* * *
At five-thirty the next afternoon, Rachel was all dressed up in a heather-gray twinset and black A-line skirt, ready to go to dinner at Chelsea and Thad’s—following a delightful detour to the psychiatric ward, of course. She paced back and forth in the living room for a few minutes, ordering those old demons to get out of her head when they kept trying to whisper in her ear, He’s not coming.
After ten minutes or so of walking back and forth and fighting off her ingrained fears, she decided she couldn’t stay in that room one minute longer. She grabbed her purse and went out the door.
She sat on the step, just as she had done so long ago, when she waited for her father, who never came. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to defy all her own inner terrors so boldly.
Appropriate, and awful. Her heart pounded as if she’d run a long race. And her palms were sweating. And those old demons in her head?
They seemed to be chanting in glee: He’s not coming, not coming, not coming…
She wanted to leap up and run back inside, lock the door, shut the curtains, turn off all the lights. She wanted, above all, not to be waiting if he didn’t show up. But somehow she made herself sit there, made herself take slow, even breaths.
And silently, she talked back to those demons in her head: He is coming. I can trust him. He wants to be with me…and with my baby.
By the time Bryce’s Mercedes eased up to the curb—two minutes early—she was sweating up her twinset and trembling a little, but she was still sitting right there on the step.
She rose on shaky legs and started down the walk as he got out and came around the front of the car.
They met on the sidewalk.
Frowning, he scanned her face. “You’re white as a sheet. What’s happened?”
She let out a tight laugh. “Oh, nothing. I was just sitting on the step. I was just…waiting…”
He touched her face. “You’re sweating.”
“Yeah…” She swayed against him and his strong arms were waiting to pull her close.
“You’re shaking. Are you sick?” He held her so gently, so cherishingly, stroking her hair, rubbing her back.
She laid her head against his shoulder, breathed in the heavenly scent of him. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay…”
He lifted her chin and made her look at him. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Really. I’m okay.” She stepped out of the shelter of his arms and pulled her shoulders back. “I have…some things to tell you. Later. But for now, let’s go. Let’s get this done.”
His silky brows were still drawn together. “You’re nervous? About my meeting your mom? About dinner at Chelsea’s?”
“Right on both counts. Now, let’s go.”
CHAPTER 9
Her mother was sitting in the chair by one of the room’s two narrow windows when Rachel led Bryce in. It was a double room, a drawn curtain down the center of it, masking off a second window and the other bed on the far side.
“Rachel.” Her mother’s smile was genuine. Then the big dark eyes found the man who filled up the doorway. Her thin hand went to her uncombed hair and fluttered quickly down to her lap. “I…wasn’t expecting company…”
Rachel reached behind her, felt for Bryce’s hand. It was right there, his fingers automatically slipping between hers, sending a message of warmth and support. He moved forward to stand beside her. “Mom. It’s okay. We won’t stay long. I just…I want you to meet Bryce Armstrong.”
Her mother stared at him for a moment, her expression unsure. And then her smile returned. “Well. Hello, Bryce. I’m Ellen. So nice to meet a friend of my daughter’s.”
“Hello, Ellen.”
So, okay. They’d gotten through the introductions. Bryce was smiling. Her mother was smiling.
What next?
Sit, she thought. They should sit down for a minute or two. She pulled her hand from Bryce’s—well, yanked it free, really. “Uh. Chairs. We need—”
“Right here.” He’d already picked up the one by the door. He carried it over and set it down next to her mother.
There wasn’t another one. “I’ll ask the orderly.” Rachel started for the hallway.
“Wait,” said her mother. “Linda?” she called. “May we use your chair?”
“Oh, all right,” a voice from behind the curtain grumbled.
At Rachel’s questioning glance, her mother mouthed, “Suicide attempt” with a philosophical shrug. Then, in a whisper, “They put her in here this morning.” And finally, at full volume, “Thanks, Linda!”
“Yeah, whatever,” Linda called back grudgingly.
Bryce went behind the curtain. She heard his words of polite greeting.
Linda mumbled something and Bryce emerged with another chair. They sat. Her mother looked from Rachel to Bryce and back again. Rachel slid a glance at Bryce. He looked so at ease, so completely relaxed. How did he do it?
Her mom cleared her throat. “So, this is something…special going on here?”
As Rachel agonized over her answer, Bryce said, “Yes, it is.” He said it so simply, without the slightest hesitation. Rachel wanted to grab him and hug him—and never let go.
Her mother’s smile widened. “Well.” Ellen shot a pointed glance at Rachel’s round stomach. “How nice…” She’d made no secret of the fact that she thought Rachel should have found a husband first and then started thinking about having a baby. It was an attitude that Rachel had found supremely irritating. After all, when you got right down to it, a fat lot of good it had done her mother to find a husband first.
Bryce asked how her mother was doing and Ellen launched into a blow-by-blow of her most recent stay at Portland General’s psychiatric ward: which nurses were angels, which ones she couldn’t stand. How the food here was pretty good. She especially enjoyed the rice pudding, which she could get on Tuesdays and Fridays. And she was making a point to take all her medications. And she was doing better. She sent Rachel a defiant look.
Oh, yes.
Better every day…
Every time Rachel dared to hope she might be winding down, Bryce would ask another question and off she’d go again.
Rachel almost interrupted more than once to say they ought to get going. But clearly, Bryce could take care of himself. If he’d had enough of her mother’s never-ending answers, he could stop asking questions.
She watched her mother chattering away about the minutia of her days and a certain tenderness welled up inside her. Tenderness and gratitude.
Ellen Stockham might not have been the best mother in the world, but she had always been there, she’d stuck with it. As poorly suited as her illness had made her for mothering, she’d never walked away from the job.
There was much Rachel would have to learn for herself about raising a child. But when it came to loyalty and commitment and sticking around…
Thanks to her mother, she had those qualities.
When they got up to go, Bryce bent to kiss her mother’s dry cheek. “I’ll see you again, Ellen. Soon.”
Her mother beamed up at him. “That would be so nice…”
* * *
Chelsea and Thad and Ariel lived in a three-bedroom cottage nestled in the oaks on Bryce’s property.
“This way they have their privacy,” he explained. “And I’m right here if they need me. There’s a driver to take them wherever they need to go. And Mrs. Davenbrook, who’s worked for our family for over thirty years, is devoted to Chelsea. She looks in on her several times a day.”
Bryce rang the bell. When the door flew back, a tall, stunning blonde in a sweet-looking floral-print dress stood on the other side. Childlike pleasure flooded her angel’s face. “Bryce! You’re here!”
He held out his arms and his sister, long, silky hair flying, flung herself into them. She clasped her slim hands around his waist, squeezing hard. “Hug, hug,” she crowed and laughed in delight.
Behind her, a man stood holding a wooden bowl full of pretzels. He was
six or seven inches shorter than Chelsea, with brown hair and dark eyes and a slightly befuddled expression. “Hello, Bryce,” he said shyly and then he looked at Rachel. “Hello,” he said carefully, as if not quite sure of the word.
“Hello,” Rachel replied.
Bryce managed to pry his sister’s hugging hands away and made the introductions.
“Rachel!” Chelsea repeated when Bryce said her name. “Hello!” She reached right out and patted Rachel’s tummy. “A baby. How nice.”
“Sleeping,” Chelsea announced when Bryce asked about his niece. “But you can see her…”
So they all tiptoed into the nursery and stood over the crib and Chelsea pantomimed “Shh…” with great enthusiasm as they admired the dreaming darling in the pink fleece footie pajamas.
They trooped back out into the living room. “Please have a pretzel,” offered Thad solemnly.
So they sat and munched a few pretzels and chatted for a while. Rachel explained that she was a nurse and Thad spoke of his own job. He worked full-time at a local Burger King.
“He is the best worker there,” Chelsea piped up proudly and patted her husband’s leg. “And sometimes he brings me home a Whopper.”
Eventually they moved into the kitchen for the meat loaf and mashed potatoes Chelsea had prepared.
“But Charles helped,” Thad announced. Charles, Rachel remembered, was Bryce’s cook.
Chelsea took that extra few seconds both she and her husband seemed to require to digest whatever was said to them and then nodded. “Charles is always helping. I like Charles.”
Thad considered. “Me, too,” he said.
Chelsea turned to Rachel. “And I like you.” She beamed and Rachel’s heart just went to mush. “You can come see us any time. You and your baby, too, when your baby comes. Ariel will like that. She will want to have friends.”
Rachel promised she would come again and a little later, when Thad and Chelsea walked them to the door, Chelsea made the offer a second time. “Please come back. Come back soon.”
“I will. I promise…”
Rachel and Bryce walked out into the brisk early-May evening, Thad and Chelsea moving into the open doorway behind them. Bryce took Rachel’s hand and they started down the walk to the garages behind the main house.
“Goodbye, come again!” Chelsea called from behind them. Rachel glanced back and saw Bryce’s sister and her husband standing in the doorway, the flood of light from inside pouring out around them.
“I will!” Rachel called back.
* * *
At Rachel’s house, Bryce came around and opened the car door for her. He took her hand to help her out. The cracked concrete walkway was too narrow for them to approach the house side-by-side, but she held tightly to his hand anyway, leading him along.
Inside, she turned on the lamps and they sat on the sofa, shucking out of their shoes, shifting around so they were facing each other.
“You were so great with my mother,” she said. “Thank you. And your sister and Thad…they’re really happy together, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “They have what matters most. In fact, I’d say the two of them showed me what life—and love—could be.”
“I can see how they could do that.”
He looked so solemn suddenly, as solemn as Thad. “I’ve…been with a lot of women, Rachel.”
She felt her mouth twisting wryly. “So I’ve heard.”
Now he looked earnest. He leaned in a little closer. “But in the last couple of years, I have been seriously looking for the right woman. The one who’d not only have me wanting to make passionate, wild love to her—but the one I’d want to talk with for hours, the one I’d want to hold so close while we’re sleeping. The one who, when the day’s over, I wouldn’t be able to wait to come home to.”
“Tall order,” she whispered.
“That day,” he said. “That first day, that first moment I saw you, all dewy-eyed over that little sweater with the ribbons all over it, a voice in my head said, There. That’s the one. Too damn bad she’s already taken…I almost turned and walked away. Fast. But then I couldn’t stop myself from getting you talking, couldn’t fight the need to hear your voice. And when you looked up at me with those big brown eyes…pow. I was done for. I was gone for good. And then you told me that you weren’t taken. From that moment on, my fate was sealed…”
Rachel knew she should say something. But what do you say when a guy you almost didn’t dare dream of tells you he knew the moment he saw you that you were the woman for him? There were no words, just a warm pressure at the back of her throat, a lifting feeling in her chest.
He asked, so gently, “What happened to you, tonight, before I picked you up? Can you tell me now?”
She nodded.
He waited, then gave her his crooked grin. “Well?”
Oh, where to start? She didn’t know how to explain. But then she just opened her mouth and said, “When I was little…” and it was okay. She was talking about it, all of it, from the father who abandoned her to the men she had kept waiting who’d finally given up and left her, too. She said, “So I was making myself sit on the porch and wait for you. I was…proving to myself that I could trust you, that you would come through, you wouldn’t let me down.”
“I won’t let you down, Rachel. I swear to you. I’ll be here, for you and the baby. If you’ll have me.”
“Oh,” she said, her heart light as air. “Oh, yes. I’ll have you. I…” Her nerve kind of wavered. She cleared her throat. “But what about your grandparents? How are they going to react when you tell them you’re marrying an ordinary, everyday woman who’s six months pregnant by a man she’s never met?”
“They’ll be shocked. At first. And then they’ll get to know you and everything will work out fine.”
“I don’t know…”
“Rachel. They will accept you. And if they were really stupid and didn’t, well, it would be their loss—but it’s not going to happen that way. Don’t forget, in the end, they accepted Thad.”
She was shaking her head. “You’re a brave, brave man.”
“I’m a smart man. I know what I want. And Rachel, what I want is you. And your daughter. I want her to be my daughter, too. And I want to be your husband for the rest of our lives.” He leaned closer, whispered, “I love you…and do not start telling me how this is so sudden.”
“Well, but it—”
He put a finger to her lips. “There you go again.”
“Oh, Bryce…”
“Sudden,” he whispered, “is fine with me. Sudden is just great.”
“Oh, Bryce…”
“I love you,” he said again, the words so simple, direct. Honest.
With a glad cry, she reached for him. His arms were there to take her in. “Oh, Bryce…”
“I love you,” he said one more time.
And she bravely whispered, “I…love you, too,” just as his lips met hers.
* * * * *
If you loved this story by New York Times bestselling author
Christine Rimmer
be sure to check out her
The Bravos of Justice Creek mini-series for stories about
life, love, family and finding your happily-ever-after!
Not Quite Married
The Good Girl’s Second Chance
Carter Bravo’s Christmas Bride
James Bravo’s Shotgun Bride
Ms. Bravo and the Boss
A Bravo for Christmas
The Lawman’s Convenient Bride
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HarlequinBlog.com
Ava Malloy is a widow and single mother who is not going to risk another heartbreak, but a holiday fling with hunky CEO Dar
ius Bravo sounds just lovely! Darius wants to give her a Bravo under her tree—every Christmas. Can he convince Ava to take a chance on a real relationship or are they doomed to be a temporary tradition?
Read on for a sneak preview of,
A BRAVO FOR CHRISTMAS,
the most recent book in New York Times bestselling author Christine Rimmer’s
THE BRAVOS OF JUSTICE CREEK miniseries.
CHAPTER ONE
The girls had been decorating Darius again.
Ava Malloy entered the Blueberry troop clubhouse to find him surrounded by ten laughing Blueberries, ages six through eight. He wore jeans, boots and a thermal work shirt. The girls had added a pink paper crown dusted with glitter, an oversize pair of red cat’s-eye glasses and a giant purple pop bead necklace. And someone had tied a length of rumpled blue velvet around his neck—for a cape or possibly a royal robe.
Ava’s seven-year-old daughter, Sylvie, caught sight of Ava at the door and crowed, “Mommy, look! Darius is king of the Blueberries!” as the other girls giggled and clapped.
Ava played along and sketched a bow. “Your Majesty.”
Darius was already looking her way. He did that a lot—watched her. Teased her. The man was born a shameless flirt. At her greeting, he lifted a dark eyebrow and returned a slow, regal nod that caused his paper crown to dip precariously near one gleaming blue eye.
He should have looked ridiculous. But no. Somehow, glittery paper crowns, tattered velvet capes and giant toy necklaces only made Darius Bravo seem more manly.
And he was so good with the girls. Ava hadn’t expected that. She’d known him since high school, and he’d been with lots of women. He’d never settled down with any of them, though, never started a family. She’d always assumed that kids didn’t interest him.
Yet somehow, he’d let himself get roped into helping out with the Blueberry Christmas project this year. For the last six weeks, he’d been supervising the troop as they assembled, painted and furnished five kit dollhouses for five local children’s charities. He’d done most of the work, while at the same time managing to get each girl involved in a constructive way.
Rachel's Bundle of Joy Page 7
