Authors: Christie Ridgway
Her foot caught on a pile of flattened empty boxes stacked against the garage and she gave them a little kick before marching toward the front door. It felt like an execution was in the offing, but she wasn't going to let him know that this meeting would be the lethal injection to her heart.
It wasn't his fault that she couldn't be the kind of woman he deserved. She could work at being friendly, fun and pleasing, but for the life and marriage he wanted she had to be trusting and open. For too long she'd only had herself to rely on, and she couldn't see herself learning to rely on someone else.
As she reached the front door, it suddenly opened. She took a hasty step back, then saw that it was Bryce, who looked a little sweaty and dusty. He smiled, then swooped in to grab her up for a kiss on the forehead. “Later, little fairy,” he said, then breezed past her at a jog.
She gazed after him with a sad smile. “I didn't get a chance to say goodbye,” she murmured to his retreating back. It was likely she'd never see him again.
“Tears?” a voice said at her back. “Don't tell me you're crying over my little brother.”
She blinked rapidly and then spun around. “Of course not.” There was going to be no sentiment during this meeting. She'd hand over the keys and
they'd exchange thoughts on how best to end their marriage.
Owen backed away from the threshold. “Come inside.”
On the small table in the shallow foyer was a huge arrangement of pale-blue roses. Maybe two dozen. She stared at the flowers, wondering who had sent them, and then immediately thought of single mom Alicia. Had she stepped up her courtship of Owen despite Izzy's laying claim to him?
Or had he called the other woman and explained their not-really-a-marriage himself?
“They're from Ellie Palmer's parents,” he said, his gaze on her face. “Yesterday, during the visit you arranged, we had a surprise special delivery on these very premises.”
Izzy's eyes widened as she deduced his meaning. “What? The baby? Born here?”
“Yep.” He smiled. “The baby. Born here.”
“Wow. They're okay?”
“They're okay. I'm okay.”
She studied the relaxed expression on his face. He looked different. Happy. Purposeful. The tightness in her chest eased a little. It appeared as if the old Owenâthe man she'd marriedâwas back.
“Let's sit down for a minute,” he said.
Following him in, she tried breathing slow and easy. He sat on the couch, and she took the chair opposite. Something seemed different, besides his
newly relaxed demeanor, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Frowning, she reached out to place his keys on the table between them. “Sorry about taking off with your car.”
“No problem.” He scooped up the metal ring and immediately pocketed it.
She frowned again, annoyed with herself for not thinking to call a cab to pick her up here at a certain time. Now she'd have to have Owen drive her back to the hotel or stand around on his sidewalk while she waited for a taxi once they were through.
Oh, well. She wiped her palms on her thighs and took a quick breath. “We should talk.”
He nodded. “We should.”
She looked down at her hands as a silence stretched between them. “I've started looking into the annulment laws.”
“Yeah? Me, too.”
Why did that hurt so much? She twisted her fingers together. “There's a couple of possibilities.”
“No. No, there's not.”
Her gaze jumped up to meet his. His expression was unreadable, but his face was so handsome and soâ¦so
dear
to her. How had this happened? How had she been so stupid as to fall in love when she was the kind of person who couldn't let herself count on forever?
“The annulment idea won't work,” Owen said.
“Oh, but I think we can find something in our circumstance that fitsâ”
“We've been living together, Izzy. I admit I'm no legal expert, but from what I've read, the fact that we've been living togetherâand sleeping togetherâputs the kibosh on that plan.”
She slumped against the back of the chair. Yesterday, after her conversation with Emily during which she'd confronted the truth that she was in love with Owen, she'd stopped thinking about a way out of their marriage and just wallowed in self-pity.
And really bad room-service pizza.
She held her palm to her stomach as if it were still burning a hole there. “Really? There's a clause about living together?”
Owen nodded. “Think so.”
Her eyes closed. That meant they needed a divorce then. The idea of it only served to wound her ready-to-be-executed heart. An annulment could be something to forget about, since it legally ruled that the marriage had indeed never occurred. But a divorce made it real.
A divorce made it real that she'd wedded the man she was in love with and that she didn't have what it took to stay married to him. Bryce had once called her a woman who made do with less. Had he been right?
“Izzy,” Owen said softly. “Isabella.”
She willed away the tears stinging her eyes. Swallowing hard, she looked at him. “What is it?”
“Izzy⦔
Her gaze snagged on a quilt folded over the arm of the sofa he was sitting on. It looked familiar. She frowned at it, then scooted forward on her cushion so she had a better view. It certainly was a quilt. In the colors of her alma mater. The alma mater she shared with Emily.
As a matter of fact, it appeared to be the very quilt that Emily had made for Izzy the year after they'd graduated.
Eyebrows raised, she looked at Owen. He was watching her, and something in his expression made her run her gaze around the room. Some of the firefighter memorabilia on the bookcase had been rearranged. There were more books on the shelves now, including
Eight Cousins
and
A Rose in Bloom.
Her books.
She rose to her feet, her insides unsteady as she toured the house. In the kitchen were some hand-embroidered tea towels that one of her
zias
had given her when she turned eighteen. Down the hall, in the room Owen used as a home office, her framed college diplomas hung on the wall next to his. Photographs that she'd taken over the years were set about, too. With a tentative fingertip, she touched one. It wasn't a figment of her imagination.
Then she whirled, sensing Owen behind her. He
stood in the doorway, his gaze trained on her face. She looked away, because what she was feeling was too big, too scary, too hard to speak of. He moved aside as she approached the door and then trailed her up the stairs to the next level.
In his bedroom, she found the clothes that had been in boxes in the garage hanging in the closet. A pair of scruffy slippers shaped like jalapeño peppers that she'd had since high school and never gotten around to throwing out peeked from under the bed.
Owen cleared his throat. “There were some god-awful flannel granny nightgowns. I took the liberty of tossing those.”
She still couldn't look at him. Her gaze hit on another familiar item. It was propped on the pillows in the center of the bed. One of her friends had embroidered the heart-shaped thing for her eons ago. “My night has become a sunny dawn because of you.”
Blinking rapidly, she turned her head, only to find something that sent the tears cascading down her cheeks. On the bedside tableâon the side that
he
slept onâwas a beautiful frame. And inside itâtheir marriage certificate.
Her gaze jumped to her side of the bed, and there, in a matching frame, was a photograph from their wedding. Magnetlike, it drew her, and she took it in her hand, her vision blurring so that she couldn't see
the image of the two people who had found each other through some unexplainable intersection of luck and fate.
It didn't matter. She remembered exactly how the couple had felt.
Happy. In love. Ready to face the future together.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and then looked over at her husband. He was smiling at her, and she guessed that he knew his gesture had been the exact right thing to get through to her. The exact right thing to make her believe.
“You made a place for me here,” she said.
“Because I want you in my life,” Owen answered. “Forever. Do you think the rolling stone can settle down awhile?”
She sniffed, and had to wipe at her wet face again. She'd lived nowhere because there'd been no one she'd felt like this about. “I like Paxton. You know I'm in love with you.”
Grinning now, he came closer. “I counted on it.” He placed the photograph back on the table and then took her into his arms.
“I can count on you.” The knowledge was the sunny dawn that warmed every lonely and empty corner of her soul. After a childhood filled with unreliability, it was this that she needed. To know that she could count on him. He'd proved it to her, hadn't he, by putting her things side by side with his. “I can really, really count on you.”
“Yes. On my support, on my partnership. On my love.”
Izzy hugged Owen to her, hearing his heart beating steady in her ear. “I am going to make you so happy,” she said fiercely. “Wait until you see how stubborn I can be about that.”
He tipped her face up for his kiss. “No more running?”
“Only to you,” she answered. “Always.”
Native Californian Christie Ridgway started reading and writing romances in middle school. It wasn't until she was the wife of her college sweetheart and the mother of two small sons that she submitted her work for publication. Many contemporary romances later, she is happiest when telling her stories despite the splash of kids in the pool, the mass of cups and plates in the kitchen and the many commitments she makes in the world beyond her desk.
Besides loving the men in her life and her dream-come-true job, she continues her longtime love affair with reading and is never without a stack of books. You can find out more about Christie or contact her at her Web site, www.christieridgway.com.
CHAPTER ONE
P
OPPY
W
ALKER JUST
wanted something good to come from the next ten days. The next ten days, the first ten in March, when she had to do without the company of the only man she’d ever love. Earlier that morning, she’d worn her game face as she’d waved goodbye to her five-year-old son.
The tears she’d saved for the ride back from her cousin’s house to the family land, four miles off the mountain highway that served a popular Southern California resort area. One hundred and fifty years before, her ancestors had secured their place seven thousand feet above sea level, and what remained were steep slopes, several acres of pines, cedars and dogwoods, as well as a dozen dilapidated cabins, all currently covered in snow.
Over the Christmas holidays, when she’d learned that her current place of employment, Inn Klein, was about to invest in a big remodel, it had sparked Poppy’s own bright idea. Then and there, she’d decided to refurbish the family cabins as vacation rentals to generate a supplemental income to share between herself, her two sisters and her brother.
Unfortunately, her siblings weren’t of the same mind. Instead, they believed in the outlandish and archaic family curse: that nothing good could ever come of this piece of Walker property.
Ridiculous.
“C’mon, Grimm,” she called to her Lab-German shepherd mix. Dressed in a cotton turtleneck, thick sweatshirt, old jeans and scruffy work boots, she led him out of the cabin where she and her son, Mason, had moved just a couple of weeks before. It was the best of the dwellings and one of five that ringed a small clearing carpeted with snow. The remaining seven were nestled among the trees in the surrounding forest.
Her dog pranced beside her, unsure of the game but a willing participant all the same.
“First order of business is cabin four,” she told him. “We’re going to clean up the inside.” He responded with his doggy grin.
The initial step in the process was to get the water turned on so she could scrub. That involved opening the small door cut into the siding, pretending she didn’t see the creepy, ropy spiderwebs then twisting the handle that would let the liquid rush into the pipes.
That went off without a hitch. Inside the kitchen, she pushed a bucket under the spout and turned the faucet handle, expecting a gratifying gush. It didn’t come. “Uh-oh,” she said, feeling a twinge of dismay.
Grimm seemed much more cavalier than she, wagging his tail as he followed her back to the little door. When they got there, she knew instantly what had gone wrong, as water was spreading from beneath the raised foundation. “Broken pipe,” she informed Grimm, dismay turning to real alarm. Surely that would be a costly repair. Braving the cobwebs a second time, she twisted the handle in the opposite direction and started a mental review of her bank balances.
On the heels of that depressing thought process, she allowed herself a fifteen-second wallow in self-pity. Then she straightened her shoulders and once again addressed her dog. “Cabin three, it is, Grimm,” she said, reaching for the ring of keys in her pocket.