And Then You Fall (Crested Butte Series) (12 page)

Ben gave Paige a hug hello, whispering thanks in her ear and introducing her to his father. He doubted Liv would’ve agreed to this trip without Paige’s prompting. She was a good friend.

“Shall we get back in the air?” his father asked.

Liv hugged Paige goodbye and told her she’d be in touch. They hadn’t talked about how long she’d stay with him, and he didn’t want to yet. The last thing he wanted to think about was her leaving and them being apart again.

The fifty-minute flight went quickly. The skies were clear and the scenery spectacularly beautiful. Liv was no stranger to Gunnison or Crested Butte. When Renie was growing up, it had been their favorite place to ski. The ski area had enough beginner and intermediate slopes that Renie learned easily. Then when she got better, there was enough challenging ter
rain that they never got bored.

The valley at the base of Mt. Crested Butte was surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery in the Rocky Mountains. Roads led to remote canyons where groves of aspens splattered the hillsides everywhere the eye could see. Driving in from Gunnison, the butte rose majestically to the east.

“I love Crested Butte,” she murmured as they drove into town.

“My grandfather played an important role in the town’s development,” answered Ben.

“I know, although I have to admit, my daughter filled me in on the Rice family’s role in the history of the town.” Liv chuckled. “She gave me a lecture about not having read the magazines left for us in our hotel rooms over the years.” She sighed and grinned. “That was the night I met you for the second time, at the Goat.” Her cheeks turned pink again.

“Nice memory?” his father asked.

“An embarrassing one,” she laughed.

“Liv feigned illness to get away from me that night,” Ben added. “What was it that made you run from me?” he whispered in her ear.

She didn’t answer him.

They turned onto a remote road before they got all the way into town.

“Where are we going?” Liv asked.

“This is the Rice family ranch little lady,” Ben answered. She heard the pride in his voice.

“We’ll stop in at my parents’ place and drop my dad. My mom will want us to stay for a bit, but I told them we’d be having dinner at my house tonight.”

“Okay,” she answered softly.

He watched her as she studied the scenery of the ranch. He thought back to one of their first telephone conversations, when she told him she’d gone riding, and that she had a ranch. He remembered feeling like a shit for not asking her much about herself. Now he realized that he’d never told her much about where he lived, or that he came from a ranching family, other than that she’d gotten herself hooked up with a good ol’ boy.

You could still see the butte from the ranch, the south side of it, if you looked north through the valley of tall grasses. A river ran through the center of valley; the Rices had always kept cattle to the south of the river, and horses to the north.  Even in the winter the ranch was beautiful, but in the spring, wildflowers bloomed everywhere you looked, like a painter’s palette. The deep blue sky, touched with billowing white clouds looked like a pastel. The land, as far as the eye could see, belonged to his family.

“It’s so beautiful here.”

Ben heard the awe in her voice. He felt the same way every time he drove these roads.

“Oh wow,” she said as they pulled up in front of his parents’ house. “It’s wonderful.”

Ben had to admit the ranch house was idyllic. Built of dark wood, it looked as though it had always been there, a part of the surrounding land. The wraparound porch offered views of the valley in three directions and the peak of Mt. Crested Butte in the fourth.

Ben’s mom came out to the porch to greet them.

“Mom, this is Liv.”

She realized that was the second time he introduced her in such a simple way, as though they would know who she was, just by her first name.

“It’s nice to meet you ma’am,” Liv said as she extended her hand in greeting.

“Oh please, call me Ginny, and come here, give me a hug sweet girl, I don’t shake hands.”

Liv looked at Ben and they both laughed. “Dottie,” Ben said and Liv nodded yes.

“Who is Dottie?” Ginny asked.

“Someone who reminded me very much of you, Mom” Ben answered.

“She doesn’t shake hands either,” added Liv.

Ben was antsy. There would be time for his parents to get to know Liv better tomorrow, or the day after that. Right now all he wanted to do was whisk her away so they could be alone. He longed to hold her close, sink his body into hers, skin on skin.

As it was, he couldn’t take his hands off her. He stroked her arm, then pulled her in closer, kissing the soft skin right along her hairline. She smelled so good, like lavender and something else, he couldn’t place it, bu
t he knew its name, it was Liv.

“I think these kids would like to be on their way Ginny,” his father interjected, sensing his son’s impatience.

“What’s your hurry?” Ginny winked at Liv.

Ben stood and held his hand out to Liv, who wrapped her fingers through his. “We’ll see you soon Mom,” he winked back.

“It was so nice to meet you both,” Liv said, walking over to hug his father.

“And you too. We hope to see more of you during your visit.” Ginny hugged her. “We’re so happy you’re here,” she added.

“Where do you live?” she asked as they got in the truck.

“Just over this hill a little ways,” he pointed in the direction of his house.

“On the ranch?”

“Yep. I guess I didn’t tell you that, did I?”

“No you didn’t mention it.”

He told her about his brothers and pointed in the direction of their places, and explained how his dad had divided up the parcels for each of his three sons.

“No sisters?”

“Sisters-in-law, but no, no sisters.” Ben felt a little uncomfortable realizing that he had been so frustrated by her lack of willingness to talk to him about her life, yet as they talked, he was stunned by how little he had told her about himself.

“Oh Ben,” was all she said as they approached his house. It was a more modern version of his parents’ place. Built from the same type of dark would, with weathered corrugated steel roofing and accents. He loved his house, but he had to admit, he loved hers more.

“I’m warning you, my kitchen isn’t half as nice as yours. And I only have one fireplace, not one in every room.”

“I don’t have a fireplace in every room Ben.”

“Just about,” he teased.

They made it through the front door, but giving her a tour now was out of the question. He’d waited long enough to hold her, feel her against him, get her out of her clothes and bury himself deep inside her.

Ben cupped the back of her neck, touching his mouth to hers, warm, barely there at first, then firmer. He parted her lips, angling his head, trying to get as close as he could to her. His hands pulled her jacket away from her shoulders and tossed it on the floor. “Need you naked and need it now baby,” he groaned.

A flush warmed her skin as he nipped at her earlobe. “You taste so good.”

A groan escaped her lips as she ran her hands over his shoulders, down, caressing his solid chest, moving lower, to unfasten his belt.

Before she could, Ben picked her up and carried her up the stairs. “Once you are in my bed, it will be a long, long time before I let you out of it.”

He took her mouth again, hungrily. His hands traveled over her back, lingering as they slowly moved down the length of her spine, over her bottom, pressing her closer into him. She made him burn from the inside out at the mere feel of her body beneath his fingertips.

Liv’s piercing blue eyes looked into his as he slid his hand into her long hair, holding her still so he could feast himself on her lips.

“Talk to me Liv. Tell me. Did you miss me? Did you miss this?”

“I missed you so much,” she whispered. She got up and started taking off the rest of her clothes. Ben watched, the vision of her caused him to growl. He cupped her chin and kissed her mouth lightly before he trailed his lips down her body, over the swell of her breast, softly kissing the curve of her stomach, then her hip.

Ben lifted her back on to the bed and pushed her softly so she was on her back, spread out in front of him. He reached behind his back and pulled his shirt over his head, then quickly took off his jeans. He reached for the drawer in the night stand and Liv sat up, stopping his hand with hers.

“No, it’s okay, nothing between us tonight Ben.”

That took him over the edge. “I need you Liv. I want to feel you. All of you. Look at me Liv. I want your eyes on me, watching what I do to you.”

Liv didn’t say a word, nor did she move from where she was. Her eyes stayed locked on his, never wavering as Ben’s slow rhythm took them both over the edge.

Chapter 10

“Are you feeling like a hostage yet?” Ben asked her two days later. They hadn’t seen another person since they’d left Ben’s parents house the night she got there, but they hadn’t spent the entire time in bed either.

Ben took her all over the ranch, somewhat stupefied that they didn’t run into one of his brothers, or even some of the other ranch hands. He wondered if his dad and warned everyone to be scarce.

“Not at all, surprisingly. Although . . .”

“Are you going to tell me or do you want me to guess? Wait, don’t tell me. You want to go riding today.”

Liv’s head snapped around. “How did you know?”

“When you’re nervous, you like to ride.”

“I didn’t say I was nervous.”

“No, you didn’t. But you know that we’re not going to be able to avoid seeing other humans much longer, which means you may have to meet more of my family. Which probably makes you nervous.”

“What about your boys Ben?”

“Is that what you’re most nervous about?”

“I understand if you don’t want me to meet them.”

Here was another thing he hadn’t talked to her about, that his boys knew about her, or at least knew that she was someone special to their dad.

“I want you to meet them more than anything. They won’t be back here with me until Monday, but I was thinking maybe we could have dinner with them Saturday or Sunday. Just so it isn’t too overwhelming.”

“For me or for them?” She laughed, but he knew she was anxious.

“You have a really charming, and grown-up, daughter. I have two rough and tumble boys, one who is at the beginning stages of puberty, so he’ll be as awkward as humanly possible around anyone of the opposite sex, and another who is still a little boy, who will likely crawl into your lap and never want to leave.” Luke was his rascal, but he was also his cuddler. He was the one who never wanted to sleep in his own bed, always wanted five more minutes of talk time, or another story at bedtime.

“And will I meet their mother?”

Ah, this was what was really bothering her, meeting his ex-wife. Liv was a widow, but if she was divorced instead, he would’ve been nervous about meeting someone who had been important enough to father her child.

“I think we should talk about them.”

“Who them?”

“Your husband, my ex-wife. I want to know about him. What made you fall in love with him, what your life was like then.”

“That was a long time ago Ben, and Scott and I weren’t married very long before he died.”

“I know, but it’s still part of who you are. In some ways I think it’s harder. With my ex, we decided we didn’t want to be together anymore, she wasn’t taken away from me. I worry sometimes about living up to his memory. Particularly given how he died.”

Ben wanted to talk about Scott. She hadn’t seen this one coming. The truth was she’d never talked to anyone about him. There was the picture she painted for Renie of who her father was, but that was only partially based on reality. A lot of what she told her daughter was how she imagined Scott would’ve been as a father, not on anything she actually knew. He wasn’t a father yet when he died.

And as much as he wasn’t sure about living up to Scott’s memory, at least Scott wasn’t a living, breathing, human being, who she still saw at least once a week. How he thought she could compete with that, she didn’t know.

“Liv?”

“I heard you. I just don’t know if I want to talk about him. Or if I want to hear about her.”

Why did he want to talk about everything all the time? Were all men like this? She didn’t remember her father ever being so
talkative.

“Tell me about him. How did you meet him?”

Scott was what her mom referred to as a “fly boy,” an F15 fighter pilot. She remembered thinking he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She worshiped him, from the day she met him, when she was only a child. He worshiped her father, so when he was around her parents, and even when he wasn’t, he was such a gentleman. The happiest day of her life was the day she found out Scott was interested in her as a woman.

The first time he took her out, he had opened her doors and pulled out her chair for her at dinner, asked her what she wanted for dinner and then ordered for her. She remembered thinking he was like a prince in a fairy tale. In fact, he’d called her his princess. And rather than Liv, he called her Olivia.

They started seeing each other in June, two months after she turned eighteen, when he was in town for his promotion to captain. They saw each other every night for the week he was there. When he went back to his base, he called her every night at eight o’clock. It was funny that she remembered it so well, waiting for him to call, and that he was always so punctual.

They had kissed, but Scott never pushed her to go any further. Liv looked back on it now and wondered why not. She had been so innocent then she hadn’t thought about it. Then again, she hadn’t dated anyone in high school, no one had ever measured up to Scott. He asked her one night, during one of their phone calls, if she was a virgin. She remembered being aghast, and embarrassed, that he would ask, and telling him that of course she was. She hadn’t told him she’d been saving herself for him, but she had been.

He came back at Christmas to spend it with her family, and he proposed, on Christmas Eve, in front of the Christmas tree, with her parents looking on. That was another thing that she hadn’t questioned then, but now looked back on it and found it strange. It was odd to remember how happy her mother and father had been. They had been as happy as she was. She wondered now if they were happy for her, or if they were happy that she had landed such a “catch.”

Once they were engaged, she went to his base to visit and he took her around, introducing her to his friends, most were already married and had families. She particularly remembered him never failing to ask if they didn’t think she was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen. Her looks always seemed so important to him. As did her innocence.

One evening during her visit they went out for dinner with several other couples. One of the wives asked Liv what she liked to do, what her hobbies were, and Liv told her about her horse, and that she had always dreamed of being a barrel racer. She’d been training and was thinking about looking into rodeos she could enter.

Later, when he dropped her off at her hotel, Scott sat her down and told her he didn’t want to hear anymore talk of rodeos. She would be too busy as an Air Force wife for such foolishness. He also told her that he wanted to start a family as soon as they were married. Liv remembered thinking that he knew best, and she loved him more than anything, so giving up her dream to be with him didn’t seem like a sacrifice.

When she got home, she talked to her mother about it. Her mom assured her that life with Scott would be an unimaginable series of adventures. She’d travel the world and have opportunities as the wife of a pilot, few could even dream about. Rodeos and barrel racing were for women of a different caliber than Liv was. And evidently it wasn’t a better caliber.

The next month was a flurry of activity as they rushed to plan the wedding. The ceremony was held at the Air Force Academy
chapel, and the reception was at their ranch. Liv knew so few peo
ple at her own wedding, most were Scott’s friends, or friends of her parents. It was another thing that seemed odd to her now, but hadn’t at the time.

Scott took her to Hawaii for their honeymoon and treated her like a queen. He was romantic and charming, he made her feel as though she was the most special woman who ever lived. He was gentle when they made love, and patient as he taught her how to please him. And he was sure to please her as well. She’d never dreamed that sex would be the way it was. It was spectacular.

While they were in Hawaii, he made sure they did everything she wanted to do. They went sailing and whale-watching, hiking and snorkeling. He took her all over the islands and when they were in Kauai, they’d made love on a beach, under the stars.

As a captain, and a fighter pilot, Scott had arranged for a very nice home for the two of them, off base. It wasn’t anywhere near as nice as her parents’ home, but Liv hadn’t expected it to be. She missed her horse more than anything, but being with Scott was everything to her.

The life of an Air Force officer was something Liv was accustomed to. She understood what the expectations would be of her, there would be wives’ clubs to join, dinner parties to host, and functions to attend. She had seen and learned it all from her mother.

In early April, Liv found out she was pregnant. Scott was beside himself with happiness and so was she. If she’d felt like a princess before, now she felt doubly so. He was attentive and caring, always making sure she had everything she wanted or needed.

Each month, on the fourteenth, he’d bring her some kind of gift, to celebrate their anniversary. In March, he brought her an emerald four-leaf clover necklace; in April a pair of diamond earrings, in honor of her birthday which was April 17. In May, he gave her tickets for the two of them to go and visit her parents for Memorial Day, and in June, he gave her a bracelet that had belonged to his grandmother. Scott never failed to make her feel as though his sun rose and set with her. God, she had loved him so much, heart and soul.

In August he was deployed and by November, he was gone. Those had been such dark days for Liv. Her world ended when they told her Scott was gone.

Her parents had flown in immediately, she wondered now if her father had known Scott had been shot down before she had. They had taken care of everything. She moved back home to live with them. She remembered Scott’s funeral, the day he was buried at the academy cemetery. Everyone told her she should be so proud, her husband was a hero.

Irene Louise Fairchild was born a few weeks later, and from that moment on, she was Liv’s everything. Her world went from revolving around Scott to
revolving around her daughter.

Ben watched the expressions on Liv’s face change as she told him the story of her life with Scott. She had been so young, so innocent, but it sounded as though he had been a decent man, and good to her. And she had loved him, completely. Which made it easier to understand why she hadn’t found someone else, hadn’t ever remarried.

“When Renie was little, I had no desire to do anything but be her mom. My parents would’ve been happy to watch her if I had ever wanted to go out, but I never did. I believed that Scott was it for me. I shut that part me off.

“The day Renie started school, I met Paige. Her daughter Blythe was in the same kindergarten class.”

Soon Liv became busy with mother-daughter play dates, helping in Renie’s classroom, and on field trips. When that happened, her parents started traveling more. Liv never realized how much they put their lives on hold to help her after her daughter was born.

When Renie was ten, Liv’s father had a heart attack. He died the next day without ever regaining consciousness. That was when Liv got Pooh, Renie’s horse, as a way to distract her daughter from the pain of losing her grandfather. Two years later her mother passed away from breast cancer. The time between her diagnosis and her passing had been brief.

Between then and now, Liv had her hands full raising her daughter. Over the years Paige and Mark had tried to fix her up with different guys, but there had never been anyone she thought could hold a candle to Scott. She enjoyed the time she spent with her daughter. They were as much friends as they were parent and child.

“I guess you really didn’t ask me to tell you my life story, but it’s hard to tell you about Scott, without doing so. The truth is, we were together such a short amount of time, but even so, he was my life, and he impacted the rest of my life so profoundly, it’s hard to separate one from the other.”

Wow—her life story, she thought. She had been a daughter, then a wife, then a mother. That was it. She really liked Ben, but the idea of adding “Ben’s girl,” as the fourth title on her life’s resume, didn’t resonate so well. She needed to do something for herself, be something for herself, before she woke up twenty years from now and resented the fact that she never had.

Other than Liv believing no one could measure up to her long-dead husband, the thing that bothered Ben the most, of everything she’d told him, was that her birthday had been a little over a week ago, and he hadn’t known it. For all he knew, she celebrated it alone. He only hoped that Paige and Mark had done something nice for her.

“Are you getting hungry?” They were sitting out on Ben’s deck, the sun was going down and he turned on one of the outdoor heat lamps.

“I am. What should we make?”

Ben decided he wanted to take her into town. He’d surprise her and they’d celebrate her birthday. “I think we should go out tonight. How does sushi sound?”

“Oh fabulous. I love sushi, I would eat it every day if it wasn’t such a long drive from home. Um, what should I wear?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable in. I’d be happy if you wore nothin’ at all baby, but then I wouldn’t want to leave the house.” Ben snuggled her closer to him. “Thanks for telling me about Scott. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”