Parnell’s gaze narrowed. “You don’t want to be making me mad, do you, Mary Louise?”
She dared a look at Willie Ron and drew strength and determination from his quiet, calm demeanor. Once more, he mouthed the words Go inside.
Without responding to Parnell’s taunt, she turned and ran, flipping the lock as she closed the door and dove behind the counter. It was then, just as she was frantically dialing 911 that she heard the gunshot.
Forcing herself to stay where she was, she spilled out the story to the dispatcher, then pressed the button to get Cord and repeated it.
“I’m on my way,” he said quietly. “Stay right where you are, Mary Louise. Whatever you do, don’t get up, don’t look outside, okay?”
Sobbing now, she nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Okay,” she murmured, then dropped the phone and huddled behind the counter, rocking herself and holding her stomach. “Please God, let Willie Ron be okay. Please, he never did anything to hurt anyone. He was just trying to protect me.”
At the sound of sirens in the distance, she heard car doors slam and the squeal of tires as Parnell and his cowardly friends fled. Despite Cord’s advice, she eased to the end of the counter and peeked outside.
There was blood smeared on the door as if someone had used it to begin some hateful message. Sick to her stomach, she crawled closer to the door.
Willie Ron was sprawled on the ground, blood seeping from a wound in his chest. On her feet now, Mary Louise grabbed a handful of paper towels, unbolted the door and ran to him.
“Don’t you dare die on me,” she sobbed as she pressed a wad of towels against his chest. “I will never forgive you if you die, Willie Ron, do you hear me?”
His pain-filled eyes cracked open. “Deaf man could hear you, girl. Stop all that caterwauling. It’s not good for the baby.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up. “You can’t be telling me what to do,” she said. “Save your strength. I won’t have you dying because you were trying to boss me around.”
An ambulance turned into the parking lot, along with two police cars and Cord. Dinah was out of Cord’s car before he’d cut the engine. She wrapped Mary Louise in her arms and rocked her. “Come on, sweetie, let’s give the paramedics room to do their job, okay?”
“I’m not leaving him,” Mary Louise said fiercely.
“Of course not,” Dinah soothed. “We’ll just stand right over here. And when they take Willie Ron to the hospital, we’ll follow right behind.”
Mary Louise kept her gaze locked on the paramedics, who were working to stem the bleeding and hook Willie Ron up to an IV. Now that he was in good hands, she began to shake from the inside out.
“Let’s go sit down,” Dinah said, urging her toward the bench where all her precious yarn catalogs were strewn and spotted with blood.
Just then Mary Louise’s belly tightened in a spasm that had her gasping for breath. “The baby,” she whispered, panicked. “Oh, God, I think I’m in labor and it’s too soon.”
“Cord!” Dinah yelled, holding her hand tightly and rubbing her belly soothingly.
Cord materialized instantly in front of them. “What?”
“We need to get her to the hospital now. There’s not time to wait for another ambulance to get here.”
Mary Louise thought Cord looked a little faint. “You’d better not pass out,” she said. “If you’re this messed up when I go into labor, you won’t be a bit of help at all when it happens to Dinah.”
He grinned at her. “You have a point. How about I get a paramedic to take a look at you before we go?”
“No,” Mary Louise said firmly. “They shouldn’t leave Willie Ron. I’ll be okay if you just get me to the hospital.”
Cord spoke to one of the policemen, then hurried to his car, where Dinah had already settled Mary Louise into the back seat.
She didn’t remember much of the ride. Dinah sat next to her, punching in numbers on her cell phone as if working some late-breaking news story for her TV station. Mary Louise tuned out the conversations and concentrated on trying to stay calm, despite the pains twisting her belly.
Cord slammed to a stop at the emergency entrance, then charged around the car to pick her up as if she weighed no more than a feather. He carried her inside as if she were the most precious thing he’d ever handled.
She summoned a smile when he put her down on a gurney provided by a couple of nurses. “Maybe you’ll do okay when your baby comes, after all.”
He smiled back. “Thanks for the endorsement. Be sure to tell Dinah.”
Then another pain had her writhing and clutching her stomach. Murmuring every prayer she’d ever been taught, she willed her baby to slow down and stay inside where it belonged. Then the doctor gave her some sort of shot and the last thing she remembered was looking up into Danny’s panic-stricken eyes. Dinah must have called him.
“Marry me,” he pleaded just before she slipped away.
Later she wondered if she’d said yes, or only dreamed it.
Caleb was exhausted from spending the night at the hospital with Mary Louise and her friend Willie Ron, waiting until the doctors said both of them were stable before he went home. He should have collapsed into a sound sleep when he finally crawled into his bed, but instead his head was whirling with his dilemma over Amanda. Watching the doctors work to stop Mary Louise’s premature labor and save her baby had reminded him of what a miracle a baby was. It had also reminded him of the secret he was keeping from Amanda.
He wanted to ask her to marry him, wanted to ask Max’s blessing before it was too late, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not with that one huge secret—okay, two, if he counted Max’s owning the land her house was sitting on—left between them. Unfortunately, though, for a man who found the words he needed to help others, Caleb couldn’t find the right ones to help himself. He had no idea how to tell Amanda the truth.
It was midday before he finally fell into a restless sleep. He awoke before sunset and made his way to meet Amanda and the kids at Willow Bend as they’d planned several days ago.
“Max had a difficult day,” Jessie told them when they arrived. “He’s in his room resting now. I don’t want to disturb him.”
“Of course not,” Amanda agreed, then looked at Caleb, her gaze intense. “Could we stay awhile, anyway? The kids need some time to run off some of that energy they’ve stored up in school. And I’d like to sit on the porch and rock for a bit. It’s soothing.”
“Sure,” he agreed.
“I’ll bring you some iced tea,” Jessie said. “Then I’ll go and sit with Max awhile. He seems to like it when he wakes up and finds me there.”
“Don’t bother with the tea,” Amanda told her. “I’ll get it.”
When the women were gone, Caleb sat in a rocker, wondering if the motion would soothe him, too. To be sure, the back-and-forth motion did have a calming effect, but he still hadn’t found the answers he needed.
Then, when Amanda returned, the issue was taken out of his hands. She sat down in the rocker beside him. The kids were playing hide-and-seek in the last dusky light of the summer day.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately,” Amanda said, breaking the comfortable silence. “Ever since Savannah, in fact.”
“Oh?” He became suddenly wary.
“I know a woman is supposed to wait for a man to make up his mind, but I don’t think I have time for that.”
Caleb regarded her with alarm. “What on earth are you talking about?”
She looked directly into his eyes and blurted, “I think we should get married.”
He stared at her blankly. He’d known Savannah would push things to a new level for them, but he hadn’t expected this.
“You’re asking me to marry you?” he asked, just to be sure.
She grinned at him. “Sounded like that to me. Didn’t I make myself clear enough? I love you, Caleb. You have to know I would never have gone to bed with you in Savan
nah if I didn’t. I know I told you it didn’t have to lead to anything, but I’ve changed my mind since I’ve seen how fast Daddy seems to be slipping. I don’t want to wait. I want us to be a family. I want us to have a baby, maybe even two. And I think it would make Daddy happy to see me settled with someone he respects, too. I want to give him that.”
He seized on the one part he was ready to deal with. “So, this is just about making Max happy?”
“No,” she insisted. “It’s about making us a family.”
Joy burst inside him, then withered and died. “I can’t.”
Her expression faltered. “You can’t? Why?”
“You don’t…” Caleb swallowed hard. “You don’t know everything about me.”
“I know everything that matters. You’re kind and decent and strong. I trust you with my life and with my kids. What could be more important?”
Caleb knew it was now or never. It wasn’t fair to let her think he didn’t want her, didn’t love her. She had to understand that he was only trying to protect her, save her from heartbreak.
She frowned at his silence. “Caleb, answer me. What could be so important that it would keep us apart?”
“You just said it yourself. You want more children, Amanda. You deserve them.” He drew in a deep breath and finally blurted the words that had been eating away at him for years. “And I can’t give them to you.”
Amanda saw the shame and embarrassment in Caleb’s eyes and felt her heart twist. She knew she needed to handle this exactly right or he would walk away from her out of some misguided notion that he couldn’t give her what she needed. She’d already had one man in her life who’d felt inadequate. She wouldn’t tolerate another one misjudging what mattered most to her.
“You think that having another child is more important to me than you?” she demanded.
“I’ve heard you say more than once that you want more children, Amanda. There’s no use denying it now to make me feel better. I can’t give them to you and that’s that.”
She continued to regard him with disbelief. “And that’s the only reason you won’t marry me? Because you can’t have children?”
“I’d say that’s a good enough reason,” Caleb said stiffly.
“Not to me,” she said heatedly. “Why would you ever imagine that the quality of your sperm is more important to me than the man you are? Am I that shallow? Is my love so unreliable?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that…”
“Just that what?”
“It was important enough for my wife to leave me,” he said, barely managing to choke out the words.
“That’s why you got divorced?” she asked incredulously. “Whatever happened to ‘for better or for worse’?”
“How could I blame her for breaking those vows? She wanted children.”
“Hadn’t she ever heard about adoption?”
“She wanted her own,” Caleb said, still determined to defend his ex-wife.
“Because of the whole childbirth experience?” Amanda asked. “Trust me, it’s not that much fun.”
Caleb’s lips twitched. “I think she was more focused on the miracle aspect of it. I felt it myself last night when I was at the hospital praying for Mary Louise’s baby to have a chance.”
“Every child is a miracle. It doesn’t matter who gives birth to him or her. Of all people, you should certainly understand that.”
“I do,” he said, but without much conviction.
She cupped his face and looked into his eyes. “Tell me something, Caleb. Do you love my kids?”
“Of course.”
“Do you see the way they look up to you, the way they care about you?”
“I suppose.”
“That’s the love and respect they’d show a father. It doesn’t matter that it’s not your blood flowing through their veins.”
His eyes brightened at last. “You really don’t care about this?” he asked, an incredulous note in his voice.
Amanda chose her next words very carefully. “I care, because I can see how much it matters to you. I would love to carry your baby inside me. But would I let something like that rip us apart? Not a chance.”
Though his expression was lighter, he still hesitated. “I think you should take some time. Think this through.”
“I don’t have to,” she said emphatically.
“Then do it because I want you to. I want you to be very sure, because if we get married, Amanda, I’ll never let you go.”
Her heart leapt at his promise, but for now she merely nodded and said, “I’ll think about it.”
She knew she wouldn’t think long.
“You gonna marry my girl?” Max asked Caleb a few days later. “I figure a man in your position sleeps with a woman, then he must be serious about her. Am I wrong?”
Caleb fought back the desire to chuckle. Apparently no one in this family was willing to wait around for him to do the asking.
“Amanda asked me pretty much the same thing the other night.”
Max looked horrified. “You waited so long that she had to ask you? What’s wrong with you, man?”
“Just trying to do the right thing,” Caleb said.
“Who left it up you to decide what’s right? I made that mistake once and look at all the years it cost me. Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Then get the show on the road while I’m still able to walk her down the aisle.”
“I’m afraid it’s out of my hands. I tossed the ball back into her court.”
Max glowered at him. “Why did you do a damn fool thing like that?”
Caleb winced at Max’s displeasure. “It seemed like a smart thing to do at the time.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, do I have to take care of this for you?”
Caleb saw the grim determination in Max’s eyes and felt momentary panic. “Absolutely not. I’m not entirely sure having you on my side will work in my favor.”
Max stared hard at him, then sat back and hooted. “You could be right about that, son. There are a lot of days lately when I think that girl’s forgiven me, but sometimes I see a look in her eyes that tells me she hasn’t forgotten what I did to her.”
“Isn’t that what real forgiveness is all about?” Caleb asked. “We remember the hurt, but we forgive, anyway, and we move on.”
“Maybe that’s the one good thing about this disease I’ve got. Sooner or later, I’ll forget the bad times I’ve had in my life, the sins I’ve committed.”
“That may be a blessing,” Caleb agreed. “But losing the good memories, too, that’s the unfairness of it.”
Max sighed heavily. “You and Amanda and those kids of hers will just have to do the remembering for me.”
23
Mary Louise walked gingerly down the hospital hallway to Willie Ron’s room. To her surprise, when she went inside, she found Danny sitting beside his bed. They were deep in conversation about the police arresting Parnell and his no-account friends when Willie Ron spotted her.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” he said to Danny. “It’s these quiet ones you have to keep an eye on. They sneak up on you.”
Looking scared, Danny bolted out of his chair and took her arm. “Are you okay? Should you be out of bed? You almost lost the baby once. Are you trying to do it again?”
Mary Louise regarded him with a mixture of impatience and amusement. “The doctor told me to walk. The crisis is over for now and he wants me to get some exercise before he lets me out of here tomorrow.”
“Seems too soon to me,” Danny said. “I want to talk to him myself. I know you, Mary Louise. You’re likely to twist his words to suit your own purposes.”
She scowled at the accusation. “I most certainly will not twist his words, not if it could put my baby at risk.”
“Uh-oh,” Willie Ron murmured from his bed. “If you two are about to have yourselves a brawl, take it somewhere else.”
Mary Louise grinned at him. “No
brawl. I’m just going to remind Danny that he has no right whatsoever to go talking to my doctor about anything.”
Danny stared at her. “Is that so? That baby inside you is mine, too, and I have a right to protect it. Besides that, I asked you to marry me not two days ago, and I’m still waiting for an answer. It’s downright rude to ignore a question that important.”
Willie Ron chuckled and Mary Louise frowned at him before she whirled on Danny. “If you’re going to ask something that important, don’t you think you ought to make sure a person is conscious before you do it?”
Danny regarded her with confusion. “Did you hear me or didn’t you?”
“I thought I heard you, but for all I knew, I could have been dreaming. I’ve been waiting for you to get around to repeating it. I figured if it wasn’t just some momentary panic sort of thing or wishful thinking on my part, you’d ask me again.”
Danny cast a helpless look toward Willie Ron, who merely shrugged. “I were you, I’d be down on one knee about now,” he told Danny.
“Maybe we could go someplace a little more private,” Danny said.
Mary Louise hid a grin at his sudden discomfort and shook her head. “If you ask me to marry you and really mean it, I want a witness so you can’t back out later.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Danny muttered, but he dropped to one knee and reached for her hand.
Mary Louise stared at him in astonishment. Until this instant, she hadn’t really believed he intended to do it. She’d convinced herself that he’d only said the words when he was worried she might die on him.
“The other night when I thought I could lose you and our baby, I’ve never been more scared in my life,” he began.
Huh, she thought. Proves my point. “But you didn’t lose either of us,” she said.
“Would you hush and let me say this?” he pleaded.
“Yes, please, before my sedative kicks in,” Willie Ron chimed in.
Mary Louise shut up.
“I realized then just how much I love you,” Danny continued. “And how much I want to be a real father to our baby, no half measures. So, I’m asking you again in front of God and one witness who will probably beat me to a pulp if I mess this up again, will you please do me the honor of being my wife? And would you do it quick, before this baby comes? He or she seems impatient.”
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