“I’m not upset, I’m ecstatic.” He wasn’t smiling. In fact, when he spoke, it was with a clenched jaw. “I’m coming home. I’m moving back in. We’ll get married.”
“No,” she protested weakly, wanting to protect her fragile heart. Except, a little voice deep inside whispered that this was meant to be.
The air suddenly seemed too thick, the kitchen too hot. Lexie sank down to her knees, barely aware of Heidi shrieking her joy that Jackson was moving back in.
Jackson eased Lexie into his lap. “Head between your knees, darlin’. Breathe deep. That’s excellent.”
Jackson was elbowing his way back into her life. Nothing was going to be excellent again.
“WE’RE NOT GETTING MARRIED,” Lexie whispered at him.
Jackson sat across the table from Lex, having helped her to a chair while she scolded Heidi and the Hot Shots for fussing over her. All the while, Jackson couldn’t help but think that this baby was the reason he’d made it home safely, the reason he and Lexie would get back together. She was his good luck charm.
But she didn’t seem to see it that way. “We’re going to be friends.”
“Like hell we are. Show’s over, boys,” Jackson growled at the firefighters hovering over his wife. “Don’t you have a bus to catch?”
“Sure thing.” Logan slapped Jackson on the shoulder. “Welcome home.” It took the acting superintendent less than two minutes to drive his crew outside.
“Heidi, come help with the dishes,” Mary singsonged, as if the world hadn’t just come crashing down around her son’s ears.
Jackson waited until the door closed behind the last fireman and Heidi followed his mother into the kitchen before confronting Lexie. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t move back home.” He stared pointedly at Lexie’s belly.
“We’re not married,” she said wearily, shifting in her chair in a way that had Jackson recalling how Lexie’s back bothered her when she was pregnant all those years ago. Her eyes kept skittering away from his, as if she couldn’t stand to look at him.
Smiles generally came easily to Jackson, but when he tried to smile at Lexie, he felt as if he were a wolf baring his teeth at her. “We can fix that. Marry me.”
Her eyes widened and she looked at him dead-on. “Please don’t suggest that. We had our chance.”
Jackson opened his mouth to contradict her, then closed it. He couldn’t have said for sure, but there seemed to be panic in her big blue eyes. Why did the thought of his moving back in scare her? Unless there was someone else.
Jackson’s heart sank to his toes. He clasped and unclasped his hands, studying the face of the woman he loved. Everything had seemed clear and simple in Russia. Here at home, the reality of winning Lexie back was daunting, perhaps impossible.
What would he do if she’d fallen in love with someone else?
Jackson swallowed hard as the silence stretched between them. Lexie was back to squirming in her chair, trying to get comfortable. But what if she wasn’t squirming to ease an aching back? What if she was squirming because she didn’t want to tell him about another man in her life? She’d had plenty of time to fall in love again. Pregnant or not, she was a beautiful woman that turned heads. How did you ask a woman if there was someone else more important than you in their life? Words bumbled through his head, quickly discarded. Anything he said would just distance them further and wound his pride.
“This shouldn’t be so hard,” Jackson blurted, inwardly cursing himself as the coward he was. If there was another man, he didn’t want to hear it from Lexie. The way Silver Bend talked, he’d hear about it soon enough.
“It shouldn’t be anything,” Lexie replied, her expression distant, almost aloof. “All we have to do is add the baby’s name to the visitation papers. End of problem.”
“Problem,” Jackson murmured, shocked by how callous his wife had become. His softhearted Lexie was also an incredibly capable woman, who’d demonstrated on several occasions over the years that she didn’t need him. Just once, he’d like Lexie to want him for something other than an errand or a chore around the house.
Old wounds reopened, smarting more than they had the first time she’d sent him away. That night, he’d attributed her rejection to moodiness, assuming it was temporary. So, he’d been calm. Reasonable. This time, her dismissive words drove his anger uncharacteristically to the surface.
“Is that all I am to you? A problem?” He leaned across the table. “There was a time when you begged to have me as your problem.”
Lexie stared toward the kitchen, one hand rubbing the curve of her stomach.
“In fact, I remember our wedding night when you said you couldn’t imagine life without me.”
Her face seemed to pale; her lips tightened into a thin line. The saner part of his brain, the one that had paid attention to hours and hours of medical training, told him that now was the time to back off. But his brain didn’t seem in control of his rampant emotions.
“Or was that just a lie?”
Her hand stilled. She seemed to barely take a breath.
Jackson pushed on. “Do you remember the day you asked me to leave?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly, her profile to him.
Jackson lowered his voice, but his words were still cruelly edged. “You told me you loved me that morning, then you told me to get out that night. And what about my last day in the States? You asked for my signature on the divorce papers, then came with me…willingly…to a motel where we spent hours…” He couldn’t stop himself from looking at her stomach. “…Apparently making that baby you’re carrying.”
Lexie’s head dropped. Her eyes closed.
“Tell me, Lex. What’s true between us and what’s a lie?” He wanted her to say she still loved him.
After a moment, she blinked and lifted her soft, watery gaze to him. She always cried right before they made up, but still Lexie said nothing, gave him no explanation for her actions, nor did her tears well over and fall.
“I don’t want to be a problem to you or our baby.” Jackson extended his hand, palm up, across the table toward her. “I’m here for you, Lex, just like I’ve always been.”
Lexie’s features stiffened. She rose awkwardly from the chair and stared down her slender nose at him. “I’m not taking you back.”
“THANKS FOR THE VODKA. Hopefully I won’t have to use it to bribe some tight-ass supply manager for some of Chainsaw’s gasoline.” Logan stroked the Russian bottle of spirits almost reverently before tucking it into his backpack. “The bus is late, as usual.”
The Forest Service arranged for ground transportation to and from fires outside the area on vans and buses, sometimes as spartan as school buses. They stood outside the ranger station in Silver Bend, along with twenty other men checking their packs and shooting the bull. Most of the crew kept their distance from the two leaders.
Logan had just finished telling Jackson about a fire that the Silver Bend Hot Shots had worked in Oregon. The fire had been a tricky one to control, requiring several crews, smoke jumpers and air support. Jackson could barely contain his envy or his anxiety. He would have loved to fight such a fire. In the past, he’d reveled in the challenges of leading a team against something so incredibly powerful.
A nervous sweat broke out on his upper lip as the cowardly demon danced a tango across his bowels. Self-consciously, Jackson wiped at his mustache.
He was done fighting fires on the line. He’d made his choice. Why hadn’t the demon left him?
“You’re too quiet. You’re