The Wedding Promise. Grace Green

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СКАЧАТЬ father, like daughter!’ Sara’s courage had swelled up again, but too late to give her any feeling of pride or pleasure.

      ‘I guess.’ The faintest twinkle gleamed in his eyes.

      Green eyes. Sara had noticed that when she’d first met him. Then, and moments ago, they’d been cold and hostile. Now, for the first time, she saw a glimmer of warmth, and it kindled an odd spark of excitement deep inside her.

      ‘For God’s sake—’ his voice was hoarse ‘—don’t tell her about this. I’ll never hear the end of it.’

      Without waiting for an answer, he wheeled away, slamming the bathroom door behind him.

      Sara slumped, boneless as a drunken jellyfish. Her body trembled; her heart trembled. If that confrontation was a portent of the kind of holiday that lay ahead, perhaps it would indeed have been better if Zach had rented her a de luxe condo in a busy holiday resort...

      ‘What happened, Dad?’ The girl’s voice drifted into the bathroom through the open window as father and daughter walked along the side of the cottage. ‘I heard the scream and I ran to your room to see if you had too, but you weren’t there, so I guessed you must have come down to investigate.’

      Sara held her breath, curious to hear Logan’s answer.

      ‘It was nothing, sweetie. Zach Grant’s gone—his girlfriend’s here on her own, and apparently when she was in the bathroom she saw a... mouse.’

      The voices faded, and once again Sara relaxed.

      A mouse. No, Mr Logan, she disdainfully corrected him, what I saw in my bathroom was certainly not a mouse.

      It looked much more like a rat.

      

      ‘After we finish breakfast, I’m going to start clearing out your mother’s things from the master bedroom.’ Logan watched his daughter carefully from across the verandah table, alert to any sign of distress. ‘Care to help?’

      Andy’s huge brown eyes gave nothing away as they met his. ‘No, that’s OK, Dad. You should probably do it on your own. I’ll start packing up the books in the den. Where are the boxes?’

      ‘Should be a bunch up in the attic. We’ll get them later.’

      Andy nodded and, bending her head over her bowl, dug her spoon into her cereal.

      Logan felt a wave of weariness wash over him. Andy was a real trooper and he was so proud of her he sometimes could hardly contain it...but he wished new, as he so often did, that she weren’t so adept at keeping her emotions under control. Apart from an outburst of hysterical sobbing when her mother had died, she’d never let go. Not once. At least, not in front of him. If she cried, she cried alone.

      In the beginning, he’d tried to talk to her about her Mom, but in the end had given up. She was as closed as a clam. It would have helped her, he felt sure, if they could have shared their sorrow. And it would have helped him too.

      Another problem was that everybody they knew avoided talking about Bethany. They probably thought they were being kind, but it would have been more natural to remember her aloud, to recall all the wonderful things about her.

      Sometimes it seemed to him as if his beloved wife had never existed...except in his own life.

      ‘That was a big sigh, Dad,’ Andy murmured. ‘What’s up?’

      ‘Oh...it’s...’ he searched his brain for an answer that would satisfy her ‘...um...just that woman in the cottage, sweetie—I want you to keep away from her.’

      He got up from the table and, shoving his hands into his pockets, looked down at his daughter. Her hair was damp from her shower, and the sun caught copper highlights in the ragged strands. His heart ached as he remembered how Bethany’s long brown hair had glinted in just such a way...

      ‘Why, Dad?’

      ‘Why what?’

      Andy uttered a sound of exasperation. ‘Why must I keep away from “that woman”?’

      She said ‘that woman’ in a tone of dark melodrama, which Logan chose to ignore. ‘Because, daughter mine, rightly or wrongly, society judges people by the company they keep. I want you to stick with people whose values are the same as your own. A good reputation’s worth its weight in gold—and it’s something you can lose only once.’

      ‘Kind of like virginity, right, Dad?’

      Logan cleared his throat, and busied himself with gathering up his dishes. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Darned right.’

      A feeling of helplessness and inadequacy almost swamped him. He was no good at this; he was clumsy, awkward—or, to use Andy’s latest expression of derision, ‘pathetic’.

      She needed a mother, especially at this stage in her life, where she was herself on the threshold of womanhood. And he did intend to take himself another wife...but only because of his promise to Bethany.

      Just the memory of it broke his heart.

      ‘Darling,’ she’d whispered as she’d lain dying in the stark white hospital bed, ‘promise me you’ll marry again.’ Her voice had caught. ‘I couldn’t bear it if I thought you’d go through the rest of your life grieving...’

      He’d have promised her the moon if he’d thought it would give her a moment’s respite from her suffering.

      ‘I promise—’ the lump in his throat had almost choked him ‘—if that’s what you want, I’ll marry again...’

      And the promise had been worth it, to see the quick shine of relief in her dulled eyes, to feel the tiny surge of strength in the fragile fingers clutching his.

      He’d had to turn away to hide his tears.

      Five years had passed since he’d made that promise.

      Five long years, and his failure to honour it weighed on him more heavily with each passing day.

      No more.

      He’d sworn to himself that this summer he’d find himself a wife.

      She’d have to be someone Andy liked.

      She’d have to be someone he himself found compatible.

      She’d have to be someone sensible. Someone with no frilly romantic notions. Someone willing to enter into a marriage of convenience.

      He felt a dark cloud of despair settle over him as he carried his dishes into the house.

      Where the hell would he find somebody like that?

      

      Marriage to Travis Wynter had stifled Sara’s creativity. Had all but killed it.

      It hadn’t happened straight away, but it had started to happen soon after the honeymoon.

      Unhappy memories flowed СКАЧАТЬ