“And it’s necessary for you to hear the words,” Helen guessed.
Janey threw up her hands. “Well, duh.”
“Showing you in every way that counts wasn’t enough.”
“How do you—?”
Helen smiled at her gently. “Because I saw the light in your eyes, and the smile on your face whenever you looked at him the night of his sister Molly’s party here. I saw the spring in your step and your new outlook on life, and I knew he was responsible for bringing so much joy into your life, and Chris’s, too.”
Janey paused. “I thought you didn’t approve of me seeing him.” I thought you were sure this was just another episode of recklessness and regret.
Helen shrugged. “I admit I would have preferred a slower courtship but sometimes that isn’t the way it happens. Sometimes feelings are fierce and true and so powerful there’s no denying them.”
That was how it happened. But it didn’t mean there weren’t obstacles standing in their way. “It’s just such a bad time for me to be falling in love with someone,” Janey ruminated, upset.
Helen scoffed. “Come on, Janey. You know there is no orchestrating love. You can’t just conjure it up on demand.”
“I don’t see why not.” She looked at her mother. “I want what you and Daddy had.”
Helen looked her in the eye. “Our life together wasn’t perfect, honey.”
Janey pushed aside the suspicion she was being way too unrealistic yet again. “But you really loved each other.”
“Yes, we did. But that doesn’t mean that our marriage wasn’t without challenges,” Helen corrected without an ounce of regret. “We got married awfully young and we had six children in nine years. Ed was on the road a lot with his job, which left a lot of the child-rearing to me.”
“But that was what you both wanted,” Janey protested. “And the time was right.”
Helen leaned forward urgently. “Honey, that’s another fallacy. The time is never right. There’s never going to be a perfect time to fall in love or get married or have a baby. And if you wait for the perfect time, for everything to be just so, none of it will ever happen. If this is right, if you love Thad Lantz, or even think you do, you’ve got to take a risk and jump in with both feet.”
TAKE A RISK…take a risk… That was all Janey could think about as she headed home for the evening. When she got there, Chris was working hard on his math homework at the kitchen table. He had a pan of hot dogs simmering on the stove, a bowl of potato chips and some fruit cocktail with sliced bananas set out.
He looked up as she came in. For the first time since his injury, there was a smile on his face, contentment in his eyes. “I made dinner for us.”
“So I see.” Janey set down her shoulder bag and keys, feeling a little like she had landed in an alternate universe, the one that had existed before her son’s quest to be an athlete had brought conflict and Thad Lantz into their lives. “You look happy,” she said.
Chris put down his pencil. “Coach Lantz came to see me today during my physical therapy session.” Chris regarded her steadily, sizing her up. “He said you weren’t mad at me for getting hurt.”
Janey blinked in a mixture of astonishment and dismay. “Of course I’m not angry with you!” She sat down opposite her son, knowing there was no better time to have a heart to heart. “What would ever make you think that?” she asked gently.
Chris shrugged. He flicked his thumb across the surface of his worksheet. “I dunno. I just got to thinking that maybe I was too much like Dad, and that I was—you know—” he stammered uncertainly “—making you unhappy with all my ‘risky behavior.’”
Hearing the exact words she had used to describe Ty’s actions during one of their many fights on the subject, filled Janey with guilt. They hadn’t meant for Chris to hear them arguing. Obviously, he had. And that had scarred him as deeply as Ty’s reckless pursuits and senseless death. The last thing she had ever wanted was for Chris to feel like he had let her down in the same way, when the truth was he had done nothing of the sort. “Listen to me, Chris. Playing hockey is not risky.”
He lifted a skeptical brow and slumped back in his chair. “Kids get hurt all the time.”
Janey shrugged in a way that let him know she had finally come to terms with his athletic ambitions. “Kids get hurt riding skateboards and you do that, too.”
Chris flashed a crooked smile. “So you don’t mind?”
Janey reached over and patted his arm affectionately. “I want you to go for your dreams, whatever they are.” She looked at him sincerely. “I will support you.”
Chris gulped, his features once again taking on the pinched, anxious look. “But if you get scared—”
Janey lifted a silencing palm. “You don’t have to be concerned about me fretting. Mothers fret all the time—it’s our prerogative. If it weren’t hockey, it would just be something else I’d be agonizing over. Like math.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Chris reassured her. “I asked my teacher for extra help today after summer school and she gave it to me. She’d have done it before—I just never asked her before. Because I didn’t want to look like a nerd. But Coach made me see that asking for what you need is never something to be ashamed of. It’s the not asking, the not going after what you want that causes problems in people’s lives.”
INDEED, JANEY THOUGHT, all that evening and well into the next business day. The trouble was, she knew what she wanted. Had realized it all along, even when she was protesting a little too much. So the only thing to do was swallow her pride, and hope like heck it wasn’t too late to undo the damage she had done in kicking Thad Lantz out of her life. But first she had an appointment at the arena in Raleigh, with the Storm business management team. They wanted to photograph the cakes and cupcakes being offered in the new birthday celebration ticket packages.
Leaving her new employee—an experienced pastry chef she had hired yesterday to help her with the additional business—to close up the bakery, she loaded everything into her car and proceeded to the arena, arriving some twenty minutes ahead of schedule.
The building was closed to the public, but the guards were expecting her and waved her on up to the executive offices. Janey was just getting off the escalator when she saw Thad at the other end of the carpeted hall. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. Just kind of nodded and kept going in the opposite direction.
Swallowing her disappointment, Janey proceeded with her business. The photography session with the team mascot went as smoothly as she had hoped. An hour later, Janey was walking back to the escalator, wondering if Thad was still around, or if she should just wait and track him down at his home. Assuming, of course, that he would see her. She had been awfully rough on him.
“Mrs. Hart Campbell?” The security guard who had allowed her inside was suddenly standing in front of her, blocking her way. “If you don’t mind, we’d like you to leave another way.”
Well, there went her chances of making amends with Thad now, Janey thought with a sigh. She smiled graciously at the guard, aware he was just doing his job. “Certainly.”
He led her down the hall, through a set of doors marked Employees Only, down three flights of stairs, and yet another hall, to a cement floored area that led out onto the home team’s bench in the brightly lit arena. Janey turned, disquieted. The security guard merely smiled and pointed to the other end of the bench, behind the protective glass. “Coach Lantz wants a word with you,” the guard said. He smiled and left as discreetly as he had appeared.
Her heart racing, Janey turned to face the man who had swiftly become the love of her life. Stunned by how hungry she was for the sight of him, after just a week apart, she let her eyes rove over him. He was wearing a red-and-gray polo shirt with the Storm emblem on the chest, jeans that encased his long, sturdy legs. And he had never looked more ruggedly handsome or determined.
As he moved toward her, the arena lights dimmed to a romantic hue. �
�If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get cozy with me,” Janey quipped, knowing she would like nothing better.
Thad looked down at her, his electric-blue eyes somber. “Would that be such a bad thing?” he asked softly.
Suddenly, Janey had a lump in her throat, and a smidgen of much-needed hope growing deep inside her. Love took work. It didn’t happen without sacrifice. She knew that now. And the first thing to go was going to be her pride. “Oh, Thad, I’m so sorry,” she whispered, taking both his hands in hers and clasping them tightly.
His callused palms gripped hers. “So am I,” he told her huskily.
“You were right.” Now that they were face-to-face again, she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “I was afraid to put my heart on the line.” Afraid to love. Afraid to risk. Afraid to change.
He let go of her hands, wrapped his arms around her back and guided her near, until they collided, hardness to softness. He looked down at her intensely. “And now?” he asked, so softly she had to strain to hear.
Janey luxuriated in the comfort of his warm embrace and the potent resolve on his face. “I realize I’m never going to be happy unless I go after what I want,” she whispered as tears of happiness welled up behind her eyes.
“Which is—?”
“What you want.” And had been, unlike her, unafraid to pursue. “A family,” she whispered emotionally. “With you and me and Chris.”
For the first time, caution warred with the determination on his face. “I want a heck of a lot more than that with you, Janey,” he told her seriously, all the tenderness she had ever dreamed of radiating in his low voice. He tucked one hand beneath her chin, lifting her face to his. With the other, he tightened his grip on her possessively. “I want you to love me the way I love you, with all my heart and soul.”
Janey blinked. “What did you just say?” she asked as her heart turned somersaults in her chest.
Thad looked deep into her eyes, more than happy to repeat the words again. “That I love you.”
Happiness bubbled up inside her as all her dreams came true, Janey wreathed her arms around him. “I love you, too,” she said in a choked up voice. “So very much.”
He studied her, curious now, needing to understand her as much as she yearned to know the innermost parts of him. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“Because,” Janey shrugged, embarrassed, “you never said.”
“I didn’t think I had to. I thought I showed you how I felt every time I held you, kissed you, made love with you.”
And he had, Janey thought. She just hadn’t trusted it. Hadn’t trusted herself. Or the love she was feeling for him.
He gently stroked her hair as he looked down at her as if she were the most wonderful woman on earth. “Is that why you turned down my marriage proposal?” he asked curiously.
Janey rose up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, admitting. “That and because I was scared you wouldn’t stay as attracted to me as you are right now.”
Thad grinned wickedly. He bent his head and kissed her until her senses flamed and the world spun around them. “Not much chance of that,” he murmured sexily, as they continued to kiss, sweetly, passionately, with all the love in their hearts. Both were trembling as they drew apart.
But Janey knew there were things she had to make plain, if they wanted to be happy in the long run. “I want this to last, Thad.” She ran her fingers through his dark hair and gazed into his eyes. “If we’re going to do it, I want us to commit ourselves heart and soul to the relationship. I want it to be for real, forever.” Her voice caught huskily. “I want Chris to know he can count on our devotion to each other as much as he can count on us to be there for him.”
“You have my word of honor, Janey,” Thad told her hoarsely. “I’m not just in this for the short haul. And to prove it to you—” He turned, gave the thumbs up.
Suddenly the Jumbotron that hung above center ice came on.
The screens flashed film of referees in zebra-striped uniforms making Misconduct and then Time-Out signs.
“So what’s it going to be?” Thad probed as the referees on the screen mimed the signs for Delay Of Game and Holding.
“This?” Thad asked as the referees gestured a triumphant Goal Scored.
“Or this?” Thad continued as they slashed the Wash Out, or No Goal sign.
Laughing at the unique way he had fashioned his proposal, Janey wrapped her arms about his neck, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him with all the love and passion she possessed, until both of them were aching for more. “Coach,” she said happily. “You just won the game.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7799-5
THE SECRET WEDDING WISH
Copyright © 2004 by Cathy Gillen Thacker.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.eHarlequin.com
The Secret Wedding Wish Page 18