Heartsong (Singing to the Heart Book 2) (13 page)

How was it possible to want a man as much as she did Gabe and not even like him? She’d never had many boyfriends and never had casual sex. They’d begun dating when she was seventeen and he was eighteen. Before him, she hadn’t been with anyone. After him, she’d only had two boyfriends. Both relationships had burned hot and quickly fizzled, but at least she’d liked those men. She was still friends with both of them.

His gaze snagged hers. “I hoped after we’re done here, we can go to Brownwood and do some furniture shopping for the house.”

She glanced at her mother. Momma was laughing with a group of women surrounding her. Micki left her alone more than she liked already.

Gabe must have seen her concern and added, “We can bring her with us.”

Micki shook her head and looked back at Gabe. “No. I’ll talk to Mary. See if she’ll watch over Momma for a little while.” The women were close friends. Mary loved caring for her mother, although the older woman hated calling her time with Momma anything other than visits. Micki suspected Mary missed her old friend. “But we can’t stay out for too long.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to. We’ll just furnish the rooms we need.” He looked her over, making the tugging pull in her low belly turn into an ache. “Will you need to get a dress?”

“Can’t we just get a license and get this thing over with? I don’t want to wear a dress.”

He smiled and touched the brim of his hat when an elderly couple passed by. Leaning close, his breath tickled her cheek as he said in a low voice, “I don’t want it to be too fancy of an event, but if we aren’t careful, people will speculate it’s a shotgun wedding.”

Micki jerked at his words, and her desire evaporated. “The last thing I want is people thinking I’m pregnant. But I do see the irony, don’t you? The last time we were engaged, I was pregnant.”

Gabe stared at her from under the brim of his hat with deep, dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring...”

She swallowed and glanced around the milling neighbors and friends. “I grieved the loss of our baby, Gabe. And I did it alone.” She felt a hollow ache as she remembered the baby she’d lost fewer than two weeks before her wedding day seven years ago. Micki met his gaze and shrugged. “Maybe my miscarrying when I did was a godsend.”

His eyes narrowed and he stiffened. “How can you think something like that?”

“I didn’t plan to tell you I was pregnant until our wedding night--which never happened, because you left me.”

Every blasé word she spoke was a stab in her heart. She’d loved her baby, despite losing it a week after discovering she was pregnant. The only person who’d known had been Frankie until the night she miscarried. She’d woken with cramps and bleeding. Gabe found her crying in the bathroom of their small bunkhouse apartment. When she’d explained she miscarried their baby, Gabe had rushed her to the hospital. “You knew how much I was dealing with.” Micki forced her voice to remain low to prevent others from overhearing. “Momma fell and broke her hip. I was planning our wedding on a shoestring budget because you refused to take a dime more than your pitiful wage from your dad. I had no money of my own and didn’t have anyone to lean on. The last thing I needed after you left was a baby to raise on my own--and I would have. I would’ve walked through fire to keep Andrea Rose away from my child.”

His hand at her back curled, and she felt the strength in his fingers. The shadow of his hat brim made his cold eyes and the hard line of his jaw all the more foreboding. “If you hadn’t miscarried, the moment I found out you were pregnant I would’ve been back. You may have broken off our engagement, but I would have been a father to my baby.”

A couple walked past them, grinning at them. She forced a gooey, love-happy smile and leaned into Gabe as if to whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Instead, she said, “And I would have told you the same thing I told my own so-called father: go straight to hell.”

He stepped away and his jaw twitched, but before he could unleash the fury she saw brewing in him, the preacher stopped in front of them.

With a huge grin on his round face, Reverend Watson spread his hands. “God bless you both. I hear congratulations are in order for you two. I’m always excited to see true love prevail.”

* * * *

“Why are you doing this?” Cash asked behind her.

“I’ll meet you at the pasture.” Pasting on a smile, Micki dismissed the two cowboys; then she faced Cash standing in the middle of the driveway.

Waiting until the men were out of earshot, she propped her hands on her hips. She didn’t want to lie to Cash, but telling him the truth wasn’t an option. He closed the distance between them and stopped only inches from her.

“Micki, don’t marry Gabe.”

Swallowing her regret in lying, she shook her head. “Gabe and I want to be together. We still love each other.”

When the desire for the statement to be true hit her, Micki shifted her feet, hugged herself, and looked out over the pasture behind the barn. She couldn’t want this marriage to be real, and she had to remember that it wasn’t. Despite all the outward affections she and Gabe had to share in public, he could not be trusted. Not with her heart, anyway.

“I don’t buy it.” He laid his hand on her upper arm. “You told me just a couple weeks ago you couldn’t stand him. If he loved you so much, why was he caught in a lip lock with a stripper?”

“I forgave him for that. He didn’t know I still loved him.” Every word hurt as she spoke them, but she kept her voice level and her face void of any hint of the ache in her chest.

“Right. Did you forgive him for cheating on you the first time and leaving you?”

“Yes.” She about choked on the lie.

“Like hell. You can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to me.” He shook his head in frustration, but then his eyes widened and he stepped back. “That’s it! You think if you get married to him, you’ll have a better chance at getting Jesse.”

She swung her gaze to his. “Look. Gabe and I came to an understanding. That’s all I’m going to say. We’re getting married and I really don’t care what people think the reason for it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish showing the new ranch hands around, and then Gabe and I have a date with a caterer. See you around, Cash.”

She turned and walked to her workhorse, hating the shattered look on Cash’s face.

Standing next to the fireplace in the ranch house, Gabe twirled the whiskey around in the highball glass and stared at the tabloid in his other hand. A grainy picture of him and Michaela, which had been taken during their shopping trip two weeks ago, was in the corner of the cover page. The byline below it read, “Country hunk Gabe McKenna set to marry pregnant girlfriend
.
”

He tossed the paper onto the end table beside the couch as the night he’d found Michaela sitting on the floor beside the toilet rushed forward in his mind. The front of her T-shirt had been stained crimson from blood.

“God, Michaela!” He knelt in front of her and pushed her tangled blond hair out of her tear-streaked face. “Are you hurt, baby?”

“Oh, Gabe.” She sobbed and went into his arms. “I think I lost him.”

He held her tight, but then lessened his grip, afraid he’d hurt her. “Lost him? Baby, you’re bleeding. What’s going on?”

She pulled away to meet his gaze with red-rimmed eyes. “The baby, Gabe. I’m pregnant. But--but I think I lost him.” She hiccupped and hugged him close, burying her face into his neck. “I was scared to tell you. We have so much going on. I loved him so much.”

He stood, pulling her up with him and swung her into his arms. “C’mon. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

Focused on the memory, he didn’t hear Reese enter the living room.

“As your future divorce lawyer, I might suggest you reconsider the wedding altogether if you’re already breaking out the whiskey and drinking alone.”

Gabe turned away from the fireplace. He tossed back the shot, wincing at the burn as he swallowed the liquor and waited for the heat to spread through him. “Have you ever wondered about the
what ifs
in your life?”

Reese snorted and poured himself a glass of the Jack Daniels from the stocked temporary bar set up in the corner for the reception later. “Hell, who hasn’t?”

Gabe glanced at the man dressed in an Armani suit with a white western shirt. Lizard skin cowboy boots and a bolo tie completed Reese’s getup.

“Are you coming to your senses?” The lawyer sat down on a plush, overstuffed chair in a red, green, and tan plaid Gabe hated but Michaela loved. “I still think this whole charade is nuts. Even with the pre-nup, the soon-to-be Mrs. McKenna could toast your balls if she wanted to. The pre-nup has no cap on what she could demand from you for child support for Jesse if you do adopt him. Not to mention alimony.”

“You already know I don’t care about the money. Besides, the trick will be getting her to take the child support I intend to pay for Jesse. She’s too damned proud and hates my guts too much to want anything from me.” Gabe pointed to the chair Reese sat on. “Case in point. I wanted all top-of-the-line leather for this room. She didn’t want me forking out the money since I won’t be living here. She would’ve preferred me not furnishing the house at all.”

Gabe begrudgingly admitted the chair went well with the room’s colors and with the tan leather couch. He moved away from the fireplace and sat down on the sofa. He remembered how he and Michaela fought over everything, from colors to the style of the furniture he bought for the house; however, the sticking point had always been cost. Gabe had been willing to buy the best and most expensive. Micki wanted something more affordable for her. Since the cheaper furniture was in stock and available for immediate delivery, he ended up compromising.

The excursion to three furniture stores in Brownwood had shown Gabe the stubborn practicality he found so damned infuriating about Michaela and that he’d fallen in love with as a wide-eyed kid some fifteen years ago.

But he wasn’t a kid anymore, and he had no intention of falling for Michaela again.

Reese laughed and leaned back into the chair. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do. Now, let it go.” Gabe picked up the tabloid from the end table. Holding it across the coffee table, he said, “Have you seen this?”

Reese took the paper and read the article. “The old pregnancy angle for the rushed wedding. I like it.”

“I don’t.” Gabe stood and headed for the bar, needing another drink. “It’s the last thing I want anyone to think.”

Reese moved to stand with Gabe at the bar and took the glass out of his hand before he could drink it. “You’ve had enough. If the world, and more importantly Judge Anderson, thinks there’s a baby, it makes the swiftness of your wedding more realistic.”

Gabe glared at his friend. “That might be true, but it also could backfire. The judge could decide that Michaela and I don’t love each other and that we married because of the pregnancy.”

He picked up the shot of whiskey from the bar where Reese had set it and downed it before the lawyer could take the glass from him again. Gabe turned away and crossed to the mantle, which held photos of Jesse with Sam and Frankie and a few of him and Michaela that Frankie had kept. He picked up one of him and Michaela, taken after her high school graduation.

Would he ever forget the rush of emotions on the night she’d lost the baby? The possibility of fatherhood had scared him shitless when Michaela told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t been ready to be a father yet. As he’d held her while she’d shaken with her tears, he’d wished she hadn’t lost it.

Michaela had loved the tiny baby. Up until that night, he’d never seen her cry. He sat the frame back on the mantle and faced Reese. “Michaela and I lost a baby.”

“I’m sorry. When?”

Gabe tugged on the sleeves of his jacket. “She miscarried about two weeks before the date of our last wedding. She hadn’t been very far along, but she loved the baby and it hurt her when she lost it.”

I grieved the loss of our baby, Gabe. And I did it alone.

“Was that why you called off the wedding?”

Glancing back at the photo, he shook his head. “I didn’t call off the wedding. She did.” Had she only been marrying him for the baby the last time? She easily agreed to this current craziness for the chance to raise Jesse.

“I thought you were never getting married again?”

Gabe and Reese turned at the sound of the deep voice by the arched door. Gabe smiled and headed for his best friend, and they shook hands. He and country singer Seth Kendall became friends six years ago when Gabe had been Seth’s opening act. They had more in common than most people could guess at, which went far beyond them both being from Texas. “Seth, thanks for coming at such short notice,” Gabe said.

Seth smiled and cuffed him on the shoulder. “You think I’d miss your wedding? I’m honored you asked me to return the favor and be your best man.” Gabe had been Seth’s best man last year when he married the mother of his teenage daughter. He then turned and held his hand out to Reese. “Good to see you again, Reese. You still making cheating spouses pay for their stupidity?”

Reese laughed. “You better believe it.”

A commotion at the front door had Gabe turning as Jesse burst into the living room.

“Gabe!” His little brother lurched himself into Gabe’s open arms. “I can’t believe you and Aunt Micki are getting married.”

Gabe smiled as he held the boy. “I know. Funny how things worked out. But your aunt and I were together long before you were even born, squirt. So, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.”

“Convenient is what I’d call it.”

Gabe looked over Jesse’s dark head of curly hair to Lemont standing in the doorway, a smug snicker on his lined face. His eyes as cold as Gabe had ever seen them. He ambled around the room, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket and nodding. “I have to say, Gabriel, you surprised me. I had no idea you were behind the corporation that bought this place.” He stopped before Gabe and snorted. “Hell, I should’ve done the same thing; then no one would’ve known it was me making the bid.”