Poppy frowned. “We don’t want that happening in a private moment, do we, Shay?”
“Uh-oh, Zan,” her sister said, but she was smiling. “You’re in for it now. If Poppy wants something, Poppy gets that thing.”
The bride’s expression turned wheedling and she wrapped her small hands around his forearm.
“Uh-oh,” Zan echoed. Poppy Walker had never been easy to refuse, especially when she took on that coaxing tone. Under its influence, he’d rescued baby birds and even played pretend tea party on more than one occasion.
“Zan,” she said now, “remember how I told you I had a master plan? It’s a master plan for my perfect day. And seeing Mac happy with you would cap that off.”
He groaned. “Poppy—”
“She’s always done so much for all of us...for me.” Her big gray eyes were trained on his face. “You could have her in your arms forever, starting tonight. Starting right now.”
During this impassioned declaration, Ryan had come up behind his bride. Zan met his gaze. “You heard her,” the other man said, grinning. “Give me some peace. Cap off my wife’s perfect day.”
Zan’s pulse pounded. How much he wanted to begin his perfect night. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Poppy said, her excitement contagious. “Do you need help?”
A smile grew on Zan’s face and he shook his head. “I already have an idea...” It would mean taking a public risk and, worse, putting everything on the line for that emotion he’d been trying to escape for ten years, but Zan wasn’t walking away any longer. This time he was running toward what he wanted. Who he needed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MAC’S FACE HURT from all the smiles she’d been doling out that evening. She was tired, but also tired of responding to the same comments and questions she’d fielded at the past two Walker marital events.
Though it was easy to agree that the bride was beautiful and the groom looked doting.
Effortless to nod along when Mason—her date for the evening as the other had gotten sick—was effusively complimented for his toasting abilities.
But she was out of clever or evasive responses to some of the other things that had been said, and she was tempted to respond less graciously to the next round of queries.
Did she know when it was going to be her turn? Likely never.
Didn’t she want kids before she was too old to have them? Twenty-eight was hardly over-the-hill.
Was it lonely to be the only Walker sibling without a partner? Yes, so she already had her multi-cat adoption papers turned in.
Why was a beautiful girl like her unmarried? Because she was in love with a man who didn’t love her back—the one who’d better stop looking at her or she’d be inspired to nab him with a flying tackle, thus humiliating herself and adding to that wretched legend she’d be hearing about for the rest of her life.
That would be the clunker of all conversational clunkers, wouldn’t it?
So she turned and headed for a destination unknown, intent on avoiding guests with unthinking remarks to make as well as Zan Elliott, whose gaze she continued to feel upon her.
As she strode past the table displaying the wedding cake surrounded by the bridesmaids’ flowers, she set her jaw and added another item to her evasion agenda. No way, no how, would she be forced into one more embarrassing round of catch-the-bridal-bouquet. The instant she sensed it in the offing, she was going to retreat to the kitchen and hide among the ladles and chafing dishes.
Then Mason popped up at her side, and she smiled at her small and welcome distraction. After her arranged date had been forced to cancel because of an unfortunate chronic sinus problem, her nephew had declared himself to be her escort for the evening. She didn’t mind at all. He was funny and smart and didn’t make this weird whirring-clicking noise in the back of his throat due to postnasal drip.
Now he wanted her to show him to the restrooms. His business finished there, he next asked her to accompany him to the deck over the lake. The temperature was freezing outside and she could smell snow, but she accepted the goose bumps and took the opportunity to clear her head.
This was her new normal and it was time to accept it. Her brother and sisters were married and the Walker family clan would continue on, paired up and with more pregnancies to follow, she supposed, but she could deal. Even if none of those pairings were hers, even if none of the children to come would call her “Mommy.”
Mason was playing airplane all over the deck, his arms out as he surfed the wind in his little tuxedo. What a guy. Her guy, at least for the evening—and for Poppy and Ryan’s honeymoon, too. Yes, that was something to smile about.
“I love you, Mace,” she called out.
The Mason Walker Hamilton flying machine made a sharp turn and buzzed her way. When he reached her side, he grinned, exposing the gap in his top row of teeth. “The Tooth Fairy left me a dollar,” he said.
“Coolio,” she answered, unsure why he shared that news now.
“London gave me five.”
Mac’s eyes widened. The teenager was paying for baby teeth? What was that all about? If she still dressed as she had when she first came to the mountains—in all black, her hair dyed to match, her eye makeup scary dark—Mac might have worried she wanted one for some kind of weird ritual or odd jewelry idea, but London wasn’t like that anymore. “Why’d she pay you the money, Mace?”
Instead of answering, he slid a cell phone out of his front pocket. “She gave me this for the night, too.” He held it up.
It was the girl’s distinctive pink-on-purple device.
“Uh...that was nice?”
Mason sent her a quick grin and slid it away. “I’m waiting for a signal.”
“Um...” Mac narrowed her eyes. “I think we should go back inside.” There, she’d track down the teenager and find out what was what.
Her nephew paused, then pulled out the phone again. “Okay,” he said, glancing at the screen. “We can go in now.”
She pushed open the French doors just as the DJ played a raucous fanfare. A spotlight started roaming the darkened room. “Time for the bouquet toss!” he said into the mic. “We need all you single ladies onto the dance floor.” Beyoncé’s song started up, just as the light found Mac’s face.
Her body froze, her gaze slid to her nephew. “Did you have something to do with this?” she hissed, seeing London coming toward her, the girl’s face filled with glee.
“Five dollars is five dollars,” he said, unrepentant.
Crap, what could she say? He was a true Walker.
The crowd applauded as her niece tugged her onto the dance floor. Mac considered making a break for it, but that would only be more embarrassing. And after three broken engagements and ten years of listening to the legend of Mac and Zan, she should be used to mortification.
Still, she wished the floor would open, swallow her up and take her straight down to the bottom of the lake.
Someone was going to pay for this.
As the lights came up a little and more women joined her and London, Poppy caught Mac’s eye and gave an apologetic shrug.
Mood only lower, she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for the stupid ritual to begin. London jostled her with an elbow. “I cooked up this plan with Mason so you wouldn’t miss this. Isn’t it fun?”
Mac only snorted, then uttered her sister’s favorite word in the most sarcastic way possible. “High-larious.”
Twenty or so women had joined them when the lights went down again and that stupid spotlight turned them all into washed-out deer.
“All right, everyone,” the DJ said. “We’re about to—”
“Hold it,” a familiar voice called out. Then Zan strolled onto the dance floor to stop right by her side.
Oh, y
es, let’s just rub salt in the wounds. “Go away, Zan.”
He bent toward her ear. “I tried to get this done earlier. But the DJ is on a schedule and Skeeter was slow getting back from the souvenir shop. Not to mention that at first I couldn’t find Lewis—”
“What?” Lewis the mail carrier?
“And just for the record,” Zan added, “this has Poppy and Ryan’s full approval.”
“What?” she said again. But then another voice rang through the room.
“Special delivery for Miss Mackenzie Marie Walker!”
She swung toward the sound of her name. What was going on?
Lewis pushed through the crowd. Middle-aged and smiling, he had kids about the same age as the Walker clan. With a flourish, the man handed Mac a postcard.
She stared down at the glossy image. It was a highly colorized shot of Blue Arrow Lake in spring, daffodils circling the shoreline. Baffled, she stared at it.
“Turn it over,” Zan whispered.
In his handwriting, that she knew so well, was one word. Will.
She only had a chance to send him a confused look before Lewis stepped forward again, with another card.
Summer at Blue Arrow Lake. It was written in script across the bottom of an aerial photo showing blue water, boats, water-skiers. And on the other side, it read You.
Mac began to tremble. The chill her skin had taken outside was washed away in a flush of heat.
Lewis was grinning as he gave her yet another postcard.
In this one, there were yellow aspens. Pumpkins were lined on a fence and the lake glistened in the distance. Mac stared down at the photo and it shook in her fingers as hope made it hard to breathe. She was afraid to turn it over.
Zan’s hand came in her line of sight and did it for her.
The word wavered. She blinked, blinked again. Marry. It most definitely read Marry. In Zan’s handwriting.
Then he was in front of her, holding a fourth postcard at eye level. A snowy scene. Blue Arrow Lake in winter. This very season.
His gaze on her, he slowly flipped it over so she could see the two letters that would change her life. “Me,” he said aloud as she traced the word with her eyes. “Mac Walker, will you marry me?”
The DJ cut the music and a hush came over the room.
Her head lifted and she looked into Zan’s eyes. They were crinkled at the corners in a way that Boy Zan’s hadn’t done... They were the eyes of a man who’d seen the world.
“This is not just so I can get out of the dumb bouquet toss, is it?”
He shook his head. “It’s so that I can begin a life with the woman I love. The woman I have loved for so, so long.”
Her heartbeat was going so hard, so fast, the whole room must have been able to hear it. “You love me?”
“So much, Mac.” He smiled. “I think you knew.”
“One hundred seventeen times, I knew,” she said, or at least that’s what she’d always wished the white spaces around the letter Z meant. A pressure built behind her nose and a burning at the back of her eyes. “I thought you would never figure it out.” She’d thought he’d run from the risk of it forever.
“It took me ten years to learn to live with my ghosts. And ten years to win the battle against letting people in because I was afraid of losing them. You showed me how to do that the other night.”
When she’d told him she loved him, despite the fact that he’d been bent on leaving her again. He tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. The tender touch sent tingles all over her body. “That decade hurt you, and I’m sorry for it.”
“You don’t have to be,” she whispered, understanding now the profound effects his tragedy had wrought on him. It made this decision of his just that more precious. “Maybe we needed to let our love age.”
“Then I guess it’s ripe now.” He grinned and leaned close. “That sounds kind of salacious. Not to mention delicious.”
His mouth was close enough to kiss, but she couldn’t do it quite yet. “Is this really happening to me?” she wondered aloud. Was this her very own grand gesture?
Zan began to answer, but his words were lost when a bouquet of flowers hit him square in the face, then fell into Mac’s arms. She looked down at it, then glared at her sister, who stood a dozen feet away, laughing like a loon.
“Hey, it’s not supposed to be this way,” Mac groused. “I’m off the market now.”
“We haven’t heard a ‘yes’ yet,” Poppy called out, her smile unrepentant.
Mac’s gaze shifted to Zan. His expression sobered and he studied her face as if wanting to memorize this moment. “Marry me, Mac. I’ll make those ten years apart up to you. I’ll make the next seventy-five the best ever. The legend deserves a happy ending.”
“We deserve a happy ending,” she said, because she’d been brave enough to open her heart again and because that had inspired him to admit his own feelings for her. “Zan and Mac. So yes, I’ll marry you. Yes. One hundred seventeen times yes.”
The crowd broke into loud applause and she leaped into his arms, crushing the flowers between them so the scent of roses and lavender filled the air as they kissed. Then Mac Walker, cool, controlled, unsentimental Mac Walker, now feeling as buoyant and bright as only happiness and hope for the future could make a person, buried her face in her beloved’s throat and burst into tears.
EPILOGUE
Five years later...
WINTER AT THE Walker Lodge was nearly over. The last patches of snow on the ground were shrinking by the day, but they had bookings for their famous Lovers’ Weekends that they advertised during the transitional periods between seasons to keep the visitors coming up the hill.
Mac Walker Elliott cleaned one of the great room’s stackable set of doors that led to the large veranda where they served meals in summer. Soon the daffodils would be poking their brave heads out of the cold earth, but now it seemed all was quiet waiting for spring.
Once back in their hands, the Walkers and their spouses had worked hard to make this land a beautiful place for themselves, friends and visitors. They often thought of Zan’s grandfather, the man who had made it all possible, and wondered if he’d had a secret agenda all along. Zan himself was sure of it, that the old man had been paving the way for his grandson to have a family again and a place that he’d finally know was home.
She put her hand over her belly as she felt the gentle kick of her and Zan’s second child.
In the distance a little one was fussing, but her mother’s trained ear knew it wasn’t their Damon—better known as Dragon. When he got going he lived up to his name, all fire and smoke. She’d mentioned just yesterday that she couldn’t figure out where his temper came from, and everyone in the Walker-Hamilton-Jennings-Elliott clan laughed.
They were all so going to pay for that.
Poppy showed up to wrest the window cleaner and bunched newspaper from her hands. “I thought you were going to put your feet up.”
Her sister’s dark-haired daughter, age four, skipped into the room. “Hi, Auntie Mac!”
“Hi, Melly.” The girl had her mother’s gray eyes and light heart. “Where’s Mason? He said he was going to play chess with me.”
“Here I am,” a boy’s voice answered.
She glanced over her shoulder as her nephew walked into the room holding the hand of one of Shay’s towheaded twins. Mac’s youngest sister followed next, the other twin draped over her shoulder, out like a light.
Cassie and Tommy were never asleep at the same time. The family had come to—wearily—accept this.
“I thought you were going to put your feet up,” Shay said.
Mac rolled her eyes and then headed for one of several couches in the huge room. She made a big show of seating herself and crossing her ankles on an ottoman. Grimacing,
she noticed they were swollen.
Then Brett wandered from the back room behind the check-in desk. His three-year-old, Susannah, nicknamed Sweetness because she’d been born with her mother’s disposition, was on one hip. She sucked her thumb with her head against her daddy’s shoulder. A baby lay in the crook of his other arm.
“Let me take Dorrie,” Poppy said, hurrying to scoop up the infant. She blinked at her aunt, completely accepting that another person loved her and wanted her close. Together, the two of them plopped down to share Mac’s couch.
Brett and Sweetness took to an adjacent love seat. Shay and Cassie joined them there.
Mac glanced around at her siblings. “Are we having a family meeting or something?” The baby rolled in her belly and she rubbed at its rump, which was poking up at her right side.
“I suppose we could,” Brett said. “What do we need to talk about?”
They all stared at each other.
“Um...” Poppy seemed to be searching her mind.
Shay tilted her head. “Well...”
“I got nothing,” Mac finally said. “I think that means everything’s good.”
Sweetness’s thumb popped out of her mouth. “Happy,” she said.
The Walker siblings stilled, then met one another’s gazes and, sharing smiles, let that be the last word.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from CAN’T FIGHT THIS FEELING by Christie Ridgway.
USA TODAY bestselling author
CHRISTIE RIDGWAY
Sparks fly in Christie Ridgway’s charming contemporary romance series:
Cabin Fever
Take My Breath Away
Make Me Lose Control
Can’t Fight this Feeling
Keep on Loving You
“Equally passionate and emotional, this tale will quicken pulses and firmly tug on the heartstrings… An excellent story that you hope won’t ever end!”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) on Can’t Fight This Feeling
Keep On Loving you Page 32