Blackbird Lake (38 page)

“Jake.” She pressed a kiss to his mouth. “I don’t care about a ring. I care about a man. My man. That would be you.” She smoothed his hair back with her fingers as he suddenly shifted, sitting up. “What are you do—”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” One strong hand took hold of the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head. Then he unhooked her bra with a flick of his fingers and flung it aside. A moment later, those fingers slid the zipper of her jeans downward. “I’m celebrating.
We’re
celebrating.”

She grabbed his shirt, her fingers flying over the buttons,
then turned her attention to getting him out of his jeans. In a moment they were both naked. On the floor. Laughing and touching and sealing the pact.

A half hour later, Jake slid on his jeans and Carly tied the sash of a silky blush pink robe before they tiptoed, tousled and sated and happy, into Emma’s room.

“Are you sure I can’t wake her up?” Jake whispered.

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered back.

His grin lit the shadowed room full of toys and dolls and a big plush rocking horse. Bug was facedown in his rightful place on the miniature chair. Bronco had followed them in and was now sitting just inside the doorway, watching them with his head tilted to one side.

They stared down at Emma asleep in her crib. Her breathing was soft and even, her little fingers splayed across the Cookie Monster sheet.

“We do good work.” Jake’s arm encircled her waist, holding her close by his side.

Carly kissed his neck. “Yes, we do. The best.”

“We should go for a few more of these. I say the more the merrier.”

“Let’s get married first,” she suggested.

He grinned and whispered against her hair, holding her close, “Sounds like a plan.”

The wedding of Carly McKinnon and Jake Tanner took place on a snowy December afternoon, two weeks following the Thanksgiving dinner dance fund-raiser. Snowflakes drifted softly down upon the roof of Sage Ranch as a small group of friends and family gathered in the spacious house and filled the pretty white chairs set out in the living room.

Big Billy carried Laureen up the steps and into the ranch house so she wouldn’t slip in her new silver stilettos and elegant dove gray gown.

Brady and Madison were almost late because they’d sat huddled for hours the night before in their treehouse, wrapped in coats and quilts, eating Cheez-Its and peanut butter cookies and drinking hot chocolate as they rehashed their childhood adventures and talked about the future.

Finally Brady had taken her hand after they’d climbed down the ladder and they’d gone inside his halfway renovated family home to kiss and make love and sleep before a roaring living room fire. Fortunately, Madison awakened by ten and remembered where they were supposed to be. They had time only to shower and gulp down coffee and
blueberry muffins before Brady drove her back to her apartment and waited while she slipped into her slinky black cashmere dress and matching heels, applied some eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss, then grabbed her guitar.

The ranch house smelled divine as Carly dressed upstairs in Sophie and Rafe’s master bedroom, while Martha had her hands full with Emma, who kept wanting to chase Starbucks and Tidbit, their hosts’ two rescued dogs. It was all Martha could do to keep her goddaughter’s pale pink ruffled dress from getting dirty or torn.

“It’s time,” Martha finally exclaimed with relief, standing in the doorway of the master bedroom at precisely one o’clock.

“Finally!” Carly laughed and finished slipping on her simple pale blue tourmaline earrings. They had once belonged to Annie. Now they were both her something old and her something blue, just as Martha’s pearl brooch, pinned to Carly’s simple one-shouldered cream dress, was her something borrowed.

As for something new—at least, relatively new—she glanced down at the princess-cut engagement ring sparkling on her finger. If that wasn’t enough, she’d bought pale blue stilettos to wear down the aisle—double good luck because they were both new and blue.

She wasn’t taking any chances.

Smiling at her daughter, she held out her arms.

“Guess what, Emma—it’s time to go downstairs and marry your daddy.”

With a laugh and a grin Emma catapulted herself into her mother’s arms.

Downstairs, Madison began to play a hauntingly beautiful arrangement of the Beatles’ “Here, There, and Everywhere” on her guitar. A soft appreciative gasp went up from the guests as the bride, her daughter, and her daughter’s godmother swept down the stairs and into the hall.

Carly’s heart felt ready to burst. When she saw Jake waiting for her in his tuxedo, she thought she might cry, but instead her face glowed with a huge smile.

Here was her love, her future. Waiting for her as snow fell beyond the window and all their friends and family looked on.

She was only dimly aware of Madison sitting off to the side, playing her guitar. Of Karla and Denny McDonald beaming at her from the second row of guests, of Sophie and Mia and Laureen all blinking back happy tears, while Jake’s brothers stood at his side, grinning from ear to ear.

But it was Jake who filled her vision, just as he filled her heart. He came toward them and kissed Emma’s cheek, then Martha led their daughter to a seat.

Happiness surged through her as Jake took her hands in his. His eyes gleamed into hers as they stood before Reverend Kail near the fireplace, its mantel adorned with candles and lilies and roses. She saw certainty in his eyes, and love, and tenderness, along with a cocky twinkle that was pure Jake Tanner.

By the time Reverend Kail pronounced them husband and wife, and invited Jake to kiss his bride, Carly was oh-so-ready for that kiss. She threw her arms around his neck and heard him whisper:

“This is the best day of my life.”

She knew when they kissed in the glow of the fire that they’d just sealed their marriage more than any piece of paper ever could. It wasn’t until the champagne had been poured and passed and their friends and family had congratulated them, feasted, and were devouring Sophie’s three-layer red velvet wedding cake, and assorted pastries were being served along with coffee and hot tea, that Jake pulled her into the side parlor where his mother had liked to sew. He closed the door and drew her into his arms.

“Emma is with Madison and Ivy,” he told her before she could start to fret about their daughter. “They’ve corralled her—to give us a minute.”

“Only a minute? I’d love an hour with you right now.” Dreamily, she slid her fingers through his hair.

“We’re going to have plenty of hours, wife.”

Just before his mouth closed over hers, she breathed, “I’ll hold you to that, husband.”

It wasn’t until the kiss ended that she touched his face and told him her news. And laughed at the whoop he let out, since she knew everyone in the house must have heard. And probably guessed…

In slightly less than eight months, they would welcome another Tanner baby into the family of sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends who all shared their joys, challenges, and lives in the town of Lonesome Way.

“When will we get there? To Sage Ranch?”

The sleepy, but still wary voice of the boy in the passenger seat broke the silence of the moonless Montana night.

Travis Tanner glanced at his scrawny ten-year-old adopted stepson. Then back at the long, empty road leading them to Lonesome Way and his family’s ranch. The vast darkness of the June night nearly obliterated the peaks of the Crazy Mountains in the distance—but not quite. A few stars gleamed, despite the clouds, illuminating the faint outline of hefty granite peaks spiraling up, dwarfing the road, the trees, and certainly the black Explorer and its two passengers driving down that lonely road.

“Soon,” Travis said quietly. “We’ll be there soon. Another twenty minutes, half hour, tops.”

It was almost midnight and Grady had been sleeping since ten o’clock. But now the brown-haired boy with his mother’s green eyes looked like he was going to be awake for the duration. Awake and uneasy.

“You need a pit stop?” Travis asked as the Explorer sped
past a coyote stealing furtively through some brush at the side of the road. “There’s a gas station coming up just outside of Lonesome Way.”

“I’m okay,” Grady mumbled. His voice sounded low, defensive. And just a tad sulky. Which matched the expression on his face ever since Travis had picked him up at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix the previous afternoon, after Val plopped him on a plane in L.A.

The poor kid didn’t know what to expect, Travis reflected, his jaw tightening. One minute he’d been in L.A., in his big fancy new house with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, cabana, guest house, game room, and thirty-seat home theater, and the next he’d been shipped off for the summer with his adoptive father, who was no longer even married to his mother—and was on his way to a remote ranch the kid had been to only once in his life and probably didn’t even remember.

Travis had been stunned when his ex-wife called him, her voice high-pitched and shaking with tension as she yelled that she and her new husband were at the end of their rope and couldn’t handle Grady anymore, that they needed a break. She’d said Grady had failed a class at school and would probably need to repeat fifth grade. He hadn’t bothered doing homework, he’d skipped classes, he’d mouthed off to teachers. Worse, he’d been getting into fights and had even been suspended for the last two weeks of school before summer vacation started.

“Drew’s really angry—and I just can’t take it anymore. The two of them…they just don’t…Travis, you’re his father legally, and I need you to take him for the summer! I really can’t deal with any of this right now. Drew and I—we’re having a big party here in a few weeks—one hundred guests—and I’m at my wit’s end. There’s so much to do, and Grady, he’s so difficult—I just can’t handle—”

“I’ll come get him,” Travis had said instantly. Not for Val’s sake, that was for damned sure, but for Grady’s. He’d first met Val’s son, then four years old, when he picked her
up for their second date. Val’s first husband, Kevin, had died of cancer two years before, when Grady was only a toddler.

The Grady he’d met that night had been a tiny fast-motion machine, a tousle-haired, pug-nosed imp, precocious, funny as hell, and possessing a sweet smile that had burrowed its way into Travis’s heart. A year after he and Val tied the knot, Travis had legally adopted his stepson and had loved being a father to him, even after things went south between him and Val.

But lately he hadn’t been able to spend as much time with his son. His latest investigation with the FBI, the death of his former partner, and Val marrying some corporate bigwig and moving with Grady to L.A. last year had made visits a lot more difficult to come by.

“I was just leaving for the ranch, Val, but I’ll come to L.A. first and pick Grady up,” Travis had told her.

“The ranch? You’re going to the ranch?”

He hadn’t bothered explaining that he’d taken an extended leave of absence from the FBI two weeks before, had found someone to rent his house outside of Phoenix, and was headed home to Lonesome Way to take some time, figure things out, and make a new start.

“Yep,” was all Travis had told his ex-wife. “I’ll see to it Grady gets back on track over the summer. In Montana.”

After that, Val hadn’t asked any questions. She’d been too relieved that Travis was taking the boy off her hands for the entire summer. Before he could say another word, she told him that he didn’t need to drive all the way out to L.A.—she would put Grady on a plane, get an airline escort for him. It was as clear as daylight to Travis that all she really wanted was to ship the kid the hell out as fast as she could.

Travis’s heart had plummeted when he’d picked Grady up at the airport and had seen how much his son had changed in just the past three months. For one thing, he’d shot up a couple of inches—the very beginnings of a growth spurt.
But there was also scant trace of the happy kid who’d read all of the Harry Potter books twice and seen all of the movies, and who had joyously biked with Travis up and down Venice Beach last summer.