Romance: Altered Engagement (Wild Hearts, Contemporary Romance Book 1) Read online

  “Oh, Geez, Katie Lou, stop it! Top being so selfish and thinking about what you want, and think for a moment about me, and all I have to do to give us the future we both want!”

  “The future we both want? Did I hear that right? Darren, I wouldn't care if we lived in my parents' garage, or in a shack on the outside of town, as long as we could be together! I'm in love with you, Darren, and I don’t care if you're a lawyer, a congressman or a ditch digger! It's you I'm in love with, not who you hope to become, or what you hope to do in the future! And I thought you felt the same about me!”

  “Honey, I do, it's just that we've already made all these plans...”

  “No, Darren, we didn't make those plans, you did! I've just stood by you as you made them, the dutiful little wife to be, and done everything you've asked of me to try to help you accomplish the things you want to do! And now, after we have an accident and I get hurt, you suddenly find me to be a distraction and an inconvenience? Well, let me tell you something, Darren Allsip—if I'm such an inconvenience and distraction that you have to put off our wedding so I won't be interfering with your future, then you can take that future and our wedding and shove them both where the sun don't shine!” She hung up on him, and waited for the phone to ring again as he called to apologize.

  When it rang, she answered. “What?”

  “Katie,” Darren said, “it isn't like that, it isn't like that at all—but I've got to do this, I've got to follow the plans we've laid out. I thought you wanted to be part of the life I'm out to build, but suddenly you seem like a different person, and I don't know what to think...”

  Katie's eyes bugged out as the enormity of what he was saying began to hit her. “You don't know what to think? I'm acting different? Darren, at this moment, I'm not sure I even know who you are! Just yesterday morning, you stood in my hospital room and told me we'd get through this together, and then last night you called and said we might have to postpone the wedding, and now you're talking about going ahead with your plans and your life, without me! Is that what you want, Darren? Are you trying to say you want to call the wedding off so you can concentrate on your political career?”

  “Well, not at this moment, no, but...” His voice trailed off, as he realized what he had said, and tried to find some way to take it back or cover it up.

  “Not at this moment?” Katie asked. “Then that means there might be a moment coming when that's exactly what you'd be saying?”

  Darren was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “Baby, if you can't get back on your feet, then eventually I'd have to choose between you and my career. The last thing we could afford is to win an election on a sympathy vote, and if you're crippled...”

  “Darren,” Katie said, and her voice sounded more calm and controlled than it had through the entire conversation, “I'm going to solve your problem for you. I'm going to walk again, I really am—but you won't ever have to worry about it. Our engagement is off, and I'm canceling the wedding. I don't want to see you, I don't want to talk to you—I want to forget you even exist, Darren. Don't call me again, don't come over, don't even mention my name out loud, can you do that for me? I want you to forget me, too, Darren, and I hope you get everything you want from life. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone and turned it off.

  A noise outside her door made her aware that her mother had heard her getting angry and loud. “Come on in, Mom,” she said, suddenly realizing that she was crying.

  Judy stepped inside and looked at her for a moment. “What is it, Honey?” she asked.

  Katie Lou looked up at her mother, and the tears began to flow even more freely down her face. She started to speak, but nothing came out, so she closed her mouth and tried again.

  “Mom,” she squeaked out, and then swallowed and tried again. “Mom, Darren says that if I can't walk, I'm a distraction and will only keep him from doing the things he wants to do with his life—so I told him the engagement is off, and the wedding is canceled. Oh, Mom, I love him so much, but I can't be with a man who could think of me being crippled as nothing but a distraction that would hurt his career. Please don't be mad at me, Mom, please?”

  Judy sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over to take her daughter into her arms the same way she had when Katie was a little girl.

  “Oh, Sweetheart,” she said, “I'm so sorry, and I can never be mad at you! Honey, this is his loss, not yours. One day soon, you'll see, he'll come begging you to take him back, and the two of you will be even stronger than before!”

  Katie shook her head against her mother's chest. “No,” she said. “He hurt me too much, Mom, I won't take him back, not ever!”

  Judy just held her for a while, and finally the tears subsided, the sobbing came to a quiet end, and Katie Lou drifted off to sleep.

  Judy sat there and held her a few moments longer, and then eased herself out and went to the living room, where her husband was asleep in his recliner. The past few days had taken a toll on all of them, and Allen had borne up fairly well, but she knew him, and he wasn't going to take this news lightly. She watched him for a moment, and then touched his shoulder.

  “Allen?” he said. “Allen, wake up, I need to talk to you.”

  He snorted a couple of times, and then his eyes opened. “Hmm? Yeah, Honey, what is it?”

  “Allen, something has happened, and I don't think it's going to be pleasant. Apparently Darren called Katie Lou, and he says that her being in the wheelchair is not good for his career, so they got into a fight—and I'm afraid she broke it off with him. She's canceling the wedding and everything, she says.”

  Allen looked at her for a moment, and she couldn't tell whether he was trying to digest what she'd said, or planning what he'd say to Darren when he saw him, but then he said, “He wasn't good enough for her, anyway.” He turned his head away and made it plain that he was going back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  “Katie Lou?” Kylie said as she knocked on her sister's door. “Hey, dinner's ready. Let me help you into your chair, okay?” She opened the door and walked in, and found Katie lying on the bed just as she'd last seen her. Her eyes were open, and she was just staring at the ceiling. “Hey, Sis. You okay? Mom told me what happened, and I'm really sorry...”

  “He said I'd be a distraction, Kylie,” Katie Lou said. “How can the woman you supposedly love be a distraction?”

  Kylie sat on the edge and smiled sadly. “I don't know,” she said. “I really don't. Katie, there's not any words I can think of to tell you how sorry I really am for you, but you've got to concentrate on getting yourself better, right now, and maybe this is for the best. If you're worried about making it to the wedding, then if things don't go that way, you're just gonna be more upset—but now you can really just concentrate on getting back on your feet. That's what you've got to do, you know? You've got to think about you?”

  Katie Lou turned her face to look at Kylie, and the tears in her eyes made Kylie want to cry too. “How can I do that?” she asked. “I just threw away my whole life, everything I've wanted and wished for and dreamed of for more than a year now, I just threw it all away! Why should I worry about walking now? Maybe I belong in the wheelchair, maybe I did something so bad that this is God's way of punishing me for it.” She turned away again.

  “Now, that's a crock of crap, Katie Lou, and you know it. God doesn't work that way. This isn't your fault, and let me tell you something else, you aren't the one who threw it all away—that's Darren who did that, and one of these days he's going to realize it and regret it, and come begging you to take him back!”

  “I hope not,” Katie said, “cause I might, and he doesn't deserve it!”

  Kylie looked at her for a minute, and then said, “You're right, Katie, he doesn't deserve another chance with you. He had the sweetest, most wonderful girl in the world, and he got so worried about himself and his career that he forgot what a treasure he already had. He doesn't deserve another chance with you, that's true—but that doesn't mean
you don't deserve a chance to be happy, and if he does come back, and if it does make you happy, then don't let your anger keep you from doing what you want to do.” She reached out and brushed some stray hairs away from Katie's eyes, and her sister turned to look at her again.

  “I don't think I'll ever trust him again,” she said. “Maybe I won't trust any man.”

  Kylie shrugged. “Maybe not,” she said. “That's up to you, but you can't decide that right now, y'know. So, for now, why not come eat dinner with your family who loves you, and then we can watch some TV or movies or something, and tomorrow we'll go back and see Dr. Christopher, and get you started on your road to recovery. Deal?”

  Katie smiled, but it was subdued. “Deal,” she said, “but you gotta help me get up.”

  “Yeah, I know. Let me get the chair over here, and then you can grab onto me and use me for the swing, right?”

  Together, they managed it. Katie made it into the wheelchair, and immediately said, “Okay, first stop is the bathroom. I've been lying there holding it for a while, now.”

  Kylie shook her head. “All you had to do was call out to one of us, and we'd have come to help.”

  “Yeah, well, it's a little embarrassing to yell out, 'Hey, can someone come help me go potty?' I haven't had to ask for that kind of help since I was two years old!” She wheeled herself into the bathroom, where she could manage on her own, and was back a few minutes later. “All set,” she said, and Kylie took hold of the chair. She was wheeling her sister into the kitchen a moment later when their mother saw them and broke into a big smile.

  “You know,” she said, “this sort of reminds me of when you were both small, and used to push each other around in your wagons. Of course, it was usually the other way around, then, with Katie Lou pushing Kylie, but it's still sort of nostalgic, seeing the two of you like this.

  “Mom,” Katie said, “only you can find a silver lining in something like this. This isn't a wagon, and we're not little kids playing with toys; I'm in a wheelchair, and I may never get out of it, so it's a little hard to see the humor.”

  “Humor isn't in the situation, Katie Lou, it's in your heart and how you react to the situation. If you want to let this be nothing but a tragedy, you can do that, but I prefer to look for something good in every circumstance. That way, when things start to get better—and they always do, because time really does heal all wounds—then we can enjoy it and not feel like we got cheated out of something to moan and whine about.”

  Katie looked at her, and then forced a smile. “I'll try,” she said, and Judy crossed the room to hug her daughter.

  “Good,” she said. “Listen, I made cube steaks with mashed potatoes and gravy and sweet corn for dinner, I hope that's okay.”

  Katie gave her a lopsided grin. “Okay? As if you didn't know that's pretty much my favorite meal of all time, right?”

  “Is it? Oh, I'd forgotten,” her mother said, with an impish look in her eyes.

  “No, you didn't, Mom,” Kylie said. “You asked me a while ago if she still loved it, remember?”

  “Hush, Kylie! Come on, you two, it's almost time to eat.”

  They went on into the kitchen, where the family ate most of their meals. Katie felt a little sad when she saw that her usual chair had been removed from the table, so that her wheelchair could get up to it. The food smelled good, however, so she swallowed her pain and pride and wheeled herself up to the spot it used to occupy.

  Allen came in a few minutes later and took his own spot at the head of the table. Kylie helped Judy get all of the food to the table, and then set the plates and silver out, the two of them chatting a mile a minute. Katie looked at her father and said, “Mom tell you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It's your call, but I never did think he was good enough for you, you know. He always seemed to be not in your league, like he was hoping that being with a beautiful girl like you would help him get where he wanted to go in life.”

  Katie snorted. “I think you hit the nail on the head,” she said. “He told me that my being a cripple could hurt his political ambitions.”

  “Well, what can you expect from someone who wants to be in politics? If that's what’s most important to him, then he shouldn't have ever gotten mixed up with a real woman. He should have gotten him one like Hillary Clinton. She didn't ever let anything as stupid as the truth stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do, which makes her the perfect politician's wife. Her problem is that she thinks being a politician's wife qualifies her to be a politician, herself. Two different critters.”

  Despite herself, Katie Lou laughed. “Daddy, you make sense even when you're not making any sense at all, you know that?” She sobered. “I can't believe I was so wrong about him. I mean, how could I love someone who could be so material that his career is more important to him than his future wife?”

  Allen just shook his head. “Honey, I don't know what to say, so I'll just say nothin'. Far as I'm concerned, though, you're better off without him. Can you pass the corn over this way?”

  Kylie and Judy had joined them at the table, so it was time to eat. Allen led the family in saying grace, as he usually did, and they dug in. Hospital and cafeteria food had left them all ready for a good, home-cooked meal, and Judy had done an incredible job of putting one in front of them that they all would enjoy.

  When dinner was over, the ladies all moved to the living room to watch some TV, while Allen went to install the swing he'd devised to help Katie Lou get in and out of bed by herself. He'd seen the trapeze over the bed in the hospital, and watched as Kathy the nurse had shown Katie how to use it, so it hadn't taken him long in his garage to whip up something similar. He mounted it to the wall behind the bed, and it worked fine.

  That was good, because it wasn't long before Katie began to yawn. “I guess it's just been a big day,” she said, “with physical therapy and everything else. I'm worn out, and I've got to go back for more of that torture tomorrow morning. I think I'm gonna hit the hay, okay?”

  “Sure, Honey,” Judy said, and Kylie echoed her. “I'll be taking you tomorrow, so don’t sneak off without me, okay?”

  Katie sneered at her sister. “Very funny,” she said, and Kylie made a silly face at her. She went to her new room, and managed to change clothes, then used the swing to get herself into bed. She lay there and thought about everything, determined not to cry again, but when the tears came she couldn't stop them.

  Katie Lou Brennan had been popular in high school, and in college she'd been one of the girls that every guy wanted—but the one she'd fallen for had turned out to be a heartless robot that only had one goal in mind, and that was his own personal advancement. She knew she'd done the right thing in calling it off, but the loneliness that was settling into her heart was more than she could bear, at that moment. She turned herself over with great difficulty, so that she could bury her face in her pillow and weep.

  * * * * *

  Katie was on her feet, and it suddenly dawned on her that she shouldn't be—she'd heard something, and without even thinking about it, she'd jumped up, and before she knew it she was walking across the floor of her bedroom just as normally as ever! She looked down at her legs and feet, and saw them standing there, strong and proud, just the way they'd always been. She saw the carpet she'd had in her room since she was ten, when her parents had decided to remodel the house, and…

  That wasn’t right, she knew. She wasn't in her own room, she was in the guest room, because her room was upstairs and the wheelchair couldn't get there.

  The guest room window faced south, so the rising sun came through and hit her in the eyes. She blinked, and realized that she wasn't standing up at all, that she was still in bed. She lay there for a moment, confused by the unfamiliar surroundings, and then memory brought it all back to her. She saw the wheelchair sitting beside her, then looked up at the swing her father had built to help her get in and out of bed, and reached for it.

  Fifteen minutes later, her
bladder empty and her hands and face washed, she rolled herself out of her room and to the kitchen, where she could hear her mother moving around as she made breakfast. One of the joys of Katie's life had been knowing that breakfast would always be waiting in the kitchen when she got up each morning, and lately she had been dreaming of passing along that feeling to her own children. Now, she just let herself enjoy it one more time, and paused in the doorway to watch her mom bustling around as she made coffee and got the eggs and bacon out and ready. They were familiar sights, and helped Katie to remember that life wasn't over, maybe.

  “Hey, Mom,” she said as cheerfully as she could, and smiled when her mother turned in surprise. “Gotcha, didn't I?”

  “Yes, you did,” Judy said. “I didn't hear you coming. That thing is too quiet.”

  Katie laughed. “Buy me one of those bicycle bells, and I'll ring it whenever I see you,” she said. It got her a smile from her mother, and she tucked it away in her little box of memories.

  A thumping sound told them that Kylie was up, and had come downstairs. She came into the kitchen a second later, and smiled sleepily at everyone. “Hey,” she said, and both Judy and Katie Lou said, “Hey,” in response. Between them all, they managed to get breakfast done and on the table just as Allen made his way into the kitchen to join them.

  They ate with the comfortable banter that comes from a happy family's long history together, and even Katie Lou was able to join in some of the fun. She told her father that when he got to work at his shop, he should have Darren's car sent to the scrap yard, but he said he was actually looking forward to going through it. “I want to know why that car's steering failed,” he said, “and why it let you go through the windshield when that's supposed to be impossible, anymore. If it's a mechanical defect, then the manufacturer needs to know about it. If not, then I want to know what the heck could have caused my baby girl to go through this, so I can beat the snot out of whoever's responsible!”