From the kitchen doorway, Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald watched the woman that had somehow managed to steal his heart wipe away the tears falling from her normally sparkling blue eyes and felt his heart constrict with pain. She had gone back into that protect shell that he had spent months trying to tear down. He had no idea what else he could say to her. She accused him of something he knew he never said and yet she seemed so positive that he said them. Why was it so much easier for her to believe that he was lying to her than it was for her to believe he genuinely cared for her?
She had told him about the guys in her past, but he was nothing like those bastards and he thought she knew that. He thought she knew him. Obviously he thought wrong. Shaking his head, he dropped his hand from its resting place against the wooden doorframe then slowly stepped forward into the living room. The kitchen door swung swiftly shut behind him, causing a whoosh of cool air to hit his back.
The door shut with a slight creak and drew Sheridan’s attention to him. The moment their eyes connected something passed between them, but she, not very surprisingly, turned her attention back away from him. It was as if she couldn’t even look at him anymore. It had been like this ever since he refused to admit that he said those things about her. She had asked him to admit it, said she’d forgive him, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to lie to her. He never wanted to lie to her and it was ironic that the very thing she accused him of doing, lying to her about saying those things, was also the very thing she asked him to do last night, lie and say he said those things when he really didn’t.
She told him that if he admitted he said them then she could forgive him and that they could be together. He knew she meant what she said. He’d seen it in her eyes. All he had to do was tell her what she wanted to hear and he could be with the woman he loved. But if he told her he said those things, he would be going against everything he believed in, everything he valued, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He wanted to. He’d give anything to be able to utter the words she wanted him to say but he just couldn’t.
She thought it was his pride that kept him from admitting he said those things, that he was upset that she had caught him in a lie. If she only knew how wrong she was… Why didn’t she know? Why couldn’t she see how hurt he was that she didn’t believe in him? That she didn’t trust him? Oh sure she trusted him to protect her, but she didn’t trust him to love her and he was beginning to wonder if she ever would.
He picked up the Harmony newspaper off the glass coffee table in front of the couch then without uttering a word, he walked past her and out the front door. He was used to reading the morning paper outside. He’d done it for the past week and a half now. Usually, Hank was here to watch Sheridan so he’d go to the gazebo to read the paper, but this morning Hank said he had work to do. Whatever that meant, he thought lowering himself to sit on the front porch step. As far as he could tell his best buddy didn’t work much. In fact, he wasn’t sure he work –
The sound of the front door creaking open behind him interrupted his thoughts. He turned in surprise. Sheridan never came outside to talk with him. In fact, she didn’t barely talked to him at all anymore. He didn’t think they’d had more than a two-syllable conversation in almost two weeks.
“Did you need something?” He asked hiding all trace of emotion from his voice.
“I want to go for a walk around the grounds. Is that okay with you?” She asked her voice taking on a haughty tone that he hadn’t heard her use in months.
“Fine with me. Crane security has stepped up their protection measures so you should be fine walking along the grounds.”
“You mean you aren’t going to argue?” She asked surprise lighting her tone. “You aren’t going to insist that you come with me?”
“No. It’s obvious you don’t want me around and that’s why I placed a call into Agent Freeman earlier this morning. He is going to try to get another agent in here to take over my duties as your bodyguard. At first he told me he couldn’t, but when I explained that my guarding you was no longer in your best interest he relented his position. So,” He said waving a hand dismissively through the air. “With any luck I’ll be out of your hair this afternoon. That should make you happy.”
He searched her eyes for some kind of sign as to what she was thinking but her eyes were as closed off as her heart. “That is probably for the best. Your guarding me wasn’t the best decision in the first place. Not the way we fought all the time.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that.” He answered in a voice cold to his own ears. “I’ll be glad to get back home and I’m sure you’ll be glad to have me gone.”
He saw her bottom lip quiver but she turned her away from him so quickly he wasn’t at all sure he hadn’t imagined it. He saw her struggle for a breath and he knew, even before he got to his feet and turned her to face him that she was crying. He felt it. He felt her pain. He raised a hand to wipe away her tears then met her eyes with his. “You are a walking contradiction, Sheridan Crane. One minute you act as if you can’t wait to have me out of your hair and the next you’re crying because I might be leaving. Which is how you really feel? Do you or don’t you want me to go?”
“I - … I don’t want you to leave, Luis. But I don’t want you to stay either.”
“So you want me to be in limbo? Is that it?” He asked shaking his head in confusion. “Sheridan, you can’t have it both ways. You either want me here or you don’t. Which is it?”
“I know what you want me to say but I can’t say it. I can’t say those words to you.”
“Join the club.” He muttered under his breath. “You wanted me to say something I couldn’t say too. The only difference is you wanted me to lie and I want you to tell me the truth.”
She gave an exasperated sigh then once again tried to turn her back on him. This time he wouldn’t let her. He was through letting her hide. It was time they talked about things and laid everything out on the table. He knew it would be hard – for both of them – but he was determined to fight this thing that was keeping them apart and he was even more determined to beat it. He loved her and whether she knew it yet or not, he wasn’t giving her up without a fight.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Sheridan stared into Luis’ intense dark eyes and immediately felt the air leave her lungs. He studied her eyes as if he were trying to see into her soul. Because she was afraid he could, she closed them. She didn’t want Luis to see into her soul because that would allow him into access to her heart as well and she could never allow him to have that kind of power over her. He’d already broken it once. She couldn’t survive the pain a second time.
“Let me go.” She said opening her eyes and struggling to get free of his grip. “I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“Then how about you listen?” He asked quietly. “Because I have something to say to you and I don’t want you to interrupt me. I want you to listen… really listen. Can you do that, Sheridan? Can you listen to me without interrupting me or getting angry with me? Just this once can you really sit down and listen to me?”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to say she didn’t want to listen to anymore of his denials of the truth. But somehow or other, she ended up muttering a week “yes” instead. She still wasn’t sure how it happened and as Luis took her hand in his, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. Maybe she should listen to Luis. Maybe he was finally going to admit the truth to her. And maybe he would finally tell her the reason he’d said those awful things about her too.
“How about we talk at the gazebo? I don’t want to get interrupted and something tells me if we stay at the cottage someone will call.”
She nodded and allowed him to lead her through the heart of the Crane rose garden toward the place she’d called paradise as a child. Some of the happiest times in her life were spent in the gazebo. She could remember listening to her mother sing there every afternoon. It had been her mother’s special place. The place she said helped her to be happy when she had so many reasons to be sad. Sheridan didn’t know what those reasons were, but she was reasonable sure they had something to do with the tyrant she called father.
Shaking her head of the memories, she followed Luis into the gazebo and didn’t utter a single protest as he sat her down on one of the white stone benches. He didn’t sit down like she expected him to. Instead, he started to pace the wooden floor beneath their feet. He seemed so unsure and it was so unlike him that she sat in awe for a few moments. She had never seen Luis so… nervous. He always seemed so confident, so self-assured, but right now he was anything but. Was what he had to say really that monumental?
As he turned to look at her, his eyes full of determination, her heart screamed answered her question with a simple yes. Something was about to change between them. She could feel it. Whatever Luis was going to say would have an affect on their current situation. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” He asked his voice calm, his gaze steady.
She nodded unable to speak through the sudden tightness in her throat. She remembered it like it was yesterday…
She was through with men. They were all jerks and she’d had enough of those to last a lifetime. She pressed her foot down further to the floor. She was almost home. Home she had never really thought of Harmony as home before, but for some reason that was the only word that came to mind tonight. She had been living in Paris since she was a young girl and she had never really thought of it as home either. Now that she thought about it, she never really thought of any place as her home. Even all the time she and Jean-Lu had spent at his cottage… it had never felt like home to her. It was just some place she happened to live. Home was something else. Something she wasn’t sure she’d ever have.
She whizzed by a dirt road off to the side and a second later, the sound of a police siren lit the hot balmy night air. There was no way she was going to stop to listen to a lecture on speed limits. Not tonight. Tonight she was in no mood to deal with Harmony’s finest. She was almost to the Crane Mansion and she wasn’t stopping for anyone, let alone a cop trying to make his daily ticket quota by hiding in the bushes trying to catch unsuspecting cars as they drove on by.
By the time she saw the police cruiser it was too late for her to stop. The sound of screeching brakes and spinning tires lit the night air, but the only sound she heard was the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal. The sudden impact as the two vehicles hit threw her forward and she was fairly certain that, if she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, she would have been thrown through the windshield. The nerve of that cop to block the road! How dare he –
“You try anything else and I’m using your tires for target practice.” A firm masculine voice called out. As he walked closer, his voice became clearer and his irritation was crystal clear. “Well, I hope you had a good time, buster, because you're about to say good-bye to life as you know it. There is no way your sorry behind isn’t doing jail time for those moves.”
“My name isn’t buster.” She said unbuckling her seat belt and starting to dig in her purse for her wallet containing her driver’s license. “My behind is anything but sorry and you can’t arrest me.”
“You've broken at least ten laws in the last minutes. Give me one good reason I shouldn't arrest you.”
“Because my last name is Crane.” She said finally looking up and suddenly finding herself lost in a pair of deep brown eyes.
She remembered that day all right. Luis had been mad as hell that she’d totaled his police cruiser. In fact, he’d been worse than mad, he’d been livid. “I remember.” She said finally finding her voice. “I remember everything.”
“What about the first time we danced the tango? Our first date? Our first kiss? Do you remember those too?” He asked kneeling on the ground in front of her and taking her left hand in his right. “Sheridan, you weren’t the only one that felt things. You were the only one who was in a position to be hurt. I was to. When you slapped me that day at the youth center, I had no idea what it was for. I just knew you had turned on me. You called me a boy toy. Just some fling, you said. Do you know how that made me feel? It hurt like nothing has ever hurt me before. If I was just using you, how could you have had the power to hurt me?”
She looked into his eyes and saw the hurt and pain. She saw confusion and sadness too. They weren’t the emotions she wanted to see. She never wanted to see that pained look in his eyes again. She wanted to see… love. Love for her. She wanted him to love her more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. But she wasn’t sure she could trust that love. Not with that night hanging over their head.
She removed her hand from his then slowly stood up. “I’m sorry Luis. I just can’t -”
“I know you can’t trust me therefore you can’t have a relationship with me. I’ve heard all this before.” He said finally getting to his feet. When he turned his back on her a second later, she felt the loss down in the deepest part of her soul.
“Not that you will believe me or anything but I have to say it anyway. I can’t keep it to myself anymore. I love you, Sheridan. And I’m not telling you this because I want to change your mind about what you say you saw and heard that night. I’m telling you because it’s true. Whether you believe me or not is entirely up to you.”
With that he walked out of the gazebo and back toward the cottage up on the hill. As her knees threatened to buckle, Sheridan sank down onto the stone bench behind her. He loved her? Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald loved her? Surely, he didn’t mean it. She was a Crane after all. He hated the Cranes. He’d never let himself fall in love with one. You can’t help who you love. Hadn’t Ethan told her that recently? She wanted more than anything in the world to believe Luis truly loved her, but if she believed he loved her then she would have to believe what she saw and heard that night on the wharf didn’t happen and she knew damn good and well it did.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Luis walked back into the cottage and immediately began packing his black leather bag. He only prayed Agent Freeman sent his replacement soon. He had to get out of here. He’d already given Sheridan even more ammunition with which to hurt him and he knew the longer he stayed her bodyguard, the more likely the possibility of her hurting him again would be.
As he unzipped the inside front zipper and reached inside, he felt the round shaped compact he’d bought for Sheridan. He’d never given it back to her after he’d found it in Jean-Luc’s place back in Paris. He’d meant to but for some reason the time just never seemed right. She probably already bought a replacement anyway, he thought taking the compact out and turning it over in his hands. He’d bought it thinking it was a replacement for the one he broke in New Mexico, but he’d later found out hers had been an antique and was virtually priceless. He’d felt like an idiot, much as he did now.
He started to place the compact back inside his bag, but a small gasp from behind him caught him off guard and he turned without thinking. Her eyes were glued to his hand and he swallowed hard as she slowly began to make her way toward him. She took the compact out of his hand and the minute she held it in her palm, she raised her head until her tear-filled blue eyes met his. “It’s the same. It’s not new. This is the one you gave me after New Mexico. I lost it in Paris when – Where did you find it?”
He cleared his throat, as it had suddenly become too tight. “Jean Luc’s place. It’s how I knew you had been there. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it until I got arrested. I meant to give it back to you –“
“Why didn’t you?” She asked searching his eyes with hers. “Why didn’t you give it back to me?”
“At the time, you didn’t particularly like me very much and I was pretty steamed at you too, if you recall.”
She nodded but her eyes never left his. “Yet you kept this. Why?”
“Because it was yours." He said shifting his stance suddenly feeling uncomfortable. He cleared his throat. "I always intended to give it back to you.”
“When?” She asked tilting her head slightly to the side. “When were you going to give it back to me? You’ve had it for months. Did you think I wouldn’t want it back? Is that it?”
“No.” He said shaking his head. “I was waiting for the right time and then you never mentioned you were missing it so I assumed you bought a replacement.”
“I didn’t. I tried to find another like this one but the sales lady said they didn’t have anymore like it. I was really upset about it. I didn’t want to hurt you by letting you know how careless I was in losing it so I –“
“Careless?” He asked taking her gently by the arms. “Two men tried to kill you and you dropped it during you’re escape. You think you were careless? If you hadn’t dropped it I might not have known you were there. They might have actually gotten away with - ”
He broke off unable to say the words. Every time he thought about what those bastards tried to do to Sheridan, his stomach went into a fit of knots. What if he hadn’t gotten to her in time? What if he hadn’t found the compact signaling that she had been there? What if –
“Luis?” She asked raising a hand to his face. “I never thanked you for saving my life and I should have. I should have thanked you for a lot of things, actually.”
“It’s okay.”
“No it isn’t.” She said shaking her head. “I let my hurt over what I heard that night cloud my judgment of who you are. I’d always thought I could trust my own eyes and ears, but now I’m… now I’m seriously doubting that fact.”
“Why?” He asked not moving an inch, afraid that at any moment she would say she didn’t mean what she was saying. “Why are you suddenly doubting what you say you saw and heard?”
“Because,” She said looking down at the compact in her hands then back up at him. “I know you meant what you said. I know you love me and because of that I know you would not have said those things about me. I don’t have any answers as to what happened that night, but I know how I feel about what you told me tonight and I know I don’t want to walk away from that feeling. Not anymore. Because you see I… I love you too, Luis and I don’t want to fight it anymore.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding then cupped her face in his hands. “Do you mean that? Do you really and truly mean what you just said?”
“Yes.” She whispered looking into his eyes. “And I only need just one chance to prove it to you.”
A second after she whispered the words, she covered his lips with hers. It was a kiss that spoke of love and promises… and maybe just maybe there was a happily ever after in there as well. He sure as hell hoped so because there was no way he was going to let her go now that he had her. He didn’t care if he had to slay a thousand dragons to keep her either. He would slay every one he had to because out of all the people he knew Sheridan most deserved the happily ever after ending and he planned to make damn sure he was the one to give it to her.
THE END