The One Who Changed Everything. Lilian Darcy
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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