My Way Back to You (Harlequin Large Print Super Romance) (19 page)

There it was.
Finally!
A strange sense of satisfaction rolled through her.

“I had a wife and a baby to take care of,” he continued. “I was trying to make a living, go to school, keep the scholarship that I eventually ended up losing, be a husband and father, and things were turning out totally different from the way I thought they’d be when I moved to Kentucky from California. Everything felt out of control.”

He scratched his head roughly, his telltale sign of frustration, but his honesty dredged up what lay at the bottom of Maggie’s resentment—the truth she’d never been able to put into words, even while she’d been in counseling. It was like she’d stepped out of her body and was viewing herself with a new perspective...because, of course, she was.

She wasn’t
that person
anymore. Would never allow herself to be
that person
again.

“And the more you controlled me...the more I
let
you control me—” her voice suddenly went very quiet, all the anger that had infused it gone “—the more I felt you didn’t love the real me. You tried to make me into someone I wasn’t, as if you were afraid that, if you let me be my own person, I was going to turn into someone you didn’t like...and certainly couldn’t love.”

Jeff’s chin lifted as if she’d connected with an upper cut. His mouth opened and closed, and he ran his hand down his face.

She took the quiet moment to sink into the chair, drained and exhausted by the past six weeks—the past eighteen years.

“And that’s why I can’t think about marriage to you again, Jeff. You still control me. You talk me into dinner in Chicago, accompanying you to Lake Geneva, letting you stay at my house...” She pointed to the calendars protruding from her purse. “And making plans for the future.” She shrugged and took a long breath. “I lose myself in you. Forget who I am. Even after all this time.”

A shadow of sadness and acceptance settled on his face—she recognized it because she felt it, too.

“I...I don’t know what to say, Mags,” he said at last. “I never meant to make you feel that way. I’m sor—”

She held her hand out to stop him and shook her head. “Don’t say you’re sorry. Please. Haven’t you been listening? Neither of us should
ever
have to apologize for being who we are. We just don’t work together—at least, not for the long-term...and not for the right reasons.”

He studied her and then swiped his hand around the back of his neck, letting out a long breath. “Want to sit outside for a little while?”

“No.” She stood up. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed. Long day tomorrow.” She started in that direction, stopping long enough to take his hand. “Are you coming?”

“You go on.” He motioned toward the hallway. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Shortly
must be a relative term, she decided, when his weight shifting onto the bed woke her...four hours later.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Y
OU
CAN
BE
pissed at me all you want, Chlo, but it won’t change anything.” Jeff held his sister’s hands firmly as she struggled to lower herself onto the chaise. “I didn’t tell anybody she was coming. It wasn’t anybody’s business—yours included.” When her butt settled into place, he lifted her legs and swung them onto the chair so she could face the pool.

“Humph.” She snorted her displeasure again—her standard response since his mom and dad dropped her off a half hour ago.

“Do you want a towel?” He held one out. She didn’t respond—choosing instead to focus her attention somewhere to the left of him as if he didn’t exist—so he tossed it onto her lap.

She swiped it onto the concrete with her forearm.

Water dripped from her bangs and ran down her face in little streams that had to be annoying, but if she wanted to continue being obstinate, by God, he’d let her.

He stalked away to the diving board and dove in, determined to rid himself of the soreness that had plagued his back and shoulders since his discussion with Mags on Wednesday night. He did a few laps, then flipped onto his back and added a few more using the backstroke. On his way past Chloe, he glanced her way. She was squinting against the sun, and he chided himself for leaving her sunglasses in the bag beside the chair.

He exited the pool at the shallow end, leaving a dripping trail to where she sat, and fished around in the beach bag until he found her glasses. Standing over her, he shook his head like a wet dog, spraying her with cold droplets.

She grunted and closed her eyes sullenly, obviously not wanting to give him the pleasure of knowing he was aggravating her.

He chuckled, just to annoy her more, and slid her sunglasses into place before toweling off in her direction and then taking the seat beside her.

They sat in silence, the only people at the pool this gorgeous Sunday afternoon. The swim had loosened his muscles some, and the warm sun helped, also. He closed his eyes and tried to relax—tried to ignore the image of Mags walking away from him at the airport that popped up anytime his mind wasn’t occupied by work.

“Din’t go well, huh?” Chloe said at last.

It was his turn to grunt disapprovingly. “Nope. Not at the end, anyway, which pretty much colored the whole visit.”

“Wan’ talk ’bout it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Another couple of minutes of silence passed.

“Shoul’ talk ’bout i’. Helps.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. She says she loses herself in me, like my personality overpowers hers. She made me sound...overbearing.” The word that had niggled at the back of his brain since Wednesday night surfaced. He stretched his shoulder blades apart and raised the arms of his chair to let the back down into a more reclining and, hopefully, more comfortable position.

“You can be.”

“No, I’m not.” His fingers cramped, and he loosened his grip on the chair arms.

“Yeah, ya are. You an’ Russ. Stron’ pers’nalty...overbear’n. Flip sides, same coin.”

Irritation brought Jeff to an upright position. “How can you say that? You’re crazy about Russ, and you know there’s never been a kinder, more loving kid.”

“Jus’ like you. Crazy ’bout you, too.” She turned her face toward him and gave him a satisfied grin—the first one he’d received from her today.

He swung his legs around to rest his feet on the concrete between their chairs and leaned toward her on his elbows. “Do you really think I’m overbearing?”

Chloe nodded. “Abs’luly. Take charge. Follah me. That’s you.”

He grabbed a towel and threw it over his head, shaking out some more of his frustration along with the pool water. “Well, somebody has to step up to the plate and make decisions. Nothing gets done if everybody sits around with their heads up their asses. I get things done.”

“An’ ’cause you do, others don’t hafta...or don’t get to, eve’ if they want to.”

She made a good point. Jeff wadded the towel into a ball and slammed it down beside his chair. “Damn. I do that a lot with you, don’t I?”

“Yeah.” She sighed, and he recognized the echo of frustration.

How often had he made decisions for Chloe and about her without ever asking what she wanted or needed, as if the disease had robbed her of the ability to think for herself? Like the sunglasses. He’d put them on her like she was three. And sitting here.
He’d
made the decision to swim today, never asking her preference, just assuming if he wanted to swim, she did, too.

“Was there something else you wanted to do today, Chlo?” Guilt tinged his voice.

“No, wanna swim. Bu’ it woulda been nice to be asked.”

“I’ll make a point of asking from now on.” He settled back into his chair, noting the tension still making his neck muscles tight and sore. He’d been given a bit of insight into how other people viewed him. And while he appreciated that, it didn’t change anything. It didn’t put him any closer to his goal—to win Maggie over and raise this second child together full-time.

The question was how to make those demands on her without appearing overbearing?

This would take some thought.

“Sooo, you wanna hear whah else I really wan’ do this afternoon?”

“Gonna test me already, huh?” He grinned, intertwining his fingers to rest his hands on his belly. “Okay. What else do you really want to do this afternoon, sister dear?”

“I wannna hear ’bout Mag visit.”

“Not gonna happen. I told you it’s none of your business.”

“Humph.”

Jeff lowered the chair to a flat position and rolled over on his stomach. Chloe was pissed again, which would give him a good half hour of silence. He intended to fill the time with a nap.

* * *

“
S
O
,
CAN
I
call you
?”

Bryan Palmer kept his voice low, and Maggie realized he knew the answer to the question before she spoke. She glanced a wary eye toward the driveway where his friend Holden and Emmy were saying their goodbyes—their very
physical
goodbyes. Well, actually, they weren’t saying anything. Their mouths were too occupied to make any sounds that didn’t belong behind closed doors.

Maggie opened her mouth to reply, then hesitated.

“Yeah, I thought not.” He shrugged and shot a glance in the direction of the car. Turning back, he gave Maggie a winsome grin that at one time would have curled her toes.

Not anymore.

“I had a good time tonight. Really. I’m just not in a place to start seeing anyone right now.”

So, so, sooo not in a place.

“No problem.” He made the three steps off Emmy’s porch, then shoved his hands in his pockets and turned back, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. “But if you change your mind...”

Maggie nodded. “I’ll see you at the gym.”

Bryan was cute, funny, thirty-five, divorced for three years, and drool-worthy, with a body that looked like it was sculpted in stone.

How in the heck would she explain her lack of interest in him to Emmy? The
I’m too busy/I’m too tired/I’m too everything
excuses were beginning to sound thin even to her.

She waved goodbye to Bryan one last time as he got in his car, and then she returned to the kitchen to start cleaning up the mess left from the Sunday-night supper of grilled pizza.

A couple of minutes later, Emmy made her entrance into the kitchen, singing loud, as usual. Maggie cringed at her song choice—Matchbox Twenty’s “She’s So Mean”—and wondered if she was making a point.

Emmy clasped her hands over her head and gyrated her hips to swivel in a circle as she sang, using the action to sidle up beside Maggie. The suggestive shimmy started in her shoulders, and it was like, once the movement hit her breasts, there was no way to stop it. The rest of Emmy’s body had no option but to follow.

Maggie rolled her eyes and slid the leftover veggie pizza into the plastic container.

Emmy stopped the music midverse. “You a cwazy woman, Maggie Russell Wells Gunther Russell.” Her friend thought the names sounded cool strung together like that. “Hot, hot,
hot
—” she shouted the last one. “Bryan was yours for the taking, and you turn him down like a piece of bad sushi.”

“I agree, Bryan is indeed hot, but, I dunno—something just didn’t click.” Maggie put the lid on the plastic container and pressed in the middle until she heard the satisfying pop. She turned her back and headed to the fridge so she wouldn’t have to make contact as she lied. “I’ll keep him in mind in case, you know... When I start dating again.” The plastic box fit perfectly into an open slot on the second shelf.

Maggie moved back to the table as Emmy drew out a long, dramatic sigh. “He’s probably already found somebody else.” She pulled some of the topping off the leftover pepperoni pizza and leaned her head back to drop it in. “Why, oh, why—” she stopped to chew “—didn’t we go to your house and swim? The only thing better than seein’ them thar men clothed would be seein’ ’em nek-kid. Mmm-mmm. Fine they be.”

Maggie chuckled and stacked the dirty plates, pausing with one in her hand. “I would appreciate a little more honesty next time, though. Telling me you’re ‘having a few people over’ when you’re actually trying to fix me up isn’t best-friend protocol.”

“But I did it, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Then it must be best-friend protocol. Ha!” Emmy picked at the pizza again, locating a mushroom to nibble on. “Who in their right mind
ever
decided mushrooms were good food? I mean, they’re rubbery and they got no personality. Just little rubbery sponges that suck up the flavor around them. Like eatin’ a leech.”

“Ew!” Maggie took the stacked dishes to the sink for rinsing, trying to shoo that image from her mind. She didn’t need a bout of nausea right then.

“And speaking of best-friend protocol, if I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have come, and I promised your mama I’d try harder to fix you up with somebody.”

“You what?” Maggie was glad she’d gotten the plates safely to the sink before that came up. She whirled around to Emmy’s smug smile. “Y’all have been talking about me? When? When did you tell her that?”

“Week before last. The day you went to the eye doctor. She and your dad came into the salon.”

The day of my ob-gyn appointment. The day she confirmed I’m pregnant.

“And don’t go gettin’ your panties in a wad.” Emmy came to the garbage disposal with the last piece of leftover pizza, now plucked clean. “Move. I do this better than you.” She waved Maggie away from dishwasher-loading duty. “We’re doing this out of love, and you know it.
She’s
concerned about the hold Mr. Wells has on you, and
I
figure, now that Mr. Wells got you back in the saddle, might as well keep you riding.”

“Oh, good Lord.” Her best friend and her mom colluding to find her someone to date. How pitiful was that?

Maggie gathered the beer bottles and transferred them to the counter along with her lemonade glass. Her argument that she’d read alcohol was a cause of belly fat in women had won her a pass on questions about her drink of choice. But when one of the guys—Holden? maybe—remarked that
he
thought the leading cause of belly fat in women was pregnancy, she’d felt her face grow hot, though thankfully no one paid any attention.

“You ever think about the word
rut
?”

Maggie was used to her friend’s strange thought processes, but this one was really out there. “Where’d that come from?”

“I was just thinking how you’d gotten into
a
rut, never doing it with anybody. Then Jeff got you
in
rut—you know, like a buck in rut? Wanting it all the time?” Emmy talked as she rinsed every speck of food from the dishes before loading them. “And now, if we don’t keep you in rut, you’ll get back into
a
rut.” She cackled at her cleverness. “Damn, I am deep!”

Maggie laughed, but all of this talk about Jeff made her want to cry, too. And then, without warning, she was fighting back tears. And Emmy was looking at her. She blinked fast, trying not to let any escape, but her hands were full of silverware and wads of dirty paper napkins.

“I knew it.”

Emmy’s declaration pushed Maggie’s heart into her already tight throat. She couldn’t breathe, let alone ask what Emmy knew.

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Emmy took her elbow and guided her to a chair. “Sit, Ubu.” She’d picked that phrase up from some TV show years ago, and it had become part of normal Emmy-speak.

Maggie tried to smother the flame of panic. She couldn’t tell anyone. Not yet. “What do you mean?”

“You love him, Maggie. You’ve always loved him. You’re always going to love him. There’s never going to be room in your heart for another man because Jeff Wells occupies the entire space. What are you going to do about it?”

While half of her felt relief that her secret was still secure, the other half ached at Emmy’s question. Maggie bit her lip in an attempt to quell the tears. Sharing part of the truth might be okay and could win her some time—and maybe hold Emmy off on fixing her up with anyone.

“I’ve already done something about it, Em.”

Her friend plopped into the chair next to her, all eyes and ears. “What?”

Maggie took a deep breath. “I didn’t go to Vegas last week. I went to San Diego to see him.”

Emmy’s jaw went slack. “And...?”

“And things went really well the first night, but kind of became hell in a handbasket the second.”

“You fought?”

“We got into a heated discussion about all the things that went wrong when we were married.” She left out his proposal. Being married to him again had been her standard fantasy for so long, the memory of turning him down still made her reel in disbelief. “I told him about what I resented. I mean, I always thought we were just too young, had our freedom jerked away from us too quickly. But, as I talked, I realized it’s me with the problem, not him. I
am
the problem. He has a strong personality, and I just can’t hold my own with him.”