by Sharon Sala
“It’s a little hard to explain over the phone,” Wyatt said. “And if the truth was told, she would take the hide off of me for calling you. But if you're half the man everyone said you are, you'll come out and see for yourself.”
“Lord! Don’t call me long-distance and then give me some mystic bull. What the hell is wrong with Toni?”
“I've said more than I should. But no one made me promise not to tell.”
“Tell what?” Lane asked, and knew when every man in the office turned and looked at him that he’d just shouted into the phone at the top of his lungs.
The line went dead in his ear.
“Son of a bitch!”
He slammed the receiver onto the cradle and bolted up from the desk.
“Damn it to hell!”
He stuffed a stack of papers into a file and then tossed them on Palmer’s desk as he stomped past.
“What’s wrong?” Palmer asked, and then held up his hands to ward off the blow he felt coming. “Don’t mind me,” he muttered, and picked up the file Lane had tossed. “I’d be more than happy to finish it for you. Thank you so much for asking me first.”
The door banged behind Lane, and then all was silent in the room as the officers stared at one another in shock.
Chapter 14
Lane left Tallahassee in a blaze of sunlight and arrived in Tennessee on a cold winter chill. It was the first snow of the season. Two weeks before Christmas and the light dusting on the ground was still not enough to make a decent-size snowball, although to give them credit, every child in Chaney that Lane had passed seemed bent on trying to do just that.
“Chaney hasn’t changed. I just pray to God that neither has anything or anyone else.”
Lane wouldn’t even pretend to guess what the phone call from Toni’s brother had been about. There were too many ominous implications to wonder. But the fear was real that had carried him from his apartment to the airport, and then across miles and through states on the road back to her.
And all he could feel was the cold sweat that came with the sound of her name, and the memory of a line going dead in his ear. If this was nothing serious, he was going to punch Wyatt Hatfield in the nose. But if it mattered...
He took a turn in the road, passing the place where he’d killed Emmit Rice and in so doing had saved Toni’s life; he didn’t even remember to look.
“When I see her face, then it will be all right,” he reassured himself, and had to be satisfied with that thought.
The driveway loomed. He took the curve high and fast, his eyes on the rooftop visible above the treetops, and on the silly rooster weather vane that marked the spot where Toni lived.
* * *
Toni spun at the knock on the front door, then rolled her eyes as she wiped her hands on a towel. Wyatt must have locked himself out, although she couldn’t imagine how or why. She smoothed her hands down the front of her plaid shirt and brushed a smear of flour off the leg of her jeans.
Carrying a baby hadn’t changed what she wore, only the style. She’d traded her 501 Blues for maternity denim, but she was still the same dark-haired, chocolate-eyed woman with more hair than she could manage. Older but wiser, and only a little bit rounder, she wore her pregnancy with grace.
“What did you do, lock yourself out?”
The laughter died on her lips as she stared in openmouthed shock at the man across the threshold. She had the intense urge to slam the door in his face before it was too late, but knew that it already was.
She looked into his eyes, saw the shock and a stark wave of horror slide across his expression, and wished Wyatt to hell and back for what he had done. And she knew it was Wyatt who had caused this from the look he wore as he came up the steps behind him.
“Oh, my God,” Lane muttered.
He stepped across the threshold unaware of the man behind him and started backing Toni across the room, his arms reaching out to her in a beseeching manner that she kept trying to elude.
“Oh, Lord! Toni, baby...you shouldn’t have...you don’t understand, you can’t...”
He couldn’t think past praying, nor could he find the words to say what needed to be said. And when he did, they came out all wrong.
I shouldn’t have? I can’t? Toni needed to scream, but she settled for a sarcastic remark instead. “What do you mean, I can’t? I already have, Mr. Monday.”
“Toni, Toni, what in hell have you done?”
The accusation was as sharp as a knife thrust beneath her heart. It rang in her ears long after Wyatt had entered the room and closed the door after him.
“Nothing that concerns you,” Toni said. “And why, may I ask, have you come at this late date in our...association?”
Lane shook his head and wiped a hand across his face. “I got a call. Someone said you were...I thought you’d been hurt or worse. I came as quick as I...” He spun, suddenly aware of someone standing there.
Wyatt leaned against the wall with the nonchalance of a man who knew he was in the right. “You would be Lane Monday, am I right?”
“You son of a bitch,” Lane muttered. “You scared me half to death.”
Wyatt grinned. “You came, didn’t you?”
Toni shook from shock and rage. At that moment she hated both men. Wyatt for interfering, and Lane for reacting exactly as she’d feared and not as she’d dreamed.
“Why don’t you two take your disagreement outside,” Toni said. “I don’t feel like mopping up blood.”
Lane turned to face her, completely blocking out every thought except what he’d just learned.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he groaned, and tried once again to take her into his arms.
Toni pushed his hands away and glared through her tears. “Probably because it was none of your business, and because I knew you would react exactly as you did. I don’t need pity. Thanks to an interfering family, I have all that I need.”
Lane paled. His hands shook, and the room tilted. He had a momentary vision of Sharla’s face contorted in excruciating pain, and then he remembered the blood and the way in which life had drained from her eyes. He groaned.
“Oh, God, not again. Not again.”
Wyatt frowned. “What do you mean, not again? Are you trying to tell us you've done this before? Gotten some woman pregnant and then walked out on her without so much as a thank you, ma'am?”
Toni gasped. “Wyatt, I told you it was all my doing! You shouldn’t have interfered. He didn’t make promises, and I didn’t ask for any.”
“You can’t have this baby,” Lane said quietly, and wondered if he could die from a broken heart.
Toni thought that she was prepared for everything, but to hear this man telling her that she should terminate a pregnancy she had prayed for made her weak with shock.
“How dare you?” she accused, and cradled her belly as if to protect the child from the sudden appearance of a demon. “How dare you ask me to kill my own—”
“Oh, God,” Lane groaned, grabbing her hands from her stomach and pulling her fiercely into his arms. “That’s not what I meant, honey! That’s not what I meant! I meant, you won’t physically be able to have it. If you try, it will kill you. It happened before. It will happen again.” Ignoring her protests, he buried his face against the heat on her cheek and wished that he’d drowned in the flood. “I can’t be responsible for another woman’s death. So help me God, I just can’t.”
Toni froze. She heard what he said, but it didn’t make sense. The only thing certain was the true depth of Lane Monday’s fear, because he was coming apart in her arms.
“You're crazy,” she said, and tried to tear herself away. “I'm fine. The baby is due in a couple of months. Everything is, or was, perfect until you showed up. I'm sorry Wyatt frightened you, but you need not worry that I'll make any demands on you. I know you didn’t want me, and I learned to accept that, but I want this baby. It’s mine,” she said, and finally succeeded in pushing him away.
Didn’t want you?
How did our signals get so messed up? he wondered. Yet listening to her talk, he felt that he knew. What he’d meant as caution, she’d felt as rejection. He groaned beneath his breath. It was time for explanations.
“I weighed eleven pounds when I was born,” Lane said.
Wyatt whistled softly between his teeth, eyeing his sister’s belly. “Damn.”
“After my wife, Sharla, got pregnant, they told her she would have to have a cesarean delivery because the baby was going to be so big.”
“Lots of women have those,” Toni said.
“She went into labor at seven and a half months while I was out of town. All sorts of complications happened before they found her. I got to the hospital in time to watch her die in my arms.”
“That’s not your fault,” Toni argued.
But Lane couldn’t—wouldn’t—hear the truth in what she said, even though it was an echo of what the doctor had told him that fateful day. If he’d been a different man...a normal-size man...his wife and baby would not have died, and that was a fact. The memories were making him shake, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He took Toni by the arms and all but shook her as he spoke.
“I stood in her blood, watching her trying to have a baby that was too damned big for her, and you stand here telling me it’s none of my business! Like hell, lady! Like hell!”
“Oh Lord,” Toni whispered, and unintentionally cradled herself again. “I'm sorry, Lane. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”
She inhaled slowly, choosing her words carefully, hoping that she could make him understand. “You don’t realize it, but you aren’t thinking clearly. You're letting something that happened a long time ago color your judgment of an entirely different situation. Look at me! I'm as big as a horse, and as healthy, remember? That won’t happen to me. I'll be fine. You don’t have to worry.”
Lane glared at her. She would be fine! He’d just spilled his guts about something that had haunted him every day of his life since it had happened, and she’d brushed it aside as old news.
“I don’t intend to worry, because I'm not letting you out of my sight until this child is born,” he said. And then he leaned forward, trying not to glare at the woman who was carrying his child. “And maybe not even then.”
Toni’s eyebrows arched. Her chin jutted. And in that moment, Lane knew how much he loved her, and how impossible it would be to make her believe it.
“You will marry me,” he said.
“I will not.”
“I'll find a judge. Being a lawman has its perks, and bypassing waiting periods is one of them. If you want anyone besides me present, you’d better start calling. As soon as the license is in my hands, you're mine, lady.”
“I'm not yours,” Toni retorted. “You didn’t want me, remember? And I won’t marry a man who doesn’t love me!”
“Why the hell not?” Lane shouted back at her. “According to you, you went to bed with one!”
* * *
As it turned out, she had called no one to come and witness her humiliation other than the brother who had caused it all. Wyatt was present in a dishonorable position, relegated to the sidelines by a look from Toni that would have wilted a lesser man’s nerve.
The minister shifted his Bible to a position nearer his eyeglasses and cleared his throat as he began the ceremony. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and woman in holy matrimony. If there be anyone present who objects, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Lane increased the pressure of his hold on Toni’s wrist and stared down into her eyes with a warning that she didn’t dare ignore.
But her chin jutted just the same as she stared at him without blinking, daring him to utter one kind, sentimental word about this farce of a marriage.
Everything floated in and out of Toni’s consciousness. Words were traded with little emotion. Feelings were hidden well-deep inside, where no one could tell how moved she was by the moment, and how desperately she wished that this had been done in the name of love, not duty and fear. She kept reminding herself that this was for the baby’s sake. That now, her child would know its father.
Lane’s hand was strong and firm upon Toni’s arm as he repeated his vows, but his thoughts kept jumping in and out of the past. And then his attention ricocheted sharply from the past to the present as he heard the preacher repeat his question.
“Mr. Monday, do you have a ring?”
Before Lane could answer, he heard Toni take a deep breath, and when she yanked her hand out of his, obviously overwhelmed by the entire ceremony, he took it as an indication that she was ready to bolt. Before he had time to think, the handcuffs that normally hung from his belt were in his hand. For a lawman used to restraints that corralled the unwilling, it had been an instinctive gesture. And considering their history, the move was highly appropriate. He popped one bracelet across her wrist, then calmly fastened the other one to his own.
“It’s symbolic,” he said shortly, ignoring the preacher’s bugged eyes and Toni’s shocked gasp. “Please continue.”
The preacher nodded.
Wyatt started to laugh, but the look of disbelief on Toni’s face and the warning that Lane gave him stifled his mirth.
“In lieu of the traditional giving of rings—” the preacher cast one last glance at the metallic binding upon their wrists “—I now pronounce that you are husband and wife. Mr. Monday, you may kiss your bride.”
Lane exhaled on a slow, weary breath and looked at his new wife.
“You have no right,” Toni said, hating herself for the tears running down her cheeks.
“I do now, Mrs. Monday,” he said softly, and cupped her face with his hands and tasted the tears on her mouth.
Toni froze. Tenderness had no part in this day or the farce that they had enacted. But resisting this man had been impossible for her from the start. Today, in spite of her disappointment that it had all come to this, she could not resist the tug of his lips against her own, and her resolve softened just enough to return the kiss.
“My turn,” Wyatt said, and started to swoop his sister into his arms when the handcuffs binding the pair together clanged against his waist and got in his way. “Do you mind?” he asked Lane, pointing to the cuffs.
Lane shrugged and unlocked the cuff. Toni’s hand came loose at the same moment Wyatt took her in his arms.
“Congratulations, baby sister. You make a beautiful bride.”
“I will hate you forever, Wyatt Hatfield,” Toni muttered, and suffered his kiss.
“No, you won’t,” he said softly, and then turned back to the glowering groom. There was no jest in his voice as he spoke. “Monday, you are now in possession of the only sister we Hatfield boys have. We care for her greatly. If you hurt her, I will kill you, and that is a promise.”
Lane wasn’t impressed by the man or his threat. He saw past it all, but felt compelled to add a warning of his own. “Yeah, and if you ever scare me again like you did yesterday, there won’t be enough left of you to do the deed.”
Wyatt grinned. “Fair enough, brother,” he said with a grin, and reached out to shake Lane’s hand. “Welcome to the family.”
Toni wouldn’t let herself care about the pleasure that she saw on Lane’s face when Wyatt embraced him, or the joy in his eyes when Wyatt had said, “Welcome to the family.” Wyatt didn’t have to live with the man. Her brother hadn’t deliberately deceived someone for the chance to have a baby.
“I'll be leaving now,” Wyatt said. “Take care, Toni. Have a great honeymoon.”
She snorted lightly beneath her breath and then had to suffer the echo of his laughter long after he had gone.
“Where to now?” Toni asked.
“Home. I'm taking you home.”
“To Florida?” Dismay was deep in her voice.
Lane shook his head and gently brushed a curl away from her face. “No, baby. You're the one with roots, not me. I'm taking you back where you belong.”
It was the
first good news that she’d had all day.
* * *
The house echoed with their footsteps as they entered, two silent people caught up in a web of their own doing, uncertain how to fix the situation that they now found themselves in.
Lane stood near the doorway, his gaze never wavering from Toni’s face, gauging the pale line around her mouth against the flush across her cheeks.
“Do you want to lie down?”
She sighed. “Do you want something to eat?”
Lane tried a smile. “I asked you first.”
Toni walked past him on her way to her room. She didn’t have the energy to fight. Not today. Not anymore. She’d just gotten married to the father of her child, and knew that they were the least happy couple she’d ever seen.
Lane watched her go without venturing another word. What could he say that hadn’t already been said? He picked up his bag, and followed.
Toni was sitting on the side of the bed about to pull off her shoes when Lane walked into her room and headed for the closet.
“What do you think you're doing?” she asked.
“Hanging up my clothes.”
“Not in there!” she cried.
“Why not? I see no need in getting out of bed each morning, and then having to go to another room to dress.” He unzipped the bag as if there were no argument and proceeded to unpack.
She’d never felt so helpless or frustrated in her life. It didn’t seem to matter what she said to this man, he just kept bulldozing his way through her business as if she weren’t there.
“You're not sleeping in here, either,” she said, and resisted the urge to stomp her feet. They were too swollen for fits of pique.
“Yes, I am,” Lane said. “This is marriage, Toni, not a horse trade where one tries to outdo the other.” He dropped his bag and sat down beside her. “It may have happened for all the wrong reasons, but it’s not going to continue that way. I made love to you because I wanted to, not because you think you talked me into it. All you did by getting pregnant was give me a damned good reason to break an old promise I’d made to myself. The mistake was not in making love. My mistake was that I did not take precautions with you. If I had been as responsible as you tried to be, this might not have happened to you.”