A Bride For Crimson Falls

by Cindy Gerard

  “I can try.” Pride fired her eyes.

  “To the exclusion of all else?”

  She fell silent. She looked scared. And confused. And very, very weary.

  “You can’t win this one, Scarlett. I think you know that. And I think you’re fighting me because you know you can’t win the other battle. Don’t do it. Don’t fight us. Come with me to New York.”

  “You know that can’t happen.”

  “Only because you won’t let it. We can work something out. We could live between New York and here. There’d be no reason why it wouldn’t work.”

  Scarlett had quit listening. She was still stunned by, and mired in, the realization that with his investment in Crimson Falls, she’d lost controlling interest.

  “You don’t understand,” she said wearily.

  “Then help me. Help me to understand. I thought I was doing something that would please you. I thought I was providing a solution.”

  “A solution? Your solution was to defeat me? Well, you’ve done exactly that. Not only do I feel defeated, I feel diminished. For the second time in my life, I’ve been reduced to dependence on a man to make my decisions for me.”

  Stunned, for a moment all he could do was stare. “That’s how you see this?”

  “That’s what it is. You ordered the materials. You decided what was best for me....

  “No, thank you. I had a bellyful of having my life run for me when I was married to John. I came here to get away from that. I came here to prove to myself that I’m strong enough to make my way on my own. And I was doing just that—until you and your forty thousand dollars just took it all away from me.”

  Finally he understood the depth of her despair. He’d known there was more to the breakup of their marriage than she’d let on. Now he knew what the undefined factor was. Her ex must have had a real power trip going, and she’d been a casualty.

  Somehow he had to make her see this was different. “I wasn’t taking, Scarlett. I was giving.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “No. You were controlling. I won’t let that happen to me again. I don’t want your help. I don’t want your interference. I don’t want you making decisions for me, and I don’t want you running my life.” The fire in her voice turned to ice. So did the look in her eyes. “Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” he said, after a long, considering moment. “I think I do. Another man took away your independence, and I’m paying the price.”

  A tear slowly leaked from one eye. “You paid the price all right. I hope it was worth the money.”

  He didn’t stop her when she turned away this time. He couldn’t do anything but stand there and watch her go. And know that what he’d hoped would bring them to common ground had only succeeded in widening the gap. Widening, hell. There was no way he could ever reach her now.

  Ten

  During the night Colin decided there was nothing left to do but leave. It wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t what she needed. But she was going to have to come to that conclusion by herself.

  He’d radioed J.D. at the crack of dawn and ordered him to fly over and pick him up, no questions asked. A few minutes ago he’d heard the float plane circle the bay and knew J.D. was taxiing up to the dock as he carried his luggage down the stairs.

  Casey was all sad eyes and deep sighs as she stood just inside the lobby door. In silence she watched him set his bags on the floor.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Casey cast her eyes downward and hiked her chin toward the kitchen. “She’s making chocolate chip cookies.”

  He watched her in silence, dreading the moment when he would walk in there and tell Scarlett goodbye. It was hard enough telling her daughter.

  “She only makes chocolate chip cookies when she’s really sad,” Casey added, unaware that she’d just ground a little more salt into some very raw wounds.

  He jammed his fists into his pockets and stared at his feet. “I’m afraid I’m responsible for that. I blew it, Casey. I hurt her bad. I never meant to.”

  “Then tell her.” Her dark eyes, so much like her mother’s, brimmed with tears.

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t want to hear it. And until she does, I’m just wasting my breath.”

  “Does that mean you’re coming back?”

  He cupped his palm behind his nape, wishing he hadn’t heard so much hope in her question. “I don’t know what it means. I only know I’ve got to get out of here and put some distance between us. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. She does, too.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a lost puppy look. “She’s going to miss you. Me, too.”

  Those eyes of hers could melt candle wax. “Yeah, well, that goes both ways.” He hesitated only a moment, then opened his arms to her. “Come here, squirt.”

  She threw herself against his chest in a heartbeat, her tears leaving damp tracks on his shirt. A thick knot of emotion clogged his throat as he held her.

  “I was going to teach you how to swim,” she said between sniffles, and his heart broke into a thousand little pieces.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know if either of us were up for that little adventure. Rocks don’t float, and I’ve got a feeling I don’t, either.”

  That little bit of nonsense finally earned him a grin. He squeezed her shoulders and set her away.

  “Take care of your mother, okay?”

  She nodded glumly.

  With one final, reassuring squeeze of her arm, he walked toward the kitchen.

  The sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies greeted him when he opened the door. The sight of Scarlett, beautifully mussed and valiantly busy, was almost more than he could handle.

  She acknowledged his presence in the room with a quick look, before slipping on an oven mitt and pulling a sheet of cookies out of the oven.

  “I came to say goodbye.” It hurt to say the words. Just like it hurt to look at her and know it might be for the last time.

  She stalled for an instant before resuming her motions like an automaton. Slip the spatula under a cookie, slide it from the sheet, settle it onto a cooling rack. Start all over again.

  He waited in silence, watched as her movements slowed, then stopped altogether. And still she didn’t look his way. She just stood there, her head down, her eyes closed, and, he suspected, her heart breaking like the pieces that were left of his.

  “I’d ask you again to come with me, but I don’t think I could take another hit like the last one.”

  Silence. Thick. Conclusive.

  For a long moment he stood there, debating the wisdom of what he was about to say. In the end, wisdom didn’t factor in. What he felt for her did.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to say it, anyway. I love you, Scarlett.” Once he’d admitted it aloud, the rest of the words were automatic. “I wanted to make the rest of my life with you. But I guess that’s not going to happen, is it? Not as long as you feel I’m guilty of the same crimes as your ex-husband.”

  He paused, his chest tight with regret, as a single tear spilled onto the counter and landed on her tightly clenched fingers.

  “I’m not him, Scarlett. And the only thing I’m guilty of is trying too hard to make it work between us. I didn’t want to control you. I wanted to love you. I messed up. And I’m sorry. Looks like I’ll always be sorry.”

  The tremulous rise and fall of her shoulders was the only response she gave him. It wasn’t enough to keep him there. Which meant it was time to go.

  “Don’t worry about the hotel. Abel will see to the renovations. Any changes you want made in the plans, talk to him.”

  It never happened. That moment he’d been waiting for when she’d turn to him, open her arms and forgive him. But he couldn’t just leave. Not without touching her one last time.

  He crossed slowly to her side. Slower still, he raised a hand to her face, brushed a fiery red-gold curl away from her cheek and pressed a soft kiss there.

  With the
sweet scent of her hair filling his senses, the petal softness of her skin already a memory on his lips, he turned and walked out of her life.

  “What do you think it means?”

  Scarlett turned at the sound of Casey’s voice. She was standing just inside the door of Belinda’s room. Leaning against the doorjamb, she stared at the oil lamp burning at low wick. “I was just wondering the same thing.”

  Every night since Colin had left two weeks ago, when she’d climbed the stairs to go to bed, she’d found the door standing open, the oil lamp on the table by the window lit.

  She crossed the room, feeling the memories she and Colin had made here surround her like a warm blanket Bending to the lamp, she softly blew out the flame, knowing as she did that it would be burning again when she got up in the morning.

  “I think she’s waiting for him to come back.”

  The wistful look in her daughter’s eyes tore at Scarlett’s heart. She’d been unusually quiet since Colin had left. Guilt hit her hard and fast. She’d been so mired in her own misery that she hadn’t realized until this moment how much his leaving had affected Casey.

  “Well, she’s wasting her time and my lamp oil,” she said, attempting to lighten the mood. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and Casey knew it.

  “You could ask him to come back.”

  “Oh, honey. If only it was that simple.”

  “It is. It is that simple. All you have to do is do it.

  Feeling far older than she was, she sat down on the edge of the bed and made a place for Casey beside her. “Come here.”

  Head down, Casey joined her. Scarlett draped her arm over Casey’s shoulders and hugged her tight.

  “You liked Colin a lot, didn’t you?”

  “He was a nice guy. He said he messed things up between you guys. He said he told you he was sorry. Why can’t you tell him it’s okay?”

  That was the question of the hour. Every hour. Every day. Every night since she’d let him walk away. “I don’t know,” she finally said honestly. “I’m afraid, I guess.”

  “Of Colin?”

  She withdrew her arm and folded her hands together on her lap. “I guess you could say that. I’m afraid of how I feel about him. I’m afraid of his success. His self-assurance. I’m afraid he’ll swallow me up, and somewhere along the way I’ll lose who I am.” She smiled crookedly. “Does that make any sense to you? If it does, let me know and you can help me figure it out.”

  “Do you love him?”

  She smiled again to keep back the tears. “’Fraid so.”

  Casey’s frown was deep and perplexed. “If you love him, why did you let him go?” With a look that said she would never understand adults, she left her.

  Left her alone in the room where she and Colin had made love. Left her alone with her regrets and a love so strong it hurt. Left her with Casey’s question echoing through her mind—the very question she’d asked herself a thousand times.

  If you love him, why did you let him go?

  Everything had changed. Everything he’d valued. Everything he’d stood for. Everything that had been important.

  He’d been back in the city for two weeks. He couldn’t look out the tinted plate-glass windows to the concrete city below and not think of a forest full of trees. He couldn’t walk down the street full of the chaotic sounds and smells of the city and not remember the silence, the bird song and the cleansing scent of fresh air and pine.

  He couldn’t go to bed at night and not see Scarlett beside him, her summer-tanned skin, her lush, giving body, her smile of sheer feminine seduction beneath the dance of the northern lights.

  “Colin?”

  He turned to his brother’s voice. Cameron was standing beside him in his office, a file folder in his hand.

  “What?”

  “The Black project? We were talking about cost overruns? Hello? You’re here in body, but where the hell is your mind?”

  Colin turned back toward the window. “Just figure it out You don’t need me to pin it down.”

  “This from Mr. Hands-On-at-All-Costs? What happened to you out there in the great, wild North, anyway? You lose your ‘control’ gene in the woods?”

  Control. There was that word again. The one Scarlett had thrown in his face. The one he’d seen as a strength, not a weakness—until it had cost him her.

  “Just do it, Cam, and quit giving me grief.”

  “I don’t think I have a single thing to do with your grief. You want to tell me who does?”

  Colin worked his jaw and kept his silence.

  “It’s a woman, isn’t it?” Cameron said after a long moment, his tone ringing with surprise and discovery. “Well, I’ll be damned. Big brother’s finally been bitten by the love bug.”

  “You’re pressing your luck here.”

  “And it’s well worth the risk. Hot damn. I never thought it would happen. So who is she, and why isn’t she here?”

  Colin turned to him with a glare that could have flash-frozen fire.

  “What? She turn you down? Ah.” He narrowed his eyes when Colin’s silence confirmed yet one more conclusion. “She turned you down. Amazing.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “This is news? You haven’t been in the mood for much more than brooding ever since you came back—early I might add.”

  “Will you just get this over with and leave me alone?”

  “It’s not up to me to do anything here. You’re the one who needs to either get on with things or get over them. Hey, man,” Cameron added, not only as his brother but his friend. “Fix it. It’s what you do.”

  Fix it. It’s what you do.

  Cameron’s words hung in the room long after he’d left it. They stuck in his mind for days afterward. So simple. So concise. He fixed worn-out buildings and made them new again. He’d repeatedly done the impossible and become successful in the process.

  So why hadn’t he been able to fix what had gone wrong between him and Scarlett?

  It was several days later when frustration had driven him out of the office and into the field. They’d bought a condemned apartment building for a song last month. Reconstruction had started last week. He’d donned hard hat and work boots and was in the midst of concrete dust and chunks of debris when he sensed he wasn’t alone.

  Snagging a kerchief from his hip pocket, he wiped the grime from his face, then, sensing again that he was being watched, slowly turned around.

  Dust filtered through the air in layers of soft powder. Sunlight backlit and shone in refracted rays on his brother and the small frame of a woman wearing a hard hat by his side.

  His first reaction was anger. Cameron knew better than to bring someone other than crew onto a work site. He whipped off his hat and stalked toward them—then stopped dead in his tracks when he recognized the red-gold of the curls peaking out from under the formed plastic helmet.

  He blinked, then blinked again, finally accepting that it was Scarlett standing there, tentative, self-conscious, beautiful.

  Cam gave him a thumbs-up signal over Scarlett’s head, mouthed the words “Fix it,” and made himself scarce.

  And still he just stood there, conscious of the sun on his back, the sweat trickling down his temple, the elevated rhythm of his heart.

  “So,” she said, taking a hesitant step toward him, “this is how the money man makes his money.”

  Watching her, he pulled off his leather gloves, then his hat, and tossed the gloves inside it. “You’re a long ways from home.”

  “Yeah, well...someone very important to me invited me to come to New York a while back. I decided to see if the invitation was still open.”

  He tucked the hat under his arm and watched her carefully. “I’m not so sure it was such a good idea—accepting the invitation, that is.”

  “No?” she said, more sigh than sound, and he saw the panic in her eyes.

  “Actually, the city isn’t the greatest place to be this time of year. I was thinking—I was hop
ing—that someone... someone very special to me, would invite me to this wonderful old hotel she runs near the most beautiful waterfall in the world.”

  The relief in her eyes eased the ache in his chest. The tears that followed nearly sent him to his knees.

  “I’ve missed you Miz Scarlett,” he said, barely getting the words past the lump in his throat as he reached for her, then folded her against him when she launched herself into his arms.

  To touch him again was heaven. To feel him inside her where he belonged, the sweetest thrill she’d ever known. To drift off to sleep in his arms, safe, secure, well loved, was unlike any pleasure she’d ever encountered.

  “Are you awake?”

  His husky murmur near her ear stirred the hair at her nape. She drew his arm tighter around her and turned on her back so she could see his face.

  They were in his bed. In his apartment. In deep, complete love.

  Shadows played across his cheeks in the darkness. Candlelight flickered in the lazy drift of his eyes.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “And,” he prompted, a soft smile tilting his lips.

  She lowered her lashes. “And you’re nothing like him.”

  He tipped her face to his with a curled finger under her chin. His smile had faded, but not his gentleness. “Tell me. Tell me so I’ll know to never make the same mistakes he did.”

  She drew in a deep breath, struggling with how to say what she needed to say. Finally she just started talking and hoped that when she was through he would understand.

  “I’m not sure he made any mistakes.” Her statement was met by silence but she pressed on. “I think I’m the one who made them. I let him have control over me. I don’t even know how it happened. One day I was this young, eager-to-please bride—then somewhere along the way, that’s all I was doing. Pleasing. Or at least I was trying to. I’m not making any sense, am I?”

  He stroked his thumb along her jaw. “Keep working on it. You’ll get there.”

  “I think I did it to myself. I wanted our marriage to be as good as my parents’ marriage was. Only I didn’t realize then that theirs was, and is, a give-and-take arrangement. I turned ours into I gave and he took. I set myself up for it. In retrospect I can’t even blame him for taking advantage. After all, if someone lays down a rug, you walk on it.”