Cara Colter - A Bride Worth Waiting For

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.