The Misconception (35 page)

“No, Marietta,” Tracy said firmly. Suddenly, the picture was so clear she didn’t understand why she hadn’t been able to see it before. “You don’t understand. Ryan’s not with Anna. Not the way you mean, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Marietta’s head whipped around at the exact instant that Ryan firmly disengaged Anna from him and shook her hand. Without a backward glance, Ryan left the restaurant. Alone. Anna stared after him, a pout on her poufy lips, her hands on her cinched waist. Then she left, too, traveling in the opposite direction from Ryan.

“I mean that they were having lunch together, as friends. Ryan wouldn’t cheat on me,” Tracy said.

She thought back to their last conversation when Ryan pointed out she’d never asked him what happened that day she’d seen the blonde with the big hair and hourglass figure kissing him at the elevator. She’d claimed she didn’t want to know. Now, quite suddenly, she did know. Big Hair Barbie had been kissing Ryan. He hadn’t been kissing B.H. Barbie.

“Oh, my God. What have I done?” Tracy covered her face with her hands. Tears dampened her fingertips. “I broke up our marriage, Marietta. I did, not Ryan. I did, because I didn’t trust him. I knew he loved me. How could I not trust him?”

“How could you not trust him?” Marietta blurted out the words, incredulity written on her face. “Mom trusted Dad, and look what happened to her! She spent a lifetime pretending she believed his lies. And six months after she was free of him, she died. She died, Tracy. Died before she had a chance to live.”

“But it was her choice, Mari,” Tracy said as the tears flowed freely down her face. Instead of blinding her, they cleared her vision. “Mom wasn’t a victim. She could have left him, but she chose to stay. That’s what she wanted.”

“That’s not what I want for you.” Marietta’s fierce mask dissolved, and tears pooled in her eyes. She reached across the table and squeezed Tracy’s hands. “I don’t want Ryan to hurt you, honey. I don’t want you to let yourself be hurt.”

Marietta’s teary eyes fastened on hers, and Tracy saw in them what she always did: Fierce, unwavering love. For as long as she remembered, Marietta had rushed to her defense. In grade school, she’d pushed Jimmy Lee in the mud after he’d ripped the strap on Tracy’s backpack. In high school, she’d gone to the principal to argue her sister’s case after she’d been suspended for having ibuprofen in her locker. And ten months ago, she’d advised Tracy to leave Ryan before she opened herself up to a world of hurt.

“This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what I want,” Tracy said, swallowing. “I can’t keep letting you protect me. I have to make my own decisions. Even if they’re wrong. I have to live my own life.”

“You do live your own life.”

“No, I don’t. I’m living the life you think I should live. If I had followed my heart, I never would have taken those anthropology courses. And I never would have left Ryan.”

“But you had to leave him, honey. Biological evidence supports the fact that a man can’t be faithful to one woman. It’s not in their nature.”

“That’s what you believe. It’s not what I believe,” Tracy said, shaking her head. The tears came again. “Oh, Mari, I’ve been so miserable. I love him so much I can’t bear to face the rest of my life without him. To think that I had that happiness in my hands, and I threw it away.”

Marietta’s lips parted and trembled, and Tracy braced herself to hear biology-supported evidence about how females can survive, and even thrive, without males. She remembered Marietta telling her once that flatworms could reproduce asexually and that whole-body regeneration occurs in starfish.

“I don’t think you did throw it away,” Marietta said instead.

“What do you mean?”

Marietta pressed her lips together as though the next words were difficult for her to say. “I think if you went to him,” she said softly, “you’d find that out for yourself.”

TRACY STOOD ON THE doorstep of the adorable little house she’d once shared with Ryan, worrying that she’d made a mistake in coming here. What if Marietta were wrong about Ryan? What if he couldn’t forgive her for believing the worst of him? What if her distrust had killed whatever love he’d once had for her?

She lifted her hand and paused in the act of knocking, running her fingers instead over the heart-shaped wooden door knocker that Ryan had installed when she’d said she didn’t like the sound of doorbells.

Other men wore their heart on a sleeve, he’d joked. He put his on a door.

She banged the heart, figuring she’d done pretty much the same thing to Ryan’s flesh-and-blood organ when she hadn’t trusted him all those months ago. How would he ever forgive her? Could she even forgive herself?

A full minute later, when Ryan still hadn’t come to the door, Tracy blinked back tears. He wasn’t home. She’d drummed up the courage to bare her soul, and he wasn’t home. Life, Tracy thought, was a bitch.

She was turning from the door when it opened. Ryan filled the frame, his hair wet from the shower, the snap of his jeans undone, his shirt hanging open and unbuttoned to reveal a damp, masculine chest sprinkled with the dark hair she so loved to run her fingers through. Her lips parted, and her heart fluttered. Then her eyes went to his, which were guarded and unfriendly.

“What are you doing here, Tracy? I sent the papers to your lawyer. Don’t tell me she didn’t get them.”

Tracy cleared her throat at the coldness in his voice. She wet her lips. “No, she got them.”

“Do you want more money? Is that why you’re here?”

The frostiness in his eyes nearly froze her vocal chords. She winced. How could he ask that when he knew money had never been a driving influence in her life? His love was worth far more than money ever could be.

“The settlement’s more than generous,” Tracy said. “It’s enough for me to open my own shop, even.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She closed her eyes briefly and bit her lip until it hurt. This was even harder than she’d imagined. “Can I come in?”

He sighed heavily, but made room for her to pass. “Look, if you want something from the house, just take it, okay? I don’t care. You always liked that lamp of my mother’s. It’s yours.”

Miserable, Tracy shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “That’s not what I want.”

“You want my dad’s old rocking chair? That’s yours, too. Just take it and leave. I’ve got things to do. You can let yourself out when you’re done.”

He turned away from her, and snippets of their past appeared before Tracy’s eyes the way that life’s most glorious moments flashed before the eyes of a dying person.

Ryan asking her to marry him amid the furor of a rock concert. Ryan’s beautiful dark eyes never wavering from hers when he promised to love and cherish her until death parted them. Her bare-chested husband beckoning her to bed with a smile that reached all the way to his soul.

“Ryan, wait.” The words were as strangled as the invisible vise squeezing her chest. She couldn’t let their marriage die. If she did, everything vital inside her would also die. He stopped, but didn’t turn, and she had to say something to keep him from going. “I don’t want anything from the house.”

He turned then, but his eyes were still guarded, his lips pulled taut. “Then what do you want?”

She wanted him, so badly she could barely stop herself from reaching out and running her fingers over the bare, warm skin of his achingly beautiful chest. She twisted the wedding ring she still hadn’t been able to bring herself to remove.

“Marietta and I had lunch at the Grill and Go today.” She cleared her throat. “We saw you with Anna Morosco. At the exit. Right when you were leaving.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You saw her kiss me, right? So, naturally, you assumed I have something going with her.”

“Marietta did, but I—”

He swore ripely. “You listened to her? Even though you know Anna’s always been like a kid sister to me. I bet you let Marietta convince you we’re sleeping together.”

“No, I—”

“Here’s a news flash for you.” He advanced toward her, his voice so gruff and defiant that he was almost shouting. “I’m not sleeping with her. I’m not sleeping with anybody.”

“Ryan, I’m trying to—”

“I don’t want to sleep with anyone but you. I never did.” His words came faster, more furiously. “I know you won’t believe this, but it’s time you heard it. Despite what you thought you saw at that elevator ten months ago, I never cheated on you.”

“I know,” she said calmly.

“The woman you saw me with, Mia Sullivan, she wanted me to come up to her room. She said she contracted me to build her a house
because
she wanted me. But just because she was willing didn’t mean I was.” He stopped, ran his fingers through his damp hair. The fight seemed to seep out of him like the air from a deflated balloon. “I don’t know why I expect you to believe me now when you—”

“Ryan,” Tracy interrupted, placing her hand on his bare chest, right over his madly beating heart. “I said I know you’re not having an affair with her. That you never were.”

Ryan had been waiting for those words for so long that he barely believed his ears. Something hot and sweet loosened in his chest until he remembered that he’d done what he vowed never to do. Then the pain came back.

“I get it,” he said, wishing he didn’t. “You only believe me because I convinced you that nothing happened. The next time we’re faced with something like this, I’d have to convince you all over again.”

Tracy shook her head. “That’s not true. I knew, Ryan. I knew the instant I saw Anna kiss you at the restaurant today that you’ve never cheated on me.”

Hope leapt inside him, but he stopped himself from reaching for her the way he’d wanted to since she walked in the door. They needed to get this straight. For the sake of their marriage. For the sake of their love. “What are you saying?”

“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?” The bleached strands of her hair were so short they barely moved when she shook her head. On another woman, hair like that would have looked outrageous. On Tracy, it was outrageously sexy. “I’m saying I was a fool. When I saw you in the hotel lobby, I wasn’t thinking with my heart. I should have trusted you. I should have known you’d never cheat on me.”

Underneath her heavy make-up, her eyes were sincere. But he needed to be sure he understood what he was hearing. “Are you saying all this because of what I told Marietta at the play?”

She looked confused. “Marietta? What does Marietta have to do with this?”

“She didn’t tell you what we talked about?”

Tracy shook her head. “What did you talk about?”

“Never mind.” Ryan wasn’t willing to delve into how her sister’s far-out theories affected her life. One day, they would discuss it, but not today. Today, he was going to revel in the fact that she was finally offering what he’d so long asked for. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying you trust me.”

Tracy nodded. Tears spilled down her cheeks, splitting his heart in two.

“I know it could be a case of too little, too late.” Her voice broke. “If that’s the way it is, I’ll accept it and know I was the one who wrecked our marriage. And I’d understand, I would, if you still want a. . .” She stopped, sniffed, blinked, “divorce. Because if—”

“Tracy.” By speaking her name, he stopped her torrent of words. She raised her watery eyes, and his own eyes moistened. He gently wiped the falling tears from her cheeks with the backs of his fingers and forced himself to ask the question. “Is a divorce what you want?”

Mutely, she shook her head. Both her chin and lips quivered as she tried to talk. “But if you don’t love me anymore—”

Ryan took her face in his hands, looked deep into her eyes. “Not love you anymore? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The red dress,” she choked out. “When I wore it, you didn’t touch me. I thought—”

“That I didn’t love you?” He rubbed his cheek over her short hair. “Tracy, seeing you in that red dress and not touching you nearly killed me.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew if I touched you, we’d end up in bed. I don’t want you for just one night. I want you forever.” He pulled back, looked deeply into her green eyes. “I love you, Trace. I want you in my bed. I want you in my life. But, most of all, I want you to trust me.”