dress,” she said flatly, watching it burn. “And I’ll never use it again. It’s bad karma.”
The dress went up in smoke, and within moments, there was nothing left but a pile of ashes. Just like all her hopes and dreams, Merry thought numbly, staring at the glowing embers. There was nothing left of her and Thomas and what might have been.
Pain squeezed her heart like a fist, and just that easily, the tears that she’d been fighting all evening were back. Only this time, she was too tired, too defeated, to fight them. They welled over her lashes and spilled down her cheeks to drip silently onto the blanket she still clutched around her.
She never made a sound, didn’t so much as lift a finger to wipe them away, but Nick must have caught the glint of them in the firelight. With a murmur, he reached for her. “Awh, Merry, don’t. I hate to see you hurting.”
“I c-can’t h-h-help it,” she sniffed, burying her face against his wet shirt. “I d-don’t understand h-how he c-could do this t-to me. I—I thought he l-loved m-me!” What was left of her control shattered then, and with a mournful wail, she collapsed against him, sobbing.
His heart breaking for her, Nick wrapped his arms around her and just let her cry, wishing there was something he could say to explain Thomas’s behavior. But he didn’t understand it himself. He was best friends to both of them and had watched them fall in love in high school, then all over again when Thomas came back to Liberty Hill when his mother became ill. He would have sworn that Thomas loved her with all of his heart. But if that was the case, how could he have humiliated her this way?
“He does love you,” he assured her, and hoped for her sake that it was true. “He’s confused right now, but it’s only a temporary condition. He’d never risk losing you forever. He just needs some space to get his head on straight and realize what he walked away from. Then he’ll be back. You’ll see. The two of you will make up; and the next time you walk down the aisle, he’ll be waiting for you. Then fifty years from now, when we get together to celebrate your anniversary, we’ll all laugh over this.”
Merry knew he meant well, but she couldn’t think about the next fifty years when she still didn’t know how she was going to get through tonight. And as for laughing, she didn’t think she would ever smile again, let alone laugh. Especially over today.
Exhausted, her tears spent, she leaned against Nick and didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t been there to take her weight. “I’m so tired,” she said huskily. “Could we leave now? I don’t feel much like swimming anymore.”
“Let me put out the fire,” he said gruffly, “then we’ll get out of here.”
He took her home with him because he didn’t know where else to take her. She’d already made it quite clear that she didn’t want to go to her own house, and he was fairly positive that she wouldn’t want to arrive at her mother’s wearing nothing but her bra and panties. So he took her home, gave her one of his T-shirts to sleep in and showed her to the guest room. When he checked on her fifteen minutes later, she was asleep, but her cheeks were still wet with tears.
Grabbing a beer from the refrigerator, Nick retreated to his favorite chair in front of the TV in the den and didn’t even think about going to bed himself. He knew there was little point—he would never be able to sleep. Not when the woman he loved was asleep in one of his beds wearing nothing but his T-shirt.
Staring morosely at the TV screen, he didn’t even see the old John Wayne movie that played on one of the cable channels. All he could see was Merry, in a thousand different ways. She was all he’d ever been able to see from the time he was first old enough to appreciate her as a female. And she hadn’t known he was alive except as a friend.
Because of Thomas. He’d captured her heart from the very beginning.
Nick ruefully acknowledged that he’d never stood a chance. She was a one-man woman. Accepting that hadn’t always been easy, but he’d done it because he needed her in his life any way he could get her, even if it was only as a friend.
Another man might have seen what happened today as an opportunity to further his own relationship with her, but Nick knew he could never take advantage of her when she was hurting so. And it wouldn’t do any good anyway. To her, he was just Nick, her old buddy, and that wasn’t going to change. Thomas was the one she loved, the only one she’d ever loved. Once he came to his senses and got over his attack of nerves, he’d come running back to her and charm her with roses and heartfelt words of apology. Because she loved him, she’d find a way to forgive him.
And once again, Nick would be on the sidelines.
Which was why, he told himself as he finished his beer, he wasn’t going to do anything to try to change the status quo. He didn’t want to get hurt, and unlike Thomas, he was smart enough to value the relationship he did have with her. It might not be what he really wanted, but it was better than nothing. So he’d just be her friend. Even if it killed him.
When there was a knock at the door fifteen minutes after Merry went to sleep, Nick didn’t have to check the peephole to know it was Joe. Not wanting the McBrides to worry, he’d called the homestead shortly after he put Merry to bed so that her family would know where she was. He’d explained to Joe that she was fine, but exhausted, and would be home tomorrow, but Joe had insisted on seeing her immediately. Nick couldn’t say he blamed him. If he hadn’t known where she was, he’d have been worried sick about her himself. Resigned, he went to let him in.
“She’s all right,” he said the second he opened the door to the oldest McBride. “You didn’t need to come rushing over.”
His rugged face set in grim lines, Joe held up an overnight bag. “Mom thought she might need some things. Where is she?”
“In the guest room. Asleep,” he added as Joe strode past him into the living room. “She was pretty wrung out after we left the lake—”
“The lake? You took my sister to the lake? At night? After what that jackass did to her?”
“Hey, it was her idea, not mine,” Nick defended himself. “You know how headstrong she can be. She didn’t want to go home. And it’s because of what that jackass did to her that I agreed to go there in the first place. I thought it was better to humor her. Of course, I didn’t know then that she was going to burn her wedding dress.”
“What?!” Sounding like a parrot, Joe gaped at him. “She burned her wedding dress?”
“I don’t think she wanted any reminders of what happened,” he retorted. “Can you blame her?”
After giving it some thought, Joe couldn’t say that he did. “No. I probably would have done the same thing.” Picturing her tossing the dress into the flames, he had to grin. “God, I wish I could have seen that! I guess she was pretty steamed, huh? Good! The quicker she gets mad, the quicker she gets over the jerk.”
Hating to disillusion him, Nick knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. “She’s hurting, Joe,” he warned. “She had a pretty hard cry at the lake before we left, then cried herself to sleep when we got here. You need to warn the family she’s not going to get over this overnight.”
“Are you saying she still loves the bastard?”
“Would you have stopped loving Angel overnight if she’d stood you up at the altar?”
Put that way,
