Heart's Desire

“I’m thinking that you wish it were your wedding,” Audra offered, leveling her brown eyes on Maddie.

“Not hardly,” Maddie retorted.

Audra waved away her objection. “I’ve always found it just as interesting to watch the bridesmaids and maid of honor as to watch the bride. There are so many little dramas going on around us every day. Dozens of innuendos and intrigues, mistakes and missed fortunes. Lives being slowly knit together and others, sometimes sadly and methodically, being torn apart. Most people are oblivious to these little underpinnings of life. But they are what form the structure of our lives and create our finales for us. Me? I pride myself on observations.”

“Well, there’s nothing to observe here. I have no fiancé. No boyfriend. And to be honest, I have a lot of world to conquer before I get tied down with marriage.”

Audra smiled. “Is that right?”

“Absolutely.” Maddie looked at herself again. “Still. It’s a very pretty dress, isn’t it?”

“It was made for you. Just you.”

“I think it would look marvelous on Sarah.”

Audra chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully and walked around Maddie, studying the dress from all angles. “I have another theory. It’s taken me over twenty years in the bridal business to come to the conclusion that there really is one perfect wedding dress for every woman, and when the dress finds her, sometimes it’s an omen of changes to come.”

“I bet you believe in soul mates, too.”

“I wouldn’t be in the wedding business if I didn’t.”

Maddie stared at Audra as if she was nuts. This wasn’t the kind of conversation she needed to have, today of all days. She came here to help Sarah pick a dress, and now she was standing here, looking frankly fantabulous—better than she ever knew she could look—and this woman was telling her this dress had “found” her and was mystically going to change her life. Maybe Audra had been hitting the champagne a bit early. Or maybe she was just trying to make an extra sale.

“Well, let’s see what Sarah thinks of the gown, shall we?”

Audra took the change of subject as her cue to open the dressing room door. “We should, indeed.”

Maddie walked into the main showroom and up to the front window where there was a step-up round riser. She lifted her skirt and heard the swishing of all the underskirts and the peau de soie next to the horsehair net. She stood still and looked at herself in the two cheval mirrors. The gleam of the light from the crystal chandelier overhead pirouetted off the crystals in the dress.

Mrs. Beabots clasped her hands together and brought them to her smiling lips. “You are a vision for my eyes, my dear!”

Sarah was dumbstruck and could barely speak. “It’s you, Maddie. The dress is like the angels made it for you.”

“I can’t deny I feel like Cinderella,” Maddie said, admiring herself once again, still not believing her own reflection. Maddie turned back to Sarah. “But I thought it was perfect for you.”

Mrs. Beabots and Sarah stared at Maddie and allowed her to revel in the moment.

“Let me see the back,” Sarah said.

“Oh, I just love the little bow and nosegay,” Maddie said, turning toward the front window.

Maddie stared. Then she blinked. Twice.

At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. She peered into the darkening day.

There, underneath the black, wrought-iron Victorian street lamp, the evening fog drifting along the sidewalk, stood Nate. He looked directly at her, and when their eyes locked, he smiled.

Her heart thrummed in her chest and she could feel a pounding of hot blood at her temples. She felt dizzy for a moment, but steadied herself by using the mind-over-matter techniques Sarah’s uncle George had once taught her.

In the eleven years since Nate had abandoned her, Maddie had not had a single boyfriend. She had dated a few men here and there, but all her energy had gone into her business. She had convinced herself that she was strong and willful, that she owned her own power. She firmly denied and crushed any idea that she might fear being rejected again by a man, especially Nate, and moved on. She purposefully fanned and fueled the fires of her anger against Nate to mask even the tiniest possibility that she still had any feelings for him. Maddie didn’t dare think about Nate and love in the same thought. Such musings could lead to her ruin. For eleven years, Maddie had told her friends over and over that Nate Barzonni was the devil to her.

Maddie continued to stare at the vision outside the window.

If it was at all possible, Nate was more handsome than ever, with a man’s face and a man’s physique under a double-breasted black wool coat. His dark hair was worn shorter than she remembered, but still parted on the right side. He wore a grey, black-and-white-plaid scarf around his neck, and suddenly she realized it was a scarf she’d bought for him their last Christmas together, in his senior year of high school. His hands were shoved into the pockets of the coat, and he did not raise one to wave to her.

He only stared.

She was spellbound.

There was no way Nate was actually standing outside Bride’s Corner. No way.

Until today, she hadn’t thought about Nate in months. Okay, weeks. After more than a decade, she could now go a full two, sometimes even three, weeks, and never actually think about him, wonder about him, curse him, rail against him and the cruel, heartless fates that had brought them together in the first place. Maddie closed her eyes and opened them again.

Nate was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR

“DID YOU SEE him?” Maddie asked Sarah and Mrs. Beabots, raising a shaking arm and pointing out the window.

“See whom, dear?” Mrs. Beabots asked.

“Nate. He was there.”

Sarah jumped up from the settee and rushed to the window. “Nate Barzonni was here? In Indian Lake? Right now?” She turned to Maddie.

Maddie felt the color drain from her face. “I swear I saw him,” she repeated as her eyes flitted from Sarah’s concerned expression to Mrs. Beabot’s clear, blue compassion-filled eyes. She wanted desperately for her friends to believe her, but even more important, she wished to high heaven that they’d seen Nate as well. Clearly, they hadn’t, or they would be confirming her statement. Instead, their gazes were filled with surprise and censure. She wasn’t sure if they just didn’t believe her, or if they disapproved of Nate, as well. Hopefully, they would still side with her against the slimy jerk who had abandoned her with no explanation. Maddie couldn’t help wondering if they, and her other friends, would think if Nate came back and finally gave his side of the story, whatever that side might be.

Clearly, he was a jerk. A creep to the nth degree. A scum that no one could or should ever trust. What kind of guy tells a girl he’ll love her till the end of time and then disappears? Vanishes without a single goodbye? For eleven years?

Now that Maddie thought about it, if Nate was truly back, she would have to face the humiliation all over again. She would have to go through the entire abandonment, the dumping, the heartache all over again because everyone would want to talk about it. Again.

Why couldn’t he just stay away?

God, but she felt violently ill.

Maddie placed her shaking hand on her flushed but icy cheek. She felt beads of sweat trickle from her temples. “I don’t feel so good,” she said, her voice warbling.

Sarah rushed to her side and grabbed her arm. “And you don’t look good. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Maddie sat next to Mrs. Beabots on the settee, barely noticing that she was trembling from head to foot. Suddenly, Sarah’s words sunk in.

“That was it! I saw a ghost. That’s what it was.” She was off the hook. He wasn’t back at all. She was just seeing things. She wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation and embarrassment in front of the whole town again at all.

Mrs. Beabots harrumphed and pulled her hands together, then pressed them into her lap. “Fine day for ghosts. It’s Valentine’s Day not Halloween. You’d think they’d know the difference.”

Maddie shook her head to clear it. She was stronger than this. She couldn’t push the truth under the rug anymore, and she wasn’t one to run from a confrontation. The best way to beat a fear was to meet it head-on, vanquish it and be the conqueror. “What’s wrong with me?” she said aloud. “Why would I start hallucinating all of a sudden? I mean, what’s so special about now?”

“I can think of a few things, dearie,” Mrs. Beabots offered.

Maddie and Sarah lifted their heads and looked at their octogenarian friend. “Like what?” they asked in unison.

“This is a very critical time in your life, Maddie. Your best friend is getting married soon and you haven’t a prospect in sight. What’s more, you’ve been pushing to expand your business and get this franchising idea off the ground, but it’s been a longer process than you’d anticipated....”

“Hey, how do you know that?” Maddie demanded and looked accusingly at Sarah. “Maybe someone has a big mouth.”

“I—” Sarah began but Mrs. Beabots interrupted her.

“I have other sources than cross-your-heart Sarah, who would never betray a confidence. I know a lot of things that go on in this town, especially to those whom I love,” Mrs. Beabots replied with a haughty tilt to her chin and a twinkle in her eye. “In addition, you’re not getting any younger, Maddie Strong, and it’s high time you began beating the bushes for a beau instead of sending every prospective groom out your café door with a cynical retort and a very icy shoulder.”

Maddie graced her octogenarian friend with a smile. Mrs. Beabots’s view of life was charmingly old-fashioned, but Maddie strongly believed she would have plenty of time for love and romance after she had her business secure. Maddie’s life was happy and very full with her work and friends.

“I’m too busy for men.”

“So you say, but I wasn’t the one seeing an apparition of my former sweetheart out that window,” Mrs. Beabots concluded with the kind of sharp clip to the end of her comment that warned others that the Oracle had spoken.

Sarah’s eyes tracked from Mrs. Beabots back to Maddie, who was clearly confused and still a bit shaken by the vision or ghost or whatever it was she saw. “Maybe it was just all the excitement of these gorgeous gowns and dressing up. Maybe...”

“No, Sarah. My corset is not too tight and the dress is not so elegant that my brain went off track. I saw Nate out there. In the flesh. He’s come back. I’d know him anywhere. What I don’t know is what he’s doing here and why he would choose the very moment I’m standing in the window of Bride’s Corner in a wedding gown to stare at me?”

Mrs. Beabots nodded. “Stalking. That’s it.”

Sarah sighed deeply. “Nate is not stalking Maddie.”

“How do you know?” Mrs. Beabots asked. “I watch CSI Miami and Law and Order and even Elementary and The Mentalist. Every single one of those detective shows has a murder a month committed by a stalker. It’s quite common.” She looked from Sarah to Maddie, but neither woman appeared to be following her line of reasoning.

“Nate’s been gone for eleven years. Why would he stalk Maddie now?” Sarah asked. “Why not just come into the shop and talk to her?”

“Good point,” Mrs. Beabots answered.

Maddie looked at Sarah. “You think I was seeing things?”

“Uh-huh. I do. But don’t take my word for it. Just call his mother and ask if he’s in town.”

“What?” Maddie jumped up and put her hands on her hips. “You know she’s never liked me. Always thought I was after the Barzonni millions and that I didn’t really love her son. I wouldn’t call her if I was facing the devil himself!”

Sarah stood and put her hand on Maddie’s arm. “I know, sweetie. I know.”

Tears filled Maddie’s eyes in an instant. She crumpled into Sarah’s arms and let her friend hug her. “I don’t understand what’s the matter with me.”

“You had a shock. That’s all. The only reason you would have had such a hallucination would be if you’d been obsessing about Nate lately, and we all know that’s not true. It was probably just some look-alike.”

Maddie sniffed and straightened to look Sarah in the eyes. “Right. I haven’t been thinking about Nate. Well, not so much. I always said that if I saw him on the street I’d ignore him like he was nothing. Just like he’s done to me all these years. He told me every day in high school that he loved me. He wanted to run away to Kentucky and get married, but I was the stable one. I was the one who said we should put our careers first. He proposed right there on my doorstep on the Fourth of July. And the next day, he was gone, without a word to anyone! Anyone, Sarah!” Maddie nearly spit she was so angry. “He left me. He was able to forget me. It didn’t cause him any pain or heartache. He just took off. He wanted to see the world, he said. Guess he did. All of it! What a jerk.”

“I’m glad you remembered that aspect of his character, dearie,” Mrs. Beabots said. “He treated you shabbily and you deserve the very best, just like my sweet Sarah.”

“I agree,” Sarah said. “You know what, this just isn’t the right day to find my dress. Let’s go over to my house for a glass of wine to celebrate Valentine’s Day.”

“I thought you and Luke were going out tonight,” Mrs. Beabots said.

“Not a chance. I’m making dinner for all of us at home. I decorated the house with valentines and red lights. I have homemade heart-shaped sugar cookies for Annie and Timmy. But they won’t be over until six-thirty. We have time for a girl toast beforehand.”

“Done!” Maddie said, and started walking toward the dressing room. “I’ll be out in a jiffy,” she promised.

Sarah swished into the dressing room next to Maddie’s.

Mrs. Beabots smiled at both women, and then turned around to gaze out the front window. The sun had gone down and the street lamps were coming on. Moving closer to the pane, she craned her neck to see a tall man dressed in a double-breasted black wool coat pass under the lamp and then vanish into the dark of nightfall.

Mrs. Beabots sat back on the settee. She knew a ghost when she saw one. She’d been seeing her husband’s spirit for years. Ghosts didn’t fool her one bit, even though people often did. No, what she saw tonight was a real man.

It was Nate Barzonni.

CHAPTER FIVE

NATE BARZONNI HAD always been a man of single purpose and clear-minded goals. Never once had he thought his mind was incapable of reasoning out the best course of action for the highest possible good. He was a man of honor and conviction. He was a leader, and little swayed him off his chosen course or derailed him from his beliefs. He’d never been drunk, never used drugs, never lied or cheated. His mind was as sharp as a razor and as tight as a trap.

But that day, Nate was sure he’d lost all his senses and the entirety of his reasoning ability when he’d purposefully gone back to that bridal shop to confirm whether what he’d seen was real or a mirage. The shock of seeing Maddie Strong trying on a wedding gown was enough to rip his insides apart. No earthquake under his feet or hurricane at sea had ever unsettled him as much as the sight of her. Even after he’d walked away, when he realized she’d seen him and recognized him, he could barely put one foot in front of the other to get back to his Hummer. Climbing numbly into his vehicle, he tried to catch his ragged breath. His mouth had gone dry. He attempted to rake his hand through his hair and wipe the sweat from his brow, but his hand was shaking too much.

He’d seen beautiful women before, but the moment he saw Maddie in that wedding gown, lights glinting off the flowers in her dress like tiny fairies attending an earth angel, he thought he’d lost his mind and certainly his heart to her all over again.

She’s getting married? Nate stared at his hands as they gripped the steering wheel and his knuckles turned white.

For the past eleven years, Nate had pursued all his dreams. After literally leaving Maddie on her doorstep, he’d packed his camping duffel bag and taken the bus to Great Lakes Naval Station to enlist in the navy. He hadn’t left a note to his parents for fear they would talk him out of his decision, and to be truthful, he’d known he would have been convinced.

At eighteen, Nate had no fear of the unknown, but he was an absolute coward when it came to confrontation with his mother and father.

His loving mother, Gina, had doted on him and his three brothers all their lives. He loved her dearly and it crushed him to leave like he did, but he knew no other way. His father, Angelo, was possessive of his mother and his sons. He expected them all to carry on with the lucrative family farming business. Though each of the Barzonni boys secretly harbored their own dreams and ambitions, Angelo would not tolerate even a whisper of dissention. Their lives were to be lived Angelo’s way and only his way.

Though the navy was a six-year stint, Nate didn’t care. He would have signed up for twelve years if that had been a requirement. He wanted to leave Indian Lake behind and get on with his dream of becoming a doctor.

His only regret was leaving Maddie. But to do what he knew he needed to do for himself, he felt he had to cut all his ties to his past. Above all, Nate wanted to find out who Nate was, and to do that, he needed to disappear.

Nate declared in boot camp that he was interested in medicine and being a medic. He didn’t travel overseas, as a great deal of his fellow recruits did, but remained near Chicago, where he later went to Northwestern’s medical school, completing his internship and residency there as well.

After six weeks in boot camp, Nate buckled under to the need to call his parents and make his explanations. He wanted to be sure he was locked into his commitment to the navy before he told his parents his life plans. Because he’d graduated, he wanted them to attend the Review and be a part of his new life. He was terrified to tell them the truth. They were angry and disappointed...at first.

Nate had planned the reunion well. Being surrounded by the pomp and pageantry of the navy graduates marching in their navy whites for the Review altered his parents’ attitude considerably. His mother, Gina, especially, was overcome with love and pride for Nate and hugged him with tear-filled eyes.

From his brothers, Nate had heard the gossip about him and the fact that half the town had sided with Maddie. She’d painted him as the jerk of all time. He knew that if Maddie ever found out where he was, she would come after him, and he would cave to her. They would run away together and he would never realize his dream. She had been so right to refuse his proposal. She’d been wise and forward-thinking.

Nate asked his parents never to reveal his whereabouts to anyone in Indian Lake. No one outside the Barzonni family ever knew where Nate was or what happened to him.

Despite body-and mind-numbing days in boot camp and the years he spent in the Navy and pursuing his career, Nate never forgot Maddie, not for a single day.

Nate looked out the Hummer’s windshield to the bridal shop. Maddie. They had been so young and naive back then, but she was the only one who knew him inside and out. It was as if she held his heart in her hand and gazed into it like a crystal ball. The great mystery to him was that his heart had spoken back to her.

Nate told Maddie he wanted a career in medicine, but he’d never told anyone about the moment when a cosmic clash had taken place in his life. It had been as if his future had rushed to the present and shown him his path.

Nate was only ten when he spent an entire afternoon huddled in the horse barn with one of his father’s prize mares, who was in labor. His father, Angelo, had called for the vet, but the man was late in coming to the farm. Angelo had been anxious and short with the vet. This mare was his most prized horse. He was terrified she would die.

Nate stroked the horse’s neck and calmed her with soothing words and whispers, never leaving her side. When the vet finally arrived, he went straight to work. The mare’s heart was weak, and though Angelo had been warned not to breed her every year, he had not listened. The strain on her heart was too much. However, the vet was a skilled and knowledgeable man and saved both the mare and the colt.

Nate had decided that day that he wanted to be a doctor. Not a vet or a general practitioner. He wanted to be a cardiac surgeon. His mind was made up.

However, Nate’s parents had always insisted their sons devote their careers to the ever-expanding farm and produce business. Nate struggled for years with schemes and scenarios for how he would tell his parents about his own dreams. He believed Gina would understand, but there was no doubt in his mind that she wanted him to live at home.

By the time Nate was in high school, he had observed that his parents weren’t affectionate toward each other. They didn’t hold hands the way he held Maddie’s hand. He never once saw his father put his arm around Gina. And whenever they sat anywhere in public—baseball games, movies, plays—they always placed the boys between them as if trying to keep their distance from each other.

Angelo was domineering and he had high standards when it came to his sons. By the time Nate graduated from high school, he’d allowed his parents to think that a degree in agriculture was just fine with him. He’d been accepted at Purdue and pretended to make all the necessary plans for the fall semester.

He’d been a coward, and it had caused a lot of people a great deal of pain.

Nate took one last look at the bridal shop where Maddie was no doubt making more wedding plans. When Nate first applied for the job at the Indian Lake Hospital, he’d briefly thought about Maddie, but he’d he’d shelved his memories of her a long time ago.

Nate believed that people didn’t change their core personalities as they matured. Even at seventeen, Maddie had been compassionate, kind, bright, fun and deeply loving.

There had been times during his stint in the navy and later in med school when he’d remembered all too well what it was like to be with Maddie. To love her. As much as he wanted back then to return to Indian Lake and sweep her off her feet, he couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t have been true to himself. He’d sacrificed love in order to be the cardiac surgeon he was today.

Nate had saved numerous lives already, and he intended to go on saving more.

In all his planning and goal-setting and returning for his interview with Dr. Caldwell, not once had he considered that he might actually see Maddie. Seeing her in that gown was a shock. He hadn’t counted on his immense reaction to her—even from a distance. He hadn’t planned for jealousy.

His entire past with her rumbled over him like a tsunami, and he was swept away in it. For the first time in a long time, he felt helpless. He didn’t know who the other guy in her life was, but at this moment he couldn’t imagine any man having ever loved a girl as much as he’d loved Maddie Strong.

Nate expelled a deep breath as a new realization hit him like a fist to his chest. I still do.

CHAPTER SIX

MADDIE PARKED IN a garage off West Lake and South Wacker drives, as she had on her previous trips to Chicago to meet with Alex. She walked down Wacker to the large granite-and-glass office building that housed Ashton and Marsh and checked in with the security guard at the front desk. The guard was a tall, older man with a barrel chest so large, Maddie wondered if he wore a bulletproof vest under his shirt. She noticed he had Mace, a billy club and a pistol attached to his thick leather belt. Maddie should have been used to him by now, but still she found herself swallowing hard as she approached him. She was certainly not in Indian Lake.

“Maddie Strong to see Alex Perkins at Ashton and Marsh.”

“I see it here,” the man said, running his finger down a list of today’s appointments for all the offices in this building. “Sixth floor. Hey, I remember you! Maddie, isn’t it?” He smiled broadly.