His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) Page 14

  Mike was the one looking at a stranger now as Bethany pressed onto the tips of her toes. She smelled like paint and a deeper scent that might have been red wine. And bubble gum. She pressed closer, his body responding with an instant need to love, cherish, and be more to someone than he’d thought he’d want to be again. But he could tell. She was saying goodbye.

  Crazy.

  This was crazy.

  “I want to help you understand,” he said. “You said you’d give us that chance.”

  “That was when you were just some nice guy I met.” Her bottom lip trembled. “And I was thinking maybe I could enjoy myself, and not take it all so seriously for once. Now it’s all tangled up, and we’re . . . I don’t know what my dad will do about his rehab. But I can’t do this with you. I’m already having a hard enough time figuring out my life. I can’t handle this, too.”

  “You can’t handle caring about me?”

  She pressed her lips to his.

  She shook her head, her anger gone. “I’ve cared about a lot of men. That doesn’t mean they were right for me. Or that they were going to stick around long enough to try and make it right. You’re not an easygoing cowboy bartender with a heart of gold, Mike. You’re a professional wanderer who’s made a life out of not attaching to anyone—it sounds like since your brother died.”

  “And you hide in plain sight, with your camouflage truck and crazy clothes, overdosing on painting when you’re not exhausting yourself helping out your family or other people’s kids. It’s like you’ve decided which parts of your heart you can trust, Bethany. And you’re locking the rest of you away, thinking you can live without it.”

  “I’m trying to stick this time where I’m already loved. Instead of wasting more of my life thinking there’s something better for me somewhere else.”

  “And I’m not going anywhere,” he pledged, even if he didn’t completely understand why. “Not like this.”

  “Exactly like this.” She sounded resigned. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Harrison Michael Taylor. The real you. If you keep working with my father, if I ever paint in the loft again and you’re here in your studio, please stay away from me. I just . . . I can’t.”

  And then she left him without a backward glance, heading through the door after her girlfriends.

  Dru popped her head into the Dream Whip’s kitchen Wednesday morning. She waited silently.

  Silently made Bethany crazy. Especially when someone clearly had something to say at the butt crack of dawn. She stopped pretending she was ignoring her sister and looked up from prepping for the Whip’s eleven-o’clock open. She’d been hand-forming hamburger patties using the ground beef the butcher counter at Sweetie’s delivered fresh twice a week.

  “You have a visitor,” Dru said.

  It had been over a week since Bethany and her sister had really talked—except for hellos and goodbyes in passing at the Douglas house. Bethany had filled in Marsha and Joe Saturday about what had happened at the Artist Co-op. She’d asked them to let her siblings know. She’d made it clear she was done talking about Mike. But she’d asked her parents to keep his identity in the family. Whatever else the guy was, however much Bethany needed not to be part of it, Mike seemed to genuinely be trying to do something with his life. Bethany didn’t want to cause him problems. She’d never wanted to be anyone’s problem.

  Dru and the rest of her adult siblings had no doubt heard it all by now, and had been talking it to death. Joe had had another session with Mike on Sunday. Bethany had made a point not to ask her mother about it. And not to contact Mike, the way he hadn’t tried to reach her. Everyone had been giving her even more space than before to sort things out. To hide in plain sight.

  Until now.

  “Who’s here at this time of morning?” Bethany checked her watch, her breath catching at the thought that it might be Mike. She used the back of her hand to wipe her bangs out of her eyes. “It’s not even seven yet.”

  “I guess,” her sister said, “you’re not the only one who can’t sleep these days. I’ll finish the burgers.”

  Bethany stripped off her gloves while Dru donned her own pair and took Bethany’s place at one of the stainless-steel work counters where Bethany had put in as many hours as she could the last few days. She’d needed to work. She’d needed to keep busy, to stick in Chandlerville where she belonged, and to stay out of Midtown Atlanta. She’d even asked one of the other youth center volunteers to cover her art classes on Sunday and yesterday. Meanwhile, Bethany hadn’t been able to touch her brushes and paints in her studio at the Douglas house. Instead, she’d stared each night till dawn at a room full of half-finished canvases.

  “You know,” Dru said as Bethany headed for the door that led to the Dream Whip’s front counter and dining room, “maybe he really is sorry about how things played out.”

  Bethany stopped, her hand pressed to the still-closed door, not bothering to ask whom her sister was talking about.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Sure it does.” Dru formed a ball of fresh hamburger and pounded it flat with the palm of her hand. “If avoiding Mike means the rest of us have to watch you avoid how you feel about everything else, it matters a lot.”

  Bethany watched her sister apply too much force, squashing a patty that would never make the kind of juicy, meaty burger the Whip was famous for. She deserved Dru’s frustration. Clair’s and Nic’s, too. Since she’d driven back to Chandlerville Saturday night, she hadn’t returned her girlfriends’ calls or stopped by G&Bs. She’d barely spoken to them when she’d grabbed her backpack and all but sprinted from the co-op loft—asking only that they leave her be for real this time, until she was ready to talk.

  “You’re not alone, remember?” Dru rerolled the ground beef into a ball. “You never will be. We’re not letting you go again, Bethany. You mean everything to us. We’re your family.”

  Bethany blinked, angry tears pushing at the corners of her eyes. And the anger was at herself. Not at Mike. Not at her sister’s well-intentioned meddling.

  For days she’d stared at her art at Dru and Brad’s house, trying to figure out what was missing in each canvas. But her painting of her foster home had been all she could see—the canvas that she’d left at the loft, because she’d been too much of a coward to go back for it and risk another possible run-in with Mike. And then what? He’d be the same great guy who’d inspired the maddening, ethereal landscape that was keeping her from working on something new. And she’d still want him, when he was an even bigger wild card now than before.

  “I want to be exactly where I am,” she insisted to her sister.

  “Exactly where you were five years ago, you mean.” Dru kept her eyes on her work. “You still don’t know what to do with the rest of us. Only now there’s some new guy making you feel things you don’t want to feel, while everyone else watches from a distance to see if you’ll bolt.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “You told Mom and Dad that you’re thinking about giving up your residency at that art place. Because Mike’s turning out to be too good to be true?”

  Dru cut Bethany with an exasperated expression.

  “Dump the guy,” Dru said, “if tall, dark, handsome, and successful is a turnoff. But don’t give up your chance to figure out what’s going on with a gift like your art, when not being able to paint is tearing you up inside.” She went back to making burgers. “I don’t understand how you do what you do, or why you can’t do it anymore. But I’m pretty sure those people at your co-op could help you figure something out. Maybe even Mike could.”

  “I’m handling it on my own,” Bethany insisted.

  “Aren’t you always?”

  “It’s . . . complicated.”

  “It shouldn’t be. Didn’t used to be. You loved painting. You were your paintings in high school. It’s the only time I’ve seen you really happy. But then Benjie happened, and you hit the road. And now it’s almost like you hate p
ainting—while the family’s losing you to it again.”

  “I’m right here.”

  Bethany had come straight back to Chandlerville after leaving the loft. Each morning, she convinced herself to stay with her friends and family. She might not be able to talk to any of them yet about what she was going through. But this community was where she wanted to belong. Didn’t that count for something?

  “Yes, you’re still here,” her sister agreed. “But . . . you’re also a million miles away. And I wish I understood. I wish I could help. It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what? I’m fine.”

  Dru smiled, but it wasn’t really a smile. She walked to Bethany and pulled her into a hug using her upper arms and elbows, her glove-encased hands covered in hamburger.

  “Tell that to your visitor,” she said. “You’d better get out there. She has to get to school by eight.”

  Shandra?

  Bethany hugged Dru back, absorbing her sister’s support. Bethany had apologized to Shandra over the phone Sunday, when she’d nixed their trip to Midtown for their youth center art class. But she’d felt lousy about it ever since, even though Shandra had sounded fine.

  Dru nudged Bethany toward the swinging door that would take her to the dining room.

  “Go,” Dru said. “I’ll take care of things in here until Willie shows up to fire the grill. At which point you’d better be long gone or he’ll sweet-talk you into working the rest of the day.”

  Bethany nodded; she couldn’t remember ever feeling this exhausted. She pushed through the door and headed around the front counter. Her younger sister was waiting at the front of the dining room, looking at the painting Dru had proudly hung there. It was the one that had helped Bethany earn both her four-year JHTF grant to Pratt and her residency.

  “Hey, girl.” She gave her sister a side hug.

  Shandra tensed but kept staring at the canvas of a meadow just outside of town, one of Bethany’s favorite places in the world. Bethany looked, too, reliving the moment when Mike had handed her the fax of her scholarship application.

  “I’m sorry again about skipping Sunday’s class,” she said. “We’ll make it to Midtown this weekend for sure.”

  “Sure.” Shandra shrugged.

  She was wearing an emerald-green tunic top she’d hemmed to mid-thigh length, over a pair of checkerboard-patterned tights she’d bought on a thrift-store shopping binge with Bethany. She’d tied a bright-pink, paisley-printed bandanna over her hair. When Bethany had attempted Shandra’s portrait, she’d used similar colors, wanting to capture her sister’s exuberance and the passion for living Shandra shared with the world, simply by entering a room and brightening the day of everyone inside.

  “Or you’ll cancel again,” Shandra said.

  “I won’t.” The funk Bethany had let herself slip into was hurting her sister. Her family. Herself. “I swear. I’m going to get my act together.”

  Shandra sighed away the promise. “I hear people. I know more than everyone thinks I do. You’re spooked. You’ll stop pretending you’re not one day, and you’ll be gone. That’s why I came to tell you I don’t want to go down to the youth center this weekend, either. So don’t worry about it.”

  “What? No.” We’re not letting you go again, Bethany . . . We’re your family. “I am going back Sunday, and it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  How many foster homes had let Shandra down in some way before she’d been placed in Chandlerville? Now Bethany was becoming a part of that legacy.

  She followed as her sister tried to leave. “Don’t go.”

  “Why not?” Shandra whirled around, looking ready to explode. “You don’t want to be anywhere the rest of us are. You’re hardly ever at the house anymore. I heard you tell Mom and Dad you’re not going back to your residency, not while Mike’s there . . . It’s just like before, people keep saying. Just like when you quit painting and quit the family and quit everything else after high school. So, fine. Dump the youth center, too. Like I care.”

  Of course she cared.

  “Give me a chance to fix things.” Bethany’s knees wobbled as she remembered Mike begging her for the exact same thing.

  But this was why Bethany had to steer clear of him. There was too much else at stake. She couldn’t let falling apart over a guy ruin things with her family again.

  “I’m not quitting painting.”

  Shandra looked at the tank top and jeans Bethany had worn to the Whip. Bethany knew there wasn’t a speck of fresh paint on her. There hadn’t been since Saturday. She ran a hand down the flared sleeve of Shandra’s perfectly tailored tunic.

  “I won’t miss our youth center class Sunday,” she promised. “I’ve just needed some time to myself. I’m sorry I let that get in the way of what we’re doing together.”

  Precious moments that she’d lost with her sister, her students, and the life in Chandlerville Bethany wanted so badly to be real.

  She sat in the nearest booth. She ran her hand over the coolness of the red leather seats. She’d always loved the look of the Whip, with its vintage upholstery and chrome-rimmed tables. It was retro, but it was classy somehow. The Douglas family had kept things the same from the moment they’d opened their doors when Brad’s mother was a little girl. The permanence of a legacy like that had always mystified Bethany—how people could hold on and fight for something forever, no matter the obstacles. Never completely letting go.

  “You’re really scared of him,” Shandra said, “aren’t you?”

  “What?” Bethany blinked and realized her sister was sitting across the booth from her.

  “Mike. Is it really that bad, that he’s famous and has money and wants to help artists like you and people like Dad?”

  “No.”

  It wasn’t bad.

  Bethany rubbed at her tired eyes. It was wonderful, the things he’d done with his life. She’d come to terms with that while she’d lain awake the last four nights. It was sad, what had happened to his brother and whatever his parents had or hadn’t done to help their sons get through it.

  But . . .

  “Bethie?” Shandra asked, deserving an explanation.

  “He’s just . . .” Bethany dropped her hands to the table.

  He was too much like her. She’d sensed it that first night at McC’s, when something about him had made her feel so safe, she’d trusted a total stranger to help her.

  “It’s scary, right?” Her sister slid a hand across the table and held Bethany’s. “People acting like they like you. And you never know if it’s real, or if it’s going to last, or if you want it to.”

  Bethany inhaled, the air catching in the back of her throat. “All you know is that it hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does.”

  “So you stop it from hurting.” Her sister nodded, wise and angry and brutally honest beyond her years. “However you have to.”

  Bethany squeezed her sister’s hand, feeling closer to Shandra than ever. “You always have the right to say stop.”

  They’d gotten to this place a time or two, as their friendship had deepened. On their long drives into Midtown, or when they’d grabbed something to eat before or after the classes they taught together. When they talked about one of their students Shandra had grown particularly close to—Darby, a little girl who seemed to be quietly hurting in her own six-year-old way.

  “It’s okay to hurt,” Bethany said. “We all do sometimes. But you don’t have to keep hurting. Your life starts getting better as soon as you accept that.”

  Shandra had never talked about what she’d endured in her biological home and maybe some of her earlier foster experiences. But the pain was there, just below the surface, the damage done.

  “Fighting back is never a bad thing,” Bethany insisted, “even when we sometimes make self-destructive choices thinking we’ll feel better.”

  “Like when you walked away from Mom and Dad after high school?” Shandra asked, Bethany’s long-ago decision hovering between them li
ke a shadowy path that she might follow again. “Because they said they liked you. And Benjie treated you like he liked you, and then treated you so bad. And you didn’t want to be treated bad anymore, so you left . . .”

  Shandra pulled her touch away, a brave young woman who’d run from several homes of her own. Thanks to Marsha and Joe, she lost herself in fabric now, and designing crazy-cool clothes, the way their parents had helped Bethany find her paints and brushes and canvases, so she’d have something beautiful, something totally her own, to believe in, too.

  “I’m back for good,” Bethany promised her sister. “I want my life here, with you and Mom and Dad and everyone. I know I’m being flaky, and I’m sorry about Sunday, and that I’m scaring you. I’m trying to fix this scary thing I’m going through. But I’m not going to run just because I’m scared.” She sat up straighter. “That’s no way to live life. Neither is you nixing the youth center and Darby and the other kids because of me.”

  “You’re fixing yourself?” Her sister slumped into the booth’s plush cushion, arms crossed. “By ditching another guy, a good guy this time who’s been good to you? And now you’re ditching everyone else you want to be with, because you feel like shit without him around?”

  Language, Marsha would have said.

  Damn straight, Nic would have responded.

  “No,” Bethany said. “Mike’s just . . . too much for me right now.”

  “Fighting back can be a bad thing, too. Right? If there’s no real reason to fight?”

  Shandra sounded so young and scared. And so not the funny, strong, determined teenager Bethany had watched blossom. She was a kid, after all. A lost, scared kid who desperately needed someone to tell her that everything would work out okay.

  “Right,” Bethany agreed, hating that her insecurities were backing up on the sister she’d wanted so badly to inspire.

  Except how did Bethany convince Shandra that things would be fine . . . when Bethany kept shying away from the people who loved them both to distraction, and kept fighting how perfectly at home she felt in a wandering cowboy’s arms?