The Bride Said, 'Surprise!'

“The lavender exterior paint and the deep-purple trim aren’t exactly guy colors. Not to mention the clashing dark-green shutters and snowy-white door,” Kelsey began critically, watching as Dani’s husband, Beau, and Kelsey’s business partner, Brady Anderson, went over to introduce themselves and lend a hand to Luke and the moving crew.

“That house has the most garish interior paint I have ever seen. I know, because I saw it before I bought my place,” Dani said as she sliced ham for sandwiches.

“So Luke Carrington has his work cut out for him. I’m sure he can manage. To get inspired, all he has to do is look at my place,” Meg said as Kelsey began to help with the salad making. Maybe the redecorating would take up all his spare time and energy.

“Or you,” Dani teased.

Meg rolled her eyes at Dani. Luke had desired her once, but that didn’t mean it would ever happen again. “Just because you and Jenna are happily married and head-over-heels-in-love with your husbands does not mean I have romance on my mind.”

“Maybe you should,” Dani said, covering the filled platter with plastic wrap and sliding it back into the refrigerator. “After all, Luke’s a doctor. You’re a nurse. You both work at Laramie Community Hospital. You both are single and both have kids.”

“You know what I find interesting?” Kelsey interrupted as she washed the lettuce. “That the new doctor in town would have the same name as that buddy of yours from your grad school days in Chicago. Remember how much you used to talk about that guy on the phone to us? It was always Luke this and Luke that.”

Leave it to baby sister Kelsey, the most fickle of all the Lockhart women, to remember a detail like that, Meg thought. And then bring it up at the worst possible time. When she was still feeling vulnerable from Luke’s visit.

Dani’s amber eyes brightened. “That is a coincidence.”

Meg knew she might as well be honest—her sisters would find out soon enough that Luke and she had known each other before. If not from John and Lilah McCabe, who were responsible for bringing Luke to Laramie, then from Luke himself. “It’s the same guy.”

“How did he end up in Laramie?” Kelsey asked as she put the washed lettuce into the salad spinner and gave it a whirl.

Wary of divulging her emotions, Meg gave more than usual concentration to the cheese sauce she was making. “Lilah told me he met John at a family medicine conference on rural medicine in New Mexico last spring,” she replied in the most casual voice she could manage. “John knew he was going to retire this summer, and he encouraged Luke, who was looking for a way to come back to the state where he grew up, to apply for the position at the hospital here.”

Looking every bit the native Texas cowgirl she was, in jeans, chambray shirt and boots, Kelsey leaned against the kitchen counter and munched on a carrot. “You never did tell us why you had that falling out with Luke after Mom and Dad died.”

Meg did her best to curtail a blush as she drained the cooked macaroni through the colander in the sink. “It wasn’t a falling out.”

“Seemed like one to me,” Dani noted as she began slicing red cabbage into thin strips. “You wouldn’t take his calls or read his letters.”

Meg put the drained macaroni into the buttered casserole and poured the cheese sauce over that. “I was just upset that summer, that’s all.”

“Meaning it was all your fault and not Luke’s?” Dani asked, suddenly acting more counselor to the hopelessly romantic and perennially unattached than the film critic she was. “Or simply that you still don’t want to talk about it?”

Leave it to Dani, a person who knew a good story when she found one, to zero in on the problem. Her shoulders stiff with building tension, Meg sprinkled the dish with bread crumbs and slid the casserole into the oven to bake. “I am not going to discuss this with you two.”

Dani and Kelsey exchanged mischievous looks. “The question is, did you discuss it with Luke?” Kelsey pressed.

“Discuss what with Luke?” Jenna asked curiously, coming in the door and glowing like the very recent bride she was.

Kelsey quickly brought their other sister up to speed on what was happening. “Meg has just informed us that the new doctor at the hospital—who just happens to have also bought the house next door—is the same Luke she knew in Chicago years ago.”

Looking lovely in a fashionable dress of her own design, Jenna quirked a red-gold brow. “Interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” Dani agreed as she put the finishing touches on the salad.

Knowing she had to nip this meddling in the bud before it got any worse, Meg made eye contact with each and every one of her three sisters. “Okay, ladies. Lay off.”

Kelsey grinned and took a long swig of the bottled water she’d brought in with her. “Ohh. Me thinks that man has gotten under her skin again.”

Meg did her best to contain a telltale flush. “Luke has done nothing of the sort,” she said firmly, looking around in vain for something else to do to prepare for the welcome-to-the-neighborhood luncheon she was having for her new neighbors. “If anyone has gotten under my skin, it is you all.”

“You sure?” Kelsey continued to tease playfully.

“What went on between us was a long time ago,” Meg said firmly, as she began counting out napkins.

“And yet, looking at the expression on your face just now,” Jenna interrupted, setting out the old-fashioned Texas sheet cake she’d brought from Isabelle’s bakery, “I’d swear it feels like it happened to you today.”

Meg counted out silverware. “Luke Carrington and I are going to be working together. We’ve got kids the same age. We are living next door to each other.”

“So?” All three of her sisters asked in unison, studying her.

“So I can’t change the reasons for the tension between us years ago,” Meg said, her exasperation growing by leaps and bounds with every new question.

“Meaning what?” Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “That you forgive him for whatever he did?”

Meg drew a deep, bolstering breath. Forgiveness had nothing to do with it. It was self-preservation, maintaining the serenity of their lives, that was key. “Meaning I am going to let bygones be just that and treat Luke just like any other neighbor of mine. No better, no worse.” And certainly not any more intimately, Meg promised herself determinedly. Because this time she and Luke had not just themselves to think of, but also all four of their children.

SOON AFTER, John and Lilah McCabe arrived with Luke Carrington’s three little girls in tow. Like stairsteps, they were the image of their mother, Gwyneth, with blond hair, golden-brown eyes and pretty, delicate features. All three had the same haircut—silky, chin-length bobs with bangs—and were dressed in pastel shorts and matching sleeveless tops, tennis shoes and socks. As John and Lilah brought them over to Meg’s to introduce them to the children gathered on the lawn, watching the unloading of the moving van, Meg went out to join them.

“And this is Jeremy’s mom, Meg Lockhart,” Lilah said, concluding the introductions.

“Hello,” Susie, the oldest, said shyly.

“Can Jeremy and the other kids play with us sometimes at our house?” Becca asked.

“Absolutely,” Meg smiled, finding it impossible not to warm to the three adorable little girls. “And you can come over here, too, as often as you’d like.”

Amy, the youngest, smiled at Meg and the other kids, then tugged on Lilah’s hand. “Where’s my daddy?”

At the mention of the word, Jeremy frowned.

“Right there.” Lilah pointed and lifted her hand in a wave, motioning Luke over.

Jeremy gave Meg a petulant look, abruptly taking up the dispute they’d been having off and on all summer. He propped his hands on his sturdy little hips and scowled at Meg. “How come everybody else gets to know who their dad is, even if he isn’t hardly ever there no more, like with Teddy, Tyler and Trevor, and I don’t?”

Tyler, Teddy and Trevor looked at Meg, waited expectantly for her reply. As did everyone else, including Lilah McCabe, all three of Meg’s sisters and all three of Luke Carrington’s little girls. “Honey,” Meg felt herself beginning to blush self-consciously despite her desire to stay cool, calm and collected under fire, “I think we should discuss this later.”

“Why?” Jeremy shot back belligerently, his patience with Meg clearly at an end. “You always say the same thing.” He turned to Luke and the other men who had just joined the group. “Do you know who my daddy is?” Jeremy asked Luke. Ignoring the collective gasp of all the adults present, Jeremy pressed him contentiously, “Because I don’t think my mommy knows.”

Meg blushed all the more.

“Of course she does,” Luke said firmly. Then looked at Meg with all the intimacy of a once-dear friend, letting her know with a single glance that he agreed with everyone else and thought she wasn’t being fair to anyone, by keeping Jeremy’s paternity a secret.

Unfortunately, Meg knew it wasn’t that simple. Jeremy didn’t just want to find out who his father was. He wanted a daddy in his life and Meg’s. He wanted the kind of two-parent family other kids had. And while there was always a slim chance that might happen in a sort of marriage-of-convenience way, were Meg to try to get Jeremy’s father to take responsibility for their son at this point. There was also the equally strong possibility that Jeremy’s father would—once the first flush of excitement wore off—be interested in a much less taxing arrangement than what Jeremy had in mind.

Meg had seen it happen plenty of times in her years as a nurse. Fathers who were thrilled and attentive one year, too busy or just plain not interested the next and practically estranged the following year. When the romance of it all wore off, it was always the kids who suffered, who felt somehow they were to blame for the father walking away from the child they’d never planned on and the woman they had never really loved in the first place.

Meg would rather have her son do without than have his hopes raised and then crushed, his heart broken, as hers had been. She didn’t want him to think he had magically found the love he had been looking for all his life, only to see it slip away the next. As it was, Jeremy had her to rely on. She would never make him feel he was a burden or be too busy for him, never lose interest as time went on and walk away from him.