One #2
“Try me,” Liam urged. Standing back a little, to give the runaway bride some space. No sense crowding her.
She seemed solid, but magical, too, which meant she could be a figment of his imagination, not a regular woman.
“I really thought Jeffrey was the man for me,” she began, shaking her head, apparently reflecting upon her previous choices. “He ticked all the right boxes. He was handsome, employed, and he said he wanted kids.”
Liam raised one eyebrow, though he was pretty sure she didn’t notice that. She was too involved in the story she was telling.
“Your first husband?” he prompted casually, picking up the cloth, wiping down the spotless surface of the bar, glancing at the clock again.
In less than an hour, Bitter Gulch would be open for business, bustling with appropriately costumed employees and the usual horde of families on summer vacation.
This delightful interlude would be over.
And how many times could something like this happen in one man’s life?
“Yes,” she began. “His name was—is—Tom Wainwright. He’s an airline pilot, very good-looking and very macho. We were married for three years.”
Liam thought of his own marital history. Reminded himself he was in no position to judge, given that he’d gone into that crap show of a marriage with both eyes wide-open.
His late wife, Waverly, a model and sometime actress, had been beautiful, with her fit, slender body, her gleaming dark hair, her stunning green eyes.
She’d also been a walking red flag, vindictive when she was angry, which was often, jealous of just about everybody and prone to straying, although Liam hadn’t known that until he was in way over his head, with two children to think about.
Inwardly, he sighed. “Go on,” he said.
Madison’s fascinating, chameleon eyes seemed to be fixed on another place and time. “He promised,” she said.
Liam waited.
“Tom knew I wanted children more than anything, and he promised we would start a family as soon as he got promoted, after we moved, that kind of thing. And, like a fool, I believed him.” Madison paused, looked down at her drink.
Her left hand, shimmering with a doorknob of a diamond and an impressive wedding band to match, trembled slightly.
“Turns out, he never wanted children. He was just stringing me along, waiting for my grandmother to die, so he could raid my inheritance. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, he got another woman pregnant. I divorced him.”
“Understandable,” Liam said, not wanting to break the flow. He felt honored, somehow, receiving her confidences in that quiet and otherwise-empty saloon.
And very sympathetic. After all, he could identify. He would have divorced Waverly a lot sooner, for similar reasons, if she hadn’t gotten sick. She’d died only six months after she’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia.
Everything he’d felt for her had dried up and blown away like so much dust, once he finally admitted to himself that she’d been unfaithful, not just once or twice, but dozens of times.
But she’d been so desperately ill.
And she was the mother of his children.
He’d had to stand by her, whether he wanted to or not.
And stand by her he had, until the end, though even as she was dying, Waverly had been distant with him, cold.
If it weren’t for you and these kids , she’d said once, lying skeletal in her hospital bed, breathless and bitter, while machines beeped and wheezed around her, I would have been famous. I would have been somebody special.
The memory, brief as it was, caused Liam to shut his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, Madison was throwing back more whiskey.
She teetered a little on the stool in the process, so that Liam reached for her, caught himself just short of grabbing her forearm to keep her from falling right into the sawdust.
“Steady, there,” he said.
“I definitely dodged a bullet today,” she confided, though wistfully. “I need to rethink my entire life.”
She fell silent again. Staring down at her drink, probably fighting back tears.
Liam had never longed to put his arms around a woman the way he did then, but that was a risk he didn’t want to take.
She might vanish.
Anyway, somebody was bound to come looking for her soon—the erstwhile groom, for example, or maybe her mother, if she had one. It was a wonder no one had tracked her down yet, in fact, since Brynne Garrett’s fancy wedding venue was just on the other side of the road.
He’d noticed the crowd gathered around the flower-draped gazebo earlier, though it wasn’t an unusual sight, since Brynne and her business partner, David Fielding, did a land office business throwing lavish weddings, many of them complete with fireworks, strange costumes and paid extras.
Now he imagined the drama and chaos that must have started when the bride turned her “I do” into an “I don’t,” and fled the scene in a fist-clenching fury.
Again, he allowed himself the faintest of grins, savoring the memory of her spectacular arrival, a creature of light and flame and sweet, sweet frenzy.
“And today, you married Jeffrey,” he ventured, to get the conversation moving again.
“Sort of,” she said, with another sigh and another swirl and another swig.
More like a gulp.
“How do you ‘sort of’ get married?”
“I went through with the ceremony,” she recalled.
“We exchanged vows in front of that lovely gazebo, and the minister pronounced us husband and wife. We went into the lodge then, since it was time for the reception to start. Jeffrey’s mother sidled up to me, all smiles, and said she was so thrilled to be going on the honeymoon with us.
Turned out, Jeffrey had bought her an airline ticket, behind my back, and even reserved a room for her at our hotel. ”
“Uh-oh,” Liam muttered, with conviction. In any other circumstances, he would have added a whistle, for emphasis.
“Jeffrey actually invited his mother to join us on our honey moon , and I didn’t see it coming. I should have, because there were plenty of warning signs, but I didn’t!”
Liam was sympathetic—and fascinated. “What happened then?”
“I confronted Jeffrey, and he admitted it was true. His mommy needed a vacation, and she’d always wanted to visit Costa Rica. Can you believe it?”
Liam was stuck for an answer, so he didn’t offer one.
“I told Jeffrey we were through, this time for good, and I refused to sign the license, which meant we weren’t legally married. We’d been through the motions, but none of it was binding.
“Jeffrey kept arguing—he said I was being dramatic.”
“Were you?” Liam asked mildly, and felt a smile tug at one corner of his mouth.
“Yes,” Madison replied, after huffing out a sigh. “And I’m not sorry.”
“Understandably,” Liam affirmed. What kind of idiot wanted to take his mother along on a honeymoon ? “I guess this wasn’t the first time Jeffrey’s mother had been a problem?”
Madison drew a deep breath, causing her perfect breasts to rise beneath the silk and lace of her bodice, and exhaled loudly, in obvious frustration.
Remembering, she shook her head. “That woman—Yolanda, I mean—was always interfering. She was awful, actually. Always passive-aggressive—with me , that is. Clingy and possessive, too, forever fawning over Jeffrey, calling him her baby boy.” She paused, shook her head. “I’m such a ninny.”
“You don’t strike me as a ninny,” Liam observed moderately, wondering how long it had been since he’d heard that old-fashioned term. “Maybe you’re being a little too hard on yourself?”
“Kind of you to say so,” Madison said, softly and sadly.
“But I have to take full responsibility. I wanted an ordinary man—somebody solid and dependable—not an overgrown jock like Tom. I thought Jeffrey was that man, and he said he wanted children, so I guess I was willing to overlook some of his faults—after all, I’m not exactly perfect myself. ”
Liam figured that was debatable, but he didn’t say so. That would have been flattery, and he didn’t deal in that.
“The signs were there, all along,” Madison continued quietly, reflectively. “Yolanda was around way too much. She went to movies with us, for heaven’s sake, and crashed more than one otherwise-romantic dinner. We took a day trip to the beach once, and she followed us there.”
“Wow,” Liam said, because speaking his thoughts about Jeffrey’s relationship with his mother would have been rude. Plus, it was none of his business.
Madison fixed her gaze on him in the next moment, eyes slightly narrowed, brows raised. “What’s your mother like?” she asked forthrightly.
The question took Liam aback, unexpected as it was. “Different,” he said, after a few long moments. “From Yolanda, that is.”
“She doesn’t interfere in your life? Invite herself along on your dates?”
“God, no,” Liam said, trying to picture his independent mother behaving the way this Yolanda person apparently did.
Cassie McKettrick loved her children, for sure, and she had been a loving, attentive parent when they were young, making sure they led active, happy lives and behaved themselves.
For all that, she had always been more than a mother, more than a wife.
She was an artist, a businesswoman, a thriving entity in her own right.
Now that all three of them were grown men, he, Jesse and Rhett, the youngest, Cassie was too busy sculpting museum-quality pieces, helping to run the family’s sizable ranch near San Diego and serving on various charity boards to be overly concerned with what might be happening in the lives of her sons.
The faintest blush pinkened Madison’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked such personal questions.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Liam said. He could hear car doors slamming now, female voices rising and falling, drawing nearer.
It was over, this odd encounter, and Liam wanted it to last longer. A lot longer.
“That will be my friends,” Madison said, draining the last drops of whiskey and melted ice with an obvious swallow.
She was right, of course.