The Marriage Agenda: The Marriage Conspiracy / The Billionaire's Baby Plan

Joleen, who needed to get to the cleaners and make a quick stop at WalMart before she headed over to one of the major beauty supply houses to pick up a few popular products they had run low on, couldn’t keep herself from making a small, impatient sound in her throat.

Camilla heaved a deep sigh and shook her head at her coffee cup. “I find I don’t quite know how to say this.”

That suits me just fine, Joleen thought. “It’s okay. We can talk later.” She started to stand. “Tonight, after—”

“No, you don’t.” Camilla’s hand closed over her arm. “You are not escapin’ me.”

Joleen stared at her mother’s hand, which was soft and slim, the smooth square-filed nails polished a shimmery bronze. It did not look like the hand of a fifty-year-old woman, not by a long shot. Joleen wished her own hands looked half that good. But Joleen still did hair. And she had no shampoo girl, so she spent a lot of her working life knuckle-deep in lather. Very hard on the hands.

Camilla said. “I have been awake half the night worryin’ over you.”

“Why?”

“Sit back down.”

Joleen dropped into the chair again. “All right, Mama. I’m sitting. Talk.”

“I am just going to ask you directly.”

“I sure wish you would.”

Camilla let go of Joleen’s arm and threw up both hands. “What on God’s green earth has possessed you to think a marriage between you and Dekker is a good idea?”

Joleen felt pure indignation. She decided to let it show. “Mama! I love Dekker. And he loves me.”

Camilla smacked one slim, soft hand on the table and waved the other one in the air. “Yes, and I love your uncle Foley. But I never would marry him.”

“Uncle Foley is your brother, Mama.”

“Exactly. And that’s how I love him. Like a brother. The same way that you love Dekker Smith.”

Oh, this was getting sticky already. As Joleen had known it would, as she’d tried to get Dekker to understand it would.

Half-truths and evasions, she though glumly. Comin’ right up…

“Well?” said her mother on a hard huff of breath.

“I love him,” Joleen said again, and she stared her mother straight in the eye.

Her mother stared right back. “You don’t love him the way a woman loves a man,” she accused. “And he doesn’t have that soul feelin’ for you, either.”

“You do not know that,” Joleen said. “You do not know what we feel.”

“Oh, yes I do. I know my baby. And I know Lorraine’s boy. I also know that you both deserve better than to marry a person who does not set your heart on fire. You both deserve it all. Passion and excitement. And magic. I want those things for you—and I want them for Dekker, too.”

Joleen wrapped her hands around her cup. The warmth felt comforting against her palms. She said honestly, “Both Dekker and I had those things once, Mama. They didn’t last.”

“Bobby Atwood and Stacey?” Her mother made a low, scoffing sound.

Joleen’s indignation level rose again. “Yes. Bobby Atwood. And Stacey. You know how Dekker was about Stacey.”

“There were terrible problems in that marriage, baby.”

“I know that. I am not saying they didn’t have problems. I am only saying he loved her. In a passionate way. A soul way. And Bobby, well, it shames me to have to admit it now, but I was long gone in love with that man.”

“Oh, that is so not true.”

“Mama—”

“You thought you were long gone in love with that man. You wanted to be. You were waiting for your knight in shinin’ armor to thunder in on a fine white horse and sweep you away. You waited a long time. When that young Atwood showed up, with his smooth talk and his fancy car and winnin’ smile, you were like a nice, ripe peach, just ready to drop off the tree. And you did drop. You dropped good and hard. But that was not—”

“Mama—”

“Pardon me. I believe that I was still speaking.”

“Fine. Speak. Finish.”

“What I’m saying is—and you are listening, aren’t you?”

Joleen gritted her teeth. “I am, Mama. I am listening.”

Camilla’s eyebrows had a skeptical lift—but she did continue. “What I’m saying is that what happened with Bobby Atwood was not it—was not love. And Dekker and Stacey, well, that was certainly something, but it wasn’t it, either. Not the real, true, deep lifelong passion I am talking about. Not what I had with your daddy. Not what DeDe has with Wayne.”

“Mama. Some people never find that kind of love.”

“We are not talking about some people. We are talking about you. And Dekker. My first baby. And my best friend’s little boy.”

“Well, maybe you have to stop thinking of us that way—as your baby and Lorraine’s little boy. We are grown people now. We have a right to make our own decisions about life. And about who we will love.”

“I never said that you didn’t. I just don’t like this.” Camilla looked into her cup again—and then sharply up to snare her daughter’s gaze. “Something else is goin’ on here. I know it. I can feel it.”

Joleen kept her face composed—and told some more lies. “Nothing is going on, Mama. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, you do. You know. There is something.…” Camilla pushed her cup to the side and leaned across the table. “Is it…those Atwood people? You went off alone with them, didn’t you, before they left the wedding Saturday? I saw you go inside with them.”

Joleen opened her mouth to let out more lies. And then shut it. Camilla would have to hear the truth about the Atwoods sooner or later.

“Yes,” Joleen said. “They wanted to talk to me.”

“About…?”

Sam was too quiet. Joleen stood.

“What is it now?” muttered her mother. But Camilla had had three children of her own. She nodded. “Go on. Check—and then get right back in here.”

Joleen went through the dining room. She found her little boy sitting on the hooked rug near the big window at the front of the house, playing with the wooden blocks one of the uncles had given him for his first birthday six months before.

Sam looked up. “How,” he said, beaming proudly at the crooked stacks of blocks in front of him.

“Yes,” said Joleen, her chest suddenly tight. “A very fine house.” She would do anything—anything, including telling her dear mama a thousand rotten lies—to keep her boy safe, to be there whenever he needed her. To get to see his face now and then when he smiled like he was smiling now.…

She took in a deep breath to loosen those bands of emotion that had squeezed around her heart. Then she asked slowly, pronouncing each word with care, “Come in the kitchen? With Grandma and me?”

He shook his head and loosed a string of nonsense syllables.

“You mean, you want to stay here?”

“Pway.”

She wanted to scoop him up hard against her heart, to hug him until he squirmed to get down. But no. He was content, sitting on her mama’s rug, playing with his house of blocks. Why ruin that?

“Okay. Be good.”

“I goo.”

Her steps dragging, Joleen returned to the breakfast nook. She slid back into her chair. “He’s fine.”

“All right. What did the Atwoods want to talk with you about?”

Joleen took a fortifying sip of her coffee. And then she told her mother everything that had transpired in her father’s study before the Atwoods took their leave.

When she had finished, Camilla picked up her coffee cup, started to sip, realized it was empty and set it back down—hard. “Oh sweetheart, the nerve of those people.”

“I hear you, Mama.”

“I did not like that Robert Atwood. Right from the first I saw that he would be trouble. Thinks he’s a cut above, doesn’t he? That he’s better than the rest of us. And the woman, Antonia? Well, I’m willin’ to admit I felt sorry for her. Scared of her own shadow, and wearing mauve, of all colors. Much too cool for her. Just faded her right out to nothin’ at all. She needs a bright, warm palette, to bring out that peach tone in her—”

“Mama.”

“Oh, well, all right. I’m rambling and I know it. It’s just, what else can I say, but how dare they?”

“I asked myself that same question.”

Camilla folded those beautiful hands on the tabletop. “I think I am starting to understand it all now. You and Dekker have been scheming. You’ve decided that the two of you getting married is somehow going to help you keep the Atwoods from stealin’ our Sam.”

Joleen gulped. “No, Mama. Of course not. You asked me what happened with them, and I told you. It’s got nothin’ to do with Dekker and me.”

“Oh, sweetheart. You are such a bad liar. You shouldn’t even try it.”

Joleen only wanted to get out of there. “I am marrying Dekker, Mama. That is all there is to it.”

“But you don’t love him—not the way you need to love the man you bind your life with.”

Joleen stood. “I am saying this once more. I want you to listen. I do love Dekker. And Dekker loves me. We are getting married as soon as possible, and we are going to be happy. You just wait and see.”

“But you don’t—”

“Mama. Enough. You have said your piece, and I have heard it. This decision, though, is mine to make.”

Camilla was shaking her head, her mouth all pursed up, brow furrowed. At that moment she looked her age—and more. She said, very softly and with heavy regret, “I know I was never the mother I should have been.”

Joleen glared down at her. “You are my mother. If I was startin’ all over, and God gave me a chance to choose, you are the one I would pick in an instant.”

“Oh, baby…”

“Do not start in cryin’ on me, Mama. I just don’t have the time or the patience for that right now.”

“I only…I wanted so much more for you.”

“Well, this is about what I want. And I want to marry Dekker. I want to make a life with him.” It surprised her, how firm she sounded. How secure in her choice.

On the counter, the coffeemaker made a gurgling sound, and somewhere outside, a leaf blower started up.

Camilla’s tears spilled over, they trailed down her soft cheeks. “Well, I have told you my feelings on this.”

Joleen held her ground. “And I have said what I will do.”

There was a box of tissues, ready and waiting, in the center of the table. Her mother yanked one out. “I love you, baby.”

“And I love you, Mama.”

“And no mistake—” Camilla had to pause, to blow her nose. Then she started again. “No mistake is so big that love can’t find a way to make it right in the end.”

Chapter 7

Joleen fitted in her blood test later that day. The lab said she would have her results by Thursday. That night she and Dekker decided they would marry on Friday afternoon at the Oklahoma County Courthouse.

Joleen called DeDe in Mississippi.

“Oh, I cannot stand it,” DeDe wailed when Joleen shared the news. “You are my sister and Dekker is the only brother I have ever known and if you two are getting married on Friday, Wayne and I are comin’ home right now.”

Dekker got on the line with her and managed to calm her down. He told her they would miss her, but on no account would he allow her to cut her honeymoon short. He finally got her to promise to stay in Mississippi for another week as planned.

Camilla, Niki and Sam would attend the short ceremony. As for the rest of the family, Joleen told them that she loved them all dearly, but she and Dekker could only have so many guests at the courthouse.

“Well then, do not have it at the courthouse, hon,” argued Aunt LeeAnne.

Joleen explained that she wasn’t quite up for planning another big wedding so soon after the one she’d put together for her sister. She said that she and Dekker just wanted to get the formalities over with and start living their lives side by side.

They all said they understood. But they didn’t. Joleen could see it in their eyes.

“We have to do something,” Aunt LeeAnne insisted. “Just a little family get-together when you come home from the courthouse. At least we can have that.”

So it was agreed. After the civil ceremony, the cousins and uncles and aunts would be waiting at Camilla’s. They would have chips and dips and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. They’d bring a few wedding gifts and they’d offer their heartfelt congratulations.

At the courthouse both Niki and Camilla cried a lot. Camilla had no reservations about explaining to Joleen why she was crying.

“Because another of my babies is saying ‘I do.’ Because I know there is more goin’ on here than I have been told about. Because, well, I do feel that I have been cheated of giving you the kind of wedding DeDe had, a real family wedding, which you know I believe every woman deserves…and because I wish my best friend could be here on this day of all days—but I know, if Lorraine were back with us again, she’d just be headin’ off to jail. And that plain breaks my heart.”

By then the whole family had learned the truth about Dekker’s real identity.

And they hadn’t found out quite the way Joleen and Dekker had intended.

* * *

Dekker had left his apartment Tuesday morning to find five reporters lurking outside. They all wanted to interview him, to get the first statements from the long-lost Bravo Baby. Dekker told them to get lost.

He got a call from his brother an hour or so after he chased the reporters away. Jonas told him that the story had broken in Los Angeles that morning. He urged Dekker not to let it bother him. He said it had been bound to leak out sooner or later.

“As a Bravo,” Jonas warned. “You’ll have to get used to being in the spotlight now and then.”

“No, I won’t,” said Dekker.

Jonas laughed and assured Dekker that the whole thing would blow over eventually.

By Wednesday the wire services had gotten hold of it. The tale of how Dekker Smith was really Russell Bravo of the fabulously wealthy southern California Bravos made the second page of the Daily Oklahoman. And everyone in the family had been able to read all about it for themselves.

So part of the reason that Camilla cried through Joleen’s wedding was because she had recently learned that her best friend in the whole world had not been Dekker’s mama, after all, but the accomplice of the evil uncle who had stolen him from his real mother—who, as it turned out, had died just a few short months ago, never having seen her precious second son again.

Niki cried for her own reasons. Because her big sister and her beloved Dek were getting married, and because her mother was crying, and because…well, just because.

Dekker had found the time to go out and buy Joleen a ring. It was so beautiful—two curving rows of diamonds set into the band, surrounding a single large marquise-cut stone. He kissed her after the judge pronounced them man and wife—a light kiss, hardly more than a gentle brushing of his mouth across her own.

Right then her mother and sister burst into renewed sobbing. Joleen and Dekker turned from each other to try to settle them down.

They all went back to Camilla’s house together, in the beautiful new silver-gray Lexus that Dekker had bought the day before. Two cars filled with reporters followed along behind.

“Ignore them,” commanded Dekker, his voice a low growl.

Joleen granted him her most unconcerned smile. “No problem.” And it wasn’t. For her. She was a little worried about her new husband, though. Since Tuesday, news people seemed to be popping up wherever Dekker went. He was getting very tired of it.

“You go on in,” he said when they got to her mother’s. “Give me a minute.”

Joleen put her hand on his sleeve. “What are you going to do?”

“Have a few words with the media.”

“What will you say?”

“That I’d appreciate a little privacy on my wedding day.”

“Don’t you think that it might be better if—”

“Jo. Go in. I won’t be long.”

She could tell by the thrust of that cleft chin of his that it would get her nowhere to keep after him, so she got her son from his car seat and herded her mother and sister toward the front door.

The aunts and uncles and cousins and lots of finger foods were waiting inside. Joleen moved from one set of loving arms to the next, getting kissed and congratulated by one and all.

“Well, don’t you look beautiful,” said Aunt LeeAnne, stepping back to admire Joleen’s ivory-colored street-length silk sheath and the short, fitted jacket that went with it.

Joleen thanked her aunt and kept an eye on the front door until Dekker slipped through it a few minutes later.

“How did it go out there?” she asked him, when she finally got him aside for a moment.

He shrugged. “They said they would leave.”

“They’re gone, then?”

“I have my doubts. They all have this kind of glassy-eyed, hungry stare when they deal with me. To them, I’m not even really human. I’m just a story they’ll do anything to get. Maybe I should have listened to you and left it alone—and don’t give me that I-told-you-so look.”

“I’m sure I do not know what look you are talkin’ about.”

“The one on your face right now.”

She made a show of crossing her eyes—and then grew more serious. “Did you tell them straight out that we just got married?”

“Hell, yes. They followed us from the courthouse, and that leads me to believe they probably already knew—which is just fine. Let Robert Atwood read all about how you’ve married the famous—and rich—Bravo Baby, let him think about the ways it will mess up his plans. Let him—”

“Hey, you two,” called Uncle Hubert from over by the big bowl of sparkling-wine punch that Aunt Catherine had made. “Stop that whispering. Get over here with the rest of us. Time for a little toast…”

“Yes, come over here right now.” Camilla paused to sob and dab at her eyes with a tissue. “We want to wish you both the best of everything.”

* * *

Camilla cried until six-thirty. But then the doorbell rang. It was one of Wayne’s bachelor uncles from the wedding the week before—the one who had stayed so late last Saturday night. The uncle, whose name was Ezra Clay, did not come empty-handed. He had a gift for the newlyweds and a huge bouquet of tiger lilies for the mother of the bride.

At the sight of her admirer, Camilla ran upstairs to freshen her makeup. When she came back down, she took Ezra Clay’s hand and led him to the kitchen. They stayed in there for quite a while. When Joleen went in to hunt down more pretzels, her mother and Wayne’s uncle were standing close together at the counter, a tall crystal vase in front of them. Half the lilies stood in the vase, half lay in wait, bright splashes of sable-spotted gold, on the counter.

Camilla chose a flower from those waiting on the counter, clipped the stem at an angle with her gardening shears, and carefully propped it up in the vase. Then she leaned close to Wayne’s uncle and whispered something.

The uncle laughed, a low, intimate sound. Camilla laughed, too, and leaned close again to whisper some more.

Joleen watched them from the corner of her eye as she got a fresh bag of pretzels from the cupboard by the stove. Ezra Clay could have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty. He had intelligent dark eyes and nice, broad shoulders. He owned a couple of ice-cream store franchises, Joleen thought she remembered Wayne mentioning once.

Could this be the man who would convince her mother to settle down at last?

Sure. And maybe tomorrow the sun would set in the east.

Joleen closed the cupboard door. Whether Ezra Clay lasted in her mother’s affections or not, Joleen was grateful to him. Camilla had not shed a single tear since he’d walked in the front door.

Romance, Joleen thought wryly, did have its uses.

* * *

Dekker, Joleen and Sam left the party at a little after nine. The reporters—who had not gone away when Dekker asked them to—snapped pictures when the newlyweds emerged from the house, their flashes explosions of blinding light in the warm autumn darkness. Then they jumped into their cars, ready to give chase.

Dekker swore under his breath as he swung out of Camilla’s driveway. “They said they’d leave us alone for tonight, damn it.”

“Well, they are not doing it.” Joleen fastened her seat belt. “Take your own advice and ignore them.”

Dekker muttered a few swear words under his breath. Joleen pretended not to hear. She smiled and waved at the family members who had gathered on the porch to watch them drive away.

“And how the hell am I supposed to see to drive?” Dekker grumbled as they took off down the street. He had to squint through the words Just Married, which Bud and Burly had scrawled on the windshield in shaving cream. There Goes the Bride was written on the rear window. And a bouncing row of tin cans clattered along behind them.

Joleen brushed the birdseed from her hair. “It’s three blocks to my place. Take it slow and we’ll make it okay.” They’d chosen to stay at Joleen’s house for the wedding night. First thing in the morning they were leaving for Los Angeles.

As soon as they turned the corner and all the waving relatives disappeared from sight, Dekker swung over and stopped at the curb.

“What now?” Joleen demanded, as one of the reporters’ cars slid in behind them and the other rolled past the Lexus and nosed in along the curb just ahead.

Dekker whipped out his Swiss Army knife—the one with three blades, a corkscrew and just about every other tool known to man tucked inside. “Be right back.”

“Dekker—”

He was out of the car before she could tell him to stay where he was. She watched him circle around to the rear bumper, where he crouched, disappearing from her line of sight. When he stood again, he had the cans, still hanging by their strings.

He came back to the front of the car and presented them to her. “Here. Do something with these.”

Like what? she thought, but decided not to ask. She took them and set them on the floor next to her door. They rattled together as Dekker swung away from the curb. He passed the car in front before the reporter at the wheel had the wherewithal to shift into drive.

“I thought you said you couldn’t see,” Joleen reminded him as the powerful car picked up speed.

“I’m managing.”

“Lord, I hope so.”

“And this baby handles like a dream.”

“Oh. Good news to all of us, I am sure.…”

Sam laughed in pure glee from the backseat. He let out a string of almost-words, followed by a rousing, “Vroom-vroom-vroom!”

Joleen clutched the armrest and thought of all the times she’d suggested her friend ought to get himself a new car. And now he had done it. She could almost wish he hadn’t.

But then again, his old Road Runner, which still sat beneath the carport outside his apartment building, boasted 383 cubes on a V-8 block—a fact he mentioned often and with considerable pride. If he’d been driving it right now, they’d be going at the same speeds—and the ride would have been a whole lot rougher.

They barreled around a corner, tin cans rolling at her feet. “Dekker…”

He wasn’t listening. “Very fine,” he murmured, “like a knife through warm butter…”

In seconds they reached another corner and spun around it. Joleen shoved the cans out of the way, braced her feet more firmly and told herself she ought to be grateful he hadn’t bought that Ferrari he’d mentioned Wednesday.

“Maybe later,” he’d decided, after considering the Ferrari. “First, I want to get us a nice family car.”

The Lexus was a four-door. In Dekker’s mind, that made it a family car, though clearly, what it had under the hood would stack up against that old Road Runner of his any day of the week.

They took two more corners at speeds faster than Joleen wanted to think about. Then at last Dekker applied the brakes. “Well?” he asked.

She glanced behind them. The dark street was deserted. “You lost them.”

“Vroom-vroom-vroom,” said Sam.

Dekker readjusted his rearview mirror. “You haven’t seen any of them hanging around your place, right?”

“No, I have not.”

“Good. Then maybe they haven’t figured out where you live yet. Which means we’ll be left alone tonight. And tomorrow, we are outta here.”