The Wonder of You (2 page)

T
HE DANGER OF LIVING
in a big family was that to do anything of notice, a person had to go big or go home.

Amelia had leaped, hoping to grab ahold of her dreams, show every one of her five siblings that she was just as amazing as the rest of them.

The whole thing wouldn’t have been so epically tragic if Amelia hadn’t harbored such high hopes.

A year in Prague, chasing her vision of becoming a professional photographer.

Go big . . . or go home.

Amelia moved to take a wider-angle shot of the couple. Sabine, her lush brown hair up in a loopy, messy bun, was caught inside the embrace of her groom, Kirby Hueston, swaying to the Blue Monkeys’ version of “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.” The song
lured couples onto the tiled dance floor, under the twinkling lights strewn from the faux pine trees that framed the reception and pool area of the Mad Moose Motel.

A rock-edged garden area brimming with early blooming violets and irises, combined with the aroma of potted hydrangeas on the tables and the heady smell of the roses twining up the wedding arch, managed to conjure the necessary magic for a north-shore-in-early-May wedding despite the chlorinated air. More, tonight the heavens were cooperating, the stars sprinkling the glass canopy with hopes of tomorrow, the moon a perfect halo of divine approval.

The viewfinder framed a life Amelia Christiansen knew she should want. But after the crash and burn in Prague, and her hightail back to the one-sled-dog town of Deep Haven, Minnesota, she wasn’t sure
what
she’d describe as her own personal happily ever after.

Adventure? True love?

Maybe just a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. One that didn’t include big brother Darek’s list of housekeeping to-dos at the Evergreen Resort, thank you.

At least she’d landed a gig, albeit free, taking pictures at her friend Sabine’s wedding.

She adjusted the focus on her Canon EOS Rebel, taking a number of burst shots as Kirby twirled Sabine out and back in. She checked the shots, increased the shutter speed, and climbed on a chair, just in case one of the dancers decided to cut into her frame.

“For crying out loud, Amelia, you act like you’re stalking Sasquatch. It’s a wedding, not a show on Animal Planet.” The voice came from behind her, a husky, familiar tenor that could still send ripples through her entire body.

She held out her hand, not taking her eye from the viewfinder, and pinched her fingers together. “Zip it, Seth. I’m working.”

“You’re not working
 
—you’re not even the official photographer.”

She glanced at him. “One does not need to be paid to do a good job. Sabine asked me to take photos, and one of these is going to be
 
—oh, shoot!”

Kirby swung his bride down into a dip as the song ended. And it would have been exactly the breathtaking shot she’d waited for
 
—Sabine’s head thrown back, her dark hair trickling over Kirby’s arms, a smile playing on her lips: the intoxicating surrender of a woman in love.

“I missed it.” Amelia snapped one last smooch between Kirby and Sabine before climbing off the chair, Seth’s hand at her elbow.

“I’ve no doubt you have about three thousand good shots from tonight. Now, please put the camera down and dance with your boyfriend.”

He smiled at the word, and Amelia didn’t have the heart to contradict him. Later she’d remind him that she hadn’t agreed to officially date again. Just because she’d failed in her first post–high school launch attempt didn’t mean she’d returned to pick up where they left off.

Except Seth’s voice could still elicit the sweet tingle of heat inside her, just like it did when he used to find her after a victorious football game, his blond hair wet from his shower, smelling of Axe and turning her world just a little smoky.

He’d always slicked up well off the field also, tonight wearing a white dress shirt, open at the neck, the fabric tight against his frame, honed by hours of cutting wood at his father’s lumber mill. He wore a pair of black dress pants, slim at his waist, creased to a fine edge as if he might be trying to prove something.

His hair brushed his shoulders, begging to be tangled with her fingers, and his brown eyes fixed on her so long it should stop her heart in her chest.

It occurred to her that maybe God had returned her to Deep Haven after a semester abroad because she never should have left.

Seth’s voice turned soft as his hand closed on the camera and urged it out of her grip. “Please put the camera down, and let’s dance.”

On the dance floor, Kyle Hueston, drummer for the Blue Monkeys, took the mic. He’d shucked off his gray vest, wore his black shirt rolled up at the forearms, and beamed at Kirby and Sabine, then the audience. “You might not know it, but my little bro is an Elvis junkie. Kirbs, this one’s for you and your girl.”

Behind Kyle, his wife, Emma, strummed the introductory chords.

His low baritone began, “‘Wise men say only fools rush in . . .’”

Amelia wanted to wince at the way the lyrics rubbed along her conscience, hitting her choices from the past year and, most recently, the blowup at the Christiansen family home. But Seth seemed to not notice as he unwound the camera strap from her neck. “I’ve been waiting all night to have you to myself,” he said.

“Seth
 
—”

He set the camera on a folding chair and took her hand. “It’ll be there when you get back.”

She couldn’t exactly protest with the town watching. Besides, Deep Haven expected them to dance. Probably thought they’d be next.

A thought Seth confirmed as he took her into his arms. “Maybe we should start thinking about our own wedding playlist.”

Oh. Boy.

He wrapped one big linebacker hand behind her; the other he held out for her to grasp.

“Since when did you learn how to do more than sway?” she said as she took it.

“I may not be as fancy as that jerk from Europe, but I am house-trained.”

Yep, clearly something to prove. She couldn’t be sure where he’d gotten his information about her recent unexpected guest, but someone
 
—maybe even a traitor from the house of Christiansen
 
—had spilled her secrets, probably in an attempt to keep her from repeating her mistakes. She’d hunt down her brothers and pry out the truth at the next family campfire.

Now she met Seth’s eyes and recognized hurt behind the veneer of redneck bravado. “Roark is gone, and he’s not coming back.”

There, she said it out loud.

Despite the echo of Roark’s words, rising up to haunt her.
We belong together! Please forgive me.

“Mr. James Bond had better not show his face in Deep Haven again,” Seth said, “or he’ll get a taste of what
 
—”

“Seth, stop.” She pressed her hand against his lips.

He made a face. “Sorry. You’re right.”

Amelia leaned into him, winding her arm around his shoulder, laying her head on his chest. The familiarity of being in his broad, safe embrace caught her up, spoke to her. Maybe she needed this, needed Seth. The boy she’d shared her first kiss with. Shared dreams and unraveled her fears with as they lounged under the stars on a beach blanket of stones, the great Lake Superior lapping at their feet.

Always, until she left for Prague, those dreams had included each other.

“Amelia! There you are!” The voice was too high, too loud, to be sober
 
—and of course it belonged to Vivien Calhoun. “Hey, Seth,” she said, then took Amelia’s hand. “C’mon, I got something to show you!”

“Viv, we’re dancing here,” Seth said, a growl in the back of his throat.

“Oh, whatever, Seth
 
—deal. C’mon, Ames.” Vivien tugged her across the dance floor, leaving the hint of something stronger than wine in her wake. Amelia threw an I’ll-be-right-back glance over her shoulder to Seth.

Or maybe she wouldn’t because Vivie pulled her across the reception area
 
—Amelia breaking free long enough to grab her camera
 
—then through the lobby and outside to the parking lot, where the sky shimmered with starlight, the night air sweet with the buds of spring. “What?”

“You’ll see!” Vivie wore her sable hair long and loose in waves, and if possible, she’d lost even more weight since jetting off to an NYC film school, her body rail-thin in a light-blue baby doll dress, her legs as long as the Empire State Building in wedge platform sandals.

She looked like the movie star she longed to become.

At least one of Amelia’s high school friends had reached for her dreams
 
—and not fallen on her face.

Except Sabine, the bride,
also
had her dreams safely in her grip, finally tying the knot with the boy she’d loved since sixth grade, even if he didn’t figure it out until last summer.

Vivie wove her way through a tangle of cars, then out onto the long drive of the motel, where more cars edged the grass. “Look what I’m driving!”

She pointed, even as Amelia stopped, shot her a look. “No, really?”

“That’s right, bay-bee, a vintage, 1967, cherry-red convertible Mustang.” Vivien slid onto the hood and posed like she might be Bettie Page. “And it’s all mine. Sorta.”

Amelia ran her hand across the hood, glanced at Ree Zimmerman, sitting in the passenger seat. “Sorta?”

Ree, an aspiring journalist, wedged in freelance hours at the Deep Haven paper between helping her parents with the twenty-four-room Mad Moose Motel. Tonight her short blonde hair was held back with a gold headband, and she wore a faded jean jacket over her lime-green dress. She’d pulled off her sandals, now held them in her grip, dangling out the window. Amelia should have grabbed her sweater to put over her own coral swing dress.

“How long have you known about this?” she said to Ree.

“Just now. She pulled up, and . . . I thought I’d better come along quietly.” Ree made a face. “Get in the driver’s seat. I grabbed the keys.” She dangled them from her hand.

“Hey, those are mine!” Vivien said, sliding off the hood and leaning over to swipe them. She missed, and Amelia opened the driver’s door, pulled down the front seat.

“Get in, Vivie. We’ll pretend it’s red carpet night.”

Vivien climbed in, sitting high on the back as if she were Miss Minnesota. “So? It’s a wicked ride, right?”

Amelia got behind the wheel, ran her hand over the red leather seat, the shiny red steering wheel, the polished chrome radio knobs. “Is it really yours?”

“It is for now. My new boyfriend let me borrow it.”

“Your
boyfriend
let you borrow his vintage Mustang?” Ree said. “Sheesh, Viv, who is this guy?” She shot a look at Amelia.

Amelia could read the question on her face.
What did he get in return?

Or maybe she just heard it inside. Amelia had managed all of two e-mails to Vivien since hopping the pond to Prague and back. She simply couldn’t face her own failures against the shiny victories of her girlfriends. But maybe she shouldn’t count Vivie’s new role as a victory.

“Just a producer friend.” Vivien said it like they all inhabited that world. “But . . .” She slid down onto the backseat. “Let’s talk about Rrrrrroark.” She enunciated the name with a long roll of her
r
’s. “Dahling, a Brit? Was he royal?”

Just when Amelia thought she’d shaken off the specter of her mistakes for the evening. “How about we talk about something
 
—”

“Oh no, honey,” Ree, the betrayer, said. “We want all the juicy details. I didn’t even know there was a scandal until a couple weeks ago, after the dustup with your brothers.”

“It wasn’t a scandal
 
—” Amelia started.

“Not true,” Vivie said. “Everyone’s talking about the hot souvenir Amelia Christiansen brought back from her trip to Prague.”

“He wasn’t
 
—”

“Hot?” Ree turned to Vivie. “For the record, he could melt a girl from fifty feet. Tall
 
—he’s probably six two
 
—with dark curly hair and blue eyes brimming with mystery. Very MI6, superspy with a nice stack of muscles.”

“Ree!”

“He went swimming. I looked. Shoot me. But oh, the shoulders! I’m sorry, but Seth is all brawn. This one is . . . chiseled.”

“Stop.”

“And did I mention the accent? He was all ‘fancy’ this and ‘rubbish’ that, with a few
blimey
s and
chips
and
horses for courses
thrown in. I’d work the front desk just in hopes he’d come down and ask for more towels.”

“He stayed here?” Vivien said, leaning forward between the seats.

“Where else was he going to stay?” Ree said. “My parents offered him a room half-off after the Christiansens practically tarred and feathered him and rode him off their property on a rail.”

“Oh, we did not,” Amelia said.

Well, they sorta had. Or her brothers had. Got in his face, yelling
 
—Casper just might have hit him had her father not intervened. And more yelling outside in the driveway before he finally drove away.

The memory elicited a groan that made Amelia bury her face in her hands.