Lost and Found Groom by McLinn, Patricia (most difficult books to read .TXT) 📗

Anger burned through her, but Kendra touched Marti’s arm. “I’m sorry you’re getting fallout over my actions–”

Marti caught her hand. “I don’t care about those two. I don’t care about any of it except you.”

Kendra had been accustomed for so long to carry things on her own. She’d had no close girlfriends growing up–even if she’d been of a confiding nature, her mother had moved them too often to let any of her acquaintances become friends. Only to Amy had she told her secrets. First during summers, and then through long letters. They had gone to the same college and roomed together all four years, so she’d needed no other confidants.

Her nature and her career had kept her from forming close friendships after college. Since Amy’s death, she’d grown closer to Marti, and Ellyn had become a true friend. But even with them she’d shared daily life rather than her thoughts or dreams or fears.

Only with a stranger in the middle of a hurricane had she opened that part of herself.

“We talked at the church about Santa Estella,” she started slowly. “Then I brought him back here. You saw him, Marti.” She waited for her aunt’s nod. “I gave him dinner, and he fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up, I gave him breakfast and drove him back to his car.”

Kendra drew a deep breath and took a plunge.

“I’ll admit–” An admission to herself as well as them. “–I’m very attracted to him. I don’t suppose that’s a big surprise considering what happened between us on Santa Estella.”

“That feeling could have died,” murmured Ellyn. “It happens.”

Kendra remembered how she’d felt being held by Daniel, even asleep. “It hasn’t died. But even if I had any thought of acting on that feeling–which I don’t–it wouldn’t have happened last night.”

She searched for a way to make them understand.

“You’re right, Marti, that he’s got a lot of pain in him. He’s carrying a lot of guilt that he didn’t do more in Santa Estella–that he didn’t do everything.”

Ellyn’s disbelieving tsking sound reminded Kendra why she liked the other woman so much.

“–But I think it started much earlier. He had a horrible childhood, until he was adopted when he was about seven. And–” She hesitated, knowing this would win their instant sympathy. “–He’s worried he doesn’t know how to be a good father. He doesn’t feel he knows much about families.”

“But he wants to be a good father?” Marti asked.

“Oh, yes, he wants to be.” With elbows propped on the table to either side of her coffee cup, she dropped her chin to her palms. “I suppose that’s part of why he proposed. I was so angry at him for sweeping in here like the masked crusader, that it didn’t register at first that he thinks getting married will automatically make us a real family. He doesn’t realize–”

“Wait a minute. Back up. What was that?”

“He proposed,” Marti supplied. “You said he proposed to you.”

Kendra straightened. She hadn’t meant to let that out. “Ye-es.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell us?”

“It wasn’t anything I seriously considered,” she protested. Except for a few crazy seconds.

“Why not?”

She might have expected that from Ellyn, but Marti? Kendra gaped at her aunt. “Why not?” she repeated, dumfounded.

“Kendra, you keep your heart under such close guard. Too close.”

The surprise of those words carried a sting. Or maybe the words themselves held the sting.

“Professional hazard,” she said shortly. “Can’t let your emotions get involved with the story.”

“How about letting your emotions get involved with your life? I do worry that you’re overly cautious in emotional matters.”

“You’re basing this belief that I’m too emotionally cautious on the fact that I didn’t jump at the chance to marry him as soon as he popped back into my life? That’s–”

“I’m basing it on the way you’ve lived your life. It took such extraordinary circumstances–my God, you thought you were going to die!–to open yourself up to a man. Maybe it took an extraordinary man, too,” she added thoughtfully.

“I never knew you felt this way about me, Marti.” Her words sounded strange, as if her lips had gone stiff.

Marti laid her palm over Kendra’s wrist. “Honey, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time, but. . . Well, you were so busy showing how strong you were that nobody dared even mention that you walked around like a porcupine at constant alert.”

Kendra glanced at Ellyn. Sympathy showed in her eyes but she nodded.

In a stiff voice she barely recognized as her own, Kendra started, “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult–”

Marti waved that off. “Difficult is what you’ve made it for yourself. All your life I’ve watched you do it. So busy being strong and independent that you wouldn’t let anybody in. Kendra, I know watching your Mom bothered you a lot, but you must let that go.”

“The way she let my father go? Apparently not letting things go is one trait I inherited from her.”

Bitterness flowed from the words, a bitterness she couldn’t remember expressing before . . . except during a hurricane to a man she’d thought didn’t understand.

Is this about you not wanting to turn into your mother, the way you said on Santa Estella? You were hard enough on her.

“There could be worse things to inherit. Tenacity didn’t hurt you any in that network job.”

“Tenacity.” Kendra tested the word. She’d never thought of her mother in that light. Foolish, silly, weak, but tenacious? “I’ve always thought of you as tenacious, Marti. Not Mother.”

“Oh, yes, Wendy was tenacious. Tenacious in a lot of ways, and especially in loving Ken. Your mother and father truly loved each other, you know. You might have been too young to see that, to remember it. They glowed with it. When your father went missing. . .” Clouded memories dimmed Marti’s eyes. “That was the absolutely worst thing to happen for Wendy.”

Kendra fought a tug of sympathy for her mother with sharp words. “If loving my father hurt her so much, she would have been better off never letting herself love