Harlequin Special Edition November 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: The Maverick's Thanksgiving Baby\A Celebration Christmas\Dr. Daddy's Perfect Christmas (8 page)

“But maybe you'll be at the next meeting,” he said solicitously, because the head of an international company understood that it was easier to stay on top when you had people below to keep you there.

“Maybe I will,” she said, but she didn't think it was likely.

She knew that her work mattered, but she was only beginning to realize that she wanted more than that—she wanted to matter. And she would never be anything more than one of those interchangeable gears if she stayed at Alliston & Blake.

She went back to her office and printed her resignation letter.

Chapter Eight

M
aggie wasn't usually an impulsive person, but less than twenty-four hours after her brief conversation with Perry Edler, she was back in Rust Creek Falls to meet with Ben Dalton.

“We do a little bit of everything here,” the attorney said, in response to her question about his areas of practice. “Although most of it is wills, real estate transactions, the occasional divorce, traffic offenses, minor criminal stuff. What did you do in LA?”

“Mostly corporate law for the past few years, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions,” she admitted. “I've already looked into taking the Montana Bar, and I know it's only offered twice a year—in Helena in February or Missoula in July. I was hoping to write in February, but I missed the registration deadline.”

“If you think you can be ready to write in February, I might be able to get your name on the list.”

“I think I'd do better writing it in February,” she admitted. “Because I'm expecting a baby in April.”

“Are you planning to get married before then?”

The unexpected question made her pause, because she couldn't imagine any interviewer in LA ever daring to ask any such thing.

“It's a possibility,” she told him.

“Because folks around here are pretty conservative,” Ben warned. “And likely to be suspicious enough of a big-city attorney setting up practice in their backyard. But if you were married to a local boy—assuming the baby's father is a local boy—that would go a long way with the people in this town.”

And she knew that if he did offer her a position, she'd have to remember that things were done a little bit differently here. With that thought in mind, she nodded. “One of the reasons I wanted to move to Rust Creek Falls was to be closer to the baby's father, so that we can share the parenting.”

“A smart decision,” Ben told her. “My wife chose to be a stay-at-home mother, and I'm grateful our six kids had the benefit of having her around full-time, but she'll be the first to admit that every aspect of parenting is made easier by sharing it with someone.”

He talked about his wife with an easy affection that spoke of their thirty-seven years and the experience of raising half a dozen kids together. He had a copy of their wedding picture in a gold frame on his desk and told Maggie it was a lucky man who could, after almost four decades, honestly say he loved his wife even more now than the day he married her.

Rust Creek Falls might have been a small town, but there were still a lot of people that Maggie had yet to meet and a lot of familial connections she hadn't begun to make. For example, it wasn't until Ben pulled out his cell phone to show off the latest snapshots of his brand-new grandson that she learned his daughter Paige was married to Sutter Traub, the owner of Traub Stables—Jesse's boss. They'd recently had a baby boy—Carter Benjamin Traub—and the proud grandpa had more than a hundred photos of the little guy on his cell phone.

The baby was adorable, and just looking at the pictures made Maggie long for the day when her baby would finally be in her arms. Except when she remembered her first interaction with Jesse's ten-month-old-niece—then her anticipation was tempered by a healthy dose of apprehension.

* * *

“He offered me a job,” Maggie told Lissa, when she got back to her cousin's house after the interview.

“Of course he did,” Lissa said smugly. “He's never going to find a more qualified candidate than you to add to his practice.”

“I'm not qualified yet,” she reminded her cousin. “I still have to pass the Montana Bar.”

Lissa waved a hand dismissively. “I'm more interested in the details about your wedding, such as what your matron of honor will be wearing.”

Maggie shook her head. “The only thing I accepted today was a job, not a marriage proposal.”

“But you
are
going to marry Jesse, aren't you?”

“I don't know,” she admitted.

“So let me see if I'm following this,” Lissa said. “You felt an instant connection to Jesse and fell into bed together. It was the best sex of your life and you hoped it was the start of a real relationship, then you found out you were having his baby and he proposed, but you don't know if you should marry him?”

Maggie nodded. “That about sums it up.”

“I need a little help with the ‘why' part,” her cousin admitted.

“Why what?”

“Why you don't want to marry him.”

“Because I love him.”

Lissa took her hands. “Sweetie, you're not just my cousin but one of my best friends in the world, but I have to admit that right now, I have serious concerns about your sanity.”

Maggie managed a smile even as her eyes filled with tears. “I want him to love me, too.”

“You don't think he does?”

“I know he doesn't.” And she told Lissa what Jesse had said about common goals being more important to the success of a marriage than love.

“Clearly Jesse Crawford is an idiot. But,” Lissa continued, when Maggie opened her mouth to protest, “since he's the idiot you love, we're going to have to come up with a plan.”

“A plan?”

“To make sure he falls in love with you, too.”

“I don't think that's something you can plan,” Maggie said.

Her cousin smiled. “A smart woman has a plan for everything.”

* * *

Gage and Lissa decided to go into Kalispell for dinner. They invited Maggie to go with them, but she declined. She needed some time to think about her future—and she needed to call Jesse. Before she had a chance to do so, there was a knock on the door, and when she opened it, he was there.

“Jesse—hi.” Her instinctive pleasure at seeing him was mixed with guilt as she realized that she hadn't told him about her plans to come to Rust Creek Falls this week. “I guess news travels fast in a small town.”

He nodded. “Of course, I didn't believe it when Nina told me she overheard Lani Dalton tell Melba Strickland that her father was interviewing ‘that city lawyer.' But then Will Baker told me that he saw you and Ben having lunch at the Ace in the Hole.”

“Who needs Twitter when you've got the Rust Creek Falls grapevine?”

“Why are you here?” Jesse asked. “I thought you had some big project to work on with your boss at Alliston & Blake.”

She stepped away from the door so that he could enter. “Why don't you come in so we can talk about it?”

He followed her into the kitchen, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair before settling into it.

“Do you want anything to drink?”

He shook his head. “No, I'm fine, thanks.”

She turned on the kettle to make herself a cup of peppermint tea, more because she wanted something to do than because she wanted the tea.

“I handed in my resignation at Alliston & Blake yesterday.”

He opened his mouth, closed it again, as if he wasn't quite sure what to say, how to respond to her news. “Okay—I'll admit I didn't see that one coming.”

She shrugged. “It was time. Maybe past time. Technically, I'm supposed to give two weeks' notice, but since I haven't used all of my vacation this year—actually, I haven't used all of it in any of the past few years—I'm officially on vacation right now.”

“And your lunch with Ben today?” he prompted.

“He offered me a job.” She didn't tell him that she'd accepted, because she didn't want him to immediately rush to the same conclusion that Lissa had done.

“You're thinking about moving to Rust Creek Falls?”

She nodded. “I'm not sure of any of the other details yet, but I'm sure that I want you to be part of our baby's life.” She poured the boiling water over the tea bag inside her cup, then carried it to the table and sat down across from him. “You went away to school, right?”

“Montana State University in Bozeman.”

“When you graduated, did you ever think about exploring options anywhere else?”

He shook his head. “Nowhere else is home.”

She couldn't help but smile at his conviction. “It must be nice, to know without a doubt that you are exactly where you belong.”

“You don't feel like that in LA?”

“I wouldn't be making this move if I did,” she told him.

“Are you going to marry me?”

She hesitated. “I still think marriage is a little extreme.”

“And yet people have been doing it for thousands of years.”

She smiled. “Yes, and since it's the twenty-first century, our child is unlikely to be ostracized by society if his or her parents aren't married.”

“Archaic attitudes are still pervasive in society,” he said, in an echo of Ben's comments earlier that day.

“And more so in Montana than California,” she acknowledged.

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed.

“Despite that, there are aspects of this town that really appeal to me, too.”

“Such as?”

“The teacher-to-student ratio in the schools. It's widely theorized that students in smaller classes learn better. The public high school I went to had two thousand students. The secondary school here has a population that isn't even one-tenth of that.”

“And only one teacher.”

She laughed, because she was almost 100 percent certain he was joking. “And I like the sense of community,” she said. “Everywhere you go, you cross paths with someone you know.”

“I don't always consider that a plus,” he admitted.

“It is,” she insisted. “You might not always agree with your friends and neighbors, but you know you can count on them.

“Lissa told me what it was like, after the floods last year. How the residents rallied to help one another. Even the Crawfords and the Traubs worked together.”

“That's true.”

“You don't see a lot of that in LA. I'm not saying that neighbors don't ever help neighbors, but it's not the usual mindset. It's a town built on glitz and glamour and climbing over other people to get to the top.”

“Why would you ever want to leave such a place?”

She smiled at his dry tone. “I also like the idea of a job with more regular hours, so that I'd have more time to spend with my baby.”

“And your husband.”

She shook her head. “You're like a wave crashing against a rock, determined to erode my resistance.”

“Is it working?”

“It might be,” she acknowledged. “And if I did decide to marry you, then what would you do?”

“Call the preacher to book a date for the wedding before you changed your mind,” he replied without hesitation.

“The wedding is the easy part—it's the marriage I'm worried about.”

“I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't worry,” he said. “Because I think you're right—if we want our marriage to succeed, we're both going to have to work at it. But the fact that you're having my baby means that we both have a vested interest in its success, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to give our child the happy and stable family that he—or she—deserves.”

“Then I guess, since it seems we both want the same thing, you should call the preacher.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

He whooped and lifted her off her feet, spinning her around. And the sheer joy of being in his arms and sharing his joy convinced Maggie that she'd made the right decision.

She still had some concerns—aside from agreeing to marry a man who didn't love her, there was the uncertainty about whether or not she would be able to make the transition to life in the country. But if Lissa could do it—if her cousin could make the change from Manhattan to Montana—then Maggie was confident she could adjust, too.

But Lissa had worked her butt off to prove herself to the people of Rust Creek Falls after the flood the previous year. On behalf of Bootstraps, a New York–based charitable organization, she'd rallied volunteers, coordinated their schedules and duties, and essentially gone door-to-door assisting families in need and helping repair damage. Along the way she'd fallen in love with the highly respected sheriff, which had helped the townspeople fall in love with her. Even so, Gage's mother had expressed concern when her son had got involved with Lissa. Apparently the local residents had some pretty strong opinions about “city people” and not necessarily good ones.

And then Maggie had swept into town from Los Angeles, and what had she done? She'd helped get Arthur Swinton out of jail—and while his illegal activities had targeted the residents of Thunder Canyon, the people of Rust Creek Falls weren't unaware of what he'd done. As if representing the convict wasn't bad enough, she'd seduced Jesse Crawford and got pregnant in order to trap him into marriage.

Of course, that wasn't at all how things had really happened, but she didn't doubt that at least some of the locals would view the situation in exactly that way.

“At the risk of you changing your mind before I've even put a ring on your finger, I have to ask—do you think you'll miss the hustle and bustle of LA?”

“It's not as if I'm never going back there,” she pointed out. “I do still have family in California.”

“How are they going to feel about you moving so far away?”

“My parents have always encouraged me to follow my own path.”

“Even if that path leads you to a small town in the middle of nowhere?”

“Are you trying to convince me to stay or go?”

“I just want to be sure you know what you're getting into,” he told her. “I couldn't imagine living anywhere else, but I know the open space and isolation aren't for everyone. Winters, in particular, can be harsh, especially for someone who is accustomed to having all the amenities of the big city within walking distance.”

“So who was she?”

“Who was who?”