Straight from the Heart (18 page)

“I know you’ve changed. I know why. I admire your loyalty to Casey, Jace, but I don’t want to wonder if I’m part of your penance.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, “Nothing.”

“No,” he insisted, his jaw set at a belligerent angle. “You’re the one with the two-twenty IQ and the college education. Explain it to me.”

Rebecca took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She could explain it until she was blue in the face, and he wouldn’t listen, not when he was feeling hurt and defensive. “You’ve had a terrible experience, you’re reacting to it. You told me something good had to come out of what happened to Casey. Maybe right now you think that something is marriage and a family.”

His opinion of her theory came out in a stream of muttered curses. “That ridiculous. I love you, Becca. Just because my priorities changed after the accident doesn’t make them false.”

“I didn’t say they were false. I just think you should give yourself some time. You’ve taken yourself out of the environment that put so much pressure on you, you almost ruined your life. What happens when you go back? You’ll have more demands on you than ever before, Jace. Not only the demands of the game and celebrity status, but demands you’ll put on yourself as well.”

He began pacing beside the unmade bed, his bare feet padding softly across the blue rug. He wanted to hit something or run, but the time for running was over. Deep in his gut was that bottom-of-the-ninth feeling, that two-outs-and-two-strikes feeling. Reining in his fears, he stopped and faced Rebecca.

“You think I’ll knuckle under?” he asked coolly. One dark eyebrow stretched upward in a sardonic question. “You think I’ll get back to Chicago, pop a few brewskies, and race out to the track to blow my paycheck on the horses?”

Rebecca rubbed a hand across her suddenly aching forehead. She wasn’t trying to undermine his confidence. She only wanted to make him see the need for caution. And, yes, dammit, she wanted to protect herself.

“I just—” She stopped and shook her head, frustration rubbing her nerves raw. “I don’t want promises from you now, Jace.”

He closed the distance between them with three angry strides. When he spoke again, his face was only inches from hers, close enough so Rebecca could see the pain and the fury in it. “Well, maybe you don’t want promises, but I
need
to make them, Becca. Can you understand that? I
need
to promise you I’ll come back. I
need
to have you believe me. You want some kind of proof I’ll come back. I’m offering it now. You’re the one who’s not willing to make a commitment to this relationship, Rebecca.”

He backed off a yard and began pacing again, his gaze riveted to the floor. His voice vibrated with barely restrained emotion. “If you had any idea of the hell I’ve gone through trying to start my whole stinking life over, then you’d understand that I could use a little support. I don’t think it’s asking too much to want the woman I love to have a little faith in me.”

“I do—”

He stopped and shot her a look so incredulous, it cut her to the quick. “No, you don’t. I know I hurt you once. That was seven years ago, Rebecca. We were hardly more than kids. I admit I made a mistake. How long am I going to have to pay for it? You were the judge and the jury. Tell me what the sentence is for making a mistake?”

The sharp sense of
déjà vu
was like being poked with a needle. Her sister had used almost those same words seven years ago when they’d fought about Ellen’s lack of responsibility. Rebecca tried to tell herself she wasn’t still passing judgment on Jace, she was only being careful.

“What’s the matter, Becca? Doesn’t your logical, practical mind have a list of guidelines for offenses?” he asked sarcastically. “Do I get credit for time already served? Does it matter that I love you, that I want to have a life with you? Or are you going to hold it over my head for the rest of my life that I wasn’t always as mature and responsible as you?”

“I’m not holding it over your head,” she denied softly, staring down at her clasped hands as tears rose in her eyes.

Jace’s laugh was nothing more than derision. “The hell you’re not.”

“You say that as if I don’t have a right to!” she shouted, glaring at him. “You broke my heart! That may be a ‘little mistake’ to you, but it’s a lot more than that to me. Do you have any idea how long I hurt after you left?”

A measure of control came back to her as her question hung in the air between them. She turned to one side, combing her hair back with a trembling hand. “Yes, I’m afraid of it happening again. I don’t think I could live through it.”

“You won’t have to,” Jace said quietly. He had never meant for this to escalate into a fight. The last thing he wanted to do was drag up the past and hurt Rebecca. He wanted the past behind them, but it seemed he couldn’t quite close the door on it. She wouldn’t let him. “Trust me, Rebecca. Let me make that promise.”

It was a simple statement, and yet he was asking too much. Jace saw his promise as a tie that would bind him to her even in his absence. Rebecca saw it as a string that could easily be broken once he had his career back on track. It was a difference of perspective, she thought sadly, one that wasn’t going to be resolved. Why couldn’t he just have left the future alone? They could have gone on drifting with no promises to keep or to break.

A weary sigh ribboned out of her. “They haven’t called you back yet. We could be arguing for no reason.”

“No, Becca,” Jace said sadly. “Believing in me can’t be conditional. I have to have your trust whether I stay here or go back to the Kings. Love can’t have those kinds of restrictions put on it and still be called love. It may not be logical for you to trust me, but you can’t love me without doing it.”

The silence was thick around them as Jace waited for Rebecca to make some kind of comment. The only sound that came was that of rain on the window and a distant rumble of thunder.

“Maybe you don’t love me. Maybe I’m the one who’s being a fool.”

Rebecca’s troubled gaze met his as she hurried to reassure him. “I do love you, Jace, but—”

“No. No qualification, no proviso. Either you love me, you believe in me, or you don’t. Maybe you ought to take a little time to think about that,” he said, going to the door. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned to look back at Rebecca. “Let me know when you decide you’re willing to take a chance on me. I’ll be around. That’s a promise, Becca.”

Rebecca closed her eyes rather than watch him walk out. Pain swelled and surged inside her like a flood tide. She wanted to call him back, but the words wouldn’t form. When she heard the muted sound of the back door closing, she opened her eyes and stared out at the rain-washed backyard, watching as Jace walked slowly toward the brown house across the alley, shirtless, with his hands jammed in the pockets of his worn jeans. Then he disappeared through the back door, leaving three orange cats sitting forlornly on the porch.

He was gone. The emptiness inside her was a cold, hollow ache. Shivering, she pulled his shirt closer around her and wept.

                  10                  

The words of the article on hydrotherapy blurred in front of her yet again. Rebecca sat back in her desk chair, pulled her glasses off, and rubbed her eyes with no regard for what was left of her eye makeup. Her desktop was nearly covered by stacks of files and patient reports. One whole side of the thing was devoted to information on the proposed expansion of the physical therapy department.

Griffith Saunders had promised her he would use the muscle he had as head administrator to get the board to make a final decision this month. Rebecca was to meet with him again that afternoon to discuss options. She should have been arming herself with information for a final campaign to get the improvements she felt they needed, but she couldn’t concentrate.

All she could think of was Jace. She hadn’t seen him in days. She missed him. He was still spending time with Justin and Hugh, but he managed to avoid running into her. She supposed he was being true to his word, giving her time to think, but thinking was taking a backseat to missing and hurting.

It seemed the separation was having its effects on Jace as well. Her father hadn’t actually come right out and told her so, but he had given her plenty of none-too-subtle hints. Grumbling under his breath while his white mustache twitched was a classic sign of Hugh being out of sorts with somebody. The sharp looks he gave Rebecca told her she was the one in his doghouse.

Just that morning at breakfast he had come up with a comment that might have seemed out of the blue if his feelings toward Jace hadn’t been so clear. “For someone so intelligent, you can be awfully stupid.”

When Rebecca had asked for an explanation of that statement, all she’d gotten was more grumbling and mustache twitching. As raw as her feelings were these days, that was as bad as a lecture.

Justin had delivered the double whammy when he entered the kitchen pouting because Rebecca had told him the night before that their planned Saturday outing to the Hannah Lindahl Children’s Museum was not going to include Jace.

He had stared at her with hurt and anger in his fathomless blue eyes, a frown tugging his freckles down. “We never get to do stuff together with Uncle Jace anymore. How come you’re being so mean?”

“I’m not trying to be mean, honey—”

“You are so! I wanted Uncle Jace to be my dad, and now you’re making him stay away!”

Things had gone downhill from there. Thinking about it now, Rebecca couldn’t stop feeling a surge of resentment toward Jace. One of the things she had feared most in having him around was having Justin become too attached to him, only to be disappointed when the end of the relationship came. That was exactly what was happening.

But it wasn’t really Jace’s fault, was it? The voice of truth and justice asked inside her. Because she had never been much of a liar, she had to answer truthfully. No. For the time being, she was the one to blame. Jace hadn’t left Mishawaka—yet. He hadn’t broken any promises—yet.

Jace couldn’t see she was doing him a favor by not letting him make promises to her before he got called back to Chicago. Rebecca didn’t want to add to the pressure that would be on him. And, adding that annoying little troubadour of truth, she didn’t want to add to her hopes, because she knew from experience that the higher they were, the more pain she would suffer when they were crushed beneath the hobnailed boot of reality.

Now she swiveled absently back and forth in her desk chair, second-guessing herself. Was Jace asking too much, or was she simply willing to give too little? Was she still punishing him for not being the perfect All-American star? Was she still punishing him for breaking her heart?

Everyone made mistakes; most deserved to be forgiven. She was willing to forgive him, but her heart wasn’t able to forget. It kept whispering inside her—what if? What if she trusted Jace and he let her down again?

What if she didn’t trust him?

The question trailed away to thoughts of the past weeks. Rebecca looked out the window of her office to the exercise room. Jace had worked so hard to come back from his injury, without complaint, without bitterness for what had happened to him. He had helped and encouraged other patients as well. He hadn’t been the spoiled star. He hadn’t been the slick, smiling con man who had charmed her into going out with him seven years before. His concern and compassion had been genuine.

As it had been when he’d held her the night she’d told him about Justin’s parentage. He had been so understanding, so caring.

She recalled all the time he’d spent with Justin, time that hadn’t diminished after he’d found out the boy wasn’t his son. She thought of all the patient lessons on how to play baseball. She thought of the mechanical dog Jace had built to soothe Justin’s disappointment at not being able to have a real pet.

She closed her eyes and brought back that night in the parking lot at Captain Jack’s. She could still hear the strain in his voice when he told her he hadn’t had a drink in four months. She could still see the vulnerability, the fear, and the determination not to give in to it.

And she could picture him standing over Casey Mercer in his hospital bed—hurting, blaming himself, punishing himself. She could still hear the anguish in his voice when he’d said he’d never meant to hurt anybody. She could still feel his tears on her shoulder.

The Jace Cooper she’d known so long ago wouldn’t have owned up to faults or mistakes or accepted responsibility for what had happened because a young teammate had idolized the wrong aspects of a hero. Jace had grown and matured. He had fought hard to change. She was being unfair to him in believing the changes were only temporary. It was natural for her to want to protect herself, but she was hurting Jace in the process. The changes he had made in his life had been made over a long, hard road, one he was still struggling over—alone.

Is it too much to ask that the woman I love have a little faith in me?

If he went back to Chicago, the pressure put on him would be intense. Fans, friends, and the press would be expecting the old Jace—the party boy, the high roller, the star. Team management would have him under a microscope, demanding perfection and yet waiting for him to make a mistake. Everyone would be watching every move he made.

And he would be alone.

He needed her support. He needed her love. He needed her friendship.

“Someone dropped this at the nurses’ station for you,” Dominique said as she walked into Rebecca’s office. Taking the seat across the desk from her friend, she handed Rebecca an envelope with her name scribbled on the front of it.

There was no note, just a snapshot. Rebecca let the envelope fall to her desk as she stared at the picture. The photo was of a stream and trees and a meadow at sunset. It might have been taken the day before or years before—there was no way of telling. Perhaps it was that sense of timelessness that struck her most about the picture. It was a place everyday life could not intrude upon, a place made for memories. And the memories flowed unchecked through Rebecca’s mind and heart.

In this place an uncertain girl had confided in the only person who had ever understood her. In this place friendship had taken root. In this place she had fallen in love. In this place she had become a woman. In this place, just weeks ago, love had struggled to bloom anew.

Rebecca’s hand began to tremble, and she turned the photograph over to put it down. On the back was written a verse she recognized as being from the Bible.

Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.

“It looks like a very special place,” Dominique said softly.

Not trusting her voice, Rebecca nodded. It was a very special place she had shared with a very special friend—a special friend who was asking her to believe in him.

“I do love him,” she whispered, fighting back tears.

“I know.” Dominique gave her a sad little smile as she unfolded her long frame, standing and moving toward the open door. The light in her ebony eyes was one of empathy. “That’s not always the easiest thing, is it?”

No, Rebecca thought as she watched her friend leave, sometimes there wasn’t anything easy about love. It could be the simplest of emotions or the most complex. The risks involved could be enormous, the rewards unimaginably wonderful—and you couldn’t win one without chancing the other.

A heart once broken could be a selfish, suspicious thing. But Jace was right, there could be no conditions, no restrictions on love. She had to be willing to believe in him wholeheartedly. She had to be willing to put her heart in his hands, or the love she professed for him meant nothing.

He was the only man she’d ever loved. He was the only man she would ever love so intensely. He was the only man who had ever made her feel so complete as a woman. He was the only person who knew her soul deep.

Staring out the window, she watched Dominique explain the fine art of negotiating steps on crutches to a weekend warrior who had broken his ankle playing soccer. Bob Wilkes was working out on the weight machine. His face was shiny with sweat and tense with concentration. Because her door stood open, Rebecca could hear the squeak and sigh of the machine as Bob worked.

Suddenly he stopped his routine and yanked off the earphones to the portable radio he was wearing.

“Hey, everybody! Super Cooper’s been called up to Chicago! It was just on the radio. He’s supposed to join the team today!”

As a cheer went up from the small crowd in the PT room, Rebecca bolted up in her chair and grabbed the phone on her desk. Frantically, she punched Muriel’s number. She had to catch Jace before he left. She had to tell him she’d come to a decision. But the phone on the other end of the line rang unanswered. A call to her own house was no more successful. Grabbing her purse and the snapshot from her desktop, she dashed out of her office.

“Dominique,” she shouted, “you have to cover for me, please. I have to go.”

Dominique looked shocked to the ends of her wild black mane, probably because Rebecca never asked anyone to cover for her. “What about your meeting with Mr. Saunders?”

“It’ll have to wait,” Rebecca said as she headed for the door. “This is more important.”

Her friend’s mouth curved upward in a knowing smile. “Good luck.”

Everywhere Rebecca went, it seemed as though she was one step behind Jace. No one she talked to seemed to know exactly where he was—until she ran into Turk Lacey at the ballpark. Turk was his usual recalcitrant self, but Mr. Peppy, the hand puppet, told her Jace had gone to the bus depot.

As she drove to the other side of town, Rebecca cursed speed limits, bad timing, and herself. Why had it taken her so blasted long to see what should have been plain to her all along? The part of Jace Cooper that had made him capable of hurting her seven years ago no longer existed! The sharp edges and slick shine of his youth had been worn down by time and hard lessons, leaving all the qualities she had fallen in love with intact. The Jace Cooper who had come back to Mishawaka was a good man, a kind man. He was a man who had made mistakes but was well worth forgiving…and supporting…and loving.

As she sat waiting impatiently at a red light, Rebecca felt a sense of panic that cut her to the core. She had to catch Jace before he left. She had to tell him before he went back to Chicago that she loved him and believed in him.

In the parking lot of the bus depot she parked her Honda, then fumbled trying to get her keys out of the ignition. She left them, deciding she would rather have her car stolen than miss catching Jace. Running across the asphalt, she broke the heel of one of her black pumps, but it hardly slowed her down.

Inside the building her eyes scanned the small crowd. There was no sign of Jace. An elderly woman sat knitting on one of the green plastic chairs. Several seats down a young mother fanned herself and her sleeping baby with a magazine. There were some rough-looking characters hanging around an old cigarette machine, and two teenage boys with duffel bags resting at their feet were playing a video game. There was no sign of Jace.

Rebecca’s heart pounded in her chest like a gong. She’d missed him. To confirm her fears, she asked the man behind the ticket window about the bus schedule to Chicago. He informed her that a bus had gone at two-thirty and the next didn’t leave until six-fifteen. She’d missed him by no more than five minutes.