No such luck. Instead he was sitting in a tufted brocade love seat, staring directly at her when she came out of the bathroom.
Taylor stiffened, then relaxed. “Sorry, I didn’t think you’d still be up.”
He looked at her for a moment, then picked up the box of matches on the fireplace. “I figured we could start a fire, enjoy it a little before we go to bed,” he said neutrally, bending to the fireplace. She heard the snick of the match against the strike pad and saw flame hiss up. “So what’s going on?” Dev asked without turning.
Why was she surprised he’d known something was up? And how could she convince him it wasn’t? “I’m just tired. Long day,” she said, throwing in a fake yawn.
He took his time with the log, lighting the paper wrapper at several points along its length. “You were gone a long time at dinner during the toasts.” He drew the brass mesh fire screen closed.
“It’s okay,” Taylor said dismissively.
He rose, setting the matches back on the mantel. “No, it is definitely not okay,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve been looking like death all night. What’s going on?”
When he looked at her this time, she had nowhere to escape. When he caught her hands and drew her to the love seat, she was trapped. Perhaps if she gave him part of the truth, it would be enough. “Being at the rehearsal dinner tonight, the toasting, it just took me back.”
“More like it made you see a ghost.”
“The Ghost Of Weddings Past.” She tried for a smile that failed miserably. “Maybe it did. I was married before.”
“And divorced. I know.”
He pulled her over to lean against him, and the warmth of his arms around her thawed some of the chill that had crept into her bones. And somehow, it made it easier to speak, staring into the dancing flames of the fire. “No, you don’t know. You can’t imagine.”
He pressed his lips to her temple. “Tell me,” he said softly.
She hesitated. “Before we were married, he was great. Sweet, romantic…he made me feel special, like he believed in me. He told me not to listen to what my family said. He gave me the nerve to stand up against them. I mean, my parents had a fit when I told them I was quitting school to get married. Even after they met Bennett, they thought we should wait. I didn’t want to, neither did he. I finally wore my parents down. I was so happy. I thought everything was perfect.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “And then he changed.”
“What did he do to you?” Dev asked, his voice low, threaded through with a hint of danger.
“He never hit me. He never had to. He could slice you to ribbons with his tongue,” Taylor said, fighting to sound matter-of-fact. “It was all so subtle, though. If he’d ever gotten physical, I could have left him. Instead it was just the off and on attacks. Sometimes he’d be sweet, and then wham, he’d just…” She trailed off. The fireplace log hissed and sent up a small shower of sparks.
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Who, me? Taylor the quitter?” She looked at him bleakly. “I was ashamed. Everyone had tried to get me to stop on my way to the altar, but I knew best. Now, I’d be coming back and saying I’d been wrong.”
“There are worse things, especially when you’re living with abuse.”
“I tried to tell my mother once. She told me it was time I learned to live with my decisions and not run out when things got difficult. She thought Bennett was a good man. Everybody did. He was the model husband in public. It was only in private…” Her voice cracked.
“What finally happened?”
Taylor sighed and let her head fall back onto his shoulder. “I’d gone to visit my parents, or so Bennett thought. He always hated for me to go places alone. He liked to be along to monitor things.”
“I’m sure.”
“I’d lied to him, though. I’d gone to my parents’ for a day or two and then I went to visit my girlfriend Jody from college.” She swallowed. “I came home early. I thought it might make things easier with Bennett if I did. Maybe he’d be less angry. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Instead she’d been the one to get the surprise.
How easily she could still remember coming in quietly through the kitchen door, hearing voices and loud music. “Oh, yeah, baby, touch yourself there again,” he’d said, an instant before Taylor had burst through the door to find a woman doing a striptease for him. Or mostly a tease, since the better part of her clothing appeared to have been stripped off long before.
“I found him with a woman. It was pretty obvious.” Taylor blinked dry eyes. It wasn’t tears that the memory brought to her now, but burning shame that she’d wasted so much time on trying to please Bennett.
“What did he do?”
“Tried to blame it on me, of course.” She’d driven him to it, he’d raged. He was under too much pressure, working too hard. If she’d been a better wife, he wouldn’t have been vulnerable to the lure of another woman.
“Another time, it might have worked. I wasn’t in real great shape emotionally by that point. But I’d just been with Jody. She’d reminded me of who I really was, and I had just enough in me to leave him.” That night had been a blur, driving down the New Jersey Turnpike in the rain, leaving behind New York and all she’d once thought she wanted from life.
“He didn’t make it easy, I’m sure.”
“He didn’t,” she agreed. “But I had backing. Infidelity was something I could take to my parents. I’m not sure they ever really understood the rest, but I got out. I got out,” she repeated.
“You didn’t just get out, you made a success of yourself. You’ve got so much to be proud of.” He tightened his arms around her. “You know someone like Bennett is sick. That’s no reflection on you.”
“It is a reflection on me. I didn’t see it.” She stared at the crown molding that ran around the ceiling, neat and tidy, covering up cracks. It was a shame they didn’t have crown moldings for the soul. “You don’t understand. I thought he was the love of my life, and he turned out to be a monster. What does that say about my judgment? How can I trust anything I see? And infidelity is the least of it, but you have no idea what that does to you.”
“That much, I do.”
Taylor blinked at him.
He gave a humorless laugh. “Why do you think I called off my engagement a week before the wedding? I walked in on my fiancée with another man.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head as though to ward off the image. “It’s past,” he muttered. “The thing is, you take it in stride and you go on.”
“It’s not that simple, Dev.”
“I know it’s not, but what else are you going to do? It’s worth the fight. Trust me, I know, and it’s not just Melissa that taught me that. Everything that went on with my parents, it haunted my sister, and I’m not going to tell you it didn’t change me, too, but you can’t let stuff like that define the whole direction of your life.” He took both her hands in his and stared at her intensely. “They don’t deserve that, none of them do. You go on, and you live life on your own terms.”
Taylor started to pull away. “I’m through living to other people’s expectations, even yours.”
“The only expectations you need to meet are your own. I’m just trying to give you another way of thinking about it. If you let it shadow you, then you’re still letting him have control.” He kissed her fingers. “Just think about what I’m saying. Don’t let what happened make you run away from a good thing. I swear, by anything I can think of, that I’ll never do anything to hurt you. I swear it.”
THE CHURCH WAS LOVELY AND old, with soaring ceilings and smoothly worn pews. Stained-glass windows filled it with radiance. Shay would have grown up in this church, she guessed, and the white-haired minister who was going to marry him might well have given him his name, long before.
She stared at Dev, standing in his tux by the altar, between Shay and Shay’s brother Colin. And Mallory walked down the aisle,
looking like a faerie princess in a flowing chiffon gown belted with silk flowers. The organist played Pachelbel’s Canon, the notes dancing into the air.It pulled Taylor back, with an almost physical tug, to her own wedding. She remembered, oh, she remembered walking down that aisle, giddily certain of what she was doing, knowing she’d show everyone. It will too last—those words had echoed in her head as she walked. She hadn’t even glanced at her mother in the front pew, but walked by with her head held high.
And Bennett, standing up front in his tux with his lord-of-all-he-surveyed expression, he’d made her heart swell with pride that she was the one he’d chosen.
Suddenly everything in her stilled as she sat in the pew, remembering that long ago day. Why hadn’t she ever realized it before? It had been so obvious. The seeds of destruction had been sown long before Bennett’s abusive side had surfaced. She’d married him for every wrong reason in the world. She’d married him because her parents were against it, she’d married him because she wanted to prove to everyone she could finish something. She’d married him because somehow she’d believed it would make her a grownup. Deep in her heart of hearts, she’d known there was something wrong, but pride hadn’t let her back down, pride and a kind of wild romanticism that wanted to believe in a storybook romance.
Instead she’d gotten a horror story nightmare.
Taylor took in a deep breath of air and watched Mallory and Shay link hands at the altar. Had she and Bennett ever had that sense of equality, that sense of love? She gave her head an almost imperceptible shake, knowing the answer was no, and suddenly not caring.
It was as though she’d been walking around with a heavy load on her shoulders and she’d thrown it off. How was it she’d labored so long in fear? She’d been young, reactive, impulsive. The signs had all been there, she’d simply ignored them. And she’d paid for that, God knew she’d paid, but it wasn’t something capricious and mysterious that might catch her unawares again.
The congregation rose for prayer, and Taylor rose with them. To make the right decisions and live honorably, she thought, sending the thought winging up. That was her prayer. More than that, she couldn’t ask for.
A slow grin spread over her face as she saw the groom kiss the bride. Applause broke out. Clasping hands, Mallory and Shay turned around together and walked out as equals, down the aisle and into their future.
And Dev walked past, tossing Taylor a grin and a wink as he escorted Becka out of the church.
Outside, the air was fresh with just the faintest breath of spring. Rebirth, she thought, searching for Dev. A new life.
Taylor walked up and planted a fervent kiss on him.
He blinked. “What was that for?”
“For being generally wonderful.”
He leaned toward her. “You think I’m wonderful now, baby, you just wait till tonight.”
16
SWINGING A HAMMER USUALLY put him in a good mood, Dev thought as he pounded nails into the studs of a wall designed to divide one of the basement storage rooms. So why did he feel so restless and unsettled? It had been with him from the moment he’d awoken that morning, this sense of somehow not fitting into his life properly, as though he’d put his right shoe on the left foot. He knew it was there; what he couldn’t understand was why.
Things were good. The project would finish the following week, on budget and on schedule. Mallory was happy. He and Taylor seemed to have come to an accommodation.Taylor…
On one hand he felt like they’d talked and made a connection. She’d wanted to run and he’d talked her out of it. On the other hand, it felt like they were in limbo. They had a hot, no hassle affair going. Was there anything wrong with wanting to keep things steady when it worked so well for both of them?
Moodily he slipped his hammer into its loop on his tool belt. Time to go make the rounds and give a call to the building inspector.
The icy rain that dripped down his neck as he walked to the construction trailer didn’t improve his frame of mind. He mounted the steps, cursing a little as he opened the door. Then he stepped inside.
And froze, staring at the woman sitting in his chair. She looked like some beauty from a pre-Raphaelite painting, all milk-pale skin, flushed cheeks, and red-gold hair curling down to her waist. She would have been painted as an innocent seduced by a god in the form of a swan, or a naive music student led astray.
“Hello, Dev,” she said. In her baggy cream fisherman’s sweater, she looked small and vulnerable. He remembered the first time he’d seen her across the room at one of Riley’s parties, how his mind had stuttered and stopped at the sight of her, a face imported from across the centuries.
“Melissa.” He wrenched his eyes away and turned to the coffeepot. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve missed you.” Her voice was low and shook a bit. “Have you missed me?”
He concentrated on pouring coffee into the cup. “You know better than to ask that.”
“Do I? We don’t disconnect from each other as easily as that.” She rose to her feet. “You can’t just shut me out and pretend that we never existed.”
How could she stand there looking so innocent and hurt when she’d betrayed him utterly? Dev felt the weight of the heavy ceramic cup in his hand, wishing he were outside where he could throw it, throw something to burn off the frustration surging through him. “You’re acting like you don’t remember the last time we saw each other.”
Regret shimmered in her eyes. “I wish I could forget it. I wish that you could.”
“You think that ignoring it will make it go away?” She’d not only betrayed him, but she’d done it with some cipher, some pretty boy she didn’t know from Adam.
“God, Dev, I made a mistake.” She raked a hand through her hair and stared at him, her eyes pleading. “I drank too much, I was stupid. I was just thinking about how it was my last chance to get crazy and spontaneous.”
“Well, now, see, it wasn’t, as it turns out,” he said conversationally. “You’re free to be as crazy and spontaneous as you want anytime you want.”
“And all I want is you,” she said, tears shimmering in her eyes.
Dev tightened his jaw. Don’t buy into this, he told himself. Don’t let her sell you. Every time they’d had a fight, it had gone this way. Every time they’d had a fight—and they’d had them often—she’d come to him contrite, sorrowful, telling him how much he meant to her, telling him that she’d change. And once she’d convinced him, once she’d manipulated him into doing what she wanted, she’d turn back into the self-absorbed person she truly was.
“We’re no good together, Melissa,” he said, reminding himself as much as her.
She stared at him, and a confidence bordering on arrogance flickered in her eyes. “I don’t believe that. We fit.”
“No.”
“You wanted me then and you still want me now.”
“We have different goals. Even before the Jack and Jill party, we fought all the time.” Even to his own ears he didn’t sound convinced.
“All that means is that we’re two different people, both very passionate about what we believe,” she said softly. “That makes us human, and humans make mistakes. That’s what this breakup is all about, a mistake.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes, I do. And so do you.”
TAYLOR SAT IN HER OFFICE staring at her computer screen. She shook her head and for the hundredth time dragged her thoughts away from Dev and on to the work at hand. The problem was, they didn’t want to stay there. Things had changed for her over the weekend, perhaps they’d been changing all along, but they were definitely different now and she needed to decide what to do about it.
One thing was incontestable—she loved him. No matter how panicky it had made her, it was her reality. She took a deep breath and made herself face the idea. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Dev Carson was not Bennett, she reminded herself. He was someone she liked, someone she respected; someone who unde
rstood her, he’d demonstrated that the night before. Time and again, he’d showed her he cared for her, he’d filled her life with fun, light, passion, and the unexpected. The wonder wasn’t that she loved him, it was that it had taken her so long to realize it.To tell him or not, that was the question. And if she decided to tell him, how did she do it? Just how did you break news like that to a man, she mused. With Bennett, she’d been too young to really understand what she was saying, and he’d said it to her first, anyway. But how to tell a man so that he understood it was a gift, not an obligation, so that he didn’t feel trapped or pressured to say it in return? She shook her head. That much was a mystery.
Have him over to her apartment and cook a romantic dinner? Too fraught with expectation. Tell him in bed one night, after they’d finished making love? Too clichéd, she decided. Send him a note? Too wimpy.
She gave a growl of frustration. Maybe she should just keep it to herself. Certainly it would be safer, but she was through with playing life safe. It was time to take chances.
The light on her phone flashed and Taylor picked the handset up.
“Mr. Champlin of Champlin Travel is here to see you.”
DEV LOOKED AT MELISSA and tried to ignore the pounding in his temples.
“In a way, I think this breakup has been good for us,” she said, walking over to the trailer door. “It’s shown us both just what we mean to each other.” Eyes bright, gaze bold, she locked it and turned back to him.“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I thought we already knew what we meant to each other back when we got engaged. I guess I was wrong.”
“No. You do mean something to me, Dev, you do.” Melissa moved closer to him. “But till death do us part is a long time. It made me panic. I mean, you’re a man. You understand what it’s like to feel like you’re about to be tied forever.”
Slippery When Wet Page 17