"Damn." He patted her bottom affectionately as she sat down beside him.
Before, she would have pulled away in an effort to control her reaction to his nearness. Not anymore. She wasn't going to let Grandmother's poison ruin her marriage. "Eat." She kissed his cheek.
Halfway through the meal, he raised his head and asked, "Do you really think I'll be a bad father?"
She was startled enough to be completely honest. "I think you could be a great father but the way you're going, you might end up being an absentee one." When he remained silent, she pressed on. "Children don't only need things, they need a parent's presence, hugs and kisses and loving."
So do wives, she wanted to add. Wives needed love and attention most of all. A thousand diamond necklaces couldn't equal a moment of Caleb's love, a moment of being the center of his world.
Even if she found success in another arena, it would never be the thing her life revolved around. Caleb and her child would occupy that place. It was simply the way she was built. Perhaps because she'd never really had a family, her own small one meant everything to her. But her devotion also meant that each time Caleb put the firm above her, she felt it like a kick to the gut.
"Vicki, I don't know how to be a good father." It was a blunt statement, raw to the core.
Heart in her throat, she smiled. "And I don't know how to be a good mother." So far, she hadn't even done such a great job of being a good wife. "But I know one thing-as long as our child knows we'll always be there for her, she'll be okay."
That was a lesson Vicki had gleaned from the mockery that had been her childhood. All the other hurts would have been nothing if she'd known that she could run to her parents for comfort. "I know neither of us has great role models to follow but this is us, not anyone else. We can create the life we want for our baby." She had to believe that. Otherwise, her fear of messing up their child's life might just cripple her.
They didn't speak about the topic again, but when Caleb left to go back to the office, she saw the concentration on his face. He was thinking over what she'd said. She only hoped he wouldn't disregard it. A wife might be able to accept and understand, but a child's heart was much more fragile.
Caleb put down the phone after the last conference call with London and swiveled in his executive chair to stare out at the city lights. Silence reigned in a place that was usually buzzing with organized confusion. This particular deal was done. He'd sent his staff home two hours ago, confident he could tie up the loose ends.It was a good thing tomorrow was Saturday. After the Donner crisis and then the problems today, everyone had been run ragged. Including him. As he looked out from his high-rise office to the beautiful lights segueing into the darkness of the sea, Vicki's words returned to haunt him.
Absentee father.
It was a term that applied to too many of the CEOs and lawyers he knew. Their children grew up under a loving mother's care if they were lucky, or under an indifferent nanny's if they weren't. Without their parents' guidance, he'd seen several of his acquaintances' children go off the rails.
Did he want his and Vicki's kids to turn to him one day and deny him any say in their lives because he'd never been there for them? No. He wanted the right to support their children, to help them grow, to provide encouragement and love. And he was intelligent enough to know he had to earn that right.
His sons or daughters would only respect what he had to say if he treated them as individuals worth making time for. Caleb knew that better than anyone. After the way his own father had treated him during his childhood, Caleb had never allowed Max any input into how he lived his life. Max had thrown away that right when he'd continually punished an innocent child for a mistake that had been made long before Caleb was born.
Vicki was right. Coming home for dinner would hardly be enough to nurture their children's love, to teach them their worth. He needed to be there for breakfast and dinner not only sometimes, but most of the time. He needed to drive his kids to school occasionally, to be around for sports games and school plays, for excited narrations of the day and even grumpy tantrums.
I know you're busy so thank you for taking time out for me.
The seemingly unrelated comment popped into his head, startling him. His wife had thanked him for making time for her. That seemed wrong. Following that thought, he found the link. So obvious. If occasional dinners at home wouldn't be enough for a child, how could they possibly be enough for a wife?
Unlike their child, or children, who'd have both a mother and a father, Vicki had no other husband to pick up the slack of Caleb's absence. If he didn't give her what she needed, no one would.
Even now, so soon after she'd begun to heal the sexual hurts between them, he'd let work get in the way of their journey. He'd pushed aside the importance of the steps they'd taken to find true intimacy and perhaps irreparably damaged the fragile trust that had grown the night he'd surrendered to her touch.
Picking up the photo of Vicki that sat on his desk, he ran his fingers over her laughing face. Jeans rolled up and hair tangled by the wind, she was standing ankle-deep in sand, looking mussed and happy enough to break his heart. It was his favorite picture of her … and it had been taken almost four years ago. His wife had stopped laughing long ago. And he hadn't been around enough to hear her silence.
Was it any wonder she'd wanted to divorce him? Sure, he'd been unhappy in their marriage, thinking that his wife didn't want him. As their marriage had crumbled, so had his dream-of a life with a wife who loved him absolutely, of a family as full of joy as his childhood one had been full of pain.
Then had come that business trip to Wellington four months ago when everything had shattered. The emotional destruction had been so bad that no matter how hard he'd tried, he hadn't been able to glue all the pieces back together.
But despite all that, he'd never felt abandoned the way Vicki must have. He'd always known that she was at home, waiting for him. That when he went to bed, his wife would be right there beside him, giving him another chance to repair the fissures in their relationship.
How many nights had Vicki slipped into a cold bed, aware that her husband wouldn't be home for hours yet? How many nights had she woken from a nightmare to find herself alone and without comfort? His gut twisted. Whatever the state of their marriage, he'd always been proud of the fact that he'd protected his wife and kept her safe from harm.
What rubbish!
He might have never raised a hand to her but there were other ways of causing pain and he'd been guilty of most of them. Every day and night that he hadn't been there when she'd needed him, he'd hurt her. And as for keeping her safe? What did Vicki do at night when storms blew the fuses? He'd never come home to find her waiting for him to fix things, hadn't even thought about it before now. But the answer was clear. She'd gone outside to the old-fashioned fuse box of their villa and done it herself.
What else did she do that he didn't know about? What else had she learned not to rely on him for? It was no longer enough that she'd agreed not to leave him, not when he'd glimpsed the fire she'd tried to contain her entire lifetime.
He was fascinated by the woman she'd revealed and he needed her, all of her. It was just starting to dawn on him that maybe more had been lost in those five years than Victoria's girlhood innocence.
Vicki woke the second Caleb slipped into bed beside her. She never really slept deeply until he was home, worrying about him on a subconscious level. Smiling, she snuggled into his warm body and started to drift back to sleep. She was aware that he was holding her tight, that there was something different about the intent in his body but she was too sleepy to figure out what."Vicki?" Kisses fell on her neck.
They felt so good that she cuddled closer. "Hmm?"
A big hand smoothed up her leg, bare under the rugby jersey she'd commandeered again. She shivered and the shadows of sleep started to fade. "Caleb?"
He answered by sliding that hand up her body until he cupped her breast. With a gasp, she came wide awake, belatedly aware that Caleb was naked beside her, his arousal pressed against her hip. Her first reaction was to freeze, to try to analyze what he was doing to her, to attempt to manage her reaction.
As if he knew exactly what was going through her mind, he whispered, "Do what you did last time."