Harlequin Superromance September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: This Good Man\Promises Under the Peach Tree\Husband by Choice (49 page)

“She's okay, Nina.” Mack's voice softened. Like he knew how freaked-out she would be right now.

She got up and walked to the window overlooking the field and the orchards. Not that she could see anything in the dark, even though she hadn't bothered to draw the blinds under the sheer curtains.

“Who?” She laid a hand on the cold window and kept it there, grounding herself in the moment and the present. “Who was it?”

“Remember Ally's friend who was helping her with the maze?”

“The blonde.” Of course she remembered. The girl looked like she'd walked out of a high-end magazine, her hair the color of corn silk. “Rachel, I think.”

“Yeah. Rachel Wagoner. She was alone and she was okay, even though she was stuck inside the car.” He must have stepped under a shelter or back inside somewhere, because the wind that had been whistling in the background suddenly stopped. “She has a broken leg that will need some surgical repair, but nothing major. The EMTs said she was fine, and she was lucid when they put her in the ambulance. She was asking for Ally, actually.”

“They must be good friends.” Nina let go of the glass, relieved the girl was okay. Mack must have been living an old nightmare the whole time. She found the flannel robe Gram had bought her and slid her arms inside.

“I guess. The girl didn't want her mother there, so I drove Ally up to the hospital so she can sit with Rachel when she gets out of surgery.”

That was nice of him. Then again, he was probably wishing like hell that he'd had the chance to sit with Vince that night. He'd always regretted letting his friend take his car when he was upset.

“Is that where you are now? The hospital?”

“No.” He paused. “You have FaceTime or Friend Time on your phone?”

“You want to video chat?” She tucked stay strands of hair behind her ears. “That's fine. I can...” She stared at the phone and saw his contact info. “Hang up and I'll call back.”

Switching on a bedside wall sconce with a floral embroidered shade, Nina pressed the button to connect via video chat. When Mack answered, it was dark all around him, though his phone emitted enough light to show his face when he turned it toward him.

“Hey.” There was a starkness to his features. Dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes. Some thin scratches on his cheeks, as though he'd wrestled with a few thorn bushes. A scruff of whiskers along his jaw. “I wasn't sure if you'd been here before.” He walked into the wind as the swooshing sound of the breeze picked up, his shoulders moving. “I drove out to Vince's grave.”

Her chest squeezed tight. She hugged her arms around herself and dropped onto the quilt-covered chest at the end of the full-size four-poster bed.

“I've been there.” She hadn't spent much time in Heartache after graduation, but she'd made that trek more than once. “My counselor in college—someone who helped me with the grief—advised me to visit. And, you know, talk to him.”

Mack shone the phone on the headstone. He must be squatting close to it because she could see Vince's name clearly. The date of his death.

“I always liked the Zeppelin quote.” Mack traced the words from a rock song about a feather in the wind.

“Did you suggest it?” Nina asked, curious and full of emotions too entangled to name. If the night felt darkly nostalgic to her, she could only imagine the strangeness of it for Mack who'd discovered the accident.

He had to be reeling.

“God, no. I hardly spoke to his parents that year. I felt so guilty and they were grieving so hard.” He angled the phone back toward him and Nina realized he was seated on the cold, hard ground beside his friend. “His dad played guitar with Vince occasionally. I think he must have come up with it. But it always seemed apt to me. Vince was here such a short time.”

She wished she could put her arms around him right now and comfort him. She considered getting in the truck and driving out there to be with Mack, but she also didn't want to compromise the connection she felt to him right now. He wasn't a guy who ever talked about his feelings. She didn't want anything to disrupt that or distract him.

“Did you ever talk to someone about it?” She cleared her throat and hoped he wouldn't be offended. “A counselor, I mean?”

“Jenny and I both met with someone before we got married. She thought it would help us make sure we were together for the right reasons, and I was trying to...make her happy.” He held the phone far enough away that she could see one of his shoulders moving and she guessed by the rustling sound that he was swiping fall leaves away from the grave.

“So the counselor didn't help?” She smoothed her hand over the handmade quilt on the chest beneath her, her fingers tracing the pattern of the square cut from a nightgown she'd worn when she first came to live with Gram. The fabric was soft linen and beautifully made—clothes from a different life.

“She taught me about the stages of grief. I don't blame anyone anymore. But acceptance? I'm not sure that's what I call my endpoint in the process. I don't accept Vince's death. But I've made a certain peace with it.” He went still again and then turned the phone to the grave, now free of leaves. “Better.”

I don't blame anyone anymore.

“You blamed me.” It wasn't a revelation, exactly. Plenty of other people had.

But still...

“I blamed myself, mostly. I blamed the senior class for having that party. Jenny for not hanging out with him more that night so he wouldn't have hit on you. And yeah, I blamed you for speaking your mind and telling him he was being a loser. Looking back, the thoughts were juvenile, but we were so damn young then.”

Hearing her words—the exact words she'd said to Vince that night—still cut deep. She didn't even speak that word,
loser,
anymore since it held a power like none other in her vocabulary after what had happened. But she didn't let Mack's use of it now wind her up. She wouldn't go back to living in old shadows.

“I wish you would have told me.” She sat up enough to pull the quilt out from under her and lay it over her lap. “It must have been hard keeping all that blame to yourself.”

“It was tougher being mad at you when I still cared about you so much.” He turned the phone square to his face again so she could see him clearly. “And it occurred to me while I was driving Ally to the hospital that I did the same thing earlier tonight—I let my own issues get in the way of caring about you.”

She gripped her phone tighter, accidentally hitting the volume button.

“I never thought we'd overcome any of it, so this is a bonus.” Taking a deep breath, she traced his jawline on the screen, remembering what it was like to touch him for real.

“Thanks for picking up when I called. After the way we left things earlier, I wasn't all that certain you would answer.”

For a man as stoic as Mack, that comment represented a lot of emotion. She smiled to think how different they were in that regard. She with her drama and passion for life. Him with his quiet, even response to it. But in the end, they were a good balance for each other.

“I can come over there,” she offered. “If you don't want to be alone—”

“I'll be okay. I'm going to get some sleep and then try to talk to my brother. He and Bethany are... She kicked him out.”

Remembering Bethany's hopefulness when she'd left the fairgrounds earlier today, Nina was confused.

“She was going to try to get him to go away with her last night. I wonder what happened.”

“Someone needs to tell Scott to get his head out of his—” Mack scrambled to his feet and started walking, his image on the phone doing a bouncy vertigo sort of thing as he moved. “Nina, I know things seem to have fallen apart, but I'm not ready to give up on us yet. Will you...meet me at the fairgrounds tomorrow night, technically tonight, I guess? My sense of time is all mixed up. But I know I have to see you before I go back home.”

Her defenses—the same ones she'd ratcheted up high when he dropped her off tonight—crumbled away at the reminder that he was leaving. They only had one weekend left together.

“I can do that.” How much more damage could she and Mack do to one another's hearts at this point? Besides, the thought of him sitting alone out there tonight by Vince's grave squeezed any resistance out of her. Truth be told, she wanted to hold him after what he'd been through tonight. She cleared her throat and wished she could settle her emotions as easily. “I'll be over there by four o'clock, right after my appointment with a realtor.”

“You're getting a place of your own?” He frowned and she wondered if it made the scratches on his face hurt.

Her fingers itched to smooth over them. More than that, she wished she could kiss them and hold him while he fell asleep. No doubt about it, she was falling for Mack again even though it made no sense. Even though he'd never stay here with her. Never build a family with her.

“I'm not looking for places to live. This is for a place to work.” She'd been thinking about her career off and on ever since she'd realized she wanted to stay in Heartache. “If I'm going to really put down roots here, I need to start thinking about a business of my own.”

And she'd also need to make her peace with Mack's mom. The older woman no longer had the power to hurt her. Nina wished she could say the same for her son.

He was quiet for a long moment. Of course, she knew he didn't want any part of Heartache—for either of them.

But Nina couldn't let her grandmother down. Wouldn't sit idly by while she was forced to leave the home she loved. So as long as Gram wanted to be here, Nina did, too. Besides, she owed it to herself to figure out how to run a business by herself. How to stand on her own two feet and take responsibility for her life and her happiness. No more begging Mack to be with her, like she had eight years ago. No more relying on Olivia to fund her dreams. Those were the behaviors of the old, selfish Nina, still the knee-jerk reactions of a lonely girl hoping a parent would come back to love her.

She was smarter than that now, and she was independent enough to take whatever life doled out. So she'd decided she had to begin nailing down her plans for the future, even if those plans didn't include Mack.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

L
ESS
THAN
A
week after her own visit, Ally was back in the hospital.

Since shortly before dawn, she'd sat beside Rachel in surgical recovery. Rachel had asked the hospital not to contact her mother, and, being eighteen, apparently she had that right. As monitors beeped quietly and the medical staff wheeled patients in and out of the wide-open room separated only by curtains on metal tracks, Ally wondered what on earth had made the girl ask for
her
of all people.

Smoothing the blankets, she waited for Rachel to wake up. Part of her was scared Rachel was still mad at her. But that didn't seem to fit. Until Ally had accused Ethan of flirting with her, she and Rachel had actually had fun outlining the straw maze. Rachel was smart and efficient, impressing Ally with how organized she was. Now that Ally looked back at the hours they'd spent together—knowing that Ethan hadn't been hitting on Rachel—Ally realized that they would have never gotten the outline done if Rachel hadn't called for help.

“She's in here,” a nurse's voice was saying just outside the curtain. “But you can't stay long. We're only allowed to admit one visitor at a time.”

The nurse opened the curtain but the only person Ally saw was Ethan. His gaze flicked to Rachel first, but then moved to Ally and...stayed there.

Tall and broad-shouldered, he'd always looked older than everyone else at school. Now, she could see a maturity that went along with his appearance. Underneath his good nature and easygoing smile, Ethan was a strong, capable guy.

“Thank you so much for coming.” Ally had texted him as soon as she'd arrived, too worried for Rachel to be concerned about whatever awkwardness or bad feelings lingered between her and Ethan. “You're Rachel's friend and—”

“I am.” He met her gaze levelly, and she felt like a first-class jerk for giving him a hard time about his relationship with Rachel. “But I came for you.”

She rose to her feet, shaky from the hours of worry. Even before the hell of the accident, there'd been her dad's revelation. Ethan's show of support now—even when she didn't deserve it—was about the nicest thing she could imagine.

Flinging her arms around him, she hugged him tight. It wasn't the kind of first embrace she'd imagined for them, but she needed it like nothing else. By the time Ethan's arms went around her, she was already crying against his shoulder. Tears flowed like someone had turned on the faucets, all the stress of the past week overflowing.

“I've been so horrible.” She kept her voice low, knowing people in nearby curtain stalls could hear her if they cared to listen. She'd already eavesdropped on all kinds of drama going on in the lives of the faceless strangers on either side of Rachel's tiny space.

“No, you haven't.” Ethan eased back to look at her face, his expression so open and caring.

Easy for him when he hid no secrets.

Ally released him, knowing she needed to come clean, and the sooner the better. She wanted to smooth things over with him before Rachel woke up. Then maybe together they could figure out why the girl had asked for Ally in her delirium.

“About a week ago, I overheard Rachel say she had a date with you.” If only she could take back what had happened afterward. She realized now that she needed more outlets than just Gram. And if that meant regular therapy sessions, she was going to find a way to get them, even after she left Heartache for good. “And I didn't handle it well.”

She shoved up her sleeves to show him the healing scratches. He'd noticed the bandages the day after, but now that she was letting them “breathe” as Gram had suggested, he could see exactly how revolting they were.

“What do you mean?” He stared blankly at the marks. For a second. Then he looked back up at her, his expression stunned. “You did that to yourself?” His voice was a shocked whisper.

She closed her eyes so she wouldn't see his face, but it showed up even behind her eyelids.

“I've done it other times, too. It's a stress thing.” A dumb, embarrassing stress thing. Yet Gram told her she could fight it. She opened her eyes again. “But I'm working on it. I mean, I'm fixing myself. So I won't do it anymore.”

“Ally, I'm so damn sorry.” His hazel eyes were full of regret.

“You didn't do this to me. I did.” She definitely didn't want to unload her baggage on him.

“Does Rachel know about this?”

A voice murmured sleepily from the bed. “I do now.”

Whirling, Ally hurried over to her side with Ethan on her heels. “Hey, Rachel. How are you feeling?”

“They didn't call my mom, did they?” Wide blue eyes stared up at Ally, and she noticed some of Rachel's blond hair was stuck to the bandage at the top of her forehead.

She had a cut on her lip and a big splint on the leg that had been surgically repaired to fix a fracture. Her leg was now propped on pillows and an IV full of fluids had been attached to one arm. Ally couldn't even imagine what a crap relationship Rachel must have with her mother that she didn't want her here right now.

“No. You're eighteen. The nurse told me they can't call her because of privacy laws.” Ally picked some of the hair out of the bandage with gentle fingers, knowing she'd want someone to take care of her if she was in the hospital.

She'd had a few someones, actually. For all her issues with her parents, her parents had been there every second. It was a weird moment to realize she should text her mom and make sure
she
was okay after whatever had happened between her and Dad.

“I don't feel so well.” Rachel ran a hand over her stomach. “The meds are—ugh.” She closed her eyes again. “Ethan, I was going to tell her. But will you, like, tell her for me?”

Confused, Ally turned to him.

“Yeah. Sure. Just focus on getting better, okay?”

“Right. Um. Guys, I need the nurse. And I totally don't want you to see me gagging, so, like—go be in love somewhere.”

Ethan scrambled away fast. He fumbled with the curtain for a second and Ally could hear him calling to someone.

“Rachel, I'll stay with you. You can't be alone.” She had no idea what was going on between Ethan and the girl that Ally had been so jealous of, but she knew now that her jealousy had been very wrongly placed. “I'm so sorry we argued before you left the fair—”

Rachel gestured toward the pan on the bedside tray and Ally passed it to her as Rachel's skin turned sheet-white. Rachel threw up, but only a little, her color returning to normal as a nurse rushed in.

Ally gestured to Ethan to stay out and glimpsed a look of total gratitude on his face before she moved back to Rachel.

“It's like you told Ethan.” Rachel smiled at the nurse as she poked a straw between Rachel's teeth and ordered her to sip some water. “You didn't do this to me. I did.”

“I shouldn't have let you leave the parking lot. I knew you were upset.”

“Stop.” Her head fell back against the pillow, weariness evident in the slump of her shoulders. “Go see Ethan. I figured if I got you here, I'd get the two-for-one special and he'd show, too.” Her eyes slid closed. “I want you to know my secret. No more hiding.”

“But who will stay with you?” Ally thought about how she'd had her mom and dad by her side and her uncle in the waiting room with Nina Spencer.

No matter how bad her life sucked, at least she had people who cared. Now, just maybe, that list might include Ethan.

“As your elder, I order you to go home. You can visit tomorrow, okay?”

“Go on, honey,” the nurse chimed in. “We've got to move her upstairs to a bed and let her get some rest anyhow. We'll take good care of her. You can leave your phone number with me if it makes you feel better.”

She jotted her number down on a scrap of paper and passed it to the nurse. Still, walking away with Rachel still in that bed with a cut lip and an IV made Ally feel two inches tall.

“All right.” On impulse, she edged around the nurse and planted a kiss on Rachel's head, on the side opposite the bandage. “You're going to be okay. We're going to unveil that maze together next weekend, so get better fast.”

The nurse gave her a warm smile, but Rachel had already drifted back to drug-induced sleep. A week ago, it would have seemed mega weird to be in the hospital with her former enemy classmate, wishing her well and slobbering on her hair. But Ally was convinced there was a whole lot of hurt beneath Rachel's designer clothes and perpetually perfect shade of blond hair.

Stepping outside of the recovery area and into the main reception room, Ally found Ethan waiting for her. He was stepping aside for an older woman pushing an IV, actually, which was exactly an Ethan sort of thing to do. He might hate farming and math, but he seemed really at home in small-town Tennessee in a way she hadn't appreciated before. Everybody liked Ethan. What right did she have to drag him away from Heartache because she was unhappy here?

He wasn't just her crush anymore. He was a real guy with secrets, hurts and feelings, and she needed to get over herself and start treating him that way—as a person and a friend, not some object of crazy teenage adoration. She wouldn't talk him into leaving just because
she
wanted to escape.

“Do you want to go—” Ethan looked around the entry area past the gift shop and toward the cafeteria “—grab a soda?”

“Actually, would it be weird to sit in your truck?” She needed a ride home anyhow, since Uncle Mack had dropped her off. She hugged her arms around herself. “I've had more than my share of hospitals for today.”

“Right. You must be exhausted.” He pulled his keys from his pocket. “I actually got a great spot out front.”

A few minutes later, she slid into the front seat of an old GMC truck. It had the pieced-together look of a scrapyard find, with the truck bed a different color than the cab. But the front was clean and Ethan had sprung for the leather seat overhaul himself—a factoid he'd told her on their visit to the hay maze. It seemed like eons ago, considering all that had happened this week.

The interior of his truck smelled like new leather and pine air freshener, but when she breathed deeply, she caught a hint of Ethan's aftershave, too. Ethan had parked in front of the main entrance, and she watched as employees flooded into the hospital for their morning shifts.

“So, you know why Rachel refused to contact her mom?” It burned her up to think of Rachel undergoing emergency surgery alone. She'd already been out in recovery by the time Ally had arrived.

“Yeah. We had a talk that night behind Lucky's. I'm not sure why she decided to trust me, but she seemed sad. Like she could use a friend, you know?”

“I'm glad you were there,” she said honestly. “I wish I'd been a better friend.”

“She moved to this school because her mother insisted. She fell in love with a girl from her old high school. Her mother found out and flipped. I guess she's super homophobic or something.” Ethan shrugged as if it was an unheard of condition and Ally fell for him—the real him—a little more. “Her mom forced her to come here, hoping a new school would change Rachel and give them a chance to hide the past from people. She bought Rachel a new wardrobe—like there are non-gay clothes or something.”

“That's so horrible.” Ally's heart broke for the poor girl in the hospital. To have no allies. No friends who knew her and having to pretend to be someone she wasn't...Ally couldn't imagine it.

“Right? Rachel said she's under major pressure because her mom is in charge of her inheritance since her dad died. It's convoluted. But she was trying to put on a game face until graduation.” Ethan turned in the seat, draping his arm along the bench right behind where Ally sat. “And her mom kept bugging her about dating. Er, guys, I mean. So I told her she should fake having a date with me. Spread it around town a little bit. But it was just talk. I didn't really think about how weird it might be if it got back to you.”

Weak morning sun shone through the windshield as so many pieces slid into place in her head. Rachel's comment about her clothes and how her mother would just buy her more. The noisy announcement at the hair salon about dating Ethan. The mild flirting with lots of guys even though she hadn't really dated any of them.

“I've been so stupid. And blind as a freaking bat.” She, of all people, should know that not everyone's life was as perfect as it appeared on the outside. She hadn't even been aware that Rachel's dad had died, although that had probably happened before they moved here.

“Blind? You saw what she wanted people to see. I'm just sorry I talked myself into a corner. Because once I blurted out the date thing, I realized it wouldn't be cool after I'd just started—you know—talking to you more.” He lifted a strand of her hair where it lay on her shoulder and toyed with the end. “Plus, how could I tell you what happened without giving away Rachel's secret? That wasn't right, either.”

Ally wanted to go back into the hospital and hug Rachel for what she'd been through. But Rachel had said, “Go be in love somewhere.” Maybe Rachel was rooting for Ally and Ethan to get together, since she hadn't gotten to be with the person she cared about.

Or maybe it was Ethan playing with her hair that had her thinking about staying right in this spot with him.

“My problems feel small compared to hers,” she admitted. “Maybe I'll ask her if she wants to leave town with us.” She tossed it out there, just for his reaction. To see if there was any hope he still wanted to go with her even though she was in therapy for the scratching and she might face more obstacles down the road, like her grandmother.

“How can we leave now?” Ethan jerked a thumb toward the hospital. “It's not so bad here, Ally. And Rachel's going to need friends at school. I have a feeling the accident is only going to fuel the rumors about her.”