“Satisfaction, maybe,” Jessie offered. “Tormenting him might be a kind of sweet revenge for all those years you spent silently suffering.”
“Absolutely not. That’s not the kind of person I am.”
“Not normally, I know, but these are unusual circumstances. It might be natural to want to exact a little revenge because he flaunted all those other women in your face. I’m not saying that’s what’s behind your indecision here, I’m just suggesting you think about the possibility.”
Jessie’s suggestion angered her. She didn’t like thinking she was capable of exacting revenge for deeds she thought she’d long since forgiven, deeds that had never been meant to hurt her in the first place. Still, she knew her friend wouldn’t have mentioned it if she didn’t think there might be some validity to it.
“I’ll think about it,” Kelly agreed.
In fact, she thought about little else for the rest of the day. She recalled all the instances when Jordan had spent hours on end talking about the hottest girls in high school and asking her advice on how to get them to go out with him. Not that he’d had that much trouble. Even as teenagers, girls had gravitated to him because of his good looks and fun-loving personality. It hadn’t hurt that he was a star athlete, too.
He’d been equally sought after during his one year in college, chased when he’d been working the oil fields, and on every year’s most eligible bachelor list once he’d settled in Houston. He’d had more relationships than she could count, but when each one had ended for one reason or another, he’d always come back to her to lick his wounds. She’d consoled him, boosted his ego with her nonjudgmental adoration, made him laugh again.
And all the while, her own heart had ached.
When she’d finally tired of the pattern, she had turned to Paul Flint and impulsively married him, determined to put Jordan and her wasted emotions behind her once and for all.
But Jordan had refused to stay out of her life. He had befriended Paul, even though he couldn’t stand him. He’d stayed on the fringes of their lives, close enough to pick up the pieces when the marriage had fallen apart. The divorce had taken a long, messy year or more after she’d returned to her family’s ranch. Jordan had stuck by her through every terrible minute of it.
She’d experienced a wild moment of hope then, sure that it was finally their turn. Within weeks, however, he had announced his engagement to Rexanne. Though Kelly had known better than to hope for the impossible, she had been devastated just the same. She’d shored up her defenses so securely after that that the marines couldn’t have penetrated.
All that night she lay awake considering Jessie’s question. Was it possible that she was cutting off her nose to spite her face, just to get even with Jordan for not turning to her sooner? Was she holding out for moonbeams, when what he was offering was much more solid?
From practically the first moment she’d ever set eyes on Jordan she had known in her heart that he was the man she would one day marry. That sense of inevitability had taken a very long time to shake. Now, when she’d least expected it, her chance was finally here and she couldn’t seem to bring herself to say yes. Was that nothing more than pure perversity?
As Jessie had pointed out, he might not have said the words she desperately wanted to hear. He might not have said he loved her, but he was willing to stand up in front of God and everyone and declare his intentions to love, honor and cherish her for the rest of their days.
In that moment, she made up her mind. If Dani had no objections, if Jordan’s determination hadn’t wavered, she would say yes.
And then she would dedicate the rest of her days to making sure that neither of them ever regretted the choice they had made.
Chapter Nine
“Mommy, is Jordan going to be my new daddy?” Dani asked the following morning while shoving her French toast around in a puddle of syrup.
The unexpected question brought up the subject that had kept Kelly awake all night long.
“If he has his way, he is,” Kelly muttered before she could catch herself.
She hadn’t anticipated getting into this before she’d even had her first cup of coffee. In fact, she hadn’t intended to get into it with her daughter at all, at least not until the matter was more settled with Jordan himself.
“When?”
“That’s hard to say, sweetie. There are some things we have to work out.”
“Like what?”
Kelly thought of all the doubts that had chased through her mind. None of them were things she could share with her daughter. “Just things,” she said evasively.
Dani studied her intently and apparently concluded Kelly still wasn’t convinced that Jordan would make a proper daddy. “I like Jordan,” she informed her mother firmly. “I think he would make a very good daddy.”
Kelly wondered if her daughter had insights into Jordan that hadn’t come to her yet. “Why is that?” she asked.
“He brings me candy.”
Kelly refrained from labeling the candy what it was—bribery. Hadn’t he tried the very same tactic on her? She’d already told Jordan half a dozen times to cut it out or he’d be paying Dani’s dental bills.
“Don’t you like Jordan?” Dani inquired worriedly. “You used to be bestest friends, that’s what you said.”
“Most of the time I like him very much,” Kelly conceded.
“More than Daddy?”
Ah, now there was a mine field if ever Kelly had seen one. She had prepared an answer to that long ago, knowing sooner or later that rather plaintive question or one very similar was going to come up. Dani was too precocious not to ask difficult questions about the man who had sired her but spent very little time in her life.
“Your father is a fine man,” she said, almost by rote. “He and I
