MEGAN sat on their bed, watching her husband strip off his clothes, remembering the scene he'd played with the widow in the movie—the raw conflict and the caring.
'Why are you embarrassed?' she asked.
He shot her a wary look, eyes guarded, watchful, assessing.
Anticipating trouble with her?
'Mitch was right,' she asserted warmly. 'You made us live it with you. I don't think many actors can grab people by the throat like that. You deserve the accolades, Johnny.'
A wry little smile twitched at his mouth. 'I wasn't really acting, Megan. I just channelled what I felt about…other things…into the role.'
'What other things?' she probed, her pulse skipping into a faster beat at the implication that parts of the movie had parallelled his own life experience.
Caught naked…
He shook his head. 'None of it relates to our life now.' Putting in the block again.
Megan gritted her teeth, determined to fight it this time. 'I want to know all of you, Johnny, not just the part you think is suitable for me.'
He flashed her a hard look. 'No, you don't, Megan. You've spelled out many times that Gundamurra is your world and you don't want to be a part of any other.'
Damned by her own words!
'I'm sorry that the movie has disturbed you,' he went on. 'Just remember it was made before we were married.'
Her own thoughts before she saw it!
Her heart sank as she realised Johnny had taken on board all the parameters she had drawn and because he wanted their marriage to work, he was doing what he had to do to keep it within them. In a burst of shattering insight, she understood it was the mind-set of a survivor. Cut away anything that might put their life together at risk. Keep everything steady and on course. Don't invite trouble. Be charming. Smile.
The abused child in Johnny Ellis was still there—buried deep but still inside him, doing what had to be done to survive and prosper in a hostile world!
Having shed his clothes, he landed on the bed, pulled her down beside him, and smiled to set her at ease as he started unbuttoning her shirt. 'You must be tired…'
'Stop!' she cried.
He frowned at the sharpness of her protest.
'Stop patronising me, Johnny.' Her eyes begged his understanding as she rushed to explain. 'I did see your career as a threat to anything we could have together, but I have grown up this past year and I know to put someone like you in a cage is terribly wrong.'
The frown returned. 'I'm not caged at Gundamurra, Megan. There's plenty of space here. Different challenges. More than enough to happily occupy me.'
She reached up and stroked his cheek, wanting desperately to get under his skin, the self-protective layers he'd grown over too many years. 'I love you, Johnny. I want you to share your life with me. All of it, not just the part you think is acceptable to me. I promise you, I won't turn away from any of it, just because it's unfamiliar to me. So please…put down the barriers and let me into your mind.'
His eyes studied hers quizzically. 'You've never said that before.'
'I've been a frightened fool, holding back because I didn't believe I could ever have all of you, but if you'll truly share with me, Johnny, I swear I'll always be there for you, wherever you want to go and whatever you want to do. I'll never take your family from you, nor…'
He placed gentle fingers on her lips, halting her speech. 'You love me?' he repeated gruffly, as though that was all he'd heard.
Appalled that he had gone all this time with her in the intimacy of their marriage and not felt loved, Megan spilled out the truth of her long fixation on him, from when she was a little girl—her hero-worship, her teenage crush, the self- protective rejection that had taken the form of scorn, the wild intensity of her need to have him once, the guilt of trapping him into marriage, the fear of not ever being enough for him. She laid her heart absolutely bare, desperately hoping he would open up, too—good or bad.
She had to know.
Only with knowing could she feel truly married to him. No secrets.
No forbidden areas. Honesty.
She saw her revelations strike chords of recognition in his eyes, saw them provoke expressions of bemusement, tenderness, regret, irony, and her nerves were screwed into a complete mess by the time she'd laid it all out to him, but she didn't care. It was the truth.
For several heart-churning moments he made no reply, simply stroking the wild mop of her hair away from her face, seemingly entranced by the curly tendrils. Or the colour. Her crowning glory.
'We always had that gap between us, Megan,' he remarked ruefully. 'You captured my heart when you were a little girl. In my mind, I adopted you as my little sister, just as I adopted Patrick as my father. Crossing that line was unthinkable. Though I certainly thought about it in recent years.'
'You did?' she queried incredulously. He nodded.
'You never showed it.'
'Inappropriate. Firstly, you were Patrick's daughter.
Secondly, you wouldn't have a bar of me, anyway.'
She sighed. 'I thought you were out of my reach, Johnny.' 'I realise that now. But once you agreed to our making
love on the night of Patrick's wake, I was hell-bent on bridging that gap.'
That startled her into saying, 'It wasn't…just sex?'
A whimsical little smile. 'Did it feel like just sex to you?' 'Johnny, I was so caught up in my own feelings…and I'd baited you, tricked you…'
'I was where I wanted to be, Megan. And nothing was going to stop me from coming back and winning more from you.'
'Like…in the movie?' she asked, wanting to know if he'd transferred his feelings for her to the scene with the widow.
He grimaced. 'I didn't think of you ever seeing that movie. When I went back to Arizona, I had them rewrite the part with the widow. I could see she should be thinking the cowboy had too big a commitment to his previous life, that he'd go and never come back. You were in my head all the time, Megan.'
'The cowboy was torn by the situation, too, Johnny— between her and what he'd set out to do,' she reminded him. 'I don't want you to feel torn.'
'It was something he had to finish before he could move on. And he did finish it. I feel the same way. There's no conflict in me about what I want.' He smiled, a beautiful, happy smile. 'You've just given it to me.'
Her love…
Such a powerful thing if it wasn't hemmed in by constrictions.
'It's free, Johnny,' she promised him. 'You don't have to perform for me. No matter what you choose to do, or have done in the past, I love you.'
'What still bothers you about my past, Megan?'
'The children…what you felt in the movie. You said you channelled it…from what?'
Sadness clouded his eyes. 'When you're a little kid, you can't stop what adults do,' he said quietly. 'I remember Ric telling Mitch and me—back when we were sixteen—how his mother was regularly beaten up and eventually killed by his father, how he'd tried to get in the way, only to get hurled aside and beaten himself. I knew how that was. I learnt very young that you can't win against adults. They're too strong. And they have answers for everything—for the bruises and the broken bones and the bed-wetting…'
'What was the worst for you?'
He hesitated, not wanting to pull it out.
'You told me about Ric, Johnny,' she quickly pressed. 'Please…tell me about you.'
It came reluctantly, almost as though he was ashamed of it. 'Being hit wasn't so bad. I hated being locked in a cupboard. Alone. In the dark. No escape. Days, nights…I never knew how long it would last. Or if they'd forget I was there. I had to stay quiet or I'd get pulled out, beaten, and put back even longer.'
'My God, Johnny! No wonder you ran away when you could.'
'It's a long way behind me now,' he said dismissively. 'But playing that initial scene in the movie—the terrible waste of lives that promised so much—it wasn't hard for me to call up grief, nor a savage desire to balance the ledger. Though, in the end, as Ric says, it's best to let those feelings go and move on. You just don't ever forget…how it was.'
'No,' she murmured. 'I can't imagine you would. Thank you for telling me. It helps me to bridge the gap…knowing why you think and feel as you do. And I don't want you to ever feel alone again, Johnny.'
He smiled as she wound her arms around his neck, the desire for more unifying action simmering into his eyes as he hopefully asked, 'Have I said enough?'
'No.'
'What more?' His patience was being tested. 'I want to hear you say you love me.'
He laughed, and to Megan's ears, it was the heady laugh of freedom. His eyes sparkled wild pleasure as he bent to brush his lips over hers and whisper, 'I love you, Megan Maguire. I love having you as my partner in all things. I love sharing your life—'
'You've got to let me share yours, too,' she cut in breathlessly.
'Everything. I love everything about you.'
Then he proceeded to show her how very much he did, and she loved him right back…openly, wholeheartedly, blissfully secure in the certain knowledge that she was every bit as special to him as he was to her…and always would be.