Buch lesen: «The Bride Said, 'I Did?'»

Chapter One

“What you need is a man,” Jenna Lockhart teased.

“According to John and Lilah McCabe, we all need a man,” Dani Lockhart spouted back as she plucked the Sold sign off the front lawn and marched up the sidewalk leading to her century-old Victorian home.

Thanks to all four of the McCabe sons, who had finally found the loves of their lives and gotten married, wedding fever had swept the town of Laramie, Texas. Old family friends John and Lilah McCabe had swiftly decided that the four Lockhart girls should do the same. And, having more or less become surrogate parents to the girls since their own parents’ death, had taken it upon themselves to lead the cheering campaign. Hence, Laramie residents were now looking to the four Lockhart daughters to pony up to the hitching post.

Unfortunately, Dani thought irritably as she watched the moving van drive away from the curb, it wasn’t that simple. She and her three sisters had all returned to Laramie so they could once again be closer to each other, but none of them was intent on bringing a man into her life. All had been badly burned in the game of love. All were now determinedly, and she did mean determinedly, single.

“But that is not going to happen,” Dani continued after a moment, speaking to all three of her sisters as they sat on the comfortable wicker furniture on the front porch. The furniture had been sold with the house, and it fitted the spacious veranda perfectly.

Jenna capped her pen, shut her sketchbook of dress designs and stood. “You know what I mean. Someone to help discourage Billy Carter once and for all.” Jenna walked across the shady deck. “If you had a man around, showering you with attention, well, surely Billy would understand that at eighteen he’s far too young for you. And then find someone closer to his own age to date.”

Refusing to touch that suggestion with a ten-foot pole, Dani ran a hand through her cap of copper hair and sighed. She knew that part of this untoward situation was her fault. Billy Carter had gotten in touch with her three years ago when he’d interviewed her for his school newspaper. Since, Dani had mentored him via e-mail, answering his questions about what it was like to work in the industry and encouraging his own interest in a film career. She’d known he looked up to her, but she’d had no idea he had a crush on her until the day they finally met in person, and by then, it was too late. She’d already hired him for the summer.

Dani sighed and set the Sold sign in a corner of the front porch, so the realtor could pick it up at her convenience. “I’ve tried to get Billy interested in girls his own age,” Dani confessed. In the few weeks she’d been back, shopping for a house and settling in, she’d tried to fix him up several times.

“And?” Jenna asked with bated breath.

Dani frowned, remembering how her young protégé had turned up his nose at each and every one of them. “No go.” Dani frowned and shook her head as she admitted reluctantly, “Billy has eyes only for me.”

The four Lockhart sisters exchanged troubled glances.

“Maybe if he wasn’t going to be working for you the rest of the summer,” Meg suggested gently as Dani held the door and she carried in the straw basket of housewarming goodies she’d brought, “your problem would be easier to resolve.”

Threading her way through the dozens of moving boxes, Dani led her sisters to the spacious country kitchen at the rear of the house. She took the basket of goodies from Meg and slid it into the refrigerator. “I can’t fire him now, not after just one day, especially when he did such a super job this morning making sure the movers put all my work boxes in the library. And with over two thousand videos to unpack, sort, catalog and put away, and several thousand more coming in the next few weeks…well, you can see where I’m in a bind.”

Like her, Billy had a passion for movies. The kind of passion that was just not going to go away. The kind of passion the industry needed in this day and age if it was ever going to get back to the glory days of old, where the story—not the special effects—was the focus of the film.

“Billy is an excellent student, an incredible worker. He’s just young and overly romantic. I don’t think I should hold that against him,” Dani continued. Surely his crush on her would fade with time, she told herself.

“Then maybe you should hire someone else, too. A third party to make things less intimate,” Kelsey suggested practically as the four sisters headed back out to the much-cooler veranda, glasses of lemonade in hand, to enjoy what was left of the sultry summer afternoon.

“I only wish I could. But my budget has been sorely strained as it is,” Dani said. She had moved from Los Angeles, bought one of the most expensive old houses in town: a charming Victorian on Spring Street—and then set about furnishing it. She’d depleted her savings, and until she received her book advance, in approximately another month, she was counting every penny. Her sisters, all having incurred similar expenses, were also strapped for cash.

“I need someone who knows movies as well as I do. And aside from Billy—” a film buff if ever there was one, Dani thought “—I don’t know a single person in Laramie who would have the patience, never mind the know-how, for the job. I mean, I can just rattle off a title and Billy instantly knows whether it was a western or a comedy. Who’s in it, who directed it, how it was received by moviegoers.”

“Well, then, I guess you could try dressing badly,” Jenna, a clothing designer and fashion plate in her own right, teased.

“Or smelling awful,” Kelsey, a cowgirl and budding rancher who knew what it was to smell to high heaven after a day in the saddle, suggested with the same mirth as Jenna.

“Or just stop bathing,” Meg, who’d just landed a job as nursing supervisor at Laramie Community Hospital, said. “That’ll do it.”

“You all are lots of help.” Dani rolled her eyes at the good-natured ribbing.

Silence fell as Meg stood, stretched and peered around the crepe-myrtle bush at the corner of the house. Dani noted the stunned look on Meg’s face.

“What?” Dani demanded.

Meg blinked, blinked again. “Uh…are you expecting company this afternoon?” she asked nervously. Which was odd, Dani thought. Meg was never nervous.

“No,” Dani said slowly, almost afraid to find out what suddenly had her oldest sister on edge. “Why?”

Jenna joined Meg at the veranda railing. She, too, peered around the brilliant flowers on the leafy green bush. “Oh, boy,” she said. “And we thought Billy was going to be trouble.”

Kelsey leaped up to see what the fuss was about. “You aren’t kidding,” she muttered, looking even more amused and skeptical.

Dani, who felt she’d already endured enough joking for the day, stayed where she was, remaining cool, calm and collected. And curious. “Is Billy back?” Dani demanded when her three sisters continued to gape at whatever—whoever—was coming down the walk. She’d just sent the kid home for the day half an hour ago.

“You wish,” Meg said.

“Billy, you can handle,” Kelsey agreed.

“But this one…” Jenna shook her head in silent commiseration.

Surely her sisters were pulling her leg with their dramatics. Dani walked over to the corner of the porch where all three were congregated, fighting for a view.

She peered around them. Seeing who was coming up the walk, all the air left her lungs in one big whoosh. She would have known that tall broad-shouldered silhouette and ruggedly handsome face anywhere, even if he hadn’t graced the romantic daydreams of millions of women the world over.

As usual, Beau Chamberlain was wearing snug worn jeans, custom leather boots, a bone-colored Stetson hat and a snowy white western shirt that had become his trademark both on and off the set. The only thing that alluded to his star status—aside from the knowing curl of his sensually carved lips and the exceedingly confident way he carried himself—was the movie-star sunglasses that shaded his bedroom eyes.

Already picking up her sketchbook of designs, Jenna turned back to Dani. “Should we stay or go?” Jenna asked, looking ready to bolt if so desired.

Dani frowned as Beau made a hard right and strode resolutely up the walk to her house. To her mounting dismay, he looked ready to kick some Texas butt. Namely, Dani realized on a beleaguered sigh, hers.

But that was not going to happen.

“Stay,” Dani told her sisters firmly. Her heart beat slowly and heavily as she surveyed the straight black hair peeking out from beneath the brim of Beau’s hat, and remembered the way it had felt beneath her fingertips. Another shimmer of awareness sifted through her, weakening her knees. “It won’t take me long to get rid of him,” Dani promised. All she had to do was remind Beau of the acrimonious nature of their relationship for the past two years, and he’d be gone in a flash.

Ignoring the take-no-prisoners set of his broad shoulders and the determined flare of his nostrils, Dani crossed to the top of the porch steps. She folded her arms in front of her and glared down at him, determined not to forgive him for what had happened between them in Mexico. “I thought I’d seen the last of you,” she said coolly, amazed he had the audacity to show up on her doorstep after the unforgivable stunt he’d pulled on her south of the border. Never mind stand in front of her so contentiously, his legs braced apart, every inch of him taut and ready for action.

“Dream on,” Beau Chamberlain replied with a grim smile. He yanked off his sunglasses to reveal thick-lashed, midnight-blue eyes that lasered into her very soul. “Wife.”

DANI LAUGHED UNEASILY as she recalled all too well where and how they had last parted company. And she, at least, hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. That she knew for sure. The gauzy white dress, flowers and lacy white mantilla were another matter. But she was sure they could easily be explained. Just not by her. Not yet, anyway.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded incredulously, not sure what he was trying to pull on her now, just knowing she didn’t like this practical joke any more than she had liked the first one.

Beau propped one boot on the bottom step. Leaning forward, he rested an elbow on his thigh. His sunglasses dangled from his hand.

“I am talking,” he enunciated clearly, looking deep into her eyes, “about waking up in Mexico three weeks ago with you in my bed.”

Dani recalled waking up alone in a hotel room and being naked beneath the sheets. And very little before that. Embarrassed to the hilt—as he had no doubt intended her to be, Dani thought angrily—she felt all the color leave her face. Her sisters looked similarly distressed. Darn it all, anyway. She hadn’t wanted them, or anyone else for that matter, to know about this!

“Oh, dear.” Meg consulted her watch with customary tact. “I think I better go pick up Jeremy. That birthday party he’s attending is supposed to be over at four and it’s three-thirty now.”

Jenna cleared her throat and patted her chest with the flat of her hand. “That reminds me. I think I have a customer coming in for a fitting.”

Kelsey dug in the pocket of her blue jeans for the keys to her pickup truck. “You know cattle and horses—they wait for no one. And I’ve already taken off enough time today.” That quickly, all three of her sisters scattered, leaving Dani to work out what was obviously a difficult situation with as much dignity and privacy as possible.

“Way to clear out a front porch,” Dani told Beau sarcastically, not sure when she had wanted to deck a cowboy more. And Beau Chamberlain was one heck of a cowboy, both on-screen and off. There hadn’t been one with as much charisma and raw sex appeal since John Wayne. Worse, the man practically exuded courage, integrity and the determination to do right, no matter what the cost.

Men liked and respected him.

Women adored him and lusted after him.

Children found him irresistible.

And animals instantly trusted him.

Only Dani, it seemed, found him lacking in any way.

A fact, she knew, that had gotten to him like a spur in the side.

She regarded him in a devil-may-care way as he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You could have asked them to stay,” he said. Clearly aware he was annoying her terribly, he looked her over from head to toe, taking in the delicate U of her collarbone and the shadowy hint of cleavage in the open V of her marine-blue blouse. His glance moved still lower, checking out the fit of her tailored white linen slacks before returning to her eyes. “I’m sure they’d like to know all about our marriage,” he taunted softly.

“Stop saying that.” Dani felt herself flush with embarrassment. She didn’t know what he was up to now, but she didn’t like it one bit.

“Why?” He tipped the brim of his hat back with his index finger and looked up at her with a taunting smile. “It’s true.”

Dani’s eyebrows climbed higher. “It can’t be,” she countered just as emphatically, even as her knees grew weaker still.

“Really,” he said, still holding her gaze. “And how do you figure that?”

“Because—” Dani marched down the steps until they stood at eye level, and poked a finger in his chest—“we’ve been sworn enemies for two years. I would never marry someone and not remember it! Never mind my sworn enemy,” she contended hotly.

Beau moved up two steps, so they were standing on the same one and he was once again towering over her. “But you do recall waking up in that little inn in Mexico with a raging headache,” he said, glaring down at her.

Dani’s shoulders stiffened. Insensitive cretin. He would have to bring that up! She lifted her chin, drew a deep breath. “I was also alone.”

“Only because I left to find out what the devil had been going on,” he pointed out.

The way he’d looked at her then—as if he’d known what it was like to make love with her—sent shivers of awareness sliding willy-nilly down her spine. “What do you mean?” Dani demanded, hanging on to her composure by a thread.

Beau angled a telltale thumb at his chest. “I woke up with one helluva headache, too. I also wondered what in the heck had been going on that would have landed us both in bed and naked as jaybirds, to boot.”

Dani winced at the potent fantasy his words evoked. Beau’s beautifully muscled body, covered with light whorls of hair, stretched alongside her own. Everywhere she was soft, he’d be hard. Everywhere he was male, she’d be female. And surely no good could come of that! “Must you be so graphic in your descriptions?” Dani said, frowning all the more. She did not want to think about making love with him! Because that was never going to happen. It never had happened, no matter what things looked like. If it had, she certainly would remember it. Wouldn’t she?

“As I had no memory of having gotten there with you, not to mention having shucked our clothes,” he said softly, his low sexy voice doing strange things to her insides, “I decided to get up to investigate.”

“Of course.” Determined to irritate him as much as he was irritating her, Dani blinked her eyes at him coquettishly. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Steadfastly ignoring her goading manner, Beau continued with daunting seriousness. “Only, there was a marriage certificate on the bedside table. It had both our names on it.”

If he was pulling her leg, he was doing a damn-fine job of it, Dani thought. “Let me guess. And you didn’t remember getting married, either.”

Beau exhaled. “Not initially, no,” he told her grimly.

Despite her desire to stay cool, calm and collected, Dani’s heart took on a quicker beat. She rolled her eyes, not believing a word of it. “But you do now, of course.”

Beau nodded and eyed her seriously. “The more I looked at the marriage certificate that morning, the more I had a fuzzy memory—sort of a single freeze-frame image of the two of us standing in front of a priest, with candles all around us and guitar music playing softly in the background. At first I thought it was a dream, but then when I checked out the church where the marriage had supposedly taken place and spoke to the village priest, who confirmed he had indeed married us the night before, I knew it was true. Why or how I remember that and nothing else leading up to it, or following it, I don’t know,” he said. “But I do remember that. Just a millisecond of it, anyway.”

Dani had to admit, he spun a convincing yarn. He looked sincere, too. But that was also his stock-in-trade as an actor, making the unbelievable believable, she schooled herself firmly. “You need a better script.” She gave him an arch look and started to turn away. “So tell the writers you hired to come up with this preposterously lame joke to go back to their computers and write you a better exit scene.”

With maddening nonchalance, Beau clamped a hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him. His strong capable fingers radiating warmth through her blouse to her skin, he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a folded piece of parchment paper. “Perhaps this will refresh your memory,” he said, pushing it into her resisting fingers.

Dani stared up at him, her throat dry. She had to hand it to him. He was playing out this prank to the end. The only way she could end it was by playing out her part, too. “Fine,” she said tartly. She unfolded the finely crafted sheet with stiff fingers, determined to get this farce over with once and for all. She stared down at the certificate of marriage. It was a convincing fake, she had to give him that. Even the signature of the bride—her signature—looked suspiciously real.

Her fingers began to tremble.

“Now do you remember?” Beau prodded impatiently. Sweeping off his hat, he raked his fingers through his hair.

Dani pushed the memory of a hauntingly beautiful Spanish love song from her head. “No,” she retorted more stubbornly than ever, handing him the certificate right back. Her pulse picking up for no good reason, she angled her head at him. “I don’t remember that,” she said just as firmly. “So it can’t be valid.”

“That’s what you’d like to think, sweetheart, but I’m here to tell you it just ain’t so. I checked it out, both in Mexico and with my attorney in Los Angeles. Like it or not, legally we are as married as two people can be.”

Panic surged deep inside Dani, instantly giving way to incredibly warm and sexy and totally out-of-the-question romantic fantasies. “Then we’ll have it annulled,” she insisted, stepping back and away, telling herself she was not going to get roped into any wildly exciting or potentially devastating romantic drama with him.

“With the possibility of a baby on the way?” Beau advanced on her, becoming once again the same kick-butt take-charge cowboy America had fallen in love with on-screen. He looked down at her and shook his head. “Forget it. There is not going to be—now or ever—an annulment.”

“JUST TELL ME it’s not true,” Dani said half an hour later as she sat on the examining table in the Laramie Community Hospital family clinic, nervously awaiting the verdict from her physician friend, Lacey Buchanon McCabe, who’d been drafted to do her this enormous favor right away. Dani had only agreed to this test to quickly and efficiently and as scientifically as possible put an end to Beau’s claims of possible parenthood once and for all. As far as she was concerned, Dani thought, the sooner Beau Chamberlain was out of her life the better. She knew they couldn’t possibly have made love, no matter how married—or naked—they had been. The sooner Beau knew it, too, the better.

Lacey pulled up a stool and scooted closer. A newlywed herself, she had never been happier, now that she was married to staff surgeon Jackson McCabe, and she looked it. “Can’t,” Lacey said gently. She regarded Dani solemnly. “You are.”

Dani gulped as her heart began to gallop. Pleating the soft linen hospital gown between her fingers, she protested emotionally, “But—”

“The test I just ran is very accurate,” Lacey interrupted in a firm tone. “If it says you are, you are.”

Lacey paused. In full physician mode, she studied Dani’s face, then eventually patted her knee. “Do you want me to call in Beau?” she asked gently.

Normally, Dani knew, that was the next step. “No. Yes.” Dani ran her hands through her hair, shoving it off her face. “I don’t know.” This had to be a dream. It couldn’t possibly be real, could it? But if it was a dream, why couldn’t she wake up? And why couldn’t she shake the sudden sharp image of herself holding Beau Chamberlain’s baby in her arms, with Beau standing right beside her? Why couldn’t she shake the image of her and Beau and their baby becoming an incredibly happy and contented family?

What was happening to her? She wasn’t romantic! She was anything but. Their public feuding had shown her that Beau was not the man for her. From the first moment they’d met at a party two years ago, he had tried to tell her that real life could be every bit as good as in the movies. While she had tried to tell him that real life was rarely as fair or kind or predictable over the long haul, as he made it out to be. Worse, he was doing the moviegoing public a disservice by making films that led people to believe that right always prevailed over wrong, because bitter experience had taught Dani that just wasn’t so. Sometimes the worst happened for no reason at all.

“Maybe you need a minute?” Lacey asked as Dani put a hand to her tummy and let it hover there, contemplating the unexpected miracle within. She didn’t feel any different. She didn’t look any different. And yet, deep inside her was a tiny baby that was part Beau and part her, growing, thriving and in need of a tremendous amount of tender loving care from both of them. If that wasn’t a miracle of life and love, what was?

“I definitely need a minute,” Dani said firmly as she pushed the happiness and wonder from her heart. She had always wanted a baby. But not like this. And definitely not with the man who had never even been her friend!

“Jackson and I are both going to be here at the hospital all evening. We’re heading up the search committee for the new family practitioner to take his dad’s place as chief of Family Medicine. And we’ve got a hundred résumés to read through. So if you want to talk or you think of any questions, just call me or come by. In the meantime, you need to set up an appointment with an obstetrician on staff. And start taking these prenatal vitamins.” Lacey sifted through the supply cupboard, pulling out samples of vitamins and several pamphlets. “Also, read these. They cover the basic dos and don’ts of pregnancy. Okay?”

“Okay.” Still in shock, Dani stared at everything Lacey put in her hands.

Lacey touched her shoulder gently. “Are you going to be okay?”

Dani drew a deep breath and tried not to think about how irked Beau had been with her because she had never seen things his way and probably never would. “Sure,” she fibbed. “It’s just a lot to take in.”

“I know, but like I said, Jackson and I are here for you, so don’t hesitate to call.”

Lacey slipped out. Seconds later the door opened. His expression both hopeful and wary, Beau stepped in. He looked at her. “Guess I don’t need to ask the results.”

Dani slid off the end of the examining table. Her legs were trembling as she put the pamphlets and prenatal vitamins aside and reached for her clothing. “I do not understand how this could have happened,” Dani muttered. Under the cover of her hospital gown, she slipped on her panties, and then her white linen slacks. Her fingers were shaking so badly she could barely manage the zipper and button clasp.

Arms folded in front of him, Beau leaned against the corner of the examining table. “Make that two of us,” he muttered, for a moment looking as taken aback as she felt.

Silence fell as she pulled on her bra beneath her gown.

“Well, it could be worse,” he said eventually as she turned her back, removed her gown and slipped on her blouse.

“How?” Dani demanded, distressed. Turning back to him, she found her sandals. She hated that he was now trying to make the best of this! She wanted him to be as upset—as simultaneously ecstatic and upset about her unexpected pregnancy—as she was. But now that his shock had faded, Beau Chamberlain was looking downright happy about it all! As if it was yet another example of life always working out for the best, instead of the unmitigated disaster it could very well turn out to be.

Beau grinned and shrugged. “You could be pregnant and unmarried.”

Straightening, Dani glared at him. She did not appreciate his quip and she let him know it with a look. “That’s not funny.” She pushed the words through tightly clenched teeth.

He sighed, then grimaced. “Okay.” He shoved a hand through his hair again. “Obviously this has caught us both off guard and we have a lot to figure out.”