Patti Standard - Say You'll Stay And Marry Me

“I can’t have you go to all that trouble.” Mac bounced his good leg against the mattress in frustration. “There’s got to be somebody who didn’t go to Cheyenne for the weekend.”

“You’d be doing me a favor, really,” she told him. “It’ll be difficult finding an RV spot this late in Jackson. I need a place to park.”

“It’s nice of you to offer, Sara, but...” Mac hesitated and she was surprised to see a look of embarrassment on his face. Of course! She realized the problem with a start. That time they’d shared in the truck had made her feel so close to him, she’d forgotten they were strangers. She couldn’t ask him to leave his children in the care of someone who’d wandered into his gas station mere hours before.

“But I could be a mass murderer or something?”

“I don’t mean that, but—”

“Hey, you can’t be too careful these days. You’re absolutely right. I’d feel the same way in your place.” Sara thought for a moment. “I tell you what, why don’t I give Cyrus a call over at the university? He’ll vouch for my sanity.”

“Any friend of Cyrus’s is a friend of mine?” Mac thought it over for a moment. “Sure, sounds like a good idea. Of course, it could be the morphine talking, but right now all I want is to go to sleep and I can’t think of any other alternatives.”

Mac did look tired, sick-tired, with dark smudges under his eyes. Sara picked up the phone next to his bed and dialed the number of her late husband’s oldest and dearest friend.

“Cyrus?” She was pleased to hear his voice after only the first ring. “You’ll never guess who I ran into in Dutch Creek.”

“Mac Wallace,” he replied promptly in his crisp English accent. When she gasped, he said, “My dear girl, there are only a dozen people living in that entire half of the state. It wasn’t exactly a stumper.”

She laughed. Cyrus always made her feel good. Briefly, she explained the situation, then handed the phone to Mac. “He wants to talk to you.”

Sara could hear only one side of the conversation, but Mac laughed out loud several times. She could just imagine what Cyrus was telling him about her.

“All right, Cyrus,” Mac said. “I’ll keep that in mind. It’s been great talking to you. The boys can’t wait to see you in August.” He held out the phone for her to hang up.

“Well?”

“Cyrus said you’re definitely sane, the salt of the earth, he’d trust you with his children any time—if he had any—and he urged me to marry you immediately.”

Chapter Three

“He what!”

“His exact words were, ‘Please pry that lovely child from that vile truck and wed her immediatus, which I think loosely translates into pronto.”

“Or, if your Latin’s as good as mine, could mean ‘when hell freezes over.’”

Mac grinned. “Cyrus has been trying to get me remarried for years. He thinks it’s my dumb luck that you happened into my garage and said I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I’m a gift horse?” She tried to sound lightly amused in spite of the way her heart had jolted at Cyrus’s eccentric suggestion.

“I was sort of paraphrasing what he actually said. He lost me when he started quoting Julius Caesar.” Mac’s smile faded. “Seriously, Cyrus said I should jump at your baby-sitting offer. So I’m jumping—as high as I can under the circumstances. And I really want to thank you for your help.”

“That’s all right. As a man once told me when he fixed my water hose for free, it’s just being neighborly.”

His look was warm and she felt unreasonably pleased by his gratitude. She felt as if she’d done something wonderful, rather than simply offered to baby-sit in exchange for a parking place. His blue eyes held hers, and she read things in them she told herself came from the morphine, not from Mac. Things that made the narrow hospital bed suddenly appear plenty wide enough for two, if she was pressed up tight enough against him... Discomfited, she picked up the phone and held it out to him. “Here, call the boys and tell them I’m coming—with pizza.”

“They like pepperoni.”

“Got it.” It was as hard to leave him now as it had been in the parking lot. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go? I think your nurse sounded pretty serious about not touching that buzzer again.”

“Not unless you happen to have an extra elephant-hide boot tucked away in that camper of yours.”

“Sorry, it’s just me and my spider plant, remember?”

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” His inflection made it a question, a lonely-sounding question. The small hospital seemed quiet and empty, no ringing phones, no gurneys whisking down the corridors on rubber wheels, no clipboards crisply snapping shut.

“I’ll ask what time they think you’ll be released. Try to get some sleep now.” Impulsively, she took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze as she dropped a light kiss on his cheek. But his skin was so firm and warm, with his shadow of whiskers prickling her sensitive lips, that an erotic jolt caught her unaware. She jerked upright and stepped away from the bed. Murmuring good-night, she walked quickly from the room before she found an excuse to linger any longer, her mouth still hot and tingling.

She arrived at the ranch just over an hour later. The sun hovered on the horizon, fiery layers of pink, orange and mauve, as she guided the truck up the gravel drive and pulled around the side of the two-story house. She walked up the wooden steps that led to the porch, balancing two large, flat pizza boxes.

Michael answered her awkward knock on the back door, delivered with the toe of her tennis shoe.

“Hi. Come on in.” He took the boxes from her and politely moved aside for her to enter.

His older brother stood in the kitchen, hair still wet from a shower. Jacob looked at her a little warily. She was sure the boys wished she were Libby—the name that had come first to everyone’s mind when Mac had needed help—rather than some stranger who’d been dropped in their laps. At their age, they didn’t need an adult hovering over them, making sure they brushed their teeth before bed, so she hastened to reassure them that she wouldn’t intrude.

“I just wanted to deliver these pizzas.” She stayed at the threshold. “Your dad said you liked pepperoni.”

They nodded and smiled stiffly.

“I’m all set up for the night in my camper—” she started to back away “—but if you men need anything, be sure to give a knock on the door.”

“Aren’t you going to have some pizza?” Michael asked, obviously surprised.

She shook her head. “I had a hamburger in Dutch Creek. Good night, then.”

“But Dad said to put clean sheets on the bed in the guest room,” Michael blurted. “And we even changed the towels in the bathroom.”

She tried not to smile. “That was sweet of you, but—”

“At least come in and have a cup of coffee,” Jacob offered. “Dad said to have some ready for you. I made a whole pot, and me and Mike don’t like it.”

“I like it,” Michael said.

“You like the cream and sugar,” his brother scoffed. “It’s a wonder your teeth haven’t rotted off under those braces.”

“Thank you.” Sara stepped into the kitchen before the argument escalated. “A cup of coffee would be nice.”

Jacob sat the pizza boxes in the middle of the large butcher-block table while Michael rather defiantly got out two mugs. She poured them both a cup of coffee without comment, although she spooned a generous amount of sugar and creamer into her cup so Michael’s lavish use of both wasn’t so obvious.

“Does he have a cast or just one of those bandage things?” Michael asked, dunking the end of a slice of pizza into his coffee.