Ready for Marriage?: The Marriage Ultimatum / Laying His Claim / The Bride Tamer

Derek nodded. ‘‘I don’t know what I’d do without her.’’ Then he grinned, remembering how Kristin had shaken him up in the exam room. ‘‘But she sure does come up with some mighty strange schemes.’’

Faye smiled. She’d worked for Kristin’s father, ‘‘Doc’’ Gordon, before Derek took over the practice and she’d known Kristin since she had been a young child. ‘‘Let me guess. She wants to start flying lessons.’’

‘‘Nope.’’

‘‘Join the police academy?’’

Derek chuckled and shook his head.

‘‘Take an Alaskan wilderness trek?’’

‘‘Not even close. She thinks I should marry her.’’

To his surprise, Faye didn’t give an immediate belly laugh as he’d expected. ‘‘Hmm,’’ was all she said. The matter-of-fact way she’d accepted the statement shook him more than he liked.

‘‘What does ‘hmm’ mean?’’

Faye shrugged. ‘‘It’s a pretty good idea, if you ask me.’’

‘‘Are you kidding?’’ He stopped dead. ‘‘She’s way too young for me.’’

‘‘You’re thirty-four years old.’’ Faye was over fifty and she only shook her head. ‘‘That’s young. And Kristin was twenty-five last week. You’re not even a decade apart.’’

He stared at her, feeling ridiculously betrayed. He’d been sure Faye would laugh and agree with him about Kristin’s harebrained idea. ‘‘It’s a nutty idea, just like most of her other schemes.’’

She ignored his warning tone. ‘‘Mollie needs a mother. Who better than the woman who’s cared for her since she was born? And you need a wife, but just anybody won’t do. You need somebody who’s as bullheaded as you, somebody who will bark back when you get difficult—’’

‘‘Kristin is hardly a woman.’’ He knew his face mirrored the irritation he was feeling.

Faye hooted. ‘‘Give me a break, Derek. She ain’t a man and she’s way too old to be a teenager!’’

‘‘That may be, but she’s not marriage material.’’ His tone was curt as he turned away and continued down the hall before she could see the red flush he was pretty sure was climbing his face. Faye must be crazy. He had no intention of ever marrying again. Why should he? His life was just fine the way it was—as fine as it ever could be without Deb. No one could replace her in his heart.

Besides, Deb hadn’t been bullheaded and they’d never had a shouting match in the entire ten years of their marriage. She was nothing like Kristin, a whirlwind of opinionated energy. No, no one could ever be the same as his sweet, gentle Deb.

She’d been warm and loving, filling the world around her with her own special brand of quiet peace until the cancer had extinguished her life and destroyed his. If it hadn’t been for Mollie, their precious gift, thankfully untouched by the illness that ravaged her mother, he’d have laid down and died with Deb.

The thought of his bouncy baby girl soothed the deep sorrow that still filled him at the thought of living a lifetime without Deb. He was darn lucky to have such a handy arrangement with Kris. Mollie couldn’t be in better hands.

Hands. Recalling the chart he still held, he remembered it was Friday and he had patients waiting. He wanted to be finished by noon so he could spend the afternoon doing well-checks on new arrivals at the Appalachian Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit shelter Kristin’s father had founded a few years before his death. Forcing himself to dismiss thoughts of Kristin, he went on down the hall to talk about Mutley.

But that evening, as he said farewell to the volunteers at the animal sanctuary’s on-site clinic, Kristin’s words were still replaying themselves in his ears. He hadn’t been able to think of anything else today. Every time he’d surfaced from whatever procedure he was concentrating on, he heard her again. I think we should get married.

Crazy! He felt a sensation oddly akin to panic clutch at his chest as he parked in his driveway and walked up the front walk of his home. It was a beautiful old brick manor house in the small town of Quartz Forge, just minutes from the Michaux Forest and the Appalachian Trail. Kristin had shared it with her father until his sudden death from a heart attack nearly eight years ago. Just like Mollie, her own mother had passed away when she was an infant. After Paul Gordon had died, Kristin had claimed the place was too big for just her, so he’d bought it from her at generous fair-market value for the family he and Deb anticipated would fill it one day. Kristin had protested the amount, but he’d been firm. It wasn’t as if he’d ever miss that amount of money, although Kristin didn’t know that. No one in Quartz Forge knew the extent of his personal fortune and he was happy to keep it that way.

His personal fortune. The realization that he was a wealthy man—no, make that a filthy-rich man—still didn’t seem real. Thanks to his brother’s savvy dealings, the ten million he’d started with had increased significantly just in the fifteen years he’d had it. Maybe, he thought, he just didn’t want it to be real. Because if it hadn’t happened, his parents would still be alive and enjoying their first and only grandchild.

He still could barely think of them. In one of the most improbable scenarios ever, his parents had been swimming while on a second honeymoon in the Caribbean when they had been struck by a young drunk speedboat driver while Derek and his brother Damon were in high school. It turned out their killer was a Saudi prince. The young man’s father, furious at his son’s reckless behavior, settled a multimillion-dollar sum on the two Mahoney brothers and nullified the prince’s position as his heir, elevating another of his sons instead. While it hadn’t brought back his parents and it wasn’t justice as Americans knew it, Derek imagined the punishment was far more effective in the long run than the suspended jail sentence the young man had received.

The heavy inner door opened while he was mounting the steps, interrupting his morose thoughts. Mollie appeared behind the screen, waving wildly. A moment later, Kristin appeared behind her. She glanced at him, unsmiling, and then stepped back, eyes averted, as he opened the door and walked inside.

‘‘My daddy! My daddy!’’ Mollie chattered happily about her day as he swung her up into his arms for a hug. An instant later she was squirming to be set down, babbling something about Play-Doh that she apparently wanted him to see. As she raced out of the front hallway, he risked a glance at Kristin.

‘‘Looks like you two had a fun afternoon. How long did she nap today?’’

‘‘Two hours.’’ Kristin’s voice was so carefully neutral that he could tell without a doubt she was still angry. She was normally the most expressive person he knew, her green eyes telegraphing joy or amusement or outrage or whatever it was she was feeling. ‘‘She woke up about four.’’

He checked the hallway. Mollie still hadn’t reappeared. ‘‘Um, Kris, about what you said this morning?’’

She didn’t speak, only tilted her head and lifted her eyebrows in cool query.

‘‘It’s just not that easy.’’ She was studying a spot just beyond his left shoulder and he had a shockingly strong impulse to grab her and shake her until she looked at him. ‘‘People don’t just get married because it’s convenient, or—or because it would solve a few logistical problems. You’re a great baby-sitter and you know I’ll never be able to thank you enough for the way you’ve stepped in to help me raise Mollie, but—’’ he made a helpless gesture ‘‘—that’s no reason to try to force us into becoming a family.’’

There was a long silence in the hallway and he could hear his own awkward words echoing around them. Finally, when she still didn’t respond, he demanded, ‘‘Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’’

‘‘Perfectly.’’ Her voice was chilly. ‘‘You want to monopolize my life and my youth because it’s a convenient arrangement for you.’’

He was shocked. ‘‘That’s not true!’’ Was it?

‘‘Look, Derek.’’ Kristin’s face took on the mutinous expression he knew from experience meant that he was going to have to use every trick in the book to change her opinion. Her tone went from cool to heated. ‘‘This isn’t fair to me or to Molly. She’s growing far too dependent on me. You’re setting yourself up for trouble when you do get married again some day. She’ll have a terrible time acclimating to a new mother.’’

‘‘Dependent how?’’ The tone in her voice made him uneasy and he ignored the rest of her words because he had no idea how to respond. Why did he have to get married again? He was perfectly happy the way he was.

Or at least he had been. He wasn’t sure where this was going but he was fairly sure he wasn’t going to like where it ended.

‘‘She’s been calling me Mommy. Not often, but sometimes it just slips out. Given the amount of time we’re together, it’s probably natural—and that’s what I wanted to talk about.’’ She took a deep breath and her voice quavered. ‘‘I think you should find a new baby-sitter for Mollie.’’

He was stunned. No, not stunned. Sledgehammer-in-the-forehead totally shocked. He couldn’t even formulate an answer. At that moment, Mollie came racing toward him again, demanding he see her artwork.

‘‘There’s a roast in the oven,’’ Kristin said, ‘‘with carrots and potatoes. Mollie’s had plenty of fruit and vegetables today so she could have some ice cream for dessert.’’

‘‘You’re not staying?’’ Kristin nearly always ate with them on weekday evenings.

‘‘No.’’ She turned away and took her jacket from the knob of the hall closet. ‘‘I’ve got some things to do this evening.’’

Darn Derek anyway!

The following afternoon, Kristin scowled at the columns of figures before her, but she couldn’t concentrate on the quarterly taxes she should be completing for a local artist. Derek still thought of her as a giddy teenager, she could tell. Why couldn’t he see how much she had changed and matured? He trusted her to raise his daughter, but he couldn’t believe she was grown-up.

Well, that was going to change. She was tired of being good old helpful Kristin, part of the woodwork. Deb had died more than two years ago.

Sadness hovered, threatening to spirit away her righteous annoyance. She’d loved Deb like a sister. And had Deb lived, Kristin would never have acknowledged her own feelings for Derek as anything more than an adolescent crush. But she wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was a woman. A woman who loved him deeply.

And he’d made it very clear today that he wasn’t the least bit interested in changing the way he viewed her.

She sighed. Was it so wrong of her to want a family of her own and a love for the rest of her life? She was a good mother to Mollie and she knew the little girl loved her. But that wasn’t enough.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, stubbornly denying tears. She was too practical to spend the rest of her life wishing for the moon. She was twenty-five years old, and she’d barely even given other men a second glance. All her life, she’d never been seriously attracted to anyone else…because she compared them all to Derek? There had been guys in college who had asked her out, but she hadn’t been interested in developing any relationships. She’d had one sexual encounter so tepid it barely ranked as such.