Ever After (44 page)

“Don't let this get messed up,” she said aloud and didn't know if she was praying or talking to the resident ghosts who always seemed to be near. “Let me
keep
this. Please.”

She didn't have time for more thought. People were waiting for her. She grabbed clothes and pulled them on.

J
amie was in the gym and working to concentrate. He was so angry that he had to remind himself not to sling the weights around. Years of training from his dad and uncle were strongly in his mind. “Form is everything,” his uncle Mike always said. “A wrong move and muscles can detach.”

What was making it so difficult now was that in a few minutes he was to meet Hallie's “boyfriend” for a “chat.” That's what he'd said at breakfast.

Hallie had been in a hurry to meet her newly found cousin and to say goodbye to some of the older members of Jamie's family. Braden, sitting quietly at the table, had begged off. He said he had too bad a hangover to go anywhere. He just wanted to stay at the house.

Jamie was at the sink when Braden came up behind him—something that was guaranteed to set Jamie off—and said he
wanted to have a private “chat” with him. “About ten? And please don't say anything to Hallie. This is just between us men.”

All Jamie had been able to do was nod silently in reply. Throughout breakfast, through cousins arriving to pick Hallie up, Jamie had thought about the coming meeting. Was this guy going to ask for help in getting Hallie? Would he play on Jamie's sympathy so he felt as sorry for him as Hallie did?

When the house was empty, Jamie went to the gym to try to work off some of the nervous energy that was building in him. But he kept looking at the clock, dreading what was coming, but also wanting to get it over with. Whatever the guy wanted, Jamie knew he'd do what was best for Hallie.

At five minutes to ten, Braden showed up at the door. He had on clean, crisp clothes, while Jamie's loose workout gear was soaked in sweat.

“Go ahead and finish,” Braden said. “I'll wait.”

Jamie put down two sixty-pound dumbbells. “No. We'll do it now.” He sounded like he was facing a firing squad. He nodded toward the arbor and the two chairs there, and Braden followed him.

Once they were outside, Braden sat down, and Jamie wished he'd taken the time to shower and change. On impulse, he pulled his sweaty shirt off over his head and sat down, naked from the waist up. It wouldn't hurt to intimidate the enemy.

When Braden saw Jamie's bare upper half with all its scars, his eyes widened. “Oh, man! You look like a survivor of the gladiator ring. I read about your injuries, but that's not the same as seeing them.” He was studying Jamie's chest and shoulders, stomach and arms. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for what you soldiers do for our country. But then none of us can thank you enough. Mind if I shake your hand?”

This wasn't what he'd been expecting, Jamie thought as he
held out his hand and shook Braden's. His buildup of anger was being replaced with confusion. “What do you mean you read about me?”

Braden settled back in the chair. A bit of sunshine hit his face and he closed his eyes to enjoy it. “I couldn't let Hallie stay here with some guy I knew nothing about, now could I? Sergeant Bill Murphy says hello and that if you ever need anything, he's ready.”

“You want to tell me what's going on?” There was a bit of a threat in Jamie's voice.

Braden smiled. “You have a little sister. When she starts dating, will your family do some checking on her boyfriend?”

“Hallie is
not
your sister.”

“Might as well be,” Braden said, unperturbed by Jamie's temper. He looked across the garden and smiled in memory. “I was six when her parents brought their new baby home from the hospital. When Mom and I walked over to see her, Hallie reached up, grabbed my finger, and smiled at me. Everyone made a big deal of it, saying she was much too young to smile, but it never changed. For all her life, whenever she saw me, she smiled.”

Jamie couldn't control his sneer. “So now you want to
marry
her?”

“About as much as you want to marry your little sister.” Braden took a breath. “I picked that ring up at the airport. Ugly thing, isn't it? I knew Hallie would hate it. By the way, years ago she told Mom she'd like to have an oval diamond.”

“If you don't want to marry her, then why did you ask her?”

“To release her,” Braden said. “You see, when Mom called me in hysterics and said that if I didn't get here fast I was going to lose Hallie to her client, I knew it was time to change things.”

“Change them how?”

Braden took a moment to organize his thoughts. “Since her
dad was always gone, the only real security Hallie had was Mom and me. And you know how girls are. If they see you as a rescuing hero, they think they're in love with you.” He looked at Jamie. “Until you. I knew from Mom's voice that this was different, so I used the resources at my law firm to do some research on you. Dr. James Michael Taggert is spoken of highly. Sergeant Murphy said you saved his leg. He told me how you volunteered to go on some of the most dangerous missions with the men and women. You wanted to be there at the moment they needed your medical expertise.”

Jamie shrugged. “It's what needed to be done.”

“Not quite! You could have gone to work in some plush clinic or had your dad buy you a wing of a hospital. But you chose to go into the army and save our soldiers.”

“I'm not a hero, if that's what you're implying. You said you came here to release her.”

“I wanted to let Hallie know that it was okay to love someone else. And to do that, I knew she had to stop seeing me as the epitome of all that was good in mankind. She had to see me as I am, a man with a whole lot of flaws. How much did your young cousins laugh at my dancing?”

“A lot.” Jamie looked at Braden. “Are you saying that all of this has been an
act
?”

“Yes,” Braden said. “So tell me, how have I done? Have I been obnoxious enough? Hitting your dad up for possible business at a wedding was the low point. He looked so angry and he's so
big
that sweat was running down the back of my shirt. Then his brother joined him and I was so scared I wanted to run away, but I held my ground.”

Jamie was listening in astonishment. “What about that first night? Were you really drunk?”

“Give me
some
credit,” Braden said. “I can hold my liquor. Two beers and those kids were sure an old man like me was
drunk—but it was one of them who threw up on me. Anyway, I knew that a sober me could never pull off asking Hallie to marry me. But I couldn't let her go through life thinking I was the one who got away. And also, I wanted to see you two together. One sight of the big drippy way you two looked at each other and I knew where your hearts were. So how was my acting?”

“Excellent,” Jamie said. “I believed it all.”

“I thought about being an actor, but then my dad died and I knew I had to get a real job. Support the family, that sort of thing. Though if my law firm ever finds out I alienated one of the heads of the Montgomery-Taggert clan, I'll be out on my ear. I'll be begging on the street corner.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” Jamie said. “I'll take care of it.” He was looking at Braden. “This was a noble thing you did.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “What's going to be hard is when I tell Mom. She deeply and truly wants me to marry Hallie, but it wouldn't work. I actually am a workaholic and Hallie's so self-sacrificing she'd never demand anything of me and—” He shrugged. “I'd make her miserable.”

He looked at Jamie. “I never meant to tell you or anyone the truth.” Braden paused and when he spoke again, there was no laughter in his voice. “I only told you this so you'd trust what I'm about to tell you. Shelly texted me that she's arriving at around seven this evening. When she gets here, Hallie is going to freak out. Come apart. My guess is that she'll tell you that she never wants to see you again, that she wants you to get out of her life forever.”

“Because of her stepsister? Why?”

Braden was quiet for a moment. “Hallie will think that if you see Shelly in person, you'll drop her in favor of her stepsister.” When he saw that Jamie didn't understand, he continued.
“You know those Victoria's Secret shows on TV? If you put some wings on Shelly, she could walk down the runway beside those girls and fit right in.”

“So?” Jamie said.

Turning, Braden smiled at him. “Good answer. The problem is that Hallie won't believe you because Shelly stole every boyfriend she ever had.”

“Bastards!” Jamie grumbled.

“Yeah, well, at seventeen you don't have any brains. Shelly would show up wearing about two ounces of clothing and the boys would go crazy. And by comparison Hallie was downright plump—or at least that's what Ruby used to say. The contrast between the girls was dramatic. But last night Hallie sure looked good in that dress. What did you do to get her in such great shape?”

“I got her away from people who see her as second best,” Jamie said.

“Ouch!” Braden said. “I just wish you weren't right. Men love Hallie, but they lust after Shelly.”

“Not me,” Jamie said. He was looking at Braden in speculation. There was something about the way he said Hallie's stepsister's name that set Jamie on edge. “Can I take it that you don't think of Shelly as your little sister?”

Braden let out his breath. “When she was growing up, I never paid much attention to the kid. But then one day I came home to visit and there was this girl—five eleven, maybe six feet—outside Hallie's house wearing a bikini. You ever look at a woman and get dizzy with lust?”

“I nearly passed out when I met Hallie.”

“Good. I like that. She deserves it. Anyway, that's what I felt when I saw Shelly at sixteen.” Braden took a moment before speaking, as though trying to decide whether he should reveal the truth or not. “I'll tell you something nobody else knows. All
these women since then—the ones who keep dumping me—the truth is that I understand why they do. To me, they're just weak copies of Shelly, and they sense that.”

“So why not go after her?”

Braden shrugged. “What would it have done to Hallie if I—her knight on a white horse—went after her stepsister like all the other guys did? And then there's my mom. She's had years of hearing all the mean, petty things done to Hallie by Shelly. I couldn't do it to either of them.”

“A lot of men wouldn't have cared about any of that,” Jamie said.

“And you were in a Humvee when you could have been safely in a hospital being a doctor. We all have things that make us earn the title of ‘man.' ”

“Yeah, we do,” Jamie said. “I've never been able to get Hallie to talk to me about her stepmother and she's said little about Shelly—except that she felt like a donor who had to give body parts to her stepsister.”

Braden laughed. “That's a good one. I've always loved Hallie's sense of humor. Did she tell you what happened to the garden?”

“No, but I'd like to hear the story.” Jamie's voice was earnest.

“Okay, but first you have to understand that Ruby had an ambition that ate the earth—and it was
all
wrapped up in her pretty daughter. About a year after they moved in, Ruby decided she wanted a big in-ground swimming pool. But Hallie's grandparents had a glorious garden in the back. They fed their own household and shared with neighbors. When the grandparents said no to the pool, Ruby was very calm, and they thought the matter was settled. But they underestimated her.”

“I'm afraid to ask what happened,” Jamie said.

“The grandparents took Hallie away for a weekend and
when they returned, the garden was gone. Bulldozed flat. Even the cute little playhouse Hallie's grandfather had built for her had been destroyed.”