by Kim Law
Oh, hell.
“Just love me, Mark,” she whispered. A tear slipped from the corner of one eye, but she ignored it. Mark saw it, though, and pressed his mouth to the lone track it had made.
“I’m going to love you forever, sunshine.”
She closed her eyes with the flood of emotions and felt several more tears slip free.
Mark continued moving against her. Slowly. Reverently. There were no sounds made save for the soft moans that occasionally escaped. His lips and hands left her with zero doubt how he felt, his body connecting with hers in a way she hadn’t imagined ever feeling again. And she opened her heart and let in all the hope she’d been afraid to dream of.
They would figure this out.
“I love you,” she whispered again.
Mark pushed up off her and stared down into her eyes. He nodded and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “And I love you.”
Sometime later the sound of car doors woke her, and Andie blinked her eyes open in the darkness. Mark lay beside her, one arm thrown over her waist and his head tucked in against her neck, and Andie stared up at the ceiling as the fear began to creep back in. Had she given him too much? Was she going to get hurt?
She could hear laughter coming from next door as she closed her eyes. Apparently Wendy had not come back alone.
Good.
Maybe that would keep her off Rob long enough for him to get married.
Mark groaned in his sleep and rolled over onto his back, and Andie could sense when he became alert of his surroundings. The muscles in the arm lying against her tightened slightly, and then he turned his head and looked in her direction.
She did the same. She smiled at him in the dark.
There was enough light coming through the uncovered window that she could make out the planes of his face and the curve of his mouth as he peered back at her.
“I have something for you,” he murmured.
He reached across her to the bedside table and opened the drawer. Then he switched on the lamp, and she squinted in the glare.
“Did you have to do that?” she groaned. She’d rather go back to sleep and wait until morning to face the facts. She’d told him she loved him, but nothing about them was different.
Mark pressed a quick kiss to her mouth, and she peeked at him. He looked so happy. It eased a bit of the stress building inside her. Maybe they could figure this out.
When he returned to lying on the bed beside her, both of them now on their backs, he held one hand up above them.
And that was when she saw it.
He had his thumb and forefinger pinched together and between the two was a large, emerald-cut ruby flanked by a row of baguette diamonds. She’d pointed that ring out to him once — years ago — and had said that she would love to get married with a ring like that one day.
When they’d gotten engaged, he’d given her his grandmother’s ring instead.
Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Mark turned on his side and propped himself up on his fist. He kissed the corner of her eye. “I want you to marry me, Andie. I never should have let you go before. I messed up.”
Wetness streaked from her eyes to her ears. “Why do you have this ring?”
“I’d gotten it for you back then. You wanted it.”
“But you wanted me to wear your family ring.”
It hadn’t been an argument between them, but it had hurt her feelings that he’d thought the ring she wanted wasn’t right for their marriage.
“I was wrong,” he said. “I knew that. So I bought it for you.”
She shook her head as she stared up at him and tried to follow his train of thought. “You never gave it to me.”
Shame flitted briefly across his features. “It’s why I stopped at our apartment that day. The morning of our wedding.”
Oh. She got it now. “You were bringing this to me before the wedding?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I had finally figured out that we couldn’t get married with you wearing the wrong ring.”
“Your grandmother’s ring was beautiful.” And it had been. It had also held three times the diamonds this one did, and was very traditional. Not exactly her style.
“But this is the one you loved,” Mark told her. “It’s the one that suited you. It took me a while, but I finally understood that.”
And then, instead of giving it to her, he’d sent Rob to the church to call off their wedding.
Andie sat up, not touching the ring.
She turned to him. “So you just want to give it to me now? And what? Start back up as if we didn’t miss a day?”
The accusation was probably unfair, but the moment she’d realized what he held, his mother’s words had come back to her. He was pushing her again. They hadn’t solved any of the issues between them, and he hadn’t bothered to explain his past.
He’d just presented her with the ring and expected her to swoon.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he said. Worry began to lace his voice. “I know we can’t just go back.”
Mark picked up her hand and slid the ring onto her finger.
“I want to go forward.” His eyes were blue and solid tonight. And pleading. “I want to marry you, Andie. I want you by my side. Forever.”
Andie sat there and stared at the ring he’d put on her finger, and then closed her eyes. She pulled in a slow breath. This was not going right at all. She wanted to marry him. She knew that with all of her heart. But not like this. They still weren’t talking, hadn’t communicated enough to know anything more than that the chemistry was still burning bright between them.
And he would expect her to pack her bags and simply follow him back to Boston.
Then what? Be the good little wife he’d wanted before?
But she didn’t even know what she wanted.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, and slowly shook her head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Panic exploded inside Mark as he watched Andie shake her head back and forth.
This could not be happening.
He sat up quickly and reached out to stop the movement of her head.
“Babe,” he spoke quickly. “We can do this. We can make this work.”
“Mark, you haven’t even explained anything. We had issues. You had issues. You walked away on the most important day of our lives without so much as a good-bye.”
She shook her head again, and reached for the ring, but Mark stopped her, clasping his hand around hers. “I’m talking now,” he said. “Whatever you want to know, I’m talking. I’m sorry I did it backwards. I screwed up. But I love you. I want to be with you forever.”
“And I want to know why you have issues with marriage.”
He did not have issues with marriage! He clenched his jaw.
“Why did Beth leave you?” Andie asked. “What did you do to make that happen?”
He breathed in and out through his nose. Okay, he could start there. Beth was easy. He could explain that.
“I didn’t love her the way a man should love a woman he plans to marry,” he stated bluntly.
Andie eyed him. “Then why did you get engaged?”
“Because we were good friends. We had been since we were kids. Our families have known each other forever.”
“I thought her name sounded familiar,” she softly mused. “I probably heard it mentioned at some point. Did you date her when you were younger, then?”
He shook his head and squeezed her hand, terrified to let it go. He liked the look of that ring on her finger.
“We went to a lot of the same functions in our teens and college years,” he said. “But then she moved away. She came back a couple years ago. We ran into each other at one of Mom’s fund-raisers and started going out.”
Andie was silent as she digested his story. She then peeled his hand from hers and stood to begin gathering her clothes.
“Rob said she had the right prestige,” she said,
not looking at him as she stepped into her underwear.
“She had the last name Rob would have been impressed with,” he pointed out. “That had nothing to do with me. Beth and I were friends, neither of us married. And I thought she …” He paused but then plowed ahead. No sense worrying about being sensitive now. “I thought she’d make a good wife and mother.”
Andie pulled her underwear up, watching him now, then tossed his to him. “So she didn’t work?” she asked.
Mark coughed out a short laugh, knowing the answer would shock her.
“What?” Andie scowled at him. “Don’t laugh at me.”
“Oh, babe,” he murmured. He stood and began dressing. “I would never laugh at you. I’m simply laughing at the situation. Beth is an engineering professor at MIT. She’s one of the most intelligent people I know. And no, she was not willing to give that up to stay at home. Nor did I ask her to.”
“Then I don’t understand,” Andie started.
“I never wanted you to quit your job, Andie.” He spoke to her across the bed. “I just wanted you to stay home with me on occasion.”
“And Beth would have done this?”
“She had professor hours. They were set. She might occasionally get lost in the lab for an evening, but generally speaking she was finished at a regular hour each day.” Plus, he hadn’t loved her as much. He hadn’t worried about her as much.
Andie nodded, digesting the information. Mark could see she was processing his words.
“What would make her such a great mother, then?” she finally asked. She had her skirt and bra on now, and was headed to the living room for her shirt.
He followed, shrugging into his own shirt as he went. “She was an older sister,” he said. “Two siblings. I’d been around her when she was younger, so I knew she was nurturing.”
“So you asked her to marry you simply because you wanted a wife and family?”
He gave her an unwavering look. “I want what my parents have. What my brothers have. It feels right.”
“Yet you left me at the altar when I was offering that same thing.”
He didn’t break contact at her statement. Yes, that’s exactly what he’d done. Other than what he’d already told her, he had no other excuse. He didn’t know what else he could say.
After a minute of silence, Andie asked, “You did something to push her away, right? So the marriage got called off,” she said. “She may have dumped you, but it was your fault.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “It was my fault. The first problem started when we were supposed to be looking for wedding venues,” he admitted.
“What happened? You refused to get involved?”
“Not exactly.” He was almost embarrassed to admit the truth. “But instead of locations, I started looking up you.”
Her eyes widened. “She discovered this, I take it?”
He gave her a tight smile. “Yeah, she discovered it. When I told her I was just wondering. You know, because I’d never talked to you after. She was fine with that. She understood.”
“But then you did it again?” Andie asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “Then I did it again. Every time I was supposed to be looking up location venues, I Googled you instead. I wanted to see what you’d been up to. What you were doing. I was floored to find you here instead of at some high-pressure financial job in the corporate world. You’d seemed so sure that kind of world was what you wanted.”
“Yeah, well.” She walked across the living room, with her back to him. “People change.”
“But why did you?” he asked.
She turned to him and answered his question with one of her own. “Do you really think I did? You never thought that job was right for me anyway.” She laughed. A dry, brittle sound. “Come to find out, Aunt Ginny didn’t, either. So yeah … maybe I didn’t change. Maybe I just moved here and figured out that that life wasn’t me.”
“Is that what happened?”
She shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Takes more than that to get through my thick skull. After I was fired, I moped around for a couple weeks, and then I realized I was thrilled not to have to go back. But I didn’t get that it was the job and not the company I was glad to be escaping. I sent out résumés, but nothing stuck.” She shrugged and looked away. “So I talked Aunt Ginny into turning the house into a bed-and-breakfast.”
Mark opened the refrigerator and pulled out two sodas. He handed one to Andie and drank part of the other while he waited, figuring she had more to say.
“I sent out résumés again six months later,” she added. “This time I got a couple interviews. One in Cincinnati. Not far from my mom. I could have proven my worth there, I was certain.”
“What happened?”
She barked out another hollow laugh. “I couldn’t get a job. No one would hire me.”
That had to have stung. Especially since she’d wrapped her self-worth around her career.
“So I came back here and talked Aunt Ginny into doing weddings.”
“Seems every ‘no’ opened another door for you.”
“Who knows?” She shrugged and took a sip of the soda. “I bought the bar after a short stint at an insurance company in Columbus a year later. At the end of my three-month trial period, we all agreed to go our separate ways. So I came back here and I haven’t left again.”
“What happened last year?” he asked.
She met his gaze over the top of her drink. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you tell me you talked Ginny into the bungalows last year? What happened to make you do that?”
She lowered the can, and her teeth came out to gnaw at her lip.
“Andie?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to tell you.”
He had no idea what it possibly could have been, but he tried for a teasing smile. He wanted to hear it. And he wanted to lighten the mood. “It can’t be that bad. Come on, I’m telling you my secrets. You tell me yours,” he cajoled.
She blinked her eyes several times then shifted her gaze away from him. Her chest rose and fell with a sigh. “I saw your wedding announcement in the paper,” she stated flatly.
Oh.
His chest expanded as he realized she’d been thinking about him about the same time he’d been thinking about her.
Fate.
It had to be.
“So what was problem number two?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘first problem, Beth caught you looking me up.’ What was problem number two?”
He drained the soda, taking his time to do so. Trying to steel himself to admit the rest. He had to show her how bad he could let someone down.
“Beth knew about what had happened with Tiffany,” he finally said. “Because she’d known me back then.”
Confusion clouded Andie’s face. “Tiffany?”
“The girl Rob mentioned on the boat.”
Andie’s eyes went wide. “The girl he said you …” She paused as if not wanting to say the word. He didn’t want her to say it, either. Finally, she stepped closer and looked him straight in the eyes. “Killed?”
Mark’s chest tightened.
“Right.” He nodded. The girl he had killed. His mouth grew dry. “Beth had known me back then, and she had the thought that I was letting what happened in my past impact my life. My relationships.”
He didn’t point out that Beth had said basically the same thing that Andie had. That he had issues with marriage. Neither of them knew what they were talking about. He plunged ahead, not giving Andie time to jump in.
“I’m not,” he declared. “I got over the past long ago. It has nothing to do with now. But with that in Beth’s mind, along with her seeing that there was an issue still lingering with you” — Mark paused — “she walked. Said she could do better. And hell, she could. She did. She’s found someone now, and I couldn’t be happier for her. She and I never should have gotten together in the first place.”
<
br /> He’d been settling, but he’d never disgrace Beth by admitting that out loud. She remained a good friend, if nothing more.
Andie carefully lowered herself to the couch and rubbed the spot beside her as if beckoning him across the room. “So what happened?” Her voice was soft and gentle, as if she suspected he needed to be handled with kid gloves. “With Tiffany?”
Mark sat next to her and grabbed hold when she reached for his hand.
“I was seventeen,” he started. “Tiffany was sixteen. She was my first ‘real’ girlfriend. She was …” He paused and pictured Tiff as she’d been then. She’d smiled all the time. “She loved life. She was impulsive, and would try or do anything. I loved being around her. And somehow I talked her into going out with me.”
“I’ve seen pictures of you at that age,” Andie said wryly. “I’m sure it wasn’t a hardship to go out with someone like you.”
“But that’s just it. She wasn’t like me.” He was embarrassed to say the next words. “Moneywise,” he muttered. “She went to my school on a scholarship, and it embarrassed her that I was interested in her. She always told me she didn’t fit into my life.” He gave Andie a pointed look. “Like another woman I met years later.”
Andie gave him a small, acknowledging smile and then squeezed his hand, silently encouraging him to continue.
“We’d been dating a few months, and I swear, every time I picked her up, her father would get this look on his face.” Mark mimicked the stern look the man had worn. “He’d put a hand on my shoulder, and never take his eyes off mine. And he’d tell me, ‘She’s your responsibility when she’s with you, son. You make sure you always bring my little girl home safe and sound.’”
Mark stopped and sucked in a breath before he continued. He hadn’t thought about Mr. Avery in a while, but he could still see him in his mind — looking Mark straight in the eye as if he believed that Mark was as responsible as any other grown-up in the world. Mark had believed it, too. Tiffany had been his responsibility. He was the man. The protector.
He’d let her down.
He turned loose of Andie and rose. It felt as if he had a sock lodged in his chest. He’d never told anyone this story before. Many people knew it. They’d been around when it had happened. But he’d never said the words out loud.
