by Rachel Lee
“I’m not worried about me,” she said again. “But if people are talking about you like that...”
He shook his head. “People might be curious, but most of them won’t take that tack about you visiting me.”
Earl sniffed.
Amber looked at him.
Wyatt said, “Let’s not do that again, Dad.”
“Do what again?” Amber demanded.
Earl looked a little sheepish. “Well, before you got here I was telling Wyatt it wasn’t a great idea right before the election. People will talk.”
“See,” said Amber, jumping in before Wyatt could respond, “I’ve got to leave. If I’d known you had this election coming up I’d have gone somewhere else.”
Both men spoke simultaneously. “No.”
She blinked. “No what?”
“You’re not leaving.” Again they both spoke, sounding like a chorus.
She wrapped her hands around the glass of water she’d barely tasted and looked from one to the other, trying to figure this out. “Okay,” she said finally. “I get that this never concerned Wyatt, but why did you change your mind, Earl?”
“Because I was wrong to be concerned. I told you when we had dinner, I think it’s better if you stay. And I’m right. I’ve been poking my nose around since you arrived, and most people think it’s nice that Wyatt has a friend visiting. Almost nobody seems inclined to criticize him for it.”
“But if those women...”
“Those women won’t be listened to by anyone outside their poisonous little group.” Earl shrugged. “And, as usual, most people just don’t give a damn one way or the other. Might make a nice topic of conversation for a few minutes, but... Wyatt was right. It’s just not a big deal.”
“Told you,” Wyatt said.
After all the tension she’d been feeling, she almost giggled at the smug way Wyatt said that to his father. Earl grinned at him.
“In fact,” Earl said, “the whole seven-day-wonder aspect of this may already be wearing off. Ellie, though...” Earl shook his head. “She can’t make up her mind which story to try to spread. After what she said a year ago when she and Wyatt broke up, there’s not a whole lot she can say about you being pregnant by him. This is fun to watch.”
“Just as long as those women don’t come back to bother Amber, I’m fine with it.”
Glancing at him, Amber thought she wouldn’t want to have to deal with an angry Judge Wyatt Carter.
“Bah,” said Earl. “Now look, Amber, I know you don’t have a license in this state, but I sure could use a little help at my office. You can practice under my license, help with motions, research and so on. Say, Monday afternoon?”
Wyatt snorted. “I should have known you had an ulterior motive.”
“What ulterior motive? I can use help, and this lovely lady is hardly going to be happy rattling around in this big old house all by herself while you’re in court.”
Amber didn’t even have to think about it. “I’d enjoy that, Earl.”
Wyatt smiled. At first she couldn’t imagine why, then she realized—she had just committed to staying. At least for a while.
Oh, boy. She hoped she hadn’t made a bad decision.
* * *
That evening after a dinner of Wyatt’s homemade chicken soup, he suggested they take that walk the doctor had recommended. Amber liked the idea. Now that her stomach had settled, she wanted some activity. She’d been here for five days now, and all she’d seen were a couple of pretty streets, the courthouse and a diner.
Donning jackets, they stepped out into the cooling night. The last signs of twilight were fading over the western mountains and the streetlights cast golden puddles of light on the sidewalks and streets. The air smelled amazingly fresh. She could even detect sage on the gentle breeze.
“I should really show you around my town,” Wyatt remarked, tucking her arm through his. “You haven’t seen much of the good that keeps me here. A morning in court, a visit to a doctor and two women hell-bent on salvation...”
She giggled. “Do you realize how that sounds? ‘Hell-bent on salvation’?”
He laughed quietly. “I meant it exactly the way it sounds. Most of the time that group is just a minor irritant around the fringes. People hardly pay them any mind. We may like our gossip around here, but few people are cruel about it. Anyway, our city police chief, Jake Madison, is married to Loftis’s daughter, Nora. That got a little attention. And then one of Loftis’s followers tried to poison some of the chief’s cattle as an expression of his displeasure, so for a while they had everyone’s attention. Then things settled down again.”
The streets were quiet, inviting. Lights glowed from the houses, giving Amber a few twinges of loneliness. So much life behind those windows, maybe a whole lot of love, and she’d never felt more on the outside in her life, not even as a too-young student in college and law school.
“There’s the library,” he said, pointing to the instantly recognizable facade of a Carnegie library. “Emmaline Dalton, the sheriff’s wife, has been the librarian there since she left college. Her dad was a judge, too. Anyway, if you hear anyone mention Miss Emma, they’re talking about her. No one knows when it started, but that’s what everyone always calls her.”
“Miss Emma. I like the sound of it.”
“You’d like her, too. And the sheriff, Gage Dalton. Now there was an interesting story.”
“Yes?” Her curiosity piqued.
“Back when he first arrived here, Gage was a loner, a complete unknown. All anyone knew was his face was scarred from burns, he had a wicked limp and he lived above Mahoney’s Bar. Every night he’d walk into the bar, have a shot, then take a long, painful walk. People started calling him Hell’s Own Archangel.”
“Really? Wow. He must have looked awful.”
“A little scary, too. Anyway, he eventually took a room with Miss Emma...she was running a boardinghouse mostly for women. I never heard the details of why she rented a room to Gage. Anyway, it was just after I left for college, so I don’t know much about it, but I heard he wound up saving her life. Then marriage followed.”
“And Gage? What had happened to him?”
“He used to work for the DEA. A car bomb killed his family and he barely survived.”
Amber thought about that as they continued to stroll. “I guess he would have looked like Hell’s Archangel after that.”
“That would be my guess. Things have changed for him since Emma, though. Anyway, he went to work for our old sheriff Nate Tate... I hope you get to meet him. An icon in this town. When Nate retired, Gage was elected to replace him.”
Amber could almost feel the threads that knit this town together. She envied the people who lived here. They had something she’d never had—a community and lifelong friends. All the while she’d been pursuing her parents’ goals and then her own, it seemed she had missed a huge chunk of life.
“You’re lucky,” she blurted.
“Me? Why?”
“Because you live in a place like this. Oh, I get it isn’t perfect. I met some of the imperfection this afternoon, but...you must know so many people, have so many friends, it’s... Well, I’ve never known anything like this.”
“It’s not Currier and Ives,” he warned her. “Plenty of warts to share around.”
“I’m sure.” She sighed. “I guess I’m feeling...adrift. And like I missed something important.”
He didn’t answer as they continued down the block and rounded a corner onto another tree-lined street. Here the wind had ripped most of the autumn leaves from the branches. Bare fingers stretching upward and outward. She refused to consider them skeletal.
“Must be awfully pretty in the spring when the trees leaf out,” she remarked.
“You’re welcome to stay an
d see.”
“Wyatt! I can’t put you out like that.”
“Who says you’d be putting me out?” he answered quietly. “I like coming home to see you. I hated how empty that house was before. Anyway, where will you go? To your father?”
“Oh, God, no.”
“A friend?”
She fell silent. When she’d needed a friend, whom had she called?
“I thought so. You can stay with me. I’m not being a male chauvinist when I say a woman shouldn’t have to face pregnancy, birth and a newborn without some emotional support.”
Actually, the thought of facing all that alone had terrified her when she allowed herself to think about it. She was a strong woman, able to take care of herself in the man’s world of the law, but this?
“Women all over the world have a community of support,” he continued. “You could have one here.”
She glanced at the lamp-lit houses again and wondered if he could be right. If just a piece of that could be hers.
“Amber?”
She turned her head toward him, trying to drag herself out of the wisps of dreams that were probably unattainable for her. “Yes?”
“Remember what you said about having a pretend engagement?”
She almost flushed. “And you went all moral on me.”
“Well, I’m not much fond of pretense. But it just occurred to me...you’re about to have a baby without a father. Don’t kids need fathers? If you married me, we could get you through this and I could help take care of the child in any way you think best.”
She froze in her tracks and faced him. “What about pretense?” she demanded even as shock flooded her all the way to her toes. She was going hot and cold faster than she could believe.
“You suggested an engagement to end after the election.” He faced her, too. “Amber, there’s no pretense in a marriage. It’s real.”
Her jaw dropped. Words almost deserted her. Her heart hammered wildly. She had no idea how long it was before she could speak. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Maybe,” he answered. “It just popped into my head. Not like it’s something I’ve been thinking about. But now that it popped out...well, I could take care of you and the child. So think about it.”
Think about it? With difficulty she turned and started walking again, but this was no gentle stroll. She strode quickly, and when he took her arm again, he kept pace with her. A marriage? All because she was having a baby?
God help her, it sounded like a solution to all her fears and worries. Which, she supposed, made her despicable.
Wyatt deserved better. Much better.
* * *
They didn’t speak again until they were back inside the house. Wyatt was still trying to figure out what had caused him to blurt that without thinking it through beforehand. He wasn’t usually the type. He was also worried about the apparent shock he’d given Amber. Damn, what had he been thinking? Even if he wanted to ride to the rescue, there ought to be some easing into a question like that. But no matter how badly he had brought the subject up, it was out there and he wasn’t backing down. He’d be lying if he told himself the possibility hadn’t crossed his mind more than once over the years. A fantasy, just a fantasy, but now it somehow felt right.
He urged her into the kitchen for a warm drink and suggested a few cookies. She merely nodded. Apparently she was still stunned. Maybe even working up to a good rage. She’d have every right. She’d offered a pretend engagement, he’d gotten on his high horse and embarrassed her, and now he was offering marriage out of the blue.
She must wonder if he’d gone mad. He was certainly wondering.
He settled her at the kitchen table with chocolate chip cookies and asked if she wanted her milk warmed. She simply shook her head.
Oh, man, next thing she’d be packing up to escape this insane asylum. First those women this afternoon, and now him. Really?
She drank half her milk while he downed a beer and waited for whatever was to come. Weirdly enough, he had no desire to withdraw his proposal, even though her reaction told him the thought had never entered her mind, unlike his. But the attraction he felt was strong enough that he was sure it could grow. Whether it became love, who could tell right now? He just knew he needed to protect this woman and her child in any way he could.
“You know,” she said finally, “the other day you didn’t want us to make love because I needed time to settle.”
He almost winced, because it was true.
“Now all of a sudden I’m settled enough to decide whether to marry you?”
She had a point. When she started drumming her fingers on the tabletop, he braced himself.
“Wyatt, you’re not a knight-errant. You can’t go around acting like Don Quixote and expect any better outcome than he had. Maybe this seems like a perfect solution for my problems to you. I admit, it’s attractive to me. But marriage? That’s a hell of a commitment for both of us when I’m just in a spot of trouble. A temporary spot of trouble.”
One thing he had to say. “A child isn’t temporary, Amber.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Her voice rose a little. “I’ve been spending the last month trying not to think about how untemporary this is. How to deal with it. How to change my entire future to accommodate it. I’ve spent more time denying my pregnancy than planning for it.”
He nodded, not wanting to interrupt her.
“You’ve already hinted that I’m not of sound mind right now. Well, what about you? What the hell are you thinking?”
He took a moment, closing his eyes and searching deep within himself. He rarely blurted things. Being a lawyer and a judge had taught him to be very considered in all he did and said.
But thinking back to when he’d first known Amber, he faced something else, something she needed to know, even if it was uncomfortable for him. He opened his eyes and looked at her, glad to see her color was returning. For a little while there she had appeared pale.
“Wyatt?” she asked.
“You know, back when we were in law school, I was really attracted to you. My dad and I both told you that. But I was eight years older, and you seemed like a lost lamb. No way was I going to take advantage of you. But if you’d been older, I’d have asked you out. And if we hadn’t been headed in different directions—me to the navy and you to the big law firms—we might be married right now.”
Her eyes had widened, and she drew several quick breaths. “What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying that we’ve been friends for a long time. That if things had been different back then, we might have become more than friends. Honestly, I’ve even thought about it more than once. But now we’re here.”
“And once again you want to protect me,” she said sharply.
“No,” he said levelly. “I want to take care of you and this child. There’s a difference. Anyway, marriage would guarantee that you’d be cared for even if something happened to me. You and the child. Who else am I going to take care of, Amber?”
Her face changed and he wished he could read what had suddenly made it so soft and sad all at once. “Just think about it,” he said. “Like I said, marriage is real. This would be no pretense. You can tell me in the morning. If you say no, I’ll never mention it again. And now you know the last of my secrets. I’ve always hankered after you.”
Then he rose. “I need to go do some work. Come get me if you need anything.”
The walk to his office, his ears straining to hear her call his name, seemed a lot longer than usual.
But she never called his name.
* * *
Amber ate a cookie absently, hardly tasting it, sipping some milk to wash it down. What in the world had possessed Wyatt? He said he wasn’t concerned about the election. Maybe those women earlier today?
Maybe he felt he needed to protect her from any more of that kind of attention? But wasn’t marriage an extreme solution?
Then she remembered what he’d said: marriage was real, not a pretense. That he wanted to care for her and her child. That he’d sometimes thought about it in the past. So he meant it. But why?
Sure, she’d been attracted to him in law school. She’d had no idea back then that he reciprocated. None. He was always a perfect gentleman with her. Of all the men in law school, he was the last one she would have thought felt any sexual interest in her.
Had it lingered over the years? Apparently. When he’d kissed her, he’d said he’d wanted her all those years ago. So maybe having her back in his life—and not just at the other end of a phone call or email—had awakened those feelings again. They’d certainly preserved their friendship. Why not the rest of it, especially since it had never been expressed?
But marriage. That was such a huge commitment. He said he liked finding her here when he came home. He’d said something else, too, and it had tugged at her heartstrings: Who else am I going to take care of?
There was such loneliness in those words. Reaching for another cookie, she bit off a small piece, trying to focus on just that one thing. Wyatt was thirty-seven, maybe thirty-eight now. That was young in this day and age. But maybe he was longing for a family to fill this house, and maybe after Ellie he’d felt too burned to start over again with another woman. Or maybe there weren’t a lot of prospects around here.
Regardless, the loneliness of those words reached through all her preoccupation and touched a part of her she’d thought would remain frozen forever. After Tom, she’d told herself she wanted nothing to do with a man ever again. They were liars and cheats.
And then there was Wyatt, in a class by himself. He’d always been in a class by himself. Unfailingly honest and upright. If Wyatt said he’d do something, you could count on it. If he made a promise, he kept it. All these years he’d been a sort of touchstone for her, keeping her straight when the twisting paths of the law might have led her to take some turns that, while not illegal, would have made her ashamed later. And how many cases had he helped her think through over the years?