by Jessica Hart
‘You two take the coffee through,’ she said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She disappeared upstairs, presumably to repair any sign of tears.
Avoiding Bram’s eyes, Sophie picked up the jug of coffee and carried it through to the dining room. She needed to talk to him and find out what was going on with Melissa—but when? More than anything she wanted to go back to Haw Gill with him that night, to be alone with him and to talk quietly, but her mother was adamant.
‘You’re staying here tonight, Sophie. There’s too much to do tomorrow morning. And anyway, everyone knows it’s unlucky to see your groom before you get to the church.’
So Sophie had to say goodbye to him in front of everybody. Bram hesitated for a moment, looking down into her eyes, then dropped a light, almost perfunctory kiss on her lips. ‘Don’t be late tomorrow,’ was all he said.
It was strange being back in her old room, with her wedding dress hanging up behind the door. Sophie lay awake, looking at it, wishing that Bram was there so that she could hold onto him. When his arms were around her she felt safe. Alone, it was too easy to lose her nerve and feel desperately unsure that she was doing the right thing.
Again and again Sophie reminded herself about the deal they had made. They would build their marriage on friendship and would accept that neither could have what they really wanted. What was so wrong with that?
The trouble was that she had changed. Sophie realised now that what she really wanted was Bram. The balance had shifted and they weren’t equal any more. It had made sense when they’d both thought they wanted someone they couldn’t have. As long as Sophie had been in love with Nick she had understood what Bram felt for Melissa and believed that they were doing the right thing, throwing their lot in together.
But she wasn’t in love with Nick any more. It was Bram she wanted now, and everything was different.
Sophie tossed and turned all night. She wanted to marry Bram, she wanted to be with him for ever, but she wanted him to love her too. How could she marry him if he still yearned for Melissa? Bram had said that he didn’t, but what she had seen and heard tonight told a different story. It had sounded to Sophie as if Melissa might have changed her mind. As if Bram might, after all this time, have a chance to be with the woman he really loved.
She thought about how long she and Bram had been friends, about the times they had talked and laughed together, the times he had comforted her and teased her and been exactly what she needed him to be. She couldn’t be truly happy if he wasn’t. If Bram did have a chance to be with Melissa, should she—could she—stand in his way?
By morning, Sophie was looking drawn and haggard. She managed to get as far as putting her wedding dress on, but the sheen on the ivory material made her skin look dull and lifeless when she looked in the mirror, and her sister’s radiantly beautiful reflection only made the contrast crueller.
Melissa seemed to have thrown off her nervousness of the night before, and was calm and loving as she helped her sister to get ready. Sophie was puzzled. Surely Melissa wouldn’t be like this if she were helping Sophie to marry the man she herself loved?
Then Sophie thought about the effort she had made to make Melissa’s wedding day special for her. She hadn’t wanted her beloved sister to guess how much she was suffering so she had been bright and cheerful all day, and she didn’t think anyone had guessed that her heart was breaking.
Except Bram. He had known, and he had been there for her.
‘Do you think I’m doing the right thing?’ she asked Melissa abruptly.
‘Marrying Bram?’ Melissa looked shocked. ‘Of course I do. You’re such good friends, and you know each other so well. How could it not be the right thing?’
‘Is friendship enough, though?’
‘I think it matters more than you know.’ Melissa pulled up the zip on Sophie’s dress and looked at her sister soberly in the mirror. ‘You know, being married isn’t as easy as you think it’s going to be. You think that loving someone desperately will be enough, but I’m not sure that it is,’ she confessed.
She hesitated, then smiled at Sophie. ‘But you’ll be all right. Bram’s a wonderful man. He’s kind and he’s loving and he’s constant—and those things are more important than anything.’
Melissa looked away before Sophie could see the tears standing in her eyes. ‘I…I just hope you appreciate what you’ve got,’ she said, her voice breaking slightly.
Sophie stared at her sister in the mirror. Could Melissa be regretting the choice she had made? It had sounded like that when she’d overheard her talking to Bram last night, but Sophie hadn’t wanted to believe it. Was she really thinking of leaving Nick—of telling him, as Bram had urged her, that she didn’t love him any more?
She couldn’t ask Melissa outright if she wished that she could marry Bram instead. Melissa would deny it absolutely. It had been hard enough for her to accept that Sophie would give up Nick. She’d never accept that Sophie would give up Bram for her too.
But what about Bram? If he wanted Melissa, and could have Melissa, Sophie didn’t want to be the reason it couldn’t work. If she married him, he would never leave her. Sophie knew Bram. So did Melissa. You always do what you say you’re going to do, she had told him when she’d picked Nick up from Haw Gill. If Bram said that he would be faithful to Sophie till death did them part, that was what he would be.
Even if it broke his heart to see Melissa alone once more, and to know how close he might have been to having his heart’s desire.
‘You look a little pale,’ said Melissa, peering at her in concern. ‘Why don’t I get my make-up? We can do something about those shadows under your eyes, at least.’
Sophie studied her reflection as Melissa went off to find her cosmetics bag. The wedding dress in the mirror seemed to mock her. This was a farce. What was she thinking of—marrying a man in love with her own sister? How could she ever possibly have thought that it would work? She couldn’t do it to Bram, and she couldn’t do it to herself.
She couldn’t just sit there, Sophie realised. She couldn’t sit there calmly and let Melissa conceal the shadows under her eyes. They were there for a reason. She couldn’t pick up her bouquet, take her father’s arm and walk down the aisle to meet Bram without talking to him.
And if she was going to talk to him before the wedding she would have to do it now.
Suddenly galvanized into action, Sophie ran downstairs in her stockinged feet. She could hear Melissa talking to her mother somewhere. There was no one around to stop her and ask her questions.
A beautiful bride’s bouquet had been delivered that morning and was sitting on the kitchen table. Sophie ignored it, scrabbling desperately in the bowl where her parents kept their keys.
‘What is it, love?’ Joe had come into the kitchen, his tie hanging loose around his neck, and his weatherbeaten face creased in concern as he looked at her.
‘Where are your car keys, Dad?’
‘They’re here,’ he said, putting his hand on them straight away. ‘Why?’
‘I need to see Bram,’ said Sophie tensely. ‘I need to see him now. Can I take your car?’
After one look at her face, Joe didn’t bother to argue. ‘I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘You’re not driving on these roads in that state.’
‘Oh, thank you, Dad,’ she said fervently. ‘Can we go now?’
He looked down at her feet. ‘What about your shoes?’
She couldn’t face going upstairs, encountering Melissa or her mother, answering their questions. ‘I’ll wear Mum’s boots,’ she said, dragging on a pair of her father’s thick woollen socks and thrusting her feet into the rubber boots. They looked absurd under the wedding dress, but Sophie didn’t care.
She ran out to where her father had the car started already. As she jumped in beside him she caught a glimpse of her mother at the window, gesticulating wildly.
‘Can we hurry, Dad?’
‘Not on these roads, lass.’
Joe said no mo
re, and asked not a single question as he drove carefully up to Haw Gill on roads that were narrower and more treacherous than usual because of the snow. Sophie was glad of his silence. Her heart was thumping so hard she wouldn’t have been able to hear anyway.
It was another beautiful day. The snow piled up by the roadside glittered in the pale winter sunshine, and the light over the frozen moors was dazzling. In a monochrome landscape the bare trees stood stark against the whiteness, their branches petrified in ice.
They saw Bram coming down from the moor in his tractor as they drove into the farmyard. The stock still had to be fed and checked, even if you were getting married—although Bram was cutting it fine if he were to be showered and changed and waiting at the church in an hour’s time.
‘Do you want me to wait?’
‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘No, you’d better go and calm Mum down. Tell her not to worry. It’s just something I’ve got to do.’ She opened her door, turning back on an impulse to kiss her father’s cheek. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
With a nod, Joe turned the car round and drove off as Bram brought the tractor to an abrupt halt. Jumping down, he stopped and stared at Sophie, standing ridiculously on the frozen mud of the yard in her wedding dress and Wellington boots. Bess, with no inhibitions, ran over to greet the woman who had let her sleep in front of the fire, tail wagging happily.
‘Sophie!’ Bram was wearing his old working trousers and a thick jumper with bits of hay sticking to it, and his voice was tense with apprehension. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I had to see you.’ Sophie bent to quieten Bess, shaking as much from nerves as from the biting cold.
He strode towards her. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I…I have to be sure that you want to do this, Bram. That you want to marry me.’
Bram stopped a few feet from her, his brows drawn together. ‘Why would I have changed my mind?’
‘Melissa,’ said Sophie simply.
‘Melissa? What’s she been saying to you?’
‘Nothing. I saw you with her last night, when you were making the coffee.’
Bram opened his mouth to answer, then paused. ‘What exactly did you see?’
‘I saw you holding her.’ Sophie hugged herself against the cold. ‘I heard you telling her that it wasn’t too late,’ she rushed on. ‘You said that it was never too late, Bram, but it will be too late if we get married today. I want you to know that it’s not too late to change your mind. If you want to be with Melissa, if she’s what you really want, it’s better that we call the wedding off now.’
‘Is that what you want to do?’ said Bram slowly.
‘No,’ she said, incurably honest. ‘But I want you to be happy.’
Closing the gap between then, Bram took her hands in a firm, warm clasp. ‘Do you mean that, Sophie?’
She nodded, not meeting his eyes. ‘I don’t want to marry you if you’re not going to be happy,’ she muttered.
‘Does my happiness really matter to you that much?’
Sophie swallowed, very conscious of his hands holding hers. ‘Yes. I want you to be honest, Bram.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘To be absolutely honest, there’s only one thing I need to make me happy.’
She made herself look up into his eyes, bracing herself to hear that he wanted Melissa to leave Nick.
‘And that’s you,’ said Bram.
There was a frozen pause. Sophie stared at him, not sure that she had heard correctly. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you,’ he said. ‘You’re all I want and all I need. You asked me if I want to marry you today, and I do, but what I want even more than that is for you to love me, Sophie, the way I so desperately love you.’
‘You love me?’ Sophie repeated blankly, afraid to let herself believe even then.
Bram smiled at her expression. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘It’s not part of our deal, I know. We agreed that we would be good friends. But, since you’re asking me to be honest, Sophie, I have to tell you that being friends isn’t enough for me.’
His grip on her hands tightened and he pulled her closer. ‘I know you’ll always be my friend, but I want more than that. I want you in my heart and in my life and in my bed as well. If you really want to make me happy, Sophie darling, all you have to do is to tell me that’s where you want to be too.’
Sophie drew an unsteady breath as happiness tumbled dizzily through her. It was wonderful to be able to tell the truth at last. ‘That’s where I want to be, Bram,’ she said shakily. ‘That’s what I want more than anything else in the world.’
He kissed her then, a hard, hungry kiss, and Sophie flung her arms round him and melted into him, delirious with the sheer joy of knowing that he was hers and he loved her.
‘Oh, Bram,’ she sighed, blizzarding kisses along his jaw, clinging to his wonderfully solid body, loving the taste of his mouth and the touch of his hands and the feel of his arms around her. ‘I’ve been so unsure about everything. I thought you wanted to be with Melissa. When I overheard you last night it sounded as if you were persuading her that it wasn’t too late for her to leave Nick for you.’
Bram tightened his hold on her. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, horrified at the very thought. ‘Melissa doesn’t want to leave Nick; she loves him.’
‘Then why has she seemed so tense and unhappy?’
‘I don’t think Nick realised what it would be like to be married. He was carried away by Melissa’s beauty, but now that he’s got her he feels tied down. Melissa says that whenever they go out he finds someone to flirt with.’
‘Like he did with me at that engagement dinner?’
‘Exactly,’ said Bram. ‘I think he’s probably just beating his chest to prove that he’s still male, but it hurts Melissa. I tried to encourage her to tell him that she wouldn’t put up with it any more, but she was afraid that if she did Nick would leave. Last night I finally convinced her that she had to at least talk to him.’
Sophie leant her head against Bram’s shoulder and kissed his throat. ‘Is that what you were talking about for so long?’
‘I could see that Melissa was wound up,’ he tried to explain. ‘She was feeling desperate about Nick, but she didn’t want to say anything to spoil our engagement or your father’s party. Nick was furious with her for calling the rescue services when he was lost, and she was at the end of her tether last night. It was obvious that she was on edge and needed someone to talk to.’
‘Why didn’t she talk to me?’ said Sophie, a little hurt.
‘She didn’t feel that she could, after everything that happened with Nick. It would have been very awkward. We’ve always got on well, and I seemed to be the only one she could talk to.’
Sophie pulled back slightly to look at Bram. ‘Are you still in love with her?’ she made herself ask.
‘I love Melissa,’ he said, ‘but I’m not in love with her any more. I don’t think I have been for a very long time. I was used to the idea of loving her more than anything else.
‘Then you came back, and I realised what it meant to really fall in love. It wasn’t what I expected at all. This isn’t what I felt for Melissa, Sophie,’ he said earnestly. ‘This is so much more real, and because it is I need you and want you and love you so much more. I told myself it would be fine being just friends, but it wasn’t. I hated seeing you with Nick, wondering if you still loved him as much as you always said that you did. I wasn’t sure—I couldn’t believe you still could be—but you seemed determined to be friends with me and nothing else.’
‘Only because you were,’ Sophie protested, still struggling to take in the wonderful, incredible, joyous fact that he loved her—her. If it hadn’t been for the cold seeping up through her rubber boots she would have been afraid that she was dreaming.
‘I did love Nick,’ she admitted. ‘I loved him desperately for a while. But I don’t love him any more, and I never loved him the way I love you, Bram. I can see now that what I felt for him was a kind of obses
sion. But you…you’re part of me. You always have been and you always will be.’
She kissed him again, thrilled to know that she could, and that he would kiss her back.
‘I can’t believe that loving you was right in front of me all the time,’ she said, kissing her way up his throat and along his jaw. ‘All those years and I didn’t see it until the other day, and now…now I can’t see anything else. There’s just you. Only you. You’re all that matters.’
She wrapped her arms around his back, rejoicing at the feel of the powerful muscles flexing beneath her touch, wondering if it was too cold to pull his shirt free and let her hands drift over his skin. She wasn’t feeling cold at all now. Quite the opposite.
‘Bram,’ she murmured between kisses.
‘Mmm?’
‘Remember how you told me that if I wanted you to make love to me all I had to do was say?’
He smiled against her ear. ‘I do remember that, yes.’
‘Can I drop it into the conversation now?’
Bram laughed and took her face between her hands. ‘You don’t think you might like to go and get married first?’ he suggested. ‘I could make an honest woman of you…and it would be a shame to waste all your mother’s planning.’
‘The wedding!’ Sophie jumped back in comical dismay. ‘Mum’s going to kill me!’
‘We’ve still got twenty-five minutes,’ said Bram, looking at his watch. ‘We can do it. Ring her while I shower and get changed. Tell her we’ll meet them at the church.’
Her parents were waiting for them at the church door as they drove up in the old Land Rover. Joe beamed at the sight of Sophie’s radiant face, and watched indulgently as Bram gave her a lingering kiss. ‘In you go,’ he said, jerking his head towards the church with a grin. ‘I’ll bring her in in a minute!’
Harriet was rather tight-lipped, but too relieved that a last-minute cancellation had been averted to say too much as she fussed around Sophie. ‘Here’s the bouquet, and the flowers for your hair. Oh, dear, look at the state of it…Has anyone got a comb? And is that hay on your skirt, Sophie?’
