Line of Scrimmage (8 page)

Even when Ryan hired the best lawyer in Florida to keep her father out of jail after his business partner embezzled from their
clients—even
then
—her family withheld their approval of her marriage to a professional athlete. Despite his obvious devotion to Susannah, they
were convinced he would eventually stray. Oh, they were always friendly and civil to him, but they never made Ryan feel like
a member of their family, which was something he desperately wanted after growing up as the only child of a single mother
who had worked two jobs to support them.

Susannah’s head spun as she took a shower and got dressed. Carrying her breakfast tray, she went into the living room where
Ryan was stretched out on the sofa with the remote control aimed at the T.V.

“Thanks again for breakfast,” Susannah said.

Without looking away from the television, he said, “No problem.”

She expected a mess when she went into the spotless kitchen, but once again he surprised her. The Ryan she used to live with
might have made breakfast, but he would’ve left the mess for her to deal with.

They had argued about hiring household help. Susannah felt that because she didn’t work she could take care of her own home.
He hadn’t wanted her to have to deal with it, saying her volunteer commitments were equivalent to a full-time job and they
could well afford help. In truth, she hadn’t wanted a stranger in their home. Their lives were so public there had to be somewhere
they could be completely alone.

She put her dishes in the dishwasher and wiped off the tray. The sprig of evergreen caught her eye. Susannah picked it up
and breathed in the fragrant scent that brought back memories of Christmas trees and cozy holidays—some of them right here
in this house. When there was nothing more to keep her in the kitchen, she took a deep breath to prepare herself to face him,
wondering how she would ever stand eight more days alone with him.

He came into the kitchen and refilled his coffee cup.

“What did non-lover lover boy want?”

She shot him a withering look. “It was Missy.”

“
Oh,
another of my biggest fans. How
is
my sister-in-law?” he asked, leaning back against the counter.

She noticed the bruises on his face were beginning to yellow and fade a bit. “She’s not happy I’m here with you.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Susannah shrugged.

“I’m sure she gave you an earful.”

“And a half.”

He raised an amused eyebrow. “Do you remember what we used to say when we’d get that disapproving vibe from your family?”

Susannah felt her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. “Don’t say it.”

“Why not?” he asked, enjoying her discomfort. “If they could see us in bed, they’d never wonder what kept us together.”

She rolled her eyes. “It takes more than good sex to keep a marriage together. We found that out, didn’t we?”

Putting his mug on the counter, he crossed the room and rested his hands on her shoulders. “What we had was not
good
sex. It was
great
sex.” He kissed her cheek and then her neck. “Need me to refresh your memory?”

“No, thank you.” She pushed gently on his chest. “I appreciate the offer, though.”

He chuckled but didn’t remove his lips from her neck.

“Want to get out of here for a while?”

Thrown off balance by the question and trying not to be breathless from what he was doing to her neck, she asked, “And do
what?”

“We could take the snowmobile for a ride.”

“Should you be doing that?”

“I feel a lot better today, and if I don’t get some air, I’m going to lose it.”

She pushed him away with more insistence as her sister’s warning echoed through her mind. “You always were a terrible patient.”

“I won’t deny that.”

“I’ll agree to the air, but not the snowmobile. How about we start with a walk?”

He made a face of distaste.

“I know a walk won’t pacify your need for speed, but one wrong move on the snowmobile and you’re back in the hospital.”

“Why do you always have to be such a grown up?”

he asked, his lips forming a pout that reduced him to a twelve-year-old. He’d asked the question often during their life together.

“One of us has to be,” she said, and the familiar retort made her ache for what used to be. From the look on his face, he
felt it, too.

“Susie,” he whispered, cradling her face in his hands.

“Kiss me like you did last night. Just once.”

This time she didn’t say no. She kissed him because she wanted to. It was a simple as that. Besides, the lump in her throat
made it impossible for her to do anything but hold on for the ride as he crushed his lips to hers. Her arms slipped around
his neck, his hands on her hips molded her to him, and her breasts pressed against his chest. Heat, the one thing she could
always count on from him, blazed through her, making her feel weak and empowered at the same time.

He had asked for just one kiss, so he made sure he got his money’s worth. By the time he pulled back from her, Susannah was
clinging to him.

“Let me make love to you,” he whispered in her ear, sending a tremble through her. “I was awake all night thinking about what
might’ ve happened if you hadn’t said no. I want you so much, Susie.” He inched her back against the counter to make sure
she could feel just
how
much.

“I can’t.” She sidestepped out of his embrace and moved as far from him as she could get without leaving the room. “I can’t
do this to Henry.”

Ryan exploded. “
I don’t want to hear another word
about him!
How can you stand being with that seventy-year- old trapped in a thirty-year-old’s body?”

“I love him!” Susannah cried.

“If you loved him, you wouldn’t have kissed me the way you just did, the way you did last night. You love
me!
You said so!”

Susannah burst into tears.

He went to her and brought her into his arms. “You love me,” he said in a softer but no less urgent tone. “You don’t want
him. That’s why you’re not sleeping with him. You want me.”

“I don’t
want
to want you,” she said, pummeling his chest with her fists.

Before she could connect with his ribs, he tightened his hold on her.

“I just can’t do this again, Ryan. I barely survived it the first time, and the only reason I did was because Henry was there
for me.”

“He was
always
there for you,” Ryan fumed. “He’s been the third person in our marriage from the very beginning. I tolerated your friendship
with him, but I always knew he was in love with you. He couldn’t wait for us to break up so he could swoop in and rescue you.”

“That’s not true.”

“
The hell it isn’t!
He’s been poisoning your mind against me for years.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Susannah protested, even as something about what Ryan said rang true. She couldn’t remember Henry ever having
anything nice to say about Ryan, but she had always thought it was because she left him for Ryan. Had Henry deliberately tried
to sabotage her marriage?

“He hates me because you love me, and he knows it,”

Ryan said quietly. “He’s willing to marry a woman who’s in love with another man. Who does that, Susie?”

“He loves me!”

“Yes, he does. But you don’t love
him.
He knows it, I know it, and you know it. You
know
it, Susie.”

Trapped by the truth and overwhelmed by her feelings for Ryan, Susannah pulled herself free of him and left the room before
she could humiliate herself by crying again.

Chapter 8

RYAN WATCHED HER GO AND THEN KICKED ONE OF THE kitchen chairs in frustration. He winced when pain cut through his midsection.
“
Goddamn it!
”

Nothing was going according to plan. He hadn’t expected it to take this long to bring her around.

He’d had more than enough time over the last year to think about what had gone wrong between him and Susie and to take responsibility
for his share of it, which was most of it if he were being honest. He was trying to show her he’d changed, but he was finding
she had changed, too. She was no longer the wide-eyed girl who loved him unconditionally, who stood by him through all the
highs and lows of his illustrious career, and who made him feel adored even in the most trying of times. That girl was gone,
and in her place was an older, wiser woman who wouldn’t be so easily led this time.

But he couldn’t give up, especially now that he knew she still loved him. They needed more time. The only problem was they
didn’t have much time. In just over a week they were due back in court, and unless he was somehow able to convince her to
give their marriage another chance, he was going to be handed a divorce he didn’t want. If that happened, how was he supposed
to live the rest of his life without her? Since she was no longer susceptible to what he’d often been told was his formidable
charm, he was going to have to take his game up a notch. But how? He had no idea, but he had to think of something—and fast.

Desperate and panicky, Ryan went on a futile search for her in the house. In the front hall, he noticed her coat was gone.
Grabbing his coat, he shrugged it on and went outside.

“Susie?” he called but was greeted by silence. The sky was thick with stormy-looking clouds, and the air heavy with moisture.
We’re going to get pounded with more
snow,
he thought, studying the sky for a moment before he looked down to find her footprints in the old snow.

“Susie!” he called, breaking into a jog that made him painfully aware of his weakened state. He hadn’t even traveled the length
of a football field when he had to stop to catch his breath.

He found her perched on a ridge that overlooked the town. They had whiled away many an hour in that spot but not when the
slope leading to the ridge was slick with ice like it was now. “Susie,” he said, weak from exertion and relief. “Susie, come
down from there. Come on.”

She didn’t move or even indicate she heard him.

“I can’t do a goddamned thing for you if you fall off that rock!” he yelled, still clutching his side as he tried to catch
his breath. “So get down. Now!”

“Leave me alone, Ryan. Will you please just leave me alone?”

He hated the tears he saw on her cold-reddened cheeks—and hated knowing he had put them there.

“If you don’t come down, I’m coming up.”

“I got myself up, I can get myself down. Now, go away.”

He scaled the six-foot climb with his eyes, groaning inwardly at what it would cost him to climb up there in his current condition.
Reaching for the first notch in the rock, he grabbed hold of it and grunted as he eased his way up the craggy slope.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, descending with ease.

She wiped her hands on her jeans and glared at him.

“Happy now?”

“No,” he said. “I am
not
happy right now.”

She tried to push past him, but he blocked the path.

“I need you to leave me alone for a little while.” Her bright blue eyes spit fire at him. “Can you do that? I can’t think
when you’re taking up all the space.”

He fought to conceal his smile. “Out here?” He gestured to the snow-capped aspens and pines. “Or in there?” he asked, resting
a finger on her chest.

She swatted his hand away. “
Ugh! You’re driving
me crazy!

”

“Right back atcha, darlin’. You drive me crazy. You drive me wild. You drive me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Well,
I’ve
been trying to tell
you
it’s time for you to get a new driver, but you refuse to listen to anything other than what you want to hear.”

“I don’t want another driver. I want you.”

“
You can’t have me!
What part of that do you not understand?”

“Um, the ‘can’t’ part?”

She shrieked with frustration. “You could have any woman in that town.” She gestured toward Breckenridge off in the distance.
“Hell, you could have three of them

at once if that’s what floats your boat. Why don’t you go find one who wants you and
leave me alone?

”

“Maybe I
can
have any woman I want.” He worked at not showing her she had hurt him by being so anxious for him to find someone else. “But
the only one I want is the one who’s standing right in front of me.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you—”

“I know you’re hoping I’ll get bored with this and give up because that’s what I would’ve done in the past. But that’s not
going to happen.”

“Let me ask you something, Ryan.”

“Anything you want.”

“What happens, hypothetically speaking, if you were to ‘get’ me?” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

“What happens then?”

He shrugged. “We spend the rest of our lives together.”

“And when you’re not in what you consider to be the fight of your life, are you going to be this concerned about how I feel
and what I’m thinking and if I’m happy?”

“Of course I will,” he stammered. “
I will.

”

She snorted. “Whatever. Once the thrill of the chase is gone, the thrill will be gone, too, and we’ll be right back to business
as usual—you being the great and wonderful Ryan Sanderson and me being a piece of furniture in your life. You can’t convince
me
anything
would be different.”

“Do you know what your problem is?” He told himself to just shut up before he said something he couldn’t take back. But somehow
his mouth never got the message from his brain.

“Oh, please,
do
enlighten me.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“You’ve never forgiven me.”

“For?”

He kicked at the snow with the point of his boot.

“You know.”

Her face went pale. “Don’t go there. That’s completely and totally off limits.” She pushed past him.

“Why?” He chased after her. “Why is it off limits?

You’ve never talked to me about it. I know you’ve talked to other people about it. Why not me? Why not the only other person
in the world who feels the same way you do?”

She stopped and turned to him, a look of disbelief on her face. “You do
not
feel the same way I do, and you’ve got a lot of nerve to say that!”

“
Why?
” he cried. “Because I wasn’t the one who carried him? That doesn’t mean I didn’t want him! I wanted him. More than I’ve ever
wanted anything!”

Susannah put her hands over her ears and shook her head. “Please stop.”

He reached for her arm. “No, I won’t stop,” he said, plunging forward despite the hurt that made every nerve ending in his
body feel like it was on fire. “This conversation is long overdue. It’s the reason we’re on the verge of a divorce.”

“It’s not the only reason.”

“It’s a big one, and nothing was ever the same after it.

Talk to me, Susie,” he pleaded. “I needed to share it with you, but you shut me out.”

“You went back to work!” She tugged her arm free.

“If you wanted to share it with me, you should’ve stayed home.”

Following her as she started back down the path, he said, “I had a job to do. My team was counting on me.”

“Your
wife
was counting on you,” she shot over her shoulder.

“My
wife
treated me like the whole thing was my fault. Going back to work was a relief.”

“How typical. Of course it was all about you.” Her movements were jerky as she went into the cabin and tugged off her coat.

He hung his coat next to hers and summoned the strength to pursue it, knowing if he didn’t, nothing else he did would matter.
“It wasn’t all about me, Susie,” he said in a quiet tone as he fought for control of his emotions. “But it wasn’t all about
you, either. I was in that room when they couldn’t find his heartbeat. I was right there with you. And then I had to watch
my wife give birth to a baby we knew was dead.” His voice caught. “So don’t try to tell me it didn’t happen to me, too.” He
walked up behind her and rested his hands on her stooped shoulders. “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Susie,”
he whispered. “Even worse than losing my mother.”

Sobs wracked through her petite frame. “It was my fault.”

“
What?
” He turned her around so he could see her face. “Why would you say that?”

“I must’ve done something wrong. He was moving all around. For thirty-two weeks he lived inside me, and then he was just gone.
How could that have happened?”

“No one knows, baby.” Tears slid down his face. “But it was
not
your fault. You did everything right. I wanted to help you. After. I wanted to be there for you, but you didn’t want me. That
made me crazy, Susie. I felt like I had lost you, too. That’s why I went back to work. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t
bear to spend another day in that house waiting for you to turn to me. Your mother was there and your sister, so I knew you’d
be well cared for. I just needed to go back to something I could control.”

“And how did that go?”

His mouth twisted into an ironic smile. “You know.

The biggest blowout of my career.”

“Which led to all the press coverage of our loss. It was
ours,
Ryan. It never should’ve been in the papers.”

His jaw clenched with old anger. “I know that. I tried to find out who leaked it to the press, but I never did. I was on the
warpath for weeks over it.”

She shrugged. “It could’ve been anyone—a nurse in the hospital, a trainer on the team. Who knows? It didn’t matter. Nothing
did, for a long, long time.”

“I’ve thought of him every day for two years,” Ryan confessed. “I wonder what he’d be doing, what he’d be saying, what he’d
be interested in. I have this picture in my mind of what he might look like—he’d have to be blond with us as his parents.
I hope he’d have gotten your pretty blue eyes and maybe my dimples. Girls always went crazy over them.”

Susannah looked up with surprise, her eyes bright with new tears. “I never knew you thought about him that way.”

“You never let me tell you. I couldn’t stand having to pretend like nothing happened when the worst thing in the world had
happened. After Bernie and I cleaned out the nursery before you came home, I bawled for hours. I was a total mess, but you
refused to let me even mention his name.”

She shook her head. “Don’t.”

“Justin,” Ryan whispered. “His name was Justin, and he was our son, Susie.
Ours.
” He pulled her tight against him when she broke down into sobs. “I loved him as much as I love you, and I miss him. I miss
him every day.” He brushed the tears from her face. “We should’ve tried again.”

“I couldn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t bear the idea of it happening again.”

“The doctors said there was no reason to believe it would. It was a fluke thing, baby. And don’t you think we owe our son
more than to let his death ruin our marriage? He wouldn’t have wanted that, Susie. We were so happy for so long, and then
it was over. Just like that.”

“It wasn’t just because of what happened with . . . ”

“Say it, Susie. Say his name.”

“Justin,” she whispered. “It wasn’t just because of him.”

He sat on the sofa and brought her down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “It didn’t help that we weren’t able to
share our loss, that we both turned to other people to get us through it.”

“No,” she conceded. “That didn’t help. I’m sorry if you felt like I blamed you. I didn’t. I just felt like I had failed you
so profoundly.”

“Failed
me?
” He was incredulous. “You didn’t fail me. You could never fail me.”

“I knew how much you wanted a family of your own, and I wanted to give you that. I wanted to do that for you.”

“You already had. The day you agreed to marry me, I had my family. If I’d had only you, it would’ve been enough. Justin and
any other children we might’ve had would’ve only been frosting on the cake.”

Susannah stared at him, seeming amazed by his confession.

“So what do you say?” he asked. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

“For what?”

“For going back to work when you needed me. For letting you think football was more important to me than you were, which it
wasn’t—ever.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Never?”

He shook his head. “Never.”

Caressing his bruised cheek, she studied him for a long time. “I do forgive you, Ryan. I pushed you away after everything
happened. You’re right about that. I knew I was doing it, and I knew I’d regret it.” She looked almost ashamed. “In a way,
I think I was testing you.”

“I guess I failed then, miserably, by rejoining the team,” he said, feeling sick as he said it.

“You did what I expected you to.”

“I would’ve stayed. If you had given me even the slightest indication you wanted me there, I would’ve stayed. I would’ve sacrificed
the rest of the season if I’d thought it would matter to you.”

She rested her head on his shoulder. “We’ve made a terrible mess of things, haven’t we?”

“It’s nothing we can’t fix.”

“I’m marrying someone else,” she reminded him.

He tipped her chin up and brushed his lips over hers.

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I
am.

”

Chuckling, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth. “You’ll marry him over my dead body.”

“If that’s what it takes,” she said with a saucy grin.

Her eyes danced with amusement, which he much preferred to the devastation of a few minutes earlier.

He tossed his head back and laughed but went silent when he felt her lips on his neck. “
Susie
. . . ” he groaned.