Loving You Always (18 page)

W
alsh ignored the flicker of guilt he still felt every time he saw the man who had been his best friend. He’d never felt more ruthless. The killer instinct his father had so carefully cultivated in him over the years flared to life. There would be no doubt in Cam’s mind that Kerris was his, and that Walsh intended to keep her. Walsh had allowed his feelings to be swept under a rug before, disregarded. He had watched his future taken out of his control, out of his hands. Not this time. He was in control, and he wanted every card on the table.

“Walsh, wait.” Kerris stepped out of his arms and crossed over to Cam, dragging him over to stand beside Walsh.

“The last conversation I had alone with Kristeene was about the two of you.” Kerris looked from one face to the other. Walsh figured his expression was about as rigidly expressionless as Cam’s. “She asked me to make a promise. That I would do everything I could to reconcile her boys.”

Walsh and Cam looked away from each other. Walsh knew they both still wrestled with the grief that might always be there for his mother, the woman who had shaped both their lives so significantly.

“She died believing I would make good on that promise,” Kerris continued, eyes watering and mouth trembling. “Cam, Walsh and I have both asked you to forgive us for not being honest with you when we realized how we felt. I should have faced my feelings instead of avoiding them.”

Walsh watched Cam’s face soften only by degrees during Kerris’s speech. He had no idea how Cam was taking it.

“Cam, you’ve apologized for leaving after Amalie, and I understand why you did that.” Kerris stood between them like a small bridge. “I forgive you. I know it’s not possible to ever completely clean our slate with each other, but will you try? Will the two of you try to be…friends again?”

The two men faced each other like sparring partners, their weapons never far from reach. The betrayal, disillusion, and hurt was too deep, too real, to evaporate. Walsh glanced from Kerris’s pleading face to Cam’s impassive expression. Walsh remembered his mother knocking their heads together when they’d fought as adolescent boys and forcing them to apologize to each other. To make up and go back and play. It wasn’t that simple anymore. He wished it were, wished that one day they could help Kerris fulfill that deathbed promise, but today wasn’t that day. He could see the same regret on Cam’s face.

“I think I should go.” Cam’s smile had been waxed on. “I left something for you in the office. Something that was yours.”

“Oh. Okay.” Kerris’s eyes asked the question Cam obviously wasn’t going to answer. A solitary tear streaked down her cheek. “Tell me we can work this out.”

“Kerris, you don’t need my blessing to marry Walsh.”

“It’s not that.” She reached for Cam’s hand. “I have to make this right.”

“And maybe one day, it will be.” Cam’s eyes reflected the same pain Walsh strained against. “For all of us. But for today, this is as right as it’s gonna get. I have to meet Sebastian at the gallery. We’re heading back to Paris.”

“Cam, please don’t leave like this.” Kerris swiped at the tears still trailing down her face.

“Sweetie, this is the best I can do.” Cam gave her small hand a squeeze.

“Cam, I know this is hard,” Walsh said, finding it harder than he had thought it would be.

“Hard?” Cam matched the tightness in Walsh’s voice. “This is more than hard. I lost my wife, my best friend, and my baby girl. It’s hell.”

“I’m sorry.” Walsh was surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice.

“I think I believe you,” Cam said, some of the bitterness flaking away from his voice. “And maybe one day that’ll be enough, but not today, brother.”

Kerris grabbed Cam’s sleeve when he turned to leave.

“Cam, think about what I said before. Maybe talking to someone.”

Cam rolled his eyes and peeled her fingers away from his arm. “No.”

Without another word, he passed through the cottage door, closing it noiselessly behind him.

Kerris stared at the closed door before turning her concern on Walsh.

“I’m worried about him.”

“Cam’s a survivor. He’ll be fine. Eventually.”

“But Walsh, he needs help. He—”

“Baby, the same way we have to sort our own shit out, so does he. We’ve done all we can do to make our part up to him, short of not being together. And that’s not going to happen, so we wait.”

He pulled her into his arms, drawing his first clear breath since he’d left for Tokyo.

“When he’s ready, we’ll be there for him. If he’ll let us.”

“You want that?” She rested her hand on his shoulder. “To reconcile with him?”

“I don’t know.” He gave her his real answer. “What I do know is that I didn’t come here to talk about Cam.”

“Really? Is that so?” The look she offered teased him, but Walsh couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t even force himself to smile, because the weight of the next few moments pressed into his chest until his heart hurt.

“I want to tell you a story.” Walsh steadied his breathing and locked his knees in place because they were actually shaking. “A story my mom told me right before she died about my great-great-great-great-grandmother, who was actually a slave.”

Kerris blinked several times, processing the surprising information.

“I know it’s hard to believe looking at me, but she was an eighth black.” He studied her face with a wry smile. “People were probably always trying to figure out what she was, too. I guess you know what that’s like.”

Kerris looked away, but a small smile tugged at the soft line of her mouth.

“She was the master’s mistress.” Walsh grimaced before continuing. “She had two of his children. Those are my ancestors. But the story my mother told was about Great-Grandma Maddie and Asher, not her and the master.”

“Asher?” Kerris looked up at Walsh, frowning. “Who was he?”

“He was a slave on the plantation, and he fell in love with her almost instantly. He loved her, but he couldn’t live that way. Said he’d rather die than watch her with another man for the rest of his life. So he ran away. Escaped, but had to leave her behind.”

Walsh pressed on with the story, hoping it would make as much sense to her as it had to him.

“He went on to fight for the Union, and when the war was over, he returned to North Carolina to find Maddie. The master had died in the war, but had left her, as a free woman, a plot of land and a small bit of money to raise his two children with. That land and that little bit of money was the foundation for my family’s success.

“When Asher found her, she was raising the master’s kids and working that land by herself. He married her. He didn’t care that she’d been the master’s mistress, or that she’d had the master’s children, or that she was living on land the master had left her. He just knew she was his soul mate, and he’d do whatever it took to spend the rest of his life with her. They took their second chance.”

“Walsh, that’s beautiful.” Kerris curled her hand into a fist on his chest, her eyes telling him the story had landed with her the same way it had for him.

“Yeah, it is.” Walsh smiled for the first time since he had started. “My mom told me that story because I asked if she believed in soul mates. I thought I had found and lost mine.”

Walsh saw the tears standing in Kerris’s eyes and felt the band restricting his chest loosen inch by inch. He pulled a small ring from his pocket. It was a simple gold band. Not flashy, or expensive, but with an intricate pattern etched into the surface. His mother left her original wedding band for her father, but this one—this one she’d left for Walsh.

“Mom said I came from a long line of romantics, and she knew that I would find a way to love. That’s why she left me this when she died. It’s the ring Asher gave my great-grandma Maddie.”

Walsh stooped several inches until they were almost eye level. He searched her eyes and saw the answer before he asked the question. His heart banged against his chest like it wanted out so it could fall at her feet.

“Kerris, will you please, please marry me?” He plowed on, almost afraid to give her the chance to refuse. “I know you just got divorced today, and it might look bad, but I can’t live another day without this promise. I want to wake up yours every day for the rest of my life. And I have to know you’re mine. It doesn’t have to be this ring. Good grief, I could go to Harry Winston or—”

“Don’t you dare.”

Kerris reached for the hand holding the simple gold band. She looked at him, and he’d never seen her eyes so sure. So confident. So certain. He didn’t know if his love had done that for her, or if she had done it for herself, but it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever witnessed.

“I don’t actually care how it looks.” She watched him through her lashes, coquettish for once. “If you’re sure you want me…”

“Kerris, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” He hated the tears he had to blink away. He wanted to get through this without wussing out. “You are the soul mate I thought I’d never get to live my life with. I’m pinching myself that we get a second chance. Please don’t make me wait any longer, baby.”

“I…well, if you want…yes, I’ll marry you.”

Walsh scooped her up, his forearms under her bottom, pulled her off the ground, and rested his forehead against hers, not even ashamed that the tears rebelled and charged down his face. He was holding every dream that mattered right here in his arms. His greatest ambition was to love her, to spoil her, to give her the family she’d always wanted.

Even though it had been a hard road, a messy road, littered with the potholes of their mistakes, Walsh embraced that journey. He wasn’t sure he would have fully appreciated how much it meant to have Kerris had he not lost her. He gripped her like she might disappear, easing up when she laughed and said she couldn’t breathe. Now that they finally had each other, he promised himself he’d never let go.

I
think you’re even more beautiful the second time around, Kerris.”

Kerris met Meredith’s eyes in the mirror before studying her own reflection. Her dark hair spilled around her shoulders, free and waving. She wore no veil, which she thought was fitting because this time, she had nothing to hide. Her mouth was tinted pale rose and stretched into a smile she couldn’t hold back no matter how hard she tried. The glints of gold in her amber-colored eyes reflected the gold embroidery piping the startling white of her dress.

“I can’t get over this.” Jo ran reverent fingers over the material skimming Kerris’s slim shape. “I couldn’t have chosen better. Vera Wang couldn’t have done better. No designer could have.”

“I couldn’t have either.” Kerris touched the orchid charm dangling at her neck. “I love that Walsh chose it for me.”

Cam may not be attending their wedding, but he had given her the best wedding present possible. After he’d gone, she’d found what he left for her in the office—the dress Walsh had brought back from Kenya so long ago. Cam had hidden it from her then. He had hidden a lot from her before, and she had hidden so much from herself and those she loved. But not today.

The African gown fell to her feet, pristine and shot with gold threads. She couldn’t wait for Walsh to see it. It would be the only surprise, since they had chosen each detail of this day together. Her first wedding had been to the wrong man with two hundred wedding guests looking on. She’d carried calla lilies she didn’t like, and a lump of dread and anxiety had sat like coal in her belly all day. Today, there was such peace, and as much as the tabloids would love to intrude, they had no idea. This simple ceremony would take place at a covered bridge suspended over the river with only a few sworn-to-secrecy family and friends present. She was a mere month removed from her divorce. They might still cause a scandal once word got out, but Kerris had reached that place of complete indifference to any opinion except Walsh’s.

“Okay, so you have something new.” Meredith gestured to the diamond earrings designed to look like feathers, a gift from Walsh that Kerris liked to think of as bohemian luxury. “And you have something borrowed.”

Kerris had been shocked when Martin Bennett offered a trio of gorgeous pearl-studded bangles as her something borrowed. Kristeene had admired them once and Martin had gotten them for her, but they had divorced before he had the chance to give them to her. Kerris was humbled by his thoughtfulness. He and Walsh had come so far in the last few years, and his excitement about the wedding had been the greatest proof of that.

“I wanted to cover something blue, if you don’t have anything.” Jo extended a satin bag with a silky ribbon tied around its neck.

Kerris opened the bag and pulled out a powder blue garter of lace and satin, light as a cobweb in her hand.

“The women in our family have worn this on their wedding day for generations.” Jo swallowed and blinked a few times before controlling the emotion her face almost expressed. “Aunt Kris eloped and never got to, but I know she’d want you to have it today.”

Jo knelt on the floor and carefully pulled the soft material of Kerris’s dress up from the hem. Kerris slid the garter up her thigh, smiling at the image of Jo, so regal even on her knees. Jo caught her eyes and offered a smile.

“I don’t have to ask this time if you love him,” Jo said, standing to her feet. “I know you do, and I know you’ll take care of him for me.”

“I can’t wait to give this garter back to you, Jo, on your wedding day.”

Jo’s laugh was a rough bark, so at odds with her refined appearance—hair caught at the back of her neck in an elegant bundle and gorgeous rose-colored silk dress draped around her lean body.

“That might take a miracle at this point.”

Kerris smiled, thinking of the implausible road that had led her to this day. That had led her to the man waiting just beyond the docked houseboat where she was getting dressed. Who even now stood under a covered bridge waiting to start the rest of their lives together. It had taken no less than a series of miracles to unite them.

“Lucky for you,” Kerris said to Jo as she headed toward the door, “I still believe in those.”

What else but a miracle would find her standing in front of Walsh Bennett moments later? His rakish grin deepened when Mama Jess handed her over to him. There was so little that was conventional about this day, so Mama Jess giving her away made complete sense. She gave Walsh one of her stern looks, but the tears in her eyes spoiled the effect. Meredith stood as Kerris’s maid of honor, her hair, pink as cotton candy, bright and glaring in the September sun. Walsh stood alone, no best man, and even as Kerris walked across the scattering of orchid petals to reach him, she wondered about Cam. He wasn’t here today, but she believed in her heart that he would be back in their lives when the time was right for them all.

Soon, there was no room for anyone else except the man facing her, smiling at her like they were all alone. As it often did, the world narrowed down to this one man who had breathed life into places she’d thought long dead. The one who had given “forever” meaning. Enduring love burned in the eyes he fixed on her. He ran his hand down the sleeve of the dress he hadn’t seen in so long and had never expected to see again. For a second pain flashed through the joy in his eyes, and Kerris knew he recognized Cam’s gift to them. That was their journey, though. Joy, spiked with pain. They had walked through fire to reach each other, and these final moments, though singed, were absolutely perfect because they had found a way to share the rest of their lives.

The minister invited them to say the vows they had written for each other. As Walsh said each word, they fell on her heart like a final balm, healing hurts she had once thought beyond repair.

“This I vow with all the love my heart can hold. I will never leave you. I’ll love you without condition. I’ll love you when times are hard, and I’ll relish all the good days ahead. I will love you until my final breath. Loving you is my greatest privilege. My heart fought to find you, and now that we have each other, I will never let go. I will love you always.”

And after all they had endured, after all he had sacrificed to love and have her, Kerris knew that he would.