Runaway Bridesmaid (23 page)

He'd been wrong.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Would you like to breathe?”

Her laugh was soft. “Not particularly.” Then she frowned,
and he saw that odd expression flash through her eyes, that something-is-wrong-but-I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-so-don't-bother-asking look. Even so, he started when she grasped the tops of his arms. “Don't let me go.”

“Wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart,” he said, now concerned. Only Vivian's counsel, to not push, to let her come to him in her own time, kept him from shaking her, demanding she 'fess up about whatever it was that was bugging her so much.

Instead he drew her close, gentling her head to his chest and stroking her hair. He kissed her on the forehead, whispered, “I do love you, you know.”

“I kinda figured,” she murmured in reply, snuggling closer.

“And…yourself?”

She chuckled into his chest. “Fishing, are you?”

“Yep.”

Her stillness sent his emotions into a tailspin, until she said, “Always, Dean. Always have, always will. No matter what.”

Again, they lay silent. Something new, Dean realized, one of those subtle shifts that happens in a relationship with the passage of time. They'd always talked each other's ears off when they were young, sometimes holding two separate conversations they'd somehow always managed to keep straight, much to the amazement of everyone around them. Some things, however, could be quite readily communicated without words.

Sarah's hand began to explore his torso with gradually increasing pressure and precision, her lips following in its path. Her touch was pure magic, her uninhibitedness thrilling. But there seemed to be something of desperation in her touches, as if…

As if this was her only shot.

He shoved the thought out of his brain and decided to just go with the flow. Which was beginning to pick up speed again.

“Anything in particular you'd like?” he murmured as his hand in turn played up and down her spine.

“Cute. You sound like a waiter.”

She'd made her usual comeback, but he couldn't hear the laughter in her voice. He kissed her quickly on the lips, trying to make contact with her eyes. To his dismay, they'd gone blank, as if she'd stepped away from her mental desk. “I…just want to do whatever most pleases you. You know.”

She pushed herself up, looked him right in the eye. “No, Dean. I don't know. My entire sexual experience consists of our toss in the pine needles when we were kids and what we just did tonight. Which means I haven't had much opportunity to build up a repertoire. Let alone a wish list. Shoot, I know more about how pigs do it than people.”

He stilled, realizing. “There's really been no one else?”

The grandfather clock on the hall landing chimed something-forty-five. Then she said, “It's not something I care to share with just anybody. That's all.”

Dean suddenly felt downright tawdry. “I see.”

She twisted to face him, amusement flickering in her eyes. “Let me guess. You wouldn't win any celibacy awards, huh?”

“I guess that depends.”

“On?”

“On what the statute of limitations are on celibacy. I guess I sowed an oat or two when I first got to Atlanta, but…” He shrugged. “Let's just say it's been a long time for me, too.”

She went silent again. Too silent. And he knew whatever it was that kept bothering her was back again.

He saw her give a quick shake of her head, then clear her throat. “Hey,” she said, shifting on top of him. “Seems to me we're spending an awful lot of time talking here when we could be doing other things.”

He slipped his hands around her bottom, pressing her to him, ignoring the doubts, reminding himself—sternly—she'd declared her love.

In spite of what he'd done.

“Going for that Guinness record, huh?” he managed to say over the knot in his chest.

“Might as well,” she said. “Since you brought so much equipment.”

 

Sarah awoke with a start about 1:00 a.m., momentarily sure she was either having or had just had the most erotic dream in psychological history.

No dream, she realized, yawning. She really had just made love for more than three hours and lived to tell about it. If she
were
to tell about it, she thought, a small smile touching her lips.

But only for a moment.

She'd have to begin pulling away now, if she had any chance at all of getting through this. The longer she let herself believe this was real, the harder it was going to be. Dean loved her now; by dawn, he wouldn't. It was that simple.

She'd had her one night. And whether or not it was enough, it was certainly more than she'd ever thought she'd have, so it would have to do.

Wrapping the unused top sheet around her like a toga, she slipped out of bed and curled up in the large armchair in the corner of the room with Bali on her lap, not bothering to turn off the lamp for fear the click would wake Dean. For a long time, she simply watched him sleep; then, she lay her cheek on the back of the chair and silently cried herself to sleep.

 

Dean was surprised to see the room already bathed in silvery mauve light when he awoke, even more surprised to find Sarah asleep like a child in the chair across the room. Lord. He'd slept like the dead. Nothing like heaving calves out of cows, then staying up half the night making love, to take it out of a guy.

He sat up, forking his hand through his hair and yawning for a full ten seconds before crossing to the woman responsible for all of it. Squatting down, he studied her for several seconds, smiling slightly. The sheet she “wore” in lieu of a robe had slipped, exposing one creamy breast, delicately tinged with pink from the morning light, the tip the same pale rose as her full, partly open lips. The nipple was soft and relaxed; he yearned to touch it, to put his lips to it, feel it spring taut in
arousal. For
him.
It was dumb, and antiquated, and assured him a lifetime membership in Macho Mindset of the Month Club, but it gave him an inordinate rush to know no one else had ever touched her like that.

No one would ever separate them again, boy.

His gaze raked her glowing skin slowly, luxuriously, up to her face, a shade darker than her breast, her lashes resting against the tops of her cheeks. Then he noticed something else, and shifted his weight to get a better look.

Her lashes were spiked, as though she'd been crying.

No more secrets, he thought, almost angrily. Not after everything they'd shared last night.

He stroked the top of her hand. “Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered. As if on cue, one of the Jenkinses' roosters squawked a wake-up call. Sarah jumped, clutching the sheet to her breasts.

He laughed softly, encircling her wrist with his fingers. “Morning, baby. Whatcha doin' way over here?”

Her eyes grew wide, before she looked away, shaking her head. “Couldn't sleep,” she mumbled, rubbing her hand over her face.

Dean slicked two fingers down her arm. “You should have awakened me.”

She wouldn't look at him. He couldn't decide whether he found her behavior worrisome or irritating. Whatever it was, he didn't like the sense of foreboding that had settled in his gut.

“Honey…” His hand swept up to her face, capturing her jaw. “I can tell something's wrong. Why won't you tell…?” Then it dawned on him. He grasped her hands and pressed them to his chest. “You want promises, don't you? Reassurances that last night wasn't just a one-shot deal?”

“No, Dean, it's not that—”

“You want reassurances, I can do that.” He kissed her fingers. “Sarah, sweetheart…marry me. How's that?”

Her laugh was sharp. And sad. “In all my born days,” she
said in a shaky voice, “I never expected to receive a marriage proposal from a naked man.”

“So don't look below my neck. Marry me, honey. Now. While we're on a roll. I mean, we did a pretty good job of putting the past behind us last night, don'tcha think…?”

“Dean. Stop.”

He stopped, as the foreboding hiked one notch closer to fear.

She touched his face, and he saw hers crumple into despair. “You don't know what you're saying—”

“I'm awake and sober and I know damn well what I'm saying. I asked you to marry me…what are you doing?”

She'd stood up, letting the sheet fall so she stood naked in front of him. “You didn't notice last night, and I didn't think it was in my best interest to bring it to your attention.”

By now he was thoroughly confused, shaking his head as he scanned what certainly appeared to be a perfectly normal, perfectly exquisite body, the satiny surface of her ivory skin marked only by the occasional mole or freckle. She then pointed to either side of her lower abdomen. “Here. Look.”

He saw nothing at first. Then, slowly, like one of those 3-D paintings, they came into view—lines of puckered skin tracing her belly, a faint lavender-silver color. He remembered feeling them last night, thinking nothing about them except that they were part of her uniqueness. He reached out to touch them now, but she pushed his hands away.

“They're stretch marks, Dean. From when I was pregnant.”

His eyes jerked to hers, as the sense of doom in his belly exploded into realization.

D
ressed now, Dean sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, staring in disbelief at Katey's birth certificate in his shaking hands. Sarah, clothed as well in a particularly unattractive T-shirt and pair of cutoffs, stood at the window, her back to him. Periodically, he noticed her hand drift to her face, presumably wiping away tears. His brain still too tangled to form a coherent question or comment, he'd yet to speak.

Katey was his daughter. His little girl.

Their
little girl.

His breath hitched in his throat. “She really doesn't know?”

Sarah shook her head and swiped at her eyes again. “Not yet.”

He lifted up the piece of paper. “She would have found out eventually.”

A sharp nod was Sarah's only reply.

There had to be anger, but it hadn't worked its way through the shock yet. Eight years, he'd been a father and not known it. Eight years, a wonderful little girl had existed that carried
his genes, born of the only woman he'd ever loved, and no one had bothered to tell him.

Instantly, hot tears sprang to his own eyes and he slapped the paper with the back of his hand, nearly tearing it. “Dammit, Sarah!” He leapt to his feet, took three long steps toward her. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Protecting you,” she said softly, still staring out the window.

“
Protecting
me! By not telling me I had a kid?”

Underneath the worn cotton, one shoulder hitched. “And if you'd known, what would you have done? Come home and married me?”

“Damn straight that's what I would have done—”

“Which is exactly why I couldn't let you know about Katey.”

“Oh, for God's
sake,
Sarah—that doesn't make a lick of sense.”

“Then let me replay the scene for you, mister,” she said, turning on him with sparking eyes, the heat, the scent from their lovemaking perfuming the room in the early morning humidity. “You told me you would die if you stayed here. You told me you didn't love me. You even told me the very act that conceived your child was worth little more than a good night's sleep to you.”

“But I told you, those were all lies!”

“But I didn't know that!”
Her eyes were searing hot ambers, locked with his; tears streamed down her cheeks. “I didn't know you'd lied, Dean,” she repeated, as if he wouldn't understand. “Don't you see? I thought, if I told you about the baby, that either you wouldn't care, or you'd feel
obligated—
” the word exploded like an obscenity from her mouth “—to come back and marry me.” Her gaze drifted back out the window while she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I wouldn't have dreamed of trapping you—or me—like that for anything. It wouldn't've been fair to either one of us. Or to Katey.”

“So instead you made up this elaborate, preposterous story.”

“I'm not looking to shift blame,” she said quietly, “but that was my mother's doing, mostly. I got caught up in it, and decided I'd rather call Katey my sister and at least get to see her grow up, than call her my daughter and never see her at all.” After a long moment, she added, “I was eighteen and heartbroken and scared, Dean. And not left with a whole lot of options. I picked what I thought was the best of a bad lot.”

Finally, his part in this whole screwup began to sink in. “That's why you never got involved with anyone…else, isn't it?” he asked at last. “Because it might've meant leaving Katey?”

When she faced him, he thought he'd never seen sadder eyes. “Oh, Dean…believe me, Katey never even entered into the equation.” She fingered the edge of the curtains, her head coming to rest on the window sash. “Never.”

His head had begun to ache, a dull throb over his left temple. He desperately needed to think, but he couldn't. Not standing in the same room with Sarah, anyway. Part of him wanted to comfort her. But he was too hurt and stunned and angry. He needed space. Time. A rule book with the passage highlighted, telling him exactly what he was supposed to do right now.

“This…this is just too much.” He stood for another few seconds in the middle of the room, staring helplessly at her back, then strode out of the room.

 

Sounds. That's all that was left.

Footsteps thundering down the stairs; the front door creaking open, slamming shut; a truck engine revving up like an old man clearing his throat, then tires spitting gravel as Dean hauled out of the driveway. Then, there wasn't even that much.

Sarah crossed to the disheveled bed, picking up the pillow Dean had used, suffused with his scent. Hugging it to her aching chest, she sank onto the edge of the bed and wept.

 

When Vivian returned about four, Sarah was seated at the kitchen table, gnawing on an overdone brownie. A corner, hard
enough to challenge a hippopotamus's teeth. She'd already eaten most of the edible ones. She'd spent the day in a haze of tears, wishing she'd had company, grateful she didn't. She greeted her mother with the same ambivalence. Ambivalence, and overdone brownies.

Vivian walked into the kitchen, hung her bag by the door. “You baked?”

“Yep.” Sarah hacked off another piece of brownie with her teeth.

Vivian sank heavily onto the chair beside her. “What happened?”

“Where's Katey?” Sarah countered, wiping crumbs from her fingers.

“At the kennels, checking on the pups. Well?”

“I told him.”

“I figured. And?”

“And he left.”

“Well, yes. He needed to get back, anyway—”

“Mama, don't.”

Vivian crossed her arms over her bosom, speared her with her gaze. “He loves you.”

“Loved,”
Sarah amended, exaggerating the final
d.
“Maybe.”

But Vivian was shaking her head. “He's probably hurt. Angry, even. Doesn't mean anything's changed—”

“Mama, please. When are you going to snap out of this fantasy you're in?” A dozen brownies heaved in her stomach. “I kept his child from him for eight years, for God's sake. You should have seen the look on his face—”

“If it's anything like you looked, nine years ago, I've seen it,” Vivian parried, unaffected. “It's not fatal. Either to him, or to what he feels for you.”

Sarah shot up from her chair. “It's over, Mama. Okay? He's not coming back, we're not getting married, there is no happily-ever-after here—”

“What's this?” came a small, tight voice from the kitchen door.

Both Sarah and Vivian whipped around. Katey stood stock still, her eyes wide with bewilderment. And the first stirrings of anger. “I went into your room to play with Bali,” she said, as if needing to justify herself. “And I found this.”

She held out a piece of paper. A piece of paper Sarah realized with horror she'd forgotten to put away.

Oh, God…no.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Not that she'd yet figured out what the right way was, but this wasn't it. She'd changed the linens, disposed of the unused condoms, everything. And left
this.

“Katey,” Sarah began, then fell silent before the blaze in her daughter's eyes. The child was only eight—who would've guessed she'd know how to decipher the information on a birth certificate? But, as Sarah knew all too well, Katey was no ordinary child.

“
You're
my mother?” Katey sounded almost appalled.

A nod was all Sarah could manage over the baseball-size lump lodged in her throat.

Katey's gaze darted to Vivian. “You lied to me?” Back to Sarah. “You both
lied
to me?”

“Honey,” Vivian said, rising and going to her. “There were reasons…”

But Katey backed away, shaking her head. Shock had given way to tears, and Sarah knew the little girl was on the brink of hysteria. Sarah understood. Oh, boy, did she understand.

“You lied to me!” Katey shrieked, then thrust the birth certificate at Vivian as if it had caught fire in her hands, spun around and ran out of the kitchen. Before either of the ladies could reach her, she slammed the front door between them, hard enough to rattle the windows.

Sarah started after her; her mother grabbed her arm. “Leave her be. She's gonna have to sort this one through on her own.”

“She's only eight years old, for crying out loud!” Sarah retorted, furious with herself, furious with her mother. Even, irrationally, with Katey for wandering into her room without permission. “How the hell is she supposed to sort out some
thing she knows nothing about?” She jerked her arm out of her mother's grasp and yanked open the front door, hurtling through it before her mother could recoup.

“Sarah—you're making a mistake!”

Already down the steps, she reeled around, rammed her hand through her hair. “No. I made a mistake eight years ago. Now, since I'd very much like to end this day with as few people hating me as possible, I'm going to go find my daughter and beg her forgiveness. I just hope to God I'm not too late.”

 

She found her in the kennels, crouched in a corner of Mariah's pen, cradling a little black furball in the crook of her arm and bawling her heart out.

Her heart in jagged pieces, Sarah curled her fingers around the wire mesh and leaned her head against the gate. “I'm so sorry, baby,” she whispered.

Palsied with sobbing, Katey turned a blotched, wet face to her but said nothing.

“Can I come in?”

Tiny shoulders hitched, one jutting up so she could wipe her nose on the sleeve of her blouse.

Sarah slipped inside the pen, slid down beside her daughter and handed her a tissue from her pocket, which the child snatched out of her hands. Sarah scooped up a puppy, too, her heart breaking anew at the sound of her daughter's staccato breathing beside her. That she had been the cause of Katey's anguish nearly ripped her in two. “We screwed up,” she said, aching to pull the little girl into her arms, for her own comfort as well as Katey's.

“W-why didn't you tell me the t-truth?”

Sarah rested her head against the wall, waiting for the Perfect Answer to fall out of the sky. When it didn't, she realized she was on her own. “Listen, baby, I don't expect you to understand all this. Heaven knows, I don't understand a lot of it myself. Just remember that grown-ups aren't always perfect, okay? Sometimes we make mistakes.” She huffed. “
Big
mis
takes. And I guess Mama and I kinda took the prize, considering the size of the one we made.” Frowning, she peered over at Katey. “I'm not saying what we did was right, but we did what we thought was the best thing at the time.”

Katey's sobs began to settle down, at least enough for her to finally get out, “Dean's my real d-daddy?”

Apparently, this part of it had just sunk in.

“Yeah.”

Carefully, Katey set the pup back down, watched it scuttle back to its mother. “Were…were you m-married?”

Oh, Lord,
Sarah thought. Quicksand would be preferable to this.

“No, honey,” she said on a sigh. “We weren't.” She caught Katey's eyes in hers. “You know how babies are made?”

Katey nodded. A series of rattling hiccups had replaced the sobs. Now alarm registered on an already ravished face. “You and Dean…?”

“Yes,” Sarah replied as calmly as she could. “Dean and I made you.” She reached out, smoothed a tendril of hair off her baby's forehead. Katey flinched, as did Sarah's battered heart. “And you happened out of love, honey, in case you're wondering. But…” She wriggled her back against the wall, scratching it. “Things got all fouled up, somehow. He went away, and I thought he didn't love me anymore. Turns out that was a mistake, too.”

“Did he know about me?”

Sarah shook her head. “No.”

“Why didn't you tell 'im?”

The question of the century, she guessed that was. “Because he said some things that made me think he wouldn't want to know,” she finally said. “Which is where I was wrong.”

Those amber eyes weren't going to let go for a second. Behind them, Sarah could practically hear the thoughts shuffling through that steel trap of a brain. “Does Dean love you now?”

Sarah tried to slip her arm around Katey's shoulders, but the child shied away. Duly chastised, Sarah pulled her knees up, linked her hands around her ankles. Thought about how much
to tell her. “Turns out he always did.” She snorted. “Between the two of us, we sure got things balled up. A mess we'd just started to straighten out.”

Until I told him about you.

“Does he know about me now? Is that why that piece of paper was out?”

Sarah nodded.

“Then why'd he leave? Doesn't he like me?”

“Oh, sweetie…” Sarah swallowed so hard the lump lodged in her chest. “You know he does. But he's real angry with me. He was…just as upset as you are. Maybe even more.”

Katey assumed a pose identical to Sarah's. “He couldn't possibly be madder than I am.” In spite of feeling like barn muck, Sarah had to smile.

“Yeah. You're probably right. And I don't blame you. If I were you, I probably wouldn't like me very much right now. I
am
me, and I don't like myself very much.” She looked over, regarded the top of her daughter's head. And the justified scowl lodged underneath. “But, well…at least you still
had
me. Maybe you thought I was your sister, but I've always been here for you. We've been together just as much as we would've if you'd known I was your mama all along. But Dean never even got to see you before now.”

One of the pups had shimmied over to Katey and was nuzzling her sneaker. She gently played with its ears, but Sarah could sense the tension in her jerky movements. “I didn't know about him, either.”