Last-Minute Marriage

by Marisa Carroll

  “Tessa…” He closed his mouth and set his jaw. What had he been about to say? You don’t have to raise this baby alone. Marry me and I’ll be the best father I know how to be.

  My God, what had come over him? He couldn’t be thinking of proposing marriage to her. They’d only known each other a couple of weeks. They’d never had a real date. They’d never kissed. They’d never made love.

  But he was falling in love with her. He suspected he had been since the moment they’d first met.

  And Tessa didn’t believe in love at first sight. She might not have told him in so many words, but he knew. And heaven help him, he had no business believing in it, either. He’d never looked at another woman once he’d set his heart on Kara, and their marriage had been a dismal failure. What made him think he’d do better a second time if he acted on those bolt-from-the-blue kind of feelings?

  Because Tessa isn’t Kara, and I’m not nineteen anymore.

  “Yes? Was there something else you wanted to say?” She tilted her head a little, looking up at him.

  “Nothing,” he said, breaking the contact of those blue, blue eyes with an effort that was almost physical. “Nothing at all.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  HER BABY’S SWEATER was coming along nicely. Tessa looked down at the pieces of the little garment she’d knitted so diligently. It might not be county-fair-blue-ribbon quality, but every stitch had been done with love.

  Tomorrow she would go back to the shop next to Killian’s and have the proprietor, whose name she now knew was Marcie Captor, show her how to put it all together. Then maybe she’d tackle a hat and booties to match. She had some yarn left. If she bought another skein, it would probably be enough.

  And she had the time to learn the more complicated stitches it would take to finish the ensemble. Tessa smiled to herself, looking out over the river as the setting sun gilded the orange, red and brown leaves on the trees lining the bank with a blaze of gold light. Her brother-in-law had chicken pox. She wasn’t going to have to leave Riverbend for at least another week.

  She tightened her lips until the smile was wiped away. She shouldn’t be this happy about another delay in getting to Albany. But she was. Her little nest egg was growing, and she was comfortable in the boathouse apartment. Tiny as it was, it was hers—for the time being. She could even close her eyes and picture a crib at the foot of her bed, the mobile of brightly colored circus animals she’d seen in Killian’s baby department circling around as it lulled her infant to sleep.

  Forbidden dreams.

  She shouldn’t let herself revel in the sudden lift in her spirits whenever she looked out over the river, or greeted Evie Mazerik and Lucy Garvey when she stepped into the Sunnyside Café. Or, be relieved that she would have another prenatal visit with Dr. Stevens and not some anonymous nurse practitioner in an Albany clinic.

  Riverbend wasn’t her home. She had to stop thinking of it that way. She picked up the tiny sweater, put it in a plastic bag and set it on the chair beside the sofa. Her job at the hardware was only a means to an end—an independent life for her and her baby in a city nearly a thousand miles away from the flat Indiana cornfields that encircled the town like rows of golden sentinels.

  She had to stop thinking about things like what the subject of Reverend Lynn’s sermon would be that day when she heard church bells ring out on Sunday mornings. She’d met the young minister when she came into the hardware to look at carpet samples, and found her friendly and easy to talk to.

  Her mother had partied too hard on most Saturday nights to have any inclination to get up on Sunday mornings and spend an hour in church. But when Tessa was settled in Albany, she intended to find a church for her and her baby to attend. A church with a young, forward-thinking minister like Lynn Kendall.

  And she would pick a neighborhood with good schools. Even if she never fulfilled her own dreams of finishing her degree and teaching, her child was going to have the best education she could provide.

  A truck pulled into Mitch’s driveway and came to a halt in front of the boathouse. Tessa glanced at the sunflower-shaped clock she’d bought at a flea market and hung on a nail above the sink. It must be Charlie Callahan arriving to start the chili. He was going to cook it over an open fire in a big iron kettle on the riverbank.

  She looked out the window and saw Charlie kneeling beside the fire pit. He had the same rangy build, the same broad shoulders and narrow hips as Mitch, the same laugh lines around his nose and mouth. She had no trouble at all imagining the two of them playing in mud puddles after a thunderstorm when they were little, hunting squirrels in the woods outside town with their fathers, anchoring the basketball team in high school, consoling each other when their marriages went bad.

  Tessa grabbed her sweater and reminded herself sternly that Charlie Callahan had reconciled with his ex-wife. And Mitch’s love life was none of her business. Too many times lately she’d found herself imagining what it would be like to be his wife, fantasizing that the baby she carried was his and would be born into a family full of shared values and love.

  Another forbidden dream.

  “Hi, Charlie,” she said as she walked to her car. It was time to get back to the hardware for the party.

  “Hi, Tessa.” He stood up and brushed crushed leaves from the knees of his jeans. He was wearing a green chambray shirt and a canvas jacket with a dark brown corduroy collar, which enhanced his rugged good looks. “Are you off to help with the pumpkin carving?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Hang on a minute until I get this fire started, and I’ll drive you over to the store.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “I’m going to swing by there and pick up some folding chairs, anyway. It’ll save you having to find a parking space when you get back here tonight. The driveway will be full.” He was watching the kindling and crumpled newspaper he’d placed under the tepee-shaped pile of logs as it caught fire and sent licks of yellow flames curling up between the split wood. “There it goes. Have a seat in my truck. I’ll holler at Caleb and tell him I’m leaving. He’ll keep an eye on the fire until I get back.”

  “Whose idea was it to put candles in the trees?” she asked.

  He shrugged and looked up at the mason jars with votive candles inside them hanging by heavy strings tied around their mouths. They’d been placed in the lower branches of the maples that shared the backyard with the huge old oak. The heavy glass jars swung to and fro in the gentle breeze, casting a flickering play of light and shadow across the yard. “Mitch’s mom, I guess. She always used to hang them out here for trick-or-treat night when we were kids. We sorta kept up the tradition when Mitch started the après-carving party a few years back.”

  “I like them,” Tessa said. She liked the tradition, too. There had never been any traditions in the Masterson family. She would have to make some of her own—for her and her child, just as Callie was doing for her girls.

  Flames were licking at the larger pieces of wood now. Caleb came out with a folding lawn chair and sat down close to the fire. “Looks like it’s going to stay lit,” he said, holding his hands out to the warmth.

  Charlie nodded, satisfied with his handiwork, and motioned toward his truck. “I’ll be back ASAP. Let me give you a hand up.” His hand was warm and strong and rough, like Mitch’s. A workingman’s hand. She stepped onto the high step of his truck and wriggled her way onto the seat. It was a cool night, and she stuck her hands in the pockets of her coat, a raspberry-colored all-weather coat with a heavy zippered lining that had belonged to Mitch’s mother. She’d barely worn it, he said, and he’d just never gotten rid of it after she died. It was several sizes larger than Tessa usually wore, but she needed the extra material to cover her growing belly. She’d found an ivory scarf and matching gloves at Killian’s. Callie would probably have an extra pair of boots lying around, so she’d be ready to face an upstate New York winter when she finally got to Albany without
dipping into her savings.

  Tessa wondered what winter was like in Riverbend. Did it snow a lot? Or was it barren and bleak most of the time? Did kids skate on the river ice? Or was it never safe enough for that? She remembered what Mitch had said about Abraham Steele falling through the ice many years before.

  “It’s a nice night for a bonfire,” Charlie said as they pulled out onto River Road. “Never know if it’s going to be clear or raining cats and dogs this time of year.”

  “No rain tonight—there’s a full moon,” Tessa said. She’d been watching the waxing of the big harvest moon all week. Some nights when it came up over the horizon like an enormous gold coin, it seemed almost close enough to touch.

  “‘Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky,”’ Charlie warbled horribly off key.

  Tessa laughed. “I hope you never plan to earn a living as a singer.”

  Charlie put his hand over his heart. “You wound me to the quick, woman. I intend to be the next Sinatra.”

  “Oh, dear, then please forgive me,” she said, still laughing.

  He grinned. “But until I get my big break I’ll just keep building garden centers for Mitch and houses for the good citizens of Riverbend.”

  Tessa was still smiling when they pulled into the parking lot at the hardware store. It was already more than half-full, and cars were pulling in as they parked in the roped-off area around the new greenhouse. “Rank has its privileges,” Charlie said. He’d bounded out of the pickup cab and rounded the hood to open Tessa’s door before she could do it for herself.

  “Let me give you a hand down. This thing’s built a lot higher off the ground than a car.”

  “I noticed,” she said, doing as he asked. “I like being above the crowd that way.”

  “Why do you think SUVs and trucks are so popular? Everyone wants to be up high where they can see what’s going on.”

  “And not have to spend hours in stop-and-go traffic looking at a bumper sticker on an eighteen-wheeler that says, How Am I Driving?”

  “That, too. Although there’s not a lot of stop-and-go traffic in Riverbend except maybe after a football or basketball game on Friday night.”

  “Or Sunday mornings after church.”

  Charlie nodded. “Yeah. My sister makes her best tips when she works Sunday mornings.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Lucy Garvey. She’s a waitress at the Sunnyside Café.”

  “I’ve met her. I didn’t know she was your sister.” It seemed as if everyone in Riverbend was related to everyone else.

  “Lucy should be here tonight. I’ll introduce you properly.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that.”

  Charlie held open one of the big glass doors to the store and Tessa stepped into a scene of brightly lit confusion. Kids were everywhere, lugging pumpkins so big most of them couldn’t get their arms around them.

  Lynn Kendall was supervising a quartet of teenagers as they put up folding tables and spread newspapers on the floor. Part of her Meacham House crew, Tessa guessed. She’d read about the new youth center in the Riverbend Courier. At another table Linda Christman, half glasses perched on her snub nose, was sorting through a stack of patterns for a dozen different jack-o’-lantern designs she’d been running off on the copier all afternoon.

  Tessa saw Dr. Stevens and a towheaded little girl who was obviously her daughter searching through some of the designs Linda had already laid out, their heads bent over the patterns, looking for just the perfect one.

  One day she would be doing the same thing with her daughter, getting ready to carve a Halloween jack-o’-lantern, going shopping at Killian’s to find just the right costume. Except, she reminded herself for the thousandth time, she wouldn’t be shopping at Killian’s. She wouldn’t be living in Riverbend.

  “Tessa! How nice to see you here.” She turned to see Kate McMann with her daughters. Kate managed the bookstore, and Tessa had met her and her precocious five-year-old twins a week or so before on her lunch hour. Steele’s Books was a wonderful place, a treasure trove of new books and old. The history section took up half an entire wall, and Tessa had fallen in love with the place at first sight.

  She watched as the two little girls picked out their pumpkins from the pile Mitch had brought in that afternoon, then went racing to the table to paint them. Kate, looking slightly harassed but with a smile on her face, was only a step behind with smocks to cover their clothes.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. It was Sam. “Hi, Tessa,” he said. “Did you pick out your pumpkin yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll find you a good one.”

  “I’m in charge of the little kids,” Lily Mazerik said, smiling at Tessa from behind a nearby table. “We’re painting our pumpkins. No sharp objects allowed.”

  “This is probably where I should be,” Tessa confessed. “I’m not very talented with a carving knife.”

  “I am.” Sam had been following their conversation. “I’ve already carved a real neat pumpkin. Want to see?”

  “Sam and a couple of the older guys from Meacham House carved a few of the biggest pumpkins right after school. Mitch has them on display over in the corner.” Lily motioned toward the aisle that held plumbing fixtures.

  Tessa followed Sam to where Lily had indicated. Three huge pumpkins were displayed against a burlap backdrop. They were lighted from inside with small electric bulbs, she noticed, instead of candles, a safety precaution Mitch’s insurance company had probably insisted on.

  The designs carved into the pumpkins were intricate and detailed. Sam laid a hand proudly on one that contained an entire graveyard scene complete with a skeletal tree and the grim reaper with beckoning hand and scythe. A thumbnail moon-and-star shapes had been carved into the back of the pumpkin, and their silhouettes were reflected on the burlap behind the table where the pumpkins were sitting.

  “Sam, it’s great. Did you use a pattern?”

  Sam shook his head in vehement denial. “I did it all on my own.”

  “It’s wonderful. We should take a snapshot. I wonder if your dad has a camera here.”

  “Sure do,” Mitch said, coming up behind them. “I’ve already taken about half-a-dozen shots.” He ruffled Sam’s hair. “I’m thinking about having this baby cast in bronze it’s so good.”

  “You can’t do that. It’s a pumpkin. It would cook or melt or something,” Sam scoffed, but he looked pleased at his father’s reaction.

  Tessa added her compliment to Mitch’s. “I could never carve anything half so good, even with a pattern. You’re very talented, Sam.”

  “I like to draw.”

  “The others were done by kids four or five years older than Sam,” Mitch told her.

  “Is he taking lessons?” It had been a busy day at the store. She and Mitch had barely crossed paths, and then Mitch had sent her home at two to put her feet up for a while before the carving session. She hadn’t been this close to him, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin, breathe in the scent of his aftershave, all day. The pleasure it gave her made her a little weak in the knees.

  “Lily’s giving him lessons, but she says he needs more expert instruction. She’s going to get in touch with someone from the university after the holidays.”

  “In the meantime…”

  “In the meantime, everything’s taking second place to his making the Mini-Rivermen team.”

  Sam had given up demanding a weight bench, but he had held Mitch to his promise of an hour’s practice every day, and the paint department had been totally reorganized. Sam declared his biceps were half an inch bigger, and he was positive he would make first team.

  “Tessa, could you help me with these patterns?” Linda Christman called.

  “Of course. Excuse me,” she said, and hurried off. Maggie Leatherman stopped her to say hello. So did the mayor and her husband, and one or two other people before she got to Linda. Friendly everyday welcomes that she stored in her heart. Sunbeam mem
ories of this time and place.

  At the pattern table, she was caught up in a swirl of children choosing their designs. After that, Ruth Steele drafted her to ladle cider into plastic cups while Rachel passed out powdered-sugar doughnuts from the bakery, Maggie kept an eagle eye on the big boys, who kept coming back for seconds and thirds. Tessa never did get around to carving a pumpkin of her own.

  Before she knew it the carving session was over. The smallest children were wiped free of paint on fingers and noses and rosy cheeks. One or two nicked fingers were bandaged and tears mopped up. Several broken pumpkin stems were wired back on the lids. And when all were satisfied with their handiwork, Mitch lined up forty-seven children and their creations on and around an old flat-bed farm wagon at the side of the building. While applauding parents and grandparents watched, the photographer from the Courier took a roll of pictures of glowing grinning children and their glowing grinning pumpkins, ensuring a sold-out Monday edition.

  After the photo session Tessa turned to go back in the store, but Beth Pennington stopped her. “Charlie’s here to take me to Mitch’s to help set out the food. Why don’t you come with us? You look tired.”

  “There’s a lot of mess to clean up,” she said, although Beth was right. She was tired. And hungry. She had been so busy she hadn’t even had time to eat a doughnut. And the salad she’d had for lunch seemed a long time ago.

  “Mitch has plenty of help. The football team is due here in five minutes to police the parking lot and clean up the mess. Aaron arranged for it. Sort of a preemptive strike in case any of them get caught swiping pumpkins off front porches this week.” Right on cue a van pulled into the parking lot and a dozen tall, broad-shouldered teens in red-and-white Rivermen football jerseys piled out. “See? What did I tell you?” Beth laughed.

  Tessa laughed, too. “Okay. I’ll get my coat.”

  She went into the store, grabbed her coat from the employees’ lounge and headed back toward the entrance. It took her five minutes to walk the length of the store. There were friends to say goodbye to and a few last pumpkins to admire. She realized as she turned to wave a last goodbye to Kate McMann and her girls that she had begun to make friends in Riverbend. Real friends, not just acquaintances. And in return she was beginning to be treated as if she belonged.