Keep On Loving you (27 page)

Again. Still.

Probably forever.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A
S
THEY
TRAVELED
back to the mountains, Zan glanced over at Mac, noting her defensive posture hadn't changed. Though the passenger side of his SUV had plenty of room, her legs were bent so the heels of her sneakers were perched on the seat cushion. Her arms were wrapped around her knees.

In the thirty minutes since they'd left the hospital, she hadn't said a word or moved a muscle. On the outside, she looked rock-solid. On the inside...

“That had to be a scare,” he said, flicking on his headlights. The dark was coming on. The Walkers had stuck around for more updates on their sister, then gone to lunch as a group, all of them much quieter than normal. After returning with food for Ryan, they'd received a final update on Poppy.

The hospital wanted to keep her overnight. Well, that's what the nurse said, but Zan wondered if the decision came at the behest of Ryan, who had the pretty face and the cash to get just about anything he wanted.

And he wanted his pregnant bride-to-be to have a night of rest and recuperation under professional supervision.

Zan understood the man's feelings. Mac was clearly holding tight to a bundle of emotional stress and he was going to do what he must to help her release that. He didn't like to see her hurting.

“Mac?” he said, trying again to get a response. “What do you say we go out for a nice dinner?”

She suddenly jolted, spine straightening, and even in the dim light he could see her anxious expression. “I'm supposed to take care of Mason tonight!”

“No, don't you remember? Shay and Jace are keeping him, since he's already with London.”

“Oh, right.” Her back relaxed into the seat, but she was still folded into a tight ball.

“So what do you say to dinner?” he asked again.

“Just take me home.” She rested her cheek on the top of her knees, her face turned away from him. “I'm tired.”

She had to give him directions. But he found her duplex off one of the narrow side streets near the village center. It was a no-frills white stucco box with a single-wide driveway and a solo garage on each end. “I left my car at the Blue Arrow hospital,” she said, as he pulled in.

“I'll drive you to it tomorrow morning.”

She cast a swift look at him but didn't say anything until he killed the car engine and made to exit the car. “You don't need to get out.”

“I do if I'm going to rustle up some dinner for us,” he said, trailing her toward her front door, illuminated by a small porch light and painted a deep green.

“Zan,” she began as she shoved her key in the lock.

“Mac,” he countered. “You've had a rough day. Let me do this.”

Once they were inside, he saw the bathroom straight ahead, at the very end of a short hall. He made for it, then glanced around at the small tiled room. A relaxing bath was what she needed, but there was only a narrow stall shower. So he got that going, adjusting the temperature.

“What are you doing?” she said from behind him.

“Getting this just right so you can hop in and wash some of your stress down the drain.”

Backing out, he had to turn sideways to let her pass. “By the time you're done, I'll have something for us to eat. Don't rush.”

She shook her head at him but proceeded inside the steamy enclave and shut the door behind her.

That gave Zan a real chance to look around. It didn't take long. There was a good-size bedroom with a brass bed that looked as old as the mountains covered in a hand-stitched quilt. A small, painted dresser and a nightstand rounded out the furnishings. Another, smaller quilt hung on the open wall and opposite was a window framed by simple cotton curtains.

The living area was big enough for a comfortable-looking couch, covered in denim fabric with a crocheted blanket tossed over the top. A wooden chair with thick cushions on the seat and back was positioned at an angle to the couch and the flat-screen television sitting on a low table beneath the front window. The kitchen was an L-shaped countertop tiled in dark green and yellow with a small range and white-painted cabinets. All the rooms were—unsurprisingly—very clean and almost oddly tidy.

There were only two items stuck to the face of the fridge with plain round magnets: a crayon portrait with “Mason” scrawled beneath a round head with a big smile and a photo of London—probably her most recent school portrait.

It struck him, hard, that Mac should have more disorder in her life. There should be a bigger house with a man's hiking boots tumbled on the bedroom rug and his jacket hanging in the entry. She loved to read, so books should be left open on the couch—one a thriller and one a romance. A cookbook should be tossed on the countertop with take-out menus used as place marks.

Where were the flowers in a vase, the ones her guy brought to her every Friday afternoon? A beautiful bunch that would last a full seven days until he came home with the next one.

There should be more things stuck to her fridge. Ticket stubs, a pending invitation, a dozen photos. More signs of life.

Signs of a fuller life, in which Mac had a partner who appreciated her—a man who didn't mind brushing up against the occasional thorn because the honey beyond was so very sweet.

While Zan had been gone, he'd never imagined her having that life. For ten years he'd pictured her just as he'd left her, young and wild, though still rooted to her mountains. But in that decade, she should have made a match and built the kind of relationship her siblings had with their significant others.

But then...then Zan wouldn't have had this hiatus with her and it would be some other man's pleasure to provide her peace and solace after a long day. Instead, it was he who had the opportunity to give Mac the security and space to let out all the emotional turmoil bottled inside her.

To once again be her shelter.

So he got busy.

She wandered into the kitchen with her hair slicked back wet and wrapped in a long robe. Beneath it he could see flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt. Her slippers were puffy and most likely down.

“Just in time,” he said, sending the wooden spoon in another circle around the saucepan. “There's a glass of wine waiting for you in the fridge.”

“You're cooking?” she asked, coming closer to peer at what was sitting over the heat and to look into the bowls on the counter beside the range.

“My specialty. A recipe I learned from an old gypsy woman in Kiev.”

“Hmm,” Mac said. “It sure looks like the chicken soup with alphabet letters and the Goldfish crackers I keep on hand for Mason.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You mean the old gypsy woman lied to me?”

Her lips twitched, but then she turned away from him to head to the fridge, where she pulled out the wine.

The lip twitch he'd take. Mac had been strung so tight on the way back up the hill that he'd worried he'd never see her smile again.

“I've got nachos in the oven, too,” he said. “Baked like you like 'em.”

“Soup and nachos.” She sipped at the wine he'd poured for her. “Gourmet.”

“Your pantry, sweetheart. With a different set of ingredients I could have whipped up something more exotic that I learned on my global adventures.”

There was a tiny two-top seating area to one side of the room and he heard her pull out a chair there. Presumably, she sat. “Global adventures,” she mused. “What were you looking for, exactly, when you went adventuring around the globe?”

He shrugged a shoulder, turned down the heat on the soup. “What every traveler wants. Beauty. Spectacular vistas. Sunrises that blow your mind. Full moons so close you feel like you can dip your fingertips in the green cheese.”

“That was all here, Zan.” She let a beat go by. “Are you sure instead of looking for beauty you weren't
escaping
something else?”

Zan wasn't touching that remark. Instead, he served up the food and took a seat at the small table with Mac. When his knees bumped hers, she swung her feet around to the other side of the chair, which caused her to half turn away from him.

She went quiet and tense again.

Shit.

But instead of pressing her for conversation, he let her play with her food—she didn't eat much, even though he thought the nachos were damn good—and then let her clean up her kitchen. She made it so pristine it was as if they'd never eaten there. It was as if Zan had never touched a thing in the place.

He wondered if that was the point.

Shit.

After that was done, he topped off her wine, swiped a beer for himself and turned off almost all the lights. In the shadowed living area, he sat on the couch and patted the cushion beside his. “Take a rest, babe.”

“I think maybe I'm tired enough to go to bed now.”

He stood up. “Sure. It looks big enough for both of us.”

Mac promptly sat down on the other end of the couch.

Zan narrowed his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“We're not going to sleep together anymore,” she said, making it sound like a dare.

Okay, she was definitely wound up. Taking his seat again, he made another assessment of her. “Whatever you say, baby.”

She glanced over at him. “Whatever I say?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Please don't make such a fuss about it,” she snapped in a snotty tone. “I hate to see you broken up like this, Zan.”

Definitely wound up.

“Hey, I understand you're in a mood. You had a shock today. You were afraid you might lose someone you loved.” The person who held all Mac's hope.

At that, she curled into herself again, her feet on the bottom cushion, her arms curled around her knees.

He gentled his voice. “You could talk about it, honey.”

“I don't want to,” she whispered. “I want to put it from my mind.”

Too bad it wasn't that easy. “It stays with you, Mac. You know that.”

“I don't know that. I only know that I've got to stay strong. I'm Mac Walker, female head of the family, keeping it all together.” She said that last to her knees, with her forehead pressed to the caps of them. “Mac Walker, female head of the family, not thinking about all that might go wrong.”

“Mac...” He slid down the sofa, getting within touching distance.

“Don't,” she croaked out when he reached a hand toward her. “Don't make me break.”

At least that's what he thought she said, though it might have been “Don't make me weak.” Shit.

She was the least fragile woman he knew, but right now he wanted to wrap her in cotton and rock her like a child. If he had the power, he'd make her universe filled with sunshine and smiles, clean snow and perfect sunsets.

It was a powerful yearning.

“How do you handle it?” She was still talking to her kneecaps.

“What?” he asked.

“You lost people you love. What's your coping mechanism? You never speak of it, of them.”

She had that right. Mentioning his family by name to Brett the other day was one of the rare times he'd addressed the subject.

“What's your way to handle that loss?” Mac insisted. “It almost broke me, just thinking something had happened to Poppy.”

“Babe, you wouldn't be able to handle it my way.” She had too many people who loved her and counted on her, so she couldn't just cut herself off. “I'm not sorry about that—it's just true.”

“What do you mean?”

She wasn't looking at him, which made it easier to explain. “Maybe because of when it happened to me—at such a young age—or how I lost them all at once, but I cope with my losses in a manner that can't be your manner.” He'd never stated it so baldly. He'd never thought it through so clearly.

“What do you mean?”

“I cope by keeping separate. That's not an option for you. You can't keep distant from your family. They would never allow it.”

“But you can keep distant?”

“I
do
keep distant, you know that. I don't have real family any longer and getting too close to other people is out for me because...because I just won't. I won't care deeply because I learned the danger of it young and avoiding that danger became ingrained early.”

“You cared about us,” she whispered. “You cared about me.”

“Not enough, right?” He had to be truthful. “I left. I left you all.” Before
he
could be left. “To me, loving means loss.” It was always the end game. The fucking price.

That he didn't intend to pay ever again.

Something that he said got to Mac. One moment she was curled into that frozen ball, and the next her shoulders began to shake. Every part of her began to shake and seeing that knocked something loose inside Zan, too. He needed her in his arms.

“Sweetheart,” he said, starting to move into her.

She swung toward him, too, crawling into his lap and clinging. He held her but her arms came around him, too, and her face was pressed to his neck as silent sobs racked her body.

“Mac...” he said, whispering it against her hair. Glad for the breakthrough that was releasing her from all that tension.

“Oh, God,” she said, her lips moving on his skin.

And as he held her tighter it came to him. This was no true release. While she seemed to be crying, her eyes were actually dry.

“Oh, Zan,” she said now.

And then he suspected something else—that these non-tears were not just for herself...but for him, too.

He hadn't the faintest idea what to do with that.

* * *

M
AC
MADE
BREAKFAST
in her kitchen, Zan doing his part with monitoring toast and watching the eggs and bacon while she poured juice and set the table. A few days ago, this domesticity might have made her heart ache just a little. This morning it was much more than a twinge because now she was absolutely, completely, a million percent convinced it was just an illusion.