Once Upon a Groom

by Karen Rose Smith

  Since she couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask anything personal, she forced a smile and inquired, “Do you really have a house in Malibu, a penthouse in L.A. and a condo in Vail?”

  “Now where did that come from?” His forehead furrowed but there was a sparkle of curiosity in his eyes.

  “I’m just wondering how much of the tabloid stories about you I can believe.”

  “Well, at least the real estate I have is one thing they got right. Yes, to all of the above.”

  “And you’ve been to every continent?” she pushed.

  “I have, for either work or pleasure.”

  “You actually vacationed in Antarctica?”

  At that, he let out a chuckle. “Yes, I did. Why are you so amazed?”

  “Because I can’t imagine why anyone would want to vacation there.”

  His blue gaze became more probing. “Jenny, don’t you want to see the world?”

  “Why would I? I’m happy here.”

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t understand that philosophy at all. “Don’t you want to know how other people live? What work means to them…what gives their lives meaning?”

  “Does your curiosity get satisfied in your travels?”

  He considered that. “I don’t know. But I always find answers to some unanswered questions I didn’t even know were lurking in my mind. That probably doesn’t make any sense to you.”

  She could see he wasn’t talking down to her, but really trying to clarify his point of view. “When I want an answer, I just work at finding it right here. But then I guess that’s why I gentle horses and you make movies.”

  “The movie-making might change now.”

  “How? Why?”

  Suddenly, Zack’s focus shifted from her to the doorway. When she peered around him, she saw Dr. Murphy, Silas’s cardiologist. He looked serious and she couldn’t tell from his expression exactly what had happened.

  The cardiac surgeon said, “Zack has signed appropriate forms and instructed me you’re to be kept up-to-date on everything that concerns his father’s condition.”

  She murmured to Zack, “Thank you.”

  His gaze briefly met hers and she gained a momentary glimpse of the young man she’d once loved. The next moment his attention focused on the cardiologist as he asked, “Good news or bad?”

  Although Zack might be a visionary behind the camera, Jenny realized he was a pragmatist, too.

  “A little of both. There has been heart muscle damage, which we suspected from the myocardial infarction. But we inserted two stents and with a change in lifestyle, I think he’ll regain his energy and maybe some of the verve he’s lost in the past few months. He’s a lucky man…lucky this happened when someone was with him and fortunate an ambulance got him here as soon as it did. No one is ever happy about life changes they need to make to continue good health, but your father seems like a practical man. I’m hoping with the two of you to help convince him, he’ll see this as a positive life change, not as something he has to dread. I’ll have a nutritionist talk to him before he leaves.”

  “Can I sit in?” Jenny asked. “He has a housekeeper and I’d like to relay any information to her. Maybe we can devise meals that he doesn’t think are too boring.”

  The doctor smiled. “Diet and exercise will be the two main components of his life changes and…” He motioned to Zack. “Zack told me you’d be a big help with that.”

  “What about a cardiac rehab program?” Zack asked.

  “I’ll be speaking with your father about that, too. There are a couple of different ways we can handle it. He’ll have to choose what’s right for him.”

  “He’ll probably want a private nurse and a home gym,” Zack muttered.

  The doctor didn’t look fazed. He just said, “Whatever it takes.”

  Jenny knew he was right. She would do whatever it took to keep Silas on the road to good health. Seeing how quickly Zack had responded to her call, she was hopeful he would, too, even if it was only so he could get back to his own life.

  “How long do you think it will be until he’s able to do the things he wants to do again?” she asked.

  “We’re going to have to see how his recuperation comes along. But if you’re asking in general terms, I’d say four to six weeks at least. Maybe longer until the changes he makes take effect.”

  Jenny saw Zack frown and didn’t know what that meant. Would he consider staying in Miners Bluff that long? If so, why? Did he feel she couldn’t handle Silas on her own? Or was he simply worried about his father and didn’t want to admit it?

  “I’m going to keep him in CICU for today. Tomorrow, if all goes well, I’ll transition him to an intermediary room. I want to keep an eye on his blood oxygen level. Then we’ll decide what happens next.”

  Zack extended his hand to shake the cardiologist’s. “Thank you.”

  Jenny did the same, saying, “I wish we weren’t so far from the hospital.”

  “Miners Bluff has a superior urgent care center. Don’t hesitate to go there or call me if there are any problems.” The doctor moved toward the door. There he stopped. To Zack he said, “Your dad is a tough customer. It might take both of you to convince him to do what he needs to do.” Then he exited the room, leaving Zack and Jenny alone—each wondering what came next.

  Four days later, Jenny stepped through the mahogany French doors to Silas’s parlor, surprised to see Zack cleaning out the cupboard behind the wet bar. “What are you doing?”

  Zack didn’t know if this was going to be a fight or not, but he wouldn’t back down from it. He stacked bottles of liquor into a carton. “I’m clearing away temptation. Dad’s resting, I hope?”

  They’d driven into Flagstaff together to pick him up when he was discharged. Both wanted to hear what the instructions were for after-care. He was supposed to take it easy for the next week. Zack wasn’t sure that meant the same thing to his father that it meant to him.

  He continued to remove bottles from the cabinet and shove them in the box. “I know he doesn’t like staying in one of the guest bedrooms down here, but it’s for his own good. I’ll stay down here, too, then I can keep an eye on him.”

  “He can use the intercom system if he needs you.”

  Zack stared down into the box so long, Jenny finally asked, “Zack?”

  “Sorry. I was remembering… This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this.”

  She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  Did he want to get into this with her? Why not? The past didn’t matter anymore. If she didn’t know the gritty details, maybe it was time. “Dad drank and gambled for as far back as I can remember, then he’d come home and fight with Mom. When I was around ten, I got this mistaken impression that if I went through the house and got rid of some of the liquor, that might make a difference. So I’d take out a bottle here, a bottle there and I’d dump them behind the barn. I couldn’t wipe out the whole cupboard, there would’ve been hell to pay. But at least I felt I was doing something.”

  He saw the softening in Jenny’s brown eyes and he knew what that meant. It was pity. He certainly didn’t want her pity, not for the boy he’d been, and certainly not for the man he was now. “That taught me one very important lesson,” he added, suddenly realizing exactly why he was telling her this story. “You can’t make a difference in someone’s life unless they want you to.”

  She crossed the hunter green and burgundy Persian rug, rounding a suede and leather sofa. “That’s not true, Zack. Don’t tell me you believe that.”

  When she stopped in front of the bar, he focused his gaze on her. “Do you think you’ve made a difference in his life?” He knew Jenny had poured everything she was and everything she could have been into Silas and the Rocky D.

  “I have made a difference. Because I’ve become a substitute for you.”

  This time there was no pity in her eyes but there was something else he couldn’t decipher. That bothered him. He used to understand Je
nny so well…why she yearned for bonds she could depend on.

  Jenny’s father had done his duty by her when he’d had to. His love had always been the rodeo. Early on, Jenny had had her mom, but had only seen her dad when he came in from the circuit. After that…

  Jenny’s mom had suddenly died of a brain aneurysm when Jenny was eight and her father had been devastated. Jenny had known, even though he wasn’t at home that much, that he and her mom had really loved each other. After a year of Jenny taking care of Charlie, rather than Charlie taking care of her, he’d left her with a neighbor more and more, always chasing a rodeo purse and a dream. That’s the way it had been until Jenny had done an internship on the Rocky D the summer before her senior year in high school. She’d loved horses, handled them expertly and calmed them, showing up his father’s best grooms. His mother had started giving her other responsibilities and had let her handle some of the bookwork. When his mom learned her history, she’d asked Jenny if she wanted to live with them her senior year of high school. Charlie had easily agreed, handing off some of the responsibility for his almost-grown child. Jenny became like a daughter to the Deckers.

  Zack’s attraction to Jenny and hers to him had revved up the moment she’d set foot on the Rocky D. Zack had known it wouldn’t be fair to start something with her, when he intended to leave Miners Bluff as soon as he could. Jenny, on the other hand, wore her heart on her sleeve, which had made it easy for him to confide in her, go on long walks and rides, become close to her in a way he’d never been close to a girl before. The night of their high school graduation, they’d gone to the all-night party, come home around 3:00 a.m. and climbed up to the hayloft, which had become their private place. They’d been so excited. He’d won the National Young Filmmakers Scholarship and his dad had hired her to be one of his horse trainers and handlers. In that excitement, their threshold of restraint had fallen low. They’d made love in that hayloft. He’d asked her to go with him to L.A. She’d refused. That had been the end of them.

  “You didn’t have to be a substitute for anyone,” Zack protested, feeling as if she were blaming him for something about her life, too.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to be here, because I did. But I also realized that after your mother died, Silas gave up on the idea that you’d ever come back.”

  Staying in this house again, recollections from that difficult time in Zack’s life pummeled him. As he’d tried to do since he’d returned, he shoved them away. “Even if Mom hadn’t died, I doubt if I would have come back. When she visited me in L.A., she made sure to tell me she was proud—of me, of my work… But have you forgotten that when I left for film school, my father cut me off? He didn’t want to know how the classes were, or what kind of projects I was doing. He didn’t want to know if I was successful. He just didn’t care. He’d planned for me to take his place someday. He blamed her for my absence because she gave me my first video camera.”

  Jenny leaned closer, the bar still a barrier between them. “You’re both carrying too many shadows from the past. It’s time to let go of all of it.”

  Just a whiff of Jenny’s perfume unsettled Zack and lit fires he’d rather douse. “What about your dad, Jenny? Have you let go of all of it?” He saw immediately that he’d struck home and he shouldn’t have. He shook his head. “I had no right to ask that.”

  With a sigh, she leaned away. “Maybe you did. After all, I’m giving you advice.”

  With a shrug, he admitted, “I have no advice, not about fathers and their kids.” Closing the top of the carton, he taped it then started filling another.

  Finally she said, “I’ve learned something over the years, Zack. I do have to accept reality. Wishing my dad would change only brought me heartache, so I accept him for who he is and don’t expect anything. That way I don’t get hurt.”

  Her acceptance of her own father’s shortcomings made him feel like a jerk. He shouldn’t have complained about the childhood he’d had when Jenny’s had been so much worse. Losing her mom as a kid couldn’t have been easy. Staying with a neighbor who really wasn’t interested in babysitting while her father was gone had to have made Jenny feel unwanted.

  She proved that as she told him, “After Mom died and I had to stay with Mildred when Dad left for the circuit, I disappeared into the library downtown and learned everything I could about horses…to fill up my life and I guess my heart, too. I didn’t have the guts to come to a place like the Rocky D to learn what I needed to know to become a horse trainer, but I went to smaller ranches, asked if I could help with chores and got paid enough to buy clothes for school. I didn’t care about the money as much as I just wanted to be around the animals, to know more about them. Some of those horses were my best friends until I went to high school and really got to know Mikala and Celeste. Up until then I shied away from the other girls because I felt they made fun of me…and looked down on me. Celeste and I had a lot in common because we were both girls from the wrong side of the tracks. I’m not sure how Mikala hooked up with us, maybe because her mother wasn’t around much when she was growing up. But they became my safety net—they were always there for me. How did you and Dawson and Clay become friends?”

  “The reverse of you and Celeste and Mikala, I guess. Our families went back to the founding fathers of Miners Bluff. In one way or another, we were all rebelling against authority, against our fathers, our families. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t talk about it. Guys didn’t do that.” He shot her a wry grin. “But we knew we all wanted to be independent and forge our own course, no matter what anybody else thought.”

  “Rebels with a cause?” she joked.

  “Minus the motorcycles. Clay and I used horses. Dawson had a Mustang.”

  She laughed at the pun.

  Whenever he and Jenny found a nonvolatile subject, he enjoyed the ease of talking to her, just as he had when he was a teenager.

  In high school, they’d all hung out at Mikala’s aunt’s bed and breakfast where her refrigerator and pantry was overstocked with everyone’s favorite drinks and snacks. As he and Jenny started spending more time alone after she moved in at the Rocky D, long talks about anything and everything had taken place in the barn and hayloft. Long talks…and plenty of kisses…?.

  But they weren’t kids anymore and the shadow of him leaving and her refusal to go with him sidled in and out between them now, along with the electricity that never seemed to cease buzzing.

  “Is there anywhere else you think I should look for a stash like this?” He waved at the remaining bottles.

  “You could ask me,” Silas said from the doorway. Both Zack and Jenny jumped, startled by his appearance.

  “All right,” Zack agreed quickly, deciding to face his father head-on in everything now. “Is there anyplace else you’d like me to clean out?” He tried to ignore the fact that his father was leaning on a cane and looking pale. His physician had warned them not to expect too much too soon, but it was hard seeing his father like this.

  Silas entered the room and straightened up to his full six-foot height. “You don’t have to clean anything out. I haven’t had a drop of liquor for a year. I keep that assortment for my friends, or for cocktail parties, like the one I had to introduce Clay Sullivan to some possible clients. It was the same night we all watched your new movie.”

  That derailed Zack’s thoughts. “You got a pirated copy?”

  “I did. I didn’t want to wait for the premiere.”

  Sometimes Zack forgot how well his father was connected. “You never told me you watched it.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Good question—and he really wasn’t sure of the answer. Did he want to know what his father thought about it? Chances were good Silas would have something critical to say. Not that Zack couldn’t take criticism. He’d had to take plenty of it to get where he was now. But coming from his father, it would be nice to hear something positive, some sort of encouragement or pat on the back he’d never gotten as a kid.

&n
bsp; Silas stroked his mustache. “If you’re looking for cigars in addition to the liquor, you’ll find a box in my bottom desk drawer in my office. They’re underneath the Bible. I haven’t had a smoke in the past six months.”

  As Zack looked into his father’s eyes, he wished he could believe him. But after years of hearing his dad lie to his mother so many times, he knew trust hadn’t even been a word in his father’s vocabulary.

  Deciding to leave this discussion for the present, Zack asked his dad, “Is there anything I can bring you from upstairs to make you more comfortable down here?”

  “I’ll only be comfortable when I’m in my own room again,” Silas grumbled.

  Jenny, who’d been absorbing the conversation, stepped in. “It’s only for a few days, Silas. Besides, you’ll have a great view of the back pasture from the guest room. You can watch the yearlings when we let them out on the nice days.”

  “Nice days?” Silas barked. “You won’t be seeing many more of them. I heard we’re in for snow next week.”

  “So you can watch them frolic in the snow when I exercise them,” she responded, unfazed.

  “While I eat sawdust and vegetables.”

  “Do you think I’d let Martha serve you sawdust and vegetables? I’m smarter than that. We’re going to make such tasty recipes you won’t be able to resist.”

  Finally, Silas broke into a slow smile. “If anybody can do it, you can.” He sighed and ran a hand through his halo of gray hair. “Already I’m more tired than if I’d ridden out to Feather Peak. Jeez, how long is this going to last?”

  “You know what the doctor said. It could be a while—a month, two, maybe even three. But with a new diet and some exercise when you’re ready, you’ll be feeling better soon, Silas. I promise you.”