A Moment of Bliss

by Heather McGovern

  And his room was covered in pictures. His brothers and sister, Beau, Roark hiking with his family, pictures of the inn, several of him as a boy with a distinguished-looking gentleman who had to be his grandfather, and two pictures that she assumed were of his parents when the Bradley kids were all very young.

  “Is that your grandfather and that’s your family?” She nodded to the pictures on the table below his television. Against her better judgment, she was opening that door, but she had to know. The Bradleys as kids were all too freaking cute.

  “That’s us.” Roark already had a bite of kabob in his mouth.

  “Heathen.”

  “I’m hungry,” he said around it.

  She looked away, taking a plate and placing a Portobello kabob on it before sitting.

  “But yes.” He finished chewing as he got up to grab two pictures and bring them over. “This is me and Granddad, back in the day, and that’s all of us with Mom and Dad.”

  She took the pictures, even though the last thing she needed was to see adorable prepubescent Roark, already being the little man of the family for his younger siblings. A quick look down, and yep. He was all that and more. A head taller than the rest of them, he wore a smile but held a seriousness in his eyes. He even had his arms thrown around his family, rather than looking like a disgruntled preteen. “Look at how adorable you all are.”

  Roark sat down, a solid weight beside her. “I was already hitting that awkward preteen stage. And look at Devlin. He’d rather be anywhere than posing for a family photo.”

  “Where . . .” She was treading on dangerous ground again. “Where are your parents now?”

  Roark grabbed a beer and twisted it open, taking a long swig before he spoke. “Mom moved to Asheville, so she’s not far away. Dad is in Greenville. They rarely come up, never together. It’s awkward for everyone if they’re here at the same time. But they’re happier now, so . . .”

  “You were close to your grandfather though, huh?”

  He sat up, tilting the picture still in her hands. Rhododendrons in full bloom all around them in the photo, and a misty view of the mountains behind them that’d make an artist weep.

  “He was my idol growing up. One of those people who knew a little about everything and could do anything from fix a car to grow the perfect tomatoes. I loved him.”

  The sincerity in his voice, the loss that still remained, cracked something open inside of her, a fracture with light shining out.

  She shifted on the couch beside him, the mood suddenly too deep. “And look at your little shaggy haircut.”

  “It was the style. And it’s horrible, I know.”

  “No, it’s cute.”

  “Well, I try.” He winked at her.

  “Actually, I have a confession to make.”

  “Nice.” Roark took the pictures from her and set them on the coffee table. He opened another beer and handed it over. “Confessions. Do tell.”

  Instead of debating how honest she should be, she spat it out. “Before I even visited Honeywilde, that first time, I did some research on you guys.”

  “It’s normal to check a place out before you visit.”

  “Yeah,” she said, dragging the word out. “But I researched you. All of you, but mostly you. Online.”

  “Really?” He sounded impressed instead of creeped out.

  “I saw that you went to App State, that you studied business and played baseball there, then got your MBA.”

  “Did you look up a picture of me in my baseball uniform? I was pretty cute in that too.”

  “Very cute.”

  “You did look me up in my uniform.”

  “Of course. Baseball uniforms are hot.” He was hotter now.

  He rubbed his hand on the napkin over his thigh. “Not gonna lie, the fact that you looked me up is pretty hot too.”

  “You are so weird.” She took a long drink of her beer. “I didn’t go to college.” The bitter truth was out of her mouth before she could stop it. A close, personal fact that she had no reason to share with him, but after seeing him with Trevor, seeing with her own eyes what really made Roark tick, her truth wanted out.

  The thing was, she’d wanted to go. She remembered kids taking the tests and talking about going away to school. They were getting out, getting on with their lives in this bright, positive way. She hadn’t had the means or the grades. Her long swig of beer was cold enough to make her eyes water, but that’s not why she blinked and looked away.

  “Didn’t slow you down though. You learned all about business and stuff the old-fashioned way.”

  “You mean the only way I could.”

  He nodded, eating his food, and into the quiet of the room she told him the rest. “I had no money for college, obviously, but I didn’t have the grades either.”

  “How is that possible? You’re one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.”

  That compliment was not going to get to her, even though it did. “Self-taught and clever. Not the same thing.”

  “Cleverness got you to where you are now, and you seem to be doing all right.”

  Except, she wasn’t all right. Yes, she did fine now, but she’d had to scrape and scavenge to get here. She’d always worked her ass off for everything she had, and it left her with nothing else but work.

  Her teen years weren’t spent studying and her early twenties weren’t full of stories about carefree weekends and playing baseball. They were full of scrounging to get by, then thinking she’d finally found love, only for it to fall apart.

  “I was more concerned about having a meal at night than history and math. School was something I had to do until I was eighteen, but I was also waiting tables so at least I knew I would eat.”

  His expression might look placid to someone else, but the set of Roark’s jaw showed how hard he was working not to rage against her past. “Damn, I want to drop-kick your parents, in spite of the fact that you’re doing better now.”

  She hadn’t meant to say all of that, but . . . it wasn’t fair. People might think she was okay now, or even that she was cold and stuck-up, but that was only because they knew nothing about where she came from or how she got here. Madison stuck a potato wedge in her mouth to keep from telling Roark more. She could barely taste it, but chewing gave her time to get it together. “I don’t mean to vent. Life is good now. That’s what matters. It’s—”

  “Fine.” Roark said the word for her, setting his plate down. “You’re going to say it’s fine and I swear to god I cannot hear that word one more time, okay? It is not fine.” The vehemence in his voice brought Madison up short. In the time she’d been at Honeywilde, she’d never heard him like this. His tone brokered no argument.

  He turned to face her, taking her plate away to set it on the coffee table as well.

  Everything inside her screamed to run and hide from whatever he saw or thought he saw.

  “You keep saying you’re fine or it’s fine that you got the shit end of the deal as a kid, and it is not fine. You deserved to be a kid and have fun and not worry about having a hot meal. Working to eat and survive at fifteen or sixteen is not okay. There’s nothing fine about it, so stop pretending otherwise.”

  “I’m not pretending, I—” She snapped at him, then clamped her mouth shut.

  “Don’t you dare hermit up on me right now.”

  Madison stared at him, clutching her beer until her hand hurt from the cold.

  “You’re the most outspoken person I know. Say it.”

  “I’m not pretending my childhood was okay,” she ground out. “This is just how I deal with it. I’ve moved on because I have to. What’s my option? Stay in bed for days, or pay for years of therapy? Cry all over you? Not going to happen.”

  Roark straightened, his lips pinched, then he nodded to himself as if he’d decided. “All right. You want to know what I do? To deal with it all?”

  She was lost on how to answer. Roark always seemed so together.

  “I make
lists. All the time, lists. You’ve seen them. My brother gives me shit about it, but what you don’t know—what no one knows—is I make a list for almost everything. I make one at night and sometimes in the morning, and I check each item off to keep me on track. If I don’t, I’d wake up completely lost inside my head. I couldn’t sleep for the jumble of thoughts about to swallow me whole. If I can’t look at something that tells me what I need to do, what needs to be done, my mind starts to wander and I start to think. That is not a good thing, and you want to know why?”

  Madison blinked.

  “Because I start thinking about my brothers and my sister, and when I think about them, I worry about them. I worry and then I get angry for them because of what we should’ve had and didn’t. I worry about what we went through, I worry because I’ve worried for so long, I can’t turn it off. I was responsible for them in some way from the time I started kindergarten. Then, when I’m done stressing over them and their lives, I start to think about how much they resent the hell out of me for it.”

  “They don’t,” she tried to argue.

  He shook his head, unconvinced. “And I don’t blame them. I hover over them and get too bossy sometimes. Dad gave me a larger share of the inn than them, and even though they know it makes good business sense, it still bothers them. They see me with a degree of separation. Dev and Sophie? They can have an hour-long conversation without opening their mouths. Trevor and Soph were two of a kind when we were kids. Me? I’m the manager. Was then and I am now.”

  “You’re more than a manager to them. You have to know that.”

  “Maybe, but the fact that I had to basically take over to save Honeywilde, that my folks were too wrapped up in themselves and their misery to keep this place in good shape—it pisses me off. It pisses me off that I was never given any option but to play the responsible-leader role, my whole life, yet somehow I’m the asshole. I’m the asshole because they wouldn’t do their jobs as parents or as owners of this place, and it is not fine. It’s shitty and it’s okay for you to tell me it’s shitty. You don’t have to insist everything is fine. Not with me.”

  “I hate my mother,” she blurted. The one thing she never said aloud came pouring out, making her throat burn. But this time, she wasn’t going to shut herself up. “I mean, hate her. She was the reason Dad left and she . . . she was horrible.”

  Madison could still hear the spite in her mother’s voice when she told a sixteen-year-old Madison that if she didn’t like this new boyfriend’s place, she was more than welcome to try her luck on the streets.

  “If she’d tried, if she’d even given half a damn, I would’ve felt like the luckiest girl alive. She resented me for existing. I could see it in her eyes. I wish I would’ve had an older brother or sister who gave a damn about me. Believe me. Your family loves you for what you did.”

  At first, she wasn’t going to say the rest. It wasn’t her place or any of her business, but she saw something in Roark’s family. A bond that, though strained at times, went deeper and held stronger than anything she’d ever experienced. What they had mattered, and if she could help Roark, she would.

  “Just . . . maybe. Maybe your brothers and sister don’t want you to do so much for them now?” She eased into her suggestion. “Maybe they want you to trust them a little more. Give Devlin more responsibility or, I don’t know, let them do things all on their own, without your help. Even if it means they mess up sometimes.”

  Roark leaned back on the couch, his gaze steady on the photographs in front of them. He didn’t say anything for a moment and doubt flooded her senses. She couldn’t feel the beer in her hand anymore. The low throb of numbness spread to every limb.

  Finally, he sighed. “I know. You’re right, and I want to let go a little. The thing is, I don’t know if I can. I trust them; it’s me I’m not so sure about.” He lifted his shoulders and let them drop.

  Madison reached for him. Without hesitation or uncertainty, she put her hand over the top of his, and held on tight.

  She’d done her best not to know Roark, not to fall for him and like him more and more. She didn’t want to understand him or for him to understand her, but she did. She knew how hard he tried and how much those around him meant. And no matter how walled up she tried to be, he got her.

  More importantly, he accepted her.

  She met his gaze.

  “C’mere.” Roark tilted his chin and tugged at her elbow.

  “What?”

  “You’re sitting too far away.” But he was the one who made the move to sit even closer, taking the beer bottle from her hand and setting it on the coffee table. “I can’t kiss you over there and I need to kiss you right now.”

  She pressed into him and their lips met, his kiss slow and soft, his fingers in her hair, skimming her face and neck. He brushed his hand over her hair, cupping the back of her head, savoring the kiss like he was savoring her. Cherishing. He slipped his tongue past her lips, coaxing her open, giving her everything that she wanted in that moment. An acceptance, without words, of who she was, all that she was, on the outside and the complicated inside.

  In that moment, she knew what she needed.

  This.

  Not explosive sex or undeniable chemistry, but something even more potent.

  He leaned back, still holding her close. “Will you spend the night with me? Here. I don’t care if we stay right here on this couch and fall asleep with our clothes on, but I want you to stay with me tonight.”

  She couldn’t let herself overthink what it’d mean. “I want that too.”

  He brushed her hair back, his expression so open that the wall inside her cracked further; something long forgotten tried to fight every withering effect in her life to bloom, big and beautiful.

  Murmuring words she could barely make out but didn’t need to hear to understand, he touched her, stroked her hair, raining the smallest kisses over her cheek.

  Affection, in its truest and deepest form, not because he wanted sex or because the sex was great, but because he wanted her.

  Madison turned her face and he kissed her temple, but she did it so he wouldn’t see. Tears pricked her eyes and she squeezed them shut, not because she was scared but because here, in this calm quiet, she was allowed to feel, and it was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Maybe, if she sat very still and promised not to want it too much, she could feel this way forever.

  Chapter 25

  A few weeks ago, all he’d wanted was for this wedding to happen, Honeywilde to get the publicity from it so that he, his family, and the resort would be in a secure spot. Now, he’d give anything to put this weekend off another week or two. A month. Three months. As long as it was further into the future and he got a little more time with Madison.

  But that wasn’t reality. Reality was a great room full of pretentious wedding guests, with so much fake hugging and cheek kissing, he wanted to hurl himself off the veranda.

  A distinct line differentiated the wedding folks who were family and old friends from those who were industry people.

  Whitney and Jack’s friends and family looked like anyone you might run into at the local Target or someone from juvie. The industry folks were deceptively casual, wearing five-hundred-dollar distressed jeans, and shirts you’d only see in a magazine ad. They greeted each other with loud exclamations of joy and lots of hand gestures, none of it with an ounce of sincerity.

  Madison worked the room though, skirting the edges, watching the guests for any needs, working with the inn staff to have those needs met. Her efforts were making the party a success, but her presence was never obvious.

  Except to Roark. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Soaking up all he could, while he could, that was his excuse.

  What else was he supposed to do? Ask her to stay? She’d already been very clear about what she wanted and expected. Even though they’d grown closer, that didn’t mean she’d stay, and in fairness, she’d been nothing but honest from the start. They never
said anything about after the wedding.

  Maybe he should bring up her coming to see him some weekend, or he could visit her in the city. But to what end? An extra weekend or two would only make it worse. Putting off the inevitable so it’d hurt all the more when they finally said goodbye.

  He swallowed the bitter thought as Madison approached him.

  “It’s like a show but without the stage,” she whispered.

  “It is. Normally I’m into people-watching, but this is . . .” He pulled a face.

  “Yeah. Talk about schmoozing. There’s more here than I can stand.”

  “Where are Whitney and Jack?”

  “Around. Probably avoiding”—Madison moved her palm in a circle—“this.”

  She lowered her hand to her blouse, fiddling with the top button.

  “Stop worrying. Everything is going well, I’ve seen what Wright has ready for dinner and I’m still drooling, and these people look happy in their hobnobbing.” He tried to reassure her, but she kept fidgeting.

  “I have a bad feeling.”

  “Probably just nerves. It’s a big weekend.” He wouldn’t share his nerves about the two of them. About it ending. The anxiety radiating off her would be work related, same as always, and he needed to accept things as they were.

  Tomorrow they were done. He wasn’t going to ask her for some kind of long-distance nonsense, so this would be it. She’d hate the idea of dragging out their “not a thing,” and if he pressed her for any kind of promises, she’d likely panic. Or worse, agree when it wasn’t what she really wanted.

  The last thing he needed was another person growing to resent him.

  Damn. Why was he even thinking this way?

  “It’s not my nerves.” She shook her head. “There are some signs. Namely the bride and groom aren’t here right now, and this is their party. Troutman is flouncing around like this is his weekend.”

  As soon as she said that, ol’ fish face lumbered toward them.