Hero by Nature (Reed Sisters: Holding out for a Hero 3)

“I do love you, Jeff,” Autumn whispered. She strengthened her voice. “But you’ve known all along that I wasn’t looking for permanence. I told you that I wasn’t cut out for marriage. I just can’t be any man’s ‘little woman.'”

“That is utter garbage and you know it. Tell me, Autumn, what was it that caused this grand decision of yours? A few tactless remarks at the country club? Something my parents said at breakfast yesterday? Something I said?”

The hint of pain behind the bitterness went straight to her heart. She’d give anything not to hurt him. But, being Autumn, she reacted to her own pain and confusion by lashing out in anger. “Stop patronizing me, Jeff!” she snapped, jumping to her feet and finally turning to face him. “Stop acting like I don’t know my own mind. This has been building for weeks. The weekend only convinced me of what I had to do.”

“Suppose you elaborate a bit.” His face was hard, his jaw set ominously. She’d never seen him look quite so…intimidating.

“I’m feeling smothered again, Jeff,” she told him in a rush of words. “Just like last time, with Steven.” She had to look away from the expression that crossed his face when she compared him to her former fiance. “I can’t give you what you want, Jeff. I can’t give up the independence that I’ve worked so hard to attain to try to make you happy.”

“I have never,” he told her concisely, rising to his feet, “asked you to give up anything. I want to marry you, Autumn, not chain you to a bed or a stove. I want us to share our lives with each other, not sacrifice our lives for each other. Is that so damn much to ask?”

“Yes!” she shouted. “It is! I don’t know how to be a wife, Jeff! I don’t know how to be a mother. Dammit, I don’t even know how to be a lover. I only know how to be myself, Autumn Reed.”

“That was all I ever wanted you to be.” His voice was low, throbbing with pain.

“But how long would you be satisfied with that? How long would you be happy with a wife who wears coveralls and hard hats to work? Who sometimes comes home with bruises or cuts from work-related injuries? Whose friends all wear blue collars to their jobs? How long before you start asking me to behave like a proper physician’s wife, join the right clubs, cultivate the right friends? Give you the same kind of Ozzie-and-Harriet-Nelson-Ward-and-June-Cleaver relationship your parents have?”

Autumn had once wondered if it was possible to make Jeff lose the temper he’d once warned her about. It was.

“How dare you?” he demanded, his hands falling ruthlessly onto her shoulders, his grip anything but gentle. His blue eyes were blazing, his handsome face set in white-mouthed fury. The fine tremor in his fingers let her know that he really wanted to shake her, hard, but he restrained himself. “Who the hell do you think you are to criticize my parents? And just what gives you the right to tell me what I want or need from a wife?”

He snatched his hands away from her as if he couldn’t bear to touch her for another minute, shoving them violently into the pockets of his jeans. “All right, Autumn, if you want honesty, then you’re going to get it. You are a spoiled, self-centered, immature, frightened child. You put on a big act of being sophisticated and liberated, when the truth is that you’re a young woman from small-town Arkansas who hasn’t got the guts to take emotional risks. You don’t seem to be afraid of physical risks or physical pain, but you run like hell from any kind of mature, responsible relationship. Not because you don’t want it, Autumn, but because you’re too damn scared you can’t handle it!”

Feeling the blood drain from her face at his words, Autumn gasped, furious at his unprecedented attack. “Why, you—”

Jeff kept on as if she hadn’t made a sound. His jerky movements indicated just how little in control of himself he really was, despite his bitingly concise, low-voiced words. “You’re not the liberated woman you want to be. You’re chained to a lot o

f old fears and insecurities that trap you in a lonely, unfilled life, despite your claims that you’re perfectly happy alone.”

Wanting to lash out at him as he was at her, Autumn tried to interrupt, but he was on a roll, spurred on by sheer rage, and he wasn’t finished.

“When I came along, I didn’t try to change you. I love you exactly the way you are, stubborn and fiery and self-reliant and all. But you had to start looking for new excuses to break it off because you’re still afraid to become deeply involved.”

Though temper still edged his voice and hardened his face, his eyes suddenly looked sad. “So now you think you’ve found the perfect excuse. Not that I have tried to change you, but that I may try to change you at some nebulous point in the future. I’ve got to admit it’s a great accusation, Autumn. One I can’t disprove because I have only my word that I would never want you to change. And that’s not enough for you, is it?”

“No!” she almost screamed, then made a deliberate effort to lower her voice and regain her tenuous self-control when it appeared that he was actually going to allow her to say a few words. “Maybe you think now that you don’t want to change me, but how do you know? You could change your mind in a year or two years or five. How could you possibly know that you won’t?”

“I know because I know myself,” he replied flatly. “Unlike you, I don’t try to deceive myself or others about what I want, what I need. I love you now, just as I’ll love you in a year or two years or five. Or fifty. And you’re willing to just throw that love away because you’re too scared to take the risk that everything won’t always be perfect. Too selfish to be willing to make a few compromises to smooth the way during the rough times.”

His words hurt. Deeply. And they made her even angrier. She wanted to hurt him as badly, but instead of the insults that hovered on her tongue, a quiet question came out. “You can say all these things about me and still claim to love me?” she asked him, her voice strained, tight.

“I don’t claim to love you. I do love you. Exactly the way you are. And you’re not perfect, Autumn. Neither of us is.” He pulled one hand out of his pocket to run a weary hand through his hair. “I’m going to spell this out for you one more time, and then I’m going to leave you to decide once and for all what you want for us. I love you. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you. I don’t want to change you. If I wanted to be pampered and waited on and catered to, I’d move back home to my mother. I love her deeply, but being treated like a five-year-old drives me crazy. Why do you think I moved to Tampa? I can see my parents when I want to, but I’m far enough away that I can live like a real grown-up the rest of the time.

“I was never looking for a wife who’d subjugate herself to me, Autumn. I want a mate, a partner. Someone to stand beside me, not behind me. I want you, Autumn. Only you. I’m willing to make every sacrifice, every compromise I have to make to have you. But only if you’re willing to do the same. You think about it. If you decide I’m worth the effort, you know where to find me.”

And then he kissed her, hard, not giving her a chance to respond even if she had wanted to. Almost blind with atavistic pain and fury, she jerked away from him. And he left her, standing in the middle of her living room floor and staring at the door he’d closed much too softly behind him.

Autumn spent the next hour throwing pillows, storming around the apartment in a temper tantrum. Remembering every terrible word he’d said, every slashing accusation.

“He’s an idiot,” she told Babs, pacing like a madwoman. “Everything he said was garbage. After all this time he doesn’t even know me! But he sure as hell thinks he does!”

She paced and raged and muttered until the early hours of morning, when she finally threw herself onto her bed, physically and emotionally exhausted.

And then she cried. For a very long time.

SHE HADN’T KNOWN that anyone could hurt so much and for so long and still continue to function. The passage of almost three long weeks did nothing to assuage the pain of ending her relationship with Jeff. Webb’s proud announcement that he was making Autumn foreman of a large, upcoming job should have made her happy. It brought her no joy at all. Only a dull ache because she had no one to tell her how proud he was of her accomplishment.

Webb’s rather sheepish announcement a few days later that he and Emily were engaged almost destroyed her. She made a valiant effort to look happy for him. “I told you you were marriage bait,” she said in a weak attempt at teasing.