Buzz finished with her right hand, then started on the left. He was very thankful he had something to do with his hands, something to look at besides her eyes.
“It makes a difference.” He looked up at her, felt the impact of her like the front end of a truck traveling at a hundred miles an hour. “But it doesn’t change the situation. We’re the same people we were before the divorce. The same problems are there. Only this time, when all is said and done, I can’t just forget I have a son.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“I don’t know how to be a father.” He remembered the way he’d felt when that little boy had wrapped his arms around him and kissed him with such open affection and felt a knot of emotion form in his chest. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for that. But I’m not going to walk away.”
“I won’t keep you from him,” she said.
“It’s going to be a tad difficult for me to be involved in his life when you’re in Tahoe.”
“That’s a twelve-hour drive from Denver. A couple of hours if you fly.”
“You’ve put me in an impossible situation.”
“I don’t expect anything from you, Buzz,” she said quickly. “I don’t expect money. I don’t expect you to love him. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
Anger rumbled like thunder in his chest, and he held onto it like a lifeline. It was better than the other emotions pounding through him—and a hell of a lot safer. Any emotion was better than the sharp-edged need, the stark sense of loss, of betrayal that cut him every time he thought about what she’d done. Not only to him, but to their son. An innocent child who might never know his father because she hadn’t seen fit to tell the truth.
“You may not want anything from me, Kel,” he began. “But I’d like a few things from you.”
Her hand jolted within his. Her gaze fixed on his, and in their brown depths Buzz saw emotions he didn’t want to see, didn’t want to confront. He felt those same emotions tangle and snap inside him.
“I’d like some answers,” he said. “I’d like to know why this happened. Then I think we need to figure out what the hell we’re going to do about it.”
Chapter 12
K elly had dreaded this moment for five unbearable years. She’d known all along that eventually she would have to face him. Buzz would somehow find out about Eddie and she would have to own up to what she’d done, confront the man she’d lied to. The man she’d betrayed and cheated and hurt.
The man she’d once loved more than life itself.
Heart pounding, she sat silent and still and watched him, unseeing, as he treated the rope burns on her palm, wondering how he could function, how his hands could be so steady when the world around them crumbled and shook. She could feel the tension coming off him, like steam off a geyser in the seconds before it blew. Her own emotions trembled inside her, locked in her chest, ready to explode outward at the slightest touch.
Because she was shaking, she waited until he was finished treating the abrasions before attempting to speak, using those few precious moments to gather her courage and shore up defenses that were far too battered to do her any good now.
Easing her hand from his, she forced a gulp of air into her lungs then let it shudder out. “You made it clear when we were married that you never wanted children. You were adamant about it.”
“I might be able to accept that if I didn’t know you so well.”
She arched a brow, trying to look cool and amused when in reality her heart was beating out of control. “Why do you say that?”
“You’re too logical a woman not to realize you could come to me with this. That’s how I know there’s more going on than you want to say.”
“You’re a responsible man, Buzz. I didn’t want you to feel trapped. I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I guess you figured keeping me in the dark was better?”
“I figured all of us would be better off if you and I split cleanly and amicably.”
“This has been real clean and amicable, hasn’t it?”
“Life doesn’t always cooperate.” She sighed. “Look, I didn’t plan on getting pregnant.”
His gaze turned glacial, boring into hers like an awl through ice. “It was an accident, wasn’t it, Kel?”
“You know damn good and well it was,” she snapped. “How dare you accuse me of using you for something like that.”
“I never thought you’d keep the fact that I had a child from me either, but you did.”
Aware that anger had joined the chorus of emotions screaming through her, she worked hard to keep her voice steady. “You’re entitled to decide whether or not you want to have children, Buzz. But it would have saved us both a lot of heartache if you had told me how you felt before we got married.”
“What are you saying, Kel?” he asked nastily. “That you would have turned me down?”
“Yes,” she said, but they both knew it was a bald-faced lie. The night he’d proposed to her they’d been so crazy in love a war of the worlds couldn’t have kept them apart.