The Wedding She Always Wanted

by Stacy Connelly

  Stories and pictures of Kelsey and Connor’s wedding and honeymoon were passed around, details about the damage done to the restaurant were shared and tours were given to show off the work Alex and Javy had done.

  Emily loved the tile in the hallway to the bathrooms. Cream-colored tiles lined the walls, interspersed with hand-painted pieces in greens, blues and reds. The color scheme continued into the bathrooms, where the decorative tiles lined the mirrors and accented the countertops.

  Everyone commented about the amazing job, and while Alex soaked up the praise, Javy took it all in stride, and Emily wondered if he didn’t see the job as incomplete, with the patio and bar area untouched.

  Needing a break, Emily slipped away from the party and stepped out onto the patio, willing to brave the hot, stifling night for a few seconds of quiet. A slight breeze made the heat bearable and set the branches of bougainvillea, with their fuchsia blooms, waving.

  The sliding-glass doors muffled the sounds of the party inside, and only a muted light spilled out onto the brick patio, scarcely chasing shadows into the corners.

  Emily jumped when a sudden movement caught her eye.

  Maria Delgado pushed out of a chair on the far side of the patio.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Delgado. I didn’t realize anyone was out here. I’ll go back—”

  “Wait a moment, Emily,” Javy’s mother said. “We should talk.”

  “All right,” Emily agreed, hoping Maria didn’t hear the reluctance in her voice.

  When the older woman sat back down, Emily crossed the patio to join her. Despite her proclamation, Maria didn’t say anything, a burst of laughter coming from inside the restaurant emphasizing the silence.

  “The restaurant looks amazing,” Emily said finally, picking a subject obviously close to the woman’s heart. “Javy worked so hard to have everything back the way it was before the water damage. You should be proud of him.”

  Maria’s shoulders drew back. “He is my son. Of course, I am proud of him.”

  “No, I didn’t mean…” With a sound of frustration, Emily let her explanation die. Somehow she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with Maria Delgado, and she doubted anything would change that.

  She was searching for an excuse to make her way back inside when Maria said, “You are doing a good thing, donating your clothes, helping with Angela’s charity.”

  A polite response formed in Emily’s thoughts, even though she knew Maria didn’t mean the words as a compliment. Unwilling to simply smile and let it go, she said, “And yet you don’t sound impressed.”

  “Is that why you do this? To impress me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Ah.” Maria nodded. “To impress my son.”

  “No, that’s not it, either,” Emily argued, the first flicker of anger sparking inside her. “I’m doing this because I want to help. Because I know how lucky I am, how blessed I’ve been my entire life.” A point that talking to Lauren had certainly driven home. “I want to do what I can to give something back. And if you don’t believe that…Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Maria sighed. “I do believe you, Emily. You’re a nice girl. A pretty girl. But you aren’t the girl who will make my Javy settle down.”

  At the older woman’s words, a knot twisted in Emily’s stomach, even though she had known going in that any relationship with Javier Delgado was not meant to last. She certainly wasn’t foolish enough to think she would be the woman to change his playboy ways.

  And that was what she should have told his mother, but when she opened her mouth, a completely unexpected question came out. “Because I’m not like Stephanie?”

  She couldn’t deny her curiosity about the woman Javy had once been engaged to, a woman who had once settled Javy down.

  Even in the faint lighting, Emily saw Maria’s eyes widen. “My son told you about her?”

  Javy hadn’t told her much, and Emily suddenly regretted asking. If he’d wanted her to know, he would have told her. His refusal was a reminder that she shouldn’t let herself get too close, a reminder Emily feared she had ignored.

  Shaking her head, Emily pushed out of the chair. “It doesn’t matter. I should go back.”

  Maria caught her arm before she could leave. “It is not because you are different from Stephanie that I worry,” she said, a hint of sorrow pulling at her features. “It is because you are too much the same.”

  The same? She and Javy’s ex-fiancée were somehow alike? The questions swirled through Emily’s thoughts, but when Maria’s fingers slipped away with the faint jingle of bracelets at her wrist, Emily backed toward the sliding-glass doors. If Javy didn’t want to tell her about Stephanie, she wasn’t going to ask.

  And while she might not know much of anything about Javy’s past, she did know him. Well enough to point out to Maria, “You should have let Javy remodel the patio and the bar. It would have meant a lot to him, more than you seem to know.”

  At the end of the evening any number of people could have driven Javy home. He was pretty sure he could have managed it himself. After his first beer, he’d switched to margaritas, but with Alex behind the bar, guaranteeing the drinks were more tequila than lime, Javy didn’t want to risk it.

  So, without any real planning on either of their parts, amid hugs of farewell and high fives, he and Emily drifted toward her car.

  She filled the ride with idle small talk, mostly about the restaurant and the following night’s reopening. “It will be a huge success, just like tonight. I’m glad I could come.”

  “So am I.”

  “I had a really good time.”

  “Despite what my mother said to you?” he drawled.

  Emily’s gaze cut to his before refocusing on the road ahead. The passing streetlights flashed over her profile like the flickering of a black-and-white television set. “How did you—”

  “I saw you come in from the patio, and I know my mother was already outside.”

  He doubted Maria had missed the chance to say something to Emily about their relationship. His mother had been bemoaning his single status for years. It was one of the reasons he usually kept the women he dated far, far away from Maria.

  The last thing he’d needed was his mother putting ideas in anyone’s head. Until now. Until Emily. He wouldn’t mind so much if his mother put some of those ideas into her head.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said finally.

  “Emily—”

  “It’s not important, Javy,” she insisted. “Really.”

  And maybe that was part of the problem. He wanted their relationship to matter. He wanted it to be important, life altering. He wanted their relationship to be forever. That realization had his stomach churning, as if he’d had a dozen or so margaritas, instead of two or three.

  “I think,” he said, actually hoping, “it might be important.”

  But despite the opening he gave her, Emily didn’t speak for the rest of the ride.

  Javy waited until they arrived at his place and he invited Emily inside before pressing the point. “What did my mother say to you?”

  Seated on his couch, which was definitely built more for comfort than style, Emily maintained perfect posture. She smoothed the skirt of her dress over her knees. “She’s your mother. She wants you to be happy.”

  “And?”

  “She wants to see you settle down.” Nothing Emily said came as a surprise until she added, “She doesn’t think it’s going to happen.”

  “She doesn’t?” His mother was giving up on him? That didn’t sound like Maria at all. And wouldn’t that be ironic? For her to give up on the idea of him settling down just as he found the one woman he wanted to get serious about.

  “I thought maybe it had to do with Stephanie.” Emily turned to face him on the couch, drawing up one knee and distracting him with her bare skin and a toned, shapely calf. “I shouldn’t have brought it up, and your mother really didn’t tell me anything, but I want to apologize for go
ing behind your back. It wasn’t right and—”

  “And you shouldn’t have had to do it,” Javy interrupted. “I should have told you.”

  “You don’t have to….”

  “I want to,” he insisted. “Stephanie was my first serious girlfriend. We dated at the end of our senior year in high school. We thought…I thought we were in love,” he amended, since to this day he still wasn’t sure if Stephanie had loved him or had simply seen him as a ticket to freedom.

  “What was she like?” Emily asked.

  He expected a certain amount of curiosity; he would have felt the same had he not already heard so much about Emily’s ex. But something more—a reluctance—was hidden behind the question.

  Maybe she’s afraid you’re gonna act like a jerk and cut her off the way you did last time she asked, his conscience goaded.

  Hoping to wipe the hesitancy from her eyes, he insisted, “You can ask me anything you want, Emily.”

  She nodded, but the worry didn’t entirely disappear.

  Determined to tell her everything, he said, “Stephanie was beautiful. She looked…Well, I guess she looked a little like you. She was blonde and had blue eyes.” But that was where the similarities ended, and maybe that was why he’d never paid much attention to the likeness before. “Stephanie was troubled and…fragile.”

  “Fragile? How?” With Emily’s focus locked on the floral pattern of her skirt, Javy couldn’t see her expression, but he could almost sense her frown.

  “Her parents divorced when she was eleven, and they spent the next several years bouncing from one family court to another, fighting over custody of her. She felt like a pawn, and for as long as I knew her, all she talked about was the day she could finally escape.”

  He should have realized that he was little more than a ticket out of town. At eighteen, he, too, had had big plans of striking out on his own, not because he’d had a bad home life, but simply because, well, hell, he’d been eighteen. He’d thought he knew it all and was ready to see it all, do it all. When Stephanie agreed to his every suggestion, he’d believed it was because she loved him and wanted to be with him, no matter what the adventure.

  Too late had he realized all she wanted was the getaway car; it didn’t really matter who was driving.

  He went on. “I proposed the night of our graduation. It seemed like the perfect time. We were riding high on success, and nothing could stop us. Or at least that’s what I thought.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told my parents our plans, and my dad flipped out. I’d never seen him so angry. Everything we said to each other built this wall of anger and bitterness until, finally, neither one of us could get through to the other. And then…my dad had a heart attack. It was only a few weeks after our fight. The doctors said stress might have been the cause….”

  “Oh, Javy.”

  Reaching out, Emily took his hands in hers and let her touch convey all she couldn’t say. Her presence, her compassion, did more to sooth his guilt than any words ever could.

  “I thought graduating from high school and getting engaged meant I was an adult. I found out real fast what growing up really meant. My mother was at my dad’s side twenty-four-seven, and that put me in charge at the restaurant. I had spent my whole life around that place and had worked there since I was in junior high, but running it—that was completely different. I couldn’t just be one of the guys anymore. I was the boss, whether they liked it or not. Whether I liked it or not.”

  Overnight he’d had responsibility thrust on him, and he could now admit, in some ways he’d been running from it ever since.

  “I told Stephanie I couldn’t leave as long as my dad was in the hospital. I still wanted to get married, just not as soon as we’d planned. I expected her to understand and fooled myself into thinking she did.”

  “What happened?”

  “My dad never left the hospital. The doctors thought he was improving, but he had a second heart attack and…” He swallowed hard, the memories still raw after all these years. Regret clawed at him for the fight they’d had and the missed chance of ever making amends. “After that, there was no way I could leave town with Stephanie. But we could still get married, find an apartment near the restaurant, start our life together.”

  Looking back now, Javy didn’t know how he’d thought their marriage could work. His father had been right when he’d called him selfish and irresponsible. He and Stephanie had been self-centered kids, focused only on what they wanted. And while tragedy had forced a change in his plans, Stephanie’s plans had remained the same.

  He continued. “I tried spending as much time as I could with her, but my mother was in no shape to be running the restaurant. Sometimes I felt like I lived there, so I don’t suppose I can blame Stephanie for feeling abandoned. And then, one day, I found a note stuck on the windshield of my car.”

  Emily squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  He waited for the dark memories to sweep over him like a summer monsoon, filled with flashes of anger and earsplitting roars of protest, but like a storm that dissipated over the desert, all he felt was the faint brush of relief.

  “I couldn’t go after her. Couldn’t just take off after I’d promised my mother that I could handle running the restaurant and that she didn’t have to worry about a thing. And then there was the fire.”

  Even after ten years, guilt sliced through his gut with the memory. As the manager, it had been his job to do a final walk-through of the restaurant each night. To this day, he would swear he’d checked the stoves before leaving that night. But exhaustion and constant worry had taken a toll, and while he’d been so sure, he’d also been so wrong.

  “We were at home when we got the phone call from the fire department.” He would never forget the look in his mother’s eyes—not a look of anger or devastation, which he could have handled, but a look of utter defeat. He’d seen a woman who simply had nothing left to lose. “It was my fault.”

  “No,” Emily protested.

  “I should have checked the kitchen one more time.”

  Emily shifted closer, bracing one hand on his shoulder and curving her fingers around his jaw to turn his face toward her. “That doesn’t make it your fault. It was an accident. You said your mother wasn’t in any shape to run the restaurant. But what kind of shape were you in?”

  He’d been a mess. His father’s death and Stephanie’s desertion had hit him hard. Add the responsibility of managing the restaurant on top of that, and it was little surprise that something had to give. But for it to be his family’s restaurant…

  “It was not your fault,” Emily insisted. “You need to stop blaming yourself. To let go and move on.” Javy opened his mouth to argue, but she beat him to it. “Why didn’t you push harder to remodel the restaurant?”

  “It’s like you said. My mother wants to keep everything as it was when my father was still alive.”

  “Is that the reason? Or is it because you think she won’t trust your ideas? Because you don’t trust those ideas?”

  He didn’t like the thought that he’d let failure control his life, but he had. Between the fire at the restaurant and Stephanie’s desertion, he’d changed. Oh, he’d told himself and everyone else that all he wanted out of life was to have some fun and enjoy his freedom, but he’d lied. He wasn’t having fun, and he wasn’t free. He was afraid and running scared.

  But as he gazed into Emily’s eyes—at the understanding, the concern, the confidence he saw there—everything inside him slowed, stilled and stopped.

  He didn’t have to run anymore. Not when he’d finally found the one place he wanted to be and the one person he wanted to be with.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With Javy staring at her so intently, Emily wondered if she’d pushed too far. If like the night of their date, she was going to ruin a wonderful evening by asking too many questions.

  Her stomach twisted at the idea of Javy pulling away from her again, but it was a
risk she had to take. She couldn’t go back to trying to make everyone else happy by keeping her mouth shut with a smile.

  Not even for Javy. Especially not for Javy.

  “You know the changes will only make the restaurant that much better, and you deserve the chance to prove it to yourself and to Maria,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And the only way to do that is to talk to her again, to try and make her see…” So caught up in her own argument, she didn’t even realize she’d won. “You what?”

  He chuckled at her confusion. “There is such a thing as quitting while you’re ahead, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever been ahead before. I didn’t realize I was there.”

  All teasing aside, she drew her right leg up onto the couch. Javy caught her around the waist, steadying her, as she cupped his face in her hands. His evening beard scraped against her palms, a rough contrast as she ran her thumb over his lips.

  “I think…” Emily felt the brush of breath and movement against her flesh as he spoke, and a shiver raced from her fingertips up her arm to scatter goose bumps across her chest. “I think there’s a way for both of us to get what we want. For my mother to keep the restaurant and her memories intact, and for me to get what I want, too.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he promised, “but first I need some time to work out the details. And second, I don’t want to talk about the restaurant or my mother or my past anymore tonight.”

  Sliding her fingers back into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, she tilted her head to the side. “Hmm. What do you want to talk about?”

  Judging by the heat in his eyes as his gaze dropped to her lips, she expected him to say he didn’t want to talk at all. But he surprised her, answering, “Let’s talk about you.”

  “Me? I think we’ve already determined that you know everything about me.”