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The hot air surrounding him suddenly cooled, chilling his wet skin. Blake blinked again. Less painfully this time. His eyes came back to his surroundings and focused on the friendly lighting in a kitchen in River Bluff, Texas.
And he saw Annie sitting not two feet away from him, tears streaming down her face.
“I… TELL ME ABOUT IT, Blake. About what happened to you.” Dry-eyed now, Annie tried to reconnect with the man she’d once loved with all her heart. He sipped his wine. Acted as if he hadn’t just given her more of himself in five minutes than he’d given her during their entire marriage.
He shrugged. “There’s not much to tell that you don’t already know. I was among a small group of American and British civilians taken captive by a rogue band of bin Laden supporters who hoped to gain his approval by offering him human bargaining tools.”
She, and a lot of other people, knew the political part. The official explanation for innocent people losing years of their lives to terrorist factions.
“You were in captivity for four years, Blake. What was it like?”
“Not as bad as it could have been,” he said at last. “We were never tortured.”
The words hinted at something that remained unsaid, and Annie shivered.
“Holding someone against their will is torture.” She dared to push him, which was something she wouldn’t have done six years before. She’d begged once. And that had netted her nothing but a husband who was presumed dead, and a miscarriage that had nearly cost her her sanity.
Talk to me,Blake. Her pleas were silent now. For once in your life,give me even a small bitof all that you hold so deeply inside of you.
He stood. “I’m sorry to have kept you so long,” he said, pushing the folding chair back up to the card table. He set down his glass. “I came to talk to you about this…thing you intend to do.”
He’d come to tell her no, and she didn’t want to hear it—not right then. Not when her feelings were so raw, her heart still breaking at the thought of her proud, loyal, private-to-the-point-of-breaking-her-heart husband locked away all alone in some cell in the Middle East, imagining their nonexistent child at her breast.
“It’s okay.”
His brows raised, he glanced down at her. “You’ve changed your mind?”
“No. I just…”
“In that case, I agree.”
AS SOON AS HE HEARD himself say the words, Blake turned around and walked out of Annie’s kitchen. Out of her house. And her life.
He drove for an hour, but without leaving River Bluff. Past the Cross Fox Ranch, which was the home of the Carricks, a father-andson duo who cared deeply for each other while struggling to see who each had become in the time Brady had been gone. Around town, and then out to see Luke Chisum, another of the gang of poker players who had taken him on as one of their own.
Blake had only met Luke the month before. And he figured he’d probably never know the real man behind the happy-faced guy who sat at the table and joked with men he’d known his whole life. Luke hadn’t had an easy time of it. Still wasn’t, from what little Blake had gathered from things left unsaid at the table. Not only had Luke come home to help his mother care for his father, who’d had a stroke, but there were problems with an older brother, too.
Blake could relate. His homecoming hadn’t been the best, either.
The Lincoln found its way past the old bar outside of town where the Wild Bunch played their weekly poker games. It reminded Blake of his life—once filled with love and promise and friendship, and now run-down, a shambles.
He went by Cole’s place, too. Sat at the end of the drive of the half-built dream house that his recently divorced friend and ex-brother-in-law was slowly finishing on his own. Blake thought about knocking on the door. Thought about it, but didn’t do it.
Instead, with more doubt in his heart than anything else, he somehow found himself back outside the house Annie and her second husband had bought together. Lived in together.
The home she’d gone back to the day she’d picked up Blake from the airport in San Antonio and driven him to the hotel where she’d booked him a room, leaving him with a bank account containing a quarter of a million dollars, keys to his deceased uncle’s car, and a hole where his heart had been.
He climbed the steps more slowly this time around. Knocked. And knocked again.
When she didn’t answer, he tried the door. It had been latched earlier, but hardly anyone in River Bluff locked their doors. Blake wasn’t surprised now whenAnnie’s door swung open.
And he didn’t even think twice when he stepped inside, moving slowly through the rooms, listening for any sound that might tell him where he’d find her.
The house gave away nothing. He took in the nearly empty living room and a bedroom-turned-office, with a desk that matched her kitchen table.
Passed a bathroom and moved on down the hallway to another bedroom, not sure what to expect. And that’s where he found her. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the most exquisite room he’d ever seen.
Annie might not have done a thing with the rest of her living space, but the room she’d created for the baby she hoped to have could easily have been featured in a magazine.
She glanced up. Met his gaze. Didn’t seem all that surprised to see him there, again, uninvited.
“We have to talk.” He’d never been much for pretty words, and this time was no different.
Pulling her knees to her chest, Annie wrapped her arms around them and nodded.
He’d come back to tell her that he’d misspoken earlier. That he couldn’t father her child. For all the obvious reasons. And for one she would have no way of knowing.
Contrary to what her brother, Cole, thought, Blake didn’t fit her criteria. First and foremost, Annie was looking for a man who was emotionally stable. Strong.
And Blake Smith was no such thing.
SHE TRIED TO LOOK AT HIM, to face life head-on. But instead she could only stare at the rainbow mural painted on the wall opposite the hand-carved wooden crib she’d found in a little shop outside of Waco.
“We need to decide how we’re going to go about doing this.”
Blake’s words were so matter-of-fact, so ludicrous, when she considered that they hadn’t seen each other in two years, and before that had been separated for four. And were now, with barely a hello, discussing sharing their sperm and eggs.
She wasn’t going to sleep with him. She couldn’t.
“Have you changed your mind?”
His question made her think.
“Because if you’ve decided you don’t want a baby after all, I’d be—”
“No!” She’d not meant to speak so sharply. “I want the baby.”
More than anything. She was completely sure of that.
“You just don’t want me to be the father.” He’d always been a smart man.
And had managed to miss such key things at the same time.
“I didn’t expect you to say yes.” Which wasn’t quite the same thing. But close enough.
“You have someone else in mind?”
She wanted to lie. Wished she could truthfully say yes. “No.”
“But you want to find someone else.”
Chin high, she stared up at him. “Don’t you want that, too? In all honesty?”
Blake’s hesitation made her heart miss a beat. He’d disappeared on her six years ago. And run out again an hour ago.
“You could end up with a man who fit all the criteria and seemed nice, but was rough when it came right down to it….”
Or what? A man who made such exquisite love that he brought tears to her eyes?
Even though he never told her that he loved her.
“And contracts are only as binding as a judge decides they are. Whatever judge is looking at them at the time the parties are in court. This guy might change his mind sometime down the road and sue for parenting rights. He could get a sympathetic judge, and then—”
“Blake.” She couldn’t sit here and listen to this. “Don’t you think I’ve considered all the pros and cons of such a decision? A hundred times over?”
He knew her. As did everyone else in the tiny town she’d been born and raised in. Annie Kincaid was careful about everything she did.
When he remained silent, staring down at her as if she were a cross between a princess and a toad, she continued. “I don’t want you helping me out of guilt.”
“I’m not the one who remarried. Or chose husband number two over husband number one.”
She deserved that. At least in part. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t already said to herself at least once a day since his return.
“I’m sorry.” He leaned against the doorjamb. “That was unfair and uncalled for.”
“Cole’s crazy, Blake. And this idea of his was out of line. Just forget I ever asked. I’m going to tell my little brother to mind his own business and then I’ll get on with the business of living my own life.”
She had no idea why she was holding her breath. She just needed Blake to go.
“I can’t forget it.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea.”
She couldn’t get away from the honesty in his reply. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
Little fingers of some long forgotten feeling crept through Annie’s lower parts. Had they just decided to make a baby? Together?
Flushed with heat, she wanted to jump up, move around, away. And instead, she couldn’t do anything but stare at him.
And remember.
Blake’s kiss, his taste had always been enough to unhinge her. His arms had offered her a unique mixture of strength and tenderness, providing a sense of safety, but never a feeling of confinement. And when his long legs were wrapped around hers…
“I want to be very clear up front.”
Annie glanced up, realizing that Blake had been talking to her. He’d shed his suit jacket sometime between his earlier visit and this one. Loosened his tie.
He looked tired.
And lonely?
“Up front?” she asked, swallowing when the words got stuck in her throat.
“I said I have a couple of stipulations.”
So that’s what she’d missed. Annie nodded, listening. Trying to focus.
“First, I’m not going to sign any contract that takes away my right to be a father to my own child.”
Walls rose, and Annie found it hard to continue listening; managed to do so only by assuring herself that as soon as he finished talking she was going to tell him that there was no deal.
“I’ll sign a contract that gives you custody of the child, that makes you the primary parent, but I want to be known to him or her, and to have visitation rights.”
Not as bad as she’d first thought. He was peering over at her, as though waiting for a response. Her nod was jerky at best.
“Second, it must be understood that this agreement in no way initiates any resurrection of a personal relationship between the two of us.”
That one was easy. “I agree completely.”
Head turned slightly, he gave her that assessing look that had always made her nervous.
“I mean it, Annie.”
Like she didn’t? “You’re the one who pointed out that I stayed with husband number two,” she blurted, before she had time to edit her words.
“I’m not a demonstrative guy. Never have been. You need demonstrations of affection. Hand holding and romance and esoteric promises.”
I love you would have been nice.
“I hurt you once. And I’ll live with the regret for the rest of my life. I can’t risk doing that again.”
“Blake…” She stood as she prepared to make her point. “You’re preaching to the converted here. The feelings I had for you died a long time ago. But even if they hadn’t, even if they somehow returned, I would never, ever go back to you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HE DIDN’T FLINCH. Didn’t even blink. Which was so Blake. And exactly why Annie knew with certainty that her decision was the right one. He’d just proved her point.
“You’re a great person, Blake Smith. One of the very best. But I’ve done a lot of growing up these past six years. A lot of soul searching. I’ve engaged in some pretty brutally intense self-examination and I know myself a whole lot better than I did when I married you. My father’s suicide, my mother’s single-minded dedication to the church as a result, left their marks on me.”
Annie looked Blake straight in the eye. It felt good to be telling him this. As if maybe she was helping him, freeing him of any responsibility he might have felt for the failures in their relationship.
“I’m not going to live my life as a victim,” she continued, speaking straight from the heart. “I’m not going to blame my parents’ choices for any aspect of my own life. What I can do is offer myself understanding and acceptance, and change what I can and work with what I can’t.
