All of Me

by Lori Wilde

  She feared that if the dark cloud chasing her ever caught up with her, the depression would swallow her whole. She had to do something. She had to get away from her life, think this thing through, formulate an action plan.

  Two security guards appeared in her doorway. “DA Fredericks sent us. We’re here to escort you off the premises, Ms. Samuels,” the tallest one said sheepishly.

  “Fine.” Jillian snapped her briefcase closed and straightened.

  “I’ll carry that box for you,” said the second security guard.

  “Thank you.”

  They escorted her down the corridor, past the curious eyes of her colleagues. Jillian held her head high. A few minutes later, hands shaking, she slid behind the wheel of her red Sebring convertible, the cardboard box stowed in the back behind her, her briefcase stashed on the passenger seat. With trembling fingers, she tried to stab the key into the ignition. After several fumbling attempts, she finally got the engine started.

  Were all men cheating bastards? Lying pigs? Even Blake had cheated on his wife. He’d told her his infidelity was what had destroyed his marriage. He regretted it. He was ashamed of what he’d done, but he’d done it. If a good guy like Blake couldn’t keep his pants zipped …

  I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, Jillian. We can start over fresh, you and I. Alex’s words rang in her head.

  Jillian gritted her teeth. Had he honestly thought she’d jump at the chance to resume their affair? God, how she regretted sleeping with the man, but even more, she regretted feeling as if they’d had something special.

  Fool. In your heart you knew better.

  It was her own fault for daring to think she deserved the same kind of happiness her friends had found. They’d all wished on the wedding veil. All met the loves of their lives. They’d told her it was worth the risk. That she could find love too. So she’d dared to take a chance.

  And it had exploded in her face. Dammit, she’d known better.

  Blake dropped dead in Starbucks of the brain tumor he’d hidden from me.

  He had abandoned her as well. The only man she’d ever really trusted. Jillian stared unseeingly through the windshield as she drove from the parking lot, her mind numb. Losing Blake hurt so damned much.

  Tears, hot and unexpected, burned the back of her eyelids, but she refused to let them fall. She sucked in air, sucked up the pain, closed off her heart. Never again. She’d been hurt too many times by men to ever truly trust one.

  It didn’t matter that her three best friends had found true love and happily-ever-after. They were different from her. They believed in magic.

  No matter how hard she tried, Jillian couldn’t believe.

  Without even knowing how she got there, numb from everything that had happened in the past week, Jillian drove to the condo she rented in a trendy area of Houston not far from downtown. Her lease was up at the end of the month; she’d planned on renewing it, but now she realized there was nothing holding her here. She’d lost everything. Her mentor, her job, her self-respect.

  She wanted to curl into a tight ball and howl from the pain. She hated herself like this. Vulnerable, taken advantage of, used, disregarded. She’d spent her life trying to rise above the victim mentality, to prove she deserved better than the way she’d been treated by her stepmother.

  But now she felt stupid, deceived, cheated. And worst of all, the defensive mechanism that had kept her safe all these years, the guard she kept around her heart, had failed her miserably.

  She walked into her quiet, lonely house, aching to her very core. She didn’t know what drove her, but she tossed her purse and her briefcase on the table and stalked to the bedroom. She went to the cedar chest at the end of her bed, started yanking out sweaters and tossing them heedlessly about the room. At the bottom of the chest she found what she hadn’t consciously known she was looking for.

  The magical wedding veil.

  Rachael had passed it on to her months earlier. It was a floor-length mantilla style made of Rosepoint lace. She remembered the day Delaney had found the veil in a consignment shop just before her wedding to the wrong man, and she remembered the fanciful story the store owner had told.

  According to the lore, in long-ago Ireland, there had lived a beautiful young witch named Morag, who possessed a great talent for tatting incredible lace. People came from far and wide to buy the lovely wedding veils she created, but there were other women in the community who were envious of Morag’s beauty and talent.

  These women lied and told the magistrate that Morag was casting spells on the men of the village. The magistrate arrested Morag but found himself falling madly in love with her. Convinced that she must have cast a spell upon him as well, he moved to have her tried for practicing witchcraft. If found guilty, she would be burned at the stake. But in the end, the magistrate could not resist the power of true love.

  On the eve before Morag was to stand trial, he kidnapped her from the jail in the dead of night and spirited her away to America, giving up everything he knew for her. To prove that she had not cast a spell over him, Morag promised never to use magic again.

  As her final act of witchcraft, she made one last wedding veil, investing it with the power to grant the deepest wish of the wearer’s soul. She wore the veil on her own wedding day, wishing for true and lasting love. Morag and the magistrate were blessed with many children and much happiness. They lived to a ripe old age and died in each other’s arms.

  Delaney had wished on the veil to get out of marrying the wrong man, and in the end, she’d found her heart’s desire in her soul mate, Nick Vinetti.

  Then Delaney had passed the veil on to Tish.

  Tish had wished to get out of debt, and the granting of her wish had brought her back together with the husband she’d lost but never stopped loving.

  And then Tish had passed the veil on to Rachael.

  Rachael had wished to stop being so romantic, and she’d ended up marrying the hero of her dreams.

  Jillian didn’t believe in magic, but the wedding veil was all the hope she had left. She’d lost everything else.

  “What a load of crap,” she muttered, but even as she muttered it, she took the antique veil from its protective wrapping and settled it on her head. Compelled by a mysterious force beyond her control, she stared at herself in the mirror.

  “I wish,” she muttered, “I wish I’d been born into a loving, trusting, giving family. I wish … I wish … I wish …” Her words trailed off as she realized what it was she really wanted.

  Finally, she whispered, “I wish I had a brand-new life.”

  The second the wish was out of her mouth, her scalp began to tingle and she felt her body grow suddenly heavy. With the wish on her lips, the veil on her head, and utter despair in her heart, Jillian curled up on the floor and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  UNTIL TWO YEARS AGO, Tucker Manning had led a magical life.

  People said he was charmed, and it was true. Born the youngest child and only son to James and Meredith Manning, he’d been spoiled by his parents and his three older sisters straight from the get-go. He’d possessed an easygoing personality and a bad-boy smile women simply couldn’t resist.

  And when he discovered he’d not only inherited the famed Manning carpentry skills, but that he had a natural flare for architecture as well, the world beat a path to his door. He had put himself through architectural school with his carpentry skills. For his senior class project, twenty-two-year-old Tuck had designed and constructed an innovative learning center for elementary schoolchildren. Then something amazing and bizarre happened.

  The grade point average of every single child enrolled in Tuck’s new learning center shot up.

  Tuck brushed if off to coincidence. But educators seemed convinced it was the building. They claimed something about the lighting and the open-air blueprint stimulated learning. Other schools heard what had happened, and they commissioned Manning Learning Centers.

  Tuck design
ed them. Each and every time, test scores rose and grade point averages shot up. Tuck figured it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. People thought their children would get smarter in his buildings, so they did.

  Architectural Digest ran a feature story on him, dubbing him “Magic Man.” He traveled the world building schools and getting rich.

  Then he met Aimee Townsend in Albany, New York. A kindergarten teacher by trade. Beautiful girl. Petite. Honey-blond hair, big blue eyes, creamy porcelain complexion. Wearing a Wizard of Oz green sweater and a short brown wool skirt. Nice legs. No pantyhose. Wholesome and heartwarming.

  Tuck had designed and built that classroom as if it was just for her.

  Two months later, they were married and bought a loft in Manhattan. He loved city life, but Aimee was a small-town girl at heart, and she made him promise that when they were ready to start a family, they would move to the place where she’d spent her summer vacations as a kid before her parents got divorced. The place she loved most in the world.

  Salvation, Colorado.

  Tuck had said glibly, easily, “Sure. Why not?” Kids were a long way off.

  Then Aimee got very sick with a deadly form of ovarian cancer. He took her from doctor to doctor. Private clinic to exclusive hospital. They consulted experts in Europe and Japan. They went through most of his money, but Tuck didn’t care. All he wanted was to save his wife.

  In the end, Aimee had whispered, “Take me to Colorado, Tuck. That’s where I want to die. At the lake house. In Salvation.”

  And that was where the magic had run out.

  Now Tuck hunkered alone in a small rowboat in the middle of Salvation Lake in Salvation, Colorado. In spite of his down coat, the wind sliced through him, as cold as a ceramic blade. To warm himself, he took another swig from the bottle of Johnny Walker Red at his feet. The whiskey neatly seared the back of his throat.

  “Look at the stars, Aimee,” Tuck whispered into the midnight sky carpeted with a thousand points of starlight. “Brilliant as the night I asked you to marry me. Remember?”

  The water stretched out around him, inky black and vast. He was a good fifty yards from shore, where the first snowfall of the season clung to the pine trees, looming up like ghostly giants.

  “I know I didn’t get started on renovating the lake house this year like I promised. A lot of things got in the way. Chick Halsey hired me to add a bedroom onto his house, because he and Addie are expecting another baby. Their fourth. And before that, Jessie Dolittle had me build a pole barn for some new mules. Then there were the special-order cabinets for an older couple that just moved up here from Denver. Now the lake house will have to wait because of winter. I’m sorry to disappoint you again, babe. I’ll get started on it come spring, I promise.”

  Another slug of the Johnny Walker and he was a regular furnace inside.

  He could picture Aimee sitting across from him in the rowboat. Her long blond hair trailing down her back, her blue eyes aglow, looking the way she’d looked the night he proposed. Right here on this lake. It had been summer then, Fourth of July, actually. Fireworks going off all around the lake, a picnic basket of fried chicken sitting in the bottom of the boat between them. The taste of watermelon on their tongues as they’d kissed.

  He’d slipped a four-carat diamond sparkler on her hand, and she’d said, “Yes, yes, yes. You just have to promise me one thing.”

  “Anything,” he’d breathed.

  “You can never, ever cheat on me the way my dad cheated on my mother. I won’t stand for it. Promise you’ll never break my heart.”

  “I promise,” Tuck had sworn. It was an easy promise. He loved her so much, he’d never jeopardize what they had over another woman. His mistake, he realized now, was that he hadn’t made her swear not to break his heart.

  Tuck’s breath frosted in the chilly air. “I miss you, babe. I miss you so damn much. I’m not worth shit without you.”

  If Aimee were here, she would have chided him for cursing. She was so sweet, so innocent. Too innocent for this sorry world.

  Grief knotted his throat.

  It was bad today.

  Some days it was better. Some days he was almost his old self again, flirting innocently with the waitresses at the Bluebird Café, whistling while he sanded down cabinets or planed doors, smiling at people on the streets. Forgetting for hours at a stretch. Some days the sorrow didn’t hit him until he was underneath the covers with the lights turned off, and the empty spot in the bed beside him stretched out as wide as the lake.

  Then the grief would sledgehammer him. His beloved Aimee was gone, and he was alone.

  Some days, like today, were so bad that the only thing that could dull the pain was good old Johnny W. He put the whiskey bottle to his lips. Took another sip and wondered if it was against the law to drink and row.

  When the hell did it ever stop hurting? When would he wake up and not listen for the sound of her moving about the kitchen, cooking him egg-white omelets, which he despised but had eaten anyway to make her happy? She’d told him he had to watch his cholesterol, because she wanted him with her until they were stooped and gray. Tuck had eaten the loathsome egg-white omelets, but she’d been the one to break the pact. Aimee would never grow stooped and gray. She was forever twenty-five.

  He threw back his head and howled at the starry sky. “Fuuuuck!”

  The sound of his mournful curse carried on the crisp night air, echoing up and down the lake. The outburst made him feel a little better so he did it again.

  “Fuuuuck!”

  Wind rushed into his lungs, freezing the pipes the whiskey had previously warmed. He got to his feet, threw his arms wide, and embraced the icicle breeze. Bring it on, Mother Nature.

  “Fuuuuck!”

  The boat wobbled. Tuck stumbled. Johnny Walker played fast and loose with his balance. He tried to sit back down, but gravity already had him in a choke hold.

  Next thing he knew, Tucker Manning, the former Magic Man of Manhattan, was tumbling headlong into Salvation Lake.

  EVIE MANNING RED DEER was locking up the Bluebird Café when her husband, Ridley, came up the sidewalk and slipped his arms around her waist. He pressed his face into her hair and pulled her up flush against his body so she could feel his arousal pressing into her backside.

  “Mmm,” he murmured. “You smell like fry bread.”

  She turned in his arms. His shoulders were as broad as beams, his ebony hair longer than hers, and she slipped her arms around his neck, tilting her lips up for a kiss.

  Ridley crushed his mouth against hers. Evie breathed him in. God, how she loved this man.

  When she’d come to Salvation to be with her younger brother in his time of grief over losing his young wife, she could never have imagined that she would fall in love with a native, marry him, and end up running the Bluebird Café. She was a pastry chef who’d trained at Lenotre in Paris. She’d trotted the globe. Seen the world. Met royalty and movie stars. She’d had far more than her share of lovers. But Salvation, Colorado, was where she’d lost her heart, and she’d freely surrendered her old life to be with this man. Ridley Red Deer was everything Evie had never known she wanted.

  Ridley was kind and generous, strong and understanding. While he was truly masculine, he had a tender heart as big as the sky. He grounded her, calmed her in a way no one else ever had.

  He broke the kiss, nuzzled her neck, and slipped his hands up underneath her coat.

  “Ridley.” She giggled.

  “Uh-huh?” He lowered his eyelids suggestively.

  “We’re out on the street for everyone to see. Save it for when we get home.”

  “Everyone knows how crazy I am about you.” He ran his tongue along her neck, sending shivers of delight darting down her spine. “How I can’t keep my hands off you.”

  Panting, she pulled away. “Down, boy.”

  He chuckled and let her go but reached out to take her hand. She looked at his profile in the lamplight. Proud Native American nose, r
uddy skin, high cheekbones, intelligent dark eyes. Her heart did an instinctive little hopscotch the way it always did when she caught sight of him.

  Ridley linked his fingers through hers, and they started down the street, swinging their arms in unison, heading for their house on the next block over. Every night, he came to walk her home from the café.

  “So how was your day?”

  “We cleared four hundred dollars.”

  “Not bad for a Thursday in down season.”

  “We had a caravan of recreational vehicles stop in, snowbirds on their way south for the winter. They’d seen the feature story on us in RV Today.”

  “That’s great.”

  She could hear his pride for her in his voice. Evie leaned into him, inhaled his familiar scent. “So how was Tucker when you left him?”

  “Um, I wasn’t with Tuck tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” She punched her husband playfully on the upper arm. “Are you teasing me?”

  “Dutch dropped by and we watched college basketball. UNLV trounced the hell out of USC.”

  Evie stopped walking and sank her hands on her hips. “Ridley, please don’t tell me you forgot.”

  “Forgot what?”

  Worry grabbed hold of her. “Rid, it’s the second anniversary of Aimee’s death. I told you this morning to go hang with Tuck when you got off work.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I did.” She heard her voice rise an octave.

  “When did you tell me?”

  “You were in the shower, and I was putting on my makeup, and I clearly told you—”

  “If you told me when I was in the shower, then I didn’t hear you. Running water and all that.”

  “Never mind.” Evie spun on her heels and started walking in the opposite direction. She wrung her hands. “I can’t believe you forgot the day Aimee died.”

  “You’re overreacting,” Ridley said, chasing after her. “Tuck’s been a lot better lately.”

  She stopped and spun around. “Am I? What about last year?”

  A sobering look passed over her husband’s face. “That was last year. Tuck’s come a long way since then.”