Authors: A Bride Worth Waiting For
Cara Colter (2 page)
No boy left in him. All man out there on her doorstep. At least six foot one of it, the adolescent promise of broadness through the chest and shoulders now completely realized. Easy animal strength lingering just below the surface of those well-cut clothes. Oh yes, that wild side still there, glittering dangerously just below the surface of dark eyes, serving to make him mysterious. Intriguing. Dangerously attractive.
Had she reached out and locked her screen door to keep him out, or herself in?
She wondered if he was married. In the mirror she watched the blood drain from her own face making her freckles stand out like random dots from a felt pen. She almost felt like she had taken a bad blow to the stomach.
“Oh, what do you care if he’s married?” she chastised herself. She told herself she only cared about the woman. Married to an insensitive cad like him.
But she knew she was lying to herself, and that’s why she knew she absolutely had to ignore him until he went away.
She tiptoed out of the bathroom. The house was in darkness now. She looked out the window.
He was still there.
And if there was anything of the old Adam in him he would still be there in the morning. Next week. Next month.
She could not outwait him. She knew that She had only been able to say no to him once.
Why was she so afraid of him? Let him have his say, and be on his way. She sighed, and went and got an afghan from off the back of her couch. Because of Calgary’s proximity to the Rocky Mountains there was almost always a nip in the air at night. Not that Adam had ever seemed to feel it!
“Don’t do this,” she told herself. But she knew that she would. And she knew he knew she would.
She opened the front door and slipped out into the darkness of her porch.
The swing stilled.
She went and sat beside him, pulling the blanket around her shoulders against the chill in the air, a small but comforting barrier against him.
“You’re the most stubborn man I ever met,” she said.
He smelled heavenly. Of sunshine and aftershave and cleanliness.
He reached out and unerringly found a hand, her hand, in the folds of the afghan. His hands were surprisingly warm considering how long he had sat out here in the cold.
She ordered herself to pull her hand away. Her mind mutinied.
Instead, she turned and looked at him.
His eyes were dark and full of mystery. And something else as he looked at her.
“It’s like time rolling back seeing you all wrapped up in that blanket.”
“Like a sausage,” she said dourly.
He showed her his teeth, straight and white and strong. “More like the Indian princess in
Peter Pan.
You were always the first one cold.”
Peter Pan.
You were always the first one cold.”
“Cold hands, warm heart,”
they said together.
they said together.
He laughed, but she felt angry with herself, drawn into the past against her will.
“You can’t roll back time,” she told him, and this time she did snatch her hand away, tucked it safely inside the fold of her blanket, and studied her neighbor’s window across the street. New drapes. Horizontal. She decided she hated them.
“I know,” he said, and she heard something in his voice that crumpled her defenses. Weariness. Regret.
“You never came,” she whispered.
He was silent. And finally, his voice hoarse, he said “I’m sorry.”
“He was your best friend, and you never came when he died.” She turned and looked him full in the face. It was his turn to look away. “You never came. All the time he was sick.”
He didn’t apologize again.
“Why are you here now?” she demanded, sorry he was here, sorry she was so bloody glad he was here, sorry for how she had loved the feel of her hand in his.
Sorry for the way the streetlight made his features look so damnably handsome.
“I’m just back for a visit,” he said softly. “I hoped we could spend some time together.”
“I don’t think so,” she said stiffly, which, his lawyer’s mind noted, was quite different than an out and out no.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever gone Rollerblading, have you?” Rollerblading, he thought. She’s going to think I’m crazy. But he had the agenda memorized and that was item one. He would break the other three—kite flying, a ride on a bicycle built for two, and a trip to Sylvan Lake to watch the stars from lawn chairs—to her later. Once he had his foot in the door.
She was looking at him incredulously, as if he’d lost his mind, which seemed like a distinct possibility. Seeing her under the glow of the streetlight like this, having felt briefly, the soft strength and warmth of her hand in his, he could feel time shifting, pulling him back….
“Are you crazy?” she asked.
“I think so,” he answered. Her eyes were different after all, he realized. Back then they had always had a smile in them. Now they looked angry, and a bit sad.
She didn’t look like that person who used to laugh so hard she had worried about wetting her pants.
Where did that side of a person go to?
“Look,” she said, her voice suddenly hard, “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but don’t bother. I needed you—Mark needed you—a long time ago. It’s too late, now.”
She got up in a single flounce, the blanket swinging regally around her, and fixed him with a glare that turned her from Tory to Victoria Bradbury in an instant. “Go back to where you came from. Don’t bother me anymore.”
He got up too, looked down at her, into her blazing eyes and then at the soft fullness of her lips.
He had kissed those lips. And the sweetness of them had never left him.
He gave himself a mental shake.
She was giving him a way out.
Take it and run
.
.
He had a busy life back in Toronto. He couldn’t afford to take a week off right now. He had a gorgeous, classy girlfriend who would say yes in a minute when he got around to asking her to marry him. He wondered now what he’d been waiting for.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said softly. “Around ten.”
And he went off her porch, to her sputtered, “Don’t bother.”
He knew, just like the big bad wolf, he’d have to come at nine to catch her.
He had taken a cab, but he decided he’d walk back to his hotel, just across the river. He realized as he went, he was whistling.
And that it had been a very long time since he had whistled.
The hotel room was very posh. For a mechanic’s son he had adjusted to poshness with complete ease.
He glanced at his watch. Nearly eleven Calgary time, which meant it was close to one in the morning Eastern time. Too late to call Kathleen, and he was glad. He hadn’t told her the details of this trip, only that it was business. Which it was. Or had been. Strictly business.
Until he saw Tory.
Now he felt like Kathleen would hear it in his voice.
Hear what in your voice? he asked himself.
The pull of the past. Things that were once certain becoming uncertain.
He’d thought he and Kathleen, also a lawyer, made an excellent couple, and that he was nearly ready to make a commitment to her.
Until the exact moment Tory had opened her door.
And then nothing seemed assured anymore. Kathleen, an ex-model with her raven black hair and sapphire eyes, wavering in his mind like a mirage.
Impatiently, Adam went over to the tiny fridge and investigated the contents. He took a cola even though he knew it would probably chase away sleep until dawn streaked the sky.
When had he become so old and stable that he didn’t drink cola at night because it kept him awake?
He had seen a different man reflected back at him through Tory’s eyes. She still saw in him the man-child, who had delighted in walking close to the wild side.
In truth, not just the soda would keep him awake tonight. A strange energy seemed to be singing through his veins.
He picked up his briefcase, moved to the table and snapped it open. Neat stacks of legal briefs stared back at him, the work of a man who didn’t drink cola at night because it might keep him awake.
Did she know he was a lawyer? She hadn’t asked. Would she ask tomorrow? Would she ask him why?
And would he tell her the truth?
He had contemplated his career long and hard before choosing. He had thought about becoming a doctor, just like her old man.
The thought, unfortunately, made him squeamish. He had always been able to hide his squeamish side from Tory and Mark, who seemed to think he was tough in every respect. And in some respects he had been. He had a high threshold for pain. He liked doing things that were thrilling. He was fearless, almost stupidly so, in the face of authority.
But the day he’d cut open the frog in high school biology he’d known a career that involved blood and body parts was out. He suspected he wouldn’t even be able to handle looking at slimy tonsils. Which meant dentistry, an extremely high paying profession, was unfortunately also out. Mark’s dad had been a vet. Since Adam had never so much as owned a goldfish, and could not even pretend an interest in the plump poodles that he had seen in Mark’s father’s outer office, he knew he wasn’t going to be doing that either.
Mark’s mother had been a psychologist, also a respectable profession, but the money was not as good, and probing the secrets of the human mind when his own was so largely baffling to him left him cold.
Accounting was too dull.
And that seemed to leave law. Nice clean work, for the most part. Though he had seen some slimy things that would put a pair of infected tonsils to shame. Still, he had a good mind for it. He excelled at it. Problem solving. Thinking on his feet. Keeping track of a multitude of different things at once. Butting heads. Maintaining his personal integrity when all about him others were losing theirs. He liked it. It was constantly changing and constantly challenging.
But somehow, even though the workings of his own mind baffled him, he knew becoming a lawyer had been about her.
She had picked Mark because they were from the same world. He had known intuitively that education was the passport to her world.
Education opened doors. Bought nice things. Bought respectability.
He had sworn the next time he was ready to ask a woman to spend her life with him, she would say yes.
The problem was that woman was supposed to be Kathleen. Twice as beautiful as Tory. Ten times as sophisticated.
Tory had already had her kick at this particular can. She’d lost her chance. Picked Mark.
But now Mark was dead.
And Mark had sent him back here.
He closed the briefcase and took the letter back out of his pocket. It was getting soft from so much handling.
He closed his eyes. He really didn’t have to read it again.
Mark’s last request of him. Make Tory laugh again.
Mark. Handsome. Athletic. Quiet. Stable. A good choice if you had to make one. A sensible choice.
That was what they had both been, Tory and Mark. Sensible. He bet they didn’t drink cola at half-past eleven at night.
He took a defiant swig, and suddenly felt so tired he thought he would collapse.
He set the letter on the table, stripped off his clothes and crawled between the soft sheets.
He slept almost instantly.
Chapter Two
A
dam awoke in the morning feeling disoriented. Then it came back to him. Calgary. Tory. Mark. A mission.
dam awoke in the morning feeling disoriented. Then it came back to him. Calgary. Tory. Mark. A mission.
He groaned, sat up, stretched. He saw the can of cola that he had taken precisely one swig from, and wondered how it was possible to feel like he had a hangover. The letter was beside the cola tin. He picked it up.
Don’t read it again,
he ordered himself, and then read it again.
he ordered himself, and then read it again.
Dear Adam:
I asked my lawyer to wait a year before sending this on to you. Tory will need time. We married before we completed university, and she needs to know she can make it on her own.But she needs to laugh, too.I know how much you loved her.And I know she loved you more than me. When she picked me, even though she loved you best, I began to believe in miracles.You know, I’ve never stopped.She was my angel. And now, if things work the way I think they do, I’m going to be hers.This is my last request, Adam, and only you can do it. Go home. Go to her. Make her laugh. Teach her to have fun again. Rollerblade, and ride bikes with two seats, fly kites, sit out on lawn chairs at the lake and watch for the Big Dipper and Orion to come out.She was always a little afraid of how you grabbed life with both hands. But she knows a little more about the nature of life, now. She won’t be afraid to take what it offers her.You were my best friend, besides her. I know why you stayed away. She was mad at you, and probably still is, but I wasn’t. I’m watching out for you. I promise.
The letter was signed, simply,
love
,
Mark
.
love
,
Mark
.
Every single time he read that letter, Adam felt the same lump of emotion rise in his throat. The last paragraph in particular reminded him with such aching poignancy who Mark had been. Solid. Loyal. Loving. The fact that Mark’s handwriting was wobbly with pain, like the writing of a little old man, always seemed to increase that lump in his throat to damn near grapefruit size.
“This was not a good way to start the day,” Adam told himself, getting up and putting the letter down.
But the words stayed.
I know why you stayed away.
Adam wished Mark would have said why. Because he didn’t know himself. A thousand times he had almost come home. A thousand times something had stopped him. And he did not know what that something was.
Adam wished Mark would have said why. Because he didn’t know himself. A thousand times he had almost come home. A thousand times something had stopped him. And he did not know what that something was.
Pride. Hurt. Anger. Betrayal.
He shook his head. Mark seemed to think it was something else. But then Mark could be wrong. Look at that nonsense about Tory loving him, Adam, better.
When he’d first received the letter he’d known he absolutely could not go to Tory. He had several important trials coming up. Kathleen’s sister was getting married, and he was to be master of ceremonies. He had a 1964 Harley panhead in pieces in a friend’s garage.
He couldn’t just go traipsing across the country to go Rollerblading, for God’s sake!
And then he found he couldn’t not go.
Mark’s last request.
It kept him awake nights. He read over that blasted letter so often that the paper was wearing thin. You would think the lump in his throat would be getting smaller, but it never did.
Tory not laughing? How could that be? Tory
was
laughter.
was
laughter.
Finally, he surrendered. The letter was not going to let him go. If he followed Mark’s instructions precisely, fulfilling his last wish would only involve four things. He could probably be done with it in four days. A week, tops.
And maybe the mystery in that letter would unravel.
I know why you stayed away.
“Great,” Adam muttered, “that makes one of us.”
He went and showered and dressed. What did one wear Rollerblading? He put on jeans and a white denim shirt. Everybody in Calgary wore jeans, even lawyers.
He went out the hotel door at quarter to nine. A girl with tired looking eyes, in a worn dress, stood on the corner with a basket of flowers. On impulse he bought them all, and was rewarded with a shy and lovely smile.
Really, it had nothing to do with romancing Tory, he defended himself as he hailed a cab. If she had one weakness, it was flowers, and he needed to get his foot in the door.
At first he thought she had outsmarted him and escaped, just like the little piggies who left for the fair an hour before their appointment with the big, bad wolf.
He banged on her front door, and when she didn’t come, he sauntered over to her living room window and peered in.
Somehow he had known before he looked in exactly how it would look—lace and antiques, bookcases, sunny colorful prints, scatter rugs, hardwood, wainscoting, wallpaper, framed petit point, flowers, fresh and dried, hanging and in hand-thrown pots.
Homey and charming. The kind of room in which one sat in front of the fireplace with a pipe—unlit, now that he was reformed—and an old dog at foot, the day’s newspaper in hand. It was the kind of room in which one could feel utterly content.
His own upscale condominium was furnished in a look he referred to as modern motorcycle. Black leather and chrome. Somehow homey was not the ambience he had achieved. Or yearned for either.
Until now.
He could hear the faint sound of music and followed it like a dog following a scent, off her front porch and down a narrow swatch of grass in between her house and the one next door. He came to a high fence. No gate. But the music louder.
Vivaldi. Once he wouldn’t have known. Or cared.
He glanced around to see if any of the neighbors were watching suspiciously. The street was quiet. The wall of the other house was windowless on this side.
He spit on his hands, tossed his bouquet of flowers over first, and acknowledged a funny little singing inside of him. And then he caught the top of the fence and hefted himself over it, landing with a thud that was drowned out by the music and a delicate looking shrub that he thought might have been a magnolia, though he had never heard of one growing successfully in Calgary.
He shoved a few broken branches back into place, picked up his flowers and looked around her walled yard with interest.
His offering of flowers seemed redundant.
Her backyard was like an English country garden—flowers and shrubs were everywhere, narrow stone paths going between them. He could hear the gurgle of a fountain. He glanced to his right and saw her deck.
It was a work of art, really, multilayered wooden platforms sporting potted trees and barrels of flowers and water, benches and planters.
On the top platform, connected to her house by a lovely set of French garden doors, she sat at a patio table beneath a colorful umbrella, surrounded by wicker baskets full of dried flowers and baby’s breath. She was bent over something, her pink tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration, the sun on her hair turning it to flame.
He looked for a place to dump the flowers he had brought. The wilted bouquet was a ridiculous offering given the wild profusion of blossoms in her yard.
She glanced up, saw him, and froze. Then she glanced at her watch, confirming his suspicion that she would have been long gone had he waited for the appointed hour. But, by the look on her face, she had meant to be gone by now, and had gotten caught up in something, become lost in the task at hand.
He went up the stairs toward her, holding out his bouquet, a drooping peace offering.
She didn’t reach out to take it, folding her hands instead over her chest, and regarding him with wide brown eyes.
He saw she was working on an arrangement of dried flowers and what looked to be a dried corn stalk twisted into a bow shape. A glue gun was at her elbow. Given the simplicity of the items she was working with, the arrangement was nothing short of breathtaking.
“That’s very good,” he said inadequately.
She shrugged. “It’s what I do. My business.”
He sensed even this short explanation was offered to him reluctantly.
“How did you get in here?” she asked.
“I jumped the fence.”
For the slightest moment just a hint of laughter leapt in her eyes, but she doused it swiftly.
“Then you can go back out the same way.”
He ignored her. “Mark built the deck, didn’t he?”
He watched her eyes soften as she glanced around. “Yes.”
She still loved him.
Uninvited he sat down, placing the humble nosegay on the table. “He did a nice job of it.”
“You know how he loved to build things.”
“Yeah. I know.” The tree house that had been in progress since they all turned thirteen came to mind. Mark had always been the idea man. The result was a tree house that had been the envy of every boy and girl within a hundred miles. Windows with shutters, a rope ladder that wound up and down, a sturdy deck out the front door.
“Is the tree house still—?”
“Still at my mom and dad’s. Being enjoyed by the grandchildren, now. The tree house. This deck. They’re all he ever built. He never became an architect. He got sick before he completed his degree.”
“I’m sorry.” And he was. But the word
grandchildren
was begging for his attention. He looked around for toys, for signs. Surely he would have heard. “The kids enjoying the tree house aren’t yours, are they?”
grandchildren
was begging for his attention. He looked around for toys, for signs. Surely he would have heard. “The kids enjoying the tree house aren’t yours, are they?”
She shook her head, looked away quickly. “My sister. Margie’s.”
He remembered her sister, Margie, only vaguely. She had been much older than them. Or so it had seemed at the time. Four or five years now wouldn’t be quite the same chasm.
“Mark got sick very shortly after we got married.”
“Aw, Tory. I didn’t know.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
He didn’t know, so he didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to expect him to. Unless he was mistaken, she was still in her pajamas, a kind of fuzzy two-piece short suit with pudgy angels frolicking in the pattern of fabric.
Not intended to be the least bit sexy, he found it unbelievably so.
“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked wistfully.
She glared at him.
“I’ll trade you this little posy.” He wagged his eyebrows at the flowers, hoping she would laugh.
“You’re offering those in trade? They look pretty near to death,” she said scornfully.
“The coffee’s an unknown. I tried cookies you baked on three or four occasions before I wised up and fed them to old Brewster.”
“No wonder that dog was so monstrously fat. I suppose it wasn’t just you, was it?”
This was encouraging. She was asking him questions.
“Mark, too,” he admitted, “and your dad.”
“My dad?” She was trying to look outraged, but he thought he could see a bit of smile trying to press out past the prissy set of her lips.
She took the flowers, got up and marched into the house. The shorts were really very short. Her legs were gorgeous. It looked like she could still ride a bicycle fitteen or twenty miles without breaking into a sweat, or shinny up a tree in five seconds fiat.
She glanced back and caught him looking. He half expected her to slam the door behind her, turn the key in the lock and then stick out her tongue at him, but she didn’t.
She came back out a few minutes later, a carafe of coffee in one hand and an extra mug in the other, a long white terry-cloth robe hiding her delectable little knees from him.
She poured him a coffee as the birds rioted in her yard.
“What a beautiful space you’ve created for yourself, Tory.”
She looked at him uneasily. “I grow most of these flowers for my business.”
“What is your business?” He took advantage of the tenuous peace between them.
“I make dried flower arrangements, like this one, and sell them to upscale gift shops like the ones on Kensington and in Mount Royal Square. I have some contracts in Banff, too.” There was a hint of pride in her voice.
She’ll need to know she can make it on her own.
“You’re doing well, aren’t you?”
“Extremely. Better than I ever expected. I call my business Victoria’s Garden.”
He wanted to pull her in his arms and swing her around at the pride he saw shining in her eyes. But that brought thoughts of what her body, wrapped in the fluffy robe, would feel like after all these years.
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