Her mother enjoyed life, lived and laughed, but she'd never given her heart and soul to anyone or anything. Not to her child, not to her safely married lover, not to her work. Vicki had fallen helplessly in love with Caleb and as helplessly in love with their unborn child.
She'd tried to find a passion, a dream, in an attempt to fight the knowledge that Caleb was her dream. It had been her way of coping with the fact that work was his life. No more, she thought. Just because he couldn't return her feelings didn't mean he didn't deserve to know how she felt.
Perhaps that made her a fool. Then again, perhaps it made her the luckiest woman alive. Smiling through eyes gone watery, she picked up the lace-edged panties that matched the camisole and took them to the counter.
* * *
That night, Caleb managed to make it home by eight. Vicki was outside chatting to their neighbor, Bill, and he joined her for a few minutes before they headed in out of the chill air.
"How are things?" she asked.
"There might be a light at the end of the tunnel." Holding the door open for her, he let her take his briefcase and put it next to a nearby table. "Something smells good."
"I made pasta. And I ate a ton of it." She scrunched up her face. "I'm going to be huge by the time she decides it's time to come out."
Chuckling, he followed her into the living room. "I guess I'll have to survive on what's left over."
"Don't worry. I've learned my lesson by now. I make twice as much as I used to."
As they passed the coffee table, he glanced down to see an open photo album. "What were you doing with this?" He remembered it from soon after they'd married, when Ada had presented it to them. It was a professionally collated piece of work that chronicled Vicki's life from birth to marriage.
"Let me put the pasta on to heat first. Wait here—I'll be back in a second."
Taking her at her word, he shed his jacket, loosened his tie and sat with the album in his lap. He knew Vicki didn't care for it, much preferring the ones she'd started after their wedding. Once, he'd asked her why she didn't like the pictures of her childhood and she'd answered, "They make me feel abandoned."
It had taken him a night of leafing through those pages alone to understand. There were very few photos of Vicki with either parent after she turned four. He'd counted perhaps eight in all and three had been studio shots taken to commemorate her father's remarriage. Eight photos for fifteen years of life. She had a right to feel abandoned.
At least Max and Carmen hadn't thrown him aside until he was old enough to deal with it. And they'd never taunted him with false hope. He couldn't imagine what it must have done to a four-year-old to be left behind by parents who'd professed to love her. It almost allowed him to understand her reluctance to love him heart and soul. In his wife's mind, love led only to a broken heart. How he wished he could undo the lessons of her childhood.
At that moment, Vicki walked in with a plate piled high with pasta and a glass of wine in her hands. "You might as well eat while we talk."
He watched her put the food on the coffee table in front of him. "Thanks, honey. Why don't you … oh right."
"What?" She sat and shifted the album from his lap to hers.
"I was going to ask you to join me in a glass of wine." He smiled. "It still gets me in the gut every time I think about you carrying our kid."
"Me, too." Smiling, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Eat."
"So what were you doing with that thing?" he asked after a few bites.
"I'm letting myself remember."
"Why?"
"Because I need to. I can't just ignore what happened and still be me. I have to accept the fact that I was hurt by the people who were supposed to love me forever." Her clear blue eyes looked into his. "I have to make peace with the past before I can move on to the future."
His heart leapt into his throat at her implied statement but he was so damn proud of her. "You're the bravest woman I know."
She gave him a rueful smile. "You wouldn't have said that if you'd seen me quaking in my boots before I met Mother for coffee today."
Frowning, he put down his fork and tipped up her chin. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've—"
"Hush." She placed a finger on his lips. "We all have things to face up to and Danica was one of mine. I couldn't keep hiding from what she did to me any more than I can hide from these pictures."
The strength he saw on her face was something he'd never expected to see in the girl he'd married. He was awed by her will, by her ability to move beyond the pain her mother had caused her. In this arena, Vicki was proving far more courageous than him. He could identify the need driving his desperation to save the firm, the need to prove himself to Max all over again, but he couldn't overcome it. Not yet. "What did you decide after seeing her?"
She put her head against his side and began to flip the pages again. "I decided that I shouldn't be afraid of feeling, of loving, of giving my everything. It hurts when it's thrown back in your face but eventually, the pain dims and you can breathe again."
He didn't know how to read that statement, didn't dare to hope. Putting an arm around her, he hugged her close. "Nothing you give me will be rejected. Nothing."
To his surprise, she laughed. "What about my divorce application?"
"Except that." He found himself smiling, too.
She turned a page and pointed to a picture of a somber eight-year-old standing by a bicycle. She was dressed perfectly, her almost white blond hair combed to within an inch of its life. "I could've used you back then. I think I'll always need you. Don't ever leave me, Caleb."
Her last words were heartbreakingly quiet and he felt them in the core of his soul. Outside she was smiling and perhaps even laughing, but in her heart, Vicki was crying. Today she'd surrendered her last hopes and accepted that Danica wouldn't ever be able to give her what she needed. Acceptance didn't mean the pain was any less.
"Never," he whispered, his voice husky from the knot of emotion choking his throat. "I wouldn't go when you asked me to. Why would I leave voluntarily?"
* * *
Thirteen
« ^ »
Vicki curled in bed, thinking over the words Caleb had said to her as they sat on the couch. Next to her, he was fast asleep. She'd set the alarm to ring in a few hours so he could return to work, but she couldn't sleep.
For the first time in her life, she was with someone who, quite simply, was too damn stubborn to walk away from her. Some women might have found that kind of possessive commitment daunting, but it was exactly what she needed. When she'd tried to divorce Caleb, she'd hoped to garner his attention, but she hadn't understood the depths to which he'd go to keep the promise he'd made to her on their wedding day.
To love, honor and cherish. For always.
The extent of his loyalty humbled her. Her darling Caleb would be her rock, no matter what life threw at them. It was okay to take risks and open her heart and her body fully to him.
After all these years, the four-year-old girl inside her was smiling. She still felt a little bruised but was healed enough to take the next step.
Getting up out of Caleb's arms, she walked quietly to the dresser and pulled out the lingerie she'd bought today. It was time to start showing her husband what he meant to her. He'd done so much for her and yet expected so little in return.
He'd been abandoned the same way she had and needed as much care and tenderness. The difference was, he'd never allow himself to break down as she'd done countless times, never allow himself to cry or ask for tenderness. She could accept that. It was simply the man he was. But it meant she had to read between the lines where his emotional needs were concerned.
A smile curved her lips—these days she was having no trouble reading Caleb, in bed or out … because her husband trusted her. She had every intention of treasuring that gift, starting now. Tonight she'd give him the tenderness he'd never accept in any other context, show him that she was his in every way.
Slipping out of her pj's, she shimmied into the panties and camisole. There, she thought, feeling a mixture of nervousness and joy. That will surprise him when he wakes. She only hoped he'd understand what she was trying to say. Fighting a shiver, she crawled into bed next to Caleb's warm body. He grumbled in his sleep then cuddled her close.
* * *
Caleb woke though the alarm hadn't gone off. Staring at the clock, he realized it was an hour before he had to be up. Yawning, he was about to close his eyes when he registered the texture beneath his palm. Satin. Soft and silky and very touchable. He frowned. He'd been tired when he'd gone to bed but he was sure Vicki had been in her pj's. Carefully, he switched on the bedside light.