Hero by Nature Read online

  In the same deadly quiet voice she told him exactly what he could do with his party and with his amusement, making him laugh again. “I can’t resist this,” he told her, then kissed her thoroughly, right in the middle of the dance floor, to the delight of their enthralled audience. “I love you,” he told her when he released her mouth, making no effort to prevent anyone else from hearing him.

  Fortunately for him, the dance ended just then—before Autumn could deliver the embarrassing and rather painful retribution that she was seriously considering. He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her to the buffet table to join his parents, effectively blocking any further conversation between them. For the rest of the evening they mingled, and Autumn was able to maintain her politely bland facade, never once revealing her true feelings as she had to Jeff on the dance floor. Though she seethed at his amused response to her complaints, she didn’t know what she’d really expected from him. It was so easy for Jeff to shrug off other people’s comments or attitudes, she thought almost resentfully. He was an exceptionally tolerant man, able to talk pleasantly to others despite differing viewpoints. But then again, no one had called him a “pretty little thing,” she fumed.

  “OKAY, AUTUMN. Let’s talk about it. What’s wrong?” Jeff demanded when they were alone in her apartment the next afternoon, having carried in Autumn’s things from Jeff’s car and retrieved Babs from Emily.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Jeff,” she lied composedly, avoiding his eyes as she stroked the dog in her lap. “Did you miss me, Babs?” she murmured, trying to ignore Jeff’s dissatisfaction with her answer. “Were you a good girl for Emily?”

  Sighing audibly, Jeff lifted the dog from Autumn’s lap, set her on the floor with an affectionate pat and settled firmly on the couch beside Autumn. “I’m not letting you change the subject this time,” he informed her decisively. “You’ve pulled back from me emotionally again, and I want to know why. You can start by looking at me. I don’t think you’ve really looked at me all day.”

  She kept her eyes trained steadily on her hands, laced in a white-knuckled grip in her lap. She’d known this confrontation was coming, but she hadn’t been looking forward to it. She’d known it was inevitable since that kiss on the dance floor the evening before. It had been late when they’d returned to Jeff’s parents’ home, and there had been no chance for the two of them to be alone since, other than during a lingering good-night kiss before retiring to their separate beds. Autumn had carefully avoided his eyes through breakfast, church services and lunch with his parents and, claiming weariness from a night spent in unfamiliar surroundings, had feigned sleep during the drive back to Tampa. Jeff had allowed her to get away with the postponement efforts—until now. He would wait no longer for his explanation.

  She’d made a decision during the long sleepless night in the guest bedroom of the Bradford home. She hadn’t cried when she’d come to the painful conclusion, but she’d felt her heart twisting into knots in her chest. Still, she had to do it, she told herself relentlessly. It was the only decision she could make that was fair to both Jeff and her. “I think we should stop seeing each other, Jeff,” she said, her voice entirely devoid of emotion.

  He went very still beside her. “You think what?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m sure you heard me,” she replied, still looking down at her hands. Part of her mind wondered absently if her knuckles could get any whiter.

  “Oh, I heard you,” he agreed flatly. “I’m just not sure you really meant it.”

  “I meant it.” She dipped her head a bit lower, her hair falling forward to partially hide her face. “There’s no future for us, Jeff. If we keep seeing each other, one of us—or both of us—will be hurt. I’d like to avoid that.”

  “I’m sure you would.” His voice held more sarcasm than she’d ever heard from him. She risked a quick glance at his face, then quickly turned her eyes back downward, not liking what she’d seen. “Want to tell me what precipitated this?” he asked with polite detachment. “I was under the assumption that we love each other. As a matter of fact, you told me only yesterday that you love me.”

  “I do love you, Jeff,” Autumn whispered. She strengthened her voice. “But you’ve known all along that I wasn’t looking for permanence. I told you that I wasn’t cut out for marriage. I just can’t be any man’s ‘little woman.'”

  “That is utter garbage and you know it. Tell me, Autumn, what was it that caused this grand decision of yours? A few tactless remarks at the country club? Something my parents said at breakfast yesterday? Something I said?”

  The hint of pain behind the bitterness went straight to her heart. She’d give anything not to hurt him. But, being Autumn, she reacted to her own pain and confusion by lashing out in anger. “Stop patronizing me, Jeff!” she snapped, jumping to her feet and finally turning to face him. “Stop acting like I don’t know my own mind. This has been building for weeks. The weekend only convinced me of what I had to do.”

  “Suppose you elaborate a bit.” His face was hard, his jaw set ominously. She’d never seen him look quite so…intimidating.

  “I’m feeling smothered again, Jeff,” she told him in a rush of words. “Just like last time, with Steven.” She had to look away from the expression that crossed his face when she compared him to her former fiance. “I can’t give you what you want, Jeff. I can’t give up the independence that I’ve worked so hard to attain to try to make you happy.”

  “I have never,” he told her concisely, rising to his feet, “asked you to give up anything. I want to marry you, Autumn, not chain you to a bed or a stove. I want us to share our lives with each other, not sacrifice our lives for each other. Is that so damn much to ask?”

  “Yes!” she shouted. “It is! I don’t know how to be a wife, Jeff! I don’t know how to be a mother. Dammit, I don’t even know how to be a lover. I only know how to be myself, Autumn Reed.”

  “That was all I ever wanted you to be.” His voice was low, throbbing with pain.

  “But how long would you be satisfied with that? How long would you be happy with a wife who wears coveralls and hard hats to work? Who sometimes comes home with bruises or cuts from work-related injuries? Whose friends all wear blue collars to their jobs? How long before you start asking me to behave like a proper physician’s wife, join the right clubs, cultivate the right friends? Give you the same kind of Ozzie-and-Harriet-Nelson-Ward-and-June-Cleaver relationship your parents have?”

  Autumn had once wondered if it was possible to make Jeff lose the temper he’d once warned her about. It was.

  “How dare you?” he demanded, his hands falling ruthlessly onto her shoulders, his grip anything but gentle. His blue eyes were blazing, his handsome face set in white-mouthed fury. The fine tremor in his fingers let her know that he really wanted to shake her, hard, but he restrained himself. “Who the hell do you think you are to criticize my parents? And just what gives you the right to tell me what I want or need from a wife?”

  He snatched his hands away from her as if he couldn’t bear to touch her for another minute, shoving them violently into the pockets of his jeans. “All right, Autumn, if you want honesty, then you’re going to get it. You are a spoiled, self-centered, immature, frightened child. You put on a big act of being sophisticated and liberated, when the truth is that you’re a young woman from small-town Arkansas who hasn’t got the guts to take emotional risks. You don’t seem to be afraid of physical risks or physical pain, but you run like hell from any kind of mature, responsible relationship. Not because you don’t want it, Autumn, but because you’re too damn scared you can’t handle it!”

  Feeling the blood drain from her face at his words, Autumn gasped, furious at his unprecedented attack. “Why, you—”

  Jeff kept on as if she hadn’t made a sound. His jerky movements indicated just how little in control of himself he really was, despite his bitingly concise, low-voiced words. “You’re not the liberated woman you want to be. You’re chained to a lot o
f old fears and insecurities that trap you in a lonely, unfilled life, despite your claims that you’re perfectly happy alone.”

  Wanting to lash out at him as he was at her, Autumn tried to interrupt, but he was on a roll, spurred on by sheer rage, and he wasn’t finished.

  “When I came along, I didn’t try to change you. I love you exactly the way you are, stubborn and fiery and self-reliant and all. But you had to start looking for new excuses to break it off because you’re still afraid to become deeply involved.”

  Though temper still edged his voice and hardened his face, his eyes suddenly looked sad. “So now you think you’ve found the perfect excuse. Not that I have tried to change you, but that I may try to change you at some nebulous point in the future. I’ve got to admit it’s a great accusation, Autumn. One I can’t disprove because I have only my word that I would never want you to change. And that’s not enough for you, is it?”

  “No!” she almost screamed, then made a deliberate effort to lower her voice and regain her tenuous self-control when it appeared that he was actually going to allow her to say a few words. “Maybe you think now that you don’t want to change me, but how do you know? You could change your mind in a year or two years or five. How could you possibly know that you won’t?”

  “I know because I know myself,” he replied flatly. “Unlike you, I don’t try to deceive myself or others about what I want, what I need. I love you now, just as I’ll love you in a year or two years or five. Or fifty. And you’re willing to just throw that love away because you’re too scared to take the risk that everything won’t always be perfect. Too selfish to be willing to make a few compromises to smooth the way during the rough times.”

  His words hurt. Deeply. And they made her even angrier. She wanted to hurt him as badly, but instead of the insults that hovered on her tongue, a quiet question came out. “You can say all these things about me and still claim to love me?” she asked him, her voice strained, tight.

  “I don’t claim to love you. I do love you. Exactly the way you are. And you’re not perfect, Autumn. Neither of us is.” He pulled one hand out of his pocket to run a weary hand through his hair. “I’m going to spell this out for you one more time, and then I’m going to leave you to decide once and for all what you want for us. I love you. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you. I don’t want to change you. If I wanted to be pampered and waited on and catered to, I’d move back home to my mother. I love her deeply, but being treated like a five-year-old drives me crazy. Why do you think I moved to Tampa? I can see my parents when I want to, but I’m far enough away that I can live like a real grown-up the rest of the time.

  “I was never looking for a wife who’d subjugate herself to me, Autumn. I want a mate, a partner. Someone to stand beside me, not behind me. I want you, Autumn. Only you. I’m willing to make every sacrifice, every compromise I have to make to have you. But only if you’re willing to do the same. You think about it. If you decide I’m worth the effort, you know where to find me.”

  And then he kissed her, hard, not giving her a chance to respond even if she had wanted to. Almost blind with atavistic pain and fury, she jerked away from him. And he left her, standing in the middle of her living room floor and staring at the door he’d closed much too softly behind him.

  Autumn spent the next hour throwing pillows, storming around the apartment in a temper tantrum. Remembering every terrible word he’d said, every slashing accusation.

  “He’s an idiot,” she told Babs, pacing like a madwoman. “Everything he said was garbage. After all this time he doesn’t even know me! But he sure as hell thinks he does!”

  She paced and raged and muttered until the early hours of morning, when she finally threw herself onto her bed, physically and emotionally exhausted.

  And then she cried. For a very long time.

  SHE HADN’T KNOWN that anyone could hurt so much and for so long and still continue to function. The passage of almost three long weeks did nothing to assuage the pain of ending her relationship with Jeff. Webb’s proud announcement that he was making Autumn foreman of a large, upcoming job should have made her happy. It brought her no joy at all. Only a dull ache because she had no one to tell her how proud he was of her accomplishment.

  Webb’s rather sheepish announcement a few days later that he and Emily were engaged almost destroyed her. She made a valiant effort to look happy for him. “I told you you were marriage bait,” she said in a weak attempt at teasing.

  “I guess you were right,” he admitted with a grin, not looking at all chagrined at being proven wrong. “I was always against marriage in the past because I hadn’t met Emily yet. I guess I was just waiting for her all along.”

  “You’re absolutely sure that you want to do this?” Autumn asked him searchingly, envying his calm certainty.

  “I’m absolutely sure,” he answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I love her, and I love Ryan, and I want to spend the rest of my life with them. So go ahead, Autumn. Make fun of me all you like.”

  “No,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. Horrified, she tried to hold them back. She hadn’t cried in front of anyone in more years than she could remember.

  But Webb saw the tears and took her in his arms. “I’m sorry you’re hurting, Autumn,” he murmured, his voice deep with sympathy. “Isn’t there anything I can do to help? Can’t you and Jeff work out your problems somehow?”

  “I drove him away,” she said with a sob. “I took everything he offered and threw it away. And I’m afraid it’s too late to get it back.”

  “It’s not too late. It can’t be. The man’s in love with you, Autumn.”

  “He deserves someone better,” she murmured, burying her face in Webb’s comforting shoulder. “Someone who’s not afraid to take risks,” she added, remembering all those painful, heated, and oh-so-true accusations Jeff had made. Now she understood what Spring had meant that day in Little Rock. Spring had claimed to know her sister was in love because Autumn was worried about not being good enough for Jeff. Now Autumn understood.

  Webb tried to talk to her further, offering again to help, but she drew back, wiping her eyes and forbidding him to mention the subject again or to contact Jeff. She apologized to him for casting a pall on his own happiness and forced herself to smile and talk about his wedding plans, trying to ignore the continuous pain the subject brought her. Webb wasn’t satisfied, but he knew her well enough to accept that the subject was closed. Permanently.

  12

  ON SUNDAY, three weeks after the day she’d sent Jeff away, Autumn took a long look at herself in the mirror and knew that she couldn’t go on running. Perhaps she’d been quite content with her life prior to meeting Jeff. But she had met him and she’d fallen in love with him, and living without him was destroying her. So now it was time to decide exactly what it was that was keeping them apart, why she was afraid to share her life with him when she loved him so very much.

  Need. It all came down to need. She was so afraid to admit that she needed him. But she did. She needed him desperately, and there was no way she could continue to deny that very obvious fact. Loving someone was thing, but needing someone was terrifying. What happened if she needed someone who was no longer there for her?

  On a sudden impulse she picked up her telephone and dialed Spring’s number. She didn’t even identify herself when Spring answered but blurted out a blunt question. “Spring, what would you do if something happened to Clay, or if he left you?”

  Spring paused for a moment, then asked for clarification. “What would I do?”

  “Yes. You have your career, you’ll have your child in late July. Would those things be enough to make you happy if you lost Clay? I know this is weird, Spring, but humor me, will you?”

  “They wouldn’t be enough,” Spring replied, making an effort to answer honestly. “I love my work and I’ll love my child, but Clay is a part of me. Without him that part of me would die. Oh, I’m not saying that I
would literally die, though I might want to at times. I’m sure that life would go on, and perhaps I’d even find peace after a time. But I’d never be whole again. Do you understand that?”

  “You need him,” Autumn said with a sigh.

  “Yes. I need him. I need him to make me laugh and keep me from being too serious about life. To be there for me when I need a hug or encouragement. To talk to about anything and everything that interests us. To make love with. And Clay needs me, too. For moral support when he’s having a hard time getting through to one of his patients, to give him an outlet for the fears and vulnerabilities that he hides from others behind his funny clothes and quirky humor, to share the good times and the bad times. I don’t spend time worrying about losing him, Autumn. I choose, instead, to treasure every moment I have with him.”

  “I don’t want to need anyone,” Autumn whispered starkly. “I don’t want to know that part of me will die if I lose that person.”

  Spring’s laugh was brief, gentle, understanding. “We don’t choose to need, Sis. It’s a part of living. When you love, you need.” She paused, then asked carefully, “Are you and Jeff having problems?”

  “We—I broke it off three weeks ago. I was afraid to make a commitment.”

  “I see. You were afraid that you needed him.”

  “Yes.” The single syllable was painfully expressive.

  “And do you love him any less now than you did three weeks ago? Does not seeing him take him out of your heart or your mind?” Spring asked wisely.

  “No.” Autumn dropped her head and closed her eyes, the receiver pressed close to her mouth. “No.”

  “Then you need him.”

  “Yes.”

  “The final decision is yours, of course, Autumn. I can’t tell you what to do. But being afraid is such a paltry reason to throw away a chance for a lifetime of happiness, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Autumn admitted after a pause. “I honestly don’t know.”