Married by High Noon

by Leigh Greenwood

He didn’t respond, but she was certain he didn’t believe her. “My priorities and commitments have changed. I know this seems sudden, but it isn’t. Not really. Everything started to change when Mattie moved in. It changed even more when Danny was born. I didn’t realize it at the time because I was too busy to pay attention to my feelings. Lots of things changed without my realizing it.” Why didn’t he say something? The silence frightened her. “After your father’s and Mattie’s death and finding yourself Danny’s guardian, you probably felt a little like that.”

  “Feeling sad, hurt and overwhelmed isn’t the same. I haven’t changed my feelings about anything important. I’ve only added Danny to my family.”

  A numbing cold crept through Dana’s limbs. She shivered and sat up. She guessed she had her answer.

  “We’ve only been playacting for the benefit of the judge and Lucius’s lawyer.” Gabe sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. “You’ve been talking nearly every day about what you want to do when you get back to New York.”

  How odd that people could so misunderstand each other. “I was trying to convince myself I really wanted to go back to New York. But I hoped you’d ask me to stay.”

  “Would you?”

  “What we have together is what’s important, not where we live.”

  “Where I live is important to me. I can’t fulfill my obligations anywhere else.”

  “Don’t you have an obligation to yourself to be happy?”

  “As soon as I get custody of Danny, I’ll be happy.”

  She wanted to reach over and touch him, kiss him, put her hands all over him until he couldn’t keep himself from taking her into his arms. But she had some few shreds of pride.

  She had no idea how she could convince Gabe they ought to stay married, but she knew he loved her. She couldn’t believe he could make love to her the way he had without feeling something akin to love. Besides, she knew how he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. She knew naked hunger when she saw it. She also knew loneliness, longing for something out of reach.

  “I won’t pretend I’m not attracted to you,” Gabe said. His voice sounded under tight control. “I can’t be in the same house with you all the time, sleep in the room next to you, and keep my hands off of you. If it upsets you, I’ll sleep at my mother’s house.”

  “That would be all that’s needed to convince the judge to hand Danny over to Lucius.”

  “Then you can move Danny’s bed in here.”

  “Gabe, I don’t need protection. I like making love to you. I want to do it again and again. I’m saying that I love you, that I think you love me, that we can be the family Danny needs, the kind of family we both want.”

  “What about your career?” he asked. “And let’s not forget your parents. They’d move heaven and earth to keep you from marrying me or living in Iron Springs.”

  “I’m not going to marry to please my parents. I don’t know what I want to do about my career just now, but we can work something out.”

  “What if you can’t? What if you decide you hate Iron Springs and never want to come back here again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Your mother did. Even my wife did, and she grew up in the valley.”

  “I’m not Ellen.”

  “No. You’ve got even less reason to want to live here.”

  “We don’t have to live here, not all the time. And I don’t mean you have to desert your business or your friends. New York would be the perfect place for you. You could get three or four times as much for your work. You could develop a bigger shop, make more furniture, make more money.”

  “I’m not interested in a bigger shop or more money. I make furniture because I enjoy doing the work myself. It wouldn’t be the same if I had a whole roomful of assistants.”

  “You have Sam and Billy.”

  “We’re partners. We do everything together. They’re like family.”

  “You could take them to New York.”

  “They’d be as out of place as I would be.”

  “You could be comfortable anywhere you wanted to be. Try it for six months, even a month—”

  Gabe heaved himself up in the bed so suddenly he caused Dana to cut off her sentence.

  “There’s no point in talking about this,” he said. “It just makes things harder. We ought to go ahead with things the way we planned.”

  “Have you thought about what a divorce would do to Danny?”

  “We knew from the first we’d be getting divorced,” he said.

  “What if Lucius brings the case up again?”

  Gabe got up from the bed and reached for his clothes. “I’ll figure out something else, but I don’t think we ought to stay married.”

  He left the room, taking with him all the warmth and her happiness.

  Gabe had been miserable all week. He couldn’t pretend otherwise. Neither could he deny Dana was the problem, because he was falling in love with Dana. He could feel it happening minute by minute. He didn’t need to be alone with her to be forcefully reminded of how much he liked being with her, how much he needed her. That would seal his fate all the more quickly.

  He couldn’t allow himself to love her. It would never work.

  He’d finally realized it wasn’t about New York. He didn’t like big cities of any kind. He knew choosing to live in a remote mountain village had been an expensive choice, but he didn’t regret it. He knew what he’d given up—at least he thought he did—and he willingly paid the price.

  It wasn’t about her career. He didn’t have any objection to the woman he wanted to marry having a career, as long as that didn’t exclude children and a close relationship with him.

  He accepted the evidence of his own eyes and admitted Dana had changed. She would never be the stay-at-home wife he’d envisioned when he married Ellen, but she did want a family, she did like living in Iron Springs.

  He just didn’t believe she’d changed enough for him to trust his heart again.

  There, he’d finally said it. He was afraid to fall in love. Big, strong, confident Gabe Purvis trembled in fear of a little old emotion that could take a man like him and turn him inside out, leave him helpless.

  Wasn’t he helpless already? He hadn’t been this miserable in years. He couldn’t stay away from Dana when then were together. No matter what he vowed during the day, his resolve evaporated the minute he stepped in the house and she smiled at him. He called himself a liar, a cheat, a fraud, but it made no difference. The moment they put Danny to bed, he would make hot, passionate love to Dana, sometimes not letting her fall asleep until midnight. He would wake up renewed, invigorated, only to beat himself down during the day because he had no willpower. He would go home determined that this time things would be different.

  Then he would do it all over again.

  Because the way he looked at Dana had changed. All the things he used to think were so important to her—the things that stood between them—had disappeared. He no longer thought of her as a woman obsessed with career, success or independence. Just a woman looking for love, generous, able to give more love than she got.

  Now he could respect her decisions, admire some of them. And that despite disagreeing with her half the time! No wonder he felt as if he was going in circles.

  The most unexpected thing she’d done was create a life for the three of them that he’d come to depend on. He loved breakfast and dinner. They cooked together, ate together, cleaned up together. And he looked forward to lunch when she and Danny would come to the shop. Dana would sit quietly, smiling while Danny bubbled over with things he’d done at day care.

  Gabe especially liked the time after dinner. He and Danny would play on the floor while Dana watched. Lately they’d been able to talk her into joining them. He’d never realized how much fun she could be.

  Then there was their time together after Danny had gone to sleep. His body began to swell just thinking about it.

  She had set her trap and b
aited it with just about everything he’d ever wanted. And like an unsuspecting fool, he’d walked straight into it. Now he didn’t know if he could stand to be set free.

  But he would be. The judge would make his decision in a couple of weeks. If he didn’t agree to stay married to Dana, she would go back to New York.

  But could he trust any woman to want the same things he wanted when even his sister had been willing to do almost anything to get away from that very life-style?

  No. He’d had one disastrous marriage because he’d misjudged a woman, and it had nearly destroyed him. It had made him unaware of what was happening to his own sister. It had kept him from supporting his mother when she might have been able to prevent the rift in his family. His own confusion had kept him from confronting his father’s stubborn refusal to accept Mattie’s right to independence.

  No. It was too dangerous. He could learn to love Dana in a way that had never been possible with Ellen. If Ellen’s leaving had torn him apart, what would Dana’s walking out on him do?

  It would destroy him. No, he couldn’t risk it. He had to think of Danny.

  But thinking of Danny brought him back to Dana. No woman could love Danny more than she did. This very same love had brought about the change in her, caused her to create a warm home environment for Danny, an environment in which she wanted to include Gabe. All he had to do was accept what he’d been given.

  But to do that would mean trusting his heart again, and he couldn’t do that.

  So the argument went round and round in his head until he greeted his mother’s arrival at his workshop with relief. “What are you doing here?” he asked. She never came to the shop. She said the smell of the paints and chemicals gave her a headache.

  “I want to know what’s bothering you.”

  His mother never beat around the bush. If she wanted something, she asked flat-out.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve just been working extra hard to make up for the time I spent in New York.”

  “I didn’t come here to listen to the fibs you tell yourself. Or any you’re telling Dana. I want to know the truth.”

  That was the problem with mothers. They could always tell when you weren’t telling the truth. Even when you were telling half-truths.

  “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  Being evasive never worked, but he wanted to know if everybody else in Iron Springs could see him tearing himself apart.

  “You’re acting just like your father when he had something in his craw. He wouldn’t say a word, just walked around looking as if he’d bite you in half if you dared speak to him. When you start doing that to Billy and Sam, boys you’ve known all your life, something’s wrong.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Then there’s Dana.”

  “What about Dana?” Dana had gotten to be good friends with Liz and Salome, but he didn’t believe she would have said anything to his mother.

  “Dana’s walking around looking like she’s frozen stiff,” his mother said. “She laughs and smiles, tries to give the impression she’s happy when it’s perfectly obvious she’s miserable. The only person who could make her that miserable is you. I want to know what you’ve done to her.”

  Just what he needed, his mother to take Dana’s side. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Then what haven’t you done that you should have done?”

  “Why do you think if there’s anything wrong it has to be my fault?”

  “Most women learn early on they have to compromise, to bend. Men come up thinking they can have everything their own way. When they don’t get it, they make everybody miserable. Now, what’s going on?”

  He resented being put in the wrong. He just wanted to raise Danny, to give the kid as much love and family support as he could. Good intentions, but they’d gotten him caught between what he wanted to do and what he felt he ought to do. Either way he turned he’d be miserable.

  He hadn’t intended to tell his mother why he and Dana got married, but he had tired of hiding behind a lie. It had made Dana and him miserable. Best to get it out in the open.

  “Sit down,” he said, using a cloth to brush the dust off an old folding chair. “I’ve got something to tell you, and you’re not going to like it.”

  He told her everything, especially the fact that he thought he was falling in love with her.

  He had to give his mother credit. She didn’t faint, turn red in the face, or tell him he was a fool. She just listened.

  “You’re playing a mighty dangerous game,” she said when he finished.

  “I know.”

  “I’m not sure I’d have done the same thing, but given how things have turned out, I don’t see why you’re so upset. It looks to me like you’ve fallen in whipped cream despite doing your best to land in the ditch.”

  “What could a woman like Dana and me have in common?”

  “Do you love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Well I’m still not sure.” It irritated him that every woman thought she could tell him what he was feeling when he didn’t know himself.

  “If you don’t love her, it won’t make any difference how much you have in common,” his mother said. “And if you do, you’ll find the things you have in common are a lot more important that the things you don’t.”

  “Is that the way it was with you and Dad?”

  That question stopped her. Maybe it was unfair, but he had to ask it.

  “Yes, except for not letting Mattie go to college. I made a mistake there. I think I could have brought him around if I’d tried, but I was afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Losing him.”

  “Dad would never have divorced you.”

  “If I’d lost your Dad, divorce would have been easier than living with him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then you don’t love Dana the way you ought.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’re still afraid of loving her. If you really loved her, you wouldn’t let anything stop you.”

  “How can you say that after what happened with Ellen?”

  “Dana and Ellen have no more in common than Ellen and I do.”

  “Ma, look at the facts. Outside of Danny, we’d have nothing to keep us together.”

  He knew that wasn’t true the moment he said it. Even before the trip to New York they’d found plenty of shared interests.

  His mother stood and brushed nonexistent dust from her dress. “If what I suspect is true, you’re letting the best thing that’s ever happened to you slip away for the want of a little courage.”

  “I’m not a coward.”

  “You never have been except where Dana’s concerned. Even when she was a little girl, you used to keep your distance. Now you’re letting one mistake make you afraid to trust your heart.”

  “I’m not afraid. I told—”

  “All of us have to take chances to find what we want, son. Sometimes it’s only a small chance. Sometimes it’s a really big one. If your happiness is at stake, don’t you think it’s worth taking a chance?”

  “It could just as easily be my future misery. If I thought it could work—”

  “Maybe you can make it work. No one can guarantee that. You have to have the courage to try. Now I’ve lectured enough. I told Dana to bring you and Danny over for dinner tonight. I’m making chicken and dump-lings, and you can’t make that for just one person.”

  “Ma—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Gabe. Everything you ever wanted is being handed to you. Don’t keep telling me she’s different. If you want this marriage, or any marriage, to work, you’re going to have to make some compromises.”

  “There are some things you can compromise on and others you can’t.”

  “I know. Just make sure you haven’t mixed up the can’t’s with the can’s.”

  “How do you know which i
s which?”

  “You don’t, not always. Some things you take on faith. Other times you take a chance and hope things will work.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “She’s a genius,” Liz Dennis said to Gabe. “You ought to see the list of buyers she’s lined up for the fair. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, even Boston. She’s even talked Amos into holding rooms for them in the hotel for that weekend.”

  Liz had commissioned Gabe to make a desk for Matt. She came in every day to check on his progress and to report on Dana’s latest accomplishment. When she exhausted that subject, she would tell him again she didn’t know how they survived at the clinic before Dana started to volunteer. Salome had already asked Matt to put her on the payroll.

  “We have only local merchandise,” Gabe said “What are those buyers going to find to interest them?”

  “She talked the committee into letting her invite people from the whole valley. Then she got on the Internet and found names and addresses of people from Pennsylvania to Tennessee who craft handmade products. If they all come, we’ll have enough for several fairs.”

  Liz wasn’t the only person who seemed determined to make certain Gabe knew each one of the miracles Dana worked on behalf of the fair. He would have sworn every person in town had taken a vow to keep him informed on an hourly basis.

  “I can see why she made such a success of her antique business,” Liz said.

  “How do you know about that?” Both of them had been careful to say nothing of the business.

  “She wasn’t bragging,” Liz assured him, “though she would have every reason to if she wanted. She told us she owned part of a business, that she was taking a long vacation on her doctor’s advice. I just happened to mention the name to my ex-husband’s wife. She couldn’t believe I actually knew one of the owners. She said she can’t afford to shop there.”

  “Dana’s clients are rather wealthy.”

  “That’s what Phyllis said. We’re very lucky to have had her help us.”

  Others weren’t quite so subtle.

  “I don’t know what you’re going to do to keep her in Iron Springs,” Josie Woodhouse said.