Stealing Home

by Sherryl Woods

  Maddie exchanged a bewildered look with Helen. “Do you remember that being a rule?”

  Helen shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Besides, I think all this nonsense about catching a bouquet is just a smoke screen. Dana Sue wants to throw you a big party. She’s had the menu all planned for weeks now, ever since she found out about the ring in the birthday cake.”

  Maddie stared at her. “You have?”

  “Well, yes,” Dana Sue admitted, embarrassed. “I just wanted to make a contribution to your big day.”

  “You can be a part of it without cooking,” Maddie told her.

  “But cooking is what I do best.” Dana Sue’s expression turned wistful. “And I really, really want to try my hand at a fancy wedding cake with at least six tiers and a cute little bride and groom on the top. Erik said he’d help me, since wedding cakes are his specialty. You can’t do that for a dozen people. It would be crazy.”

  Maddie turned to Helen. “What about you? Why do you want me to have a big wedding?”

  Helen, the most confident woman in Serenity, blushed like a girl. “Do I really have to answer that?”

  “You do if I’m going to subject Cal to some fancy blowout instead of the quiet ceremony he’s been expecting,” Maddie told her.

  Helen took a bracing sip of margarita before replying. “Okay, I’m living vicariously,” she admitted. “Who knows if I’ll ever have a wedding of my own, so I want to be part of one with all the bells and whistles.”

  Maddie regarded her with bemusement. “You were my maid of honor when I married Bill, and that wedding had all the bells and whistles.”

  “True, but I was too young to appreciate it. And I was also struggling with the fact that I hated Bill even then and thought you were making a terrible mistake. This time I’m genuinely happy for you.”

  Stunned, Maddie sat back on her chaise longue and took a long swallow of her margarita, then gazed from one woman to the other. The hopeful, eager expressions on their faces were too much for her. The wedding might be for her and Cal, but her best friends had earned a right to have a say in it, too. They’d stood by her for months now, given her a new purpose and taken a risk on her business capabilities when few others would have.

  “Okay, then,” she said at last. “Let’s have ourselves a wedding!”

  “Really?” they asked in unison.

  “Cal won’t freak out, will he?” Dana Sue asked worriedly.

  Maddie smiled. “Not as long as he doesn’t have to do anything but show up at the church.”

  “He won’t have to do a thing,” Helen promised. “You won’t have to lift a finger, either. Dana Sue and I will take care of everything.”

  “Can I at least pick out my own dress?” Maddie asked, wondering if she hadn’t just signed away too much control over her own wedding.

  “As long as we get to come along,” Dana Sue said.

  “And get final approval,” Helen added.

  Maddie lifted her glass in a toast. “A negotiator to the end,” she told Helen. “Deal.”

  Cal squirmed as Hamilton Reynolds tried to tighten the knot on his tie. “You’re strangling me.”

  “Oh, hush up, son. You don’t want to walk into church looking as if you’ve never worn a tuxedo before, do you?”

  “I’d rather walk in there not wearing a tuxedo at all,” Cal grumbled. “This was supposed to be a quiet little ceremony way back in September. Now it’s almost Thanksgiving.” He frowned. “How many people do you suppose are in the church?”

  Ham gave him a pitying look. “Three hundred or so, from the looks of it. Those gals sure know how to throw a party.”

  Cal shuddered. Even when Maddie had told him that she’d turned the reins for their wedding over to Dana Sue and Helen and that they couldn’t pull it off by the end of summer, he’d had no idea what they were in for. When he’d questioned them about why it had gotten so out of hand, he was simply told they were “making a statement.”

  He still hadn’t figured that one out, but he’d seen Maddie’s eyes shining with anticipation and clamped his mouth shut. He’d concluded he could endure a few hours of expensive commotion if it made her happy.

  He was still telling himself that three hours after the ceremony when the lavish reception with its surprisingly good garage band showed no signs of slowing down. Beside him at the head table, even Maddie was beginning to wilt a little.

  “Can we get out of here yet?” he whispered in her ear. “I’d actually hoped to spend my first honeymoon night with my bride and not with three hundred of her nearest and dearest friends.”

  She grinned at him. “Patience, Cal. We have a whole lifetime ahead of us. Just look at Helen and Dana Sue out on the dance floor. They’re having a ball. We can’t cut this short.”

  “So this is for them,” he said, finally getting it. “I thought so.”

  “It made them happy to do it for us,” Maddie admitted. “I couldn’t say no.” Her expression brightened. “Oh, look, Ty’s finally dancing with Annie. She looks as if she’s died and gone to heaven. I hope he realizes that she has a huge crush on him and treats her kindly.”

  Cal studied Ty—his new stepson—with the eye of a man who could still remember how careless teenage boys could be when it came to fragile emotions. “Maybe I should have a talk with him,” Cal said. “Boys Ty’s age can be idiots when it comes to girls. They can miss a lot of signs and wind up trampling all over a young girl’s heart.”

  Before Maddie could respond, Annie suddenly sagged in Ty’s arms.

  “Oh my gosh, did you see that?” she asked, already on her feet and running.

  Cal reached the couple before Maddie, who’d been hampered by her wedding gown and high heels. Ty was clinging to Annie, trying to carefully lower her to the floor, his expression bewildered.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he told Cal. “One minute she was fine. The next she passed out or something. Is she okay?”

  Cal knelt beside her and felt for a pulse. It was weak and rapid. “Get Dana Sue,” he told Maddie.

  “Is she okay?”

  Cal gave her a curt nod. “She just fainted. Bring some water when you come back.”

  “I’ll get it,” Ty said, sounding relieved to have something to do.

  Cal brushed a hand over Annie’s pale cheek. “Come on, sweetie, wake up for me, okay? Come on, Annie.”

  She blinked at last and opened her eyes. “Coach?”

  Cal forced a reassuring smile. “Hey, there, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “What happened?”

  “You fainted.”

  Color bloomed in her cheeks. “While I was dancing with Ty?”

  Cal nodded.

  “Oh, God,” she said, misery in her eyes. “He’ll never speak to me again.”

  “Sure he will,” Cal said just as Ty returned with the water.

  Ty knelt and held out the glass. “You’re awake,” he said, obviously relieved. “You scared me.”

  Annie accepted the water but wouldn’t look at him. “I feel like such an idiot,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Ty.”

  “Hey, it’s not your fault,” Ty said just as Dana Sue rushed up, her expression frantic.

  “She’s okay,” Cal told her.

  Dana Sue insisted on kneeling down and checking Annie for herself. “Have you eaten today?” she demanded.

  “Mom!”

  “Dammit, I want to know. Have you eaten?”

  “She had some cake,” Ty said.

  Dana Sue kept her gaze on Annie. “Anything else?”

  Tears welled up in Annie’s eyes. “Mom, don’t make a scene. I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine,” Dana Sue said. “You passed out.”

  Maddie hunkered down and hugged Dana Sue. “She’s okay now. We’ll go with you to take her home. Or to the emergency room if you think that’s best.”

  “I don’t know what’s best,” Dana Sue whispered, looking stricken.

  “Mom, I’m fine,” Annie protested, struggl
ing to sit up. “See? No hospital, please. Just take me home. I’ll eat some soup or something. I promise.”

  Maddie’s gaze remained on Dana Sue’s face. “Up to you, sweetie.”

  Her gaze still pinned on her daughter, Dana Sue finally sighed. “I guess we’ll go home, but you guys don’t need to come with us. Helen will come. You need to go on your honeymoon and forget about everything back here.” She clutched Annie’s hand tightly and gazed up at Maddie, then at Cal. “We’re going to be okay.”

  Cal awaited Maddie’s decision. He knew she was torn between leaving with him and sticking by her friend.

  Maddie studied Dana Sue intently, then nodded at last. “We’ll call you in the morning to check on how Annie’s feeling.”

  Dana Sue nodded.

  Cal bent down and scooped Annie up in his arms. The girl weighed next to nothing. “I’ll take you out to the car.”

  Dana Sue gave Maddie a kiss, then followed Cal, along with Ty.

  When Annie was settled in the back seat, Ty gave Cal a questioning look. “Is it okay if I go with them?”

  Cal nodded. “Sure. Run inside and let your grandmother know that you’ll be home later, so she doesn’t worry.”

  Cal studied Dana Sue and noted that her eyes were still shadowed with concern. “You sure you don’t want Maddie and me to stick around and help you? We can get a flight out of here tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely not,” Dana Sue said. “I closed the restaurant for the day today and my staff can cover for me tomorrow, so I can keep an eye on her. Annie will be at Doc Marshall’s Monday morning if I have to drag her there by her hair.”

  “See that she is, okay?” he said. He held her gaze, trying to impress on her the urgency of the situation without scaring her and Annie.

  Dana Sue’s eyes watered at his somber tone. “I will. I promise. Now go back in there and get Maddie. Make her happy, you hear?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Cal promised.

  But when he walked back inside, he found Maddie sitting on a chair, her head being held between her knees by her mother. Her cheeks were as pale as Annie’s had been a few minutes earlier.

  “What the hell happened?” he demanded.

  Paula gave him a wry look. “She fainted.”

  Cal felt as if he’d plunged into the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party by accident. “Is there something in the water? Is everyone in the place going to faint?” he asked, hunkering down beside his wife and taking her ice-cold hand in his.

  Paula chuckled. “I don’t think so. I’ll leave you with your bride. She can explain.”

  Cal stared at Maddie, whose face was still ashen. “Well?”

  “You know that dream of yours?”

  He stared at her blankly. “Dream? Marrying you, you mean?”

  She smiled. “No, the other one.”

  Cal still didn’t get it. “This was the big one, Maddie.”

  “You told me you wanted to add to our family,” she reminded him.

  When the implication of her words sank in, Cal sat down hard, right on the floor at her feet. He felt a little faint himself.

  “A baby?” he whispered.

  Maddie nodded. “I guess we got a little ahead of ourselves.”

  “A baby,” he repeated, awestruck.

  “Looks that way. I’d hoped to wait to tell you on our honeymoon, but the way things are going, we might never get to our hotel.”

  “Do the kids know?”

  She shook her head. “Only my mom, and she only knows because she guessed.”

  Panic spread through him. He’d wanted this more than anything, but now? When they were still at their wedding reception? Before they’d even had a chance to talk it through some more? He studied Maddie’s face to see if she was as freaked out as he was. Aside from being a bit pale, though, she looked happy. Really happy.

  “Is it okay?” he asked. “Should we stay here and see the doctor?”

  “I’ve already seen the doctor and everything’s fine,” she assured him. “And we are going on this honeymoon, Cal Maddox. You promised me an incredible trip and I’m holding you to it.”

  For the second time in less than thirty minutes, Cal scooped a woman into his arms. This one had a nice healthy heft to her, the kind of curves that made a man’s blood heat. He looked into Maddie’s shining eyes. “It’s going to be a helluva ride, isn’t it, Mrs. Maddox?”

  “Apparently so. You ready for it?”

  “I’ve been waiting all my life.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5390-6

  STEALING HOME

  Copyright © 2007 by Sherryl Woods.

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