“Go away.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication About the Author Dear Adam Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

“Go away.”

They weren’t exactly words that should make one feel cheerful, Adam thought. Especially given the fact that he had traveled over two thousand miles to hear them.

But he did. He felt cheerful.

It wasn’t, he told himself firmly, because he was seeing her again, after a space of nearly seven years.

“I told you to go away,” Tory said again, resolutely.

Adam regarded her thoughtfully. If he was not mistaken, that was fire he saw in her eyes.

“I’m not leaving.” The words came from his mouth, all right, but they really surprised him. Because he didn’t want to be here in the first place. He’d come only because of that letter. In fact, all the way here he had hoped for a reaction like this from her.

And yet he knew without a doubt that this time he couldn’t walk away....

Dear Reader,

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In Suzanne McMinn’s engaging BUNDLES OF JOY title, The Billionaire and the Bassinet, a blue blood finds his hardened heart irrevocably tamed. This month’s FABULOUS FATHERS offering by Jodi O’Donnell features an emotional, heartwarming twist you won’t soon forget; in Dr. Dad to the Rescue, a man discovers strength and the healing power of love from one very special lady. Marrying O’Malley. the renegade who’d been her childhood nemesis, seemed the perfect way for a bride-to-be to thwart an unwanted betrothal—until their unlikely alliance stirred an even more incredible passion; don’t miss this latest winner by Elizabeth August!

The Cowboy Proposes...Marriage? Get the charming lowdown as WRANGLERS & LACE continues with this sizzling story by Cathy Forsythe. Cara Colter will make you laugh and cry with A Bride Worth Waiting For, the story of the boy next door who didn’t get the girl, but who’ll stop at nothing to have her now. For readers who love powerful, dramatic stories, you won’t want to miss Paternity Lessons. Maris Soule’s uplifting FAMILY MATTERS tale.

Enjoy this month’s titles—and please drop me a line about why you keep coming back to Romance. I want to make sure we continue fulfilling your dreams!

Regards,

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Senior Editor Silhouette Romance

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A Bride Worth Waiting For
Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my sisters,

Anna and Avon,

with love.

CARA COLTER

shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail, and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.

She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”

Dear Adam,

I asked my lawyer to wait a year before sending this to you. Tory will need time. She needs to know she can make it on her own.

But she needs to laugh, too.

She was my angel. And now, if things work the way I think they will, I’m going to be hers.

This is my last request, Adam, and only you can fulfill it. I know how much you loved her. Go home. Make her laugh again.

She was always a little afraid of how you grabbed life with both hands. But she knows a little more about life now; she won’t be so afraid to take what it offers her.

You were my best friend besides her. I know why you stayed away. She was mad at you, and probably still is, but I wasn’t. I’m watching out for you. I promise.

Mark

Chapter One

“Go away.”

They weren’t exactly words that should make one feel cheerful, Adam thought. Especially given the fact he had traveled over two thousand miles to hear them.

But he did feel cheerful. Probably because this insane mission was over before it had even started.

It wasn’t, he told himself firmly, because he was seeing her again, after a space of nearly seven years.

“I told you to go away,” she said again, resolutely.

He regarded her thoughtfully. She was on the other side of her screen door, her arms folded over her chest, her foot tapping impatiently, and if he was not mistaken, with fire in her eyes.

She had not been beautiful all those years ago, and she had not matured into beauty.

In fact, she was remarkably unchanged. On the flight here he had picked out women of his age and hers, and studied them. And been reassured. That she would have changed. That she would be plump and frumpy. Or that a smooth veneer of sophistication would have chased away the elfin charm that had made him call her “cute,” a description she had always reacted to with chagrin, which only made her cuter.

But she was still cute. Not plump. Certainly not frumpy. No veneer of sophistication. Though he knew her to be his own age, thirty, she looked astoundingly like the first time he had seen her in sixth grade—her baseball cap on backward, that same riot of red-gold curls scattered around her face, those same freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her little snub nose, a pointed chin, little bow lips. Except now there was no baseball cap and that chin was lifted at him in defiance, the bows of her lips faintly downturned in disapproval.

That first time she’d had on a too-big Stampeders jersey, and rolled up jeans that showed a Band-Aid on her knee. She had been smiling, though. A smile so full of mischief and warmth it had melted his twelve-year-old heart in a way it had never been touched before. Or since.

Today she wore a too-large man’s shirt over a pair of black bicycle shorts. Silly, but he checked the knees, his eyes drifting over the rest of her on the way down. She’d mourned her boyish build all through adolescence, and as far as he could tell it was unchanged. She was willowy and slender as a young tree.

“I’ve got about as many curves as a ruler,” she used to lament.

By then she was already the ruler of his heart. It had made him blind for all time to the attractions of fullerfigured women.

He found her knees, finally, and peered through the screen.

She tucked one slim leg behind her, but not before he saw the smudge that struck him, foolishly, as being utterly lovely.

“I was out back in the garden,” she said defensively.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Anyway, you’re leaving.” She reached out and snapped the lock on the screen, as if he was some sort of barbarian, who would enter her house without an invitation, barge by her, sit on her sofa and demand tea. No. Beer.

Did she really think of him like that? Of course she did. That was why he’d been overlooked for someone with a better pedigree.

Of course if she really thought of him like that, she would know the flimsy screen door, with its fancy heritage scrolling in the corners, wouldn’t keep him out. Probably couldn’t keep a determined kitten out.

“I’m not leaving.” The words came from his mouth, all right, but they really surprised him. Because he didn’t want to be here in the first place. All the way here he had hoped and maybe even prayed for a reaction like this from her. So he could turn on his heel and catch the next flight back to Toronto. That would be enough to soothe his conscience. He’d flown all the way here, hadn’t he? Who could say he had not tried his hardest? Not made his best effort?

“If you don’t go away, I’ll call the police.”

He wondered if he should tell her the truth. About the letter in his pocket. Something told him the time was not right.

“No you won’t,” he said. “You won’t call the police.”

She glared at him. Her eyes were dark brown, shot through with gold. Immense eyes. They had always been her best feature, dancing with the light that was inside of her.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“We could always talk about the dirt on your knees.”

She glared at him, tossed her head and slammed the inside door. The beveled glass insert rattled.

Not something a man who had just traveled two thousand one hundred and twenty-five miles should find amusing.

But he did.

It wasn’t, he told himself firmly, seeing her again that was causing this sensation inside him—like a light had been turned on in darkness.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels. He turned slowly from her door. She lived only a block or two from where they had grown up together. Her, and him. And Mark.

The community of Sunnyside. A beautiful old part of the city, bordering the banks of the Bow River. From here, on her covered porch, he could look south up her street, and see the park that ran parallel to the river for most of its journey through Calgary. A couple of runners enjoyed the paved path under huge trees.

He noticed she had a swing on her porch, full of plump gray and pink pillows and he went and sat on it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a curtain twitch angrily into place.

He rocked slowly with one foot. He liked Calgary. He’d been struck by that an hour earlier when the plane circled. That he liked this city. Had missed it.

This neighborhood was changing so rapidly. Young professionals were snapping up the dignified old houses just across the river from the downtown core and doing incredible renovations on them.

That trend had actually started when he and his dad had moved here years ago. He’d been in the sixth grade.

Her father, Tory’s, was a doctor, and had owned the beautifully kept old house on one side of his. Mark’s parents, a psychologist and a veterinarian, owned an equally beautiful one on the other.

His house, a ramshackle rental, was right in the middle. Him and his dad, a mechanic with grease under his nails, doing their best to make it after the death of his mom.

He heard the window squeak open behind him.

“Get lost!” she snapped.

“No,” he said.

The window slammed shut.

He sighed with something like pleasure. Tory in a temper.

Her name was really Victoria. Victoria Bradbury, a good name for a heroine in an old English novel, but a terrible one for a tomboy who climbed trees and had perpetually scuffed knees. And a temper like a skyrocket going off.

He looked around her porch with interest. The house was probably sixty years old or more, well kept, nicely painted—yellow with gray trim. He noticed she had a gift with flowers, just as her mother had had. The window boxes around the porch rioted with color, which was an accomplishment in the first week of June in a city with such a short growing season.

Her house, back then, had always had flowers. And Mark’s parents had had beautifully landscaped nomaintenance shrubs and bark mulch. His own yard had sported the hulks of cars.

He supposed that’s why he was staying. To show her what he had become. A lawyer now, the shoes he was wearing worth more than his dad used to pay for a month’s rent on that old falling down house.

The thing was, he remembered, she had never seemed to care what he had come from.

And neither had Mark.

They had taken him under wing from the very first day he’d moved in. They had become the three musketeers—ridden their bikes up and down these very streets, built tree houses, walked forever along that path by the river. Their doors had always been open to him, both of their mothers treating him like he was one of their families.

He felt the strangest clawing sensation in his throat.

Remembering. Those bright days so full of laughter and kinship.

Love.

That was not too strong a word for what the three of them had shared, for what passed in and out of the doors of those three side-by-side houses.

Of course, the inevitable had happened.

They got older and the love changed. He and Mark had both fallen in love with her.

And she had chosen Mark.

The swing was squeaking outrageously. The sun was sinking and had bathed the street and its gorgeous huge trees and old houses in the most resplendent light.

He took the letter out of his pocket, opened it and began to read it again. For at least the hundredth time.

Tory inched the curtain back, and looked out. He was still there, sitting in her porch swing, seeming not to care that it had grown quite dark out.

And probably cold.

“Don’t you dare care if he’s cold,” she muttered to herself.

Adam.

She had nearly fainted when she had opened the door and he had been standing there.

The same and yet very different, too.

The same since he was so recklessly handsome that it took a person’s breath away.

His hair, though shorter now, was black and faintly wavy and still fell over one eye. Obsidian dark, those eyes, glinting with hints of silver laughter, of mischief. A straight nose, a wide sensuous mouth, clean sparkling teeth, that scar was still on his chin from the time he’d split it open riding his bike over a jump neither she nor Mark would try.

He had laughed, devil-may-care, when her mother had insisted on taking him to the hospital for stitches.

The next week he’d broken his arm going over the same jump.

It didn’t look like he laughed quite so much these days. The line around his mouth seemed firm and stern, and the light in his eyes, when she had first opened the door, had been distinctly grim. A man with a mission.

When she’d told him to go away, that old familiar glint of humor had lit somewhere at the back of his eyes. And then it had deepened when he had spotted the dirt on her knees.

She shivered involuntarily as she thought of those black eyes drifting down her with easy familiarity, his gaze nearly as powerful, altogether as sensuous, as a touch.

He had always had that in him. Magnetism. A place in him that could not be tamed, his presence electrifying, making other boys seem smaller, infinitely less interesting, as if they were black-and-white cutouts, and he was three dimensional and in living color.

Even Mark.

Tory had always thought Adam would mature to be the kind of man with a wild side. That he would end up in black leather, jumping canyons on those motorcycles he had loved so much as a teenager. Or traveling the world in search of adventure—crocodiles to wrestle, damsels to rescue.

There was nothing ordinary about him, so she had thought he would do extraordinary things. Become a secret agent Climb Mount Everest. Sail solo around the world. Explore outer space.

When she’d heard he was a lawyer, she couldn’t believe it. Had felt disappointed, almost. Adam, a lawyer? It seemed unthinkable.

Until she saw him standing on her porch, oozing self-confidence and wealth. Of course, the self-confidence he had always had in abundance.

But somehow she never would have imagined him in those shoes, the silk shirt with the tie slightly askew, the knife-pressed pants.

She looked out on her porch again. He used to smoke, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t anymore.

The wild boy banished.

But still there, lurking in those eyes and that smile.

“Go away,” she whispered.

The swing creaked.

He wasn’t going away.

She knew he would be a good lawyer. Better than good. He’d always had a talent for reading people. He always knew what they would do. He was so smart that sometimes she and Mark had exchanged awed looks behind his back. And at his core, he had a toughness, that neither she nor Mark had. A toughness that had less to do with being a mechanic’s son than his deep certainty of who he was and what kind of treatment he would accept at the hands of the world.

She knew he thought she’d give in and go out there. Lured by old affections or curiosity.

But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Let him sit out there all night.

She went into her bathroom and slammed the door, regarded herself in the mirror with ill humor. She looked like a little kid. And felt like one, too. She reached down and rubbed the dirt off her knee. With spit.

He looked so sophisticated now. She bet he dated lacquered ladies who could wear sequined gowns and look dazzling instead of ridiculous. He probably took them to the opera.

Adam Reed at the opera.

When had he become that kind of guy instead of the boy who took his motorcycle apart in his backyard, looked over his fence into hers, grinning, the black smudge of motor oil across his cheek making him look more wildly appealing than ever?

No boy left in him. All man out there on her doorstep. At least six foot one of it, the adolescent promise of broadness through the chest and shoulders now completely realized. Easy animal strength lingering just below the surface of those well-cut clothes. Oh yes, that wild side still there, glittering dangerously just below the surface of dark eyes, serving to make him mysterious. Intriguing. Dangerously attractive.

Had she reached out and locked her screen door to keep him out, or herself in?

She wondered if he was married. In the mirror she watched the blood drain from her own face making her freckles stand out like random dots from a felt pen. She almost felt like she had taken a bad blow to the stomach.

“Oh, what do you care if he’s married?” she chastised herself. She told herself she only cared about the woman. Married to an insensitive cad like him.

But she knew she was lying to herself, and that’s why she knew she absolutely had to ignore him until he went away.

She tiptoed out of the bathroom. The house was in darkness now. She looked out the window.

He was still there.

And if there was anything of the old Adam in him he would still be there in the morning. Next week. Next month.

She could not outwait him. She knew that She had only been able to say no to him once.

Why was she so afraid of him? Let him have his say, and be on his way. She sighed, and went and got an afghan from off the back of her couch. Because of Calgary’s proximity to the Rocky Mountains there was almost always a nip in the air at night. Not that Adam had ever seemed to feel it!

“Don’t do this,” she told herself. But she knew that she would. And she knew he knew she would.

She opened the front door and slipped out into the darkness of her porch.

The swing stilled.

She went and sat beside him, pulling the blanket around her shoulders against the chill in the air, a small but comforting barrier against him.

“You’re the most stubborn man I ever met,” she said.

He smelled heavenly. Of sunshine and aftershave and cleanliness.

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.

In truth, not just the soda would keep him awake tonight. A strange energy seemed to be singing through his veins.

He picked up his briefcase, moved to the table and snapped it open. Neat stacks of legal briefs stared back at him, the work of a man who didn’t drink cola at night because it might keep him awake.

Did she know he was a lawyer? She hadn’t asked. Would she ask tomorrow? Would she ask him why?

And would he tell her the truth?

He had contemplated his career long and hard before choosing. He had thought about becoming a doctor, just like her old man.

The thought, unfortunately, made him squeamish. He had always been able to hide his squeamish side from Tory and Mark, who seemed to think he was tough in every respect. And in some respects he had been. He had a high threshold for pain. He liked doing things that were thrilling. He was fearless, almost stupidly so, in the face of authority.

But the day he’d cut open the frog in high school biology he’d known a career that involved blood and body parts was out. He suspected he wouldn’t even be able to handle looking at slimy tonsils. Which meant dentistry, an extremely high paying profession, was unfortunately also out. Mark’s dad had been a vet. Since Adam had never so much as owned a goldfish, and could not even pretend an interest in the plump poodles that he had seen in Mark’s father’s outer office, he knew he wasn’t going to be doing that either.

Mark’s mother had been a psychologist, also a respectable profession, but the money was not as good, and probing the secrets of the human mind when his own was so largely baffling to him left him cold.

Accounting was too dull.

And that seemed to leave law. Nice clean work, for the most part. Though he had seen some slimy things that would put a pair of infected tonsils to shame. Still, he had a good mind for it. He excelled at it. Problem solving. Thinking on his feet. Keeping track of a multitude of different things at once. Butting heads. Maintaining his personal integrity when all about him others were losing theirs. He liked it. It was constantly changing and constantly challenging.

But somehow, even though the workings of his own mind baffled him, he knew becoming a lawyer had been about her.

She had picked Mark because they were from the same world. He had known intuitively that education was the passport to her world.

Education opened doors. Bought nice things. Bought respectability.

He had sworn the next time he was ready to ask a woman to spend her life with him, she would say yes.

The problem was that woman was supposed to be Kathleen. Twice as beautiful as Tory. Ten times as sophisticated.

Tory had already had her kick at this particular can. She’d lost her chance. Picked Mark.

But now Mark was dead.

And Mark had sent him back here.

He closed the briefcase and took the letter back out of his pocket. It was getting soft from so much handling.

He closed his eyes. He really didn’t have to read it again.

Mark’s last request of him. Make Tory laugh again.

Mark. Handsome. Athletic. Quiet. Stable. A good choice if you had to make one. A sensible choice.

That was what they had both been, Tory and Mark. Sensible. He bet they didn’t drink cola at half-past eleven at night.

He took a defiant swig, and suddenly felt so tired he thought he would collapse.

He set the letter on the table, stripped off his clothes and crawled between the soft sheets.

He slept almost instantly.

Chapter Two

Adam awoke in the morning feeling disoriented. Then it came back to him. Calgary. Tory. Mark. A mission.

He groaned, sat up, stretched. He saw the can of cola that he had taken precisely one swig from, and wondered how it was possible to feel like he had a hangover. The letter was beside the cola tin. He picked it up.

Don’t read it again, he ordered himself, and then read it again.

Dear Adam:

I asked my lawyer to wait a year before sending this on to you. Tory will need time. We married before we completed university, and she needs to know she can make it on her own.

But she needs to laugh, too.

I know how much you loved her.

And I know she loved you more than me. When she picked me, even though she loved you best, I began to believe in miracles.

You know, I’ve never stopped.

She was my angel. And now, if things work the way I think they do, I’m going to be hers.

This is my last request, Adam, and only you can do it. Go home. Go to her. Make her laugh. Teach her to have fun again. Rollerblade, and ride bikes with two seats, fly kites, sit out on lawn chairs at the lake and watch for the Big Dipper and Orion to come out.

She was always a little afraid of how you grabbed life with both hands. But she knows a little more about the nature of life, now. She won’t be afraid to take what it offers her.

You were my best friend, besides her. I know why you stayed away. She was mad at you, and probably still is, but I wasn’t. I’m watching out for you. I promise.

The letter was signed, simply, love, Mark.

Every single time he read that letter, Adam felt the same lump of emotion rise in his throat. The last paragraph in particular reminded him with such aching poignancy who Mark had been. Solid. Loyal. Loving. The fact that Mark’s handwriting was wobbly with pain, like the writing of a little old man, always seemed to increase that lump in his throat to damn near grapefruit size.

“This was not a good way to start the day,” Adam told himself, getting up and putting the letter down.

But the words stayed.

I know why you stayed away. Adam wished Mark would have said why. Because he didn’t know himself. A thousand times he had almost come home. A thousand times something had stopped him. And he did not know what that something was.

Pride. Hurt. Anger. Betrayal.

He shook his head. Mark seemed to think it was something else. But then Mark could be wrong. Look at that nonsense about Tory loving him, Adam, better.

When he’d first received the letter he’d known he absolutely could not go to Tory. He had several important trials coming up. Kathleen’s sister was getting married, and he was to be master of ceremonies. He had a 1964 Harley panhead in pieces in a friend’s garage.

He couldn’t just go traipsing across the country to go Rollerblading, for God’s sake!

And then he found he couldn’t not go.

Mark’s last request.

It kept him awake nights. He read over that blasted letter so often that the paper was wearing thin. You would think the lump in his throat would be getting smaller, but it never did.

Tory not laughing? How could that be? Tory was laughter.

Finally, he surrendered. The letter was not going to let him go. If he followed Mark’s instructions precisely, fulfilling his last wish would only involve four things. He could probably be done with it in four days. A week, tops.

And maybe the mystery in that letter would unravel.

I know why you stayed away.

“Great,” Adam muttered, “that makes one of us.”

He went and showered and dressed. What did one wear Rollerblading? He put on jeans and a white denim shirt. Everybody in Calgary wore jeans, even lawyers.

He went out the hotel door at quarter to nine. A girl with tired looking eyes, in a worn dress, stood on the corner with a basket of flowers. On impulse he bought them all, and was rewarded with a shy and lovely smile.

Really, it had nothing to do with romancing Tory, he defended himself as he hailed a cab. If she had one weakness, it was flowers, and he needed to get his foot in the door.

At first he thought she had outsmarted him and escaped, just like the little piggies who left for the fair an hour before their appointment with the big, bad wolf.

He banged on her front door, and when she didn’t come, he sauntered over to her living room window and peered in.

Somehow he had known before he looked in exactly how it would look—lace and antiques, bookcases, sunny colorful prints, scatter rugs, hardwood, wainscoting, wallpaper, framed petit point, flowers, fresh and dried, hanging and in hand-thrown pots.

Homey and charming. The kind of room in which one sat in front of the fireplace with a pipe—unlit, now that he was reformed—and an old dog at foot, the day’s newspaper in hand. It was the kind of room in which one could feel utterly content.

His own upscale condominium was furnished in a look he referred to as modern motorcycle. Black leather and chrome. Somehow homey was not the ambience he had achieved. Or yearned for either.

Until now.

He could hear the faint sound of music and followed it like a dog following a scent, off her front porch and down a narrow swatch of grass in between her house and the one next door. He came to a high fence. No gate. But the music louder.

Vivaldi. Once he wouldn’t have known. Or cared.

He glanced around to see if any of the neighbors were watching suspiciously. The street was quiet. The wall of the other house was windowless on this side.

He spit on his hands, tossed his bouquet of flowers over first, and acknowledged a funny little singing inside of him. And then he caught the top of the fence and hefted himself over it, landing with a thud that was drowned out by the music and a delicate looking shrub that he thought might have been a magnolia, though he had never heard of one growing successfully in Calgary.

He shoved a few broken branches back into place, picked up his flowers and looked around her walled yard with interest.

His offering of flowers seemed redundant.

Her backyard was like an English country garden—flowers and shrubs were everywhere, narrow stone paths going between them. He could hear the gurgle of a fountain. He glanced to his right and saw her deck.

It was a work of art, really, multilayered wooden platforms sporting potted trees and barrels of flowers and water, benches and planters.

On the top platform, connected to her house by a lovely set of French garden doors, she sat at a patio table beneath a colorful umbrella, surrounded by wicker baskets full of dried flowers and baby’s breath. She was bent over something, her pink tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration, the sun on her hair turning it to flame.

He looked for a place to dump the flowers he had brought. The wilted bouquet was a ridiculous offering given the wild profusion of blossoms in her yard.

She glanced up, saw him, and froze. Then she glanced at her watch, confirming his suspicion that she would have been long gone had he waited for the appointed hour. But, by the look on her face, she had meant to be gone by now, and had gotten caught up in something, become lost in the task at hand.

He went up the stairs toward her, holding out his bouquet, a drooping peace offering.

She didn’t reach out to take it, folding her hands instead over her chest, and regarding him with wide brown eyes.

He saw she was working on an arrangement of dried flowers and what looked to be a dried corn stalk twisted into a bow shape. A glue gun was at her elbow. Given the simplicity of the items she was working with, the arrangement was nothing short of breathtaking.

“That’s very good,” he said inadequately.

She shrugged. “It’s what I do. My business.”

He sensed even this short explanation was offered to him reluctantly.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“I jumped the fence.”

For the slightest moment just a hint of laughter leapt in her eyes, but she doused it swiftly.

“Then you can go back out the same way.”

He ignored her. “Mark built the deck, didn’t he?”

He watched her eyes soften as she glanced around. “Yes.”

She still loved him.

Uninvited he sat down, placing the humble nosegay on the table. “He did a nice job of it.”

“You know how he loved to build things.”

“Yeah. I know.” The tree house that had been in progress since they all turned thirteen came to mind. Mark had always been the idea man. The result was a tree house that had been the envy of every boy and girl within a hundred miles. Windows with shutters, a rope ladder that wound up and down, a sturdy deck out the front door.

“Is the tree house still—?”

“Still at my mom and dad’s. Being enjoyed by the grandchildren, now. The tree house. This deck. They’re all he ever built. He never became an architect. He got sick before he completed his degree.”

“I’m sorry.” And he was. But the word grandchildren was begging for his attention. He looked around for toys, for signs. Surely he would have heard. “The kids enjoying the tree house aren’t yours, are they?”

She shook her head, looked away quickly. “My sister. Margie’s.”

He remembered her sister, Margie, only vaguely. She had been much older than them. Or so it had seemed at the time. Four or five years now wouldn’t be quite the same chasm.

“Mark got sick very shortly after we got married.”

“Aw, Tory. I didn’t know.”

“Would it have made any difference?”

He didn’t know, so he didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to expect him to. Unless he was mistaken, she was still in her pajamas, a kind of fuzzy two-piece short suit with pudgy angels frolicking in the pattern of fabric.

Not intended to be the least bit sexy, he found it unbelievably so.

“Is that coffee I smell?” he asked wistfully.

She glared at him.

“I’ll trade you this little posy.” He wagged his eyebrows at the flowers, hoping she would laugh.

“You’re offering those in trade? They look pretty near to death,” she said scornfully.

“The coffee’s an unknown. I tried cookies you baked on three or four occasions before I wised up and fed them to old Brewster.”

“No wonder that dog was so monstrously fat. I suppose it wasn’t just you, was it?”

This was encouraging. She was asking him questions.

“Mark, too,” he admitted, “and your dad.”

“My dad?” She was trying to look outraged, but he thought he could see a bit of smile trying to press out past the prissy set of her lips.

She took the flowers, got up and marched into the house. The shorts were really very short. Her legs were gorgeous. It looked like she could still ride a bicycle fitteen or twenty miles without breaking into a sweat, or shinny up a tree in five seconds fiat.

She glanced back and caught him looking. He half expected her to slam the door behind her, turn the key in the lock and then stick out her tongue at him, but she didn’t.

She came back out a few minutes later, a carafe of coffee in one hand and an extra mug in the other, a long white terry-cloth robe hiding her delectable little knees from him.

She poured him a coffee as the birds rioted in her yard.

“What a beautiful space you’ve created for yourself, Tory.”

She looked at him uneasily. “I grow most of these flowers for my business.”

“What is your business?” He took advantage of the tenuous peace between them.

“I make dried flower arrangements, like this one, and sell them to upscale gift shops like the ones on Kensington and in Mount Royal Square. I have some contracts in Banff, too.” There was a hint of pride in her voice.

She’ll need to know she can make it on her own.

“You’re doing well, aren’t you?”

“Extremely. Better than I ever expected. I call my business Victoria’s Garden.”

He wanted to pull her in his arms and swing her around at the pride he saw shining in her eyes. But that brought thoughts of what her body, wrapped in the fluffy robe, would feel like after all these years.

Now, for the first time, his mind going down a very dangerous path—thinking wayward thoughts of her—

“Adam?” she asked.

“Coffee’s great,” he said gruffly, taking a sip. It really was great Exotic. Like coffee and chocolate and mint all mixed together. “Have your cookies improved?”

“I seem to have better luck with flowers. Adam, what are you doing here?”

“I told you. Taking you Rollerblading.”

“But I don’t want to go Rollerblading!”

Neither do I, he thought. It was not on his list of the one hundred and one things that he most wanted to do in his life.

“Why not?” he asked, sneaking a look at her over the rim of his coffee cup. She looked beautiful. Flustered, her curls scattered around her face, the freckles standing out on her nose. Her freckles always stood out on her nose when she was upset.

Somehow the purpose of this exercise had not been to upset her.

“I’m too old,” she said.

He almost spit out his coffee. “Too old to have fun?”

“Oh, Adam.” she said. “I stopped believing life was fun a long time ago.”

And then, for the first time, he felt committed to his mission. Knew why he was here, knew why Mark had sent him, and knew that he couldn’t fail.

“It must have been very hard for you. Watching him die.”

“It wasn’t hard at all,” she said stubbornly. Her chin tilted up, and her eyes glittering dangerously. “It was incredible. I didn’t regret one minute of it. It was a privilege to make that journey with that strong, courageous man.”

Her speech finished, her composure crumbled. Silver tears trickled down her cheeks. She swiped at them impatiently. More replaced them. She covered her eyes, trying to regain control. Her shoulders started to shake. She hiccuped.

And then she was sobbing. Uncontrollably.

And a voice deep within him, in his soul, told him what to do. He went and scooped her from her chair, and then sat back down in it, with her cradled against his chest. And while she wept, her hot tears trickling down his shirt, he stroked her hair and murmured words to her that came from some part so deep within him he had not been aware it existed.

He told her how proud he was of her for being so strong. He told her it was okay to cry. He told her he was going to help her laugh again. All the time aware of how slight she was in his embrace, how good she smelled, how soft her shoulders were under his hands. And all the time aware that she still loved Mark.

That her love with Mark had been one of those loves that would transcend all obstacles, even death.

And that was good. He was relieved. His future was safe after all. Kathleen was real and good and eminently suited to him in every way, and he was going to go back to Toronto and lose no time in asking her to marry him.

They would buy a house somewhere in suburbia, and someday they might have children—two point two, just like the national average.

“How?” Her voice was small, muffled against his shirt

For a startled moment he wondered if she was asking how one had two point two children, which he had not exactly figured out.

“How what?”

“How are you going to make me laugh again?” she asked somberly.

“I’m going to take you Rollerblading,” he said.

She flung back her head and looked at him. Her eyes were all puffy from crying. She seemed to realize suddenly she was in his lap, and she scrambled out of his embrace and onto her feet.

“You’re not giving up, are you? Just like the old days!”

“Bulldog Reed,” he agreed. Her robe had pulled apart slightly below the belt, and he tried for a glimpse of her upper thigh.

“Adam, you have to go away.” She looked down, blushed, and pulled her robe ferociously into place, yanking hard on the belt.

“Not until I take you Rollerblading.”

“And then you’ll go?”

As a lawyer he had mastered a few nuances of lying without actually lying. For instance, you could incline your head a certain way and people took that as assent, when in the letter of the law no verbal agreement had been committed.

He tilted his head, a gesture one might mistake as preceding a nod.

She straightened her robe again unnecessarily, and pointed that cute little nose at the sky and spun away from him.

He waited for the slamming door, the turn of the key, and actually felt relief when it didn’t come.

He had finished all the coffee in the carafe before she finally returned, her face scrubbed free of tear stains, dressed in some terribly unattractive sweat outfit in the most unbecoming shade of gray he had ever seen.

Not intending to be the least bit sexy, she was unbelievably so.

“All right,” she snapped. “You want to go so bad, let’s go.” Covering up her moment of vulnerability with cool dignity. With impatience. In her eyes a vow: never to be vulnerable to him again.

He sighed.

Tory watched him get up from his chair. God, he was glorious. He always had been. Incredibly handsome, but more. Sure of himself—and that certainty showing up in the way he moved, pure masculine strength and grace in his every move.

He was dressed casually today, in jeans faded to dusty blue from long and loving wear, and a white denim shirt. It made him look more like, well, him, than the expensively dressed man who had appeared on her doorstep yesterday.

His hair was falling carelessly over one eye. Beautiful hair, black and thick and silky. Hair that begged to be touched, begged her fingers to reach up and flick it back for him. She had done that all the time. Before. When his face and their friendship had been so familiar to her. When he’d been a part of her life, like the river was a part of her life. Something she had assumed would be constant and unchanging.

Every woman they saw today would look at him.

In the old days, he’d rarely noticed. Or if he did, he would grin back at them and then turn and give Tory, or Mark, a puzzled look. Like, What’s with them? or Is that Someone we know?

And she was dressed in one of Mark’s old sweat suits. It looked absolutely appalling on her, and she knew it.

She had started out quite differently. She had marched into the house and past his pathetic flowers, which for some reason she had put in her very best vase.

In her bedroom she had thrown open her closet and scrutinized every outfit she had. And tried on three of them, finally settling on a nice pair of pleated white shorts and a jade-green silk blouse that did the most splendid things to her hair and her eyes. Which, of course, was too ridiculous considering where they were going.

Next had come black jeans and a flannel shirt. Better. Faintly feminine, but hardly alluring. It showed off her coloring and her trim figure rather nicely.

A dusting of make-up and then the fist slamming into her stomach.

What was she doing? Trying to make herself look attractive for Adam! As if her heart wasn’t vulnerable enough to those dark flashing eyes.

“The idea,” she told the mirror, “is to get rid of him.”

Who did he think he was, coming here, casually trying to renew an old friendship, commandeering her life, when he’d abandoned her, them, when they needed him most?

He was a dangerous man. He was dangerous to her heart. A heart that was already damaged almost beyond repair.

She had never said it out loud. Mark would have been disappointed in her if she had. He might have felt guilty. Like he had done it to her.

But she said it out loud, now.

“I am never going to love anyone again.” And, she added to herself, least of all Adam Reed, who had shown beyond a shadow of a doubt he could not be trusted with such delicate organs as hearts and souls.

And so she scrubbed her face until it shone, and left the freckles and the hollows under her eyes. She combed her hair, but didn’t mousse it so that each curl stood out, separate and shining. And in the very back of the closet she had found an old sweat suit that belonged to Mark, and that she had hated on him and that looked even worse on her than it ever had on him.

She went back out onto her back deck, defiant, amazed when in his lazy gaze she saw frank appreciation.

“Unless you want to jump back over the fence,” she told him haughtily, “you’ll have to come through the house.”

She hoped he’d offer to jump the fence. She did not want Adam to see her house. It was too close to her. Reflected her very soul.

And somehow her soul felt like it needed to be protected from him.

He stopped inside her back door, waiting while she slid it shut and locked it

They were in her kitchen and she turned and tried to see the room through his eyes. Small and cluttered with dried flower paraphernalia. The top of her old round oak table barely visible under a mound of baby’s breath and pink ribbons.

He was smiling. “This room says a lot about you.”

Just what she feared! “And what is that?”

“The stove looks like it never gets used, but the microwave does.”

She slid a look to her stove. Sparkling clean as the day it arrived. The microwave had a little splotch of something red on it. Spaghetti sauce from her last TV dinner.

“And you don’t eat at the table, so I bet you eat on the back deck when it’s nice out, which is not that often in Calgary. The rest of the time you eat in the living room. Watching TV. No. Not Tory. Music. Listening to music. And watching the bird feeder you’ve got in the front yard. And keeping an eye out on the neighbor’s renovations and decorations.”

She glared at him. A portrait of a lonely and pathetic soul. And accurate.

He’d always been like this, looking and seeing what other people never saw. Incredibly observant and astute, able to take a few telling details and weave out a whole story.

“Did you have to remember that?” she asked grouchily.

“What?”

“That I liked looking at other people’s houses.”

“Little peeping Tory. You used to love to go for walks at twilight, right as people were turning on their lights but before they closed their curtains.”

“A weakness,” she admitted haughtily.

He laughed.

She wished that he wouldn’t do that. It chased the years from his face and made him back into her Adam. The boy next door. That wild boy that she had loved so madly.

In those simple days, it had been okay to love them both. Mark quietly, and Adam wildly. It had always seemed as if it could go on like that forever.

But, of course, she knew better now.

There was no forever.

She marched him through her living room with her head held high, not inviting his comment. But she saw this room though his eyes, too. Suddenly it seemed cramped and prissy, and like a room an eighty-year-old grandmother would enjoy in the evenings with her knitting and her cats.

“No TV,” he said with a pleased grin, and then, “I like your house, Tory. I like it a lot.”

She held open the front door for him. The doorway was narrow. He brushed her as he went by. She could feel his heat and his strength. He smelled good. She hoped her hand wasn’t trembling as she put the key in the dead bolt to lock the door behind them while he held the screen door open.

“Thank you,” she said tightly. “Your car or mine?”

“I came by cab. I thought we’d just walk. It’s a beautiful day.”

It was a beautiful day. To walk with him along the path by the river would be like strolling toward the past. The river had once seemed like it belonged to them, as familiar as their own backyards.

“Are we going to the island?” she asked.

“That’s where they rent them. The Rollerblades.”

Returning to the old playgrounds of their youth. She did not know if she could stand it

They crossed Memorial Drive and moved down the path. The sun came through the leaves of the giant trees that bordered the path and dappled the earth around them green and gold. The river looked steely gray and cold.

She noticed with relief that they had nothing to say to each other.

And then with less relief that he seemed perfectly comfortable with the silence.

She did not have to chatter, to think of clever things to say to keep him occupied, to fill the silence between them. Had never had to. With him, and with Mark, she could always just be herself.

Against her will she felt something relax within her.

“Out of the way, Gramps!”

A boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, streaked by them on a bicycle. As they leapt out of his way, Adam encircled her with his arms, protectively.

She looked at Adam. And felt warmth in the circle of his arms, strangely like homecoming. She could feel his breath rising and falling, and the beat of his heart. This close she could see the beginnings of dark stubble on his strong chin and on his cheeks. An outraged expression was on his face.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and eased her away from him to look.

“Oh, fine,” she said, dusting an imaginary speck off her sweatpant leg, hating herself for how badly she wanted to go back into the circle of his arms.

She glanced at him. Apparently he hadn’t even noticed their close encounter, was not stirred as physically by it as she had been. Of course, it had probably not been a year since he had come in close contact with a member of the opposite sex!

He was glaring after the cyclist. “Gramps,” he sputtered indignantly. “Did that delinquent call me Gramps?”

She nodded, wide-eyed, trying to repress the giggle inside of her. It would not be repressed.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“The look on your face. That boy—” she was giggling now, and because she was trying not to, it seemed to her the sound coming out of her was most undignified. Like snorting.

“What about that boy?”

“He looked just like you used to look, Adam. Devil-may-care” she was laughing now. Laughing as she had not laughed in years. And then she saw the smile on his face, and remembered how his smile had always had the power to change everything. To turn a bad day into a good one, to make a hurt heart feel better.

“Hell-bent for leather,” Adam said ruefully, watching her, smiling at her laughter, not seeming to find her snorting undignified at all. “I never yelled at people to get out of my way, did I?”

“Oh, you were much worse than that.”

“I was not.”

“Yes, you were.”

Suddenly he was standing very close to her again, and her elbow was in his hand and his eyes were darkly intense on hers.

“You liked it, didn’t you, Tory?” he growled.

And her laughter was gone, replaced by another feeling she remembered all too well around Adam. A kind of walking-on-the-edge feeling, caught somewhere between fear and exhilaration.

“Liked what?” she stammered.

“The rebel in me. The bad boy.”

“It scared the hell out of me,” she whispered.

She didn’t add: And it still does.

Chapter Three

“Adam, why are we doing this?” Tory asked him, closing the latches on the apparatuses now attached to her feet. “I never even liked ice-skating. Neither did you!”

“I know. The only boy in Calgary who never played hockey. Probably in all of Canada. An albatross I have carried around my neck for two decades.”

“Answer the question then. Why?” She wiggled her feet. Even though they moved on command, they seemed strangely detached from her body.

“I’m tired of carrying the albatross?”

She shot him a look. He had never given a damn what the rest of the world was doing, and he didn’t care now. It was written in the supreme confidence with which he carried himself, written in the light that lit those devilishly dark eyes. This expedition was not about whether he had played hockey as a boy.

He rose to his feet, and when his feet scooted out from under him, he grabbed the back of the bench where they had sat to put their skates on, and tried to look casual and in control.

For once he didn’t succeed, and it really was quite funny.

“Don’t stand up,” he advised her. “We’ll just sit on this bench and look like we’re having a rest.”

Damn him. She could feel that little smile twitching again.

“He’ll know,” she whispered wagging her eyebrows toward the kid who had rented them the skates—the same boy who had nearly mowed them over on his bicycle.

Adam had given him hell for clearing them off the path, and the boy had grinned at him with a certain impish charm and said, “Sure, Gramps, I’ll watch that next time.”

“I’m not your Gramps,” Adam said in a low, lethal tone that had set the hair on the back of Tory’s neck on end.

“Yes, sir,” the boy had said, not the least perturbed. “By the way, my generation calls them in-line skates, not Rollerblades.”

“I think I defended his brother on a murder rap,” Adam said to Tory, looking over at the little booth where the boy was now happily engrossed in a comic book. “I’m sorry I tried so hard.”

She couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “Well, unless you want to be Gramps forever, you had better let go of the bench.”

“Ladies first,” he insisted smoothly.

Tentatively she tried standing on her feet. “It’s like standing on a plate balanced on top of ball bearings,” she said when her feet seemed to be going every which way from underneath of her. Bent over from the waist, she grabbed the seat of the bench.

“At least I’m maintaining my dignity, Gran,” he taunted her.

She blew a curl out of her way and looked up at him. She let go of the seat, straightened and lunged toward him. She caught him around the waist and held tight.

He stared at her, something darkening in eyes that were already darker than pitch.

Her own heart was quickening within the walls of her chest. It would be a very good idea to let go of him.

But if she did that she’d probably land flat on her fanny in front of him. There was no denying how good it felt to hold him, his muscles strong and sinewy beneath the denim of his shirt, his body throwing off soft heat, like early summer sunshine.

“The little creep is watching us,” he said under his breath.

“Then let go of the bench.”

He did. His arms wrapped tightly around her.

She was not sure if it was an improvement. Her heart seemed happy. Her head was muttering something about pure insanity.

“Turn right,” he ordered tersely.

They inched their way around, and then took a few wobbly steps forward.

“The little creep is laughing.”

“Adam. I’m afraid we’re hilarious.”

A man jogged by, grinned and shook his head.

“Okay,” Adam said, “that’s it for Rollerblading. In-line skating. That looked like a great restaurant we came by. Let’s—”

“Forget it. This was your idea. We’ve got to take at least one turn around the park.”

“Is this park any smaller than it used to be?”

“No.”

“Why are you torturing me?”

“Because I tried to talk you out of this and you wouldn’t listen. You promised me fun. Laughter.”

“Well, they’re all laughing.” He scowled darkly at a herd of cyclists who went by.

“Adam, you can’t lean on me so hard. You’re pushing me over.”

“I’ll take off my skates,” he said, brightening, a lawyer who had just found his way out of an impossible dilemma “No!”

He ignored her. “And you’ll leave yours on. I’ll guide you.”

“No!”

“You can close your eyes. Pretend you’re blind. I’ll be your Seeing Eye dog. A laugh a minute. I guarantee it.”

“No. Absolutely not, no.”

“I hate it when you say that ‘Absolutely not, no.’”

“You haven’t heard me say it for a long time.”

“It doesn’t seem that long.”

“It doesn’t? When did I ever use that expression on you? I never said no to you.”

“Yes you did. The night that I asked you to marry me.”

She actually felt the blood drain from her face. Of course. The only time she had ever said no to Adam.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I really hate this. Much more than I expected to hate it.”

“Are you referring to Rollerblading or something else?” she asked suspiciously.

He sighed, but the melancholy of it was lost when his foot shot off to the right and left him leaning on her drunkenly, threatening to pull them both down. He scrambled to regain his balance.

Adam’s dignity had always been innate in him.

He was like a duck out of water with these foolish inventions on his feet, and she could not imagine what had led him to this moment.

He swore under his breath, a word that was pure Adam.

She started to laugh.

He glared at her.

She started to laugh harder.

“Stop it. You’re making my skates wobble.”

It was the first time she had ever seen Adam so out of his element and so out of control. It was delightful.

She pushed off tentatively.

“Not so bloody fast!”

She pushed with her other foot. “I think I’m getting it.”

“Tory, you are going way too fast!”

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