Kiss the Bride (56 page)

“Not good enough,” she said instead. “But you and Elysee, you guys
are
good together. She needs you and you need to be needed. That was something I just couldn’t give you.”

“Wouldn’t give me.”

“Couldn’t, wouldn’t, the end results were the same.”

“Tish.” He gave her that “you’ve-disappointed-me” look that used to send her heart sinking to her shoes. Whether it was true or not, she’d often felt like she fell short in his eyes.

“It’s okay, Shane, really. And I think Elysee Benedict is a very wise person. I like her. She’s great. I don’t know how she had the courage to hire me as her videographer, but this…” She toggled her index finger in the air between them. “She was right. This is clearing up a lot of old baggage between us.”

“Is it?”

“I think so.” She canted her head. “Don’t you?”

He surprised her by giving her one of his signature lopsided grins. “Yeah.”

“Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“We can be friends.” She touched his wounded hand.

“Friends.” He repeated the word like he’d never heard it before, pushing it tentatively around on his tongue.

“Friends,” she echoed.

Her hopes lifted. Could they really be friends? The
thought was enticing. To have him in her life in some small way would be a gift beyond measure.

Friends?

Shane watched her walk toward her car, the alien concept stomping around in his brain. His gaze landed on her swaying behind. Immediately guilt had him by the short hairs. Was it even possible that he and Tish could be friends, considering their sexual chemistry? And if they could, would it be fair to Elysee?

Anger fisted inside him. Anger at Elysee for bringing Tish here. Anger at Tish for trying to be his friend. Anger at himself for being so damned conflicted about what he wanted.

What was the matter with him? Ever since the accident he’d been acting like a pansy, letting circumstances push him around rather than taking action. The only purposeful thing he’d done since leaving the hospital was ask Elysee to marry him, and he’d been second-guessing that decision from the moment he’d made it. What had happened to the old Shane? The man who took a stand and never wavered from his course of action?

Shane stalked back inside the ranch house and headed for the gym. He knew of no other way to dissipate this mishmash of regret, anger, sadness, guilt, helplessness, and longing. He ground his teeth, marched down the hallway, and pushed through the doorway into the gym.

“When you want to hit something, son, take it out on a punching bag,” his father had instructed him. “Whale away until your anger is gone.”

He strode to the box where they stowed the gym gear, pried it open, and rummaged around for a pair of boxing gloves. He put one glove on his bad hand, but then fumbled with the other glove, failing repeatedly to get it on.

In frustration, he slung the glove to the ground, and muttering a dark curse laid into the punching bag with his bare-knuckled left hand and his ineffective right hand.

He slammed into the heavy punching bag. Jarring pain shot up through his arm.

Again and again he punched, harder and harder, punishing himself, accepting the physical pain, inviting it in to gratefully crowd out his emotional turmoil.

His muscles bunched. Sweat slicked his brow. He grunted in ragged breaths.

Throughout his entire life, Shane had been all about self-control. His father had drilled it into his head. He was from a military family. A Tremont. He had a reputation, a code of honor to measure up to.

Even as a kid, he’d tried to do the right thing, to uphold his legacy. He could hear his father’s voice, the echo of platitudes in his head. “You make a decision, you stick with it. Doubt is weakness. Don’t ever show weakness. No second-guessing. It’s better to make a mistake and fail than to be a wishy-washy girl of a man.”

Whenever he thought back on his childhood, all he could remember craving was his father’s admiration and respect, two things not easily earned from Ben Tremont.

“Dad, watch me go off the diving board.”

“Don’t whine for my attention, boy, just jump.”

He’d stood at the end of the diving board, six years old and staring down into the swimming pool, unable to jump now that his father was watching.

Ben stood on the sideline, hands on his hips, scowl on his face. “Don’t be a pussy. Jump.”

His toes had curled over the end of the board. Paralyzed by his father’s expectations, he couldn’t do it.

In disgust, Ben had climbed up the ladder, grabbed him
by the seat of his swim trunks, and threw him into the water. “Hesitate and you’re dead.”

Shane smacked the punching bag. The pain was strong, but his anger was stronger. Punch, punch, punch.

Why was he so mad?

Punch, punch, punch.

He pounded the bag, beating back not only his frustration but the sexual desire he still felt for Tish that he was so ashamed to acknowledge.

Shane recalled another childhood memory. He had been twelve years old this time and eager to go on his first hunting trip with Ben and his cronies. Crouching in the deer blind, shivering cold, rifle clutched in his hand, pulse pounding with fear and adrenaline.

The big antlered mule deer walked into the clearing nibbling corn from the deer feeder they’d set up to lure him in.

Ben’s mouth was pressed against Shane’s ear as he whispered, “Look down the sight. Take aim at his heart.”

Shane raised the gun, peered down the barrel, the buck in his crosshairs.

“Commit,” his father commanded.

Shane’s finger curled around the trigger, his breath fogged frigid air. The deer turned, lifted his head, staring through the small rectangular window of the blind and straight into Shane’s eyes.

“Fire!” Ben’s demanding whisper sounded like a shout in Shane’s ear.

He pulled the trigger just as impulse telegraphed this thought to his brain:
I don’t want to kill the deer.

His arm moved in response to his thoughts, throwing off his aim. The gun blasted, the noise reverberated in the small enclosure, inside his head. The air filled with the
acrid smell of gunpowder. Shane flung the gun away from him, closed his eyes.

His father cursed, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and shook him. “Come on, boy. You’re going to finish what you started.”

Ben dragged him through the underbrush, tracking the blood drops spattered over the fallen autumn leaves. They walked for half an hour before they found him, lying against a cedar tree.

The buck thrashed on the ground, eyes glassy, breath raspy—dying. Slowly, painfully.

Bile rose in his throat and he dropped to his knees to retch in the weeds. He’d caused this.

Ben laid a heavy hand on Shane’s shoulder. “The animal is suffering, son. Suffering because you second-guessed yourself. Now get up and finish what you started. Put this animal out of his misery.”

Shane had learned an ugly but important lesson that day. He’d made up his mind. No more second-guessing. From now on he would not hesitate. He would do his duty. He would finish what he started.

And except for his marriage to Tish, he’d lived by that vow.

Wham, wham, wham.
He pummeled the punching bag. His right hand was past pain now. It was numb. Dulled by the repeated punches.

He’d failed with Tish. Failed his marriage. Failed himself. He hadn’t stood by his commitment and they’d both suffered.

She pushed you away.

But that was no excuse. She’d needed him and he hadn’t been there. Not sticking with Tish was the biggest mistake he’d ever made. But it was over and done with now. He had
a new commitment. He was engaged to another woman. A good, kind, trusting woman. And not just any woman, but the daughter of the President of the United States.

Exhausted, he dropped his aching arms to his sides, stepped back from the punching bag, rested his back against the wall and slowly sank to the floor.

He’d made promises. To Elysee. To Nathan Benedict. To himself. Promises he intended to keep.

Elysee needed him in a way Tish never had. He was determined to take care of her, especially since he’d messed things up so spectacularly with Tish.

So what if the sexual chemistry between him and Tish still lingered? It didn’t change the fact that he’d made a commitment to Elysee. She trusted him and he would not betray her.

No matter how much he might long to make love to his ex-wife, he’d do whatever it took to eliminate those desires. Slam a punching bag into oblivion, take cold showers and stay as far away from Tish as he could get.

It wasn’t going to be easy to accomplish with her underfoot as their wedding videographer. But this time he was determined. He was not going back on his promise. There’d been too much hurt already.

W
hen Elysee had told Tish she was going to fly her to Washington DC to video the engagement party, she’d assumed they would give her a coach ticket on a commercial airline. What she hadn’t counted on was traveling via
Air Force One
.

When the stretch limo pulled up to the private airfield in Houston with Tish sitting in the backseat, her mouth dropped open at the sight of the presidential airplane parked on the tarmac. Just looking at the 747 with the emblem of the United States flag painted on its tail made her want to put her hand over her heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. For the first time she fully understood the sense of pride Shane felt working for the Secret Service.

It
was
awe-inspiring.

As the limo driver held open the door and she alighted in blue jeans and a flowing, amber-colored tunic top, she felt even more out of place than she had in the limousine.

She’d ridden in limos before, at her senior prom and a couple of times when her mother was dating men with lavish expense accounts. In comparison to this sleek,
polished piece of equipment, those limousines had seemed old and shabby.

A no-nonsense-looking woman dressed all in black and holding a clipboard asked for her name and identity before she got within ten feet of the plane. Tish fumbled for her wallet, overwhelmed by what was happening and pulled out her driver’s license. She explained who she was and why she was there. The woman took Tish’s suitcase and passed it to a cohort for inspection before they stowed it in the plane.

When the woman reached for her camera bag, Tish clamped a hand around the strap. “This stays with me.”

“Fine.” The woman nodded curtly. “But it must be examined first.”

Tish nodded, pulled out her expensive digital camera and accessories. She cringed while the woman turned on the camera, flipped settings, played with the focus.

After she made it past that gatekeeper, a Secret Service agent frisked her. The frisking put Tish in mind of the favorite sex game she used to play with Shane. Where he was the Secret Service agent and she pretended to be a foreign spy out to seduce him for state secrets. Her face heated at the memory.

“You may proceed,” the agent said, sounding stern and not smiling.

She remembered that, too. How Shane could look at her sometimes so coldly and unemotionally. She hadn’t really realized until now it was something he’d learned in training.

The revelation startled her.

Maybe all those times he had seemed to be stonewalling, he was actually struggling hard not to show his feelings, thinking it would make him seem weak somehow.
She bit down on her bottom lip and followed the female staff member who ushered her inside the plane.

Ascending the retractable stairs at the rear of the plane was a mythic experience. She was being granted entry where few had ever gone.

Once inside
Air Force One
, the staffer led her immediately up another staircase to the middle level. It looked more like a hotel or an executive office than a jetliner, except for the seat belts on the chairs.

“The lower level on the plane serves as a cargo hold,” the woman said, acting as tour guide. “Most of the passenger room is here on the middle level. The upper level is largely dedicated to communications equipment and the cockpit. The president has onboard living quarters, with his own bedroom, washroom, workout gym, and office space.”

The woman paused, letting Tish catch up. She’d been lingering, looking around at the masterfully handcrafted furniture with a photographer’s admiring eye.

“All in all,” the woman continued, “
Air Force One
can comfortably carry seventy passengers and twenty-six crew members. Passengers are not allowed to move forward within the plane. If the President should wish to speak with you, he’ll walk back here to see you.”

Staff members were moving to and fro. Security, military men and women, and members of the press were all dressed in either uniforms or suits. Tish felt out of place and extremely underdressed.

Why hadn’t she realized what a big deal this was? Feeling like the proverbial local yokel, she stood in the middle of the aisle, confused and fighting the urge to turn around and run right out the way she’d come. She even turned her head toward the exit, checking the escape route.