“Yes, you will.” He smoothed her hair. “Now get dressed. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved!”
“Come to think of it, so am I,” she said, blinking. “Gene, we never had supper! Not to mention breakfast or lunch!”
He chuckled. “We didn’t, did we?”
“No wonder we’re hungry!”
“Amen. So get moving, woman.”
She got dressed, with his dubious assistance, which took twice as long. They had a leisurely supper and then went out to see Old Faithful erupt. Later they drove up to the mud volcano, past the fishing bridge, and sat beside a little stream that cut through towering lodgepole pines with the jagged Rocky Mountains rising majestically in the distance and Yellowstone Lake in the other direction.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he said when they were back in the hotel room, curled up together in bed.
“So it is,” she replied.
He sighed softly and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. “They have church services nearby,” he said. “I asked. Suppose we go?”
Her breath caught. She sat up, looking at him in the light from outside the room. “Do you mean it? You really want to?”
“I mean it,” he said quietly.
She had to fight tears. “Oh, Gene,” she whispered, because she knew what a giant step it was for him to make.
He brushed away the moistness from her eyes. “I love you,” he said. “From now on, we go together—wherever we go.”
“Yes.” She laughed, so full of happiness that it was all but overflowing. “Oh, yes!”
He pulled her close and rested his cheek on her soft hair. Minutes later, he heard her breathing change as she fell asleep. He watched her sleeping face with quiet wonder for a few minutes before he pulled the covers over them and settled down beside her, with her cheek resting on his broad, warm shoulder.
Outside, a bird was making sofÁt night noises, and his eyes closed as he relaxed into the mattress. He’d been looking for a place in life, somewhere he belonged, somewhere he fit. Now he’d found it. He fit very nicely into Allison’s warm, soft arms—and even better in her gentle heart. She made him complete. He closed his eyes with a slow smile. He’d have to remember to tell her that in the morning.
The Wedding in White
For Irene Sullivan, my friend
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter One
“I’ll never get married!” Vivian wailed. “He won’t let me have Whit here at all. I only wanted him to come for supper, and now I have to call him and say it’s off! Mack’s just hateful!”
“There, there,” Natalie Brock soothed, hugging the younger girl. “He’s not hateful. He just doesn’t understand how you feel about Whit. And you have to remember, he’s been totally responsible for you since you were fifteen.”
“But he’s my brother, not my father,” came the sniffling reply. Vivian dashed tears off on the back of her hand. “I’m twenty-two,” she added in a plaintive tone. “He can’t tell me what to do anymore, anyway!”
“He can, on Medicine Ridge Ranch,” Natalie reminded her wryly. Medicine Ridge Ranch was the largest spread in this part of Montana—even the town was named after it. “He’s the big boss.”
“Humph!” Vivian dabbed at her red eyes with a handkerchief. “Only because Daddy left it to him.”
“That isn’t quite true,” came the amused rejoinder. “Your father left him a ranch that was almost bankrupt, on land the bank was trying to repossess.” She waved her hand around the expensive Victorian furnishings of the living room. “All this came from his hard work, not a will.”
“And so whatever McKinzey Donald Killain wants, he gets,” Vivian raged.
It was odd to hear him called by his complete name. For years, everyone around Medicine Ridge, Montana, which had grown up around the Killain ranch, had called him Mack. It was an abbreviation of his first name, which few of his childhood friends could pronounce.
“He only wants you to be happy,” Natalie said softly, kissing the flushed cheek of the blond girl. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Would you?” Bright blue eyes looked up hopefully.
“I will.”
“You’re just the nicest friend anybody ever had, Nat,” Vivian said fervently. “Nobody else around here has the guts to say anything to him,” she added.
“Bob and Charles don’t feel comfortable telling him what to do.” Natalie defended the younger brothers of the household. Mack had been responsible for all three of his siblings from his early twenties. He was twenty-eight now, crusty and impatient, a real hell-raiser whom most people found intimidating. Natalie had teased him and picked at him from her teens, and she still did. She adored him, despite his fiery temper and legendary impatience. A lot of that ill humor came from having one eye, and she knew it.
Soon after the accident that could as easily have killed him as blinded him, she told him that the rakish patch over his left eye made him look like a sexy pirate. He’d told her to go home and mind her own damned business. She ignored him and continued to help Vivian nurse him, even when he’d come home from the hospital. That hadn’t been easy. Natalie was a senior in high school at the time. She’d just gone from the orphanage where she’d spent most of her life to her maiden aunt’s house the year before the accident occurred. Her aunt, old Mrs. Barnes, didn’t approve of Mack Killain, although she respected him. Natalie had had to beg to get her aunt to drive her first to the hospital and then to the Killain ranch every day to look after Mack. Her aunt had felt it was Vivian’s job—not Natalie’s—but Vivian couldn’t do a thing with her elder brother. Left alone, Mack would have been out on the northern border with his men helping to brand calves.
At first, the doctors feared that he’d lost the sight in both eyes. But later, it had become evident that the right one
