Crossroad To Love (Fab Five Series) (13 page)

“You really have thought of everything, haven’t you?” She
could be angry that he was so presumptuous, but she wasn’t. Why spoil a nice
evening?

Michael made his phone call and came over to the couch to
sit beside Angie, taking the glass of champagne that she had poured for him.         

He toasted her with his glass and said softly, “Angie, we
have to get our feelings resolved before we get back to work next week. We are
going to have a long, serious talk about where we stand with each other. Don’t
you agree?” He took a strand of her long, brown hair between his fingers and
twirled it. He brushed her forehead with his hand, caressed her cheek, and
touched her lips with his fingers. His touch scorched her skin.

She slowly took a sip of champagne and looked at him. She
touched his face and smiled, “I agree, but Michael, you can’t just rush me up
to your room, order dinner and expect fifteen years to disappear.”

“I know that, sweetheart. Let’s relax. You are as tense as
can be.” He began to massage the tight muscles in her shoulders, the way he
used to do after a long day at work. “Just relax, enjoy the champagne. We’ll
enjoy our dinner and catch up on small talk. But then we can’t put this off any
longer, Angie. We have to talk about what happened fifteen years ago, what has
happened since, and where we go from here. I didn’t walk into your office last
Friday morning by sheer coincidence. I told you that I asked for the
assignment. I miss you, Baby. I had to know if you were still single. I had to
know if we had any kind of a chance together. What better way than to approach
you at your work? You have no idea what the last fifteen years without you have
done to me.”

So, there it was. Michael had laid his cards out on the
table.
He does want me back.
Those words should have brought sheer joy
to Angie’s soul. But would he still feel that way when she told him her secret?
Maybe she would never have to tell him. Maybe it would not even come up in
conversation. But deep in her heart, she knew that if the subject came up, she
would have to finally tell him. If they were ever going to have a chance at
happiness again, she would have to tell him the truth. She was older and wiser
now, she could see that her mother had been right. She should have told him
back then, but the pain had been so fresh and raw. She had tried to shield him
from feeling the same pain that she had felt. She had given him a chance to
find happiness.
But at what cost to
herself? At what cost to him?
The last fifteen years had been no picnic for her either.

Their dinner finally arrived. True to his word, Michael had
ordered all her old favorites. Angie was amazed that after all this time he
still remembered her favorite foods. The blackened salmon was prepared just the
way she liked it, with twice baked potatoes and steamed asparagus as the sides.
He had even ordered her favorite dessert, peanut butter pie. How could he have
still remembered this? She knew more and more with each passing minute that she
had made the biggest mistake of her life fifteen years ago. As they ate their
food and talked about old times and old friends, she realized it all seemed so
easy with Michael
. Being with him seems so natural. Why
couldn’t I
have seen it back
then? Actually, you big dope, you did see it. You were
just too
devastated to think about it.

She told him about Katy’s big date with Ryan. Michael
thought that was interesting. He had liked Ryan instantly when he met him and
felt he and Katy would be a good match. He told her he hoped it would work out
for them. He also said he was proud of Katy for starting her design business
after all this time. He spoke of the times he and Katy had spent together after
the death of her husband and daughter. He told Angie how he had done everything
he could to help Katy at the time. Katy had always been the strong one of the
group and he felt she had needed a shoulder to lean on for once.

Angie told him that Marianne and Jon were going through
difficult times.

Michael remarked, “I hope they are not as foolish as the two
of us have been and

they don’t lose something very precious.” The words he spoke
touched her heart. She felt tears spring to her eyes.

They also discussed Lizzie’s venture with advertising and
the chance she had taken by going ahead and doing the ads for the O’Gradys
without checking with Rex. Michael said that it did not surprise him in the
least. Lizzie had always been very resourceful. He added that he was looking
forward to seeing Rex again when he flew out to Dallas later in the week. They
discussed each other’s families and caught up on all the happenings with each
family member.

After they finished dinner and the dishes had been removed
from the room, he poured her another glass of champagne.

“You know, I’ve had my limit, this is my last glass. I won’t
even be able to walk back to my room.” Angie laughed as she gazed into
Michael’s gorgeous eyes.

“Who says you have to go back to your room?” he teased her
as his hand gently caressed her face, her ear, and her neck.

She stopped him with a gentle reminder. “Michael, you know
the rules of this game.”

“Angie, my darling, I am going to be quite frank with you. I
have led a miserable life without you for the last fifteen years.
Professionally, I have done well, very well. But what has it all been worth
without the one person in my life with whom I’ve always wanted to share it
with? No one that I have been with since you has mattered to me the way you do.
That’s why, when I found out that you had hired our firm to do your work, I
maneuvered to get the assignment. I knew I had to see for myself if you had
moved on, if you were happy, or if there was a chance for us. I was elated to
find that you were single.”

“Michael, we might discover that we don’t even like each
other now.” She laughed, knowing full well that was not the case.

“I highly doubt that, my love. But we won’t know if we don’t
try, now will we?”

“Michael, are you saying that you want us to try again?”

“That is exactly what I am saying.”

“I won’t have an affair with you. You were once my husband.
I won’t ruin the memory of that marriage with an affair. Can you understand
that?”

“We can take this as slow or as fast as you want, but I am
determined to make you my wife again. And hopefully, that will be in the not
too distant future.”

“I just don’t know.” She looked at him helplessly.

“Do you love me?” he asked a simple question, waiting
breathlessly for her reply.

“I never stopped,” she admitted it finally, looking down at
her lap.

“And neither did I.” Simply stated, he took her in his arms
and held her quietly for what seemed like an eternity. Her heart was pounding
so hard she thought it would pop right out of her chest. Surely, he could hear
it. But his heart was pounding just as hard. She caressed his tired face. All
the pent up emotions from all the years past came flooding to the surface for
both of them. She had missed him so much. She had missed this so much, the time
spent in his arms, his kisses, and his love. This was where she was meant to
be. They sat on the couch kissing and savoring the moment for several minutes.
With a question in his eyes, Michael pulled away. “Why?” he finally asked. He
had to know.

The moment of truth had arrived. The moment she had
dreaded.  Angie could not speak. She looked deep into his chocolate brown eyes
and nodded. He grabbed her to his chest and held her close. Slowly, he kissed
her again, on the forehead first, moving to her nose, then her lips.

When the kiss ended, she licked her lips and finally began
to speak. “You have to understand that this is very complicated. I didn’t
divorce you because I didn’t love you. I did it because I do love you.” Her
emerald green eyes glistened with tears as they begged him to understand.

“Angie, I love you and I always will. We were so good together.
What you are saying makes no sense. Why in heaven’s name would you divorce a
man that you love?”

“I have always loved you, too, Michael. I am so sorry that I’ve
put us both through hell all these years. We have missed so much time
together.”

“Shhhh.” He kissed her again. They had many long years to
make up for and tonight he was determined to get to the bottom of this whole
mess and put it behind them once and for all. It was time to stop the nonsense
and get their lives back on track, start a family.

“You know, Ang, maybe we should say to heck with taking it
slow and get remarried right away, the old biological clock ticking and all.”

Angie winced. She was very quiet for a few minutes. How
could she tell him?

“Michael, we have to talk about that.”

“If you’re saying you still don’t want kids, especially at
this stage of the game, I will understand. But if you think that you might want
to have a baby, we probably should get right on that pretty soon, don’t you
think?” He pulled her close to him again.

Angie shook her head. “Michael, we have to talk about this.
Please listen to me very carefully. This is very hard for me and I only want to
have to say it once.” She looked away as she spoke softly, “I can’t have
children.” There now, at least part of the tale is told, she thought with a
twinge.

Michael looked at her in disbelief. When he finally spoke,
it was with great concern. “I am so sorry, Angie, I had no idea. How did you
find this out? When did you find this out?’ 

“I had a miscarriage several years ago. The doctor ran tests
to find out why I did not carry the baby to term. Everything had seemed so
normal. It seems that I have some sort of problem where my body thinks the
fetus is a foreign object and rejects it, causing me to miscarry. Can you imagine
how it felt to be told that my own body was rejecting my baby? To be told that
I could never carry a baby to term. My body betrayed me, Michael.” Angie began
to sob, the old pain returning tenfold.

Michael felt as if all the breath had been knocked out of
his body.
So she had tried
to have a baby with someone else
. He
could not believe the incredible hurt and jealousy that he was feeling at this
news. “How long ago was that, Angie?” he asked her warily.
Do I really want
to know?

Angie hesitated before she spoke again. Her mouth was
parched, her body shaking. The time had come. There was no going back. She had
come this far, she had to see it through. “Fifteen years ago, Michael.” She
searched his face, waiting for the truth to sink in, waiting for his reaction.

Michael’s face was ashen. What was she saying? What was she
trying to tell him? He looked at her with a question in his eyes.
Was there
another man back then
?
Or had
she carried and lost his baby and
not told him? But why on God’s green earth would she
do that?

She went on to explain. “Not long after we began discussing
starting a family, I found out that I was pregnant. You had gone on that
three-week-long business trip. Remember, we had thought it better for me not to
go because I was so busy at work. We thought I should not take time off so I
could take a long maternity leave when we finally had a baby. I was incredibly
happy when I found out. I couldn’t wait for you to get back from your trip so
that I could share the news with you. I was so sure that we would be starting
our little family and that we were going to live happily ever after, raising
our babies together and building a life. The great American dream. I was making
all kinds of plans for the nursery already. I couldn’t tell you over the phone
with hundreds of miles between us. I had planned a special night for when you
returned to tell you.”

“But then, one night, I began cramping and bleeding. I
called Mom immediately and she came over and took me to the hospital, where I
miscarried later that night. As I said before, the doctor ran a series of tests
and the news wasn’t good. I was devastated. By the time you got back home, I
was so upset by everything, I was simply numb. There is no other way to
describe how I felt at that time. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I
thought I could at least spare you from feeling the same pain I was feeling,
knowing we had lost our baby and knowing that we would never have a child of
our own. If you never knew about the baby, you wouldn’t need to grieve. Believe
me, I did enough of that for both of us. So, being in the state of mind I was
and knowing how much you wanted children, I filed for divorce, giving you the
chance to have a family with someone else. At the time, it seemed like the best
thing to do. I will admit that I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind and
wasn’t thinking clearly at all.”

Michael was silent. Angie thought that he would never speak
again. He did not know whether to comfort her or to throttle her. How could she
not tell him? How could she not give him the chance to grieve for their child
as she’d had the chance to do? How could she say she had done it for him? She
had given him no choice. She had taken away all of his choices. She had
divorced him, giving him a freedom he did not want. He did not want to have a
family with someone else. If they could not have a child of their own, they
would have still had each other. How could she have done this to him? How could
she have never told him? And how could she have thrown away their love like
that? And why, if she still loved him, had she not found the courage to tell
him before now? All these years, and she could have fixed it.

“Who knew about this?” he finally spoke.

“The only people who knew were Mom, the doctor, and me. For
what it’s worth, Mom did not agree with my decision not to tell you.”

“Wish her daughter was as smart as she is. Angie, what could
you have been thinking?”