Married by High Noon Read online

  “I’ve got to undress him,” Dana said.

  “Can’t we put him in bed in his clothes?”

  “No.” Only a man would ask a question like that. She followed Gabe up the wide staircase. “Don’t take him in his bedroom.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want him to wake up and find himself alone in a strange house. I’ll let him sleep with me.”

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “It’s better than having him wake up and be frightened.”

  “I guess it won’t be too bad. You won’t be here very long.”

  His words brought back the one fact above all others she’d been trying to forget. Being in Iron Springs made it easy to feel New York and the rest of the world were far away, that nothing could ever penetrate these mountains to harm her. Yet Iron Springs had hurt her far more than New York ever could.

  She shoved all that from her mind. “If you’ll help me, maybe we can get him into his pajamas without waking him.”

  Gabe’s gentleness surprised her. She guessed she thought big men of rough manners, decided opinions, and firmly held beliefs lacked a gentle side altogether. That might be true of others, but not Gabe. He laid Danny down on the bed without causing an eyelid to flicker, untied and removed Danny’s shoes while Dana took off his shirt. Gabe helped her with the pants. He yielded to Dana when it came time to change his diaper, but Dana had no doubt he’d know how to do it next time.

  “You’re going to put him in those?” Gabe asked when Dana pulled out a pair of pajamas decorated with teddy bears.

  “What’s wrong with them?” she hissed.

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he said.

  He frowned so the whole time he helped her put them on, she knew she’d contravened one of those mysterious codes only men understood. She still doubted the wisdom of Mattie’s insisting Danny be reared by a man, but she no longer doubted there were certain areas of the male psyche no female could hope to fathom.

  You didn’t have to be female to know Danny looked perfectly adorable in sleep. Dana had often wondered what made people—but especially babies—look so irresistible in sleep. Even rumpled, with hair in their faces, all the innocence and sweetness seemed to come to the surface during slumber.

  “He’s a real cute kid, isn’t he?”

  Gabe’s whispered voice disturbed her thoughts.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “He looks just like Mattie.”

  “Mattie said she’d never been that adorable.”

  “She was. Dad used to dote on her. I think that’s what made it so hard for him to accept what happened later.”

  Leave it to a man to find a way destroy a tender moment. “We’d better leave before we wake him up.”

  Gabe moved to the doorway. “Do you know where everything is?”

  She could tell he didn’t want her in his house. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. After all, she had invited herself.

  “I’ve got everything I need in my suitcase.”

  “I mean in the kitchen. You’ll need to fix Danny’s breakfast.”

  She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Do you have milk?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have Danny’s cereal. We’ll be fine.” They hadn’t moved from the doorway. It made Dana nervous. She wanted Gabe to leave. She headed down the stairs, hoping he would follow. He did.

  “Do you need anything from the car?” he asked when they reached the bottom.

  “No.” She walked toward the front door. She wondered if he’d be comfortable at his mother’s. She knew Mrs. Purvis would try to mother him. Gabe didn’t look like the kind of man to enjoy that.

  “You do have a key for the front door, don’t you?” she asked, remembering he hadn’t locked it.

  “You don’t need to lock the door.”

  “Probably not, but I’m not used to sleeping with unlocked doors. I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  “The key’s in the door. But I wish you could trust the townspeople.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to marry me so I can keep Danny.”

  Chapter Six

  At least he had the decency not to pretend he’d fallen in love with her honey-brown hair, brown eyes or fabulous figure. He just wanted Danny, and he’d do anything he must to keep him. She should have been relieved he didn’t pretend feelings he couldn’t possibly have. But appreciating his honesty did nothing to loosen the double knot that had formed in her stomach.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Marshall said we didn’t have much time.”

  “We have until tomorrow.” She wondered if her voice sounded a little desperate to him. That’s how she felt, pressured on all sides by decisions she didn’t want to make, couldn’t make, on the spur of the moment.

  “We’d have to get married tomorrow. I have to know tonight so I can make the arrangements.”

  She didn’t want an explanation. It would just make the pressure worse. “We haven’t talked about anything.”

  “What do you need to know beyond the fact that you can get a divorce the minute I get custody of Danny?”

  “All kinds of things,” she said, feeling as desperate as she sounded. “We haven’t worked out the living arrangements.”

  “We’ll sleep in separate bedrooms.”

  “People will ask questions.”

  “We’ll think of something to tell them.”

  “I still don’t know. I—”

  “I’ll put a lock on your door if it’ll make you feel better.”

  “I trust you.” She would never agree to marry him if she didn’t trust him, not even for a few weeks.

  “Good, that’s taken care of. I’ll sign any kind of prenuptial agreement you want.”

  “What for?”

  “So I won’t have a claim on your money. You’ll be abandoning Danny and me. That would give me grounds to take you for all you’re worth.”

  She’d never thought of a prenuptial agreement. Gabe would never try to take her family’s money. He was too proud.

  “You can make as many trips to New York as you like.”

  “I don’t imagine my being away a lot would make a very good impression on the judge.”

  “He wouldn’t have to know.”

  “Sooner or later everybody knows everything in a place like this.”

  “He doesn’t live in Iron Springs.”

  “He’d find out anyway.”

  “Look, Dana,” he said when she didn’t respond immediately, “I’ll do anything you want, sign any paper, agree to any conditions.”

  “Think of the women who’d give everything they own for a proposal like that.”

  “I doubt they’d be too pleased with the divorce tacked on at the end,” Gabe said.

  He didn’t have to make fun of her just because she’d tried to keep things from becoming unbearably tense.

  “You’re probably encouraging me to go back to New York because you can’t stand the thought of me in your house.”

  “I hardly know you. But even if I disliked you, I’d still ask you to marry me. Danny is all the family Ma and I have left. I’ll do anything to keep him.”

  Dana didn’t know why Gabe’s answer didn’t soothe her anxiety. He’d said exactly what she wanted him to say. He’d promised to do everything he could to make the situation as easy for her as possible. She couldn’t ask any more of a man who must be going through agonies to make the offer at all.

  “I’ll let you know first thing in the morning,” she said. “I know you want an answer right now, but I’ll be more clearheaded after a good night’s sleep.”

  But when Gabe had made his final plea, gathered what he needed for the night, and she’d locked the front door behind him, she felt too keyed up to sleep. The mere thought of being married to Gabe had set every nerve in her body on edge. Living in the same house, doing things together, acting like a married couple, filled her mind with vivid images she cou
ldn’t have imagined only a few hours ago.

  The magnetism she’d felt the moment she stepped into Marshall’s kitchen had continued to grow until it felt like a physical force acting on her body. Looking at him and being in the same room with him had been difficult. Being alone in the car and at the farm had heightened the feeling. It had dissipated only slightly at his mother’s. It intensified again on the walk home, flared when he helped her put Danny to bed, and nearly consumed her when he asked her to marry him.

  She couldn’t understand it. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have said she was attracted to him again, that she actually liked him, that she could enjoy being married to him.

  Nothing could be further from the truth. She could find only two possible explanations. Maybe Gabe was too handsome, too overwhelmingly masculine, too much the perfect realization of a woman’s dream for Dana not to be attracted to him.

  On the other hand, it could simply be the resurrection of her youthful feelings. She’d been wildly in love with him until that fateful evening. Maybe, even though her mind and emotional maturity had traveled a long distance since that day, her physical attraction to him had become frozen in time. Maybe a small part of her had stayed that teenage girl worshiping the older man she’d always dreamed of marrying.

  In that case, marrying him would be a good thing. She’d be around Gabe long enough to give her physical attraction time to shift from the past into the present. If he was just too good looking to be ignored no matter what her mental, emotional or physical state, she’d just have to endure it. She’d done it in business situations. She could do it here.

  But she had never been expected to live in the man’s house.

  She turned away from the front door and came face-to-face with Gabe’s grandfather clock. She couldn’t possible look at that beautifully finished wood, the intricate carving, without thinking of Gabe. It wouldn’t do any good to turn her head. Everywhere she looked her gaze fell on his work, all of it a testament to craftsmanship that couldn’t be ignored. But it wasn’t the skill that drew her, it was the soul of the craftsman evident in each piece of work, the way a wood’s texture and color seemed to have been specifically chosen for a particular design, a particular piece, to stand in a particular place. Decorative detail never overshadowed the simple beauty of material or function.

  Dana had worked with masterpieces of craftsmanship far too long to fail to see flashes of genius in Gabe’s work, sparks that testified to the existence of a part of Gabe she’d never seen. Any man who could lavish such care and attention on a piece of wood, should be able to create a masterpiece of love when it came to a woman.

  She shivered. Being in his house was causing her to think all kinds of crazy thoughts. She ought to get out of Iron Springs before she started doing something really crazy.

  Like forgetting Gabe had proved no one could love her for herself, just what she appeared to be.

  Yet she felt drawn to the big, spacious house. It had been built more than fifty years earlier by local craftsmen from local lumber without benefit of an architect’s plans. Its fourteen-foot ceilings, glass above doors, plaster molding, and central hall from front to back stamped it as belonging to another era. Dana couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live here. Surely it would be like playacting, stepping into a past that hadn’t existed for years.

  Then she remembered her summers with her grandmother, days spent doing various chores, hours spent visiting, quiet evenings after dinner spent on the porch swinging and talking until time to go to bed. Suddenly, it didn’t see quite so impossible. She remembered how happy she’d been, how much her grandmother loved Iron Springs. It was a different way of living, one that probably required a very different set of priorities from the ones necessary for surviving in the cutthroat business of high-priced antiques, but there were parts of it that were very attractive, very seductive. She might tire of it after a short while, but it would be a nice change.

  What was she thinking! She couldn’t possibly like living in Iron Springs. She had to be mentally exhausted. There could be no other reason for her thinking such mad thoughts. Next she’d be thinking she was marrying Gabe because he loved her for the person she was, not her money, looks or success. It wouldn’t happen. He’d made that very clear fourteen years ago.

  But when she went into the living room to turn off the light, her gaze fell on an open photo album. The first picture that caught her attention was one of her and Mattie when they were eight and Gabe had taken them swimming in a nearby lake. They stood clutching black inner tubes, clad in those terrible one-piece bathing suits all little girls wore. Gabe had devoted the whole afternoon to them, making every other female in sight jealous. Even at fourteen, Gabe’s good looks made women take notice. He’d been kind and attentive, and Dana had had a wonderful time.

  She wondered if he’d changed as much as it seemed. She told herself that had nothing to do with her decision whether or not to marry him. If she did, she would do so for one reason only—to protect Danny from a father who wanted him only because of his gender.

  Still Dana had the distinct feeling being married to Gabe, even for only a few weeks, could be dangerous. If she didn’t exercise great care, she might do something foolish like start thinking of him as a hero again.

  She closed the album, turned off the light and left the room. Tomorrow would be a new day. And before it got very old, she’d have to decide whether to marry Gabe. She feared trying to make that decision would keep her awake most of the night.

  Gabe stared into the mirror at his own bleary-eyed reflection. He looked like something out of a horror movie. He had spent the whole night tossing and turning in the bed he’d slept in as a teenager. He fought off a nearly overwhelming urge to crawl back into bed and forget the troubles that had descended on him when a certain forest-green Jaguar rolled into town.

  “You up, Gabe?” his mother called.

  She knew he was up. You could hear the water running in the pipes all over the house. “Yeah, Ma, I’m up.”

  “What do you want for breakfast?”

  His mother was a morning person. She bubbled over with good cheer from the moment she opened her eyes. It practically set Gabe’s teeth on edge. “I don’t want anything.” He’d eaten too much last night. His mouth felt like cotton and tasted a lot worse, and he was far too grumpy to make polite conversation.

  “You have to eat. You can’t go to the shop on an empty stomach.”

  “Yes, I can, Ma.” He’d stopped eating breakfast after his divorce.

  “It’s not good for you.”

  “You’ve been telling me that for years.”

  “It’s still the truth.”

  “I don’t want anything. I’ve got to see Dana.”

  “No need to rush. She’s not going anywhere.”

  She couldn’t understand because she didn’t know what was as stake. But he could see no point in worrying her when she couldn’t do anything about it. He had to solve this problem alone.

  “I’ll tell you what we decide,” he said.

  “I don’t need to know. I’m not nosy.”

  Most mothers would want to know if their only son planned to get married later that day.

  “You’ll want to know about Danny.” He knew he had her there. She’d spent nearly an hour talking about Danny after he got back to the house last night.

  “I’ll be back shortly,” he said. “If you’re already at work, I’ll drop by.”

  “This is Saturday. I don’t go to work.”

  Which just went to show how rattled he’d been since Dana arrived. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  He headed for the front door, his mother trailing behind. “Maybe Dana would bring Danny over for breakfast. I’m sure he likes pancakes.”

  “She’s been taking care of him for a long time. I’m sure she’s got a routine.”

  “She’s so good with Danny,” his mother said. “She was always a sweet child even though she could never sit still, but I nev
er expected her to take such good care of Danny. He’s going to miss her a lot.” Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “But not as much as she’s going to miss him.”

  Gabe had been trying to convince himself Dana was clinging to Danny out of habit, that she’d soon be ready to go back to her normal way of life. “You think she’s going to miss him that much?” he asked.

  “She loves him like he’s her own child. It’s going to break her heart to give him up.”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “I realize that, but it’s not going to change the hurt.”

  Now he felt guilty for wanting Dana to go back to New York. “Maybe we can think of something,” he said.

  “What?”

  Leave it to his mother to pin him down immediately. “I don’t know. I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  The morning air was thick and muggy. Must have been a shower somewhere in the valley. The atmosphere matched Gabe’s mood. He hadn’t been able to think of any more reasons to convince Dana to marry him. Promising to let her see Danny whenever she wanted—even sending him to New York for visits—wouldn’t bring her around. She knew she could come down anytime she wanted. He didn’t want to mention that she owed it to Mattie’s memory. That would be unfair. Besides, she already knew that.

  Searching for ways to convince Dana to marry him wasn’t the only thing that had kept him awake, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling long after midnight. The idea of being married to Dana, even a pretend marriage, had set him in a uproar.

  He’d never denied Dana’s attractiveness. He’d conceded that every time he’d seen her over the summers she’d spent in Iron Springs. But he’d never thought of much beyond that. She was his little sister’s best friend. Back then six years seemed like a yawning chasm. Even after Dana declared she loved him, begged him to wait for her, he hadn’t taken her feelings seriously. She was just a rich, overindulged young girl with a crush on an older guy. She always talked about her rich friends, the schools she attended, her trips all over the world, how she planned to be such a great success everybody in New York would know her name. They had nothing in common, and he’d told her so.