* * *
For a while, he did stop talking, losing himself instead in her and glorying in the way she made him feel—as if he was ten feet tall and totally invincible.
When it was over and, shrouded in the misty afterglow of lovemaking, lying together on the gurney that they had turned into a makeshift bed, Neil returned to the subject that had been at the back of his mind for most of the day.
“Forever needs a hospital.”
The statement, coming out of the blue the way it did, caught Ellie completely off guard. It took her a moment to be able to respond.
“No argument,” she agreed. “Do you have a solution?” She was kidding.
But he wasn’t.
“I have a trust fund,” he told her.
“Sure you do,” she said, nibbling on his shoulder affectionately.
She was distracting him and he wanted to get this out before he got really carried away again.
“No. I do,” he told her. “I really do.” What she was doing was making his eyes roll back in his head, and he needed to tell her this part so she would understand.
“I’m an only child. My parents were very well off, and add to that my mother’s great-aunt—Aunt Grace—who never had any kids. She was always too busy making her money work for her and, apparently, it worked very, very hard. When she died, she left all her money to me.”
Ellie pulled herself up on her elbow and looked at him, an eerie feeling that she was on the cusp of something really big emerging, though she was afraid of getting carried away. “What is it that you’re saying?” she asked in a small voice.
“I’m saying that I have enough for some serious seed money to put into starting a hospital here in Forever,” Neil told her. “And I honestly think I know enough people to contact who will put up the rest of it.”
“You’re talking about getting money together to build a hospital. Here. In Forever.” Ellie didn’t know if she was asking, or reiterating, as she stared at him. Being nude under the sheet didn’t exactly help her thinking process, either.
“You’re a little late to the party,” Neil told her with a smile, “but yes, that is exactly what I’m talking about.”
Ellie realized that she wasn’t absorbing this. “But why?”
“Because it really hit me today that the next time someone needs an emergency operation, there might not be enough time for you to fly them to Lincoln Memorial or some other hospital. They could die because there isn’t a hospital here.”
“That’s all well and good, but this is all going to take time,” she pointed out. “Lots of time.”
“I am aware of that. I was kind of good in math that way. Not brilliant,” he allowed, “but good enough.”
Ellie put her fingers on his lips to still them. Hope began to rise within her. “You’ll have to be here at least part of the time to oversee this project, won’t you?”
“Nothing gets by you, does it?” He laughed. “I will,” he answered. “Probably all the time I’m not here, I’ll be out there, hitting up friends for donations,” Neil told her.
“Wait. Wait!” she cried, trying to get this all straight in her head and at the same time to not get too excited because it really couldn’t be what she thought it was—could it? She drew her courage together and forced herself to ask, “So you’re staying in Forever?” Even as she asked, she braced herself for a negative answer.
“Uh-huh.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?” she cried, her heart beating hard.
“Really,” he echoed.
She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him soundly. She was prepared to continue and make love with him all over again, but he surprised her by catching hold of her arms and pulling them away from him.
“There’s one more thing,” he told her.
Ellie felt a knot suddenly materialize in the pit of her stomach, pulling tightly and somehow managing to steal all the air from her lungs. She tried to brace herself for what she felt was coming, but she knew she really couldn’t.
“What?” she asked in a shaky whisper.
Holding her hand and still very naked, he slipped out of bed and down to one knee, and said, “Elliana Montenegro, will you do me the supreme honor of becoming my wife?”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—or get her hearing checked.
“What?” she asked, stunned.
“You don’t have to change your name if you don’t want to. Because yours sounds so lyrical, I understand you wanting to keep it, but I’d really be very happy if you said yes—”
“Yes!” she cried, hardly believing her ears. The man she had found herself falling in love with was actually asking her to marry him. How wonderful was that? “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“Really?” he cried, surprised. “Because I thought I’d have to do a lot more convincing, or that you’d tell me you had to think about it or—”
“Please stop talking!” Ellie pleaded. “I want to start practicing for the honeymoon and I can’t if you’re talking.”
He grinned at her, loving her so much that it actually physically hurt. “Yes, ma’am.”
Neil noted, with pleasure, that her smile went all the way up into her eyes. Capturing his heart, it took him prisoner.
As did Ellie when he started kissing her again.
Epilogue
Years later, whenever she talked about it, Miss Joan told people that she’d nearly had to die to bring Ellie and Neil together—but it had been worth it. The woman thought nothing of taking full credit for the young couple getting married because, in her mind, she really was the one person responsible for the two of them meeting in the first place.
When Neil and Ellie went back to Lincoln Memorial to see how the woman was doing after her surgery, even in her weakened state, the sharp-tongued diner owner only needed to take one look at the duo to discern that there was something different going on between them.
“So, what’s going on, you two?” she asked in a raspy voice.
Neil took the question at face value, but Ellie wasn’t so sure. This was Miss Joan asking and the woman had an eerie way of knowing things before they were ever made public.
“We’re just happy that you’ve pulled through and are going to be all right,” Ellie said, hoping that would satisfy Miss Joan’s question.
She and Neil had decided to get married as soon as they found the time, but for now, they were both agreed that they wanted to hang on to this special secret just a little while longer.
“Is that your story, too, sonny?” Miss Joan asked, turning her eyes on Neil.
“Yes,” he answered, doing his best to sound as innocent as possible.
Miss Joan frowned. “Look, I didn’t escape the Grim Reaper’s clutches just to have you two blow smoke up my butt.”
Exhaling a very short breath, the woman looked at her husband, who was also in the room and hadn’t left her side since she’d been brought in. “How about you, Harry? You know anything?” But even as she asked the question, Miss Joan answered for him. “No. Of course you don’t. That’s okay. I didn’t marry you for your ability to see through people’s fabrications. I married you for your sweet innocence and kind heart.”
She paused to clear her throat and then continued as if nothing had happened. “You’re not leaving here, you know—neither one of you—until you’ve come clean.”
Ellie knew the woman meant it. Rather than engage in a battle of wills, she told Miss Joan, “Neil asked me to marry him.”
“Yes. And?” Miss Joan asked, waiting for Ellie to get to the point.
Ellie’s smile was brilliant as she answered, “And I said yes.”
Miss Joan huffed. “Well, it’s about damn time,” she said as if the union Ellie had just told her about had been a forgone conclusion to her. “And just to prove that there are no hard feelings a
bout you dragging Zelda back into my life, I’ll be the one throwing the wedding for you two.”
Because the first part of her statement was even more mind-boggling than the second part, Neil had to ask, “Wait, does that mean that you and your sister have patched things up?” Because if they had, he felt as if this was a really big deal, given the anger he had seen on Miss Joan’s face the day Zelda had walked into the diner with them.
“Well, right now there’s just Scotch tape, not duct tape, holding everything together, but I guess you could say that,” Miss Joan allowed magnanimously. She pulled her blanket up closer around her. “I’m letting her work at the diner for now. She’s on probation,” she added. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Ellie smiled. She had a good feeling about this, she thought, exchanging glances with Neil and Harry.
“But enough about that,” Miss Joan said abruptly. “I need to start making plans for your wedding. The end of the month should work...” she decided, then continued talking.
Yes, Ellie thought as the man who could create upheavals throughout her body with his mere touch reached for her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, the end of the month would definitely work for her.
* * *
Don’t miss previous romances by Marie Ferrarella, from Harlequin Special Edition:
Coming to a Crossroads
Her Right-Hand Cowboy
Bridesmaid for Hire
The Lawman’s Romance Lesson
Adding Up to Family
An Engagement for Two
Keep reading for an excerpt from Four Christmas Matchmakers by Cathy Gillen Thacker.
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Four Christmas Matchmakers
by Cathy Gillen Thacker
Chapter One
“Gorgeous...”
Allison Meadows stepped away from the festive evergreen garland and home-crafted wreath she’d just placed on the front door of her Laramie, Texas, cottage. Both perfectly accentuated the gabled portico roof, her pale rose brick porch floor, stately white columns and sage-green door. She shook her head and let out a low, satisfied sigh. There was nothing as fun as decorating for Christmas!
“Are you talking to me or admiring your handiwork?”
Allison hadn’t heard her “guest” approach, but she did not have to turn around to know whom that low, sexy voice belonged to—Cade Lockhart. Inveterate charmer. And onetime love of her life...turned giant pain in the tuchus. Mostly because he likely kept telling himself that after everything that had happened between them, they could still be friends.
Glad she had finished her latest blog post, she switched off the video camera that had been recording her work. Turned around. And squared off with the former star pitcher for the Texas Wranglers pro baseball team.
She was well used to his six-foot-three frame. Tall men in Texas were a dime a dozen. The short mussed sable-brown hair, mesmerizing espresso eyes and intractable jaw were a little harder to disregard. As were his sensual lips. After all, she knew how he kissed. Touched. And did a whole host of other things. Hence, as their gazes locked, she felt her heart take a telltale leap. Although she couldn’t help reminding herself there was no reason a wicked sense of humor, warm seductive smile and solid male muscle should be such a turn-on.
“Who or what was I talking about?” she echoed, picking up the threads of the conversation. Though, technically speaking, he was right. Gorgeous fit. She lifted her chin. “What do you think?”
He grinned at her deadpan tone. “A little of both.”
Refusing to be drawn in by the inherent mischief in his gaze, she smiled sweetly. Not about to admit she’d always thought he was incredibly gorgeous, too. “Then you’d be wrong,” she corrected archly.
His gaze drifted over her face, lingered on her lips, before returning to her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
This was not an argument she was going to win.
Her heart racing, Allison gathered the hammer and nails she’d left on the rail and put them back into the toolbox at her feet. She snapped the lid shut, then turned back to face him. “I thought we agreed we were going to do everything we could to avoid running into each other now that we are both living back in Laramie...” Although she didn’t expect him to stay in his hometown for long. Just until his unpopularity in Dallas completely died down. And people forgot about the disappointing end to the Texas Wranglers’ season.
He scrubbed a hand underneath his handsome jaw. “Actually, as I recall, that was your dictum, not mine.”
“Necessary, in any case.”
“Not in my opinion,” he said flatly.
And here they went again...
He stepped closer, persisting, “All I did was try to send some interior design business your way when you were first starting out.”
Allison swallowed around the parched feeling in her throat. “By having me decorate the house you were buying back in Dallas without letting me know the owner was you?”
He straightened, squaring his broad shoulders. “I had my reasons for doing that.”
“Can’t wait to hear them.”
He squinted, displeased. “Okay, well, first, I figured you’d reject my request if I asked.”
Sharing in his obvious exasperation, Allison glared right back at him. “You would have been right about that,” she said stonily, then pulled her cell phone from her pocket to see if the work email she’d been expecting had come in yet. To her disappointment, it hadn’t. “I would have turned you down flat.”
Victorious to have been proved right about that much, he braced his hands on his waist and continued, “Second, I was warned by my business manager that the subcontractor charges would likely be a whole lot higher if it were known that the property being renovated would soon belong to the rookie pitcher for the Texas Wranglers. Because it would be assumed, as beneficiary of a new multimillion-dollar contract, that I would not know how to handle my money. And would go around spending like a drunken sailor.”
She took in his nondescript charcoal-gray running clothes and expensive sneakers. “So to prove otherwise, you hired a rookie designer who also happened to be dirt cheap by celebrity standards.”
His broad shoulders flexed. “Is that what your ire is about?” He speared her with his gaze. “You think I didn’t pay you enough for your work?”
“No.” He had paid her plenty through his accountant. More than she had hoped to get. Which, for reasons she couldn’t quite fathom, still rankled even more.
“Then...?” he prodded, wanting the rest of her explanation.
Trying not to recall how taut and warm his muscled body felt after a run, she ignored everything else he had done to hurt her, albeit unintentionally, in his unrelenting drive for success. Admitting in abject embarrassment, “I thought I was doing a house for the bachelor CEO of CBL Enterprises.”
“And you were,” he explained patiently, pacing back and forth on her wide front porch, “because that was me.” He paused, his back to a pillar.
Her temper flaring, Allison remained beneath the high gabled roof and sputtered angrily, “Except I didn’t know it was you until a reporter from the style section of the Dallas newspaper asked me how I landed the gig and if it had anything to do with the fact we had dated all through high school and college.”
Then, she recalled in consternation, the female journalist had gone on to imply a romantic reconciliation just might be in the works.
When she had known, deep in her gut, that such an occurrence would never happen. Not after the way he had neglected her at the end of their relationship.
Well used to such invasions of privacy, Cade pushed away from the pillar and offered a maddeningly affable shrug. “You could have just declined to answer. Or pushed the conversation to something a lot more interesting.”
“And made matters worse?” Allison scoffed.
He scowled in exasperation. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. The gig got you a write-up in the paper and a lot of attention.”
And a lot of work, she thought. Initially, mostly from baseball fans who wanted to ask her about Cade and what he was really like. But that was not the point. She stepped closer to him. “I was humiliated and embarrassed to be caught unaware.”
He towered over her. “And I told you at the time I was sorry about that.” He reminded her of the multiple phone messages he had left—all of which had gone unanswered. His voice turned unexpectedly penitent. “It was never my intention to make you feel foolish.”
At the time, Allison had been too hurt and angry to respond to anything he’d had to convey. She had simply wanted them to never speak again. But now that eight years had passed, she had to know.
“Then what was your intention?” she asked.
* * *
Easy, Cade thought. To share in my good fortune. And begin to make up for the way I treated you the entire last year or so we were together. The birthdays and anniversaries he’d forgotten. The dates he’d canceled so he could get in a little more practice. The calls and texts he’d made that had been so brief and hurried they’d practically been nonexistent. She’d been a saint, whereas he’d been the world’s worst boyfriend. It was no surprise she had finally seen the light and broken up with him. No surprise he’d regretted it ever since.
Not that she was interested in letting him find a way back to her.
Trying to figure out how much—if anything—to say about all that, he let his gaze roam over her. Her five-foot-seven-inch height and slender frame always left him wanting to step in to protect her. As usual these days, she was more dressed up than was warranted for a weekday afternoon. Her plaid knee-length kilt a bit retro. But sexy nonetheless. Black tights encased her showgirl-worthy legs. A dark green turtleneck sweater cloaked her luscious breasts and brought out the vibrant hue of her long-lashed eyes. But it was her pretty face, pert nose, stubborn chin and kissably soft lips that most haunted his dreams.
Secrets of Forever Page 18
