by Dee Tenorio
If only she could figure out what she wanted to be the truth.
A future with Craig wouldn’t be a bad future. She’d be financially secure, pampered even. Loved, in the comfortable way one loved old shoes and fat pants after a holiday dinner. She might even talk him into a child or two. It could happen. Maybe. But she would always be longing for something she missed. Wishing for some sense that she belonged to him and him to her. That she was where she was meant to be.
She glanced at Kane, taking in the unrepentantly male lines of his face. He was missing his hat more than ever, she realized at the grim set to his mouth and the hard squint to those breathtaking green eyes. His hands were knotted into fists, thumbs hooked into the hip pockets of his jeans as he leaned against the side of the limo Elaine had insisted they use.
Their driver for the day, a college aged kid named Pete, was contentedly reading a book in the front seat while they stared at the building doing nothing.
“You wanna take a walk first?” Delilah blurted out all of a sudden, the words not even hitting her brain before escaping her mouth.
“God, yes.” She never got the chance to question his vehemence. He had her hand and had thumped the hood of the limo twice to let Pete know they were on the move. With his long stride all but dragging her along, Delilah was breathless by the time they’d gotten half a block away. Noticing, finally, Kane slowed enough for her to get a few breaths in. His mumbled apology didn’t ring with his usual honesty when the hand he put on her back to rub soothingly also maintained a subtle pressure to keep her moving forward.
“You really didn’t want to go in there, did you?”
His snort was far more expressive than his muttered, “Can you blame me?”
No, she couldn’t. “What exactly do you think will happen if you do?”
The push at her back increased slightly. “Oh, you know, dissolution of my every fantasy for the last three years. Ruination of my every hope I’ve held since I was a kid. No pressure or anything.”
Delilah slanted her gaze at him, ignoring his only-slightly sarcastic response. “You’ve barely said boo to me for the last year, Kane. Why does being married to me now mean so much to you all of a sudden?”
He cocked his head to the side, tsking as if that were the most ridiculous question he’d ever been asked. His hand slipped from her back, down her arm to reclaim her hand. But he didn’t answer the question.
For some reason, that just amped up the tension she’d been feeling since she’d stepped out of the limo to stare at the building now one corner behind them. Just like that, the insecurities and uncertainties clamoring in her mind seemed so overwhelming. “I mean, seriously. What will it change, if we’re married or not? We’re not really in a relationship. We’ve never even been on a date. It’s not a real marriage, legal or not. If you think about it, this is just one more episode of impulsive insanity to add my long list of stunts my parents are tempted to disown me for.”
His hand tightened around hers. Like a reflex against her words. They didn’t feel good coming out of her mouth, either. In fact, with every one she uttered, a frown creased deeper and deeper into her face and her stomach tightened until it hurt. But she couldn’t stop herself from talking. As if her father’s voice in her head had somehow, horribly, stolen her own, leaving her feeling lacerated and wrong.
She didn’t want to think what it was making him feel like.
Still, he kept them moving, though his steps finally slowed. Long moments passed in silence while they both brooded uncomfortably. A second corner turned, but nothing else changed. He didn’t argue. He didn’t drop to his knees and tell her he loved her so much the sky would fall if she didn’t love him back. He just kept walking and so did she.
She was insane to be disappointed at the intrusion of reality. Since waking up, nothing about this day had been truly real. Not the money, the room, the shower or even something as simple as breakfast. She hadn’t realized how far she’d fallen into the surreality of it all until now.
Because until she had said it wasn’t a real marriage, she didn’t have to admit she’d been considering it one. The only thing she’d been worried about was whether or not to stay married. To Kane. There was something wrong with that, wasn’t there?
After all, she’d spent three years talking herself into marrying Craig. Good looking, great guy Craig, whose worst crime was that he didn’t make her heart leap.
But Kane did. The brooding man with his under-the-breath humor and searing stare that seemed to say I see you every time she dared to meet it. He always had.
And right now, in this moment, the thought of not being married to him physically hurt.
God, she knew then that she must have hit her head sometime last night too.
“Why would they even consider disowning you?”
She could hear the frown in his tone, but she couldn’t look up and face it. Kane, whom she knew valued family more than anyone she’d ever met, probably couldn’t imagine a world where family turned its back on family. When his parents had died, his grandparents had raised him as if he were their own. Simply put, because to them, he was. But in her family…
“They probably wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t think about it. Or that he’d speak to me for a long time. The Colonel has never had a lot of patience when it comes to screw ups.”
“You seriously call your father ‘The Colonel’? When you introduced him the other night, I thought you were just being formal.”
Delilah shrugged. “It’s what I’m used to. No one on the base would dare refer to him by his first name. Even his friends would ask for him that way. When I talk to him, of course, I call him Dad, but talking to others…”
“Most people just called my grandfather Mr. Wilkensen or Gramps. I never thought about it beyond that.”
She almost laughed. “The only person, other than my mother, who calls my father by his first name is Rainbow, and that’s just to annoy him. Trust me, stick with Colonel or Sir, like you did the other night. You see less of the vein in his forehead that way.”
Kane nodded. “He did hit me as a stickler.”
How she didn’t snort at that understatement, she didn’t know. “He grew up in a military family, had military siblings and he’s had an incredible career because he’s a discipline machine. Me, not so much.” Another massive understatement. “He doesn’t understand how a person can even consider living their lives outside the lines already drawn for them. So I confuse him and he doesn’t know what to do with me. I mean, I know he loves me. It’s just...when you keep disappointing someone who loves you, you kinda want to stop doing it after a while, you know?”
No, he probably didn’t. Kane wasn’t the kind who disappointed anyone. Ever. He always knew what he wanted to be or do and he went out and did it, with little fanfare or concern. That was how he’d handled taking over his grandparents’ ranch, shifting it from its focus on boarding to training. The risk had been huge, but he hadn’t faltered once. He was still developing his business, growing his clientele, but he was afloat. That was part of what attracted her to him. Stability seemed to follow him like a shadow but it ran for the hills whenever she took a step from the set path.
“When I was a kid, my Mom was just like all the other moms. Fun and nutty—I mean, hello, she was raised by Rainbow—but the more advanced his rank, the more obsessed she became with making everything perfect all the time. I think she had it in her head that she might screw up somehow and cost him an advancement. Or I could. We had to have the right hair, the right clothes, the right impression. I always loved school so my grades weren’t an issue, but any time I wanted to do something that wasn’t perfectly inside the lines, they both freaked. Most of the time, I backed down because it just wasn’t worth the fuss, but every now and then…”
“Every now and then, you followed your heart.” Kane’s thumb stroked the skin on the back of her hand, gently urging her closer. She swayed, drawn to him despite all the logi
c that told her she shouldn’t be. Logic made no sense between her and Kane. What had happened in the shower earlier should have proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Her body warmed as she nodded, remembering the shocking bliss of making love to him there. Not because her body couldn’t stop, but because she’d chosen to.
Chosen him. She glanced at him now, her heart constricting. Because he chose her.
She leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked, relaxing against him for just a few moments longer.
“Following your heart isn’t a crime. Even if it was, imagine how unhappy, how wrong, your life would be if you didn’t do it sometimes.”
She could imagine very easily. Too easily.
“My grandparents were married for sixty-eight years, did I ever tell you that?”
She nodded, though it had been years since he’d brought up the couple that had raised him in any way but a fast reference. She’d never felt it was her place to draw him out either. The most she knew about them was what she’d gleaned from the trip she and Craig had made to the ranch for Kane’s grandmother’s funeral.
Beautiful land, peaceful and well cared for, with hills and mountains in every direction. The sunsets were what she thought about most. With the sky a curving blend of golds and purples and blues, the peaks and valleys an inky black reaching up to the unfurling stars twinkling above.
Kane had been virtually silent for the entire three days they’d visited, but he’d taken her hand at the funeral when she’d offered it, only letting go to give the eulogy in his rough, almost broken sounding voice.
“She always liked to tease him that they would never have gotten together if he hadn’t run away with her.”
“Run away?”
“According to him, he borrowed her.” The affection in his tone told her how many times he’d heard that word correction. “When they first met, she wouldn’t give him the time of day. She had plans to go to college—which was pretty progressive still in 1939. She wanted to get a business degree and he was a horse rancher who had no interest in seeing more of the world or changing it in any way other than raising and training good stock, but he was stuck on her no matter how she put him off. He wrote her letters when she went to school, though she said she didn’t want him to, she never returned a single one. For two years, that’s how it went. Him writing, her pretending she didn’t care.”
“What happened to change things?” Delilah asked, twining their fingers together.
“Pearl Harbor. My grandfather loved the land, but he felt enlisting was the right thing to do. When he wrote to tell my grandmother, she left school and came all the way back home to tell him he was out of his fool mind.”
“Her words?”
“Definitely hers.” Kane chuckled. “Gramps decided when she showed up, that was all the sign he needed. He threw her over his shoulder and took off with her into the mountains. He didn’t bring her back until she agreed to marry him.”
“You know, these days, that’s called stalking and kidnapping.”
“But back in ’41, it was romantic.” That finally got a smile back on his face. Her relief at seeing it said a little more than she could handle, but she decided to ignore that for now. She’d hurt him with what she said, no matter that she’d hurt herself as well.
“Did he still enlist?”
Kane nodded. “Came home at the end of his tour with a Silver Star and a bullet in his shoulder that stayed there ‘til the day he died.” Kane lifted his left hand, showing her the broad gold band. “He wore this 'til the day he died, too. The two pieces of metal he said he thanked God for every day. The bullet saved his life and brought him home, but the ring… His ring was his life.”
“He must have really loved her.” It didn’t need saying, but Delilah couldn’t hold the awe back.
“They had six kids, saw each other through three of them dying, nearly lost everything a few times and almost died a few times themselves in all those years, but never once did that love ever waver. When he died, he left his ring for me. He wanted me to always remember that love was the most important part of a man’s life. Not his mistakes, not his successes. Just the simple fact that he was able to truly love someone enough to share a lifetime with them. He wanted that for me. That’s why I've carried their rings on a chain around my neck since she died. I wanted that for me too.” He lifted the hand that held hers, turning it into the light so that the stones on the rings caught the sun and shone with startling brilliance. Then he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them reverently. “I want it with you, Delilah.”
Teardrops fell from the edges of her eyes before she even realized they were filing. “How? How do you know you want me? What have I ever done that would make you so sure?” She was never sure about anything, no matter how much she wanted to be. The doubts and the worries that she was screwing up always plagued her, keeping her from settling on anything. Not even a major for her unending list of college courses. Her father loved to point out most people were lawyers and doctors after the amount of time she’d spent taking odd classes without ever coming close to settling on a goal.
“I’ve known since the first moment I saw you and every day after has only made me surer. I see who you are, right down to your soul. I know you’re the kind of woman who gives of herself, completely. I know the promises you make mean more to you than the cost. I know that family is the most important thing to you in the entire world. But most of all, I know that you feel exactly the same thing I do—we belong together, Del. You’re the piece of me that’s been missing all my life and I can tell just looking that I’m the same for you.
“I never thought I’d have a chance with you, all because Craig was lucky enough to find you first. I was going to let you go, if he made you happy. If he was what you wanted. But he wasn’t and he won’t. Right now, this is the only time I’ll ever have to show you that I’m the man you need in your life. The man you want. So no matter what happens in that building over there, I’m not giving up on you, Delilah Anne. I’m not giving up until you’re mine.”
She had to shut him up or she was going to fall to her knees right there on the cracked sidewalk and broken glass of Richtor Street. So she did the only thing she could and kissed him.
It wasn’t soft or pretty or even completely on target, but she knew her entire heart was in it. And when his arms came around her, his lips seeking before taking control and completely destroying all of the paltry defenses she had left, she could tell he knew it too.
Chapter Eight
The inside of the Fantasy Wedding Chapel erased the memory of the dingy exterior as soon as they passed through the cool rush of air blowing from above the double doors. Stones, mostly polished, still rough and bumpy, transported them from the hot city to an almost storybook castle with a single step. Like some kind of medieval great hall, the foyer was a giant open space, with gleaming dark wood reception bars and pews lining its walls. Each piece seemed to be hewn out of single pieces of a giant tree. Beautiful cabinetry housed modern computers, but they stayed mostly out of sight. Oversize doors with intricate wrought iron trees hung open beneath a wide arch, leading to three wide hallways.
Those hallways sparked something in Kane’s mind, stopping him in his tracks. He recognized the deep red carpet leading forward to another door with the black metal tree. In his mind, he saw his own hand reaching for the door, pushing it open to reveal a circular garden, the center of which held a large gazebo with twinkling lights twined through it’s every surface.
“What’d I tell you, Vera? Didn’t I say they’d be back?”
Kane turned, pulling Delilah behind him at the booming voice coming from behind them.
The white-haired man smiling at them wasn’t exactly threatening. Oh, he was a beast of a man, tall enough to require even Kane to look slightly upward, but his danger was offset by the delighted smile, red nose, bright blue eyes and a bely round enough to be eighteen months pregnant.
Vera turned
out to be a patient-looking woman in her forties, closing the door they had obviously just exited. Unlike the man, who wore simple brown polyester pants and a white shirt doing its best to contain him, she wore a uniform blazer matching the hall carpet and her dark hair was pulled back with gold clips on each side.
Very professional, her smile just the right shade of approachable. Kane looked back at the man, who seemed to be waiting for something, his big hands fisted at his...hips?
“He don’t have a clue who we are,” the man said to Vera as if it were the funniest thing he’d heard in forever, his rich laughter setting Kane’s ears ringing. He put his hand out, waiting for a shake. “I’m the man that married you two.”
“We were married by Santa Claus?” Delilah whispered just behind Kane’s ear as he put his hand out in acceptance.
“Well, mostly married, anyway,” the man added, letting go of Kane’s hand not even noticing he’d practically punched Kane in the chest with those words. “Name’s Norman Rouse, friendly neighborhood JP.”
“How can you be mostly married?” Delilah asked. Well, demanded, really, but she still sounded a lot less abrupt than Kane would have been if he could have coughed out the question.
“Oh, you know, the legal part has a few kinks in it, nothing that can’t be fixed in a jiff. My specialty is marrying the heart and soul, not that you two needed any help in that department. My daughter Vera here takes care of the legal junk, so you two are gonna owe her one for messing with her perfect record. Actually, she handles the business junk too, to be honest.” Norman laughed again. “She’s the one turning this place around, bit by bit. Anyhow, when you two wandered off, Vera figured you were just another pair of drunk tourists who didn’t have a clue what you’d done, but I told her, you two would be back, and I was right, wasn’t I?”
Kane glanced at Vera, whose cheeks had turned a darker tinge of pink but she was holding onto that professional smile with every tooth she had. “How’d you know?”