Читать книгу The Pregnancy Pact - Kandy Shepherd, Cara Colter - Страница 20

CHAPTER TWELVE

“AND WHAT SHOULD I do for clothes tomorrow?” Jessica asked. Her voice felt stiff with tension.

But Kade did not seem tense at all. He just shrugged, and then said, his tone teasing, “We will figure something out. It’s not as though we could do worse than what you have on.”

We.

She ordered herself not to give in to this. It was a weakness to let him look after her. It was an illusion to feel safe with him.

But she did. And she was suddenly aware she had not really slept or even eaten properly since the break-in. Exhaustion settled over her.

“One night,” she decided. “My place will probably be aired out by tomorrow.”

“Probably,” he said insincerely.

“I think I have to go to bed now.”

“All right. I’ll show you the way, and find you a shirt to wear for pajamas.”

“I’ll put away the dishes.”

“No, I’ll do it. I’ve gotten better at picking up behind myself.”

Was that true, or would the maid come and pick up after them tomorrow? She found she just didn’t care. She was giving herself over to the luxurious feeling of being looked after. Just for one night, though!

And then she found herself led down a wide hallway and tucked inside a bedroom that was an opulent symphony of grays. She went into the attached bathroom. Her mouth fell open. There was a beautiful bathtub shaped like an egg in here. And double sinks and granite, and a walk-in shower. And this was the guest room.

Why did she feel such comfort that he didn’t feel as at home here as he had in the humble little wreck of a house they had shared?

Just tired, she told herself. As promised, there was everything she needed there, from toothbrushes to fresh towels.

When she went out of the bathroom, she saw he had left a shirt on the bed for her. Unable to stop herself, she buried her face in it, and inhaled the deep and wonderful scent of her husband. She managed to get the oversize buttons undone on the dress and get it off.

She pulled his shirt on. His buttons weren’t quite so easy to do up, but she managed. When she noticed they were done up crooked, she didn’t have the energy to change them. She tumbled into the deep luxury of that bed, looked out the window at the lights of the city reflecting in the dark waters of the river and felt her eyes grow heavy.

She realized, for the first time since her shop had been broken into and she had been injured in her ill-advised scuffle with the perpetrator, she was going to get to sleep easily. She suspected she would sleep deeply.

Only it wasn’t really the first time in a week.

It was the first time in a year.

* * *

Kade was so aware that Jessica was right down the hallway from him. He wished he would not have made that crack about her sleeping naked.

Because a man did not want to be having naked thoughts about the wife he still missed and mourned.

But he had developed ways of getting by all these painful feelings. He looked at his watch. Despite the fact Jessica was in bed—she had always handled stress poorly, and he suspected she was exhausted—it was still early.

And he had his balm.

He had work. Plus, he had nearly wrecked her house today. He needed to look after that. He liked the sense of having a mission. This time, though, he decided to call the guy who had fixed her shop door, at least for the floors.

Jake, like all good carpenters and handymen in the supercharged economy of Calgary, was busy.

But willing to put a different project on hold when he heard Jessica’s situation, and that Jessica’s furniture was currently residing on the lawn.

His attitude inspired confidence, and Kade found himself sharing the whole repair list with him. Jake promised to look at it first thing in the morning, even though it was Sunday, and get back to him with a cost estimate and a time frame.

“Can she stay out of the house for a couple of days? The floor sanding and refinishing causes a real mess. It’s actually kind of a hazardous environment. Even the best floor sander can’t contain all the dust, and it’s full of chemicals. Plus it’ll be easier for me to work if she’s not there.”

“Oh, sure,” Kade said, thinking of Jessica staying here a few days. She probably wouldn’t. She would probably insist on getting a hotel.

But for a little while longer, anyway, he was still her husband. And he liked having her here, under his roof. He liked how protective he felt of her, and how he felt as if he could fix her world.

So he gave Jake the go-ahead.

As he disconnected his phone, Kade realized he needed to remember, when it came to larger issues, there was a lot he could not fix. This sense of having her under his protection was largely an illusion. They had tried it over the fire of real life, and they had been scorched.

Tomorrow, he would get up superearly and be gone before she even opened her eyes. He would solve all the helpless ambivalence she made him feel in the way he always had.

He would go to work.

He would, a little voice inside him said, abandon his wife. The same as always.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. Because in the night, he was awakened to the sound of screaming.

Kade bolted from his bed and down the hall to her door. He paused outside it for a minute, aware, suddenly, he was in his underwear.

He heard a strangled sob, and the hesitation was over. He opened her door, and raced to her side. The bedside lamp was a touch lamp, and he brushed it with his hand.

Jessica was illuminated in the soft light. She was thrashing around, her hair a sweaty tangle, her eyes clenched tightly shut. When the light came on, she sat up abruptly, and the jolt to her arm woke her up.

She looked up at him, terrified, and then the terror melted into a look he could have lived for.

Had lived for, once upon a time, when he still believed in once upon a time.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“Just a dream,” she said, her voice hoarse.

He went into the adjoining bathroom and found a glass wrapped in plastic that crinkled when he stripped it off. Again, he was reminded this place was more like a hotel and not a home. He filled the glass and brought it to her.

She was sitting up now, with her back against the headboard, her eyes shut. “Sorry,” she said.

“No, no, it’s okay.” He handed her the water. “How long have you been having the nightmares?”

“Since the break-in.” She took a long drink of water. “I dream that someone is breaking into my house. My bedroom. That I wake up and—” She shuddered.

Kade felt a helpless anger at the burglar who had caused all this.

“Are you in your underwear?” she whispered.

“Yeah.” He wanted to say it was nothing she had never seen before, but she looked suddenly shy, and it was adorable.

“You know I don’t own a pair of pajamas,” he reminded her.

He sat down on the bed beside her. Everything about her was adorable. She looked cute and very vulnerable in his too-large shirt with the buttons done up crooked. Her hair was sticking up on one side, and he had to resist the temptation to smooth it down with his hand. He noticed her eyes skittered everywhere but to his bare legs.

Sheesh. How long had they been married?

She seemed as if she might protest him getting in the bed, but instead, after a moment’s thought, she scooted over, and he slid his legs up on the mattress beside her. He felt the soft familiar curve of her shoulder touching his, let the scent of her fill up his nose.

“I’m sorry about the nightmares,” he said.

“It’s silly,” she said. “I think I’m getting post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s shameful to get it for a very minor event.”

“Hey, stop that. You were the victim here. The person who should be ashamed is whoever did this. Jessica, do these people not have any kind of conscience? Decency? Can they not know how these stupid things they do for piddling sums of money reverberate outward in a circle of pain and distress for their victims?”

He felt her relax, snuggle against him. “I feel sorry for him.”

He snorted. “You would.”

“I don’t think you or I have ever known that kind of desperation, Kade.”

Except that was not true. When she had wanted to have that baby, he had been desperate to make her happy. Desperate. And her own desperation had filled him with the most horrifying sense of helplessness.

He reached over and snapped off the light. His hand found her head, and he pulled it onto his shoulder, and stroked her hair.

“Go to sleep,” he said softly. “I’ll just stay with you until you do. You’re safe. I’ll take care of you. Why don’t you lie back down.”

“In a minute,” she said huskily. “You know what this reminds me of, Kade?

“Hmm?”

“Remember when we first met, how I was terrified of thunderstorms?”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly, “I remember.”

“And then that one night, a huge electrical storm was moving over the city, and you came and got me out of the bathroom where I was hiding.”

“Under the sink,” he recalled.

“And you led me outside, and you had the whole front step set up. You had a blanket out there, and a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and we sat on the step.

“At first I was terrified. I was quivering, I was so scared. I wanted to bolt. The clouds were so black. And the lightning was ripping open the heavens. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, as if I could be swept away.

“And then you put your hand on my shoulder, as if to hold me to the earth. You told me to count the seconds between the lightning bolt and the thunder hitting and I would know how far away the lightning strike was.”

He remembered it all, especially her body trembling against his as the storm had intensified all around them.

“It kept getting closer and closer. Finally, there was no pause between the lightning strike and the thunder, there was not even time to count to one. The whole house shook. I could feel the rumble of the thunder ripple through you and through me and through the stairs and through the whole world. The tree in the front yard shook.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“The whole night lit up in a flash, and I looked at you, and your face was illuminated by the lightning. You weren’t even a little bit afraid. I could tell you loved it. You loved the fury and intensity of the storm. And suddenly, just like that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I loved it, too. Sitting out on the front steps with you, we sipped that wine, and cuddled under that blanket, and got soaked when the rain came.”

She was silent for a long time.

“And after that,” he said gently, “every time there was a storm, you were the first one out on that step.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it? It cost nothing to go sit on those steps and storm watch. They came from nowhere. We couldn’t plan it or expect it. And yet those moments?”

“I know, Jessica,” he said softly. “The best. Those moments were the best.”

“And today,” she said, her voice slightly slurred with sleep, “today was a good day, like that.”

“I nearly burned your house down.”

“Our house,” she corrected him. “You made me laugh. That made it worth it.”

It made him realize how much pain was between them, and how much of it he had caused. He had a sense of wanting, somehow, to make it right between them. It bothered him, her casual admittance that she did not laugh much anymore. It bothered him, and he accepted responsibility for it.

So it could be a clean goodbye between him and Jessica. They could get a divorce without acrimony and without regret. So they could remember times like that, sitting in the thunderstorm, and know they had been made better for them. Not temporarily. But permanently.

He was a better man because of her.