by Lori Wilde
“So listen,” Joshua said, worried that he wouldn’t get another chance to talk to Hailey. In full view of his mother, the catering staff, Trip, Sam, and everybody, he said to her, “I’m here for two weeks on spring break. Let’s go to lunch.”
Hailey’s heart-shaped face turned bright pink like a sunburn that had started on the inside. She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“For heaven’s sake, Joshua, it’s your sister’s wedding,” Marion said. “Can’t this wait?”
But Joshua wasn’t going anywhere till he got an answer. He gazed down at Hailey, blood pounding, wondering if he was certifiably insane. He had a sinking feeling that the answer was yes—but that her answer wouldn’t be.
“I’m, uh, super busy,” she said, flicking her gaze away. “Wedding season, you know.”
Joshua sucked in a breath and turned to leave. Ouch. That hurt.
Trip slapped one hand on his shoulder and herded him out of the kitchen. “Ya blew it,” he muttered. “You bombed so hard, she’s going to be picking pieces of you out of her teeth for weeks.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“You were like a Scud missile of lameness,” Trip said. “My grandma’s got more game than that. Really, dude, I can’t believe I hang out with you.”
Chapter Two
“Who was that?” Sam wanted to know, giving Hailey a load of side-eye. “He looks like a young Matthew McConaughey. If Matthew McConaughey were a linebacker. Which he’s not. And why on earth did you say no when he asked you out?”
Hailey arranged the spiced beef empanadas around a ramekin of lime sour cream. Her hands sweated inside the plastic gloves, and her thoughts kept revolving like Fourth of July pinwheels.
What bothered her wasn’t that Joshua had asked her out. No, that would have been easy. It was the fact that seeing him made her heart combust. But how was that possible after he’d taken her heart and stomped it flat in the first place? After he’d promised to love her forever, to marry her, and then had abandoned her at the lowest point in her life—all because his parents decided that he and Hailey were too young to get married? You didn’t just get over something like that.
What if she was one of those people who loved once and never loved again? Like Juliet from that play. Or even her own father, who’d never really bounced back after the death of his wife. Skyrocketing blood pressure had killed Hailey’s mother shortly after labor. She was buried in the local cemetery. All Hailey knew about her was what she saw in the mirror every day. It was the same face that peered at her from her mother’s photo in the hallway. And when her father had looked at her, she could sometimes see the grief in his eyes.
And then, just when she’d lost everything else, she had lost Joshua, too.
“Hello?” Sam said. “Do you speak English? I said if I had a guy like that who was hot for me, I’d take him home and ride him like a rented mule.”
“Oh my God, Sam. Really?”
“Too much information? Sorry. It’s just been me and a carton of ice cream for the last couple of months.”
Harper rushed into the kitchen looking a little frazzled. “The ceremony’s started. Are those trays ready?”
“Everything except the rest of the veggie platter,” Hailey told her. She went to the kitchen sink to finish rinsing the cherry tomatoes. There was a window above the sink flanked by two open shutters and a sun catcher in the shape of a bluebird. Through the window Hailey saw Savannah Loving in her floofy wedding dress go rushing toward the carport. Had she forgotten something? Why didn’t she just send somebody to get it?
Then Savannah turned around, and Hailey saw the expression of sheer panic and desperation on her face.
Uh oh.
Hailey turned off the water and stood watching with a growing sense of alarm.
“Something’s going on out there,” she told the others. “And whatever it is, I don’t think it’s good.”
Sam, Harper, and a half dozen other caterers crowded around the window while Savannah thrashed her way out of the wedding dress. Underneath the dress, she wore a tank tee and leggings.
Harper let her clipboard go clattering onto the counter. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Standing at the sink with a dripping handful of cherry tomatoes, Hailey watched Savannah straddle a badass Ducati motorcycle and take off just as her bewildered bridegroom came running out, yelling after her. He retrieved the wedding gown from the lawn and stood gazing at it with a curious expression of sadness and . . . Hailey looked closer. Good Lord, was that relief?
“Wow,” Sam muttered. “I thought things like this only happened on bad late-night cable television.”
“Poor Dr. Worthington,” one of the younger caterers said with a dreamy sigh.
Harper dropped onto a nearby chair and then buried her head in her hands. “I’m hyperventilating. I think I have a rash. What if they decide this is my fault? They could stop payment on the check. My business could be ruined.”
Sam grabbed a beer out of the fridge, popped the cap, and then wrapped Harper’s limp fingers around the bottle. “I think the best we can do right now is get crazy drunk and pretend we didn’t see it happen.”
Hailey let the tomatoes roll into the sink, peeled off the gloves, and then deposited them in the recycle bin. She wasn’t terribly worried about Chance Worthington. No one with hair that perfect would stay single for long. But she did worry about Joshua. He and Savannah had always been close. Hailey might have thought of her as a princess, but, to be fair, Savannah had her good points. Maybe at the last minute she’d decided not to become a Junior Leaguer like her mom. Maybe she was less spoiled and elitist than Hailey had given her credit for.
“I’ll be right back,” she mumbled.
The garden looked the same as it had before—a big Texas cake topper complete with fluffy bows and flowers—only now there was an air of stunned disbelief hanging over the place. That nice Felicity Patterson, owner of the Bluebird Inn, was in deep conversation with a tall stranger. Over by the appetizers, Marion had ten people fluttering around her while she did her “bring me the smelling salts” routine, only instead of smelling salts it was a vodka tonic. Hailey actually felt sorry for her. Marion had been publicly humiliated, and her daughter was a runaway bride. If that didn’t get you a vodka tonic, what did?
Hailey searched for Joshua. No matter what might have happened between them, she couldn’t bear the thought of him suffering. Maybe there was something she could say that might help. Sure. A tiny voice in her head accused her of having ulterior motives. But if there was ever a time to circle the wagons, it was now. Hard feelings had to be put aside.
Rounding the walkway that led to the carport, she heard voices and stopped. It was Joshua and his father. Neither one of them sounded calm. Or friendly.
“Let her run off then if her life is so damn awful,” Joseph was saying. “Sixty thousand dollars I shelled out for this wedding. And she doesn’t have the decency to tell me there’s something wrong and she doesn’t want to get married?”
“Dad, just calm down,” Joshua said. “Savannah’s devastated. I know she is. And I don’t think she should be alone right now.”
“Alone? What do I care if she’s alone? What she did was inexcusable!”
“She’s still your daughter,” Joshua said. “What if something happens to her out there?”
“I swear to God, if you try to go after her, I will never forgive you. She made her bed. Let her lie in it.”
Hailey hung back, wondering what she should do. Then Joseph relieved her of having to decide by storming past on his way to the garden. She’d never seen his face so red, not even when Joshua had told his father he wanted to marry her. On that day, Joseph had simply been curt and condescending. On this day, he just gave her a fierce look of annoyance and kept marching.
She peeked around the corner and saw Joshua disappear up the front porch steps. Was she right to talk to him? Hailey scraped one hand through her hair and considered her option
s. What if he was mad at her for blowing him off like that? What if he treated her like his father just had?
But this is Joshua.
She found him on the porch swing, leaning forward dejectedly, elbows on knees. He glanced up when he heard her feet on the wooden porch, and, for just a split second, his face was open. Naked. Not one trace of a young man’s swagger. He looked as though he’d lost something and didn’t know how to get it back again.
Seeing him like this, unguarded and alone . . . she felt the pull of attraction right down to her bones. Suddenly, she was eighteen again, and it was the summer after senior year. She was out looking for one of Grams’s cats, and there was Joshua with his bashful smile and his sun-streaked hair, staring like he’d never really seen her before. Hailey had idolized him throughout high school, but they’d traveled in different circles. She was athletic, but not a jock. Smart, but not a brain. Not unpopular, really. Just not on the radar.
Joshua, on the other hand, had been worshipped by everyone. He had dated a cheerleader and driven a black Ford F-250.
Until that day when Hailey had heard Cooper mewing from the bushes and had watched Joshua’s big, gentle hands retrieve the annoying cat, she’d never said more than hello to him.
She felt just like that now, felt the same speechless yearning. Wasn’t time supposed to change all that? Deaden your feelings somehow so you could go on with the business of living? But when Joshua looked at her, a whole net of captive butterflies was released inside her stomach.
“Hey,” she said softly. “Some day, huh?” She sat beside Joshua on the swing, which was hung a little high. He was so tall, his knees poked up, but her toes barely scraped the porch.
He leaned back and gave her an apologetic smile. “Well, now. Aren’t you brave?”
“Brave?”
“For coming out here. You’re not afraid I’m going to make an ass of myself again?”
“You’re not an ass.” She found a brown sparrow feather caught in the chain of the swing and twirled it between her fingers. “It’s good to see you again, Joshua. Really, it is. It’s just that . . .” Hailey lapsed into a pained silence. She’d always struggled to express herself, especially when it came to emotionally complicated stuff.
“Yeah,” he said heavily. “I know.”
She couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that he was in Serendipity and they were talking together on the porch. A porch that was a lot like the one she had at home, only this one wasn’t lopsided and falling apart. On a white wicker table next to her, a watering can with a bluebird painted on it sat next to a pair of gardening gloves. Squirrels raced around the sycamore branches. In the distance, a train whistle reminded her of the hot summer nights when she and Joshua had wandered the tracks looking for lightning bugs and talking about their future together. Kissing him had made her head spin.
Hailey knew she wasn’t good with words, but she was alive to beauty in nature and to animal sensation. The way her taste buds curdled when she ate lemons. The green glow of a leaf when the sun shone through it. The breathtaking sensitivity of Joshua’s hands, their quiet strength and tenderness.
How he’d used them to help her discover what her body was capable of.
“I should have gone after her, Hailey,” he said sadly. “I never should’ve let her go like that.”
“Savannah can take care of herself.” She survived being a Loving, didn’t she?
Joshua absently rocked the porch swing, brow furrowed, hands clasped over his flat stomach. “Yeah, but she never told me. I had no idea she was unhappy. Why didn’t she say anything? Savannah knows I have her back, no matter what.”
Hailey hunted for the right words, but she was too powerfully aware of his presence beside her, of the shape of his strong thighs beneath the tux pants. “Maybe Savannah didn’t know she was unhappy until today,” Hailey said after a long pause. “She probably just needs a little time to sort things out.”
Joshua rested his head on the back of the swing. “I feel completely useless. I came here to tell my parents the truth about my future plans. Now Savannah’s run off, it’s the worst time for them, and I don’t think they could handle any more stress.”
“What do you mean ‘the truth’?” She felt uneasy suddenly, as though the sacrifices she’d made—that they’d both made—had been for nothing. It was one thing to think he’d given her up to save lives . . .
He turned his head to look at her, close enough that she could see his bristly boy lashes and the pallor of sadness beneath his tanned skin. There was knowing in his dark eyes, and the kind of mute hunger that burned through her own body like a cascade of fiery stars.
He had no business looking at her like that. Making her want things.
Joshua must have read her thoughts. He swung his gaze back up to the ceiling. “I don’t want to be a heart surgeon. You know that. I never did. The Lovings have been cattle ranchers going back for generations now. Animal husbandry is in my blood.”
“You wanted to be a veterinarian,” she said. “We used to talk about it, remember?”
“Of course I remember,” he said softly, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Yearning moved through her again—for him, for the past. If only you could rewind time like one of Grams’s old cassette tapes, back to the good years before her dad and her brother went on that hunting trip and never came back. Why couldn’t a person stop these things from happening? The next morning when Hailey had answered the door, two police officers had been standing there, hats off, the bad news etched on their faces. Tanner and her dad had lost control of the truck. After the gas tank exploded, there wasn’t enough left of either one of them to bury.
Joshua had been there with her when she went to the morgue. She’d just fallen to pieces. Without his strength and steadiness, she never would have survived. But a month later, he had been gone, off to university. And now, not only was she all alone in the world, but she and Joshua were worlds apart. She was still the girl his parents didn’t want him to marry, and he was still the young man who lacked the courage of his convictions. If only he had loved her enough to follow his heart.
“I have to go,” she said, rising suddenly.
“Please don’t.”
She turned to look at him. This wasn’t the smiling, easygoing Joshua she remembered. Instead, his manner was self-reproachful in a way that made her wonder if people actually could change. She had to get away before it was too late and she started believing such nonsense.
“Take care of yourself,” she said. “Try not to worry about Savannah. She’s brave. And tougher than she looks.”
His massive shoulders sagged. “You take care, too, Hailey. Thanks for the talk.”
She forced herself to walk away, one foot in front of the other until she got to the end of the porch. Tears gathered behind her eyelids, shameful amounts of heat that she blinked sharply away.
Before going down the steps, Hailey stopped. She didn’t dare turn around. In a voice she barely recognized, she said, “I hope you tell your folks the truth. It’s easy to go with the flow, Joshua. What takes courage is standing up for the things you believe in.”
Chapter Three
Hailey pedaled up the dusty street to the tumbling-down Victorian that had housed four generations of Deacons. Serendipity seemed so boring—Mr. Garibaldi’s portable sprinkler bravely chugging water across the crabgrass. Screen doors clattering over the shrill voices of children. A rust-bucket pickup truck wheezing by. Serendipity’s very sameness made her restless because Joshua was here.
What point was there in starting something now? It was hard to admit that she wanted to. But he was just going to leave again. That was what happened to the people she loved. They left her here to fend for herself.
She rested her bicycle against the overgrown rose trellis and went inside, wondering which version of her Grandma Adelia she was going to get today. There was the Grams who collected cats and read the poetry of Tennyson and Walt Whitman out loud
after supper. Then there was the Grams who made spookily accurate predictions about things she couldn’t possibly know. And finally the Grams who wore elaborate church lady “chapeaux,” drank tea, and talked to people who weren’t actually there. When Hailey heard the Victrola going, she knew Grams was in the parlor amidst all the clutter, tea poured for an invisible audience, her face half-hidden beneath a wide-brim hat burdened with decorative fruit.
“I’m home!” Hailey called to her. “We’re having appetizers for dinner tonight.” She’d taken a grocery sack of them home with her. Why not? There had been plenty left over.
Grams’s ten cats came running into the kitchen. They mewed pitifully and rubbed their soft, warm bodies against Hailey’s legs. Every day she had to count them just to make sure Grams hadn’t snuck in another furry mouth to feed.
After pouring a few bowls of kibble and packing the appetizers inside the fridge, Hailey went into the parlor. Grams was playing four-handed bridge, sipping Chinese oolong, and scolding her imaginary bridge partners for their inattentiveness. Her blue eyes looked especially vague today, which was discouraging. Hailey always worried that Grams would retreat so far into her fantasy world she would never come back again.
Beneath the brim of a pink straw hat strewn with cherries, Adelia’s face was sweet and surprisingly girlish. Grams might be crazy, but she was all Hailey had left now, and Hailey would do anything to protect her.
“Lord Byron was hiding an ace,” Grams confided when Hailey pulled up a chair. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, he’s not a man to be trusted.”
All of Grams’s “friends” were poets. She had her favorites. Lord Byron was never one of them. Too sneaky, Grams would say. A man who cheats at cards will cheat at love.