“A re you all right?” Buzz finally asked.
The words came to her as if through a fog and from a great distance. Blowing the hair from her eyes, she risked making eye contact. His face might have been expressionless to a person who didn’t know him. But Kelly knew him. Had memorized every hard angle and plane, and she didn’t miss the flash of heat in his eyes. She wanted to believe it was anger, but she knew it wasn’t, knew it was much more dangerous and infinitely more complex. And she knew there was no way in hell she could let this go on.
“I’m okay,” she said in a voice that sounded amazingly normal. “Let me up.”
His grip on her wrists relaxed. “You’re not going to go off on me again, are you?”
“I didn’t go off on you,” she snapped.
Pulling away slightly, Buzz scowled at her.
She looked away, shamed that she’d lost control. She could only imagine what he thought of her, this man who lived for the high that came with emergency situations. A man who looked down on people who were too weak to handle it. She wondered if that’s what he thought of her now. That she was weak, that she couldn’t handle it.
“I’m sorry I lost it,” she said after a moment. “I don’t normally do that.”
“It’s okay. This has been…stressful to say the least.”
She remembered the blood and shuddered. “I was okay. I mean, I’d walked over to the stream to splash some water on my face. I was feeling all right. I was ready to go. Then I saw those cougar tracks.” She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting to control an imagination that would drive her insane with worry if she let it. “There’s blood, Buzz. For a moment, I thought…I thought…”
“Don’t go there, Kel. He’s all right,” he said fiercely.
“How do you explain—”
“The blood could be from any number of things. The cougar could have nabbed a squirrel, for God’s sake.”
She prayed that was the case.
“We’re going to find him,” Buzz said. “And he’s going to be fine when we do. You’ve got to believe that.”
A dozen emotions rushed through her brain when she looked into his eyes and saw that he wasn’t saying empty words on her behalf. Buzz didn’t make nice; he didn’t pretend for the sake of others. He believed what he was telling her, and he meant it. The realization took her panic down a notch. “Thank you for saying that,” she said.
“Kel, you’ve got to trust me.” Buzz stared at her for an interminable moment. “I’ve got to be able to count on you, too.”
Kelly stared back, desperately trying not to acknowledge how much being close to him like this had bolstered her. His hips were nestled snugly between her legs. She could feel the hard ridge of him against her most intimate part. It shamed her that she would notice such a thing at a time like this. What kind of mother did that make her? She tried to convince herself she needed the physical contact on an emotional level. But she knew that wasn’t quite true.
Sex had been the one aspect of their marriage that had never failed them. Even when things were bad, sex had always been…breathtaking. It had healed a lot of wounds between them. She supposed that’s why it had taken her so long to realize mind-blowing sex couldn’t fix a broken marriage. She wasn’t quite sure whether Buzz had ever realized the same thing.
He’d come to her several times after the divorce was final, and he’d made no bones about what he wanted. There were no pretenses for Buzz Malone. Even knowing they could never live together as husband and wife, Kelly hadn’t been strong enough to turn him away.
She’d gone off the pill in a last-ditch effort to convince herself that she would never be with him again. That it was over between them not only physically, but emotionally as well. Kelly knew her going off the pill had been more of a symbolic gesture than anything else. A surefire way to sever that last, lingering tie. But the break hadn’t been clean. When Buzz had shown up at her door at two o’clock in the morning with desperation in his eyes and taken her into his arms, Kelly went willingly. She’d vowed to turn him away, convinced herself she didn’t need him anymore. But when he’d kissed her, her resolve had crumpled.
They’d ended up in bed and for a few short hours, they’d forgotten about the rest of the world. In the morning, Buzz was always gone. Kelly had hated herself afterward. For being weak. For being vulnerable. For always feeling too much. But in the few short hours when he’d held her in his arms, she’d almost believed they were going to make it. Almost.
She flinched when he raised his hand and pulled a twig from her hair. They spoke simultaneously.
“Sorry I fell on you,” he said.
“Sorry I tripped you.”