“How am I going to do that?”
“You kissed her, didn’t you? Pretty soon she’ll get mad at you, just like Mom did, and then she’ll go away and never come back.”
Tears were streaming down his cheeks as he said it. Slade gathered him close and, for once, Timmy didn’t fight him.
Slade was flabbergasted at the workings of his son’s mind. If Timmy’s pain hadn’t been so obvious, if he hadn’t believed so clearly what he was saying, Slade would have dismissed it as nothing more than the overly active imagination of a ten-year-old.
How much had Timmy really been aware of when he and Amanda had been fighting? Had he realized how troubled his parents’ marriage was? Slade had been so sure that both boys were too young to understand any of the anguish he and Amanda had been going through. Obviously he’d been wrong. On some level, Timmy had been attuned to it.
“You miss your mom, don’t you?”
“Sometimes,” Timmy admitted. “Do you?”
“Sometimes,” Slade said truthfully. He missed the woman she had been when he’d married her, and he was more sorry than he could say that she was dead. She hadn’t deserved that.
“Sometimes I get real scared,” Timmy admitted.
“Of what?”
“That you’ll die.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Slade said. “I promise.”
A world-weary expression settled on Timmy’s face. “You can’t promise. Mom didn’t mean to get killed, either. What if something happened? Who would we live with?”
Slade cursed himself for not realizing that it was exactly the sort of question that would plague a child in the aftermath of the unexpected loss of a parent. He’d deprived his children of an extended family. No wonder Timmy felt as if he might one day find himself completely alone.
“Would you like to go to Texas so you can meet your grandparents?” he asked impulsively. “Would it help to know that you have more family?”
To his surprise, Timmy didn’t seem nearly as eager as he had when he’d first discovered their existence.
“You said you didn’t like them.”
“I said my father and I didn’t always get along.”
“Then I’ll bet I wouldn’t get along with him, either,” Timmy declared loyally. “I’d rather live with Dani. I know I told her she wasn’t our mom, but I wish she was.”
The reply wasn’t unexpected, but Slade’s heart clenched anyway. The web drawing him and Dani together was getting tighter and tighter. First, though, he had to banish the ghosts from the past that he’d always believed would haunt him forever.
“Will you ask her to keep us?” Timmy asked.
“Not just yet,” Slade said. “But you and I will talk about it some more.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Timmy nodded, apparently satisfied that Slade would keep his word. “Let’s go back now. I’m hungry.”
Laughing, Slade caught him up in a bear hug. “You’re always hungry.”
“That’s why living with Dani would be so cool. She can cook better than anybody.”
Slade grinned. “She sure can.”
But it wasn’t Dani’s cooking that had him hooked. In the past few days he’d discovered that he was well and truly intrigued with just about everything about Dani Wilde. The direct, honest woman who’d proposed to him a few days before was far more complex than he’d ever guessed.
In the lonely dark of night, he found himself wondering if a lifetime of marriage would be long enough to unearth all her secrets. Could he ever stop punishing himself for not loving Amanda enough to try?
Chapter Ten
“Well,” Ashley demanded when she dropped in the first thing on Tuesday morning. “Did it work?”
Fortunately Timmy and Kevin were down the street playing with the Bleecker boys. This was not a conversation Dani would have wanted them to overhear. She could feel the color rising in her cheeks, even as a grin spread across her face.
“Yes, it worked,” she admitted. “I know I said it was ridiculous to think that some sexy lingerie the man couldn’t even see would make a difference, but it did. Slade never took his eyes off me.”
She could still feel the warmth of his intense scrutiny, as well as the blistering heat he’d set off with those frustrated, demanding kisses of his. All in all, she considered the experiment a rousing success, even if she had no clue why it had worked so well.
“I still don’t get it, though. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been wearing lingerie all along,” she pointed out.
“You’ve been wearing underwear,” Ashley corrected with a dismissive tone. “Cotton is not sexy, even with little bows and frilly edging. Those skimpy scraps of French lace I bought for you made you feel feminine. Red makes a woman feel practically scandalous. You were unconsciously radiating an aura of sensuality. What do you think all those magazine ads I did were all about?”
Dani supposed it did make a bizarre kind of sense. She’d agreed to experiment with the red, but as for the set of black bra and panties Ashley had provided, she wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. If red was scandalous, the black lace was downright decadent. She needed a whole lot more practice at seduction before she put those on.
“Okay, this went rather well,” she conceded, “but what do I do for an encore? Strip naked and greet him at the door?”
“An interesting thought,” Ashley observed dryly, “but maybe you should wait awhile on that one. It ought to come in handy when the marriage needs a little spark of something. In the meantime, I’ve brought this.”
She opened her huge satchel of a handbag and scooped out a bottle of outrageously expensive French perfume. She’d promoted it for years, so she probably had gallons of the stuff, but Dani was awed by the size of the crystal container nonetheless. A single ounce, a fraction of this size, would have cost as much as she made in a week with her baked goods.
“This ought to do it,” Ashley assured Dani. “A little here, a little there and he’ll be swooning, or all those print ads I did are making fraudulent claims.”
Dani sniffed the slightly mysterious scent with its delicate floral undertones and regarded the bottle skeptically. “Did it work on Dillon?”
Ashley grinned. “Anything works on Dillon. Being married to him is very, very good for my ego.”
Dani sighed, fighting off envy. “I’m afraid Slade will provide a much more realistic test of its powers.”
“I imagine he will, but I’m convinced this fragrance is up to it.” After giving Dani a quick hug, Ashley hefted her weighty bag and headed for the door. “Gotta run. I’m doing a makeover this morning. It’s going to be quite a challenge.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Matilda Fawcett.”
Dani’s mouth gaped. “Our retired algebra teacher?”
“Right woman. Wrong spin. We’re talking about Daddy’s new flame.” She paused. “Or his old one, if I understand the infatuation he had for her years ago.”
“Do you intend to tell her to scrap the baggy clothes and sneakers?”
Ashley chuckled. “I’m going to burn them and then I am going to turn her into a sophisticated femme fatale. Daddy isn’t going to know what hit him.”
“About time,” Dani said fervently.
“Isn’t it just?”
“Whose idea was this?”
“Mine. You have no idea what it took to talk her into it. She seemed to think she was way too old to change.”
“How did you persuade her?”
“I told her Daddy needed shaking up. She couldn’t argue with me about that. She’s promised me a front-row seat tonight when she unveils her new look out at Three-Stars. You should come, too. I know I’m going to enjoy watching his reaction.” She grinned. “Almost as much as I’m enjoying watching you trying to land Slade Watkins.”
“Watch your step, sister dearest, or I’ll do to you what I threatened to do to Sara.”
“Which was?”
“Tell
Daddy you’re about to make him a grandparent.”
“Maybe I am,” Ashley retorted, hopping aboard Dillon’s infamous black motorcycle and revving it up. She looked very, very bad riding that Harley, an effect that clearly delighted her after years of being the town’s perfect angel.
She scooted off before Dani could find out whether she was teasing or dead serious. Ashley a mother? What an incredible thought. Dani grinned. That really would set the family on its ear. If anyone had been laying odds on who’d become the first mother, Ashley would have been at the bottom of the list.
The only way Dani could see to beat her to it was to pull off this wedding to Slade in a very big hurry. She studied the bottle of perfume Ashley had left behind. She recalled all the advertisements promising passion and excitement.
“Okay, let’s see just how well you live up to all those marketing claims,” she muttered. Just in case, she decided she’d better wear the red lingerie one more time.
* * *
Dani had followed Ashley’s advice regarding the perfume to the letter, and Slade did seem pretty close to swooning. Actually that wasn’t quite the right word. He was sneezing his head off. Dani decided she’d either drastically overdone the here-and-there scattering of the perfume or he was just plain allergic to the stuff.
She made a quick trip to the bathroom and washed off as much as she could. When she returned to the front porch he was still sneezing, but that spark of fascination was evident in his eyes. Clearly the red lingerie was a consistent success.
“Are you okay?” she asked, feeling guilty as sin for causing such a dramatic reaction.
“Just a summer cold,” he confessed. “It’ll be gone in a few days.”
Dani couldn’t help herself. She chuckled. She had just washed off at least ten dollars’ worth of perfume and the man hadn’t even gotten the first whiff of it. She looked up to find him regarding her oddly.
“What’s so amusing?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just a private joke.”
“You have a private joke about summer colds?”
“Nope.”
“About me, then?”
She shook her head vehemently at that. “Of course not.” She decided she’d better change the subject. Slade might be totally confused at the moment, but he was no fool. If she wasn’t careful, he’d add up two and two and figure out what she was up to.
“Do you have plans for this evening?” she asked.
“Not really. Why?”
“I was thinking of taking a ride out to Three-Stars. We wouldn’t be long. I just want to be there when Matilda Fawcett shows up.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see,” she said mysteriously. “Want to come?”
“The boys, too?”
“Of course.”
His expression sobered suddenly. “Even after last night and what Timmy said to you? I thought maybe you’d be ready to try and put some distance between you and the boys.”
Dani sighed. Was he just seizing on that as an excuse to put some distance between all of them? She wouldn’t allow that to happen. “I won’t lie to you and tell you it didn’t hurt, but do my feelings really matter here?”
“Of course they do,” he insisted before she could finish all she’d intended to say.
“To you, maybe, but it’s Timmy I’m concerned about. Did he tell you why he was so upset? I wasn’t sure if I should get into it with him today. It seemed better to just let it slide unless he brought it up himself. He hardly looked at me all during dinner last night.”
“Don’t blame yourself. He was embarrassed. Ironically, it really had very little to do with you. I’m sure some analyst would say he said what he did because he has unresolved issues about his mother,” Slade said. “In other words, he misses her and he’s scared that I’m going to die, too. On top of that, he thinks I’m about to screw things up and you’ll end up leaving us, too.”
“Oh, dear. All that stirred up by seeing one kiss?” Dani whispered.
“He has a very active imagination. Until last night I had no idea how active. He knew far more than I’d realized how bad things were between his mother and me.”
“You’ve never mentioned that before,” Dani said surprised.
“No man wants to admit he’s failed at something so important. Someday I’ll tell you all about it.”
Slade reached over and brushed a wisp of hair back from her face. “He said something else I think you ought to know, though.”
“What’s that?”
“He said if I do die, he wants to come and live with you. Despite what he said before he ran out of here, he thinks you’d make a terrific mom. Did he tell you that?”
There was such a huge lump in Dani’s throat she couldn’t speak. She shook her head.
“I thought he might. He worried all night long about having hurt your feelings.”
“I guessed as much,” she said. “He hugged me really hard when he got here this morning. I suppose I didn’t really need the words to know what he was thinking.”
Slade’s gaze caught hers. “Do you need the words to know what I’m thinking?”
She stared into those blue, blue eyes and thought she saw the beginning of something that went deeper than lust, deeper than affection. But even after all she’d done in the past few days, she wasn’t quite daring enough to label it love.
“That you can’t wait to get to Three-Stars and find out what I’m being so mysterious about?” she teased.
“Hardly. I may be a little curious, but right now that is the last thing on my mind,” he assured her. “And if I hadn’t caught this ridiculous cold, I’d prove it to you.”
Dani regarded him hopefully. “Maybe it’s just allergies.”
“I don’t have allergies.”
Maybe he’d never been bombarded by a particular French scent before, she thought, but kept that possibility to herself. “Too bad. I was thinking that tonight would be the night I’d reveal that difference that had you so perplexed yesterday.”
He groaned, then eyed her speculatively. “You’re just saying that, aren’t you? Because you know I won’t risk sharing my germs with you.”
“Am I?” she taunted.
“Dani Wilde, you are a tease.”
She stared at him, ridiculously pleased by an observation that would have been insulting to many women. “I am, aren’t I? How lovely.”
“And you’re going to drive me to distraction,” he observed.
“I am going to try,” she promised. And she vowed to herself, she was going to prove to him that he was marriage material.
She leaned down and, oblivious to his cold, kissed him. “Let’s get the boys and head for Three-Stars. I don’t want to miss the show.”
Slade looked perplexed. “What show?”
“Never mind. You’ll see soon enough.”
A few minutes later Kevin was asking from the back seat, “Why are we going to the ranch at night? We can’t ride horses now, can we?”
“Not tonight,” Slade agreed.
“Then how come we’re going?” Kevin persisted.
“Dani says it’s a surprise.”
“Oh, wow,” Kevin said. “I’ll bet it’s a new foal. Jake said maybe one day I could have one of my very own. Is that it? Did you buy me my own horse?”
Slade slanted a look at Dani. “See what you’ve started with your secrets? Maybe you’d better answer that one.”
She turned in her seat. “Sorry, sweetie. This isn’t about a horse, I’m afraid. It’s a grown-up surprise.”
Both boys looked puzzled.
“Like somebody’s birthday or something?” Timmy asked.
“Not exactly.” Dani was regretting making such a big deal of the trip. Neither of the boys was going to be the least bit fascinated by Matilda Fawcett’s transformation. She glanced at her watch. “We’d better hurry or we’re going to miss the big entrance.”
Even though he was clearly thoroughly confused, Slade dutifully
accelerated. In another fifteen minutes they were pulling in to the circular driveway in front of the ranch.
Dani glanced around and noticed that Ashley and Dillon’s car was there, but there was no sign yet of Mrs. Fawcett. Headlights just making the turn off the highway indicated, though, that she was on her way.
“Inside, guys,” Dani said. “I’ll bet if you run out to the kitchen, Annie will give you a snack. She almost always bakes sugar cookies on Tuesdays.”
“Are they as good as yours?” Kevin asked.
“Who do you think taught me how to bake?”
That was enough to send Timmy and Kevin scampering toward the kitchen just as Sara appeared. She grinned.
“I see you couldn’t resist the show, either.”
“What show?” Slade demanded again.
“You’ll see,” Sara promised.
Slade turned to Jake, who was just coming in from the barn. “You’ve known these two a long time. Do you find them exasperating?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jake said.
“Do you have any idea what they’re up to tonight?”
“None. Relax, buddy. It’s less painful if you just go with the flow.”
“Where’s Daddy?” Dani asked.
Sara’s grin broadened. “In the living room, innocent as a lamb. He has no idea.”
Slade and Jake exchanged a look of pure masculine commiseration.
“Uh-oh,” Slade murmured, as they all walked into the living room.
“And here I thought we’d have to wait until the town’s Labor Day celebration for any more fireworks,” Jake said. “I think maybe I’m going to need a drink for this. What about you, Slade?”
“Definitely.”
“Me, too,” Dillon chimed in when he heard them. He glanced over at his father-in-law. “And I have the feeling you’d better give Trent a double.”
At the mention of his name, her father looked up from the chessboard. “Where’d you two come from?” he asked testily, scowling at Slade and Dani. “Nobody said you were dropping by. That makes twice in one week. Something must be up.” He glanced pointedly at Slade. “You two planning to get hitched?”
Slade swallowed hard. Dani blushed furiously.
“No, sir,” Slade responded. “I can’t say we’ve made any plans along that line.”
The Bridal Path: Danielle Page 12