by Beth Andrews
Not to mention her broken heart.
She couldn’t allow herself to think of Max. It hurt more than her broken bones, her bruised ribs and her stitches all rolled together. When he’d left the hospital room yesterday, it had been like watching a beautiful, shimmering bubble bursting in thin air.
She had always known the bubble was too fragile to survive. But watching it pop and disappear felt like an act of violence. It felt like a little death.
She would not fall apart, though. She’d promised herself that. She’d gone white-water rafting yesterday to prove to herself that she was still moving forward, in spite of the fact that Ellen’s outburst had clearly destroyed all hope of a relationship with Max.
She might have lost the man, but she hadn’t lost herself. She hurt, but she was still growing, still risking. She’d looked at her list that day and asked herself, what is the scariest thing on here? The answer was the same as it had always been—white-water rafting.
So that was what she did.
And now here she was, twenty-four hours, one broken bone and two bruised ribs later, still missing Max like an amputation.
Maybe it was time to pick out something else to risk.
When the doorbell rang, she assumed it was one of the staff, bringing her lunch.
“Come in,” she called, because standing was fairly painful. She’d managed to bathe and dress this morning, but that had taken most of the starch right out of her.
She let her head fall back against the cushioned armchair. Rowena had decorated these cottages so beautifully. She felt at home here already. Maybe later, she’d bring a couple of her paintings over. And of course she’d want her sketchbook....
She opened her eyes, ready with a smile to thank whichever college kid had been recruited to deliver her food. Instead, she thought she must be hallucinating.
Because the person standing in front of her was Max.
She tried to stand, but every muscle protested. He held out his hand. “Don’t,” he said. “You need to rest.”
She felt her head shaking just an inch or so from left to right, like a subconscious expression of denial. Max couldn’t really be here....
And what was he holding? It looked like a large white box. Like a box you’d buy a bedspread in.
“Max, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see if there were some way I could help you finish up your Risk-it List,” he said. He pointed to the chair on the other side of the little, unlit fireplace. “May I? It might take a while.”
She nodded carefully. “Max...” She watched him drag the chair closer. He put the large white box between them, on the ottoman. “Max, what’s really going on here?”
“Really. It’s what I said.” He smiled. “I’ve got some ideas that I hope will get you through your list in record time. Just hear me out, okay?”
She nodded again. Her head was spinning, anyhow, and she wasn’t sure she could think straight enough to ask sensible questions even if he let her. She wished, suddenly, that she hadn’t taken the doctor’s recommended pain pill when she got up this morning. He’d said it might make bathing and dressing easier. But right now she’d rather have a clear head than clean hair.
“Okay, so, as best I can tell you’ve got only five items left. They are, in no particular order, learn to juggle, get a beautiful tattoo, take a photo of someone famous, host a costume party and something about a sailboat. Is that about right?”
She looked at him, wondering whether she’d actually fallen asleep in this chair, knocked out by the pain pill, and was dreaming him here. He looked good here, she thought. His suede jacket picked up the browns in the river rock fireplace, and his blue shirt picked up the blue of the carpet. Even in her dreams, she liked a nice color scheme....
“Is that about right?” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re listening, aren’t you, Penny? Are you feeling all right?”
She smiled. “I’m feeling fantastic,” she said. “But if you’re a dream, I definitely do not want to wake up.”
“I’m not a dream.” He leaned forward, and looked carefully into her eyes. “Have you been given some pain medication?”
She nodded, still smiling. “Yes. It was only so-so until a few minutes ago, but it’s really kicking in now.” She sobered for a second. “Wait. You said you’re not a dream.”
“No. I’m not. But I tell you what.” He stood, and came to sit next to her on the sofa. “How about if you rest your head here.” He tilted her very, very slowly toward him, so gently that it didn’t even make her ribs cry out in pain. How did he do that? Even talking made them hurt, before.
She let her head sink into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. It was a perfect fit. She kept her face out, though, so that the stitches about her eyebrows didn’t press against anything. They did still hurt, just a bit.
“This is nice,” she murmured as she shut her eyes.
“Good. So how about if you sleep here for a little while, until the medication wears...”
And that was all she remembered for a very long time. Later, she woke with a start that made her ribs blaze with pain. The sun was casting long rectangles of light through the great room windows, and the color of the light was clearly an afternoon gold. She glanced at the clock over the fireplace. Three? She’d slept for three hours?
She looked back at the man whose shoulder she’d been sleeping on. She rubbed at a small round damp spot on the suede. Oops—not just sleeping on. Drooling on.
Well, drool was about as unglamorous as you could get. It hadn’t been a dream, then. It really had been Max. And there was the white box, on the ottoman.
“Hi, there,” he said softly. “Are you feeling better?”
“Actually, I’m feeling physically much worse. But my head is clear, and I know you’re real. So that’s better.” She smiled. “In fact, it’s quite wonderful.”
“Good.” He took her hand. “Do you remember where we were?”
She thought hard. “Oh. You were telling me about the five things left on my Risk-it List.”
“Right!” He seemed proud of her, as if she were a student who had just turned in an A paper. “So those were the five things. Juggle, photo of someone famous, tattoo, costume party, sailboat.”
She nodded. “Sounds about right. But I’m still not sure where this is going.”
“Bear with me. So here’s my plan. There’s a pro golfer who is behind the Silverdell Hills project. His name is Acton Adams. Ever heard of him?”
She laughed. “Of course. Everyone has.”
“Great. That means he definitely qualifies as famous. Which is good, because he’d like to hire you to do his photo shoot for the Silverdell Hills brochure.”
“I...” She tilted her head suspiciously. “You arranged this?”
“Of course. Well, I got some help from Ellen and Alec. But the Acton Adams plan was mine.”
She wondered whether she’d slipped back into a happy painkiller haze. Had he really said that Ellen had helped him? “Go on,” she said cautiously.
“Okay. So that’s one. Two, the tattoo. That was Alec’s idea.” He felt around in his jacket’s outside pocket, and he brought out a small rub-on tattoo. It was a bluebird.
“Nothing on the list says your tattoo has to be permanent. And you said you’d already decided not to get one, so Alec thought one of these rub-on deals would be best.”
He grinned. “It took us two hours and seven stores to find one in the right color. Silverdell doesn’t exactly have a lot of cutting-edge teen emporia.”
“No,” she agreed, still bemused. “No, it doesn’t.”
“Okay. So that’s two down. Next comes the costume party. In that white box is a beautiful princess costume that Ellen picked out for you. She says we should have a Halloween party, and you
and she can come as princesses. Only two small hitches. One, we have to have an early, early Halloween party, because none of us is willing to wait.”
“And the other hitch?”
“Ellen says Alec and I have to come as princes. I’m willing to make the sacrifice, but Alec is standing firm. No prince costume for him. Ellen is very put out.”
“I can imagine.” She bit her lips so that she wouldn’t laugh. Laughing really did hurt. Unfortunately, so did biting her cut lip.
“Okay. So that’s three down. Which brings us to the sailboat thing. We were kind of stumped there. None of us had any idea what you really meant by just that one word...sailboat. Ellen was sure it meant you wanted to buy one, but then she’s a big fan of conspicuous consumption. Alec, who has been brought up frugal, said probably you just want to paint one.”
Penny was finally beginning to put the big picture together. And what a lovely, dreamlike picture it was! Alec, Ellen, Max—all conferring together to try to make Penny happy. How she would have loved to see them together like that, heads bent, faces intent, all in harmony. All focused on her—and not with hatred or resentment, but with affection and care.
She felt suddenly so lighthearted she thought she might float up off the sofa. She wondered how a body could be so battered and so aglow with happiness at the same time.
“How about you?” She gave him a teasing glance. “What did you think sailboat meant?”
“I thought maybe you just wanted to rent one and sail it somewhere special. Somewhere romantic...”
“Close.” She put her hand on his thigh. “I want to make love on one.”
His eyes widened, and then so did his smile. “Then I guess I’d better buy one,” he said. “It’ll be cheaper in the end.”
She laughed. “Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself? I don’t remember saying I wanted to make love with you....”
“Don’t you?” He took her hand and placed it over his heart. “I do. I remember your body telling me that you wanted to make love to me all night long. I told you I’d never forget it, and I never will.”
“Yes,” she said. “We agreed that we’d be happy memories for each other....”
“That’s what I’m here to tell you. I was kidding myself, Penny. I can’t be content with being a memory. It’s just not enough—not anywhere nearly enough. I love you. I want to make new memories with you every single day for the rest of our lives.”
“You do?” She sounded like an idiot. But happiness was like soda fizz spritzing through her veins, making her feel slightly drunk. She could hardly sit still, because everything inside her was bubbling and tickling and doubling over on itself like a hurricane caught in a bottle.
“But what about Ellen?”
“She loves you, too.” His face was earnest. “I think we both knew, almost from the first moment we met you, that you were the one we needed in our lives. That you were the one who could teach us to love again. To be happy again. But it was so hard to believe. So hard to trust. We both tried to deny it for far too long.”
He touched her face gently. “We’re both through denying it, Penny. We love you. I love you. I know you wanted time, time to find yourself, to learn who you are and what you want, and if you still feel that way, we’re willing to wait.”
It was all she could do not to lean over and kiss that handsome, sensual and yet indescribably gentle face. Good thing her body was a wreck right now, or she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself.
And there was still so much to be said.
“I...I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “You haven’t told me how you’re going to deal with the juggling problem.”
He grinned. He knew, the scoundrel. No matter how she tried to tease him, he knew she loved him. He had probably known it from the start.
Or at least from that night—the night she gave him her body, he couldn’t have missed that she also offered her heart and her soul.
“Yeah. The juggling. About that...”
She waited.
“We’re going to have to remove that from the list. Just cross it off, snip it out, throw it away. Pretend it wasn’t ever there. The three of us hashed that out for an hour or more, and we decided you are, indeed, hopeless.”
She shook her head. “Fine thing to say to the woman you love.”
He leaned over and softly kissed the bandages above each of her eyes. Then he kissed her swollen upper lip, so gently she almost couldn’t tell when his lips were gone. Except that her lip tingled, and seemed to heal a little in that very instant.
“I think it’s the perfect thing to tell her. I don’t love you because I imagine you’re perfect. I don’t love you just because your body is beautiful and your face is young and sweet. I love you because you’re you. I love the parts that are perfect, and I love the parts that are clumsy, or frightened, or sad.”
She blinked, willing the silly tears to stay away. This was not a time for tears, not even happy ones.
“So what do you say, Penny? Will you give up that one thing on your list and take a husband and a daughter in its place? We’re both slightly used and more than a little damaged, but we love you, and we need you, and I promise we’ll work very, very hard to be sure the rest of your life is as happy as we can make it.”
She reached up with her good hand and ran her fingertips through his hair. He shut his eyes briefly, absorbing the sensation, and when he opened them she saw that this tiny touch had ignited a fire.
“There’s only one problem,” she said. She waited to be sure she had his attention. “You see, yesterday I decided that list was absurd. Those weren’t the risks I really wanted to take in my life. They weren’t the things that mattered. And yet, just because I had put white-water rafting on some arbitrary list, I almost died in the rapids.”
She took a deep breath. “So, while I was in the hospital, I made an entirely different list.”
His jaw went momentarily slack. “An entirely different list...” He sounded stupefied.
“Yes. Want to see it?”
He nodded, half-dazed.
“It’s in the drawer next to my bed.” She nodded toward the hall that led to the bedroom. “I’d go get it myself, but...”
“Of course.” He stood, went down the hall and within seconds was back, with her notebook in his hand. He extended it, but she shook her head.
“I’d like you to read it, if you will,” she said. “It’s on the first page.”
She knew the list by heart, because, this time, it was the list of her heart. It was shorter, but much harder to achieve. Everything on there was frightening, difficult and very, very real.
He began to read the list out loud.
“One: Learn to separate the Bell River of the present from the Bell River of the past. The stairs are just stairs. Put those ghosts to rest.”
He glanced at her, his eyes somber. She didn’t speak, so he went on.
“Two: Learn the sound of your own inner voice. It doesn’t sound like Dad, or Mom, or even Rowena or Bree. You know it when you hear it. Learn to obey that voice and that voice only.”
He hesitated a moment, then sat on the nearest chair, as if he needed to be at rest, so that he could really absorb and understand. He was clearly catching on that this wasn’t a list that anyone could “help” her accomplish. And it wasn’t a list that would be mastered in a month, or a year, or maybe even in a lifetime. But it was a list to live by.
“Three: Accept that there are no places where no storms come. Don’t hide from life. Learn to value the storm as well as the calm.”
She closed her eyes, waiting for numbers four and five. They were the ones that really mattered. They were the ones she needed him to hear.
“Four: Tell Max that you love him.”
He cleared his throat, as
if some emotion had clogged it, making it hard to speak.
He started again, but had to stop. And so she spoke the last one for him.
“Five,” she said softly.
“Love is the only risk worth taking.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three months later
SHE’D BEEN ON a sailboat so long she’d lost her land legs, it seemed. They got off the plane, drove through the bleak gray and white landscape of an approaching Colorado winter, made their way to Silverdell and pulled onto the grounds of Bell River before she really felt that the ground wasn’t swaying and swelling beneath her.
The honeymoon had been two weeks on a schooner, sailing around Hawaii, drinking out of coconuts, dancing under the starlight and always, always making love.
It had been two weeks of heaven.
But now they were home, and they could hardly wait to see Ellen, who’d been staying at the ranch while they were gone. They’d talked to her every day, and they’d called on Skype and texted and created Google hangouts...at least they did so whenever Ellen could find the time for them.
Max had pretended to lament the loss of his daughter to her two new loves, horseback riding and photography, but Penny knew that he was deeply grateful to see her so busy, so passionate and so healthy.
She’d shot up about six inches in two months, and was starting to look like a fashion model. Ironically, all that had happened just about the time she stopped believing her looks were the most important thing in her life.
When they arrived, a red-nosed, jacketed welcoming committee was gathered around the front fountain, so Max parked the car out front. They’d be moving into River Song cottage, and turning the duplex into the art studio Penny had always dreamed of.
They’d spend the first month in the main house, though, while an addition to River Song was finished. Ellen was going to need more privacy than the original two-bedroom floor plan would have allowed. She would be a teenager in a couple of years—and heaven help them then!