Heartsong (Singing to the Heart Book 2) (14 page)

Jesse pressed closer to Gabe. The boy’s fear angered him more than the man’s words. “Get out, Lemont. Before I call security to throw you off my ranch.”

Seth took a step toward Gabe. Leave it to him to have Gabe’s back.

He laughed and tipped his white hat. “No need for that. Think how bad tossing the bride’s father out would look in the tabloids. I’m here to see my only daughter marry the love of her life, despite my invitation somehow getting lost in the mail. Imagine that.” He leaned in and glared at Gabe. “You may think you’ve won one over me, but I’ll prove this so-called marriage is a farce.”

Gabe’s heart skipped a beat at how easily Lemont figured them out. He gritted his teeth. “I love Michaela. I always have.”

The terrible truth in the supposed lie hit him in the chest like a fist.

“I don’t care who you are, buddy, but I think my friend asked you to leave.” Seth’s voice was so low and cold it would have frozen a glacier.

Lemont chuckled again and turned to leave. At the door, he held out his hand. “C’mon, Jesse. We’ll take our seats and you’ll see your brother and aunt later.”

Gabe hated the veiled threat in the tone of the words. “No, I want to visit with my brother. You wouldn’t let him be in the wedding, but he’s here and I have every intention of talking to him. Now, get out.”

Lemont gave Jesse another warning look before leaving.

Jesse looked up at him. “I don’t want to live with him, Gabe.” The boy wrapped his arm around Gabe’s waist and held on tight as a shudder shimmered through him. “He won’t allow me to see my friends and started to homeschool me. I don’t like the woman he hired to be my teacher. She yells at me and calls me stupid. I’m not dumb. I made the honor roll every year.” Jesse paused to catch his breath.

Gabe’s anger at Lemont climbed. He should change the subject, but he needed to know exactly how Lemont treated Jesse. “Has he done anything to you?”

“He keeps telling me you and Aunt Micki don’t love me.” Jesse’s blue eyes misted with unshed tears. “He tells me that Daddy and Mommy died because I wasn’t a good enough boy.”

“Damn,” Seth muttered and laid his hand on Gabe’s shoulder.

“Dear God.” Reese knelt down in front of him. “Jesse, you have to tell the judge what he says to you.”

Jesse shook his head. “I can’t.” The tears let go and ran down his pale cheeks. “Miz Fennel tells me that if I say such things the judge will lock me away because they aren’t true. But they are!” He wailed and turned into Gabe, who held him as tightly as Jesse was gripping him. “He’s the meanest man I’ve ever met.” Jesse’s muffled words impaled Gabe’s heart.

Gabe squeezed his baby brother. “I know, buddy. I know.”

“Please, Gabe, don’t make me go back there.”

* * * *

In the master bedroom, Micki stared at the woman in the mirror and wondered if she suffered from some sort of brain rot. In twenty minutes, she would be getting married in the garden to a man she didn’t love.

Despite the desire to keep the farce from getting too big, nearly a hundred wedding guests had descended on the place. Music from the string quartet and chatter from the guests drifted up to her from the yard. Most of the guests were local folks, but Gabe had invited his band members, manager, and a few singers he was close friends with.

Her heart pinched as she remembered the day she, Frankie, and her mother had gone shopping for the gown. Gabe hadn’t expected her to get dressed up for their wedding seven years ago. In fact, they’d planned for a small ceremony at the church and a picnic reception behind the bunkhouse. He’d only wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Or so she’d believed.

“You know I’d prefer to get married in my jeans,” Micki said when Frankie pulled the strapless, fitted gown off the rack at the expensive bridal shop. Her sister had insisted on buying her a designer gown. “Gabe said he didn’t care if I didn’t wear a fancy wedding dress.”

“We know that, Mick.” Frankie held the gown in front of Micki. “That’s the problem. You want to make Gabe speechless. You want to keep him guessing. And to do that, you need to do the unexpected. I guarantee, if you walk down the aisle wearing this, he won’t know what hit him.”

“Go try it on.” Her mother wiped at the mistiness in her eyes. “You deserve something beautiful for the day your dreams come true.”

Micki focused on the reflection of the woman fussing with the tiny buttons up the back of the dress.

“You’re so beautiful.” Lizzie Decker finished the last button. Cash’s eldest sister, Frankie, and Micki had been close friends while in high school. Since Frankie wasn’t here to do the honors, Micki had asked Lizzie to be her matron of honor. “Frankie was right about the dress. It’s perfect for you. Gabe won’t know what hit him.” Lizzie picked up a bouquet of white and tangerine roses with a watery gleam to her brown eyes and a dreamy smile on her pink lips. “I still can’t believe you saved the dress.”

Micki took the roses from Lizzie. “I almost didn’t.” She turned the bouquet until the pale orange ribbons fell over her hand just right. “I wanted to cut it to shreds.” She forced a smile. “I guess it was meant to be that Gabe and I would eventually tie the knot.”

Lizzie giggled like a girl half her age. “I can’t believe he bought the ranch in secret for you to prove his love. That’s so romantic. This whole thing is just so darned amazing. Even after you both wanted little Jesse and went to court and everything, y’all still want to get married.” She leaned in and fanned herself with a pudgy hand. “Besides, the man is gorgeous.”

“You can’t fight love.” Micki suddenly wanted to get the day over. Her gaze snagged on the king-sized bed, and she swallowed. Ever since the night he’d kissed her in the kitchen when he’d proposed, she’d been putting him off by agreeing that once they were married she’d sleep with him.

Maybe she wasn’t in such a hurry after all. Getting the day over would bring the night sooner, and she wasn’t ready for sex with Gabe. The thought of him lying her down on the soft mattress and doing his wicked best to her had her insides melting and aching for his touch.

“Is your momma ready?”

Lizzie’s question shattered the fantasy, and Micki turned to her friend. “Señora Hernandez was finishing up with her hair when I left her room to get dressed.”

Florencia Hernandez had started working at the ranch on Monday. The middle-aged, Hispanic housekeeper Gabe hired from a Dallas agency was great with Momma and in getting the house ready.

Her hair finished, she stared into the mirror at the daisies Lizzie had woven into her loose curls. She looked like a fairy. Despite her protests about the dress and all the other primping she’d been subjected to, she had to admit she looked amazing. She turned toward Lizzie. “Is Jesse here yet?”

“I don’t know.”

Micki swallowed hard and nodded. She hoped Lemont wouldn’t keep him away to spite her, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he refused to let the kid come. After all, he hadn’t been invited.

Lizzie picked up her bouquet of orange autumn flowers and roses. “I can’t believe you aren’t more nervous. I’m shaking in my boots just thinking about all those famous people out there. Plus, Cash said he saw a helicopter flying low overhead earlier.” She shook her head of curly red hair. “Can you believe tabloids hire them to get pictures?”

Micki smiled and squeezed the short, chubby woman’s clammy hand. “You’ll be fine. Take a deep breath. Remember Gabe is famous and just think of where he came from. Those singers out there put their pants on the same way you do. As for the photographers, Gabe hired security to keep them away.”

She didn’t tell Lizzie about Gabe’s plan to sell their wedding photos to
People.
Lizzie was already so nervous she was babbling. The deal was struck last night with the money the magazine will pay for them to go to her mother. To her surprise,
People
was as interested in her, since in the world of professional barrel racing Micki had once been pretty darned famous. Not to mention the daughter of a Texas billionaire. Her marriage to Gabe was truly turning into a celebrity event.

“Well, that’s good.” Lizzie relaxed her grip on Micki’s hand and smiled. “I can’t imagine being famous. Must be a royal pain in the keister.”

Yes, but not as much as her famous soon-to-be-husband was. Micki laughed and gathered her long, satin skirt into her free hand. “C’mon. I want to get this thing over with so I can get the hell out of this damned dress.”

Lizzie giggled again. “And the sooner you can get Gabe out of his tuxedo.”

Micki swallowed and shrugged. “I suppose being Mrs. Gabriel McKenna has its perks.”

She glanced once more at the stranger in the mirror as they headed out the door and remembered the tearful time that should have been her first wedding day. Instead, she’d sat in her room staring at the dress Frankie and Momma had talked her into letting her sister buy her.

What had possessed her to save the gown? After crying through a box of tissues over Gabe McKenna, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy the beautiful dress. She’d taken it off the hanger, wrapped it in white tissue paper, and stowed it away in an old chest with the elegant dress her mother had worn on her wedding day. Over the two relics of broken promises and shattered dreams, she’d vowed to never get married.

She’d never let another man hurt her. The first man had been her father when he’d abandoned her. When Micki was ten years old, she discovered the real reason her father had divorced her mother on one of her rare visits to his Brownwood ranch. Until then, even her mother had led her to believe she’d been the one to leave him. The truth wasn’t as sugarcoated. Her father’s ruthlessness toward her mother after her diagnosis, simply because she was unable to have another child, made her shiver with anger. As if he’d known he’d look like the asshole that he was, he’d trumped up some nonsense for their divorce hearing that her mother had cheated on him. When Micki was thirteen and Annie McKenna helped Momma sue for custody of her, Lemont had decided he was tired of Micki and called into question her paternity.

Micki gritted her teeth as she descended the stairs, thinking of Lemont. She’d thought Gabe was different from her father when she fell in love with him. She’d been there for him when his mother had died so tragically. Even strained her bond with her sister when she supported Gabe against his father after Frankie and Sam’s affair came to light. On their four-year anniversary as a couple, Gabe proposed, promising to love her forever, and she’d foolishly believed him.

Like her father when she’d needed him, Gabe left her to chase his dreams with another woman.

They stopped in the living room where Momma waited. Her mother gasped when she saw Micki. She moved to Momma and hugged her, whispering near her ear, “Don’t you start crying. You know this isn’t real. I’m doing this for Jesse.”

Momma hung on and whispered back, “I’m still giving my beautiful girl away today to a man I wish she could forgive.”

As she looked past Momma’s shoulder, Micki noticed the photographs on the mantle. Several depicted Jesse at various stages of his young life. In another, she and Gabe were so happy they glowed. She swallowed the memory of how much in love they looked in their first engagement photo.

Sucking in a deep breath, she pulled away from her mother. “I’m sorry, Momma, but I can’t do that.”

When the wedding coordinator signaled from the French doors, Micki turned away. She had to make this believable for Jesse’s sake. For a moment, she filled the empty spaces in her heart with the memory of being in love with Gabe McKenna.

As she walked down the aisle with her mother by her side, her heart broke all over again for what might have been.

Gabe stared out the dark window of the master bedroom and lifted a bottle of beer to his lips. Under the window, the side yard was still alight with the lighting set up by the events people. The big white tent where the reception had been held now stood empty. Workers would be back tomorrow to gather up the white folding chairs and take down the tents, leaving behind nothing but crushed grass and a bill to be paid.

As he took another draw on the beer, the image of how Michaela had looked as she stepped out of the living room flashed before him. He’d never seen her look so radiantly beautiful. For the first time since suggesting they pretend to love each other, he feared the danger of this game to his heart.

He couldn’t afford to let it be that vulnerable.

After they’d spoken vows neither of them had any intention of keeping and the meal he couldn’t remember eating had been served, he took Michaela onto the dance floor. Nate O’Connell, another good friend and fellow singer, had sung a love song, and Gabe had held Michaela close.

Too close. Her scent of summer jasmine had surrounded him. The form-fitting gown had shown off every one of her curves in exquisite fashion, leaving little for him to imagine, and yet hiding her secrets under layers of lace and satin. Her tanned shoulders and upper back had been silky under his touch as he’d moved his hands over them. Her breasts, pushed high in the bodice of the dress, pressed against his chest, and he’d felt the firmness of them even through their clothes. The way her body molded to his had him hard as granite by the song’s end.

When she’d looked up at him, the fire burning in her blue eyes and the rapid pulse at her throat left no doubt she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Michaela had licked her lips, and he gave into the temptation and kissed her.

There was no pretending in the passion they’d shared. She’d kissed him back and held on to him as if he were a lifeline. If they had been alone, he’d have swept her off the dance floor, taken her straight to bed, and made long, slow love to her.

Sleeping with his new wife was something he could not do. Michaela was the most passionate woman he’d ever known. He’d been her first lover, and she’d been shy. But when she’d gotten over her inhibitions, sex with her had been explosive.

As much as he wanted her, he wouldn’t have her. His heart couldn’t take being broken by her a second time. Once they adopted Jesse and became his parents, he’d have ongoing dealings with her for the rest of his life. It would be better for everyone if they became friends and left being lovers in the past.