Donovan's Child (15 page)

And she did look—and it
was
okay. He was all right. The color was back in his cheeks, and his eyes were
focused, alive. He was there, in the studio, in the
world,
with her again.

She took his mouth—a hard, quick kiss. A claiming kiss. Once, and then a second time. “Oh, you scared me. You did. You really did….”

He eased her away from him enough that he could capture her gaze and hold it. “Okay,” he said, firmly. Decisively.

She didn't get it, had no idea what he was telling her. “Okay, what?”

“Okay, you were right.”

“Um. I was?”

“Sometimes I hate it, you know? How right you are?”

“I have to tell you, Donovan. Sometimes I don't feel very right. Sometimes I feel like I haven't got a clue.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“Yeah. Well, I put on a pretty good act, I guess, huh?”

He searched her face. And then he gave a low chuckle. “You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?”

“Well…”

“Do you?”

She was busted. “I hate to admit it, but no. I don't.”

“I'm saying you were right, tonight, at the dinner table. And after I wheeled out on you, after I went to my rooms to sulk, I stared at the portrait of Elias over the fireplace, and I thought about how I let him down the day he died, by not watching out for him closely enough, by being too damn proud of him to do what was good for him, to tell him it wasn't safe, tell him no. And stick by it.”

It was futile to argue that point, she got that. But she couldn't just keep letting it go, either. “Oh, Donovan…”
She put up a hand between them, touched her fingers to his lips.

His gold brows drew together. “What?”

“Sometimes terrible things happen, no matter what you do to make sure that they don't.”

He caught her fingers, eased them away. “I'm very well aware of that.” The bitterness was there, in his tone, again—and in his eyes. “And it doesn't help to know that, doesn't help when people say it. It doesn't help in the least.”

She lowered her head in surrender. “No,” she said quietly. “I can see that it doesn't.” She reminded herself—again—that nothing she could say was going to make him stop blaming himself. He had to come to forgiving himself in his own way, in his own time.

He touched her chin, so gently. When she looked up, the anger was gone from his face. He spoke tenderly. “What I'm trying to tell you is that I get it. I understand. I made a commitment when I offered the fellowship for the children's center, and that commitment was not only to the children who need the center, not only to the Foundation, not only to you. It was also to Elias. For his sake most of all, I have to follow through. If I don't, I'll be letting him down all over again.”

Her breath got all tangled up in her throat and her heart beat faster, with pure joy. It was happening. He'd seen what he needed to do at last.

And he'd decided to go for it.

He said, “You were right, Abilene, as you are way too much of the time. I'll be going to San Antonio with you, after all.”

H
e took her to his rooms. She saw the pictures of Elias, at last.

“Oh, I wish I could have known him,” she said.

“He would have liked you.” Donovan's voice was rough with feeling. He held out his hand to her.

She went to him. She kissed him. They undressed each other slowly and went to bed.

They didn't get to sleep until very late. But they were up at dawn, nonetheless.

Now that he'd made the decision to go, Donovan was wasting no time about it. He wanted to be in San Antonio, ready to work, within the week.

Sunday morning, he started surfing the internet, looking for a place he might stay for an indefinite period, somewhere with good wheelchair access. A few hotels offered what he needed. But he was hoping he could find
a house to rent. After a couple of hours of looking, he'd come up with zip.

Abilene suggested, “You should call Dax. He and Zoe have plenty of room.”

Donovan hesitated. He didn't want to put them out. It seemed presumptuous. They'd invited him to visit, not to move in on them while he worked.

Abilene marched down the length of the studio to his desk, grabbed the phone and shoved it at him. “They would love to have you. They have plenty of room. Their house is so big, you could move in there permanently. Unless they wanted to see you, they would never even realize you were there.”

He slanted her a put-upon look. “Have I told you that you are one extremely annoying and pushy woman?”

“You have. Frequently. Make the call.”

He took the phone she held under his nose and dialed Dax's number.

Dax said Donovan was welcome to live at his place, for as long as he wanted to stay. He and Zoe would be gone next week, when Donovan arrived. They traveled a lot, gathering material for his magazine. But he had live-in staff who would have Donovan's rooms ready and waiting for him.

Donovan thanked him, and explained what he needed in terms of access for his wheelchair. And Dax promised it was all workable. There was a suite on the main floor that should be ideal. Meals would be available at Donovan's convenience, since the cook lived in.

So it was settled. Donovan would stay with the Girards. Abilene had her condo waiting for her—though she wouldn't mind at all if she ended up spending her nights at her sister's, in Donovan's rooms.

Monday, when Helen came to work, Donovan asked
her to accompany them to San Antonio. But she didn't want to leave her husband alone in Chula Mesa. So he had her call a San Antonio temp agency. They would send someone to Dax's as soon as Donovan got settled in. Also, Helen found trainers and a massage therapist in San Antonio who would work with Donovan while he was there.

Anton and Olga would remain in West Texas to take care of the house. And Helen would come in three times a week to deal with correspondence and anything else that might need her attention while Donovan was away.

As the week went by, Donovan spent a lot of time on the phone with the Foundation people. They were thrilled to learn that he and his protégé would be showing up very soon now. There were conference calls with Ruth Gilman and Doug Lito at the Johnson Wallace Group and with the builder, Sam Duncan of SA Custom Contracting. The site, chosen over a year before, was ready and waiting. The formal groundbreaking ceremony would be going forward on March first, as planned.

Abilene spent her days working feverishly to be ready to go—and her nights in Donovan's bed. She loved the picture of Elias in his sailor suit and talked Donovan into moving it back out to the main living area.

Wednesday night, at dinner, he told Olga to take the portrait out of his sitting room and put it back where it belonged, over the front room fireplace.

Tears welled in Olga's eyes. “Yes. Of course. An excellent decision. He was the sweetest boy. And we miss him, so much.”

Thursday night, Luisa came to dinner. She told Donovan how happy it made her, to see that he'd put Elias's picture back in the front room.

“Blame Abilene,” he said. “She made me do it.” And
he sent Abilene a look that melted her midsection and made her toes curl inside her high-heeled shoes.

Luisa wanted them to come to the cantina one more time before they left for San Antonio.

So Friday night, they drove out to the roadhouse. They had margaritas and played pool—and Donovan got his butt kicked again by that tall, tattooed blonde. They were back at the house before midnight and went together to Donovan's rooms, where they made slow, tender love and fell asleep in each other's arms.

 

Abilene woke Saturday morning in Donovan's bed. She watched him sleeping and found herself wishing she could wake up beside him every morning, for the rest of her life.

She loved him—was
in
love with him. And for the past few busy days, she'd been trying to figure out how to tell him. It seemed such a simple thing. She ought to just say it.
I love you, Donovan.

But she didn't. Somehow, the moment never quite seemed right.

Strange, really. She'd always been the kind who said exactly what was on her mind.

But on this whole I-love-you thing, well, she kept hesitating, kept putting it off. She didn't want to push him. Not about something so important as love.

Not about something as far-reaching as the possibility of forever.

On the pillow beside her, he opened his eyes.

She thought,
I love you.
But all she said was, “Good morning.”

 

Donovan met her shining eyes and knew what he had to do. But somehow, he just couldn't bring himself to do it.

What he had with her, he'd never had with any woman—that sense that she knew him, knew who he really was. That she accepted him, completely, and yet still expected him to be the best he could possibly be.

He felt the same way about her. He
knew
her in the deepest way. He accepted her as the brilliant, pushy, tenderhearted woman she was. And he wanted the best for her. He wanted her to have the chance to make all her dreams come true.

She couldn't do that with him. He didn't share her dreams. He couldn't. Not anymore. He kept thinking about that fantasy house of hers—her dream house—about the husband and children she wanted to build it for. He was never going to be the husband in that house, or the father of those children.

He reached out and brushed the back of his hand along the velvety curve of her cheek, thinking that he somehow had to find a way to make her understand why he had to leave her.

Not now, though.

Not yet…

So he thought,
I have to leave you.
But all he said was, “Good morning.”

 

Later that day, Abilene packed up her car. She would leave, on her own, early Sunday morning.

Donovan would fly to San Antonio on Monday. He'd offered to ride with Abilene, to keep her company. But they both knew an eight-hour car ride would be uncomfortable for him. In the end, he'd admitted it was probably wiser for him to fly. Helen had made arrangements for a van with a wheelchair lift to be available at the San Antonio airport, so he would have the use of a car when he got there.

That night, late, it rained. A real gulley-washer. Abilene heard the soft, insistent roar of it outside and woke. Beside her, Donovan slept on.

Slowly, with care, so as not to wake him, she rose from the bed, grabbed her robe from a nearby chair and slipped it on. Barefoot, she padded into his sitting room, where she gazed out at the torrent. It was coming down so hard it made the water in the pool churn and ran in little rivers along the courtyard pathways. Lightning brightened the sky and thunder boomed somewhere in the distance.

She stood there at the glass door for several minutes, watching the rain come down and the lightning flash, listening to the rumbles of thunder.

“Looks pretty wild out there,” Donovan said from behind her.

She turned to him. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

“You didn't. The thunder did.” His white teeth flashed with his smile. In the darkness, his eyes were almost black. He'd pulled on sweats before he wheeled in to join her.

She went to him, bent to kiss him. He reached for her and pulled her down across his lap. She curved against him, her legs over one wheel, an arm around his neck, her head tucked beneath his chin.

He kissed the top of her head. “Ready for the big drive tomorrow?”

“All packed.” She nuzzled his throat, breathed in the clean scent of his skin, thought how she hated to be apart from him, even just for a day.

Lightning flashed again. The room brightened.

She lifted her head and met his eyes as the room darkened once more and the thunder rolled off across the desert floor. “It almost feels unreal, that we're leaving.
Five weeks out here, and it's as if I've been here, with you, forever.”

“Five weeks,” he echoed. “And I spent most of it making your life as miserable as possible.”

“The past week is the one that counts.”

He held her gaze. “They all count. You know that.” And then he guided her head down to his shoulder again. “It will be good, though, won't it? To see your family, to go home…?”

“Um-hm.”
I love you.
She thought the words. But she didn't say them.

Five weeks, she had known him. Five weeks was nothing. Even if it did kind of feel like forever.

And as he'd just said, only in the past week had they truly found each other.

They both needed more time.

At least a little more.

And a chance to be together out in the real world. His house was beautiful and so comfortable and lately, it had started to feel like her home, somehow. But it was a place apart, where the world outside could not intrude.

San Antonio would be the proof of what they had together. He would meet her family. And the work on the children's center would proceed beyond just the two of them.

Yes. It was good, that they were going.

And this strange feeling she had, the one she kept denying. The feeling that his going with her to San Antonio was an end instead of the beginning…

That would pass, like the lightning and the thunder, like a sudden midnight storm across the wide-open desert.

He smoothed her hair. “Back to bed?”

She lifted her head again, touched her lips to his.
“Please.” And then she shifted on his lap, turning to face front, bringing her legs down over his, out of the way of the wheels.

He rolled them both in a circle and back to the other room.

 

The next morning, she said goodbye to Anton and Olga and thanked them for everything.

Olga hugged her and whispered to her to come back soon.

“I will,” she promised.

Donovan went with her down to the garage. She kissed him and told him she would see him tomorrow.

He said, “Call me when you get there?”

She promised that she would.

And then she got into her Prius and headed for home.

The drive was every bit as long and tedious as she remembered. But she finally arrived. At a little after five that afternoon, she lugged her suitcases into her condo.

Her place was pretty much as she'd left it—including the Christmas tree in the window and the fat red candles in festive holders on the mantel. When the summons had come from Donovan the day after New Year's, she'd had no time to put away her holiday decorations.

She called Donovan's cell.

He answered on the first ring. “You made it.” The sound of his voice warmed her, banished all her strange, persistent doubts. “I've been waiting for you to call….”

She said, “It's crazy. We've been apart for eight hours and fifteen minutes. And I miss you so much.”

He said nothing.

Her doubts came flooding back, drowning her. “Donovan?”

And then he confessed gruffly, “Yeah. I miss you, too.”

She told herself she was being so silly—and definitely paranoid. And she asked, “Tomorrow?”

He confirmed it. “Tomorrow.”

“I could come to the airport and meet you….”

“No. I'll have the van waiting. There's no point.”

She wanted to argue that of course there was a point. To see him. To be with him as soon as she possibly could.

But she didn't argue. She told herself to get over this burning need to be near him constantly. Just because she loved him didn't mean she had to turn into some wimpy clinging vine.

She answered with determined cheerfulness. “Then I'll be waiting at Zoe and Dax's.”

He said he would see her then. They said goodbye.

She felt let down and lonely—which was totally self-indulgent. So she ordered a pizza and called her mom. Aleta didn't answer the phone at home, so she tried the family ranch, Bravo Ridge, where her mom and dad usually went for Sunday dinner.

Mercy, her sister-in-law, answered. “Everyone's here,” she said. “Why don't you come on out?”

“I'd love to, but I've been driving all day and my place is still decorated for Christmas. I need to take down all this holiday stuff.”

“Next Sunday then. Family dinner here, as always. Think about it.”

“I will. Thanks. Is Mom there?”

“Right here…”

Her mother came on the line. “You're home?”

“Yep. Safe and well.”

“How about lunch, tomorrow?”

“Oh, I'd love to. But I can't. Donovan is coming in around noon and I—”

“Honey.” Her mother's voice was full of love and patience. “I understand. Of course, you'll want to see that he's all settled at Zoe's.”

“Yes. Especially, you know, since Zoe and Dax are out of town.”

“Sweetheart, I agree. You should be there to greet him.”

“Thanks. For understanding.”

“I do want to meet him soon.”

“Yes. Absolutely. Tomorrow will be impossible, though, and probably the rest of the week. We have meetings and more meetings.”