Marrying Molly

“So you’re saying you don’t—” Dixie paused to take another belt from her bottle, screw up her face and swallow “—want to marry him, right?” Molly looked away. “Well, do you or don’t you?”

“It would never work.”

Dixie took her face and guided it back around. Molly pushed her hand away. Dixie sighed. “You planning on answering my question? Sometime soon would be nice.”

“I can’t answer it.”

“Because…?”

“Since it’s not gonna work, it doesn’t matter what I want.”

Dixie looked kind of thoughtful. “So,” she said, and paused for yet another big gulp. “You do care for him, then. Am I right?”

Molly hung her head and nodded.

Dixie’s whisper got softer. “But the way he’s been acting, he’s not reassuring you that he would make a decent husband?”

Molly shrugged. “I guess. And then there’s me. You know how I am. I do like to run things. And I have no idea at all about how to try to be a wife.”

“Well, baby, some things you just do, you know? You learn as you go.”

Molly looked straight at her mother. “It isn’t going to work. Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

Dixie giggled—but softly, ever-mindful that Granny shouldn’t know she was there. She leaned close to Molly and whispered in her ear. “I know! I’ve been meaning to ask you. Be my maid of honor?”

Molly grunted out a scoffing sound and put her hand on her stomach. “Some maid.”

Dixie grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Oh, silly girl. Who’s a virgin at thirty, anyway?”

“I was…for a month or so.”

Dixie let go of Molly’s hand—and then wrapped her arm around Molly’s shoulders. She gave a squeeze. “Say you will.”

Molly looked up at her mother, smelling White Diamonds again—and the heady scent of Tennessee whiskey, as well. “You know I will.”

“That’s my baby.” Dixie gave Molly’s shoulder another squeeze. “And I might not have been much use to you while you were growing up, but maybe I can help now. I think I will have a little talk with that man of yours.”

Molly pulled out of her mother’s embrace. “He’s not my man—and you better not.”

“Is that a ‘please don’t’?”

“It’s a ‘why waste your breath!”’

Pink plastic hearts clattered together as Dixie raised her bottle of Jack Black high. “Baby, give your mama just a little bit of credit.”

It was after eleven at night when the doorbell rang. Tate was in his study going over some of the accounts. Miranda had long since retired to the apartment over the garages that she shared with Jesse.

So Tate got up, turned off the alarm and answered the door himself. It was Molly’s mother, Dixie O’Dare.

“Tate Bravo, I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

Since his study was right off the entry, he ushered her in there. “Sit down.” He gestured to the sitting area.

“Thank you.” Dixie smiled that pretty smile of hers, but didn’t move beyond the doorway. In her mid-forties, she was still a woman who turned heads. She had that fine, sweet smile and the kind of figure that got men thinking things they shouldn’t. “Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’ll stand.”

Tate went over to the liquor cart in the corner. “Drink?”

Molly’s mother licked her full pink lips. She had a woozy look. Tate guessed she’d already had a few. “Better not,” she said. “But thank you.”

“Well, then. What can I do for you…?” Uncertain about how to address her, he let the question trail off.

“Dixie,” she helpfully provided. “You just go ahead and call me Dixie.”

“Dixie,” he repeated, returning her smile, wishing that Molly could be half as agreeable as her mother.

“So, Tate…”

“Yeah?”

“I heard you want to marry my Molly.”

He went around and dropped into his studded leather swivel chair. “That’s right. Molly’s having my child, and I’m going to marry her.”

“Molly says you’re not.”

He sat forward. “Molly is wrong.”

“See?” said Dixie. “See there, that’s your problem. You’re a man used to giving orders and having everyone say yes, sir. Right away, sir. Now, with a lot of women, that kind of he-man approach will work just fine. A lot of women go all weak in the knees when a real man starts bossing them around. But in case maybe you didn’t notice, Molly’s not like a lot of women.”

Good-looking as Dixie was, she was starting to get on his nerves. “Your point?”

“Well, maybe you could try cozying up to her a little.”

He grunted. “Since she’s not letting me near her, cozying up is not looking real likely.”

“Well, and see? That’s just what I meant. How you gonna marry my baby if she won’t let you near her?”

It was a problem. He realized that. “So?” he demanded gruffly.

“So, maybe you oughtta start by making sure you’ll be welcome when you come calling at her house.”

He thought of Molly’s grandmother—on the porch with the shotgun. “I could get killed trying that.”

Dixie giggled. “Well, Tate. That’s why I’m here. I aim to help you out.”

He regarded her with frank suspicion. “How do you plan to do that?”

“You know that expression, ‘salt the old cow to get to the calf’?”

“Dixie, you’re hardly an old cow.”

Dixie glowed with pleasure at the compliment. “Why, thank you, Tate. But I wasn’t referring to myself.”

Tate understood then. He made a sour face. “Dusty? You want me to suck up to Dusty?”

“Sucking up isn’t exactly what I would have called it.”

“But it is what you meant.”

“Oh, now, Tate. It’s not going to kill you.”

“Sucking up? Maybe not. But that crazy mother of yours just might.”

“You only need to know how to make up to her. You need to know her likes and dislikes. Her secret yearnings…”

“Dusty O’Dare has got secret yearnings?” The idea kind of scared him.

“My mother’s tough as a roll of barbed wire, but she is still a woman in her heart.”

“Oh, yeah?” Could have fooled Tate.

“Now, Tate. That there’s a big part of your problem. You need to get yourself in courting mode. And courting mode means you are always polite and respectful when referring to or addressing your darlin’ one or any member of her family.”

Tate wasn’t sure he liked the idea of sucking up to Dusty. But he was getting the picture. “And that’s why you’re here? To help me make nice?”

Dixie got a kind of wistful look. “I could never have another child after Molly. It was a tough birth and…well, as a result, she is my one and only. I have been somewhat…distracted, when it came to being a mother. But like all mothers, I do want to see my only child happy, with a good man who’ll love her till she pleads for mercy and provide her with a platinum no-limit credit card. I think you just might be that man. And I do believe that deep in her heart, Molly would prefer to be married to her baby’s daddy. You say you want that, too.”

“I do want that, Dixie,” Tate said quietly.

The sad look vanished as Dixie smiled her dazzling smile. “Then grab a pen and a full-size piece of paper. This will be a long list….”

The next day, which just happened to be Friday the thirteenth, Molly got a lot more advice at work—and couple of expressions of deep disappointment that she’d gone and crawled into bed with Tate Bravo, of all people.

And like the day before, she kept waiting for Tate to come barreling through the door, demanding that she marry him on the spot. Also like the day before, he never appeared. Maybe, she thought philosophically, as time went by and he didn’t come busting through the door, she would learn to relax a little again—if her customers would ever shut the heck up about him.

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