The Cowboy Takes A Bride (The Bridal Bid #2)

by Cathleen Galitz

  Grant’s breath caught in his lungs. Such an affirmation was more precious to him than gold. Still the direction this conversation was taking made him extremely uncomfortable. Not only would Caitlin be certain to feel betrayed by her father’s dying act of generosity, the plain truth of the matter was that L.L. Drilling would never mean as much to him as to the man who had started it.

  As far as Grant was concerned, rig work was just a means to an end, a way of making enough money to buy a pretty piece of land where he could build a real home, one as stable as the one in which he remembered growing up. One not on wheels. Nevertheless the fact that Paddy thought enough of him to even consider bequeathing his company to him was almost more than he could comprehend.

  “The kind of man worthy of my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  So lost was he in his whirling thoughts that Grant imagined he’d heard Paddy offer him his daughter. His lips twisted in wry amusement as he envisioned Caitlin’s feminist reaction to such a proposal. Funny what lack of sleep and stress could do to one’s mind.

  Reining in his stray thoughts with a rough hand, he stammered a bewildered, “What did you say?”

  “The two of you were meant for each other. I only wish I could stick around long enough to see the beautiful children you’re bound to have.”

  Grant’s head snapped up in disbelief. This couldn’t possibly be the big “bonus” he’d been promised, could it? The tears running down Paddy’s cheeks were real enough to convince him that he wasn’t just imagining this preposterous invitation to the honorable ranks of the Flynn family.

  “Don’t you think Caitlin might have something to say about this?” he stammered incredulously. “Hasn’t she set her sights on a college man, someone with more brains in his head than calluses on his hands?”

  “That’s just the kind of man she doesn’t need. Over the years, I’ve watched her throw off any number of simpering intellectuals. The truth is I’m worried about her, Grant. When I’m dead and gone, there’ll be no one around to protect her from unscrupulous sorts who wouldn’t think twice about bedding and wedding a sweet young thing like her for a piece of my business and a permanent address on Easy Street.”

  As “bonuses” went this one definitely left something to be desired. Grant suspected Caitlin’s Twentieth Century convictions would be turned upside down when she discovered she’d been handed over to him as part of some questionable business acquisition. He didn’t have the heart to remind his old friend that at the present time his company was not in the best shape it had ever been. They were, in fact, barely holding on. Nonetheless he understood completely Paddy’s fear of leaving his only daughter without protection. Outside of the sheltered social circle in which she had been raised, such an innocent would be an easy mark for any number of men. Calculating, brutal men who didn’t give a damn about a lady’s sensibilities.

  The thought sideswiped him and sent his senses spinning out of control. His head began to pound as Paddy continued in a voice that was fast failing.

  “Trust me. I’ve got eyes in my head. I know what my daughter wants, needs, and deserves. You’re the best man for the job. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d go get her for me.”

  Not willing to put any more strain upon the man he loved as a father, Grant didn’t bother putting up an argument. He stumbled out of Paddy’s room looking as if he’d just survived the dropping of the atom bomb.

  Still fuming that her father had asked to see him before her, Caitlin regarded Grant with cold fury. He seemed impervious to her anger.

  “He wants to talk to you,” was all he could manage to say before she pushed her way around him and rushed to her father’s bedside.

  Tubes, wires, and little plastic bags filled with mysterious fluids sprouted like tentacles in all directions. Looking as pale as the sheets upon which he lay, Paddy appeared already dead. A strangled sob escaped from Caitlin’s lips.

  “Daddy,” she cried, taking a limp hand into her own.

  A faint squeeze reassured her as his eyelids fluttered open.

  “Cait, you look so pretty,” he mumbled. “So like your mother.”

  The statement was typical of her father. And so sweet and genuine that it caused tears to well up in her eyes.

  “You’re going to be fine, Daddy. Just fine,” she promised, bestowing a kiss upon the weathered hand that had helped guide her though life.

  Resting against the pillow, he offered her a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re here, honey.”

  His voice was as unsteady as a reed in the wind, and he looked older than Caitlin could have ever envisioned him. In her mind, her father would be the vibrant man who carried her as a child upon his broad shoulders and allowed her to touch the sky.

  “Me, too,” she murmured.

  “I’ve asked for a priest.”

  “But there’s no need,” Caitlin protested, a note of panic bubbling up in her throat. “I’m telling you that you’re going to be just fine. You most certainly are not dying!”

  Despite the vehemence of her words, in her heart she wasn’t quite so sure. Her father’s desire for Last Rites could only mean that he had already accepted the fact that he was going to die. And if that was the case, hope hadn’t a chance.

  Paddy met her gaze directly. “Yes, honey, I am, and before I go there’s something I want to see happen more than anything else in the world.”

  Caitlin’s heart was in her eyes as she fingered the golden locket at her throat. Nestled inside was her most precious belonging: her parents’ wedding photograph. Eternally young, they looked lovingly at each another. In times of great stress, Caitlin would revert to her childhood habit of stroking it tenderly. Many a long night she had spent longingly looking at those two happy faces, praying that her parents would somehow get back together. Once upon a time, she had thought that simply wishing upon that amulet could produce miracles.

  In the comforting pattern of her old childhood habit, she rubbed the locket between her finger and thumb. “What is it, Daddy?” she asked. “Just tell me; I’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

  In an attempt to make his final wish known, her father strained forward. So as not to tax his voice any further, Caitlin moved even closer.

  “A man hates to leave the world with any regrets. I’ve got one weighing heavy on my conscience that you have the power to remedy.”

  Caitlin was surprised by the admission. She didn’t think her father had any regrets. Anxious to put his mind at ease, she was prepared to assure him that she would do whatever it was he asked of her.

  “I’ve come to rely on Grant like the son I never had. Truth is I couldn’t have done it without him. I’ve been meaning to write him into my will for some time, but I just never got around to it. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I’d like to leave half of the company to each of you.”

  Caitlin had only thought she was too numb to feel any more pain. She was wrong. A pain stabbed through her and left the blade sticking out of her back. Even on his deathbed, her father was more concerned with Grant than he was with his own daughter.

  “Like the son I never had…”

  Cracking her skull from the inside out, the words rang in her head like a great iron clapper. How fitting. She was to be partners with the man who had stolen her father’s affection from her.

  “You know I’ve always felt responsible for his father’s death.”

  Caitlin didn’t bother refuting the obvious. This was neither the time nor the place to explain how faulty his logic was. How senseless his guilt was. How misplaced his heart was.

  It was enough to know that dear heart was too weak to place any more stress upon it.

  Dully, she started to assure him that she would make arrangements to have the proper paperwork drawn up when he stopped her midsentence.

  “I’ve got a better idea. Honey, I’ve seen the way you and Grant look at each other. Don’t even try to deny it. I watched Grant risk his own life to save yours, and I’d feel
real good leaving you in his care. I love you both. I just don’t have the time to waste waiting for two stubborn, proud kids to work this thing through to its natural conclusion. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but what I want more than anything else in this world is to see you married before I’m dead and buried.”

  Shock registered on Caitlin’s face.

  “What?” she stammered in disbelief, releasing the locket in her fingers. It burned a hole at the base of her throat as a foreboding tingle raced through her body.

  “As your husband, Grant would be automatically entitled to half the company, and I could meet my maker feeling like I’d taken care of you both.”

  At that very moment a nurse walked through the door with a brusqueness characteristic of a seasoned military man.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now,” she said, clipping her words sharply.

  Indeed Paddy’s eyes were already closed.

  “Saving his strength is the utmost concern right now,” Nurse Ratchet added, ushering Caitlin out the door where Grant was waiting. Though he’d had a few minutes to compose himself, he still looked as shell-shocked as she did. Unfortunately, the hospital corridor offered them little privacy.

  They regarded one another warily.

  Caitlin broke the silence at last with a question. “Did he tell you what he wants?”

  “To see us married before he dies.”

  “Any chance he was delirious and won’t remember a thing that he said?” she ventured.

  He snorted derisively in response.

  Despite her own bewilderment, Caitlin’s pride was wounded by Grant’s decided lack of enthusiasm. “Don’t worry,” she spat out. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to actually go through with it.”

  “Even if it might mean saving your father’s life?” Grant retorted, equally hurt that the prospect of marrying him was clearly so repugnant to her.

  A slap in the face would have been less cruel than his words. Caitlin’s mouth flew open in outrage at the callousness of the remark.

  “You can’t actually be considering following through on such a farce!”

  Grant’s eyes were deep blue drill bits that bore into her very soul. “I’d give my own life for that man,” he replied, giving every word deliberate emphasis. “If all it takes is two little words like ‘I do’ to make him happy, I won’t be the one to deny him them.”

  “But it’s ludicrous,” Caitlin stuttered. “It’s blasphemous.”

  Still even as her mouth was forming the words, her heart latched onto the possibility of giving her father something to live for. She studied Grant thoughtfully.

  “You’d really do that for him?”

  His gaze never wavered beneath Caitlin’s scrutiny.

  “I’ve seen firsthand what the power of love can do to a person’s heart.”

  Caitlin flinched at the reference to his mother’s suicide.

  Clearly Grant wasn’t willing to risk losing Paddy to a broken heart as well. If granting his friend this small final comfort offered him hope, then his own pride was a mighty small price to pay.

  “Need I remind you that we’re the cause of your father’s heart attack in the first place?”

  “No, you don’t,” Caitlin snapped. As if that knowledge wasn’t enough of a burden on her conscience without having Grant add even more weight to it.

  He stood before her as solid and immovable as a bronze statue. “I gave him my word,” he said, reminding Caitlin of what that meant to a man such as himself.

  Sighing, she put her hands to her temples. Her head was throbbing, her knees felt like elastic, and the way the floor was spinning around felt like some persistent child was swatting at the globe of the earth. The only thing keeping Caitlin standing was her concern for her father. She had spent all of her life trying to please him, trying to prove herself worthy of his respect. Hoping to make up for all the precious years she had lost with him, she wanted nothing more than to make him proud and happy—at any cost.

  “I suppose that it wouldn’t have to be real,” she pondered out loud. “As long as we don’t consummate the marriage, it could always be annulled later. We could claim to have been pressured under duress or to have irreconcilable differences.”

  Grant stiffened at her words. He tried tamping the sudden welling of emotion that threatened to betray him. Perhaps being soured on marriage by her own parents’ divorce, Caitlin couldn’t guess his own secret desire to form the kind of sacred bond that his mother and father had enjoyed. After witnessing the agony that his mother endured at the loss of her husband, Grant had packed those longings away on an icy strand of his heart. Equating love with loss, he preferred his relationships simple and torrid—with no emotional investment.

  Unfortunately, he doubted whether Caitlin was the type who could in good conscience buy into such a cold arrangement. Indeed he wondered whether he himself could remain clinically detached when his blood ran as hot as molten lava whenever she was near. Even now he had to fight the urge to enfold her protectively in his arms and offer her the comfort of his body. She looked so frightened and small against the inevitability of death.

  Grant’s blood may have run hot, but his words were as cold as an arctic breeze when he spoke again. Never one to deny Paddy what he wanted—much less on his deathbed, he tried to put the situation into perspective.

  “Right now our feelings for one another are secondary to your father’s wishes. If you’re worried that I’m going to force myself upon you and ruin your chances of dissolving our socalled marriage, don’t be. I promise I’ll keep my dirty, working man’s hands off you.”

  His words stung like a bullwhip. No words came out of Caitlin’s open mouth. As a befuddled-looking man approached the door checking its number against the one scrawled on the scrap of paper in his hand, she stood gaping like a fish with a hook in its mouth. Dressed in black, the man wore the stiff white collar that identified him to the world as a priest.

  He asked the intense, extraordinary-looking couple before him, “Would you happen to know whether this is Paddy Flynn’s room?”

  Grant indicated that the man was in the right place.

  Caitlin held out a shaky hand and introduced herself. “My father is expecting you.”

  “I’m so glad to meet you at last, Caitlin. I’m Father O’Riley, an old friend of Paddy’s,” the priest said with a trace of Irish brogue and sincere concern. “I was told it is an emergency.”

  Taking Caitlin firmly by the elbow, Grant pulled her away from the doorway to allow the priest entry. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t rush off, Father. We do need to see you, but right now we’ve got some pressing business to attend to. I promise we’ll be back just as soon as we possibly can.”

  “That’s no problem,” the priest assured him with a patient smile. “I’ll pop in on Paddy first and administer Last Rites before making rounds to check on my other parishioners. I’ll meet you back here in a couple of hours.”

  Grant shook his hand with ardent appreciation. “Thank you.”

  Nodding his head, Father O’Riley checked his watch, opened the door, and went in.

  Unable to stand by and watch her father give up on life, Caitlin’s voice was devoid of emotion when she addressed Grant again. The words felt thick and awkward in her mouth.

  “Can you promise me that this marriage will be in name only?”

  Grant’s eyes turned the color of blue frost as all hint of gentleness vanished with the onset of bitter winter. “All I want to do is make your father’s last hours happy ones. I’ve given you my word, and it’ll have to do. Rest assured, somehow I’ll manage to keep my grimy mitts off your lily-white reputation.”

  It was clear from the scorn in his voice that Grant both questioned her innocence and spurned her pretense. Like so many of the jerks she had dated, he seemed to be under the impression that every girl who went to college automatically lost her virtue with her freshman status. Telling herself that she was perfectly fine with such
high-handed assumptions, Caitlin reminded herself that the last thing she needed was Grant’s pity. It had been hard enough persuading her college roommate that “saving herself” for marriage was not a joke. Convincing Grant would take physical proof that could be offered but once. And she wasn’t about to be goaded into losing such a precious gift by some hard-hat cowboy sporting a chip on his shoulder.

  “Come on,” Grant muttered, mistaking the pained expression on her face for disdain. “If we’re going to do this for your father, we’d better get going.”

  It was far from the romantic proposal she had so often imagined in her fantasies. Nodding in dry-eyed agreement, she fell into step beside him.

  The next hour and a half passed in a blur. Since there is no waiting period for a marriage license or requirement for a blood test in the state of Wyoming, the necessary paperwork at the courthouse was filled out in no time at all. Signing her name with trembling hand, Caitlin told herself that it was best that there was no time to entertain second thoughts.

  On the way back to the hospital Grant pulled into a small shopping center. Caitlin looked at him questioningly.

  He nodded in the direction of a mannequin in a storefront window. “I know it’s probably not what you had in mind, but every bride should have a wedding dress.”

  Caitlin’s heart melted at the sight of the dress the mannequin was wearing. Beautiful in its simplicity, the white sundress with matching jacket was a vision. Delicate embroidery decorated a square neckline, and a sash around the waist was intended to reveal a woman’s curves.

  Such a feminine outfit was fitting for Southern evenings spent sipping iced tea on a porch swing or nuptials offered in the woods surrounded by wild flowers. The thought of marching into her father’s hospital room in the sort of wedding gown her mother had always promised her was just as ludicrous as being married in the pair of shorts she was presently wearing.