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“Yes, only Mary Jane...has doubts.”
“Because of me?” Lee had a habit of getting right to the point.
“That’s right,” she said again, aware that Jackie could overhear.
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Well, yes, I thought so, but I wanted to check with you.”
“And you’ve checked, and I’m good, so go ahead.”
Daisy laughed. “You are the most efficient conversationalist I know, Lee.”
“Only when I’m busting to get into the shower. Seriously, it seems like half a lifetime ago that he and I were planning a big wedding, and I am sooo not that kind of girl anymore. If I ever was. Mary Jane is projecting her own stuff.”
“Well, yeah, I did wonder about that.”
“I was hurt at the time. I mean, I was.”
“I don’t think I knew that...”
“You were hardly around. But now I know it’s the best thing that could have happened, us calling that wedding off. Are we done?”
“We’re done. Go take your shower.”
They ended the conversation seconds later, just as the phone vibrated on the Reid Landscaping office manager’s desk. Jackie checked it quickly and said, “Okay, you’re in luck, Ms. Cherry.”
“Please call me Daisy.”
“Daisy. Such a pretty name!”
“Thanks.”
“Tucker can see you now. He’ll be coming in from the display area in a moment or two.”
“Can I meet him out there?” Daisy jumped up. “I don’t want to create too much of an interruption.” She felt a little claustrophobic in here for some reason, and suddenly craved the open air with its October crispness and bite.
“Sure, go through the door here,” the office manager said. “You’ll see him coming across in a minute or two.” Once more, there was that flicker of curiosity in Jackie’s manner, and Daisy wondered what it meant.
Probably nothing. Curiosity was a natural response. She was feeling it, too. If she’d never gotten to know Tucker Reid ten years ago when he was about to marry her sister, what would she feel about him now?
Would he still be that granite-faced, uncomfortable presence she’d been able to call to memory so clearly a few minutes ago? Would he be someone that carefree Lee would still be happy to think of as a friend? Would he be the man Mary Jane thought he was—cold and superficial enough to dump his fiancée because she had some burn scarring on one side of her lower jaw and neck and shoulder?
Or was there another truth to the man that none of the Cherry sisters had understood?
* * *
The paving stones were a delaying tactic. Tucker knew it even as he placed another one in position, rocking it back and forth on its sand foundation to make sure it was steady.
It wasn’t.
Or level.
He didn’t have the spirit level with him to enable a final adjustment, so he was not just delaying his meeting with Daisy Cherry here, he was actively wasting his own time, because he would probably end up lifting all the pavers and laying them down again from scratch in order to get them right.
He sighed between his teeth, irritated at himself.
And then picked up another paving stone. There was something about physical labor that settled his head. He’d always been that way, through his father’s illness, through all the anger and mess, through the years he’d spent filling his dad’s shoes too young. When he had something on his mind, he worked through it, literally. Raking leaves in his parents’ yard at thirteen. Unloading deliveries at the garden center at twenty.
Or fiddling uselessly with pavers right now.
He didn’t like thinking back on his relationship with Lee, that was the problem. And he definitely didn’t like thinking about Daisy’s part in the whole thing.
No, that wasn’t fair.
As far as Daisy herself knew, she hadn’t been involved at all.
It was all me.
It had so nearly been a disaster—so very, very nearly—and he couldn’t give himself any credit for averting that disaster. He’d seen it coming, but he hadn’t been the one to act. He’d let Lee and fate do that. He’d been paralyzed by his intense need to do the right thing, without knowing what the right thing was.
There were reasons for the paralysis, but he found it hard to forgive himself for it all the same.
He sometimes still thought about getting in touch with Lee to see how she was doing. Thought about calling or emailing, but how did you do that? How did you revive something that had started as a friendship and should never have turned into anything else? How did you just ask someone out of the blue, “Hey...are you happy?”
You can ask Lee’s sister if Lee is happy. You can ask her today. She would know the answer to that.
But he wasn’t convinced that he would manage to frame the question. He could end up holding back and holding back until someone else took the matter into their own hands, the way he had held back ten years ago.
Yeah, he definitely hadn’t forgiven himself for that.
Ten years earlier
Something’s not right.
The thought was nagging and insistent, prodding at Tucker like someone trying to get his attention with the point of an umbrella. Hey, you! Notice me! Do something!
Everything’s not right.
“...and Mom is still questioning the fact that we’re only giving chocolate as wedding favors,” Lee was saying.
Tucker tried to listen, tried to feel that what his fiancée was saying was important. “I think it’s fine,” he said, and she nodded, but neither of them was really thinking about chocolate or wedding etiquette or any of that.
I’m thinking I don’t want to go ahead with this, and I’ve known it in my heart for a while, and today it’s making me sick. It’s like lead in my stomach. It’s gotten worse. Oh boy, has it gotten worse! How could this happen? Everyone in both families is so happy about the wedding, I shouldn’t be feeling this way.
Was that what Lee was thinking, too? Or was she just scared? Scared because she could see that he was thinking it?
His mind scattered onto six different tracks at once. Scared because she didn’t know what he was thinking, because he was fighting so hard not to let it show?
More than that, he was fighting so hard not to feel it. He honestly did not know if it was just prewedding jitters, the kind everyone had, or if it was a serious problem, and he didn’t dare to bare his soul to a listening ear in order to find out. Not to Lee, not to anyone.
Dad had “followed his heart” and left havoc in his wake for years, made his whole family miserable. Tucker thought that human hearts could talk a lot of disastrous nonsense, and had vowed many times that he would keep his where it belonged, under the firm control of his head.
Meanwhile, Daisy had disappeared into the kitchen.
Daisy, who’d knocked him off course the moment he’d set eyes on her from an upstairs bedroom window less than an hour ago. He’d never expected it. How the hell could you expect something like that?
He’d heard the car swinging in from the resort driveway to park beside the house, a little later than predicted. Mary Jane had been the one to go pick up Daisy from Albany airport. He’d heard voices—Lee and his future in-laws, Marshall and Denise, as they rushed outside to greet her.
He’d stepped over to the window. Daisy was climbing out of the car. Shafts of afternoon sun struck her blond hair and glinted on earrings and a gold bangle on a bare, lightly tanned wrist. She was wearing jeans, a white top and some kind of pointless but beautiful, vibrantly colorful summery scarf that got mixed up in her huge, warm hug with Lee.
She didn’t even seem to see Lee’s newly scarred skin, she was just so busy hugging her and exclaiming, wiping happy tears from her eyes, laughing. She hugged her parents, said something about the beautiful June day and the sun on the water.
“You’re later than we expected,” Denise Cherry said.
“My fault,” Daisy answered. “I want to bake for you tonight, so we stopped for ingredients.”
“You don’t have to bake for us! Not when you’re only just home!”
“I want to. Please! I really do!” She was already diving into the trunk of the car and bringing out shopping bags. “I’m going to do a raspberry dacquoise that’s so luscious we’ll have to row right around the lake to burn off the calories. And a peach tart, because French tarts are just so gorgeous to look at.”
“I don’t know where you get the energy, honey!”
Tucker didn’t know, either. All he knew was that it glowed from every pore of her skin and he was captivated by it. Lee was pretty energetic, too. She liked to hike and ski and climb and run, and he loved that about her—that she was active and fit, and not some girlie girl who wouldn’t set foot outdoors for fear of ruining a pedicure.
But Daisy’s energy was different, electric and beautiful, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He felt as if he was spying, a voyeur, betraying Lee, betraying the whole Cherry family, betraying himself, and even his mother, who adored Lee. And he kept right on doing it, watching the outline and movement of Daisy’s body as she carried the shopping bags. She paused to take another look around her at the beloved, familiar sights of home, and let out a big sigh of contentment that he felt in his own body.
It couldn’t be happening.
Even if it was happening, it couldn’t mean anything, or be important in any way. It was just some stupid symptom of his prewedding nerves. He seriously didn’t believe in this kind of thing. He seriously didn’t want to believe in it, after Dad. And if it seemed to be happening anyway, then it was just a meaningless illusion. It wasn’t real.
And yet... He felt it again a little later, when they formally met, the moment they shook hands. The aura of creative energy and star-kissed good fortune that radiated from her like an inner light, the optimism and curiosity and zest for life. Her hair, her eyes, her bow of a mouth, the way she undraped that stupid, beautiful scarf, unconsciously running her hand over the silk as if its color gave off heat and her fingers were cold.
Wow.
Just wow.
There were three Cherry sisters in his life. He liked the eldest one a lot, even though she could be prickly at times and he couldn’t stand Alex, her boyfriend. He loved the middle one like a comrade-in-arms and he was going to marry her. He was. Everyone wanted it.
Sister number three was a revelation he hadn’t expected or wanted or—
Hadn’t wanted.
Really, really didn’t want.
He wanted to marry Lee.
He wanted to want to marry Lee.
“Should we get out of here?” she asked him suddenly, and he realized he was still staring into space, roughly in the direction of the kitchen door, even though it was a good forty-five seconds since Daisy had disappeared through it.
“Out of here?” he echoed stupidly.
“Away,” Lee said. “Right after dinner. Go to a bar, or something. Even better, skip dinner and go to a bar right now.”
“You know we can’t do that.” As a future Cherry son-in-law...as the first future Cherry son-in-law...he was well aware of family requirements five days before the wedding, and his sense of duty about it was strong. “Not even after dinner.”
“Is it wrong that I want to?” There was a huge amount of appeal in Lee’s voice, and he didn’t know how to answer her.
“We’re both on edge.” He touched her neck. It was a caress he’d used countless times before the accident and he wasn’t out of the habit of it yet, even though he knew she didn’t like it anymore. The burn scarring there and on her jaw and shoulder was fading now, but it was still too fresh for comfort and would never fully disappear, and they were both self-conscious about it, second-guessing their own motivations.
Was he only touching her neck to prove that he didn’t mind touching it? Did she only dislike it because she didn’t believe such a caress could possibly be sincere? She hated the scarring way more than he did.
Why had he started touching her neck in the first place? He liked her so much, they were such great friends, they had things in common, but that slightly crazy party night when friendship had spilled over into something physical...
To be honest, he wondered where they would be now if that night had never happened.
Maybe we would have stayed just friends, and I would have met Daisy instead...
No! Idiot!
When Lee had still been in the hospital after the accident, they’d both said to each other that this was what love was all about, going through the dark times together as well as the good times, and yet...
Something’s not right.
It wasn’t just wedding jitters.
And it wasn’t just Daisy.
Lee felt it, too, he was sure she did.
Almost sure.
But she wasn’t saying anything.
And he couldn’t say it for her because then she’d think...everyone would think...that he was doing it because of the accident, when really he thought the accident had done him a favor, reaffirming his bone-deep understanding of how serious marriage was, forcing a realization that they weren’t together for the right reasons. They cared about each other, but not in the right way.
I have to say it. If she won’t, I have to.
But what if he was wrong? What if this was just a temporary blip in the beat of his untrustworthy heart? What if the Reid and Cherry families were right to be so happy about the wedding? And what if Lee was devastated instead of relieved? Could he do that to her?
He couldn’t say it. Was there any way he could work out what both of them really felt without resorting to the finality of words? Maybe the best marriages were the ones that started out exactly the way he’d started out with Lee—as friends. After seeing what passion and wild impulse had done to his own family, he truly didn’t think that was the way to go.
So where did Daisy fit in?
She didn’t, his own ruthless honesty told him. He’d schooled himself not to believe in rosy scenarios, after Dad’s lymphoma diagnosis and his reaction to it. Life wasn’t sunny and effortless. Life wasn’t about going where the winds of emotion blew you. Life was struggle. Given a choice between believing in easy miracles and believing in solid work, Tucker chose the hard yards every time.
