by Liz Isaacson
Had she?
Her brain misfired, and Wyatt swept his other arm around her waist. “Can I kiss you, sugar?”
Marcy didn’t even remember thinking the word, but “Yes,” came out of her mouth. Wyatt’s lips touched her, and fire sparked in every cell of her body. Strange, that had never happened before, and Marcy had dated several men over the years.
Wyatt kissed her like no one ever had before, and Marcy simply did her best to keep up. He backed her into the wall, a growl coming from his throat. He deepened the kiss, and Marcy had no objections.
None at all.
The next evening, Marcy’s stomach writhed as she entered the hospital. She hated this place, and she didn’t have time to be there. But she’d promised Wyatt, and she didn’t want to let him down.
At the same time, the whole reason she hadn’t gotten involved in a real relationship with him was precisely because of situations like this.
But that kiss…. Her blood heated just thinking about the kiss they’d shared in her office the previous afternoon. He’d left soon after that, and she’d stayed in her office chair until her legs felt strong enough to support her weight.
But something had been bothering her all day. She didn’t have time to nurse two men back to full health, maintain the planes, and do all of the crop dusting herself. She barely had time to do one of those things, and she felt stretched thin in a half-dozen ways.
She stalled outside the room where the lady at the information desk had told her Wyatt would be, and sure enough, she heard his voice coming from inside. He sounded in good spirits as he spoke with another man. The cadence and tone of his voice suggested a brother, and Marcy found Skyler there when she finally dared to peek around the corner.
He sat in the only other chair in the room, facing the door. And he’d seen her.
She ducked back into the hallway, unsure about why she felt like she’d been caught. Her heart pounded, though, and she didn’t hear Skyler approach over the hammering of it in her ears.
“You can go on in,” he said. “I’ve got to get goin’.”
“Oh, I’m—” She cut off as Skyler walked away, nothing else to say, obviously.
Marcy clutched the six-pack of soda she’d brought for Wyatt and entered the room.
“Heya, baby,” he said easily, that smile so genuine on his face. But he looked tired, washed out, half of the man he’d been last night. He made no effort to move or stretch to touch her. He didn’t reach for her, and the whole place smelled sterile and like death.
Her stomach revolted and tears sprang to her eyes. “How did it go?”
“The doctors said they did the best they could.” Wyatt looked disappointed, and she liked that he didn’t hide his true emotions from her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Not your fault.”
She set the soda on the rolling tray in front of him. “Wyatt,” she said, not really sure why everything inside her had started to tremble. Her thoughts tangled, like they’d been doing all day. “I’m not…I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” She gestured between the two of them. “I’m barely hanging on as it is, and my daddy is still so sick, and I can’t nurse you back to health too.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “I have a huge family to do that.” He still didn’t reach for her, and she hated that more than anything.
“I’m sorry,” she said, the tears falling down her face now. “I shouldn’t have kissed you last night.”
“Hey,” he said, earnest and panicked now. “It’s fine. I know where we are. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Or can’t do.”
She nodded, sniffling and hating how every hole in her face seemed to be leaking. “I have to go. I’m so sorry.”
“Marcy,” he said after her, but she turned and walked away, much the same way Skyler had.
Every step shattered something new inside her, and she found herself running down the hall. Running away from Wyatt’s calls for her to come back.
She wasn’t strong enough for this, and she couldn’t shoulder more than she already was.
So she ran, and she ran fast.
Chapter Thirty
Whitney rolled over to find Jeremiah’s side of the bed empty. Unsurprising. The man came to bed late and got up early, and Whitney would find him in the kitchen, bent over his phone or a puzzle book.
She’d run her fingers up his arm and along his shoulder, and he’d kiss her good morning. Whitney loved their routine, and the scent of coffee that hung in the air told her that it was in full swing already.
Wyatt was sometimes in the kitchen too, but more often than not, Liam or Tripp had come to get him for the gym or a physical therapy appointment. The first few weeks after his back surgery had been rough, his physical agony only enhanced by Marcy Payne’s sudden departure from his life.
Whitney hated seeing him sitting alone in the kitchen or sleeping on the couch. She imagined him to be Jeremiah, after she’d stopped talking to him last January. She had to talk herself off the ledge at times like that, because she’d completely turned her life around in the last nine months.
She was married now, for crying out loud. Her life wasn’t anything like she’d envisioned it would be when she’d set her New Year’s resolutions.
She finally pulled herself from bed when she was in danger of being late for work at Wilde & Organic. She’d have to skip whatever Jeremiah had made for breakfast and drive straight to the store. After dressing quickly, she headed down the hall.
“Morning,” Jeremiah said from the kitchen counter. He stood this morning, his coffee cup in his hand. “You’re going to be late.”
“I know.” She grabbed her keys from the bowl on the built-in desk and kissed him quickly. She couldn’t believe how completely she loved him, and she took a moment to marvel at her feelings. Maybe they were still new. Maybe she didn’t understand them all. But she sure did like living here with him, wandering the ranch in the afternoon after her shift, and swaying with him in that swing under the oak tree.
Jeremiah did not take on a job at Wilde & Organic. He did go with her to her parents’ house for meals and family activities, and he blended in effortlessly with her siblings and their spouses. The nieces and nephews loved him on-sight, of course, because he was tall and sarcastic, with that cowboy hat.
Dalton loved Seven Sons Ranch, and he came a couple of times a week to sit with Wyatt or take him on a walk. He kept Wyatt up-to-date on the happenings at Bowman’s Breeds, though he’d gone to part-time work when school started.
Halloween came and went, and the Christmas festivities picked up around town, and around the ranch. Whitney woke up one morning, absolutely sure she was pregnant when she realized that she still hadn’t started her period.
Excitement moved through her, and she pressed her palm flat against her stomach, wishing Jeremiah was in bed with her so she could tell him.
“I should do something special,” she said to herself, and she sat up to start planning. The bakery at Wilde & Organic made a fantastic vegan chocolate cake, but she wasn’t sure Jeremiah would be impressed by that.
But he loved everything at the bakery on Main Street, and Whitney called over there. “I need something for my husband,” she said.
“Okay,” the girl said. “Can you be more specific?”
“Can you make a cake that says surprise or something?” After all, Whitney didn’t know if she was having a boy or a girl, and she wanted to take a pregnancy test to really be sure she was pregnant.
“Is it his birthday?”
“No,” Whitney said. She wasn’t going to tell this girl her news before she told her husband. She couldn’t believe she was pregnant. Her mother would cry for days. “Just something that says surprise, but nothing with balloons or birthday stuff.”
“Okay,” the girl said. “Flavor of cake?”
“What are my choices?” Whitney continued to ask questions and get
her cake ordered, and by the time she hung up, she was frustrated. Probably not as much as the girl taking her order, but still. Who knew there were so many different flavors of fillings and frostings? She’d just wanted a cake, for crying out loud.
She jumped into the shower, thinking of showing up that night with the cake, ready to tell Jeremiah that he was going to be a father. They’d talked about having kids, and he wanted as many as they could have. He was great with kids, and he wanted nothing more than to be a husband and father.
Whitney wept with gratitude for the life growing inside her, and thankfully, the hot water washed the evidence of her tears from her face.
She felt fine as she drove to work. As she stocked the produce section with her sister. As she went through her paperwork and then left the store. The cake wouldn’t be ready until one, so she ran by her house.
The place didn’t feel like anyone lived there, and she stepped just inside the front door and stalled. She’d loved this house the moment she’d parked in front of it several years ago. She loved the yellow siding, and the huge porch. She’d like the built-in cat door by the back door, and the airy, bright kitchen.
She’d moved her computer to the homestead on the ranch, taking the office that apparently Liam and Tripp had once shared. She still had plenty of business, and now that fall was in full swing, she’d started booking seniors who wanted fall foliage in their pictures instead of spring blooms.
And Christmas in Texas seemed to be a popular time to get married, as Whitney had three in the seven-day period surrounding the holiday. And one of them was right here at Seven Sons Ranch. Her first wedding at the ranch she now called home.
She understood on a different level why Jeremiah didn’t want to open the ranch up as a wedding venue. This land possessed something sacred, almost like it had a spirit of its own. Yes, the windmill was amazing, the huge barn with the American flag, the hay bales, the pumpkins, the old corn stalks now that the fields had been harvested.
Whitney loved the horses, the chickens, the goats, all of it. She loved the cattle dog that lived part-time on the ranch and part-time with Rhett and Evelyn. She loved Jeremiah’s beehives, and the cowboy cabins on the west side, and all the trees.
So she’d only booked one wedding here, and she was willing to play things by ear to see how they went.
Most of her furniture was still in the house, and after she’d sent a text to Jeremiah saying she had some errands to run, Whitney curled into the couch, set an alarm on her phone, and put her hands on her stomach again. If she still lived here, her cats would’ve joined her, Jones settling on her hip while Jess would keep her feet warm.
She dozed, a sure sign she was pregnant, and stayed on the couch for several minutes after her alarm went off. Then she remembered the test she’d bought at the store that morning—at the self-checkout counter—and hurried into the bathroom to see if her suspicions were right.
If they weren’t…she didn’t need that cake.
But the test showed two, bright pink lines, and Whitney braced herself against the counter in the bathroom.
“I’m pregnant.”
Pure joy filled her, and she basked in it for a few minutes.
Now she just needed to tell Jeremiah.
She headed over to the bakery to pick up her cake, and the girl working the counter got a strange look on her face when Whitney gave her name. “Sorry it was a little crazy this morning,” she said. “I had no idea I could choose coconut lime filling.”
The girl flashed a tight smile and went to get her cake. She returned and flipped open the top of the box. “How’d we do?”
Whitney gazed down into the box to find a perfectly chocolate cake with a smooth, glassy mirror glaze on it. The word surprise had been piped on in white frosting, and that was all. No flowers. No balloons. No stars. Just pure class in pure chocolate.
“It’s perfect,” she said, pulling out her debit card to pay for it. She and Jeremiah still kept separate finances, but she didn’t buy her own groceries. She put gas in her car and paid her mortgage to keep the house, though with the new addition to her family, she wasn’t sure why she should keep doing that.
She loved Jeremiah Walker. This marriage wasn’t fake anymore. She was his real wife, not his bogus bride. She could sell her house.
Determined to talk to him about it that night, after she’d given him the cake and made him guess what the surprise was, she tucked her card away and picked up her cake box.
She’d only taken two steps when someone said, “Whitney?”
She turned toward the oh-so-familiar voice, finding the man she thought she would.
Blake Thurston.
She froze, the cake suddenly heavy in her hands.
He stepped out of line and came toward her, a wide grin on his face. “There you are, baby. I’ve been back for a couple of days and haven’t seen you yet.” He took the cake box and set it on a nearby table.
Blake gathered her into his arms, despite Whitney’s protests. He never had listened to her, and Whitney’s anger started to rise. Everything in her emotions felt a little off, and she knew her increased hormones were to blame.
“I missed you, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m going to stay in town this time.”
“Right,” Whitney said, and before she knew it, Blake leaned down and kissed her.
Whitney struggled, unsure of what to do. He was bigger than her, and she’d never resisted his kiss before.
She pushed against his chest, but nothing happened.
“Hey,” a man said, and pure terror moved through Whitney. Her stomach dropped to her toes as Jeremiah pulled Blake away from her. “What are you doing, kissing my wife?” He switched his dark, dangerous, lasered gaze to Whitney. “This is what you’re calling an errand?”
“Your wife?”
“Jeremiah.”
But he simply glared at her, glanced around the bakery, and spun around. He walked away before Whitney could get her brain to play nice, and the tinkling of bells seemed to scream through the air as he yanked open the door and left the bakery.
Whitney slapped Blake’s chest. “You…you…what are you doing? I’m not yours for the taking.”
Surprise had etched itself in Blake’s eyes. “I didn’t know.”
“Maybe ask,” she said. “Or better yet, just leave town again, Blake. It’s what you’re good at.” She snatched the cake off the table and hurried after her husband, desperate to make him understand.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jeremiah drove away from the bakery, his sweet tooth completely unsatisfied. And to think he’d gone to get some sweets because he knew Whitney would like them. She particularly enjoyed the Rocky Road bars at the bakery on Main Street, but now the thought of them made Jeremiah’s stomach turn.
Of course, watching his wife kiss another man had done that. In fact, that had turned his most vital organs inside out, his heart included.
He hoped the twenty-minute drive back to the ranch would allow him to simmer down, but he was angrier by the time he pulled into the garage at the homestead. He slammed the door and took the three steps up to the entrance in a single bound.
Inside the house, he felt caged, and he paced from the mudroom to the living room and back. He took his cowboy hat off and put it back on. Surely Whitney would only be a few minutes behind him, even if he had driven over the speed limit the whole way home.
Her cats snoozed on the couch, and Jeremiah wanted to spray them with water. Instead, he watched them, and when Jones perked up only a half-minute later, he knew Whitney was home.
Sure enough, she walked through the front door a moment later, a cake box in her hand. “Jeremiah,” she said, but he stayed in the kitchen.
She came down the hall and found him instantly. It wasn’t like he was trying to hide. He pressed his cowboy hat lower, every emotion in the book raging through him.
“That wasn’t what you thought it was.”
“No?” Jeremiah didn’t mean to
bark the word. He was just glad Wyatt wasn’t home so he and Whitney could have this conversation. “Trust is vital to me,” he said. “Absolutely vital.” And she knew why. How could she do this to him?
“I was just there getting a cake.” She took a few steps and set the cake box on the counter.
“For what?”
“Open it.”
Jeremiah made no move to do what she said. “It took you three hours to get a cake?” She still owned her home. She could’ve met Brock or Brian or Brett—whatever his name was—and been kissing him for hours. She didn’t need to do it in public, and something troubled Jeremiah about the kiss in the bakery.
He couldn’t put his finger on what, but he knew one thing: his trust in Whitney had just shattered. And it had taken him over four years to learn to trust a woman again.
Jeremiah felt all the carefully glued-together pieces of himself slowly splintering apart. “If I can’t trust you, we have nothing.”
“You can trust me,” she said. “I worked at the store, and I was tired. I ordered this cake, and I couldn’t pick it up until two, so I went to my house and took a nap.”
Her house. So she had gone there. Jeremiah’s mind went through a thousand different scenarios in the blink of an eye, none of them good. All of them ended with him standing by himself while what he wanted drove away from him.
He couldn’t believe this. He’d invited this pain into his life when he’d started imagining what it would be like to kiss Whitney’s delicious, red lips.
And it had been wonderful. He loved kissing Whitney. He liked holding her hand. He enjoyed sharing his life and his bed with her.
How had everything changed in the blink of an eye?
“I can’t constantly be wondering if you’re really at work, of if you’ve snuck off to meet him,” Jeremiah said.
“I didn’t do that,” Whitney said, pure desperation in her voice. “You’re not even listening to me.”