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He looked at Sawyer and grinned. “I do. But not to the degree that Sawyer does.”
She met his gaze. “I’m not marrying you here.”
“Well, you have to,” Ash said. “At least, you have to try on the magic wedding dress. Fiona sent it with me, said you should try it on. I always think my aunt’s advice should be heeded,” she said, tugging Sawyer away from Jace’s suddenly interested gaze.
Sawyer made herself follow Ash down the hall and into a private room. “I don’t want to try on a dress.”
“This one you do,” Sawyer said. “It’s magic.”
“That’s a myth, a fairy tale.” She’d heard about the dress’s supposedly supernatural qualities and didn’t believe it. “There’s nothing wrong with the dress I have on.”
Ash glanced back at her before opening a closet where a long, white bag hung. “If you’re going to be a runaway bride, at least do it in style. This dress,” she said, pointing to the bag, “exudes style. High fashion, even.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Sawyer said. She wasn’t getting near it, wouldn’t be enticed to even take a peek. “I saw the dress on Rose when she and Galen were married. It’s beautiful and traditional, but not high fashion.”
Ash stared at the bag. “I thought a gown that made every woman beautiful would be considered high fashion.”
“No. It would be considered lucky.”
“Oh,” Ash said, recoiling. “We don’t do lucky in our family. Mysticism and respect and ancient lore, and perhaps a little supernatural wonder, but never luck.”
Sawyer shook her head. “I’m fine wearing what I have on.”
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll regret it?” Ash asked. “You’ve been rendezvousing with my brother secretly for a long time. You might as well admit you’re in love with him. And when a woman’s in love, she wants to be beautiful on her wedding day.”
Sawyer didn’t know what to say to that outrageous statement. Down the hall, a wedding march played—probably for the couple who’d been waiting in the hall nervously when she and Jace had walked into the chapel.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Ash said. “Give you a chance to collect your thoughts. I won’t be far if you want to do some more sisterly bonding. Feel free to call me if you do.”
She went out, closing the door behind her. Sawyer glared at the garment bag. It wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t going to try on the gown, which was exactly what Ash wanted. Temptation—the Callahans were very good at temptation.
* * *
“IT MAY BE mission failure,” Ash said, coming to stand next to Jace as he waited anxiously for whatever his bride and sister decided. He was well aware that Sawyer would need to be coaxed into marrying him. He’d seen some reluctant brides in his time, but she seemed to take reticence to a new level. He shook his head as his sister patted his back in sympathy.
“It’s not mission failure. She wants to marry me.” He refused to believe that after all they’d shared, Sawyer didn’t want him. She had to know it wasn’t just sex for him—and yet he was pretty certain that’s what she’d say if he asked her what she thought it was the two of them had going.
He wasn’t about to ask how she defined their relationship.
“She probably thinks you were sowing your wild oats, brother,” Ash said cheerfully. “After all, you never stepped up to the plate meaningfully.”
“Thank you,” he said, “I think I had that much figured out. Now if you can wave your magic wand and tell me how to fix it, I’d be happy to listen to that advice.”
She fluffed her silvery hair, glancing in a mirror that was hanging in the foyer. “You and I may be doomed to never ease our wild hearts.”
He refused to accept that. Sawyer and he had been seeing each other a long time. It had been wild and passionate in the beginning, but then she’d left, and he’d had way too much time to think. To miss her. “What’s she doing? Is she ever coming out of that room? Did you make sure there were no open windows?”
Ash looked at him. “I was trying to talk her into trying on the magic wedding dress.”
He felt his stomach pitch. “Sawyer won’t wear Fiona’s magic wedding dress.”
Ash gave him a look that said he was crazy, and maybe he was. “Of course Sawyer should be married in the Callahan tradition!”
“I can’t believe you dragged that thing all the way here.” Struck by a sudden thought, Jace glanced wildly at the door. “You have no idea the trouble it caused our brothers. In almost every single case, that gown tried to wreck everything.”
Ash gasped. “Jace! That’s not true!”
“It is true.” He remembered tales from their brothers with some horror. One bride hadn’t seen her one true love—as she’d believed she would, according to Fiona’s fairy tale—and had taken off running out the door. That brother had barely been able to get his chosen bride to give the gown a second chance.
Jace had heard other tales, too, and they all made his blood pressure skyrocket with an attack of premonition.
“What about River? The gown saved her in Montana.”
“It’s a trick, a dice roll. A man doesn’t know if the dress is on his side. I don’t need that kind of help.” Jace looked at the door again, debating knocking on it and demanding that Sawyer come out. She’d been in there far too long. “Are you sure there were no windows in there she could open?”
“There may have been one,” Ash said, “but Sawyer isn’t the kind of woman who would ditch you in Vegas.”
“She ditched me, as you say, for the past several months.” His chest felt very heavy with sadness. “You have no idea what I’ve been through with that woman. And now you put her in a room with a diabolical magic wedding dress, and I’m supposed to—”
He glared when the door opened. Sawyer came out, wearing the same clothes she had been before. He looked at her, his breath tight.
“Is it time?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Time?”
“To do this thing.”
Jace swallowed. “Sure. If you’re ready.”
“Are you?”
He’d been ready far longer than he’d realized, but he didn’t want to seem overeager and scare her off. “Better now than never.”
She didn’t look certain, and he shrugged, wanting to give her as much space as possible. With the way she clearly felt about getting married, it could do no good to keep pushing her. They said you could lead a horse to water but not make it drink, and Sawyer was as untamed as the black Diablo mustangs in the canyons around Rancho Diablo.
“I am ready,” she said. “As long as we agree that we’ll revisit this marriage after the babies are born.”
“Revisit it? I’m fine with what we’re doing.” He didn’t like the sound of that at all. He’d heard those cold-footed-bride tales from his brothers, too—and a very merry chase some of their women had led them on.
“I’m well aware that your interest in marriage is purely because of the children, and I understand that.” She looked at his sister. “Thank you for bringing the dress, Ash. I appreciate the effort you made to get it here, I really do. More than anything, I’m honored that your aunt Fiona was willing to share a favorite Callahan tradition with me.” She looked back at Jace. “But I don’t feel like a real Callahan bride, and I don’t think I ever will.”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than the small waiting area suddenly filled with Callahans and Cashs, all loud and happy, and perplexed to see Sawyer wearing a hot pink dress and not a magic wedding gown. Storm carted in a bridal bouquet for his niece, kissing her before glaring at Jace.
“It’s a happy day!” Fiona exclaimed. “The last Callahan bachelor getting hitched!” She beamed with delight. “Come on, dear. Ash and I will help you change.”
Jace raised a brow, watching Sawyer sputter her way out of Fiona’s clutches. He smiled, seeing his family envelop his bride-to-be with their overwhelming presence. No one irritated him more than his relatives at times, but it was great to have them at his back.
The cake was delivered by two uniformed men who looked a bit seedy to Jace.
“You’re putting that there?” Fiona demanded, as they set the cake down in the foyer. “Do we look like we eat wedding cake in doorways?”
They shrugged, and Jace had an uncomfortable feeling he’d seen them before. “Aren’t you going to take it out of the box?” he asked.
The men left without saying a word.
“That was odd,” Sawyer said.
“Very odd.” Ash went to undo the white box. “That bakery came highly recommended, and I’m going to give them a piece of my mind about their delivery service.” She peeled the sides of the box down and gasped.
Instead of a plastic bride and groom there was a butcher knife, splendidly tied with satin ribbon, sticking up out of the top of the beautiful cake.
* * *
THE WHOLE THING was a disaster as far as Jace was concerned. Married hurriedly by a satin-wearing pastor who wanted them gone as fast as possible once he saw the butcher knife in the wedding cake—and wed apparently in name only to his pregnant love—Jace found it wasn’t a happy-ever-after type of event.
And they’d slept in separate beds after his late-night partying family finally went to bed.
“Very sad state of affairs,” he told Sawyer as they drove back toward Rancho Diablo the next day.
She didn’t spare him a glance as she looked out the window. “What’s a very sad state of affairs?”
“You. Me. That stupid wedding.” He gulped, certain that dire consequences might lie in his future. “The whole thing was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Not traditional.” Not done right, not written in stone, the butcher knife notwithstanding.
Traditional was the way he wanted his relationship with Sawyer to be.
“Stop thinking about the cake. It was an accident, like your aunt said. The delivery drivers were new, they didn’t know not to put the knife in the same box as the cake, and it somehow got stuck in it. These things happen at weddings.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Anyway, it was delicious. You said so yourself. And the bakery gave Ash a 50 percent discount and told her that if she ever got married, they’d do a cake for her for free.”
He wasn’t calmed by his bride’s attempt to soothe him. Jace was sure he’d seen those delivery guys somewhere, and trying to remember where nagged at him. The bakery had said they’d sent two men to deliver the cake, and the Callahans hadn’t thought to ask for ID or names in the shock of the moment. “You could have at least pretended to want to wear the wedding dress Ash went to the trouble to bring you,” he groused, thinking he should probably be happy Sawyer had at least said I do. That was something.
Heck, he’d wanted some enthusiasm from his bride. Perhaps even a smile. He was so out of sorts he wasn’t even sure why he was complaining.
“I can’t feel good about this marriage, Jace. So wearing the dress would be dishonest. I’m too aware that your family doesn’t trust me, though they put on a happy face today for you.”
So that’s what was bugging doll face. He couldn’t contradict her, either. The Chacon Callahans as a rule had never really trusted Sawyer’s uncle Storm—and Sawyer was assuming that some familial distrust was reflected on her, as well.
“We trusted you enough to hire you, let you bodyguard our children.”
“But when Somer and I were at Rose’s father’s place and fired on each other, and someone conked her father over the head, everything changed. You can’t deny that.”
He heard the note of sadness in Sawyer’s voice. “It was a big misunderstanding. Your cousin and you probably saved Rose that night. Maybe Sheriff Carstairs, too. Hell, even my brother Galen. He’s never been a fast runner, though he claims he is, and you and Somer firing at each other gave him the cover he needed to make it inside to Rose.”
“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better. But I know in my heart that I was always on a probationary basis with all of you. Only Galen really trusted me. And once I became pregnant...” She glanced at him. “Jace, be honest. It had to have crossed a few of your brothers’ minds that maybe I’d become pregnant as part of a plot to get inside Rancho Diablo permanently.”
“No one mentioned it.” He shrugged. “But you’re part of the Callahan family now, and no one’s sending up warning flares. In fact, you’re the only one who seems bothered by the past. And anyway, we wouldn’t have agreed to buy Storm’s place if we hadn’t decided he was on our side. We don’t do business—any kind of business—with folks who are trying to kill us.”
She didn’t say anything else, conversation over for the moment. He hadn’t convinced her that the family accepted her. Only time could solve that problem.
Maybe he could appeal to her feminine side. All the Callahan brides seemed to favor the frilly white fairy tale.
“Look at it this way. Would Ash have taken the time and the trouble to bring you the mystical treasured gown to wear down the aisle if the family didn’t consider you one of us?”
Jace wished Sawyer would look at him, but she didn’t, nor did she answer. He drove on, wondering if a difficult beginning could ever turn into a happy ending.
Chapter Four
“So the holy grail, as I see it,” Jace said to his sister on his cell phone, as Sawyer selected some lunch offerings in a roadside café in New Mexico, “is keeping my bride out of Rancho Diablo.”
“That’s the family vote. There are a hundred reasons for Sawyer not to be here, and no good ones we can think of for her to be. It’s just not safe. She’s too good of a bargaining chip. Now that Storm has managed to break any ties Wolf was hoping to bind him with, our uncle will certainly try to get even with hers.”
Jace watched his delicate wife as she chatted with the owner of the small mom-and-pop restaurant. Roadside places this size could be greasy spoons, but this one was warm and welcoming. He liked the white paint on the building and the blue shutters that seemed to welcome weary travelers. The full parking lot had been testament to the good eats inside.
“She won’t like it,” he told his sister.
“We all agree that’s the likelihood. We hasten to warn you that Sawyer has left before, when she felt things were not optimum between you. This time, you’ll have to figure out how to keep her on the road with you. Unless you can convince her to go into temporary hiding, at least until after the babies are born. We had a family council, and we vote unanimously that less of you is more. Besides, you deserve a honeymoon, brother.”
He could hear his sister’s giggle loud and clear. “I’ll do my best.”
“Then that should be good enough. Tell Sawyer hello from the Callahan clan, and congratulations again. There must be a hundred wedding gifts here that she can open when you lovebirds return.”
Ash hung up, and Jace went inside to sit in a sunny, cushy booth across from his wife.
“I ordered for you.”
“Thanks.” He glanced around, checking the other diners. “Ash says the family sends their...” He groped for a word she’d find acceptable.
“Felicitations?”
“Exactly.” A waitress put a steaming cup of coffee in front of him, and Jace waited until she was gone. “She says a few wedding gifts have arrived.”
“I’ll write thank-you letters when we get home.”
“Yeah, about that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Ash also says that we need to stay gone awhile longer.”
Sawyer gazed over her glass of tea at him. “Reason?”
He hated to be the bearer of bad news. “Security.”
“Your family’s afraid I’m on the other side.”
“Will you stop?” he demanded impatiently. “They’re worried you’re a target now that your uncle has crossed Wolf, and therefore the cartel that Wolf is in cahoots with. It’s a dangerous situation for all.”
