Married By High Noon

She shook her head vigorously, hoping to fling the maddening little voice into the grass where she devoutly hoped it would be nibbled to death by voracious ants.

She managed to get her racing thoughts under control. “I didn’t mean to commandeer your house like that. I was just thinking out loud.”

“No problem,” Gabe said, but he looked as though it were anything but all right. “I can spend the night with Ma.”

“Maybe Danny and I should go to your mother’s house.”

“No. The sooner Danny gets used to his bedroom, the better.”

But he won’t be able to spend many nights in it if you don’t marry Gabe.

Dana began to wonder what part of her mind could take such sadistic enjoyment in torturing her. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Why should it be happening now when she was at her most defenseless?

“We’d better head back to town,” Gabe said.

“Why?”

“Mother’s expecting us for dinner. She’ll worry herself into a fit if we’re a minute late. What did you decide to do about the house?”

“I’m going to keep it.”

“What for? You haven’t used it in fourteen years.”

“I’m going to fix it up for myself. I can stay there when I visit Danny.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. She could practically read his thoughts, but right now she couldn’t take the blame for Lucius getting Danny. She’d had too much to endure these past weeks. One more thing just might be too much.

“Why did you stay in Iron Springs?” she asked.

Chapter Four

She hadn’t meant to ask that. She resented it when anyone asked her such a personal question.

“Why should I leave?”

She could think of a hundred reasons. “Mattie said you did very well in college, that you had two promising job offers.”

“I discovered I’d rather work with wood than be an engineer.”

“But you could do that anywhere. Why come back here?”

“Why go anywhere else?”

“Mattie couldn’t wait to get out.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She didn’t know if he knew how his sister felt about Iron Springs, but she figured learning wouldn’t improve his attitude toward her. A glance at his profile—the rigid jaw and pursed lips—told her she’d judged correctly.

“Being with people I know and trust is important to me.” Gabe stared straight ahead. “I met lots of people in college who considered me their friend, but it wasn’t the same as with people around here.”

“Why not?”

“Because they only knew me for a few years, a semester, even a month. The people here have known me since I was born. They knew my parents before that, their parents before that. It’s like a large family. If anything happens to one of us, it happens to everybody.”

Dana could believe that. Her mother had made a lot of people in Iron Springs angry before she left for college. Years later, when Dana visited her grandmother, they still remembered. She’s a Yankee, poor thing. You can’t expect anything better of her.

“I wanted to stay near my family,” Gabe said. “After Mattie went away, Ma and Pa didn’t have anyone but me. I liked being able to walk to my parents’ house before breakfast, or have them visit me.”

“Most people don’t want their parents that close.”

“To me it’s a privilege. There’s nobody more concerned for me, more willing to lend a hand if I need it. I can’t always depend upon friends. I can on family.”

Dana’s life had been entirely different. Even in grade school, her parents had been away from home more often than not. When she went away to boarding school, college, started work, they sent cards, talked on the telephone, kept in touch by e-mail, but they maintained their separate lives. Dana couldn’t think of anything more unlikely than her mother showing up at her apartment before breakfast. Her mother never got out of bed before 10:00 a.m.

“I like familiar places,” Gabe continued. “I can’t go anywhere without being reminded of something I really like doing, somebody important to me. If I left Iron Springs, I’d lose all that.”

Dana opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Coming back to Iron Springs had brought to the surface many memories she’d forgotten. But stepping into her grandmother’s house had been almost like becoming a different person, someone she used to be but hadn’t been in a long time. She hadn’t expected that, wouldn’t have believed it an hour ago. She had left a great chunk of herself in Iron Springs, and she hadn’t realized it until now.

“I like the slower pace,” Gabe said. “Everybody’s not after you to do 10 percent more this year than you did last. We don’t have to justify everything to cost accountants or efficiency experts. If I need to take the afternoon off, I just close up my shop. I also like selling things I make to people I know. Every piece of furniture I make is designed with a specific person in mind. I know what they like, what they need, even where it’ll go in the house. It’s nice to be able to see how close I came to finding the perfect solution.”

Dana could understand that. She’d often wondered where a particularly beautiful antique would be placed, if its setting would complement the piece. Even repeat customers seldom invited her into their homes.

“Maybe most of all, I like being around people I can trust, people who consider me part of their own family. People buy furniture from me even though they could get it cheaper at a discount store, because they know I’ll work a little harder to give them what they want. That’s a wonderfully warm feeling. It may sound trite in this day and time, but it makes my work more fun because it adds meaning to everything I do.”

Dana had never looked at things like that. Everyone she knew subscribed to the theory that you ought to do ten percent more this year, fifteen if you could manage it; that you shouldn’t worry about anything but making the sale; that numbers were all that counted; that you weren’t a success unless you were a success in other people’s eyes; that if working fifty hours a week was good, working sixty was better; that everything in life was secondary to being successful. She had to be a huge success to force her parents to recognize her achievements.

She had done all that and more.

Before Mattie came to live with her, she’d never once questioned that she was doing exactly what she wanted. But after Danny’s birth, she found her job at odds with being able to spend as much time at home as she wanted. Despite her partner’s objections, she stopped working sixteen-hour days, seven-day weeks. She’d even gotten to the point where, while she was trying to make a sale that might have netted them as much as fifty thousand dollars profit, she’d be thinking of what she meant to do after she left work.

Then Mattie got sick, and the worry and fear made Dana impossible to live with. Her partner had been relieved when Dana’s doctor ordered her to take some time off. Neither of them considered it anything but a temporary situation. But Gabe’s remarks, coming after her visit to her grandmother’s house, had reshuffled things in her head, had put them together in a way she’d never looked at them before.

In the world’s eyes—admit it! In hers, too—Gabe was a failure and she was a great success. But even with a failed marriage in his past, Gabe was happy and content while she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Maybe Iron Springs hadn’t failed her. Maybe she hadn’t heard what it tried to tell her.

“I always thought you wanted a family,” she said.

“I do.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’ll have to leave here to find a wife.”

“I don’t need a wife now. I have Danny.”

“You won’t have him if you don’t find a wife.”

“That’s why I think you ought to marry me.”

Surprise caused her to swerve in the road. “I thought you hated that idea as much as I do.”

“Marriage is my only option, and you’re my best choice. We can work out an equitable agreement, stay married as long as necessary, then get divorced. The whole thing won’t be messed up by a tangle of emotions. It’ll be pure business.”