by Marie Force
“What do you think you’re doing?” Susannah asked with mounting desperation.
“Going to bed. Feel free to join me when you ditch lover boy. Oh, and if you’re feeling generous, you can bring me some ice for my ribs.”
“When pigs fly.”
“If that’s how long it takes, I can wait. The season’s over, and I’ve got nothing but time.”
Helplessly, she watched as he trudged up the stairs and disappeared down the hallway. She stood there for a long time trying to figure out what to do until Henry finally came to find her.
“Did you get rid of him?” he asked.
With a glance at the top of the stairs she said, “Um, not exactly.”
Chapter 2
“What?”
“Shhh,” Susannah said. In that moment, she realized arousal wasn’t the only emotion that made Henry’s ears turn red.
“This is outrageous! He cannot stay here.”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed. “This foyer echoes through the house. He’ll hear every word you say and so will your parents.”
“I don’t care,” Henry hissed. “I want him out of here.”
Susannah nibbled on her thumbnail as anxiety coursed through her. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Not tonight anyway.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Just leave you here with your ex-husband?”
“Technically, he’s not my ex-husband. Yet.”
Henry tugged at his bow tie, which seemed to be choking him all of a sudden.
“Let’s go back in with your parents.” Susannah slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Yes, we certainly will.”
Ryan eased himself onto the bed and winced when the mattress sagged under his weight. Pain ricocheted through his body. He unbuttoned his shirt and grimaced as he eased it over his shoulders. The simple act of swinging his legs onto the bed and resting against the pile of pillows caused him to break out in a cold sweat. He took shallow breaths in and out until the blast of pain had passed. By the time it did, though, his heart pounded and his stomach roiled with nausea.
Downplaying the injury in front of Susie had used up what was left of his energy after he checked himself out of the hospital that morning—against medical advice—to fly home from New Orleans on the private plane that the team had sent for him. Aware he was running out of time to stop a divorce he didn’t want, Ryan had been desperate to get home to Susie. The rest of the team had arrived home two days earlier to find their adoring fans waiting for them at the airport. Ryan had been sorry to miss the party on the plane and the celebration at the airport, but he’d been through it before—twice, in fact—so he would survive missing it this time.
He had been banged up plenty of times in the twenty years since he started playing football as a sixth grader. During his junior year at Florida, he dislocated his elbow—fortunately not his throwing arm—in a game against Florida State. The Mavs had been playing the Bears when he tore the ACL in his left knee three years ago. That had hurt like a son of a bitch and knocked him out for half a season. But he had never broken a rib, let alone three of them, and on a scale of one to ten, the pain of broken ribs was a twelve. His face didn’t feel too great, either, and his head had been throbbing for days.
He wanted to cry when he realized his pain pills were in the duffel bag across the room. He hoped Susie would come up to fight with him, so he could cajole her into getting them for him.
Ryan hated being so helpless, but luckily he bounced back fast from injuries. He already felt a lot better than he did when it first happened. He’d had his eyes locked on his friend, Bernie, in the end zone and hadn’t seen the hulking defensive end coming. The ball just left Ryan’s hand when boom! He saw stars as he lay on the field gasping for air and wracked with pain in his head and chest.
Eight hours passed in a pain-induced fog before Ryan thought to ask if Bernie had caught the ball. Of course he had, and the touchdown added six insurance points to the score. After also learning he had been named Super Bowl MVP—again—he found out one of the broken ribs had almost punctured his lung and the hit to his face had given him a concussion.
Ryan winced when he pictured his less-than-glorious exit from the NFL—on a stretcher of all things. No one knew yet that he had played in his last game. He’d made the decision weeks before the Super Bowl and was waiting to announce it until after the team had its moment of celebration. No way would Ryan allow his personal announcement to detract from the attention his teammates deserved after their big victory.
A sneeze startled him, and he was unable to stop it in time. The new blast of pain ripped through him and brought tears to his eyes. He had discovered in the last three days that sneezing was the most painful thing in the world when your ribs are broken.
Unfortunately, his allergies had picked this week to act up for the first time in months. Tomorrow he would call the team doctor to get a shot for the allergies—anything to stop the sneezing.
When he managed to catch his breath, Ryan lay still to listen to the voices at the bottom of the stairs.
“Everything was lovely, Susannah,” Henrietta said, offering her cheek to Susannah.
Susannah kissed the plump cheek. “Thank you...Mother.”
“Let’s talk this week about the final wedding plans,” Henrietta added.
Susannah nodded as she kissed Martin goodbye. They had managed to avoid telling Henry’s parents that her ex-husband was in the house.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Henry said to his parents, handing the car keys to his father.
Susannah could tell he wanted them gone so he could confront her about Ryan. She wanted to beg them to stay.
“Take your time, son,” Martin said with a wink.
The moment the door closed behind them, Henry pounced. “I’m going up to talk to him.”
Susannah grabbed his arm. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Let me handle this, Susannah. I need to handle it.”
“You can’t,” she insisted. “He’s not listening to reason. I know him. When he gets like this, all you can do is wait him out until he changes his mind. You have to trust me on this.”
“I do trust you. It’s him I don’t trust.”
They looked up when they heard Ryan at the top of the stairs.
Susannah gasped when she saw he was wearing only boxer shorts. The half of his face that wasn’t battered was pale and pinched with pain. Above and below the tape on his ribs were evil-looking bruises that stretched from his waist to his shoulder. As he came down the stairs, she noticed his usual cocky stride was gone. That he was so obviously in agony made her heart hurt for him, despite her aggravation over his sudden reappearance after more than a year of separation. She watched as Henry’s eyes skirted over Ryan’s broad shoulders, his sculpted chest and abs, his narrow hips.
Henry swallowed. Hard.
Even banged up, Ryan Sanderson was the sexiest man Susannah had ever seen—and he knew it. From the look on Henry’s face, he knew it, too. He was daunted by Ryan’s imposing physique, which was exactly what Ryan had hoped to achieve by coming down there in his underwear.
“Is there a problem, darlin’?” Ryan asked as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“You need to leave,” Henry stammered. “It’s completely inappropriate for you to just show up here and to walk around like...like that.”
With an innocent look on his face, Ryan scratched his belly just above the waistband of his red plaid boxers. “Like what?”
“Half naked.”
Ryan snorted. “I don’t know what you consider to be naked, but I’d say I’m about three-quarters naked. Susie can tell you I prefer being au natural. I only kept the shorts on because we have company. Despite your low opinion of me, I’m not a total Neanderthal.”
“That’s enough, Ryan,” Susannah snapped.
“I just came down for a glass of water, so I can take my pain pills,”
Ryan said. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
“You are not staying here with my fiancée,” Henry said in a burst of courageous indignation.
“She may be your fiancée, but she’s still my wife. So I hate to point out the obvious, padna, but I think I trumped your ace.”
Henry fumed, and his ears turned bright red.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Ryan said. “I want a few days alone with my wife with no annoying distractions—”
“That’s not going to happen,” Henry retorted.
“Yes, it is, or there’ll be no divorce and thus no wedding. You following me here?”
“You can’t do this!” Henry cried.
“I believe I already have.” Ryan left them in the foyer and went into the kitchen.
When they were alone, Henry reached for Susannah’s hand. “Come with me,” he pleaded. “Come home with me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I have to pacify him, so he won’t make trouble with the divorce. It’s the only hope we have.”
“What am I supposed to do while you’re playing house with your ex-husband?”
“Wait and be patient.”
“I’ve been doing that for more than eleven years. How much patience do you expect me to have?”
“It’s ten more days. After all this time, surely you can give me ten more days.” She cradled his face with her hands. “Can’t you?”
His expression stony, Henry said, “You’re asking an awful lot of me, Susannah. I know what that egomaniacal bastard put you through. How do you expect me to just walk out that door and leave you here with him?”
Ryan came back into the foyer carrying a glass of water. “Still here, Henry?” he asked, lifting that cocky eyebrow.
Henry fixed his eyes on Susannah. “I was just leaving.”
“I’ll be waiting for you upstairs, darlin’,” Ryan said as he started up the stairs.
“Sanderson!” Henry called. “If you lay one finger on her, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”
“You’d have to catch me first,” Ryan said with a snicker.
Susannah stopped Henry from replying. “Let it go,” she said softly. “He’s all talk.”
“I mean it, Susannah,” Henry said, holding her tight against him. “If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”
“He won’t get the chance.”
“See that he doesn’t.”
Susannah took a step back from him. “I don’t care for the insinuation.”
“And I don’t care for your ex-husband showing up less than a month before our wedding and staking his claim on you like a cowboy from a cheesy western.”
“I think you’d better go now, before one of us says something we’ll regret.”
“Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s already causing trouble between us.”
“He can only cause trouble between us if we let him.” Susannah leaned in to kiss him. What she intended to be a quick goodbye kiss became much more when Henry hauled her to him and left her with a thorough, possessive kiss.
“Call me if you need me.” He looked up to the top of the stairs. “If anything happens—”
“It won’t.”
With great reluctance, he nodded and left.
As Susannah watched him walk to his Toyota sedan, she saw him pause to study the brand new black Cadillac Escalade in the driveway. Apparently, Ryan had been named Super Bowl MVP—again. She touched her fingers to lips that still tingled from the most passionate kiss she’d ever received from Henry. Long after he drove away, Susannah rested her forehead against the cool glass of the storm door. Ten days alone with Ryan Sanderson. I’ll never survive it. I barely survived the first go-round with him. What in the world am I going to do?
Susannah took her time cleaning up the dining room and kitchen. She washed and dried the crystal, returned the flatware to its mahogany box, and hand-washed Grandma Sally’s china. When there was nothing left to wash, dry, or polish, she wiped her hands on a dishtowel and hung it up. She locked the back door and turned off the lights before she crept up the stairs to find the light on in the master bedroom. Oh, he has some nerve!
As she stood in the hallway working up the fortitude to face him again, she heard him sneeze three times in rapid succession. He cried out in pain, and Susannah rushed into the room. His eyes were closed, his skin sallow and flushed, and he was gasping for air.
“Oh, God, Ryan,” she sighed. “You should be in the hospital.”
“I’m okay,” he said between shallow breaths. “It’s the goddamned allergies. Something in New Orleans stirred them up.”
Susannah went into the bathroom and returned with two Claritin pills that she handed to him.
“Still keep that stuff in the house?”
“They’re yours,” she said with a shrug. “I never threw them out.” She picked up his glass of water from the bedside table and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” He gave the glass back to her and closed his eyes.
“What are you doing here, Ryan? Really?”
“I told you,” he said with a weak sigh.
“Were you expecting a warm welcome home?”
“Not particularly. All I know for sure is I still love you, and I think maybe you still love me.”
Susannah was bent in half picking up his jeans from the floor. She straightened and looked at him in amazement. “I don’t,” she said, folding the pants and setting them on the foot of the bed.
Ryan sneezed again and wrapped his arms around his middle to defend against the pain.
“I’ll get you some ice,” she said, anxious to get away from the sight of him suffering. The Ryan she knew was never this helpless. Even when he had torn his ACL, he had been up and about the day after he’d had surgery to fix it. She hadn’t ever seen him flattened like this and was unnerved by it. When she returned with the ice, Ryan reached for her hand.
“Stay with me, Susie,” he said, his almond-shaped brown eyes locked on hers as she laid the ice bag over the tape on his ribs.
Those eyes, that fabulous, sexy mouth, the shaggy hair that would’ve looked messy on most other men, the dimples...It was more than Susannah could bear. Anger flashed through her. How like him to reappear like this and stir up old feelings in me just as I’m about to move on with my life—with another man. She couldn’t let him get away with it. “I can’t,” she said. “I won’t.”
“What do you think is going to happen? I can barely move.” He took a shallow breath and tightened his hold on her hand. “Stay. Please.”
She studied his battered face for a long moment before she pulled her hand free.
“Susie...” he said to her retreating back. “I need you.”
Susannah went into the bathroom and closed the door. Her heart raced with anxiety and sympathy and—damn it—desire. He was right. She wanted him as much as ever. She wanted to lay down with him, put her arms around him, and offer whatever comfort she could. But nothing with Ryan was ever that simple. That it was still possible for her to feel sympathy and desire for him amazed and disturbed her. She changed into pink flannel pajamas, washed the makeup off her face, and applied the moisturizer she used every night without fail.
Studying her face in the mirror, she contemplated the creamy complexion she went to great lengths to keep out of the sun that shone three hundred days a year in Denver. Her blue eyes were a little too far apart for her liking, but Ryan had always said they were the eyes of an innocent girl. She ran a finger down the bridge of the straight, patrician nose she considered her best feature. A few of her Junior League friends had spent small fortunes for noses that looked like hers. Dabbing balm onto lips that formed a perfect bow, she wished for the thousandth time that her lower lip wasn’t quite so full. All in all it was an attractive face—albeit not her sister’s stunningly beautiful face. But it was better than most. She brushed her blond hair until it was shiny and smooth and then reached for her toothbrush.
By the time she emerged from the bath
room, Ryan had fallen into a restless sleep. Susannah sighed as she studied him, remembering the first time she’d ever seen him. She had been with a group of girlfriends at the Purple Porpoise in Gainesville. When Ryan came in with a bunch of football players, Susannah’s friends had dissolved into whispering, giggling fools. They were struck dumb when Ryan stopped at their table, his eyes singling out Susannah.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
Ignoring the jab from one of her friends, Susannah said, “Fine.”
“Ryan Sanderson,” he said, extending his hand to her.
“Susannah Freeman.”
He kept her hand in his as his mouth twisted with amusement. “Nice to meet you, Susannah Freeman.”
Right about then she noticed everything in the restaurant had come to a halt and all eyes were focused on her. Her face had grown hot with embarrassment. She pulled her hand back and reached for her soda.
“I’ll see you around, Susannah Freeman.”
She managed a small nod before he walked away.
“Oh my God,” one of her friends said. “That was Ryan Sanderson.”
“Yes, I heard him say that,” Susannah said.
“He’s the starting quarterback for the Gators.”
“Oh.” Susannah glanced over her shoulder for another look at him. “What’s a quarterback?” When he winked at her, she quickly turned away. As she acknowledged something about him made her nervous, she became aware that her friends were staring at her with their mouths hanging open. “What?” she asked them.
Susannah smiled at the memory. Since that day she had learned more than she’d ever wanted to know about football—and Ryan Sanderson. He shivered in his sleep, so she reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed, removed the ice bag, and carefully spread the blanket over him. She took the ice into the bathroom and dumped it in the sink. When she returned, she flipped on a nightlight, so he wouldn’t injure himself further if he woke up disoriented.