James Bravo's Shotgun Bride

by Christine Rimmer

  That night, she told James how good it felt, to whip out her checkbook and pay for what was needed without batting an eye. Wednesday, she called Nell to get Bravo Construction out to tell her how much it would cost to make the needed repairs to the foreman’s cottage and some upgrades to the house, as well.

  The following Monday, when she got the formal estimate from Nell, she freaked out a little. The total for everything she wanted done was well over fifty thousand.

  That night in bed after they made slow love, James held her and soothed her and reminded her that she was rich now. He teased, “Fifty K is chump change.”

  She got all prickly. “I do not like throwing money away, James.”

  “You’ll like it less when the foreman’s cottage caves in from neglect. Plus, it’s about time you got a new kitchen and an overhaul of that basement room.”

  She snuggled in closer. “You’re right. I know you are...”

  It seemed a perfect moment to bring up their future. “Addie Anne, I—”

  She lifted herself right up and put a finger to his lips. “Sorry, but I really have to pee. Be right back.” And she jumped from the bed, scooped her short robe off the bedside chair and disappeared into the bathroom.

  No way was he waiting even one more day to talk about the future. According to the original agreement they’d made, their supposed two-month marriage ended on Thursday. He had a feeling if he just let things go without insisting they talk about it, they could wander on into the future together without ever saying the words that meant so much.

  But he didn’t want it like that between them. He wanted her to know how he felt, what he wanted with her, how precious she was to him. He wanted to tell her that he would like to be a father to the baby, to say all the words that mattered so much when two people decided to make one life together. He also wanted to hear those words coming back to him out of her sweet, plump mouth.

  He turned on the lamp, propped his pillow against the headboard and sat up to wait for her.

  Took her a good ten minutes to return. She hovered out of the circle of the lamp’s light, her big eyes wary, arms wrapped around herself as though for comfort. Even through the shadows he could see her quick mind working. She didn’t want to ask him why he’d turned the light on, because he just might tell her that he wanted to talk. Then she’d have to invent some new excuse to shut him up.

  He broke the silence. “Come back to bed, Addie Anne.”

  She started chewing that sweet lower lip. “Oh, James...”

  “We have to talk about it.” He patted the empty space beside him.

  “Please.” The distress in her voice was way too evident and she hadn’t come any closer. “We have a few more days. Can’t we just enjoy them?”

  He didn’t like the sound of that at all. But this time, he was getting the damn words out no matter what she did to stop him. “We can have forever and you know it.”

  “James—”

  “No. You’re not going to stop me. Not this time. I love you and I want to stay with you. I want the baby, too. I want it all with you, Addie. I don’t want it to end and there is absolutely no reason that it has to end. We’re married and we can stay that way. I want that. And I want you to tell me that you want it, too.” Yeah, all right. As declarations of love went, it lacked finesse. But still. He’d meant every word and he hoped, at least, that his sincerity came through.

  She shifted from one foot to the other, let her arms drop to her sides and then rewrapped them around herself. But she didn’t come to him. She stayed in the shadows. “I’m just... You’re such a good man. I... You’re everything, James. But I’m not going to say it. Saying it never works for me. Saying it only makes everything go bad.”

  “Will you listen to yourself? You know that’s not true.”

  “I just... I can’t, James. I’m not going to say it. It’s not going to happen.”

  He had a really bad feeling. A feeling that she meant it, that she never would say it, never would let herself get past what Donnie Jacobs, Eddie Bolanger and Randy Pettier had done to her heart. “You’re smarter than this, Addie. And I’m not like any of those jerks who messed you over.”

  “I know you’re not. You’re good and true. But it’s like a jinx for me, you know? I say it, and everything goes wrong.”

  “That’s not going to happen with me, with us.”

  “I’m sorry.” She did take a step closer then, into the pool of light cast by the lamp. He held his breath as she raised both hands—and then let them drop to her sides. “No, I just can’t. I really can’t.”

  He kind of wanted to break something. But he tried another tack instead. “So, then, what’s going to happen? How do you see this playing out? Are you thinking that on Thursday, I’m just going to pack my stuff and move out?”

  She shut her eyes. “I don’t know. The truth is I don’t want to think about it. I never want to think about it.”

  He held out his hand. “Come here.”

  She did look at him then. And she let out a hard, shaky sigh. “I feel like such a complete loser. I mean, I’m a woman. Women are supposed to be good at all this, at dealing with emotions, expressing their feelings...”

  “Come here.”

  At last, she came. She even put her slim, work-roughened hand in his and let him pull her onto the bed beside him.

  “Take off the robe.”

  She pulled the tie. It fell open.

  He pushed it off one shoulder and then let go of her hand in order to ease it all the way off. “Lift up.” She lifted up from the mattress enough that he could get the robe out from under her. He tossed it onto the chair a few feet away. She looked so beautiful and so sad, sitting there naked, unable to let herself say what he wanted most to hear. He held up the covers and she slid beneath them. He settled them over her and pulled her into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered against his heart.

  He stroked a hand down her hair, cupped the velvety curve of her shoulder. “Be warned. I’m saying it again. I love you. That’s my choice, to love you. I chased you for all those months before Levi took the situation in hand and made it so I could catch you—at least for a while. In all those months before your grandfather came after me with his shotgun, I never had a prayer with you, did I?”

  “I just couldn’t.” Her voice was so small, he almost didn’t hear it. “I just never know what I’m doing when it comes to—” she had to swallow before she could say it “—love. I always mess it up.”

  “You haven’t messed a damn thing up. But you haven’t had a chance to choose, either, have you—not when it comes to you and me?”

  She tipped her head back. Those amber eyes met his. “What are you getting at?”

  “That I chose you the first time you rode that gray mare past my new house.”

  “Oh, that’s just crazy.”

  “Maybe. But it’s also the truth. I saw that ginger hair escaping out from under your hat, shining in the sun, saw the perfect, curvy shape of you astride that pretty horse. And then you stopped and you smiled at me. We started talking. By the time you rode away that day, my heart went with you.”

  Her eyes shone brighter, the shine of tears. One escaped and trailed down her round cheek. “Oh, just look at me. Crying.” She sniffed. “I’m not only a loser, I’m a wuss, a complete wuss.”

  “No, you’re not.” He brushed at the wetness with his thumb. “And I don’t want to make you cry, Addie Anne. But I do want you to have your chance to make your choice, a choice you make not because I won’t stop chasing you and not because your grandfather threatens to die unless you marry me—die like Brandon did. And your mom, too. That was so cruel of Levi to do that to you.”

  She pressed her lips together hard, wrapped her fingers around his upper arm and held on too tight. “You are
planning something, James. I know you are and already I don’t like it, whatever it is.” He kissed the tip of her upturned nose—and she accused, “You are leaving me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m moving to my new house, that’s all. I’m moving there loving you with all of my heart. And I will be there, waiting, hoping that you decide it’s safe to believe—in me and in you and in the life we can have together.”

  “It’s what I said,” she whispered again, that plump lower lip trembling. “Dress it up however you want, make it sound like you’re doing me a favor. You. Are. Leaving.”

  “What matters is I love you. And yes, on Thursday, I’m moving to my new house, where I will be waiting, praying every damn day that passes that you will give yourself a chance to trust me, that you will come and get me. That you will make your choice to take me as your husband for the rest of our lives.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Addie longed to beg him to stay.

  But she didn’t. She knew he was nothing like Eddie or Randy or Donnie, knew that he really did care for her, knew that what she had with him was deeper, truer and more real than anything she’d had with any man before.

  Still, she shed that one tear right when he told her he would go—and after that, well, something went numb in her.

  She didn’t want him to go, but of course he would go. She’d known that all along, now, hadn’t she?

  At least this time she hadn’t made a fool of herself. He’d even said he loved her and somehow she’d managed not to say it back. That had always been her brilliant plan if any man ever said those three little words to her again: not to say them back.

  So she’d followed through with the plan.

  And it didn’t feel so brilliant, after all. Truth was, it felt even worse than declaring her love and ending up with a stomped-on heart. It seemed to her by then that something really had gotten broken inside her. She’d lost that special, sacred part of a person that knew how to love and be loved in return.

  Would she ever be mended?

  She just didn’t know.

  * * *

  The morning James left, he hugged her and kissed her and whispered, “Take care of yourself, Addie Anne.” She stared up at him, wordless, until he dropped his cherishing arms and stepped back.

  “Bye, James,” she managed at last.

  PawPaw came out on the porch right then. Addie waited for him to throw a fit. After all, the shotgun marriage he’d threatened to die for was ending so easily, with James walking away and Addie planning simply to stand there and watch as he drove off and left her.

  Levi offered his hand to James. They shook and Levi pulled James close to pound his other hand on James’s broad back. “Don’t be a stranger,” said Levi gruffly, as though James had just dropped in for a visit and now he was heading off back to his own life.

  Well, and maybe that was exactly what was happening here.

  Tell him you love him. Beg him to stay, pleaded the lovesick fool within.

  But she wasn’t going to do that.

  And on second thought, she wasn’t standing there on the porch to see James drive away, either. She slipped past her grandfather and went into the house, shutting the door quietly behind her.

  Inside, she waited for Levi to come stomping back in and read her the riot act for letting James go.

  Didn’t happen. PawPaw came in. He asked gently, “You all right?”

  “No, I am not and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fair enough.” He headed for the kitchen. Addie trailed along behind him, not sure what to do with herself. He went straight to Lola, who stood at the sink loading the dishwasher after their breakfast. He wrapped his wiry old arms around her and kissed her neck.

  That did it.

  Addie whirled around and left the room. The last thing she needed right at that moment was to see a pair of happy lovers kissing on each other.

  She went out to the stables, but there wasn’t much to do there. Rudy was conscientious and good at his job. So after hanging on the pasture fence and petting the horses that came to say hi, she went on to her work shed and spent the morning stuffing flour-sack heads, painting faces on them and assembling the outfits for her next several orders.

  That day passed. And the next one. The weekend dragged by. Three times, she started to take off her wedding and engagement ring set. She should have given them to James before he left Thursday morning. But she hadn’t even let herself think of such a thing then.

  And now, well, she couldn’t bear to do it. So she just went on wearing them, telling herself that eventually she would have to take them off and return them to him.

  It hurt so much—the vast emptiness of her own bed at night, the space at the table that didn’t have him in it, the words she needed to say to him that he wasn’t there to hear.

  And his touch. And his kiss. And the scent of his aftershave.

  How long would it take her to get over James Bravo?

  She really, really needed to stop asking herself that.

  Monday, Nell Bravo came with a crew to start fixing up the foreman’s cottage. Nell was well-known in her family for speaking her mind. Addie worried that James’s half sister might demand to know what had gone wrong with her and James. But Nell only gave her a big hug and asked her a few questions about the teardown and went to work with her crew.

  Another week dragged by. That following Monday, the final one in May, Addie drove into town for groceries. She stopped at the bank and arranged with the branch manager to put some of her money from Brandon into CDs, which were safe and low risk. Because she didn’t do well with risk. Not when it came to money.

  Or her heart, apparently.

  Once that was done, she considered the amount left in her savings account. She’d hardly made a dent in it. So she transferred another fifty thousand into her checking account. She went home and sent money to the Wounded Warrior Project, the ASPCA, UNICEF, the Salvation Army and the family shelter in town.

  She felt a little better after giving some of her windfall to people who needed it and she decided she would make a habit of giving regularly.

  But did writing those checks help her get over James?

  Not one bit.

  Two more weeks went by. She talked to her sister twice on the phone. Carmen didn’t like it that James had moved out, but when Addie asked her to leave the subject alone, Carm didn’t argue, either.

  Addie met Rory in town for lunch. Rory asked how she was doing. Addie said she was managing all right. Rory offered to listen if Addie had needed to talk. Addie thanked her and said she would think about it. They left it at that.

  The days ran together. Addie worked on her orders, approved of the progress Nell and her crew were making on the cottage and started thinking about more stuff that could stand doing around Red Hill. She hired another hand to work three days a week. He would mend fences, help Rudy when needed and clear brush to keep the danger down in fire season.

  Addie’s stomach grew rounder. She wished James were there to put his big hand on it and smile at her in that special, tender way that only he did. She ached to drive by his house and see how he was doing.

  But she stopped herself. What would she say to him? Nothing would do for him but I love you and she was too much of a coward to ever say those words again.

  The second week of June, she had her eighteen-week ultrasound and missed James desperately all through it. He would have loved to see the baby now. The little boy had grown to five and a half i
nches. Addie watched him kick, roll and flex his arms, activities she’d already felt him doing in the past couple of weeks.

  She couldn’t button her jeans anymore. So the next week, on Friday, she went into town and bought actual maternity clothes. She was putting them away in her closet and bureau when she heard footsteps along the upper hall.

  PawPaw appeared in the doorway to her room. “Addie Anne, we need to have us a talk.”

  Whatever he had to say, she didn’t want to hear it. She still hadn’t forgiven him for kidnapping James and causing his own heart attack—and then forcing her and James to the altar by refusing to get well.

  “Please,” he said, his eyes, the faded blue of worn denim, so sad.

  She went over, plopped to the edge of the bed and gestured at the bedside chair. “Have a seat.”

  He came into the room and eased himself down into the chair. “How you feelin’?”

  Except for my hopeless broken heart? “Fine, PawPaw. Truly.”

  “Good. You look good—except for that sad face you’re wearing all the time.”

  She asked him wearily, “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

  He folded his gnarled hands and twiddled his ancient thumbs. Finally, he came out with it. “I know that my new great-grandson is Brandon Hall’s baby. I knew since that day in the hospital when you brought me all those damn papers from that sperm bank and your doctor.”

  Addie sat very still for a second or two. And then she accused, way too softly, “You knew and yet you still wouldn’t get better until James and I got married?”

  The white head dipped once in confirmation. “I knew he loved you and I knew you would never give him a chance to make you happy. Not unless somebody took the matter in hand. So I did what I had to do. But I know that what I did was wrong and I’m thinking you’re never going to forgive me. I could live with that, with you hating your old PawPaw for the rest of my days. Except that now you’ve sent James away. Now you haven’t got love and you’re mad at me, too.”