smile and wave, and tell us to have a good time. I've often wondered, if my mother had lived, would it have made a difference? She was so different from Daddy.'
She heard Tommy Lee swallow against her temple. 'They were like second parents to me.'
She rubbed her hands along his back, feeling his steady heartbeat against her breast, wondering again if love was powerful enough to overcome such long-standing enmities. Loving him, even marrying him, would never be enough. Until the hostilities were over, the two of them could never know complete serenity.
'Tommy Lee?'
'H'm?'
'I want to make a bargain with you.'
He drew back, tilting his head to see her face. 'A bargain?'
She looked up with eloquent brown eyes,
hoping what she was doing was right.
'A bargain.'
'What kind of bargain?'
'You… you still want to marry me?'
He released a breathy, rueful laugh that said it all, and she went on, fixing him with her steady eyes. 'I'll promise to marry you if you'll promise to go see your mama and daddy and make peace with them.'
She felt him begin to stiffen and quickly framed his jaws with both hands, holding him where he was. 'Please, hear me out. When you pull away and get that look on your face you remind me of Daddy. In your own way you're as stubborn as he is, don't you see?'
Tommy Lee didn't appreciate being compared to Everett. He gave an ironic sniff, but she forced him to listen to reason.
'The only way it'll work for us is if we make every attempt at forgiving,' she went on. 'You've just said my daddy is frightened of admitting he's been wrong all these years. Well, aren't you, too? So where do we start putting an end to it all?' When he tried to pull away again she held him, continuing persuasively, 'Oh,
Tommy Lee, I saw the look on 355 your mama's face-and your daddy's, too-when they saw you walk up those church steps last Sunday. They love you and they miss you terribly, and whether you want to admit it or not, you miss them, too. You're their only son, and Beth is their granddaughter. Isn't it time you became a family again?'
Beneath her palms she felt his tense muscles and quivering nerves, and made small, soothing circles with her thumbs on his cheeks. 'I want to tell you something that I've never told you before,' she said in an equally soothing voice, studying his deep, dark eyes. 'Your mother and father were against sending me away. My mother told me before she died. She was never happy with the estrangement between the two couples, but there was little she could do, given my father's stubbornness. He's very strong-willed, and he talked your parents and my mother into agreeing with him about giving the baby up for adoption. I spent years blaming all of them equally, but it was really my father who forced the issue. If I can forgive him, can't you forgive your parents, too?'
She could see his defenses weakening and rushed on. 'I'll help you. I'll go with you if you
want. You and I together have a chance to show them how to forgive. Maybe… just maybe, if we take the first step, they'll follow suit.' She smiled at the idea. 'Imagine it-we could set off a whole chain reaction.'
But Tommy Lee remained unconvinced. 'You're so idealistic. What if they throw me out?'
Behind his words she sensed a vulnerability that touched her heart. 'They won't. You know they won't. All it'll take is for one of you to make the first move.'
'And you really think if we can patch things up with them they'll suddenly soften toward Everett?'
'It's worth a chance, isn't it?'
'And what about this newest fracas? Are you forgetting you just threw your daddy out of your house? I'd say that leaves you and him with some patching up of your own to do.'
She dropped her hands from his face, but captured the two ends of the towel that hung around his neck. 'We've fought before. But in the end we always seem to realize that we're the only family left. You leave him up to me for the time being. When he sees me happily married to you, he's bound
to soften.' She smiled up at him. 357 'There's something you have to realize about my daddy. Underneath all that bluster he has a grudging respect for anybody who'll stand up to him.' She tugged on the towel and drew him down for a short kiss. 'So what do you say?'
'You drive a hard bargain, Rachel.'
Suddenly she saw through the idealist's eyes he accused her of having and slipped her hands beneath the towel, locking her fingers behind his neck while meeting his brown eyes intensely. 'I want it to be the way it used to be.'
'It'll never be the way it used to be.'
'It could be better.' She squeezed his neck for emphasis. 'It could be… you know it could. You, me, your parents, my father… and Beth. What about her? You're cheating her out of her own grandparents by carrying this grudge.'
'I know.' He sighed wearily and drew her into his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. 'I know.'
'Grandparents can be a wonderful influence on young people, and vice versa. And besides'-she kissed his Adam's apple-'I thought I was the woman you'd do anything in the world for.'
Somewhere in the house, bacon was burning and the buttons of a shirt sang out against the metal tumbler of a dryer. Tommy Lee folded Rachel against his heart and buried his face in the flower-scented skin of her neck, realizing that if things went right he had within his grasp the chance of gaining back everything he'd once had taken from him.
Rachel was very wise, knowing even better than he how badly his old wounds needed to be cauterized. 'You'll really do it, Rachel? You'll marry me?' he asked hoarsely.
'Don't you think it's time?' came her trembling reply.
He drew back to look into her dark eyes, and his own traversed her face, cataloging it feature by feature while his thumbs brushed the crests of her cheekbones. Her lips were slightly parted, her hair in disarray, and the expression in her eyes was one he'd dreamed of seeing there during the endless years when nothing and no one else could quite fill the empty spot in his heart.
'Oh, Rachel… my Rachel.' He dropped his forehead against hers, letting his eyes
sink shut, capturing the essence of the 359 moment to carry within him as a talisman during the days ahead. 'How I love you.'
She swallowed back the tears in her throat. 'I love you, too… so much.'
Then their mouths were joined and emotions billowed. They clung together in an ardent kiss, pressing their bodies close, hands wandering impatiently now that the decision was made.
Abruptly Tommy Lee drew back, holding her head with both hands. 'When?' Without giving her time to answer, he rushed on, 'Right away, as soon as we can get a license and find somebody to do it. I want us to have a honeymoon, so you'll have to make arrangements at the store, and afterward… which house do you want to live at? I'd live here if you asked me to, but… oh, Rachel, say you'll move into my house on the lake. God, it'll be like a dream-was
'Hold on.' She couldn't resist chuckling at his impetuousness. 'Aren't you forgetting something?'
He frowned in puzzlement. 'What?'
'Beth. Shouldn't I meet her first? Don't you think we should get her approval, since she's
going to be part of the family, too?'
'Oh, Beth.' He wrapped Rachel loosely in his arms and rocked her. 'Beth is going to love you.'
He said it with such thoughtless conviction there seemed no other way it could be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The expression on his daughter's face when Tommy Lee walked into his house less than an hour later warned him trouble lay ahead.
'Where were you all night?' She stood with both hands stuffed into the tight pockets of her blue jeans, a
