“I know.” He pulled her just a little closer, pressed his rough cheek to her soft one, whispered prayerfully, “Let me take you.”
“Walker...”
He cast about wildly for some convincing argument, some way to get her to see that he needed to do that, needed to see her on her way.
But then she made arguments unnecessary. Because she gave in. “I have to leave the hotel at seven in the morning.”
“Seven. I’ll be waiting for you right outside the lobby doors.”
She nodded. “All right, then.” And she stepped from the circle of his arms and left him standing there.
* * *
Rory and Clara stole a few minutes alone. They shared a pink tuck-and-roll sofa in the ladies’ lounge.
“You’re all right, then?” Rory asked her favorite cousin.
Clara drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I really am.” They were both leaning back against the cushions. Clara turned and grinned at her. “I have to say—only you could pull off that do-rag you’re wearing.”
Rory put on her princess voice. “This is no do-rag. It’s an artfully tied handmade scarf. Scarves are quite the thing this year.”
“Oh. Right. I knew that—and I saw you dancing with Walker.”
So much for the lighthearted mood. “He’s taking me to the airport tomorrow.”
“Excellent.”
“Not really. Clara, everything I told you the other day still stands. He wants me, yeah. But he doesn’t want love. He doesn’t want us. It’s not going to happen.”
“Give him time.”
Rory just shook her head. And then she leaned closer to her cousin and asked, “If Ryan’s not the dad, then who?”
Clara sighed again. “I just... I can’t talk about it now.”
Rory longed to keep after her. But Clara didn’t want that. And Rory tried to respect the wishes of her friends. “When you’re ready to talk about it, you know I’ll be there.”
* * *
Rory half hoped that maybe Walker wouldn’t show up to drive her to the airport, after all. The more she stewed over the situation, the more she dreaded the hour-and-a-half ride to Denver, just the two of them.
But then, she knew he would be there. Walker might not be willing to love again, or to marry. But when he made a promise, he kept it.
He was there in his SUV, waiting, when Jacob, the porter, wheeled out the luggage cart piled with her bags. Walker got out and helped get everything loaded.
Rory handed over a tip. And Jacob gave her a great big smile. “Thank you, Your Highness. Come and stay with us again soon.”
She promised that she would and got in on the passenger side.
They set out. For the first twenty miles or so, she waited with a knot in her stomach, dreading whatever Walker planned to say.
But then he didn’t say anything. A light snow was falling. The sun was a slightly brighter smudge behind the cloud cover, slowly lifting above the mountains.
He turned on the radio. Christmas music filled the empty space between them. Apparently, he had no big goodbye speech planned. It was just what he’d said it would be: a ride to the airport, nothing more. Just Walker being Walker, needing to finish what he’d started, to see her safely to the plane.
Rory levered her seat back and closed her eyes.
When she woke, the snow had stopped and the mountains were behind them. He’d turned off the radio.
“You looked so sweet and peaceful sleeping,” he said on a gruff husk of breath.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say.
In no time, they reached the airfield where the private planes took off. The family jet was waiting. One of those motorized carts idled right there at curbside, complete with driver, ready to load her luggage onto the plane.
Walker opened the hatch and the guy went to work.
Rory stayed in her seat, reluctant to get out. Once she did, it would truly be over. There would be nothing left but to say goodbye and walk away. It was tearing her up inside, like leaving him all over again, just to get out of his car.
He didn’t move, either, not at first. They sat there, side by side, staring out the windshield—together, and so far apart.
And then, so suddenly that she had to swallow a gasp, he leaned on his door and jumped out. Still, she sat there, chewing her lower lip a little, as he came around to her door and pulled it open. The cold outside air swirled in, making her shiver.
He held out his hand. She took it.
And the second his warm fingers touched her cool ones, she knew what she had to do.
She swung her legs down to the blacktop. Once she stood on solid ground, it took only a single step forward to rest her hands against his heart.
“Rory...” He growled her name, eyes like a storm at sea.
“Shh.” And she went on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
He froze for a second, and then he grabbed her good and hard. The kiss went deep. She reveled in it, drinking it in, determined to remember everything, the taste of his mouth, the buttery softness of his shearling jacket against her palms, the low groan he couldn’t hold back.
“Rory...” He lifted that wonderful mouth much too soon.
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Are you listening?”
“My God. What?” He looked at her as though he would never let her go. But she knew the truth. His fear of what she offered was greater than his need.
She told him anyway. “I love you, Walker McKellan. I’m in love with you and only you.” Now he just looked stunned. She rubbed her thumbs across his fleece collar and added cheerfully, “There. I’ve said it. Now there’s no doubt about it. I’ve said the dreaded L word right to your face. And you can never pretend I didn’t say it, never try to tell yourself that you didn’t know for certain what was in my heart.”
Chapter Thirteen
Walker watched her walk away.
As soon as she was out of sight, he got back in the SUV and went home to the ranch.
But going home was no good. Everything there reminded him of her. Lucky and Lonesome kept watching him mournfully. As if they wished they could speak human so they could ask him right out where she’d gone.
And what was it about that perfume of hers? Somehow it seemed to linger in the air. He kept thinking he smelled it—and then when he would sniff again...?
Gone.
How had he let this happen? He was supposed to know better. He was too damn much like his mother, the kind who fell so hard he hardly knew how to get back up on his feet again.
Somehow, in the time she’d stayed with him, she’d put her mark on everything. He had nothing left that didn’t have her in it. His sofa, the hearth, the kitchen table, his bed...everything. All of it. Every stick of furniture he owned.
And the damn Christmas crap. What was he supposed to do about that? He couldn’t bear to see it now. He wanted to chuck it all out a window, get rid of everything she’d touched.
But then there was the house itself. She’d filled up every room with her laughter and her passion and her flat-out love of life. No way to get the echoes of her out of there, except to strike a match and burn it to the ground.
He went out to the stables, thinking he’d ride up into the mountains. But then he just stood there staring blankly as the horses whickered softly in greeting, remembering the way she would get up early every morning to help with the animals, the way she pitched in around the place, always ready to work.
By noon, he’d had enough of wandering numbly from the house to the stables and back to the house again. He grabbed his keys and headed for town.
He decided he’d have lunch at Rye’s place. And maybe a beer—or ten. Might as well get good and drunk. He seemed to be incap
able of doing anything constructive.
When he got to McKellan’s Rye took one look at him and declared, “It’s about enough, big brother. We have to talk.” Rye led him to the back and into his office. He shut the door.
Walker stared glumly at Rye’s battered desk, remembering Rory perched on the edge of it the night of the bachelorette party, wearing a skirt the size of a postage stamp and those shoes that could give a man a heart attack. He remembered how he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her, how they’d come so close to taking it all the way. Right there. On that very desk...
He shook his head. She was gone. But she was everywhere. There was no escaping the sweet, unbearable memories of her.
“You’re a mess,” Rye said. “Sit down before you fall down.”
Walker didn’t even bother to lie and say he was fine. He just backed up and dropped into one of the chairs.
Rye waited several seconds. When Walker just sat there, Rye asked, “So what happened?”
“Rory said she loves me. She said she’s in love with me.”
“And that’s bad?”
“I didn’t want her to say it. I tried to keep her from saying it. But she said it anyway.”
Rye dropped into the chair behind the desk and swung his boots up onto the desktop. “Okay, I don’t get it. This is not adding up. She says she’s in love with you and you’re acting like she took a shotgun to your heart.”
“Because she did. She...got to me. Got to me deep. You know how I am, Rye. Kind of like Mom was. I fall too hard and I end up getting messed over. I’m better off on my own.”
Rye made a snorting sound. “I will agree that you’re better off on your own than with that crafty bitch Denise, yeah. But better off without Rory? Are you out of your mind? Rory’s the real deal. If she says she loves you, you know it’s the truth.”
“She’s too good for me. She grew up in a palace. Come on. I have to get real here. No way can it last.”
“So?”
“So I’ll end up like Mom, dragging around half-alive, waiting my whole life for her to come back.”
“Kind of like what you’re doing now?”
“I’m not waiting for Rory to come back.” He said it a little louder than he meant to—or maybe a lot louder.
Loud enough that Rye put up both hands like a robbery victim at gunpoint. “Okay, okay. Whatever you say.”
Walker muttered, “I did catch myself thinking of burning the house down.”
“Totally healthy reaction to thwarted love, no doubt about it.”
“I’m not thwarted. She didn’t thwart me. She said that she loves me.”
“Oh, right. I get it. The thwarting is something you’re doing all on your own.”
He gave his brother a look of deadly warning. “Don’t mock me, Rye.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m just telling you what you need to hear. Because it’s too late for you. You’re so gone on her, you can’t see straight. You’re outta control. I know how you hate that, how you need to be on top of every little thing. But with love, well, there’s nothing to do but give in to it.”
“How the hell do you know so much about love all of a sudden?”
Rye shrugged. “I tend bar. You learn a lot about what makes people tick tending bar. Eventually I’m hoping to apply what I’ve learned to my own life. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m workin’ on it—and where was I? Oh, yeah. There’s a point in every love affair where a man can turn and walk away clean. You are way past that point, big brother. Right now, the only sensible thing for you to do is to get your ass to Montedoro and pray to heaven she takes you back.”
“I’m not going to Montedoro. What’s a guy like me going to do in Montedoro?”
Rye only looked at him, shaking his head.
* * *
“You were matchmaking, weren’t you, Mother?” Rory purposely made the question into something of an accusation. Sometimes, with her mother, the only way to go was on the offensive.
Adrienne sat on the long velvet sofa in her private office at the palace. She sipped oolong from a beautiful old Sevres teacup. Wincing a little, she eyed the bandage on Rory’s forehead. “Tell me you had that looked at.”
“I did, yes. And I’m taking proper care of it—and answer my question. Were you matchmaking?”
A slight smile curved her beautiful mother’s still-full lips. “Yes, I suppose I was. I really like Walker, and I thought the two of you would make a fine couple.”
“You hardly know him. You spent maybe three hours in his presence that time you and Papa came to Colorado.”
“I have a great sense for people. I knew instantly that he was a good man, a man of strength and integrity. And then there was the fact that you’ve been in love with him for years. You would hardly love a man who wasn’t worthy.”
Rory set her teacup on the low table between them. “It wasn’t love, for all those years. Not exactly, anyway. And I really, really thought that nobody knew.”
“Oh, my darling. Forgive me. But I am your mother. And sometimes a mother just knows.” She patted the space beside her on the sofa.
Rory gave in to her need for comfort. She got up, went around the low table and sat down. With a shaky little sigh, she laid her head on her mother’s Chanel-clad shoulder. “It didn’t work out. And it hurts so damn much.”
Her mother smoothed her hair and pressed a kiss against her temple, at the edge of the bandage. “Sometimes the best ones have a hard time surrendering.”
“You say that as if there’s still some hope. Seriously. There’s not.”
Her mother made a tsking sound. “It’s not like you to give in so easily, my darling.”
“But I haven’t given in easily. Believe me, I haven’t. I’ve waited years for him. I’ve offered him everything—my heart, my future, my two capable hands. At some point, he’s got to start offering back. That hasn’t happened. And he’s given me no reason to believe that it ever will.”
* * *
Two days before Christmas, His Serene Highness Maximilian Bravo-Calabretti, heir to the Montedoran throne, married Texas-born Yolanda Vasquez, former nanny and budding novelist. There were two ceremonies, one religious and one of state.
Rory attended both. It did her heart good to see her oldest brother happy at last, after losing his first wife in a tragic accident. Yolanda, whom they all called Lani, wore a cream silk day suit for the ceremony of state and a gorgeous white gown with a lace-and-beadwork train for the religious ceremony.
That night, people celebrated through all of Montedoro. There were parties in the grand casino, Casino d’Ambre, with twenty giant Christmas trees blazing bright in the area of exclusive shops called the Triangle d’Or. Every café and restaurant through all ten wards was packed with revelers.
In the Prince’s Palace, on its rocky promontory above the Mediterranean, Her Sovereign Highness Adrienne and her beloved husband, Prince Evan, held a wedding gala. The guests filled the heated tents erected in the gardens, where dinner was served on the finest china, beneath a fantasy of party lights, to the glow of a thousand crystal candlesticks.
After the meal, everyone made their way up to the ballroom. Lani’s father, an English professor from the Fort Worth area, led her out onto the floor for the first dance. As tradition dictated, Max cut in. The father surrendered his daughter to her prince.
Rory stood on the sidelines in a floor-length strapless gown of gold metallic lace, a matching scarf tied artfully over the bandage on her forehead. She sipped champagne, happy for her brother and his bride in spite of the sadness that dragged on her heart.
She visited with her sisters Alice and Rhiannon, both of whom were married now—just like Max and Rule and Alexander and Damien, like Arabella and Genny, too. Genny was the only one of Rory’s siblings who hadn’t made
it to the wedding, having given birth to little Tommy such a short time before.
For Rory, it felt more than a little lonely, to be the only one still single of the nine of them. Especially now, after her two magical, impossible, beautiful, frustrating weeks with Walker at home in Justice Creek.
Home.
She felt the tears rise and gulped them down. She loved Montedoro and she always would. But Colorado was her home and no matter how hard it was going to be to have to see Walker now and then, around town, she would not give up the home of her heart. One day she would have a place of her own in Justice Creek.
Alice and Rhia wanted to hear all about her adventures in the Rockies. She told them of the view from Lookout Point and the beauty of Ice Castle Falls. And she described what it was like to spend a snowy night stranded in a tiny cabin in the piney woods.
But then their husbands came to claim them. The men greeted Rory warmly and took their wives off to dance.
Rory watched them, her heart so full.
“Don’t turn around,” said a deep, rough voice behind her.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Hope was rising, undeniable. She bit her lip and froze in place.
He touched her then. She felt his rough, warm, knowing finger. He traced a light path across the bare skin between her shoulder blades. Heat flared across her skin. But still, she didn’t turn to look.
Didn’t dare.
Couldn’t bear to know if this was real. Or just a sweet hallucination brought on by her stubborn, yearning heart, a heart that simply couldn’t bear to accept defeat.
He leaned closer. She felt the warmth and height of him behind her. The scent of him came to her. Woodsy, clean. All man. “You are so beautiful,” he said. “So fine. So completely outside the boundaries of my wildest dreams. I didn’t want to want you, Rory. It seemed...way too dangerous. And to love you? Complete insanity. You’re so much braver and bolder than I am. I can’t hope to live up to you.”
“Walker.” There. She’d done it. Said his name right out loud.
And he was still there. She could feel him, still real and warm and solid, standing right behind her. “I should have said I love you that day at the airport,” he told her. “I should have dropped to my knees and begged you to marry me.”
A Bravo Christmas Wedding Page 18