The First Love Cookie Club (19 page)

“What?” she asked, unnerved by his stare.

He shook his head. “I still can’t get over the fact that you’re Sadie Cool. It’s just so—”

“Unbelievable?”

“I was going to say impressive.”

She shrugged. “No more impressive than raising a child on your own.”

“Do you ever want to get married? Have kids?”

Did she? Sarah shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve never thought about it.” That wasn’t really true. She’d thought about it, she just figured she might never find a man willing to look past her scars and personality quirks. “I’m only twenty-four.”

“I was married and the father of a three-year-old when I was twenty-four.”

“I know,” she said. “Some of us bloom later than others.”

“Some might say that you knew what you wanted from a very early age.”

Was he talking about writing or him? Sarah shifted in the chair, focused on her soup.

A long silence ensued, then Travis said, “How come you came with me to cut down the town Christmas tree?” He reached out to run a finger over the back of her hand, gently tracing the blue-tinged vein that ran from her index finger to her wrist. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad you did, but I thought you weren’t really into all the holiday hoopla.”

She shrugged. “Moe kind of drafted me.”

“You could have said no. I expected you to say no.”

She lowered her eyelashes, shrugged against his chest, felt a fresh surge of warmth radiate through her. “I don’t know. I guess I just …”

“What?”

“Wanted to be with you,” she admitted.

His fingers kept moving from her wrist to her elbow and back again in lazy strokes. “I really am glad you came.”

“Guess what I found in my purse when I was freshening up,” she said, changing the subject, looking for an excuse to move her arm away from him before she burst into flames.

“What?”

She reached over for her purse and pulled out a couple of Tootsie Pops from the bouquet he’d given her. “Dessert.”

He laughed and she passed him a sucker.

“Why do you suppose they call them suckers?” she pondered, unwrapping her cherry Tootsie Pop. “I mean why not lickers? Some people lick them,right? And what about the people who simply let them melt in their mouth?”

“Then there are the crunchers who just bite down and to hell with their teeth. They want at that chewy middle,” Travis drawled, and lowered his eyelids in a way that made him look all lusty and seductive.

“Which one are you?” she asked, relieved he’d left his question about romantic relationships alone. “A sucker, a licker, or a biter?”

“A licker all the way.” His devilish eyes sparked. “What about you?”

“A melter. I’m a melter.” God, why had she said that?

“Hmm. That’s good information to have. You never know when it might come in handy.” He winked.

A shiver arrowed down her spine and she felt … What did she feel? That was the thing. She was never sure if her feelings were real or just something that would fall away if she gave it time and distance. Mostly she’d found the latter to be true. Emotions always changed. They weren’t something you could count on to stick around for long.

“So how come you’re not spending the holidays with your folks?” he asked, slowly licking his sucker.

Her gaze was transfixed on his mouth. “They’re not holiday kind of people.”

“Not particularly family-oriented.”

“To say the least.

The tip of his tongue curled around the raised ridge of the Tootsie Pop. Oh, the slow care he took with it. “That sounds like the short version,” hesaid. “We’re not going anywhere for a while, you might as well tell me the long version.”

“They’re brilliant surgeons. Among the top heart surgeons in the world. They live it, they breathe it, they never should have had a kid.”

“I for one am damn glad they did.” He stopped licking the sucker long enough to drill her with a steady stare.

Sarah gulped, overwhelmed by his intensity. “I felt so utterly abandoned by my parents, but I didn’t fight it. I didn’t try too hard to win their love. I simply accepted my fate and learned not to expect anything from them.”

He reached over to squeeze her hand. “I hurt for that little girl.”

“Honestly, I’m okay with it. What I remember most from my childhood is the silence in that big house. Mostly, it was only me and the housekeeper. My parents were always at the hospital or on lecture tours. Even when my parents were there it was like we weren’t really a family. It was the two of them and me alone, as if we were spinning in separate orbits and there was no way our emotional paths could ever cross. My parents are so in sync with each other. Their conversations are always about medicine. I felt like I was an observer, put there to simply watch them and not really interact. I don’t think they quite knew what to do with me. When they did try to engage me, it was as if we were speaking different languages. I suppose that’s why they shipped me off to boarding school as soon as they could. I reminded them of their failure as parents.”

“I can’t imagine sending Jazzy away.” His voicecracked with emotion. “What was it like for you at boarding school?”

“It was okay. I didn’t like sharing a room with someone else.” She made a face. “Privacy is very important to me and I was socially awkward. I spent a lot of time in the library, but when I had to interact with others, I would imitate their facial expressions and mannerisms and speak like they spoke to fit into the scene. I watched and I learned and I mimicked. What about you?”

“Me? When I’m around people I get charged up, energized, and I think about what I can do to make things more fun for everyone,” he said.

“Now
that,
I can’t imagine.”

“So …” He paused. “What’s it like for you when you’re in a romantic relationship?”

How could she begin to explain to him that for the most part she was happy without a romantic relationship? Odd as it might sound to some people, she took pleasure in abstinence because it freed her from personal entanglements.

Okay, yeah, sometimes when she was out on the street and saw people holding hands or kissing she would feel lonely and she’d start to hate her isolation. But whenever she was with someone she discovered that the real joy only came afterward, when she was alone again and could go over what she’d felt and really process the experience. It was as if remembering the encounter was more rewarding than the actual relationship. In the long run, in the past, she ended up feeling lonelier with a partner than without one. It made her wonder if she would be able to feel something spontaneous, on the spot when something intensewas happening, rather than disappearing into her own mind.

You did once. With the very man sitting across the table from you.

Yeah, and look how that turned out.

But it was happening to her again; in spite of all her resolve not to fall, she was in love with him. Maybe she’d never stopped loving him, she’d just tucked his memory away for nine years while she waited.

“You want to tell me what it is you’re really afraid of?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Who me?”

“Well?”

Sarah glanced down at his hand and aimlessly traced her index finger along the sturdy muscles. A log in the fireplace snapped, shooting a shower of sparks upward into the chimney. She peered into his eyes, suddenly understanding that this feeling was every bit as unnerving for him as it was for her. She took courage from that realization and smiled softly.

“I’m afraid … because, well, I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know where I want it to go. And I’m scared because I want you more than I should.” She paused, glanced away, stared into the fire, unable to keep looking at him.

“Yes,” he said. “I can see how the thought of being with me would frighten you.”

Was he being sarcastic? Had she hurt his feelings? “You aren’t what scares me,” Sarah said.
“I’m
what scares me. I’ve never had a real relationship. I don’t know if I’m even capable of one.”

“You’re afraid of feeling too much.”

He nailed it. Nailed her. Sarah frowned.

“I shouldn’t have brought you along on this trip. Or I should have insisted we wait. I knew a storm was coming. I just thought we could beat it and I thought …” His eyes were enigmatic. “Who the hell am I kidding? Part of me wanted to be iced in this cabin with you.”

“You did?” she mumbled, and looked away again.

He let out a pent-up breath, ran a hand through his dark, shaggy hair. “Not consciously, but on a subconscious level. It seemed like the only way I could pin you down.”

“But now,” she said, “you’re pinned down too.”

“Yeah.” His smile was wry. “If I was smart, I’d just take off walking and head for town and come back to rescue you with the de-ice truck.”

“Please don’t do that. I don’t want you to go.”

“Which is probably why I should, but I can’t go off and leave you alone, and not just because it would be unchivalrous. I’m enjoying your company.”

She took a deep breath and tentatively dared to murmur what she was feeling. “I’m enjoying your company too. I want more.”

“Are you sure?”

She swallowed. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else for days, Travis.”

He took her hand, turned her palm up, and slowly traced his fingers up and down. The movements were innocent but the sensations they aroused in her were wholly erotic. “Before we take this any further, I think you need to tell me about that scar.”

She froze, felt herself pull back mentally. He kept stroking her palm and she tried to take that back too, but he speared two fingers around her wrists and held her hand in place.

“No,” he said. “No more running away. If you want this as much as I do, we’re going to have to be open and honest with each other about everything. No secrets. That’s how intimate relationships work.”

“Is that how it was with you and Crystal?” She was taunting him and she knew it. She formed a fist between his fingers.

“No,” he said. “That’s how I know what doesn’t work. If we want to take this to the next level we’re going to have to knock down a few walls first.”

“That’s the question,” she said. “Do we want to take it to the next level?”

He unfolded her fingers, opened her hand again, and this time traced letters into her palm. He held her gaze as he did it, looked deeply into her eyes. It made her feel both uncomfortable and exhilarated.

I want you,
he traced.

“Are you sure it’s me you want and not Sadie Cool? She’s just a persona. My alter ego. She’s not who I really am.”

“With that statement, you underestimate both of us,” he growled. “I know who you are, Sarah Collier. I’ve known you since you were eight years old.”

“I’m afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“Once you really see it …” She hauled in a deep breath. “That you won’t be attracted to me anymore.”

“There you go, underestimating me again,” he said, his big strong fingers curling around hers.

“You say that now—“

“I mean it. You are the sexiest thing in the world to me, and it’s not just about your looks. It’s in the regal way you carry yourself and how composed you are. Take getting iced in, for instance. You didn’t even blink when you realized we were going to have to spend the night in a hunter’s cabin. Let me tell you, Crystal would have bitched up a blue streak.”

“I’ve never found complaining about something

I have no control over to be a very effective strategy.”

“Exactly.” He held her gaze captive and she couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to look away. “I’m going to tell you something I don’t talk about much. It’s a scar you can’t see. It’s a scar on my soul and I’m going to show it to you.”

Travis hadn’t intended on getting into this, but he understood her self-consciousness over that scar was one of the things standing between them, and until he got her to talk, they weren’t going to get past it. Tit for tat. If he told her his dark secret, she’d owe him hers.

“You know my mom died of the severe asthma when I was fifteen.”

Sarah nodded.

“It’s the same condition that affects Jazzy, except until recently she was even worse than my mother.”

“Travis, you don’t have to talk about this.”

He raised a palm. “I was pretty messed up after my mom died. I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have.”

“Like getting Crystal pregnant.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but I can’t regret that. I got Jazzy out of the deal. But I do regret putting my dad through hell. He was a wreck after my mother died. My parents were high school sweethearts who’d never been apart a day in their married lives. My dad sank into a deep depression and he didn’t have the heart or energy to discipline me.” Travis spread his palms. “I’ve got to be honest, I was a total shit. I didn’t care about anything or anyone but myself.”

“That’s not true,” Sarah said. “You were lashing out because you were in so much pain over your mother’s death. Gram saw it. She understood.”

“Your grandmother was really good to me. She helped a lot after my mother died.”

“I wish I’d been older. That I could have helped you.”

Travis stared down at his hands. “My mother used to say she and my dad were soul mates. That they were destined to be together. After she died, my dad told me that destiny was a living hell because when your other half dies it’s like someone reached into your chest and yanked your heart out and yet you continue to live.” He raised his head, met her gaze again. “That’s why you completely freaked me out with that destiny talk at my wedding.”

“Travis … I was just a dumb kid with a fanciful imagination.”

He reached out his hand again and she rested her palm against his. He interlaced their fingers. “You weren’t and that’s what scared me so damn much. But you were fifteen and I was twenty. I couldn’t have thoughts like that about you, so I shut them down.”

Outside, the wind howled as sleet continued to pelt the cabin. Travis got up to put another log on the fire. When he turned, he looked at Sarah, cast in the glow of firelight, and he burned for her ina way he’d never burned for anyone. He quickly glanced away. He had to get this story out while he still had the courage to tell it.

“After my mom died, I was basically all alone except for your Gram, my Aunt Raylene, and their friends. It’s why I got into trouble. I was searching for something I couldn’t find. Nothing made sense. My world was upside-down and everything I’d ever believed in was gone. I went looking for love in all the wrong places. I didn’t know any better. I hooked up with Crystal because she made me feel something again. In hindsight, I can see clearly that I was trying to put together a family of my own to replace the one I’d lost.”

Sarah said nothing, tamped down the tears that wanted to spill for him.

“I was still a bit of punk after I married Crystal and before Jazzy was born,” he admitted, stirring the embers with a poker. “I’m ashamed of the way I acted back then. I’d go out, leave Crystal home alone, get drunk. One night I got into an accident. Hit a car with a family of five in it. Thank heavens no one was hurt, but it was a serious wake-up call. I know my dad felt like he’d failed me. I wish …” His throat tightened and he had to force himself to keep on speaking. “I just wish he’d stuck around to see Jazzy born. To see how she changed me for the better.”

“I’m listening,” she murmured.

Travis put down the poker and sat on the hearth. He rubbed his palms over his jean-clad thighs. “My father was more depressed than I ever guessed. He was a reserved guy who didn’t talk about his problems. He withdrew from people. Kept himselfclosed off.” Travis was finding it even harder to say the words than he expected.

“What happened?” Sarah gently prodded after a few minutes.

Travis met her gaze. “The depression won.” He paused, bit down on his bottom lip.

“Please, you don’t have to talk about this. I can see it’s still very painful.”

“No, I want you to understand. I’m an open book, Sarah. With me, what you see is what you get. The good, the bad, the in-between. I want to share it all with you.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

He pulled his palm down his face. “Two months before Jazzy was born, my father took a bottle of nitrous oxide from his dental practice, drove to a Wal-Mart in another county, and parked in the far corner of their parking lot. He climbed into the backseat of the car, locked all the doors, turned on the nitrous, and inhaled the gas until he stopped breathing. They didn’t find his body until five days later.”

Silence filled the room. Sarah kept her face expressionless, but he saw that her breathing had quickened, that she was biting the inside of her cheek.

“Could it have been accidental?” she asked. “Maybe he just wanted to feel better?”

Travis shook his head. “The medical examiner ruled it as an accidental overdose, but I think he was just being kind so Dad’s insurance would pay out. That’s how I ended up paying off the cottage. But me, I know he did it on purpose.”

“I …” She raised a hand as if to touch him, comfort him, but then dropped it in her lap. “Travis … I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. He’d learned the best way to deal with sorrow was to put on a brave face and keep putting one foot in front of the other until finally, finally the pain began to ease a bit. “Scars are just evidence of where you’ve been, they’re not markers of where you’re going. I swore I was never going to be like my dad and isolate myself from the people who loved me. That was my father’s downfall. He kept to himself. He didn’t let anyone help him. He never told me what was going on in his head. He withdrew even from me. He kept his dark secrets and I had a lot of trouble forgiving him for that.”

“Not everyone can embrace being with people the way you do,” Sarah said. “Some people just need to be alone in order to make things right in their own heads. It doesn’t mean they’re hiding. We’re all different. Your father just had a different way of coping than you did.”

“Well, it wasn’t a very damn successful method, now was it?” Travis heard the anger in his voice. Yeah, he was still mad at Dad.

“He probably wanted to connect with you very badly, he just didn’t know how. Especially if he was clinically depressed.” Tentatively, she reached out and put her hand over his.

“You know what it feels like, don’t you?” he said.

“What?”

“Not being able to fully connect with people even when you want to.”

She inhaled audibly. “I do.”

“Help me to understand.”

“I can’t speak for your father.”

“No, but as someone who withdraws when you’re under stress, you might give me insight into my dad’s behavior.”

She paused and he thought for the longest moment she wasn’t going to tell him, then finally she said, “This is how it works for me. The world feels like an invasion. Everything is coming at you so fast. Cell phones, text messages, pagers, traffic noises—“

“Then why do you live in New York?”

“Because there is an odd peace in the chaos. You can be in your own little bubble in New York in spite of all the people.”

“You need to come fishing with me sometime,” he said. “I’ll show you real peace.”

“I don’t know why I’m the way I am. Maybe I was just born this way. Maybe it was because I was alone so much of the time as a kid. Maybe it’s because I basically parented myself except when I was here with Gram. Whatever the reason, I feel safe when I’m alone and off balance the rest of the time. I live in my head a lot and I love details and information.”

“But you just said information was an assault.”

“It is, if I don’t have a time and place to process it in private.”

“Okay, I can respect that. You need your space and you need a soft place to land.”

“I don’t expect much from life. In fact, I like it better when there’s not a lot of expectations. The success of
The Magic Christmas Cookie
caused problems for me. Public appearances are a nightmare. The only way I get through them is by pretending to be Sadie Cool. There’s intense pressure to produce a second book as good or better than the first.”

He nodded, waited. Let her go at her own pace.

“It’s not that I’m commitment-phobic or that I don’t want a relationship. It’s just very hard for me to reach out, and a lot of people don’t get this. They see me as distant, aloof, and I suppose I am.” She sighed. “The scar doesn’t help matters.”

He looked at her, looked into her, and told her with his eyes that it was all right. That her secret was safe with him.

“I’ve never been very good at relationships. My parents and I barely talk. My agent is my best friend and honestly, I don’t mind. I had a boyfriend in college, sort of. It wasn’t a love match, but he was cute and I was feeling the need for companionship. We hooked up over a mutual love of jazz music and for a little while things weren’t bad. We went out a couple of months and then he started pressuring me to socialize more. Get out. Go to parties. To me that held the appeal of slamming my finger in a car door, but for him, I agreed to try. We went to a new jazz club that had opened up in a rather rundown part of Houston.”

A thought flashed into Travis’s head. A news story he’d heard about three years back. A fire in a jazz club in Houston that hadn’t been up to code; several people had been severely injured. One person had died. His gut tightened.

“The club was very crowded and the music was too loud. I asked him if we could leave and he got really angry. Called me a hermit and recluse, said I’d end up an old maid. So even though every instinct in my body told me to leave, I stayed.” She reached for a bottle of water, twisted off the top, took a long drink before continuing with the story he knew was going in a horrible direction.

“A fire broke out. Someone had been freebasing cocaine in the bathroom. There was a stampede. I got knocked down.” She spoke in a clear, detached, calm manner as if it had happened to someone she didn’t even know.

“Sarah,” he whispered, but her expression never changed.

“A burning beam fell across my waist. Someone—not the guy I was with—lifted it off of me and carried me to safety. I spent three weeks in the burn unit with third-degree burns. But I was lucky. It was over less than ten percent of my body. I’ve had some skin grafts. I could have more to reduce the scarring if I wished, but I haven’t had the mental energy to deal with that, especially in the wake of my literary success.”

“What happened to the boyfriend?”

She shrugged. “He broke up with me while I was in the hospital.”

“Sounds like a real prince,” he growled.

“That was nothing compared to the next guy I went out with,” she said. “I told him about the burns. He said he was cool with it. Until it came time to take off my clothes. One look and suddenly he remembered ten dozen other places he needed to be.”

“He ran out on you after you let down your guard and showed him your scar?”

“Hey, what can I say? It looks pretty bad.”

“Asshole.” Travis clenched his fists.

“That’s just the way it is.”

“Are you lumping me in the same category with those guys? You think I’m gonna take off on you if you pull off your shirt?”

Sarah glanced out the window and laughed. “Hey, this is my big chance. Captive audience. It’s the only way the burned girl is going to get laid.” Her laugh was rough, humorless.

“Don’t …” Travis raised a finger. “Don’t put yourself down that way, Sarah. You’re a fine, gorgeous woman any man would be lucky to have.”

“In spite of the scars and personality quirks?”

“Because of them,” he said firmly. “They make you who you are. Strong and independent. Perceptive and calm. Curious and objective. Wise and kind and trustworthy.”

Her cheeks flushed red.

“Those two losers are fools. You know that.”

“So is Crystal.”

“Yes she is. She left the most fabulous child in the world behind.” Travis got to his feet and crossed the short distance between the fireplace hearth and the table. He reached for Sarah, drew her to her feet, and she let him. He gazed into her eyes, just looked and looked and looked. She held her own and felt the power of their connection. It was beyond anything he’d ever experienced in his life.

He was in love with this woman, but he didn’t know if she was ready to hear him say it. But he knew she was his destiny as surely as he knew his own name and she’d known it before he had.

He was attracted to her quiet self-possession. She made him feel restful and steady, as if her calmness granted him permission to take internal solitude seriously. She was like the lake he loved, deep and serene, and she evoked in him the same sense of peace.

Whenever he was with her, he felt as if he was truly at home. He didn’t have to scramble around to find his identity in meeting the needs of others. In fact, until he was with her, he’d never recognized that he filled his life up with other people so that he didn’t have to take stock of what he’d neglected—himself.

She gave him permission to find out who he really was. Between taking care of his mother, then coming to terms with his father’s suicide, and finally looking after his ailing daughter, he’d shoved aside his own needs to do what needed to be done, but it left him feeling a little hollow inside.

He loved how Sarah was free to go her own way; independent of what others expected of her. But this quality also gave him pause. How could she ever put down roots? How could he ever really connect with her permanently if he was always afraid she would simply wander away?

Travis thought of how his father used to withdraw. He’d stay in bed and sleep for days on end, barely waking up, not eating, not caring about anything. He’d given up on life.

Sarah wasn’t depressed as his father had been. He knew that. But the potential was there. It worried him, the way she isolated herself at times. Did he really want to get involved with someone who kept people at arm’s length? Especially when he had Jazzy to think about.