His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) (20 page)

“Closer than my parents ever wanted to be.”

Mike looked at her, letting her see how lost a part of him still felt.

“There it is again.” He reached out his hand, waited for her to cover it with hers. “Another part of us that just . . .”

“Fits?”

“We’re both drifters.”

“Feeling safer wandering than staying in one place. At least I did, until one morning I woke up, broken up with my latest guy, dead broke and fired from my latest dead-end job. And I realized who I was becoming.”

Her mother.

That was what Bethany had seen when she’d stared, horrified, at her exhausted, defiant reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’d become a caricature of everything she remembered hating most about her mother.

“I was lucky,” she said. “Everyone, my friends and family, welcomed me back.”

“They’re lucky, too, that you were strong enough to come home and accept their help.”

She’d never thought of it that way. “It took Dad’s heart attack to get me to face making things right for real. Maybe not being able to paint anymore is the price I’m paying for staying away so long.”

Mike relaxed into his side of the booth and finished his last bite of hot dog. “Or maybe your art is like your family. It never really let you go at all. It understands that you just needed time.”

He pushed his onion rings closer to her and filched some of her fries. She ate and sipped at her FO and distracted herself with his mouth while he took a long draw through his ice water’s straw.

She could feel the things they’d shared sinking in. Closing the gaps that could have been excuses for not trusting each other. Now those spaces were connected. Stories about their lives that were so different were fitting together perfectly, the way their bodies did each time they touched.

While he finished eating, she busied herself stacking their plates, until his hand caught hers. Startled, she found his expression hardening—with passion this time, not anger.

“You’re perfect just the way you are, Bethany,” he said, “
because
of everything you’ve been through. Don’t ever forget that. Even if your ex hadn’t been such an ass that night at the bar, there’s a light in you I needed to be next to. I’d have found a way, somehow. It’s that powerful. Time and mistakes and hurting matter. What you’ve been through matters. But none of that diminishes who you really are. Not to your family or your art. Or to me.”

Mike found himself locked into Bethany’s questioning gaze. And for the love of all that was holy he wanted to stay there, listening to her open up, telling her personal things he hadn’t discussed with anyone besides George.

While Bethany thought her secrets would make her
less
to him, not more.

“You survived,” he said, and nothing was sexier to him. “You’re this amazing, vibrant, creative bundle of positive energy that I felt drawn to, long before I glimpsed it in your paintings.”

She ran her fingers through her brightly colored bangs, embarrassed. “I can’t even paint my meadow anymore.”

“That’s just you getting in your own way, telling yourself what you’re doing isn’t good enough. One day, when you least expect it, you’ll be—”

“Free?” She exhaled. “I used to feel free when I painted. And then not for a long time. And now . . . I only feel it when I’m close to you.”

Silence punctuated her admission, the commotion of the people around them fading completely. Mike’s hand shook a little. Or was it hers? Their fingers were too intertwined to tell.

“I’m scared of this, too,” he admitted. “It’s real. And neither one of us was looking for that.”

“Because the more real feelings get, the harder it is to let go when you have to.”

Mike nodded.

“I want . . .” she whispered. “I want to show you my meadow.”

“You do?”

She seemed surprised, too, as if the thought just occurred to her.

“I went there one of my first nights in Chandlerville.” She smiled. “It’s this perfect, peaceful place. The first place I can remember wanting just for myself.”

“I’d give anything to have been there for that.” Getting to glimpse the beginning of her happiness and the healing and belonging she was just now embracing.

“Come see it then. It’s just outside town, not far from my parents’. You should feel it. Take pictures of it. That way it can be yours, too. Always. Even after . . .”

Even after he left.

“It’ll be the same as when you captured the world you saw for Jeremy.” Excited, she rushed to her feet, not giving herself or him a chance to change her mind. She checked her watch. “If we hurry, we’ll get there by sunset.”

She tossed out their trash. Then she grabbed his hand and led him down the stairs to their spot in the parking deck. But that was where he stopped her. Kissed her. Pressed her against the side of his Jeep, his mouth and hands and the weight of his body leaving nothing to the imagination about what he was fantasizing would happen once they reached her meadow.

“I’ll take my pictures until the light is gone,” he said when they came up for air. “But I’ll want more. When I look back at tonight, I know I’ll want to remember it being so much more. And we agreed to play this slow.”

She’d been hurt as a young child. God knew how much, and Mike would never ask unless she wanted to share the details. Her experience with her grandmother had been lonely at best. Criminally negligent, more likely. Which had finished shaping how difficult it must be for Bethany to accept that anyone could truly care about her.

Of course she’d struggled, chased the wrong attention from the wrong people, and run from those who would have, from the start, given her the love she craved. He’d never judge her for that. He’d never feel anything but the burning desire to cherish her for what she’d become, despite all the hurt. But he’d never lie to her, either, about who and what he was.

He’d be good for Bethany, like he’d promised Joe. Or he’d find the strength to either change what he had to, or walk away.

“I’d never do anything to rush you,” he promised.

“I want more, too,” she admitted, shaking in his arms, excited and off balance the same as him. “It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself fall like this for someone. You probably don’t believe that after what I just told you, but—”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “I believe you. We’ll take it slow.”

“We don’t do slow,” she whispered into his ear. And then, God help him, she nipped his earlobe.

“This time we will. You’ll tell me what feels good to you. And that’s all we’ll do.”

“We feel good.” She eased back, her smile firmly in place. “Even if you can’t stay. Even if it’s going to be hard to let you go when it’s time, I want tonight to be whatever it’s supposed to be. You’re right. We’re real. We’re the same in all the ways that are important. I don’t care anymore how little time it’s been. We belong together for as long as we have. I can’t imagine being with you and it feeling anything but good.”

Chapter Twelve

“Late-summer sunsets are remarkable,” Mike said.

He was setting up the camera and tripod he’d produced from his Jeep, positioning them near the pond that held court at the far corner of the meadow. There’d be no settling for quick iPhone images this time, Bethany mused, mesmerized by his precise, practiced movements.

“This far south, especially.” He stared at the sky in between fiddling with his equipment. “The oranges and yellows and pinks bleed differently. Their lavenders, navies, and blacks are more intense.”

He adjusted the height and angle of the tripod’s legs and attached the camera. His motions were confident. Unhurried, despite the waning light. He talked to her as he worked, answering her questions here and there, completely absorbed otherwise in what he was doing. She was watching a man in love with his art.

His passion for sharing with her what he usually did alone drew Bethany closer to the pond’s edge. The sun was showing off in a magnificent display, charming the water’s reflection into an equally grand spectacle. Mike had scouted the meadow and decided on the exact angle he wanted to photograph sunset and dusk, based on how he thought the light would drop behind the tree line.

“When I try to take photos this time of night”—she watched as he peered through the camera’s lens and made adjustments on the digital display’s touch screen—“all I get are shadows and washed-out gray.”

“The colors come when you adjust for the light, where it’s weakest or strongest, and for how vibrant or dark you want the exposure to be. It also depends on where you focus the lens. You have to work with the camera to get it to see what you want it to, even the newer ones. You compensate for its limitations and adjust for your environment—otherwise the lens won’t see what your eye does. You can work with shutter speed and adjust aperture. This camera is digital. Film is a different medium with another set of tools to manipulate.”

“It sounds . . .” Absolutely fascinating. “Complicated.”

Mike looked at her, his gaze soft as velvet. “I’m being a total geek. Sorry. Your meadow is beautiful.” He looked around them at the tall grass and the sprinkling of ancient oak trees here and there, then at the woods full of pines beyond the pond. “I can see what drew you to paint it. I’ll want to capture it at dawn one day, on a cloudy morning with the sun burning through. That kind of diffused light would be incredible here.”

While he made final adjustments to the camera, he snagged Bethany with a one-armed grab that plastered her to his side. She pushed up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. Capturing his attention completely, she kissed him to distraction. He lifted her until her feet were practically dangling and whistled once his lips slipped away. He licked the corner of his mouth, making her feel like the dessert he’d denied himself at the Varsity.

“You make it hard for a man to concentrate.” He sounded as desperate as she felt.

“Good.” For tonight, for as long as they had, it was going to be so good. She finally knew that. Trusted that. Trusted him?

He eased her down his body. She rested her head on the delicious warmth of his chest. The sky and clouds over the water were magnificent, creating fantasy patterns of color and shadow. Each moment was an ever-changing celebration.

Mike watched her taking it all in. His large palm rubbed down her back. “I can always shoot this another night.”

“Not gonna happen, cowboy.” She backed away. She wasn’t missing her chance to watch him work. “Make me a picture I won’t be able to stop myself from painting.”

She walked back to the Jeep and leaned on the bumper while he worked with his camera, quickly now as the light and colors in the sky—their reflections on the pond—shifted. His legs were braced for balance as he shot, muscles bunching beneath his whisper-soft cotton shirt. His slightly too long hair brushed his collar, making her mouth water to kiss the skin beneath. Nibble it. Make him shiver the way she knew he would.

He snapped frame after frame, the horizon vivid, vibrant, the late-summer sun slanting away. His adjustments to the camera were relentless, grabbing every glimpse of the world deepening around them. The day’s afterlife emerged with the sound of night creatures: crickets and frogs and softly singing birds, their rhythms a soothing hymn. All the things she liked best about this place were now better because Mike was there.

The trees and the grass lost their dimension. The pond faded to shadow. Only fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, had passed. But it might have been hours, and he’d have stayed just as absorbed in his work, and Bethany in him.

He was motionless now. She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around him from behind and pressing her cheek to his back. A vast blanket of stars emerged, infinite, fragile, spreading above them. He sighed into their quiet spell.

“Thank you,” he said. “For sharing this with me.”

“I’ll never be here again without thinking of tonight.”

He drew her around him and kissed her. He removed the sparkly headband that Camille had helped her pick out at the dollar store, and he ran his hand through her hair and kissed her again. And again, as if he’d be satisfied to do nothing more until dawn.

“Don’t go away.” He left long enough to walk to the Jeep and store his equipment.

Long enough for him to grab a blanket and return and spread it at the water’s edge. Long enough for her to change her mind. Except she couldn’t. Not now. Not with this man. She was taking a huge risk. But how could she have thought
just friends
was possible with Mike? It turned out that this was a night
she
wanted to always look back on, too.

It was the night she’d remember giving her cowboy her heart.

Mike reached out his hand, relaxing only when Bethany joined him by the pond after watching him so calmly from her meadow’s moonlit shadows.

He welcomed her body closer, her breath teasing his neck, every inch of them aligning. She smiled, her hands smoothing across his chest. They drew each other down to the blanket. He wanted them skin-to-skin, hearts pounding, need driving them until they couldn’t think about anything else. But he kept telling himself to give her time, to make sure she was okay.

And then she kissed him, her body flowing into his lap, reckless and needing and out of control. He groaned and helped her drag his shirt free from his jeans. He’d already gotten his insulin pump out of the way at the Jeep, not wanting to worry her with the process, leaving her free rein now. When her hands moved to his belt, he stalled them.

“I’m trying to be careful with you,” he said.

She hesitated for the first time. “Tonight I don’t want careful.”

He gave a short laugh, his body straining against his control, desperate to pounce. Consume. Dive into the pleasure he knew they’d find. “That makes two of us.”

He kissed her long, hard, soft, easing her back to the blanket, testing his control.

She began unbuttoning the front of her dress, revealing fragile, feminine lace beneath. “You’ve already shown me more of your heart, wanted to know more of mine, than any man I’ve ever been with.”

“It’s not enough.” He kissed the soft skin of her collarbone. Nuzzled the valley between her breasts. “I know I’m not nearly enough for you.”

“It’s everything.” She smiled as he finished unbuttoning, all the way down to her matching panties. “Trust me. I’ve done the legwork.”

His mouth worshiped her belly while he dragged off his shirt, her dress and sandals, and the jeans that got stuck on his boots. She giggled at his curse and helped him discard the offending footwear and clothes. Then he kissed his way back up her body. The last thing he removed was the beautiful lingerie he’d had no idea lay hidden beneath all her crazy outfits.

“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 . . .”