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“What, pray tell, is your heart into these days?”
“My heart,” he said in the velvety tone that tightened her nipples and resonated deep in her belly every time she heard it, “has only ever been in one place—”
His disquieting gaze swept over her, making her shiver involuntarily.
“—but we’ll get to that another time. If you’re asking what I’m doing with myself these days, you can be one of the first to know. I’ve endowed a new charitable foundation, Phoenix Legacies. I’m running it.”
Jillian couldn’t tamp down her surprise or her growing sense of dread. If Beau was doing good works, she didn’t need to know. Any information that interfered with her unmitigated hatred of him was a bad thing.
“Phoenix Legacies?”
“We give micro loans to worthy applicants who’ve taken a wrong turn with their lives and need a little help getting back on their feet.”
This was too stunning for words. Beau? The former governor of Virginia and current king of Miami’s fast-living, hard-partying lifestyle? A philanthropist now? Beau?
And she didn’t want to ask—was afraid to ask—but she had to know.
“Phoenix? Why would you do that?”
He stared her in the face, deadly serious. “I like the idea of rising from the ashes. If I can help people put their life on the right track, then maybe my life will mean something.” He paused, his jaw flexing with the effort to hold back his words, but the words won. “For a change.”
So that’s what this was about. Redemption for Beau. Fine. He could do all the saintly works he wanted, as long as it had nothing to do with her. Big deal; God knew he had a lot to make up for and he certainly had money to spare. She would not be impressed or interested. It would not matter to her—
“And how much of your fortune did you use to bankroll this little venture?” she demanded because her curiosity had her in a stranglehold. A million or two was nothing to him—
“Ninety-eight percent,” he said, unsmiling.
Jillian’s jaw dropped. He’d given it all away—everything his family had ever worked for or stood for. Gone. He still had enough to live well on, but—
Heavy male footsteps and voices distracted them just then. They looked around to see several uniformed movers descending the steps.
“Still working on the bedroom,” one of them told Beau as they trooped out the front door toward the van.
“Great,” he said.
“What’s gotten into you?” Jillian asked the second they were alone again.
Though he stilled and didn’t move by so much as a blink or a breath, Jillian felt the change come over him, the intensification of his focus on her. As though he’d wanted her to ask this exact question and they were now circling toward the heart of something important and terrifying.
“I almost died,” he said simply.
This reminder did nothing for her nerves, which were already stretching and unraveling. Did he think she’d forgotten the middle-of-the-night phone call that had told her the father of her child and the only man she’d ever loved was near death in a Miami hospital?
Though she hadn’t seen him in years at that point—didn’t want to see him—she’d never forget the blinding horror she felt, especially when she’d heard that his companion du jour, Sabrina something, and the driver had been killed when the driver of that semi fell asleep at the wheel.
In that moment, all her rage fell away and the only thing that mattered was Beau and her need to see him again, not to let him go. So she left Allegra with Blanche and hopped on the next plane and prayed for him not to die or, if he had to die, for him not to die until she got there.
And then she’d arrived at the hospital and survived the shock of seeing the biggest, strongest, most vital man she’d ever known swollen and broken, bruised and slashed, more dead than alive, with internal injuries and a badly broken leg that was begging for amputation.
He’d coded once, the nurse told her. Probably would again, and the next time—if there was a next time—they most likely wouldn’t be able to bring him back.
All through that terrible day and night, Jillian had sat with him, talked to him, prayed for him. Then the second day began and the doctor told her that Beau would live and keep his leg, and that was all she needed to hear. She left before noon, on the next plane back to Atlanta, because she’d made sure her child’s father was okay, but that didn’t mean she forgave him or ever wanted to see him again.
Now here he was and, God, she just couldn’t breathe or think.
“I know you almost died.” She spoke slowly because it was so hard to force the words past the overwhelming knot of dread in her chest and throat. “What’s that got to do with you setting up a foundation, moving down the street from me and getting a dog?”
Again that relentless focus held her in its thrall, hypnotizing her with the splintered shards of bright black, green and gold visible in his eyes, even across the room.
“When I woke up in the hospital, I was sorry I wasn’t dead.”
This merciless honesty unnerved her. Beau dead? Even now she couldn’t bear to think it. “Don’t say that.”
“I was.” He was so matter-of-fact they might have been discussing his need for a house painter. “But then I decided that just because I’d screwed up the first half of my life didn’t mean I needed to screw up the last half.”
“And that means…what?”
But her body already knew the answer even if her brain refused to accept it. It was in her lungs, which couldn’t breathe, in her heart, which skittered on every other beat, and in her belly, which dropped sickeningly.
As the silence stretched, she prayed.
Please don’t let him say it. Please, God, don’t let anything else in this safe, new world here outside Atlanta change on her. Please…please.
Pushing away from the console, Beau made his painful way across the room to where she stood with her clenched fist still clutching that stupid basket of muffins. He stared down at her, doling his words out in measured amounts.
“It means that, while I was recovering in the hospital and working on strengthening my body, I also started working on strengthening my spirit and figuring out why I did the things I did.” He paused, color rising high over his cheeks. “I stopped drinking. And I started counseling.”
This was unbelievable. Too flustered to be coherent, she stammered the first response that came to mind.
“Y-You’re not an alcoholic.”
“No, but I didn’t need to be drinking.”
Wow. That was quite a step because Beau loved his scotch.
“I’m…proud of you.”
This wasn’t a pro forma attaboy; she really meant it. Knowing Beau as well as she had for all these years, she knew what a huge step this was. The change in him was profound—she felt it the way she felt the relentless beat of her pulse in her throat—and it wasn’t just the physical. Whether it was from the accident or the counseling, she couldn’t tell, but it petrified her.
A smile warmed his eyes and it was so achingly familiar she wanted to drown in it. “I’m trying to be a better man, Jillian.”
The way he said her name hadn’t changed after all these years. It was still a loving touch, a melting caress that reached places deep in her soul only he’d ever been able to access. Hearing those three syllables roll off his tongue again renewed her panic and intensified it.
Where was this going? When was he going to drop that final shoe on her? Why couldn’t she breathe?
Because she couldn’t look him in the face and let him see how he was ripping her to shreds all over again, she looked away. To the crown molding, to the empty hallway, to the dog, who was now drowsing on a sunny patch of the floor with his paws sticking up. If Medusa had been in the room, Jillian would have gladly looked at her swirling head of snakes and been turned to stone.
Anything to avoid Beau’s gaze.
Beau waited until finally her cowardice became so humiliating that even she couldn’t stand it for another second.
Be a woman, Jill. Just ask.
“What does your trying to be a better man have to do with me?”
Staring her right in the eye, he hit her with the directness that had always been both a wonderful and a terrible thing about him.
“I want my family back.”
Jillian paused, the words locked tight in her throat. “You never lost Allegra.”
“I want you back.”
Chapter 4
How the hell could he do this to her?
Again?
How was it that this one man could still reach deep inside her and touch her heart? Why, after every terrible thing they’d been through together, did he still have that power over her?
Well, no more. Never again. The independence and self-confidence she’d gained since the divorce were too precious—too hard-won—to risk by letting him into her life again.
God, she was an idiot. If only she could be indifferent enough to laugh and tell him she didn’t give a damn what he wanted. What a glorious day that would be when she finally managed it.
Until then, she felt sudden, choking rage, the kind that burned its way out of her body in an unstoppable eruption. Just this once—just once, God—she wanted to hurt him a millionth as much as he’d hurt her. If not emotionally, then physically would do just fine.
With an incoherent cry, she hurled the basket at him.
That cane didn’t slow him down any. His instincts were still sharp and he deflected the attack, sending muffins flying in all directions.
“How dare you?” The movers would hear her screeching and realize she was insane, but there was time enough to be embarrassed later. “You have a near-death experience and you decide…what? That it’s finally time for you to grow up and be a man? And now you show up here, where I have rebuilt my life, bit by painful bit, and move onto my street and announce you want me back? What do you expect me to do?”
“Exactly what you’re doing.”
The grim resignation in his voice and on his face brought her up short. How could he be so calm when she was losing it? Didn’t he know he was detonating an atomic bomb right in the middle of the carefully constructed house of cards that was her life?
If only she could breathe. If only she could think. If only she’d had some warning that today wouldn’t be just another quiet day at the B & B.
Maybe they needed another joint walk down memory lane.
“Let’s recap, shall we?”
“Jillian—”
“You cheated on me when you were the governor. Is this ringing a bell at all?”
“Jillian—”
“We’d been having problems and I knew our marriage had been in trouble for a long time, so I forgave you. I stood by you at that podium while you gave your little press conference and apologized for the scandal and swore you’d changed. Remember that?”
“I remember.”
“And then we hired Adena Brown to rehabilitate your image and save your career. And what did you do when I thought we were rebuilding our marriage? You had another affair. With her.”
“I know what I did.”
“So you broke my heart again. Created another scandal. Put me through another public humiliation. Made things so bad for me that I couldn’t walk down the street in Richmond without being gawked at. I had to come down here after the divorce and start a new life in a new place where I could hold my head up. And I have.”
“I know you have, baby.”
God, she was shaking all over. He’d made her a mess, after all. Those same stupid tears seemed stuck in her eyes; they wouldn’t fall and they wouldn’t dry up. Worst of all, they didn’t shield her from the yearning in his darkened eyes or from the telltale throb in his tight jaw that told her he was also near tears.
The sight of his raw emotion was almost worse than feeling her own. Taking a deep breath, she willed herself to be strong and her voice not to shake.
“So, given our long and painful history together, Beau, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t want any part of your little self-improvement project.”
Noises startled her and for the first time in a while, she became aware that they were not the only two people in the universe. From outside in the hall came the sound of the movers returning with a mattress and trying to negotiate it up the staircase.
The poor dog hadn’t managed to sleep through her shouting. He was up again, snuffling around the room and systematically eating the muffins with appreciative smacks.
All this activity went on around her and still Beau was the center of her existence. He’d always been the sun to her orbiting earth, since the day they met in law school all those years ago, no matter how she wished otherwise.
He crept closer.
Stubborn pride forced her to stand firm and keep her chin up when the smarter thing would’ve been to leave now, call her real estate agent and list the B & B for sale by supper. But she was still a weak fool, even now, because she held his gaze, knowing that he could play her heartstrings the way Eric Clapton played guitar.
“Do you know what I thought about when I saw that truck coming, Jill?”
“God.” Pressing a hand to her chest, she tried unsuccessfully to choke back a hysterical laugh. “Are you going to use your near-death experience against me? Really, Beau?”
“I thought about you.” He shrugged helplessly, as though thoughts of her at the moment of his anticipated death were inevitable and he accepted them as such. “I saw your face.”
If only those words were meaningless. If only she could let them roll off her back, pity him for living in the past and move on with her life with no thoughts of him to torment her in the dark hours of the night. None of that was possible, though, and bluster was her only flimsy defense against him.
“Too bad for you.” She tried to look bored. “I’ve moved on.”
“You have in some ways,” he said evenly. “But we’re still in love with each other. We’re not finished. We’ll never be finished.”
Jillian went still, too shaken even to blink. The words were such a stinging blow that he might have backhanded her across the face.
For no reason at all, she thought of Adam, her numbness when he’d kissed her earlier, and the way she’d been sleepwalking through life for years. She thought of the yawning emptiness she’d felt, and how she’d wondered if and when she’d ever feel anything deeply ever again.
And now, after ten minutes with her ex-husband, she was that same sickening knot of seething emotions—anger, pain, hurt and confusion—that she’d been when she left him.
Oh, the irony.
She gave him the kind of pitying look she knew he hated, and focused on getting out of there as soon as possible, while she was still in one piece.
