A Baby Changes Everything (7 page)

His eyes immediately looked up to the boy's room. “Is he hurt?”

She shook her head, taking the lead toward the dining room. “Luckily, no.”

“You've got to keep a closer eye on him.”

She didn't take kindly to the implication that she was lax in her parenting duties, even from Cruz. “The only way my eye would be any closer is if I put Luke in a cage and stared at him all day from a foot away. He's just too high-spirited.”

“No such thing.” And then Cruz grinned as he thought back to his own childhood. “My mother'll tell you I was like that as a kid.”

Savannah placed a casserole dish in the center of the table and then regarded him for a moment. He appeared none the worse for wear. “You mean there's hope?”

“There's always hope.” The grin melted into a smile. She had her hands full, he thought. Just as his mother had. Except in his mother's case, there had been five of them, not just one, and she'd worked full-time for the Fortunes, as well. “I'll talk to him.” Talking was not his long suit. Actions did the speaking for him. Maybe it was time to introduce the boy into the family business. “Maybe I'll take him with me tomorrow.”

Savannah thought of how caught up with his work Cruz got. How the other hands would be busy with the myriad things it took to run this ranch. Those were perfect conditions for an accident waiting to happen. “No.”

He looked at her sharply. She'd never opposed him before. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean no, it's not a good idea to take Luke with you when you work. Not yet, anyway. He's at an age where he requires full-time attention, Cruz. You'll be too busy to watch him every moment. Luke gets into trouble here and I'm on him almost constantly. Out there, who knows?”

He supposed she made sense. Still, there would be consequences if they handled the boy with kid gloves, watching his every step.

Cruz helped himself to some of the casserole. “I don't want my son growing up to be a wimp.”

“He won't be a wimp,” she promised. “He'll be alive.”

Cruz snorted, taking a healthy forkful of food. “Seems to me that I can't do a much worse job.” He bit his lower lip the moment the words were out. That sounded critical and he hadn't meant to be. He was just too tired to function. “I didn't mean that.”

“Yes, you did.”

Savannah was hurt, and it was on the tip of her tongue to retaliate. To say that she thought they needed a break from each other for a while. Part of her still believed that, despite all her plans to keep them together, their marriage was in serious trouble.

But she just couldn't say that to Cruz. She knew once the words were out, there would be no turning back. She couldn't say for sure how Cruz would react, but she knew the assessment would badly wound his pride. And ulti
mately, that was where he lived—in his pride. Any kind of temporary break might turn into a permanent one. She didn't want that. She couldn't imagine her life without Cruz.

Sitting down opposite him, she reached across the table and placed her hand on his. She wanted his undivided attention. “We need to get away.”

A small hissing sound came from between his teeth. “Look, if this is about last night—”

“Yes, it's about last night.” She couldn't very well deny that. But it was about more than that. “And all the other nights that came before.”

He looked at her indignantly. “It hasn't been all bad,” he said defensively.

She didn't want this getting off on the wrong foot. “I'm not saying that.”

His dark eyes narrowed as he began to eat again. “So what
are
you saying?”

She struggled not to get emotional, knowing that if she did, she'd lose the advantage, not to mention his attention.

“I'm saying that lately we're both too tired to enjoy each other. That we're both working at maximum capacity and that we're running out of steam in the areas that really count.” She looked at him pointedly. “I don't want us to grow apart.”

He took her comment the only way he knew how. “And I do?”

She knew that defensive tone, knew that she could easily get sucked into an argument, but that wasn't what she was after. What she wanted was a resolution.

“I don't think so,” Savannah told him. “It's what I'm banking on.” She reached across the table again and took his hand in hers in mute supplication. “Let's get away, Cruz.”

“You mean run away?”

She liked the sound of that, she decided. “Yes. Run away,” she repeated. “For the weekend, let's just run away.” Her voice picked up speed as she tried to get him to come on board. “Let's go to San Antonio, rent a nice hotel room, stay in bed and make love the whole two days.”

Weary from the day's chores, he forced a smile to his lips. “We don't have to go away to do that, Savannah. We could do it here.”

She knew better and so did he, she thought. “The point is, we
haven't
done that here. If we stay at home, weekend or weekday, there are just too many distractions, too many demands on your time and on mine. If we go away, then there's nothing for us to concentrate on except each other.”

He frowned, not liking what he was hearing. “You could just walk off and leave Luke?”

Why was he fighting her on this? “You make it sound as if I was going to leave him standing waist deep in a water trough with buzzards circling around his head. Vanessa's offered to take him for the weekend.” She threw in the clincher. “And he'd get back a rested mother at the end of this.”

“Vanessa,” he said slowly, the light dawning. “Is this her idea?”

Savannah watched his eyes for signs of anger as she said, “Yes.”

Suspicion darkened his brow. He never discussed their private life with anyone, not even members of his family. “Have you been complaining to her about our love life?”

Now there was a laugh. She withdrew her hand. “What love life?”

His eyes darkened ominously. He liked Vanessa, but what happened—or didn't happen—between his wife and him behind closed doors was his business, not hers. “Is that what you said?”

He was focusing on the wrong thing, damn it. Didn't he see that? “She's my closest friend. With close friends, you don't have to voice everything. You just know things about each other. Besides, this isn't about your machismo,” she insisted, “this is about us. About being together.” She looked at him, suddenly afraid of what she would discover. “Don't you want to be alone with me?”

“Sure I do.” How could she even think that? “But everything I do is for you.”

She thought if she heard that one more time, she was going to scream. That she didn't scream was a huge display of self-control, and she silently congratulated herself for it.

“Then do this one more thing for me,” she begged. “Take the weekend off. The hands know how to take care of the horses for two days. Tell Hank or Billy or Jaime that you're taking off with your wife because if you don't do it soon, you'll forget what she looks like.”

His expression softened as he looked at her for the first time that evening. Really looked at her.

“Never happen. Your image is etched right here.” He pointed to his heart.

And was that enough for him? she wondered. After five years, was he satisfied with just that and nothing more substantial? “Is that your way of saying that we're not going?”

“No, that's my way of saying that no matter how busy I get, I don't stop loving you.” He took a breath, considering the matter again. What she was asking for wasn't that
unreasonable. And maybe he could stand to be away from his work for a while. Maybe it would even do him some good. “Okay, make a reservation and tell Vanessa she's got a new man in her life.”

Rising from the table, Savannah circled to where he was sitting and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

Cruz laughed as he pulled his wife onto his lap and kissed her soundly. “You're welcome. Now, if you don't let me eat, I'm not going to have strength left for that weekend.”

Her eyes dancing, she slid off his lap and began to fill up his plate again. “Then by all means, eat.”

“Y
ou sure Vanessa's up to taking Luke in?” Cruz asked the following morning.

Standing at the stove, Savannah stiffened slightly. Here it came, she thought, the disclaimer. He was looking for a way to back out of this.

She'd forced herself out of bed the moment she'd felt Cruz stirring, determined to prepare breakfast for him. Determined to try to make a new start from this moment on, since he was making an effort to do the same by agreeing to go away for the weekend with her.

Happily, she hadn't felt the urge to go running into the bathroom first thing this morning. But that didn't mean she felt up to par. The truth was, she was so far from it that she was barely at the beginning of the tee.

Still, she'd vowed to be the cheerful, loving wife this morning or die in the attempt.

But she didn't like the way this conversation seemed to be going.

She forced herself to pay attention to the eggs she was making. Flipping them over, she asked as calmly as she could, “Why wouldn't she be up to it?”

Cruz sipped his coffee. “Because of the rumors.”

The toast popped. She buttered it quickly, placing it on the plate. “What rumors?”

He watched Savannah slide the eggs out of the pan onto the plate, then bring it over to the table. She wasn't eating anything herself, he noticed. Was she still feeling sick?

“They say the body they found at the lake is somehow connected to Ryan. Maybe even a long-lost illegitimate son, finally coming forward after all these years. Why aren't you eating anything?”

“Not hungry.” She glanced down at the cup of tea on the table in front of her. “What else are they saying?”

“That maybe the guy was going to expose Ryan if he didn't come through with a sizable chunk of the Fortune empire as hush money.” Cruz couldn't help wondering if it was true. If all those years of respectability had been an attempt to bury the man Ryan Fortune really was. It wouldn't be the first time a wealthy man tried to bury his past with good deeds.

Savannah frowned at the idea. “Expose Ryan? As what?”

He knew Savannah liked the man. Hell, he liked the man. Ryan Fortune had always treated him decently. But that wouldn't change the facts if they turned out to be true.

“As being something other than the upstanding pillar of the community we all think he is.”

Savannah took offense for Ryan. Not against her hus
band, but against the faceless people of Red Rock and beyond, the ones who lived for gossip and dirt as a way to take away the dullness of their own small, boring lives.

“Ryan
is
the man we think he is. He's kind, noble and charitable to a fault. I've never seen that man talk down to anyone. He was very kind to me when I had nowhere to turn.” She'd lost her teaching position at the school because of her pregnancy and no one would hire a pregnant woman. It was Ryan who took her on to help with the accounting when he clearly didn't have to.

Cruz felt she was forgetting one important thing. After all, Ryan Fortune wasn't a saint. Nobody was. “That was because of Vanessa.”

Savannah wondered if Cruz was deliberately taking the other side of the argument to start a fight so that he could call off the trip.

Struggling not to make any accusations, she approached the situation logically.

“If it was in Ryan Fortune's character to be a bastard, it would have come out way before now,” she pointed out. “He's dealt with too many people to keep his true nature a secret—if that was his true nature. Which,” she concluded, “it isn't.”

Cruz couldn't help grinning as he ate his breakfast. “Pretty loyal, aren't you?”

Savannah raised her chin proudly. “It's one of my good points. I stick with things even when the road gets bumpy.”

He heard the inflection in her voice, saw the look in her eyes as she gazed at him. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what she was talking about. “Meaning me?”

“Meaning us,” she corrected. And while she was at it, she shot down any attempt he might make at wiggling out
of his promise because there was no one to look after their son. “And if Vanessa couldn't take Luke for some reason, there's always your mom or one of your sisters.” She gave him a knowing look. “Can't use that to fall back on, mister.”

“I wasn't using that to fall back on,” he informed her. And then he frowned. “But…”

She braced herself, ready to shoot down anything else he came up with. They just
had
to get away. She had this feeling that if they didn't, their marriage was doomed. “‘But?'”

He'd had to pay cash for the four horses. Cash against the money he hoped to collect from the man who was going to pay him once the animals had been trained to be cutting horses.

“We really don't have that much cash available.” He could sense that this was important to her, so he qualified it rather than try to postpone the trip the way he'd first thought to do. “Can't be a very expensive place.”

She did a little quick thinking. Compromise was the essence of survival. “It won't be,” she told him brightly. “It'll be free.”

“Free? Why?” The next moment, he came up with his own answer to that. This had been Vanessa's idea. What if the woman made her a gift of it? He liked the Fortunes well enough, but he wasn't about to be the object of their pity. “I won't take charity.”

Savannah stared at him. She had no idea what he was talking about. “Charity?”

She knew damn well what he was talking about, Cruz thought. “If Vanessa is ‘treating' us, tell your friend to put away her checkbook. A Perez always pays his own way.”

So that was it. Had he always been this thin-skinned, or
was trying to develop a superranch in a record amount of time getting to him? “A Perez—and in case you've forgotten, I am one, too—doesn't have to pay his own way if there's nothing to pay.”

Finished eating, he pushed his plate back. “What are you talking about?”

She'd had her heart set on going to a hotel, having their meals sent up to their room, luxuriating in a king-size bed with nothing more than the blankets, pillow and Cruz for comfort. But the one important ingredient in the scenario was Cruz; everything else was expendable. Which was why she'd done a little quick recalculating to make it more acceptable to him.

“Going camping.”

“Camping?” he echoed. He ended the word with a wide smile.

One look at his face told her that she'd made the right decision. As much as he maintained that he wanted to attain the good life, to have everything the Fortunes had, there was no denying the fact that the man inside was still Cruz Perez. Someone who liked to go camping, who enjoyed getting away from everything, including the life he so zealously aspired to.

“Camping,” she repeated with a smile.

“But I thought you wanted room service.”

“I want your service most of all.” Getting up, she crossed to him and cupped his cheek. “I figure I'd have more of a chance at that if you were happy.”

It was time to go. He needed to get back to training those horses he'd bought if he was going to have them ready on time. Especially if he was going to lose two days in the bargain.

He stood up and kissed the top of Savannah's head. “You're the best.”

She wanted to savor the moment, to lose herself in Cruz's arms, but she knew he had to leave. With a laugh, she threw back her head. “You're just finding that out now?”

He laughed, too, picking up his hat from the table. “No, just taking a refresher course.” Putting on the Stetson, he began to walk out.

“You could start by kissing me goodbye,” she called after him. “Properly,” she tagged on before he could try to pass off that fleeting brushing of his lips against her hair as a kiss.

Turning on his heel, Cruz blew out a breath, as if bracing himself. “It's a dirty job, but I guess someone's got to do it.”

With a laugh, she grabbed him by the lapels she'd ironed only the day before, and pulled him to her. “And that someone's you, mister.” Her smile faded a little as emotion filled her throat. “And it always will be.”

Cruz took her into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers.

He was in a hurry and it was only meant to be a quick, perfunctory kiss. Something to hold his place until he had more time to give himself up to the moment and the desire that was always there, just buried beneath details and minutia.

But something took hold of him the second his mouth was on hers.

Maybe it was the promise of being alone with her again, sans the myriad demands that always took his attention away. Maybe it was that he missed being with her the way it had been in the very beginning, when each day began and ended in her eyes.

He wasn't sure.

All he knew was that the taste of her lips this morning triggered something inside of him, igniting it again. That old feeling he'd once had, where he couldn't wait to see her, to be with her.

For one brief moment in time, the long years of marriage, with its routine that caused him to take things for granted, faded into the background, along with the overwhelming weight of all the responsibilities he had on his shoulders. For a brief moment, all there was was Savannah.

He sank into the kiss, allowing the fire that came up into his belly to spread out to his limbs.

Making him want her.

Making him wish with all his soul that he didn't have to walk out that door in the next few minutes because his men and his ranch were all waiting on him.

Savannah had no idea what came over her husband, or why. All she knew was that for a second, he was her Cruz again, the man who could have made her walk to the ends of the earth if he'd so much as indicated that he wanted her to.

The man who could make her head spin and her pulse race even faster than it had the moment she'd seen Luke go crashing onto the tabletop and then through it; or the time she'd seen him sail off his swing and arc into the air, only to mercifully land in his sand pile, sustaining bruises instead of broken bones.

Her pulse raced faster than all that.

Her fingers tightened around the lapels she was grasping as she rose up on her toes, sinking further into the kiss.

Into the promise.

She felt his body harden against her and she smiled broadly against his lips.

Finally, Cruz forced himself to pull back, knowing he was at the critical point. If he didn't stop now, he wasn't going to. And there was no telling when Luke would come down or one of his men might come to the door, looking for him, wondering what was keeping him.

He smiled down into her eyes. “Consider that a retainer.”

Savannah grinned, touching her lips as she leaned against the table at her back. “If I knew you were going to react that way, I would have suggested camping a lot sooner.”

He was about to answer her when there was a knock on the front door.

“Go.” She waved him off. “That's bound to be Hank, wondering why you haven't come out to play yet.”

“Play,” he snorted, shaking his head. “Woman, do you have any idea what it is I do out there?”

“You work very, very hard,” she agreed. “But you also like what you're doing. It's not as if you're putting on a jacket and tie and going off to sit behind a desk in an office all day.” She knew that would have killed him as surely as a well-aimed bullet. There was another knock on the door and she shooed him again. “Now go. Make yourself and us proud,” she instructed.

In that order, too, she thought as she watched him head out the front door. Because if Cruz wasn't proud of himself, then no amount of words from her could make him feel that way. He needed it as much as he needed the very air he breathed.

Savannah just wished it wouldn't take quite so much out of him.

 

They were getting worse.

Coming out of nowhere, the headaches would attack without warning, laying siege to his temples, his forehead. Wild, savage little men with pickaxes would storm over his skull and begin pounding madly.

Sometimes the headaches were almost blinding.

Sitting at his desk in his spacious office suite, Ryan Fortune ran his hand along his forehead, as if the action could somehow make the almost wrenching pain recede, if only a little.

But it didn't.

Just as he knew it wouldn't.

He sighed, telling himself it was a case of mind over matter. Telling himself to hold on until this newest bout would fade, as it always had before.

It felt as if the very top of his skull was being torn off.

The headaches were happening more frequently now, and it was getting harder and harder to pretend that nothing was wrong. That this was just some anomaly, an annoying roadblock that his body was throwing up for no apparent reason.

Aches and pains were facts of life. First they assaulted you as growing pains, then they came along in a different form because you were growing older. In every case, he'd learned that you just pushed on, not allowing yourself to be conquered.

But it was getting harder to do.

These days, Ryan found himself swallowing extra-strength aspirin by the handful. He'd no sooner open one bottle than the contents seemed to evaporate. He tried to hold out, but it wasn't possible.

Opening the middle drawer in his desk, he took out a
large bottle he'd opened just two days ago. It was less than half-full now.

Twisting off the cap, he shook out three tablets and popped them into his mouth, swallowing the pills dry. He'd gotten good at that.

Maybe he should buy stock in the company, he mused. Ryan screwed the cap back on and threw the bottle into the drawer.

He wondered if this mess with the body washing ashore had contributed to his headaches in any way. God knew it hadn't helped.

People were whispering all the time now, looking at him oddly as he passed. As if he were somehow responsible for this latest ripple that was upsetting life as they all knew it in Red Rock.