Instant Husband

He carefully shouldered open the door to the bedroom where he’d decided to put Ann. Gently lowering her onto the narrow bed, he stared down at her sleep-flushed face. For a moment he was filled with a desire to carry her downstairs to his own bed. To assert his masculinity in the most basic of ways. But he ruthlessly squelched the urge. He’d already decided that his best hope for remaining undamaged by this marriage would be to maintain an emotional and physical distance from her. But what he hadn’t counted on when he’d made his plans was that Ann Lennon would be quite so tempting a physical package. Although, maybe her appeal would fade upon closer acquaintance, he encouraged himself as he pulled a blanket around her and then hastily retreated to the safety of his own room.

* * *

“Ann? Ann!”

The irritating sound nibbled at the edge of her consciousness, and Ann rolled over, wincing slightly at the unyielding hardness of the lumpy mattress.

“Ann!” The voice demanded with all the persistence of a dentist’s drill.

She burrowed beneath her thin pillow in a vain attempt to shut out the hectoring sound.

“Are you awake?” the deep voice sounded closer.

Ann forced open her eyes and stared blankly at the door. Its dark green paint had peeled away in places to reveal the dingy brown color beneath. She frowned, trying to place it and failed. Where was she? Her gaze swung around the barren room, which was dimly lit by the sunlight filtering in through the ripped shade partially covering the window.

“Ann, wake up!”

Nick! Ann jackknifed up as memory suddenly poured through her.

“I’m awake,” she yelled, not wanting Nick to come in and see her all rumpled from having spent the night in her clothes. To her dismay, Nick pushed open the door, although he didn’t come inside. Instead, he gestured toward the other side of the room.

“Those are the boxes you sent,” he said.

“Thank you.” Uncertainly, Ann stared at him. If anything, he looked even more intensely masculine in broad daylight than he had last night. Well-worn jeans lovingly molded his muscular thighs, and a long-sleeve, dark green cotton shirt covered his broad chest. Her eyes met his, and her breath caught at the seething emotion she could see there. Probably not excitement at seeing her, she thought ruefully. Far more likely, it was impatience.

She swallowed an enormous yawn and pushed her tumbled hair out of her face.

“What time is it?” Her voice was husky with sleep.

“Six o’clock. I let you sleep late because you seemed so tired last night.”

“Late!” she repeated incredulously. As far as she was concerned, the day started at seven. Any time before that was merely an unsubstantiated rumor.

“We normally get up at five-thirty. There’s a lot of chores to do on a working ranch.”

Ann opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of working ranches and then promptly closed it, reminding herself that she’d agreed to this. Just because she’d never gotten up in the middle of the night before, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t become accustomed to it in time. Of course, in time she’d die of old age and it wouldn’t matter, she thought gloomily.

“Farm wives fix their husbands’ breakfast,” Nick added with what Ann thought was an appalling smugness.

“Lovely,” she mumbled.

“Although, because this is your first day, I’ll fix breakfast while you get ready. The judge said he’d be at home all morning, so after I take care of the stock, we’ll drive into town and get married.”

Ann gulped as his news hit her with the force of a blow. They were going to get married today? This morning? Blind panic churned through her. Panic that she tried hard to quell, knowing that it was irrational. She’d come out here to marry him, so what was the point of waiting?

“Is that going to be a problem?” Nick’s voice hardened.

Ann stared up into his narrowed eyes, wondering what he wanted her to say. His tone of voice was almost…hostile. Could he want her to say no? Say she’d changed her mind and didn’t want to marry him after all? Or could he be afraid that she had changed her mind and he wouldn’t have anyone to help him with his daughter? She didn’t know him well enough to even hazard a reasonable guess. And that being so, she’d be wise to respond to what he was saying and not what she thought he might mean, she told herself.

Ann took a deep breath and, feeling as if she were taking an irrevocable step into the unknown, said, “No, it’s not a problem. I’m just not awake yet. If you could tell me where the bathroom is?”

“First door to the right at the foot of the stairs. Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes.” He abruptly turned and left.

Ann listened to the sound of his footsteps receding on the bare wooden steps before she flung back the covers and climbed out of bed. She gasped as the room’s icy air pounced on her unsuspecting body and began to freeze her top layer of skin.

If it was this cold in April, what was it like in January? she wondered uneasily. Briskly rubbing her hands over her arms, she looked around for a furnace register to warm herself. She didn’t find one. In fact, she didn’t find much of anything. The only furniture the small room contained was the narrow bed she’d slept on and a huge, battered mahogany chest of drawers that was so ugly it was almost avant-garde. Almost.

The single narrow window was covered with a flyspecked green blind that was ripped along the bottom, while a truly hideous pink cabbage-rose-print wallpaper desecrated the walls. From the look of the water stains beneath the window, the paper had probably been there since the Depression. But the decorating coup de grace, as far as Ann was concerned, was the oversize picture hanging above the bed. It depicted a soul writhing in torment in the fires of Hell.

It had probably been painted by a farm wife who had gotten up at five-thirty one too many times, Ann thought tartly. Whoever had decorated this room had obviously been heavily into self-denial, if not outright masochism.

Although…Ann frowned. Why hadn’t Nick’s first wife redecorated? Because she hadn’t slept here? For that matter, where had Nick slept? Certainly not here. She felt a momentary frisson of regret that she quickly stifled. Where Nick slept was his own business. All she needed to know was that her original supposition about his lack of interest in sex was correct. He obviously didn’t intend to share his bed with her or he would have taken her there in the first place.

Which was one less thing to have to worry about, she told herself as she rummaged through her suitcase to find clean clothes.

Fifteen minutes later Ann emerged from the bathroom with a whole new appreciation for the wonders of modern plumbing. The only positive thing she could find to say about the facilities was that everything worked. At least, they worked as long as one wasn’t too fussy about things like hot water, adequate pressure and much heat.

She followed the smell of coffee down a dark, narrow hallway filled with an underlying odor of mildew. Emerging into the bright, sunshiny kitchen, she instinctively headed toward the coffeepot.

She filled one of the thick mugs sitting on the counter, added sugar with a liberal hand and took a long, reviving swallow.

“The coffee is very good,” she complimented Nick’s back, which was the only part of him that was visible. He was standing over an old stove stirring something in a frying pan.

“Thank you,” he tossed over his shoulder, then lapsed into silence.

Ann took another drink of coffee and looked around the kitchen, barely suppressing a shudder at what she saw. The ceiling was painted a brilliant Chinese red, while the walls were a malevolent shade of acid yellow. The ancient metal cupboard leaning drunkenly against the wall was dented, scratched and rusted around the bottom. The chipped white enamel sink was discolored by dark brown stains, and the cloth skirt someone had hung beneath it to hide the pipes had long since faded to a nondescript gray. The linoleum had not only lost its pattern but it was completely worn away in front of the sink and back door.

In fact, the only thing in the whole room she approved of was the round oak table underneath the window. It was gorgeous. Worthy of a serious collector. She sat down at it and ran her hand over its worn surface. Maybe she could try her hand at refinishing it.

“What’s the matter?” Nick set a heaping plate in front of her and sat down across from her with his own.

“Nothing. I was just—” She broke off as she noticed what was on her plate.

“Did I give you too much?” Nick asked.

“It isn’t how much you gave me, it’s what you gave me.”

“Just what I’m eating.”

“Every morning?”

Nick frowned uncomprehendingly at her “Breakfast is not a one-time affair. Most people indulge every morning.”

“Well, if you continue to indulge like this, you aren’t going to have all that many more breakfasts. You’ll drop dead of a heart attack. Look at this.” She gestured toward the thick white plate.

Nick looked. “Scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and toast fried in the pan drippings. Lots of protein.”

“Lots of cholesterol,” Ann said firmly. She might not know much about how to make a success of marriage, but she did know about nutrition—a subject about which Nick seemed woefully and dangerously ignorant. “You’ve probably got a whole week’s allowance of fat here. It—”

She turned as the back door suddenly opened and a whipcord thin man of indeterminate age stalked in. He was wearing worn jeans, a faded denim jacket and boots heavily encrusted with a suspicious brown substance.

“One of them fancy purebreds of yours done dropped her calf early. They’s out in the far west pasture and the little critter don’t look none too good neither.”

“Dammit!” Nick got to his feet. “Ann, this is Snake, my right-hand man.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Ann politely held out her hand. To her surprise, Snake merely stared at her as if she’d just made an indecent gesture.

Finally he shifted a large wad of what Ann feared was tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other and said, “Ya might as well know, I don’t hold with wimmin. They’s trouble. Every man jack of ’em.”

Ann swallowed a grin at his choice of metaphors. “I take it you’re a misogynist?” she said for lack of anything else to say.

“Ain’t neither!” he snapped. “Baptized a Methodist fifty-seven years ago and ain’t never seen no reason ta change.”

Snake turned to Nick. “Ya comin’? This ain’t no time ta be daudlin’.”

“I’m coming.” Nick grabbed a piece of toast and followed Snake out. He paused at the door and turned back to Ann. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll go get married.”

“This is my world and welcome to it,” Ann muttered, watching through the window as Nick crossed the bare ground between the house and the barn.

Pushing the offending plate of food away from her, she reached for her coffee. At least her life here wasn’t going to be dull. She grinned as she remembered Snake’s outraged face when she’d called him a misogynist.

In fact, there was a great deal of scope for her here, she thought, bolstering her sagging resolve. The whole house was in desperate need of renovation and so was Nick’s diet. Those were things she could do. Maybe if she focused on what she could do, Nick wouldn’t notice what she couldn’t do.

Two

Ann jumped as the pencil she held clenched in her fingers suddenly snapped with a loud crack that echoed through the silent kitchen. Blankly, she stared down at the pieces for a startled moment and then impatiently shoved them aside.

Relax, she ordered her tense muscles, but her muscles didn’t respond. She felt as if she’d been wound too tightly. As if she might shatter into pieces like the pencil at any second. Her disconnected thoughts seemed to scurry around her mind like mice on a treadmill, going nowhere and solving nothing.

What was she doing here? She looked around the dilapidated kitchen with a sense of unreality. This wasn’t her environment. She’d spent her whole life in New York City. She didn’t know anything about the West or ranching. Or men like Nick St. Hilarion. She must have been crazy to have thought that she could make this work. Mail-order brides were a thing of the past. They had no place in modern society.

Ann shot to her feet, propelled by her fears, which had been steadily growing ever since Nick had left. She had to get out of here before it was too late. Before she made a terrible mistake. She had to—

“Nick said ta tell ya he’s almost done within the stock.”

“Done with the stock?” Ann parroted, taken off guard by Snake’s sudden appearance at the back door.

“That’s what I said. Nick said ta be ready ta go get hitched,” Snake said belligerently.

“But…” Ann began, only to find herself talking to empty air.

“And that’s another thing,” she muttered as honest indignation began to nudge aside her corroding fears. “That refugee from a bad spaghetti Western treats me like I had a highly contagious disease.” She grimaced as she heard the peevish note in her voice. What did it matter if she couldn’t get along with Snake? What mattered was whether or not she could get along with Snake’s boss.

Ann walked over to the window and stared outside into the blinding sunlight as she tried to think. Her reasons for accepting Nick hadn’t changed. She would be getting a career that appealed to her and one that she had a definite talent for—homemaking—and, hopefully, she would find companionship with Nick. A sense of belonging.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she willed her racing heart to slow down. If her reasons for marrying Nick hadn’t changed, then why was she indulging in hysterical doubts? She tried to follow her chaotic emotions through to their inception. It wasn’t the state of his house, appalling as it was. Nor was it his surly hired hand. The cause of her uncertainty was Nick himself. She squarely faced this fact. He was not at all what she had expected.

Instead of a quiet, retiring specimen of manhood, she had found someone who looked like the embodiment of an adolescent romantic fantasy. What was worse, it was a romantic fantasy that touched something deep inside her. Something she hadn’t even been aware had existed. And that was on their first meeting. What would she feel like after a few weeks?

She didn’t know. Possibly her initial attraction would fade beneath the demands of daily living. Or it might mellow out into something more comfortable.

And Nick had no idea how he’d impacted on her emotions, she mused, soothing her frayed nerves. Nor was she some overeager adolescent who couldn’t control her own reactions. If she didn’t act on her impulses, they’d remain just thoughts, known only to her.

Ann pressed her lips together in unconscious determination. There were no guarantees, but she had a decent shot at making this marriage work. Mainly because Nick was as committed to its success as she was. She took a deep, calming breath. She’d marry Nick and she’d build a solid relationship that would be a comfort to both of them, she vowed as she headed upstairs to change into the cream wool suit she’d bought because it had looked vaguely bridal without being fussy.

To her surprise and slight hurt, when she came back downstairs she found that Nick hadn’t bothered to change. Telling herself that their marriage wouldn’t be any more valid if he were wearing a suit, Ann climbed into the cab of the truck.

Her sense of purpose held through the trip to town despite Nick’s monosyllabic answers to her few tentative stabs at conversation. Knowing that he was probably worried about the cow who had had the calf early, she refused to allow her sense of unease to grow. If Nick had changed his mind about marrying her, all he had to do was say so-much as Snake was doing in the jump seat of the truck, Ann thought wryly as she listened to his mutters about one more good man biting the dust.

“If you feel that way, why are you coming to the wedding?” Ann finally asked.

“I’s hopin’ he’ll change his mind,” Snake shot back.

“I’m not going to change my mind, Snake.” Nick’s voice sounded loud and overly emphatic in the close confines of the truck. Who was he trying so hard to convince? Ann wondered. Her? Snake? Or maybe himself?

“Jake’s Market is down that street.” Nick pointed to his left as they entered the tiny town. “He delivers. Just call and tell him what you want.”

A large dose of self-confidence would be nice, Ann thought ruefully.

“Aren’t we going to the courthouse?” she asked as they passed the red brick building with its identifying sign in front.

“Should be,” Snake muttered. “Marriage should be a crime.”

“No.” Nick ignored Snake, and Ann gamely followed his lead, although her growing impulse was to say something rude. Very rude. “Judge Adams is recovering from a heart attack, and he’s at home so his wife can keep an eye on him.”

Nick pulled up in front of a neat, two-story white clapboard house and cut the engine.

“This is it,” Nick said baldly.

“The end of the line,” Snake agreed somberly.

“Change is the essence of the human condition,” Ann offered, as much to encourage herself as to rebuke Snake. Scrambling out of the car, she nervously brushed the front of her suit, checking to make sure it was still spotless. She took a deep breath, clutched her best Italian leather purse in her icy fingers and fell into step beside Nick as he mounted the porch steps.

Nick paused at the top and turned to look for Snake. He was standing by the car, drinking from a flask he’d pulled out of his back pocket.

“Need a snootful of whiskey ta face up ta this,” Snake muttered at Nick’s raised eyebrows.

Ann squashed an impulse to ask for a swallow herself and turned to Nick. “Doesn’t it take two witnesses?”

“Mabel, the judge’s wife, offered to be our second witness,” Nick said as he rung the doorbell.

The door opened before the sound of the chimes had died away to reveal a short, plump, elderly woman who took one look at them and burst into noisy tears.

Nick instinctively stepped back and glanced over his shoulder as if checking his escape route.

“Have we come at a bad time?” Ann asked uncertainly.

“No, no.” The woman beamed at them through her tears. “I always cry at weddings. I just love romance. By the way, I’m Mabel. The judge’s better half.”

“Glad to meet you,” Ann murmured, leaving the woman to her illusions. There wasn’t much romance to be found in this particular wedding.

“Come in, come in.” Mabel made a shooing motion into the house. “You, too,” she called to Snake, who was still standing by the car. “And wipe the barnyard off your boots and keep your stupid ideas to yourself,” Mabel ordered as Snake slowly climbed the porch steps. “This is my house, and I’ll not be listening to your antifeminism.

“You want to put him in his place from the start,” Mabel whispered in an audible aside to Ann. “Snake’s like most men, only worse. Come on now. The judge is waiting in the study, although I should warn you that there’s been a slight hitch.”

“Oh?” Ann asked when Nick didn’t respond.

“The poor man set his glasses down when he was through reading the paper this morning, and he’s blind as a bat without them,” Mabel explained.

“And now he can’t find them?” Ann hazarded a guess.

“Oh, no. He knows right where they are. Not that it’ll do him any good. You see, the puppy carried them off and chewed them. He scratched the lenses something awful. Now the judge can’t see to read the marriage lines. But don’t you worry none. We’ve thought of a way around the problem.” Mabel nodded emphatically. “I’m going to read the words to him, and he’ll repeat it to you.

“Come along.” Mabel hurried down the hallway and flung open the door at the end. “Here they are, dear,” she announced.

“Ah, good morning, Nick. And this must be the happy bride?” The judge squinted in Ann’s direction.

“Yes.” Nick performed the introductions with a shortness that increased Ann’s nervousness.

Think of this as the roller-coaster ride at the amusement park, she told herself. Just blank what’s happening out of your mind and hang on until it’s over.

“You got the license, Nick?” the judge asked, and Nick dug into his pocket and passed over a well-creased piece of paper.

“Good, good. Now if you and your little bride will stand here—” the judge gestured to a spot in front of him “—we’ll have this over before you know it. Dear, if you’ll begin…” He nodded to his wife.

Mabel sniffed happily, blew her nose and picked up a book from the cluttered desk.

“Dearly beloved,” she began, and her husband parroted the words. “We are—” She broke off as a loud snore suddenly sounded from the corner.

“Drat.” The judge looked exasperated. “I forgot about Pa. He always takes his morning nap there.”

“Don’t wake him on my account,” Ann said weakly, feeling as if she’d stumbled into a badly written farce. This wedding was about as different from her first one as it was possible to be. That one had taken place in a huge church with hundreds of guests, six bridesmaids and three flower girls. A soloist had sung “The Wind That Breathed O’er Eden” while she’d floated down the aisle in a cloud of white satin and antique lace.

But for all its grandeur, that wedding had been a disastrous flop, she reminded herself. This one might be stripped down to the bare essentials, but perhaps it would be all the more real for that.

The judge turned to his wife. “If you’ll continue, dear…?”

Five minutes later he pronounced them man and wife and told Nick he could kiss the bride. Neither Snake’s snort of disgust nor Mabel’s increased sobs could entirely suppress the tingle of awareness Ann felt as Nick’s lips brushed her cheek. What would it feel like if he were to really kiss her? she wondered.

“I like your wedding ring, Ann.” Mabel studied the plain gold band Nick had slipped on her finger. “But I notice you aren’t wearing your engagement ring. What does it look like? It must be a beauty. Why, I remember the monstrous diamond Nick gave Mona—” Mabel’s reminiscences came to an embarrassed stop as she suddenly seemed to realize that enumerating Nick’s gifts to his first wife might not be in the best of taste.

“How about some coffee?” Mabel asked, hurriedly changing the subject.

“Thank you, but we need to get back to the ranch,” Nick answered, while Ann considered what Mabel had said. So Nick had bought Mona a huge diamond. Why? Because he had loved her to distraction or because she’d asked for one?

It didn’t really matter, Ann told herself, because she didn’t want a diamond—big or otherwise. She’d had one once. Bill had picked it out and she’d paid for it. And it hadn’t insured a happy marriage. The simple gold band Nick had given her somehow seemed more enduring than any ostentatious diamond.

“Stop by when you’re in town, Ann, and we’ll get acquainted,” Mabel called after her as Nick hurried her out to the truck and bundled her inside.

“I will,” Ann responded. Then Nick started the truck, almost as if he were escaping the scene of a crime, Ann thought, not sure whether she should laugh or cry. His hasty retreat added the final farcical touch to the event.

Surreptitiously, she studied Nick from beneath her lashes as he maneuvered through the sparse traffic. She was his wife. Mrs. Nick St. Hilarion. She tried the name out and found it curiously satisfying. What she had to do now was to turn this taciturn stranger into a friend.

For a moment, self-doubt at her ability to accomplish it shook her but she fought it. She could do it, she encouraged herself. She might have no talent as a lover, but she did for friendship. She had scores of friends. Good friends. People whose company she enjoyed and who enjoyed hers. There was no reason she couldn’t make a friend out of Nick just because she was married to him. But how did she go about it? Ann stared blankly out the window at the passing landscape as she tried to remember how her friendships had started.