Yesterday's Embers

by Deborah Raney

  “Well…what, then?”

  “We could just get wedding bands. Thin silver bands.”

  The tightness in his chest eased a little. He wasn’t sure where two thousand bucks would come from. “Is that what you want?”

  She bent and perused the jewelry case again. “I thought I wanted a diamond, but”—she tossed her head in the direction of the jewelry store—“that’s a lot of money. I can think of other things I’d rather spend it on.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged, looking sheepish. “Well, it’s not exactly my money to spend.”

  He put an arm around her waist and steered her toward the front door. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee and talk some things through.”

  She raised a questioning brow at him and trailed him out to the sidewalk. A Saturday’s worth of vehicles lined Santa Fe in front of the jewelry store. He shaded his eyes and looked across the street. “Isn’t there a coffee shop in the next block?”

  She nodded and led the way south. A few minutes later they had pretzels on order, and she was sipping some fancy coffee drink while he nursed a mug of black brew that didn’t taste nearly as good as the Folgers he usually drank. Not to mention he could have bought three pounds of coffee beans for what he’d paid for their drinks.

  Mickey rearranged her napkin under her coffee and angled her body toward him.

  Pulling out the small notebook he kept in his back pocket, he repositioned his chair and leaned against the wall. “Let’s work out some details, okay?”

  Her eyes lit and she nodded like an eager puppy.

  He slipped a ballpoint pen from his front pocket and jotted the words “wedding date” across the top of the narrow page.

  She leaned across the table to read them.

  “And the sooner the better.” He touched her nose.

  “Well…first we need to talk about where, and how many people, and what all we have to do before we can even have a wedding.”

  “Okay, where?” He made a row of Ws down the side of the paper, turning the first one into Where?

  “St. Mary’s?” She hunched up her shoulders as if she expected him to challenge that.

  He rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t have to…convert, would I? If we got married in your church?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I guess we could ask Rick.”

  “Yeah, about that…” They’d planned to stop off at her brother’s after they bought the rings to announce their engagement and reintroduce Doug to the brothers—Rick and Tony, anyway. Alex had called her cell phone on the way to Salina to say he couldn’t make it. From her end of the conversation Doug could tell that Alex Valdez knew something was up, and he was trying to get it out of her. She just kept saying, “Rick and Tony can tell you all about it.”

  Doug had grown up knowing who the Valdez brothers were. Who didn’t know the stars of the basketball and baseball teams? Rick still held some records at Clayburn High, Doug thought. But he doubted the brothers remembered him. Rick and Tony were out of high school by the time he got there, and Alex had been a senior when Doug was a freshman.

  Still, he was more than a little nervous to meet Mickey’s older brothers again under these circumstances. Mickey had told him she thought her brothers suspected the reason they were coming, but she wanted to keep them guessing.

  “You don’t think they’re planning to kill me or anything, do you?”

  She gave him a playful slug. “Quit worrying. They’re going to love you as much as I do.”

  But he thought Mickey looked a little worried herself.

  “Yeah, well, I guess we’ll find out,” he said.

  She ignored him and went back to the topic of his conversion. “Maybe we can ask Angie about St. Mary’s. She grew up there. She’d know. And she’s a good Catholic.”

  He broached a subject they should have talked about long ago. “I don’t think I could convert, Mick. And not the kids, for sure. Don’t you guys have to promise to raise your kids in the church?”

  “It’s not really my church…not anymore. And I wouldn’t ask you to, Doug. Convert, I mean. Any of you. I-I guess I’m not a very good Catholic.”

  He cocked his head. “What’s with the ‘good Catholic’ stuff all of a sudden?” Mickey had seemed to like the worship service when she’d gone to church with him and the kids. She’d always talked about God like she knew Him, had a relationship with Him. That was all that mattered to Doug. He didn’t care much about denominations. That was why he and Kaye had started going to Community Christian. It hadn’t made Harriet too happy, but Kaye put her foot down, and Harriet eventually quit trying to get them back to the First Baptist church Kaye grew up in.

  Mickey took a sip of her coffee, obviously a diversion tactic. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m just thinking my brothers might not be too happy if I don’t get married in the Church.”

  “They might not be too happy you’re marrying a widower with five kids, either.”

  Her slow nod told him she agreed.

  The waitress brought their pretzels and Doug squeezed mustard into the paper basket and took a bite before looking at the list again. “Okay, let’s move to something else for now.” He scooted the basket to one side and filled in the other Ws on the paper. Who, What, When. “Hey, here’s something we can fill in.” Beside Who, he wrote Doug DeVore and Mickey Valdez. “And this…” He wrote the word wedding beside What.

  “Yay! We’re making progress!” She clapped loud enough to make the elderly women at the booth across the coffee shop turn to stare.

  Laughing, he folded his hands over hers and eased them to the table. “Shhh!”

  She looked embarrassed, but the twinkle remained in her eyes.

  He dipped a hunk of pretzel in mustard and popped it in his mouth. “Okay, here’s one.” He hated to ruin the mood, but if he wanted to marry this woman, they had to get some things ironed out. “Where are we going to live?”

  “Your house.” She pointed to his list. “Write it down.”

  He let the ballpoint hover over the paper. “You’re sure about that? You’ve been there, Mickey. You know what you’d be getting into.”

  “Well, sorry, but you guys aren’t going to fit in my house. Unless you want to sleep in the garage.”

  “Be serious.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Maybe I am.”

  He scooted his chair back from the table and leveled a stern look at her. “Mickey, I don’t want you to regret this.”

  Her expression turned serious. “Okay. I’ll admit I’d like…I wish we could find a house in town together. But we don’t have to do that right now, do we? We can live at your place for a while…while we look.”

  “Fair enough.” She’d said in town. Did he dare tell her he and Kaye had scrimped and saved to buy the farm he’d grown up on? He couldn’t imagine ever leaving there. But now wasn’t the time to bring that up.

  She jabbed at the list. “Write it down.”

  He jotted my house at the bottom of the list and clicked the pen off.

  But she nabbed it out of his hand, clicked it back on, and crossed out my. In its place she wrote OUR in big capital letters.

  His chest swelled with warmth, and he reached across the table and ran a finger down the smooth plane of her cheek. “I love you.”

  Smiling, she reached to dab at the corner of his mouth with her napkin. “Mustard,” she explained, kissing her fingers and transferring her kiss to the spot she’d just wiped.

  “What would I do without you?” He made his voice light, but her simple action moved him more than he let on. In the same way Kaye had completed him, Mickey was the missing piece of his life. He’d always been a leader, a man’s man. But in so many ways, he needed somebody to take care of him. Someone to baby him a little. Mickey did that. And he loved her for it. He longed for the day they were married.

  “Okay, what’s next?” Mickey poised the pen over their list again. “I know.” She added another W to the lis
t and turned it into Why.

  “Why?”

  She nodded, then scratched something on the list. When she was finished, she rotated the paper and pushed it over to his side of the table.

  Because I love you, it said.

  That did it. “Let’s get married.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “I thought that was the plan.”

  “No. I mean now. Right now. Let’s go find a justice of the peace…or whatever it takes.” He stabbed at the list. “None of this stuff matters, Mickey. If we try to solve all these questions, we’ll still be trying to work out details a year from now. Let’s just do it.”

  “Doug…” A deer-in-the-headlights look glazed her eyes. “You can’t just get married on a…a whim.”

  “It’s not on a whim. We’ve talked it out. We’d just be skipping all the stupid stuff. The expensive stuff—” He held up a hand. “And don’t worry, I don’t mean the ring. I want you to have a ring. We’ll go back and get it today.” He took her hand and caressed her fingers. “But do we really need a big, fancy wedding? Especially if it’s going to cause trouble with your brothers and the Church…?”

  He waited for her to respond, trying to read her thoughts in her expression.

  “I don’t know, Doug.” She still looked a little shell-shocked. “You don’t mean ‘today’ literally, I hope.”

  He did, but maybe that was expecting too much. “Not today, but soon. Next weekend if we can. I’ll call the courthouse and see what we need to do. Can you get a couple days off of work?”

  She nodded. “But what about the kids?”

  “What about them?”

  “Would they—come with us?”

  “Oh. No. Of course not. I’ll figure something out. Maybe Wren can watch them for a couple days. We couldn’t go to Hawaii or anything, but maybe we can plan a little getaway in Kansas City. Then next summer we’ll do a real honeymoon. I promise.”

  She reached up and put a gentle finger over his lips. “Shhh. Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep. We’ll just take things as they come, okay?”

  He nodded. She might really go for this. He was torn between relief and panic. If she was willing, they might be man and wife this time next week.

  “I…I’d need to rent my house out…or”—she swallowed hard—“sell it.”

  “You could rent it out for now. We can decide what to do later. There’s no need to rush into anything.”

  The outline of her tongue puffed out her cheek. “Um…excuse me, but isn’t that exactly what you’re talking about? Rushing into things?”

  “You know what I mean. The piddly stuff. We can figure that out later. For now let’s go pick out a ring. With what we’ll be saving in wedding expenses, you can choose the biggest honkin’ ring in the store.”

  “Oh, Doug.” Her eyes lit up and she shivered with excitement.

  He pushed back his chair and grabbed her hand. “Come on, babe, let’s do this.”

  He planned to tell the kids tonight. But the prospect sent a shudder of panic through him.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Doug pushed open the door to Wren’s Nest and let it slam hard enough to jangle the bells, announcing his arrival. Wren’s giant striped tabby cat sauntered around from behind the counter, but no Wren.

  He inhaled the inn’s distinctive scent of apples and cinnamon and fresh-brewed coffee, and his stomach grumbled. After a minute he cleared his throat and called Wren’s name. He thought he heard a clothes dryer running and started around the counter to see if she was in the back.

  The cat chose that moment to wrap its furry self around his leg. If it hadn’t been for the counter catching his fall, Doug would have been flat on the floor, the stupid cat squashed beneath his weight. He gave the critter a gentle shove with the toe of his boot.

  At that moment Wren Johannsen came bustling out from the laundry room, a stack of folded, fluffy white towels cradled in her arms. “Douglas, I didn’t know you were here. Goodness…have you been waiting long?” The cat transferred its affections to Wren, and she nudged it with a tiny foot. “Get out of the way, Jasper, you silly old cat.”

  “Just got here.”

  “Well, come on in the dining room. I’ve got a couple slices of Peaches and Cream Cheesecake in the refrigerator.” She deposited the towels on the counter and led the way into the sunny dining room. “How are you?”

  The note of sympathy that always accompanied that question was thick in Wren’s voice, but somehow he didn’t mind it so much coming from her. Wren had loved Kaye—and by proxy, him—like her own. In fact, she’d played matchmaker for them when they were barely out of high school and Kaye was helping Wren out at the inn.

  “I’m doing good. How about you?” He folded himself into a chair underneath a too-small table, watching while she poured coffee and served up slices of her famous cheesecake.

  When she joined him at the table, she made it easy for him. “Let me guess: you’re needing somebody to watch those precious kiddos of yours?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  Her eyes sparked with mischief. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain pretty Valdez girl, would it?”

  He laughed. “I see the rumor mill is alive and well in Clayburn, USA.”

  Her expression turned serious. “Is it only a rumor?”

  His smile apparently betrayed him.

  “It’s true then, Doug? You’re…seeing Mickey Valdez?”

  “I’m not just seeing her.” He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “We’re getting married, Wren.”

  A plump hand flew to her bosom. “Married? You’re joking.”

  “Not one bit. Friday, in fact. That’s why I’m here, actually. I wanted to ask if you’d mind watching the kids while we take a couple days off for a honeymoon?”

  “Doug…? Friday? This Friday?”

  Try as he would, he couldn’t temper his smile. “We just decided to go for it.”

  She tilted her head and eyed him, no trace of the joy he’d expected from her at the news. “This Friday?” she said again.

  It struck him then that maybe she was hurt not to be invited to the wedding. “We’re being married by a justice of the peace,” he said quickly. “In Salina. Just the two of us.”

  It had been an amazingly simple matter to obtain a marriage license this morning. The ceremony was set for Friday afternoon at two o’clock with Judge Miriam Rickard. The clerk who’d helped him with the license said they didn’t even need to bring witnesses if they didn’t want to. “We can get someone from the offices to stand in as witnesses for you,” she’d said.

  “We didn’t want a big wedding,” he told Wren now. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “Oh, Doug.” She shook her silvery head slowly. “It’s…so soon. So soon after Kaye and Rachel. Are you sure about this? Why, it’s barely been…”

  He could see her ticking off the months in her head, and saved her the trouble. “It’ll be five months.” Why was she doing this? Why did she feel the need to spoil his happiness?

  “Not even five months? Oh, Douglas, don’t rush into something, honey.”

  “I’m not, Wren,” he assured her. “We’re not. We’ve talked this through.”

  She seemed not to hear him but went on, her voice almost pleading. “You’ve been through so much. Give yourself time. It takes time to get over something like this. To fall in love again. It’s too soon. It’s just too soon.”

  He nodded, intending no commitment. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say. He forked another bite of cheesecake. “This is good stuff.”

  Wren reached up to pat his cheek—a gesture oddly reminiscent of Kaye. “I’m not saying Mickey doesn’t love you, honey. Who wouldn’t? But you need time to…process all this. And what about the kids? They—”

  “Oh, the kids love Mickey.” He grasped at the thin strand of reason she offered him. “And she loves them.”

  “I’m sure she does. But this will be
quite an adjustment…for all of you.” She picked at a crumb on the embroidered tablecloth. “Where will you live?”

  He was winning her over, he could tell. “We’ll live on my place. She’s going to rent out her house. Say…you don’t know anyone looking for a place to rent long-term, do you? Maybe with the option to buy?”

  “Mickey’s beautiful garden…she’s going to let that go?”

  He shrugged. “We’re not sure. She might hang on to that. It’ll depend on what the renters want.”

  He’d found out last night that it was killing Mickey to think of leaving her garden. She seemed to think she’d have time to keep it up after she moved out to his house. “I could just go there for a little while after work each evening,” she’d told him. “So it doesn’t go to pot.”

  Why she’d want to keep a garden for strangers, he didn’t know. He’d suggested starting one at his place, but she hadn’t seemed too enthusiastic about that. But they’d work it out. He had a feeling these things wouldn’t even be important once they were married.

  He scraped up the last of his cheesecake with one tine of his fork, and looked pointedly at the clock. “I need to get going. If you don’t think it’ll work for you and Bart to keep the kids, I can find someone else.” He had no idea who that might be, especially with Harriet in the midst of packing up for her move, but he’d do what he had to do.

  She pshawed and waved him off. “Of course we’ll keep them. If you’re sure this is what you want to do. But please, do think about it, Doug. I-I feel a little responsible, since I was the one who got you two started.”

  “The Linders’ wedding reception, you mean?” He’d almost forgotten it had been Wren who suggested he dance with Mickey that night. That really had been the start of all this.

  Wren nodded. “Maybe I was a little too…eager to pair you two up.”

  “You played matchmaker for me and Kaye, too, as I recall. And look how that turned out.” He forced a smile.

  “Just promise me you’ll pray about it, Doug. Maybe you should talk to Trevor. He’s been where you are. He’ll have some good advice. I’d hate to think I rushed you into something that wasn’t God’s design for you.”