by Tina Leonard
He flipped on one of the bedroom lights, and a figure rose from the bed.
“What the hell?” the figure demanded.
Gabriel frowned. “Ben, what the devil are you doing here?”
Ben rubbed his eyes. “Trying to sleep! What are you doing here?”
“This house is on Morgan property,” Gabriel reminded him.
“If you want me taking care of your livestock at five a.m., this is my house.” Ben stuck out his jaw. “I can’t sleep in fields forever.”
Gabriel considered that. The man would be his father-in-law tomorrow. He supposed it was churlish of him to begrudge the man a home. “You think you could have asked?”
Ben shrugged. “The door hadn’t been opened in probably five years. Didn’t figure as it mattered.”
It probably didn’t. “I’m avoiding Pop.”
“You think you are?” Ben swung his legs to the side of the bed. “He wouldn’t exactly be jumping for joy to find me on his property.” He squinted at him. “Did you tell him you hired me?”
“Yeah.” Gabriel sank into an old leather chair that had seen better days. “I’d say he wasn’t happy, except he wasn’t happy about anything. That’s sort of the groove he stays stuck in.”
“I don’t mind sharing the place with you if you’ll sleep,” Ben said. “Five o’clock comes early, you know, and my bosses are real jackasses.” He snickered and slid back in bed. “Nice of them to hire me, though.”
Gabriel rubbed his chin. “Yeah, about that, Ben.”
“You promised you’d be silent as a mouse,” Ben told him. “So far all I hear is yak, yak, yak.”
“I’m marrying your daughter tomorrow.”
A long pause met his words. Then Ben sat up.
“Nope,” he said, “that ain’t gonna do.”
Chapter Ten
Laura was nervous. Accepting Gabriel’s marriage proposal filled her with a strange type of dread. She’d said yes for all the wrong reasons.
Gabriel was a handsome man. He was sexy, the kind of man most women wanted. But there was something she’d kept from him: she was the reason Josiah Morgan had returned.
Mr. Morgan had made her promise that if any of his sons came home to Union Junction, he was to be notified. She didn’t know any of the Morgan boys, and innocently, she had thought it was awful the way they never came to visit their father. Maybe she’d even felt a sad yearning for the relationship she lacked with her own father. Because of the gifts Mr. Morgan had given her children, she’d readily agreed to his request.
She hadn’t realized how much they despised him—and she hadn’t dreamed he meant to return home to confront them. Mr. Morgan’s return had driven Gabriel to a marriage proposal. He claimed he wanted the one thing he’d never had: a real family. Children he could love and hold and call his own. Secretly, she couldn’t say that she didn’t adore the idea that her children would have a father like Gabriel.
She wasn’t going to deny to herself that Gabriel didn’t make her blood run hot. A fantasy or two or ten had definitely played in her mind, hotter ones than she’d care to admit.
Yet if he knew that Mr. Morgan had planned to return, had basically lured them, and she had helped—she was pretty certain it was a betrayal that Gabriel would not be able to forgive.
She wasn’t going to tell Gabriel. He had offered marriage for one year. She had been honest, told him that she wouldn’t fall in love with him. She’d had love before, knew what it felt like, how deep it lodged in her heart. What she felt now was lust and a desire to have safety for her children, nothing more.
And when Gabriel left in a year, she would tell Penny and Perrin that Gabriel would always be part of their lives. He would, she knew, just as Mr. Morgan remained part of their world.
Gabriel just wouldn’t stay in hers.
Knowing that kept the guilt she felt at bay. Even if she felt like a traitor, it had been an innocent mistake. She’d thought she was doing the right thing, and she couldn’t change that now.
* * *
JOSIAH MORGAN HAD FEW friends. He had no family who cared for him. It was ironic how much he wanted what he couldn’t have, when he could buy everything in sight.
An old journal lay open on his desk. Pictures of him and his wife at their wedding stayed between the pages of the heavy journal; they were slightly grainy with age and wrinkled at the corners. He treasured those two pictures more than anything he owned.
He knew where his wife had gone. With the money he’d accumulated in his life, he’d been able to hire an investigator. Gisella was living in France, in the countryside, with people who remembered her from her childhood. Her own parents were long deceased, but Gisella still fit in to the surroundings of her youth. He would never contact her, but he needed to know where she’d gone.
He’d met Gisella in the military, in London, when he’d been stationed there as a cook. Back then he hadn’t had two pounds in his pocket, but Gisella hadn’t cared. They’d found plenty of activities to fill their time, and then Jack had been conceived. Head over heels in love, Josiah married Gisella. He smiled, remembering that day. Never had he seen a woman look more beautiful. Nowadays most women wore too much makeup, had their bodies artificially plumped or toned or browned—Gisella had been the salt of the earth.
As soon as he’d gotten out of the military, he’d begun his lifelong habit of acquisition. He was determined to deserve this wonderful woman, give her everything she didn’t have. It was rough financially while they were married, but she believed in his dreams. She gave him four beautiful sons.
He was moody, struggling with start-up businesses. He was under the weight of trying to deserve the woman he loved. They fought a lot. Gisella hated being left alone on the ranch; she was afraid of the dark.
Their few cattle started disappearing, and Gisella became nervous with fear. Always edgy, afraid for the boys. Terrified for herself.
He was gone on a business trip to Dallas when he got the worried call from Jack. All of eight years old, Jack tried manfully to tell him his mother was gone—in the end, he dissolved into tears that Josiah would never forget hearing him cry. He hurried home, finding the boys were being kept by Ben Smith, whom Gisella had called for help.
He would never, ever forgive Ben Smith for driving his wife to the airport.
It had been years, and he was still mad as hell. Ben told him that Gisella had planned to call a taxi, but he’d driven her to Dallas to try to talk her out of leaving. Gisella had left a babysitter at the house, with instructions to stay with her sons until their father returned.
He could feel his blood boil all over again. Betrayal, by everyone he knew.
The boys would never understand that from that day forward, he had to teach them to be men. They needed to know that life was hard, and there were disappointments. Nothing was easy, nothing was free. Nobody gave a man a single thing, he earned every bit, and if he was smart, he made that lesson the bedrock of his soul.
Josiah shut the journal and stared at it for a long moment. In the journal, he wrote words daily that he wanted his sons to know about him, about their mother. He was aware they disliked him intensely. But they would know that he had loved them, and whether they considered his love too harsh was something they could decide after he was gone.
His kidneys were failing and he had maybe a year, possibly less. He would not take treatment, would not be chained to a machine. Would not show weakness, nor the fatigue that robbed his strength. Not even the depression that came upon him from time to time. A kidney transplant could save him, but that was not an option he chose. There were many more deserving people in the world who had something to live for. He’d been given his own chances to do something good with his life, and God would judge that.
He’d leave the healing to those who deserved it. He’d struck his deal with life, now he was determined to go out with fireworks. He would be no wimpy candle that blew out unresisting at the slightest puff of wind.
* * *
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“NOPE,” BEN SAID, “you ain’t marrying my daughter. And if that’s why you gave me a job, then you can sure as hell shove it, Morgan.”
Gabriel threw himself on the sofa and closed his eyes. The sofa was scratchy and old, made of a plaid fabric that had seen better days. It felt lumpy and out of shape, but Gabriel was too tired to care. “Go to sleep, Ben. We’ll argue in the morning.”
“Morning or night, next week or next year, I ain’t giving you my blessing. You damn Morgans ruin everything you touch, and you ain’t gonna upset Laura.”
“Listen, Ben, you’re no angel. And Laura’s old enough to make her own decisions.”
“That’s just like a Morgan, thinking they can bend everybody else to their will. I’m telling you, leave Laura and the kids out of your screwed-up life.”
Ben had a point. He had several points, in fact, but nothing was going to stop Gabriel from marrying Laura, not even her own father. He wanted her so badly that he could practically taste her. Desire washed through him, tugging at him, binding him to her in a way he could never explain.
“She deserves a man who can love her,” Ben said, standing over him, “and you come from stock that loves no one but themselves.”
“It’s not entirely true.” Gabriel grimaced.
“Yes, it is. Your whole clan turns on each other at the snap of a finger. Where are your brothers?”
“Not here.”
“And how many words have you spoken to your father?”
“Under fifty, maybe,” Gabriel admitted.
“Which is why you’re hiding out here, and why you’re trying to rope my daughter into marrying you. Fact is, you’re doing this to get your father’s approval.”
Gabriel blinked. “You could have a point.”
“Yeah. I do. You know your father provided for my grandchildren. So what do you do? You go and ask their mother to marry you. You haven’t even known Laura a week. It’s not love at first sight or something romantic like that—it’s trophy bagging. Like she’s some kind of prized deer you can brag that you shot.”
“Hey!” Gabriel jerked up on the sofa. “Ben, shut your mouth before I shut it for you. That’s a terrible way to talk about your daughter!” There might have been some family psychology at work—he didn’t mind admitting that Laura represented wholeness and a sense of family he craved—but he would never see her as a trophy.
Ben stuck out his chin belligerently. “I’m talking about you, not my daughter. You’re the hunter here. She’s just the innocent prey in your quest for game.”
Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t know what to say, except you sort of worry me. Didn’t you act up about Laura’s first husband?”
Ben raised a finger, wagging it at Gabriel. “He wasn’t good enough for Laura.”
“Is anybody?” Gabriel honestly wanted to know.
“Probably not,” Ben barked. “She hasn’t yet met the man who deserves her. But I don’t expect you to understand that, because you’re your father’s son.”
Gabriel sighed. “Ben, you gotta calm down. It’s going to be hard to share Christmas dinners if you talk like that all the time.”
“I’m being honest.”
“And I appreciate that, but I’m not the devil. And Laura’s a smart woman. She wouldn’t have said yes if she didn’t think marrying me had some merit.”
Ben snorted. “Laura is a grieving widow. She thinks you’ll be a good father. Maybe you can be, but maybe you won’t be. But, son, I know more about you and your family than you’ll ever know, and I’ll be willing to bet you’ve never had a relationship with a woman that lasted a year.”
Gabriel’s brows furrowed.
“Have you?” Ben demanded.
“How do my past relationships affect my future ability to be a good husband?”
Ben put a boot on the side of the sofa and leaned close. “Rumor has it you and your brothers make sport of women.”
“Not true,” Gabriel said defensively. “While I can’t speak for my brothers, I can’t exactly say I personally ever met the woman I wanted to spend my life with.”
“And did you tell my daughter you planned to stay with her for the long haul?” Ben asked. “I’m just curious, because marriage is a long-term thing. It’s a commitment. Something I haven’t ever known you Morgans to be good with.”
“I was in the military. Can’t think of a more demanding commitment than that.”
“That’s a paycheck. It was also an escape from your father.” Ben left the room, heading back to his own exile. “Marriage should not be an escape route, Morgan.”
He closed his eyes. “True,” he muttered. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
“I’ll be saying the same to Laura.”
“Probably a good idea.” He’d be worried about having himself for a son-in-law if he was in Ben’s boots. Why had he even mentioned it to Ben?
He stared up into the darkness, examining his conscience. It was traditional to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Perhaps he’d hoped for his future father-in-law’s blessing. He really cared about Laura and her family, and that included Ben to some degree. He didn’t blame Ben for feeling the way he did. Yet Gabriel knew he was marrying Laura—unless she changed her mind about having him. He briefly considered tying Ben to his bunk, at least until the I dos were spoken, but the old man had a right to do his damnedest. It didn’t matter what Ben did, anyway. Laura had said yes, and she wasn’t the kind of woman to go back on her word.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m getting married,” Gabriel told his father the next day before he left to pick up Laura on the way to the airport. “I know news travels fast here, so I wanted you to hear it from me.” He figured Ben had probably already run a marathon to tell his old man, but Josiah looked surprised.
“You are?”
Gabriel nodded. “I’m marrying Laura in Las Vegas today. We’ll be back by nightfall.”
Josiah’s brows beetled. “Not much of a honeymoon.”
Gabriel shrugged. “She has two young children. She’d rather not leave them long.” He wouldn’t tell his father they didn’t need any real honeymooning.
“Penny and Perrin would be fine with me. They like me,” Josiah offered.
“Thanks. But Laura’s got her heart set on coming home.”
Josiah grunted. “Your brothers slunk out of here without saying much to me. Guess you’d be gone, too, if it wasn’t for Laura and the kids.”
He probably would. Pop’s gaze was on him, inspecting him, waiting for an answer. What was the right answer? What did Pop want to hear? He didn’t know. “Since you’re back, you can take care of the place yourself, right? And you’ve got Ben.”
Josiah scowled. “I don’t need Ben.”
“Well, get along with him.” Gabriel tossed some stuff into his truck. “I probably won’t be seeing you for a while.”
“You probably won’t. I’m planning on going back to France early next week.”
Gabriel turned to look at his father. “Why did you really come home?”
Josiah shook his head. “It’s my house, isn’t it?”
“So what was the deal about the million dollars if we stayed here for a year?”
Josiah fixed dark eyes on him. “None of you seem to be planning to do it, so what does it matter?”
True enough. Gabriel knew his father had simply been moving them around like chess pieces.
“Gabriel, I have to admit I’m glad you and Laura are getting married.”
“I guess so. It makes you a grandfather. Wasn’t that what this was all about?” Gabriel felt a little bitter about satisfying one of his father’s desires, the familiar resentment welling up inside him that Josiah Morgan was always behind every move in his life.
“Actually, I never dreamed she’d have you,” Josiah said. “She was pretty torn up when Dave died. I just wanted you to look after her and the kids while I was gone.”
“Did you cheat Ben on purpose?”
Josiah frowned. “I saw value in something that Mr. Smith did not. Including his own family, I might add.”
He had a point. But that didn’t make it right with Gabriel.
“Pop, have you ever thought that maybe you shouldn’t capitalize on people’s weaknesses?”
“Hell, no. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Don’t kid yourself.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Listen, I’ve got to head out.”
He looked at the man who was his father, and yet who felt like he was something else: judge, jury, prosecutor. Time had stretched the bonds between them and deepened the scars. He didn’t think either of them would really ever heal the wounds.
“Gabriel, thanks for telling me about the wedding.” Josiah turned to go inside his house. For just a moment, Gabriel felt sorry for his father, then decided it was a wasted emotion. Josiah played by his own rules, and they were rules he was comfortable with. Gabriel wasn’t going to make the mistake of judging his father.
He drove off to pick up his soon-to-be bride, and it belatedly occurred to him that he had received his father’s approval. It felt good.
Marrying Laura would feel good. He’d counted the hours since yesterday.
He was going to be a husband and a father. He couldn’t wait.
But when he got to Laura’s house, she wasn’t there. Instead, he found a note taped to the door.
Gabriel, Dad was having chest pains. I’ve taken him to the hospital. Laura
* * *
LAURA WAS NEARLY SICK WITH fear. Her father looked so pale. Nurses scurried to hook him up to various monitors and an IV. She didn’t want him to have a heart attack, she wanted him to be well. Life was short, and she’d wasted time Ben could have had with his grandchildren. She regretted every moment of her stubborn pride.
She should have tried harder to make her father understand how much she loved Dave—although as much as she hated to admit it, Dave hadn’t helped to ease Ben’s worries. In retrospect, she realized how much Dave’s laconic approach to life had worried Ben.
