A Bride by Summer

by Sandra Steffen

  “Which way to your bedroom?” he asked.

  She led the way. There, she switched on an old metal fan and a lamp with a fringed shade. He opened a window, she turned down the bed and finally they stood facing each other.

  He laced his fingers with hers, palm to palm, and slowly went down on one knee. “There still isn’t anything you’d care to say to me?” he asked.

  “There is one thing,” she said. “As long as you’re down there, would you do me a favor?” He quirked one eyebrow. Oh, he had a dirty mind. One more thing to like about him.

  “I dropped an earring earlier. I think it went under the bed. But never mind. Come here, would you? I’d like you to be standing for this.”

  He rose and stood feet apart, hands on his hips.

  “You were saying?” she asked.

  “Do you know when I knew I wanted to marry you?”

  Her breath caught. “Actually, this is the first I’ve heard you want to marry me, but go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “It was the night I watched you eat a quart of ice cream by yourself.”

  It was the last thing she’d expected him to say. “You fell in love with me because I went overboard eating ice cream?”

  “I fell in love with you because you don’t do anything halfway.”

  “I thought you were going to say you knew last weekend when I was wearing that white dress.”

  He shrugged, and it was a marvelous shifting of shoulders and man. “That’s when I knew I had to have you in my bed.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s pretty, uh, I was going to say straightforward, but it occurs to me that I like a straightforward man.”

  He took both her hands in both of his and held them, just held them. The fan whirred, and just like that, the lamp on the dresser went out.

  “I think that’s a sign,” she said. “Did I tell you I’m superstitious?”

  “The first time I saw you, you asked me what sign I was. You said I was a water sign, deep and moody.”

  “I really am sorry about Joey, Reed. I know how much you love him. Although I must say it is nice to know you’re good with babies. I’d like to have a baby, your baby, maybe a few, maybe twins, a boy and a girl.”

  “Would you marry me first?” he asked.

  “I’d want Father Murphy to perform the ceremony.”

  He inched a little closer, nudged her hair from her temple with his lips. “You want your old boyfriend to marry us?”

  “That’s what I like about you.” Her voice was growing husky, dusky. “You always understand.”

  “That’s what you like about me?” He was still waiting to hear her say it.

  “There are a lot of things I like about you. You’re a snappy dresser, for one. And underneath that cool, calm and collected persona is a streak of very uncivilized man.”

  He was feathering kisses along the side of her face, her cheekbone, below her ear and just beneath the ridge of her jaw. She pressed her body against his and kissed him, once, twice. His breath was a rasp as she tugged his shirt from the waistband of his jeans and undid every button. He was a patient man, but when she slid her hands underneath, pressing the fabric up and off him, he shuddered and took over.

  “Do you know when I knew I loved you?” she asked as he whisked her silky black shirt over her head.

  He caught her raised hands in his, and clasped her wrists together in his right hand. She felt shackled, and she swore she’d never felt such a delicious shudder go through her.

  “This is the first I’ve heard anything about love,” he said, his voice husky, his hips pressing against hers.

  He was going to make her say it. She liked that about him, too.

  “I knew I loved you when I heard you ask Nanny McPhee if she’d ever been spanked.” He laughed, and even though she was serious, she didn’t mind, because sometimes serious life was pretty funny.

  “I’ve loved you every moment since, even when I hated you, even when I wanted to clobber you over the head with a perfectly good bottle of whiskey.”

  He lifted his face and looked at her, his eyes dilated in the semidarkness. “That sounds like true love to me. Is there anything else you want me to know right now, Ruby?”

  “I can’t think of anything off the top of my head,” she said.

  He placed her hands on his shoulders and whispered, “You’re going to want to hold on for this.”

  She tipped her head back and smiled. But she did hold on, and on, and on, through kisses, and sighs, and murmurs and a serenade as old as time. Their remaining clothes came off slowly, shoes, slacks, her skirt and a pair of fine cotton panties.

  He eased her onto her back on the bed, the fan whirring, the mattress shifting beneath their weight. He covered her breasts with his hands and covered her body with his. She was tall. He was taller. She was soft and unbelievably pliant, and he was hard and undeniably strong.

  She was underneath him one minute, sprawled on top of him the next. She giggled when he found a ticklish spot, and he let all his breath out when she wrapped her legs around his hips.

  He had her on her back so fast she gasped. She opened her mouth beneath his, and he began to move. The mattress shifted and the curtain fluttered at the window, their only music. She made a sound deep in her throat, until the shudders overtook her, and him.

  Sometime later, he eased to his side and drew the sheet to their shoulders. Her long curly hair tickled his chin, and his short blond chest hair tickled her nose. They smiled in the near darkness, and it was as if the whole universe smiled with them.

  “So this is love,” he said.

  “Who knew?” she agreed.

  Not Reed, until he met Ruby, and not Ruby, until she met Reed.

  Someone opened the door downstairs, and voices called to one another from the alley. Bell’s grand reopening had been a huge success. Ruby was already looking forward to her next adventure. But no matter what she tried next, she was putting down roots here in this town where Johnny Appleseed once visited, where Reed’s great-grandfather once discovered water, and his mother, rain. She was putting down roots with a man who knew how to make an entrance, and would always want to make an entrance with her.

  They would never agree on ice cream and neither would want to cook, but he would read to her, sometimes from the newspaper, other times from one of the books stacked on his nightstand. She would love everyone in his family, even his great-uncle, the judge. And he would love her mother, and respect her father and tolerate her uncle Herb.

  Later, she would tell him that someone had made her an offer to buy Bell’s tonight. But for now, they touched, they enticed, they enjoyed, they aroused. They promised to be true and faithful, to love each other forever. She felt like a bride already, and it was better than in the movies. She made love to the man she loved, the man who loved her in return.

  Her. And nobody else.

  And him, and only him.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss these other stories in

  Sandra Steffen’s ROUND-THE-CLOCK BRIDES series:

  THE WEDDING GIFT

  A BRIDE UNTIL MIDNIGHT

  A BRIDE BEFORE DAWN

  Now available from Harlequin Special Edition.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A DOCTOR FOR KEEPS by Lynne Marshall.

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  Chapter One

  Desi wished she had a flashlight as she crept around the side of the ancient house in the dark. A thorn from an equally old and gnarly bush snagged her T-shirt, puncturing her skin.

  “Ouch!” She immediately regretted her outburst since it was almost midnight. Where did Gerda say that painted rock is?

  Her grandmother, a woman Desi had met only a few times in her twenty-eight years, had earlier instructed over the phone where the extra house key was hidden. Determined not to wake up Grandma Gerda, she tramped through the overgrown grass and shrubbery along the side of the house, searching for the mark.

  Success! A brightly patterned rock nestled against the wooden gate stood out under the moonlight like fluorescent paint under black light. As she’d been told, she searched along the bottom for the small stick-on box holding the house key, hoping there weren’t any nighttime creepy crawlers around. Just as she retrieved the box and opened it, the assaulting aroma of night-blooming jasmine tickled her nose. Sneezing with gusto, she dropped the key and got on her hands and knees to search for it, grateful there was a full moon.

  A few seconds later, with key in hand, she emerged out of the thick overgrowth between two houses, heading for the huge wraparound porch belonging to her maternal grandmother. But not before tripping on a brick along the walkway. She lurched forward, swatting at the night for nonexistent support and letting fly a few choice words.

  A bright light blinded her just as she stopped teetering and regained her balance.

  “Who’s there?” A distinctly deep and masculine voice came from the vicinity of the light.

  She shielded her eyes with her forearms. “I’m Mrs. Rask’s granddaughter. Who’re you?”

  The light lowered, allowing Desi to see a huge shadow, making her wish she’d kept up those kickboxing classes...just in case.

  “I’m Kent, Gerda’s next-door neighbor.” The man stepped closer, studying her, as though he didn’t believe her story. “I’ve never heard about a granddaughter.”

  Why would she expect otherwise? Wasn’t she supposed to be the secret granddaughter? Especially since a Scandinavian stronghold like Heartlandia along the Columbia River in Oregon probably wasn’t used to people like her.

  “Are you saying you’re Ester’s daughter?” His voice, a moment ago deep and intriguing, had jumped an octave higher. He must have known who her mother was...or had been.

  “Yes. Could you please turn off that light and not talk so loud? I don’t want to wake my grandmother. I had no idea how long the drive from Portland to Heartlandia would be.” On a whim, and for future reference, she’d taken a detour through the big city just to see it, suspecting her father might still live there. Determined not to spend extra money for a motel, she’d made a decision to drive straight through tonight. “Took me two and a half hours. And what’s Oregon got against streetlights, anyway?” she said in a raspy whisper. “Thought I’d driven into a black hole on Highway 30 for a while there.” She fussed with the leaves that had stuck to her shirt and her hair, and brushed off the dirt from her hands, then reached out. “I’m Desi Rask, by the way.”

  Stepping closer, with her eyes having adjusted to the dark again, she realized how tall the man was. At five foot nine it was hard to find many men to look up to. He had to be at least six foot three. And blond. As in Nordic-god blond. “Kent Larson.” He accepted her hand and shook it; hers felt incredibly petite inside his grasp. “Your mother used to babysit me before—”

  He stopped without completing the sentence. Before she ran away from home. Yeah, Desi knew the story. Her mother, the piano-bar queen of the Midwest, had finally cleared up most of the missing pieces before she’d passed.

  “Desdemona? Is that you?” a reedy voice called out. “Kent?”

  Succeeding at doing what she’d hoped to avoid—waking up her grandmother—Desi turned toward the porch to face her for the first time since her mother’s last days in the hospital.

  “It’s me. Your greeting committee from next door decided to interrogate me before I could let myself in.”

  “That’s not it,” Kent the Viking said. “With Mrs. Rask being the mayor, I look out for her is all.”

  She’d seen the doubt on his face and the hesitation to swallow her story when she’d told him who she was. But being half-black, why should she expect otherwise when she didn’t look anything like the Norseman or her equally pale grandmother, the mayor of Heartlandia?

  * * *

  Kent worked quickly to put two and two together. Ester Rask had been a teenager when she’d run away from home. Being only eight at the time, the same age as his son Steven now, he’d never heard the whole story. He remembered the town searching high and low for Ester without success. He also remembered that Ester had never been declared dead, just missing, and eventually, his parents had quit talking about her disappearance altogether and he’d had a new babysitter. That had to be twenty-eight years ago. Hard to believe.

  Now, having run into Desdemona in the dark of night, he understood why Ester had run away—she must have been pregnant.

  Gerda flipped on the porch light, and Kent got his first good look at the dark and enchanting one named Desdemona. Or Desi, as she’d introduced herself. Tall, sturdy in build, coffee-with-cream-colored skin with an extra dollop of milk, wide-set rich brown eyes, a smoothed out variation on the pointy Rask family nose, full lips and straight teeth. It had been a long time since he’d seen such an exotically beautiful woman in person and it threw him off-balance.

  She wore a bright yellow top that hung off one shoulder, with the straps of a black tank top playing peekaboo from beneath. The midnight-blue jeans fit like second skin, and black flats countered her height. Wow, her outfit didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination, and right now his was running wild. Loads of thick dark hair danced around her shoulders, long and full-bodied like how he’d remembered Ester’s, except Ester’s hair had been blond, nearly white-blond. Kent’s hands grew suddenly restless, his fingers itching and his mind wondering what it would be like to dig into those gorgeous waves and curls.

  Even at eight he’d had a crush on his babysitter, and tonight a fresh rush of infatuation was springing up for another brand of Rask woman.

  She’d introduced herself as Desi Rask, so Ester had probably never married. For some reason, maybe his general mood about marriage lately, that knowledge landed like a sad clunk in his chest.

  “Are you going to come inside?” Mayor Rask asked, drawing him out of his rambling thoughts.

  “Oh, no. Steven’s sleeping. I should be getting back.”

  Desi didn’t hug her grandmother when she approached the porch. Instead they stood with a good three feet between them, offering polite smiles, seeming more like mere acquaintances than relatives. It didn’t feel right by a long shot, but who was he to figure out the way life should go?

  “Let me get my stuff first,” Desi said, rushing back down the six porch steps toward the Ford Taurus station wagon from at least two decades back. That car had definitely seen better days.

  “I’ll help you,” he said on impulse, waiting for her to open the back liftgate. There were two suitcases, a few boxes and assorted household items, including a potted plant or two. Was she moving in?

  “All I need is my overnight case for now.”

  Maybe she was just passing through.

  “I can get whatever else I need in the morning,” she said, her alto voice already beginning to grow on him. Would she still be there by the time he got off work tomorrow?

  “May as well bring this one inside, too.” Ignor
ing her wish, he grabbed both suitcases and carried them up the porch and inside his neighbor’s house. This one gave the impression of being flighty, and he wanted to make sure for Gerda’s sake that her long-lost granddaughter stuck around for more than one stinking night. Surreptitiously catching Gerda’s gaze on his way inside the dimly lit house, he inquired with a raised brow, “Everything okay?”

  She nodded in her usual stiff-upper-lip way, clutching the thick blue bathrobe to her throat. “She’ll have Ester’s old room, upstairs and down the hall.” Gerda’s robe was the exact shade of blue as Desi’s painted-on jeans, and he wondered if either woman noticed their similar taste in color.

  Kent carried the bags around the grand piano in the center of the living room—the piano he’d once taken lessons on and now Steven also took lessons on—and headed up the stairs. The third door on the left was the room where Ester had taught him how to play Go Fish. He knew this house like it was his own, having lived next door nearly his entire thirty-six years. Being so deeply rooted in Heartlandia when his parents moved to a retirement village in Bend, he’d bought their house.

  As a doctor and part owner of the Heartlandia Urgent Care, he had an early shift tomorrow, so he excused himself. “Welcome to Heartlandia, Desdemona, but I’ve got to go.”

  Desi sent a hesitant but thoughtful glance his way just before he headed for the door, her eyes filled with questions and suspicion. He nodded good-night, recognizing the mistrustful look, since he saw the same expression each morning when he shaved. When had he lost his natural trust in women? Oh, right, when his wife walked out.

  “Gerda, I’ll check in tomorrow.”

  “Tell Steven to be sure and practice,” Gerda said, reminding Kent that his son could come up with a hundred excuses when it came time to take his piano lesson.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, lying on his bed, hands behind his head on the pillow, Kent stared at the ceiling, wrenching his memory all the way back to when he’d been eight. Ester Rask had run away and had never come back. So much of the story had eluded him all these years. Now he understood it was because she was pregnant. He’d never known that part of the equation before. He’d heard she’d died last year, seen how distraught Gerda had been when she’d come home from her mysterious trip to California just before she’d been appointed mayor pro tem. Yet she’d barely spoken about it, just moped around for months. At least Gerda had been able to see her daughter one last time—a sad consolation to a lost life together.