“I’m not blowing anything.”
She’s the one who keeps turning me down.
“Oh, I know
that
voice. It’s your ‘I’m the boss and you’re not’ voice.”
He breathed deep and grumbled, “Lucy. Cut it out.”
And she relented. “Okay. Just, you know, try to be open, will you?”
“Open. Absolutely. I will.”
“Ha. I love you, Noah.”
“Good. Be safe. Don’t overdo it.”
“I will be fine. I promise. Bye, now.”
And she was gone. He set down the phone and thought of all the things he hadn’t said:
Watch your back. Hold on to your purse. Stay out of dark alleyways. Set up those first appointments with your new doctors....
He had so much advice he needed to give her. But she was on her own now. All grown up. And a continent away.
* * *
Alice didn’t know what to do. Noah was shutting down on her, shutting her out. Whenever she tried to talk to him about it, he denied and evaded.
Maybe he was right. A little time apart wouldn’t hurt them. It might do them good.
Or it might just be the simplest way to end it. She would go home; he would fly to Texas on business.
The days would go by, the weeks and the months. Somehow they would never quite get back together again....
She left for Montedoro Wednesday morning.
Noah kissed her goodbye at the front door. “Have a good trip,” he said. Nothing else. No urging her to hurry back, not a single word about how much he would miss her or when he might come to her.
His coolness hurt. She longed to tell him she loved him, but she’d promised she wouldn’t—not until she was ready to marry him. And how could she be ready when he wouldn’t even talk to her about the things that really mattered?
So she kissed him back and whispered, “Take care.”
Altus held open the car door and she got in.
And that was that. They drove away.
* * *
Noah returned from Texas on Friday. He’d sunk a big chunk of change into Yellow Rose Wind and Solar. And he had complete confidence in his decision to go in and go big.
There were other things he wasn’t so confident about. Things like his sister’s continued good health and well-being now she’d run off to New York to become a star in the fashion world. And Alice.
Alice most of all.
She’d left him without saying when she’d be back. He was pretty damn furious at her for that.
True, he hadn’t
asked
when she would be back. He hadn’t offered to join her in Montedoro. But he felt justified in that. After all,
she
was the one leaving
him.
She should be the one to say when she planned to return.
And she hadn’t called or emailed or texted him, either.
Well, all right. One text. To tell him she’d arrived home safely:
@ Nice Airport. Flt smooth. Njoy Texas.
He’d texted back,
Thnx
, a real conversation stopper. Because he didn’t really want to text Alice.
Or talk to her on the phone.
Or correspond via email.
He wanted her with him, where he could touch her and see her smile. He wanted his ring on her finger and her sweet, strong body next to him in bed.
Wanted all that. And wanted it way, way too much.
So much it scared the crap out of him. So much it had him all upside down and turned around inside.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to say yes when he asked her—or at least, if she didn’t say yes, he should be able to take it in stride. Patience and persistence were everything. He knew that. You kept your eye on the prize and you never gave up no matter what went down.
He was blowing it. He got that. Blowing it and determined to keep on blowing it.
It made no sense.
He
made no sense.
He was ashamed of himself and pissed off at her. And so lonely for her it made his bones ache.
Saturday, he called Lucy just to see how she was doing. And to give her all the important advice he hadn’t managed to impart when she’d called the previous Monday. She chattered away, laughing, sharing way more information about her new life in New York City than he ever needed to know.
And he simply listened. And found himself smiling and nodding and now and then making an encouraging sound. He never did give her all that advice he’d been so anxious to share.
Because he realized she didn’t need to hear it.
Somewhere around the time she started detailing how Mrs. Nichols across the landing had invited her over and they’d made cookies together—spice cookies with cinnamon and nutmeg and sugar sprinkled on top—the truth came to him.
Lucy was okay.
Lucy was going to be fine.
If she needed him, she would call him. For now, he’d done all he could for her.
It was her turn to soar, and he really couldn’t help her with that.
He was just feeling kind of good for the first time in a week when she asked him about Alice. He didn’t know what to say so he answered in single syllables, and she knew immediately that things weren’t right. When she found out that Alice had gone to Montedoro and Noah had no idea when she’d be back, Lucy got all over him, calling him his own worst enemy, demanding to know if he’d lost his mind.
Noah let her rant on. What could he say? She was right after all.
When she finally wound down, she pleaded softly, “Go after her, Noah. Do not let her get away.”
After that conversation, he felt worse than ever. He went out to the stables and spent the day with his horses. It helped a little.
But not enough.
Monday, Orion arrived from the farm in Maryland. God, he was beautiful. To see that incredible iridescent coat shining in the California sun, well, that was something. Noah called in the vet to check him over. The vet declared him in excellent health. After the vet visit, Noah tacked him up and rode him. Orion amazed him, so calm and responsive for a stallion, especially a supersensitive Teke recently cooped up in a trailer for the long ride from Maryland.
He started to whip out his phone and text Alice, just to let her know that Orion had finally arrived safe and well, to give her a hard time for parting with such an amazing animal.
But he didn’t call.
What if she didn’t answer? He had no idea where he stood with her now.
It had been five days since she’d left him. In some ways, those five days seemed a century. Or maybe two.
That got him feeling down all over again.
Back at the house, he showered and changed and then went down for a drink before dinner. He poured himself a double and drank it, staring out over the equestrian fields. When the glass was empty, he poured another.
Hannah served him his solitary dinner on the loggia.
He sat down and looked at the excellent meal she’d put in front of him and decided he wasn’t hungry after all. “Hannah, another drink.” He held up his glass to her.
She gave him one of those looks and said, “If you want to get wasted, you can do that on your own.” And then she spun on her heel and marched back into the house.
He sat there for a moment after she left, fuming. And then he went after her.
“What the hell, Hannah?” he demanded when he got to the jut of white stone counter that separated the kitchen from the family room. He slammed the heavy crystal glass down. “What is your problem?”
Okay, he shouldn’t have asked. He knew that. You didn’t ask Hannah Russo what her problem was unless you wanted an earful.
“You,” she said low, with a cold curl of her lip. “
You
are my problem, Noah. You, moping around here like someone did you wrong when we all know very well that
you’re
the one in the wrong here.”
“Now, you wait just a minute here...”
“No. Uh-uh.
You
wait, Noah. When are you going to wake up? You think I can’t tell what’s happened in this house? You think I don’t know that you went out and found yourself the woman of your dreams and then brought her home only to send her away again?”
“I didn’t—”
Hannah cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t even bother lying to me. I’ve known you for too long. I know what you’re up to. You had some grandiose scheme to get yourself the ultimate trophy wife.”
“What the... How did you—”
“
You
told me.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. Maybe you didn’t know that you did. But you told me all about her, including that she’s a Montedoran princess. You said you were going to marry her, and that was before you even met her. I can add two and two and come up with four every time—and where was I? Oh, yeah. You went out to catch yourself a princess and instead you found someone to love you. Someone you love right back. That scares you. Love scares you. Well, you know what? You’re not the least special. Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s afraid that they’ll lose what they love the most. Everybody’s afraid that they’ll end up alone.”
“I’m not—”
That time, she slapped her palm flat to the counter for silence. The sound echoed like a shot. “Yes, you
are.
You are afraid. And you are taking yourself way too seriously. You need to get over yourself. And here’s a hot flash. Getting snockered on thirty-four-year-old Scotch is not going to give you anything but a headache in the morning. You need to go after her. You need to suck it up and say what’s in your heart, Noah. You need to get down on your knees in front of her. You need to tell that sweet girl that you love her. You need to do it right away. Before she does exactly what you’re afraid she’ll do—which is to decide that you’re not worth waiting for.”
Chapter Thirteen
A
lice was doing her best just making it through one day after another.
In some ways it was good to be back in Montedoro. To share long lunches with Rhia, to spend time with her horses.
The Autumn Faire came and went. She rode Yazzy in the parade wearing traditional Montedoran dress: full pink skirt with black trim, a frothy white blouse, a snug black vest embroidered with twining flowers and a round, flat, wide-brimmed hat with a black ribbon that tied beneath her chin. White tights and flat black shoes completed the ensemble.
Alice waved and smiled at the crowds that lined the narrow streets. A lot of people had cameras pressed against their faces or took pictures with their phones as she rode by. Alice just kept smiling even though she felt vaguely ridiculous. She knew she would end up all over the tabloids looking like a country milkmaid.
Which was fine, she reminded herself. Looking like a milkmaid was a significant improvement over coming off like a refugee from an episode of
Girls Behaving Badly.
After the parade, she went home to change. Dami showed up and coaxed her out for a coffee with him. They sat in a favorite café and he told her what a delight Lucy was and then asked her why Noah hadn’t come with her for the Faire.
She sipped her espresso and said she didn’t want to talk about Noah.
And Dami surprised her by not pressing her to say more. He took her hand and kissed the back of it, and then turned it over and pretended to see her future in her palm. “Great happiness. True love. Horses. Children—lots and lots of children.” He faked a look of dismay. “Far too many of them, if you ask me.”
She eased her hand away. “You just never know, Dami.”
He didn’t lose his beautiful smile. “Perhaps
you
don’t. But
I
know. You are a ray of boldly shining light in a world that is too often boring and gray. You were born to be happy. And you will be. Just watch.”
Alice hoped her charming brother might be right. But as each day went by, she grew more afraid that if there was to be happiness for her, it wouldn’t be with Noah.
Michelle clucked over her and whipped up delicious meals to tempt her flagging appetite. Alice ate the wonderful food without much pleasure. Everything seemed gray and sad to her, even Michelle’s excellent cooking.
More than once she considered simply hopping a flight and returning to California. But she didn’t do it—which was unlike her. She’d always been one to go after what she wanted.
With Noah, though...
It just didn’t feel right to go running after him. He’d sent her away alone, though she’d asked him twice to come with her. He wanted her to marry him, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t say that he loved her. He didn’t even seem to want her to say that
she
loved him. It was all too perplexing, and she didn’t know what to do about it, didn’t know how to get through to him.
So she did nothing.
Rhia gave her a hard time about that. “Waiting. That’s what you’re doing. You realize that, don’t you? Waiting for him to make the first move. It’s so...backward of you to wait for a man to make the moves. That’s just not you, Allie. You’re a woman of action. And you need to go to him, work things out with him, together, the two of you....”
Maybe Rhia was right.
But deep in her heart, Alice didn’t think so. Alice thought that Noah needed time to figure a few things out.
She was giving him that time.
At least that was what she told herself.
While she waited.
And did nothing.
Thank God for her horses. Without them, it all would have been too much to bear. She gave her days to them gratefully, rising long before daylight to be the first one at the stables, not going back to her villa until sunset.
On the last Wednesday in October, she woke from her restless dreams even earlier than usual. She went straight to the stables and tacked up the chestnut mare Rosanna to ride. She’d just set the saddle well forward on the mare’s fine back when she heard it: the soft rhythmic rustling of a broom brushing the floor.
Her heart roaring in her ears and her gloved hands suddenly trembling, she turned.
He was there at the edge of the shadows, tall, strong, golden. Wearing battered jeans, an old sweatshirt and worn Western boots.
His name filled up her throat. She hesitated to let it out, struck silent by the absurd certainty that he was only a fantasy brought on by her own desperation and longing, that he would vanish as soon as she dared to acknowledge him with sound.
She made herself say his name anyway. “Noah?”
He dropped the broom. It clapped and clattered against the stone floor. And then he was lifting his head to face her. He tried on a smile that didn’t quite make it. In those blue eyes she saw hope and fear and so many sweet, tender questions.
And love.
She did. At last. She saw his love.
He made a noise, a tight, tortured sound. And in a whisper, he said, “Alice.” He held out his arms.
It was enough. It was everything.
With a soft cry, she covered the distance between them in swift strides. He scooped her up and she grabbed on tight.
He turned them in a circle there in the darkened stable, so early in the morning it still felt like night. His cheek, rough with morning stubble, pressed to hers—at first.
And then he turned his head just that little bit more. Their lips met in a kiss that told her all the things she needed so desperately to know. A kiss that promised tomorrow.
And the next day.
And all the days after that.
* * *
On Friday they flew to Los Angeles.
They took a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel and made love for hours. When they finally fell asleep, exhausted from jet lag, pleasure and happiness, they slept until the middle of the following day.
At three in the afternoon, they stood on a palm-tree-lined street in the pretty, hilly neighborhood of Silver Lake. He showed her the Spanish-style house that his parents had owned, where he’d lived until the money ran out after his father died.
“It’s a comfortable house,” he said. “Built in the 1920s and big for that era. Four bedrooms, two baths. A great house to raise a family.”
She linked her arm with his and shaded her eyes with her other hand. “You loved it here.”
He nodded, his gaze on the house where he used to live. “We were happy. Safe. Until my father died, I honestly thought no trouble could touch me—or maybe I didn’t actually think it. It was simply true. A fact of life. But then one morning, he kissed my mother goodbye, walked out the front door and fell off a roof two hours later. Everything changed.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder and wished she could think of something both helpful and profound to say. All that came was, “It’s so sad. And scary...”
He tipped her chin up and kissed her, just a tender brush of his mouth across hers. “Come on.”
They got back in the car and he told the driver where to go next.
Twenty minutes later the car pulled to the curb on another street, where the houses were smaller and more run-down, with barred windows and doors.
They got out and stood on the sidewalk by the car, beneath a beautiful tree with delicate fernlike leaves. “A jacaranda,” she said. “We have them in Montedoro, too.”
He pointed at the house across the street, a small stucco bungalow painted a truly awful shade of turquoise. The paint was peeling, the doors and windows barred. A battered chain-link fence marked off the tiny bare yard. “One bedroom,” he said. “One bath. My mother slept on the sofa. Lucy had the bedroom. There was an extra room, very small, in the back. I had a cot in there. I hated that house. But not because it was so ugly and cramped. It just... It always felt empty to me. Empty and sad. Well, except for Lucy. She was like a bright ray of light, even when she was so sick and I was sure we would lose her like we lost my dad.”
“So, then, it wasn’t
all
bad.”
“Bad enough,” he said gruffly, still staring at the turquoise house.
She reached up and guided his face around to look at her. “It means so much to me that you’ve brought me here.”
He turned to her fully then, there beneath the lacy branches of the jacaranda tree, and he gazed down at her steadily, his eyes like windows on the wide-open sky. “I love you, Alice.” He said it softly but firmly, too. Without hesitation and with no equivocation. “You are my heart, my life, all the hope for the future I didn’t even realize I was looking for. I want you to marry me, but if you’re not ready, I swear I can be patient. I can wait as long as you need me to.”
She put her hands on his chest, felt his heart beating strong and steady beneath her palm. “Oh, Noah...” Across the street, a woman with long black hair pushed a stroller in front of the house where Noah used to live. Two boys raced past in the middle of the street, laughing and bouncing a ball between them. She thought that it wasn’t such a bad street, really, that there were people in the small houses around them who loved and cared for each other, who looked to the future with hope in their hearts. She whispered, “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come to find me.”
He laughed then, but it was a ragged, torn sort of sound. “Me, too.” He took her by the shoulders and met her eyes again. “The love thing. Talking about it, saying it out loud... It’s hard for me.”
She laid her hand against his cheek. “It will get easier. Love is like that. The more you give, the more you have to give.”
“Think so, huh?”
“I know so.”
“Hannah got fed up with me,” he confessed. “She told me off, said I was scared to love you and I’d better get over myself and deal with my fear before you got tired of waiting for me.”
She shook her head and dared a smile. “It would have taken a long time for me to get that tired. But I’m glad you came sooner rather than later.”
“I gave some thought to what Hannah said...”
“And?”
His mouth twisted wryly. “It’s old news.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He glanced up into the ferny branches of the tree, then down at the cracked sidewalk and finally into her eyes again. “My parents, that’s all.”
“They made you afraid to love? But how? From all you’ve told me, they did love you, very much. And they loved each other....”
He lifted a hand and stroked her hair, his touch so sure and steady—and cherishing, too. “I know. It doesn’t make sense. They loved each other absolutely. Even I knew that, and I was only a kid. But my mother was never the same once he was gone. She let everything go. She was like a ghost of herself. She was...just hanging around, waiting for it to be over.”
“Oh, Noah. Are you sure? Did she say actually that?”
“No, of course not. But she didn’t have to. It was there in her face all the time. That faraway look, a bottomless sort of sadness. The day we lost her, I think she knew what would happen if she didn’t get to the doctor. But she wouldn’t go. She wanted to be with my dad. It was where she’d wanted to be all along.”
Alice started to speak.
He put his finger against her lips. “I realize I’ll never know for certain that she let herself die. I realize she did the best she could and that we survived, Lucy and me.”
“But you’ve been afraid. Afraid to love so much...”
He nodded. And then he bent and he kissed her. It was the sweetest kiss, tender and slow.
When he lifted his head, she said, “Don’t be afraid. Or if you are, do it anyway. Love me anyway.”
“I will,” he replied. “I do.”
And then, slowly and clearly, she said, “Yes, Noah. I will marry you.”
He looked so startled she almost laughed. And then he demanded, “You mean it? You will?”
“I love you. And yes. I will.”
He stuck his hand into his pocket and came out with the ring he’d offered her that first time they made love. When she shook her head in wonderment, he explained, “I’ve been carrying it around with me all along, just in case. It got to be like a talisman. I kept it on me even after you left California.”
“Noah, I do believe you’re a complete romantic.”
“Shh. Don’t tell anyone. Let it be our secret.”
She gave him her hand and he slipped it on her finger. It was a perfect fit. “I love it,” she whispered. “I love
you.
”
They shared another slow and tender kiss.
Then, hand in hand, they turned for the waiting car.
* * * * *
Watch for Damien and Lucy’s story,
HOLIDAY ROYALE,
coming in December 2013,
only from Harlequin Special Edition.
Keep reading for an excerpt from A MAVERICK UNDER THE MISTLETOE by Brenda Harlen