Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!

by Victoria Pade

  “The McDoogal place is seven acres too big and a hell of a lot more money!”

  “I told you I can get them down on the price. I can also try to sell the extra acreage to the surrounding farms to make up some of the cost and get us down to no more than the seventeen acres we would have been getting with the Bowen farm. This way the Monarchs can come into town with their heads held high, not having half of Northbridge hating us for profiting on the hard times of one of their own. Or I can bow out and you can get someone else to do my job. It’s your call, but that’s the best that’s going to get done here.”

  “Because you got blinded by some woman!” Morgan Kincaid yelled.

  “That’s right, I did,” Ian countered. “And I did what I needed to do for her.”

  “You could have had Chelsea Tanner and the team could have had a fast ticket to permanent sponsorship from her father! We could have had the property we needed and paid a song for it! Instead what do we have? What do you have? Nothing! The woman doesn’t even want you!”

  She’d go see Meg, Jenna decided when she heard that and—feeling even worse than she had before—she silently ran down the steps and across the yard to her best friend’s back door.

  “I only know that Morgan Kincaid got here about two hours ago, and that there have been some raised voices coming from the apartment ever since,” Meg said when Jenna told her what she’d just overheard.

  “They’ve been at it for two hours?” Jenna lamented. She was standing at Meg’s kitchen sink, spying out the window to keep an eye on the garage apartment.

  Meg was standing beside her, her gaze trained in the same direction although they could see Ian or Morgan Kincaid only when they passed by the apartment window that faced the main house.

  “Two hours,” Meg confirmed. “He and Ian were supposed to have dinner with Chase and Hadley but Hadley said Ian called it off just before his father got here.”

  “Because he knew his father wouldn’t take it well when he told him he’d paid my taxes….”

  “It looks like he was right.”

  “And now he could lose his job and this could cause another family rift and—”

  “And apparently it was worth it to Ian,” Meg said pointedly. “Apparently you were worth it to Ian.”

  Jenna grimaced. “Don’t make me feel any worse than I already do.”

  “I don’t want to…” Meg said. “But now you know that Ian is his own man.”

  Over coffee and crying that morning Jenna had told her friend everything—including her concerns about Ian being no different from Jenna’s ex when it came to living his life to please someone else.

  “I can’t believe,” Meg was saying, “that standing up to the wrath of Morgan Kincaid is any easier than it would have been for Ted to stand up to his mother and tell her he didn’t want to be a doctor. But Ian did this. For you. Even after you turned him down.”

  “You don’t want to make me feel any worse than I already do, but you’re going to anyway?” Jenna said wryly.

  Meg shrugged. “Maybe a little bit. I just don’t want you to do something you’ll be sorry for later, Jen. I know a lot has happened to you in the last eleven months. I know you really, really need things to settle down, for you and for Abby. I know you think adding Ian to the mix just means more chaos and upheaval—and at first, it might. I know all the reasons you sent him packing last night—you told them to me this morning. I’m just not sure you’re doing what’s going to ultimately make you happy.”

  She certainly hadn’t been happy since sending Ian packing….

  But her reasons still seemed valid, and she was glad when Logan popped his head into the kitchen to tell Meg that Tia was ready for them to read her bedtime story and tuck her in for the night.

  “Go,” Jenna urged her friend. “I just want to wait a little and see if Morgan leaves so I can talk to Ian.”

  Meg didn’t argue. She merely reached out an arm to give Jenna a bolstering hug and then left Jenna to continue staring up at the apartment. Thinking.

  Oh, how she’d hated hearing what Ian’s father had said about how he’d paid the taxes and put himself in this position all for someone who didn’t want him!

  It was so, so not true!

  She did want him. Horribly. She just hadn’t thought she should give in to her feelings.

  Obviously her best friend didn’t agree with that position.

  Am I wrong? Jenna asked herself.

  She couldn’t deny that, yes, it seemed that she had been mistaken in thinking that Ian was like her ex-husband, that Ian wasn’t his own man, that pleasing his father would come first with him.

  Ian had paid her taxes and taken her out of harm’s way—not only at his own financial expense, but to his own detriment when it came to dealing with his father and thwarting what the great Morgan Kincaid wanted, too.

  She supposed that there were indications along the way that Ian was different than Ted—Ian had said that he’d played football because he loved the game, which meant that he hadn’t done it solely to please his father. And he had stayed with the sport on the business side, even after leaving the Kincaid Corporation when he and his father and brother had had their disagreement.

  That disagreement had been a good example of Ian standing his ground when Morgan Kincaid had over-stepped his bounds. Ian had had the guts, the backbone, the strength to step away from his father and his job. To go out on his own, to leave behind that father whose approval he valued rather than take what his father had been dishing out.

  Ted would never have done any of that.

  And now, paying her taxes, not letting his father have her farm for the Monarchs’ training center? That was standing up to his father yet again in a very big way.

  On behalf of someone who had rejected him.

  On behalf of someone who had been so sure she—and ultimately, Abby—would be sacrificed instead.

  Well, he’d proven her wrong. He’d been the one to make the sacrifice. The greater sacrifice.

  And she just felt awful….

  But that hadn’t been the only reason she’d said no to him, she reminded herself. There was Abby. But didn’t the fact that baby Abby was so willing and eager to have Ian around mean that it would actually be better to let him become a part of their little family now, when Abby was most open to including him?

  He’d already been nothing but kind and caring and loving toward the baby. He’d already shown he’d be a good father.

  Because Ian was just a good guy. A great guy, Jenna admitted.

  And Abby wasn’t the only one of them who adored him…

  The underlying truth was that Jenna adored him, too.

  The moment she thought that, a big black town car drove up to the compound, coming to a stop near the stairs that led up to the garage apartment. The apartment door opened and out came Morgan Kincaid.

  From what Jenna could see of his expression in the dim light, the former football star didn’t look any too appeased as he barreled down the stairs and into the car, past the driver, who had gotten out to hold the rear door open for him.

  The driver quickly closed the door, slid behind the wheel again and put the car into motion, going back the way he’d come.

  When they were gone, Jenna’s gaze rose once more to the top of the stairs.

  Ian was standing out on the landing now, in the cold, watching as his father was driven off.

  Then he spotted Jenna standing at Meg’s kitchen window….

  Chapter Twelve

  Jenna’s mind was racing as she hurried across the yard to the garage. Ian merely stood where he was on the landing, watching her come.

  Once she climbed the stairs and was facing him, she still didn’t know what to say, where to begin.

  A simple hello seemed too mundane at that point, and instead she found herself blurting out, “I came to talk to you, but your father was here and I could tell things were…heated…so I went over to Meg’s to wait until you were alone. But if yo
u have too much to deal with right now—”

  Ian cut her off with the shake of his head and motioned for her to go into the apartment ahead of him.

  She did, appreciating the warmth of the room because she’d forgotten to put on a coat in her rush to leave Meg’s.

  Then, only a few feet inside, she turned to watch Ian come into the apartment and close the door. He put his back to it and crossed his arms over his broad chest, frowning slightly at her.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked in a deep, serious voice, sounding as if he were a little weary underneath it all, as if he was merely resigned to having what he thought was going to be his second unpleasant encounter of the night.

  But for a split second Jenna was just glad to be in the same room with him again, and she feasted on her view of him in jeans and a black cashmere crewneck.

  Gawking at him wasn’t why she was there, however, and after reminding herself of that, she got right to the point.

  “I know you paid my taxes,” she said bluntly.

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” he countered, as if it had been nothing.

  “It’s a very big deal. In more ways than one,” Jenna declared, deciding in that instant to just jump in with both feet and tell him all she’d sorted through since overhearing a portion of his argument with his father.

  She told him that her own bad past experience had led her to misjudge him, to compare him to her ex-husband and file him away in that same category. She told him that she had been wrong to do that, that she knew now that he wasn’t anything like Ted, that he would never sacrifice her or Abby to what his father wanted, and she apologized for ever believing that of him.

  As she spoke, she realized that she’d been glancing everywhere but his face, his eyes, because she’d been too afraid of what she might see there.

  So she altered her gaze, forcing herself to look at him squarely.

  But his expression hadn’t changed—it remained a blank slate as he stood there, merely listening.

  It wasn’t encouraging. But since she had more to say, she went on.

  “It’s been nice, it’s felt good, to have it be the three of us,” she told him, explaining how her thinking had altered on that count, too. How maybe the speed with which things had happened between them had frightened her. How maybe she’d even been a little selfish when it came to Abby. She’d wanted so much for her and Abby to bond, and she didn’t want Ian to interrupt that. Certainly she’d worried that including Ian in the mix would be an additional distraction just when she was striving for calm.

  “But maybe now is the best time for us to start a new family…for you and I…for you to join us. For us to become a family of three instead of a family of two…” she concluded with a question in her voice because she still couldn’t judge his reaction.

  Not that she could blame him if he had changed his mind. Because he was angry or disgusted with her, because he’d had second thoughts about being with her, let alone taking on a child, too.

  Then, feeling uncomfortable, she added with a nervous sort of laugh, “After all, Abby seems to have picked you for us….”

  “You’re going to let Abby do your matchmaking?” Ian finally said into a silence she wasn’t sure would ever end.

  “She seems to have really good taste in men,” Jenna claimed.

  And that was when Ian finally smiled, and as drop-dead gorgeous as she thought that face of his was, it had never looked as wonderful to her as it did then, giving her a glimmer of hope that she hadn’t ruined things between them.

  “You’ve had a lot slung at you for a long time, Jenna,” he said. “And I know I came at you with both barrels myself, right in the middle of losing your farm, your home, your parents. All while you were setting up housekeeping for yourself and Abby. I hit you with too much—I saw that—and I never wanted to make things more complicated for you. I wanted them to be simpler—”

  “So you paid my taxes.”

  He shrugged that off.

  “I’ll pay you back,” she swore. “It’ll take time, but—”

  Ian shook his head. “I paid your taxes to give you time. And options. You can stay in the house and work the farm. Or you can stay in the house and hire the farm work out. Or you can keep the place up for sale with any conditions you want attached and wait for a buyer who will accept those conditions. Or you can sell just the land to be farmed by someone else so you at least have a place to live.”

  “I do have a lot of options now,” she agreed. But then she said very quietly, “What about you? Are you still one of them?”

  “I am,” he said just that simply, coming away from the door and stepping up close in front of her to slide one hand under her hair to her nape.

  The feel of his touch was exactly what she needed—she nearly melted right there. She swayed slightly in his grip and said, “I’ll still repay you….”

  “Or the forty thousand could be my dowry. Or my buy-in.”

  Jenna smiled. “Your dowry?”

  His only answer to that was a grin. “My vote—if I have one—is that we keep the whole property, hire out the farm work, but do some renovations on the house. That way you and Abby can stick to your roots and not lose any more than the two of you already have, but we can update the place a little.”

  “And you’d be part of the update?” she teased him.

  “The best part,” he joked with bravado.

  No argument there, Jenna thought.

  But that reminded her that he’d been arguing earlier with his father.

  “What about your dad and your job? Do I need to teach you to farm for a living?”

  “My father is unhappy with me at the moment but he’ll get over it, and yes, I do still have a job. My family has already had to put things back together once before—Hutch is only now coming back into the fold after our last big blow up. But this time, my father ultimately saw that I wanted you bad enough to do whatever it took, and he accepted it. Ranting and raving about it—that’s his way—but he accepted it.”

  “So you wanted me bad enough to do whatever it took,” she repeated with some bravado of her own. “What else would you have done?”

  The hint of challenge made him laugh. “Maybe just this…” he said before he kissed her. It was the kiss of a rogue—mouth open from the start, tongue claiming hers, bold and brash and brazenly branding her as his.

  Which Jenna sanctioned and seconded. Her lips parted, she met him on equal ground.

  As he pulled her closer, Jenna snaked her arms under his and splayed her hands across his massive back. It sank in that they’d weathered this storm, that they’d actually touched on plans for the future….

  But thoughts of the future were shoved aside by what was happening in the moment as the fires they’d lit before blazed between them again.

  That kiss grew hotter and hotter, more and more intense as passion flamed and flourished, and clothes began to be shed, as hands began to explore and arouse and delight.

  Jenna was in nothing but bikini panties and a lacy bra when their kiss took an intermission so Ian could sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the bed.

  Standing beside it once he’d playfully laid her there, he dropped what remained of his own clothes—his already-unfastened and unzipped jeans—while Jenna devoured the sight of the muscular, well-honed torso and biceps that made her mouth water, then took a longing look at the magnificence of the rest of him bared to her, nearly moaning at just how glorious a vision it was.

  Joining her on the bed, he made short work of disposing of what little she was still wearing, too, before he recaptured her mouth with his.

  They made love with an abandon that Jenna had never known. With a freedom born of the certainty that they were sealing what was between them when they reached a pinnacle that was so explosive it left them depleted and weak and able to do nothing but hold each other while they caught their breath in an almost blinding afterglow.

  That was how they remained for a while,
bodies still united, Jenna lying atop Ian as he ran those big hands of his up and down her bare back again and again.

  Then, in a raspy whisper, he said, “I love you, Jenna.”

  “I love you, too, Ian. More than I can ever tell you,” Jenna responded as naturally as the feelings that had taken root within her.

  “And you’ll marry me?” he asked.

  “I will,” she answered with a replete smile, her cheek resting on his chest. Then she craned her head back so she could look up at him and said, “But we’ll have to come up with a story for how you proposed that doesn’t have us naked in bed—how can we tell the grandkids that!”

  “We’ll say that I rushed you late one night, and you turned me down, then you thought about what you’d be missing—” he quickly stole a kiss “—and you knew you couldn’t live without it.”

  Jenna laughed again. “That hardly cleans it up.”

  “Okay, how about this—I rushed you late one night because I knew I couldn’t live without you and you turned me down—”

  “Then you showed me how much you cared about me and Abby, and when I came to talk to you about it—”

  “You couldn’t keep your hands off me, we ended up in bed and—”

  “This story is still going to take some fine-tuning.”

  “We’ll work on it,” he assured her. “But for now, I’m guessing Abby is either over with Meg and Logan or at your place with a babysitter—”

  “I think it’s our place now, isn’t it?”

  The smile that spread across his handsome face showed how much he liked hearing that.

  “And I think we should get dressed and go home to her.”

  Jenna couldn’t help another smile of her own, pleased by the thought of the two of them going home to Abby.

  “You’ll make a great dad.”

  “We’ll make a great family,” he amended, bringing his head forward to give her a long, heartfelt kiss. “You and me and Abby and the other kids we’ll have—because we will have other kids, too. Right?” he asked when that kiss ended.