Vegas Wedding, Weaver Bride

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Or he would be late himself for his seven o’clock “be there” edict.

  Only Penny wasn’t at her house in Weaver.

  After returning to Weaver, missing Squire Clay at the diner where his wife had assured Penny he would be, then spending the rest of her afternoon traipsing around town handing out “V is for Vivian” campaign buttons to people who probably just threw them away the second she was out of sight, she’d gotten a call from a frantic Margaret because the babysitter she’d scheduled—Delia Templeton—had canceled at the last minute.

  Knowing Margaret was trying to work things out with her estranged husband, Penny hadn’t been able to say no. So, for the second time that day, she’d driven back to Braden.

  The phone was still ringing. It wasn’t even transferring over to a voice mail, which would have been the easiest way to head Quinn and his divorce-related paperwork off at the pass.

  Considering his insistence on waiting until they knew for certain that she wasn’t pregnant, it felt like he’d all of a sudden gotten into a rush about it.

  She blamed it on the fatigues he’d been wearing. Maybe his leave wasn’t up yet, but it seemed to her that his mind was already heading that way.

  She ended the call and looked down at Matty.

  He was sitting on the floor wearing the sandals he’d pulled off her feet, pushing a metal truck around in circles. Penny’s concern that he wouldn’t be happy being left with her had been for nothing. The toddler had merely welcomed her with a joyful “Bye!” and dumped a load of plastic blocks on her lap that he’d obviously expected her to help stack. When Margaret left a few minutes later, he’d waved, yelling “Bye!” again and again until Penny had distracted him with another toy.

  When he saw her looking at him now, he smiled widely, displaying his mouthful of small white teeth. “Book?” He held up his truck.

  “That’s a truck, Matty. A big, yellow truck.”

  He pushed off the floor and shuffled in the too-large sandals to the toy bin in the corner. He rummaged inside and pulled out a book, stepped out of her shoes and ran back to shove his new find in her hands. “Book!”

  She chuckled, looking at the brightly colored trucks on the front of the board book. “I get it. A book about trucks.” She sat down on the floor with her back against the couch and he plopped right onto her lap.

  Margaret had just finished giving him his bath when Penny arrived. And now, with his tuft of dark hair leaning against her chest, all Penny could smell was his sweet, baby-clean smell.

  The longing that hit her had all the subtlety of a big yellow truck broadsiding her.

  She exhaled and reached for her cell phone again. She hit redial while Matty flipped the pages and chortled over the pictures in his sweet, little-boy voice and Penny reminded herself that she wasn’t one of those uncontrollable women who couldn’t resist hugging and kissing every baby they ever saw.

  But Matty wasn’t every baby. He was just the one she was watching now. And she nuzzled a quick kiss onto the top of his soft hair.

  “Answer the phone,” she murmured as she put the phone to her ear.

  “Okay.” Quinn’s voice greeted her and it startled her so much, she dropped the phone altogether. It bounced off the edge of the couch she was leaning against and noisily hit Matty’s metal truck before she finally caught it. She fumbled with it and pressed it back to her ear.

  “Quinn?”

  “What’re you doing there?”

  “Sorry about that. I dropped the phone.” She pushed the truck out of the danger zone and Matty immediately leaned forward to grab it and roll it right back where it had been, all the while making vroom, vroom sounds.

  Then he looked up at her with his beatific smile. “Book,” he yelled exuberantly.

  Penny couldn’t help smiling. She opened the book and held it out to him. “Read your book, sweetie.”

  “Read your book, sweetie,” Quinn said in her ear. “Are you already entertaining my replacement?”

  Who could replace Quinn? She shook off the thought.

  “Yes,” she told him lightly. “He’s about three feet tall and has almost all of his teeth.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “Bye!” Matty yelled at the top of his lungs. He tried to grab for the phone, but she angled it out of his reach.

  “It’s very serious,” Penny told Quinn. “I’m considering running away with him. But I think his mama would probably miss him.”

  “Where are you?” She could hear the amusement in his voice.

  “Babysitting for a friend,” she told him. Matty had turned his attention to the truck yet again and was pushing it around the living area on his hands and knees, so she moved from the floor to the couch. “In Braden. That’s why I was calling. I didn’t want you driving all the way to Weaver just because of me.” She decided she didn’t like the way that sounded. “I mean, I know you have plenty of other reasons to go to Weaver, but—”

  “I know what you mean. So where exactly are you?”

  “I told you. I’m in Braden. We can, uh, can do the paperwork later, right?”

  “I’ll bring it over. Where in Braden?”

  She switched hands on the phone and gently rolled back the small red ball that Matty had unearthed from the toy box and inexpertly tossed to her. Quinn’s insistence made her nerves tighten. “You don’t care anymore whether or not I’m...with child?”

  He was silent for a beat. “Are you?”

  She rubbed her forehead between her eyes. Since Las Vegas, she’d been losing her mind. “My period’s due today! Tomorrow at the latest.” Her frustration sounded loud and clear. “I should just take a test and clear up your doubt once and for all. Because I am never late. Never.”

  “If you take a pregnancy test too early, you’re going to get a negative result no matter what.” His voice was annoyingly reasonable considering everything. “We’ve waited this long. A few more days won’t hurt. Just tell me where you and the three-foot Casanova are at.”

  She exhaled. Grudgingly told him the address of the apartment.

  “I’ll be there soon.” He hung up.

  “Mr. Jump-outta-planes is in a rush,” she told Matty.

  He grinned and told her what he thought of that. She reached out and tickled his tummy through his “Perfect #1 Son” T-shirt and he bent in half, chortling wildly.

  The perfection lasted another hour.

  Then sweet, cheerful and friendly Matty turned into screaming, miserable and unfriendly Matty. Who wanted nothing to do with Penny no matter what she tried. He just wanted his mommy.

  Feeling like the worst person on the planet, she’d finally called Margaret. “He’s always like that before bedtime,” she’d said. “Just put him in his bed and he’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” Penny muttered after discovering that Matty was entirely adept at escaping from his bed. All he’d had to do was magically push the crib a foot away from where it stood until he could reach the dresser and pull out a drawer that he then used as leverage to climb over the side of his crib.

  Penny wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it through her own eyes on the baby monitor video.

  “A few minutes on what planet?” She huffed her hair out of her eyes and picked up the screaming boy, who mercifully didn’t arch his back and shove away from her the way he’d been doing. She carried him into the kitchen. Tried offering him his cartoon-character cup filled with water.

  He stopped wailing at least. But after a tiny sip, he just stared at her with huge crocodile tears in his eyes and a pushed-out lip on which a bird could have landed.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  He started wailing again and with the strength that only an agile two-year-old possessed, wriggled out of her hold. “Mamaaaaaa!” He raced thr
ough the living area toward the door.

  Even though it had a lock well out of his reach, Penny darted after him. After the crib incident, she knew better than to underestimate the tot’s inventiveness. She grabbed him from behind and swung him up in her arms as she peered through the peephole in the door.

  Quinn.

  Of course it would be Quinn. Not Margaret, coming back to rescue Penny from the demon child.

  And what better time could there be to fill out divorce paperwork than when Matty was screaming bloody murder at her?

  She flipped open the lock and pulled open the door. “Welcome to—” she considered her miniature audience “—H-E-Double Toothpicks.”

  At the sight of Quinn, though, Matty’s screaming stopped midbreath. His eyes widened as he looked up, and then up some more until he got to Quinn’s face.

  “Hey, bud.” Quinn held out his palm. “What’s doing?”

  Matty slapped his palm against Quinn’s. “Sssdoing!” He still had tears on his sweaty cheeks but one look at Quinn—still in his damned camo—and life was good again.

  “Clearly, it’s true that all males stick together,” she said grumpily. She turned away from the door. “Come on in to the mad, mad world of Matty the Great. Watch your step, though. Over the last hour, he’s tossed every toy out of his toy box and refuses to let me put any of them back. It’s like walking through a minefield.”

  Quinn laughed softly. “Honey, I’ve been through real minefields. This is nothing.”

  She didn’t need a reminder about his real work. The research she’d done online about it was more than enough to keep her awake at night. Not only had she read voraciously about pararescue in general, she’d found a photo of him looking ungodly handsome in his dress uniform when he’d received his Silver Star. And she’d read the account of the bombing in which he’d been injured.

  Quinn was a hero in every sense of the word. Saving lives was in his blood, even when it meant putting his own in peril.

  She went to set Matty on the floor, but in typical toddler contrariness, he suddenly clung tenaciously to her neck. She straightened and he put his head on her shoulder and popped his thumb in his mouth.

  An angel, once again.

  The thumb, though, was a good enough sign for her. “I’m going to try to put him to bed again.” She glanced over the decimation of the living area. One of the couch cushions was on the floor and the rest of them were misaligned. Every other surface seemed to be home to one of Matty’s seemingly endless supply of toys. “I’d say make yourself comfortable, but I’m not sure where that would be.”

  There was a smile in his eyes. It extended to the ray of fine lines beside them. But he didn’t say a word. Just looked at her for a moment that seemed to stretch until she finally huffed a little. “What?”

  He took a step forward and cupped his hand behind her neck and kissed her softly.

  She went stock-still, hardly able to conceive a single thought as shock and giddiness and heat blasted through her.

  The recording of their wedding kiss flitted through her mind but disintegrated in a puff when, just as unexpectedly, he lifted his head and stepped back again.

  All told, it was more of a peck than a real kiss, but it still left her scrambling for composure. “What the he—heck was that for?”

  “‘Cause you’re just too damn cute for words.”

  Even more disconcerted, she gave him a fierce frown. Cute was not a word she particularly welcomed. Combined with the stupid giddiness, it made her feel as mature as a teenager. “I’m not cute,” she muttered as she turned on her heel and carried Matty into his bedroom.

  His head was still on her shoulder. She stood next to his crib, swaying with him for a few minutes and humming in her off-key way that he didn’t seem to mind too much as she surreptitiously felt his diaper. Fortunately, it was still dry because she’d learned right off that changing Matty’s diaper meant chasing a bare-butt Matty around the apartment while trying to get him back into a dry one.

  He gave a ferocious sigh and patted her face as she gingerly lowered him into the crib. “Night night, sweetheart.”

  His thumb went back into his mouth and he turned onto his stomach, his diaper-covered butt going into the air.

  It was silly. But her eyes suddenly flooded.

  She snatched a tissue from the box on Matty’s dresser and wiped her eyes. Her nose. Then she shoved the crumpled tissue into the pocket of her jeans and tugged up the strap of her black tank top and went out to face Quinn.

  He’d restored the cushions to proper order and was sitting in the middle of the couch.

  Only then did she remember the baby monitor. It had been sitting on the table next to the couch and Quinn had obviously discovered it, since he was holding it in his hands.

  She sincerely hoped he hadn’t noticed the whole teary-eyed thing.

  “You ever think about having kids?”

  So much for that hope. But at least he hadn’t made a big deal about her sniffling.

  As a girl, she’d thought about having Andy’s kids. But it had always been in terms of finally having a real family of her own.

  Now was the first time she was really thinking about a child. The reality of one. The confounding blessing and responsibility and maybe even the need of one.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek, buying time by picking up a handful of toys and carefully placing them back in the toy box for fear that one of them would bust into noisy song and wake up Matty again.

  “I never thought about it,” he finally said into the silence. “Not until—”

  “Las Vegas,” she finished, sending him a look.

  “No.”

  Surprised, she straightened.

  He pressed his hand to his side where she knew his scars were. “When I woke up after this and knew I wasn’t dead, I thought about kids. I thought about a lot of stuff that I had put aside because of the choices I’ve made in my life.”

  Her chest felt tight. She had that ominous burning behind her eyes again, but fiercely ignored it. “From the looks of you, your choices haven’t changed.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She waved her hand at him. “You look ready to report for duty. What do they say? The clothes make the man?” Even as she said it, though, she knew that wasn’t the case where Quinn Templeton was concerned. He could be naked or dressed in a joker’s costume and he’d still be exactly who he was. A man who’d put his own life in danger over and over for the sake of someone else.

  He plucked at his pants. “Penny, sometimes a pair of digies is just a pair of digies.” He smiled gently. “Particularly when everything else I have with me needs to be washed. That’s what I was doing at my folks’ house this morning. Hitting up my mother for some laundry duty.”

  “You’re a grown man. You should do your own laundry.”

  “And I do. Often. But it was Mom or a laundromat since my cousin doesn’t know what a washing machine even is.” He held out his hand to her. “Come here.”

  She eyed his hand. Long, square-tipped fingers. Broad, square-shaped palm. Putting her hand in his seemed dangerous. Like she’d be taking a step into a land in which she was afraid to live.

  And sometimes a hand is just a hand.

  Her eyes burned again and she ignored his outstretched palm as she went over and sat next to him on the couch. Considering his hogging the middle of the thing, that left her with the choice of a half a cushion on one side of him or half a cushion on the other. “So where’s the paperwork?”

  He seemed to sigh. Then he pulled a folded envelope out of his back pocket and extracted several pages. “We have to decide which one of us is filing. I’m domiciled in Wyoming, and obviously I know you’ve lived here for more than sixty days.”

  “My whole life
. I was born at the Weaver hospital.” She felt his gaze.

  “Me, too,” he murmured. He pointed at the boxes printed on the form and his shoulder brushed against hers. “So either one of us can be the petitioner.” He went silent.

  Was he waiting for her to say something?

  But what? Yes, she wanted to be the one to divorce him? No, she didn’t?

  “This is weird,” she admitted huskily as she scanned through the form. “Deciding these things about a divorce when we don’t even feel married.” Birthdate. Previous marriages. Children born during the current marriage.

  Was petitioner pregnant?

  She swallowed hard at that one.

  “You don’t have to decide anything right now,” he said.

  Not deciding something that should be so simple seemed like it was a decision, too.

  A noise from the baby monitor made her jump.

  Quinn picked up the monitor and held it where they could both see. Even though Penny had turned off the light in Matty’s room, the black-and-white image was clear, showing him sitting up in his crib, rubbing his eyes.

  She held her breath.

  He made a few squawks, then rolled over again, butt in the air, and silence reigned once more.

  She blew out a relieved breath.

  “You didn’t answer before.” Quinn’s thumb rubbed over the monitor’s screen. Almost like he was rubbing little Matty’s back.

  She looked up at him. Her heart climbed inexorably until she felt it pounding hard at the base of her throat. She realized she was looking at his mouth and quickly lifted her gaze to his. But that was really no safer. “About what?”

  “About having kids.” His deep voice seemed to drop a notch. “You ever think about it?”

  She tried to look away. But her disobedient eyes only went as far as his mouth.

  His beautiful, perfectly molded lips that set off long-forgotten dreams whenever they touched hers.

  She pushed off the couch and winced when her bare foot landed on a connecting block. She flicked it free and started putting more toys away. An airplane with a nose that blinked orange and announced robotically “now boarding” as soon as she touched it. A play cell phone that noisily buzzed until she shoved it under one of the couch cushions.