Leave it for the Rain: A Love She Couldn't Remember—A Woman He Couldn't Forget (Grayson Brothers Book 6) (3 page)

Barefoot, Rebecca Grayson pirouetted across the wood floor of her bedroom, dreaming of dancing in Adam’s arms on their wedding day little more than a month away.

After months and years of sporadic, too-short visits home, Adam would finally be back to stay—to
marry
her and begin living the life they had dreamt about for so long.

She folded his letter—the last one he’d sent to her—and placed it inside a wooden chest filled with his correspondence and her journals. Adam had created the cedar chest for her six years earlier, before he’d left for university. Neither of them could have anticipated that the trunk would contain six years’ worth of letters filled with heartache and longing before he would return home and make her his wife.

But he was truly coming home, and she would be meeting him at their willow tree tomorrow evening. She ached to feel his strong arms around her, to press her face to his neck and inhale the pine and cedar scent of him, to experience the wonderful feel of his lips upon hers.

Sighing, she swept a brush through her long, thick hair, daydreaming about their love. With efficient skill, she twisted the ebony waves into a chignon and pinned it in place. Above it, she added a tortoise shell hair comb that Adam had given to her last year on her twenty-third birthday. Tomorrow, when Adam returned, she would leave her hair down, the way he liked it best.

Their local veterinarian, Calvin Uldridge—with whom she’d been apprenticing the last several years—would be here soon. Although he’d been opposed to teaching a woman his trade, he acquiesced when Rebecca demonstrated her special skill with horses—a skill she’d acquired from her mother, Evelyn Tucker Grayson. Her mother had grown up working in her father’s livery and had eventually inherited it.

Rebecca drew on her worn riding habit and then floated downstairs on a cloud of happiness. One more day and she and Adam would finally...
finally
be together.

Her father, along with Will, the eldest of her brothers, had already left for the sawmill. Her mother, dressed in a simple green frock and brown and beige checkered apron, was putting eggs, biscuits, and fresh milk on the table for Hannah, Tyler, and Sarah, Rebecca’s younger siblings, who would be off to school shortly. Little Emma was still sleeping, but she would be up before long, dogging Rebecca’s and her mother’s heels and asking a hundred questions as they worked in the livery.

In that moment, Rebecca suddenly glimpsed her life years from now. She would have her own family with Adam. She would cook them breakfast in her own kitchen and would eventually send her babies off to school and university or marriage.

“Good morning,” her mother said, her eyes twinkling at Rebecca as she placed the glasses on the table “Someone is all smiles this morning.”

Rebecca swept her mother into her arms for a hug and a twirl around the kitchen. “Adam’s coming home tomorrow, Mama!”

Her mother’s laughter filled the room, and they ended their impromptu dance with an exuberant hug. “I’m happy for you, sweetheart. You’ve been waiting a long time.”

Dark-haired, fair-skinned with eyes as green as emeralds, her mother was a beautiful woman who possessed a youthful energy that Rebecca hoped she never lost.

“I’ve been waiting too long,” Rebecca said, her heart begging release from the emptiness and yearning that haunted her days. “I’m fast becoming an old maid.” Rebecca scrunched up her face and hunched her back, cackling like a madwoman at her younger siblings.

They giggled and looked at each other as if she was getting dotty.

“What are you laughing at?” Rebecca asked her ten-year-old sister, Hannah, a little brown-eyed beauty. “It won’t be long before you’re eager to see your own beau.”

“Ewww,” Hannah said. “Boys are pests.”

“They can be,” Rebecca agreed, and laughed at Tyler’s offended frown.

“We’re only pests ‘cause you girls won’t leave us be,” Ty said.

He was extremely bright and worldly for an eight-year-old, something Rebecca attributed to his spending too much time with his older brothers. Will and Joshua frequently forgot that Ty was years younger than the two of them and that their conversations were inappropriate for a boy his age.

Rebecca smiled at the children she was helping to raise. “I’m going to miss you little sass-buckets when I marry Adam and move to my own house.”

“I’m not a sass-bucket!” Sarah said, spilling her scrambled eggs off her fork.

“I was jesting, sweetie.” Rebecca planted a kiss on the top of Sarah’s head of brown silky curls. “You’re sweet as Mama’s apple pie, and I’m hoping you and Hannah will help me take care of my babies when I have them.”

“I take care of Emma already, don’t I?” Sarah asked, shifting her green gaze in search of their mother’s confirmation. At six, all pigtails and innocence, Sarah was already a charmer.

“You certainly do.” Their mother picked up Tyler’s empty plate. “I don’t know what I’d do without your help.”

“I help, too,” Ty grumbled.

Their mother pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. “Of course you do. With your father and brothers at the mill so often, you’re my man around here. ”

His cheeks flamed and he shot out of his chair, heading toward the door.

She caught his shoulder and turned him toward the stairs. “Please tell Joshua if he isn’t up and dressed in five minutes I’ll be in to wake him up.”

Rebecca smiled at the warning note in her mother’s voice. She was a sweet and loving mama to all of them, but at one time or another they had all learned the danger of making her angry.

“I won’t be eating this morning,” Rebecca said. “I have to check on Star before Mr. Uldridge gets here.”

“Take a biscuit with you,” her mother suggested. “Calvin will wait, especially if you take a biscuit for him, too.”

So Rebecca headed to the livery with two biscuits and a heart filled with love. She was blessed in more ways than any single person deserved, and she felt deeply grateful for all she had.

Adam’s life had been the opposite and extremely difficult. Their friend Leo’s life had been even worse, which was almost impossible for her to imagine. When she and Adam had found Leo and Benny hiding in the greenhouse on a frigid winter evening it changed Rebecca’s world. Leo and his baby brother were orphans with no place to go. They didn’t even have proper clothing to keep them warm. They were all much better off now, but their difficult circumstances made Rebecca realize how fortunate she was to have such a loving family—and how desperately she wanted one of her own.

o0o

On Thursday Adam finally arrived home. The village of Fredonia with its twin parks, two-story brick buildings, and towering maple trees was a welcome sight for Adam. He was home and seeing the little village through new eyes—the eyes of a confident man who had witnessed and learned much, who was no longer that scared boy who had come here with his family seeking safety a decade earlier.

Flowering magnolia, crabapple, and leafy maple trees lined Liberty Street, offering floral-scented shade to the homes he passed on his way to Grayson’s Livery—and the one woman he’d been aching to return to.

Heart pounding, Adam approached the white two-story house Rebecca shared with her six siblings and their parents Radford and Evelyn Grayson. The wide front porch with a black spindle railing and four large support columns beckoned him to sit a spell. But he was headed for the big barn and livery out back that would soon need a fresh coat of paint. A garden to the left of the barn had been freshly tilled and was ready for planting. To the right of the livery, a large paddock ran across the yard and circled back behind the barn.

A warm spring breeze, scented by the fragrant lilac bushes bordering their property, urged Adam forward. New lime-green leaves were making an appearance on the massive, sprawling oak tree in their side yard, a place Adam had spent many happy hours with Rebecca and her family.

In New York, May was a time of birth and awakening, a time for new beginnings, a time for Adam and Rebecca to finally begin their life together.

In one month she would be his wife.

In one minute she would be in his arms.

His heartbeat doubled as he dropped his bags by the stone fence that girded their property. He strode into the yard and moved past the quiet house. The red double doors at the front of the livery were open, but he knew without looking that Rebecca would be outside. He rounded the livery and went to the large paddock. In the early afternoon, Rebecca would be there training and tending her beloved horses.

Adam knew it as surely as he knew he was never going to leave her again.

He found her standing in the patchy grass, working with her black mare, talking to Star as if the horse understood every loving word she spoke. Rebecca’s shiny mass of onyx-colored hair, loosely bound with a blue ribbon, draped her shoulder and shirtwaist like a silk sash. Her brown skirt, shortened four inches to keep it out of the dirt and off the livery floor, showed a good bit of her leather boots, faded and worn in pursuit of her passion. She was wonderfully disheveled and vibrantly alive.

“Rebecca?” he called softly, careful not to startle her black mare.

She spun on her boot heel, the question in her eyes fading in the instant she saw him. Not a word or a smile moved her beautiful lips as she dropped the curry brush and crossed the rutted ground of the paddock, moving directly toward him.

Adam leapt the split rail fence and met her beneath a low-limbed maple tree.

Emotion pumped through him, but not a sound left his mouth. What he felt was too big, as if he were a schooner navigating an ocean, riding one massive swell of feeling after another.

He gazed into her brown eyes, seeing her love and her pain, knowing he was the cause of both.

Wordlessly, they reached for each other, their fingers lacing. Gazes locked, their surging emotions made them tremble.

Robins twittered in the distance and a bee buzzed around a limb above their heads. Rebecca’s sleek black mare nickered from the far corner of the paddock as if welcoming him home. A light breeze swept a strand of Rebecca’s long hair across her cheek, and he watched it flirt with her collarbone and the rapid pulse beating in her throat.

The breeze came off Lake Erie and Canadaway Creek where he and Rebecca once played—where they still met when he came home. The memory of her then and the sight of her now blended together in his head like a wild, wonderful painting.

She brushed the pad of her thumb over his abraded knuckles, her eyes taking in everything, her silence telling him that she noticed his wounds... that she knew something had happened that changed him. Gently, she raised his palm to her chest and pressed it above her thudding heart. That simple gesture of love and understanding was his undoing.

He swept her into his arms, aching to kiss her, knowing he couldn’t. “I’ve missed you so,” he whispered.

“Oh, Adam... it’s been unbearable,” she said, her sweet, soft voice filling his ears as it had filled his dreams.

He nodded and pressed his face into her hair, missing the wonderful scent of lavender and hay and fresh air that was Rebecca.

“I thought we were going to meet at the Willow this evening,” she said, her face tucked in the crook of his neck as if she, too, needed to immerse herself in his scent, his warmth, his love.

“I couldn’t wait another minute,” he whispered, his throat clogged by emotions he couldn’t swallow. He grieved the time they had lost. He celebrated their reunion and anticipated their future... and he wanted this moment to last forever. “I hope you’ll meet me this evening.”

“Nothing could keep me away,” she said, returning his enthusiastic hug.

“Your father would if he knew you were sneaking off without an escort.”

“He won’t know. And besides,” she said, leaning back in Adam’s arms, “We’ll do nothing improper, will we?”

Surprised, he raised his eyebrows. “Have we ever?”

“No, Adam.” She placed her palm on his chest, killing him with her touch. “You’re an honorable, remarkable man. Thankfully, you’ve been strong enough to protect both of us. But I’m years beyond the point of wanting protection. I want to be with you and begin our married life together.”

He groaned. “It’s all I’ve been able to think about these past seven months.” He stepped back and clasped her work-roughened, loving hands in his own. “I’m glad I found you alone.”

“Me, too.” Rebecca gazed up at him, her brown eyes sparkling with love. “Mama’s in the house putting Emma down for a nap. The younger kids are at school, and Will and Daddy are at the mill again today.”

A thrill shot through Adam. He would return to the mill tomorrow—as a partner. He’d been adopted into the Grayson family, but he’d
earned
his way into a partnership at the mill. The Grayson brothers—Rebecca’s father, Radford; Adam’s adopted father, Duke; and their brothers, Kyle and Boyd—had several sons between them, but Adam was the eldest and the one who would lead the way for the next generation of Graysons wanting to follow the footsteps of their fathers into the sawmilling business. To become worthy of that position, Adam had gone to university and apprenticed at Crane and Grayson, and though it was at great sacrifice to his heart, he’d become a worldly man capable of running the prosperous mill business—and providing for Rebecca and the family they would soon begin.