Strangers When We Married

by Carla Cassidy

  Closing her eyes, she sighed audibly. This was where she belonged, in his arms. And the utter contentment she felt at this moment enveloped her.

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have fallen asleep for a few minutes. It was Seth’s voice that pulled her from her half-sleep state.

  “Meghan…” He trailed his hand across her bare back, as if loving the touch of her skin. “We need to talk.”

  His words caused a shiver of fear to race up her spine. She opened her eyes with a weary resignation, knowing the conversation they were about to have would irrevocably shatter the fantasy they’d been living the past week.

  It was time for a reality check, and Meghan knew her heart was about to be broken all over again.

  Chapter 13

  Meghan rolled away from Seth’s embrace and grabbed her clothes. She didn’t want to have this talk while naked and in his arms.

  While she pulled on her clothes, Seth did the same, redressing in his jeans and sweater. “Let’s go back in the living room to talk,” he suggested, as if he didn’t want to have the discussion in the room where they had just shared a beautiful intimacy.

  Meghan agreed with a nod. She grabbed her glasses from the nightstand and followed him from the bedroom.

  The last thing she wanted was to have this difficult conversation in the room where they had just made love. She knew if they remained in here she would be vulnerable to him, might agree to anything with the touch of him still imprinted on her skin.

  When they went back into the living room, Seth placed several more logs on the fire, then stirred it with the poker to set them aflame.

  Meghan curled up in one corner of the sofa, watching him work with the fire, her thoughts trying to untangle themselves. She was so conflicted about Seth, about if he should be a part of Kirk’s life or not.

  Things had been so clear to her when she’d first found out she was pregnant. Although she’d known it was the right thing to do to let Seth know he had a son, she’d been absolutely convinced that it was also the right thing to do to keep Seth out of their lives.

  Seth finished with the fire and joined her on the sofa. His gaze was soft, tender as he looked at her. “Meghan…” he reached for her hand.

  She pulled her hand from his, not wanting any contact with him as she desperately tried to decide what to do. Should she allow him to be an active participant in raising Kirk? As she thought of her own childhood, her heart rebelled against the very thought. “Seth, I’m just not ready to make a final decision where Kirk and you are concerned.”

  He took her hand again, this time refusing to allow her to pull away. “I don’t want to talk about Kirk. We need to talk about us.”

  Meghan looked at him in surprise. “About us?”

  “Meghan, I love you. I never stopped loving you.” His voice was deeper than usual and intensity gave it a slightly shaky tone. His gaze burned into hers. “And I know you still love me.”

  “I do,” she confessed, deep emotion rising inside her. “I never stopped loving you, Seth. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t.”

  He squeezed her hand tightly. “Then what in the hell are we doing to one another?” He released her hand and stood suddenly. “What in the hell are we doing pretending it’s all about Kirk, when it’s all about us?”

  “Because there’s no answer for us.” The joyous emotion that had filled her at his words of love transformed to agony as she remembered the reasons they had parted, the reasons that would still keep them apart.

  “There has to be an answer.” Seth paced in front of the fireplace, his body taut with tension, a deep frown etched into his forehead. “We’re two rational, adult people who love one another. Surely we can work out any kinks so that we can be together for the rest of our lives.”

  He stopped pacing and stared at her, his gaze filled with a combination of love and a hint of suppressed anger. “Dammit, Meghan. I don’t just want to be Kirk’s father. I want to be your lover, your husband, your future.”

  “Then quit your job.”

  The words tore painfully from her throat and hung in the air, suspended by tension. He continued to hold her gaze and she saw the anger rising, stirring the green of his eyes into turbulent seas.

  “And it’s that simple,” he said, a touch of bitterness sharpening his tone. His hands balled into fists at his sides. “When you met me, I was a field agent. When we started dating, I was a field agent. And when you married me, I was a field agent. I have never understood when, exactly, my job became an issue.” His voice rose angrily.

  Meghan held his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by his anger. “It was always an issue. I told you when I first met you that I didn’t date field agents.”

  “But you did date me. You slept with me. You fell in love with me…and I fell in love with you. We got married and you never mentioned anything about me quitting my job.”

  “I just thought you understood that’s what I wanted.” She felt the same helpless, hopeless feeling that she had almost two years before, when they’d had a discussion much like this one.

  He drew in a deep breath, as if to steady himself. “Meghan, I don’t understand the sacrifice you’re asking me to make. I’ve never understood it.”

  Meghan pulled off her glasses and rubbed her forehead, then put her glasses back on. “That’s because we never really talked. In all the time we dated, in all the time we were married, we never really talked about what was important to each of us.”

  “Then talk to me now.” He rejoined her on the sofa and once again reached for her hand.

  Meghan chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. She’d never told Seth about her fear…never really explained to him about her childhood. Maybe if she’d told him years ago, he would have abided by her wishes and quit. Maybe if she’d told him they would have never divorced.

  “Meghan…you said the other day that we were nothing more than intimate strangers when we married. Looking back, I realize you were right. We didn’t talk enough. We didn’t share enough. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late now.”

  His words gave her courage, the courage to go back in time and face her dismal childhood, attempt to explain to him why she refused to live her mother’s life and make Kirk live her childhood all over again.

  “You know my father was a cop,” she began.

  “Yeah. But what does that have to do with us?”

  “Everything.” Once again she extricated her hand from him. This time she stood, unable to sit, needing the physical activity of pacing while she talked about how the past colored the present.

  “I told you how much my mother hated the holidays, especially Christmas because she was so afraid for my father.” She stood in front of the fireplace and stared into the flames, her back to Seth. “What I didn’t tell you is that she was afraid every night my father left for work.”

  Meghan closed her eyes, allowing herself to go back in time. “That fear filled our house every night. She’d cry, she’d wring her hands, she’d conjure up all kinds of horrible scenarios. It was a terrible thing to see, a terrible thing to feel.”

  She jumped as Seth’s hands touched her shoulders. He turned her around to face him. “Why haven’t you ever told me about this before now?”

  A blush stole across her face, warming her from the inside out. “I was ashamed and embarrassed.” She stepped around him, dislodging his hands from her shoulders. “Oh Seth, you’re so brave and so strong. I didn’t want you to laugh at me.”

  She faced him again, the heat of her face intensifying as her blush deepened. “Why do you think I have to have night-lights burning all over the house? It’s because some of that fear of my childhood is still with me.”

  “I wouldn’t have laughed at you,” he protested softly.

  “It doesn’t matter now.” She threaded a hand through her hair, her thoughts still in the distant past. “My mom used to wake me up on the nights dad was at work. She’d be crying, telling me that if something happen
ed to him, she’d die, too. I saw her torment, Seth. The utter terror that gripped her each time he walked out the door. I lived her torment and I won’t do it again. I don’t want that for myself, and I definitely don’t want it for my son.”

  “Meghan, for God’s sake, don’t ask me to give up my work.” His eyes held a tortured plea.

  “I’m not asking you to give it up entirely,” she protested. “You can still work for SPEAR. Just take a desk job, Seth. Get out of the field.” She hadn’t realized hope filled her heart until this very moment. But now, hope expanded inside her and she held her breath…hoping…praying he would give her the happily-ever-after she wanted with him.

  His agony shone from his eyes. “Meghan, I would do anything for you…for Kirk, but I can’t do this. Working for SPEAR as a field agent isn’t just what I do…it’s who I am.”

  “Then you aren’t the man I can live with for the rest of my life.” The hope she had momentarily entertained left her, making her feel weak and defeated and in pain. “It just proves what I’ve always known. What you feel for me isn’t love, not really. If you truly loved me, you’d do this for me.”

  “If you truly loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to do this for you,” he countered with an edge of bitterness.

  They were back at the same place they had been eighteen months before, when they’d bitterly said goodbye and parted ways.

  “And now you understand why we can’t build a life together. And you should also understand why I can’t allow you to continue to be a part of Kirk’s life.”

  She raised her chin defiantly as she saw the flames of rising anger igniting in his eyes. “I won’t give him the kind of childhood I had. If we got remarried, if we tried to be together, Kirk and I would be afraid every time you left for an assignment. I won’t have that for myself, and I won’t have it for him.”

  “Now, let me tell you something,” Seth said, advancing toward her. He stopped when he stood mere inches from her. “Your mother did a terrible thing to you.”

  Meghan gasped in surprise. “What are you talking about? This isn’t about my mother…it’s about your job.”

  “It wasn’t about your father’s job and it isn’t about mine. It’s about a grown woman infecting her child with fear.”

  He took her by the shoulders, as if he wanted to shake her until she agreed to whatever he wanted. “Your mother destroyed your childhood, not your father’s job. I will have a relationship with my son, whether you like it or not.”

  Meghan jerked away from him, her own anger raising an ugly head. “I’m his mother, and I’ll decide who he has a relationship with.”

  “And I’m his father, and nobody…not even you will keep him from me,” he yelled. He drew a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair as if to steady himself.

  “Any time I walk out that door, whether it’s to go on an assignment or to get milk at the corner store, I’m at risk. I could be hit by a bus, or struck by lightning. Tragedies happen,” he continued more calmly.

  “But your job puts you at greater risk than if you were pushing papers at a desk,” she countered unevenly.

  “And how Kirk handles that is up to you. Kirk will take his emotional health from you. You can do one of two things. You can teach him to accept my job calmly, rationally, or you can do what your mother did to you and make him an emotional cripple for the rest of his life.”

  Seth went to the hall closet and pulled out his coat. He put it on, then grabbed his stocking cap. “You can shove me out of your life, Meghan. But, you can’t shove me out of Kirk’s.” With these final words, he left the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Meghan stared at the fire, the dancing flames blurring as tears filled her eyes. Just as she’d anticipated, the fantasy had shattered.

  There would be no happily-ever-after for herself and Seth. She refused to compromise on this particular issue. She’d watched her mother disintegrate beneath the burden of fear. She loved Seth desperately, devotedly…but she couldn’t surrender on this particular point. She refused to spend her life with a man who could be killed at any moment.

  As long as Seth worked as a field agent for SPEAR, their futures would be separate from one another, no matter how much they loved one another.

  Seth stalked around to the back of the town house and opened the shed. Anger coursed through him as he grabbed a snow shovel, needing some physical work to ease the tension that rolled inside him.

  He wasn’t sure who his anger was directed at, Meghan, himself, or fate…who had given him and Meghan a taste of what could be if only one of them would give in.

  He went back to the front of the house and began to shovel the sidewalk, his thoughts in turmoil. She’d never told him before about her childhood and the needy mother who had used a child as a sounding board for fear.

  Scooping up a shovelful of snow, he realized that at least now he better understood Meghan’s demand, although he still believed it was unreasonable.

  However, it was more than reason that kept him from granting her what she wanted…demanded of him.

  Every time he thought about quitting his job as a field agent, panic pressed suffocatingly tight in his chest. A dreadful sense of impending doom engulfed him and he knew, rational or not, that if he quit his job he would die.

  It was a feeling he could share with nobody, a feeling of weakness that shamed him. He especially couldn’t tell Meghan, who believed him to be brave and strong.

  He’d told the truth when he said to Meghan that being a field agent wasn’t just what he did. It was who he was and without it he’d be nothing.

  And so in the end, they were right back where they had been almost two years ago…in love, but unable to make it work.

  Not quite where they had been, he amended. He shoveled more snow, methodically moving down the walkway in front of the house. Kirk. His head filled with a vision of his son.

  Smiling, drooling Kirk was the difference between the past and the present. Never again would Seth be simply a divorced man. For the rest of his life he would be a father.

  Seth knew what it was like to grow up without a father. His own father had been a dead man in a recliner for years before he’d tragically ended his own life. There had been no father-son bonding, no baseball games or fishing trips. In truth, there had been scant little interaction between Seth’s father and Seth.

  Things will be different with Kirk, Seth vowed as he finished the walkway in front of Meghan’s house and moved to shovel the one in front of Rose’s place.

  He didn’t give a damn what Meghan wanted. He didn’t give a damn what she demanded as far as Kirk was concerned. No power in the world would keep Seth from being a father to his son. Meghan would just have to figure out how to deal with what Seth did for a living when it came to raising Kirk.

  She’d made it quite clear she would not deal with what he did for a living where she was concerned. Bitterness ripped through him, a bitterness born of enormous pain and disappointment.

  He hadn’t realized how much he’d hoped they could work out the issue and build a life together until now, when all that hope had fled.

  Just quit your job, a little voice whispered inside him. That’s all it would take to make things right. Quit your job and Meghan will be yours forever.

  He gasped, his breath exploding out of him in a huge puff of icy smoke. He couldn’t quit his job. He couldn’t explain it, didn’t understand it, but he knew this was the one thing he couldn’t do for her.

  He sat down on a bank of snow, trying to catch his breath.

  He wasn’t sure if his breathlessness came from his physical exertion or the terror that always gripped him when he thought of quitting his job.

  He drew deep breaths, the icy cold aching in his chest. Why couldn’t she just accept him for what he was? She’d married him, vowed to love him forever, then had changed all the rules.

  The fear inside him transformed to a renewed dose of bitterness. Why couldn’t she understand that with
out his job, he was nothing, and if he was nothing, what did he have to offer her or Kirk?

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key chain Rose had given him. She had no idea how appropriate the gift had been. He was a man with only half a heart.

  With an ache of emptiness inside him, he picked up his shovel and got back to work.

  “You have big plans for tonight?” Mark asked Meghan as the two prepared to go home after working on yet another Sunday.

  “Tonight?” She looked at him blankly, then sighed as she realized the date. New Year’s Eve. The time of new beginnings, resolutions and hope. “Sure, my big plans are to get into my pajamas and be in bed by ten.”

  “In bed alone?” Mark asked with a sly grin.

  Meghan didn’t return the grin. “Definitely.” Her tone of voice obviously spoke volumes to how things stood between herself and Seth, as Mark asked no more questions.

  Moments later in her car driving home, Meghan thought about the past six days. Since their heated discussion on Christmas Day, she and Seth had kept a wary distance between themselves.

  They shared their evening meal together with Kirk, then separated for the rest of the night. She wasn’t sure what Seth did in the evenings as she usually took Kirk and went into her office to work on the computer.

  She did know Seth’s restlessness had increased tenfold. It was as if when he’d thought he and Meghan might be able to work out their problems and build a life together, the demons inside him quieted. But now that he knew a future between them was impossible, he was tense and filled with agitation.

  He was ready for a mission. Meghan knew the signs. Seth needed action, adventure and excitement. It was best that they had decided not to try again with each other. She’d never be enough for him. He’d eventually grow to resent her for making him give up his job.

  She’d been a fool to marry him in the first place, a fool to believe they could ever make a real life together. She pulled into the driveway, dreading another night of isolation and silence.