Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!

by Victoria Pade

  “She’s on a photo shoot in Paris, Dad, so no. That’s her job, and she won’t come back until she’s finished.”

  “You could take a long weekend and—”

  “I don’t have the time for that.”

  “Your job is to look after the best interests of the Monarchs, and the Monarchs need sponsorship. Revenue. A football franchise and a brewery? That’s a perfect match,” Morgan Kincaid said. “You and Chelsea together, with Chelsea working for her father and sticking around more to be with you, would seal the deal between the Monarchs and Tanner Brewery—I’ll throw you the biggest wedding Montana has ever seen.”

  Chelsea? Photo shoot in Paris? Wedding?

  “Drop it, Dad,” Ian said then. “Chelsea and I are friendly—that’s all. I’m doing what you and her father want as far as trying to convince her that it might be good for her to be the spokeswoman for Tanner Brewery if it comes on board with the Monarchs. We have some musical tastes in common, but that’s it—no romance. She’s not interested in me, I’m not interested in her.”

  “But romance could develop—how bad would it be? She’s a model, she’s beautiful. If she called you from Paris that means she likes you,” the former football star pointed out hopefully.

  Ian laughed wryly. “We have the same taste in music. We’re exchanging playlists. That’s it. We’re friends exchanging playlists,” he repeated slowly, seemingly for emphasis.

  “But a long weekend in Paris—on the company’s dime—things could become more than that…”

  “Or I could just get Tanner Brewery to sign on for sponsorship because it’s good business.”

  “But the two of you together—that would lock in permanent sponsorship—”

  “Uh-huh,” Ian said as if it just wasn’t worth arguing about.

  But still Jenna couldn’t shake the fact that his father wanted him hooked up with whomever this Chelsea was.

  And there was a Chelsea.

  There was a Chelsea…

  Jenna had no idea why that disturbed her so much but she suddenly wanted the Kincaids to leave.

  Go away! Get off my property while it’s still my property! she thought, wishing she could play frontier woman, pull out a shotgun and run them off.

  But just then Morgan Kincaid looked at his watch and said, “I have to get going—there’s a charity thing tonight in Billings and I’m the guest speaker.”

  The older man headed around the house and as Ian followed him he glanced at the window again. When he spotted Jenna this time he raised a palm as if to wave goodbye. But that open palm quickly closed around a single index finger pointed as if he was signaling for something.

  Jenna had no idea what that meant, but responded with a halfhearted wave of her own just as he disappeared around the side of the house.

  A sudden chill made her decide to close the window above the sink before she wiped down her countertops. And while she did she couldn’t get the echo of another woman’s name out of her head.

  Chelsea. Chelsea. Chelsea…

  Was Ian Kincaid seeing someone?

  He had said he was just being friendly. That he wasn’t interested in the woman and the feeling was mutual. That he was just exchanging playlists with her to build rapport. So it didn’t seem like it. But that was what his father wanted….

  Why should I care one way or another? Jenna chastised herself.

  She shouldn’t. She didn’t. There wasn’t a single reason why it should matter in the slightest if Ian Kincaid was engaged and on the verge of marrying ten women!

  The doorbell rang just then and jolted her slightly because she’d been so lost in thinking about Ian and his involvement with this Chelsea person.

  Belatedly, it occurred to her that that single finger he’d raised might have meant one minute. One minute before he returned. And that could be him at her front door.

  Abandoning her sponge and knowing the mischief Abby could get into being left alone for even a moment, Jenna scooped the baby up into her arms and went to the front door.

  Sure enough, Ian was standing on the front porch.

  She could see his car parked in the drive that led to the house, but there was no sign of his father.

  “Reservation for one,” he said, as if he were at a restaurant.

  Was that what the single finger had meant?

  But Chelsea was still on Jenna’s mind and it made her tone a bit aloof. “I thought you were kidding,” she said.

  “I was. I am,” he assured, frowning slightly, as if she’d confused him. Then he seemed to relax a little and said, “My father is gone, I just wanted to hang back and tell you thanks for letting me show him the place and to apologize again for the drop-in.”

  “No problem,” Jenna answered.

  “Un,” Abby said then, holding out her arms to him through the screen.

  “Hi, Abby,” he said affectionately, giving the baby a big smile and holding the tip of one finger to the screen for her.

  That went a long way in melting Jenna’s coolness, and a little voice in the back of her mind said, They are just exchanging playlists…

  And he did look fantastic—he was wearing the first pair of jeans she’d seen him in, and what the man did to a few yards of denim was sinful. He also had on a sky-blue shirt that brought out the blue of his eyes, and a bluish-gray sport coat that finished the look of city-meets-country style with more sexy flair than he had any right to.

  It all worked to take the starch out of her, and before she had even made the decision consciously, she heard herself say, “I do have enough lasagna for half a dozen people if you want to stay….”

  “Don’t say it unless you mean it, because I’ll take you up on it,” he warned.

  But she did mean it. Even though she wished she didn’t and wasn’t quite sure why she did.

  There’s someone else, she reminded herself as she pushed open the screen door. He’s duty- and otherwise-bound to do his father’s bidding, plus there’s someone named Chelsea in his life. Someone he seems to like just fine and his father wants him to marry….

  But what she said was, “Come in.”

  Ian didn’t require any more persuasion than that to step across the threshold and close the door behind himself.

  Again Abby said, “Un,” and leaned toward him with outstretched arms.

  “Let him take his coat off first,” Jenna told the baby.

  Ian shrugged out of it and hung it on one of the four pegs that lined the chair rail on the wall behind the door.

  Then he took Abby, who once more curled her arm around his neck with an air of possessiveness, just as a timer sounded from the kitchen.

  “That’s for the lasagna,” Jenna informed him, retracing her steps down the hallway beside the staircase to the kitchen with Ian and Abby following behind.

  “Sit down,” she said as she opened the oven door, removed the foil that covered the lasagna and then set the timer for another fifteen minutes. “I have salad and bread to go with this. I need to set the table and get Abby’s dinner going—she won’t touch lasagna—”

  “You made it just for yourself?”

  “I was craving it.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No, just sit.”

  “I should let Hadley know I won’t be there for dinner,” he said, as if that had just occurred to him. Then he pulled out one of the spindle-backed chairs and sat with Abby on his lap at the round pedestal table. He took his cell phone from his shirt pocket and made the call while Jenna poured Abby a sippy-cup of milk and set it on the table in front of her.

  Jenna was taking two adult-size glasses out of the cupboard when Ian got off the phone. “Will they miss you?” she asked.

  “Nah,” he assured. “They’ll probably like having some time alone.”

  Jenna nodded, held up the two water glasses and said, “Water, iced tea, lemonade or soda?”

  “What, no Chianti? What kind of Italian restaurant is this?” he joked again.<
br />
  “Lasagna for one I could justify, but a bottle of wine for one? That seemed like a waste.” Although now she was sorry she didn’t have it to offer.

  “Water is fine,” Ian said, helping Abby with her sippy-cup when she couldn’t quite reach it.

  As she began to make the salad, Jenna said, “Sooo, your father didn’t see any demerits in putting the training center here?”

  “Sorry,” Ian said, sounding genuinely contrite.

  “And now that he’s given his stamp of approval, that’s it, huh? Because he calls the shots….”

  “We weren’t going to talk about this anymore, remember?” he said. “It’s out of our hands. What will be, will be, and we’re separating ourselves from it when we’re together.”

  As if their being together was something special?

  That was a dangerous thought, which Jenna shooed away. But she had agreed that they wouldn’t talk about the farm, so she conceded to his reminder by asking him how his day had gone and telling him about her own as she dressed the salad, sliced bread, made Abby’s dinner, took the lasagna out and cut it into squares.

  Then, with everything ready to eat, Ian put Abby in the high chair, and Jenna tied the infant’s bib around her neck. By the time she and Ian sat down to eat, it struck Jenna that this was all very family-like. And that it was nice.

  For this one night. This one night that had happened on the spur of the moment. And wouldn’t ever happen again.

  Those were things she felt she should keep in mind, before she liked this whole scenario too much.

  Abby had a sauceless version of the lasagna, which was basically macaroni and cheeses. And since the baby was intent on participating in her meals, there were two spoons—one for Abby to use awkwardly and messily and the other for Jenna to use to actually get some of the food in Abby’s mouth.

  She did that first—persuading Abby to taste her mac and cheese—before she served Ian and herself the rest of the meal and got into her usual rhythm of alternating a bite for herself and a bite for Abby.

  After Ian had tasted the lasagna and deemed it even better than it smelled, and Jenna had thanked him, she searched for a way to get the attention off herself.

  “Tell me about your dad,” she said, going in that direction to accomplish her goal.

  Ian laughed. “Where would you like me to start?”

  “At the beginning—but not with the stuff that everybody knows. How did he get to be your father in the first place—I mean, how did you get from Northbridge to being the son of one of the biggest sports stars in the whole country?”

  “Adoption,” Ian said with a smile.

  Jenna rolled her eyes at him. “But how did that adoption come about? I know that you and your twin—”

  “Hutch.”

  “—were orphaned along with Chase, Shannon and a half sister when your parents were killed in a car accident. I know that Meg’s grandfather—Reverend Perry—was instrumental in finding homes for all but Chase. But I heard something about Morgan Kincaid not being your first adoptive dad….”

  “Right. My mother was married to a man named Tony Bruno at the time—he was my first adoptive father. They were willing to take both Hutch and I so we wouldn’t be separated—that went a long way in persuading the powers-that-be to give us to them. We were two months old at the time.”

  “So what happened to Tony Bruno?”

  “He and my mother moved to Billings right after they adopted us. But the way my mother tells it, Tony Bruno didn’t turn out to be much of a breadwinner or a father or a husband, and they were divorced before Hutch and I were as old as Abby is.”

  “Bi?” Abby said, apparently hearing her name and deciding to offer Ian a bite of her dinner.

  “Mmm, thank you,” Ian said, pretending to take the bite the infant offered and not showing any revulsion at the gooey mess the fifteen-month-old wanted to share.

  Then he went back to his story. “My mother met Morgan Kincaid within a month after her divorce was final—through mutual friends. They hit it off, got married six months after that, and he wanted to raise us as his own kids, not as stepkids. Giving up parental rights got Tony Bruno off the hook for child support—which my mother says he wasn’t paying anyway—so he agreed to that and willingly stepped out of the picture. Hutch and I were two years and three months old by that time—not old enough to remember him, and since he never came around after that, Morgan Kincaid became my adoptive father and the only father I actually know.”

  “And what’s he like as a father?” Jenna asked. Having eaten her fill, she settled back to focus on Abby and her conversation with Ian.

  “Morgan Kincaid as a father…” Ian shrugged. “There’s always been good and bad. Hutch and I, in particular, got a lot of his attention and some of that was fun. On the other hand, it put more pressure on us than either of us liked. And we were also in the public eye—trotted out for everything—”

  “Everything like…football games?”

  “Oh yeah, definitely for football games—we had to be front and center for every one of those. But we were on display for everything else, too. Being a family man was a big deal to my father. He doesn’t approve of the playboy-sports-figure persona, he believes that everything to do with football should be wholesome, that there’s a responsibility to be a good role model when you’re a prominent sports figure. Being a father, being connected with charities, fundraising, politics—those were what he wanted to be known for. Which was part of why Hutch and I and Lacey—our younger sister who was also adopted—were paraded out as the poster children to advocate for adoption.”

  “It sounds as if you didn’t appreciate that….”

  “I hated it,” he said bluntly, and she could tell by the sobering of his expression that he really had.

  “Did you not want it known that you were adopted?” she guessed.

  “It was always out in the open, but making such a big deal of it just…I don’t know…made it tough to forget about. It made it tough for me to shake the feeling that we were somehow acquisitions or disposable or something.”

  “Oh, that’s not good….” Jenna said in a sort of verbal flinch, feeling sorry for the young Ian and hating the thought that Abby could ever think such a thing.

  “Don’t get me wrong—my mother and father didn’t do anything to cause that in me. They always said we were more special because they chose us, that they’d had to prove how much they wanted us to get us—that kind of thing. But—”

  “I could see where your father making you the poster kid for adoption might have made you feel like an acquisition. But do you think Tony Bruno giving you up so easily contributed to you feeling disposable?”

  Ian seemed to consider that as he finished his dinner and then sat back to watch her try to persuade Abby to take a few more bites.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “That’s an interesting point that never occurred to me. I mean, I was too young to have any memory of the guy at all, so it wasn’t as if I felt any kind of loss that the first man to adopt me bailed. But now that you mention it, I wonder if somewhere in my kid brain the fact that he seemed to have no problem passing us on to the next guy gave me that sense. I just know that I had it. That after my mom died—”

  “What did she die of?”

  “She had a brain aneurysm—apparently it was like a ticking time bomb in her head, which no one ever knew she had. But I was eleven when she died and I know I worried myself sick that if Mom was gone, Dad might not want us around anymore, either.”

  “That just breaks my heart,” Jenna told him.

  “All I know is that I always felt as if I had to not only be grateful for what I was given, but prove how grateful I was. And to earn being my father’s son.”

  “By doing what your dad wanted of you?” Another guess.

  Ian nodded. “In a lot of respects, yeah.”

  “I can’t imagine feeling like that. I never felt like I had to earn my place as my parent’s chi
ld. Or even go to any great lengths to please either of them. Doing what I’m doing at the farm is really the only extra step I ever felt I needed to take to please my dad or my mom.”

  “Maybe because your parents were your birth parents. That’s why I only want kids who are my own. I never want kids who aren’t, and who might have the thoughts and feelings I had.”

  “What about your brother? Did he—does he—feel the same way?”

  “Hutch? No. We may be twins, but we’re pretty different. At least, we always were. I haven’t seen him in almost six years now, so I probably shouldn’t speak to what he does or doesn’t feel, but I know he didn’t feel that way before.”

  “You haven’t seen your twin brother in six years?” Jenna marveled as she gave up trying to get Abby to eat any more, and wiped the baby’s face with her bib before taking it off. “I thought twins were always close….”

  “Yeah, that was one of the casualties of having Morgan Kincaid as a father.”

  “How so?” Jenna asked, hoping she wasn’t prying too much.

  “There was a huge push for both Hutch and I to follow in our father’s footsteps. We were enrolled in Little League football the minute we were old enough to be and even before that he had us in the yard every minute he could spare, teaching us to throw the ball, play the game, to compete—always to compete. ‘Competition is what makes men strong’—that was my father’s motto.”

  “Your father pitted the two of you against each other?”

  “In every way he could dream up.”

  “So did you end up more rivals than brothers?”

  “I’d say about half and half, but there was definitely rivalry. Too much for us to be as close as other twins I’ve known. But Dad figured the rivalry improved us both since he was also determined that we be individuals… Being twins did not give us an unusually strong bond, no.”

  “And now you haven’t seen your brother in six years….”

  “I guess it stands to reason that eventually there would be a straw that broke the camel’s back, and there was,” Ian said.

  But that was all he said, leaving her hanging.

  Or maybe he would have said more, except that Abby chose that moment to become fussy and fidgety.