I Won't!

by Gina Wilkins

  3

  MIKE CARMICHAEL WAS the first person other than Case to notice his daughter’s entrance. “Here’s Maddie now,” he announced, stepping toward her with a quizzical look. “Come in, honey. Maybe you’d like to formally introduce us to your, er, fiancé.”

  The quick glare Maddie gave Case should have singed his eyebrows. He only smiled blandly.

  “What is he doing here?” Maddie asked her father.

  Mike seemed to be fighting a grin. “Well, he was just sort of hanging around outside, so I invited him in,” her father admitted. “He’s a stranger in our town, honey. We don’t want him to think we aren’t hospitable, now, do we?”

  “I don’t really care what he thinks,” Maddie replied. “This is a family dinner.”

  “According to Case, here, he’s about to become part of the family,” Mike returned, obviously enjoying the confusion.

  Maddie’s hands drew into fists, but she took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking. “I’m afraid Mr. Brannigan has been teasing you, Dad,” she said firmly. “He isn’t my fiancé. He’s merely an acquaintance.”

  Lounging nearby, apparently completely at ease, Case laughed softly. “Is that what I am?” he murmured, unfazed by the description.

  Maddie realized that his comfortable reaction had the effect of making her look like the one who wasn’t being quite honest. “Yes,” she said flatly. “That’s all.”

  She turned away to set her grandfather’s present on a low side table already piled with other gifts, needing a few moments to recuperate from her surprise at finding Case here. Maybe then she’d know how to handle this without causing an unpleasant scene that could only lead to further embarrassment for her.

  Aunt Nettie was watching her closely; Maddie avoided the old woman’s too-perceptive eyes as she passed, heading for the man seated at the head of the long dining table.

  She leaned over and planted a kiss on the elderly man’s bald head. “Happy birthday, Grampa.”

  The doorbell rang before her grandfather could answer. He beamed. “More guests for my party,” he announced, his frail face lighting with pleasure. Grampa Carmichael loved being the center of attention, Maddie thought with an indulgent smile.

  The new arrivals were more members of the family. Mike’s sister, Anita, and her husband, Dan, were accompanied by their daughter, Maddie’s cousin, Lisa, who was five years older than Maddie and had been divorced for several years. Lisa’s fifteen-year-old twins, Kathy and Jeff, trailed into the room behind her.

  The room was getting full, and everyone seemed to be talking at once. Yet Maddie was constantly aware of Case, standing slightly to one side of the room, watching everything that went on yet never really taking his attention from her.

  She heard her father introducing Case to his sister. “This is Case Brannigan,” Mike said. “He claims to be Maddie’s fiancé.”

  Maddie flushed as her aunt Anita exclaimed in surprise. This was really getting awkward, she seethed. And her father was behaving almost as badly as Case.

  She should have known Mike would find this whole thing amusing; she’d always accused her father of having a warped sense of humor, a charge he’d never been able to deny. She loved him dearly, but this wasn’t the first time he’d put her on the spot with his love of a good joke.

  Obviously, he’d decided Case wasn’t a threat to her; Mike could be fiercely overprotective of his only child when he chose. So why did he seem to be welcoming Case with open arms? Maddie fumed.

  “You’re marrying this guy, Maddie?” Kathy asked with typical teenage bluntness. “I thought you were dating that cute Jackson Babbit.”

  “Jackson Babbit’s a jerk,” Jeff pronounced scornfully. “The guy wears enough hair spray to choke a gopher, and those weird clothes—” He shuddered expressively.

  “Kathy, Jeff, please,” their mother murmured in exasperation. “This is none of your business.”

  Maddie turned to Lisa’s twins, intending to gently reinforce her cousin’s words, but she was quickly distracted. “Jeff!” she gasped, seeing the boy closely for the first time that evening. “What happened to your face?”

  Jeff flushed behind his bruises and shrugged. “Nothing,” he muttered.

  “Danny Cooper beat him up,” Kathy said, planting her fists on her slender hips, her dark eyes sparking. “Him and that gang of creeps he hangs out with.”

  “Shut up, Kathy,” Jeff grumbled, obviously uncomfortable that the attention in the crowded room had suddenly shifted to him.

  “Something is going to have to be done about that Cooper boy and his gang before someone is seriously hurt,” Anita said, her distress showing as she studied her grandson’s battered face. “I just don’t understand why Sheriff McAdams won’t do anything about them.”

  “Same reason Mayor Sloane ain’t saying anything about it,” Nettie observed cynically. “The Cooper money put both of them in office and the Cooper money’s keeping them there. That Cooper boy’s just as mean and power-hungry as his daddy is, and ain’t nobody around here got the guts to do anything about it.”

  “I wanted to go have a talk with Major Cooper, but Lisa talked me out of it,” Maddie’s uncle Dan, Jeff’s devoted grandfather, insisted.

  “I just didn’t want any more trouble with the Coopers,” Lisa said, looking harried. She turned to Maddie. “Danny Cooper’s already making Jeff’s life hell. If we start anything with his family, who knows what kind of revenge Danny and those other boys will take?”

  Maddie was aware that Case had been listening to every word of the family exchange, a deep frown creasing his forehead. “One teenage boy is terrorizing this entire town?” he asked Mike as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

  Mike nodded grimly. “Pretty much,” he admitted. “His father terrorized the town twenty years ago, and his father before that. You might say it’s a tradition around these parts. Problem is, each generation gets meaner and more blatant about it.”

  “And nobody will do anything to stop it?”

  The adults in the room sighed. “Major Cooper is the third-generation owner of a manufacturing plant that employs a good fifty percent of the citizens of Mitchell’s Fork,” Mike explained. “Which makes it...difficult for most folks around here to get involved. So far, the boys haven’t done anything too drastic—”

  “Beating up my grandson isn’t drastic?” Anita demanded.

  “C’mon, Grandma, it wasn’t that bad,” Jeff muttered, still embarrassed.

  Anita shook her head, but subsided.

  “So when are you guys getting married?” Jeff asked Maddie, motioning toward Case. It was an obvious ploy to divert attention—and it succeeded.

  “Yes, Maddie,” Mike said blandly, his eyes lighting again. “When are you guys getting married?”

  Maddie tossed her artfully gold-streaked hair, sending it swinging around her face. “When hell freezes over,” she said succinctly.

  Nettie gasped. “Madelyn Kathleen Carmichael! You watch your mouth, you hear? There are innocent ears in this room,” she scolded, looking meaningfully toward Kathy and Jeff.

  Case only grinned. “She’ll come around,” he assured Jeff. “She’s just a little annoyed with me at the moment.”

  Maddie gasped in outrage. Annoyed? Annoyed? She opened her mouth to set him straight, but Jeff was already speaking. “Yeah?” he asked Case curiously. “How come?”

  Case shrugged. “Let’s just say we’ve had a breakdown in communication.”

  “What’s this about Maddie getting married?” Grampa Carmichael demanded, as usual a bit slower than the others in catching the topic of discussion.

  Maddie barely resisted throwing up her hands in a gesture of frustration and screeching. This was getting to be too much for her to handle. She would never be able to explain everything to Grampa at the moment...that would take some time and prove extremely embarrassing in front of everyone. “Never mind, Grampa,” she said, hoping he would take the hint.
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br />   But Case had already stepped forward and was introducing himself to the family patriarch. “Case Brannigan,” he said, extending a large, callused hand.

  Grampa Carmichael took the hand in his own trembling, age-spotted one. His faded eyes searched Case’s face, and he frowned when he didn’t recognize the features. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

  “No, sir. But I plan to hang around a while. This looks like a good place to put down roots.”

  Grampa nodded. “Lived here all my life,” he said proudly. “Raised the kids here. Now we got a fourth generation going,” he added, motioning toward Jeff and Kathy. “Maddie’s almost thirty, you know. Been telling her it’s time she settled down and had herself some kids.”

  Maddie groaned. It looked as though she was going to have to explain, after all. Everyone was watching her so intently. She guessed she couldn’t blame them. It was certainly unusual for Maddie to be the one to cause a family scene. “Grampa, Case isn’t really my fiancé,” she began.

  “Oh?” Grampa looked from Case’s bland expression to Maddie’s harried one. “Well, what is he, then?”

  Everyone seemed to expect Maddie to answer that one, including Case. “He’s—he’s—” What? A friend? A vacation acquaintance? A total stranger? None of the descriptions seemed quite adequate.

  “Well?” Grampa prodded impatiently. “Did you agree to marry this man or didn’t you?”

  Case smiled. “Tell him, Maddie,” he urged. “What was your answer when I proposed to you on that beach in Cancú?”

  Maddie opened her mouth, then closed it, feeling trapped. “Er—”

  Nettie cocked her white-haired head and thumped the floor with her cane. “Tell us what’s going on, Madelyn,” she insisted. “Did you tell this man you’d marry him?”

  “Yes!” Maddie said in exasperation. “But—”

  Case’s smile deepened in satisfaction. “If I hadn’t been called away on business, Maddie would already be my wife,” he said. “We were going to be married in Cancú.”

  “And you never said a word about this to anyone?” Mike asked. The humor had faded from his mischievous eyes, to be replaced by a touch of hurt. He and Maddie had been very close since her mother died five years ago; Maddie knew Mike was wondering why she hadn’t shared this with him.

  She couldn’t have explained, even now. She simply hadn’t been able to talk about Case, or about her humiliation when she’d stood in that little room, reading that curt note in front of pitying strangers.

  “Dad, I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’ll explain later. I promise.”

  Mike nodded and gave her a smile, but it was a strained one. Perhaps, she thought, he had only just realized that Case hadn’t been carrying on an elaborate practical joke when he’d appeared and introduced himself as Maddie’s fiancé. Mike must have suddenly understood that Maddie really had agreed to become Case’s wife, and would have already done so had something not happened to prevent it.

  Maddie could understand why her father looked so startled by the realization; she was finding it hard to believe, herself, that she’d come so close to making such a huge mistake. Thank goodness that fate, in the form of a tall redhead, had stepped in to stop her, she thought fervently.

  “Seems to me,” Grampa Carmichael said slowly, “that if a woman gives her word to a man, she’s bound to uphold it.”

  Maddie’s cousin Lisa sighed and shook her head. “Talk about a generation gap,” she whispered.

  “Seems to me,” Nettie said, not to be left out, “that this young woman gave her word too fast. Imagine, agreeing to marry a man you just met,” she said with a disapproving shake of her head.

  Maddie almost sighed in relief to have finally found an ally.

  But then Nettie spoiled it by shaking an arthritic finger at Case. “Our Maddie deserves a proper courtship,” she told him. “Ain’t no need to go rushing anything. You do it right this time, you hear?”

  “I’m willing to give her a little time,” Case conceded. “But I’m holding her to her word.”

  Maddie whirled on him. “Case, you cannot just—”

  “If I were you,” Uncle Dan said thoughtfully, as though Maddie weren’t even there, “I’d slow down a bit, boy. Take her to the movies. Send her flowers. That’s the way I courted Anita, here, nearly forty years ago. I believe the procedure is about the same these days.”

  “Uncle Dan,” Maddie began.

  “These days, the woman’s likely to do the asking, and the paying,” Jeff said cheekily, getting his grandmother’s full attention.

  Anita lifted a thinly plucked dark eyebrow. “A lady doesn’t ask a man for a date. And any man who would let a woman pay for their dinner is hardly a gentleman.”

  “Mother,” Lisa said loudly with a roll of her eyes. “Was that a dig about Charlie? Just because I loaned him a few dollars, you and Daddy are convinced he’s a gigolo. He’s really a very nice guy,” she insisted. “The first one I’ve really liked since Bill and I got divorced.”

  “A real man doesn’t take loans from his lady friends,” Anita insisted. Maddie’s problems were suddenly forgotten as Anita turned her attention to her own daughter’s worrisome love life.

  Nettie was moving to intercede between mother and daughter before a quarrel developed. Maddie stepped aside to allow her great-aunt to pass, relieved that at least three of her family members had decided to leave her—and her love life—alone for the moment. “Anita, you let the girl be,” Nettie ordered. “She’s old enough to know her own mind now.”

  “But she—”

  “I met my blushing bride on a Mississippi riverboat,” Grampa mused out loud, not addressing anyone in particular. “It was a fine day. A Saturday, as I remember. Annabelle was wearing a floating white dress and carrying—”

  Because everyone in the room, except Case, of course, had heard the story many times, no one paid much attention to the elderly man’s ramblings.

  Maddie took advantage of the confusion—and the merciful distraction—to take Case firmly by the arm. “I want to see you outside,” she said through gritted teeth. “Now.”

  With rather suspicious ease, Case allowed her to all but drag him from the room.

  * * *

  “YOUR FAMILY IS very interesting,” Case said as soon as they’d stepped out onto the long porch of the family farmhouse. “They certainly don’t hesitate to speak their minds, do they?”

  “No, they don’t. Or to butt into another family member’s business,” Maddie agreed grimly, still seething over all the advice Case had been given on the proper way to “court” her.

  “I suppose that’s common with large, close families.”

  “Probably. Case, I—”

  “I can get used to it,” he said with a decisive nod of his head.

  Maddie was exasperated at the arrogance of his magnanimous concession. “Oh, you can, can you?”

  “Sure. That’s just the way families are.” He seemed oddly satisfied with the conclusion.

  Maddie had lost the thread of the conversation somewhere. She struggled to regain control of it. “Case, we need to talk.”

  “Yes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a porch post, one foot up on the railing behind him. He breathed deeply of the crisp, spring evening air and his gaze wandered over the moon-washed rural surroundings. “You have a nice home here, Maddie. It’s no wonder you haven’t been in any hurry to leave it.”

  She was glad for the shadows that partially concealed her when she felt her cheeks wash with color. She’d become increasingly sensitive lately about still living at home with her family. But then, she’d become increasingly sen-sitive about a lot of things during the past six months.

  “I lived on my own for a while after I finished college,” she said casually. “Had an apartment in town, close to the restaurant. I moved back here a couple of years ago, when Aunt Nettie broke her hip and the last housekeeper retired. After my trip to Europe, I plan to start look
ing for a new place, now that everything seems to be going smoothly here again.”

  Case started to say something, but hesitated. When he spoke, she sensed he’d deliberately changed the topic. “Speaking of housekeepers, I met yours earlier.”

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah. He wasn’t exactly what I expected.”

  She couldn’t resist a slight smile. “I know. But he’s wonderful. He runs the household so smoothly that I don’t know what we’d do without him now.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “He was in the service with Dad many years ago. Dad had always told him that if he ever needed a job to look him up. Of course, Dad was thinking of giving him a job at the restaurant—Frank was a cook in the army. A few months after the last housekeeper left and I moved back in, Frank showed up on the doorstep and told Dad he’d lost his job and his wife and he wanted to take Dad up on his offer.”

  “His wife died?” Case asked in sympathy.

  “No. She ran off with a traveling evangelist.”

  “Oh,” he said blankly.

  Maddie nodded. “Anyway, almost before anyone knew how it happened, he had moved into the guest house and taken over the running of the household. He cooks, cleans, does the shopping, takes care of Grampa, makes sure Aunt Nettie takes her medicine—he’s probably the most important member of the family,” she concluded with a chuckle.

  “Your family seems eager to welcome new members,” Case said carefully, still looking out at the misty lawn.

  Maddie thought she detected a touch of wistfulness in his deep voice. And then she told herself she must be mistaken. Case Brannigan wasn’t deceiving her with this lonely-little-orphan routine. She didn’t know what he was after, exactly, but this time she had no intention of making a fool of herself over him.

  “Case,” she said, dropping all pretense of casual conversation. “Why are you here?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “I’m here to claim my wife.”

  His equally blunt words sent a quiver through her. She had to clear her throat before she could speak coolly. “You don’t have a wife. At least, not that I know of. Unless, of course, you married the redhead.”