by Lily Reynard
"You assumed wrong,'" he said. He scooted back his chair. "Come here, darling. I've got some things to tell you, and I want to hold you while I'm saying them."
To his pleasure, she didn’t protest, just rose from her seat, still holding Chris in her arms, and sat herself down on his lap in a billow of skirts.
He put his arms around her as she leaned against his chest, and dropped a kiss on Chris's fuzzy head. "I've never wanted anyone the way I want you, Abigail. I am head over heels in love with you. And I sure as hell wouldn't be happy with a wife who considered sleeping with me a 'marital duty.' I adore that you're so game about trying new things and so honest about enjoying sex."
"But—" she began.
"Hold on, I'm not done saying my piece yet." To underline his point, he shushed her with a long, sweet kiss.
"I love you, and I want you to be my wife. I want us to raise Chris together and to find other orphan children to open our hearts and our home to."
There. He'd finally told her how he felt.
Chapter 22
Curled on Dan's lap, Abby still couldn't stop crying, but her tears of misery had transmuted into tears of joy.
Her worst nightmare about the scandal following her to Twin Forks had come true…and Arthur's plans to keep ruining her life had been thwarted because of Emma's true and loyal friendship and Dan's willingness to believe Abby's version of events.
"…once we get married, I want kids. Lots of them. We can adopt a hundred orphans—Lord knows, we've got more than enough place for them here at the ranch." His arms tightened around her waist. She saw the twinkle in his eye as he finished with mock sternness, "But I'm telling you now, if you want more than a hundred, I'm gonna have to stop you."
Abby laughed. Dan loosened his embrace momentarily, long enough to pull a clean handkerchief from his pocket so that she could dry her eyes and cheeks. "Thank you. I am so very fortunate to have people like you and Emma as my friends."
"Well, you make me feel like the luckiest man in the world," Dan assured her.
"Oh, you can't possibly be," she replied, smiling through the last of her tears. "Because I'm not ready to say yes to your proposal yet."
Dan smiled back at her, clearly undiscouraged. "Then I'll just have to keep trying to convince you."
He drew her down for a kiss. As Dan's face dipped into reach, Christopher promptly hit his uncle's face and grabbed for his ear.
"Ow!" Dan said, straightening up. "You've got a surprisingly strong right hook there, little nipper."
Abby couldn't help giggling at the expression on his face. "He's reminding us that I don’t need another scandal in my life, so I'd better remove myself from your lap, Mr. Brody."
Dan scowled but didn't try to stop her as she regained her feet.
On impulse, because it felt impossibly decadent to suggest such a thing in the middle of the day, she said, "I'm going to take Christopher upstairs and put him down for his nap. And then I was hoping to take a nap myself. Would you care to join me?"
"Well, now." Dan hesitated, and Abby could see he was torn. "Thing is, Jim and Huritt are expecting me to join them. We got a batch of mules we need to train to harness—" Then he shook his head and stood, putting an arm around her shoulders. He finished firmly, "And they can wait for me to finish my lunch."
◆◆◆
As always, making love with Abby was sweet as honey and as fiery as those chili peppers that Texan Isaiah favored. It was well worth skipping his lunch for.
I have to find a way to make this woman my wife, he thought afterwards, as they lay cuddled together in her bed.
The problem, of course, was Jim, who was also head over heels for Abby. Despite his assurances, Dan wasn't sure how Jim might react if Abby chose him over Jim. Hell, for that matter, he wasn't sure whether he could resign himself to having Abby as his sister-in-law rather than his wife.
Being with Abby, both in bed and out of it, felt right in a way that he'd never experienced before. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Today, I'll tell him that I intend to marry her as soon as possible.
"Do you think Jim got one of those letters, too?" Abby asked, her breath softly caressing his chest.
She was clearly still upset by the incident—as she damned well should be.
"I doubt it. The letter was addressed to both of us," Dan replied. "But I do need to tell him."
She tensed against him.
"…and I promise you, Abby, that my brother is going to have the same reaction I did. Arthur Van Dyke is damned lucky that he lives on the other side of the country, or we'd be saddling up right now to administer a bit of frontier justice." Dan kissed her soft hair, which smelled faintly of the lavender cologne water she favored. "Everything's going to be all right. I swear it."
"Thank you," she whispered.
He glanced out her window, noted the position of the sun, and sighed. "I hate to go, but I can't leave Jim with all of the afternoon chores."
He reluctantly left the bed, poured some water from the pitcher on the washstand into the bowl, and quickly washed up before getting dressed again and heading downstairs.
◆◆◆
"That no-account lickspittle!" snarled Jim when Dan finished telling him about the letter that Arthur Van Dyke had sent, and Abby's reaction to it.
Jim always did have a more colorful vocabulary than me, thought Dan.
"So you don't have any interest in reading what Abby's ex-fiancé had to say?" Dan asked.
"Aw, hell no," Jim said immediately. "If she said it was a pack of lies, that's good enough for me. You can dump that letter into the outhouse. That's where it belongs, down in the pit with the other shit." He tossed a shovelful of manure into the wheelbarrow with extra vigor. "I'd like to skin him alive and use his worthless hide for boots."
"Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel too," Dan agreed. Now for the difficult part of the conversation. "Jim, about Abby—there's something I need to tell you."
Jim stopped shoveling. He raised his dark brows. "Don't tell me that she's got other men crawling out of the woodwork?"
Dan shook his head. "It's just—well, I asked her to marry me again. And this time, I don't intend to take 'no' for an answer."
He squared his shoulders and braced himself for an explosion.
It never came. Instead Jim chuckled. "Funny. I was thinking the same thing. We've both told her that we want to get hitched to her, and we've never gotten a straight answer out of her. She's been too busy confessing her faults and telling us why she'd make a terrible wife." He paused. "I'd be the happiest man alive if she agreed to marry me."
"And what if she picks me?" Dan asked. "I know we discussed it, but could you really reconcile yourself to seeing her married to me instead of you? Or would that stir up a mess of bad feelings between us?"
Jim's eyes narrowed. "You're really in love with her?"
"Yeah. Heart and soul," Dan assured his twin, scrutinizing him in turn. "You?"
"I don't want to live without her," Jim said flatly.
"Dammit."
Jim nodded. "But I don't want to live without you, either." He paused, a thoughtful line creasing his forehead. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to keep on sharing our sweet Abby, if she's so inclined?"
"What, you want to ask her to marry us both?" Dan asked incredulously.
Jim shrugged. "Why not? The three of us have been getting on pretty comfortably so far. And the last time I was in town, a little bird told me that Abby had feelings for us both and was having a hell of a time deciding." He gave Dan a smug grin. "So why can't the three of us all be happy?"
Dan thought it over. Jim was right. Neither of them had been jealous of the other during this unorthodox courtship, and Abby seemed pretty happy—not to mention satisfied—sharing her affections. There was one very important flaw in this plan, though…
"I'm pretty sure the reverend would object to Abby marrying both of us. And it's probably illegal, too."
Jim shrugged
. "Hell, most of the folks in town can't tell us apart, so who's gonna find out if we don't tell them? Once we convince Abby, all we need to do is decide which one of us gets to stand next to her in front of the minister. And consult the lawyer to make sure that she's provided for in both of our wills."
It could work, Dan thought. Jim's plan actually sounded pretty good.
"Well, are you in?" Jim demanded after a moment.
"Hell yeah, I'm in," Dan said.
Excitement zinged through his veins at the thought that he might be able to wed Abby without alienating his brother.
"Good. Now, we got some planning to do, if we're going to pull this off," Jim said. "And, as a wedding gift, we're going to find a way to put Abby's mind at ease by dealing with that no-good cross-roader Van Dyke."
"Sounds like a plan," Dan agreed.
He could practically hear the gears turning in his brother's head as Jim started working on his next plan.
For his part, Dan couldn't wait for the moment when they presented their joint proposal to Miss Abigail Rose.
Chapter 23
The next morning, when Abigail came downstairs carrying Chris, she heard an uncharacteristic clamor from the kitchen. It sounded as if pots and pans were being hurled around with great ferocity, but the scents that drifted into the dining room made her stomach growl.
"Isaiah? Is everything all right? " She cautiously pushed open the swinging door that led to the kitchen.
And was confronted with the unexpected sight of Dan and Jim standing at the big range. The wide stovetop was laden with three big cast iron pans crowded with sizzling bacon, fat sausages, and frying eggs, as well as a waffle iron and a greased griddle with neat circles of bubbling pancake batter.
"Morning, Abby!" Jim said with a cheerful grin as he began to flip the pancakes.
"Good morning," Dan added, opening the waffle iron and neatly extracting a golden waffle. It joined a stack of others balanced in a tower on a plate on the counter.
"Where's Isaiah?" she asked, confused.
"Gone for a while," Jim replied. "His youngest sister is getting married, so we bought him a train ticket."
"Yeah, he told us that he hadn't been back to Texas for five years, so we told him to take as much time as he needed to visit his family," Dan added. "His mother isn't getting any younger, and he missed his brother's wedding while recovering from the amputation."
"He should be back in two or three weeks," Jim said. "We need to hire an extra cook pronto for the ranch hands, but his absence does mean we get you all to ourselves for a while."
Abby looked at all of the food cooking on the stove and the stacks of waffles and pancakes. "I was wondering why you were cooking breakfast for an army," she said.
Dan chuckled. "Maybe not an army, but you'd be amazed at how much tucker a group of hungry men can put away, especially after a couple of hours' worth of work."
"Can I help?" she asked.
"Sure," Jim said, pointing at a tall wooden cupboard. "Will you set the table for the three of us while we go deliver breakfast to the bunkhouse?"
As she worked, Jim and Dan piled most of the food they had cooked into deep metal pans, put lids on the pans, and carried them out the back door.
Abby put Chris down in a corner of the kitchen, safely away from the big stove, and gave him a wooden spoon and a pot to bang on while she set the table for their breakfast.
She halted in front of the kitchen window and gazed out over the riot of flowers in the garden, with its backdrop of spectacular snow-capped peaks.
Should I accept Dan's latest proposal?
Abby had fallen in love with him weeks ago, and his reaction to Arthur's letter had only intensified her conviction that he truly loved her in return. And his passionate proposals were all she had ever dreamed of.
But if she accepted Dan, she would have to reject Jim. Her heart rebelled against having to make that decision, as it did every time she contemplated the decision facing her.
Why can't I have them both? Why can't we just continue this current blissful state of all three of us, together?
Her wishes went against everything she had ever been taught about how virtuous women behaved and what they should want…not to mention the laws that forbade bigamy.
But it felt like the only true solution to her current dilemma.
Should I ask them whether they might consider it? Do I dare propose that our ménage à trois become a permanent state of affairs rather than a temporary courtship ritual?
Abby shook her head in frustration and decided that it would be only fair to have that highly uncomfortable conversation with them sooner rather than later. It would be dishonest to keep them both on a string when she had, in fact, made her decision.
I'll take advantage of our private breakfast to talk to them. Perhaps they'll even agree to my scandalous proposal.
When the twins returned, they shooed her out to the dining room to feed Chris some oatmeal while they cooked up a second batch of breakfast.
A short time later, they slid a tall stack of pancakes from a serving platter onto her plate, then stood expectantly.
"Here, let me take the little nipper while you dig in," Jim said, scooping Chris from her lap and taking possession of the oatmeal.
"We even have maple syrup," Dan said, offering her a small bottle filled with dark amber fluid. "Friend of ours went up to Canada to trade furs."
Abby hadn't had real maple syrup since leaving home, just molasses or honey.
"This looks wonderful," she said, when she had applied butter and a generous amount of the syrup. "Thank you. I'll cook breakfast tomorrow."
She picked up her fork and dug in, aware that both brothers were watching her with avid interest.
"Delicious," she reported after the first mouthful.
Her fork hit something hard as she cut through the pancakes for a second mouthful. Not wanting to hurt their feelings, she did her best to discreetly extract the object.
The gleam of gold caught her eye as she dislodged it from a pancake. It landed on the plate with a heavy chink of metal against china.
It was a gold ring. Despite being thickly coated with maple syrup and crumbs of pancake, she saw that it was set with an oval diamond surrounded by a circle of smaller diamonds, the stones framed by graceful curlicues of gold scrollwork.
Puzzled, Abby stared down at it. What on earth is a ring doing in my breakfast?
Then Dan and Jim both lowered themselves one knee next to her chair. Jim put the baby down on the carpet and looked up at her. Her heart began pounding.
Oh no! They're going to make me decide between them now. But I can't!
"Abby, we've each asked you separately to marry us," Dan began.
"Because we're both crazy in love with you," Jim said. "And we're hoping that you feel the same way about us."
"I do," she said, suddenly breathless, as if she'd laced her corset too tightly this morning.
"We've got something to say to you, but before we say our piece, we need to know—do you have a preference for one of us over the other?" Dan asked.
She shook her head. "I—I have feelings, strong feelings of—affection…no, of love," she corrected herself. "For both of you. And therein lies my dilemma. I haven't addressed your proposals because I can't bear the thought of choosing one of you over the other."
The twins looked at each other, and Abby could swear that they both looked pleased at the news.
A wildly far-fetched hope began to dawn in her breast. Could it be…?
"Good," Dan and Jim said in chorus. Then Jim continued, "Then maybe you'll be open to a different kind of proposal."
Dan said, "Jim and I were talking, trying to sort out this conundrum, and we realized that there's another way."
Abby's heart was pounding so hard now that the drumming in her ears almost drowned out their words.
"Marry us both, Abby," Jim said. "Neither of us wants to live without you, and you're in love with both of us…s
o why not?"
"I—" She was overwhelmed with a mixture of wild joy and disbelief.
Can it really be true that we have all arrived at the same unlikely solution to this problem?
◆◆◆
Abigail turned as pale as spilled milk at their proposal, and she swayed a little in her chair. She looked ready to faint, and Jim braced himself to catch her if she toppled over.
