A Hasty Wedding

“Joe Colton was right. He told me he thinks it’s time to move on.”

“That would be a whole lot easier if the culprit had been caught.”

“That’s what I said. When I spoke to Kade Lummus today, he said they have a firm suspect. That’s very confidential.”

She knew it was his way of telling her he did trust her. “But he didn’t tell you who?”

“No. I took Rory out for lunch after, but I’m afraid I couldn’t even use our old college friendship to get that out of him. Not even for the secret fraternity handshake.”

His quick sense of humor was coming through again. It was almost as if nothing happened. They slipped so naturally back into the easy give-and-take that had become a hallmark of their relationship.

After they had discussed the water a little further, she told him she had pulled Lucille’s file and put it on his desk, as she thought he might need it to figure out what to do about the sudden and probably totally unauthorized arrival of her brother, Tomas.

“He’s going to stay with Joe and Meredith for now,” Blake told her. “I’ll have to do some checking and see what kind of trouble he’s in, but really I think—knife aside—he just wants to be with his sister. I’ll see what I can do for him.”

“You don’t believe he’s dangerous, either.”

“Let’s not go there again.”

She grinned, relieved that the old tone seemed to be back between them, realizing how much she looked forward to her communication with this man, how much a part of her life he had become.

In fact, the Hopechest Ranch now seemed to be her whole life, much to her father’s disgust.

“Your brains and your skills and you’re working as a secretary? For a pittance?” Todd Lamb never passed up an opportunity to belittle her efforts.

Well, maybe she was kidding herself, but somehow she felt like more than a secretary. She felt like she mattered, and that these kids needed her. For the first time in her life, someone needed her.

Her relief at the old tone being back between her and Blake was pitifully short-lived.

“Joe told me he and Meredith are going to host a barn dance a week from Saturday to try and lighten the mood in the community, bring people together again. He’s got this funny idea that people are more good than bad, given a chance, and that the folks of Prosperino need to be brought back to that wholesome truth.”

She ignored Blake’s slightly cynical tone. “What a charming idea. Honestly, Joe and Meredith Colton are such a lovely couple.” The kind of couple she envied so much. The kind of couple who had found it. That thing that everyone searched for.

Love.

Found it and let it sustain them, but more, had not just kept it as sustenance for themselves and their family, but had given it away over and over again.

To the community, to their foster children.

And in that giving, they lived a truth that the whole world needed to know: that love given away, multiplied itself and came back.

Holly suddenly felt so lonely she thought she might cry, after all. She’d never had that in her own family. Her mother was totally self-involved in her looks and her shape and her clubs, and her father was totally self-involved in his career and his power plays. They were two people with no time for each other, and in the end, no time for their daughter, who had needed things from them so desperately.

“Holly?”

She looked up, forced herself to smile. “Hmm?”

“You looked so sad for a second there.”

“Oh,” she said. “I think you were right. Too many things have happened. It’s been very stressful. You may have even been right about the incident with the knife. It may have made more of an impression than I thought.”

“You’re in need of some diversion.”

“I have a great book at home.” She wished she could snatch that back the moment it slipped out of her mouth. Good grief, she sounded like a pathetic old maid. It was a good thing she hadn’t mentioned her cat, as well.

“I had something else in mind,” Blake said. “Why don’t you allow me to take you to the dance? As a way of thanking you for all the extra work you do, and apologizing for being such a boor right now.”

She understood then that their relationship could never go back to what it had been before. Not now that she was carrying the secret. If she didn’t love him, it wouldn’t have mattered that he had only asked her out as a way of saying thank-you. Or apologizing. Or because he felt sorry for her.

Even with her new secret knowledge, or maybe because of it, she had some pride.

Her handsome boss fully expected his plain-Jane secretary to fall all over herself with gratitude because he had asked her out.

Methodically, not meeting his eyes, she turned off her computer and neatly covered it with the dust cover. She placed her paperwork in a neat stack, and when she was totally composed she gave him a steady look and a frosty smile.

“Let me think about it,” she said, and was rewarded with the stunned look that appeared on his features.

She suspected no one had ever said no to Blake Fallon before. Oh, she’d seen how all the beautiful women of Prosperino fawned over him.

Well, it certainly wouldn’t hurt him to feel what the rest of the world felt for once.

She took her pocketbook out of the bottom drawer of her desk and shrugged back into her neat navy jacket, then stood up.

“Excuse me,” she said coolly.

He couldn’t get off the edge of her desk fast enough. She suspected he was still watching her, his mouth open, as she went out the door.

But she didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, even though she suspected he stood in the office doorway, watching her as she walked all the way home.

Home was only a few hundred yards from the office, a lovely little cabin that had once served as a bunkhouse on the ranch.

Her mother and father, had they taken the time to visit her here, would have been mortified by her humble lodgings. She was a long way from the palatial home outside of Prosperino that her mother and father had once shared and that she had grown-up in.

But as she walked up her creaking steps, she felt a wonderful sense of homecoming. The cat, Mr. Rogers, woke up from his favored position on the rocking chair on the front porch and came to greet her, rubbing himself against her legs until the static crackled.

“So it’s you who’s responsible for the hair I always have on the seat of my pants,” she greeted him. She realized if anyone was watching, talking to her cat would make her seem even more the pathetic old-maid secretary.

So she bent down to pet him, taking a quick glance back over her shoulder at the office. She had been wrong. The door was firmly shut, and Blake was not watching her.

As if.

She opened the door to her cabin and went in, and the troubles of the day seemed to fall away.

She loved this space she had made for herself. Some of her favorite drawings from the children were on the rustic log walls, pictures of the children themselves crowded her mantel. The rough wood floors that demanded slippers at all times were covered in bright throw rugs.

Her simple furniture—two red plaid armchairs and a yellow love seat—were shaped in a semicircle around the fireplace. The same stonemason must have done all the ranch fireplaces, because they were all equally beautiful.

A ball of wool attached to two needles, which a sweater had been taking shape out of for the last six months, was heaped on one of the chairs.