Tender Vow (37 page)

He hated the groveling and felt almost sorry for her. “Going to church is a good thing, Candace, as long as it’s a biblically based church and you’re going with the right motives. But you should know it’s too late for us, regardless of anything you do.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jason. It’s never too late.” Before he had time to react, she reached her hands behind his neck and drew him down to her, planting a hard, wet, unforgiving kiss on his lips.

***

Upon pulling into the parking lot in front of Jason’s condo, Rachel parked next to a red Toyota Camry and cut the engine. She was plagued by the nagging notion that she shouldn’t have come, but she pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them in her purse, anyway. Then, she gathered up the gallon of milk and loaf of bread she’d purchased at the corner market, pulled her purse strap over her shoulder, and slid out of the van, closing the door with her hip. Curiosity made her peek inside the car parked beside hers. On the leather-upholstered front seat lay a yellow silk scarf, an empty water bottle, and several pieces of mail addressed to Candace Peterson. Her heart thudded hard against the wall of her chest, and she sucked in a deep breath for courage before trudging up the walkway.

Lord, give me strength
, she prayed.
If Jay has set me up for finding Candace and him together, please forgive me ahead of time for killing him
.

She tried the knob and discovered it was unlocked, so she opened the door and stepped inside. What she saw made her stomach twist, her legs teeter, and her hand nearly drop the gallon of milk. Sitting on the sofa like two snug bugs were Jason and Candace, kissing, no less. Candace’s arms were wrapped around Jason’s neck, holding him close.

As soon as Jason spotted her with his less swollen eye, he pulled away from Candace. “Rachel!” he exclaimed, standing much faster than she’d thought him capable of doing and causing Candace to tumble backward.

“Rachel?” Candace asked in a stupefied tone, pulling herself up and pivoting on the sofa to stare wide-eyed at her. “Well, well, if it isn’t your lovely sister-in-law. What in the world brings her here? And, good gracious, how are you, Rachel?”

“I’m fine, but I—I see I’m interrupting.” She hated herself for the tears that sprang to her eyes.

“Indeed, you are,” Candace said.

“Actually, you’re not interrupting at all,” Jason said, his face an ashen gray but turning greener by the second. Then to his girlfriend, or whatever she was, he said, “Candace was just leaving, weren’t you, Candace?”

“I was?” She reclined again, this time stretching out her long, graceful arms across the back of the sofa as if preparing to watch a movie. With a Cheshire-cat grin, she said, “I thought we were just getting warmed up, Jase.”

“Don’t be absurd. That kiss was purely one-sided, and you know it.” To Rachel, he implored, “Come in.”

“No, I think I’ll go.” She swiveled on her heel and walked back outside, where the biting air sent chills from the top of her head clear to her toes.

She felt ridiculous still carrying the milk and bread under her arm, so she bent to place them on the doorstep. When she stood up again, Jason nabbed her by the arm and turned her around. “Don’t you even think about getting in your car,” he said firmly.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Okay, let me rephrase that.” He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “Rachel, please come back in the house.” She gazed past him to see that Candace hadn’t moved so much as a hair on her pretty head. If anything, she’d settled in more cozily on the couch.

“Three’s a crowd, Jay, or didn’t you know? And, by the way, I overheard you talking to Candace on the phone yesterday.” This she said just above a whisper. “I suppose you planned this entire event—Candace’s coming over this morning at precisely the time you might have expected me to arrive. Very clever.”

“What? No! I did not invite her, and as for the phone call, I purposely didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea. She called me, not the other way around.”

“Uh-huh. Right. You expect me to believe she came over here of her own accord?”

“I know it hardly seems plausible, but if you knew Candace, you’d understand. She’s very assertive, and…well, she still has high hopes for us, even though I’ve done nothing to encourage her.” He turned and looked in through the doorway. Candace still hadn’t moved, other than to hold out one manicured hand and inspect the state of her nail polish.

“You’re probably going to also tell me she forced you to kiss her.”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you.” He gave a low chuckle. “I had my lips sealed up tighter than a jar of pickles.”

“That’s very funny, Jason,” she said drily, shaking her head. “You told me you loved me, remember? And I was beginning to come to terms with my own feelings for you, but now…this fiasco. What do you want me to think? Good grief, I saw the two of you kissing, tight-lipped or not. If you ask me, you two deserve each other.” Blotting her damp eyes, she turned and hustled down the porch steps, intending to jump into her car and speed toward home. But Jason beat her to the car door, albeit out of breath and as pale as a summer cloud, save for his burnt-red cheek.

“Wait a minute. What did you just say?”

She huffed with impatience. “I said, you two deserve each other.”

“No, no, before that. The part about coming to terms with your feelings.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said as more tears pooled in the corners of her eyes.

He put a palm to the side of her face and gently lifted it. “Of course it matters, sweetheart. It matters a great deal.”

“Don’t call me that.” Her heart thumped past her chest, making it hard to swallow, much less breathe.

“What’s going on out there?” Candace asked from the doorway. “Does it usually take this long to tell your sister-in-law good-bye, Jason?”

Jason heaved a sigh and said, loudly enough for Ivy Bronson and her Pomeranian pup to hear, “Candace, get in your car and go home.”

“What?” she screeched.

“You heard me. Go. And don’t bother coming back; I’m having a conversation with the woman I love.”

“The woman you—what? Well, I never!” Her confounded expression aroused a tiny bit of sympathy in Rachel’s heart, but it quickly vanished as she watched the tall beauty nab her jacket and click down the hallway in her spiky heels, her mouth pursed in a tight frown that dulled her pretty face. She marched past them and over to her car, eyes on the sidewalk, then stopped before opening the door and peering up at them. “You and your sister-in-law, Jason? Honestly! Isn’t that a rather…um, inappropriate arrangement?”

He shrugged and tilted his battered face down at Rachel, grinning broadly. “Uncommon, maybe; inappropriate, no.” Then he turned to grant Candace one last look. “Sorry about everything,” he called to her. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Pfff,” she spat, shaking her head in obvious disgust. “You two deserve each other.”

She yanked open her car door, climbed inside, and started the engine. Without so much as a glance at them, she backed out of the space and sped off, wheels squealing.

Despite the rather cheerless situation, Rachel and Jason shared a laugh over her parting remark, and it seemed to fuse them together with an unspoken promise of tender vows.

Back inside his condo, Jason collapsed on the sofa, bringing Rachel with him. Her featherlight body fell into his lap, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her snugly to his side. She scrambled to get up, but he wouldn’t have it. He’d waited too long for this moment.

“What are you doing, Jay?” she asked, swiveling to look at him, her breath warm and moist on his neck, her lips close enough to kiss. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt your ribs. You’d better let me up.”

His heart fluttered and flapped as if on butterflies’ wings. “Not on your life, honey.” Slowly relenting, she relaxed against his chest, where the cloth bandage was still wrapped securely around his torso. Everything about her felt right and perfect. He snagged a lock of her hair and twirled it around his finger. “Did you mean it, Rach, when you said you’d come to terms with your feelings?” He couldn’t help the husky quality of his voice, thanks to his nerves.

She didn’t answer right off but just sat there in his lap. Her toes didn’t quite reach the floor, putting him in mind of an innocent child. She clasped her hands together and touched them to her chin, then nestled in close to his chest. The pressure of her body against his and her shoulder poking into his ribs pained him a little; but the pure joy of it far outweighed any discomfort.

“Well?” he urged her, hungry for her reply, praying for the one he longed to hear. “Want to tell me what conclusion you’ve reached?”

“You want the fancy answer or the no-frills one?”

He centered his chin on top of her head and rubbed little circles into the upper part of her arm, chuckling softly. “I’m tempted to get right to the no-frills one, but if you want to work your way up to it, that’s fine.”

“I’ll try to keep my answer as brief as possible, but I am a woman, after all.” He could almost hear her smile.

He couldn’t help himself; he leaned around and kissed her cheek. “You’ll get no argument from me about that.”

She swallowed and took a couple of slow, methodical breaths. “I found one of John’s diaries.”

He gently set her back from him to look into her eyes. “Really? Did you read it?”

She gave a slow nod. “I thought I’d feel guilty, but afterward, I knew he would have wanted me to read it. I also found a letter he wrote to me way before the kids were even born.”

“You’re kidding. And he never gave it to you?”

“Nope.” She licked her lips, then pressed them together while weighing her next words. “It’s okay, though. It was meant to happen just as it did.” She settled against him again, the fit as flawless as a long-lost puzzle piece. “It helped to clear up a lot of things for me.”

“Such as?”

“Well, you probably won’t believe this, but in that letter, he actually said that if anything ever happened to him, the only person he’d ever approve of my remarrying is you.”

This rendered him speechless for several moments. Shoot, he couldn’t even move. He stopped rubbing Rachel’s arm and stared across the room at a framed photo of him and John, taken two summers ago at Lakewood Golf Course. Finally, he managed to formulate a sentence. “You’re kidding, right? He didn’t actually write that. I mean—what in the world could have possessed him to say that, especially when he went so crazy thinking you and I had feelings for each other?”

“He loved and respected you so much, Jay. True, he couldn’t bear to think of us being in love, but he also couldn’t stand the thought of me ever giving my heart to anybody else if something were to happen to him. It’s weird and paradoxical that he wrote that letter, as if he had some peculiar sense of impending doom. I hate to think about it, really, and yet his writing it gave me just the affirmation I needed.” She paused for a moment, then went on.

“I think I wasn’t ready to give myself the freedom to love again, and particularly not you, knowing that John had argued with you over me in his final hour. But when I read that letter and then his diary with entries leading up to your skiing trip…well, it just set me on a different course and freed me for thinking about…stuff.”

Jason resumed gently rubbing her arm, his heart thumping out a hard and fast rhythm. “Stuff, huh?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.

She looked up at him and smiled. “Yes—stuff.”

“What sort of stuff, Rachel Kay?”

“Future stuff, Jason Allen.”

“Ah.” He trailed a few feathery kisses from her temple area down to her jawline. “As in our future?”

“Exactly.”

***

Their kisses were lush and dense, as soft and smooth as fine silk. They involved willful gravity that kept them from getting close enough, melding lips and pounding hearts, splayed hands touching every allowable part from backs to napes to hair to waists. Each tender kiss made them long for more, and so when one ended, they drew apart, smileless, only to catch a breath and start afresh, one kiss following another until they all blended together, no ending, no beginning.

“Rachel,” he murmured.

“Jay,” she whispered.

He broke free first, and, for some time, they merely gazed at each other. It occurred to her that she still hadn’t spoken those three tender words, but for the moment, it mattered little.

“I have never known anyone as lovely as you, Rachel.”

“And you are the handsomest man on earth, Jason.” It thrilled her to say it. They laughed and touched foreheads. “I should probably get off your lap.”

“Why?”

“Aren’t I hurting you?”

“It would hurt more if you left me.”

She stole the next kiss, meeting his mouth and then moving her lips to kiss his less bruised cheek, then ever so gently the other one, then traversing to both eyes. “Poor, poor Jay, colliding with that bad car.”

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad; it brought me you, didn’t it?” he said. “Speaking of, just how long would you have made me wait if that car hadn’t plowed into me?”

She put a finger to her chin. “Oh, I don’t know. Till a truck came along, maybe.”

“What? You’re cruel.”

She giggled, then quickly sobered. “Actually, Jason, it wouldn’t have been long. The Lord’s been giving me little signs, subtle but sure. I have no further doubts about us.”

He gripped her hands. “You’re sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then say the words.”

She knew exactly what he was talking about, and her heart swelled with eagerness to say them. Holding her breath and pressing one cheek to his, she ceased breathing. “I love you, Jay.”

She felt his eyes close when his lashes brushed her face. They sat unmoving, each reveling in the other’s presence.

After a moment, he gently pushed her off him. “Wait here.”

“What? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.” He got up and limped to the stairs.

“Jay, there’s a bathroom down here.”

He chuckled. “That’s not where I’m heading.”