Penn shook his head. “Unless the sleeping porch actually tore away from the main part of the house — which I don’t think it did — the inner rooms should still be dry. I’ll know in the morning.”
There was nothing that could be done before then, she knew. There could be no assessment of the structural damage till it was light.
Her marshmallows were done; she absentmindedly tried to eat them both at the same time, and ended up with goo all over her face. Penn watched for a moment as she tried to clean it off, then helpfully began to remove it himself, half-licking and half-kissing.
And by the time he was finished with that and had doused the fire and led her upstairs, Kaitlyn no longer remembered that he hadn’t ever answered her question.
*****
Sunlight pouring through the balcony windows woke her the next morning — brilliant sunlight, cascading down from a crisp, clear, bright blue sky — and she peered out at the world that looked as fresh and newly-washed as if it had just come from the laundry. Then she realized that Penn was nowhere to be seen.
His absence didn’t bother her at first; it was later than she’d thought, and no doubt he was already inspecting the damage the fallen tree had done.
But she found no sign of him downstairs, and no evidence that he had been there. The power had come back on sometime during the night, but he hadn’t even made coffee. She told herself it was nothing; he would have been anxious to check the cabin. But when she went out to see the damage for herself, only the birds greeted her.
The hole in the side of the cabin was a gaping wound. Kaitlyn stared at it, aghast, wondering if Penn had taken one look and decided it wasn’t worth the work of repairing. Or had everything that had happened — the storm, the damage to truck and cabin, the explosive evening with Kaitlyn herself — made him conclude that it was time to move on?
Her common sense told her such a thing was unlikely. His car was still there — blocked by the fallen tree, she reminded herself.
But the little nugget of fear settled at the bottom of her stomach. It was the harsh truth that he had left her once, and she knew that sooner or later it would happen again. She had made her choices with that knowledge firmly in mind, but the facts didn’t make things easier.
Then she heard a whistle and Schnoodle’s cheerful yapping. She hadn’t even missed the dog, but Penn was coming down the path, a chain saw cradled in his arms and Schnoodle at his heels. “I borrowed it from the guy a couple of houses down,” he explained. “We aren’t going anywhere as long as that tree is blocking the road.”
She tried to play it casual. “What’s so important about getting out, anyway?” she said with a shrug.
He grinned and kissed her lightly. “Don’t you remember? I told you I’d have a talk with Marcus today.”
Something snapped deep inside her. “That’s right,” she agreed woodenly. “To set him straight and tell him that I don’t mean a damned thing to you and I never did.”
She saw the shock in his face, so like that night ten years ago when she’d implied a future that he didn’t want.
You asked for this, Kaitlyn, she told herself coldly.
She’d always known there would be no promises from Penn — at least not the kind she wanted. She had told herself she could live without promises, but whether that was actually true or not made no difference now. Whatever she said, it would look as if she was making demands, and that alone would be enough to drive him away. She had set herself up for this; it was no one’s fault but her own. There was nothing she could say now that would make it better.
So she turned on her heel and stalked back into the cabin.
“Damn it, Kaitlyn!” The door slammed as he followed her in. “I’m heartily sick of this!”
And nothing you say can possibly make it worse, either, she thought. So why not stop bottling it up inside?
“You’re sick of it?” she shouted. “I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking of, Penn Caldwell! Yourself, that’s obvious. Well, you don’t have to tell me again what you think of me — I still remember it from last time.”
He winced at that.
But she quickly found there was no satisfaction in wounding him. All the anger died away in an instant, and left her feeling limp and hopeless. “Just go ahead and leave,” she whispered. “That’s what you’ll do, sooner or later.” She turned aside with a helpless gesture.
“I’m not going anywhere, Kaitlyn.” It was very quiet, very firm. “Not for a long time.”
She didn’t bother to answer. What was a long time, anyway? Time was relative.
“I’ve got the Delaney property,” he said. “They agreed to the terms yesterday.”
It should have been a breath of reprieve. She should have instantly started to figure out how many months it would take to build a house — how long she could have him, provided that she didn’t make the mistake of growing over-possessive and lose him through her own folly. But she didn’t.
“That’s nice,” she said flatly. “But all of a sudden it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It won’t work, Penn. I want promises — and you can’t give them.”
He would leave now, she thought. He would probably be so anxious to escape that he’d go straight through the wall.
Instead, he said very calmly, “What sort of promises, Kaitlyn?”
She stared at him and realized that her hearing had suddenly gone bizarre. She’d have to have it checked… She shook her head, trying to clear it.
He came across the room and seized her by the shoulders. “Answer me,” he said fiercely. “For once, would you open up those glorious green eyes of yours and look at the way things really are instead of what you think they must be?”
She blinked up at him in wonder.
“Why the hell do you imagine I want that particular piece of ground, anyway? I can build houses anywhere — and I have. I didn’t have to choose Springhill.”
“I – I don’t know.” It was little more than a whisper, almost shaken out of her.
The handsomeness had drained out of his face, leaving only harsh lines and angles. “Because as soon as I saw you again, I knew what had been missing in my life for the past ten years.”
She was too stunned to move, and she couldn’t remember how to breathe. If it hadn’t been for his hands still clutching her shoulders she would probably have collapsed.
“I came home for Angela’s wedding,” he said. “I don’t know why. Call it a sudden attack of nostalgia. Coming at a time when I was at loose ends, it sounded like a reasonable thing to do. But that day in the church when I saw you again, I knew you weren’t just a girl I used to care about. You were—”
He let her go, and she found herself leaning against the back of the couch, grateful for its solid strength. “You could have said something,” she muttered.
“No — I couldn’t. Don’t you see, Kaitlyn? You wouldn’t have trusted me, no matter what I said. I used you ten years ago. I didn’t mean to, I swear I never intended what happened — but that doesn’t change what I did. I walked out on you, as cruelly as any man ever did. I destroyed the trust you had put in me.”
This was no slick and facile apology, she knew, but hard-edged, unpleasant truth, and obviously it had long ago been considered and admitted. Kaitlyn put her hands to her face; her cheeks were burning.
“I knew I would have to be patient in order to rebuild that trust — because I couldn’t take advantage of you again. I knew you wouldn’t believe whatever I said, but I thought that sooner or later you’d realize that I was around to stay. That’s why I wanted the Delaney property — to give me something to do while I waited. I figured by the time I built half a dozen houses on that tract of land—”
“Half a dozen?” The words were little more than a croak.
“—you’d get the message. But last night, I thought—” He gave a long, tired sigh, and admitted, “I didn’t want to think last night, that’s the real truth. I didn’t want to wait any longer, to b
e patient another day — so I told myself it was all right, that you understood I was different now. Obviously you cared about me, the way you came tearing out into that storm — and this was your way of telling me that you had forgiven what I’d done.”
“All I understood was that I wanted you,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to look at what would happen after that.”
He sounded discouraged, and angry. “And so we ripped open old wounds, and now we have to let them heal all over again.”
He started to turn away.
She pushed herself awkwardly from the couch, and caught at his arm. When he turned to her, she raised her fingertips to his forehead and stroked the small scratch made by the tree branch. “Perhaps those wounds never would have healed, left to themselves, hidden away like that,” she said. “But now we have another chance. If we share them — talk about them…”
Slowly, his arms closed around her, and she gave him a tremulous smile and then buried her face in his neck and tried not to shed the tears that burned her eyes.
He held her quietly for a long time, his face pressed against her hair. When he began to talk, his voice was so soft that she almost couldn’t catch the words.
“When you’re twenty years old, it isn’t very fashionable to actually like your parents,” he said. “And I don’t mean to say we never had disagreements. But I didn’t just lose my parents in that boating accident, Kitten. I lost my two best friends as well. I can tell you all the psychological jargon about survivor’s guilt, because I made it and they didn’t. And there was regular guilt, too, because I thought I should have been able to turn that wheel and get out of the way.”
“But that wasn’t possible,” she whispered. “Nobody could have avoided that accident.”
“Guilt isn’t logical, Kitten. And I had lots of things to feel guilty about, like the fight I’d been having with my father over whether I should drop out of college for a while, till I figured out what I wanted to do. When suddenly I was free to do it, I felt as if I’d killed him.”
A tiny spark of relief sprang to life in Kaitlyn’s heart. She’d always blamed herself because he’d dropped out of school. But it hadn’t been her fault, after all.
“For a month after the accident, I was either too numb to know what was going on, or I hurt like hell every minute of the day. And when I could comprehend anything at all, I told myself that the answer was never to care about anyone so much again. Then they couldn’t hurt me, and I couldn’t hurt them. It was perfectly simple.”
She hugged him as tightly as she could, wishing she’d understood any of this, back then. Her own innocent simplicity — pretending that it would all go away if she ignored it long enough — made her feel just a little sick.
“But you were there, and I couldn’t push you away. For one thing, you wouldn’t be pushed. And then came that awful night when I needed your warmth and your sanity and your beauty —and it was only afterward, when you held me—”
“What did I say?” she whispered. “I don’t remember, Penn. I swear, I don’t remember.”
He raised his head and looked down at her. “Nothing can come between us now,” he quoted dryly.
“Oh, Penn.”
“That’s when I realized I was doing it all over again, despite my best intentions — loving you, and leaving myself open to that awful hurt. Fearing — because if losing parents was so awful, what would it be like to lose a lover? Or a wife? Or a child?”
Her tears brimmed, and she tried futilely to blink them away. “Then it wasn’t—”
“It wasn’t you, darling. It was me, and the fear that I would lose anyone I let myself care about — and the knowledge that if it was through my fault, it would finish me.” He released a long, painful breath. “And so I deliberately cast aside the most beautiful thing that was left in my life — and I ran.”
She hugged him closer still, and tried to tell him with her touch — because there were no words — how this agonizing honesty was affecting her.
“I’m not sorry about leaving,” he added, with what was almost defiance. “If I had stayed, I would have resented it.’’
She nodded. “And you’d have resented me for keeping you here.” It wasn’t pleasant to acknowledge that, but there was peace in knowing the truth.
“For a while, I convinced myself nothing mattered but today. Why bother? Why get involved? – It will all be wiped out tomorrow anyway. Eventually I got over that, and for the past few years I’ve at least been making a contribution to the world, instead of asking nothing and giving nothing. But it wasn’t until that day at St. Matthew’s when I saw you again that I knew there was still unfinished business here. Kaitlyn, if you will only take me back, and let me show you what you mean to me—” He was whispering against her hair. “I’ll never hurt you again.”
“Yes, you will, Penn,” she said unsteadily. “And I’ll no doubt hurt you, too — because loving sometimes hurts. But never again will we hide the pain and pretend it doesn’t matter. That’s the difference.”
He took it for the answer it was, and kissed her long and softly as if he would never let her go.
“You’ve been so restless,” she murmured. “I was afraid. I thought you were getting anxious to be gone.”
He shook his head. “No. Just to know. To have this settled.”
“But you didn’t say anything when I ended my engagement,” she protested. “So I thought it didn’t matter to you what I did, and it almost broke my heart when you congratulated Marcus on getting out of marrying me.”
“But of course,” Penn said. He held her a few inches away from him. The old sparkle had sprung back into his eyes and his voice. “Marrying you would have been a fate worse than death.”
“Dammit, Penn,” she objected, and stopped dead. The one thing he hadn’t mentioned — hadn’t offered her — was marriage.
It’s all right, she told herself stoutly. I’m sure, now, that he loves me, and that’s the only thing that matters.
“For Marcus,” he added smoothly. “You see, Kitten, I never did believe in your engagement. If you had been serious about Marcus, you’d have married him long ago — or slept with him at least. But if you were willing to wait eight months—”
He saw the uncertainty in her eyes, and caught her close again. “Kitten, darling, I’m sorry. I was convinced you’d never marry Marcus, but I can’t say that was much comfort, because I wasn’t so sure you’d ever marry me, either. Will you?”
She choked on the lump in her throat, and he had to pat her on the back for almost a minute before she could stop coughing and breathe properly again.
“That’s not flattering,” he complained.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
There was a light in his eyes that made her think she’d glimpsed heaven — but he wouldn’t have been Penn if he’d said something sentimental. “Too bad we didn’t get this all sorted out last week. We could have just taken over Laura’s arrangements — church and guests and cake and all.”
“We couldn’t have gotten a license in time.”
“Want to bet?”
Something clicked in her head. “You were coming out of the courthouse the other day.”
He grinned. “And I wasn’t applying for building permits. But in any case, it doesn’t matter — we’ll have all kinds of time to get a license.”
She frowned, because that didn’t sound right, somehow. “We will?”
“Of course. You’ll want the whole show, right? I warn you, however; I am not Marcus, and I am not willing to wait forever. If you want a splashy wedding, fine — we’ll have it. But in the meantime I’ll be doing my absolute best to persuade you to live with me.”
“Where?” she asked, remembering the caved-in wall.
“I’ll build us a house. Now stop distracting me when I’m trying to warn you about my methods. I don’t play fair, you know. Shall I demonstrate?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, and by the time h
e allowed Kaitlyn to come up for air, she was dizzy.
“I don’t think we’ll wait for a big wedding,” she managed.
Penn looked concerned. “That’s the point. We’re not waiting for the wedding, no matter what size it is. But your clients wouldn’t understand if you didn’t have a major splash.”
“The ones who know you will.” She remembered what he had said about Sabrina’s elaborate plans, and snuggled against him. “Penn, you were right. It’s the marriage that counts — not the ceremony. I don’t want to get so caught up in the details I can’t have fun at my own wedding.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he promised, and she nodded.
But she didn’t think she would change her mind. It would be a new challenge, to create a nice wedding that didn’t take forever to plan, or cost the earth, or cause that last-minute war of nerves she had come to think was inevitable. A lot of her clients might like that idea, too.
But there would be time to think about that later. There were more important considerations at the moment, like telling him with every cell of her body and with every whisper of sensation how much she loved him.
She obviously succeeded, for a few minutes later Penn said breathlessly, “You were right, Kitten. We’ll just let the damn tree lie there. I wonder why I thought it was so important to get out of here in the next week or two, anyway?”
EPILOGUE
“Just one more pose,” Jill said, “and then we’ll let Audrey go sit down while we finish up the shots of the bridesmaids. Kaitlyn’s veil isn’t flowing quite right on that side, Audrey. Can you fix it?”
Audrey fussed with the drifting chiffon. Her hands were shaking a little. A standard case of mother-of-the-bride nerves, Kaitlyn thought. Or was it more than that? Audrey’s lower lip was trembling a little, too.
Jill’s photo flash popped. “Perfect,” she said with satisfaction. “Now if we can get all of the bridesmaids together—”
But Kaitlyn wasn’t listening. “What is it, Mother?”
Audrey tried to smile, but tears gleamed in her eyes. “I wasn’t going to tell you. It’s so silly. But I just remembered your christening bonnet. Oh, Kaitlyn, how could I have forgotten it, on this special day?”
The Best-Made Plans Page 16
