Page 9 of A Complicated Bride

Chapter 4

Brad

Why the damn flower-lined drive and the view beyond the elegant storybook lake house that hung like a Monet-esque portrait should intimidate me, I wasn’t sure. I’d seen plenty of impressive homes, bigger and better and in equally magnificent settings. But this place told a different story, not about the size of the owner’s bank account or his ego. This one was the story about a successful contemporary couple happy in their idyllic world of graceful coziness.

My pulse pumped harder than it should as I got out of my car because I saw Tammy’s little mini-cooper in the drive and I knew she hadn’t changed. In spite of whatever setting she was put in, she would be the same genuine small town girl with big ambitions and a bigger heart.

And the rush of shameless excitement at seeing her again meant I was over her—not that I’d ever been completely into her. She hadn’t been into me either. Not for real. If I weren’t over her, I’d have run scared because I’m a warped shithead. Or I was then. Now I was reforming, wasn’t I. This visit, though seemingly spontaneous, must be part of my reform program.

Pausing at the front door, I sighed at the realization. I wanted what she had. She’d found the love of her life and it hadn’t been me. She’d given herself completely to Roark with no reservations and that hadn’t been possible with me. I was full of reservations, caveats and hedging. Still was, wasn’t I?

I rang the doorbell with no idea what to expect. I only knew I had to satisfy my urge to see her, to have my faith in the promise of something more than the life I’d been leading buttressed by someone other than Jack and Julie. I figured they were outliers of the first order.

I tried picturing Tammy in my mind as I’d last seen her and instead a picture of a different redhead showed up, one in a business suit hefting her ridiculous bags through a doorway and exuding some kind of magically complex combination of competent and hopeless and practical and dreamer. Her eyes had no hedge to them, no games, no nonsense. When she showed delight with my movie quote, there’d been no pretense, no false flattery or easily impressed naivety. She’d been genuine and the strike of a connection to my gut had been too real.

So here she was invading my thoughts when the front door flew open and I was faced with my past.

And I hadn’t been ready.

“Oh my god. The last man on earth I’d expect to see in nowhere New Hampshire. Bradley Simmons the great and famous photographer of the stars.”

Tammy’s words would have shriveled my starving heart if it hadn’t been for the warmth of her smile and the fact that she’d pulled me inside while she spoke. Whatever grin I returned to her hadn’t been planned so it must have been genuine. She dragged me through the middle of her home to the great room in the back overlooking the lake with massive windows to a deck.

Going with my impulses, I put out my arms for a hug and she obliged me. For only two beats but it was enough. When I heard the door from the deck open, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Bradley Simmons. To what do we owe the pleasure?” Roark boomed in one of those greetings that was edged with a fine sting of unfriendliness.

“In the neighborhood as the cliché goes.”

“You came to visit Jack and Julie and their new babies. You sentimental fool.” Tammy patted my arm, face full of mischief.

“Something like that.” I manned up then and looked straight at Roark. “I needed a break from the false life of the rich and glamorous.”

If I expected surprise or approval or even disbelief, I didn’t get it. Roark gave me nothing, but Tammy, my old girl, snorted.

“I’ll bet you do. Anyone sane would have run screaming from the crowd you run with long ago.”

“Are you questioning my sanity?” I enjoyed her irreverence. A knot of tension somewhere deep unraveled a by a micrometer.

“Of course he’s insane. He let you get away.” Roark moved in to hold his wife from behind.

And there it was. The stake out of a man in possession of a treasure.

But since I was no threat, I could afford my magnanimous smile.

“Guilty as charged.”

I would have gone on to compliment the happy couple on their home and then get on my way before I tested fully my willingness to avoid pretense, but the out-of-place screech of tires on the drive interrupted our exchange from proceeding for better or worse.

“Who’s here now?” Tammy disengaged herself from Roark’s arms and went to the front door with characteristic energy.

I followed, not without a certain amount of dread growing like a ball of bread dough in my stomach.

For good reason.

When I looked over Tammy’s head out the open front door, I saw Julie barreling forward in a fierce hurry. And following behind her, Lily, my previous vision of her enhanced by the becoming country girl charm of her too short shorts and tight t-shirt cladding her killer body in a way the suit she’d worn had not.

That was when I realized that any ambition I had to become friends-only with this woman were one hundred percent doomed. I was more of a fool than I’d thought. Or maybe more pathetically starved for something I didn’t want to admit to. Not yet.