She sat in her dressing room, surrounded by flowers, the scent and the color of them. She barely noticed them. She’d hoped, perhaps foolishly, that one of the luscious bouquets, one of the elegant arrangements, had been sent by Brady.
But she had known better.
He had not come to see her off at the airport. He had not called to wish her luck, or to tell her he would miss her while she was gone. Not his style, Vanessa thought as she studied her reflection in the mirror. It never had been. When Brady Tucker was angry, he was angry. He made no polite, civilized overtures. He just stayed mad.
He had the right, she admitted. The perfect right.
She had left him, after all. She had gone to him, given herself to him, made love to him with all the passion and promise a woman could bring to a man. But she had held back the words. And, by doing so, she had held back herself.
Because she was afraid, she thought now. Of making that dreadful, life-consuming mistake. He would never understand that her caution was as much for him as it was for herself.
She understood now, after listening to her mother. Mistakes could be made for the best of reasons, or the worst of them. It was too late to ask her father, to try to understand his feelings, his reasons.
She only hoped it wasn’t too late for herself.
Where were they now, those children who had loved so fiercely and so unwisely? Brady had his life, his skill, and his answers. His family, his friends, his home. From the rash, angry boy he had been had grown a man of integrity and purpose.
And she? Vanessa stared down at her hands, the long, gifted fingers spread. She had her music. It was all she had ever really had that belonged only to her.
Yes, she understood now, perhaps more than she wanted to, her mother’s failings, her father’s mistakes. They had, in their separate ways, loved her. But that love hadn’t made them a family. Nor had it made any of the three of them happy.
So while Brady was setting down his roots in the fertile soil of the town where they had both been young, she was alone in a dressing room filled with flowers, waiting to step onto another stage.
At the knock on her door, she watched the reflection in the dressing room mirror smile. The show started long before the key light clicked on.
“Entrez.”
“Vanessa.” The Princess Gabriella, stunning in blue silk, swept inside.
“Your Highness.” Before she could rise and make her curtsy, Gabriella was waving her to her seat in a gesture that was somehow imperious and friendly all at once.
“Please, don’t get up. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Of course not. May I get you some wine?”
“If you’re having some.” Though her feet ached after a backbreaking day on her feet, she only sighed a little as she took a chair. She had been born royal, and royalty was taught not to complain. “It’s been so hectic today, I haven’t had a chance to see you, make certain you’ve been comfortable.”
“No one could be uncomfortable in the palace, Your Highness.”
“Gabriella, please.” She accepted the glass of wine. “We’re alone.” She gave brief consideration to slipping out of her shoes, but thought better of it. “I wanted to thank you again for agreeing to play tonight. It’s so important.”
“It’s always a pleasure to play in Cordina.” The lights around the mirror sent the dozens of bugle beads on Vanessa’s white dress dancing. “I’m honored that you wanted to include me.”
Gabriella gave a quick laugh before she sipped. “You’re annoyed that I bothered you while you were on vacation.” She tossed back her fall of red-gold hair. “And I don’t blame you. But for this, I’ve learned to be rude—and ruthless.”
Vanessa had to smile. Royalty or not, the Princess Gabriella was easy to be with. “Honored and annoyed, then. I hope tonight’s benefit is a tremendous success.”
“It will be.” She refused to accept less. “Eve— You know my sister-in-law?”
“Yes, I’ve met Her Highness several times.”
“She’s American—and therefore pushy. She’s been a tremendous help to me.”
“Your husband, he is also American?”
Gabriella’s topaz eyes lit. “Yes. Reeve is also pushy. This year we involved our children quite a bit, so it’s been even more of a circus than usual. My brother, Alexander, was away for a few weeks, but he returned in time to be put to use.”
“You are ruthless with your family, Gabriella.”
“It’s best to be ruthless with those you love.” She saw something, some cloud, come and go in Vanessa’s eyes. She would get to that. “Hannah apologizes for not coming backstage before your performance. Bennett is fussing over her.”
“Your younger brother is entitled to fuss when his wife is on the verge of delivering their child.”
“Hannah was interested in you, Vanessa.” Gabriella couldn’t resist a smile. “As your name was linked with Bennett’s before his marriage.”
Along with half the female population of the free world, Vanessa thought, but she kept her smile bland. “His Highness was the most charming of escorts.”
“He was a scoundrel.”
“Tamed by the lovely Lady Hannah.”
“Not tamed, but perhaps restrained.” The princess set her glass aside. “I was sorry when your manager informed us that you wouldn’t spend more than another day in Cordina. It’s been so long since you visited us.”
“There is no place I’ve felt more welcome.” She toyed with the petals of a pure white rose. “I remember the last time I was here, the lovely day I spent at your farm, with your family.”
“We would love to have you to ourselves again, whenever your schedule permits.” Compassionate by nature, she reached out a hand. “You are well?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m quite well.”
“You look lovely, Vanessa, perhaps more so because there’s such sadness in your eyes. I understand the look. It faced me in the mirror once, not so many years ago. Men put it there. It’s one of their finest skills.” Her fingers linked with Vanessa’s. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down at their joined hands, then up into Gabriella’s soft, patient eyes. “Gabriella, may I ask you, what’s the most important thing in your life?”
“My family.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “You had such a romantic story. How you met and fell in love with your husband.”
“It becomes more romantic as time passes, and less traumatic.”
“He’s an American, a former policeman?”
“Of sorts.”
“If you had had to give up your position, your, well, birthright, to have married him, would you have done so?”
“Yes. But with great pain. Does this man ask you to give up something that’s so much a part of you?”
“No, he doesn’t ask me to give up anything. And yet he asks for everything.”
Gabriella smiled again. “It is another skill they have.”
“I’ve learned things about myself, about my background, my family, that are very difficult to accept. I’m not sure if I give this man what he wants, for now, that I won’t be cheating him and myself in the bargain.”
Gabriella was silent a moment. “You know my story, it has been well documented. After I had been kidnapped, and my memory was gone, I looked into my father’s face and didn’t know him. Into my brothers’ eyes and saw the eyes of strangers. However much this hurt me, it hurt them only more. But I had to find myself, discover myself in the most basic of ways. It’s very frightening, very frustrating. I’m not a patient or a temperate person.”
Vanessa managed another smile. “I’ve heard rumors.”
With a laugh, Gabriella picked up her wine and sipped again. “At last I recognized myself. At last I looked at my family and knew them. But differently,” she said, gesturing. “It’s not easy to explain. But when I knew them again, when I loved them again, it was with a different heart. Whatever flaws they had, whatever mistakes they had made, however they had wounded me in the past, or I them, didn’t matter any longer.”
“You’re saying you forgot the past.”
She gave a quick shake of her head, and her diamonds sizzled. “The past wasn’t forgotten. It can’t be. But I could see it through different eyes. Falling in love was not so difficult after being reborn.”
“Your husband is a fortunate man.”
“Yes. I remind him often.” She rose. “I’d better leave you to prepare.”
“Thank you.”
Gabriella paused at the door. “Perhaps on my next trip to America you will invite me to spend a day in your home.”
“With the greatest pleasure.”
“And I’ll meet this man.”
“Yes.” Vanessa’s laugh was quick and easy. “I think you will.”
When the door closed, she sat again. Very slowly she turned her head, until she faced herself in the mirror, ringed by bright lights. She saw dark green eyes, a mouth that had been carefully painted a deep rose. A mane of chestnut hair. Pale skin over delicate features. She saw a musician. And a woman.
“Vanessa Sexton,” she murmured, and smiled a little.
Suddenly she knew why she was there, why she would walk out onstage. And why, when she was done, she would go home.
Home.
It was too damn hot for a thirty-year-old fool to be out in the afternoon sun playing basketball. That was what Brady told himself as he jumped up and jammed another basket.
Even though the kids were out of school for the summer, he had the court, and the park, to himself. Apparently children had more sense than a lovesick doctor.
The temperature might have taken an unseasonable hike into the nineties, and the humidity might have decided to join it degree for degree, but Brady figured sweating on the court was a hell of a lot better than brooding alone at home.
Why the hell had he taken the day off?
He needed his work. He needed his hours filled.
He needed Vanessa.
That was something he was going to have to get over. He dribbled into a fast layup. The ball rolled around the rim, then dropped through.
He’d seen the pictures of Vanessa. They’d been all over the damn television, all over the newspaper. People in town hadn’t been able to shut up about it—about her—for two days.
He wished he’d never seen her in that glittery white dress, her hair flaming down her back, those gorgeous hands racing over the keys, caressing them, drawing impossible music from them. Her music, he thought now. The same composition she’d been playing that day he’d walked into her house to find her waiting for him.
Her composition. She’d finished it.
Just as she’d finished with him.
He scraped his surgeon’s fingers on the hoop.
How could he expect her to come back to a one-horse town, her high school sweetheart? She had royalty cheering her. She could move from palace to palace for the price of a song. All he had to offer her was a house in the woods, an ill-mannered dog and the occasional baked good in lieu of fee.
That was bull, he thought viciously as the ball rammed onto the backboard and careened off. No one would ever love her the way he did, the way he had all of his damn life. And if he ever got his hands on her again, she’d hear about it. She’d need an otolaryngologist by the time her ears stopped ringing.
“Stuff it,” he snapped at Kong as the dog began to bark in short, happy yips. He was out of breath, Brady thought as he puffed toward the foul line. Out of shape. And—as the ball nipped the rim and bounced off—out of luck.
He pivoted, grabbed the rebound, and stopped dead in his tracks.
There she was, wearing those damn skimpy shorts, an excuse for a blouse that skimmed just under her breasts, carrying a bottle of grape soda and sporting a bratty smile on her face.
He wiped the sweat out of his eyes. The heat, his mood—and the fact that he hadn’t slept in two days—might be enough to bring on a hallucination. But he didn’t like it. Not a bit.
“Hi, Brady.” Though her heart was jolting against her ribs, she schooled her voice. She wanted it cool and low and just a little snotty. “You look awful hot.” With her eyes on his, Vanessa took a long sip from the bottle, ran her tongue over her upper lip and sauntered the rest of the way to him. “Want a sip?”
He had to be going crazy. He wasn’t eighteen anymore. But he could smell her. That floaty, flirty scent. He could feel the hard rubber of the ball in his bare hands, and the sweat dripping down his bare chest and back. As he watched, she leaned over to pet the dog. Still bent, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and sent him one of those taunting sidelong smiles.
“Nice dog.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I was taking a walk.” She straightened, then tipped the bottle to her lips again, draining it before she tossed the empty container into the nearby trash bin. “Your hook shot needs work.” Her mouth moved into a pout. “Aren’t you going to grab me?”
“No.” If he did, he wasn’t sure if he would kiss her or strangle her.
“Oh.” She felt the confidence that had built up all during the flight, all during the interminable drive home, dry up. “Does that mean you don’t want me?”
“Damn you, Vanessa.”
Battling tears, she turned away. This wasn’t the time for tears. Or for pride. Her little ploy to appeal to his sentiment had been an obvious mistake. “You have every right to be angry.”
“Angry?” He heaved the ball away. Delighted, the dog raced after it. “That doesn’t begin to describe what I’m feeling. What kind of game are you playing?”
“It’s not a game.” Eyes brilliant, she turned back to him. “It’s never been a game. I love you, Brady.”
He didn’t know if her words slashed his heart or healed it. “You took your damn time telling me.”
“I took what I had to take. I’m sorry I hurt you.” Any moment now, her breath would begin to hitch, mortifying her. “If you decide you want to talk to me, I’ll be at home.”
He grabbed her arm. “Don’t you walk away from me. Don’t you walk away from me ever again.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Tough. You come back here, stir me up. You expect me to let things go on as they have been. To put aside what I want, what I need. To watch you leave time and time again, with never a promise, never a future. I won’t do it. It’s all or nothing, Van, starting now.”
“You listen to me.”
“The hell with you.” He grabbed her then, but there was no fumbling in this kiss. It was hot and hungry. There was as much pain as pleasure here. Just as he wanted there to be.
She struggled, outraged that he would use force. But his muscles were like iron, sleeked with the sweat that heat and exercise had brought to his skin. The violence that flamed inside him was more potent than any she had known before, the need that vibrated from him more furious.
She was breathless when she finally tore away. And would have struck him if she hadn’t seen the dark misery in his eyes.
“Go away, Van,” he said tightly. “Leave me alone.”
“Brady.”
“Go away.” He rounded on her again, the violence still darkening his eyes. “I haven’t changed that much.”
“And neither have I.” She planted her feet. “If you’ve finished playing the macho idiot, I want you to listen to me.”
“Fine. I’m going to move to the shade.” He turned away from her, snatching up a towel from the court and rubbing it over his head as he walked onto the grass.
She stormed off after him. “You’re just as impossible as you ever were.”
After a quick, insolent look, he dropped down under the shade of an oak. To distract the dog, he picked up a handy stick and heaved it. “So?”
“So I wonder how the hell I ever fell in love with you. Twice.” She took a deep, cleansing breath. This was not going as she had hoped. So she would try again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to explain myself adequately before I left.”
“You explained well enough. You don’t want to be a wife.”
She gritted her teeth. “I believe I said I didn’t know how to be one—and that I didn’t know if I wanted to be one. My closest example of one was my mother, and she was miserably unhappy as a wife. And I felt inadequate and insecure.”
“Because of the tuna casserole.”
“No, damn it, not because of the tuna casserole, because I didn’t know if I could handle being a wife and a woman, a mother and a musician. I hadn’t worked out my own definition of any of those terms.” She frowned down at him. “I hadn’t really had the chance to be any of them.”
“You were a woman and a musician.”
“I was my father’s daughter. Before I came back here, I’d never been anything else.” Impassioned, she dropped down beside him. “I performed on demand, Brady. I played the music he chose, went where he directed. And I felt what he wanted me to feel.”
She let out a long breath and looked away, to those distant Blue Mountains. “I can’t blame him for that. I certainly don’t want to—not now. You were right when you said I’d never argued with him. That was my fault. If I had, things might have changed. I’ll never know.”
“Van—”
“No, let me finish. Please. I’ve spent so much time working all this out.” She could still feel his anger, but she took heart from the fact that he didn’t pull his hand away when she touched it. “My coming back here was the first thing I’d done completely on my own in twelve years. And even that wasn’t really a choice. I had to come back. Unfinished business.” She looked back at him then, and smiled. “You weren’t supposed to be a part of that. And when you were, I was even more confused.”
She paused to pluck at the grass, to feel its softness between her fingers. “Oh, I wanted you. Even when I was angry, even when I still hurt, I wanted you. Maybe that was part of the problem. I couldn’t think clearly around you. I guess I never have been able to. Things got out of control so quickly. I realized, when you talked about marriage, that it wasn’t enough just to want. Just to take.”
“You weren’t just taking.”
“I hope not. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never did. Maybe, in some ways, I tried too hard not to. I knew you would be upset that I was going to Cordina to perform.”
He was calm again. After the roller-coaster ride she’d taken his emotions on, his anger had burned itself out. “I wouldn’t ask you to give up your music, Van. Or your career.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She rose to walk out of the shade into the sun and he followed her. “But I was afraid I would give up everything, anything, to please you. And if I did, I wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be, Brady.”
“I love what you are, Van.” His hands closed lightly over her shoulder. “The rest is just details.”
“No.” She turned back. Her eyes were passionate, and her grip was tight. “It wasn’t until I was away again that I began to see what I was pulling away from, what I was moving toward. All my life I did what I was told. Decisions were made for me. The choice was always out of my hands. This time I decided. I chose to go to Cordina. I chose to perform. And when I stood in the wings, I waited for the fear to come. I waited for my stomach to clutch and the sweat to break out, and the dizziness. But it didn’t come.” There were tears in her eyes again, glinting in the sunlight. “It felt wonderful. I felt wonderful. I wanted to step out on the stage, into those lights. I wanted to play and have thousands of people listen. I wanted. And it changed everything.”
“I’m glad for you.” He ran his hands up and down her arms before he stepped back. “I am. I was worried.”
“It was glorious.” Hugging her arms, she spun away. “And in my heart I know I never played better. There was such…freedom. I know I could go back to all the stages, all the halls, and play like that again.” She turned back, magnificent in the streaming sunlight. “I know it.”
“I am glad for you,” he repeated. “I hated thinking about you performing under stress. I’d never be able to allow you to make yourself ill again, Van, but I meant it when I said I wouldn’t ask you to give up your career.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Damn it, Van, I want to know you’ll be coming back to me. I know a house in the woods doesn’t compare with Paris or London, but I want you to tell me you’ll come back at the end of your tours. That when you’re here we’ll have a life together, and a family. I want you to ask me to go with you whenever I can.”
“I would,” she said. “I would promise that, but—”
Rage flickered again. “No buts this time.”
“But,” she repeated, eyes challenging, “I’m not going to tour again.”
“You just said—”
“I said I could perform, and I will. Now and then, if a particular engagement appeals, and if I can fit it comfortably into the rest of my life.” With a laugh, she grabbed his hands. “Knowing I can perform, when I want, when I choose. That’s important to me. Oh, it’s not just important, Brady. It’s like suddenly realizing I’m a real person. The person I haven’t had a chance to be since I was sixteen. Before I went on stage this last time, I looked in the mirror. I knew who I was, I liked who I was. So instead of there being fear when I stepped into the light, there was only joy.”
He could see it in her eyes. And more. “But you came back.”
“I chose to come back.” She squeezed his fingers. “I needed to come back. There may be other concerts, Brady, but I want to compose, to record. And as much as it continues to amaze me, I want to teach. I can do all of those things here. Especially if someone was willing to add a recording studio onto the house he’s building.”
Closing his eyes, he brought her hands to his lips. “I think we can manage that.”
“I want to get to know my mother again—and learn how to cook. But not well enough so you’d depend on it.” She waited until he looked at her again. “I chose to come back here, to come back to you. About the only thing I didn’t choose to do was love you.” Smiling, she framed his face in her hands. “That just happened, but I think I can live with it. And I do love you, Brady, more than yesterday.”
She brought her lips to his. Yes, more than yesterday, she realized. For this was richer, deeper, but with all the energy and hope of youth.
“Ask me again,” she whispered. “Please.”
He was having trouble letting her go, even far enough that he could look down into her eyes. “Ask you what?”
“Damn you, Brady.”
His lips were curved as they brushed through her hair. “A few minutes ago, I was mad at you.”
“I know.” Her sigh vibrated with satisfaction. “I could always wrap you around my little finger.”
“Yeah.” He hoped she’d keep doing it for the next fifty or sixty years. “I love you, Van.”
“I love you, too. Now ask me.”
With his hands on her shoulders, he drew her back. “I want to do it right this time. There’s no dim light, no music.”
“We’ll stand in the shade, and I’ll hum.”
“Anxious, aren’t you?” He laughed and gave her another bruising kiss. “I still don’t have a ring.”
“Yes, you do.” She’d come, armed and ready. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a ring with a tiny emerald. She watched Brady’s face change when he saw it, recognized it.
“You kept it,” he murmured before he lifted his gaze to hers. Every emotion he was feeling had suddenly doubled.
“Always.” She set it in the palm of his hand. “It worked before. Why don’t you try it again?”
His hand wasn’t steady. It hadn’t been before. He looked at her. There was a promise in her eyes that spanned more than a decade. And that was absolutely new.
“Will you marry me, Van?”
“Yes.” She laughed and blinked away tears. “Oh, yes.”
He slipped the ring on her finger. It still fit.