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Authors: A Bride Worth Waiting For

BOOK: Cara Colter
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Her mother took the wine and her father came and was pumping his hand, and telling him how good it was to see him.
In the living room, he could see the Mitchells sitting on the sofa. He stepped back from her father.
And then they were coming toward him.
Mark’s mother looking so much older, and his father with a stoop to his shoulders that had never been there before.
He looked for recrimination in their eyes as they looked at him.
He saw only warm welcome. Happiness. Almost as if he was a favored son they had not seen for a long time.
Handshakes became hugs.
“I’m so sorry about Mark,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” his mother said with dignity. “We know you are.”
How could they have known that?
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t come.”
“You’re here now.”
And somehow that seemed to be loaded with an expectation. That somehow he would fix something.
He knew what, even before the soft knock came at the door.
They all loved Tory. They all thought—
He turned and watched her come in the door. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
She was wearing a little black dress, that swished around her thighs and had the dinkiest little straps on her shoulders. Dark stockings disguised her swollen knee.
Her hair was tamed.
She had on makeup.
She looked gorgeous and grown-up.
He supposed he looked all grown-up, too, in his expensive suit, and his shirt and silk tie.
Somehow, he had expected she would not come.
And he did not know what it meant that she had come. And that she had come looking like this.
He only knew that everyone else faded from the room, and his throat went dry when he looked at her.
And he knew no matter what happened here tonight, or on the remainder of his trip here, he was never going to marry Kathleen.
Chapter Six
T
ory glared at the bottle of wine he had brought. It was easy to focus all her resentment on that bottle of fancy cabernet. It was a very proper choice. Moderately expensive. Tasteful. Boring.
She glanced across the table at him.
He
was so proper now. Looking relaxed and suave in a suit that was a perfect match for the wine. Expensive. Tasteful. Boring.
He glanced away from Agnes Mitchell for a moment, caught her looking, and smiled.
Maybe not so proper. In that smile lurked the boy who had jumped that bike off the edge of a cliff with one arm already in a cast.
And who had never needed to get his boldness from a bottle.
Spellbound, he had told her of the way she had watched him, and it was true. When he had done those wild, reckless things he had done, she had been spellbound.
Of course she’d also been so frightened her breath had nearly abandoned her body, but another part of her had soared with him. Was entranced by his daring. Maybe had loved that about him best of all. The way he laughed into the teeth of life. Approached it with boldness and daring and fearlessness.
“Tory, dear, you’re frowning,” her mother, sitting on her right, said to her in an undertone.
She made her lips smile even though it made her face feel as if it was molded out of Plasticine.
And now here he was, with his boring old wine, in his boring old suit, being boring.
Except that he wasn’t being the least boring.
They were all as spellbound as she had been.
Now the cliffs he leapt from were legal ones, and yet the daring and boldness were still there, taking on a different form now, being applied to a different world, still making him shine and stand apart from the rest of them.
The suit was navy blue, with a faint gray pinstripe in it On anybody else it really would have been unremarkable. On him it was sexy, and terribly so.
There was no such thing as a sexy suit, she grumbled to herself. It occurred to her it was what was in the suit that made it seem so—his broad shoulders perfectly fitted under the expensive fabric, the brilliant white of the shirt making his skin look tanned and healthy, and his eyes even darker than they really were. The tie was already slightly loosened around the strong column of his throat.
She squinted at the tie. It looked conservative at first. A closer inspection showed the pattern in it to be motorcycles.
He was relating the story of his first encounter with a judge, and Agnes Mitchell was laughing until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Not even Tory could begrudge her that. It had been so long since they had laughed, any of them, like this.
So long, actually since they had been together as a group, Mitchells and Bradburys. Not since that awful day when they had all stood together in the rain, and each had taken a turn with the spade, putting Mark, their beloved, in the cold, hard ground.
And now they were together again, and laughing, and they could thank him. Adam. The one who had not come.
Did it count that he was lessening the burden of pain
now
? She thought somehow it did, though the admission came grudgingly to her.
Her father cleared his throat, and lifted his glass of wine. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
Tory felt his eyes on her, and then his gaze moved to Adam, his intent evident. She felt dread. She knew they were matching them up together, Mark’s parents and her own, seeing Adam as heaven-sent. In the bright light of hope that shone in her father’s eyes, she could see them being marched down the aisle together. Her father was going to propose a long and happy life to them, and she was not going to be able to live with the embarrassment—
But he didn’t say anything about her. Or about Adam.
He said, “I’d like to propose a toast to the man missing from our table tonight, but never from our hearts.”
They all picked up their glasses—she and Adam only water—and raised them.
“To Mark,” her father said.
And suddenly it was as though Mark were there with them.
She had the oddest sensation of actually
feeling
him—his solidness, his warmth, his great capacity to love.
And when she glanced across the table at Adam, her animosity seemed to have dimmed. She saw what two pairs of parents were seeing—that he was one of the special ones in the world and it was good that he had come back here.
Their glasses clinked and their eyes held, and it seemed to be his voice only that she heard say, “To Mark.”
Then Adam laughed. “Tory, do you remember the time we had that toast in the tree house? I think we were christening it. With Kool-Aid. And you hit Mark’s glass so hard it broke?”
“It wasn’t
I
who hit it so hard, it was
you.”
“Was it? I think I’ve improved slightly since my novice attempts at toasting,” he said. “Anyway, Mark got cut, and then we saw it as an opportunity to become blood brothers—”
“And then you both came in to me, bleeding like stuck pigs,” her mother remembered fondly.
The floodgates opened. And Tory watched and listened as they talked about Mark, remembered him, did what they had needed to do for so long.
Adam, she thought, his blood brother, bringing him back to them. Was it possible he could not have done this if he had been there all along? That perhaps this was his role to play, and that maybe after all, she did not know what was best for everyone and everything, even though she certainly liked to think she did?
“Adam, when are you going back to Toronto?” Sam Mitchell asked him, after talk of Mark had finally subsided, leaving only the warm glow in its wake.
Adam slid her a look. “I’ll be on the first plane out in the morning.”
She felt her fork freeze halfway up to her mouth. From the look on his face, she suspected he would have gone tonight if he had been able to get a flight.
“Oh, sorry to hear that,” Sam said. “I was hoping we might have a chance to fish that spot we both used to favor.”
She had forgotten that. That for all his bent toward bold adventure, Adam had always been far more willing than either Mark or herself to spend a quiet day flyfishing with their fathers.
“I thought,” she could not believe the voice was her own, traitorous thing, “we were going kite flying.”
If her own behavior had not come as such a complete shock to her, she might have felt some small satisfaction in the fact she had, for once, shocked him.
His mouth fell open and he stared at her.
She glared back at him. Mark’s last request—and Adam was going to even try and renege on that?
She was aware of her parents and the Mitchells looking at her oddly.
“Kite flying, dear?” her mother said hesitantly. “Surely Adam doesn’t want to—” She looked at him as if trying to make Tory see the fine cut of the clothes, the sophistication.
But Tory wanted to see something else.
The measure of the man.
He tilted his water glass at her, and something glittered dangerously in his eyes. “Kite flying it is,” he said smoothly, without missing a beat. “There’s nothing in Toronto so pressing as to keep me from a day with a kite.”
His eyes said what his mouth did not.
And you
.
She felt a shiver pass from her head to the bottom of her toes.
“Really, what has gotten into the pair of you?” her mother asked. “Those funny newfangled roller skates, that contraption in front of your house yesterday, kite flying. Are you trying to recapture your childhoods?”
Suddenly Tory felt weak. It was not, she realized, about recapturing childhoods, but about recapturing something else.
Something Mark had always known about.
She wished she could take back the reckless words that would keep Adam from boarding his flight tomorrow.
She felt like she was foolishly venturing out onto very dangerous ground. The proverbial thin ice gave a loud crack and groan under the weight of her anxiety.
“Oh, gosh,” she said, impatiently aware of how weak her voice sounded, “my knee. I guess I won’t be able to go after all.”
“You won’t have to run,” he assured her.
“Even I know you have to run to fly a kite,” she said crossly.
“I’ve looked after it.” His tone warned her he was not going to argue with her in the company of her parents and Mark’s.
How could he have looked after it, when he had thought he was leaving?
She wasn’t quite sure how this had happened. How everything had turned around so quickly and against her will. She had come here tonight to make him pant with longing for her, and then to walk—limp—away with her head high, and alone.
Instead, she had
asked
him to go out with her. Kite flying. Something she had never ever done and had never felt the least inclination to do.
Especially not with a knee out of commission.
It was almost enough to make one believe in divine intervention. If it was not so damn obvious that he was about as opposite to an angel as you could get.
After dinner, he offered to help with dishes, but of course her mother wouldn’t hear of it.
“Would you mind then,” he said wistfully, “if I went and had a look at the tree house?”
“Of course not,” her mother said. “Why don’t you go with him, Tory?”
“Yeah, why don’t you, Tory?” he asked, grinning at her, as if he knew all about that thin ice she was skating across.
“I’m hardly dressed for—” she closed her mouth. It occurred to her, glumly, that they would always see her as the kind of girl who shinnied up trees, even if she was wearing an incredibly sexy five-hundred-dollar dress.
And it occurred to her she wanted to revisit this part of their history with him.
He held open the door, and they went out into the backyard. The night was warm. The scent of hyacinth and honeysuckle was heavy in the air. The moonlight washed the world in silver.
It was the kind of night where magic happened.
If there was any such thing.
They made their way across the yard to the base of a huge maple. A rope ladder swayed gently in the evening breeze, inviting them up into the canopy of leaves.
“I’m not going up first,” she told him.
“You always went first!” he said, mistaking her hesitation for fear.
Impatiently she gestured at the dress, and the light that had kindled in his eyes when she had first walked through the door blazed to life again.
He took a step toward her, and she found herself leaning toward him.
He’s going to kiss me
, she thought, and was suddenly aware of how every fiber of her being yearned for his kiss, his touch—wanted it, needed it.
Her strap had fallen off her shoulder, and he gently tugged it back into place, his hand lingering on the soft flesh of her shoulder.
And then he stepped back and laughed softly—the sound was rich in the darkness of the night. “Tory! Would I look up your skirt?”
“Yes!”
He laughed again. “If opportunity knocked. Okay, I’ll go first.” And he scooted up ahead of her, going up that rope ladder like a sailor up the rigging of an old sail ship. He turned at the landing and offered his hand back to her.
She took it, and again felt some physical response that bypassed entirely the confusion of her mind.
Her hand was meant to be in his.
Magic. They stood on that small deck, surrounded by whispering leaves, the house lights and the moonlight filtered now.
She was almost unbearably aware of the power in his hand, the electrical feeling that was pulsing through her.
“Do you remember, Tory?”
She remembered.
He looked down at her, and again she was struck with the sensation that a kiss was only seconds away. Instead, he let go of her hand and bent to get in the door of the tree house.
She followed him. It was remarkably unchanged. An overturned wooden box for a table. A crooked shelf holding some crockery and some books. Three beanbag chairs still showing the dents left by the last people who had sat there.
He was looking at the books. “Our copy of
The Outsiders
is still here.”
On rainy afternoons they had sat in here and read aloud to each other. They took turns picking books. She had tortured Mark and Adam with
Little Women
and romance novels.
“Trust me,” she’d told them. “You’ll find out what women really want.”

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