The Missing Heir (Special Edition)

by Jane Toombs

  “I’ve never known an Indian summer,” she confessed. “Nevada doesn’t have them.”

  “They come in October after a spell of cold fall weather that hints at winter’s arrival. The days turn warm again, with the trees all in brilliant color, so beautiful. It’s a gift given to those of us brave enough to live where the winters are long and cold.” He grinned at her. “But I’m not crazy enough to spend winters in the north.”

  “Northern Nevada doesn’t get a long winter,” she said. “Around Lake Tahoe they get a lot of snow, though.”

  “Tahoe,” Joe repeated. “Beautiful lake.”

  “Do you think Russ and his father are on the island yet?” she asked, so eager to see Russ she could hardly contain herself.

  “Should be coming in today, anyway.”

  At the cottage, to Mari’s pleased surprise, she found that in the study, the portrait of her mother, now in a beautiful frame, was hanging on the wall opposite Yvonne’s.

  “Thank you, Grandpa Joe,” she said.

  “Isabel should have been there all along,” he said gruffly. “My stupidity.”

  In the early afternoon, Willa and Uncle Stan arrived. Mari barely had time to hug Stan before her grandfather bore him off “to get acquainted with a real Nevadan.”

  Mari and Willa retreated to the upstairs sitting room with a tea tray.

  “Fancy place,” Willa said.

  Mari nodded, sighing. “The wedding will be, too.”

  Willa eyed her. “’Tis your grandfather’s way of trying to make up for lost years. Best to humor him.”

  “I am. He deserves to have his way.”

  Willa set down her cup, leaned forward and tapped Mari on the knee. “For the wedding, yes. But not for everything, gal. Sometime soon you best speak your mind.” Sitting back, she said, “Right about now, I could do with a lay-down. Riding in those jet planes tires a body more’n a hard day’s work.”

  Mari escorted Willa to her bedroom, then retrieved the tea tray. She was going down the back stairs to bring it to the kitchen when she heard the doorbell. Though she knew Pauline would answer the summons, she hurriedly set the tray on a counter and all but ran toward the entry, hoping it was Russ. Her heart sank when she saw Pauline greeting a young blond woman. Where was Russ?

  Pauline turned, saying, “Mari, this is Russ’s sister, Amy, all the way from California.”

  “The bride!” the blonde exclaimed, stepping forward to give Mari a hug. “I know you must be busy, but I couldn’t resist coming over to meet you.”

  Except for her green eyes, Amy looked nothing like Russ, being petite as well as blond.

  “I can tell by your expression that you’re wondering if I’m a changeling, someone who got into the Simon family by mistake” Amy said. “They tell me I’m a throwback to our great-grandmother, who, scandal of scandals, was a chorus girl on Broadway when great-grandpa met her. I’ve always thought he must have been a true romantic.”

  “Like Russ,” Mari said, already sure she was going to like Amy.

  Amy’s eyes widened. “Russ? You can’t be speaking of my big brother.”

  “He really is. It isn’t every man who’d come down from the Evening Star to rescue an unhappy maiden.”

  “Russ did what? I think we have to talk about this.”

  “Upstairs?” Mari suggested.

  “Oh, yes, I love that little sitting room.”

  By the time Mari finished the story, Amy was helpless with laughter. When she sobered enough to talk, she said, “You know about Denise?”

  Mari nodded.

  “Denise always claimed my brother didn’t have any money sense or even the romantic soul that should go with someone who didn’t care about a career. He sure picked the wrong gal the first time. Which is what I told him.”

  “He mentioned that.”

  “Obviously you bring out the best in Russ. Thank heaven. He hasn’t looked so happy in years.” Amy’s expression was so wistful that Mari wondered momentarily about Russ’s sister’s life.

  Unable to wait any longer, Mari asked, “Is Russ on the island?”

  “Not yet. We expect him any time, though,” Amy rose from her chair. “I’ll run along so you can get back to those last minute tasks that always pop up.”

  Mari smiled, not mentioning that actually she had nothing to do because it was all being done for her.

  As it turned out, Russ barely got to the island in time for the wedding rehearsal the next day. What with having to meet those of the wedding party she didn’t already know, Mari scarcely had a chance to say hello to him before they were swept into rehearsal.

  It wasn’t until the rehearsal dinner Russ managed to sneak Mari away long enough to satisfy their longing to hold each other, but they had little chance for anything more than a few kisses before they were discovered.

  “We should have eloped,” he said as they were surrounded by well-wishers again.

  At the moment, she felt the same way, even though she knew she couldn’t have done that to Grandpa Joe. Not after Isabel.

  Russ couldn’t get out of the bachelor party planned for him, so Mari didn’t see him again that evening. The next day, appointments for hair and nails filled her morning and then it was time to get ready. Her bridal gown was the simplest she’d been able to find.

  “Elegant,” Amy told her. “Suits you beautifully. You aren’t a frilly person.”

  Since this was Mari’s own evaluation of herself, she warmed even more to Amy.

  “Russ’s gift to the bride?” Amy asked, lifting from a velvet box an exquisite gold pin with a lilac blossom enameled on it.

  Mari smiled. “He knows I love lilacs.”

  “Like our mother did. Hold still and I’ll pin it in place.”

  It was as though Amy’s presence grounded her, because after Amy left with the other bridesmaids, Mari’s grasp of her surroundings became less and less real, though she did know that Grandpa Joe was on one side of her and Uncle Stan on the other as she walked up the aisle toward Russ, at the altar.

  The actual ceremony passed in a blur. The only clear moment for her was when Russ looked into her eyes and said, as though to her alone, “I do.”

  The reception was, of course, held at the Grand Hotel, another whirlwind of people, all wishing them well. Somewhere in the middle of it, Grandpa Joe separated her from Russ, taking her into a small room where the two of them were alone.

  “Thought I’d discuss some of my plans for you,” he began.

  His words brought her out of her daze, Willa’s advice foremost in her mind. Now Mari told herself. Now is the time. She held up her hand.

  “Grandfather, please. I need to say something first. I love you and want to be with you as much as I can be, but I also want to live my own life. I have to. You know what happened to Russ and his father. I wouldn’t ever wish that on you and me, so you can’t go on arranging my life for me as though it’s a—well, an occasion like a Haskell wedding. Russ has a horse ranch in Nevada now and I want to help him with it, which means I’ll be spending a lot of time in Nevada. I hope you can understand.” She looked at him apprehensively.

  He nodded. “You’re a Haskell, all right. Takes one to know one. You keep right on standing up for yourself, my dear. I did learn from the fiasco with Isabel, but we Haskells just can’t resist trying to order everyone’s life. As it happens, I’ve always wanted a place near Tahoe—they tell me it’s a great sailing lake.”

  “Tahoe?” she repeated.

  “Not far from that ranch Russ bought, is it?”

  “Thirty miles or so,” she managed to say.

  “That’s an easy distance for visiting back and forth. Of course, I’ll expect you to bring the children to Mackinac for at least part of the summer.”

  “Grandpa Joe,” she protested. “Russ and I are hardly married.”

  He grinned at her. “So?”

  She reached out and hugged him, understanding that he was offering a compromise. If he could, so could
she. “Your great-grandchildren will love the island as much as I do,” she said.

  He led her back into the milling mass of guests, where Russ promptly found her and engineered their escape. When they were safely in the buggy, riding away from the hotel, he said, “What did Joe want?”

  “Nothing much,” she said. “Only a promise to let the children spend summers on Mackinac.”

  “Children? Ours?” He drew her into his arms and murmured, “In that case, why keep him waiting?”

  Epilogue

  “Gapa,” two-year-old Elias insisted loudly. “Gapa do.”

  Mari shook her head and looked at her grandfather. “I guess you’ll have to put his boots on.”

  Joe chuckled. “Good to see the Haskell spirit handed down.” He reached for the boots.

  Mari rolled her eyes. “The combination of the terrible twos and the Haskell spirit can be daunting, not to say tiresome.”

  “I suppose that’s why you’re having another.”

  Since she barely showed even a bulge, Mari frowned. “Russ told you.”

  Shaking his head, Joe said, “Got eyes in my head, haven’t I? I may be old, but I still know what’s going on.” He pulled the second boot onto his great-grandson’s foot. “Okay, buddy, let’s get cracking.”

  “Buddy,” Elias repeated, obviously enchanted with the word. “Buddy, buddy.”

  “That’s what we are, you and me,” Grandpa Joe told him. “Buddies. Let’s go see your birthday present.”

  Feeling the warmth of the May Nevada sun, Mari followed them from the ranch house to where the gift—a child’s dapple-gray pony—waited. The scent of the lilacs Russ had planted around the house drifted on the breeze.

  “Horsie,” Elias said, marching up to the animal.

  “No—pony,” Joe corrected. “Your pony.”

  “Horsie.”

  “Pony.” He handed Elias a slice of apple. “Feed the pony.”

  Elias, who’d been fearlessly feeding his father’s big draft horses since he was old enough to understand what to do, held out the piece of apple on his palm, and the pony promptly snaffled it up.

  “Now he knows you’re his buddy,” Joe said. Elias’s green eyes looked from the pony to his great-grandfather and back. “Buddy,” he said, pointing at the animal. “Up.”

  “A rider already, are you?” Joe said, lifting him onto the pony’s saddled back and holding him there. He glanced at Mari. “I guess he likes his pony.”

  “No po’y,” Elias announced. “Buddy.”

  “Okay, that’s his name,” Joe said. “Good choice.”

  With Grandpa Joe holding her son, Mari walked Buddy around the paddock, chuckling to herself at the interchange between the old man and the little boy. She eyed Elias’s brown hair, so close to Joe’s gray head, and thought how good it was to see her grandfather enjoying him. She marveled at his patience with the child—more than she had sometimes.

  How wonderful that Elias could grow up having not only Great-grandpa Joe around but Grandpa Stan and Grandpa Lou as well. Willa, too. He was surrounded by people who loved him.

  Finally Elias tired of riding the pony, and Joe took him off to the creek to look for tadpoles. As one of the ranch hands led the pony away to unsaddle him, from behind Mari, Russ said, “How did the riding session go?”

  She turned and he put an arm around her. “More importantly, how are you and our next one doing?” he asked.

  “Joe noticed.”

  “He doesn’t miss much.”

  “Elias has already named his new pony Buddy. When we get to Mackinac next month, I just hope Grandpa Joe hasn’t already bought a snowbird for him and is planning on teaching him to sail.”

  Russ chuckled, then leaned to whisper in her ear, “Speaking of boats, when we get to Mackinac, how about the two of us sailing into a patch of Lake Huron fog?”

  She smiled impishly. “Mackinac Island is a month away—do you really want to wait that long?”

  The flash in his green eyes clearly showed her he didn’t. So did the urgency in the quick kiss he gave her before turning her toward the house. He paused to break off a lilac bloom and hand it to her before they went inside and up the stairs. She held the flowerets to her heart, the sweet scent reminding her of the love they would always share.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-4018-6

  THE MISSING HEIR

  Copyright © 2001 by Jane Toombs

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