Suddenly Married (6 page)

But if that was the case, why had he come so close to kissing her…not once but twice!

Sighing, Dara returned to the kitchen, where the water was at a full boil in the kettle. How would Noah take his tea? she asked herself, stirring half a teaspoon of sugar into her own mug. With honey and lemon? Cream and sugar? Or just plain? If she had to guess, she’d choose the latter. Everything else about him was no-frills, from the neatly trimmed mustache above his upper lip to the gleam of his razor-cut hair.

And whatever it was that he wanted to say to her, she had a feeling he’d get straight to the point.

Francine had always been the one who’d listened to their prayers, but once she accepted the fact that her illness was terminal, she had said, “It’s important that you be there for them, morning and night. How else will they learn that talking to God can be as easy and as natural as breathing?”

It had been just one of the many things he’d promised in her last hours. So far, he hadn’t let her down. With the help of a cleaning service, he kept the house
shipshape and saw to it Angie and Bobby ate three squares a day. He made sure they continued with their piano lessons and took her place in helping them with their homework. And most important of all, he’d made a point of attending Sunday services with them after their Bible class ended. “Children learn by example,” Francine had said.

More times than he cared to admit, Noah wished he’d been more observant of all the little things she’d done to make his life pleasant and peaceful. Things like pretty flower arrangements that brightened dark corners. His bathrobe, belted and hanging neatly in their closet. Socks, freshly laundered and paired, then rolled into a ball and tucked into his top dresser drawer.

She’d known without his saying so that he didn’t like his feet cramped into a tightly sheeted bed. And so, in addition to covers that were pulled back and smoothed, Francine had, without fail, untucked the sheets and blankets every night.

Raised in St. Vincent’s Orphanage with nothing but a change of clothes to call his own, the closest he’d come to loving and being loved was when old Brother Constantine invited the lonely boy to join him for his daily walks around the academy grounds.

He’d been dumped on the headmaster’s doorstep at the tender age of two, and by the time Noah turned fourteen, he’d given up hope that one of the smiling couples who came “visiting” would take
him
home. The starry-eyed ladies and their stoic husbands were looking for babies, after all, and he’d grown too tall, too gangly, for their tastes. Besides, if his own mother hadn’t wanted him, why should anyone else?

But years of the brother’s quiet and steadfast acceptance opened the boy’s heart to the possibility, at least,
that one day he might find the kind of warmth that can be generated only by a loving family. And when he was twenty-two, four full years after he’d left St. Vincent’s and Brother Constantine behind, Noah found it in the arms of Francine Brewster.

Her motherly ministrations were like soothing salve, healing the raw wounds of desperation inflicted by years of believing love was an emotion intended for everyone, anyone but him.

He had accepted her gift of unconditional love, and, believing it was far better to
show
her that he appreciated it, Noah took to doing little things for his wife. Things like surprising her with bouquets of wildflowers, plucked from the roadside; building a potting shed out back, complete with heat and electricity, where she could tend her green-leafed “pets.” He added a room to the back of their Pennsylvania farmhouse so she’d have a place to read when the mood struck.

Oh, how she’d brightened his life! Noah often said he would have tried to reel in the sun if she thought it might warm her, would have gathered up the stars to add sparkle to her life. She’d laugh softly and wave his wishes away, saying, “You’re plenty warm and sparkly for me!”

Still, he’d have done anything she’d asked of him, because Noah believed that
nothing
he did or built or said could ever balance the scales once she’d given him those precious treasures called Angela Marie and Robert Edward.

He missed her. Missed the companionship and the camaraderie. And being with Dara tonight had reminded him that a rock-solid marriage could be as comfortable as a feather bed.

He hadn’t met a person who didn’t love Dara—and
he’d spoken to dozens in trying to find out if she might be involved in the embezzlement scheme. Why, he’d need a calculator to count up all the people who said she’d done them a favor or a kindness over the years!

She certainly had a way with children, his own in particular. She had an incredible sense of humor. And from all he’d seen, she enjoyed hard work. He sensed that the sweetness in her started in her heart, reverberated to every other part of her. And she’s certainly pretty enough, he thought, picturing her dark doe eyes, her bouncy curls, her heart-stopping smile.

More importantly, Dara was a devout follower. That was essential. Francine had specifically told him if love ever came knocking again, he should open the door—provided a Christian woman stood on the other side. “A believer will see to it Angie and Bobby are raised in the faith. She’ll teach them through her own example, not just by words alone.”

He’d prayed himself hoarse over it; if he had to rehitch his wagon—and according to the counselor, that’s exactly what his kids needed most right now—why not yoke himself to someone he sincerely respected, a woman he genuinely
liked?

Noah shrugged. Because who knows? You might just find yourself feeling more than friendship for Dara…one day.

If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit he felt more than that for her
now.
How else was he to explain the way his heart had thundered when he’d
almost
held her in his arms…when he’d
almost
kissed her lovely pink lips.…

“Father?” Angela Marie was saying now.

She’d caught him daydreaming, and she knew it. Noah returned her mischievous smile.

“Good thing you listened to my prayers
last,
” she said, grinning.

He tucked the covers up under her chin. “And why is that?”

“Because Bobby gets his feelings hurt if you don’t pay attention to
his
prayers, remember?”

Nodding, Noah chuckled. “What makes you think I wasn’t paying attention to your prayers?”

“Because,” she said matter-of-factly, “you didn’t say ‘Amen’ when I finished.”

“Good night, sweet girl,” he said, bending to kiss her forehead.

He turned out the light, and as he stepped into the hall, he heard her whisper, “I love you, Father.”

“I love you, too.”

Heart knocking against his ribs, he descended the stairs and headed for the kitchen, where Dara was waiting for him. What he was about to say wouldn’t be easy, but it would be right.

Dara had finished one cup of tea and was halfway through a second before she decided to wait for him in the family room, where it was warmer. According to the carriage clock on top of the TV, he’d been gone twenty minutes.

It seemed like an hour.

Dara worried about staying the night. What would his neighbors say when the little red car that had been parked in his driveway before the snow started was still there in the morning? What would Angie and Bobby think when they woke up and found their Sunday-school teacher asleep on the sofa in their family room? And speaking of Sunday school, how would the parents
of her other students feel when they found out she’d spent the night in a widower’s house?

You’re a grown-up, they’d scold, why didn’t you check the weather before it got too hazardous to drive? To which she’d reply, Well, if they don’t think any better of me than that…

Still, others might say that she’d subconsciously allowed herself to get waylaid at Noah’s house. Some would no doubt think it hadn’t been unconscious at all, that she’d deliberately gotten stranded, miles from home, on one of the worst weather nights of the year.

Dara sighed. Because, in all honesty she didn’t know which scenario was true.

She was standing at the stove when she heard him coming down the hall. “How do you take your tea?” she asked when he came in from the small home office adjacent to the kitchen.

He carried a thick accordion file under his arm. “No hot chocolate?”

“I figured you’d suggested it only on my behalf.”

Grinning, he said, “You figured right.”

“So…?” She pointed to the mug

He hesitated a moment before saying, “Strong and black.”

She wondered about the tick in time that had passed before he answered. But his response had been what she’d expected: no frills, just like Noah himself.

“Sorry it took so long up there. The kids get a little wordy sometimes.”

It isn’t like I was going anywhere, she wanted to say, not with a foot and a half of snow on the ground. “I didn’t mind,” she said, instead. “I made myself comfortable in the family room. It’s very warm and cozy in there.”

“Then what say we bring the—” He frowned at the file. “How about if we drink our tea in the family room?”

The way he’d stopped midsentence Dara knew he hadn’t said what he’d intended. His serious expression told her it wouldn’t be long until he did.

She carried their mugs into the family room. While she’d waited for him to tuck the children in, Dara had decided the big overstuffed recliner in the corner was Noah’s. Her father had had a favorite chair, and it, too, had that certain comfortably worn quality. She put one mug on the table beside it, placed the other on the coffee table and nodded at the file. “What’s that?” she asked, sitting on the end of the couch nearest his chair.

“Something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said, sliding a manila folder from the file. “But before I show you what’s in here, I want you to know I feel terrible about this.”

Why did his tone of voice, his choice of words, remind her of when her father used to begin her childhood scoldings with “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”?

“I gave a lot of thought to what you’d said the other day in your father’s office, that he wasn’t the kind of man who could steal.”

Dara’s heart hammered; her palms grew moist. This was going to be much more serious than any reprimand her dad had ever doled out.

“I never had the pleasure of meeting him,” Noah continued, “but his reputation as an honest businessman was well-known…and well-deserved, from everything I’ve heard. That’s what prompted me to take another look into this matter of…of embezzlement.”

Embezzlement.
The word echoed loudly, harshly, in
her ears, like the deep, repeating grate of the school’s fire alarm.

“You sounded so sure of his innocence,” Noah said, “that it made me believe if I dug deep enough, looked long enough, I might just find the proof you were talking about, proof that would clear his name.”

“You’re not going to believe this, but…”

“But what?”

“I came here tonight hoping to discuss that very thing with you.”

His furrowed brow told her he still didn’t understand.

“I was hoping you’d go to work for
me,
looking for…looking for—”

“Proof that would clear your father’s name?” he repeated.

Dara nodded. “You didn’t find it, did you?”

His somber expression was her answer.

Noah took a deep breath, handed Dara the file. “I didn’t leave a stone unturned. I checked into everything. No one escaped my scrutiny, not the board of directors, not Kurt Turner, not the bookkeeper or even the secretary.” Noah paused, still frowning. “Only a handful of people had access to that money, and each one of them could account for every cent.” He met her eyes, his frown intensifying slightly. “The trail deadends at your father’s door.”

He had nothing to gain by lying to her, Dara realized. In fact, his stellar reputation could only improve if he managed to turn up documentation that cleared her father’s name. She opened the file, flipped nervously through the paperwork inside. But she couldn’t read what was printed on the pages, because Dara couldn’t see through her tears.

Right from the start, something had told her things might turn out this way. She’d hoped and prayed for a different ending, of course, an ending that would show the Kurt Turners of the world that, despite his unconventional behavior, Jake Mackenzie had been a good and decent man.

He’d always been eccentric, a bit offbeat. But
that
had been what set him apart from the crowd; his business successes had been a direct result of what some called “personality quirks” and “peculiarities.” Everyone said so, including her father!

It had never taken much to satisfy him. “Three square meals and a cot,” he’d often say, “and I’m a happy man.” Then, with no warning whatever, the simple life no longer seemed to satisfy him. He started jetting all over the country, “lunching” with big shots from Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health, saying only that his meetings with the top docs would improve life for everybody.

His actions grew more and more unpredictable, especially those months before the first heart attack. And in the weeks before he’d left for England, Dara’s gregarious, easygoing, amiable father became elusive, secretive, overly sensitive to questions.

All right. So he had taken the money. But why, she wondered. “
Why?
”

Noah sat beside her on the sofa, slipped an arm around her shoulders. He handed her his handkerchief.

She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a ba—”

“No need for tears
or
apologies.” He kissed her temple. “Because I have an idea that I think will right all the wrongs in both our lives.”

Dara dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t see how that’s
possible,” she said, smiling, “but you’ve sure got my attention.”

He turned her to face him, rested his hands on her shoulders, his intense gaze stealing her breath away.

“Marry me.”

S
urely she hadn’t heard him correctly…he hadn’t really asked her to marry him.

Had he?

Dara blinked the last of her tears away. “I, ah, I’m sorry, Noah. My pity party must have affected my hearing.”

“You heard me right.”

She stiffened as he plunged on.

“See, it’s like this. Pinnacle hired me to find that money. They don’t care
where
I find it, so if I find it in my own account—”

“
Your
account?” She pressed her fingertips against her temples and squinted. “I’m afraid I’m not following you,” she said, shaking her head. “This is a lot to absorb in just a few minutes. I mean…I just found out my father is a…a criminal, and then I get…I get proposed to by a man I barely know.” She shook her head again. “Wait a minute. You said they wouldn’t care if you found the missing money in your account. How did it get into your account, anyway?”

“I never said it
was
in my account. What I said was, I’d replace it with my own two hundred thousand. Of course, I’ll have to let that account go. It would be a conflict of interest to work on Pinnacle if we were married.”

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “So you’re saying…” Frowning, Dara met his eyes. He’d said it straight out: “Dara, will you marry me?” But why would he say such a thing? And what did it have to do with the missing money?

Dara was beginning to get a headache. “Exactly what
are
you saying?”

“Look, it’s simple. I happen to know that you’ll be out of a job in a few months, and I figure money’s gonna be scarce, so—”

Dad is guilty, she thought, barely hearing a word Noah was saying. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had a lapful of evidence that said otherwise. But wait—had she heard right? Had Noah said something about her losing her job? “How do you know I’ll soon be out of work? I only found out myse—”

Staring at the toes of his sneakers, he tucked in one corner of his mouth. “I just know, okay?” And before she had a chance to ask how, he met her eyes. “You know as well as I do that Angie and Bobby need a mother. And I know as well as you do that your father’s reputation is important to you. Very important.” He shrugged. “So, what I’m proposing is this. I’ll put the money back…if you’ll become my wife.”

Dara could only stare at him in silent disbelief. “You…you want to
buy
me?”

“Of course not,” he snapped.

“Well, what would
you
call it?” Not ten minutes had passed since he’d handed her proof positive that
her father—the man she had always thought could do no wrong—was a fraud. Jake Mackenzie had been her protector, her provider, her
hero,
for goodness’ sake, for thirty years. If
he
had feet of clay…

“No one will ever have to know about what happened at Pinnacle,” he was saying.

What had happened at Pinnacle in and of itself would have been more than enough to stagger her. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to top the news, and then Noah had pitched his either-or proposition.

Some choice! she thought. Marry Noah, and Dad’s reputation as an honest businessman stands, or…She pictured the plaque on the office wall, commissioned by the men and women who had worked for Jake Mackenzie. Friend and Father to Us All, it said. What would they think of their “friend and father” if they knew he’d stolen company funds for—

What did you do with that money, Dad? she demanded. Perhaps if she knew the answer to that, she’d understand
why
he’d done something so out of character in the first place. You’re grasping at straws, she thought, cupping her elbows. You want easy answers, and there are none.

Dara began to pace as a plethora of thoughts flitted through her head, among them, that her fondest childhood dream had turned into a nightmare. She hadn’t even gone to kindergarten yet when she began believing in the beautiful fairy tale—a handsome prince would carry her off on his white steed to a life of picket fences and the pitter-patter of little feet. But if Jake Mackenzie—whom she’d admired all her life—could do something so underhanded, it could only mean one thing: her handsome prince wasn’t coming, because no such man existed.

She heaved a sad sigh and glanced around Noah’s family room, at the tidy furnishings, the ceiling-to-floor flagstone behind the woodstove where the family photographs hung. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? There wasn’t a knickknack or collectible in sight. No throw pillows on the couch, no scatter rugs underfoot. I’ve seen homier rooms in furniture advertisements.

And then it struck her. That was what Noah was looking for…someone to give this place a woman’s touch. She frowned, staring at the nubby texture of the beige carpeting beneath her feet. Why doesn’t he just hire somebody? It sure would be easier.

She stood at the French doors, staring out across the frosty expanse of lawn. Pressing her forehead against the smooth, cool glass, she closed her eyes. “I don’t think you really want to saddle yourself with a wife, Noah,” she said softly. Straightening, Dara drew a frowny face in the vapor her breath had created on a windowpane. “You want a nanny. A housekeeper.
Both,
maybe.” She tucked her hand into her sleeve, wiped the smile away. “The Yellow Pages are full—”

“Been there, done that,” came his brusque interruption.

She turned in time to see him run both hands through his hair.

“Look, I’ve had it up to here,” he steamed, stroking a fingertip across his throat, “with women who’re content to put in a nine-to-five day, who’ll do only what’s absolutely necessary to earn their paychecks and not one whit more. My kids need more than a clean house and well-balanced meals. They need…”

He clamped his teeth together, lips and eyes narrowing in frustration. “I’ll tell you what I want, Dara.” He stood between the coffee table and the sofa, feet
planted shoulder-width apart, and jabbed the air with a forefinger. “What I want is someone who will love my kids as if they were her own, someone who’ll genuinely care about every minute detail of their lives—from what they wear to bed to who they choose as playmates to whether or not they say their prayers.” He threw both hands into the air. “If I had access to all the money in the world, I couldn’t buy that!”

Dara’s eyes widened with surprise at the ferocity in his quietly faltering voice. He closed his eyes, as if to summon self-control, and, chin resting on his chest, whispered, “I
know
you’d be good for Angie and Bobby.”

“Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth?” she snapped.

Crossing the room in three long strides, he grasped her hands, gave them a gentle squeeze. “It’s a win-win situation, as I see it.”

“That’s not the way
I
see it! If I marry you, my father gets his good name back, you get a chief cook and bottle washer and your kids get a substitute mother.” She paused, lower lip trembling with frustration. “What’s in it for
me
?”

He blinked. Licked his lips. “I—I, ah, I guess I never looked at it that way.”

She snatched back her hands, folded them tightly in front of her and shot a furtive glance at the doorway. If only she could leave, right now!

Dara stared outside, where the snow was falling harder than ever. It was everywhere now, two feet deep and mounting steadily; clinging to tree limbs, hugging the twigs of shrubs and bushes; blanketing the wrought-iron deck furniture; burying flower beds. When she’d peeked out the front door earlier, it had
climbed halfway up the tires of her car. It was sure to have hidden them by now. Escape was impossible; she was trapped.

She heard him quietly step up behind her. Inhaling the faint masculine scent of his woodsy aftershave, she felt the heat and weight of his hands on her shoulders.

“We have an awful lot in common, you and I,” he whispered into her ear.

“Like what!”

“We get along pretty well, and you seemed to like my cooking,” he joked. “And I can see it in your eyes when you look at Angie and Bobby—you really care about them.”

“Well, of course I do. A person would need a heart made of wood not to care about those—”

“Then give me one good reason we shouldn’t get married.”

There were a whole
host
of reasons—not the least of which was that they’d only just met—but the most important reason screamed in her head. “Because we don’t love each other,” she said. Surely he couldn’t argue with
that.

The sandy brows drew together as his lips tightened beneath the tawny mustache. Like a swift punch to the jaw, Dara’s straightforward remark seemed to have caught him off guard, as if he’d expected her to smile and pull out her pocket calendar, start talking dates and gowns and—

“It’s been my experience that good marriages have to be built on a stronger foundation than love alone,” he said. “If they’re to endure the test of time, they’d better be made of sturdier stuff—more dependable stuff—than—”

“But without love,” she interrupted, “your so-called
strong foundation might as well be sand. You ought to know that better than most, since your marriage to Francine was so…so
perfect.
”

Dara blamed her terse comment on having just discovered that everything she’d believed all her life about her father was a lie. On feeling cornered by Noah, his proposal. On the weather. The late hour. She pressed her fingertips into her eyes.

“Hey,” he said softly, “don’t cry.”

“Give me one good reason,” she said distractedly.

Noah gently cupped her face in his hands and ran the pads of his thumbs over her cheeks. Slowly, he studied her eyes. A smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Having a woman respond to his marriage proposal with tears doesn’t do much for a man’s ego,” he responded honestly.

Under the circumstances, she didn’t want his simple admonition to get to her. But it did. And try as she might to fight it, she felt sorry for hurting his feelings.

“I’m not crying because you proposed to me…” She met his gaze and forgot what she was about to say.

She stirred uneasily as a warning flashed in her head. If she thought her car would make it through the snow, Dara would leave right now, because she wanted nothing more than to hole up in her room and hide under the covers, at least until the snow stopped falling. But she wasn’t going anywhere, and she knew it.

“I wish I could tell you what you want to hear, Dara,” he was saying. “I like you…like everything about you, but…”

He thinks you want to hear him say he loves you before—Why else was he looking at her with that expression on his face? What else could explain the
way he’d softened his tone and tilted his head? He feels sorry for you!

She replayed the evening in her mind at fast-forward speed, scanning her memory for the thing she’d done or said that might have given him such a ludicrous notion. Love, she wanted to say, is the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

But she hadn’t spent all those years under the same roof with Gloria Mackenzie for nothing. Dara was a guest in Noah’s house—a fact that wouldn’t,
couldn’t
change until morning at the earliest, thanks to the twofoot blanket of snow on the ground. She couldn’t very well tell her host that he was beginning to sound like a conceited, self-absorbed man.…

Or could she?

Dara opened her mouth, fully prepared to tell him what she thought of him
and
his buy-a-wife deal, when he slid an arm around her waist and led her to the couch.

“I owe you an explanation. Please sit down and let—”

“You don’t owe me anything, least of all an explanation,” she said, enunciating every word.

“Just humor me, then.”

She sat, stiff and straight and silent, and listened.

“Francine…she was my wife—” He stopped and looked down, then started again. “It was cancer that took…” Noah inhaled sharply. “That…” He blew a stream of air through his lips before continuing. “I, ah, I don’t make a practice of talking about this.”

Suddenly, Dara felt sorry for him. “And you don’t have to talk about it now,” she said, her voice and manner softening.

“No, no. I need you to understand why I…”

Dara really didn’t have any business listening to any of this. She barely knew the man, after all. If only she could go home, hide under her covers and go to sleep. At least then she wouldn’t have to think about what Jake Mackenzie had done. Because if he hadn’t stolen the money, Pinnacle wouldn’t have hired a CPA firm to find it. So it was her father’s fault, in a roundabout way, that Noah had gotten his absurd idea in the first place.

He stroked his mustache between thumb and forefinger. “I made a lot of promises to her at the end.”

Well, at least while you’re being Mother Confessor you won’t have to think about Father Done You Wrong, she thought ruefully. “What kind of promises?”

“‘Yes, honey, I’ll remember your mother’s birthday,’ and ‘No, honey, I won’t forget the kids’ piano lessons’ and ‘Of course I’ll make sure they say their prayers’ and…” Facing forward, he leaned both elbows on his knees and clasped his hands in the space between, head down. His frown deepened, and so did his voice. “And I said I’d see to it they had a loving mother as soon as possible.”

And loving him and her children as she had, Francine hadn’t realized she was asking the impossible of him, Dara thought. Hadn’t she seen how much he loved her, and that
because
he did, remarriage was the
last
thing on his mind? Dara sat quietly, watching, listening. Oh, he was trying hard, she could see, to hide his true feelings behind that stern expression and those no-nonsense words, but he was hurting. She knew because his voice took on a special softness, and a certain sadness-tinged-with-longing glinted in his eyes when he spoke of his wife.

Lord,
Dara prayed,
will I ever know a love like that?
She tucked in one corner of her mouth.
Not likely, since there isn’t a decent man left on the face of the earth.

Now, that isn’t fair,
she quickly corrected herself.
Noah is decent enough. It’s just that
…

Just that
what?

“Look at me, Dara,” he said, interrupting her reverie. He cupped her chin in a palm. “I’ve never told anyone any of this before. I wouldn’t be telling you now, except…”