by Tina Leonard
Thirty minutes later, when they’d completed the paperwork, Dane could tell his new fiancée was completely rattled as they left the courthouse. Worried, he’d wondered if Suzy might bolt. He hadn’t considered the fact that everybody in Union Junction knew Suzy had been unceremoniously dumped by her ex-boyfriend—and the romantic notion she’d suddenly found true love would be too much of a fairy tale for the town’s ladies to resist. “Heart-pounding excitement, huh?”
Suzy didn’t answer. Dane reached out and took her hand as they crossed the street. “Hey, it wasn’t so bad.”
“I have a feeling,” Suzy said, “that our business merger is being hijacked by the kindest people on earth.”
“Nah,” he said, “we’re still in control. Let’s get a ring and then—”
“I vote we don’t,” she said. “It’s not cost-effective, considering the plan.”
“On the contrary. The ladies are watching us from the courthouse window, and we don’t want anyone to say that we’re not the town’s happiest couple, do we?”
“And in a year, when they think we’re the town’s most quickly divorced couple?”
Dane knew Suzy was thinking about her daughters’ future in Union Junction. He couldn’t blame her. “Let’s go in and look. Then they’ll be satisfied.”
“All right.”
She sounded as if the spirit of adventure had left her. Dane opened the door and they went inside the jeweler’s.
It was a replay of the courthouse incident, with the elderly Mr. Tompkins not only inviting himself to the wedding, but selecting their bands—a very affordable set of white gold rings. Suzy’s even had a trail of diamonds along the top that made it sparkle. He wouldn’t accept payment—said he’d bill them—and sent them on their way with a lot of hearty good wishes and the request that they say hello to old Josiah for him.
Dane helped Suzy into his truck. “None of this will matter in a few months.”
She looked at him from the seat of his truck. He’d hesitated, not closing the door just yet, stealing one last lingering look at her solemn face. She was just so cute, all worried about money, that he almost felt bad that he’d talked her into this plan. But then he remembered how much she wanted the Morgan name for her children and felt better about sharing it with her.
“Don’t worry, Suzy,” he said softly, catching her hands in his. And then, not caring that plenty of people were watching them with avid and delighted interest, he kissed his new fiancée on the hand, then her lips, just like he’d been wanting to for days.
Chapter Thirteen
Suzy’s breath caught as Dane kissed her. He took his time with her lips, turning all the anxiety she’d been feeling into a bone-melting promise she welcomed.
The first time he’d kissed her, she’d been annoyed and a little scared.
But now his lips were soft, gentle, searching. Suzy felt herself closing her eyes, leaning forward to receive more of Dane’s kiss. Her blood seemed to buzz; her hands slid up his arms.
Then she remembered where she was—on the main street of Union Junction with an audience—and she pulled herself away. His eyes sparkled at her, his lips turned up in a teasing quirk.
“If you like being a fiancée this much, imagine how much fun being married will be,” he said, and Suzy groaned.
“Could we get home?” she asked. “I’m sure my girls are wondering where I am.”
“Not with their aunties Cricket and Priscilla bribing them with sweets and hugs. I’m sure they’re in the best of hands, but, yes, we’ll hit the road.” He pulled away from the curb, waving to each friendly person watching them drive by. “It surprises me that so many people have such warm regard for Pop.”
“Josiah’s done a lot for many of us.” Suzy stared down at her ring, amazed that she wore such a beautiful gift on her finger. She felt guilty accepting it, but Dane had insisted, said it was for the girls, too, and how could she refuse such sentiment? He seemed to mention the girls and their future often, and his concern for them warmed her. Maybe Dane was more like his father than she’d thought.
“Funny what money can do,” Dane said, “including turning people’s opinions around.”
“Josiah never said why you all didn’t like each other,” Suzy commented carefully.
He shook his head. “He was hard on us. Wanted us to be men. Thought the world beat people down who didn’t know how to take care of themselves. And still, we could have stood that, because it was us four boys against him, so we stayed bonded together. But one night—”
He hesitated. Suzy looked at him. “One night?”
“One night we sneaked out. We wanted to see Jack ride in the rodeo. Pop was harder on Jack than the rest of us because he was the oldest. I think Pop wanted Jack to be tough enough to raise us if anything happened to him. This was a long time ago, before Union Junction had grown so much. Basically, we were country kids, far out from the town. Pop didn’t have many friends. Our mother had left when we were young because she was tired of Pop’s traveling. She went back home to France. I think it was hard being foreign here, and alone in the country with no other women for companionship.” He shrugged. “I don’t really know what made her leave. I’ve always assumed he treated her as roughly as he treated us with his tough love.”
“So she left?”
“Yeah. So Jack was supposed to be responsible for us. But he was a kid, too, and he loved the one thing Pop hated, which was rodeo. In Pop’s eyes, rodeo was the sin of loafing, ne’er-do-well ill-bred types. This was in the days before sponsorships and a living could be made at it.”
Suzy remembered her well-heeled parents attending cocktail parties and dinner balls for charities. She’d been trotted out in various gowns and bows when she was a child to greet the guests before being taken back upstairs by the nanny. Like a doll, she’d enjoyed putting on her shoes and having her hair done high and being introduced as the only daughter of the wealthy Winterstones. Of course, she’d been a debutante, and an eastern Ivy League education would have followed a summer abroad at Oxford.
But she’d chosen nursing school at the local community college, feeling more comfortable in her own element. She’d met the man she’d fallen in love with, her first love…only to have her eyes cruelly opened to discover that the love was one-sided. Her parents had been devastated and humiliated by her pregnancy. An ex-cop or a rodeo cowboy would never have been her parents’ choice for her. “So Jack was independent,” she murmured.
“Which drove Pop nuts because he saw Jack throwing away his life on something that paid nothing. But we loved watching him ride. We didn’t have the courage to disobey Pop and do it ourselves, but we sure did like watching Jack.” He took a deep breath. “But one night we sneaked out to watch him, and there was an accident…we got hit by a driver who shouldn’t have been on the road. Pop never forgave Jack for being a bad example. He was so mad at him. It was fury I never saw even in my years in the military or in the Rangers.”
“And then what?” Suzy asked, not wanting to cause him more pain but having to know what had driven Josiah and his boys apart.
“We lied to cover for Jack. Said it was each other’s idea to go.” He shook his head. “We were young, confused, scared for Jack, who was in the hospital after a bad ride. In the end, we all got in so much trouble, we just ran away. I know that sounds cowardly, but Pop had always been pretty hard to live with. We were afraid. That’s all there is to it. And we made bad choices.”
Suzy hesitated. She couldn’t offer any words of consolation or advice because she knew too well what it felt like to earn a parent’s scorn. Their judgment destroyed the trust a child felt with their parent, whom they wanted to be able to count on. “I’m sorry,” she finally said.
“Don’t be,” Dane said, his voice hard, “it’s all in the past.”
And yet it’s not, Suzy thought. It’s right here in this truck with us, and it’s the reason we’re saying I do.
DANE TOOK A LONG TIME THINKING about wh
ether or not he would call Pop. The conversation would be awkward; there was a lot unsaid between them.
Yet the townspeople had made him think about his father’s feelings, and how much Pop liked Suzy. And so in the end, he decided to call and tell his father they were getting married, for Suzy’s sake. He could tell it bothered her that her parents had disowned her, which was probably why she’d appreciated Josiah looking after her and Sandra and Nicole.
And so, if Dane was falling in with his father’s plans—at least on the surface—then it would be best for everyone if he let Josiah know he had won. Dane drank a beer, wandered around the barns for a while, and finally forced himself to pull out the phone in his bedroom and place the call.
“Hello?” Josiah barked.
Dane hesitated. Josiah was no smaller a personality when he was a few countries away; Dane could feel himself snapping to attention as soon as he heard his father’s voice. “Pop, it’s Dane.”
“Dane? To what do I owe the honor of this phone call?” Josiah demanded.
So much for pleasantries. “Pop, just wanted to let you know that…” He stopped, fought with his conscience, knowing that Pop would feel vindicated just like with Gabriel…and yet, it wasn’t about Pop. This call, and the wedding, was about Suzy. “I’m getting married, Pop.”
“To whom, may I ask?” His father’s voice was only mildly curious.
“Suzy Winterstone,” Dane said.
Josiah chuckled. “Best of luck to you,” he said.
That was it? Dane frowned. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for calling,” Josiah said courteously.
The line went dead. Dane stared at the phone for a moment, somewhat stunned. That was it? He’d agonized over calling his father, hadn’t spoken fifty words to him in ten years, and that was all Josiah had to say?
The man was, like everyone had once said, a jackass.
Only he wasn’t really called that much anymore. Dane reflected on that, and why it was so difficult to thaw the relationship between Josiah and his boys. “That was anticlimactic,” he said to himself.
He went to find Suzy. She was in the kitchen with Priscilla, Cricket and the twins. They were drawing frosting decorations on a piece of paper, presumably planning for cakes.
“Swirls or bows?” Cricket asked Dane.
“Uh—”
The ladies all laughed at his expression.
“That means, don’t bother me with the details,” Priscilla said. “You look tired, Dane.”
Suzy glanced at him, her gaze questioning. “I called Pop,” he told her.
“And?”
He shrugged, reached into the fridge for a beer. “He said congratulations, and that I couldn’t have picked a finer woman.”
“See?” Cricket said. “Josiah’s softening up in his old age.”
Suzy’s eyes widened. She went back to examining patterns on the paper, so Dane slid into a seat and pulled the twins up into his lap. “You girls need a coloring table,” he told them. “Someplace where you can sit and color, with tiny seats and a tiny table that’s made just for pint-sized arts and crafts. I’m going to build you one.”
Suzy glanced up. “They’d love that! Their own little workstation.” She beamed at him, and he felt himself puffing up with pride. “I didn’t know you could build things, Dane.”
For the first time since meeting Suzy and her girls, Dane felt valuable. He didn’t know why he hadn’t felt this before, because Suzy seemed to admire him, when she wasn’t being shy. But there’d been hero worship in her tone just then, and he’d liked it—this was the first time in his life anyone had ever been amazed by something he could do.
He could feel himself wanting to brag a little, get some more attention from her, and had to fight the urge. “It’s not as hard to build a table as it is to bake wedding cakes, I bet.”
Priscilla smiled at his efforts to praise them in return. “Suzy, this man is a prince.”
Suzy looked at Dane, slowly lowering her eyes. She hadn’t been so shy when he’d kissed her in Union Junction. In fact, she’d seemed quite eager, unless he was misreading her signals. She peeked up at him again, a soft smile on her face, and that’s when Dane knew he wasn’t quite the businessman his father was.
His heart was definitely getting involved.
SUZY HAD PUT THE GIRLS TO BED, and Cricket and Priscilla were off in their rooms when she heard a knock on her door. She opened it to find Dane standing outside. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He cleared his throat. “Are the girls asleep?”
She nodded. “They drifted off without protest.”
He smiled. “When I called Pop, he didn’t seem as surprised as I thought he’d be.”
Suzy moved into the room to fold some of Sandra’s and Nicole’s tiny clothes. “It’s hard to surprise your father. He’s made a living not letting people catch him off guard.”
“But you and my father weren’t in cahoots?”
She looked at him, not exactly shocked that he’d ask but not pleased at the implications of what he’d said, either. “I would do a lot of things for my children’s futures, but drag a man to the altar isn’t one of them, obviously, or I’d be married now.”
“Sorry,” he said, looking apologetic. “I didn’t really think you would, but I just expected more of a reaction from Pop.”
“You don’t show a lot of emotion yourself,” Suzy pointed out. “Maybe it runs in the family.”
“I never gave it much thought.”
“Jack strikes me as the most emotional of all of you,” Suzy said. “He gets his feelings hurt easily.”
“Tell me about it.” He shook his head. “Well, just thought I’d tell you I spoke with Pop. He didn’t seem particularly happy. He didn’t seem much of anything. So if you’re doing this for the old man’s sake, he may not care one way or the other. I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t marry me out of a sense of obligation to Pop.”
She considered his suggestion. “If you’re not planning to accept your money, and your father’s not thrilled you’re here, why are you still marrying me? Perhaps you’re the one who’s acting out of obligation.”
He stared at her. With a sinking heart, she realized he didn’t have any reason to marry her; he was, in fact, acting out of duty and responsibility—to her. Probably more specifically, to her daughters, because Josiah had wanted him to look after Suzy and her girls. Whether Dane realized it or not, he was seeking his father’s approval.
“I see,” Suzy said softly. “You thought your father would be proud of you. When you called him and told him the good news, you thought you were doing what would make him happy. Being a good son. Giving him grandchildren, and a reason to believe you were home to stay.”
“I don’t think that was what my motives were,” Dane said.
“Every man wants to know his father loves him and thinks well of him.”
“It matters more than I thought it would,” Dane admitted, “but I’m not backing out now.”
“Obligation?” Suzy asked.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Dane murmured. “You’re too independent. But you and your girls represent something good in my life, and I don’t feel like giving it up now. Not this soon.”
She held her breath for a moment. Her ex had never said anything like that to her. Coming from Dane, the words sounded more romantic than obliged. She wanted to believe him. It was so hard, given what she knew about men, and though she tried to judge Dane on his own merits, what she knew about him was that he liked his freedom. “So now what?”
“I’m sticking it out here, without taking Pop’s money, if for no other reason than to prove to him that I’m choosing how to live my life of my own free will. I’ll always know that I did my part to put away the past.”
She nodded slowly, understanding.
“Now the decision is up to you,” he said, his tone steady. “We can live here, or we can live at your house, your choice. But I’d like to change the business pr
oposition. Instead of getting married because Pop’s pulling the strings, I’d like the next three hundred sixty-two days of marriage to answer a different question.”
“What would that be?” she asked, her heart beginning to beat faster. Dane’s gaze on her was so purposeful that Suzy knew that the phone call to his father had changed Dane.
“If we still want to stay married after a year,” he said, drawing her to him for a long, sweet kiss, “I hope you’ll let me adopt your girls.”
Chapter Fourteen
“He’s romancing you,” Cricket said when Suzy told her about Dane’s new proposal. “Something’s changed him.”
They looked out the window while Dane worked down by the barn. Chips of wood flew, and smoke and sawdust swirled around the electric saw. Suzy could almost smell the fresh-cut wood as he worked on the children’s table he’d promised Sandra and Nicole.
Priscilla nodded. “It’s an astonishing transformation. Maybe he’s falling in love with you.”
Suzy didn’t know what to think. “Or maybe he’s falling in love with being a father.”
Cricket smiled. “People do change. Their priorities change. Maybe Dane wants different things out of life than he thought he did before.”
“I don’t know,” Suzy said. “Maybe this is just family responsibility he’s shouldering without realizing it.” She watched Dane, his muscles bunched under his T-shirt as he worked. He wore plastic protective glasses, and his cowboy hat. The two didn’t necessarily go together, but Suzy still thought he made an attractive sight.
“I suppose Josiah could have made the water so muddy Dane doesn’t really know why he wants to marry you,” Cricket said. “Not to be mean or anything, but it does seem like what Josiah can’t give emotionally, he gives monetarily. Or at least people certainly seem to respect his generous donations to the town. I’ve had five phone calls this morning from ladies in Union Junction wanting to know what they can do to help with the wedding.”
