“I must look like a walking disaster,” she heard herself say.
“You look terrific.”
Kelly looked over her shoulder, telling herself she wasn’t looking for Buzz, spotted several RMSAR team members talking to him.
“I’m really glad you’re all right.”
She turned back to Taylor and forced a smile, only giving him half her attention. “Thank you.”
He must have decided she didn’t look that bad, because in the next instant, he stepped forward and pulled her into an embrace.
“Taylor…” she said, surprised.
“I was so worried about you.”
Kelly closed her eyes and let herself be held, trying not to think about how cold his arms felt around her. She tried not to compare this with the heat of Buzz’s embrace. Or think about how wrong it felt to be held by another man. Most of all, she tried not to acknowledge the pain knifing through her heart because as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was pretty sure it was broken.
And she knew there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it because it was nobody’s fault but her own.
Buzz watched the other man’s arms go around her and felt the primal urge to walk over and rearrange that pretty-boy face. Blood streaked through his veins like lighted jet fuel as Quelhorst’s hands skimmed over the small of her back. Dangerous thoughts streaked through his mind, possessive thoughts that belied the fact that he was an enlightened and civilized man.
She made her choice, a little voice told him. Be a man about it and let her go.
He looked over at the child whose hand she clutched so with a white-knuckled hand, and a different kind of pain broke open in his chest. The kind of pain a man never quite learned to live with.
“Easy does it, partner.”
He turned his head at the sound of the voice to see John Maitland standing next to him, a grim, knowing expression on his face.
“Let it go,” Maitland said.
Buzz answered with a nasty curse. He might be furious and hurting and maybe even a little desperate, but his pride wouldn’t let him do anything as stupid as take a swing at a man over a woman who’d made her position perfectly clear.
“Come on,” John said. “I’ll drive you over to Lake County to get that shoulder looked at.”
Pain ground in his shoulder every time he moved. The burn on his arm throbbed with every beat of his heart. But the pain splitting his chest was infinitely worse than those two physical pains combined.
Buzz took one last look at Kelly and Eddie. At the woman who’d once been his, who’d turned his life upside-down. At the child who’d changed everything—and made him realize for the first time in his life just how wrong a man could be, how at odds a man could be about what he wanted and what he really needed.
Regret lay like a steel ball in his gut. He would find a way to get to know his son, he vowed. He would travel to Lake Tahoe as often as possible. Eddie could visit during summer vacation and spring break. They could play softball down at the school in the evenings. Hike the trails and camp during the warm summer months. Ski when the mountains were lush with snow.
But the thought of seeing that child only two or three times a year hurt. It wasn’t enough, he realized. It would never be enough. He wanted more. Not just his son, but the woman. He wanted his wife back. A house with a white picket fence and a hedge and a Labrador retriever.
He wanted a family.
The realization shocked him. Frightened him. That it was five years too late shattered him.
Feeling himself tumbling into a black pit of despair, Buzz turned away. He was breathing hard, nearly doubled over with pain. John Maitland looked away, and Buzz realized the other man knew it wasn’t just the physical pain that was about to send him to his knees.
Hanging on to the last of his dignity by a thread, Buzz started toward the RMSAR truck across the lot. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 18
R ock and roll blared through the hangar. A serenade of screaming guitar, bass drums and a lilting male voice echoed off the corrugated steel walls, vibrating everything in between.