The Secret Wedding Wish

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “We’re too old to sneak around,” Thad continued persuading her calmly. He lifted the back of her hand to his lips and kissed it warmly. “And frankly there’s no reason for us to limit ourselves to a love affair. What I feel for you and Chris isn’t going to change, Janey. I know what I want—the three of us to be a family and have a happy, stable life.”

  Janey knew she loved Thad. She had been waiting her entire life to love and be loved by someone like him. But she wasn’t so sure if he actually loved her. Oh, she knew he cared about her and her son, and that he desired her. She knew he was a good, kindhearted, stand-up kind of guy who would never cheat on her or be anything but totally responsible and wonderful to her and Chris. She knew, if she married him, he would see she and Chris had everything they wanted and needed. But was it enough without the words? Without him actually being in love with her and not averse to telling her so?

  On the other hand, she told herself practically, words were cheap. Ty had said he loved her many times in the beginning, but Ty’s actions had never owned up to that grand pronouncement, and she had been miserable as a result.

  Janey’s heart told her that Thad would never treat her or Chris badly. He had too much character to be anything but trustworthy. And what was it Thad had said to her about listening to her gut, about not thinking something to death but just following her heart and doing what felt right? This felt right.

  He kissed her brow, her cheek, the nape of her neck, the sensitive spot behind her ear. And then finally, finally, her lips. “I don’t want things to go back the way they were, with me inventing reasons to see you or drop by, and not being able to kiss you and hold you and make love to you every night,” he told her as he kissed her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder, the underside of her wrist. “Practice starts in August. The first preseason game’s in September. And I’m going to be on the road a lot with the team the months after that.”

  Janey knew it was a long season. The Storm played some eighty games at home and away, and that was before the playoff rounds started, which would not conclude until June.

  Thad took her in his arms again, and fit his arousal against her softness. “If we’re married, you and Chris can come with me some of the time. I promise you, I’ll never let either of you down, the way Ty did.”

  What was she waiting for? Janey wondered, already tingling all over in anticipation of their making love again. So what if he hadn’t said he loved her yet? He had showed her how much he cared for her and her son in every way that counted. And you did only live once. This was it. Her chance for happiness, and her son’s. “Yes,” Janey said, her eyes brimming with heartfelt joy as she wrapped both her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly, sealing the deal. “I will marry you, as soon as you want.” As soon as we can.

  Thad smiled, abruptly looking as happy and excited about their future as she felt. “Then we’ll tell Chris tomorrow?” he asked, as he rolled her over onto her back, and kissed his way down her throat.

  Janey nodded blissfully. “Right after I pick him up from camp…”

  JANEY KNEW something was wrong when her brother Fletcher walked into the bakery Friday morning. The most easygoing of all the Hart men, Fletcher usually had a smile on his face and a welcoming light in his eyes. Now, he just looked grim.

  “Shouldn’t you be over at the vet clinic?” she asked, glancing at her watch. It was barely eleven and he should still be seeing his veterinary patients. Instead, he was standing there in front of her in jeans, chambray shirt and boots.

  “Cal called me and asked me to come and get you.”

  Janey tensed at the worry in his golden brown eyes. “Something happen to Mom?”

  “Mom’s fine.” Fletcher ran a hand through his shaggy honey-brown hair and looked even more reluctant as he told her, “It’s Chris. He had a little mishap this morning during his game.”

  Mishap. Janey’s heart skidded to a halt. Suddenly, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could barely breathe. “How bad is it?” she asked anxiously, suddenly furious that she had allowed her brothers to talk her into letting him attend camp.

  Fletcher closed the distance between them and wrapped a strong arm around her. He smelled like antiseptic and some sort of topical medicine and he had a streak of what looked to be mud across one sleeve.

  “Chris tried to avoid slamming into someone and ran into another player instead and then hit the boards.”

  Janey recalled how fast and she now saw—recklessly—her son had been skating the night before and could only imagine the force with which her son had crashed into the wall. She could only hope he hadn’t suffered a terrible head or neck injury or been cut by the blades on someone else’s skates in the process. “Does he have a concussion?” she demanded.

  Fletcher frowned. “They don’t know. He passed out briefly, but that might have been from pain. Joe rode with him in the ambulance and Cal’s evaluating him now over at the medical center.”

  Oh, God. Please. Let him be okay. Tears blurred her eyes. “I’ve got to go to him,” Janey struggled with the pastel pink apron over her white chef’s coat.

  “Maybe we should turn off these ovens first,” Fletcher moved past her.

  Stricken, Janey turned her glance in her brother’s direction.

  “Got a couple cakes in here, I see.” Fletcher opened the door and peered into the oven.

  Seven, to be exact, Janey thought, as she struggled to get a grip on her emotions. Chances were Chris was going to be just fine, she told herself sternly. “It’s a wedding cake,” she said evenly. “It has to be ready tomorrow and it’s only half-baked.” If she took the layers out now, it would be ruined. She would have to start all over. And yet, to wait…

  “How much longer?” Fletcher asked crisply.

  Barely able to remember her own name at that point, Janey glanced at the timer. “Twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll call one of my vet techs, and have them come over and take them out. They can stay here with the shop until you get back.”

  “Thanks,” Janey said gratefully. There were times when it was nice to have brothers who didn’t mind stepping in to take command of a situation. This was one of them.

  Fletcher made the call as they walked out to his extended cab pickup truck. It was covered with what looked to be wet mud. “House call,” he said in explanation of the mess.

  Janey nodded, knowing Fletcher spent as much time out at the farms and ranches in the area as he did in the office. “Who contacted you about Chris?”

  “Thad.” Fletcher backed out of the space while they were still fastening their safety belts. “He didn’t want you getting the news over the phone. He knew you’d be upset and he was afraid you’d jump in the car and have a wreck on the way over to the medical center.”

  She probably would have.

  “Is Joe still with Chris?” Janey asked, knowing local EMT policy was that only family members could ride in the ambulance with the patient. So Thad wouldn’t have been able to accompany Chris to the Emergency Room in any case.

  Not that this would have been a big deal to someone like Thad, who saw injured players all the time and was used to sending them off to the hospital in an ambulance and getting a report back later once the player was evaluated by medical professionals.

  “No. Joe went back to the camp as soon as he handed him over to Cal. It’s the last day. And they’ve got a big luncheon and award ceremonies going on.”

  “So Joe was needed there, as was Thad.”

  And what about Chris, Janey wondered. What did Chris need? And why hadn’t she taken the day off work and been there, watching the last of the camp’s exhibition games? Had she not been making love with Thad last night, she could have done her baking during the previous evening, and been there for her son when he needed her….

  “Thad said to tell you he would catch up with the two of you as soon as he could. And to call him if there are any problems. Not that he expected any since Cal is in charge of Chris’s m
edical care.” Fletcher reached across the seat and awkwardly patted her hand, then put his pickup into Drive. “Chris is going to be okay, Janey.”

  “I know,” she replied firmly even though she knew no such thing. She had to keep a positive attitude. Had to, had to, had to….

  Chris looked as if he were surviving the ordeal when she entered the examination room in the Emergency Room at Holly Springs Regional Medical Center. If you considered the fact his skin was ashen gray, he had a cut, swollen lip, and was still in such pain he seemed incapable of speech. Janey could tell her son had been crying. He never cried. And wouldn’t appreciate her doing so, either.

  Struggling to contain her own worries, she walked over to him. He looked gangly and vulnerable in the hospital gown. The sheet was drawn up to his waist, and one side was bunched up over what looked to be some rather significant ice packs. “Hey.” She issued the standard North Carolina greeting.

  Chris ducked his head and said nothing as he studiously rubbed the sheet between his thumb and fore-finger. A single tear slid out of the corner of one eye. Janey’s throat ached as she struggled to hold back her own tears.

  “What’s going on?” Janey continued in the most normal tone she could manage.

  Chris shrugged and turned his glance to the wall. The look on his face was stubborn and unhappy. It reminded Janey a lot of Ty whenever Ty had suffered a setback in his never-realized quest to make it to the Olympics. A shiver of dread curled in her stomach. It was this very road she had wanted to avoid, when she had refused to let him attend camp and further his obsession in the first place.

  Cal appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in surgical blue pants, shirt, and cap. With his gray eyes and traditionally-cut ash-blond hair, he looked the most like their late father of all the siblings. “Hey, sis. Talk to you for a minute?” he said amiably, the bedside manner he used on his patients and their families in good stead. Cal looked to their brother for help. “Fletcher—?”

  “I’ll stay with Chris,” Fletcher volunteered.

  Janey followed her brother down the hall to a room with lighted screens. He slapped a couple of pictures from the MRI that had been taken up on the screens and hit the lights. “Chris has what’s commonly known as a groin injury.”

  “One of the most common in hockey,” Janey said.

  “And most painful,” Cal agreed grimly. “It usually happens from a sudden start or stop or change in direction. And in Chris’s case it was the latter two things. The muscle fibers are actually torn and not just stretched.”

  “Which means?” Janey asked, not sure what he was telling her.

  “It’s going to be a lot slower to heal.”

  A fact Chris was not going to appreciate. “How long are we talking?”

  “Four, six weeks, maybe longer.”

  She thought about the bloody cut on her son’s face. “Did he hit his head on the boards?” And if so, how could she have been foolish enough to allow this to happen? Hadn’t she promised herself she would never let her son indulge in the kind of reckless athletic behavior his father had?

  “Actually, we think he may have banged it a little on either the ice or the boards on the way down but in either case his helmet seems to have protected him just fine. Although he lost his mouth guard in the process, which is the reason for the cut lip.”

  Great, Janey thought. She supposed she should feel lucky her son still had all his teeth.

  “Since it was an amateur game we don’t have any instant replays to look at. And it all happens pretty quick. So it’s just recollection of those close enough to be able to see.”

  Janey had seen her share of on-ice collisions in their brother Joe’s games. It was frightening, even when you didn’t have a personal connection with the players involved. “Fletcher said something about two other players,” Janey said nervously. Were they here, too? And if so, what kind of shape were they in?

  “They were both uninjured and were able to finish the game.”

  Which probably only added to her son’s mortification, since he had been the only one to be carted off in an ambulance. Janey said a little prayer of thanks for the other boys’ continued good health, then turned her attention back to her son’s condition. “Fletcher also said Chris passed out.”

  “Very briefly. Probably from the pain of the muscle tear.”

  Janey could only imagine how excruciating that must have been. “But he’s going to be okay.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to warn you, though, his recovery isn’t going to be fun. He’s got torn muscle fibers that have to heal and then he’s going to have to go into physical therapy to get his injured muscles back in playing shape. And for the first week or so any movement—walking, sitting, shifting positions in bed—is going to be very painful.”

  Janey tried to be grateful it wasn’t any worse. “When can I take him home?”

  Cal hesitated once again, looking even more reluctant as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “That, Janey, is what I have to talk to you about.”

  TO HIS CHAGRIN, it was 7:00 p.m. before Thad was able to get away from the camp. Figuring Chris had long since been released from the Holly Springs Medical Center, Thad headed for Janey’s. To his surprise, she didn’t appear to be home. And she wasn’t answering her cell phone, either. So he headed back along Main Street, and found her where he least expected her to be, at her bakery.

  Janey barely looked up from the cake she was frosting when he walked in. She looked pale and exhausted, and he could hardly blame her for that. He knew she’d had quite a scare that morning—they all had. But her son was a tough kid and he would bounce back from this, the way all true athletes did.

  “You’re working tonight?” he asked in surprise.

  She gave him a deeply disappointed look. “I have to finish this and take it to The Wedding Inn.”

  So she blamed him for Chris’s injury. No surprise there. “Where’s Chris?” Thad asked, determined to deal with this situation calmly, even if she wouldn’t.

  “With Cal, at his place,” she retorted crisply. “He’s off this weekend and he offered to take care of Chris.”

  Thad edged nearer. “I’m surprised you agreed to that,” he said gently.

  Hurt flashed in her amber eyes. “I didn’t have much choice. Chris didn’t want to come home with me.”

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. “That’s understandable.” Thad did his best to help her see reason. “A groin injury is embarrassing under the best of circumstances. To be a twelve-year-old boy, with no dad in residence… He’s obviously going to need some help getting around and getting the ice in the right place for a couple of days. It makes sense he wouldn’t want his mother helping him with that if there were any other recourse.”

  “That’s what Cal said.” She didn’t look as if she had appreciated it any more coming from him than she did from Thad.

  “You understand Cal is just trying to limit the humiliation of the ordeal for Chris,” Thad explained as he attempted to comfort her by putting an arm around her shoulders.

  Janey extricated herself from his arm and turned her back to him.

  “Look, I know it’s upsetting when an athlete gets hurt, and it’s a million times worse when said athlete happens to be your son,” Thad said as he watched her pipe icing onto the edges of the cake. “And I’m sorry you had to go through it alone today.”

  Janey lifted a hand to cut him off. “I understand why you couldn’t go to the medical center with Chris,” she said bluntly.

  She knew, as well as Thad, that the EMTs wouldn’t have let him ride in the ambulance, and Cal had been right there for Chris when he arrived. Thad had made sure of that.

  “I still want to tell him we’re going to get married.” Thad wanted to tell everyone. Make it official. Before she backed out. Because the way she was acting right now, he was pretty sure she wanted to back out.

  Janey hesitated, for the first time since he had come in seeming a tad vulnerable
, then her expression sobered. “Tonight probably isn’t the time,” she retorted matter-of-factly.

  “It might give him something to look forward to,” Thad suggested softly, ready to do anything that would help Janey and Chris feel better.

  Janey shook her head. “It won’t hurt us to wait. You’ll see.”

  BUT IT DID HURT THEM, and by Wednesday evening, Thad knew he had to do something to keep from losing the woman in his life altogether. “You can’t keep avoiding me,” Thad told Janey when he caught up with her at 5:00 p.m.

  “Look, my life is not so great right now,” Janey said as she joined him on the sidewalk outside Delectable Cakes. Her face was pale. There were circles beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping much, either. And he knew that expression on her face by now. There would be no backing down.

  “Because of Chris’s injury,” he said.

  “Because of a lot of things.” She stepped past him, looking as self-sufficient and independent as ever. “I’ve got to get home.”

  Thad moved to block her way. “Uh, no, actually, you don’t.”

  She lifted a brow at his temerity and explained with barely veiled patience, “Chris is going to need dinner.”

  He stuck his thumbs in the loops on either side of his fly and rocked back on his heels. “Joe and Emma are going to handle that.”

  She blinked. Her expression held more challenge than warmth. “You called my brother and his wife,” she repeated, dumbfounded.

  Thad shrugged, not about to apologize for doing what had to be done. “I told them I needed to talk to you alone. They graciously agreed to feed and entertain Chris tonight, and regale him with tales of some of Joe’s injuries and recuperation strategies while you and I have a nice quiet dinner at my place.”

  She stepped back a pace, color first fading, then coming into her face. “That’s really not a good idea.”

  “Then we’ll go to a restaurant,” he said affably. “Your choice.” The important thing was for them to start talking. Spending time with each other again.