скачать книгу бесплатно
§ (#litres_trial_promo)A Bride for Jackson Powers #1273
DIXIE BROWNING
celebrated her sixty-fifth book for Silhouette with the publication of Texas Millionaire in 1999. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America, and a member of Novelists, Inc., Dixie has won numerous awards for her work. She lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Contents
Prologue (#u1584afc1-a089-54dc-8966-c9f2502e6675)
Chapter One (#u9b14e152-bd2c-534c-bf6c-494c26d01198)
Chapter Two (#u03310fd7-031c-5602-9766-401ad5daf80f)
Chapter Three (#ua22eb66c-f0fb-5ef3-a50e-ce139c9ab20d)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
“This is my first diary, and I don’t know exactly where to start. Mama always kept one, but I never did. She told me to read hers after she was gone so I would understand, but her personal things were packed away and I couldn’t get to them for a long time.
“My name is Cynthia Danbury. I am fourteen and a half years old.”
Fourteen and a half. Ten years ago. How very young I was then, she mused now.
“I’m called Cindy, which probably should be spelled Sendy because people are always sending me on errands. In case anyone ever reads this, I want it on record that Daddy was an inventor. He died before he could invent anything important that people would pay money for, but that didn’t mean he never amounted to anything. Mama worked real hard at the truck stop to earn money for Daddy’s experiments. She was not a worthless shantytown tramp who ruined a perfectly decent boy, like Aunt Stephenson told Uncle Henry she was, which is one of the reasons I’m writing this. To set the record straight.”
Looking back, Cindy could remember as if it were yesterday the first time she’d met her aunt Stephenson, her father’s sister. Cindy had been about seven years old. They had just moved to Mocksville. Her father had taken her to a large white house, with a wide porch and stained glass panels beside the front door, to meet her aunt Lorna.
They’d been standing in the front hall, only now it was called a foyer. Her father had introduced her to a large woman in a black silk dress and told Cindy that this was her “Aunt Lorna.”
“You may call me Mrs. Stephenson,” the woman had corrected coldly. Her father had been furious. Cindy remembered hiding behind him and clinging to his hand. Over the years they had reached a compromise, she and her father’s sister. Cindy called her Aunt S.
Picking up the diary again, she skipped a few pages and continued to read. “Mama never went with us when we visited. I didn’t understand why until years later, when I read her diary a long time after the accident.
“The accident was when Daddy and I were taking Mama to work, and this tank truck blew a tire and ran us off the road. Daddy was killed instantly. My hip was damaged. A nurse said it was crushed, but if that had been the case I’d have had to have a new one, and I didn’t. Just a patch job.
“Anyway, Mama and I were both in the hospital and couldn’t even go to Daddy’s funeral. Aunt S. saw to everything, and I guess I’m grateful, but I resent it, too. I don’t like to think about those days, so mostly I don’t.”
Cindy’s hip never had healed properly. She still limped when she was tired, but the scar was barely visible. She’d been about eleven then. It had happened in November. She could remember starting her period the next May and thinking it had something to do with her hip, until her mother explained.
“Mama was surprised I didn’t already know, and I guess I sort of did. They teach all about it in school, only it’s different when it actually happens to you. Besides, whenever I have to listen to embarrassing stuff, I design hats in my mind. Big, fancy hats. The romantic kind with lots of nice floppy flowers.”
Yes, and she still did, only now she did more than merely design them in her mind. Skimming a few more pages, Cindy marveled at how naive she’d been ten years earlier.
“Who I Am. In case I have children of my own one day and they need to know about their lina—lineage, I can’t really help with it very much. I do know Mama’s folks, the Scarboroughs, came from out near the coast somewhere, and there aren’t any left closer than third cousin, once removed. But maybe this will be a starting place.
“Mama was real sad after Daddy died, and when she didn’t get over it, it turned out that she had leukemia. I stayed with a neighbor while she was in the hospital, and when I’d visit her she tried to pretend everything was going to be all right, but we both knew better.
“Those were really bad times. I remember we played double sol and watched silly cartoons on TV. Sometimes we just sat and held hands. Once we laughed together over what she called my tacky taste, and she said I must have inherited it from her because we both liked big, gaudy hats with tons of fake flowers.”
Cindy reached for the framed photograph on her bedside table, an out-of-focus snapshot of a very young woman wearing bell-bottom pants, a halter, a floppy-brimmed hat trimmed with sunflowers, and a broad, happy smile. Mama at age nineteen, holding her precious old Gibson guitar.
“I’m not going to talk about all that because it still hurts too much, but if anyone ever reads this, I want you to know that Aurelia Scarborough Danbury was the sweetest, bravest woman in the world. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
“Anyway, after Mama died I went to live with Aunt Stephenson and Uncle Henry and my stepcousins, Maura and Stephanie, because in a town like ours, where everybody knows everybody’s family all the way back to Year One, even when some of them live in big fancy houses like Aunt S. does and some live in trailer parks like we did, the whole town knows who’s kin to who. (Or as Aunt S. would say, whom.) So when the social services lady said if the Stephensons wouldn’t take me in they’d have to find me a foster home, poor Aunt S. didn’t have much choice. I guess she could’ve explained, but people would still have talked, and Nice People don’t get themselves talked about, according to Aunt S.
“Uncle Henry was more like family than Aunt S. Actually, neither of them was real family, but you know what I mean. He used to call me Radish on account of my hair, and give me a box of chocolates and a twenty-dollar bill every Christmas. I saved half the money for the Future and spent the rest on gifts, but the candy never lasted through the holidays. Steff and Maura both have a sweet tooth.
“I didn’t really want to live there, but I didn’t know what else to do, and anyway, when you’re only twelve and a half, people don’t listen to you. But I sort of liked Maura and Steff. Maura is two years older than I am, Steff three and a half years older. We’ve never had much in common. Since I’m smaller than either of them, I never have to worry about clothes, though. Maura always buys her jeans a size too small, and when Aunt S. catches her in them, she makes her give them to me. Same with T-shirts. Tight. Maura likes to show off her boobs, but I don’t have any yet. I don’t really like jeans very much, they’re hot in the summertime and cold in the winter, but I guess they’re pretty practical.
“Steff never wears jeans. She gives me dresses she doesn’t want, usually the fancy kind that have to be dry-cleaned. Definitely not practical! Luckily, I’m good at mending and spot-cleaning, which they almost always need by the time I get them.
“You might have noticed I tend to ramble a lot. Mama used to say I had a brain like an overgrown flower garden. There’s good stuff in it if you can ever find it under all the weeds.
“For the record, though, I’m truly grateful for Aunt S.’s kindness, which is why I can’t just walk away and get on with my life, as much as I’m tempted to.”
Oh, how many times she’d been tempted, but soon now…very soon, she would be ready.
“Well, Diary, here comes the hard part. It concerns something Aunt S. knew all along, but I didn’t find out until years later when I finally got up the nerve to read Mama’s diary. Which is one of the reasons I’m doing this—to set the record straight so my children and grandchildren, if any, will know what’s what.
“I’m not a real Danbury. My biological father was a navy pilot who crashed on a training mission before I was even born. Mama said his name was Bill Jones and he was from somewhere in Virginia, which doesn’t help much, but there it is, anyway.
“When Daddy married Mama, he gave me his name, which is probably why Aunt S. took me to live with her. Uncle Henry didn’t mind. About Uncle Henry—he wears three-piece suits and walks to the office every morning and walks home every afternoon for a cigar, a drink and a nap. Maura looks a lot like him, but she’s not as kind.”
With a sigh, Cindy laid the diary aside and stared out the window at the house next door. Hitch was coming back. Which was why she’d dug out her old diary in the first place—because John Hale Hitchcock had figured in so many of her girlish fantasies back in her diary-keeping days.
When Mac had told her Hitch had agreed to be his best man, she’d nearly drowned in all those old daydreams. She would die of embarrassment if he ever found out, but he probably wouldn’t even recognize her. She wasn’t sure he’d really noticed her in those days, yet even after ten years she could remember him as if it had been only yesterday.
Of course, he’d have changed—he might even be married, although Mac hadn’t mentioned a wife. But then, she herself had changed since the days when she’d thought he hung the moon. Not a whole lot, but at least she was no longer built like an ironing board.
Skimming over the middle part of the worn diary, Cindy picked up at her eighteenth birthday.
“Uncle Henry gave me my own car! I can’t believe it! Now instead of bicycling all over town to do my Monday errands, I can drive. Maybe I should paint a sign on the side—something like Send Cindy, She’s Fast, Reliable and Cheap.
“Aunt S. would have a hissy-fit.”
Her uncle had died before her next birthday. She still missed him. “I think Aunt S. knows anyway,” Cindy had written all those years ago. “The reason she doesn’t say anything is because then she might have to give me an allowance to buy the stuff I absolutely have to have. I’ve done my best to earn my keep all these years by making myself useful, but I’ll tell you this much, Diary. I might end up an old maid, but no way will I ever let Maura or Steff fix me up with another blind date. The one last month nearly tore my dress off. The one last week told dirty jokes and laughed when I blushed, and last night’s date was so boring I nearly fell asleep while he was telling me about every job he ever held, from bag boy right on up to produce manager. I might not be rich or well-bred or pretty, but I deserve better than that.”
That was one thing that hadn’t changed, Cindy told herself, laying the diary aside again. She deserved whatever she could make of her life. Once Steff’s wedding was over, she was going to find a tiny apartment she could afford and turn her Monday job into a full-time thing until she saved enough to launch her dream career. One day, women would go back to wearing gorgeous, feminine, romantic hats, and when that happened, she would be ready.
If she still had enough energy left after this blasted wedding!
Chapter One
John Hale Hitchcock quietly hung up the phone and began to swear. He’d finally said yes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have serious reservations. All his adult life he’d made it a policy to stay as far away from weddings as possible in case they were contagious. Especially weddings that required his active participation. What was it the shrinks called it? A defense mechanism?
Yeah, it was that and more.
He’d always had a feeling his own parents hated each other’s guts, but were far too well bred to mention it. Add to that his mother’s sporadic attempts to pair him up with one of her colleagues and it was no wonder he’d developed a jaded outlook on marriage.
He’d eventually learned to handle such things tactfully. In spite of his parents’ dismay when he’d chosen engineering over law, Georgia Tech over Yale, he wasn’t a barbarian. At least he’d had the good manners not to come right out and admit to harboring a deep-seated aversion to pinstripes, brogans and button-down brains, a description that summed up those among his mother’s younger female colleagues who considered her a role model. Now a highly esteemed federal judge, Janet Hale Hitchcock had never, not even in her junior-partner days, been a hands-on type mother.
Once she’d given up trying to hand over control of her only son to one of her right-minded colleagues, her matchmaking efforts had ceased. Now it was only his married friends who were forever trying to pair him up. Hitch put it down to the theory that misery liked company. His method of dealing with it was both tactful and efficient. Smile politely and run like hell. Having spent his formative years under the thumbs of domineering parents, in a home that had all the warmth of a refrigerator truck, he wasn’t about to get caught in the marriage trap.
Mac’s call had caught him at a weak moment. He’d just come back from a memorial service for another old classmate, dead of heart failure at the age of thirty-three, a year younger than Mac.
Life was risky business.
After pouring himself a drink, Hitch had been wallowing in a rare moment of philosophical nostalgia when Mac MacCollum had called to tell him about his upcoming wedding and ask him to act as best man.
“No thanks, my friend. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m severely allergic to weddings.”
“Aw, come on, Hitch, you’re my closest pal. I couldn’t ask anyone else.”
The two men had gone through four years at Georgia Tech together, Hitch on a football scholarship as his parents, both Yale law school graduates, had refused to condone such heresy. The day after graduation Mac and Hitch had joined the army together. Mac had then tried on half a dozen careers, while Hitch went to Harvard for his MBA. Through it all they’d never lost contact, due mostly to Mac’s friendly persistence.
“You know, Mac,” Hitch had remarked, “whining was never one of your more attractive traits.”
“I’m not whining, man, I’m begging. Begging has more dignity than whining.”
“Do I know the lucky lady?”
“You remember Steffie Stephenson? Lives next door to our house?”
Hitch would never forget the many weekends during their college years he’d spent in the rambling, friendly, comfortable old house in a small North Carolina town. The MacCollums’ place, messy, noisy, filled with the aroma of Mama Mac’s good cooking, was as different from the house he’d grown up in as night from day.
He also remembered the Stephenson sisters next door, Stephanie and…was it Mary? Marnie? Something like that.
And hadn’t there been a third sister? He’d never actually met her, but he seemed to recall a red-haired kid scurrying around in the background.
“Yeah, I remember Steff,” he said, sipping the one drink a day he allowed himself. “Word of advice, Mac. Get out before it’s too late. Women need marriage. Men don’t. Don’t bother to question my logic—logic never was your strong suit—just take my word for it. Get out of Dodge.”
But Mac had talked him into it. Good old Mac, with his big ears, two left feet and ready grin. The guy could talk a dalmatian out of his spots. Hitch had hung up, having reluctantly agreed, and spent the next few minutes wondering how the devil Mac and Steff had ever got together. Unless she’d changed considerably since he’d last seen her, Stephanie Stephenson was a shallow little snob with a cover girl face and a one-cylinder brain.
Could she have finally wised up to the fact that Mac, for all he might act the clown, was a terrific guy? Or was it because, through a lot of hard work and some lucky breaks, he had parlayed the rundown ski resort he’d bought a few years ago into a thriving chain stretching all the way up into West Virginia?
Hitch polished off his drink, rose and stretched. He’d been working flat out for the past couple of years establishing his own business, JHH Designs, a small Richmond, Virginia, industrial design firm with a big future. He could use a break, and where better to take one than with the family who had treated him like one of their own?
That meant he’d be passing close to his parents’ place on the drive from Richmond to Mocksville. Might as well make an effort to mend a few fences. It had been nearly a year since he’d seen them, and that last scene had not been pleasant.
Maybe, he thought with bitter amusement, he could break the ice with a bit of gallows humor. Hey folks, whaddya think, if Mac’s marriage goes south the way most marriages seem to do these days, can the best man be nailed as an accessory after the fact?
Oh, yeah, that would really crack ’em up.
Both his parents were lawyers with strong control tendencies. The trait had caused problems from the time Hitch was old enough to leave small, sticky fingerprints on every polished surface in the somber old house.
His mother, a small woman with iron-gray hair worn in a knot at the back of her head, could get more mileage from a lifted eyebrow than most people could from a loaded gun. His paternal grandfather had been a Supreme Court judge. Most of his cousins were lawyers or judges. Hitch had been slated to follow the family calling, only he’d had ideas of his own.
Major hassle. There was still a lot of residual bitterness, but one thing he’d inherited from both sides of the family was a streak of stubbornness a mile wide. He’d never actually won an argument with either of his folks, but at least he’d learned to minimize the damage by biting his tongue and walking out.
Matter of fact, the driving force behind his present success might easily be his determination to prove something to his parents.
Talk about childish.
“Two things I’ll never be,” Cindy muttered as she carted a stack of bone china to the kitchen to be washed, “are a caterer or a professional wedding planner.”
She’d already broken the handle off one of the cups and had spent far too much valuable time on the phone to Greensboro to see if the china replacement center could match the pattern. Lucky for her it could.
Unlucky for her, it would cost her an arm and a leg, plus a drive to Greensboro at her own expense.
“Cindy, did you call the florist?”
“They’re coming tomorrow to go over final plans.”
“Cindy, is my dress back from the cleaner?”
“Be here in about an hour.”
“Cindy, for goodness sake, I told you to air out my luggage! It smells like mildew!”
“It was cloudy when I got up, so I thought I’d better wait. If it doesn’t clear up, I’ll open all your cases and put them up in my room—that’s always dry.” And hot as Hades, as the attic wasn’t air-conditioned.
The wedding was still days away, and already the guest rooms were filled with family here for the occasion, plus Steff’s two attendants, both former college classmates. Cindy had run her legs right down to the nub trying to get all the rooms aired and made up, and all the china and crystal, which had to be hand washed and dried, ready for the rehearsal party, which had gone from a simple buffet to a combination ball and banquet.
Mac’s folks were supposed to host the party but this was Aunt S.’s first wedding, and she was pulling out all the stops. What had started out to be a small, elegant home wedding was rapidly turning into a three-ring circus, in Cindy’s estimation. A small thing like wedding protocol never stopped Aunt S.
All that in addition to trying to keep up with the ordinary demands of a demanding family, and Cindy was pooped. Just plain frazzled. And it was barely midafternoon, with three days to go until the wedding, after which there would be all the undoing and cleaning-up-after.
It was a good thing she was used to it, else she might have blown her redheaded stack.
“One of these days,” she muttered, catching a glimpse of a cupcake wrapper under the hall table. One of these days she would have enough saved up to move out, and this would all seem like a crazy dream.
Meanwhile, it was a good thing she had the hide of an elephant and the backbone of a—well, whatever had the strongest backbone, which was what it took to survive when you had only yourself to depend on.
