The invitations had been mailed, and responses sent back by email. Viviana had ordered the food, flowers and decorations. And Angela had had her final fitting for her gown and she had also picked up Zoe’s dress and Malcolm’s outfit.
The wedding was scheduled exactly one week before the B and B’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. Viviana closed her eyes and whispered a prayer that Lee would be able to convince Angela that he loved her enough to give up one dream to realize another.
* * *
The doorbell echoed throughout the house at the same time Angela finished reading The Cat in the Hat to Malcolm and Zoe. The Dr. Seuss titles were also their favorites because of the rhyming.
“You kids go upstairs and get into bed. I’ll tuck you in as soon as I see who’s at the door.”
“Okay, Mama,” they chimed in unison.
The first day Lee hadn’t come to eat with them she made an excuse that he was busy and couldn’t make it. The second day the excuse was the same until Joyce gave her a look that said she knew something wasn’t right. But it was Malcolm and Zoe who were clearly affected by his absence when they said no one could sit or touch his chair.
Angela peered through the security eye to see Lee standing on the porch. Her respiration increased as she opened the door and gasped. He had the same haunted look in his eyes as when he’d returned for Justin’s funeral.
“May I come in?”
She inhaled a breath and stood aside for him enter. “Yes.”
“Daddy!” Zoe screamed, making a beeline toward the door. He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her hair.
“Grammie, Daddy’s here!” Malcolm yelled at the top of his tiny lungs.
Joyce emerged from her sewing room. Smiling, she pressed her palms together. “It’s good seeing you again, Leland.”
He shifted Zoe to one arm and cupped the back of Malcolm’s head with his free hand. “Same here.”
Malcolm patted his leg. “Are you coming up to tuck us in?”
“You do it better than Mama,” Zoe said in a loud whisper.
Lee pressed his forehead to Zoe’s. “That means I’m going to have to show Mama the way you like.” Bending slightly, he set her down. “Go upstairs and get into bed and Daddy will be up as soon as I talk to Mama.”
Angela bit back a smile. Lee was like the Pied Piper with her children. He was able to get the kids to do whatever he wanted without question, while it was Why, Mama whenever she asked them to do something.
She motioned to him with her head. “We’ll talk on the porch.”
“Are you coming for dinner tomorrow?” Joyce asked.
Lee stopped. “That all depends on your daughter-in-law.”
Joyce glared at Angela. “Don’t do or say something you might regret for the rest of your life. Yeah, I know I’m being a meddling mama-in-law, but my grandbabies love this man—”
“And I don’t?” Angela countered angrily, cutting her off.
Joyce waved her hand in dismissal. “I give up. Forgive me for interfering.”
Lee reached for Angela’s hand. “Not to worry, Grammie. Everything is going to be okay.”
“Do you really think everything is going to be okay because you say so?” she said accusingly when she and Lee stood on the porch.
“It will be after you hear what I have to say,” Lee countered. “And Miss Joyce is right about her grandbabies loving me because I love them, too. I think I know what I’d like to do as a civilian.”
Angela’s mouth dropped. “Does this mean you’re not going to reenlist?”
“Close your mouth, darling,” Lee urged when he finished telling her about his plan to enroll in a culinary school and eventually take over as chef of the B and B.
“Where do you plan to go to culinary school?” Angela questioned.
“I’m thinking of applying to the same school where my Aunt Babs graduated.”
“And where’s that, Leland?”
“Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
Lee counted slowly to ten. He was willing to compromise and not reenlist, but even that didn’t seem to please Angela. “No, I’m not, Angela. Do you really believe I’m going to marry you and leave you and our children behind?”
“Listen to yourself, Leland. If you re-up you still would leave us behind.”
“This is different, babe. I plan to apply to Johnson and Wales University’s Culinary Arts program. If I’m accepted, then I’d rent a house or an apartment for us. You’ve always talked about going to college, so the situation would be perfect for us.”
“What about Malcolm and Zoe?”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Lee didn’t want to believe Angela was making it so difficult to agree to something that would prove beneficial to them both. He would use his GI educational benefits to pay for his tuition and there was a possibility that he could also secure housing at a reduced rate based on his military rank and number of years served.
“There are childcare facilities in North Carolina.”
Angela rested her back against the porch column. She thought about everything Lee had proposed. And he was right about her wanting to attend and graduate college, but that would mean leaving The Falls until they completed their education. “It looks as if you’ve figured everything out.”
“Not quite.”
“What’s missing, Lee?”
“You. Tell me now we’re going to be married next Saturday or I’ll walk away and never bother you again.”
She bit her lip. She remembered him telling her the same thing when asking if he was competing with a dead man. Her chin trembled as she struggled not to cry. “I want you to bother me every day of my life we spend together.”
“Is that a yes?”
Angela was so overcome with emotion that all she could do was nod. After she’d given Lee the ultimatum she thought she was being selfish, yet she knew there was no way she could go through losing another husband because he’d chosen to be a soldier.
“Yes, it’s a yes.”
She was given no time to react when Lee picked her up and kissed her in a passion that stole the breath from her lungs. She moaned when his hand searched under her blouse to cover her breast. Her hands were just as busy as she pulled up his tee and dug her fingers into the firm flesh covering his muscled back. It had been so long since they’d made love that she wanted to beg him to make love to her right there, but common sense prevailed.
The sounds from their labored breathing competed with the noise from emerging nocturnal wildlife. “Why don’t you go upstairs and tuck your son and daughter in because it appears their mama just can’t get it right,” she teased.
“You don’t have to get it right, Mama. There’s one thing you can do that I’ll never be able to do.”
“What’s that?”
Lee winked at her. “Grow a baby.”
“Duh!” Angela’s smile mirrored the happiness eddying through her and she turned and stared at the shadows in the encroaching dusk. Her life had come full circle. She never knew when she decided to befriend the new student sitting alone in the school’s cafeteria that he would grow up to become her husband and father to her twins. She stayed on the porch until buzzing insects brushed against her exposed skin, and then went inside to break the news to Joyce that she was going to move to North Carolina for several years where she and Lee planned to attend college. Charlotte wasn’t that far away and she was welcome to come and visit with her grandchildren anytime she wanted.
Chapter Thirteen
Angela held the bouquet of fall flowers in her left hand and rested her right on her father’s as he led her down the white carpet on the grass under the enormous tent where the ceremony and reception would take place. The weather had cooperated with cool morning temperatures giving way to brilliant sunligh
t and seventy-degree readings.
Lee had declined having a military-style wedding because he did not want to be reminded of the weddings of his former buddies. Although he no longer thought of himself as a soldier he said he would always be an army ranger. He had selected Aiden Gibson as his best man.
Angela’s gown was an unadorned sheath with narrow straps crisscrossing her bare back and a hint of a train. Her neatly braided shoulder-length hair was pinned on the nape of her long, slender neck with a jeweled hairclip. She’d attached a fingertip veil to the clip that had once belonged to Lee’s great-grandmother. Viviana did double duty as maid of honor and assistant to the party planner.
Zoe and Malcolm, dressed in white, were adorable as flower girl and ring bearer, and when Nathan Banks escorted her past the rows with her mother and Joyce, Angela noticed they were dabbing their eyes.
She had insisted on an informal celebration sans tuxedos and ties, and with comfortable shoes for the women. Only Lee and Aiden wore neckwear for the ceremony and the photos to follow, and both joked they didn’t like wearing legal nooses.
When the pastor asked who was giving this woman in marriage Nathan Banks’s deep voice reverberated throughout the tent, eliciting laughs and giggles from the assembly. Angela could not bring her gaze away from Lee as she mouthed the appropriate responses. Pinpoints of heat stung her cheeks when she saw desire lurking in the depths of the blue-gray eyes making love to her.
He untied the ribbon on the pillow holding the rings and smiled at Malcolm. “Thank you, son.” Lee repeated his vows as he slipped the platinum band on Angela’s finger.
Angela repeated the action when she slipped a matching band on Lee’s hand. Less than a minute later the pastor pronounced them man and wife. And when she felt Lee’s mouth touch hers she knew Justin was smiling down on her and his best friend.
They turned to face the assembly amid applause and whistling. She shared a tender smile with Lee when he raised her left hand and kissed her fingers. “I love you,” she mouthed as he nodded in acknowledgment.
Flashes from cameras and phones went off as those in attendance captured the joy in the newlyweds’ eyes as they continued to stare lovingly at each other. Angela stopped long enough to hug her father-in-law. “Thank you for your son,” she whispered in his ear.
Emory smiled. “He’ll be a good father and husband.”
“I know he will.”
She and Lee stood in a receiving line to greet and thank their guests for sharing their special day, and she knew the next time she and Lee celebrated it would be to welcome the birth of their third child.
* * *
Look for the next book in the
Wickham Falls Weddings miniseries
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Home to Wickham Falls
Claiming the Captain’s Baby
Her Wickham Falls SEAL
The Sheriff of Wickham Falls
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Winning Charlotte Back
by Kathy Douglass
Chapter One
As Charlotte Shields passed the secretaries’ lunch room on her way to her corner office, the off-key strains of the happy birthday song wafted through the open door. Her steps slowed. Stopped.
“Open my gift first,” a voice cried out.
“Wait until after the cake,” someone said and female laughter followed.
Charlotte yearned to join the celebration, but she knew she wouldn’t be welcome. Not now. Early in her career several of the other women had invited her to join them on a girls’ night out. She’d longed to say yes, but she’d known better. The morning of her first day, her father had called her into his office and given her a list of rules designed especially for her. Primary among them was that she was not to mingle with the employees. To his way of thinking, it would be hard to discipline or terminate a friend. She’d been eager to please and convinced that her father knew better than she how to run a business, so she’d complied.
After a while, the invitations slowed and finally stopped. The offers of friendship dried up. The other women came to regard her as conceited and unfriendly, a reputation she’d lived up to over the years. She regretted her behavior now, but years ago she’d been willing to do anything to avoid disappointing her father.
Charlotte’s need to please her father had always been her downfall.
She forced the longing and regrets away and continued through the maze of cubicles, pausing when she got to her secretary’s desk. “Did anyone call while I was out?”
“Yes, Ms. Shields.” Anita handed her a stack of pink paper. “Your father has scheduled a meeting in the conference room for three this afternoon.”
“Thank you.”
Although Anita was only a year younger than Charlotte’s own thirty-four, she never addressed Charlotte by her first name, something that hadn’t bothered Charlotte before. For some reason, the distance it created between them bugged her now.
Charlotte opened her mouth to ask how the other woman’s pregnancy was progressing, but she couldn’t find the words.
“Is there something else, Ms. Shields?” Anita asked when Charlotte continued to stand there. Anita’s voice was professional, lacking the warmth that was there when she interacted with the other secretaries, and Charlotte’s heart sank.
“No, nothing.”
Stepping through the door to her office, Charlotte riffled through the messages. Nothing urgent. Her mind returned to the meeting her father had scheduled for that afternoon. Charles was a creature of habit and had established a schedule that hadn’t changed in all the years she’d worked here. The fact that he’d called an impromptu meeting was unsettling. But there was no sense asking him about the agenda beforehand because he wouldn’t tell her. Although she was his daughter, he never treated her better than anyone else. If anything, he was harder on her.
She had master’s degrees in both business and marketing, but she’d still had to start at the bottom and work her way up to the position of executive vice president of marketing. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind that had
she been a son, her path would have been easier. By now, she’d be president.
She got down to work, determined to have her desk cleared in case her father passed out new assignments.
At promptly 2:55 she stepped into the conference room. Several executives mingled, talking quietly among themselves. They nodded at her and she did the same. She was too jittery to engage in conversation, so she stared at the framed newspaper and magazine articles lining the walls. The articles chronicled the progression of Shields Manufacturing from a small company specializing in bookcases to one of the top furniture manufacturing companies in the world.
Five minutes later her father entered, followed by a man she’d never seen before.
“Have a seat,” Charles said. The man he’d brought with him took the chair at her father’s right—her chair—so she was forced to sit in the next chair. She glowered at the trespasser but he didn’t seem to notice.
Instead of immediately getting to the point of the meeting as was his habit, Charles’s eyes traveled the same path hers had only moments ago, a small smile on his face as he seemed to relive the history of the company. For the briefest moment, her father seemed reflective. Charles was many things, but introspective wasn’t one of them.
Was he ill? He’d lost weight since her mother’s death two years ago, but she’d attributed it to lack of appetite due to grief. She looked at him closely. She didn’t notice anything different.
“I know you’re all wondering why I called this meeting today.” Charles smiled. Smiled! He never smiled. Charlotte’s heart sped up as worry gnawed at her.
“Let me put you at ease,” Charles continued. “I’m not sick. And you all know the company is doing well.”
Relief whooshed through Charlotte. Although Charles wasn’t the warmest person, he was for all intents and purposes the only family she had, as she was currently estranged from her sisters.
She realized her father was still speaking and forced herself to listen. Charles gestured to the wall. “We’ve come a long way from where we started to where we are now. I want to ensure that the next thirty-five years are just as successful as the past thirty-five. To that end, I’m stepping aside as president to make room for someone new. I’ll stay on as CEO to make sure the company continues to go in the right direction.”
Twins for the Soldier Page 18