Rumor Has It (16 page)

He didn't understand. He was trying, but Katie could see he didn't understand. She could have explained it to him in the concise, clinical way of a psychologist. She could have told him that the ideal process for the successful resolution of feelings toward infertility were not unlike the stages toward acceptance of death. She could have explained
that while most of the time she felt as if she had completely accepted her fate, she sometimes fell back into the anger stage because she was a goal- oriented person who was being denied a life goal. She could have explained that she often didn't feel entitled to her sense of loss because she had willingly chosen to participate in a dangerous sport and felt she had to accept the consequences. She could have explained, but she didn't want to.

How could she expect him to understand the kind of loss she had suffered? How could she possibly make him understand the hollow feeling she got knowing she would never experience pregnancy, would never know what it was to feel her child grow inside her, to give it life, to nurse it at her breast. How could he feel any of her emotions? He was a man. He couldn't feel the loss of a privilege that had never been his.

Nick hated it when she shut him out. He could feel her going inside her emotional isolation booth and vowed to stick his foot in the door before she could close it.

“Katie,” he said, reaching out to her, “talk to
me. Help me understand what you're feeling. Don't shut me out.”

She moved to look out the window above the sink, effectively dodging contact with him, but she didn't voice an objection when he stepped behind her and corralled her against the counter with an arm on either side of her. She sighed and resigned herself to giving him as brief an explanation as he would accept.

“After my mother left us, I used to lie awake nights thinking about the children I would have when I grew up, and what a wonderful mother I'd be. It will never happen to me, Nick. It hurts.”

The intensity of the hurt had taken her by surprise. It always stung a little to encounter children—she expected it. But it had been years since the pain had been as sharp as when she'd looked down at Nick and those two darling little redheads. Weeks ago she had seen him with Zoe's little daughter in his arms. What she'd felt then had been nothing in comparison. The difference, she realized, was that she hadn't been in love with him then.

It hurt him too. It cut at Nick's heart to see Katie in pain. He knew how full of love she was.
She could be cool and aloof, but he knew that behind her shield was a woman who was perhaps too sensitive, too easily hurt. Glimpses of the vulnerable side of Katie never failed to bring out his protective instincts, never failed to make him love her more. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her back against his body.

“It's not an all or nothing proposition,” he said softly, following her gaze as she stared out the window. Watch rolled on his back in the grass with an enormous rawhide bone in his mouth. “Adoption is a perfectly good alternative.”

“Not for me.”

“Why not?”

Why not? Because she didn't want to be a single parent, and what man was going to want someone else's children when he was perfectly capable of fathering his own? Why not? Because what she knew of the process seemed so cold, analytical, and businesslike. It reminded her too much of people coming to the farm to buy foals— weeding through the crop, looking for what characteristics were important to them. The whole procedure made her question her own reasons for wanting to become a parent in the first place.

If he wanted to hear deeper reasons, they were there as well. But Katie didn't offer them to him. In love with him or not, she was too used to keeping her own counsel to open up her innermost self for examination by Nick.

She said simply, “It just isn't.”

“That's not a reason, Katie, that's stubbornness. Lots of people adopt kids. It's an option to give you what you want—why won't you look at it?”

Anger that had been simmering just under the surface bubbled up. She turned in his arms and tried to push him away. She didn't succeed, but he took the hint and stepped back. “I've had five years to look at it,” she said, glaring up at him. “I've lain awake nights looking at it. How long have you spent looking at it, five minutes?”

The last thing he'd meant to do was add to her hurt, yet he'd done so with his careless advice. The evidence of his mistake shimmered in her eyes and trembled on her wide, soft mouth. He could have kicked himself. Hitching his hands to his hips he sighed in defeat. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—”

“No, you shouldn't have,” she said. Abandoning
her drink on the counter she walked stiffly past Nick to the bathroom and shut herself inside.

She half expected him to be gone when she came back out nearly half an hour later. She had needed the time by herself to regain control, to raise her defensive shield of cool composure, to put all her feelings back into their compartments where they usually stayed. Maybe she had wanted Nick to take some time to think too. Maybe if he thought about the situation, he would opt out now.

She wouldn't blame Nick. It wasn't his fault she couldn't give him a family. It didn't do any good to rail against fate either. She knew; she'd already wasted too much time doing that. But it was hard not to curse her fate. After everything that had happened, didn't she deserve some compensation? She loved Nick—deeply, selfishly, possessively. The last thing she wanted was to let him go.

Methodically she went through her bedtime ritual of washing her face, brushing her teeth, combing out and braiding her waist- length hair. Phys ically and emotionally drained she undressed, dropping her clothes into the white wicker hamper.
She slipped into the robe she kept on a hook beside the door, belting it snugly.

Taking a deep breath to clam herself, Katie sank down onto the vanity chair and leaned her elbows on her knees. She was overreacting. The subject of children had blindsided her, and she automatically had turned defensive. Now she calmly made a mental list of her attributes, of the positive things she could bring to a relationship. She reviewed the bright side of her life—good friends, a business she had built and was extremely proud of.

She couldn't have children and had decided against adoption after a great deal of soul-searching. It wasn't the end of the world. A fulfilling, meaningful life was not based on one's ability to reproduce. She would have to sit down with Nick and explain her feelings to him like the cool-headed, responsible adult she normally was. All she had to do now was hope he hadn't left after deciding she was a raving lunatic.

Nick wasn't gone.

Katie stepped from the bathroom to find her bedroom aglow with candlelight—a soft, honey-gold light that warmed the peach- colored walls to
a rich melon hue. The shades had been drawn, the bedclothes turned down invitingly. The radio on the table beside her bed murmured a slow, romantic song. There was a single peach rose lying on her pillow. And there was Nick with his sincere dark gaze on her and his arms open wide.

Feeling as if she had just received a reprieve, Katie walked into his embrace and fell even more deeply in love with him. Her lips trailed across his chest as her arms went around him, and tears of relief tried to force their way out from behind the barrier of her tightly closed lids.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, not quite certain what she was apologizing for—for flying off the handle, for leaving him alone, for not being able to have his children?

Nick's hand slid over her hair as he held her close. “Shh, it's all right, kitten. I'm sorry too. We'll work it out.”

We'll work it out. Katie had a feeling the statement meant something different to each of them. To her it meant she would be able to convince Nick she had made the only decision she could. To Nick it probably meant he thought he would
be able to convince her to choose the alternative open to her.

For the moment Katie couldn't let their differences of opinion matter. All that mattered was being in Nick's arms and letting love and desire control her actions and responses. He was hers to hold, to touch, to tease. She never wanted to let him go.

That one thought filled her mind as Nick's hands parted her robe and claimed her aching breasts. It filled her head as he laid her down on the sheets and filled with his hardness the aching emptiness between her thighs.

He was hers, and she never wanted to let him go.

“W
HAT IS THIS
thing?” Maggie asked, poking at the stainless- steel box that sat in the middle of Nick's new kitchen. Thunder rumbled overhead. “It looks dangerous.”

Nick paused in his task of adjusting the shelves in the reach- in refrigerator to glance over his shoulder. “That's a plate elevator.” He slid the refrigerator door shut and approached his latest kitchen toy to demonstrate. “The plates go in here, see? It's spring- loaded, so every time a waitress takes a plate off, a new one pops up to the top.”

“I had no idea there was so much machinery
involved in running a restaurant,” she said, her curious gaze roaming around the room.

Nick proudly looked around. He had worked like a demon to get his kitchen in shape. Now freshly painted yellow walls made a cheery background for the equipment he'd purchased. There was the brand- new stove he had spent too much money on. The ice maker, plate elevator, and reach- in refrigerator had all been bought used to get his budget back in line. The center of the room was dominated by a long, high worktable with a butcher block at one end and a sink at the other. Pots of various sizes hung from an iron rack overhead.

“Maggie,” Katie called, stepping in from the dining room. “I thought you were going to help me decide on the arrangement of these things for the walls.”

“I am.” She puffed up her red hair and batted her lashes at Nick. “Just as soon as I steal your beau away from you, Kathryn.”

“If you're looking for a date to the big party at the Drewes mansion, he's already spoken for,” Katie said, moving to the counter where Nick had been sorting through his hundreds of recipe cards.
She fussed unnecessarily with the stacks, trying to appear nonchalant. “Has anyone asked you yet?”

“Carter Hill,” Maggie replied with no enthusiasm. Frowning, she stared at the rain that poured down on the other side of the kitchen screen door.

Katie and Nick exchanged a nervous look.

“I didn't answer him though,” Maggie went on. She made a face. “All he ever wants to talk about is corporate law. The last date we had, I came right out and told him if he was going to talk about briefs, they'd better be the ones he had on under his trousers.”

Laughing, Nick leaned against Katie. She stepped away, trying to concentrate on the conversation, something she always had difficulty doing when Nick was touching her. “I think it's wise to wait. After all, the party is still more than a week away. You never know what might happen.”

“Well,” Maggie sighed. “I can tell you one thing that won't happen: I won't get asked by the one man I want to go with.”

“Why don't you ask him?” Nick suggested. “Maybe he's shy.”

“Ask him?” she questioned in a thin voice as
she turned an unhealthy shade of gray. “Some how, I don't think that would be a very good idea.” She glanced at her oversize wristwatch, relief visibly washing over her. Her shoulders sagged. Even her hair seemed to relax. “Oh, my, just look at the time. Mrs. Pruitt will be waiting for me.”

With a quick wave, she was out of the kitchen. Nick watched her until she had stepped out into the gray morning, then he turned back toward Katie. “You're gonna have to give that brother of yours a talking to.”

“Me?” Katie asked, sifting through the recipes with interest. “You're a man. Why don't you talk to him?”

“You're a relative. There's less chance of him mortally wounding you.” Giving Ryland Quaid advice on his love life did not seem like a healthy thing to do, Nick decided.

“I have every intention of speaking to Ry about it.” Katie said. “And Maggie. I've never seen such foolishness. They shoot off their mouths at each other like a couple of machine guns—until the topic turns to romance. Then you can't make a half- wit out of the pair of them.

“What's
pollo del padrone?”
she asked, singling out a recipe card. “It sounds delicious.”

Nick pulled the recipe cards out of her hands, set them aside, and pulled Katie into his arms. “Your education has been woefully inadequate, Miss Quaid. Speaking from a culinary standpoint, that is. How about social dance? Do you know one foot from the other, or am I going to have to give you a crash course before the big party?”

Katie frowned at him. “I told you once—I can't dance, Nick.”

He hung on to her when she tried to step out of his arms. It was time Katie found out there were no absolutes. It seemed to Nick she perhaps had been too accepting of her limitations. Katie was no quitter, but she tended to see things only one way. It was time she found out there was more than one solution to every problem. If she would learn to compromise, she would be able to have many of the things she now denied herself. Dancing was one of those things, he knew. Children were another.

“Now, there's dancing, and then there's dancing,” he said patiently.

Katie shook her head in frustration. “I can't. I
would love nothing more than to be able to dance with you at the party, but I can't.”

“You thought you couldn't have a relationship with me either,” he pointed out.

“That was different.”

“No, it wasn't. You had it in your head no man was going to want you, and you wouldn't reconsider. “

“Falling in love with you wasn't dangerous to my health,” she argued. “My doctor says I can't dance. I can't dance.”

“You are so stubborn!” He threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “If you would just listen to me, but no. You see things only one way—your way. Nobody else knows anything.”

“I never said that!”

“But you're correct about this, right?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think, I'm gonna ask you to do the samba and lift you over my head and spin you around? You think I'm gonna make you do the lindy or something?” By the expression on Katie's face he could tell she was stuck on remembering the turns and leaps he did in his Highwayman act. He forced himself to rein in his temper and cool
off on a long sigh. Cradling Katie's face in his hands he looked deep into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”