She stood, pulling him up as well. “If I say yes, will you go home and get some sleep? You look awful.”
He slid his arms around her waist. “Only if you’ll come home with me. I discovered I don’t like sleeping without you.”
She looked around the room and back to him. “All right. But I still have to be out of here by Monday.”
He walked her to the door, his arm firmly around her waist. “You will be, if I have to bring one of my crews over here to do it!” He opened the door for her and when they were in the hall and the door secure, Brad turned to her and said, “By the way, what was Arthur doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
She laughed and grabbed his hand. As they headed for the elevator, she said, “I would never have imagined Arthur in the role of Cupid, but wait until you hear what he told me.”
Epilogue
Nine Years Later
“Mom?” Eight-year-old Casie, named after “Granddad” Casey, was busy helping Rachel clean the kitchen after a large Sunday meal.
“What, sweetie?” she asked absently, briskly wiping down the counter before starting the dishwasher.
“How did you and Daddy get together?”
“You’ve heard that story hundreds of times, Casie. He hired me to work for him soon after I graduated from college.”
“That’s not what I mean. I guess what I’m asking is, what made you decide to get married when you did if you’d worked for him for a long time?”
Rachel turned the switch on and the dishwasher started purring into action. She tucked her daughter—who looked mostly like her daddy, but with her mother’s eyes and hair—against her side. “I think that’s a great question. I bet your daddy can answer it for you. Let’s go see.”
She already knew where she’d find him—stretched out on their bed watching a football game on television. He’d used the excuse that he needed to lie down with the boys because it was the only way he could get five-year-old Brandon and two-year-old Benjamin to take their naps without a fuss.
Brad had promoted Carl and Rich Harmon and a couple of site managers, so he spent much less time working than he once had. Rachel acted as a consultant to Brad and continued to help with some of the more difficult clients, but she seldom went into the office.
She and Casie walked into the bedroom and sure enough, both boys were sound asleep, one cuddled on each side of Brad.
Casie went bouncing over to the bed and scrambled onto it. Brad quickly put his finger over his mouth and nodded to her brothers. She gave a little nod but was too impatient to wait. In a loud whisper, she said, “Mom said you would tell me what made you decide to marry each other.”
He’d been watching his daughter with indulgent adoration, an expression he wore most of the time when he was with their little ones. Rachel watched Brad’s eyes narrow slightly at his daughter’s question.
“Mommy said to ask me, did she?” He kept his voice soft, but the look he gave Rachel spoke volumes.
Casie nodded her head vigorously. “I’ve looked through the pictures taken at your wedding. You looked so happy together. It made me wonder why you waited to get married when you loved each other for so long.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Good question. Way back then I was so busy working that I didn’t notice much around me. Then one day your mother and I had to go on a business trip and we needed to fly.”
“Mommy hates to fly,” Casie pointed out and rolled her eyes.
“That’s right. So while we were flying, Mommy got really, really scared and she threw her arms around my neck and cried,” he slipped into a falsetto voice, “‘Save me, oh please save me.’ That’s when I truly looked at her for the first time, with my heart as well as my eyes. I thought, ‘My, my, what a pretty lady you are. Where have you been all my life?’ I decided that I would save her from everything scary in life and keep her safe here with me. And that’s what I did. So you see, that’s how it came about that your mother and I got married.”
His eyes were filled with laughter when he glanced at Rachel and asked, “Isn’t that right, pretty lady?”
She should have known he’d come up with a highly creative answer. “You’re telling the story, not me,” she replied, struggling not to laugh.
“So you saved her by marrying her and she wore that pretty dress and you got all dressed up, too, and had a beeoootiful wedding.” Casie nodded to the small table that held their wedding picture album.
“Yep, that’s what I did. I saved her, like a prince in one of your fairy tales.”
Casie fell back on the bed and sighed a very large sigh of contentment. “And you lived happily ever after,” she said with satisfaction.
Brad’s eyes sent a heated message to Rachel, silently warning her that she would be paying for this much later that night.
“Yes, baby-girl, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re living happily ever after.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4039-1
BUT NOT FOR ME
Copyright © 2002 by Annette Broadrick
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* Sons of Texas
†Daughters of Texas
** 50th Book
But Not for Me Page 19