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Grabbing his cell phone, Blake hit the last number on his speed dial. For the first time ever.
He switched ears when he heard her answer. But didn’t consider hanging up.
“I’d like to stop by, if that’s okay,” he said shortly.
His request was met with silence. But then she replied, “Stop by River Bluff, thirty miles outside San Antonio—on your way where?”
“Are you going to be home tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have plans?”
There was another pause. “I was going to cut wallpaper.” And then, as if she was worried he’d feel sorry for her, alone on a Friday night, she added, “Becky’s at the game. Shane’s playing.” And high-school football was a constant in River Bluff, whether you had a kid in school or not.
“May I come over?” If anyone had told him three, four, even five years ago that he’d be asking that question of Annie, he’d have known they were crazy.
These days he wondered if he was.
“I guess.”
“Give me an hour.”
Blake rang off before she could ask him questions he wasn’t prepared to answer over the phone. Or worse, before she could change her mind. He had to get this done. He couldn’t take another day like today.
SHE TRIED TO EAT DINNER but the food stuck in her throat, so she put it outside for the stray cat, instead. The darn thing didn’t seem to realize that cats were supposed to be finicky eaters. Scrambled eggs were just fine with her.
But entering a house wasn’t. As many times as Annie had tried over the past year to coax the bedraggled thing inside, it continued to refuse her invitations.
She heard Blake’s car door and reached for the cat, wishing for something warm to hold. But it darted across the yard and into the Friday evening darkness.
Annie went back inside, locking the kitchen door behind her. Grabbing the glass of wine she’d poured, she slipped on her sandals, pulled down her T-shirt over the low-cut waistband of her jeans, and went to open the front door, flipping on the porch light.
She needed to be on the offensive, but she could handle this. Blake felt honor bound to explain, in person, why he couldn’t father her child. She understood.
He was a respectful kind of guy. And this entire strange episode between them was mostly about his relationship with Cole. It had nothing to do with her.
“Hi,” she said through the screen door, fumbling with the lock. If he talked fast, he could be done and gone before she even got it open.
Other than muttering hello, he didn’t talk at all. Finally, Annie pushed on the latch, catching her breath as she opened her home to the outside night air—and him.
Blake at any time was hard to ignore. But in a suit he was breathtaking.
And maybe a little intimidating, too. If she’d been susceptible to him emotionally, in any way. Now, however, she was only inclined to get rid of him.
When he turned, waiting for her to lead the way, she headed toward the kitchen. It was the one place where she had more than a single seat to offer.
He took the folding chair she pointed him to. “Your tastes have changed.” His voice was more teasing than judgmental—not that Blake had ever been one to point fingers at anyone.
“I wanted the house more than I wanted the furniture,” she said, pouring him a glass of the merlot he used to like, and bringing it and her own glass to the table. She didn’t plan for them to be there long enough to finish their drinks, but the wine provided them with something socially acceptable to do while they decided not to have a baby together.
It might take a moment or two for her to figure out how to handle Cole’s reaction in a way that would be gentle yet firm.
“Roger wanted the furniture worse than he wanted the house,” she continued, handing Blake a napkin to put under his glass. “I got the dishes. He got the tools.”
She sat.
Blake’s gaze settled on her as if he could see inside her just as well as he used to. She wished he wouldn’t do that.
“It sounds like it was an amicable parting,” he said.
She nodded tentatively. On paper it had been. But privately, in those conversations when they acknowledged that they had to part, there’d been nothing but disappointment. And pain. And guilt. His pain and her guilt. And in the end, her pain, too.
In marrying Roger, who’d been her friend for years, she’d hurt someone she loved. Horribly.
“I heard he left town,” Blake said, and Annie stared at him. He was a little too close to her thoughts.
“He has an uncle in Ohio with a farm equipment company. Roger’s running the place for him now.”
“Does he like it there?”
How would Annie know? She wasn’t in the habit of talking to her exes—as Blake was well aware.
“According to his sister, when I ran into her at the post office about six months ago.”
“She’s still in town?”
“They moved to San Antonio this past summer. Her daughter needed a gifted program….”
“What about his parents?”
“His dad died several years ago, and afterward his mom remarried and moved to Dallas.”
And that just about took care of Annie’s second marriage—and nearly four years of her life.
“Do you have any regrets?”
No one had asked her that before—not regarding her breakup with Roger. That was a question she’d heard many times, however, after Blake had returned and she’d chosen to honor her current marriage over her first. Most often she’d heard it from Roger.
“He’s a good man who’d have given his life for me, and I hurt him,” she said simply. “Of course I have regrets.”
“You stayed with him.”
“I was committed, and I did love him. But he knew I wasn’t in love with him.”
She didn’t realize exactly what she’d just revealed—and to whom—until Blake took a slow sip of his wine, peering at her over the top of the glass.
“From the beginning?” His question, as usual, went straight to the point.
“He knew from the beginning, yes.”
Blake didn’t say any more, and in spite of all the things left unsaid between them, neither did she.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE WINE WAS GOOD, but Blake sipped slowly.
It would be so easy to let the libation do his work for him. Too easy. And infinitely more difficult to regain his self-control.
He’d been that route. And had managed to haul himself away from the detour before it destroyed him.
But there were others.
“I’ve given some thought to your request.” In fact, pretty much every nonwork thought he’d had in the past forty-eight hours had concerned Annie’s request.
She looked about twenty as she sat there, silently awaiting his response. Instead of filling out with approaching middle age, she was thinner now, her belly flatter—and more tanned, he saw from the sliver of skin showing between the bottom of her shirt and the low-cut top of her jeans.
His gaze settled there, finding momentary escape. But then that belly was a reminder of other things, too.
“What happened?” His dry throat made speech difficult.
Annie was frowning. “What do you mean? What happened when?”
There was a time when she’d known what he was thinking, sometimes even before he did. Back then they’d talked in code, their own particular language of half-spoken thoughts understood only by the two of them.
“With the baby.”
He could feel her stiffen. Watched her wineglass tremble as she raised it to her lips.
Our baby, he’d wanted to say.
“The doctor just said it was one of those things.”
“One of what things?”
Annie ran her finger around the rim of her glass, not looking at him. “It happens that way sometimes. Could be the egg and sperm didn’t fully fertilize, or that the egg wasn’t properly embedded in the uterus. Maybe there was some genetic abnormality that would have produced catastrophic results. Miscarriages are common—nature’s way of ridding the body of something that wasn’t right.”
He thought about that. Wondered what could possibly have not been right about a baby between him and Annie. A baby that they’d conceived together in love.
“What are the chances of it happening again?”
How could talking with Annie feel so awkward? And at the same time so natural? Right?
“Slim. I’ve had all the tests, just for my own peace of mind, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me—no reason I shouldn’t carry a healthy baby full term.”
Suddenly, he could feel the tremors starting—behind his knees was always the first place they hit. He had to get out of here. Or at the very least, out of a conversation that was triggering such painful memories.
“Were they able to tell…if it was a boy or a girl?”
Stop, man. Go home.
The interior of his uncle’s old Lincoln was beige. With white stitching. After all these years, the smell of the leather still permeated the car. And if he concentrated hard enough he could smell it.
If Blake stood up, he could be driving away in less than a minute.
It took him several seconds to see that Annie was shaking her head, the curls around her temples brushing against her skin. “It was too soon,” she said, her voice hushed.
She still hurt. The loss of their child tore at her, undiminished with time. He’d known that, of course, on some level. He just didn’t want to think about it.
Not unless he couldn’t help it. Like all the other things locked away in that cave inside him, numbing him to much of what went on in the outside world. And in his own world, as well.
“I was expecting to see a three-and-a-half-year-old girl when I got off that plane.”
What in the hell was he doing? He didn’t relive this stuff. This wasn’t why he’d come here.
He had a plan. Strict orders to himself.
One of which was to be out of Annie’s house within ten minutes.
He’d already disobeyed that order.
Annie sat still, not looking at him.
“She had blond hair, like my mother’s,” Blake continued. “And curls like yours.”
He could feel the anticipation, the sweat down the middle of his back. Could hear the sound of the plane’s engines, the landing gear dropping down. And then metal clanking on metal—a cell door closing. Locking him in.
“She took her first step on what I calculated to be October 12.” He heard his voice, but wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t just in his head. “She said ‘Mama’ on Christmas Eve—the best Christmas present you could have received.”
When he’d imagined all this the first time, he’d been lying naked on a dirty cement floor somewhere in Jordan, shivering with cold. The nudity had been his punishment for refusing to eat until he was granted some kind of contact with the American embassy. By then he’d been imprisoned for eighteen months. Had only known the exact date because one of his guards had taunted him about the Christian holiday.
Blake had grown used to the mental and emotional torture by then. Or at least, he’d become as immune to it as a human being could be, living under such duress for an extended length of time.
They hadn’t beaten him. He had no outward scars. And he was thankful for that.
“I used to picture you breast-feeding her,” he continued. “I had set feeding times, and I’d sit and picture you, the creamy whiteness of your breasts. The softness in your eyes as you looked at our little girl. The gentle smile on your lips. I’d see her little hand, with her tiny fingernails, cupping you, opening and closing against you. I could hear her suckling. For months, I would wake up in the morning, eager to get to feeding time. And look forward to subsequent feedings throughout the day.”
His voice trailed off, but the vision didn’t. He was there. Feeling the cold. The hardness. Seeing the rough gray rock of the makeshift cell that a group of extremist insurgents had held him in—U.S. collateral for whatever they might decide to bargain for, following the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
“She was almost three when she was finally potty trained. Though you gave it your best effort for six months prior to that, she refused to be interested before then. But then, almost overnight, she had it.”
And shortly after that his captors had been identified by the Jordanian government. It had taken them another three months to find Blake and the other civilians the group had held hostage.
Blake blinked, his eyes burning, as he relived the first experience of daylight he’d had in nearly four years. He had hardly been able to comprehend the blue skies and sunshine overhead, and the fresh air against his skin had been almost painful.
And so beautiful he’d actually wept as he walked down the path to medical help and a series of debriefing meetings, counseling, hand-holding, more debriefing, exercising, recovering his strength.
And finally, after one brief phone call announcing his arrival, home.
