by Cara Colter
“To what?” Dannie said innocently. “He hasn’t asked me anything yet.”
Dannie smiled at Melanie, allowed herself to feel the tenderness of the flamingos planted in a declaration of love for her. When she had challenged Joshua to woo her, without great displays of wealth and power, nothing could have prepared her for how that man rose to a challenge!
The only exception she had made to her proviso about his using his wealth was plane tickets. Even she had to admit that it was pretty hard to woo someone unless you saw them.
So, he flew to Toronto, and he flew her to Vancouver, or they met in Calgary to have time with Jared and the Morgans.
Melanie was right. Her brother was crazy, but in the most phenomenal way. Never had a woman been wooed the way Danielle Springer was being wooed.
While the weather had still been good, they had attended rock-climbing and canoeing schools together. To his consternation, Dannie insisted on paying her own tuition. She asked him to donate his offering to the classes Wilderness Ways offered to the Boys & Girls Club.
He had found a guitar—he claimed it had been given to him, so that it was still within her rules of wooing—and sang to her outside his sister’s house. He neither knew how to play or how to sing. Listening to him murder a love song had been more endearing than him offering to take her to a concert in Vancouver, which she had said no to, firmly, when he had flashed the very expensive tickets in front of her.
He had made her a cedar chest with his own hands, when she had refused the one he had wanted to buy for her after she had admired it at an antique store they had been browsing through. He didn’t know how to build anymore than he knew how to sing, the chest a lopsided testament to his love.
He was slowly filling it with treasures, not a single one that money could buy. The chest held his mother’s wedding ring and his grandmother’s handmade lace. It held a bronzed baby shoe—his—and a baby picture of Jared. He was giving her his history.
He had made her a locket to replace the one she had thrown away, only his was made out of paper maché and contained his thumb print. She had worn it until it threatened to disintegrate, and then she had put it in the chest with her other treasures.
He had baked her cookies shaped like haphazard hearts and that had tasted strongly of baking soda. One of their most romantic evenings had been over his home-cooked spaghetti, perfecting the art of eating the same noodle, both of them sucking one end of it until their lips met in the middle.
He had sent her dental floss, special delivery, claiming he was a reformed man.
“Is that used?” Melanie had asked, horrified when Danielle had opened the package.
“Never mind,” Danielle had said, tucking the envelope in her chest of treasures. “I will show it to my children one day. I will say, ‘Your father gave me plaque.’”
“You’re as disgusting as him,” Melanie griped. “What children? Has he asked you?”
“Not yet.”
“He better get on with it. I’m reporting him to the post office if he sends anything else like that.”
When he flew in for the weekends, he taught her how to fish on a little canal near Melanie and Ryan’s house, and when it froze over, he taught her how to skate. They never caught a single fish, though they caught a frog for Jared, and then had to figure out how to get it to him. Joshua ended up chartering a plane so he didn’t have to smuggle the little green creature through airport security.
Dannie never was able to skate without him holding her up, and it just didn’t matter. They went for long walks and on star-gazing expeditions. When they passed some children with kittens in a box outside a grocery store, under a huge sign that said Free, he picked out the cutest one for her.
She named it Rhapsody.
When he flew her to Vancouver, she brought him terrible poems that she had written herself, and cooked him disastrous meals. She admired the flowers he was growing for her on his terrace, since he wasn’t allowed to buy her anything. They rode the Skytrain, and explored Stanley Park. They spent evenings in the Jacuzzi, in bathing suits.
When they went to Calgary they went on picnics with the Morgans and rode bicycles with Jared on the network of trails. They threw baseballs in the backyard and built a roof on the tree platform so they could sleep out there at night. Joshua proved again he was no builder. That roof leaked like a sieve, which only added to the fun!
They took Jared to the public pools that had waves and waterslides, and they hung out at the libraries that offered story time. They caught bugs for his frog, Simon, and took the golden retriever to obedience class.
Joshua and Jared took ski lessons at the Olympic Park, and she perfected the art of drinking hot chocolate in the ski lodge.
“There he is,” Melanie said, looking past the flamingos. She snorted with affection. “The great playboy arrives. If he doesn’t ask you this weekend, I’m disowning him.”
“You said that last weekend,” Dannie reminded her.
“The difference is this weekend I mean it.”
“Look, Melanie,” Dannie said softly, “he brought you a surprise.”
Joshua was getting out of a small sports car, obviously a rental, trying to convince an eight-foot-long toboggan to get out with him. And then a little boy tumbled out of the front seat.
“Ohmygod,” Melanie said, and turned wide tear-filled eyes to Dannie. “Is that my nephew?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but went out the front door in her sock feet, tripping over pink flamingos in her haste to meet the little boy who looked just like her brother had once looked.
Every day they spent together seemed magical, but that one more so. They took the kids tobogganing, Susie had an instant case of hero-worship for her older cousin.
When they got home, Melanie took the kids under her wing, then handed her brother an envelope. “Enough’s enough,” she said sternly. “I’ll mind the children.”
Joshua opened the envelope. Inside it was a map. Danielle could hardly look at him, suddenly shy, wondering if he, too remembered the last time someone had offered to mind the children for them.
They followed the map outside of the city, through the ever deepening darkness and the countryside to a little cabin.
It was inside the cabin that Dannie realized he was in on it. How else could it be completely stocked with tinned spaghetti and boxed cake mix?
He made her a dinner, and then as the fire roared in the stone hearth, he poured the cake mix into a pot, mixed it with water, and cooked it over the fire.
“I don’t want any of that,” she said.
“Come on. You’re just way too skinny.”
It was true, but for the first time in her life, she wasn’t skinny on purpose. She was skinny because she was so happy there was not a single space in her that food could fill.
Tonight, she thought, looking through the door to the bedroom of the tiny cabin. Tonight would be the night. She leaned forward and kissed him.
Normally he would have kissed her back, but tonight he didn’t.
“I can’t do it anymore,” he said. “I can’t kiss you and not have you.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m wooed. Let’s go to bed.”
“Ah, no.”
“What do you mean, no?” she asked stunned.
“Dannie, that’s not how an old-fashioned wooing ends.”
“It isn’t?”
“No,” he said and got down on one knee in front of her. “It ends like this.” He freed a ring box stuck in his pocket. “Dannie, will you marry me? Will you be mine forever? Will you have my children and be a part of the family that includes my son? And my niece and nephew?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Then he kissed her, but when she tried to get him into that bedroom he wouldn’t allow it.
“Nope. You have to wait until the wedding night.”
“I do?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me the fried cake,” she said glumly. She shared the s
poon with him. It didn’t taste half bad.
“Don’t you want to see what’s in the box?” he teased.
She’d actually forgotten to look at the ring. The truth was the ring did not mean anything to her. How could it compare to the ring he’d made her out of tinfoil and glue that was in her box of treasures? How could it have the same value as these wonderful days of wooing? Oh, she was going to miss this.
Of course, being married meant it was all going to be replaced. With something better. Much better. She realized she was starved for him. For more of him. For his body and for his tongue and for his lips and for his hands all over her.
Her eyes skittered to that bedroom door again. Was he really going to make her wait?
“Open it,” he insisted handing her the box.
The lid was very hard to pry open. When she did get it open, she saw why. Instead of a ring, there was a piece of paper folded up to fit in there. Carefully, she unfolded it, tried to understand the legal terms printed on it.
Finally, she got it. Joshua had given her the deed to Moose Lake Lodge.
“I cannot imagine not having you as a full partner in every single thing I do, my confidante, my equal. This is yours, Dannie, to run as you see fit.”
She was smiling through her tears.
“How long is it going to take you to plan a wedding?” he asked. “I want you to have it all. The dress, the flower girls, the cathedral, the—”
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t want any of that. That’s all about a wedding, and nothing about a marriage.” She began to blush. “Joshua, I can’t wait much longer.”
“For what?” he said with evil knowing.
“You know.”
“Tell me.”
So she whispered her secret longings in his ear.
“You’re right,” he said. “I think we need to do something fast. My honor is at stake. What do you have in mind, then?”
“A quick civil ceremony. As soon as we can get the documents in place.”
He laughed. “I forgot you already have a dress.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m marrying you in a snowsuit so that we can go straight to our honeymoon.”
“You’ve given that some thought?” he asked, raising a wicked eyebrow at her.
“I’m afraid I have,” she confessed, blushing. “I want to have our honeymoon at Moose Lake Lodge at the honeymoon cabin.”
“It’s snowing up there!” he said.
She smiled. She could not think of one thing—not one—that she would love better than being snowbound in a little cabin with him.
“I know,” she said happily. “I know.”
“I don’t even know how you get to the cabin in the winter. I’m not canoeing you across the lake in the snow!”
“Joshua?”
“Yes?”
“I trust you to think of something.” She paused, and whispered, “I trust you.”
“You wouldn’t if you knew the perverted thoughts I was having about your toes.”
But she saw the words were her gift to him. The one he needed and wanted more than any other. She put her head on his shoulder and found the warmth of his hand.
“I trust you,” she whispered again. “With my forever after.”
EPILOGUE
JOSHUA COLE stood behind Angel’s Rest at Moose Lake Lodge. It was a rare moment alone, and the sounds of summer—a vigorous game of football, laughter, the shouts of children down on the beach—drifted up to him.
He held a rose to plant and a spade, and he looked for the perfect place in the rugged garden that had been started there. Four years had passed since he had first laid eyes on this place, and first acknowledged the stirrings of his own heart.
Four years had not changed much about Moose Lake Lodge. It remained stable while all around it changed.
Dannie had an innate sense for what the world wanted: a family place, a home away from home, a place basically untouched by modern conveniences, by technology, by all those things like TV sets and computers that put distance between people who shared the same homes.
Moose Lake Lodge had become Sun’s first family resort. It was not a runaway financial success, but it stood for something way more important than financial success. It was his favorite of all the Sun resorts.
“Susie, Susie Blue-Toes.”
His son, Jared, now eleven, was down there tormenting his niece, refusing her command to be called Susan now that she had reached the mature age of eight. His nephew, Jake, now four, had the same contempt for the new baby that his sister had once had for him. Sally and Michael managed the place, their three grandchildren had come to live here with them since the death of Sally and Michael’s daughter, Darlene, in the spring.
Moose Lake Lodge seemed a natural place for those children, since they had been able to spend so much time here with their mother. The only real change Sun had ever made to the lodge was to make Angel’s Rest completely wheelchair accessible, so that Darlene could spend her last few summers here.
In the folds of what had become a family.
His son, Jared, and the Morgans, came every year for the whole summer. Joshua never stopped learning from the Morgans’ generosity of spirit, from how they had included him in their lives without a moment’s pause or hesitation. From them he had learned that love expanded to include; if it contracted to exclude it was no longer love.
Melanie and Ryan had fallen in love with Moose Lake Lodge from their first visit. They were entrenched in the cabin called Piper’s Hollow for every long weekend and every summer. Susie and Jake acted as if they owned the whole place.
No one wanted a pool. Or a new wharf. Or jet skis. No one wanted new furniture or an outdoor bar.
No one who came here wanted anything to change.
This summer was the baby’s first year here. Joshua had worried his daughter, only four months old, was too young for cold nights and onslaughts of mosquitoes, for late nights around the campfire, for noisy children all wanting to hold her. Dannie had laughed at him.
Dannie, who had come into her own in ways he had not even imagined a woman could come into her own: shining with beauty and light, with laughter and compassion. Somehow Dannie was always at the center of all this love, the spokes around which the wheel turned.
As he thought of her, he heard her shout, turned for a moment from the flower bed, to see if he could catch a glimpse of her.
And there she was, hair flying, feet bare, slender and strong, those long legs flashing in the sun, with every kid in the place trying to catch her and wrest that football from her.
Sometimes he wished her curves back. He remembered her lush full figure when he had first met her.
But she said that once a woman had known love, chocolate just didn’t do it anymore. Only four months after the baby, she was back to her normal self.
He turned again to the flower garden that Sally had just planted in Darlene’s memory and found an empty place in the rich dark soil. He got down on his hands and knees and began to dig, the sounds of shouting and laughter like music in the background.
Every life, he thought, had a period of Camelot in it, a time overflowing with youth and energy, a time that shimmered with creation and abundance and love.
Joshua had experienced that in his boyhood, and thought he’d lost his chance to have it again, for good, when he had given up Jared.
He’d chased it, tried to manufacture its feeling through the Sun resorts.
But in the end Camelot came to those who did not chase it. It came through grace.
Joshua put the rose in the hole he had made in the ground, tenderly patted the dirt back into place around it, sat back on his heels and admired the buds that promised pure white blooms. To get to Camelot, an ordinary man had to become a knight, to ride into the unknown with only one weapon: a brave heart.
A heart that had faith that all would be good in the end, even if there was plenty of evidence to the contrary.
A heart that that kn
ew a man could not always trust circumstances would go his way, but if he was true, he would always be able to trust himself to deal with those circumstances.
In Camelot, there was only one truth. Money did not heal wounds. Nor did possessions. The biggest lie of all was that time did.
No, here in Camelot, Joshua found comfort in the greatest truth of all: love healed all wounds.
When a man’s world burned down and there was nothing left, out of the ashes of despair and hurt and fear, love grew roses.
“Dad-O.” The voice drifted up the hill, the name his son Jared had chosen to call him. “Are you coming? Our team needs you.”
Joshua gave the rose one final pat, got to his feet, looked across the lake to where a little cabin, Love’s Rhapsody, waited. It would probably have to wait awhile yet for them to return there, but just looking at it, he remembered.
Chasing Dannie. Kissing her toes until they were both breathless with wanting. Fusing together to create the boundless miracle that was life.
“Dad-O!” Jared had an eleven-year-old’s impatience. And he would never say what he really meant. That he was anxious to spend every second he could with his father before summer ended.
“Coming,” Joshua called, and went down the creaking old boardwalk stairs, two at a time, to a world that was beyond anything he could have ever dreamed of for himself. To a world that was better than any man had a right to dream of for himself.
It was a world that had waited for him when he was lost. Sometimes he called it Camelot.
But he knew its real name was Love.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3261-1
HIRED: NANNY BRIDE
First North American Publication 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Cara Colter.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.