My snarky cynicism seemed to have deserted me, and I felt a little panicky all of a sudden. Exposed, almost. Willa’s voice was husky with emotion, and I recognized the sincerity in her voice…because I’d meant those words, too, when it had been my turn to say them, twelve years ago.
“…to love and to cherish…”
I sneaked a glance over at Nick. He was looking at the floor, and I wondered if he was remembering, too.
“…from this day forward, and for all the days of my life.”
God, I’d loved him so much.
He looked up at me, and time seemed to stop. Those dark, sad, beautiful eyes…full of so much…regret? Love? Sorrow? For one long, unguarded moment, we just looked at each other, a sea of emotion and all this time between us.
If only…the saddest words in the English language.
I would never love anyone the way I loved him. My lawyerly brain accepted that fact. My heart…well, my heart couldn’t think at the moment. Once, I’d been adored by the man with the gypsy eyes, and those days had been the happiest and most terrifying of my life.
“The rings, please?” asked the JP. Nick looked over at the bride and groom, and the spell was broken, and I was left feeling as defenseless as a newborn raccoon on the Mass Pike during rush hour, because I knew Nick had seen.
The ceremony ended a few minutes later. Willa and Chris were engulfed in a crowd of well-wishers, Bever-Lee’s twang slicing through my molars as she squealed her joy. Dennis was already at the bar, obeying his genetic imperative by sipping a Guinness, laughing with Emily. Dad nodded and shook hands. Willa caught my eye and gave that infectious, delighted smile of hers. She waved her hand, and I caught a glimpse of the thin gold band. I shoved down my apprehension, smiled back and said a quick prayer to whatever god, saint or angel might keep her happy, considered sacrificing a goat…whatever it took.
Nick didn’t look at me again. There was a stillness about him even as he smiled at the other guests, shook hands and chatted. But he didn’t even glance my way.
The storm had ended, and the general consensus was that the party should move back out onto the patio. People picked up chairs and tables, and the party moved outside. The sun broke through the clouds in thick slices of gold, the pines sparkled with raindrops and the lake gleamed an ethereal blue.
I needed a moment.
Running up the stairs, I got a leer from an elderly man in a Korean War veteran baseball cap. Ignoring him, I continued charging up the stairs, all the way to the third floor—hey, I was in good shape, all that bike riding, so this was nothing. No, the knocking and rolling of my heart, that was due to something other than exercise.
My room was blissfully quiet. Coco, curled around her bunny, acknowledged me with two wags but didn’t open her eyes, as naptimes were precious to her. I went over to the window and pulled back the curtain, revealing the endless wilderness. My hands were shaking, I noted. What to do about that was another question. “Harper.”
As if summoned, Nick stood in my doorway. “Nick,” I breathed.
For a second, I just looked at him—his tousled, nearly black hair, those sad eyes, and it just didn’t seem possible that so many years had passed, that I hadn’t teased him about his first gray hair, that we hadn’t talked every day, that I’d spent so long without him, the last man on earth I ever thought would let me go.
Then he crossed the room, hot, bristling energy gathering in a ball and without word or thought, we were wrapped around each other, mouths seeking and finding, and God, the charge nearly lifted me from my feet, as if I was hovering in the air and melting into him at the same time. He was at once familiar and new, leaner than he’d been and harder, but his mouth, his lovely mouth, was the same, hot and hungry, and it was simply unspeakable, how good it was to feel him again, elemental, fundamental, primally right to be with Nick, to kiss him, to…to…to own him again, because let’s be honest. We’d only ever belonged to each other.
He held me so hard my ribs creaked, and oh, God, I had missed him, missed this, why oh why did we ever let this get away from us? My back was against the wall and Nick shifted, his hand covering my breast, his skin hot on mine, and still we didn’t stop kissing, hot, hard, desperate kisses. He felt so good, like no one had ever felt, as if we were two pieces of rock that had been split apart by lightning and were now fusing back into one, as we were meant to be. He kissed me as if the end of days was upon us, his tongue sliding against mine so that my knees nearly gave out. Nothing mattered but the two of us, together again. Not one thing. I jerked his shirt from his pants and slid my hands up along his ribs, drinking in the hot glory of his skin, my fingertips seeking out the little scar over his heart, and he groaned against my mouth and shifted so I could feel his full weight against me, and my body hummed with lust and power, because he was shaking a little. I’d done that to him, just as he had to me.
He pulled back, his face flushed, eyes burning, hair standing on end, and then he grinned, and I thought my heart might crack from the sight, so much had I missed Nick’s smile.
“Do you want to say something?” he whispered, breathing hard.
“Um…take me?” I said, panting a little, smiling back.
He gave a raspy laugh. “Well, yes, I’d love to.” His smile grew. “But maybe you wanted to say something else?” With one hand, he pushed a lock of my now-wild hair behind my ear and just looked at me. His eyes were gentle, and expectant. “Go ahead.”
I paused. A trickle of dread cooled the flash fire of just seconds before. Crap. This was where things generally started breaking down where the two of us were concerned. Expectations. “You…you go first.”
He cocked his head. “I think you should go first, Harper. After all, you…”
I stood up a little straighter. “After all, what?”
“Well, you’re the one who…you know.” Clearly he was hinting that there was some declaration that would be appropriate right about now. I frowned. Nick blinked. “You don’t want to say…anything, Harper?”
“No, I’m good, Nick.” Ardor definitely cooling here.
“Nothing. You have nothing to say to me,” he clarified, taking a step back and running a hand through his hair.
I pursed my lips. “Well, obviously, you think I should say something, so why don’t you elucidate, Nick?
His jaw grew knotty. “I just figured you’d want to…”
“What?”
“Apologize. I thought you’d want to apologize.”
I gritted my teeth. “Oh. This…This is great.” I crossed my arms over my too-exposed chest. “For what?”
He blinked. “What do you mean, for what? For ruining our marriage, that’s what.”
“I—you—Are you kidding me?”
“No,” he said, giving me that all-too-familiar look. Why are you hysterical? I’m only being completely logical here. “You want me to apologize?” I asked, my voice rising. “That’s what you want? Now? Seriously?”
He put up his hands defensively. “Look, I’m completely willing to forgive you and start over—”
“Oh, wow, how generous! Thank you, Nick!”
“—but you have to admit, Harper, that what you did was really bad. I mean, in at least one sense, you cheated on me. Betrayed me. And while I’m definitely open to making a fresh—”
“You know what? Here we go again, Nick. This was the whole problem during our marriage. You were blameless, and everything was my fault. Well, guess what? I’m not playing this time.”
“What did I do? I loved you, Harper! I worked a lot. Is that a crime? Was that a stupid plan, for me to work hard so we could have a secure future?”
“You know what’s a stupid plan, Nick? This. Us. Look. You’re…whatever. And obviously, I’m still…attracted to you. But if you’re still looking for me to take the full blame of our fiery crash, no! I won’t, Nick! You had a hand in that, too.”
“I fail to see what I did that was so wrong,” he said tightly.
“And that’s the whole problem,” I snapped. “I’m sorry you came up here. Too much time has passed. You’re still hung up on me being the bad guy. Good night.”
“You are the one who left,” he snapped.
“Actually, you were,” I returned through gritted teeth. “Whatever. At any rate, it’s clear you’re looking for an abject apology and some groveling in addition to some groping and fondling. But guess what, Nick? You’ll have to look somewhere else.”
And with that, I stomped out of the room, down the hall and back to my sister’s wedding.
CHAPTER NINE
“OKAY FOLKS, GATHER round for the latest killer martini—Crillas, in honor of the happy couple!” My voice was bright and chipper—damned if I was going to let Nick know just how much he’d gotten under my skin. “This little number has Kahlúa, to represent our dark and handsome groom…”
“So handsome!” Willa said, kissing her man.
“…and pineapple juice, for the sweet bride.” I smiled, getting an “aw” from the crowd. “Now maybe it doesn’t sound like those two ingredients go together…” I winked at my sister…“but when you try them, you’ll see. Crillas are fantastic! So go ahead, gang!”
This wedding reception was eternal. Faking good cheer was definitely not a specialty of mine, but Nick and I seemed engaged in a war as to who could ignore the other the most effectively. It seemed to be a draw. Here I was, behind the bar—I’d bartended through college, as well as during my brief stint in New York, and was now playing merry maid of honor. Nick, for his part, had claimed the role of available bachelor/uber best man, and had danced with every woman present from Emily to BeverLee to an elderly woman from Wisconsin who wasn’t a wedding guest but wasn’t complaining, either. Every woman but one, of course. He laughed and flirted and seemed as happy and good-natured as humanly possible, and I’d be damned if I was going to let on that my knees still buzzed from that kiss.
I’d been spared, that was it. In a moment of weakness, of useless, pointless sentimentality, I might’ve let things go further with Nick, and then I’d be swamped with regret and guilt. It was bad enough…Dennis hadn’t even crossed my mind during that kiss, and what the hell did that say, so thank the Lord nothing went any further. There was a reason Nick and I hadn’t worked, and it would serve me well to remember that.
As I went to the bar for my third Crilla, Jason Cruise approached, doing that side-to-side swagger so that the friction between his chubby thighs wouldn’t cause a fire. “Harper, wanna dance? Old time’s sake or whatever?” He adjusted his Wayfarers sunglasses. Wayfarers. Honestly. So 1980s.
“Bite me, Jason,” I said.
“Whoa. You don’t have to be such a bitch.”
“And you don’t have to breathe, Jason, yet you continue to do so. Frustrating.”
“Why do you hate me?” he asked. “What did I ever do to you?”
For a second, I wasn’t going to answer. Jason had, in point of fact, never done anything to me. But letting things go wasn’t exactly my forte. “I don’t hate you, Jason. You’re not important enough to hate. But I dislike you intensely.”
“Why?”
“Because I know about you, Jason,” I hissed. “How you treated Nick when you were kids, broke his toys, rubbed your life in his face and shot him in the chest with an arrow. Add to this the fact that you’re a shallow, irritating twit, and there you have it.”
“So? I thought you hated Nick.”
I opened my mouth to protest, reconsidered (I did rather hate Nick, at the moment, anyway). “Whatever.”
Jason lifted his Wayfarers to better ogle my breasts. “So how about that dance, Harper?”
Men. A friend of mine from law school had just gone the sperm-bank route. She was first in our class, okay? Clearly a brilliant woman.
I was saved from further interaction with Jason in the form of Firefighter Costello, all six foot two of him. “This guy bothering you, Harp?” he asked, looking down at Jason.
“Yes, Dennis. Please beat him to a pulp.”
Dennis gave me a startled glance. “Seriously?”
“Dude, I just asked her to dance,” Jason babbled, backing up rapidly. “She used to be family or something. That’s all. I wasn’t trying to, uh…you know. Whatever.”
I shot the little toad a lethal glance. “Shoo, Jason. Go back to your swamp.” He slumped away, bumping into one of the posts that held up the ceiling, since he’d put the stupid sunglasses back on, and went off to bore more people with his recitation of Tom Cruise’s biggest box-office hits.
“Wanna dance, babe?” Dennis asked.
“Definitely,” I answered, and so we did, my guilt over kissing Nick causing me to snuggle up against Dennis’s broad shoulder. Den smiled and copped a feel, since he was not a man to resist a breast, especially two so obviously offered as were mine.
“What time do you have to leave tomorrow?” I asked.
He grimaced. “My flight’s at seven,” he said. “Which means I have to catch the five-thirty shuttle.”
“You know what? Take the rental car,” I offered. “I’ll grab the shuttle later on.”
Dennis’s face lit up. “That’d be great, dude. Thanks.”
When I first asked him if he’d wanted to come to this wedding, Dennis hadn’t committed right away. The result was that he’d had to book a much less civilized flight than my afternoon departure. Dad and BeverLee were driving to Salt Lake City—I guess BeverLee had some third cousins there she hadn’t seen in years—then flying home from there, and so I’d be all alone on my journey back East. That was more than fine with me.