A brilliant idea occurred to her.
"Brock," she said suddenly. "You need a medical secretary in the clinic. This girl needs a job. That's the first thing we can help her with . . ." Maria gave him a meaningful look.
Brock gave Ash an equally meaningful look.
Ash didn't need to be told in words what his sister-in-law was hinting at. After all, he was married to her sister and the two women were closer than twins. So Maria didn't think this scrawny girl should sign an annulment . . . she seemed to want Cassie to stay. If that's what Maria wanted, then he would move heaven and earth and sell shares in hell to make that happen.
Ash exchanged a glance with Bob, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
The family had agreed.
"I do need a medical secretary, Cassie," Brock said, as if he'd just thought of the idea all by himself without any help from anybody.
"Wait a minute," Cassie said. "I don't want to cause any more trouble."
"Well, seems to me there's more trouble brewing if you get an annulment. You're still underage, and when your cousin finds you, you'll have to go back to Texas." Ash pondered the situation for a moment or two. "Your marriage might not even be legal if Cecil Gorman is your guardian, since he didn't exactly give his consent. I'd have to check the statutes and case law in that area."
Cassie looked frantically at Ted, who was looking stonily at the pattern of the parquet floor.
"Cassie, I think I can speak for all of us Wellmans when I say we'd be happy to have you stay with us as long as you need to." Ash looked around the room. There were only nods and murmurs of assent.
"Once you're eighteen, Cecil Gorman can't make you go anywhere," Ash added. "Then you can file for an annulment. You could work for Brock and stay right here—"
"No!" Cassie interrupted him, but Ash put up his hand to stop her.
"Think about it before you say no, Cassie. It's a pretty good arrangement for the time being. You can stay in Liz's old room, or one of the other bedrooms, for as long as you like. No shortage of bedrooms around this old place."
"And," Maria chimed in, "You can help me with breakfast every morning for your room and board. So it's not as if you'd be accepting charity." She had shrewdly guessed one of the things, at least, that was keeping Cassie from accepting their kindness. "The clinic is a nice place to work, and you need a job for six months. You can save some money, and after the annulment you can go anywhere you like."
"You're a godsend, Cassie, and that's a fact." Brock jumped right in to do his part to convince her. "The angels must have heard my prayers last night. Can you start work tomorrow?" He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out two hundred dollars. "Here's an advance on your salary. Ted can drive you into town later today, and you can get some white uniforms."
"Thank you." Cassie swallowed her pride and, all of a sudden, decided to accept. If Ted wasn't going to look at her—well, she didn't have to look at him. She wasn't taking handouts. Here was a job, a family, a home. Even if it was only for six months. Maybe when it was over, she could start college in Texas. Training as a medical secretary had only been the first step to the career in health care she'd planned.
"Let's have some breakfast." Alicia's girlish voice and smile were warm. She stood up and walked over to Cassie. "And then I'll find you a nightie and you can get some rest before you go shopping with Ted. You can have the bedroom next to mine. After riding all the way from Texas in that junky pickup truck, you'll probably sleep the rest of the morning."
"So that's settled. Welcome, Cassie. Now come on and have some breakfast." Bob Wellman's deep voice sounded even warmer than Alicia's. Maria simply beamed.
Bob chuckled as he made his way to the kitchen, his arm around his wife. There hadn't ever been a divorce in the Wellman family. Whether his son was aware of it or not, his fate was sealed. Bob would bet his new silver belt buckle that pretty Cassie was just what Ted need to wake up out of a seven-year sleep, anyway.
Maria smiled up at him. She had won. She had six months to work a little magic. And she intended to make the most of them.
Chapter Three
"This is my big sister Liz's old room." Alicia opened the door to a bedroom almost the size of the small house Cassie had lived in with her grandmother. "She got married a few years ago, but Momma kept everything pretty much as it was. My room's right across he hall if you ever need anything. Or just want to talk sometime."
"Thank you," Cassie said shyly. She looked around.
The furniture was white wicker, with cushions of white eyelet lace. There were touches of pastel colors everywhere—in the bedspread, the throw pillows, the silk wallpaper, and the drapes covering French doors that led out onto one of the balconies Cassie had seen from the outside.
Even as a little girl, she hadn't believed that real people lived in rooms like this one. Or in houses that looked like pictures in the decorating magazines.
Alicia opened the drapes to a breathtaking view. Dormant trees awaiting the warmth of spring were silhouetted against a wintry blue sky. Cassie shut her eyes and imagined what they would look like when the change of seasons greened the bare branches.
"I've always loved this view. I could have moved over here after Liz married, but it would have taken an army of movers at least a week to get my stuff across the hall," Alicia giggled. "Oh, I nearly forgot. I promised to get you a nightie." She disappeared, leaving the door open behind her.
Cassie touched the silver-handled brush and comb set on the wicker dresser. She was sure if she pinched herself she'd wake up back at Cecil Gorman's ramshackle, rundown farm. All of this would vanish—it had to be only a dream.
Alicia backed into the room, carrying an armload of clothing.
"Here's a nightie, and some underwear. You're about the same size I am so I brought a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. But I think I've got more on top than you so I didn't bring a bra." She piled clothes on the bed and plopped down beside them.
"You didn't have to—" Cassie started to say.
Alicia didn't let her finish. "Hey. I'm going to be your friend. I'm glad to see my brother with some spark again. This family owes you a lot more than a job and a place to stay, Cassie." She smiled again, and Cassie noticed that her smile was exactly like her mother's. And Ted's.
"Okay," Alicia said briskly. "I gotta go. If I don't get a curling iron in this straight hair, I'll look like a mule having a bad hair day." She giggled again. "If you need anything, holler for Momma. We all do. She's too good to us."
She shut the door into the hallway as she left and Cassie opened the door to the bathroom. She turned on the water in the deep, clawfooted, shiny white tub, took a huge, folded pink towel from under the vanity, and set it on the wicker bench at the end of the tub. A big, oval mirror above the vanity reflected a fresh bouquet of daisies and roses. She touched them to see if they were real, then stooped to inhale their scent when she realized that they were.
She dropped her clothes on the floor, and stepped into the most luxurious bath she'd ever had, and thought about the morning. Breakfast had been a big family affair with both brothers and their wives, as well as Ted's parents, and a host of other relatives who'd driven by to meet Cassie and join them at the table.
The lively Wellman clan had gotten right into catching up on the news about Cassie, but Ted had sat at the other end of the table and ignored her completely. Lord, he must be as angry as a wet hen in the middle of a rain storm. He'd thought—and he'd told Cassie while they were driving up—that his Uncle Ash would have papers ready to be signed and he'd be a free man again, just like that. But he was still legally married and it wouldn't be over for six months. She had to admit, if she'd been in his shoes, she would have been standing in the middle of that oak dining table pitching a first-class hissy fit.
Cassie soaked happily for quite a while, until the bathwater turned cold, and the bubbles went flat. She shivered, jumped out of the tub, and wrapped the huge pink towel around her. She remembered Ali
cia saying that Ted had some spark again, and wondered what she'd meant by that. That sadness Cassie had sensed about him—well, she wondered about that, too. It just might have something to do with why these people were being so nice.
The Wellmans didn't have to do all this for her. No one had ever done so much.
It seemed as if she'd just nestled into the oversized pillow on the bed, and pulled the crisp, white sheets up to her chin and dozed off . . . when the door to the bedroom eased open.
"I hate to wake you," Maria said gently, "but if you're going to buy uniforms for work tomorrow, you'll have to wake up now. Brock keeps the clinic open on New Year's Day." Maria looked at her watch. "It's three-thirty now and the stores are closing early for New Year's Eve," she added.
"Well, hell's bells!" Cassie threw back the covers and hopped out of bed. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she blushed. "Excuse my language, Mrs. Wellman."
Maria laughed, a full, rich laugh that made Cassie smile. "I used to say that when I was a girl in southern Texas, back before I married Bob. My mother used to frown at me and tell me I'd never find a husband if I didn't clean up my language."
"So you grew up in Texas, too?" Cassie pulled Ted's T-shirt over her head and slipped into the jeans Alicia had brought her earlier.
"Yes, I did. But that's a story for another day. For now, you've got to go with your new husband to buy uniforms." Maria straightened the bed as she talked. "I'm glad you decided to stay, Cassie. And please call me Maria. Or Momma, the way Ted does."
"Ye-es," Cassie said slowly. "I appreciate your taking me in—you don't know how much. But I don't plan to impose on your kindness any longer than I have to. Or Ted's. I don't think of him as my husband, you see."
"I do," Maria said simply. She patted the pillows one more time and waved as she left.
"Well, hell's bells," Cassie said again. That sweet lady seemed to still like the idea that she and Ted were really married. Was this whole family just plumb crazy?
Ted was waiting for her in the living room. "Ready?" he said flatly.
"I suppose," she answered calmly, not wanting to irk him more than she already had by agreeing to stay. He led the way out the door and to his white pickup, which had a royal blue interior that Cassie hadn't noticed in the half-light of dawn. He didn't talk on the way to town so she didn't either.
He nosed his truck into a parking place in front of a clothing store and turned to look out the side window. The cold was biting, and there wasn't anybody to look at on the streets of Maysville, as far as Cassie could see.
"Are you coming inside with me?" she asked.
"Nope," he answered.
Cassie felt unexpectedly nervous. It had been a long time since she'd been inside a store, other than the pawnshop where she'd hocked her mother's wedding rings. The clerks in this place probably knew Ted well—they probably knew everybody in this small town. She wouldn't mind having him along to introduce her.
"Why not?" she asked tentatively.
"I don't need a uniform. I'm not going to work for Uncle Brock tomorrow morning," he said bluntly. "I'm going to spend a quiet New Year's Eve with my folks tonight and I'm sleeping late tomorrow morning."
Plans that didn't seem to include her, Cassie noted.
"Suit yourself," she retorted, slamming the truck door and storming into the store. So he was mad that she hadn't refused Brock's offer of a job and hitchhiked down the highway. When he'd wanted to play the hero and rescue the fair maiden, he'd been more than kind. But when he was done playacting, he quickly lost interest, Cassie now saw. It was evident he hadn't planned on her staying around to be a thorn in his side for six months until she turned eighteen.
Well, he didn't have any choice in the matter, because she didn't have a choice, when it came right down to it.
"May I help you?" A snooty, over-thirty, overweight, and overly made-up sales clerk approached. The tone of her voice said Cassie was only one step up from being a worm and the sales clerk was only one step away from sprouting wings of gold.
"Yes, ma'am," Cassie said, politely enough. "I need to buy some uniforms. White ones for a doctor's office. Do you stock anything like that?"
"At the back, on the round rack. Dressing room is over there." The sales clerk pointed with the long, sharp fingernail of her pinkie.
Cassie picked up two pairs of size seven white slacks and tops to match and took them to the dressing room. She took off her clothes and stood in front of the mirror, not believing her reflection. She was so thin the uniforms hung on her frame like a bed sheet on a broomstick. She'd always been petite and slightly built, but she hadn't realized just how lean she'd become over the past six months. The meals she'd missed and the Gormans' regimen of unrelenting work had made her downright skinny.
She pulled her jeans and T-shirt back on, gathered up the uniforms, and padded back to the rack in her socks to find something smaller. The sales clerk and her new customer didn't hear Cassie as she flipped through the rack looking for the same style in a smaller size, but she couldn't help hearing them. The customer's high-pitched, nasal voice was impossible to ignore.
"Well, I heard it at the beauty shop this morning," the customer said breathlessly. "Ted Wellman just up and got married all of a sudden. My cousin Milly said that Doctor Wellman told her that a new person was coming to work at the clinic tomorrow. They're always short on staff on New Year's Day. Everyone's sleeping something off, I guess. Velma, didn't you say his new wife was over there looking at uniforms?"
Cassie stood very still behind the rack, which was just tall enough to hide her.
The witchy sales clerk launched into a meanspirited monologue of her own.
"She ain't much to look at. Kinda plain and skinny as a rail fence," the clerk said haughtily. "She's just Texas white trash, from what I hear. Those Wellman men are supposed to be smart, but I don't think so. Bob, Brock, and Ash ain't got a lick of sense between them. Why should Ted be any different? He's Bob's son, after all."
"Well, I guess you're right. Why did he marry a girl like that if he didn't have to? Know what I mean?" The customer cackled unpleasantly.
Cassie was furious. These two biddy hens seemed to have nothing better to do than disparage a family that had shown her every kindness. She hadn't known the Wellmans for very long, but no one—no one—was going to say anything bad about them or Ted while Cassie was close enough to hear it.
She took two more pairs of size three pants and two more matching tops from the rack, and didn't take the time to try them on. She marched up to the register and put the garments down on the countertop.
"I also need a pair of white nurse's shoes," Cassie said frostily, glaring at the clerk.
"What size?" the woman snapped.
"Six," Cassie snapped back.
The sales clerk went around the end of the counter and picked out a shoe box with the right number on the end. Without another word, she punched the buttons on the cash register. "That will be one hundred dollars and fifty-nine cents," she said prissily, handing the register tape to Cassie as if it were a dead fish. She stuffed Cassie's purchases carelessly into a printed plastic shopping bag.
"Does Ted Wellman have an account in this store?" Cassie asked.
"Of course he does," the clerk said.
"Well, since I'm the skinny girl from Texas he married yesterday, you can go ahead and put all this on his charge account. And don't ask me for I.D. because I know you know who I am. I heard everything you said about me." Cassie raised her voice so that the customer who'd been gossiping about her could hear, too. "And while you're at it, let me give you some advice. If I ever hear you and that other old hen bad-mouth my husband, his relatives or me ever again, I intend to slap you silly!"
Then, with an icy glare that would have frozen off Lucifer's horns on a hot July day in hell, Cassie picked up her bag of clothes, and walked out the front door.
She looked back when she was outside to see the clerk and the customer staring out the front window at her, th
eir eyes round and their mouths hanging open wide enough to catch dragonflies. Cassie hopped into Ted's white pickup truck, slid across the seat, put her arms around Ted's neck, and pulled his mouth down to hers for a kiss that came close to knocking the socks off all four of their collective feet.
That kiss surprised him. Ted had just been considering apologizing for his rudeness that morning—after all, it wasn't her fault that his family had asked her to stay. If he had to guess, he'd say she'd forgiven him in advance for some reason.
Cassie broke off the kiss finally, and reached in her pocket. She set five twenty-dollar bills, one ten, and a single on the console between them. "Next time you go in there, pay your bill, and keep the change," she told him. "I used your charge account. They seemed to know I was the new Mrs. Wellman."
Ted thought about that for a moment.
"Okay. Is that why I got a kiss?" he asked cautiously.
"Oh, I don't know," Cassie said. "Let's just say you're a whole lot nicer than some people around here. And you've got plenty of sense, no matter what some people say. After all, you picked me to be your wife—right?"
"Looks like I did."
Suddenly uncomfortable with the curious stares of the store clerk and her customer, Ted detached Cassie's arms from around his neck and slid away from her on the seat. He stared out the window once more, tapping a hand on the steering wheel.
"And it looks like we're going to be together for longer than I thought. Even though we don't know each other at all."
"Well, I can return these right now and you can drive me to Oklahoma City and never have to see me again—" Cassie began.
"No. You need a place and my family seems to like you." He raked a strong hand through his thick hair, making it stand on end. Cassie would've poked fun at him for it if his expression hadn't been so serious.
"Sorry, Cassie. This just isn't how I expected to start the new year."
Chapter Four
Small Town Romance Collection: Four Complete Romances & A New Novella Page 44
