On the day of Tessa’s first wedding, she’d been scared and alone, desperately grasping at the first kind hand extended to her. She hadn’t had any friends to help her get ready. Her father would not be walking her down the aisle. She’d missed her mother.
Some things hadn’t changed, she reflected as she gazed at her reflection in the old-fashioned beveled mirror in Miss Patty’s guest room. Her father might be currently under treatment at a psychiatric facility instead of on his plot of land at the commune, but he still wouldn’t be walking her down the aisle.
And Tessa still missed her mother, with a painful intensity of grief that had been stirred up by her recent experiences.
But this time around, she did have friends; she wasn’t alone. In fact, this was the first moment she’d had to herself all morning. Between Quinn and Patty flitting around, helping her into her dress and insisting on doing her makeup, Tessa had never felt so pampered.
And this time around, she wasn’t afraid, either. Johnny wasn’t marrying her out of kindness this time. Today was all about love.
A tap at the door brought her out of her reflections. Shaking her head, she stood up from the vanity bench to let her friends back in.
“What now?” she called as she made her way to the door. “We still have an hour before we need to leave!”
“Tessa.”
It was Johnny’s deep voice, low and happy. Delight thrilled through her, and she leaned against the doorjamb longing for the time a few short hours from now when there would be nothing separating them any longer. “What are you doing out there? Don’t you know it’s bad luck?”
“Only if we see each other,” Johnny said reasonably. “I’m staying out here, don’t worry. We’re taking no chances this time around. But…”
He paused, and Tessa frowned slightly to hear the hesitance and tension suddenly creep into his tone.
“What’s wrong?” Was he having second thoughts?
“Nothing,” Johnny assured her, easing the tight constriction around her lungs. “But I have a present for you. I wasn’t sure it would get here in time, but it’s here. And I wish I could be there with you when you … open it.”
Giddy with relief, Tessa laughed. “Johnny! You’re spoiling me. I don’t need any more presents!”
“You need this one.” His voice was very certain, rough with an emotion Tessa couldn’t identify. “Here, I’m going to leave it here in the hall and go downstairs. Count to ten and open the door, I promise I’ll be gone.”
Tessa fought the urge to pout. “The best present would be getting to see your face,” she said. “Maybe I’m not superstitious after all.”
That made Johnny laugh. “Oh, but you are, though. I know you, and the minute you see me before the wedding, you’ll start worrying about our seven years of bad luck.”
“That’s for broken mirrors,” Tessa corrected him instantly, then scrunched up her nose. “I guess the fact that I know that sort of proves your point, huh?”
“I know you,” Johnny said again, this time so tenderly, it made the tips of her ears burn and her eyes sting with tears. “And I’ll see you very soon, honey.”
“I’m counting the minutes.” She leaned harder against the door, imagining him on the other side doing the same. She loved him so much, her heart felt sore and swollen with it.
“Just count to ten,” he reminded her with another soft laugh. “And remember, I love you. No matter what. You’ll never be alone again.”
That was a little ominous, Tessa thought, raising her eyebrows as she listened for the sound of his footsteps retreating down the hallway. After ten seconds, Tessa reached for the doorknob and turned it.
The door swung wide, and there on the threshold stood Tessa’s mother.
Naomi Mulligan was older, her face lined with the cares and trials of a lifetime of hard work and regrets. Her thick hair had gone fully gray, and her figure had rounded to a softness that had never been possible during the years of Tessa’s bare-bones childhood. But it was unmistakably her.
Everything inside Tessa cried out in recognition. A sob tore its way from her chest. “Mom,” she cried, and nearly fell across the threshold into her mother’s open arms.
Naomi’s embrace was as strong and sure as Tessa remembered. Tears came in a torrent, a flood that had been dammed up for years, suddenly released in a river of relief. She felt her mother’s tears against her own cheek, and the two women clung together for several long minutes.
“My sweet girl,” Naomi whispered, voice choked and thick with emotion. She pulled back far enough to frame Tessa’s face between her hands. “You grew up so beautiful and healthy.”
Tessa’s heart broke a little. “Yes,” she assured her mother. “I got treatment for the seizures, and they finally stopped completely a few years after I … after I left. I wrote letters, I wanted you to know I was okay.”
Naomi dropped her hands from her daughter’s face, pain tightening her features. “I never got those letters. I had left the community by then.”
“I can’t believe you left. I never thought you would.”
A strange expression crossed Naomi’s face. “Sweet girl. Do you really think I could have stayed? At that place, in that life—the life that had endangered my daughter and made her think she’d be safer running away than staying with us? And the worst part of it was that you were right. You were better off without us.”
Tessa grabbed the tormented woman by the shoulders. “I had to leave, and I’m not sorry I did—I can’t be sorry for any choice I made that led me here, to the life I’m building on Sanctuary Island with the man I love. But Mom, I wasn’t better off without you. I missed you every day.”
Naomi covered her eyes with her hands, shoulders hunching. “Oh. To hear you say that, after all the ways I failed you. I should have stood up to your father much sooner. I should have been stronger, I should have gotten us both away.”
The words healed a ragged wound in Tessa’s heart, allowing compassion and forgiveness to flow into the breach. “You were afraid. The community was the only way of life you knew. And Dad was…”
She broke off, suddenly unsure how much her mother knew about the events of the past few weeks.
“Your father is a bully,” Naomi said bluntly. “He wants to control everything and everyone around him, even if it means crushing the life out of them. And don’t worry, your young man filled me in on how far Abe was willing to go to get me back under his thumb. I’m so sorry, darling. So very everlastingly sorry that I couldn’t protect you from him.”
Tessa wrapped her mother up in a forgiving hug. “You didn’t make his choices for him,” she said, repeating the mantra she’d been working with lately. “And you did the best you could, under really difficult circumstances. I always knew that, Mom.”
Blinking away tears, Naomi shook her head. “Where did you get that big, wide-open heart?”
“Well, not from Dad.” Tessa smiled at her mother, who tentatively smiled back. “Come on, come sit down with me. We have a lot of years to catch up on.”
“Yes, I want to hear all about the man who tracked me down—the man you’re marrying!”
“Technically, we’re already married … it’s a long story.”
Naomi clutched her hand. “I’m not going anywhere. We have time.”
* * *
The barn was crammed with people. Their “small, private” ceremony had bloomed into a town-wide celebration. Loyal bakery customers chatted to Windy Corner Therapeutic Riding Center employees on white folding chairs set up among the hay bales. Brad Garner, his buddy from the ATF, was there with his wife, and they’d gotten drawn into an animated conversation with Quinn once she finished handing out the programs and studiously ignoring Marcus Beckett. Marcus sat impassively at Miss Patty’s side, in the very front row by the pile of saddles they’d moved to make room for the ceremony, and didn’t move except to keep Patty from getting up to greet every new person who arrived.
Johnny stood underneath the hayloft, breathing in the scents of sweet hay, leather, and horses. They’d asked to say their vows at Windy Corner, because without that place, they wouldn’t have made it this far. Dr. Voss had smiled so broadly when they asked, Johnny had thought her cheeks might split.
Now Johnny stared out over the smiling crowd of half-familiar, very friendly faces, and wondered when he was going to start feeling nervous.
God knew, he hadn’t been smart enough to be nervous the first time he married Tessa. He’d been so sure he knew what he was doing, caught up in the practical implications and the satisfaction of helping someone who needed him. It wasn’t until a few years later that he realized what he’d done—that he’d tied himself for life to a woman he couldn’t touch. A woman who made him burn for her, without even realizing she was the spark that lit him up.
He’d assumed he’d be nervous in this moment, as their second wedding ceremony was about to begin. After all, now he knew what he was getting into. He knew how much Tessa meant to him. He didn’t know exactly what their new life together would look like, but he knew it would be different from everything that came before.
Yeah, it seemed like he should be feeling some nerves. But he just wasn’t, he mused as someone at the back near the open barn doors picked up a guitar and began to pluck at the strings. It was the man from the hardware store, Johnny recognized with a start. The one they called King, who wore a funny toy crown and sat playing checkers all day and picking up gossip. It turned out that checkers and gossip weren’t King’s only interests. The music he coaxed from that guitar sent warm chills down Johnny’s spine. He felt as if the man’s fingers were reaching into his chest to pluck at his heart.
A ripple went through the guests, and Johnny’s heart quickened. Everyone stood up, so he couldn’t see at first, but in the next instant, he caught a glimpse of Tessa. His wife.
She walked down the aisle between the chairs in a simple cream-colored sundress, and she was so beautiful, she dazzled him. Her smile was radiant, her eyes bright and clear when they locked on his. He couldn’t look away, and it took him a full minute to realize that she was walking with someone.
Johnny’s chest filled with satisfaction when he saw that Tessa was arm in arm with her mother. It looked like his gift had gone over well.
When the two women reached the front of the barn, Naomi hugged and kissed her daughter, then stepped close to Johnny. “Thank you,” she whispered fervently as he bent down to embrace her. “For loving her as much as she deserves to be loved, and for bringing me here to be a part of this special day.”
“I’d do anything for your daughter,” he said quietly. “I’d give everything I am to make her happy.”
“From what she tells me, you already have.” Naomi patted his cheek and went to sit down while Johnny turned to Tessa.
She held out her hands to him, and he took them. In a husky undertone, he whispered, “It’s a real struggle not to bend you back over my arm and kiss the breath from your body, right here and now.”
He was rewarded with a shivery sigh and a slow lowering of Tessa’s lashes. Her lips parted in the smile of a woman who knew all about pleasure. “Patience,” she murmured. “Let’s declare our love and commitment to each other in front of all the people who matter most to us in this world. And then you can have whatever you want.”
“I already have everything I want,” he told her. “I have a second chance. A new life. And you.”
“We have each other,” Tessa said, smiling with tears sparkling in her eyes. “Forever.”