Bravo Christmas Reunion Read online

  That would be a lie.

  And the whole point was no lies.

  She turned in his arms.

  One look in her eyes and he knew that something wasn’t right. He cradled her face between his palms. “What?”

  She stepped clear of his touch. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  They sat on a beige sofa in the living room. Like the master suite above, it faced the lake, though on the ground floor, the view was framed by the winter-bare shapes of nearby trees, trees that were illuminated now by strategically placed in-ground lanterns. Here and there, in the distance, boats lit up at bow and stern bobbed on the gleaming dark water. The sky was overcast, hiding the stars.

  “What?” he asked again, those straight sable brows drawn together over worried eyes.

  She laid it right out there. “Adriana was here today.”

  He winced as if she’d struck him. And then he swore, a single, raw word.

  Hayley went on, “She just showed up at the front door, out of nowhere. A…surprise visit.”

  His frown deepened. “How the hell did she get past the gatehouse?”

  “You’ll have to ask her that. She knew my name. And she knew about Jenny. She said she’s moved back to Seattle now. I told her you weren’t at home and she claimed that she’d come to see me. Then she started giving me messages to pass on to you—stuff like how you would have to deal with her. That you were being ‘childish,’ that she needed to see you and she wanted you to call her.”

  He swore again. “I damn well don’t believe this.”

  “Yeah. Well. I hear you. I have to tell you, it freaked me out. That’s one scary, determined woman. I get a bad feeling she’ll go a long way to make you realize that you belong with her.”

  “God. Hayley. I’m so sorry. She won’t bother you again. I’ll make sure of it.” He tried to take her hand.

  She didn’t allow that. “She’s already been in touch with you, right?”

  “Hayley—”

  “Please. Just answer the question. Just tell me the truth. You know that’s what I wanted. Always. The main thing, between us. Honesty. Had she already contacted you before today?”

  It took him a moment. But then he finally said, “Yeah. She called me on my cell while I was back here, getting things cleared up for our two weeks together. I told her it was over, that I didn’t want to get back with her. I told her never to call me again. She started calling the house.”

  “So you had the number changed. And your cell number, too. Because of her.”

  “I thought, if she couldn’t reach me, she’d give it up.”

  “Marcus.”

  “Could you just not…look at me like that?”

  “How can you have believed that that woman would just go away?”

  “I hoped, okay? Is that such a bad thing?”

  “It’s unrealistic. She’s…obsessed with you. I don’t even know her and I wouldn’t have expected her to give up. Not after what you told me about her. You said yourself she…how did you put it? She…gets off on resistance?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No. Actually, I think I do.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not over her.”

  “Damn it. That’s not true.”

  “Maybe you want to be over her, maybe you even believe that you are over her. But if you were, you would have dealt with this situation openly, you would have told me what was going on.”

  “I told her never to call me again. I changed my phone numbers. She’s made no attempt to contact me since the Friday we went to Vegas when she called the office—twice, according to Joyce. After that, until today, nothing. I thought she’d gotten the message. I figured she’d gone back to her second husband or…moved on. Hell. I don’t know. I just thought she wouldn’t be bothering me anymore.”

  Hayley scooted farther away from him.

  “Damn it, Hayley. Please…”

  She put up a hand. “The question I can’t get past, the thing that sticks in my brain, is why didn’t you tell me? You’ve been lying to me for almost three weeks now.”

  “The hell I have.”

  “Marcus. You have. You know you have.”

  He made a low, frustrated sound. “All right. Yes. By omission.”

  “A lie is a lie, no matter how you try to pretty it up.”

  “Look. I see now I should have told you. But I really thought that there was no need for you to know.”

  “But there was a need. Between two people who are building a life together, there’s always a need. For trust. And for truth. I don’t want a life built on knowing only what you think I need to know. I deserve better. We both do.”

  Anger flared in his eyes. “There is nothing going on between Adriana and me.”

  “I never said there was.”

  “Then why are you so damn mad at me?”

  “I think you know why. I’ve said why. More than once. And not only is there the lie you’ve been telling me, there’s the fact that you left me swinging in the wind today.”

  “Hayley—”

  “Uh-uh. I was not prepared to open the door and find your ex-wife standing there. I was not prepared because you didn’t tell me what was going on.”

  “I thought it was finished.”

  “Adriana would say differently—and she did. This afternoon.”

  “Damn it, Hayley…” He let the muttered words trail off. Then he rose, went to the window and stared out over the lake. She watched as he lifted a lean arm and rubbed the back of his neck. There was something so…sad in the gesture. So infinitely weary.

  God. How she loved him. So much that she’d learned to bear his not belonging to her completely. She’d learned to live—and happily—without hearing the words I love you from his lips.

  But this…this lying. This holding back the truth from her and then trying to convince her it had been for her own good. She just couldn’t live with that.

  At last, he faced her again. “You act like I’ve been having an affair with her or something.”

  “No. That’s not true. I know you haven’t been having an affair with her. I know you would never do such a thing. The issue is that you lied to me when you knew that honesty was what I wanted above all.”

  “Damn it. I didn’t tell you because I knew it would upset you. Apparently, I was right.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no. Uh-uh. That’s not going to work on me. You don’t get to hold back important information so as not to upset me. I’m not some wilting little flower you have to protect from real life. My father was a murdering, kidnapping, double-dealing polygamist. My mother was a basket case who wouldn’t take care of me—but wouldn’t let me go, either. I know a whole bunch about real life. I know how to take the hardest kind of truth.”

  “I said I was wrong. I know I was wrong. I don’t know what else I can tell you. Except that I swear to you, I want nothing to do with Adriana. Since she divorced me, I’ve had nothing to do with Adriana. I spoke with her on the phone once, almost three weeks ago. I told her to get lost and I hung up. That’s the extent of my connection with her.”

  “Oh, Marcus. You’re not only lying to me. You’re lying to yourself.”

  “What the—?”

  “You are still connected to her.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You’re still not sure, what, exactly you feel about her. You’re running from her, Marcus. You’re afraid to face her.”

  “That’s bullsh—”

  “No. Please. Think. If you had no…fears about your connection with that woman, if you were completely over her, you would have told me that she’d called you. You would have been secure in the knowledge that she was no threat to you, to me or to our marriage.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve met her now. She’s bound to make trouble, we can both see that now. She is a threat. Who the hell knows what she’ll pull next?”

  Hayley rose—because she found she couldn�
�t sit still. “You’re determined not to admit your part in this.”

  His face looked carved in stone—except for the furious fire that burned in his eyes. “What the hell do you want me to tell you? I’ve said it a thousand times. I’ll say it again. I know where I stand in this. I know my part in this. I’m with you. I want to be with you. That bitch is nothing to me anymore.”

  She longed to believe him. But she simply didn’t. “When she’s nothing to you, you won’t have to lie to me about her.”

  He swore some more. “When will you listen? When will you hear me? I feel like I’m talking to a damn brick wall.” He took a step toward her.

  She put out a hand. “Don’t. I mean it. Just don’t.”

  He veered the other way, headed for the back of the house.

  Silent moments ticked past. She didn’t hear the utility room door to the garage open and close, but she knew he was gone.

  Slowly she sank to the couch again. She sat there for a long time, staring out through the naked branches of the trees, at the lake, at the lights of the boats bobbing in the darkness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The days went by.

  Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.

  Marcus went to work early and came home late. He said nothing more about Adriana. Hayley had no idea whether or not he’d contacted the woman. She didn’t ask. And he didn’t tell.

  The silence between them was deep and wide as an ocean, impenetrable as stone. She knew she should find a way to bridge that silence, to break through it. She knew that she’d hurt him, bad. By calling him a liar, by accusing him of still having feelings for the woman who’d left him flat for another man.

  She knew that he really thought he’d been protecting her by keeping the truth from her, that he honestly believed he’d behaved honorably. She knew he would never betray her. Such behavior just wasn’t in him. He was loyal to the core.

  But something still bound him to Adriana. And until he admitted that was so, he would never understand the bedrock reason he’d kept the truth from her, Hayley. He would keep on lying about his own motives—to her and to himself.

  She felt numb at the core, but she made herself go through the motions of living her new life as Marcus’s bride. She went to the paint store and chose brighter colors for most of the rooms, made arrangements for the painters to come the following week. Once Jenny’s room was painted, she planned to do a mural on one wall and a border along the baseboards, as she had at the apartment. Something cheerful and childlike—what, exactly, she hadn’t decided. She sketched a number of possibilities, but she hadn’t made her mind up yet which idea she’d go with.

  Not a rainbow, though. Not unless she and Marcus worked out this big problem they were having first. Every time she thought of rainbows, she remembered the first time Marcus saw the rainbow in Jenny’s room in Sacramento—that musing, hopeful look on his usually guarded face.

  No. She couldn’t do a rainbow now.

  Friday night, when he finally got home from work, she lay in bed beside him, yet miles and miles away. She ached to scoot over close to him, to wrap her arms around him, to whisper, I’m sorry. Can we please just get past this? Can we please just let it be like it was before?

  Yet somehow, she couldn’t. Somehow she just wouldn’t make herself apologize to him when he was the one who’d done the damage here.

  And it was never going to be the way it was before. It could be better. Or worse and worse. But never the same. Those happy, magical beginning days of their marriage were gone. They’d had their first fight.

  And it had been a doozy.

  Yes, she did know that all relationships required compromise. A marriage that lasted necessitated give and take. At some point, one of them was going to have to make the first move, reach out a hand, try and bridge the gap.

  But he hadn’t done it yet. He was too angry.

  And she hadn’t done it—she was too hurt.

  Very late, she finally drifted into a restless sleep, only to wake an hour later when Jenny started fussing in her temporary crib in the sitting room.

  “I’ll get her,” he mumbled from way over there on the far side of the giant bed.

  “No. It’s all right. She’s hungry. I’ll do it.”

  In the morning, when Hayley woke, Marcus was already gone. Off to work on Saturday—which was nothing new, really. He worked long hours and she’d known that when she married him. It only seemed crappy now because of the trouble they were having.

  Fussy, whiny sounds came from the sitting room. Jenny was ready to eat again.

  Hayley fed and changed the baby. Then she carried her downstairs and put her in the kitchen playpen. She got the water going for tea, put the bread in the toaster and cracked a couple of eggs into a pan. The phone rang.

  Her stomach clenched and her heart beat faster. Maybe it would be Marcus, making the first move toward her at last. Or it might just be Adriana, mounting another surprise attack….

  The display showed it was neither. Smiling, she put the phone to her ear. “Kelly. Hey!”

  Her sister teased. “What is it with you? You never call, you never write….”

  Because she knew if she called Kelly, she’d only cry on her shoulder. And Kelly would worry, and she didn’t want that. “Sorry. It’s been a zoo around here.”

  “I kind of figured. I thought I’d give you a few days to get settled in before I got in touch. I knew I’d only get all teary-eyed because I miss you so dang much. And guess what?” She made a soft little sniffling sound.

  “Don’t say it. I feel exactly the same way.” Hayley turned off the fire under the eggs and whipped a paper towel off the roll to dab at her suddenly misty eyes. “I miss you, too. Even worse than I thought I would, and that’s a whole lot.”

  “Hold on. I have to blow my nose.” There was a loud honking sound.

  Hayley laughed. “Better?”

  “A little—and honestly. I didn’t only call to cry over how much I miss you….”

  “What’s up?”

  “Let me say this first. Tanner told me not to bug you. I said forget that noise. You’d want to know—and don’t get all freaked on me. It’s nothing that awful. Well, I mean. It’s not good. But—”

  “Kell.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What is it?”

  “Tanner got broadsided by a one of those humongous four-wheel-drive pickups last night.”

  “Omigod.” Hayley pulled out a chair and sank into it. “Is he—?”

  “He’ll be okay. In time. Broken arm, broken leg. A couple of cracked ribs. And a concussion. The guy who hit him was totally hammered. And wouldn’t you know that fool walked away without a scratch?”

  “Where’s Tanner now?”

  “Sutter General. Under duress. You know how he is. Always on the move. Well, he won’t be moving a lot for the next few weeks. And he’s completely freaked because if he can’t move, he can’t work. He hates to miss a job and he’ll miss a few with this, believe me. I keep trying to remind him that he can damn well afford this. The guy who hit him is going to be paying big-time. And besides, Tanner has insurance and money in the bank. But you know, it’s not the money. It’s the lack of control. Our big brother could never stand to be not in control.”

  “But he’s…okay? Right?”

  “Well, yeah. He’ll be fine. In time.”

  “What about right now?”

  “He hurts everywhere. He can barely move. He’s one big bandage with swollen slits for eyes.”

  “Oh, no. That’s horrible.”

  “And did I mention, he’s really, really mad?”

  Hayley stood up. “You know what? I’m not letting you guys deal with this on your own. I’ll be there. I’ll call you back as soon as I know when my flight gets in.”

  “Huh? You’ve got a three-week-old baby. And a brand-new husband. There’s no need for you to leave your new home. Hey, it’s not like he’s dying. He’s going to be fine. I just wanted you to know.”r />
  “Well, of course you did. I’m coming.”

  “Hayley, don’t. There’s no need for you to—”

  “You already said that. I’m coming. So stop telling me not to.”

  She called Marcus, something she hadn’t done since the big blowup Tuesday night. He surprised her by answering the phone.

  “Yeah?” Cautious. And completely noncommittal.

  “I, um, Kelly just called. Tanner’s been in an accident.”

  That got a reaction. “My God. Is he okay?”

  “He will be. But he’s in the hospital and he’s pretty messed up. I’m going to go ahead and go down there….”

  A silence. A heavy one. Then, “Of course. I’ll arrange for the jet.”

  “Oh. Really. That’s not necessary.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it is. You don’t want to take Jenny on a commercial flight when you don’t have to.”

  “Marcus. She’ll be fine.”

  “No. I’ll have a car sent to get you.”

  “But I—”

  “Two hours. Is that enough time?”

  “But I said—”

  “If you’re taking my daughter to Sacramento, by God you’ll do it in my private plane.”

  Well. That pretty much settled it. “All right. Two hours. I’ll be ready.”

  “Give Tanner my best. Tell him if he needs anything, to let me know.”

  “I will. Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Have a safe trip.”

  “Thank you.”

  He hung up.

  She hadn’t said when she was coming home—and he hadn’t asked.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Tanner growled when Hayley entered his room.

  “Good to see you, too—well, except you look like holy hell.” He was trussed up like a mummy, hooked up to an IV—among other things. What she could see of him didn’t look good. All swollen up, battered, black-and-blue.

  “Where’s the baby?”

  “Kelly’s got her, out in the waiting room. Oh, God, Tanner…” She moved up right next to him and lightly laid her hand on his gauze-covered shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I know it must really hurt.”