Her Secret Valentine

Cal dropped down into the chair next to hers. “How long do you have to decide?” he asked, wishing he could be more charitable. But he couldn’t. His patience with this long-distance marriage of theirs was at an end.

“A month.”

Ashley fanned her hand in front of her face, as if that would dispel the heat of the late-afternoon sun that pinkened her cheeks and added perspiration to her forehead. “Of course they’d like my answer sooner.”

Cal watched her pull the fabric of her cotton top away from her breasts. “Of course.” Why couldn’t you just say no? Cal wondered. Why are you even considering this? Unless his gut fear was right, and she really did not want to be married to him after all.

“Look, I know how little time off you have,” Ashley said sympathetically.

Figuring he wasn’t going to like this either, Cal tensed. “So?”

Ashley swallowed and brought her feet down off the pastel green metal railing and stood. “We need to be practical here. There’s no reason for you to stay while I’m job-hunting and getting ready to move out of this apartment.”

Cal bet she wanted him out of the way. But his time for being the understanding husband, with no demands of his own, was over. He grimaced, knowing he hadn’t needed his brother’s advice to react in a take-no-excuses manner now. He’d had it up to here with the separations and it was time his wife knew it! “I’m not leaving, Ashley.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

He stood and faced her, legs planted apart, hands braced on his waist. “I’m not going back home without you. Not this time. Nor do I plan to let you make a decision about your professional future without considering the impact that decision will have on our marriage.”

“What has gotten into you?” Ashley demanded.

Two and a half years ago, Cal had pushed her to be all she could be. Insisting—just as her parents had—that Ashley take the fellowship slot in Honolulu, rather than face a one-year interruption in her medical education. It hadn’t seemed to matter to any of them that she hadn’t really wanted to go all the way to Hawaii or be apart from her husband of just five months. The opportunity in Hawaii was worth the sacrifice, or so everyone had told her.

She’d let herself be convinced of that, because she had truly needed time apart from Cal to deal with her own mistakes. Mistakes that Cal and her parents still knew nothing about. And she hoped guiltily, they never would.

Oblivious to her own inner angst, Cal impatiently answered her question. “Let’s just say I’ve finally come to my senses. Living apart for two-and-a-half years is much too long. I’m your husband. You’re my wife. Enough of the long-distance marriage, Ash. We need to be together.”

If only he had said this to her back then, Ashley thought sadly. She wasn’t sure she could trust his sudden devotion to her now. She didn’t want to start counting on something that would, in the end, only be snatched away from her by circumstances yet again. Right now they had a commuter marriage that was working, despite the occasional glitch. At least to the point that he still wanted her when they were together. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case if they were together day in and day out and she ended up letting him down.

Ashley was afraid that if she returned to Holly Springs, it could be the end of her marriage. After all, what if the members of the Hart clan passed judgment on their less-than-perfect union and it pushed Cal even further away? Right now, she would rather have “half a marriage” than none at all.

“And if I go to Maui tomorrow?” She posed the question to him casually, as if her entire well-being weren’t riding on his reply.

Cal gestured, as if the answer to that were a no-brainer. “Then I guess I’ll go to Maui with you.”

Now he definitely was not making sense. Nor was she sure she quite believed him. “What about your family and your patients back in North Carolina?” Ashley asked bluntly.

For the first time, there was a hint of conflict on Cal’s face, reminding Ashley how tied he was to his hometown.

Cal shrugged, still refusing to back down. He walked through the sliding-glass doors and into the apartment. “I guess they’ll all have to get along without me,” he drawled.

Right on cue, her deeply ingrained sense of responsibility reared its ugly head. She couldn’t be responsible for Cal shirking his duty, and he knew that. Ashley followed him, then folded her arms in front of her and glared at him. For once she wished she weren’t so inherently responsible. “This isn’t funny, Cal.” She pushed the words through her teeth.

Still clad in nothing but swim trunks, he sank down on the mattress and made himself comfortable on the pillows of her bed, folding his arms behind his head, as if he slept there with her every night. He narrowed his eyes at her and replied, “It isn’t supposed to be.”

Ashley glided closer, being careful to stay out of easy reach. “You can’t just stop working in Holly Springs on a whim!” She planted both her hands on her hips.

Cal’s inherently sexy smile widened. “Want to bet?” he tossed right back.

Heat flooded Ashley’s face as her glance moved over his sinewy chest, broad shoulders and long, muscled limbs. With difficulty, she forced her attention back to the matter at hand. “You’ll get fired from the medical center or sued for breach of contract by the state if you pull a stunt like that,” she warned. He wasn’t serious. He couldn’t be. And yet…he looked as if he was fully ready to do just that!

“Change into your swimsuit and we’ll go for a swim, Ash.”

She stared at him. Their discussion had apparently come to an end as far as he was concerned.

He patted the mattress. “Okay, if you don’t want to take a swim, then come to bed with me.”

Ignoring the sexy command, she looked right back at him. “In your dreams,” she retorted.

NOW IT WAS Cal’s turn to be stunned. No matter how rocky their relationship got at times, Ashley had never refused to make love. “All right.” He got up lazily, closing the distance between them. He was determined to feel close to her in whatever way he could. “I’ll come to you, then.”

“This isn’t going to work, Cal,” Ashley murmured as he took her into his arms and kissed her neck. Ashley splayed her hands across his chest and pushed him away. “Every time we find ourselves alone we end up doing this!”

Cal drank in the intoxicating fragrance of her hair and skin, then drew back to savor the sight of her. With her heart-shaped face, long-lashed china-blue eyes, high sculpted cheekbones and slender nose, she was just as beautiful now as she had been the day they had met, nearly ten years ago. Her thick, glossy dark-brown hair was still shoulder-length, although she now wore it in a sexy, layered style, and her skin had retained its radiant golden glow. The only change, it seemed, was her weight. There was a new voluptuousness to her breasts, a slight thickening of her waist and hips, that hadn’t been there the last time he had been with her. He was glad to see she had put a little weight on her tall, willowy body. Last fall and summer she had been almost too thin.

“We are married,” Cal reminded her, stepping back enough to take in her long curvaceous legs.

Ashley reached for a brush on her bureau and ran it through her hair. “We make love so much when we do see each other it feels like we’re having an affair!” She rummaged through her bureau and brought out a turquoise tankini.

Cal leaned against the wall and folded his arms against his chest. “I can think of worse things than trysting with my wife.”

Ashley disappeared into the bathroom with her swimsuit. “Making love right now won’t solve anything,” she called through the door.

“Neither will you not coming home where you belong.” Cal waited until she emerged in the demure swimsuit. The sight of her breasts pushing against the confines of the top confirmed his observation that she had gained weight.

With effort, he turned his glance away from the swelling curves. He paused as their glances met in a firestorm of emotion once again. “You want to work things out with me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she said hotly. She didn’t know why her husband even had to ask that! The problem was she was scared that if they tried Cal would discover what she already knew in her heart—that this marriage of theirs was a sham.

“Then,” Cal continued, moving away from the wall. He sauntered toward her, all insouciant charm. “I expect you to do the practical thing and take the next month to figure out what you want and where you want to live. And do it while spending time with me.”

As he neared her, Ashley felt as if she was being backed into a corner and she hated that as much as she hated being instructed what to do or feel or think. “How do you know I haven’t already made up my mind?” she challenged.

The corners of his lips turned up smugly. “Have you?”

“Well, no, I haven’t had time.”

A mixture of affection and promise gleamed in his gray eyes as he took her in his arms once again. “Come home with me and you’ll have all the time in the world.”

Ashley didn’t like feeling trapped. When Cal behaved this way, he reminded her of her youth, of growing up with parents who had everything all plotted out for her, there had been no time for discussion or dissension. All the decisions regarding Ashley’s life had already been made for her. Telling her parents that what they wanted was not necessarily what she wanted had been futile. They had argued and pushed and prodded until it had been easier just to give in and go along. Her cooperation had made them happy. But it had made her miserable.

Cal didn’t seem to realize it, but his relentless expectations had often left her feeling just as hemmed in. The only difference was Cal had not pushed to rule every situation they encountered in their marriage. He had allowed her to do what she wanted, when she wanted. But that freedom had not come without a price. She had seen the disappointment in his eyes when she failed to live up to his dreams of what his wife and lover—and the potential mother of his children—should be. She had felt his hurt, and known she was responsible. And that had been worse to her in many ways than the distress she had caused her parents when she had thwarted their expectations of her.

So Ashley had done the only thing she could to preserve her marriage—she’d put enough distance between them to prevent such clashes on a daily basis. Her hope had been that “absence” would make their hearts grow fonder…and strengthen their relationship.

Only it hadn’t worked out that way; they’d become even more emotionally distant than before.

Cal pulled her closer. “We can’t keep running from each other,” Cal said quietly as the warmth of his tall strong body penetrated hers. He threaded his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and tilted her face up to his. “We have to figure out a way to make this marriage of ours work on an everyday basis.”