The Bridal Arrangement

by Cindy Gerard

  Ellie heard the truck pull up one Saturday morning and walked out onto the front porch. When she saw who it was, she bounced down the steps to greet him and was promptly wrapped in strong arms, swung around in a circle, and given a big smacking kiss on the cheek.

  “John Tyler,” she gasped, laughing up at him as he held her and grinned his poster boy grin, “a simple hello would have done just fine.”

  “But this way is so much more fun.”

  She laughed again. “Well put me down. I can’t breathe, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Ellie, sweet thing, you’ve stolen my breath for so many years now, it only seems fair that I steal a little bit of yours.”

  “Is that what you’ve got on your mind, Tyler? Stealing?”

  Ellie looked over her shoulder to see Lee standing behind them, his face grim, his voice as hard as the hammer he held in his hand that he’d been using to rebuild a box stall.

  “Hello, Savage,” John said, slowly letting Ellie go with an affectionate squeeze and another quick grin. “How’s it shakin’?”

  “It’s shakin’ just fine,” Lee said in a steely voice that made Ellie frown and wonder about the heat in his eyes and his rigid stance.

  “So…” Lee slung his weight onto one foot and crossed his arms over his chest. “You were in the neighborhood or what?”

  Since Shiloh was nowhere near anyone’s neighborhood, Ellie thought Lee’s question a little odd, but she was so happy to see John that she let it roll on by.

  “What are you doing way out here?” she asked, then remembered her manners. “Oh, wait. I don’t get to play hostess very often. Come on up to the house. I’ll get us all something to drink, then we can talk.”

  She was halfway up the steps before she realized the men were still planted where they stood.

  “Are you coming?” she asked, puzzled by John’s grin, which could only be described as challenging, and Lee’s scowl, which was flat-out fierce.

  “In a minute,” Lee said, his eyes never leaving John’s face. “You go on, Ellie. I want to show John the box stall—maybe get his take on a couple of things.”

  When she hesitated, unsure, John’s grin just widened. “Give us five and we’ll be there.”

  Then the two of them turned and headed for the barn, leaving Ellie with the distinct impression that there was much more to their conversation than box stalls.

  Lee was steaming. Because Ellie was beaming at John-boy here, who didn’t have the wherewithal to comprehend that he was about a hammer handle away from losing a few of the pearly whites that made his lady-killer grin so irresistible.

  “You can’t get your own woman, Tyler? You’ve got to come out here sniffing after mine?”

  “Is that what she is? Yours? As in property?” John asked, his smile gone, his expression leaning toward combative.

  Lee stared at the young man long and hard, then purposefully dropped the hammer so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it. “You want to explain to me where you get off, coming to my home, kissing my wife and asking me a question like that?”

  Tyler didn’t have anything to say for a long moment. When he finally spoke, Lee figured the kid couldn’t possibly know what kind of risk he was taking. “A long time ago I did a lousy thing to Ellie. I hurt her. Worse, I let her be hurt. I was a kid then. And I was stupid. I’m not a kid anymore,” he added, just a hint of a threat in his voice. “And I don’t figure that it would be right if I stood by and watched her get hurt again.”

  “And you figure I’m going to hurt her,” Lee said, more statement than question.

  “I guess that’s what I came here to find out.”

  The anger came from deep inside. So deep he hadn’t known it was there. So fierce he wasn’t sure what kept him from laying John Tyler and his White-Knight attitude lower than barn dirt. “And I guess that still leaves me wondering why you think you have the right.”

  Something flickered in John’s eyes. “Oh, no. No, man,” he said, patting the air between them as if to ward off the thought. “It’s nothing like that. Hell, I’ve never had a chance with Ellie. Not that way. Not when we were kids…not now. And even if she was interested—which she absolutely is not,” he added with emphasis, “I’d never graze in another man’s pasture, if you know what I mean.”

  “Then your point is?” Lee ground out.

  “My point is, she is nuts about you. I just want to make sure the feeling’s mutual.”

  The silence that settled would have made a lesser man head for the nearest exit. At a run. John Tyler, for all his coverboy looks, was not a lesser man. Either that or he had a death wish.

  “Shiloh,” John said, holding his ground. “It’s a pretty high-ticket piece of property.”

  “Ah. So it’s the profit margin you figure I’m working toward,” Lee said, understanding where this was headed.

  “It’s crossed my mind. Quite a bit, in fact, until I ran into Ellie again at those night classes.”

  “And?”

  “And I’d never seen her so confident. Or so happy.”

  Quiet filled the barn like the daylight that crept in through the door when Ellie opened it and called out to them.

  They remained locked in combative silence until John broke it. “So, I came out here to make sure I was reading the situation right.”

  “Overlooking the fact that it’s none of your business…what’s your read now?”

  John grinned. “It’s a good read. And you’re good for her. So…congratulations on your marriage. You’re a lucky man.”

  He sobered then, looked Lee straight in the eye. “Keep her happy. She deserves to be happy. And now that I’ve seen for myself that you’re ready to knock the block off any fool stupid enough to question your good intentions,” he added, tongue in cheek, and with a quick glance at the hammer lying by Lee’s feet, “I think maybe you just might be good enough for her.”

  Ellie had crossed the barn and had tucked herself along Lee’s side before he could manage to do anything but shake his head and give up a halfhearted smile when John shot another flirting grin at his wife and invited himself up to the house for a cold one.

  As Ellie stood at the kitchen sink finishing up dishes that night, she decided that she would never understand men. True, she’d had limited experience dealing with them, but the experience she’d had, well, it was baffling. Take this afternoon with John and Lee. She could have sworn that when she went looking for them in the barn she was going to find one or both of them covered with blood—though she didn’t have a clue what they’d been angry about.

  Instead, they were actually laughing at each other’s stupid jokes by the time John had left after a supper that she hadn’t had to work too hard at talking him into staying for.

  Lee…Lee was still something of a puzzle. After John left, he’d withdrawn again. She was ready to admit that he’d started pulling away from her about the time they’d started taking those classes. She’d sensed then that he’d been struggling with something. She’d seen the look on his face whenever he’d come into her class to pick her up.

  Sometimes he’d actually looked angry. No. It had been less than anger. It had been something else…something she had never been able to figure out. Something that had haunted her—and evidently haunted him, too.

  On a deep sigh she looked hard at the picture she’d propped on the kitchen windowsill and dried her hands on a dish towel. She’d found it when she’d been cleaning the roll-top desk this morning. It was a picture of Lee when he’d first come to Shiloh, before she’d ever been born. The look on his face—as he’d stood there by her daddy’s side—made her heart break. It was a look full of hurt and distrust and defiant pride. Her daddy’s hand had been on his shoulder, his touch an extension of his love, an overture of trust, a welcome that the ten-year-old boy Lee had been had only to reach out and take to his heart—yet Lee had looked as alone as she felt without him.

  He looked, she realized, with tears misting her eyes, as he had looked s
o often during the past few weeks. Distrustful, confused. Alone.

  Her heart tripped. Her breath quickened. She stared at the picture of that lost little boy who had come to Shiloh broken and abused. And with the wisdom of a woman in love, she finally understood. So many things.

  “Oh, Lee,” she whispered, taking the picture in her hand. Running her thumb over that beautiful, un-smiling, defiant face, she finally understood that of the two of them he was still the most wounded.

  She went to him at dusk that night. In her flowing white gown, with the wind whipping her hair, she went out on the porch where he sat in brooding silence.

  “Go inside, Ellie,” he said after a long moment. “It’s too cool out here tonight.”

  She wasn’t going anywhere. Not without him. Not ever again.

  “It’s colder in there. Without you.”

  She moved to kneel at his feet, watched the turmoil in his eyes and knew she’d been right to come to him. As she’d once before come to him, a woman determined to love her man.

  Then she eased up onto his lap until he was forced to put his arms around her or let her tumble to the cold porch floor. It took no leap of faith to know he’d never let her fall.

  He let out a deep breath, then surrendered and, pulling her to him, buried his face in her hair.

  She hugged him to her breast, loving the feel of his hair beneath her hands, the heat of his big, strong body surrounding her.

  “I love you, Lee.”

  His breath came out on a long and ragged shudder. He stared at her face, ran his thumb along her cheek. “You could have been anything. Anything you wanted to be.”

  Her heart broke as the complexities of this man’s soul started to unravel around them. “That’s what’s been eating at you lately? You think you’ve taken something away from me?”

  He looked away, and her heart stuttered for several beats. “Are you sorry you married me?”

  He held her hard against him. “I’m sorry that I took away your choices.”

  “Listen to me,” she said after a long breath. Framing his face in her hands, she made him look into her eyes. “Everything I am, everything I need, is right here with you. I know my own mind, Lee, and it has always been with you. Always.

  “No,” she insisted when he shook his head. “Just listen. For too long, I let something I couldn’t control, control me. Who I was, what I did, what I thought of myself. You’ve opened up my world. You, Lee. You have shown me who I am. And the only choices I’ve ever had—you have given to me. Choices, Lee. About that, you’re right. It’s all about choices. Now please…please trust me to make them.”

  She caressed his face, looked deep in his eyes. “I choose Shiloh. I choose you.”

  Lee stared at this woman who was his wife. He listened to her words, heard the strength in them, saw the conviction in her eyes, felt the love that spilled out from her heart. She believed. She believed every word she said, that he had given her choices, not taken them away. That she was strong, not in spite of him but because of what she was and what they were together.

  She believed. In them. In him. And in that moment, she finally made him a believer, too. Right or wrong, deserved or not, he was going to hold on to the belief—just as he was going to hold on to her and in the process give her the gift of every opportunity she had ever missed.

  “Well,” he whispered, folding her against him, feeling the heart that she had given him so freely beat, steady and strong and true. “You may have had choices but I never have. Never. Not when it comes to you.”

  Midnight was soft, and securely wrapped around the bed in the room with pink flowers on the wall. Shiloh slept even as husband and wife lay awake.

  “I want to have your baby,” Ellie whispered into the quiet.

  As happy as he was in this moment, he felt his body tense involuntarily. He’d been waiting for this. Dreading this. Wrestling with what he would say when she asked.

  “Give me some time,” he said into the dark. “Give me some time to get used to the idea.”

  In the moonlight he saw her eyes mist over with tears. He brushed the back of a knuckle across her petal-soft cheek. “And then we’ll talk to Doc, okay? Just talk,” he insisted, then banded his arms around her. “As much as I’d love to give you a baby…it tears me up to think of you taking that kind of risk.”

  She kissed him gently. “Life is a risk. The sweetest kind…. When you’re ready,” she murmured, settling back down in his arms, “only when you’re ready, we’ll talk with Doc. Then we’ll make the decision together.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, aching for her and the disappointment that their decision might bring her. “And what if the decision is no? What if it’s not safe for you to have babies?”

  She was quiet, too, dealing with the possibility, mourning the potential loss. “Shiloh has a lot to offer a child,” she said at last, her eyes like velvet mist in the night. “Especially a child who has never been offered much of a chance.”

  A child like he had been. A child who had grown into a man who had thought the exceptional woman in his arms had needed mending. Instead he’d been the one who’d been broken—and she had mended him.

  So much warmth, so much wisdom, so much love. He hung on to it. He hung on to her. As he was going to hang on to her for the rest of his life.

  “I love you, Ellie.”

  “I know,” she whispered softly. “I think I’ve always known.”

  He showed her with his touch then, with the deep glide and penetration of his body, what he couldn’t hope to accomplish with mere words.

  He took her up, he took her over, to that place where they could both soar free, to that place where she was woman-strong and he was the best man he could ever be…and where neither one of them had to be afraid of the fall.

  My thanks to Joan Marlow Golan for her vision and

  trust, to Carole Loveless for sharing and as always,

  to Glenna McReynolds, for her brilliant insight,

  generosity and friendship.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0445-4

  THE BRIDAL ARRANGEMENT

  Copyright © 2001 by Cindy Gerard

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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