Marry Me Again (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 1) (10 page)

"No." She jumped at his harsh tone. "I didn't know, Tucker. He wouldn't tell me what he wanted for his birthday until that night, right before he went to sleep, when you weren't there."

Tucker scowled and paced some more.

"It was that damned Jimmy Horton," she said. "His parents separated, and then they got back together. And it gave Sammy the idea that you might come back, too."

When he looked as dangerous as ever, Rebecca kept talking.

"He didn't... It's not like he begged me to find you and ask you to come see him, Tucker. He didn't even tell me what he wanted until that night after the party."

"So why didn't you call me?"

His words hung in the air, and she paused, knowing they'd reached the heart of the matter.

And she wanted to hurt him then. She knew it was wrong, knew it wouldn't solve anything, but she wanted him to have a taste of the pain he'd caused her and Sammy.

"Why, Rebecca? Why couldn't you just call me and tell me?"

"Would it have mattered to you?"

He halted, almost in mid-step, and she heard the breath whiz out of his lungs.

She'd wounded him, and now she found no pleasure in it. "Tucker——"

"It would have mattered."

She heard the anguish in his voice and hardened her heart against it.

"You're telling me that if I had called, you would have come running?" She couldn't believe that. "It's been years, Tucker. Years without so much as a word from you. He's your son, for God's sake, and you haven't seen him in years."

Tucker sat down on the edge of the coffee table, right in front of her, and took both her hands in his. She would have resisted, should have, but something in his eyes stopped her, something urgent, something unfathomable that touched her in the core of her being.

"Tucker—"

She tried to draw away, but he held fast to her hands and ran the pads of his thumbs back and forth to calm her, and she let him. She sat there with her hands in his, closer to him than she needed to be, feeling that old familiar power.

She'd been drawn to him once, inevitably, inexplicably, undeniably, and for the life of her she couldn't understand why it had all happened.

Except, of course, for Sammy.

At one time, Rebecca had wished vehemently that she'd never met Tucker. But that hadn't lasted. Tucker had given her Sammy, and Sammy meant the world to her. As Rebecca saw it, she was meant to have Sammy. He was her world, her absolute joy. So she had been fated to fall in love with Tucker, too, and to have her heart broken by him.

Asking why didn't do any good. It never did. Fate was fate. It didn't take kindly to questions, and it always won out in the end.

Still, with him here now, she couldn't help but think... Why? Why did it have to be Tucker? Why did he have to come back? Why did her whole body go warm all over in remembrance of him when he was doing nothing but holding her hands and making her miserable, all at the same time?

"Rebecca?"

She met his eyes, when she shouldn't have. She let her hands stay there in the warmth of his hold, when she should have known better.

"I just..." Tucker faltered, and she thought it was so unlike him to be the least bit unsure of himself. "I honestly thought he'd be better off without me."

She bit her lip, bit down hard and found herself trembling, her hands still in his and tears running down her face.

She should hate him. She had for years, and one heartfelt confession couldn't change that but—oh, a part of her hurt so badly for him then. Hurt for him, and at the same time, blamed him. She tried to concentrate on the anger and to hang on to the need to blame him. She had to do that.

"It's just not enough, Tucker. It's a cop-out."

"I know," he admitted. "But it's true."

Well, maybe it was. It probably was true. Rebecca couldn't deny that. She believed Tucker did think Sammy would be better off without him, because she knew how he felt about having children.

And it just wasn't fair. It was so absolutely unfair that it had happened this way, with so much hurt and so much pain.

Grudgingly, she admitted part of the hurt came from knowing it wasn't just him to blame. She'd blamed Tucker for years for the mess they'd made of their family, but when she was being really honest, she blamed herself, too.

They'd gotten married too fast. She'd known that. They'd had too many differences, some that they hadn't even discovered until after they were married. Like Tucker saying he didn't think he'd make a good father. He'd meant it. She hadn't realized just how much he'd meant it until it was too late, until she was pregnant, hoping a baby might somehow help hold together her already troubled marriage.

It had been terribly unfair to Sammy. He deserved the very best she had to give him, and as Rebecca saw it, the best gift a mother could give her son was to bring him into the world in the midst of a strong, loving marriage. Because being a parent was hard. It was so very hard sometimes, and it scared her—being the one person in the world Sammy truly had. What if something happened to her? What if she was doing it all wrong? What if she couldn't be all that he needed? It was a job that surely was easier for two people.

Rebecca almost wept then. The sadness was just too much, too big, too overwhelming. How much of it could one person take?

It was so much easier when she could think of Tucker as a cold, unfeeling person. It was easier to hate him and then try to push him from her mind.

Why did he have to come back and bring up all these things in their shared past? Why?

He caught her unaware, lost in her thoughts and her unanswered questions, and before she could stop him, he caught another tear as it ran down her face. He was wiping her tears away, again.

But she had to remember there'd also been so many nights when she'd cried her eyes out and he'd been nowhere to be found.

She had to remember, because he was the most dangerous man she'd ever met. He touched her where no one else had. He connected with her on some level that no one else had ever reached. Why did it have to be that way between them, still, after all these years?

"I can't do this, Tucker."

She backed away nervously, as far as she could from her seat on the sofa, and when it wasn't far enough, she got up and backed up against the wall and held up her hands to warn him off.

"I don't want to be here with you. I don't want you to try to explain things to me or to make me understand, and I don't want you to touch me again." She was revealing much more than she should have with her plea, but she didn't care. She just couldn't take any more. "I can't be here with you like this. It's too hard. It hurts too much, and it won't change anything, anyway."

He stared at her from across the room, and she was grateful for the distance, although it did little to diminish the power he had over her.

"I just can't do it, Tucker."

He watched her for the longest time, watched her as if he were trying to look deep inside her and know all her secret thoughts. And just when she'd decided he wasn't going to back away, he did.

"All right," he said.

He went to the door, and she breathed a little easier. He opened it, and she felt some semblance of self-control again.

"I'll see you—"

She backed away a little as he paused in the doorway.

"I'll see Sammy?"

She nodded, still wary, still shaken.

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes."

Tomorrow.

How was she going to get through tomorrow?

Chapter 6

Sammy woke early, with another tummy ache.

He'd thought it would feel better this morning, now that he'd already met his dad. But it didn't. Now he was worried about the game.

His dad was coming to the soccer game, the very first one, and Sammy was glad, but he was scared, too. He wasn't very good at soccer. He was too little, and he wasn't fast enough. He tried as hard as he could, but the ball kept getting by him. And that was just at practice. Today was the real thing, the first game, and he didn't want to mess up in front of his dad.

He rolled out of bed and looked at the messed-up covers. They were going every which way. He wasn't sure he could straighten them out even if he tried. So he didn't. He figured he could get away with it one more time.

Sammy walked down the hall to his mom's room, and she was still in bed. He smiled and tiptoed over to the bed. He didn't want to wake her up. He just wanted to snuggle for a minute.

He lay down right beside her and tried not to breathe. He loved his mom. She was the greatest. And he liked his dad, too.

He just wished he understood why they didn't like each other anymore. And he wondered if it was his fault.

* * *

Tucker ran through the events of the day, time and again and long into the early morning hours.

He was overwhelmed by his feelings for his son. Awe and wonder, fear and fascination, pride and sorrow.

Tucker had missed so much already. He didn't want to miss another moment with Sammy. He'd known that within the first hour of meeting the boy. He was never going to turn his back on this child again.

So what if he didn't know anything about being a father? He'd figure it out. He and Sammy would make their own way. They'd make it work.

He would probably screw up every now and then, but he'd make damned sure that his son knew his father cared about him.

Tucker hadn't tried to explain himself to Sammy yet, and Sammy hadn't asked. All the boy had done was tell Tucker about the birthday party.

Even now, just thinking about it nearly killed Tucker. The image of those big, sad eyes staring at birthday candles had been burned into his brain. All he had to do was think about it, and a weight settled down onto his chest, and it was all he could do to breathe.

Tucker vowed he would be six feet under before he missed another birthday party.

And Rebecca?

God, what was he going to do about Rebecca?

Who'd have thought he would feel this way after all these years? It was crazy and it was hopeless, but still, there it was.

He felt like she was still his, like she always had been and she always would be. And that was crazy. She'd ceased to be his wife a long time ago. He'd killed whatever feelings she once had for him long before their marriage ended.

Still, he felt the power between them. He'd been close enough to her tonight to smell the fresh scent of her hair. It reminded him of rainwater, always had, always would.

And he had no business being close enough to notice, and no business remembering.

But he had gotten that close, and he couldn't help but remember. He remembered the way her body fit exactly, breathtakingly, against his. He remembered her smile, her laughter, her tears. He'd brought out her tears again tonight.

Damn, this was crazy.

The tears had reminded him of sitting in front of her and holding her hands in his, of running his thumb over the back of her hand and her fingers. He remembered the gold ring she'd always worn on the little finger of her right hand.

It had been her grandmother's. For a while, he'd been angry that she wore that simple gold band, yet didn't care for the expensive, impressive gemstones he'd given her.

He'd started with a big, oval-shaped diamond with light dancing inside it, as an engagement ring. And she'd worn it for a while after they got married.

Sometime later, they'd had a fight. He couldn't even remember what it had been about, but he'd gone out and bought the emerald, square cut and surrounded by diamonds, to apologize. When he gave it to her, her lips had moved to form a smile, but her eyes had said something different, and she didn't wear it. She said it was too big, that it stood so high above her hand that she kept knocking the stone against things, and she was afraid she would break it.

When he gave her the pearl set, she hadn't even smiled. It seemed to make things worse between them.

So, years ago, he'd spent a lot of time watching her hands, looking at her grandmother's little gold ring and wondering why she would wear that and not the fancier stones he'd given her.