The Surprise of His Life (3 page)

Lindsey
had said nothing.

"There,
uh, there isn't anyone else, is there?" This time, uncertainty underscored
his voice.

Still,
Lindsey had said nothing.

"Is
there someone else?" Ken had asked point-blank.

For
as long as she lived, Lindsey would remember that question. She'd remember the
verbalizing of something that she hadn't had the guts to put into words. Not
even in some secret place in her heart. But to be fair to herself, the question
had never occurred to her until earlier that very evening. Until the wedding
rehearsal itself. When it did occur, as some errant feeling in her heart, she'd
been terrified at the realization. Terrified, mortified, helplessly lost on the
sea of new emotions, new emotions that she had no name for.

She'd
also always remember the tears that had slid from her closed eyes and down her
cheeks, the hurt look on Ken Larey's face when she had opened her eyes, the
voicing of the question that she knew he would inevitably ask.

"Who?"

She
hadn't given him a name, though. Nor had she given it to anyone else. In fact,
she'd told her parents— everyone, except Ken, to whom she felt she owed nothing
short of honesty—that she'd simply, regrettably, had a change of heart and that
she needed to get away for a while, to better sort through her feelings. A
friend of a friend of a friend had found her a job out of the country. For that
she would always be grateful.

The
time away had worked its healing magic. Muddied waters had cleared. Feelings
had fallen into place. A name for the feelings had been found. Or rather, she'd
stopped fighting the name she'd known all along was the only name that applied.
That name was
love.
She was in love. It was that simple.

She
Was uncertain when her heart had made the commitment, but she knew the exact
moment when she had been forced to confront the fact that something was going
on with her emotions. She had wondered countless times what would have happened
if she hadn't chosen to flaunt custom. If she had let someone stand in for her
at the rehearsal, as was tradition, if she'd let her maid of honor walk down
the aisle in her place, would she now happily be Mrs. Kenneth Larey?

"That's
bad luck," Millie Moore, the petite maid of honor who was Lindsey's best
friend and former college roommate, had said.

Lindsey
remembered saying that nothing even resembling bad luck could touch her the
weekend of her wedding. Later, she would think that she had been wrong, though
she couldn't really call what had happened bad luck. Maybe it had even been
good luck—good luck with bad timing.

"Besides,"
Lindsey had added, "we already have a stand-in, and one is enough to
satisfy convention."

With
that, she had looped her arm through Walker's. Since her father had been
delayed on a rig, he'd telephoned Walker at the last minute and had requested
that his buddy, and Lindsey's godfather, take his place during the rehearsal.

"Are
you ready to give me away?" she had asked, smiling up at Walker.

He
had smiled back. And she had thought how very special his smile was, how it
seemed to light up his whole face, how it always seemed to light up her heart.
But then, Walker, like a bright night star, had always managed to light up her
world.

She
literally could not recall a time when he was not part of her life. He'd been
at her birth—or so she'd been told—and he'd been at every major event since.
He'd taught her to water-ski, he'd pitched her balls at the same time he'd
pitched balls to his son, he'd given her a teddy bear every Christmas since
she'd begun collecting them, which had been somewhere around the age of ten.
He'd been her pal, just the way Phyllis had been not only her godmother, but
also her friend.

When
Phyllis had died so suddenly, at the time that Lindsey was an impressionable
sixteen, Lindsey had been devastated. She'd also witnessed Walker's
devastation. Which had been complete and total. While her friends had
fantasized of teenage idols—Eddie Van Halen, Rod Stewart, Billy Joel—Lindsey
had romanticized about one day finding a man who would love her with the same
depth of feeling with which Walker had loved his wife. He became the ideal by
which all other males were judged. Critically judged. That Ken Larey had
measured up had been little short of a miracle. That miracle man, the best man
at his side, had awaited Lindsey at the altar that eventful rehearsal night.

"All
right," Lindsey remembered the minister saying, "the maid of
honor—come on, young lady," he'd said, motioning for Millie to start down
the aisle "—will approach the altar." She had, pretending she was
carrying a bouquet.

"Nervous?"
Walker had whispered to Lindsey.

"A
little," she'd whispered back.

He
had tightened his hold on her arm, just enough to reassure her. "Just
remember that no one's ever died from repeating the marriage vows."

Lindsey
had smiled and she could have sworn that Walker had started to, as well. His
smile never materialized, however. Instead, he'd turned deadly serious.

"Look,
I probably won't have time to say this tomorrow—you're going to have everything
on your mind but me—so I want to say it now. I wish you all the happiness in
the world, hon. You know that, don't you?"

Lindsey
had nodded. She did know that he wished her well. Just the way that she wished
him well. She even wished that he could find someone to be happy with again,
though the truth was that, out of the few women he'd dated over the years, none
had really been worthy of him. At least in her humble opinion.

"And,
listen," Walker had added, a grin now slipping to his lips as he jerked
his head in the direction of the front of the church, "if this Kenneth guy
doesn't treat you right, you just let me know, you hear? And I'll kick his rear
into the middle of next week."

The
image of a booted Ken sailing through time caused Lindsey to giggle. At the
same time, Walker had leaned forward and brushed his lips against her cheek.

In
that moment, a curious thing had happened. Looking back, with the supposed
objectivity of hindsight, Lindsey realized that that hadn't been the first time
he'd kissed her. Far from it. Always a demonstrative person, he'd never been
stingy with expressing his feelings. No, his kissing her had not been new. It
was her reaction to that kiss that had been totally foreign. And frightening.

From
out of literally nowhere had come the realization that she wondered what his
lips would feel like pressed against hers. No, it was more than wondering. She
actually longed for his kiss. A real kiss. A man-woman kiss. Not a well-wish
kiss given by a godfather to his goddaughter on the eve of her wedding.

The
inappropriateness of her response had not escaped her. In fact, she'd been more
than aware of its gravity. The man whom she'd pledged to marry was waiting for
her at the altar, to rehearse the vows that would bind them together for the
rest of their lives, and here she was wondering what another man's kiss would
be like. And the man hadn't been just any ordinary man. He'd been her
godfather. A man old enough to be her father!

The
revelation had upset Lindsey as nothing else in her life ever had.

"Okay,"
the minister had stated, "now the 'Wedding March' will begin, and the
bride and her father—" here he motioned for Lindsey and Walker "—will
make their way to the front of the church."

"Ready?"
Walker had whispered.

"Y-yes,"
Lindsey had stammered. Somehow she'd struggled through the remainder of the
rehearsal. She'd struggled through the rehearsal dinner. She'd struggled
through the difficult, and heartbreaking, talk with Ken. And then had begun the
real struggle, the long months that it had taken her to sort through her
feelings.

"Lindsey?"

But
at least she was now armed with the truth....

"Lindsey?"

For
whatever good that would do her.

"Lindsey?"

She
glanced up as her name penetrated her consciousness. The car had stopped in
front of her parents' home. Walker was watching her with a look that said he'd
called her name before and had gotten no response.

"I'm
sorry," she said. "I guess I was elsewhere."

Even
as she spoke, she couldn't keep her eyes, her hungry eyes, from feasting on him
once again. Just the way she had at the airport. For the most part, his hair
was still jet-black, but she thought that there were a few more gray hairs
frosting the temples than the last time she'd seen him. He was still incredibly
handsome, though, with piercing brown eyes that peered from beneath thick ebony
lashes. His skin still shone gold from the sun, telling her that, while he
might spend a lot of time in the office, he still managed his fair share of hot
hours out on the rigs with her father. And his lips... well, they still haunted
her with their masculine strength and sensual curves.

What
would he think if he knew why she'd called off her wedding? What would he think
if he knew that she'd spent endless hours searching her soul for answers to the
hardest questions she'd ever been forced to ask? What would he think if he knew
that she still wondered what his lips would feel like on hers?

Startled?

Shocked?

Appalled?

Probably
all of the above, though she had the hardest time dealing with the latter.
Would he be appalled that the woman he thought of as his daughter thought of
him as so much more? Could the truth easily destroy every good thing that they
shared?

Maybe.

But
she'd decided that it was a chance worth taking. She'd unquestionably come home
at this point because of the marital problems her parents were having, but the
truth was that she'd come home for another reason, as well. She'd come home
because she had some unfinished business with the man sitting beside her.

Home
was
just as Lindsey remembered it—a pretty cream-colored brick house with shutters
the blue of a robin's egg. Her father's fishing boat stood in the driveway with
a tarpaulin over it, while her mother's climbing roses, planted the year they'd
moved into the house, nearly twenty years ago now, crept lazily up a lattice.
The white wrought-iron lawn furniture, a small table and two chairs, rested
beneath the drooping boughs of the aged oak tree in the front yard. The
furniture needed a fresh coat of paint, a fact her mother pointed out to her
father on a regular basis, though it never seemed to do much good. It was
always something he'd take care of the next day, the next week, the next month.

In
contrast, however, the mowing of the grass was something that was never
postponed. A passion with her father, he kept the yard immaculately cut and
trimmed. Which was precisely how it looked now. It was as though he'd mowed it
as per usual over the weekend, then had gotten up Monday morning and had calmly
asked, over breakfast, for a divorce. Not for a separation, which seemed to
Lindsey to be the logical intermediary step, but for a divorce. Final and
irrevocable.

Yes,
Lindsey thought as she opened the car door, everything looked the same. In
reality, though, nothing was, and she experienced a reaction she hadn't
experienced since hearing of the divorce. She felt anger. Anger at her parents
for what they were doing to her. How dare they threaten the stability of her
world! Even as the dark emotion crushed her heart, she realized how
self-centered she was being. Because of that, because Walker was standing
before her, waiting for her to get out of the car, she brushed the thought
away.

"Ready?"
he asked.

"Yeah,"
she said, pushing from the seat. The heat immediately assailed her, making the
long-sleeved white cotton blouse she wore more than uncomfortable. Then again,
maybe she was uncomfortable because of what she knew lay ahead of her.

"I'll
get your suitcases," Walker called over his shoulder as he headed for the
rear of the car.

"Thanks,"
Lindsey answered, starting for the house. She saw her mother peek from a
window, and in seconds the front door was thrown wide.

If
the house was just as Lindsey remembered, her mother was not. Her short blond hair,
every strand of which was always impeccably in place, looked mussed, as though
it had not been seriously combed in a while, or as if restless fingers had
wreaked havoc with any recent attempt. She, likewise, wore no makeup. For a
woman who wore makeup even when sick, Lindsey thought the absence of it now
more than telling. As were her eyes. Normally, they were wide and blue and
clear, the fun-filled eyes of someone who had taught her daughter to love life.
Now, however, they just looked tired, dull, as though they had cried a seaful
of tears.

Lindsey's
heart split in two.

Wordlessly,
the two women embraced in the middle of the yard. Lindsey could feel her mother
clinging to her in something just short of desperation, as though Lindsey had
arrived in time to loan her some much-needed strength. But then, as though it
were she who had to be strong for her daughter, Bunny Ellison smiled. The
smile, however, looked totally incongruous with her weary face.