The Bridal Path: Danielle (22 page)

Five minutes later Slade was there, accompanied by both boys, their eyes wide with excitement. All three of them were dressed in tuxedos, though Timmy’s and Kevin’s were already rumpled, their bow ties slightly askew, their shirts untucked. Kevin’s black pants had a suspicious streak of mud, suggesting that Pirate was somewhere in the vicinity, even though the dog had been banished for the day. Slade apparently wasn’t yet aware of the interloper, since the boys were still in one piece.

“Dani, you look like a princess,” Kevin asserted.

“You’re beautiful,” Timmy agreed. “The most beautiful bride ever.”

Dani’s heart warmed. They were her guys, all right. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about their love. It was their father who concerned her.

“Thanks, you two. I love you.” She leaned down to kiss them both. “Now, could you do me a huge favor and go with Sara for a minute? I need to speak with your father.”

Timmy apparently caught some undertone in her voice and promptly looked worried. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is just fine,” she promised, praying that she wasn’t lying about something so important. He would be crushed if she and Slade let him down now.

“Run along,” she prompted. “We’ll be walking down the aisle in no time.”

“And keep that blasted dog out of the church,” Slade told them, proving that he was far more aware of things than Dani had guessed.

When they’d gone, Dani reached up and stopped Slade’s fingers from fiddling with his tie. Clearly startled by her touch, he paused and gazed into her eyes. His expression instantly clouded with concern that mirrored his son’s.

“Timmy was right, wasn’t he? Something is wrong. You’re not about to back out on me, are you?”

She rested her hand against his cheek. Even so slight a contact reassured her. She absolutely tingled inside, proving once more that Slade was the only man for her.

“I’m not,” she assured him. “How about you, though? Are you sure about this, Slade?”

There was no mistaking the slight hesitation before he managed to say yes. That infinitesimal pause scared the living daylights out of her. How could she go through with this if he had any uncertainties at all? How could he go through with it?

Worse, why the devil had she waited until they had a church filled with people before she forced a discussion of this? That one was easy, of course. She’d been terrified he would give her the wrong answer. She still was, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who could back down from discovering hard truths.

“That wasn’t very convincing,” she told him as lightly as she could manage with fear clogging her throat. “Are you really sure this is what you want? Or have the boys and I badgered you into it?”

He took her hands in his and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Yes, this is what I want,” he insisted a little more forcefully.

There was more conviction in his voice this time, but that earlier hesitation wasn’t so easily overcome. “Why?” she asked. “Because you want me?”

His answering grin was enough to make her pulse race. “That’s definitely one reason.”

But was it enough? she wondered. Passion was a good start, but for a marriage to last a lifetime, there had to be more. “Anything else?” she asked.

“Like Kevin said, you look like a princess.”

She sighed. This wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped it would. “And?” she prodded.

There was an amused glint in his eye as he added, “To quote Timmy, you cook pretty good.”

Oh, dear heaven, it was exactly as she’d feared. He was doing this for all the wrong reasons, she concluded with a sinking sensation of dismay.

“You could sleep with any one of the women in town who’ve been salivating over your body ever since you arrived,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t want them.”

He seemed certain enough about that. That was good, but it wasn’t enough. “I’m not a princess, Slade. I’m just a woman who wants a husband and family.”

His obvious amusement faded as he realized how serious she was. “Me, I hope. And my family.”

“You could hire a housekeeper. That might be less complicated.”

“I like your cooking just fine. And my boys adore you.” He stepped closer then and cupped her face in his hands. “It’s you I want, Dani Wilde. Just you.”

She couldn’t seem to stop herself from asking one more time, “Why?” It came out as a tremulous whisper.

“Because nobody could love me the way you do,” he said at once. He brushed aside her veil and kissed her gently. “And there’s nobody on earth I could love the way I love you.”

She searched his face. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. You amaze me, Dani Wilde. You amaze me with how much love you have to give, with your generosity, with your spirit, with your ability to cope with those two outrageous boys of mine. Destiny brought you into my life. You never gave up on me, on us. Now that we’re together, I will never let you go. And I swear that I will do everything in my power to make you happy.”

A sigh of relief whispered through her, followed by a bursting of pure joy. Dani felt as if she’d been granted God’s greatest gift. “You already have.” She paused. “There is just one thing–”

He cut her off. “I know.”

She regarded him guiltily. “Know what?”

“I know that you slipped my parents into town for the wedding.”

Dani winced. “You saw them?”

“How could I miss them? They’re sitting in the first row of the church.”

“Are you furious?”

“No, I love you all the more for caring enough to try to patch things up between us. Just be sure you’re around to referee the first time we’re in the same room together.”

“Always,” she agreed readily.

“Can we get on with this wedding now?”

Dani grinned at him. “You sound like a man in a hurry.”

“I am. I can’t wait to get a really good look at all that sexy lingerie you’ve been ordering by the truckload.”

* * *

Slade actually spent very little time on their honeymoon admiring Dani’s lingerie. In fact, he managed to get her out of it as quickly and as often as he could.

She never failed to startle and astonish him, he decided as he watched her sleeping so peacefully beside him, a smile on her lips.

Why had it taken him so long to realize what a treasure she was? How could he have had any doubts at all that having her in his life on a permanent basis was the smartest decision he would ever make?

He sighed with pleasure as she unconsciously reached for him, curving an arm over his belly as she slept. His body leapt to life at the innocent touch.

She was amazing, all right. But what amazed him most of all was that this one audacious imp of a woman had made a hardened old cynic like him believe in love and happily ever after.

Epilogue

T
rent Wilde was exhausted, yet he gazed around the yard at Three-Stars and sighed contentedly. For an old man, he’d done pretty darned well, he concluded. He reached over and grasped the hand of the woman beside him.

“Well, Tillie, it looks as though my work here is just about done. All of my girls are happily married. Now maybe we can finally get around to that wedding we’ve been putting off.”

Matilda Fawcett regarded him with blatant skepticism. “Trent Wilde, who do you think you’re kidding? You’ve got a whole new generation to worry about now, what with Dani and Slade’s boys giving everybody in town fits and Ashley’s new baby on the way.” She glanced at Sara. “Something tells me Sara and Jake will be making an announcement of their own any minute now.”

Trent sat up a little straighter and gazed at his middle daughter. “You think so? She hasn’t said a word.”

“And why would she tell you first? You’d only pester her to death till the baby is born.” She grinned at him. “Maybe I should do her a favor and get you out of their hair.”

Trent kissed the hand he held. “Are you finally saying yes, after all these years?”

Color crept into her cheeks. “Well, I never thought I’d be marrying a younger man,” she teased, “but you haven’t turned out so badly.”

“It took you long enough to see that,” he chided.

“It always pays to use a little caution where you outrageous Wildes are concerned.”

“But forty years seems awfully long. Didn’t you have the proof you needed long ago?”

“I did,” she agreed. “But by then you were happily married to someone else and so was I.”

“Now, at long last, it’s our turn,” he said, then grinned as a wicked scheme occurred to him. “How do you feel about hopping on Dillon’s Harley and eloping right this second?”

Her eyes lit up at the suggestion. Suddenly she looked like a young girl again, the woman he’d fallen a little bit in love with the first time she’d stepped into a classroom and tried to teach algebra to a class filled with troublemakers like him.

She laced her fingers through his. “Why, Trent Wilde, I do believe that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

He looked from her excited expression to the family that had brought him so much joy. “It’s right up there with getting those girls of mine settled down, I guarantee you that. Come on, Tillie. Let’s go walk down that bridal path while no one in this gang is the wiser.”

“You sure you want to cheat them of the chance to be there?”

He looked across the lawn to where Ashley was leaning back in Dillon’s arms, then moved on to Sara and Jake, who were side by side at the paddock fence, their hands linked as they laughed at the new foal just testing his legs.

And finally he turned to Dani, his firstborn, the one so much like his late wife she’d sometimes made his heart ache just looking at her sweet face. She and Slade were arguing over the placement of the swing set Trent had just bought for all the grandbabies he was anticipating. Timmy and Kevin were chiming in with their opinions as well, and that fool dog of theirs was running in circles, chasing his own tail and barking to beat the band.

Well satisfied with what he saw, he turned back to Tillie. “I doubt they’ll even miss us,” he told her. “Let’s go get hitched.”

They slipped silently away. They’d made it as far as Dillon’s motorcycle when Trent heard Ashley’s voice.

“Hey, Daddy, don’t forget to buy her the biggest bouquet the florist has,” she called out, laughing.

Trent scowled as the rest of them gathered around. “Never could put a darn thing over on any of you, could I?” he muttered.

“Try to remember that,” Dani told him.

“Bless you, Daddy,” Sara whispered in his ear. “Be happy.”

“How could I not be,” he said, his voice choked. “I’m about to add one more to the best family God ever gave a man.”

Turn the page for a special sneak peak at Sherryl Wood’s new Chesapeake Shores novel,
The Christmas Bouquet.

One

It was all because of that blasted bridal bouquet, Caitlyn Winters thought as she stared in dismay at the positive pregnancy test in her hand. From the moment she’d caught the bouquet at Jenny Collins’s Christmas wedding in New York a little over a year ago, she’d been doomed. That instinctive grab of an object flying straight at her had changed her life.

Her twin sister, Carrie, who’d all but shoved her aside to try to snatch the bouquet from the air, was going to laugh herself silly at what had transpired since that night. So were the rest of the O’Briens, for that matter. They loved irony.

Noah McIlroy, the family medicine resident whom she’d met soon after the wedding and with whom she’d been having a serious relationship since last September, tapped on the bathroom door.

“Caitlyn, are you okay?”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up, but she fought to contain it. This was no laughing matter. “Fine,” she managed to squeak out just as the door opened. Noah’s gaze shifted from her face to land on the test strip she was holding. Concern immediately evolved into astonishment.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his eyes filled with surprise, but a smile already tugging at his lips.

His wonderful, sensual lips, which had gotten them into this mess, she thought wryly. Of course she was well aware those lips hadn’t caused her pregnancy. Heck, she’d known about the birds and bees long before that, thanks to all the romances in Chesapeake Shores and among her amorous O’Brien relatives.

But it was her inability to resist Noah’s heated kisses that had led to all the rest. That and an apparently defective condom. Given her cautious nature, she probably should have insisted on at least three methods of birth control, but no, she’d trusted Noah when he’d assured her that the condoms would be sufficient.

The man had cast a spell over her from the minute they’d met, literally one week after she’d caught that blasted romantic bouquet with all its superstition attached like streamers of satin ribbon. The deft catch had earned hoots of laughter from her family and a stunned, disappointed scowl from her twin, who’d been angling for the bouquet all evening.

And now, here she was, barely more than a year later, and pregnant. She hadn’t even accepted Noah’s repeated pleas that they live together, even though he was in her apartment more often than he was in his own. She’d drawn a line at that, knowing that she’d never be able to keep his presence in her life a secret from her nosy family if they were actually living under the same roof.

And she’d wanted to keep this relationship a secret. After all, she was supposed to be the grounded, goal-oriented sister. Carrie was the one everyone had expected to fall madly in love and marry before her college graduation. Instead, Carrie was jetting around the world, leading a completely carefree life, building a career in public relations for a big fashion designer and tossing away men like used tissues, while she pined for one unobtainable man. And Caitlyn, thanks to that bouquet, was standing here with a positive pregnancy test in her hand!

She recalled the forget-me-nots that her Aunt Bree had tucked into Jenny’s simple bridal bouquet and fought back another hysterical laugh. She was hardly likely to forget this moment, that’s for sure.

She drew in a deep breath and finally dared to meet Noah’s gaze. For a man supposedly as dedicated to his medical career as she was to hers, he looked awfully pleased about this unexpected bump in the road. Of course, he was just a couple of months away from launching his career, while she still had the long years of an internship and residency to complete.