That wasn't to say she'd been lacking her own strengths. In fact, she'd been unnaturally mature for her age, completely willing and able to take over her role as the wife of an ambitious young litigator determined to become better than the best.
He wouldn't have been drawn to her if he hadn't glimpsed the resilient will behind her shy smiles. But while he'd already walked a hard road by the age of twenty-nine, she'd been untested by the world, cocooned in an environment where everyone behaved according to accepted rules. Used to making decisions, it hadn't occurred to him to act any other way with his wife.
For the first time in a long while, he looked at her without being blinded by memories of the girl she'd been. She was still slender, still beautiful in that graceful way with her blue eyes and that silky hair he loved to have brush over his skin. But her eyes no longer said what they had in the past.
When they'd wed, she'd looked to him for everything. Now … now there was distance in those blue depths, a world of secrets he was shut out of. To his shock, he found he had no idea who she was behind her elegant shell.
"No, I guess I didn't." He'd built his life around his self-confidence, trusting his instincts when there'd been nothing and no one else to trust. To admit he'd been wrong about something this important was a blow.
Vicki's lips parted, her eyes going wide.
"But don't blame me for everything," he continued. They'd both been in that broken marriage and if they were going to survive the rebuilding, they had to be honest. "You know what I'm like. If you'd said something, I would have tried to fix it. I don't like to see you hurting."
Which was why he'd never berated her for the one thing she couldn't give him—her passion, her desire. That absence in their marriage had stung like hell, and still did, but he was incapable of harming her, even to assuage his own pain. From the moment he'd met her, all he'd wanted to do was make her happy … make her smile.
Shoulders taut beneath the white linen of her simple shift dress, she shook her head. "That's the point, Caleb. I don't want you to fix things for me. I need…"
"What, Vicki? Tell me what you need." It was something he'd never asked. The realization stunned him, made him question exactly how good a job he'd done of loving her.
Even in bed, he'd taken the lead, confident in his ability to ensure her physical pleasure though he couldn't make her want him with the fury that he wanted her. But what if she'd needed something else, something he hadn't known how to give? What if that was the reason she'd never responded to him with the intensity he needed from her?
Her whole face softened. "I just need you to see and love me, not the idea of the perfect wife you have in your head, or the woman Grandmother tried to mold me into. Just me. Just Victoria."
It felt as if she'd struck him. "I never tried to change you."
"No, Caleb. You never even saw me at all." And that had hurt more than anything. Because no matter what she said and did, she loved Caleb Callaghan with every breath in her body. Loved his laugh, his intelligence, his stubbornness and even his temper.
But it wasn't enough. Love like that could slowly destroy a person from the inside out if it wasn't returned. And despite what Caleb believed, she knew it wasn't. To her husband she was as fragile as an exotic bloom, someone who always had to be protected, even if that meant she had to be shielded from the full power of his own feelings.
Like now. His fists were clenched, his jaw taut but he kept himself under control. "If I didn't see you, then who the hell did I spend five years with? A ghost?"
The sarcastic comment fell too close to the mark. "Maybe you did."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
How did she tell him something she'd barely started to understand herself? "Who was I in that marriage, Caleb?"
"My wife." His hazel eyes were clouded with a kind of pain she'd never before seen. "Wasn't that enough?"
"Caleb Callaghan's wife," she said, swallowing the knot of emotion in her throat. "But was I really even that?"
He scowled. "What kind of question is that? Of course you were my wife. You still are. And if you'd get over this separate-bedrooms crap, we could start working on making things right."
If I'm your wife, she wanted to scream, then why did you do that with Miranda? But that wasn't something she was strong enough to face yet—four months of distance from the event hadn't even formed a scab on the wound. "This is not crap, Caleb. This is real, so start paying attention—for once in your life, pay attention to your marriage!"
Swiveling on her heel, she walked out of the room. From behind her came the harsh sounds of Caleb swearing and throwing something at the wall, but he didn't follow her. Relieved, she entered her own room, knowing she was close to an emotional meltdown. It was one thing to coach herself on how to handle Caleb when it was only hypothetical, and quite another to be faced with the full force of his personality.
She'd spent her marriage unable to say what needed to be said because she'd been too weak to stand up to the force of nature that was Caleb Callaghan. Having him home scared her—what if she crumpled again, losing everything she'd gained in the months they'd been apart, months in which she'd made herself take a critical look at her life?
What she'd seen hadn't been pretty. But at least she was facing her mistakes now, facing the mess of their marriage. Getting Caleb to do the same would be a major battle, but she'd made a beginning two months ago when she'd gambled everything on a throw of the dice and asked him for a divorce.
It had been a move born of desperation and staked on Caleb's stubborn refusal to admit defeat in any arena. She'd wanted to shake him out of his complacency, to make him see that the life they'd been living wasn't a life at all, merely an existence. Despite her hurt over what he'd done with Miranda during that business trip to Wellington, she hadn't wanted to give up on the dream that had first brought them together.
But not even for that dream had she been willing to continue hiding behind the perfect facade of their fractured marriage. So she'd thrown the dice. And waited for Caleb to pick them up.
He hadn't let her down. Though he'd moved out, he'd made sure he had contact with her almost every day. Now, the unexpected gift of their baby had given them more time, time enough for Caleb to get to know her, to begin to understand the woman she'd always been beneath the brittle shell of breeding and culture.
After he understood who she was, he'd have to decide whether or not he wanted to remain married to her, whether or not he wanted to fight to fix a marriage she wasn't sure could be fixed. Vicki had no intention of ever again donning the mask of a fashion-conscious socialite wife. The question was, what if that was exactly the kind of woman Caleb wanted?
A woman who'd go her own way and not demand anything from him but money and a place in society; a woman who'd turn the other cheek when infidelity raised its ugly head; a woman who'd never dream of destroying her upper-class lifestyle by divorcing her husband because he didn't love her.
* * *
Two
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Caleb was in a foul mood. He'd fully expected to spend the night with his wife, but instead had tossed and turned in the guest bedroom while Vicki lay feet away. By the time the shrill ring of the alarm woke him, all of his nerves had been rubbed raw.
He didn't understand why Vicki was doing this to them—she'd never acted so unreasonably before. How could she expect them to pretend to be separated when they were both living in the same house and she was about to have his baby, for God's sake? As far as he was concerned, separate beds were not part of the marriage deal. And he'd missed her, damn it. Hadn't she missed him even a bit?
After a quick shower, he pulled on his suit jacket and walked into the kitchen, expecting a cold welcome from the woman he'd spent the night dreaming about. Vicki stood at the counter pouring coffee into his cup. His mood elevated. "I half expected you to tell me to fend for myself." That was what she'd done in the last weeks before their separation.
She rolled her eyes. "If I didn't feed you, you'd live on takeout."
He slid onto a stool on the other side of the counter, luxuriating in the feel of being home again. In spite of the hours he'd worked as a rising young lawyer, he'd restored this villa with his own hands. It had been his escape from the combative world in which he spent much of his life.
When he'd married Vicki, the villa had only been partially restored and he'd expected her to balk at the work remaining, but she'd lit up at the prospect. She'd done a lot of the finishing work herself—he'd often come home to a wife with paint-stained skin and scraped knuckles.
Almost a year later, they'd had a bright, airy home stamped with their personalities. Some of the happiest days of their marriage had been spent covered in paint and sawdust, with only each other's voices for company.