The Bride Said, I Did?

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Her whole body throbbing with tension, Dani pushed on. “Kelsey’s surface calm is deceptive. She isn’t handling this any better than the rest of us, as has been evidenced by her constant switching of jobs and boyfriends and every other significant detail of her life!”

  With Beau right beside her, keeping pace, Dani reached the top of the rise just as the rain started. There, where the old barn had stood, was a building that couldn’t have been more than two years old. It was bigger than the original, painted the same ugly gray-blue as the house, but in her mind’s eye, Dani could see the old barn, which had been gray, splintered and falling apart to the point where play had been forbidden.

  “Tell me what happened,” Beau insisted as the rain came down harder.

  Dani turned to him and sighed. If she didn’t tell him, someone else would. She didn’t know why it mattered so much. She just knew she didn’t want him hearing this from anyone else but her. Feeling as though her heart was breaking all over again, she took a deep bolstering breath, gathered all her courage and said, “My parents died—both of them—right here, in front of my eyes.”

  BEAU HADN’T KNOWN if Dani would confide in him, even if he followed her all the way out here. He did know that she was used to handling things more or less alone, that she kept her feelings buried deep inside. That she’d trusted him enough to tell him anything meant a lot. Because she had to trust him in order to love him. But there was still a lot more to be said. And no reason on earth they should stand out here in the storm to do so.

  Past arguing about anything, Beau lifted the latch and pushed open the barn door. Seeing what he intended, Dani blanched. He took her by the elbow and guided her inside. Outside, the wind picked up. As Beau closed the door, shutting out the storm, the wind and the rain, tears flooded Dani’s eyes. Not sure what else to do—her pain was so great—he closed the distance between them swiftly, took her in his arms and held her against him.

  Determined to get her talking—Kelsey was right, Dani needed to confront this and talk about it—he stroked his hands through the silken strands of her hair. “So what happened?” he prodded gently as her sobs began to subside.

  Dani pulled away from him. Struggling to compose herself, she wiped her face with her hands and began to talk in a hoarse choked voice. “The barn that was here then was nearly twenty years old and had suffered structural damage in a previous thunderstorm. My parents were waiting to have it torn down and we’d been forbidden to play here. But it was such a great place, one of the few places on the ranch where any of us could go to be alone.”

  Dani gulped. A distant look came into her eyes. As she continued, her voice began to shake. “That day…that last day Kelsey and I had come home from school with Mom—she was a teacher at the high school—Jenna had stayed in town for an after-school prom-committee meeting.” Fresh tears glistened in Dani’s eyes. “We knew there was a tornado watch on, but there were always tornado watches during the spring storms and we didn’t really take it seriously, until it suddenly began to get very black out and very quiet, very still. We didn’t know it then, but a tornado had formed just outside Laramie, and touched down on several ranches in the area, overturning tractors, uprooting trees and knocking over power lines, and causing all manner of havoc. It was heading our way.”

  Dani’s breath hitched. “Mom and Dad told me to get to the storm cellar in the basement, but Kelsey was nowhere around. They assumed she was in the old barn or down at the stables, which are a little farther out, with her horse. Mom said she’d check the barn. Dad went off to check the stables. They wanted me to stay in the house in case Kelsey showed up here.” Turning away from him, Dani began to pace, her sandals tap-tapping on the cement floor.

  “I guess Mom had just reached the old barn when the tornado appeared.” Dani closed her eyes briefly, shook her head, her pain at remembering evident. “Whether the tornado actually hit the barn or the high winds alone did it, we’ll never know. But it collapsed on top of her.”

  Beau could only imagine how horrible that must have been.

  Covering her ears, Dani pushed on. “I heard the crash all the way over at the ranch house. So did my dad. As soon as the tornado roared by, we both made a mad dash for the barn.” Dani swallowed. She turned to Beau, the detached distant look back in her eyes. “It was like a big pile of kindling, but miraculously my mother was still alive,” she whispered. “My dad told me to go back and call 911 while he went in to see what he could do for my mom. So I did—only to find out the phone lines were down.” Dani gritted her teeth. Tears rolled down her face. “I ran back. What was left of the barn collapsed just as I arrived. And that was…it.” Dani lifted her hands helplessly, then let them fall as she concluded, “I knew they were gone.”

  Knowing she needed him now more than ever, Beau strode to her and took her in his arms.

  “Were any others killed?”

  “No, just my folks, although there were a few other ranchers and their families injured, too. Overall, the town and the county got off lucky. Many more could have been killed had the tornado touched down in a heavily populated area.”

  “That’s why you never wanted to come back here.” He stroked her back.

  Dani buried her face in his chest. “Can you blame me?”

  No, he couldn’t. But he also knew that you never solved a problem by running from it. Pain had to be faced. The sooner, the better. “Yet you came back to Laramie.”

  “To be close to my sisters again, to have a real home,” Dani confided emotionally. “Not to relive the past!” She pushed away from him and scrubbed at the fresh flow of tears. “Damn Kelsey and her lamebrained ideas, anyway!”

  “You ought to be thanking her,” Beau replied.

  Dani stared at him. She should have known Beau would take the opposite view. Didn’t he always? “For what?” Dani snapped. If there was one thing she didn’t want today, or any other for that matter, it was Beau’s criticism.

  Beau paused. His glance was loving and tender. His words were anything but. “It’s pretty clear you haven’t moved beyond your parents’ death. And until you do, no really happy future is going to be possible. Bottom line, Dani. You either come to terms with what happened here and move past it. Or you get mowed down by it. Those are your choices.”

  Hot angry tears glimmered in Dani’s eyes. “I should have known better than to confide in you. I should have known you wouldn’t understand!”

  “I do understand you, Dani.” Beau’s voice lowered a husky notch as he grabbed her and held her in front of him when she would have run. “Just the way you have always understood me!”

  Dani struggled unsuccessfully to be free of him. “What are you…?” she sputtered. “I never…” And then it hit her at the same time it hit him. With the force of a locomotive speeding across the Texas plains.

  They’d been in Mexico, at his villa, trying to end their feud for both their sakes, with Dani insisting she’d been right to systematically dismantle the fantasy element of all his movies and Beau insisting she’d been wrong. Dead wrong to deprive people of their hopes and dreams. He had insisted that the all-consuming love depicted in his movies did exist. And so did the eventual triumph of good over evil, right over wrong. Lasting happiness was within reach of everyone, Beau had said. What was wrong, he had continued, was telling people over and over in her reviews that “real life” just wasn’t like that. That real life guaranteed only heartbreak and, at best, fleeting happiness.

  The hell of it had been, Dani had feared Beau was right, even if she was scared to admit it. Maybe other people did have better, happier and more satisfying lives. Maybe it was just her who’d never been meant to be happy or to have all that life could offer.

  Hurt, for no one had ever talked to her like that, she’d lashed back at him. Demanded to know why he was taking her reviews so personally. Demanded to know why he was so wrapped up in what she said about his work when he clearly didn’t give a hoot what other critics said about his films.r />
  Beau had readily admitted that Dani got to him like no other. Maybe because Dani was harder on him than any other actor in Hollywood. So relentlessly critical, in fact, that if he didn’t know better, Beau had alleged hotly as they carried their argument from the patio of his villa down onto his private beach, he’d think she was in love with him.

  “You said I loved you,” Dani remembered, color blooming in her cheeks as the memory of that fateful night hit her full blast. “On the beach outside your villa in Mexico, you said I loved you!” she repeated, stunned and amazed.

  Beau nodded as if this was something he’d come to terms with long ago. “And you admitted it was so,” he replied.

  Chapter Ten

  “And then you kissed me and told me you loved me, too,” Dani said, marveling at the return of the memories. It was happening just the way Lacey and Jackson McCabe had said it would. Out of the blue, they were remembering things in bits and fragments. One fact leading to the recollection of another.

  And what she was remembering now, Dani realized in wonderment, was one of the most romantic moments of her entire life. The kind that was so movie perfect and wonderful she had never expected to have it. The kind that happened to other people. Never to her. But this had happened to her, Dani realized in trembling amazement. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to recall the warmth of the sand beneath her bare feet or the wind blowing over their bodies. She didn’t have to struggle to remember Beau’s arms around her, holding her close, or his lips on hers, kissing her with more tenderness and passion than she had ever dreamed existed. She didn’t have to wonder how and when and why he had made her his woman, because suddenly she knew. And so, Dani realized as she looked deep into his eyes, did he.

  “And we made love right there on the beach,” Beau said, the passion in his low voice fueling her own. As he looked at her, his hands moved down her back and tightened on her spine.

  Her heart pounding with the enormity of what they were discovering to be true, Dani pulled away from him. She ran her hands through her hair.

  “Not just on the beach,” she said in a low trembling voice as memories of that weekend in Mexico continued to come back at a dizzying pace. “On the patio.” She had an image of Beau stretched out on top of her. “Inside the villa.” Another image of them impatiently making love against the wall. “In the bed.” Their bodies intertwined. “The shower.” Beau soaping her, then holding her close, so close…Never had she been loved so thoroughly or so well. Never had she felt as loved as she had that night. Never had she known such passion, tenderness or understanding. Never had she felt such happiness or hope for the future. As if it was all there, waiting for her. She needed only to stay with Beau, and everything she’d been afraid to yearn for would come true.

  Beau’s eyes darkened as his memory returned with the force of the storm pounding outside. “We couldn’t keep our hands off each other for most of that night and all the next day,” he said softly, drawing her into his arms once again.

  Dani splayed her hands across his chest. She looked up into his face. “And then we went into town for dinner.” She’d been wearing that white off-the-shoulder dress. Beau had stopped to buy her a bouquet of fragrant flowers from a street vendor. They’d been walking hand in hand down narrow cobblestone streets.

  Beau nodded. A smile curved his lips as he recollected, “It started to rain.” A gentle warm rain that soon picked up in force, threatening to drench them both.

  “So we ducked into that church,” Dani continued, remembering the beauty of the candlelit chapel.

  “And the priest thought we were there wanting to get married,” Beau recollected, all the love Dani ever could have wanted in his eyes.

  Dani nodded. She remembered turning to Beau in surprise and embarrassment at the misunderstanding, only to realize the two of them were thinking the same thing after all—that it wasn’t such a farfetched idea. “And suddenly it seemed like the most natural thing in the world,” Dani concluded softly.

  Beau smoothed a hand up and down Dani’s back. “So we did.”

  Dani closed her eyes briefly, remembering how it had felt to stand before the altar, pledging to love Beau as long as they both lived. She remembered how it had felt to know he loved her enough to promise the same. “We didn’t have any rings,” Beau said huskily, “but it didn’t matter. We said we’d get them later.”

  Dani nodded. “And then we went to that restaurant, and the restaurant owners were so happy for us they made us those special drinks to celebrate.”

  Beau nodded. “You remember everything.”

  “So do you.”

  Silence fell between them once again. Dani felt as though she was standing on a precipice. On one side, all the joy and happiness she had ever hoped to have. On the other, a fall to misery. Only now it wasn’t just herself she had to be concerned about. She had her baby—their baby—to think about, too. She didn’t want that baby to suffer the kind of loss she had. One moment having a father to love and nurture her and make her feel safe and secure the way only a daddy could, the next losing him forever.

  “I do love you, Dani,” Beau murmured as he gazed into her eyes. He threaded his fingers through her hair, trailed a hand down her face.

  “And I love you, Beau,” Dani whispered back emotionally. So much that she wanted to believe in the fantasy as strongly as he did.

  “But…?” Beau prodded at the lingering doubt in her voice.

  Dani swallowed. She knew she had to be completely honest with him if this relationship of theirs was to work. “I still don’t believe in happily-ever-afters. And certainly not the lifelong kind.” The kind always denied her.

  “That’s only because you won’t let yourself believe,” Beau said sternly, looking all the more determined to convince her otherwise.

  “Beau…” Dani drew in a ragged breath.

  Beau tilted her face up to his. “When we were in Mexico, you opened up to me for the very first time. You let yourself trust. Not just in me but what—if we’re honest—we’ve both been feeling for each other for a very long time. What happened with the amnesia changed all that. Made us go back to flirting and feuding again. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. We can love each other again. You can stop being afraid of life and start taking risks again.” He looked at her as if he was betting everything on the two of them. “All you have to do is let go,” he whispered urgently.

  Dani groaned. Tempted, yet so afraid of being hurt again, of having her whole life turned upside down, the equilibrium she’d fought so hard to get back destroyed.

  “Let the fear go, Dani.” Beau lowered his lips to hers. “Replace it with love for me and our baby.”

  She read the intent in his eyes: to make love to her here, now, while the storm raged outside. Bending closer, he pulled her against his hard length and used his other hand to brush the hair from her nape. His warm breath touched the curve of her cheek, the bow of her lips, then moved to her chin, the soft vulnerable underside of her jaw. Trembling with pent-up desire, Dani wreathed her arms about his neck and turned her lips to his.

  His lips came down on hers, firm and sure. A disquieting shudder ran through her. Her whole body trembled, and then she was throwing caution to the wind, following her instinct and rising on tiptoe to deepen the kiss. Beau reacted in kind, his next kiss forcing her lips apart. His hands moved sensuously in her hair, then glided lower in long smooth strokes over her shoulders, back, breasts and hips.

  Unbuttoning as he kissed, his mouth still moving ardently over hers, he opened her blouse and unclasped her bra. Dani offered no assistance or resistance as he pushed the rain-drenched fabric aside and cupped her breasts. It was everything she could do to keep her soaring feelings in check. But when he uttered a soft male groan of contentment as he brushed her hardening nipples with his fingertips, then bent to kiss the taut aching crowns, desire swept through her in powerful waves. Dani knew what he was doing. Trying to replace the bad memories with good. It shou
ldn’t have worked, but it did. And she wanted more, so much more than just a few kisses and the feel of his hands and his lips on her breasts. She wanted to know all of him, here and now. She wanted to feel connected with him again, the way they’d connected with each other in Mexico, not just in body, not just in want and need, but in heart and soul.

  “Make love to me,” Dani whispered urgently, aware once again the world had narrowed to just the two of them. Taking his hand, she led him to a sheltered alcove in the barn. “Make love to me here, Beau. Now.”

  Beau hadn’t meant things to go this far. He’d wanted to kiss her, touch her, make her believe in the two of them. He’d wanted to make her see how right they could be together, the fact that they were married and she was pregnant with his child aside. He wanted to see how much they were meant—no, destined—to be together. Not just for now but for the rest of their lives. And the best way he knew to do that was by letting their feelings run rampant, in kisses and in touch.

  Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Dani had been his ever since they had made love that first time, and she always would be. He could feel it in the possessive way she held him and the ardent way she returned his kiss. Awed by the beauty of her, the perfection of her supple curves, he undressed her slowly, touching and caressing as he went. Dropping to his knees, he lingered in the V of her legs, kissing and caressing until she trembled and moaned, until she could no longer contain the wild pleasure he was evoking.

  Dani dropped to her knees right along with him. And then her lips were on his, kissing him with a hunger and desperation he not only understood but felt. Trembling, Dani unbuckled his belt, and slid down his zipper. More ready for her than he had ever been, he wanted to hurry. She wouldn’t let him. As the rain drummed on the roof, she eased open the buttons on his shirt.

  Drew that off and ran her hands across the hard muscles of his chest. Like hers, his skin felt so hot it almost sizzled. And still she continued, slowly, lovingly helping him off with his boots and jeans, kissing everywhere she looked, touching everywhere she kissed, until at last she’d aligned their bodies, bare flesh to bare flesh, and looked up at him with eyes that were glazed with passion, dark with need.