The Best Man. Linda Turner
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favorite part of the day, right after dawn, when the sun was just peaking over the horizon and most of the rest of the world was still sleeping. The dew was heavy on the ground, the scent of pine sweet and fresh on the morning air, and the sky washed clear of clouds. It was then that she loved to sit on her back porch with a steaming cup of coffee and watch the ranch slowly come awake.
But she wasn’t at the ranch this morning, and she found no joy in the sunlight that streamed in through the open window of Nick’s guest room. Outside, a robin sang merrily in a nearby tree, but all Merry could think of was last night…when she’d stripped off her wedding dress in front of Nick and waded into the lake.
Groaning, she rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. It was all just a horrible dream, she tried to tell herself, but the memories that marched relentlessly through her throbbing head were all too real. Thomas had stood her up, and she’d had too much to drink at the wake of her reception. She’d danced with every cowboy who’d asked her, flirted shamelessly, then completely fallen apart on poor Nick.
Images flashed before her closed eyes, horrifying her in the bright light of day. Standing before Nick in her bra and panties, burning her wedding dress, crying her heart out in her old friend’s arms. She was sure she must have thoroughly embarrassed him, and she regretted that. But she didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t been there. All she’d wanted to do was die.
She still did, but life wasn’t that easy. Like it or not, she was the talk of the town through no fault of her own, and starting today, she had to face that. But first, she had to face Nick, and just the thought of doing that dressed in nothing but his T-shirt made her cringe. Whatever possessed her to burn her dress? she wondered wildly. She must have been out of her mind.
Left with no choice, she climbed out of bed and only just then spied her overnight bag sitting just inside the room by the door. Relieved, she didn’t have to ask how it had gotten there—she knew Nick well enough to know that he’d called her family to let them know where she was and someone had brought her some clothes. He was that kind of man, caring and considerate, and she was lucky to have him for a friend. He’d been kinder to her than the man who had spent most of the last year telling her how much he loved her.
Her emotions all out of kilter, she felt her eyes start to fill with tears and stiffened. No! she told herself fiercely. She would not cry! Not again. Thomas was gone, without a word of apology or explanation to her, and she had to find a way to get past that, to get past the hurt that burned like an open wound where her heart had once been. And she couldn’t do it by crying. That only made the pain worse.
She needed to focus on today, just today, and what it would take to get her through it, she decided. She had to get dressed, then face Nick. Then tomorrow, she’d go back to work and she could push everything else from her mind. If she was lucky, she’d forget that she’d ever had the misfortune to even meet Thomas Cooper, let alone fall in love with him.
The woman who stepped out of the bedroom twenty minutes later bore little resemblance to the one who’d suffered a serious meltdown the previous evening. Dressed casually in a mint green cotton shift and flat sandals, she’d swept her dark hair up off her neck in a simple twist and kept her makeup to the bare necessities—mascara, blush and lip gloss.
Satisfied that she would do, she had no idea what the sight of her did to Nick. In the process of taking a sip of his coffee when she found him in the kitchen, he very nearly choked.
She was, he thought, shaken, the most amazing woman! He’d known her forever, seen her at her best and her worst as both a child and a woman, and she could still steal his breath just by walking into a room. And it had nothing to do with what she wore or how she had her hair fixed. It was just Merry, the way she moved, breathed, smiled. She had a glow to her, an inherent beauty, that came straight from the heart and a sparkle that a woman either had or she didn’t. Even when she was slightly hungover and had every right to be in the depths of depression, Merry had it in spades.
He wanted to tell her that Thomas was a fool, that nothing short of an army would have been able to drag him away from the church if she’d been waiting there to marry him, but he couldn’t bring himself to take the chance. Not when that would put her in the position of defending Thomas—and irrevocably change the way she looked at him.
Resigned, he swallowed the coffee that seemed to stick in his throat and greeted her gruffly. “Good morning, sleepyhead. How’d you sleep?”
“Much better than I expected,” she admitted honestly as he handed her a mug of coffee. “Especially after the way I acted at the lake.” Heat climbing in her cheeks, she resisted the urge to stare down into her mug and met his gaze head on, instead. “What should I apologize first for? Stripping in front of you or crying all over you?”
She looked so miserable that Nick had to laugh. “If I remember correctly, you had a bathing suit when you were sixteen that showed a heck of a lot more skin than your bra and panties, so I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. And what’s a few tears among friends? After what you’d just been through, I figured you were entitled.”
He meant to set her at ease, but the words were hardly out of his mouth when her eyes flooded. “Well, damn!” he swore. “I’ve gone and made you cry again. I’m sorry, Mer. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s not you,” she choked, swiping at her tears before they could ruin her mascara. “It’s me. I swore I wasn’t going to do this. I hate crying!”
In all the years that he’d known her, Nick could only remember her crying a handful of times—once, when she broke her arm when she was eight, then again when her dog was run over by one of the ranch hands when she was twelve. That was when she’d decided to become a veterinarian when she grew up. But it was when her father died that she’d been nearly inconsolable. Nick hoped he never saw her cry like that again, but last night, she’d come awfully close.
“There’s nothing wrong with crying, Merry,” he said quietly. “It’s only natural. You’re grieving.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, but he was right. She was grieving for something that had died—her relationship with the man she loved—and she hadn’t even known there was a problem. “I feel so stupid,” she sniffed. “This didn’t just happen. There had to be signs along the way that something was wrong, and I didn’t see them.”
“Neither did I, and I’m his best friend,” he replied. Pulling out a chair for her at the kitchen table, he sat across from her and confided, “I thought we were as close as brothers, but he never said anything about having any doubts about getting married. In fact, I thought he couldn’t wait. These last few months were the happiest I’ve ever seen him.”
“Then what happened? If he was so happy, why did he run out on me?”
He shrugged and could only guess. “I still think he had a bad case of jitters and just bolted in pure panic. You know how he jumps to conclusions—he gets a headache and he thinks he’s got a brain tumor. Yesterday, all it would have taken was one little doubt and he’d have convinced himself that the two of you were headed for disaster and he had to do something to stop it. So he gave into blind fear and ran. That doesn’t mean he won’t come back. He just needs to work some things out and put them in perspective.”
She wanted to believe him, but she just couldn’t. Not yet. “And how long is it going to take him to do that? A week? A month? Six years?”
That was a question Nick didn’t have any answers for. He just wanted Merry to be happy, even if he was nowhere in the picture. If that meant she waited a lifetime for Thomas to come to his senses, then so be it. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “That’s something the two of you will have to come to terms with. Why don’t you let me call him for you?” he suggested. “You need to talk, the sooner the better. I can make a few phone calls, track him down—”
“No!”
“But it’s the only way you’re going to work this out.”
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