A Bravo Christmas Wedding

by Christine Rimmer

  He groaned, and clearly not from passion. “Does anything ever get you down?”

  “Sure. But not for long.”

  His expression softened. “You are something really special—and I mean beyond your being an actual real-life princess and all.” And then he reached across the table.

  Rory reached back. Their fingers met and twined in the middle.

  I love you, Walker. Love you, love you...

  It sounded so good inside her head. It sounded right. She was just about to go ahead and say it.

  But then, with his other hand, he grabbed his phone, which he’d set on the edge of the table. “I’ve got to try to get hold of Bud. He’ll call Rye for me. And then you can call Clara. You can have Clara call your mother.”

  She pulled her hand from his. “Walker.” Now she was the one groaning. “Talk about a mood killer.”

  He wiggled his fingers. “Give me your hand back. Do it now.” She made a face at him, but then she did put her hand in his again. He wrapped his fingers around hers and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, bringing a little thrill of happiness to curl around her heart. “There’ll be time for romance once we let everyone know where we are.”

  She laughed. “Right. In between your checking my pupils, changing my bandage and monitoring my vital signs.”

  His gaze was tinged with reproach. “I’m just trying to keep us safe.”

  How could she fault him for that? “Thank you—and fine. Let’s make those calls.”

  He called Bud, who promised not only to look after the animals, but also to call Ryan and tell him what was going on. As soon as the weather cleared, he would come with the snowshoes.

  The phone was the kind that kept a thirty-hour charge and could get reception in the most remote places, but tended to drop calls in the middle of conversations due to the movement of the satellites it accessed. Rory had to call Clara twice to tell her all she needed to know—which did not include the part about the gash on her head. Clara agreed to call Rory’s mother and explain that she and Walker were waiting out a sudden snowstorm in a cozy mountain cabin a few miles from Walker’s house and out of cell phone reach for a day or two.

  When she hung up, Walker was watching her accusingly. “You didn’t say a word about your injury.”

  “That’s right. If Clara doesn’t know, I don’t have to ask her to lie to my mother for me.”

  “Your mother has a right to—”

  “Don’t even get started. What my mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I am going to be fine, and if she knows I’m stuck in a blizzard with a big bandage on my head, she’s only going to worry—and just possibly decide she’s got to fly to my rescue. No, thanks.”

  “I don’t like lying to your mother.”

  “But you haven’t lied to her. And neither have I, really. I’ve just...omitted a detail or two.”

  “Princess voice,” he muttered.

  She stood. “And now, if you don’t mind, I need to use that little hut with the half-moon on the door.” The outhouse was twenty paces from the exit outside the attached woodshed lean-to.

  Of course, he insisted on going out with her. “First aid precaution. You don’t want to be alone for twenty-four hours after a head injury.”

  She’d taken more than one first aid course and knew he was right. So she didn’t even argue. They put their coats back on and went out into the storm again, trudging the short distance through the drifts together. He did let her go in alone, but he waited for her beside the outhouse door.

  Back in the cabin, they peeled off their coats and washed their hands using the water they’d warmed on the stove. He wouldn’t let her disturb her bandage, but he did help her clean the dried blood from her temples and her hair. Once that was done, she didn’t look quite so grisly. She rinsed out her wool cap and set it close to the stove to dry.

  After that, came the waiting. He found an old pack of cards and they played gin rummy. By four, it was still snowing. They lit the lamps.

  At six, they had dinner. Rory had scoured the shelves and discovered an old canister full of Lipton tea bags, so they drank hot tea with their half sandwiches.

  “The rest of the evening should be spectacular,” he said wryly. “More gin rummy. And did you notice that shelf full of ancient magazines and old paperbacks by John le Carré and Louis L’Amour?”

  “I did.” She blew on her tea and then sipped. “My father’s a big fan of Louis L’Amour. I might give old Louis a try.”

  He studied her for a minute. “You’re bored to death, right?”

  “No,” she said, and meant it. “Do I look like I’m bored?”

  He shook his head. “No. I guess you don’t.”

  Silence. The words rose in her throat, begging to be said. I love you, Walker. But she swallowed them down yet again.

  She ate the rest of her half sandwich and thought about seducing him. Fat chance. No way would he let his guard down that much. He seemed to feel honor bound to watch her constantly for signs of incipient mental deterioration caused by her injury—for which he’d decided to blame himself.

  So, then. If he wouldn’t make love with her and she couldn’t quite get her mouth around the L word, at least they could talk about something that mattered.

  So she asked, “Did you ever bring Denise here?”

  His eyes widened. Classic are-you-kidding expression. “To this cabin?” At her nod, he said, “Never.” And he actually chuckled. “You have no idea how much she would have hated it.”

  “Well, I don’t hate it. But then, I’m not Denise.”

  She had to give him credit. He got the message. And he didn’t get defensive about it. “No, you’re not.”

  “Not in any way.”

  “Nope. Not the least little bit.”

  She sipped more tea and batted her eyelashes. “Denise was way hot. Are you saying I’m not?—and wait.” She pointed at her forehead. “Don’t answer that until the bandage comes off and the bruises fade.”

  Of course, he answered anyway. “You are hot. Very. Even with a bloody bandage on your forehead.”

  “Well, okay. I may keep you around, after all.” They’d both finished their meager meal. She pushed her chair back. “Bring your tea. Let’s sit on the sofa. We’ll have a nice chat.”

  “A chat about...?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He eyed her with caution—but he did rise and follow her over there, where they sat side by side and put their mugs on the rough-hewn low table in front of them.

  She’d taken off her boots earlier. Now she turned toward him and drew up her knees to the side. “I want you to talk to me about Denise.”

  He looked slightly pained. “And this is a good idea...why?”

  “Because you almost never talk about her. And I want to understand...” She didn’t know exactly how to finish. “I don’t know, whatever you want to tell me. Whatever you want to say about her.”

  “You’re serious?” He searched her face.

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Walker watched Rory’s battered face. The bruises had spread below the delicate ridge of her brow. But her eyes were as clear and focused as ever. He was pretty sure she was going to be fine.

  No thanks to him. He would never forgive himself for not taking better care of her back at the falls.

  “Walker?”

  “Huh?”

  “Just talk about Denise a little. Whatever you want to say.”

  “Nothing?” he suggested hopefully.

  But Rory only waited.

  He gave in. “She... What can I say? The first night I met her, at that bar where Rye used to work before he opened McKellan’s, she swore she loved it here in the mountains. She went home to the ranch with me that first night. The
next morning, she said how much she loved it there, that it would really be something, to live there with me, forever. I believed her. I was gone, gone, gone.

  “But as soon as we were married, she changed it all up. Suddenly, she was all about sunshine and palm trees. She would drag around the house in her robe all day. She cried all the time. We started fighting a lot. She laid down the law. She wanted to go home, and she wanted me to come with her, to relocate. I refused. I’m not a Florida kind of guy. But more than that, I kept remembering that Rye had warned me she wasn’t for real. I felt I’d been played, you know?”

  She made a small sound, encouraging. Understanding. “I can see how you would feel that way.”

  He plowed on. “She packed up and left. Said she’d send the divorce papers. In spite of how bad it had been by the end, I missed her. I really was gone on her and the feeling hadn’t died yet. I started rethinking the situation, started trying to see her side of it.”

  “Which was?”

  “She was my wife. I loved her. And I owed it to her, owed it to what we had together, to try harder to make it work. Instead of blaming her for playing me, I tried to see it through her eyes. I told myself she hadn’t been working me, that she really had thought she wanted a life on the ranch with me, but then, once she was living the life she’d been so sure she wanted, she’d realized she’d been wrong. Honest mistake. I started thinking that maybe I ought to give Florida a chance.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. “Wow. You. Living in Miami. Not really picturing that.”

  “Yeah, well. Rye told me not to go, that he’d seen Denise coming a mile away, that she was one of those women who’s all sweet and easygoing at first. It’s only later a guy learns that it’s her way or forget it. I didn’t believe him. I decided to go to Florida to try to work it out with her.”

  “I never knew you went to Florida.”

  “I told Rye. No one else. It was a short trip.”

  “So...what happened?”

  He touched her cheek. So soft. And he smoothed her long brown hair. Because it felt good. Everything about Rory felt good. Better. Richer. Fuller than with any other woman he’d ever known—better even than the best times with Denise. “Rory. It’s enough. You already know that it didn’t work out.”

  “Walker. Tell me.”

  “It’s not a good story.”

  “Please. I want to know.”

  “Why?”

  She gave him one of those looks. Patient and maybe a little put out at him. “Because it’s about you and you matter to me.”

  “So are you going to tell me about all your other boyfriends?”

  She didn’t bat an eye. “Absolutely, if that’s what you want from me.”

  Did he? Want to know about her and some other guy? What for? It would only make him long to start rearranging somebody’s face. “You still seeing any of them?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Carrying a torch for any of them?”

  “No.”

  He couldn’t help smirking. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to hear all about them.”

  “Wonderful.” She waited, undeterred.

  He grunted. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me what happened when you went after Denise in Miami.”

  “Crap.”

  “Still waiting.”

  He gave in and told her the rest. “A week and a half after she left me, I called Denise. Said we needed to talk, that I was flying to Miami. She seemed glad to hear from me. Hopeful. Sweet. She picked me up at the airport and took me to her apartment, which it turned out she’d had before she came to Colorado. She’d only sublet it for the year she was gone. She said how happy she was to see me. I told her I was willing to try Florida. For her. Things got intimate. Then her boyfriend showed up.”

  Rory gasped. “Wait. What boyfriend?”

  “The guy she’d been with before she came to Colorado. She’d gotten back with him.”

  “No way.”

  “Oh, yeah. It was pretty bad. Turned out, when I called and said I was coming to see her, she’d dumped him all over again. Poor guy was wrecked. Tears running down his face, he swore that the past week and a half had been the happiest of his life.”

  “Week and a half?” Rory squeaked. “But didn’t you say it was a week and a half since she left you?”

  “Yeah. I did the math, too. Meanwhile, the other guy was beside himself—begging her not to leave him, threatening to kick my teeth in. She finally got rid of him and then she started telling me how that guy was nothing, and she was so glad I’d finally realized that with her, in Miami, was where I was meant to be. She had it all planned. Back then, Rye and I were still co-owners of the Bar-N. She wanted me to sell my half—to Rye or to whoever was willing to pay the money. And then she and I would use the profit to buy a small business right there in Miami, maybe a Subway franchise, maybe a discount liquor store.”

  “Oh, Walker.” She took his hand, wove her fingers with his. “I’m just not seeing you with a Subway franchise.”

  “Exactly. That was what really did it, really ended it with her and me. Not her walking out on me, not her getting back with that poor sucker the day she got off the plane from Colorado. It was when she said I should sell my half of the Bar-N.”

  “You would never do that.” She said it quietly, but with absolute conviction.

  “That’s right. And that was when I finally understood that it was never going to work with her. I still wanted her, still believed that I loved her. That was hard, still being so far gone on her when I didn’t even like her anymore. Rye had been right about her. And I’d completely misread her. We had nothing in common, really. It was chemistry. That’s all we had. And it was wild and sweet for a little while, but we never should have gotten married. I was a complete idiot to think it was ever going to work. Learned my lesson on that one.”

  “What lesson?” she asked kind of breathlessly.

  “Never should have gotten married. Never doing it again.”

  She pulled her hand free of his. “Hold on. Just because it didn’t work with Denise doesn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Oh, you are so wrong.”

  “Look. My father left my mother when I was six years old. She waited her whole life for him to come back. The day she died, she was still waiting. She died saying his name. That’s delusional. I just don’t get marriage. It’s like some foreign language to me. I’ve got no experience of how to be married, of what makes a marriage work. And selfishly speaking, it took me too damn long to get past what happened with Denise. I don’t want to go through that again.”

  “But you don’t have to go through that again. Not if you choose someone who wouldn’t tell you lies, someone more suited to you, someone who really does love exactly the kind of life that you do...” Her voice trailed off. But her eyes held the strangest look. A pleading, vulnerable sort of look.

  And it was right then, by that look in her eyes, that he finally began to realize there was more going on here than he was picking up.

  He asked carefully, “You mean someone who isn’t lying when she says she wants the same things I want out of life?”

  “Well, yeah.” Beneath the blood-spotted white bandage, she gazed at him so hopefully.

  And that did it. He might be thick as a post when it came to love and the female mind. But Rory, well, she was different. Not only his lover, but his friend in the basic, best sense of the word. He knew her in ways he’d never known another woman. He could read her. And as much as he understood any woman, he understood her.

  And he knew what he saw in those big brown eyes of hers.

  She thinks she’s in love with me.

  And damned if she wasn’t trying to fin
d a way to tell him so.

  Love. Uh-uh. He was no good for that. Not good at it. She deserved so much better.

  He had to make her see that the whole love thing with him was never going to work. And he needed to do that before she said anything she would later regret. He grunted. “Get real. What happens when I mess that up, too?”

  “But you won’t.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  “Oh, Walker, don’t you see? That’s the point. It’s really pretty simple. If you choose the right person and both of you are honest and true to each other. If you work hard, together, to make it work—”

  “Uh-uh. I’m a lot better off not trying to do something I’ve got no clue how to do. And so is any poor woman who might be crazy enough to think it’s a good idea to take me on.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts. Not about this.”

  A gasp of outrage escaped her. “Of course there are buts. Love is like anything else in life. If you don’t know how, you learn. You get better as you go along.”

  “Maybe for some people. Not for me.”

  “But—”

  “Not going to happen, Rory. Not going there. Not ever again. I’ve got a good life and I like it just the way it is.”

  * * *

  Rory got the picture. She got it crystal clear.

  He knew.

  He knew that she was in love with him. He got that she was trying to find a way to tell him so.

  He knew. He got it. And he didn’t want to hear it.

  That hurt worse than a giant icicle to the head. She longed to launch herself at him, beat on his broad chest and yell at him for being a pigheaded fool who didn’t know the greatest thing in the world when it was staring him in the face.

  But she didn’t yell or pound his chest.

  She just sat there and glared at him and tried to decide...

  Did she intend to tell him, anyway? Was she going to say it out loud, that she loved him and wanted him, wanted to live her life with him, right here in Colorado, at the Bar-N?