Authors: Patricia Coughlin
Borrowed Bride (15 page)
She could see now that's what she had been doing. That's why she had felt so unsettled as she waited on those church steps for the ceremony to begin. She had been going through the motions. She'd become an expert at it, at performing all the tasks required for living life on the surface. Be a good mother, refinance the mortgage, marry a stepfather for Toby, all without really feeling anything... except where Toby was concerned. She had never shut down her feelings around him. He had been the only real joy or pleasure in her life for the past two years, safe inside the shell along with her.
Until last night.
Last night, she thought, picturing it all at once as some sort of monumental dividing line in her life. There was the past behind her and the future ahead, and last night like a bold red slash separating the two. She bit her bottom lip. Regardless of how the investigation into Adam turned out, there was no way she could cross back over that line and return to a life of going through the motions. Last night she had come alive again, and whatever happened next, she had Connor to thank for that.
What would happen next? she wondered. In a way it was up to Connor. After all, he was the one who had rejected her and walked away last night. Ordinarily that would have left her feeling humiliated and mad as hell. Except she hadn't felt rejected when he pulled away. She'd felt sorry for him. She knew the kind of guilt and doubts he was wrestling with. Hadn't she felt their talons in her earlier in the day, when she'd run from his honest admission of how much he wanted to kiss her?
Last night she had been suddenly, miraculously freed of the last of that guilt and self-doubt. She had responded to Connor with an unfettered heart...with that mysterious crystalline sense of certainty, she thought, grinning. A certainty that had nothing to do with common sense, but rather with something she couldn't explain.
She wished she could, she thought, sliding from the bed and walking to the window to gaze outside. If she could explain it to Connor, maybe she could help him find freedom, too. As it was, all she could do was be patient and wait for him to find it on his own...with maybe just a little help from other sources.
Glancing up at the bluest sky she'd ever seen, she smiled wistfully.
“If you're listening,” she whispered, “I have another little job for you....”
After showering and dressing in white shorts and a yellow tank top, she went downstairs. The kitchen was deserted, the coffee not yet made. Evidently Connor was still sleeping. Shrugging off her disappointment, she made coffee and looked around for the book she'd started yesterday. She carried it, along with a cup of coffee and a muffin, to her grassy spot just above the shoreline. There was a warm breeze blowing off the water, and the scent of the lilacs and wild lilies growing all around sweetened the air.
She ate her breakfast as she watched the birds swooping low over the water in search of their own. She had just brushed the crumbs from her shorts and opened her book when she heard footsteps and turned to see Connor walking toward her, carrying two cups.
His hair was still damp from the shower, and the black stubble that had seemed to be permanently affixed to his face was gone. Without it, his combination of high cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes was even more striking. He also looked younger, she noted, and even more handsome. He had on faded jeans and a clean white cotton shirt open at the collar, and her heart turned over at the sight of him.
“Morning,” he said, squatting in front of her and offering her one of the cups that she could see contained hot coffee. “I figured you might be ready for a second cup about now.”
“Your timing is perfect.”
“Good. And since it seems to be my turn to make the morning peace offering, I brought you this, too.”
She hadn't noticed the daisy stuck in his pocket until he reached for it and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “But you have nothing to make peace for.”
His mouth quirked. “Don't I? After the way I came on to you last night and then called a halt?”
“So which one are you making peace for, coming on or calling a halt?”
“Good question,” he said, shrugging, his smile self-mocking. “Which should I be apologizing for?”
“Oh, no, you don't. This is your peace offeringâyou decide.” She took a sip of coffee. “Of course, I could give you a hint if you like.”
He lowered himself to the ground a little in front and to the left of her. “I think I could use one.”
“It seems obvious that what we have here are two diametrically opposed actions. Kissing and stopping,” she explained. “My thought is that you shouldn't be sorry for whichever of them you wanted to do, whether it was kissing me or stopping.”
“That's easy. I wanted to kiss you. The last thing I wanted to do last night was to stop.”
“Then you shouldn't have,” she said, meeting his gaze, letting the silence that followed speak for her. Finally she added, “As for the rest, if there's any apologizing to be done, I'd say you owe one to yourself for not trusting your own instincts.”
“My instincts,” he echoed, a small, sardonic smile playing at the edges of his mouth. “Would you like to hear what my instincts tell me where you're concerned, Gabrielle?”
He said her name softly, turning it into a caress that sent a shiver of excitement dancing along her spine, making it impossible for her to do more than nod.
“My instincts tell me to take you,” he said bluntly. He watched her reaction closely, as if expecting her to be shocked by his directness, perhaps even to be scared off. When she wasn't, he continued, “My instincts tell me that you want me almost as much as I want you. And that if we made love, it would be good. Real good. For both of us.”
“I see,” she managed to say, her heart pumping so furiously she felt out of breath. “And for some reason you feel you can't follow that instinct?”
He frowned impatiently. “Damn it, Gaby, you know I can't. And you know the reason why.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I'm not sure I do.”
He exhaled sharply and stared at the lake. “You said it yesterday. Because of Joel,” he said without looking at her. Before she could protest, he continued. “Maybe it would be different if I hadn't wanted you the way I did while he was still alive, while you were still his wife, for God's sake. But I did and I can never go back and change that.”
“No. You can't,” she agreed, looping her arms loosely around her bent knees.
Something in her tranquil tone drew his attention. He peered at her, his expression guarded but curious.
“It's like almost everything in life,” she went on, “or at least, it seems to me, all the things that matter most. You can never go back and change them no matter how badly you want to. All you can do is accept them and move on and hopefully learn from the past.”
“You're looking at the master of accepting and moving on,” he told her.
“You're thinking of your mother.”
He nodded, plucking at the long blades of grass growing beside him. “My mother, and the way my family just seemed to fall apart after she died.” He squinted, as if the sun hurt his eyes even though the branches overhead shielded them from its direct glare. “And Joel, too.”
“Are you really sure you're all right with all of that?”
“Sure I'm sure.”
“Then how come you never got married?”
“What?”
“How come you never got married?”
“I never found the right woman.”
She lifted one shoulder and gave a dubious nod.
“What does that mean?” he asked. “That look.”
“It means a psychiatrist would have a field day with the fact that after losing your mother so suddenly and at such a young age, you've never really bonded with another woman.”
“I've bonded with plenty of women,” he retorted, his lip curled at one side.
“I'm talking about one special woman.”
“What if I told you they were all special? All right, all right,” he added at the despairing rolling of her eyes. “I get your meaning.”
“Plus you say your family fell apart when she died. That seems to have bothered you a great deal, and yet you've never tried to start a family of your own. Maybe you're afraid of losing all over again.” She stopped suddenly and shook her head, aghast. “Gosh, I'm sorry, listen to me. I sound as if I'm a psychiatrist, sitting here analyzing your whole life. I am sorry, Connor.”
“Don't be. There's probably a whole lot of truth in what you said. Maybe what I should have said before was that I've accepted the things that have happened in the only way I know how to.”
She nodded, her small smile self-effacing. “I can't argue with that. In some ways I'm still coming to terms with what happened to Joel.”
He met her suddenly teary gaze, his lean face unsmiling, his silence conveying an understanding deeper than words could express.
“You know,” she said, blinking back the tears that had threatened briefly, “right after Joel was killed, I packed up everything of his that I could find. His clothes, his books, all the papers and stuff from his office. I intended to throw them away or give them to Goodwill, but my mother convinced me to hang on to some of it, at least his trophies and sporting equipment and his personal papers, if only for Toby's sake. I separated that from the rest and stored it in the basement. Now I'm glad I did, but back then I just wanted any reminder of him gone. I was so miserable and so angry with him for dying and leaving me.” She gave a broken, forlorn laugh. “Crazy, huh?”
He placed his hand on top of hers where it rested on the grass between them. “I don't think so. Not at all.”
For a minute Gaby just savored the feeling of his warm, rough palm, the very act of connecting with someone who could hear her grief without mouthing sunny platitudes. Finally she gave a soft chuckle.
“I even put away all the pictures of him,” she revealed. “Can you believe it? And whenever Toby asked about his daddy, I gave him the shortest answer I could. Eventually, with no reminders and no encouragement, he sort of stopped asking. I know that's awful,” she said hurriedly, seeing his pained expression, “but at the time it was the only way I could deal with it.”
“I don't think it's awful. Just real sad.” He lifted his hand from hers, dragging his fingers roughly through his hair. “You never should have had to go through that, and I'm going to make sure that whoever's responsible pays for it.”
She shrugged, her lips pressed tightly together. She knew he was thinking about Adam and the investigation, but she didn't feel like dealing with that right now. They would know one way or the other soon enough.
“Anyway my point is that I didn't handle it well at all back then,” she confessed. “I even moved out of our bedroom into the smaller one down the hall.” She hesitated. “When I started dating Adam, I avoided going to any place where Joel and I used to go and later...” She searched for the right words. “Later, when he wanted us to become...intimate, I told him I couldn't sleep with another man in that house. Joel's house.”
“That was your right,” Connor said, a note of what sounded like satisfaction in his deep voice. “A decent man would honor your wishes without question.”
“He did. He tried to, anyway. What made it hard was that I also couldn't spend a night away from Toby to stay at his house or at a motel. It made things rather...difficult.”
“So where did the big event finally take place?” Connor asked, his full lips tight and barely moving.
Gaby stared at her knees and mumbled, “It didn't.”
“What did you say?”
Her head jerked up. “It didn't. I said it didn't take place anywhere, all right? We never...” She stopped. He was grinning like a kid on the last day of school.
“What a shame,” he said. “In that case I'll bet old Adam was really looking forward to his wedding night.”
“We both were,” she snapped.
Black sparks flashed in his eyes. “Then I'm damn sorry I interfered.”
“You're nothing of the sort, Connor DeWolfe, and you know it.”
“You're right. I'm not.” His smile could have melted concrete. “I just thought I'd be polite and say I was. The truth is I couldn't be happier that you never went to bed with Adam.”
He sure looked happy, Gaby noted, overjoyed actually. Against her will she found herself returning his smile.
“So tell me,” he said after a minute, “why do you think you never slept with him?”
Gaby shrugged. “At first I just wasn't ready. Then I told myself that waiting for our wedding night would be symbolic of making a clean break with the past and starting fresh. Maybe it was because he had been Joel's friend and partner and all, but I always felt as if I had to make it clear to Adam and myself and everyone else that this was an entirely different relationship. That I wasn't simply trying to replace Joel with a reasonable facsimile, that this was something completely and utterly new, with no relation to what I had shared with Joel. I guess I thought that was the way to protect and preserve what Joel and I had together.”
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