A Stone Creek Collection, Volume 2

by Linda Lael Miller

  Ashley gulped down her O’Ballivan pride, and it wasn’t easy to swallow. “I’ll let you know,” she said, with what dignity she had left. “Do me a favor, will you? Call Tanner and Olivia and let them know I got here okay?”

  “Sure,” Melissa said.

  They said their goodbyes soon after that, and hung up.

  As tired as she was, Ashley knew she wouldn’t sleep.

  She took a bath, brushed her teeth and put on her pajamas.

  She watched a newscast on the guestroom TV, waited until the very end for the weather report.

  More snow on the way. O’Hare was shut down, and the police were asking everyone to stay off the roads except in the most dire emergencies.

  At quarter after ten, a knock sounded on Ashley’s door.

  “It’s me,” Jack called, in a loud whisper. “Can I come in?”

  Before Ashley could answer, one way or the other, the door opened and he stepped inside, carrying a white bag in one hand.

  “Nothing stops the post office or pharmacy delivery drivers,” he said, holding out the bag.

  The pregnancy test, of course.

  Ashley’s hand trembled as she reached out to accept it. “Come back later,” she said, moving toward her bathroom door.

  Jack sat down on the side of her bed. “I’ll wait,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Huddled in the McKenzies’ guest bathroom, Ashley stared down at the plastic stick in mingled horror and delight.

  A plus sign.

  She was pregnant.

  Ashley made some rapid calculations in her head; normally, if she hadn’t been under stress, it would have been a no-brainer to figure out that the baby was due sometime in September. Because she was frazzled, it took longer.

  “Well?” Jack called from the other side of the door. As a precaution, Ashley had turned the lock; otherwise, he might have stormed in on her, he was so anxious to learn the results.

  Ashley swallowed painfully. She was bursting with the news, but if she told Jack now, she would, in effect, be trapping him. He’d feel honor-bound to marry her, whether he really wanted to or not.

  And suppose he died?

  That, of course, would be awful either way.

  But maybe knowing about the baby would somehow heal Jack, inspire him to try harder to recover. To believe he could.

  The knob jiggled. “Ashley?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Okay,” Jack replied, “but are you pregnant?”

  “It’s inconclusive,” Ashley said, too earnestly and too cheerfully.

  “I read the package. You get either a plus or a minus,” Jack retorted, not at all cheerful, but very earnest. “Which is it, Ashley?”

  Ashley closed her eyes for a moment, offered up a silent prayer for wisdom, for strength, for courage. She simply wasn’t a very good liar; Jack would see through her if she tried to deceive him. And, anyway, deception seemed wrong, however good her intentions might be. The child was as much Jack’s as her own, and he had a right to know he was going to be a father.

  “It’s—it’s a plus.”

  “Open the door,” Jack said. Was that jubilation she heard in his voice, or irritation? Joy—or dread?

  Ashley pushed the lock button in the center of the knob, and stepped back quickly to avoid being run down by a man on a mission. She was still holding the white plastic stick in one hand.

  Jack took it from her, examined the little panel at one end, giving nothing away by his expression. His shoulders were tense, though, and his breathing was fast and shallow.

  “My God,” he said finally. “Ashley, we made a baby.”

  “You and me,” Ashley agreed, sniffling a little.

  Jack raised his eyes to hers. She thought she saw a quickening there, something akin to delight, but he looked worried, too. “You weren’t going to tell me?” he asked. “I wouldn’t exactly describe a plus sign as ‘inconclusive.’”

  “I didn’t know how you’d react,” Ashley said. She still couldn’t read him—was he glad or sad?

  “How I’d react?” he echoed. “Ashley, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, besides you.”

  Ashley stared at him, stricken to silence, stricken by joy and surprise and a wild, nearly uncontainable hope.

  “You do want this baby, don’t you?” Jack asked.

  “Of course I do,” Ashley blurted. “I wasn’t sure you did, that’s all.”

  Jack looked down at the stick again, shaking his head and grinning.

  “I peed on that, you know,” Ashley pointed out, reaching for the test stick, intending to throw it away.

  Jack held it out of her reach. “We’re keeping this. You can glue it into the kid’s baby book or something.”

  “Jack, it’s not sanitary,” Ashley pointed out. Why was she talking about trivial things, when so much hung in the balance?

  “Neither are wet diapers,” Jack reasoned calmly. “Sanitation is all well and good, but a kid needs good old-fashioned germs, too, so he—or she—can build up all the necessary antibodies.”

  “You don’t have to marry me if you don’t want to,” Ashley said, too quickly, and then wished she could bite off her tongue.

  “Sure, I do,” Jack said. “Call me old-fashioned, but I think a kid ought to have two legal parents.”

  “Sure, you have to marry me, or sure, you want to?” Ashley asked.

  “Oh, I want to, all right,” Jack told her, his voice hoarse, his eyes glistening. “The question is, do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? You could be a widow in six months, or even sooner. A widow with a baby to raise.”

  “Not if you fight to live, Jack,” Ashley said.

  He looked away, evidently staring into some grim scenario only he could see. “There’s plenty of money,” he said, as though speaking to someone else. “If nothing else, I made a good living doing what I did. You would never want for anything, and neither would our baby.”

  “I don’t care about money,” Ashley countered honestly, and a little angrily, too. I care about you, and this baby, and our life together. Our long, long life together. “I love you, remember?”

  He set the test stick carefully aside, on the counter by the sink, and pulled Ashley out into the main part of the small suite. “I can’t propose to you in a bathroom,” he said.

  Ashley laughed and cried.

  Awkwardly, Jack dropped to one knee, still holding her hand. “I love you, Ashley O’Ballivan. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He gave an exuberant shout, got to his feet again and pulled her into his arms, practically drowning her in a deep, hungry kiss.

  The guestroom door popped open.

  “Oops,” Dr. McKenzie the elder said, blushing.

  Jack and Ashley broke apart, Jack laughing, Ashley embarrassed and happy and not a little dazed.

  Bill looked even more chagrined than before. “I heard a yell and I thought—”

  “Everything’s okay, Dad,” Jack said, with gruff affection. “It’s better than okay. I just asked Ashley to marry me, and she said yes.”

  “I see,” Bill said, smiling, and quietly closed the door.

  A jubilant “Yes!” sounded from the hallway. Ashley pictured her future father-in-law punching the air with one fist, a heartening thought.

  “I still might die,” Jack reminded her.

  “Welcome to the human race,” Ashley replied. “From the moment any of us arrive here, we’re on our way out again.”

  “I’d like to make love to you right now,” Jack said.

  “Not here,” Ashley answered. “I couldn’t—not in your dad’s house.”

  Jack nodded slowly. “You’re as old-fashione
d as I am,” he said. “As soon as this storm lets up, though, we’re out of here.”

  They sat down, side by side, on the bed where both of them wanted to make love, and neither intended to give in to desire.

  Not just yet, anyway.

  “How soon can we get married?” Jack asked, taking her hand, stroking the backs of her knuckles with the pad of his thumb.

  Ashley’s heart, full to bursting, shoved its way up into her throat and lodged there. “Wait a second,” she protested, when she finally gathered the breath to speak. The aftershocks of Jack’s kiss were still banging around inside her. “There are things we have to decide first.”

  “Like?”

  “Like where we’re going to live,” Ashley said, nervous now. She liked Chicago, what little she’d seen of the place, that is, but Stone Creek would always be home.

  “Wherever you want,” Jack told her quietly. “And I know that’s the old hometown. Just remember that your family isn’t exactly wild about me.”

  “They’ll get over it,” Ashley told him, with confidence. “Once they know you’re going to stick around this time.”

  “Just try shaking me off your trail, lady,” Jack teased. He leaned toward her, kissed her again, this time lightly, and in a way that shook her soul.

  “Does that mean you won’t go back to whatever it is you do for a living?” Ashley ventured.

  “It means I’m going to shovel snow and carry out the trash and love you, Ashley. For as long as we both shall live.”

  Tears of joy stung her eyes. “That probably won’t be enough to keep you busy,” she fretted. “You’re used to action—”

  “I’m sick of action. At least, the kind that involves covert security operations. Vince can run the company, along with a few other people I trust. I can manage it from the computer in your study.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust Vince anymore,” Ashley said.

  “I got a little peeved with him,” Jack admitted, “but he’s sound. He’d have been long gone if he wasn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t be taking off all of the sudden—on some important job that required your expertise?”

  “I’m good at what I do, Ashley,” Jack said. “But I’m not so good that I can’t delegate. Maybe I’ll hang out with Tanner sometimes, though, riding the range and all that cowboy-type stuff.”

  “Do you know how to ride a horse?”

  Jack chuckled. “It can’t be that much different from riding a camel.” He grinned. “And I’d be a whole lot closer to the ground.”

  That last statement sobered both of them.

  Jack might not be just closer to the ground, he might wind up under it.

  “I’m going to make it, Ashley,” he assured her.

  She dropped her forehead against his shoulder, wrapped her arms around him, let herself cling for a few moments. “You’d better,” she said. “You’d just better.”

  * * *

  Three days later, the storm had finally moved on, leaving a crystalline world behind, trees etched with ice, blankets of white covering every roof.

  A private jet, courtesy of Brad, skimmed down onto the tarmac at a private airfield on the fringes of the Windy City, and Jack and Ashley turned to say temporary farewells to Jack’s entire family, gathered there to see them off.

  The whole clan would be traveling to Stone Creek for the wedding, which would take place in two weeks. Valentine’s Day would have been perfect, but with so many guests already booked to stay at the bed-and-breakfast, it was impossible, and neither Jack nor Ashley wanted to wait until the next one rolled around.

  Bill McKenzie pumped his eldest son’s hand, the hem of his expensive black overcoat flapping in a brisk breeze, then drew him into a bear hug.

  “Better get yourselves onto that plane and out of this wind,” Bill said, at last, his voice choked. He bent to kiss Ashley’s cheek. “I always wanted a daughter,” he added, in a whisper.

  Jack nodded, then shook hands with each of his brothers. Every handshake turned into a hug. Lastly, he embraced Abigail, his stepmother.

  Ashley looked away, grappling with emotions of her own, watched as the metal stairs swung down out of the side of the jet with an electronic hum. The pilot stood in the doorway, grinning, and she recognized Vince Griffin—the man who’d held a gun on her in her own kitchen, the night Ardith and Rachel arrived.

  “Better roll, boss,” he called to Jack. “There’s more weather headed this way, and I’d like to stay ahead of it.”

  Jack took Ashley’s arm, steered her gently up the steps, into the sumptuous cabin of the jet. There were eight seats, each set of two facing the other across a narrow fold-down table.

  “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?” Vince asked Jack, blustering with manly bravado and boyishly earnest at the same time.

  “No,” Jack answered. “It’s obvious that you wangled the job so you could be the one to take us home to Stone Creek.”

  Home to Stone Creek. That sounded so good to Ashley, especially coming from Jack.

  Vince laughed. “I’m trying to get back in your good graces, boss,” he said, flipping a switch to retract the stairs, then shutting and securing the cabin door. “Is it working?”

  “Maybe,” Jack said.

  “I hate it when you say ‘maybe,’” Vince replied.

  “Just fly this thing,” Jack told him mildly, with mischief in his eyes. “I want to stay ahead of the weather as much as you do.”

  Vince nodded, retreated into the cockpit, and shut the door behind him.

  Solicitously, Jack helped Ashley out of her coat, sat her down in one of the sumptuous leather seats and swiveled it to buckle her seat belt for her.

  A thrill of anticipation went through her.

  Not yet, she told herself.

  Jack must have been reading her mind. “As soon as we get home,” he vowed, leaning over her, bracing himself on the armrests of her seat, “we’re going to do it like we’ve never done it before.”

  That remark inspired another hot shiver. “Are we, now?” she said, her voice deliberately sultry.

  Jack thrust himself away from her, since the plane was already taxiing down the runway, took his own seat across from hers and fastened his belt for takeoff.

  Four and a half hours later, they landed outside Stone Creek.

  Brad and Meg were waiting to greet them, along with Olivia and Tanner, Carly and Sophie, and Melissa.

  “Thank God you’re back,” Melissa said, close to Ashley’s ear, after hugging her. “I thought I was going to have to cook.”

  Brad stood squarely in front of Jack, Ashley noticed, out of the corner of her eye, his arms folded and his face stern.

  Jack did the same thing, gazing straight into Brad’s eyes.

  “Uh-oh,” Melissa breathed. “Testosterone overload.”

  Neither man moved. Or spoke.

  Olivia finally nudged Brad hard in the ribs. “Behave yourself, big brother,” she said. “Jack will be part of the family soon, and that means the two of you have to get along.”

  It didn’t mean any such thing, of course, but to Ashley’s profound relief, Brad softened visibly at Olivia’s words. Then, after some hesitation, he put out a hand.

  Jack took it.

  After the shake, Brad said, “That doesn’t mean you can mistreat my kid sister, hotshot.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” Jack said. “I love her.” He curved an arm around Ashley, pulled her close against his side, looked down into her upturned face. “Always have, always will.”

  Two weeks later

  Stone Creek Presbyterian Church

  “It’s tacky,” Olivia protested to Melissa, zipping herself into her bridesmaid’s dress with some difficulty, since she was still a little on the pud
gy side from having the twins. “Coming to a wedding with a U-Haul hitched to the back of your car!”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “I have to be in Phoenix bright and early Monday morning to start my new job,” she said, yet again. The three sisters had been over the topic many times. Most of Melissa’s belongings had already been moved to the fancy condo in Scottsdale; the rented trailer contained the last of them.

  Initially, flushed with the success of helping Ashley steer the bed-and-breakfast through the Valentine’s Day rush, Melissa had seemed to be wavering a little on the subject of moving away. After all, she liked her job at the small, local firm where she’d worked since graduating from law school, but then Dan Guthrie had suddenly eloped with Holly the Waitress. Now nothing would move Melissa to stay.

  She was determined to shake the dust of Stone Creek off her feet and start a whole new life—elsewhere.

  Ashley turned her back to her sisters and her mind to her wedding, smoothing the beaded skirt of her ivory-silk gown in front of the grainy full-length mirror affixed to the back of the pastor’s office door. She and Melissa had scoured every bridal shop within a two-hundred-mile radius to find it, while Olivia searched the Internet, and the dress was perfect.

  Not so the bridesmaids’ outfits, Ashley reflected, happily rueful. They were bright yellow taffeta, with square necklines, puffy sleeves, big bows at the back, and way too many ruffles.

  What was I thinking? Ashley asked herself, stifling a giggle.

  The answer, of course, was that she hadn’t been thinking. She’d fallen wholly, completely and irrevocably in love with Jack McKenzie, dazed in the daytime, crazed at night, when they made love until they were both sweaty and breathless and gasping for air.

  The yellow dresses must have seemed like a good idea at the time, she supposed. Olivia and Melissa had surely argued against that particular choice—but Ashley honestly had no memory of it.

  “We’re going to look like giant parakeets in the pictures,” Olivia complained now, but her eyes were warm and moist as she came to stand behind Ashley in front of the mirror. “You look so beautiful.”

  Ashley turned, and she and Olivia embraced. “I’ll make it up to you,” Ashley said. “Having to wear those awful dresses, I mean.”