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Authors: A Bride Worth Waiting For

BOOK: Cara Colter
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“I need to know.”
“Adam—”
“Please.” He heard the pleading in his own voice, and was ashamed of it.
“It wasn’t about you, Adam, or about Mark either. It was about me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I could have never made you happy.”
“You couldn’t have
made
me happy?”
“No.”
“Since when had I ever asked you to make me happy? People don’t make each other happy.”
“Let me word this another way. You would not have been happy with me.”
“How can you say that?”
“Adam, I’m boring. I have always been boring. I probably always will be.”
He stared at her. “You? Boring?”
“You asked me on an impulse. You hadn’t thought it through. At all.”
“I never thought of anything else. Not since I was twelve years old.”
“You were probably feeling all hot and sexy and thinking if I said yes we could just progress to the nearest motel.”
“I never thought of you as a motel kind of girl,” he said grimly. Though he couldn’t deny the rest of it. He’d been twenty-two years old. He’d thought of sex all of the time.
“Adam, I am trying to tell you I am the most ordinary of women.”
“You’re not!”
“Yes, I am.”
They were arguing. He realized they were standing out here in the dark arguing over things that were over and done with. It served no purpose at all—all it did was make the blood drain from her face and the freckles stand out on her nose.
He wanted to shake her. Victoria Bradbury ordinary!
Victoria Mitchell, he reminded himself.
“Get on the damn bike,” he said.
She did, her nose stuck in the air.
He thrust his weight down on the kick start with savage strength. He couldn’t wait to leave her behind forever. To get on that plane for Toronto and forget he had ever met this aggravating, annoying, frustrating, galling woman!
His energetic jump on the kick starter was rewarded with a strange, hollow thanking sound. Nothing more.
He drove his leg down on the kick start again, and again heard only the empty clunk. He looked up at the stars. And it was his turn to think he heard Mark laughing.
Chapter Nine
A
dam watched Tory cross the driveway and go up the steps to the cabin. Her nose was still pointed toward the stars and her hips were swishing. She unlocked the door and went in and the screen slapped closed behind her.
He turned the flashlight on the bike.
The truth was this kind of problem was something of a relief.
He knew motorcycles and he knew how to fix them.
For the first time in five days he was entering his comfort zone. Problems were his specialty. You pitted your experience and intellect against them and you solved them.
Legal problems. Mechanical problems.
Now those other kind—like the kind that had just sashayed into she house—those were utterly baffling to him.
Problems that dealt with feelings were untidy things. Not cut-and-dried and neat at all.
A little whistle on his lips, he found the bike’s tool kit, strung the flashlight from a tree branch so it illuminated his work area, and went to it.
It was freezing in the cabin. Through the screen door Tory could hear him whistling. “Jingle Bells.” An appropriate choice since it felt as if it might start snowing at any minute.
He actually seemed happy to be out there taking that motorbike to pieces.
Which made her furious with him. How could he bring up that awful night, and then dismiss it at the first clunk of a mechanical problem.
She went out the back door to his freshly cut woodpile and loaded up. She dumped the load in front of the wood stove in the cabin, and crumpled up newspaper with far more force than was necessary. She added kindling and struck a match.
Actually, that night had not been awful. It had been absolute magic. She had felt as if she could reach up and touch the stars that had shone in the sky above them. She had felt like they were explorers of the universe, hurtling through space. She had felt an extraordinary kinship with him, though not one word had passed between them since he had hauled her out her bedroom window.
She had felt as if she could
feel
his spirit soaring, kicking up its heels like a colt let out on a green pasture. His confidence about himself and about life showed in the effortless way he controlled the powerful machine.
In university once, in a class whose name she had long since forgotten, the professor had talked about peak experiences—called that because that was what mountain climbers felt when they reached the peak they had struggled toward.
And she would look back on that night always as that. A peak experience.
The part when he had asked her to marry him was the most exhilarating of all—like pulling incredibly clean, pure air into her lungs from the very top of the world. Like standing on the edge of a cliff, hurtling herself off and making the splendid discovery she could fly.
For that moment she had felt joy such as she had never known it.
Even now she could picture him exactly. Moonlight dancing off dark hair, his broad shoulders relaxed under the dark leather of his jacket, faded jeans hugging muscular thighs. She could see his eyes, dark and enigmatic, focused so intently on her it still could make her shiver all these years later.
She had looked at his hands, powerful and wellshaped, and for a moment allowed herself to think what marrying him would actually mean. The things they could do together. The places those hands would go.
She had accused him, just a few minutes ago, of being motivated in his proposal by feeling hot and sexy. Maybe he hadn’t felt those things at all that night. Maybe it had been just her. She had read the expression “swooning” in books, and had thought it was absolute nonsense, the domain of weak-witted ninnies.
But that night, looking at him, wanting him, feeling a primal fire burning within her, she had come very close. To swooning.
Maybe it was that very loss of her customary control that had brought her back to her senses. And made her look beyond the glory of Adam in moonlight. Adam was impulsive. Much of his charm came from the ability to give himself, with complete spontaneity, to what any given moment offered. He was a guy who could turn a trip to the grocery store for milk into a laughter-filled adventure. He was the guy who could make dullest moments bright.
He did what felt good in the moment, and in that moment, with no more thought than he had given to jumping his bicycle over a cliff, he had asked her to marry him.
Thinking perhaps to capture the magic of the night for all time. If it had been another girl riding behind him, would he have asked her, too? Who knew what he had thought?
She only knew after that flash of joy, after that struggle to douse the flames of passion that threatened her to her soul, came doubt after doubt after doubt.
Her parents were her models of how to behave, and as far as she could tell, they had never done anything impulsively.
But tonight he had said he had wanted nothing else since he was twelve. That it had not been an impulse at all.
And at dinner the other night, it had been embarrassingly obvious that her parents would have no objection now if she married Adam.
She suspected it might have been a different story back then.
Tory snorted, and shoved a larger log onto the licking flame. As if anybody started planning who they would marry when they were twelve. And yet she could not bring herself to call him a liar, because that was one thing Adam had never, ever been.
Besides, in the end it had not been his character that had made the decision for her, but her own.
What she had said to him tonight was the absolute truth: she saw herself as an ordinary girl back then, not up to the challenges of leading a life of excitement and high adventure.
She had thought he would travel the world and climb the Himalayas. She had thought he might ride the high plains on half-broken horses. She had thought he would learn to surf in the warm waters of Hawaii and learn to speak Spanish. In Spain. She had thought he would consult on oil-well fires or travel to the Far East to learn Buddhism from the Dalai Lama.
She had thought he would lead a life that did not have room for someone like her. Someone who would stifle him. Who would be afraid to bungee-jump from the bridge or trek through the jungle. Someone who had to eat at eight and noon and seven. Someone who liked clean sheets and the same bed.
She had wanted stability.
And Adam had not seemed like the one who could give it to her.
The quiet love she had for Mark had seemed like the lasting kind, so close to the kind of love her parents had enjoyed for so many years. The kind that would help her raise children. The kind that would see them growing old together side by side in their rooking chairs.
Outside, a wrench hit the ground with a clatter.
Not on their motorcycles!
The fire blazed, and she felt suddenly tired. Worn out completely from the constant demands on her emotions that the last five days had made.
When she went to find a place to lay down her weary head, she found the rest of the cabin was still unbearably cold, so she tugged a mattress off a bed and brought it in front of the fire. She searched the cabin, but found only the one blanket that she had been wrapped in outside, and so she laid it on the mattress and crawled underneath it.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to go to sleep.
Instead she thought of that letter Mark had sent Adam.
It hurt her that Mark had thought she loved Adam better than him.
Differently,
she defended herself. Not better, but differently.
She heard a long string of curse words from outside and could not help but smile.
And then, suddenly, without warning, she knew the truth.
Not differently.
She had loved Adam better. Always.
The tears gathered behind her eyes, and spilled down her cheeks, as she contemplated this betrayal and the fact that Mark had known.
She had loved Adam better, and been afraid of the intensity of that love. Been afraid of the mountain tops Adam brought her to. Been afraid of falling from such dizzying heights.
What did any of it matter now?
He was leaving.
If it went for that stupid bike out there, he’d almost be gone.
Why look at the past?
And then she knew. She had to look at it before she could move on, before she could have a future.
She had to acknowledge this wild and reckless side of herself that was so much like Adam’s. Her repressed side.
The side of her that had wanted to say yes—to mountain climbing and bronc riding and exploring the whole world with a knapsack on her back. The part of her that had said yes, once, to that spontaneous motorcycle ride at four in the morning. And known then, with fear and exhilaration, that the world as she knew it was limited, and that he could open it up for her beyond her wildest dreams.
The tears still wet on her cheeks, she thought again of that letter.
She knows a little more about the nature of life, now. She won’t be afraid to take what it offers her.
But she was.
Not, she reminded herself, that it had offered her anything.
Adam had fulfilled his
obligation
to her. And offered her nothing beyond that. Except a little glimpse of her own soul.
And his. How could he have wanted nothing else but to marry her since he was twelve?
An hour passed, and sleep did not come. She put more wood on the fire and listened to him alternate between whistling “Jingle Bells” and cussing. She suspected he was in his element.
Another hour passed, and she dozed and woke, and dozed and woke.
When she woke again, he was standing in the doorway, rubbing his hands together, blowing on them. She could see he was shivering, and then she heard the rain falling on the roof of the cabin.
“Is the motorcycle fixed?” she asked sleepily.
“No.”
He came over to her, and looked down, and smiled.
He had a streak of grease across his cheek, and in that smile was something so intimate and unguarded that it felt like it would keep her warm forever.
“Come to bed, Adam,” she said. “We’ll think of it in the morning.”
He stiffened, and looked around. “Bed? You mean with you?”
She laughed softly. “This is the only blanket. And the only fire. And you look frozen.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he growled.
“I’m going to sleep,” she told him sternly. “And so are you.”
He glared down at her.
Her heart beat wildly. She really was playing with fire. And a part of her wanted this. To torment him. To drive him over the edge of his control. To own him physically. And even while a part of her wanted it so badly it felt as though her heart had stopped in her chest, her spirit told her no. That she could never have Adam in that way. To have him physically
only
would never soothe that part of her soul that craved to have him completely.
That part of her that had craved him since she was twelve years old.
She closed her eyes against the utter temptation of him. Closed her eyes against the way he stood, so strong, so sure, so big, so male. Closed her eyes against the slow fire that burned in his own eyes.
He stomped off and a minute later she heard water running.
And then he was back, his chest naked, his damp jeans clinging to the hard muscles of his legs.
Even she was not going to tempt fate to the extent of telling him to take those pants off.
He folded back the blanket and slid under the cover.
She could feel the warmth of his skin, though he did not touch her. He smelled of rain and motors, and it was intoxicating.
His chest was broader and deeper than she remembered it being all those years ago, each muscle exquisitely carved. His skin looked like bronze in the firelight and begged the touch of her fingers. She curled them into fists at her sides.
“What’s wrong with the motorcycle?” she whispered.
“Damned if I know.”
She heard the hoarseness in his voice and knew he wanted to touch her, and the heady sensation of power almost overruled her deeply felt sense that she could not, ever, have him in just this way, and survive it.
“When did it start raining?” she asked, trying to create a casual conversation that would get her head working harder than her hormones.
“About an hour ago.”
Terse. Uncooperative.
And then she knew. She did not know if it would ever be possible to have Adam the way she desired him: heart, soul, mind. Body. But she knew that something between them was broken, and that she had to do her part to fix it.

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