As Kendall laughed, her breasts brushed against Rick’s chest and his body completely overheated. “Can we come in before I drop her?” he asked.
“Excuse my manners.” Pearl pushed Eldin back and they cleared a path. “You go on now, Rick, carry your bride over the threshold.”
He’d never live this down. Rick paced the inside of the stifling hot guest house behind Crystal Sutton’s main house. Eldin had brought them over so they could “get settled,” while Pearl had insisted she needed to go to town for some groceries.
“Groceries, my ass,” Rick muttered. She wanted to tell the world that she’d seen Rick Chandler carry his bride over the threshold. Never mind that there’d never been a ceremony or that the bride and supposed groom had just met. Pearl hadn’t been listening.
The tightness in Rick’s shoulders increased. All he could do was hope that when his mother heard the gossip, she’d put an end to the foolishness. Raina would know that Rick hadn’t married or eloped again. She knew better than to buy into unfounded stories. But the news would spread, everyone in town speculating about Rick Chandler and the lady in the wedding dress he’d carried over the threshold.
He groaned and for the first time considered moving to a huge city where he could be anonymous in a large crowd. He shook his head, knowing it would never happen. Despite the memories here, he loved his family, friends, and the small-town feel of Yorkshire Falls too much to leave. But a man could dream, couldn’t he?
He glanced at the closed bathroom door where Kendall had gone to change. His bride. He rolled his eyes at the absurdity and swiped a hand over his damp forehead. Damn but it was like a sauna in here. He’d have to make sure Kendall got over to the General Store and picked up an A.C. unit.
Where was she, anyway? She said she’d needed to change out of the gown but that had been over ten minutes ago. He strode to the bathroom door and rapped twice. “You okay in there?”
“Sort of,” came the muffled reply.
He jiggled the handle and found the door locked. He knocked once more. “Open up for me or I’m kicking the door down.” He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. His back and shoulder muscles remained sore from the dive onto the driveway.
The door creaked open wide. He stepped inside in time to see her lower herself back onto the closed toilet seat and hang her head low between her knees. “I am sooo dizzy.”
He glanced at her, concerned. “It’s no wonder with that damn dress cutting off your circulation. I thought you were going to get out of it.”
“I tried, but it’s hot in here and I couldn’t unbutton the dress on my own, so I sat down for a minute. Then I got to thinking about my aunt and all the years she spent here. I stood up, got dizzy again . . .” She managed a shrug.
She liked to ramble, something he’d learned from talking to her by the side of the road. Her thoughts jumped from topic to topic, but one thing stuck with him. Her pain. Rick had lost his father when he was fifteen. He’d been young, but not young enough so he didn’t remember the man. He’d been a hands-on father, attended all his boys’ baseball games and back-to-school nights.
“I lost my father a while back. I can understand what you’re going through now,” he said, compelled to open up to this woman for reasons he didn’t understand. Reasons that made him wary. But he didn’t censor himself. “It was twenty years ago. I was fifteen,” he said, remembering. “But sometimes the pain is as fresh as if it were yesterday.”
Rick met Kendall’s moist gaze and his heart twisted with understanding. He hadn’t expected to connect with her on any level, especially not on the emotional one he normally walled off. He was surprised he understood this stranger, this woman, so well. “I’m sorry about your aunt.” He hadn’t said so earlier and meant to.
“Thanks.” Her voice held a rough timbre. “Same with your dad.”
He nodded. She and Crystal had obviously shared a special relationship. Family bonding was something else Rick could relate to. The Chandlers were closer than most, bonded by shared memories, both good and bad. With Kendall’s pain both new and raw, he found himself wanting to be the one to ease her anguish—and not because to serve and protect was in his job description.
He swallowed a groan. He’d been down this road once before and received a punch in the gut for his efforts. “Once you got light-headed, didn’t it dawn on you to call for help?” He directed them back to the problem at hand.
She tipped her head to the side. “Such a simple solution. Gee, why hadn’t I thought of that?”
He chuckled. “Too weak, huh?”
“Something like that. Help me?”
Her wide eyes got to him and he couldn’t resist her plea. “Where’s the best place to start?”
“Back buttons.” She hung her head forward, the pinkish red strands brushing against the stark white dress. When she felt better, he’d have to remember to ask her about the hair color, not that it mattered. He liked her anyway. And here he thought he preferred blondes, though he had to admit he hadn’t a clue what her real hair color was beneath the pink sheen.
He reached for the first pearlized button when the intimacy of the act struck him. He stood in the small bathroom undoing a bride’s dress. No memories rose to suffocate him since he and Jillian had eloped, Rick in uniform, Jillian in a maternity dress. At this point he was long over the hurt and way past the love. Last Rick had heard, Jillian and her husband were happily married with three kids, living in California. Done, gone, and forgotten except for the lessons learned, Rick thought.
Which was why this bride and the feelings she inspired shocked him. Though
