Into His Keeping Page 5

  “I figured being in the public eye somehow would do it. I had to be famous so you could keep track of me. Football was the only thing I could come up with and still make it through school. I was a third-string backup that first year. I planned to be the starting quarterback by the time I was a junior. Do you have any idea how fucking ridiculous that plan was? No third-string quarterback gets to be a starter. I did it. I did it because I had to know you could find me. My junior year I was first string and we went to a bowl game. I waited for your call. You didn’t.

  “I made up reasons for you. You’d never been interested in football. You might not have realized mine was the name you read. It went on and on, I was damn good at thinking up reasons you couldn’t call me. So the next year I had to get my face plastered in every paper across the country. I predicted we’d be national champions at the beginning of the year just to get the press coverage. It worked. But then there was the rest of the team and the huge weight I’d put on them by needing to get my face in the paper for you.

  “The press called me Superman and a bunch of other smack for dragging that team to the top on my back. It was goddamned true. I needed us to be national champions and do it spectacularly so you’d see me. You had to know where I was so you could call me. You didn’t.

  “I figured perhaps college ball wasn’t big enough. You wouldn’t read the sports page and we were only front-page news a couple of times. You could have missed it. I had more reasons why you didn’t call but you couldn’t miss the Super Bowl. Everyone knows who wins the Super Bowl. At least they do the day after.” Holdin sucked in a breath and grimaced.

  “First-round draft pick meant nothing to me. It meant I was going to a shitty team and I needed to get to the Super Bowl. So I did it again. I hounded, I bribed, I bullied those men into practicing in the off-season, working harder, being better. I lived and breathed football. I drove them like a freaking obsessed fiend. My second year in the pros we made it to the Super Bowl but we lost. And you didn’t call. The third year we won it all. And you didn’t call.”

  Jill’s eyes barely blinked as she listened. Drifter had plopped down on the end of the other double bed.

  “I became the biggest thing in football, the best. Money, fame, a freaking household name and you didn’t call. I took on the biggest charities I could find, did commercials. Became spokesperson for household products. If you didn’t watch football, you had to have seen me in those commercials, I figured. I did every damn thing I could think of and you didn’t call.

  “Don’t try to make us, this, finding each other trivial. You struggled with no memories, no history. I lived with them every damn day. I built my life around them, on top of them. I became the man you see now so you could find me. I’ve loved you, hated you and died because you didn’t call over and over again. You drove me to the edge of endurance and then you pulled the impossible out of my soul. With each success and disappointment it drove me to imagine what I thought was every conceivable reason you didn’t find me. Every reason except this one. It never occurred to me that you didn’t know me.”

  Holdin pulled away from the door and took the two steps to her, sinking to his knees in front of her. He reached out and clasped her hands, which were folded in her lap. Holding them gently in both of his, he looked into her eyes. “Living with the memory of you was just as damn hard as living without the memory of anything,” he said softly. “Give us time, Jill. Don’t run away again.”

  “Oh my God, Holdin!” Jill breathed softly.

  “I know, I know. I made you my obsession in ways that seem frightening right now. But I got over it too. I gave up. It wasn’t ‘til after the second Super Bowl ring. The third one I did for me. I stopped waiting for that call. By then the drive and discipline were mine and I was mad. Mad about the years waiting, hoping. It’s not like the time was wasted but somehow it felt that way to me.” Humor hitched up his lip briefly. “I’d become one of the richest, most admired men in the country and I felt like I’d wasted my time on a woman who’d never wanted me. Not like I wanted her.”

  “But…” Jill leaned forward, her face clouded with frown.

  “I get it. I know you came back as soon as you knew, as soon as you remembered. For you it was a few days.” His hands glided up her arms as she leaned into him. He shifted forward his eyes never leaving hers. “Give us some time, Jill. This time it’s us. We have a son. We’ll be in each other’s lives.”

  Jill’s head was cautiously shaking “no” as she shrank back from him. “I’m not her! Holdin, the Jill you knew, the one you waited for isn’t me anymore. She died in that car wreck. The person I am now woke up and was alone, pregnant and unwanted. She had no one to turn to so she had to be an adult. Since then, this person has been making her own way while taking care of a child. The Jill you knew adored you and her father. But between the two of you, she didn’t have a self-driven bone in her body. I hardly know that girl. Do not mistake me for the girlfriend you kissed goodnight at three a.m.” Jill’s body now pressed back in her chair, creating as much distance as possible between herself and Holdin.

  Fear, panic, desperation, and now the unbearable weight of his loss, all of it pressed down on Jill. His story was almost unbelievable. She’d seen his celebrity as a block to reaching him, not an open door. It intimidated the hell out of her and she’d assumed it came with tons of insulation between him and the general public. He was so somebody now and she was a dental hygienist. When they’d met it’d been much simpler, more equal. Now she was the mouse staring at the roaring lion.

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment as he absorbed her argument. “Good. I can’t be nineteen again so it’s a good thing we’ve cleared that up.” Holdin stood and smiled down at Jill. “So we both agree to start here? We’ve traveled a long way from the starry-eyed lovers who kissed goodnight fifteen years ago.”

  “What? The girlfriend you’ve obsessed over for fifteen years is gone and you just say good?”

  “She was gone a long time ago, Jill. I knew it. I didn’t know you’d lost your memory. For me, the person who never called was not the person I’d been in love with. Then when I found out the name I knew her by was an alias, I had reason to doubt I’d ever known that girl at all. I like the woman sitting in front of me a damn sight better than I do the other possibilities. You came to find me as soon as you were able. You faced your past and didn’t slink away from it. This Jill is a hell of a woman who’s willing to do whatever’s necessary for our son. How could I not be impressed with her?”

  Jill searched his face and slowly relaxed. This was good. He’d decided to listen to her. Nerves still rattled her insides but it could have been worse. “Okay. Then sit down so we can discuss this and get some things settled,” Jill directed briskly.

  “Is your surgery scheduled yet?” Holdin asked casually as he sat down on the end of the bed again.

  “Yes, but that’s not what I wanted…”

  “When?”

  “Um, next Tuesday. Now I thought…”

  “Where?”

  “Presbyterian, Dallas. Are you going to let me finish a sentence?”

  “Not if it involves the garbage you started with when we came in here. Do you have to be there the day before for blood work?”

  “Of course I do, and that stuff before was practical, not garbage. Let me remind you, I’m not at your beck and call anymore. The girlfriend who thought the sun rose with you is gone and…”

  “You saying you worshiped me? Damn, you could have told me then. I’d have liked that.” Holdin grinned.

  “Ah, no, well, maybe. It doesn’t matter! Stop trying to evade the issues.”

  “Quit trying to be a witch.”

  “What?” Jill scowled at his smiling face. He didn’t want to deal with this now? The signals he was sending were so confusing.

  “As I see it, we have four days before we go to Dallas. I’d really like it if you would consent to being my guest out at the ranch. Drifter deserves to meet hi
s grandparents and see my home. Driving back and forth to town is a pain in the ass. Before you object, there is a three-bedroom guesthouse waiting for you. You’ll be perfectly comfortable there.

  “Things have changed, Jill. The ranch is now the home of a pretty well-off guy who has to bring in important folks occasionally. You don’t expect me to make the guys offering me millions of dollars in contracts stay here, do you?” A wave of his hand indicated the neat but rather garishly threadbare motel room.

  “Oh. Yes, I see.” Holdin always sounded so reasonable. If she listened to him, she was being just plain stubborn by refusing to go out to the ranch. Not to mention denying her son his grandparents.

  Jill looked over at Drifter. He’d forgotten to look bored but he wasn’t looking excited either. “Would you like to go out to Holdin’s ranch?” she asked quietly. “We’ve already paid for this room. We can stay if you’d rather not.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to go. But it’s no big deal if you wanna stay here.” Drifter shrugged. “He’s only the most freakin’ famous guy in Texas and junk.”

  Jill raised an eyebrow as Drifter continued. “It’s not like I need to see what kind of cool stuff he has out there.” Drifter grinned at his mother in a sheepish-boy fashion.

  Jill glanced between the two males in the room. Two grins. They knew she’d go. It wasn’t fair. Denying Drifter was nearly impossible when he got all smart and refused to ask. Denying Holdin wouldn’t have been as difficult but then she’d be the witch he called her. And she wanted to go, yet with the same intensity, she didn’t want to go.

  He confused her, thrilled her and scared her. This wasn’t like it was before. They weren’t the same people. But she wanted him and the man knew there was still a sexual fire burning between them. It singed the edges of every word they spoke. A white-hot flame they both tried to ignore with studied resolve.

  What was it about him that still lit a blaze low in her belly after all these years? Was it his storied reputation? The wickedly sexy playboy who was charmingly generous with his time and money? Was it the modern gladiator who’d owned the gridiron and had done it repeatedly? Or was it a connection that had never died? That possibility snuck into her brain and wouldn’t be forced out.

  Breaking into the silence as she considered those questions, Holdin’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at the caller ID.

  “I have to get this. It’s Mom.” He didn’t move away as he answered.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Is it true?” Carol Powell asked urgently.

  Holdin didn’t need to ask her what she was talking about. Enough people had seen him with them. He was sure one of those “helpful” folks had called his mother by now. “Yes.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Right here with me.”

  “Well, hurry up. Apologize to Jill and bring me my grandbaby!”

  “What? Why would you assume I have to apologize?”

  “Because you do. Now quit wastin’ time and git it over with! It appears I’ve waited fifteen years to see that child.”

  “Mom. It’s not that simple.”

  “I don’t care to hear the details, Holdin Thomas. I can do the math. She was eighteen and you need to apologize, son. Now beg for forgiveness and make it right. I expect to see both of them within the hour.”

  “Everyone’s so concerned with the damn math! I used a condom. Mostly,” Holdin growled.

  “I told you I don’t care to hear the details,” Carol reiterated in amused exasperation. “But since you brought it up, big boy, apparently you didn’t know how to use a condom properly. Sadly, your father and I had no idea you needed instruction on that. However I ‘spect it’s the times you didn’t use one that got you in this lovely fix. Don’t bother denyin’ it. You were young. I know better, you’re my boy and I know the kind of guy I raised. And don’t think you’re big enough to curse at your mama.”

  “Curse at you? Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I wasn’t cursing at you, Mom. Believe me, I knew how to use prophylactics. You’re probably right about the other time though. And I’m trying to bring them home but Jill isn’t sure she’d be welcome. Perhaps you’d like to talk to her?”

  “Certainly. Hand her the phone please.”

  Holdin held the phone out to Jill. “Mom wants to talk to you.”

  Jill glared at him as she took it. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what the other side of the conversation had sounded like. He was blaming her for their reluctance to go out to the ranch. It didn’t matter that it was the truth, telling his mother was playing dirty. Now she, the scarlet woman who’d had a baby out of wedlock, had to speak to his mother!

  “Hello, Mrs. Powell,” Jill greeted cautiously.

  “Jill! I’m so glad to hear your voice. Please call me Carol. I hear you and my grandbaby are in town and I can hardly wait to see you both. Please feel welcome to come out to the ranch. In truth, there aren’t two more welcome people on earth.”

  “Um…Mrs…ah, Carol, don’t you want to know why?”

  “The details? Of course I do, dear, but not as much as I want to see you both. I’m sure when we have a minute you’ll tell Chuck and me exactly what happened, but right now that’s of no importance. I’m simply too thrilled at being a grandmother to be concerned with the details. Getting you to come home is much more urgent. We have a guesthouse now, so if you’d like some privacy, we’ll put you in there, but I’d rather the two of you stayed in the big house with us. You’re family and I don’t want to give up a minute of getting reacquainted and meeting my grandson. Please say you’ll come out and at least see if you’d be comfortable. If the problem is Holdin, I’ll put him in the guesthouse.”

  Jill burst out in a soft chuckle. “No, no. You don’t have to put Holdin in the guesthouse. I’m sure everything will be fine. Thank you for the kind invitation. We’d be happy to visit you and Mr. Powell.”

  “You can call him Chuck, honey. I’ll be looking for you. And welcome back, dear.”

  “Thank you, Carol. That’s so kind of you. Goodbye.” Jill held the phone out to Holdin. She felt overwhelmed in a whole new way now. She knew her goodbye had been stiff compared to the generous kindness Carol Powell was extending. Dealing with so many unexpected developments was stretching her resources. Even kind surprises were costly to her reserves.

  Before, spending time at the Powells’ family ranch had been a rare treat. It was twenty minutes from town. Usually Holdin spent time with her after they both got off work.

  The ranch was the Powell family home. It’d been the Powell place since there were Indians to worry about. Charles Powell was an officer in the Navy, a helicopter pilot and instructor. At that time, the base outside Dallas was the first time he’d been assigned close enough to live on the family property and give his son a few years to finish high school in his hometown.

  Jill fondly remembered the warm woman who was Carol Powell. The times she’d been out there, it had seemed to her Mrs. Powell kept a house like June Cleaver in jeans with the attitude of Roseanne Barr. In her memories, she hadn’t seen much of Charles Powell, he was always working. Her impression of him was a large man who seemed serious most of the time, but when he smiled she could see it in his eyes too.

  The Powells hadn’t seemed particularly wealthy nor poor. They were just so nice. Now, considering Holdin’s recent profession and amazing success, she’d bet it was a showplace.

  “Well, we have some visiting to do. That was a dirty trick, Holdin.”

  “No. A dirty trick would have been refusing to take you out there. She’d have been here in twenty minutes.” Holdin smiled. “Believe me, this is better. We’ll face her together, darlin’. You know I’d never make you do that alone.”

  Holdin captured her hand that went nervously to her neckline again, searching for the charm. Drawing her hand to his chest, he pressed her palm to him, covering it with both of his. “This is real, Jilly-girl, and this part is the same. Remember what I pro
mised the first time I took you out to the ranch? If it got to be too much or too hard, I’d take you away, no questions asked. Same is true now.”

  * * * * *

  Jill’s eyes opened and she was staring at the bedside table. The soft blue numbers on the clock read 3:30 a.m. She’d been in the lavish guestroom bed since ten p.m. The ranch house had changed but it was still a ranch house, warm and inviting, though it was several sizes bigger now. Holdin’s parents were just as amazing. Carol was bustling and full of effervescent emotions. Charles—Chuck to his wife—was large and quiet though no less intense.

  The Powells had always planned on retiring to the ranch. Now that they had, they’d made it a working operation, it seemed. Charles had been reared a rancher so doing it now was pleasure. Not work.