.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ expression was so serious that it bordered on grave. Whatever he was about to say was lost—probably for the best—when fourteen-year-old Clare bounded up, beautiful in her peach-colored dress chosen especially for the wedding. She was still coltish, horse crazy and ambivalent about boys, but the woman she would become was clearly visible in her poise and lively personality just the same.

      Faintly, Casey heard a few of the local musicians tuning up, but the sight of her daughter, so beautiful, beaming up at Walker in pure delight, almost stopped her heart in midbeat. Don’t turn into an adult, Casey pleaded silently. Not yet.

      “You have to dance with me,” Clare told Walker. The child didn’t have a shy bone in her body, and anyway, both Clare and Shane had always been close to this man, and to Brylee, as well.

      Boone and Tara, with the photo session finally behind them, were standing in the middle of the dance floor, looking like the figures on top of some celestial wedding cake.

      Walker smiled down at the daughter who thought of him as a beloved uncle, and in that moment Casey caught a glimpse of a place deep inside him, that part of his soul where he was this child’s father, not just a loyal and trusted friend of the family.

      “Let’s wait a couple of minutes,” he said, taking Clare’s hand and squeezing it lightly.

      Somehow, Casey found her voice. “The bride and groom always have the first dance, honey,” she told Clare. “It’s tradition.”

      Clare’s emerald eyes sparkled with mischief and spirit. “Okay,” she agreed good-naturedly, still looking up at Walker with something like hero worship. She bit her lip, then blurted out eagerly, “When I get married, will you give me away? Please, Walker? I wouldn’t want anybody else to do it except you.”

      Casey lifted her chin, swallowed. “That’s a ways off,” she said somewhat weakly. “Your getting married, I mean.”

      “I’d be proud to walk you down the aisle,” Walker told his daughter, “when the time comes.” He paused, eyes twinkling, and one corner of his mouth crooked up in a grin, the way it did when he was teasing. “Of course, it all depends on whether or not I like the yahoo you choose for a husband.”

      Clare laughed, clinging to his arm and clearly adoring him. “If I like him,” she reasoned with confidence, “you will, too.”

      Walker chuckled and kissed the top of the girl’s head. “You’re probably right about that, princess,” he agreed.

      Boone and Tara owned the dance floor, waltzing slowly, closer than close, lost in each other’s eyes.

      Casey’s own eyes scalded, and she looked away quickly, afraid Walker or Clare would notice, but they, like everyone else, were watching the newlyweds.

      As prearranged—Casey knew her showmanship—hundreds of snow-white rose petals drifted down on Boone and Tara like a velvety, fragrant first snow, spilling from a net strung up in the high branches of a venerable maple tree.

      The guests were impressed, gasping in delight, and Boone and Tara looked up, smiling, Tara putting her hands out to catch some of the petals in her palms.

      Casey started the applause, her throat thick with emotion, and the rest of the company joined in.

      In the interim, the makeshift band launched into a twangy ballad that opened the dance floor to all comers, while Boone beckoned for others to join them. Clare practically dragged Walker onto the floor, and seeing how happy Clare was to have his full and laughing attention, Casey felt the starch go out of her knees. She made her way to the porch steps and sat down, willing herself not to blubber like a sentimental fool.

      There, in the shade, amid all that celebration, she thought of the lies she’d told, right from the beginning. Sure, she’d been young and scared, wanting Walker a lot but wanting her then-blossoming career even more, back then at least. She’d told Walker the baby she was carrying belonged to another man, someone he didn’t know, and at first, he’d believed her. They’d broken up, as she’d planned, because Walker was a proud and decent man, but the grief she felt after losing him was something she hadn’t reckoned on, consuming and painful as a broken bone.

      Casey had done what she always did: she’d carried on. Barely showing even when she was near full term, she’d been able to camouflage her pregnancy, from the fans and the media, anyway, by wearing flowing gowns and big shirts.

      But a year later, she and Walker had met up again, and they’d both lost their heads and conceived Shane.

      Knowing Walker wouldn’t buy the same story twice, Casey called him from the road when the second pregnancy was confirmed.

      Nobody’s fool, Walker had soon figured out that the redheaded baby girl, just learning to toddle around on her own, was his, too.

      All hell had broken loose, and the battle was on.

      Walker wanted to get married immediately, but his cold rage was hardly conducive to romance. They’d wrangled back and forth over the children for a couple of years, though they never got quite as far as the courtroom, and finally, they’d forged a sort of armed truce.

      Unwillingly, Walker had agreed to go along with Casey’s story—that both Clare and Shane were test-tube babies, fathered by an anonymous sperm donor—as long as he was allowed regular visits with both children.

      For a long time, it worked, but now—well, Casey could feel the framework teetering around her, and she was scared.

      Kendra sat down beside her on the porch step just then, touched her arm. Her friend was the only person on earth, besides Casey and Walker, of course, who knew the truth about Clare’s and Shane’s births. Oddly enough, it had been Walker who’d told her, possibly out of frustration, rather than Casey herself.

      “It’s not too late to fix this, you know,” Kendra said gently, bumping her shoulder briefly against Casey’s. She was watching as Clare persuaded Walker to dance with her just once more, her gaze soft with understanding.

      “Has anybody ever told you that you’re too damn perceptive sometimes, Kendra Carmody?”

      Kendra smiled. “I might have heard it once or twice,” she replied. Then her smile faded and her expression turned serious. “Things like this have a way of coming out, Casey,” she said, nearly in a whisper. “In fact, given how famous you are, it’s a miracle the story hasn’t broken already.”

      Casey wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand, sat up a little straighter. “What if they don’t understand?” she asked, barely breathing the words. “What if Clare and Shane never forgive me?”

      Kendra sighed, then countered with a question of her own. “Do you want them to hear it from somebody else?” she asked.

      CHAPTER TWO

      THOUGH IT WASN’T QUITE DARK, lights glowed yellow-gold in the kitchen windows of the ranch house when Walker pulled in, and that raised his spirits a little, since he was grappling with a bad case of lonesome at the moment. Leaving Clare and Shane and, okay, Casey, too, had that effect on him, especially at that homesick time around sunset, when families were supposed to gather in a warm and well-lit room, laughing and telling each other all about their day.

      Not that long ago, СКАЧАТЬ