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Patrick pasted a confident look to his face, yet inside he quivered. His argument with Michael two days ago sat rock-like in his gut. Really, you needn’t bother. Needn’t bother to come to his wedding. Never thought he’d say that.
He sighed, unsure how to bring the moment up.
Talk to me, Michael mouth.
Yet still, Patrick hesitated. What was there to say? He’d allowed his frustrations and the remains of a silly argument to stand between him and his best friend. You, Patrick Finnegan, know better. Yes, he did. Unforgiveness always lead to bitterness, and bitterness, the Bible said, would steal your soul.
He turned about and gazed out the milky window of the bungalow toward the street. Mr. Puss, having installed himself on the sill, looked up at him through golden-slitted eyes.
He ought to explain things to Michael, apologize. But where to start.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” he began.
Sorry for acting like a fool, for letting my temper get the best of me. He’d done that too much lately.
“I think I asked you to translate that manuscript for all the wrong reasons,” he continued. “I wanted you to find something I could hold over my father’s memory. Kind of a ‘see here, you were wrong,’ and that was ... un-Christian.”
His father had only ever brought that out in him. He was forever trying to feel big enough.
“When it burnt, I assumed my problem was solved. It was gone, and I could forget. Yet seeing it in your hands, it all came back, and I reacted.”
A hand landed softly on his shoulder and squeezed. Patrick flicked a glance at Michael, his green eyes reflective.
“It was immature of me, and I’m sorry. I don’t know why I fight with my father still. He is dead and gone these many years, yet in my mind, he’s not. It’s as if I can feel the weight of his words on me. He wouldn’t like Amber; he wouldn’t like our marriage. He wouldn’t even have understood my taking in Grace.” He hesitated. “I don’t know why you stick with me.”
Michael stuck out his hand. Friends.
Friends. Patrick studied the familiar hand. Here was someone who’d only ever accepted him as an equal, who’d encouraged him in whatever he needed to do, including his marriage to Amber, who’d stuck with him after the fire. And he hadn’t been obligated to do that. Michael had his own money stashed away. He could very well have gotten his own place and lived on the well-wishes of all the people who adored him.
Because he was easy to adore. He was funny and talented, all the things he, Patrick Finnegan, was not.
What a fool he’d been. Even now Michael had no hard feelings.
“I’m sorry.” Patrick apologized again. “I shouldn’t have denied you the right to be there. It’d mean a lot for you to come.”
Michael nodded.
“I guess I’m nervous,” Patrick added. And more than that, concerned for Amber. But he covered the thought, instead, taking Michael’s hand.
“Friends?” he asked.
Michael pounded his back, and Patrick gave a weak smile. Now, if he could just get Amber through their nuptials, then ... then what? The unknown stared him in the face. Then he’d trust God to take care of them both. That was always the answer. Hadn’t he prayed? Didn’t he believe God was on his side?
Movement came from the back of the house, and Patrick turned his head toward the sound. Sight of Amber in a wedding gown took his breath.
“A gown? Where ...?”
She ducked her head, her cheeks flushed. “Anne found it.” She spoke soft, timid.
Stepping forward, he took her hands in his. Her fingers were cold and clammy; he rubbed them gently between his own. This was huge for her, a big step forward.
He tried to comfort her. “You look beautiful,” he said. Bending his neck down, he sought her gaze and was struck by the uncertainty he saw there. She was afraid. Of what? Him? He’d never hurt her. Surely, she knew that. Then again, maybe she didn’t. How many other men had hurt her in the past, and what guarantee could he give that this time was different? Trust must be earned, and though he’d gained some of hers, he still had a long way to go.
He tilted her chin upwards and kissed her forehead. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Today’s a good day, not a bad one.”
But her gaze as he led her to the door spoke otherwise, and he knew for her, this day would be tough.
This was not something she’d ever thought she’d be doing. A wedding. Her wedding. Amber’s heart made a strange thump. And on the legal side of a judge’s chambers no less.
After today, she’d be a missus. Missus Patrick Finnegan. She’d belong to him and him to her.
He gripped her hand, his fingers warm and soft, and she determined to swallow her fears. He did this for her. He provided her a home and support as father for her child in the face of great opposition. He set aside propriety and seemliness to give her respectability.
But she’d never have that, would she?
She gazed at him from the corner of her eye and questioned her sanity.
He placed everything on this. He said he loved her, and he’d proved he desired her. Yet that was the trouble.
Her thoughts twisted within her. She knew what she was, and she had no right to be here. If he saw the black, ugliness inside her, he wouldn’t feel the same.
What was she doing? She hid the truth, and that made this marriage based on a lie. Nothing based on lies ever lasted. Her father had lied. Sam had lied. Even Michael, as much as she’d loved him, hadn’t been there for her.
Wasn’t that unfair? He’d shared his life with her. His wife had accepted her. They’d fed her and defended her.
Her eyes stung, but she pushed back her tears. Patrick was such a good man. Once he found out who the father was, it would change everything. He wouldn’t want her. She’d have nowhere to go, and she’d have hurt him in the process.
He tightened his grip on her fingers, a gesture full of meaning, and repeated the words. “I, Patrick Finnegan, take thee, Amber Dawes, to be my lawfully wedded wife ...”
Wife. His wife.
“ ... to have and to hold from this day forward ...”
To hold. Tonight. What would happen after dark?
“ ... for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health until death do us part.” He smiled, and it lit up his face.
Her stomach churned. He couldn’t mean all that. She couldn’t mean all that. How could she promise such things?
The judge adjusted his robe and tilted his head her direction. “Repeat these words,” he said. “I, Amber Dawes, take thee, Patrick Finnegan ...” He paused and waited for her to speak.
She gulped, wriggling under everyone’s stares. Michael. Anne. Patrick.
Commitment. This was commitment, commitment to bear Patrick’s name, commitment to honor his wishes. Commitment to once again sleep with a man.
She couldn’t possibly. She’d promised herself. This was too much.
Pulling her hands free, she backed across the room. “I can’t. I can’t do this,” she said. And flooded with panic, she ran away.
Patrick sprinted out of the judge’s chambers and into the street, scanning the boardwalk for sight of Amber. The creamy film of her skirt swept out before him, and he doubled his pace.
“Amber.” He caught her elbow at the edge of the street and pulled her up short. “Look at me.”
He tuned her around, shocked at her widened eyes and glistening tears. “Tell me what’s wrong.” He pulled her into his arms, stilling the trembling coursing through her frame.
“I’m sorry, Pat, but I can’t do this to you. I’m no good.” She buried her face in his coat.
He laid his cheek against her head. “We talked about this. None of that matters to me.”
She pulled away, shoving his arms away from her. “It matters to me because you don’t know the truth. You don’t know everything.” Her legs shaking, she sank onto a nearby iron bench.
A buggy pulled by a young, spirited horse dashed past, the driver snapping a whip, a cloud of dust in its wake.
Patrick sat to her side. “Then tell me. I will not love you any less.”
Her lips trembled, emotion bubbling over. “It’s the child’s father,” she cried. “You don’t know who he is, and he’s a bad man. Bad.” Her voice broke and she sobbed.
Patrick took a deep breath. At last. Here was the thing that truly tormented her, the same thing that now tormented him, the thing he hadn’t spoken to her about.
“Who is he?” he asked.
All color drained from her face. She clenched her hands together, wringing them over and over. “You can’t tell Michael.”
Michael. Pat leaped in place. Joe had indicated the same thing, that whoever the father was it’d hurt Michael the most. But how could that be?
“Promise me,” she begged. She glanced behind him toward the courthouse door. “Please, Pat.”
“I promise,” he said, hastily.
Yet she delayed still, and tension built between them. “Amber, who is the baby’s father?”
She drew in her breath. “Please understand, Pat. He said he’d take care of me. He said I’d be out for good. He said I’d never want for anything. Sam had thrown me out, and I had nowhere to go. I thought ... I thought to stay with one man would be better. And he promised. He made so many promises. But when he found out I was with child, he didn’t want it. He told me to get rid of it.”
Her words spiked him in the chest. Get rid of it? What man’s conscience became so seared he’d do such a thing to his own child, a person he created? His own father had been harsh and demanding, yet he’d always known he was loved and cared for.
“I couldn’t do it, so I ran,” she said, “and I stole his money. He’ll kill me for that alone. I thought if I could get to Michael, I’d be safe. But I don’t believe that now, not after seeing Joe. Joe knows who he is. He figured it out when he broke in. I’ll never be safe, never. What if Joe has already sent word to him? He would. He’d do anything to get back at me. I just know it.”
Patrick heard the hiss of his own breath. She was right, but he couldn’t tell her that. It would only add to her fears. He cupped her chin in his hands. “Who is the baby’s father?”
Who was strong enough that his reach could extend this far south? Who was a threat so great she’d keep this secret for so long?
Michael had once told him his story in vivid detail, given him the names and faces. He shared his struggle to overcome the evil which held him in bondage. But he thought those men were dead, so who was left?
And her voice sliced the air, a knife cutting to the deepest core. “Cullen Innis.”
“Dear God.”
Cullen Innis. The man who’d seen Michael stab a man to death in New York, the man who’d sent him to Florida to die.
“He always gets what he wants,” she said. “He’ll never give up ’til he finds me, and then he’ll come after you and Michael. I’m not safe to be with, not safe to be seen around.”
Her heart raced beneath his fingertips, and at the pulse of it, he set his jaw. Had he prayed and believed in God’s strength for his marriage or not? Did he believe God was big enough and strong enough? Or would he make Him ineffective? God would protect them. They had only to believe it.
He spoke a promise to her through his teeth. “He’ll have to go through me.”
Their eyes locked, and she blinked upward at him. “Why, Pat? Why would you risk yourself for me?”
Patrick released his pent-up breath and slackened his jaw. “The prophet Elisha once found himself surrounded by the army of Syria. His servant came to him afraid, saying, ‘What will we do?’ You see, there seemed to be no way of escape. But Elisha said to him, ‘Fear not, there are more with us than are with them.’ And then he prayed. He prayed God would open the servant’s eyes to see.”
“Was he blind?”
Patrick inclined his head. “In a way. Oh, he could see the earth just fine. After all, he saw the army of Syria standing there. But what he couldn’t see was God.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Fear opens the door to many things. It makes the problem look huge. But faith is the opposite. Faith believes God is bigger, stronger, and perhaps greatest, willing to answer before we even ask. That is all we need to do. We ask Him to protect us, and then trust He will.”
“But Pat, what if ...”
He laid a finger over her lips. “With God there are no ‘what ifs.’ God is certain and absolute. What He’s said He will do, He always does.”
She stared at him, and it was as if he could hear her thoughts. All her doubts rushed up at him in one breath.
“Will you ... will you tell Michael?” she asked.
Good question. Would he? Didn’t Michael deserve to know? But was now the time to decide?
He took her hand and lifted her to her feet. “I will pray about it, and God will tell me what to do. Now, come. We need to finish our wedding.”
The door closed with a soft click, and the light flickered in the wind of Patrick’s movements across the room. He sank down onto the mattress at her side and unfastened his shoes, tossing them into the floor with a thump.
Amber drank in the sight of him, turning over the importance of this evening. Her wedding night. His wedding night. Our wedding night.
He tugged his shirttail from his pants and flicked open the buttons. She tensed. She knew this part. This was familiar.
Then why was she so nervous? Because this was Pat and he was not like all the others. Because with him she was defenseless.
She shut her eyes and rode the wave of emotion sweeping through her senses.
When had he crawled so deep into her heart? Always before, the act was impersonal. She didn’t remember their faces afterward, didn’t know anything about their lives or their families, didn’t know who they were as a person. In many ways, that made it easier. She simply closed off her mind to do the job she was paid to do. Even with Cullen, she’d had no attachment, not until the child.
But Patrick—
She opened her eyes to see he faced her, and the worried expression he wore spoke volumes. He carried her fear now as well as his. She curled her fingers into a ball. He was so much better than she, so inherently good, and she was so soiled.
What gave her any right to take that goodness away? He deserved to have a woman so much better than she was.
He patted the mattress at his side. “Come closer. I want to talk to you.”
Talk? What was left to talk about? She’d given him everything including the name of the father of her child. A couple’s wedding night wasn’t supposed to be about talk. Yet again, this was Patrick, and he was different.
She crawled across the mattress and settled stiffly at his side, leaving a gap between them.
But his gaze wore into the side of her skull. He reached for her, drawing her to his side and tucking her head to his chest.
She inhaled the fragrance of him, soap and shaving cream, and listened to his heart beat steady and reliable, a perfect image of who he was as a man and a person. She declined her head and her hair fell over her face.
“How old were you?” he asked.
She recoiled from the question. Why would he ask her that? That was personal. That was intimate and best forgotten.
“You dredge up my past?” she said quietly. She tried to close her heart, yet his words prevented it.
“Tell me, Amber. How old were you?”
Her lip trembled, and her voice fell. It was so long ago, so very long ago. Why couldn’t she simply forget? Why did he need to know?
He trailed his fingers up and down her arm. “Tell me,” he said softly.
Her answer filled the room, expanding itself in the silence and looming large over the bed. “Thirteen,” she said.
He gasped and clutched her tighter.
Tears pooled in her eyes. “My da sold me to him,” she said. Sold her for a bottle of liquor. Her ma would have been horrified and done something to help her. But her ma was long gone at that point, dead and cold in the ground. Amber liked to think her father became a drunk after her ma died, but she knew better. He was a drunk before.
Her da robbed her of childhood that night. No longer was she innocent. Instead, evil crept in. Evil shaped like lust and greed. Night after night, she was forced to look it in the eye and somehow survive. How does a girl of thirteen do that?
“That was wrong,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry anyone ever did that to you.”
She glanced up at him. “You would apologize?” He hadn’t done anything. He would never have done anything like that.
“Tell me,” he said. “What did you say to yourself that night? How did you promise to keep all the bad things away?”
She turned those questions over in her head and that evening stared at her in vivid detail. The sour smell of the man’s breath. The burden of his body. The horrible need to scrub herself clean, to wash and wash and hope the feeling went away.
“I said nobody would get to my heart.”
Nobody. And she’d successfully locked it away. Until Michael.
“Nobody would get to your heart, so you hid it.” He paused his fingers in their movement, and the heat of them caressed her skin. “I want only one thing from you.”
He placed his palm flat on her breastbone. “There is more to marriage than the physical side. I will not satisfy my flesh at the expense of your heart, for that is of the most value. I want your heart, Amber, that thing you put away for safe keeping.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks, dripping from her chin onto his chest. They beaded in the ridge of hair growing around his navel, a watery testament to her inward struggle.
She pulled away from him and reached for her nightdress. “I have to show you something.”
His face grew wary and his mouth closed tight. Still she kept on, tugging her skirt up her legs, across her thighs and to her waist.
“Holy heaven.” His voice broke. With trembling fingers, he traced the bubbled scars crisscrossing her body. “He did this to you?”
“Hot fire poker,” she said. “Or his belt. But this one,” and she touched a circular scar on her hip. “That was a broken bottle.”
And he did something so surprising, so very tender and intimate. He lowered himself to her waist with his hands stroking each mark, and lying there, one by one kissed each. He kissed her there, and there, and there, and the movement of his mouth across her discolored, misshapen flesh worked its way into her heart.
No man had ever made her feel like this. No man ever made her wish for more of him. She stared down at his figure, heat creeping through her limbs.
Raising himself, he cupped a hand behind her neck.
“Patrick, I ...”
I want you to kiss me. I want you to make love to me. She flinched at her thoughts. Had she really thought that? She’d promised herself never to do the act again. She’d remain single and somehow do penance for those eight years of her life.
“What?” he said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That you are too good for me, and I have no right to ... to take that from you.”
“There was a woman caught in adultery,” he said, “and the leaders of the church put her before Jesus. They accused her of it and asked him a question. ‘The law says she should be stoned. What do you say?’ They were trying to trap him, you see.”
“And did they?”
He smiled. “No. He said to them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.’ Then he stooped down on the ground and waited.”
“What happened next?”
“They left. Eventually, no one remained but him and her, so he looked at her and said, ‘Go and sin no more.’ He didn’t condemn that woman for what she’d done. He simply asked her to stop.”
He stared into her eyes. “You are my wife, and the child you carry is now my own, no matter who the father is or what people say about us. What I am or what you were doesn’t matter anymore. I am a man, and you are a beautiful, desirable woman.”
The air hummed between them, and he loosened her nightdress until it fell away, the rush of air raising gooseflesh on her arms. Then he pressed her to the bed, his touch lingering on her belly, and he held it there as the baby kicked, causing a tingle to ripple over her skin.
What was this thing? What was happening to her? What made her feel this way?
Her mind swirled, and she floated upward. “I don’t know where my heart is,” she whispered.
He brought his face even with hers, his breath blowing gently on her cheeks. “It’s in my hands.”