Beside a Dreamswept Sea (35 page)

“Maybe I can help,” she said. He hadn’t been this uptight since he’d proposed, and she felt ninety-nine percent sure she knew what in his dream had brought that tension on. “You dreamed strange things about Meriam, didn’t you?” He nodded, and she continued. “Did you dream about things the way they really were, and not the way you remember them being when you’re awake?”

He stiffened and looked up at her, stunned. “How did you know?”

“No great mystery, Counselor.” She gave him a soft smile. “I’ve lived through this, too. An unexpected divorce is a lot like an unexpected death. Both are mourned.”

“Of course.” He lowered his gaze to their linked hands.

“My guess is that you saw Meriam as independent. A woman who refused to need you or the kids, and who refused to let any of you get close. You understood why, but deep down you resented it. You admired her adventuresome spirit, her thumbing her nose at the role society thought she should play, and her doing what she pleased. You admired those things in her because they were traits you’d tamped in yourself. We’ve discussed that before. So that tells me you saw something else in this dream. Something you didn’t know, not even deep inside. Or maybe you knew it and refused to see it, because seeing the truth hurt too much. Is that what happened?”

“She never loved me, Cally.” Pain riddled his voice.

It cut into her heart, and she softened her voice. “I don’t think she could, sweetheart.”

“I know. And yet I still feel so angry. So . . . So—”

“Unlovable?”

He nodded, avoided her eyes.

“The anger you can deal with. It’s the feeling unlovable that doesn’t sit well on your shoulders.”

“No more easily than it sits on yours.”

“You know, darling, in a way that this happened is good. Quit glaring at me, I’m serious. I mean, it hurts like hell, but we truly understand each other’s feelings because we’ve both lived through this. That’s bound to be advantageous.”

“There should be some redeeming quality.”

“Quit pouting.”

“It hurts.”

“Yes, it does.”

“You understand totally. I’m sorry for that.” He curled an arm around her shoulder and drew her to his side. “But you’re right, Cally. This isn’t the kind of thing you can explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.”

“Who’d want to?”

“Not me,” he said, then went stone-still.

“Bryce?” He looked thunderstruck. What had happened? “What is it?”

“Tony was right.”

“What?”

“He was right. This is about pride.”

Cally pressed her face against his shoulder, then tilted her chin and looked up into his eyes. “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. I think it’s about time we got to keep a little of ours. What do you think, Counselor?”

“You’re talking in riddles again, honey.”

She gave him an apologetic smile. “Gregory married Joleen within days of divorcing me. Meriam didn’t even tell the people at work she had married you. They made us feel unlovable and our pride took a real battering.”

“I told myself those things didn’t matter. But deep down they did matter, Cally. I couldn’t admit that before, but I have to now. They mattered a lot.”

“Of course they did. They mattered to me, too.” Tension knotted the muscle at his nape. She rubbed at it. “I finally figured this out. Those things would have proven to us that we were important to them. But we didn’t get them, so we doubted we were important until we felt sure we weren’t important. The result: we feel unlovable.” She grunted. “Wickedly simple, really.”

“Hmm, but hard to face.” Bryce understood why perfectly—now. He glanced back from the carpet to Cally. She had the strangest expression on her face. Kind of awed, kind of irked. He didn’t know what to make of it. Or what to expect. “What are you thinking?”

She wheeled her gaze to his. “I’m thinking fear and doubt are horrible monsters. We let them keep us in our relationships a long time after we should have gotten out.”

He rubbed at the back of his head and debated. Bottom line, he’d promised her honesty. “I know we disagree on this, but Gregory and Meriam didn’t do anything to us that we didn’t let them do.”

“For the record, we don’t disagree anymore,” Cally said. “I always blamed Gregory and wanted back everything he had stolen from me. He did take those things, but he didn’t make me an easy victim. I did that, Bryce. I let him steal from me. Let him chisel away at the good in me until I couldn’t see any good anymore.”

“Just as I let Meriam take and take from me without once asking her to give.”

“In my humble opinion, Counselor, we screwed up.”

“I hate to have to agree, but it appears we did.”

“But”—Cally jabbed the air with a pointed finger—“by gum, we spared our pride.”

“Yeah. And paid dearly for the privilege.”

“It left us damn lonely.”

“Damn lonely,” Bryce agreed. “And unwilling to love again.”

“After our experiences? We’d be crazy.”

“Idiots.”

“And we shouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“No, we shouldn’t.” So why did he feel godawful?

“Not everyone can have that rare kind of love Collin and Cecelia, and Miss Hattie and Tony, shared.”

“If they could,” Bryce commented, “it wouldn’t be rare.”

“Right.” Cally stood up, then tugged Bryce’s hand, urging him to his feet. “I’m not agreeing to your proposal yet, but if I did, then we could care, Bryce. We do care. And caring is more honest and lasting than the kind of love we’ve known. That would fade, but us caring, that would last a lifetime.”

He smoothed his hands over her narrow shoulders, his hands warm. “So we’re smart not to love.”

She let her gaze drift to his chest. “Appears so.”

“Cally?” Standing chest to breasts, he stared down at her, the truth in his eyes. “Tell me.”

Her fingers at his waist went stiff. She dragged her gaze up to his, then sank her teeth into her lower lip. “You are lovable, Bryce. If I could choose to love any man, I’d love you. I really would.”

She would. Too moved for words, he curled his arms around her waist, then kissed her lovingly, longingly. Desire flooding his body, his heart thundering, his hands trembling, he whispered against her cheek on short rasps of breath. “I’d love you too, Cally.”

He kissed her again. Then again. And still again.

“Bryce?” She parted their fused mouths, dreamy-eyed. “Make love with me.”

Desire increased tenfold, nearly knocking him to his knees. Mentally staggering, he cupped her face in his hands and whispered the only thought he could latch onto. “I’m going to hate it.”

She went stiff in his arms. “A simple no would have sufficed, Counselor.”

God Almighty, had he lost his mind? “No.” He stroked her face. “I’m going to hate loving it, Cally. That’s what I meant.”

Primed to blister his ears, she said not a word, just stared at him. Something in his expression must have redeemed him, because her expression softened and she said, “Me, too.” Expelling a soft sigh that resembled a purr, she curled her arms around his neck. “I can’t wait.”

Determined that neither of them would have to, he grabbed her hand and headed to the stairs in a near run. At the landing, he turned to her. “Your room, or mine.”

“Mine.”

A soft rain fell
against the Great White Room’s windows. Bryce clicked on the tulip lamp beside the bed. A warm rosy glow spilled over the bed, over the floor, over Cally. His heart slid up into his throat. She stood atop the braided rug, her long blond hair mussed, her striped robe gaping open at her breasts. She looked desirable. Beautiful. Lovable. She also looked self-conscious and scared stiff.

He hated knowing she was feeling those things. He wanted her at ease with him, thinking him lovable. Hell, he wanted her eager for him. As eager for him as he was for her. One day she would be, he promised himself. One day she’d look right into that damn mirror and see herself beautiful. See herself as he saw her.

But not tonight.

Tonight she stood woodenly, like a sacrificial virgin. He couldn’t make love with her knowing she felt like a sacrificial virgin. Yet if he didn’t, she’d feel ugly. She’d think he was like Gregory. That Bryce, too, found her undesirable.

Asking him to make love with her had to have been one of the hardest things the woman ever had done in her life. Knowing it, and that she’d done it anyway, touched something in him. Something precious and good and deep. The woman had more courage in her fingertips than he had in his entire body. And before they left this room, so help him, she’d know she was lovable so deep in her soul there’d be no denying it. “It’s been a long time for both of us,” he said, attempting to ease some of the tension. Hers and his own.

“Uh-huh.” She clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides.

He tried a smile. “Are you as nervous as I am?”

“If you’re terrified, Counselor, then you’ve got company.”

The smile became genuine. “Good. I’d hate to think I was going through this alone.”

“Not a chance.” She folded her arms over her chest.

Her brush lay on a silver tray, atop the heavy wood dresser. He picked it up then walked around the bench at the foot of the bed to the opposite side of it from Cally. When he motioned, she clasped the blue coverlet near the pillows, and they peeled it and the quilts back, revealing white eyelet-edged sheets that tinged pink in the soft light and smelled of sunshine.

Without a word, Cally reached for the belt of her robe. So did he. They laid them across the foot of the bed; his on the left, hers on the right. The robes looked good there, and knowing it possible he might see them like that the rest of his life started a fire deep in his gut that warmed him, body and heart. Cally
would
accept his proposal. She
would.

He glanced up at her, and felt he’d been kicked in the chest. She looked like a barefoot princess. Her gauzy white gown clung to her breasts and to the tuck at her waist. Hiking up the hem, she crawled into bed. He slid in beside her, his heart chugging like a train. She scooted down onto the pillow then smoothed her hem down over her ankles. A fold of it creased over his pajama-clad thigh. Navy silk and white gauze. Him and Cally. A perfect match—except for love.

He held up the brush. “I’ve watched you do this and I’d like to . . . Would you mind?” Damn, he sounded like a kid who’d just hit puberty. He’d been married for eons, for God’s sake. Why was he so nervous?

Unlovable.

“No, I don’t mind.” She sat up, then turned her back to him.

Nerves were normal. He hadn’t been married to her. Hadn’t made love with her. She didn’t like liking anything about him. And more than he wanted his next breath, he wanted her to ferociously hate liking making love with him. He wanted her to marry him, to spend all her days with him and the M and M’s, to spend all of her nights in his arms, and to hate loving being there. He wanted her content and happy, satisfied and satiated, and at peace. Wanting all that and more, how could he not be nervous?

Her back was as gorgeous as the rest of her. Pale, smooth skin, dusky with a film of scented talc that smelled soothing, like the sea. Her gown cut far below her waist, into a tempting deep vee that had him nearly drooling with wanting to kiss the skin over each vertebrae. One by one. To start at her nape and work his way down her spine. His pulse pumped hard in his throat. He lifted the length of her hair into his hands. In the mellow light, it gleamed like spun gold. “I love your hair long.”