“It’s not fair for me to let you think there’s something there when there’s not.” She tried to look at him, but he wouldn’t look up. “I’m really sorry.”
Finally he nodded, and then he looked up with a tight smile. “Will you go with me to the wedding tomorrow?”
“Greg…”
“No. Not like that. Just as friends. Please?”
It took a breath, but finally she nodded.
“I can’t believe Greg and Ike didn’t take you out tonight,” Dallas said as their limo rolled up to the guesthouse. “I figured they’d abscond with you at the first break in the action.”
Considering that Ike wasn’t talking to him these days and that Greg had left with the woman he really loved, Keith was kind of glad they didn’t. “Yeah, well. It’s okay.”
“You know. I didn’t pack all of my surprises for the honeymoon. Maybe I could get one out tonight for a little preview.”
The thought made him want to throw up. He forced the air out of his lungs slowly. “I’m really beat, Dallas. Why don’t you save it for tomorrow night when we’re official?”
Official. The word sounded so very final.
She wrapped her arms around him like an anaconda. “Okay, but you don’t know what you’re missing.”
The sun would be up in an hour, but Keith couldn’t sleep. By this time tomorrow morning Dallas Henderson would be his wife, and there would be no going back. He sat in the recliner, letting scenes from his life flash before him. There were the turns he had taken and the ones that had been taken for him. There were decisions he made but more that had been made for him.
Although it knifed him to the core to think it, he knew that this marriage was the best thing for everyone save himself. It would make his father happy. Finally. It would make Mr. and Mrs. Henderson happy, although why that was, he wasn’t really sure. It would make Dallas happy. But the one that kept him moving forward was the knowledge that if he just married Dallas, Maggie would be free to go on with her life.
Sooner or later she would certainly leave the mansion, and the Ayer family replete with all their curses and selfishness would be forever out of her life. She deserved that much. Of that and only that, Keith was perfectly sure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“We need the children for pictures,” Patty Ann said, appearing at the door of Isabella’s room. It was only one o’clock. The wedding wouldn’t start for four more hours. Whose brilliant idea it was to start with the children’s pictures, Maggie wasn’t at all sure, but whoever it was had no concept of how restless children got in dress clothes. “Mr. Ayer requested that they be brought to the waterfall for the pictures.”
“The waterfall?” Maggie’s heart sank through the thought. “Why can’t we just do it here?”
Patty Ann’s face fell into a scowl. “Really, Ms. Montgomery, you’re not going to wear tennis shoes with that dress now, are you?”
Maggie looked down at her shoes beneath the soft satin of her formal peach dress. It was $25 at the thrift store, and it only had one small hole in the back hem. “Not for the wedding. Just for the keeping up with the kids for pictures and stuff. I got a horrendous blister from last night.”
The secretary didn’t look at all pleased. “Well, don’t let anyone important see you in those things. We’ll both be fired on the spot.” She started to turn. “Oh, and Tanner is downstairs to take you to the falls. The wedding party is meeting down there.”
“Okay.” Maggie swept Isabella off the carpet and grabbed Peter’s hand. At least Tanner would be there to keep her company. He and Jamie had been so nice the night before. They were a diversion, a distraction to keep her mind from thinking too far into the future or too much about the present. “Hi,” she said at the bottom of the steps.
“Oh, look at you! You’re so precious.” Jamie squealed when she saw Isabella, and Isabella squealed back. “And Peter, my, aren’t we handsome today?”
Peter smiled proudly.
“Well, let’s just hope we are still precious and handsome four hours from now,” Maggie said with a laugh.
The others would be descending on the place in no time. Keith knew that, so for one last moment, he stood at the edge of the falls and enjoyed the peacefulness. The wedding was edging inexorably closer, but standing here, he could pretend that he was again ten-years-old, with his mother and her wisdom.
“Mom, you know I only want what’s best for everyone,” he whispered, “even if it’s not what I want.”
The breeze whispered back to him, and then another sound hummed through that one. Keith turned, and his heart flipped over. Tanner’s pickup parked next to the Dodge. Keith himself had sent Tanner on that errand, and so he knew better than anyone what his arrival meant. A door, another, and wedding attired people tumbled out. Tanner held Peter, and Jamie held Isabella. Then, behind them, Keith caught sight of the only one he’d been wanting to see since she’d walked out the night before.
“Looks like we even beat the photographer,” Tanner said as he carefully descended the rocky path that was more fit for cowboy boots than a tuxedo. “Hey, Mr. Ayer. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Keith’s gaze never left her as she picked her way down the path. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad you made it.”
With the way her luck was going, Maggie knew she would probably twist an ankle on the hard rocks and go crashing to the ground in a heap of peach and blood. It took only one glance at Keith to confirm how dangerous to her heart this situation really was. His white tuxedo set off the deep tan of his face and the dark hair that always made her ultra-aware that he wasn’t just the estate handyman.
“I thought the photographer was supposed to be here,” Jamie said.
“Ike went to get him,” Keith said, looking only at Maggie, and her nerves twisted over themselves.
“Where’s Greg?” Tanner asked.
“Getting Dallas and the other bridesmaids.” Keith looked at his watch. “They should all be here any minute.”
“Keef!” Isabella squealed, tossing her arms out for him. He took her with a smile that ripped Maggie apart. She let her gaze drift out to the falls. It had always been so easy to be here with him. So deceptively easy.
“Hey there, little one. You look like a little princess.” Keith turned for the tree, and the others followed him. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the sun.”
The heavens had had mercy on them. The weather was a cool 89 degrees, and for June, that was better than anyone could have hoped.
“This is so gorgeous,” Jamie said. “I had no idea this was here.”
Keith glanced at her. “Thanks.” They reached the tree, and Keith put Isabella on the blanket he had already laid out. “Why don’t you show her around, Tanner? There’s some really nice views right over there.”
Tanner nodded, and he and Jamie walked off hand-in-hand.
“They’re a cute couple,” Maggie said, trying desperately to ward off any serious conversation. He was so heart-stoppingly handsome today, she might well say something she would have to feel guilty for saying forever.
Peter sat down next to Izzy and started playing. The breeze caught a strand and sent it skittering across Maggie’s face. She brushed it away, feeling Keith’s gaze slide to her. Thinking she could just smile at him, she glanced his direction, but the intensity in his eyes jerked everything but her racing heart to a screeching halt.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his eyes held a tender apology.
Concern slipped through her. “Sorry? For what?”
His gaze fell and then drifted back up to hers. “For how my family’s treated you, for all the junk they’ve put you through.”
She smiled and brushed the thought away. “It’s no big deal.”
The tenderness left. “No. It is a big deal… to me.”
Her ears picked up the sound of a vehicle, but she couldn’t look away from him. He wouldn’t let her.
“If I could make it all better, I would,” he said, holding her gaz
e in a grip so tight, she couldn’t breathe. The tree formed a barrier between them and whoever had gotten out of the vehicle up the path. “You deserve so much better. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t.”
She wanted him to stop talking like this, like he was at somebody’s funeral or something. “Keith…”
“No, Maggie.” He reached out and took her hand. The warmth of his hand coupled with the gentleness of his touch sent tingles throughout her entire body. “I just want you to be happy. I just want what’s best for you. No matter what that means. I…”
For the barest of moments Maggie was swept up in the completely illogical thought that he was about to kiss her. Then as quickly as the moment was there, it was gone.
“We made it,” Ike said, stepping around the tree with an armload of camera equipment.
Maggie’s hand dropped back to her side, and she half turned, some to get away from Keith, some to make sure Ike knew she was. She reached up and pushed the hair from her eyes, hoping the heat in her face wasn’t evident to anyone other than her.
However, Ike took one look at them, and his smile fell into a frown. “There’s more equipment in the truck. Why don’t you go help him get it down here?”
“Oh, okay. Yeah,” Keith said, and he walked around the tree away from her.
Maggie felt every step he took.
“Boy, you are some piece of something,” Ike said, eyeing her from head to toe. “They’re getting married today. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Words were smashing into one another in her head. “I…”
“You’re here to watch the kids,” Ike said with so much ice, Maggie almost shivered. “Don’t forget it.”
“I think we’ll start right over here,” the photographer said, lugging a camera and a tripod past the tree. “Will the bride be here soon?”
“She’s on her way,” Keith said, following him as if he had never so much as heard there was a tree by the falls. They went down to the rock shelf as Maggie fought to breathe. How she had gotten tagged Enemy Number One by Ike, she had no idea, but it was clear she had better steer clear or risk being roasted for dinner.
At that moment Keith’s gaze snagged hers from where he stood with the photographer at the falls, and he smiled a sad, half smile at her. Maggie yanked her gaze from his. Behind her the roar of another approaching vehicle slid through the stillness. She whipped her head to the side to see who it was. From one door stepped Greg, from the back stepped three bridesmaids in celery green taffeta, and then from the other side stepped the real love of Keith’s life. A goddess in the most beautiful dress ever created, and Maggie knew her heart would never be the same again.
Taking pictures was an ordeal. Had he known it would be this bad, Keith never would have suggested it. Dallas was in top form. She was either yelling at him or kissing him, and he couldn’t decide which was worse. Throughout the nightmare of an hour of posing first here then there, he kept tabs on Maggie, and nothing in him liked the droop of her shoulders or the downcast of her eyes. She looked sadder than he had ever seen her, and he wondered if his bungling of the apology from before was what had upset her.
He hadn’t meant to upset her, but trying to dance around the phrase I love you was harder than he’d ever expected it to be.
“Oh, joy,” Tracy said as they stood waiting for the photographer to set the next shot of the entire wedding party sans ring bearer and flowergirl. “Greg, did you have to invite the dollar-store queen? I mean look at that dress. She probably fished it out of a dumpster somewhere.”
Keith’s heart slid through him at the luridly mean tone in Tracy’s voice. Maggie Montgomery was ten times the woman Tracy would ever be, and yet beside him, Dallas laughed as if it was funny.
“She’s the help,” Dallas said spitefully. “You know Greg just can’t help himself.”
Greg stood next to Keith, and his tone was low and bitter. “You know, you two could be just a little more mean and maybe Satan would draft you for another tour in hell.”
Dallas laughed at him. “Oh, come on, Greg. We’re joking. You know that.”
“Ha. Ha,” he said, but he wasn’t laughing and neither was Keith.
“Okay, everyone look here and smile.”
It was asking a lot.
“We’ve got more pictures to take at the mansion,” Dallas instructed as the group made their way up the rocks. “So don’t anyone get lost on the way back.”
Lost sounded very good to Maggie. If she’d had her way, she would’ve gone the long route home, preferably through China. Carrying Isabella, she climbed up and up and up until she wouldn’t have been surprised to have found herself in heaven at the top of the path.
“We should’ve all been smart and worn shoes like Maggie,” Tracy said, and it was obvious it wasn’t a compliment.
“Shut up, Tracy,” Greg warned from his place just behind her.
“What? I didn’t know we were going hiking.”
Maggie pushed the words and the hurt from her. Just get through this. Just keep moving and get through it. At the top she put the kids in Tanner’s truck without so much as looking at anyone. She was out of place here. They all knew it, and so did she.
“Maggie, Keith’s taking Dallas back,” Greg said, appearing at the door to Tanner’s pickup. “You want to ride with me?”
“I… Oh.” She glanced at Tracy, who was slinging arrows at her with her gaze just behind Greg. “Umm, no. I think I’ll just ride with the kids.”
“Are you sure?” Greg slid his hand over hers, which immediately pulled up memories of the last guy to hold her hand like that. Tears of helplessness stung her eyes as her heart turned over. She couldn’t find a safe place to look. At the Dodge Keith turned and smiled softly at her, then with a glance back to the falls, he got into the pickup and drove off with Dallas in the passenger’s seat. Maggie’s gaze plummeted to the ground.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Pictures of the wedding party at the mansion had given way to pictures of just Keith and Dallas, and from Isabella’s room above the festivities, Maggie watched them below, holding hands, smiling at each other, and kissing. Every look, every kiss broke her heart into a few more pieces. She wrenched her arms over themselves to keep the pain away, but still it attacked her like warriors breaching barricades. He was getting married. Keith was getting married. This was real. It wasn’t just some nightmare that she would wake up from. It was really happening. Tears slid out of her eyes as she watched them, so happy, so right together. Keith’s arms were around Dallas just as Maggie had wished for so long they would be around her.
Dallas gazed up at him, and the look he gave her in return could hold no other meaning. Watching it was horrible. It was like being ripped apart from the inside out. The soft knock on the door smashed through her, and she swiped at the tears as she turned. “Yeah?”
“Maggie?” Jamie asked in instant concern when she saw her. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”
Anguish crashed through the pain. “I… I can’t do this.”
Jamie’s concern deepened. “Can’t do what?”
Maggie raked her fingers through her hair. “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go.”
“Go? But…”
An escape plan formed in her head as Maggie looked at the young lady. “You have to cover for me, Jamie. You’re good with the kids. They’ll be all right with you.”
“Me? Maggie, what are you talking about?”
“Tell them I got a call from home. Tell them it was an emergency, and I had to go. Tell them I’m sorry.” She stepped past Jamie and ran to her room, tears blinding her path. Nothing other than the overwhelming desire to run was getting through. If she could just leave, just get out of here before anyone knew she was gone, then surely her heart wouldn’t crack in two.
As she dragged her suitcase from the closet, she heard the first strains of the violins downstairs. Guests were already arriving. She didn’t have much time to make her getaway. In fist
fuls she yanked her clothes from the closet and threw them into the suitcase just as the door to her room came open.
“Maggie? What’re you doing?” Greg asked in horror. “Where are you going?”
“Back where I belong.”
“Well, I guess you got what you wanted,” Tanner said to Ike as Keith readjusted his tie at the mirror of the bedroom where they were getting ready. “Ms. Montgomery’s leaving.”
In one second the tie was forgotten as Keith spun. “Leaving?”
Tanner nodded. “Jamie just came and got Greg. She said Ms. Montgomery’s real upset. She’s packing to leave.”
“What? No. She can’t…” Keith was at the door in two steps, but before he could get through it, Ike stepped between him and his destination.
“Let her go, Keith. She’s no better than the rest of them.”
“The rest of…?” Keith wasn’t comprehending. “Get out of my way, Ike.”
But the old cowboy didn’t budge, and with his foot anchored there, neither did the door.
Anger snapped into Keith. “Move, or I’ll move you.”
Ike stood for one more long moment, and then with a slow shake of his head he stepped to the side. Keith yanked the door open and raced into the hallway, through the upstairs, and right to the kids’ wing.
At Maggie’s door Greg stood pleading with her to stop. “You don’t have to do this, Maggie. Really. It’s not…”
Keith pushed past Greg, and the sight of Maggie standing at the bed, her back to the door, latching the suitcase slammed into him. “Maggie, what’re you doing?”
In a breath she whirled around. The look in her eyes was hard and determined. “I know. I should stay for the kids’ sake, but I just can’t. Okay? Don’t ask me why. I’ve just…” She reached back and swung the suitcase to her. “I’ve got to go.”
“Maggie, wait.” As she brushed by him, Keith snagged her wrist, and she stopped one inch from him. His gaze slid down her face to her lips and then traced back up again. “Please don’t go. I don’t want you to go.”
Coming Home: (Contemporary Christian Romance Boxed Set): Three Stories of Love, Faith, Struggle & Hope Page 53
