The Bridal Path: Danielle (9 page)

“I was planning on inviting you over to dance to them, but at the moment I wouldn’t let you get that close, you old sourpuss.”

Slade chuckled aloud, then tried to hide it as Trent shot him a baleful look.

“Women!” the old man muttered, and stalked off toward the house.

Dani leaned down and whispered something that had Mrs. Fawcett grinning. After she’d gone off to finish her argument with Trent, Slade asked Dani what she’d said.

“I told her to give him hell.”

“I don’t think there’s a doubt in the world that she’ll do just that,” he said, laughing at the prospect.

Dani laughed with him. “The thought of Daddy being one-upped at his own game does hold tremendous appeal, doesn’t it?”

“Amen to that,” Sara said, joining them.

She held up some sort of kitchen doodad that Slade didn’t recognize.

“How much for this?” she asked.

“Be prepared to sell your soul,” Slade told her with a wink, then went off to check on his sons.

He found them hovering over a cash box overflowing with dollar bills and change. “Have you ever seen so much money in all your life?” Kevin asked, clearly awed by their success.

“Remember now, only some of that is yours,” Slade reminded them.

“But it’s still lots and lots,” Timmy said. “More than we’ve ever gotten in our allowance.”

“And more than you’re likely to get. I think it would be a good idea if we opened a savings account with it first thing Monday morning.”

Both boys stared at him as if he’d threatened to banish them to their rooms for a year. “You want us to put it in the bank?”

“It’s the safest place.”

“But we wanted to buy stuff,” Timmy protested.

“Such as?”

“Books,” Kevin said, sounding more dutiful than enthused.

“And computer games,” Timmy added. “Some that aren’t yours.”

“And ice cream,” Kevin chimed in, finally back in character.

Slade looked into their hopeful faces and decided on a compromise. “You may each buy one book and you can get one computer game together,” he said.

Despite the offer, disappointment clouded their faces. “What about the ice cream?” Kevin demanded.

He grinned. “I’ll buy that.”

The two boys slapped hands in a high five, then Timmy asked, “Can Dani come, too?”

“Of course,” Slade said, trying very hard not to reveal that that was exactly what he’d hoped they’d ask. An invitation from his sons would keep him from having to show the woman just how badly he wanted to spend time with her.

According to his logic, if he didn’t have to admit to this growing yearning, then it simply didn’t exist. He could go on thinking that Dani Wilde was just a nice woman who was generously filling a huge void in his sons’ lives. It was a delusion he intended to cling to as long as humanly possible.

Chapter Six

T
he outing to the ice cream parlor that Slade proposed grew rapidly from a foursome to a crowd. First Sara overheard the boys inviting Dani and decided to tag along. Then her father and Mrs. Fawcett claimed to have a craving for hot fudge sundaes.

Someone–Dani figured she would never know for sure who–called Ashley and Dillon, who wandered in just as they were taking over the entire middle row of tables. Slade looked a little bemused at being suddenly surrounded by her family.

“This wasn’t exactly what you had in mind, was it?” Dani asked, deeply regretting the lack of privacy herself. “Unfortunately, impromptu family gatherings happen a lot with the Wildes. Don’t panic at all these interlopers. Daddy will pick up the check.”

Slade frowned. “No, he won’t,” he said adamantly. “This was my idea.”

“You’ll have to fight him for it, then. He considers it his God-given right as patriarch of the clan. Dillon and Jake have finally stopped arguing.”

Slade appeared undaunted. “Then they’re not half as sneaky as I am,” he told her, grinning. “I gave my credit card to the waitress when we came in the door. Even as we speak the charge is being written up in my name.”

Dani chuckled at his sweet innocence. Obviously he didn’t understand the ways of small towns yet. “Do you honestly think that any waitress in this town will go against Daddy’s wishes?” she asked. “They all know his habits. That credit card will come back to you with an apologetic shrug and without a charge slip attached.”

“Care to make a wager on that?” he taunted.

“Sure,” Dani said without hesitation. “What are the stakes?”

“You choose.”

The first part was easy enough and suited her own devious purposes rather nicely. “Okay, if you win, I’ll make you and the boys dinner for a week,” she said.

Slade grinned. “Done. And if you win?”

She hesitated over that one, then finally said, “You come to Three-Stars with us next time we go.”

His face promptly clouded over. She could see a storm brewing in his eyes and expected a negative answer, even before he said, “I don’t think so.”

“You said I got to choose,” she reminded him, even as she tried to gauge exactly how painful the thought of such a visit was to him and why. She played her trump card. “I doubt if I’ll be able to get Timmy back there without you.”

He sighed, his innate sense of parental responsibility obviously kicking in. “You don’t play fair.”

“Just looking out for your boys,” she retorted. “And you.”

His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Me?”

“People should always confront the things they fear most.”

The suggestion clearly stung. Slade went perfectly still, and his gaze hardened. “What makes you think I’m afraid of Three-Stars?”

“Your reaction when I asked you to go there. What’s with you and ranches? It can’t be Three-Stars itself. As far as I know, you’ve never set foot on the place. So it must have something to do with your past.”

His stony reaction told her she’d hit the nail on the head. That subtle confirmation was enough to satisfy her for now. She didn’t have to know every detail of his antipathy toward ranches. That could come later. For now, she met his gaze evenly. “So,” she said gently, “will you come? For Timmy’s sake?”

“I’ll come,” he said tersely, then added, “if you win the bet.”

* * *

Slade cursed the day he’d ever gotten mixed up with Dani Wilde and her pushy family. He stopped his car at the wrought-iron gate to Three-Stars and sucked in a deep breath. No matter how often he told himself that this wasn’t his father’s ranch and that there was no reason on earth to react as if it were, his insides twisted into a knot anyway.

Damn that stupid bet he’d made with Dani. He should have realized she knew her father through and through. Slade never had figured out how Trent Wilde had managed to pay the bill at the ice cream parlor without getting caught at it. Sure enough, though, Slade’s credit card had come back with an apologetic shrug, just as Dani had predicted.

As a result, instead of getting a solid week’s worth of decent meals, here he was facing his demons. The only thing holding him together at all was the fact that Timmy was clearly more terrified than he was to make the trip down that long, winding driveway.

“I’m not getting on a horse again,” he said fiercely from the back seat.

“You don’t have to,” Slade reassured him.

“But it’s so much fun,” Kevin argued. “You won’t fall this time. You have to try it.”

“Dad, make him stop bugging me.”

“Kevin, leave your brother alone. It’s his decision.” Slade glanced into the rearview mirror. “Dani did suggest a picnic by the creek, though. She says we’ll have to take the horses to get there.”

Timmy looked suspicious. “Why can’t we drive?”

“There’s no road,” Slade told him.

Timmy’s forehead creased with a frown as he weighed his options. “I could stay at the house with Sara,” he said resignedly, proving just how greatly his fear had been magnified during the past week.

Kevin stared at him with shock. “You’d miss the picnic?”

“Who cares about an old picnic?” Timmy retorted stoically.

“You don’t have to decide right this second,” Slade told him. “Let’s see how you feel when we get up to the house.”

“I won’t change my mind,” Timmy vowed.

“Bet you will,” Kevin taunted.

The next thing Slade knew the two of them were wrestling in the back seat, taunts and fists flying.

“Enough,” he said sharply, then added a threat that suited his own purposes all too well. “Or no one will be going anywhere. I’ll turn around right this second and go back home.”

To his deep regret, not even Timmy was willing to risk that, apparently. Uttering a heavy, put-upon sigh, he settled back into the seat as far from his brother as he could get. Kevin glared at him.

The tension lasted until they reached the ranch house. Kevin bolted eagerly from the car, while Timmy trailed along behind, looking dejected. Slade put an arm around his shoulders.

“How about riding with me?” he suggested casually.

Timmy stared at him doubtfully. “On the same horse?”

“Sure. You can sit right in front of me in the saddle.”

Timmy considered the new option carefully, then brightened. “I guess that would be okay.”

“You won’t fall,” Slade promised him. “I’ll see to it.”

Though Timmy was rapidly reaching the age where he shunned public displays of affection, he threw his arms around Slade’s waist. “Thanks, Dad.”

“You bet. Now go with your brother and pick out the best horse for us, preferably not one named Diablo,” he added dryly.

“How come?”

“Just take my word for it. Diablos usually come by their name naturally. They are not gentle creatures.”

“Oh,” Timmy said. “I’ll find us a really tame horse, Dad.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

As soon as Timmy had run off, Slade paused and absorbed the once-familiar sensations of being on a ranch. The scents of dust and recently mowed grass, the distant lowing of cows, the feel of unrelenting sun on his shoulders, burning even through his shirt. Oddly enough, it wasn’t nearly as awful as he’d expected.

“How does it feel?” Dani asked softly, coming up beside him.

“Familiar,” he said at once.

“Scary?”

He smiled down at her. “No, this place isn’t scary at all.” He wanted to add that it was because she was there, but feared that would be far too revealing of feelings he wasn’t ready to acknowledge.

“You grew up on a ranch, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Did you hate it?”

Slade considered the question thoughtfully. “I don’t think I hated the ranch nearly as much as I hated the man who ran it. He turned it into a torment.” He glanced around at the stark, rugged terrain that was so different from his home in Texas and yet in so many ways the same. “How could any place this beautiful be despised?”

“Like you said, it’s not the place. It’s the people. Neither Ashley nor I were cut out to be ranchers. Sara got all of those genes. Even so, I didn’t leave because I hated my home or the life-style we had here. I left Three-Stars because my father was overbearing and controlling. Now that I have my independence, I actually enjoy coming back.” She grinned. “Once in a while, anyway.”

“Meaning, I wouldn’t mind going home again either, now that I know who I am?” he asked.

“Something like that.”

He gazed into her huge brown eyes. “How did you get to be so wise?”

“I’m not wise, just practical. It takes a lot more energy to fight the past than it does to accept it.”

“I told Timmy about his grandparents the other day.”

Surprise and pleasure lit her eyes. “Did you, now? I’d say that’s progress.”

“Of course, now he and Kevin are clamoring to go to Texas for a visit,” he said.

“Will you take them?”

“I was thinking I’d let you do it.”

She chuckled. “Oh, no, you don’t. You deal with your father. I’ve got trouble enough with my own.”

Before they could debate whose parent was worse, Kevin and Timmy came running up.

“When are we going on the picnic?” Kevin asked. “My tummy’s empty.”

“After that huge breakfast you ate this morning?” Slade asked skeptically. “That was just over an hour ago.”

“I’m a kid,” Kevin reminded him. “I need lots and lots of energy.”

“You just heard that I baked chocolate chip cookies, didn’t you?” Dani said. “Sara blabbed.”

“She said you fixed a whole feast,” Timmy confirmed. “Fried chicken and coleslaw and potato salad.” He gazed at Kevin. “And what else?”

“Biscuits, I think. And iced tea.”

“That’s a lot of work for food that will be gobbled up in a nanosecond,” Slade observed.

Dani shrugged. “It’s a pleasure to cook for healthy appetites for a change. It’s no fun to fix big meals for one person.”

The comment was innocuous enough that Slade couldn’t imagine why it set off warning bells. He looked deep into Dani’s eyes, searching for some sort of ulterior motive, some hint that she was using her excellent cooking to weave an ever-tighter web around them all. Surely every woman had been taught that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. In the case of the Watkins family, where edible meals were few and far between, that slogan had the ring of truth. Would Dani Wilde exploit such a thing?

She returned his gaze, though, with a perfectly bland expression. “I’ll just run up to the house and get the picnic basket,” she said. “Boys, ask Jake to help you saddle the horses.”

Kevin’s eyes widened. “Really? We get to saddle them ourselves?”

“With Jake’s help,” she reminded them as they ran back toward the paddock.

Slade debated following them or going to assist Dani. He suddenly wanted desperately to put some distance between them. Every time he was around her lately, he realized that he was more and more drawn to her in ways that went beyond a physical yearning.

She was so sweetly generous, so direct and honest that he was beginning to let down his guard around her and that, he reminded himself sternly, would be a huge mistake.

Women were all alike in some ways. They wouldn’t be satisfied until they got their hooks into a man. But then they changed, just as Amanda had, practically from the day they’d exchanged vows. He wouldn’t risk going through that kind of transformation again. It would be hard on him. It would be devastating to the boys.