“You could marry me.”
Starla turned. She’d misunderstood him.
“What?”
“I said you could marry me.”
A smile quivered on her lips. “That would be carrying ‘nice’ a bit far, don’t you think?”
“I’m serious.”
He looked it, his dark eyes steady in their hold on hers, his features composed in somber lines. She wasn’t sure if the sight relieved or alarmed her. A bitter laugh escaped.
“You said you weren’t one for games, sir, yet you play them quite cruelly.”
“It’s no game.”
“You’d marry me?”
“Yes.”
For a moment she was too stunned to speak, then the words poured out in a quavering rush. “Why? Why would you do such a thing? Because you feel sorry for me? Well, I won’t tolerate your pity, either.”
“My reasons aren’t quite that unselfish.”
She waited to hear them, thinking herself mad for even listening, for even considering….
“I don’t know anyone here. I’m going crazy
with just my own company. I didn’t know how bad things were until the wedding. Now I know what I want. I want what Reeve and Patrice have.”
“But I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”
He shrugged off her protest. “But you could like me, couldn’t you? Or at least put up with me?”
She went rigid by slow increments. Her tone was frosty. “Just because I made a mistake with one man doesn’t mean I’m willing to jump into bed with another.”
He actually blushed and she found that so surprisingly honest, she began to entertain seriously the preposterous notion.
“I’m not asking you to jump into anything, ma’am.” His face was red but the uncomfortable cant of his eyes said he didn’t find the idea totally abhorrent. “I’m a banker, not a poet. I’m thinking more a business merger than a … a—”
“An intimate arrangement?”
He nodded, gratefully. “Exactly. We’re strangers, that’s true, but we each want things the other can supply. I’m suggesting a trade-off. I’ll save your reputation. I’ll give you my name and raise your baby as my own.”
“And what do you get?” She couldn’t help the suspicion edging into that question.
“I get someone waiting for me when I finish at work. I get a meal on the table, someone to ask how my day was, clean clothes. I’m so sick of washing out my own socks.”
“You want me to take care of you?”
A fierce defensiveness gripped his features. “I’m
not an invalid. I can take care of myself. I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“I didn’t mean—what I meant was, do you want me to be your servant?”
He relaxed and waved off her flat assumption. “No. No, that’s not what I want. I want—ah, hell, I want someone to keep me from being so lonely I want to scream. I want a family. I want that baby.”
His fervor alarmed her. He was so sure, so enthusiastic, it scared her. But she was thinking about it. Thinking hard and fast, and seeing her susceptibility, Dodge hurried on.
“You need security and I need companionship. Most marriages aren’t made on more than that, are they?”
It was starting to sound so good when the whole meaning of the word “marriage” sank in. As she’d told him, she knew marriage wasn’t the solution to every problem. It sometimes created more problems than it solved. Starla would allow him no illusions.
“I won’t sleep with you.”
He was too startled by her candor to respond at first, then he answered gruffly. “I wouldn’t expect you to. I enjoy my privacy, too. Separate beds, separate rooms. I have no problem with that. Once we get to know each other a whole helluva lot better, we can discuss the arrangements again, but for now, you can trust me—like a brother. I’ve had plenty of practice there.”
Could she? Could she trust him? It all came down to that. Trust was something she guarded as
zealously as love. Neither had ever applied to more than a few people. She loved her brother but didn’t trust him. She’d trusted the man who’d left her with his illegitimate legacy, but she hadn’t loved him. She trusted Patrice, and Patrice said she could trust this man who was offering her a much needed salvation.
Or was she making another huge mistake?
Sensing her lingering hesitation, Dodge made a final petition, his words simple, his tone level, his manner completely open.
“It’s like this, Miss Fairfax, I come from a big family. I’m not used to taking a step without falling over someone. I don’t want to be alone anymore, especially not here, where I couldn’t drag a smile out of someone with a team of horses.”
“Then why stay?”
It was a simple question, but he approached it like it held the complexity of the universe.
“I can do good here. What started out as a favor to a friend has become personal. I love a good challenge and I don’t accept failure, Miss Fairfax. Not in anything I put my mind to. I’ll be a good husband to you and a good father to that baby. I’ll respect you, I won’t hurt you, and I’ll never lie to you. If you can do the same, I think we’ll have a pretty good shot. What do you say?”
He put out his hand. She ignored it to ask one more thing.
“Why would you want me for a wife? Because of the challenge?”
He grinned at her brittle tone and summed it up briefly. “You make me feel alive.”
He kept his hand suspended, the smile lingering on his face with a confidence she couldn’t quite share.
But she couldn’t argue with his logic, nor could she deny that what he offered was far better than any of the alternatives.
She took his hand gingerly. His fingers closed about hers in a careful press, but even so, she was quick to pull away.
“I think you should start calling me Starla rather than Miss Fairfax. What do I call you?”
“Call me Dodge. Tomorrow you can call me husband.”
“You’re what?”
Patrice had none of Reeve’s trouble accepting the incredible news. With a squeal of “That’s wonderful!” she threw her arms around first Starla then Dodge while beaming in self-congratulation.
“Are you both insane?” Reeve demanded. “You don’t even know each other! When did this happen?”
“Just now.” Dodge’s hand curled protectively over Starla’s, containing it for a show of support, and also to hide how his own were shaking.
“Tell me it’s going to be a long, long engagement.”
To his friend’s dismay, Dodge said, “Tomorrow.”
Reeve threw up his hands and stalked across the room, muttering, “Are you sure you weren’t shot in the head instead of the back?”
Patrice scowled at her husband, then went on to
take full credit for the match. “I knew you two would be right for one another. Didn’t I tell you, Dodge? Didn’t I tell you she’d be worth holding on for?”
He smiled. “Yes, you did.”
Obviously she had no trouble accepting their announcement as fated, but Dodge could see Reeve wasn’t going to be as easy to convince. Starla stood at his side, her hand still and cold within his, her face void of expression. No help there in convincing his friend that she’d fallen blindly in love.
“We’d like to do it here,” he went on hopefully, “with the two of you as our witnesses.”
Reeve narrowed a stare at him. “What’s the hurry?”
“She’s pregnant.”
He heard Starla’s gasp and tightened his grip on her hand. Both Reeve and Patrice were looking between them in unabashed shock.
“Who’s—” was all Patrice could manage.
“Mine.” He spoke the word so firmly and forcefully that to question further would be calling him a liar. Neither challenged him, though both knew he wasn’t the father. Starla’s fingers squeezed through his as she held up her head and stared at the other couple boldly. It didn’t take any more explaining for them to understand what was behind the Sudden decision.
“Dodge, have you thought this out?” Reeve asked at last.
“If you don’t want us to get married here, just say so,” he growled, bristling up with unexpected belligerence.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then just what the hell
are
you saying?”
Reeve glanced at Starla in awkward apology. “Excuse us a minute, Starla. The best man needs a word with the groom.”
When he gripped Dodge’s arm, the banker balked, but when Reeve wouldn’t relent, Dodge finally went with him, following him down the hall to Squire Glendower’s study, where Reeve poured them both glasses of whiskey. Reeve gulped his down before speaking.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting married.”
“To a woman you don’t know? Who doesn’t even like you?”
Dodge gave a wry smile. “I’ll grow on her.”
“I’m glad you think this is so damned amusing.
“I don’t.” He faced his friend with a deadly seriousness. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m doing her a favor and she’s doing one for me.”
“Taking marriage vows isn’t the same as trading favors, Dodge.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“I don’t think you’re thinking at all. Starla Fairfax isn’t the kind of woman—”
Dodge glared at him. “Starla isn’t what? The kind you marry? Is that what you were going to say?”
Reeve sighed in exasperation. “I’ve known her all my life. There isn’t a man alive she hasn’t made eyes at. She’s always had a reputation as a tease, and now she shows up pregnant after being gone
for four years—do you know whose baby it is?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out.
Reeve stared at him. “You’re going to toss away the chance of finding the right woman just to give a name to a baby a woman you don’t know made with a man she won’t name?”
“That’s about it.”
“You’re crazy.”
Dodge jerked him up by the shirtfront. The movement was fierce and demonstrative, startling Reeve with a sudden hugeness of presence from the smaller man, the same powerful authority that allowed the unpretentious lieutenant to command an army into hell without question. “What I know is that this may be my only chance to raise a child as my own, and damn it, you’re not taking that away from me. You owe me this, Reeve.”
Reeve blinked in sudden understanding as Dodge let him go, acting apologetic but no less obstinate.
“I need something to hold me here,” Dodge went on in a low, almost angry tone. “I can’t go home. They’d treat me like—” He broke off to rethink his words, then continued in earnest. “I want a family to tie me here in Pride. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to—that I’ll ever have children of my own, and now I’ve got this chance to help out a friend of yours, a woman who can give me the family I need, and the reason to drag myself up in the morning. Don’t you dare tell me I can’t make this work. I will. For that baby, if for nothing else. Damn it, if that isn’t reason enough—”
Reeve put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s reason enough.”
Dodge expelled his breath noisily, and his hostility with it. He clasped his hand over Reeve’s for a brief instant, then Reeve walked back to the sideboard, where he spoke without turning.
“Have you thought about the other two people involved in this grand gesture?”
“You and Patrice?”
“No. You and Starla. I don’t want to see either of you get hurt in this.”
His friend’s sincerity warmed him to his soul. Dodge smiled with grim determination. “It’s worth the risk to me. It’s a business arrangement, Reeve. I make them all the time and nobody’s better at it than I am. Nobody gets cheated. We’ll be fine … as long as we can keep from killing each other.”
“All right. I guess if any one can make Starla behave, you can.”
Not exactly confidence-inspiring words to a groom-to-be.
Exactly twenty-four hours later, Hamilton Dodge brought the same judge who’d married Patrice and Reeve to the door of the Glade. He didn’t draw a deep breath until he saw Starla there waiting, still of the same mind. He’d worried that perhaps—
Then he saw her standing by the stairs in a demure gown of ivory silk, her glossy black hair swept back beneath a crown of lace and pearls, and his emotions staggered. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to convince himself that he was in love with this glorious creature who’d consented to be his wife.
But of course, he wasn’t. He was merely
stunned, as any man with eyes would be, by her exotic beauty. On closer examination, he could see how pale she was, how her vivaciousness was tempered to the vaguest of smiles when she saw him. Regrets? Or just wishing there were some other way than having to say vows with a perfect stranger? His mood sobered. This was no love match, so it wasn’t smart to consider it as anything but business.
They said their vows in the sunny front parlor, Patrice weeping freely on one side, Reeve grim as a sentinel on the other. Beside him Starla spoke the necessary words without inflection, then lifted her hand so he could slide on the ring his mother had given him to see him safely through four years of war. Let it see him through this marriage with equal indemnity.
As Reeve had predicted, the solemnity of the event didn’t strike home until the judge intoned the words pronouncing them man and wife.
Man and wife.
His to have and hold.
An attack of nervous exhilaration took hold of him, rattling him with consequence and conviction. He’d just taken a woman for his wife and had given himself as husband. And that was about as far from a business merger as anything he could imagine.
Panic chilled through his belly. Anticipation slicked his palms. Slowly he turned to his wife of less than a minute as the judge invited him to kiss his bride.
His mouth went desert dry as he bent for his first taste of her kiss. At the last possible moment, she
jerked her head to one side, just far enough for his mouth to find her cheek instead of settling upon her lips. It was more than a denial of intimacy on grounds of embarrassed modesty. When he put his other palm to her opposite cheek, he heard her sharp intake of breath and felt her go stiff as stone against him.
He finished the gesture quickly, grazing the soft curve as if it had been the intended target all along, then leaning back to accept Reeve and Patrice’s congratulations.
But his smile was forced as he had to wonder if his bride’s distaste was directed at him or if it was the manifestation of some deeper loathing.
Had he just made the biggest mistake of his life?