And suddenly, with all that aching sweetness in her ears, calling up memory and stealing into the heart of her—oh, yes, the heart!—suddenly she knew. She loved this man who sat beside her, unaware. Travis. She loved him.
Stunned, she closed her eyes, familiarizing herself with this certainty borne on the wings of a song. With the truth that had been chasing her through all the endless days and nights without him. She loved him!
“Randi?” Travis’s voice was soft yet taut with concern. He remembered the Liebestraum all too well. Remembered every sweet response of the woman in his arms that night. Remembered, too, the bitter disappointment that followed. “Darlin’, are you all right?”
Randi gave herself a shake and groped for a response as emotion thundered through her. God, she couldn’t give in to it now! Perhaps later, when she could think clearly. It was all too new, too raw.
“Why the Sarah Anne?” she said at last. There. Her voice even sounded normal. Now, how to explain.
She’d chosen that setting for a reason. Despite the magic summoned by the Liebestraum, the yacht itself represented all that had gone wrong that night. All that had crippled the dream that hadn’t come true. Couldn’t come true, not when nightmares barred the way.
But she’d come a long way since then; thanks to the counseling, she was a lot stronger. She wanted, needed, to face the scene of the disaster that had turned her life inside out and killed a dream she hadn’t even known she held in her heart. She loved this man. That, in itself, made facing it necessary, but it was more than that. She was done being a coward.
“I’ve heard,” she replied, glancing at him as the last strains of the Liebestraum faded and died, “that when you fall off a horse—” she took a steadying breath and released it “—you should climb right back on and ride.”
She saw him swallow, as if to digest this, his tanned throat working above the collar of the shirt he’d opened and stripped of its tie. For a long time he didn’t respond, didn’t look at her, just kept his eyes on the road and drove. She held her breath as the muted tones of the radio announcer and the engine’s purr underscored the silence that stretched between them.
His answer, when it came, was thick with emotion. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you,” he said, and she saw him swallow again, “that you lack courage, Randi Terhune. Lady, you’ve got it in spades!”
ALERTED BY TRAVIS’S phone call before they left, Captain Baker welcomed them aboard with the quiet courtesy Randi recalled from before. There were a few shy smiles of recognition from members of the crew, as well, and before she knew it, she and Travis were settled in the lounge where they’d once nibbled hors d’ouvres and drunk champagne.
After speaking a few words to the steward, who nodded deferentially and disappeared, Travis smiled at her. “You looked elegant in that bridesmaid’s gown, but it’s best you took the time to change.” Warm appreciation filled the eyeshe ran over her, and he shook his head. “Damned if you don’t still look elegant. You’re the only woman I know who can inspire that comment wearin’ jeans ‘n’ a T-shirt.”
Blushing, Randi whispered a thank-you and stared at the hands she held folded in her lap. All too aware of her newfound feelings, she was a taut bundle of nerves, but she wouldn’t let this defeat her. She wouldn’t!
She made herself raise her eyes, though her glance barely lit on the beloved face before skittering away. “I…liked you in that suit tonight,” she managed, hating the schoolgirl callowness of her reply.
She knew they had to talk, but now that they were here, the enormity of her emotional discovery threatened to make it impossible. Talk? She could barely think. “Um, I mean,” she added awkwardly, “I never saw you in a suit and tie before, and…well, you looked very, uh, smart.”
“Why, thank you, ma’am.” Would she ever be at ease with him when they were alone like this? Travis wondered. They needed to talk, but he wouldn’t crowd her. He’d resolved to give her space—the space she needed to grow comfortable with him. To trust him, however long it took. He wasn’t going to rush her, though he wanted desperately to reach out to her. No, the impetus had to come from her.
“Here you go.” He handed her a glass from a tray the steward left before disappearing as unobtrusively as he’d come. “Etienne’s a whiz with fresh-made lemonade.”
“What, no champagne?” she quipped, trying for insouciance, fearing she sounded querulous, instead.
His gaze was solemn and direct as he faced her across the hammered brass table where they’d once sipped the bubbly. “I want no fuzzy thoughts between us this trip, Randi. What needs sayin’s much too important.”
Yet he saw that she was taut as a drum, that he needed to put her at ease. “But all in good time.” He rose and took the barely touched lemonade from her hand, set it aside. “C’mon, darlin’, there’s a heavenful of stars need watchin’ up top.”
“All right,” she said, rising. The smile he sent had her blood pulsing madly through her veins. The air topside would be welcome; she needed a clear head.
But as he led her up on deck, something felt wrong, and she tried to think what it was. He escorted her, but…but without touching her, she realized with a stab of disappointment. Without taking her arm or her hand, as he had in the past.
Yet Travis was a toucher; she had only to recall the countless times she’d seen him ruffle Matt’s hair or grab him for a hug, not to mention the myriad ways she’d felt the touch of those gentle hands.
But he hadn’t touched her at all this day. Not to lead her to his car, nor to help her in or out of it, not even to dance, though the celebration had been in full swing by the time they left. What was wrong?
IF THERE WERE ANY HANDS on deck, Randi didn’t see them; there were just the two of them under an inky sky that blazed with the promised stars. For a long time neither spoke, and at first she despaired, wondering if they even could; perhaps there was just too much that stood between them.
But after a while, as they strolled the pristine deck, the silence grew more comfortable. Moonlight etched a path across the sea, from the horizon to the smoothly gliding vessel. Up close, it pearled the things it touched, encasing them in an incandescence so lovely it made her sigh.
Hearing her, Travis stopped, leaned against the railing and found her gaze. “So, gutsy lady, how’s the horse?”
“The horse? I don’t…” With a gurgle of laughter, she deciphered his meaning. “Oh, the horse!”
Smiling, she moved to lean against the railing, also. Beside him, but not touching him, since this seemed to be how he wanted it. That this troubled her was something she pushed to the back of her mind; perhaps it held no significance at all, and she was just imagining problems that didn’t exist. Those she was sure of were challenge enough, and now was the time.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve climbed back on the silly nag. Now all I’ve gotta do is ride.”
His quick reassuring grin gave her courage; she took a deep breath and plunged in. “Travis, I owe you a deep apology, two of them, in fact. No, don’t shake your head It’s true, and I need to tell you about it…please?”
“Go on,” he said quietly, reading the need in her face.
“Travis, on a beach last summer, you…you began to make love to me,” she said in a voice so low he had to strain to hear it. “You were the first man who ever did. You didn’t know that of course, yet you were utterly gentle and considerate of me.”
She took a deep breath, expelled it in a quavering rush of air. “And I ran screaming from your arms. You didn’t deserve that, Travis. And I’m so heartily sorry for it. So sorry, I could—No, please, let me finish.
“That was the first time, and bad enough. The second time was much worse. It happened here on the Sarah Anne, of course, and you deserved my behavior then even less because you tried to tell me that you…that you cared. Yet all I did was spew venom at you. And, Travis, I’m so deeply sorry about that night. Sorrier than I can put into words, although I’m going to try.”
; Travis heard the anguish in her voice, saw tears glisten in her eyes, and he wanted to hold her, tell her to stop. She owed him no apologies. She’d had it right that night; he’d brought it on himself, with his damnable penchant for trying to control other people’s lives.
He wanted to hold her. Tell her what he’d learned about himself and beg her forgiveness for being so blind and stupid. Wanted to, but couldn’t, not until she—
“But telling you I’m sorry isn’t enough.” Randi’s voice shook as it cut across his thoughts, yet gathered strength as she went on. “You see, there are reasons I rejected your…intimate touch. The same reasons, pretty much, why I once refused to explain choosing to conceive Matt as I did.”
There was a tremor in her voice, but she made herself go on. “Travis, when I was barely twelve years old, I was…touched—used—in unspeakably intimate ways by a grown man. An adult. My dead mother’s second husband—my stepfather.”
Beside her, Travis’s body tensed; she could feel it. But he didn’t move to touch her, and when she continued, her voice was laced with pain.
“A man we’d been told to respect, even if we couldn’t love him, because he was now in Daddy’s place.” She gave a small mirthless laugh. “In his place? Dear God, he was as much like Daddy as a gargoyle to an archangel! Oh, he was handsome enough, big and muscular. Yes, I remember very well how strong he was. He’d hold me down, you see, and—”
“Randi—”
“No, I need to tell it!” She turned her head toward him, and moonlight glistened on the tracks of her tears; he longed to soothe them away; seeing her face, he didn’t dare.
“There was nothing I could do or say to stop him, though I tried. Dear God, I tried! I fought him, but he was so much bigger, and I was such a skinny little kid. When that failed, I pleaded. And then I begged.”
She took a shuddering breath. “But the begging only seemed to make him more eager and…and rougher. So after a while I stopped begging. I stopped doing anything at all.”
Her voice became a monotone as she described what she meant. “It was as if I left my body and floated free up to the ceiling, and it was someone else lying down there on the bed. Someone else lying under him, while he panted and sweated and groaned. That wasn’t me whimpering and powerless down there, oh, no! It wasn’t happening to me at all.”
She paused, staring off into the moon-washed dark. “And that’s how I endured it. Week after week, month after ugly month. Until that blessed day, half a year later, when he was dead. When he was killed in a car accident, and for Jill and me…”
She paused again, considering whether she had the right to tell him her sister’s history, then recalled he already knew.
“It’s all right,” Travis said in a voice shaking with emotion. “You don’t need to go on.” He’d heard the basics from Jill, but until now, until Randi’s description of what it had been like, he’d had no idea of the raw pain words could evoke. He tried to imagine himself as such a child, helpless, utterly powerless. Subject to the demands of someone bigger and stronger. And he wanted to howl like a mad dog baying at the moon. Like a beast, using claw and fang in impotent rage, to say what language couldn’t.
“He was dead,” Randi repeated dully, “so for Jill and me, the nightmare was over.” She gave a short bitter laugh. “Well, it wasn’t really over, because I had nightmares about it for years. I just didn’t remember what they were about when I woke up.”
She managed a tremulous smile as she looked over at him, into his beloved face. “But on the night we…you began to make love to me, something triggered a recollection and broke through the block I’d erected to keep the truth at bay.
“In those few terrifying seconds, I relived it all. I recalled everything, every hellish moment, just as it…as it really happened. I knew the truth then—all of it—and I couldn’t bear it.
“So I hurled my pain at you, Travis. I blamed you, when you were blameless. You weren’t the enemy, but I made you—”
“Forget about me. You were wounded.” He swallowed thickly, feeling her anguish. “God, if only you hadn’t stopped seeing…” He glanced away, running a hand through his hair, then heaved a sigh and looked at her. “I know who Carol Martin is, Randi, and that you’ve begun seein’ her again, but only recently.”
“Jill?”
He nodded. “She’s one strong together lady, your sister. And she says Martin’s help was critical. That it enabled her to go past the abuse, usin’ the sense of herself as a survivor—to empower her, I believe she said.”
“I know. I should’ve done the same years ago, but…well, I didn’t.”
He winced at the regret in her voice. “I’m not judgin’ you, Randi,” he said quietly.
“Oh, and you’re not pitying me, either?” There was misery in her eyes.
“No, I’m not,” he countered sharply. “Compassion isn’t pity, so disabuse yourself of that notion. Look,” he added in a gentler tone, “I’d do anythin’ to take away what happened, Randi, but that’s not possible. I reckon the best I can hope for’s to try to help in any way I can, if I can. But only if you want me to, understand? Only if you ask it of me.”
“But that’s not why I’ve told you this!” she cried. “I told you because I owed it to you, don’t you understand?
I owed you an apology, and with it, an explanation. Especially after what we both heard me say in your stateroom that night. Travis, you deserved some answers, that’s all. You’re not responsible for me. I’m responsible for me.”
“Yes,” he said emphatically, “you are. And that’s why, if anybody owes somethin’, it’s me. You were right in what you accused me of that night, Randi. I was tryin’ to take over and not just in settin’ up that cruise.”
His voice softened. “I apologized for that in the garage that night, you’ll recall, but it doesn’t begin to cover what I’d been doin’. Now I’m apologizin’ for the bigger sin. The habit of a lifetime that pushed you so hard you freaked out. It’s no thanks to me you didn’t go off the deep end altogether.”
“What habit of a lifetime?” she asked, puzzled.
He told her of the exchange with Troy and what he’d learned from it. Of all it drove home to him, following, as it did, the things she’d thrown at him that night. He told her, too, of the hours of self-examination and a promise he’d made to himself: that this habit of confusing control with caring would come to an end.
“I may not always succeed in avoidin’ the impulse to control those I care about,” he finished with a wry half smile. “But I’m workin’ on it, Randi. I’m tryin’.”
“My God,” she murmured, more to herself than to him, “we’ve both been wrestling with the same devil.”
“Devil?” he echoed, aching to hold her, wondering if she realized just how much.
“I’ve begun to call it the C-word,” she said, smiling wryly up at him. “C for controlling. It’s been my nemesis, too, you see.”
Before he could ask, she told him about her own frantic efforts to control every aspect of her life she could. About the little ways this manifested itself, her attempts to keep Matt from trying his wings, even her secret wish not to share him. How it sprang from the abuse, which had made her feel helpless. How it was her way of making her world feel safe.
The words tumbled freely. It occurred to her they were finally having their talk, and it was easy.
“I lived with fear for so many years, Travis, that it controlled me. I’d do anything not to feel that vulnerable again. So I avoided those I couldn’t control, those who might hurt me, even if the possibility was only in my mind. I avoided men, Travis. I avoided you—or tried to.”
He heaved a sigh. “And I came on like a runaway train. God, Randi, can you ever forgive me? I was so involved with pursuin’ the dream of a relationship with Matt, I made myself blind to the signals you gave out. And then, when I realized I was fallin’ in love with you, I just bulldozed right past—Randi, what’s wrong?”
She
choked on a sob, torn between laughter and tears. “Travis McLean, I’ve been standing here trying to work up the courage to tell you I love you, not knowing if I dared! Not knowing if I could surrender my…fear of making myself that vulnerable to you.”
She went past the dumbfounded look on his face; now that she’d begun, her words gathered speed like a downhill racer. “Not knowing how much, or in what way you cared, Travis. So what do you do? You tell me the most crucial words a woman can ever hear from the man she loves—and wrap them up in a throwaway line. ‘Oh, by the way, Randi, I just happen to be falling in love with you.’“
He gaped at her. “Dammit, woman, I told you I cared. And I recall quite clearly sayin’ I wanted to marry you.”
“Cared! What does that mean? Or even your offer of marriage? For all I knew, it was all about Matt, hot me. You had no problem saying you loved Matt. But I never once heard you say anything about loving me!”
“Lord, woman, I…” But she was right, he realized. He’d avoided all mention of love—to her. Talked around it, but never said it.
“Randi, darlin’,” he said finally, “you’re lookin’ at one helluva prize fool.” He gave a rueful smile. “I don’t think I ever told you this, but anyone who’s known me long has heard me say I don’t believe in love, that romantic love doesn’t exist. Or if it does, it’s for poets and fools.”
“And now?” she whispered, tears brimming as she ached to be held, wondering why, even now, he wasn’t reaching out for her.
“Now I know I was doin’ some big-time avoidin’ myself. Like yours, it was caused by fear. The fear of bein’ vulnerable, because that’s what love asks. That you bare yourself, risk yourself for the other…for the beloved.”
He gave her a tender smile. “But until now, until you, I
was afraid to do that. I’d seen my parents do it for years and concluded they never loved each other at all, though what I’m seein’ these days has had me rethinkin’ that assumption.”
The smile became sardonic. “No wonder I went into the field for the CIA. It was a perfect cover. A place where I could hide while pretendin’ to be brave. I mean, physical danger’s small potatoes compared to what I really feared.”
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