Denim and Lace

by Rice, Patricia

  She searched her erratic memory and shook her head. "I'd have to look at my calendar. I don't remember." Nervously, she searched his face again. "We took precautions. I remember that. It was a safe time."

  Amusement began to kink the corners of his mouth. "What exactly do you consider a safe time?"

  Her eyes lit with remembrance. "That's it! It was the end of January when we went to San Francisco. My monthly was nearly two weeks before that. So I couldn't possibly be pregnant. You're dreaming." But she had a sudden guilty feeling that wasn't right, that she had known differently for some time now. Biting her lip, she looked uncertainly to Sloan for confirmation of her words and not her feeling.

  The laughter that had leapt to his eyes at her erroneous declaration died when he saw her uncertainty. Tilting her chin upward with his fingers, he said, "You're breeding, Sam. I don't know what you think your father told you about the right times of the month, but you got it all wrong. That was the worst possible time of the month. And if you haven't had any bleeding since then, there's no doubt about it. You carry our child. Does that make you unhappy?"

  "Frightened," she admitted. "And I'm getting more scared by the minute. Will you hate me now?"

  Sloan was startled by the question. Then his gaze softened to tenderness. "I love you, Sam. Anything you want to do is all right by me, but if you're brave enough to carry my child, I think I'll love you into eternity. You'll make a good mother even if I'm a terrible father."

  Relief swept over her, relief so heady and overwhelming that she couldn't speak for a minute. She closed her eyes and let his words sink in, basking in them, letting them fill her soul with sunlight. Sloan Montgomery was a force to be reckoned with, a man of strength and intelligence and courage, a man any woman would be lucky to have. And he was hers.

  It was scarcely credible. Plain Samantha Neely—loved by a man like Sloan Montgomery. Her eyes flew wide again, and she stared up into his square-boned face.

  "You're not just saying that, are you? Because of the baby?"

  The worried look that lingered in his eyes turned to amusement again. "Of course, I am. Do I look like a fool? What man wouldn't tie himself up for life in return for a squalling, red-faced, shitting piece of himself rocking in a cradle? I can't imagine any other reason for loving and marrying the most beautiful redhead this side of the Atlantic, even if she is smarter than a brand new penny and twice as nice."

  She swatted his chest and shoved him backward. "You're a hateful, despicable man, Sloan Montgomery. And just to get even, I'm going to love you until the hair falls off your head and you go wrinkled and blind. And I think I'll have a dozen children simply to keep you in line."

  Roaring with laughter, Sloan let her climb on top of him, but it wasn't her pummeling punches he sought. Catching her wrists, he pulled her down until her mouth met his, and he could show her what she wouldn't believe otherwise.

  Chapter Forty-three

  "Why didn't he write?" Sam cried with as much pain as anger when her mother tried to explain Emmanuel's prolonged absence.

  Sloan wrapped his arm reassuringly around Sam's waist and was rewarded by the slightest tilt of her weight in his direction.

  They spoke in whispers in the empty restaurant/parlor of the hacienda while Emmanuel napped on the parlor couch.

  "He did." Frustration wrinkled Alice's eyes as she glanced at her sleeping husband. "He wrote right after he left here, telling us not to come yet, to wait until he got back. He's been writing back home ever since. I don't know what happened to the letter telling us not to come, but the post office must not have known what to do with the others. They're probably sitting back there waiting for someone to pick them up."

  Samantha groaned in despair. That was just typical Neely luck. She felt Sloan snuggle her a little closer under the guise of being helpful and let her frustration slip away. If they hadn't come to California, she wouldn't have met Sloan. She wouldn't be carrying his baby now. She gave a secretive smile at that thought. Her father was going to die when he found out.

  She wore the gown Sloan had given her, and while he seemed appreciative of the honor, she wasn't impressed. The skirt and petticoats kept her distanced from the man behind her. She wasn't ready to be separated from him for any length of time, not after a night like last night.

  "You'll need to keep a supply of quinine on hand for the malaria." Sloan's gravelly tones rumbled over her head. "It's the only thing that has proved effective. He's lucky to be alive."

  Alice sent another anxious glance over her shoulder. "I know. He pretends it wasn't anything, but I don't think he'll wander so far anymore." She turned a speculative look to Sloan. "If he really was shanghaied in San Francisco by those railroad people, is there any way we can prevent it from happening again? Do you think we ought to go back to Tennessee?"

  That was an opportunity Sloan would have paid money for not so long ago. Sam leaned against his chest and waited with curiosity for his reply.

  "No, ma'am, I don't want you doing any such thing. This town needs a good restaurant, I need someone running that store, and your grandchild will need more civilized influences than Sam and me. I think we can find some way to smack a few hands, and if your husband is anything like Sam, I figure he'll have a few ideas of his own on the subject. He'll be safe enough."

  Before the words were entirely out of Sloan's mouth, the figure on the couch stirred, stretched, sat up, and growled like a grumpy bear. "What's that you're saying? You plotting behind my back already? Sam, where the hell have you been? I'll not have any child of mine living in sin. You get yourself away from that two-bit no-good until we can haul the preacher up here."

  "There aren't any two-bit no-goods in here, Daddy. There's just Sloan, and if he's to be your son-in-law, he has to be worth a whole lot more than two bits. I have good taste." Her voice was at its sultry sweetest as she went to hug her father.

  He hugged her, then glanced down at the gown she wore. "I'll be damned, girl, I'd almost forgotten you were female." He sent Sloan a black look. "But it's obvious he hasn't."

  Sloan grinned. "Not by a country mile was I going to miss that fact, even when she was beating me at target shooting."

  The front door burst open, and Jack bounded in, scraping to a halt at a glare from his uncle. Still bouncing, he announced, "The preacher's coming! There's a whole gang coming up the hill!"

  Sam glanced nervously at Sloan, but her father's abrupt stride toward the door diverted her attention. Emmanuel looked immensely satisfied with himself, and she had just one more reason for nervousness.

  As Sloan made his apologies and hurried out after Neely, Sam turned to her mother. "What's he planning now?"

  Alice made no pretense of not understanding the question. His family knew Emmanuel too well not to recognize his expression. She glanced toward the window and the crowd of people forming in the plaza. "I don't know. He and that Hawk fellow seemed to be getting along pretty close. They were gone half the night doing something, but I don't have a clue."

  She turned and gave her eldest daughter a swift look. "And if we're talking grandchildren already, I expect whatever he's planning comes none too soon. At least this time it involves a real preacher. That's Reverend Hayes out there."

  ***

  Sloan wished he had a cheroot to chew on as he stood with the preacher at the kitchen window overlooking Sam's garden. The green shoots of her early vegetables could be seen clearly from here, but his attention was more on the crowd of people turning the once-empty room into an impromptu church. He hadn't thought the town had this many inhabitants.

  The whole setup reeked of something fishy, but he couldn't put a finger on it. Neely had taken charge of the arrangements, sending Sloan off to get himself appropriately dressed. Donner's new kitchen table had been pressed into service as an altar. The new kitchen chairs as well as every other form of seating available in the entire town had been lined up in disorderly rows as pews, with what could pass for an aisle down the middle of t
hem.

  He supposed the arrangement worked, whatever it might lack in aesthetics. Sloan just couldn't see the purpose. It took only two minutes, three at best, to say a few words and tie the knot. Why in hell did they all have to have seats?

  He was just getting itchy, he decided, twitching at his tie. Samantha ought to be here by now. Every crowded, cramped seat had filled. Joe and Hawk and a few of his more trusted men had chosen to stand and act as ushers, making certain everyone in the audience had chairs. They glanced over their shoulders now, waiting for Sam and her father. The few ladies present had been gallantly given front row seats, and they were sniffling into their lace hankies already. Sloan looked away from them impatiently. What in hell was that contraption on the ceiling?

  Momentarily distracted by the phenomenon, Sloan almost missed Sam's entrance. Only the solemn chords of what sounded like a funeral march coming from a harmonica brought him back to the moment. He couldn't see the musician, but he could see Sam.

  She was gorgeous. There weren't any other words for her. The women had pulled her hair up in fancy curls and sprinkled tiny silk flowers through it. They'd found white lace to cover the shoulders of the blue taffeta gown he'd bought for her and made up a bouquet of evergreens and silk flowers torn from every fancy gown in town, he surmised. The uncertainty wavering around the corners of her full lips disappeared when her eyes met his, and a smile brighter than a summer's day lit her entire face until even the blue of her eyes shimmered. Sloan felt the impact of that smile clear to his toes, and he couldn't look away.

  She moved slowly, in time to the music. Impatiently, Sloan wanted to grab her hand and pull her up here beside him. Only the presence of Emmanuel Neely at her side kept him stranded where he was. Neely obviously meant to make a full production of this. That was fine with him. Let the whole damned town know she was his from this day forward.

  Sloan held his patience by remembering Sam's whispered words of love during the morning hours while they lay entwined in his bed. He thought of the child she carried, the burden that would tie her to him forever, and which she accepted joyously if he read her smile right. He'd never known it could be like this. His heart hammered so hard as she approached, he was surprised no one could hear it.

  That's when Sloan saw a movement behind her, the sudden rise of a shadow in the back row, the scraping of a chair as someone shoved out of the cramped seats to the aisle. Scarcely another person in the audience noticed, but his nerves had been stretched beyond watchful to wary for months. He saw a flicker of silver in sunlight, a shadowy arm lifting as Sam came to stand beside him. Sloan roared in fury and threw her to the floor, rolling so he took the brunt of the fall.

  The explosion of gunfire in the high-ceilinged kitchen rattled the rafters. Sloan felt the jolt of noise, fully expecting the shock of pain to follow. Instead, shrieks shattered his eardrums as a ghostly shape whizzed over his head and down the aisle, to smash into the shadow in the open doorway, stopping the gunman in his tracks.

  A hundred-pound bag of flour dangled where a gun had raised just seconds before. Propping himself on his elbows, Sloan blinked and looked again. He shook his head as Samantha wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his chest. He glanced up at the ceiling contraption, then back to the dangling flour sack and the recumbent body beneath it, and a noise began to choke his throat.

  He didn't have to look for his prospective father-in-law. Emmanuel Neely was striding down the narrow aisle between the chairs with a gloating look of satisfaction. In the back of the room Jack triumphantly took his hands from what appeared to be a giant latch. From the back of the room Sloan's men converged on the gunman lying flat on his back in the aisle.

  When Hawk reached beneath the dangling flour sack to haul the body up, Sloan gave a sigh of defeat. Anderson. Somehow, someway, his insane father-in-law in cahoots with every damned man in town had managed to do what Sloan hadn't these last six months. They'd caught Anderson in the act. He just didn't know how.

  And didn't care. With a grim look of determination Sloan stood up and pulled Samantha to his side, turning her to face the preacher. She looked at him in starry-eyed wonder, as if he hadn't been made an idiot of in front of the whole damned town. He supposed he had it coming, but he'd be damned if he would acknowledge their triumph until he'd got what he came for.

  "Marry us, Hayes," he commanded.

  The preacher looked nervously from the bridegroom to the father of the bride and the small riot in the rear. Sloan glared. Hayes opened his book and began to read.

  The room grew quiet as the crowd realized the service had begun again. Emmanuel Neely gave the prisoner a frown as Hawk and Joe hauled him out, then he hurried to take his place beside Samantha, giving her away with stiff pride.

  Hayes blessed the wedding ring again. Instead of the Latin of the mock ceremony they had shared the first time, he spoke the vows in words Samantha could understand. She repeated them solemnly, watching Sloan's face every minute. He felt he'd grown a foot in her eyes, and he swelled with pride. This was the woman he'd waited for all his life. This woman was his equal. She would stand by his side through thick and thin, but stand up to him when he was wrong. They would fight, he had no doubt about that, but they both would win when it came down to it, because every fight would be made with love. He personally meant to see to that.

  Despite the tears in the front row, the rest of the room erupted in cheers when the final words echoed and Sloan kissed his bride. Chairs clattered to the floor in the excitement as men pushed and shoved to the front of the room to stand in line for their share of kisses.

  Sloan pushed Samantha behind him and glared at their audience. "I'll have Neely turn that damned thing loose again if you don't back out of here you bunch of layabouts! You don't really think I'm going to let my wife be mauled by the likes of you?"

  With the widow on his arm, Doc Ramsey looked from Sloan to the still swinging bag of flour dangling from its precariously erected pulley on the ceiling, and shook his head. "I'm getting out of here before the roof comes down," he said to no one in particular, although his voice carried loudly enough to send a number of nervous glances upward.

  That warning sufficed to start the musician playing a lively tune that quickly opened a path down the aisle. The twins grabbed the chance and, carrying baskets of colored confetti, spread a paper trail for the bride and groom to follow. More cheers erupted, and half the crowd followed the twins’ swaying skirts, forgetting the newlyweds. Beside Sloan, Sam began to snicker.

  If he looked down at her, he would do the same. Clutching her fingers around his arm, Sloan tried to keep the moment solemn as he elbowed his way out of the makeshift church, but when he stumbled over the flour bag at the entrance, he couldn't help himself. He cursed, and the laughter tumbled out of him.

  Gunmen, miners, Indians, mad inventors, and flying sacks of flour marked this wedding day instead of the formal pomp of his previous marriage. He preferred the laughter to the polite phrases he remembered mouthing that day. He caught the amusement and questions dancing in Sam's eyes as they stepped over the flour, and he shook his head. He couldn't explain if he tried.

  Grinning like fools, they walked into the hacienda, where the wedding party gathered.

  Only then did he realize a silent circle had formed around the man bound and tied in the center of the room.

  Sloan took one look and with a roar of "Anderson!" slammed his fist unerringly into the other man's jaw.

  Chapter Forty-four

  “What will happen to Harry Anderson now?" Sam asked as she sunned herself on the little balcony overlooking the hotel courtyard. The late June sun made her drowsy as she watched two figures wandering in and out of the leafy shadows of the vine-draped grape arbor.

  Sitting on the lounge chair beside her with his back to the courtyard, Sloan was more interested in measuring the kicks of his child as he cupped his palm around his wife's rounded abdomen. "They can't hang him. He never managed to murder
anybody. Until they find one of his hired killers, we can't even prove anything else against him but the one attempt. He had to have been half crazy to have tried that. They've locked him away for a while."

  Sam turned a worried gaze to her husband's face. "That means he can get out and try again. Surely, they can do something more?"

  Sloan leaned back against the railing and grinned. "We could have your father rig up some of those weird contraptions all over town and disarm all strangers."

  "Daddy likes to invent strange weapons. I don't know how you dare let him near the mines. That doesn't solve the problem. What will you do about Anderson?"

  Sloan was still grinning as he watched her. He grinned a lot these days, even when she frowned at him as she did now.

  "I could hand Harry over to your father. It was your father's damned letter to that friend of his in Boston that gave Harry a clue of where to find me. But I'm afraid your father would forget what to do with him. I've contemplated wiring Melinda and telling her where to find him. That would be sufficient vengeance in my book. She'd probably murder him single-handedly."

  "But you said she'd run through all your money already. She couldn't come get him."

  Sloan's expression grew a little more serious as he leaned over and brushed a straying curl from her face. "Sam, don't fret. Before your father even insisted on the wedding, I'd wired my lawyers in Boston and hired some in San Francisco. The ones in Boston say Melinda has already found herself another rich fool. Harry didn't realize he'd been replaced. She was as eager as I was to get that divorce agreement straightened out. She's no longer a Montgomery. I very officially gave you that name on our wedding day. Melinda is wealthy enough to do whatever she wants."

  "But you didn't wire her about Harry," she prodded. Her gaze drifted back to the figures in the arbor. She couldn't see them anymore. She frowned, but her attention turned back to Sloan when he spoke.