Easing her hand from his, she forced a gulp of air into her lungs then let it shudder out. “You made it clear when we were married that you never wanted children. You were adamant about it.”
“I might be able to accept that if I didn’t know you so well.”
She arched a brow, trying to look cool and amused when in reality her heart was beating out of control. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re too logical a woman not to realize you could come to me with this. That’s how I know there’s more going on than you want to say.”
“You’re a responsible man, Buzz. I didn’t want you to feel trapped. I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I guess you figured keeping me in the dark was better?”
“I figured all of us would be better off if you and I split cleanly and amicably.”
“This has been real clean and amicable, hasn’t it?”
“Life doesn’t always cooperate.” She sighed. “Look, I didn’t plan on getting pregnant.”
His gaze turned glacial, boring into hers like an awl through ice. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, Kel?”
“You know damn good and well it was,” she snapped. “How dare you accuse me of using you for something like that.”
“I never thought you’d keep the fact that I had a child from me either, but you did.”
Aware that anger had joined the chorus of emotions screaming through her, she worked hard to keep her voice steady. “You’re entitled to decide whether or not you want to have children, Buzz. But it would have saved us both a lot of heartache if you had told me how you felt before we got married.”
“What are you saying, Kel?” he asked nastily. “That you would have turned me down?”
“Yes,” she said, but they both knew it was a bald-faced lie. The night he’d proposed to her they’d been so crazy in love a war of the worlds couldn’t have kept them apart.
“I wasn’t thinking about kids when we met. Neither were you.”
“You should have told me how you felt about having a family.”
“It never came up.”
“You avoided the topic because you didn’t want me to know why you feel the way you do.”
He laughed, but the sound was stark and bitter. “Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t start psychoanalyzing me!”
“It took you almost two years before you told me about your father. About what he did to you.”
Buzz flushed, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, and Kelly knew she’d hit a nerve. She knew that nerve was alive and exposed and painful as hell when exposed. And she knew he would fight her tooth and nail to keep it buried.
“Damn it, Kel, that’s ancient history.”
“It’s exactly that kind of history that molded us into the people we became. You didn’t want me to know your own father abused you. That you were taken away from him by Child Protective Services when you were a teenager. To this day you’ve never told anyone what he did to you.”
“That’s enough,” he said in a dangerously calm voice.
“Not all people are as cruel as your father.”
“There are a hundred other reasons why I never wanted kids. My father was just one of them.”
“When we were married, I was stupid and naive enough to think I could change you. That I could change your mind. I thought our love was so strong we could overcome any problem, any disagreement. We had something beautiful, and I wanted so badly to make it complete. I wanted a family. Then you took the job in the Child Abuse Division and everything changed.”
His expression closed up, the way it always did when she brought up the dark years he’d spent working the CA Division of the Denver PD. “I saw first-hand the things people do to their children,” he said. “The things they do to other people’s children. The things I saw, the things I learned when I worked CAD made me realize I did not want to bring anything as innocent as a child into this world. I won’t apologize for that.”
“You never considered my feelings, Buzz.”
“In your eyes, considering your feelings would have meant doing something I didn’t want to do.”
“God forbid you might have to compromise,” she snapped. “That word isn’t part of your vocabulary, is it?”
“How in the hell do you compromise when one of us wanted children and the other did not?”
“You didn’t want children because you were afraid,” she said. “In my mind, that’s not good enough. I never accepted that. Not from you.”
“Is that why you asked for a divorce?”
She hated the way he was looking at her. With hurt and fury and a newfound coldness she’d never seen in his eyes before. “You know why I filed for divorce. You know it was a hell of a lot more complicated than that.”
“Maybe you filed for divorce because you knew you could get what you needed from me even if we weren’t married. I mean, come on, we both know sex was the one thing we never argued about. The one thing we could never resist no matter how angry we were at each other.”
The anger struck her with such force that for a moment she wanted to strike him. She’d never hit anyone in her life, but the urge to do so now was so strong she could barely hold herself back. “How dare you accuse me of something so despicable.”
“What do you expect me to think? How do you think this looks to me? If Eddie hadn’t gotten lost in those woods, I never would have known about him, would I?”
“You never wanted a child. Damn it, Buzz, you never even wanted a wife. Sure, you went through the motions. But the whole time we were married, you did what you wanted to do—even if that meant risking your life—and all the people who loved you could just be damned.”
“I may not deserve a husband of the year award,” he said. “But I damn well didn’t deserve to be treated the way I was.”
“We were already divorced when I got pregnant.”
“That divorce was a farce,” he snarled.
“Our marriage was a farce!” she shot back.
“You took care of that, though, didn’t you?”
“I did what I had to do to keep from becoming a widow! At the rate you were going that would have happened sooner or later. I ended our marriage because I refused to live in fear of getting that phone call in the middle of the night, telling me my husband wouldn’t be coming home ever again.”
“You knew who and what I was when you married me.”
“And it took me three years to realize marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life!”
Cursing, Buzz rose abruptly and paced to the edge of the clearing and stood there with his back to her.
Kelly sat there for a moment, struggling to get herself under control. She’d seen him upset before. Many times, in fact, and most of those times she was the cause. She’d seen him rant and rave and cuss the world. But in all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him like this. She’d never seen him so angry he shook.
“You almost died the night you were shot, Buzz,” she whispered. “That was when I knew it wasn’t going to work. No matter how…powerful things were between us, no matter how much I cared for you, I knew it wasn’t enough.”
“But I didn’t die, Kel, did I?”
“If the bullet had been a fraction of an inch in the other direction, you would have been paralyzed for the rest of your life.”
“You can’t live your life based on ifs,” he snapped. “It didn’t happen.”
“When you came home from the hospital and told me you were going to be retiring from the PD, I was so happy. When that corporate security job came up, I thought our problems were over. I thought I would never have to worry about you getting shot in some back alley or warehouse. I begged you to take that job. You were barely out of the wheelchair when you announced you were going to take the team leader position with Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue.”
“Search and Rescue work is not the same as being a cop. Not even close.”
“Jumping out of helicopters, s
kiing into avalanche-prone areas in winter, rappelling down sheer cliffs. Don’t tell me you’re not an adrenaline junkie.”
He stared hard at her, his jaw flexing.
“You made a choice that day, Buzz. You chose living on the edge over our marriage. Over me and any future we might have had together.”
“I am who I am, Kel. Nothing will ever change that. Not you. Not whatever job I take.” Turning abruptly, he paced back over to her.
“That’s why we’re not together, Buzz. That’s why our marriage didn’t last.”
He stared at her long enough to make her want to squirm. “When did we…when did you get pregnant?” he asked.
She didn’t want to talk about the lonely weeks following the divorce. The countless nights she’d lain awake, unable to sleep because she’d missed him so desperately. Because she’d hurt him so deeply. She knew he would never admit it—not big, strong, I-don’t-need-anyone Buzz Malone—but she’d hurt him as badly as a man could be hurt by a woman. She knew that now, had known it then, and she had learned to live with it, accept it because she knew what the alternative was.
“You came to me several times after you moved out, Buzz. After the divorce.”
Choking out a humorless laugh, he lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jesus.”
Responsibility for what she’d done pressed down on her. Kelly had never been irresponsible or impulsive or even prone to lapses in judgment, though she had made more than a few mistakes in her lifetime—most of them involving the man standing before her. After their breakup, she’d been desperate to make a clean break, even if that had meant doing something irrevocable.
“You didn’t waste any time going off the pill. You sure as hell didn’t bother to tell me you had.”
“I know it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but, for God’s sake, Buzz, the fact that I still needed those pills was just one more tie to you that needed to be severed. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to be with anyone else. In my mind, I no longer needed birth control.”
Remembering more than was wise at the moment, she raised her gaze to his. He lifted his head to look at her and his jaw flexed. She instinctively knew he was remembering that last night. He’d come to her the night he received the divorce papers in the mail. It had been a night of angry words, of unbearable heartbreak, and finally, of pain-numbing passion. When she’d wakened in the morning he’d been gone, and she’d known he would never come back.
“Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I believe my going off the pill was more symbolic than anything else.”
Buzz groaned. “Oh, Kel. Jesus.”
“It’s not like we planned to end up in bed. It’s not like either of us kept condoms on hand. I mean, we were married for three years.”
“Kel, why didn’t you say something?”
“Don’t tell me cold, hard knowledge would have stopped us that night. You know as well as I do that nothing could have stopped what happened between us.” The thought of everything they’d done the night Eddie was conceived sent a hot blush to her cheeks. Even though they’d been divorced and hurting, their hearts in turmoil, their lovemaking had been one of the most erotic experiences of her entire life. It was as if for a few short hours, they’d transformed pain into passion and made magic one final time.
“Two months later my doctor confirmed I was pregnant.”
“You haven’t been with anyone else?”
She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but she held her tongue. He deserved the truth. “No.”
“Why didn’t you call me? For chrissake, you could have sent me a letter.”
“Because I wanted…I wanted…us to be over.” That wasn’t exactly true, but the words came out in a flood. She hadn’t wanted it to be over. Not really. She’d just wanted the pain to stop.
“If I had told you,” she continued, “nothing would have changed. You would have kept coming around, and I would have continued letting you. I couldn’t go on like that. I couldn’t.” Her eyes heated and to her horror, she felt on the verge of tears.
“Why didn’t you tell me about my son?”
“Because you never wanted him. You never wanted me.”
“I deserved to know, damn it.”
“I didn’t want him hurt!” She hadn’t meant to say it, but now that it was out in the open, she wasn’t going to take it back.
He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “You know damn good and well I would never hurt a child. Any child.”
“Not maliciously. Not on purpose. But I know what kind of man you are, Buzz. And I just happen to know from experience that you’re exactly the kind of man who would end up hurting him.”
He started toward her. “How can you possibly believe Eddie’s better off without a father?”
“He needs a man who’s going to be there for him. A man he can count on. Not some superhero he’ll never be able to measure up to.”
“Like your Mr. Corporate America, huh?”
She gaped at him, shocked that he would bring up Taylor Quelhorst at a time like this. “I am not involved with Taylor.”
“You might want to clue him in on that because I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And you can bet your next paycheck once he gets you to Tahoe things are going to change.”
“Taylor has nothing to do with any of this!”
“Don’t lie to me, Kel. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about getting involved with him. I know he has. He can’t keep his goddamn eyes off you. He can barely keep his tongue in his mouth when he looks at you.”
“That’s not true!”
“Or maybe you’re willing to sell yourself out to land a good father for Eddie, is that it? Someone who doesn’t spend his days jumping out of helicopters and skiing in avalanche season.”
“Go to hell!” She whirled away from him, but he caught her arm and stopped her.
“Don’t turn away from me,” he growled.
“Let go of me!
“We’re not finished.”
“We’ve been finished for a very long time!”
“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you didn’t tell me about Eddie?” he snarled.
Kelly gaped at him. Anxiety clenched her stomach so hard she was nauseous. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You knew if you told me about Eddie that I would want to be part of his life, didn’t you?”
She tried to shove away from him, but he now gripped both biceps tightly. “No!”
“You knew you’d have to deal with me. That I would be not only part of Eddie’s life, but yours too. Isn’t that the real reason you never told me?”
“Buzz, please, just stop it.”
“You don’t have the guts to deal with me, Kel, do you? You don’t have the guts to deal with a man who’s willing to put his life on the line for what he believes in or for what he loves. You just can’t handle that can you?”
“That’s not true.”
“It’s true and you know it. Your father was that kind of man, wasn’t he? And your brother Kyle followed in his old man’s footsteps, didn’t he?”
The mention of her brother’s name went through her like a straight razor. “My brother and father have nothing to do with this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Kel. They have everything to do with this. That’s why you’re not being truthful with me. That’s why you’re not even being truthful to yourself.”
She succeeded in twisting away. “Stay away from me.”
“I’m nothing like your father.”
Raising her hands, she took a step back. “You’re exactly like him. And sooner or later you’re going to get yourself killed.” She put a trembling hand over her mouth. “I couldn’t bear it, Buzz. I swear, I couldn’t bear losing you that way.”
Her own words horrified her. She hadn’t meant to say them, hadn’t mean to crack open her heart that way.
“Jack was an adrenaline freak, Kel. I’m not. I might have a job you consider da
ngerous, but I sure don’t have a death wish.”
“You keep forgetting, Buzz, I’m the one who sat in the intensive care unit at the hospital going slowly insane until the surgeon came out and told me you were going to make it through the night. I won’t live my life that way, and I won’t put my son through losing his father.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Search and Rescue is dangerous work.”
“It’s important work, but not nearly as dangerous as most people think.” He sighed. “Maybe it’s not me you’re worried about. Maybe it’s Eddie.”
She stared at him, keenly aware of her heart rapping a hard tattoo against her ribs. And for the first time, she knew he understood. And for the first time she understood clearly herself.
“You saw the way Eddie looks at you,” she said. “He’s only four years old. His mind is impressionable. He’s only known you for a few hours and already he looks at you like you’re some kind of hero.”
He blinked at her as if momentarily stunned, but that didn’t keep him from stepping toward her. She took another step back. “He looks at you the same way Kyle looked at Dad. Look what happened to Kyle. No matter what, I won’t let that happen to my child.”
Understanding struck him like a wrecking ball slamming into a building. For the first time, the divorce, the secret pregnancy, the child she’d hidden from him made perfect, terrible sense.
He looks at you the same way Kyle looked at Dad.
Buzz had seen the parallel before, but he’d never imagined that the deaths of her father and brother had affected her so profoundly. The implications astounded him. She hadn’t asked for a divorce because she didn’t love him or because he didn’t want children or because he couldn’t handle sitting behind a desk. She’d asked for a divorce because she couldn’t live with losing him. She hadn’t told him about the baby because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her son the same way she’d lost her brother.
Buzz almost couldn’t believe it. For a full minute he just stood there feeling waylaid while his heart beat out a wild staccato in his chest. He wasn’t sure who moved first, but in the next instant he had her backed up against the face of a smooth granite boulder. A surprised gasp escaped her when his body came full length against hers. He raised his hands to cup her face, then tilted her head closer.