The Cowboy's Promise

by Teresa Southwick

  “What, sweetie?”

  Erica moved close and pulled her into a hug. “I just want to thank you for making today happen. For putting up with me through good and bad. And for being the best mom in the world.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “If I’m half as good as you are, I’ll do right by this little one.”

  “You’re going to be a wonderful mother. I love you.” Angela smiled but her mouth trembled for just a moment. “You’re going to make me cry and ruin my makeup.”

  “I’m sorry, but I needed to say it.”

  Over the years there’d been ups and downs in their relationship. But the bonds between them were stronger now than ever.

  “Okay, ladies,” her mom said, “let’s get moving.”

  Erica followed the other two women down the stairs. The house was decorated with flowers for a small reception following the ceremony. Her mother had hired Brittany to handle the event, and Erica already knew that woman could make a feast out of bread and water.

  She picked up her bouquet from the box on the entryway table. It was made up of greens and white roses with several orange ones to add a pop of fall color. Mel took her own bouquet, a smaller version of Erica’s and they left the house, then stepped into the waiting town car.

  A short time later the three of them arrived at the small white church with its graceful, elegant spire. It was charming and traditional and completely perfect. In the vestibule Brittany was waiting for them, looking tall and chic in a pale pink sheath dress with her hair smoothly pulled back into a side bun. Robby was by her side, dapper in his little dark suit and tie, and holding a pillow with two rings. They were symbolic since Morgan’s best man had the real ones. And then she saw her father, so handsome in his black suit and tie.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Baby girl—” He stopped and swallowed. “I’m not sure I can give you away.”

  She moved closer, then stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “You’re not. You’re just relieved of duty. I have a good man who will be there for me every day, every step of the way.”

  “I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to part with you.”

  “Okay,” Brittany said, taking charge as she gave them all a critical once-over. “Believe it or not, so far everything has gone off without a hitch.”

  “Of course,” Erica said. “You wouldn’t accept anything less.”

  “Darn right.” She gave Erica a final approving look. “You ready?”

  “Absolutely.” She grinned at the boy who would very soon be her nephew. “Robby Dalton, you look awfully handsome.”

  “Grandma says it runs in the family.” The boy gave Brittany a wary look. “My dad and Uncle Morgan told me I have to do everything she says.”

  “They’re right.” But Brittany smiled at him. “You’re going to do great.”

  Just then the vestibule doors opened, and Gabe walked in. When he saw Erica, a tender look of approval slid into his eyes. But when his gaze settled on his fiancée, he was speechless. Finally he said to her, “Next summer this will be us.”

  Mel blew him a kiss. “I can’t wait.”

  “Hold that thought, you two. It’s time to do this wedding,” Brittany said. “The groom’s mother is already seated. Gabe, escort your mother down the aisle.”

  He held out his arm and Angela took it. The doors remained open when he walked her down to the front row.

  “You ready, Robby?”

  The boy looked up at Brittany. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The organist in the choir loft started playing the traditional “Wedding March,” and Robby confidently walked down the aisle, followed by Mel.

  “You’re up, bride.” Brittany hugged her quickly, then brushed away a tear. “You look radiant. Go be happy.”

  “Thank you. For everything.”

  Erica took her father’s arm, and he put his hand over hers as they matched their steps to the music. She smiled at people as she passed them on her way to the altar. Her groom stood there with his father by his side. Morgan had asked him to be best man, and his mother had cried more than a few happy tears over that.

  Then she looked only at Morgan, and he was looking back at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He sure made her feel that way. In his dark suit and royal blue silk tie, the man defined the word handsome, but he was and always would be her cowboy. Eagerly they said their vows and made forever promises that felt so very right.

  After pictures, everyone came back to the Ambling A for the reception. Furniture had been moved out of the living and great rooms and tables set up. There were white tablecloths and flowers and a cocktail hour before dinner.

  At the family table Malone looked a little uncomfortable being a guest instead of doing the cooking. But Erica had insisted he enjoy her wedding, too. And he’d pronounced the catered food not bad.

  There was a dance area on the patio where they shared their first dance as husband and wife. Morgan held out his hand, and she put hers in his palm, knowing somehow that this would never get old.

  Afterward he led her back to the family table, where Gabe and Mel were sitting with her parents and Grandpa Alex. She took the seat beside Malone, who she swore was trying to hide that he was brushing away a tear.

  “Sure do wish Josiah could be here to see how pretty his great-granddaughter is.”

  “I believe he’s here in spirit.” She leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment.

  Then the DJ started talking. “The bride requested a song, a real oldie. It’s a tradition at Abernathy weddings. Her great-grandfather, Josiah Abernathy, had it played at his wedding to Cora. Her grandfather did the same as did her parents, George and Angela. So, without further ado, here we go.”

  The strains of the music began and when the lyrics kicked in, all the guests began to sing along.

  “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do—” They finished with a rousing, “But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.”

  “Holy cow.” Malone sat up straight and sounded very excited. “Holy cow, that’s it!”

  Erica had never heard that tone from the normally reserved, unflappable man. “What’s it?”

  “The name I couldn’t remember. The name Josiah said when he was talking about the prettiest little girl in the world. It was Daisy.”

  Erica let that sink in for a moment, then she quivered with excitement. She looked at Gabe and Mel, whose expressions mirrored her own. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think he was talking about a girlfriend.”

  Her brother nodded. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s his daughter’s name. Her adoptive name.”

  Erica gripped her new husband’s hand. “And I bet Gramps had that song at his wedding as a way to keep his daughter a part of him and his family in any way he could.”

  “This may be the piece of information we needed,” Gabe said. “I’ll clue Amanda in right away and we can continue the search.” He and Melanie went to find her.

  “Way to go, Malone,” Erica said.

  “Glad I could help. Finally. I need a drink.” He got up and went to the bar, and the rest of her family followed.

  So, Erica was alone with her new husband and grinned at him. “Do I know how to clear a table, or what?”

  “It’s your superpower.” He smiled, then kissed her.

  She was breathless when he stopped. “I aim to please.”

  “So that song is a family tradition?”

  “It is. And I wanted all the Abernathy customs today, because we didn’t start out in the most traditional way.”

  “That song worked in more ways than one.” Then he put his hand on her abdomen and smiled at the baby’s movement. “And you’d look sweet anywhere, but we need something more family friendly than a bicycle built for two.”

  “I like the way you think.”

  It
took a very special man to so completely embrace raising a child he didn’t make, and her heart was full of emotion. “I love the man you are. You have a heart as big as the Montana sky, Morgan Dalton, and you really stepped up. You’ll be an incredible daddy.”

  “I had no choice,” he said. “I made a promise to you. And then I fell in love.” He kissed her softly, then met her gaze. “And this cowboy always keeps his promises.”

  * * *

  Look for His Christmas Cinderella by Christy Jeffries, the next book in the new Harlequin Special Edition continuity Montana Mavericks: What Happened to Beatrix?

  On sale November 2020, wherever Harlequin books and ebooks are sold.

  And catch up with the previous Montana Mavericks titles:

  In Search of the Long-Lost Maverick

  by New York Times bestselling author Christine Rimmer

  The Cowboy’s Comeback

  by Melissa Senate

  The Maverick’s Baby Arrangement

  by Kathy Douglass

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Home for the Baby’s Sake by Christine Rimmer.

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  Home for the Baby’s Sake

  by Christine Rimmer

  Chapter One

  On a balmy afternoon in early September, Roman Marek stood on the sidewalk at the corner of Carmel Street and Pacific Lane in Valentine Bay, Oregon. His hands in his pockets, he scowled at the excess of arches and scrollwork adorning the facade of the building directly in front of him.

  The Valentine Bay Theatre was nothing short of a nightmare—at least, to Roman it was. He’d made his fortune in Las Vegas real estate and he had a definite preference for efficient, light-filled, modern spaces. The last thing he would ever invest in was a run-down, century-old theater in the Venetian Gothic style.

  But invest in it he had—in fact, he’d bought the damn thing outright. His mother had insisted. And Roman Marek would do just about anything for his mother. He loved her and he owed her.

  As for her ridiculous fondness for the old theater, when Roman was a kid, his mom used to bring him here to watch second-run movies and attend community events. She looked back on those days through rose-colored glasses. And that was why, a few weeks ago, when Sasha learned that the elderly owner had died and the heirs wanted to get rid of it, she had demanded that Roman buy the place.

  Buy it, he had. And now he needed to decide what the hell to do with it.

  To him, a wrecking ball seemed the most effective solution to the problem—just knock it down and build something better. But demolition wasn’t going to fly with his mother. To keep Sasha happy, the building would need to remain standing and to retain at least a semblance of its original design.

  As Roman glared at his recent acquisition and continued to consider his limited options, a skinny guy in khakis and a plaid shirt strode past the ticket booth and went inside.

  With a shrug, Roman followed. Might as well have a good look around, get a better idea of what he was up against.

  He entered a lobby that was pretty much as expected, with an aged maroon-and-black carpet in a dizzying pattern of interconnected medallions. There were lots of arches, fussy plaster moldings and several Tuscan pillars marching relentlessly toward the back wall. Curving stairs topped with fussy ironwork led up to the balcony.

  The good news? Though the air smelled kind of stale, he detected no odor of mold or mildew. He might get lucky and not have to call in a mold abatement crew.

  Roman found his way into the backstage area and saw that there was some kind of planning meeting happening out on the stage itself. There were a couple of hot blondes and a few long-winded middle-aged people, all of them sitting in a circle in folding chairs. He eavesdropped without shame as they droned on about a Festival of Fall Revue, a haunted house and a Christmas show—community events, complete money wasters, as far as Roman was concerned. Unfortunately, the former owner had signed on for them and it was part of the deal that Roman would honor those commitments.

  Thus, the upcoming events were money wasters Roman could do nothing about. It would be the first of the year before he could get going on his plans to make something useful of this musty pile of concrete and stone.

  He stood in the shadows behind a narrow black velour drape, watching the meeting, unnoticed, for several minutes—and not because he was interested in community events.

  One of the hot blondes had caught his eye. She wore green shorts and a white shirt and had a pretty face—a gentle oval with wide-set eyes, a small chin and a delicately shaped, shell-pink mouth. The other hot blonde was pretty, too, her face more angular, her pale hair even longer. He would guess that the two of them were sisters, possibly fraternal twins. But he liked the one in the green shorts the best.

  As if it mattered in the least.

  Shaking off the weird spell the pretty blonde had cast on him, Roman turned away and continued his self-guided tour of the property. Come the new year, when he could finally boot the theater people and community boosters out, he wanted to know where he was going with the building, to have everything in order to start ripping out walls.

  The more he looked around, the better he felt about the situation. It could have been so much worse. The place needed a boatload of work, but it wasn’t a bad space. And it was big. He explored the warren of rooms backstage and the large storage and docking area at the rear of the building.

  The property could be a killer boutique hotel. Valentine Bay had a burgeoning tourist trade. When the transformation was complete, Roman would have the out-of-towners lining up for a chance to stay here. Already, he was envisioning the extensive remodel that would keep a sense of the old theater and yet be streamlined, modern and welcoming to hotel guests.

  By the time he returned to the backstage area, only one hot blonde remained—the one he liked, in the green shorts. Everyone else had cleared out. She was busy on a tablet. Her thick, straight platinum hair fell forward to mask her face as she bent over the tablet on her lap, typing out notes or maybe an email.

  He hesitated offstage again, watching her, smiling a little at the tender curve of her back, the way she had her knees braced together supporting the tablet, her lower legs apart, ankles wrapped around the chair legs. She wore battered Converse All Stars and she was so damn cute, even with her sweet face obscured by her hair.

  He should move the hell on. But some random impulse held him in place, had him hoping that maybe she would glance over her shoulder and spot him, give him an opening to find out her name.

  Just as he was about to give it up and turn away, a tall, gangly dude appeared from the wings on the opposite side of the stage. Roman remembered him, the guy in the plaid shirt, the one he’d followed inside.

  “Hailey,” said the lanky guy. He had a distinctive voice, low and commanding for a man his size. “At last, I have you alone.” He sounded like the villain in some tacky old-time melodrama. All he needed was a tall black hat and a greasy mustache to twirl.

  The blonde was not impressed. She didn’t even bother to look up as she waved a dismissing hand. “Doug. Don’t you have levels to check in the light booth or something?”

  “When are you going to let me take you to dinner?”

  Her focus still on her tablet, the blonde muttered, “Don’t even go there.”

  “I can’t seem to help myself.” Doug moved clear of the wings and onto the stage.

  “I mean it, Doug. Don’t.”

  But Doug was nothing if not persistent. He took another step. “There’s always been such powerful energy between us. Remember senio
r year? The Crucible? I was John Proctor and you were the feisty, wild, troublesome, angry and headstrong young Abigail...”

  The blonde did look up then. Roman watched her spine draw straight. Shaking her head, she stood and set her tablet on the chair. “You need to just give it up. You get that, right?”

  Doug put a bony hand to his heart. “Don’t pretend you don’t feel it—bam! Like a bolt of lightning every time our eyes meet. I promise you, no one else ever has to know.” He moved in close to the blonde named Hailey.

  And then he reached for her.

  Roman didn’t even realize that he’d let out a low growl until he’d already started to her rescue—only to halt when she grabbed Doug’s arm and kicked his legs out from under him.

  Doug let out a shout of surprise as he landed on his ass at her feet, center stage. “Ouch,” he whined. His wounded expression was pretty damn comical. Groaning a little, he dragged himself upright again, one hand at his back. “That was just mean.”

  Hailey scoffed. “You’ll live—and you should know better.”

  “There are names I could call you,” Doug grumbled.

  “Just don’t try that again. You’ll end up back on your butt.”

  With a low, derisive sound, Doug turned and limped off the way he’d come.

  “It’s called harassment, Doug, and you need to quit it,” Hailey called to his retreating back. “You come on to me again, I’m giving Mariette a call.”

  “Leave my wife out of this,” Doug grumbled as he disappeared into the wings on the other side of the stage.

  Thoroughly entertained, Roman let out a chuckle.

  The blonde whirled to face him. He was close enough to her now to see that her wide eyes were a gorgeous lavender blue.

  He put up both hands. “Sorry. I saw what was happening and I hung around in case you needed backup.”

  She regarded him warily. “Who are you?”

  “Roman Marek.” He tipped his head toward the spot where Doug went down. “That was impressive. You have to do that often?”