Barefoot Brides by Annie Jones Page B

father had kidnapped baby Moxie? No way. She wasn’t ready. Not to make that kind of leap for a relationship so new, so untried.
    No, Kate was unprepared to accept the responsibility of marriage and motherhood. She feared her own shortcomings would bring more pain and disappointment to those she loved and that another child, Gentry, would suffer heartbreak and disappointment if she failed. Or rather, if she failed again.
    That seemed a lifetime ago. Certainly most of Gentry’s lifetime. If only Vince could move past it. If only he could believe how much she had grown.
    â€œI can’t keep going over the past. We can’t. Not if we hope to build any kind of future together.”
    â€œWe can’t fool ourselves and pretend it never happened, either, Kate. I don’t know about you but I can’t watch every word I say to try to skirt around the truth, and I don’t think I can have a relationship where that is a requirement before we can build a future together.”
    Kate raised her chin, ready to protest that she did not intend for them to skirt around the truth. Then she recalled how they had gotten into this conversation, when she had kept herself from stirring up the past. She bowed her head, shaking it, and laughed at the irony of it all.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” he asked, his smile tentative but encouraging as he lowered his own head to try to duck down and find her gaze.
    â€œI am,” she said. “ This is.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œNo, not really,” she admitted. “It’s just, you have to laugh sometimes, don’t you? At all of this? At how hard we try not to hurt one another’s feelings by not bringing up how much we hurt one another’s feelings?”
    â€œDid I hurt your feelings, Kate?” He tipped his head to one side as though honestly struggling to remember a specific incident or transgression. “You never told me that before. All those years ago, was it something I said? Something I did?”
    â€œYes.” They had been through this before, but not quite like this. Not in a quiet moment, just the two of them sitting over a dinner table talking like old friends. Talking as if whatever they said would not come between them but was just part of who they were, who they had been, who they hoped to be.
    â€œWhat, Kate?” He reached out and took her hand in his, turning it over so that the palm rested upward. “What did I say? What did I do?”
    â€œYou said you loved me and you asked me to marry you.”
    â€œI remember.” He stared at her a moment and when she didn’t say more he stroked her hand from her wrist to her fingertips then looked her deep in the eyes and asked, “And that hurt your feelings and sent you running?”
    â€œNo.” She closed her hand and gave his strong fingers a squeeze. “That scared me witless and that sent me running.”
    He held her gaze.
    â€œI sent myself running,” she confessed. “I grew up in a family where nothing, not even love, it seemed, was permanent. I’d seen the devastation of a failed marriage and felt the anguish of losing one parent who left and losing a part of the parent who stayed behind.”
    â€œYou thought our marriage would fail?”
    â€œIt all felt so rushed.”
    â€œYou could have asked me for more time.”
    â€œWhat about Gentry? Could I have asked him for more time? Could I have asked a six-year-old to hold his feelings in check, to not get his hopes up that he’d finally have his dream of a regular family until I was sure things would work out between us?”
    Vince looked away at last.
    He couldn’t argue with that. The man had all but ordered his entire life around taking care of his son. He could not find fault with her for having done the same, no matter how much it had cost them both.
    â€œBut that was then.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers. “And