Within Reach (16 page)

Cilla wasn’t about to be either gracious or docile. “Try writing
that
in a book, Michael, and they’ll boo you off the shelves. ‘A docile woman is a thing to behold,’ my foot. Modern men don’t say things like that. They don’t even
think
things like that.” She lowered her voice so that only Danica could hear. “At least, if we keep telling them they don’t, maybe they won’t. I sometimes wonder if it isn’t a losing battle.” A frown creased her brow, as though mirroring the passage of a brief pain through her mind.

Danica was intrigued. Until that moment she hadn’t seen a single dent in Cilla Buchanan. She seemed confident, optimistic, indeed a tiny bit intimidating to Danica. But with that fleeting frown something had emerged. Vulnerability? Sadness? Danica couldn’t quite pin it down because it was already gone, but she sensed that Cilla’s pain was very personal.

Over dinner she kept an ear out for anything that might lend credence to her suspicion. Once, in passing, Cilla spoke of her ex-husband, Jeffrey, but her tone remained even. Danica wondered whether she was well controlled, legitimately neutral or simply preoccupied. She kept giving Danica pensive looks from time to time.

The three were enjoying dessert when Cilla abruptly put down her fork. “I remember now,” she said in a tone of dawning recognition. “Danica Marshall. Of
course
I’ve heard that name. Didn’t you play tennis at one point?”

Danica knew that it would be foolish to feign innocence. “Yes. A long time ago.” She dared glance at Michael and caught the discomfort in his eyes. It was enough to tell her that he’d known all along, that he had been waiting for her to raise the subject herself, that he hadn’t wanted to dredge up something she would rather not have mentioned. Ironically, this knowledge gave her strength.

“You were good, as I recall. You made it to the top.”

“I was ranked fourth in the country.”

“But—” again Cilla tugged at her memory bank “—you stopped. Very suddenly.”

“Cilla, I’m not sure Dani wants to discuss—”

“It’s okay, Michael,” Danica said softly, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I don’t mind talking about it.” Maybe it was that, given the success of Cilla’s career, she wanted to share her own, albeit defunct one. Maybe it was that she liked Cilla. Maybe it was that she needed Michael to hear. Then again, maybe it was the wine she had drunk.

“I was eight when I first started playing at our club. Our pro believed I had talent, and my parents jumped at the thought. They gave me lessons, twice a week during winters, every day during summers. When I began entering tournaments and winning, they were thrilled.” She paused and looked down, momentarily unsure as to how much to say, then, with the sudden confidence that she was in the right, raised her eyes and went on.

“My father has always been a competitor. He imposed that drive on me. He was convinced that I could be the country’s top-ranked female player. He was proud of what I was doing and that motivated me to work harder. I was twelve when I went off to boarding school. I had a private coach there.” She arched a brow. “I had a special schedule and was excused from classes whenever there was a tournament. Not great for winning friends in school. Anyway, by the time I was fifteen, my parents decided to enroll me in a full-time tennis academy in Florida.”

“Arroah’s,” Cilla prompted, recalling the association of the two names.

Danica nodded. “Armand was wonderful. He was just starting the academy. I lived in his house, along with several other players.” She looked at Michael. “Reggie Nichols was one of them. We had met before, but that was where we became close friends. Eventually the school expanded enough to warrant a dorm, but Reggie and I stayed close.”

“That’s understandable,” Cilla remarked. “You were well matched in skill.”

“We liked each other. Reggie could usually beat me on the court, but I never felt myself in competition with her. That was where the trouble began, I guess.”

“Trouble?” Michael asked.

“I just wasn’t that competitive, at least not enough to take me to the top.”

“You had an injury,” he argued, revealing exactly how much he had known about her career before she had ever said a word.

Danica eyed him sadly. “The papers don’t tell everything, and what they don’t know they can’t report. I’d been agonizing for months. I reached a point where I just didn’t enjoy what I was doing. I mean, I had been living and breathing tennis for so long, and suddenly I just didn’t see the point. It was supposed to be fun, but it wasn’t. Winning didn’t mean enough to me. I didn’t have the drive it took to get to the top. And I couldn’t stand the pressure.”

“From home?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Hurting my shoulder was the best thing that could have happened. It brought things to a head. If I’d wanted, I’m sure I could have played once the shoulder healed. I chose not to.”

“Your father must have loved that,” Cilla speculated dryly.

“Don’t you know it. He tried to blame things on Armand, then on the doctor who was treating my shoulder, then, inevitably, on me.”

Michael felt her hurt. “But you held your ground.”

“For what it was worth. I’d become convinced I didn’t have it in me to hit that top spot, and being second or third or fourth just wasn’t acceptable where I came from. I was relieved when I bowed out, but I was also more than a little disappointed in myself. When you fail to come up to standards that have been solidly ingrained in you, it’s hard.”

“As if you don’t have enough going for you without having to be a superstar. You were fourth in the country! Wasn’t that good enough for him?”

“I wasn’t number one,” Danica pointed out.

Cilla, who had been momentarily taken aback by Michael’s vehemence, grew thoughtful. “There’s a fantastic story here.”

Michael pinned his sister with a glare that went far beyond vehemence. “You wouldn’t,” he warned.

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Cilla said without a flurry. “I just think that one day Danica might want to write it all down. Hell, there are books galore on the shelves by one career athlete or another. It’d be refreshing to have the other side told.”

“It’s…too personal,” Danica argued. She suddenly feared she had said too much and wondered why she had done it. Cilla was media,
real
media. If she ever pursued the story she smelled, Danica would be appalled. And embarrassed. And hurt. For once, she wished she had listened to her mother’s advice, and Blake’s. They said to be careful. She had blown it again!

seven

d
ANICA’S FEARS LURKED STRONGLY IN HER mind. Later that night, as he walked her back to her house, Michael addressed them head-on.

“She won’t say a thing, Dani. I know her as well as anyone does. She won’t betray your trust.”

Danica held his arm more tightly. “I keep asking myself why I said all that. It’s a part of my life I don’t usually talk about.”

“It’s good to talk about it. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“That’s debatable but beside the point. I barely know Cilla. If I hadn’t told
you
about it before, why did it all come out tonight?”

“Maybe because Cilla had the courage I lacked. I thought I was being thoughtful by not raising it. Maybe I was just frightened.”

“Frightened? Of what?”

“Of crossing that little line between what’s my business and what isn’t.”

“Anything’s your business. You should know that by now.” She had been with Blake too long, she realized. She was using his words. But she had barely begun to admonish herself when Michael disagreed.

“Not anything, Dani. There are some things I can’t ask.”

“Like what?”

“Like what goes on between you and Blake.”

She gave a harsh laugh. “Practically nothing, if you want to know.”

“I don’t. Oh, God, that makes it harder.” He closed his eyes for a minute, then went on, desperately needing to steer away from what she implied. “Why didn’t you tell me about your tennis before?”

“Because I didn’t want you to see me as a quitter.”

“A quitter? Come on. You reached a point in your life where a decision was called for. You made it.”

“I could have kept playing. I could have worked harder. I could have pushed myself on and on.”

“And you would have been a basket case before you were twenty.” They had reached her door. He put an arm around her waist. “You made the right decision, Danica. You did what was best for
you
.”

“That was what I told myself at the time, but I’ve had my doubts since. I took the easy way out. That’s all there is to it.”

“That’s what he thinks, isn’t it?” They both knew Michael referred to her father.

“Sometimes there’s not much difference between what he thinks and what I think.”

Michael turned to firmly grip her shoulders. “There you’re wrong. You think very differently from him. You
are
very different from him. You can’t lead your life in his footsteps. You’re your own person!”

Danica smiled softly. “You always say the right things.”

“I believe them, sweetheart. I believe in you. I just wish you did yourself.”

Touched in the most beautiful of ways by his words, his look, his faith, she stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Oh, Michael,” she whispered, holding tighter when he enclosed her in a hug.

With a soft moan, he began to caress her back, and she could only close her eyes and enjoy his warmth. It was a physical thing, but emotional, too. She needed it. Lord, how she needed it.

She felt his lips on her hair, pressing small kisses against its silk, but she needed that, too. He prized her. She had nothing to offer him, still he prized her. With him she was herself and more of a person than ever before.

His lips moved lower, whispering her name with each small kiss he planted on her forehead, her eyes, her nose. Entranced by a new and unfamiliar joy, she tipped her head to ease his access. When his lips touched hers, she caught her breath. His was sweet, warm, wafting over her as his mouth hovered, close, so close, so tempting, so ready.

She couldn’t think, could only feel and enjoy and live a dream. Her lips were open when his finally closed over them, and she gave him everything that the pent-up woman in her demanded. She had never kissed a man this way, with this hunger, this force. But sweet. It was so, so sweet. Their lips caressed and explored. Their tongues met and mated.

Then there was a quivering, from his legs to hers, her stomach to his, his chest to her breasts. And suddenly, as each realized that their bodies were taking command in a way that was forbidden, they parted.

Forehead to forehead, they breathed shallowly.

“Ahh, Dani. I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

She had wanted it, too, but she couldn’t admit it. She couldn’t admit anything, because her throat was a tight knot preventing sound.

“Don’t be angry,” he pleaded in a whisper. “I couldn’t help myself. I love you, Dani, and I don’t know what in the hell to do about it.”

She swallowed hard, then whispered his name and buried her face against the warm column of his throat.
I love you, too
, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to either of them. And it wasn’t fair to Blake.

“Maybe,” she breathed unsteadily, “maybe we shouldn’t see each other.”

“Don’t say that! Please don’t say that. I need you too much. And you need me. We’ll just…just have to keep things under control.”

“Seems to me we said the same thing once before.”

“We’ll just have to say it again and louder.” His tone echoed that determination, but when he held her back and took her face in his hands, his expression was exquisitely gentle. “There are times when I hate Blake, when I wish you could…you would leave him.…Do you love him, Dani?”

“I’m married to him,” she whispered even as her body was yearning for closer contact with this man to whom she wasn’t married.

“But do you love him?”

“There are…different kinds of love.”

“Do you
love
him?

She closed her eyes and took a pained breath.
Not as I love you, Michael Buchanan
.

“I want you to love him, Dani. I want you to say that what we have together is just an aberration. Maybe if I know that, I’ll be able to keep my distance. Say it. Say it!”

“I can’t!” she cried, opening her eyes and returning the same look of helplessness Michael wore. She couldn’t lie. Either to him
or
herself. She didn’t know if she loved Blake. Certainly what she felt for him was far different from what she felt for Michael. Maybe what she felt for Michael was an aberration, but it had been building for far too long and there was no end in sight. “I can’t. And there’s really no point.” Her voice held defeat. “I’m married to Blake; I bear his name, wear his wedding band, and…and…”

“You have his child in your belly.” Michael let out the breath he was holding. His hands dropped to her elbows, then her hands. He released one to lightly touch her stomach. “I wish it was mine,” he whispered, his voice cracking at the end. Then he turned and started down the path, knowing that he would only make things worse the longer he stayed. By the time he reached his house, though, he was regretting having left her so abruptly. She had been upset, too. And she was alone.

Bypassing Cilla’s watchful presence in the living room, he went into his den and called her. “Dani?”

“Yes?”

He kept his voice low, very low. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“You didn’t say anything I…haven’t said to myself.” Her words were broken.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

He shut his eyes tight. “You’ve been crying.”

“I’m okay now.”

“Oh, Dani,” he whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“Damn it, Michael, stop saying that!” Frustrated and angered by the entire situation, she found a sudden strength. “If you’re sorry you kissed me, remember that I kissed you back. So it’s just as much my fault as yours. More so, even. I’m the one who should be thinking about Blake. I’m the one who should be thinking about Blake. I’m the one who’s betrayed him. And I’m
not
sorry!”