Rescued in a Wedding Dress (6 page)

Molly laughed. Yes, he was. Or at least that was what he wanted people to believe. That he was untouchable. That he was not a part of what they were a part of. Somewhere in there, she could see it on his face he was just a nice boy, who wanted to belong, but who was holding something back in himself.

Was she reading too much into him?

Probably, but that’s who she was, and that’s what she did. She rescued strays. Funny she would see that in him, the man who held himself with such confidence, but she did.

Because that’s what she did. She saw the best in people. And she wasn’t going to change because it had hurt her.

She was going to be stronger than that.

Molly was no more dressed for this kind of work than Houston. But she went and got a spade and began to shift the same pile of topsoil he was working on. What better way to show him
soul
than people willing to work so hard for what they wanted? The spirit of community was sprouting in the garden with as much vitality as the plants.

The spring sun shone brightly, somewhere a bird sang. What could be better than this, working side by
side, to create an oasis of green in the middle of the busy city? There was magic here. It was in the sights and the sounds, in the smell of the fresh earth.

Of course, his smell was in her nostrils, too, tangy and clean. And there was something about the way a bead of sweat slipped down his temple that made her breath catch in her throat.

Romantic weakness,
she warned herself, but half-heartedly. Why not just enjoy this moment, the fact it included the masculine beauty of him? Now, if only he could join in, instead of be apart. There was a look on his face that was focused but remote, as if he was immune to the magic of the day.

Oh, well, that was his problem. She was going to enjoy her day, especially with this new sense of having discovered who she was.

She gave herself over to the task at hand, placed her shovel, then jumped on it with both feet to drive it in to the dirt. It was probably because he was watching—or maybe because of the desperately unsuited shoes—that things went sideways. The shovel fell to one side, throwing her against him.

His arm closed around her in reaction. She felt the hardness of his palm tingling on the sensitive upper skin of her arm. The intoxicating scent of him intensified. He held her arm just a beat longer than he had to, and she felt the seductive and exhilarating
zing
of pure chemistry.

When he had touched her yesterday, she had felt these things, but he had looked only remote. Today, she saw something pulse through his eyes, charged, before it was quickly doused and he let go of her arm.

Was it because she had made a decision to be who
she really was that she couldn’t resist playing with that
zing?
Or was it because she was powerless not to explore it, just a little?

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. And then just in case she thought he had a weak place somewhere in him, that he might actually care, that he might be feeling something as intoxicatingly unprofessional as she was, he said, “Second Chances can’t afford a compensation claim.”

She smiled to herself, went back to shoveling.

He seemed just a little too pleased with himself.

She tossed a little dirt on his shoes.

“Hey,” he warned her.

“Sorry,” she said, insincerely. She tossed a little more.

He stopped, glared at her over the top of his shovel. She pretended it had been purely an accident, focused intently on her own shovel, her own dirt. He went back to work. She tossed a shovel full of dirt right on his shoes.

“Hey!” he said, extricating his feet.

“Watch where you put your feet,” she said solemnly. “Second Chances can’t afford to buy you new shoes.”

She giggled, and shoveled, but she knew he was regarding her over the top of his shovel, and when she glanced at him, some of that remoteness had gone from his eyes,
finally,
and this time it didn’t come back. He went back to work.

Plop.
Dirt on his shoes.

“Would you stop it?” he said.

“Stop what?” she asked innocently.

“You have something against my shoes?”

“No, they’re very nice shoes.”

“I know how to make you behave,” he whispered.

She laughed. This is what she had wanted. To know
if there was something in him that was playful, a place she could
reach.
“No, you don’t.”

He dangled it in front of her eyes.

A worm! She took a step back from him. “Houston! That’s not funny!” But, darn it, in a way it was.

“What’s not funny?” he said. “Throwing dirt on people’s shoes?”

“I hate worms. Does our compensation package cover hysteria?”

“You would get hysterical if I, say, put this worm down your shirt?”

He sounded just a little too enthused about that. It occurred to her they were flirting with each other, cautiously stepping around that little
zing,
looking at it from different angles, exploring it.

“No,” she said, but he grinned wickedly, sensing the lie.

The grin changed everything about him. Everything. He went from being too uptight and too professional to being a carefree young man, covered in dirt and sweat, real and human.

It seemed to her taking that chance on showing him who she really was was paying off somehow.

Until he did a practice lunge toward her with the worm. Because she really did hate worms!

“If I tell your girlfriend you were holding worms with your bare hands today, she may never hold your hand again.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Ah, it was a weakness. She’d been fishing. But that’s what worms were for!

He lunged at her again, the worm wiggled between his fingers. He looked devilishly happy when she squealed.

Then, as if he caught himself in the sin of having fun, he abruptly dropped the worm, went back to work.

She hesitated. It was probably a good time to follow his lead and back off. But, oh, to see him smile had changed something in her. Made her willing to take a risk. With a sigh of surrender, she tossed a shovel of dirt on his shoes. And he picked up that worm.

“I warned you,” he said.

“You’d have to catch me first!”

Molly threw down her shovel and ran. He came right after her, she could hear his footfalls and his breathing. She glanced over her shoulder and saw he was chasing her, holding out the worm. She gave a little snicker, and put on a burst of speed. At one point, she was sure that horrible worm actually touched her neck, and she shrieked, heard his rumble of breathless laughter, ran harder.

She managed to put a wheelbarrow full of plants between them. She turned and faced him. “Be reasonable,” she pleaded breathlessly.

“The time for reason is done,” he told her sternly, but then that grin lit his face—boyish, devil-may-care, and he leaped the wheelbarrow with ease and the chase was back on.

The old people watched them indulgently as they chased through the garden. Finally the shoes betrayed her, and she went flying. She landed in a pile of soft but foul-smelling peat moss. He was immediately contrite. He dropped the worm and held out his hand—which she took with not a bit of hesitation. He pulled her to her feet with the same easy strength that he had shoveled with. Where did a man who crunched numbers get that kind of strength from? She had that feeling again, of
something about him not adding up, but it was chased away by his laughter.

“You don’t laugh enough,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I’m not sure. I just do. You are way too serious, aren’t you?”

He held both her hands for a moment, reached out and touched a curl, brushed it back from out of her eyes.

“Maybe I am,” he admitted.

Something in her felt absolutely weak with what she wanted at that moment. To make him laugh, but more, to
explore
all the reasons he didn’t. To find out what, exactly, about him did not add up.

“Truce?” he said.

“Of course,” she panted. She meant for all of it, their different views of Second Chances. All of it.

He reached over, snared the camera out of her pocket and took a picture of her.

“Don’t,” she protested. She could feel her hair falling out, she was pretty sure there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and probably on her derriere, too!

But naturally he didn’t listen and so she stuck out her tongue at him and then struck a pose for him, and then called over some of the other gardeners. Arms over each other’s shoulders, they performed an impromptu cancan for the camera before it all fell apart, everyone dissolving into laughter.

Houston smiled, but that moment of spontaneity was fading. Molly was aware that he saw that moment of playfulness differently to her. Possibly as a failing. Because he was still faintly removing himself from them. She had been welcomed into the folds of the group, he stood outside it.

Lonely,
she thought.
There was something so lonely about him.
And she felt that feeling, again, of wanting to explore.

And maybe to save. Just like she saved her strays. But somehow, looking at the handsome, remote cast of his face, she knew he would hate it that she had seen anything in him that needed saving. That
needed,
period.

They got back in the car, she waved to the old people. Molly was aware she was thrilled with how the morning had gone, by its unexpected surprises, and especially how he had unexpectedly revealed something of himself.

“How are your hands?” she asked him. He held one out to her. An hour on a shovel had done nothing to that hand.

“I would have thought you would have blisters,” she said.

“No, my hands are really tough.”

“From?”

“I box.”

“As in fight?”

He laughed. “Not really. It’s more the workout I like.”

So, her suspicions that he was not quite who he said were unfounded. He was a high-powered businessman who sought fitness at a high-powered level.

That showed in every beautiful, mesmerizing male inch of him!

“Wasn’t that a wonderful morning?” she asked, trying to solidify the camaraderie that had blossomed so briefly between them. “I promised I would show you the soul of Second Chances and that’s part of it! What a lovely sense of community, of reclaiming that lot, of bringing something beautiful to a place where there was ugliness.”

She became aware he was staring straight ahead. Her feeling of deflation was immediate. “You didn’t feel it?”

“Molly, it’s a nice project. The warm and fuzzy feel good kind.”

She heard the
but
in his voice, sensed it in the set of his shoulders. Naturally he would be immune to warm fuzzy feeling good.

“But it’s my job to ask if it makes good economic sense. Second Chances owns that lot, correct?”

She nodded reluctantly. Good economic sense after the magical hour they had just spent? “It was donated to us. Years ago. Before I came on board it was just an empty lot that no one did anything with.”

If she was expecting congratulations on her innovative thought she was sadly disappointed!

“Were there provisos on the donation?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I’ll have to do some homework.”

“But why?”

“I have to ask these questions. Is that the best use of that lot? It provides a green space, about a dozen people seem to actually enjoy it. Could it be liquidated and the capital used to help more people? Could it be developed—a parking lot or a commercial building—providing a stream of income into perpetuity? Providing jobs and income for the neighborhood?”

“A parking lot?” she gasped. And then she saw
exactly
what he was doing. Distancing himself from the morning they had just shared—distancing himself from the satisfaction of hard work and the joy of laughter and the admiration of people who would love him.

Distancing himself from her. Did he know she had
seen
him? Did he suspect she had uncovered things about him he kept hidden?

He didn’t like
feelings.
She should know that first
hand. Chuck had had a way of rolling his eyes when she had asked him how he was feeling that had made her stop asking!

But, naive as it might be, she was pretty sure she had just glimpsed the real Houston Whitford, something shining under those layers of defenses.

And she wasn’t quite ready to let that go. It didn’t have to be personal. No, she could make it a mission, for the good of Second Chances, she told herself, she would get past all those defenses.

For the good of Second Chances she was going to rescue him from his lonely world.

“H
EY
,”
she said, “there’s Now and Zen.”

She could clearly see he was disappointed that she had not risen to the bait of him saying he was going to build a parking lot over the garden project.

“Why don’t we go in?” she suggested. “You can look for some gardening shoes.”

She was not going to give up on him. He was not as hard-nosed as he wanted to seem. She just knew it.

How could he spend a morning like they had just spent in the loveliness of that garden, and want to put up a parking lot? Giving up wasn’t in her nature. She was finding a way to shake him up, to make him see, to make him connect! Lighten him up.

And Now and Zen was just plain fun.

“Would you like to stop and have a look?”

He shrugged, regarded her thoughtfully as if he suspected she was up to something but just wasn’t quite sure what. “Why not?”

Possibly another mistake, she thought as they went in the door to the delightful dimness and clutter of Now and Zen. He’d probably be crunching the numbers on this place, too. Figuring out if its magic could be
bottled and sold, or repackaged and sold, or destroyed for profit.

Stop it,
she ordered herself.
Show him. Invite him into this world. He’s lonely. He has to be in his uptight little world where everything has a price and nothing has value.

She tried to remind herself there was a risk of getting hurt in performing a rescue of this nature, but it was a sacrifice she was making for Second Chances! Second Chances needed for him to be the better man that she was sure she saw in there somewhere, sure she had seen when he was putting his all into that shovel.

That was muscle,
a cynical voice cautioned her,
not a sign of a better man.

Something caught her eye. She took a deep breath, plucked the black cowboy hat from the rack and held it out to him in one last attempt to get him to come into her world, to see it all through her eyes.

“Here, try this on.”

Now and Zen was not like the other stores, but funky, laid-back, a place that encouraged the bohemian.

The whole atmosphere in the store said,
Have fun!

He looked at her, shook his head, she thought in refusal. But then he said, “If I try that on, I get to pick something for you to try on.”

She felt the thrill of his surrender. So, formidable as his discipline was, she could entice him to play with her!

“That’s not fair,” Molly said. “You can clearly see what I want you to try on, but you’re asking me for carte blanche. I mean you could pick a bikini!”

“Did you see one?” he asked with such unabashed hopefulness that she laughed. It confirmed he did have a playful side. And she fully intended to coax it to the surface, even if she had to wear a bikini to do it.

Besides, the temptation to see him in the hat—as the gunslinger—proved too great to resist, even at the risk that he might turn up a bikini!

“Okay,” she said. “If you try this on, I’ll try something on that you pick.”

“Anything?” He grinned wickedly.

There was that grin again, without defenses, the kind of smile that could melt a heart.

And show a woman a soul.

He took the hat from her.

“Anything,” she said. The word took on new meaning as he set the hat on his head. It didn’t look corny, it didn’t even look like he was playing dress-up. He adjusted it, pulled the brim low over his brow. His eyes were shaded, sexy, silver.

She felt her mouth go dry.
Anything.
She had known that something else lurked between that oh so confident and composed exterior. Something dangerous. Something completely untamed. Could those things coexist with the better man that she was determined to see?

Or maybe what was dangerous and untamed was in her. In every woman, somewhere. Something that made a prim schoolteacher say to an outlaw,
anything. Anywhere.

“My turn,” he said, and disappeared down the rows. While he looked she looked some more, too. And came up with a black leather vest.

He appeared at her side, a hanger in his hand.

A feather boa dangled from it, an impossible and exotic blend of colors.

“There’s Baldy’s missing feathers!” she exclaimed.

“Baldy?”

“My budgie. With hardly any feathers. His name is Baldy.” It was small talk. Nothing more. Why did it
feel as if she was opening up her personal life, her world, to him?

“What happened to his feathers?”

“Stolen to make a boa. Kidding.” She flung the boa dramatically around her neck. “I don’t know what happened to his feathers. He was like that when I got him. If I didn’t take him…” She slid her finger dramatically over her throat.

“You saved him,” he said softly, but there was suspicion in his eyes, worthy of a gunslinger,
don’t even think it about me.

No sense letting on she already was!

“It was worth it. He’s truly a hilarious little character, full of personality. People would be amazed by how loving he is.”

This could only happen to her: standing in the middle of a crazy store, a boa around her neck, discussing a bald budgie with a glorious man with eyes that saw something about her that it felt like no one had ever seen before.

And somehow the word
love
had slipped into the conversation.

Molly took the boa in her hand and spun the long tail of it, deliberately moving away from a moment that was somehow too intense, more real than what she was ready for.

He stood back, studied her, nodded his approval. “You could wear it to work,” he decided, taking the hint that something too intense—though delightful—had just passed between them.

“Depending where I worked!”

“Hey, if you can wear a wedding gown, you can wear that.”

“I think not. Second Chances is all about image now!”

“Are you saying that in a good way?”

“Don’t take it as I’m backing down on Prom Dreams, but yes, I suppose I could warm to the bigger picture at the office. Don’t get bigheaded about it.”

“It’s just the hat that’s making you make comments about my head size. I know it.”

She handed him the vest. “This goes with it.”

“Uh-uh,” he said. “No freebies. If I try on something else, I get to pick something else for you.”

“You didn’t bring me a bikini, so I’ll try to trust you.”

“I couldn’t find one, but I’ll keep looking.”

He slipped on the vest. She drew in her breath at the picture he was forming. Rather than looking funny, he looked coolly remote, as if he was stepping back in time, a man who could handle himself in difficult circumstances, who would step toward difficulty rather than away.

He turned away from her, went searching again, came back just as she was pulling faded jeans from a hanger.

He had a huge pair of pink glass clip-on earrings.

“Those look like chandeliers. Besides, pink looks terrible with my hair.”

“Ah, well, I’m not that fond of what the hat is doing to mine, either.”

She handed him the jeans.

“You’re asking for it, lady. That means I have one more choice, too.”

“You can’t do any worse than these earrings! My ears are growing by the second.”

His eyes fastened on her ears. For a moment it felt as if the air went out of the room. He hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t even leaned closer. How could she possibly have felt the heat of his lips on the tender flesh of her earlobe?

He spun away, headed across the store for one of the
change rooms. She saw him stop and speak to Peggy for a moment, and then he disappeared into a change room.

Moments later, Peggy approached her with something. She held it out to Molly, reverently, across two arms. “He said he picks this,” she said, wide-eyed, and then in a lower tone, “that man is hotter than Hades, Molly.”

Peggy put her in the change room beside his. The dress fit her like a snakeskin. It dipped so low in the front V and an equally astonishing one at the back, that she had to take it off, remove her shoes and her underwear to do the dress justice. She put it back on and the lines between where she ended and the dress began were erased.

Now, that spectacular dress did her justice. It looked, not as if she was in a funky secondhand store, but ready to walk the red carpet. Molly recognized the intense over-the-top sensuality of the dress and tried to hide it by putting the feather boa back on.

It didn’t work.

She peeked out of the dressing room, suddenly shy.

“All the way out,” he said. He was standing there in his jeans and vest and hat, looking as dangerous as a gunslinger at high noon.

She stepped out, faked a confidence she wasn’t feeling by setting a hand on the hip she cocked at him and flinging the boa over her shoulder.

His eyes widened.

She liked the look in them so much she turned around and let him see the dipping back V of the dress, that ended sinfully just short of showing her own dimples.

She glanced over her shoulder to see his reaction.

She tried to duck back into the change room, but his hand fell, with exquisite strength, on her shoulder. She froze and then turned slowly to face him.

“I do declare, miss, I thought you were a schoolmarm,” he drawled, obviously playing with the outfit she had him in. Isn’t this what she’d wanted? To get the walls down? To find the playful side of him? For them to connect?

But if his words were playful, the light in his eyes was anything but. How could he do this? How could he act as if he’d had a front row seat to her secret fantasy about him all the time? Well, she’d asked for it by handing him that hat!

“And I thought you were just an ordinary country gentleman,” she cooed, playing along,
loving
this more than a woman should. “But you’re not, are you?”

He cocked his head at her.

“An outlaw,” she whispered.
Stealing unsuspecting hearts.

She saw the barest of flinches when she said that, as if she had struck a nerve, as if there was something real in this little game they were playing. She was aware that he was backing away from her, not physically, but the smooth curtain coming down over his amazing eyes.

Again she had a sense, a niggle of a feeling,
there is something about this man that he does not want you to know.

She was aware she should pay attention to that feeling.

One of the girls turned up the music that played over the store’s system. It was not classical, something raunchy and offbeat, so instead of paying attention to that feeling, Molly wanted to lift her hands over her head and sway to it, invite him deeper into the game.

“Would you care to dance?” she asked, not wanting him to back away, not wanting that at all, not really caring who he was, but wanting to be who she really
was, finally. Unafraid. Molly held her breath, waiting for his answer.

For a long moment—forever, while her heart stopped beating—he stood there, frozen to the spot. His struggle was clear in his eyes. He knew it wasn’t professional. He knew they were crossing some line. He knew they were dancing with danger.

Then slowly, he held up his right hand in a gesture that could have been equally surrender or an invitation to put her hand there, in his.

She read it as invitation. Even though this wasn’t the kind of dancing she meant, she stepped into him, slid her hand up to his. They stood there for a suspended moment, absolutely still, palm to palm. His eyes on her eyes, his breath stirring her hair. She could see his pulse beating in the hollow of his throat, she could smell his fragrance.

Then his fingers closed around hers. He rested his other hand lightly on her waist, missing the naked expanse of her back by a mere finger’s width.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he said. But he did not pull her closer. Instead, a stiffly formal schoolboy, ignoring the raunchy beat of the music, he danced her down the aisle of Now and Zen.

She didn’t know how he managed not to hit anything in those claustrophobic aisles, because his eyes never left her face. They drank her in, as if he was memorizing her, as if he really was an outlaw, who would go away someday and could not promise he would come back.

Molly drank in the moment, savored it. The scent of him filling her nostrils, the exquisite touch of his hand on her back, the softness in his eyes as he looked down at her. She had intended to find out something about him, to nurse something about him to the surface.

Somehow her discoveries were about herself.

That she
longed
for this. To be touched. To be seen. To feel so exquisitely feminine. And cherished. To feel as if she was a mystery that someone desperately wanted to solve.

Ridiculous. They were virtually strangers. And he was her boss.

The song ended. Peggy and the other clerk applauded. His hands dropped away, and he stepped back from her. But his gaze held.

And for a moment, in his eyes, her other secret longings were revealed to Molly: babies crawling on the floor; a little boy in soccer; a young girl getting ready for prom, her father looking at her with those stern eyes, saying,
You are not wearing that.

Molly had never had these kinds of thoughts with Chuck. She had dreamed of a wedding, yes, in detail she now saw had been excessive. A marriage? No. A vision of the future with Chuck had always eluded her.

Maybe because she had never really known what that future could feel like. Nothing in her chaotic family had given her the kind of hope she had just felt dancing down a crowded clothing aisle.

Hope for a world that tingled with liveliness, where the smallest of discoveries held the kernels of adventure, the promise that exploring another person was like exploring a strange country: exotic, full of unexpected pleasures and surprises. Beckoning. For the first time since Molly had split from Chuck she felt grateful. Not just a little bit grateful. Exceedingly.

She could have missed
this.
This single, electrifying moment of knowing.

Knowing there were things on this earth so wonder
ful they were beyond imagining. Knowing that there was something to this word called
love
that was more magnificent than any poem or song or piece of film had ever captured.