The Marrying Man (13 page)

"Oh, the poor man," Jenny cooed. "How terrible for him."

"The kids have been catering to him like he was a deposed king," Cat said in a surly tone of voice. She heard the back door swing open then slam shut. "He's probably sent one of them out for champagne."

"I'm going up there to talk to him," Max said, starting toward the staircase. "All you two need is a push in the right direction."

"Max!" Cat grabbed him by the back of his Armani jacket. "Talk to McKendrick and you die."

"Don't pay any attention to her, Maxie," Jenny said. "One day they'll thank us."

Max broke free and bounded up the stairs with Cat and Jenny and baby Dawn in hot pursuit.

"Mom!" Jack yelled from downstairs.

"Not now, Jack!"

"Mo-o-m! It's important."

"In a minute," she hollered back, wondering if she could make a running leap and stop Max before he reached the guest room door.

Who would've figured her intellectual agent was a closet sprinter?

"Wake up, McKendrick!" Max roared as he raced down the hallway, just beyond Cat's reach. "I'm here to show you the error of your ways."

"I'm going to kill you, Max," Cat muttered. "So help me, I'm--"

"Mommy!" Sarah burst from her room and threw herself in Cat's arms. "Riley's gone and he didn't even say goodbye!"

Chapter
Eight

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Jenny asked Cat the next afternoon. "We're driving out to the Christmas tree farm."

Cat made a Scrooge-like face. "Not this time."

"You should come with us," Jenny urged. "You can't sit around moping all day."

"I'm not moping."

"You miss him, don't you?"

"Absolutely not!"

"You can tell me the truth, honey. Love is nothing to be ashamed of."

"Go chop down a Christmas tree, Jenny, and leave me alone." She intended to take a long hot bubble bath and try to forget the world existed.

"Riley will come back," Jenny said, ignoring her warning scowl. "He's crazy about you." She spread her arms wide. "He's crazy about all of us."

The minivan's horn bleated.

"Your future husband is waiting," Cat said, glancing around at the three huge bouquets Max had had delivered to Jenny that morning. "Maybe he needs to rob another florist."

"Oh, Cat..."

"Don't mind me," Cat said. "I'm not feeling terribly romantic today. You and Max go and have a good time. If he can survive an afternoon with six kids in tow, marriage should be a piece of cake."

"It's good practice." Jenny dimpled. "We intend to have five brothers and sisters for Dawn as fast as we can."

Cat thought of double the chaos and shuddered. "Please tell me you'll find your own house to live in."

"Call Riley," Jenny said, edging toward the door. "What can it hurt?"

"I can't call him," Cat said as the door closed behind her friend. The man had no office, no home, nothing but a series of e-mail addresses and cellular phone numbers. Besides which she'd rather die than let the rotten coward know her heart was breaking.

She watched from the window as the minivan backed down the driveway. Normally she loved the rare times when she had the house to herself--probably because it happened so rarely. Today she felt as if the silence was mocking her, reminding her of how empty the house was without the people she loved in it.

You wouldn't think a weekend could change a person's life. A handful of days and your whole world was turned upside down and there was nothing you could do to make it right again.

Whatever had happened between her and Riley McKendrick had been an aberration, some strange chemical reaction that defied reason. And it had ended as abruptly as it had begun, without even the chance to say goodbye.

To her dismay the kids felt it too. They'd moped around all day, acting like they actually wanted to clean their rooms and fold their underwear. She'd blessed Jenny and Max into eternity when they suggested driving out to visit the Christmas tree farm.

It wasn't love, she thought as she turned away from the window. Just the sound of the word was laughable. She refused to believe an entire family could fall in love with someone just like that. Maybe Riley was some kind of cowboy wizard who'd cast a spell on the lot of them, making them believe they couldn't be happy again unless he was part of their family.

What a fool she'd been to be swayed by the loneliness she'd seen in his eyes. What an idiot to think for one second that a man like McKendrick could ever be happy in the middle of her big, boisterous family. He was a loner. He traveled through life with as little baggage as possible. Men like Riley usually ran at the first sign of big-time commitment.

Which, all things considered, was exactly what he did when he disappeared down the back stairs and vanished without a trace.

The thing to do was stop thinking about him. Hadn't he said it himself, that he wasn't a marrying man and never would be? Only a madwoman would willingly give her heart to a man like that. And no mother worth her salt would risk her children's hearts.

Better to drown her sorrows in Mr. Bubbles than spend another second thinking about what might have been.

***

"Are you sure, sir?" The florist looked askance at the tally. "You've bought every rose in the store."

"And all of the daisies, gardenias, and tulips," Riley said, handing over his credit card. "Do you have any orchids or some of those big fluffy yellow things?"

"No orchids, sir, and we're out of mums." The florist ran the card through the cash register. "Now where shall we send these?"

"Nowhere," said Riley. "I'm taking them."

"Sir, you can't possibly take all of these flowers. You'd need a van."

"I have a van," said Riley. And it was already half-filled with flowers for the woman he loved.

***

Cat had just settled down beneath the bubbles when she heard a car crunching up the driveway. Actually it sounded bigger than a car, more like a van or delivery truck. Jenny and company should have been happily chopping down Christmas trees by now, doing their utmost to wreak havoc on the environment.

Fed Ex, she wondered. Maybe UPS. Well, whatever they were delivering, it could wait. Her bubble bath couldn't. Some things in this world were sacred and, for Cat, Mr.Bubbles was one of them.

Besides, was there a better place to brood about the fact that Riley McKendrick was an arrogant, obnoxious stinker of a man who didn't even have the guts to admit he didn't want to spend the rest of his life alone.

"Wimp," she said out loud. Bathroom acoustics were wonderful for singing old Beach Boys songs and talking to yourself. "Coward."

"What was that?"

She jumped at the sound of the cowboy's voice. The acoustics were great but they weren't that great. They couldn't make you hear things that weren't there. She slid back down into the bubbles as a red rose whizzed through the door and landed on the edge of the tub.

Cat stared at it the way she stared at spiders that had the nerve to invade her domain.

"Jenny?" she called out. "I don't think this is very funny. If you--"

Another rose flew through the door followed by a lush white gardenia, two cherry red tulips, and a trio of daisies that landed on top of her head.

"I'm trying to take a bath in here! You can just take your boyfriend's flowers and--"

"And what?"

She couldn't see him for the masses of flowers that filled the doorway. American Beauty red, pale pink, Texas yellow roses. And masses of daisies. How could he have known daisies were her favorite flower? Gardenias with their beautiful, haunting scent. Tulips out of season--

Good grief. She was naked.

"Go away!" The bubbles were bursting, the towels were out of reach, and he showed no sign of paying one bit of attention to her demand.

"Not this time," said the cowboy, peering around the huge armful of blossoms. "I did that once and it was the biggest mistake of my life."

"I'm in the bathtub, you fool!"

He didn't hesitate. He didn't bat an eye. He just kept on walking right toward the tub. "Don't I have the right to privacy in my own house?"
You don't want privacy, Zaslow, you know you don't want anything but him...

"We'll talk privacy later," he said in the sexy drawl that inched her body temperature up a degree. "Right now I want to talk marriage."

She gasped then started to laugh as he tossed yellow tulips and red roses, daisies and gardenias into the tub. And then she stopped breathing when he plucked a white gardenia from the bubbles and placed it in the cleavage between her breasts. "Have you lost your mind?"

"No," he said. "I just found it."

"You can't walk out on a person one day then walk back into her life the next."

"I didn't walk out, Zaslow, I ran. I've never been in love before and it scared the hell out of me."

"Oh, cowboy..."

And that's when Riley knew he'd finally come home.

It was all there in that one word, everything he wanted to know, everything he needed to hear. The power and the wonder of love, the miracle of family life, right there for the asking.

He dropped to one knee next to the tub and took her wet hand in his. "Damn it, Zaslow, It all comes down to this: I don't want to live my life without you in it."

She met his eyes. He did his best not to peer beneath the vanishing bubbles. "You said you traveled light, cowboy, and I'm the mother of five."

"I know," he said, grinning as she rearranged rose petals around some very interesting terrain. "I got lucky."

"Family life isn't for cowards. I love you, Riley McKendrick, but I want forever from you or I don't want anything at all."

Flowers and pretty words didn't mean a damn in the scheme of things. He couldn't play it safe, he couldn't hold back. He had to love her the way she needed to be loved, the way she deserved to be loved, or he didn't really love her at all.

Her beautiful blue eyes were wet with tears. "Five kids, fourteen pets, and a lifetime commitment. Most men would run for their lives."

"No more running," he said. "No more traveling light. I want it all, Zaslow, everything you are, everything you ever will be. Kids, pets, housekeeper, Max, that damn guest room, the way you keep your filing in a laundry basket and your laundry in the filing cabinet--"

"Yes."

It took a second for the word to register. "Yes?"

"Yes!"

He stripped off his leather jacket and tossed it to the floor.

"Riley," Cat said with a soft laugh, "what are you doing?"

He started to undo the buttons on his shirt.

"You aren't...I mean, you can't..."

"Sure I can."

"What if the kids come home?"

"They won't. They'll be out for hours."