A Promise to Cherish (19 page)

“Chicago was almost a lost cause. I couldn’t keep my mind on business,” he confessed, still with his eyes closed, still with his lips turned against her fingers.

“The office wasn’t the same without you.”

He opened his eyes again. They held the look of a man who had truly come home.

“Wasn’t it?”

She shook her head no. “I almost hated being there.”

He smiled. “I’m glad. Misery loves company.”

“Every time I knew Rachael had talked to you, I
was
miserable.”

“Good, because I was too.” His eyes wandered up to her hairline then, and his hands slipped from under her shirt to bracket her hips and settle them comfortably against his own.

“Did you run, like you promised?”

She laced her fingers around the back of his neck, leaning at the waist. “I ran like a dervish, trying to get you off my mind.”

“Did it work?” The well-remembered grin was back.

“No.” She squeezed his neck briefly. “It only made matters worse. But you’d be proud of me. I must have gone three miles today.”

“Three miles! Hey, that’s good.” At his approval she was suddenly very, very glad she’d persevered with the running and felt a great rush of pride.

“Oh, and I went shopping, too, and got some decent running shoes.”

He backed away and looked down at her feet. “Let’s see—oh, very nice. No more charley horses?” He settled her back where she’d been and ran his hands idly over the curve of her spine.

“Nope. I’m getting tougher all the time.” Again she thrilled at his grin of approval. Then he observed, “You shopped for something else while I was gone too, didn’t you?”

“What?”

His head dipped briefly to her neck while his hands moved unhurriedly over her buttocks. “Some new perfume, I think.”

“Do you like it?”

“Aha.” His lips confirmed the answer with a soft nip at the skin beneath one ear.

“And it doesn’t make you sneeze?”

“Un-uh.”

She rocked lazily against him, smiling to herself while her fingers remained locked at the back of his neck.

“Good, because after the shoes I can’t afford to try another kind.”

He laughed, lifting his head, white teeth flashing, then asked, “Have you eaten yet?”

“No, and I’m ravenous now that you’re back.”

“So am I. Let’s go get something, and you can fill me in on everything that went on around the office while I was gone.”

“I’m not exactly dressed . . .” She backed away, tugging at the hem of the baggy T-shirt and looking down at it critically.

“You look sensational to me.” Sam turned her toward the door, looped an arm over her shoulders, and gave her a nudge. “Now, let’s get this damn eating over with so I can bring you back home and tell you again how much I missed you.”

It wasn’t until later that Lee realized the subtle change that had come over their relationship with Sam’s homecoming. When it struck her, the significance was overwhelming. They had taken the time to catch up on each other’s lives, talk business, eat supper together—all before they’d made love. And each moment had been equally satisfying.

A
s August lengthened, Lee and Sam grew used to seeing each other every day at the office and every evening, in private, but in spite of Lee’s silent promises, she never brought up the subject of her children. Somehow the proper moment didn’t present itself that first night, and as the days slipped by it became easier and easier to put it off.

Yet she saw more and more of Sam. She learned his favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite movie stars. They attended an outdoor concert at the Starlight Theater, and he helped her pick out chairs for her living room. They went to a preseason game of the Kansas City Chiefs at plush Arrowhead Stadium and ran together almost daily.

On the surface everything was calm, and their relationship thrived. But as the last week of August neared, an undeniable tension grew between them. Sam had never asked why she needed the week off, but she knew he wondered.

There were countless times when she could have told him, such as when he’d scooped up P. Ewing, looked the cat in the eye, and said, “Cat, I like your name. Where’d you get it?”

It was the perfect lead-in, so why didn’t she take the opportunity to explain that it had come from Jed, who’d inadvertently stumbled upon it by exclaiming the kitten was “pew-ing” the first time it used the sandbox?

It would have been so much simpler had she listened to her conscience and told him in the beginning. But the longer she held the secret inside, the bigger it grew, until it lay like a malignancy she knew must be removed before it eventually killed her. But by now she’d put off telling him for so long that she’d become paranoid about it.

There were times when she looked up to find Sam’s eyes studying her pensively, and she knew he was biting his tongue to keep from asking the question which by now he had every right to ask. Yet, honorably, he didn’t. And the tension built . . . and built.

Until the night he took her to his home to have dinner with his mother. The evening was an unqualified success, and Lee realized it represented another step in their deepening relationship. But she knew too that Sam had not chosen this last evening before her week off without due consideration. He’d done it as if to say—there, another obstacle overcome; now it’s your turn.

All the way home in the car tension grew between them. Outside, a storm raged with great slashes of lightning zagging over the plains followed by awesome thunderclaps. Rain pelted down. The windshield wipers beat out a rhythm and the tires hissed through the rainy streets while inside the car Sam refrained from taking Lee’s hand, which he usually did when he drove.

At the townhouse he killed the engine and the lights, then laced his fingers on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, as if waiting for an explanation.

“Lee—” he began at last.

But before he could get any farther, she interrupted, “There’s no sense in two of us getting soaked. You stay here.”

His silence seemed to say, “On our last night together?” Yet he continued brooding while the tension mounted still higher between them. Finally, unable to think of a graceful exit line, Lee leaned over and kissed his cheek. He sat as stiff as a ramrod, but as she reached for the door handle, his hand lashed out in the dark and grabbed her so roughly that she gasped. Immediately he loosened his grip, and his voice became contrite.

“Lee, I’m going to miss you.”

“I . . . I’m going to miss you too.” She waited breathlessly, but still he didn’t ask the question, and still she didn’t offer an explanation. She wanted so badly to be honest with him, but she was so afraid of looking inadequate in his eyes. The silence lengthened, and the tension in the car seemed ready to explode. Then, just when she thought she couldn’t bear it another instant, Sam released her hand, sighed tiredly, and sank down against the seat. She searched his face in the shadows, and for a blinding second the car interior was lit by lightning. His eyes were closed, and he’d rolled his face away from her while he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Lee, I’m not sure . . . no, let me start again.” His hand fell away from his nose, but his voice was strained and held an undeniable note of weariness. “I think I love you, Lee.”

It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her heart pounded. She reached for his hand on the seat between them, took it in both of hers, and lifted it to her mouth. It was more than a kiss she placed on the back of it. It was a taking in of the texture, warmth, and security of it. And it was an apology.

She straightened the long, lax fingers and pressed her cheek and eyebrow against his knuckles.

“Oh, Sam,” she breathed sadly against his hand, then carried it to the side of her neck and pressed it beneath her jaw where the pulse raced. “I think I love you too.”

Everything inside Lee’s body felt as temptestuous as the storm outside. She ran her fingertips down his inner wrist and felt his wild pulse, but he sat as before, wedged low in the seat.

“What should we do about it?” he asked, and she knew it was as close as he would come to forcing her to tell him why she was about to drop mysteriously out of his life for a week.

“Wait and see. We both said we ‘think.’ ”

But even to Lee, her answer sounded inadequate, and she sensed his frustration mounting. “Wait?” he snapped, anger boiling to the surface again as he demanded in a hard tone, “How long?” His fingers closed tightly around hers.

“Sam, let me go in.”

He seemed to consider a moment, as if calculating the effect of his question before asking, “Can I come in with you?”

Immediately she let go of his hand. “No, Sam, not tonight.”

“Why?” He sat up straighter and seemed to strain toward her.

“I . . .” But she couldn’t explain it. She only knew it had something to do with the boys coming tomorrow and a feeling of her own unworthiness. But before she could conjure up an answer, his voice cut coldly through the tense space between them.

“All right then, come here.” And before she could guess his intentions, he reached for her in an insolent way he’d never before used with her and pulled her roughly across the seat until she fell against his chest. He began kissing her with a bruising lack of sensitivity.

“S . . . Sam, don’t!” She struggled up, recoiling instinctively against him. But he grabbed her by both wrists, and he was frighteningly powerful in his anger as they poised, faced off in a half-prone position across the car seat. His fingers bit into the tender skin where her pulse raced. Tears trembled on her eyelids, and fear swelled up in her throat.

“Why do you pull away? I’m wishing the lady good-bye, that’s all.”

“Sam . . .” But before more words escaped her stiff lips, she was flung backward against his hard chest with her right hand wrenched between their bodies, rendering it useless. And all the while his voice grated near her ear. “I’ve just said I think I love you, and you told me the same thing. Considering that, I think you deserve a proper good-bye.” She fought him with her single free hand, but he controlled it with amazingly little difficulty as he roughly opened the front fastening of her slacks and plunged his hand inside.

“Sam . . . why . . . why are you doing . . . this?” she sobbed.

But he was relentless. “Why?” His hand invaded the part of her body he had never touched with anything but utmost tenderness, but his voice made a mockery of the act. “This is what you keep me around for, isn’t it? This is what you want me for, isn’t it?”

He plundered her with consummate skill while an unspeakable sense of loss washed over Lee. She was sobbing quietly now, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she’d brought on this anger herself, for his confession of love had been an invitation for her to confide in him, yet she’d refused once again. Tears ran down her face as she finally gave up struggling and lay passively on his hard, aroused body, letting him do with her what he would.

But just as swiftly as it had come, the fight went out of him. His hand fell still while his chest still heaved with emotion. His heartbeat reverberated through the thin fabric of Lee’s blouse, and he swallowed convulsively. At the sound, she too choked back the thick tears that clotted her throat. Slowly his fingertips withdrew to rest on the soft, warm skin of her stomach. Neither of them spoke.

In those moments, as she lay upon him, feeling him breathe torturously against the back of her neck, she saw the death of a love that might have been. She held back the sobs she wanted to release for the annihilation of something they’d built slowly and carefully, something that had shown such bright promise only a short time ago.

And—oh God, oh God—it hurt.

He had seized upon one of her greatest vulnerabilities and used it against her, knowing full well that his accusation would debase her. She wished she could go back ten minutes and live them again. But she could only fling the back of a wrist over her eyes while her throat muscles worked spasmodically. All the while she lay on top of him like a plucked flower, wilted by the very sun that had once given it life.

She opened her eyes and stared unseeingly at the rivulets of rain oozing down the windshield, turning an unearthly green in the intermittent flashes of lightning. For a minute she felt disoriented and removed from herself.

Then she summoned up the will to move and pulled herself up, slowly, slowly, sitting on his sprawled thighs and running shaky fingers through her tousled hair, unable yet to find the strength to remove herself from him completely.

“Cherokee—”

“Don’t!” His rasping utterance was cut in half by the stiffening of her shoulders and the harsh word. She had thrown up a hand in warning but still sat on him, still with her back to him. There followed a deadly silence, broken only by the ongoing thrum of rain on the roof and low growls of thunder.

Then, muscle by muscle, she dragged her weary body to the far side of the seat and untangled her legs from his. In the same deliberate fashion he righted himself behind the wheel, then hung his hands on it, staring straight ahead for several seconds before slowly lowering his forehead onto his knuckles.

She tucked in her blouse, zipped and buttoned her slacks, and reached to slip her shoes from her feet, all with the stilted motions of an automaton. But when she reached for her purse and then for the door handle, Sam lifted his head and placed a detaining hand on her arm.

“Cherokee, I’m sorry. Let’s talk about this.”

“Don’t touch me,” she said lifelessly. “And don’t call me Cherokee.”

His hand fell away, but his voice held a note of entreaty. “This happened because you won’t confide in me. If you go in now and stubbornly refuse to—”

The car door cut off his appeal as she stepped out into the torrents of rain and slammed it shut. A river of water rushed along the curb, but she scarcely felt it as her nylon-clad foot splashed through it. Then she was fleeing blindly toward the door. Behind her the engine started up, and the car tore away at breakneck speed, the tail lights fishtailing down the street on the slick pavement. At the stop sign up the block he only slowed, then tore off again with a second screech of tires and swerving of tail lights that bled off into the distance.