Her Secret Valentine

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

“All right,” Cal said with as much indifference as he could feign. He hated the mixture of self-doubt and regret her actions had engendered in him. “Let’s say I buy all that.” But he wasn’t sure he did. To him, it sounded like feeble excuses. “Why haven’t you told me about the baby you lost during all this time?”

  “Because things were already strained enough between us without adding that to the list,” she whispered softly.

  “So in other words, you were never going to tell me,” Cal concluded roughly.

  Ashley shook her head disparagingly. “I guess I sort of thought that ship had passed. That if I did tell you, and you found out how long I had kept it from you, you wouldn’t be able to forgive me.”

  Cal couldn’t deny he was really angry and hurt, anymore than he could deny they still had a wedding to go through this evening, and a whole family still on the other side of the closed double doors, waiting. He turned away from her wearily, “I’ll go get the women and see what can be done about your dress.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ashley rushed after him and grabbed his arm. “You’re not really planning to continue with the ceremony this evening…are you?”

  Cal turned and regarded Ashley stoically, his sense of duty kicking in. “My family is all here,” he reminded her with a weariness that came from his soul. “The room is ready. The dinner, the cake…”

  She cut him off with an arch look, stomping closer. “And you and I are in the middle of the biggest fight we’ve ever had in our life!”

  “What does that have to do with renewing our wedding vows?” Cal asked.

  What did it have to do with their wedding vows? Ashley wondered silently, upset. Just damn near everything!

  She looked at her husband, the sadness welling up inside her almost more than she could bear.

  She had never wanted either of them to feel the way they did right now. She had never wanted to be in a position where she had to worry constantly she would make a misstep or not live up to his considerable expectations, and feel his crushing disappointment in her. She wanted to be free to be who she was, to know she could make mistakes and still be wanted and loved. She wanted to know that forgiveness was always an option, that their love and their marriage and damn it—the family they were now creating—were strong enough to weather any difficulty thrown their way.

  But Cal obviously didn’t feel the same way. “Look,” he said, coming toward her, the aggravation he felt still plain on his face. “You know I’m disappointed in you. And—for the record, Ashley,” he continued sternly, “I have every right to be. But that doesn’t change what has to be done.”

  Ashley stiffened. She held her head high as she forced herself to admit, “You’re correct about that, all right.”

  “Where are you going?” When she didn’t answer and just kept walking, he moved to block her way. “You can’t run out on us again.”

  He was talking as if she had a choice. Tears gathered in her eyes. “I can’t stay and spend the rest of my life having you look at me like that, either,” Ashley told him sorrowfully. Her voice caught; it took everything she had to force herself to go on. “I’m not going to be the thing you most regret, Cal.” She paused, shook her head. “I spent my entire life never living up to the expectations of my parents and feeling bad about myself. I can’t be with someone who can’t accept anything less than perfection! Because I have news for you, Cal,” she whispered softly, looking deep into his eyes. “I am not perfect and never will be—and neither will our child!”

  “Ashley,” Cal warned, looking all the more betrayed, “if you walk out on me again, it’s over.”

  “Don’t you get it, Cal?” Ashley said evenly. She swallowed hard around the gathering knot of emotion in her throat. “It’s already over. It has been for years.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “So this is it, hmm?” Helen Hart asked Ashley the next morning, shortly after arriving at the farm.

  Ashley ushered Helen past the two suitcases, packed and ready to go, in the foyer. Fighting the wave of sadness moving through her, she shrugged her shoulders listlessly, then turned to face her mother-in-law. “It has to be. Cal isn’t going to forgive me.” Ashley paused, the ache rising in her throat. She blinked back tears. “I guess I knew it all along, which is why I couldn’t bring myself to tell him,” she confessed in a low, defeated voice.

  Helen wrapped a comforting arm around Ashley’s shoulders, in that instant giving Ashley all the understanding and compassion Ashley had wanted from Cal. “You were protecting yourself,” Helen soothed.

  “And Cal.” Ashley hugged Helen back, then led the way back to the family room, where they could sit down. “Unfortunately,” Ashley reached for a tissue as the tears began to flow, “all I ended up doing was driving him away.”

  Helen waited for Ashley to wipe her eyes. “Losing a baby is one of the hardest things a woman goes through, I know.” Helen caught Ashley’s look. “I was pregnant seven times. Six of those times I delivered healthy babies, but once, between Mac’s birth and Cal’s,” Helen’s voice caught, “I wasn’t as lucky.”

  Ashley regarded Helen steadily. “Cal never said anything about that to me.”

  Helen’s eyes filled with suppressed sorrow. “He doesn’t know, nor do any of his siblings.”

  And yet, Ashley thought, you’re telling me. “Why haven’t you told them?” She twisted the damp tissue in her hands.

  Helen lifted her palms in a helpless manner. “Because it hurt too much to talk about, even to Cal’s father.”

  “But he knew that you lost a child?” Ashley ascertained quickly.

  “Oh, yes.” Helen nodded sagely. “He was there when it happened and he took me to the hospital for the care I needed. But I wouldn’t discuss what had happened with him after I was released. I knew he was grieving as much as I was, but I was barely hanging on as it was. I just didn’t think I could cope with his sadness, too.”

  Ashley understood that. She hadn’t wanted to deal with anyone else’s pity for what she had been through, not her Ob/Gyn’s at the time, nor Mac’s. And especially not Cal’s.

  “So I pretended everything was fine, when it clearly wasn’t—”

  Ashley knew what that was like, too.

  “—and six months later, I was pregnant again and we were full of hope and nine months after that we were lucky enough to have Cal. And then of course four more children after that.”

  “And everything worked out all right in the end.” Ashley took comfort in knowing Helen had gone on to have a large, healthy brood, despite her miscarriage.

  “To a degree,” Helen stipulated cautiously. “I still have my fair share of regrets about how much time Cal’s father and I wasted. My husband was the love of my life and I was the love of his, but we squandered too much time quarreling over petty things because we thought we had all the time in the world to set things to right. But we didn’t. My point is this, Ashley.” Helen gave Ashley a long sober look. “None of us can ever know what the future holds for us. All any of us have is the here and now.”

  Helen was making it sound easy when it wasn’t. “Marriage is tough,” Ashley said.

  “You’re right about that,” Helen agreed readily enough. “But that should not prevent you from looking at the big picture and thinking about what really matters.”

  Ashley knew what really mattered to her—Cal and this baby they were going to have. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid to fail again. She was.

  “A lot has happened,” Ashley told Helen wearily, aware even as she spoke that she was getting the unconditional love and understanding from Helen that she had always wanted from her own parents. Cal’s mother knew that Ashley was flawed, that she made mistakes, but Helen didn’t care. Helen loved her and wanted her to remain part of the family, anyway, Ashley realized, her spirits lifting.

  “And a lot is going to happen in the future, too,” Helen concurred sagely. “Some of which you’ll be prepared for, some of which you won’t.”
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br />   Ashley guessed what Helen was going to say. “But it will be easier for us if we’re together.”

  Helen nodded. She reached over and patted Ashley’s hand. “It’s not too late. There’s still time for you and Cal to get your priorities straight and make your marriage as strong as it should’ve been all along.”

  CAL WAS STILL STRETCHED OUT on Mac’s living-room sofa when Janey, Lily, Emma and Hannah marched in. All four wives were followed by their husbands and Mac. It looked like an intervention, and then some. The only family missing—save his mother, wife and unborn child—were his nephew Christopher, and Lily and Fletcher’s yellow Labrador retriever, Spartacus. And he figured the latter two had been barred on grounds they were too young to hear any of what was about to be said.

  Cal used his forearm to shield his eyes from the mid-morning sun. “Go. Away.”

  “We warned you if you didn’t get this right we were bringing the Hart women in,” Mac said.

  Cal muttered a string of swear words not meant for delicate ears. “I don’t need your advice. Any of it,” Cal said. Furious, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the brown leather sofa.

  “We beg to differ,” Janey stated coolly. She folded her arms in front of her, still looking as if she wanted to wring his neck.

  “Where the devil did you get off walking out on Ashley last night?” Fletcher demanded, slapping his cowboy hat against his thigh.

  “You should have stayed and married her!” Lily agreed.

  “I’m already married to her,” Cal snapped.

  “From the gist of your behavior toward her, your vows need some refreshing,” Dylan scolded.

  “If you will recall, that was the original intention,” Cal volleyed right back.

  Joe shrugged. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  Cal glared at the entire group. “Hell is about where I am right now, all right,” he muttered, raking his hands through his hair.

  Hannah smiled at him sympathetically. “Tell her you’re sorry,” she advised.

  Cal blinked. “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” Dylan replied.

  Cal aimed a thumb at the center of his chest. “I’m not the one who kept a secret for nearly three years!”

  “Right,” Janey acknowledged sarcastically. “You’re the husband she didn’t feel secure enough to confide in.”

  Cal slouched back on the sofa. “Hit me where it counts, why don’t you?”

  “She loves you,” Lily said.

  “Yeah, well, she has a funny way of showing it.” Cal thrust his jaw out pugnaciously. “The minute the going gets a little tough, she gets going.”

  The women exchanged deeply frustrated looks. “She’s not leaving town,” Emma said finally.

  Yeah? That was news to him. “She went home to pack,” Cal bit out. “And she said she would be out of the farmhouse completely by later today. What do you call that?”

  Loud feminine sighs echoed all around. They were followed by a few choice, muttered words from the Hart men. “Ashley felt you should live at the farmhouse because you put the work into it,” Lily explained. “She is planning to move in with us, since Fletcher and I have the house with the most room.”

  “I wouldn’t advise letting that happen,” Fletcher said, giving Cal a warning look.

  It seemed as if everyone in the family had turned against him, Cal thought. Which was ludicrous, since he wasn’t the one at fault here! He stood, bristling with anger. “I’ve given that woman everything I could possibly give her. I was even willing to support her taking a job away from me again if that’s what it took to allow her to fulfill her dream of delivering babies.”

  Janey interjected gently, “No one is disputing you’re the master of the grand, romantic gesture. Telling your wife to take a two-and-a-half-year fellowship three thousand miles away. Locating and giving her the ’64 Mustang you two had your very first date in. Making plans to renew your wedding vows on your third anniversary. Those are all wonderful actions, Cal. But relationships aren’t made in isolated, dramatic moments—they’re built in the small everyday things. Just being there for her, day in and day out, with a heart full of love and unconditional acceptance would have been enough to make her happy.”

  “Would it?” Cal wasn’t sure. Maybe he had never been what Ashley needed.

  “Yes, if you had given her what she most wanted,” Emma said softly.

  Cal sank down on the sofa once again and buried his face in his hands. “And what is that?” he demanded in frustration.

  Janey’s husband, Thad, explained in simple coach-like fashion, “The permission to be human, to make mistakes.”

  “To know,” Lily added, “no matter what, that you’ll be there for her.”

  “Her soft place to fall,” Emma added gently.

  Cal scowled and peered up at them through his spread fingers. “This is beginning to sound like an episode of Dr. Phil.”

  Hannah grinned, all tomboy mischief. “Would you like to be on his TV show?” she asked.

  Cal swore like a longshoreman, knowing if anyone could arrange it, Hannah, the inveterate dealmaker, could. “No,” he said stonily.

  Mac stepped forward, the male patriarch of the Hart family once again. “Then we suggest you take a hard look at yourself and do whatever it is you need to do to set things to rights with Ashley,” Mac advised.

  CAL SPENT THE REST of the morning defending his actions to himself. But by the time he had gone for a run, come back, had breakfast, showered and shaved, he could no longer deny the truth.

  And neither, he decided, could Ashley.

  So, swallowing his pride, he slapped on some cologne, and headed back out to the farmhouse he had purchased with such high hopes.

  And found, to his stunned amazement, that it looked like a convention of Harts, too. Each and every sibling had a car parked in his drive. His mother’s car was parked next to Ashley’s new station wagon.

  Grimacing, Cal slammed out of his SUV and stalked up to the porch. Damn it all, wasn’t it enough his entire family except his mother had read him the riot act? Did they have to barge in and inflict their views on Ashley, too?

  Temper flaring, he let himself inside and found to his stunned amazement that the two large empty rooms at the front of the house had been transformed. White folding chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around a trellis decorated with red roses, perfect for Valentine’s Day. On the other side of the foyer a buffet reception was being set up by his four sisters-in-law. They were dressed as they had been the evening before, in their Valentine’s Day finery. “About time you got here,” Janey drawled.

  His mother came through the hall, carrying several bottles of fine champagne and another of sparkling cider. “If you’re looking for who I think, she’s upstairs,” Helen said.

  Mac strode through the hall. He glanced at his watch, reporting, “The musicians will be here shortly.”

  Dylan followed. “Ditto the minister.”

  Cal thought about commenting, then decided enough time had been wasted, enough mistakes made. It was time to set things right, permanently this time. He took the stairs two at a time and continued on down the hall into the master bedroom. Ashley was seated on the bed, wearing the dress she’d had on the evening before, when she’d fainted. It had been expertly repaired and appeared to give her plenty of breathing room this time. If possible, she looked even more gorgeous than she had the evening before. She was sipping a small glass of orange juice as he walked in. She raised it in silent toast. “Just in case.”

  “Not planning on fainting on me again this afternoon?” Cal asked.

  “I am about to marry someone.” She drained her glass and set it aside.

  “And that someone better be me,” he told her gruffly.

  “Is that a proposal?” Her voice suddenly sounded as rusty as his.

  He nodded. “If you’ll still have me.”

  “Oh, I’ll have you all right.” Ashley drew him down to sit besid
e her on the bed.

  They sat there quietly, hands linked as surely as their hearts.

  “I’m so sorry,” they said abruptly in unison.

  More silence. And a few tears this time, too.

  “I should have told you,” Ashley whispered.

  Cal tightened his grip on her hand, knowing he never wanted to let her go. “I should have understood why you didn’t,” he countered thickly.

  More tears, his and hers. “I was scared I’d lose you,” Ashley confided. Turning, she went all the way into his arms.

  Cal lifted her over onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “Believe me, I know a little bit about that.”

  Ashley rested her head on his shoulder, her low voice muffled against his jacket as she clung to him tightly. “I don’t want to lose you, Cal.”

  He tucked a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. “I don’t want to lose you, either.”

  Ashley smiled and kissed his lips. “Then what do you say we go downstairs and make it official…” she whispered tenderly “…the second time around?”

  “TO LOVE AND TO CHERISH…in joy and in sorrow…from this day forward…”

  “And now that Ashley and Cal have reconfirmed their original wedding vows, Ashley and Cal have something to promise each other,” the minister said.

  Ashley took Cal’s hand in hers. “I, Ashley, promise to tell you everything, the good, the bad, the exciting and the mundane. I pledge to have faith in you and faith in us. The only steadfast rule being that we love and understand each other more with each and every day.”

  Knowing those vows would be easy to keep now that they finally knew what was important in this life, Cal lifted their clasped hands and kissed the back of Ashley’s wrist. He looked deep into her eyes and spoke with all the love in his heart. “I, Cal, commit myself to you and to this marriage with all my heart and soul. I promise always to remember that it’s not whether we make mistakes, but when we make them, that we forgive each other, learn and grow from them, that is important…because loving each other and standing by each other in good times and tough times…is what marriage is all about.”