by Debra Holt
She stopped and faced the man whose dauntingly thoughtful look grazed over her face. He folded his arms across his chest as he waited, obviously expecting an answer.
The glib words that usually came so easily on the subject were slower to find voice this time. She moistened her lips and clutched her bag more securely.
“I haven’t seen miracles. What I’ve witnessed is the intervention and triumph of medical personnel who used their education and talents to reach a positive outcome. What I’ve seen is that people who call upon some God more often than not do not receive what they ask for. If they did, there would be far less heartbreak in the world. I have faith in my abilities. Period.” She turned to consider which way to head next.
“I think this is a discussion we’ll agree to disagree upon until we have time to delve into it,” he replied. “I believe in miracles and things that can be taken only on faith. God may not have always given me the answers to my prayers that I wanted, but He was there nonetheless. Sometimes those answers weren’t what I expected, but they were answers, and I always learned from them. They’ve made my faith deeper and stronger. And, from what I’m told, my survival last month was pretty miraculous itself.” He caught her expression. A corner of his mouth turned up in self-derision. “I’ll climb off the pulpit now. Onward we go.”
Mercy turned and headed down the sidewalk toward the next chapel. As they crossed into another block, the strains of a beautiful Italian music piece floated on the breeze toward them.
“Listen!” Her eyes lit up. “That’s Nessun Dorma. How beautiful! Maybe it’s coming from those fountains they show in the movies. Come on!” Mercy moved quickly toward the sound. She checked for traffic and then darted across the street toward the waterfront in the next block.
“Hey, slow down! Are we going to a fire?”
Josh caught up to her as she reached the stone parapet overlook. A burst of spray shot into the sky as the magical fountains in front of the Bellagio began their incredible show. Mercy stood, mesmerized. The music, the synchronized lights, and the water combined to make pure magic. She leaned her arms on the railing and watched in enthralled silence. Josh slid in next to her, and they stood with shoulders touching in a companionable silence as the fountains performed before them. When the last fountain had fallen silent, Mercy allowed a deep sigh of appreciation to escape her. She slowly turned and leaned her back against the balustrade.
“Wasn’t that something? I think that’s better than any casino or floor show.”
Josh took in the sparkle of her eyes and the flush on her cheeks. “It’s something, indeed. I’m very glad we could share this evening together.”
Mercy looked up just as Josh lowered his head toward hers. He didn’t rush, but there was no hesitation. His lips touched hers, and she wondered if the fountains had exploded again, only this time inside her. Her fingers locked around the bouquet she still held. The kiss was like no other in that, though only their lips touched, every part of her body responded and each of her senses fired at once. Her lips responded automatically to the warmth of his touch. Josh’s hand moved to her back and drew her closer to his side.
“Congratulations! Way to go! Kiss her again!” Raised voices broke in, and they moved apart. They were both surprised and shocked to see quite a few people standing around them, smiling and laughing, and then they broke into applause.
“Oh, my. They think we just got married.” Mercy’s cheeks flamed, and she gripped the bouquet even tighter.
“Thanks. Thank you!” Josh smiled at the people and, with an arm around Mercy’s shoulders, drew her away from the center of attention. His hand took possession of hers as they half-walked-half-jogged down the sidewalk away from the water.
“Hold on! Slow down!” Mercy came to a stop under a canopy of branches lit with twinkling lights. She needed to catch her breath. “Why did you let them think we were just married?”
“Did you want to go into a long explanation of what we’re actually doing here? Besides, they’re all strangers. We’ll never see them again.”
Mercy just looked at him and took a couple more calming breaths. She shook her head. “Truthfully … I have no idea what I’m doing here.” She turned to walk slowly toward the hotel. “We’re probably too late. For all I know, right now my mom is—” She bit off the last of the sentence and buried her face in the rose bouquet.
“Your mom is what? Please … continue.” Josh looked at her with an amused lift of his brow.
“Nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“Coward.” Josh stopped and leaned against the tree trunk, folding his arms again as he issued the challenge.
“What do most couples do on their wedding night?” There. She’d said it. And felt stupid doing so.
Josh threw back his head and laughed. A nice laugh that made her both smile and feel good inside. At least it would have … if it hadn’t been directed at her.
“Mercy, I love you. You are priceless.” The laughter stopped abruptly. The words had flowed without hesitation, and he clearly had been as surprised by them as she had. Josh recovered a lot quicker than she did. “It’s amusing sometimes how your mind works. I love it when there can be laughter in a situation.”
“It isn’t funny.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Did he agree with her for once? She stopped and looked at him.
“I think it’s wonderful, and I’m envious.” Mercy stared at him as if he had lost his mind, so he clarified. “I hope that when I’m their age, I’m still married to the woman I adore, and we’re still having great sex. That’s just a part of marriage—it’s not something to be whispered about as if it’s taboo. We were meant to find our mates and procreate.”
“Oh, my heavens! You’re as bad as my mother. Look, I’m not a prude. It’s just strange to talk about this subject because it does involve my parent.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, being compared to your mother. I happen to think she’s a smart lady. Come on, Mercy. You want your mother to be happy, don’t you? If this makes her happy, then where’s the harm?”
She knew she should respond, but she had a hard time keeping up the indignant pose. Or remembering just why her brothers had reacted with such opposition to it all. Mercy felt confused on so many levels, and she didn’t like that feeling.
“You’re a man,” she finally muttered. “You wouldn’t understand.”
He fell into step beside her again; his hands now clasped behind him. “Then explain it to me.”
“What’s the use? Your viewpoint is slightly biased.”
“How am I biased?”
“You’re a man. And you’re in the marriage market, so that distorts your opinions.”
He stopped at that point, so she did too. The look on his face showed she had lost him.
“Okay. I agree that I’m a man. But why does that mean I’m in the marriage market, as you put it?”
“Oh, that’s right,” she replied with a smug smile. “You probably didn’t think I knew about your fiancée back home. The one who is conveniently never around.” Mercy stepped past him and proceeded toward their destination.
More than a few seconds passed before she realized Josh still seemed lost. She had indeed stopped him in his tracks, and she spotted him still standing in the spot where she’d left him. An unusual look clouded his face—a mixture of surprise, thoughtfulness, maybe pain? She retraced her steps, stopping a short distance from him.
He brought his gaze to meet hers. She still couldn’t unravel the layers of his expression.
“That explains a lot,” he spoke finally. “You think I have a fiancée?”
“She was in your hospital room. The nurse told me so when I came to check on you. I didn’t want to interrupt or intrude so—”
“So you just walked away,” he finished for her.
“I had an emergency call.”
“That’s too bad. It’s too bad you didn’t stay around long enough to get some facts stra
ight.”
He took a step closer to her, and Mercy held her ground.
“I have never had a fiancée in my life. Stacy Lipton, the woman in my hospital room, has a habit of making decisions without the input of anyone else but herself. She decided she wanted me and my family’s pocketbook, so she skipped a few steps—such as the important one where I actually ask her to marry me.”
Relief lifted Mercy’s heart, but she kept her gaze as even as possible. He’s not engaged!
“She still thinks you’re engaged?”
“Stacy doesn’t do hospitals or invalids very well. She decided after that visit that I was less than I once was, at least in her eyes. At any rate, I hear she’s found a new interest—a banker in Amarillo.”
The nerve of the woman, to walk out on him just when he needed her the most!
“I’m sorry. It must have been hard to not be able to change her mind since you were confined to the hospital.”
“You think my heart’s broken? It isn’t. My heart was never in any danger of being involved with Stacy. I didn’t miss her at all after she left. But my heart did miss someone else.” His voice and his eyes grew darker as he uttered those words. He moved very close to her.
A shiver ran up her spine. He was so close she could smell the heady scent of his cologne. Fresh, woodsy … and dangerously habit-forming. His gaze reached inside her heart and laid siege to walls that all of a sudden felt very shaky.
“There was this doe-eyed angel who kept coming just within my reach, and then she’d fly away. She’s the one who left a real void in my life when she disappeared.”
Mercy was losing ground fast. She didn’t like the feeling. Things had changed, and she didn’t want or need them to do so. Her response? She did what it seemed she did best around Josh.
She turned and ran.
“Mercy!” Josh’s voice called to her, but she didn’t stop.
Across the footbridge and down the steps, she never looked back. She’d never been one to run from things before, at least not literally. But then, she’d never looked into Josh Wellman’s eyes before.
Chapter Ten
“Mercy? Mercy Ann!”
Just about to step into the elevator, Mercy heard her name called again. There was something different this time. Mercy paused and looked straight at the source of the voice calling her … her mother!
Jan Smith stood in the lobby, looking at her daughter with a mixture of surprise and joy. Relief rushed through her, and Mercy closed the gap between them quickly. The two of them hugged each other tightly.
“Mom! I’m so glad to see you. We’ve been looking for you for hours.”
“We? Who is with you?” Her mother stepped back to look about the lobby.
“That would be me.” Josh came to stand close by, a fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and his eyes held a different emotion than before when they settled on Mercy.
His leg. She had been a thoughtless fool. He had no business running like he had. And all the walking they had done from chapel to chapel. What was he thinking?
No, what was I thinking?
She was no better than his fake fiancée. Being a medical professional, she should have known better. She chastised herself for his obvious pain.
“Joshua, it’s good to see you again.”
Larry came upon the trio and chimed in, “Yes, it is.” His arm slipped around Jan’s shoulder after he and Josh shook hands. “We didn’t expect to see anyone we knew at this late hour.” His gaze went to Josh.
“Sorry about that,” Josh replied.
“Mom, we need to talk,” Mercy announced.
“Right now? It’s getting late.”
“Right now. I’ve come a long way to speak to you. Please?”
“Why don’t we let the men get a cool drink, and we’ll take a walk.” Her mother took charge, and for once Mercy gladly followed her lead. She didn’t look in Josh’s direction, but she could feel his eyes boring into her back as they walked away.
They passed through the lobby and across the patio to a small terrace with a view of the gardens and pool. They found an unoccupied bench and sat down.
“Okay, Mercy. Let’s hear it. What did your brothers send you here to tell me?”
“If you know they sent me, then you know what the message is.”
“Yes. So for brevity, let’s say you delivered the message, and I listened. Now tell me what you’re doing here with Josh.”
“What? I’m not with Josh. He just happened to come along when he heard about the wedding. And I can’t believe you would even consider running off to Las Vegas, of all places. This isn’t you, Mother. I suppose Larry is behind all of this change.”
“We didn’t run off. If we were running off, then no one would know where we went. But I told your brothers, and they told you. Larry also told Josh. So we didn’t run off. This was a mutual decision Larry and I made, Mercy.”
“When you were telling all these people, why didn’t you call me?”
“Maybe because I knew what your reaction would be. Just possibly, I wanted to be able to enjoy the spontaneity of the moment and not have to argue with anyone. I wanted to tell you, Mercy. Sharing this time with my daughter would have been nice.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think so. Look, Mercy. I lived my life for your father until he died. I lived my life for you and your brothers until you all grew up and left me. Now I’m living my life for me. I would highly recommend it to you.”
She certainly caught Mercy’s attention with her last words.
“Why would you say that?”
“I think you’re so afraid to live again that you don’t want anyone else to either. You’ve changed. Since you lost David, you have this invisible wall around your heart, and you keep people at arm’s length. You used to take chances, and you believed in happy endings and things you consider nonsense now. Please don’t shut yourself off from the very things that make life worth living.”
Mercy wondered how her mother could say such things to her.
“I grew up, Mother. Losing two people you love in senseless ways will do that to you. I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, too.”
“And God.”
Her mother’s words caught Mercy off guard. “I … I believe in Him. I just doubt He believes in me for some reason. Besides, my religious beliefs are not open to discussion. We’re here to discuss your situation, not mine.”
“I’m sorry, Mercy, but I’ve kept quiet far too long. I should have said something long before now.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I thought we were talking about you.”
“Don’t be upset, sweetheart.” Jan’s voice softened, and she laid her hand on top of Mercy’s where it rested on the bench between them. “I know it was a tough time for you when you lost David. It was a cruel way to lose anyone, but life happens that way sometimes. I know. I thought I would have fifty or sixty years with your father. But I didn’t. You don’t stop living because of tragedy. You can’t. If I had done that after losing your father, where would we have been? Where would I be now?” Her expression softened even more. “I don’t know how to say this just right, but … I’m going to say it. Mercy, I doubt you and David would have married even if he had lived.”
Mercy’s eyes mirrored the shock she felt at the unexpected words. Anger rose inside her.
“How can you say such a thing? You know how I felt about David.”
“I know how you thought you felt. However, I have to tell you, I never felt that David and you would marry. I’m not speaking ill of David. He was a good man. I guess maybe I thought he didn’t deserve you. I watched the two of you together. There was no spark, no fire of passion. You were just … comfortable with each other.”
“All this time and all the time David and I were dating, you never once mentioned any of this. Why now?”
“Because I’m afraid you’re holding onto David as
a way to protect yourself from taking a chance at finding happiness with anyone else. You hold him like a shield to keep others away. That’s just not the way to live.”
“I’m not hiding from life, Mom. Just because I don’t go charging off the deep end like you do over some man, that doesn’t mean that I won’t have those feelings someday.”
“If you aren’t careful, Mercy, that someday will come and go, and you will have missed it. Oh, you’ll have your nice house, your cat, and your career. But you’ll miss out on the passion of life. My heart would break for that to happen to you. Stop worrying about me and stop worrying about what might happen. Participate in life again! Please, don’t just watch from the sidelines.”
Mercy could only sit and look at her mother … words failed her. Jan sounded a bit like a coach giving a pep talk to a losing team. But there was another little voice nudging Mercy to think. Maybe her mom was onto something. Hadn’t she already had times during the evening when she’d found herself questioning her motives about why she came to Vegas? Did she really believe Larry was wrong for her mother?
A long sigh escaped. “I can’t stop you from getting married, Mom.”
“Yes, you can.” Jan’s voice sounded almost weary all of a sudden. “If I thought my getting married would harm you or the boys or our relationship with each other, I would walk away and not look back. My heart might break in half, but I would do it for my children.”
Mercy sat still, the words sinking into her heart. She saw the emotion churning in her mother’s eyes. The path seemed suddenly very clear. She held the power over her mother’s happiness.
“Oh, Mom,” Mercy’s voice cracked with emotion, and helpless tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. She raised a hand and quickly batted them away, then leveled her gaze on her mother. “If Larry makes you that happy, and he’s the one you want, then go for it. The boys will just have to deal with it. They won’t give you any more grief. I’ll see to that. You have always put us first in your life, no matter what. It’s your turn now. Just be happy. That’s what I truly want for you. Once the boys get a grip, they’ll agree. It is your life. And you do deserve happiness.”