by Cora Seton
“No.” Harris pulled Sam forward as they reached the far side of the displays. Sam thought he was about to make a run for the double doors that hopefully led into the chapel’s sanctuary, when Honey looped around them one more time.
“How about—”
“We’re not buying anything else!”
Honey quailed and Sam didn’t blame her. The woman had pushed Harris to the edge of his patience, and he was formidable when he was angry.
“Not even rings?” Honey managed, holding up a tray of them.
Harris stopped in his tracks. Sam held her breath.
Rings. She hadn’t even thought of them.
“Hell,” Harris said. He turned her. “I didn’t—”
“That’s okay,” she said hurriedly.
Honey drew herself up. “It absolutely is not okay. This is your bride. This is the woman pledging her heart to yours for the rest of her life. This is a holy occasion.”
For a moment Sam thought Harris would point out the irony of that statement, standing where they were, but to his credit he didn’t. Instead he nodded.
“We need rings.”
“Come over to the display. We have lots of lovely ones to choose from,” Honey said.
As Sam and Harris followed her slowly, Sam wondered again if she was doing the right thing. Back in the ladies’ room she’d thought she was. Every time Harris looked her way, she was sure she was, but standing next to him in this tacky salesroom at this ridiculous chapel, she had to wonder if she’d lost her mind.
“Take a look,” Honey said, lining up several trays of rings. Some of them belonged in the bottom of a cereal box, but Sam was surprised to see Honey was right; they did have some lovely ones. “You’re a traditional girl,” Honey told her. “You need a traditional ring that will stand by you through the years. I always think it’s sad how people today turn their back on the tried and true. There’s a reason for traditions, don’t you think? They worked for those who came before us, and they’ll work for us, too.”
She pulled a ring out of its slot in the tray and held it out. “Try this on.”
Sam did and a tremor ran through her when it fit perfectly. It was a single diamond in a beautiful silver setting.
“That’s an engagement ring, of course,” Honey said. “Here’s the band that goes with it. It’ll fit,” she assured them. “You’ll want to wait for the ceremony to put it on. Now for you,” she said to Harris and considered the rings, “Here’s one.” She held out a thick, silver masculine band that Sam thought would suit him to a T.
“We’ll take them.”
Sam slid the engagement ring off and handed it to Honey. Honey took the flowers and led the way to a cash register tucked discreetly to one side. She rang up the purchases. “Plus the fee for the ceremony.” She tapped in a few more numbers and named a total that made Sam wince. She reached for a purse that wasn’t there.
Harris pulled out his wallet without comment, presented a credit card and paid the bill.
“Come this way,” Honey said graciously when the transaction was done. She opened the double doors, and Sam, flustered at the thought of being thrust suddenly into the sanctuary when she was unprepared, sighed in relief to see yet another ante-chamber. This one was furnished only with a bench and a beautiful stained-glass window on one side. “I’ll give you two lovebirds a moment alone.” Honey kept the flowers and wedding bands, but presented Harris with the engagement ring in a small velvet box. “Perhaps you’d like to propose,” she said to him in a penetrating whisper. With a lift of her eyebrows toward Sam, she slipped through another set of double doors and disappeared.
Sam closed her eyes at absurdity of it all, but when she opened them again, Harris stood before her, studying her again. Without a word, he led her to the white upholstered bench and she sat down. He sat beside her.
“She’s right. We should take a minute. This is a big step. It deserves some thought.”
“I’ve thought it through,” she assured him. If he changed his mind now, she didn’t know what she’d do.
“Have you?” He scanned her face. “It isn’t an easy life I’m offering. Most women want more. A big house, fancy cars, lots of furniture. Do you think you’ll be able to live like we do?”
Sam laughed. “Harris, I’ve lived in a bus almost my entire life. A bus I shared with eleven other people, most of whom weren’t related to me. There’s nothing Base Camp can throw at me I haven’t seen before.”
When she took in his quizzical expression, Sam figured he was wondering about the circumstances of her upbringing, but before she could explain, he shook his head with a small chuckle.
“What?” she asked.
“It’s good to hear you call me that,” he explained. “In the Navy it was always Hawk this, Hawk that.”
“Hawk? Is that your nickname?”
“It’s a stupid name. I don’t like it, and I’ve put it to rest.” He examined his hands where they rested on his knees. He’d set the small velvet box aside on the seat.
“Is it because… you’re a sniper?”
“Was a sniper. That’s not who I am anymore.” His expression darkened and he looked away. “Can’t say I know for sure who I am these days.”
She understood that. “Maybe we can create something new together.” She reached out tentatively and touched one of his hands. She was so curious about him, but as soon as her fingertips slid over his skin, she pulled back, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Harris caught her hand in his, a lightning-quick move she wouldn’t have believed if not for the pressure of his fingers around hers. “Don’t ever be sorry for touching me. Don’t ever be sorry for anything you do.”
“I’m not sure what’s allowed,” she confessed to him. “We’re getting married, but we don’t know anything about each other. I want… I want to love you, but I’m not sure what you want.”
Harris didn’t answer for a long time. Then he reached for the little box, drew the ring out of it and pushed off the bench to kneel before her.
“I don’t know you, but I know what this represents to me.” He held up the ring. “It represents the commitment I’m making to you. I will love you and only you for the rest of my life. I will stay with you no matter what happens until my dying day. I will protect you from anything that wants to harm you for all time. When I put this ring on your finger, I’m giving you a promise. And I don’t ever walk away from a promise.” He took her hand and raised it, hesitating. “This ring means forever. Is that what you want?”
Sam’s heart expanded until she didn’t think her rib cage could contain it. “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I want.”
As Harris slid the ring onto Sam’s slender finger, his heart was banging away in his chest like the rattle of a snare drum announcing a military charge on some old-fashioned battleground. Fate was handing him the gift of everything he’d ever wanted and all he could think was this had to be some mistake. Surely he wasn’t allowed to be this happy.
Sam’s green eyes watched his every move as he stood and lifted her along with him. She tilted her chin for a better view, and he spotted the dark curve of a single eyelash resting on the apple of her cheek. He automatically leaned closer and brushed it away.
Her delicate fragrance, the tendrils of her hair coming loose from her updo, the smoothness of her skin under his fingertips fired up a longing in him he’d always managed to keep in check until now. Sam took a ragged breath and he fought the urge to crush her against him and taste the promised sweetness of her mouth.
Not yet.
Fire throbbed through his veins as she pulled back, watching him again, raising a hand to the spot where he’d just touched her.
“An eyelash,” he explained, his voice unexpectedly gruff.
Honey opened the door and leaned around it. “Ready, you two?”
“Yes,” Harris forced himself to say. He was ready. To hell with the consequences; there was no way he’d back out now.
This tim
e when they went through the double doors, they finally entered the sanctuary of the chapel. Harris bit back a chuckle at the décor: as white as the rest of the building. Whoever owned this place had a heaven-complex. White carpet flowed over the floor. White wooden benches stood in straight lines facing front, where a white raised dais stood lined with white vases full of white chrysanthemums. A white lectern stood waiting for the officiant, who was nowhere to be seen, and for one moment Harris wondered if Honey played that role, too, until a door opened and a man walked out.
“That’s Reverend Gabriel,” Honey whispered loudly. “The Reverend of Love.”
Harris’s fingers twitched. He caught Sam’s eye and found her biting her lip, obviously fighting against laughter. So his future wife had a sense of humor.
Good. She was going to need it back at Base Camp.
“Harris, you go down front there and stand before the reverend. Samantha, you stand back here. When the music starts, you walk down that aisle—slowly, like a real lady.”
Samantha made a choking sound and coughed to hide it. Harris touched her hand as he passed with what he hoped she’d read as an encouraging squeeze. As Honey fussed around her and Samantha composed herself, he moved to the head of the chapel, where Reverend Gabriel nodded benignly at him. He wore a white outfit that was a cross between a tuxedo and ministerial garb with a stiff collar and a large, white crucifix hanging around his neck. He held a white calfskin Bible between manicured fingers. Harris shuddered to think how the ceremony might go.
But then his attention was taken by Honey hurrying up the aisle. She presented him with the ring box that held their wedding bands. “Don’t lose it,” she admonished him, and clucked over him as she straightened his plaid shirt.
“How the hell am I going to lose it? I’m standing right here at the altar,” Harris blurted before thinking better of it.
Honey huffed. “Respect! You’re in the presence of God!” She pushed past him, climbed onto the dais and sat herself at a white baby grand piano in the corner. She fanned herself for a moment with a set of sheet music before arranging it and preparing to play.
Harris was still looking around for the Deity when the first chords of the bridal march crashed over him. Honey was an exuberant musician, and casting aside all thought about the irregularities of the Heaven’s Gate Chapel, Harris focused instead on the woman walking down the aisle toward him.
The woman he was about to marry.
Samantha looked like a queen as she floated down the aisle toward him, an angel descended from the heavens to escort him into certain bliss. It didn’t matter to him that Honey’s music was more loud than accurate, or that the officiant was puffing out his chest as if he meant to belt out an opera rather than speak the words that would bind them together.
It didn’t even matter that he’d told himself he wasn’t meant for marriage.
He was here, and so was Samantha. That was all that counted.
When Samantha reached his side, he took her hand as if they’d known each other for years, not hours. Her fingers curved around his and held on as if he was her lifeline. Harris swore to himself that was exactly what he’d be to her—a pillar of strength in an uncertain world. A lookout for danger. A sword at the ready.
But when she turned to him, lifted her gaze to his and smiled as Honey’s music came to a crashing close, Harris realized his methods of dealing with life’s problems weren’t going to work anymore. He wasn’t a lone shepherd guarding his flock from the wolves. He wasn’t the sniper on a roof pinpointing a target and eliminating it.
He was a man holding a woman’s hand, and that woman would expect to share his world, his life and his thoughts. He couldn’t hold her at arm’s length while he protected her. She’d want to enter the circle of silence he’d always surrounded himself with, that space that allowed him to be more vigilant than everyone else. Harris’s throat thickened with an unfamiliar feeling that made him want to step away a few paces. To re-establish that buffer zone between him and the rest of the world.
But he couldn’t. Not anymore.
“Dearly Beloved,” Reverend Gabriel announced suddenly in a baritone that belonged on Broadway. “We are gathered here today to join this man and this woman for all eternity in holy matrimony.”
Harris swallowed. Samantha was as fine as a china statue. Her beautiful eyes, pale cheeks and curved mouth made up the stuff of fantasies for a man like him. Despite what she’d said about growing up in a bus, he could tell from the openness of her expression she’d lived a privileged life of safety. She didn’t know poverty or desperation or disaster. She had no idea the dangers the world contained. How could he care for her and keep her close, all at the same time?
“Let us consider the nature of marriage,” the reverend went on, oblivious to Harris’s internal struggle. “A wedding isn’t a party.” He fixed Harris with a stern look. “It’s an occasion to take stock.”
Harris tuned him out. He was taking stock, damn it. Taking stock and finding that the shelves were empty and he’d set his storehouse on fire. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t put everyone around him in danger by pursuing this selfish path. Look what had happened to Nora when he relaxed his vigilance. He was the watcher.
Not the lover.
Harris looked down at Samantha again. Found her looking up at him, a tiny crease forming between her eyebrows. He knew she was sensing the turmoil inside him. If he left now—
Samantha squeezed his hand again encouragingly, sending Harris whirling into a memory from the distant past, before either of the hurricanes had torn apart his life. He was up on top of a slide at some playground. His elementary school, maybe. He had the impression of a small, blonde girl, someone in his kindergarten class. Laurie… Lanie? Lanie Sudeker. He couldn’t believe he could still pull that name out of his memory.
His legs were splayed before him. He was looking down the sweep of the slide, an enormous distance off the ground, although Harris was sure it wasn’t nearly as high as it had felt back then. Lanie, standing behind him on the ladder waiting her turn, took another step up, plopped herself on the platform, scooted up behind him, her legs to either side of his, and put her arms around his waist. “I’m scared, too,” she announced. “We’ll do it together.”
They’d pushed off, slid down and spent the rest of that recess racing up the ladder and sliding down again.
Harris, reeling from the unexpected memory, realized for the first time how much he’d lost of his early years. Hurricane Andrew had wiped the slate clean with the force of the catastrophe his family had lived through. Those first hungry weeks, the constant worry and tears of the people all around him, the never-ending bus ride to New Orleans and the herculean task of starting over in a brand-new city had all conspired to erase his time in Florida. But there had been good times back then. Memories of a different life he could draw on. A time when a hug and an offer of friendship could solve any problem.
Harris squeezed Samantha’s hand back. This beautiful woman standing next to him was offering him more than friendship. She was offering her heart. Shouldn’t he at least try to be worthy of it?
As Reverend Gabriel wound down his sermon on the wedded state and slid into the familiar wording of the vows, Harris stood tall. Damn straight he’d try to be worthy of it. He’d give it his all. Maybe he’d fail, but it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
He was going to make a life with the woman standing by his side.
He was wavering. Harris was wavering, she was sure of it, and Sam couldn’t blame him one bit. They were rushing this wedding, the venue was ridiculous, the officiant obviously loved the sound of his own voice and things like this didn’t—couldn’t—turn out well.
What had she been thinking running away from her family and joining up with a group of strangers who for all she knew were some sort of cult that had gotten television sponsorship? What was she doing marrying this… sniper? Why was she in this fairy-tale dress, in this merengue of a chapel, like Cinderel
la—doomed to a hard return to earth when the clock struck twelve and exposed this whole venture as the farce it was?
Harris kept swallowing as if fighting to find the words to stop the proceedings. His hand in hers had grown lax and cold. He was having second thoughts. He wanted out. And so did—
No.
Sam got a hold of herself and slowed her breathing, which had grown shallow and fast. No, she didn’t want out and from what he’d said back on the bench outside the sanctuary, Harris didn’t, either. She tried to come up with a rational explanation for his behavior. Her own concerns were that she wouldn’t live up to Harris’s expectations—that she’d disappoint him somehow and he’d feel tethered to a woman who didn’t suit him for the rest of his life.
Could Harris be thinking something similar? Was he worried he wasn’t good enough for her?
When she glanced up, he was glancing down again and the worry in his gaze made her think maybe she was right. She squeezed his hand to encourage him. Of course he was good enough for her.
Too good.
If anyone was to disappoint, it would be her.
What did she know of marriage, after all? It wasn’t like she had any examples to base her actions on. Henry and Rachel hadn’t managed to stay faithful more than a year and a half, and even that was debatable, Sam had often thought. Their devotion to Deader Than Ever was the only constant thing in their lives.
Would her body hold interest for Harris? She wasn’t the flamboyantly sexual being her sister was. Nor was she the free spirit her mother had always been. Maybe she was too uptight for Harris’s tastes.
Maybe she’d disappoint him the first time they made love.
It was her turn to let her hand go slack in Harris’s, but just as she’d encouraged him, now he gripped hers firmly, tugged a little until she looked up at him. He caught her gaze and held it, and all Sam’s doubts fled before the intensity of his deep blue eyes staring back at her.
She’d do whatever it took to keep this man happy, she decided. She’d love him with everything she had. More, even.
