The Wedding Tree (15 page)

He set down my suitcases and grinned at me as I stood frozen in the doorway. Tension stretched between us. He patted the mattress. “Come try it out.”

“I wonder if I can trust you,” I said, only half jesting.

“Are you really worried?”

“A little, now that I know how easily lies roll off your tongue.” I tentatively sat on the edge of the bed.

“At the funeral?” He plopped down beside me and leaned back against the wall, his arms behind his head. “Those weren't lies. That was fiction.”

I shot him an arch look. “What's the difference?”

“The reason behind it. A lie is when you're telling an untruth for your own benefit. When you're doing it for the good of someone else, it's just a story.”

“That's a very questionable line of reasoning, because any untruth—even about terrible things, like murder—can help someone.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Well, a murderer is protecting his parents when he says he didn't do it, because they're bound to grieve having reared such an awful son.”

“It's always wrong to cover up a crime.”

“Every crime? Because it's probably a crime to take a civilian up in a government plane.”

He grinned. “As I recall, I didn't tell any untruths about that. Besides, no one was hurt. I like to think I helped make a dream come true.” He looked at me, and our gazes locked. His voice
lowered to a goose-bump-making rumble. “I'd like to make all your dreams come true, Addie.”

From another man, it would have seemed like nothing but a line—a prelude to seduction. The way he looked at me, though—that all-the-way-through-to-my-soul, I-really-see-you-and-I-think-you're-wonderful look he gave me—lifted it to a different level. So did what he did next.

He rose to his feet and headed to the door. “It's late. You should go to bed. Fishing is a crack-of-dawn activity.”

“We're really going to fish?”

“Sure. We want to eat, don't we?”

He pulled the door closed.

I raced across the room and yanked it open. “Aren't you going to kiss me good night?”

“No.” His eyes seemed somehow backlit, deep and multifaceted.

“Why not?”

“Because I don't know that I could stop, and I promised you I'd be respectful.” He pulled the door closed, and I didn't dare open it again.

•   •   •

I remember bits and pieces of the next two days—the rest of that night, lying in bed awake, knowing he was in the other room, tossing and turning and burning, wondering if he were doing the same. I didn't drop off until dawn, then awoke with the sun in my face.

Other memories are random, framed in my mind like snapshots. The unexpected blue of the lake behind the cabin. The scent of sweet olives in the air. The rocking of the rowboat. His chest behind me as he taught me how to cast a rod. Making sandwiches together in the kitchen. Fishing from shore—and then wading in as the afternoon sun grew warmer and warmer. The feel of my skirt clinging to my legs, the way the bottom of my white blouse turned transparent.

That second night was long and hot, despite the fact it was April and my screen windows were open. The awareness of Joe made me
feel fevered and chilled all at the same time. I remember falling into an exhausted sleep, and awakening to the pure joy of another day with Joe.

The unseasonably warm weather continued. That afternoon, I pushed him out of the rowboat. He pulled me overboard, and we frolicked like two kids in the water—splashing and chasing each other, and then . . . oh, the pleasure of being caught in his arms! I turned and looked into his eyes. I swear my heart kept time with the crickets, it was going so fast. And then his mouth claimed mine, his lips warm and hard, and I was drowning in emotion, not wanting to let go.

He was the one who pulled back. “Damn it, Addie,” he murmured. “You're enough to make a man lose his mind.”

I had already lost mine. All I could think of was getting close again, feeling his mouth on mine. I raised my leg and wrapped it around him, half floating in the water. He put his hands on my shoulders and put me away from him. “This was a mistake.”

“What was?”

“All of it. Bringing you here, kissing you . . . Hell, this damned whole trip.” He wiped the water from his face. “A man shouldn't put the girl he wants to marry in a dangerous situation.”

Two words hit my brain simultaneously:
marry
and
dangerous
. The first word overrode everything I knew about the second.

“You . . . you mean, you want . . . ?”

“I want to marry you, Addie. I love you.” The words came out in a rush, in a tone that sounded almost angry.

“Is that a proposal?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” He looked at me, his eyes clear and serious in the tree-dappled light. “So what do you say?”

Joy filled me, making my heart rise and float like a helium balloon. “Yes!” I threw my arms around his neck, splashing both of us. “Yes, oh yes!”

The kiss left us both breathless. At length he pulled back. “Okay, then. Let's do it.” Taking my hand, he started pulling me toward the shore.

Do it? Do what?

He seemed to read my mind. “Let's go find a justice of the peace.”

“Now? Today?”

“Right this minute.”

“Oh, but I can't!” I stopped, up to my waist in water. “My family . . . why, they'd die if I eloped!”

“Addie, I have to be back on base tomorrow night. I ship out the day after.”

“But I'm the only daughter, and my mother has always dreamed of planning my wedding. And my dad—he needs to give you permission, and he has to walk me down the aisle!”

Joe blew out a hard sigh.

“You don't understand about small southern towns,” I said. “My parents would be disgraced. Lisa Sue Adams ran off and married a man no one knew three years ago, and it's still a big scandal.”

Silence welled between us.

“I want to, Joe, but I just can't do that to my parents.”

“No, I don't suppose you can.” The sun was in my eyes, making it hard for me to read his expression. He tightened his grip on my hand. “Well, go get your things together. We can't stay here.”

He intended for us to leave? To abandon paradise? The thought was unacceptable. “Of course we can.”

“Damn it, Addie, I'm crazed with wanting you. If this were a mission, I'd have to turn the controls over to my copilot, because I'm not in my right mind.”

“Well, me, neither.”

“Which is exactly why you need to go back to the cabin, put on some dry clothes, and pack up your things.” He took my shoulders and pointed me toward shore. I turned around to face him, but he was plowing through the water, swimming for the opposite shore at a speed I couldn't possibly match. I wasn't a strong enough swimmer to even attempt to follow him.

I reluctantly headed to the cabin, my body burning with need. I don't know what came over me or where I found the courage; I only
knew I couldn't bear the thought of leaving here, of sending Joe off to war, of going back to my everyday life without getting as close to this man as I could possibly get. Like Eve with the apple, I needed to know what I didn't know. I dried off, but I didn't dress. I dabbed on perfume, wrapped in a dry towel, then sat on the sofa and waited.

My already-pounding heart thundered as I heard his step on the porch. The screen door creaked open, and then he filled the doorway. His eyes moved over me. “Why aren't you dressed?” His voice was harsh.

“I was waiting for you.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I stood up and dropped the towel. I heard his breath catch. I stepped toward him before I lost my nerve. “Joe—I want to be with you. This is our last chance. And Marge told me you couldn't get pregnant the first time.”

“You can't bank on that.”

“Well, aren't there . . . devices?”

“Condoms?”

I nodded. “Do you have any?”

“Some military-issued ones in my shaving kit, but that's not the question here. I gave you my word, Addie, and . . .”

“I don't want your word. I want you.” I don't know where my boldness came from. It was like I was somebody else. I picked up his hand and put it on my breast. “You're not the only one who has a say in this, you know.”

His breath hitched. “You're playing with fire here.”

“I'm counting on it.” I pulled his head down and kissed him.

Once again I was swimming, swimming in emotion and a depth of desire I hadn't known existed. I became a creature I didn't recognize, a creature desperate and intense, straining for something I couldn't name. He touched and kissed me in places that shocked me, yet made me crave more. He whispered words of love and caressed me until I was aching with need. I couldn't get close enough, yet we were so close I couldn't breathe without inhaling the air he'd
just exhaled. I couldn't imagine ever breathing on my own again. Every stroke took me higher and higher, until I cried out and shuddered and thought I was flying and dying all at the same time.

“You're mine,” he whispered afterward.

“Likewise,” I said.

“We'll marry as soon as I get back.”

“Yes.”

“I'll write your father and ask for your hand. Make all the fancy wedding plans you want.”

We stayed in bed the rest of the day and night, making love over and over, sleeping and talking, talking, talking. We made plans for the future, plans about where we'd live and travel, about what we'd do, about how wonderful life would be. I was walking on air, flying higher than a B-24, soaring above rainbows and moonbeams toward all my wildest dreams.

matt

M
y whole day was thrown off by Hope and that trash collection incident. I'd worked at home that morning, preparing for a huge meeting at the state capitol with the attorney general and the EPA. We're prosecuting a chemical plant that illegally dumped waste near Shreveport, and it involves a lot of mind-numbing scientific information. I managed to change clothes and arrive on time for a lunch pre-con before the afternoon meeting, but instead of being sharp and focused on toxic chemicals, my mind kept drifting to a toxic woman.

As I drove back from Baton Rouge that evening, I found myself looking forward to seeing Hope again, and I'll be damned if I quite understood why. She was a disaster waiting for a place to happen. She was the last thing I needed—a flighty, accident-prone distraction who seemed to bring out the worst in me. She was only in town for the summer, so even if I could overlook those traits, she wasn't a good candidate for a relationship. Yet every time I was around her, I had some strong, inappropriate, unwanted emotional reaction.

I don't like emotions; I prefer logic, reason, and coolheaded thoughtfulness over stomach-churning highs and gut-wrenching lows. Fatherhood was inevitably an emotional minefield, but it's one I willingly inhabit because I love my girls more than life itself and they're the very best part of me. Christine had been, too, of
course, and her death—well, that's a bottomless pit of pain I don't want to ever fall down again.

So why do I keep thinking about a woman who yanks my chain so thoroughly that I do things without thinking, like pick her up off a garbage truck when I'm freshly dressed in a suit and tie? This morning's behavior had been irrational and ridiculous. I just as easily could have taken the box from her, being careful to handle only the clean side—or I could have asked the garbage collector who was so enthusiastically helping her litter my lawn to give her a hand down—but did I do that? No. I'd waded right in like a knight in a shining business suit and picked her up, muck and all, as if she were a fairy-tale princess descending from a magic carriage in one of my daughters' Disney flicks.

She sure hadn't felt like a fairy tale in my arms, though. She'd felt like a completely real, completely carnal, sexy-as-sin woman. What was it about her that gave me this reaction? I hadn't felt attraction like that since Christine—certainly not for any of the appropriate women my various friends had tried to fix me up with since her death. If I was going to be drawn to a woman—and even Peggy and Griff had been encouraging me to start dating—why did it have to be this one?

Maybe because she
was
so completely inappropriate, I thought. Maybe my subconscious was trying to keep me from starting anything serious. Everyone thinks I should be ready for a relationship, but the truth is, I'm probably not.

I'm more than a little afraid that I may never be—and the thought is depressing as hell. I wonder if a part of my brain will keep me from ever getting that close again because it will always be thinking,
at any second, something can happen to her.

Nothing about that last night with Christine had seemed out of the ordinary. We'd had dinner and put the girls to bed, and I'd turned on the TV. When Christine said she was going upstairs to take a bath, I'd just nodded and kept on watching the basketball game. It wasn't until the game was over—LSU had been playing
Texas A&M—that I realized she'd been gone a long time. I went upstairs and found her stretched on the bed, still fully clothed—her eyes open and vacant.

I've never felt fear like that—cold, sickening, desperate, crushing. My heart had stopped, then damn near jumped out of my chest. I immediately lifted her to the floor and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Christine and I had both taken CPR classes before the girls were born. I paused for a nanosecond to find the phone and call 911, then I kept at it, rhythmically compressing her chest and breathing into her mouth.

This couldn't be happening, I remember thinking. This was a mistake. She was a young, healthy woman with two small children who needed her.
I
needed her.

The worst part was her eyes. If she'd close her eyes or blink, I just knew it would be okay. But that vacant, unseeing stare—was anything colder, anything more hopeless than the unseeing eyes of the already gone?

I hated turning her over to the medics when the ambulance arrived, but I figured they would know what to do. They used a defibrillator. She jerked off the floor, her eyes still open and vacant. Again. And again.

A neighbor had come over when the ambulance arrived and offered to stay and watch the kids. I agreed. I followed the ambulance to the hospital—I don't know how I drove, but my car was there later, so I must have. At the hospital, she was whisked into the ER. They made me wait outside. I called her parents. And then the doctor came out and told me she was gone.

Gone where? From what? How?

The medical staff asked
me
questions. The police came and asked me questions. So many questions, and I had no answers—no answers at all. The next day, I learned she'd died of a brain aneurysm, but I still couldn't answer the biggest question of all:
Why?

I still can't answer it. I hate it when the girls ask, as they sometimes do.

In the two years since, I've learned to live with uncertainty. We all live with it, whether we're aware of it or not. We're all just a piece of bad news away from having our hearts broken.

The only defense is to not care that deeply. I can't help it with my daughters, but I've wondered if I'll ever let another woman close enough to cause that kind of pain again.

I pulled into my drive, noting with relief that Jillian's car wasn't parked there—nor was it across the street at her parents' home. Good. I wouldn't have to deal with her wifelike concerns. I was looking forward to seeing Hope without Jillian's hovering, stifling presence.

“Daddy's home!” yelled Sophie as I walked through the door.

As always, my chest filled with warmth. Both girls came barreling toward me. I dropped my computer case on the credenza, then bent and scooped them both up in my arms, whirling them around in a way that made them squeal. They're growing so fast I won't be able to hold them both at the same time for much longer. The thought gave me a pang.

Griff toddled in behind them, his face creased with a wistful smile. The sight of the girls hanging on to my neck seemed to give him a pang of his own. “I remember when my girls greeted me like that.”

Sophie tugged at my arm the moment I set them down. “Daddy—come see the drawing I did at school!”

“Me, too. And I've got some papers to show you—and they all have stars!” Zoey said.

“Okay, okay—just let me get my coat off.”

I looped my jacket over a dining room chair and grinned at Griff. “You're on babysitting patrol all by yourself?”

“Briefly. Peggy stepped next door a few minutes ago to say hello to Miss Addie. Think she wanted to check on Hope's sketch of the girls' room, as well. She left a pot of gumbo for you and the girls on the stove.”

“That was mighty kind of her,” I said, loosening my tie and unfastening the top button of my shirt. “Peggy's gumbo is the best.”

The only problem was it reminded me of Christine, because
she'd used her mother's recipe. Every time I tasted it, I got a lump in my throat that made it hard to swallow.

Griff waved good-bye and let himself out the front door.

I headed into the kitchen, sat down with the girls, and admired their papers. Peggy had also left a salad in the refrigerator, so as the girls set the table, I dished up salad and bowls of gumbo, and we sat down to dinner.

I hadn't realized how much I'd been listening for the sound of the doorbell until it rang as we were cleaning up.

“That must be Hope!” said Sophie.

“I'll get it,” I said, drying my hands on a dish towel. My pulse irrationally picked up speed.

•   •   •

She wore a white T-shirt and shorts. Her hair was loose and floaty, and a large sketchbook was tucked under her arm. “Did you make it to your meeting on time this morning?”

“Yeah. It was fine.”

“I'm so sorry about getting your clothes messed up.” Her eyes were big tea-colored saucers of sincerity.

“Forget about it.”

Sophie and Zoey appeared beside me, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Are you here to paint our room?” Sophie asked.

“I'm here to start the process. The first step is showing you the sketches, and then you can tell me what you like and what you want changed.”

The girls shrieked with delight.

“Why don't we go to your room,” Hope suggested. “That way I can point out what goes where.”

The girls scampered up the stairs. I motioned for Hope to precede me, thinking I was being polite. My chivalrous intentions morphed into lascivious thoughts as I gazed at her backside in those shorts. Good grief, but the woman was hot.

It was something of a relief when we reached the landing and
headed down the hall to the girls' room. Hope stopped between the headboards of the twin beds and opened her sketchbook. “This is what I drew for this wall.”

We all gazed at it.

“Oh wow!” Sophie gasped.

“It's perfect,” Zoey pronounced, eyes big and solemn.

I'm not a big fan of princess art, but even I thought it was pretty cool. Two enormous arched windows covered much of the wall. Out of one window, you could see a drawbridge and people on horses crossing it, with mountains and a village in the distance. The other window revealed a tower covered with a pink-blooming vine. “I thought these windows would be on either side of the beds,” Hope said.

“Awesome,” Sophie murmured. Zoey, usually the critic, nodded in agreement.

“And I thought we might make little canopies for each bed coming out from the wall.”

Hope flipped the page in her sketchbook and showed a drawing of the same windows, this time with the twin beds, each topped with little partial canopies.

The girls gasped.

“What would the canopies be made of?” I asked.

“Fabric, plant hangers, and curtain rods,” she said. “I made one for my first apartment.”

“Would you make them, or would we need to find someone to sew?” I asked.

“Oh, I can do it. Gran taught me how.” She grinned at the girls. “So what do you think?”

Zoey clasped her hands. “It's splendid-did.”

I looked at Hope and saw her stifling a laugh. It felt good, enjoying a silent, isn't-she-adorable moment with her.

“What about the other walls?” Sophie asked.

“Good question.” Hope motioned to the dormer window with the built-in window seat. “This wall really just needs drapes and a
cushion to match the canopies. We'd paint the wall to look like stone, so it would feel like we're inside a castle room. We'd do the same on this wall over here . . .” She motioned to their bureaus. “And I thought we might also paint a tapestry on it.” She flipped her sketchbook to another page. “Like this.”

“Oooh,” Sophie breathed.

Hope motioned to the wall with the closet. “Over here, all we need to do is the stone treatment over, between, and around the doors.” She showed another sketch.

The girls oohed, aahed, and jumped up and down.

“This is really nice, but I thought we were just doing a mural on one wall.” Last thing I needed was for her to get halfway finished, then leave town. “I'm sure you have your hands full with your grandmother, and this seems like a lot of work.”

She waved her hand. “The whole thing will probably take me about three weeks.”

Sounded like a Pollyanna-ish time estimate to me. “That's all? Are you sure?”

“I work fast.” She looked down, her expression almost embarrassed. “Too fast to be a serious artist, I've been told.”

I wondered who'd told her that. “Sounds like an asset to me.”

“I can't wait!” Sophie said.

Zoey nodded.

“Has Peggy seen this?” I asked.

Hope's curls bobbed on her shoulders. “She came over to Gran's and I showed her. She approved the sketch as well as the estimate. She said she's paying.”

“Peggy is
not
paying.” Peggy had promised the girls a real princess room when we moved to Wedding Tree, but I had no intention of letting her pick up the tab.

“Well, that's something the two of you will have to work out. Here's the estimate.” Hope handed me a professional-looking bid form.

I looked it over. It was less than what I'd been willing to pay the artist from New Orleans, minus the travel expenses.

“Looks good. When do we start?”

“As soon as you'd like. If we use the current color as the base, I can just start sketching directly onto the walls.”

“Yes!” yelled Sophie, throwing up her arms.