Authors: A Bride Worth Waiting For

Cara Colter (14 page)

BOOK: Cara Colter

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To coax a few more kisses out of him,
a little voice inside her informed her cheerfully.

“I do not want his kisses!” she informed the little voice back.

Liar
.

“Let me put this a different way. He is leaving. Soon. Tonight, with any luck. And I am—”

“Tory, who are you talking to?”

“No one,” she called, watching with dismay as her hand disobeyed her mind and reached for the hairbrush on the back of the sink.

“I’m going to go chop some wood. I think it’s going to get fairly cold out here. Maybe we could have a bonfire.”

Super. A bonfire. Hot chocolate. The stars coming out. And the most handsome man in the world to share it all with. Though she regretted telling him that. That she found him attractive. As if he didn’t know.

After quite a long and not an entirely successful session with her hair, she joined him outside.

He was right. A chill was growing in the air, and she shivered. From the chill only. And not from the way he looked, splitting that wood.

All man. Untempered strength. The axe coming up over his head and down again in such smooth rhythm it could have been a form of ballet. Round hunks of tree trunk splitting in half with a clean snap.

He seemed to be enjoying himself—as if he had longed for something to pit his masculine brawn against. And this fit the bill perfectly. A small mountain of cleanly split wood rose on one side of him.

If he kept it up her parents would have enough wood to last them the season.

She looked at the cabin. Compared to some of the summer homes rising around this lake now, it was humble and without pretension. It was a little square box made of the formed cedar logs that had been popular a long time ago. It stood under towering pines and poplars. The front window, which she faced now, looked over the lake. There was a small porch to one side of the door, and her parents’ wooden lawn chairs sat there side by side.

Looking at their chairs, she felt a sudden longing. Side by side they had sat for nearly forty years now. Her mother still looked at her dad with complete love in her eyes, and he still teased her as if she were a young girl about to blush.

Which she did often for him.

When she had married Mark, Tory had envisioned such things. Love growing quietly. A cottage at the lake. Watching the children run down toward the water.

For a moment she could almost see them, and hear them, ghostly children running through the trees. Erupting onto the lawn. Shrieking and heading for the water. Running in. Splashing. Dashing away from one another.

Was she seeing into the future, the children she had never had? Or was she looking into the past when she and Mark and Adam had played so long and hard on the shores of this lake?

“Why so glum, chum?”

She started at the sound of his voice, and then he staggered by her and dropped an enormous load of wood at the fire pit. She noticed he already had the lawn chairs set up.

He came back toward her, smiling, just the way he used to smile all those years ago, when he had done something unforgivable, like thrown her in the water in her brand-new shorts and top, and now would charm away her anger. Smile at her and her fury would melt as though it had never been.

And this time, when he smiled, it was true. The hard ball of sadness began to melt.

“Are you thinking of him?” he asked.

“Of all of us. You and me and Mark and my mom and dad and all the years gone by.”

“Me, too. The cabin seems smaller and the trees seem bigger. And there seem to be ghosts running through them, laughing.”

She turned startled eyes to him, but he was looking off to the trees, a faraway look on his face.

“I never knew again moments of such wonder,” he said softly. “Moments where everything felt so totally right. I seem to see our summer afternoons spent here wrapped in some kind of golden light, sparkling. The closest I’ve come since, is when I open up my bike and go full blast down a lonely road. And this morning. Call me crazy but I felt it this morning when you and I flew that kite.”

Again, she felt deeply startled. For that was when she had felt it, too, that golden feeling he had described. She had felt it here at the lake in the days of her childhood. She had felt it the day she had married Mark. And then again, when she and Adam had gone down that path like an out-of-control torpedo, the kite on the wind behind them.

“Look. It’s getting dark. Let’s see who spots the evening star first,” he suggested.

He offered his hand, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the whole world to take it. He led her down to the lawn chair, wrapped a blanket around her, and then laid and lit the fire.

It roared to life, its sparks dancing with a sky that was turning a hue of blue that would last for only minutes before it disappeared into the darker shades of night.

“There it is!” she called.

He turned from the fire and squinted at the sky.

Venus flickered, faded, flickered again, stronger this time.

“Make a wish,” he told her.

She looked at him, and at how the firelight and twilight mingled and played off the ridges of his face. She looked at how tall he stood, at the pride and the confidence in the set of his shoulders.

She made her wish. A wish of such naked wanting that the heat rose in her cheeks.

A foolish wish. The kind of wish a romantic schoolgirl would make. A wish so big that somewhere the words ended and the feeling just went on and on. A feeling that had something to do with those children that had run through the trees, and something to do with toes and tickling and laughter, and something to do with believing again.

In what?

Love?

Forever?

Him? Adam Reed?

Foolish and whimsical, and yet she found herself wishing with all her heart.

The lawn chair beside her creaked as it took his weight, and she found his hand searching for hers in the blanket.

Just like that first night.

And just like that first night, when it found hers, it felt right.

“I miss him,” he said quietly.

“Me, too.”

Companionable silence, as the stars winked on one by one.

“Maybe he’s up there, hunting with Orion,” she said after a long stillness. “Do you think so?”

“I never used to think about it at all. Now I do all the time.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, Tory. My brain says when it’s over, it’s over. They put you in the ground and you turn to dust.”

“But?”

“But my heart says my brain is the stupidest part of my body.”

She laughed softly.

“Tory, my heart says he’s with us. In the people we became because we had the privilege of knowing him. But it’s more, even than that. It’s like he’s here, somehow, looking out for us. Loving us still. Like the love goes on.”

“Like that old-fashioned saying. Love abides.”

“Exactly.” He got up suddenly, as if he had made himself uncomfortable. “I’m going to make that hot chocolate.”

“All right.” She sat there in the deepening darkness, watching lights wink on across the lake at Jarvis Bay. She tilted back her head and looked at the stars. They seemed extra special tonight. Like they were dancing and laughing. As if they knew the secrets of the universe and could not contain their joy at knowing them.

He came back, silently, coming out of the night, and yet she knew as soon as be drew closer. It was as though the air around her were charged with his presence.

He pressed the hot chocolate into her hands and took the seat next to her.

“I’m glad I’m here,” he said. “I don’t make time anymore to just sit and feel the world. You do. You feel it through your flowers and the creations you make.”

She had not thought of it that way, but she knew it was true. Working closely with the bounty of nature, utilizing her creative spirit, had brought her the only contentment she had known in the last year.

He added more wood to the fire and the sparks leapt and danced.

She felt as if she could stay like this forever.

And then he reminded her about that word.

“We’re going to have to go soon, Tory. It’s getting really cold, and I don’t want you to turn into a popsicle on the back of that bike.”

It felt as if nothing could take the warmth from her, but as soon as she reluctantly crawled out from under the blanket, she knew that was not the case. He looked after dousing the fire while she went to the cabin and rinsed the mugs.

“You can leave the water on now,” she called to him, “it’s not likely to freeze in June. Even if this is Alberta.”

“Don’t be too sure,” he said, and came in letting the screen door slap shut behind him. “It is really cold out there. And not much better in here.”

By flashlight they locked the cabin and made their way through the filtered light of the moon to where the bike sat.

She thought of the wish she had made. Not about to come true.

And she thought, suddenly, of the last time they had ridden through the darkness together on his motorcycle.

It had ended in a proposal of marriage.

That she had turned down. She sighed, and he looked at her sharply, then did up the zipper on his jacket.

Over, she thought.

It was over.

It was over, he thought, as he did up his jacket. He took one more look at the star-studded night and tried to quell the feeling of regret welling up inside of him.

His contract fulfilled. His obligation over.

She stood by the bike, and he remembered a long time ago when they had stood by a bike together in the darkness.

It had been a crazy night.

He had been working on the motorcycle, and at four in the morning, by some strange miracle, it had growled to life. The exhilaration he had felt in that moment simply could not be borne alone. So he had gone next door and tapped on her bedroom window and she had come to it, looking sleepy and pleased and not at all annoyed, even though the first thing she told him was that she had university classes in the morning.

Never mind that, he’d told her. He’d promised her a night of magic, and it had been easy to talk her into it.

Out her bedroom window she had come, giggling, loving the excitement, the adventure, loving being bad for once.

They had gotten on the bike and headed toward Banff, the Rocky Mountains huge dark mammoths in the distance. Predawn changed them to gray, and then the first faint blush of pink touched their tops. It was then that he pulled off the road, and they had sat silently and watched. An elk, ghostly and majestic, moved silently across the road in front of them.

He had never felt, before or since, the utter sense of rightness he had felt in that moment. Totally at one with the universe. The highway, the bike, the mountain, the elk, the dawn.

And her.

The person he loved best in the world sharing it with him.

And he had known then, that he had wanted it for all time. Her beside him for each of these moments that life offered.

And so, he had asked her to marry him.

And he had seen a flare of joy in her face so strong that for a moment he had believed. And then that was gone. A trick of light perhaps. And she had looked suddenly frightened and unsure, and the moment had been destroyed utterly.

They had not even gone on to Banff.

She had told him, with tears standing out in her eyes, and her hand resting on his arm, that no, she could not marry him.

Absolutely not, no.

And not long after that she and Mark had announced their engagement.

“You’re thinking of it, too,” he said suddenly, “aren’t you?”

She took a startled step back from him, looked carefully at her toes, and then at the snap on her leather jacket. “Thinking of what?”

He stepped into her space. She had never been able to fool him.

“That night we went to Banff. Almost to Banff.”

He saw the tears glitter in her eyes.

“Yes.”
Leave it
, the part of him that was a gentleman instructed.
Leave it. Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?

But the part of him that was a pure rogue could not leave it.

“Why?” he asked.