A Bride Worth Waiting For

He reached out and unerringly found a hand, her hand, in the folds of the afghan. His hands were surprisingly warm considering how long he had sat out here in the cold.

She ordered herself to pull her hand away. Her mind mutinied.

Instead, she turned and looked at him.

His eyes were dark and full of mystery. And something else as he looked at her.

“It’s like time rolling back seeing you all wrapped up in that blanket.”

“Like a sausage,” she said dourly.

He showed her his teeth, straight and white and strong. “More like the Indian princess in Peter Pan. You were always the first one cold.”

“Cold hands, warm heart,” they said together.

He laughed, but she felt angry with herself, drawn into the past against her will.

“You can’t roll back time,” she told him, and this time she did snatch her hand away, tucked it safely inside the fold of her blanket, and studied her neighbor’s window across the street. New drapes. Horizontal. She decided she hated them.

“I know,” he said, and she heard something in his voice that crumpled her defenses. Weariness. Regret.

“You never came,” she whispered.

He was silent. And finally, his voice hoarse, he said “I’m sorry.”

“He was your best friend, and you never came when he died.” She turned and looked him full in the face. It was his turn to look away. “You never came. All the time he was sick.”

He didn’t apologize again.

“Why are you here now?” she demanded, sorry he was here, sorry she was so bloody glad he was here, sorry for how she had loved the feel of her hand in his.

Sorry for the way the streetlight made his features look so damnably handsome.

“I’m just back for a visit,” he said softly. “I hoped we could spend some time together.”

“I don’t think so,” she said stiffly, which, his lawyer’s mind noted, was quite different than an out and out no.

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever gone Rollerblading, have you?” Rollerblading, he thought. She’s going to think I’m crazy. But he had the agenda memorized and that was item one. He would break the other three—kite flying, a ride on a bicycle built for two, and a trip to Sylvan Lake to watch the stars from lawn chairs—to her later. Once he had his foot in the door.

She was looking at him incredulously, as if he’d lost his mind, which seemed like a distinct possibility. Seeing her under the glow of the streetlight like this, having felt briefly, the soft strength and warmth of her hand in his, he could feel time shifting, pulling him back....

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

“I think so,” he answered. Her eyes were different after all, he realized. Back then they had always had a smile in them. Now they looked angry, and a bit sad.

She didn’t look like that person who used to laugh so hard she had worried about wetting her pants.

Where did that side of a person go to?

“Look,” she said, her voice suddenly hard, “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but don’t bother. I needed you—Mark needed you—a long time ago. It’s too late, now.”

She got up in a single flounce, the blanket swinging regally around her, and fixed him with a glare that turned her from Tory to Victoria Bradbury in an instant. “Go back to where you came from. Don’t bother me anymore.”

He got up too, looked down at her, into her blazing eyes and then at the soft fullness of her lips.

He had kissed those lips. And the sweetness of them had never left him.

He gave himself a mental shake.

She was giving him a way out.

Take it and run.

He had a busy life back in Toronto. He couldn’t afford to take a week off right now. He had a gorgeous, classy girlfriend who would say yes in a minute when he got around to asking her to marry him. He wondered now what he’d been waiting for.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said softly. “Around ten.”

And he went off her porch, to her sputtered, “Don’t bother.”

He knew, just like the big bad wolf, he’d have to come at nine to catch her.

He had taken a cab, but he decided he’d walk back to his hotel, just across the river. He realized as he went, he was whistling.

And that it had been a very long time since he had whistled.

The hotel room was very posh. For a mechanic’s son he had adjusted to poshness with complete ease.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly eleven Calgary time, which meant it was close to one in the morning Eastern time. Too late to call Kathleen, and he was glad. He hadn’t told her the details of this trip, only that it was business. Which it was. Or had been. Strictly business.

Until he saw Tory.

Now he felt like Kathleen would hear it in his voice.

Hear what in your voice? he asked himself.

The pull of the past. Things that were once certain becoming uncertain.

He’d thought he and Kathleen, also a lawyer, made an excellent couple, and that he was nearly ready to make a commitment to her.

Until the exact moment Tory had opened her door.

And then nothing seemed assured anymore. Kathleen, an ex-model with her raven black hair and sapphire eyes, wavering in his mind like a mirage.

Impatiently, Adam went over to the tiny fridge and investigated the contents. He took a cola even though he knew it would probably chase away sleep until dawn streaked the sky.

When had he become so old and stable that he didn’t drink cola at night because it kept him awake?

He had seen a different man reflected back at him through Tory’s eyes. She still saw in him the man-child, who had delighted in walking close to the wild side.