Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch

by Victoria Pade

  But even the sight of four masculine, virile, head-turningly handsome men didn’t have an effect on Abby. There was only one Ketchum she was interested in. And she hadn’t spotted him through any of the downstairs windows she passed by.

  The back of the house was darker than the front, and there were no lights coming from Cal’s room at all.

  But whether or not he was up there, Abby decided to go through with her plan.

  There weren’t any overhangs or a cover to the flag-stoned patio to aid in her ascent. But there was a trellis that rested between two of the second-floor windows—one of them Cal’s, the screen already torn to allow her entry if she could just get up there.

  The trellis didn’t look very stable. Some of the slats were already broken. But it was Abby’s sole option for reaching the upper level, and at that point she was willing to risk that it might not hold her rather than leave or sift through all those Ketchums to get to Cal.

  So without another glance around, she grabbed on to the outer edge of the latticework, put her foot inside a diamond-shaped opening and began to climb.

  The trellis creaked its complaint, but it held her. The trouble was, she’d assumed the thing was attached to the house and about halfway up she discovered it wasn’t. And she discovered it when the trellis started to pull away from the bricks, swaying backward.

  The gasp that escaped her throat wasn’t silent, but she didn’t expect it to draw a response. She thought she was alone.

  Until she heard, “Well, look at this. I think we have ourselves a little lady cat burglar.”

  The voice was deep and unquestionably male.

  But it wasn’t Cal’s.

  Wavering back and forth like a flag in the wind, Abby tried to press herself forward to keep the trellis from falling and all she could manage to say was a weak “Help.”

  The man stepped up just below and put his weight into pushing the trellis against the wall once more.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Abby could finally look down.

  Standing there with his chambray shirt unbuttoned and left untucked to flap around jean-clad hips was a man who looked very much like Cal. The fifth of Cal’s brothers, Abby thought, realizing just then that one had been missing from the house.

  “Hi,” she said feebly, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.

  “Nothin’ inside to steal,” he informed casually.

  “I didn’t come to steal. I came to see Cal.”

  “Was there a problem with the front door?”

  “I didn’t want to see anybody else,” she confessed.

  “Want me to leave?” he asked amiably, taking his hands from the trellis long enough for it to sway slightly away from the brick wall again before he pushed it back once more.

  “Uh...no. Could you just hold this thing until I can get down?”

  “Sure,” he agreed. Then he raised his voice to a loud boom and shouted, “Cal! Got somethin’ for you. Come on out back.”

  Abby could hear the message being relayed through the house, one voice after another. Moments later the sound of someone descending the stairs echoed through the place, followed by the noises of more movement than just one man could make. The whole clan was coming for a look.

  Abby wished she could dry up and blow away.

  Barring that, she had no choice but to climb down.

  But as if he thought she might make a run for it, the man waiting on the ground didn’t let her get all the way there before scooping her off the latticework to hold her like a baby in his arms. At about the same time Cal led a contingent of other people out the French doors from the kitchen.

  “Abby?” he said, sounding confused.

  “She was sneakin’ up the trellis to see you. Know her?”

  “I know her,” Cal said, his tone giving no clue as to whether or not he was glad to see her.

  “Guess you can have ’er, then.” The man who was holding Abby handed her across to Cal as if she were a light sack of grain. And just that quick she was in Cal’s arms instead.

  “Hi,” she repeated, even more feebly to Cal.

  “Did you just come window peekin’ or did you finally want to talk?” he asked.

  “I wanted to talk.”

  Cal glanced at their very interested audience, then said, “Upstairs,” and turned to carry her past them all.

  “You can put me down and let me walk,” she suggested between clenched teeth and through a forced smile at the onlookers.

  But he pretended not to hear her and simply carted her through them into the house and up the steps, not stopping until they were in his dark bedroom and he’d kicked the door shut behind them.

  Only then did he set her on her feet, in the center of the room.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” she muttered.

  Cal went back to the door to flip on the light switch beside it and lean against the wall there. Studying her from a distance, he crossed his arms over his shirtless torso, tucking each hand under the opposite armpit but leaving blunt thumbs poking up toward his muscular shoulders.

  He must have been in bed before that because his hair and the sheets were mussed, his feet were bare and his jeans weren’t zipped completely or fastened at the waistband—as if he’d pulled them on in a hurry.

  But God, he looked sexy!

  Abby wished he didn’t because if he was going to give her the brush-off it was going to be all the more difficult for her after seeing him like that.

  She forced her eyes away from his naked, bulging biceps wrapped over that broad chest and cleared her throat so she could speak.

  “I’m sorry. This was all dumb.”

  “What was?”

  “Climbing the trellis. Coming unannounced at this time of night...” She nodded in the direction of his rumpled bed and voiced a fear that had just struck her. “Did I interrupt—?”

  He made a sound that was disgusted enough to stop her words midsentence.

  “What do you think? That I was in the middle of an orgy? That because you’ve been playing cat and mouse with me I’d just bring in a couple of other women to horse around with?”

  “No, I—” She stopped herself that time. What could she say? That yes, for a fleeting moment she’d been afraid he had found someone else to warm his bed already?

  “Why’d you come, Abby?” he demanded then.

  “You said you wanted to talk,” she said feebly, knowing it sounded ridiculous under the circumstances.

  “I wanted to talk four days ago. I wanted to talk every time I called or came by your house or the bakery. Where’ve you been all those times?”

  She shrugged. “Hiding,” she admitted.

  “Why?”

  She told him why, forging headlong into the admission that she’d been trying to be as worldly as he was, not to seem provincial. To take what had gone on between them as lightly as she thought he had and that she hadn’t wanted to hear him say just how lightly he had taken it.

  “But I guess I need to hear it. Maybe to put some closure to things,” she finished fatalistically.

  He shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on her. “That’s not what I had to say to you.”

  Abby raised her chin in question, waiting.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said then. “I realized it the morning I woke up with you in my arms. I realized I wanted to do that every morning for the rest of my life. That I wanted to marry you. To make you mine.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “But you sounded so...serious. And you warned me that you’re not a one-woman man,” she reminded.

  “If I sounded serious, it was because it wasn’t an easy thing to come to. It’s never happened to me before and it didn’t quite fit. I had to get used to the idea. And as for the one-woman man thing—I didn’t warn you. I only said it in passing.”

  “I took it as a warning.”

  “Well, stop it,” he ordered in no uncertain terms. “No, I’ve never been a one-woman man before. But that’s bec
ause I’ve never met the right woman. Until you.”

  “But I’m—”

  “Don’t give me that stuff about being predictable or provincial or any of the rest of it. I hashed through all that in my head, and it’s bull. I don’t buy any of it for a minute. Just tell me you love me and that you’ll marry me.”

  To say she was stunned would have been an understatement. Abby just stood there, staring at him, while a hundred things flashed through her mind.

  Did she love him?

  She’d been terrified to admit it to herself, but now the floodgates opened and out swelled the knowledge that she did. She loved him with all her heart and soul. In a way she’d never loved Bill Snodgrass. With more intensity. More passion. More of everything that made it real and deep and abiding.

  But what about all her former fiancé had said about her? What if Cal just wasn’t seeing it because things were so new between them? What if she did eventually bore him into another woman’s arms?

  Her sisters’ earlier words came back to support Cal’s contention that the other man’s accusations were bull, and suddenly Abby gave in to the possibility that they were all right. She wasn’t lacking. It was Bill Snodgrass whose character was so weak that he’d trumped up faults in her to justify his own shoddy actions.

  She hadn’t done anything extraordinary since meeting Cal—well, with the exception of tonight’s escapade—yet he’d kept coming around anyway. He’d fallen in love with her anyway. He was asking her to marry him anyway...

  And what about the fact that he’d never before been a one-woman man? she asked herself. How risky did that make him?

  But she didn’t have to consider that for too long, either.

  He might not have settled down before this, but he hadn’t cheated on anyone, either, which spoke for a stronger character than Bill Snodgrass had, a strong character she’d seen in Cal in other ways, too. In his kindness and consideration. In his care for his family.

  And obviously he’d been bent on putting down roots even before he’d met her. His whole purpose of being in Clangton was to do that, and obviously he’d had no problem making a commitment to it.

  “Abby?”

  His deep voice drew her out of her musings. She looked him square in the eye, giving herself over to the pull of that warm gaze. “I’ve been really dumb the last couple of days, haven’t I?”

  “I don’t know. Have you?”

  “I’ve been avoiding you when the truth is I love you, too. And marrying you is just what I want.”

  For a moment he stayed where he was, watching her as if he thought she might change her mind any moment.

  But then he shoved off the wall and crossed to her on purposeful strides with a bit of swagger to his step.

  He came to a stop close in front of her, slipped his hands around her neck, cupping the sides of her face from the back of her jawbone, his thumbs controlling the angle of her face so he could raise it to look up at him.

  She thought he was going to say something. Something very serious from the appearance of the stern frown creasing his brow. But instead he bent to capture her mouth with his in a kiss that was forceful, masterful, possessive. A kiss that claimed her. A kiss that took her only a moment to respond to, to give herself over to, to relax into and enjoy.

  But just as she did he ended it, swept her up into his arms again and carried her out of the bedroom, into the bathroom she’d used that first morning there.

  Only it didn’t look the same by any means.

  Where before there had been a grungy old tub and sink, chipped tile and peeled paint, now the walls were freshly whitewashed. A floor-to-ceiling, paned, triple-paneled window had been added and the centerpiece of the newly remodeled room was the bathtub they’d tried out on the showroom floor of the hardware store.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said as he set her on her feet alongside the tub.

  “And thinkin’ about you the whole time. Want to use it?” he asked with a nod at the huge bathtub.

  “Do I smell bad?” she joked.

  “You smell great,” he answered with what was almost a growl.

  “A bath might be nice, though....”

  That was all the encouragement he needed to turn on the water and the whirlpool jets.

  Then it was Abby he turned on, undressing her while the tub filled, shedding his own clothes and pulling her with him into the bubbling water.

  He made love to her there. Just the way he’d described when he’d teased her with that fantasy in the hardware store. Wet, slippery love that was playful but poignant, too. He explored every inch of her body, cherished it, teased it, tormented it and finally found his home inside it in a way that melded them together so smoothly, so perfectly that it chased away any lingering uncertainty that they were made for each other.

  With every powerful thrust water rose and fell around them like a tidal wave as passion washed through them with a turbulence all its own. Wild, abandoned passion that took them to an explosive, simultaneous climax, bathed in the sensuous silk of warm water and love and the knowledge that they had a whole lifetime of sexy saunas ahead of them.

  “I do love you,” Cal said as they eased back against one of the tub’s slanted ends, holding each other, letting the jets do a little after-magic all their own.

  “I love you, too,” Abby said in a breathy voice. “But we did make a mess,” she added a moment later, glancing at the water that they’d splashed all over the place.

  “But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” she agreed without having to think about it.

  “Now tell me you’ll marry me,” he ordered.

  “I’ll many you.”

  “And be my wife for the rest of our born days, and have my babies and never take a bath alone again.”

  “And be your wife for the rest of our born days, and have your babies. But I don’t know about never taking a bath alone again. This tub would be pretty great to lounge in with a good book.”

  “Are you marryin’ me to get hold of my tub?”

  “Well, that and one or two other things,” she said, getting hold of something much better.

  “What was that part about you bein’ predictable again?” he said with a low rumble of a chuckle deep in his throat.

  “You mean you didn’t know I’d come to my senses and give you the chance to propose?”

  “You had me worried, Abby. You definitely had me worried that the night we had together had turned you off.”

  “Turned me off?” she said, doing a little further underwater exploration that refuted the notion.

  He chuckled deep in his throat at the absurdity of ever having thought such a thing. “Now I’m gonna put more water in this tub before we splash it dry. Then, in a while, I’m gonna take you downstairs and introduce you to your soon-to-be in-laws,” he said then.

  Abby groaned at that.

  “Can’t meeting my soon-to-be in-laws wait until tomorrow?”

  “I suppose so. Since we’ll have a lot of tomorrows,” he said, nibbling her earlobe.

  A lot of tomorrows...

  The words chimed through her heart like joyous church bells.

  They’d have a lot of tomorrows together.

  The fact that she’d ever doubted it, doubted him, doubted herself, suddenly seemed like something that had happened long ago and far away, to someone who didn’t know what she knew.

  Because what she knew was that she loved this man in a way she could never love anyone else.

  And that he loved her just the same.

  And that together they really would have a whole lifetime of tomorrows.

  The Best Man Switch

  LIZ IRELAND

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  Dear Reader,

  Several days ago I told a phone
buddy that I was writing a scene about two sixteen-year-olds having a calamitous date. Dead air cracked over the telephone wire, then my friend asked, “When you’re sixteen, what date isn’t a calamity?”

  Hmm. Come to think of it, there are some (I won’t name names) who never seem to graduate beyond the tragic teen pattern—luckily for me and the rest of the Romance Writers of America roster. If the course of true love started running smoothly, what would we write about?

  I hope you enjoy The Best Man Switch. Stories about identical twins have been a favorite of mine since I saw Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap. Growing up I always wanted an identical twin—preferably a math-science whiz!

  Prologue

  “ALL I’M ASKING FOR is a tiny favor,” Grant Whiting begged his twin brother, Ted. “Just stand in for me at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding ceremony. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Ted, who had been slouching in the chair on the other side of Grant’s desk, suddenly sprang bolt upright. His reaction made him look like a gaping mirror image of his brother. “You call pulling a best man switch tiny?”

  “It’s not like you’re standing in for me during an IRS audit or a moon launch. It’s just a wedding.”

  Grant knew what his brother was thinking—that it wasn’t like him to cop out on a commitment. Just a glance was enough to tell that Grant was a nose-to-the-grindstone, never-shirk-a-responsibility type. He always dressed for work conservatively—funereally, Ted would say—in dark suits and sensible ties and perfectly polished shoes. Whereas, today Ted had seen fit to show up—late—in a getup more suitable for a beach at Waikiki. White shorts, a floral-print shirt and sandals! All he lacked was a fruity drink with an umbrella.

  His secretary was probably whipping up a shaker of those down the hall.

  The few times in the past they had pulled switches—an enterprise never embarked on lightly, though they were perfectly identical—it had always been for Ted’s benefit. Because he’d had stage fright and couldn’t buck up to being George Washington in the third-grade history pageant, or because he never could get the hang of geometry—or Spanish, or botany—or because he just couldn’t bring himself to tell Mary Pepperburg that he already had a date. Grant had never needed rescuing before.