A Baby Changes Everything (13 page)

That they were husband and wife again.

Sighing, trying vainly to catch her breath, Savannah turned toward him. There was an ache inside of her, an ache that had nothing to do with the man she loved, or with what had just happened here. She'd felt a slight twinge of it earlier. With effort, she forced herself to ignore the budding pain. She didn't want anything to mar what had just happened.

All she wanted to concentrate on was that Cruz had come back to her. That they could be a family again and she could stop feeling so miserably alone.

She feathered her fingers along the slope of his waist. His skin was bronzed in comparison to hers. She always looked like Snow White beside him, she mused. She was so glad that their son had the same golden skin tones that Cruz did.

There was mischief in her eyes as she said, “I guess it's like riding a bicycle. You never quite forget.”

Taking her hand, he threaded her fingers through his. “It hadn't been that long.”

If you counted it in minutes, in seconds, it was, she thought. And then she laughed. “To a fruit fly, it's been a lot more than several lifetimes.”

He wondered if that was her way of starting a discussion about what had driven them apart. Or was it just a subtle recrimination that he hadn't been attentive enough to her needs? That he put the ranch first and that it tired him out too much to be the husband he should have been?

Even though he tried not to let it, he could feel Savannah's words making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Cruz sat up and dragged a hand through his hair before swinging his legs off the bed. It amazed him how carried away he had gotten. Logic had fled from his brain. In a way he felt almost ashamed of himself to have been governed by his emotions, by the physical side of him. He'd thought he'd outgrown that.

“To one of those sea turtles that live to be over a hundred,” he pointed out defensively, “it's a blink of an eye.”

She detected a warning note in his voice and felt herself stiffening. No, she told herself. They'd just made love together. That was a sign things were getting better. Wasn't it? She cleared her throat. “I guess it's all in the perspective.”

“Guess so.” His voice was flat, emotionless.

Savannah drew the comforter to her, covering herself, suddenly feeling very naked and exposed. She didn't like what she was hearing in his voice, didn't like that sinking sensation that was taking hold of her stomach.

Had Cruz come here tonight just because he felt a phys
ical need, and being with her was easier than going off to town with the ranch hands and picking up someone?

She had to know the truth, no matter how bitter it was. “Why did you come here?”

He looked at her sharply over his shoulder. Was she telling him that she would have preferred he hadn't come to see her tonight?

But she'd been so warm, so pliant only a few moments ago….

Maybe she was having regrets, he thought. Regrets because she hadn't remained strong, held fast against him. He didn't want to be here to see that. Didn't want to hear Savannah say something that would ruin what had just happened between them.

“Well, it wasn't because the car lost its way,” he quipped, not answering her question. Picking up his clothes from where they'd fallen on the floor during their mutual striptease act, he began getting dressed.

Even though the comforter was pulled over her body, Savannah felt horribly naked. She watched as he tugged on his jeans, stuffing his underwear into his pocket. “What are you doing?”

For a second, while he slipped on his shirt, he didn't answer her. “Getting dressed.”

She'd thought, hoped, that he would spend the night. Everything until these last few moments had pointed to it. She felt a horrible pang seizing her. From somewhere within, she found her courage.

“Are you leaving?”

He was going because he didn't want to see regret in her eyes. He didn't want to feel like a fool. But all she had to do was ask him to stay and he would. “Do you want me to?”

She wasn't going to beg, wasn't going to ask him to stay when he wanted to leave. There was no triumph in that.

“I don't want you to do anything you don't want to.”

He stood looking at her, weighing her words, wishing she'd tell him to stay. But he couldn't force his wishes on her.

And she wasn't saying anything.

He finished buttoning up his shirt. “Then I guess I'm leaving.”

She felt her heart shredding. “Why did you come here?” she demanded again.

Without a word, Cruz crossed to the door. At the last moment, he turned back to look at her. He longed to strip off his clothes and make love to her all over again, but seeing her and knowing that there was this wall between them hurt too much.

To save his crumbling pride, to keep from throwing himself at her feet and begging her to end all this nonsense, to take him back before he lost his mind, Cruz stonily replied, “Damned if I know.”

He walked out, shutting the door behind him.

Between them.

Savannah got the message, loud and clear. Cruz didn't want to be with her. He didn't want to stay the night now that he no longer craved her sexually. The thought throbbed through her head that she was nothing more than some kind of a release valve to him.

It was as if someone had taken a knife and plunged it into her heart.

If he loved her, he would have remained. To talk. To straighten things out.

To just hold her until the night faded into the past and daylight came to swallow up the shadows.

Now she felt as if there was a huge shadow over her soul.

Unable to hold back any longer, Savannah drew her knees up, buried her face against them and cried.

C
ruz blinked, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, wondering if he was seeing things.

The faded red car was still there.

He'd just happened to look in the general direction of the house while leading Diablo around the corral. The last time he'd turned that way, the driveway had been empty. Now it wasn't. The faded red Mustang, the first car he'd ever owned, the one he'd kept alive over the years thanks to creative tinkering and body parts he'd found in junk-yards, was there.

In his driveway. Just as it always had been before Savannah had taken the light from his world.

From out of nowhere, excitement bubbled up like an untapped oil well, filling all the spaces inside of him as if he'd been hollow up to this point.

Oblivious to everything but the horse he'd been training, Cruz looked around to see where his men were. Whistling for Hank's attention, he beckoned to him. “Here, take over.”

Even with one arm in a sling, Hank managed to get over the fence with the agility of a cat. He stared at Cruz, dumb-founded. Everyone knew that training was Cruz's exclusive domain. He worked with a horse until it was ready, not allowing any of them to do anything beyond the standard care and feeding.

This was something really different. Especially with this horse, Cruz's favorite. Hank crossed to him, still looking befuddled.

“Take over what?”

“Training.” Cruz handed him the reins, almost having to tuck them into Hank's hand. “You've been watching me long enough, haven't you?”

“Yes, sure, but…” The grin that came over Hank's long, angular face threatened to all but split it. “I never thought this day'd come.”

Cruz was already jumping over the fence. “Yeah, well, don't let it go to your head. Just do what I was doing with him.”

He tossed the last words over his shoulder, rushing away from the corral toward the house. He felt like a schoolboy.

As he approached, he quickly scrutinized the vehicle parked haphazardly before the three front steps that led to the wraparound porch. The porch where he and Savannah had sat, making plans, when they were first married.

They hardly sat here anymore, he thought ruefully.

How the hell had life gotten so twisted up? So complicated?

There were a dozen or so other cherry-red, vintage Mustangs in the area, but none he knew of with that particular dent just above the right fender. In the yard now, Cruz glanced at the license plate. The right letters were all there.

His heart pumped harder.

Cruz ran up the front steps, grinning. It was over. This damn spat of theirs was over. He'd known that if he just waited her out, she'd come to her senses. That she'd realize she missed him as much as he missed her.

He threw open the front door, which he only locked at night. “Savannah!” he called. “Savannah, are you in here?”

It was a rhetorical question. He knew she had to be in the house. The car couldn't just appear in his driveway on its own.

Like a child searching for Christmas presents hidden somewhere in the house, Cruz didn't know where to look first.

A quick run to the kitchen yielded no sign of her. He doubled back and called out again, impatience framing each syllable.

“Savannah, where are you?”

A movement at the top of the stairs caught his eye. When he looked up and saw his wife standing there, a suitcase in her hand, the smile on his face froze. The light that had gone on inside of him began to flicker like a candle set down in a draft.

Cruz gripped the banister to anchor himself. His knees suddenly didn't feel as solid as they should. “What are you doing?”

Savannah had spent hours telling herself that she was a fool for hanging on, that Cruz probably didn't even bother thinking of her, much less spend as much time thinking of
her as she did of him. She'd all but put it on the line for him, and he'd made his choice. He'd chosen the ranch over her. Over them.

It was time for her to move on with her life.

If only it didn't hurt like a thousand jagged knives tearing away at her flesh. “I came to get more of my things.”

He knew he should just stand aside, let her pass. But he couldn't. As she came to the landing, he took hold of her wrist.

“Instead of taking your things to Vanessa's, why don't you just bring yourself to your things?”

She wasn't going to react to that look, that hint of a smile. That had been her undoing the last time, and look where it had gotten her. She was a ranch widow. Housekeepers were shown more attention, more recognition than she was. “I'm leaving you, Cruz.”

He made a hissing noise through his teeth, grappling for control of his temper. “We've already played this scene out, Savannah, remember?”

She drew her wrist away. If only she could draw her heart away as easily, she thought. But maybe in time she could, she counseled herself.

“No, not this version. This time I'm leaving you for good. Or bad, as the case may be. At any rate, I'm leaving permanently.”

His temper burst out of its confinement. “What the hell are you talking about, woman? I came over. We made love.”

Big deal,
her mind shouted.
Is that all you think there is? Sex?
God, he'd completely undersold her. Or she'd undersold herself.

She held up five fingers of one hand, pushing them into
his face. “Five days ago, Cruz. We made love five days ago. You showed up five days ago, and then nothing, not a word, not a phone call in all that time. Nothing.”

“I've been busy,” he all but shouted, waving a hand in the general direction of the stables and corral. “If you'd been here, you would have seen—”

She would have seen how he put everything else in front of being with her, Savannah concluded silently. She didn't need or want that.

“I don't have to be here to know you don't have time for me.”

Cruz was sorely tempted to shake her. But he'd never gotten physical with a woman and he wasn't about to start with the mother of his children. He fisted his hands and shoved them into his pockets.

“Damn it, Savannah, you could have come back. Nobody said you couldn't.”

“Come back to what?” she demanded. “The same conditions?”

“To me,” Cruz exclaimed. “You could have come back to me.”

With nothing resolved? He would have liked that, she thought. But she couldn't hold her tongue any longer. Not feeling the way she did. “Cruz, we can't go on the way we were—”

“There was nothing wrong the way we were,” he cried in exasperation. He hit the top of the banister and almost broke his hand. Shoving it back into his pocket, he could feel the pain working its way up his arm. “I was earning a living, you were helping—”

“We weren't together,” she insisted. Why did she have to keep spelling it out for him? Didn't he understand? Or
was he hoping to wear her down? After all, he needed his bookkeeper back. He was hopeless with numbers.

“If you wanted to be together, all you had to do was open a window. I was right out there. All you had to do was look!” He angrily gestured toward the corral, as if there were no walls in the way.

“That's not together and you know it.” He wasn't that thick; she knew he wasn't. She couldn't have fallen in love with him if he had no more brains than a toasted marshmallow. He was just being too stubborn to admit she was right. “I was hoping that if I went away, you'd come to your senses, see what you were letting slip through your fingers.” It was a gamble and she'd lost. “But I think you actually liked it better this way. You were free to be with your mistress as long as you wanted.”

He stared at her. Had she lost her mind? “What mistress?” he demanded hotly. “Savannah, what are you talking about? There's no other woman.” Days on end went by when she was the only female he even spoke to.

He might have been fooling himself; she didn't know. “There's La Esperanza. She's got a lot stronger hold on your affections than I do.”

“I
came
to see you,” he reminded her, not knowing what else he could do.

“And then you left again,” she countered. Left her feeling used. By leaving so abruptly, by not staying the night, he'd siphoned out the joy in her heart. “You didn't come to talk, to say we'd work things out. You came to satisfy some physical urge you had. Once that was over, you were gone.”

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. “You're going to sell yourself short like that?”

Savannah's eyes narrowed. She picked up her suitcase again. “Why not? It's obvious that you have.”

Incensed, frustrated, Cruz threw up his hands. “Damn it, woman. What do you want me to say? I can't talk to you when you're like this.”

She looked at him knowingly. “And why should now be any different from all the other times?”

Part of her was afraid to walk out the door, knowing that this time it would be permanent. And she didn't want a world that was devoid of Cruz. She loved him. But what would staying get her? Nothing. There was nothing to be gained by wavering. They were just going to dance around the same sentiments, with her being the one to give in all the time. She couldn't do that any longer.

Cruz had made his choice. He'd chosen the ranch over her, over their son and unborn child. They all deserved better than that, and she was tired of trying to fight things the way they were. Not if they weren't going to change.

It took two people to create the kind of change they needed.

Squaring her shoulders, she moved past him to the front door.

Stunned, Cruz remained where he was, staring at her back. “I don't know you anymore.”

Savannah looked over her shoulder at him one last time. Her heart ached so badly she thought it was going to crack in half.

“Maybe you never did,” she told him.

And then she was gone.

 

Night pressed down against the land, hot and sticky, as uncomfortable as the people who endured it. The threat of
rain had hung over them all day, promising not relief but even worse conditions when the pregnant clouds finally emptied.

The lightning came first, to herald the event. It lit up the sky for a split second, flaming forks of gold that pierced the ground, followed by rolls of thunder.

And the rain continued to hover, the very air tasted of it, but still it wouldn't come.

Cruz had been up half the night, his windows open in hopes of finding some sort of relief, from the weather if not from his tormented state.

She was gone. She was really gone.

Damn it, what was he supposed to do? Crawl? Beg? If he were a rancher like one of the Fortunes, he'd have more than enough people to pick up any slack there might be. Then he could take his family on vacations, on long, languid trips. They could talk all night, play all day.

But he wasn't a Fortune, he was a Perez. And that meant long, hard hours to make ends meet. Someday he could do the things Savannah wanted, but not now. Not yet.

He hated missing her.

Hated not feeling whole.

Finally, Cruz fell into a restless, fitful sleep where reality and dreams became one and the same. He was too exhausted to differentiate between them as they preyed on his mind, haunting him.

They brought his worst nightmare.

Savannah, leaving him. Over and over again. Saying she'd made a mistake in wasting her time loving a man like him.

And then she disappeared, along with everything else. His ranch, his life, it was all gone. And he was left with nothing.

The crash of thunder vibrated in his mind first.

As it grew in volume, it mingled with the high-pitched cries of the horses. The sound was a horrible shriek that, once heard, could never be completely erased from one's mind.

It echoed through his being, followed by a flash of light that made it seem as if the whole world had been set on fire.

Jolting upright, Cruz realized that this wasn't part of his nightmare. This was real. The horses were shrieking.

And then he saw why.

His heart stopped in his chest.

There were flames shooting up from the stable closest to the house. The structure was on fire. One of the bolts of lightning had struck it.

And the horses were inside.

Pulling on his jeans, Cruz grabbed his boots and flew down the stairs.

As he tore out of the back of the house, he could see Jaime and Hank running from the trailer. There was no need to shout orders. Everyone knew that the first priority was to save the horses. Cruz had twenty-nine now, counting the colts and nursing mares. Half were housed in this stable.

Pulling a bandanna from his pocket, he tied it over his nose. He was going to need both hands to gentle the horses and lead them out. There was nothing they were more afraid of than fire.

“If they won't come out,” he shouted to Jaime and Hank, “cover their eyes.”

The heat felt as if it was singeing his skin even at this distance. Steeling himself, he dived into the inferno.

The flames were in the rear of the stable, but they would eat their way through in a matter of minutes. He had no time to spare. Cruz threw a bridle over one of the mares, then leaped onto the back of another, leading them both out. He turned them loose in the corral before running back inside.

Just as he entered, another terrifying flash of lightning came, creasing the brow of an angry sky. This time, the bolt appeared to be miles away. It ushered in the rain.

On the back of another horse, leading two more out, Cruz took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut for just a moment. He could have fallen to his knees in gratitude. There was no need to call the fire department, no need to run for the hoses normally used for filling buckets to wash the animals. The rains had come, and with them, relief. Not from the heat or the stickiness, but from something far worse. From the fire.