Heather Graham (21 page)

“Kim, I want you to know that I’m not in any kind of crazy temper. I’m very calm, very controlled. Wouldn’t you say that?”

Her return stare was incredulous. Still, he certainly didn’t look insanely angry. “Yes, uh…” she murmured.

“Good,” he replied, satisfied as he stood again. “I just want you to know that I’m doing what I’m going to do because I’m just the same as any other normal American male. Harris, this is going to be for my wife and me—and for Lacey.”

“What?” David took a step backward but then seemed to panic. He swung an ill-aimed blow at Brian, which was neatly sidestepped. Then, as Kim and Lacey watched with amazement, Brian caught David with a clean right hook to the jaw. David crumpled to the floor.

“Oh, Brian,” Kim said, waiting for all hell to break loose, and it did. The sound of the quick fight must have carried. Mr. Simms was standing in the doorway.

“What is going on here? This is a place of business! Kimberly, I must assume this man is your husband. I must insist that you keep him out of here! It is understandable that terrible circumstances can make a man a crazy animal, but not in my office!”

“I’m going to call the cops on you, Trent,” David said threateningly from the floor.

“You do that, Harris,” Brian said contemptuously. “I’ll just wait for them downstairs. I don’t think I care to stay in this room with you any longer. Kim, I’ll be waiting. You do what you want.”

Brian had a last glance for all of them. Then he brushed past Mr. Simms, his eyes strangely sympathetic, his shoulders tall and squared.

Kim stared at Mr. Simms and suddenly started laughing. “I’m leaving, Mr. Simms. But I think you should know, my husband is not a crazy animal. Your account executive is. Lacey, if you want my job, it’s yours. Free and clear. David, if you’re going to call the police, I’d do so now. But I can also promise to bring a case against you in court.”

“What is all this?” Mr. Simms demanded indignantly.

“I haven’t time for the explanation, Mr. Simms,” Kim said. “I’ve already wasted too much of my new life. Talk to Lacey, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

She walked out of the office, feeling as light as air. She was about to leave the agency behind her entirely when she suddenly moved back to the receptionist’s desk. She smiled vaguely as she grabbed the phone and dialed.

Her heart took on a slightly painful beat when she heard Keith’s voice, but she plunged into her conversation, heedless of who might hear her. “Keith, I should be doing this in person, and I’m terribly sorry. Please forgive me. But I had to tell you…now. I care very much for you. I always will. You will always hold a very special place in my heart. In fact, I will always love you a little, but, Keith, I’m going to stay with Brian.”

“What? Kim? Are you okay? Where are you? I’ll come—”

“No, Keith. I’m absolutely fine. I haven’t been fair to you. I believe I could have told you long before this.”

“Kim, I just don’t believe you can still love a man after twelve years—”

“Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I fell in love with him all over again. Oh, Keith! You are so wonderful, and this is so hard. But I love Brian. He’s—he’s just always the sun.”

“Kim, I can’t believe you’re serious.”

“But I am, Keith. Good-bye.”

She hung up the phone pensively, torn to have hurt Keith. But the truth was surely kinder than more lies. She would miss little things about Keith; she would miss him. But there were choices in life, and despite the tempests she would face ahead, she had made her choice.

She turned to the stunned receptionist with a sunny smile. “Thank you!”

Downstairs she found Brian sitting in the car.

“Kim,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m really not an animal. I know I need to let you be independent and solve—”

“Oh, Brian!” She burst into laughter and threw her arms around him. “I loved it!”

“You did?”

“Absolutely!” She kissed him thoroughly and passionately. She broke the kiss, still laughing. “It’s not something you can make a habit of doing, but in David’s case—oh, Brian, but how did you know?”

He shrugged. “I put two and two together. That first morning the call you had from a David Harris sounded like trouble. Then I overheard a bit of your conversation with Lacey. Then I heard the things Harris was saying….I had to do something, Kim.”

She kissed him again, still laughing. But she sobered as they entered the car. “Well, the problem is that now we’re in trouble. I just quit my job. I can’t guarantee that any of those free-lance things I could take would pay anything. What are we going to do?”

Brian started laughing. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t start the car and he gave up the attempt.

“Brian, you are acting insane now! This is the real I world. We need money to survive. We have children. And you—”

He sobered slightly. “And I what?”

“Well, I heard you tell my father that you wanted to try to write, and that’s even worse than free-lance photography if you want to make money. You could go for years….”

“Oh, Kim!” He reached across the car and cupped her chin in his hands. “Sweetheart, you are priceless! You’ve been worried about the job because you’ve been worried about supporting me when you’re not even sure you want to stay with me? Oh, honey, I do love you! But you never needed to worry.”

“Brian,” Kim said impatiently, “what are you talking about?”

“I’ve already written a book, and I’ve already sold it. And the advance I received was more than your salary would be for the next two years!”

“What?”

“When I was in Arizona, as soon as I reached home, when everything was still immediate in my mind, I sat down to write a book. It was something I really did only for myself: my feelings on the war, on the Vietnamese, on escaping and trying to come home. A friend of my dad’s is a literary agent. He talked me into letting him see the manuscript, and he went crazy. There aren’t many men who spent that many years in captivity and have been able to come home and tell about it. Anyway, he was able to sell the book with a phenomenal advance. And I’ve already signed a contract to do another book—fiction this time. Wartime adventure.”

Kim stared at him incredulously as seconds ticked by. Then she began to laugh again herself. “You are incredible! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You never asked me,” he told her. “Besides, it was rather nice to see you so strong and concerned.”

She smiled and picked up his hand from the seat beside her. “Brian, I do love you,” she murmured.

He was silent a moment. “Enough to try to put the past behind us?”

“The sun is stronger than anything,” she murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Never mind! Yes, Brian, enough to put the past behind us! But things are still going to bother me. We have to keep talking even when it hurts. There are twelve years that we lost, and I do want to make it easier. I want to help to put to rest all the tragedy.”

They both were silent for a minute. Then Brian kissed the back of her hand. “I love you very, very much, and I will appreciate you listening to me. I will appreciate your sharing with me all that was so hard to bear.”

“I should have already,” she whispered.

He leaned toward her, to kiss her brow, then swept her into his arms to kiss her with yearning, ardor, and loving tenderness. “No, my darling,” he told her. “We both are human. Both vulnerable. And we both took the only roads back together that we could. I love you for being who you are, Kim, exactly who you are.”

He pulled away from her with a gentle smile. “How about getting started on that intimate little vacation I was planning?”

“I thought we were going to have dinner?”

“We will. But we’ll have it in flight.”

“In flight? To where?”

“The French Riviera. We never really had a honeymoon, if you recall. We were settling into the house and all—”

“France! Brian, are you crazy? I’m not packed for that kind of vacation! And I’d need my passport—”

“I have your passport—your sons are big on matchmaking.”

“You’re serious!”

“Of course.”

Kim blinked with amazement, then started to smile. “France, Brian? We’re really heading out for France tonight?”

“Really. Right after you make a phone call.”

“To who?”

“Mr. Norman. It’s time you let him off that dangling line.”

She smiled at him but then shook her head. “I already did.” Kim saw the frown etching its way into his features and spoke quickly. “I called him from the office to tell him that you and I are going to give our marriage a try. I owed him that. I’d been telling him that I loved him and that I hadn’t been sleeping with you. I owed him the truth before we went any farther.”

“Thank you,” Brian said quietly. “I’m glad you called him. Did he understand?”

“I’m not sure he really believed me. I should have seen him in person, but I had to let him know.”

“What did you tell him?”

Kim scooted across the seat and laced her fingers around Brian’s neck. “I just told him that you were always the sun.”

He stared at her as if she had gone crazy, but he couldn’t resist the mischievousness of her gesture. He kissed her again, stroking her hair, sliding his hands insinuatingly along the provocative curves of her body. Finally he released her, trembling, his voice a bit husky. “Talk about the shades of the past! I think we’re a little too old to neck in a car!”

Kim laughed and pulled away from him. “I suppose so! Besides, the Riviera sounds much more romantic.”

Brian grimaced. “Yes, and we’d better get going. Our flight is in an hour and a half.”

He started the engine, and a minute later they were headed toward the airport.

“Brian,” Kim murmured.

“Yes?”

“I think it will be a good idea if we see a marriage counselor together, someone to help us see ourselves, to keep us going smoothly, to give us both perspective.”

“I agree,” he told her with a grimace. “I’d thought about that myself.”

“You know, even before all this, we used to fight constantly.”

“I thought we had mellowed there a bit, age and all. Besides, I always like the making-up part. All that energy that exudes with that temper of yours creating such a wild adrenaline flow—”

“My temper!”

“There it goes already, but this isn’t the time, Kim. I’m driving!”

“Brian Trent, you’re impossible!”

He reached his free hand across the seats, palm upward. Kim gazed down at the entreating expanse of his palm, then placed her hand in it. He squeezed gently.

“Brian?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, I suppose I really could consider…well, I mean, this time you would be around. I wouldn’t have to try to cook with two infants screaming, and you could wake up sometimes in the night, and I’d be able to get out a little more—”

The car suddenly veered off the road into the embankment. “What are you saying, Kim?” Brian demanded hoarsely, an arm dangling over the steering wheel as he turned to face her.

“I’d, uh, I’d have another child, Brian. Not now I think we need at least this year for just us…and the twins, of cour—”

She never got the word out. She was wrapped in a kiss and a shattering embrace, caught in a whirlwind of emotion and sensation so deep that the world seemed to black out and then become filled with a brilliant, searing heat. She was shaking when he released her, blushing as she realized they were acting like teen-agers in the car again.

“Only if you really want to,” Brian said.

“Ah, what?” she murmured.

“We will have a child ever again only if you really want to have another one, too.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Trent, the idea is beginning to grow on me. Not before a year but definitely before three years. I’m getting old, you know!”

“Terribly!” he said teasingly.

“And one more thing, Brian.”

“What’s that, my love?”

“I absolutely refuse to have a litter. Having twins was quite enough, and we had twins once. We could have them a second time!”

“Would that be so bad?”

“Well, I suppose not. Except that there would be two again! And I was counting on you to be able to give me free time!”

He teased her nape with a gentle finger. “No problem. It will be solved by one of the benefits of being older and wiser.”

Kim cocked a brow at him. “There’s a benefit?”

“Of course. We can afford to hire a nice housekeeper who loves kids!” His touch on her neck became very tender. “I married an art student who was determined to take the world by storm. You’re going to be spending hours in the darkroom with your photography. We’ll have to have a maid.”

Kim sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Do you know, Brian, you are a bit superhuman. But”—she placed a finger against his lip before he could protest—“I think it’s awfully, awfully nice to be married to someone who
is!
”

“Well,” he said huskily, “if you’re going to see it that way…” He cleared his throat and twisted the key in the ignition again. “Don’t throw any more curves this way for the moment, sweetheart. Not if you want to make the plane. It’s getting dark.”

Kim obediently settled into the seat, smiling as she watched him through contented, half-closed, and very lazy eyes which twinkled wickedly. “Not dark, my love.” She laughed. “It’s brilliantly, beautifully sunny!”

I
T WAS A BEAUTIFUL
wedding except that it wasn’t actually a wedding. It was a renewal of past vows.

Even the weather, usually hot and humid, dark and brooding during the late summer season, had altered for the day. The sky was a crystal clear blue; soft breezes alleviated the glow of the late-afternoon sun.

The woman who walked down the outdoor aisle of orchids and ivy, her eyes shimmering like true amber, was more beautiful than ever. Time had added to the lovely character of her features. Living had given her a soft and gentle, if still mischievous, smile.

The love theme from Franco Zeffirelli’s
Romeo and Juliet
was played softly on the organ, and if the couple this day did not have the extreme youth of the fabled lovers, they still shared the beauty of that very special, indomitable love. He was dynamic in black; she was splendid in royal blue silk.