Sarah's Surrender (17 page)

She shook her head softly. "Let's get out of here."

"Sarah--"

"Please, John. In the car." She turned toward the door and began to walk away from him. He'd already settled their bill, so he picked himself up off the chair and held the door open for her. As she walked past, through wet tears, she gave him a tiny little smile that seemed to want to comfort him.

She was upset, but her first thought was to offer him comfort. It was another added shock to his system.

They walked out to the car, hand in hand.

He opened her door, got her settled in, and put the air-conditioner on full blast. His vehicle had been sitting under a shade tree, so the interior became blessedly cool very quickly. He didn't make a move to leave the parking lot, but took her hand in his. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head again and then the tears began to spill in earnest. She lifted her hand and tried to wipe them away as John watched her, completely in shock. He didn't know how to react, didn't know how to comfort her, and he felt a great big ball of fury begin to form in his gut at the unknown person who might have hurt her.

He tried like hell to give her time but it was killing him. Finally she turned to him. "Nothing's really wrong. Nothing new, anyway. I'm clean." She looked up at him with a question in her eyes that he could tell she didn't want to voice.

"Yeah, babe, I'm clean, too." he answered her unspoken question.

"Good."

"Nothing new? What does that mean?" he asked to get her back on track.

"I went ahead and had a well-woman check-up since we were already here and it was something I needed to do when I got back to Dallas anyway." She took a sustaining breath and then continued her explanation, "After the miscarriage, I had to have a D and C. It left some scarring. But either my doctor at home didn't know how bad it was, or he didn't tell me. I just found out it's going to be hard for me to get pregnant again." She bit her lip and twisted her fingers together as she looked down as her voice shook. "Maybe impossible."

After John heard the word 'miscarriage,' a huge roaring began in his ears and he could barely concentrate on her words. He valiantly tried to get his shit together, but it was one of the hardest things he'd ever attempted to do. He wanted to comfort her, he was upset that she was upset about the fertility issue, but all he could really feel was a great glob of heated jealousy.
She'd been pregnant with another man's baby.
He couldn't believe what he was feeling. He knew he'd been pissed the night before at the Cut-n-Shoot, he knew he'd been jealous then. But to think that there was a man out there, a man who had put a baby in her belly. The jealousy he felt was almost painful; in fact it was more of a searing pain than a feeling of jealousy. He knew the emotion wasn't rational, he knew it bordered on crazy, and at the very least it was totally fucked-up, but he couldn't help it. So she had a past, and he had a past. There was no getting around that.

He viciously brought his head out of his ass and did what he should have done already. He took her in his arms and held her and let her cry.

She cried against his shoulder until he could feel the dampness of her tears seeping through his shirt. She cried until she began hiccupping, she cried until he began worrying she might endanger her health if she didn't quit. Could a person become dehydrated from crying this many tears?

"Baby, stop." He rubbed her back, swirling his hands up and over her.

She took a gasping breath and lifted her hands and rubbed her eyes. She took five steady breaths, in and out, and finally settled down. He still held her, but now she only leaned against him.

She was upset, he could wait a bit, but he needed to know. "You're going to have to tell me." He tried to keep his voice gentle, but he would know. "Not right now, but later. It will make you feel better to get it out and I--I need to know."

Her eyes met his again and something heated passed between them. Her anguish was clearly written on her face, but she seemed to be in control now, and he pushed his dark feelings to the back of his brain and tried to focus on what she needed. He was assailed with a feeling of helplessness; the grief that held her in its grip was raw and primitive and he didn't know if he had what it would take to help her. He felt a deep need to make this better for her, to take away what was making her misery so acute. "Let's get home." He tried to keep his voice even, to show strength so she could lean on him, but he was very much afraid that his attempt had failed and that she could hear the torment in his voice.

She nodded her head and pulled back from his embrace, leaned back in her seat and began fastening her seatbelt with hands that shook. He reached over and finished the job for her and then placed a chaste kiss on her lips.

He backed out of the parking lot, navigated them to the highway, and then reached over the console and took her hand in his.

****

Sarah didn't want to put off the conversation they needed to have. She knew that sooner or later he would insist on knowing, and she wanted to get it over with. When they were about ten miles out of San Antonio, she began to speak. "I got married when I was twenty-three." His hand jerked and she felt the tension that took hold of him but he didn't say anything. "Greg was only a year older than me, and he basically swept me off my feet. The quick version of the story is that I got pregnant within the year, and he began cheating on me after that. Hell, probably before that, I don't know. It was a tough pregnancy, and then he left me for the woman he was sleeping with. The stress and everything caught up with me, and I lost the baby. The pregnancy was the one good thing that came from that marriage, and I loved that baby. But it wasn't meant to be, I guess."

She glanced over at him and could see the tic in his cheek as he watched the road and continued to hold her hand in a tight, unrelenting grip.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry you lost the baby." Internally, John asked himself for the truth. Was he sorry she'd lost the baby?
Thank God, the answer was yes
. Yes, he was sorry she lost the baby. He wasn't jealous of the baby, and the loss of the innocent life was tragic. It was the man who put the baby inside of her who pissed him off. "The asshole must have been insane to cheat on you. Why the hell would he?" He glanced over at her before turning his eyes back to the road. "Why in the fuck would anybody cheat when they could have you in their bed every night?"

Sarah thought he'd asked a rhetorical question, and she didn't try to answer. What he said sent a feeling of pleasure snaking through her; he sounded like he meant every word.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, baby."

"Thanks," she answered softly.

"What's his last name?"

Sarah looked over at him again and suddenly the pleasurable feeling was replaced with something that felt like mild panic at the sudden change of subject. Why would he ask that question? Why would he care? And why would a choice she had made several years ago, several years before she even knew him, be filling her with apprehension now? Oh no, she didn't want to give him the answer.

His eyes left the road and took a few seconds to study her before sliding forward again. His jaw clenched. "Don't tell me his name is McAlister, babe. Don't do that to me."

She swallowed hard. "John--"

"Sarah, don't say it."

She remained mute and watched as he ran a hand through his hair and his face became set in stone and then he clenched the steering wheel in what looked like a death grip.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you then, didn't expect anything like this--"

"Why? For what fucking reason would you keep his name?" His anger could clearly be heard in his tone.

"This is going to sound so shallow. I almost hate to say it."

"Just tell me the truth. I want to know why."

"I did it to piss him off and for no other reason. He betrayed me, cheated on me, abandoned me when I most needed him, and when it came down to it, he thought I would automatically go back to my maiden name. We had a big fight and it came out that his new woman didn't want me to have his name, and so I kept it out of spite. Pure spite. To piss them both off. So there you have it; it wasn't nice on my part, and I'm not proud of what I did."

"You could change it now." He suggested in a low, controlled voice.

"I could, but why? Everyone at my school knows be by that name, it would just add confusion to the mix at this late date. Everyone would assume I got married again and then I'd have a huge amount of explaining to do. I don't need the hassle."

"I don't like it."

Sarah shut her eyes and tried again to reason with him. He was acting like a child who wasn't getting his way. "It's part of the past, John. We both have a past. You have one, too." She took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. "I know you were married before. And I'm so sorry about your wife. I know you must have gone through sheer hell when she died, but--" Her words dwindled off.

"But what?"

She remained mute and only shook her head.

"But what, Sarah?" he asked more heatedly.

"But I try not to think about how much you must have loved her. How you stayed true to her for so long after she died. It makes me--it makes me ill inside knowing what you lost, but it also makes me--it makes me feel terrible to be jealous of that. So I try not to think about it."

He didn't take his eyes from the road, but he braked immediately and pulled over onto the shoulder and turned to her. "Where'd you hear all this?"

She didn't want to say her friend's name. She was already a sore spot with him, but she had no other choice. "Jaime."

"Jaime's wrong, sweetheart. She's been listening to too much gossip."

"What do you mean?"

"Is that the rumor? That I was so inconsolable that I retreated to my ranch and shunned the female population?"

"Yes."

His mouth hardened. "It's not true, baby. Sarah, my marriage wasn't what you think. It wasn't perfect, far from it. You think you were the only one who was cheated on? Think again. Monica cheated on me with my best friend. He was also my business partner. I was betrayed by the two people closest to me." He watched her closely to see if she understood what he was explaining. "There's a lot you don't know about. Shit, nobody knows about it. She was an alcoholic and addicted to pills. I'd already filed for divorce when she had the wreck. I wasn't staying true to her memory, Sarah. I abstained from sex because I respected her old man. Her father was devastated when she died, Monica was his only child and he had no one else but me. He didn't know the divorce was pending, and after she died, I couldn't chance hurting him even more by running around like a tomcat. I just couldn't do it."

His running dialogue came to an abrupt stop and he waiting for her reaction. She was watching him closely, her eyes running over his face. "What caused the change in you then?"

He frowned. "What change?"

"Jaime said that one minute you were a recluse, and the next you were--you were--" Her words came to a halt when she either couldn't find the words or refused to speak them. But he knew what she was asking.

"Her father died."

"That's the reason?"

He picked up her hand and laced his fingers through hers over the console. "Yeah. He died and couldn't be hurt by my actions anymore."

Sarah sank deeper into the leather seat as uneasiness gripped her. She was feeling so many emotions it was hard to take them all in. A warning voice hammered inside her head, telling her to be careful. Don't move so fast. Don't fall for him so deeply and so quickly. But there wasn't much she could do to protect herself from it. She was inordinately relieved that he wasn't pining away inside for his dead wife. She was equally upset that he'd been hurt. That someone had taken this beautiful, giving man's trust and smashed it to smithereens and turned him into the almost-cold, calculating person he was now. She knew how it felt to be cheated on. Her lips opened and she spoke without thinking, "I'd never hurt you like that."

His fingers clenched on hers. His scrutiny dropped to her lips and just as quickly, came back up to her eyes. His gaze clashed and tangled with hers. "I'm beginning to think that might be true."

"Of course it's true," she whispered.

Leaning over the console, he dropped a kiss on her lips as his thumb caressed the back of her hand. "Let's get you home, baby. You've had a rough morning."

****

Sarah didn't remember falling asleep during the rest of the ride home. But she must have because she came awake as the smooth drone of the engine was cut off. She opened her eyes and sat up, preparing herself to get out of the vehicle.

Her fingers froze over the seatbelt enclosure as she looked around and saw where he had brought her.

To his house.

She looked across to him but he wasn't looking at her; he was already opening his door and stepping out into the hot sunshine. Before she couldn't even get her brain to fully function, he walked around to the passenger door and was opening it for her.

He didn't look her in the eye, he didn't say anything to her, he just reached over and unsnapped the seatbelt and took her hand in his to help her step down.

Why did she get the feeling that this meant something? Why did she think that his bringing her to his house now, after everything that had passed between them, meant more than just the obvious? Her pulse accelerated as her hand was enfolded in his and she followed him into the house.

"John--"

"Not now."

He led her inside and deposited her in a chair in the living room and then walked through to the kitchen. Moments later, Beth walked into the room behind John with a large smile beaming across her face. "Okay. I get the afternoon off." She hooked her purse over her shoulder and spoke directly to Sarah. "There's a pot roast and vegetables in the oven. I just turned the heat down. All you have to do is open the oven at six o'clock and it will be done. Y'all have fun; I'm going home."

Sarah felt like a fish out of water and barely managed a nod and an 'okay.'