The Bride Wore Blue (15 page)

She’d hurt him. She knew she’d hurt him. The night she’d left, she’d composed a hundred different notes in her head to tell him what she had to do. In the end, no words seemed right. In retrospect, she realized he could have construed her hurriedly scribbled “trust me” to mean anything from “wait for me,” to “I’ll be back,” to “goodbye.” He’d had to live with that. And now, so did she.

The past seven days, she’d worked like a dog. She’d cleaned up, aired out, shined bright, listening for the plane, in her heart knowing he wouldn’t return. And all the while she’d remembered and missed and longed for Blue’s arms around her, Blue’s smile caressing her, Blue’s body loving her.

She drew solace from the water sounds and the bird song. She found small pleasures in the lazy drift of the faded red, white and blue wind sock fluttering in the breeze, in the soft droning buzz of hummingbirds flitting from the wild iris to the sweet williams in the flower bed bordering the forest.

Small pleasures, however, were no longer enough. After loving Blue, small pleasures would never be enough.

A loon sounded in the bay. She raised her head to the lonesome, mournful sound, tracking its solitary progress as it fished the shallow waters alone.

Alone.
She didn’t want to be alone anymore. And it struck her then that if she wanted to correct the situation, she was going to have to do something about it.

Her opportunity arrived the next morning when Abel drove his boat up to her dock.

“Will you take me to him?”

Like the friend he was, he didn’t ask questions; he simply held out his hand and helped her into the boat.

J.D. had given her a new paint job. It was past time for a change. It was time for a lot of changes, J.D. thought grimly as he looked the Cessna up and down, satisfied with the shiny red enamel that now covered the fuselage and wingtips.

“What d’ya think, Al?” he asked the arthritic old man sitting on the dock, alternately inspecting the lures in his tackle box and swatting flies.

Al hitched his thumbs under the straps of his bib overalls, squinted over the top of his scratched half glasses and eyed the Cessna. “It’ll do,” he mumbled, giving the plane one last distracted look and going back to rummaging around in his tackle box.

“Your enthusiasm over…whelms…me…” J.D. said, his words trailing off when he recognized the boat pulling into the Crane Cove Marina—and the woman sitting in the bow.

His memory hadn’t lived up to the reality—neither had his dreams. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And even though it had only been a week since she’d left, seeing her again sent his heart rate off the charts.

He stood on a float, one hand gripping a wing strut, the other propped on his hip as she walked toward him, her dark hair wind-whipped and shining, her long legs tan and sleek beneath her white shorts, her eyes bright and expectant and not a little bit wary.

“Hey, Blue.” Her voice was soft and tentative as she crossed her arms under her breasts in that giveaway action that relayed how nervous she was.

Hershey, who’d been sleeping like the dead in the shade of the boathouse, woke up with a start when he heard her voice. He jumped to all fours and ran at her like she’d brought his favorite bone.

“Hey, Stretch,” J.D. said, and hoped she didn’t hear the tremor in the words he’d tried too hard to make sound casual. “How’s it going?”

Starting with the day he’d buzzed her bay and discovered she was back, he couldn’t count the number of times he’d made up his mind to go to her—then let his pride muscle in and change his decision.

Only his pride kept him from going to her now, scooping her up in his arms and making love to her until he obliterated any argument she might still have that would keep them apart.

Instead, he worked his jaw and watched her.

She looked at him from where she’d dropped to her knees to hug Hershey. “Better now.” Her dark eyes glistened when they met his. “Much better now.”

Emotions he’d tucked away the day she’d left him seemed to swell and grow too large for the small closet that harbored his feelings. He’d intended to make this as hard for her as it was for him. He couldn’t do it.

“How much better?” he asked, letting go of the strut and jumping from the float to the dock.

She managed a crooked smile. “Got a minute? I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

Sunlight slivered down through the whispering pine and trembling birch, dappling the forest floor with flickering light and dusky shadows. They walked slowly along the pine-needle-covered hiking trail that Blue had suggested they take so they could talk in private.

But even as determined as she was to share everything with him, it was still hard to know where to start.

“Why not at the beginning,” he suggested gently, when she told him as much.

“The beginning,” she echoed, and drew a deep breath. “I’m not sure I remember where the beginning is. Maybe it was when the courts took me out of my mother’s home and placed me in the first of a string of foster homes.” She shivered and wrapped her hands around her bare arms. “Maybe there never was a beginning—even though I kept waiting for one. Kids are funny that way. Resilient, you know?” She kept her head down, looking at her feet as she walked. “I kept thinking that since my mom didn’t want me enough to clean up her act so she could keep me with her, that the next set of foster parents would be permanent ones and that would be the beginning of my terrific new life. Only it never worked out that way.”

Blue remained silent, supportive beside her. She drew strength from that.

“That’s one of the things I used to resent about you.” She smiled tightly and angled a quick glance at him. “You had the perfect life. Parents who loved you. Money to do what you wanted. An ego that told anyone who knew you how secure you were with yourself and everyone around you.”

“Peter Pan man, that’s me,” he said with a hint of disgust in his voice.

She stopped and faced him, taking his hands in hers, reveling in the feel of their callused yet gentle strength. “No. Don’t ever feel you have to apologize for that. What
you are,
who
you are, and how you got that way—all of that is what makes you special. I’m just trying to make you see where I was coming from. Where I
came
from. I don’t want your pity or your sympathy—I just want you to know so you’ll understand why I did what I did. And why I was so afraid to trust you.”

She looked at their joined hands, looked at his face. His blue eyes were gentle, his face drawn with concern and a determined patience that gave her the courage to go on.

Keeping his hand in hers, she started walking along the path again.

“I was seventeen when I moved to New York. Tough as nails and figuring I could take anything that city could dish out. After all, I’d just survived the attentions of a foster father who had more than fatherly affection on his agenda.” She drew a deep breath, and fought back the revulsion and shame that accompanied that particular ugly memory with a fonder one of the time she’d spent with the Snyders who had never been anything but kind to her, but because of system restraints, couldn’t keep her permanently.

“Anyway,” she continued, trying to ignore the sudden, almost violent clenching of Blue’s hand around hers. “I was going to make it as a star on Broadway.”

She smiled at her naiveté, remembering. “I ended up waiting tables and—” she hesitated, each word as hard as she’d anticipated, her smile fading with yet another dark memory “—I was close to resorting to other methods of making my rent money…”

She had to stop again and fight the helpless feeling that the desperate memory fostered before she could go on.

“Fortunately, I didn’t have to go that route. And needless to say, I didn’t make it as an actress, either. I was ’discovered’ instead by a famous photographer.”

“Sebastion…Rolfe Sebastion, wasn’t it?” Blue’s voice was tight. A frown creased his brows. “I followed your career, Maggie. Your story didn’t miss many magazines.”

She smiled ruefully. “Cinderella and her charming prince, right? Isn’t that how the media liked to tell it? Only it turns out the prince wasn’t so charming. At least he lost his charm as the years went by.”

Beside her, she could feel Blue’s tension mounting. She prayed he could forgive her for what she was about to tell him. Prayed that even though it would be painful, that she had the strength to see it through.

She drew a deep breath and bent to pick up a curling piece of birch bark, shredding it as they walked.

“The worst of it,” she reflected aloud, “was that I let what he did to me happen. What I have to keep telling myself,” she continued, digging deep for justification of how she had let Rolfe dominate her, “is that I was young. Young and needy. He was the first person who had ever taken an interest in me on a long-term basis. I saw him as my savior. I saw myself in love with him. Finally, someone cared about me. Finally, someone actually loved me. And in the name of love, I did anything he asked of me.

“Anything,” she repeated as a rolling nausea tumbled through her. “Until it got to the point that he would go to great lengths to put me in positions where he could show the control he had over me.”

She became very quiet then, her steps slowing until she stopped. Her throat clogged up. Tears she refused to shed welled in her eyes. “I…it was the day of my twenty-fifth birthday. I’d just found out I was pregnant. The news was going to be my birthday present to him.”

She pinched her eyes shut and turned away. Blue’s strong, warm hands on her shoulders gave her courage.

“It turned out he didn’t much care for my present. In fact, he was livid. My career, he’d railed. A baby would
ruin my career. He wanted me to get an abortion.” She made a sound of pained despair.

“He
ordered
me to get an abortion. I refused. It was the first time I’d ever defied him. Evidently, he felt the emotional abuse was no longer enough—because it was also the first time he beat me.”

The warm hands on her shoulders tightened. She felt Blue’s tension as if it were her own and knew that his silence was as much from a tortured effort at control as it was in support.

“He beat me so badly…the abortion was no longer an issue.”

She’d known this was going to be painful. She hadn’t known the pain would consume her until the aching despair over the loss of her child crushed down like earth on a shallow grave.

Her baby. He’d killed her baby.
And she’d been too weak to stop him. Self-directed anger ripped through her heart.

She didn’t know when Blue had pulled her against him. She was only aware of the crush of his arms around her, of his solid strength enfolding her.

“When I recovered,” she whispered against his shoulder, “I ran away from him. It didn’t take long for him to find me and bring me back. And I’ve hated myself every day of my life for being so weak and letting him.

“Oh, I tried again. But again he followed, heaping on the guilt, layering the promises, playing on my shame over letting him abuse me as additional leverage for his control.

“He’d made me what I was—famous, rich, a woman who had everything—taking great pleasure in constantly pointing out that if it wasn’t for him, no one would care about me. If it wasn’t for my face and my body, no one would have a reason to.”

“The bastard,” Blue gritted out, wrapping her tighter against him.

“Yes,” she whispered, nestling against him, praying that more than sympathy fueled his actions. “He’s a bastard. And among my many regrets is the fact that it took me so long to realize he’d been feeding his own insecurities by working on mine.”

She pressed her forehead to his chest. “Two years ago, when I found out the Snyders had left me the cabin, I started formulating a plan. It took me eighteen months to secretly filter out fifty-thousand dollars in cash from my own accounts that Rolfe controlled and watched like a hawk. When the opportunity finally came, I packed light, paid cash for a four-wheel-drive Jeep and started driving.

“That was six months ago. I only decided to chance coming to the cabin after I’d made sure the last place he could trace me to was L.A. Then I dropped out of sight.

“And then you found me,” she whispered, lifting her face to his. “And you made me feel special, and loved, and it scared me so much…it scared me so much, Blue,” she murmured, touching her fingers to his cheek, “that I fought you, and denied you, and finally when you were getting so close to my heart I feared for it all over again, I blamed you for everything Rolfe and anyone else in my life who had ever used me had done.”

His eyes glistened as they met hers. “I’ll never, never hurt you, Maggie.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know that now. And I’ll never hurt you. Never again. That’s why I had to leave you. I had to go back to New York and face him. More than anything, I wanted to be able to stop looking over my shoulder, wondering how long I had before he found me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you let me help you?”

“Because this was my mess. My battle. And because if I didn’t go back and fight it, I’d never be free of him.”

His grip became fiercely protective. “That sonofabitch will never touch you again.”

“You’re right about that. He knows now that I’ve got my lawyers on alert. If he so much as breathes in my direction, I’ll have him in court so fast he’ll wish he never met me.”

For the longest time he just held her, and rocked her, soothing his hand over her hair.

“I feel so ashamed,” she choked out on a hoarse whisper. “I’ve been so weak.”

“You’ve never been weak, Stretch. Never.” He set her away from him, cupping her face in his hands. “What you’ve never been is loved. Not until you met me.” His eyes searched hers, full of truth and love and promise. “I’ll make up for all of them. I’ll give you so much love, you’ll forget it was ever lacking in your life.

“I’ll give you babies,” he promised. “All the babies you want.”

The love and the pain and the giving in his words enveloped her with the most perfect sense of belonging she’d ever known. She searched his face and saw the heart of this Peter Pan man and knew he had the capacity to heal her.