Liam could take Luke outside, it was safe now. Rafe, after drily commenting that he’d damn near shot Alyssa by accident when she’d bolted into his field of fire, had gone off to wherever he went to unwind. Quinn and Teague were still at the scene with the sheriff’s deputies, and Hayley was on the phone in the next room. This was his chance.
“Luke, you want to go out and play with Cutter?”
“Now?” the boy asked, looking happy but doubtful. His mother had refused to let go of him the entire time the sheriff’s office had descended and made them go through it all time and again. Only Quinn’s rapport with them, the respect they had for Foxworth, had let them leave when they did, to regroup here at the Foxworth building.
“We’ll handle this end. You’re going to need time to decompress, trust me,” Quinn had told them. “Luke will be past this a lot sooner than you will.”
“Yes,” Drew said now. “Your mother and I need to talk.”
Alyssa went very still, but Drew kept his gaze on Luke.
“Oh.” The boy’s nose wrinkled. “Okay.”
“Come on, buddy,” Liam said with a glance at Drew that said he understood they needed time alone. “We’ll go see if we can find that big ol’ raccoon we saw before.”
Luke scrambled to the floor and followed the young Texan happily. Cutter got up more slowly, and paused at the door. He looked back over his shoulder, then back at Luke. Then, as if he’d reached a decision, he came back inside and sat at Alyssa’s and Drew’s feet once more.
Luke frowned, puzzled. “He’s probably tired,” Liam said. “He’s had a busy day.”
“Oh.” The boy’s expression cleared.
“You get too dirty, you’re looking at another bath,” Alyssa warned. She’d borrowed the bathroom here to clean the boy up once he’d been checked by medical personnel the sheriff’s office had called in. They’d pronounced him, thankfully, uninjured, merely dirty and hungry, and not even particularly scared.
“He told us over and over he knew you would find him,” the counselor who’d talked to him said when she released him. “You and...Cutter, is it?”
Drew had smiled as he lifted his son in his arms. “Yes, it is. A most remarkable dog.”
And now he watched that remarkable dog forego the pleasure of a romp in the woods to stay with them. He didn’t believe for an instant he was really tired, but was glad Liam had come up with an explanation Luke accepted. He wasn’t at all sure what he himself thought.
“What do we need to talk about that you don’t want Luke to hear?” Alyssa asked, sounding more apprehensive than angry.
Drew hesitated, then got up. He stared into the fireplace, at the flames that seemed cheerful compared to the thick, damp overcast outside. Finally he turned to look at her.
“A divorce,” he said.
He’d expected her to be relieved, instead she just looked shocked. He hastened to reassure her.
“I’ll see that you’re taken care of, you won’t have to worry. I’ll support you and Luke. All I ask is you let me stay...” He stopped, swallowed tightly, made himself go on. “Let me stay in Luke’s life.”
“You want...a divorce?” She said it in a tiny, shaken voice, as if she’d heard nothing of his assurances.
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” She opened her mouth as if to speak, and he cut her off. He wanted to get through this as fast as he could. “It’s all right. I understand,” he said. “It’s my own fault. I should never have expected you to—”
He cut off his own words before he could say the one thing he could never take back.
“Your fault? What is your fault?”
That I fell in love with you, when you never wanted that.
He fought down the words and said instead, “I took advantage of your situation. I know that.”
“I think that’s called taking responsibility, not advantage. And that’s all too rare these days.” They both turned at the sound of Hayley’s voice. She had come out of the other room, and for a moment stood looking at them from one to the other. “So you think he married you just to take care of Luke, and you think she still loves your brother. Want to know what I think?”
Given what Foxworth had just helped them through, Drew didn’t feel he really had the right to say no, so he said nothing.
“I think,” Hayley went on, “that people change, and you both need to question whether the reasons you began this marriage have changed. And admit if your feelings have changed.” She eyed them almost warningly. “And don’t blow it.”
She started for the door, then stopped and looked back with a grin, “Oh, and I might caution you to be aware of who’s at your feet. Somehow I don’t think you’re going to get past him until you work this all out.”
They both glanced down at Cutter, who was alertly watching them both.
“Trust me,” Hayley said with a laugh. “He’s done this before. He knows what he thinks is right. So he’d better like your results, because you’re not getting out of here until he does.”
When she was gone, he turned back to find Alyssa watching him as intently as the dog was.
“Do you really believe I still love Doug?” she asked.
“Haven’t you always?”
“I thought so.” She stared at him. “But I was wrong. If nothing else, what happened these last two weeks showed me that the Doug I loved didn’t really exist. Just as you always said.”
“But at the end—”
“Yes, at the end he finally found...a tiny bit of his brother in him, and did the right thing.” Drew sucked in a breath. He was afraid to speak, and after a moment she went on. “So we were both right, in a way.”
“Lyss,” he said, all he could manage.
“Let me say this,” she pleaded, standing up, stepping past the watchful Cutter. “I owe it to you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he snapped. She’d stayed with him this long because she thought she owed him, and he was done with that. It wasn’t enough anymore.
Cutter got to his feet and moved to one side. Drew thought he was just getting out of the way as the tension grew, until he realized the animal had stationed himself between them and the door. He remembered Hayley’s words, and wondered.
“Not for that reason,” Alyssa said quickly, as if she’d read his thoughts. She crossed the short distance between them in a single stride. “I’m not sure exactly when my feelings changed. Maybe when I changed, when I finally grew up. Yes, at first I stayed because I felt I owed you, in the way you mean. But ever since this started I’ve been thinking about what my life would be like if something happened to you. I didn’t even understand why it felt like the most horrible nightmare I could imagine. Now I do.”
“You’d be all right. I told you that.”
“No. No I would not be all right. Not without you.” He heard her take in a deep breath before she said, steadily and with no small amount of force, “How could I be? I love you.”
He really did stop breathing then. But every battered emotion he’d felt in the last three years rose up to warn him, to tell him not to believe, not to hope again. But he couldn’t seem to keep himself from reaching out to brush his fingers against her face.
“You’re just saying that because today rattled you.”
“I’m saying that,” she said as she grabbed his hand, cupped it against her cheek, “because it’s true. It has been for a long time, Drew, I just wouldn’t admit it, for so many stupid reasons. I love you in a way I never could have loved your brother.”
“Lyss,” he breathed, stubborn hope rising again. He felt an odd sense of losing his balance, as though his world really was tilting on its axis. Then he realized it was Cutter, behind him, leaning into him as if trying to tip him into Alyssa’s arms.
“All I could think about, when
you were out there risking yourself for us without a second thought, was how awful my life would be if I lost you. How I’d never told you how I felt. That I love you,” she said for the third time.
Drew stared at her for a moment that spun out in silence until he lost track of how long it had been. He’d denied his own feelings for so long that now that the gate was open, they still seemed to cower in a corner, uncertain. Cutter nudged him again. Then the dog came around and sat next to their feet, looking up at them. He made a sound that sounded astonishingly like “Well?” Drew was starting to feel outnumbered.
As maybe he was.
“Am I wrong, Drew?” Alyssa asked, her voice quivering in a way that shot straight through to that deep place where those feelings were cowering. “I thought... I had the feeling you felt the same way. After the other night...I realized you couldn’t have made love to me like that, if you didn’t care.”
Memories of that night seared through his brain, shot fire into that dark place, bringing light to it all.
“Care? Alyssa Kiley, I have loved you since the day you colored those damned shoelaces for Luke.”
She blinked, as if startled at that particular reason. “Really?”
“It wasn’t just that Luke couldn’t lose his mother that made me not want you to confront Oliver,” he said. “It was that I couldn’t lose you.”
“And I can’t lose you.” She smiled at him, almost shyly. They had been married three years, yet it felt as if they were starting anew.
That smile undid him. He pulled her to him, lowered his head, and kissed her with every bit of the passion he’d concealed for so long. She went pliant in his arms but kissed him back with a fierce eagerness that blasted the last of his restraint to pieces.
For a moment Cutter watched, as if to be sure. He gave a short, satisfied sounding yip. And then, head and tail high, he trotted to the door, hit the automatic button and ran outside to find Luke and play.
Epilogue
“Dad, did you see? Cutter has on a bow tie!”
Luke’s delighted giggle was the sweetest sound on earth, Alyssa thought.
She looked around the clearing, now amazingly decorated with ribbons and bows in a bright, clear royal blue and crisp white, row upon row of white chairs, and a pristine white carpet unrolled down the aisle between the sections of chairs. The sky itself was blue. Somehow the fates had conspired to gift the happy couple with one of those severely clear northwest winter days that Drew always said were worth ten days anywhere else.
They’d been prepared, Hayley had told her, to have the ceremony inside if necessary, and the big downstairs rooms had been decorated the same way just in case. But now the room was full of tables, chairs, and a gorgeous cake that Alyssa couldn’t quite believe was real. Perfectly square, four stair-step layers tall, frosted in pure white with lattice work on the sides, and decorated with blue ribbons and blue roses, it was beautiful. The figures on top, man, woman and dog made everyone smile. Luke was already eyeing it with interest.
“Is that really a cake?”
“I think so,” Alyssa said with a laugh.
“Cutter’s on top.”
“I saw that.”
“Wonder what flavor it is.”
“We’ll find out,” Drew said.
“Why do all the guys have on those funny suits?” Luke asked, looking around to where Teague and Liam were acting as ushers, seating guests in the rows of white chairs. Alyssa wondered which of the sizable crowd were friends and which were grateful former clients. Then decided they were likely all both, just as they themselves were. Or colleagues of a sort and friends, as the just-arrived Detective Dunbar was. Foxworth had that effect.
“The penguin suits, you mean?” Drew said to Luke.
“Don’t make it worse, he’ll repeat it.”
“Fine,” Drew said, grinning at her. “You know they’re thinking it, too.”
Alyssa laughed. She nearly got her fill of that grin these days. Nearly.
Her life had changed so much since that day everything had become so crystal clear to her. She’d come close, perilously close, to losing what she had before she’d realized how precious it was. She’d meant what she’d said to him, that she loved him in a way she had never loved his brother. A deeper way. A more complete way.
A forever way.
And once he’d been sure of her, Drew had opened the gates he’d kept closed for so long and let his love envelop her. From the day she’d come home to find he’d not only been to her parents and repossessed, as he called it, her artwork, but had hung her favorite—that night scene of a brightly lit ferry crossing dark water—she’d sensed how much things had changed. It was the most wonderful feeling she’d ever known.
And Luke had blossomed in the overflow. She felt a twinge of regret that they hadn’t realized how much their relationship affected him, but now that it was nearly perfect, the difference was clear. And Drew had, of course, kept his word. He hadn’t said another bad word about Doug, in fact had even managed to tell Luke a couple of funny stories from when Doug had been Luke’s age. He’d seem surprised himself, as if he’d forgotten there had ever been fun times.
And she was confident enough now that it didn’t even bother her when Drew said, “Wow,” as a tall, strikingly beautiful brunette in an exquisitely cut blue silk dress that matched the wedding colors strode across the lawn.
“Indeed,” she agreed.
“I just meant I wonder how she walks in those heels,” Drew said. “On the grass and all.”
“Uh-huh.” She let a teasing note into her voice, not feeling a bit threatened by the beautiful maid of honor, whoever she was.
A man walked up to the woman in blue. Rafe, who was still a little taller than she was even in the heels. For a moment they didn’t speak, although she guessed they had to have met each other before. Then they both nodded, the maid of honor and best man confirming their respective charges were ready.
And the ceremony began. She heard the sweet, mellow sound of a wooden Celtic flute, playing a slow, romantic tune that tugged at something deep inside. It was the only music there was, but in this setting, it was all that was needed. With the evergreens towering over the clearing, the blue sky above, it seemed perfect.
Alyssa felt her eyes begin to tear from the moment an obviously energized Quinn took his place in front of the festooned gazebo. Rafe, the limp barely visible today, stood beside him, his expression solemn. The woman in blue led the way, walking gracefully down the aisle between the two sections of seats. Smiles and a bit of applause broke out as Cutter followed, in his blue bow tie, gently carrying a blue satin bag by its strings.
“Do you think Texas could do that?” Luke asked.
Alyssa smiled at the thought of the black-and-white puppy who had nearly cost them so much, but who was now their son’s beloved companion. They’d found out Baird had stolen the three from a backyard, using the first two to draw the attention of the other kids, and the last one to lure Luke off by himself by throwing it literally under a bus. The owners, upon hearing the story, had been horrified, and had gladly given the puppy to them when Luke had been loath to give him up.
And then the flute player changed to a gloriously triumphant flourish, and Hayley was there. Her dress gleamed white in the sun until she passed, and Alyssa could see the matching blue insert flowing down the back in a swath that seemed to pull everything together.
As Hayley herself so often did, Alyssa thought with a bit of whimsy.
“Wow,” Drew said again.
“Indeed,” Alyssa repeated. They smiled at each other. Drew took her hand. His fingers ran over her wedding band, and stilled there. She looked up at him.
“Marry me,” he whispered.
She drew back, startled.
“You guys are married,” Luke expla
ined, distracted from the ceremony and watching Cutter walk perfectly down the aisle in front of one half of the couple he’d brought together.
“Marry me again,” Drew said, never taking his gaze off her. “For real.”
A tear welled up and over. “Yes,” she whispered back. “Oh, yes.”
Drew’s fingers tightened around hers, and she thought she caught the gleam of moisture in his eyes as he turned back to the ceremony at hand.
The music faded, the bride and groom took their places, and Alyssa knew she’d never seen a couple more likely to make it through whatever life threw at them. She smiled when Cutter took his cue perfectly and presented the little bag that contained the rings to Rafe and the woman in blue. The dog that had begun it all then sat at their feet as if he were following every word of the vows his people then made.
And in that last moment, when they were introduced as man and wife, the entire gathering gasped as two bald eagles swooped into view, circled overhead, dived, rolled, soared again and then vanished into the trees.
“They mate for life, you know,” Quinn said, looking at his wife, loud enough for all to hear.
“Yes, they do,” Hayley said, looking at her husband.
Cutter barked. As if it were their own cue, the attendees as one stood up, cheering, applauding.
Whatever adventures awaited, the Foxworth family, all of them, would face it all together.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from SPECIAL OPS RENDEZVOUS by Karen Anders.
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Romantic Suspense title.
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