“Look inside,” she said softly.
He pulled the shining gold ring from the blue velvet box, held it up to the faint light from the kitchen. He could just make out the words, With love from Allie, carved inside. Emotions swamped him, and his hands shook as he carefully replaced the ring in the box.
“I asked John,” she said, answering his silent question. She touched the precious thing with a fingertip. “He told me you’d always wanted a ring like this.”
How had John known? Lucas supposed there had been enough times in college when he and John had wandered through Berkeley together or gone into San Francisco for the day. Lucas hadn’t realized his hungry stares into jewelry-store windows had been so obvious. A custom-made ring, created just for him, would symbolize his arrival in a world that didn’t want him.
He’d long ago dismissed the idea as a bit of vanity he didn’t need. Yet holding it now, the soft glow of gold and wink of diamonds brought the old longings, the old hurts sharply to the surface.
He glanced over at Allie, at her sweet upturned face. Watching her, it was as if a chasm yawned between them. He would be safe on his own side, safe and alone. To reach Allie, he would have to leap over his fears, the old remembered pain. That vault would tear away every crutch, all his walls and barriers.
He only had to say, thank you.
But even that shred of gratitude froze in his throat. God help him, cowardice gripped his heart like a fist, forced him back behind his walls.
“Take it back.” The mean-spirited words leapt from his mouth before he could stop them. He shut the ring box with a snap and shoved it into her hands. “I don’t want it.”
Her eyes went wide with the beginnings of hurt. “But John said—”
“I don’t give a damn what John said.” He rose abruptly, knocking the chair backward. “I don’t want it.” Not even understanding what drove him, he headed for the house.
“Lucas!”
Her cry struck him between the shoulder blades with the force of a dagger. He staggered a step, then continued inside.
She was right behind him. She grabbed his sleeve, turned him around with the force of her will. “I know the world hurt you,” she hissed. “I know there’s more pain inside you than I can even imagine. But to be so cruel…”
She took a breath, the sound edging on tears. Snatching up his hand, she stuffed the box into it. “Take it. Even if it hurts you. Even if it means nothing to you. Take it.” She dragged in another breath. “Because I gave it to you. Because it means something to me.”
She pushed past him then, raced upstairs. He stood there, feeling lower than low, like the worst kind of vermin.
She was his wife, the mother of his child. How could he have treated her so shabbily? Good God, what was wrong with him?
He sagged into a kitchen chair, the box clutched in his hand. He didn’t deserve the gift. He didn’t deserve Allie.
Unable to help himself, he opened the box again, pulled the ring from it. And in the pale kitchen light, he read over and over again the inscription inside.
Chapter Thirteen
Lucas stood just outside the doorway of the TaylorMade cafeteria, his gaze fixed across the room on a table crowded with employees. Allie sat among them, Helen on her left and engineer Randy Sato on her right. The weak sunshine of early January filtered through the windows as the staff enjoyed an afternoon coffee break.
Rather than enter the cafeteria and join them, Lucas hung back, not wanting them to see him. His presence tended to throw a damper on staff gatherings. Even more so since Allie’s announcement about her pregnancy.
Allie’s revelation, coupled with their commitment to continue the marriage, had roused in Lucas a protectiveness and possessiveness so fierce it frightened him. Even the most innocuous look from another man brought up an almost caveman response to declare his ownership. Bone-deep and primitive, the urgency to make clear his claim on her shook him even more than the passion she never failed to stir in him.
After the mess he had made of Christmas, it had taken until now, the first week of January, for Allie to speak to him beyond what was strictly required. When John had informed him shortly after Christmas that the pregnant teen had changed her mind about adopting, Lucas had tried to draw Allie into a discussion about whether they should still try to adopt. He’d barely gotten a word out of her and the issue remained unresolved. She still refused to share his bed with him. No more than he deserved since he had hurt her so deeply when he’d spurned her gift.
He’d tried to make amends with a diamond necklace his jeweler had quickly put together for him. But although she had responded politely to the present and had put it on at his prompting, he hadn’t seen her wear it since.
Even as her belly swelled with their child, his passion for her grew daily. Sometimes he ached for her so badly his body shook with the pent-up fire of his attraction to her. Being so close to her yet holding back was an agony, one that set him so much on edge he thought he’d go mad.
The day he had to fight down the impulse to take a swing at Randy Sato because Allie had smiled down the conference table at him at a meeting, Lucas knew he was in bad shape. But he couldn’t seem to stop the pang inside him when he saw how easily she interacted with her fellow employees. She related to them with an effortlessness he had never possessed.
The staff respected him, although some of them he intimidated. But they never joked with him, never stopped him in the hallway for a bit of chitchat as they did with Allie. In the years he’d owned TaylorMade, even at the beginning when they’d operated on a shoestring, he’d never encouraged the kind of socializing that seemed to come so naturally to Allie.
He’d always considered personal lives irrelevant in the workplace. But watching Allie, it hit home that his employees spent a good chunk of their lives at TaylorMade. It made perfect sense they would strive to connect with each other.
Until now it had never bothered him to be set apart from the others. He was the boss; it was expected that he be somewhat isolated from the staff. But the staff seemed truly delighted with Allie’s company. The way she seemed to have forged such strong bonds with the other employees, Lucas for the first time felt like the outsider in the one place he’d thought he belonged. Like that child that had yearned for so long for stability, for a friend, a connection, he felt cut off from the camaraderie.
As he watched, Allie threw back her head in laughter, exuberance in the sound. But when he caught her eye across the room, her happiness seemed to dim. Her wary expression wrenched something inside him, gave him a sense of loss he didn’t understand. She pressed her hands to the table as if to rise; he motioned her to stay put.
She kept her gaze on him as he remained in the doorway. She looked flustered and unsure, as if she suspected he wanted something of her, but couldn’t decipher it. If he could have spoken to her, he would have confessed he hadn’t a clue either, other than wanting to hold her, to protect her, to find a way to her heart.
She looked his way again, and this time said her goodbyes and gathered up her jacket. As she approached him, her serious expression told him nothing of what she was feeling. Only her green eyes revealed the turbulence inside her.
“Was there something you needed, Lucas?” she asked, her cool tone uncharacteristic.
He had to find a way to get her back. Impulsively, he took her hand. “Come walk with me.”
Her eyes narrowed at his demand, but she nodded in acquiescence. He helped her on with her coat, then reclaimed her hand, leading her from the building and out into the weak winter sunshine.
As they headed for the pond, the rain-laden grass gave under their feet, squishing with each step. Lucas kept a firm hand on Allie’s elbow, catching her when she slipped a little on the slick surface.
They stopped at a stone bench at the pond’s edge. Allie lowered herself onto the bench and Lucas sat beside her. She gazed out over the pond, tracing the path of the swans as they crossed the still water.
He knew she was waiting for him to speak. Words danced in his mind in a confusing chaos, refusing to fall into any ordered pattern. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head, then plunged in. “Allie, I’m sorry.”
Allie could see the regret in his hooded gaze, heard the sincerity in his voice. But he’d hurt her at Christmas, wounded her badly. And even though she loved the man more than she ought to, she didn’t feel particularly inclined right then to make things easy for him.
She cast him a skeptical look. “So you’ve said before. But somehow we always end up back with this distance between us.”
She could see that stung and felt a moment of remorse. But she held her tongue, leaving it to him to talk. “I’ve made mistakes,” he said. “I’m no good at relationships. I never learned how to do it right.”
“Nice excuse, Lucas. But you can’t keep blaming your past for the mess you’ve made of the present.”
Anger flared in his gray eyes and she thought she’d pushed him too far. Yet as he regained his composure, she wondered if it would have been better for him to explode, to burn away his restraint.
His jaw tightening, he turned toward her, took her hands in his. “Allie, thank you for the Christmas gift. Thank you for caring enough to have it made for me.”
Her gaze fell to his hands, noticed the ring for the first time on his right pinky. “You’re wearing it.”
“I put it on this morning. I don’t intend to take it off.”
Her feelings for him welled up inside her, flowing from her heart, filling her. She could no more hold back the words shaping her emotions than she could resist taking another breath. “Lucas.” She laid her hand against his cheek. “I love you, Lucas.”
He seemed startled and she could see the now-familiar instinct to escape in his eyes. Curling her fingers around his neck, she gave a gentle squeeze. “I love you and there’s no avoiding it. You can’t change the way I feel, no matter what, so there’s no point in running away from it.”
He cupped his hand over hers, held her there. “I care for you, Allie. I cherish you. I want to call that feeling love….” He looked away from her, out across the pond, to some distant point beyond. Then he focused on her again, intent. “But I can’t lie to you. I know love is more, greater.”
He brought her hand to his lips, shut his eyes. “There’s a lock on my heart, Allie. Too many years of a mother more in love with a bottle than her own son, too many homes where I was unwelcome.”
Even as tears closed Allie’s throat, her love spilled from her. “You’re always welcome in my heart, Lucas.”
His gaze locked with hers. “If I had the key, I would give it to you. I would open to you…to our child. But I don’t…”
He pulled her to him then, clutching her close. His heart thudded in a rapid beat, his breathing dragged in and out of his lungs raggedly. “You’ll never want for anything, Allie, you or our child. As long as you’re with me. Every part of me there is to give is yours.”
Except his love. She wept inside at the realization. But at least they’d broken down the walls again and perhaps they could build a new bridge between them.
When Lucas eased away from her and rose, his smile tugged at her heart. “What do you say we leave work early? Go to a movie and dinner.”
She nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. This would be enough, wouldn’t it? A generous man, giving her whatever she desired? It was close to love.
It would have to be enough.
Late that night, after a wonderful film and an even better dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant, Allie walked with Lucas into the house, sated and content. When Lucas came up behind her, slipping her jacket from her shoulders and pressing a kiss to the back of her neck, the sizzling attraction between them flared immediately into white-hot heat. He’d held back every night, until she felt crazy with wanting him. But she sensed tonight he wouldn’t stop at holding her in his arms in bed. And she was willing to go as far as he would take her.
As Lucas hung up their jackets in the coat closet, Allie’s gaze fell on the answering machine’s flashing red light. In spite of her warm contentment, a shiver of premonition arced up her spine. She hit the play button and waited while the tape rewound, trying to shake off her dread.
“Allie, call me!” her sister said, panic obvious in her tone. “As soon as you get home, no matter what time!”
Lucas laid his hand on the back of neck, lightly stroked the sudden tension there. “What is it?”
Her hands shook as she dialed her sister’s number. “I don’t know.”
Please, don’t let it be the baby, she prayed. Or Danny or Lisa.
“Sherril,” she gasped out when her sister answered the phone. “It’s me.”
Sherril sucked in a breath and Allie could hear her tears. “It’s Dad,” she said. “He’s wandered away from the care home. They can’t find him.”
Terror gripped Allie as she set down the phone. It was the dead of winter, even colder in Reno than Sacramento. For her father to be out wandering the streets…
Lucas turned her toward him. “Allie, what’s wrong?”
Her mind raced as she tried to figure out what to do next. “My dad…they don’t know where he is.”
“Who doesn’t?” He shook her gently. “You’re not making sense.”
She raised her gaze to his. “I have to leave. I have to go to Reno, now, tonight.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Allie, I still don’t understand. Why are you going to Reno?”
She tried to shrug away from him, gave up when he refused to loosen his grip. “To find my father. He left the home. They haven’t been able to find him.” Pulling harder, she finally broke free. “I have to leave.”
Lucas followed right behind her as she hurried up the stairs. “Then I’m going with you.”
Behind Lucas’s arrogant tone, Allie sensed a trace of fear. But she had her father to think about. Lucas would have to deal with his own emotions.
In her room, she went straight to her dresser, pulled out a handful of underwear, bras, socks. “No, Lucas. Please, I just have to do this by myself.”
“Allie, I want to be with you.” He dogged her steps as she crossed to the closet, tugged out jeans and sweaters. “I want to help you.”
“No!” She clutched the clothes to her chest. She wasn’t being fair to him, but panic had stripped her of compassion. She just shook her head, pushed past him.
“How long will you be gone? Can you at least tell me that?”
“I don’t know!” She dumped the clothes on the bed, fighting back tears as she returned to the closet for her suitcase. “As long as it takes to find him.”
He reached for her, tried to grab her shoulder. “Take me with you.” A pleading note had crept into his voice.
She evaded his grasp. “I can’t, Lucas. Please understand—”
“I don’t understand anything!” He dragged in a breath and his voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Just that you’re leaving. You won’t let me help.”
“Oh, Lucas.” Dropping the suitcase to the floor, she took his hands. “My father…he…” Has Alzheimer’s, she tried to force herself to say. But it still felt like too great a betrayal to her father to tell Lucas.
“He’s very sick, and he’s missing. He needs me, Lucas. My family needs me.”
He squeezed her hands. “Then let me be what you need. Let me in, Allie.”
Crazy with worry, she couldn’t hold back the anger that surged up in her. “Let you in…” She bit out the words. “When you refuse to open up to me, when you keep your heart under lock and key…”
Her hand flew to her mouth as the cruel words hung between them. “I’m sorry, Lucas.”
He released her hands, took a step back. “Why apologize? It’s only the truth.” He moved toward the door. “You’d better get going.”
She closed the distance between them, took his hand. “I love you, Lucas. That hasn’t changed. But I have to see to my father.”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze. He just nodded, tugged his hand from hers. She knew she had to somehow make things right between them again, but it would have to wait until her father was safe.
She threw her clothes into the suitcase, grabbed up what necessities she could think of from the bathroom and added them to the pile. If she needed anything else, she could buy it in Reno.
Snapping the suitcase shut, she turned to Lucas. He’d shut himself off to her again and her dreams of an intimate connection with him were shattered. Would it always be like this with him, one step forward, two back?
“I’ll call when I get to Reno, let you know where I’m staying.”
She bent to pick up the suitcase, but with a stubborn set to his jaw, he took it from her, carried it from her room. “I’ll wait for your call.”
“You don’t have to wait up. I can leave a message.”
“I’ll wait.”
At the bottom of the stairs, she tried again to reach him. “I shouldn’t be gone long. At least I hope…” She didn’t want to think about how many days her father could survive exposed to a Reno winter.
“Take as long as you need.” He wouldn’t look at her as he strode toward the door to the garage.
Snatching up her purse, she hurried after him. In the garage, he hefted the suitcase into the trunk of the Volvo, slammed the lid shut. Then he opened the car door for her, helped her inside.
His hand lingered on her arm and she wondered if he would lean in and kiss her goodbye. But although his gaze dropped to her lips, he straightened abruptly and backed away.
Allie closed the car door, then started the engine so she could roll down the electric window. “Lucas.”
He had turned his back to activate the automatic garage door. When she called his name a second time, he turned toward her, his body stiff with reluctance.
“You know I’ll be back,” she said firmly, keeping her gaze locked with his.
A softness flickered briefly in his face, a trace of hope. He reached through the window to brush her cheek with his thumb. He looked so lost, like a boy who’d faced too many broken promises. “Find your father, Allie.”
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