Slow Hands
Page 20
“That’s the problem, you see,” he added, his fingers loosening, as if the effort to clench their hands was too much. “Like many others in my family—your grandmother, who lived alone for decades, my brother, always looking for the one he foolishly let get away—I’m at the mercy of my own heart.” He lightly tapped his chest. “Which is, perhaps, a bit weaker than I’d supposed.”
“What are you saying?” Tabby asked, in visible confusion.
He smiled up at his oldest daughter, who shared his bright blue eyes. “I cared for your mother, but we were young. Neither of us went into it for the right reasons.”
Tabitha nodded, conceding the point. “I know.”
“And I quite enjoyed many relationships with others over the years.” Then he glanced at Maddy and his eyes moistened, as if tears were threatening. “But the truth is, we Turners are only capable of one real love.”
Maddy sucked in a breath. She’d never heard her father talk this way, not in her entire twenty-eight years. And while for a brief moment, she wondered if his medication had confused him, she had to acknowledge that his gaze was clear; his voice—though weak—held certainty and conviction.
“It’s a blessing and a curse in our family, but it’s true. We can only manage it once. One great love, never to be forgotten, never to be replaced, not even if we end up entirely alone.” He reached up and brushed his shaking hand across Maddy’s cheek. “You break my heart and you fill it, every time I look into your eyes and see her there.”
And suddenly she understood the words he was saying. The truth he’d never admitted before. Her father wasn’t guilty of loving too briefly, or too shallowly.
The greatest tragedy of his life was in having loved so much he could never say goodbye.
“You’re doomed, I’m afraid, both of you. So be vigilant, listen to your heart,” he said, sighing deeply. “And when you do, savor every moment, don’t waste a second of it. I pray you won’t be like me. I found the other half of my heart and have spent twenty-four years trying to fill the time until I can be with her again.”
Tears flowed freely down Maddy’s face. Of all the moments in her life when she’d regretted having lost her mother, this was the most poignant.
Their father reached for Tabby’s hand again, regarding her with sad eyes. “You’ve found the wrong one, darling…again and again, trying so hard and hoping each time will be better than the last.” Then he turned his attention to Maddy. “And you, my sweet girl, have closed yourself off completely, never allowing yourself to believe you’ll ever find the right one.”
“Oh, Dad,” Maddy whispered, her heart breaking for him more with every word he spoke.
There was, she knew, one gift she could give him, to help ease his worry, perhaps to help him heal. Just one secret…but the most important one of Maddy’s life. “You’re wrong, you know.”
He merely waited.
“I’ve already found him,” she said, then bent to press a soft kiss on his forehead.
He stared at her, seeing the truth there. “I’m so glad,” he whispered. “So very glad.” Then he fell asleep, looking comfortable and relaxed as his breathing continued evenly, steadily.
Maddy and her sister stared at their father, then across his bed at each other. The shock and grief for the long, lonely years their father had endured had to have been written just as clearly on Maddy’s face as it was on Tabitha’s. And, from both of them, maybe even sadness for the women who’d hoped to refill the vast empty wells of his heart that, to this day, mourned for Magdalena.
A nurse intruded, informing them their time was up. They rose in unison; each bent to kiss their father’s cheek before walking out of the room together.
“I’ve got to go,” Tabby murmured, her voice having lost that anxiety—the sadness and guilt she’d been carrying when she’d arrived here this morning. “I have a wedding to cancel and a fiancé to jilt.”
Unable to stop herself from smiling, Maddy grabbed her sister’s hand. “Me, too. I’ve got three words to say to an amazing man.”
The love of her life. She no longer had a single doubt about it. And she would make sure he didn’t, either.
“HEY, WALLACE, somebody’s here to see you!”
Jake looked up from the medical kit he’d been restocking in the supply room, surprised that one of the guys had come back here looking for him. He wasn’t even supposed to be on duty today. He’d taken the day off for a woman who didn’t trust him enough to let him escort her to a family wedding, much less to love her. But staring at the four walls of his apartment had soon driven him batty and he’d come to the station house, determined to do a little restocking and catch up on some paperwork.
“Who is it?”
The guy, one of the newer firefighters, wagged his eyebrows.
And Jake knew.
He shoved the case of sterile bandages he’d been holding back into the storage closet, slammed the door shut, and strode out to the front of the station. Maddy stood right outside, her beautiful, dark hair shimmering in the brilliant June sunshine. Her arms wrapped around her waist, she was dressed, not in her wickedly sexy bridesmaid dress, but in a simple jean skirt and brightly colored blouse.
The wedding, he figured, must have been postponed. No surprise there. He couldn’t imagine his own sister going through with her wedding if something happened to their father. But given the identity of the bride and groom, he hadn’t been entirely sure.
“Hey,” he said when he reached her side. “You all right?”
She tilted her head back and looked up at him, a gentle smile widening those beautiful lips. “I’m fine.”
“Your father?”
“Fine, too.”
Then they fell silent. She’d come here to say something—he didn’t have it in him to work up the hope that it could be something he truly wanted to hear. That she was wrong—so wrong—to put those self-protective walls around herself again. That she knew he’d never hurt her and was ready to admit she loved him, too.
But she said nothing.
“I guess the wedding’s been postponed?”
She shook her head.
“Oh. Do you, uh, still need an escort?”
“Yes,” she murmured, then cleared her throat. “Yes. I need an escort.”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I left my tux back at my apartment.” Glancing at his watch, he said, “Look, I’ll go get it and…”
“No,” she said, putting her hand over his mouth to shut him up. “I don’t need an escort to a wedding. It hasn’t been postponed. Tabby called it off. For good.”
Sounded like one of the smartest things that sister of hers had ever done.
Maddy traced the tip of her finger over his lips, then his jaw and on down his neck before confessing, “But I still want the next fourteen days you owe me.”
“What?”
“And then I want fourteen thousand more.”
The ground lurched beneath his feet. Or maybe it was just his heart flipping around in his chest. Because that had sounded an awful lot like…
“What I need is an escort for life. I want to be on your arm forever, Jake, and I want you on mine,” Maddy admitted, all attempts to protect herself, evaporating under the bright summer sky. “I want you sleeping beside me and waking up beside me. Walking with me, and holding me. Laughing with me, crying with me, and keeping me from ever freezing up into that woman again.”
“I love that woman,” he said. “I loved her from the beginning. And I love this one, too. I love every part of you, Madeline Turner.”
Stepping closer, until her body brushed his, she sent all his nerve endings on alert, filling his head with her sweet scent and his ears with her tender words. “I love you, too.”
Her whisper sent the world spinning again, everything falling into place, exactly where it belonged. Right and perfect and all he’d ever dreamed of.
Maddy rose on tiptoe. “I love you so much and I don’t ever want to lose you
.” She smiled, such a sweet, heartbreaking smile. “I’ve finally allowed myself to believe it.”
“I’m so glad,” he whispered, bending to brush a soft kiss on her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him back, her tongue mating with his, oblivious to time and place and anybody around them.
When the kiss finally ended, she didn’t pull away, remaining wrapped in his embrace. “You should know, I won’t ever let you go. Even if the world ended tomorrow and we never saw each other again…I will never let you go.”
She didn’t have to explain. He understood completely. They were joined now. Through emotion and words and soon, he knew, through vows and family. Joined for life.
“Maddy, didn’t you learn that the night we met?” he asked with a teasing kiss to her jaw. “I’ll never let you get away from me, either.” Then all teasing faded. “I promise you.”
“Well, then, I guess we have a deal,” she said. Her eyes twinkled with merriment and utter happiness. “Because I know you’re not a welsher.”
He tilted his head back and laughed up at the sky. He was happier than he’d ever been, more sure of the two of them being together than of anything he’d ever done.
And he was grateful—very grateful—to Fate, or whoever it was that had made him the man she’d chosen that night.
The one she’d chosen for life.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1781-6
SLOW HANDS
Copyright © 2008 by Leslie Kelly.
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