Always on My Mind

Chapter Twenty-five

Grayson stepped off the plane in New York and found the driver waiting for him by the luggage carousels. For a moment, it felt as though the past three years hadn't happened. As though this were just another business trip, and he was simply heading home to Westchester to shower and change and have a pre-dinner drink with Leslie, where both of them tried to act interested in things they didn't actually care about at all.

When he gave the address to the driver, to the man's credit, he barely betrayed a response. In the backseat of the town car, Grayson took out the picture of Lori as a little girl that Mary Sullivan had given to him at Sunday lunch. He'd kept it with him every second since she'd been gone, and it never failed to bring a smile to his face, even now.

Both of her front teeth were missing, she was wearing ripped boys' jeans and a T-shirt that were both at least two sizes too big, and she was hands down the prettiest thing he'd ever seen in his life as she leapt through the air, dancing in the middle of her crowded backyard. He could see the way, even at eight, that she'd blossom into such a striking beauty. He could also see that she was too determined, too stubborn, to ever allow anything or anyone to take away her joy, her love for life.

Grayson wanted to be worthy of sharing that life with her, but he wanted something else, too. He wanted, one day, to take pictures of his own little girl as she danced and laughed and loved just like her beautiful mother.

At the entrance was a flower stand and Grayson asked the driver to stop, tucking the picture into the pocket above his heart as he opened the door and stepped out of the car. He didn't buy the biggest, flashiest bouquet. Instead, he bought a small bouquet of bright tulips, Leslie's favorite flower.

"I'll walk from here," he said to the driver, who nodded and pulled over to the curb to wait.

The cemetery looked the same as it had three years ago during his wife's funeral, the last time he'd ever been here. The grass was perfectly green and meticulously mowed. The sky was full of dark clouds that looked as if they would burst with rain at any moment, the gray, cold sky so different from the clear blue over his farm.

As he approached Leslie's gravestone, he could see that it was polished clean and bright, with an enormous bouquet of flowers in a vase beside it that he knew had to be from her parents.

The last time he'd been here, he'd been stunned...and racked with guilt. The shock had eventually lessened as he accepted that she really was gone, but the guilt, the blame he'd placed on himself for not knowing his own wife better, had deepened. Every day, as he'd put on his suit and tie and gone in to work to field questions and sympathy from colleagues and friends and people he only knew from cocktail parties, the guilt and blame and disgust with everyone who said they loved her and missed her but who hadn't done a damn thing to stop her self-destruction, grew to the point where he knew he couldn't stay there another second. He'd needed to start over in a world that was as far from New York society as possible, so he'd gone west and, just like Lori in her rental car, had stumbled onto his farm. The real estate transaction had been completed by nightfall, and Grayson had never planned on looking - or coming - back.

"Leslie." He knelt down and laid the flowers on her grave, putting his hand over the cold stone as if that would help them finally connect again. "I'm sorry I haven't been back for so long."

It was so awkward that he felt like they were having one of their surface conversations again, where both of them spoke, but neither of them said anything. Lori, he knew, would never have stood for that. Cemetery or not, she would have said exactly what was on her mind...and in her heart.

Suddenly, he could picture her there, egging him on: Come on and grow some balls, farmer. Why are you still so afraid of baring your soul? Unconsciously, his hand went to the picture of her in his shirt pocket. They're all good parts, she'd told him. And I'd never let anyone hurt you. Even now, he could feel her protecting him, his fierce and beautiful dancing farm girl who had the biggest heart of anyone he'd ever known.

Grayson sat down on the grass beside Leslie's gravestone and ran his fingers slowly over the engraving of her name. "I'm sorry I was a bad husband. And I'm sorry that I wasn't much of a friend by the end, either. I knew you were unhappy. I was unhappy, too. But I didn't know how to fix any of it, so I ignored it instead. I ignored you, Leslie, and I'm so, so sorry."

He'd apologized more in the past two weeks than he had in his entire life. And yet, just as he had with Lori, he couldn't see how his wife could ever forgive him for the mess their lives had become before she died. No amount of apologizing would change that.

But since his big mistake had been that he hadn't talked to her - really and truly talked to her - when she was still alive, he figured, at the very least, he could change that now.

"After you died, I pretty much lost it. I turned away from every last person, every last piece of our life, and decided to start over. I'm in California now, on a farm. A big one, right by the ocean. Whenever the fog rolls in, I think of how much you loved to walk along the coast on stormy days. I wasn't searching for happiness, just for an escape, but the amazing thing is that I found it after all. Not just in the land, and my animals, but with the last person on earth I would ever have expected.

"You would have liked Lori, Leslie, and I know she would have liked you, too. She never stops asking questions, and when I try to ignore them she just asks more, so I've told her all about you. About when we were in college, how we used to the Tree Lighting and Yule Log ceremonies, and that one year we were so excited about being the big winners of the bad poetry contest. I even told her all about the way I asked you to marry me and ended up dropping the ring into a storm drain because I was so nervous."

He thought he heard something then, a rustling of the leaves above him that sounded like a question: Is she pretty?

Before he knew it, Grayson was laughing and crying at the same time. Of course it was what Leslie would want to know.

"Yes," he said as he finally let his tears fall for the woman who had been such an important part of his life for so long. "She is."

And during the next hour, as he sat and finally talked to his wife, the thick gray clouds blew away one by one until there was nothing but bright, blue sky above the two of them.

* * *

Lori stood backstage at the Joyce Theatre in New York City in a circle with her dancers, all of them holding hands as they got ready to go out on stage. It had been the craziest forty-eight hours of her life, but she'd loved every second of it.

Carter had brought her in to take over on choreography that had been set in stone for months. But the vision she'd had was so clear and pure that she'd choreographed a brand-new dance barely one step ahead of the dancers learning the movements.

"Thank you so much for going on this journey with me," she told them now. "You're all amazing and wonderful and I love you guys for trusting me with this dance and putting your hearts and souls into something that means so much to me." She grinned at them. "Now let's go make some magic happen."

One by one, they took their places on the darkened stage and when the lights slowly came up, the audience saw them not as dancers, but as beautiful wildflowers in red and orange, yellow and purple. All around the flowers the wild green grasses swayed in the breeze. The score the orchestra played sounded like the ocean on a clear day, with children playing with buckets and pails in the sand and seagulls flying above the gently crashing waves.

On a crack of thunder from the percussion section, the bright, sunny lighting gave way to a sudden storm, blue lights and whisper-thin streamers beginning to rain down from above the stage. To the crashing sound of the waves and the hard pellets of rain, the flowers and grasses gave in to the wildness of the storm, even more beautiful now as they were blown hard by the wind, soaked by the rain.

And then, suddenly, the smallest wildflower was ripped from the ground by the wind. She was blowing away from the rest of them, when from the center of the group, the largest, most powerful blade of grass reached for her.

He cradled her against him in a beautiful dance of protection and love as the storm continued to rage, and then, when the storm waned and the sun emerged again, he finally set the brightly colored flower free to fly away.

Oh, how beautiful that wildflower was as she flew, higher and higher in that bright, pure sunlight. The other flowers, the grasses, watched her dance through the sky, as they knew she'd dreamed of doing all her life.

The sun was setting and the flowers were closing their petals, the grasses already collecting dew in the cool night, when the wildflower emerged again in the dark sky. She'd always dreamed of flying, but one perfect dance in a storm had given her new dreams.

She still wanted to fly...but she no longer wanted to do it alone.

And then the wildflower and the blade of grass were coming together again, wrapping themselves around each other in a dance of love that was just as beautiful beneath the calm moon as it had been in the rain and the wind.

That was when the lights came up enough for Lori to see the ruggedly beautiful man in the front row. Grayson was surrounded by men in tuxes and women in sequins, but in his flannel shirt and dark jeans and cowboy boots, he was the one who shone.

She'd choreographed this dance to celebrate the beauty of his land and to bask in the passion they'd discovered together on a stormy afternoon. Now, she danced only for him, the wildflower that had been blowing off course, until his love had shown her exactly where she needed to be.

With him.

Forever.

* * *

Grayson was waiting in the wings when Lori came off stage, and she flew into his arms.

She'd said I love you to him in a dozen different ways during the dance, and now he was the one saying, "I love you. You're everything to me, Lori. Everything."

He didn't let go of her hand as she went to congratulate her dancers on the phenomenal job they'd done, couldn't have stopped touching her for anyone in the world, even when she went out of her way to embarrass him by saying, "Everyone, this is Grayson, the hottest farmer you'll ever - "

Of course the only way to shut her up was with a kiss, so right there in front of thirty strangers, he tugged her close and covered her mouth with his.

Everyone was applauding and hooting and hollering by the time he finally let her up for air, and while Lori worked to get her breath back, he said, "It's nice to meet you all. I was blown away by your performance."

Just then, a slim man dressed in a silver-blue suit rushed up and threw his arms around Lori. "Amazing, Lori. Simply amazing! Just as I knew you'd be. People can't stop talking about your program." When he realized that Lori's hand was connected to Grayson's, the man pursed his mouth into an appreciative O. "And who is this gorgeous hunk of yours?"

Seeing the gleam in Lori's eye that told him she would say anything she needed to if it would egg him into giving her another kiss, Grayson held out his hand. "I'm a big fan of yours, Carter. And even more so now that I know what great taste you have in choreographers."

The man's eyes widened as he blushingly thanked Grayson for the praise. He air-kissed them both on both cheeks in his characteristically dramatic way before running off to keep watch over the rest of his production.

When the two of them were finally alone again, Grayson stroked his hand over Lori's cheek and said, "I know a great pizza place around the corner. Best pepperoni you'll ever have."

She quickly changed and they headed outside. Holding each other, in sweet silence they walked down the crowded sidewalk and turned into a smaller side street. They passed the jewelry store where Leslie had exclaimed over diamond earrings and he'd surprised her with them on their first anniversary. They'd often eaten at this pizza place during finals in college.

But instead of being followed by a ghost, it felt more like Leslie was an angel watching over them.

Grayson knew he'd never be a man of too many words, but from here on out he planned for every one he said to Lori to matter. Once they were sitting on stools at a tiny booth with dripping, steaming slices of pizza in front of them, he told her, "I never thought I could be in the middle of New York City and my farm at the same time. But as you danced I was there, Lori, right back in that storm, holding you in my arms, wanting to keep you safe and knowing you needed to fly free again. All this time, I thought one had to give up for the other, that it was impossible for them ever to connect."

There was so much more he wanted to tell her, so much he had to say, but he'd never had much practice at it, and the words got stuck in his throat. Thank God Lori had always heard everything he didn't know how to say.

"According to my mom, when I was two - " She picked up her slice of pizza and jammed a huge bite into her mouth. "Oh, my God!" she exclaimed after she'd chewed and swallowed in clear rapture. "This really is the best pepperoni in the world!" She mmm'd and ah'd over the pizza until, finally, she continued her earlier sentence. "I used to think the word impossible was actually two words. Evidently I would dance and twirl around the house declaring I'm possible! over and over until everyone was going crazy."

"I know how that feels," he said in a low voice that clearly didn't scare her in the least, because she stuck out her tongue at him in response.

"So," she asked as she picked up what was left of her enormous slice and gave him a soft smile, "how is she?"

Of course Lori would know where he'd been today without his saying a word. It was one of the many reasons why they were so perfect together. He was a man who didn't say much, and she was a woman who knew how to listen to a look, a touch, a glance. A kiss. And, tonight, he knew exactly what she was doing, talking and teasing and eating as though his being here with her in the city that held all of his personal demons was perfectly normal. He'd never met anyone who was so openly emotional, or so willing to share her heart.

He could see how much every one of her dancers, and the show's producer, adored her. And for good reason. Lori was completely adorable, even with grease dripping from the corner of her greedy mouth.

He wiped it away with the tip of his finger before saying, "She asked if you were pretty."

Lori looked absolutely delighted with that, even as her eyes grew soft and a little misty with emotion. "You really do have great taste in women, you know."

Grayson knew he hadn't done everything he needed to do yet. He still needed to sit down and talk with Leslie's parents, and his parents were in Europe, so he couldn't introduce Lori to them. But while talking to Leslie at her grave hadn't been easy, it hadn't destroyed him, either. He'd come back, soon, to say the rest of what he should have said so many years ago, to everyone he should have said it to.

But this time, he'd have Lori by his side every step of the way, along with an angel watching over both of them.

He reached for his pizza, but his plate was empty. Of course, he knew just where to look for it: in Lori's mouth.

"You weren't eating it," she said with her mouth full.

Even as he growled at her to give up his slice or else, he knew she was right.

He really did have great taste in women.