A Promise Worth Remembering (Promises Collection) (5 page)

“No. Doing that would have only made things worse. I had no place to go, Bailey. My father has influence in every facet of Safe Haven except your family.”

She wished he’d have come to her at the time. “Exactly. You should have come to me. Even my uncle would have understood if he’d had the evidence against your father.”

“No way.” He tossed his head back and forth. “I couldn’t risk him hurting you. Besides, being shy of a few months of turning eighteen and graduating, I found other ways to bide my time. The Library. Swimming. You.”

How strange he’d lumped her in with the mundane. How ironic he’d been the one who’d needed to be saved, but had never let on. In truth, she’d done the same since Jesse and her uncle’s deaths. She’d focused on the cats and the meticulous mending of fences. Anything to override the pain of loneliness. “You had no safe haven. I’m sorry. But you still haven’t told me
how
you got the burns or the details of that night.”

“We’re almost at my car.” Tucker turned away, but not before a darkness passed through his stare.

Darkness she’d seen in his eyes when they were younger. She reached up, touched his arm, and pulled him to a stop. “Make peace with the past, Tucker. Isn’t that what you’ve asked from me? So do it. Right here, right now. With me.”

Copper brushed up against her leg as he gazed toward the river where
Kissing Rock
mounded against the preserve. Cottonwood seeds, rounded in cottony puffs, floated around them as if the three of them stood inside a great snow globe.

She lowered her gaze and spotted a watery streak of red wetting her thigh. Unlike Copper who she’d received as a cub, some of her tigers had been confiscated and placed in protective custody on her preserve. Some had suffered at the hands of their masters. People who were supposed to love them, but abused them instead. The preserve was needed protection where her uncle had given the tigers a second chance at happiness—like he had her—and like she now provided the tigers. She let her arms fall to her side and stroked Copper’s head. She would have wanted to provide Tucker shelter—if only he’d have given her that chance. “I wish you’d have risked confiding in me.”

When he glanced to the brush in the background, creases lined the corner of his eyes, his lips, the scissoring of his jaw.

Was he recounting the past the night he’d burned? “Tell me… Please.”

After a long moment, he held her stare. His fingertips ran the length of his gun strap, as if it were an instrument to be strummed. “After I left you that night on the rock, I confronted my father. Told him I loved you and I wasn’t carrying the family feud any further. I expected him to hit my face. He always went for the face—reminded him of my mother, I suppose, the woman who’d broken his heart when she left. But I was ready for him. I don’t think he expected me to fight back. But to win you, I had to be strong. Stronger than him. Quicker than him.” He shook his head and tugged at his shirt, as if the low collar somehow constricted his airflow. “He didn’t like that. He barreled into me and I smacked my head against the fireplace. Got up. Staggered.”

“Oh, God…Tucker.”

“He promised to kill me if I ever saw you again.” His glare locked on hers. “But when he threatened to kill you…that’s when I lost it. I grabbed the fire poker. Thought about killing him.”

When she touched his forearm, his hard stare softened. “But you didn’t.”

“No. I thought of you. You’d never trust me, if I lost control like that. So I made a deal—he’d never see me again if he left you alone. Of course, it was only a ploy to buy some time. I planned to tell you in the morning what had happened. I got in my truck. I had to make him believe that I wasn’t coming back. I couldn’t risk him coming after you. So I drove. Just drove.”

Her hands found his face and her thumbs smoothed away the strain. Strain of the memory. Deep grooves, grooves like the ones she’d watched grow in the mirror over time—worry lines—etched his eyes and forehead. But his, she so desperately wanted to wipe clean and paint a smile there. If only she could erase the past, but she couldn’t. “So he didn’t burn you.”

“No. But I had a concussion from when I hit my head on the fireplace. Before dawn, before I had a chance to call you and explain everything, I crashed my truck. A week later, I woke up in a burn unit in Reno, Nevada.” He swallowed hard. “I’m not sure how much time passed before I realized the seriousness of my injuries or how much time had truly passed as I slipped in and out of consciousness. But I kept my focus on the future. Of coming home to you.”

Her stomach tumbled round and round. As her mouth watered, she swallowed the disappointment in herself. She’d focused on the past for too long when she should have focused on her instinct that he’d truly loved her. That she’d been lied to and led astray by Tucker’s father. Even Uncle Mark.

He took her hand. “As soon as I had the chance, I called you. The first time, I only listened to you breathe before I hung up. The second time, though, my hand shook so hard and my teeth chattered—I didn’t know what to say. How to explain without telling you too much and risk that you’d go after him.”

“I remember the call. And I remember telling you I was fine.” At the memory, her throat tightened
and her eyes stung. “But I wasn’t. Not really.”

He slid his hand around the nape of her neck and drew her close, so he gazed into her eyes. “I knew you weren’t okay. Soon as I could, I came to see you. I had to explain what had happened, and show you, but I couldn’t risk being seen by your uncle or my father. Then I saw Jesse parked outside your house like some night sentry, guarding you.”

She pictured Jesse in his pickup, but the image didn’t fit his personal motto. Had he actually thought about her more deeply than he’d led on? About their future? “You saw Jesse doing what?”

“I’d done the same thing, see. Guy stuff. You’d told him about the call? About me?”

They walked a little further, until the
Kissing Rock
came into view. “I did.”

“That’s when I knew you’d moved on. You confided in him and he’d stepped up to the challenge. He was a good guy. Fun. A better swimmer than me. You needed fun. And I needed you to be safe, not plagued by some unending feud.” His shoulders slumped and his voice faded. “Then you married him.”

Jessie had presented her with hand-picked wild flowers on their first date. And every anniversary he gave her more of the same flowers—Lilies, Larkspur, and Lupine. He’d told her she deserved to be loved. And in turn, she deserved to care for someone who was there in her life. “He was a good man. Good to me, the animals, and my uncle.”

But he wasn’t you, Tucker.

“After I healed physically, I focused on my career, but I never stopped thinking about you.” He glanced at her and his posture grew stout again. “Maybe that drove me to be who I am. What I am… Then I’d heard Jesse had died. I waited—for time to heal your heart like I imagined you’d need.” He looked away. “I waited and hoped I still wouldn’t want you the way I always had, but I did.”

Did
. Past tense. Not
still do
. Her chest squeezed and she forced a deep breath. She lowered her gaze and tried to absorb his past, his pain, his faded promise.

“Then I read in the local paper about the incident on Crooked Bridge and your uncle’s passing. That’s when I made my decision to confront my father. We had a heart to heart, or rather head to head, but he’s sorry for everything. He’s alone and lonely. Controlling every facet of his life and others’ has worn him down. Aged him until—he’s not well. He wants to make things right between our families while there’s still a chance to mend fences—combine properties. If you’ll give me that opportunity.”

She stiffened and pulled back. The Pierce family had used their land as a hunting range for profit. But if she joined in with Tucker, any profit from a joint venture would void her non-profit status and disqualify her to receive grant monies. She couldn’t protect her treasured tigers. The sanctuary would have to close. “You’d go for the land merger, so you could profit off it, right?”

He lifted her hand to his mouth where he placed the lightest kiss, no heavier than the dusting of butterfly wings. “No. I’d do that because, unlike my father, I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog.” He brushed a wet strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “And for one very beautiful preserve owner who I’ve had my eye on since I was seventeen. One I’m not giving up on ever. One she can trust never to break his promises. One who’ll take his time to prove his loyalty starting right here.”

Heat radiated from her chest outward until even her eyes burned, not from the glare off the water three feet away, but from Tucker’s offer of a
future
she’d only dreamed of.

How could she put her trust in him over her future when something or someone had always stood in the way of what she’d wanted? A loving family, her mother had destroyed. A gentle hug, when her uncle dished out cynicism. Peace, when Tucker’s father targeted her every move. Not to mention the hunters. Even
Kissing Rock
left her distracted with memories of the past. No wonder Jesse had joked that she needed to live for the day. Instead, she’d filled her thoughts and time with memories from the past.

The past is safe.

She wasn’t ready to move forward. Well, with her breeding program, definitely, and the land merger, maybe, but not with Tucker on a romantic level and risk heartbreak all over again. Something or someone would tear them apart.

With his elbow, he nudged her shoulder. “And here I stand.”

She stared not at him, but somewhere in between, as numbness filled the void inside her. “Your father knew all this time where you were and pretended that you’d gone off to make a life of your own like some fairytale? Knew we had a relationship. That I loved you and you me, and still said nothing.”

With a thumb, he stroked her cheek. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“No,” she choked out, pushing her words past the lump in her throat. “It’s unforgivable.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It is. He never once came to see me. At least not that I know of. But I’m the one who ran away when I should have trusted you. I’m the one who’s unforgivable.”

At his statement, she placed a hand on his chest and his pulse slammed against her palm. Before she could protest, he crushed his lips against hers. Like the falls in the distance, crashing over jagged boulders made smooth by years of both harsh and gentle currents, over time he’d helped to mold her into someone who could endure almost anything. But also into a woman who could support a man like Tucker. She didn’t need protecting. She was no longer that innocent girl. But one who could soothe even the wildest beast.

She leaned into his kiss and drank him down. She wanted him and had never stopped. He was a man worth loving, worth forgiving, worth trusting if only she could convince her heart. She linked her hands around his neck to form an open loop, teetering on the verge of letting him inside.

He gripped her waist and curled over her. His hot breath raced over her neck and stole the oxygen from the air and replaced it with…love?

Caution waged inside her as prickly as thorns. He’d risked his life for her, but did she dare risk her heart?

With a reluctance she didn’t want to admit, she eased back and he unfurled his arms. She glanced down to see Copper’s eyes had a glazed look. Her body snapped straight and her tummy squeezed. She’d ignored her prized tiger. “I need to call Raymond, so he can help me get Copper back.”

“I’ll drive to the house and call him myself. But I don’t want you to worry about Copper too much. He’ll be okay.”

As Tucker bent down to inspect Copper’s wound, she caught a glimpse of Tucker’s pant leg still hung up on the back of his boot.

Her head spun. She’d loved Tucker too hard. Like Copper when she’d called out to him, she’d distracted Tucker to the point he’d nearly died. Or so she assumed by the severity of his scars. Her existence seemed to ruin people’s lives. She’d ruined her mother’s life, or so her mother had claimed. And she’d always felt like a burden to her uncle. Had she caused Jesse’s motorcycle accident by distracting him while she drove behind him in her car?

She glanced at
Kissing Rock
on the opposite side of the riverbank. Sitting there so steady. Had for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. Safely grounded in the past.

Copper chuffed at the other tigers that now brushed up against the fencing across the river. Then he padded to stand beside her near the embankment edge.

The hole was someplace close to where she’d first seen Copper’s paw prints. Hidden by the thicket, but the other cats could escape at any moment. They’d follow Copper’s scent. Near her feet, the shallow water exposed a clear trail of hop rocks leading to the other side. Her backpack with the fence repair tools still lay tucked up against the
Rock
. In two minutes, she could cross the river. Copper would follow her across the step-stone path. “I have to find and fix that opening in the fence before the other tigers find their way out.”

“What if you fall? What if Copper falls?” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Let me drive you.”

His grip tightened, as if in doing so he’d convince her to stay. But she’d never persuade Copper to get inside Tucker’s SUV. Truck’s bed or Jeep maybe, if she drove, but never inside a box. “No. We’ll be fine. Besides, I’m better off alone.”