HE’D BEEN IN the darkest night his soul had ever known and she’d come to him. Not used to fanciful thinking, or at least to allowing it to enter his conscious thought, Mason walked up the beach feeling like he’d just been given new life. He’d been living in an emotional cocoon all his life, keeping his own feelings contained in order to make room for his brother’s.
It was what Bruce—and to an extent his parents and grandparents—had expected of him. It was what he’d expected of himself once he became an adult.
He didn’t regret the choice he’d made to protect his younger brother. He regretted the things he hadn’t seen.
He hadn’t been able to find a way to get past that. To live with it in any semblance of peace.
In one sentence, Harper had shown him the way.
They could choose. If they were to stop being victims of Bruce’s manipulation, they had to choose.
He wasn’t Mozart.
Neither was Bruce, but he’d been gifted. In a way, his brother had been the anti-Mozart.
“If I hadn’t come here tonight, would you have called me? Ever?” She was looking up at him, but he didn’t meet her gaze. Still trying to grasp the fact that Harper was there with him. Perhaps for more than a moment.
“I was going to come by tomorrow to see Brianna, you knew that.”
“I know,” she said, and let it drop.
But he couldn’t. He hadn’t called her five years ago, after the most incredible night of talk and sex, because of his brother.
And he’d been staying away for the same reason. Sort of. He’d just begun to understand how much that sort of mattered.
“I’m not going to pressure you, Harper,” he told her. “Or try to convince you that we belong together. Nor am I going to suffocate you with what I need...”
She halted in the sand, her arm dropping away from behind him. “Would you stop?” she said, in the angriest tone she’d ever used with him. “You think I don’t have the strength of mind to stand up to pressure? Because let me tell you—”
He stopped her with a finger to her lips and a smile on his face.
“Okay, tiger, I get it,” he said. “And you’re right. That was insulting. You left Bruce. Do you realize you’re the only one who was ever able to do that?”
“Not completely I didn’t.”
“Because you had Brianna. Without that, I’m sure you would have.”
Her smile was sad, but her eyes glowed for him again. “Maybe. I hope so.”
Suddenly he had a million things to say and had to get them lined up in his mind. “I think we should go on a date,” he said. First things first. He’d been wanting to go out with her for six long years.
“We’ve had sex...twice. We have a daughter—and you’re asking me out?”
“Yep.” Pulling her up against him, he added, “I’m not saying that’s all we’ll do. We need to face facts, and a major fact is, we’re combustible when we’re together. But we’re family. We share a daughter. It just seems like...if we’re going to have it all, we should take a little time to date.”
Harper’s life was filled with beach, the air, the sea. “I love you, Mason Thomas,” she said. And stopped, horror filling her eyes.
As though she felt guilty... As he should. No. Bruce had had his chance. He’d hurt everyone. Mason was going to spend the rest of his life doing what it took to make sure his brother never hurt anyone again.
“I love you, too, Harper Davidson, soon to be Thomas, I hope. And I’ll stand on my brother’s grave and tell you so. What Bruce brought into our lives wasn’t a healthy love. This is, like a flower that blooms forever, and a burning fire, just like Gram said.”
Harper pulled back. “Miriam... She’s not going to like this. Bruce had her convinced that I was always after you, and that’s why I took the first chance I had to get out of our marriage, because you never came around...”
He shook his head. Kissed her quiet. “Gram sees him for what he is now, Harper, or at least sees enough of what he was. Loving Elmer showed her the difference between dependence and love. And she sees you for what you’ve always been, too. She asked me this afternoon if I thought you’d ever forgive her.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Harper said. “How do you blame a heart that was only doing its best to love?”
Her words hit him hard.
With her usual wisdom, Harper had just sent Bruce on a new journey away from them where, hopefully, his spirit would find, and be able to accept, real love.
Loving wasn’t easy. It didn’t guarantee there’d be no pain. But its promise, that it would be stronger than pain, stronger than evil, that it would be everlasting...was the ultimate truth. A truth that even Bruce couldn’t reframe.
* * *
“YOU READY?” MORE nervous than she’d ever been, Harper looked down at her daughter a couple of months after her walk on the beach with Mason, loving the red velvet dress, the curly blond hair, the black patent shoes, but mostly, loving the open, engaging, trusting grin on Brianna’s face.
“Yep!” Brianna said, “You ready?”
In a short black, figure-hugging dress with a big red satin bow on one hip, and wearing black two-inch heels, Harper squeezed Brianna’s hand as they approached Mason’s front door. “I’m ready,” she said. There was no doubt in her mind about what they were about to do, about a choice she’d already made. But the emotion that accompanied everything these days was still a bit hard for her to get used to.
Why jittery knees and breathlessness, butterfly stomachs and rapid heartbeats had to go along with something so incredible, she had no idea.
“It’s the best Christmas present ever, huh?” Brianna said, her voice almost a whisper. Harper just wanted to pick her up, hug her and never let go. The moment she’d given birth, she’d been introduced to Magic.
Mason deserved the same. “Yes, it is.”
“Because you’re the mom I always wanted,” Brianna said, and Harper started to cry. She’d stop. She had to stop.
And had a smile plastered on her face as Mason opened the door. “I thought you’d never get here!” he said, swinging Brianna up and giving her a hug before putting her down, saying, “The tree’s all bare and waiting for you.” He motioned toward the other room, the family room where the three of them had spent a few evenings over the past couple of months. They’d decided to keep the place, so they could stay in a home of their own when they came to visit Gram and her parents in Albina. So they could entertain both sides of their family at the same time. As they were doing during this first Christmas together.
“I think we should do presents first.” Brianna hadn’t moved from the doorway. “Don’t you, Mommy?” The look she gave Harper was clearly a hint.
“At least one,” Harper agreed, standing back.
Brianna tugged Mason’s hand. “Can you come down here?” she asked. Of course he bent immediately, putting himself on eye level with her.
Harper knew what was coming, what Brianna was going to tell him, but she didn’t know exactly what the little girl would say. The idea had been Brianna’s, so the gift was hers to give.
Brianna looked back at Harper as though for reassurance, and she smiled, nodded, in spite of the tears already in her eyes.
“I have a present that isn’t like one you open,” she told Mason, her tone steady and unmistakably serious.
“Okay.” Mason smiled at her, waiting patiently.
“My present is you are the daddy I always wanted.”
Love exploded around Harper, bathing her, healing her. Filling her.
Leave it to a four-year-old to know the perfect words.
Or...leave it to Brianna.
Harper started to sob. Bent over with the exquisite pain of loving—with the pain of letting go of the bad.
Mason hadn’t moved. He had tears on his face, too. He was smiling at Brianna. And he hadn’t moved.
“Mommy used to say that to me when I was a baby.” Brianna just kept right on talking in her matter-of-fact way. “I don’t ’member that part, but she says it to me when I’m sick or sad and it always makes me feel better, and I say it to her and she feels better, and now your present is to feel it, too.”
Mason looked up at Harper. “You...when...”
“Mommy told me how you helped her one time, because my other...daddy asked you to when she was sad. She said how you helped her feel better and that made you my daddy. She said because we didn’t want to hurt my other daddy’s feelings, you were keeping that a secret. But now that he’s in heaven he would want Mommy to tell.”
It hadn’t been quite like that, but close enough.
Mason lifted Brianna off the ground and into his arms. “You’re most definitely the baby I always wanted,” he said to her, then reached for Harper, pulling her into their hug. “And Mommy is the mommy I always wanted, too,” he said. His voice was strong, sure, but his eyes were still glazed with tears. “I had a special present for tonight, too,” he said, releasing Harper to reach into his pocket. He pulled out a black box and handed it to Brianna. “Open it.”
And as she did, he said, “Harper and Brianna, will you marry me?”
Harper grinned, she cried, she opened her mouth, but before she could say a word, Brianna pulled the ring out of the box and said, “Oh, yes, we will! Won’t we, Mommy?”
Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Harper’s arm, pulling her hand up and putting the ring on the little finger of her left hand.
There were still some things to teach their daughter. And many things she was sure to teach them, but Harper knew all she had to know that night.
She loved. She was loved.
The rest would take care of itself.
* * * * *
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