The Bridal Path: Ashley (21 page)

She scowled. “When you put it like that, it does sound ridiculous, but yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I don’t seem to have any staying power.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Dillon began, then saw that she was dead serious. “Okay, sweetheart, let’s back up a minute. How long ago did you discover that you had feelings for me, maybe not love, but feelings?”

She hesitated. “In high school,” she admitted eventually. “But it was just a rebellion, I’m sure, and I wasn’t even very good at it. The only thing we ever shared was one dance. I never even had the gumption to kiss you.”

He wanted to remind her they had more than made up for it in the past few days, but he restrained himself. “Be that as it may,” he said, “the feelings were there, correct?”

“I suppose.”

“And they’re stronger than ever now, correct?”

“Yes,” she admitted, eyeing him cautiously. “What’s your point?”

“Doesn’t that suggest some sort of staying power to you?”

“I’d wanted to be a model since I turned seven,” she countered.

Dillon held back a sigh of pure frustration. “So you figure your fascination with modeling petered out after twenty years or so, and we’re just not to that limit yet?”

She beamed at him. “Exactly,” she said, then sighed. “Pitiful, isn’t it?”

Dillon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She actually believed the hogwash she was spouting at him. The only way to prove that sort of faulty logic wrong was to hang around for another twenty or thirty years and prove it one day at a time. That would require far more patience than he possessed. A more inventive, aggressive scheme was definitely in order. He thought he had just the right plan to make her admit that she was as crazy in love as he was.

“Ashley,” he began, putting the finishing touches on the idea as he pulled to a stop in the hospital parking lot. “We are going to get Mrs. Fawcett, take her home and then you and I are going to do something totally outrageous.”

“I don’t do outrageous things,” she pointed out, despite the spark of fascination that was evident in her eyes.

“You do with me. Just last night you were drag racing me down the old post road.”

“Not by choice.”

“You could have stopped anytime you really wanted to,” he said. “You didn’t.”

He let that sink in for a moment, then added, “Trust me on this, sweetheart.”

She looked as if trust was an alien concept. Dillon held his breath as she appeared to weigh his plea from every angle. Finally, to his relief, she nodded.

“You’ll have to do me one favor, though,” he said. “You get Mrs. Fawcett checked out and ready to go so I can make a few phone calls, okay?”

“Phone calls?” she asked suspiciously.

“Trust me,” he reminded her.

Though she still looked skeptical, she nodded again. Dillon couldn’t help wondering if he could pull off his plan while she was still in this compliant mood, or if all her well-honed straight-arrow impulses would kick in at precisely the wrong moment.

As the elevator doors opened on Mrs. Fawcett’s floor, Dillon pushed the hold button and caught Ashley’s elbow.

“You do love me, right? Now, at this moment?”

Her gaze caught his and held. Hers was filled with obvious astonishment. “Yes,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

He nodded in satisfaction. That was all he needed to know to put his plan in motion. The love of a woman like Ashley could inspire a man to reach for the most ingenious schemes of his entire life.

* * *

Ashley couldn’t shake off the odd sense of lethargy and depression that had come over her the night before. Not even Dillon’s promise of an outrageous plan sparked much enthusiasm. She just wasn’t the daring type, after all, even if she had once risked her entire future on a chess game. She was still feeling a little lost and out of it when she reached Mrs. Fawcett’s room. The sound of her father’s booming laughter from inside had her halting in her tracks.

“They are a pair, aren’t they?” her father said. “She’s stubborn as a mule, and he’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of the whole danged state. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like if…”

The description left little doubt in Ashley’s mind that she and Dillon were the subject of the conversation. She supposed she could have stood in the hallway and listened to their opinions, but she didn’t have the heart for eavesdropping. She pushed open the door and brought the traitorous chitchat to a halt.

Her father stared at her guiltily, then quickly came to greet her. “Well, hello, baby, I didn’t expect to see you at this hour,” he said, kissing her soundly on the cheek.

“Dillon and I are here to give Mrs. Fawcett a lift home,” she said, still regarding the pair of them dubiously. “What are you doing here?”

“Catching up on old times,” Mrs. Fawcett said, blushing like a schoolgirl.

Ashley nodded, though she wasn’t entirely convinced that this visit had as much to do with old times as it did with current gossip. “That’s right,” she said, playing along for the moment. “Daddy was one of your first students, wasn’t he?”

“She almost flunked me,” her father said indignantly, “even after I told her the reason I couldn’t concentrate was that she was so gosh-darned pretty.”

“Your sweet talk couldn’t make up for not doing your assignments,” Mrs. Fawcett said, sounding every bit as prim as she probably had when she’d recited the same words back then. “Besides, a seventeen-year-old boy had no business saying such things to his teacher.”

“You were barely twenty-one,” he pointed out. “Nowadays, that’s hardly cause for anyone to blink.”

“I was a teacher. It wasn’t right.”

He grinned at Ashley. “She was so darned prissy and proper it almost drove me crazy.”

“And he was a scoundrel,” Mrs Fawcett countered. “Still is, I suspect.”

Ashley listened to the banter with increasing amazement. Whatever sparks there had been between them decades ago appeared to be fanning to life again. Once again she had to wonder at the attraction between two such seemingly polar opposites.

Of course, until Mrs. Fawcett had spilled the beans on her father’s devilish streak, she would never have suspected it of him. He was a salt-of-the-earth, pillar-of-the-community kind of man. Everyone from the governor on down would have testified to that in a court of law. They would have been shocked by Mrs. Fawcett’s assessment of his character.

Just as she doubted if any of Dillon’s friends in Los Angeles would believe he had terrorized an entire town in his youth.

The thought came to her like a bolt out of the blue. People were actually a compilation of their images.

What if, like her father, Dillon mellowed into a life of respectability?

And what if she, like Mrs. Fawcett, had a hidden daring streak that could remain alive for a lifetime?

Would those two things make a marriage between her and Dillon more likely to succeed than she had imagined up until now? How could she ever tire of a man who made her senses spin and kept her mind engaged with his unexpected actions? Wouldn’t they complement each other? She could keep him from getting arrested, and he could prevent her from dying of total, unrelieved boredom.

All those fiercely protective feelings that had crowded in the day before when she’d observed the reaction of the town’s citizens to Dillon’s return rose up again. It finally occurred to her that, as badly as she needed him in her life to bolster her flagging self-esteem, he needed her just as much. It wasn’t a one-way street at all, she thought with a sudden sense of joy.

“Do you two need me here?” she asked.

“For what?” her father asked blankly, which was answer enough.

“Never mind,” she said, grinning at him. She winked at Mrs. Fawcett. “Keep him out of trouble, would you? And be wary of letting him in the front door when he gives you a lift home.”

“What would be the fun in that?” the retired teacher replied, her cheeks bright.

“Go find Dillon,” her father ordered brusquely, guessing where she was headed and indicating his approval. “A man like that shouldn’t be kept waiting forever.” His gaze fell on Mrs. Fawcett when he said it. He added softly, “Should he, Tilly?”

Tilly,
Ashley thought. She wondered when Matilda Fawcett had ever before been called by such a frivolous nickname. Judging from the pink in her cheeks, it had been thirty or forty years before, and by this very same man.

“Oh, I’d say he’s been kept dangling quite long enough,” Mrs. Fawcett said pointedly, her gaze locked with Ashley’s father’s.

Ashley was absolutely certain the remark had far more to do with Trent Wilde than it did with Dillon. She could hardly wait to pass on this momentous tidbit of gossip to her sisters. A romance between her father and Mrs. Fawcett would be a vast improvement over any he might have fallen into during his lonely stay in Arizona.

She knew Jake and Sara had been holding out for some spark to ignite between her father and their longtime housekeeper, but judging from the exchange she’d just witnessed that didn’t seem to be in the cards. Besides, she had a feeling Annie knew her father’s worst flaws far too well to ever want to marry him.

Forget all that for now, though. First things first. She had to find Dillon and tell him that she would marry him after all.

She searched the hospital from one end to the other, but there was no sign of him. Her stomach sank as she considered the very real possibility that he’d gotten thoroughly discouraged and simply abandoned her to her foolish logic. The phone calls he’d mentioned had probably been no more than an excuse to escape, though she couldn’t imagine him running off and abandoning Mrs. Fawcett.

The doubts didn’t last long. Dillon had asked her to trust him, and she did.

Since she was completely out of cars at the moment–though it seemed likely that her father had parked hers somewhere in the vicinity–she called Dani to come and get her. There was no answer at her sister’s.

Nor was there any answer at Jake and Sara’s.

Wasn’t anybody in the whole darn family around when she needed them? Well, never let it be said that she wasn’t resourceful, she decided, taking off on foot for the center of town. Dani was, no doubt, at the general store delivering a supply of home-baked pies and jams. She’d catch up with her there.

By the time she arrived, though, the pies were at the general store, but there was no sign of her sister. Nor did she find her at home, though the back door was unlocked, as always. Ashley walked in and made herself at home.

Another call to the ranch failed to turn up either Sara or Jake. A call to the hospital was too late to catch her father or Mrs. Fawcett.

“Well, damn,” she thought, as she poured herself a glass of lemonade and settled down on Dani’s front porch to wait. Sooner or later, somebody was bound to turn up. Dani was too much of a homebody to stay away for long.

Exhausted from her restless tossing and turning the night before, she drifted off to sleep, wondering if she would ever get to tell Dillon the conclusions she’d reached.

She was awakened some time later by the sound of a motorcycle approaching. When she stared down the road, she spotted Dillon, dressed in his usual black from head to toe, though this particular attire appeared to be slightly more formal. Black tie, in fact.

Ashley’s eyes lit up. “Nice outfit,” she commented, when he pulled to a stop on the lawn in front of her.

He held up a white helmet. “Care to join me? Finding exactly the right helmet took longer than I expected. I came back to the hospital to get you, but naturally you weren’t where I’d left you. Your father seemed to think you’d gone looking for me.”

“You said you wanted unpredictable. I’m just making sure you get it,” she assured him.

“Whatever you say. At any rate, I’ve been chasing around town ever since, trying to find you.”

Something about the white helmet, which was in such stark contrast to his black one, struck her as possibly significant. “Was there some reason the helmet had to be that particular color?”

“Sure,” he said with a grin. “As many June fashion spreads as you’ve done, don’t you know that the bride always wears white?”

A huge lump formed in Ashley’s throat. “Bride?”

“I thought maybe two daring souls like us should do something totally outrageous, rather than the traditional church to-do. What do you think?”

“Have I said yes?” she asked, even as she left the porch and crossed the lawn. She forced herself to walk slowly.

When she was close enough, he reached out, tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her head until he could gaze straight into her eyes. Apparently he liked what he saw there, because he nodded smugly.

“Yep, I see yes flashing in those incredible topaz sparks in your eyes.”

“But has the word crossed my lips?”

He winked. “Not yet, but we’ll work on that on the drive to the cabin.”

“We’re getting married at the cabin?”

“It seemed appropriate.”

“Today?”

“Why not?”

“Does anyone know about this?” she wondered. She was pretty sure she already knew the answer. It would explain why no one she’d tried to reach had been home.

“Just family, except for Mrs. Fawcett,” he said. “I didn’t want to be humiliated in front of anyone else in case you turned me down at the last second and bolted.”

“Don’t we need a license or something?”

“Your father’s Trent Wilde. That cuts through all sorts of red tape.”

She chuckled. “Well, God bless dear old Daddy.”

“Amen.” He regarded her intently. “Are you hopping on or not?”

“I’m thinking about it,” she said, considering a lifetime of being caught off guard and lured into doing the unexpected. It was exactly what she wanted, and Dillon was precisely the man to give it to her.

“Stop thinking,” he ordered. “Just listen to your heart.”

Ashley grinned. “In that case, where’s my leather jacket?”

He peeled his off and held it out. “This’ll have to do for now. I couldn’t find one in white.”

Shrugging into the warm leather with its scent of Dillon in every fiber, Ashley felt suddenly complete. This was right. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about it. Dillon filled all the empty spaces in her heart that no amount of acclaim had been able to touch.