An Independent Wife (23 page)

"And you don't need to catch a chill," he growled, putting her on her feet and leaning down to lift his flight bag. "Let's get dried off, then we can talk."

He insisted that she take a hot shower while he changed into dry clothing, and when she came out of the bath she found that he'd made coffee; two steaming cups were already on the table.

"Oh, that's good." She sighed as she sipped the hot liquid and it completed the warming job that the shower had started.

Rhy sank into a chair at the table and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I need this to keep me awake," he said wearily.

Sallie looked at him, seeing his exhaustion etched into every line of his face, and her heart clenched painfully. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

He made a gesture with his hand, waving aside his weariness, and silence stretched between them. It was as if they were afraid to begin, afraid to say anything personal, and Sallie stared into her coffee cup.

"Chris is gone," said Rhy abruptly, not looking at her.

Her head jerked up. "Gone?" she echoed.

"He quit. Downey told me-hell, I don't know how long ago it was. Everything's a blur. But he quit, said he was moving on to another city."

For a moment Sallie had hoped that Chris and his Amy had gotten together, that he'd quit his job to settle down, but she knew that it just hadn't happened for Chris. A shaft of pain pierced her as she thought of how close she'd come to losing Rhy, and she quickly took another sip of coffee. She blurted,

"I suppose Barbara called you?"

"Immediately," he acknowledged. "I owe her a lot to make up for that favor. I completely wrecked the shooting schedule to get on the first flight to New York. Everyone thinks I've gone berserk anyway, flying back and forth cross the Atlantic whenever we had a break. It drove me crazy," he admitted grimly. "Not knowing where you were, if you were all right, knowing that you believed what that vicious little tramp told you."

"Mrs. Hermann told you what she said?" Sallie asked, wanting to know if Coral's story had been related correctly. Wild hope was bubbling in her; he'd said that Coral had lied, and he certainly wasn't acting like a man who was guilty of anything.

"Word for word, with tears pouring down her face like a waterfall," Rhy growled. He reached out abruptly and took Sallie's free hand, clasping it firmly in his long fingers. "She lied," he told her again, his husky voice taut with strain. "If you've ever believed anything, believe that. Coral may be pregnant, but I swear I'm not the father. I've never made love to her, though she tried hard enough to instigate an affair."

The words jolted Sallie. His voice had an undeniable ring of truth to it, but still she squeaked incredulously, "Never?"

A flush darkened his cheekbones. "That's right. I think I was a challenge to her ego. She just couldn't believe that I wasn't interested in sleeping with her even when I told her I was married and that I'd never been as attracted to any other woman as I was to MY wife," he said, watching her steadily. Sallie blushed under his regard, and his hand tightened on hers. "I think she hated you because of that," he continued, his eyes never leaving her face. "I turned her down in favor of you, and she tried her best to tear us apart, to hurt you. Maybe she didn't plan on doing what she did, if you want to give her the benefit of the doubt. If she truly is pregnant she probably wanted me to give her the money for an abortion. A pregnancy is poison to a model, and I can't see Coral as a doting mother."

Sallie sucked in her breath. "Rhy, would you have?"

"No," he growled. "And I could've killed her when Mrs. Hermann told me what she'd done."

"But ... surely Coral has the money herself ..."Don't you believe it," he muttered. "She likes the high life too well to save anything and she loses heavily in Atlantic City and Vegas. She's not a good gambler," he finished starkly.

"But why did you go out with her at all if you weren't interested in her?" Sallie asked. That was the biggest flaw in Rhy's story. He and Coral had been constant companions, and she wasn't fool enough to think things hadn't progressed beyond hand-holding.

"Because I liked her," he replied abruptly. "Don't ask me for proof of my faithfulness, Sallie, because I haven't got any. I can only tell you that Coral wasn't my mistress, even before I found you again."

"Take it on trust?" she queried, her voice going tight.

"Exactly," he said in a hard voice. "Just as I have to take it on trust that you haven't been involved with any other man. You have no proof, either."

Sallie scowled down at the tablecloth and traced a pattern on it with the hand he wasn't holding. "I've never been interested in any other men," she admitted with ill-grace, hating having to reveal that secret to him. "I've never even bothered to date."

"And for eight years you've been the only woman I could see," he replied in a strained voice, releasing her hand and getting up to stride restlessly around the small kitchen. "I felt like a fool. I couldn't understand why a timid little rabbit like you were then had gotten under my skin like that. I wouldn't have put up with one scene over my work from any other woman, but I kept coming back to you, hoping you'd grow up and understand that I needed my work. You said you were hooked on excitement, on danger, and that's exactly the way I was. A danger junkie.

"I never meant to leave you pernianently," be said jerkily. "I just wanted to teach you a lesson. I wanted you to beg me to come back to you. But you didn't. You picked up and carried on as if you didn't need me at all. You even sent my support checks back to me. I buried myself in work. I swore I'd forget about you, too, and sometimes I almost did. I enjoyed the company of other women, but whenever things began getting involved ... I just couldn't. It made me furious, but I'd remember how it had been with us, and I didn't want second best."

Sallie stared at him, thunderstruck, and he glared at her as if she'd done something terrible. "I made a lot of money," he said with constrained violence. "A lot of money. I bought some stocks and they went out of sight and I ended up a rich man. There was no longer any need to put myself on the line to get a story and getting shot at had lost whatever perverted thrill it had held for me, anyway. I wanted to sleep in the same bed every night, and finally I admitted to myself that if there was going to be a woman in that bed it had to be you. I bought the magazine and began trying to trace you, but you'd left here years before, and no one had any idea where you were."

"You tried to find me?" she asked, her eyes going wide with wonder. So Rhy hadn't simply forgotten about her for those years! "And this time? You've been trying to find me this time, too?"

"It seems like trying to find you has become a habit." He tried to make a joke, but his face was too tightly drawn to express any humor. "I didn't even think of hunting for you here. I've been checking with newspapers in all the major cities on the thought that you were likely to get a job as a reporter.

You threw it in my face so often that you were bored without a job that I thought you'd go right back to work."

"I thought I'd be bored," she admitted, "but I wasn't. I had the book to work on, but most of all, you were there."

His face lightened curiously. "You sure put up a good fight, lady," he said wryly, and he gave her a wolfish grin that held no humor.

"I didn't have a chance," she denied. "Having me working for your magazine like I did gave you all the aces."

"Don't you believe it," he said roughly. "I caught a glimpse of a long braid swinging against a slim little bottom, and it was like I'd been kicked in the gut. Without even seeing your face I wanted you. I thought it was a vicious joke on me to find a woman I wanted just when I'd begun the search for my wife, but the few glimpses I had of you made me determined to have you. Then I ran into you in the hallway and recognized you. The dainty little elf with that bewitching braid was my own wife, changed almost beyond recognition except for those big eyes, and you made it plain that you weren't interested in anything about me. I'd spent eight years with the feel of you branded on my senses until I couldn't even see another woman, and you didn't care!"

"Of course I cared!" she interrupted, standing up to face him. She was trembling with strain, but she couldn't let him think that he meant nothing to her. "But I didn't want you to hurt me again, Rhy! It nearly killed me when you left the first time, and I didn't think I could stand it again. I tried to protect myself from you. I even convinced myself that I was completely over you. But it didn't work," she finished in a small voice, staring down at the tiled floor.

He drew a deep, shaking breath. "We're two of a kind," he said roughly. "We're as wary and independent as wild animals, the both of us. We try to protect ourselves at all costs, and it's going to be hard to change. But I have changed, Sallie. I've grown up. I need you more than I need excitement. It's hard to say," he muttered. "It's hard to deliberately leave yourself open to hurt. Love makes a person vulnerable, and it takes a lot of trust to admit that you love someone. Why else do people try so hard to hide a love that they know isn't returned? I love you. You can tear me to pieces or you can send me so high I lose myself. Trust has to start somewhere, Sarah, and I'm willing to make the first move. I love you."

Hearing him call her Sarah swept away all the long years of loneliness and pain, and she raised a face that was pale and streaked with slowly falling tears. "I love you, too," she said softly, making the words a litany of devotion. "I've always loved you. I ran away because I was hurt. I was insecure and didn't feel that you loved me, and Coral tore me apart with her vile insinuations. But today I decided that I loved you too much to just let you go, hand you over to her without a fight. I was coming after you, Rhy Baines, and I was going to make a believer out of you!"

"Hey," he said just as softly, opening his arms and holding them open for her. "Go ahead. Make me believe it, darling!"

Sallie dived into his arms and felt them enclose her tightly. She couldn't stop the tears that wet his neck, and he tried to comfort her, gently kissing the moisture from her cheeks and eyes.

They had been apart for too long. His kisses became hungry and his hands roamed over her gently swelling body, and Sallie cried out wordlessly as desire flamed through her. He lifted her and carried her to the bedroom, the same bedroom where eight years before he'd carried her as an innocent bride and initiated her into the intoxicating sensuality of his lovemaking. It was the same now as it had been then; he was gentle and passionate, and she responded to him with all her reserve finally gone. When the fire of their desire had been sated she lay drowsily amid the tangled covers of the bed. His dark tousled head was pressed into her soft shoulder and his lips sleepily nuzzled the swell of her breast. His lean fingers stroked the slight swell his child made and he murmured against her flesh. "Was it all right? There's no harm in making love?"

"None," she assured him, lacing her fingers tenderly in the thick hair that curled onto his neck. She couldn't get enough of touching him; she was content to lie there with him resting heavily against her, wornout from traveling and their loving.

He was already half-asleep but he muttered, "I don't want to tie you down. I just want you to fly back to me every night."

"Loving you doesn't tie me down," she answered, kissing his forehead, which was all she could reach.

And it didn't. She was surprised. Where had all her fears for her independence gone? Then she knew that what she'd really feared had been being hurt again. Rhy's love would give her a springboard to soar to heights she'd never reached before. She was free as she'd never been before, free because she was secure.

He didn't hold her down; he added his strength to hers.

"You've got talent," he whispered. "Real talent. Use it, darling. I'll help you in any way I can. I don't want to clip your wings. I fell in love with you all over again when I found you, you'd grown up, too, and become a woman who drove me mad with your nearness and wild with frustration when we were apart."

Sallie smiled in the darkness. It looked as if all those crash courses so long ago had finally paid off. He went to sleep on her shoulder, and she slept, too, content and secure in his love. For the first time she felt that their need for each other was something permanent. She had always felt the tug of the bond that held her to him, but until now she hadn't known that he was equally bound to her. That was why there had been no divorce, why he hadn't even made an effort to obtain one. They belonged to each other and they always would.