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Authors: A Bride Worth Waiting For

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Laughter, fresh and pure as a brook, bubbled deep within her.

“That chair says Scarlet Leaves Rest Home on it,” she pointed out, still laughing.

He looked and muttered something under his breath.

“Get in.”

She hesitated. Oh, why not just give herself over to this lovely madness? It was only for a day or two more.

And it was for Mark.

Or maybe for herself. For that part of herself that had forgotten how to laugh, just as Mark had said.

She settled herself in the seat, and he handed her a strange object that looked like a brown paper bag mounted on planter sticks.

“What is this?” she asked. It had the cutest picture painted awkwardly on the front—a dragon with bulging eyes and fire coming out his mouth.

“It’s a kite.”

She looked at it more carefully. “Is this going to fly?”

“I doubt it.”

“Did you make it?”

“No.”

That was something of a relief. Where would he have gotten the obviously used nylons that adorned the straggly string? “I hope it didn’t come from the nursing home.”

“Me, too. Or the local kindergarten class.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“Hang on for dear life,” he advised, and began to race top speed, down a paved path that pitched steeply down a green hillside.

Chapter Seven

“A
dam! You are going way too fast! Adaaaam!”

“Throw the kite up in the air. Let out the string. More.”

Tory managed to wrench her eyes away from their scary descent down the hill and look behind her. Adam’s black hair was swept back from his face and his eyes shone with laughter. The kite was actually lifting, swaying drunkenly, tugging on the string.

“It flies!” she said with disbelief. “Adam, run faster. Faster!”

“You asked for it.”

As he surged forward, the wind caught the kite and lifted it higher, while she tried frantically to unwind string fast enough. Tory looked forward and felt her heart plummet at the crazy speed they were building. Better to stay focused on the kite. She looked back over her shoulder.

Adam was breathing hard, and sexy little diamonds of perspiration were breaking out on his brow. Better to stay focused on the kite! She looked past his shoulder. The kite was nose-diving, straight for earth.

“Faster,” she commanded recklessly.

He tried, but it was too late. The kite crashed on the hard asphalt path behind him.

“Oh, damn,” she said.

Adam laughed and dug in his heels to stop them. She had to hold onto the arms of the wheelchair to keep from pitching out of it.

“Does this thing have a seatbelt?” she asked, lifting herself up and looking on the seat.

“I don’t think it was ever intended to be used in quite this fashion. Put your feet down, so you don’t roll away,” he instructed, then went back to retrieve the kite.

She wound in the string. Adam held the kite in a straight line from her so the string wouldn’t tangle.

It gave her the uncomfortable sensation of reeling in a fish.

A big fish.

A big, gloriously handsome fish.

A woman going by with a double stroller with two noisy babies in it gave Adam a smile that briefly washed the harried young mother look from her face.

Adam smiled at the babies.

Adam Reed, Catch-of-the-Day.

“Is the kite broken?” Tory called, reminding herself to keep things official. Officially they were here to fly a kite.

Never mind the way the sun looked in his hair, or how white his teeth were, or how his chest swelled, rising and falling under the fabric of his T-shirt.

“Are you kidding? A tank could run over this thing and not damage it. Which is why it’s not doing so well in the air.”

She had reeled him in close, and he inspected the kite, while she inspected him. Unofficially.

“It did fine,” she said, too sharply. “We just need a little more speed.”

“Women. Not three minutes ago you were telling me I was going too fast.”

And he was. He was going way too fast. Doing things to her heart and mind that should really happen more slowly.

She made herself focus on their official business.

“If we’re going to make this kite fly, you have to go
really
fast. Let’s go back to the top and try again.”

Adam looked up the enormous hill and sighed. “I think I liked it better before you were committed to this idea.”

“I’ll get out of the wheelchair. Walk up, ride down.”

“Can your knee handle that?”

“Oh, sure. I can walk. I just can’t run.”

“Now that’s a switch. You were the girl who could run but not walk.”

Two teenage girls with earrings in the oddest places went by and looked at the kite, then looked at Adam, and giggled breathlessly.

“Great day for flying a kite, ladies,” he said.

They giggled again, tickled by the attention.

Catch-of-the-Month, Tory thought ruefully.

He offered her his arm, and she took it, looping her own companionably through his. He pushed the empty wheelchair back up the hill, and she suddenly wondered what it would be like to grow old with him, to walk slowly, like this, through their twilight years.

She smiled to herself. As if Adam would ever slow down.

“What are you smiling about?”

“I was just thinking you will probably die at age one hundred and three in a motorcycle accident where speed was a factor.”

“What made you think of that?”

She wasn’t about to admit she had momentarily thought of a future together. “The wheelchair, I guess, made me think of growing old.”

“You will grow old beautifully. With uncommon grace.”

“Adam! No one can know these things.”

“I do. I know that of you.”

She could feel an embarrassing tide of red rising up her cheeks. “Well, since you can see the future so clearly, and my arriving at old age is assured, I intend to be fearless going down the hill this time.”

“Good.” He was looking at her with wickedness lighting his eyes. She resettled in the chair, thinking he had always done this—coaxed her wild side out. Made her bolder than she really was.

She remembered Mark watching her once, when Adam had her bent over with laughter, howling really, without any dignity at all. She had not realized it at the time, but looking back she could see something wistful in Mark’s eyes.

“All right,” she called, impatiently putting the memory behind her. “Go!”

They zoomed down the hill, and her fear was gone. Vanished. She cackled wild delight at the wind in her face and hair. She looked back, mesmerized for a moment by the power of him, by the easy play of muscles in his arms and legs, and then she looked over his broad shoulder.

The wind had grabbed the kite, and was tugging the string out of her fingers, begging for more.

At the bottom of the hill, Adam stopped and spun the wheelchair around with such momentum she was nearly flung out of it. But before she could give him heck for his lousy driving she saw the kite, dancing exuberantly on the wind above them.

She laughed with a pure delight that she was not sure she had felt since her childhood. The kite went up and up and up. And then without warning, it began to list.

“No! It’s doing that thing, Adam.”

The kite listed this way and then that, and then dipped, a big S forming in the string.

“Run,” she cried.

He spun her around again and put on a heroic burst of speed, but it was too late. The kite wobbled drunkenly and then crashed to the earth.

He retrieved the kite, and she wound in the string.

“We’ve got a little rip here,” he said. “Luckily I was given a repair kit.”

He pulled a roll of masking tape from his pocket and set the kite on her lap. He bent over it, much too close for her comfort.

How she wanted to touch the springy silkiness of his hair. He smelled wonderful. Of sunshine and aftershave, and ever so enticing of sweat. All male.

A nurse went by, overweight and puffing. He glanced up at her and returned her tentative smile. She was transformed into a beauty queen before Tory’s very eyes.

A half dozen more times they careened crazily down the hill. The kite was now patched in several places, and masking tape held together one of the fragile sticks that formed the kite’s frame. And then, when they had both decided that keeping the kite in the air was not even a possibility, nature decided to take pity on them and the wind picked up.

The kite soared upward, pulling restlessly at the string in her hands, dancing with the wind, begging for freedom.

The string seemed to be singing off the roll in her hands. She stood up and played the string, Adam right beside her. The kite was like a living thing at the end of that tether. Pulling, soaring, falling, soaring again.

Grinning with a sense of triumph she could not explain, she finally relinquished the string to Adam, wanting him to feel what she had felt. The tug of the kite, the unexpected power of it, the beauty of its dance with the wind vibrating through his fingertips.

The kite swayed and dipped and soared like an exotic dancer making love with the wind. It nose dived and then righted itself. For twenty minutes the kite danced with the air currents.

It was an incredible thing. Beautiful.

She felt no regret at all when without warning the kite string snapped, and it was free. She laughed and waved at it as it soared yet higher, the bright dragon becoming a bright dot, and then a bright speck, in the distant sky.

“Hell’s bells,” Adam muttered, watching it go. “I suspect that kite just became worth a minor fortune.”

“Really? How come?” She was standing in front of him and, on impulse, leaned back into the broadness of his chest.

His arms folded around her, his hands interlocked on her tummy.

They had stood like this a hundred times growing up—watching the Stampede fireworks from Scotsman Hill, at the high school football games, at the edge of the river as the sun went down.

“I rented the kite from a young entrepreneur. Very eager to make his first million. Off of me.”

She felt how she had always felt in the circle of his arms. Safe. Cared about
Right.

“Did your young friend provide the wheelchair, too?”

“I’m afraid so. And the ricksha. And the skates.”

“Him? Out-of the-way-Gramps?”

“His name is Daniel.”

“How on earth did you wind up doing business with him?” It crept into her mind, uninvited, that she was feeling something
more
than safe and cared about. There was a strange tingling beginning at the bottom of her toes and making its way stealthily toward her heart.

“I think it had nothing to do with earth, actually. In fact, it was unearthly strange how he kept popping up.”

“I liked him,” she said, resisting with all her might the urge to push herself deeper into the circle of his strength. “He was spunky. I think he could really go places.”

“Yeah. He could, if the right opportunity came along before the wrong one.”

There was something in the way he said that, that made her turn in the circle of his arms and look up at his face. It was closed.

“You’re going to help him, aren’t you?” she guessed.

“I already did! Rented those skates from him, the wheelchair, the ricksha. I’ll be buying that blasted kite, too.”

“You won’t be able to leave it at that.”

She felt him stiffen with surprise, before he relaxed again.

“How come you always saw in me what nobody else could see?” he asked her softly.

“Maybe, Adam, you always showed me what you never let anyone else see.”

She felt good. Full. Happy. She could have easily stayed like this forever, bigger questions not gnawing on her mind at all.

“It was fun, wasn’t it?” he said, his chin resting comfortably on the top of her head.

“It was. It was a lot of fun. Better than in-line skating.”

“Way better than rickshawing.”

“Why do you suppose Mark picked kite flying? We never flew kites as kids, did we?”

“No. Not that I recall.”

“He was right, you know. I haven’t laughed enough.”

“I guess I haven’t really, either.”

“Adam! You used to laugh all the time. What happened?”

“Work, I guess. Life. Who knows?”

“Promise me, when you go back, you’ll do things that make you laugh.” And there it was. The simple fact that he was going back. The reminder that what she felt in his arms was no more real than a mirage shimmering and shifting in hot desert air.

“Such as?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Whinny at old ladies or something.”

“You, too, then.”

“What? Me whinny at old ladies?” She tried for a teasing note, but already she could feel in her heart the hurt of him going away.

“Find things that make you laugh, Tory. Promise me.”

She couldn’t think right now of a single thing that would ever make her laugh again. Fifty miles an hour down a hill in a wheelchair was a pretty hard act to follow. “Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Find some guy who’ll chase you around the bedroom and when he catches you, tickle your toes.”

“Adam!”

“You still have ticklish toes, don’t you?”

“I was not objecting to the ticklish toes!”

“Really? Well, then I’m going to tickle them right now, if you have no objections.”

“You are not. I do have objections.”
I’d rather we were in the bedroom first
. She blushed red just thinking it.