“I read your book. I’ve been sitting outside your hotel crying my way through it for the past two hours.”
“It wasn’t meant to make you cry.”
“Well, it did. Though now that I think about it, I have to admit that I messed up on principle number ten. It wasn’t anywhere on my blueprint.” The bluster went right out of her and she looked at him with total frankness, holding nothing back. “Maybe if I’d thought of it, instead of having to live through it, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time or caused such heartache. I’m sorry for that, Harry. I should have read your book sooner. It would have saved us a lot of trouble. Of course it would have caused all sorts of other problems.”
His eyebrows shot up at that. “What problems?”
She shrugged. “Considering I thought your father had written Principles, I’d have probably dumped you and fought my grandmother for him.”
For a moment she thought she’d gone too far. Then he growled a word that brought the color flooding into her cheeks and snatched her into his arms. “You drive me insane.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his tie. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“You damned well should be.”
She shoved at his shoulders. Not that it did any good. “Don’t get too happy,” she warned when he refused to release her. “There’s something I haven’t told you. Something you should know about me.”
“Your blueprint told me everything I needed to know.”
“You’re wrong.” She released her breath in a long sigh, struggling to find the right words to tell him about her past. Not that there were any right words, just the truth. “You said last night that you thought we were alike, but we’re not. There’s one major difference between us.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not ethical like you. I’m every bit as bad as my cousin Linc. Worse, I suppose.”
He stilled, a tension gathering in the arms that held her and the chest that supported her. “Explain.”
She offered the folder she’d removed from her filing cabinet. “Here. This is for you.” He made no move to take it from her and she tossed it onto the coffee table.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A dossier on me.” The urge to run was so strong she literally shook with it. She forced herself to meet his gaze and put her faith in the man she loved with all her heart. “Do you remember my saying my father was a thief and a liar?”
“Yes.”
She fought through the anguish of her confession, clinging to a desperate pride in the face of a shame she’d taken as her own. “What I failed to mention is that he also taught me how to do it.”
“Taught you?” Harry captured her chin in his palm and tilted her face upward. Sunlight streamed in the picture windows, casting an ambient glow over her and baring every thought and emotion. “What do you mean, he taught you?”
She swallowed painfully. “Once he realized I possessed a nature more similar to his than to my mother’s side of the family, he made sure that I became an Adams in every corrupted sense of the word.”
“I don’t understand.”
Frustration ripped through her, a frustration that traced its roots to fear. “Don’t you get it? He taught me how to embezzle money. When I was old enough to hold a job, he helped me find part-time work in businesses where I could assist him steal. I was the inside man. My job was to gather crucial information on how to get around their systems. After all, who’d suspect a kid?”
Harry said a word that she’d never heard spoken aloud. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“But you walked away from all that.”
“Not until after they caught me.”
“Damn him!” Harry’s anger finally erupted and it was a terrifying sight. She’d never understood how much control he’d exerted until that moment. To see his wrath unleashed was to witness a storm more elemental and primitive than anything that had gone before. The word “intimidation” took on a whole new meaning. “I swear, if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll take that man down.”
Madison clung to him, refusing to let go. To her amazement her touch acted like a balm, draining the fury from him, though she doubted it would change her father’s ultimate fate. “He’s to blame for a lot of what happened to me, but not all. I was every bit as ruthless as my father. I enjoyed what he’d taught me to do. I got off on the power, the risk.”
“What convinced you to walk away? Getting caught?”
She shook her head. “I received a slap on the wrist, courtesy of Uncle Tyler. We laughed about it afterward.”
“Then why did you leave your father?”
“Sunny called the day before my eighteenth birthday. And I suddenly realized that I’d given up on clicking my heels together and trying to get back home. I wasn’t Dorothy anymore. At some point I’d turned into the Wicked Witch and I was ashamed of what I’d become. I didn’t want Sunny to find out the truth. It would have devastated her. That’s when something changed inside of me. That’s when I decided I had to get away before every last scrap of Sunflower was plucked out of me.” Time to finish it. Time to see if they still had a future. “There’s more, Harry. And it’s worse.”
“Aw, hell.” He cupped her closer, holding her as though she might shatter if he let go. “Finish it. Finish it, so we can put this behind us.”
Her throat tightened to the point that she wasn’t certain she could get the words out. “I’m the one who taught Linc. What happened at Bradford’s isn’t his fault. It’s mine. He was my younger cousin and I should have protected him. Instead I—” Her voice broke, but she didn’t relent. “I did my level best to corrupt him. Apparently, I succeeded.”
“You’re wrong, Madison. You saved him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After you left, Linc confessed to everything. He also gave us information that should put an end to your father’s career. And he asked us to help him. He said you’d managed to get away from the Adams and would we be willing to help him get away, too.” Harry forked his hands into her hair, her curls clinging to his fingers in joyous abandon. “He didn’t betray you, Madison. He never said a word about your past. And when he talked about you, it was with admiration. You’re an example to him, sweetheart. An example that may make all the difference to his future.”
She was crying by the time he’d finished. “I’ve been so afraid. Afraid to trust people in case they found out I wasn’t what I seemed. Afraid to believe in permanence in case it was taken away from me, like when my parents divorced. Afraid to lose control of the people I love in case they leave.”
“You’re talking about Sunny.”
She nodded, the tears coming faster. “I panicked when I found out about your father. They were going to marry and move east together. And…and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing her. The Sunflower family is my safety net. My protection. If something happened to them, I was terrified that I might turn into an Adams again.”
“That will never happen.”
“I know that now.” She clutched the lapels of his suit jacket. “Harry?”
A tender light appeared in his eyes and it gave her hope. “What is it, honey?”
“I love you.”
“It took you a long time to figure that out, didn’t it?”
“Far too long. Is it too late? For us, I mean?”
“How can you even ask me that?” His mouth closed over hers in a kiss of such passion she prayed it would never end. “I love you, Madison. I fell in love with you after reading the first few words you wrote in your journal. And I fell even harder when we sat on a stuck elevator and I held you in my arms.”
“Despite the fact that I’d trashed your book?”
“Maybe because of it. I knew that if you hadn’t read it, you couldn’t have been influenced by it. What you’d put in your journal had to have come from your heart and soul. I also knew that I wanted the woman who’d written those words because they
echoed my own thoughts and dreams.”
“I have another confession to make,” she admitted.
“And what’s that?”
“I think I fell in love with you that first day on the elevator.”
It was so good to see the humor return to his eyes. “Love at first hearing?”
“At first hearing, at first touch. But most of all at first kindness and first kiss.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “I believe in you, Harry. I believe in your book and in your integrity and your love.”
He released a bone-deep sigh of sheer contentment. “Does that mean you’re not afraid to make a commitment, anymore?”
“Commitment?” She grinned. “Piffle. No problem at all. To quote a very intimidating man, ‘I want to start at once-upon-a-time with you and go straight through until we reach happily-ever-after.”’
“In that case…” He lifted her into his arms. “We’d better get started right away. Because I have a lot of once-upon-a-time to work through with you.”
She snuggled close. “Then I suggest a brief detour to the dining room. I have more leaves to pluck.”
“Palm fronds, my love. Palm fronds.”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-1104-2
THE MARRIAGE PROJECT
First North American Publication 2001.
Copyright © 2001 by Day Totton Smith.
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The Marriage Project Page 16