Ten
The day of the wedding was drawing closer and Danielle was drawing closer to a potential nervous breakdown. She was happy, in a way. When Joshua kissed her, when he took her to bed, when he spent the whole night holding her in his strong arms, everything felt great.
It was the in-between hours. The quiet moments she spent with herself, rocking Riley in that gray time before dawn. That was when she pulled those bad feelings out and began to examine them.
She had two days until the wedding, and her dress had been professionally altered to fit her—a glorious, heavy satin gown with a deep V in the back and buttons that ran down the full skirt—and if for no other reason than that, she couldn’t back out.
The thought of backing out sent a burst of pain blooming through her chest. Unfurling, spreading, expanding. No. She didn’t want to leave Joshua. No matter the strange, imbalanced feelings between them, she wanted to be with him. She felt almost desperate to be with him.
She looked over at him now, sitting in the driver’s seat of what was still the nicest car she had ever touched, much less ridden in, as they pulled up to the front of his parents’ house.
Sometimes looking at him hurt. And sometimes looking away from him hurt. Sometimes everything hurt. The need to be near him, the need for distance.
Maybe she really had lost her mind.
It took her a moment to realize she was still sitting motionless in the passenger seat, and Joshua had already put the car in Park and retrieved Riley from the back seat. He didn’t bother to bring the car seat inside this time. Instead, he wrapped the baby in a blanket and cradled him in his arms.
Oh, that hurt her in a whole different way.
Joshua was sexy. All the time. There was no question about that. But the way he was with Riley... Well, she was surprised that any woman who walked by him when he was holding Riley didn’t fall immediately at his feet.
She nearly did. Every damned time.
She followed him to the front door, looking down to focus on the way the gravel crunched beneath her boots—new boots courtesy of Joshua that didn’t have holes in them, and didn’t need three pairs of socks to keep her toes from turning into icicles—because otherwise she was going to get swallowed up by the nerves that were riding through her.
His mother had insisted on making a prewedding dinner for them, and this was Danielle’s second chance to make a first impression. Now it was real and she felt an immense amount of pressure to be better than she was, rather than simply sliding into the lowest expectation people like his family had of someone like her, as she’d done before.
She looked over at him when she realized he was staring at her. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.
Then he bent down and kissed her. She closed her eyes, her breath rushing from her lungs as she gave herself over to his kiss.
That, of course, was when the front door opened.
“You’re here!”
Nancy Grayson actually looked happy to see them both, and even happier that she had caught them making out on the front porch.
Danielle tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Thank you for doing this,” she said, jarred by the change in her role, but desperate to do a good job.
“Of course,” the older woman said. “Now, let me hold my grandbaby.”
Those words made Danielle pause, made her freeze up. Made her want to cry. Actually, she was crying. Tears were rolling down her cheeks without even giving her a chance to hold them back.
Joshua’s mother frowned. “What’s wrong, honey?”
Danielle swallowed hard. “I didn’t ever expect that he would have grandparents. That he would have a family.” She took a deep breath. “I mean like this. It means a lot to me.”
Nancy took Riley from Joshua’s arms. But then she reached out and put her hand on Danielle’s shoulder. “He’s not the only one who has a family. You do too.”
Throughout the evening Danielle was stunned by the warm acceptance of Joshua’s entire family. By the way his sister-in-law, Mia, made an effort to get to know her, and by the complete absence of antagonism coming from his younger sister, Faith.
But what really surprised her was when Joshua’s father came and sat next to her on the couch during dessert. Joshua was engaged in conversation with his brothers across the room while Mia, Faith and Joshua’s mother were busy playing with Riley.
“I knew you would be good for him,” Mr. Grayson said.
Danielle looked up at the older man. “A wife, you mean,” she said, her voice soft. She didn’t know why she had challenged his assertion, why she’d done anything but blandly agree. Except she knew she wasn’t the woman he would have chosen for his son, and she didn’t want him to pretend otherwise.
He shook his head. “I’m not talking about the ad. I know what he did. I know that he placed another ad looking for somebody he could use to get back at me. But the minute I met you, I knew you were exactly what he needed. Somebody unexpected. Somebody who would push him out of his comfort zone. It’s real now, isn’t it?”
It’s real now.
Those words echoed inside of her. What did real mean? They were really getting married, but was their relationship real?
He didn’t love her. He wanted to fix her. And somehow, through fixing her, he believed he would fix himself.
Maybe that wasn’t any less real than what most people had. Maybe it was just more honest.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “It’s real.”
“I know that my meddling upset him. I’m not stupid. And I know he felt like I wasn’t listening to him. But he has been so lost in all that pain, and I knew... I knew he just needed to love somebody again. He thought everything I did, everything I said was because I don’t understand a life that goes beyond what we have here.” He gestured around the living room—small, cozy, essentially a stereotype of the happy, rural family. “But that’s not it. Doesn’t matter what a life looks like, a man needs love. And that man needs love more than most. He always was stubborn, difficult. Never could get him to talk about much of anything. He needs someone he can talk to. Someone who can see the good in him so he can start to see it too.”
“Love,” Danielle said softly, the word a revelation she had been trying to avoid.
That was why it hurt. When she looked at him. When she was with him. When she looked away from him. When he was gone.
That was the intense, building pressure inside her that felt almost too large for her body to contain.
It was every beautiful, hopeful feeling she’d had since meeting him.
She loved him.
And he didn’t love her. That absence was the cause of the dark disquiet she’d felt sometimes. He wanted to use her as a substitute for his girlfriend, the one he thought he had failed.
“Every man needs love,” Todd said. “Successful businessmen and humble farmers. Trust me. It’s the thing that makes life run. The thing that keeps you going when crops don’t grow and the weather doesn’t cooperate. The thing that pulls you up from the dark pit when you can’t find the light. I’m glad he found his light.”
But he hadn’t.
She had found hers.
For him, she was a Band-Aid he was trying to put over a wound that would end up being fatal if he didn’t do something to treat it. If he didn’t do something more than simply cover it up.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t...”
“Are you ready to go home?”
Danielle looked up and saw Joshua standing in front of her. And those words...
Him asking if she wanted to go home, meaning to his house, with him, like that house belonged to her. Like he belonged to her...
Well, his question allowed her to erase all the doubts that had just washed through her. Allowed her to put herself back in the fantasy she’d been living in since she’d agreed to his proposal.
“Sure,” she said, pushing herself up from the couch.
She watched as he said goodbye to his family, as he collected Riley and slung the diaper bag over his shoulder. Yes. She loved him.
She was an absolute and total lost cause for him. In love. Something she had thought she could never be.
The only problem was, she was in love alone.
* * *
It was his wedding day.
Thankfully, only his family would be in attendance. A small wedding in Copper Ridge’s Baptist church, which was already decorated for Christmas and so saved everyone time and hassle.
Which was a good thing, since he had already harassed local baker Alison Donnelly to the point where she was ready to assault him with a spatula over his demands related to a Pop-Tart cake.
It was the one thing Danielle had said she wanted, and even if she had been joking, he wanted to make it happen for her.
He liked doing things for her. Whether it was teaching her how to ride horses, pleasuring her in the bedroom or fixing her nice meals, she always expressed a deep and sweet gratitude that transcended anything he had ever experienced before.
Her appreciation affected him. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t.
She affected him.
He walked into the empty church, looking up at the steeply pitched roof and the thick, curved beams of wood that ran the length of it, currently decked with actual boughs of holly.
Everything looked like it was set up and ready, all there was to do now was wait for the ceremony to start.
Suddenly, the doors that led to the fellowship hall opened wide and in burst Danielle. If he had thought she looked ethereal before, it was nothing compared to how she looked at this moment. Her dark hair was swept back in a loose bun, sprigs of baby’s breath woven into it, some tendrils hanging around her face.
And the dress...
The bodice was fitted, showing off her slim figure, and the skirt billowed out around her, shimmering with each and every step. She was holding a bouquet of dark red roses, her lips painted a deep crimson to match.
“I didn’t think I was supposed to see you until the wedding?” It was a stupid thing to say, but it was about the only thing he could think of.
“Yes. I know. I was here getting ready, and I was going to hide until everything started. Stay in the dressing room.” She shook her head. “I need to talk to you, though. And I was already wearing this dress, and all of the layers of underwear that you have to wear underneath it to make it do this.” She kicked her foot out, causing the skirt to flare.
“To make it do what?”
“You need a crinoline. Otherwise your skirt is like a wilted tulip. That’s something I learned when the wedding store lady came this morning to help me get ready. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He wasn’t sure if her clarification was a relief or not. He wasn’t an expert on the subject of crinolines, but it seemed like an innocuous subject. Anything else that had drawn her out of hiding before the ceremony probably wasn’t.
“Then talk.”
She took a deep breath, wringing her hands around the stem of her bouquet. “Okay. I will talk. I’m going to. In just a second.”
He shook his head. “Danielle Kelly, you stormed into my house with a baby and pretty much refused to leave until I agreed to give you what you wanted—don’t act like you’re afraid of me now.”
“That was different. I wasn’t afraid of losing you then.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes liquid. “I’m afraid right now.”
“You?” He couldn’t imagine this brave, wonderfully strong woman being afraid of anything.
“I’ve never had anything that I wanted to keep. Or I guess, I never did before Riley. Once I had him, the thought of losing him was one of the things that scared me. It was the first time I’d ever felt anything like it. And now...it’s the same with you. Do you know what you have in common with Riley?”
“The occasional tantrum?” His chest was tight. He knew that was the wrong thing to say, knew it was wrong to make light of the situation when she was so obviously serious and trembling.
“Fair enough,” she said. Then she took a deep breath. “I love you. That’s what you have in common with Riley. That’s why I’m afraid of losing you. Because you matter. Because you more than matter. You’re...everything.”
Her words were like a sucker punch straight to the gut. “Danielle...”
He was such an ass. Of course she thought she was in love with him. He was her first lover, the first man to ever give her an orgasm. He had offered her a place to live and he was promising a certain amount of financial security, the kind she’d never had before.
Of course such a vulnerable, lonely woman would confuse those feelings of gratitude with love.
She frowned. “Don’t use that tone with me. I know you’re about to act like you’re the older and wiser of the two of us. You’re about to explain why I don’t understand what I’m talking about. Remember when you told me about your penis?”
He looked over his shoulder, then back at Danielle. “Okay, I’m not usually a prude, but we are in a church.”
She let out an exasperated sound. “Sorry. But the thing is, remember when you told me that because you had been indiscriminate you knew the difference between common, garden-variety sex—”
“Danielle, Pastor John is around here somewhere.”
She straightened her arms at her sides, the flowers in her hand trembling with her unsuppressed irritation. “Who cares? This is our life. Anyway, what little I’ve read in the Bible was pretty honest about people. Everything I’m talking about—it’s all part of being a person. I’m not embarrassed about any of it.” She tilted her chin up, looking defiant. “My point is, I don’t need you telling me what you think I feel. I have spent so much time alone, so much time without love, that I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it might feel like. About what it might mean.”
He lowered his voice and took a step toward her. “Danielle, feeling cared for isn’t the same as love. Pleasure isn’t the same as love.”
“I know that!” Her words echoed in the empty sanctuary. “Trust me. If I thought being taken care of was the same thing as love, I probably would have repeated my mother’s pattern for my entire life. But I didn’t. I waited. I waited until I found a man who was worth being an idiot over. Here I am in a wedding dress yelling at the man I’m supposed to marry in an hour, wanting him to understand that I love him. You can’t be much more of an idiot than that, Joshua.”
“It’s okay if you love me,” he said, even though it made his stomach feel tight. Even though it wasn’t okay at all. “But I don’t know what you expect me to do with that.”
She stamped her foot, the sound ricocheting around them. “Love me back, dammit.”
He felt like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed it hard. “Danielle, I can’t do that. I can’t. And honestly, it’s better if you don’t feel that way about me. I think we can have a partnership. I’m good with those. I’m good with making agreements, shaking hands, holding up my end of the deal. But feelings, all that stuff in between... I would tell you to call Shannon and ask her about that, but I don’t think she has a phone right now, because I’m pretty sure she’s homeless.”
“You can’t take the blame for that. You can’t take the blame for her mistakes. I mean, I guess you can, you’ve been doing a great job of it for the past five years. And I get that. You lost a child. And then you lost your fiancée, the woman you loved. And you’re holding on to that pain to try to insulate yourself from more.”
He shook his head. “That’s not it. It would be damned irresponsible of me not to pay attention to what I did to her. To what being with me can do to a woman.” He cleared his throat. “She needed something that I couldn’t give. I did love her—you’re right. But it wasn’t enough.”
“You’re wrong about that too,” she said. “You loved her enough. But sometimes, Joshua, you can love somebody and love somebody, but unless they do something with that love it goes fallow. You can sow the seeds all you want, but if they don’t water them, if they don’t nurture them, you can’t fix it for them.”
“I didn’t do enough,” he said, tightening his jaw, hardening his heart.
“Maybe you were difficult. Maybe you did some wrong things. But at some point, she needed to reach out and tell you that. But she didn’t. She shut down. Love can be everything, but it can’t all be coming from one direction. The other person has to accept it. You can’t love someone into being whole. They have to love themselves enough to want to be whole. And they have to love you enough to lay down their pain, to lay down their selfishness, and change—even when it’s hard.”
“I can’t say she was selfish,” he said, his voice rough. “I can’t say she did anything wrong.”
“What about my mother? God knows she had it hard, Joshua. I can’t imagine having a baby at fourteen. It’s hard enough having one at twenty-two. She has a lot of excuses. And they’re valid. She went through hell, but the fact of the matter is she’s choosing to go through it at this point. She has spent her whole life searching for the kind of love that either one of her children would have given her for nothing. I couldn’t have loved her more. Riley is a baby, completely and totally dependent on whoever might take care of him. Could we have loved her more? Could we have made her stay?”
“That’s different.”
She stamped her foot again. “It is fucking not!”
He didn’t bother to yell at her about them being in a church again. “I understand that all of this is new to you,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “And honestly? It feels good, selfishly good, to know you see all this in me. It’s tempting to lie to you, Danielle. But I can’t do that. What I offered you is the beginning and end of what I have. Either you accept our partnership or you walk away.”
She wouldn’t.
She needed him too much. That was the part that made him a monster.
He knew he had all the power here, and he knew she would ultimately see things his way. She would have to.
And then what? Would she wither away living with him? Wanting something that he refused to give her?
The situation looked too familiar.
He tightened his jaw, steeling himself for her response.
What he didn’t expect was to find a bouquet of flowers tossed at him. He caught them, and her petite shoulders lifted up, then lowered as she let out a shuddering breath. “I guess you’re the next one to get married, then. Congratulations. You caught the flowers.”
“Of course I damn well am,” he said, tightening his fist around the roses, ignoring the thorn that bit into his palm. “Our wedding is in an hour.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. Then she turned and ran out of the room, pausing only to kick her shoes off and leave them lying on the floor like she was Cinderella.
And he just stood there, holding on to the flowers, a trickle of blood from the thorn dripping down his wrist as he watched the first ray of light, the first bit of hope he’d had in years, disappear from his life.
Of course, her exit didn’t stop him from standing at the altar and waiting. Didn’t stop him from acting like the wedding would continue without a hitch.
He knew she hadn’t gone far, mostly because Janine was still at the church with Riley, and while Danielle’s actions were painful and mystifying at the moment, he knew her well enough to know she wasn’t going to leave without Riley.
But the music began to play and no bride materialized.
There he was, a giant dick in a suit, waiting for a woman who wasn’t going to come.
His family looked at each other, trading expressions filled with a mix of pity and anger. But it was his father who spoke up. “What in hell did you do, boy?”
A damned good question.
Unfortunately, he knew the answer to it.
“Why are you blaming him?” Faith asked, his younger sister defending him to the bitter end, even when he didn’t deserve it.
“Because that girl loves him,” his father said, his tone full of confidence, “and she wouldn’t have left him standing there if he hadn’t done something.”
Pastor John raised his hands, the gesture clearly meant to placate. “If there are any doubts about a marriage, it’s definitely best to stop and consider those doubts, as it is a union meant for life.”
“And she was certain,” Joshua’s father said. “Which means he messed it up.”
“When two people love each other...” The rest of Pastor John’s words were swallowed up by Joshua’s family, but those first six hit Joshua and pierced him right in the chest.
When two people love each other.
Two people. Loving each other.
Love going both ways. Giving and taking.
And he understood then. He really understood.
Why she couldn’t submit to living in a relationship that she thought might be one-sided. Because she had already endured it once. Because she’d already lived it with her mother.
Danielle was willing to walk away from everything he’d offered her. From the house, from the money, from the security. Even from his family. Because for some reason his love meant that much to her.
That realization nearly brought him to his knees.
He had thought his love insufficient. Had thought it destructive. And as she had stood there, pleading with him to love her back, he had thought his love unimportant.
But to her, it was everything.
How dare he question her feelings for him? Love, to Danielle, was more than a ranch and good sex. And she had proved it, because she was clearly willing to sacrifice the ranch and the sex to have him return her love.
“It was my fault,” he said, his voice sounding like a stranger’s as it echoed through the room. “She said she loved me. And I told her I couldn’t love her back.”
“Well,” Faith said, “not even I can defend you now, dumbass.”
His mother looked stricken, his father angry. His brothers seemed completely unsurprised.
“You do love her, though,” his father said, his tone steady. “So why did you tell her you didn’t?”
Of course, Joshua realized right then something else she’d been right about. He was afraid.
Afraid of wanting this life he really had always dreamed of but had written off because he messed up his first attempt so badly. Afraid because the first time had been so painful, had gone so horribly wrong.
“Because I’m a coward,” he said. “But I’m not going to be one anymore.”
He walked down off the stage and to the front pew, picking up the bouquet. “I’m going to go find her,” he said. “I know she’s not far, since Riley is here.”
Suddenly, he knew exactly where she was.
“Do you have any other weddings today, Pastor?”
Pastor John shook his head. “No. This is the only thing I have on my schedule today. Not many people get married on a Thursday.”
“Hopefully, if I don’t mess this up, we’ll need you.”