The Cowboy Takes A Bride (The Bridal Bid #2)

by Cathleen Galitz

  Caitlin had to hand it to Grant. He had impeccable taste. The dress was perfect. Not only was it sure to please her father, it also indulged some foolish romantic illusion she had secreted away in some soft spot in her heart. In light of the way Grant was being forced into this farce of a marriage, she couldn’t believe his thoughtfulness. Her father was, after all, practically holding a shotgun to his back.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she protested weakly.

  “If we’re going to commit to this idea, we might as well do it right.”

  Caitlin’s eyes misted with emotion as she swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

  They emerged from the mall a short while later. The sundress and jacket fit Caitlin as if it had been custom made for her. She’d also purchased a pair of strappy heels that accentuated the curve of her calves and a very simple veil. Grant looked heartbreakingly handsome in a crisp white dress shirt, silk tie, dark slacks, boots, and new Stetson.

  “After all, a man doesn’t get married every day,” he’d informed the wide-eyed salesgirl batting her eyelashes at him from behind the counter.

  Back at the hospital, Grant steered Caitlin toward the gift shop in the lobby and insisted she pick out some flowers for the occasion. Blushing prettily, she chose a small spray of pink roses and baby’s breath she hoped would hide her shaking hands throughout the upcoming ceremony.

  The gesture made on her behalf was so sweet it made her ache with longing. What girl didn’t dream of the perfect wedding?

  “Thank you,” she murmured, blinking back her tears.

  Five minutes later, they were pushing open the door to her father’s hospital room.

  The faint scent of holy oil lingered in the air. A small white candle by the bedside remained unlit.

  “I understand that you two are in a hurry to be married?” the good Father said, quirking an eyebrow in their direction. “Right here and now and in the sight of God.”

  Caitlin’s felt her head bobbing in agreement of its own accord.

  “Is that God’s honest truth?” he pursued.

  “Yes.” Grant’s single word reply rang as loudly in the room as a death knell.

  Father O’Riley regarded them gravely. “It’s highly unusual, you know, to perform a marriage ceremony without proper preparation time in which I get to know the young couple first and ascertain whether or not they have a sincere desire to be united forever in the common bond of matrimony. Still, Paddy’s an old friend of mine, and he assures me that this is indeed the case. That his precarious condition has merely intensified your eagerness to be wed. Is that truly the case?”

  Caitlin looked at her father’s closed eyelids. He seemed so frail and old. Knowing that her answer could indeed be the difference between life and death, she paused but a second before nodding again.

  Father O’Riley’s voice was solemn. “If either one of you has been coerced into this decision, you must understand that I cannot in good conscience marry you.”

  Caitlin’s voice sounded squeaky from lack of use. “I am choosing this of my free will, Father.”

  “As am I,” Grant said so convincingly that Caitlin found herself wishing he really meant it. That this man truly wanted her to be his wife in every respect.

  Paddy sank even deeper into his bed in relief, and a smile as wide as the Rocky Mountains crossed his wizened features. His eyelids fluttered open.

  “You look beautiful, Caitlin,” he whispered.

  Tears welled up in her eyes as she squeezed his hand reassuringly.

  “Are you ready to proceed then?” the priest asked, flipping the pages of his worn black missal to the proper place. “As much as I’d like to light a holy candle for a spot of atmosphere, it wouldn’t be wise with the patient on oxygen.”

  The dear Father’s desire to romanticize the dreary setting coaxed but a grim smile from Caitlin. She felt strangely removed from the situation, as if watching it from afar.

  Surrounded by machines in the stark room, the bride wore white and a bewildered look. The groom sported a rugged look that was far too sexy for such a strained occasion.

  It struck her that Grant would look wonderful in the white tux she had once upon a time envisioned for her wedding. It conjured a fetching picture in her mind, one that any number of glossy wedding magazines would have snapped up in an instant. Her husband was indeed the kind of hunk that women swooned over.

  Her husband!

  Would that he be a husband to her in more than just name! To have and to hold in both sickness and in health…

  As much as she would have liked to indulge such fantasies, Caitlin refused to delude herself. Love played no part in this travesty of a vow. Why, her father might just as well have sold her off to the highest bidder! Being bartered to pay off Paddy’s debt of conscience hurt her so deeply that it was all she could do to just stay upright through the ceremony.

  There was no ring to put upon her finger, no cake or champagne, no friends to catch her bouquet. All the many loving details a woman puts such stock in were as noticeably absent at Caitlin’s wedding as her mother. Her heart twinged with guilt. Laura Leigh would be devastated to discover her only daughter thus married off like a piece of medieval chattel.

  As he issued his final instructions, Father O’Reily beamed at Grant. “You may now kiss your bride.”

  Caitlin stiffened as Grant took her by the shoulders and placed a light kiss upon her lips. They felt as numb as the very soul she had just sold to purchase her father’s happiness. Nevertheless she trembled beneath his touch. Considering the circumstances, his tenderness was unexpected and so incredibly gentle that it made her knees buckle. Sagging against Grant’s solid chest, she buried her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

  Wiping away a tear, Paddy remarked. “I only wish your mother could have been here.”

  “Me, too, Daddy.”

  With that Caitlin Flynn Davis bestowed a kiss upon her father’s brow, and dropping her voice a notch, whispered into his ear. “Something borrowed…”

  Fishing a scrap of lace out of her purse, she slipped one of her mother’s scented handkerchiefs behind Paddy’s pillow. The familiar scent of honeysuckle wafted through the small room softening the medicinal smell that permeated it.

  “You’re a darlin’ girl,” Paddy said.

  The old twinkle was back in his eye, and suddenly Caitlin knew Grant had been right all along. Pride and the loss of a cherished childhood dream were nothing in the face of her father’s happiness.

  Who could it possibly hurt to let Paddy go to his grave thinking his fair line would live on in the passel of grandchildren they had pledged to give him?

  Ten

  “You’ve done what?”

  Caitlin could hardly bear to look at the horrified expression on her mother’s face. Though it had been her fondest wish to have Laura Leigh rush to Paddy’s bedside, in all actuality she had no expectations that it would come to pass. That her mother had hopped the first plane out of San Antonio at her request only intensified Caitlin’s tremendous feelings of guilt for not apprising Laura Leigh ahead of time of her “marriage.”

  “I refuse to repeat myself, Mother,” she replied in a tone that sounded far more petulant than she intended. Still it went against the grain. A married woman should not have to explain herself like some naughty toddler who has just made a mess on the kitchen floor.

  Laura Leigh pressed both hands to the sides of her perfectly made-up face as if to keep her head from exploding. In her haste to find Paddy’s room, she had virtually collided with her daughter and the brooding, handsome man who was accompanying her. The man’s rugged good looks so reminded Laura Leigh of her own first love that it left her tottering on her high heels. No sooner had she regained her footing than the stranger up and introduced himself as her son-in-law. At the pronouncement, the world crumbled beneath Laura Leigh’s feet.

  Promising to return after picking up a few necessities from a nearby convenience store, Grant excused
himself, leaving his bride blushing an explanation.

  “Coward,” she hissed to his receding backside.

  Laura Leigh gave her daughter a baleful look.

  “Have you no respect at all for me? For all my dreams of throwing my only daughter a gorgeous, white church wedding the likes of which the entire state of Texas has never seen?”

  For one dreadful moment, Caitlin feared her mother was going to burst into tears. Never before had she seen Laura Leigh deal with any emergency with anything less than calming dignity. Dabbing at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief, she was oblivious to the streak of mascara that it left on the side of her aquiline nose.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you come out here to your father’s rig,” she wailed as much to herself as to her daughter. “I’d hoped to spare you the mistakes I’ve made in my life.”

  “I didn’t get married just to spite you,” Caitlin hastened to assure her mother. Vainly hoping to postpone the inevitable discussion of how this surprising turn of events had come about, she attempted to focus her mother’s attention on something other than herself. Caitlin was certain she would stand a better chance against such treacherous weapons as logic and common sense when she wasn’t in a state of walking shock.

  “I promise I’ll explain it all to you later. Don’t you want to see Daddy now?” Caitlin’s voice cracked with emotion. “It’ll mean a lot to him to have you here. It does to me. More than you can know, Mother.”

  Suddenly Caitlin found herself enfolded in her mother’s arms, carried away by the sweet, familiar scent of honeysuckle to those innocent childhood days when a Band-Aid applied with a liberal dose of maternal words of comfort had been a sure cure for any scrape.

  “Is he really that bad?” Laura Leigh’s voice quavered slightly as a furrow of concern creased her brow.

  Caitlin’s voice dropped to a shaky whisper. “It doesn’t look good. The doctors aren’t sure whether he’ll even make it.”

  Her mother’s face grew pale. Her lovely mouth quivered, reassuring Caitlin that her feelings for the man had not completely eroded over time.

  “Of course I want to see him.”

  “He was asleep when we left his room. The doctors suggested we get some sleep ourselves and come back later.”

  Caitlin’s voice conveyed her sense of guilt about leaving at all. It had taken all Grant’s powers of persuasion to convince her that it was foolish for both of them to spend any more time dozing on a hospital couch.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when he wakes up.”

  “Are you sure, Mother?”

  The questioning look on her daughter’s face spurred Laura Leigh into an unwilling explanation. “I’ve yet to make my peace with your father.”

  When Caitlin offered to escort her to Paddy’s room, the older woman worried her lower lip between her teeth, a sure sign that she was distraught. “No, this is something I have to do myself.”

  Pausing to take a long look at her daughter’s troubled countenance, Laura Leigh’s motherly hormones kicked into high gear. “The doctors are right,” she concurred. “You look like you’re dead on your feet. Go on and get some sleep. I’ll stay with your father and call you if anything happens that you should know about.”

  When Grant returned a short time later, he was surprised to see Caitlin resting her head against her mother’s shoulder. Laura Leigh wasn’t at all what he had expected. That she had showed up at all was a shocker. That she didn’t have two heads and fangs was equally astonishing. In fact, the lady was quite well preserved for her age. That did little to lessen Grant’s animosity toward her. Nothing could make him forget that she was the woman who had broken Paddy’s heart without a backward glance or a second thought about her wedding vows.

  He hoped good looks were the only thing Caitlin inherited from her mother. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he held out a tiny flicker of hope that she might actually consider the vows they had just spoken more than some lines an actress might read from a script.

  His own parents had placed the utmost value upon the sanctity of marriage, and he felt certain that the loving bond that connected them in this life remained unbroken in the hereafter. Ashamed of the part he himself had played in that gross burlesque that had just made a mockery of a sacred ritual, Grant made a silent act of contrition. Surely God would forgive him if his intentions were pure.

  There was the rub. His intentions were as pure as old Beelzebub’s. In the most secret place in his heart, Grant held the desire to do more than simply pretend with his fair bride. A hot-blooded man, he was invariably stirred to arousal by the very sight of her, and playing house was not exactly his style.

  As Caitlin stumbled toward him from her mother’s arms, bleary-eyed and weak, he reached out to steady her with all protective instincts of a man who claimed this woman as his own.

  “Let’s get you to bed,” he murmured into the sensuous dark waves of her hair, wondering vaguely how he was ever going to bridle his lust once he got her alone.

  Grant’s comment made Caitlin shiver involuntarily. As much as she would have liked to attribute it to dread, the funny tightening in her tummy made her think twice.

  Before she knew it, they were outside the hospital and in the parking lot. Faced with a loveless wedding night on the eve of her father’s impending death, Caitlin resisted the urge to laugh hysterically as her husband opened the door of the Jeep for her. In the face of such bizarre circumstances, his usual chivalry seemed misplaced.

  This can’t be happening to me, Caitlin thought to herself as she settled herself in her seat and rested her cheek against the cool glass of the window.

  “What exactly did you tell your mother?”

  Grant’s voice sounded raw as he took his own seat and turned the ignition. Having taken a goodly measure of delight in putting a horrified expression on his mother-in-law’s face by blurting out that they were married, he couldn’t help but wonder if in his absence the two women had shared a laugh at his expense.

  “Not much,” Caitlin confided with a weary sigh. “I was hoping you could help me out with explanations tomorrow.”

  Grant reached across the seat and took her hand into his own. It was icy cold to the touch, and he feared she was becoming ill herself.

  “Let’s get you to a motel,” he said.

  The tremor he felt go through her hand at the comment signaled his wife’s fear of being alone with him in a room with a bed. Instead of setting her mind at ease, Grant focused on navigating the streets of downtown Casper.

  With children just back in school and most of their parents working, the streets were relatively vacant save for the rustle of golden leaves and an occasional retiree poking slowly along the dusty sidewalks. Crossing the Platte River’s sluggish, murky water reminded Caitlin of just how enigmatic life could be. Like a river meandering through varied terrain, her own days were subject to sudden twists of fate over which she had no more control than the weather.

  Her pulse jumped as they pulled into the parking lot of a nice hotel. The thought of registering as Mr. and Mrs. Grant Davis sent all thoughts of desperately needed sleep skittering from her mind like a broken string of pearls hitting a marble floor. Caitlin hoped he had not forgotten the terms of their marriage in such a short time.

  It was all she could do to feign composure as Grant approached the desk and returned with but one key. Her mouth flew open in surprise.

  “I assumed we’d have separate rooms,” she protested. A revealing blush climbed her neck and deposited twin roses upon her cheeks.

  Grant pinned her down with his eyes. “You don’t have anything to fear from me,” he assured her with a derisive twist of his lips. “I’ve been sleeping on couches for so long the thought of stretching out on a bed all to myself is almost as appealing as sharing one with my lovely bride. The room has two beds, and the truth of the matter is all I want to do is get some sleep.”

  Unsure of whether it was relief or disappointment that clogged her th
roat, Caitlin swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’d try anything…”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he added with a glint in his eye that could not be mistaken. “Possessing such a beautiful wife, even in name alone, gives me a great sense of pride. I won’t lie to you, Caitlin. I do want you, but I hope you know that I’m not the sort of man who’d force himself on anyone—whatever the circumstances.”

  “The room then is just…” Caitlin spoke haltingly. “A matter of convenience…like our marriage?”

  “Unless you’d like to make it something more.”

  His words hit her with the force of a blunt object. The look in his eyes was unmistakable. Fearing he would laugh at her if she told him she was a virgin and completely inexperienced at pleasuring a man, Caitlin clamped her lips shut. Whenever a date had begun groping her, she had felt such revulsion to his clumsy advances that she had quickly sent the suitor packing—occasionally amid curses that she was either a tease or a frigid oddball. Those memories clawed at her insides.

  What if they were right?

  “You don’t have to look like I’m leading you to your execution,” Grant chided, opening the elevator doors and gesturing for Caitlin to precede him.

  Nervousness pricked at the back of her throat as the elevator closed in around them. She felt her stomach drop as the confining box began climbing to its destination. Caitlin feared it had less to do with physics than it did the chemistry bubbling between them. Hoping to steady her nerves, she crowded the far wall of the elevator and concentrated on the changing numbers with each passing floor.

  There was no luggage to carry as they stepped off at the appropriate floor, just a small sack of sundries Grant had picked up while she was talking to her mother. A man passing them in the hallway gave her the once-over. Had it not been for the chilling glare she leveled at him, Caitlin was sure he would have winked at Grant in a sleazy sign of brotherhood. The clod seemed to think there was a gross of condoms in the sack she was so nervously crinkling in her hands.