by Maisey Yates
A moment later, he heard a strange sucking sound and realized the bottle was empty.
“Am I supposed to burp him?”
Danielle laughed. “Yes. But I’ll do that.”
“I’m not helpless.”
“He’s probably going to spit up on your hot and sexy chest. Better to have him do it on your T-shirt.” She reached out. “I got this.”
She took Riley from him and he sat back and admired the expert way she handled the little boy. She rocked him over her shoulder, patting his back lightly until he made a sound that most definitely suggested he had spit up on the T-shirt she was wearing.
Joshua had found her to be such a strange creature when he had first seen her. Brittle and pointed. Fragile.
But she was made of iron. He could see that now.
No one had been there to raise her, not really. And then she had stepped in to make sure that her half brother was taken care of. Had upended every plan she’d made for her life and decided to become a mother at twenty-two.
“What?” she asked, and he realized he had been sitting there staring at her.
“You’re an amazing woman, Danielle Kelly. And if no one’s ever told you that, it’s about time someone did.”
She was so bright, so beautiful, so fearless.
All this time she had been a burning flame no one had taken the time to look at. But she had come to him, answered his ad and started a wildfire in his life.
It didn’t seem fair, the way the world saw each of them. He was a celebrated businessman, and she... Well, hadn’t he chosen her because he knew his family would simply see her as a poor, unwed mother?
She was worth ten of him.
She blinked rapidly and wasn’t quite able to stop a tear from tracking down her cheek. “Why...why do you think that?”
“Not very many people would have done what you did. Taking your brother. Not after everything your mother already put you through. Not after spending your whole life taking care of the one person who should have been taking care of you. And then you came here and answered my ad.”
“Some people might argue that the last part was taking the easy way out.”
“Right. Except that I could have been a serial killer.”
“Or made me dress like a teddy bear,” she said, keeping her tone completely serious. “I actually feel like that last one is more likely.”
“Do you?”
“There are more furries than there are serial killers, thank God.”
“I guess, lucky for you, I’m neither one.” He wasn’t sure he was the great hope she seemed to think he was. But right now, he wanted to be.
“Very lucky for me,” she said. “Oh...Joshua, imagine if someone were both.”
“I’d rather not.”
She went to the changing table and quickly set about getting Riley a new diaper before placing him back in the crib. Then she straightened and hesitated. “I guess I could... I can just stay in here. Or...”
“Get the baby monitor,” he said. “You’re coming back to my bed.”
She smiled, and she did just that.
* * *
The next day there were wedding dresses in Danielle’s room. Not just a couple of wedding dresses. At least ten, all in her size.
She turned in a circle, looking at all of the garment bags with heavy white satin, beads and chiffon showing through.
Joshua walked into the room behind her, his arms folded over his chest. She raised her eyebrows, gesturing wildly at the dresses. “What is this?”
“We are getting married in less than two weeks. You need a dress.”
“A fancy dress to eat my Pop-Tart cake in,” she said, moving to a joke because if she didn’t she might cry. Because the man had ordered wedding dresses and brought them into the house.
And because if she were normal, she might have friends to share this occasion with her. Or her mother. Instead, she was standing in her bedroom, where her baby was napping, and her fiancé was the only potential spectator.
“You aren’t supposed to see the dresses, though,” she said.
“I promise you I cannot make any sense out of them based on how they look stuffed into those bags. I called the bridal store in town and described your figure and had her send dresses accordingly.”
Her eyes flew wide, her mouth dropping open. “You described my figure?”
“To give her an idea of what would suit you.”
“I’m going to need a play-by-play of this description. How did you describe my figure, Joshua? This is very important.”
“Elfin,” he said, surprising her because he didn’t seem to be joking. And that was a downright fanciful description coming from him.
“Elfin?”
A smile tipped his lips upward. “Yes. You’re like an elf. Or a nymph.”
“Nympho, maybe. And I blame you for that.”
He reached out then, hooking his arm around her waist and drawing her toward him. “Danielle, I am serious.”
She swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said, because she didn’t really know what else to say.
“You’re beautiful.”
Hearing him say that made her throat feel all dry and scratchy, made her eyes feel like they were burning. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“You think I’m lying? Why would I lie about that? Also, men can’t fake this.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it up against the front of his jeans, against the hardness there.
“You’re asking me to believe your penis? Because penises are notoriously indiscriminate.”
“You have a point. Plus, mine is pretty damn famously indiscriminate. By my own admission. But the one good thing about that is you can trust I know the difference between generalized lust and when a woman has reached down inside of me and grabbed hold of something I didn’t even know was there. I told you, I like it easy. I told you...I don’t deal with difficult situations or difficult people. That was my past failing. A huge failing, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to forgive myself for it. But what we have here makes me feel like maybe I can make up for it.”
There were a lot of nice words in there. A lot of beautiful sentiments tangled up in something that made her feel, well, kind of gross.
But he was looking at her with all that intensity, and there were wedding dresses hung up all around her, his ring glittering on her finger. And she just didn’t want to examine the bad feelings. She was so tired of bad feelings.
Joshua—all of this—was like a fantasy. She wanted to live in the fantasy for as long as she could.
Was that wrong? After everything she had been through, she couldn’t believe that it was.
“Well, get your penis out of here. The rest of you too. I’m going to try on dresses.”
“I don’t get to watch?”
“I grant you nothing about our relationship has been typical so far, but I would like to surprise you with my dress choice.”
“That’s fair. Why don’t you let me take Riley for a while?”
“Janine is going to be here soon.”
He shrugged. “I’ll take him until then.” He strode across the room and picked Riley up, and Riley flashed a small, gummy smile that might have been nothing more than a facial twitch but still made Danielle’s heart do something fluttery and funny.
Joshua’s confidence with Riley was increasing, and he made a massive effort to be proactive when it came to taking care of the baby.
Watching Joshua stand there with Riley banished any lingering gross feelings about being considered difficult, and when Joshua left the room and Danielle turned to face the array of gowns, she pushed every last one of her doubts to the side.
Maybe Joshua wasn’t perfect. Maybe there were some issues. But all of this, with him, was a damn sight better than anything she’d had before.
And a girl like her couldn’t afford to be too picky.
She took a deep breath and unzipped the first dress.
Ten
The day of the wedding was drawing closer and Danielle was drawing closer to a potential nervous breakdown. She was happy, in a way. When Joshua kissed her, when he took her to bed, when he spent the whole night holding her in his strong arms, everything felt great.
It was the in-between hours. The quiet moments she spent with herself, rocking Riley in that gray time before dawn. That was when she pulled those bad feelings out and began to examine them.
She had two days until the wedding, and her dress had been professionally altered to fit her—a glorious, heavy satin gown with a deep V in the back and buttons that ran down the full skirt—and if for no other reason than that, she couldn’t back out.
The thought of backing out sent a burst of pain blooming through her chest. Unfurling, spreading, expanding. No. She didn’t want to leave Joshua. No matter the strange, imbalanced feelings between them, she wanted to be with him. She felt almost desperate to be with him.
She looked over at him now, sitting in the driver’s seat of what was still the nicest car she had ever touched, much less ridden in, as they pulled up to the front of his parents’ house.
Sometimes looking at him hurt. And sometimes looking away from him hurt. Sometimes everything hurt. The need to be near him, the need for distance.
Maybe she really had lost her mind.
It took her a moment to realize she was still sitting motionless in the passenger seat, and Joshua had already put the car in Park and retrieved Riley from the back seat. He didn’t bother to bring the car seat inside this time. Instead, he wrapped the baby in a blanket and cradled him in his arms.
Oh, that hurt her in a whole different way.
Joshua was sexy. All the time. There was no question about that. But the way he was with Riley... Well, she was surprised that any woman who walked by him when he was holding Riley didn’t fall immediately at his feet.
She nearly did. Every damned time.
She followed him to the front door, looking down to focus on the way the gravel crunched beneath her boots—new boots courtesy of Joshua that didn’t have holes in them, and didn’t need three pairs of socks to keep her toes from turning into icicles—because otherwise she was going to get swallowed up by the nerves that were riding through her.
His mother had insisted on making a prewedding dinner for them, and this was Danielle’s second chance to make a first impression. Now it was real and she felt an immense amount of pressure to be better than she was, rather than simply sliding into the lowest expectation people like his family had of someone like her, as she’d done before.
She looked over at him when she realized he was staring at her. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.
Then he bent down and kissed her. She closed her eyes, her breath rushing from her lungs as she gave herself over to his kiss.
That, of course, was when the front door opened.
“You’re here!”
Nancy Grayson actually looked happy to see them both, and even happier that she had caught them making out on the front porch.
Danielle tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Thank you for doing this,” she said, jarred by the change in her role, but desperate to do a good job.
“Of course,” the older woman said. “Now, let me hold my grandbaby.”
Those words made Danielle pause, made her freeze up. Made her want to cry. Actually, she was crying. Tears were rolling down her cheeks without even giving her a chance to hold them back.
Joshua’s mother frowned. “What’s wrong, honey?”
Danielle swallowed hard. “I didn’t ever expect that he would have grandparents. That he would have a family.” She took a deep breath. “I mean like this. It means a lot to me.”
Nancy took Riley from Joshua’s arms. But then she reached out and put her hand on Danielle’s shoulder. “He’s not the only one who has a family. You do too.”
Throughout the evening Danielle was stunned by the warm acceptance of Joshua’s entire family. By the way his sister-in-law, Mia, made an effort to get to know her, and by the complete absence of antagonism coming from his younger sister, Faith.
But what really surprised her was when Joshua’s father came and sat next to her on the couch during dessert. Joshua was engaged in conversation with his brothers across the room while Mia, Faith and Joshua’s mother were busy playing with Riley.
“I knew you would be good for him,” Mr. Grayson said.
Danielle looked up at the older man. “A wife, you mean,” she said, her voice soft. She didn’t know why she had challenged his assertion, why she’d done anything but blandly agree. Except she knew she wasn’t the woman he would have chosen for his son, and she didn’t want him to pretend otherwise.
He shook his head. “I’m not talking about the ad. I know what he did. I know that he placed another ad looking for somebody he could use to get back at me. But the minute I met you, I knew you were exactly what he needed. Somebody unexpected. Somebody who would push him out of his comfort zone. It’s real now, isn’t it?”
It’s real now.
Those words echoed inside of her. What did real mean? They were really getting married, but was their relationship real?
He didn’t love her. He wanted to fix her. And somehow, through fixing her, he believed he would fix himself.
Maybe that wasn’t any less real than what most people had. Maybe it was just more honest.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “It’s real.”
“I know that my meddling upset him. I’m not stupid. And I know he felt like I wasn’t listening to him. But he has been so lost in all that pain, and I knew... I knew he just needed to love somebody again. He thought everything I did, everything I said was because I don’t understand a life that goes beyond what we have here.” He gestured around the living room—small, cozy, essentially a stereotype of the happy, rural family. “But that’s not it. Doesn’t matter what a life looks like, a man needs love. And that man needs love more than most. He always was stubborn, difficult. Never could get him to talk about much of anything. He needs someone he can talk to. Someone who can see the good in him so he can start to see it too.”
“Love,” Danielle said softly, the word a revelation she had been trying to avoid.
That was why it hurt. When she looked at him. When she was with him. When she looked away from him. When he was gone.
That was the intense, building pressure inside her that felt almost too large for her body to contain.
It was every beautiful, hopeful feeling she’d had since meeting him.
She loved him.
And he didn’t love her. That absence was the cause of the dark disquiet she’d felt sometimes. He wanted to use her as a substitute for his girlfriend, the one he thought he had failed.
“Every man needs love,” Todd said. “Successful businessmen and humble farmers. Trust me. It’s the thing that makes life run. The thing that keeps you going when crops don’t grow and the weather doesn’t cooperate. The thing that pulls you up from the dark pit when you can’t find the light. I’m glad he found his light.”
But he hadn’t.
She had found hers.
For him, she was a Band-Aid he was trying to put over a wound that would end up being fatal if he didn’t do something to treat it. If he didn’t do something more than simply cover it up.
She took a deep breath. “I don’t...”
“Are you ready to go home?”
Danielle looked up and saw Joshua standing in front of her. And those words...
Him asking if she wanted to go home, meaning to his house, with him, like that house belonged to her. Like he belonged to her...
Well, his questi
on allowed her to erase all the doubts that had just washed through her. Allowed her to put herself back in the fantasy she’d been living in since she’d agreed to his proposal.
“Sure,” she said, pushing herself up from the couch.
She watched as he said goodbye to his family, as he collected Riley and slung the diaper bag over his shoulder. Yes. She loved him.
She was an absolute and total lost cause for him. In love. Something she had thought she could never be.
The only problem was, she was in love alone.
* * *
It was his wedding day.
Thankfully, only his family would be in attendance. A small wedding in Copper Ridge’s Baptist church, which was already decorated for Christmas and so saved everyone time and hassle.
Which was a good thing, since he had already harassed local baker Alison Donnelly to the point where she was ready to assault him with a spatula over his demands related to a Pop-Tart cake.
It was the one thing Danielle had said she wanted, and even if she had been joking, he wanted to make it happen for her.
He liked doing things for her. Whether it was teaching her how to ride horses, pleasuring her in the bedroom or fixing her nice meals, she always expressed a deep and sweet gratitude that transcended anything he had ever experienced before.
Her appreciation affected him. He couldn’t pretend it didn’t.
She affected him.
He walked into the empty church, looking up at the steeply pitched roof and the thick, curved beams of wood that ran the length of it, currently decked with actual boughs of holly.
Everything looked like it was set up and ready, all there was to do now was wait for the ceremony to start.
Suddenly, the doors that led to the fellowship hall opened wide and in burst Danielle. If he had thought she looked ethereal before, it was nothing compared to how she looked at this moment. Her dark hair was swept back in a loose bun, sprigs of baby’s breath woven into it, some tendrils hanging around her face.
And the dress...
The bodice was fitted, showing off her slim figure, and the skirt billowed out around her, shimmering with each and every step. She was holding a bouquet of dark red roses, her lips painted a deep crimson to match.