Picture Perfect Wedding (17 page)

Erin slowly rubbed her foot against his calf and beamed. “Thank you. You’re looking at the Erin Davis touch.” The pride in her voice was unmistakable.

“You mean you use Photoshop?”

She slapped his chest indignantly. “No, I do not.”

He quirked a brow.

“Only to even out skin tones because no one needs acne on their wedding-day photos. What I’m talking about is the inner glow Jenna has. It radiates from her, doesn’t it? It’s why you keep looking at it.”

“She looks hopeful and optimistic.” Two things he missed.

“She does, but fifteen minutes before I took that shot, she was in a furious argument with her mother.”

He rolled onto his side to face her. “So really, this isn’t a true depiction of her day at all.”

“You think she wants to be reminded of how her mother tried to control her wedding?” Her voice developed an edge. “My job is to show happiness and to that end I can and will make any bride look happy. Life has enough crap and sadness in it and I refuse to record it.”

Show happiness.
He stroked her hair as her words blasted into him. Shouldn’t that be showing love? “Has your life had crap and sadness in it?”

She stiffened against him. “Oh, you know, divorce, bankruptcy, just the usual stuff.”

He knew about manageable debt but he’d not experienced the other things. Had she? The idea that she might have been married surprised him. Drawing back slightly, he looked into her eyes for clues. “You’re divorced?”

She shook her head. “God, no. That would mean I was once dumb enough to get married. No, it was my parents who got divorced.”

He understood her feelings on marriage as they mirrored his own, but something made him think of her tattoo. “Because of the bankruptcy?”

“Sort of. It was the final straw in a long line of financial indiscretions.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

She wriggled her nose. “It’s all pretty boring, really.”

He doubted that. “Try me.”

She met his gaze, her eyes swirling with a thousand thoughts and then she moved into him, resting her forehead on his chest. The hair on the back of her head tickled his nose and he fully expected her to change the subject.

“My father calls himself an entrepreneur.” Her voice was muffled against his skin. “My mother calls him a gambler.”

He stroked her hair. “Horses? Slots?”

“Nope. Businesses.” Her sigh rolled the length of her body and she flipped onto her back but her legs stayed tangled with his. “High risk with big returns. Only, there’s a massive downside to businesses like that.”

Her fingers fiddled with the top sheet as if she was having an internal argument. Silence played out between them and then, slowly, she started talking again. “Financial highs and lows punctuated our lives. I’ve only got snapshot memories from when I was young. Stuff like Mom giving me clothes to wear that I knew had belonged to my cousins and the look on her face, which was at odds with her words when she told me I was lucky because they were mine now.”

She blew out a breath. “I remember being woken up at night by the sound of raised voices and if I wasn’t trying to soothe my crying baby brother, I was cuddling up to my teddy bear to try and block out the sound. They’re only vague recollections, though, because when I was in the fourth grade we moved to Highland Park.”

“Where’s that?”

“A leafy Chicago suburb. We had a big house with a yard and a swing hanging from an old oak tree. I went to private school and I grew up with pretty much everything a preteen and teen girl could want.”

He thought about her clothes. “Pink everything?”

She gave a wry smile. “Pink and purple did feature some, yes.”

He reached out to trace the length of her arm. “Did everything include a camera?”

“It did.” The smile in her voice wrapped around him. “Dad bought me my first camera at ten and it was pretty much love at first sight. There’s something about being able to isolate a moment in time and—”

She sat up abruptly, pulled on his T-shirt and padded into the other room.

He tugged on his pants and followed, finding her sitting at the counter eating ice cream. He sat down next to her, accepted the proffered spoon and squeezed her hand. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was a story that needed ice cream.”

She grimaced. “It’s a story that needs Jack but I don’t have any.”

Looking at the pain in her eyes he knew he should say
if it’s going to upset you
,
you don’t have to tell me.
Only he knew he couldn’t say that because he really wanted to know her story.

While he waited for her to start talking again, he sampled the ice cream. He’d always loved ice cream and he savored it with the same concentration that a sommelier tasted wine. It was good but nothing startling and he thought it could have been a lot creamier and the flavor more pronounced.

Erin twirled her spoon in her fingers. “When I was fourteen, the arguments started again. My mother always looked drawn and strained and Dad was away a lot. I retreated. I spent lots of time taking photos of my friends, of people having fun doing crazy things and I spent even more time in my darkroom developing them, even though by then I had a digital camera. I still love using film.” She scooped up more ice cream and sighed. “Just after my fifteenth birthday I came home to find a massive moving van parked out front and three burly guys marching all our possessions, including my cameras, out of the house. My father had gone to ground, leaving Mom to deal with the trauma and the embarrassment of losing everything while our neighbors stood on the sidewalk watching.”

He knew farmers who’d been forced off their land but he could only imagine the gut-wrenching trauma of losing everything. He didn’t know what to say. Sorry sounded lame so he pressed a kiss into her hair.

She blinked three or four times and ate more ice cream. “We had our clothes and that was about it. Without money, I had to change schools and obviously we had to move out of the area. Every connection I’d ever known, the camera club, Girl Scouts, school friends, all got severed. I learned really fast about the differences between true friendship and acquaintances. Tragically, so did my mother. We spent a month with my grandparents and then Dad showed up. I hated what he’d done to us but it took him less than two weeks to convince Mom we needed to be together as a family.”

She snorted. “So started three years of constant moving. I went to five high schools as we traipsed across the country with Dad, following the next
surefire thing.
”

“And did he find it?”

She nodded. “He did, but by then my mother had collapsed from emotional exhaustion and had spent time in the hospital. She never really recovered and she died crossing the street one day when she stepped out in front of a truck. Jesse and I ended up living with Mom’s sister and I went to community college.”

“And your dad?”

“He dropped in and out of our lives but I haven’t seen him in three years.” She bit her lip. “It’s better that way. It saves me hoping he’s changed and then getting hurt again.”

He didn’t know what to say. Right now things were rough between him and his father but just the thought of not seeing him hurt. Then again, Vernon hadn’t monumentally let him down.

Raising her head she looked straight at him, daring him not to pity her. “So that’s my sorry story but I promise you, I am
never
going to be put in a situation like that again. Ever.”

In her eyes he glimpsed the hurt, angry and bewildered fifteen-year-old who’d lost everything secure in her life. Now her tattoo and driving work ethic made total sense and so did her lovely clothes. After years of hand-me-downs he understood her need to wear clothes that she’d chosen. He, on the other hand, had grown up surrounded by stability—something he’d never really thought about much until recently when the solidness of the farm had started suffocating him.

He slid off the stool and drew her into his arms. Unlike other times when her body touched his and he instantly went hard and all his thoughts were about burying himself deep inside her, this time he had an irrational need to just hold her. Keep her safe and sheltered.

“Ah, Luke.” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “Too tight. You’re suffocating me.”

“Sorry.” With a jolt of panic, he realized what he was doing and dropped his arms.

She rubbed her upper arms against the potential bruise from his crushing hug. “No, I’m sorry. This is a perfect example of why I don’t tell people that story. That and I can’t afford the ice cream calorie consumption.” Her laugh held strain. “We need to lift the mood by finding happy and I know exactly where to find it.”

Her hands trailed down his chest and slid under the waistband of his pants until she was stroking him and all coherent thought fled. He stumbled backward, pulling her with him to the couch. He fell back but she didn’t follow. Instead, she kneeled between his knees.

He’d expected sex but the fact she was suggesting oral sex both excited and surprised him. She’d always been generous in bed, but she’d not initiated a blowjob before. Something made him say, “I don’t expect this. You don’t have to.”

She pursed her lips. “Maybe I just want to.”

With a sharp jerk, she tugged his pants out of the way and then starting using her hands, mouth and teeth in a wicked yet determined combination. Silver spots spun across his vision.

His blood grew thick with pulsing need and he felt himself starting to spiral up into the pleasure whirl. His hands sought her hair, desperate to touch her, to feel her skin under his hands, to connect with her. He hadn’t realized how important that was to him until this very second but she shook his hands away and her mouth took him deeper.

Any regret that he wasn’t holding her fell away as his body took over, drowning in the rising, exquisite sensations and canceling all coherent thought. As every muscle in his body teetered on the edge of oblivion, she glanced up at him, her eyes overly bright, glittering green and swirling with memories.

He tumbled into the orgasm knowing she’d just used him to block out her past.

* * *

With the afternoon sunshine streaming in through the car window, Martha glanced across at the profile of her husband of thirty-six years. His hair, once as golden as ripened wheat, was now white but it was still as thick today as it ever had been. A life spent outdoors gave him a healthy tan and he was as fit as when she’d met him at the state fair all those years ago. She put her hand on his jean-clad thigh. He immediately covered it with his own and smiled before returning his gaze to the road ahead.

She sighed. “It was nice to visit with Gwen and have some time away from the farm.”

“You’ve had eleven months off of the farm,” Vern said mildly.

“I know, but these last few weeks haven’t quite been the vacation I imagined.”

Vern didn’t reply but she noticed his jaw stiffen. Since arriving back in Wisconsin, her husband had been tense and irritable. She’d put it down to him missing his golf games. For a man who’d retired, he still rose every morning at dawn like he’d always done, only in Arizona he’d exchanged milking for golf. Now it was the other way around.

She gently squeezed his thigh. “Have you gotten any further with Luke, finding out what his plans are?”

Vernon thumped the steering wheel. “That boy doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

She withdrew her hand. “You know that isn’t so. Something’s bothering him and we need to find out what it is. I’ve tried but no luck. I hoped he’d tell you.”

“He’s not saying squat.”

Just like you.
Over the years she’d learned to ride out the times when Vern closed down. Early in their marriage she’d believed his distracted silences were the result of something she’d said or done to upset him, but with time and maturity came understanding. Nine times out of ten his silences had nothing to do with her and were usually related to a problem on the farm. It had taken her a long time to work out that those silences meant he was thinking—working his way through issues such as why the tractor wouldn’t start, why his best milker was off her feed and, in the early days when money was tight, how he’d manage to pay the vet’s bill or the bank. He’d be so busy working out the problem that he’d completely tune out everything else.

“Do you think it’s the farm, Vern? Is he losing money?”

He shook his head. “The books look good and his changes to the parlor have made milking easier.”

Martha heard the grudging respect in his voice. “Then what can it be?”

“Dunno, but what I do know is, we’re gonna have to move back here.”

No!
Her heart hammered hard against her chest as trepidation settled in. “But this is our time.”

He frowned at her. “What were the last thirty years then?”

“Don’t be like that. You know what I mean. You’ve worked hard for years and now it’s time to slow down.”

“For God’s sake, Martha, I’m fifty-seven not seventy.” His sharp, critical tone sliced into her. “There’s no way I’m allowing the farm to be sold.”

“And what happens when you’re seventy?”

“Keri’s kids can continue the line.”

“Oh, Vern, they’re city kids. You know that isn’t going to happen.”

The jut of his jaw was intransigent and she could see her new life in Arizona—one of golf, bridge, volunteering and not an iota of snow—being torn from her. She’d given thirty years of service to the farm—to the family business. She’d served it with care and devotion, shared her husband with it and raised a family on it. Now it was time off for good behavior, to be free of the 24/7 demands that were both the joy and the bind of farm life.

No way was she letting her new life in Arizona slip away from her. Come hell or high water, she was going to find a solution that kept Luke on the farm.

* * *

Want to travel to reception on a hay cart.
Arrange it.
Connie.

A hay cart? Erin blinked at the text wondering why it had come to her and not Nicole. Connie, with her stiletto heels and designer clothes, was an urbanite through and through, but if she wanted a hay cart, she’d have a hay cart. Erin almost texted back,
Do you know how scratchy that stuff is?
But instead she typed,
On it.