Shaken

Dedication

For my husband, who has held me through too many tears and given me so much laughter and happiness. Thank you for loving me.

Chapter One

God, she’s beautiful.

He’d been thinking that for an hour. Hell, he’d been thinking it for eight years. From the moment he’d walked into his office and found her there with her mother, nervously awaiting the great cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Grant Sullivan. He didn’t know how great he was, but that was how she’d made him feel. He’d been able to treat her mother, but Julia was the reason he looked forward to the older woman’s appointments.

Ten years older than her, he should have known better than to give in to the temptation to ask her to dinner once his obligations with her mother were over, but something about Julia had captivated him from that first glimpse and had yet—even now—to let him go. Even after everything they’d been through. If only Julia felt the same.

If she did, they wouldn’t be sitting in this lawyer’s office on a cloudy winter day, on opposite sides of the table, getting a divorce.

He let his eyes course over her, wishing they were his hands. What he wouldn’t give to pull the pins from her glorious cornsilk hair. It should be free, flowing like sunshine over her bare shoulders, or better yet, over his pillow on their bed. Instead, it was pulled tight, twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. The sedate style matched the slightly loose pinstriped black suit she wore. The skirt came to her knees, baring creamy calves and slim ankles he’d traced with his lips a thousand times. A satiny blouse peeked out from beneath the jacket, its high collar tied with a satin knot on the left side of her neck. Professional, cool, reserved.

He didn’t like it.

Julia was never reserved and she sure as hell had never dressed like it. With her long-limbed build, lean with tempting curves, she was born for summer dresses and wore them year round. His favorite memories almost all included the flick of her skirt and a saucy glance over her shoulder at him. She tended to be quiet with people she didn’t know, but her surprising wit and playfulness—her passion for life—had always glinted from her sky blue eyes no matter what she did. Now she looked tied up and locked away. He didn’t like how tired she seemed, either. Gaunt. Nearly colorless. Faint purple bruises shadowed the tender skin under her eyes. Weariness and pain pulled at the corners of her mouth and reddened the rims of her eyes.

She was still crying herself to sleep.

His heart clutched tight, pain of his own pounding in his pulse. If she’d just stayed with him, he could help. He
had
helped. Night after night, when the tears would come, he’d taken her in his arms, kissed them off her cheeks. Licked them from her sunset pink lips. He knew how much it hurt, that pain that filled them both from the tips of their fingers to the bottoms of their hearts, making them feel as if someone had ripped out their insides and left them empty. As if something horrible were sucking at the emptiness, taking more than they had to give.

She wasn’t there anymore to comfort. She didn’t return his kisses, didn’t hold tight to his shoulders as he turned the pain into something worth feeling. Didn’t help him fill the emptiness with passion until both of them could finally sleep. He could still feel the satin of her breasts against his lips when he woke up at night, hear the sobs that came from pleasure instead of heartbreak. Her taste, her warmth, the solace of sliding deep into her body, into her arms…just memories now. Her scent had faded from their apartment in the two months since she’d left. He’d found himself sleeping in her closet some nights, because it was the only place the smell of her was still strong enough to soothe him. But even that was disappearing.

He stared across the table, wondering if she could feel his longing for her. Did she still long for him? She hadn’t met his gaze once since coming in. Couldn’t she look at him? Or did guilt for leaving him keep her eyes on the tightly fisted hands in her lap? She had to know he was watching her, her face had that soft pink flush she usually got mad at him for. She used to say she could tell when he was undressing her with his eyes and it never failed to make her blush. Did she know when he was making love to her with his thoughts?

“Grant,” his lawyer’s quiet voice interrupted. “Is that acceptable to you?”

Grant tore his gaze from Julia’s face and met the entirely unwelcome visage of some lawyer another surgeon at the hospital had recommended. Grant had trouble remembering his name—something Soaring Eagle? Maybe Jack?—so all he did was raise an eyebrow. “Is what acceptable?”

Irritation flickered across the man’s bronzed face, but he stifled it quickly. “We’re discussing the division of property.”

Grant turned his stare back to Julia, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her lawyer was a woman, dark hair and dark eyes, whispering something in her ear. Julia shook her head, even though her lawyer looked decidedly unhappy with whatever it was Julia wouldn’t listen to.
Welcome to my world, lady.

“Let her have anything she wants.” God knew he owed it to her.

“That’s just it, Grant, she doesn’t want anything. Just her clothes and personal paperwork, which she says she already has in her possession.”

Grant frowned. “What about support?”

Whatever-his-name-was shook his head. “She doesn’t want it.”

He turned his attention back where it belonged. “What do you mean you don’t want support? What are you supposed to live on?”

She finally had to look him in the eye, the effect like a punch to the jaw. “I’ve gone back to playing.”

Her cello. She’d never stopped playing, really, but when they’d met, she’d been on her way to a promising symphonic career. She’d turned it all down, for him. For
them
. Sometimes, if he bothered her enough, she’d play for him and Aut— He cut the thought off ruthlessly.

It did no good to remember. It only hurt and he didn’t have the right to hurt.

“There’s always been a standing invitation for me with JD and the Dallas Orchestra, you know that.” JD Kinsella hadn’t been happy to lose his protégée to marriage, and he’d made no bones about not liking Grant. Their animosity over the years had settled into a grudging acceptance that neither of them was leaving her life. Until now. “I’ve already made arrangements to accept.”

“You what?”
Dallas?
Even the reminder of her mentor didn’t matter to him as much as what she’d just said. “You’re leaving Laguna? When?”

She didn’t flinch at his near snarl. “As soon as the divorce is settled. If you’re really selling your practice the way your lawyer says, you won’t have any money to spare anyway. So I won’t need anything from you.”

Like hell, she didn’t. “You need support.”

Her lips curled tight. That damn stubborn glare. How many times had he faced that and known deep in his gut he wasn’t going to win an argument? “I don’t want your money.”

“
I
don’t want the divorce,” he reminded her, hoping she remembered he could be just as stubborn, too. “Looks like neither of us gets to be happy.”

“Grant,” his lawyer interrupted, voice low and urgent. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that letting her go without alimony is in your best interests.”

“
She’s
the only thing I’m interested in.” And he made sure she heard him say it. “I can live the rest of my life on what that practice is worth and she knows it. If she’s going to walk out on our marriage, she’s damn well going to go on my terms. No support, no divorce. Period.”

“You can’t be serious,” Julia’s lawyer replied, her dark eyes filled with shock.

“Stop it, Grant.” But Julia knew. He could see it in her eyes. He wasn’t going to let her walk out of this room having kicked him off her heels like the dust she didn’t want staining her life anymore.

“No.” It was the most satisfying word he’d said in months.

She shook her head and looked away. “Why can’t you just let me go?”

So many reasons. Too many to tell her with these two on either side of the table and an older woman clacking away on a small steno machine in the corner. Because he needed her, because his entire world failed without her. Because being with her was the only way he could keep the pain at bay, even if he didn’t deserve a single minute in her presence. He’d failed her when she’d needed him the most. He didn’t deserve to be in this room with her right now. But still, all he wanted was the chance to—if not make it right—make it better.

“Why can’t you stay?”

She closed her eyes, slowly, and held them shut while tears streaked down her cheeks.

He heard the leather arms of his chair creak beneath his grip as he rose to go to her.

“Because I can’t stay with a man who can’t even mourn his own daughter.”

Grant tried to suck in a breath, but it wouldn’t come. His chest felt solid, heavy. He sank back into the chair.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

“Julia.” He choked her name out, but she was already pushing her chair back and running out of the room. “Julia!”

Then he was on his feet, following.

“Dr. Sullivan, I don’t think—”

But whatever Julia’s lawyer thought didn’t much matter to him. He strode out, following the open doors to the corridor. She had already stepped into the elevator at the end, her eyes wide as she watched him approach. The doors began sliding shut. If her face had shown relief, he might have stopped. Instead, she stared at the moving doors in panic.

It was all he needed to start running.

Chapter Two

The doors whisked shut just as he cleared his shoe heel. Julia stared up at her husband with a mix of horror and relief. Seemed to be the story of her life these days. Nothing but mixed emotions, misery and confusion and a desperate need to shut them out. Grant panted, catching his breath from the short sprint. Julia tightened her arms around herself, hating how much she wanted to wrap them around him instead.

Don’t turn to him. He’ll hold you, but it won’t be real. It wasn’t ever real.

Not that the pep talk did her any good. How could one man look so good and so horrible at the same time? He’d lost weight since the accident, but even more since she’d left him. His thick black hair fell over his forehead, overgrown by a full three inches. Unbelievably, streaks of silver had grown in at his temples, something that had never been there before. He hadn’t shaved in days, his stubble darkening the strong line of his jaw and somehow making his gray eyes seem to glow.

Another couple of days and it would be a full beard. She liked that look on him best, discovering it only after Autumn was born. The baby had seen to it that they’d had neither time to sleep nor the ability to take more than passing care of themselves, and Grant hadn’t shaved until he’d gone back to work. He never seemed to notice what a day’s stubble did for his appearance. Made him rakish. Sexy, in that rumpled, never-left-the-bed kind of way. Given his lack of a tie, the neck of his gray shirt not even fully buttoned, and his black jacket seeming more of an afterthought than a planned choice, she rather thought Grant hadn’t been leaving his bed much at all lately.

Against her will, she remembered being there, snuggled against him in the blankets. Saturday morning sleep-ins, when she’d try to read a book and he’d pretend to read a newspaper. It always ended the same. Grant’s hand sneaking up the hem of her camisole skirt, easing the silk up over her backside with a tickle and a tease. Caressing the fold where her thigh met her bottom and following it with his fingertip. With his mouth. A nibble…a kiss…a lick. Eight years together and she had never finished a book when he was around.

She’d read twelve in the last two months.

And she didn’t remember a word of any of them.

“What are you doing?”

“Following you,” he replied, his graveled voice more rumbly than ever. His fingertips grazed her cheek, smoothing a loose lock of her hair back. Her skin warmed with just that tiny touch. A rough thumb traced the wet track of her tears. “Making sure you’re all right.”

Hurt lanced her, startling a brittle laugh out of her. She hadn’t been all right for almost a year. Not since that rainy night last January. Not since the second the wheels of the car lost contact with the road, lurching them sickeningly sideways and into the metal girder that should have kept them on the road. Should have…

She jerked out of his loose hold. Another twenty seconds and they’d be at the lobby. She’d be free. Alone. Until then… “I’m not. But that’s not your concern.”

“You’ll always be my concern. You know that. Anything you need, I’ll give.”

“Not anything.” He’d support her, take care of her, tell her he loved her. But he would never give her what she needed from him. A partner in mourning. The sense that she wasn’t alone in this agony. Every time she cried, she could feel him bracing himself against it. Could feel his impatience with her for not letting it go, month after month. Until she couldn’t bear that flinch. The flinch that told her the last eight years were a complete and total lie.

“No,” he agreed, his voice little more than a breath at her nape as he stood behind her. She could feel the heat of him through her clothes. All she had to do was lean back and he’d wrap his arms around her. He’d take her pain on his broad shoulders and give her nothing in return. “Anything in my power, though, is yours.”