The phone rang again, and Marshall left the room. Much to her surprise, Dana felt herself tense. Surely after all these years she could face Gabe without being uncomfortable.
“Before I can think of letting you have Danny for a single night,” she said, “I’ve got to know you can take care of a little boy who’s hardly more than a baby. What do you know about children? Have you ever been around any?”
“I don’t know a lot, but I don’t anticipate any difficulty learning.”
“Well I do,” Dana shot back. “You don’t know what he likes, what he doesn’t, what frightens him, what to do when he gets upset. You don’t know what foods upset his stomach, what he tends to gobble, what he has to be coaxed to eat, when he should go to bed, when to start potty training.” She threw up her hands. “Leaving him with you would be practically the same as leaving him with Elton.”
“I’m a little more capable than that,” Gabe said.
His smile surprised her. She’d expected a snarl.
“Mattie didn’t know how to take care of a child,” Gabe said, “but she learned. I think I can, too.”
“She was a woman. You’re not.” Gabe probably thought if a poor woman could manage, a man would have no difficulty. Just thinking about it made her angry. “Who’s going to take care of Danny while you’re at work?” she asked.
Gabe signed. “I’ve already told you Naomi will take care of him during the week. My mother can help out if I have to be away on weekends.”
“If Mattie had wanted him raised by strangers, she could have left him with me. If you had a wife, it would solve everything. Are you engaged?”
“No.”
“Do you have anybody in mind?”
“I’m not engaged, I don’t have anybody in mind, and I intend to raise Danny without a wife.”
He acted as though having a wife was about as desirable as contracting mumps, but her own reaction upset her more. She could deny it if she wanted, but knowing he was still single excited her.
“I don’t see why you want to know all this.”
“Because you’re expecting me to let you have the child I love,” Dana said. “Did you think I could just drop Danny off and go back to New York as if nothing ever happened?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Well I can’t. He’s been part of my life since the day Mattie moved into my apartment. You might as well ask me to give up my own child.”
“Are you married?” Gabe asked.
“No.”
“Engaged?”
“No.”
“Anybody on the horizon?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“As far as taking care of Danny is concerned, you’re no different from me.”
“Not true. I know him. You don’t.”
“I’ll learn.”
“In how many years?”
Gabe laughed. “I promise to figure it out before he graduates high school.”
“I don’t know how you can take this so lightly. We’re talking about a child’s life here, not some…some piece of furniture. You don’t put it together, polish it up and hand it over to somebody else.”
Apparently she’d finally succeeded in angering him. His brows lowered and puckered. Any hint of a smile disappeared.
“Danny is all my mother and I have left of Mattie. Making sure we do everything right for him is just about the most important thing in our lives. Now call him in from the porch. We can take his things over to the house and settle him in. You ought to be able to start back to New York tonight.”
Dana couldn’t believe her ears. Hadn’t he heard anything she’d said? “I have no intention of turning Danny over to you this afternoon. Or tomorrow afternoon, for that matter. Mattie gave me equal custody. That means I have equal right to approve all arrangements.”
“Satisfying you could take days,” Gabe said.
“I’m sure it will. That’s why I’ve taken two weeks vacation.”
Gabe stared at her very much in the manner she would have expected if she’d grown a second head right before his eyes.
Marshall returned to the room in this interval of silence.
“She’s not going to leave,” Gabe said to his lawyer. “She’s going to stay here for two weeks, sticking her nose into everything I do, complaining and demanding.”
“You’ve got more important things to worry about than Dana,” Marshall said.
“If you think—”
Gabe interrupted Dana. “What are you talking about?”
Being cut off angered Dana, but Marshall’s expression caused her to choke off her outburst.
“That was Lucius Abernathy, Danny’s natural father, on the phone.”
Dana had been looking over her shoulder ever since Mattie’s death, afraid he would show up again demanding Danny.
“His lawyer is flying to Washington tomorrow,” Marshall said. “He plans to rent a car and drive to Iron Springs.”
“What does he want?” Gabe asked.
“Danny,” Marshall answered.
“Mattie’s will specifically says we’re to be his guardians,” Dana said.
“An uncle and a friend won’t stand much of a chance against the natural father.”
“Is there anything we can do to stop him?” Gabe asked.
“Maybe.”
“What?”
“I’ll do anything,” Dana added.
“Gabe’s best chance to keep Danny is to get married before the lawyer gets here.”
“But he said he didn’t have anybody in mind,” Dana pointed out.
Marshall looked straight at her. “I know. So since you’re willing to do anything to make sure Danny’s natural father doesn’t get him, I suggest you marry Gabe.”
Chapter Two
Marshall couldn’t have stunned Gabe more completely if he’d suggested he have a public drawing to choose his wife. Even if he were foolish enough to consider remarriage, Dana Marsh would be the last woman he’d choose.
Not that she was hard to look at.
He remembered her as a skinny kid with huge brown eyes, sun-browned arms and legs, honey-brown hair that was always getting in her face. As often as not, she had a tear in her clothes and dirt on her chin. She could assume a look of doll-like innocence or change to a pixie-full-of-mischief in the blink of an eye. Despite the hard feelings some locals still harbored against her mother, she could charm nearly anyone into a sunny mood.
But he could see nothing of that innocence in Dana now.
She had turned into a New York siren with a body to die for. Dressed and accessorized with understated but expensive taste, she represented nearly everything he had come to distrust in a woman. At thirty-six years old, mature and experienced, he should have been beyond the impressionable age. Then why did his heart beat as if he’d just run the four hundred? He should be shouting down Marshall’s impossible suggestion that he marry Dana, but all that blood flooding his brain made it impossible to think.
“You’re crazy,” Dana said, finding her tongue before Gabe. “I wouldn’t marry Gabe if he were the last man in the world.”
“You both want to keep Danny,” Marshall said. “Gabe has to get married to have a chance. It’s the obvious solution.”
“There must be another way.”
“Maybe, but you’ve got less than twenty-four hours to find it.”
“You’re the lawyer,” Gabe said. “You’re supposed to find the solution.”
“I have,” Marshall replied.
“You can’t seriously expect us to get married just like that,” Gabe said, snapping his fingers. “We haven’t seen each other in more than fourteen years.”
“And we can’t stand each other,” Dana added.
That was going too far for Gabe. Dana might figure in his mind as the human embodiment of everything that had gone wrong in his life, but a man would have to be a misogynist to have any difficulty standing a woman like Dana.
“We have some differences of o
pinion,” Gabe said.
“I’m not saying you have to love each other,” Marshall said. “I’m just trying to come up with a way for you to keep this kid. If you don’t want—”
“Don’t be a fool,” Gabe snapped. “You know I want him.”
“Then you have to get married. It’s almost impossible for an uncle to win custody over the natural father, especially when the natural father is a wealthy, respected businessman with a wife and family ready and willing to welcome Danny into their midst.”
“Even if the natural father got furious when Maggie told him she was pregnant,” Dana said, angrily, “ordered her to get rid of the kid, and walked out when she wouldn’t?”
“Even then. Today’s courts lean heavily on the side of the natural parents.”
“He only wants Danny because he’s a boy,” Dana said.
“You can’t prove that. As far as the court is concerned, it would be the perfect situation for Danny, certainly better than living with a bachelor uncle who has to put him in day care. We’d have even less chance if he lived with you.”
“I could hire a live-in housekeeper.” Gabe said.
“You couldn’t afford it,” Marshall said.
“I’ll pay for it,” Dana offered.
“It wouldn’t matter where the money came from,” Marshall said. “It’s the family unit the judge is going to consider.”
Dana looked at Gabe. The look felt almost accusatory. “Can’t you find somebody to marry?”
“Not on twenty-four hour’s notice.”
“Maybe Marshall could get the judge to wait longer. If you could just—”
“There’s nobody I want to marry,” Gabe snapped, “not now, not in twenty-four hours or twenty-four days.”
“I guess that brings it back to you two,” Marshall said.
“You heard what he said,” Dana said. “That nobody includes me.”
“You don’t have to want to get married. You just have to do it. You can file for divorce as soon as the judge hears the case.”
Gabe looked at Dana. She glared back at him. He would never consider marrying her under normal circumstances. But if he couldn’t keep Danny any other way, he could put up with it, particularly if they got a divorce as soon as he got custody. If the natural father got custody, he would never see his nephew again.
“Can a person get married that quickly on a Saturday?” Gabe asked.
“Not normally,” Marshall said, “but there are ways.”
Dana jumped up and headed toward the door to the back porch.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” she said. “I’m not doing it. I’ll take Danny back to New York first.”
“There’s no way the courts will give him to you,” Marshall said.
“You can visit him anytime you want,” Gabe said.
“Do you think his father will make you the same offer?” Marshall asked.
Gabe could tell from her look she knew he wouldn’t. He could also tell she felt caught between two desperate choices, neither of which she felt she could accept. If she was to give Marshall’s idea even five minutes’ serious consideration, he had to find a way to take some pressure off her.
“Why don’t we get Danny and head over to my house so you can see his room?”
She looked relieved to have something else to do, thankful to him for having suggested it. He could understand. After years of burying himself in his work and not allowing himself to feel anything—not bitterness over his wife’s betrayal and subsequent divorce, not anger at the rift that tore his family apart—he felt buried under an emotional landslide. His father’s and Mattie’s deaths coming so close together had demolished his emotional barriers. Danny’s arrival made him feel even more vulnerable. Now, years of bottled-up emotions bubbled to the surface. He, too, needed time to sort things out.
“Why?” Marshall asked.
“Dana said she wouldn’t leave Danny with me until she was perfectly satisfied I could take care of him. Checking out the suitability of where he’ll live ought to be high on the list.”
“What about the lawyer hired by Danny’s father?” Dana asked.
“Let’s work on the assumption we’re keeping Danny.”
Dana nodded, opened the door and went out to the back porch.
“Do you think she’ll do it?” Marshall asked.
“I don’t know. It was a terrific shock.”
Marshall laughed. “I thought all women swooned at the thought of marrying a hunk like you.”
“She nearly did.”
Both men laughed, but Marshall sobered quickly. “What about you?”
“It’ll only be for a few weeks or a couple of months.”
“I wondered if after Ellen…”
“This isn’t the same.”
“You got that right. Dana isn’t a lying, deceitful witch. If she’s going to shaft you, she’ll tell you right to your face.”
“Why don’t you fix your sidewalks?” Dana asked.
They were walking back toward the heart of the community, the street and lawns shaded by huge oaks.
“We like them cracked and uneven,” Gabe replied.
“A person could break a leg.”
“Half the town learned to walk stepping over them.”
“Strangers didn’t.”
“We don’t have many strangers. And those we get stay at the ski lodge or go straight to the camp.”
“How about the people who come to the hotel?” she asked, referring to the huge, pre-Civil War building with wide verandahs on all three levels that towered over the surrounding houses.
“People come to the hotel to get away from their ordinary lives,” he told Dana. “They like the cracks in the sidewalks, the sixteen-foot ceilings, the rocking chairs on the verandas. Some of them come back every year just to sit and rock for a whole week.”
“I couldn’t stand that,” she said.
“I know.”
She whipped around. “What to you mean by that?”
He didn’t know how she walked in those heels without stumbling, though he had to admit they set her legs off to good advantage. Of course her legs would have looked good even if she’d been barefoot.
“Are you going to answer me, or are you going to stare at me as if I’m a piece of wood whose grain you’re judging?”
He grinned. “You’re much finer to look at than any piece of wood I’ve ever worked with. As for your grain—”
“I didn’t intend for you to take me so literally.”
She became uneasy under his scrutiny, looked away hastily, moved ahead quickly. It pleased him to know a country boy could rattle a woman used to the fast lane.
“We should be talking about Danny.”
Danny scampered along ahead of them, peeping through fences, walking in the bottom of the dry ditch, peering into drain pipes. He didn’t have any trouble with the sidewalk. Whenever a piece of concrete tilted a little too high for him to step on the crack, he jumped it. But he stopped frequently to make sure Dana followed close behind.
“Okay, we’ll talk about Danny.”
But talking about Danny wasn’t safe, either. It brought up Marshall’s preposterous idea. Gabe still couldn’t believe he’d suggested it. People didn’t do things like that anymore. Still, Gabe couldn’t dismiss the thought of marrying Dana.
He didn’t know what kind of suit she was wearing, or what kind of material it was made of, but he did know he’d never seen anything cling to and outline a body more effectively. Each time he dropped back to allow her to precede him where shrubs overhung the sidewalk, he marveled at her long legs, slim hips and small waist. He didn’t care if it came naturally or if she spent twenty hours a week in a gym. He practically had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out to touch her.
“How did Danny get along with Elton?” Gabe forced himself to walk alongside Dana, his gaze on Danny just ahead.
“Fine as long as the cookies lasted,” she replied. “Naomi said he seemed
a little lost after that.”
“How come?”
“He doesn’t know how to play. He hasn’t had a chance to be around other children.”
Gabe couldn’t deceive himself into thinking the boy would soon forget Dana. Despite Marshall’s advice, he had no intention of attempting to tear Danny from Dana’s arms. If he and his mother wanted to be equally important to this child, they had to give and earn similar feelings of love and security. Gabe doubted two weeks would be enough.
Seeing how much Danny loved and depended on Dana—how deeply she was attached to him—forced Gabe to amend at least part of his opinion of Dana. She was obviously warm and nurturing in her relationship with Danny. Being separated would hurt Danny as much as Dana. Maybe more.
“Did you have a good time with Elton?” Gabe asked Danny.
Danny nodded, ducked his head, ran back to Dana and hugged her around the legs. She picked him up, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. She didn’t seem the least bit conscious of the damage done to her expensive clothes.
Gabe wasn’t sure he could afford to think about Dana’s good qualities. The moment he did, visions of having her naked in his bed turned his thoughts to charcoal. He could forget her seductive charm as long as she stayed in New York, but he had trouble remembering the dangers of being attracted to a woman like her when she walked just ahead of him.
If he had half a brain, he wouldn’t think about that at all. A beautiful, smart, aggressive career woman, expecting to get anything she wanted, she came dangerously close to being like his ex-wife. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was more attracted to Dana than to any woman he’d met in more than ten years. Being told he had to marry her in order to gain permanent custody of Danny merely gave his libido license to go into overdrive.
“Danny will get along with the other kids just fine,” Dana said as she set Danny down again. He started forward, walking on the cracks. “All he needs is a little time. Mattie and I both thought he was too young to go to play school.”
Gabe didn’t think Danny was upset so much as clinging to someone familiar in strange situations. But until he got to know his nephew, he couldn’t be sure what the child needed or wanted. For the time being, he’d have to depend on Dana. And he would listen to her advice. He wanted the very best for his nephew.
Married by High Noon Page 2