Secrets Rising (37 page)

***

Rebecca fluffed her mother's hair and gave it a final spritz of hair spray. "You look beautiful," she said. "Just like a bride."

Mary stood and smoothed the slim skirt of her ivory suit. "I'm so nervous. I can't believe this is really happening. I never thought I'd marry again, and I certainly never thought my daughter would be my maid of honor."

Rebecca smiled and squeezed her mother's hand. "I'm still having a hard time believing any of this myself, but that doesn't stop me from being thrilled about all of it."

Doris entered the small room in the back of the chapel carrying a bouquet of chrysanthemums and other late-blooming flowers from her garden. "How lovely you both are," she said, then handed the bouquet to Mary. "Are you ready? Your groom is waiting."

Mary accepted the flowers. "Thank you, Doris. I guess I'm ready." She looked from Rebecca to Doris. "You both know I wouldn't be doing this without your blessing."

"And you know you have it, from both of us," Doris assured her. "David's a wonderful man."

"He loves you," Rebecca added. "He makes you happy and that makes us happy." In the two months she'd known the quiet college professor, she'd come to care for him and to respect him for the kindness he showed her mother.

"Okay," Mary said, squaring her shoulders. "I guess I'm ready." She took a step toward the door, but Doris stopped her with one hand on her arm.

"Mary," she said softly. "Ben's ring. You'll have to take it off."

Mary lifted her left hand, and tears filled her eyes. "I don't think I can. I'll always love Ben."

"Of course you will. But you're marrying David, and you'll wear his ring on that finger. Maybe you could move Ben's ring to your other hand."

Mary gave her flowers to Doris and tugged the ring from her finger. "Or," she said, turning to Rebecca, "I could give it to his daughter."

Rebecca's vision blurred as tears welled in her own eyes. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Wearing or not wearing his ring won't change how much I love him. I'll always have him in my heart, right beside you and David and Doris."

"Do you love David more than you loved my father?" Rebecca asked the question she'd wanted to ask for some time.

Mary smiled. "No. I could never love anybody more than I loved Ben. I love David in a different way, with a different part of my heart." She pressed the ring into Rebecca's hand and closed her daughter's fingers around it. "Oh, sweetheart, I spent so many years trying not to love, having you and David is like a banquet after a starvation diet! The more you love, the more you're able to love."

Rebecca nodded. "My parents—I mean—" She stopped herself, not wanting to hurt her mother, to remind her that she still thought of Brenda and Jerry as her parents, too.

"It's okay. You can have more than one set of parents just like I can have more than one husband. I'm glad the Pattersons were good to you. I knew they would be. They adored you from the minute you were born. Brenda even made them let her into the delivery room."

Rebecca pressed her lips together, blinking rapidly.

"Don't you dare cry!" Mary said with a soft smile. "I don't want my maid of honor to have raccoon eyes."

Rebecca pressed a finger to the corner of each eye to blot the moisture before it could spill. "I can see my mother pushing into the delivery room! I'll bet she had everybody laughing while you were in labor."

"Even me. I'd laugh and then I'd scream. She and Jerry had a rare gift of love."

"Yes, they did. I'd give anything if you could have been with me all those years, but I wouldn't trade the life I had with them. I'd want you both there. You're right. The more you love, the more you're able to love."

Finally she understood that she had been special to her parents, that their love for others had in no way diminished their love for her any more than her love for her mother diminished her love for them.

Rebecca opened her hand and looked at her mother's wedding band, tried it on her ring finger then placed it on her little finger. "Your hands are smaller than mine," she whispered, her voice shaky.

"That's where you should wear it. Someday soon a man you love with all your heart will be placing another ring on your finger."

In the midst of all her happiness, Rebecca felt a stab of sadness. Her mother was wrong about that last. In spite of determined efforts to forget Jake the way he'd forgotten her, he was the man she loved with all her heart, but he'd never put a ring on her finger, never promise to love, honor and cherish until death parted them.

He hadn't lied to her, hadn't promised anything beyond the brief, intense encounters. It was entirely her fault that she couldn't forget him.

Perhaps someday she'd find her David, someone she could love in a different way than she loved Jake, but right now that didn't even seem a possibility.

Over the last two months, she'd been forced to admit to herself that she did love Jake in an elemental, forever kind of way. It wasn't that she needed him because she had no one. She had others to love...her mother and her grandmother...and that love should have filled her heart, yet still there was an empty spot. Still she loved Jake.

When it was over, Mary and David walked back down the aisle, pausing to greet some of the small gathering of guests. It was then that she thought she saw Jake in the middle of the third row from the back.

Her heart fluttered though she told herself it was only a tall man with dark hair, a case of mistaken identity, something that had happened to her more than once over the last couple of months.

Mary turned at the church door, lifted her bouquet and tossed it straight toward Rebecca. She'd have had to jump aside to miss catching it.

The thirty or so guests broke into noisy confusion then, laughing and talking and milling about as they left the chapel to go to the reception at Doris' house.

"How've you been?" he asked. He looked essentially the same but different in a suit. His hair was still a bit too long and still shaggy and his eyes were still the shade of the midnight sky in summer. She yearned to touch him, to tangle her fingers in his hair, to kiss his lips, to feel his arms around her.

"Good," she answered, clasping both hands firmly about the bouquet to keep them from doing anything stupid like touching him. "How about you?"

"Good. Fine." He shifted from one foot to the other. "Your mother invited me."

"I see." How strange that her mother would have done that and not mentioned it. "Are you going to the reception at Doris' house?"

"Yes. I don't know. Maybe." He glanced around at the almost-empty church. "It was a nice ceremony. Your mother looks happy, not like the first time we saw her."

"She is happy."

"This is a nice chapel."

"Nice chapel, nice ceremony, nice day outside, and you look very nice. Guess that takes care of all the niceties." She gave him a brittle smile. Now he could leave, having satisfied the requirements of etiquette...or he could ask her to spend another night with him if that was what he wanted, and suddenly she thought it might be. His gaze was heated as it stroked over her.

She had no idea what she'd say if he asked. Her arms ached to be around him again, her body yearned for him. The leaving had been so hard before, and would be hard again. But she didn't regret one second of their time together.

If he wanted to be with her again, she'd say yes, she decided abruptly. She knew her mother didn't regret loving her father, no matter how short their happiness had been.

"You'd been dealt some pretty hard blows, but you had the strength to go on, the courage to want to find your birth parents no matter what the consequences. I've spent my entire adult life running."

"I don't understand what you're saying."

"I didn't understand it either until recently. All this business about
love and let go
was just cowardice. I was afraid to stay around long enough to let myself care about somebody for fear they'd leave me. So I left first. Or at least I tried to. I can't leave you, Rebecca. You've become a part of me. You're everywhere I go. I can't get away from you. I don't want to get away from you."

"I know. I feel the same way. I'm here, Jake. For however long it lasts, I'm here."

One corner of his mouth quirked up in a half grin. "Are you sure you mean that?"

She took a deep breath, ordering herself to think about the present, the immediate future, about being with Jake and the wonderful, soaring way that always made her feel—not to think about the eventual pain of parting.

"I'm sure," she said.

He reached in the pocket of his jacket with one hand, then extended the other toward her. She placed hers in it and her soul seemed to lighten at his touch. She'd made the right decision. Whatever bits of love they shared would be worth the price.

"I love you, Rebecca." He opened his other hand to expose a sparkling diamond ring. "I want you to marry me and stay with me always."

Rebecca opened her mouth to say yes to the question she'd expected from him, the request to spend the night or the day together. It was, after all, what she'd already told herself she'd say, no matter what Jake asked of her.

But his words registered, and she heard what he'd really said.

Not an hour, not even the entire weekend, but the rest of their lives.

She must have misunderstood. How many times had he told her that nothing lasted forever, that
love and let go
was the wisdom of the ages?

Forever?
Going to sleep in Jake's arms and waking beside him? Having breakfast together, coming home at the end of a hard day to veg in front of the television together? The possibility of more than a weekend had never even crossed her mind.

"Do you need some time to think about this?" Jake asked as she hesitated, and she was amazed at the uncertainty in his voice. "Or if you're afraid to say no, to tell me you don't love me, don't sweat it. I've had plenty of experience with moving on, though I gotta admit, it's going to be pretty tough this time. I never loved anybody before."

"Not love you? Of course I do! I love you so much, Jake, I was ready to face loneliness the rest of my life in exchange for one more night with you. And now you're offering me a lifetime of nights with you.
Yes
seems an inadequate answer."

"It's all the answer I need." Jake's smile stretched from one side of his face to the other. He slid the diamond ring onto her finger, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Rebecca reveled in the delicious sensations of his lips on hers, his body pressed against hers, sensations she'd thought she'd never experience again. Now she not only had them for the moment but a promise of a lifetime of ecstasy, of loving Jake.

A few minutes later when they walked out of the church, arms wrapped around each other, Mary and David were waiting beside the door.

Mary introduced Jake and David, then looked up at her daughter expectantly. Rebecca knew she was beaming, knew her happiness showed on her face.

"I've missed twenty-nine birthdays and Christmases," Mary said. "Do you think getting him here is a start on all those gifts I didn't give you?"

Jake's arm slid around Rebecca. "I can't speak for your daughter, but as for me, you're caught up on birthday, Christmas and everyday gifts for the rest of my life."

The End

###

Thank you for purchasing
Secrets Rising
. If you enjoyed this book, check out the chapter below of
Secrets Among the Shadows,
my romantic suspense novel about a man who thinks he's a modern day Jekyll and Hyde, available now on Kindle.

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Prologue

She poured wine into two glasses and handed one to him. The glass was cheap. Probably something she'd found at a discount store. The wine was cheap, too, like her apartment and the sofa they sat on. Like her.