A Hasty Wedding

by Cara Colter

  "What was a dumb thing to do?"

  "Pulling the blade on her."

  Blake, who prided himself on being unshockable, on keeping his cool in any circumstance, swerved the vehicle onto the shoulder and braked to a halt so fast that the boy's head popped out of his jacket.

  "You did what?" It registered, somewhere in him, that this was not him, the unflappable Blake Fallon. But the thought of someone scaring his sweet secretary filled him with a quiet and protective rage that did not bode well for the boy sitting next to him.

  Tomas shrank back against the door. His hand moved stealthily for the handle. "Don't hit me," he whispered.

  And Blake snapped back to reality. He took a deep breath and tried not to think of Holly on the end of a knife.

  "I don't hit kids," he said quietly. "Nobody here hits kids." Given the paleness of the boy's face, he decided to skip the lecture on the possible consequences of pulling a knife on someone. If it had been his old secretary, that boy would be in cuffs already, on his way back to where he'd just come from.

  But instead of that making him appreciate her more, Blake suddenly felt furious with Holly for putting him in this situation. He'd asked her what was going on, and she'd lied to him. Maybe, he admitted, he felt furious with her because for a moment pure emotion ruled him.

  "I didn't see a knife when I arrived at the office," he said, putting the vehicle back in gear and pulling back onto the highway.

  "She kicked it under the desk when you came in."

  Great. He felt his ire rising again. Not only had she lied to him, she'd deliberately misled him.

  "Do you have any more weapons on you?"

  "No."

  "Do I have to check?"

  "No."

  He glanced at Tomas, and saw truth there. He arrived at Hacienda de Alegria, Joe and Meredith Colton's lavish ranch, and shook his head. There were kids everywhere, spilling across the lawns and out of the big sprawling house that dominated the scene.

  Meredith Colton, who really should have been enjoying her retirement, was running frantically with a homemade kite, kids on all sides of her, running and laughing, their faces lifted to the sun.

  Joe had a little fat pony saddled and a small girl had a death grip on the saddle horn and a huge smile on her face as Joe led her around the yard. Another dozen or so kids were hopping along on either side of them, excited to have a turn.

  Blake shook his head. He'd been worried about imposing on his foster parents when they had offered to take the kids from Hopechest. But when the logistics of keeping the ranch open by bringing in water and supplying bottled water for drinking had proved impossible, he had accepted their gracious offer.

  He realized now he had never seen two people look less imposed upon. The pair of them looked like they were in all their glory.

  "What is this place?" Tomas asked, his eyes wide, his nose pressed to the window.

  "It's a temporary home for the kids who were displaced from the ranch."

  "No kidding?" he breathed. "I kind of imagined heaven looking like this."

  "That's kind of how I felt when I first saw it, too," Blake confessed. Tomas was way ahead of where Blake had been, though, if he could admit something like that. Blake, at that age, would have considered such an admission soft.

  A half hour later Tomas had been reunited with his sister, and Joe, with his knack for trusting those who had never been trusted, had put Tomas in charge of pony rides.

  "What's his story?" Joe asked quietly, as he and Blake sat on comfortable cushions on the bent willow chairs in the deep shade of the porch.

  "I don't know yet," Blake said, taking a sip of his iced tea. Just the way he liked it. Tea and lemon, no sugar. Trust Meredith to be watching the sugar intake of all these kids. "I just found out from him he pulled a knife on my secretary."

  "Really?" Joe said mildly. "Surprised he has any teeth left."

  "I don't hit kids."

  "Well, none of them ever pulled a knife on Holly before. Meredith and I are very taken with that girl."

  Holly was making several trips a week between Hacienda de Alegria and the Hopechest Ranch with paperwork. But Blake suspected many of her trips were just because she missed the kids so much.

  He did, too.

  He noticed a twinkle in Joe Colton's eye that seemed to encourage a confession that Blake, too, was quite taken with his new secretary.

  Blake had a desperate need to deny it. "I would have been ticked if it happened to anybody, and not enough to be smashing heads, either."

  "Well, maybe you wouldn't have been that ticked if it had happened to Mrs. Bartholomew," Joe guessed.

  Blake had to chuckle. "Okay, maybe not her. Joe, I don't have any kind of interest in Holly Lamb, aside from the fact she's the most wonderful secretary I've ever had."

  Joe looked skeptical.

  "For God's sake, it would be totally unprofessional."

  "I don't recall saying a word about your relationship with Holly, professional or otherwise. But let an old man share some wisdom with you."

  "Do you have to?"

  "Yes. She's the kind of girl men pass up. She doesn't catch the eye, like a piece of tinfoil in the gutter. She's more like gold. Gold doesn't shine much when you first find it. You have to look hard for it."

  "I'm not involved with my secretary. And I don't plan to be. Joe, I have an example to set. My behavior has to be exemplary in every way."

  "Who are you trying to convince you're perfect—the rest of the world or yourself? You've got to quit lining up those paper clips in neat rows and live a little."

  An annoying statement, uncomfortably close to the one Rory had made recently. Something insulting about him polishing his stapler.

  Of course, Rory was all buoyance and light and unpolished staplers now that Cupid's arrow had found him.

  Joe could still make Blake feel like an awkward kid, still ask all the right questions.

  He also knew precisely when to drop something.

  "Look, Meredith and I have set our party for a week from Saturday. We think its about time to have some fun."

  Blake looked at the three-ring circus happening around him and wondered glumly how much more fun it could get.

  "This whole thing has been terrible on the morale of the whole town. We're going to have a good old-fashioned barn dance. Get people laughing again, give these kids a chance to see there are wholesome ways to have fun. Can I count on you to come?"

  "Oh, yeah, like you need me to have fun." Blake had an independent nature that did not lend itself well to social functions, which he detested. His job required him to attend some, but he rarely attended any voluntarily.

  "I don't need you, but I sure like it when you're around, Blake. You know Meredith and I consider you as much our son as Rand and Drake. Meredith wants you to come, too. Plus, of course, it would be setting a good example to your staff, showing them it's time for a change in mood, time to move forward."

  "I'd feel better about doing that when whoever is behind the contamination of the water system is found."

  "Maybe he'll never be found," Joe said. "It's important to move forward now, past the fear and tensions of the last couple of months. You can poison kids like these without ever touching their water."

  "He'll be found," Blake said. "I won't rest until he's found. Sinclair from the FBI, and Rafe feel the same way."

  Joe nodded. "Well, since we've got the three of you on it, the rest of us might as well start relaxing, hmm?"

  Blake grinned. "Okay, I get your point."

  "Good. Are you going to come?"

  "Okay. I'll come," he agreed reluctantly.

  "Feel free to bring somebody with you."

  Blake squinted at Joe suspiciously, but there was not a flicker in the older man's face to suggest he thought that someone should be Holly Lamb. As if.

  "Can Tomas stay here for a day or two? Until I find out where he's supposed to be, and if he needs to go back?"

  "Oh, sure
," Joe said easily as if one more kid was a joy.

  That was what Blake had felt here, for the very first time in his life. That his presence in this universe was a joy to someone, instead of a burden.

  "Well, don't forget he pulled the knife."

  "Blake, look at him. He hasn't let go of his little sister's hand since he arrived. He's been helping snotty-nosed kids on and off that pony for the better part of half an hour. I like the cut of his jib."

  "Well, you always see it first, Joe."

  "Don't I?" Joe said happily. "Go home and make sure that secretary of yours is okay. Though she looks to me like the kind of girl who would know just how to handle a scrawny, scared kid with a knife."

  Blake thought of coming into the office, Tomas weeping against Holly's slender shoulder, and he sighed heavily.

  "I suppose you like the cut of her jib, too."

  "You said it first, not me."

  Three

  Holly knew, as soon as she heard the crunch of the Pathfinder's tires on the gravel outside the office door that, in some part of her that she would much rather not acknowledge, she had been listening for it to return, waiting for the moment Blake would stride back through the door, smile at her, maybe stop to talk for a few minutes about his day and the developments in the water contamination case.

  The vehicle door closed quietly, not like their old vehicle that had required a good hard slam. The Pathfinder itself still troubled her. The gesture seemed so unlike her father. It was not that he wasn't generous—she'd received dozens of expensive gifts from him. Or at least the cards were signed by him.

  The gifts themselves had his secretary, Hannah's demure personality written all over them. Holly suspected her birthday was penciled right on Hannah's calendar, not her father's. Which was probably why she felt odd about the gift of the Pathfinder.

  Todd Lamb was not thoughtful. Or sensitive. He was not even particularly astute about the good public relations move. He had been reprimanded more than once for making anti Native American remarks.

  He was a man who had risen to a high position in Springer because he was smart, tough and ambitious. Her father had told her once, with great pride, that he was the kind of man every company wanted. He could turn one dollar into ten, and he didn't care whom he ran over to do it. Why would a man who took pride in turning one dollar into ten, insist on repainting the nearly new Springer vehicle from perfectly acceptable white to silver gray?

  Not knowing why, Holly shuddered, then put the whole thing out of her mind. She busied herself with the typing, when the door swung open.

  She glanced up at just the right moment, and smiled cordially at Blake when he came through the door. The smile hid more than it revealed.

  For instance, you would think, after you had seen a man a certain number of times, the novelty of him would wear off.

  That you would no longer notice the color of his eyes, the little Dennis-the-Menace rooster tail in his hair, the powerful shape of his shoulders, the easy and effortless ripple of his arm muscles.

  You would think, after a while, that the loose, graceful swing of his walk wouldn't make butterflies take off in your stomach, and that you would be able to look at his lips without wondering what they tasted like and what they would feel like, and if you were ever, ever going to know.

  She realized she had been having these thoughts for a long, long time. The crush on the boss wasn't new, just her admission of it.

  He was so handsome. She loved his eyes. She felt like she could look at him forever. She had the awful thought her newly discovered feelings were going to be in her face, that she would stumble over her tongue now, turn red whenever he spoke to her.

  Diligently, she looked back at her work, began to type furious nonsense, which she hoped at least wouldn't say she was in love with her boss.

  When he neither greeted her nor went by her into his own office, she glanced up, to see him perched on the corner of her desk, one leg swinging, the other anchored to the floor. He looked at her thoughtfully, his brow furrowed. His normal smile, the one that put the sun to shame, was nowhere in sight.

  He looked distinctly…crabby.

  "Anything you want to tell me about?" he asked.

  She swallowed. No. Even he wasn't that intuitive, though he was dangerously alert to undercurrents and unspoken things going on all around him.

  He shocked the kids with this uncanny ability to look into their hearts.

  Ralph, you got something in that pocket I should know about?

  Shirley, anything happen last night you care to share with me?

  Polly, do you need to talk to me?

  And as it turned out Ralph had a joint in his pocket, and Shirley tearfully admitted to escaping from her second-floor dorm window and running across the roof to peek in the boys' dorm, and Polly had been keeping a kitten under her bed that had turned seriously ill.

  But Holly didn't have any secrets of that nature. Secrets that had witnesses or hard evidence.

  How much could he read into a blush, a stammer, a quick lowering of eyes, after all?

  "Something to tell you?" she said, pleased with how smooth her voice sounded, just as if she was the same person as she had been when she arrived at work this morning, when in fact she was changed in some way that was so fundamental she knew she could never change back.

  "You know. Some interesting detail about your day." His you-can-confide-in-me voice invited trust, showed genuine interest.

  She stared at him, flabbergasted, and resisted the urge to pinch herself. Was he actually showing interest in her personally? It seemed too much to hope for, following so closely on her discovery of the feelings she was harboring in the far and secret reaches of her heart.

  Her golden opportunity. To make him smile. To make him see her. All she had to do was think of something clever, or funny, or interesting to share with him about her day.

  Not one single thing came to her mind.

  She had always performed terribly under pressure. She knew if she was ever chosen to play Wheel of Fortune, she would be one of those people who asked for a letter that had already been used.

  "Well?" he said silkily, leaning toward her, something glinting gravely in his eyes.

  "Willie died," she blurted out.

  "Willie?"

  "The guppie."

  "A fish?" He looked stunned, like he didn't have a clue what she was talking about, and why should he?

  A golden opportunity, blown. She said miserably, "The one named after the whale. As in Free Willie."

  He said nothing.

  "I'll go get another one tomorrow," she babbled. "Little Flo Henderson was very attached to him."

  "Anything else you want to tell me about? Aside from the unfortunate demise of Willie?"

  It occurred to her there was something pointed about his question. That he wasn't expressing a nice generic kind of interest in her. He was probing for something specific.

  Annoyed at herself for hoping too much, and at him for not even being in the same ball park as her, she said crisply, "If there's something specific you want to know, you'll have to tell me. I don't do well at twenty questions."

  "How's this for specific—"

  It occurred to her the glint in his eye that she had mistaken for interest was actually anger. Blake was angry at her.

  "—what does it feel like to have the blade of a knife pressed against your pretty little throat?"

  "Oh," she said, deflated, "that." She wondered if it counted at all that Blake Fallon thought her throat was pretty.

  "Oh, that. Hardly worth mentioning."

  "To be quite frank, I'd forgotten about it already."

  "It seems to me I asked you if something was wrong as soon as I stepped into this office and saw you with Tomas. It doesn't seem to me as if I got a straight answer."

  "The whole thing was already long over by the time you got here."

  "Oh? The way I heard it, the knife was being shoved under the desk by your big toe
just as I came in the door. Is it still there, or did Miss Efficient file it already?"

  Miss Efficient? "Actually, I did file it already. It's in the trash. Outside."

  "Not inside, where I might see it."

  She was beginning to feel really angry. This was what his interest in her was about? The first strong emotion he had ever shown to her was annoyance? Anger? She realized she had not totally forgiven him yet for that teasing but still slightly stinging remark he had made earlier.

  I didn't know you were a girl.

  And now the brief interest that had lit in his eyes was about this? Even his remark about her neck had been accompanied by that cynical tone of voice.

  "I had no interest in hiding the knife from you," she said stiffly. "I put it in the outside garbage so I didn't have to see it every time I disposed of a piece of paper."

  "Meaning the episode did leave some impression on you."

  "Some," she agreed reluctantly.

  He leaned very close to her. "In the future, if you are attacked by someone with a knife, do you think it would be asking too much to let me know?"

  "I explained to you, it was already over. And it was nothing. I never really felt threatened. I never even really felt frightened."

  "And you didn't want to get him in trouble," he guessed softly.

  "Now that you mention it, I didn't want to get him into trouble."

  "Your first loyalty belongs to me, Miss Lamb."

  Now she was really angry. "No, it does not, Mr. Fallon. It belongs to me. You seem quite satisfied with my heart telling me what to do with these kids so far. Tomas wasn't a dangerous boy, he was a frightened one."

  "And if you had a few years experience with these kids, instead of a few months, you would know that was the most dangerous kind of all."

  She could see he was angry, too. Really angry for the first time since she had been employed by him. She had never even seen him get irritated with the children, but now his voice had a dangerous edge to it, and his eyes were snapping with sparks that had not the slightest thing to do with passion.

  She sighed inwardly, but not out loud. Wasn't that just her luck? Discover the humiliating secret that you were madly in love with a man who was never even going to give you a second look, and then end up in his doghouse on the very same day!