TheSurpriseChristmasBride Read online

  The silence following that statement stretched out for what seemed hours.

  What could he say that wouldn’t make him sound like the bastard he knew he was? So he said nothing, taking the familiar route of hiding from something that cut too close to home. Sitting up, he pulled the sweatpants on, then stood and walked to his dresser for a shirt. Anything to keep from gazing into her eyes and what was surely a stricken look.

  “I guess the honeymoon really isover,” she said finally, and scooted to the edge of the bed.

  Jake inhaled deeply, shoved his arms into the sleeves of a plain white T-shirt, then pulled it on. When he had no other choice, he turned to look at her.

  “Casey—”

  “Don’t.” She held up one hand toward him and shook her head.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t tell me about how this is a different sort of marriage and love wasn’t a part of the bargain.”

  “Well, was it?”

  “For me, yes.” She pushed herself off the bed and took a step toward the door. Then she stopped and looked at him again. Jake felt her gaze slice into him and knew he deserved it. “Fine. You don’t—or won’t—love me.”

  “It’s not you,” he argued. He didn’t want to hurt her, so he gave her as much of the truth as he was able. “It’s me. I don’t think I’m capable of love anymore.”

  “That’s bull, Jake.”

  “What?” Surprised, he stared at her and even from across the room, saw the flash of anger that glittered in her eyes.

  “You heard me.”

  “Casey—”

  “No. What we just experienced together was—”

  “Lust,” he finished for her. “Pure and simple.”

  “Is that all you felt? Really?”

  His gaze dropped a fraction and Casey saw it. She knew he had felt a hell of a lot more than lust. It was in his touch. In his kiss. In his every embrace. He loved her. But he was too damned stubborn to admit it.

  “There’s no reason we can’t be happy in this marriage, Casey. We can be husband and wife. Enjoy each other. Raise our children and have as good a marriage, if not better, than most people have.”

  She nodded and waited for him to finish.

  He took a deep breath and said, “Don’t ask for what I can’t give you, Casey. It will only hurt both of us.”

  Amazing. Did he actually believethat garbage?

  Facing him, she crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to one side to stare at him.

  “You’re wrong, Jake.”

  He blinked and defensively folded his own arms across his chest.

  “You don’t want me to expect love from you? All right, I won’t. But that’s yourloss, Jake. Not mine.”

  He lifted his chin as if expecting a blow, and she delivered it with her next words.

  “I dolove you, you big idiot. But as of right now, I’m through saying it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you can go ahead and pretend anything you like. But you loveme, Jake Parrish. I know it.” She crossed the room to him in several angry strides, not stopping until she was directly in front of him.

  Poking his chest with her index finger to underline each word, she went on, “We’ll be husband and wife. We’ll enjoy each other. Raise our children. But until you can admit that you love me, we’ll have only halfa marriage.”

  “Casey—”

  “And you’ll have to be the first one to say it, Jake. I won’t tell you again that I love you. Not until you’ve said it to me.”

  He shook his head slightly, and she wanted to kick him.

  “You will say it, Jake. You will, or you’ll be cheating yourself—and meout of something precious few people ever feel.”

  He reached for her, but she jumped back.

  “Casey, can’t you see that I’m only trying to protect both of us?”

  “No. All I see is a man too hardheaded for his own good.”

  His jaw tightened and his gaze narrowed.

  Casey nodded abruptly and turned her back on him. Headed for the doorway, she called over her shoulder, “Now come and have dinner, Jake. You’ll need your strength.”

  “My strength,” he repeated.

  “Sure.” She stopped, half turned and smiled at him. “I’m not going to cheat myself out of loving you or making love with you just because you’re too stubborn to see what’s right in front of you.” Then she was gone, leaving him alone in the half-light.

  “Casey…” She really was going to act as though nothing was wrong. She was going to go on and have a marriage whether he helped or not. He felt like an idiot.

  He stared after her for a long moment and tried to figure out what had gone wrong with his perfectly reasonable plan.

  A week later he was still trying.

  One hairy lopsided ear slapped his cheek, and just to add insult to injury, Stumbles turned and barked in his face.

  “All right,” Jake muttered, pushing the dog off his lap and onto the passenger seat. “Look out your own window for a while.”

  Obligingly Stumbles rose on his hind legs, curled his front paws over the lowered window glass and leaned his head out into the forty-mile-an-hour wind.

  Jake scowled at the mutt, then swung his gaze back to stare blankly out the windshield. There had been no snow all week, and the sun had turned the earlier snowfalls into slushy mud. Everything was brown. Which matched his mood. He’d driven this same lonely stretch of road so many times he could have done it blindfolded. Even in the muck. Since no concentration was necessary, his mind began to wander. Naturally it wandered straight to Casey.

  A whole week and she had been as good as her word. Not one more peep out of her about love and forever. They made love, spent their days and their evenings together. He helped her with her growing list of catering clients and gratefully accepted her assistance with the ranch books. They talked about the baby and Christmas, played with Stumbles and planned a nursery. Just yesterday they’d gone out and chopped down a tall Scotch pine and dragged it back to the house to be decorated. They ate together, slept together and did everything any other married couple did.

  He grumbled, shifted in the seat and slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

  Stumbles whined.

  “Sorry,” he said, then laughed at himself for apologizing to a dog.

  Dammit, he was getting exactly what he’d insisted he’d wanted. Why wasn’t he happy?

  Because he missed hearing those three little words from her.

  He missed seeing the words in her eyes.

  “Hell.” He glanced at the dog. “She even tells youshe loves you.”

  Stumbles whined again, stretched out on the seat and laid his head on his master’s thigh.

  “Yeah, I know. I love you, too.” Jake reached down and scratched behind the dog’s ears. Stumbles scooted closer.

  “Strange, don’t you think? I can say those words to you. But not to her.”

  In the distance a large dark brown van pulled out of the ranch drive and started down the road toward Jake, obviously headed back to town.

  He squinted into the afternoon sunshine and fought a growing tide of unease rising inside him. The closer he got to that damned van, the worse he felt. When they were separated by no more than ten feet, Jake pulled to one side and stopped to let the vehicle pass.

  Long after the driver’s friendly wave, he still sat there. Engine idling, dog climbing over him, he simply stared through the windshield at the house.

  It had started again.

  “Yes, I know, Mother,” Casey was saying as he stomped into the kitchen. “I only thought you’d want to know. I never expected you to doanything.”

  He glanced at her. She smiled, but he didn’t return it. He couldn’t. Not now. Not when everything he’d feared would happen had only just begun.

  “I’m sure Father is more than ready to go,” Casey said, and rolled her eyes at Jake. “Yes, Paris is probabl
y very pretty right now.”

  Paris.

  Casey held up her index finger as if telling him she would only be another minute or two.

  “Mother, I realize you’re not the grandmother type. No one expectsyou to bake cookies or change diapers.”

  God forbid.

  “I know, Mother. Yes, I’m sure Jake will understand that a pregnant woman is bound to gain weight and be unsightly.”

  Apparently talking to her mother on the telephone was no more pleasant than talking to her in person. But he didn’t want to feel sorry for Casey now. No, right now, he wanted to ride the growing wave of anger and disappointment threatening to choke off his air. He wanted to surround himself with it and tell himself that he had been right to be wary. That he had knownnothing would come of this marriage.

  Hurrying through the kitchen, he glanced into the great room, absently noted the still-bare Christmas tree in front of the tall windows, then went on down the hall. He knew where the packages would be. The master bedroom. Where else?

  Whenever the UPS man had delivered Linda’s never-ending chain of parcels, they’d been piled on the bed so his devoted wife could amuse herself in comfort. Well, he wasn’t going to stand by and let it happen all over again. Linda had damn near ruined him with her wild spending and extravagant indulgences. She’d been the only woman he’d ever known who’d actually seemed to requirea dozen new pairs of shoes every six weeks.

  He rounded the corner and spied them immediately—a relatively small stack of packages piled on a chair near the door. Snatching the top one, he ripped off the brown paper, pulled back the lid and stared down at the result of Casey’s first foray into spending.

  A flannel shirt.

  For him.

  Frowning, Jake quickly went through the rest of the packages, ripping the paper free and tossing it onto the floor. Flannel shirts. Socks. Two pairs of jeans and a rain slicker.

  All for him.

  Not only that, they were exactly what he would have bought for himself if he’d ever had the time or inclination to shop.

  He dropped the last package and shoved one hand through his hair. Confused, he tried to figure out what this might mean. What it did to his theories.

  “Well,” Casey said dryly from behind him, “I can hardly wait to watch you on Christmas morning.”

  He turned around to look at her.

  She smiled and shook her head at the mess littering the floor. “It’s a good thing I didn’t have your Christmas present delivered. You’re worse than a kid.”

  “These are all for me,” he finally said.

  “Is that a problem?” she asked, stepping into the room and picking up a sheet of torn paper from the rug.

  “No,” he said. Not a problem. Mysterywas a better word. “But why? When did you get these?”

  “At Annie’s shop. She had a great catalog there.” Both eyebrows lifted. “Don’t tell her, but I swiped it. I didn’t think you’d mind, Jake. Your jeans are disintegrating. You stay more wet than dry in your ratty old rain slicker, and I’m afraid Stumbles has developed a taste for your socks.”

  She’d noticed. She’d shopped for him. Scowling slightly, he bent to pick up the rest of the paper he had tossed about in his frenzy. When he straightened, she looked at him closely.

  “My buying clothes for you really surprised you, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He snorted. “You could say that.”

  “Jeez, Jake, I’m your wife.” She shrugged and reached up to plant a quick kiss on his cheek. “I—” Clamping her lips together tightly, she shook her head.

  She’d almost said it.

  Strange that words notsaid could hurt so much.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said in an obvious change of subject. “I’d like to decorate the tree tonight.”

  “Uh-huh,” he answered absently, his brain still adjusting to a woman shopping for him, not herself.

  “I was wondering,” she went on, speaking a little more loudly to get his attention. “The lights have to go on first. Do you want to do it or would you rather I did?”

  “Lights?” he repeated, an image of the tall pine coming to mind. “I’ll do it. You’d have to use a ladder, and you might fall.”

  She nodded. “All right, thanks. Oh, I found an old box of Christmas ornaments in the garage today, so I brought them inside. Hope that’s okay.”

  Now he was really confused. “But I showed you where all the new stuff was yesterday.” Every imported glass ball and color-coordinated decoration had cost him a bundle. Naturally Linda hadn’t settled for anything but the best.

  “Yeah,” Casey said slowly, “but it was all so…I don’t know. Anyway, I decided to look around for the things I remembered your mother setting out each year.”

  “Why?” he had to ask.

  “OK, Jake,” she said, sighing. “The things you showed me yesterday are pretty…but they remind me too much of the professionally decorated trees my mother gets done every year.” She shrugged. “For our first Christmas I wanted everything to be…”

  “Perfect?”

  “Homey,” she corrected. “You don’t mind if I use your mother’s things, do you?”

  “No,” he said quickly. Of course he didn’t mind. He just wasn’t sure he understood.

  “Good.” Casey smiled and turned for the door. “Wash up for dinner, then we’ll get this Christmas on the road!”

  Christmas, he thought as he sat down on the mattress. Christmas with his mother’s decorations, a real tree and Casey.

  He should be happy.

  Dammit, why wouldn’t he let himself be happy?

  Eleven

  The next morning bright and early Casey stood in the great room saying goodbye to Jake.

  “You’ll stay off the ladder?” he asked pointedly.

  She chuckled and held up her right hand. “Promise. Besides, I don’t need the ladder now.” She glanced up at the newly placed strings of lights encircling the floor-to-ceiling front windows. Cheerful Christmas colors shone in the gleaming windowpanes. “Pretty, aren’t they?”

  “Beautiful,” he said softly.

  Casey turned to find him staring—not at the lights he’d insisted on hanging himself—but at her. A slow tide of pleasure washed through her. He loved her. She could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at her. Why couldn’t he see it, too? Why couldn’t he admit to the truth?

  “You sure you want to take your car to town?” he asked abruptly. “I could leave the Jeep with you. One of your brothers can drive to the lake.”

  Casey shook her head. What was this husband of hers going to be like when her pregnancy was further along? He worried about everything, watched her diet like a hawk and stillcouldn’t see that he loved her. “You go ahead,” she said. “Since you put the snow tires on my car, it’s fine. And so am I.”

  He nodded and grabbed his fishing pole. “I’ll be back before dark.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then bent down to kiss her. What he’d meant to be a brief dusting of lips, Casey instinctively deepened, drawing him closer by looping her arms around his neck.

  A low groan eased from the back of his throat, and he dropped the fishing pole to squeeze her tightly. No matter what else lay between them, they shared an incredible magic every time they touched. When she was sure she had his complete attention, she broke the kiss and took a step back. Judging by the tortured expression on his face, her work was done. She might have pretended to go along with his ridiculous notions of what their marriage should be like. But she had never promised to make it easy for him.

  “Have fun,” she said. “Say hi to Nathan and J.T.”

  Jake inhaled sharply, narrowed his gaze and jerked her a nod. “I don’t have to go fishing, you know.”

  Though it felt wonderful just knowing he’d be willing to give up a fishing trip with her brothers in favor of being with her, Casey shooed him out of the kitchen. “Yes, you do. The three of
you have been talking about going ice fishing since the wedding.”

  Resigned, he picked up his pole and tackle box and headed for the door. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he conceded.

  “How carving a hole in the ice and sitting all day huddled beside it waiting for a fish to swim by can seem like a good idea at anytime is beyond me.” She smiled, then reached up to tug the collar of his coat higher around his neck.

  “You’re a girl,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Girls don’t understand guy stuff.”

  Maybe not, she thought. But girls understand enough to take advantage when their men were off doing guy stuff. While Jake was busy with her brothers, Casey planned to talk to Annie. She had finally come to the conclusion that, to fight Jake’s memories of his ex-wife, she had to know what exactly she was up against.

  Dawn was just beginning to creep across the sky, dragging soft rose-colored clouds into the growing brightness. It would be at least another couple of hours before she could call Annie.

  She stood at the front window waving until Jake drove out of the yard, then she headed for the warmth of the fireplace. Sitting down with a cup of hot cocoa, she stared into the flames and made her plans.

  “She spent nearly every dime the man ever made,” Annie said, and reached for another fresh-baked cinnamon roll. “These are really good, Case. But you didn’t have to bribe me to make me talk, you know.”

  “Don’t think of it as a bribe. Think of it as an incentive.”

  Annie arched one black eyebrow and inclined her head. “That iseasier on my gentle sensibilities.”

  Incentive, bribe, but what the cinnamon rolls really were, were the products of restless hands and a too-busy brain. Those two hours between dawn and the more respectable 8 a.m. took an alarmingly long time to pass.

  “So,” Casey said, and reached for Annie’s coffeepot, “the reason Jake divorced Linda was that she spent all his money?” that would certainly explain his behavior the day the UPS man made a delivery at the ranch.

  “That was part of it, sure. But that wasn’t what finally ended it.”

  Casey glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. She certainly didn’t want Lisa wandering in to overhear her mother and aunt discussing her uncle. The muted sounds of an early-morning children’s television show drifted to her, along with Lisa’s occasional giggle. Stumbles and the little girl had formed an immediate kinship, probably because Lisa believed in sharing her cinnamon roll with the ever-hungry dog.