During the years Kelsey had lived with her aunt and uncle, she rarely intruded on their sanctuary. Once she stepped inside, she saw the dresser had three bottom drawers. Which one would hold the handkerchief Charlene mentioned?
Kelsey started at the nearest drawer and found a collection of family mementos. Glancing through the items, she realized these were her uncle’s belongings, not her aunt’s. A packet of envelopes nestled among a worn-out glove and baseball cap. She slid the drawer halfway closed before she noticed the address on the top envelope. A Nevada location that had once been her home.
Hesitating, she reached for the letters. Kelsey flipped through one after the other, noting the changing addresses and postmark dates as well as the undeniable “return to sender” printed across the fronts.
“You can open them if you want.”
Kelsey jumped at the sound of her uncle’s voice. Gordon stood framed by the doorway. Dressed in tan slacks and a blue polo shirt, he looked more casual than usual. The hint of sunburn above his close-cropped beard told of the morning hours spent on the golf course, and his silver-blond hair had recently lost some of its structured style. But regardless of what he wore, her uncle was a tall, handsome man whose presence demanded attention and respect.
Clutching the letters to her chest, she said, “Aunt Charlene sent me to look for Great-grandmother’s handkerchief. For the wedding. You know, something old—”
Gordon waved a hand. “The middle drawer is your aunt’s.”
Ignoring the errand that had sent her to the room, Kelsey held out the letters. “You wrote to my mother?”
Gordon nodded. “More times than I can count. But it was all too little, too late.”
Too little. Kelsey flipped through the envelopes—years’ worth of envelopes, years’ worth of effort—seeing nothing little about it. “I don’t understand.”
“Your grandfather was a hard man. He wouldn’t stand for any sign of defiance, and your mother—” Gordon shook his head with a bittersweet smile. “Your mother challenged him from the day she was born. They butted heads constantly, but when she refused to stop seeing your father, that was an impasse neither of them could cross.”
Kelsey’s hands tightened on the letters at the mention of her father. “Maybe she should have listened.”
“She made a bad choice, and at the time I thought your grandfather handled the situation very poorly. Years later I realized how desperate he must have felt to make the ultimatum he did—forcing your mother to choose between her family and your father.”
And her mother chose Donnie Mardell. She’d never talked about him, and not until her illness reached a point where there was no hope did she tell Kelsey the whole story. How she had defied her father to leave home with Donnie. How her father refused to accept that decision and paid Donnie to leave town, thinking that would force Olivia to come to heel.
But that plan backfired. Donnie left town, money burning a hole in his pocket, but Olivia hadn’t returned home. Instead, she fled even farther, cutting all contact with her family…to the point where Kelsey hadn’t known she had any family.
Regret furrowed his forehead. “I’d hoped your mother could forgive me for what she saw as my decision to side with our father.” Gordon shook his head. “So stubborn, the both of them. So unwilling to bend.”
Instant denial rose up inside Kelsey. “My mother was brave and strong. She took care of herself and me without help from anyone.”
“And she raised you to do the same, didn’t she?”
Kelsey opened her mouth to respond, only to be silenced by her mother’s voice echoing in her mind. You may not have been raised as one of the wealthy Wilsons, but you’re better than they are. Hold your head high and prove to them what an amazing young woman I’ve raised.
She’d done her best, trying to prove herself instead of simply being herself. All the judgments, all the expectations, had her aunt and uncle put them on Kelsey…or had Olivia with her dying words?
Lifting a hand, Gordon brushed his fingertips against the edges of the envelopes, flipping through fifteen years of unanswered pleas. “She was my only sibling. The last link to my childhood and my parents. I never stopped hoping we’d have the chance to overcome the differences of the past. But she was so determined to prove she didn’t need anybody.” He met Kelsey’s gaze with a melancholy grin. “There’s no doubt you are your mother’s daughter.”
She’d spent eight years trying to be exactly that. Struggling to prove herself by trying to follow step by humiliating step in her cousins’ footprints rather than simply telling her aunt and uncle she wasn’t cut out for ballet or dressage or the lead role in the school play. Insisting on taking summer jobs to pay for her clothes and books and CDs; refusing to accept her uncle’s loan to get her business going.
How many other times had she pushed her aunt and uncle away in her desperation to live up to her mother’s stubborn independence? Unlike Olivia, Kelsey hadn’t been totally alone, but she had followed her mother’s footsteps when it came to protecting her heart. She’d kept people at a distance, never letting anyone—even family—too close, so she could never be let down, never be disappointed. Even with Matt…Kelsey saw now she’d purposely picked someone she liked but could never love.
And what about Connor? Had she resisted because she was afraid of his lingering feelings for Emily…or simply because she was afraid? Was she using his past as an excuse the same way her mother had held Gordon’s past decisions against him? A reason not to give him—not to give anyone—a second chance?
Wilson women against the world. The motto that had once been a battle cry of strength and independence now seemed a cowardly whimper. And an excuse not to trust, not to fall in love…
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why let me think you’d cut my mother out of your life like your father did?”
Sorrow for the sister he’d lost pulled at Gordon’s features. “Olivia was gone, and I didn’t want to make you choose between your memory of her—your good memories of her—and the truth I could have told you.”
Kelsey wondered if she might have been better off knowing the truth, but how could she fault her uncle when he’d made such an unselfish decision? “I’m so sorry, Uncle Gordon.”
“Don’t be. I know how much your mother meant to you, and I’d never want to take that away. Besides, I’m proud of you, Kelsey. Of your determination and drive. I’m sure your mother would be, as well.”
Kelsey tried to answer, but the words were blocked by the lump in her throat. Swallowing, she said, “Uncle Gordon—”
“Kelsey, can’t you find the handkerchief?” Charlene entered the bedroom and stepped around her husband. She frowned at the drawer Kelsey had left open. Her heart skipped a beat as her aunt crossed the room. But Charlene merely pushed the drawer shut, opened the correct one and lifted the handkerchief without sparing the envelopes in Kelsey’s hand a single glance.
“Here it is,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I might as well hold on to it.”
Kelsey blinked, the past falling away as she refocused on the present. “Isn’t Emily downstairs?”
“Todd invited her to brunch.”
She’d missed her chance to talk to Emily about her feelings for Todd and about the wedding, but Kelsey couldn’t think about anything but the letters in her hands.
“Speaking of brunch,” Gordon said, “I’m starved. You wouldn’t believe the calories I burned beating that future son-in-law of mine. Although I do think he might have let me win.”
“Nonsense,” Charlene said briskly. “Experience trumps youth every time.”
“I, um, should go,” Kelsey said, ducking past her aunt. She tried to slip her uncle the letters, but he squeezed her hands and mouthed, “Keep them.”
After giving a brief nod, Kelsey jogged down the stairs with her uncle’s written words in her hands and his voice in her head.
You are your mother’s daughter.
>
Connor stepped out of the shower, dropped the damp towel onto the marble floor in a limp heap and seriously considered following suit himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done enough reps to leave his arms and legs flopping like fish out of water.
His cell phone beeped as he pulled on a pair of well-worn jeans. The sound immediately took him back to the evening before and the reason he’d needed the killer workout. Memories of Kelsey’s kiss, the feel of her curves beneath his hands, and the untimely interruption had tortured him through the night.
Only, the sound wasn’t alerting him to an incoming call, but to a new message. Seeing Jake’s number on the screen, he quickly dialed his voice mail.
“Come on, Jake. Tell me Sophia Pirelli gave you something on Dunworthy,” he muttered while he waited for the message to play.
“Whatever happened to Sophia in Chicago still has her feeling vulnerable,” Jake’s message announced without preamble. “I’m getting close, though. She—she’s starting to trust me. It won’t be long now.”
His friend said the words with an almost grim sense of finality. Once Jake found out what had made Sophia quit her job and whether or not it had anything to do with Dunworthy, Jake would be on the next plane back to L.A.
Just as Connor would be leaving Scottsdale…leaving Kelsey…
Leaving Kelsey to pick up the pieces, he thought as he snapped the phone shut and tossed it back on the dresser. If Emily called off the wedding, would it ruin Kelsey’s business? He’d told her she had the strength and determination to succeed no matter what, and while he’d meant every word, he really didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, did he? Could her dreams end up buried beneath a landslide of bad publicity for a wedding gone wrong?
And what about her family? The Wilsons were counting on Kelsey. Would she see her failure as yet another time when she hadn’t lived up to expectations?
But what was he supposed to do? Connor wondered. Step back and let Emily marry a guy with a narcissistic streak running like a fault line beneath his charming, sophisticated facade? Raise a glass of champagne and hope for the best?
Cara Mitchell would likely be dead if not for you. You saved her life, Connor.
He still wasn’t sure he could take credit instead of blame for what happened to Cara, but he did know he couldn’t have walked away. Just like he couldn’t walk away from Emily.
But maybe he needed to walk away from Kelsey…
Bad enough that he’d be leaving her to deal with the professional fallout. The last thing he wanted was to leave her personal life in shambles after an affair that wouldn’t—couldn’t—go anywhere. It would be best to end things now, before someone got hurt.
Are you so sure it’s Kelsey you’re trying to protect? his sarcastic inner voice questioned, mocking his noble intentions for what they were—the act of a coward.
When it came right down to it, he had his own heart to protect, too. And Kelsey—with her caring, her concern, her willingness to see the best in everyone, including him—was already way too close to working her way inside.
A quiet knock on the door broke into his thoughts. He didn’t bother to check the keyhole, accustomed to being able to handle anything, only to open the door and realize he could still be caught off guard.
Kelsey stood in the hallway, a lost look on her face.
“What are you doing here?” The question bordered on rude, but as he took in the uncertainty in her wide brown eyes, the sexier-than-hell freckles on her pale face, the plump lower lip she held caught between her teeth, his earlier intentions blew up in his face.
Walk away? As he caught the cinnamon scent of her skin, he couldn’t even move.
“I went to see Emily this morning,” she said as she ducked through the doorway. “I wanted to find out why she called you last night.”
Last night.
The two simple words had the power to turn back time. His flesh still burned in the aftermath of her touch. He grabbed a clean T-shirt from the dresser and jerked it over his head as if he could smother the memories. Not likely. It would take much stronger fabric than simple cotton, especially with Kelsey standing mere feet from his bed.
Pushing his damp hair back with both hands, he caught Kelsey staring at him, desire and awareness swirling in her chocolate eyes. Slowly lowering his arms, he shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans rather than pull her into his arms. As if sensing his thoughts, Kelsey broke eye contact, her gaze skittering away as soft color lit her cheeks.
In a voice that sounded dry as the desert, he asked, “Did you?”
Blinking like waking from a dream, Kelsey asked, “Did I what?”
“Find out why Em called?”
“No. Well, maybe. It sounds like Uncle Gordon and Todd are getting pretty close. Emily says she’s happy about it, but I’m not so sure.”
Connor nodded. “Makes sense. Emily’s always wanted her father’s approval, and she’s never known how to get it.”
Silence followed his statement. He wasn’t sure when he lost Kelsey. Her gaze was focused on the far wall, and he doubted she was captivated by the desertscape watercolor.
“Kelsey? You okay?”
“All this time, I thought I knew, but it was a lie, and I can’t ask her why.”
He frowned. “Ask who what?”
Shaking her head, she came back from whatever place or time had her spellbound. “Sorry. You don’t even know what I’m talking about.” She clutched at the oversize purse hanging from her shoulder, the lost, almost haunted look coming back.
Concern accomplished what little else could—pushing desire to the back burner. He stepped closer and watched her throat move as she swallowed—thanks to whatever she must have seen in his eyes—but he merely took her hand and led her to the couch.
“Tell me,” he urged. “Maybe I can figure it out.”
“If you can, you’re one up on me,” she said with a sound that could have been a laugh but wasn’t. Still, she took a deep breath as she sank against one of the cushions and said, “Aunt Charlene walked in when I was with Emily. We told her we’d been discussing what Emily would carry down the aisle. Something old, something new…”
Kelsey seemed to expect him to fill in the rest, so Connor ventured, “Roses are red, violets are blue?”
A slight smile tweaked her lips, and she said, “Close. Something borrowed, something blue.” Her smile faded as she pulled a rubber-banded stack of envelopes out of her purse. “I went looking for something old.”
“And you found those?” he asked, nodding at the bundle in her hands.
“These are letters my uncle wrote to my mother. Letters I never knew about. From an uncle I never knew existed until I was sixteen.”
Slowly Kelsey filled Connor in about her wrong-side-of-the-tracks father, about the demand her grandfather had made of her mother, and the money he’d paid her father to leave.
The words were a sucker punch to Connor’s soul. “Your grandfather paid your father off?”
Damned if he didn’t have to give the family credit. They were consistent if not original. Clearly payoffs were standard practice when it came to getting rid of unwanted boyfriends. He still remembered the look on Gordon Wilson’s face when the older man handed him a check to stay away from Emily.
Money he still hadn’t told Kelsey about…
“He took the money and never looked back. He didn’t care that my mother gave up everything for him. Didn’t even care that she was pregnant with me.”
An old bitterness, stale and rusty, cut into Kelsey’s words, and panic started to grow inside Connor. “But if he never contacted your mother, then you don’t know his reasons. You don’t know why he took the money—”
Kelsey gave a scoffing laugh. “Oh, believe me. I know why. He took the money because he was a selfish bastard. It was all he was interested in, all he wanted, and as soon as it was his, he was gone. Nothing he could say would matter, nothing he could do would ever make up f
or taking the money.”
She might as well be talking about him, Connor thought, guilt churning inside him. There was nothing he could do to change the past. He’d known when he took the money, Emily would never understand why he’d done it, why it was so vital that he help the Delgados. Would Kelsey really be any different?
She is different, his conscience argued.
And, yeah, okay, he’d taken her to meet Maria with the thought that he could somehow explain. But with her past and her father’s bought-and-paid-for desertion, well, she’d it said herself, hadn’t she?
Nothing he could say would matter…
“I’m sorry, Kelsey,” he bit out. Sorry for reasons he couldn’t even tell her.
“So am I,” she said as she placed the letters on the coffee table. Taking a deep breath, she seemed to come to a decision as she turned on the couch cushion to face him. “I’m sorry my mother couldn’t see another choice—to let go of the past. But I’ve been just as guilty.”
“Kelsey—”
“It’s true,” she insisted. “I’ve always kept my aunt and uncle at a distance. You saw that. I was afraid to trust them, to count on them, in case they turned their backs on me the same way I thought they’d turned their backs on my mom.”
“And Gordon never told you the whole story until now?”
Kelsey shook her head. “He said he didn’t want to make me choose between my loyalty to my mom and them.” She caught sight of Connor’s surprised look and added, “See? He’s not all bad.”
Surprising her, Connor said, “Yeah, I’m starting to see that.” His jaw clenched. “I mean, talk about the past repeating. He looked at me and saw a guy like your father—”
“You’re nothing like him,” Kelsey insisted fiercely.
“Kelsey, you don’t know—”
“I do. I know you’re a good man.”
A pained expression crossed his face. “No.”
“You are,” she insisted.
She thought of the way he’d taken responsibility for the women in his life: his mother, Emily, Cara Mitchell. He’d saved the woman’s life, yet he held himself accountable for putting her in a dangerous situation. Then, there was the love and gratitude he showed the Delgados. And yet none of those things compared to how he made her feel. She didn’t want to be a responsibility. She certainly didn’t want to be family. She wanted to be the woman Connor thought she was—strong, beautiful, sexy…
Once Upon a Wedding Page 15
