An Inconvenient Husband (24 page)

"I was upset...
angry," she managed at last.

He stared at her, eyes
dark and compelling. "Why? Good Lord, Nicky, what had I done?"

Her throat ached with
the effort not to cry. "I didn't think you loved me anymore. You kept
telling me how you could manage. You were so...independent and self- reliant
and... I didn't feel you needed me."

His face twisted in a
wry grimace. "Nicky, I
can
manage. If we're talking about basic
human survival needs. I don't need someone to wash my socks and make my bed. I
don't need someone to do my cooking. I don't need a housekeeper or a fussing
mother. I didn't marry you to fulfill those functions. I married you because I
needed a wife, a friend, a lover."

She felt the damp drip
of a tear on her hand and she glanced down, seeing nothing but a blur.
"You never told me you needed me. All I wanted was for you to tell me you
missed me when we were apart." Her voice broke. "I wanted you to tell
me you wanted me home when I wasn't."

He came to his feet,
raking both hands through his hair—a frustrated, helpless gesture. "I
can't believe this," he said on a note of despair. "I was expressing
my love for you by not being selfish about what I wanted for myself. By not
interfering with your freedom to be who you wanted to be and what you wanted to
do. It wasn't because I didn't care."

She closed her eyes,
digesting the words, knowing the truth of them, knowing, too, how little she
had understood her own husband, the man whom she had loved for his
unpossessiveness, his unselfishness and generosity of spirit.

"I never looked
at it like that," she said in a small voice, glancing up at him, seeing
desolation edged in his features.

He pushed his hands
into his pockets and took a few steps away, turned on his heel and came back to
where she was sitting.

"And when you no
longer came home when I was home," he went on, "I assumed it was
because that's how you wanted it." A muscle jerked at his temple. "I
wondered if you'd stopped loving me, if you'd found someone else."

"Oh, God,"
she muttered miserably. "No, no."

"Nicky," he
said softly, "what else was I to think?"

She shook her head
numbly. Why had she not told him about her worries? Her fears? Would he not
have understood? He was her husband. He had married her and promised to love
her always. Why, then, had she doubted him?

It was easy to find
excuses: She'd been young and inexperienced. They'd been married much too soon.
They hadn't known each other well enough. She had not truly understood that
Blake did not express himself with words. He was the strong, silent type—she had
loved that about him, yet she hadn't had the maturity to know how to deal with
it.

Blake sat down again
next to her. Not too close, leaving space. Tears blinded her and she wiped at
them.

"I'm so
sorry," she said thickly. "I'm so sorry."

Across the space between
them he took her hand. "I'm sorry, too," he said softly.

"I should have
just come out and told you what I needed, told you about why I was so scared. I
made so many mistakes, so many stupid mistakes." Her throat ached with the
effort not to cry.

"We both did,
Nicky. I've never been one to express my feelings, I know that. I took for
granted that you knew how I felt about you." Grief and regret darkened his
eyes. "I loved you so deeply, Nicky, it did not occur to me that you
needed reassurance, that I needed to...to be more verbal about it."

It hurt to see the
pain in his face and she lowered her gaze to his ringless left hand resting on
his denim-covered thigh. "You...we...we were so far away, and then you'd
call, and I was always so happy to hear your voice and then... and then you
wouldn't say anything. You were always so businesslike." She glanced up at
him. "I was so insecure."

He smiled ruefully.
"The phone never struck me as a very romantic piece of equipment for
communication. It's what I use for business and other nonintimate
matters."

"I so wanted to
hear you say you loved me, that you missed me."

"I always missed
you. And you were always on my mind—in the middle of a meeting, in the middle
of a field of yams or vanilla beans." He gave a wistful little smile.
"When you come to think of it, Nicky, you've been thought of, missed and
loved, in practically every corner of the world."

Regret twisted inside
her. She couldn't make her voice work and she sank her teeth into her lower lip
to stop it from trembling.

Blake sighed wearily.
"I'm sorry I'm not a romantic on the telephone, whisper words of love,
sensuous, intimate stuff." He gave a helpless little groan. "It's not
my style, Nicky, but that doesn't mean that I didn't feel all these things. I
thought you knew that."

She shook her head
numbly.

"When you weren't
home anymore, I should have demanded an explanation," he said in a
strangled voice. "I should never have let it go on the way it did."

"Why did
you?"

He shook his head.
"My pride was hurt. The only reason I could come up with was that you
found someone else, and I wasn't—"

"Oh, Blake,"
she whispered, "no, no."

"Do you remember
that dream you told me about? The one with me on a horse, rescuing you?"

"Yes."

He rubbed his neck,
his eyes bleak. "Every time I came home alone to the house, that's what I
wanted to do. I wanted to get on the next plane to wherever you were and simply
pick you up and take you home with me. I wanted to tell you I couldn't live
without you, that I wanted you, that I loved you more than anything in the
whole world and you belonged with me."

How she had hoped and
dreamed that he would come—to Morocco, Rome, New York and tell her just those
words. "I wanted you to do that," she admitted. "I was always
secretly waiting for you to come."

"I was too damned
proud. The idea that you didn't want me was not easy to accept, and I wasn't
going to beg for your love."

She closed her eyes
briefly, stunned by the notion that he might ever have thought he'd have to beg
for her love. It filled her with sadness and regret.

What a terrible thing
had happened between them.

She thought of the
dream, trying to see the meaning. She swallowed painfully and forced herself to
look at Blake. "There was truth in what you said in the dream, you know,
about my having to rescue myself. I was wrong to sit and wait for you to come
for me. I should have rescued myself."

He searched her face.
"How?" he asked softly.

"I should have
talked about my fears instead of letting them ferment inside of me. I should
have been home with you talking about it instead of staying away and worrying
whether it mattered to you that I wasn't there."

He gave a weary little
smile. "Oh, it mattered to me, Nicky. What do you think? That house was
nothing with you not in it—just another place to sleep, another place to eat.
Except worse."

"Worse?"

"Because
everything reminded me of you, accentuating the fact that you weren't there. At
least in a hotel room everything is anonymous and impersonal." His mouth
quirked in self-derision. "I couldn't stand being alone in the house, so
I'd stay at a hotel near the World Bank office."

She felt an aching
regret. "I called and called at all hours of the night," she said,
her voice trembling. "And you were never there. I thought you were with
someone else."

His face worked.
"God, Nicky, what kind of crazy ideas did you have in your head? How could
you ever, ever think I wanted anyone but you?"

Tears ran silently
down her cheeks. She was afraid to utter another word.

He moved closer to
her, taking both her hands in his own. "Nicky, do you have any idea how
much I loved you?"

She shook her head.
"If I had known I wouldn't have done what I did." She felt the
strength of his hands, drawing courage from it. It was so hard to say what she
had to say, what she needed to. "I put you to the test," she
confessed. "I stayed away to test you. I wanted you to prove yourself, but
it had to be on my terms."

"And I didn't
know your rules."

"I can't believe
I did this. How could I have done this?" She withdrew her hands from his
grasp and covered her face. "I don't know what to do," she said on a
low moan.

His arms came around
her, locking her against him. "You can forgive yourself," he
suggested quietly. "You can forgive me. And then I'll have to do the same
thing."

She lowered her hands,
feeling her face against his shoulder, wanting to curl up closer against him,
feel his warmth sooth the grieving sadness inside her. She sat very still.
"I can forgive you," she said shakily. "It's not hard at all. But
I don't know about forgiving myself."

He lifted her chin and
his face was close, his eyes full of tenderness. "I feel exactly the same
way. I'm having trouble forgiving myself for my stupid pride. It's a lot easier
forgiving you."

She shook her head.
"I don't understand. Why is that? I played such a terrible, immature game.
It was unfair and dangerous. How can you forgive me for that?"

His mouth tilted in a
solemn little smile. "Because I love you more than words could ever
express, Nicky."

She sat motionless as
the words seeped into her soul. The pain eased out of her chest as jubilant
tears filled her eyes.

"Nicky?" His
mouth brushed against hers. "I love you. I always did, I always will. I've
never wanted anybody but you."

"I love you,
too." A sob broke loose and then she was crying uncontrollably, a torrent
of emotion freeing her heart, her mind. He held her tight against him.

"We are a sorry
pair," he muttered when her body grew limp against him. "You're the
verbal one and you can't talk, and I'm the quiet one and now I have to do all
the talking. All right, then, here we go. Did I tell you how much I love you?
Do you know how much I need you in my life? I need you more than you'll ever
understand, Nicky. Please, please, don't ever doubt it."

She nodded against his
chest, too choked up to utter a word.

"Say
something," he said in her ear.

"I love
you," she whispered, and new tears flooded her eyes. "I never stopped
loving you."

He stroked her back.
"All right, I'll keep talking. This is what we are going to do. Stop me anytime
you don't agree. We're going to get married again and do it right this time
around. If I feel unhappy about something, I will tell you. If you feel unhappy
or worried about something you will tell me. How is this so far?"

She nodded, burying
her wet face against his chest, savoring the comfort, the words.

"All right,
then," he went on, "this agreement we used to have about letting each
other be free is out the door, gone and finished. You are not free to do just
any crazy thing you want to, and neither am I. Rest assured, that if you get
yourself into trouble again, I'm not going to stand by and let you. I will come
and rescue you— both of us. We belong together, and if one of us is in trouble,
then we both are."

She gave a tremulous
smile, still saying nothing, listening to the most wonderful voice in the
world. He lifted her chin and kissed her. She kissed him back with a euphoric
sense of relief and abandon. "I love you," she whispered against his
mouth. "I love you, I love you."

With a soft groan, he
lifted her up as he came to his feet and carried her into the bedroom.

"Have I told
you," he whispered as he began to take off her clothes, "that
sometimes all I have to do is just look at you and know that you are all I
want? Just you. In the house with me, next to me, in bed with me.
Forever."

She felt a flowering
of joy, of exultation. "I'll be there," she said tremulously. "I
promise you I'll always be there."