The ceremony was short and sweet, because everyone was hungry. When the pastor said, “You may now kiss the bride,” Gideon pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her for all he was worth.
When he raised his head for a breath, she looked up at him through the veil of her lashes, wondering what on earth had just happened to her. “We’re married,” she said softly, and Gideon nodded.
“We are, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’ve wanted to make you my wife for years and years.”
She smiled at him, wondering if he’d have said the same thing if destiny didn’t force them to be together. Either way, she decided she was going to have a happy night. She would only marry once, so this would be her only wedding reception. She was going to be the happiest woman alive for the next couple of hours.
They filled their plates with the food Lillian and Claire had worked so hard to make, and then the two of them headed for one of the tables. When there was a wedding, they brought in a regular table so the bride wouldn’t have to climb onto a picnic table in her dress. The McClains thought of everything.
At the table with her was each of the other McClain brothers and their brides, along with Gideon of course. Claire reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m here to help with the barbecues.”
“Good. I’ll need it!” Brittany said, shaking her head. She was doing her best to feel happy and not drown under the enormity of the responsibilities in front of her. She looked at Adam. “You know you’re my favorite boss, right?”
“I also know you’re quitting. You feel too guilty for it to be anything else.”
She laughed. “I should have known you’d already know.”
Tiffani smiled at her sweetly. “I think you’re going to be really happy you made that decision. I just hope you’ll stick around long enough to train someone to take your place.”
“You don’t think Gideon should take the job full-time?” Brittany asked, hiding her grin from her new husband.
“No! Absolutely not! I’d rather be on handwashing diaper duty for the rest of my life!”
Brittany shook her head. “There will be no hand-washed diapers. If I’m having seven kids, there will be Pampers for everyone. I don’t care if you need to get three jobs to pay for them!”
Gideon frowned. Had he forgotten to talk to her about the family’s finances when he’d filled her in on everything else? “We’ll talk about all of that later.”
As they ate, they all laughed and joked, and Brittany felt more and more like these people would really be a family to her. Her new sisters were already giving her good advice. Her new brothers were acting as if she’d been a part of their family forever—which really, in a way, she had. Working for the ranch was just like being a member of the family.
She did her best to keep an eye on her younger siblings, but lost sight of them often. When she finally found Madison in the crowd later that evening, she saw that she was sitting between Michael and Jose, two of the boys who were currently in Gideon’s house. “Is she safe with those two?” Brittany asked, immediately feeling badly, because she remembered Maria, Ephraim’s wife, was also Michael’s sister.
Maria shrugged. “She’s safe with Michael. Not sure about Jose. I don’t know him super well yet.”
“Sorry,” Brittany said. “That was rude of me.”
“No, it wasn’t. I’d have worried about the same thing if it was my kid sister.” Maria shrugged. “There aren’t usually a lot of girls on the ranch, and the boys do tend to be drawn to the ones who are here.”
“They’re fine,” Gideon told her. “Besides, Mom has an eye on the situation. She’s not going to allow anything to happen to Madison or Kaeden. She’s responsible for the two of them tonight, and she takes that type of responsibility very seriously!”
“So I can quit worrying about them?”
Gideon nodded. “Definitely stop worrying. For the next couple of nights, Mom will take care of them. You only need to worry about being married and being happy. When was the last time you had a chance to worry about only yourself and not your younger siblings?”
She thought about his question for a moment. “Not since 2008, when my parents died.”
“Now’s the time, then, isn’t it?”
Chapter Five
After the reception, Brittany met Lillian at the car, along with both her siblings, to give them all their things they’d packed for the night. Then Gideon led her to his truck, opening the door for her. “I have my suitcase for the next couple of nights in the back. I’ll have to be at work when the boys wake up Monday morning.”
She looked at him for a moment. “How do you stand it? I know you’re not an early riser.”
“I hate it! I can’t really take naps usually, but every once in a while, I work one in.” He shrugged. “I do what I need to do.”
“What do you do all day? When you’re not bothering Adam, that is?”
“I’ll have you know I was never there to bother Adam. I was looking for an excuse to see you.”
She shook her head. “You were not!”
“I was too!” He turned off the ranch’s main road and onto the highway. “And what do I do all day? It depends. Some days, Ephraim needs help with the animals, and I’m the logical choice, because I can talk to them too. Sometimes Benjamin needs help, and I’m the logical choice there, too. I really have never become specialized in any one thing, but I help out wherever I need to.”
“Do you like that?” Brittany had always thought of Gideon as someone who wasn’t incredibly important in one place, but she thought she understood. He was needed all over.
“I do. It means that I can be absent a little more than my brothers, but I have the ability to fill in anywhere. I’m not as good as any of them at their own powers, but I can do things mostly as well.” He paused frowning for a moment. “You may have the wrong idea about our family’s financial state…”
“What does that mean? I know you do a fundraiser every year.” Did the fundraiser help more than she realized?
“Remember how I said my dad is a precog? Well, he sometimes is given the vision of lottery numbers, and we always buy a ticket. We’ve never won the big pot, but we win a couple hundred thousand here and there.” He sighed. “We don’t do the fundraisers to make money for the ranch. They’re mostly a smokescreen, and we put the money we get into trust funds for the boys. They all graduate, thinking they’re broke, but they have very good trust funds when they’re done with school.”
She blinked a couple of times. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t think of it with you asking me to grow silk flowers and if I knew where Jimmy Hoffa was buried!”
“Fair point.” She knew she’d been silly that day, but she’d felt very uncomfortable at that lunch. “I’m sorry if I made it hard on you.”
“It was fine. You were trying to add a little levity to a situation that was weighing heavily on me.” He pulled into her driveway and parked the truck, running around to open her door. He offered her a hand, worried she’d trip with her long dress. “Have I mentioned yet today how beautiful you look? Because stunning doesn’t begin to cover it.”
She smiled, looking deeply into his blue-gray eyes. “And you were incredibly handsome. I appreciate that you wore clean clothes.”
He made a face. “Someday you’re going to stop teasing me all the time! And I’m going to call the coroner!”
“Wait…you can’t heal me if I start to die?”
He shook his head emphatically. “I’m pretty good with small injuries. I’m not even very good at mending broken bones. We leave that stuff to Daniel. But if you cut your thumb, I’m the man to see!”
She grinned at him, resting her hands on his shoulders. “Thank you for coming to the rescue of my family. I hope you know that I’ll be eternally grateful.”
Her gratitude wasn’t exactly what he wanted. If she’d said he’d have her undying love, that would have made him a grea
t deal happier. “No gratitude is necessary.” Just your love. He opened the back door and grabbed his suitcase. “I really could take you to a nice hotel in Austin or San Antonio.”
“No need. I still have a lot to do in the house anyway. I may even put you to work!”
“On my honey-weekend?”
“Honey-weekend? What on earth is a honey-weekend?”
“I would take a honeymoon if I could, and that would span an entire moon, or a month. I only get a honey-weekend, so I’m going to take advantage of every minute.”
She laughed softly, shaking her head. “I’m never going to understand how your mind works, Gideon McClain.”
“That’s probably best for everyone.” He waited while she unlocked the door before carrying his suitcase in. He would wait to carry her over the threshold until he had her at the home where they’d raise their own sons. “Where should I put this?” he asked. He was surprised to realize that though he’d picked her up at her home many times, he’d never been inside.
“I thought I’d put you in Kaeden’s room for the weekend. Down the hall and last door on your right.” She went into her own room, looking for her favorite pair of comfortable pajamas. She had to get out of her wedding dress or she just might die. Thankfully, working on the ranch meant comfortable clothes if that’s what she wanted to wear.
Gideon stopped in the middle of the hall and set down his suitcase. “What do you mean you’re putting me in Kaeden’s room for the weekend?”
She popped her head out of her room. “I didn’t think you’d want Madison’s room. It’s all covered in pink, and there might be some unicorns on the ceiling. Not your thing at all.”
“We’re married. Doesn’t that mean we sleep together?” What on earth was she thinking?
She stared at him for a moment, blinking rapidly as she tried to come to grips with the situation. “But we’re friends. You married me as your friend.”
Gideon wasn’t quite sure where her thoughts had come from. He walked into the room she was in—obviously her bedroom—and sat down on the bed, patting the spot beside him. Once she was settled, he did his best to formulate his thoughts into sentences. “You married me knowing that we would have seven children. Did you think we were going to look for medical intervention for those miracle babies?”
She sighed. “No, but I thought we’d take some time to get more comfortable with each other.”
“More comfortable with each other? You’ve been my best friend since junior high! How could we be more comfortable with each other?” Her reasoning was making no sense to him, and he was starting to get a bit worked up.
“Maybe you should use your calming power on yourself. I figured we would be looking at each other differently, and we’d each need time to get used to our new roles in each other’s lives.”
Gideon ran his fingers through his hair. “We’re married. There was a time when we almost made love in the backseat of my car, pulling back just in time. And now you’re telling me you need time to get comfortable with me?” He took a deep breath and expelled it, doing his best not to get angry with her. “How long do you think you need? We’re never again going to have time alone like this.”
She frowned at that. “Maybe it would be easier if we were totally alone like we are now.” She hadn’t considered that he planned to consummate the marriage so soon! “I have to have a little while to wrap my mind around this.”
“I can understand that.” He didn’t want to upset her, but he really didn’t want to wait either. “Why don’t you get changed into something comfortable, and I’ll do the same. We’ll watch a movie together and snuggle on the couch. See what happens from there?”
She bit her lip before nodding slowly. “I can deal with that. I think it’s a good compromise.”
Gideon sighed, getting to his feet. “I’ll go put on a pair of shorts, and meet you in the living room.” He turned back to her. “Do you need help getting out of that thing?”
She stood and turned her back to him. “If you wouldn’t mind unzipping me, that would be awesome. The thing about wedding dresses is there’s no way to get in and out of them by yourself.”
“Who got you into that thing?” he asked.
Brittany felt the dress ease behind her, and she wanted to wiggle free, but he was still there. “Madison helped me, and someday I’ll help her. It’s the way of the sisters.”
“You have seven sisters now.” He closed the door behind him with a soft click, grabbing his suitcase to get his shorts. He contemplated leaving it in the middle of the hallway for them to trip over in protest of her wanting to wait, but decided that would not only be childish, but he wouldn’t have any clothes to put on.
He changed into a pair of stretchy shorts and a t-shirt, after discarding the idea of going shirtless. If she was already nervous, then it wouldn’t be a good idea to run around half naked in front of her, no matter how much he wanted to.
He walked into the living room and turned the television on, sifting through the movies on her shelf. He grinned when he found Seven Brides for Seven Brothers among her DVDs and he popped it into the DVD player. He’d seen it enough to have it memorized, and he had a feeling she had as well.
He sat quietly waiting for her, playing a stupid game on his phone. Phone games were always stupid in his opinion, but he was always sucked into one or two of them.
When she joined him a few minutes later, she’d brushed her hair out, freeing it from those things that held it up on the sides. He didn’t know what they were called, but he was glad she’d taken them out of her hair. He loved how she looked with her red hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back.
She walked over and sat beside him on the couch, curling her legs under her. She’d chosen her most comfortable pair of flannel pajamas, and she refused to worry if he’d find her sexy. She had to hold out on having sex for as long as she possibly could, because she knew she’d feel closer to him once they made love. She couldn’t risk her heart that way.
“What are we watching?” Brittany asked.
“I thought we’d go with a classic.” Gideon pushed the button to start the movie as he put his arm around her.
She giggled as it came on. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve watched this over the years? When we were in junior high and first became friends, I couldn’t help but think about how this movie was tied to you, so I watched it again and again. I thought one day I’d walk up to you and sing the song Millie sings while she’s picking sorrel for the nourishing soup she wants to make for her wedding night, and you’d just fall in love with me.”
He grinned. “You never sang it for me!”
“I never had the guts.” She shrugged. “Then you asked me out all on your own without me ever singing the song to you—which was probably for the best for both of us—and then you broke it off. You never told me why, though.”
He sighed. If she wanted to have this discussion now, then he’d have it now. It didn’t feel like the right time to him, but…whatever she wanted. He paused the movie and put the remote onto the end table beside him, turning to her fully on the couch and taking her hands in his. Her green eyes had always made him feel like he was drowning.
“I’m happy to tell you. I think I told you a little bit at the diner when I asked you to marry me, but if you want more, I’ll give it to you.”
She nodded, refusing to back down. This was something she needed to know to be able to trust him again. Well, she did trust him, but only as a friend. Not as a romantic interest. “Tell me.”
He took a deep breath, drawing the courage to have this conversation from within. He sent out a calming aura, hoping she wouldn’t notice.
“No tricks now, Gideon!”
“No tricks.” So much for that. She was onto him! “I had a crush on you from the day you hit me over the head with your books. I still don’t know why you did it, but I know I went home and told my whole family about you. I was over the moon. We became good friends, and
time after time I tried to ask you out, but I couldn’t get up the courage.”
She nodded. “I know you were shy with me a lot. I mean, mostly we were friends, but there were times when you’d blush, and I’d get all excited thinking maybe you were finally going to ask me out.”
“Really?” He shook his head. “I was such a dork. Anyway, when I finally got up the guts to ask you out, and we dated for what? Two or three months at least, I think. Every single time we went out, I felt more and more connected to you. I felt like you had to be my destined wife, because even though you only heard about that this week, it’s something I’ve known about since I was a little boy.”
She nodded. “I can understand that.”
“Well, my dad never told me you were my destined wife. I’d talk about you, hoping he’d share that information with me, and he’d just tell me to be careful not to fall too hard too fast. He’d talk about how I needed time to figure out who I was before I became half of a couple.”
“So you thought that meant that we weren’t meant to be together?” Brittany frowned, but she could see where that would be hard.
“I did. And I thought if I got closer to you, my heart might just explode, because my feelings for you were so strong! And every time we were together, we were pushing boundaries. We wanted things that both of us felt were wrong, and we both knew we were too young for.” He looked down at their hands for a moment, gathering his words. When he started speaking again, he was looking into her eyes. “So I broke it off with you. I felt like the longer we were together, the more danger we’d be in of crossing that line. And I knew the more time we spent together, the less chance there was that I would survive the break-up that had to come for me to marry the woman I was destined to marry.”
She nodded. “I honestly understand that.”
“You do? You don’t hate me?”
“I could never hate you, Gideon. The problem is that I’m not sure I can trust you romantically. I trust you as my friend, of course, but I can’t trust you not to break my heart again.”
Gideon (Seven Sons Book 7) Page 4
