She sighed. This wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped it would. “And?” she prodded.
There was an amused glint in his eye as he added, “To quote Timmy, you cook pretty good.”
Oh, dear heaven, it was exactly as she’d feared. He was doing this for all the wrong reasons, she concluded with a sinking sensation of dismay.
“You could sleep with any one of the women in town who’ve been salivating over your body ever since you arrived,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t want them.”
He seemed certain enough about that. That was good, but it wasn’t enough. “I’m not a princess, Slade. I’m just a woman who wants a husband and family.”
His obvious amusement faded as he realized how serious she was. “Me, I hope. And my family.”
“You could hire a housekeeper. That might be less complicated.”
“I like your cooking just fine. And my boys adore you.” He stepped closer then and cupped her face in his hands. “It’s you I want, Dani Wilde. Just you.”
She couldn’t seem to stop herself from asking one more time, “Why?” It came out as a tremulous whisper.
“Because nobody could love me the way you do,” he said at once. He brushed aside her veil and kissed her gently. “And there’s nobody on earth I could love the way I love you.”
She searched his face. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. You amaze me, Dani Wilde. You amaze me with how much love you have to give, with your generosity, with your spirit, with your ability to cope with those two outrageous boys of mine. Destiny brought you into my life. You never gave up on me, on us. Now that we’re together, I will never let you go. And I swear that I will do everything in my power to make you happy.”
A sigh of relief whispered through her, followed by a bursting of pure joy. Dani felt as if she’d been granted God’s greatest gift. “You already have.” She paused. “There is just one thing–”
He cut her off. “I know.”
She regarded him guiltily. “Know what?”
“I know that you slipped my parents into town for the wedding.”
Dani winced. “You saw them?”
“How could I miss them? They’re sitting in the first row of the church.”
“Are you furious?”
“No, I love you all the more for caring enough to try to patch things up between us. Just be sure you’re around to referee the first time we’re in the same room together.”
“Always,” she agreed readily.
“Can we get on with this wedding now?”
Dani grinned at him. “You sound like a man in a hurry.”
“I am. I can’t wait to get a really good look at all that sexy lingerie you’ve been ordering by the truckload.”
* * *
Slade actually spent very little time on their honeymoon admiring Dani’s lingerie. In fact, he managed to get her out of it as quickly and as often as he could.
She never failed to startle and astonish him, he decided as he watched her sleeping so peacefully beside him, a smile on her lips.
Why had it taken him so long to realize what a treasure she was? How could he have had any doubts at all that having her in his life on a permanent basis was the smartest decision he would ever make?
He sighed with pleasure as she unconsciously reached for him, curving an arm over his belly as she slept. His body leapt to life at the innocent touch.
She was amazing, all right. But what amazed him most of all was that this one audacious imp of a woman had made a hardened old cynic like him believe in love and happily ever after.
Epilogue
Trent Wilde was exhausted, yet he gazed around the yard at Three-Stars and sighed contentedly. For an old man, he’d done pretty darned well, he concluded. He reached over and grasped the hand of the woman beside him.
“Well, Tillie, it looks as though my work here is just about done. All of my girls are happily married. Now maybe we can finally get around to that wedding we’ve been putting off.”
Matilda Fawcett regarded him with blatant skepticism. “Trent Wilde, who do you think you’re kidding? You’ve got a whole new generation to worry about now, what with Dani and Slade’s boys giving everybody in town fits and Ashley’s new baby on the way.” She glanced at Sara. “Something tells me Sara and Jake will be making an announcement of their own any minute now.”
Trent sat up a little straighter and gazed at his middle daughter. “You think so? She hasn’t said a word.”
“And why would she tell you first? You’d only pester her to death till the baby is born.” She grinned at him. “Maybe I should do her a favor and get you out of their hair.”
Trent kissed the hand he held. “Are you finally saying yes, after all these years?”
Color crept into her cheeks. “Well, I never thought I’d be marrying a younger man,” she teased, “but you haven’t turned out so badly.”
“It took you long enough to see that,” he chided.
“It always pays to use a little caution where you outrageous Wildes are concerned.”
“But forty years seems awfully long. Didn’t you have the proof you needed long ago?”
“I did,” she agreed. “But by then you were happily married to someone else and so was I.”
“Now, at long last, it’s our turn,” he said, then grinned as a wicked scheme occurred to him. “How do you feel about hopping on Dillon’s Harley and eloping right this second?”
Her eyes lit up at the suggestion. Suddenly she looked like a young girl again, the woman he’d fallen a little bit in love with the first time she’d stepped into a classroom and tried to teach algebra to a class filled with troublemakers like him.
She laced her fingers through his. “Why, Trent Wilde, I do believe that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”
He looked from her excited expression to the family that had brought him so much joy. “It’s right up there with getting those girls of mine settled down, I guarantee you that. Come on, Tillie. Let’s go walk down that bridal path while no one in this gang is the wiser.”
“You sure you want to cheat them of the chance to be there?”
He looked across the lawn to where Ashley was leaning back in Dillon’s arms, then moved on to Sara and Jake, who were side by side at the paddock fence, their hands linked as they laughed at the new foal just testing his legs.
And finally he turned to Dani, his firstborn, the one so much like his late wife she’d sometimes made his heart ache just looking at her sweet face. She and Slade were arguing over the placement of the swing set Trent had just bought for all the grandbabies he was anticipating. Timmy and Kevin were chiming in with their opinions as well, and that fool dog of theirs was running in circles, chasing his own tail and barking to beat the band.
Well satisfied with what he saw, he turned back to Tillie. “I doubt they’ll even miss us,” he told her. “Let’s go get hitched.”
They slipped silently away. They’d made it as far as Dillon’s motorcycle when Trent heard Ashley’s voice.
“Hey, Daddy, don’t forget to buy her the biggest bouquet the florist has,” she called out, laughing.
Trent scowled as the rest of them gathered around. “Never could put a darn thing over on any of you, could I?” he muttered.
“Try to remember that,” Dani told him.
“Bless you, Daddy,” Sara whispered in his ear. “Be happy.”
“How could I not be,” he said, his voice choked. “I’m about to add one more to the best family God ever gave a man.”
Turn the page for a special sneak peak at Sherryl Wood’s new Chesapeake Shores novel, The Christmas Bouquet.
One
It was all because of that blasted bridal bouquet, Caitlyn Winters thought as she stared in dismay at the positive pregnancy test in her hand. From the moment she’d caught the bouquet at Jenny Collins’s Christmas wedding in New York a little over a year ago, she’d been doomed. That instinctive grab of an objec
t flying straight at her had changed her life.
Her twin sister, Carrie, who’d all but shoved her aside to try to snatch the bouquet from the air, was going to laugh herself silly at what had transpired since that night. So were the rest of the O’Briens, for that matter. They loved irony.
Noah McIlroy, the family medicine resident whom she’d met soon after the wedding and with whom she’d been having a serious relationship since last September, tapped on the bathroom door.
“Caitlyn, are you okay?”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up, but she fought to contain it. This was no laughing matter. “Fine,” she managed to squeak out just as the door opened. Noah’s gaze shifted from her face to land on the test strip she was holding. Concern immediately evolved into astonishment.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his eyes filled with surprise, but a smile already tugging at his lips.
His wonderful, sensual lips, which had gotten them into this mess, she thought wryly. Of course she was well aware those lips hadn’t caused her pregnancy. Heck, she’d known about the birds and bees long before that, thanks to all the romances in Chesapeake Shores and among her amorous O’Brien relatives.
But it was her inability to resist Noah’s heated kisses that had led to all the rest. That and an apparently defective condom. Given her cautious nature, she probably should have insisted on at least three methods of birth control, but no, she’d trusted Noah when he’d assured her that the condoms would be sufficient.
The man had cast a spell over her from the minute they’d met, literally one week after she’d caught that blasted romantic bouquet with all its superstition attached like streamers of satin ribbon. The deft catch had earned hoots of laughter from her family and a stunned, disappointed scowl from her twin, who’d been angling for the bouquet all evening.
And now, here she was, barely more than a year later, and pregnant. She hadn’t even accepted Noah’s repeated pleas that they live together, even though he was in her apartment more often than he was in his own. She’d drawn a line at that, knowing that she’d never be able to keep his presence in her life a secret from her nosy family if they were actually living under the same roof.
And she’d wanted to keep this relationship a secret. After all, she was supposed to be the grounded, goal-oriented sister. Carrie was the one everyone had expected to fall madly in love and marry before her college graduation. Instead, Carrie was jetting around the world, leading a completely carefree life, building a career in public relations for a big fashion designer and tossing away men like used tissues, while she pined for one unobtainable man. And Caitlyn, thanks to that bouquet, was standing here with a positive pregnancy test in her hand!
She recalled the forget-me-nots that her Aunt Bree had tucked into Jenny’s simple bridal bouquet and fought back another hysterical laugh. She was hardly likely to forget this moment, that’s for sure.
She drew in a deep breath and finally dared to meet Noah’s gaze. For a man supposedly as dedicated to his medical career as she was to hers, he looked awfully pleased about this unexpected bump in the road. Of course, he was just a couple of months away from launching his career, while she still had the long years of an internship and residency to complete.
“Wipe that smile off your face,” she instructed him firmly. “This is not good news.”
His smile only spread, revealing that appealing dimple that had also sucked her right in. “It’s the best possible news,” he contradicted.
“Noah, you may see the light at the end of the tunnel, but be real. You’ll finish your residency at the end of June and you still have to decide where you want to go into practice and get established. I haven’t even started my internship. We might not even be living in the same city a few months from now. A baby doesn’t fit into the plan.”
“You know what they say,” he began.
“Don’t you dare remind me that God laughs while we’re making plans.”
She frowned for emphasis as she passed him on her way into the bedroom, where she sank down on the side of the bed. Maybe if she sat for a minute, she could think. Thinking clearly had always been her best trait.
She’d known what she wanted for her life by her teens. After spending a summer volunteering in a doctor’s office in a medically underserved community in Appalachia and seeing reports about villages in third-world countries that were even worse off, she’d found her calling. Her reward had been the healthy children who’d clustered around her at the end of the summer to say goodbye, the moms who’d hugged her with tears in their eyes.
Just like her ambitious mother Abby O’Brien Winters Riley, Caitlyn had thought her future through very carefully. There would be college, medical school, an internship and residency. Then she’d use all that knowledge to help children in parts of the world where medical help was severely lacking. She’d make a difference, just like everyone else in her family had in their own way. This was her way to shine, to live up to all those family expectations and at the same time do the kind of meaningful work she’d been born to do.
She’d been so focused that she’d managed to complete college in three years, then set out to whip through medical school and all of her rotations as fast as they’d allowed her to. Every summer she’d either crammed in more courses or served in another needy community, most recently in Africa with the Red Cross. While Carrie was the social butterfly, Caitlyn had been driven, not allowing a single distraction. Not until Noah, anyway.
She glanced up at him as he studied her with a worried expression. He was so incredibly gorgeous, it was little wonder that her heart seemed to stop whenever she looked at him. But it wasn’t his looks that had made her fall in love. He’d seemed as driven as she was, determined to be the kind of old-fashioned doctor who was more concerned with treating his patients with compassion and dignity than racking up huge bucks on office visits and unnecessary testing.
They’d met on her rotation through the family medicine service right after that fateful wedding. She’d been immediately smitten by his dedication, the thoughtful kindness he displayed to everyone from patients to the most inept medical students still struggling to adapt book learning to practical experience. He’d turned her into a better doctor by example, no question about it. He’d suggested she waver from her original intention to focus on pediatrics and steered her into choosing family medicine. He’d helped her see that she could serve even more people with that well-rounded specialty.
Until she’d worked with him, she’d understood everything in her textbooks, but she hadn’t mastered the instinctive diagnostic skills that made the difference between being competent and excelling. He’d taught her to listen to more than a list of symptoms, to hear what her patients weren’t saying, as much as to what they said.
By fall, when she’d started her final year of medical school, they were in an exclusive relationship, stealing time to be together whenever they could. With their competing, demanding schedules, those stolen moments had been few and far between. Given the test strip she was holding, they’d been more than sufficient to alter her life apparently.
Noah dropped down beside her now and took her hand in his. “We’re going to be okay,” he said softly, his warm brown eyes filled with tenderness.
When she didn’t answer, he touched her chin. “Look at me, Cait.” Only after she’d turned her head, fighting tears, did he repeat, “We’re going to be okay.”
“How?” she asked him, unable to imagine it, unable to accept his confidently spoken reassurance.
“We’ll get married,” he said without hesitation. “I know we haven’t talked about that yet, but you know I love you. I want a future with you. This just bumps up the timetable. I’m all but finished with my residency. I’ll go into practice in July. You’ll finish your internship and residency. Then you can join me in the practice.”
She listened to the logical simplicity of his plan and regarded him incredulously, panicked by the certainty in his voice.
“That’s your dream, Noah. Not mine. You know what I want, what I’ve worked so hard for. There’s a big world out there in desperate need of medical help. I want to save the lives of babies in third-world countries who might not make it without a doctor in their village. The two weeks I spent in Africa last year…” Her voice trailed off and her voice hitched as she thought about the desperation she’d seen everywhere she’d turned. “That time confirmed everything for me. I was meant to do that kind of work. I promised I’d be back.”
To his credit he didn’t dismiss her dream or the promise she’d made. They’d talked about it often enough. He knew how much it meant to her to go where she was needed. It was what she’d stayed up nights studying for. She’d known it from the first time she’d seen those malnourished children with their wide, desperate eyes on the news. Every volunteer assignment she’d taken after that had only solidified her resolve.
“Then how do you see this going?” he asked quietly.
She wanted to blurt out that she’d have to end the pregnancy, but how could she? While she might believe in every woman’s right to choose, she knew she’d never be able to live with herself if she chose abortion. She was a healer. And this was Noah’s baby, an unexpected blessing under any other circumstances.
“I don’t know,” she whispered, hot tears falling.
Noah pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest, surrounding her with his strength and heat and that scary, unwavering certainty. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “Together, we’ll figure out what’s best.”
For just an instant, Caitlyn allowed herself to believe that. She desperately wanted to hold on to the possibility that there was an answer that worked for both of them. But in every scenario she envisioned, she lost.
eISBN: 978-1-4603-4543-6
The Bridal Path: Danielle
Copyright © 1995 by Sherryl Woods
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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