Rescued in a Wedding Dress (10 page)

He realized he still had Molly’s camera in his pocket, and he took it out, scanned idly through the pictures.

He stopped at the one where
Princess
was kissing his cheek.

Something had changed for him, Houston acknowledged, in that exact moment. Because at that moment, he had surprised himself. He had surprised himself by so clearly seeing—no, not just seeing,
knowing
—the need in those children. But the biggest surprise had come when he had embraced that need instead of walking—no, running—away from it.

Everything had become personal after that.

It hadn’t been about helping out Beebee and Miss Viv anymore, doing his civic duty, get in, get out, goodbye.

Those kids in that daycare, wistful for the fathers and mothers they didn’t have, had hurt him, reminded him of things long buried, which made the fact he’d embraced their need even more surprising to him.

They called to who he had once been, and he wondered if there was something in that self he had left behind that had value.

“I doubt it,” he muttered, wanting a beer out of a bottle being a prime example. The fact that, even though he was doing nothing else tonight, he was avoiding answering the letter from his father, being another example.

Houston wished, suddenly, wearily, that he had dele
gated the whole Second Chances project to someone else. It was bringing things to the surface that he had been content to leave behind for a long time.

He scanned through more pictures on the camera, stopped at the one of Molly that he had taken in the garden. She was leaning on the shovel, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, her hair wild around her, her eyes laughing, the constant wariness finally, finally gone from them.

Some tension she always held around him had relaxed in that garden. The playful part that he had glimpsed the first time he had seen her—in a bridal gown at work—had come back out at the garden. And at the preschool.

People loved her. That was evident in the next picture, her in the very middle of a line of ancient grandmothers, unaware how her youth and vitality set her apart, how beautiful she looked with her head thrown back in laughter as she kicked her leg up impossibly high. And in another of her at Sunshine and Lollipops, of her laughing, unaware there was salad dressing in her hair.

Ah, well, that was the promise that had been in her eyes all along. That she could take a life that had become too damned serious and insert some fun back in it.

What would she add to an evening like this one? Would she be content to sit here, listening to spring sounds? Or would she want to be out there, part of it?

Houston thought of the taste of her lips beneath his—raindrop fresh—and felt a shiver of pure longing that he killed.

Because the bigger question was what
price
would he pay to know those things? Would it be too high?

“Ah, Houston,” he said. “The question isn’t whether the price you would pay would be too high. It’s what
price would be asked of her, and if it would be more than she was willing to pay?”

Because to satisfy his curiosity by inviting her into his life would only invite trouble. Eventually she would want things he could not give her.

Because you could not give what you did not know. What you had never known. Though he felt how disappointed Beebee would be to know that even her best efforts had not taught him the lesson she most wanted to give him. That a life well lived was rarely lived alone.

And certainly not without love.

She had really come along too late. He’d been fourteen, his life lessons already learned, his personality long since shaped.

He tossed back a wine that was meant to be savored. He did not want to even think the word
love
on the same day he had told her things he had never told another living soul.

Told her? Ha! Had it dragged out of him!

He got up abruptly, went inside, closed the French doors on the sounds of spring unfolding relentlessly all around him.

He thought of her guiding his hand to the tears slipping down her cheeks, and something happened that hadn’t happened to him since he had learned his mother was dead.

A fist closed in his throat, and something stung behind his eyes.

That’s what he needed to remember about love, he told himself sternly. It hurt. It hurt like hell. It could make a strong man like his father weak.

Or a strong man like him.

A man needed to approach these kinds of temptations
with a plan, with a road map of how to extricate himself from sticky situations.

And so when he saw her next, he would be coolly professional. He would take a step back from all the lines that had been crossed. He would not think of chasing her with a worm, or dancing with her, or holding her and telling her one small secret. He would not think of how it had felt to open his world just a little bit to another human being.

He steeled himself against the temptation to go those few steps down the hall to her office, just to see her, make small talk, ask about the stupid budgie.

So, when she arrived in the doorway of his office just before lunch the next day, he hardened himself to how beautiful she looked in a white linen suit, a sunshine-yellow top, her hair already doing its escape routine.

He had one more week here, and then he was never going to see her again. He could suck it up for that long.

“They finished painting my office yesterday,” she said, cheerfully, as if her lips had not touched his. “The ochre isn’t that bad.”

“That’s good.” Apparently she had decided she could suck it up for that long, too. Keep it professional, talk about paint, not revisit last night.
Is that why it had taken her so long to come and see him today?

“I was at the Suits for Success auction this morning.”

As if he had asked why he hadn’t seen her!

“How was it?”

“Great.”

They stood on a precipice. Were they going to go deeper? Were they going to remember last night or move on?

She jumped off it.

“My bird likes you,” she said, and then she smiled. “He doesn’t like everybody.”

Her bird liked him? Wasn’t she thinking about that kiss? Had it been a sympathy kiss, then? Good grief!

“That’s good.” How ridiculous was it to preen slightly because her bird liked him? And didn’t like just anybody? Houston fought the urge to ask her if the bird had liked Chuck, as if he could use that to judge the bird’s true skill.

“I want you to know it meant a lot to me. The whole day yesterday. Letting me show you the soul of Second Chances.” Her voice dropped lower. “And then showing me a bit of yours.”

“I don’t like pity, Molly.”

“Pity?” She looked genuinely astounded, and then she laughed. “Oh, my God, Houston, I cannot think of a man who would inspire pity less than you.”

And he could tell that she meant it. And that the kiss had not been about pity at all. And she was so beautiful when she laughed.

Houston knew he could not spend another day with her. She made him too vulnerable. She opened something in him that was better left closed. He could not be with her without looking at her lips and remembering.

The research portion of the job at Second Chances was done. He knew exactly what each store brought in, he knew what their staffing and overhead costs were, he’d assigned a management team to go in and help them streamline, improve their efficiency, develop marketing plans.

One week left. He could suck it up for that long if he avoided her. If he stayed in Miss Viv’s newly revamped office with the door firmly shut and the Do Not Disturb sign out.

Houston Whitford had built a career on his ability to be in control.

But this week was showing him something different about himself. And that version of himself could not refuse what she was offering.

One week. There were really two ways of looking at it. He could avoid her. Or he could engage with her.

Why not give himself that?

Because it’s dumb,
his more reasonable self said,
like playing with fire.

But he felt the exquisite freedom of a man who had just ripped up his plan and thrown away the map. Like he could do anything and go anywhere.

For one week.

“Do you want to go for lunch?”

Molly was beaming at him. The late morning light was playing off her hair, making the copper shimmer with flame and reminding him what it was like to play with fire, why children were drawn to sticks in campfires. Because before fire burned, it was irresistible, the temptation of what it offered wiping out any thought of consequences.

Molly didn’t taste one single bite of the five-star meal she had ordered. She didn’t think of Miss Viv, or Prom Dreams or what the future of Second Chances was going to look like with him as the boss.

When she left him after lunch, she felt as if she was on pins and needles waiting to see him again,
dying
to see him again. Thinking uncontrollable thoughts of how his lips had felt beneath hers.

Was he feeling it, too?

When her phone rang, and it was him, she could hear something in his voice.

“I noticed that boys’ soccer team we sponsor are playing on the Great Lawn fields at Central Park tonight. That’s close to home for me. I wouldn’t mind going.”

With me?

“With you.”

There was a momentary temptation to manufacture an exciting full schedule to impress him, to play hard to get, but she had played all the games before and knew they were empty. What she wanted now was real.

“I’d love to join you,” she said.

And that’s how they ended up spending most of the week together. The soccer game—where she screamed until she was hoarse—led to dinner. Then he said he had been given tickets for
Phantom of the Opera
for the next evening. Though it was the longest running show in Broadway history, Molly hadn’t seen it, and was thrilled to go with him.

After, she was delighted when he insisted on seeing her home. And then said, “If I promise to be a perfect gentleman, can I come in and see Baldy?”

He came in. She made coffee. Baldy decided to give him a chance. She was not sure she had ever seen anyone laugh so hard as when Baldy began to peck affectionately on Houston’s ear.

Being with Houston was easy and exhilarating. She found herself sharing things with him that she had rarely told anyone. She told him about the pets that had preexisted Baldy. She told him things from her childhood, anecdotes about the long chain of step-fathers. Finally it was he who remembered they both had to work in the morning.

He hesitated at her door. For a moment she thought he would kiss her, again, and her life as she had known
it would be over because she knew they were reaching the point where neither of them was going to be able to hold back.

But clearly, though the struggle was apparent in his face, he remembered his promise to be a gentleman.

At work the next day, she appreciated his discipline. It was hard enough to separate the personal from the professional without the complication of another kiss between them.

But even without that complication her life suddenly felt as if it were lit from within.

They had gone from being combatants to being a team. They were working together, sharing a vision for Second Chances. Houston could make her laugh harder than she had ever laughed. He could take an ordinary moment and make it seem as if it had been infused with sunshine.

There was so much to be done and so little time left to do it as they moved toward the reopening of the office, the open house unveiling party set for Friday afternoon. The personal and the professional began to blend seamlessly. They worked side by side, late into the night, eating dinner together. He always walked her home when they were done.

She was beginning to see how right he had been about Second Chances, it could be so much better than she had ever dreamed possible.

And her personal life felt the same way. Life could be so much better than she had ever dreamed was possible!

It seemed like a long, long time ago, she had tried on that wedding dress, and felt all that it stood for. In this week of breathtaking changes and astounding togetherness, Molly had felt each of those things.
Souls joined. Laughter shared. Long conversations. Lonely no more.

Was she falling in love with her boss? She had known the potential was there and now she evaluated how she was feeling.

If falling in love meant feeling gloriously alive every minute you spent together, then yes. If falling in love meant noticing a person’s eyes were the exact color of silver of moonlight on water, yes. If falling in love was living for an accidental brush of a hand, yes.

If falling in love made the most ordinary things—coffee in the morning, the phone ringing and his voice being on the other end—extraordinary, then yes.

She glanced up to see him standing in her office doorway, looking at her. Something in his face made a shiver go up and down her spine.

“Tomorrow’s the big day,” she said, smiling at him.

But he didn’t smile back.

“Molly, I need to show you something.”

There was something grim about him that stopped the smile on her lips. He ushered her outside to a waiting cab, and gave the driver an address she didn’t recognize.

But somehow her gut told her they were going somewhere she did not want to go.

H
OUSTON
knew something that Molly didn’t. Their time together was ticking down. Only Houston was so aware now that the week he had given himself didn’t seem like enough. He was greedy. He wanted more. A woman like her made a man feel as if he could never get enough of her. Never.

Giving himself that week had made him feel like a man who had been told he only had a week to live: on fire with life, intensely engaged, as awake as he had ever been.

But there was that shadow, too. A feeling of foreboding from knowing that thing that she didn’t. Nothing good ever lasted.

He realized the thought of not seeing her was like putting away the sun, turning his world, for all its accomplishments, for all he had acquired, back into a gray and dreary space, not unlike this neighborhood they were now entering.

He was not sure when he had decided to take this chance, only that he had, and now he was committed to it, even though his spirits sank as they got closer to the place that he had called home, and that somehow, he had never left behind. This was the biggest chance of his life.

What if he let her know the truth of him? All of it?

“I want to show you something,” he said to her again as the cab slowed and then stopped in front of the address he had given the driver. He helped her out of it. She was, he knew, used to tough neighborhoods. But there were certain places even the saints of Second Chances feared to go.

“This is Clinton,” he said, watching her face. “They don’t call it Hell’s Kitchen anymore.”

The cab drove away, eager to be out of this part of town.

“You’ve found us a new project?” she asked. She had the good sense to frown at the cab leaving.

Maybe a project so challenging even Molly would not want to take it on.

“Not exactly. This is where I grew up.”

“This building?”

He scanned her face for signs of reaction. He was aware pity felt as though it would kill him. But there was no sign of pity in her face, just the dawning of something else, as if she knew better than him why he would bring her here.

Why had he? A test.

“Yes. I want to show you something else.” He walked her down the street. “This didn’t used to be a liquor store,” he told her quietly. “It used to be a bank.”

She waited, and he could tell she knew something was coming, something big. And that she wanted it to come. Maybe had waited for this. He plunged on, even while part of him wanted to back away from this.

“When I was fourteen my dad lost his job. Again. My mother was her normal sympathetic self, screaming at him he was a loser, threatening to trade up to someone with more promise.”

Again, he scanned her face. If
that
look came across it, the drowned kitten look, like he needed rescuing by
her,
they were out of here.

“He took a gun, and he came down here and he held that gun to the teller’s nose and he took all the money that poor frightened woman could stuff into a bag. On his way out, a man tried to stop him. My father shot him. Thankfully he didn’t kill him.

“He went to jail. Within a week my mother had traded up as promised. I never saw her again.”

“But what happened to you?” Molly whispered.

“I became the kind of bitter man who doesn’t trust anyone or anything.”

“Houston, that’s not true,” she said firmly. “That’s not even close to true.”

He remembered the first day he had met her, when he had talked about being hungry and out of work and not having a place to live, had talked about it generically but her eyes had still been on his face,
knowing.

“What is true then?” he asked her roughly. What if she
really
knew? He was aware of holding his breath, as if he had waited his whole life to find out.

Her eyes were the clearest shade of green he had ever seen as she gazed at him. A small smile touched her lips, and she took a step toward him, placed her hand on his chest, her palm flat, the strength of her
knowing
radiating from her touch.

“This is true,” she whispered. “Your heart.”

And the strangest thing was that he believed her. That somewhere in him, safe from the chaos, his heart had beat true and strong.

Whole.

Waiting.

“Did you think this would change how I feel about you?” she asked softly.

It was a major distraction. How
did
she feel about him?

“I always knew there was something about you that made you stronger than most people,” she said.

He suddenly knew why he was here. He was asking her,
are you willing to take a chance on me?
And it was only fair that she knew the whole story before she made that decision. Still, he made one last ditch effort to convince her she might be making a mistake.

“There’s nothing romantic about growing up like this, Molly. Maybe it makes you strong. Or maybe just hard. I have scars that might never heal.”

“Like the one on your nose?”

“That’s the one that shows.”

“I think love can heal anything,” she said quietly, and somehow it felt as if she had just told him how she felt about him, after all.

Something felt tight in his chest. She was the one who believed in miracles. And standing here at the heart of Clinton, seeing the look in her eyes, it occurred to him that maybe he did, too.

“There’s something else you should know,” he said stubbornly.
Tell her all of it.

“What’s that?” she said, and she was looking at him as if not a single thing he could ever do or say could frighten her away from him.

Houston hesitated, searching for the words, framing them in his mind.

My father’s getting out of prison. I don’t know what to do. Somehow I feel that you’ll know what to do, if I let you into my world. Did she want to come into this?

He drank her in, felt her hand still on his heart. The
softness in her face, the utter desire to love him, could make a man take a sledgehammer to his own defenses, knock them down, not be worried about what got out. Wanting to let something else in. Wanting to let in what he saw in her eyes when she looked at him.

A place where a man could rest, and be lonely no more. A place where a man could feel cared about. A place where he could lay down his weapons and fight no more. A place where he could be seen. And
known.
For who he was. All of it. She would want him to answer that letter from his father. He knew a man who was going to be worthy of loving her would be able to do that.

Would be able to believe that love could heal all things, just as she had said.

For a moment he was completely lost in thought, the look in her eyes that believed him to be a better man than Houston Whitford had ever believed himself to be. A man could rise up to meet that expectation, a man could live in the place that he found himself. Funny, that he would come this close to heaven in Clinton.

Suddenly the hair on the back of his neck went up. He was aware of something trying to penetrate the light that was beginning to pierce his darkness. And then he realized he was not free from darkness. This world held a darkness of its own, not so easy to escape, and he foolishly had brought her here.

They weren’t alone on this street. The hair rising on the back of his neck, an instinctual residue from his days here, let him know they were being watched.

He glanced over Molly’s shoulder, moved away from her hand still covering his heart. With the focused stare of a predator, a man in a blue ball cap nearly lost in the
shadow of the liquor store’s doorway was watching them. He glanced away as soon as Houston spotted him.

What had Houston been thinking bringing her here? Flashing his watch and his custom suit like a neon invitation. He knew better than that! He should have known better than that.

That man pushed himself off the wall, shuffled by them, eyed Houston’s watch, scanned his face.

Houston absorbed the details. The man was huge, at least an inch taller than Houston, and no doubt outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. He had rings on his hand, a T-shirt that said Jay on it, in huge letters. His face was wily, lined with hardness.

“What’s going on?” Molly asked, seeing the change in Houston’s face. She glanced at the man, back at him.

But Houston didn’t answer, preparing himself, his instincts on red alert.

“Got the time?” “Jay” had circled back on them.

The certainty of what would happen next filled Houston. Mentally he picked up the weapons he had thought it was safe to lay down. Without taking his eyes off Jay he noted the sounds around him, the motion. The neighborhood was unusually quiet today, and besides, people here knew how to mind their own business.

Molly was looking up at the thug, smiling, intent on seeing the good in him, just as she was intent on seeing the good in everyone.
Even a man who had come into her life to bring changes she hadn’t wanted.

Except falling in love. She’d wanted that. The bridal gown should have warned him. He should have backed away while he still could have. Because Molly was about to see something of him that he had not intended to show her. That he thought he had managed to kill within himself.

She looked at her wrist, gave “Jay” the time. Houston was silent, reading the predatory readiness in that man’s body language, the threat.

Silently he begged for Molly to pay attention to her intuition, to never mind hurting anyone’s feelings if she was wrong. He wanted her to run, to get the hell out of the way. To not see what was going to happen next.

“How bout a cigarette?” the man asked.

The first doubt crossed Molly’s features. Houston could feel her looking at him for direction, but he dared not take his eyes off “Jay,” not for a second.

“I don’t smoke,” she said uneasily.

Adrenaline rushed through Houston. In one smooth move he had taken Molly and shoved her behind his back, inserted himself between her and the threat.

“He doesn’t want a cigarette, Molly,” he said, still not taking his eyes from the man.

“Ain’t no watch worth you dying for,” the man told him, and Houston saw the flash of a silver blade appear in his palm.

“Or you,” Houston said.

Molly gasped. “Just give him the watch.”

But if “Jay” got the watch, then what? Then the purse? Then the wallet? Then Molly?

The watch might not be worth dying for. But other things were.

“Just give it up,” the man was saying in a reasonable tone of voice. “No one has to get hurt.”

Something primal swept Houston. He went to a place without thought, a place of pure instinct. Years on the speed bag had made him lightning fast.

He knew his own speed and he knew his own strength, and there was nothing in him that held back
from using them both. He was outgunned, the man both taller and heavier than him. There could be no holding back. None.

He was aware his breath was harsh, but that he felt calm, something at his core beyond calm. Still. It felt strangely as if this was the moment he’d prepared for his entire life, all those hours at the bag, running on cold mornings, practicing the grueling left right combinations and jabs.

All for this. To be ready for this one moment when he had to protect Molly.

“Hey, man,” the guy said, “give it up, I tell you.”

But the phrase was only intended to distract. Peripherally Houston registered the silvery flash in the young thug’s hand, the glitter of malice in his eyes. Houston was, in a split second, a man he had never wanted Molly to see, a man he had never wanted to see himself, even as he’d been aware of the shadowy presence within him.

This was what he had tried to outrun, the violence of his father, the primitive ability to kill thrumming through his veins. He was a man who had never left these streets behind him at all, who was ready now to claim the toughness, the resilience, the resourcefulness that a person never really left behind them.

His fists flashed. Left jab. Straight right. The man slashed at him once, but his heaviness made him less than agile, and Houston’s fury knew no bounds. Jay went down under the hail of fists, crashed to the sidewalk.

Houston was on top of him, some instinct howling within him.
Don’t let him get up. Not until you see the knife. Where is it?

Pounding, pounding in the rhythm to the waves of
red energy that pulsed through him. The fury drove his fists into the crumpled form of Jay over and over.

Slowly he became aware that Molly was pulling at him, trying to get him off him, screaming.

“Stop, Houston. You’re going to kill him.”

“Where’s the knife?”

And then he saw it, the silver blade under Jay’s leg. The man had probably dropped it the minute he’d been hit.

Still, Houston was aware of his reluctance, as he came back to her, made himself stop, rose to his feet, tried to shake it off.

He was aware he had come here to show Molly where he was from, to see how she reacted to that.

Instead, he had found out who he really was. A thug. Someone who could lose control in the blink of an eye. He’d brought Molly down here to see if she could handle
his
reality. He was grateful this test that not even he could have predicted or expected had come.

They were not going to move forward. There was no relationship with Molly Michaels in his future.

What if he got this angry at her? The way his father had gotten angry at his mother? And claimed it was love.

And if anybody asked him why he had just pulverized that young man, wouldn’t that be his answer, too?

Because he loved her.

And he would protect her with his very life.

Even if that meant protecting her from himself.

He had come so close to believing he could have it all. Now watching that dream fade, he felt bereft.

The man rolled to his side, scrambled drunkenly to his feet, sent a bewildered look back, blood splashing down a nose that was surely broken onto a shirt. The knife lay abandoned on the sidewalk.

Only when he was sure that Jay was gone did Houston turn to her. She stared at him silently. And then her face crumpled. A sob escaped her and then another. She began to shake like a leaf. She crept into him, laid her head against his chest and cried.