The Best Bride

by Susan Mallery

  He shook his head. He didn’t know anything anymore. He’d never had a clue about Sandy’s mother.

  “He fell off a mountain. He’d gone away, like he did every summer. He usually disappeared for two months at a time. He’d wanted to take Lindsay, but I wouldn’t let him. Thank God. He was careless, or unlucky, and he fell to his death. Now there’s only me. I’ve got a mortgage and three kids. They’re depending on me. So don’t you tell me that I’ve forgotten how to live. Just getting through the day is a victory for me. My children are happy, healthy and warm every single night. The bills are paid and I’m keeping it all together.”

  He reached toward her and touched her face. “I’m sorry.”

  She jerked away from his hand. “Sorry doesn’t cut it. You’re used to getting what you want without having to work for it. Nice for you, but not realistic for the rest of the world. I don’t know what kind of game you’ve been playing with me, but it has to stop. I don’t want to get involved with you. I can’t afford to be one of your conquests.”

  He felt as if she’d stabbed him in the gut. “It’s not like that. I haven’t been playing a game with you. Just because I’m not like you doesn’t mean I’m a jerk like Thomas. You’re judging me on my reputation and what you remember about my brothers. I’ve been here for you, Sandy. From the moment you arrived in Glenwood, I’ve made it easier.”

  Emotions chased across her face. He watched as she wrestled with the truth of that statement. Her mouth straightened and he knew he’d been judged and found guilty.

  “So you’ve been neighborly. I appreciate that. But it doesn’t mean I want you in my life. You’re not Thomas, but you’re just as dangerous.”

  “How?”

  “Have you ever once had a long-term relationship?”

  She had him there. “Define long-term.”

  She sighed. Her shoulders slumped. “That’s the whole point, Kyle. I shouldn’t have to. I don’t want to have to deal with any more adult children, Peter Pan types or charming flirts. I’m tired of being in charge. I want someone to take care of me for a change. We both know you’re not that person. I want you out of my life.” She walked to the door. “I hope you understand, and even if you don’t, I hope you’ll respect my wishes.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sandy left without giving him a chance. Kyle walked to the window and watched as she strode purposefully to her house. Once there, she climbed the three stairs, crossed the porch and went inside, all without once looking back at him.

  She’d told him to stay away from her. Just like that. No explanations, no second chances. She’d made her decision and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  He crossed over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. Several steaks sat on the second shelf. The vegetable crisper was filled with corn. So much for the barbecue. He told himself he didn’t care. Sandy and her family had been taking up too much of his time, anyway. Now he would be able to do what he wanted, instead of hanging around with them. The words sounded great, but he knew he didn’t mean them. He liked her, he liked her kids. With them, he was able to pretend it was real—that he had a chance at a family of his own.

  After twisting off the cap of his beer, he took a long swallow. Was she right? He didn’t want to consider that, but he had to. Was he irresponsible and immature?

  “Hell, no,” he said aloud, then wondered if he was just whistling in the dark.

  Sandy was right about one thing. He didn’t have a record of long-term relationships. He’d never been willing to risk committing before. In the back of his mind had been the fear that the woman he gave his heart to would walk out the door. People he cared about left. It was a fact of life.

  But he wasn’t a charming flirt who got by on his looks. At least he tried not to be. As a teenager, it had been convenient to take the easy way out. Most things in life had come to him without a lot of work. But that didn’t mean he was irresponsible. He usually didn’t care about the things that came easily. What he remembered the most was what he’d had to work for. Or what he’d never gotten. Like Sandy. Sixteen years ago, she’d trampled all over his male pride, and here she was, doing it again.

  He walked into the living room and sat in the large chair in front of the fireplace. The leather was cool against his bare back. He closed his eyes. He knew for a fact he didn’t act like a kid. He had a responsible job. He’d worked hard at the police academy, graduating third in a class of a hundred. He’d taken a job in San Francisco for a year, and he’d been the top rookie. But he’d missed life in Glenwood, and when Travis had offered him a job in the county sheriff’s department, he’d been glad to come home. He knew deep inside that he could have made it in San Francisco, or in any other big city, if he’d wanted to.

  He shifted on the chair and tried to look at it from Sandy’s point of view. She’d been gone less than an hour and had come home to a bleeding kid. That would be enough to send anyone into a tailspin. She’d overreacted. He was pretty sure she would see that she’d been unreasonable and apologize. He’d been trying to help Blake by teaching him how to protect himself. Could a woman understand that? He smiled. He doubted Sandy would appreciate that particular question. Walking in on him teaching Blake to defend himself had only made it worse for her. In time, she would see that lesson was important to the boy.

  He took another swallow of beer and settled the bottle on the floor. He was rationalizing because he didn’t want to face the truth. Sandy could be right about everything. After all, he was a Haynes. Four generations of failed marriages and broken families were hard to argue with. So far, the only brother that was making his relationship work was Travis. He wondered how he’d gotten so lucky.

  Kyle didn’t know what a happy marriage looked like. His old man had been gone more than he’d been home. His father’s idea of good parenting was to smack the boys up the side of the head every now and then, whether or not they needed it. He always said, if they hadn’t gotten into trouble, they would. To consider it punishment in advance.

  His mother had been physically in the house, but emotionally just as distant. Now that Kyle was an adult, he couldn’t blame her for her bitterness. Being married to Earl Haynes had to have been a living death. Her husband hadn’t believed in fidelity, or seen the wisdom in being discreet. He’d flaunted his affairs, excusing them by pointing out he always woke up in his own bed. Kyle grimaced. Yeah, like the old man had been a saint.

  His mother had finally left the summer he, Kyle, had turned fifteen. He wondered if she’d waited until he was old enough to be on his own, or if her patience and sanity had finally cracked. Whatever the reason, she’d disappeared. There hadn’t even been a note.

  For Kyle, life had gotten worse. Jordan had been his only brother still at home, but he’d been a senior and had arranged his schedule to be gone a lot. Craig and Travis already had their lives. He couldn’t count on them. It was just him and the old man. He’d had three stepmothers in three years, each one younger than the previous one. The last one had walked into his bedroom one evening and hit on him. He’d been too shocked to do anything but duck out the window and spend the night in the tree house. He’d moved in with a friend for the rest of the summer, then had left for college in the fall.

  He opened his eyes and stared at his living room. He’d tried to be different from his father. They all had. No one wanted to mess things up that badly. For Kyle, that meant leaving before getting left. He wondered if that was just another description of running away.

  A hand-drawn picture pinned to the wall fluttered in the breeze from the open window. Nichole had made it for him. It showed a group of butterflies in a field of flowers. At least he thought they were butterflies. They could have been birds. One of Lindsay’s books sat on the coffee table next to a baseball puzzle he’d been working on with Blake. In a few short weeks, Sandy’s children had become a part of his days. He wanted to be a father, so he’d tried to be a father to them. It was temporary, perhaps even foolish. No
w the thought of being without them made his bones ache.

  He knew they would miss him, too. So where did that leave him? Was this a blessing in disguise? If they broke things off now, if he stepped out of their lives, they would recover quickly and get on with things. If he continued to be there for them, they would start to depend upon him. Was he willing to risk that? For the first time, Kyle began to see there was more at stake here than himself. Three other lives would be affected by his actions. Walking away from a woman was one thing, walking away from kids was something much worse.

  Up until today, he’d been playing a game. Sandy was right. With her, he’d been toying with the past, teasing them both with sparks they felt when they were together. He didn’t want to hurt her or the kids. He didn’t want to get hurt himself. If it was just a game to him, he needed to walk away now. Before it got ugly.

  Simple enough, he told himself. He would walk. Because it was just a game, right? Sure he liked her. How could he not? She would do anything to protect those she cared about. She had a giving heart. He’d seen it years before when his mother had walked out and Sandy had come by to pick up the pieces. She wasn’t afraid of doing the right thing, even if it made her unpopular.

  Okay, he could handle liking and respecting her. So what? His feelings weren’t serious. He didn’t want to risk it all and get involved. Because Sandy would leave. Everyone left eventually. The price of being wrong was too high. He didn’t need her or the kids.

  He finished the beer and picked up a book he’d been reading. But the silence filling the room made it impossible to concentrate. He missed the laughter. He missed them. It wasn’t that they’d been gone so long, it was knowing he might not see them again. Or Sandy.

  Since she’d come back, she was all he thought about. For a while, he’d thought it was an adult manifestation of his adolescent crush. But what if it was something more? What if she was the one and he let her get away? What if she wasn’t the one and she left him broken and bleeding? He’d thought her marriage to Thomas had been perfect. According to her, it hadn’t been. She’d made a mistake. What if he was making a worse one?

  * * *

  Sandy adjusted the sheets around her son’s shoulders. There was a light blanket folded at the foot of the bed. It was warm during the day, but always cooled off at night. She glanced at the open window, then back at Blake.

  “Are you going to be all right?” she asked.

  “Mo-om,” he said. “I told you, it doesn’t even hurt.”

  Her gaze moved to the bruise next to his mouth. It was about the diameter of a baseball. The swelling had gone down some, but it still looked ugly. By morning, the red would darken to purple.

  “I saw you wincing at dinner.”

  “The soup was too hot.”

  “Sure it was.” She brushed his hair off his forehead. The rest of the family had had tacos for dinner, but she’d fixed something easier for Blake to eat.

  She still couldn’t believe her son had gotten in a fight. Just thinking about it made her furious. The problem was, she didn’t know if she was angry with Kyle or herself. She wanted to blame him for not taking better care of Blake, but ultimately the responsibility was hers. When she was around him, she didn’t think—she just reacted.

  “Don’t be mad,” Blake said.

  She forced herself to smile at him. “I’m not.”

  “Uh-huh. Your eyes are getting all scrunchy. You’re still mad at Kyle, aren’t you?”

  She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “That’s between us adults.”

  “Lindsay said we won’t get to see him anymore. Is that true?” He sounded lost at the thought.

  During the day, when her children were moving around, she thought of them as growing, determined people. But at night, in their beds, they seemed smaller and defenseless. Easily hurt by the pitfalls of life.

  “It’s my fault,” she said, and touched his uninjured cheek. “I shouldn’t have let you kids get so involved with Kyle so quickly. I haven’t decided yet, but maybe it would be for the best if we didn’t—”

  “No!” He raised himself up onto his elbows. “No, Mom. Don’t say we can’t see him. The fight was my fault. Really. Gary threw a ball at Robby on purpose. When Robby started to stand up to Gary, I said he’d done it, too. So after he hit Robby, he started coming after me.” He sagged back to the bed. “Kyle said if I’d tried to defend myself, Gary wouldn’t have hit me. He said he’s a bully and bullies only go after people who don’t know how to defend themselves.”

  Sandy blinked in confusion. “Who are Gary and Robby, and what does this have to do with your getting hit?”

  Blake took a deep breath. “I went over to Robby’s to play baseball with the guys…”

  Her son gave her a more detailed explanation of what had happened. She listened carefully. When he got to the part about defending Robby against the neighborhood bully, she took his hand and squeezed it. “That was very brave of you,” she said.

  Blake squirmed. “I didn’t know he was gonna hit me.”

  “Still, standing up for someone you just met isn’t something most boys would do. I’m glad you did the right thing. What happened next?”

  “Gary and his friends chased me out of the yard and onto that dirt road. Gary said he was gonna beat me up. I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t want to run. Then Kyle came through the bushes and yelled at Gary to let me alone.” He grimaced. “When I heard Kyle, I looked at him. That’s when Gary punched me. Kyle chased ’em off. He said the best way to deal with a bully is to know how to defend myself. He started to show me how.” The unbruised side of his mouth turned down. “That’s when you came in and got real upset.”

  “I see.” Sandy rose and walked to the window. She closed it halfway, then stared out at the night. From what Blake told her, Kyle had done what he could to stop the fight. Kyle had tried to tell her that, but she had been too busy assigning blame. Why? she wondered. Why did she always want him to be the bad guy?

  “Mom, can I play with Robby again?”

  She turned to look at her son. He hadn’t had a friend in a long time. “Sure, honey. You can go over there, or have him come here. You two will probably want to avoid Gary, though.”

  “Yeah. I don’t like him.”

  She needed to talk with Gary’s parents. Then she realized she didn’t know the boy’s last name. She would have to ask Kyle. If he was still speaking to her.

  “Are you mad at Kyle?” Blake asked.

  “Not in the way you think. Grown-ups have different kinds of mad.”

  “But we didn’t go to his house for the barbecue.”

  No surprise there. She’d told Kyle she wanted him to stay away from her. She flinched. She’d overreacted. She saw that now. Once again she’d reacted to the fear of not being in control. “You wouldn’t have been able to eat anything,” she said.

  “I know, but I could have, you know, been there.” Blake looked at her. “I like Kyle, Mom. He’s gonna teach me how to defend myself so Gary can’t hurt me again.”

  Sandy wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she didn’t want to get into it tonight. “We’ll talk in the morning. Right now, why don’t you get some sleep?”

  “Okay.” He turned onto his side.

  She moved next to the bed, then bent down and kissed his cheek, being careful to stay away from the bruise. Then she turned off the light and left the room. Nichole was already in bed, but Lindsay was waiting downstairs. Sandy wasn’t ready to face her oldest yet.

  She paused by the top of the stairs and tried to remember everything she’d said to Kyle. It was all a blur. She remembered parking the car and starting to get out. Lindsay had come running outside and told her Blake had been in a fight and was bleeding. Her next clear memory was standing in Kyle’s kitchen and telling him she wanted him out of her life. He’d tried to explain, but she hadn’t let him. It was so much easier to make everything his fault. If it wasn’t, she would have to look to herself. She would ha
ve to question why she did things. She couldn’t afford to let her carefully constructed world crumble. It was all she had.

  She sat on the top stair and buried her face in her hands. It was all too confusing. Her body was screaming at her, yelling, “He’s the one, he’s the one,” while her head kept calling her a fool. Kyle had the potential to break her heart and that had her running scared. She’d made such a huge mistake with Thomas. She’d taken a look at the exterior package and had assumed he was what he appeared to be. Who ever heard of a philosophy professor who went rock climbing and cut class to surf? She didn’t want to be stupid again.

  So where did that leave her? If only Kyle hadn’t asked her if she was ever lonely. By bringing the question to the light of day, she’d been forced to face reality. The truth was she’d spent her life being lonely. As a child, her days had been filled with secrets. Caring for an alcoholic mother hadn’t been easy. After her mother had died, she’d expected to only feel relief. Instead, she’d mourned her parent. The move to Glenwood had allowed her to heal some, but she realized now it had come too late. She’d never been able to let go enough to be a child again. She’d crossed the line to adulthood and there wasn’t any going back.

  With Thomas, she’d hoped to finally find a place to belong, a relationship between equals, where she could be both care giver and care receiver. She’d wanted to let someone else carry the burden for a while. It wasn’t to be. She’d found that out the first week of classes, when he’d skipped lectures to surf. She still remembered how shocked she’d been. He was the professor. He’d shrugged off her concern by pointing out there were only a certain number of good surfing days in the fall, and he intended to take advantage of all of them.