Only Skin Deep (11 page)

“That I love you.”

A chasm of silence accompanied that heartfelt proclamation.

It wasn't exactly the reaction Lauren had been hoping for. She thought the least Travis could do was to say something. Anything. It seemed his mouth was temporarily under construction. Blinking back her tears, she willed him to look away so she could make a graceful getaway. She'd never felt so stupid or ugly or embarrassed in all her life.

“You don't have to say anything back,” she somehow managed to croak out before climbing out of bed, taking the sheet along with her. “I just thought you should know that I wouldn't move in with you if I didn't love you. That's all.”

 

That's all?

Reeling from Lauren's announcement, Travis didn't know why he couldn't bring himself to say the words that she was longing to hear. It would be so easy to staunch her tears with a lie, but he didn't want to hurt her any more than he already had by giving her false hope.

Only the crazy thing was Travis wasn't so sure he would be lying to repeat those three little words. He knew that what he felt for this woman went far beyond
lust; otherwise he never would have asked her to move in with him. It went far beyond simple attraction and genuine fondness, too. And it went far beyond what his battered heart could accept.

Was it too much to believe a woman as special as Lauren could truly love him for who he was, not just what he represented? Not for all the things he could buy her or for the social perks associated with a name synonymous with one of the biggest ranches in Wyoming.

If anything, the truth was far more frightening than any lie he might feel compelled to tell at the moment.

Travis reached out to grab a fistful of quickly disappearing sheet. He pulled Lauren back into bed where he held her a little too tightly—as though he were afraid that she would fly away if he gave her half a chance. He understood that her unexpected proclamation of love didn't necessarily mean she was willing to move in with him, either. As much as that thought annoyed him, he secretly had to admire her character. Few women he knew would consider the offer a moral dilemma.

“I don't deserve you,” he said, glad to discover his mouth was up and running again.

Still, his voice sounded as gravelly as the road connecting them to the rest of the world.

“You probably don't,” Lauren agreed, hiding her tears behind the border of the sheet wrapped toga style around her.

“Does that mean you're not going to move in with me?”

Lauren studied the quality of light filtering through
the window. She followed a dust mite that crossed the path of her eye. Tested the springy texture of the fine hair along Travis's arm against her fingers.

“It means that I want to, but I'd like to think about it a little while longer before I let you know for sure.”

Hurt that she wasn't happier about the prospect of living with him, Travis grew uneasy at the idea of Lauren weighing the pros and cons of such a decision with anyone else. Just thinking about her broaching this touchy subject with her mother or stepfather Henry, who'd already warned him about hurting her, or any of the other funny, sweet relatives who loved her so openly made him feel like a real heel.

A heel that had stepped in cow manure and didn't have the good sense to scrape it off before he got to smelling too bad.

He supposed that's what he got for falling for someone with scruples

“Big girls don't have to check in with their mommies before they make up their own minds,” he pointed out.

That Travis really liked Lauren's family complicated things. He didn't want to come between Lauren and the people whose opinions meant the most to her. He didn't particularly want them thinking badly of him, either. Or make her already difficult teaching job any more challenging for that matter.

Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to him.

“You're not going to talk to your principal about this, are you?” he wanted to know.

If that fat, bald, mealy-mouthed old goat had any
thing to say about this, he could damn well say it to Travis—right before he ate his fist.

Lauren shook her head. “Not unless he brings it up.”

Travis was okay with that. School wouldn't start up for another couple of months, and by then who knew how their relationship would be progressing? Experience had taught him that it was one thing to date someone and quite another to live with her. It hadn't taken long to realize the honeymoon was over with Jaclyn shortly after it had begun. He truly believed that the wisest course for any couple considering marriage was to try living together first on a temporary basis.

Not that Travis was predicting failure for the trial arrangement he was suggesting. A veteran of the war between the sexes, he was simply preparing himself for it, just in case.

“W
hat a quandary!” Suzanne exclaimed in mock exaggeration. Holding out both hands, she mimed a scale and proceeded to weigh her friend's options. “Let's see, should I move in with some gorgeous, rich hunk who curls my toes with his kisses, or should I live out the rest of my days alone and miserable as the spinster of Pinedale High?”

The image evoked in Lauren's mind a disturbing cross between the Old Maid and the lead character from
Phantom of the Opera.

Continuing on, Suzanne dropped her left hand to her side as if it couldn't possibly support the weight of the obvious answer. “Gosh, I don't know. What should I do?”

Lauren worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you really think it's that simple?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

Lauren wished she had Suzanne's decisive outlook on life. If only matters of the heart could be as easily resolved as her friend made it sound. Of course, giving advice was far different from living it.

“I didn't see you moving in with Mike before the two of you got married,” Lauren pointed out.

A coy smile curled Suzanne's lips. “True,” she admitted. “But then Mike wasn't as afraid of commitment as Travis. In fact, as I recall he couldn't hustle me up the aisle fast enough to suit his timetable.”

A faraway look came across Suzanne's face and she sighed with a wistfulness one rarely heard in her voice.

“Those were the days. Back when paying bills didn't take precedence over making love.”

Although Lauren commiserated, she really couldn't empathize. From the outside looking in, her friend had the perfect marriage. It was hard not to envy the spur-of-the-moment elopement that had shocked the whole town and marked the beginning of Suzanne and Mike's life together.

“At least you don't have to be afraid of Mike leaving you whenever he feels like it. When you live with somebody, who's to say the least little argument won't lead to terminating the entire relationship?”

Suzanne pushed a cup of coffee toward Lauren and offered her free refills on the advice she was about to give.

“Look, Lauren, I know you're afraid of operating without a net. That you're worried if you move in, Travis will think that he's pacified you and things will deteri
orate the instant you say you're ready for more of a commitment. You need to realize that marriage is no guarantee that won't happen, either. People do get divorced. Travis did. And that's probably why he wants to start out slow and easy. Remember love is a choice. It's hard work. And above all, love is worth the risk.”

Lauren appreciated the insight and support. Having waited a long time herself for the right man to come along, Suzanne wasn't one to give flippant counsel. It meant a lot to know that whatever the consequences of her decision Lauren always would have a friend to lean on. She sighed in anticipation of what lay ahead of her.

“I just hope Mom is as open-minded when I broach this subject.”

 

She fretted for the better part of the morning before dragging her feet to the doorstep of her mother's house. Lauren stopped by the bakery first and purchased a dozen glazed donuts just in case she needed something to soften Barbara Aberdeen up. Out of sheer nervousness, Lauren ate three of them herself on the way over.

“Good Lord,” her mother exclaimed, opening the door. “You don't have to ring the doorbell like some stranger.”

Lauren didn't know how to explain that she'd been afraid of interrupting something intimate. After dancing around the real reason for the visit, she finally brought up the subject in an awkward, roundabout way and steeled herself for the explosion to come.

“Why, that's wonderful news, honey!” Barbara exclaimed throwing her arms around her daughter.

It turned out that Lauren's mother was far less conservative than she had thought. In fact, as the conversation wore on, Lauren couldn't help being just a little hurt that her mother seemed more concerned about Travis's feelings than hers.

“You can't blame a man who went through the kind of nasty divorce that Travis did for being a little gun shy. I'd advise against giving him any kind of ultimatum. You know that any man worth his salt will resist that kind of emotional blackmail.”

“You mean you wouldn't be disappointed in me if I skipped the wedding and went straight to the honeymoon?” Lauren asked, sounding far more incredulous and naive than she wanted to.

“You could never disappoint me, dear. I thought you knew that.”

Her response was so instantaneous and sincere that it made Lauren teary. She dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips.

“I'm sorry. I seem to be doing a lot of crying lately. It's just not like me.”

Barbara gave her another hug before leaving to fetch a box of tissues. She sat down beside her daughter on the couch, pulled a couple of tissues from the floral print box, and pressed them into her Lauren's hand.

“What I want to know is whether you love him.”

“God help me, I do, Mom. I love him so much it hurts.”

Barbara looked perplexed. “Then I don't see what the problem is.”

What had been merely a trickle of tears turned into a river as Lauren struggled to admit the awful truth. Just the memory of that pregnant pause when she'd told Travis she loved him sent mascara cascading down her face. Her words caught on swallowed sobs. She couldn't imagine her father ever treating her mother so horribly and didn't know how to put her humiliation into words.

“I'm afraid he doesn't love me back.”

“There, there,” her mother said, trying to comfort her baby the best she knew how. “A man doesn't ask you to move in with him unless he feels something for you. Maybe Travis just isn't very demonstrative about his feelings. Some men aren't you know. Some men simply defy pigeonholing. Henry says such nice things about Travis, and he seemed to fit into the family so well the other night. Leta and the boys are all fired up to take him up on his generous offer to go horseback riding.”

“Who cares how he fits into the rest of the family?” Lauren wailed. “I'm more concerned about whether he wants to fit in with me. I want him to want what I want. And what I want is for him to want to marry me.”

Lauren's head was beginning to spin. She wasn't sure her words were making any sense.

“The problem is,” she continued on, “that I just don't think there's any way that I can make that happen.”

Barbara reached out in empathy. It clearly hurt her very much to see her only child in such pain. “I wish there was something I could do to make this easier for you, but I can't. I can only encourage you to think about giving Travis a chance to make you happy. To let love
flower in its own time. To advise you not to try to force things. And to let you know that I'll support you no matter what you decide to do with the rest of your life.”

Having never in a million years expected her mother to sanction any kind of sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage, Lauren was speechless. Between Suzanne and her mom, all the obstacles in the way of Lauren accepting Travis's offer were falling away faster than she could erect new ones. There was only one person left whose opinion mattered more to her than anyone else's.

And he wasn't around to offer any advice.

“What do you suppose Daddy would think?” she asked, sniffling into a tissue.

A tender smile crossed Barbara's face. “He'd want you to be happy. I know for a fact that he wouldn't want you to sacrifice your own joy out of some misguided sense of obligation to his memory. Over the years I'm afraid in your mind you've elevated your father to sainthood, but never forget that he was made of flesh and blood just like you and me. I think he would have liked Travis very much. I do.”

Lauren brightened. Her mother was a pretty good judge of character. “You do?”

“In a lot of ways, he reminds me of your father who, by the way, was more than a little nervous about walking down the aisle himself. The truth is, I wasn't absolutely sure he was going to show up at the church on the day of our wedding.”

Lauren couldn't believe what she was hearing. The
way she remembered her father telling it, he'd fallen in love with pretty Barbara Miller at first sight and immediately begun doing everything humanly possible to tie the knot binding her to him as quickly as possible.

“And,” her mother continued in a gentle tone that belied the seriousness of what she was about to say. “I know that you have some intimacy issues. Listen to me, Lauren. Just because your father died doesn't mean that Travis is going to leave you, too. If your father's death teaches you anything, it should be to celebrate life for all it's worth while you can.”

Having a spotlight cast into the deepest, darkest closet of her mind was illuminating—not to mention a little embarrassing. Suddenly, all Lauren's fears seemed stupid and small as it became perfectly clear that the decision to take a chance on love was entirely her own.

The fact that everybody she confided in seemed crazy about Travis should have made her decision to put her misgivings aside all that much easier.

But for some reason it didn't.

And that in itself was testimony to the depth of her girlish attachment to fairy-tale endings and an aversion to reality when it came complete with warts. Clearly no one else had a problem with Travis's proposal but Lauren herself.

She had some serious soul searching to do. The chances of that occurring if she returned home and found Travis in her bed were highly unlikely. Thinking wasn't something she did well around him, particularly when he was naked. So when she left her mother's house and
turned her car, not in the direction of the Half Moon Ranch but rather in the exact opposite direction, Lauren wasn't worried about getting lost. She had enough money in her pocket to cover her expenses while she sorted out the doubts in her heart and tried to get her head screwed on straight. Any decent motel should be able to offer her what she needed most: solitude and room service.

Driving helped soothe her frayed nerves. The open road embraced her. Lauren's sense of foreboding rolled back with every click of the odometer. The open range offered breathing space and miles and miles of uninterrupted contemplation beneath a cloudless Wyoming sky that put no ceiling on a person's dreams. She made a game of following any road that appealed to her sense of adventure.

Tiredness from lack of sleep the previous night combined with the emotional exhaustion of sorting through her feelings. Completely used up both physically and emotionally, Lauren shut off her cell phone without a sense of guilt. She certainly wasn't married, and had yet to commit to moving in with Travis on a temporary basis. A grown woman she didn't need anyone's permission to take a little road trip.

When Lauren finally pulled into a quaint bed-and-breakfast tucked into the foothills of the Tetons, she gave herself permission to sleep for days on end. She had just collected her room key when a handsome stranger registering next to her in the hotel lobby stroked her wounded ego by offering her an alternate plan for the evening.

“If you'd let me buy you a drink in the lounge, I'd do my very best to replace that sad expression on your pretty face with a smile,” he told her.

 

Where was she?

Travis was going out of his mind with worry. A couple of hours after the sun went down and Lauren still hadn't returned from town, he set aside his reservations about being the little boy who called wolf and contacted every single person he knew who might have any inkling of her whereabouts, effectively distributing his anxiety even among Lauren's friends and family.

“She left here hours ago,” her mother informed him.

Travis regretted worrying her. Glad that she didn't chastise him for not treating her daughter right, he asked her if she knew of any reason that Lauren might be upset.

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone before Barbara responded. “I only know that she loves you madly—and she's afraid that you don't feel the same way about her.”

That soft-spoken reprimand hit Travis with all the subtlety of a baseball bat. The memory of his silent response to Lauren's sweet, sweet admission of love stabbed through him, and he forgot about salvaging the tenuous good impression he'd made upon her family.

“I care very deeply about your daughter,” he said.

“Then you might think about letting her know that—before you lose her altogether.”

It was good advice. Travis just hoped it wasn't too late to follow it. If he had been unsure of his feelings
for Lauren before, by the time he hung up the phone, there was absolutely no doubt left in his mind that he had fallen hopelessly in love with her. Why else would he become so physically sick with worry wondering where she was?

Travis imagined the worst. The possibilities were endlessly gruesome. He envisioned her bleeding to death by the side of road, wandering around the countryside in a state of amnesia, abducted and raped by some lunatic. The spike in his blood pressure was at a dangerous level. Exhausting the more grisly scenarios, he considered another possibility.

Maybe she was just playing mind games with him. Maybe she was more like Jaclyn than he wanted to think. Maybe she was down at The Alibi looking for a less emotionally constipated man who didn't swallow his tongue whenever she expressed her feelings for him.

At a loss what to do, Travis climbed into his pickup in a self-induced panic and set out to find her. He tried the bars first. There was no sign of her there. Nor on any of the side streets in Pinedale. His friend Larry at the police station informed him that they could not put out an all-points bulletin for a single woman who had been missing for less than twenty-four hours.

“And I hate to tell you, but you don't have any legal rights over someone who isn't your wife.”