His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) Read online

  “So you’re just going to walk away from your art? From us?”

  “Us?”

  “I told myself I wasn’t going to make coming here about us. We haven’t even figured out if there is an us. But you’ve flat-out decided I’m no good for you. Now your residency isn’t good for you. Don’t do that. You’re too talented, Bethany. If nothing else, I can help you with your creative process.”

  “But you want more than that, right?” She squared her shoulders, aware of her deplorable appearance. “And I want more than that.”

  A relieved smile softened his features. “Then let me in. Let me help. Let me show you what I see when I look at all you’ve done.”

  “When you look at what?”

  She waved at the cluster of the landscapes she’d attempted when she’d first picked up a brush again. She’d been living in her tiny place above Dan’s and thinking it would be so easy to just dive back into painting now that she was ready.

  “These are of the same meadow in your fax,” she said, staring with him at her dozen or so attempts to re-create the oil that hung near the entrance to the Whip. Different times of the year, different seasons. She hadn’t come close to finishing a single one of them. “There’s no life in them, no light. It’s not working.”

  “Do you mind if I take some pictures?”

  The idea made her sick to her stomach. “Why?”

  “Because they’re your first love.”

  “What?” Something inside Bethany clicked, like a piece of a puzzle locking into place.

  “Art was your first love in high school, not that mongrel Benjie. And I can see how maybe you lost it for a while when he hurt you.”

  “Painting started hurting, too.” Anger flooded her along with the memory. “I couldn’t create anymore. I couldn’t go to art school. While Benjie moved on, at least partially because of work that I’d done. And after that I couldn’t stay here with my family and friends, wanting to fight back against all of them, because . . .”

  “You thought you’d lost the one thing you needed most?”

  Mike scanned her canvases as if they were treasures—the same way he’d looked at her just now, when he’d arrived and found her sweaty and covered in paint.

  “Your love for painting is in every one of these,” he said. “You’re struggling with your creativity, just like you’re struggling to stay with your family. But believe me, you haven’t lost anything. You’ll get your art back, better than ever.”

  The world-renowned HMT had his phone out, looking like a kid in a candy store, eager to photograph the unfinished attempts she’d never meant for anyone to see. He waited to make certain it was okay. Bethany hesitated, then nodded, trusting him while she clung to his confidence in her ability. He worked quickly, businesslike in his intensity. But his smile never dimmed. He was having a blast.

  He started with her landscapes. He crouched in front of another grouping, sifting through and shooting each unframed piece with equal care. They were some of her more recent work, since she’d moved in with Dru and Brad.

  “What made you so indecisive about these?” he asked.

  Indecisive?

  He was kneeling in front of the first portrait she’d attempted. It was of Camille. Bethany rode out a wave of disappointment.

  “I’m looking for something special for my parents. Dru and Brad are getting married on Marsha and Joe’s wedding anniversary. I want to present a painting to my parents at the reception. And Camille’s been such a special surprise for all of us . . .”

  Bethany knelt, too, and studied the work she hadn’t been able to look at in weeks.

  “What stopped you from finishing her?” Mike asked.

  “I . . .” Bethany flashed back to her talk with Shandra. “I think sometimes you fight the hardest against the things you want to care about the most.”

  She was suddenly eye-to-eye with Mike, his gaze warming at her admission.

  He was a too-good-to-be-true man who’d taken his first pictures so he could bring the world back to his sick brother. He was a man who’d then spent a year photographing Jeremy’s bucket list, and had donated the money he’d made from the sales of the prints to help other kids and families and struggling artists like Bethany.

  He was a man who was kissing her. Or was she kissing him again? All she knew was how right it felt to touch Mike, even as she ducked her head away.

  “I wish . . .” She brushed her fingertips across Camille’s half-finished image.

  Mike hugged her to his side and pressed his lips to her temple. “What do you wish?”

  “That I could show my family how it feels to belong to them. Just once, even if it’s the last thing I paint.”

  “Show your family, or show yourself?”

  Bethany shook her head, not questioning anymore the way he seemed to understand.

  “What about when you were in high school?” he asked as she inched away.

  “I guess it was easier to pretend then.” She stared out the bay window’s gauzy curtains at the muted world beyond.

  “Before that asshat Carrington got into your head?”

  “I’d started believing things were going to finally work out in my life.” Bethany leaned her weight against Mike. “And my paintings were getting better and better. They were dreams I could make happen with merely a brush in my hand. Then it all just fell apart when Benjie and I did. Or I ripped it apart. I ripped up every painting I’d ever done, except for that one of the meadow Dru has at the Whip. The images I submitted for the residency were the photographs my dad took of my work when I was a teenager. I was pissed at the world back then and needed to destroy something, I guess.”

  “I understand.”

  Bethany laughed. “Well, I don’t. Benjie was nothing. I know that now. I wish I had then. Before I did the kind of damage to my life that maybe it’s impossible to undo.”

  Her knees gave out and she landed on her butt.

  Mike sat beside her, crossing his legs, the two of them surrounded by her attempts to capture the very best of the home she was finally determined to keep. He curved her into the warmth of his body. She could sense him listening, when she didn’t know how to say more. She didn’t know how she’d managed to get what she had out. Or maybe she did.

  “I keep forgetting who you are.”

  “Who am I, darlin’?”

  She sighed. “An easy-come, easy-go cowboy. A part-time, drifting bartender. A grieving little brother. A healer who’s helping my dad, even if Joe’s not so good at being helped. A celebrated, philanthropic artist who sees way more than the rest of us can. A man who wants to help and be needed, but never long enough to need anything or anyone himself.”

  Mike chuckled.

  “You and your family make easy-come, easy-go damn near impossible,” he said. “And you see plenty yourself. A lot more now, I’m betting, than when you were a teenager, when you first started dreaming while you painted. And maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  “What problem?” she asked, the answer bubbling inside her, just out of reach.

  “That you can’t pretend anymore. Painting was your escape when you were a kid. But your first love knows how hard life can be, too. And now, if you want your art back, you have to deal with reality as you create.”

  While Bethany watched Dru and Brad start their lives together. And Oliver and Selena make their future with Camille a dream come true. And Marsha and Joe—beating the odds and fighting back after Joe’s heart attack and surgery, refusing to consider that it was time to maybe scale down their foster home full of kids like Shandra, who’d be lost without them. Everywhere Bethany looked, there was love. The kind that never gave up, and never backed down from a challenge.

  And she kept trying to paint it all. Even though, when she was being totally honest with herself, just her and her brushes and paints, what she’d kept finding herself thinking about was . . . leaving it all behind again.

  She looked at her recent attempts, at the c
olors she’d mixed and layered and applied. She’d poured her feelings into each stroke, hoping something beautiful would emerge. Something that wouldn’t hurt when she looked at it. Something she could see through to the end.

  “I was glad it was gone for a while.” The awful truth came tumbling out before she could catch it. “My art. The escape it had been. It all seemed like such a lie.”

  Mike gave her a supportive nod. “So you ran from it, when you left your foster family.”

  She shook her head at the years she’d wasted. “I didn’t make it far. And I never belonged anywhere else. Wherever I went, I was desperate to get away from there, too. I was always searching for a home to come back to.”

  His gaze jerked to hers, their connection stronger than ever. Their pasts and present and more colliding.

  “And now?” he asked.

  “Now?” She swept her arms wide, encompassing her new pieces, one failure after another. “This is all I’ve been able to do since I promised my family I wanted to stay.”

  Mike captured her arms and crossed them over her chest, hugging her close.

  “Then stay,” he said. “So your life and your art are different now. So what? Figure out what staying means now—to you and your paintings. Let them take you in a new direction. It’ll be the adventure of a lifetime, I promise you. I know it’s scary, but you can do it. What you create is always about where you are. And right now, you’re not sure about your place with your family. I get how hard that can be.”

  His drifter’s gaze made her think of the stormy sunset images on his office wall.

  “But trust me,” Mike said. “You can create beyond your anger and your fear and any other emotion blocking you. You already proved that to yourself when you were a teenager. You’ll get your light back. Your dreams. You’ll be able to show how you see the world and want to change things for the better. The only thing your paintings can’t be about anymore is—”

  “Pretending,” she said, swept along by the passion in his voice. His heart. This stranger. This generous artist who understood. A man who saw and seemed to cherish even the stormy parts of her.

  “Once you break through,” he said, “you’ll create the most beautiful things you’ve ever painted.”

  “The way your brother’s illness inspired your photography?” She was thinking of the priceless photographs Mike had taken of Jeremy’s hat—his brother’s memory—posed in wondrous places Mike had traveled to alone.

  He ran a hand down her arm.

  His fingers tangled with hers.

  “Jeremy’s life changed mine. As hard as it was to watch him keep fighting and grow weaker and sicker and finally lose his battle with CF . . . it was inspiring. He made whatever time he had a good thing. He made me promise to make a difference, the way he couldn’t.”

  “You do. And because of you, so many other artists get to make that difference, too.” While Mike kept to himself. “Through your co-ops, and the volunteer work the resident artists do, and the money you donate . . . Jeremy’s why you work with people like Joe, too, right?”

  Mike nodded. “I can’t . . .”

  “Not help people?”

  “Don’t romanticize my life. I’ve been furious with my own childhood for a long time. I’ve made my own mistakes. I’ve wandered the globe for years—”

  “Disappearing from everywhere you’ve been before you could get too attached?”

  Mike caressed her face. “See? We’re not so different after all.”

  “No,” she agreed, “we’re not.”

  He’d never been a stranger. Not really. Not when he could talk about her art so honestly, and about escaping and coming home for real. Not when he could promise her she’d create again, and she found herself believing him. Not when every time they touched, the same recklessness took over, making her want more, even if Chandlerville was just a temporary stop on the way to his next adventure.

  “That’s what’s scaring me,” she said as she kissed him.

  Mike returned Bethany’s kiss, letting her take the lead. This was her show, her choice. But, God, he hoped she didn’t slam the door on them again.

  He’d reminded himself on the drive over that he was coming to talk about him continuing to work with Joe, and about her continuing with her residency. He’d made it clear that he didn’t expect anything more. Then while Bethany’s sister had been distracting her, he’d slipped into her studio after glimpsing it when he’d walked inside. And once Bethany had followed him in here—and stayed, talking to him about her art and her past and her fears for the future—there’d been no way he could keep his distance, short of Bethany tossing him out on his ear.

  When she stopped kissing him and stood and moved out of his reach, he let her go, watching her stare at her paintings. She wore baggy overall shorts and a neon-pink tank top layered under a man’s flannel shirt that had been ripped in several places. Everything was too big on her, except for the tank, which looked shrink-wrapped to every tantalizing inch of her upper body. She’d gotten taupe wall paint all over herself.

  He wanted to capture her with his camera so he could show her how amazing she was to him, even scattered and disheveled and looking lost as she frowned at her niece’s half-painted face.

  “I dreamed the other night,” Bethany said, “about washing soft pastels over this. A rainbow of them. Like the colors in one of Camille’s quilts, the ones she and Selena’s mother are so into. This is the first portrait I tried to paint. I’ve been looking at it for months. But I can’t . . . get it right.”

  “And more color would make it right?”

  He’d seen Camille’s pictures of her quilts. He was intrigued by the challenge of merging something like one of their patterns with the little girl’s image.

  “I have no idea.” Bethany moved on to a barely begun group portrait of what looked to be her and Dru and Oliver when they were teens.

  Mike joined her. It always surprised him how tiny she was—despite her over-the-top personality and determination to bulldoze through every challenge.

  “Maybe you’re not supposed to know yet,” he suggested. “Maybe it’s time to play, instead of worrying about things being right. Playing is different from pretending, Bethany. It can get you through a lot when you’re blocked. Whatever you end up doing with all of this will be unexpected, but it will wow people the same as your teenage paintings. Even more. Because there will be more of you in your work now. Trust that, and just play for a while.”

  “Because being afraid is no way to live your life?” She kept searching her canvases. “That’s what I told Shandra.”

  “It’s no way to live your art, either.”

  “I’m afraid of you.” Bethany peeked sideways at him. “You came from out of nowhere, and now you’re a part of all of this somehow. My father’s recovery. My painting. My . . . feelings. It’s way too much, too fast.”

  “The fear is mutual, love.” She had him quaking in his hiking boots.

  “But you’re still here.”

  “And you keep letting me in.”

  “So far.”

  “Fair enough.” He motioned to her treasure trove of new beginnings. “Let me spend some more time with you and your work. I think I can help.”

  “Just my work?” She stared into his eyes, challenging him. “My art’s why you brought me strawberry cupcakes?”

  “I got the scones, too.”

  “Because . . .”

  He shook his head. “Because I want to get to know you, Bethany, for real this time.”

  “But only for as long as you’re in town?”

  Mike wished he had a different answer to give. “I don’t expect you to trust me. I’m a work in progress, too,” he warned. “I liked things the way they were before I came to Chandlerville. But now . . .”

  The sensitive fingers of an artist glided over his cheek, the way he’d caressed her earlier. “No more pretending for you, either?”

  “I don’t seem to have a choice. Not wi
th you. I see all you have, and how fiercely you’re fighting to hold on to it. And it makes me think I don’t really know anything about myself anymore. Except that I need more of you in my life.”

  She studied him with the same intensity as she had her paintings. “And once Joe is better?”

  “My photography can take me anywhere in the world when I’m doing a new series. But I’m here now. And I’d like to spend that time with you.”

  Her gray eyes narrowed. “How long has it been since you’ve been honest with someone this way, about who and what you are?”

  “Too long,” he admitted. “Thank you, by the way, for asking your family to keep the details of my professional life to themselves.”

  “It seemed important to you.”

  “You’re important to me, too.” Something he hadn’t let happen with any of the women he’d briefly dated since his engagement.

  “Another dream to play with?” She led him back into the living room, walking lighter with each step, smiling brighter.

  “Another adventure not to quit,” he countered, “until we see where this can take us. I get how that’s not your comfort zone.”

  “Evidently, no matter how hard I try to sometimes, I’m not a quitter either. Just like my foster father.”

  She opened the front door and motioned Mike out with a sweep of her arm.

  “Is . . . that a yes?” He joined her, accepting that he had to go, even if he’d dream tonight of bubble-gum-pink lips and strawberry cupcakes.

  “You’d better saddle up, cowboy,” Bethany said as she shoved him out the door. “That’s a yes.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Only your part of the mural is uncovered,” Bethany said to her and Shandra’s Sunday youth center class. “Let your creativity go.”

  She smiled, thinking of all the glorious work that had gone into the wall-sized project, the rest of the painting already completed by her other classes. A community canvas was emerging, with just one more section to go.