Married By High Noon

The thought of her marriage being a business deal upset her. Even though nearly all her effort so far had been poured into building her career, a successful marriage had always been her goal. Getting married in this way made her dream seem further away, less real, less attainable. No one would call her relationships with men successful, but accepting Gabe’s offer made it seem like she’d given up.

On the other hand, he would lose Danny if he didn’t marry someone. What kind of woman could he find to marry him by tomorrow? How would she treat Danny? Or Gabe?

Everything was up to her.

Marrying Gabe shouldn’t be so hard. He would agree to her staying at her grandmother’s house, even living in New York. She could come down every weekend to see Danny. She and Gabe would hardly have to see each other.

“Well, what do you say?” Gabe asked.

“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

She could tell he didn’t like that answer. But after being asked to marry him, in fewer than twenty-four hours, she deserved at least half of those hours to think about it.

Gabe studied Dana’s profile. It seemed absolutely incredible he should be asking a woman he hadn’t seen in fourteen years to marry him, a woman he barely knew, one who embodied nearly everything he distrusted. He might as well close his eyes, leap over a cliff and hope someone remembered to tie a bungie cord to his ankles. No, it was worse, like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. It could only end in disaster.

Her resemblance to Ellen frightened him. But Marshall was right. If Dana meant to shaft you, she would warn you first. She was direct, honest. Blunt, even. He hated the prospect of a second divorce. He’d promised himself if he ever remarried, it would be forever. Still, if he couldn’t get Danny any other way, he’d do it. It wasn’t as if he was marrying a stranger.

He wondered why he’d never realized that before. Though he hadn’t seen her since she was sixteen, she’d continued to be a part of his life. Through Mattie’s letters he knew about their years at that fancy New England college, their vacations in exotic places, Dana’s determination to make a success of her career. Mattie had seemed almost unaware of her own great talent, but she’d chronicled Dana’s success almost week by week. When she’d sent pictures of Danny, half of them included Dana.

Gabe couldn’t understand Dana’s almost frantic need to succeed, her willingness, like Ellen, to sacrifice nearly everything for her career. He couldn’t understand how she and Mattie had stayed friends. Given the kind of life she wanted, he couldn’t imagine why she concerned herself with Danny. She didn’t seem to need anyone—family or friends—or need to belong anywhere. He couldn’t understand such emotional isolation, her need to be so independent. Maybe she feared letting someone into her life would use up the energy she needed for her career.

Yet her decision to renovate the farmhouse caused him to wonder if she was as much of an emotional desert as she seemed. He’d seen the emotion in her eyes when she turned her car into the lane, when she saw the house, the swings, the yard. He’d also sensed she didn’t want anybody with her when she entered the house. It wasn’t a fancy apartment or a palatial villa on the Costa del Sol. Just a farmhouse. Still, something about those long-ago summers retained a very strong hold on her emotions.

Maybe he’d let his prejudice keep him from seeing a side of Dana that even she didn’t know existed. She had insisted Mattie share her apartment. She’d been at her side through the pregnancy and Danny’s birth. And during Mattie’s illness, according to Mattie’s last letter, Dana had virtually abandoned her job. Now she watched over Danny with the ferocity of a mother bear. Maybe Danny and Mattie had changed Dana more than either of them realized.

The more he thought about that idea, the more it intrigued him. Maybe finding the answer would help him keep his mind off her body for the few weeks they would be married—if she agreed to marry him.

He glanced to his left again. No, nothing short of unconsciousness could do that. A woman with Dana’s figure should never be seen in profile. It had the power to send the juices churning through his body in a matter of seconds. And she should certainly, absolutely, positively never wear a short skirt when driving. A good look at those long, slim legs could send any red-blooded male over the edge. He didn’t know a thing about hosiery, but Dana’s made her legs look as smooth as silk. The impulse to reach out and trail his fingertips along their length was nearly impossible to resist.

Her skirt was too short. It ought to extend half way down her calf. Or, just to be on the safe side, down to her ankles. And it shouldn’t be tight-fitting. The sight of her slim hips so cleanly outlined wasn’t good for his concentration. Maybe one of those things with elastic at the waist and lots of thick, gathered material.

And that didn’t take into consideration a blouse so filmy he could practically see her breasts. He knew he couldn’t, but the material made him think he could. He wondered how much they paid designers to create that effect. It ought to be millions.

“Everything looks so green,” Dana said.

“We’ve had a lot of rain.”

“It ought to help prevent fires.”

A hurricane couldn’t have doused the fire building inside him. “We almost never have fires up here.”

“I was thinking of the hay at my grandmother’s farm.”

“Get someone to cut it.”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“I do.”

“Will you take care of it for me?”

She turned toward him for a moment—not long enough to affect her driving, but long enough to endanger his self-control. There ought to be warning labels sown into every piece of her outfit saying Wearer subject to attack by sex-starved males.

Not that a man needed to be sex starved to want Dana. Even the perfume she wore tugged seductively at his senses. Half the time he couldn’t catch the scent. But when he did, it acted on him like a hypnotic drug, one that a man became aware of only after it had him firmly in its coils.

Everything about this woman seemed designed to eat away at his self-control. He’d better rectify that. No matter what arrangement they reached, city-bred Dana Marsh wouldn’t want anything to do with a country boy who made furniture and lived in a Podunk mountain town in Virginia.

“What time would you like to leave for Ma’s house?” Gabe asked, determined to get his mind off Dana’s body. She cast him a quick glance before turning her gaze back to the road. She didn’t look too happy about that idea, but he hadn’t expected she would.

“I’d been thinking of picking up something and spending the evening letting Danny get used to your house.”

He turned to look in the back seat. Danny had gone to sleep in his car seat, his head tilted to one side. There was something about the child asleep that reached out and grabbed Gabe like nothing ever had. He couldn’t decide whether it was that he was such an angelic-looking child, his complete trust that they would take care of him, or the sweet innocence of his expression. He just knew he was more determined than ever to be the one who would rear his sister’s child.

“If you want to continue to be part of Danny’s life, you’re going to have to get to know the people in his life.”

“Nobody in Iron Springs likes me.”

“Maybe a few of them haven’t forgotten the things your mother said when she left—she badmouthed just about everybody and everything in Iron Springs—but the rest like you just fine.”

“No, they don’t. You might not have seen it, but I felt it. I asked my grandmother about it.”

“What did she say?”

“She said to pretend it didn’t exist.”

“Sounds like good advice to me.”

“It’s not good enough for me now.”

“Then you’ll have to figure out a way to change their minds.”

“Would marrying you do that?”

Until he married Ellen, he’d always taken belonging for granted. She looked down on everybody, and they sensed it right way.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I supposed you’d have to like Iron Springs, want to live here, want the people to be your friends.”

“They’d have to want me, too. I was always that kid from New York.”

“They probably felt you were just visiting, that you had no more intention than your mother did of having anything to do with Iron Springs after you grew up.”

“Why should they think that?”

“You were always telling us about your big plans to become a famous businesswoman and make millions of dollars.”

Back then he’d never heard of a million dollars. That figure had been a constant reminder of the great distance between their two worlds.

“Little girls always dream big.”