My Baby, My Bride

“Damn it,” he muttered. His heart was breaking. To be ousted from the town he loved, snubbed by people he spent his days helping…

What had gone so wrong between he and Liberty? One second he’d had her at the altar, the next, she’d disappeared. He should be angry, but all he did was love her more. Her wild side appealed to him.

And damn it, that’s exactly what he was going to tell her. He was going to walk into the Tulips Saloon like the sheriff he was—this time he’d even gently ease open the doors instead of tossing them back—and he’d politely ask for his dog. That’s what he’d do.

It wouldn’t work, he realized, because Mr. Parsons was in there and she probably wouldn’t even leave the old man’s side.

Okay, so he’d cruise over there and just act as if he hadn’t known there was a party. It wasn’t Ladies Only Day so he had every right, he assured himself righteously while taking a swig of whiskey in some cold coffee for courage.

Gathering up his bravado, which had been shamelessly stomped lately, he strode across the street. With good manners and a somewhat trembling heart, he calmly opened the doors with a smile that he hoped would convey I’m harmless, aren’t we friends?

Silence enveloped the room. The smile slipped from his face as he saw the rangy cowboy sitting next to Liberty. Hesitating—remembering to keep a lid on his temper—his gaze suddenly riveted to the beautiful cake Liberty was about to cut.

The cake was festooned with a tier of pastel pink-and-blue ribbons, and a silver baby rattle lay beneath it like a shiny announcement of a beautiful, miraculous future.

His eyes met Liberty’s with horror and heartbreak, and in her eyes he read the truth: Liberty Wentworth was welcoming a baby into her life. That was the real reason she’d returned to Tulips.

What a faithless would-be-bride she’d turned out to be.

Chapter Four

“Duke, wait!” Liberty hurried after him as he strode down the street. Catching his arm, she made him stop so that she could catch her breath. Duke snatched his arm away from her grasp and her heart broke, even more than it had when he’d peeked around the saloon door, his face hopeful and trusting. “Please let me explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain.” He headed for the jailhouse—his sanctuary—but she followed relentlessly.

“If you would just wait a minute, Duke,” she said.

“Obviously, I’ve been waiting too long.”

There was a stitch in her side but she followed him into his office before he could somehow lock her out. She didn’t want to cause more of a scene than they already had, and she knew too well that a few dozen faces were tucked up against the windows of the Tulips Saloon, anxiously peering out. “Duke, can I just explain?”

He turned on her. “Explain that you’re pregnant?” he demanded, his harsh voice tearing in her heart. She’d never seen his eyes so cold. “I don’t think that requires an explanation, Liberty. And I do think I now understand why I wasn’t invited to the shower.”

“It wasn’t really a shower.” It had turned into one, but quite by accident, though she doubted he was in the mood to hear that.

“So, everyone knew but me.” He looked at her, shaking his head in disbelief. “And I guess wearing the wedding gown the other day means you’re marrying that pup who was paying court at your feet.”

She was astonished he would think such a thing. “Duke, that cowboy came with Valentine to help her deliver the cake. I didn’t know that Pansy and Helen had ordered one.” She put a hand on his arm. “Please hear me out. This has all gotten way out of hand.”

“I don’t want to listen,” Duke said, and Liberty recognized the strong Duke, the one with all the stubborn opinions, marching in to stiffen his spine and his resolve. There’d be no talking to him now.

“Just go on,” he told Liberty. “I can’t take any more drama. Honestly. In fact, I think I’ll let all of you schemers have my sheriff’s seat. I’ve got a hankering to live in the tropics around some beautiful beauties who just want to feed me pineapples all day.”

Liberty blinked. Now was not the time to tell him, she realized with a pang. As mad as he was now, the truth would fall on dry, hard soil.

“But congratulations. I guess,” he said.

She sat on his desk. “You’re going to have to listen.”

“Ah. A prisoner in my own jail. I don’t think I do have to listen.” He reclined in the old cracked leather chair, putting his boots up on the desk and covering his face with his hat.

“Duke,” Liberty said, irritated, “this isn’t easy for me.”

He was silent.

“Must you be a troll?”

She thought she heard snoring.

She did hear snoring. His chest fell with rhythmic breathing, and she knew he really had nodded off, just like that, out of sheer determination to shut her out. “You’re the daddy,” she said softly, just to try out the words.

Not a hitch in those z’s. Rip Van Winkle wasn’t about to be disturbed by some climactic pronouncement.

She wanted to cry but all of her tears had been squeezed out of her long ago. Being strong didn’t mean a woman couldn’t cry, but it did mean she usually had better things to do with her time, so Liberty left Duke in his state of slumber and departed.

It was very still across the street, as if the Tulips Saloon was waiting for life to be breathed back into it. Liberty straightened her shoulders and walked through the pretty, stained-glass doors.

All her friends sat at tables, waiting to see whether she would need comforting or if wedding bells would finally ring. Sadness and a bit of embarrassment clutched at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t tell him.”

He wouldn’t listen was more the truth, but it didn’t seem fair to air every piece of their dirty laundry.

Pansy opened her arms, and Liberty rushed into them, squeezing her eyes tightly shut so that she wouldn’t see Duke’s face, so crestfallen when he realized his own town had left him out-and it was all because of Liberty.

“YOU COULDN’T HAVE BEEN more of a pissant if you’d tried, Duke,” Pepper said to her older brother late that afternoon when he slunk home, tired despite his nap. Duke glanced at her, then at Zach, with some surprise. Pepper was lying out in a bikini around the pool, soaking up some waning September sunshine after being up north so long, and Zach was coiling up a hose he’d been using to water the plants around the patio.

“Just let it drop,” Duke commanded, unwilling to talk to anyone about what had happened. He had no idea what his brother’s and sister’s roles had been in today’s drama, but what he did know was that they, and most of the town, were on Liberty’s side.

Damned if he knew why.

Zach shrugged, not about to throw any weight on his side of the sinking ship to save him, Duke realized. There would be no peace in his house until they’d had their say, obviously. “Spit out all the opinions you want, and then the matter’s closed,” he stated, feeling angry that his own siblings were against him. Who could you count on if not family?

With a sigh, Pepper went back to reading a magazine. It was a medical journal, Duke saw as she defiantly flipped pages. Zach went inside, abandoning the whole family council process.

Though Duke should have felt relief, the silent treatment just brought him more anxiety. Shouldn’t someone recognize that he wasn’t the enemy?

Of course, it wasn’t often that Pepper was put out with him. For as long as he could remember, he and his siblings had been tight as ticks.

Liberty had been the one knot in the tight rope of their existence. As a child, she’d sneaked across the small ravine, deftly climbing the barbed-wire fence of their property and playing pranks on them. It had been like having their own personal, mischief-making elf. Milk would disappear. Pots would be rearranged on the patio. A cow would be wearing a bow around its neck at Christmas. Once she’d put firecrackers in their mailbox. Small ones, of course, but it had gotten their attention.

And then they’d laid a trap for her, figuring to put a stop to the antics of the Wentworth waif. One Christmas Eve night, they put candy canes all along the patio leading to the front door, a colorful sugar trail designed to catch a child who was doubling their chores with her mischief. As they sat at the family Christmas table, laden with home-cooked food and covered with fine linen, they innocently waited to see if they’d have a visitor.

When they heard the cowbell clang and the bucket release its four gallons of water, they knew they had her and went gleefully dashing from the table.

Liberty had been standing on the porch, soaking wet, caught in the act of staring in the window at them before taking off at a run. Their mother, coming up behind them, had seen the two handprints she’d left against the window as she’d peered in, and it wasn’t Liberty who got in trouble that night. Their father had given Duke, Zach and Pepper such a talking to, and then their mother had marched them over to the Wentworths to apologize to Liberty and her parents.

What they’d seen in the Wentworth home had surprised them. There was no Christmas table adorned with glowing candles and laden with home-cooked food. No decorations. Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth sat in front of a fire, each reading a book, completely unaware that their daughter had been gone at all, and apparently disinterested that it was Christmas Eve.

But what Duke never forgot was the look in Liberty’s eyes as she stared at his mother—it was the hungry look of a child who desperately wanted the attention his mother was giving her. His mother toweled off Liberty and then handed her the strand of candy canes they’d used as bait. Not only that, she went back and retrieved the presents he and his siblings were supposed to get for Christmas that year and gave them to Liberty.

He’d resented that, until he saw those three toys in Mr. Parsons’s pawnshop window and realized Liberty had never even gotten to play with them.

From that day forward, she was one of them. She ate at their table for meals, and she walked to school with them. Zach was her same age so they became the closest, though Pepper had followed Liberty around like fog.

He had tried to hold himself aloof, as he’d been uncertain of her. Thirteen years old, he’d been a jumble of hormones and teenage pride and not sure what to think about the little girl who, once she was cleaned up, stoked some part of his being he hadn’t been aware existed. Oh, the girls chased him, and he ignored them for the most part, because he’d been interested in football and baseball and rodeo.

But Liberty nagged at him, and he was never quite sure what to do with those confusing feelings. So he ignored her.

But one time he’d come upon her and Zach and Holt in the barn attic, and he was astonished by what he saw. Liberty and Zach had dressed Holt in a costume, an old wrangler’s outfit for Halloween, and they were busily sewing and stuffing material on him. Holt was the sewing dummy, or whatever one called those things, and they were improvising.

Duke couldn’t even thread a needle, wouldn’t have known how to start, and the jealousy that hit him took him clean by surprise. When Zach wore the costume to the Halloween Ball in town that night, Duke had been positively pea-green.

And he really hadn’t understood why. As costumes went, they all looked fine. Liberty was a bride, Pepper was a witch—not too far off the mark there, he’d thought with brotherly snide-ness—and Holt, who tagged along, was a British punk rocker. Duke wore his football uniform with streaks of grease under his eyes, in no way feeling dressed up at all.

When Zach won “Best Costume” that night, Liberty hugged him with glee and kissed Holt’s cheek, and Duke knew something special had happened he’d been left out of: Liberty’s secret mission.

She was going to design things. And he would be left out, because he had no patience for thread and small stitches and lace, and wouldn’t stand still and be a sewing mannequin.

But Zach and Holt would.

“So are you going to sit there and sigh all day, or are you going to say what’s on your mind?” Duke demanded. “I can tell you’re about to burst with advice.”

“No,” Pepper said, giving him a bland look over her journal. “I’m not.”

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