Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch (19 page)

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Authors: Victoria Pade

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“Well, that was embarrassing,” she muttered.
Cal went back to the door to flip on the light switch beside it and lean against the wall there. Studying her from a distance, he crossed his arms over his shirtless torso, tucking each hand under the opposite armpit but leaving blunt thumbs poking up toward his muscular shoulders.
He must have been in bed before that because his hair and the sheets were mussed, his feet were bare and his jeans weren't zipped completely or fastened at the waistband—as if he'd pulled them on in a hurry.
But God, he looked sexy!
Abby wished he didn't because if he was going to give her the brush-off it was going to be all the more difficult for her after seeing him like that.
She forced her eyes away from his naked, bulging biceps wrapped over that broad chest and cleared her throat so she could speak.
“I'm sorry. This was all dumb.”
“What was?”
“Climbing the trellis. Coming unannounced at this time of night...” She nodded in the direction of his rumpled bed and voiced a fear that had just struck her. “Did I interrupt—?”
He made a sound that was disgusted enough to stop her words midsentence.
“What do you think? That I was in the middle of an orgy? That because you've been playing cat and mouse with me I'd just bring in a couple of other women to horse around with?”
“No, I—” She stopped herself that time. What could she say? That yes, for a fleeting moment she'd been afraid he had found someone else to warm his bed already?
“Why'd you come, Abby?” he demanded then.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she said feebly, knowing it sounded ridiculous under the circumstances.
“I wanted to talk four days ago. I wanted to talk every time I called or came by your house or the bakery. Where've you been all those times?”
She shrugged. “Hiding,” she admitted.
“Why?”
She told him why, forging headlong into the admission that she'd been trying to be as worldly as he was, not to seem provincial. To take what had gone on between them as lightly as she thought he had and that she hadn't wanted to hear him say just how lightly he had taken it.
“But I guess I need to hear it. Maybe to put some closure to things,” she finished fatalistically.
He shook his head, keeping his eyes trained on her. “That's not what I had to say to you.”
Abby raised her chin in question, waiting.
“I'm in love with you,” he said then. “I realized it the morning I woke up with you in my arms. I realized I wanted to do that every morning for the rest of my life. That I wanted to marry you. To make you mine.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “But you sounded so...serious. And you warned me that you're not a one-woman man,” she reminded.
“If I sounded serious, it was because it wasn't an easy thing to come to. It's never happened to me before and it didn't quite fit. I had to get used to the idea. And as for the one-woman man thing—I didn't
warn
you. I only said it in passing.”
“I took it as a warning.”
“Well, stop it,” he ordered in no uncertain terms. “No, I've never been a one-woman man before. But that's because I've never met the right woman. Until you.”
“But I'm—”
“Don't give me that stuff about being predictable or provincial or any of the rest of it. I hashed through all that in my head, and it's bull. I don't buy any of it for a minute. Just tell me you love me and that you'll marry me.”
To say she was stunned would have been an understatement. Abby just stood there, staring at him, while a hundred things flashed through her mind.
Did she love him?
She'd been terrified to admit it to herself, but now the floodgates opened and out swelled the knowledge that she did. She loved him with all her heart and soul. In a way she'd never loved Bill Snodgrass. With more intensity. More passion. More of everything that made it real and deep and abiding.
But what about all her former fiancé had said about her? What if Cal just wasn't seeing it because things were so new between them? What if she did eventually bore him into another woman's arms?
Her sisters' earlier words came back to support Cal's contention that the other man's accusations were bull, and suddenly Abby gave in to the possibility that they were all right. She wasn't lacking. It was Bill Snodgrass whose character was so weak that he'd trumped up faults in her to justify his own shoddy actions.
She hadn't done anything extraordinary since meeting Cal—well, with the exception of tonight's escapade—yet he'd kept coming around anyway. He'd fallen in love with her anyway. He was asking her to marry him anyway...
And what about the fact that he'd never before been a one-woman man? she asked herself. How risky did that make him?
But she didn't have to consider that for too long, either.
He might not have settled down before this, but he hadn't cheated on anyone, either, which spoke for a stronger character than Bill Snodgrass had, a strong character she'd seen in Cal in other ways, too. In his kindness and consideration. In his care for his family.
And obviously he'd been bent on putting down roots even before he'd met her. His whole purpose of being in Clangton was to do that, and obviously he'd had no problem making a commitment to it.
“Abby?”
His deep voice drew her out of her musings. She looked him square in the eye, giving herself over to the pull of that warm gaze. “I've been really dumb the last couple of days, haven't I?”
“I don't know. Have you?”
“I've been avoiding you when the truth is I love you, too. And marrying you is just what I want.”
For a moment he stayed where he was, watching her as if he thought she might change her mind any moment.
But then he shoved off the wall and crossed to her on purposeful strides with a bit of swagger to his step.
He came to a stop close in front of her, slipped his hands around her neck, cupping the sides of her face from the back of her jawbone, his thumbs controlling the angle of her face so he could raise it to look up at him.
She thought he was going to say something. Something very serious from the appearance of the stern frown creasing his brow. But instead he bent to capture her mouth with his in a kiss that was forceful, masterful, possessive. A kiss that claimed her. A kiss that took her only a moment to respond to, to give herself over to, to relax into and enjoy.
But just as she did he ended it, swept her up into his arms again and carried her out of the bedroom, into the bathroom she'd used that first morning there.
Only it didn't look the same by any means.
Where before there had been a grungy old tub and sink, chipped tile and peeled paint, now the walls were freshly whitewashed. A floor-to-ceiling, paned, triple-paneled window had been added and the centerpiece of the newly remodeled room was the bathtub they'd tried out on the showroom floor of the hardware store.
“You've been busy,” she said as he set her on her feet alongside the tub.
“And thinkin' about you the whole time. Want to use it?” he asked with a nod at the huge bathtub.
“Do I smell bad?” she joked.
“You smell great,” he answered with what was almost a growl.
“A bath might be nice, though....”
That was all the encouragement he needed to turn on the water and the whirlpool jets.
Then it was Abby he turned on, undressing her while the tub filled, shedding his own clothes and pulling her with him into the bubbling water.
He made love to her there. Just the way he'd described when he'd teased her with that fantasy in the hardware store. Wet, slippery love that was playful but poignant, too. He explored every inch of her body, cherished it, teased it, tormented it and finally found his home inside it in a way that melded them together so smoothly, so perfectly that it chased away any lingering uncertainty that they were made for each other.
With every powerful thrust water rose and fell around them like a tidal wave as passion washed through them with a turbulence all its own. Wild, abandoned passion that took them to an explosive, simultaneous climax, bathed in the sensuous silk of warm water and love and the knowledge that they had a whole lifetime of sexy saunas ahead of them.
“I do love you,” Cal said as they eased back against one of the tub's slanted ends, holding each other, letting the jets do a little after-magic all their own.
“I love you, too,” Abby said in a breathy voice. “But we did make a mess,” she added a moment later, glancing at the water that they'd splashed all over the place.
“But it was worth it, wasn't it?”
“It was,” she agreed without having to think about it.
“Now tell me you'll marry me,” he ordered.
“I'll many you.”
“And be my wife for the rest of our born days, and have my babies and never take a bath alone again.”
“And be your wife for the rest of our born days, and have your babies. But I don't know about
never
taking a bath alone again. This tub would be pretty great to lounge in with a good book.”
“Are you marryin' me to get hold of my tub?”
“Well, that and one or two other things,” she said, getting hold of something much better.
“What was that part about you bein' predictable again?” he said with a low rumble of a chuckle deep in his throat.
“You mean you didn't know I'd come to my senses and give you the chance to propose?”
“You had me worried, Abby. You definitely had me worried that the night we had together had turned you off.”
“Turned me
off?”
she said, doing a little further underwater exploration that refuted the notion.
He chuckled deep in his throat at the absurdity of ever having thought such a thing. “Now I'm gonna put more water in this tub before we splash it dry. Then, in a while, I'm gonna take you downstairs and introduce you to your soon-to-be in-laws,” he said then.
Abby groaned at that.
“Can't meeting my soon-to-be in-laws wait until tomorrow?”
“I suppose so. Since we'll have a lot of tomorrows,” he said, nibbling her earlobe.
A lot of tomorrows...
The words chimed through her heart like joyous church bells.
They'd have a lot of tomorrows together.
The fact that she'd ever doubted it, doubted him, doubted herself, suddenly seemed like something that had happened long ago and far away, to someone who didn't know what she knew.
Because what she knew was that she loved this man in a way she could never love anyone else.
And that he loved her just the same.
And that together they really would have a whole lifetime of tomorrows.
The Best Man Switch
LIZ IRELAND
T
ORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Dear Reader,
Several days ago I told a phone buddy that I was writing a scene about two sixteen-year-olds having a calamitous date. Dead air cracked over the telephone wire, then my friend asked, “When you're sixteen, what date
isn't
a calamity?”
Hmm. Come to think of it, there are some (I won't name names) who never seem to graduate beyond the tragic teen pattern—luckily for me and the rest of the Romance Writers of America roster. If the course of true love started running smoothly, what would we write about?
I hope you enjoy
The Best Man Switch.
Stories about identical twins have been a favorite of mine since I saw Hayley Mills in
The Parent Trap.
Growing up I always wanted an identical twin—preferably a math-science whiz!
Prologue
“A
LL I'M ASKING FOR is a
tiny
favor,” Grant Whiting begged his twin brother, Ted. “Just stand in for me at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding ceremony. That's all.”
“That's all?” Ted, who had been slouching in the chair on the other side of Grant's desk, suddenly sprang bolt upright. His reaction made him look like a gaping mirror image of his brother. “You call pulling a best man switch
tiny?”
“It's not like you're standing in for me during an IRS audit or a moon launch. It's just a wedding.”
Grant knew what his brother was thinking—that it wasn't like him to cop out on a commitment. Just a glance was enough to tell that Grant was a nose-to-the-grindstone, never-shirk-a-responsibility type. He always dressed for work conservatively—funereally, Ted would say—in dark suits and sensible ties and perfectly polished shoes. Whereas, today Ted had seen fit to show up—late—in a getup more suitable for a beach at Waikiki. White shorts, a floral-print shirt and sandals! All he lacked was a fruity drink with an umbrella.
His secretary was probably whipping up a shaker of those down the hall.
The few times in the past they had pulled switches—an enterprise never embarked on lightly, though they were perfectly identical—it had always been for Ted's benefit. Because he'd had stage fright and couldn't buck up to being George Washington in the third-grade history pageant, or because he never could get the hang of geometry—or Spanish, or botany—or because he just couldn't bring himself to tell Mary Pepperburg that he already had a date. Grant had never needed rescuing before.
“I thought you were looking forward to Kay and Marty's wedding,” Ted said.
“Of course. They're my best friends.”
“Uh-huh.” Ted drummed his fingers and eyeballed him closely. “This isn't about the buyout, is it? Good grief! You can't even leave the store for one measly day!”
Ted thought Grant was a hopeless workaholic. But then, Ted had the work ethic of a house cat.
“It's one night and the next day,” Grant corrected him. “I don't think you realize the gravity of our situation.” He and his brother were at risk of losing their small chain of family-owned department stores, Whiting's, if they didn't forestall a buyout bid from Moreland's, a larger Midwest chain. “This is the biggest business crisis we've faced since Herman Little from men's suits tried to unionize the salesclerks.”
“And what happened?” Ted asked. “We gave everybody a little pay raise.”
“A seven percent pay raise!”
His brother shrugged. “Will you relax?”
“You don't have Horace Moreland calling you every ten minutes. And now he's in our territory.”
Horace Moreland was a corporate general who devoured local department stores like a kid devours Halloween candy, and he was here this week to munch down on Whiting's. Ted and Grant were against a buyout, naturally, but they weren't in complete control of their destiny. Their uncle Truman, a veteran of Whiting's himself, still had a quarter share in the business. Uncle Truman was a golf nut who seemingly always needed money to keep up with his club dues—a weakness that left him very susceptible to big money talk from Moreland. The other quarter belonged to Mona, Ted and Grant's stepmother. Though their father had passed away seven years ago, his last wife still held considerable sway over their lives in the form of her twenty-five percent, and Mona wasn't just willing to be bought out, she was eager. Champing at the bit, even. Mona was a slave to fashion, and keeping up appearances took money. And wasn't cash better than ownership in a business so subject to the whims of the economy? In other words, if Moreland was the ruthless enemy general, Mona and Truman were the turncoats ready to greet his tanks with welcome signs and confetti.
“I need to be on my toes in order to stave off calamity. I don't have time for weddings.”
“You know what I think?” Ted asked. “I think you're going to avoid that wedding because you don't want the reminder.”
“Reminder of what?”
“Your divorce.”
Grant winced. “You're right. I didn't want the reminder.” He was still shocked that he of all people, he who had watched his father remarry three times and always swore he would be different, was divorced.
“You can't avoid women forever, you know. Why not get out and enjoy your new bachelordom? Loosen up!”
“That's what Janice always said.” Janice was his ex-wife.
Ted looked perplexed. “Janice wanted you to go out and meet women?”
“No, she wanted me to loosen up. She called me too stodgy, too rigid.”
“Janice was crazy!” Ted had never liked Grant's wife. But he had a natural revulsion against anything that smacked of the domestic.
“Do you think I'm stodgy?”
“Well...” His brother shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe not stodgy exactly...serious. Dignified.”
“Stodgy.” Grant sighed. “Janice always complained that we never did anything fun or spontaneous, and that I was too responsible. Too responsible! Is there actually such a thing?”
“Janice was a nut.”
Was she? Grant had suggested they seek counseling. Really, he meant that Janice needed therapy, but he did want to be present when the psychiatrist pronounced that Janice just didn't appreciate what a sterling husband she had, and that there was positively nothing wrong with their marriage, just as Grant had always claimed.
But before they'd made it to the first session, one morning Grant awakened and discovered his wife had run off with the prince of a thumbnail-size, oil-rich country in the Middle East.
Okay, so maybe there had been something wrong with his marriage.... But needless to say, Janice's bailing out catapulted their relationship way beyond the realm of your average everyday marital dysfunction.
“The truly disturbing thing is, I was completely blind-sided by Janice's defection. While I was the faithful hubby, slaving away at the store by day, and even adding on an extra room to our house on weekends in hopes that we would be starting a family soon, Janice was off having secret afternoon love sessions with Prince Omar.”
“While you were doing the handy-hubby number, she was doing the dance of the seven veils,” Ted quipped.
“How can I ever find a woman to trust after that kind of deception?”
Ted waved away that concern. “Forget trust. Think legs.”
Grant wished he could be a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor like his brother. “I don't want to get married again.”
“Good!”
“I don't even want to think about it.”
“So don't. Find yourself a babe and have yourself a time.”
Ted's advice was all well and good, but at this wedding he would have to stand through a long ceremony, hearing the words that he'd spoken so solemnly himself to a woman who apparently hadn't given much thought to the “till-death-do-us-part” part. He just wasn't sure he was up to it. And then there was the small matter of the maid of honor....
“What else is wrong?” Ted asked.
“It's Kay,” he said. “The bride.”
“The woman with the mutt!” Ted exclaimed in disgust.
Kay was one of Grant's friends from business school, and had only met Ted once...but once had been enough. At a backyard cookout at Kay's house, her dachshund, Chester, had earned Ted's enmity by peeing on his prized pair of genuine wallaby-hide boots imported from Australia. Man and beast had been sworn adversaries ever since.
“This has nothing to do with her dog,” Grant assured him. “It's just...well, Kay is one of these mother-hen types, and now she's getting married, and I'm the best man, and she naturally has been nagging
me
about getting married again.”
“Women!” Ted, who loved women—at least, he loved leggy blondes—always became defensive when the subject of matrimony was being discussed. “They'll never be happy until every man on the planet is snagged and strapped down with a wife, a mortgage and kids.”
Grant nodded. “That's Kay all over.”
Ted tapped a pencil against his thigh in annoyance. “Let me guess... Kay thinks her maid of honor would be just perfect for you.” He finished the sentence in a high feminine trill.
Grant grinned. “How'd you guess?” In fact, Kay had mentioned her maid of honor several times. Matchmaking was definitely afoot.
“Oh, they're so predictable.” Ted leaned back, parked the pencil behind his ear and shook his head philosophically. “Women engineer these weddings to have their own momentum. First one woman gets married and then another one gets the urge, and before the poor sap she's going out with knows it, he's marching down the aisle, and on and on. The whole wedding thing is like a pep rally for matrimony, whipping females into a bridal frenzy. And unless you're on guard, brother, you'll get sucked into it, too, just like one of those cows getting sucked into a tornado in
Twister.”
Grant smiled ruefully. “If only you'd given me that speech five years ago, I might never have married Princess Janice.”
Ted's forehead creased with wrinkles—he did feel guilty for not indoctrinating his brother into staunch bachelorhood earlier. Though Lord knows he'd tried. He'd been on guard against the opposite sex ever since their father married for the fourth time when they were fourteen. He still blamed himself for letting Janice get through the defensive line.
Grant had paid dearly for that lapse. And now look at him—still vulnerable. Easy pickin's for any wily female. It made Ted furious just to think about it.
“Listen, bro, of course I'll do the switch. In fact, I see it as a solemn duty, like pulling my weight here at the store.”
Grant choked on a sip of coffee. Ted was essential to Whiting's, especially when it came to entertaining buyers; he could impress executives with his college-football-hero stories. But he weaseled out of the more stressful day-to-day operations of the store in favor of perfecting his tan out on his precious boat. Or, when pressed about his absenteeism, he might show up and play Nerf hoops in his office for a couple hours.
But Ted took pride in being the older brother by twelve minutes, and for being infinitely wiser, at least when it came to women. “Clearly, you're still not equipped to deal with this what's-her-name that Kay has marked you as a target for.”
“Mitzi,” Grant said, prepping him. “The maid of honor's name is Mitzi Campion, a friend from Kay's high school days.”
“Mitzi. Gotcha.” Ted narrowed his eyes contempla-tively. “Mitzi... You know what that name says to me?”
“No, what?”
“It says perky. It says pushy.”
Grant laughed.
“Just think Mitzi Gaynor,” Ted explained, all seriousness. “Just think
South Pacific.
That little nurse she played was full of perk—and what happened?”
“She danced a lot?”
Ted rolled his eyes. “She got married! And to some poor French guy who was just sitting on his island, minding his own business before she barreled into him.”
“I thought he was a lonely old murderer with two kids...”
His brother sneered. “They just threw that stuff in to make the woman look good.”
Grant steered Ted back on topic. “This Mitzi is being flown in and is going to house-sit for Kay next week while Kay and Marty are having their honeymoon, so naturally Kay wants me to squire the girl around and—”
Ted, who'd been absorbed in the briefing, suddenly gestured for Grant to stop right there. “No, no, no. Don't think of this Mitzi character as a ‘girl.' In confirmed-bachelor lingo, she's a predator, and before the end of that rehearsal dinner Friday night, I'll let her know what we think about squiring.”
Grant chuckled.
“Oh, laugh now, if you want,” his brother drawled. “You'll thank me when it's over. Believe me, Grant old boy, after this wedding, perky Mitzi will know better than to fly to strange cities trying to entrap men.”
Grant smiled. Overprotective “big” brothers definitely had their good points. For the first time since his marriage fiasco, Grant was beginning to feel in control again. Now he would be able to concentrate all his energies on saving the family store, and with it, his sanity. Best of all, he could forget about weddings and marriage vows and women....
“Sic 'em, tiger,” he said to his brother.

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