AWOL Bride, page 14
So this time she did end that scorching kiss to whisper, “We can’t do this...here...”
She should have just said no rather than pretending the location was the obstacle. But she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him outright. Not when she wanted him so much.
“Come out to the farm with me, then,” he said in a voice ragged with desire.
Maicy shook her head. “No,” she said more definitively. “There’s already enough to answer for...”
“I don’t give a damn!” he said, sounding desperate to have her.
Maicy laughed a little wryly, understanding. Still she said, “I do. And this is the—”
“Yeah, I know,” Conor complained, “this is part of the church.”
“And I’m the guest of the minister,” she added with a sinner’s laugh. “We have to behave.”
Conor groaned. “I’m really missing the cabin now,” he muttered.
But he gave her breast one last squeeze, readjusted her bra with expertise he hadn’t had as a teenager before taking his hand out from under her sweater.
That triggered a moan of regret from Maicy that escaped on its own and prompted Conor to recapture both her mouth and her breast on top of her clothes again.
With some things slightly more in control, Maicy indulged and for a while they went on kissing and caressing as they had as teenagers.
Until her control began to waffle and she knew she had to hold her ground.
So once more she stopped things.
“You have to go,” she told him.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, let his head fall back and said a “Yeah, okay...” that was full of complaint.
Then he sighed, let go of her and sat up.
“Out into the cold again,” he said, getting to his feet.
Maicy stood, too, waiting while he put his coat on again and then walking with him to the door.
Where he grabbed her, pulled her into his arms again and kissed her as if she was his to kiss before he ended it this time.
“Jane said that there’s a dance tomorrow night in the school gym to get people out and celebrate the end of the town being blocked off,” he said then. “Let’s go.”
Maicy made a face. “I don’t know...”
“Come on. I’ll be your shield against whatever comes your way.”
She laughed. He was big enough to be a pretty good one.
“We’ve been even more cooped up than anyone around here. We deserve it. And if anybody should be hiding out in shame it should be Gary and Candace—you should be holding your head up high.”
None of that persuaded her.
What did was the excuse of being with Conor.
He kissed her again and then she heard herself say, “Okay.”
That made him smile and her drown in the glory of that face and those eyes of his. “Good,” he said. “Charge your phone and I’ll let you know tomorrow what happens with your car and what time I’ll pick you up for the dance.”
Maicy nodded, didn’t reject yet another kiss and then watched him walk out the door.
Leaving her in the blast of cold air, knowing she was playing with fire.
Chapter Eight
“Gary...”
“Hi, Maicy...”
Alone in the minister’s guesthouse on Saturday morning, Maicy had done a lot of pacing, dreading this very conversation but knowing it needed to happen.
Running away from the wedding had effectively canceled their planned commitment, but it hadn’t canceled the relationship they’d had. She couldn’t just leave things the way they were. There needed to be closure of some kind. And on a purely practical level, there were details that had to be sorted through about what to do with his belongings at her house in Denver, and—most important to Maicy—the fact that since she’d opted to use her grandmother’s wedding ring as her own, Gary still had it and she needed that back.
So after fretting over it all, she’d finally shored up her courage and texted Gary.
We should talk. And I need the ring.
Gary had not responded.
But now it was midafternoon and here he was at her door.
“Did you get my text?” she asked flatly.
He pulled the ring box out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Can I come in?”
Maicy stepped out of the doorway so he could enter.
He was a not-terribly-tall, boyishly attractive man of slight build, with pale brown hair. And he couldn’t hold a candle to Conor’s swarthy good looks or the masculine, imposing presence that commanded any room.
Gary had come up short by comparison when they were all teenagers, and now? He definitely came up short now as he took off his coat.
After meticulously folding it and laying it over the arm of the sofa he looked at her, something sheepish in his plain brown eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He’d been so involved in kissing his former girlfriend at the wedding that Maicy hadn’t been sure if he was aware that he’d been caught—though perhaps the photographer had clued him in once he’d detached his tongue from his ex’s tonsils.
She raised her chin at him but didn’t say anything, wondering what exactly he was apologizing for.
“I know you saw us...Candace and me...kissing...”
So that was the reason for the apology.
“I don’t know how long you were there,” he went on. “But when you grabbed the cake box and ran out...”
Had they been making out a long time before that? Maicy wondered.
But she discovered that it didn’t really matter to her. Because standing there, looking at this man she’d almost married, her dominant emotions were still relief that she hadn’t married him, and true certainty that they shouldn’t have ever gotten engaged in the first place.
“I want you to know,” he was saying, “that I haven’t let you take the rap for the wedding not happening. I didn’t tell anybody that you ran out. I said that we talked and both decided that maybe we didn’t want to go through with it—”
“So you also didn’t own up to what you did,” she pointed out without rancor, just glad that while it was still embarrassing, she might not be in line for any scorn.
“I didn’t, but...” He hesitated and she could see clearly that he didn’t want to say what he was about to. But he did anyway. “Candace and I are back together so... Well, everybody knows that by now, and people are figuring that—”
“You dumped me for her,” Maicy finished for him.
He shrugged, looking spineless to her.
“Basically that is what you did, I guess.” But she’d been thinking more about her own actions and running out on the wedding and having to answer for that.
“It isn’t that I dumped you... What happened with Candace just...happened. It took us both by surprise. Sparks flew and...”
Sparks...
Maicy had more of an understanding of that than she wished she did. Sparks were definitely flying with Conor no matter how hard she tried to douse or ignore them.
And here she was thinking about Conor even as Gary was talking.
She refocused on him but it took some effort.
“Candace realized that she’d turned me down because she’d been afraid, not because she didn’t love me and...” He cut himself off, likely before saying that he loved Candace, too.
“I do care for you, Maicy,” he continued when he’d regrouped. “When you and I met in Denver...it was like a little piece of home—comfortable and nice. And it was so easy to be with you.”
That’s what he’d been to her, too—comfortable, easy, uncomplicated. “But that isn’t a reason to get married—for comfort,” she contributed. She might have believed that before, but not anymore.
“And I think maybe there was some of that in it for you, too,” he said tentatively.
She hadn’t thought he’d realized how lukewarm her feelings for him were but she didn’t deny it now. “I guess it’s just a good thing you and Candace met up again before we got to the altar,” she said.
“I’m staying in Northbridge,” he confessed then. “I’m going back to working in my dad’s accounting office. You know I didn’t do well in Denver. I guess I’m not a city boy. But I’m really, really sorry for the way things ended...”
“Don’t be,” she said, meaning it. How could she fault him too much after what had been happening between her and Conor?
“I’ll pay you back for what you spent on the wedding. It’ll have to be in installments, but—”
Maicy shrugged that off, feeling a bit guilty for having accepted his proposal in the first place when she’d known her feelings for him weren’t strong enough for marriage. If the price she had to pay was covering the cost of the failed wedding, she could live with that. “Do you want to come to Denver to get your things or—”
“If I never set eyes on Denver again it’ll be okay with me. Could you pack them up and ship them to me? I’ll pay for that, too, of course.”
“Sure,” Maicy said, fine with the prospect of not having him at her house again.
“So are we okay?” he asked then.
“We are,” she answered, happy to have this behind her.
With nothing more to say, Gary put his coat back on, buttoning it up. “I heard it was Conor Madison at the Dales’ cabin with you. Did you patch things up with him?”
The idea clearly didn’t cause any more jealousy in Gary than the thought of him with Candace had caused in Maicy.
We really weren’t meant for each other, she thought.
“I don’t know that I’d say we patched anything up. But we did find some...middle ground, maybe.”
“It’d be something if the two of you got back together, too, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s never going to happen,” she said. Maybe too quickly. Too forcefully. She and Conor weren’t going to get back together, she insisted to herself. Regardless of the sparks, regardless of whatever it was they were doing, that wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t letting her guard down that far.
“Well, I only wish you the best, Maicy,” Gary said then.
“You, too,” she responded.
He stayed looking at her for another moment, smiling the smile of someone saying goodbye to an old friend.
“Thanks for everything you did for me—giving me a place to live, trying to find me a job...everything,” he added.
Especially for running out on the wedding...
It was something that went through Maicy’s mind as if he’d said it and made her smile a little, too.
“Sure,” she said, walking with him to the door to let him out.
Once he was gone, once the awkward meeting was over, she breathed a genuine sigh of relief—thinking that sometimes things worked out the way they were supposed to.
For Gary and Candace.
There was no way she would put Conor rescuing her into that category.
Even if she did suddenly have the oddest sense that she was a little freer to go to that dance tonight with him.
Free enough to look forward to it.
A lot.
And maybe a little freer to have what everything in her had been crying out for since she’d made him stop last night...
* * *
Maicy had arrived in Northbridge only two days before her wedding and had been swept into last-minute details and preparations. In the course of that she’d encountered several people she’d known before, but not so many that being in the small town again had had the air of a reunion. The end-of-the-storm dance did.
It was held in the hastily decorated high school gym and included a potluck dinner to go along with dancing to the music of a local garage band that sometimes played at the town’s single bar.
When she and Conor stepped into the doorway of the gym Maicy was met with a better reception than she’d feared. Someone good-naturedly shouted, “It’s our runaway bride!”
So much for Gary thinking he’d convinced anyone that they’d just reached an amicable parting, Maicy thought. She shouldn’t have believed that anything got past the eyes and ears of Northbridge.
But still everyone laughed at the runaway bride greeting, there was some applause and many shouts of “Welcome back!” and Maicy decided the best thing to do was play along. So she smiled and took a theatrical bow.
And that was it. From then on the incident seemed to be forgotten and the reunion-like air prevailed, making the evening fun.
It didn’t even bother Maicy that Gary and Candace came with his family. She was reasonably sure that being there herself with Conor made all the difference in that. And while there were a few comments along the lines of Maicy-and-Conor-back-together-again, they both sidestepped them.
They shared a table with Rickie—who had to use two chairs so he could elevate his broken leg on one of them—and his family, including wife, Jane, and his three kids.
Jane doted on her husband in a way that made it clear that her long-ago crush on Conor was just that—long-ago and over with—so that didn’t prove uncomfortable. Plus there was an endless stream of interruptions as people came to say hello and catch up with Maicy and with Conor.
And there was dancing.
Though Maicy did not dance with Conor.
On the way into the school she’d told him that she didn’t want there to be anything between them that would set tongues wagging tonight and Conor honored that. They kept a friendly distance from each other, just two single people attending the same function. There weren’t any romantic overtures or any exchanges of private conversation. Maicy didn’t even pay strict attention when he told Rickie and Jane the things that he’d told her on the way to the dance—that he had been able to speak directly to his brother and while Declan was still very ill, the antibiotics were helping. That Declan had insisted that since Conor had come all this way already, he should go to Denver to at least spend a day with their sister before he returned to Declan’s bedside.
She’d also left it to Conor to tell them that both of their vehicles had been dug out of the snow and brought to the farm, where the local mechanic had gone to check them out. That the rental SUV was fine but Maicy’s accident had left her car in need of a part the mechanic didn’t have. The mechanic had done a temporary fix that he wasn’t sure would hold to get Maicy all the way to Denver. But he’d shown Conor how to redo the fix if it failed, so Conor was going to follow her in his rental to make sure she made it safely before seeing his sister. And not even through all of that did he speak directly to her, so everything seemed completely innocent.
Until the last dance.
Just as the band announced it, Maicy’s high school frog-dissecting-partner stepped up to ask for his second dance of the night, and Conor inserted himself between him and Maicy.
He was friendly but firm when he said, “Sorry, this one is all mine.” Then he held out his hand to her. And she didn’t hesitate before accepting it. Despite the ground rules she’d laid down as they’d arrived tonight, she’d spent every minute of what had turned out to be a pleasant event regretting the rules she’d put in place between them. Wishing with everything in her that he would just fold her into his arms and let her have him all to herself.
Which was what finally happened on the dance floor.
Except that he stood military-straight and tall and stiff, and held her at a respectable distance that felt as if there was still a mile between them.
But at least dancing gave her the excuse to focus solely on him, on the fine features of his face, to peer up into cobalt blue eyes that looked at her in a way no one else ever had.
Even as he smiled blandly and said for her ears only, “This is killing me.”
Maicy laughed. “What is?”
“You know what is—acting like I hardly know you’re here, watching you dance with other guys, keeping my hands off you...” His hand at her waist and the one that held hers both gripped her more firmly—something she felt but no one would be able to see.
“Tonight has been nice, though,” she said as if she hadn’t been going out of her mind wanting more of him. “It’s almost made me sorry that I haven’t been back to visit here until now. That I didn’t stay in touch with anyone. I’ve actually been feeling a little homesick for Northbridge tonight.”
“You could move back,” he suggested.
Maicy laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far. But who knows, I might not skip the next class reunion.”
“Surprisingly, I made it to mine. I just happened to be on leave and visiting my folks when it happened. But you skipped yours?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You didn’t just skip it, you avoided it like the plague,” he guessed from her tone.
“They couldn’t have paid me to come,” she confirmed.
“Why? You never hated Northbridge—in fact, back when you proposed, you said that we could have a good life here if we stayed instead of heading to college.”
“I believed that,” she said. “But then you left and that last year here, after losing my mom...you...” she added quietly, “all I wanted was to put this place behind me and never look back, and that’s what I did. I guess the same way I chose to forget that we’d ever had anything good together before the split, I forgot that there was anything good about Northbridge, too. Tonight I remembered, though—it’s not a bad place and neither are the people in it. I was happy here before things fell apart.”
“Think you would have been happy if you’d stayed?” he asked.
“Not then.” Because she honestly didn’t think she would have been happy in the small town without him. But she wasn’t willing to say that.
Conor nodded as if he understood anyway. “A lot of people have stayed,” he said, taking his eyes off her to glance around the gym before his attention was all on her once more. “They married, had kids... Hard for me to imagine some of the couple combinations that have happened over the years. Harder still to see some of these guys as parents—”
