The woman on the stretcher was Audrey.
Gray rushed to her.
“How bad is she?” he asked. “Is she going to live?”
He couldn’t lose her now, not when he’d just come back to her after so many years. Not when he was finally finding himself.
“We need to get her to a hospital right away. Out of the way, man.”
“Where will you take her?”
“We’re going straight to Denver.”
“A head injury?”
“Apparently, she was hit by falling rocks. The cavers took good care of her. There’s no hypothermia. They did their best.”
He closed the ambulance door. “Gotta go.”
Gray returned to both Jeff and Tess, who waited stoically.
“We’re not losing her,” Gray said. “Come on. We need to follow that ambulance to Denver.”
On their way to the car, Gray passed the same officer who’d given them an escort the day before. He looked freshly shaven, his uniform crisp, and drank a steaming cup of coffee.
When he saw Gray’s face, he sobered. “What’s going on? I thought everyone was alive.”
Gray pointed to the ambulance driving away, its siren wailing. “That’s Audrey. She’s unconscious. They’re taking her to Denver.”
The officer tossed his still-full paper cup into a garbage can.
“Follow me. I’ll get you there.”
In a terrible déjà vu, Gray trailed the cruiser with its flashing lights to the hospital in Denver.
Audrey had already been brought in, but no one could tell him what was going on.
“The doctors are still with her,” a nurse said.
“Where can we wait?” Gray asked.
“I suggest the cafeteria. She was one of the trapped cavers, right? It’s been on the news. You all look cold and tired. Go eat. If anything happens, I’ll come get you.”
Gray hated to contemplate what that if anything happens might be, but he took comfort from how calm the nurse was.
“Come on,” he said to Jeff and Tess. “She’s right.”
The nurse found them an hour later.
“She’s good. She’d conscious. She’s got a concussion, so they’re going to keep her for a couple of days.”
“Days,” Gray said. “Doesn’t a concussion usually entail just an overnight stay?”
“Yes, but the doctors are being careful. Do you want to see her?”
Gray let Jeff go in first.
After Jeff came out, he entered the room.
“Audrey?” he whispered. She opened her eyes. “How are you?”
“Tired,” she murmured. “I was so cold.”
Gray stared at the woman he’d grown to care for with unsurpassed passion and thought, I love.
I love.
He was love. He was love.
He’d held back from giving completely to Audrey because of fear. More accurately, because of memories of fear.
There was no more room in his life for panic or anxiety. What was the opposite of fear? Not courage. Nor bravery.
Love. Love was the polar opposite of fear.
What was the absence of fear? Again, love.
His chest, his life, the universe expanded. He became part of all and every.
Audrey watched him, her smile radiant. She knew. She understood. He recognized a feeling that had always been a part of him, lost, submerged, but never conquered. There had been one person in his life who had known him better than anyone else, even better than himself.
Audrey was understanding. Audrey was love.
The paradoxes of his life, the worries, the vanities, became reduced to one word. Audrey.
Needing her more than food, water, drink, his heartbeat and the blood in his veins, he embraced her.
The air between them, the molecules that separated beings, the flesh that separates humans, dissipated. He breathed her into his soul.
“Welcome home.”
“I never left.”
“Love me,” he whispered
“Always,” she promised, her eyes as frank and bright as pansies in June. “I have loved you forever.”
Her truth awed him, left him speechless, and he rested his head on her dark head and breathed.
Hospital noises outside the room, and reality, intruded. He pointed a finger at her. “You are never going caving again, do you hear?”
She smiled. “Yeah? Says who?”
“Says the man who’s going to marry you.”
“Marry?”
“You know, when you squeal like that, you sound like Tiffany.”
“I can’t help it. You just said the M word. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I love you. I adore you. I want to worship you for the rest of our lives.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Yeah? And how about this? I want children. I want to have them with you. I want you pregnant the second you’re healthy.”
“Caveman,” she said, but softened it with a smile.
“You scared me.” His voice wavered. “You terrified me. I thought I’d lost you. I can’t go through that again. I want you for my wife, and I want a family and home in Accord. I’m serious, Audrey. I want to worship you. I love you.”
“I’ve waited a long time to hear those words, Gray. I love you, too.” She held his face between her small cool palms and looked into his eyes. “The boy I used to know is back.”
Radiant, she said, “Gray, you’re not the cold CEO anymore. You’re you again.”
“No, I’m no longer the cold businessman.” He rested his lips on her forehead. “You brought me back to life, Audrey. Back to myself.”
“I’m glad. I’m so happy to see you.” She fingered the blankets and blushed. “I like the sound of babies. I’m already thirty-six, though. We might only ever have one.”
“That’s fine. Just means we’d better start soon.”
“Gray?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll stop caving while we have babies, but I’ll probably do it again in the future.”
“No, you won’t,” he said fiercely.
She laughed. “Yes, I will. You can’t hold a good woman down, Gray.”
He rubbed his cramping stomach. “Audrey, you’re going to be the death of me.”
* * *
A COLD DRIZZLE coated the cemetery with silver puddles in the late-September evening dusk. Gray had returned to Boston for a brief visit. Before he could marry Audrey, he had to say goodbye to Marnie.
The weather was unusually cold, chilly enough to warrant an overcoat on top of his suit, the mood of the day somehow fitting for the occasion.
He set the pale peach roses he’d brought into the small urn on the headstone of Marnie’s grave, their color soft yet brave against the gloom. They’d been her favorite flower.
There was so much about Marnie that he remembered, that he would never forget, no matter how much he’d come to love another woman. Or had come back to loving Audrey.
For half an hour, he talked to Marnie, telling her about the twists and turns of his life over the past few months. Somehow, he knew she would understand if she were alive. She would support him in the difficult decisions he’d had to make with Dad. She would approve of the changes Gray was making to Turner Lumber.
Above all, she would like Audrey.
“She’s different, Marnie. Not like you at all, but she matters to me as much as air or my own heartbeat. As much as you did. I hope that doesn’t hurt you wherever you are.”
He didn’t know anything about the afterlife, reincarnation or religion. He did know that he was loved by two good women. He loved two amazing women. How many
men could say they were that blessed?
The soft rain stopped and a sliver of pink settled on the horizon, the distant sun wishing the world good-night. Gray closed his umbrella and shook it.
“Goodbye, sweetheart,” he whispered before leaving to start his new life, knowing a small but vital part of himself would remain behind with Marnie.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
APPARENTLY, TIFFANY WAS going to be a flower girl at their wedding because, really, how could someone that cute, someone who adored dressing up so much, not be in the wedding party? Especially given how much she also adored Audrey.
In fact, she was rapidly becoming a mini-Audrey.
Sam and Joe, in his new wheelchair, were dressed in tuxes beside Gray at the front of the church. Jerry Springer Spaniel sat on their far side with a big red bow tied around his neck.
The physiotherapy was doing wonders for Joe, strengthening his arms and back, and easing some of the pain from the scoliosis.
Gray’s business had sold remarkably quickly, and he’d put a lot of money into Turner Lumber. They’d lost a couple of employees to early retirement, but had managed to dodge laying anyone off. The mood in the building had improved and many Turner Lumber workers sat here in this church today.
He’d given Shelly a lump sum that she and her children now lived on. He’d given her back her pride, and it looked good on her.
Shelly sat in the front row beside Gray’s parents. Gray still couldn’t stop himself from showing up at her house unannounced with gifts, no matter how much Shelly scolded him.
He just had too much fun shopping for them.
Besides, the scolds had become good-natured, and Gray didn’t mind them.
Tess sat on the other side of the church, waiting for Jeff to join her after he walked his daughter down the aisle.
They planned to get married after Jeff had the surgery he’d finally agreed to and his eyes healed, followed by a week of deep-sea fishing. They continued to lift weights together three times a week. Jeff’s devotion to Tess was an inspiration to Gray, as was his dad’s to his mom.
God, he loved them.
He would do everything in his power to make sure that his own marriage was as successful as theirs. By example, Dad had taught him how to treat a woman with respect and how to love one for a lifetime.
Gray looked out over the congregation and thanked his lucky stars for good friends and neighbors. In the past months, he’d become an important part of Accord, taking suggestions for updating the business from Hilary and many Turner Lumber employees—suggestions that suited the small-town business that it was.
He’d learned to listen.
The organist started the music.
Tiffany appeared at the back of the aisle in a pink dress and white shoes with frilly white socks.
She carried a white basket full of flower petals she strewed on the carpet leading to the front of the church. When she reached the front, she ran to her mother and said, “I didded really good, Mommy.”
The congregation burst into laughter.
Then Audrey was in the doorway, the sun streaming through stained-glass windows behind her, so even though she wore a cream dress, she was still bathed in the colors that she normally loved to wear.
She started down the aisle on her father’s arm, and Gray’s heart expanded, grew and took flight. Was any man on earth ever as lucky as he was today?
She’d brought color and light into his life. She’d banished the grays and blacks, the fears and despair that had plagued him when he’d returned to Accord.
Audrey wore a homemade replica of the dress that Jacqueline Bouvier wore the day she married Senator John F. Kennedy. But it was a dressed-down, less busy version with fewer tucks and pleats. He knew this because Mom had been talking about it for weeks, mentioning portrait necklines and bouffant skirts and details he didn’t understand.
To him, Audrey looked like an angel.
Judging the original bridesmaids dresses at the Kennedy wedding too plain for Tiffany, Audrey had designed and sewn a miniature version of her own dress in pink. Tiffany sat on the floor playing with the rosettes on the front of the dress.
On impulse, he picked her up and gave her a big kiss on her tiny cheek. Then he set her on her feet.
He’d never known that a heart could hold so much love without exploding.
When Audrey reached the front, she received a kiss from her father. Tess stepped forward to lead Jeff to the front pew.
The wedding vows Gray and Audrey had written and were now speaking humbled Gray with their earnest simplicity and honesty.
After the wedding celebration—and all of the food had been consumed and too many glasses had been raised in toast—Gray took his bride home.
He’d bought the condo, and they’d given the existing furniture to charity. Audrey had turned the rooms into bowers of color and texture using rich, bold fabrics, infusing her warmth and sense of quirky humor into the surroundings.
Gray loved it.
He carried her over the threshold, the tradition old-fashioned but fitting for a woman who reminded him of contrasting classics—Betty Boop and Jackie O, Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. He’d fallen in love with the things he used to find outlandish. Now? He wouldn’t change a thing about her. He’d found his way back to himself because of Audrey.
When he set her down, letting her body slide slowly over his for the sheer pleasure of it, he whispered, “Welcome home.”
* * * * *
Look for the next story set in Accord, Colorado, by Mary Sullivan! Coming in May 2014 from Harlequin Superromance.
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Chapter One
ADDY TOUSSANT STUDIED the fading bloom of the Pauwela Cloud orchid. Such a shame to snuff out the white-ruffled beauty, but the withered edges of the petal bore the tale. The bloom was off the—snip!—orchid.
Irony didn’t escape her as she tucked the petals into the waste bag she wore hooked on her gardening utility belt.
Not that Addy was old. Or unhappy about having her bloom fade. She rather liked the emerging lines around her eyes. Gave her character and all that.
Besides, thirty-two wasn’t “old”—it was practically the new twenty-two. Or so a magazine she’d read yesterday in the optometrist waiting room had declared. Still, so many of her high school friends were married and starting families, and though Addy didn’t feel empty, something about being so behind the curve made her feel, well, old.
But she shouldn’t feel that way. After all, not everyone wanted to be a wife and mother. Some women liked being exactly who they were. She’d always embraced that notion, a lifestyle her aunt Flora had modeled for her.
Addy stood and ignored the cracking of her knees, stretching her back and looking up at the plastic skylight in the greenhouse she’d had built in her yard. Afternoon was giving over to evening. She could see the moon peeking out from behind the pink clouds. Another Tuesday nearing conclusion, but at least it had been filled with sunshine and a warmer breeze.
A blur of motion rocketed into the structure, rending the heavy plastic sheeting. A scream caught in her throat as she pitched herself to the side, away from the roar. A corner of the greenhouse collapsed under the assault as Addy rolled away. The black rubber tire missed her nose by inches and the reverberation of an engine thundered in her ear. Gasoline fumes choked her and she coughed, raising herself up on an elbow amidst broken pottery. The spinning wheel of the motorbike snagged her sleeve.
“Oh, my sweet Lord,” Addy said, her voice drowned by the noise, tugging her loose-sleeved yoga shirt from the grip of the tire and trying to get her bearings. Pushing herself upward, she caught sight of a Converse sneaker and jean-clad leg draped over the seat of the still-rumbling bike.
Addy turned the switch on the handle to the off position. How she knew exactly where the switch was stymied her, but the engine died.
A groan emerged from beneath the wooden shelf that had collapsed onto whoever had driven a small motorcycle into her newly constructed greenhouse.
Addy shoved the splintered wood away to find a small boy. Or—to be more specific—a small boy who’d run through her daylilies on the same motorbike a month ago; a small boy who was the middle child of her irresponsible neighbors; a small boy whose name was Chris.
Or Michael. She got them mixed up.
Okay, so her neighbors weren’t necessarily irresponsible, merely overwhelmed with a lot of kids and pets running amuck.
“Chris?”
“What?” he mumbled.
“Are you okay?”
The child moved, pulling his leg to him and lifting himself from the yellowed-grass floor. He blinked and his face crumbled as he realized what had occurred. “Oh, no. My bike.”
His bike?
Addy looked at the torn plastic, bent frame, busted shelves and pottery shards. Yeah, she was totally concerned about the stupid bike. Precious, no, valuable, orchids lay scattered on the ground, roots dangling, stems crushed, petals bruised.
Dirt smeared the boy’s cheek, and if Addy hadn’t been so troubled by the fact the accident-prone child had nearly decapitated himself and destroyed her orchid collection, she might have thought it endearing. But she was upset...and mad...and scared the boy had nearly broken his fool neck.
Because of Audrey Page 28