“Dani–” he began, but she waved him off.
“It’s okay. You go ahead,” she insisted. “You can serve up that pot roast if you’re hungry now. I’ll be downstairs in a second.”
As eager as he was to be gone so he could collect his thoughts, Slade had the feeling that he ought to be staying right where he was. Who knew what other crazy ideas she might come up with when he wasn’t looking. Still, he went.
Guilt and dismay warred inside him as he paced up and down in the kitchen and waited for the uncomfortable conversation that was ahead. He had to find some way to let her down easily, to explain that although he appreciated so many things about her, he wasn’t in love with her. He didn’t even believe in love anymore.
Maybe telling her that would be enough. A romantic like Dani would be shocked, maybe even appalled by such a declaration. She probably wouldn’t even want a cynic like him in her life.
Or she might consider him more of a challenge than ever, he concluded wearily. She was that kind of woman. She was a Wilde.
As he paced and debated, he tried to ignore the aroma of that damned pot roast, but its allure was almost as powerful as that of the woman who was awaiting his reply to her proposal. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had a decent pot roast. It was something his mother had enjoyed serving, but Amanda had disliked most meat. The scent of well-cooked beef and spices and rich gravy had his mouth watering and his head filling with memories he was so certain had been forgotten. Memories of home. Memories of a mother who’d been a whole lot like Dani in her ability to nurture, if not in her ability to stand up to the stubbornness of Duke Watkins.
In what felt a lot like an act of rebellion–though he couldn’t for the life of him determine against whom–he finally scooped some meat and vegetables onto two plates and irritably slammed them onto the table.
Dani breezed in a minute later, wrapped in some sort of slinky, sexy robe that was practically indecent. He couldn’t seem to drag his gaze away from the way it clung to her breasts, outlining her nipples in provocative detail. Where the devil were the jeans and T-shirts she usually wore, he thought to himself. She’d lingered long enough upstairs to put on real clothes. He’d expected protective barriers, layers of them, in fact. Instead, she’d sashayed down here looking all tousled and wanton. She was practically irresistible.
Determined not to succumb to this latest temptation, he sat down and focused his attention on forking the pot roast into his mouth, bite by deliberate bite. When he finally dared to glance up, he saw that she was watching him with that same amused, knowing expression.
“It’s okay, you know. You don’t have to worry about giving me an answer now,” she reminded him. “I know my proposal must have come as something of a surprise, but it makes sense, really.”
Surprise? That was an understatement, if ever he’d heard one. Slade stared, trying to follow her unspoken logic. When he couldn’t, he echoed, “Makes sense? How?”
While his head was still reeling, she systematically piled reason upon reason, until the whole idiotic scheme did begin to make a crazy sort of sense. There were sensible, practical reasons that seemed to have a lot to do with her being able to fix meals and get them on the table. The pot roast seemed to be her primary exhibit. Hearing that, he dropped his fork so quickly that gravy splattered on the pristine tablecloth.
Then there were emotional considerations, such as how much she adored the boys and vice versa. He had no arguments for that, none at all.
Finally she added what she clearly considered the coup de grace.
“Also, it’s clear to everyone in town that the boys were…” She hesitated. “Well, they were a bit out of control, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Slade minded her saying so like crazy, but truth was truth. Until Dani had taken charge, Timmy and Kevin had seldom missed an opportunity to stir up trouble. At ten and eight, there was only so much damage they could cause. He had hated to think what they might do when they hit their teens.
Even so, it rankled to have this woman remind him he had been a lousy father until she had prodded him into doing otherwise. He had been doing the best he could–under trying circumstances–to make up for past neglect.
In fact, he had convinced himself that he and the boys were starting to do just fine on their own. And while Kevin and Timmy were definitely more of a handful than he’d expected, he thought things were going rather well. Nobody had gotten poisoned from his cooking or broken any bones so far.
Of course, he was forced to admit that Dani might have been largely responsible for that. She’d been sending more and more meals home with the kids lately, and she was responsible for them for a good percentage of their waking hours. She’d even sided with Timmy and somehow convinced him to coach a baseball team, even though it was a sport he’d never played himself. Thanks to Dani, they were turning into the damned Brady Bunch.
But even if he was satisfied with the way things had been going, he gathered that others in Riverton weren’t as impressed with his parenting skills. In fact, memories of the boys’ first pranks died hard. The disapproving glances he continued to receive every time the boys misbehaved were beginning to get on his nerves. Dani had a point about that.
“They’re a little rambunctious,” he conceded. “But they’ve been much better lately.”
She gave him that same sneaky, knowing smile. “Since they’ve been spending time with me?” she suggested.
Slade swallowed hard. He’d always believed in giving credit where credit was due, but he sensed that this time an admission was going to be a tactical blunder. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to deny her claim.
“You have been a good influence, no doubt about it.” He eyed her warily. “Maybe we could work out some sort of ongoing business deal even after the summer ends. They’ll be back in school soon. I’d pay you to look out for them after school, you know, to do the things a mother would do, like bake cookies and stuff.”
“Should I fill in for you at parent-teacher conferences, too?” she inquired a little tartly.
Slade winced. It was the first little slip in her composure, but he couldn’t take much pleasure in it. In fact, as soon as the words had come out of his mouth, he had recognized exactly how insulting they were. She was proposing to marry him. He was offering to pay her to be a surrogate mommy, when she clearly wanted to be the real thing.
He fully expected to feel one of those fantastic blueberry pies of hers smashed in his face. Surprisingly, the prospect wasn’t all that distasteful. He’d grown very fond of those pies. And, if he were being totally honest, of the woman who baked them.
Instead of being smothered in blueberries, though, he heard a distinctly merry chuckle that had a disconcerting effect on his pulse. When he met Dani’s gaze, he saw that far from taking serious offense at his suggestion, she found it–or his continued resistance–thoroughly amusing. Clearly, Dani Wilde was a most remarkable woman.
He took another look at her. Less than an hour ago they had been as close as it was possible for two people to be, and yet now it was as if he were seeing her for the first time.
He took the time he should have taken earlier to survey her closely. He started with the brunette hair she wore in a style that curled softly around her face, moved down past the decidedly feminine curves barely concealed by that slinky robe and ended with the tips of her bare toes. The flame-red nails, usually hidden inside dusty cowboy boots or sneakers, were so incongruous with her sweet image that the sight of them alone was enough to stir his blood.
He had the feeling that he had unleashed something in bed, something that was dangerous and wild, both in himself and in her. Even sitting here in the middle of her kitchen, with a plateful of tempting pot roast, his favorite food, all he could think about was carrying her back upstairs and tossing her onto that soft mattress and making love to her again.
And again.
But if the first time had drawn a proposal, what would happen followin
g a repeat? Would she have the preacher waiting downstairs? He wouldn’t put it past her, given her attachment to surprises.
That determined, optimistic gleam in her eyes was definitely disconcerting. The lovely, gentle woman with the flyaway brown hair struck him as someone dedicated to a mission, and he seemed to be at the center of it. Her absolute serenity in the face of all his doubts and skepticism was the most disconcerting thing of all.
His gaze rose to clash with hers. Only one word came to mind, and it was at the heart of everything.
“Why?” he asked.
She smiled in a way that suggested aeons of feminine secrets, then shrugged. “Because the three of you need me,” she said simply.
Did they? he wondered. Certainly the boys needed someone to guide them and love them, to give them the kind of tenderness he wasn’t sure he understood. He, however, needed no one except his sons. He wanted Dani, but that was something else entirely.
Suddenly, before he could try to explain the difference to her, Slade gazed into her eyes and saw the kind of yearning that could break a man’s heart. He guessed, then, that the real need here was hers, not theirs. Or perhaps some blending of the two.
How had he missed it? Her father’s attitude, the meddling of her sisters, all of it pointed to an almost desperate desire to see Dani wed and settled down with a family of her own.
He suspected it was more than the fact that she was almost thirty and unwed. It was the fact that she was a woman who had always craved a home and family. Nurturing was what she did, as naturally and enthusiastically as another woman might climb a corporate ladder. So far, though, she’d been lavishing all that love and attention on her father and sisters and on friends and neighbors.
She was impatient with the pace of her own love life, and now literally everyone in town seemed dedicated to seeing that she got her heart’s desire. He wondered how many of them viewed him as her last and best hope.
She certainly seemed to see herself as a woman who’d run out of options. And maybe in Riverton she had. The town wasn’t exactly crawling with bachelors. With the exception of a few old codgers on outlying ranches, who would no doubt have been glad to have a comely companion and decent cook around.
But Slade could have told Dani about a whole world that craved the kind of rich and unconditional love she had to give. There seemed little point in wasting it on a man as uninterested in love and marital ties as he was. He’d played that game and failed at it miserably. There was no reason to think he could get it right the second time around. In the end, he would only disappoint her.
“I’m not asking you to love me, if that’s what’s worrying you,” she said bluntly, somehow reading his mind.
“Just to marry you,” he said, holding back a desire to smile at her simplistic view of the deal she wanted to strike.
She nodded.
“Why would a beautiful, intelligent woman like you marry without love?”
Her thoughtful expression lasted for some time before she said, “It seems to me there are two kinds of love–that blinding, love-at-first-sight kind and the kind that grows slowly.”
She smiled at him and shrugged as if they were discussing something as simple and uncomplicated as growing a vegetable garden, rather than one of life’s most intricate and tricky relationships.
“I’d rather take my chances on the latter,” she explained. “I’m willing to put in the time and hard work it takes to make a marriage succeed. I won’t cut and run when that first glow wears off.”
Again Slade was startled by her unknowing insight into his own heart. He’d been wild about Amanda, stunned by her beauty and enchanted by her zest for life. That sweet haze of enchantment had worn off for both of them practically before the ink was dry on the wedding license. When it was gone, there had been nothing left except two little boys who wondered why their mother never came home anymore.
When Amanda had died a slow, painful death from injuries she’d received in another man’s car in a middle-of-the-night wreck, Slade had faced the knowing looks and expressions of sympathy with stoic, bitter silence. He hadn’t been able to get away from Denver and all the gossip fast enough. The small Victorian home in Riverton, left to him years ago by his maternal grandparents, had been a godsend, a haven to him as a child, remembered warmly as an adult.
Perhaps Dani Wilde was yet another godsend. Impulsively, he leaned over and kissed her, drawn by some indefinable need of his own. It was a soft, tender exploration that brought a sigh to her lips and reassurance to his heart.
Suddenly the whole crazy idea did begin to make sense. Or maybe he’d just succumbed to the desperate longing he heard behind her words. He might not know a thing about women, but he understood a whole lot about desperation. He’d faced it head-on the day he’d awakened and realized that the rearing of his two sons was entirely in his hands.
Because it suited his purposes, he tried to convince himself now that maybe a marriage of convenience wouldn’t be half as bad as a marriage based on love that turned sour before the first anniversary.
Because it had felt so good, so right, he kissed her once more, tasting the sweetness of her lips, lingering to savor the softness. This kiss lasted far, far longer. It was clearly a prelude to something. Perhaps the future, perhaps just more of the intoxicating lovemaking that had brought them to this point.
“Was that a yes?” she asked, sounding breathless, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
He brushed his thumb across her lower lip and shook his head. At the quick flaring of disappointment in her eyes, he allowed himself a smile.
“But it was a definite maybe.”
Chapter Nine
Maybe. Truthfully, it was more than Dani had had any reason to hope for. Slade hadn’t laughed in her face. He hadn’t flat-out said no, though he’d looked for one interminable minute as if he might.
He’d said maybe. And if she knew almost nothing else about him, she knew that Slade Watkins always meant what he said. He was a man of few words, but he made each and every one count.
She clung to that knowledge all through the night as she cradled the pillow that still carried his wonderfully intriguing, purely masculine scent. She, Dani Wilde, had actually popped the most important question of her life and Slade Watkins had said maybe. It was enough to keep her downright giddy for a month.
But she didn’t have a minute, much less a month to waste. She couldn’t sit back now and hope nature took its course.
No, if Slade was going to be considering her marriage proposal, then she was going to have to do everything in her power to weave some sort of spell he wouldn’t be able to resist. She would have to keep him so off balance, so fascinated with her that marriage would eventually seem as inevitable to him as it did to her.
The trouble was she’d never been much good with playing provocative games or flirting. The stakes had always seemed too high. She was too self-conscious, too vulnerable to risk being rebuffed. Her brazen marriage proposal to Slade had been her first foray into a more daring pattern for her life, and it had scared her practically spitless.
But she’d survived. She’d faced her fear of rejection and overcome it. Now it was on to step two, whatever the heck that was. She hadn’t entirely expected to ever need a step two. She’d been counting on a quick yes or no. Now that she needed a more detailed plan of action, she was at a loss.
Fortunately, she had two sisters who’d never been the least bit shy around men or at a loss about much of anything. Sara had won her husband with that outrageous all-or-nothing bet. Ashley had mistakenly bopped Dillon with a lamp and managed to win his heart anyway. Surely they would be good for some sisterly advice. An easy-to-follow, impossible-to-screw-up list–Five Steps To Catching The Man Of Your Dreams–would be nice, especially if step two was an awe-inspiring, spectacular doozy that would practically eliminate the need for steps three, four and five. She vowed to speak to them on Sunday.
* * *
Of course, getting her
two sisters alone during the traditional Sunday family dinner at Three-Stars was almost as complicated as the logistics for staging a military maneuver. Dillon was so disgustingly besotted with his wife that he rarely let her out of his sight for long. Sara had just discovered a more domestic side to her nature. She tended to fuss over the dinner preparations, much to the dismay of their longtime housekeeper, who considered the kitchen to be her domain. Annie’s expression turned increasingly sour each time Sara invaded the kitchen. Ashley and Dani spent an awful lot of time smoothing ruffled feathers.
And then, of course, there was her father. He seemed to have some sort of radar when it came to detecting a scheme afoot. He spent most of Sunday hovering around Dani, asking questions about Slade, poking and prodding about their relationship until she wanted to scream. She vowed then and there to invite Mrs. Fawcett to dinner next Sunday just to distract him.
It was Sara who finally rescued her.
“Daddy, why don’t you go out to the barn and check out the new foal?” she suggested. “Jake isn’t happy with the way she’s developing.”
Jake looked a little startled, but he was smart enough to guess that something was going on and to take the broad hint that the men’s presence wasn’t needed.
“Come on, Trent.” He glanced at his brother-in-law and rolled his eyes. “You, too, Dillon. Ashley will still be here when you get back.”
“If he’s lucky,” Ashley retorted, then kissed Dillon soundly before adding, “And he is always very lucky.”
Looking very reluctant, Dillon tore himself away and headed for the barn with the other men. Dani suspected that what he knew about horses would fit on the head of a pin, but he enjoyed Trent’s and Jake’s company well enough to sacrifice a few minutes with his wife to be with them.
“Okay,” Sara said to Dani the minute the men were out of earshot. “What is wrong with you? You’ve been jumpy as a june bug since you got here.”
The Bridal Path: Danielle Page 10
