Montana Sky

and tried to nudge her into a chair. “If you’re having second thoughts—”
    “Don’t ‘honey’ me.” Lily wrenched away, fuming. “And don’t pretend you give me credit for having second thoughts when no one gives me credit for having the first ones. It’s my wedding, damn it. Mine. And you’ve all just taken it over. If you want to plan a wedding so badly, then you get married.”
    “I’ll get Bess,” Tess murmured, and sent Lily into a fresh tantrum.
    “Don’t you dare get Bess and have her up here clucking over me. The next person, the very next person who clucks over me, I’m slapping them. I mean it. You.” She jabbed a finger at Tess. “You planted my garden. And you.” She spun on Willa. “You addressed my wedding invitations. Between the two of you, you’ve taken everything. And what slips through your fingers, Adam snaps up so quickly I can’t even grab for it.”
    “Well, fine.” Willa threw up her hands. “Excuse us for trying to help you through a difficult time. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed getting writer’s cramp with this one here breathing down my neck.”
    “I was not breathing down your neck,” Tess said between her teeth. “I was supervising.”
    “Supervising, my butt. You’ve got your nose in everything and sooner or later someone’s going to pop you in it.”
    “Oh, and that would be you, I suppose.”
    “Shut up, both of you. Just shut the hell up.”
    They did, though their mouths hung open when Lily lifted a vase and sent it flying. “The two of you can argue till your tongues fall out, but not over my business. Not over me. Do you understand? I’m not going to be used anymore. I’m not going to be controlled. I’m not going to be brushed aside. I want everyone to stop looking at me as if I’m going to fall to pieces at any moment. Because I’m not. I’m not! ”
    “Lily.” Adam stepped into the doorway. He wasn’t sure how to approach her now, so he stood back and hoped a soothing tone would work. “I didn’t mean to upset you. If you need time to—”
    “Oh, don’t you start on me.” Vibrating with fury, she kicked at the papers scattered at her feet. “That’s just what I’m talking about. Don’t anyone upset Lily. Don’t anyone treat Lily like a normal woman. Poor thing, poor Lily. She might shatter.”
    She spun around so she could fire a stream of frustrated rage at all of them. “Well, I’m the one Jesse abused. He held a gun to my head. I’m the one he dragged into the hills and kicked into the snow and pulled along on a rope like a dog. And I got through it. I survived it. It’s about time you did too.”
    It was Adam who shattered, at the image that flashed into his brain. “What do you want me to do? Forget it? Pretend it never happened?”
    “Live with it. I am. You haven’t asked any questions.” Her voice hitched, but she steadied it. No, she promised herself, she wasn’t going to shatter. And she wasn’t going to cry. “Maybe you don’t want the answers. Maybe you don’t want me the way things are.”
    “How can you say that?”
    Now she drew herself up, made her voice as cool andreasonable as she could with her heart pounding so hard it hurt her ribs. “You haven’t touched me, Adam. Not once since it happened have you touched me.” She shook her head as Willa and Tess started to leave the room. “No, stay. This isn’t just between Adam and me. That’s only part of it. You haven’t talked about it either, so let’s talk about it now. Right now.”
    She wiped a tear from her cheek. Damn it, that would be the last one that fell. “Why haven’t you touched me, Adam? Is it because you think he did, and you don’t want me now?”
    “I don’t know how.” He stepped forward, stopped. His hands felt clumsy, outsized, as they had for weeks. “I didn’t stop him. I didn’t protect you. I didn’t do what I promised you. And I don’t know how to touch you, or why you’d want me to.”
    She closed her eyes a moment. Why hadn’t she seen that before? He was the fragile one now. He was the lost one. “You came for me.” She said it softly, hoping he could understand just how much that mattered. “Yours was the first face I saw when I stumbled out of that cave, away from . . . away from it. You were the first thing I saw, and that’s one of the reasons I can live with it.”
    She took one unsteady breath, tried again, and found that the next one came more easily. “And all the time