by Lori Wilde
At times their lovemaking was sweet—a romantic seduction in the bathtub, complete with bubbles and candles and expensive champagne. At other times, it was hungry and fierce and raw—they tore at each other, animals unable to get enough. After one such session, they came up for air and Nick glanced around the room.
“We knocked two seascapes off the walls.” He grinned. “I think we broke the glass in the frames.”
“Oh, my.” She grinned back and drew the covers to her chest. “Seven years’ bad luck.”
“No, no, that’s mirrors.”
“Better check the bathroom. The way we were going at it, we could have knocked the mirror off the wall too.”
“You were amazing.” Nick was lying facedown in the pillows. He reached a hand over and trailed his fingertips over her belly. His touch raised gooseflesh on her arms. She couldn’t believe the way he made her feel. As if the very air they breathed was special.
She sat up, pushed back a strand of hair that flopped across her face. “Oh, dear.”
“What is it?”
“There’s scratches all over your back. How did they get there?”
His laugh was deep and rich. “You clawed me.”
“I did?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember feeling all shook up.”
“Yep.” He grinned up at her. “You were wild, out of control.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I loved it.”
She leaned down and gently pressed her lips to the scratches she’d inflicted upon him in the throes of desire. She would never have thought herself capable of such passion. It renewed her excitement.
When she finished kissing the scratches she kept going, tracing her lips down the curve of his spine to the high, tight mound of his bottom. Once there, she bit down tenderly on a nice chunk of butt.
“Watch out, woman, you’re playing with fire.”
“Promises, promises,” she teased. “We’ve already made love twice today.”
“Are you questioning my stamina?”
“Stop bragging and back it up.”
Quick as a cobra, he flipped her over. She giggled as he grabbed her around the waist and tackled her to the mattress. “There’s two more seascapes on the wall. Wanna go for double or nothing?”
Looking into his eyes, a thrill so rich and true she would never be able to express it filled her up. He kissed her and they were off again. Riding the crest of their passion.
They woke again at dawn on Monday morning, locked in each other’s arms. He leaned in to kiss her.
“No, no, morning breath.” She put a hand over her mouth.
“I don’t care. I want to share everything with you, including morning breath.”
“That’s yucky.”
“That’s life, baby.”
He kissed her, then pulled back laughing. “Okay, so maybe it’s a little yucky.”
Teasing each other, they filed into the bathroom to brush their teeth. They stood side by side, naked in front of the mirror, making silly faces at each other. Delaney felt lighter, freer, than she’d ever felt in her life.
She realized with a start that she had never been naked in the bathroom with a man before she’d been with Nick. How had she managed to get to the ripe old age of twenty-five without such intimacy?
Nick wandered back into the bedroom and flicked on the television. It was the first time they’d had the TV on all weekend. He channel surfed, looking for the morning news. And stopped cold when he saw Delaney’s face flash across the screen.
Uh-oh.
He thumbed up the volume.
“Delaney Cartwright has been missing since she was kidnapped from the chapel on her wedding day,” said the News 4 anchorwoman. “Police departments all across the country have been looking for her. This morning we have stunning new revelations in the case. We go now to our correspondent, Joe Sanchez, outside the main precinct of the Houston Police Department.”
Delaney came running in from the bathroom, her toothbrush still in her mouth, wearing nothing but her underwear. Since they’d been holed up together, she’d stopped flatironing her hair and it curled around her face. Nick said it made her look like an erotic sea nymph and she liked the sound of that.
“New revelations,” she mouthed around the toothbrush. “What new revelations?”
“Kelly,” Joe Sanchez addressed the anchorwoman. “Here’s what we’ve learned. James Robert Cartwright, Senior VP of Cartwright Oil and Gas, and his wife, Honey Montgomery Cartwright, received a ransom note asking for ten million dollars or their missing daughter will be executed.”
Delaney pulled the toothbrush from her mouth and waved it at the TV. “They can’t execute me,” she shouted. “I’m not being held hostage.”
“Your parents don’t know that,” Nick said quietly and the full extent of his words hit her like a slap.
Guilt took hold of her then, sharp and raw. What a horrible daughter she was. She hadn’t thought about her parents or Evan from the moment Nick kissed her on the balcony. She imagined how frantic they must be and recalled how crushed they had been after Skylar’s death. She thought the note she’d left for Evan would ease their minds, let them know she’d gone off on her own.
The taste of shame filled her mouth. She’d wanted to punish her mother for lying, for deceiving her all these years, but this was too cruel. How thoughtless she’d been. How selfish.
Nick loosely hooked his elbow around her neck and drew her against his chest and whispered, “Don’t browbeat yourself.”
“In a stunning revelation,” the newscaster continued, “Honey Montgomery Cartwright revealed that she was being blackmailed by her biological mother and that her real name is Fayrene Doggett. Thirty-five years ago, she assumed the identity of a dead woman. For over three decades, Fayrene Doggett was posing as a Philadelphia blue blood. The scandal has rocked Houston high society, and the police have put out an APB on Paulette Doggett Wilson and her stepson Monty Wilson, who are suspected of holding Delaney Cartwright hostage. Their fingerprints were all over the ransom note.”
Delaney’s mouth dropped open and she sat down hard on the floor. “Mother went public? She admitted she’s Fayrene Doggett? She’ll be drummed out of the society that means so much to her. I can’t believe she confessed.”
“She did it for you,” Nick said.
Her mother had come clean in order to get her back. Letting go of her too-high standards, telling the truth, risking everything for Delaney. Guilt and shame mixed with sadness and concern inside her. There’d been too much pain and misunderstanding on both sides of the fence. It was time for open and honest communication between mother and daughter.
She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. “Take me home, Nick. Take me home.”
As Nick drove Delaney up to the security gate of the mansion she called home, he felt decidedly out of place.
Delaney told him the security code and as he punched it into the keypad, he wished he could disappear. The driveway was crammed with unmarked police cars. Nick recognized the Feds when he saw them, standing guard outside the house. Before he even stopped the pickup, they were running toward him, guns drawn.
He got out with his hands up, identifying himself.
The FBI yanked open his truck door and pulled Delaney out. They ushered her inside the house, while another batch of agents surrounded him. Nick stood watching Delaney go, and he’d never felt more like an outsider in his life.
“Delaney!” Honey swallowed her daughter up in the tightest embrace she’d ever given.
The last two days had been a living hell. Right in front of the FBI, she and James Robert had fought and cried and argued and slammed doors and relived the day Skylar had been killed. But he’d stayed and they’d fought it out. Then they’d talked in a way they hadn’t talked in years, if ever. Honey didn’t hold back. She told him all her secrets, her fears, her terror of losing him. Letting down the guard she’d held up so high fo
r so long wasn’t easy.
When they could argue no more, James Robert took her in his arms, kissed her tenderly the way he’d kissed her in the early days, and told her he forgave her, but that for them to go forward, she was also going to have to forgive herself.
That was the hard part. Letting go of thirty-five years of self-recrimination and guilt. But she was trying her best.
Honey kissed her daughter’s face over and over. They were both sobbing and apologizing profusely. Delaney for running away from her wedding, Honey for keeping a lifetime’s worth of secrets and lies.
The FBI debriefed Delaney at her parents’ home and then went off to find Paulette and her stepson Monty. Honey would eventually have to deal with her blackmailing mother face-to-face, but for now, her only concern was her daughter.
“I’m so sorry,” she told Delaney. “The way I raised you was wrong. In trying to keep anyone from finding out that I was living a lie, I forced my fears and anxieties onto you. I emphasized perfection, because I couldn’t afford to slip. I demanded too much from you and Skylar. I know that now, and I’ll go to my grave regretting what I did to you.”
“No, Mother,” Delaney said. “I don’t want you to have regrets. You were strict, yes, but you taught me a lot. And now that I understand where you came from and why you did what you did, it makes it easier to accept your flaws. I forgive you, Mother, and I only hope you can forgive me for hiding out from you for two days. I was just so angry when Nick told me your real identity. I couldn’t believe you’d kept such a dark secret for so long. I mean, if you weren’t who you said you were, then who was I? I needed time to sort it all out. I should have called you. It was so wrong of me to let you worry, fearing I was dead.”
And then she told Honey about how Nick had rescued her from the kidnapper.
“Where is he?” Honey asked softly. “I’d like to meet the man you’re in love with.”
“Who says I’m in love with him?” Delaney’s eyes widened.
“You can’t hide it, sweetheart. It’s in your face. You look the way I felt when I first met your father.”
“I guess he wanted to give us our space,” she said.
Honey reached over and squeezed Delaney’s hand. “I’m so happy you didn’t marry Evan. And I’m sorry you felt pressured into a wedding. I’m so glad that you knew better than I did and stuck to your convictions, even if your methods were a bit unorthodox.”
The maid appeared in the dining room where Honey, Delaney, and James Robert had congregated. “There’s a visitor at the door to see Delaney,” she announced.
“Nick!” Delaney cried. She was up and out of her seat. She ran down the hall, threw open the door.
“Hello, Delaney,” Evan said. “May I come in?”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known this moment would come; she’d just hoped it would be later rather than sooner. But here was Evan, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t going away until he’d had his say.
“Evan,” she said.
“Delaney.” His eyes were tinged with sadness, and she just felt awful. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”
She ushered him over the threshold. “Come on in.”
He followed her inside and then they just stood awkwardly in the foyer, avoiding looking each other directly in the eyes. It hurt her to realize how she must have hurt Evan. He’d been her best friend for as long as she could remember.
“Evan,” she started, “I’m so—”
“Shh.” He raised an index finger. “Don’t say it. You don’t have to apologize to me.”
“Yes, yes, I do. I’m so ashamed of the way I treated you. Arranging my own kidnapping.” She shook her head. “It was cowardly.”
“It’s all right. I understand. In fact, I’m glad you had the courage to dump me at the altar. Granted, your methods were a bit unorthodox.” His laugh was shaky.
“You were glad?”
“Yeah.” He smiled ruefully. “I didn’t want to marry you either.”
Flabbergasted, she stared at him. “Then why didn’t you just say something?”
“Why didn’t you?”
Good question. “Because we were perfect for each other, everyone said so.”
“Same here.”
“Why did you ask me to marry you in the first place?” she asked.
“Because my family was pressuring me to get married, to give them a grandchild. It’s a drawback to being an only child born late in life. Your parents fear they’ll die before they’ll get to see their grandchildren. I wanted to make them happy, and you’re one of the finest women I’ve ever known. But after going to Guatemala, I realized I love that kind of primitive medicine. I want to move there, live there. I want to make a real difference in those children’s lives. And I do love you, Laney—”
“But not in the way we both deserve,” she finished the sentence for him.
“Yeah.” He pressed his lips together tight.
Tears misted her eyes. He was a good man. Just not the man for her.
“I was looking for the magic that was missing between us,” he said. “And I found it in Guatemala.”
Delaney smiled. Tears were in his eyes too. “I understand completely.”
They looked at each other and then burst out laughing, as tears slid down their cheeks.
“Friends?” Evan stuck out his hand.
She took it. “Friends.”
He reached out and gently touched her cheek in a sweet brotherly gesture that she cherished but did not yearn for. “You’re an amazing woman, Laney. I hope you know that, and I hope you find the same kind of happiness in your life that I’ve found in Guatemala.”
“I’ve already found it,” she said.
“Good for you.” Evan kissed her on the forehead and then he was gone, leaving her feeling a little startled by his admission and a lot relieved. She was also stunned by what she suddenly realized about herself.
All this time she’d been looking outside for the answer to what was missing from her life. And here it turned out the magic had been inside her all along. Afraid of her own power, she’d hidden it, covered up beneath a fake facade, a false image. By trying so hard to please others, she’d denied her true essence.
Nick alone had seen her potential. He was the one who had shown Delaney her real self.
And she loved him for it.
Now all she had to do was tell him exactly how she felt.
It was a media circus around the house for the next few days. Delaney kept expecting Nick to call her, but he never did. She knew he’d gone back to work and she supposed he was too busy to make contact, and that he was trying to give her some privacy.
But when a week went by and he still hadn’t called her, she began to worry.
She called Lucia and was distressed to learn not only had Lucia not heard from Nick, but that the buyer for her house had backed out of the deal and it was back on the market.
She called his cell phone. No answer. Same with the home phone.
She had to face facts. He was screening his calls and didn’t want to talk to her. Heart breaking, she came to the awful conclusion their time together hadn’t been as magical for him as it had been for her.
In the past, she might have accepted defeat, but no longer. She’d been through too much. She’d learned how to speak her mind and tell people what she wanted. Sure, she might get rejected, but wasn’t it better to get rejected than to never express your opinion, never get what you really want, and always settle for second best because you were afraid to speak up?
She picked up the phone and called Lucia again. Delaney had a plan.
That night, Delaney dreamed of Skylar. She was wearing the same black baby-doll-style KISS T-shirt and faded blue jeans that she’d worn to the concert on the day she’d died. She was also wearing the wedding veil and carrying a pink suitcase.
“So what’s up? You eloping with a KISS roadie or something?”
“Witty,” Skylar said, “but
no. I just dropped by to say so long.”
Delaney sat up in bed. “So long? What do you mean?”
“I got my wish.”
“What?”
“I wished on the dream version of your veil on the same night you wished on it, and well, the deepest desire of my soul came true.”
“What did you wish for?”
Skylar gave her a wistful smile. “You can’t guess?”
“You wished for me to find true love?”
“No, you had that covered.”
She met her sister’s eyes and saw tears shining there. “For Mother’s secret to come out?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
“I wished for you to be able to let go of the past—to let go of me. I was happy to be here for you, in your dreams, Delaney, since I couldn’t be here in the flesh, but you don’t need me anymore. You’ve confronted your demons, faced off with Mother, and found your true self. You don’t need me anymore. And that’s a good thing.”
Anxiety gripped her. She’d been dreaming of her sister almost weekly for the last seventeen years. What would she do without her? “But I don’t want you to go!”
“It’s okay. It’s time to embrace the future, embrace your new life with Nick, and you can’t do that with me hanging around.”
“Skylar,” her voice, brittle with tears, cracked open.
“Adios, little sister.” Skylar leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Never forget I’ll always love you.”
And with that, her sister picked up her pink suitcase and was gone.
A week later, Nick was moping in his truck on the beach at Galveston Island where he and Delaney had almost made love, listening to sad country-and-western songs. Going to Delaney’s home, seeing how she really lived in opulence and glamour, had brought out the fact that he was pipe dreaming if he thought he was ever going to fit in with a woman like that. No matter how down to earth she seemed.
He took a pull off his soda and tried to tell himself that everything was going to be all right. That they’d had a good time together, and it needn’t be anything more than that. But deep down inside he knew it was a lie. He loved Delaney as he’d never loved another.
Finally, he understood why Amber had left him for another man. With Feldstein, she’d found the magic that was missing in their relationship. The magic he thought he’d found with Delaney.
