One Mother Wanted

by Jeanne Allan

  “Don’t worry about it. Dolly and Buck are making a fuss over Hannah. The judge has been buzzing around Mom. I think he’d like to be her best beau.” Worth uttered a derisive laugh. “Bad choice of words. The last thing Mom needs is another Beau.”

  Allie turned her head. “He wasn’t much of a father.”

  “Beau would have been the first to agree with you.”

  “A child needs two parents.”

  “We managed with one.”

  “We had Grandpa,” Allie reminded him.

  Worth studied her with somber eyes. “Is that what this sudden wedding is about? Giving Hannah a mother? I should have guessed. Before Cheyenne got married all she talked about was how much she loved Thomas. Neither you nor Zane mentioned love.”

  Allie shrugged. She didn’t need Worth to tell her how dumb she’d almost been.

  “Hannah’s a little cutie, I’ll give you that. All dressed up in a fluffy pink dress. She came equipped with color markers so everyone could sign her cast.” He chuckled. “Davy’s so jealous he doesn’t have a broken arm, he can’t see straight.”

  “What about...” Allie buried her face back in the pillow.

  “Zane?” Worth must have taken the sound she made for “yes,” because he continued, “He’s all spiffed up. Guess he thought he was getting married.”

  “That’s not funny.” Allie lifted her head. “I haven’t heard any cars leave.”

  “Mom probably told everyone to stay for dinner.”

  She gave him a startled look. “How could everyone just sit down and eat?”

  “You know Mom. She’s not going to send anyone away with an empty stomach because you’re calling off the wedding.”

  “I can’t go down and face Zane. Am I supposed to hide up here forever?”

  “I don’t know. Are you hiding?”

  “I knew you couldn’t pass up an opportunity for a sermon. Do your duty, Alberta. Remember who you are, Alberta. How is your behavior going to make your mother feel, Alberta? Do you think your mother is going to approve, Alberta? Does behaving that way make you feel good, Alberta?”

  “I don’t remember those words passing my lips just now.”

  “You were thinking them.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Marriage is a big step, Allie. We all want you to be happy, but you’re the one who has to decide what’s right for you.”

  “I have decided. I’m not getting married.”

  “Okay.” The mattress rebounded as he stood. “If you can’t face Zane, I’ll bring you up some supper on a tray.”

  Allie rolled over and sat up. “I hate you, Fort Worth Beauregard Lassiter. You’re being nice and offering to bring up food to make me feel guilty and like a coward for not facing everyone myself. You think I should have told Zane, don’t you?”

  “He’s in the hall. Want me to tell him to come in?”

  Giving her brother a killing look, Allie nodded, then grabbed her pillow and hugged it to her stomach. The pillow did nothing to fill the emptiness deep inside her.

  Worth left the room. Male voices rumbled in the hall.

  “You hear any of that?” Worth asked.

  Zane nodded. “I should have dragged her to the courthouse first thing this morning.” He would have, but his parents had insisted on coming for the wedding and hadn’t been able to get a flight out of San Antonio until today. He loved his mother, but he’d wanted to tell her he didn’t give a damn whether she made it to the wedding, as long as Allie made it. He should have told her. The extra time had given Alhe too long to think.

  “Allie thinks it’s about Hannah, but it’s not, not for you, is it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you may have given yourself an impossible task. If there’s one thing the Lassiter sisters have in common, it’s that they have got to be the three stubbornest women on earth. Mom’s tough and a fighter, but she’s never been as pigheaded as her daughters. They got it from Yancy.” Worth paused. “Whatever Allie decides, all the Lassiters will support her decision.” He headed downstairs.

  In the bedroom, Zane closed the door behind him. Allie wore her unreadable face, but her eyes gave her away. Wariness mixed with belligerence. He wanted to fling her over his shoulder and haul her downstairs. Stand her in front of the judge. Make her say the wedding vows. Damn it, he’d come so close.

  “Hannah was excited about us getting married,” he said. “She insisted on wearing her party dress.”

  “You can’t make me feel guilty. Not when you came to me only weeks before our last attempt at a wedding and told me you’d slept with another woman and were going to marry her.”

  Zane pushed back his jacket and put his hands in his pockets. “Should I scream at you the way you screamed at me?”

  “How was I supposed to react? Congratulate you? Wish you all the happiness in the world? No woman could do that. I’d ordered flowers, a cake, my wedding dress, the invitations.”

  “A point you made repeatedly that night. I’d screwed up our whole lives and all you could think about was how I’d screwed up your wedding plans.”

  “You never gave me a choice. Everyone else had choices, but not me. You and Kim chose to sleep together. You chose to marry her. Nobody cared what I thought. Did you even think about marrying me and adopting Kim’s baby? Did you ever once consider I might be willing to overlook what you’d done?”

  “Would you have overlooked it?”

  “No, but I should have had the choice,” she said in a low voice, watching her hands knead the pillow in her lap.

  “Why? Would turning me down have made you feel better?”

  She raised her head and glared defiantly at him. “At least I would have had the satisfaction of telling you I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  She shook her head. “It’s about not making a stupid mistake. This time I have a choice, and I choose not to marry you.”

  Zane walked over to the window and stared out. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said quietly. “Not about marrying Kim.” Overhead a turkey vulture wheeled in the sky. Allie’s elderly mare stood in the corral facing the house. He’d driven his pickup with the horse trailer hitched on back so they could trailer the mare back to his place. The setting sun burnished Copper’s coat to a fiery red.

  “When Kim came to me and told me about the baby, at first I thought I had choices.” The horror of the moment, the panic, the utter despair, revisited Zane. He clutched the keys in his pocket. “I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted the whole situation to go away. I wanted to turn back time. I thought, if she went away, gave away the baby, if there was no baby, you wouldn’t need to know. I wanted to offer her money, anything, to make it all go away. She was crying, going on and on, and as she talked, I realized, it was my baby she was talking about. My baby. I wanted her to give away my baby. I wanted to ignore my baby. For no other reason than a baby was inconvenient.”

  Allie made no sound behind him.

  Zane forced himself to continue. “I never claimed to be perfect, but I had to face a hard truth at that moment about just how imperfect I was. I thought it was the lowest point in my life. It wasn’t.”

  His keys bit deep into his palm. “Much worse was telling you. The look on your face... The disbelief, the pain, the contempt.” Her look of shock and abhorrence had replayed in his brain a million times. “I deserved every bit of your contempt. I’d behaved despicably.” He exhaled deeply. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  Zane knew apologies changed nothing. He’d been a fool to think his past was a prison from which he could win parole. He’d danced. He had to pay the piper. He was too old to whine about the length of the dance.

  Turning, he rested his hip on the windowsill. “The other night I persuaded you to marry me for Hannah’s sake, and you agreed out of a sense of guilt.” He noted her tiny start. Hadn’t she realized he’d guessed that?

  “We th
ought we could go through a ceremony,” he said, “live in the same house, eat at the same table, and sleep in different beds. I was willing to take you on any terms, but the way we’ve been going, dwelling on past crimes, nursing hurts, trying to strike first... You’re right, it wouldn’t have worked. Hannah suffered through one unhappy marriage. I’m not going to put her through another.”

  Allie sat on her bed, her knees drawn up beneath her chin. She didn’t look at him. “That’s nothing to me. I’m not marrying you.”

  Zane knew he should let it go. Walk away. He couldn’t. There had to be a way. When the idea came to him, he was too desperate to stop and analyze it for flaws.

  He had nothing to lose.

  Gripping his keys, he bet the rest of his life on the biggest gamble he’d ever taken. “I want us to get married, Allie. Hear me out,” he said fiercely as she opened her mouth. “Many me give me one month of a real marriage. One month. If we can’t work things out between us, we’ll call it quits. I’ll figure out a way to fight Vern and Edie.”

  In the distance a horse neighed. In the bedroom, silence reigned. Zane had a sense of time stopped as he waited for Allie’s answer.

  She stirred, then slowly faced him. “A real marriage? Why don’t you come out and say it, Zane? You want to sleep with me.”

  He hadn’t slept with another woman since he’d married Kim. The only woman he’d ever wanted to sleep with sat across the room. “I want to sleep with you.”

  Allie put her head down on her knees. “Go away.”

  Zane hesitated. There must be words he could use to sway her. Words to force her into marrying him. None came to him. His gamble had lost. He went downstairs to collect his daughter to take her home.

  Allie threw her pillow across the room. Zane Peters had more nerve than anyone she knew. After what he’d done, he actually expected her to consider a real marriage?

  If he’d wanted to marry her for real, he should have done it five years ago. He should have known she didn’t mean it when she’d told him she’d never marry him, but no, he’d used their argument as an excuse to sleep with another woman.

  What kind of glutton for punishment did he think she was? She wasn’t about to give him a chance to devastate her again. Not that he could. Not when she didn’t care two hoots about him. Or about how wide his shoulders looked in his wedding suit. Or how handsome he looked.

  How dare he ask her to forget the past? Which is exactly what his outrageous offer amounted to. Pretend he hadn’t betrayed her? She had no intention of pretending anything.

  Did he think a stupid apology wiped out the pain he’d inflicted on her? If he’d suffered one tiny fraction of what she’d suffered, he’d know it took more than words to even the score.

  Anger pumping through her veins, Allie jumped up and paced the width of the bedroom. For his sins, Zane had been rewarded with a daughter he idolized. Allie had done nothing but love him and she’d been jilted. Been pitied by the entire population up and down the Roaring Fork River. She’d suffered through five barren, empty years. He’d ripped up her heart, ruined her life, even stolen the name of her first daughter. In return he expected her to live with him as husband and wife in every sense.

  As if she’d been waiting for him for five years. Pining away for him.

  She didn’t want to marry him. She wanted to bang his head against a stone wall. She wanted to drive a herd of cattle over him and pound him into the dirt. She wanted to hurt him.

  She wanted revenge.

  Allie stopped dead in the middle of her room.

  She wanted revenge. Only by Zane suffering the way she’d suffered could the slate be wiped clean.

  She’d be done with Zane Peters once and for all.

  She didn’t want marriage. She wanted revenge.

  Cheyenne’s wedding dress caught her eye, and the perfect plan popped into Allie’s head. Marriage and revenge could be one and the same.

  One month, Zane had said. Allie would give him a real marriage for one month. She’d be the perfect wife, weaving herself so thoroughly into his life, he couldn’t imagine living without her. She’d occupy his days, his mind, his bed.

  The thought of his bed brought her up short. How could she sleep with a man she didn’t love? Allie mentally slapped herself. People did it all the time. Zane had slept with a woman he claimed he didn’t love. Allie was an adult Twenty-six years old. She could make love to him.

  It wouldn’t be making love. Having sex. A purely physical activity, which had nothing to do with love. Like washing her face or brushing her teeth. One merely went through the drill. Get from point A to point B. He’d never know her emotions weren’t engaged. She could fake it.

  Sharing a bed with Zane shouldn’t be too difficult. Even without love, lingering remnants of the attraction she’d once felt for him occasionally resurfaced. The remains of a purely physical, meaningless attraction.

  Hannah. What about Hannah? Hannah would see Allie as someone visiting for a month. They could have fun together and then Allie would leave. The way Zane’s parents visited the ranch and then returned to Texas. It wasn’t as if Allie planned to be Hannah’s mother. Hannah had her father. And Ruth. Once Allie left, Hannah would forget her as if Allie had never been there.

  Allie contemplated Cheyenne’s bridal veil carefully spread out on the surface of her bureau. She could raise a million objections. Or she could just do it.

  She would do it.

  She’d make Zane Peters fall in love with her. She’d bring him to his knees.

  Then she’d walk out on him.

  As he’d walked out on her.

  Whoever’d said revenge was sweet had never made it clear exactly how sweet it could be. Allie smiled. If she were Amber, she’d purr.

  Downstairs a chair scraped against the floor. People must be starting to leave. Zane would be leaving. And the judge. Snatching the bridal veil from the top of the bureau, Allie plopped it on her head.

  She stopped at the bottom of the staircase to look into the dining room. Everyone sat around the table except Worth, who stood with a large knife in his hand. The wedding cake sat in front of him.

  “The bride and groom are supposed to cut the cake,” Allie said loudly. “After the wedding.”

  All conversation instantly ceased.

  Mary Lassiter spoke first. “Allie? What is going on? Blue jeans and a bridal veil? What are you doing?”

  “Allie!” Hannah waved a fork.

  “I thought you weren’t getting married,” Davy said.

  Watching Zane, Allie ignored the others. He sat with his back to her. His body had jerked when she’d spoken, then every single muscle in his back had rigidly locked. Allie waited.

  Finally Zane turned, his face composed. One eyebrow rose quizzically. “We can wait until you’re dressed.”

  “We can wait longer than that,” Mary said. “Allie, I want to see you in the kitchen.” Once there, Mary closed the door to the dining room. “What’s going on? A few minutes ago you were determined not to marry Zane.”

  Allie shrugged. “Call it bridal nerves.”

  Zane walked into the kitchen. “I think I ought to be part of this discussion.”

  Mary Lassiter looked at him. “I don’t know what you said to her, but I know you want her to be sure she’s doing the right thing.”

  “I am doing the right thing.”

  “I ought to lock you in your room.”

  “You can’t stop me, Mom. If you’re opposed, I’ll get married somewhere else, but I’ve made up my mind.” Allie looked directly at Zane. “I’m marrying Zane. Now.”

  Zane stared calmly back at her. The kitchen smelled of cake and baked chicken.

  After a moment, her mother said, “You can’t wear blue jeans. If you don’t want to wear Cheyenne’s bridal gown, at least put on a dress.”

  Allie rammed one last pin into the veil’s simple headpiece. Her gaze never left Zane’s face. “Take it or leave it”

  “I’ll take it.
” The simple words resonated with layers of meaning.

  Her heart rate tripled at the look in his eyes. A look quickly extinguished. She refused to acknowledge the second thoughts clamoring insistently in her head.

  Zane held out his hand. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Her courage—or foolhardiness?—threatened to flee. She’d never be ready. Zane wrapped his strong, workcallused hand around her hand. A heated current flowed from him to her. She’d forgotten how dark blue his irises were. Dark blue with white flecks. Amusement and approval warmed his eyes. No, she wanted to shout Don’t approve. “I’m not doing this for you,” she muttered.

  “I know.”

  He thought she was doing it for Hannah. She couldn’t go through with it. Allie tried to pull her hand free, but Zane tightened his grip, lifting her hand to his lips. Electricity zapped through her body. No. He couldn’t make love to her. Not here. Not now.

  “Alberta Harmony Lassiter, will you marry me?”

  She tried to shake her head, to refuse, but her chin had a mind of its own and somehow lifted up and down. Zane scrutinized her face. He must read the panic in her eyes. He’d release her. Banish the spell.

  A crooked smile curved his mouth. “Let’s go tell the judge we’re ready,” he said, his eyes intent on Allie’s face.

  “Allie.” Worth came into the kitchen, followed by Greeley. “Wait until you’re sure what you’re doing.”

  “I’m sure.” She knew her voice lacked conviction.

  Zane gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Quit acting like a big brother, Worth. Allie knows what she’s doing.”

  He knew. He’d guessed she wanted revenge. Allie dismissed the thought as soon as it entered her mind. Zane couldn’t possibly know. Not yet. In one month. When she left him. She had no misgivings, no doubts. This is what she wanted to do. Definitely. Dividing a glittering smile between her brother and her bridegroom, she said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Allie,” Worth began.

  Greeley cut him off. “Unless you plan to tie her to her bed and lock her bedroom door, you know you’re not going to stop her once she’s made up her mind.”