The Maverick Marriage

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “I’m sorry, too.” His voice was husky with regret as he wrapped his arms around her waist and gathered her close. “For letting you down. For letting us all down.”

  Tears of happiness shimmered in Susannah’s eyes as she twined her arms around his neck. “I want a second chance, Trace. I want to do it right this tune.”

  His handsome face split into a relieved grin. He brushed his lips over her temple. “So do I.” He paused to kiss her on the lips, sweetly, lingeringly. He tugged her closer so they were aligned more intimately yet. He looked down at her hotly and confessed, “I want to follow the dictates of my heart, just as Max advised. I want to be with you for the rest of my life—” he kissed her cheek, her temple, the curve of her ear “—and love you the way you were meant to be loved.” His hands molded her spine. “The way I have always loved you.”

  Their lips met again. Joy unlike anything Susannah had ever known swept through her. He did love her, after all! “Oh, Trace, Move you, too,” she murmured emotionally, clinging to him, and their future, with all her might. “I never stopped.”

  “Then it’s settled?” Trace tightened his hold on her. “We won’t just go through with the wedding for formality’s sake. We’ll get married today as planned. And the boys will be ours. And we’ll find a way to explain to Scott that I’m his father—together.”

  “Oh, Trace…It will be all right.”

  Trace nodded his agreement. “But we’ll start with our honeymoon to—”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  Trace paused. “The day after?” he asked, confused.

  Susannah nodded. It was time to reveal her gift to him. “I called the travel agency that made the arrangements for Max. They’re going to move them back a day, so you will have time to meet with Sam Farraday and her attorney again tomorrow. I called her and explained why you had to get up and leave in the middle of the meeting. Though single and childless, she has a strong dose of female intuition herself, and she was surprisingly understanding once I explained. The deal is on again, for tomorrow morning.”

  Trace looked stunned but happy as he sat down in a chair and tugged her down onto his lap, “I thought you resented my devotion to business.”

  Susannah draped her arm around his shoulders and cuddled against him. The love in his eyes was as sure and strong as the love in her heart and she knew this time that it would last a lifetime. “That was when I thought your business fell ahead of family in your priorities,” she admitted as he continued to hold her protectively close. “Finding out it didn’t…that you had sacrificed the Farraday deal to follow what at the time was merely my intuition that the boys were in danger… made me realize you had changed, and for the better. And if you could sacrifice something so important to you, for the sake of our family,” she continued, her lower lip quivering, “it was time I made some changes in my behavior, too, and stopped viewing your hard work as a rival for my affections. ‘Cause I know now, it’s not.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t, not by a long shot.” He kissed her softly, lingeringly.

  “Besides, sacrificing one day of our honeymoon was a small price to pay for a lifetime of married bliss,” Susannah said happily.

  “Now, that sounds good to me.” He paused to give her another long, sensual kiss. Reluctantly, noting the time, recalling their pending nuptials, they drew apart. His strong fingers closing tightly over hers, he led her to the window, removed the screen and studied the possibilities with an experienced eye. “Now all we have to do is get out of here,” he said.

  00:38

  “I TOLD YOU it would work,” Nate whispered from his vantage point down the hall.

  “How do you know?” Scott asked, frowning, as he struggled to help his younger brother with his blacksatin bow tie.

  “Do you hear any fighting?” Jason queried, swiftly tying his tennis shoes.

  “No,” Mickey said.

  All four boys exchanged glances. “What do you think that means?” Jason asked as he flattened a hand over his cowlick.

  Scott shrugged and started to work on his own bow tie. “They could be kissing.”

  “Guess again!” a low voice rumbled behind them.

  The four boys started and whirled toward Trace. “How did you get out here in the hall?” they demanded in unison.

  “That,” Trace told them as he swept by them and moved the chair wedged beneath the door handle, “is for me to know and you boys never to try.” He removed the mangled paper clip that had interfered with the lock, opened the door and let Susannah out.

  Looking like a vision in her white wedding dress, she swept to his side, smiling all the while. There was no mistaking the happiness in her eyes.

  Taking her hand in his, he announced, “I’m glad to see you’re all in your tuxes, guys, ‘cause Susannah and I have some very good news to share.”

  00:25

  WHEN THE WHOOPS and hollers had subsided, and congratulatory hugs had been exchanged all around, Trace glanced at his watch, then at Susannah. “Think we can make it?”

  Susannah adjusted her veil and tucked her hand in his. They had a little more than twenty minutes to get to the wedding. “If we leave right now, we can,” she assured her guys.

  They all piled into her Suburban. Leaving the lake house was the easy part. It was when they hit the main ranch road that they fell into trouble. Water was pooled in some of the low-lying dips in the road. Trace slowed the Suburban and the first shallow puddles were navigated without problem. The fourth was deeper than it looked. They swept through it, then promptly bogged down in mud on the other side.

  As the car stopped going forward, the wheels spun. The vehicle sank even more. Swearing, Trace shifted into park and cut the engine. “You all stay here,” he ordered firmly. “I’m going to get out and take a look.”

  They waited with bated breath for Trace to circle the car and take a look. Susannah leaned out the window. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  Trace was already stripping off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. “Bad.”

  00:15

  TRACE OPENED the cargo doors to the back of the Suburban. He took a small shovel out of the tire well. “We’ve got to dig out and get some traction under these wheels.”

  “What are we going to use?”

  “I don’t know.” Trace paused to look at the woods on either side of them. There were downed branches here, too. Most were three or four feet in length. “I guess we could try the brush.”

  “Hang on, Dad. We’ll get it.” Before he could stop them, Nate and Jason jumped out of the truck and into the mud. Scott and Mickey were fast on their heels. In tandem, they struggled toward the woods.

  “How far are we from the wedding site?” Susannah asked.

  “Ten minutes.” Trace bent and scooped out another shovelful of mud. “Assuming,” he added grimly, clearing out the mud around first one wheel, then the next, “there are no more snafus.”

  The boys came back, dragging several leafy-green branches apiece. “How are these, Dad?”

  “Great.” Trace pointed toward the front wheel he’d dug out. “Push what you can underneath the wheel.”

  “We’re running out of time. I’ll help you dig, too,” Scott said, flinging off his tuxedo jacket. He took a separate branch and began digging out beneath a rear wheel.

  “I’ll work on this one.” Nate took his place at the other rear wheel. Meanwhile, Jason and Mickey helped Trace stick branches beneath the front wheels. Two minutes later, they circled to the back. All four boys crammed as much foliage as they could beneath the wheels.

  Trace motioned everyone away from the truck. The muddied crew was quick to obey.

  “Want me to try it?” Susannah asked.

  Trace nodded.

  She slid behind the wheel. Started the engine, shifted into gear and gave it the gas.

  She rocked forward slightly, then back. Feeling the truck begin to sink again, she stopped and put it back into park.

  “The
branches won’t do it,” Trace said. “We need something else.”

  “How about our coats?” Scott asked.

  Nate nodded his agreement. “That’s bound to give us better traction.”

  Trace hated to do it, but what choice did they have? “Okay.” He shrugged, a little amazed at how quickly they had become a family in just two days. “Let’s give it a try.” The boys rushed forward. With Trace directing, they shoved their jackets under all four wheels.

  They all stepped back, clear of the truck. He turned to Susannah.

  “Ready?” she said.

  He nodded. “Give it another try.”

  Susannah started the engine, shifted into drive and hit the gas. The Suburban rocked forward, back, then lurched forward.

  She drove until she hit gravel again. Then braked. Whooping and cheering with joy, Trace and the boys dashed to catch up. “How much time?” Nate asked as Susannah scooted over so Trace could get behind the wheel.

  00:02

  “WE’RE NOT GOING to make it,” Jason said as he, too, glanced at his watch.

  “We can try! Drive fast, Dad,” Nate urged.

  “Yeah, real fast,” Mickey coaxed.

  “No,” Trace said firmly. With Scott reaching driving age soon, it was imperative he set a good example. “We’ll get there safely or not at all.”

  “But your inheritance,” the boys protested in unison.

  “Is the least of our worries,” Trace said as he reached over and squeezed Susannah’s hand. He glanced at the boys in the rearview mirror. “We’ve already got everything we need, one another.” He could live without his inheritance. He couldn’t live without Susannah and the boys; she was the key to his happiness; the key to his heart. Now and forever.

  -00:13

  “LOOK, Dad, there really is a wedding going on,” Jason stated in a hushed reverent tone. “Two weddings. See. There’s Uncle Cody and his bride.”

  “Man, she’s a looker!” Scott enthused.

  “And Aunt Patience and is that…Dr. Colter, the new veterinarian?” Nate asked.

  “It would appear so,” Trace said.

  Without warning, the audience erupted in applause. The orchestra started up again and Cody and his bride, Callie Sheridan, and Patience and Josh Colter, started back down the satin aisles.

  “It’s over.” Trace looked at Susannah. “We may have missed out on our inheritances, but it’s still not too late to get married again today, if you don’t mind a little mud, that is.”

  Susannah grinned. “I say, let’s find the minister and do it!”

  The boys cheered again, just as Trace’s family came rushing at him.

  “Where were you?” Patience demanded.

  “We waited as long as we could,” Cody said.

  “They had to marry, as the will stated,” Cisco explained.

  Trace held up a hand to stop the flow of explanations. “It’s okay. We know we’ve lost our inheritances, by not marrying within forty-eight hours,” he said happily. And thanks to the love he had found with Susannah, it really didn’t matter.

  “Not necessarily.”

  They turned at the sound of the deep, booming voice. A collective gasp went through the crowd.

  “Max?” Patience, Trace and Cody said in unison, the color leaving their faces.

  “One and the same.” Big as life, his silver spurs jingling, Max strode toward them. He was clad in his usual fringed buckskins. He swept off his Stetson, revealing his mane of snowy-white hair and a grin as big as all Montana. “As you can see, the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” he drawled.

  “But,” Cody sputtered. Patience looked as if she might faint. Only Trace, greatly irritated, turned to Max’s attorney.

  Cisco palmed his chest. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I was just following orders.”

  Max nodded vigorously, attesting that was true, then continued explaining, “I figured why wait until I actually kicked the bucket to give you young’uns your inheritances? Why not do it while I’m still alive to enjoy it,” Max said. He spread his arms wide. “So I did.”

  “Or in my case, you tried.” Trace shook his head.

  It was Max’s turn to hold up a cautioning palm. “Not to worry, Trace and Susannah,” he informed them gently. “You’re still going to get what’s coming to you, once you say your I dos. Not that it’s necessary in the legal sense.”

  Trace regarded his uncle. He could tell by the glimmer in Max’s wily blue eyes that his eccentric uncle was not done with his surprises. “What do you mean, it’s not necessary?” he asked.

  “You know that quickie divorce you asked me to get for you, seventeen years ago?” Max slapped his knee as his family gathered around. “Well, it seems there was a hitch with it. The papers were never filed. So, technically, you and Susannah are still married … have been all this time,” he said as a gasp ran through the crowd.

  “I found out about it myself about the same time that Callie signed up with the Western Ranch Wives video-matchmaking service, and Patience told me she was thinking of going to a clinic to have her baby,” Max explained. With a shrug, he continued, “With so much happening at once, I figured Providence had to be sending me a sign. And since I was part and parcel of all three of your romances going sour, I figured I should be part and parcel of all three getting fixed. So, I came up with the idea to reunite you all. Cisco helped me write the will. And here we all are.”

  Patience thrust herself into Max’s arms. She gave him a fierce hug. Cody and Trace swiftly followed suit. Tears and laughter were all around. “But what are you going to do?” Patience asked.

  “Good question,” Max said. He looked at his sidekick and attorney, Cisco Kidd, and then his old friend and town-diner owner, Pearl. “But don’t you all worry none,” Max told them seriously. “I’ve got plenty of new frontiers to conquer. I’m hoping Pearl will go with me. And Cisco, as a way of thanking you for all you’ve done for me and my kin, just let me tell you that your future is set, too. As it should be, since you’ve become like a son to me.”

  “And a brother to us,” Patience said as Trace and Cody agreed.

  For once, the handsome Montana attorney was at a loss for words. Cisco swept off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “I have to admit, Max, I had my doubts when you came up with this idea, but it seems everything worked out even better than any of us could have hoped.”

  “I’ll damn sure second that.” Max grinned. “Here’s to the future.” Max lifted his glass of champagne in a toast.

  Cisco locked eyes with Gillian Taylor as everyone followed suit. Trace thought, but couldn’t be sure, he saw a flash of attraction there. One that might possibly bring the quiet Cisco out of his shell. He couldn’t think of anything that would please him more.

  “May it bring us all much love and happiness,” Trace proposed, wrapping his arm around his beloved and drawing her close.

  “Right here on the Silver Spur,” Susannah agreed. They clinked glasses and drank their toast.

  “Hey, I thought you two were getting married,” Mickey reminded them, tugging on Susannah’s skirt and Trace’s sleeve.

  Trace held out his hand to Susannah. “We are,” he said firmly as the beaming minister stepped forward out of the crowd. “And we’ll need four witnesses,” Trace said. “Scott, Nate, Jason, Mickey—”

  “Can we count on you to help us out?” Susannah asked.

  “You bet,” the boys said in unison, gathering round, and the ceremony that would bind them together the rest of their lives began.

  eISBN 978-14592-7490-7

  THE MAVERICK MARRIAGE

  Copyright © 1996 by Cathy Gillen Thacker

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