Authors: Lucy Francis
He’d hurt her, cut her deeply. He’d seen it in her eyes then, in the tears she’d choked back before she turned the tables and unloaded on him. He hadn’t cared at the time, in his quest for self-preservation. Thinking about it now, what he’d done weighed him down with her pain.
I reckon
real
is the one thing that scares you.
He’d stripped a lot of insulation from his soul in the last several hours, looked deeper into himself than he ever really wanted to. It all came down to this—part of him was missing, and Victoria held it. He needed her in his life, and the idea of committing to her, of letting her permanently into his heart scared the hell out of him.
Scared him enough to send him to his baby sister for advice. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. After a couple of rings, Kelli’s sleep-rusted voice said, “Hello?”
“I need to ask you something.”
“Curran, you’re up early.” She yawned. “Or did you never go to bed?”
He went back into the entertainment room, dropped onto the couch. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“So you deprive me of mine. Thanks, dear.”
He needed a woman’s perspective. “Kel, am I selfish?”
“You woke me up this early and you have to ask?” She yawned again and grumbled, “Of course you’re selfish. You’re a guy.”
“That doesn’t help.”
She drew a deep breath, blew it out slowly. “All right, seriously then. Sometimes you are. You aren’t with Rob, though. I’ve never seen you behave in a self-centered way with him. Why?”
He considered her words. Maybe there was hope after all. “I’m trying to figure some things out.”
After a moment of silence, Kelli said, “Curran, what do you want? Deep down inside, what do you really want, most of all?”
The words passed his lips before he could stop them. “I want Victoria in my life.”
“Is that it?”
His throat swelled and stung. His voice came out rough. “I want her to love me.”
“Then you have to love her.”
Curran released a dry laugh. “Easy for you to say. After last night, I doubt she’ll have anything to do with me.”
She cleared her throat. “What did you do?”
Some things didn’t need discussing with his sister. Besides, she’d probably hear every detail from Victoria later. “I saw her at Brindle’s and let’s just say that I made a real ass out of myself and hurt her feelings again. She regrets every day we were together.”
Kelli laughed softly. “I know Victoria, and I know you broke her heart. That doesn’t mean she won’t give you another chance.”
“Of course it does.”
She sighed. “No, you clearly don’t understand her. Or, women in general, for that matter. If you go about it wrong, then yeah, she won’t give you the time of day.”
The complexities of business never bothered him. In fact, he thrived on the challenge, puzzling out how to bring companies together and manage to please the stockholders, how to restructure debt in a way that raised the company’s worth rather than undermined it.
Complexities in relationships meant it was time to break up, like selling off a stock just as it started to dive. But ending things hadn’t helped with Victoria. His feelings were plenty complicated and getting worse every day. “How do I do this, Kel? How do I get her back?”
“I told you. Love her. If you don’t, it won’t work, and frankly, I won’t help you.”
Love her. How? His heart was too hard; he’d kept it that way rather than lose his ability to concentrate on work every time a relationship ended. He didn’t have time for injured feelings, so he never let any feelings build.
Wasn’t this constant ache for her proof that he’d slipped, that she’d gotten under his skin? “I’m serious about this, Kel. What do I do?”
“Let her in. You’re good at keeping people out of your heart, while you demand they let you into theirs. You try to dissect them, to find out everything—”
“No, I don’t.”
She laughed. “Curran, you did it to me. That’s how you operate.”
When he didn’t reply, she said, “You have to let her in. Open yourself up to be hurt. You can’t feel deeply if you continue shielding yourself. And you can’t ask for something from her that you’re not willing to give.”
He rubbed his eyes. Kelli made a lot of sense. He didn’t like what she said, but he couldn’t argue with it, either. Only one question remained to ask himself. Did he want her enough to lay himself open?
“I’m going to bed.” Curran switched the phone to his other ear and rose from the couch. “I need to get some sleep so I can think clearly.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t make this decision with your head, Curran. Maybe this should be the one decision you make with your heart. Just a suggestion.”
“Duly noted.”
Curran found sleep quickly once he climbed into bed. When he awoke late that afternoon, the wisps of dreams floating in his head combined with the ache in his heart to tell him what he needed to do. Now, how did he talk Victoria into giving them a chance to start over?
* * * *
Three days after a storm had dumped an extra twenty inches of snow in the mountains, Victoria stopped by the post office to pick up a package. She’d missed delivery while picking up groceries a day earlier. The clerk returned with a box that was too big to fit in the mailbox. Victoria left the counter and waited until she had the SUV turned on and the heater blasting before she examined the box.
It was postmarked in San Diego.
Nate was at it again.
She hesitated, her heart pounding. She wanted nothing more than to toss the box in the garbage unopened. Her need to know what he was up to made her pull open the pocketknife on her keychain. She slid the blade through the packing tape, then took a deep breath and opened the box.
She withdrew a note, a toy truck and a rag doll from the shredded paper filling the package. The note was far longer than the others.
I want to see the child. Does he look like me? Or does she look like you?
Bring him, her, whatever. Come see me, we can get married in the chapel here.
We can be a family.
The air vanished from her lungs. He didn’t know. He thought she’d kept the baby.
She didn’t have the resources to raise a child on her own. She knew she wouldn’t be able to look at her son without seeing Nate. A child deserved more than that, deserved a solid home, with both parents who loved it and wanted it, and a fenced yard and a dog. She’d given her child those things.
And she’d saved her son from his father. She was glad she’d let him go. He would never have to face the devil behind Nate’s handsomely chiseled features.
She drove behind the corner gas station to the dumpster. She ripped the note into a dozen pieces, then threw the toys, the box and the paper into the garbage. She drove home on autopilot, trying to forget about the package, until she pulled into the driveway and found the left side filled by Curran’s truck.
Nate’s latest ploy left her drained. Pulling up the energy for sparring with Curran was impossible with her reserves emptied.
He opened his truck door and climbed out when she did. He let her walk past, then he followed her onto the porch.
She unlocked the door and drew a deep breath before turning to Curran. He didn’t appear his normal, confident self. He stood with his hands buried in his pockets, his shoulders slightly rounded. He clearly hadn’t shaved today, and the shadows under his eyes told her he hadn’t slept much recently.
The sight of him looking so out of sorts made her heart twinge. She’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t miss him any longer. Did she really think she could turn off her feelings that easily?
He gave her a half-smile, but didn’t quite meet her gaze. “I know you’re not thrilled to see me.”
No, she wasn’t, but that didn’t stop her soul from yearning, tugging her emotions out of their hiding place like a crocus surfacing to early spring sunshine. “I can think of people I’d rather see. I suppose you want to come in?”
“For a moment. I have some things I need to say to you.”
Victoria shrugged. She doubted he could hurt her any more than he already had. Being polite wouldn’t kill her. “All right.” She opened the door and hung her coat and purse in the closet, then led Curran into the living room. She faced him, crossing her arms before her. Her heart thumped in anticipation, though part of her feared what he might say.
Curran nodded toward the love seat, the largest piece of furniture in the elegant burgundy room. “Will you sit with me?”
“Go ahead. I’ll stand.” If he touched her again, in this drained state, she’d shatter.
His gaze dropped to his boots, then he nodded. He drew a deep breath and looked up, his eyes capturing hers. The swirl of blatant emotion in his normally composed gaze shocked her.
“I, uh…damn. I’m not good at this. But I wanted to apologize. I’ve not been careful of your feelings. You’re right, I was a jerk. Actually I was a lot worse than that. I truly am sorry.”
She doused the internal spark of hope. “You’re forgiven, Curran. I owe you an apology too. I should have been upfront about the article.”
He nodded. “Apology accepted.”
Okay, that cleared the air, right? “Good. Now we can go our separate ways without these things hanging over our heads.”
His head jerked back. “Go our separate ways? I don’t want…I mean, um, is that what you want?”
She couldn’t answer. Her throat constricted so hard she could barely breathe, let alone say anything. He stepped toward her. “I’ll do whatever you ask, Victoria. I’ll leave you alone, if it’s what you really want.”
She gripped her arms tighter, wanting to say no, wanting to beg him to stay. “Do you want to start over?”
“What I want doesn’t matter. What do you want?”
She shivered, fighting the intense need for him, trying to use her brain for once. “I don’t know.”
His crestfallen expression broke her heart. He nodded, looked at the floor. “I suppose that’s my cue to leave, then.” He walked to the door, pulled it open. “You know where to find me, Victoria. If you ever need anything, I’ll be there.”
He stepped out, closed the door behind him. The click of the latch ripped through the protective bands around her heart and set her feet free. She ran to the door, yanked it open.
“Curran.” Oh, she had to be completely insane to subject herself to this again.
He turned at the foot of the stairs. “Yeah?”
“Do you have a plan for starting over?”
Relief flooded his eyes as he climbed the stairs to reach her. “Nothing specific. Dating. Taking it slow.” He leaned against the post supporting the porch roof, ran a hand through his hair. “Victoria, I am truly sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You came over here that day to chastise me and break up with me, and it never occurred to you I might be hurt?”
He leveled his gaze at her. “You have to understand something. Whenever I’ve dated a woman, it’s been with the understanding that it was all fun and games, and when it ended, that was it. No hard feelings, we both just walk away. Remember, that first day at my place, before you rode off. I told you if things got too complex for you, end the relationship. That’s the way it always worked.”
“Sorry I wasn’t sophisticated enough to pick up on the don’t-get-emotionally-involved angle of dating you.” She heard the bitterness in her voice, but didn’t bother to soften it.
“Dammit, that’s not what I mean. I never expected this thing between us to become so different from what I was accustomed to.”
“Different how?”
“No one ever cared enough to be hurt by me, just pissed off.” He stepped toward her. “I never cared enough to be hurt before.”
She desperately wanted to believe she was different, unique from the other women in his life. “Do you hurt now?”
His eyes darkened, as if her very words pained him. “God, yes.” He drew a shaky breath. “Victoria, I’m walking on totally unfamiliar ground with you.”
Now there was something she could relate to. But if Curran could bare this small part of his soul to her, the least she could do in return was take another chance. “Maybe it’s best to walk unfamiliar ground together. I’m willing to start over if you are.”
Curran smiled, some of the shadows lifting from his eyes. “I can’t promise I won’t screw up a few dozen times.”
“Neither can I.”
He reached out and grasped her hand. She squeezed his fingers in return but retreated a step when he slid a hand behind her neck as if he meant to kiss her. She shook her head in response to his confused expression. “Take it slow, Curran. I’m too raw to pick up right where we left off.”
He released her and raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, no worries. Since we’re going slow, may I call you tomorrow?”
Had a guy ever asked if he could call her? “Sure, I’d like that.”
Curran gave her a wave, then strode off to his truck. She watched him back out of the drive before she retreated into the house.