Only You (14 page)

JD went around to the driver’s side and got in. He cranked the engine and jacked up the heat. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and shivered. He looked so amazing in his cowboy outfit. Clothes, she amended. If he heard her call his clothes an outfit, he’d have a fit.

“I suppose you think you’re a hero, coming into the bar like that and rescuing me. I didn’t need your help.”

She had, but JD knew better than to argue with a woman when she had steam coming out of her ears. “Trust me, I’m no hero.” He watched the wipers clear the windshield, then shifted into first and drove out of the crowded parking lot.

When they drove in silence for a couple minutes, he thought maybe he was going to get away with acting like a Neanderthal. He considered himself a civilized man. He’d never done anything like that in his life. He’d also never felt such an all-encompassing rage before. He’d grabbed Maggie and gotten out of there because he hadn’t trusted himself not to kill Jesse Mann.  

He was running his finger inside the collar of his sweater when Maggie fixed him with bright, curious eyes. Aw, hell. Maggie curious was dangerous.

“How did you know we were at the bar?”

“I didn’t. Ethan wanted to go for a ride around the ranch and check things out. We stopped at the bar for a drink on the way home.”

“Oh.”

“Look, Jesse has a reputation for being unpredictable when he’s drinking. Sorry if I upset your plans.” He wasn’t sorry, and he didn’t know why he said it. He’d been glad for a legitimate reason to hustle her out of that old, dingy bar. She didn’t belong there.

“So, you weren’t burning with jealousy to see me in the arms of another man.”

His mouth twitched. He glanced her way, then turned his attention back to the road. He supposed he’d never stop loving this woman. His job now was to make sure she knew he wasn’t worth loving back. “I admit I was afraid he might hurt you. But I picked you up like that because Jesse and I have had our differences before and the truth is I didn’t want to fight him. He’s the better man in a fight. Jesse is a lot of things, but he’d never poach another man’s woman, as archaic as that sounds. I played to his strengths, you might say.”

“You hauled me out of the bar like that because you were afraid of getting punched in the face?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want, but I’m telling the truth. I’m no one’s hero.”

His heart hurt as she seemed to shrink in her seat. “Where are we going?” she asked after a few minutes.

“To have that talk I promised you.”

“How’s your wife?”

“Ex-wife. She’s gone.”

“She still uses your name.”

“She won’t for long. She came to tell me she’s getting remarried.”

He glanced at her in the glow from the dash lights. She looked like she’d taken a hit, but she wasn’t down yet. Hell, he hated to be the one to kill her dreams. He had a feeling Maggie had taken a lot of hits in life, and yet, she hadn’t let anything stop her. She was full of life and ideas and just plain fun. He’d lied to her a few minutes ago about being no one’s hero. He’d lay down his life for her.

Maggie made a small sound, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Probably cursing about something.

He turned onto a small country lane that no one used as far as he knew. The branches brushed against the sides of his truck.

“Where are we?”

“Up behind my house.” He turned off the engine and listened to it click as the cooling metal contracted. It had stopped raining, but water dripped from the trees onto the cab of the truck. He took off his hat and chucked it in the crew seat behind him. “In the daytime you can see even farther than you can at the house. I come up here sometimes when I want to think.”

Maggie undid her seat belt and put her back against the passenger door so she faced him, watching and waiting. He wanted to pull her into his arms and lose himself in her warmth and loveliness. Instead, he was going to let her go.

He watched the raindrops fall from the leaves, hit the windshield and form little rivers running down the glass. The silence in the cab smothered him.

“Lydia and I met in college,” he began. “I was in my last year of my degree in architecture, and she was taking the last class she needed to graduate.” He’d been so young then. So enthusiastic.

“I got a job straight out of school, working for Lymes and Moore, a big architecture firm. I loved my work. We lived together for a year, then decided to get married.” He sent Maggie a grim smile. “Marriage is good for the corporate image, and God knows I bought into the whole thing. Worked my ass off, and after a couple years, my designs started to get noticed.

“Lydia complained I worked too much, and she was right. I did. But she had a great job, too, working for the city in economic development. She came from a poor family, and she liked the money we made. I thought she’d want to start a family right away, because her parents were dead, and she’s an only child, but she said no. That was okay with me. I was so wrapped up in my job, I didn’t have much time to spend with her, let alone a kid. I wanted to have children, but it didn’t have to be right away.”

He tried to remember what that feeling was like, to be excited about being a father. “Lydia had an uncle, her father’s brother, whom we’d never met. Her parents hadn’t had anything to do with him, and she’d forgotten he even existed until he contacted her about a year after we got married. He lived in New York, a rich old geezer, Don Horner, and Lydia was his only family. He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and didn’t have long to live. And he wanted an heir.”

He glanced at Maggie’s drawn face. She looked exhausted. He should have taken her straight home instead of dragging her up here in the dark and the rain. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “What happened?”

He rubbed a hand over his face, hating that he had to tell her about the worst thing he’d ever done in his life. “He offered Lydia five million dollars if we had a child and named that child after him. Donald, if it was a boy. Donna for a girl. Lydia decided it was time to have a child, anyway. Honestly,”—his left temple throbbed—“I wasn’t so sure about having a kid. Lydia and I weren’t getting along so well. She resented the amount of time my work consumed. Not that she wasn’t right. A lot of business was accomplished out of the office, and often I had to attend dinners or show up at a country club after-hours. I’d become the firm’s boy wonder.”

Why had that been so important to him? “Five million dollars is a lot of money, and Lydia kept at me. The child had to be legitimate, and I guess she figured she didn’t have time to divorce me and marry someone else. She said I owed her that much. Maybe I did.

“We tried for six months. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I started to hate sex. No matter how many times we tried, she couldn’t get pregnant. Meanwhile, old Don Horner was fading, and Lydia started talking again about getting a divorce, but then she got pregnant, and things were okay for a while. Donnie was born nine months later in time for Horner to see his namesake. He died a happy man, I guess. And Lydia got her millions.

“Nothing prepared me for how I’d feel about Donnie. He was . . . he was a miracle, you know? From the minute he was born, he was perfect.” He gathered his courage and looked at Maggie. “I didn’t know a person could love so deeply and completely. I fell in love with him the first minute I saw him.

“When everything settled down, Lydia and I decided to go our separate ways. I conceded any right to her millions in exchange for uncontested fifty-fifty custody of Donnie. I quit working for the firm and started my own boutique company, thinking, you know, that I could get control of the amount of time I was working. But it got away from me, even though I worked from home. It seemed like everyone wanted a JD Cooper design.” He’d loved being in demand. No one had told him it would come at such a high price.

“How did you look after Donnie and work so much?”

“Hired a full-time housekeeper-slash-nanny. Carla. She was great. She loved Donnie like he was her own grandson.”

Maggie reached over and put her hand on his arm. “What happened?”

“Donnie drowned in our pool.” He knew the words had to be said if Maggie was ever going to understand, and he pushed them out hard and fast. “Carla was sick, had a cold and had taken some over-the-counter meds that made her drowsy. She fell asleep in a lounger beside the pool while Donnie was playing in the shallow end. I was right there, in my office and I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water and saw his little body floating facedown in the pool.”

They sat in silence as he tried to control his breath. Tears ran down Maggie’s face, and he was sorry to hurt her, but he didn’t see any other way. He’d cry, too, if he could, but something, some part of him, had locked up tight the day he’d found his son in the pool, and it was never going to open again. He didn’t want it to. His beautiful son was dead, and he was walking around, laughing and breathing—living. That was so wrong.

“There’s no word for a parent who’s lost a child,” he continued, his voice raw with emotion. “If your husband dies, you’re a widow, or your wife, a widower. If your parents die, you’re an orphan, but we don’t have a word for losing a child because it’s unthinkable.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maggie whispered.

“Yeah.”

“So you stopped designing and moved to the ranch.”

“There’s more, Maggie.” His voice broke. He beat back the black wave of depression that he knew so intimately. “An unexpected death at home is always treated as suspicious. The coroner did tests. Both Lydia and I have type O blood and Donnie was AB, which isn’t possible unless he had a different father. I followed the results up with a DNA test that confirmed I wasn’t his biological father.

“When Lydia realized I couldn’t give her a child, she found someone who could. I don’t know who it was, and I don’t care. He was my child in every way that counted.”

He finally looked at her. “I don’t deserve to have children, and what’s more, I can’t have them. I’m sorry if I hurt you. It’s the last thing I wanted to happen. But this . . . whatever it is between us has to stop. I don’t want to fall in love, and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s feelings. I’m not capable of having a relationship. There’s no point in discussing it any further.”

He started the engine and backed around and drove them home in silence. The only sound in the cab was Maggie sniffing back her tears. The sound broke his heart.

When he stopped in front of the ranch house, she leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for telling me about Donnie. It must have been very difficult for you to do.”

He nodded and watched her climb out of the truck. “Take care of yourself, Maggie Kennedy.”

He watched her walk into the brightly lit house, wishing he could start all over again. But he couldn’t. All he could do was continue on from here.

Two days later, Maggie sat at the kitchen table and scowled at her two friends who stood before her, arms folded, frowns stamped on their faces.

“I made an appointment for you to see the local doctor next week,” Claire said. “I don’t want any argument from you. I heard you throwing up again. You keep saying you’ve kicked the flu, but I’m beginning to wonder if you have something else. Remember the time you refused to go to the doctor in college because you thought it was only a cold, then ended up in the hospital with pneumonia?” 

Maggie knew something was wrong with her physically, but it was hard to focus on what was going on with her body with all the emotions flying around. In a word, she was a mess. She’d spent the last two days curled up in bed, wishing she’d never come to the ranch. She ran a hand through her hair and leaned back. “Fine.”

“What happened the other night?” Sammie asked. “I couldn’t believe it when JD carried you out of the bar like that. It was so romantic.”

Her mood darkened even more, and she felt achy and lethargic. She’d been battling that dark pit for two days now, and she wasn’t sure she could climb out.

“It wasn’t romantic, believe me. He was afraid Jesse would beat him up, and it was the quickest way to get me out of there. Jesse has a rep for being unpredictable when he drinks. Whatever that means.”