Читать книгу That Night We Made Baby - Mary Anne Wilson - Страница 11

Nine months later

Malibu, California

Nick was sicker than he could ever remember being since he was a kid at boarding school. He’d canceled his last appointment for the day, gone home, taken medication the doctor had given him, then crawled into bed just after seven. In his house overlooking the ocean, he’d sunk rapidly into sleep that, at first, had been peaceful and a break from the aches and pains caused by the flu.

But sometime during the night, that all changed. A dream came, a dream about Sam and him. There had been dreams since she’d left, vague, unformed dreams that left him frustrated and restless the next day. But he wasn’t prepared for this dream. Maybe it came from the medication, but whatever it was, the dream was vivid and clear.

Sam had exploded into his life months ago, tipping his world with her presence. Then she was gone and he’d tried to forget her and go on with his life. But at that moment, her image was burned into his mind and soul. It was so clear he wondered if the dream was reality and his life was the dream.

Sam with the golden curls, slender beauty, those green eyes. The vision was so real his whole being ached. The fascination and attraction he’d experienced from his first glimpse of her in the courtroom were still there—a basic, disturbing reality in the dream. He could see himself going to her, wild need filling him, surrounding him, threatening to smother him.

The dream was filled with a hunger that had a life of its own. He saw himself reach out for her, his hands touching silky skin. He could feel heat consume his world that had been filled with only coldness until then—a coldness that reappeared when she’d left him.

He felt the heaviness of her breasts in his hands, her hips pressing against his hardness. When his lips covered hers, he felt himself melting into her. He became so infused with her that there was no division between them. Just one person. One need. One hunger.

In a single jarring moment, all that dissolved. She was ripped away from him and Nick’s only reality was solitude. There was no contact, no heat, no satisfaction, no losing himself. Then he realized a phone was ringing.

He woke with a sickening jolt. His ragged breathing was punctuated by the ringing of the phone. The sheets tangled around his naked body, he pushed himself upright in the mussed bed. The room was bathed in the cold light of morning, and a sudden sense of loss all but choked him. Emptiness echoed around him and his skin was filmed with moisture.

The phone on the nightstand rang again, and with one swipe at his damp face, he reached for the receiver.

His hand shook as it closed over the cold plastic, and he passed the unsteadiness off as part of his illness and the medication he was taking. That’s why he had such a dream. God knew what the combination of being sick and taking medication could do to a man’s mind, let alone his body. Crazy, insane visions of the past were banished. He never dwelled on mistakes in his life and he didn’t intend to start now.

Nick pressed the phone to his ear, closed his eyes to the view of the ocean visible through the French doors and started to speak. But he stopped when he realized it was his voice mail ringing with his messages. He’d put a hold on all calls last night, hoping that whatever illness he had would be gone by morning. But he wasn’t that lucky. Then he heard the machine’s voice saying that the message had been left just about the time he’d gone to bed last night.

His attorney started to speak and Nick silently cursed the quirks of timing that fate seemed to possess. The call was about Samantha.

“Nick, it’s Jerod Danforth. I’d hoped to catch you home. The papers are ready. Come by the office at your convenience to sign them. Then the divorce is final. A few minutes, that’s all. A simple procedure. Call me about it. Oh, by the way, congratulations on getting Griffith off. Very nice indeed. Almost makes me wish I was in trouble with the law to see you do your stuff in court. See you soon.”

Nick dropped the receiver back down with a clatter and sank against the smooth coolness of the bleached wood headboard. Damn it. He didn’t need this. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now was a marriage that had had about as much substance as a flash of lightning. It had been intense and blinding for a heartbeat before it had faded away forever.

“A simple procedure,” Danforth had said.

Nothing had been simple with Sam. Not from his first meeting with her, to the moment when she’d walked out of his world six months ago. He’d go by Danforth’s offices as soon as he could and finally put the madness Sam had brought into his life to rest. Shifting, he could still feel the tight, uncomfortable aching in his body.

Yes, he needed to put this all to rest and forget it ever happened. Then he got out of bed and headed to the bathroom and a cool shower.

SAM WAS JUST ON HER WAY out of her Brentwood hotel room when the phone rang. Hurrying back to the phone by the bed, she picked up the receiver and said, “Yes, hello?”

“Samantha, it’s May Douglas.”

Sam was surprised to hear from her landlady. The elderly widow lived in an old Victorian house on several acres overlooking the ocean in Jensen Pass, a small town in northern California. The cottage where Sam lived and worked had been built for May’s husband, a writer, and Sam—when she was a child—had often thought it looked enchanted. So far it had been a place of healing and a place of safety.

She’d gone to Jensen Pass when she left Nick and found the cottage was available for rent. It had been perfect. The isolation and the peace to be found there were just perfect. Even Mrs. Douglas was perfect. A quiet, interesting lady, she liked roses and afternoon teas. A grandmotherly sort whom Sam had come to like very much.

“Mrs. Douglas, how wonderful to hear your voice,” Sam said. “There isn’t anything wrong, is there?”

“Oh, no, dear, nothing’s wrong. Owen is doing better, but he’s a bit put out because I’ve had to give him medicine that he hates. He just won’t take it nicely. But then again, Owen is so sensitive and opinionated.”

The lady surely hadn’t called to tell Sam about the well-being of Owen or his medicinal regime. “Yes, he certainly is,” Sam said.

“Oh, did you get the showing?”

“The gallery owner is very interested and seems to think the show could do well. I have to ship more pieces down and he’ll make a decision then.”

“He’ll love them, dear. Are you coming back tomorrow?”

“Yes, I plan to. In the afternoon.”

“Wonderful. Tea and conversation, the two things I’ve missed so much until you rented the cottage.”

Mrs. Douglas was tiny and spry with silver hair and the propensity for anything lavender, even in her gardens that hugged the top of the cliff overlooking the beach. “Yes, I’ll look forward to that.” She was about to say goodbye when Mrs. Douglas spoke again.

“Oh, my, I almost forgot why I called. I was at the cottage watering your plants, and the phone rang. I know it could have gone to your machine, but that’s so impersonal, so I hope it’s okay that I took the call?”

“Of course it is. Was it important?”

“Just a minute,” she said, then Sam heard the rustle of paper before Mrs. Douglas spoke again. “Let me see if I can read my own handwriting here. Yes, it was a Mr. Danforth’s secretary calling to let you know that the final divorce papers are ready for your signature and he wants you to contact him at your earliest convenience.”

Sam sank onto the bed, her legs suddenly unsteady. The divorce. Why had she thought she could come to Los Angeles without being touched by Nick in one way or another? “Anything else?”

“No, not really. Except you told me you were only married for three months. I would have thought you could just have gotten an annulment instead of a divorce. I mean, after three months, that’s hardly a marriage.”

The elderly lady was more right than she knew about her marriage hardly being a marriage. “Nick took care of it, and I told him to do whatever he needed. He’s an attorney, so I assumed he’d know how best to handle the situation.”

Sam closed her eyes but opened them immediately when a vision of Nick popped into her head. Damn it, she’d been trying to put him behind her for six months. She’d changed her life by putting almost the entire state of California between them and rebuilding her own life. But suddenly he was there, tall and lean, his face a mix of planes and angles, eyes so intense she’d been sure he could see into her soul.

One of the many things she’d been wrong about with Nick was that he hadn’t been able to see into her soul. He’d never even known her. He’d wanted to be with her but had never wanted the marriage she’d finally insisted on. Just a few of the many things she’d found out about too late. She shook her head and banished the thoughts and memories.

“There’s no point in looking back,” she said. Especially not when all that did was stir up a sense of loss and frustration and pain. A sense of being so wrong.

“You’re right, Samantha. The future is where your life is going. You’re young and have your whole life ahead of you. And you know, dear, you can never go back.”

She wouldn’t want to. “Thanks for the message, Mrs. Douglas. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Have a safe trip, dear, and come by the house to let me know when you’re home.”

“Yes, I will,” she said, and hung up.

The divorce was a formality. A legality. Nothing more. But that logic couldn’t shut out memories of that horrible conversation she’d overheard the night her marriage had ended. Nick and his partner and friend, Greg O’Neill, had been out on the deck of the house in Malibu, drinking in the darkness. She’d heard their loud conversation all the way from the living room.

“My God, Greg,” she’d heard Nick say, “I’ve gotten myself in a real mess. This marriage…” She’d heard the clink of glass on glass and looked through the doorway out to the deck. She’d barely been able to make Nick out as he stood with his back to the house, staring at the ocean. “I don’t even know how it happened,” he’d said to Greg. “I’d only known her two weeks.” She tried to stop the memory but it kept going.

“You bribed a judge, didn’t you?” Greg had replied with a burst of laughter. She’d stopped a few feet from the door and waited for Nick to join in, to make it all a joke.

But that hadn’t happened. “‘Bribe’ isn’t the word, but he owed me a favor. If I’d had to wait three days, who knows?”

“You wouldn’t have done it?” Greg had asked.

“I would have come to my senses,” he’d said after a long, painful pause. That had been the truth. She’d heard it in his voice. There was a blur of hurtful words, then Nick saying, “Marriage isn’t a normal state. Who ever thought up this concept of ‘forever’ with one person?”

Sam had known things were bad between them, that they were strangers in so many ways. As much as she’d craved a family, a connection that she’d never had from her life growing up in foster homes, she’d known at that moment that happily-ever-after was never going to happen with Nick.

Pain and sorrow had filled her and she’d known what she had to do then. As she knew what she had to do now. Once she signed the divorce papers, she could go back to her real life and start forgetting Nick…again.