Authors: Sherryl Woods
He caught her arm and held her back. “It’s not safe.”
Her gaze clashed with his. “But David is there and his son. I have to find them.”
The fireman, a young man with streaks of soot on his already weary face, regarded her sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you do that. Wait here. We’re evacuating the people from up there now.”
“But what if they’re injured?” she said, her voice catching on a sob.
“We’ll get them out, ma’am.”
Defeated, Kate walked to the side of the road and sank down on the trunk of an upended tree. Tears cut streaks down her cheeks as she kept her gaze pinned to the road and the straggle of residents making their way down from higher ground.
They had to be all right, she told herself over and over. She couldn’t lose them. Whether they were her real family or not, she loved them as if they were. An image of David swam before her eyes, a teasing I-told-you-so glint in his eyes. She choked back a sob. He would come to her eventually, if only to say those words, if only to taunt her for taking so blasted long to admit something he had accepted weeks ago.
Family, she thought as the smoke seemed to surround her. Dear Lord, she hadn’t given a thought to her mother and Brandon or to Ellen and her family. Chances were good, given the preliminary estimate of the quake’s epicenter, that they’d received no more than the same awakening jolt she had. Still, she had to check. She thought, belatedly, of her car phone.
Reluctant to leave where she was, she realized that she had no real choice anyway. The smoke was becoming more dense by the minute, and she could see by the expression on the fireman’s face that at any second he was going to insist that she move farther out of the path of danger.
She trudged back down the winding road until she reached her car. She tried first to call David, but there was no answer at the house. Because he was already moving out of harm’s way, she told herself firmly. Even though she wanted with all her heart to believe that, she couldn’t help envisioning him pinned under a fallen beam or trapped on the far side of the fire.
Trembling with the agony of waiting, she dialed her mother’s house. “Mom?” she said and then her voice broke.
“Kate, darling, are you okay? I’ve been calling and calling, but your damned phone isn’t working.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. As soon as it happened, I saw that there was a fire over in Bel Air.”
“And you started worrying about David?” her mother guessed. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” she said bleakly. “I can’t get all the way up to the house. The fire’s getting worse. It’s driving me crazy. I don’t like sitting on the sidelines and waiting this way. I want to do something.”
“Charging to the rescue,” her mother said, and Kate could practically see her smile. “Oh, Katie, darling, you can’t save the world.”
“Maybe not,” she admitted. “But I’ve given it a damned good shot.” She hesitated. “Mom?”
“Yes, darling?”
“I think I’m ready to think about saving myself.”
“Is that your way of saying you’ve fallen in love with David Winthrop?”
Kate laughed. “Yes, I guess it is.” It was such an overwhelming relief to be able to speak the words aloud. “I love David Winthrop.”
Suddenly she heard someone pounding on the window of the car and looked up to see David, sooty and rumpled, but very much alive. He was grinning at her and she knew that he’d heard, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore that she’d put her heart on the line.
“He’s here,” Kate shouted, jubilant. “Mom, I’ll talk to you later, all right?” Then, almost as an afterthought, she said, “You are okay, aren’t you? And Ellen?”
“Everyone is fine, darling. Why don’t you and your young man join us for breakfast? Ellen’s coming, as well, with Penny.”
Her gaze locked with David’s, Kate barely mumbled an affirmative response before hanging up and springing out of the car.
“You’re okay?” she asked when she was wrapped tightly in his embrace. She touched his cheeks, his forehead, his shoulders as if to make sure.
“Keep that up and we’re going to cause quite a scene,” he taunted lightly.
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Oh, David, I was so worried about you. When I thought I might never see you again, I wanted to die.”
He touched her lips with a finger. “Don’t ever,
ever
say that.” He held her even more tightly, his own expression mirroring her relief. “I went nuts when I couldn’t reach you. Davey even had the car phone number and we tried calling that.” He gave her a quelling look. “Even though I knew only a damn fool would be out traipsing around at six in the morning after an earthquake.”
She ignored the criticism. “Davey’s okay?”
“He’s over there with a fireman. What do you think?”
She glanced across the road and saw Davey asking questions of the fireman at a clip that had put a smile on that exhausted face. Her heart filled to overflowing.
“Kate?”
“Umm,” she murmured, content to be held.
“I heard what you said on the phone.”
She glanced up and met his gaze. “That I love you?”
He nodded. “Did you mean it?”
There was no point in hiding the truth any longer. For better or worse, she loved him. It was time to take a risk. “Have you ever known me to say anything I didn’t mean?”
“Enough to marry me?”
A joy unlike anything she had ever experienced before spread through her, sneaking up on her and bringing with it an undeniable sense of fulfillment, but still she was cautious.
“Marriage?”
He tilted her face up. “I love you, Kate,” he said with slow emphasis. “Just you.”
She wanted so badly to believe. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. You’ve made me feel alive again. You’ve given me back my son. Married or not, we’re a family, Kate, in every sense of the word.”
She knew that was true. She’d felt it herself for weeks now. She searched his eyes and for the first time there were no shadows, only hope and joy. “Yes,” she said then. “Yes, I will marry you.”
He swung her off her feet with a cry of such absolute delight that people all along the road turned to stare and smile. Davey came charging across the street.
“Did you ask her, Dad? Did you ask her to marry you?”
David winked at Kate. “I did.”
“And did she say yes?” he asked, bouncing up and down with excitement. “She did, didn’t she?”
“I did,” Kate confirmed.
“All right!” Davey shouted, hugging Kate around the middle.
“We’re getting married,” he announced to all the observers.
In a morning bleak with destruction and marred by fear, the news was greeted with applause.
“If total strangers are this pleased, just imagine how my family will feel,” she said wryly. “Which reminds me, we’ve been invited to a family breakfast. Are you up to it?”
David brushed a strand of hair from her face and grinned, his hand lingering to cup her chin. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
When Kate and David pulled up in front of the house she’d grown up in, she looked at the spill of fuchsia bougainvillae, the Spanish tiled roof, the neat lawn, and thought of all the years she’d thought of this house as home. She glanced up at David, caught his smile and felt his hand envelop hers.
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not a one. I was just thinking about what it takes to make a home.”
“Two people who love each other,” he said. “A family.”
“It’s taken me a long time to understand that.”
“Maybe what’s taken a long time was finding the right man to make that happen,” he suggested with a devilish twinkle in his eyes.
If he’d expected her to argue, even mildly, she couldn’t. There was only one right man for her, and he had taken an impossibly long time to turn up. Or perhaps he’d simply waited until he knew the time was right. Any sooner and she might not have been ready for him.
“I think everyone is going to love you,” she told him, grinning. “You’re so self-confident.”
“Can’t see my knees shaking, huh?”
“What are you guys talking about?” Davey demanded. “I’m starved.”
“Well, go inside and tell the first person you see to feed you,” Kate suggested with a laugh.
Davey’s eyes widened. “I can’t do that.” He glanced at his father. “Can I?”
David chuckled. “No, I suppose not. Come on, Kate, there’s no sense putting this off.”
“You realize that you have forestalled a lot of problems by making an honest woman of me before our arrival. Otherwise, you could have forgotten having a nice leisurely breakfast with my clan. They’d have been plaguing you with questions.”
The possibility didn’t seem to concern him. “Kate, you’re dallying.”
She grinned. “Yes, I guess I am.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”
By then her mother already had the door open and her arms held wide. “Darling, it’s so good to see you. I’m so glad to see for myself that you’re okay.” She turned her worried expression on David and Davey. “Now, what about you two? Are you okay? Kate told me about the fires.”
“We’re a little the worse for wear, but nothing serious,” David told her. “I’m David Winthrop.”
“Well, of course. I’ve been hearing all about you.”
Kate could practically hear alarm bells clanging. She looked up just in time to see Brandon Halloran making his way to the door, his smile warm, his eyes filled with concern as he looked them over.
“David,” he said, shaking his hand. “Good to see you again.”
“Again?” Kate murmured, looking from one to the other for an explanation. David just smiled. Brandon avoided her gaze altogether. She tugged on David’s sleeve. “What does that mean? Again?”
“I’ll explain later,” he said, just as Ellen swooped in for an introduction, followed by Penny.
“I wish my husband could be here to meet you, too,” she said. “He got called in to work.” She gave Kate a smug, sisterly look, linked her arm through David’s and led him away.
Kate glanced down at Davey. “Let’s sneak into the kitchen and see what’s cooking.”
“Yeah!” he agreed.
Kate found her mother at the stove taking up the last of an entire package of crisp bacon. She sniffed the air appreciatively.
“Should Brandon be eating this?” Kate teased as she saw the bowl of eggs waiting to be scrambled.
“I indulge him once a week,” her mother said. “And today is definitely a special occasion.”
“Should I be taking notes on how to maintain marital bliss?” Kate inquired idly after she’d sent Davey off with a covered plate of warm biscuits.
Her mother’s sharp gaze took in Kate’s expression. Suddenly she was laughing and her arms were around Kate. “Oh, darling, I’m so happy for you. He seems like a fine young man.”
“Is that the judgment you formed in the last five minutes or has Brandon been indulging in a little more background checking?”
“I believe they had lunch one day last week,” her mother admitted.
“They what!”
“Now, dear, we just wanted to be sure that this was the right young man for you.”
Davey, back again and clearly bored with the grown-up talk, finally chimed in. “Are we ever going to eat?”
Kate and her mother laughed at his impatience. “In five minutes,” Elizabeth Halloran promised her new grandson-to-be. “Why don’t you go and tell everyone?”
When everyone was gathered around the dining room table, Brandon glanced down the length of it until his gaze caught with his new wife’s. “I think this calls for a blessing, don’t you?”
Eyes shining with love, Elizabeth Halloran nodded. The pure happiness on her face brought tears to Kate’s eyes.
“Heavenly Father,” Brandon began, “thank you for sparing us from today’s earthquake and for bringing us all together here this morning. I thank you, too, for my new daughters, my granddaughter and for the fine young man and his son who have brought so much happiness into Kate’s life. We ask your blessing on this food we are about to eat and on this family. May we always remember the importance of the love we share. Amen.”
Kate lifted her head and looked around the table. At last her glance settled, first on Davey, seated across from her, and then on David at her side. “Amen,” she echoed softly.
Beneath the table she felt David’s hand reach for hers and close around it. She looked up into eyes that were filled with the radiance of love. Surely they shone no more brightly than her own.
A smile stole across her face. “Now,” she said sweetly, “tell me all about this lunch you had with Brandon.”
Epilogue
T
he glass walls and ceiling of the Wayfarer’s Chapel high above the Pacific allowed sunlight to spill in on the small group gathered for the wedding of Kate Newton to David Allen Winthrop II. Her heart in her throat, Kate stood on the stone steps at the back of the church and waited for David to take his place before the altar.
Then she turned and smiled at Ellen. “I guess this is it.”
“I guess so, little sister.” Ellen kissed her cheek. “I love you and I know you’re going to be very, very happy.”
“Yes,” Kate agreed with certainty. “Yes, I am.”
“Ladies,” Brandon Halloran said, gazing at them both with eyes filled with tenderness and unmistakably genuine caring. “I believe we’re on.”
Kate looked up at this white-haired man who had twice blessed her mother’s life with happiness. No longer a stranger, once Kate had opened her heart to him, she recognized at last that he was someone she could trust to be there for her, just as her own father once had been.
“Brandon?”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Thank you for agreeing to give me away.”
“Nothing could have pleased me more than your asking,” he said, patting her hand and then linking her arm through his. Kind eyes studied her intently. “All set?”
“Just one more thing. For a time I couldn’t imagine how you could care for me the same way you care for Ellen. Then I met Davey, and I couldn’t possibly love him any more if he were my own, just because he’s David’s.”
His smile was gentle. “That’s the power of love. It has no limitations, my dear. Now, are you ready to begin this new life of yours?”
She took a look down the aisle and let her gaze rest on David and Davey. “Absolutely,” she said firmly.