Last-Minute Marriage

by Marisa Carroll

  Belle looked up at her, tongue lolling, a doggy grin on her face proclaiming her pleasure at having made a successful entry into forbidden territory.

  “You’d better go back outside right now,” Tessa said, hesitating to reach out and grab Belle by her collar. “Will you take a bite out of my arm if I try that?” she wondered aloud.

  Belle looked hurt at the suggestion that she would bite anyone. She sighed and rolled over to have her belly scratched. “All right—I’m sorry.” Tessa laughed as she knelt with the aid of her hand on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “I apologize. Of course you’d never bite anyone. There, girl. Does that feel good?”

  The Lab sighed and wriggled closer, all seventy-five pounds of her, knocking her head against Tessa’s belly. Tessa stood up, a little breathless. “Enough of that. If you want your ears scratched, come over to the couch like a good guest.”

  Belle surged to her feet and ambled across the room, looking back over her shoulder to make sure Tessa was following her. A knock sounded, then Sam’s head appeared around the door, his wheat-colored hair darkened with raindrops.

  “Hi,” he said. “Have you seen—Belle!”

  Tessa said, “Come in.”

  Sam hesitated a moment, then sidled into the room. “She ran away,” he said slowly and with obvious care so Tessa could understand. “I’ve been looking for her all over the neighborhood.”

  “She’s only been here a couple of minutes. I imagine she didn’t want to be scolded for running away.”

  “Gramps makes her stay in the basement when she gets muddy.” Sam stomped across the floor in his oversize running shoes and grabbed Belle’s collar and pulled. Belle pulled back. She and Sam weighed about the same, but she had the advantage of digging in with four feet, not just two.

  “Why don’t you both stay a minute,” Tessa invited, facing Sam head-on so he could read her lips. “I promised Belle a good ear scratching.”

  “We shouldn’t. Gramps doesn’t know where I went. He’s watching TV.” By that Tessa surmised he meant Caleb was napping in front of the television and Sam hadn’t bothered to wake him when he went looking for Belle.

  “Where’s your father?” The hardware closed at seven on weeknights. It was now a few minutes before eight.

  “He’s at a meeting.”

  Tessa remembered the town council was meeting tonight—she’d heard it on the radio. She glanced at the clock. She had no idea how long small-town council meetings might last. “Is your homework done?” she asked, still scratching Belle behind her ears. The dog’s head was a comforting weight on her knee, Sam’s presence a welcome change from her usual solitary evening.

  “All but my vocabulary words.” Vocabulary was scarcely recognizable, but being around Sam the past week had made her more familiar with his speech patterns, and she made an educated guess.

  “Vocabulary,” she repeated, emphasizing the combination of vowels and consonants that seemed the most difficult for him, the way she had seen Mitch do.

  “Whatever,” Sam said, giving her a sly grin that made him look like an angel whose halo was just a little tarnished.

  “Okay, no word practice here,” Tessa said. She’d been put neatly in her place, but she didn’t mind. After all, what right did she have to act as an authority figure to Mitch’s son? None at all. Sam knew that, even if she had forgotten for a moment.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked, pointing to her knitting.

  “I’m trying to knit a sweater for my baby. It’s much harder than I thought.”

  Sam looked at the inch of painstaking knitting with a skeptical eye. “Is that what you do when you don’t have TV or the Internet?”

  Tessa laughed. “Yes, it is.”

  Sam rested his elbows on the back of the sofa and dropped his chin into his hands. “Granddad Caleb didn’t have a TV until he was as old as my dad,” Sam said, talking so quickly Tessa could scarcely catch the words. He was a great kid, but he wasn’t above testing her. He wanted to see if she’d do it again, attempt to assert her grown-up authority. He was going to see how much slack she’d cut him. She’d spent enough time with her sister’s kids to read the signs.

  Or was it because she was going to have a baby herself? Some kind of hormonal sharpening of her instincts, maybe? It didn’t matter how she knew. It only mattered that she did.

  “I’m sorry, Sam, I can’t understand you,” she said gently, but firmly. Her tone of voice couldn’t register with Sam, she knew, but her body language and expression would. “If you don’t speak more slowly and clearly, I’m going to have to ask you to write it down.” She got up from her seat and went over to the kitchen drawer, where she’d found a couple of decks of cards and a writing tablet and pencil, testimony to the fact that the boathouse must have been the scene of many a Friday-night card game in its day.

  She might not have any authority to correct Sam, but she had a duty. It was in his best interest to speak as clearly as possible. She wasn’t doing him a favor by letting him get lazy with his words. Tessa held her breath, wondering how Sam would react to her ultimatum.

  A spark of anger and humiliation flared in his blue eyes. “You’re not my boss,” he said very plainly.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t have to do what you say.” He grabbed Belle by the collar and stalked toward the door. Or attempted to. It was hard to stalk when you were dragging your own weight in reluctant dog. “Damn it, Belle, come on.”

  Tessa didn’t scold him for the mild curse. She’d played the heavy enough for one night. She was actually shaking a little. How did parents do it every day?

  She wondered if she’d be any good at this parenting thing. She started forward to tap Sam on the shoulder and call him back.

  Sam was two feet from the door when someone else knocked.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Sam stopped in his tracks. Tessa didn’t know if he could hear the sharp tattoo of knuckles on wood, or if he could see a figure through the thin cotton curtain that screened the glass in the upper half of the door.

  Her third unexpected visitor was Caleb, raindrops darkening the shoulders of his jacket and the red baseball cap he wore. “There you are, boy. What are you doing out here?”

  “Belle got loose. She came here,” Sam said, indicating the whining dog by his side. Belle obviously wasn’t ready to end her visit, even if Sam was.

  “You know she’s not supposed to run loose, Sam.”

  “She got out of her kennel again.”

  “I didn’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let her in.” Tessa said. “I was going to bring her over to the house—”

  “Shouldn’t be your place to be bringing the dog home,” Caleb said, still unsmiling. He removed his baseball cap with old-fashioned courtesy and held it between his gnarled hands. “But I do thank you. She means a lot to the boy, and she’s going to get hit by a car sure as shooting if she keeps running loose.”

  “I enjoyed having her,” Tessa assured him. “She’s a good dog. Won’t you sit down?” she invited. She wasn’t at all comfortable around Mitch’s grandfather, but it was so nice to have the little apartment filled with voices. A dog lying on the rug would be a comforting sight. All she needed was a fireplace to make it perfect.

  “We should be getting back to the house.”

  “I…I baked brownies. They’re just from a mix, but I could use someone to help me eat them. I’m watching my weight, you know.” She smiled, hoping to coax one from Caleb in return.

  He didn’t smile, but he didn’t refuse her invitation. “Thank you,” he said formally. “I’d be pleased to have a brownie.”

  “Sam? Do you like brownies.” The boy hesitated. Tessa realized he was waiting for her to tell Caleb of his rudeness. He was watching her intently, eyes narrowed. She smiled at him, too, ignoring the opportunity to report his misdemeanor. Chocolate was the best peace offering she could think of. “They’re double-chocolate walnut.”

  Sam nodded, then g
rinned. The anger and humiliation she’d glimpsed in his eyes a few moments before was gone. “Yes,” he said clearly. “I’d like one. Do you have milk?”

  He was a bright and inquisitive child. It must be horribly frustrating to have such trouble communicating even the simplest requests. But she’d be doing him no favor in letting him misbehave, either. She smiled, showing him she agreed to a truce. “Brownies and milk coming up. Make yourselves comfortable, won’t you?”

  She bustled about taking chipped and mismatched plates and glasses from the metal cupboard. She didn’t have napkins, but paper towels would do. She’d picked a few last-of-the-season daisies from alongside the boathouse and put them in a small vase on the table. Sam took the glasses to the table and poured milk from the Shirley Temple pitcher Tessa had found pushed to the back of the highest shelf.

  “I hope you don’t mind me using this,” she said to Caleb as he pulled out a chair. “I found it in the cupboard. It really shouldn’t be out here. I assume it’s quite valuable.”

  Caleb picked up the small dark blue pitcher and studied the smiling face of the curly-headed little girl. “I have no idea where this came from. We haven’t used this place for years. Maybe the people who bought the house from me and my wife left it behind.”

  “Mitch told me you sold the house when he was a boy.” Tessa hadn’t been inside Mitch’s house. She wondered what it was like. High ceilings, she supposed, and dark old woodwork. Or had it been remodeled to a high-tech gloss? It would be a shame if it had.

  “Me and Celia—that’s my late wife—we wanted something smaller. She had trouble with arthritis in her knees. We had a nice little rambler over in the new addition. But Mitch loved this house. It went on the market right after Sam was born. He scraped up every penny he could beg, borrow or steal to get it. I’m kinda glad he did now that there’s only me and him and the boy left.”

  It was the longest, most personal speech Caleb had ever made to her. Tessa searched for the right response. Sam was eating his brownie, oblivious to what the grown-ups at the table were discussing.

  “Mitch is very conscious of his roots,” she said.

  Caleb considered her words. She was afraid for a moment that he would lash out and say that she didn’t know a damn thing about how his grandson felt, but he surprised her. “More so than I ever was,” he said at last. “Maybe it was growing up trying to make ends meet all through the depression. Then going into the army right out of high school. I’d never been out of Sycamore County until I went overseas on my eighteenth birthday. I wasn’t even twenty when we marched into Berlin. Made me a little less sentimental, maybe. Or just glad to be alive. I wanted to move on with my life. Celia wasn’t from around these parts. She didn’t even like the place. Anyway, that old house across the driveway didn’t mean near as much to me then as it does now. I’m glad Mitch brought it back into the family.”

  Tessa stared down at her untouched brownie. “The Sterling house,” she said very quietly. There had never been a Masterson house. Just a series of shabby apartments and run-down duplexes. Even the condo she’d shared with Brian hadn’t felt like a home—although she knew in her heart that it should have.

  “That’s what it’s called around town. Always been the Sterling house, no matter who was living here.” Caleb took a bite of his brownie, then looked at Sam. He tapped his finger on the tabletop. Sam looked up. “You got homework, boy?”

  “It’s done,” Sam said, not quite meeting the old man’s gaze.

  Caleb tapped his finger again. “Vocabulary words?”

  Sam made a face. “No.”

  “You need to be working on them.”

  “Dad’s going to help me when he gets home.” Sam lifted his plate. “Could I have another brownie, please?”

  Tessa laughed, pleased, even though she knew there was almost nothing a ten-year-old boy wouldn’t ask to have seconds of. “Certainly you may.” A thought struck her. Perhaps Mitch didn’t allow Sam to have seconds of dessert. A great many parents limited their children’s intake of sugar and fat. She looked at Caleb. “Is it all right if he has another brownie?”

  “That’d be fine. Can’t say I blame the boy for asking.”

  “Would you like another?”

  “I would, but I’ll pass. I have to watch my sugar intake these days.”

  She nodded.

  It was quiet in the little room for a while, except for the sound of Belle’s snores, the clink of Sam’s fork against the china plate and the faint music from the radio. The song ended and a series of commercials began. One of them was Mitch talking about the store’s big fall sale.

  Belle woke up and padded over to the radio, then stood facing it, head cocked comically. Tessa listened, too, and so did Caleb. Even Sam stopped eating, although Tessa suspected with the volume so low he was only reacting to their responses, and not his father’s voice.

  “Mitch does a fair job with those commercials. I admit I didn’t think it was a good use of money. Still don’t, as far as the business it brings in. But the goodwill in town—well, they’re worth their weight in gold that way.”

  Tessa suspected the ladies in town didn’t mind listening to Mitch’s sexy voice over the airwaves, either. The thought, and the flush of heat that surged through her veins, startled her. The baby, too. Tiny fists and feet sprang to action inside her. She folded her hands on the table and took a deep steadying breath.

  When she looked up again, Caleb was watching her, his wise old eyes narrowed to slits. Tessa felt the flush that had heated her skin climb into her cheeks. She stood up and took her plate to the sink, keeping her back to him. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “Nothing more.”

  She came back and sat down.

  Sam finished his brownie. “It was good,” he said. He put his plate and empty glass in the sink, then went back to the couch and put his arms around Belle’s neck.

  “Have you decided yet when you’re leaving town?” Caleb asked bluntly.

  “I…no. Not precisely. I have an appointment at the clinic the day after tomorrow. I’ll probably decide then.”

  “You’ll want to be settled with your sister before the baby comes.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been a real help at the store.”

  “Thank you. The job has been a godsend to me. I owe Mitch a great deal for hiring me on faith the way he did.”

  “Mitch has a good heart. Sometimes it gets in the way of his head.” Caleb had been following the outline of the red flowers that dotted the vinyl tablecloth with his fingertip. Now he looked up, pinning Tessa with his gaze. “Mitch doesn’t always make the right choices when he thinks with his heart. But once he’s committed, he sticks, come hell or high water. It’s easy to get hurt that way. I don’t want to see him go through that again.” He was warning her away. She couldn’t blame him. She was a woman alone. Pregnant. Almost penniless. Caleb had every right to be worried that she would take advantage of his grandson.

  “I haven’t always made the right choices, either,” she said, not looking away, although she wanted to, desperately. She could feel tears pricking her eyelids, and she was determined not to cry. “I let my heart do the thinking once too often myself.” She laid her hand on her stomach, under the table, where Caleb couldn’t see. “So from now on I’m determined to go it alone. Just me and my baby. Working for you and Mitch will give me a little more security when I leave here. That’s why I want to stay in Riverbend as long as possible.” She stood up. Caleb followed suit, still watching her, but his eyes had softened a little, or perhaps she’d only imagined it. “But you have my word that’s the only reason I’m still here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MITCH STOOD at the end of the dock and let tendrils of mist eddy around him. He took a deep breath. The air was heavy with the smell of the river and the wet earth behind him, and over it all the tang of burning leaves. Off in the distance the roar of a combine came to him as a faint growl. A farmer worki
ng late, staying ahead of the weather. The harvest was nearly complete, the grain stored. Midway through another season, and winter not far away. He loved these still, quiet nights with the first real bite of autumn chill in the air.

  Rocking back on his heels, he looked up at the sky. The clouds were breaking up, chased off by a freshening breeze. Tomorrow was supposed to be cool and clear. The rest of the week the same. He was going to have to bring the dock in soon, or the water would be too cold to get into without hip waders.

  Charlie Callahan would probably help, if he gave him a call. That is, if he wasn’t off somewhere with Beth planning their wedding. It was still four months away, but you’d think it was scheduled for day after tomorrow. It was going to be bigger and more elaborate than their first, because it was damned well going to be their last, according to Charlie and Beth. He smiled as he turned to head back up the steep flight of stairs that lined the bank alongside the boathouse.

  Charlie and Beth were sure making up for all the years they’d been apart. You almost never saw one of them without the other these days, and Mitch was glad of it. He’d always thought they were meant for each other. But maybe for old times’ sake he could coax them apart long enough to get the dock put away for the winter. Especially if it meant giving Charlie a chance to escape from picking out wedding music or deciding between chicken cordon bleu and roast beef for the reception menu.

  Mitch took his time climbing the steps. He wasn’t in any hurry to get back inside. What did he have to look forward to? Caleb and Sam were already in bed. That left the late news, maybe Letterman. He was too wound up to sleep. It had been one of those days.

  Most of the time he enjoyed his job on the town council. But not tonight. Not when half-a-dozen irate citizens came to make complaints about barking dogs and uneven sidewalks and motor homes parked on the back alley right-of-way. All of them had to be given their say, on top of the council’s regular agenda. After a session like that, he wished he’d never let the mayor, Barb Baden, talk him into running for town council. It was just too damned tedious for words.