Sullivan's Promise

by Joan Johnston

  Aiden hadn’t leapt at her suggestion. He’d stood in the kitchen doorway with his hands on his hips and his mouth turned down. “What happened to waiting until King is well?”

  Suddenly nervous, she’d stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and said, “He might never get well.”

  “What happened to your plans for a big wedding?”

  “Everyone knows we’re married. It would be a waste of time and money.” She was surprised by Aiden’s interrogation, but she supposed he was entitled to question her sudden change of mind. However, his incisive questions, or maybe it was his penetrating gaze, caused her pulse to jump. Couldn’t he just accept what she’d said at face value?

  Leah pulled one of her hands out of her back pocket and shoved her dishwater blond hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “It makes more sense to have a big christening party instead.”

  “What about your plans to own Kingdom Come?”

  She found it significant that he’d left that question for last. “You’re more important to me than any piece of property. I love you so much—”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish, just scooped her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to his bedroom.

  It hadn’t even been dark when they’d stripped off their clothes to make love. It was after midnight, and they hadn’t left his bed.

  They’d talked endlessly between the three times they’d coupled, making plans, deciding where they wanted to build their house, and what they wanted it to look like.

  “I’m starving,” Aiden said, scratching his belly. “How about an early breakfast?”

  Leah laughed. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I could go for some pancakes. How about you?”

  Her mouth suddenly watered. So far during her pregnancy, Leah hadn’t had any cravings. Pancakes loaded with butter and dripping with maple syrup sounded delicious. “I guess I could eat a bite or two.”

  Aiden grabbed his jeans and pulled them on without underwear, leaving a couple of buttons undone so the denim slid down his hips revealing the concave area on either side of his belly. Leah found the panel of muscle at the center of that dip, which ran down to his sex, absolutely fascinating. She was staring, but she couldn’t help it.

  Leah walked toward Aiden, not bothering to grab the flannel shirt at the foot of the bed to cover her nakedness, too entranced by his muscular body to think of her own.

  “Aiden,” she said in a husky voice, as she laid her hand on the flesh that had caught her attention.

  Aiden gasped when her hands traced the muscular indentations, sliding downward toward what was hidden by the layer of denim. His hands grasped her wrists. “Leah.”

  She looked up, unsure whether he wanted her to stop or keep up what she was doing. A glance at his Levi’s revealed that his body was willing, even if he wasn’t.

  “I love your body, Aiden. I want to touch this spot…right…here.”

  He gave a guttural groan of surrender and released her hands.

  They made love on the rug. The sex was fierce and fast and fully satisfying.

  “Now I am hungry,” Leah said when she was breathing normally again. “Are you going to feed me, or not?”

  He stood and pulled his Levi’s back up, this time buttoning them all the way to the top. Then he grabbed her flannel shirt from the bed and stuffed her arms into it, making sure it was securely fastened. His gaze kept slipping to her rear end, which was barely covered by the flannel tail.

  “Keep that up,” she said, “and I’ll be expecting you to do something about it.”

  “Have mercy,” he said, turning her and giving her rear end a loving pat as he nudged her toward the bedroom door. “I need some food to keep up my strength.”

  The next time Leah’s phone rang, she was downstairs in the kitchen eating pancakes. She didn’t hear it.

  VICK WAS FRANTIC. Leah wasn’t answering her phone. Everyone else she could have called had babies that were likely sound asleep or lived too far away to get to her anytime soon.

  She heard someone knocking at her hotel room door and raced to answer it. “Rye? Is that you?”

  But it wasn’t Rye.

  “Matt? What are you doing here?”

  Matt stepped inside her room with Nathan draped over his shoulder sound asleep. He put a finger to his lips to silence her, so she wouldn’t wake him up. To her amazement, Jennie stepped inside behind Matt.

  Vick’s jaw dropped, and her gaze shot from one to the other.

  “What are you doing here, Matt? You lost the ranch. Why are you back?”

  “Leah asked me to come.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s late. We can discuss all this in the morning. We flew in late, and I didn’t want to drive all the way to the ranch. Jimmy, the hotel clerk, told me you were staying here, and I thought I’d check with you and see whether there was some problem.”

  “No problem. Except I need a babysitter. Can you keep an eye on Cody while I go out?”

  Matt didn’t even raise a brow at the sight of the sleeping boy, and Vick decided he must already have heard about Cody through the family grapevine.

  Matt glanced at Jennie, whose shoulders sagged and whose eyes looked sunken, and said, “You need to get to bed, honey. You look ragged.”

  Jennie grimaced. “Thanks a lot. You don’t look so great yourself.”

  Vick had been so absorbed with her own issues, she hadn’t noticed how fatigued both Matt and Jennie appeared. “What happened to make you so late getting here?”

  “Mechanical problems with the jet. We didn’t want to put off the trip till morning, so here we are.”

  “Just in time to help me out, for which I will be eternally grateful.”

  “Give me a few minutes to get Jennie and Nate settled and I’ll be back,” Matt said.

  Vick paced the confines of the small room waiting for Matt’s return and hurried to the door when he knocked.

  As she grabbed her coat he asked, “Where are you going at this hour of the night?”

  “I have to see someone.”

  Matt stood with his hands on his hips, waiting for further explanation, and she said, “If you must know, it’s Cody’s father.”

  “Ah,” Matt said. “The Montana rancher.”

  “If you’ve been told that much, you know things are still up in the air between us. I need to speak to him, and it can’t wait till morning.”

  Matt gestured toward the door, grinned, and said, “Go for it.”

  Vick hurried out the door. She’d checked, and the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar closed at 2 a.m. She found a parking place four blocks away and ran all the way back to the bar, arriving with her cheeks pink from the cold and her lungs heaving.

  Rye was sitting at a table in the bar with a drink in front of him—along with three upside-down shot glasses. She moved to the bar and slipped onto one of the saddle bar stools. “I’ll have whatever’s on tap.”

  “Drink up. We close in fifteen minutes,” the bartender said as he set the beer in front of her.

  Vick wasn’t wearing a pair of sexy, tight-fitting jeans or a tailored white shirt that emphasized her breasts or even stylish cowboy boots. She had on a ratty sweatshirt and ripped Wranglers with her Uggs. Her hair was a mess. Her mascara was clumped and her eyeliner was smeared. She glanced over her shoulder, waiting until Rye saw her.

  He froze with his drink halfway to his mouth.

  She maintained eye contact for a moment too long and then smiled, giving him her very best come-hither look. Finally, she flipped her tousled hair over her shoulder and turned her back on him.

  And waited to see what he would do.

  Please come over and speak to me. Please give me a chance to explain. Please believe I want to be with you.

 
; “Hello, pretty lady.” His voice was rough and warm and oh, so welcome.

  Vick slid off the saddle and stood facing him. “I went to pick up Cody. He had a nightmare.”

  “I know.”

  Her brow furrowed. “You know? How did you know?”

  “When I woke up, I checked my phone and saw that Eve had called. I called her back, and she told me you were on your way.”

  “So you never thought I’d walked out?”

  He met her gaze and shook his head.

  “Then why did you leave?” she asked. “I came back and you were gone and I went crazy worrying what you would think. I couldn’t leave Cody alone and I couldn’t get hold of Leah and if Matt hadn’t shown up out of the blue I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “Matt showed up?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she said. “Why did you leave?”

  “To see if you would follow me.”

  “What if I hadn’t shown up because I couldn’t find a babysitter,” she said, exasperated.

  He smiled. “I knew you would come. Knowing it wasn’t easy for you to get here just makes having you here all the sweeter.”

  He’d believed she would come. He loved her and was willing to trust her to love him. She wasn’t sure whether to kiss him or kick him. “How was I supposed to know where you went?”

  “You figured it out, didn’t you? Although I was getting a little worried that you weren’t going to make it before the place closed for the night.”

  “What if I hadn’t? What would you have done then?”

  “Headed for the Wort Hotel, of course.”

  “We are not going there,” she said.

  “Nope,” he agreed. “We’re going back to the hotel and pack our things, and when the sun comes up, we’re heading home. I need to keep an eye on Mike,” he continued, “so he doesn’t get himself killed hunting down that poacher who shot him, and we need to get Cody enrolled in Vacation Bible School.”

  “And Amy Beth needs to get back to Missoula so she can finish up her exams and talk to—” Vick cut herself off, blushed, and said, “So she can finish up her exams.”

  “I’d like to check on Mom and make sure she’s okay,” Rye said.

  “Is that everything?” she asked.

  He shot her a wry look. “Everything except how to get you to marry me.”

  “You might ask.”

  “I love you, Vick. Will you marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  He threw his hat in the air and gave a cowboy yell that startled the patrons in the bar. “She said yes!” he shouted.

  The customers laughed and clapped and hooted and hollered while Rye scooped Vick into his arms and held her close, giving her the chance to whisper, “I love you, too.”

  THE GRAYHAWK WOMEN were both fertile and fecund. Every wife at the Fourth of July picnic being held at Leah and Aiden’s ranch house was carrying a newborn or had a belly swollen with child. It had been three years since Vick and Rye were married by a justice of the peace in Jackson, with two strangers for witnesses and no family except their five-year-old son in attendance. Vick wore a smug smile. She had both a baby in her arms and another growing inside her that her husband knew nothing about.

  The celebration was being held at Leah’s home, instead of Kingdom Come, because you always met at your mom’s place for family gatherings, and Leah had carried that burden with joy in her heart all the years King’s Brats had been growing up.

  Chemo hadn’t worked this time on King’s leukemia, and when he’d died a year ago and his will was read, Leah learned that he’d given Kingdom Come to Matt. Vick had been surprised, when she tried to console Leah, to discover that her sister wasn’t at all sorry to lose the ranch.

  “I was hanging on to a piece of land because it was all I had in the world. I realized it wasn’t the land I wanted, it was the love and security it represented. My life now is filled to overflowing with a husband and children, and there’s plenty of work at the Lucky 7 to go around.

  “Besides, the house would have been a sad place with King gone,” she continued. “I have a home with Aiden that I love, and with King dead and Angus living in Montana—and most of us married to Flynns—there’s no need to merge our ranches to stop those two old men from fighting. The feud between our families is over and done.”

  Angus had come with Darcie, and Vick thought they seemed very happy together. Amy Beth had shown up this year for the first time with a boyfriend, the young man she’d been crying over all those years ago when Vick had held her and comforted her because he was getting engaged to someone else. The engagement had broken off without the young man ever getting married, and Amy Beth had made sure he noticed her this time around.

  Mike had become a bitter lone wolf. No one ever saw much of him. He’d retreated to Vick’s cabin in the woods and could rarely be coaxed out. He worked on the Rafter S, and did his shopping late at night so he wouldn’t run into kids who would flee from the monster he believed he’d become. Vick and Rye had told Mike the scars on his face had faded, and Cody had never again reacted the same way. But nothing anybody said could change Mike’s mind.

  When Mike had refused for the third year in a row to come to the family picnic in Jackson Hole, Vick had decided things had to change. She was currently on the lookout for a woman who would see past Mike’s scars to the man she’d come to know. It wasn’t going to be easy, because the truth was the attack had disfigured Mike’s face, drawing his mouth down on one side so he always looked angry. But Vick was sure the woman who could save Mike from himself was out there somewhere. All she had to do was find her.

  The poacher who’d shot Goldilocks and missed had tried the same thing a year later and ended up getting badly mauled by the bear he’d shot. Once the poacher recovered from his injuries, Pete had arrested him.

  Pete had a brand-new girlfriend. She was a policewoman in Kalispell. Pete had told Vick they had a lot in common—the subject of bears never came up. They were planning a trip to Hawaii together in the fall.

  Leah and Aiden had built their living room and kitchen large enough to hold every one of King’s Brats and “those awful Flynn boys” along with their children and the grandchildren they all hoped to have someday. Some of the men and the more pregnant women were sitting on the covered front porch in swings and rockers, while others shot off firecrackers and played flag football and other games with the kids on the lawn. The rest of the women had gathered in the kitchen to finish up the food for the picnic and were now carrying everything out to the tables that had been set up in the backyard, where a huge side of beef was being roasted on a spit.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  Vick felt Rye’s arms slide around her waist as he nosed her hair out of the way and nuzzled her neck. She had a platter of deviled eggs in her hand and said, “Don’t make me drop these.”

  “Put them down and turn around so I can kiss you.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all morning,” Vick said with a laugh. She set down the platter and threw her arms around Rye’s neck, enthusiastically participating as he kissed her silly.

  “We need to join the others,” she said, breaking the kiss. “You know how much your brothers like deviled eggs,” she added with a teasing smile.

  “They can wait while I kiss my wife.”

  “What did you do with the baby?” she asked.

  “Mom is holding Tommy.”

  “Where’s Cody?”

  “He and Sawyer are pretending to be X-Men with superpowers.”

  “Leaving you free to come here and accost me and the baby.”

  “I told you the baby’s with Mom.”

  “Not this one,” Vick said, laying her hand over her belly.

  It took Rye a moment to catch on, but he was a quick study. “You’re pregnant?�
��

  Vick’s eyes teared with joy. “I am.”

  “We’re having another baby?”

  “We are.”

  Rye pulled her close and rocked her in his arms. “My beautiful wife is having a baby,” he whispered in her ear. “I think I might cry.”

  Vick leaned back far enough to see the tears in his eyes and the grin on his face. “You’re happy?”

  “Over the moon. How about you? I know you would have been happy with two. Are you okay with three?”

  “Are you okay with four?”

  He looked stunned. “Four?”

  She nodded.

  “We’re having twins?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. More than fine.” She laughed and said, “I’m over the moon.”

  “Hey!” a male voice called from outside the screen door. “Where are those deviled eggs?”

  Rye slid an arm around her waist, then picked up the dish of deviled eggs and said, “Keep your shorts on! My pregnant wife needs a little help getting them on the table.”

  “Your pregnant wife?” someone yelled from outside.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Vick said.

  “Vick is pregnant!” one of her sisters shouted.

  Vick giggled and followed her husband, with his dish of deviled eggs, out the screen door and into the chaos and cacophony of her loving family celebrating life—and the nation’s birthday—with sparklers and good food and laughter.

  This book is dedicated to

  Nancy November Sloane,

  whose cheerful, capable, and creative

  assistance in all things book related

  makes my life as a writer

  so much better

  in so many ways.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank Kat and Larry Martin, my wonderful writer friends in Montana (wonderful friends and amazing writers), for giving me a place to lay my head while I did research for this book.