“This isn’t penance,” he argued. “This is me trying to protect you and the twins. Why don’t you see that?”
“What I see is that it’s time for you to go, Colt. Just leave.” She pulled her hands free of her pockets and used them both to push back her thick mane of hair. “You would have left soon anyway, so go tonight. I don’t want my children to love a father who’s so busy trying to kill himself that he’s forgotten how to live.”
Ten
Colt didn’t stick around. What would have been the point? He threw his stuff together and left while the twins were still sleeping because God help him, he didn’t think he could walk out the door with his kids watching him go. His kids.
Those two words bounced around in his skull like maniacal rubber balls. He never had bothered to get a paternity test. He hadn’t needed to. He’d known in his gut the moment he’d seen them that those babies were his. Just as he knew now that he had to leave.
He just hadn’t expected Penny to be the one to tell him to go. Damn it, he was the one who left. Always. No woman before her had ever asked him to leave. Though he supposed she had reason enough.
“The problem is she doesn’t get it,” he muttered, and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway not even noticing the ocean on his right. “How could she? She’s never failed anyone before.”
He had, though. His mind spun darkly through all the memories he’d just dug up and stomped through.
“Never should have tried to explain,” he told himself, pushing dark thoughts aside to concentrate on the road and the wild race of his heartbeat. “Should have just gone. Should never have stayed that long in the first damn place.”
But how could he not? He had kids. Two tiny human beings who were alive because of him and they deserved...what?
“Better than a part-time father, that’s what,” he muttered as he turned his car onto the private road that led to the house on the cliff.
He slapped one hand against the steering wheel, then waved at the security guard at the gate. He drove past in a hurry and followed the narrow, winding road to his driveway. When he got there, he stopped, parked and reluctantly turned off the engine.
What he wanted to do was to keep driving. To push his car and himself to their limits. To feel that rush of speed that came when you discarded the idea of being careful. When you raced out to stay just ahead of—
He stopped that thought cold as Penny’s voice echoed in his mind. Chasing death. Forgotten how to live.
She was wrong, though, he argued silently. He wasn’t chasing death, for God’s sake. He was relishing every moment of his life. He wasn’t wasting time. He wasn’t going to be an old man and regret not taking chances. Not living life to the fullest. That’s what this was about. Life, not death.
But Penny’s voice wouldn’t leave his mind. Her accusatory stare seemed to drill right into his soul. And the look on her face when she told him to leave the cottage would stay with him forever.
From the moment he’d met Penny, he had known that this woman wasn’t the kind you could forget. And he hadn’t. Now the memories of her were thicker, richer, more deeply embedded in his soul. Somehow, she’d become a part of him and leaving her had felt as though he was carving out his own heart with a butter knife.
Hands fisted on the steering wheel, he sat in the shade of the spectacular house that hadn’t become a home until Penny and the twins had arrived. He looked up at the building and felt an emptiness he’d never known before. He was being chased not only by his own past but by the futures that he wouldn’t be a part of.
He already missed Penny. The scent of her. The sound of her laugh. The taste of her. Colt had never thought about falling in love. Never even considered it. But now he realized that when he’d first met her in Vegas, he’d instinctively known that she would be the one woman he would never get over.
Now he’d made that situation worse.
Then there were the twins. He didn’t want to think about all he would miss with his kids, but how could he help it? First words. First steps. First day of school. First heartbreak. He’d miss them all.
His heart twisted in his chest, but he couldn’t back down now. He was doing the right thing and he’d keep on doing it. Even if he suffered every day of his life because he’d walked away from the three people in the world who meant the most to him.
Grabbing his duffel bag, Colt climbed out of the car, slung the bag over one shoulder and headed inside. What he needed to do was to get back to the real world. The exciting race to find bigger and better adrenaline rushes.
The house was too quiet. Deliberately, he didn’t notice a thing about the place where Penny and the twins had been so recently. They’d left themselves stamped all over the house, but he figured the memories would fade in time. And if they didn’t, he’d sell the damn house.
He made a few phone calls—his brother, the airport and his lawyer—threw some clothes in another bag, then grabbed up his ski equipment and headed for John Wayne Airport. A KingJet would be waiting for him and in several hours, he’d be where he should have gone nearly two weeks ago. Sicily. Mount Etna.
He’d reclaim normalcy for himself and chalk up the last couple of weeks as a glitch on his radar. A bump in the road.
Which would be much easier to do if the memory of Penny’s eyes would just leave him the hell alone.
* * *
Both of the twins were whiny and Penny knew just how they felt. They missed Colt and so did she. In a couple of short weeks, he’d become a part of their lives in the cottage, and now that he was gone, there was an aching hole in the tapestry of their family.
She still couldn’t believe that she’d actually told him to leave the night before. After wishing so hard that he would stay, it was completely ironic that she would be the one to tell him to go.
She’d been awake all night, going over their conversation, word for word. She remembered the shadowed look in his eyes when he’d told her about the day his parents died. She’d seen the pain and the guilt glittering in his gaze despite his effort to shield his emotions from her.
Penny knew he was hurt and had been for years. She felt bad for him, living with misplaced guilt for so long, but at the same time she wanted to shriek at him. He hadn’t killed his family. Why did he have to keep suffering? When would it be enough?
She’d overcome her past and moved on. Why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he value her and their children more than his own fears and guilt? And why was she still torturing herself?