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“Neither of us was thinking straight after Rachel died,” she told him. “Now that we’ve had these months to put things into a more moderate perspective, I think we both have doubts about going on together.”
There. She’d got it said and the world hadn’t come to an end. The minor softening of Reece’s stony expression had vanished, but he was still silent. She tried not to fidget while his dark eyes bore into hers like twin drills.
There was something in the way he stared over at her that compelled her to go on, something that suggested he needed to hear more to be convinced. Leah made a try at doing just that.
“As I said, we made the decision to marry at a time when we weren’t quite ourselves,” she said calmly, careful to keep her tone mild, though she couldn’t keep the tremor out of it. “Lately you’ve seemed…unhappy. In a different way than before, so I…thought it was time to discuss what might need to change, even though the change that probably seems most sensible is divorce.”
The booming silence that followed was as much a sudden assault on the room as a thunderclap would have been. It had impacted with such power that it was difficult, even in the aftermath, to decide if an actual clap of thunder had sounded around them, or if it had truly been a silent shockwave.
But maybe it had been an actual thunderclap, because the storm was suddenly visible in Reece’s harsh face. His dark eyes snapped with angry surprise, and the ruthless line of his mouth now seemed more promise than vague threat.
“Are you asking for a divorce?”
The blunt question wasn’t unexpected, but his gravelly tone of voice carried a steeliness that warned how rigidly he controlled himself. Leah felt her heart skip faster, and forced herself to shake her head.
“There’s a difference between asking for a divorce and offering one.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth she wondered why she’d put it that way. She should have simply answered “yes”. The huge tide of hurt and unhappiness that rose up added to her alarm and she mentally scrambled to show none of it.
Oh, God, don’t let him see, don’t ever let him find out…
“I’ve made the offer,” she said coolly, so relieved that her tone was calm and practical that she blundered into undermining her purpose even more. “What you do with it is up to you.”
She’d somehow stood to her feet without being fully aware of it until she felt the back of her knees brush the front of the chair. But whether her body had taken action to help her assert herself or to flee, she didn’t know. At least she could see that her more temperate answer to Reece’s question had gotten her message across just as clearly as a more definitive one.
Reece’s weather-tanned face was like a granite monolith. A ruddy flush she recognized as fury had crept into his lean cheeks, but she knew by his iron silence that he wouldn’t inflict it on her.
“I’ll look in on Bobby before I go to bed. Goodnight.”
Leah turned and moved around the chair to walk as normally as possible to the door then into the hall. Her knees were rubbery and her legs felt heavy and weak, but she managed to make a dignified exit.
She’d got the job done and except for that part near the end, she’d managed it fairly well. Though she might have delivered it all a bit less stiffly, she’d survived and Reece hadn’t guessed anything of her real feelings about either the divorce or him.
The need to spend time with Bobby was overwhelming, so she hurried down the hall to the bedroom end of the large, single-story ranch house. The child’s room was next to the master bedroom, and both rooms were linked by a connecting door.
Leah had never shared the master bedroom with Reece, much less shared his bed. He hadn’t offered and she’d certainly never asked. Given her pick of bedrooms, she’d chosen the one on the other side of Bobby’s. Reece had noted her choice and for her convenience, he’d had another connecting door put in the shared wall between her room and the baby’s.
As Leah slipped silently into Bobby’s room, the arrangement struck her as even more telling. At first, it had been understandable that she and Reece wouldn’t share a room or a bed, and she’d completely agreed. Rachel’s death had been too fresh and agonizing for them both, and it was scandalous enough that they’d married so soon after.
But as the months had gone by without so much as a hint of real closeness between them, Leah had reminded herself that she couldn’t reasonably expect more. Except for the baby, there was nothing between them but a marriage certificate and the same last name.
Reece had bargained for a woman to help raise his son and he’d wanted to settle a life that had been shattered by death and shock and upheaval. He’d also been determined to prevent his son from ever being raised and exploited by his maternal grandparents, if something should happen to him.
Leah had been a means to get an adoptive mother he trusted for his infant son and to keep his home life in order. He’d meant for Leah to be a fail-safe protection for Bobby if he was no longer around. He apparently hadn’t been thinking much about the wife he’d have to live with to get all that. And after what she’d sensed in him these past weeks, he’d surely awakened to the fact that having a wife had created almost as many problems for him as getting one had solved.
Bobby’s room was dimly lit, thanks to the ceramic puppy lamp she always left on. The house was so quiet that she could hear the child’s soft baby breaths almost from the moment she walked into the room.
She crossed to the baby bed and looked down blurrily into the sweet face of the sleeping child. His dark silky hair lay in charming disarray, and his long, black lashes fanned out thickly on chubby, sleep-flushed cheeks.
Leah put out a hand to tenderly touch his open fingers, marveling at his beauty, her heart breaking with love. She couldn’t love this baby more if she’d given birth to him herself. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Not even the love she felt for Reece was as powerful as the love she felt for this dark-haired cherub.
Eventually, she eased the light blanket higher on his chest and turned to go to her room. She left the door between her room and his partway open, as always, so she could hear in case he woke up during the night.
As Leah began to get ready for bed a dozen doubts about her talk with Reece began to pick at her sense of accomplishment, but the important thing was that she’d got the subject into the open.
As a successful rancher and businessman, Reece was comfortable making decisions, and he’d learned better than most how to quickly determine and evaluate all the facts of a situation, and then to identify his options. His decision to marry her was probably the only truly bad decision of his adult life. And that had only happened because he’d been blinded by grief over Rachel and worry about his infant son’s future.
Deciding to divorce her wouldn’t require much thought. For Reece, it wouldn’t be a “yes” or “no” answer as much as it would be a “how soon?” one. He’d probably reached his decision before she’d gotten a handful of steps down the hall from the den.
Her obligation had been to put the subject before him and to signal her permission and approval. He’d probably confirm his decision to divorce her first thing in the morning at breakfast. After that, the only wrangling there’d ever be between them—over Bobby—would begin.
And even that was nothing to lie awake and fret about. Leah had been the baby’s main caregiver, and she’d naturally be responsible for the majority of his care, at least while he was so young. The rest they could work out as Bobby got older.
She had no fear that Reece would somehow banish her from Bobby’s life, particularly since part of protecting Bobby had meant that Leah had had to adopt him. She had as many parental rights as Reece did, and since they were both mindful of Bobby’s best interests, they would both play major parts in the boy’s life whether they stayed married or not.
As she lay in the dark, her sense of accomplishment and relief slowly gave way to a heavy heart. What she’d done tonight had virtually sealed the death of her fondest, most impossible dream. Though it had taken a secretly agonizing eleven months to finally kill it, what she’d done by offering Reece a divorce was to acknowledge that the dream of openly loving him and being loved by him was well and truly lost.
And it was only right that she would never see that dream fulfilled. She’d fallen in love with Reece years ago, long before he’d ever dated her best friend, but she hadn’t been able to stop loving him, not even when he’d married Rachel. She’d suffered tremendous guilt over that, but never enough to overcome her feelings.
Then she’d compounded the wrong of being in love with a married man by grabbing the chance to marry him after he’d been widowed, at perhaps the only time in his life that he’d ever been vulnerable. The guilt and heartache she’d suffered and might continue to suffer over her selfish feelings for her best friend’s husband, were fitting punishments that she accepted.
At least Rachel had never suspected. Hopefully Reece would never find out, either.
Leah turned onto her side and stared into the dark for a long time. She must have dropped off to sleep sometime before it got too late, because she never heard Reece’s bootsteps as she usually did when he passed her room on the way to his own.
CHAPTER TWO
REECE’S first impulse had been to go after Leah and drag her back to the den to have it out. His second had been to walk over to the liquor cabinet and pour himself a double Scotch. Once he’d done the latter, he tossed it back like a man on fire trying to douse the flames.
But the conflagration of anger and surprise and guilt wasn’t so easily put out. The hell of it was, he was overdue to have his meek wife stand up to him. Though she’d used softly polite, tactful words, she’d nonetheless given him a sound thrashing and called him to account.
Leah Gray Waverly had turned out to be the perfect mother, calm and competent, as loving as she was gently patient and wise with the boy. She made certain Bobby saw him in the morning before he left the house, she timed the baby’s schedule to his to maximize their time together, and she arranged nightly for him to spend time alone with his son.
She’d also been the ideal wife. After his housekeeper had retired just after their sudden marriage, Leah had cooked his meals, washed his clothes, and single-handedly kept his large, six-bedroom house virtually dust free in the middle of a ranch headquarters where dust hung in the air around the clock. In between all that, she ran his errands, took his phone calls when he was out, and generally made his home life an aggravation-free island of pleasantness and serenity.
But whatever he’d thought about Leah’s quiet temperament, what she’d done just now reminded him that the lady had a backbone. Tonight she’d shown a steely pride that was no less formidable than his own.
As Reece poured himself another drink, he did so more thoughtfully this time. He hadn’t meant to be so indifferent to her, he hadn’t meant to take everything she’d done for him and give her nothing personal in return.
He’d given her his son, the most precious person in his life, but what woman who thought anything of herself would have been content to love and help raise her best friend’s child and put up with being an unpaid servant to a husband who, as far as she’d be able to tell, hadn’t appreciated any of it?
For weeks his conscience had been dogged by the things he’d neglected with Leah. He’d put her name on his bank accounts, but she’d never spent so much as a dollar of his money on herself. He had yet to take her out to a nice restaurant or a social function. The only time he’d attended church with her had been on the Sunday she’d had Bobby dedicated. Hell, he hadn’t even remembered her birthday until four months after it had passed.
After being married to a near hermit for the past eleven months, it was no wonder she’d informed him that she meant to go to the barbecue, with or without him.
Rachel had told him things about Leah that he hadn’t thought about for years. About her nomadic childhood, the many abandonments by both her father and mother, her eventual ordeal in a series of foster homes. According to Rachel, Leah’s biggest dream had been to someday have a family and a home.
She had a legal son in Bobby and she lived in one of the finest homes in the area. But his preoccupation with Rachel’s loss had cheated her out of the complete family she must have wanted and had probably left her feeling like a slave instead of a marriage partner. Hence her solemn little bombshell tonight.
Yet he felt nothing for her aside from gratitude—gratitude and guilt. The turmoil of that had nettled him for weeks, but he couldn’t seem to help that gratitude and guilt were the only things Leah stirred in him.
Losing Rachel had left him empty. Any woman who wasn’t her was merely female. No one to wonder about, and certainly no one to get excited about. His hormones had come back to life, his lust still fired over the usual sights and thoughts, he still had powerful male urges that craved satisfaction, but the mysterious allure of tenderness and sweet feelings were gone as completely as Rachel.
In his mind and heart, love and sex were associated exclusively with luxurious red hair, freckle-flecked satin skin and exotic emerald eyes that sparkled with passion and a zest for life.
Suddenly the memories were white hot, and he relived the phantom feeling of Rachel’s lush body pressed against his. His palms ached to slide over her soft skin to tenderly cup and caress, and his fingers tingled with the unforgettable sensation of what it had felt like to lavish pleasure on her.
Pain and bitterness welled up at the torment, and Reece forced the powerful memories to stop. He determinedly fixed his thoughts on the living woman—the wife—he was obligated to crave.
But desire didn’t rise very high over long sable hair that was usually pinned up or worn in a French braid; it didn’t crave the touch and warm feel of lightly tanned almost dusky skin. Eyes that were a deep, quiet blue didn’t suggest anything more enticing or arousing for him than somber mysteries and unhappiness, and his heart was already weighted down by those.
Try as he might, he couldn’t picture Leah’s pretty eyes going slumberous with lust, and he couldn’t imagine her losing her very rigid self-control to clutch at him in the high heat of sexual intimacy. It was as unthinkable of Leah as it would have been of an elderly maiden aunt.
The harsh bite of guilt he felt for the unfair comparison made him finish the second Scotch in another punishing rush.
He didn’t want Bobby to be hurt, and divorce would do a masterful job of hurting the boy. Surely his lack of sexual interest in Leah was a remnant of Rachel’s loss. That and the fact that he’d barely paid attention to her as a potential lover, and he’d never been curious enough to find out what she might really be like when she wasn’t being a mommy or teaching Sunday School.
Rachel and Leah had been closer than sisters. So close that he knew Rachel wouldn’t think much of him for cheating Leah out of a loving home. Particularly when Leah had given up her chance of finding a man whose heart could be all hers so she could come to the aid of her best friend’s husband and infant son.
Feeling gut sick over what Leah had sacrificed and how poorly he’d repaid her, Reece set the tumbler down with a soft thud then made himself walk over to his desk. He picked up the silver-framed photo of Rachel and turned it to study her face.
The flatness of the image impacted him. He tilted the frame slightly, as if to get a better look at the thickness of it, but the photo paper behind the glass suddenly looked as thin and unsubstantial as any other photograph.
For the first time Reece felt detached from the color image, and his heart grabbed futilely to recapture the sense of connection. It was as if he’d known this achingly beautiful woman a long time ago, too long ago, and something in him flinched with surprise at the feeling of distance. It had only been fifteen months since the wreck, and yet it suddenly felt like another lifetime, one that had belonged to some other Reece Waverly.
In the space of mere moments, the memory of Rachel had gone from white hot and all but tangible to something more like a dimly remembered dream.
Which reminded him of the worst part of these past weeks. Rachel had been fading from his mind. A little here, a little there, he was starting to forget the things he’d been convinced were burned on his heart forever. Except for the soul rocking flashes of sudden memory, the everyday details of how Rachel had moved, how she’d smiled—even how she’d touched and taken care of their son that handful of days—had begin to cloud over until he could only rarely summon them at will.
Would her memory fade completely away? Was he man enough to face the bleakness of that second loss if she did? The loneliness he already felt was brutal.
Reece stood there for several minutes more, wondering if he was drunk, wondering whether these strange feelings and impressions meant anything, but eventually realizing how weary he was. What he did next wasn’t so much a decision as it was a necessity.
He didn’t want to ever look at a picture of Rachel and feel this disconnected from her. The clarity of the photo was a reminder that the living image in his brain seemed to be growing more fuzzy and indistinct. Better to never see it again than to feel so eerily detached from both the woman and the life they’d had together.
Once he’d switched off the desk lamp, Reece turned and carried the framed picture to the bedroom end of the dark ranch house. He didn’t need a light to walk through the big house he’d lived in since birth. He went into the first guest bedroom he came to, and moved across the carpet to the dresser by memory. He fumbled for a drawer catch and opened the drawer just enough to put the picture inside.
It was best to ignore the hollow rattle of the silver frame against the wood bottom of the empty drawer as he pushed it closed. Nevertheless he hesitated, as if he might think of a rational reason to change his mind and put the picture back on his desk. Eventually, he left the drawer closed and walked out of the room and into the hall.
The soft glow of the light Leah always left on in Bobby’s room spilled into the hall and drew him, particularly tonight, though it was his usual habit to look in on the child.
Bobby was sleeping peacefully, so he lingered a bit before he backed a step away from the bed then paused to glance toward the partially open door between the baby’s room and Leah’s. It was too dark in her room to see more than a wedge of carpet, though from this angle he hadn’t expected to be able to actually catch a glimpse of her.
The mental picture of what she might look like asleep and his quick curiosity about what she wore to bed came so suddenly that he felt a new kind of jolt. He’d never had a single thought about Leah’s preferences or private habits, so this was a new thing.
But then again, he’d either had just enough booze to inspire a faint spark of curiosity about Leah because he’d been trying to summon some kind of desire for her, or he was drunk enough to have lost a few inhibitions so that the idea of sex without love wasn’t such an empty one.
Either way, he couldn’t take the small spark seriously. It would surely be gone by morning, smothered out by the cold reality of another day.
Reece heard Leah’s soft laugh just before he reached the kitchen that next morning.
“No, no, let’s not put the toast in your cup. It goes in your mouth, silly boy.”
Leah was never late putting a hot breakfast on the table. She might have been up half the night with Bobby or had to deal with the boy waking up earlier than normal, but somehow she handled every complication so competently that Reece could have set his watch by her.
Bobby had awakened early, probably with his usual soaked diaper that required a quick bath, but when Reece stepped into the kitchen his son was clean and dressed and sitting in his high chair with a bib on. He was gnawing on a piece of toast as Leah finished putting food on the table.
Reece felt a nettle of guilt and an equally sharp nettle of resentment. He already owed Leah more than he could repay, yet she just went on being perfect. Relentlessly perfect. Her perfection was a silent indictment of his notable lack of perfection where being a husband was concerned. The mild headache he’d woke up with began to pound.
“Daddeee!”
Bobby’s excitement to see him gave Reece a rush of pleasure and love that somehow soothed the rawness he felt.
The baby had his dark coloring, though Bobby’s features, particularly his green eyes and the way he set his mouth, fairly shouted testimony that he was Rachel’s son. The tender pride Reece felt in the boy might have added to the volatile churn of emotion that was still riding him from last night, but his relief to not only see but also identify the ways Bobby resembled his late mother slowed some of the churn.
Reece crossed to where the high chair sat between his place at the head of the table and Leah’s to his right. He ruffled Bobby’s dark hair before bending to give him a kiss on the forehead.
“Good morning,” Leah said quietly.
“Morning.”
Reece sat down just after Leah did, then automatically took hold of Bobby’s hand as Leah briefly said grace.
Quick and soft, the small prayer was another unintended reminder that Leah was a wonderful mother to his son. No detail of the child’s upbringing was being overlooked by her, while Reece himself had failed to provide him with something as elemental and necessary to a happy childhood as having a daddy and mama who loved each other.
The boy needed to grow up seeing a normal and settled relationship between his parents. How long would it be before he was old enough to note the significance of having a mama and daddy who never touched, who never embraced, and who didn’t even sleep in the same bed? His mood going darker, Reece took the meat plate Leah passed to him and silently served himself.
Leah was so tense that she felt awkward and self-conscious. Should she ask Reece what he’d decided or wait for him to tell her? Now that the big moment was almost here, she realized even more sharply how difficult it would be to actually hear that he would take her up on her offer to divorce.
Be careful what you ask for. How fitting that of all the things she’d asked for in her life and hadn’t gotten, she would actually get the one thing that would hurt the most.
She put Bobby’s plate on his tray and gave him his fork. The thought of what a divorce would mean to this happy child made it nearly impossible to look him full in the face.
“Do you have special plans for today?” Reece asked, and Leah felt her nerves jump. She managed to glance his way briefly, but not to actually make eye contact before she focused on filling her own plate.
“I thought I might go to San Antonio to find something new for Saturday. It could wait till tomorrow if you have something you need done today.”
“Wouldn’t mind ridin’ along,” he said, his low voice oddly gruff. “What time?”
The information was a surprise, but then Leah realized that Reece might have planned for them to consult with their lawyer as soon as possible. Or rather, he would consult with his lawyer while she found one to represent her.
“I’d planned to leave you a cold lunch and start midmorning, but we could go anytime. Just so I have an hour or so to shop.”
At this point, there was no sense in dancing around the subject that had to be dominating his thoughts as strongly as it was hers. And if she had to find a lawyer, she might as well know it now so she could check the Yellow Pages before they set out.
“So you’ve made your decision?” Leah asked, then made the mistake of taking a bite of fluffy eggs before she realized she probably wouldn’t be able to swallow them past the huge lump of dread in her throat.
The charged silence that followed her question increased her self-consciousness. She reached for her coffee cup to try to wash down the eggs.
