by Marie Force
“Never been married?”
“Nope. Never even came close.”
“How’s that possible? Are all the men in Vermont blind?”
“You are a charmer, Patrick,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll give you that.”
“My daughter told me to leave you alone. She said you were too nice for the likes of me.”
“The likes of you? That doesn’t sound like her.”
“Maybe not, but it’s true. Since my wife died, I haven’t exactly been Prince Charming when it comes to women.”
“What happened to your wife?” Mary immediately regretted the question that caused a flash of pain to register in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my business.”
“It’s no secret that she died having Cam.”
“Oh God, Patrick. I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry for both of you.”
“Thanks.” He used the stirrer to swirl the chunk of lemon around in his drink. “Cameron wore her mother’s dress today. Surprised the hell out of me with that.”
“In a good way?”
“Yeah. It was good, but it was hard, too. She looks so much like her mother. It’s uncanny. The older she gets, the more she’s Ali all over again.” He took a sip of his drink. “Anyway, didn’t mean to get maudlin.”
“You didn’t. It was an emotional day for you.”
“Much more so than I’d expected it to be. Not sure what I thought it would be like to see her all decked out as a bride and then have to give her away . . . Whose big idea was that nonsense, anyway? Raise this little girl her whole life and then ‘give her away’ to some other guy? How is that fair?”
Mary laughed at his mini diatribe.
“In fact, I really have no right to be so indignant. I was a lousy father to her.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I traveled a lot, left her with nannies. She was always well cared for, but I was absent much of the time. It was easier that way. For me, anyway. I wish I had it to do over again.”
“Would you have done it differently?”
“Oh, hell yeah. But losing Ali suddenly the way I did . . . It messed me up pretty bad. By the time I started to come out of the fog and took a look around me, Cam was ten and no longer cried when I left on business trips.” He shrugged. “I screwed up every which way, and she loves me anyhow. Go figure.”
“She’s a wonderful person, Patrick. You can certainly be proud of her.”
“I’m extremely proud of her. Everything she’s accomplished she’s done on her own. She could’ve turned into another Paris Hilton if she’d been so inclined.”
Mary shook her head. “That would never be Cam. She’s too ambitious.”
“Always was, even when she was a kid and struggling in school. She found out later she had attention deficit disorder, which made me feel like shit because I used to ride her about her lousy grades. It never occurred to me that it could be something like that. Ali would’ve been all over it, and I was oblivious. I wouldn’t have even known she had ADD, but I saw her take her meds one day and asked her what they were for. Talk about a slap to the face for dear old dad.” He seemed to snap out of his melancholy all of a sudden and shook his head. “Anyway, didn’t mean to turn this into a pity party. I never talk about this crap. What is it about you that makes me want to confess my sins to you?”
“Perhaps it’s easier with a new friend who hasn’t known you all these years.”
“Perhaps that’s it, or maybe it’s just you, and you’re sweet and easy to talk to.”
Mary had no idea how to respond to such blatant flirting. She was woefully out of practice with such things.
“Have you ever been to New York, sweet Mary from Vermont?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You should come down sometime. See the sights, take in a show.”
“That would be fun.”
“When do you want to come?”
“Patrick . . .”
“What?”
“I thought we were talking hypothetically.”
“I wasn’t. I was actually ham-handedly inviting you to come visit me in New York. In fact, I’d love it if you came to visit me so I could show you my city.”
“Oh, well . . . I don’t know. I’d have to think about that.”
“While you do your thinking, could I possibly have your phone number so I could call you to try to persuade you to accept my invitation?”
“I suppose that would be all right.”
“Excellent.” He withdrew his smart phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat and began poking at it. “What’s the number?”
She recited her phone number and watched him program it into his phone.
“There we go.” He showed her the screen, where she was listed as Sweet Mary from Vermont. “I assume that’s a landline in this cell-phone wasteland?”
“You assume correctly. I don’t have a cell phone. No point to it around here.”
Patrick shook his head in dismay. “It’s like an alternate universe.”
“Nope, it’s just Vermont.”
“Thanks for listening to me just now. It’s been quite a day, and it helped to talk it out.”
“I was happy to listen, and I enjoyed today very much. We’ve all come to love Cameron, and the two of them together are just perfect. Will is a really, really good guy, Patrick. The best of the best.”
“I know,” he said glumly. “She had to pick a prince among men so I can’t even hate him for taking my little girl away from me.”
“You’re a mess.”
Laughing, he said, “Yes, I am.” He reached for her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. “But I’m less of a mess than I would’ve been without you to talk to, so thank you for that.”
Mary was still recovering from the zing of sensation that had traveled from her hand up her arm and couldn’t seem to form a reply to that statement.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“You’re not supposed to ask a woman that,” she said with pretend indignation.
“All right then . . . I’m fifty-four. Are you too young for me?”
“I’m probably too old for you at forty-two.”
“That is a little outside my usual range,” he said with a wink. “But I’ve been thinking lately that it might be time to grow up and act my age.”
“And when did this startling revelation take place?”
“This past Thursday afternoon. Around two o’clock. I met this sweet woman in Vermont who has me wondering what it might be like to get to know her better. What do you say to that?”
“I say,” Mary began haltingly, “you’re very nice and very charming and way, way, way out of my league.”
“What’s that mean?” His brows furrowed with what seemed to be genuine puzzlement. “Out of your league?”
“Your world and mine—two different planets. I wouldn’t even know how to function in yours.”
“I’ve just functioned for days in yours. Even lived without a cell-phone connection, and the world didn’t end. I bet you could exist in my world just as easily. Hell, look at Colton. He’s living between here and New York now and figuring it out as he goes.”
Mary glanced at his handsome face and decided to level with him. “I’ve lived my whole life without having my heart broken. I think you, Patrick Murphy, could break my heart if I let you, so I’m not going to let you.”
“If that’s true, then you, Mary Larkin, are long overdue for a little adventure in your life.”
“Maybe so, but I’d prefer to chalk this up to one lovely evening spent with a new friend—the father of another new friend—and call it a night.”
“We can call it a night if you’d like, but don’t forget I’ve got your number now. So I’ll be calli
ng you some other night. Will you take my call?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fair enough, but you won’t blame a guy for trying, will you?”
“No, I won’t.”
He smiled at her and finished his drink in one last swallow. “Shall we head out? I have no idea what my curfew is at the barn.”
“I’m sure they haven’t locked you out—yet.”
Mary was much more aware of that hand on her lower back leaving the bar than she’d been on the way in. Fortunately, she didn’t see anyone she knew in the inn, so she wasn’t worried about gossip. Besides, it might be fun to be the source of gossip for once.
Even though she was driving, he held the car door for her and waited for her to get settled before he went around to the passenger side of her nondescript sedan. Her entire life was somewhat nondescript when it came right down to it. Not that she was unhappy. Not at all. But Patrick had dangled something in front of her tonight that looked awfully good to her—adventure.
“You’re thinking about whether you’ll take my call, aren’t you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
His ringing laughter brought a reluctant smile to her face. “I do like you, sweet Mary from Vermont.”
She drove slowly across the one-lane bridge that led to the Abbotts’ home on Hells Peak Road.
“What do you do if someone is coming the other way?”
“You wait.”
“Huh. Interesting.”
“Not used to waiting for anything, are you?”
“Not so much.”
She would’ve rolled her eyes at him, but it was too dark for him to see. She took the right that led to the distinctive red barn and pulled into the Abbotts’ driveway a minute later. “Here you are.”
“Do you live far from here?”
“A couple of miles.”
“You’ll be okay going home?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I might call to check.”
“I won’t take the call.”
He surprised her when he leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Take my call, Mary,” he said softly. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”
Then he was gone, taking the scent of fine cologne with him when he left her car. She waited until she saw him go into the barn and turn off the outside light Molly and Lincoln had left on for him.
On the way home to her house on Butler’s north side, she thought about the evening she’d spent with Patrick, as well as the magical wedding of two people she adored.
Maybe it was the romance of it all that had her thinking of the way Patrick had invited her to New York, asked for her phone number and promised to call her. Maybe it was the way he wanted to challenge her routine and staid existence with his offer of adventure. She was no closer to figuring out what to do about him when she arrived home a short time later, but she already knew one thing for certain.
If and when it happened, she would take his call.
* * *
WILL and Cameron never did sleep that night, and when the sun came up over Lake Champlain, they watched it on the deck, a comforter wrapped around their naked bodies.
“This was the best night of my life,” Will said. “I hate to see it come to an end.”
“This is just the beginning.”
“Are you tired?”
“For some crazy reason, I’m not. I must be running on pure adrenaline by now.”
“Whatever we’re running on, I’m digging it.”
“Me, too.” When she kissed him, she realized how sore her lips were from a night of nonstop kissing—among other things. “We need to hit the shower and get ready to go. The car will be here in an hour to take us to the airport.”
“Did we screw this up by deciding to go halfway around the world when we’ve got this right here?”
“As much as I love this house and the lake, it’s freezing here. I want warm sun, sand between my toes and little paper umbrellas in my drinks. We can’t get that here.”
“True.”
“Have you forgotten there’s a bed on the plane?”
“I have not forgotten. I’ve thought of little else since you mentioned that last night.”
“Then what do you say we go to Fiji?”
“I say I’d go to the ends of the earth if it meant I got to be with you.”
Cameron smiled as she kissed him. One more minute wrapped up in him wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Not when she had the rest of her life to spend with him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thank you for reading “You’ll Be Mine.” I really enjoyed writing about Will and Cam’s wedding, and hope you felt like a guest on their big day. Special thanks to my beta readers Anne Woodall, Kara Conrad, Ronlyn Howe and Holly Sullivan for their quick work, as well as to everyone on my team who supports me every day. Thank you to all the readers whose enthusiasm for my books allows me to live my dream.
Join the You’ll Be Mine Reader Group at facebook.com/groups/YoullBeMine/ to discuss the wedding with other fans of the series. Thanks for reading, and watch for much more from the Green Mountains, including It’s Love, Only Love, Gavin and Ella’s story, coming in November 2015.
Can her love heal his broken heart?
Read on for a glorious preview of Marie’s latest novel in the
Green Mountain Series
Coming soon from
Resigned to another Saturday night at home, Ella Abbott settled into her sofa with her two best friends—Ben and Jerry. She’d been spending a lot of nights with these guys lately, which she would regret the next time she stepped onto a scale. But who cared about scales or exercise or anything else for that matter when your heart was broken?
It was all she could do to get up, take a shower, dry her hair, eat something that tasted like nothing, go to work and barely function once she got there. She went through the motions day after day, one foot in front of the other with a stiff upper lip that quivered an awful lot when she was alone. No one needed to know that.
She dug her spoon into yet another new pint of Cherry Garcia, which was the only thing that made her feel better. So she overindulged. Whatever. She’d happily pay the piper as soon as she stopped feeling like utter crap.
In the last couple of weeks, she’d had no choice but to accept that nothing was ever going to come of her fierce love for Gavin Guthrie.
“And how’s that going for you?” she asked the ice cream. “Are we at the acceptance stage yet?” She took another bite and then one more. “Nope, still stuck firmly in denial.”
If only he hadn’t kissed her. If only she could take back that one perfect moment of utter bliss on the beach in Burlington during her sister Hannah’s wedding last summer. Not knowing what it was like to kiss him would make this whole acceptance thing a hell of a lot easier.
And it wasn’t just a kiss. That would be oversimplifying what’d happened between her and Gavin while everyone else was listening to Nolan serenade his bride. She’d dared to put her arms around Gavin, wanting only to offer comfort as his late brother’s widow got remarried. But then he’d kissed her—and not the way she’d dreamed for all the years she’d been thinking about him.
No, this kiss had been rough and untamed and powerful, the single most incendiary kiss she’d ever received from anyone.
Thinking about it now, she rubbed her finger absently back and forth over her lips, which had tingled for hours afterward. And during those hours she’d had to act like everything was fine, like her entire world hadn’t been redesigned in the course of five unforgettable minutes.
She’d relived it a thousand times since then. The way he’d swooped in like a man who’d been drowning until she came to rescue him. The way his tongue had swept into her mouth and his lips had pressed so tightly against hers they’d felt bruised later, not that she minded. Bruised lips had
been a reminder, for days afterward, that it had really happened. It hadn’t been a figment of her overactive imagination.
Gavin Guthrie had really kissed her. And then he’d walked away like it hadn’t changed everything between them. He’d pulled away so abruptly he’d left her reeling. Worst of all, he’d actually apologized for kissing her. She shuddered, recalling what he’d said.
“Christ, Ella. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so fucked up today. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
But that wasn’t all he’d said. No, he’d had to take her breath away with a sweet caress to her face and even sweeter words. “You’re beautiful, Ella. Inside and out. If I were going to let something like this happen with anyone, you’d be the first one I’d call. But I’ve got nothing to give you, and it wouldn’t be fair. It just wouldn’t be fair.”
Even though he’d walked away from her after that, his words and that kiss—that incredible, unforgettable kiss—had filled her with foolish, giddy hope, which had been snuffed during two less memorable encounters with him since then. Both times, he’d reminded her once again that he had nothing to give her and refused to suck her into the disaster his life had become.
The first time she saw him after “The Kiss,” he’d told her he’d been spiraling since the wedding, locked in the kind of grief he’d experienced when his brother Caleb first died after stepping on a land mine in Iraq. As happy as he was for Hannah and Nolan, both of whom were close friends of Gavin’s, seeing his brother’s widow remarry had rekindled his grief. And knowing that, knowing he was alone and suffering so badly, was killing Ella one spoonful of Ben and Jerry’s at a time.
Her phone rang, which was a welcome interruption from the direction her thoughts were taking. He had already rebuffed her multiple times. She wouldn’t try to reason with him again, but damn, she wanted to. Good thing she’d turned to ice cream rather than booze. With some liquid courage in her belly, she’d probably get in her car and drive to his house to plead her case yet again.
She went to the kitchen to grab the phone. “Hello?” In the background she could hear loud music and louder voices. Suspecting a wrong number, she nearly hung up.
