Rescued in a Wedding Dress (13 page)

But Miss Viv didn’t call his name.

Her eyes searched the people gathered around her, until she finally found Molly. She smiled and held out her hand.

“Molly, come up here.”

Molly tried to shrink away. Oh, no, she did not want to be part of introducing the new boss. She thought her feelings would be too naked in her face, she felt as if there was no place for her to hide.

But Miss Viv did not notice Molly trying to shrink away. She gestured her forward even more enthusiastically. She thought Molly not coming was because of the press of the crowds, and gave up trying to get her to the front.

The crowd opened for her. Somebody pushed her from behind.

Molly had no choice but to go up there.

“I’d like to introduce you to the new head of Second Chances,” Miss Viv said gleefully. “Molly Michaels.”

Molly stood there, stunned. There was no happiness at all. Just a growing sense of self-scorn. Until the very
last minute, she had believed in him, believed the best in him. Just like always.

No doubt she’d be getting another postcard from some far off exotic place soon. To rub her face in her own lack of discernment.

Her own Pollyanna need to
believe.

She had been lied to by the man she thought she had seen more truly than anyone else. He wasn’t the boss and he wasn’t going to be part of her future here.

Or anywhere else.

“I don’t know that I’m qualified,” Molly managed to say through stiff lips, in an undertone to Miss Viv.

“Oh, but you are, dear. That’s one of the things our darling Houston was here to do. To find out if you were ready to take over for me.”

Our darling Houston.

Molly had been falling in love, and he’d been conducting a two week job interview?

The front door opened, and a delivery man walked in, barely able to see over his arms loaded with long, white boxes. “Where should I put—” He stopped, uncomfortably aware he was the center of attention. “The dresses?”

“What dresses?” Tish asked.

“I hate to break up the party, but I got a truckload of prom dresses out there, lady, and I’m double parked.”

Miss Viv put a hand to her heart. “Oh,” she said, and her eyes filled with fresh tears. “My Houston.”

And again, Molly felt no joy at all.
Her Houston. Darling Houston.
Houston Whitford was Miss Viv’s Houston.

They had a relationship that preexisted his coming here. He had never thought to mention that in two
weeks, either. Nor had Miss Viv mentioned it when she had first introduced him.

Molly had been lied to, not just by him, but by the woman she loved more than any other in the world?

Somehow Molly managed to get through the gradual wind-down of the festivities. She begged off looking at the dresses that had arrived. Someone else could do it. Prom Dreams seemed like a project suited to a desperate romantic, which she wasn’t going to be anymore.

And she meant that, this time. That moment in the garden when Molly had thought she knew who she really was wavered like the mirage that it was.

Though there were still people there, Molly tried to get out the door unnoticed.

Miss Viv broke away from the crowd and came to her. “Wait just a sec. Houston left something for you.”

She came back moments later with a long, narrow box, pressed it into Molly’s unwilling hands.

“Are you all right?”

She was not ready to discuss the magnitude of how not all right she was. “Just tired,” she said.

“Are you going to open it?”

Molly shook her head. “At home.” The fact that it was light as a feather should have warned her what was in it.

She opened the box in the safety of her apartment with trepidation rather than enjoyment.

There was the feather boa she had worn on that day when they had danced at Now and Zen. Baldy’s feathers. One of those fancy dresses, a diamond ring, flowers, somehow she could have handled a gift like that. Expensive. Impersonal somehow. A
thanks for the memories
brush off.

But this?

Molly allowed the tears to come. What she should have remembered when she was nourishing the ridiculous fantasy of him as the lone gunslinger who saved the town, was how that story always ended.

With the hero who had saved the town riding away as alone as the day he had first ridden in.

An hour ago watching Houston’s face flash across the screen, that child kissing his cheek, Molly had thought,
there is my heaven.

How was it that heaven could be so close to hell?

H
OUSTON
awoke with the dream of her kiss on his lips. If he closed his eyes again, he could conjure it.

It had been a month since he had felt her lips under his own, since he had known he had to say goodbye to her. Why were the memories of the short time they had shared becoming more vivid instead of fading?

Probably because of the choice he had made. He might have chosen to walk away from Molly—for her own good—but he had also chosen not to walk away from her lesson.

Every day he tried to do one thing that would make her proud of him, if she knew, one thing that somehow made him live up to the belief he had seen shining in her eyes.

He had sent a truckload of brand-new shoes to Sunshine and Lollipops. He had arranged scholarships for some of those girls who had written the earnest letters in defense of Prom Dreams.

Yesterday, he had rented an apartment for his father. It was just down the block from the garden project that would never become a parking lot. After he had rented the apartment, he had wandered down there, and looked at the flowers and the vegetables growing in cheery defiance of
the concrete all around them, and he had known this would be a good place for his father to come to.

Then Houston had seen Mary Bedford working alone, weeding around delicate new spinach tops. He had gone to her, and been humbled by her delight in seeing him. He had told her his father would soon be new to the neighborhood. He had not told her anything that would bring out the drowning kitten kind of sympathy—for his father would hate that—but he had asked her if she could make him welcome here.

His phone rang beside the bed.

“Houston, it’s Miss Viv.”

“What can I do for you, Miss Viv?”
Please, nothing that will test my resolve. Don’t ask me to be near her.

“It’s about Molly.”

He closed his eyes, steeling himself to say no to whatever the request was.

“I have a terrible feeling she’s involved herself in an Internet affair. You know how dangerous those can be, don’t you?”

“What? Molly? That doesn’t sound like Molly.” Even though his heart felt as if it was going to pound out of his chest, he forced himself to be calm. “What would make you think that?”

“After I came back from my holiday, Molly just wasn’t herself. She didn’t seem interested in work. She wouldn’t accept the position as head of Second Chances and seemed angry at me, though she wouldn’t say why. She lost weight. She had big circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted, as if she may have been crying, privately.”

Not an Internet affair,
he thought, sick,
a cad.

“But then, about a week ago, everything changed. She
started smiling again. I didn’t feel as if she was angry with me. In fact, Houston, she became radiant. Absolutely radiant. I know a woman in love when I see one.”

In love? With someone other than him? This new form of torture he had not anticipated.

“Then, just out of the blue, she announced she was going on holidays. I just know she’s met someone on the Internet! And fallen in love with them. Houston, she’s foolish that way.”

I know.

“Did she say she’d met someone?” he asked, amazed by how reasonable he made his voice sound.

“She didn’t have to! She said she’s done experiencing her dreams through a picture on her living room wall! She said she was going to California for a while.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Miss Viv wailed. “But I need to know she’s safe.”

That’s funny. So did he.

“I’ll look after it,” he said.

“But how?” This said doubtfully. “California is a big place, Houston!”

He thought of the picture on Molly’s living room wall. “It’s not that big,” he said.

Molly sighed with absolute contentment, and looked over the incredible view. The sun was setting over the Napa Valley. It was as beautiful as she had ever dreamed it could be.

Of course, maybe that was because she was in love.

Finally.

With herself.

Molly sat on a stone patio, high up on a terraced
hillside that overlooked the famous vineyards of the Napa Valley in California. The setting sun gilded the grapevines in gold, and the air was as mild as an embrace. She was alone, wearing casual slacks and a T-shirt from a winery she had visited earlier in the day.

She had the feather boa wrapped around her neck.

In front of her was a wineglass of the finest crystal, a precious bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon this Valley was so famous for producing.

For a while after Houston had gone, she had thought she would die. Literally, Molly had thought she would curl up in a ball in a corner somewhere in her apartment and die.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Baldy needed her.

And then one day she went to Sunshine and Lollipops to do a routine visit for a report that needed to be filled out for a grant.

All the children, every single one of them, were wearing new shoes.

“An anonymous donor,” one of the staff told her. “A whole truckload of them arrived.”

Something in Molly had become alert, as if she was reaching for an answer that she couldn’t quite grasp.

The next day there had been an excited message on her answering machine.

“Miss Michaels, it’s Carmen Sanchez.”
Tears, Spanish mixed with English, more tears.
“I got a scholarship. I don’t know how. I never even applied for one.”

And that feeling of alertness inside Molly had grown. And then, when the second call came, from another one of the girls who had written a letter for Prom Dreams, the alertness sighed within her,
knowing.

And with that knowing had come a revelation: she had always known the truth about Houston Whitford.

It was her own truth that she had not been so sure of.

Even though he would never admit it, she could clearly see he understood love at a level that she had missed.

It didn’t rip down. It didn’t tear apart. It didn’t wallow in self-pity. It didn’t curl up in a corner and die.

Those who had been lucky enough to know it gave back. They danced with life. They embraced
everything:
heartbreak, too. They never stopped believing good could come from bad.

She had told
him
that love could heal all things.

But then she had not lived it. Not believed it. Not ever embraced it as her own truth.

Now she was going to do just that. She was going to be made
better
by the fact, that ever so briefly, she had known the touch and the grace and the glory of loving. She was going to take that and give it to a world that had always waited for her to
see.

Herself.

So, she watched with a full heart as the light faded over the Napa Valley. She felt as if the radiance within her matched the golden sun.

Headlights were moving up the hill toward the bed and breakfast where she was staying, and she watched them pierce the growing blackness, marveled at how something so simple could be so beautiful, marveled at how a loving heart could
see.

The car pulled into the parking lot, below her perch, and she watched as a man got out.

In the fading light and at this distance, the man looked amazingly like Houston, that dark shock of hair, the way he carried himself with such masculine confidence, grace.

Of course, who didn’t look like Houston? Every dark haired stranger made her heart beat faster. At first, in her curl-up-in-the-corner phase, she had hated that. But as she came to embrace the truth about herself, she didn’t anymore.

It was a reminder that she had been given a gift from him. And when she saw someone who reminded her of him now, she allowed herself to tenderly explore what she felt, and send a silent blessing to him.

To love him in a way that was pure because it wished only the best for him and asked for nothing in return.

It wasn’t the same as not expecting enough of someone like Chuck, because really getting tangled with someone like Chuck meant you had not expected enough of yourself!

The man disappeared inside the main door far below the patio she sat on, and Molly allowed the beating of her heart to return to normal. She took another sip of wine, watched the vineyards turn to dusky gold as the light faded from the sky.

“Hello.”

She turned and looked at him, felt the stillness inside her, the
knowing.
That love was more powerful than he was, than his formidable desire to fight against it.

“Hello,” she said softly, back.

“Surprised to see me?”

“Not really,” she said.

He frowned at her. “You made yourself damnably hard to find, if you were expecting me.”

She smiled.

“Miss Viv was worried that you were having an Internet affair.”

“And you? Were you worried about that?”

“Impossible,” he whispered.

“Then why did you come?”

He sighed and took the chair across from her. “Because I couldn’t
not
come.”

They sat there silently for a moment.

“The feathers look good on you,” he said after a while.

“Thank you.”

“Where’s Baldy?”

“I left him with a neighbor.”

“Oh.”

Again the silence fell. She noticed it was comfortable.
Full,
somehow.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“No,” she said, “you don’t. I learned more from you walking away than I could have ever learned from you staying.”

He frowned. “That’s not what I was going to apologize for. We both know you’re better off without me.”

We do?

“No, I wanted to apologize for bringing you to the old neighborhood that night. And then for losing it on that guy, the mugger. For not being able to stop. I might have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me.”

She chuckled, and he glared at her.

“It’s not funny.”

“Of course it’s funny, Houston. I weigh a hundred and thirteen pounds. And I could have stopped you? Don’t be ridiculous. You stopped yourself.”

“I’m trying to tell you something important.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I come from chaos,” he said. “And violence. That is my legacy. And I am not visiting them on you.”

“Why?” she asked softly.

He glared at her.

“Why are you so afraid to visit your legacy on me?”

“Because I love you, damn it!” The admission was hoarse with held in emotion.

“Ah,” she said softly, her whole world filling with a light that put the gold of the Napa Valley sunset to shame. “And you’re afraid you would hurt me?”

“Yes.”

“You told me you hit a boy in high school once.”

“True,” he said tautly.

“And then what, fourteen or fifteen years later you hit another person? Who was attacking you?”

“I didn’t feel like he was attacking me. I felt as though he was attacking you.”

“And so defending me, putting your body between me and that threat, taking care of it, that was a
bad
thing? A pattern?”

“I lost control.”

She would have laughed out loud at how ludicrous that assessment of himself was, except she saw what he was doing. He was trying to convince himself to climb back on that horse and ride away from her, back to those lonely places.

The thing was, she wasn’t letting him ride off alone. That’s all there was to it. Somewhere, somehow, this incredible man had lost a sense of who he really was.

But she saw him so clearly. It was as if she held his truth. And no matter what was in it for her, she was leading him back to it. Because suddenly, she understood that’s what love did.

“He had a knife, Houston. He was huge. Don’t you think you did what you had to do?”

“Overkill,” he said. “Inexcusable.”

“I’m not buying it, Houston.”

He looked her full in the face.

“You’re afraid of loving me.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“You’re afraid I will let you down, just like every other person who should have loved you has let you down.”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“You’re afraid you will let yourself down. That love will make you do something crazy that you will regret forever.”

“Yes,” he said absolutely.

“There is a place,” she said ever so softly, “where you do not have to be afraid anymore, Houston. Never again.”

He looked at her. His eyes begged for it to be true.

She opened her arms.

And he came into them. She reached up and touched his cheek, with reverence, with the tender welcome of a woman who could see right to her gunslinger’s soul. She could feel the strong beat of his good, good heart.

“You are a good man, Houston Whitford. A man with the courage to take every single hard thing life has handed you and rise above it.”

He didn’t speak, just nestled his head against her breast, and he sighed with the surrender of a man who had found his way down from the high and lonely places.

Over the next few days, they gave themselves over to exploring the glory of the Napa Valley.

They took the wine train. They went for long walks. They drove for miles exploring the country. They stopped at little tucked away restaurants and vineyards, book shops and antique stores. They whiled away sun-
filled afternoons sipping wine, holding hands, looking at each other, letting comfortable silences fall.

They laughed until their sides hurt, they talked until their voices were hoarse.

Molly remembered the day she had first met him, looking at herself in that wedding dress, and yearning for all the things it had made her feel: a longing for love, souls joined, laughter shared, long conversations. Lonely no more.

It was their final morning in California when he told her he had a surprise for her. It was so early in the morning it was still dark when he piled her into the car and drove the mazes of those twisting roads to a field.

Where a hot air balloon was anchored, gorgeous, standing against the muted colors of early morning.

It seemed to pull against its ropes, its brilliant stripes of color—purple, red, green, yellow—straining to join the cobalt-blue of the sky.