His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) (12 page)

“I’m a lot of things,” Mike said.

“And you’re telling me you really didn’t—”

“Know that I would be your dad’s physical therapy aide when I kissed you until we were both senseless?”

Bethany felt her body heating at the memory.

“No,” he insisted. “I didn’t.”

“What on earth where you doing bartending at McC’s?”

“Law and Rick needed help Friday night. Thursday was my tryout. I’m a decent bar back. It sounded like fun, and I like to get to know a place I’m going to stay in for a while. Unless Rick’s in another bind, I doubt he’ll need me anymore. But you never know.”

“You never know?”

The corners of Mike’s mouth ticked up into a smile that he seemed to be trying to control. Bethany realized how close she was to him. Practically pressed against him while they talked softly in comically loud whispers that she was certain her sister at least could hear—Dru’s ear smashed against the now-closed kitchen door.

“Are you okay with this?” Mike asked.

Okay
with it? This was a guy she’d embarrassed herself with, whom she’d consoled herself with probably never seeing again. And even if she did, it wouldn’t mean anything. Only there he was, standing in front of her in her parents’ living room. And the needle on her hunky-guy radar was pinned to the red zone. Now Mike was going to be in and out of her parents’ house on a regular basis—unless Bethany put the brakes on her foster father’s rehab.

“Why wouldn’t I be okay with it?” She put several inches between them. “I don’t know what my dad thinks is wrong. I’ve told my family about Thursday night, and that we’re not dating. Why would it be a problem for you to help Joe if you can?”

“Well . . .” Mike caught her hand. He lifted her fingers for a kiss like the one he’d given them at Nic’s, making Bethany’s sensitive skin there—everywhere—tingle. “There’s the fact that you can’t seem to stop wanting to be next to me, but every time we get close, you keep—”

“Stop that.” She yanked her hand free.

“Shoving me away.” He backed out of her personal space, the way he would from a frightened, cornered animal. “What
did
you wind up telling your family about me?”

“The truth. That I asked you to help me with Benjie at the bar. And that I was . . .”

“Grateful?”

“Momentarily confused.”

“About liking having a total stranger kiss you? Or about trusting me to help in the first place?”

She inched even farther away. He
had
been a stranger. She’d been in a room full of friends and neighbors, and eventually family once her brothers showed up. But with Benjie zeroing in, when the pressure was on and she’d accepted that she needed help, her subconscious had run once more toward the unknown—straight into Mike’s arms.

“So what if we kissed?” she reminded Mike. “We agreed it was no big deal when we said goodbye to each other at Grapes & Beans.”

“Well, I guess this is hello again.”

He made a motion with his hand that she suspected would have had something to do with his hat. He rubbed his fingers through his shaggy haircut instead, tugging at the ends.

“I don’t think your father’s trying to throw us together as a couple or anything,” he said.

“Good, because Joe has no business trying to.”

Mike grew more serious. “I think he’s looking for a legitimate reason to back out of physical therapy. He doesn’t want to admit that on his own he might not recover any better than he has. But on some level, he’s probably also thinking that no matter what he and I do together, things might stay the same or maybe get worse. That kind of circular logic, a sense of hopelessness, can trip up a lot of patients. Ones who haven’t waited nearly as long as your dad has to get started.”

“Do . . .”

Every heartbeat and breath and instinct was screaming for Bethany to be next to Mike. For comfort. To touch him. To demand that he say
yes
to her next question.

“Do you really think he can get better?” she asked.

“I know he can.” Mike smiled. “And as far as what’s happened between us, I wouldn’t mind Joe or anyone else in your family giving me a hard time about it while he and I work together. But your dad cares about you, and he’s seen and heard enough about us to question whether I should be here.”

“Because of me?”

“Because we started off on the wrong foot. Joe doesn’t need that kind of distraction. Or another excuse to rough out his recovery on his own. If the two of us agreeing to reboot things gives me the next hour with him and the PT sessions we’ll hopefully schedule, what’s the harm?”

“Reboot?”

“Me not being your worst nightmare,” he pressed, “every time we wind up in the same place. Us getting to know each other in real time, the way we would have if I hadn’t manhandled you at first sight.”

Bethany raised her hands to stall his hard sell.

“I asked you for help at the bar.” And she hadn’t minded one bit of the way he’d handled himself or her. “I kissed you. And I seriously doubt you could ever be a woman’s worst nightmare.”

Mike looked skeptical. “I have an ex-fiancée who might disagree with you.”

“She dumped you?” Bethany couldn’t fathom it.

“It’s a long story.”

One that had ended with Mike being single, gorgeous, unattached, and saying he wanted to get to know Bethany better. Her stomach did a crazy flip.

“How often has Joe backed out of physical therapy,” he asked, “since the rehab center released him?”

“Every other time he’s gotten close to making this decision.”

Mike brushed a comforting touch down her arm. “I know how difficult that can be for a patient’s family. This first step is the hardest for your dad—admitting he needs help. Followed by our first few sessions that he will probably feel are a waste of time. Some patients call therapy off even then, before they give themselves a chance to make sustainable improvements.”

“My foster father’s not a quitter. He doesn’t just need to get back to work for my family’s sake. He wants to walk Dru down the aisle, be an active part of her wedding, and have enough energy to dance with her at the reception. He’s loved her like his own flesh-and-blood daughter since the day he and Marsha brought Dru home, and he doesn’t want to miss a second of her big day.”

But on a difficult morning now, Joe was exhausted just from walking down the stairs and sitting through family breakfast—barely eating a few bites of whatever Marsha had made to tempt his nonexistent appetite.

“The wedding’s not even a month away,” she reminded Mike. “Will he be ready for that?”

Mike dug his hand into his pocket. “I can’t make any promises, even if that means I’m talking you out of putting up with me.”

“You’re not. And I’m not trying to make you think you have to.”

What she was, was terrified for her parents and their fresh crop of foster kids—including Shandra—and what would happen to all of them if Joe couldn’t recover fully.

“Your father’s challenges,” Mike said, “are more than physical at this stage. Men like Joe aren’t used to feeling weak and out of control and unable to pull themselves together by muscling through a problem. It’s going to take time to relearn how to listen to his body. To accept new limitations and adjust to what normal is going to feel like post-bypass. The sooner we can get him thinking in that direction the better.”

We.

Bethany peered up at the guy.

“You’re worried about him, too,” she said in wonder. “You really are a good man, Michael Taylor.”

“Stranger things have happened. But is that a strike in my favor, or against me? Don’t you like good men?”

She exhaled, choosing her words carefully. “Let’s just say I wasn’t looking for a man at all at this point in my life. Let alone one who . . . makes me feel as good as you do.”

“Because feeling good is so overrated?”

What had Bethany ever known about getting feelings and relationships right? Even feeling good could hurt, when feeling pretty much of anything made you need to disappear.

Mike crossed his arms when she didn’t answer him, his legs braced as if he were readying for battle.

“Let’s start small,” he suggested. “Can you at least stop looking like you’re going to bolt for the door every time we see each other and you have a powerful hankering for more of my manhandling?”

He was teasing her, she realized.

And of course she was liking it.

“Could you not be such an adorable ass,” she said, “about understanding me better than a guy should, considering we’ve only fake-dated so far?”

He considered her terms. “I can work with that. Can
you
put up with the rumors around town if we actually do make some time for that first date? At least from your friends and neighbors. I’m assuming your family would leave you alone now if we spent time together.”

Bethany snorted. “Clearly you haven’t been around families as large and nosy as mine.”

“That’s true enough.”

There was something wistful about the way he scanned Marsha’s comfortably decorated, cluttered living room. Bethany tried to imagine what it would look like to someone else.

It was the hub of the house. Where Marsha or Joe helped with homework and distributed chores, bandaged scrapes and bruises, and refereed skirmishes that ranged from halfhearted bickering to
the domestic equivalent of World War III. Later on, most evenings—at least before Joe’s heart attack—Bethany’s foster parents could often
be caught cuddling on the couch or in Joe’s recliner.

“Can you put up with me decking the mongrel,” Mike asked, intruding on Bethany’s memories, “if Benny makes another play for you?”

“I’m sure Joe wouldn’t expect you to cause bodily harm on my behalf just to prove we’ve made peace.”

Mike tipped the invisible brim of the cowboy hat he hadn’t worn. “Consider it a bonus, ma’am.”

An intriguing bonus.

All of him was.

“Just friends?” she asked. “Going on a first date?”

He was the one who stepped closer this time. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to be more than friends.”

And she didn’t say how every time he popped onto her horizon, it felt as if she were free-falling into him. It was exactly the way she’d locked into her paintings in high school, obsessed from even the tiniest first brushstroke, not able to stop herself until what she was creating was finished.

“Bethany,” Mike said. “Congress doesn’t take this long to pass legislation.”

She realized the last of her doubts were gone, like storm clouds beaten back by a vivid blue sky. “If you’re this skilled at putting your patients at ease, my father’s in excellent hands. You’re good at making people believe that you care about them.”

“Maybe that’s because I do care.” Mike’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t take on a lot of patients. This work is very personal for me. I’m in for the duration, no matter how much time it takes from the rest of my life. For the record, I don’t hook up with a lot of women, either. And when I bartend, I never hit on customers.”

“And I . . .” It was important to her that he knew, after what he’d heard at McC’s. “I don’t sleep around. Not the way Benjie made it sound.”

Mike tipped up her chin. “I don’t have any problem believing that.”

“That”—she gestured between them—“you and me at McC’s . . .
that was my first kiss in a long time.”

“Mine, too. I’d say we both remember how to do it just fine.”

“Except it felt . . .”

She let him ease her into his arms, his body solid against her softer one.

“How did it feel?” he asked.

She didn’t know how to describe it.

So she kissed him again instead, his lips a soft, lingering question, a gentle request. Until the excitement grabbed them, a powerful surge, an all-in wave of need making his body shiver along with hers.

Bethany wanted. It was a visceral, edgy, beyond-reason type of want that streaked color behind her closed eyes. Heat coursed through her clinging body, consuming everything as Mike’s hands turned gentle, comforting, calming the both of them. His restraint brought Bethany back to the reality of her parents’ den, and him easing her away.

“It felt risky,” she panted, trying to understand.

Mike nodded, searching her face for his own answers.

She could step back from him, she told herself. And she did. But she couldn’t make herself stop wanting to know him better. To understand why he had such an intoxicating, undeniable effect on her.

“So.” He braced his hands on his hips while he caught his own breath. “We’ll take things slow. No pressure. More talking, less kissing until we get to know each other better.”

“No strings attached,” she instructed herself and Mike. “No expectations. And I assure you that when we get around to that first date, it’ll be a just-friends night.”

“Agreed.” He reached out his hand and waited for her to shake. “I need to get back to your dad. But I . . . really do want us to talk, Bethany. To get to know each other the right way. I’m . . . I wish we had more time now. I mean, I’m glad about working with Joe. But you and me. There’s something . . .”

“Whatever it is will keep,” she reassured him, finding his sudden bout of insecurity endearing. “And I’ve been thinking about you, too. A lot more than I wanted to. Talking with you yesterday at Nic’s was . . .”

Nerve-racking. Exciting. She shrugged off the impulse to believe that it had been anything more than chemistry.

Dating just for fun isn’t a personality flaw, Bethany.

“I’m glad,” she finally said, “that we’re giving it another shot.”

“Risky it is then.” His sexy cowboy’s smile was back. “Don’t make me wait too long for that date now, darlin’.”

He hoisted his duffel over one shoulder and walked toward the kitchen to help her father . . . while Bethany rubbed her fingers over her lips, tasting Mike’s kisses and wondering what the hell she’d just gotten herself into.

Chapter Seven

“You’re not hiding out down here all night,” Clair said to Bethany almost a week later.

Bethany didn’t know what time it was. She never did when she worked on a new piece. And since new pieces were all she was working on these days, it was no small accomplishment that she knew it was Saturday again.

Clair and Nicole had shown up at the Artist Co-op’s loft a few minutes ago, wanting Bethany—who’d turned her phone off, so she hadn’t gotten any of their texts—to join them for drinks at some trendy Midtown place Nic loved. They’d been trying to corner her ever since her run-in with Mike at her parents’ house. And, yes, technically Bethany had been hiding from them.

But it wasn’t personal. She’d been avoiding everyone since she and Mike had
worked things out
the way her dad had needed them to. Which had been code, evidently, for Bethany drowning in second thoughts ever since, and she didn’t know how to explain to herself or anyone else.

Mike had started therapy sessions with Joe. Marsha had called Bethany a couple of times to say things were going well enough—and to ask if Bethany and Mike had gone out yet. Dru kept Bethany filled in, too, on whatever she’d heard about Joe and Mike’s every-other-day work. It sounded as if their father’s recovery was progressing at a slow pace, though Joe seemed to be wanting to do his best. So far his lagging energy level and outlook continued to be a challenge.

And, oh, by the way,
Dru managed to slip in after each report,
when were Bethany and Mike going out?

And Bethany’s friends . . .

Nic and Clair were just as curious in their own supportive way. Never pestering her or asking outright what was going on. But her friends’ just-checking-in texts and IMs had become increasingly persistent. And
someone
had given Mike the phone number to the Douglas house. No one in her family would have done that.

Now he was trying to reach her at Dru and Brad’s, leaving his own messages, asking Bethany to call him back, and adding to the mounting pressure for her to make good on her commitment to see him again. But to be fair, when Bethany had gone hunting for a last-minute sub to cover today’s shift at the Dream Whip, it hadn’t
entirely
been because she’d needed somewhere to hide.

A work slot had suddenly opened up at the Artist Co-op, and she’d jumped at the chance to get on the schedule sooner than her September start date. The co-op used a website calendar system to track free-of-charge work times for its artists. August’s schedule had already been booked when Bethany’s residency was accepted. The loft’s office manager had said to keep checking the system in case a cancellation came up. That morning Bethany had struck gold. Back-to-back day and evening slots were hers if she’d wanted them. So she’d been on her way into the city in under an hour, relieved to be twenty-five miles away from Chandlerville for the day and blissfully working on a new project.

Ten hours later, her new canvas, like all the ones she’d abandoned before it, was mocking her from its easel. Almost making it seem like a blessing when her friends snuck into the loft through the street-level entrance behind another artist heading home for the night.

Almost.

“It’s late,” Nicole reasoned. “Take a break for something to eat at least.”

Bethany shook her head. “The next resident working in this space isn’t due in until morning. I’m going to figure this piece out by then if it kills me.”

“All you’re going to do is keep staring at what you’ve already painted, until you nix it and start over and stare some more.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know it’s what you’ve been doing for months at your sister’s house. Dru said so.”

“Now you’re doing it here,” Clair chimed in.

“This painting doesn’t stand a chance any more than the others,” Nic said. “You’re obsessed with painting something perfect for your parents.”

“An obsession I could live with.” Bethany eyed the canvas she’d been tinkering with since before noon.

Her friends had told her that it was after nine. She’d been staring at her barely begun landscape for she didn’t know how long now. Trying to listen to it. Needing it to speak to her. Needing to feel . . . something from it, besides a void of creativity refusing to inspire her.

“Obsession I could work with. But this . . .” She pointed her brush at her painting. “This is just . . .”

Her work made her feel nothing at all.

And she had absolutely no idea how to get back what she’d once had.

“It’s gorgeous.” Clair flinched at whatever reaction flashed across Bethany’s face. “It’s a gorgeous beginning at least. Come out with us and loosen up. Go home and indulge in that sexy cowboy who’s waiting to woo you. Do
something
besides spending more and more time not liking anything you’re painting.”

“Really,” Nic said. “People are getting worried. Your dad already was, before you cut yourself off from everyone entirely. Now look at you.”

“What?” Bethany glanced down at the floral sundress she’d layered over daisy-patterned tights and her hot-pink high-top Converse sneakers.

Clair took stock of her, too. “Things are getting a little
Night of the Living Dead
, B. Dru said you’ve been on a painting tear since last weekend. Let’s get you in a shower. Get some food into you. Maybe you could sleep a few hours? Let this canvas go for a while.”

“I can’t.”

Bethany couldn’t let another idea—her favorite so far, for her parents’ anniversary—slip away from her.

“What about Mike?” Nicole asked. “How long do you think he’s going to wait for you to stop running yourself ragged, obsessing over whether or not to go out with him?”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Bethany snapped at her friend. “And he said he wouldn’t pressure me.”

“Why would a guy like Mike have to pressure you?” Nic ignored Bethany’s temper and turned her away from her canvas. “He seems really nice. You said so yourself, after you saw how much he wants to help Joe.”

“Enjoy the bounty.” Clair plucked a compact from her purse, opened it, and held the mirror in front of Bethany. “Once your eyes aren’t so bloodshot you can barely keep them open.”

Bethany turned back to her misfit painting. “What’s it going to take to get rid of you two?”

“Don’t bother trying to piss us off by being rude.” Clair pried the paintbrush from Bethany’s hand and tossed it onto the worktable that was covered in tubes of oil paint and the other items Bethany had checked out of the co-op’s supply closet. “We built up an immunity to your brush-offs in high school.”

She rubbed at the aching muscles in Bethany’s hand, the ones that always cramped when she was in the middle of a creative binge.

“Don’t stop,” Bethany groaned, willing to endure her girlfriends’ pushing their way into her current creative crisis, as long as Clair didn’t stop.

“I doubt you’re going to scare your cowboy away, either.” Clair tended to the pressure point in Bethany’s hand, until Bethany wanted to scream in relief.

“The next time you see him,” Nicole said, “do you really want to be sporting the dark circles and six-feet-under skin tone of a zombie? How long do you think you can keep this up?”

“As long as it takes . . .” Bethany sighed, too worn out to keep fighting with her friends. They were just trying to help. And it was entirely possible they knew Bethany better than she knew herself. She winced as Clair hit a particularly tender spot. “Whatever it takes, to show my parents what I see every time I look at the world they gave me, when they agreed to take on the mess that I was at fifteen.”

She didn’t need to sleep. She didn’t need thoughts of Mike distracting her. She didn’t need to be worrying about what would happen when they finally went out for real. She
needed
this painting to make sense.

How did she explain the emptiness inside her where her imagination used to dream in effortless abandon? Or the panic she felt each time it seemed her art would never come back. How did she tell people that if they wanted to worry about something, to worry about who and what she’d become if she lost her creativity for good?

“If I get too tired later,” she said with renewed determination, “I can crash on one of the cots down the hall for a couple of hours.”

The loft was equipped with small sleeping areas for residents, alcoves that were little more than dorm rooms. But they were magical havens with blackout curtains and white-noise machines. Artists who needed to recharge could lock the door and grab a few winks whenever they needed to.

“I have to figure this painting out,” she insisted.

The three of them studied what she’d done so far.

Bethany reclaimed her brush from the cluster of rags she used to mix colors on a palette board, thinning hues out, creating custom tints and textures. She’d wanted to capture the Dixon house this time, instead of leaning into another portrait of the family.

Over the last few months she’d tried and failed to paint her siblings, one by one, and then their parents. She’d also attempted several family groupings—Oliver and Selena and Camille, Dru and Brad, Marsha and Joe and the younger kids. All from photos Marsha had collected over the years. Bethany had wanted to capture each detail. But the perfect reflection of her family that she’d been going for had refused to materialize. Then she’d watched Mike gaze around Marsha and Joe’s living room for the first time . . . and a new idea had sparked to life.

In her latest canvas she’d gone for an interpretation of the Dixon house, instead of painting an exact replica of the home she loved. From memory alone, she’d create her impression of the magical world that had been her fresh start. She’d wanted viewers to feel what she’d watched Mike take in.

She’d wanted to capture the love seeping out of every inch of the place, palpable to anyone who entered Marsha and Joe’s home. The acceptance and belonging, and the way her foster parents had made Bethany and her siblings feel instantly welcome. The second chance Marsha and Joe had tirelessly offered to broken lives that were desperate to become whole.

Bethany had wanted her parents to know what that meant to her, what
they
meant to her and all of her siblings. Even if she still needed to keep her distance sometimes, the world her foster parents had given to her was absolutely everything she’d dreamed family could be.
That
was what she’d hoped to bring to life when she’d started painting this morning.

“I thought you liked things to look more . . .” Clair hesitated.

“Realistic?” Nic ventured.

“Yeah.” Bethany’s gift had always been photorealistic painting. “Not so much anymore.”

Her use of light had come so easily once. As had the pure, simple lines that had emerged so effortlessly. She’d had a natural gift, according to her high school art teacher, for drawing the eye into the very heart of an image—whatever image she’d loved so much, she’d had to capture it—making the viewer believe they were looking at a photograph instead of thousands of brushstrokes. She could remember losing herself in the escape of capturing each of those early moments, never once questioning whether an image would come to life.

For over a year now she’d been fighting to get the technique back, ever since moving to the apartment above Dan’s. She’d thought setting up her studio at Dru’s in January would be the turning point that would seduce her creativity into playing nice. Now she was counting on her residency to kick-start things.

She’d been so excited when she’d hauled a fresh canvas out of the supply closet this morning. She’d picked her paints, going by feel alone. Committed to doing something different with the house and the yard surrounding it, she’d let herself be drawn to less realistic colors. Lighter, brighter, more whimsical hues. The result, once she’d started working, had rendered an almost surreal composition, like nothing she’d ever produced with a landscape. It was as if you could look through the walls and roof of the house, even the trees and shrubbery. The effect was ghostly in a welcoming way she’d hoped would draw the viewer in, the same as her more “accurate” paintings.

She’d started with a deft wash of green against a bright white canvas. Trees and grass and sky had taken ethereal shape in different hues of the same base color, mixed with creams and light pinks. She’d framed the area where a hint of the house currently existed, waiting to take clearer shape once she focused on it.
If
she got around to focusing on it. But every time she tried to execute more of the building itself, amid her otherworldly reflection of the yard surrounding it . . . the perfectly imperfect foster home that had saved her, was
still
saving her, wouldn’t appear.

“It’s going to be pretty,” Clair proclaimed in an overly optimistic way that had Bethany wanting to crawl under her worktable.

“You know,” Nicole amended, “once you’re finished doing whatever you’re doing.”

“I don’t
know
what I’m doing.”

Except it felt as if Bethany were suffocating.