by Teresa Hill
"I know so. You'll be so good with them. You know exactly what it's like to feel lost. But you're not anymore. I'm here, and I want to help you with the shelter. I want us to find a way to make it work."
"I'd like for us to do it together. I don't want to leave, but..."
"Stephen?" Megan guessed.
"Yes."
"Have you talked to him yet?"
"No." But her eyes were automatically drawn to him. He stood straight and tall between his sister-in-law and his mother—who was as devastated by facing up to the truth of who her son was, as by the fact that he was dead. His two little nieces were in front of him, Casey behind his right shoulder, his father standing conspicuously alone.
"Stephen made the most generous offer," Megan said. "He came to see me, in the middle of making his brother's funeral arrangements, to tell me he knew how much Casey wants and needs a father. He said he was willing to step in and take whatever role in Casey's life that Casey and I would like. And he means it, Allie. He's already been so good with Casey, trying to help him now with all that he's feeling about Rich. He told Casey there's good and bad in most everyone. That it's okay, especially with family, to love them for the good, even if you despise the bad things they've done."
Allie couldn't say anything to that. Her father's eloquent plea, his bitter lesson, was running through her head. But she was still so angry, so hurt. She was trying very hard to convince herself that Stephen Whittaker had never truly loved her, and that she couldn't love him, though she still couldn't pry her eyes away from him right now.
He stood by his brother's grave, the rock at the center of what was left of his family, the one holding everyone together, the one everyone depended upon. He'd done the same thing for her. Even when he'd lied to her, he'd been a rock. She had no doubts that if she or Megan or Casey ever truly needed anything from him, he would help them and protect them. And she hated seeing him like this, wondering if everyone was taking comfort from him, drawing strength from him, while at the same time no one was giving anything to him in return.
He was just a man, after all. Complex, driven, stubborn to the point of being arrogant, always thinking he was right, always thinking he could manage any situation that came along.
And he'd managed her.... The little problem. She hated thinking of herself that way, hated thinking of him seeing her like that.
He couldn't truly love her and do that to her, she'd told herself over and over again, even as she missed him more than she could ever imagine missing anyone.
"I know he hurt you, but I also think he loves you," Megan said. "Sometimes we end up hurting the people we love the most, Allie. Look at what our parents did to each other. Think about how much I hurt you by staying away, by letting everyone believe I was dead."
"You did that to protect yourself and your son."
"And Stephen says he did this to protect you from his father and his brother. He did it even when he knew he might well lose you over it. He put his own feelings aside to protect you at all costs," Megan said.
"Think about what that says about him, about the kind of man he really is. Think about what you'd do to protect him, if you thought he was truly in danger. You'd do anything. You'd say anything. Because you love him."
But Allie said nothing. She couldn't. It hurt just to stand here and look at him. Did they know how alone he felt at times? Did anyone even think that he might need someone, too? Surely there was someone who could look past the facade and see the man underneath.
"I'm going to Casey," Megan said. "We'll see you back at the house."
Allie realized the service was over. People were leaving. Stephen walked his mother and his sister-in-law to the waiting limousine, then stepped back, watching them drive away. Then he stood by the casket by the open grave, his back every bit as straight as it had been the entire time she'd watched. He never wavered.
What was he thinking, she wondered? Of the waste it was for a man to have died so young and to have done so much wrong with his life? To have left behind two beautiful little girls and a wealth of unfulfilled potential? That his family had been torn apart, his parents separating after forty years and his brother gone, the whole foundation of his life shaken.
Allie knew what that was like. He'd given her back her family. It didn't seem right that he'd lost so much of his in the process. It didn't seem right that he was standing there by his brother's grave all alone.
She was walking toward him even before she made any conscious decision to do so. He turned at the last minute, hearing her approach, and for a second, his expression was utterly bleak, before he carefully schooled his features into a cool, impersonal mask.
"Allie," he said.
She slipped her left hand into his right. He stiffened at the touch but still said nothing. He just watched her with those beautiful dark eyes of his.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For what?"
"That you've lost your brother."
"He was a terrible human being, Allie. He tried to kill your sister. He did kill Margaret Addison."
"He was still your brother."
Stephen shook his head back and forth. "I wanted to kill him myself for what he did to Megan. I hated the idea that we had the same blood running through our veins."
"I can understand that. But you still didn't want him to die. It had to be a shock. Maybe even worse because of how angry you were at him."
"You must despise me," he said, even as she stood there holding his hand. "You must despise my entire family."
"I don't hold your brother's actions against you," she said. "And I hate seeing you like this. Hurting and all alone."
It was true. All of it. Once again, she couldn't help herself where he was concerned. She came to stand directly in front of him, wrapping her arms tightly around him and feeling his whole body stiffen, feeling his quickly indrawn breath, finally his arms slowly closing around her.
She held him for a long time, thinking it shouldn't be this hard to let go of him, given how angry she still was and how hurt. Thinking that she shouldn't still feel so much for him, that she should be able to stay away, but she couldn't. She just couldn't. Not today.
"Allie, you don't owe me anything," he said.
"Yes, I do. You wouldn't have left me alone if I was feeling like this. You didn't."
She felt a shudder run through him, felt an answering one run through her entire body and held him more tightly, for as long as she dared. Then she slipped away from him and left him there all alone once again.
* * *
He stayed away for three and a half weeks.
Allie and Megan cleaned out the house. Megan went back to Birmingham temporarily, to put her house on the market and prepare to move her business to Lexington. Mitch Wilson had proposed, and she'd accepted. He'd been tempted to marry her before she left, not wanting to let her go again, but she'd talked him into a quiet ceremony in front of a justice of the peace when she returned and a roaring party afterward at his restaurant. She was shopping for office space downtown, near him, and they were house hunting.
Megan's reappearance had caused quite a stir in Dublin. But luckily, so far no one had linked her disappearance or return to Stephen's brother, which was fine with everyone. Rich was dead. No one saw any reason to make the events of the last fifteen years public. Stephen's mother intended to claim Casey as her grandson, as Rich's son, but not right away. Rich was still news, and no one wanted to see their stories plastered all over the local papers.
Allie was starting to think Stephen was right—that she did belong here, that there was no escaping this place she'd always considered her home. Good memories and bad, they were all here. So was all that was left of her family.
She'd gone to Connecticut briefly to arrange the sale of her mother's house and pack her things, and when she returned to Kentucky, she'd received an unsolicited offer on her parents' house—a generous one, she thought. If she accepted it, she and Megan and Casey had agreed to set th
e money aside either as a donation to a charitable organization or as seed money for a shelter in central Kentucky.
Allie had buried herself in the nitty-gritty details for weeks, and after talking with dozens of people, she had to admit, the shelter as she originally conceived of the idea was never going to fly. Dublin was too small, which complicated funding and volunteer issues, and a majority of the town's zoning board had told her in no uncertain terms they'd never vote to allow such a place on Willow Lane.
Which meant she had some hard decisions to make about where she was going to live and what she was going to do with her life. She thought perhaps Megan was right. Allie was an idealist. She still wanted to believe she could make a difference. She had a deep-seated need to feel her life was worthwhile, and she thought the most personally satisfying thing she could do was to help others somehow. She just had to figure out how.
At the moment she hadn't figured out anything, and she couldn't have been more surprised to find Stephen at her front door one day, looking so tall and so solid, so heartbreakingly gorgeous, if a bit reserved and probably unsure of his welcome.
"Hi," she said tentatively.
"Hi. I was wondering if you had a few minutes. There's something I'd like to show you."
She hesitated. She'd missed him so.
"Please," he said.
"All right."
She got her sweater, because there was a chill in the air this morning, and let him lead her to his car, the big four-wheeler this time. She was conscious of every move he made, every little brush of his body against hers, even the hand at her back as she walked.
She didn't ask where they were going. She'd always been willing to go anywhere with him. Her first instincts had been to trust him, even when he gave her cause to think she shouldn't.
He took her back to Dublin, down a road just off Main Street, a place of older houses, many of which had been converted into business offices. There at the end of the street was an oversize lot amid towering trees. He parked at the curb and helped her out of the car, his hand falling to his side the minute she had her feet on the ground.
He had a canister with him, a long white one, from which he pulled a sheath of papers he unrolled on the hood of the car.
"What do you think?" he said.
Allie stared at the pen and ink sketch, an artist's rendering of a house. She looked back at the empty lot. A house on this site.
"It looks like my house," she said. "On this lot?"
He nodded.
"I was talking to my mother and mentioned that you wanted to turn your house into a runaway shelter. She liked the idea. She's also an excellent fundraiser. She raised a half million dollars for the new library last year. But even with all the clout she has in this town, she didn't think she could get her neighbors behind the idea of a shelter in their neighborhood. All those things I told you about the shelter, Allie, self-serving as all it was at the time, it was still good advice. I don't think you'd ever overcome all those obstacles and make a go of a shelter on Willow Lane. But this... You could make this work."
Allie stared at the sketches, noticed the lettering along the bottom. Meg's House.
"Your sister didn't think her name should be on the project. She suggested Meg's."
"You never give up, do you?" Allie said, not sure if she was complaining about that or admiring him for it.
"So far... No, I've never given up on anything I truly wanted. You don't either," he said. "It's one of the first things I admired about you."
"Stephen—"
"Just look at this. Think about it," he said. "I should probably tell you, I thought about just going ahead and doing it—"
"Doing it?"
"I actually made an offer on the lot," he said. "My mother and my sister-in-law want to help, too. I know you have an offer on the house—they're low-balling you, by the way—and my mother and Renee want to buy the house from you and donate it, for the shelter. Or you donate it, and take their money to get the project going," he said.
"Wait a minute. What do you mean—you thought about just doing it?"
"Letting them buy it without saying anything to you. Having a real set of blueprints for the renovations drawn up, going ahead and moving your house to the site. I thought I'd have it sitting here waiting for you. A done deal. And then I decided I'd better wait a minute and think about it first." He honestly looked chagrined, then admitted, "Maybe that would have been a little..."
"Controlling?" she suggested. "Arrogant? The actions of a man who's sure he always knows what's best?"
"I did stop," he pointed out. "And just because I thought of it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I know it isn't exactly what you wanted, but we can bring your house here. I've been all over it with an engineer, and it can be done."
"You've been there with an engineer?"
"Megan let us in," he said.
"Of course."
"Look at this neighborhood, Allie. It's mostly businesses now. I don't think anyone would fight you on the zoning. It's close to the hospital, so there are lots of health professionals. I bet you could round up a lot of volunteer medical professionals from the neighborhood. My mother and Renee honestly want to do this. I can find somebody to move the house. As for the renovations that would be necessary, the architect's a friend of mine. He owes me a favor. So you don't have to worry about his fee. I can twist a few arms, and get a good bit of the renovation work donated or done at cost. It could work."
She folded her arms across her chest and stared up at him, fighting the urge to grin. Or to cry. "You have it all figured out, don't you?"
"Why don't you give me a clue here." He looked a bit worried. "I'm not sure if I'm being manipulative or helpful."
"Both, I'd say." It was so like him to just push forward like this. "Why did you do this, Stephen?"
"I thought about what I had to offer you." He frowned, looking quite serious and sincere. "What I wanted to give you. I thought it was fitting that it come from my family, because of all that we took from yours."
"So this is guilt?"
"It's me trying to give you something you want, something I thought was important to you, and... Oh, hell, I can't change the man that I am. I still want you," he confessed. "I want to give-you this because I know it's important to you. I want you to have everything you want, Allie. Everything you need. But I also want to give you a reason to stay."
Through great force of will, Allie managed to say nothing. Not yet. And she couldn't quite bring herself to look at him anymore. She didn't think she could hide what was in her eyes, and she liked too much what she saw in his.
"So... what does that make me?" he asked. "Someone who hasn't learned a thing by losing you? Someone you don't want anything to do with? Someone you could never live with? Never trust? Never forgive?"
She knew exactly who he was. She knew. He was a man who got things done, one who seemed incredibly adept at bending the world to his will—just as his father and brother did. Except he wasn't like them in so many of the ways that counted. He wasn't evil He wasn't selfish. He didn't see himself as a man entitled to exactly what he wanted, either by virtue of his birth or the fortune that came with the Whittaker name. He earned it through hard work and perseverance, and she thought at the core, he was a genuinely kind, caring man, that the vast majority of the time, he put his time and talents and incredible drive to work for good.
"I think all of that makes you the man that you are," she said simply. "Determined, hardworking, someone capable of making things happen, someone who likes to take charge, someone who thinks he can handle anything."
"I don't think I could handle losing you," he said. "I don't know how to handle the idea that you might walk away from me right now and I might never see you again."
"I have a feeling you'd come find me," she said.
"I hadn't planned on giving up anytime soon. If that was a question of my intentions."
"So..." She looked back down at the plans. "This is an apology?"
/>
"I was thinking more along the lines of a gift," he said, coming close enough to touch her, to take the hand hanging by her side in his and look down at her with glittering, dark eyes that had always seen too much.
She had tears on her cheeks, tears he gently wiped away.
"I wanted you to understand that the things which are important to you are important to me, too, and that if you were mine, Allie, I would do anything in this world to see that you're happy."
He framed her face with his hands, brought his lips down to hers for a long, slow, sweet, hungry kiss.
"I love you," he said. "And I'm so sorry. For everything. I wanted to protect you from every bad thing in this world, from everything that ever hurt you, and I ended up hurting you even more myself. Do you think you might be able to forgive me for that someday?"
"I think it's a distinct possibility."
"I will never lie to you again. I will never keep anything from you." He kissed her again, deeper, harder, with more hunger this time. "I've never wanted anything as much as I want you. And I want forever, Allie. I want you to marry me, and live here with me, and make a family with me. Forever."
She closed her eyes, buried her face against his neck, and breathed in the scent of him, absorbed the incredible feel of his arms securely around her once again, his heart beating solidly against her palm.
"I know you. I know what you want," he said. "You want a refuge, a sanctuary. One place in this whole, big, scary world where you feel absolutely safe and wanted and needed and loved, and that place is with me. I know what it means to you to have that. I know what it cost you all those years you did without it, all the time you were alone. But you don't ever have to be alone again, because I'm here, and I love you. I can't imagine that you need me half as much as I need you."
"I've never quite understood why you would need me."
"You want a list? A dozen reasons, maybe?" he suggested, then started rattling them off, punctuating each one with a kiss. "Maybe because you made me realize how lonely I was, how empty my life had become. Because you filled up all those empty spots. Because I'm much too cynical, and you reminded me what optimism and what hope is all about. Because you reminded me of what's important in life. That I love this place, and that it's my home, and that I want to share it with a woman who loves completely, with her whole heart, and forever. Someone who hangs on tight to the people she loves."