TheSurpriseChristmasBride Read online

  Especially when that virgin was Casey Oakes.

  Not to mention the fact that there was a chance, however slim, that she could be pregnant.

  What was he supposed to do now?

  Shaking his head, he shifted his gaze to the windows on his left and tried to clear his mind. Just for the moment. He’d be able to think more clearly if he got at least a couple of hours’ sleep.

  Stars winked at him from a clear sky. The storm had finally cleared out. Maybe that was a good sign.

  “Omigosh, omigosh.” Annie snatched the muddy wet wedding dress down from the shower rod and raced with it into the kitchen.

  “Mommy,” the little girl left behind called out, “I still hafta go potty.”

  But Annie was on a mission and didn’t hear her daughter’s complaint. Rushing into the kitchen where her father, aunt and uncle sat around the table waiting for Jake to wake up, she demanded, “Look! Look what I found!”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Aunt Emma said with a sniff. “What on earth happened to that beautiful dress?”

  “Where’d you get it?” Frank Parrish asked his daughter.

  “In the bathroom,” Annie told him. “Hanging over the shower rod.”

  “Should have left it there,” Emma said, lifting one black eyebrow at the trail of mud across the Spanish tiles.

  “Wonder why Jake has a wedding dress?” Uncle Harry scratched his chin thoughtfully.

  “Don’t you see?” Annie dropped the dress into her father’s lap and looked at each of her thick-headed relatives one at a time. “Thisis what Jake meant on the phone last night.”

  “This what?”

  She flashed a quick dumbfounded look at Harry and went on, concentrating on her father. “Jake said he’d finally succeeded in getting something he’d wanted for a long time.”

  “Yeah?”

  “This must be it!” Annie brushed a stray lock of hair back out of her eyes and grinned at her dad. “Jake got married!”

  Aunt Emma’s dark brown eyes looked like saucers with spilled coffee in the center.

  “Married?” Uncle Harry repeated. “Who got married?”

  “Jake.”

  “Annie,” her father warned, “you don’t know that for sure.”

  “Why else would he have a wedding dress here?” She shook her head until another long strand of black hair fell out of the neat bun and lay across her shoulder. “What a rat! Keeping this a secret from us. Why wasn’t I invited?”

  Frank Parrish ran one gnarled hand over the mud-spattered lace gown. “If he ismarried, how did thishappen? He tied her to his saddle and dragged her through the mud until she said, ‘I do’?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Annie turned away and started pacing, a soft smile on her face. “It doesn’t matter how it happened. I just want to know who.”

  “Mommy!”

  The shout came from down the hall.

  “Lisa!” Annie gasped, shamefaced, and started for the door. “I forgot all about her—and she has to go potty.”

  Aunt Emma sniffed again. “Potty! Really.The child’s probably had an accident by now.”

  “Potty is a perfectly fine word.” Annie shot her aunt an annoyed look and not for the first time wondered what her sweet befuddled uncle Harry had ever seen in the sharp-tongued old biddy.

  “A child should not be taught to shout in public about bodily functions.”

  “She’s not inpublic. She’s—” Annie stopped short. She didn’t owe anyone an explanation about how she raised her daughter. Least of all Emma. “Never mind,” she said, and hastened her steps.

  “Mommy!” Lisa’s voice was louder, more demanding. “Who’s da lady in da bed?”

  Emma gasped.

  “What?” Harry asked. “What lady? Where?”

  “Uh-oh,” Frank muttered, and pushed himself out of his chair. Following his daughter, he headed into the hall toward his son’s room.

  Emma and Harry were right behind him.

  Jake’s bedroom door was wide open. A slash of morning sunlight lay across the big four-poster and the two people under the sheets.

  Annie skidded to a sudden stop at the threshold and her father crashed into her, pushing her the rest of the way into the room. Behind them, Aunt Emma gasped again. Annie glanced at her. She clutched a church newsletter in her beringed chubby hands and was frantically waving it back and forth in front of her flushed face.

  Harry pushed his round wire spectacles higher on his nose and peered over his wife’s formidable shoulder.

  Lisa, a black-haired, blue-eyed, twenty-five-pound bundle of energy, stood at the foot of the bed, holding her crotch and jumping from foot to foot.

  “Morning, son,” Frank offered.

  “Dad.” Jake sat up slowly and looked at the small crowd. “Annie.”

  “Unco Jake,” Lisa demanded again, “Who’s da naked lady?”

  Just then the naked lady sat up beside Jake, clutching the sheet to her chest like a warrior’s shield. She blinked wildly, looked at the people in the doorway, then smiled sheepishly.

  “The lady,” Annie told her daughter, “is your aunt Casey.”

  “Can shetake me to go potty?”

  Six

  Jake tossed a look over his shoulder at the snow-dusted house behind him. Inside his sister was closeted with Casey, and Lord only knew what shewas saying. He frowned thoughtfully and hoped that his uncle Harry had been able to keep his aunt Emma from grabbing the phone.

  From the moment he and Casey had been discovered together, he’d seen Emma’s dialing finger twitching. She could hardly wait to get busy spreading the latest gossip. News of finding Jake and a new bride in bed was good. News of finding Jake and someone else’s bride in bed was even better!

  Wryly he remembered that when he’d decided to divorce Linda, Jake hadn’t had to tell a soul. Emma had taken care of notifying the town. And had managed it all in just under two hours.

  “Well, son…” his father said softly. Jake turned his head to look at him. “What are you going to do about this?”

  “What is there todo?” Defensive. Why did he sound so defensive? He was an adult. So was Casey. It was no one else’s business if two consenting adults spent the night together. He scowled and hunched his sheepskin-clad shoulders. If that was true, why did he feel like a teenager caught on the couch with his hand up a girl’s skirt?

  “Jake,” the older man tried again, “I saw that wedding dress.” One gray-flecked eyebrow lifted. “It was white. In my day a white dress meant something.”

  “Everybody wears white now, Dad.” The fact that it actually hadmeant something in Casey’s case didn’t really have to be discussed. Did it?

  “True.” The older man sighed. “I guess it would be pretty rare these days to find a woman who’d saved herself for marriage. Of course, it’d probably be just as rare to find a man willing to go along with that decision.”

  Jake shifted uncomfortably. Casey had waited. Only to have her bridegroom jilt her at the altar. Though this might not be the best time to say that perhaps Casey might have mentioned that she was a virgin. It would only sound as if he was trying to duck responsibility. Hell, it even felt like that to him, and he knew it wasn’t true. But whatever he said, judging by the look in his father’s eyes, this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.

  Just a few days ago the Parrish family had celebrated Thanksgiving. If he had known then what would be happening soon, Jake might have been a little less thankful.

  Now, though, he was trying to be reasonable. A man of the nineties.

  “Dad, Casey’s a big girl. She makes her own decisions.”

  “So do you,” Frank countered. “The right ones, I hope.”

  What did that mean? Oh, hell, he knew what it meant. No, he hadn’t used any protection until after the barn door was open and the horse was frolicking. And all right, yes, there was a chance that Casey could be pregnant because of him. A slimchance.

  Grumbling under his breath, Jake
shifted his gaze to the snow-covered meadow beyond the ranch yard. Ridiculous. He might become a father because of a storm and a lost calf. He leaned his forearms on the top rail of the corral fence and tried to convince himself that there was nothing to worry about.

  Frank Parrish sighed again, planted one elbow on the same fence rail and cupped his chin in his hand. “You know that Emma’s going to be flapping her gums the minute she gets a clear path to a telephone.”

  “Yeah.” But what did that really matter, Jake thought. He and Casey were two consenting single adults.

  “And the fact that Casey ran out of the church and straight into your bed is going to make the tale interesting to a lot of folks.”

  Jake had a feeling he knew where this was going. He just didn’t know how to stop it.

  “Your mother…” Frank said.

  Uh-oh, his dad was pulling out the big guns.

  “She was always real fond of Casey. Thought of her as a daughter.”

  Hell, he refused to look on this little episode as incest! “She’s not, though, remember?”

  “As close as she can come without being blood.”

  True. As a girl, Casey hadspent a lot of time at the ranch. His parents haddoted on her. But she was all grown-up now. She didn’t need a champion.

  “That girl,” Frank went on, “is like a part of this family. I won’t have her cheaply used any more than I would stand by and watch some man take advantage of your sister.”

  Frank’s mouth thinned into a grim line, and pain flickered briefly in his dark eyes. Jake knew he was thinking about Annie’s useless ex-husband. There hadn’t been anything either of them could do to protect Annie from hurt and embarrassment then. Obviously Frank was prepared to make up for that with Casey.

  Jake stretched his neck as if he could feel a bow tie tightening around it. Across his shoulders, it was as if the snug fit of a rented tuxedo was already boxing him in.

  “There’s one way to take the sting out of Emma’s gossip-spewing.” Frank paused before continuing.

  Jake knew what was coming. Blankly he studied the puff of his own breath as it misted in the cold air. He kept himself from speaking because he didn’t want to prod his father into saying the words out loud.

  He should have known that wouldn’t stop him.

  “You two can get married.”

  There it was. Tossed into the open where everyone could stare at it. The imaginary bow tie was strangling him now.

  “Married?” Jake pushed away from the fence and shoved both hands into his coat pockets. He swiveled his head to stare at his father’s calm determined features. “No thanks, Dad. I tried that once.”

  Frank didn’t say a word. He just looked at his son.

  Jake shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t seen that particular flare of disappointment in his father’s eyes since the night of his seventeenth birthday. Like other teenage fools before him, he’d been convinced that a celebration without beer wasn’t a celebration at all. Unfortunately, after his surprise party, he’d tried to drive himself home. He never saw the tree that jumped out into the road and bit his right fender. All he remembered to this day was the look on his father’s face when he’d shown up at the police station to pick him up.

  Jake had done everything he could since then to avoid reliving that particular sensation.

  Until today.

  Uneasily he glanced at the house again. Hell, maybe his father was right. Maybe he shouldask Casey to marry him. It might be the nineties everywhere else in the country, but as for morality in small-town America, it was generally more like the nineties of the past century. And that wasn’t altogether a bad thing. Until it affected him personally.

  Still, there was something else to consider. Casey would no doubt turn his proposal down, anyway. So he could do the right thing, avoid shaming himself in his father’s eyes and still not worry about embarking on yet another disappointing marriage.

  “Well?” Frank asked.

  “I’ll talk to her.” Before he could change his mind, Jake started for the house.

  Casey stood in front of the dresser and ran a brush through her tangled blond hair. Then, in the mirror above the heavy chest of drawers, she glanced wryly at the clothes she’d been given to wear. Jake’s oversize sweats hung on her small frame. The ribbed cuffs fell past her wrists and had to be constantly pushed up. The pant legs could be pulled over her feet to serve as slippers.

  A real femme fatale.

  “What on earth went on yesterday?” Annie plopped down on Jake’s bed and sat with her legs crossed.

  Casey glanced at her friend in the mirror and lifted both eyebrows.

  Annie laughed and held up one hand. “OK, I know what went on. What I can’t figure out is why.”

  “I suppose it would really look bad for me if I said I didn’t know.”

  “Look, Case.” Annie leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “The last time we talked, you were practically walking down the aisle with—” she paused and pushed the end of her nose up with the tip of one finger “—Steven.”

  “Yeah, well,” Casey said, “I was walking and Steven was running. In the other direction.”

  “Omigod. Jilted? The bastard jiltedyou?”

  “Have you ever noticed what a lovely word that is? Jilted, I mean.”

  “Lovely?” Annie cocked her head and her long black hair, freed from its knot, swung to one side.

  Casey turned around and leaned her fanny against the edge of the dresser. Watching her friend’s confused face, she couldn’t really blame her. Sheshould be confused, too. Strangely enough, though, she wasn’t.

  It was as if she’d been released from prison to find herself in a wide glorious new world. All right. Steven wasa nice enough guy, and maybe prison was too strong a word. But when she thought about the quick passionless kisses she and her ex-fiancé had shared and then compared them with Jake’s kisses…well, there wasno comparison.

  The day before, she had almost married the wrong man for all the wrong reasons. To please her family. To avoid hurting Steven’s feelings. And because canceling the wedding after all the time and money spent on it would have been unthinkable for her.

  Today, however, it seemed anythingwas possible. Despite the embarrassment of being caught naked in Jake’s bed by his father, of all people.

  “I’ll never be able to look your dad in the face again.”

  “I don’t think anyone was looking at your face, Casey.”

  “Oh, God.”

  Annie chuckled again, got off the bed and walked over to her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But your uncle Harry is a minister.”

  “Ministers have sex, I’m told.” She paused and shuddered. “Though the idea of him and Emma together is enough to make me want to take the veil.”

  Casey laughed and immediately felt better.

  “See? Nothing’s so bad it can’t be cured with a good laugh.”

  “Hope you feel the same way when you see what Lisa’s done to her pretty new dress.”

  Both women turned to look at Jake, standing in the doorway.

  “What’s she gotten into?” Annie sounded tired but resigned.

  “Can’t be sure,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s black and it looks permanent.”

  “Ohhh…!” Annie got to her feet. “I’ll be back, Case. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “She won’t,” Jake said.

  Casey looked from her friend’s retreating form to the cool steadiness of Jake’s eyes. “I won’t?”

  “Not until we talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Our wedding.”

  The room tilted and Casey grabbed hold of the dresser behind her to keep from sliding out the window.

  Jake pried one of her hands free and dragged her over to the bed.

  “Married?” She shook her head, then raised her confused eyes to meet his.

  “Casey,” he said, “Emma’s in the kitchen inching closer to the phone every second
. Harry and Dad won’t be able to hold her down much longer.”

  “So?”

  “So, with that phone in her hand, she’s more potent than those tabloids in the grocery stores.”

  “Gossip bothers you?” Even as she asked it, Casey winced. From the little Annie had told her of Jake’s divorce, it hadn’t been pretty. No doubt the gossips had chewed on him for months.

  “It’s not me they’ll be talking about this time.” Jake started pacing. “I’m old news. But you—” he pointed at her “—are fresh meat.”

  “Oh.”

  Casey’s big green eyes were fixed on him. His navy blue sweats shouldn’t have looked so damn good on her. She was practically swimming in them and still she looked beautiful. He gritted his teeth and ignored the sudden rush of blood to his groin. She chewed her bottom lip. Her delicate features made her appear too fragile to stand up to the tidal wave of gossip and innuendo headed their way. Even though rationally he knew Casey was no spun-glass woman, he couldn’t deny the protective urge rising in him.

  “Jake, I don’t live here anymore. Why should it matter what the people in Simpson say about me?”

  “Morgan Hill isn’t that far away,” he reminded her. “And the Oakes name is well-known.”

  At the mention of her family, she paled.

  No wonder, he told himself. Her parents would not be pleased at being the center of gossip. Jake scowled and turned away. Why did he care? All he’d intended was to ask her to marry him. To do the right thing. Why was he standing here trying to convince her to say yes, when he was hoping she would say no?

  That was it. No more. It wasn’t his business. If Casey felt she could stand up to Emma and her cronies—not to mention her father, Henderson Oakes—that was up to her. He had done his best. He had offered her marriage.

  Lord, he could hardly wait for this day to be over. He rubbed the back of his neck as if to loosen that imaginary bow tie. Hell, he hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell his family about the land he’d finally managed to buy. This was supposed to be his big day. He should feel triumphant. Victorious.

  Ah, well.

  “All right, Jake,” Casey said softly.