One hand on either of her shoulders, I manage through gritted teeth, “Where is Jillie?”
She stares up at me, her face illuminated in the headlights. Her eyes are filled with outrage. “I believe she’s dealing with a gunshot wound back at my house,” she snaps.
I have never wanted to hit a woman in my life, but it is all I can do now to restrain myself. With one hand at the back of her neck, I reach in and grab her keys from the ignition, then march her across the pavement to the back of the vehicle, clicking the remote to open the trunk.
“You wouldn’t!” she screams.
“I would,” I say, pushing her backwards into the open space.
She flails the air with both hands. “If Angela had stuck to the story all those years ago, you wouldn’t even be here now!”
I go still at the words. “What story is that, Poppy?”
She stares up at me, as if trying to decide whether she’s said too much. But the temptation to finish me off proves too great. “You trying to rape her. Although I admit it was a stretch for anyone to believe you would want her.”
“So it was your idea then?”
“Angela’s never had a good idea in her life,” she says on a disdainful laugh.
“If that’s true,” I say, staring down at her in disgust, “picking you for a friend was the worst one of all.”
I slam the trunk shut, pull my car to the side of the road and then slide under the wheel, whipping another U and pushing the limits of the car’s engine all the way back to Poppy’s house, blanking my mind to anything except Jillie being okay.
81
Jillie
I FEEL AS if I am in a tunnel. I hear the voices calling my name. I hang onto one. Tate. Pleading with me to wake up. Demanding that I wake up. But that’s not anger defining my name. It’s fear.
I want to assure him that I am coming. But my legs feel as if they weigh a thousand pounds each, my heart stalling against the effort. I try to reach up for him. I can’t make my hand move. I’m here in the same room with him. I can see him. Hear him. But invisible walls have begun to close between us, and panic wells up and over me.
“Jillie! Jillie!”
Tears slide down my face, and my eyes slip closed to my name on his lips.
82
Tate
I WAIT BY the side of her bed, her left hand locked between my two.
It’s been a full forty-eight hours since Jillie returned to the room from surgery. She has yet to regain consciousness, and the doctors have been unable to give me any idea when that might happen.
They did tell me how lucky Jillie was, that the bullet missed her heart by an inch. When I think of how close I have come to losing her again, it is all I can do to keep breathing around the fear that swamps over me.
I haven’t slept. I’ve tried, but I’m afraid I’ll wake up to find her gone, and so it’s easier to wait with my eyes open.
Lucille has the girls and has brought them to the hospital several times while trying to keep them on something of a regular schedule. I want to tell them that everything will be all right, that there’s nothing to worry about, but I can’t make the words come out of my mouth. What if I’m wrong? What if they are faced with losing their mother when they so recently lost their father?
It’s an unbearable question to consider, and so when Jillie opens her eyes sixty-three hours after the surgery, I have never felt such overwhelming relief and gratitude.
Staring into her beautiful face, I know I will be grateful every day for the rest of my life. I take her hand in mine, entwine our fingers and stare into her eyes. “Hi,” I say softly.
“Hi,” she manages on a whisper.
“It took you a while.”
“I dreamed you were here beside me.”
“I was. At the regular protest of pretty much every nurse in the hospital.”
She smiles a little at this. “The girls?”
“Are fine. Lucille is holding down the fort. They’ll be here again this afternoon.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, opens them again. “Am I going to be okay?”
“Yes.” I lean in and kiss her cheek. “But I won’t be until I get an answer from you.”
She shakes her head a little and says, “What was the question?”
“Will you marry me, Jillie Andrews?”
She stares at me, clearly surprised. “Have you been waiting for me to wake up so you could ask me that?”
“Counting the seconds and praying I would get the chance to do so. That I hadn’t blown it yet again.”
“You never blew it. I blew it. I’m sorry for ever letting myself believe you could be anyone other than the boy I knew you to be.”
Her voice breaks on the apology, and I move closer to the side of the bed, smoothing my hand across her hair. “I have absolutely no explanation for the way things go in this world or why people do the things they do. All I know is that there is only one thing that matters from here—our family. You. And those two girls. And the life we’ve started building together. Nothing matters to me except that. I don’t want to let bitterness or regret tarnish any of it. There’s only one thing I do want.”
“What?” she asks softly.
“To hear you say you’ll spend the rest of your life with me.”
“Tate.” Tears slide down her face. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I do. I have to. I have to know that you’ll be mine, and I’ll be yours and nothing will ever come between us again.”
A smile breaks through her tears, and she nods once, biting her lip. “Then I say yes. I love you, Tate. I’ve loved you pretty much since the first day I ever saw you.”
“And I think you might have been the first person in my life to ever feel that way about me.” This time I’m the one with tears in my eyes. “You have no idea what that has meant to me. What it still means to me.”
“I guess I better hurry up and get well then. Since we have a wedding to plan, I mean.”
“Yes,” I say, leaning in to kiss her. “Hurry up.”
83
Jillie
One Month Later
IT IS A wedding I never thought to dream of.
Cross Country is the setting, a small gathering of the people we care about waiting at the edge of Smith Mountain Lake to hear our vows. In the field behind us, a group of our sweet rescued ponies and horses stand with their heads over the fencing, taking it all in.
Kala and Corey are our flower girls. It had been their idea that Elijah and Zippy would also walk with them down the grass aisle centered between the rows of chairs on either side.
Both mule and pony make valiant efforts to catch the pink rose petals Kala and Corey are dropping along the way to the front of the gathering where the pastor and Tate await.
I watch them with a smile that beams upward from my heart and wraps me in a warmth that rivals the summer sun high in the sky.
I know I’m not the first person to realize what a winding road life can take. It would be so easy to regret some of the turns mine has taken me on. To wish I had made some different choices.
But on this beautiful, August day that has spared us of Virginia’s typical summer humidity, with the backdrop of Smith Mountain Lake before us, I cannot regret a single turn. Because each one has led me here, to this place, surrounded by the people and the animals I love, to this moment, where I am about to pledge the rest of my life to a man I will do my best to deserve.
When the girls and their companions have reached the front, it is my turn. I walk slowly down the aisle to the awareness that everyone in attendance today is truly happy for us.
Lucille sits at the front, her eyes filled with the kind of pride I know my own daddy would have felt on this day.
Angela is sitting next to her, and, as strange as it seems, I know she’s happy for us as well. We’ve all found as much peace with the past as we can at this point, and have chosen not to give it power over our futures. Among us, Pop
py is the only one whose choices have resulted in consequences that cannot be untangled. And while some part of me can feel sorry for her, I know that they were her choices.
At the end of the aisle, Tate reaches for my hand, and his gaze is full with his love for me. Part of me knows I have never done anything to deserve this kind of love. But even so, I am grateful for it.
Pastor Owens smiles at us. “Shall we begin?”
We both nod, our hands joined together. We stand quietly as the violinist plays Ave Maria, and I brush the tears from my eyes.
When the last note from the violin fades, Pastor Owens turns to me. “Jillie Andrews. My dear, do you take this man, Tate Callahan, to be your husband? To love and honor, unconditionally, and with your whole heart? Will you care for him, stand beside him, and share with him all of life’s difficulties and joys, from this day forward for the rest of your life?”
My response is immediate, my gaze locked with Tate’s. I let every ounce of my love for him shine through my two-word answer. “I do.”
84
Tate
I WAKE TO moonlight streaming through the window of our bedroom.
Our bedroom.
I roll over in bed to drape my arm across Jillie’s waist, pulling her to me, pressing my lips to her neck and kissing her awake.
“Um, you again?” she says with drowsy humor.
“Afraid so,” I say, finding her mouth and kissing her further awake, so that she turns to me, her arms finding their way around my neck, our bodies striking up their instant song.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again with you in my bed.”
“You’ll grow tired of me soon enough,” she says, running her hand down the center of my chest.
“Never,” I say, lifting her on top of me and providing her with undeniable proof that she is wrong.
A while later, I hold her close in the curve of my arm, my lips against her hair.
“This could be a dream,” she says softly, her thumb absently brushing my chest. “It has been a dream. Many times.”
“It’s not now though.”
“No,” she says. “It isn’t.”
“Are you sorry we didn’t go somewhere for our honeymoon?”
She shakes her head. “Kala and Corey were ecstatic to be spending the night at Lucille’s, and I love the idea of the four of us going somewhere warm when the weather gets cold here.”
Outside our open window, a whinny floats up from one of the pastures. “I have to admit I’ve never been more content with the thought of staying in one place for the rest of my life. I love it here, Jillie. I already love our life together.”
“I love it too,” she says. She leans up on one elbow, looks into my eyes, moonlight touching the side of her face. “I love you, Tate Callahan.”
“Forever will do,” I say.
“Forever it is.”
Dear Reader,
I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my story. There are so many wonderful books to choose from these days, and I am hugely appreciative that you chose mine.
If you’d like to try another of my books, get a FREE copy of Nashville – Part One – Ready to Reach by joining my newsletter mailing list. Just click here.
Come check out my Facebook page for postings on books, dogs and things that make life good!
Wishing you many, many happy afternoons of reading pleasure.
All best,
Inglath
Books by Inglath Cooper
My Italian Lover
Fences
Dragonfly Summer – Book Two – Smith Mountain Lake Series
Blue Wide Sky – Book One – Smith Mountain Lake Series
That Month in Tuscany
Crossing Tinker’s Knob
Jane Austen Girl
Good Guys Love Dogs
Truths and Roses
Nashville – Part Ten – Not Without You
Nashville – Book Nine – You, Me and a Palm Tree
Nashville – Book Eight – R U Serious
Nashville – Book Seven – Commit
Nashville – Book Six – Sweet Tea and Me
Nashville – Book Five – Amazed
Nashville – Book Four – Pleasure in the Rain
Nashville – Book Three – What We Feel
Nashville – Book Two – Hammer and a Song
Nashville – Book One – Ready to Reach
On Angel’s Wings
A Gift of Grace
RITA® Award Winner John Riley’s Girl
A Woman With Secrets
Unfinished Business
A Woman Like Annie
The Lost Daughter of Pigeon Hollow
A Year and a Day
About Inglath Cooper
RITA® Award-winning author Inglath Cooper was born in Virginia. She is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in English. She fell in love with books as soon as she learned how to read. “My mom read to us before bed, and I think that’s how I started to love stories. It was like a little mini-vacation we looked forward to every night before going to sleep. I think I eventually read most of the books in my elementary school library.”
That love for books translated into a natural love for writing and a desire to create stories that other readers could get lost in, just as she had gotten lost in her favorite books. Her stories focus on the dynamics of relationships, those between a man and a woman, mother and daughter, sisters, friends. They most often take place in small Virginia towns very much like the one where she grew up and are peopled with characters who reflect those values and traditions.
“There’s something about small-town life that’s just part of who I am. I’ve had the desire to live in other places, wondered what it would be like to be a true Manhattanite, but the thing I know I would miss is the familiarity of faces everywhere I go. There’s a lot to be said for going in the grocery store and seeing ten people you know!”
Inglath Cooper is an avid supporter of companion animal rescue and is a volunteer and donor for the Franklin County Humane Society. She and her family have fostered many dogs and cats that have gone on to be adopted by other families. “The rewards are endless. It’s an eye-opening moment to realize that what one person throws away can fill another person’s life with love and joy.”
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Fences: Smith Mountain Lake Series - Book Three Page 22