Finally a Bride & His Love Match
Auteur
Sherryl Woods
Lezers
18,4K
Hoofdstukken
35
Prologue
“You’re going to need a new roof,” Ron Matthews informed Caitlyn Jones, gesturing toward the upper levels of the Clover Street Boarding House. “If you don’t replace the whole thing, you’ll just have me up there patching after every single thunderstorm rolls through here all summer long, and you’ll still need a new roof when all’s said and done.”
Katie heard the news with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. First the wiring, then the plumbing, now the roof. Was there any part of this beautiful old Victorian house that wasn’t about to collapse around her?
The repairs were sopping up the last of her savings at a rate that made her banker very nervous. Charlie Hastings at the First National Bank of Clover, South Carolina, had already started asking pointed questions about where she was going to find the funds to make the balloon payment on her mortgage on the first of September. He was all too aware of the state of her bank balance and her pitiful cash flow.
He also knew in intimate detail what she’d already spent to make the once decrepit boarding house habitable after years of neglect. And he was just itching to remind her he’d warned her about all the pitfalls of taking an old relic and trying to remodel it on a shoestring budget. In essence, Charlie Hastings was a royal pain. Just the thought of admitting to him that he’d been right had her sighing heavily.
“Trouble?”
Katie’s heart thumped unsteadily at the sound of that one single word. She recognized Luke Cassidy’s voice as if she’d last heard it only yesterday. Instead it had been six years ago, on a night filled with the kind of seductive whispers that had made her heart melt. Trouble? Luke Cassidy’s return to Clover made the problems with the boarding house pale in comparison.
She’d been dreading a face-to-face meeting with Luke ever since he’d hit town. She’d hoped it would come when she was dressed fit to kill, rather than wearing ragged cutoffs and a cast-off man’s shirt that had belonged to one of her elderly boarders.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she insisted, turning slowly toward the man who had broken her heart by abandoning her without a word of goodbye.
Aware that news of this meeting would spread through town like lightning, she faced him squarely. She raised her chin a notch just to show that his disappearance had meant nothing to her, that he meant nothing to her, despite all the years of friendship that had preceded that one stolen night of perfect bliss.
To prove just how independent she’d become and how unflustered she was by Luke’s presence, she shifted her gaze to Ron. “How soon can you start working on the roof?”
“What will it cost?” Luke asked, avoiding her entirely and concentrating on the roofer who’d been one class behind Katie in school.
Ron’s gaze darted from Katie to Luke and back again. Apparently he caught something in her expression that made him ignore Luke and respond directly to her.
“Week after next is the soonest, Katie,” he said apologetically. “I’ll put a tarp over it meantime. That should keep the worst of any rain from leaking into that front bedroom until I can get to it.”
“Thanks, Ron.”
“How much?” Luke repeated as if he had a perfect right to ask the question.
Ron regarded him doubtfully, then looked at Katie. She sighed. “How much?” she repeated.
“Four thousand. Could be closer to five with all those turrets. It’s not like slapping up a nice straight roof on some little single-story bungalow. I’ll get you a firm estimate by tomorrow.”
Katie gulped. Four or five thousand dollars! Where was she supposed to come up with that kind of money? Right now, though, it hardly mattered. She wouldn’t back down from the commitment with Luke looking on if her life depended on it.
“Fine,” she said, though there was the faintest tremor in her voice she couldn’t control.
“Is that a problem?” Ron asked, picking up on that tremor. “If it is, all you have to do is say the word and we can work out the payments. You know I’d do anything in the world to help you make a go of this place, Katie.”
“I’ll manage,” Katie snapped, then winced at her misdirected anger. If anyone deserved sharp words it was Luke, not Ron, and it was way too late to be delivering them. “Just schedule the job, Ron. I had to move Mrs. Jeffers into another room until the repairs are done. I can’t afford to keep a room empty for long.”
“Sure thing. If I can free up someone to start sooner, I’ll let you know.” He glanced at Luke. “Good to see you again, Luke. I’d heard you were back. Planning to stay?”
Luke nodded. “If things work out,” he said enigmatically.
As soon as the roofer had left, Kate whirled on Luke. “How dare you interfere in this? The cost of repairing my roof is none of your business.”
“Never said it was,” he said complacently, shoving his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans. “But you weren’t asking and the question needed answering. Spelling out the details is one of the cardinal rules in business. Getting it in writing is another.”
The suggestion that she had been about to make a lousy business decision and didn’t know enough to get a contract aggravated Katie almost as much as Luke’s interference.
“Ron and I have done a lot of business together,” she said.
His knowing glance took in the old Victorian from porch to roof. “I can imagine.”
His sarcasm had her gnashing her teeth. “We would have discussed the cost.”
“When?”
“Later.” She scowled at him, hoping her frosty reception would drive him away before she betrayed the fact that his presence had her heart hammering a hundred beats a minute. “Did you want something in particular?”
“You and Ron seem...close,” he said, watching her intently. “How close?”
“Oh, I’m sure if you hadn’t been here, he would have thrown me to the lawn and made mad, passionate love to me,” she said sweetly.
Luke’s jaw clenched. “That’s not something to joke about.”
“It’s also none of your business.”
“So you’ve said. Well, let’s just pretend for a moment that it is my business. How close are you?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Luke, Ron is happily married and has three kids.”
“Then how come he’s so eager to give you a break on the roof job?”
If Luke hadn’t looked so genuinely bemused by Ron’s generosity, Katie might have blown a gasket at the suggestion that the younger man might expect something in return. As it was, she figured it was about time Luke learned that not every relationship was about sex. Maybe, after all those years of well-reported wheeling and dealing in Atlanta, he needed to remember that in Clover people helped each other out without ulterior motives.
“Ron’s kid sister was one of my first boarders,” she said. “She was having a rough time at home. When she moved in here, I looked out for her. He credits me with keeping her out of trouble, though the truth is Janie was smarter than anyone in her family recognized. She had her whole life mapped out, and it didn’t include getting smashed up with a bunch of teenage drunks out on the highway or an unplanned pregnancy. More kids today should have the kinds of goals and limits she’d set for herself.”
If she hadn’t had her gaze pinned to Luke’s face, Katie might have missed the fleeting change in his expression when she mentioned the unplanned pregnancy. It made her wonder all over again how much the son he’d turned up with on his return had to do with his abrupt departure all those years ago. Just guessing that the timing roughly coincided with the same period in which he’d made love to her filled her with regrets. If Luke had been trapped into marriage, why couldn’t she have been the one...? She let the thought trail off uncompleted. She would never have done that to him. Never.
Whatever Luke was thinking, though, he managed to banish it. He resumed that bland, inscrutable expression that tempted Katie to do something, anything to draw a reaction.
Regarding her evenly, he asked, “How are you going to pay for a new roof?”
The question was so far afield from the direction of her thoughts that Katie took a minute to form a response. “That’s what you dropped by after six years to ask?”
Luke’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “How are you going to pay for it?”
“I’ll find a way,” she said, injecting a misplaced note of confidence into her voice. “Well, it was great seeing you again. We’ll have to catch up some other time. I’ve got things to do.”
She tried to subtly edge toward the front door, but Luke kept pace with her. She sighed at her failed attempt to escape. He’d always had a single-track mind and an inability to take a hint.
“How? By working more hours at Peg’s Diner?” he asked irritably. “You can’t earn enough there in the next week to pay for the tarp Ron is going to use, much less a new roof.”
She stared at him, filled with indignation at the certainty she heard in his voice. “How would you know a thing like that? And what difference does it make to you, even if it is true?”
“It’s not all that difficult to get information in Clover,” he said. “Nothing thrives in this town quite like gossip.”
“You used to hate that,” Katie reminded him.
“Yes, I did,” he agreed. “I’ve discovered, though, that it has its uses. The rumor mill provided all the information I needed on you, including the fact that you are knee-deep in debt. Half the people I talked to are worried sick about you. They say you’re wearing yourself out trying to make a go of this business. What in all that’s holy ever possessed you to buy this ramshackle old place and try to turn it into a boarding house? It should have been torn down thirty years ago when the McAllisters abandoned it.”
I bought it because we used to sit on that secluded porch night after night and share our innermost secrets, she thought to herself. Those were memories he’d obviously forgotten. She wouldn’t have divulged them to him now for a stack of free shingles and sufficient tar paper to cover the entire roof. She decided it was best to ignore that question altogether.
“I had no idea folks in Clover were so fascinated with my well-being.” She regarded him pointedly. “But they, at least, are friends. I’m not sure I’d describe you the same way. I do know that my financial status is none of your concern. I can’t imagine why you would have wanted information about me, but if you did, you could have asked me directly.”
“Would you have given me honest answers?”
Their gazes clashed. “I was always honest with you,” she said heatedly. “You...” She let the accusation trail off. There was no point to arguing. History couldn’t be changed. She had loved him once to distraction. He had left her without a word, apparently to marry a woman who was pregnant with his child. What more was there to say?
Even though Katie fell silent, Luke clearly got the message and, just as clearly, accepted the blame for whatever lack of honesty had come between them six years earlier. Guilt was written all over his handsome, chiseled face, along with something that might have been regret.
“Look, can we go inside and talk?” he asked, his tone suddenly placating.
“Why?”
He seemed amused by her reluctance. “Maybe just because it’s way past time for two old friends to catch up.”
Catching up—risking involvement—struck Katie as a remarkably bad idea. She didn’t want to be alone with Luke. The man still had the power to wreak havoc with her senses. She’d known that the instant she’d spotted him in the back of the church at Lucy Maguire Ryder’s disrupted wedding. That meant he also had the power to cause her even more anguish than he had in the past. She had wounds from the first time that, to her deep regret, felt as fresh today as they had on the day he’d walked out of her life.
“Please,” he coaxed, his gaze unrelenting.
“We can sit on the porch,” she said as a compromise when she saw that he wasn’t about to leave until he’d gotten whatever he’d come for. She didn’t for one single minute believe it had anything to do with the cost of her roof repairs. “I’ll get us some lemonade.”
“Afraid to be alone with me?” he inquired with a smile that never quite reached his eyes.
“Never,” she denied.
“Then wouldn’t it be better to have this conversation where half the town won’t be witness to it?”
She couldn’t imagine what he had to say that needed such privacy, but it was clear he was going to badger her until he got his way. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she snapped impatiently. “Come on into the kitchen.”
The kitchen, normally Katie’s favorite room in the house because of its huge windows facing the backyard and a table large enough to seat a half-dozen friends for a good long chat, suddenly seemed the size of a closet. Luke’s presence was overpowering. The effect was worsened by his pacing, which brought him brushing past her time and again as she squeezed the lemons into a big glass pitcher, added water, plenty of sugar and a tray of ice cubes. At least the process and his silence gave her time to gather her composure.
When she finally turned, handing him a glass, she was almost able to convince herself that Luke was just another old friend stopping by to catch up on the news. People—a few of them attractive, available men—gathered in her kitchen all the time, though none of them made her pulse race. Still, there was no reason to think of Luke any differently than she did all those others. She could handle his presence. She could, dammit!
Then his fingers grazed hers as he took the lemonade. Her pulse bucked. She glanced into his eyes and saw a torment that made her breath catch in her throat. Her natural compassion welled up, even as she forced herself to look away. It took every ounce of restraint she possessed to keep from wrapping her arms around him and consoling him.
Though what Luke Cassidy had to be tormented about she couldn’t imagine. Everyone in town had heard by now that he’d made a fortune while living in Atlanta. He had a precious son, Robby, the merest sight of whom brought a lump to Katie’s throat. And if he was divorced, well, so were a lot of people. However tragic the circumstances, people got over it. It was nothing for her to get all teary-eyed over.
“Katie?” Luke asked suddenly.
She reluctantly lifted her gaze to his. Something in his voice, a soft, cajoling note, made her pulse skip yet another beat. How many times had she heard just that note before he’d asked her to do something outrageous? She could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he intended to do just that all over again.
“What?” she asked warily.
“Marry me.”
The two simple, totally unexpected words hit her with the force of a tornado. If he’d asked her to join him on a shuttle to the moon, she wouldn’t have been any more stunned. Katie was suddenly very glad they weren’t in plain sight. At least there was no one to see her mouth drop open, no one to witness in case she followed through on her urge to whap him upside his hard head with a frying pan. If Luke Cassidy had asked her to marry him six years ago, she would have wept with joy. Today that same request—that out-of-the-blue mockery of a real proposal—filled her with fury.
“You want to marry me?” she repeated incredulously. Her pulse, apparently unaware that the proposal merited anger, not consideration, took off as if this were a declaration of true love. “Six years without a word, and now you want to marry me? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he agreed, as calmly as if the suggestion weren’t totally absurd.
“Have you lost your mind?”
He seemed to consider the question thoughtfully, then shook his head, his expression thoroughly serious. “Nope. I don’t think so.”
“Then I think you need a second opinion.”
“Katie, I’ve given this a lot of thought. It makes sense.”
She regarded him blankly. “Why?” she asked, when she should have been shrieking to the high heavens about the gall of any man who would walk back into a woman’s life after six years and drop a marriage proposal on the table as if it were a simple hello.
“Why?” she asked again, wondering if there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she would get the simple, three-word answer she’d always dreamed of hearing cross his lips.
“My son needs a mother. You need somebody to put this place on a sound financial base again. We always got along. I think we could make it work.”
Not three words, but a litany, Katie noticed in disgust as Luke ticked off the reasons matter-of-factly. He’d probably made a damn list of them. His businesslike tone made her grind her teeth.
“You sound as if you’re negotiating for the merger of two companies with compatible products,” she accused.
The idiot didn’t even have the decency to deny it.
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” he agreed, looking pleased that she had grasped the concept. “We both get something we need. I knew I could count on you not to get all sloppy and sentimental about this.”
Katie was just itching to reach for the cast iron skillet that was sitting atop her twenty-year-old stove, when she made the mistake of looking again into Luke’s eyes for a second time. Those blue eyes that had once danced with laughter were flat and empty now. Lonely. Lost.
Katie had always been a sucker for a lost soul. And from her twelfth birthday, when he’d brought her a wilted, but flamboyantly huge bouquet of wildflowers, she had been a sucker for Luke Cassidy. Regrettably, nothing in the past six years they’d been apart had changed that.
She drew in a deep, steadying breath and realized that she was going to do it. She was going to say yes and damn the consequences.
“Oh, what the hell,” she murmured, furious with herself for not having the willpower to resist this man or the son he’d just turned up with. Maybe she’d just been a spinster too darn long. More likely, she’d just missed Luke too much, something she wouldn’t tell him if he hog-tied her and dragged her through town in full view of every single person who’d watched the two of them grow up. Cursing herself for being a pathetic, love-starved wimp, she tried valiantly to list all the reasons to say an emphatic no. There were dozens of them, but she couldn’t seem to force her lips to form the first one.
At her continued silence, a faint suggestion of a grin tugged at Luke’s mouth. “Was that a yes?”
It was and they both knew it, but she wouldn’t make it easy on him. Katie knew she didn’t have Luke’s business acumen, but she did have an instinct for self-preservation. She couldn’t just cave in and accept his first offer. If he wanted a coldhearted business deal, then that’s what he’d get.
“We need to discuss terms,” she said, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as his, even though her heart was thundering wildly.
She couldn’t believe what she was about to do. She was standing in her own kitchen, negotiating with a man she’d loved forever, about a blasted marriage of convenience. She ought to have her head examined. She was apparently every bit as loony as he was.
Then again, as everyone who knew her well would understand, her head had never had much to do with her feelings for Luke. It was her heart he had stolen and apparently intended to claim now as his own.
Still, there was a definite call for putting some emotional distance between them, for hanging on to a shred of dignity. She would not rush into his arms, allowing herself to think for one single instant that he actually cared a whit for her. He wanted a mother for his child. She would be a baby-sitter with unusual benefits. That was it. She supposed people had gotten married for less rational reasons, but she’d never met any of them.
A few centuries back marriages like this had even been arranged by doting, practical fathers. She’d always considered such arrangements barbaric. Now she found herself in the unique position of working out such terms for herself. Well, Luke could be darned sure that she was going to adequately protect herself from any more of his foolish whims.
She went to the kitchen counter, picked up a pad of paper and a pen, then sat down at the table, pen poised. “I’m ready. Let’s talk.”
“Okay,” he said, suddenly cautious. “What did you have in mind?”
“A contract with everything all spelled out on paper. Didn’t you remind me just a few minutes ago that that’s how business is done?” she asked sweetly.
“Katie,” he began in a warning tone.
She ignored the warning. “This is my boarding house. I run it as I see fit.” She jotted that down before he could say a word.
“Now, wait a minute,” he protested. “Running it how you see fit is what got you into this mess.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “I run it. I deal with the guests,” she insisted. “You can handle the business end of things, if you want.”
“Thank you so much,” he said.
She frowned at his mocking tone. “This won’t work, if you’re going to be surly.”
“I am never surly.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed that much, Luke Cassidy. You were always surly, especially when you weren’t getting your way.”
She studied him consideringly. He wasn’t exactly dressed for success today, but she wasn’t fooled by the faded, skintight jeans, the rumpled yellow shirt or the battered sneakers. She knew the kind of money the man had made. She’d saved every one of the clippings from the local paper enumerating his financial achievements. Luke might not have been back in Clover for years, but his press releases had been.
“I’d say an investment in the Clover Street Boarding House would be appropriate, wouldn’t you? Say ten thousand,” she said and wrote it down. “That will take care of the roof and a few odds and ends I haven’t been able to afford, plus some of that balloon payment that’s due in September.”
“You want ten thousand dollars in return for agreeing to marry me?” he repeated, his neck turning a dull red. “Selling yourself cheap, aren’t you?”
She nodded as the shot hit its mark and crossed off what she’d written. “You have a point. Make that ten thousand a year for the first five years. Guaranteed,” she added, “even if the marriage falls apart.”
This time, he was the one who looked as if she’d tried to flatten him with a two-by-four. Katie was rather pleased with herself.
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Oh, but I am. Putting this place on a sound financial base is what this deal is all about, right? From my point of view, that is.”
She beamed at him. “Now, then, as far as me being a mother to Robby, we make decisions about him together. You don’t just start bullying me around or pull rank whenever I do something that doesn’t suit you. A child’s parents should present a united front. Squabbling will just confuse him.”
“What the hell do you know about raising a child?”
“I’ve watched all those baby doctors on TV. Besides, you’re the one who picked me to be a mother to your son. Are you changing your mind?”
Based on Luke’s stunned expression, Katie had the feeling she’d finally turned this stupid game of his to her advantage. The fact that he hadn’t stormed out the door was a testament to how committed he was to this plan he’d dreamed up.
“Okay,” he said, his teeth clenched. “You win.”
“Good.” She nodded approvingly as she made a note. “Just one last thing.”
“Only one more?”
Katie glared at him. “We have separate bedrooms. You can have the one that’s empty right now, as soon as the roof’s repaired, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to sleep in it while the rain is pouring in. And we want to give Robby a few weeks to get to know me before we set the date.”
“Now wait just a minute,” he protested. “What the hell kind of marriage is that? Husbands and wives do not sleep in separate bedrooms.”
“That’s true enough for ordinary husbands and wives.” She shrugged. “You’re the one who established this as some sort of business arrangement. I have no idea what your code of ethics is like after all this time, but I don’t sleep with business partners. I wouldn’t think you’d want any messy emotional entanglements, either. Sex has a way of muddying things up.”
“How would you know?” he muttered, scowling at her.
She could tell that she had taken him by surprise with her list of demands, especially this last one. She couldn’t imagine what Luke had been thinking by making this ridiculous proposition to her this morning. But if he had expected her to fall into bed with a man who could suggest this cold, calculated arrangement, then he was sadly mistaken.
She might love him to distraction, but she would never let him see her vulnerability. She knew that if Luke so much as touched her, she would go up in flames. It had always been that way. She doubted that time had dulled the effect. Time obviously hadn’t done a thing to correct her inability to think straight around him. Just look at the crazy agreement she was about to enter into. She suspected it was like making a bargain with the devil. No matter how many concessions a person gained, there was no way to win in the long run. But she intended to give Luke Cassidy a run for his money.
“Those are my terms,” she repeated, meeting his gaze evenly. She held out the tablet on which she’d written every last detail of their agreement. “Sign it.”
He seemed a little bewildered by her stance, but he nodded finally, scrawled his name across the bottom, then held out his hand. “It looks like we have a deal.”
“So it does,” she said, avoiding his hand as if it were contaminated. One touch, she reminded herself. Just one and this cool attitude of hers would be ashes.
“I’ll be in touch to work out the wedding plans,” Luke said, sounding satisfied—or relieved?—now that the deal was concluded.
As he left, Katie clutched the signed contract and fought to contain a sigh of regret. So much for moonlight and roses and a proposal that came from the heart. That was just one more silly yearning she would have to pack away. After being a bridesmaid more times than she could recall for Hannah, Emma and all the others, she would finally have her wedding. She’d finally have the only man she’d ever loved.
But it would all be a sham.
