The Wedding Gift (8 page)

“What does it feel like?” he asked.

“Steady and strong,” she said, planting a kiss at the edge of his scar. Something about the question made her rise up on one elbow and look at him. “Why did you ask?” When he said nothing, she said, “Riley, why?”

He shrugged. “I was just wondering.”

For once she didn't let her mouth go slack. She
sensed she was getting to the bottom of something important and couldn't let this go. “Why would you have to wonder?”

“Forget it.”

“Are you saying you can't feel your heart?” she asked.

She could tell he wished he hadn't brought it up, but he finally nodded. Outside the wind crooned. Inside there was only her gasp of dismay.

She eased a little farther away from him so she could see his face more clearly. His eyes were only half-open, his jaw covered with the shadow of a dark beard. Beneath her hand, his heart rate quickened.

Questions raced through her mind. Why could she feel it if he couldn't? What could have caused this condition? What was being done for it, for him? In the end, she asked, “Do the doctors know why?”

“Not really.” He punched his pillows and settled back, the sheet around his waist, his hands behind his head. By now she knew him well enough to know that if she waited, he would continue.

He glanced at the ceiling, and then into her eyes. “The transplant went off like clockwork, my recovery one for the record books. According to the specialists, I'm a resounding success. The pills I swallow every day keep my body from attacking the new heart. There's only one little problem. I can't
feel it beating. Did you know that a viable heart only lasts six hours? There's never enough time to do a cross match, and yet this heart settled into my chest as if it belonged there. Hell, it's as if it wants to be here. At first I wondered if it's so damned perfect, why couldn't I feel it? Now I don't think about it much.”

Madeline's own heart beat ominously.

He laid his hand over hers on his chest. “I can feel it on my palm. I can even feel it through your hand. But I can't feel it inside my chest, not when I run, not even that second time in the bathtub.”

“What do your doctors say?” she asked quietly.

“They hooked me up to a machine and blasted the heartbeat over loudspeakers. It sounded like a wild mustang galloping on solid ground. The specialists ruled out nerve damage and side effects to my medication. There's no physical explanation for the fact that I can't feel it.”

She shivered suddenly, for she'd read of rare instances in which people who'd witnessed horrors on the battlefield or a grotesque crime stopped seeing the color red. She'd never heard of anyone unable to feel his own beating heart.

“What about a psychological explanation?” she whispered.

He drew the spread up around her shoulders and
made a sound that told her what he thought of the psychological evaluation. “The panel of psychiatrists I saw were keenly interested in how I feel about my mother, my father, my brothers and stepmothers, even the family dogs. I told them all the same thing. I have no idea why my chest feels like a cold slab of concrete, but I'm damn sure it doesn't have anything to do with my meddling mother, my dead father or the family Pekingeses. The profession as a whole needs to get new material.”

This past year and a half Madeline had been so haunted by her loss she hadn't considered the possibility that Riley was going through his own kind of hell. How small-minded people became when they were in pain. Now she realized she wasn't the only one who'd suffered. Riley didn't tell her how sick he'd been prior to the transplant, but surely he'd have been dangerously close to death himself to have been put at the top of the transplant list at such a young age. While she and Aaron's parents had been keeping vigil in his hospital room that agonizing day, Riley and his family had been keeping another kind of vigil.

She wanted to ask what had happened, how he'd gotten so ill, and if he'd been afraid of dying. Since she couldn't voice any of those questions, she pressed her hand to his chest. Her heart brimming
with tenderness, she said, “I'm so sorry you can't feel this.”

“Try lower.”

He could still surprise her. And she could still blush, but she glided her hand down his rib cage. “You are so wicked,” she whispered.

She spread her fingers wide across his washboard stomach, eased past his naval, a little wicked herself. When she found him, he let out a sound of pleasure.

The next thing she knew, they were rolling across his bed, and he was kissing a trail of his own. He got a little sidetracked with her breasts. She loved it when he kissed her there, when he suckled, laving each in turn with his tongue, for it sent sensations to places in her body physically unconnected.

Every time they made love she learned something new, about him, and about herself. Every time she thought sex couldn't get any better. And every time she was wrong.

As the sky outside the window was just beginning to lighten, she thought about all she'd discovered since meeting Riley. She'd recalled things about her own personality she'd buried. Throughout the process of remembering, some of those traits and characteristics had slowly begun to emerge once again.

Completely on her own for the first time in her life here in Gale, she'd taken risks. She'd broken a few
rules, maybe more than a few, had a few drinks and discovered that she could still laugh. She'd made a few wonderful new friends and shed new tears. She'd found a part of herself she'd forgotten and discovered a part she hadn't known existed until now. And in the process, she'd fallen in love again, with the last person she was ever supposed to have met.

She'd come to Gale to prove to herself that Riley Merrick was alive and well. And she was the one coming back to life.

I
t was morning. And it was Monday. That was the extent of Madeline's cognitive skills, at least until she managed to pry her eyes open. That wasn't entirely true, she thought, smiling to herself. It was a wonderful Monday morning. She knew that with her eyes closed.

Squinting against the bright sunlight slanting through the narrow slats in the blinds, she sat up. The other side of the bed was empty. Unfamiliar with the protocol for mornings after, she padded to the bathroom where she splashed her face with warm water and finger-combed her impossibly mussed hair. She
wished she'd have thought to bring a toothbrush, but made do with a dab of toothpaste on the end of her finger. After donning her clothes and straightening them as best she could, she went looking for Riley.

She found him on the phone in the dining room. His back to her, he leaned over blueprints spread across the table. He was fully dressed in dark chinos and a blue knit shirt.

“There isn't enough support in the attic floor joists to sustain a fireplace that massive.” He listened, shook his head. “We found them the Riker and we're putting a glass floor in the foyer. They didn't want a second story, they wanted vaulted ceilings and enormous open rooms and five bathrooms and a home theater and a gym.”

He shook his head again. “I understand that, Kipp, and I support their vision, but unfortunately that ceiling won't. How would they get to the second floor? A staircase would completely block the view of the lake. Did you explain that to them?” He looked more closely at the blueprint. “You and I both know we can do it. We also both know it would entail major design changes, and those are costly and time-prohibitive.” He listened for a few more moments, mumbled something Madeline didn't hear then flipped the phone closed.

“Trouble?” she asked.

He turned at the sound of her voice and gave her
a smile that put her in mind of long kisses and late nights. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said.

She sauntered closer. “Have you been up long?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe. The coffee should be ready by now.”

His hair waved over the tops of his ears, a little too long to be considered civilized. Folding down his collar, she said, “I'm not sure I'm good for you. When I arrived on Friday, you were an early riser, clean-shaven and unwrinkled.”

“Believe me, you're good for me.” Riley's grip tightened possessively on her upper arm. He should have been exhausted. At the very least, he should have been sated. Instead, he found he wanted her all over again.

He reminded himself that the clients were flying in. So, with great reluctance, he let his hand fall to his side.

Felix and Gabriella Braxton's newest movie had premiered at a film festival in Chicago over the weekend. As long as they were so close, they were going to hop aboard their airplane and take a look at the progress Merrick and Dawson Enterprises was making on their lake house. Riley and Kipp needed to come up with a preliminary solution to their newest demands before they arrived.

Watching Madeline pour coffee into a mug in the kitchen, he said, “For some reason, I don't want to go to work today. Any idea why that might be?”

She took a sip before handing the cup to him. Filling another for herself, she said, “If memory serves me correctly, I can think of several.”

That attitude, he thought, that all-knowing, sexy as hell grin. He wanted to sample it, all of it, all of her, from her provocative smile to her warm, pliant body. Making a sound of frustration, he said, “You're only here until Friday. I hate to waste a minute of it at work.”

Madeline averted her face to hide an instant squeezing hurt. She couldn't fault Riley for reminding her that this was temporary. He'd laid out his parameters from the beginning. Five days, he'd said.

She had no experience in flings. Yesterday Riley had said he didn't do forever well. Did anyone have forever, really? Perhaps all anyone could do was seize the moment and leave the future for another day.

“Late yesterday I arranged for a moving company to come today to cart off the furniture,” Riley was saying. “I'll have to reschedule.”

“You don't have to do that,” she said, surprising both of them. “I can organize the movers.”

“You don't mind?” he asked.

“Not at all. In fact, I'd enjoy it. Just tell me what you want to keep.”

“Surprise me,” he said from the dining room where he was gathering up blueprints.

“Wait,” she said, getting between him and the back door. “I don't even know your taste.”

His eyes were a deep, dark brown this morning, warm enough to slip into. “I've got to tell you, right now, my taste is leaning toward blue-eyed blondes. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

He kissed her hard. A moment later he was gone.

Dazed, Madeline carried her coffee to the table. Tracing the now-familiar scorch marks with one finger, she wondered if it was too late to tell Riley about his heart. What could she say to make him believe that her reason for coming to Gale had been a sincere wish to see that something beautiful had come from something dreadful? How could she prove that she hadn't orchestrated any of this, from their first encounter at the construction site to last night in bed?

He'd left an imprint on her heart just as surely as he'd left one on the table, but she was afraid it was too late to try to explain. She hadn't planned to meet him any more than she'd planned to fall in love with him. She sighed, for even the goals she had set out to accomplish weren't going well. The dog still didn't have a name, and Riley couldn't feel his new heart.

Just then a loud knock rattled the front door. Moving a curtain aside, she saw a white moving van
in the driveway. Riley had scheduled the movers. She supposed that was progress.

The dog got off his green pillow and looked at her in silent expectation. “All right,” she said on the way to answer the door. “This morning, we'll oversee the movers. It'll be a labor of love for both of us, won't it?”

 

Felix and Gabriella Braxton didn't bring mayhem with them wherever they went. They produced it the same way they produced blockbuster movies, with incredible finesse, great brilliance and temper tantrums worthy of Oscar nominations.

Riley had picked the Braxtons up at the airstrip. He'd duly admired Felix's private plane and listened patiently to their latest dreams for their lake house. Now, the clients were in another area at Merric and Dawson headquarters, and Kipp was leafing through the sketches Riley had made, first one, then another, and another. Finally he threw the entire stack into the wastebasket next to Riley's desk.

“You're right,” Kipp said. “That house was designed around that view, and every one of those new sketches blocks it in one way or another. There's no good place for a staircase in that great room.”

Riley leaned back in his chair and shrugged at
his closest friend and business partner. The building that housed Merrick & Dawson Enterprises had been a furniture factory in another incarnation. Located on the outskirts of Traverse City, its wall of windows overlooking the bay was completely impractical six months out of the year. Clients loved it. And clients were the reason they were in business.

From the beginning Riley and Kipp had left the cookie-cutter subdivisions with their fake dormers and postage stamp lots to other developers. While property that had once been deemed useless by anyone who wasn't a farmer or orchard grower was suddenly catching on like wildfire by developers, Riley and Kipp had taken a risk, choosing to specialize in one-of-a-kind houses. Fifteen years ago, real estate was the new frontier. Resorts and gated communities had sprung up from Chicago to Mackinaw City. Now, with the economy in its greatest downturn in nearly three-quarters of a century in every corner of the country, developments sat half-finished, the exposed wood twisting and rotting in the elements.

These past few years, Riley and Kipp had altered their strategy to include energy-efficient windows and furnaces and green materials, and were busier than ever. Because their building sites were often well away from metropolises, they rarely had to deal
with city planning committees and annexation meetings. They did, however, have to cater to the whims of their decadently wealthy clients.

“Are you going to say something?” Kipp groused. “Or are you just going to sit there, looking like you've just climbed out of a woman's bed?”

Riley gave Kipp a rare smile.

With a dawning look of understanding, Kipp scratched his chin and said, “No wonder you're so mellow.”

Actually, it was Riley's own bed he'd climbed out of, but he didn't kiss and tell.

“It's that blonde nurse, isn't it? I figured she'd be good for you.”

Riley couldn't help thinking about the way Madeline had looked this morning, her blue eyes sleepy, her face pretty and pale, and her lips naturally pink and utterly kissable. Her clothes had been slightly disheveled, and the color the silver lining of a cloud. He was getting philosophical, for until he'd met her, he hadn't believed something as poetic as a cloud's silver lining existed.

Madeline Sullivan was five feet five inches tall, and a very nice five feet five, at that. She wore her clothes well. A lot of women were five-five and looked good in light-colored sweaters and skirts that rode low on their hips. Thoughts of them didn't flood
into his mind when he was in the middle of a three-engine fire at work. Which meant it wasn't Madeline's hair or clothes that made it impossible to get her out of his head. It was the way he'd felt since she'd burst onto the job site on Friday.

Work had been his constant these past eighteen months. It was the one area of his life that hadn't changed. The business of designing and building incredible and unique houses kept him in form, kept him fit, kept him focused. Normally the challenge of unforeseen problems, consultations and solutions energized him. Today, he wanted to drive straight home, turn off his phone, draw the blinds and spend the day in bed. With Madeline.

“Well? Are you going to tell me about her?” Kipp prodded.

“No. Do you think you can handle this?” Riley asked. “Without me, I mean?”

Kipp steepled his fingers beneath his chin. The clients were with the company's resident designer. Arlene Straus knew wainscoting and scraped hickory floors, cultured stone, imported marble, solid granite, gourmet kitchens, lighting and fixtures better than any designer Kipp had ever met, including Riley's stepmother. Nobody pushed Arlene around. She'd just gotten back from getting a custom latte for Gabriella.

“Go on,” Kipp said. “I can handle Felix and Gabbie.”

“They're in the movie business,” Riley said, finding his feet.

“Yes, I know.”

“I've been thinking about this. Scenes in movies are shot out of sequence. Drive them out to their property and show them their lake house as if through a camera lens. Take them up on the plywood deck and stand where their great room is going to be and let them see the view of Lake Michigan and the dunes and the distant towns. If they still want a stairway in the middle of that, we'll give them a stairway. But watch your back. Gabriella is a groper.”

“Yeah, I know. She caught me unawares half an hour ago practically right under her husband's nose.”

Riley left, and an hour later, Kipp could hardly believe how easy it had been. Felix and Gabriella had not only embraced the idea of driving to their property, they'd considered it an adventure to climb a fifteen-foot ladder so they could stand in their new vacation home on the shores of a freshwater ocean and imagine where they would arrange their furniture to best utilize those views.

Leaving them to their discussion, Kipp wandered to the far end of the building and lit a cigarette. He tried not to wonder where he would be if his mother
hadn't dumped him off at the Merrick Estate seventy-five miles south of here all those years ago. Riley treated him like a brother, but Kipp never forgot where he came from. From the beginning, Riley had had his back. Kipp would take a bullet for him. It had been a relief to see him looking almost happy this morning.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. If anybody had been looking, they would have seen him smile as he said hello to Riley's mother. “No, he's gone for the day, Chloe.” Kipp took a draw on his cigarette while he listened. “He was at the office earlier. Yes, I saw him with my own two eyes. I wouldn't lie to you. Riley's fine. Fit as a fiddle.” Kipp grimaced, for Chloe Merrick could wring the truth out of him better than anybody he knew. “As far as I know, he was going home. He has plans, Chloe. I'm sure he's—”

Chloe didn't let him finish before saying goodbye and hanging up.

He instantly punched in Riley's number to give him a heads-up. It went directly to voice mail. Riley had already turned off his phone. Damn.

Kipp didn't hear Gabriella saunter up behind him. By the time he felt her pat him on the ass, it was too late. He'd jumped, and swore. “We need to put a bell on you,” he said to the green-eyed movie director with the cute little body that belied her actual age.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I'm just glad it wasn't your husband. That would have been awkward.”

“You have a way about you,” she said, intelligence in those green eyes. “You make flawed people feel accepted.”

“And you make unsuspecting men nearly jump off buildings.”

“We all have our gifts. Did Riley run off and leave you here all alone?” she asked.

“Something came up.”

“A family emergency?”

Kipp thought about Chloe's phone call. “God I hope not,” he said, and he meant every word.

 

“There, there. This isn't so bad, is it?”

Riley was almost past the bathroom off the hallway when he remembered he hadn't taken his pills this morning. He backtracked, dumped the proper dosage into his hand, and downed them all.