A Willing Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  While Dallas read, Ryan roared. “They were here, dammit, invading our home again! While we slept and the men hired to guard this house at night were God knows where, they were here! What bloody damn nerve! What does a man have to do these days to safeguard his family?”

  Dallas handed the paper to Maggie. “Go ahead and read it,” he told her. “You’re part of this family now, or you soon will be. Claudia, Matthew, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Bryan, and yes, Dad, whoever delivered this message should be crucified. But I came here to tell you something, and I still have to say it.”

  “No, don’t,” Maggie whispered. “Not at a time like this, Dallas.”

  Dallas drew a breath. Maggie was right. They could wait to deliver their news until the family settled down.

  But Ryan had figured out a few things for himself, and he did his best to calm down. “You came here to tell me something that’s very important to you and Maggie, son. I insist on hearing it.” He looked at Maggie’s stricken face and said gently, “It’s all right, Maggie. Please let Dallas speak.” She bit her lip for a moment, then nodded.

  Dallas cleared his throat. “Thank you, Dad. Maggie and I were planning to get married next Tuesday. Considering what just took place, maybe we should delay the ceremony.”

  No one said a word for several long moments, and then Claudia said softly, “I can’t deny that we’re all very upset, Dallas.” She rose from the settee and walked over to hug him, then Maggie. “But it would be terribly unfair of us to ruin your plans when we have no reason to hope that things will be different in the near future. I think you should go ahead with your wedding, and I even have a suggestion. Have either of you considered marrying on Christmas Day? It would be a very special wedding.”

  “Yes, it would,” Maggie said huskily, “but—”

  Claudia interrupted her. “Please don’t put off your wedding, Maggie. I’m sorry you had to witness my sorrow. You came here to bring good news and were greeted with bad news—”

  “Claudia, if it were my child in trouble, I would be grieving too,” Maggie interrupted with an emotional catch in her voice.

  “That’s right, you have a son,” Ryan said. “How old is he now?”

  “Travis is five,” Dallas said. “And I’m going to legally adopt him, Dad. He’s going to be my son and your grandson.”

  Ryan tried very hard to smile, though it was obvious his heart was still broken over losing Bryan to an unscrupulous kidnapper. “That’s wonderful news, Dallas. A man can’t have too many grandchildren. Maggie, what about that Christmas wedding? Do you think Rosita and Ruben would approve?”

  “Yes,” she said in a near whisper. “I’m sure they would.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Ryan declared. “Dallas, are you going to invite anyone other than family?”

  “No. Maggie and I had already decided it was going to be a family-only affair.”

  Claudia took Maggie’s hand. “Maggie, don’t hesitate to call upon me if there’s anything I can do to help with the preparations.”

  Maggie was so close to tears for this kindly woman’s heartache that she could barely speak. “Thank you, Claudia.” She turned to Dallas. “I’m going to walk home. Please stay with your family. They need you very much right now.”

  “I’ll drive you home and come back,” Dallas said.

  “No, please, it’s only a short walk. Call me later. Ryan, Claudia, Matthew, I appreciate your kindness on what has to be a terrible day for you. Call me if there’s anything I can do. Goodbye.”

  Dallas walked her to the front door, put his arms around her and held her close. Maggie could no longer contain her emotions. “I feel so bad for them,” she whispered tremulously.

  “Everyone does, Maggie.”

  “Maybe…maybe we should postpone the wedding.”

  “They don’t want us to do that, Maggie. I would do anything to ease their pain, but the only thing that will ever heal their wounds is getting their son back. Unless you change your mind about me, Maggie, we are getting married on Christmas.” His mouth tipped in a self-deprecating manner. “You didn’t realize that marrying me also meant marrying into a passel of problems, did you?”

  “Of course I did,” she said, and raised on tiptoe to kiss his lips. “And I’ll never change my mind about you. I love you now and forever. I just wish I hadn’t been such an idiot for so long.” Smiling sadly, she backed away and opened the door. “Call when you can. You know where to find me.”

  Seventeen

  Ironically, the kidnapper’s letter left the Fortune home the same way it had arrived—in a plastic bag. The only fingerprints found on both the envelope and letter in the FBI lab were Ryan’s, because he’d risen unusually early Monday morning and, while restlessly wandering the house, had spotted the manila envelope sticking out from under the front door. Naturally he had opened it.

  Early reports from the lab were not encouraging. The paper, envelope and glue were common items, available for purchase in countless stores throughout the country. There were no hairs or fibers to examine. Minute dust particles did seem to indicate that the package had been prepared in southeast Texas, but that clue was so broad that it was barely pertinent.

  Ryan fired the night guards, who had literally fallen asleep on the job, and hired new men to watch the house. But his trust in hired guards had been badly damaged, and he himself began patrolling the grounds after dark at various intervals. He wasn’t sleeping well anyway, so every time he woke up at night he would go outside and take a walk around the house.

  Ryan was suffering some sleepless nights, and he was beginning to wonder if things would ever return to normal. His divorce proceedings seemed to be at a standstill. Parker Malone was a brilliant attorney and a fighter, and he and his staff were doing everything legally permissible to move it along. But Sophia’s lawyers were every bit as tough as Parker, and they had the additional incentive of acquiring perceivable wealth. Obviously they were determined to get their share of the huge settlement Sophia had demanded.

  The sordid battle sickened Ryan, and sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t just give Sophia half of everything and get her out of his life, once and for all. But whenever those moments of weakness struck, so did stubbornness. Fortunes had never been quitters, and he could not let himself be the first Fortune to be taken for a ride by an unscrupulous woman. As head of the family, he had to remain strong to the bitter end.

  Regardless of seemingly unsolvable problems to contend with, life had to go on. Dallas and Maggie’s upcoming wedding was a note of normalcy that Ryan welcomed. And there was something uniquely wonderful about it being a Christmas wedding. Decorations were going up, turning the ranch into a Christmas fairyland.

  The sight of twinkling Christmas lights seemed to soothe Ryan’s frazzled nerves. For one day, at least, he and the family could perhaps put aside the pain of the kidnapping and the divorce, and enjoy themselves. He ardently hoped so.

  It was a period of roller-coaster emotions for Maggie. As happy as she was in her own life, she couldn’t forget Claudia’s unhappiness. Picturing herself in Claudia’s situation, and Matthew’s too, of course, never failed to lower Maggie’s spirits, and it bothered her so much that she brought up the subject with Dallas on Tuesday, when he picked her up for the drive to Leather Bucket to take care of the “legalities,” as he’d described them.

  “I couldn’t bear it if someone kidnapped Travis,” she told Dallas.

  He understood where Maggie was coming from, but he couldn’t let her start their life together afraid that she had immediately put her son in danger by marrying a Fortune.

  “Maggie, we can’t live in fear,” he said gently. “And the very worst thing we could do is make Travis afraid of every stranger that comes along. Bryan’s kidnapping was a terrible thing, but we are going to have to let Travis lead a normal life. He’s an active, naturally friendly little boy, and destroying those qualities by making him afraid of his own shadow would be a crime in its
elf. And you and I must also lead a normal life.”

  “Can we?”

  “Yes, Maggie, we can.”

  “Are you as confident of that as you sound?” she asked. “At the hotel the other night I bared my soul to you, Dallas. I told you how hard I fought against letting myself love you, and I explained why it was so difficult for me to see you and me as a couple. We grew up on the same ranch, but nothing else about our lives was even remotely similar.”

  “Yes, we discussed all that,” Dallas agreed.

  “I think that what I’m getting at now is this—what is normal to you is not the same as what’s normal to me. I think I— I’m afraid again, Dallas. I had a lot of fears before our engagement, and then when I thought I’d lost you forever and had to finally face my own feelings, something happened and I forgot to be afraid of anything. But now… I just don’t know. Your family is so…complicated.”

  Dallas heaved a sigh. “And there’s no way that I know of to change that, Maggie. The Fortunes have always been complex people. Their lives have been complex, are complex, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Except for me and a few others, Maggie. You have to know by now that I’m really a very ordinary guy. I don’t give a hoot about big business or living anywhere but at the ranch.”

  “You’re a multimillionaire,” she whispered, then cried, “Oh, Dallas, I’ve tried so hard not to think of your wealth—not to worry about it—but it’s everywhere I look. How am I going to make the adjustment from Maggie Perez to Maggie Fortune?”

  “One day at a time, sweetheart, starting with our wedding day. And I’ll tell you something else, Maggie. Travis is going to grow up like any other ranch kid—just like you did, just like I did—and he’s going to be safe in our care. You’re an incredibly good mother, and I’m going to be the same kind of father.”

  She drew in a long breath. “I have to stop worrying, don’t I?”

  “Yes, my love, you do. We’re going to be happy, Maggie. I guarantee it.”

  She smiled at him lovingly. “You’re very convincing.”

  “Good, because I don’t hand out guarantees to just anyone,” he said, and sent her a smile of utter adoration. “I love you, Maggie.”

  “I love you, Dallas.”

  Lily’s daughter Hannah owned a boutique in San Antonio that specialized in all aspects of the perfect wedding, and Lily, with Maggie’s permission, enlisted Hannah’s aid in planning the Christmas wedding. With so little time to do much of anything, Maggie was impressed with Hannah’s ideas.

  Hannah suggested a red, white and green color scheme, then asked, “Do you have your dress yet, Maggie? The color of your dress should set the standard for flowers, napkins, etcetera.”

  Maggie thought of the beautiful silk dress that her mother had bought for her. “It’s the color of old ivory.”

  “I can work with that just fine,” Hannah said confidently.

  And so the wedding preparations went on, seemingly flowing around Maggie with only an occasional question about her personal preference on one thing or another. When she and Dallas had decided on a family-only wedding, she hadn’t realized what a Fortune family affair consisted of. She was startled by talk of a caterer and a live band. Then there was more shopping to do: Rosita needed a new dress, and Travis needed a suit. Dallas had insisted that Travis be part of the wedding party, and the little boy would stand by his new daddy’s side during the ceremony.

  Maggie truly appreciated Dallas’s thoughtfulness toward Travis, but the rest of it was pretty confusing. Obviously her adjustment from Maggie Perez to Maggie Fortune had already begun. At times she still worried about it—how could she not? She was accustomed to watching every penny, and now more money was being spent on her wedding than she could have earned in three years.

  And it was an extremely hectic time. She hardly saw Dallas after Tuesday. He was busy, she was busy. She took her mother and son shopping, and she spent every dollar of her hoarded money for some more new clothes for herself. Dallas had mentioned their going away for a honeymoon week or so after the wedding, and her current wardrobe was so pitifully limited. With all her money gone, it occurred to her that the only thing she was bringing to her marriage was herself. And Travis, of course.

  By Friday— Christmas Eve—her sisters had arrived with their families for the big doings, and the Perez home was a madhouse. It was great seeing her sisters, but their kids were everywhere, running in and out of the house, and by bedtime Maggie was so keyed up she couldn’t even help decide on the sleeping arrangements. Rosita handled that with her usual efficiency, and Maggie and Travis were to sleep on the sofa that night. Frieda and her family were going to stay with Cruz and Savannah. Anita and Carmen and their husbands would use Rosita’s second and third bedrooms, and all the children would use sleeping bags and sleep on the floor in the kitchen.

  It was all fine with Maggie, and she made up the sofa bed for her and Travis, and snuggled down with him. Only she was still on edge, and she knew why, too. She hadn’t seen Dallas even once today, and, in fact, she had barely spoken three words to him in days. Her own wedding plans were getting her down, she realized dismally, and she needed, almost desperately, a dose of Dallas’s reassurance that everything was going to turn out just fine.

  When the kids finally stopped giggling in the kitchen about Santa Claus, and Travis was sleeping, Maggie got up, pulled on her robe—the only garment she had with her in the living room, other than the nightgown she already had on—stuck her feet in her slippers and quietly left the house.

  The night air was cold, and she walked fast to keep warm. She was glad to see a lighted window in Dallas’s house, but she would have knocked on his door even without an indication that he was still awake.

  It took a minute, but he finally opened it. “Maggie!” Taking her hand he pulled her inside. “You’re wearing a robe! Is something wrong?”

  “It’s a long story,” she told him. “Let me sum it up by saying that I simply needed to see you.”

  He put his arms around her and rocked her gently. “You’re letting all the hoopla get to you, aren’t you? Honey, didn’t you know this would happen?”

  “No, I honestly didn’t. Perez family affairs are obviously very different from Fortune family affairs. Dallas, why didn’t we just go somewhere and get married by ourselves? We would have avoided all of this fuss and bother.”

  “We couldn’t do that because both of our families would have been very hurt, Maggie. Picture your mother’s disappointment if we had eloped. We can deal with it, honey. By tomorrow night it will all be over. Think of it that way.” Leaning back from her he gave her a sensuously wicked grin. “Now that you’re here, let me show you my etchings.”

  “They’re in your bedroom, of course,” Maggie said wryly.

  “Where else would a man keep his etchings?” Chuckling, Dallas brought her to his bedroom.

  During the next two hours she got all the reassurance she’d needed so badly, and by the time she finally slipped back into her parents’ home and into bed with her son, there wasn’t the smallest sign of edginess anywhere in her system.

  Yawning contentedly, she fell asleep.

  Everyone crowded into Ryan’s beautifully decorated library for the ceremony. When Maggie made her appearance on her father’s arm, she was astonished to see so many people. Apparently most of the Fortunes had shown up for Dallas’s wedding, and along with her own family, the library was a sea of expectant faces.

  Then she saw Dallas, Travis and the minister waiting for her, and she smiled as her father led her over to them.

  Dallas had never seen a more beautiful, more radiant bride, and he had to swallow hard to get rid of the emotional lump in his throat. He laid his hand on Travis’s shoulder, and Maggie saw the gesture and became very emotional herself.

  Then she was standing next to Dallas, and the minister began speaking. The ceremony took no more than ten minutes, and Maggie received her first kiss from her husband. It was, she was cert
ain, the loveliest wedding ever.

  Turning, she and Dallas faced the crowd. People began coming forward, and they were both hugged and kissed until it became funny and everyone was laughing.

  Finally the party began in earnest, and gradually, as people ate and drank and came over to talk to her, Maggie was able to put names with Fortune faces: Zane, Logan, Holden, Eden—people Maggie hadn’t seen in years. And they were so nice to her, welcoming her into the family. These people weren’t snobs, they never had been. But she sure couldn’t say that about herself. Why on earth had she believed so fervently that she wouldn’t fit in?

  Dallas mingled awhile, then returned to her side. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Though he smiled lovingly, his eyes probed hers. “Are we happy yet, Maggie?”

  “Yes, my darling, we’re very happy. Oh, Dallas, what can I say? I almost lost you, and I’ll never forget that.”

  “We almost lost each other. I won’t forget it, either.” He smiled then. “Hey, where should we go for our honeymoon?”

  “Surprise me, darling.”

  “I thought you didn’t like surprises.”

  “Did I say that? Well, I’m a changed woman, and you’re the fella who done it to me.”

  “I’m also the fella that would like to do it to you again right now.”

  They were still laughing when Rosita walked up. “What a lovely wedding this is!” she exclaimed. “Dallas, I am so glad that so many Fortunes came for the occasion.”

  “Yes, well, they’ve always liked a good party, and it is Christmas,” he said with a chuckle. Spotting his father, he excused himself. “I’m going to have a few words with Dad,” he told Maggie.

  “Of course, darling,” she murmured, then felt her mother staring at her. “What, Mama? Do I have dirt on my face?”

  “Don’t be silly. I have something to tell you. Do you remember when I told you of my dream about Logan Fortune?”

  “Yes, I remember. Why?”