These Ties That Bind

Drawing on the determination that had pulled her through every hardship she’d ever faced, Sara followed Timm in out of the frosty December night, to Christmas carols filling the air and candles winking on every table. Silver garlands hung from the rafters. Fresh cedar swags gathered with red velvet bows covered the walls. A decorated Christmas tree took pride of place on a small stage.

Chester and his wife, Missy, had invited all of Ordinary, Montana, to their first annual Christmas party and it looked as if the whole town had shown up. The sounds of conversation and merriment saturated the big room, but Sara heard little. Rem was here.

Timm went straight to the bar, to visit with his new wife, Angel, who was helping out for the night as bartender and waitress. No surprise. After all, Missy was her mom and Chester her stepfather.

Sara stepped farther into the room and, as though her heart were a compass, spotted Rem in the far corner. Ha. Some compass. It had been slipping since the summer, careening off center, along with her ability to keep focus on the direction her life had always taken and should continue to take, and all of it Rem’s fault.

She started toward him with her tender feelings locked down. She didn’t want or need to be vulnerable to this man.

Someone called out a greeting. She answered in kind, but had no idea to whom.

Rem watched her as she crossed the busy restaurant, the hot blue of his eyes a guiding light.

Don’t look at me like that.

He raised a glass of clear liquid to his lips. So, he was still drinking. What was in that glass? Gin? Vodka?

Sara, I’m a changed man, he’d said in June. I want you to see the new me.

Sitting here in the bar amid the hubbub of a happy crowd, the new Rem didn’t look much different from the old and it proved that she’d made the right decision when she’d turned him down. He’d lied about changing.

He drained the last of his drink. Her gaze followed. With that mouth, how could it not? He’d kissed her that day in June, just before proposing.

Why did that kiss still haunt her? Because it had been sweet and tempting and seductive. But he’d been sweet and tempting before, when he was a teenager, and things hadn’t worked out then. Why would anything work now?

She slid into the booth across from him.

He kept his eyes on her, but didn’t say anything.

Angel showed up beside them. “What can I get you, Sara?”

“We’ll have a couple of club sodas on ice,” Rem answered before Sara could.

Angel nodded and walked away, taking Rem’s empty glass with her.

“When you get a minute, Angel,” someone shouted. “We need another round here.”

“I’m on it, folks,” Angel called.

Sara ignored all of it, her focus on the man who had the power to shift her world’s axis. “I’m a big girl, Rem. I could have ordered my own drink.”

“I know.”

“So, you’re not drinking?”

“Not a drop.”

The scent of French fries wafted from the table beside them. Sara knew she should eat, but couldn’t. Her stomach rejected the thought, at least until she’d finished her business with Rem—whatever this business was.

“Since when have you not been drinking, Rem?”

“Since I got stabbed in the summer.”

Sara didn’t want to think about the stabbing. Instead, she concentrated on the drinking issue. “How long will it last this time?”

“Forever. Those two months last summer were an aberration, Sara, because you turned me down. I was hurting. That was the first alcohol I’d had in six years. I’m over the drinking and the disappointment.”

“Why am I here?” she asked. “You proposed. I said no. What’s left to discuss?”

Rem got out of the booth and she wondered where he was going. Before she could stop him, he sat beside her.

“What—?”

He forced her into the corner, facing him with her back against the wall, and laid his warm hands on her thighs. She knew she should protest, should push him out of the booth because he was too big and too close, but her body craved him even as her mind rallied against him.

“Damn it, Rem.”

He turned toward her.

“I—” Whatever she was going to say died on her lips, the festive crowd faded away and they might as well have been alone in the room. Rem stared at her with brilliant blue eyes framed by dark lashes, reflections of the white lights hanging from the ceiling shining in his pupils.

Black hair fell across his forehead and she almost reached out to push it back, managing to stop before making a fool of herself.

He smelled like cedar and pine. Maybe he’d helped Chester decorate today.

Amy Grant sang about having a merry little Christmas. Let your heart be light. But Sara’s wasn’t. It was dark and scared and off-kilter. She wanted her sanity back, her old life before Rem had proposed.

“Why?” she asked, as though he could know her thoughts. “Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”

“I wanted to make things right.”

“They already were right. My life was perfect.”

“Nothing was right between us, Sara.” He ran a finger down her cheek and she jerked away.

“Keep your hands to yourself.”

He let his hand fall to the table. “Nothing’s been right since that night in the hospital after Finn was born. I rejected you both. I was scared and immature and dead wrong. I should have married you then.”

“For Finn. Because I got pregnant.” It wasn’t a question. “So, more than eleven years later you proposed out of guilt?”

“No!” Rem slapped his palm on the table. “Are you blind? I love you.” He hauled her close and wrapped his fingers around her nape. Before she could protest, his lips were on hers and there was nothing sweet or seductive about this kiss.

It was carnal. Heat-drenched. Laden with so much anger and frustration, Sara could taste it. She felt the same things herself.

Her body begged her to give in to the kiss, but she wouldn’t, because that darkness inside her that she’d felt toward Rem for years had grown bigger in the past six months. Since June. Since that devastating marriage proposal. She didn’t know where the darkness came from or what it was, but it was profound and terrified her to her toes. Something that had been hidden for a long time had worked its way too close to the surface. A flood of emotion threatened to pour out of her and all she could do was stick her finger in the hole, resist the pressure and hang on for dear life.

She thought she heard someone whisper, “Wow, it’s about time.”