“All of a sudden, I’m starving.”
“And there’s apple pie, too.”
She kind of wanted to hold out against him, leave him hanging at least a bit longer. But then her stomach betrayed her with a hungry little growl. His grin said he heard it. At that point, what could she do but give in? “All right. A picnic, then—but I think we’ll need to eat inside.” She stared out at the darkening sky. “It’s almost nighttime. I’m not sure I want to stumble around in the dark looking for somewhere to spread a picnic blanket.”
He leaned closer. “Go in and get a sweater. It’s getting chilly out.”
“But—”
“Shh.” His warm breath tickled her ear. “It just so happens I also brought a lantern.”
* * *
Two hours later, they sat under the stars with the lantern turned down low providing a soft circle of light to push back the shadows.
By then, they’d agreed on the games for the party: a modified version of The Newlywed Game, which they’d dubbed “The Nearly Newlywed Game.” Also, they planned a scavenger hunt and some random betting and gambling games in a Western-themed, mini-casino setup. They’d made lists of all the things they would need to buy and assemble for each activity, and he’d been fine with her ideas for the decorations.
Tomorrow, she would shop online, making sure to get expedited shipping. Monday, she would drive to Kalispell and try to buy what she hadn’t found online. Monday evening, they would meet again and decide how to find or make whatever items they still needed.
Amy grabbed the sweater she’d brought from the house and stuck her arms in the sleeves for warmth against the nighttime chill. “We should probably talk about the cost of all this.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll pay you back for anything you have to buy.”
“Derek, come on. It’s a lot more than the decorations and games. I totally intend to pay for that stuff myself. But there’s still food and drinks. And what about the venue and the music?”
“It’s covered,” he said.
“Covered?” She couldn’t help scoffing. “All of it?”
He shrugged. “I told you that Nate Crawford offered the Manor. And he offered it at a deep discount, believe me. Just about everyone in town will be there and that’s good PR for the Manor. There’ll be plenty of finger food. As for alcohol, Hudson is footing the bill for the champagne and soft drinks.” Hudson Jones, a very wealthy man, was Bella Stockton’s husband. “I promise I’m good for whatever the final bill amounts to.” And then he laughed. “Don’t look so worried. I’m not the same broke-ass cowboy you used to know.”
“I’m not worried. Really.”
“Oh, yeah, you are. But you don’t need to be. I’m doing all right. You remember Collin Traub?”
“Of course.” Collin had been in their graduating class. “Eva told me that Collin married Willa Christensen.” Willa was younger. She’d graduated a few years after them. “Eva also mentioned that Collin’s the mayor now. But what has Collin Traub got to do with how we plan to split up the cost of the bachelor party?”
“Collin’s uncle Casper had a saddle-making business, which Collin inherited when Casper passed on. I hooked up with Collin a while back. Besides working the family ranch, I make saddles and a variety of fine leather goods. I’ve kind of built a name for myself—and earned some good money, too.”
Leatherwork. He’d always had a talent for that. He used to make pretty beaded leather jewelry for her. And for her eighteenth birthday, he’d made her a leather vest and a fringed skirt. She’d loved them and worn them proudly. Still had them, too, tucked in the back of her closet.
Because she never could quite bear to get rid of them.
“We have a shop on Sawmill Street, at North Broomtail Road,” he said.
“CT Saddles, right?”
“That’s it.”
“I drove by it the other day. And I’m glad that you’re doing so well—but, Derek, I want to pitch in, too. I am the maid of honor, after all, and I should pay half.”
He looked at her for a long time. She felt the sudden presence of the past—their past—rising up in the darkness between them.
What had he said?
I’m not the same broke-ass cowboy you used to know.
It wasn’t that he came from a poor family. The Daltons had been ranching in the Rust Creek Falls Valley for generations and his dad was a leader in the community, a lawyer with an office in town. Still, back in high school, Derek hadn’t had much, not in terms of cash in hand. When they ran away to Kalispell, he’d bought her a simulated diamond ring for forty dollars at Walmart.
She’d thrown it at him the day he told her to get her stuff and go with her dad. Where was that ring now? What had he done with it?
Not that she’d ever ask.
“Okay then,” the grown-up Derek said. “We’ll go fifty-fifty on the final bill.”
“Perfect. Thank you. Now, let me see...” She woke her phone, punched up the party file again and brought up the dual lists of what had to be bought and what would need to be made or otherwise assembled.
“How we doin’?” he asked.
She gave him a nod. “Really well, actually.”
“You feel like we’re getting somewhere with this party, then?”
“I do. And I think we’re pretty much set for now.”
Their non-date was almost over.
And somehow, they’d managed to steer clear of the past—mostly, anyway.
All good, she told herself. It was the past, after all, over and done, and they didn’t need to go there.
But then he stretched out on his back, laced his hands beneath his head and stared up at the wide indigo sky. “Lots of stars out tonight, Miss Wainwright.”
Miss Wainwright.
Their private joke. He’d called her that in their first tutoring session and it had stuck.
“Yes, Miss Wainwright,” he would tease her.
“Whatever you say, Miss Wainwright.”
“Miss Wainwright, you’re the boss.”
He looked pretty comfortable, lying there. Not like he planned to get up and leave anytime soon.
Maybe the evening wasn’t over, after all.
Chapter Three
Feeling light as air suddenly, and dangerously playful, Amy took his hat off the blanket and put it on. It was too big, and slipped down over her eyes.
Laughing, she tipped her head back. “Yeah. Lots of stars. A beautiful night.”
“You forgive me, for not calling?”
“Yeah.” She said it softly. “Thank you for the picnic. I...feel better about everything.”
He was watching her so steadily. “You’re as pretty as you ever were, Miss Wainwright—hell, you’re prettier.”
She felt the blush as it swept up her neck and over her cheeks. But what with the darkness, she doubted he could see it. She opened her mouth to say something teasing and light. But the memories were pressing in again and somehow, a raw truth slipped out. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was thirteen.”
It was an old confession, one she’d made to him long ago, at a party on New Year’s Eve, the night he told her for the first time that she was everything he’d ever wanted.
Her heart had ached with sheer happiness that night. How impossibly young she’d been, young and absolutely certain that nothing could ever tear them apart.
He reached up, took his hat off her head and set it on his chest. “You never would look at me. Not when you were thirteen or fourteen or fifteen...”
“I had no clue you might be looking at me. Not until that first tutoring session.”
He grunted. “You were seventeen. And you still wouldn’t look at me, even then.”
“So, shoot me. I was shy. But it didn’t take that long once we were stuck in a room together. By the end of that first session, I was looking at you, and right in the eye, too. I started getting the feeling then that just maybe you liked me—but then, I told myself, you liked all t
he girls.”
“Uh-uh.” His eyes shone almost black in the moonlight, holding hers. “I only wanted you.”
“You asked me out.” She couldn’t help grinning. “I turned you down.”
“But I persisted,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you did.” By Christmas of that year, she totally got that the hottest guy in school was crazy about her. Then at New Year’s, he’d said he wasn’t looking at any other girl. And he proved it, too. He was all about her, about Amy. And it felt so good to be wanted by a guy at last—not to mention by the sexiest, most charming guy in the whole school.
“My dad taught me that,” he said.
“Taught you what?”
“To persist. ‘Son,’ he used to say, ‘above all, if you want something, persist.’ He always said persist with emphasis, you know?”
Amy remembered Charles Dalton as a kind, intelligent man.
“I always liked your dad.” She brushed his shoulder, realized that touching him was maybe a bridge too far, and quickly withdrew her hand. “Um, your mom, too.”
He stared up at the sky for a string of too-quiet seconds before asking, “How are your parents?”
“They’re well. My dad retired two years ago. They moved to San Diego. They seem to like it there. My mom’s in a bunch of clubs—book clubs, bridge clubs. He plays a lot of golf.”
“Well, good,” Derek said. He was watching her again, his eyes so deep, she wanted to fall in and never come out.
There had been no love lost between Derek and her mom and dad. They’d checked and found out that he was not a great student and would likely never even go to college. Derek only wanted to live on his family’s ranch and work all day running cattle. He wasn’t what her parents had in mind for her, their precious only daughter.
Her dad and mom had made it very clear that they wanted her to stop seeing “that Dalton boy.” Amy defied them. She stood right up to them and said she would see him anyway, that he was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
They must have realized she meant what she’d said, because they’d backed off.
And after that, she and Derek spent every spare moment together. That New Year’s Eve, when he’d said he loved her, she’d believed him and declared her love right back. He promised there would never be anyone but her. Amy wanted him so much and he wanted her and, well, it was young love.
She couldn’t wait to have it all—all the kisses, the caresses, the soft, secret sighs. Making love was bound to happen.
And it did. In the early spring.
It was scary, that first time. Scary and a little awkward. But, oh so beautiful.
Already set to go to the University of Colorado on a full scholarship in the fall, Amy turned eighteen in May. In early June, she and Derek both graduated from Rust Creek Falls High.
“Remember graduation?” she asked, lost in the past now.
He made a low noise in the affirmative. “I remember your speech as valedictorian. ‘We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to do the best that we can every day, as we go forward into a future full of promise and the challenge of—’”
“Please.” She cut him off with a groan. “No more. There is no way I was ever that young.”
“Yeah, you were.” He reached up, brushed a rough-tender finger along her cheek, leaving a sweet trail of lingering sensation in his wake. “So was I. We were that young. And you were all set, with a big future ahead of you. I never wanted to hold you back.”
“I know that.”
“We were too young.”
She bit her lip, knowing he was right. She’d wanted to go to CU, wanted a good job that challenged her, and she’d doubted she would find that job in their tiny Montana town. At the same time, she hadn’t known how she would live without the boy she loved.
He said, “Think about it this way. It all ended up according to plan.”
“Right. Just with that big, painful detour stuck in the middle of it.”
Because by the end of June, her period was late. She’d waited a week and it didn’t come. She went to Derek. He drove her to Kalispell to buy a test and they rented a cheap room where she took that test.
She shivered a little and wrapped her sweater closer around her. “I was so scared when the test came out positive. And you took a knee right there in that motel room.”
“I wanted to marry you, Amy. I really did.”
She stared down at him, saw the moon reflected in his eyes. “I know. And I loved you. So much.”
“It was the Fourth of July. There were fireworks going off all night long, remember?”
Oh, yes, she did. “I remember.”
The next day, the fifth of July, they went to the courthouse and said I do, just the two of them, two scared kids with a baby on the way.
And for their honeymoon, they returned to the cheap room with its lumpy bed. At night, she could hear the trucks whizzing by on the highway.
“You were sorry, though, weren’t you?” he asked. “Sorry from the first.”
“It was only that I—”
“Don’t lie,” he said gently. “Let’s just tell each other the truth now, okay, and be done with it?”
“Yeah. All right.” She admitted, “I, well, I had serious second thoughts.”
“I knew it.” At least he didn’t sound angry.
But why should he? It was so long ago. And this wasn’t any big confession. This was making peace. With the past.
With each other.
This was putting it behind them, once and for all.
She said, “I just had trouble coping, you know? With my whole life turned around and a baby on the way.” She really had loved him. But it had all just seemed so overwhelming.
The next day and the day after that, he drove back to the Circle D to work. She stayed in Kalispell. She had a cell phone, though reception in the area was hit and miss back then. Her parents kept calling her. She let the calls go to voice mail for three days and then she finally answered and told them she had married Derek. Her dad demanded to know where she was. She hung up on him.
“And then, the night of the fourth day,” she said in a raggedy whisper, “my period came.”
Had she lost the baby? Or had she never been pregnant in the first place? Who knew?
“That hurt,” he said. “I mean, the baby had turned everything upside down. But suddenly, there was no baby and somehow, that was even worse.”
She agreed with a slow nod.
The next day—the fifth and final day—to cheer her up, he’d taken her to visit the Armstrongs while he went to work at the ranch.
Nobody knew that she’d married him—except the two of them and her parents. She’d made him promise not to tell his family until she was ready. When his mom and dad asked questions about where he got off to every night, he just said he was fine and for them not to worry. His parents had let it go at that. After all, he was nineteen, old enough to stay out all night if he wanted to. And besides, their ill-fated elopement didn’t last long. Before Rita and Charles Dalton got around to insisting that Derek tell them what was going on, it was over.
That day, the fifth day, when he dropped her off at the Armstrongs’, she had longed to confide in her friends—maybe not Eva, who was only thirteen at the time. But Delphine and Calla, definitely. They were like sisters to her.
She just couldn’t do it, though, couldn’t tell them what she was going through. They knew she was really upset about something and they hugged her and fussed over her. They told her that, whatever it was, it would be all right, that they would always be there for her, no matter what.
She asked Derek, “Did I tell you that Delphine quizzed me about you that day? She wanted to know if something had gone wrong between the two of us.” Everyone knew she’d been dating Derek, and the Armstrongs had seen him drop her off that morning.
“No, you never told me that. You hardly said a word on the drive back to the motel in Kalispell.”
“I was all turned
around inside, so sad about losing the baby, wondering how it was all going to work out.”
“I remember.” His voice was flat. Bleak. And then he asked, “What did you say to her that day—to Delphine?”
“I just shook my head and promised that I was fine and so were you.”
“But she guessed you were lying.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet they all three did.”
“Even Eva? She was so young.”
“But she’s always been sensitive to what other people are going through.”
“That day,” he said, staring up at the dark sky, “was the end of it...”
The end of us, she thought. “After that day, I never saw you again until last Monday, right here at the farm.”
“Thirteen years,” he said, his voice so heavy. With regret? With sadness or maybe bitterness? She couldn’t have said and she didn’t quite have the nerve to ask him what exactly he was feeling right now.
Instead, she got on with it. “I have no idea how my dad knew to find us at that motel. I never told him where I was. I assumed he’d somehow followed us from the Armstrongs’ house. I asked Eva’s mom later, before I left for Boulder, if she had called my dad and told him I was there that day. She swore she hadn’t.” Derek said nothing. He stared at the sky. Somewhere nearby, a lone owl hooted. A shiver ran through her. She peered down at him more closely. “What?”
He shifted his gaze to meet hers. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I thought maybe you were about to.”
“Uh-uh.”
She drew in a slow breath. “Well, however he did it, my father figured it out.”
* * *
Derek stared up into her night-shadowed eyes. Her skin was so smooth, silvered in moonlight.
He knew how her father had found them. But he wasn’t going to tell her. What good would that do? Jack Wainwright wasn’t a bad man. He’d just wanted the best for his only child and he’d followed them from the Armstrongs’, followed them to Kalispell and that cheap motel.
At the sight of her dad emerging from his fancy pickup, looking grim and exhausted, Amy had started to cry.
Derek had hated himself then, for jumping the gun and begging her to marry him, for putting her in this position, for messing everything up.
A Maverick to [Re] Marry Page 4
