"Oh, no. You shouldn't have." Matty was certain the guilt in her anguished whisper would give the whole charade away.
But judging from Taylor's wide smile, she took it for another emotion. "We wanted to."
Matty twisted to look up at Dave. "You shouldn't have let them, when..."
He gave her a squeeze to halt her words, accompanied by a philosophical shrug. "There's no stopping some folks when it comes to doing something they want to do. Not without making more of a fuss than I thought you'd want."
"But, you thought–"
He gave his head a slight warning shake, then shrugged. "I'd have handled it."
As their eyes held, she read what he didn't put into words. If she'd backed out at the courthouse as he'd expected her to, he would have come here and taken the brunt of the questions and confusion and gossip.
"Oh, look at that," cooed Joyce. "Just like an old married couple, telling each other secrets without saying a word. But, c'mon, now, you two, we've got some celebrating to do. First off, we'll have you cut the cake and get some pictures of you feeding each other a slice. Then we'll have the dancing."
"Cake? Oh, I couldn't eat a bite after our lunch."
"Sure you can. What you need is a little champagne to settle your stomach. Hugh! Open the champagne so we can toast the happy couple."
Matty was kissed on the cheek, shook by the hand, instructed to smile, handed champagne glasses, ordered to look at Dave and smile, given a knife, posed behind the cake, offered congratulations, told to open her mouth for cake, prompted yet again to smile and called on to kiss Dave for "just one more picture"–until her head spun.
"Okay, Dave, give Matty another bite of cake, I was out of film last time," instructed a voice from the audience.
"Oh, God," she murmured.
"Like bringing coals to Newcastle, isn't it, Matty."
Feeling a glare would not be the best expression to have captured by the cameras clicking with unnerving frequency, Matty satisfied herself with a low-voiced, "Very funny, Currick. But I swear, if you try to feed me one more thing–"
He popped not only a morsel of white cake with a fragment of icing on it, but the tip of his index finger into her mouth. She captured it, fully intending to bite down. But somehow, as he stepped closer, with his other hand at the small of her back, and looked directly into her eyes, she couldn't make her teeth clamp down. At least she had the satisfaction of seeing the amusement in his eyes evaporate as she drew in more of the sweetness on his finger with her tongue and lips before she released it.
"Great! Great!" came the voice of their latest director. "Now another kiss, and not a peck like last time, you two, we want a real kiss."
"Glad to oblige." Dave's voice seemed to rumble through her nerve endings.
Surely he wouldn't kiss her the way he had in the judge's chambers. He'd been trying to make a point then. Something to do with male pride. That was the admittedly vague conclusion she'd reached during the uneasy drive to the restaurant for lunch.
As for her response to and–admit it, Matty–participation in that kiss, that had happened because she hadn't expected it, hadn't prepared for it. Besides, she was tired. Not much sleep the past few nights, and a lot of worry. And on top of all that, there were those lingering responses from when she'd been a girl and Dave had been the only male in the universe to kiss her romantically.
This time would be different.
It was.
And just as unexpected.
His face lowered to hers. She closed her eyes and braced herself, but he didn't claim her, he didn't set a rhythm that reminded her of long-ago passions. Instead, he kissed her softly. Sliding his lips over hers gently, kissing the corner of her mouth, then her top lip, then the bottom. She tasted the sweetness of cake and the tartness of champagne on him, and wanted more. He found an opening–or she gave him one–and he explored her mouth as if he hadn't been the first one to ever kiss her this way. With a slow, soft tenderness that brought an ache to her throat, as well as parts of her body well below her throat.
And when he ended the kiss before anyone could consider it an unseemly demonstration in the church basement, he touched his lips to her nose, then her forehead, and tucked her head under his chin, so she didn't have to look at the friends and neighbors making approving sounds around them.
"Glad to oblige," he repeated, though this time in such a low voice that only she could hear it.
For an instant, Matty panicked.
She pulled back enough to get a clear look at his face.
"Everything okay, Matty?"
He winked as he asked it, and she felt a wave of weakness rush over her. Relief. Had to be.
She straightened and found a smile. "Fine. Just fine."
And after all that, they made her dance.
At least it was fairly quiet in the middle of the floor, with only Dave for company. The fact that he had his arms around her meant she didn't have to do all the work of standing up straight.
"I think this is some form of torture society's come up with," she muttered. "It's a rite of passage to see if you really have the endurance to be married."
Dave interrupted his humming along with the song emanating from Hugh's sound system. "Quit your complaining. Look at all the presents you're getting."
"That's another thing. Dave–" She took a hold of both his shoulders to look up at him earnestly. "–We can't take those things. It's not right."
"We don't have much choice."
"But–"
"Not if you want to make this look real. But that doesn't mean we have to keep them. We'll keep a list of who gave what and after...well, later, we can donate the things to charity in the names of the givers. How's that?"
"I guess that's fair."
She settled back into the usual dancing position and he resumed humming as they moved around the floor.
"Dave? This song is familiar. What is it?"
"It should be familiar, I told Hugh it's our song."
"Our song? We never had a song, even when there was a we to have a song."
"We do now. It's called A Fine Romance. Mom used to sing it."
"Oh, one of your mother's songs–must be something Fred Astaire sang."
"Most likely."
"Remember on rainy days how she used to play us that music over and over, and act out the whole movie and make us and Lisa dance around with her?"
"Um-hmm."
Letting herself relax more fully into Dave's hold, Matty smiled. She used to enjoy those rainy days, fired by Donna Currick's enthusiasm for old-fashioned musicals. Whenever any had appeared on television, it had been an event in the Currick household, with popcorn made well ahead of time and no interruptions allowed. When a particularly romantic dance ended, she could remember Mrs. Currick's soft, satisfied sigh, then the look she invariably turned toward her husband.
When Matty had gotten a little older she had wondered if Donna Currick ever regretted giving up her dreams of starring in Broadway musicals to settle down with her rancher husband in Clark County, Wyoming. When Matty had gotten older still, she'd remembered those looks, recognized what they meant and decided the answer was no.
"I don't remember the words to this one. Do you?"
Rather than answer, Dave picked up the lyrics, as if he'd been silently singing the gently sarcastic phrases about what a fine romance this was that had no kisses and no embraces, Matty didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It certainly fit the bill as "their song."
The music ended and she stepped out of his arms.
His eyes glinted with mischief and something else, not so easily identified. "Appropriate for us, don't you think?"
"You want to know what I think?" Ignoring that unidentified element, she played strictly to the mischief. "I think there is one thing absolutely certain after hearing this song. You did not inherit your mother's singing voice."
Dave's laughter drew smiles from all around the room.
"Sure am glad I got that
dance on the camcorder," gloated Joyce. "This will be something you can look back on ten years from now and remember exactly how you felt today."
Matty met Dave's look for an instant, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was–that bit of video could be around five, ten, even twenty times longer than their marriage lasted.
"Hey, Dave," came the voice of a neighboring rancher. "I wanted to ask you about that bull Terry Gatchell's selling. I don't mean to be taking you away from your bride for more than a second, whatever Betty says, but you saw it last spring, didn't you? I'm thinking of buying it and I wanted to know..."
As Fred Montress droned on, Dave quirked a fatalistic look at Matty. They both knew once Fred got into a discussion of breeding stock, it would be a spell before he'd let Dave get free.
"Sorry, Matty," he murmured as Fred wrapped a beefy arm around his shoulders and led him away.
"It's okay, I'll just...I'll..." Feeling oddly bereft alone in the middle of the dance floor, she scanned the gathering, passing over Joyce's beaming face and the beckoning finger of Mrs. Van Hopft, her second-grade teacher, before spotting Lisa in the far corner, and making a beeline for her.
"Lisa, I swear, if anyone gives me one more bite of cake," she started as she plopped down in the empty chair beside Dave's younger sister, "or one more sip of champagne, I am going to positively–" A drop of moisture splatted a spreading blot on Lisa's navy skirt. A tear? Lisa had been so completely self-contained since her return to Knighton that Matty almost didn't believe her own eyes. "–explode. Lisa, are you all right?"
"Haven't you ever seen anyone cry at a wedding before?" she responded blinking hard.
Matty refrained from pointing out that, first, she hadn't heard of this anyone crying under any circumstances for several years. And, second, that this was the reception, not the wedding.
Lisa wiped at the moisture in the corner of her eyes. "I was watching you two dance and thinking about when we were kids."
She launched into a series of reminisces about how inseparable Matty and Dave had been growing up.
"It's like you knew even then that Dave was the right man for you. A good man."
Lisa's quiet words were like hammer blows. Because he hadn't turned out to be the right man at all, and all this was a pose, a masquerade, a ruse.
Oh, God, what have I done?
Matty felt as if her head were inside one of those containers that whirled around to dry lettuce. She knew how the lettuce felt after a few too many rotations.
"And here he comes." Lisa nodded to behind Matty. She turned and saw Dave walking toward them. "I'll say one thing," Lisa added with deep affection, "he is a good man, that husband of yours."
That husband of yours.
My husband. Husband! The word slapped her, then swamped her, like storm-whipped waves. Dave was her husband.
David Edward Currick, do you take this woman... I do.
Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! I'm married. I married Dave. Dave Currick. Married!
Dave stood before her with his hand extended. His mouth quirked into a grin.
"C'mon, Mrs. Currick." There was something about the line from the corner of his jaw, down his neck and disappearing under the collar of his shirt that made her catch her breath. Something of power that she was certain hadn't been there before. Something that said he was no longer a boy.
She'd married this...this man. Not the boy she'd once known better even than her own heart, but a man who was a mystery to her. Six years had made him a stranger.
What have I done? Oh, Lord, what have I done?
His grin faded and something else came into his eyes. "Let's go home."
* * * *
Maybe it was natural for the bride to turn so pale that her eyes looked huge and terrified when she first heard herself addressed as Mrs.
And maybe not, Dave thought grimly as he drove through the darkness toward the ranch. Maybe Matty hadn't thought about the Slash-C being her home now. For someone as attached to her land, as wrapped up with the Flying W as she was, that might come as a shock.
She'd made it through the wedding ceremony and the wedding lunch and even the hours of the reception, so what was left to be afraid of?
Surely she wasn't afraid of him. Wasn't afraid of their...wedding night.
It wasn't even going to be a true wedding night. She had to know he would live up to his bargain. But even if it were going to be a true wedding night...
Matty, this might hurt you.
You'd never hurt me, Dave.
It's not that I'd want to, sweetheart, but what I read says a girl's first time–
I know. I read those books, too. But I know something no book does. I know you could never hurt me.
I'll try not to, but...I'll go slow. Matty, don't! If you do that–
It's all right, Dave. I want this. I want you... You won't hurt me.
But he had. That first time for both of them, when she'd smiled through her tears, and he'd thought his heart might explode with what he felt for her.
And he'd hurt her again later, when he'd said they should part and there'd been no smile and hardly any tears. Just a shocked, void look of despair.
That was the last he'd seen of her for more than six years except a couple glimpses during her flying visits to her grandmother, followed by standing across Grams' grave from the moving statue that had hardly resembled his Matty at all. And then not even glimpses of her. He'd heard about a couple more visits she'd made to the Flying W, but apparently she'd become better at avoiding him.
Until Henry Brennan died suddenly, and Matty had returned to Wyoming.
He glanced at his passenger, sitting so still beside him as they turned into Slash-C land.
You'd never hurt me, Dave.
She wasn't saying that this time, not with words and not with attitude. She no longer had that faith in him.
Still, when she'd run into trouble, she'd turned to him. He was still unclear on what the trouble was. But no matter what, he'd get her out of it.
I'll do my best not to hurt you, Matty, but we both know now that nobody can live up to that kind of faith all the time.
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time she stood on the lit porch of the Slash-C home ranch while Dave unlocked the door, Matty had quelled the panic she'd experienced at the moment of understanding that to the world, Dave Currick was, indeed, her husband.
At least she'd pushed it to a back room of her mind.
All she wanted now was to take this darned skirt off, wash her face, brush her teeth and sleep for about a thousand hours.
The lock clicked open, and Dave turned to her with a small smile. "Suppose we should play it safe and follow all the traditions."
She hadn't sorted out what that meant when he reached toward her with both arms. She stepped back so fast she only saved herself from falling off the porch by grabbing the railing.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"For God's sake, Matty, I wasn't going to attack you. I was going to carry you over the threshold."
Her stomach flipped the way it had when he'd picked her up at the church, and panic broke down the door of its back room with one mighty thud. No way was she going to let Dave put his arms around her again. No way was she going to let him hold her against his chest, so her arms naturally went around his neck and his face was so close that his mouth...
"Don't be an idiot!" she snapped. To him or herself? "We've done enough play-acting already today. There's no sense pretending when it's the two of us."
He pushed open the door, and gestured, wide and mocking, for her to precede him into the house.
"No pretending then. Don't worry, Matty, I'm real clear this isn't supposed to be a real marriage. And that it's no love match."
The sting to his voice made her face hot as she marched purposefully past him.
"I'm glad you do. It's strictly a business proposition."
"Ah, yes, a business proposition," he said in that cool, amuse
d way that could make her see red faster than a regiment of Santa Clauses. He followed her in and closed the door behind him with enough force that she flinched. "Would you like to tell me now what exactly that business is? And what the real reason is behind this abrupt urge to marry me?"
Her legs demonstrated a sudden tendency to tremble, as if she'd been on horseback for too many hours. In defiance of their weakness, she marched down the front hall of the rambling house to the archway that led to the family room.
But when she got there, she had to prop herself up against the back of the couch that faced the stone fireplace to keep from crumbling to the hardwood floor.
Dave didn't seem to notice. He stopped in the archway and crossed his arms over his chest. Maybe it was the pose, but she didn't think she'd ever seen him look more intimidating. The soft glow from the lamp on the hall table backlit his large frame. A light left on in the kitchen cut across his features in stark relief and black shadows.
"Well?"
For an instant, she glimpsed in his eyes what looked to be pain and something a voice in the back of her head called longing. When the expression disappeared, she almost reached out to try to grab it back. How stupid was that? Sure as hell, she was wrong. And, even surer, she didn't want those emotions to exist.
She just wanted to save her ranch.
She drew in a breath, and pushed out words.
"I needed a Clark County address. Legally, and fast. It's the only way I can get an Irrigation Commission grant. With most of the Flying W in Lewis County, my percentage of Clark County acreage isn't enough to qualify–two percentage points short, but they said no exceptions. And without that money for new irrigation equipment, the Flying W..." she couldn't say the words. "We need that money. The way it is now, I couldn't even sell it for enough to cover the debts."
He stared at her with no expression, and she kept explaining, telling him about the difference it made being in Clark County over being in Lewis County, because Lewis didn't qualify for the grants. About Taylor's efforts to get an exception, about thinking her last chance was gone, about coming across a phrase about "official residency" and thinking maybe, just maybe, she didn't have to give up hope. Of running into him like fate had put him outside Taylor's office door on that day at that time, with her having that very specific need to keep her ranch going. A need he could fill. Layer after layer of words.