Born in the Valley

CHAPTER TWO

HE’D NEVER WORN pajamas to bed. Just boxers. It was one thing that hadn’t changed.

Keith was hard inside his shorts as he climbed in beside his wife almost a week after the fire. It amazed him, that ready reaction, which happened much more often than he would’ve expected after more than six years of sharing the same bed with Bonnie.

She hadn’t been there long. The sheets were still cool.

“’Night,” she said softly before he’d even settled in.

The next day was Tuesday. Keith had a governing-board breakfast meeting. And Bonnie was always up at the crack of dawn taking care of Katie and getting to work earlier than the rest of the eight-to-five world.

Still…

He opened his mouth to reply in kind, but then didn’t. With every casual good-night, he could feel her slipping farther away.

He lay down. Fought with himself for all of two seconds. Nudged her backside with his hips. The low, welcoming moan that came quietly from deep in her throat righted his world.

“You make me crazy, woman,” he growled against the side of her throat, kissing along her neck and collarbone. His hand slid beneath the short cotton top of her pajamas.

And the pressure of her butt against him increased perceptibly.

“What do you want?” he whispered in her ear, feeling her shiver. “Top or bottom?”

Wrapping her arms around his middle, she pulled him on top of her. A silent reply. There’d been too many of those in these last confusing months.

“I love looking at your eyes in the moonlight,” he told her. He loved how they glistened with the intensity of her passion.

Tonight she closed them.

Moving past the disappointment, he bent to kiss her, long lingering openmouthed kisses they’d perfected over the years.

Her mouth opened. But her tongue didn’t dance.

“Something wrong?” he asked, raising his head only far enough to see her face.

Bonnie lifted her hips against his groin, inviting him. As badly as he needed her, Keith was hesitant.

“Talk to me.” He couldn’t make out her expression. “Please?”

“I…”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, her gaze settling at about his nose. “I’m just tired.”

In almost seven years, tired had never made their lovemaking a silent affair. Not even in those first months after Katie was born and they were both doing double duty with full-time jobs and night feeding. Their conversation during sex was what made sleeping with Bonnie different from the few other women he’d been with.

She pulled him down to her, enticing him with her tongue along the edges of his lips, enticing him with other things.

Keith wasn’t sure he should finish what he’d started.

More and more he’d come up against this strange vacancy in Bonnie. This refusal to tell him what she was thinking. But this was the first time it had translated itself into their sex life.

“Bonnie?”

“Yeah?” Her voice was languorous, as though she was giving herself up to passion, as though she wasn’t even aware of the chasm deepening between them.

He was tempted to give up for tonight, to enjoy whatever communication remained between them.

“Why won’t you talk to me? Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her hands didn’t move from around his neck, her hips still pressing against him. “There’s nothing to tell.”

He wanted to believe that. “You seem kind of…distant.”

“I’m really just tired, babe,” she said, her voice full of the intimate warmth that had made him her slave from the very beginning. “I’ve spent the entire week reassuring parents. They needed to hear for themselves that there really was no danger to their kids, that Greg’s official report said the arson was a random act. And no one was satisfied until they’d heard it directly from me.”

She reached up to kiss him and his body started to respond again.

Keith rose on his elbows.

“So I’ve just imagined the distance growing between us these past couple of months?”

It was a subject he’d broached often.

“I’m right here, Keith. Loving you and Katie every bit as much as I always have.”

Keith stared down at her. That was the kind of frustrating nonresponse he received every time. Instead of giving him a real answer, she countered with something good and affirming.

And he knew from experience that if he pushed, he’d just get more of the same.

“I don’t understand.”

She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead, running her fingers through to the ends, which rested at the bottom of his neck. “Don’t understand what?”

“Why I’m battling this fear that things are slipping away and you don’t even seem to be aware of anything changing.”

Fear wasn’t an emotion he was all that familiar with. Certainly not one he’d ever admitted to before. It was probably only because he was still lying intimately on top of her, her arms around him, that he could own up to it now.

“Keith.” She held his face with her hands. “Things are not slipping away. You have my word on that. I’m right here. I’m going to stay right here. I love you very, very much. I don’t even want to contemplate what life would be like without you. Okay?”

Slowly Keith nodded, all the while feeling a sense of defeat. How in hell did you communicate with someone who refused to acknowledge the problem?

And how could he fix whatever was broken when he couldn’t find out what it was?

Or maybe she couldn’t acknowledge the problem because it was him? And it couldn’t be fixed?

Staring down into green eyes that looked almost black in the darkness, Keith knew he wasn’t going to be able to rest easy that night. “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong that you aren’t telling me? You aren’t sick or anything?”

“I’d tell you if I was sick, you know that.”

“And business at the day care is good?”

“Amazingly so, especially considering the fire.”

“What about Katie? Is there something wrong there you aren’t telling me about?”

“Of course not! I tell you everything about Katie.”

About Katie maybe. But then, Katie had always been a source of joy between them. Caressing Bonnie’s cheek softly, he remembered how Bonnie’s pregnancy had brought them so much closer when he’d already thought they were as close as two people could be.

The nights they’d spent creating scenarios of what it would be like to be parents, the doctor’s visits, listening to that heartbeat inside her, the hundreds of names they’d picked out only to discard each one and begin again. The countless times he’d rubbed her growing belly with lotion…

“You don’t regret having her, do you?” he asked as the horrible thought occurred to him right in the middle of his reminiscing. She sure hated those stretch marks now that she’d lost weight.

Bonnie tried to sit up, which only brought her breasts and hips against him. “Of course not,” she said, settling back. Her eyes were huge in the moonlight. “Never! Katie is so special. I’d give up my life for her.”

“I still remember the day we found out you were pregnant.”

It had been a Saturday and they’d gone together to buy the home pregnancy kit. And then she’d made him wait outside their bedroom while she’d done the test. He’d burst in, anyway, when her thrilled scream exploded throughout the house.

“Me, too,” she said, her voice softening. “I was incredibly happy. I didn’t have any idea how great it was going to be once I actually held her.”

They were quiet for a moment, a contented quiet. A together quiet. Like they used to share.

“Remember all the hours it took to find just the right crib?” he asked, enjoying the escape to a happier time. “It had to be antique white with spiral spindles, only three inches maximum between the bars.”

“And the wallpaper.” She grinned. “I can’t believe how many days I spent trying to decide between horses and rainbows.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t have to, or the nursery still wouldn’t be done.” He smiled, recalling how excited she’d been when she’d found a paper that had horses on a carousel with rainbows in the background.

Excited. Happy. His. He’d come in from work that night to be greeted by her exuberant “Guess what?” as she’d launched herself at him, throwing not only her arms around him, but her legs, too, catching him off guard. Luckily the couch had been behind him and they’d fallen onto its cushioned softness. As he remembered, it had been a good half hour before he’d ever found out what she’d been so excited to tell him.

And then, without warning or forethought, as they lay there intimately entwined, the solution to the undefined problem became crystal clear to him.

“Let’s have another baby.”

Hips that had been pressing into his withdrew, not far, but then, the bed wouldn’t allow her to move any great distance.

“Katie’s three,” he reminded her. “Potty-trained. The timing’s good.” He paused, but not long enough for her to reject the idea. “If we wait much longer, there’ll be too many years between the kids for them to have anything in common.”

Her hands had dropped, and she ran her fingers along his arms. “You said you didn’t want a bunch of kids.”

The irony was not lost on him. She’d always wanted a big family. The thought of several kids to provide for, several kids taking his and Bonnie’s time until they had none left for each other, had only made him feel trapped.

“I’m not talking about a bunch of kids,” he told her, allowing the weight of his hips to rest completely on her. “Just one more.”

She didn’t say anything. Her fingers were almost frantic as they drew small circles on his upper arms. Her breathing had quickened.

And she wouldn’t look at him.

“Is that a no?” he asked, bracing himself for her answer.

She shook her head. And relief swept over him.

With a surge of protectiveness—and feeling very much in love—Keith bent to kiss her softly. “Talk to me, honey.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“That you want a baby. That you don’t.” He loved her so much, needed so badly for her to be happy. “Just talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking. Let me in.”

“You are in,” she said, stroking his face lightly, her sweet touch making his desire for her immediate again. It astounded him that a gesture as simple as her fingers on his skin could ignite him. “You’re in farther than anyone has ever been.”

It should be enough. Goddammit, it should be enough.

“I’m just tired, Keith. After years of struggle with the business and heartache with my dad and worrying about Greg, I’m finally coming down.”

She kissed him, a full-tongued, wanton kiss that was meant to take him to the place where only the two of them could go together. Sliding his arms beneath her, Keith pulled her closer, kissing her back with every bit of energy he possessed.

She was hungry. Generous. She wanted him.

“I’m still amazed by this,” she said softly. Her eyes were glinting, her lips smiling as she studied him.

She was there. Loving him.

Keith grunted, stripped off her pajamas and explored every inch of her newly thin body.

There was absolutely no doubt that this woman needed him.

Was it possible that the problem was his? Had he somehow imagined the change he was perceiving in her? Was his mind taking him down a dangerous road he didn’t need to travel? Was this remoteness of hers no more than a small case of emotional exhaustion, just as she claimed?

His heart filled with hope, with a resurgence of the peace he’d begun to take for granted over the past few years.

“Now,” she moaned. He drew out the moment, savoring it, her, them.

“Nooowww.” Her groan was louder.

He settled his body in the cradle of her thighs, slid up—

“Wait!”

He froze, confused by the alarm in her voice. “What?” he asked, concerned, afraid something was wrong.

“This.” She’d reached inside the cupboard behind them and pulled out the condom he’d thought they weren’t going to use.

Aroused beyond the ability to analyze anything but his need to have sex, Keith held himself up while she unrolled the condom around him. He plunged inside her before she’d completely finished.

The human body was incomparable. It could accomplish all manner of tasks, from the menial to the perilous; it could also transport, transcend, divert. Keith let Bonnie take him away, his mind wholly on their physical communication.

It was physical. It was exciting. And it was empty.

They weren’t making a baby.

And he had no idea why not.

THE THIRD LETTER from Mike Diamond arrived eight days after the fire. It appeared in a pile of mail that also included the insurance forms she had to fill out.

She waited until everyone was busy feeding lunch to a passel of hungry kids before she tore open the envelope with her landlord’s return address.

Keeping one eye on the space outside her glass-enclosed office—making sure she was alone—she perused the letter quickly.

The tone was more congenial than she’d expected, considering that this was the third letter in almost as many weeks. But the entreaty was just as insistent.

He wanted her to relocate Little Spirits. He had a buyer in Phoenix for the small Shelter Valley strip mall in which the day care was located, and the deal apparently hinged on the early termination of Bonnie’s three-year lease.

According to Mike Diamond, the day-care noise level, as well as the deluge of drop-off and pick-up traffic during rush hour each business day detracted from the strip’s appeal. A couple of weeks before, after receiving Mike’s first letter, Bonnie had placed an anonymous call to the Phoenix-based management company Diamond had named. She’d found that they did indeed have a policy that precluded day cares from renting in any of their strip malls.

A guffaw of laughter sounded just around the corner from Bonnie’s office. She quickly filed Diamond’s letter with the other two in a folder at the back of the file drawer in her desk.

It had taken her more than a year to land the right location for Little Spirits. Shelter Valley was a small town, and there just weren’t many places that had enough space, private kitchen facilities, the right zoning, an outside play area and met all the other specifications. And although she was doing well, she wasn’t making enough to build her own facility.

Which meant that Diamond’s continued and very determined hounding should upset her.

Six months ago, she’d have thrown his letter in the trash—after first expending much frustration in tightly wadding the paper. Today she knew only that she wasn’t moving. Tomorrow? She couldn’t say.

That didn’t mean she hadn’t considered letting Mike Diamond out of the lease.

Leaning back in her chair, eyes closed, Bonnie thought about the fire that could have solved the problem for her the week before. If only the Kachina County volunteer firemen hadn’t been so damn good at what they did—responding so quickly to the call. If there was no building, there’d be no choice to make.

“I saw a letter come in from the Diamond Company. Did they rent that space next door?”

Bonnie jumped as Beth Richards, Greg’s wife, stepped into her office. Beth volunteered at Little Spirits almost every day now that she was a woman free to look at life’s options. She’d sold the cleaning business that had kept her and her son fed while they were hiding out in Shelter Valley the previous fall.

“No,” Bonnie said, looking over the insurance forms she’d just received. She hadn’t told anyone about Diamond’s request yet. She knew that her family and friends would want to help her fight, and she had no idea what she wanted to fight for. Or if she wanted to fight at all.

“Darn.” Beth dropped into the chair across from Bonnie—just as she had all those months ago when she’d shown Bonnie the missing-persons postcard depicting Beth and her toddler son. “It’s been what—three months now? I was really hoping something would go in soon. Preferably a bookstore. I hate having to go all the way to Phoenix to buy Ryan new books.”

Bonnie smiled at the woman who, while casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved sweater, still looked like a fashion model. “You could always open one.”

Beth shook her head. Moving to the edge of her chair, she grinned. “I can’t run a store and the Montford classical music department, too.”

Squealing, Bonnie ran around her desk and hugged Beth. “No kidding? You got the job?”

“Will called this morning.”

The happiness she felt for Beth—and for her brother, whose life was finally falling into place—dispelled some of the confusion weighing her down. Her family was settled, healthy, content.

They talked about the logistics of the job for a couple of minutes. Ryan would be a regular student at Little Spirits, which was something they both agreed would be good for him. And though she’d be giving up her volunteering, Beth would still be able to spend some afternoons with her son.

“You have an odd look on your face,” Beth said as the two women walked through the multipurpose room toward the playground where the kids were loudly engaged in an after-lunch recess.

Bonnie shrugged and shook her head, afraid to speak in case the tears she was fighting won despite her efforts. What was the matter with her? She had it all. Why wasn’t that enough?

Linking her arm with Bonnie’s, Beth pulled her away and out another door. “Let’s walk.”

Which meant talk.

She should argue. She had work to do.

Or did she? The children in her care were all being watched by competent employees. Paperwork, other than the insurance forms, was up-to-date.

“Tell me what’s going on.” Beth released her arm as they circled the day care and strolled out to the desert beyond. “And before you say nothing, let me tell you right now that answer’s already disqualified.”

“I’m just ti—”

“Nope.” Beth shook her head. “Tired isn’t going to cut it, either. You’re the most energetic person I know, Bon, and besides that, I’m not just talking about this week. The guys might not have noticed yet, but you’ve lost your spark.”

“Keith noticed.”

“I don’t think Greg has, but then, he’s not looking. All he knows is that you’re married to the man you love, have the child you’ve always wanted and the career of your dreams.”

“I know.”

On the other side of the desert lot was a quiet residential street. Beth took the sidewalk away from town. And said nothing. Bonnie’s new sister-in-law, who’d quickly become her closest friend, already knew her well.

“There’s really nothing wrong,” Bonnie said slowly, wanting above all to present her case honestly. “As you said, I have everything I’ve ever wanted. And I’m incredibly thankful for that.”

Someone needed to clean the gravel out of the cracks in this sidewalk.

“But?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie said, frustration welling up inside her. She glanced at the clear, blue Arizona sky—illuminated by a sun that was already heating this March day to Midwest summer temperatures.