When You Are Mine (10 page)

She closed her eyes at his sweet endearment, feeling it wrap around her nerve endings like a blanket. And then his arms twined around her, bindings for wounds left too long unattended.

One Sunday at the Murphys’ church, Mt. Olive Baptist, the preacher talked about healing by the laying on of hands. She had scoffed at the idea, as she did so many of his ridiculous notions. But tonight she
believed
. Believed in Walsh. His hands made soothing tracks up and over her back, suffusing every pore with warmth, starting from her center and working its way to her extremities. To the tips of her toes and fingers.

She wasn’t sure when the tears began, or how long she wept into his once-crisp shirt. She only knew that with each stroke of his hand on her back, another layer of pain, another layer of shame, fell away, until she was bathed in the waters of her healing, baptized in her own tears. Made new. Made whole. It was such an unfamiliar feeling that she had to search for the emptiness and dirtiness she had carried with her since TJ stole her innocence.

It wasn’t there.

She raised her head, staring at him. Tears wet his cheeks, too. She trailed her fingers down the carved planes of his face, tipping her head to the side with a watery smile.

“What did you do to me?”

This man had reset the broken bones in minutes, during one conversation in a dimly lit gazebo. He smiled, reaching behind her where he had laid the orchid, replacing it in her hair.

“Feel better?”

“You could say that.” An understatement.

She felt lighter, cleaner than she had since she was ten years old. While she had been nestled in the protective circle of his arms, the world had faded, a blurry reality they could hide from. Now the cooler air of the dying night raised goose flesh on her arms, and she remembered. Remembered Cam. Remembered Sofie. She needed to get away from Walsh, away from these moments that could so easily muddy the path she needed to take.

She stood, smoothing her wrinkled dress.

“We’d better get back in before Sofie sends out a search party.”

“Sofie?” Walsh lowered both brows, confusion crowding out the warm tenderness she had toasted in moments before. “Why would Sofie be looking for us? If anything, Cam’s the one looking.”

“You’re probably right about that.” She turned to leave the gazebo and this strange and wonderful interlude.

“Hey.” Walsh took her elbow gently, turning her back toward him. “Can I ask you something?”

She nodded without hesitation, sure that there could be no subject more awkward than the one they’d just discussed.

“Are you planning to marry Cam?”

Well…maybe there could be
one
topic as awkward.

“Um, why do you ask? I know you’re his friend, but—”

“Don’t do it.” He squatted from his superior height until he could pierce her eyes with his. “He’s not right for you, and you’re not right for him. You’re not meant for each other.”

“Meant for each other? You mean like destiny? Fate? Soul mate kind of stuff?”

“You don’t believe in that?” He didn’t take his eyes off her face.

“No, I don’t.” She steeled herself against the sweetness left over from the moments they had shared. “I believe in making choices. Every time I’ve been left at the mercy of fate, or destiny, it’s ended badly for me. So excuse me if I decide to take one of the most important decisions of my life into my own hands. Not wait for ‘fate’ to deliver some nonexistent soul mate to me.”

“That’s mighty cynical of you.”

“Hearing my story, you don’t think I should be cynical?”

“Hearing your story and knowing you’re
not
cynical is what I love about you.” His voice was so soft and sure. “It took faith, belief, hope—something for you to press through what you experienced to be who you are.”

Kerris remembered hope. She’d hoped TJ would not come back to her room, that he would leave her alone, but he had come again and again and again, each time peeling away her illusions and pillaging her girlhood.

She tugged to free her arm, but Walsh didn’t let go.

“What do you feel when Cam kisses you?” Walsh backed up his demand with the heat of his eyes.

“That’s none of your bus—”

“What do you
feel
?” He tightened his fingers around her elbow and held her hostage to his intensity.

“I won’t talk about this with you.”

“So you can be honest with me about the most traumatic thing that ever happened to you, but you can’t tell me how you feel when Cam kisses you?”

Kerris looked away from the unrelenting heat of his eyes chasing every emotion across her face.

“It’s fine.”

The silence of the gazebo swallowed her words almost before she’d even said them. She heard the inadequacy of it. The word “fine” lay flaccid beside the sensations she’d experienced with Walsh in that hospital room. She didn’t have to look at Walsh’s face to see him remembering. He dropped her elbow, his fingers curling into his palms, like he had to stop himself from touching her. From reminding her how it had been.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to be with the person you marry.” Walsh left space around each word as if that would help her understand.

“Maybe not for you, or for other people, but that’s how it is for me. I just don’t think I have the capacity to be affected that way.” She looked back into his face, silently daring him to call her a liar. “I’ve always accepted that what happened with TJ just turned a switch off in me. Not that I won’t be intimate with my husband, but…”

“That’s not fair to Cam, because his switch has not been turned
off
.” Walsh brushed a hand across his eyes, evicting a heavy breath from his mouth. “He deserves someone who’ll love him the way he loves her, want him the way he wants her. I know for a fact Cam feels more than ‘fine’ when he thinks about making love to you.”

Heated blood stormed Kerris’s cheeks. Despite the fact that she had just shared her most closely guarded secrets with this man, his candor on this particular subject embarrassed her. And his persuasions were pointless. Her decision on whether or not to marry Cam would not hinge on their sexual chemistry. Cam wanted whatever she had to give, and she could live with what she felt for Cam.

What she had with Walsh…it was emotion and feeling and passion. All the things she couldn’t trust to sustain her for the long haul. Those things could be gone as quickly as they flared to life. And he would never consider someone like her to start the dynasty everyone expected of him. She wanted forever, not a fleeting attraction.

“Let’s go on in.” She turned her back on him and placed one foot on the first step out of the gazebo, not bothering to address his last statement.

“So you’ve never talked to Cam about what happened with TJ?”

His question petrified her, left her afraid to even move or breathe with him at her back. The silence puffed up with all the evasions she could offer instead of the awkward truth.

“No. You’re the first person I’ve talked to about it since it happened.”

“Why me?” His voice was soft, but insistent, pinioning her arms and legs to the spot where she stood.

“I’m not sure.”

“Do me a favor.” His voice hardened and bounced off her troubled mind like pebbles against a windowpane. “Figure that out before you marry my best friend.”

She looked over her shoulder, lost for a moment in his unwavering stare. She refused to acknowledge the heat that flared between them. Without another word, she crossed the lawn as quickly as she could, hoping he would not follow.

Walsh watched Kerris cross the yard, his stomach a cauldron of heating, stirring emotions. He shouldn’t have followed her when he saw her slip through those French doors. He could tell himself what he told her. That he’d just been concerned, but the truth was an ugly thing he owed himself. He’d wanted to be with her alone and unguarded. Even as disgusted as he was with himself, he would have chosen these last few moments with her over every Bennett holding he stood to inherit.

He sat down on the gazebo bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and dropping his head into his hands. There was too much information to process. What she’d been through. That monster had touched her, hurt her. The primal beast inside him pulled against the restraining chain of civilized behavior. Not just because of the abuse she’d suffered, but at the thought of Kerris marrying Cam. He knew in his gut that would be disastrous for them all, but he didn’t know how to stop it without ruining the most important relationships in his life.

He shook his head, twisting his lips in self-mockery. How ironic that she derided fate, soul mates, and destiny. Hadn’t he held similar views? Hadn’t he always assumed he’d just marry the girl he enjoyed the most in bed? Someone who’d be a good mother to his children and the arm candy he’d need to impress his exclusive social circle? Someone to whom he could remain faithful, given how his father had disrespected his mother with his blatant infidelity. That idea was so tepid beside this hurricane of feeling for Kerris.

Meeting her rocked every notion he’d held about love and marriage. How could he explain the instant recognition he’d felt for her? The confusion of feeling he’d wrestled with all summer crystallized into something so frightening he could barely breathe as it permeated his consciousness. His heart had known, and his head was just now catching up.

Kerris was his.

Despite the differences in their backgrounds—the advantages he’d grown up with and she had never known, the family he’d practically been smothered by and the gaping void in her life where familial love should have been—despite everything about them that was opposite, they fit.

The kiss they’d shared in the hospital had been more than “fine.” It had been consuming, flaming, desperate. To hear that she didn’t experience a measure of that passion with Cam humbled yet confounded him. It angered him to think she would settle for less. That she would turn her back on something so rare. Fear wrapped steely fingers around his throat, constricting his breath. If she accepted Cam’s proposal tonight, it would set them on a course of inevitable destruction.

“Dammit.” He scrambled down the gazebo steps, racing across the lawn and into the house. “Sorry, Kerris. I can’t let you do it.”

H
ey, I was wondering where you were,” Cam said when Kerris returned to his side and took his hand. “Ker, this is Sebastian. He owns that new gallery on Main we saw a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, that’s a beautiful space.” Kerris smiled at the man without really registering his features, still off kilter after her conversation with Walsh. “Did Cam tell you he paints? His work is amazing.”

“She has to say that.” Cam shrugged, modesty like a rented jacket on his shoulders. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“You’re a lucky man.” Sebastian’s eyes lingered on Kerris’s face. “I’ve actually seen some of his work. He’s very gifted. I was telling him I just got back from Paris. Still the strongest artistic community in the world. Such a convergence of culture and art and expression.”

Kerris nodded, her mind only half on the conversation. She wasn’t in the mood for Sebastian’s pompous posturing.

“Cam, I’m going to the bathroom for a minute.” She leaned into his shoulder. “And then maybe we can go?”

“Yeah.” Cam bent to kiss the top of her head, whispering in her ear. “We still have a lot to talk about.”

Tonight there would be no escape. She knew what her answer should be, but she couldn’t imagine “yes” actually coming out of her mouth; that word would burn any bridge that could ever lead to Walsh, but she would say it tonight.

She didn’t have to use the bathroom, but needed a few moments to herself. She sat on the lid of the toilet seat, collecting her scattered emotions in a closed stall. She’d thought it strange that a residential bathroom would have stalls, but she realized the Walshes had built this section of the house with entertaining on a grand scale in mind, almost like a reception hall.

Kerris rehearsed the night in her head. Sofie’s deliberate needling. Sharing her past with Walsh. Her argument with Walsh about marrying Cam.

What right did Walsh have to care? He wasn’t offering her anything, had never hinted at a permanent relationship. A conflagration of sensations sparked between them every time they touched. It was incredible, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, it could never be enough for her. And he’d never,
could
never, want anything more with her.

“Who was that girl dancing with Walsh?”

The voice reaching Kerris through the closed stall door was vaguely familiar.

“Got an extra hairpin, Ard? Which girl?”

That voice Kerris would know anywhere. Sofie.

“Short. Really pretty.” Kerris could hear Ardis digging around in her purse, presumably for the hairpin. “Dark hair. She looked familiar.”

“She should’ve looked familiar, she was just cleaning your bathroom this morning. Remember? That’s Cam’s girlfriend.” Sofie laced her voice with the condescending pseudo-pity Kerris was coming to hate. “One of those foster college kids. At one point, I thought the poor thing had a crush on Walsh. Wouldn’t that have been pathetic?”

Anger and hurt burned their way up Kerris’s throat. She gripped the sides of the toilet seat, wishing Sofie’s throat were in her hands.

“What about you and Walsh? You think he’ll ever pop the question?” Ardis asked.

“Ouch, careful with that hairpin. It’s not a weapon. To answer
your
question, I have to be patient for a little while longer. And then I’ll have everything I’ve been waiting for.”

“And what’s that?”

“Oh, Walsh’s ring, his name, his babies, and his fortune.” Sofie’s I-was-born-ready laugh slithered over Kerris’s nerves. “We’ve known we’d be together since we were kids.”

“Walsh didn’t look like he knew tonight when he was dancing with that girl.”

“Believe me, he knows I’m the one for him, Ard.”

“Why? Because of your trust fund?”

“Honey, Walsh Bennett
is
my trust fund.” Sofie’s words were slickly coated and smooth. “I mean, not literally. Of course, I have my own money, but he’s my future. I don’t mind his little flirtations because I know where he’ll end up. I’ve waited this long, and the wait is almost over.”

“If you say so.”

“I know so, and so does he. Walsh and I actually talked tonight about getting married. I gave him permission to sow his wild oats.”

Kerris’s mouth dropped open, the words pounding into her chest with the force of a wrecking ball.

“Wow, that’s big of you,” Ardis said, sarcasm evident in her tone.

“He can sow the oats. I’ll reap the harvest. Come on. Let’s get back to the party.”

Kerris clamped her lips against a whimper. Tonight? Before he’d met her in the gazebo he’d talked with Sofie about getting married? Wild oats, huh? That only confirmed what Kerris had known all along. She was good enough to have as an appetizer, but only someone with Sofie’s pedigree could be the main dish.

Walsh would never
marry
a girl like Kerris, and more than anything, she wanted a family. Cam was the man for her, and she loved him in her own way. She really did. So what if her heart didn’t flutter when she saw him? And who cared if his kisses didn’t enflame her?

As soon as she was sure the coast was clear, Kerris poked her head out, walking toward the door, steps heavy but sure.

Cam leaned against the wall, hands buried in his pockets. He straightened as soon as he saw her coming. The uncertainty in his eyes stopped her. With one word, she could wipe it away. She knew it. This was it. Now or never.

“Yes. My answer is yes.”

“To what?” Cam frowned before her words completely sank in. “You mean…you’re saying…are you—”

“I’ll marry you.” Kerris tested out a convincing smile, wondering if he had changed his mind.

He disabused her of that notion, scooping her up, his forearms under her bottom. He held her up to look down at him, letting out an exuberant whoop and twirling her around.

“You won’t regret it, Ker,” he said once they’d finally stopped circling, his expression clearer and lighter than she had ever seen it.

And in that moment, she really believed she had done the right thing.

“Dude, we need to talk,” Walsh said, glad to finally have found Cam after scouring the room for the last ten minutes.

“Can it wait?” A wide grin plastered Cam’s face. “I’ve got news.”

“Sure, I guess it can wait, but not too long.”

Walsh had to bite the bullet and get his feelings for Kerris out in the open. Better now than later, when it would only be more painful for everyone involved. And the sooner he told Cam, the sooner he could convince Kerris that they were meant for each other, that she shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the notion of soul mates because he was pretty sure that’s what they were.

“Don’t you want to know my news?” Cam looked like he would combust any minute.

“Shoot.” Walsh’s patience frayed at the delay.

“She said yes, man.”

“Who said yes?” Walsh’s blood slowed to a crawl through his veins. His heart punched him from inside.

“Kerris!” Cam hooked his elbow around Walsh’s neck. “She’s gonna marry me. The ladies have her over there oohing and aahing over the ring. I was gonna ask her tonight anyway, so I had the ring in my pocket. Can you believe that? And she didn’t even wait for me to ask. Just said yes.”

Walsh nodded, twisting his mouth into a board-stiff smile. The truth of Kerris lost to him forever burned a hole in his mind. It wasn’t possible, but he glanced across the room and saw Kerris at the epicenter of a circle of gushing women, all admiring the diamond on her ring finger.