The Marriage Contract (22 page)

She stood up
and wiped her palms on her shorts. “My whole life my mother has pushed me to
have the kind of life she wanted for me, totally discounting what I want. 
She’s always wanted me to marry you.”

He curled his
fingers around her upper arm before she could bolt and swung her around to look
at him.  “And you’re so hell-bent on proving her wrong that you’re willing to
risk losing us in the process.”

“Dammit, Devin,
you’re supposed to me on my side.  I’m trying to keep us from losing our
friendship again.  Last night wasn't us.  It was calculated.”

He laughed
sardonically.  “It was more of you and me than we ever cared to admit before.”

She wrenched
her arm free and bolted toward the stairs. Holding both sides of the rail, she
took the steps two at a time with Devin on her heels.

“You're scared
and you're running away from us.” he called from behind.

“There isn’t
any us.”

She heard his
cynical laugh behind her.  “That’s right, you have your career.  You don't need
anything or anyone else.”

Her anger
doubled and tripled before she was able to gain enough control to breathe
again.  She swung around to face him at the top of the stairs.

“And you’ve
been conspiring with my mother all along with this secret wedding.”

“I only found
out about the wedding the other day.  That was after I knew how I felt about
you.  Before that I still believed the wedding was for your parents.”

He reached out
and touched her, which did wonders to assuage her anger only to build on the
primal need they’d succumbed to last night.  

She blinked
hard.  “Devin, we should have never gone as far as we did.  Can’t you see what
this is doing?  What my mother’s manipulation has done to us?”

His voice was
low as he responded.  “Your mother had nothing to do with the way you responded
to me last night.”

Her cheeks
flamed and she felt her body grow warm remembering Devin’s strong hands
touching her breast, stroking the inside of her thighs.  She closed her eyes
and whispered, “No, but I don’t want to lose you.”

“So much so
that you’d rather play it safe letting everyone believe you're involved with a
man you don't love and is no longer in your life?  You don't love Roger.  Don’t
bother trying to deny it because I won’t believe it if you tell me you love him
now.”

She didn’t
try.  Devin had been right.  Roger had been her safety net.  The boat would
never be rocked and her world would always remain intact, under her control, if
she stayed with him.  There'd be no changes, no surprises.  The fact that her
mother couldn’t stand him was just an added bonus in a game she and her mother
had always played.  That realization left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Too much of her
world was coming apart at the seams.  All her dreams and goals had taken on a
new dimension.  The very foundation of her life was shifting.

Devin touched
her face and brushed his thumb along her cheek.  The deep timbre of his voice
made everything he said seem so simple.  “Life’s not that cut and dry, Cara. 
You don’t take each step knowing where you’ll end up in advance.  Sometimes
life is just a crap shoot.  Sometimes you have to risk losing everything to get
what it is you really want.”

She gently
pulled his hand away.  “I’m not a gambler, Devin.  I need something I can count
on.  I always thought I could count on you.”

“You still
can.”

 “I don’t want
to lose that.”   

The horn
sounded and a flurry of people started advancing toward the exit.  Cara
sprinted until she fell into step with them.  She knew Devin would be right
behind her, but she couldn’t stay on the boat and cry in front of everyone. 
She needed Devin, but not here and not like this. 

As soon as the
ferry docked, she ran down the ramp, vaguely aware of how rudely she was
pushing herself past the other people in line.  When she reached the dock, she
waited for Devin to catch up.

In his
expression, she saw the hurt and fear of a dejected man.  She didn’t want to
see Devin as the man she was desperately in love with.  She wanted him to be
her friend.  She wanted it to be the way it was, securely tucked away in a safe
harbor called the past.  

 “I need my
best friend, too, Cara.  For the rest of my life, every day in my bed and in my
heart.”  He pressed his fist against his chest and squeezed his hand.  “For
always.  That’s why we can’t let this go.”

She didn’t hide
the willful tear that rolled down her cheek.  Devin was right.  She had been
holding her own secrets tight to her chest.

“Roger asked me
to marry him.”

The blood
drained from his face right before her very eyes.  He took one big step
backward as if she'd just slapped him across the face.  “What did you say?” he
rasped, his jaw tight.

“He asked me
to--”

“Dammit, I
heard that part.  What was your answer?”

“That I needed
some space.”

He swallowed
hard.  His voice was weak when he spoke.  “Why didn't you tell me all this yesterday? 
Last night!”

“I just wanted
to be with you.  I didn't want to think about anything else.”

He shook his
head as if in disbelief.  “You can't have it both ways, Cara.  I won't share
your love with him.”

“I'm not asking
you to share,” she insisted.

“What do you
call it then?  We've already taken our relationship too far.  There is no going
back now.”

A hot tear
trickled down her cheek.  “I needed my best friend, Devin.  I needed you.”

He took her
hands and brought them to his lips, kissing them softly.  Desire swirled
through her body with the memory of just how those kisses affected her and she
pulled her hands away.

“Well here I am
in the flesh.  The man you choose to marry should be your best friend.  And
that's me, Cara.  Why can't you see that?”

“It's not that
simple.”

“For me, it
is.  In my life, it's all or nothing.  If you choose to be with him, then we
lose.  I won't stand by watching you love another man.  I won't.”

The mid-morning
sun beat down on her as if it were pounding her to the ground.  Maybe because
she felt like she just been beaten herself.  By circumstance and by fear.  

She could only
watch as Devin charged through the crowd walking along the wharf.  Inside she
was raw like an open gash.  

Devin was
right.  And she was being a coward.  At that moment, feeling as low as she was,
all she wanted was Devin’s arms to comfort her when she should have wanted
Roger.

The man you
choose to marry should be your best friend.  Devin was her best friend.  And
she’d just done her damnedest to drive him away.

# # #

Chapter Thirteen

“Are you sure
you won’t stay until after Labor Day?” Ruthie said, sitting on the bed next to
Cara's half-filled suitcase.  Her mother did nothing to hide her disappointment
that Cara had decided to return to Boston earlier than she'd originally
planned. 

Cara dropped
her cosmetic case into her suitcase.  Much as she hated all the lies and
manipulation, Cara had always found it difficult to stay angry with her
mother.  No matter what, she loved her unconditionally. 

“Louise has
been having false labor.  Her baby is going to be here any day now and I need
to get back to work to get a clear head about what is going on before she
leaves.” 

“You need to be
back here for the wedding.”

What she needed
was to get back to Boston and plant herself firmly in her old life.  She hadn’t
talked to Devin since their argument and he'd run off. For all she knew, he
probably thought she’d gone back to Boston to marry Roger. 

Of course,
nothing could have been further from the truth.  No matter what happened from
this point on in her relationship with Devin, she knew she couldn’t stay with
Roger.  She wasn’t in love with him.  Plain and simple.  And it had taken all
the heartache and crying she’d done over Devin to come to that realization.

She'd come back
here, locked herself in her room, half hoping Devin would come after her, half
knowing he wouldn't.  Now she didn't know how she was going to undo the mess
she'd made. 

One thing she
did know for sure, this charade she'd been playing with her mother had gone too
far.

“Mom, I know
the wedding isn't for you and Daddy.”

To her credit,
Ruthie gave up the charade as well.  “Devin told you?”

Cara nodded,
all the anger she'd had pent up over her mother's deception was long gone.  “I
know your intentions were good.  But I can't marry Devin just because you want
me to give you grandchildren.”

Ruthie sighed
heavily.  “The only thing I really want is for my daughter to be happy.  And
judging by the way you've been moping around for the last few days, you're far
from it.”

Cara closed her
eyes, trying her best to keep the tears that threatened her from falling.  Lord
knows she'd shed enough trying to figure out why she was being so stubborn. 
Even after all the heartache and tears, she still couldn't bring herself to
gamble her friendship with Devin away.  They'd been there and done that
seventeen years ago.  And they'd lost.  She didn't want to lose again. 

She drew in a
fortifying breath.  Time and distance is what she needed to put things back
into perspective.  She needed to plant herself firmly in her old routine and
decide which direction to turn.

Except clarity
was the last thing she got when she returned to her Back Bay condo later that
afternoon.  Every time the phone rang, she ran to answer it, expecting it to be
Devin.  But it never was.  It left her lots of idle time to sift through
paperwork and check on orders she'd already checked and to think...

 How could her
mother have actually thought she’d go through with an arranged marriage?  It
was completely archaic and, well, stupid.  She was not the marrying kind of
woman.  She’d said that all along and that was all there was to it.  

Her stomach
ached from the greasy potato chips she’d eaten for breakfast and she clutched
her stomach to ease the pain.

Devin.  As
angry as she was with him for playing along with her mother’s game, damn, she
loved him.  Could it really be like he said?  Could they really have it all and
a family, too? 

We’d make an
awesome team.  She’d replayed the words over and over again until her head
hurt.  She rubbed the soft aching spot at her temple and slouched back on her
sofa.  She and Devin, they would make an incredible team. 

Sometimes life
is just a crap shoot.  Sometimes you have to risk losing everything to get what
it is you really want. 

Distance had
not given her the answers she wanted.  It had only forced her to look at the
questions she'd been running away from.  She needed to talk to Devin.  Only
then would the answers come clearly.

But first, she
needed to straighten out things with Roger. What she needed to say wasn’t going
to be easy, and she wasn’t sure how either one of them would handle it, but she
had a two-carat reason for trying.  With her decision made, her stomach
suddenly felt a little better and her head a little lighter.

She didn’t
bother to reach Roger until well into the evening.  That’s the way things had
always been.  Except before, she’d always been working, too.  She’d had the
whole afternoon to sit and think about exactly what she was going to say. 
She’d sat in her studio, staring at the bolts of fabric and odds and ends,
rehearsing out loud her speech about why things just weren’t going to work
between them.

Standing
outside his apartment later that evening, she felt confident, and almost
herself again.  Until the door swung open and she saw Roger’s face. 

“We need to
talk,” she said.

In the end,
Roger’s reaction to their breakup was surprisingly good.  He’d admitted the
changes in her mood had frightened him, but he thought that marriage was all it
would take to change things back to the smooth existence they’d always had.  He
was adamant that children were not part of his future.  When she left an hour
later, he gave her a long hug at the door and she was glad that it was over. 

If only she’d taken
Devin’s advice earlier and talked to Roger about her feelings, things wouldn’t
have gotten so fouled up. 

She’d chosen to
follow her heart and talk to her best friend instead.

* * *

Devin yanked at
the collar of his stiffly starched tuxedo shirt and fiddled with the black tie
choking him.  He couldn't believe he let Ruthie convince him this little plan
to go through with the wedding was going to work. 

He hadn’t seen
or heard from Cara since that day on the ferry.  At first he thought she'd need
some time and he was going to give it to her for however long it took for her
to see that they belonged together.

He’d wrapped
himself around the Palmer case, putting together the necessary paperwork for
appeal so he could prove the so called evidence the state had against Wendell
Palmer was bogus.  After much haggling, the judge agreed to an appeal.  The
cloud of doubt hanging over him about his career seemed a little clearer and he
actually felt good about what he did for a living for the first time in a long
time. 

Now if he could
only get Cara to see things a little clearer.  He had to be the biggest fool to
think Cara would actually show up here today and marry him today after the way
she'd raced off.  So what was he doing dressed in a tuxedo on the hottest Labor
Day in history, waiting for a bride that was never going to show?

Yeah, he was a
fool all right.  And he was in love.  That pretty much summed it up.

“She’s not
coming,” he ground out nervously, pacing back and forth like an expecting
father.