Undeniable Demands

by Andrea Laurence

  “But before that…were you happy?”

  Happy was a funny word. Wade didn’t like using it. “I was content. ‘Happy’ sounds like puppies and rainbows. I was pleased with how my life was going.”

  “And now?”

  “And now…I guess, to use your words, I’m miserable.”

  “We’ve decided you should tell her the truth.”

  Wade’s brow shot up at his brother’s words. “We? Did you all hold some secret council meeting without me?”

  “Yes,” he said, very matter-of-factly. “Via Skype. We talked it over and decided that you shouldn’t give up your chance at real happiness just to protect us.”

  Wade almost laughed for a moment before he realized Heath wasn’t kidding. They had no idea what they were asking him to do. He’d spent his whole life trying to protect them. Trying to make up for that night. He couldn’t just flip-flop because they said it was okay. It wasn’t okay. “I’m not going to expose everyone, including myself, just for a woman.”

  “She’s not just any woman, Wade. She’s the woman you love. Do you want to marry her?”

  The image of Tori in an ivory lace gown instantly sprang into his mind. Her red-gold hair was pulled back into an elegant twist. Her peaches-and-cream skin rosy from excitement and champagne. He’d never even thought about it before, and yet the vision of her in his mind was so real that he couldn’t push it aside. “If she’d have me.”

  “Then you can tell her. After the wedding.”

  Wade opened his mouth, then realized what they had in mind. If he married Tori, he could tell her everything and she couldn’t be compelled to testify against them.

  “She’s not going to marry me unless I tell her the truth. And I can’t tell her the truth unless she marries me. So, really, I get nowhere with this.”

  Heath shrugged. “I disagree. When I came in the door, you were ‘fine.’ Now you’re a man in love who wants to get married. I think you’re way ahead. Now you just have to go tell her.”

  “Yeah, sure. Tori, I love you and I want to marry you. And once you marry me, I can tell you all about how I buried some guy on your property and I’m afraid you’ll dig him up while building your dream house.”

  “Those aren’t the words I’d recommend. But if you show up there, tell her you love her, offer her a ring to prove you’re serious and explain where you’re coming from with all this, I think she’ll understand.”

  Wade frowned at his brother, then turned back to stare at his desk blotter. He’d lain in bed night after night replaying those last moments with Tori. If he’d said or done something else, might it have ended differently? Sometimes the door slammed in his face just the way it had happened. But once, Tori had listened to his words. She’d forgiven him. And that was the time he’d imagined telling her the truth.

  He wanted so badly to go back and have another try. Heath insisted he still had a chance to turn things around. He had permission to tell her what she wanted to know, but he wasn’t sure if it would make a difference. Could Tori really trust him enough? What if it was too little, too late? Was it possible she was still in love with him after everything that had happened between them?

  Wade closed his eyes and pictured Tori as she’d been Friday morning before she left for Philadelphia. Her pale blue eyes were wary, but the love he saw there was undeniable. Maybe he hadn’t lost his chance yet. God, he hoped so. He couldn’t function like this for much longer. He’d have a real heart attack before too long from the stress and the copious amounts of caffeine he was drinking to compensate for lost sleep.

  He had to give it a shot. The gaping hole in his chest begged him to at least try. If she turned him down, he would not have lost anything he hadn’t already given away.

  Heath looked at his brother. His expression was about as serious as it ever got. “This will work out.”

  He sure as hell hoped so.

  “You always were the optimist in the family.” Wade rolled his chair up to the desk with a new fire to put his plan into action. “Okay, Mr. Advertising Executive, direct me to the most environmentally conscious jeweler on the market.”

  “I should’ve known—” Heath grinned “—that you would pick the only woman on earth able to resist the little blue box. Let me call one of my guys who handles most of our jewelry accounts. But be warned—odds are it won’t be local. You might have to wait a couple days.”

  Absolutely not. He would be in Connecticut tomorrow, come hell or high water. “That’s unacceptable,” he said.

  “Well, then, get ready to get on a plane.”

  Wade nodded and rang his admin to clear his calendar for the rest of today and tomorrow. He’d fly to the ends of the earth to get Tori back.

  * * *

  “It’s crap. All crap.” Tori ripped the sheet of paper off the pad, then crumpled her latest blueprint into a ball and tossed it into the overflowing wastepaper basket. It had to be the hundredth design she’d sketched in the past week, but she hated them all. Even the ones she’d been really happy with before Wade came into her life.

  Now everything felt wrong.

  Maybe this whole settling-down thing was just a bad idea. Maybe her mother was right when she said that they had a wandering spirit that shied away from the tethers of the typical American dream. A month ago it had seemed like a great plan. She had been bursting with ideas. Fantasizing about her new closet with room for more than five pairs of shoes. Just the thought of a full-size kitchen and an actual living room with a couch and big-screen television was enough to get her blood pumping with excitement.

  Now the only thing that set her heart to racing was Wade. And he was long gone, along with the piece of her he’d taken with him.

  Tori cussed and flung her pencil across the Airstream. It bounced off her cabinet door and rolled toward the bathroom. She watched it move across the floor, stopping at the butt of her shotgun, which was leaning against the door frame.

  It brought to mind the first day he’d shown up on her property. His charming smile. His infuriating arrogance. The way she’d threatened to shoot him. How was she supposed to carry on with her plans when even the sight of her shotgun brought memories of him to mind? Living on his parents’ old property would guarantee that she could never get away from Wade Mitchell.

  But Tori didn’t want to get away from him. She wanted the charming liar back in her arms. She sat staring blankly at her notepad, thinking about what had happened. Since he left, replaying the scene in her mind had given her some clarity. It had allowed her to focus on the words she’d refused to listen to in her anger.

  Whatever it was he wanted was important. The land itself had no real value to him, just whatever was on it. Given she didn’t even know what it was, it wasn’t something she would ever miss. A part of her understood his reasoning. If he could take or move what he needed, Tori could keep her land and they could both be happy. Maybe even happy together.

  If only she hadn’t decided to come home early.

  Tori looked back down at her fresh sheet of paper. The blank squares were taunting her. Picking up a new pencil, she took a deep breath and tried something different. How would she design a house for both her and Wade to live in?

  She started with his office. It had an entire wall of windows that opened up on a view of the valley below like the ones overlooking Times Square in their hotel suite. On the opposite wall were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A see-through fireplace connected his office to the great room. Both spaces would have twelve-foot ceilings and huge panes of glass. One panel would slide out to let them onto the deck. She sketched in a hot tub where they could sit together in the evenings, talk and drink wine.

  Wine… Tori started sketching a dream kitchen with a staircase that led down into a wine cellar. Her pencil moved feverishly now, the rooms flowing together perfectly. Nearly an hour passed before she sat back and looked at the design.

  This was the house she wanted. The one with Wade in it. Her gaze moved over the second-s
tory guest bedroom that was right off the master suite. It would be perfect for a nursery. She could just see the ivory-and-green wallpaper, the mobile over the crib. The sunlight that streamed in would provide the perfect amount of natural light. Wade could sit in the rocking chair and read bedtime stories.…

  That was the thought that brought the tears to her eyes that she’d fought for days.

  Tori grasped the corner of the sketch, ready to rip it off and trash it with the others, but she just couldn’t. This was the house she wanted.

  The rumbling sound of a car pulling onto her property pulled her attention away from the design. Unable to see from her seat, she got up and walked over to the window.

  The corner of a red hood with a BMW logo nearly sent her heart into her throat. She stumbled back against the sink, gripping the counter to keep her knees from giving out under her. Wade had returned to New York a week ago. Why was he here now? To apologize? To offer her more money? Her mind raced with different options, but she shook each one aside. The only way to know for sure was to go out there and find out.

  Glancing to her right, she picked up the shotgun and went to the door. She was in love with him, but she was still angry and hurt by what he’d done. He needed to know that.

  Tori swung open the door and stepped down into the snow. A snowstorm had blown through the day after she came home, blanketing the property in white and making it impossible for her to look around and search for clues about what he was after.

  When she turned, Wade was standing near the hood of his SUV, his arms raised in surrender. In one hand was a bundle of tulips wrapped in florist paper. “Don’t shoot,” he said with the smile she’d missed.

  She raised the gun and studied his face. He looked older, more tired than she remembered. Hopefully he’d had as bad a week as she had. Knowing he might have suffered without her helped soothe her pride a bit. “What do you want?”

  “I came here to make you an offer.”

  It took everything Tori had not to pull the trigger and cover his body in painful welts. An offer? Here she was, designing their home, decorating their damn nursery, and he came here focused on the same old agenda.

  “You’re too late,” she said. “I wouldn’t sell you this land for every dime you have. Flowers won’t help, either.”

  Wade nodded. A flicker of amusement in his eyes sent a flame of irritation through her veins. “That’s fine. I’m not here to buy the land.”

  Tori frowned. “If you don’t want my land, what do you want, Wade?”

  “I want you.”

  The intensity in his expression was undeniable. His green eyes were burrowing into her. It made it hard to breathe. He wanted her. Her. Not the land. Not what was hidden on it. Her. Her heart leaped in her chest for a moment, but she refused to so much as blink on the exterior. She wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “I’m not interested in any more dinner dates. All I got out of that was indigestion and rug burn.”

  A smile curled Wade’s lips. Instinctively she wanted to smile back, but she wouldn’t.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I’m not here to ask you on a date. I’m here to tell you that I’m in love with you.”

  Tori’s hands started trembling, the shotgun unsteady in her grasp. She stood there with her mouth open but without words as Wade came closer.

  “Let’s just set this down, shall we?” He eased the gun from her hands and laid it in the snow a few feet away. “I’d rather not have our love story turn into one of those tragic tales.” Wade handed her the bouquet of tulips. They were her favorite flower. She hadn’t ever told him that.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Brody is a genius. You can find out almost anything with a computer. I’ve waited seven years to give you those flowers.” He put his hands on her upper arms, gently rubbing her skin to warm her. “I’ve been miserable since we fought. I can’t get that night out of my head. I can’t sleep. All I can see is the look on your face when you walked away, and it breaks my heart. I’d give anything to see you smile again. Today, and every day of the rest of my life.”

  If the mention of love wasn’t enough, he was making sounds like he wanted to…to…

  “I want to tell you the truth. Every bit of it. But it’s not just my secret to keep. There are others who could get hurt if the story were to be made public. But I can tell you this much… I was once very young and very stupid. When faced with something no child should have to handle, I made the wrong decision. I believe the evidence of that night is somewhere on your property. I’ve been doing everything I can think of to make sure no one ever finds it. I’ve done some things in the past few weeks that I’m not proud of. But I did what I felt I had to do to protect my family. You know how important they are to me. I would protect them with my life, just as I would protect yours. And for now I have to continue to protect their secret, just as I would protect a secret of yours.”

  Tori could see the pain in Wade’s expression. His past was eating at him, gnawing at his gut on a daily basis. She was amazed that she hadn’t noticed it before now, but maybe he just kept it too well hidden. He was letting down walls for her. Because she wanted him to. Even if he couldn’t tell her everything, he was making the effort. And she could appreciate that. If she could be certain of nothing else, she knew that Wade would do anything for the people he loved. And if he loved her as he said he did, she would be just as fiercely protected.

  The sense of security and stability that washed over her in that moment was unprecedented. A lifetime of moving from place to place had never provided it. Even buying this land hadn’t provided it. But she’d found it in allowing herself to trust Wade and be protected by him.

  “One day, I hope to be able to tell you the rest of the story. And that you’ll hear everything I’ve done and trust me when I say that, right or wrong, I only ever had the best of intentions. I pray for your understanding because you are a beautiful, intelligent woman and I adore you. You make me happy just lying in bed listening to you breathe. I want to wake up every morning to your messy hair and pouty face. And I want to do it here, in Connecticut, in the house you designed.”

  Tori gasped. “You’d move here?”

  He nodded. “I would. There isn’t much I can do in the office that I can’t do from here with teleconferences and virtual meetings. I might have to go to the city from time to time, but when I do, I want to take you with me. I don’t think I like the idea of traveling without my wife.”

  “But I—” Tori started, then stopped. She watched as Wade eased down onto one knee in the snow. Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a small wooden box wrapped in a gold ribbon. “Wade…” she said, disbelieving. The flowers slipped from her fingers to the snow.

  “Victoria Sullivan,” he began, unwrapping the bow. He eased open the hinge and held the box up to her. “Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”

  Tori glanced down at the engagement ring in his hands. The nearly two carat round diamond was set in a multirow pave diamond band of platinum. It sparkled so brightly with the sunlight reflecting off the snow that she was almost blinded. She had stood in the snow very nearly dumbstruck for the past few minutes, but now she knew she had to find the right thing to say. And it should be easy, since she’d been screaming it in her head since he knelt in the snow.

  “Yes,” she said, tears pooling in her eyes from the light and the emotions ready to spill out of her.

  Wade stood back up, slipping the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly.

  She tore her eyes away from the ring to look up at the man who would soon be her husband. “I love you,” she said.

  “And I love you.” He leaned down to kiss her, almost the official sealing of the deal he’d come here to offer her.

  Tori melted into his arms, losing herself in the feeling of being with the man she thought she’d lost forever. Her blood instantly began to heat with the desire he easily stirred in her. Just when she was ready to tug him into the
Airstream and make love to her fiancé for the first time, he pulled away and looked down at her with a smug grin.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find the perfect diamond for you?”

  Tori frowned. “Am I that picky?”

  “I don’t know if you are, but I certainly am. It had to be perfect. So perfect, I was willing to fly to San Francisco and back to buy it from a jeweler there. This ring is from an environmentally conscious and well-regulated Canadian diamond mine. Certified conflict-free. The band is made of recycled platinum. Hell, the ring box is even made from Rimu wood, whatever that is.”

  Tori grinned. Wade could have marched right into Tiffany’s, bought any ring he wanted, and she would’ve said yes. But he didn’t. He traveled all the way to the West Coast and back to get the ring he knew she would want. That was more precious than the large, flawless stone in the center.

  “Rimu is a sustainable wood from New Zealand. And I love it. There isn’t a more beautiful and perfect ring in all the world. Absolutely perfect.”

  “Like you,” he said.

  Rising on tiptoe, she kissed him again. “Now, let’s go inside and get you out of those wet pants.”

  Wade’s brow shot up at her suggestion. He glanced down at the wet knees of his trousers, then back at the Airstream behind him. “Okay, but after that, you need to get back to work designing that house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “I’m afraid if I make love to you the way I want to, we’re going to roll this sucker down the hill and into a ditch. I need a house. Without wheels. ASAP.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Tori said. Taking his hand in hers, she led him over to the Airstream. “Until then,” she said, laughing, “if this trailer’s a rockin’…”

  Epilogue

  Two months later

  “Remind me again why we’re hiding eggs? In the dark?” Tori looked across the silver, moon-illuminated yard at Wade and Brody. They were both chucking the plastic Easter eggs under bushes and behind tree trunks.

  Brody straightened and shrugged. “It’s tradition. Like watching the Grinch at Christmas. Don’t question our methods.”