Loves Me, Loves Me Knot

Purl 16

Jenna blinked, having the strange urge to stick a finger in her ear and wiggle it, then ask Gage to repeat himself so she could be sure she’d heard him correctly.

“Protect me?”

Tugging at the sheet that had covered them both a few minutes ago, she pulled it up and held it in place over her bare breasts. “Protect me from what?” she asked.

“Everything.”

It might have been only one word, spoken in little more than a whisper, but it hit her like a sledgehammer to the solar plexus. She tried to draw in a breath, to get oxygen to her deprived brain and other malfunctioning organs. But her lungs seemed frozen in her chest just as surely as her tongue was frozen behind her lips.

Pushing up into more of a sitting position against the headboard, Gage’s earnest brown gaze drilled into hers. “I want to protect you from every single thing out there that might cause you harm or pain.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, aware deep down of just what an understatement that was.

“You don’t know how bad it is out there, Jenna. You don’t know the kinds of things I’ve seen day in and day out since joining the vice squad.”

Her mouth parted slightly as things began to click. Oh, she still had six or eight million questions she was dying to pepper him with, but what he’d just said sank in and so much of what had passed between them before the divorce suddenly made sense.

She’d started to notice a change in him only after he’d started working undercover. Before that, things had been fine. More than fine; they’d been deliriously, almost sickeningly (at least according to her friends) happy.

The silent treatment and growing distance between them had come directly on the heels of the physical transformations he’d adopted in order to fit in to whatever group he happened to be infiltrating that week or month. She’d never put two and two together before, but looking back she could clearly see the timeline of events as they’d played out.

But she still didn’t understand why. What did one thing have to do with the other?

“I can imagine,” she offered carefully, some part of her afraid that if she said the wrong thing, he might clam up on her again and they’d never get to the bottom of this.

“No,” he told her firmly, the word whipcord sharp, “you can’t. And I never wanted you to. I did everything I could think of to shield you from that world.”

Jenna cocked her head, surprised by the vehemence in his tone, and as confused as ever by the direction this conversation was going.

“Why would I need to be protected from any of that?” she asked him. “I’m not a porcelain doll, Gage. I may live in a nice section of town and lead a nice, middle-class life, but I’m aware that not everyone is so lucky. I read the paper and watch the news. I know what some of the conditions are like in the seedier sections of town, even if I’m not intimately familiar with them.”

He regarded her in silence for a long, drawn-out minute before speaking. “It’s worse,” he said quietly, his eyes darkening and clouding over with something she couldn’t quite identify. “The things you read about in the paper or hear about on the evening news… They gloss over the gory details. They don’t show pictures of victims with needles stuck in their arms or lying in pools of their own blood. Children covered in bruises and living in drug dens so full of the stuff, you can get high off the fumes.”

Her stomach fluttered-and not in a good way. It was ironic that he proclaimed to want to spare her the knowledge of what that world was really like, yet had just painted a vividly disturbing picture of exactly that.

She didn’t think it wise to mention that fact, though. This was the most he’d talked about his job, about working undercover, in all the time she’d known him. She might not like what he was telling her, but she wanted to hear it all the same. Especially if it gave her some inkling of what had gone so wrong between them.

“I understand,” she said. “I may not have seen those things with my own eyes, and I’m sorry that they happened, but I do understand. I also understand that you’re one of the good guys. You’re a superhero, out there fighting the good fight, doing what you can to stop the bad guys and help the innocents. What I’m not clear on-and forgive me if I’m being dense-is what that has to do with us.”

Shifting on the bed, she brought her legs closer to her chest, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around her knees and show him just how vulnerable she was feeling. “You pulled away from me, stopped talking to me after you started working undercover. I see that now. But I don’t see what one has to do with the other, or how you think you were protecting me by ignoring me, changing your mind about wanting children, distancing yourself from me emotionally…”

She trailed off when her voice started to rise and both anger and sadness began to creep into every word. Because what she really wanted to do was throw up her hands and scream, What the hell does that have to do with anything? Why the hell did a handful of junkies and child-abusers cost me my husband and marriage?

“How can I bring a child into the world, knowing what’s out there? Knowing that every time he left the house, he’d be faced with drugs, alcohol, prostitution. Pedophiles and murderers. People who will do anything for a buck or their next fix, and have no compunction about using or abusing children to get them.”

Jenna heard what he was saying, but she wasn’t sure she comprehended it. Possibly because the words echoed in her ears, coming to her as though from the end of a very long tunnel. Her head buzzed, her vision clouded, and her heart pounded in her throat.

This had to be what high blood pressure felt like. Perhaps the early warning signs of a heart or panic attack.

“That’s why you don’t want a baby?” she demanded, surprised when her voice came out steady and not nearly as Taming of the Shrew as she felt. “Because of what might happen? Because of a dozen or so negative possibilities?”

Mouth a thin line of anguish, he said, “There’s some ugly stuff out there, Jenna.”

“Without a doubt. There’s ugly stuff everywhere, especially if you go looking for it. But you can’t live your life in fear of it touching you.”

Feeling as though she were about to crawl out of her skin, she pushed herself up and climbed over his legs to get off the bed. Giving the top sheet a mighty yank, she pulled it free of the bed and wrapped it around her so that it draped across the floor like a long-trained ball gown.

“What if none of that ever happened?” she turned to demand of him face-on. “What if we’d stayed married, had a child-children, even-and lived happily ever after? What if none of them ever got addicted to drugs or were molested or mugged on the street? It happens, you know,” she charged in a tone growing ever more uncontrolled. “People all across the country lead happy, healthy lives, with solid marriages and perfectly content children, who never get caught up in any of those bad things you’re so worried about.”

Gage remained still on the bed, staring at her like a statue. Was he even listening to her? Did anything she’d said have an impact on him?

“We both grew up that way. Nothing awful ever happened to us. I mean, we used to joke all the time about our families giving the Cleavers or Bradys a run for their money, and how we wanted to create the same sort of environment for our own kids.”

It wasn’t entirely true that they’d grown up like sitcom children, of course. No family was perfect, and everyone had their own personal issues or baggage from the past, but not everyone had horrible, traumatizing, oversized baggage.

Jenna’s parents happened to be stiff and stoic. Whenever the topic had come up, she’d described them as being the American Gothic version of the Cleavers. But she’d been well cared for, and no one had ever beaten, neglected, or molested her, and neither of her parents was an alcoholic, drug abuser, or even compulsive gambler.

And Gage had had an even more storybook childhood. His parents were fabulous. Jenna loved them to death, had been overjoyed to join their family-and had thankfully been welcomed with open arms by his mother, father, and siblings all-and had cried as much over losing such close contact with them as in losing Gage when she’d filed for divorce. Everything about his childhood had been perfect, from a mother who baked cookies and sewed Halloween costumes to a father who built him a treehouse and coached his Little League team.

Which only made it all the more difficult to wrap her mind around his current attitude about family and child-rearing.

“Things are different now,” he told her, still morose, still holding tight to his horribly skewed point of view. “The world is a much more dangerous place now than it used to be.”

“Maybe you’re too close to it,” she said, trying not to jump completely off the deep end. “You’ve worked undercover for so long and seen so much of the dark side of society that you can’t see there are still good people out there. We’re good people, Gage. We would love and protect our children, give them a warm home and a soft place to fall if anything ever did hurt them.”

He shook his head. Sadly, it seemed, as though he wished things could be different, but still clinging tightly to his belief that having a baby meant one day losing that child to something painful and ugly.

Lowering his eyes to his lap, now covered by the thin, quilted spread her aunt kept on the guest room bed, he threaded his fingers together and shook his head again. “It’s too risky,” he rasped. “I can’t take the chance.”

She waited a beat, breathing slowly in and out, letting his final decision sink in. Anger bubbled in her belly, while at the same time a chill of sorrow spread through her veins.

“So that’s it,” she replied woodenly. “I don’t get a say in the matter? You can’t stretch your mind to believe that we could instill enough self-esteem and strong moral principles in our children that they wouldn’t get mixed up in any of that stuff? You’re going to trust that nameless, faceless strangers would wield enough power to hurt our kids before they’re even born, but you can’t trust the two of us enough to know we’d keep them safe and raise them right?”

He lifted his head to meet her gaze and the answer was clear. His eyes were bleak, splintering her heart into a thousand tiny shards. There was no changing his mind; she understood that now, even though somewhere, in the very distant back of her mind, she’d hoped and thought maybe, just maybe there was a chance.

Until that moment, however, she hadn’t realized how much pain of his own Gage was carrying around-because of his job, because of the things his job had forced him to witness, and because of the decisions they’d driven him to make.

She’d thought she’d lost it all when he’d pulled away from her and she’d been forced to ask for a divorce. Now she knew that wasn’t true. She hadn’t lost it all; he had. Because she still believed that good could win out over evil and had faith in humanity, while he…

He’d apparently lost faith in everyone and everything. Including her.

Including himself.

Gage got out of bed just as the sun was rising on the distant horizon, casting the sky in soft pink and orange and purple.

Not that he’d gotten a wink of sleep after Jenna had pressed him with the hard questions… and hadn’t liked his answers.

He didn’t think she’d gotten much rest, either.

There at the end, she’d had such a look in her eyes. A look of sadness, disappointment, and loss. It had clutched at him, squeezed him from the inside out and made him want to reach out. To grab her up, tug her back into bed, and hold her, murmuring reassuring promises until the sorrow faded from her eyes.

But he couldn’t do that. He hadn’t been able to offer a single soothing word, because everything he’d had to say had already been said. There was no changing his mind-no changing hers, either, he knew-and nothing was going to soften that blow for her.

Or the blow for him, especially after she’d looked at him that way, then simply turned and walked out of the room. She hadn’t closed the door behind her, but she might as well have slammed it for the hollow, resounding heartache she left in her wake.

Gage straightened what was left of the covers before leaving the room and heading downstairs. He suspected Jenna had slept-or not slept, as was more likely the case-on the sofa after leaving him. He’d thought about following her, but what would have been the point?

So he’d stayed where he was and hoped she wasn’t completely miserable, even though he’d known wishing for that was like wishing rain would fall up instead of down.

The stairs of the old farm house creaked as he took them slowly one at a time. He stopped in the entrance of the living room, but there was no sign of Jenna. No sheet or pillow on the antique settee. Not even the big, white plastic needles and purple yarn he’d tossed aside last night when things had still been good between them.

Good, ha! Before the conversation to end all conversations, things hadn’t just been good, they’d been freaking fantastic. He could have gone on that way with her…

Yeah, well, if he’d been lucky, forever. But where Jenna was concerned, he didn’t seem to be walking around with a four-leaf clover in his pocket. More like a black cat, a handful of spilled salt, and an upside-down horseshoe. Maybe even the number thirteen tattooed on his ass.

Turning away from the living room, he headed for the kitchen, but didn’t find Jenna there, either. Her yellow VW was still in the drive, he noticed when he glanced out the window, so unless she’d taken off on foot, there was only one place left where she could be.

He considered going out to the barn after her, but was in no hurry for the confrontation he knew was coming. Silent treatment or screaming match, either way it wasn’t going to be pretty.

There was coffee in the pot on the counter, so he poured himself a cup, then sat at the table to await Jenna’s return. He tried not to think about last night’s argument, but flashes flitted through his head. The words, the hurt, the ultimate outcome.

Just because he was responsible for ninety percent of it didn’t mean he didn’t have regrets. In a perfect world, he would change if he could. But the fact that this wasn’t a perfect world was the very reason he couldn’t change his mind, couldn’t change anything.

He was on his second cup of coffee when he heard Jenna outside the back kitchen door. She stomped her feet to kick the morning dew off her shoes, then stepped inside, closing the door behind her and shrugging out of the light jacket she’d worn out to the barn.

When she turned from hanging the jacket on a hook beside the door, she saw him and froze. But only for a split second. She recovered quickly, averting her gaze and moving about the kitchen as though he wasn’t there.

She could ignore him all she wanted, but he wasn’t going away. Not yet.

They might be right back where they’d started… well, practically. Thanks to her friends and their little sex plan, they’d technically started out in bed, with Jenna on top of him.

Things stirred behind the zipper of his jeans and he clamped his teeth together to put a stop to any more of those wayward memories.

They might be pretty much back where they’d started, but he still needed some answers of his own before he could leave, no matter how cold a shoulder she might aim at him.

“I see you got yourself a cup of coffee,” she said in a tone this close to being accusatory when she finally decided to acknowledge his presence.

“Yeah.”

She carried her own cup to the table and sat down across from him. Hostility-or possibly hurt, disappointment, and any number of other emotions blended together into hostility-rippled off of her in waves. Her actions and body language all but screamed, I’m not afraid of you. Look, I’ll sit right here and act perfectly normal to prove it.

And maybe she wasn’t afraid-she’d never been afraid of him and he didn’t want her to be, had never given her any reason-but she sure wasn’t happy with him. Didn’t want to be in the same room with him.

Same room, same house, same state. It didn’t take a psychic to figure out that she’d have probably stripped down and done an Irish jig on the tabletop if she’d come in from the barn and discovered him gone.

After blowing softly on her steaming coffee and taking a couple of sips, she set her mug down and faced him square on. Her green eyes were shadowed, both beneath her long, black lashes and in their shimmering depths.

“I think you should go,” she said quietly. The words were firm and forceful, but he noticed a brief, telltale quiver to her bottom lip.

His gut clenched, and every masculine instinct in his body screamed for him to get up, go to her, do something to end her suffering. But what could he do when he’d caused it all to begin with and wasn’t willing to go back on anything he’d told her?

Nothing, that’s what. Not a damn thing but sit there, hands fisted in his lap, fighting the urge not to leap to his feet.

“Go where?” he asked, not surprised when his voice scraped like sandpaper.

“Go,” she repeated, the words steadier than his own. “Leave. Collect your things and get out.”

“I can’t leave,” he told her. “Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

Her eyes narrowed, but in case she hadn’t seen it before, he reached to his side and slid a box along the tabletop. The same box he’d picked up on his way out of the guest room and set aside when he’d first come downstairs.

“You can’t be serious.” Her shoulders went back and her spine snapped straight while an expression of disbelief crawled across her face.

He raised a brow, but otherwise didn’t respond. She’d reacted the same way the first day he’d confronted her with a home pregnancy test and asked her to take it. Since then-after they’d wordlessly agreed to disagree and sleep together, anyway-she’d taken the boxes from him each morning and grudgingly taken the tests just to appease him.

So far, they’d each been negative. He wondered if his luck would continue to hold out on that score, or if he’d run out of pixie dust the same as he had last night in bed.

Grabbing the box from the table, Jenna pushed to her feet. Her movements were stiff and jerky with fury.

“This is the last one,” she said.

She might have been only five-foot-three, but her petite form still managed to tower over him while he remained seated and she stood like a sentinel only inches away.

“I’ll take this, and then you’re going to leave.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she stopped him with a shake of her head. “I’m not taking no for an answer this time, Gage. This is it, we’re done.”

Without waiting for his response, she stalked past him and climbed slowly up the stairs.

He stayed where he was, the knuckles of one hand turning white around his coffee mug as the seconds ticked by. He didn’t know why he was suddenly so pissed.

This was exactly what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? For the sticks to keep turning up minus signs so he could know Jenna wasn’t pregnant and get back to his life, back to his job.

But the past few days had spoiled him, lulled him into a false sense of contentment. It had been so easy to push all the important stuff to the back of his brain and focus only on the fact that he was with Jenna again. They weren’t fighting and were enjoying each other’s company.

More than enjoying. A couple of times, he’d damn near enjoyed himself straight into a coma.

Now, though, reality was smacking him full in the face. His ex-wife was upstairs peeing on a stick that could very well show a positive sign this time. Then where would they be?

Nowhere he wanted to think about right now, that was for sure.

It wasn’t in Gage’s nature to bury his head in the sand over anything, but at this particular moment, he was happy to play ostrich rather than let his mind wander down all sorts of paths he wasn’t ready to deal with. If he had to deal with them, he would-what other choice did he have?-but not until it was absolutely necessary.

Shifting in his seat, he tipped his coffee cup, which had only a couple of swallows left at the bottom. His butt was getting sore and his coffee had grown cold. How long had he been sitting here? he wondered. How long had Jenna been in the bathroom?

With a frown pulling down his brows and the corners of his mouth, he checked his watch. More than twenty minutes had passed since Jenna had stomped her way upstairs.

Well, she hadn’t come back down, that was for certain. He hadn’t heard her moving around up there, either, but then, he hadn’t exactly been paying close attention.

The legs of his chair scraped across the floor as he pushed to his feet and started for the second floor. Jenna was nowhere in sight, and the bathroom door was still closed.

He debated going back downstairs to wait her out, then thought twice about it. The image of her sitting in there holding a little white stick with a plus sign on it flickered across his mind’s eye and tightened the muscles low in his gut.

Shit. This possible impending-fatherhood thing was worse than a prostate exam.

Taking a deep breath and hoping trepidation didn’t shrink his balls to the size of marbles, he leaned a shoulder against the jamb and rapped his knuckles softly against the door. “Jenna? You okay in there?”

A couple of muted scuffles followed his query and a minute later the door opened. Only a crack at first, then all the way as she stepped out into the hall.

“You okay?” he asked again.

“Fine.” The reply was blunt and emotionless, but when she lifted her head to meet his gaze, he could see it was also a lie.

She wasn’t crying now, but her eyes were rimmed with red, her nose slightly puffy and mottled.

His heart lurched. Was that a good sign or a bad sign?

Did he even want to know?

“Here,” she said, thrusting the small white stick from the test kit at him. Her balled-up fist hit him in the center of his abdomen, driving the air from his diaphragm as his hand automatically came up to take what she was offering.

The instant they touched flesh to flesh, she released her hold on the plastic wand and yanked her hand away. He tried not to flinch, but felt her rejection like a two-by-four to the back of his knees.

“Congratulations, you win again,” she said, her tone pinpoint-sharp and dripping with derision. “And you can save yourself the trouble of coming back here every day with another test, or calling and pestering me to take one, because it’s no longer necessary. I just got my period, so there’s no baby, and probably won’t be one any time in the near future. Maybe never, thank you very much.”

Her voice cracked on the last, and he caught the threat of tears brimming in her eyes just before she brushed past him and rushed down the stairs.

He’d thought he would be relieved when she finally got her period, when there was definitive proof that she hadn’t gotten pregnant during their one night of unprotected sex.

Instead, he felt oddly disappointed. He wanted to run after her, but knew she wouldn’t welcome his company at the moment, and had no idea what he’d say even if he did.

The best thing he could do now was thank his lucky stars and get the hell out of Fertile Valley before he did something stupid like kiss her, apologize, sleep with her again, or-God forbid-offer her another shot at his little swimmers just to wipe the look of devastation off her face.

No. He’d dodged the bullet once, he was not going to risk a direct hit next time around. It was done, finished, over with. Life could go back to normal… or at least what he’d come to accept as normal over the past year and a half.

And if he wasn’t particularly happy, if he came home to an empty apartment and fell asleep in front of the television every night with only memories of better times to keep him warm…

Well, he could live with that. Especially since he didn’t seem to have a choice.