The Bride Said, Finally! (The Lockharts of Texas)

by Thacker, Cathy Gillen

  Chapter Eleven

  Jake had just parked in front of the old carpet-and-tile warehouse early Monday morning and cut the motor on his truck, when the convoy of three vehicles pulled in behind him and parked, too. Seconds later, Meg, Dani and Kelsey Lockhart all emerged from the drivers’ seats, slammed their doors, and marched toward him purposefully. Meg in her nurse’s uniform, Kelsey in ranch gear and Dani in a sophisticated linen pantsuit.

  Muttering his own displeasure beneath his breath, Jake left his briefcase on the seat beside him, grabbed the travel mug of coffee he’d brought with him, and emerged from his vehicle, as well. He had only to look at the three Lockhart women’s faces to know they were about to give him heck, whether he liked it or not. Jake glanced at his watch, noting it would be at least another fifteen minutes before the real-estate agent showed up. Plenty of time to get this dressing-down over with once and for all.

  Jake drank his coffee in a leisurely manner meant to annoy. Since he knew why they were there, he said before they could get a word in edgewise, “You needn’t worry. Jenna is still going to get her own factory and mass-produced clothing line. I always honor my business obligations.”

  Meg folded her arms in front of her and regarded him like a teacher facing a habitually truant student. “That’s good to know,” she volleyed back. “Now if only we could say the same about your personal ones.”

  Here they go again, Jake thought, swearing silently. Questioning his judgment. Trying to make him feel like he didn’t know what he was doing. When was it ever going to end? First his parents, then Jenna, and now her sisters, too!

  “You asked her to marry you, Jake,” Dani reminded him.

  “Yes, I did,” Jake said bitterly. “And Jenna said yes. Not once. But twice.” He narrowed his eyes, recalling the events that had followed. “And then she called it off the moment things got difficult, just like before.”

  Kelsey planted her cowgirl heels firmly on the pavement beneath her feet and smiled tightly at him. “Maybe the lipstick on your collar had something to do with that.”

  Jake suddenly knew what it was like to deal with a disapproving family. Then again, Jenna’s sisters had warned him. If he hurt her, he would have the three of them to contend with. The only surprise was that Dani’s new husband, Beau Chamberlain, wasn’t there, too.

  “Look, pleasant as this has been,” Jake said, hoping to cut the impromptu confrontation short, “the real-estate agent for this place is going to be here any minute with the papers.”

  Dani shook her head. “Beau took care of that. Turns out she is a big fan of his movies. The two of them are having coffee at Isabel’s bakery as we speak. She won’t be out here until we give the go-ahead. And right now we’re not finished with you, cowboy.”

  If his heart hadn’t been aching so, it would have been funny.

  Meg’s expression softened abruptly. “We thought the six of you—if you count Clara, Buster and Miss Kitty—were going to be a family, Jake.”

  Jake had thought so, too. He and Alex had both been counting on it.

  “But this is not what families do,” Kelsey put in, picking up where Meg had left off. “Families stick together and don’t let just anyone break herd.”

  Dani shook her head disapprovingly. “We saw the way you let your parents treat her. Not just way back when you were both still kids, but last week at her shop and at the party at their ranch. By not making a big show of welcoming Jenna instead of Melinda to that party, they treated Jenna like she’s not good enough for you and Alex, and never will be.”

  That, Jake thought, even as he rankled at the way Jenna had been treated, had not been his decision. “As for what happened at the shop, Jenna wanted to deal with my mother on her own,” he informed Jenna’s sisters curtly. And he’d thought she, as a responsible adult, should have the opportunity to handle that difficult situation as she saw fit. It hadn’t been the way he had wanted to handle the situation, true. But he hated being second-guessed himself, so he had put his own reservations aside, trusted in Jenna the way he wanted her to trust in him, and let her do what she felt best. Only, he thought grimly, to be derided for that, too. “I had no idea Melinda was going to be there that morning, too.”

  “Okay, we’ll let you off the hook for that. What about the party?”

  “I plead guilty. I should have taken Jenna over to speak with them the moment we arrived, but I didn’t. Later, when I wanted her to talk with them before we left, she refused—probably because she was planning to break up with me again.”

  “Can you blame her?” Kelsey put in furiously.

  “For running out on me the moment the going got tough? Yeah, I sure can.” Jake wanted a love that would stand up to the pressures life presented, not collapse under the weight of them.

  Meg sighed. “Look. There’s no doubt she has handled your parents, and others like them, in the past and could do it again if necessary. The question is, Jake, should she have to?”

  Jake sighed. There was no doubt that had been a mistake, letting Jenna meet with his mother and Melinda alone. But there was no point lamenting what couldn’t be changed. Like it or not, they had to forget about it and move on. “Look, as much as I hate to admit it, the attitude of my parents—particularly my mother—is not likely to change,” Jake said tiredly. The Remingtons would always want him to marry someone from the same monied background—it was the way they had been brought up.

  Dani lifted a disapproving brow. “Then maybe your attitude should, cowboy.”

  Kelsey nodded, and joined in. “Jenna told us about the way your parents blackmailed you into staying away from her when you tried to elope, years ago. To a point we’re even grateful. It was selfish, but we needed Jenna with us back then, we were all so devastated by the loss of our parents.”

  Meg finished, “We understand you were little more than a kid yourself, that you thought you were being noble, walking away from her the way you did. You didn’t want social services to use your elopement as proof of our inability to be on our own. But you’re not a kid anymore, Jake. And we are no longer in jeopardy. And what you did to her Saturday night at that party, abandoning her and going off with your ex-wife, was not noble.”

  “Whether or not she agrees—in retrospect—with what I did, Jenna knows why I did it. The two of us discussed it in depth on the dance floor before I acted.” And as far as Jake was concerned that should be enough. “And you ladies are forgetting something.” Jake angled a thumb at his chest. “I didn’t call it quits this time around. Jenna did. As soon as the going got difficult—and let’s face it, life will always be difficult—Jenna told me I was naive to think this was ever going to work out in the long run, and she bolted.”

  She had also accused him of wanting to love her only in secret, and damn it all, she had to know that wasn’t true! From the beginning, Jake had wanted a heck of a lot more than a backstreet affair with Jenna. He had wanted it all—marriage, family, kids, pets—the whole shebang.

  “So what?” Dani spouted right back. “You’ve got two legs. Go after her! Make her see the error of her ways.”

  As if it were that easy to make everything right again, Jake thought bad-temperedly. Jenna was the one who had taken one look at the lipstick on his collar and jumped to all sorts of unfair conclusions. She was the one who had accused him of using poor judgment on everything from buying Buster and Miss Kitty at the same time to the way he handled his ex-wife and his daughter. She was the one who had accused him of being ready to sacrifice their relationship again for the sake of other people when all he’d been trying to do was take charge of the situation. He’d had to force Melinda to play out her hand, whatever it was, so he would know how to deal with her and get her out of their lives, once and for all. So that he could marry Jenna! And his plan to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, had worked like a charm! He had smoked out Riccardo and revealed Melinda’s true intentions. As well as gotten Melinda and the count together—permanently, this time.

>   But was Jenna grateful for the way he had accurately sized up the situation and his ex-wife? Jake fumed as he finished the rest of his coffee. Was Jenna grateful that he had been ready and willing to do whatever was necessary to clear the way for them to marry—even if it was a little unorthodox and meant temporarily playing one of Melinda’s games? Was she happy he had decided to forget about the hurts of the past, charged back into her life, and done everything and anything to make her his again? No. Instead, Jenna had taken his hell-for-leather pursuit of her as the ultimate proof of their unsuitability and his lack of judgment. Instead, she had used the fact he had done his best to keep her away from his parents—and anyone and anything else that might keep them apart—as the ultimate proof that he was somehow ashamed of her. That he had never really loved her and never would.

  And Jake didn’t know how to counter that. Not after all he had done to show her how much he did love her. Not after all he had done to win her back. She was the one who didn’t believe in them, he thought furiously. Jenna was the one who wouldn’t give them another chance. Not him.

  “It’s not that simple,” Jake said gruffly, as all three of Jenna’s sisters continued to glower at him with a mixture of exasperation, disapproval and impatience.

  Dani—still glowing with her own newly married happiness and pregnancy—scowled at him contemplatively. “It could be, if you love her even half as much as she still loves you.”

  Jake wished that were the case.

  Meg leaned toward him urgently. “Bottom line, Jake, there’s still a slim chance she’ll take you back, but only if she’s convinced the two of you have more than a backstreet, fly-by-night love affair this time, and that you really mean it when you say you want to marry her.”

  Kelsey nodded, fully agreeing with her two sisters. She gave Jake a sisterly slap on the arm. “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, cowboy, if you’re going to make this situation right again. Meanwhile—” Kelsey straightened the brim of her cowgirl hat purposefully “—we’ve got our own lives to live.”

  The Lockhart sisters left, as swiftly as they had arrived. His temper soaring, Jake watched them go. He still felt maligned as hell, and yet…He paused. Were the Lockhart women right? Was there still a slim chance? Or had he blown it all with his decisive, autocratic actions? Jake exhaled wearily as he climbed back into his truck. There was only one way to find out. But first, he thought, his lips compressing grimly, there was something he had to do. Something that should have been done years ago.

  JENNA HADN’T HAD a Monday this bad in a very long time. Of course, that was not surprising considering the weekend she’d had, Jenna admitted as she brought out a beaded-satin wedding gown for a final fitting and hung it on an overhead hook. One minute she’d thought she had everything she had ever wanted, only to realize her romance with Jake was an illusion, and a heartbreaking one at that.

  Sighing, Jenna continued bustling around the back of her shop, getting ready for her two-o’clock appointment with the fussiest bride west of the Pecos. Thank heaven it was Wendy Smith’s last appointment. Or what she hoped was Wendy Smith’s last appointment. With Wendy, you were never sure. She had already selected and unselected twelve different veils to go with her dress. Fortunately, she was a little firmer on the dream dress that Jenna had custom-designed for her, a process that had taken several months. Even so, Jenna wouldn’t have been surprised to see Wendy change her mind at the last minute on that, too.

  At the front of the shop a door opened and closed. A low murmur of voices followed as Raelynn greeted whoever had come in. “Don’t you-all look pretty today!” Raelynn said.

  Then a striped gray-and-white kitten scampered in.

  Followed by a fluffy golden blur, racing by in a tangle of fast-moving legs and a wildly wagging tail. Alex came next, peeking her head around the door of the fitting room. “Buster! Miss Kitty! You come back here!” Alex dashed in, followed swiftly by Clara.

  “You two do look pretty today,” Jenna echoed Raelynn’s compliment. Alex had on the alphabet dress Jenna had made for her. Clara was wearing a neatly tailored-blue denim dress, her trademark red bandana tied jauntily around her neck. Both wore cowgirl hats and boots.

  “Thanks.” Clara smiled as she scooped up a squirming Buster, while Alex took charge of the more docile, for the moment anyway, Miss Kitty. “Alex insisted. She also suggested I buy my dress for Nathan James’s upcoming christening here.”

  “I’d be honored to make a dress for you for your grandson’s christening. When is it?”

  “In three months or so.”

  “That gives us plenty of time, then.”

  “For that. Other things are a mite more urgent,” Clara drawled, giving Jenna a significant look.

  Jenna flushed self-consciously as Alex edged closer. Obviously, she was about to get the one-two punch here.

  Still cradling Miss Kitty, Alex sat down on the edge of the pedestal in front of the three-way mirror. “My Mommy went back to Italy to get married to the count, and Daddy says that’s good because he thinks Mommy will be happy now.”

  Jenna smiled and sat down next to Alex.

  “Mommy also wants me to be the flower girl at the wedding and Daddy says I can do it if I want to but I gotta wear a dress—one Mommy picks out.” Alex let out a big sigh as Miss Kitty leapt from Alex’s lap to Jenna’s. Purring, the kitten rubbed her back against Jenna’s middle. “But he thinks it would be really nice if I did that,” Alex chattered on, leaning over to pet Miss Kitty, “so I said okay, on account of I don’t got to go to Italy to live. I can still live here in Laramie.”

  Noting that Alex was half on her lap, too, Jenna put her arm around her. “I’m sure that will make your mommy very happy.”

  Alex beamed, as if she thought so, too. She tilted her head to the side. “Were you ever a flower girl?”

  “Yes, I was,” Jenna said. “At a friend’s wedding, a long time ago. It was fun. You’ll have a good time.”

  “That’s what Daddy says.” Alex nudged closer. “Daddy also told me you don’t want to go on dates with him no more.”

  “Anymore,” Jenna corrected absently, as she tightened her arm around Alex’s shoulders and held her all the closer. And that wasn’t exactly true. She did still want to go on dates with Jake. She did still want to marry him, more than ever. She just couldn’t bear to be loved in private and shunned in public any longer. She just couldn’t bear to live her life, waiting for the next family catastrophe and resulting noble but ultimately heartbreaking action of Jake’s that would end up ripping them apart. She was tired of being excluded and feeling like she wasn’t good enough. She was tired of feeling like the only time she and Jake could really love each other—freely and without reservation—was on the sly. She wanted a man who would love her enough to brave even the most horrendous scorn and disapproval. She wanted a man who would fight for them no matter what, and who would include her—not exclude her—in that struggle to build a life together. Not just for now, or when it was convenient, but forever. And that just wasn’t Jake, Jenna thought sadly. Jake hated familial discord and Jenna brought a double dose to his life.

  Reading Jenna’s expression, Alex frowned, looking all the more worried and distressed. She watched as Buster squirmed to get down until Clara released him, and then trotted over to look at his reflection in the mirror. “Does this mean we won’t see you anymore?” Alex asked, as Miss Kitty bounded off Jenna’s lap and went over to join Buster.

  As much as Jenna wanted to protect Alex, she couldn’t. “Probably not as much as before,” she said honestly, “although we will see each other just because we all still live in Laramie.”

  “I don’t mean like that,” Alex protested emotionally, hurt welling in her eyes. “I mean like before. Does this mean you won’t come out to the ranch and have tea parties and stuff with me?”

  Jenna swallowed around the ache in her throat, and replied gently, “You can still have tea parties with your daddy and Clara an
d your new friends, like my nephew Jeremy.”

  Alex’s chin quivered. She dashed at the moisture seeping from her eyes with the back of her hand. “It won’t be the same without you.”

  No kidding, Jenna thought, doing her best to hold back her own tears. “You and Clara can come by my shop any time you want. The three of us could always have a tea party here, if your daddy says it is okay.”

  Alex gave Jenna another brokenhearted look and didn’t reply. Jenna knew Alex felt abandoned. First by Melinda, and now by her.

  “Honey, why don’t you take Miss Kitty out to see Raelynn?” Clara said gently, scooping up the kitten and putting her in Alex’s arms, “so I can talk to Jenna a minute?”

  “’Kay.” Looking as if she hoped Clara would miraculously fix everything she hadn’t been able to, Alex stood and kissed Jenna’s cheek. She left, Miss Kitty still cradled in her arms.

  Clara closed the door after Alex, ensuring their privacy, then sat down on the dressmaker’s pedestal, next to Jenna, and reached over to pet an increasingly concerned Buster, who sat at Jenna’s feet. “Alex isn’t the only one who misses you, you know,” Clara said gently. “Jake needs you, too, even if he’s too mule-headed at the moment to admit it.”

  Jenna stood and paced the room.

  “Jake’s a very private person, Jenna. You know that. He doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. The fact he romanced you at all means an incredible amount.”

  Jenna wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe the two of them had shared something special. But bitter experience had shown her differently. Edgy, upset, Jenna leaned against the wall. “Years ago, he let his parents come between us, and he never explained to me why he left—he just did what he thought was best for me, with no thought to what I might have wanted to do. Which would have been, I’m embarrassed to say, wait a few more weeks until I was eighteen and legally of age and then run off and get married, come back and live close to my sisters. But Jake didn’t give me that option. Instead he walked away from me completely for over six years. Then he came back and in one fell swoop offered me everything I’d ever dreamed about, and said he wanted to try again. And like a fool, I put my fears about being abandoned aside, and said okay.” Tears of frustration stung Jenna’s eyes.