See Jane Fall (41 page)

She had taken his arm, smiling, and they’d
headed to church together, sitting in the same pew he sat in with
his family for most Sunday mornings of his life. She smiled and
commented at all of the right places, helping to lay out the lunch
at his father’s house and taking one of the girls when Kat or Jenny
needed a hand.

But, Lars noticed. Jane was quiet. She
didn’t banter, even when he baited her. He caught her several times
looking distracted, far away, then quickly composing herself when
someone spoke to her. When he took her hand throughout the day, she
had been the one to drop his first. Especially when he had shared
with his family at lunch that Jane was staying in Gardiner, she had
looked down nervously first, before raising her eyes with a careful
smile. A smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Lars thought he may have been reading into
things, but it almost seemed like she was avoiding him. Oh, she was
working hard to act normal, but she wasn’t and he could tell.

He played with the heart-shaped keychain in
his pocket. It had a copy of his house key on it, and he had
intended to give it to Jane tonight so that she could start coming
and going to and from his place after checking out of the Best this
morning.

But, he couldn’t shake the increasingly
uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong. He had seen a
variation of this behavior before. Last Sunday when she’d gotten
businesslike with him and Tuesday when she’d broken things off with
him; both times she had backed away from him. Both times she was
letting him go or protecting herself. So, what was this, then? A
sickening feeling started rolling around in his gut and he knew.
Letting him go. Protecting herself.

He sucked in a breath of air and held it,
concentrating on it so that his eyes wouldn’t water with the force
of his disappointment. It was suddenly as clear to him as the park
on a sunny day.

Jane wasn’t staying, after all.

***

As the sun started to set, Jane hugged Jenny
and Kat good-bye, and was surprised when each of the Lindstrom men
embraced her too. She kissed the babies on their foreheads and
tried not to wince with unexpected longing when Jenny waggled
Erin’s hand and said, “Bye-bye,
Tant
Jane.”

Everyone had giggled and Jane had done her
best to look surprised and amused, even as her broken heart bled.
She had let them all believe that she was staying in Gardiner and
hated herself for deceiving them.
Tant
Jane.
Maybe if you
stayed, one day you really would have been Tant Jane
. But, her
decision was already made, no matter how much it hurt.

She had purposely tried not to be alone with
Lars for most of the day. Knowing she had to leave him tomorrow was
proving almost unbearable. Not to mention, spending hours appearing
normal and happy while her heart was in turmoil was unbelievably
exhausting.

She could feel the façade coming down now
that they were alone. She had hoped to have one last night with
him. One last happy night together without worrying about tomorrow,
but she knew it was going to be impossible. She could barely keep
the tears from falling.

They rode to his house in heavy, fraught
silence and he turned to her as he pulled into the driveway.

“Do you want to go back to the motel
instead?” he asked quietly, staring straight ahead.

“No.” Her voice broke when she answered.

He turned to look at her and she could see
the pain on his face. “What’s the point of coming in, Jane?”

He knew. How did he know?

A fat tear rolled down her cheek as she
gazed at him.

“I love you,” she rasped in a whisper.
“That’s the point.”

***

I love you. That’s the point.

It was like the wind had been knocked out of
him. It was the last thing he expected to hear. He hadn’t buckled
up for the short ride from his father’s house to home, and he
lurched across the seat, grabbing her into his arms, burying his
face in her neck as hot tears gathered in his eyes, threatening to
fall.

Is that what this was all about? Saying
‘I love you’?
For the first time all day, he took a deep,
relieved breath.

“Oh, God, I thought…I thought…”

“You were right,” she answered in a broken
voice, her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder.

What? What did she say?

He leaned back, staring at her glassy eyes,
confused.

“I can’t stay.” She swallowed, looking as
miserable as he felt. “My uncle called this morning. He wants me to
go back with her.” She paused, swiping at her eyes.

He had been holding his breath, and now he
exhaled, letting go of her, running his hands through his hair. He
gave her a hard look, angry with her, angry with this
situation.

“But, you told him no, right? You told him
to go to hell, right? You’re staying. You’re staying with me.”

He looked at her face and his heart twisted,
like a knife gutting him from the inside out.

“He asked for a little time,” she said in a
small voice. “He reminded me about the responsibility of family.
Think if it was Jenny or Nils or Erik. What would you do?”

He closed his eyes against the pain of what
was happening.
She said she would stay and now she was leaving
him. She was going back to New York.

“Lars. Lars, look at me. Please look at me.”
He looked up at her, biting his lip against the unfamiliar sting of
tears in his eyes. “It’s not forever.”

“I hate to state the obvious, Jane. But
we’ve only known each other for a week.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”
Even though she knew it had to do with everything.

“We needed time to build this. We’ve already
had a shaky start with Paul and Samara between us. We needed clear
road. We needed time together.”

“I love you. A few months isn’t going to
ch—”

“A few
months
!”

“—to change that. We’ll build while I’m
away. We’ll build when I come back.”

“We can’t build while you’re away and
there’s no guarantee that you’ll come back,” he shot back, leaning
away from her. His voice was a shadow of its normal self. “You’re
going back to your life, Jane.”

“
You’re
my life,” she whispered.

“Right,” he said dryly, swiping at his
nose.

“You
are
. But, he’s my uncle. He’s
all I had for so long. He was the one who loved me. He kept me from
falling into the chasm. He stood between
them
dying and me
wanting
to die. I
owe
him.”

“You shouldn’t
owe
family like that.
He doesn’t own your life just because he honored a promise to your
father, Jane. That’s not how things are supposed to work.”

She hung her head and wept, the unfairness
of it all crashing down on her. She had never loved anyone as she
loved Lars…and here he was. Hers. Someone who
belonged
to
her. Someone who wanted
her
to belong to him. She felt as if
she was being ripped away from him in the most painful,
unbelievable way. After this weekend she never wanted to wake up
without him again. Their time apart stretched before her like
eternity.

He slid over beside her, pulling her close
to him, his cheek against hers. He inhaled raggedly. “I don’t know
what will happen, Minx. Once you get there. Once you’re at home
again. This could all change in your head—feel more like an
infatuation and less real than it really was. Than it really is. I
just want you to come back.” He finished simply, “I want
this
. Come back.”

She started sobbing again, so relieved by
his words, she clung to them desperately, even as she suspected he
didn’t actually have much real hope. She held on to the back of his
neck, shuddering from the onslaught of emotions. “I’ll come back…I
promise.”

He kissed her hair and down her neck, then
caught her lips in a hungry, longing kiss, holding the back of her
head with one strong hand, his other hand on her hip, keeping her
close to him. When he stopped kissing her, he leaned his forehead
against hers, his eyes closed. She knew he was upset. Terribly
upset, even, and she remembered his words under the Roosevelt Arch:
If anyone gets hurt between you and me, it’ll be me. Not you. I
promise.

It made her want to weep that he’d been
right. It wasn’t that she wasn’t hurting too, but she was making a
choice that was hurting them both.

She leaned back from him, tilting her head
to the side as he often did, memorizing his face with an urgency
she hadn’t felt before. She didn’t want to sacrifice another moment
to despair while she was still with him, while he still belonged to
her for a few more hours.

“We still have tonight,” she murmured,
placing her hand on his face.

He turned his head to kiss her palm. “Stay
with me?”

“I checked out this morning. Where else
would I go?”

His face shifted the slightest bit from sad
to…well, still pretty sad.

“I could go stay with Paul.”

His lips twitched.

“Or Nils.”

More twitching.

“Or your Dad. He’s a good-looking man…”

He was definitely biting back a smile
now.

“Nah. I already made my choice,” she drawled
in the gravelliest murmur she could muster and watched as his eyes
changed. “Let’s go bed. And just stay there.”

Without a word, he pulled her out his car
door, up the porch stairs, into his house, through the living room,
down the hallway, into his bedroom, into his arms and into his bed,
just as she had asked.

***

“Tell me about New York, so I can picture you
there.”

He lay naked on his side, his head only
slightly raised, pillowed on his bent elbow, looking at her. She
exactly mirrored him, so that they were face to face, but they
didn’t touch, as if by mutual, unspoken agreement. Their bodies had
been in almost constant motion for over an hour, touching, loving,
clinging to each other. They were cooling down.

They hadn’t mentioned her leaving since the
car, and Jane stared at him, sensing the strength of his feelings
being thrown off his body like heat. Sadness. Anger. Confusion. She
had tasted them on his lips, felt them even when his body was fused
to hers.

“You don’t have to ask that.”

“Okay.” His eyes dropped hers. “Fine.”

She stared at him, disappointed that he
didn’t ask again, then swallowed, trying not to cry. “Will you come
and see me?”

“Like, for a weekend? I don’t think so,
Jane. I think—don’t get me wrong; I
would
come, if it was
where you wanted to be. If it was somewhere you loved and I needed
to learn to love it too, I’d come find you in New York. But you
were ready to give it up. I don’t think you love your life in New
York, I think you love your uncle. And I
don’t
love your
uncle, because I think he’s trapping you into a life you don’t want
for the sake of his selfish child. And I am
angry
with him
that he doesn’t see that, or sees it, and still does it.”

“You’re angry at me too.”

“Yes,” he answered simply, capturing her
eyes again. Cold, angry.

He took a deep breath and held it for a
beat, then let it out slowly, and she felt it on her lips, on her
cheeks, on her neck.

“If I come to New York, it makes it easier
for you to stay there. I don’t want to make it easier, because I
want you here with me. Because I think you want to be here with me,
and I want to support
that
plan, not some other plan that
has you leaving for all of the wrong reasons. Anyway, I don’t want
a weekend, Jane. It would just mess with my head. It definitely
wouldn’t be enough. I want you back when you’re all in. When you’re
ready”

“I
am
all in. I
am
ready.”

She watched a litany of emotions walk across
his face, ending in disappointment.

“No, love. No, you’re not.” He turned and
sat up, swinging his legs over the bed putting his back to her.
“I’m getting water. Do you want some?”

“No, thanks,” she whispered and watched as
he padded around the bed and out of the room.

Jane rolled onto her back, staring at the
ceiling, and felt a tear fall out of the corner of her eye and roll
into her hair. She didn’t reach up to wipe it away. She closed her
eyes against the assault of her feelings.

You’re making a mistake. You’re making a
mistake. You’re making such a big mistake.

The right decision shouldn’t hurt this much.
Shouldn’t feel this wrong.

She raised her hands to her face, letting
the fleshy pad of her palm press hard into her burning eyes. She
revisited her uncle’s words:
We will have
nothing more to
say to one another. Nothing more. And I will not welcome you back
to our family. I will assume you have turned your back on us.
But if she went back she could settle things to Sara’s satisfaction
and earn her uncle’s approval. She could return to Montana with a
free and peaceful heart.

She thought through what the next few months
would look like. A week to settle back in…another two or three
weeks to convince Laney to step up to be Sara’s full-time
assistant… another two or three weeks of on-the-job training… and
one last week to pack up her apartment and ship her things. Two
months. Two months and she’d be able to keep her uncle happy. She
could come back to Lars after Thanksgiving. No, she’d have to stay
for Thanksgiving. Crap, and Christmas was always packed with
shoots. If Laney wasn’t ready yet, Jane would have to stay on a few
extra weeks. After New Year’s, then. She could come back in
January. Well, as long as Laney was ready for New York Fashion Week
at the top of February. Jane would need to be sure she could handle
that…or maybe Jane could go back to help. Just for that week. Or
maybe it would be best to return to Montana after Fashion Week.
Mid-February.