Leigh Greenwood - Married By High Noon

Not that she was hard to look at.

He remembered her as a skinny kid with huge brown eyes, sun-browned arms and legs, honey-brown hair that was always getting in her face. As often as not, she had a tear in her clothes and dirt on her chin. She could assume a look of doll-like innocence or change to a pixie-full-of-mischief in the blink of an eye. Despite the hard feelings some locals still harbored against her mother, she could charm nearly anyone into a sunny mood.

But he could see nothing of that innocence in Dana now.

She had turned into a New York siren with a body to die for. Dressed and accessorized with understated but expensive taste, she represented nearly everything he had come to distrust in a woman. At thirty-six years old, mature and experienced, he should have been beyond the impressionable age. Then why did his heart beat as if he’d just run the four hundred? He should be shouting down Marshall’s impossible suggestion that he marry Dana, but all that blood flooding his brain made it impossible to think.

“You’re crazy,” Dana said, finding her tongue before Gabe. “I wouldn’t marry Gabe if he were the last man in the world.”

“You both want to keep Danny,” Marshall said. “Gabe has to get married to have a chance. It’s the obvious solution.”

“There must be another way.”

“Maybe, but you’ve got less than twenty-four hours to find it.”

“You’re the lawyer,” Gabe said. “You’re supposed to find the solution.”

“I have,” Marshall replied.

“You can’t seriously expect us to get married just like that,” Gabe said, snapping his fingers. “We haven’t seen each other in more than fourteen years.”

“And we can’t stand each other,” Dana added.

That was going too far for Gabe. Dana might figure in his mind as the human embodiment of everything that had gone wrong in his life, but a man would have to be a misogynist to have any difficulty standing a woman like Dana.

“We have some differences of opinion,” Gabe said.

“I’m not saying you have to love each other,” Marshall said. “I’m just trying to come up with a way for you to keep this kid. If you don’t want—”

“Don’t be a fool,” Gabe snapped. “You know I want him.”

“Then you have to get married. It’s almost impossible for an uncle to win custody over the natural father, especially when the natural father is a wealthy, respected businessman with a wife and family ready and willing to welcome Danny into their midst.”

“Even if the natural father got furious when Maggie told him she was pregnant,” Dana said, angrily, “ordered her to get rid of the kid, and walked out when she wouldn’t?”

“Even then. Today’s courts lean heavily on the side of the natural parents.”

“He only wants Danny because he’s a boy,” Dana said.

“You can’t prove that. As far as the court is concerned, it would be the perfect situation for Danny, certainly better than living with a bachelor uncle who has to put him in day care. We’d have even less chance if he lived with you.”

“I could hire a live-in housekeeper.” Gabe said.

“You couldn’t afford it,” Marshall said.

“I’ll pay for it,” Dana offered.

“It wouldn’t matter where the money came from,” Marshall said. “It’s the family unit the judge is going to consider.”

Dana looked at Gabe. The look felt almost accusatory. “Can’t you find somebody to marry?”

“Not on twenty-four hour’s notice.”

“Maybe Marshall could get the judge to wait longer. If you could just—”

“There’s nobody I want to marry,” Gabe snapped, “not now, not in twenty-four hours or twenty-four days.”

“I guess that brings it back to you two,” Marshall said.

“You heard what he said,” Dana said. “That nobody includes me.”

“You don’t have to want to get married. You just have to do it. You can file for divorce as soon as the judge hears the case.”

Gabe looked at Dana. She glared back at him. He would never consider marrying her under normal circumstances. But if he couldn’t keep Danny any other way, he could put up with it, particularly if they got a divorce as soon as he got custody. If the natural father got custody, he would never see his nephew again.

“Can a person get married that quickly on a Saturday?” Gabe asked.

“Not normally,” Marshall said, “but there are ways.”

Dana jumped up and headed toward the door to the back porch.

“You can stop looking at me like that,” she said. “I’m not doing it. I’ll take Danny back to New York first.”

“There’s no way the courts will give him to you,” Marshall said.

“You can visit him anytime you want,” Gabe said.

“Do you think his father will make you the same offer?” Marshall asked.

Gabe could tell from her look she knew he wouldn’t. He could also tell she felt caught between two desperate choices, neither of which she felt she could accept. If she was to give Marshall’s idea even five minutes’ serious consideration, he had to find a way to take some pressure off her.

“Why don’t we get Danny and head over to my house so you can see his room?”

She looked relieved to have something else to do, thankful to him for having suggested it. He could understand. After years of burying himself in his work and not allowing himself to feel anything—not bitterness over his wife’s betrayal and subsequent divorce, not anger at the rift that tore his family apart—he felt buried under an emotional landslide. His father’s and Mattie’s deaths coming so close together had demolished his emotional barriers. Danny’s arrival made him feel even more vulnerable. Now, years of bottled-up emotions bubbled to the surface. He, too, needed time to sort things out.

“Why?” Marshall asked.

“Dana said she wouldn’t leave Danny with me until she was perfectly satisfied I could take care of him. Checking out the suitability of where he’ll live ought to be high on the list.”

“What about the lawyer hired by Danny’s father?” Dana asked.

“Let’s work on the assumption we’re keeping Danny.”

Dana nodded, opened the door and went out to the back porch.

“Do you think she’ll do it?” Marshall asked.

“I don’t know. It was a terrific shock.”

Marshall laughed. “I thought all women swooned at the thought of marrying a hunk like you.”

“She nearly did.”

Both men laughed, but Marshall sobered quickly. “What about you?”

“It’ll only be for a few weeks or a couple of months.”

“I wondered if after Ellen…”

“This isn’t the same.”

“You got that right. Dana isn’t a lying, deceitful witch. If she’s going to shaft you, she’ll tell you right to your face.”

“Why don’t you fix your sidewalks?” Dana asked.

They were walking back toward the heart of the community, the street and lawns shaded by huge oaks.

“We like them cracked and uneven,” Gabe replied.

“A person could break a leg.”

“Half the town learned to walk stepping over them.”

“Strangers didn’t.”

“We don’t have many strangers. And those we get stay at the ski lodge or go straight to the camp.”

“How about the people who come to the hotel?” she asked, referring to the huge, pre-Civil War building with wide verandahs on all three levels that towered over the surrounding houses.

“People come to the hotel to get away from their ordinary lives,” he told Dana. “They like the cracks in the sidewalks, the sixteen-foot ceilings, the rocking chairs on the verandas. Some of them come back every year just to sit and rock for a whole week.”

“I couldn’t stand that,” she said.