Marrying Dr. Maverick

by Karen Rose Smith

  His place. He had begun thinking of it as their place. Everything—every memory, every touch and kiss—that they’d experienced last night came back to haunt him. Thinking about it all was like a punch in the gut. He thought about staying with Dallas and his kids again tonight. The boys had been a distraction, that was for sure. But even Dallas’s kids couldn’t distract him from the memory of the look in Jazzy’s eyes when he’d said he wanted out...when he’d said their deal was no longer a deal...when he’d said his father might as well know sooner rather than later.

  His dad.

  Brooks had to settle everything with him now. He didn’t want his father finding out about the breakup of his marriage from somebody else.

  Fifteen minutes later, Brooks was in his father’s kitchen, watching his dad ladle soup from a plastic container into a bowl. “You look as if you need some lunch,” Barrett said. “What’s up?”

  Brooks didn’t know where to begin. “Jazzy and I...we—”

  Barrett pushed the soup into the microwave, shut the door and set the timer. “You and Jazzy what?”

  “We don’t...we didn’t have a real marriage. She’s probably on her way back to Thunder Canyon.”

  With those words the rest of Brooks’s sorry tale poured out—how they’d connected at the Ace in the Hole, how she’d agreed to work for him, how he’d come up with the brilliant idea of a marriage of convenience. “I made an appointment to see a lawyer this week and transfer Grandma’s land to her.” He expected a blowup from his father at that, but he didn’t get it.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” was all his father asked.

  “Jazzy deserves it for putting up with this whole situation. For—”

  “Why does Jazzy deserve it? She went into this thing with open eyes just like you did. Fools, both of you. But consenting fools.”

  “Look, Dad, we just never realized what was going to happen. We thought we could keep it a business agreement and we couldn’t.”

  “So feelings got involved?” his father asked.

  “Hell, yes, feelings got involved,” Brooks erupted, standing up, walking around the table. “And there’s not a thing I can do about them. I’m not marriage material. Working the two practices is going to keep me swamped up to my eyeballs. Besides, there’s a reason Lynnette broke our engagement. There’s a reason she fell for someone else. She said it was the hours, but it was something deeper than that. I was missing something—something as a man—that would keep her there.”

  Had this been the real reason he hadn’t dated for the past four years? Was this the real reason he kept himself guarded where women were concerned? He was clearly lacking some special ingredient he needed to be a good husband and maybe a father someday.

  “Brooks,” his father said sharply.

  He stopped pacing and stared at his dad.

  “You’re missing nothing. Did it ever occur to you that your relationship with Lynnette was missing something? Maybe she was missing a loyalty factor that led to her infidelity.”

  Brooks’s mouth dropped open.

  “Jazzy was here earlier. She explained what the two of you did. She gave me a dressing-down because I didn’t trust you enough to hand over my practice. She told me about Lynnette and added that my lack of faith in you didn’t help the situation. I’ve got to tell you, son. I do have faith in you. I am proud of you. But I wanted you to find a woman like your mom who could ground you. I wanted you with a woman who could make a home for you. I wanted you to have a wife to be the center of your world...who could keep you from working too long and too much. I should have made your mom the center of my world and I didn’t. If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have died so soon. If I had, maybe I would have seen the symptoms. I would have, should have been taking care of her at the end, not your grandmother. I did everything all wrong, and I didn’t want you doing it wrong, too.”

  Brooks had never known any of this. But that’s because he and his dad had never really talked. Not about the kind of things that mattered. Stunned, he asked, “So you blame yourself for Mom’s death?”

  “I blame myself for not loving her the right way. I blame myself for being pigheaded, in denial and too focused on work that served like a shield so I didn’t have to give too much of myself. Don’t you make the same damn mistake.”

  The microwave beeped. Barrett removed the soup bowl and put it on the table. “So what happened between you and Jazzy that made this whole thing blow up?”

  Oh, no. Brooks wasn’t going there.

  Barrett narrowed his eyes. “Fine. My guess is your marriage of convenience got a little inconvenient. You’re both confused because things happened so fast.”

  “I’m not confused,” Brooks said, realizing now he had been miserable since he’d left Jazzy in his condo.

  “Do you want out of the marriage?” his father demanded to know.

  Last night when he’d made love to Jazzy, he’d realized in a blinding flash of earth-shattering proportions that he had been making love to her. It wasn’t just sex. It had been so much more that the experience had rattled and disconcerted and even panicked him. He’d given her his word their marriage would be a business deal. He’d gone back on his word, which was something he never did.

  “Not confused, huh?” his father asked with a sly smile. “Seems to me you’re plenty confused. So think about a few things. How would you feel if Jazzy left for Thunder Canyon and never came back? How would you feel if you didn’t see her every day? Just how would you feel if Jazzy Cates Smith got involved with someone else?”

  Brooks didn’t know where to turn. Facing those questions made him want to ram his fist through a wall. And why was that?

  The fact was that the sexual electricity between him and Jazzy had wired him since he’d met her. But even more than that, her sweetness and caring, her perky outlook, lifted him up above a place where he’d been. She’d become the sunlight in his days, the moonlight in his nights. She’d become someone he treasured, a woman he respected...and loved. Jazzy had become the epitome of everything he’d been running from and everything he’d hoped for.

  She was everything he wanted.

  “So,” Barrett drawled. “If you’re not confused, just what do you feel for her?”

  Brooks sighed. “I love her.”

  “Then why are you sitting here eating lunch with me? Go get her.”

  “I don’t know where she is. She might have driven back to Thunder Canyon.”

  “She didn’t. Not yet. She’s at Strickland’s.”

  Brooks started for the door.

  Barrett called after him, “For what it’s worth, she’s in love with you, too. She has to be to put up with me.”

  Brooks prayed his dad was right as he climbed into his truck and picked up his cell phone. He skimmed through his contacts and dialed Strickland’s, hoping to get Melba. He did.

  “Melba, its Brooks Smith. Is Jazzy there?”

  “I just took her a cup of tea a little while ago. Do you want me to get her?”

  “No. I just wanted to make sure she was there.”

  “She’s pretty upset,” Melba told him. “Are you going to upset her more?”

  “I certainly hope not. Can you keep her there if she tries to go out? I should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “She’s not going anywhere. She doesn’t want anyone to see her crying.”

  Brooks felt as low as he could possibly feel. The last thing he’d ever wanted to do was hurt Jazzy. So he told Melba, “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

  Twenty minutes later to the minute, he stood in front of Jazzy’s door, a bouquet of roses in his hand. Thank goodness Nina had had some fresh flowers. Maybe they’d at least get him in to talk to Jazzy. He knocked.

  Jazzy called through the door, “I’m okay, Melba. Really.
I don’t need any more tea.”

  “It’s not Melba,” he called back.

  When Jazzy opened her door, slowly, as if she was afraid to let him in, he could easily see she was miserable, too. He held out the roses to her, taking in everything about the woman he loved, trying to absorb the fact that she held his future happiness in her hands.

  “I know these will never be enough to make up for all the mistakes I made. But I want you to come home with me.”

  Jazzy’s expression changed from cautious to defiant. “I did that before and you left.”

  “That’s because I was a fool.”

  She didn’t take the roses, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not a fool anymore? What’s changed?”

  He deserved that. He deserved her not making this easy. He stepped inside her room, closed the door and laid the roses on the bed. Then he faced her, knowing this couldn’t be done in half measure. “I didn’t ask you to marry me on a whim.”

  Jazzy’s arms uncrossed as she dropped them to her sides...and she waited.

  Taking a risk, he took her hands in his and pulled her closer. “I might not have realized it the exact moment I sat on that stool at the Ace in the Hole, but you’re everything I should have been looking for, everything I missed, everything I want. I love you, Jazzy. I don’t know when it happened and I don’t know why. Maybe it was when you first smiled at me. Maybe it was when you painted my office. Maybe it was when we went to the Falls. I know now it was before I said ‘I do.’ Making love with you was absolutely incredible. But I felt overwhelmed with desires I didn’t even understand. But now I do.”

  Since she wasn’t pulling away, since she seemed to be listening, since her eyes were glistening with unshed tears, he pulled her arms up around his neck and held her in a loving embrace. “I want a real marriage with you, Jazzy. I want to build a life, a future, a home with you. Can you forgive how stupid I’ve been and be my wife through thick and thin, better and worse, today and forever?”

  “Oh, Brooks...”

  When she said his name like that all he wanted to do was love her forever—

  His heated kiss exposed his longing, his desire, the love he felt and the love he hoped to feel in the future.

  She broke off the kiss, cupped his face in her hands, and said, “I love you, too, Brooks. I want to stand beside you, work beside you, fall asleep in your arms every night and have your babies.”

  “Babies?” he asked with a quirked brow.

  “Babies,” she assured him.

  Sweeping her into his arms, he laughed and carried her to the single bed. When he kissed her again, he didn’t stop and neither did she. They’d found their future in each other’s arms.

  Epilogue

  Jazzy and Brooks walked through the field, holding gloved hands. The weather had turned colder, but they didn’t care about the chill. This was something they wanted to do. They glanced at each other often, then studied their surroundings.

  When they stopped in the midst of field grass about two hundred yards from the road, Jazzy said, “I can tell Mom and Dad are accepting our marriage now. They want to know how they can help with plans for the house.”

  “Our visit with them over the weekend brought us closer. When your dad and I went riding, he was almost friendly!”

  “They could see we’re in love.”

  Brooks grinned at her. “Because we didn’t leave our bedroom till late Saturday morning?”

  “Maybe,” Jazzy said with a laugh. “Or maybe it’s because when we look at each other, anyone within fifty feet can tell. We give off signals like Laila and Jackson, Abby and Cade, Annabel and Thomas do.”

  “Give me a signal,” Brooks said, teasing her and bringing her close for a kiss. Their passion caught fire until Brooks broke away and raggedly stated, “If we don’t want to make love in the middle of a field in freezing weather, we’d better concentrate on why we came.” He waved to the east. “I can see the house sitting on that rise. Do you want one story or two?”

  “I like those plans you found for a two-story log home. And I was thinking...”

  “Uh-oh. Always dangerous.”

  She swatted his arm.

  He hugged her, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Just teasing. What were you thinking?”

  “I could start taking business courses online so I know how to run the operational side of a horse-rescue ranch. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s a terrific idea. Self-serving on my part because I want as much time with you as we can manage. To that end, I’m interviewing two possible partners this week. One is driving all the way from Bozeman. I’m video conferencing with the other. Dad’s going to sit in.”

  Suddenly they heard a truck rumbling down the access road. “Speak of the devil,” Brooks said in an amused tone.

  Barrett climbed from his truck and leisurely walked toward them. “I thought I’d give you two a little time out here then come put in my two cents before you go back to Kalispell. Which, by the way, seems like a commute you don’t need.”

  “Nothing in Rust Creek Falls is available, Dad. I spoke with the real-estate agent again this morning.”

  “Actually, something is available,” his father assured him.

  “Just what do you know that we don’t?” Brooks kept his arm around Jazzy’s waist.

  “I was thinking,” his father said.

  “It’s going around,” Jazzy joked with a glance at Brooks.

  Barrett ignored her comment and went on, looking a little...nervous? “It will take at least six months for you to get a place built. Especially if we have a rough winter. In fact, you might have to wait until spring to start construction.”

  “That’s possible,” Brooks conceded.

  “So why don’t you come stay with me?” Barrett hurriedly continued. “You can have the whole upstairs and as much privacy as you want. You can even make a spare bedroom into your own sitting room with a TV. After work, you can go your way and I can go mine. What do you think?”

  Jazzy was totally surprised by the offer and Brooks seemed to be, too.

  Brooks said, “I can’t give you a decision right now. Jazzy and I will have to talk about it.”

  “Talking is a good thing when you’re married. I’ll let you to it. But don’t stay out here too long or you’ll freeze your tails off.”

  As quickly as Barrett had appeared, he gunned the engine of his truck and drove away in a spit of gravel.

  Brooks squeezed Jazzy nearer to combine their warmth. “We could go sit in the truck.”

  “You think this is going to be a long discussion?” she asked, studying his face.

  “I don’t know. Is it? Tell me what you honestly think. Shouldn’t newlyweds have total privacy?”

  “That depends. It seems to me if we want privacy, we can find it—in the barn, in the clinic at the end of the day, in an upstairs hideaway. I really think your dad means what he says. We could have our own place up there. And...we wouldn’t have to worry about him.”

  “It would be temporary...just until we get the house built.”

  “Exactly. Who knows? Till then maybe we can convince him to date.”

  “You are such an optimist.”

  “Isn’t that why you married me?”

  He shook his head. “I married you because I was falling hopelessly in love with you.”

  “And I with you.”

  As snowflakes began a fluttering shower around them, they kissed again with a fire that could warm any cold winter day...a fire that could last a lifetime.

  * * * * *

  Warm up for the holidays with

  A MAVERICK UNDER THE MISTLETOE

  by Brenda Harlen,

  the next installment in the new

  Speci
al Edition continuity

  MONTANA MAVERICKS:

  RUST CREEK COWBOYS

  On sale November 2013,

  wherever Harlequin books are sold.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A WEAVER BEGINNING by Allison Leigh.

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  Chapter One

  The snow covered everything.

  Everything except the clear strip down the middle of the street that had been plowed just that morning.

  Looking out the front window of the house he’d been renting for the past six months, Sloan McCray studied that strip.

  While the middle of the street was whistle clean, the displaced snow formed two-foot walls against the curb on both sides of the street, blocking driveways and parking spaces.

  Generally speaking, Sloan didn’t worry about the snowplow job as long as it was done. It was his first winter in Weaver—the first snow had fallen in October and hadn’t stopped since. He’d had two months to get used to it.