He watched his mother hug his new wife. "I'm looking forward to getting to know you, Maura.
"Of course, Mrs. Langley. I’m sorry we Jacksons haven’t been more neighborly over the last two decades, but you know how these feud things go."
His bride's words were flippant and coy. Was she trying to be funny with that feud comment? He had the distinct feeling she would like to have said a lot more but refrained. A good thing. He wouldn't tolerate anyone’s disrespect of his mom. She was a sweet person, and she didn’t deserve whatever this was.
But in all fairness, he understood the woman's reticent behavior. Today was not of his choosing either.
"Let's all go outside into the front yard for refreshments and some dancing,” His dad declared.
"Aidan, why don't you and your new bride lead the way?" his mom encouraged. Her face an open book of emotions.
He offered his arm to the woman standing next to him. Correction. His new bride standing next to him, but he didn't look at her. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge this day was real.
She hesitated for a second, then took his arm, holding lightly to the crook of his arm. She seemed timid, but Aidan knew better. He had seen her in all her naked glory, uninhibited by social conventions. And she hadn’t been bashful about pushing him into the water either. No, she wasn't timid at all.
He looked around at the tables lining the inside of the fenced front yard in front of his parent’s house. He remembered not long ago every table would have groaned under the weight of home baked pies, cakes, and breads. Potluck dishes of every shape and size would fill in anywhere there was an opening. But now, it looked a little sparse in places. Everyone was doing their best to make ends meet, but—
Thank the Good Lord the rain was plentiful this summer, so every country family could have a plentiful garden with an abundance of fresh vegetables. And, his Dad had gone all out to provide the beef for the wedding party. It was a feast for a king, but he didn’t feel like much of a king today. He didn’t feel like anything at all.
Sadness gripped his heart when he looked around and thought about the possibility of losing The Legacy. It was so much more than a home. It was his family’s life blood. He felt a little better at being the sacrificial lamb to save it.
Smile fixed in place, Aidan led his reluctant bride to the makeshift dance floor underneath the twilight sky for their first dance as husband and wife.
Aidan held her away from him under the pretense of dancing properly with his new bride. But he was just being cautious. Still unsure what happened when he kissed her at the altar, he had no intention of having a repeat performance.
He looked down at her. “So, looks like we’re married. Not exactly the way I envisioned this day going, but I guess we both know why we’re here. No pretense is necessary, I assume.”
He watched the woman in his arms wrestle with her emotions. She inhaled several deep breaths and then pasted on a smile to match his own fake one. “No, there’s no pretense necessary. We both know why we are here. We are here to seal a deal between our families.”
His bride’s smile never slipped, but he could see the mist of tears in her eyes.
Aidan didn’t want to hurt the girl, so he tried a different tactic. "Look. Neither one of us has any delusions about why we are in this marriage. It’s a business arrangement, and it’s important to my parents we look like we are happy about all of this. And it’s important we put on that same show for that damned banker standing right over there by the punch bowl. So, the way I see it, dear wife, you have two options. You can dance with me and try to stay out from under my big, clumsy feet, or you can make a scene and embarrass everyone here. Pick your poison."
A look of determination crossed her face, but her shapely shoulders sagged. He was surprised at her easy surrender.
"Or, there's a third option."
Her sly look should have made him suspicious, but he missed the signs completely.
"And what would that be?" His cockiness was his undoing.
"You can end this dance yourself and allow me to dance with my papa."
"Now, why would I do that?" Aidan thought his little bride was acting a bit coy.
"Because you are averse to pain?" she questioned.
Before he processed the portent of her words, she drove that damn little heel on her damn little shoe into the top of his foot. He released her immediately, and with a flawless pirouette, his bride danced out of his arms and into the arms of his best friend, Tommy Hillman.
Chapter Seven
Maura hadn't intended to dance with Tommy. In fact, he was probably the last guy she wanted to dance with. He had a way about him that made her think he thought he was better than everyone else, especially someone with the last name of Jackson.
Tommy nodded to Aidan and then led her around the dance floor. "I never thought I'd see the day a Jackson and a Langley would marry."
She hesitated to respond. Should she say something? She certainly felt the same way. Funny, the twists and turns life presented when you were busy doing other things.
"Well, it seems I have done just that."
"You think it'll stick, this marriage of yours and Aidan's?"
Tommy's question caught her off guard. She had wondered the same thing herself, but if it didn't, what happened then? No one had ever said what would happen to the land if she and Aidan didn’t stay married or have a child.
She didn't have an answer for Tommy, so she kept quiet and let him guide her around the dance floor one more time before the song ended. She bowed to Tommy and thanked him for the dance.
Her feet were killing her. She smiled at the memory of digging her heel into Aidan's foot. She would probably pay for that small act of independence later. She didn’t really care. It had felt good to see the look of surprised shock on his face. He was so smug and arrogant—
"A word with you, Mrs. Langley." Aidan's words, clipped and sharp, were a low whisper for her ears only. Surprised, she looked up to find him standing beside her. His face was unreadable.
She didn't say anything. Her acquiescence to his request wasn't necessary, it seemed. He wrapped his strong fingers around her arm and gently but forcefully pulled her away from the bare-bulbs strung in a row illuminating the makeshift dance and into the darkness of the ever-darkening night sky.
She struggled to keep up with his long strides and her dress skirt tangled between them.
"Do you mind not dragging me? I really don't appreciate—"
He swung her around to face him and held her against him, his grip tight and slightly painful.
"Well, I don't appreciate being made a fool of in front of the entire town. How dare you stomp on my foot. Do you think no one could see your little tantrum out there?"
Now she was angry. "If you hadn't held me against my will, I wouldn’t have been forced to take such desperate measures. You might want to remember that, Aidan Langley. I'm not someone you can control so don’t try.” She gathered her composure. “It is my wedding day. It is supposed to be the happiest day of my life." She was going for sarcasm, but her voice cracked with a touch of hysteria. She swallowed and took a deep breath to calm her emotions. "I have always dreamed I’d marry someone I at least liked, much less loved with all my heart. Now, if you will excuse me, I'd like to get back to the party. It's the only thing out of this cursed day worth hanging on to."
She turned on her heel and headed back toward the lights, but her shoes made walking over the uneven ground impossible. She was getting nowhere. Ah, to hell with it. She lifted her skirt and pulled off her offending footwear and threw them off into the darkness as far as she was able.
"Nice throw." Aidan came to stand beside her in the dark.
"Thanks. I guess." She didn't know what else to say.
"Look. Maura. I—this…" He swept his hands toward her. She assumed he was referring to her in the wedding dress. "I don't know how to process this anymore than you do, I’m presuming.”
He looked down a
t her with an earnest look she couldn’t ignore. “You presume right,” she offered hoping to ease the tension that had been building up between them since they said, ‘I Do’.
She watched him rake his fingers through his too long dark auburn hair in frustration. “You didn’t want to be married to me anymore than I want to be married to you. Is that a safe assumption?"
Maura stood in the dark near the man she had just pledged her life to. This morning she could have agreed wholeheartedly that being married to Aidan Langley was a fate worse than death. But after that breath-stealing kiss he planted on her in front of God and everyone, she realized her relationship with Aidan was—complicated. After all, they had already seen each other naked, and they hadn’t even made it to their wedding night.
"Maura?"
She realized he was waiting for an answer. "Well, yes, of course. I don't want to be married to you. I would think that obvious." She stretched the truth just a bit to cover the sting of his rejection.
"Good. That's good to hear. So, let's agree to disagree for the moment. What do you say about a truce? We don’t want the people at the bank to think we don’t like each other now, do we? They might assume this marriage of ours is a ruse just to get their money."
He grinned at his own joke and held out his hand to her. It was true the only way they might be able to set aside their differences long enough to have a child would be through a mutual truce.
She placed her hand in his and allowed him to pull her toward the lights of their wedding party. She liked the feel of his large hand covering hers. It gave the impression of an attentive husband who wanted to love and protect his new wife. She realized she would have liked that if this had been a real marriage. She had never had the love and comfort of a father.
But, she warned her heart. This marriage was an illusion. It wasn’t real, and she had best steel herself against her handsome husband's allure or she would soon be at his mercy.
Chapter Eight
The wedding party was still in high gear when Aidan walked Maura back to where her mother and another lady sat talking with each other. He and Maura had somehow managed to agree on a truce of sorts before he slipped off with Bernie Baxter, Jerry Glass. Mike Foster, Harry Anderson, and Tommy behind the ranch’s big barn. They’d called themselves Hell's Half-Dozen in college, and they were excited to be together again.
“Thanks for coming to the wedding on such short notice.” Aidan acknowledged his old friends’ presence at his wedding.
Mike looked a little embarrassed when he admitted why they were here. “Ah, we didn’t drive down from Portland for the wedding, Aidan. Sorry, bud. We didn’t have the money for gas. The fact is…me, Bernie and Jerry were already down here to help Bernie’s grandma move in with his parents. Harry there was here for his sister’s eighteenth birthday. That just leaves Tommy, and he lives here. But, glad we were close by when you needed us, old buddy.
“Now, quit messin’ around and crack that cork, Harry.” Mike lined up six shot glasses on a makeshift bar created from a bale of hay. “I confiscated some of my old man’s hooch. Homemade moonshine of this caliber doesn’t come around very often, so drink up, boys.”
Aidan took the shot offered and downed it. The clear alcohol took his breath away. “Damn, that’s some strong stuff.”
Everyone agreed, and Harry poured another round. Aidan lost count at six. Or was it seven? By the time his father found him and announced the party was over and his bride was waiting for him in the little cabin out back, his brain was a soggy sponge.
Amid the catcalls and back slaps, Aidan smirked at his friends and neighbors. He and his dad walked shoulder to shoulder toward the little cabin that his great-grandpa Finn had built on the original homestead across the creek all those years ago. Another sign his sacrifice was necessary.
"Son, I hope you spend some time getting to know your new wife. I think you are gonna be pleasantly surprised with her.”
“Like a new puppy?” He joked. The moonshine made him damned funny. At least he thought so.
“Aidan. The girl has feelings, you know." His dad admonished.
He wondered what he had done wrong now. “I know that.” Aidan thought back to the conversation he had with Maura a few hours ago. "We understand one another."
He could tell his father wanted to ask him what that meant, but they had arrived at the little cabin where his Jackson bride waited. The moonshine sloshed in his gut. For a minute he thought he was gonna be sick.
"Good night." He hugged his dad. A sudden wave of emotion hit his drunken brain. Tears burned his eyes, but he pushed them back. "I want to make you proud of me."
“I was proud of you the day you were born, son. There’s nothing you can do to turn back that clock.”
Aidan felt a twinge of guilt thinking about his parents’ expectations of having a grandchild soon. But Aidan hadn’t fully committed to that part of the arrangement yet. He wanted to wait and see what happened. One thing was for certain, his heart of hearts still wanted Beth and if there was a way he could convince her to come back to New Dawn Springs, then he would offer Maura a way out. If she was as smart as he thought she was, she would take the deal and then he would be free to choose his own bride. And that bride was Beth.
He had no problem living up to his parent’s expectations of him siring the next generation. But, he intended to do it on his own terms.
The thought sobered him a bit. He closed the front door of the tiny two-room cabin his mother had insisted they stay for their honeymoon because of the privacy away from the main house.
“Like that’s going to help.” He groused.
Aidan sat on the primitive, but comfortable, chair to take off his boots and socks. His feet rested on the handmade braided rug his great grandma, Maureen made when she and great grandpa Finn built this place in the middle of nowhere all those years ago. The rug covered a trap door to a root cellar where he used to play as a kid.
Aidan toed the rug with his bare feet. Tradition. That’s what this whole arrangement is about. Somewhere in the distance, someone was still having fun at his wedding party. He grinned. It was a great party. People would be talking about it for weeks to come. Some were obviously disappointed there wasn't an all-out brawl, but his dad had laid the law down. Fighting was not to be condoned. Anyone breaking that hard and fast rule would be shuffled off to town in the backseat of Sheriff Foley's squad car.
"Aidan? Is that you?"
Startled from his musings, he remembered his bride waiting for him in the other room.
"Yeah, it's me. Were you expecting someone else?" What made him say that, he had no idea. Perhaps it was the moonshine in his stomach, dulling his intelligence. Perhaps it was his underlying anger at being put in this position. Whatever it was, he immediately regretted it when he stood in the bedroom doorway and saw Maura lying in their marital bed. The sight of her took his breath away, and memories of a dappled creek hidden away came to mind.
He had no idea how long he stood in the doorway. It must have been long enough to make his bride uncomfortable.
“Are you drunk?”
Maura's voice broke his trance. He made a show of being unaffected by the woman lying in their bed, her bare shoulders peeking above the frothy lace of the bedsheets. His mother's doing, he surmised.
Maura's long hair draped over one shoulder in a thick braid. Her creamy skin glowed in the semi-darkness of the lamp-lit room. He was mesmerized.
He frowned. "What do you know about being drunk?"
"I know enough to know I'm not interested, thank you very much." She sniffed.
He grinned at her. He was glad when her shoulders relax. She picked at the lace on the sheet for a moment, and then she returned his grin. The tension in the room vanished.
Aidan found her openness…intriguing.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave way under his weight. Her eyes grew round, and some of her nervousness was back.
"Are you afraid of me
, Maura?" He realized he didn't want her to be.
He watched her pause for a few heartbeats before she looked up at him with those green eyes framed by sweeping lashes. Jackson-green, he reminded himself.
"No. At least, I don't think so."
He nodded his understanding and pulled at his shirt’s buttons. He lost his coat hours ago.
“Are you? Afraid of me?"
Aidan choked on his laughter. "What on Earth would make you think I'm afraid of a little slip of a thing such as yourself?"
She hesitated and then lifted her chin in quiet defiance. "Well, first I thought you might be afraid I’d put a snake in your bed."
He couldn't believe she would bring that up.
"And second, you are clutching the edge of the bed as if you are afraid…of something. I thought it might be me."
Aidan's brain was slow to catch up, but when it did, the portent of her words hit him down low, and his manhood sprang to life. Any inhibitions he might have had consummating this marriage had fallen straight to the bottom of an empty glass somewhere. Now, he had something to prove.
Shoving away Tommy’s parting advice to stay clear of Maura, he knew his duty. He would consummate this marriage and then keep his distance from the woman now sharing his bed.
Aidan removed his shirt and his pants and stood naked in front of his bride. He reveled in the shock on her face.
"I'm not afraid of anyone, Mrs. Langley. And that includes you.”
Chapter Nine
Maura had no idea what made her goad Aidan. Perhaps it was his overbearing attitude. Maybe it was to see just how far she could push him before his cockiness slipped.
She wasn't normally a bold sort of girl. Not like some of the girls Maura knew from school. Or even some her acquaintances in California who often frequented the night clubs where all kinds of raunchy things took place.
Aidan's Arrangement: (The Langley Legacy Book 4) Page 5