Moving another step away, she surveyed the brilliant sky. The stars looked so close she was sure she could reach up and touch them. She could remember only one other night when they’d been so bright, so perfect.
“You’re not obligated to say that.”
He looked away impatiently. “I wasn’t saying it because I thought I had to say it.”
“Then, thank you.” Her voice was even more unsteady than she’d feared.
Silence stretched between them.
“Why did you come?” he repeated. Grasping her by the shoulders, he shook her gently. “What did you expect?”
What did she expect? Resentment flooded her. What did she expect? Tears burned her eyes and she blinked.
Turning away, he said, “Stop looking at me that way.”
She closed her eyes to keep from seeing him at all.
His voice held quiet desperation now. “I don’t know what you expected.” He struggled for the right words. “You didn’t think it would just go away, did you?”
“I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t expect you to marry Beth.” She heard the hurt in her voice.
For the briefest of moments she thought she saw compassion in his eyes. But then it was gone. She steeled herself against the feelings roiling inside. “Congratulations. With the Baylors’ land and your family’s wealth, the Baldwins will control a sizable chunk of Potter County.”
“I’m not marrying Beth to spite you.”
“Then why are you marrying her?” Vonnie held her breath as she waited for the answer. If you say you love her, I’ll die.
“You know why I’m marrying her.” He refused to meet her eyes.
She averted her gaze. Yes, she knew—his father had arranged the union. P.K. had always wanted the Baylor land.
Lord, how can I bear this? I love him beyond words. How can I let him go to another woman—even to Beth, who would make him a devoted wife? Calm me, Lord, help me be strong, and help me veil how this is tearing me apart.
This time he was the one who looked away. “What does love have to do with it?”
“Are you saying you’re not in love with her?”
His voice turned harsh again. “I’m marrying Beth, understand?”
Oh, she understood. She understood only too well. He was like his father: headstrong and brash. She shivered, drawing the tulle-and-lace scarf closer over her shoulders. She suddenly felt chilled to the bone, though the night was hot. Hadn’t she known it would come to this? Hadn’t she told herself a million times it would end this way? He would never tell Beth. Nor would she. Ever.
“I assume you want my cooperation?”
He avoided her eyes. “Yes.”
She vowed she wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. Tears were already spilling from the corners of her eyes. “I’m supposed to keep quiet? Never tell Beth we were married?”
“It was just a ceremony. Annulled as soon as we came to our senses. We never had a chance to be married—not in the Biblical sense.”
Just a ceremony. She swallowed against the painful knot suddenly impeding the back of her throat.
“There’s no use in Beth ever knowing. It would hurt her pointlessly.”
“I’d want to know,” she said, turning back to confront him.
“Well, you’re not Beth.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not Beth. Silly me, I was only your wife.”
“Briefly,” he reminded.
“Too long,” she said, knowing it was a lie.
Stepping off the veranda, she disappeared into the darkness.
“Lord, I know I don’t have a right to him. He was never really mine. We were too young, but I love him.”
Tears blurred her sight. Her steps faltered and she searched the sky. God was there; He was beside her no matter how foolish her actions, yet she didn’t believe in her heart that He could help her face this. It was too hurtful, too unthinkable, yet so true—Adam belonged to another.
Chapter Two
It was impetuous…daring…stupid, they’d decided in the dawn of reality.
Propping his booted foot against the windowsill, Adam tipped his chair back and focused on the rain pattering against the study window. They had been so young. Young and crazy.
Steepling his fingers to his forehead, he relived the summer of ’91. What a pair they’d been. Innocence mixed with the foolish cup of youth.
It had started with puppy love that steadily blossomed from the time Adam had first seen pretty little Vonnie Taylor at the First Freewill Church’s annual Fourth of July picnic. Add a summer night and a full moon and you had trouble. He’d grown from a barefoot show-off into a seventeen-year-old man. Vonnie Taylor had sprouted from an impish tease into a fifteen-year-old woman, who, with the glance of an eye, could reduce him to a bashful kid.
Add the forbidden—neither was supposed to speak to the other—and you had the seeds of a budding rebellion.
In those days neither one of them understood the bitter feud that raged between the two families. They knew there was bad blood between P.K. Baldwin and Teague Taylor, but at nine and seven, they didn’t attempt to understand the origin of the dispute. The hatred between P.K. and Teague had happened long before Adam and Vonnie were born.
Adam was piling potato salad on his plate that hot July afternoon. Vonnie had sidled up beside him, dressed in a lavender calico dress and matching bonnet. She’d sipped a cup of cool lemonade, tilted a dangerous look up at him and read him his future. “I am going to marry you someday, Adam Baldwin. We’re going to be man and wife. Forever.”
He’d about dumped his plate of food in Flossy Norman’s lap.
“You don’t even know what that means,” he accused, feeling a red blush crawl up his neck. He didn’t either…exactly. Forever. He didn’t think so.
Tilting her chin haughtily, she glared at him in challenge. “Do too.”
From that moment on, Vonnie Taylor hadn’t been far from his thoughts.
Adam slid further down in the chair, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth when he recalled the sassy little girl she’d been. They’d been too naive, and too caught up in teasing each other, to care that P.K. Baldwin had forbidden his boys to associate with the Taylor girl. Consequently, the Baldwin brothers went out of their way to plague her. And she returned it in kind.
Every Sunday Adam and Andrew stared a hole through Vonnie the whole time they sat across the aisle from her in the First Freewill Church.
The diminutive black-haired charmer stared right back—singling out the eldest, Adam, to unleash her flirtations upon. He’d poke out his tongue, cross his eyes, push up his nose in preposterous faces in hopes of making her laugh out loud. But she’d look right back at him over her hymnbook and never crack a smile. Though he’d do his best to stare her down, she wouldn’t budge an inch.
The years passed and the Sunday-morning glances became less hostile. Liquid, clear-blue eyes searched sleepy lavender ones with mild curiosity. Shy Sunday-morning smiles replaced silly faces, and his efforts to attract her attention grew more bold.
He tied Beth Baylor’s braid to the church pew.
He silently, but no less earnestly, rolled his eyes while