When You Are Mine(24)

"Who's staying in the guest house?" Walsh demanded with a quick frown. "You and Kerris?"

"Yeah, since the wedding's here at the house, your mom and Jo thought it made sense."                       
       
           



       

Not only was Kerris marrying another man in his backyard, now she was  spending the eve of her wedding under his roof. Could there be any other  forms of torture left before this was all over? He thought about  standing at the end of the aisle as Cam's best man, Kerris walking  toward him, but not to him. He knew that would be the worst torture. Or  thinking about their wedding night. Their first child.

Actually, a lifetime of torture lay ahead of him.

"The guesthouse is out back." Every word felt like wood on his tongue. "Is Kerris already here?"

"No, she'll be coming a little later. She, um, needed some time on her own."

"She's okay, though, right?" Walsh glanced over his shoulder at the little nymph following him to the guesthouse.

"Bridal nerves," Meredith said, but Walsh recognized strain when he saw it, and it was all around her forced smile.

Walsh stopped in his tracks and turned to face Meredith, looking her straight in the eye like they'd known each other for years.

"Is she having second thoughts?" He refused to release her startled gaze.

"Did I say that? I didn't say that." Her laugh was light and false.

"Is she sure this is what she wants to do, Meredith? I don't want them making a mistake."

Meredith looked up the distance stretching between her four eleven and  his six three. Walsh saw her open her mouth and close it before anything  could come out.

"Kerris loves Cam, Walsh."

Walsh drew a quick breath, disappointment taking up all the space in his  chest, leaving him swollen and yet deflated. With the finality of  Meredith's words, he had to face it, had to check that ruthless  determination that could compel him to take, take, take and apologize  later. He felt like a tiger whose prey had disintegrated into thin air.

"Of course." He slipped back into the self-assurance perfected through  years of practice. "I've waited a long time for Cam to find someone, and  Kerris is a remarkable girl. The guesthouse is right back here. It  would've been hard for you to find on your own. I gotta get to Cam's  bachelor party."

"Oh, yeah." Meredith's face seemed to relax with his change of topic.  "You guys have fun, but not too much fun. The wedding is tomorrow, so  take care of our boy."

Walsh set his shoulders at the perfect angle to carry the weight of the  world. He'd take care of Cam, all right. Hadn't he always?





Chapter Seventeen



Walsh half stumbled through the front door, reaching out to steady  himself against the wall, but it moved under his hand. He was vodka's  bitch. Invariably, when things went wrong, he hit the vodka hard. Though  they hadn't stocked his favorite, Kauffman-not surprising considering  its hefty price tag-he'd made do with whatever swamp water they'd had at  the bachelor party. He hadn't drowned any sorrows, though. They were  still very much alive, just flailing and sloppy and wet around the  edges.

His mind crawled back into the stuffy hotel room Brad had secured for  the party. As he'd anticipated, he'd been met with a wall of exposed  flesh and cheap lingerie. He got it. It was a bachelor party. He had  politely declined every stripper who had approached him, ignoring Brad's  goading that he was wasting perfectly good, already-paid-for ass.

He'd had almost no time alone with Cam before he had to go, to get out  of there before he confessed everything in a loose-lipped, vodka-laced  miasma. He couldn't do that to Cam … could he? Walsh had never seen Cam  happier. It was a bone-deep happiness Walsh had taken for granted most  of his life. His parents' divorce had been a war zone, but they had  fought to ensure he remained a relatively well-adjusted kid. He had  always sensed, though, that Cam was braced for an emotional blow, poised  for flight. Was Walsh the only one who saw the steel-plated  undercarriage of wariness beneath Cam's carefully cultivated  nonchalance? Tonight, his eyes had been clear and his face, genuinely  open. Cam looked like he'd finally found a home. And it was Kerris.

Without his permission, Walsh's feet took him to the kitchen, through the back door, and down the path to the guesthouse.                       
       
           



       

How had he gotten here? Not just at the guesthouse, but here? In love  with his best friend's fiancée, soon-to-be wife? Here, sitting on the  sidelines as the woman he'd connected so deeply with married another  man? Here, fighting against his every instinct to charge into the  guesthouse and compel her with kisses, coerce her with chemistry, and do  everything short of abduction to stop this wedding.

He compromised with his inner warrior and settled on the bench beneath  the stairs leading up to the guesthouse door. There was a ground-level  garage, and the main rooms were on the second floor. He and Cam had sat  on this very bench a thousand times under these very stairs, plotting,  planning, laughing, confiding, dreaming.

A sound caught his attention, and he noticed Jo walking toward him from  the garden. Probably making some last-minute adjustments to the  decorations out there.

"What exactly are you doing, Walsh Bennett?"

"Kinda late for you to still be up and out, isn't it, Jo?"

"I asked you a question." Hands on hips, feet apart, chin lifted high.  Maybe Jo was the real warrior of the family. "What are you doing  skulking around in the shadows under the guesthouse?"

"Just chilling," he mumbled, too steeped in vodka to be clever.

Jo settled on the bench beside him, laying her head on his shoulder.

"She doesn't belong to you, cuz." Jo wove thorns around the compassion in her whisper. "Don't do it."

Walsh went completely still and quiet. So Jo was as astute as he'd always believed her to be.

"I think I love her." He dropped his head back against the wall,  perversely glad to say the words aloud to someone other than himself.

"No, you don't." Jo lifted her head and grabbed his chin, forcing him to  meet those penetrating gray eyes. "What you feel is no different from  what every other man feels when he sees Kerris. It's called a hard-on,  Walsh. Not love."

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about." Walsh wrenched his chin from her tight grip, his tone low and fierce.

"Oh, okay. Don't tell me. You have a connection with her, right?"

"Yeah, I do actually."

"And I guess she's your soul mate or something, right?"

"You don't have to make it sound weird." He rubbed his eyes against the soporific effect of the alcohol.

"Have you ever seen Cam happier?" Jo leaned in to look directly into his  bloodshot eyes, not waiting for him to answer. "Let's think about this.  You pretty much hit the life lottery, Walsh. Looks, wealth, a great  family-minus your dad, of course, who's practically certifiable. Most  people would choose your life. Cam got snake eyes. Crappy childhood.  Bitch of a mother. Abuse. Shuffled from home to home. No family."

"You can't make up for that, Jo." Walsh leaned forward, elbows to his  knees. "I'm guilty of it, too. So is Mom. We all are. We enable,  protect, and coddle him to make up for something that won't ever  change-his past. And I don't think, especially in this instance, that  we're doing him any favors."

"Oh, you are so noble." Sarcasm twisted Jo's pretty face. "You want  what's best for Cam. It has nothing to do with the fact that you want to  screw his fiancée, right?"

Walsh literally bit his tongue. What could he say? How could he convey  that, as selfishly presumptuous as it sounded, he just knew that Kerris  was his. That sounded like some circa caveman crap, but it was the truth  that hummed through him every time he saw her. He'd tried, but couldn't  change it. And the galling thing? He felt like she knew it, too, but  wouldn't admit it. Why? What had so thoroughly convinced her that what  she'd have with Cam was so much better?

A heavy, uneven tread on the steps over their heads startled them both,  their eyes catching and holding. They heard a persistent banging on the  guesthouse door before it squeaked open.

"Cam?" Meredith asked, her voice husky with sleep. "What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?"

"I think around one o'clock." Cam paused and then said the next words in a rush. "I need to see Kerris."