Page 75 of When You Are Mine

“Kerris,” Kristeene whispered around a weak smile. “So glad you came by.”

“Cam’ll come on his lunch break.” Kerris sat in the hard-backed chair beside Kristeene’s bed.

“Walsh just left not too long ago.” Kristeene pressed her lips together and frowned. “So they still aren’t speaking?”

“What?” Kerris played dumb. She hadn’t realized it was that obvious Walsh and Cam were avoiding each other. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Kristeene gave Kerris a long look before extending a thin arm, the bones of her hand prominent from weight loss. Kerris accepted her hand, squeezing it and pulling it to her head, bowing over it like a royal subject to this queenly woman whose compassion had changed her life.

“Kerris, has anyone told you what the doctor said this morning?”

Kerris stiffened, not expecting this direct tack, unprepared to fake or hem or haw. She nodded slowly, raising her head to find Kristeene’s knowing eyes on her face.

“The time for lies, hiding, and faking is over.” Kristeene lifted Kerris’s chin with one finger, forcing her to meet the eyes of a sage. “You love my son. Both of them, actually.”

Kerris closed her eyes, hoping the thin layer of protection her eyelids provided would block out the knowledge and, she was certain, the judgment she’d see in Kristeene’s eyes.

“Look at me,” Kristeene commanded with gentle force, tilting Kerris’s chin another centimeter. “I’m not judging you.”

“How can you not?” Kerris managed a tearful whisper, swallowing the tide of shame and guilt she couldn’t subdue under Kristeene’s weary, steady stare.

“Kerris, I wish I had known how you felt about Walsh before you married Cam.” Kristeene ran her fingers across the coolness of the sheets on her hospital bed.

“I didn’t see Walsh coming. Could never have predicted anyone would make me feel…” Kerris left the words unspoken, but the truth still blared into the silence. “I care about Cam and thought we were perfect for each other. We had so much in common. We made sense. Meeting Walsh made me question everything I’d believed about myself and about my feelings. About what I was capable of feeling.”

Kerris paused, swallowing past the shame clogging her throat before she continued.

“Then I saw Walsh with Sofie, and I knew she was the kind of woman for him. That he’d never marry a nobody like me. They made sense as much as Cam and I did. I believed that.” Kerris chewed at the corner of her bottom lip. “Has Walsh ever talked to you about me?”

“No, we’ve never talked about this.” Kristeene gave a quick shake of her silk-covered head. “At least not directly.”

“You seemed so certain. How did you know?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“You said yourself the time for hiding is over.”

“Yes, I believe it is.” Kristeene released a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid it’s very clear when the two of you are together that there is something between you.”

“Is it that obvious?” Kerris moaned and dropped her head into both hands.

“Kerris, the way my son looks at you is like—” Kristeene started, briefly hesitating. “It’s like a starved man. It’s like he can’t bring himself to look at anything else in the room.”

Kerris felt her face heating and her hands shaking. She could not believe she was having this conversation with Walsh’s mother.

“I had a man look at me that way once.” Kristeene’s wistful smile was reminiscent of the young beauty she had obviously been.

“Who was it?”

“It was my husband.” Kristeene sat up straighter in her bed, leaning into her story. “I was in New York with my family. My father was there for a restaurateur’s convention, and I met Martin at a hot dog stand on the street.”

“I can’t imagine Mr. Bennett eating a hot dog.” Kerris’s lips twitched at the image of Walsh’s impeccably tailored, unyielding father eating from a street vendor.

“Oh, there’s a lot you probably can’t imagine about my husband.” Kristeene laughed, wincing a little. “We spent every moment we could together in that week I was there.”

“What happened?”

“It was like the love you read about in books. Epic. Instant. Perfect.”

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