A Bride Before Dawn

by Sandra Steffen

  The changing table and dresser were assembled. Noah was working on the baby swing. Next to him, Marsh was rereading the directions for the crib.

  “Hand me those pliers,” Noah said.

  Marsh was studying the directions and didn’t hear him. What else was new? It rankled, but then, Noah had been stewing ever since they’d left Lacey in the courthouse square.

  “If you have something to say, say it,” Marsh said without looking up.

  So he had noticed.

  “It’s a little late to ask for my input now, isn’t it?”

  “What’s your problem?” Marsh turned the directions over noisily. “Tell me you’re not jealous because I hugged your girlfriend.”

  “Jealous of you?” Noah decided not to even address the fact that she wasn’t his girlfriend. He was still eyeing the pliers that were lying on the other side of Marsh’s knee. Beside him Marsh wadded the directions into a ball. He supposed he should have taken that as a hint that Marsh’s patience was wearing thin. But Noah wasn’t in the mood to take hints.

  He admitted that he could have been more careful when he reached for the pliers. Maybe the way he accidentally bumped Marsh with his shoulder could have been construed as a slight shove. Marsh probably meant to give him only a little push in return. But Noah was on his haunches and the return jostle caused him to lose his balance. He automatically grabbed Marsh’s arm. Unfortunately, Marsh was on the balls of his feet, too.

  The two of them toppled backward, landing with a crash on discarded cardboard and packaging foam. Marsh went up on one elbow. Noah sat up and brushed himself off, prepared to get back to work.

  “Not so fast, flyboy.” Marsh threw his arm around Noah’s chest and pulled him backward.

  Noah’s surprise lasted just long enough to glimpse the confidence on his brother’s face. As the oldest, Marsh apparently assumed he had the upper hand, the way he had when they were kids. Noah wasn’t smaller anymore, but he was still six years younger, an asset now if there ever was one. He was more agile, too, not to mention more experienced in fighting. He was going to enjoy pinning Marsh until he cried uncle.

  Marsh had something else in mind. He drove that fact home when Noah landed with a loud thump on his back on the floor. Letting loose a war cry, Noah got serious. Marsh didn’t stay on top for long. They rolled around on the floor, grunting when an elbow was jabbed into an opponent’s midsection and knees collided and heads knocked. The wrestling match got rowdier and the banging and thumping and slamming of bodies into furniture louder.

  “What’s going on?” It seemed that Reed had come to investigate the racket.

  “Noah started it.”

  “The hell I did.”

  Reed planted his Cole Haans and folded his arms. He was the only person Noah knew who could look down his nose at somebody with his nose still in the air.

  “If you’re going to behave like children,” he said, “take it outside.”

  “Where’s Joey?” Marsh asked.

  “He’s asleep in my office.”

  Marsh and Noah looked at each other. At the same time, they lunged toward Reed.

  He toppled like a stack of building blocks. “Are you both out of your minds? Ooof. Get off me.”

  “What’s the matter? Afraid to get your chinos wrinkled?” Marsh asked.

  “Or are you just afraid to lose?” Noah added.

  Those were fighting words. The years fell away, along with Reed’s air of polish and sophistication. He dived into the foray with all the gusto of a street fighter.

  The exercise caused an adrenaline rush that invigorated all three of them. A one-on-one skirmish was a fair match. This was every man for himself. Whoever was on top of the heap was winning. That changed too often to track. Arms and legs got tangled, expletives exchanged and retaliation promised. If the momentum hadn’t sent them careening into the end table, which in turn sent a lamp crashing to the floor, there was no telling who would have come out ahead.

  The explosion of ceramic and shattering glass had the effect of a bell at a boxing match. It officially ended the round. Noah had Reed in a headlock, Reed had Marsh’s left leg bent like a pretzel and Marsh had an arm around Noah’s chest. It took a little doing to get untangled.

  Free at last, Reed sat up. “What in the world is going on with you two?” he asked as he examined his shirt and chinos for damage.

  “Noah has something to say to us,” Marsh said as if the scuffle hadn’t interrupted the conversation.

  Reed looked sideways at Noah. “Let’s hear it.”

  Still on his back on the floor, Noah tested his legs to see if they would straighten out. “I just made the last payment on the loan for my Airfield Operations Specialist training.”

  “A fight broke out over that?” With a slight groan, Reed rolled up on all fours. “You should be celebrating.”

  “Lacey was the first person I wanted to tell.” When Noah had found the training program open to new enrollment down in Florida ten years ago, Marsh and Reed had wanted to help him find a way to pay for the expensive course, but Noah had already owed them for giving up their futures for him, and even if he could have let them do more, Noah had needed to prove to them and to himself that he could do it his own way, to try to succeed on his own. He’d found another lender, and had been diligently paying it off for nine years.

  Reed was right; it was cause for celebration. “So tell her,” he said.

  “I can’t, thanks to the two of you. She would think it had more to do with gratitude because she agreed to be Joey’s temporary nanny.” Noah wanted something a hell of a lot more substantial than gratitude. “We dodged a bullet with the judge because of her.”

  “She saved our asses,” Marsh agreed.

  “And Joey,” Reed said reverently.

  “You should have asked me before you coerced her into accepting the position as Joey’s nanny.”

  Marsh stared at Noah from his feet, Reed from his knees. “You’re angry because we didn’t consult you first?” Reed asked.

  “I’d probably have a heart attack if you ever did that.” He could tell he’d struck a nerve. “Expecting Lacey to be Joey’s nanny was unfair to her, especially considering the reason we broke up.”

  Marsh stopped tucking his shirt in long enough to share a look with Reed. “Why did you two break up?”

  Noah was sorry he’d brought it up. Until now he’d kept the reason vague, saying they’d wanted different things. Taking a deep breath, he blurted, “Because she wanted kids.”

  Marsh looked at Noah as if something was finally starting to make sense. “You mean you don’t?” he asked kindly.

  Noah didn’t reply.

  “Have you always felt this way?” Marsh continued in the same patient tone of voice.

  “Don’t psychoanalyze me, okay?”

  On his feet now, too, Reed said, “Noah? Have you?”

  When they were kids, it seemed that one or another of them was always getting caught someplace they shouldn’t have been, doing something they shouldn’t have been doing. Rather than lie when questioned by an adult, they’d developed a little gesture that entailed shrugging just one shoulder. It meant I’d rather not say. Noah demonstrated it now.

  Marsh’s sigh came from a place deep inside him. “I always worried that the chances you took with your life and your future had to do with being in the car with Mom and Dad that day.”

  Reed was watching Noah as intently as Marsh was. “It wasn’t your fault, buddy,” Reed said. “You couldn’t have prevented what happened.”

  Their dad used to call Noah buddy. Hearing it again caught him below his breastbone. “I know that.”

  “I would have bet money on the fact that you were disappointed when you found out Joey wasn’t yours,” Marsh said.

  “Yeah,” he said, sitting up. “Nobody was more surprised about that than me.”

  Marsh and Reed each held out a hand and practically launched Noah to his feet. “Are you saying you’ve change
d your mind?” Marsh asked now that they were all looking eye to eye.

  “I made a vow the day we buried Mom and Dad.”

  “It sounds to me as if you made a decision,” Reed countered. “A decision based on witnessing a tragedy no fifteen-year-old should ever witness.”

  Other than the time he’d told Lacey, Noah never talked about the day his parents died. He didn’t talk about the funeral, either, or how utterly empty and silent the house and the orchard had been after their parents were suddenly just gone. Everything had changed, and that, in turn, changed the three of them and their younger sister, Madeline. That wasn’t what was at the front of his mind today. “It’s been two-and-a-half years since Lacey left,” he said. “I don’t even know how she feels about me anymore.”

  “How do you feel about her?” Reed asked.

  “Are you in love with her?” Marsh said, more to the point.

  “She’s in my blood. Either of you ever have that happen?”

  Marsh said nothing.

  Reed shrugged one shoulder much as Noah had a moment ago. “Maybe you should ask her if she feels the same way about you,” he said.

  This from a man who hadn’t thought to get the last name of the woman he’d slept with and possibly fathered a child with. All his life Noah had been the wiry kid brother everybody worried about, while rugged, man-of-the-earth Marsh had the patience of a saint and brainy, brawny Reed was shamelessly self-confident. Joey’s unexpected arrival was leveling the playing field. “Maybe we should have consulted you before asking Lacey to accept the job as Joey’s nanny,” Marsh said. “But she doesn’t strike me as the type of woman who would do something she doesn’t want to do.”

  Noah was reminded of the other night when she’d opened her door, tears in her eyes. He’d reached for her hand, put his arms around her and kissed her. She had reacted, turning warm and pliant and oh-so-willing. Passion had flamed between them straight to inferno level.

  “You might want to grab some ice for that cracked lip before you pay her another visit,” Reed said as if he’d read Noah’s mind.

  Gingerly touching his sore lip with one finger, Noah looked around the room. A sense of calm was settling over him. He recalled the silent promise he’d made the day he’d watched his parents’ caskets being lowered into the ground. Joey’s arrival was causing him to question his stand. It scared the spit out of him, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from wanting to knock on Lacey’s door all over again.

  “We got lucky today,” he said. “Let’s get this nursery finished for Joey before the judge decides to send somebody out here for a surprise home visit.”

  Marsh and Reed both shuddered.

  Hunkering down in front of the baby swing he’d been assembling when that little fight broke out, Noah recalled how Lacey’s voice had sounded today after the judge had proclaimed that babies needed a woman’s care. “Your Honor,” she’d said, “I am a woman.”

  She was a woman, all right—an amazing one—but he couldn’t just race over to her place and haul her off to bed. As tempting as that notion was, he couldn’t burn this passion off as if sex was enough. She was in his blood. Two-and-a-half years apart hadn’t diminished that. If she was going to give him another chance she was going to need a good reason. He couldn’t fly by the seat of his pants this time. Winning her back would require careful thought and a well-devised plan.

  She would be here in the morning. That didn’t leave him much time.

  He set the baby swing upright and viewed his handiwork. Marsh fished the wadded-up directions from the other debris. Reed returned with a broom and dustpan and started cleaning up the broken lamp. Noah noticed that Reed was favoring his right elbow and Marsh was limping. Had it not been for his cracked lip, Noah would have smiled.

  They would all be sore tomorrow. They weren’t kids anymore. Despite an occasional sojourn back to adolescence, like the one they’d taken a few minutes ago, they were grown-ups. He didn’t know when that had happened. Even more astonishing, when had he started thinking like one?

  Lacey waved goodbye to Miss Fergusson, the administrator of the Orchard Hill Public Library, and with her stack of library books tucked under one arm, started toward home.

  The evening was balmy and the sun still bright in the western sky. Lacey loved this time of year in Michigan when it stayed light until nearly ten o’clock. It was eight now. The library was closing. Many of the other businesses were rolling up their sidewalks, too. In a little while, April and her sister-in-law were stopping over with the for-sale signs for the tavern’s windows.

  Since she’d been back, Lacey had noticed that the women in Jay’s family fussed over April like mother hens. After her mom’s death, Lacey had received her mothering from more unexpected sources. She’d been introduced to the “It takes a village to raise a child” philosophy shortly after she and her dad moved to Orchard Hill when she was twelve. Miss Fergusson had noticed her sneaking a book off a library shelf and followed her to the bathroom. Blushing to the roots of her steel-gray hair, the stern, no-non-sense librarian had assured Lacey that she wasn’t dying. The bleeding was normal.

  Lacey had been unabashedly relieved, until Miss Fergusson explained about Mother Nature’s monthly gift. “Every month?” Lacey had quipped. “Are you frickin’ kidding me?”

  “You’re becoming a woman,” Miss Fergusson had declared with a smile that had grown brighter before Lacey’s eyes. “And that’s a marvelous, beautiful creature, indeed.”

  Six months ago, two emergency surgeries days apart had left Lacey feeling the opposite of beautiful. The angry red scars on her belly were slowly fading, just as her doctor had promised. Although there had been internal scarring, too, and she couldn’t forget the impact the scarring had on her future, every day she felt a little more like her old self.

  The evening stretched languidly before her. She still hadn’t developed those photographs of Joey, and now she had books to read, too. Trying to decide whether she should begin with the Hands-On Guide to Infant Child Care or delve into the two hardcovers about Houdini and modern-day escape artists, she darted across First Street. She hadn’t gone far when she heard a horn honk behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder as a dusty-blue pickup truck pulled to a stop at the curb beside her. She knew that Chevy well.

  The grin Noah slanted her made him appear relaxed and sinuous, like an alley cat taking a break from his tomcatting to stretch languidly in a warm patch of sunshine. “Need a lift?” he called through the open passenger window.

  “Thanks, but I’m only two blocks from home.”

  He continued to stare at her. In the ensuing silence, she backed up a few steps. When he still made no move to leave, she said, “Is something wrong?”

  “Not really.”

  Homing in on his mouth, she said, “What happened to your lip?”

  “I ran into something.” He tilted his head self-mockingly. “I’ve narrowed it down to either Marsh’s elbow or Reed’s knee.”

  Obviously, it had been a guy thing, but she had to ask, “Did you win?”

  “It was a three-way tie.”

  “What were you fighting about?” she asked.

  “We were just burning off steam. You know how guys are, although, if you must know, they aren’t making it easy for me to gallop in on my great white steed and rescue you from a future of celibacy and regret.”

  She glanced over her shoulder as a group of teenage boys too young to drive ambled by on their way to wherever teenage boys went on balmy Thursday nights these days. Rather than continue this conversation where anyone could hear, she strolled to Noah’s open passenger-side window. “Excuse me, did you say celibacy and regret?”

  He gave her a crooked smile that went straight to her head. “Today I made the final payment on the loan for my Airfield Operations Specialist training,” he said.

  She knew Noah well enough to understand that he was a man of few words. And while that didn’t always make his conversation easy
to follow, what he said eventually fit together like pieces of a beautiful puzzle.

  “You’re free, Noah. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about that.”

  His gaze was as soft as a caress and almost as possessive. He wanted her. Being wanted by him sent those butterflies fluttering their naughty little wings again.

  “Digger found a used propeller for the old airplane we’re restoring,” he said, his voice deepening as if he felt those butterflies, too. “He picked it up over in Rockford today. I was on my way to the airstrip to take a look at it. Care to ride along?”

  “I ca—”

  “If you’d rather just grab a beer, or something to eat, I’ll call Dig and reschedule.”

  She was shaking her head before he’d completed the invitation. She thought about those scars and hospital bills. Noah might be free, but she wasn’t. “I can’t just forget everything that’s happened, Noah.”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “I can’t forget, either. Any of it. Not how good we were together, not how much I’ve missed you, not how damn good it is to see you do something as ordinary as walk down the sidewalk. Come on, Lace. Come for a drive with me.”

  His eyes reminded her of the heat lightning that flickered on the horizon on sweltering summer nights. More often than not that lightning continued dancing in the distance, hinting at relief without making any promises of rain. From now on she needed promises.

  Pushing away slightly from his dusty pickup truck, she said, “April and her sister-in-law are coming over. They’re probably waiting for me now. I really do have to go.”

  She didn’t know why her heart was racing as she turned on her heel, but the need to flee was instinctive and strong. She waited until she’d reached the end of the block to look behind her. The dusty-blue Chevy was no longer idling at the curb. Noah was gone.

  With a deep, calming breath, she resumed her trek toward the apartment she once again called home. She took a shortcut through the hardware store the way she used to. As she wended her way through a maze of aisles, she faced the fact that she wasn’t fleeing from Noah. She was running from her feelings for him. It would be so much easier if he didn’t bring out every yearning for happily-ever-after she’d ever had.