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If only he’d chosen to disappear in a puff of smoke…!
Stepping out of the shower, Georgia swathed her hair in a towel and checked the clock on the wall. Eight twenty-five. Four hours, give or take a few minutes, before she met her mother and sister. Four hours in which to digest the reality of Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot’s resurrection from the dead and make her peace with it.
She had thought herself safe from such upheaval. Had spun a cocoon around herself so intricately woven that she’d been sure nothing could threaten it. Not passion, or hate; not rage, or joy. Just calm affection, subdued pleasure, serene indifference.
She had turned to Steven, her new house, her work-and yes, the thousand and one busy things associated with a wedding that, this time, her family wholeheartedly approved of—hoping these things would be enough to compensate for what she had lost.
Beverley Walsh, Adam’s grandmother, had tried to warn her, the day they’d accidentally met downtown about six months after Adam had supposedly died.“It takes two years, foolish child,” she’d said, referring to the fact that Georgia and Steven were spending a lot of time together.“After that, although you won’t have forgotten your first love, you will have accepted its loss. Then, and not before, will you be ready to start over with someone else.”
Georgia hadn’t been able to wait that long; the pain was too crushing, the guilt too severe. It wasn’t just the fact of Adam’s death, it was knowing she’d sent him to it.
She’d been with him, the day he received the call from his C.O. asking him to postpone his retirement for an extra two months, “just long enough to put this prototype fighter jet through its paces and identify the bugs bothering our other pilots. You can spare me that, can’t you?”
“I’m afraid I can’t sir. I’m getting married in six weeks,” Adam had said, but Georgia had seen the flare of excitement in his eyes, the sudden longing he’d tried to hide, and she’d known that, if it had been up to him alone, he’d have snatched at this last chance to fly the most exciting fighter aircraft yet to leave the drawing boards.
“I think you should go,” she’d said, after he’d hung up the phone.
“No. All that’s behind me.” He’d tried to sound accepting but she’d heard only the regret, the sudden resurgence of uncertainty that had dogged the months before he’d finally reconciled himself to giving up military life and settling down as a civilian.
Sensing this, and because she loved him, she had offered him an escape, manufacturing a reason that had everything to do with what she thought he needed, at the cost of what she desperately wanted: a man she adored for her husband—and a father for the child he did not know she had conceived.
“I’m not sure getting married is such a good idea,” she’d said, giving voice to the most barefaced untruth of her life.“I think a cooling-off period might be very good for us.”
“Haveyou lost your mind?” he’d said.“What about the three hundred guests your mother had to invite to the wedding? What about the dress and the veil and all that other paraphernalia?”
“What about the things that really matter to us?” she’d countered, and because they’d once been valid, she was able, with a conviction that left him stunned and angry, to rattle off all the reasons for not going ahead with their wedding.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t love me, Georgia?” he’d asked at last.
To deny that was more lie than she could bring herself to utter.“No—just that I’m not sure either of us loves the other enough to give up our freedom. Let’s put the wedding on hold for now and see how we feel when you get back.”
It had been a not unreasonable gamble, she’d thought at the time. She’d found out only the day before that she was five weeks pregnant. Once his two month term was up, they’d still have plenty of time to get married before the baby was born.
“I thought we’d decided we couldn’t be happy away from each other, Georgia,” he’d said, but although his voice had been somber, his eyes had betrayed him. He was behaving like a gentleman when all he really wanted was to be an officer on active duty again.
She hadn’t been able to bear it.“Oh, please!” she’d cried.“Just go, and stop pretending it’s not what you want, too.”
Some of the light had gone out of his eyes at that.“Since you put it so kindly, maybe I will.”
“Terrific!” She’d wrenched his ring from her finger and flung it at him.“There, now it’s official. The engagement’s off until you finally decide you can live without the Air Force. Go and fly your damned toy. Fly it off the edge of the earth if it pleases you!”
He’d caught the ring, deftly tossed it in the air like a coin, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.“Okay,” he’d said flatly.
Then he’d done as she’d asked. Without a touch, a kiss, or another word, he’d turned and left her.
In the dreadful days that followed, she had not known how she would endure the rest of her life without him. But now that he was alive after all, she could have outlasted eternity before having to face him again.
She was not granted more than two hours. Shortly after her ten o’clock clients left the studio, the buzzer at the front entrance sounded. When she peered through the burglar-proof glass double doors fronting onto the street, Adam stood on the other side. Clad in narrow navy jeans, a royal blue turtleneck sweater and a doeskin suede jacket, he looked so thoroughly gorgeous that, for a very little while, all the problems and complications inherent in his reappearance took second place to the sheer miracle and pleasure of being able to look at him again.
He had changed. Was thinner, cut closer to the bone, without sacrificing any of that startling male beauty that had first drawn her to him. His cheekbones carved a more austere angle beneath the smooth, slightly tanned skin, and in the revealing light of day she noticed that his curly black hair was now touched with gray at the temples. His mouth, that used to laugh so easily and often, assumed a severity that was new. But his heavily lashed eyes were exactly as she remembered them, smoky blue and direct, even though the lines fanning from the outer corners were etched more deeply.
A feeling like nothing she’d ever known rolled over Georgia, much like a door that had been firmly locked and bolted suddenly creaking ajar and threatening to release all kinds of demons. It left her panic-stricken.“What do you want?” she asked through the intercom.
“To talk to you, obviously,” Adam replied grimly, “though not with me standing out here on the street for all and sundry to hear, so you might as well let me in. You and I do, after all, have rather a lot to say to one another, don’t you think? And just because I was gentleman enough last night not to push you into a mutual expose of everything that’s befallen us since the last time we saw each other doesn’t mean I’m willing to put it off indefinitely.”
She could have made excuses; said she had a dental appointment in another country or something, but what was the point? Sooner or later, she’d have to deal with him and time wasn’t exactly on her side.
“Some fancy system you’ve got here,” he observed as the electronic device that protected her inventory admitted him through the outer door and then the inner.“When did you become so safety-conscious?”
She blushed a little at the lightly sugared scorn underlying his words.“When it was pointed out to me that my stock makes me a target for theft on a grand scale. Taking precautions seemed the safe and sensible thing to do.”
“Safe and sensible? The Georgia I used to know never concerned herself with being either safe or sensible.”
“She changed in the months after…”
“I died?” He stepped closer, his smile so reminiscent of his old sweet smile that she almost mistook it for the real thing. Almost.“It’s okay, sweet pea,” he assured her dryly.“You can say it.”
An absurd, unreasonable guilt made her hide her left hand behind her back.“It’s not okay,” she blurted out, retreating.“And you can’t call me ‘sweet pea’, not anymore.”
“Why not?” His smile didn’t slip an inch but she realized now what made it different. It did not touch those blue eyes whose gaze dissected her with such acute, unwavering interest.
“Because…” She faltered, the words damming up for all that she wished she could let them spill out and be over with.
“Because you’re wearing another man’s ring?” He nodded calmly at her startled gasp, and unzipped his suede jacket as if this were just another in a long list of social calls he had to make that day.“Yes, I know. You’re engaged to my best friend, Steven.”
“Who—how did you…?”
“Beverley told me. Who else?”
Georgia sagged against the desk at her back.“Of course. I should have known.”
Adam lifted his shoulders disbelievingly.“Did you expect her to keep quiet about it?” he asked, and she realized that, beneath his composed facade, disgust warred with cold anger.“She’s my grandmother, and very loyal to those she loves—unlike some I could name.”
“I bet she couldn’t wait to tell you.”
He continued to pin Georgia in that sharp, unforgiving gaze.“She waited over a year. Nearly fifteen months, to be exact, during which time she mourned my apparent death. How did you spend the time, Georgia, my love? Running want ads in the Lonely Hearts column of the Piper Landing Daily News? How many poor slobs did you reject before you decided to save yourself a lot of bother and settle for good old Steven, who was so conveniently handy once I’d vacated the scene?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said, flushing at the brazen contempt in his tone.“I didn’t date anyone, not even Steven at first. But you and he had been friends for years, and he was the only one who really understood what I went through when you—when I thought you were…dead.”
“You’re wrong. He wasn’t the only one. Beverley would have understood, if you’d cared to give her the chance to share whatever small portion of grief you decided I deserved.”
There were many things Georgia could have said in retaliation, among them that Beverley Walsh hadn’t particularly wanted to share her grandson in life and had been damned if she’d allow anyone to intrude on her sorrow at his death; or that Georgia’s own anguish had been so keen that, for a while, it had taken all her strength to face each unrelenting day; or that many had been the time that she’d wished for nothing but an end to her own miserable, guilt-ridden existence, so empty and pointless had it seemed without Adam. But his greatest misconception—that she’d turned easily to another man—was the one she felt most compelled to address.
“Steven was never more your friend than in the days and weeks after you…disappeared. I think I would have died without him. He gave me back my sanity when I thought I’d lost it forever. He helped me to accept what I couldn’t change and would never understand. And he asked for nothing in return except the solace of sharing memories of you. It’s only over the last four or five months that we’ve…grown closer.”
“And how close is that, Georgia?” Adam leaned against a glass presentation cabinet with careless disregard for its fragility.“Close enough that he makes you forget the times you made love with me? Close enough that you cry out his name instead of mine when the passion takes hold? Close enough—”
“Stop it!” Georgia clapped her hands to her ears, her earlier flush a pale imitation of the real thing as a wave of embarrassment and indignation left her face flaming.“It’s no longer any of your business!”
“I guess not.” His deceptively lazy gaze missed nothing as it swept over the studio’s costly display of jewelry before finally coming to rest on her. He stared insolently at her full-skirted silk and cashmere suit, the cameo brooch at her throat, the baroque pearl studs in her ears. And last of all, he looked long and hard at the two carat diamond solitaire engagement ring on her finger.“I guess life goes on, no matter what. Things change, people change. For a thirty-year-old woman, you’ve achieved impressive success, Georgia. Grief has worked wonders on you.”
She rounded on him, stung.“How dare you cheapen how I felt and turn it into something contemptible and shallow?”
He shrugged, his shoulders lifting easily under the supple doeskin jacket.“Those are your words, sweet pea, not mine,” he pointed out softly.
“But you’re thinking them,” she cried, “and you have no right. You don’t know the half of what I went through after you disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“No, I don’t,” he said, “any more than you know what actually happened to me. One of the reasons I’m here now is that I think we’re both entitled to some enlightenment. But let’s strike a deal: I won’t ask your forgiveness for my sins of omission, if you won’t ask mine for yours of commission.”
“I don’t need your forgiveness because I haven’t done a damned thing wrong,” she shot back, an anger she’d almost forgotten sparking in response to his. Wasn’t this how it had always been between them? Raging passion, or raging fury? Sudden disagreements that erupted into flaming rows, followed by reconciliations whose intensity left them both drained and exhausted?
She sank into the chair behind her desk, the fight seeping out of her.“You know, we never would have made a go of marriage,” she said wearily.“We’re too much alike, both strong-willed—”
“I’m strong-willed,” Adam contradicted. “You’re just willful. Your trouble is, you were indulged as a child and grew up believing you had a right to whatever your little heart desired. It probably made perfect sense that, when you realized you’d made a mistake in dismissing one potential marriage candidate, you should simply turn around and snag the first available man to take his place.”
“Is that your explanation of why you were so quick to accept the decision to end our engagement?” she countered.“To avoid being chained to such a spoiled brat for the rest of your life?”
“Hardly!” He pushed himself away from the glass cabinet and she thought, as he crossed over to sit in a chair facing hers, that he limped a little.“If I’d wanted out of our engagement, I’d have said so up-front. Your family might have programmed you to believe it was your social duty to stop tongues wagging all over town by marrying the man you were sleeping with, but they never carried that much clout with me.”
Privately, Georgia felt her family ran a poor second to his grandmother when it came to trying to manipulate other people’s lives but she wasn’t about to get sidetracked by the issue now. She was, however, forced to accept the truth of the rest of his statement. Whatever else his faults, Adam Cabot had never been a coward.
“Why don’t you stop trying to outdo yourself in insults and tell me what happened to you?” she said.“Where did you disappear to for so long, and why have you shown up now, when it’s too late for either of us to go back and change things?”
“To answer your last question first, because—silly me!—I thought you might be pleased to discover I’m alive. And because I thought you deserved to hear the news from me before it became common knowledge all over town. As for the rest, official reports to the contrary, I didn’t go down with my aircraft. I managed to eject and bail out, got swept miles off course by a howling blizzard, and ended up breaking a number of bones and doing various other bodily damage when I landed in the frozen wastes of the sub-Arctic. That I didn’t get eaten alive by polar bears or die from exposure is entirely due to the kindly intercession of a band of nomadic Inuit hunters who, for reasons that escape me, find traipsing over the Polar Ice Cap a stimulating winter pastime.”
He made it sound so uttery reasonable and ordinary that she knew he was leaving out a good deal more than he was telling.“That might have kept you away for a few weeks, Adam, but it hardly explains your being gone fifteen months.”
He shrugged.“Some things take time,” he said ambiguously.“And considering the way we parted, you can’t blame me for not being in too much of a hurry to get back to you.”
Any sympathy she might have felt for him evaporated at that.“You’re the one who put our future together in jeopardy and allowed your ego to lure you out of retirement for one last chance at flying glory.”
“And you’re the one who threw my ring in my face and told me to take a hike. ‘Fly off the edge of the earth, for all I care,’ you said. Well, I did the next second-best thing, sweet pea.”
“You know I didn’t really mean that!” Georgia’s voice faltered for a moment as other memories of that last time together came surging back, but she’d be damned if she’d let them overwhelm her. She’d done all the crying she was going to do over this particular tragedy.“In case you’ve forgotten, Adam, we both said harsh things to each other. I called you selfish and chauvinistic and a lot of other things I’m ashamed to recall.”
“And I accused you of being cold and ambitious, which was equally unkind and untrue. It was your independence, the fact that you were as much a rebel as I was, that first attracted me to you.”
His voice was grave and sincere enough to soften granite. If she let him, he’d throw her life into turmoil a second time and hurt innocent bystanders in the process. Under cover of the desk, she dug her finger nails into the palms of her hands and plowed through the rest of what she had to say.“I’m not a rebel anymore, Adam. Ten days after you left, a uniformed stranger showed up at my door and told me that pieces of your precious fighter jet had been found scattered over miles but that there was no sign and absolutely no chance that you had survived. In the space of five minutes my world collapsed and nothing has been the same since, especially not me.”
“I agree. The Georgia I used to know would never have made such a remarkable recovery from grief that she’d be ready to marry someone else so soon.”
“Recovery?” Her voice cracked with emotion and she felt the tears pricking behind her eyes despite her most stringent effort to keep them in check.“I fell apart almost literally! I didn’t sleep for weeks, didn’t want to eat or go out of the apartment. I wished I had died with you, Adam, because I’d lost everything that truly mattered to me.”
More, in fact, than you can begin to guess!
She squeezed her eyes shut, even though doing so meant the tears escaped and drizzled down her face.“I felt guilty. And angry. And alone.”
“You don’t know the first thing about being alone. You had your family.”
“Who were no help at all. My mother could scarcely contain her relief at being spared having you for a sonin-law.” Georgia swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, angry and appalled at the ease with which the misery was finding chinks in her armor.
Adam leaned over, plucked a tissue from the box on the corner of her desk, and passed it to her.“But your father must have cared. He was never mean-spirited like that.”
“He was sympathetic but…”
“Too henpecked to dare take a stand.” Adam nodded.“Yeah, I’d forgotten how thoroughly your mother and sister keep poor old Arthur in line.”
“Precisely.” She drew in a deep breath and managed to get herself under control again.“And that’s when I found out what a real friend Steven was.”
“Well, good old Steven,” Adam jeered softly.
“He saved my life,” Georgia shot back, declining to mention that it was thanks to Steven that she hadn’t hemorrhaged to death when she’d miscarried Adam’s baby in the kitchen of her apartment.“If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know how I would have gone on. I felt responsible for what had happened to you.”
“Rubbish!” Adam scoffed.“The prototype’s malfunction had nothing at all to do with you.”
“But I didn’t know that. I nursed the idea that you’d been too preoccupied over our disagreement to pay proper attention to what you were doing. The guilt festered, made more complicated by the reaction of everyone I met. Pity is a corrosive thing when it’s flung in your face every time you turn around. Steven saved my sanity.”
“So what are you telling me?” Adam wanted to know.“That you’re marrying him out of gratitude? That it’s no great love affair?”
They were the same questions that had kept her awake most of last night.“It’s not quite that simple,” she wailed.
“It is to me,” Adam said bluntly.“When a man finds himself staring death in the face, things become very simple. It’s a case of fight or go under. So do you love Steven, or don’t you?”
“Of course I love him!”
“Well, that’s one of the things I came back to find out. Now that I know, I guess you and I have nothing more to say to each other.” He rose and zipped up his jacket.“Have a happy life, Georgia,” he said, and turned away.
Eyes suddenly swimming again, she watched as he covered the distance to the front doors. Sometimes, it seemed that was what she remembered most vividly of all their times together: her watching as he walked away from her. And every time, it broke her heart all over again.
Let him go! the voice of sanity begged. Do it just one more time and you’ll never have to do it again.
Yes, she thought.
And promptly accused, in a woebegone little voice, “That’s what you did after we broke up, too. Just turned and walked away without even kissing me goodbye.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_8f116eb1-1a85-523a-996d-94c0d3eb86f2)
HE STOPPED and turned back to face her. He looked at her long and thoughtfuly then, as he retraced his steps, said with ominous intent, “Did I really? Well, that’s one mistake I certainly don’t have to repeat.”
Georgia’s heart flapped around behind her ribs like a chicken trying to save its neck from the hatchet but Adam didn’t care. He just kept moving until he loomed no more than twelve inches from where she stood rooted to the plush blue carpet under her feet.
Trapped by the desk behind her and the reckless words she’d flung at him, she did the only thing she could without losing what was left of her pride. She tilted her head to one side and with regal condescension, offered him her cheek.
“Oh, no,” he murmured, capturing her face in cool fingers and turning it back toward him and bending his head to hers.“Not like that at all. Like this.”
As soon as he touched her, she fell apart. A soft roaring filled her mind, dimming her hearing and clouding her vision. Her legs buckled, sending her reeling into him for support. She grabbed at him blindly, intending only to anchor herself upright, and instead found herself smoothing her hands over his face in tactile renewal of its beauty.
His mouth lowered. She felt the warm drift of his breath against her lips. And then, in excruciating slow motion, he kissed her.
