“Oh. I see.”
“Rick stopped by here to visit his father and ended up trying to protect all of us. He’s good at rescuing people.”
“He’s a Hawkins. They come by it naturally. Have you ever thought he’s afraid you’ve been comparing him to Boris?”
“That’s absurd and he knows it.”
“Sometimes the things that seem so plain to us are anything but to someone else.”
Pam was sounding cryptic. “Are you saying Rick’s afraid I’ll turn him down if he asked me to marry him?”
“Would you? Turn him down, I mean?”
“Yes. Not because of anything to do with Boris!”
“His career then.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t want to go there.”
“Is that why you two quarreled earlier tonight?”
“How did you find out?”
“Joey happened to be in the parking lot and saw you.”
“I’ll have to remember that he’s a tattletale in the future.”
“Does it really matter? All this family cares about is your happiness. What happened?”
Audra took a shuddering breath. “Rick’s hoping that if I see a race, I’ll get over my fear.”
“I think he’s hoping for a lot more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to ask him, not me. If you’d met Rick halfway tonight, you would already have your answer.” Pam gave her another hug and got up from the bed. “I’ll see you in the morning.” She disappeared from the room.
You need to ask him, not me.
Like a mantra, those words went around in Audra’s head for the rest of the night.
Finally, the first rays of pink and yellow came through the window. She got dressed and slipped out of the house to the barn to curry Prince and give him some oats. At one point she pressed her cheek against his neck.
“Pam was trying to tell me something earlier. She never does that without a good reason.”
“Were you talking to me?”
She spun around to discover Nate was in the barn. “I—I didn’t know you were here,” she stammered.
“Last night I promised Dad I’d check on the horses. Dad and Pam shouldn’t have to worry about anything today.”
“I ought to have offered to tend the baby so you and Laurel could sleep in, too.”
He smiled. “That’s very sweet, but with Becky nursing, I’m afraid we don’t have a normal schedule anymore. Of course, that’s due to change in a few months.”
“It will.” Her heart was racing so fast she felt ill. “Nate? When are you going back to Colorado?”
“Today at four-thirty.”
“I’ve been thinking about everything and realize I need to talk to Rick. It can’t be over the phone. This has to be in person. But he was so upset when he left for Austin, I’m not sure he’ll give me the chance.
“If I flew back with you, do you think you could help me? I don’t want him to know I’m coming or he might be more put off than he already is.”
Nate’s eyes gleamed. “Leave everything to me.”
“I’D BETTER GO. I told Jackie I’d be home by nine.”
“You shouldn’t have stayed this long.” Rick walked Chip to the front door. “Thanks for coming to my rescue today.”
“I owe you for all the times you had to listen to me moan about my problems with Jackie.” After a slight pause, “Rick, I know things look bleak to you right now because of Audra. Just don’t let it get you down too far.”
“Easy advice to give. Impossible to heed.”
His buddy shook his head. “What an irony. Just when Jackie and I are starting to put our lives back together, you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Rick muttered. “Wally’s flying in tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know what time to meet us at his hotel.”
Chip nodded. “If you find you can’t stand your own company later, drive to Denver and crash with Jackie and me.”
“That’s the last thing you two need, but I appreciate the offer. I’ve got plenty of work to do on the computer tonight.”
His friend scrutinized him for a minute. “Why don’t you follow me home now? You know damn well you’re just going to lie around here and sink deeper.”
“We don’t have any secrets left, do we, Chip?”
“Nope.”
Rick rubbed his jaw. He hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Now he was regretting it. “If my demons get worse, I’ll call you.”
“No, you won’t, so I’ll be phoning you later. Better turn your cell back on. Otherwise, people will think you died. Good night, Rick. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He watched his friend drive off before he shut and locked the door.
Now he was alone in this house he loved.
It had always been his refuge, but since that nightmarish moment in the church parking lot when Audra had sent him packing, he could find no comfort anywhere.
He’d wanted her so much he’d refused to understand what should have been clear to him all along.
The Jarrett family had sustained too many losses. Audra was terrified of loving him for fear she’d lose him. All the talk about his confusion and protective instincts was just camouflage.
She’d been in a car crash with a friend who’d died. Pam was married to a man who’d secretly feared Rick would die on the racetrack. Audra had known all about his father’s fears for Rick before she’d ever met him.
Even if she’d given him the chance to tell her his days of competition were behind him, she’d probably hate the idea of his school.
He wandered into the study and turned on the CD player. She’d composed dozens of songs. He flung himself down on the couch to listen to them. Nate would tell him he was a masochist.
Tears stung his eyes when he listened to “You Should Have Asked Your Mama.” Audra’s mother had been taken away in the whirlwind. Literally swept away in the kind of funnel cloud Rick had seen at close range. His body shuddered. Audra had only been five. She never got the chance to know her mother. Rick still had a hard time comprehending it.
His gaze fell on the photograph of his mom in her wedding dress. She’d been there for him every second of his life growing up. Audra had been forced to turn to Pam when she was in pain. Pam was a loving woman but no one can take the place of your real parents.
Pam had known her own mother well. Who knew how deep the pain went when she never returned from church…
How had David found the strength to deal with his own grief and still raise five children who weren’t his?
Unable to stand his torturous thoughts another minute, he levered himself from the couch and turned off the music. To his surprise, the doorbell was ringing. He wondered for how long.
The last thing he needed was company.
If people wanted to see him, they should have called first. Then he remembered his phone was turned off. Hopefully the person would give up and go away.
When they kept ringing, he stole over to the window and peeked out. Nate’s car was in the driveway behind his M3. He must have just come back from Austin.
If his brother was this anxious to talk to him, why didn’t he just let himself in with the key?
Unless he didn’t have it on him.
“Hang on, Nate. I’m coming!” He hurried to the front door and opened it. That’s when his heart crashed into his ribs.
“Audra—”
While he stood there in shock, she stepped past him with her suitcase. The last thing he saw before shutting the door was his brother’s car going down the street.
“Last night you said you had something important to ask me. I assumed you were talking about us watching a race together, but Pam said there was a lot more to it than that.” She sought his gaze. “Was she right?”
The courage it took to ask that question was as telling as the little wobble in her voice.
He reached for her and crushed her body against his. Finally they c
ould meld together in a seamless line. She clung to him with a fierceness that satisfied him to the depths of his soul.
“Marry me, Audra. I can’t live without you.”
“Why didn’t you say that to me last night?” she cried softly into his neck.
He buried his mouth deep in her curls. “I wanted to give you a romantic evening in the truck first.”
“That’s very sweet. I’m sorry I ruined it with all my fears.”
By now his body was trembling with excitement and desire and so many emotions, he was afraid he’d burst.
“Does this mean you don’t have them anymore?”
“No,” she replied with predictable Jarrett honesty. “But you’re the love of my life—the only man I want for my husband, the one I want to be the father of my babies.
“If you crash and die before we have the chance to grow old together, then so be it. I’ll take whatever is offered for as long as it’s offered because I can’t live without you either.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, revealing a longing, a hunger for him he would remember all the days of his life. Their passion drove him to carry her up the stairs to his bedroom. There was a tiny velvet box he needed to get off his dresser.
“This was burning a hole in my pocket yesterday,” he murmured after he’d set her down on his bed. “There’s something you need to know before I put it on you.
“Meeting you has changed my life. I’m no longer going to be racing cars. I’ve already purchased property about forty-five minutes from here in order to build a racing school.”
“Rick!”
Her cry contained all the happiness and joy he could have hoped for.
“I love the sport, but the thrill of competition isn’t there anymore. It hasn’t been there for the last year. I’m excited to mentor new drivers. The beautiful part is, we can live right here. We’ll make this our home.
“With Nate and Laurel in Colorado Springs, and the Marsdens and Warners in Denver, we’ll be surrounded with family and friends.
“This house has room for your uncle. He can live with us part of the year if you think he’d like it. We’ll fly down to Texas all the time so you won’t get too homesick.
“I’m sure with a few inquiries you could have your own radio program in the Denver area. Maybe they’d let you broadcast from the house like you did at the bungalow.” He paused, having given her a lot to think about in a very short period of time. But he couldn’t wait, he needed her answer.
“What do you think?”
She gazed at him out of lustrous blue eyes. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Rick Hawkins.”
“I knew that while you were singing to Dad and Pam. It was our love song, sweetheart.”
Audra nodded. “While you and I were living together, I learned that home is where you are. I found it when I found you. I don’t feel lost anymore. I’m so full of love for you, there isn’t room for anything else.”
Feelings had welled up inside him, so he couldn’t speak. He knelt on the floor, then reached for her left hand and slid the diamond on her ring finger.
“I chose a solitaire because it looks like the top of a bluebonnet,” he said before kissing her fingertips and hands. In the next breath he followed her down on the mattress.
She was here in his arms, waiting for him with a love in full bloom. He’d found his woman of fire in the last place he would have expected. Now she’d followed him home to Copper Mountain.
Here they would stay.
Life was glorious once more.
EPILOGUE
“BY THE AUTHORITY vested in me, I now pronounce you, Audra Sealey Jarrett, and you, Richard Soderhielm Hawkins, husband and wife from this day forth, for as long as you both shall live.”
I’m his wife.
Audra couldn’t believe it. The three weeks of endless waiting for this day to come were over.
“Before Rick kisses his lovely new bride, he wants to present her with something.”
Audra couldn’t imagine what it was. He’d already made her the happiest woman alive.
His gray eyes seemed to glow with a secret. She watched him look out over the congregation assembled in the church where his parents and his brother had been married.
He cleared his throat. “Today I believe my mother is here in spirit. She’s the one who instilled the love of music in me. On my way to the Jarrett Ranch I was listening to a fabulous female vocalist out of Austin and fell in love with her voice, her music, her words.
“Little did I know it was Audra…
“I wrote a song to tell her how I feel about her. I’d like to sing it now without accompaniment.” He grasped both her hands.
My love was born in a Texas meadow,
Plucked from a waving sea,
Now she’s planted in my heart,
Where she was always meant to be.
I came across my bluebonnet,
Lying helpless on the ground,
A wind had carried her far off course,
She didn’t make a sound.
Tears glazed my cheeks that one so fair,
Could simply blow away,
I kissed the blossoms of her hair,
Before I took her home that day.
My love was born in a Texas meadow,
Plucked from a waving sea,
Now she’s planted in my heart,
Where she’ll always be with me.
“Darling—that was so beautiful, it hurts,” Audra cried before their mouths met and clung.
Until the pastor asked the congregation to rise while Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins walked down the aisle, she’d forgotten they had an audience.
The second they reached the garden where their reception was being held, her uncle was there to hug her. “You’re my little bluebonnet, too,” David said in a choked-up voice. “I love Rick for making you so happy.”
She hugged him back. “After our honeymoon we’ll come and see you.”
Clint grabbed her next. “I guess I don’t have to tell you what you mean to me. My son didn’t get nicknamed Lucky for nothing. Welcome to the family.”
“I love your family.”
“So do I,” Pam chimed in. She drew Audra to the side and put her arms around her. “Can you stand any more happiness today?”
Audra pulled back so she could look into her cousin’s brown eyes. They brimmed with joy. She was pregnant!
“Don’t say anything. I haven’t told Clint yet, but I couldn’t keep it a secret from you, not when you’re going to be in San Francisco for the next week.”
“What are you two whispering about?”
“Last-minute pointers,” Audra quipped before hugging Nate and Laurel.
He burst into laughter. “You and my brother are so crazy about each other, you don’t need any. After his performance in the church, you’re going to have to call your radio program the Red and Rick Show.”
“I heard that.” Rick grinned. “Today was a onetime-only deal.”
“Hey, Rick?” Nate said. “Have you told your wife what you’re naming your new business?”
“I’ll get around to it.”
“I want to know now.” She kissed her husband.
“It was Nate who came up with the idea. Go ahead. You’re dying to tell her anyway.”
“The Racetrack Lover’s School of High Performance.”
“You’re kidding!” Her chuckle grew into laughter. “I love it—it’s perfect!”
Her husband drew her into his arms. “I’m glad you approve. Now, let’s finish greeting our guests. I can’t wait much longer to take you on that truck ride until four in the morning. You know the one I mean.”
Audra knew the one he meant. This ride was going to last a long time past four in the morning.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7840-4
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Copyright © 2003 by Rebecca Winters.
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