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

  “You’re one surprise after another.” He took in the sight of her. “I should have dragged you out to the woods and shown off with my camera sooner.”

  She gave him another giggle and took care of his briefs, sliding them down, smiling her approval, easing back as he kicked them off. Her eyes were soft gray clouds. Her skin, satin. She returned his kisses endlessly, letting him slow them down and anchor her wrists on either side of her head, where he needed them so her inquisitive fingers didn’t end things before they could really begin.

  He lifted away to catch his breath and memorize her awestruck expression. Her sweet, trusting smile humbled him, as if this were her first time. He fished a condom from the pocket of his jeans and slid on the protection.

  And then she was moving beneath him, her legs wrapping around his waist, sending him soaring into the night, into her, like a dissolving sunset bursting into a sky full of fireworks. Her body welcomed him, and Mike was lost. Found. Flying apart. Becoming whole. Making his way home in her heat, in their passion. The combination was nearly unbearable, bewitchingly intense.

  Her hands clenched on his body as he moved faster, her nails biting just deep enough to make him crave more.

  “How can you feel so good?” she gasped as she took him, and he took her, and they gave each other more.

  “How can you be so beautiful?” He tried to remember to take his time, to make it last. But there was no slow. Not tonight. Not with Bethany.

  “Too . . . too fast.” She tugged at his hair, urging him on. “I’m going to . . .”

  “Yes,” he groaned. “I want it all.”

  All of her. All that Bethany had never given away to anyone else. Not this completely. The thought was intoxicating.

  “Mike?”

  “I’m here. Let me love you.”

  Her body clenched at his words, surging, making him curse, move over her, within her, faster, lifting them both higher, holding on. Clinging now.

  “Too fast,” he panted.

  “I need you so much.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers. He closed his eyes against the brightness, the emotions, the . . . love consuming them.

  Real.

  Passionate.

  Everything.

  “I need you, too,” he whispered. “Mine. Can’t believe you’re mine.”

  “Mine . . .” she gasped back, her pleasure sharpening his. Until release was rolling between them, their bodies straining for more.

  “All mine . . .”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Details,” Clair insisted two mornings later. “We need details. And we’re not moving from this spot until we get them.”

  Bethany was hand-pressing potatoes into fries in the Dream Whip kitchen.

  “You need to get your butt off the counter,” she said, “before Dru gets here and moves it for you.”

  Bethany had originally asked not to work today unless it was an emergency. Partly because she and Shandra were due at the youth center that afternoon for the official presentation of the mural to their students’ families. And partially because Bethany had hoped to be back in her painting groove. She wasn’t. Which wasn’t exactly a novelty.

  But not being able to sleep because she couldn’t get a guy off her mind—that was a non-novelty that had propelled her from her bed, desperate for a diversion. Even if prepping fifty pounds of potatoes was the only available distraction. Too bad she’d had a brain fart when Nicole had called on Bethany’s drive over. Bethany had answered the phone, when she’d let the rest of the world roll to voice mail since Mike dropped her off Sunday night. Nicole had pinpointed her location and destination with the speed of a federal agent tracking a hot lead.

  Bethany’s time to straighten herself out before she dealt with her friends and family was up.

  “There aren’t any details worth sharing,” she told her friends. She might be in over her head with Mike. But unless he felt the same . . . “It was just one night. It didn’t mean anything. And even if it did, it doesn’t have to mean everything. I already knew it wouldn’t for him.”

  “Because why?” Clair was munching on a dill pickle she’d snagged from the enormous jar in the Whip’s walk-in refrigerator.

  “Because Mike made it clear he’s still leaving.”

  “After he slept with you?”

  “Before.”

  I know I’m not nearly enough for you . . .

  And then they’d made love. And it had been wonderful. And it would be wonderful again. Bethany couldn’t wait to see him, talk to him, understand more about what made him the man she’d needed to meet, to know for sure that there was love in the world for her. Once she had herself under control enough not to hope for more than Mike was capable of giving—no matter what she wanted it all to mean.

  Each time she closed her eyes, she saw his near rapture while he’d worked with his camera and the sun’s light. The same expression had softened his features while he’d loved her, cherished her body, and cared for her while they’d driven each other crazy. But that was no reason to backslide into her compulsion to make every relationship with every guy the love affair that would end all others.

  She’d blown her just date for fun experiment and fallen in love with him. But that was on her. Going in, they’d both been clear on the ground rules.

  “You’re full of it,” Nic said, “and you know it.”

  “You’re totally into the guy.” Clair pointed her pickle for emphasis.

  “And I’d bet money,” Nic added, “that Harrison Michael Taylor is totally into you.”

  “And he”—Bethany pressed the lever home, shooting another potato through—“has just as many relationship hang-ups as I do.”

  He’d been so careful, making certain that making love was what she wanted. And she’d told him it was. She’d been so sure it was. Only, the one time Mike had phoned her cell after Sunday, she hadn’t taken the call.

  Mine.

  All mine . . .

  “He’ll be working with your dad for a while longer, right?” Clair polished off the buttered hamburger bun she’d made in lieu of breakfast, insisting she needed the carbs. Her morning client had four Labs she didn’t like to kennel when she traveled for business. And unless Clair wanted to spend half her day walking each one individually, she’d be wrestling all four pampered pooches at once around Chandler Park’s jogging path. “There’s plenty of time.”

  Bethany stopped pressing fries and gave her friends her undivided attention.

  “Time to what?” she snapped.

  Nic leaned a hip against the counter. “Lasso the one-eyed snake again?”

  Clair snorted. “Strap on that Stetson for another ride?”

  At Bethany’s glare, Nicole sobered. “Talk to him.”

  “And say what?” What was Bethany going to say?

  She wiped her forehead with the sleeve of the green-and-white men’s rugby shirt she’d thrown on over orange checkerboard tights.

  Clair looped her arm around Bethany’s shoulder. “Tell him what you want. Do you even know?”

  “I know it was just supposed to be dinner.” Bethany caved at Nicole’s snicker. “Okay, I figured it would end up as more than dinner. But not that much more.”

  “How much more?” Clair asked.

  “He was . . . so into it. Lost in what we were doing, just like me. Like he couldn’t stop, either.”

  “I can see how that could be a turnoff,” Nic commiserated.

  “And he held me afterward.”

  “The jerk!” Clair smiled.

  “For hours.” Bethany closed her eyes, picturing it, wanting every second of it back. “We just lay there, wrapped in a blanket under the stars, staring at each other and the sky and listening to each other breathe like it was the best sound, the best place in the world . . .”

  “Oh, honey.” There were tears in Nicole’s eyes. “You’re falling in love with him.”

  “No,” Bethany lied, “I’m not.”

 
“And Mr. Harrison Michael Taylor, wealthy, well-connected, Yankee cowboy photographer,” Clair added, “is falling for you.”

  “No,” Bethany told herself and her friends, “he’s not.”

  “Because most men just looking to scratch an itch,” Nic said, “take a girl to dinner, romance her, and then after the wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, curl up with her for hours.”

  No, they didn’t.

  “And most relationship-phobic women,” Clair added, “spend every waking moment avoiding a guy, then thinking about the guy, and then talking to the guy, even though she doesn’t want him. And then she goes out with the guy and makes love with the guy, and still tries to convince herself that she’s not hopelessly in love.”

  “He’s not staying!” Bethany shouted.

  At least she’d meant to shout. But the words had come out strangled. She bit the corner of her lip.

  I need you, Mike.

  “It doesn’t matter how fast I fell for him,” she said. “Or if he’s feeling something more than he expected, too. He’s going to leave once he’s finished working with Joe.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” Nic asked.

  “Does she look okay with it?” Clair said.

  “He’s a nice guy,” Bethany reasoned. “He cares about me. I’m not going to pitch a fit and treat him like he’s using me, when we both know that’s not what happened. I’ll be fine as soon as he needs it to stop.”

  That’s the way it went in her mind, over and over as she’d tried and failed a half dozen times to return Mike’s call. How many guys had she watched walk away from her? She should be a pro at it by now.

  “As soon as he needs it to stop?” Clair grabbed Bethany by the shoulders and prevented her from pacing across the kitchen. “Or as soon as you do?”

  Bethany shook her head at her friend and at the hours she’d spent staring at her paintings in her studio at Dru’s—lost in her attempts to re-create the landscape of the meadow and finish her beginning portraits of her parents and siblings and niece. Her heart pounding, she’d flashed back over and over to Mike’s total absorption in his photography. She’d told herself she could be like that again, loving her art the way he clearly did his. Like him she could be free in the moment, swept away by discovery, lost to the magic of being perfectly out of control.

  Make me a picture I won’t be able to stop myself from painting . . .

  But she still couldn’t pick up her brushes, not even to start a new piece.

  “It doesn’t have to hurt.” Nicole was hugging her now. “Your family, your art, falling in love. None of it’s supposed to hurt.”

  Bethany nodded.

  But it did. Even loving a wonderful man like Mike hurt. Especially loving him. And love, like her art, was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Instead, the fear of everything that could go wrong was paralyzing her.

  She covered the enormous bin of prepped potatoes with plastic wrap and lugged it to the industrial cooler where she’d already stored another one. She returned to clean up the fry cutter so Dru’s crew wouldn’t have to.

  “It feels like I’m hanging off a cliff by my fingernails,” she admitted, confiding in her friends something that she could barely face herself.

  Nic looked misty again. A little afraid for Bethany, and a little proud. “Love usually does.”

  “I’ve been running from it for so long. So has Mike. Even if he decided to stay after finishing with Joe . . . What are the chances two people like us could make something work long term?”

  Mike had kissed her softly beside the pond, after they’d packed the blanket and everything else away. He’d driven her home in silence that had grown increasingly strained, and he’d kissed her on the front porch, the brim of his Stetson shielding them from the glare of the lamp Dru had left on. He’d lifted Bethany’s hand and brushed her palm with his lips. He’d said he’d call her, and he had.

  So what was wrong with her?

  Why couldn’t she be grateful for that moment, and every new one they had, and let it be enough? Why was she already worrying about how badly it was going to end?

  “He left me a message Monday.” She’d listened to it at least once an hour since. “He said he understood if I needed space. To take my time. He’d be waiting. But for what?”

  Trying to answer that question had been like staring at her paintings, trying to feel something she couldn’t.

  I’m here. Let me love you.

  “You’re never going to know what’s over that cliff you’re clinging to,” Clair finally answered, “until you trust someone enough to let go and fall.”

  “Hey, honey,” Joe said on his cell.

  He was gulping down air after Mike’s latest round of light stretching. The guy had been true to his word. Once Joe had gotten with the program, their routines had become more intense every time they met.

  “Make it quick,” he panted. “My sadist of a physical therapist is on a bio break. He’s got a full half hour left with me, and Lord knows what your fella has up his sleeve next. Yoga’s supposed to be relaxing, right? Therapeutic? I think my heart’s sprung another leak.”

  “He’s not my fella, Dad.”

  “Uh-huh.” Joe swiped at the sweat on his face, standing beside the backyard patio’s picnic table, just outside the kitchen. “Then what is he?”

  Mike hadn’t straight-out asked after Bethany. And Joe had made a point not to mention the date he’d heard the two of them had gone on Sunday night. He and his PT specialist had been tiptoeing around the subject of Joe’s daughter for close to an hour.

  “How’s your session going?” Bethany asked, suspiciously bright and cheerful for someone whom no one in the family but Dru had spoken with in days.

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “Nothing.”

  Joe sighed. Nothing was going to be the death of him, if his daughter and her cowboy didn’t figure themselves out.

  “Mike’s pushing me,” he answered. “I’m finally pushing myself. I’m sleeping better, have more energy. I’m doing my exercises between therapy sessions, and I’m taking a two-month leave of absence from work so I’ll have the best shot at a full recovery.”

  He and Marsha would have to make a serious dent in their savings to cover the drop in his take-home pay. There might be problems with his position at the office when he went back. And he might have to strangle Oliver if the boy kept offering to handle any of the expenses Joe couldn’t in the meantime. But those were just details to sort out, when the details didn’t matter now.

  Joe was making the most of this chance to pull his life back together.

  And maybe his daughter was, too.

  “Now that we’re all caught up on me,” he said, “tell me what’s wrong, honey.” He could hear muffled conversation on her end of the connection. “Where are you?”

  “Midtown, with Shandra.”

  “Right. Your mural’s done. Congratulations. Shandra’s so excited to catch up with Darby. She couldn’t stop talking about what happened after the two of you got back Sunday. She really opened up with your mother and me. That was the first for her.”

  “That’s great, Dad. She’s the one who first guessed there was a problem. She’s the reason that family has the chance to get better. We’ll talk to Darby and her mom when Ms. Parker comes by later. But from what I can tell since the after-school bus dropped Darby off, she’s doing much better.”

  Bethany paused, hanging on the line when he could hear how busy things were around her. And he knew she hadn’t called him—when she always called her mother about family things—just to talk about his therapy and Shandra.

  “Mike’ll be heading back outside in a minute,” Joe offered.

  “Oh. Then I should let you go.”

  “Should you?”

  Joe eased onto the bench Mike had shown him how to lean on for support while they worked through standing stretching poses. He gazed around the backyard, at the swing set he’d built, the old volleyball
net that always needed repairing, and the secondhand playhouse that the younger kids dragged him and Marsha into for tea parties with their imaginary friends.

  “Actually . . .” Bethany exhaled into the phone. “Mike left me a message the other day, and I—”

  “Thought you’d call me to talk about it?”

  “No. But when I picked Shandra up she mentioned your next session with him was this afternoon, so I—”

  “Called me to check up on him, too?” Joe heard a noise and glanced over his shoulder. Travis, not Mike, walked out of the kitchen through the sliding doors. “So you didn’t have to talk to Mike yourself?”

  Bethany cleared her throat. “No, Dad. I—”

  “Your mother and I don’t ask. But that doesn’t stop folks from keeping us in the loop about you kids. Sounds to me like you and Mike have plenty to talk about these days.”

  “I know we do.”

  Joe had heard Bethany sound lost like this before. When she’d been a hurting teenager. Then an angry one. And then a scared young woman working hard to make her way back to everything she was meant to be.

  “Then why are you talking to me,” he asked, “instead of Mike?”

  “I’ve tried calling him a few times.” There was a new tremor in her voice. This was a different, excited-sounding kind of lost that made Joe smile. “I dial the phone, and then I hang up. I just . . . can’t. I thought maybe you could tell him something for me.”

  “Mike’ll be right out. Tell him yourself.”

  “Actually, I’ve got to go, Dad. More parents are showing up.”

  “Then call back.” Joe peered past Travis—and the worry on his son’s face—to the clock on the kitchen wall. “We’ll be done in a half hour.”

  “I’m sorry I’m interrupting your therapy. It’s no big deal.”

  “What’s no big deal?”

  Something was definitely wrong with his child. Or, definitely right. Either way, Joe had no intention of planting himself in the middle of it. Marsha was the matchmaker, not him. He’d already meddled enough, working with Mike when sparks had been flying from the start between the young man and Bethany.