Page 110 of The Moments You Were Mine
Chapter Twenty-nine
Fallon
WHEN YOU SAY NOTHING AT ALL
Performed by Alison Krauss & Union Station
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
HER: Do you believe in curses?
HIM: No. Not any more than I believe in fate. Why?
HER: Uncle Adam says my family is cursed. That the poker game where the Hurlys lost the land to the Harringtons twisted our futures. He says it’s why so many Hurlys and Harringtons have died in tragic ways and far too early in their lives. And now the ranch is nearly bankrupt. I’m struggling to find one good thing that’s happened since the land switched hands. I can’t find it. I think he might be right.
HIM: You. You’re the good thing, Fallon. Maybe everything had to happen just as it did so you’d be born. All I know is the world is better because you’re in it.
PRESENT DAY
My head and heart were spinninga bit, and it had nothing to do with the altitude or the nausea that had flitted through me this morning. It was the speed at which Parker was moving. He’d gone from saying yes to my ridiculous proposal, to getting married today, and now living together at the ranch at warp speed, faster than the Cessna was traveling toward Las Vegas.
I’d gotten what I wanted. But it felt empty in many ways.
A consolation prize.
Then, I remembered the way he’d touched me this morning. The look in his eyes as he’d told me to let go hadn’t seemed like a participation trophy. He’d looked at me as I’d always wanted him to—as if there was love there.
Did he love me? In that way my dad loved Sadie? The way Spence had loved my mom? The way Parker’s parents loved each other? My lungs almost forgot to breathe at even the possibility. A tiny piece of me tried to celebrate the idea before I squashed it. Talk about speeding ahead.
But he said he’d wanted me for years. I’d felt that longing time and again, hadn’t I? I’d even told him he was a coward for not taking what he wanted. The sexual tension had flitted between us long before it should have. He’d just always had the strength to say no.
Holy crap, were we really doing this? Getting married and telling our families we wanted to spend our lives together? I’d barely broken up with the man I’d been living with. Would our parents believe us? Would they really think I’d gotten pregnant with Parker’s child almost immediately after getting hitched?
Unease traveled through me.
I could convince Mom. I had years of practice showing her only what I wanted her to see, but Dad and Sadie…I wasn’t so sure. And Parker was extremely close to his parents. They had a relationship I’d always envied, built on love and respect and trust. Now, I was asking him to lie to them—forever.
My stomach flipped again.
Maybe we could tell the Steeles. But if we did, Jim would tell Dad and my father didn’t keep secrets from Sadie. Someone would slip somewhere along the way. That old saying about the only way to keep a secret was to tell no one was true.
The entire flight, I couldn’t shed the back-and-forth doubts.
After we’d landed and loaded our bags in the SUV we kept parked in our Vegas hangar, my emotions still hadn’t settled. Parker insisted on driving, and I was more worn out than I wanted to admit, so I didn’t fight him on it. I just handed him the key fob and climbed into the passenger seat.
The Steele residence was a simple two-story in a middle-classsubdivision that had been new at the time his parents had bought it but bordered on antiquated now. As we pulled into the drive of the stone-and-stucco house, the same thought hit me that always had whenever I’d been here over the years—it was a home in a way the castle I’d spent my childhood in had never been.
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been love in my home. My parents and Spencer had absolutely loved me, and none of them had clipped my wings as I’d tried to spread them. If anything, I’d been given more room and space than most kids. So, I wasn’t sure what had always made Parker’s home seem different. All I knew was walking into it felt like being doused with a blanket of love and acceptance.
Maybe the simple fact that betrayal hadn’t started his family the way it had mine was the reason.
When we got to the door, Parker’s mom was waiting for us in the opening.
Whitney was taller than me, almost six feet, and she looked younger than her actual age of fifty-five. She had dark hair and pale-blue eyes that were scrunched now in concern. She assessed us in a way that both her husband and son were good at doing, as if living with Navy SEALs for most of her life had worn off on her.
After hearing Parker’s dad had gotten us in to see Ike Puzo the following day, she’d expected our arrival, but she didn’t know we were also there to get married. Would she be happy or confused?
When Whitney saw Theo, her entire face lit up.
