by Lisa Jackson
The SUV’s wheels slid a bit as she pulled into the driveway but she managed to park in front of the garage. Hauling her briefcase and laptop computer with her, she dashed through the short drifts and climbed up the back porch. Stomping the snow from her boots and pulling off her gloves with her teeth, she opened the back door and heard squeals of delight.
“Mommy! Mommy! Come see.” Two sets of feet pounded the floor as the girls raced into the kitchen.
Nicole was unzipping her coat, but leaned down to hug each of the twins. Yes, her life was full. She didn’t need a man and certainly not Thorne McCafferty.
Patches hopped lithely onto the counter.
“The flowers. Bunches and bunches and bunches of flowers,” Molly said, holding her arms as wide as she could.
“Flowers?” Nicole asked and noticed the fragrance of roses that seemed to permeate the air.
“Yeth.” Mindy was pulling on one hand, dragging her to the living room. Molly gripped her other.
“You get down!” Nicole ordered the precocious feline as they passed the counter. The cat hopped to the floor as Nicole stepped into the living room and gasped. Jenny was standing near the fireplace and the grate was lit, several logs burning brightly, and all around the room, on every table, in the corners and on the floor, were dozens and dozens of roses. Red, white, pink, yellow—it didn’t matter, bouquet after bouquet. “What in the world…?” she whispered.
“There’s a card.” Jenny pointed to a bouquet of three dozen white long-stemmed roses.
“Read it! Read it!” both girls chimed.
With shaking fingers she opened the small white envelope. It read simply: “Marry me.”
Tears burned behind her eyelids. “Do you know who sent these?” she asked.
Jenny smiled. “Don’t you?”
Knees suddenly weak, Nicole dropped into a side chair. “Dear Lord…”
“What, Mommy? What?” Mindy asked, her little eyebrows knotting in concern.
“Thorne’s in the hospital.”
“What?” Jenny’s smile fell away and haltingly Nicole told her about the plane crash.
“Oh, my God, well you’ve got to go back there. You’ve got to be with him.”
“But the girls…”
“Don’t worry about them. I can handle them.” The twins’ faces fell and Jenny added, “We’ll have pizza delivered and make popcorn balls and…and a surprise for your mommy.”
“But I don’t want Mommy to leave,” Mindy said.
“Baby!” Molly accused, pointing a tiny finger at her sister.
“Am not!”
“Shh…shh…no one’s a baby.”
Touched by the dazzling array of flowers, Nicole stared at the soft petals and long stems and her heart pounded with a love she so recently tried to deny. “I—I do have to go back to the hospital,” she said, “but I’ll be back soon.”
Mindy’s face began to crumple. “Promise?”
Nicole kissed her daughter’s forehead and stood on legs that threatened to give out again. She plucked one crimson rose from its vase and winked at her daughters. “Promise.”
* * *
Through a veil of pain, he heard the door open and expected that it was the nurse bringing much needed medication.
“Thorne?”
Nicole’s voice. His heart leaped, but he didn’t move. Nor did she turn on the light as she walked to his bedside. Carefully she laid a long-stemmed rose on his chest. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t move. In his semiconscious state a few hours ago, he’d heard her claims of loving him yet not wanting him, of saying it would never work out, so he’d thought she’d gotten the flowers and had rejected him. He hadn’t been able to respond then, didn’t know if he could now. He barely remembered the accident. There had been a problem, an engine had died and he’d been forced to land in a field, nearly made it when the plane had crashed into a copse of trees…he was lucky…
“I got the flowers. Dozens and dozens of them. You shouldn’t have…oh, Thorne,” she whispered, dragging him back to the present, to Nicole. Beautiful, sexy Nicole. “I wish you could hear me. I want to explain....”
Here it comes again. She was going to repeat what she’d said earlier. Without moving he braced himself for the worst.
“I was—am—overwhelmed.” She cleared her throat and he felt her fingers find his. “I read the card.”
He felt like an idiot. Why had he bared his soul to her? She didn’t want him, she’d made that clear enough. He braced himself against the pain.
“And I wish I could make you hear me, that you’d understand just how much I love you. Marry you? Oh, Lord, if you only knew how much I wanted to do just that, but I saw your picture with that woman at the fund-raiser in Denver and I—I thought you weren’t ready to settle down, that you never will be and so, I don’t know what to do. If there was any chance that we could be together, you and I and the girls, believe me I’d—”
Despite the pain, he forced his hand to move. His head felt as if it might explode, but he grabbed her hand then, held on to it fiercely. The rose dropped to the floor.
“Oh! Dear God—”
“Marry me,” he rasped, forcing the words through lips that felt cracked and swollen. Pain screamed through his body but he didn’t care.
“But—what? Can you—”
“Marry me.” He squeezed her fingers so tightly that she gasped again.
“You can hear me?”
He forced his eyes open, blinked against the fragile light that seemed to blind. “Nicole—would you please just answer?” Somehow he managed to focus on her face—God, it was a great face. “Will you marry me?”
“But what about the other woman, the one in the paper?”
“There is no other woman. Just you.” He stared at her hard, willing her to believe him. “And there will always only be you in my life. I swear it.”
He watched her swallow hard, bite her lip, fight the indecision.
“I will love you forever,” he vowed and then the tears came, slowly at first and then more rapidly, falling from her gorgeous amber eyes. “Marry me, Nicole. Be my wife.”
With her free hand, she dashed the tears away. “Yes,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Yes.” He yanked hard, pulled her over him and when his lips found hers some of the pain disappeared and he knew that from this day forward he would gladly give up whatever possessions he had, that nothing else came close to the love he felt for her and he would cherish this woman until he gave up his very last breath.
“I love you, Doctor,” he vowed as she lifted her head and laughed. “And this time, believe me, I’ll never leave you and I’ll never let you go.”
“Oh, I bet you say that to all the women physicians,” she teased, her eyes bright with tears as she picked up the rose and laid it next to him on the bed.
“Nope. Only one.”
“Lucky me,” she sniffed, leaning down and brushing her lips against his.
“No.” Of this he was certain. “Lucky me.”
Epilogue
“You’re sure you want to live here?” Nicole asked, her gaze roving around the snow-covered acres as she and Thorne sat on the porch while the twins, in matching snowsuits, frolicked in the yard. The old dog, Harold, barked and joined them, acting like a pup, and cattle and horses dotted the landscape. Slade, dressed in a thick buckskin jacket, was walking near the barn, checking the pipes and watering troughs along with the stock.
It was beautiful here and Nicole’s heart was full. Though Thorne’s leg was casted, there was no keeping him down and they’d planned as soon as he was on his feet again to marry.
“I’ll live here as long as Randi lets me.”
Randi was the one worry. It ha
d been nearly a month since her accident and she was still unconscious. Though Kurt Striker was still looking into the possibility of a hit-and-run driver forcing her off the road, he hadn’t found any suspects and Thorne’s plane crash was still under investigation. Was it foul play? Thorne hadn’t thought so, or so he’d insisted, citing the fact that he should have had the plane checked out before flying off in the snowstorm. But he’d been anxious to return to Montana. “By the way,” he said, “I have something for you.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Something to make our engagement official.”
“Oh?” She lifted a wary eyebrow as he winced and dug into a front pocket of his jeans. Slowly he extracted a ring, a band of silver and gold.
“It was my father’s, from his marriage to my mom,” he explained and Nicole was touched, her throat clogging suddenly as he slipped it onto her finger. “For some sentimental reason, the old man kept it even after the divorce and while he was married to Randi’s mother. He gave it to me before he died and now…because of tradition, I guess, I want you to have it.” His smile was crooked. “I think we’ll have it sized to fit.” The ring, an intricate band of gold and silver, was much too big for her finger but she clutched it tight, knowing that it meant so much to Thorne. That he would share it with her said more than words.
“It’s beautiful.”
“And special.”
“Oh, Thorne, thank you,” she whispered, then kissed him as he held her close and the old porch swing swayed.
“And you’re special to me, Nicole, you and the girls.”
She had trouble swallowing over the lump in her throat. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she’d ever hear those words from Thorne McCafferty, the man who had so callously used her and then walked away.
As if he could read her thoughts, he placed a kiss upon her head. “I know I made a mistake with you and I’ve kicked myself a dozen times over, but I want to make it up to you, to the twins. I…I never thought I’d want to settle down, to have a family of my own to…” he struggled for a moment, looked across the snow-crusted fields “…to share my life here. On the Flying M. But I do. Because of you.” His eyes found hers. “You’re the one, Nicole. The only one.”
She sighed against him and looked at the ring. God, she loved him. Blinking back tears of joy, she whispered, “I love you.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” he said, a slow, sexy smile creeping from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Scout’s honor,” she said. His grin was infectious and she tossed a sassy smile back his way. “You don’t believe me?”
“Maybe…”
“But maybe not?”
“You could prove it.”
She laughed and rose to the bait. “And how would I do that?”
His eyes gleamed wickedly. “Oh, I can think of a dozen or two different ways.”
“And I can think of a hundred.”
He rose awkwardly to his feet and pulled her to hers. “Then let’s start, shall we? As my father would say, ‘time’s a wastin’,’ and he did say he wanted some grandchildren.”
“What about J.R. and the twins?”
“A start, lady, just a start.”
“Slow down, Romeo,” she said giggling.
“No way, lady. We’ve only got the rest of our lives.”
She threw back her head and laughed huskily. “I do love you, Thorne McCafferty, but if anyone’s going to have to do the proving it’s you.”
“All right.” He swept her off her feet and she squealed.
“Thorne, don’t! Your leg! For crying out loud, let me go! Put me down!”
He held her tight, his shoulder braced against the side of the house, his strong arms holding her close. “Never,” he vowed, then kissed her hard. She closed her eyes, kissed him back and wondered if anyone had the right to feel this happy. As he lifted his head and stared into her eyes, he said again, “I will never let you go, Nicole. Never again.”
And she believed him.
* * * * *
The McCaffertys: Matt
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Prologue
Early May
“You miserable piece of horseflesh,” Matt McCafferty growled as he climbed to his feet, dusted the back of his jeans and glowered at the wild-eyed Appaloosa colt. There was a reason the damned beast was named Diablo Rojo, the orneriest two-year-old on the Flying M Ranch. A challenge. In all his thirty-seven years, Matt had never met a horse he couldn’t tame. But he was having second thoughts about Red Devil. Major ones. The horse had spirit. Fire. Not easily tamed. Like a lot of women Matt had run across. “Okay, you bastard, let’s start over.”
He reached down and picked up his hat. Slapping it hard against his thigh, he squinted into the lowering Montana sun as it started its slow descent behind the western hills. “You and I, Devil, we’re gonna come to a reckoning and we’re gonna do it this afternoon.”
The colt tossed his fiery head and snorted noisily, then lifted his damned tail like a banner and trotted along the far fence line, the empty saddle on his back creaking mockingly. Damned fool horse. Matt squared his hat on his head. “It isn’t over,” he assured the snorting animal.
“It may as well be.”
Matt froze at the sound of his father’s voice. Turning on the worn heel of his boot, he watched as Juanita pushed John Randall’s wheelchair across the parking lot separating the rambling, two-storied ranch house from the series of connecting paddocks that surrounded the stables. Matt didn’t harbor much love for his bastard of a father, but he couldn’t help feel an ounce of pity for the once-robust man now confined to “the damned contraption,” as he referred to the chair.
John Randall’s sparse white hair caught in the wind and his skin was pale and thin, but there was still a spark in his blue eyes. And he loved this spread. More than he loved anything, including his children.
“I tried to talk him out of this,” Juanita reprimanded as she parked the wheelchair near the fence where Harold, John Randall’s partially crippled old springer spaniel, had settled into a patch of shade thrown by a lone pine tree. “But you know how it is. He is too terco…stubborn, for his own good.”
“And it’s served me well,” the old man said as he used the sun-bleached rails of the fence to pull himself to his full height. Lord, he was thin—too thin. His jeans and plaid shirt hung loosely from his once-robust frame. But he managed a tough-as-old-leather smile as he leaned over the top bar and watched his middle son.
“Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” Juanita said, sending Matt a worried glance and muttering something about loco, prideful men.
“I doubt it. I never could before.”
The older McCafferty waved Juanita off. “I’m fine. Needed some fresh air. Now I want to talk to Matt. He’ll bring me inside when we’re through.”
Juanita didn’t seem convinced, but Matt nodded. “I think I can handle him,” he said to the woman who had helped raise him. Clucking her tongue at the absurdity of the situation, Juanita bustled off to the house, the only home Matt had known growing up.
“That one,” John Randall said, hitching his chin back to the wayward colt. “He’ll give ya a run for your money.” He slid a knowing glance at his second-born. “Like a lot of women.”
Matt was irritated. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and swatted at a horsefl
y that got a little too close for comfort. “Is that what you came all the way out here to say to me, the reason you had Juanita push you outside?”
“Nope.” With an effort the older man dug into the pocket of his jeans. “I got somethin’ here for ya.”
“What?” Matt was instantly suspicious. His father’s gifts never came without a price.
“Somethin’ I want ya to have—oh, here we go.” John Randall withdrew a big silver buckle that winked in the bright Montana sun. Inlaid upon the flat surface was a gold bucking bronco, still as shiny as the day John Randall had won it at a rodeo in Canada more than fifty years earlier. He dropped it into his son’s calloused hand.
“You used to wear this all the time,” Matt observed, his jaw growing tight.
“Yep. Reminded me of my piss-and-vinegar years.” John Randall settled back in his wheelchair, and his eyes clouded a bit. “Good years,” he added thoughtfully, then squinted upward to stare at his son. “I don’t have much longer on this earth, boy,” he said, and before Matt could protest, his father raised a big-knuckled hand to silence him. “We both know it so there’s no sense in arguin’ the facts. The man upstairs, he’s about to call me home…that is, if the devil don’t take me first.”
Matt clenched his jaw. Didn’t say a word. Waited.
“I already spoke to Thorne about the fact that I’m dyin’, and seein’ as you’re the next in line, I thought I’d talk to you next. Slade…well, I’ll catch up to him soon. Now, I know I’ve made mistakes in my life, the good Lord knows I failed your mother....”
Matt didn’t comment, didn’t want to even think about the bleak time when John Randall took up with a much younger woman, divorced his wife and introduced his three sons to Penelope, “Penny” Henley, who would become their stepmother and give them all a half sister whom none of them wanted to begin with.
“I have a lot of regrets about all that,” John Randall said over the sigh of the wind, “but it’s all water under the bridge now since both Larissa and Penny are dead.” He rubbed his jaw and cleared his throat. “Never thought I’d bury two wives.”
