The Marriage Command

by Susan Fox

  “It’s old history,” he growled again.

  Claire gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I don’t doubt that,” she agreed, “but I don’t want to pay for old history that had nothing to do with what I’ve done or will do in the future. Don’t I qualify for a chance of my own with you?”

  He growled again and abruptly snatched her off the edge of the desk to his lap as if she were no bigger than Cody. He held her with one arm and caught the back of her head with his hand to pull her close for a fiery kiss.

  She tasted his anger and his frustration, but he immediately gentled the kiss then dragged his lips away to cinch her tightly against him with hard, strong arms. Claire’s cheek rested near his throat and her forehead was pressed against his jaw.

  The moments pulsed by and she kept utterly silent and still, hoping he’d speak and expose the mysteries. She could feel the small war in him, but then it began to calm and she was afraid he’d decided not to tell her.

  “My mother was a piece of work,” he said at last. “She looked fragile, but she was stronger than most men who do hard labor. My daddy was crazy about her, but the only thing she seemed to love about him was his money.”

  Claire all but held her breath as she listened.

  “She hated the ranch, so she tried to live in town or travel as much as possible. When Daddy put his foot down, she got even by going to work on Cliff and me, filling our heads with nonsense.

  “She wanted us to hate this place as much as she did, and she wanted us to take her side against Daddy. It didn’t work on me, but Cliff was a lot younger so she had a lot more influence on him. And yet it didn’t matter to our daddy what she did to him or what she did to us, or even how many times she betrayed him by trying to turn us against him. He knew about it, but he was so crazy about her that all he did was make up excuses about why she did it.”

  He stopped for a while as if lost in memory. If he didn’t go on, he’d given her enough information to understand a lot of things. Now she knew why he’d warned her about coming between him and Cody, and about spoiling Cody on the ranch.

  Another message was also coming through loud and clear: Logan believed that it had been his father’s love for his mother that had set him up and made him vulnerable to being manipulated and used and betrayed, and for them all to be set up for turmoil and unhappiness.

  “She played on his feelings for her,” he said, “time after time, working him, accusing him of not loving her, going around teary-eyed and refusing to eat.”

  He paused briefly then said, “I’m glad he outlived her. At least she didn’t get control of this place. If she had, she would have sold it to the first buyer who came along. She had no respect for anything to do with this ranch except for the income it and the oil wells generated. My daddy never got over her, and died loving her. He didn’t last two years after she was killed…crossing the street in San Antonio.”

  He chuckled then, but it sounded weary and cynical and anything but truly amused. “How’s that for irony?”

  Claire’s fingers had been toying absently with one of the buttons on his shirt as she’d concentrated on every word he’d said, but now she flattened her palm on his chest. “I’m sorry, Logan. What a confusing way to grow up.”

  She lifted her head and looked into his face. “I’m glad you told me. But there’s something else I’d like to know.”

  Logan moved his hand and brushed the back of a knuckle against her cheek. “I think I can guess,” he said, then smiled faintly.

  Claire could see the dark memories that still lingered in his eyes, and she suddenly knew that the whole story about his parents was uglier than he’d let on, but she could tell just by the fact that he’d told her as much as he had that he was already letting some of it go.

  She smiled softly back. “All right. Let’s see how good a guesser you are.” He started right away.

  “You want to know if I’ll give you a chance to be you, and if you’ll have to pay for my momma’s mistakes. And my daddy’s.”

  Claire leaned back from him a little, still searching his dark eyes and every nuance of his somber expression before she confirmed his guesses.

  “I don’t expect instant trust,” she said, “and I don’t expect you to force yourself to feel something for me that you don’t. I just don’t want you to refuse the possibility, or to refuse to let it happen. If it happens.”

  She’d added that last to protect her pride, though she didn’t know why. It would probably hurt her pride more if he honestly couldn’t love her than if he simply refused to love her.

  Logan’s callused fingertips traced lightly along her cheek. “If, huh? I thought you were more perceptive than that, Claire.”

  Now he gave her that slow, sexy smile that made him so breathtakingly handsome. All at once she knew that Logan had passed some personal milestone, that they both had. But common sense told her she already loved him too much to chance letting her hopes get too high about what might happen next.

  And it was too soon especially to believe that she’d just heard him give a significant hint about what might happen next. Or about what he might confess, though her heart was fluttering with excitement.

  “No, it’s not what I mean by saying ‘If,”’ she ventured, a little breathless, “it’s what do you mean by saying ‘If’?”

  Now his smile widened. “If, Claire? If it happens? You don’t miss much, honey, so I can’t figure how you’d miss what the past few days have been about.”

  Claire lifted her brows at that. “Far be it from me to presume,” she lied, then had to deal with a nervous giggle that almost got free as she felt her heart begin to rise with wild hope.

  “All right,” he said, “I’m prepared to indulge my wife. The past few days have really been about the fact that there was never any ‘If it happens.’ Mainly because ‘It’ had already happened, and I knew it as far back as when you stood in the hall outside the living room that first day and glared up at me like a she-cat. You practically growled when you told me Cody wasn’t a week old or a month old, that he was a trusting little boy who’d lived all his life with his momma. You were dying to call me the most wicked, dastardly monster on the planet, because you loved a kid you were terrified I wouldn’t treat right. That’s when ‘It’ happened—even though I refused to believe it.”

  Claire felt a flush go through her from head to toe. “It?”

  Logan leaned his head back as if she’d worn him out. “Please, darlin’. First it’s ‘if,’ and now it’s ‘it.’ Let’s just do the shorthand and call it ‘love.’” He lifted his head and pulled her closer. “I love you, Claire. I can’t stand going on like we have for the past week, so how ’bout we just say the words then go prove it to each other all night?”

  It was Claire who put her palm on his lean cheek then kissed him, softly, sweetly, so emotional about it that her eyes stung. She drew back only long enough to say, “I love you,” before she kissed him again.

  Sometime in between that next handful of kisses, Logan breathed the words, “I love you, Claire,” at least twice.

  And then he gathered her up and rolled back the desk chair to stand. As he carried her to the bedroom end of the house, they kissed their way there, turning off lights, then pausing as they kissed some more.

  Claire’s heart was still pounding with the wonder of it, but any worries she’d had about their sudden marriage and the future began to melt away with each gentle love word and assurance.

  Later, after they’d truly consummated their love, they lay together in the dim light Logan had left on, talking. Eventually the talk meandered to Kiki’s invitation for that next morning.

  Logan laughed when she told him, then went grim and ground out a low, “There’s not a single way on God’s green earth that I’ll let Kiki Lynch give my wife riding lessons.”

  Claire smiled at that. She already knew he was right. “She told me that I would want to learn to ride with a little ‘female elegance.’ But then she called
me Carla again, and I knew she might still have a teensy bit of animosity toward me. I was hoping I could tell her that you were taking me riding in the morning so I could get out of it politely. After all, she was very good to shop with me for the right clothes today. I don’t want to hurt her feelings or offend her.”

  Logan rose up on an elbow to give her a suspicious look that was pure playacting. “Is that why we had our talk earlier? Because you wanted me to get you out of going to Kiki’s tomorrow?”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “Oh my, will I have to prove my sincerity to you again tonight?”

  Logan gave her a broad grin and leaned down. “I was hopin’ you would, darlin’,” he rasped. “And then maybe again after that,” he added as his lips covered hers.

  There was nothing more for a while but the sounds and tender acts of a man and a woman who were delighted with each other and passionate about it.

  A man and a woman who would soon grow to be too devoted to each other and too much in love to do anything less than succeed with the marriage and the life they’d build for themselves. A marriage and a life they’d build and share, not only with each other and the sweet child they had now, but also with the sweet children who would come later.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-6607-3

  THE MARRIAGE COMMAND

  First North American Publication 2003.

  Copyright © 2003 by Susan Fox.

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