Lone Star Lonely (26 page)

But it was too late. Phillip wrenched himself
over the rail, clutching her to him as he did. And then he hung
there, toes on the very edge, fingers curled around the rail, his
back to eternity, one arm anchoring her to his side.

“Don’t move. Don’t move,” he said, to Adam,
to her, to Elliot. She was never certain. She only knew neither of
the Brands could get to her in time, and she knew Phillip was
determined to kill her and himself. If she couldn’t get him to let
go of her, she was going to die. There was no one to do anything
about it but her.

The pen pricked her forearm. She blinked,
then worked it into her palm. “Please let me go, Phillip,” she
whispered.

“I’m sorry. But I can’t.”

The hand holding the rail let go. At the same
time, Kirsten jabbed his other hand—the one holding her
captive—with the pen. And it, too, let go.

She scrambled, paddling air with frantic
arms, and gripped the rail with one desperate grasp. Phillip fell
away behind her. She couldn’t look. He never cried out, never made
a sound. The thud of his body hitting the earth made her stomach
heave. And the weakness caused by the pills he’d force-fed her made
her grip tenuous, at best.

“Hold on!” Adam leaned over the rail, clasped
her hand in his. Then he reached for her other hand, the one
dangling in space. With firm, quiet power, he hauled her back over
the rail and into his arms.

And she thought that in all the time she’d
known him, he had never held her as tightly as he did then. Nor had
he whispered her name over and over with so much emotion. Nor had
he ever, ever, dampened her hair with his tears.

Or whispered that he loved her with quite so
much conviction.

“I’ve got you, honey,” he kept saying. “God,
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I walked away. I love you, Kirsten. You
hear me? I love you.”

Was it the trauma? The stress she’d been
under? The pills Phillip had fed her? Was all this some nightmare
that had turned itself into her fondest dream? Or could he possibly
mean it?

Adam scooped her up, glanced over the rail
and saw Garrett crouched beside Philip’s body. Garrett looked up,
met Adam’s eyes and shook his head slowly, side to side.

Adam sighed.

“Give me a hand, will you, big brother?” One
of Elliot’s hands appeared at the railing. Then the other, and then
his head rose up behind them.

Cradling Kirsten, Adam reached for his
brother with his free hand and helped Elliot over.

“She okay?” Elliot asked, once he got his
feet on solid ground.

Adam shifted her weight, examined her face.
“I sure as hell hope so. She’s been through hell.”

“Yeah, and not just today, either.”

Elliot opened the trapdoor, then went through
first and watched as Adam followed him down, ready to react if Adam
stumbled. His brother seemed to think pretty highly of his woman,
Adam thought, not unkindly.

He’d have to ask El to be his best man.

Right after he asked Kirsten to be his
wife.

It took forever, he thought, to get down to
ground level, but when he did, the whole clan was there waiting.
They closed in around Kirsten as he held her. Lash pulled in with
the pickup truck, and Wes yanked the door open. “Best get her to a
hospital,” he said. “She’s probably just been fed a half bottle or
so of those sleeping pills. She’ll be okay, though.”

Adam started to ease her into the pickup, but
she stirred awake, opened her eyes, looked around at all the
concerned faces surrounding her. She sniffed once and bit her lip.
“You all…you all came here to help me?”

‘“Course we did,” Penny said. “And it’s all
over now. You’re gonna be fine.”

“But…but…” She stiffened a little in Adam’s
arms as she looked up at him. “Do they know…do they know what I
did?”

“We know,” Jessi said, and she reached out to
stroke Kirsten’s hair. “And it doesn’t matter, Kirsten.”

“It was an accident,” Garrett added.

“You were just a kid,” Wes said.

“Honey, we all make mistakes,” Ben told her.
And offered her a smile of encouragement.

“Besides,” Elliot declared, “you’re
family.”

She shook her head slowly, eyes wide with
disbelief. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll come to us next time you get in
trouble, Kirsten,” Penny told her. “We’ll be there for you if you
ever do. Promise.”

Adam lifted Kirsten and settled her into the
pickup truck. Then he went around to the other side and got in. As
he put the vehicle into motion, Kirsten leaned against him, and he
slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“Is Phillip…?” she whispered.

Adam swallowed hard. “He didn’t make it. I’m
sorry, Kirsty.”

He felt the shudder that went through her.
“He…he was my brother.”

“I know. I know, hon.” He held her closer,
and she cried softly for a long time.

When her tears eased, she lifted her head.
Her eyes were clouded, dim, but she seemed more coherent than
before. “I want to see my father,” she told him. “I…I need to
explain…everything.”

“We’ll do that when we go to pick him up,
Kirsten. The second Doc gives you a clean bill of health and
Garrett clears things up with the rangers, we’re heading for
Dallas. All right?”

She blinked up at him. “We…we are?”

Adam nodded. “I know your head’s swimming
right now, hon, but I’ve got some things to say to you that are
gonna bust a hole in my gut if I don’t get them out.”

“All..all right.”

“I was a fool, Kirsten. I was a fool two
years ago for not loving you enough. For letting you walk away from
me. For not believing in what we had enough to know you wouldn’t
have done that of your own free will. I should have come after you,
Kirsten, but I ran away instead, and I’m sorry for that.”

He glanced down at her, checking to make sure
she was still awake and alert. She needed to hear him, to
understand him. He figured he probably ought to wait until Doc had
cleared her system of whatever was floating around in it to tell
her all of this, but dammit, he couldn’t wait.

“I’m even sorrier I walked away this time.
When you told me the truth. But it was grief, Kirsten. It was
shock, and anger, and it didn’t mean a damn thing. Shoot, I wasn’t
gone twenty minutes before I knew I was making a big mistake. And
it turned out to be twenty minutes that damn near cost your life.
Can you forgive me, Kirsten?”

She drew a deep breath, seemed to be
struggling to keep him in focus, blinking and squinting by turns.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Adam. I’m the one who needs
forgiveness, if you can give it. And I’ll understand if you
can’t.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he told her. “I
understand—hell, the whole family understands now—what you went
through, how it all ended up at this point. No one blames you.”

“I blame me.”

“Well, you shouldn’t. Because I don’t.
Kirsten, I’m back, one hundred percent. And I’m not going to walk
away from you again. Now I know I told you that before, but I mean
it this time. I’ll swear it on my daddy’s grave, if it’ll help you
believe in me again—”

“I never stopped believing in you, Adam.”

He glanced down at her as he pulled into
Doc’s driveway. “Then give me another chance, Kirsty. Let’s start
over. Let’s have that wedding we planned and buy that ranch we
wanted. Let’s bring your father home to live with us. I want all
those things Cowan stole from us. And I think you do, too. We can
have them, Kirsty. All of them. All we have to do is reach out and
take them.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. Adam reached up to
brush them away. “Say you’ll marry me, honey.”

“You…you really want to marry me? Even after
all I’ve done…?”

“I’ve never wanted anything else,” he told
her. “Not really. I convinced myself I did, for a while, but that
was bull. I love you, Kirsten. I need you. This whole family needs
you.”

Her tears were streaming now.

“So will you marry me, Kirsten? Will you be
my wife the way you should have been all along?”

“You know I will,” she whispered. “I
will.”

Adam leaned down and pressed his mouth to
hers. She kissed him back for a moment, and then went limp in his
arms. He could taste the salt of tears on his lips. But when he
lifted his head away, she was out cold. “Lord help me,” he said. “I
sure as hell hope you meant that.”

Then he scooped her up and carried her into
Doc’s office.

Kirsten stood in front of a three-way
mirror. She hadn’t been able to shut the tears off long enough yet
to apply any makeup, and she was thinking she might have to do
without it for the ceremony, because the past few days had been one
surprise after another.

Besides, she didn’t need it as much anymore.
She didn’t have to hide now. Adam knew all her secrets…and he loved
her anyway.

He loved her anyway.

When she and Adam had picked her father up in
Dallas to bring him home once and for all, her father had told her
his own secrets. He’d known all along that her first wedding to
Adam had never taken place. That something had gone wrong. He’d
just been biding his time in the nursing home, hoping to get his
strength back enough to come back to Quinn and find out what had
happened to throw his little girl’s life so far off track.

He’d held her while she’d cried. And then the
second surprise came. He’d handed her a huge box, gaily wrapped.
And she’d opened it up to find the wedding gown—the one she’d left
behind, along with all her dreams, over two years ago.

“You saved it?” she’d whispered. “But…but
how… when?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he’d said, and hugged
her. “I always knew the day would come when you’d need it again.
Now, go and put it on. I never got to see you in it the first time
you wore it, and I think I’ve waited long enough.”

So had she. The dress still fit, and it felt
right. Perfect. Even more now than it had before.

There was a tap on the door to the tiny room
at the back of the chapel. “Can I come in yet?” her father asked
through the wood.

“Yes, Daddy. Come in.”

He opened the door, and she turned in a
rustle of ivory satin. “My, my,” he whispered. “I’ve never seen
anything so beautiful in all my days.” Her father’s blue eyes
teared up as he held out his arms, and she rushed into them.

“I’m going to make up for everything, Daddy,”
she whispered. “You’re going to be so happy with Adam and me.”

“So long as you’re happy, sweetheart, I will
be, too.”

“We all will be,” she promised.

A throat cleared, and she drew back from her
father’s embrace to look toward the doorway. Elliot stood there,
holding a bouquet and looking drop-dead gorgeous in his tux. “Can I
come in? I could come back later….”

“Come in,” Kirsten said.

He did, tugging at his collar. He handed her
the bouquet of lilies and orchids, with their draping ivory
ribbons. “Adam wanted me to bring this to you…and, uh, to make sure
you had everything you needed.”

She lifted her brows. “And to make sure I
didn’t forget to show up this time?”

Elliot smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

“No, but I’ll bet he did.”

“He knows you’ll be there, hon. But you know,
as best man, I figured I’d double check. There is a back way out of
here, after all. I could just picture my brother if you should get
abducted by aliens or something, and be late. He’d probably pass
out cold.” Elliot was grinning, that infectious, happy smile of his
that never failed to ooze charm. “I’ve never seen him so
nervous.”

A whole chorus of female voices rose from the
hallway, and Kirsten turned in time to see her beautiful
sisters-in-law piling into the room. Chelsea was straightening a
stray bit of Taylor’s hair, while Taylor smoothed a fold in the hem
of Jessi’s dress and Jessi picked a piece of lint from Penny’s
shoulder. They all stopped fussing when they looked at Kirsten.
They went still, then started talking all at once.

Then they shooed the men out and descended on
her in one mass, wielding combs, brushes, makeup and jewelry.

It wasn’t long before she was ready. The
organ music swelled from the small chapel, and Kirsten licked her
lips. “Oh, gosh,” she whispered. “Okay, here goes.”

Chelsea stood in the doorway and helped
little Maria Michele—who’d been walking for only a month now—and
Bubba get started. Bubba held the toddler’s hand, obviously feeling
like a big strong Brand man already, assisting his little cousin
down the aisle.

Chelsea followed. Then Taylor, and then
Jessi.

Penny, as maid of honor, went next. Kirsten
peered through a crack in the door of the little room at the back
of the church and watched her progress. Her father squeezed her
hand when her turn came. She squeezed back.

He took her arm, and they started down the
aisle. She looked up, saw Adam standing there at the other end,
waiting for her, and knew that her life was finally beginning. His
eyes met hers. He mouthed, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered back. “I
love you, too.”