The Maverick Marriage

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Cisco came out of the house. “All taken care of.”

  Somehow, Susannah forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll see you all later.” The attorney was off with a wave.

  “ ‘Bye, Cisco,” everyone said more or less in unison.

  Trace waited tranquilly until Cisco had driven off then looked at Susannah. She noted that beneath her former husband’s surface elation, there was a ruddy hint of color across his cheekbones, a cool gleam in his blue eyes. Which could only mean one thing, she thought nervously. Trace was already assessing the situation, devising a plan that would allow him to come out on top.

  Her confidence at being able to handle this, handle him, dropped another notch.

  He gave her a smile that did not reach his eyes. “May I speak to you a moment?” he said politely.

  “Not now,” Susannah said. I need time to think about how I am going to explain this in a way that you don’t hate me forever or land us both in court.

  “Yes, now,” Trace stated softly.

  “The kids,” Susannah protested.

  Trace had that figured out, too. “Boys, Susannah and I have to check on the hunting lodge,” he announced.

  “Cool!” Jason enthused as he broke into an energetic bout of shadow-boxing. “I love it out there. Can we go, too?”

  “Not today,” Trace decreed autocratically and immediately earned frowns from all four of the boys. “Maybe tomorrow,” he promised. “While we’re gone, Mickey and Scott can settle in and unpack. Nate and Jason, you show them to their rooms.”

  “Who should sleep where?” Nate asked with a perplexed frown. “After all, there are six bedrooms and—”

  “You all figure it out,” Trace said in the decisive tone of a general handing out orders to his troops. He grabbed Susannah’s arm beneath the elbow and steered her in the direction of his dark green Jeep.

  She went, for the same reason she allowed his orders to stand uncontested: she didn’t want a scene in front of the boys. Efficient seconds later, she and Trace were backing out of the driveway. Her throat dry, her heart slamming against her ribs, she cast a look over her shoulder and saw the boys had lined up, brothers against brothers, in the front yard. To her unease, they didn’t look particularly thrilled to be forced to keep company with one another. She bit her lip uncertainly. It wasn’t enough that Trace was ticked off at her. They had another battle brewing, too. “I’m not so sure it was a good idea leaving them all alone so soon. Goodness, Trace, they don’t even know one another.”

  Trace brushed off her worry with a dismissive shake of his head. “They’ll be fine.”

  You don’t know Scott and his recent all-out propensity for mischief, she thought. Not that Trace’s youngest son, Jason, looked like a stranger to shenanigans, either.

  Trace slanted her a warning look as he continued humorlessly, “It’s you and I you should be worried about, Susannah. Unless I miss my guess,” he said heavily, his blue eyes glittering with a combination of anger and remorse, “you have some explaining to do.”

  TRACE PARKED the Jeep in the gravel lane in front of the hunting lodge. As Susannah looked at the building, she was assaulted by bittersweet memories. Trace, carrying her over the threshold the night they returned from their brief honeymoon, then making wonderful passionate love to her all evening long. Trace, forgetting to show up for dinner, night after lonely night. The two of them never touching, hardly ever even speaking. … She couldn’t go back to that, she just couldn’t.

  She turned to him. Judging from the unerringly grim look on his face, he was thinking the same thing. She swallowed around the knot of emotion gathering in her throat and tried to still the sudden trembling of her heart. “I don’t think it was such a good idea, coming here.”

  “I think it’s the perfect place.” Trace pushed from the Jeep. Now that they were alone, he looked as if he wanted to explode. “After all, our child was conceived here, wasn’t he, Susannah?”

  Susannah sucked in a steadying breath and joined him on the gravel lane. She had always feared this day would come. Now that it was here, she didn’t quite know how to handle it. And apparently, neither did Trace.

  Abruptly, Trace looked as though he wanted to hit something with his fist. “I notice you’re not denying it,” he said brusquely, towering over her.

  Susannah shrugged and tried not to notice how his broad shoulders blocked out the light of the sun. “It’s clear you’ve already put two and two together.”

  Another silence. He gave her a slow once-over. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She laughed shakily as tears filled her eyes. He made it all sound so easy, and it hadn’t been. “I tried.”

  “No,” he corrected grimly, a muscle working convulsively in his cheek as he kept his eyes steadfastly on hers. “You didn’t.”

  Susannah took a step back, and then another and another. She stood with her hands folded beneath her breasts, her legs braced slightly apart, the gravel beneath her feet digging into the soles of her white sneakers. “Don’t you remember the night before I left you for good?” she reminded him hotly, working hard to keep her own skyrocketing emotions under wraps. “I said I had something important to tell you. I asked you to come home for dinner by 8:00 p.m., like I had every night for the three months before that. You said you would and then I waited for you. And I waited. And waited. You finally showed up around 2:00 a.m. You were sorry, as always. Another problem at the office, you said. Undaunted, I still tried to tell you, but you said you were too tired to talk, could it wait until morning, and then you hit the sack and went to sleep the moment your head hit the pillow.”

  Trace flushed with guilt. “I admit I was insensitive that last night we were together,” he said.

  “And then some.”

  “And maybe not the best husband in the world for the first couple months we were married.”

  “You’re damn straight about that,” Susannah retorted harshly.

  “But couldn’t you have just blurted it out?”

  Yes, Susannah thought. She could have. But she had wanted it to be a memorable occasion, something wonderful to hold on to in the years ahead. Unhappily, her plans had turned out to be as futile as their marriage had been.

  “Why? What would have been the point?” she stormed back with an indignant toss of her head. She aimed an accusing finger at his chest. “I know what a responsible person you are. I know you would have done the right thing, at least fiscally, and insist I stay. It wouldn’t have made us any happier. At that point, you didn’t know what to do with a wife, never mind a baby.” Tears flooded her eyes once again. “Scott would have been just one other person who was in the way of you achieving your dream of building your own lumber company.” And she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing her baby hurt the way she had been.

  “So the next morning you packed your things, told me our marriage was a mistake from the get-go, and you wanted out,” Trace surmised, his hurt at the memory of their last emotion-charged conversation evident.

  Susannah tried like hell not to let his pain get to her. After all, she had given him every chance to come after her and make things right between them and he hadn’t. Not that day or any other. “You made your feelings for me, or maybe I should say lack of them, pretty clear when you immediately agreed to my request for a no-fault divorce.”

  His expression impassive, he took another step nearer. “I knew you were right, that I hadn’t begun to make you happy.” He shrugged emotionlessly. “That being the case, I didn’t feel I had the right to stand in your way, if a divorce was what you wanted.”

  No, Trace, Susannah thought with a weariness that came straight from her soul. What I wanted back then was you, and our child, and a life together.

  “Our feelings for each other aside…” He took her by the shoulders and held her in front of him implacably. “You still should have told me,” he reiterated in a low voice laced with anguish. “Dammit, I had a right to share in such won
derful news. I had a right to know I was going to be a father!”

  Susannah stared straight at the suntanned column of his throat and the open collar of his shirt. As she realized the validity of his argument, she was swamped with feelings of guilt and remorse. And most of all, loss. “You’re right. As a mature adult, I agree, I should have told you that I was pregnant before I left you. At the very least, I should have telephoned or written you when Scott was born.” She paused, her lower lip quivering slightly.

  Trace’s hands tightened possessively on her shoulders. “Then why didn’t you?” he demanded hoarsely, still struggling to understand. And perhaps, forgive.

  Susannah turned her back and walked away from him. Pain tightened every muscle in her body. “Because it was years before I came to that realization,” she said, facing him again. “And by then I was already married to a man who did want a child, even if it wasn’t his. In all the ways that count, Scott knew Drew as his father. I couldn’t break that up,” she said quietly, unable to hide the depth and breadth of her regret that she hadn’t acted with more foresight seventeen years ago. “Had I done so at that point, it would have been devastating to everyone.”

  Trace did not disagree with her on that; neither did he sympathize. “Did my uncle Max know about Scott?” he asked point-blank.

  Susannah stared at the light dusting of dark wheat-gold hair on Trace’s arms. “I don’t know. He knew about my wanting to write cookbooks. He knew enough to realize that the last quake in Northridge was enough to make me want to leave California for good. He got me out here on a consulting job and wrote me into his will. What do you think?” She lifted her face to his. “Did he know, or at least guess?”

  Trace shrugged his broad shoulders and went back to lean against the front bumper of his Jeep. His mood introspective, he put a foot on the bumper, and rested his forearm on his bent knee. “He might have known. He could do math, too.” The silence stretched between them interminably.

  “Which is why, I suppose,” Trace continued after a moment, “you insisted Scott go to camp in Texas while you were here, so I wouldn’t run across him, if I happened to visit the Silver Spur Ranch.”

  Ignoring the quiet accusation in Trace’s deep blue eyes, Susannah lifted her chin. “Scott has been going to a summer camp of some sort or other every year since he was ten, and it was a good experience for him. At least it would have been, if he hadn’t been kicked out.”

  Trace took a moment to absorb that as some of the hurt left his eyes. Abruptly, he was all-business once again. “Does Scott misbehave often?” he asked, quickly shifting into his problem-solving mode.

  Susannah went back to lean against the bumper, too. Like Trace, she had no desire to go inside the hunting lodge that had also served as their home when they were newlyweds. She studied the toe of her sneaker with more than necessary care. “The last quake, even though he wasn’t in it, put Scott on a life-is-too-short-not-to-have-fun kick. I’m hoping it’s just a phase, but right now…. I don’t know. I have to turn him around. That’s one reason I was thinking of moving back to Montana,” she confided candidly, wanting Trace to know that he had not seen Scott at his best, but rather his worst.

  “The bottom line being that given a choice, you weren’t going to tell me, even now, about my son,” Trace concluded grimly, aware it was taking every bit of self-control he had to keep his own tumultuous feelings in check.

  Discovering he and Susannah had a son…a son he had never met until today had hit like a sucker punch to the gut. The fact that Scott was obviously well-loved and well-cared for did nothing to dull or negate his anger and disappointment in Susannah. Added to his fury was his hurt. The numbing knowledge of all the years he had missed. The times with his son that could never—would never—be regained. How did one get over something like this? he wondered. How could he? When right now all he wanted to do was balance the scales and make some of the betrayal and sharp disappointment he felt go away.

  “What good would it have done to tell you that now?” she countered rhetorically, moving away from the bumper. Her voice faltered abruptly. For a moment, she couldn’t go on. “It was water over the dam and—”

  “You’re wrong about that, Susannah,” Trace said, his gaze resting on her face as he cocked a faintly mocking eyebrow in her direction.

  Susannah’s skin paled at the deliberateness of his low tone. She seemed to know as well as he that he was not about to just let this go. “What do you mean?” she demanded, beginning to panic.

  His expression as sternly indomitable as his mood, Trace grabbed her hand and tugged her back to his side. “Max has given us the perfect opportunity to right a mighty big injustice,” he said as he swiftly saw a way to get back that which had been stolen from him. He clamped an arm around her waist and hauled her close. Sliding a hand beneath her chin, he tilted her face to his. “And whether you like it or not, I plan for us to do just that.”

  Chapter Three

  Trembling, Susannah flattened her hands across his chest, effectively wedging distance between them. “Listen to me, Trace. I am not—I repeat, not—giving him up!”

  Trace shifted, so her back was to his Jeep. “I didn’t ask you to give him up. I am asking you to share him with me, Susannah.”

  Susannah’s eyes widened incredulously as her emotions ran riot. This was exactly what she had been afraid of all along, exactly what had kept her from telling Trace about his son sooner. “We can’t tell Scott you’re his father!”

  “But I could be his stepfather.” Trace gave her just enough time to let the information sink in, then continued in a hard tone that brooked no dissension. “We’re going to get married, Susannah, just like Max wanted. Only we’re going to stay married and live together in the same house after the ceremony, too.”

  Susannah couldn’t seem to get any oxygen into her lungs. “You’re crazy,” she panted. Not only that, he was asking the impossible!

  “Try determined,” Trace corrected, tightening his grasp on her waist. “You robbed me of the first sixteen years of my son’s life, you are not robbing me of what is left. Nor do I want to take him away from you,” he added.

  Her heart thudding heavily in her chest, Susannah stared up at him with trepidation. “And if I disagree?” she questioned, stunned she could sound so calm when she felt as if her entire world, and that of her eldest son’s, was falling apart.

  Trace shrugged and continued to look as unmovable as a five-ton boulder. “One way or another, he is living with me. It’s up to you whether or not you want to be there, too.” Apparently satisfied that he had gotten his message across, he slowly released her.

  Susannah stumbled backward until she was leaning up against the front of his Jeep, the sun-warmed metal pressed against her skin. Feeling as though she were in a bad dream from which she could not awake, she studied him for long, tense moments. “You’d really force me into marriage.”

  He kept his eyes on hers as his lips curled sardonically. “I never believed it until this moment,” he countered, regarding her with cool satisfaction now that he had taken complete charge of the situation— and them—again, “but revenge is sweet.”

  Susannah studied the woods behind the stone-and-timber hunting lodge until she had regained her equilibrium and felt ready to face him again. Swinging back to Trace—who was at that moment rebuttoning his shirt and reknotting his tie—she looked directly into his eyes and advised him calmly, “If you think we’re going to fool the boys, you’re sadly mistaken. They’ll know when we’re not sleeping together that something is up. And then they’ll be determined to find out what.”

  “Oh, but we are going to be sleeping together,” Trace announced with a supreme male confidence that grated on her nerves, as he rolled down his shirtsleeves and rebuttoned the cuffs.

  “Like hell we are,” Susannah retorted.

  “How else are we going to enact an air of normalcy?” Trace grabbed his suit jacket out of the back of the Jeep, and slipped it on. “
Besides, sex was never a problem with us, Susannah.”

  She watched him slip into the CEO role again, the role in which he was most comfortable. “You’re right. Communication was our problem. And once again, you’re not listening to me. I am not signing on to be your bartered slave.”

  He quirked an eyebrow in her direction. “I believe it’s called a wife.”

  “Whatever you want to call it, I am not doing it!” Susannah stormed.

  “Then get a damn good lawyer, ‘cause I’ll see you in court.” Still straightening the lapels of his suit coat, he headed for the driver’s side.

  Seeing a disaster in the making, Susannah hurried after him. “Trace. Wait—”

  He whirled on her. “I have been waiting, for sixteen-some years now. I want my chance to be a father to the son I never knew I had.” He glowered at her, then pushed on after a meditative pause. “If you want to be his mother, too, then you know what you have to do.”

  Susannah studied Trace’s ferocious scowl and knew what path to take. “All right. I’ll marry you,” she decided, swiftly following his lead and seeing a way to manage him, and their situation, too. “And I’ll stay married to you,” she finished determinedly. “But only on one condition.”

  “And that is?” he prodded her uneasily.

  “No sex. Not now. Not ever.”

  TRACE STUDIED SUSANNAH, hardly able to believe how much his life had changed in the hour since she had been tossed back into his life. One moment he had been the grieving father of two and the CEO of his own company. Now, he was still grieving the loss of Maxhe sensed he would be for some time—but he was the father of three, not two, about to become a husband again and stepfather to yet a fourth child.

  Worse, Max had set up the will so he and Susannah would be neighbors—at least in terms of property owned—for the rest of their natural-born lives.