“Give us a chance, Jennie. That’s all I’m asking. Let me love you. See if you can learn to love me again.”
Silly man! That’s what’s wrong with me now. I hate you for leaving me behind. But I never stopped loving you.
Which meant he had the power to hurt her again. The power to disappoint her again. “If I let you stay—”
“I won’t let you down.”
“How do I know you won’t change your mind and walk out, if things get tough?”
“You mean if the cancer comes back?”
She gritted her teeth and nodded, unable to speak.
“If you let me stay, if you let me love you, I promise—”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she managed to say.
“Who says I can’t keep them?”
She looked him in the eye. “I don’t have breasts.”
He lowered his gaze to her flattened chest, then raised it again and looked at her with solemn eyes. “I know. I’m sorry for your sake. To me, you’re still as beautiful as you were the day I met you.”
She felt a sharp pang in her chest that had nothing to do with her recent surgery. “There’s a reason I no longer have breasts,” she reminded him.
“You have cancer. I—”
She pulled one hand free and touched his lips to stop his speech. “The doctors believe this surgery, along with chemo, will keep the cancer in remission. But there are no guarantees. It could come back. I could die. You’re dealing with a powder keg that could explode in your face.”
He recaptured her free hand and held them both tightly to keep her from pulling away. “We couldn’t control our lives when we were kids, Jennie. Our parents were making the decisions for us. We’re adults now, able to chart our own course. I’ve lived long enough without you to know that, however long your life lasts, mine will be infinitely better—infinitely happier—if I spend it with you.” He caressed her hands with his thumbs and met her gaze with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. “And Nate needs a mother.”
She rolled her eyes and gently tugged her hands free. “You don’t fight fair.”
“Why should I, when I’m fighting for my life?”
He had a point. A great deal was at stake. Happiness for the rest of their lives. Or misery, depending on how things turned out.
The senator’s wife, Jennifer Hart, would never have taken the chance. She would have done the safe thing, the sure thing. But Jennie Fairchild, the girl who’d fallen head over heels in love with Matthew Grayhawk when she was only fourteen, was willing to fight for their future.
“All right, Matt.”
She saw the hope in his eyes. And the fear.
“All right what?”
“I’m willing to give this a shot.”
Before she could take another breath, he’d picked her up, settled her on his lap, and planted his mouth on hers.
The jolt of pain in her chest was gone before she could protest. She pressed her hands against his chest, because she couldn’t raise her arms to reach his hair, which was thick and silky and looked so very healthy. Unlike hers.
The doctors had tried chemo first, which had made her violently ill and caused her hair to fall out but hadn’t stopped the cancer. They’d given her an ultimatum. Her life or her breasts. She’d chosen life.
Matt tipped the ball cap off her head and palmed her scalp, where bristly hair was trying hard to grow. When she groaned her dismay at what he must be seeing, what he must be feeling, he whispered, “I prefer ball caps to those turban things. Easier to get rid of, so I can touch.”
What man wanted to caress a bald woman’s head? Apparently he did.
His kiss was intrusive, involving lips and teeth and tongue, searing her to her very soul. He kept their bodies apart in deference to her healing flesh.
He made love to her with slow, delicious kisses, the kind where your breathing got sketchy because your heart was racing, and your skin felt hot, and your whole body thrummed with desire.
They kissed. And kissed some more. And kept on kissing. Heads twisting side to side, mouths melding, his hands clutched at her waist to keep them from roaming her body, from seeking to touch her warm flesh.
Because, of course, the most logical thing to touch would be her breasts. Which weren’t there.
She fought a sob as the enormity of her situation finally sank in. She hadn’t only lost her breasts. She still might lose her life.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.” He said all the right things between kissing her throat and ears and eyes and cheeks, before his tongue teased its way inside her mouth, urging her to forget about everything except him and the pleasure he sought to give her.
Somehow, she did forget. For long moments, Jennie relished the taste of him, without being aware of anything else. Until she realized her hands had found their way under his shirt to his hair-whorled chest. She felt hard male muscle, and beneath that, his heart beating fast and strong.
She was so very glad he was here…until her doubts reared their ugly head again.
Sure, Matt could handle a bristly head, but how would he react when he saw her horrible scars? Would it really not ever matter to him that the symbols of her femininity that so many men valued were gone? Breasts were an erogenous zone for a woman. Did she even want him to kiss her ravaged flesh, from which all pleasure had been stripped?
Jennie forced herself to focus on Matt’s exhilarating kisses, on the way his tongue made forays into her mouth seeking honey, how his lips were soft and supple against her own. He showed his love as he had when they were teenagers, when kissing was all she would allow.
A long time later, he murmured, “You won’t be sorry you let me stay, Jennie.”
She didn’t say it. But she thought it.
I hope not.
THE THUMP OF something hitting the rag rug next to her bed woke Jennie. She jerked upright, afraid of an intruder. The sudden pain in her chest was excruciating and made her gasp. She gently laid a hand against the offended muscles, as though that could make them hurt less.
“I’m sorry,” a small voice whispered from the gray dawn shadows. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Jennie reached up instinctively to rearrange the hair that was no longer there, having fallen out during previous rounds of chemotherapy, gasped again, and dropped her hand. She kept forgetting about her surgery. Forgetting she had limited range of motion. Forgetting she didn’t have breasts.
She leaned her head back, huffed out a frustrated breath of air, then focused her gaze on the boy kneeling beside the bed. He was replacing a coffee cup—filled with a handful of the blue morning glories that bloomed along the edge of her back porch—on the tray he was carrying. Whatever water had been in the cup had apparently spilled onto the rug.
“Good morning, Nate. What is this?”
He looked up at her from beneath shy, lowered lashes. “I brought you breakfast.”
Jennie’s heart squeezed with regret that she’d never experienced a moment like this with Pippa. And expanded with love for the little boy who was giving her such a gift. He carefully set a tray on her lap that held a plateful of scrambled eggs, toast, a knife and fork, a tiny glass of orange juice, a folded paper napkin, and the coffee cup full of flowers. “What’s the special occasion?” she asked.
“Well, we might not be here for Mother’s Day, so I decided I should do something nice for you now. I mean, you’re not my mom, but you are Pippa’s mom and she’s my sister and she’s not here, so…” He shrugged.
Tears burned Jennie’s eyes and emotion knotted her throat. She didn’t have a lot of experience with kids, but Nathan’s thoughtfulness seemed out of the ordinary. Matt had done a good job raising him, and raising Pippa, she was forced to admit. She ruffled Nathan’s dark hair as an excuse to touch
him and said in a choked voice, “Thank you, Nate. This is lovely.”
“I couldn’t figure out how to work your coffeemaker, so I brought you flowers instead.”
She picked up the bunch of morning glories and sniffed them before replacing them in the cup. “They’re wonderful. Thank you. Why don’t you join me while I eat?”
She didn’t have to scoot over much to give him room to sit beside her, his legs outstretched on the bed. “I’m not sure where to start,” she said, looking at the meal before her.
“Better start with the eggs. They’re gonna be cold pretty quick. I didn’t know what kind of jelly you like, so I just put butter on your toast.”
“Just butter is fine.” The eggs were indeed cold, and rubbery as well, and the toast was charred black, but she ate with gusto, because she would never do anything to hurt Nathan’s feelings. “Where did you learn to cook like this?” she asked.
“Pippa taught me. We had to do for ourselves a lot in Australia since Daddy was out early working with the livestock. She gave me jobs so I could help.”
“I’m surprised your dad lets you cook by yourself.”
“He doesn’t. But I remembered Pippa did this once for Irene. Irene was my mum. I guess she still is my mum, but she never came to see me after she got divorced from Daddy.”
Jennie fought back a flash of jealous rage that her daughter had prepared breakfast in bed for a different mother and immediately squelched it. Such feelings were futile and pointless. Better to focus on the present, on this little boy who was no longer sure what role his biological mother held in his life, and so obviously wanted a mother he could love.
I could be Nathan’s mother. I could love him and give him the praise he deserves and let him know every day in every way what a wonderful person he is.
She carefully leaned sideways and kissed his temple. “You did a great job preparing all this food, Nate. I’m impressed.”
“I kinda made a mess in the kitchen.”
“No problem. We can clean that up in a jiffy.”
Matt arrived in the doorway and said, “The kitchen looks like a tornado hit it. What’s going on?”
Jennie shot Matt an admonishing look over Nathan’s head and said, “Nate made my breakfast and served it to me in bed.”
Matt looked both surprised and confused. “He did?”
“He even picked some flowers for me,” she said, holding out a fistful of wilted morning glories.
“That was really nice of you, Nate,” Matt said. “But Jennie’s liable to throw up her hands in despair when she sees that kitchen. How about we clean it up for her?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
“You can start by putting the eggs and orange juice back in the fridge. I’ll come help you with the dishes in a minute.”
“I gotta go, Jennie.” Nate leaned over to hug Jennie, and she held her breath to keep from crying out at the pressure on her wounded body. She welcomed that hug, however painful it was, because of what it represented.
Matt must have seen her wince because after Nate had limped from the room he said, “I’ll remind him again to be gentle.”
Jennie didn’t want to talk about her mutilated chest. She had a more important question she wanted answered. “Why didn’t Nate’s mother ever come to visit him after your divorce? Did you keep her away from him the way you kept me away from Pippa?”
Matt’s face bleached completely white. “If you believe me capable of that, it’s no wonder you haven’t forgiven me for what happened with Pippa.”
“So Irene just waltzed out of Nate’s life without looking back?”
“Irene barely spent time with Nate when we were married,” Matt snarled. “She caused the accident that crippled him.”
Jennie hissed in a breath.
“That wasn’t the first time she’d put Nate in danger or the first time he was hurt because of it. I don’t know if Irene was simply too flighty to pay attention to Nate, or whether she found responsibility for our son too much of a burden, but she wasn’t a good mother. Part of the reason I left Australia was to get him away from her. I didn’t trust her to spend time alone with him. He had too many ‘accidents’ when they were together.”
“I’m sorry, Matt. I didn’t know.”
“I had an unbearable choice to make twenty years ago,” he continued. “Leaving you behind when I headed to Australia was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Not telling you about Pippa’s existence was a terrible mistake, but in the beginning I didn’t know how to reach you, and when I finally did…The time just never seemed right.”
He shoved a frustrated hand through his dark hair, leaving it askew. “The longer I waited, the more certain I was you would never forgive me.”
He met her gaze and said, “I was right. You haven’t been able to let go of the past. You haven’t been able to look at what we might have now and in the future. It hurts to want you like I do and be excluded from your life, to be judged and condemned for something I did when I was a boy of seventeen. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old man, Jennie, willing to love you with every fiber of my being. I think I deserve better from you. I know I do.”
“You’re right.”
His head jerked up, and he stared at her as though he didn’t believe what he’d just heard. “I’m right?”
“I’ve focused on what you did wrong in the past instead of all the things you’re doing now that make me want to be with you.”
“You want to be with me?” He looked surprised and hopeful at the same time.
“I’m willing to consider a future with you and Nate. I just need a little more time, Matt. To heal.” In body and soul.
He settled carefully onto the bed beside her and grasped her hands in his. He met her gaze with earnest blue eyes and said, “Time is precious, Jennie. Don’t take too long making up your mind.”
“HOW THE HELL did you find me here?”
“Matt told me you’d been admitted.” Leah swallowed past the painful knot in her throat and stepped inside King’s hospital room at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he’d previously been treated for leukemia.
“How did Matt find out?” her father snarled.
“He came to the hospital because the woman he loves was here having a double mastectomy. Since you’re a bit of a celebrity patient—the wealthy former governor of Wyoming—and Matt has the same unusual last name, the receptionist asked if he’d come to see you. That told him you were here. Matt called me because he thought I might like to know you were lying in a Texas hospital bed instead of where you told me you’d be.”
King had left her a note ten days ago saying he had business in Washington, D.C., and might be gone for a while. She should have known better. She should have guessed his true destination. Her stomach did a strange flip-flop as she met his gaze. He looked even more pale than usual in the fluorescent light. “I waited for you to call and tell me the truth yourself, but you never contacted me.”
“Didn’t want folks hovering over my bedside like a flock of vultures.”
“I’m not ‘folks.’ I’m your favorite daughter.”
He scowled. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.”
She crossed to the foot of his bed, swallowed over the painful lump in her throat, and said, “Is your leukemia back?”
King rubbed his nape. “Been feeling a little tired is all. Thought I’d come in for a checkup.”
She knotted her fingers into fists while her heart raced inside her chest. “So? Is it back?”
He dropped his hand and met her gaze. “Yeah.”
Leah’s breath, which she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, soughed out of her. Her knees wobbled, and she grabbed the foot rail to stay upright as she wailed, “Oh, Daddy.”
She saw his shock at what she’d called him. Only rarely had she
addressed him as “Father.” All her life he’d simply been “King.” Her cry of despair revealed the truth of what he’d become to her. It was the plea of a child for her beloved parent not to leave her.
It also made what she had to say next all the more important.
She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “I know what you’ve been hoping, but I’ve spoken to Matt, and he isn’t coming back. Now you’re sick in bed for God knows how long. What are you going to do about the ranch?”
“You’re my daughter, all right. Forget soppy feelings about my illness.” And then, more harshly, “Right to business.”
She refused to be cowed by his lowered brows or his flattened lips. “You’re the one who offered the ranch to someone who didn’t want it.”
He rubbed his chin, bristly with gray stubble. “I need a shave.”
“Stop stalling.”
“Guess Matt isn’t leaving me any choice,” he grumbled.
“You always have a choice. But I love the ranch.” She hesitated, then added, “And I love you.”
“Guess you think I should give it to you, since I’m on my deathbed.”
Her heart took an extra, uneasy beat. “Who said you’re dying? Did the doctors tell you that?”
He pursed his lips. “Didn’t you hear me? The cancer’s back.”
“So? You do more chemo.”
“The doctors told me the last time—”
Leah crossed to the head of the bed and took King’s shoulders in both hands, turning him to face her. “You can beat this,” she said fiercely. “I don’t intend to win the ranch by default.”
“You mean because Matt walked away?”
“I mean because you’re dead,” she said flatly, letting her hands fall to her sides.
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