“Well, well. Look who’s here.”

Tate squinted into the darkness, still not believing that Molly O’Dare, big as life and twice as exasperating, sat in his leather-seated rocker. Without saying anything, he held back the covers so she could climb into bed with him where she belonged.

“Fat chance,” she muttered.

“Then, if you don’t mind me asking, what the hell are you doing in my bedroom at—” he paused to peer at the bedside clock “—two in the morning?”

Molly crossed her beautiful legs and folded her hands. “I’ve got…news, I guess you could say.”

Tate felt the cold kiss of dread at his cheek and a kind of creepy hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. If Molly had news for him, it probably wouldn’t be good…. “Spit it out.”

And that was just what she did. “I’m pregnant, Tate Bravo. Sometime next January, you’re going to be a dad….”

And that was it. Before Tate could collect his wits and stop her, she turned, threw a slim leg up over the sill and slipped out the window the way she had come.

Christine Rimmer
Marrying Molly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For those of you who follow the Bravos, here they are, Texas-style!

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been everything from an actress to a phone sales representative to a playwright. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma. Visit Christine at her new home on the Web at www.christinerimmer.com.

THE BRAVOS: HEROES, HEROINES AND THEIR STORIES

THE NINE-MONTH MARRIAGE (SSE #1148)

—Cash Bravo and Abby Heller

MARRIAGE BY NECESSITY (SSE #1161)

—Nate Bravo and Megan Kane

PRACTICALLY MARRIED (SSE #1174)

—Zach Bravo and Tess DeMarley

MARRIED BY ACCIDENT (SSE #1250)

—Melinda Bravo and Cole Yuma

THE MILLIONAIRE SHE MARRIED (SSE #1322)

—Jenna Bravo and Mack McGarrity

THE M.D. SHE HAD TO MARRY (SSE #1345)

—Lacey Bravo and Logan Severance

THE MARRIAGE AGREEMENT (SSE #1412)

—Marsh Bravo and Tory Winningham

THE BRAVO BILLIONAIRE (Single Title)

—Jonas Bravo and Emma Hewitt

MARRIAGE: OVERBOARD

—Gwen Bravo McMillan and Rafe McMillan

(Weekly Serial at www.eHarlequin.com)

THE MARRIAGE CONSPIRACY (SSE #1423)

—Dekker (Smith) Bravo and Joleen Tilly

HIS EXECUTIVE SWEETHEART (SSE #1485)

—Aaron Bravo and Celia Tuttle

MERCURY RISING (SSE #1496)

—Cade Bravo and Jane Elliott

SCROOGE AND THE SINGLE GIRL (SSE #1509)

—Will Bravo and Jillian Diamond

FIFTY WAYS TO SAY…I’M PREGNANT (SSE #1615)

—Starr Bravo and Beau Tisdale

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter One

“T ate. Wake up, Tate.”

Sound asleep, Tate Bravo heard the taunting whisper. He knew the voice. Molly. Damn her. What right did she have to come creeping into his dreams?

And why so often? Seemed like not a night went by that she didn’t appear to torment him.

“Hey. Pssst. Tate…”

With a groan, Tate pulled a pillow over his head. “Go ’way, Molly,” he muttered, still half-asleep. “Get outta my dreams…”

“Tate Bravo, wake up.”

Tate opened his eyes under the pillow. He blinked. “Molly?” He tossed the pillow away and sat up. The window opposite the foot of the bed was open, letting in the warm wind from outside. And Molly O’Dare sat in the leather-seated rocker in the corner, not far from that open window.

“Huh?” Tate squinted into the darkness, still not quite believing it could really be her. But it was. Molly O’Dare, big as life and twice as exasperating. Even through the shadows, with all her clothes on, he knew the shape of her and couldn’t mistake the wheat-gold gleam to her hair or the velvety curve of her baby-soft cheek. Her perfume came to him on the night breeze; flowers and musk all mingled together in a scent that seemed specifically created to drive a man wild.

Tate indulged in a slow, knowing smile. “Well, well. Look who’s here.” He thought a few things he had the good sense not to say. Things like, Couldn’t stay away, could you? and I knew you’d be back.

But no. He wasn’t going to gloat, at least not out loud. He’d missed having her warm, soft body beside him in bed. Missed it a lot—much more than he ever intended to let her know. Now that she was finally here, he wasn’t doing anything to send her off in a snit.

Keeping his mouth firmly shut, he helpfully held back the covers so she could climb in bed with him where she belonged.

“Fat chance,” she muttered. Her tone was not the least bit lustful.

Irritation borne of frustrated desire sizzled beneath his skin. But he didn’t let her rile him. Not this time. Calm as you please, he gave her a shrug and tucked the blanket back in place. “Then if you don’t mind my asking, what the hell are you doing in my bedroom at—” he paused to peer at the bedside clock “—two in the morning?”

Molly, in a short skirt and a tight-fitting white top that seemed to gleam in the darkness, rocked back in the chair. She crossed those beautiful legs and folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve got…news, I guess you could say.”

Though he was known to be tougher than a basket of snakes, at that moment, Tate Bravo felt the cold kiss of dread at his cheek and a kind of creepy hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. If Molly had news for him, it probably wouldn’t be good.

Tate speared his fingers through his sleep-scrambled hair and let out a low growl of pure suspicion. Why the hell was she here? His best guess, being as how a little hot sex seemed ruled out, was that she must have come up with some new way to rescue the needy—at great expense to the town coffers, of course.

As he had a million times in the past six months, Tate cursed the day Molly managed to get herself elected mayor of his town. It was the women who’d done it. They all hung out at Molly’s beauty shop. When she’d decided to run for mayor, they rallied around her, making it possible for her to claim fifty-four percent of the vote.

If you asked Tate, Molly’s mayorship had been a disaster from the get-go. To Tate’s mind—and to the minds of every other red-blooded businessman and responsible citizen in town—Molly O’Dare had been the worst thing to happen to Tate’s Junction, Texas, since a disgruntled contingent of Comanche warriors on the run from the Oklahoma reservation took over the place for three days back in 1886.

It was a problem of comprehension, Tate thought. Molly refused to comprehend the way things worked. She insisted on thinking independently. A very bad choice, as everyone knew that the job of mayor required no thinking at all. It was so simple. Tate Bravo, like his grandfather before him, decided what needed doing. Tate informed the mayor and the town council. They voted as per his instructions. And Tate got what he wanted for the town’s betterment.

It had always been done that way.

Until Molly.

From her first town council meeting, Molly refused to do things the way they’d always been done. Molly thought independently and came up with a lot of very bad ideas. When Tate wanted a bond issue, she wanted a sales tax increase. When Tate proposed a plan to improve parking access on Center Street, Molly fought him tooth and nail. Making it easier for the townsfolk to spend money on Center Street could wait, she said, brown eyes flashing, those gorgeous full breasts of hers stuck out high and proud. Oh, no, she’d insisted. Top priority should be putting her plan in place for indigent and shut-in care.

Truth was, Tate had his head screwed on straight when it came to what was best for the Junction—and Molly didn’t. Sure, he was all for helping out the needy. But the priority had to be supporting what kept any town running: business and commerce. Molly, a businesswoman herself, ought to have known that. But as mayor, she’d been all heart and no sense, and that was a plain fact.

Tate had been seething with fury since the day she won that damned election. And since their constant head-butting struck sparks in more ways than one, he’d also burned to get her into bed.

And he did get her into bed—a few months back. For a marvelous and thoroughly stimulating three weeks, that ripe, lush body of hers was his. In bed, he ruled her. However, once on her feet and wearing her clothes, Molly O’Dare continued to be the usual sharp thorn in his side.

Tate leaned forward a little, straining to see her better. No doubt about it. Tonight, those amber-brown eyes had a strange light in them—determined and angry at the same time. Not good.

“I have debated,” she continued bleakly, “debated for a couple of weeks now, whether to tell you this. I don’t want to tell you this. But I can’t see any way around it in the end, being as how this is not something that I plan to hide. And since you’re bound to know eventually, I’ve decided you might just as well know sooner as later. You can start getting used to it. You can start figuring out how you plan to deal with it—because, one way or another, you are going to be dealing with it.”

Tate dragged himself back against the hand-hammered copper inlay of his bed’s massive headboard and reached over to switch on the lamp. In the golden spill of light it provided, he could see the sneer on her soft mouth and the dark circles under those pretty eyes. Something warm and uneasy curled through him. It might have been concern for her. She really didn’t look right.

What the hell was going on? “Spit it out,” he commanded.

And that was just what she did. “I’m pregnant, Tate Bravo. Over two months along. Sometime next January, you’re going to be a dad.” She stood, leaving the rocker pitching back and forth behind her. “Your mouth is hanging open,” she said.

And that was it. Before Tate could collect his scattered wits and stop her, she turned, threw a slim leg up over the sill and slipped out the window the way she had come.

Chapter Two

“M olly, sweetie, don’t you get those scissors near me with your eyes all glazed over like that.”

Molly blinked. She glanced at the scissors in her hand and then into the mirror, where she met the wary eyes of Betty Stoops. Red-haired and stick-skinny, Betty sat caped and shampooed in Molly’s styling chair, ready for her monthly cut. “Sorry, Betty. Just thinking…”

About Tate Bravo, of course. Molly was feeling a tad guilty over the way she’d handled things the night before.

Okay, so maybe sneaking in through his bedroom window, delivering the big news and then jumping back out the window again hadn’t been the most tactful approach to the problem. But she had said what needed saying. Discussion of the whole mess could wait.

Molly began snipping at Betty’s thinning hair. “So now, how has Titus been doing?”

Betty made a low, fretful sound. “Molly, hon, I cannot tell you. I cannot describe…” Betty launched into a blow-by-blow of her husband’s various medical conditions.

I was right to get out when I did last night, Molly silently reassured herself as Betty chattered away. Once Tate got over the shock, there was just no telling what kinds of things he might have said to her—from questioning whether the baby was really his to calling her ugly names to accusing her of trying to trap him into marriage.

Uh-uh. Getting the news out had been about all she could manage for one night. Later for the part with the hollering, the accusations and the recriminations. Later still for working out how much of a role—if any—he would be playing in her baby’s life.

“I was thinking not quite so much off the sides this time,” Betty suggested, eyeing her own reflection appraisingly, turning her head this way and that.

Molly stepped back and assessed the situation. “Sure,” she said after a moment. “We can do that.”

Molly trimmed and shaped and wondered for about the millionth time what could be the matter with her. How in the world could she have slept with Tate Bravo—repeatedly? And beyond that, how could she have liked it so much?

Worst of all, why couldn’t she stop dreaming of sleeping with him some more?

Especially now, when she knew for certain that those secret nights in Tate Bravo’s bed had produced the typical result.

Pregnant, she thought, in utter disgust. Knocked up. In Trouble.

It was the one thing Molly had always sworn was never going to happen to her. And for so long, it hadn’t. The past few years, she’d dared to start letting herself believe that she was safe from ending up like her mom—and her Granny Dusty—before her.

She only had one weakness, after all, and that was the fatheaded, far-too-handsome man’s man, Tate Bravo. She’d had a hopeless secret crush on Tate for most of her life. But her weakness wasn’t supposed to be a problem, as Tate never seemed to know she existed.

But then she got it in her mind to improve a few things in town. She ran for mayor. Once she got elected, Tate knew she existed, all right.

Molly had been sworn in as mayor six months ago, at the first of the year. She and Tate fought tooth and nail through three town council meetings: January, February and March. Then he asked her to dinner—just the two of them, in the massive formal dining room out at the big house on his family’s ranch, the Double T. Tate said they would discuss ways to “work together to get things done for our town.”

There hadn’t been much discussing that night. They barely made it past the appetizer. He was on her like paint, and she didn’t complain. She fell right into his bed. Heck. Fell? She jumped in and dragged him in after her. All the years without anything remotely resembling a sex life, all those years of forbidden fantasies featuring Tate, had caught up with her.

And now she was pregnant.

A woman like Molly knew she had to face facts. She was thirty years old. Until Tate, there’d been no one. She had no reason to assume there would be someone after Tate. This might end up being her only chance to become a mom.

So she was stuck. She refused to throw her one chance at motherhood away, no matter what Tate Bravo might imagine he had to say about it. And she wasn’t leaving her salon, Prime Cut, or the small Texas town that she loved.

So there she was, just like her mom and her Granny before her—pregnant with no husband in the town where she grew up. Once she started showing, tongues would be wagging. Like grandmother, like mother, like daughter, they would all say.

Well, too bad. She would deal with the gossip when the time came. She was keeping her baby and that was that.

“Molly, did you hear a single word I said?” Betty demanded.

Molly met Betty’s eyes again. “I certainly did. That poor Titus. How does he bear up?”

Betty kind of squinted at her. “You know, honey, you don’t look all that well.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Molly replied, faking lightheartedness for all she was worth. “Never felt better…”

Betty wiggled her drawn-on eyebrows and scowled. “You’re not letting that Tate Bravo get you down, are you? Heard he shouted at you last Thursday at the town council meeting…”

Molly’s heart did a forward roll and then slammed into her rib cage. Did Betty know?

As soon as she thought the question, she rejected it. No one knew—not yet, anyway. By mutual agreement, she and Tate had kept their affair strictly secret. He didn’t want the word getting out that he was sleeping with the woman who fought him tooth and nail at every turn. And she didn’t want the people who counted on her to find out she couldn’t keep her hands off the man who stood for everything that needed changing in their town.

Molly put on a totally unconcerned expression as she combed and then smoothed a section of Betty’s hair between two fingers. Neatly, she snipped it even. “Don’t you worry, Betty. I can handle Tate Bravo.” Oh, and hadn’t she just? She’d handled him in ways that would turn Betty’s face as red as her hair.

Betty harrumphed. “Well, of course you can. That’s why we voted you in as our mayor. It’s about time someone stood up to those Tates.”

Though Tate’s last name was Bravo, his mother had been the only child of the last surviving male Tate. So Tate and his younger brother, Tucker, inherited the extensive Tate holdings when their mother passed away. No one ever talked much about the mysterious man named Bravo who had—according to Tate’s mother—married her and sired both her boys. To everyone in town, Tucker and Tate were Tates in the truest sense of the word. And Tates had been running Tate’s Junction since the town was named after the first Tucker Tate, way back in 1884.

“We do admire your gumption, Molly.”

“Why, thank you, Betty.” Molly set down her scissors and grabbed the blow-dryer off the rack where it waited next to a row of curling irons. “Let’s just blow you dry, now, shall we?”

Betty wasn’t the only customer to notice Molly’s distraction. All day long it was, “Molly, you look worried, girl. What’s the matter?” and, “Earth to Molly. Are you in there, doll?” or, “Molly, sweetheart, what is botherin’ you?”

She told each and every one of them that she was fine, perfect, never been better—while the whole time the hard knot in her stomach seemed to promise that any second now Tate would come storming through the shop door and start shouting at her. By six, when she closed up shop, she was a wreck. All she wanted was to crawl into bed with the blinds drawn and a cool cloth over her eyes.

Molly’s little bungalow on Bluebonnet Lane was her pride and joy. Sure, it was small—750 square feet, two tiny bedrooms, simple box floor plan—but it was hers and that was what mattered. It sat back from the street surrounded by sweetgums and oaks. On the south end of town, in an area not very developed yet, all tucked into the trees the way it was, the house almost gave a person the feeling she was out in the country.

Molly put her pickup under the carport east of the house. She strolled across the yard to the porch, feeling the tensions of the day drain away from between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t too hot yet—mid-eighties that afternoon—and the air had a silky feel against her skin. A cheeky squirrel squawked at her from a tree branch, and she paused to grin up at it.

She was just mounting the front steps when the door swung back and there was Granny Dusty standing behind the storm door in Wranglers and rawhide boots and a tight plaid Western shirt. She shoved open the storm door, too. “Wait till I tell you. Baby doll, you are not going to believe this.”

Tate, Molly thought, her stomach knotting and the tension yanking tight between her shoulders again. Oh, God, what had he done? Had he been there, had he had it out with Granny?

Granny Dusty had a reputation, pretty much deserved, as the man-hatingest woman in Throckleford County. She had trusted one man in her life—the wrong one. A rich rancher from Montana, he’d come to town to do business with the Tates. The rancher knocked up Dusty with Molly’s mother, Dixie, and then promptly went back to his wife on his big spread outside of Bozeman. After the rancher from Montana, Dusty O’Dare had no more use for men.

“What happened?” Molly asked weakly.

“That fool mother of yours says she’s marrying Ray, that’s what.”

Not about Tate. Molly’s stomach unknotted and her heart stopped trying to break out of her rib cage.

Granny continued with bitter relish, “She called here an hour ago, that mother of yours, all atwitter with the news. I ask you, sweetness, has she lost what is left of her mind? Ray Deekins is a no-count. He hasn’t had a job since the Reagan years. And your mother is forty-six. You’d think she’d have grown out of all this love foolishness by now. Isn’t it enough that she’s let him move in with her? Can’t she just support his lazy butt and leave it at that? Does she have to go and get herself legally committed to him? What is the matter with—?”

“Granny.”

Granny glared—but at least she stopped talking.

“You think maybe I could get in the house before you start in about Ray?”

Granny Dusty smiled then, the network of wrinkles in her leathery cheeks scoring all the deeper. “Why sure, sugar, you just come on in.” She held the storm door wider. Molly mounted the steps and entered the house. Beyond the door, the savory smell of fried meat filled the air. “Made your favorite,” said Granny. “Chicken-fried steak.”

Though as a rule Molly loved a good chicken-fried steak as much as the next person, that night her stomach clenched tight again at the thought. “Maybe later. I have a sick headache. Think I’d better lie down.”

Now Granny got worried. “Honey pie, you got a fever? Want me to—”

“No. Really. Just a little rest, that’ll do me fine.” Molly headed for the house’s one tiny hallway and her bedroom, the front one that faced the walk.

Granny followed right after her, causing Molly to have to remind herself that most of the time, she actually enjoyed having her grandmother living in her house. “I’ll keep your supper warm for you,” Granny said fondly as Molly sank to the edge of the bed and slipped off her sandals.

“Great.” She forced a wan smile and flopped back onto the pillows, stretching her legs out and settling in, letting her eyes drift shut. “Thanks…”

“Maybe a cool cloth for your poor, tired eyes?” suggested Granny.

Molly’s smile widened and she let out a soft chuckle. “What are you, a mind reader?”

“Be back in a flash.”

Molly heard the water running and a minute later her grandmother’s capable hands smoothed a lovely cool washcloth over her eyes. “Um. Perfect…”

“Oh,” Granny said. “Almost forgot. That Tate Bravo called. Told him you weren’t in. Said I’d give you the message, but he shouldn’t hold his breath waitin’ for you to call back.”

Molly lay very still with the cloth hiding her eyes as Granny cackled in satisfaction at having put the rich and powerful Tate Bravo in his place. Granny reveled in the council-meeting wrangling that went on between Molly and Tate. She loved to go on about all the ways Molly had bested “that Tate.” She thought her granddaughter’s dealings with Tate were strictly about politics and the betterment of the town. As of yet Molly had failed to bring her granny up to speed on the rolling-around-in-bed, ending-up-pregnant part of her and Tate’s relationship.

“Thanks, Granny,” Molly whispered, turning her head toward the wall. At least, she thought, he’d left her alone at the shop.

“Rest now,” said Granny softly. A moment later, Molly heard the door click shut behind her.

Tate had called.

Unbidden, Molly felt the all-too-familiar tug of longing. It was awful. She wanted him so much—despite knowing that he was the absolute worst person in the world for her.

She let out a long sigh. She would have to call him back.

Eventually.

But not right now. Now, she was taking slow, even breaths. She was commanding her headache to pass and her stomach to stop churning. For the time being, she was resting right here in the peace of her own bedroom and she wasn’t going to think about Tate Bravo or the baby or any of that.

For a half hour or so, Molly lay there on her bed, repeating soothing words in her head, breathing in and out slowly and deeply. She hovered on the verge of dropping off to sleep at last when she heard the front door open.

“Hey. Get along. Now. Go on,” Granny called from out on the porch. There was a moment of silence and then, “Get the hell away from here, now. I have warned you and I will not be warning you again.”

A man’s voice answered from down the walk—Tate’s? Molly wasn’t sure. Whoever he was, she couldn’t make out his words. She removed the wet cloth from over her eyes and set it on the nightstand.

“You remember, I warned you,” said Granny. Molly sat up.

“Listen here, now,” the man argued. “Put that thing down.”

Molly groaned. It was Tate, all right. He was closer to the house, coming up the driveway. She swung her feet to the floor.

Granny said, “Not another damn step.”

Tate said, “I’m not leaving till I talk to—” A thunderous blast cut him off.

Granny must have fired her shotgun at him.

Chapter Three

M olly flew off the bed, flung back the bedroom door, took the hall in a step and a half and shot across the small living room in four big strides. The front door stood open. Through the storm door, she could see her granny, who was muttering to herself and chambering another round. Molly shoved open the storm door. “Granny. Don’t you put another round in that thing.”

“Tell this crazy woman to put that gun down,” Tate shouted from behind the big oak by the front walk.

Granny, who had the gun broken open and the barrel pointed at the porch boards for the moment, grumbled loudly, “Now look what you did. You went and woke her up.”

“What is going on out here?” Molly cried.

“Gettin’ rid of a little oversized vermin, sweetie pie, that’s all.”

Molly’s headache was back, with a vengeance. She shut the storm door and rubbed her forehead. “Give me that shotgun.”

Granny flattened her lips. “No need to get your drawers in a twist. It was only a warning shot, and I aimed good and high. Cleared his big, fat head by a mile. Not a scratch on him, I guarantee it.”

Molly quit rubbing her forehead and stuck out her hand, wiggling the fingers in a commanding way. “Give it here.” Granny mumbled something rude, but she did lock the barrel without shoving in a shell. “Now,” Molly commanded. Grudgingly Granny handed over the gun. “Now go on inside this instant.” Molly allowed no weakness in her voice. Sometimes, with Granny, you had to be really tough. “Get in there and let me have a minute to talk to Tate.”

“What could you possibly have to say to the likes of him, honey bun?”

“I mean it, Granny.”

“But there’s no reason you should have to—”

“Inside.” Molly looked at her grandmother dead on, no blinking. After maybe ten seconds of that, Granny gave in. Grumbling under her breath in obvious disapproval, she banged through the storm door. Molly waited till she disappeared from view before calling to Tate, “You can come out now.”

Dark eyes narrowed and broad shoulders straight, Tate emerged from behind the tree and mounted the porch steps. “What is wrong with that woman?”

Molly ignored the way watching him come toward her made her palms go sweaty and her heart beat faster. She gave him her coolest look. “Nothing the total elimination of the male sex from the world wouldn’t cure.”

For that, she got a slow once-over, starting at the top of her head and ending at her bare toes. “Having a little nap?”

She resisted the pitiful urge to fluff her pillow-flattened hair. “What’s it to you?”

“It’s good that you get your rest, that’s all. You need it, for the baby’s sake.” It wasn’t a bad thing to say, not really.

Still, another sour remark rose to her lips. She held it back.

He studied her for a long moment while she told herself that the hot shiver sliding through her meant nothing at all. Finally he said in a low, calm tone, “We need to talk, don’t you think?”

She just felt so…defensive. It made her stiffen her spine and mutter provokingly, “As if you ever did care what I think.”

He took a step closer. “Molly.” The way he whispered her name made her yearn to throw her arms around him and beg him to take her right there on the front porch, to take her and never, ever let her go.

Hah. Never let her go. As if that would happen—as if she wanted it to happen.

She didn’t. Uh-uh. No way. She did not…

“All right,” she said, resigned to the fact that they were getting to the part with the shouting and the accusations. “We’ll talk.” She still had the shotgun in one hand. With the other, she gestured at the porch rocker. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” She whirled around and went inside before he could say another word.

“Granny?” she called softly. There was no answer. The only sound was the whir of the big window air conditioner in the kitchen.

Molly stepped over to the hallway. The door to the back bedroom was shut. Good. She went into her own room and straight to the closet, where she lifted a hidden trapdoor to a two-by-four-foot space under the floor. She put the shotgun in there and closed it up. She was reasonably certain Granny didn’t know about that hiding space, which meant she wouldn’t be threatening any unfortunate men with the shotgun for a while.

The weapon safely hidden away, Molly put on her sandals, grabbed her red purse and went to tap on Granny’s door. “Tate and I have a few things to talk about. I’ll be gone for a while.”

The door opened. Granny looked at her sideways, graying brows drawn together. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

Molly forced a smile and leaned over to place a kiss on her weathered cheek. “I’ll be back later.”

“Where’s my shotgun?”

“Safe.”

“Humph,” said Granny.

Molly leaned closer. “You can’t go around shooting at men for no reason.”

“Molly, baby, all men need shooting at. No reason required.”

Molly shook her head. “You’re lucky he isn’t talking about suing you.”

“Suing me? That’s what’s the matter with this country nowadays. You fire a shot over a varmint’s head and he takes you straight to court. And besides, what do I have that a rich man would sue for?”

“Granny, just settle down and behave, will you?”

Granny pinched up her mouth. “You call me if he gives you too much grief. I’ll see he regrets the day he ever messed with us O’Dares.”

Back out on the porch, Molly told Tate, “We can’t talk here. Granny’s kind of fired up.” No telling what she would do if Molly and Tate started trading hostile words. “Let’s go out to the Double T. We can talk in private there.”

“Good idea.” He started to reach for her.

She stepped back. “I’ll take my own car.” That way, when the yelling was over, she wouldn’t be dependent on him for a ride home.

“Suit yourself.” He turned without another word and went down the steps ahead of her.

The Double T ranch house stood, graceful and welcoming, at the end of a long curving driveway lined with oaks. The main—or center—wing had been built at the turn of the last century by Tate’s great-great-grandfather, Tucker Tate II. The North Wing had been added by Tucker Tate III and the South Wing by Tate’s grandfather, Tucker Tate IV. Since Tate was the only family member currently in residence, he lived in the main wing and left the other two to the occasional attentions of his housekeeper and the day maids.

He pulled his Cadillac into the central turnaround at the front of the house. Jesse Coutera, who drove him occasionally and acted as a general handyman around the place, was waiting for him. “Thanks, Jesse. Go ahead and put it away.”

Molly’s little red pickup screeched to a stop way too close to Tate’s rear bumper. “And the lady’s pickup?” Jesse asked, looking nervous, the way most men did around Molly. Molly, scowling, got out of the pickup and slammed the door.

“Better just leave it here for now,” Tate said.

Jesse got in behind the wheel of the Caddy and headed down the side driveway. Molly approached. Though he’d already given her a good once-over back at her house, Tate couldn’t help but do it again. She was dressed to match her pickup: red knee-length pants that clung to every generous curve, red sandals and a tight red T-shirt with Prime Cut in white lariat script across those breasts that no red-blooded male could keep from gaping at.

“Let’s get this over with,” she growled.

It was kind of depressing, how hostile she was. But he figured her attitude would change as soon as she got a look at the eight-carat diamond he’d driven to Abilene and bought her that afternoon.

Tate allowed himself a smug little smile. Since she’d climbed in his window the night before and dropped the bomb on him, Tate had been giving their little problem a lot of serious thought. He’d decided he was going to do the right thing and put a ring on Molly’s finger.

“What are you grinning about?” She glowered at him, her big amber eyes narrowed to slits.

Uh-uh. She was not getting his dander up. “Shall we go inside?” He offered his arm.

She pointedly didn’t take it. “Fine.”

Tate led her to the big family room at the back of the center wing. The housekeeper, Miranda—Jesse’s wife—appeared briefly to ask if there was anything she could get for them.

Molly shook her head tightly and tossed her shiny red bag on a chair. Tate thanked Miranda and told her he wouldn’t need her again that night. She smiled and nodded and left them alone.

Molly was pacing, her heels clicking on the Spanish tiles of the floor every time she cleared one of the bright Navajo rugs.

“Sit down, why don’t you?” Tate gestured at a tufted leather love seat as she stalked past it.

“Thanks. I’ll stand.” She stopped, wrapped her arms around herself, and faced him. “So, okay. Talk.”

It wasn’t exactly an inviting opening. But then, a man didn’t get a lot of good openings with a prickly type like Molly.

She made a low, impatient sound and started pacing again. He watched her, admiring the sway of her full hips, aware that she was probably worried he would give her a hard time, maybe even try to tell her he didn’t think the baby was his.

Tate had no doubt it was his. After all, she’d been a virgin the first time he made love to her—a damned eager virgin, but a virgin nonetheless.

He grinned every time he thought about that. Her virginity had shocked the hell out of him, if you want it straight. Molly was as sexy as they come and not the least bit shy. He’d just assumed she’d had her share of men.

But she hadn’t. And she was honest. Crazy as she made him sometimes, Tate knew her word was something he would never have cause to doubt. If she said she was having a baby and that baby was his, well, then he had to accept that he really was going to be a dad—which meant he was obligated to do the right thing and make her his bride.

Tate was feeling just fine about this particular obligation. He had a sense of a certain nobility within himself. He’d made the right decision; he would do the right thing.

Yeah, there would be talk. First, because everyone in town assumed that he and Molly hated each other, no one knew that they’d had an affair. Secondly, folks generally expected that when the time came for him to choose a bride, he would marry a woman from a socially prominent and well-to-do family.

Truth to tell, he’d had the same expectations himself. But he was thirty-four. And he’d yet to meet the paragon of womanhood who was supposed to make him want to settle down. And now there was Molly.

If before, Tate Bravo had shown little interest in finding himself a paragon, since Molly, his interest has dropped to flat zero.

So no problem. He would get by without the perfect wife. He would do his duty and have Molly in his bed from now on.

And there was another benefit beyond the great sex. Once Molly was his wife, he might get a little control over her when it came to running his town.

Molly stopped pacing again and braced her fists on the fine, womanly swell of her hips. “Well.” She tapped her red toes. “Are you just going to stand there all night, gaping at me with that ridiculous, self-satisfied grin on your face?”

He felt his temper rise a little and ordered it down. “Molly, Molly. There is absolutely no reason for you to be so damn mean to me.”

“Look. Can you just say it? Can you just go ahead and say it, please?”

Every word had an icicle hanging from it. But at least she’d said please.

Tate launched into the speech he’d been composing and rehearsing all day. “Ahem. Molly. Since your, er, visit last night, I have been giving long and serious thought to what you said to me. I have looked at the situation from just about every angle, and no matter how I approach it, there seems to me to be only one solution.” Tate paused.

He couldn’t read Molly’s expression. Struck dumb with shock? Moved beyond words? No way to tell. He crossed to the pinero wood mantel that his great-great-grandfather had ordered from Mexico and rested an elbow on it. Above the mantel hung one of his mother’s paintings. Penelope Tate Bravo had studied art—to little effect that Tate could see—for a year at UCLA. It was there, in L.A., that she met Tate’s father, the mysterious Blake Bravo. Tate pretended to admire the painting—of a poorly proportioned chestnut gelding and a stunted looking vaquero in a huge sombrero—as he gathered his thoughts to go on.

“Molly, there are many who will be shocked when they hear of our plans. And to that I say, so be it. I don’t care in the least. They’ll get used to it soon enough. The important thing is that you and I give our baby the right kind of start in life, that we put aside our differences and work together to ensure—”

“Tate…” Molly said his name hoarsely and then swallowed. With obvious difficulty.

He felt a tad irked with her for interrupting. “Can’t you let a man say what he’s trying to say?” In a minute would come the part where he got down on his knees in front of her. He was a little nervous about that. After all, he wasn’t the kind of man who spent a lot of time on his knees.

“But, Tate…” She swallowed again. “I…I have to know. Are you, well, I mean, is it possible you are sneaking up on suggesting we get married?”

He smiled. How could he help it? She looked so damned adorable in her bewilderment. Also, it was occurring to him that he could skip the part where he got down on his knees. She’d pretty much blown right on by that, anyway.

Yeah. This was fine. It would work out just great. And with everything settled, she would be spending the night—and all the nights to come. “Yeah, Molly.” Pride made him stand away from the mantel and draw himself up straight and tall. “I am. I’m asking you to be my wife. I figure, at this point, there’s nothing else we can do.” He reached into his pocket to get the ring.

Before he could slide it out, she said, “No.”

Tate was certain he hadn’t heard right. “Molly, did I just hear you say—?”

“No. I said no.”

He pulled his hand from his pocket—without the ring—and took a careful step back. She’d got him on this one. Got him good. This was as unexpected as a rattler in his bedroll.

And damned if he wasn’t as hurt as if he’d really been snake bit. Why, she hadn’t even let him get to the part where he could flash that diamond at her. To cover his hurt, he gave her a curled lip and a cold eye.

She backed away a step herself and did some more gulping. “Look, Tate, it would never work. You have to see that. And why would you want to even try? Think of your granddaddy. Of what he’d say.”

“My grandfather is dead. It doesn’t matter what he’d say. Like I already told you, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn what anybody says. It’s the right thing to do. And we are going to do it.”

“No.” She put up both hands, palms out, kind of warding him off. “No, Tate. We’re not.”

It took all the considerable will and self-restraint he possessed not to grab her and turn her over his knee. She could use a good paddling, oh, yes, she could. “Molly, darlin’.” He kept his voice low—and deadly. “You have said a lot of stupid things since I have had the pleasure of knowing you. But saying no to me right now, that’s a new high in stupidity. Even for you.”

She fell back another step—but her eyes had that look in them—the look that said he’d better watch out. “Don’t you call me stupid, you big macho butt-head.”

Macho butt-head? He felt his blood pressure go up a notch and ordered it back down. “Molly, you have got to see—”

“I don’t have to see squat. We are not getting married, Tate Bravo. What do either of us know about marriage? Not a damn thing. Well, except this. I do know this. When people get married, they ought to at least know how to get along with each other first. You and me? We never get along. We’re either fighting or ripping each other’s clothes off and racing for the bed. What kind of marriage would the likes of us have? I shudder to imagine, I truly do.”

By then, Tate’s urge to yank her over his knee and paddle her good was so powerful it caused a pounding behind his eyes. With great effort, he clung to reasonable discourse—or at least, to a low, controlled tone. “You are the future mother of my child, Molly. And by God, you are going to marry me.”

She marched over and snatched her purse off the chair. “No, I am not.” She was already headed for the front hall.

“Molly,” he commanded. “Molly, get back here.” She didn’t so much as break her stride. “Molly. Damn you.” He took off after her.

In the hallway, she turned on him. “Stop, Tate. Stop right there.”

“Molly—”

“I’m going home now. Do you hear me? Home. Alone.”

“The hell you are. Why can’t you be reasonable?”

“Reasonable?” she scoffed. “Now, that’s one of those words, isn’t it, Tate?”

“One of those words? What are you babbling about?”

“You know what words I’m talking about. The kind of words that mean do things Tate’s way. There are a lot of words like that, in case you haven’t noticed. Words like right and good and logical and fair. Around you, Tate, those words always mean one thing. They mean your way. Because your way is the right, good, logical and fair way. Isn’t it?”

How, he wondered, could he want her so much when she was such a complete bitch? It was, and probably always would be, a mystery to Tate. “Don’t you walk out that door on me, Molly.”

“Oh. Oh, of course. Give me orders. Dream that I’m going to obey them.”

“I mean it. Don’t leave.”

Molly gave him a long, hot look. And then she whirled, marched to the door and flung it open. She went through and slammed it behind her. It was a heavy, carved door. It had come up from Mexico with the mantel in the living room. It made a loud, echoing, final sort of sound when slammed.

Tate stood in the entry hall with his blood pounding in his ears and listened to her pickup rev high outside. Peeling rubber, she took off.

This is not the end of it, Molly, he silently promised her.

Whether she wanted to or not, it was reasonable, right, good, logical and fair that she marry him. And one way or another, Tate Bravo always did what was reasonable, right, good, logical and fair.

Chapter Four

L ena Lou Billingsworth stuck her hand out from under the red cutting cape and fluttered her thick eyelashes at Molly. “Molly, you didn’t even ask to see it.”

Molly took Lena’s soft little hand. “Gorgeous,” she declared. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

Lena preened. “Four carats.” Back in high school, Lena and Tate’s wandering younger brother, Tucker, had been an item. But that was a decade ago. “Dirk is so generous.” Lena’s fiancé owned a couple of car dealerships on the outskirts of nearby Abilene. “You know, Molly, some say every girl is only lookin’ for a man like her daddy. I believe that now, I truly do.” Lena Lou’s daddy, Heck Billingsworth, was a car dealer, too—a big, bluff fellow who never met a man he didn’t like, let alone a vehicle he couldn’t sell.

A man just like her daddy, huh? Finding such a man would be a big challenge for Molly, as she’d never met her daddy and wouldn’t have recognized him if she bumped into him on the street.

At fifteen, Molly’s mom, Dixie, had lost her virginity to a traveling salesman who discovered the next morning that the pretty young thing he’d seduced the night before was underage. On hearing the news, the salesman promptly threw his samples in the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker and burned rubber getting the heck outta town.

Dixie never heard from the guy again—and nine months later, Molly arrived. So, truly, Molly never knew her father. In fact, she didn’t even know his name. When Dixie asked for it that fateful night, the salesman replied in a lazy Southern drawl, “You just call me Daddy, sugar-buns.”

Funny, Molly was thinking. She’d never known her dad—and her mom seemed more like a sweet and wild and often absent big sister to her than any real kind of mom. Mostly, in Molly’s growing-up years, Dixie was busy with her active social life. Dixie would climb out the window as soon as Granny Dusty went to bed and wiggle back in around dawn, half-drunk, with her mascara running down her cheeks and her clothes looking like she’d torn them off and rolled around on them—which, more than likely, she had. She would sleep until noon, then get up and eat cold cereal or maybe cream cheese on a cracker and wander around the double-wide trailer in a kind of good-natured daze until dark—at which time she would lock herself in the bathroom to shower, fix her hair and do her makeup. As soon as Granny went to bed, she would climb out the window all over again.

Dixie O’Dare had always been a woman on a mission to find the man who would love her forever and treat her right. She never had a lot of luck in her quest. And since it consumed most of her time and energy, Granny Dusty had ended up taking care of Molly.

Molly wanted things to be different for her baby. She was going into this all grown up with her eyes wide open. She wouldn’t be wasting her energy chasing after men. She would take her child-rearing seriously. And her baby girl—Molly just knew her baby had to be a girl—would at least know who her father was, even if Molly did not intend to marry the man.

Tate, Molly thought, shaking her head. She’d imagined him saying a lot of ugly things. But a marriage proposal? Not on your life.

And okay, maybe she’d been a little hard on him last night. Especially considering he’d put up with Granny shooting at him and he hadn’t called Molly one single rude name. But she was not going to marry him, and he had to accept that.

Sadly, Tate was one of those men who never heard what a woman said unless she shouted it out good and loud. And even then, the chance was never better than fifty/fifty the words would get through that thick skull of his.

Lena was still talking. “The wedding will be next June—I know, I know. It’s a whole year away. But a wedding is something a girl plans for her whole life. I want everything to be perfect. And it’s always been my dream to be a June bride.”

“A June bride,” Molly parroted brightly. “That is just so romantic,” she said and set about cutting and shaping Lena’s thick auburn hair.

Lena said, “I’ll have Lori Lee up from San Antonio to be my matron of honor. She hasn’t been home in I don’t know how long. But for this, for my wedding, you can bet she’ll be here.” Lori Lee was Lena’s identical twin, though no one ever had any trouble telling them apart. Lena was the popular one, a real sparkler. Lori Lee was quieter, less flashy, more serious—or at least, she had been ten years ago when she graduated from high school and left town suddenly, rarely to return.

Molly nodded. “That all just sounds perfect…” Lena talked, and Molly finished up her cut and blew her dry.

The salon was packed today. Molly had three other stylists working, as well as a receptionist, a shampoo girl and a nail technician. Everyone was booked through closing—and still they had walk-ins filling the reception area, thumbing through the magazines, waiting their turn, everyone laughing and chatting away.

Some of them wouldn’t get their hair done today. But the women didn’t mind. Molly had all the current fashion and hairstyle magazines, comfortable chairs for them to sit in, and the coffee and cold tea were free. They talked town politics and shared the latest gossip. The Cut was the place every woman in town went when she wanted a few laughs, some serious girl talk and all the freshest, juiciest dirt on who was doing what with whom.

“Heard your mom is marrying Ray,” said Donetta Brewer. She sat in one of the soft red reception chairs, thumbing through a Lucky magazine, waiting her turn in Molly’s styling chair. Donetta always seemed to know things no one else had heard yet. “Fourth of July,” she added, “out in Emigration Park.”

The date and the location were news to Molly. But she didn’t let Donetta know it. “Yep. Looks like it.”

“Ray is a sweet man,” declared Emmie Lusk, ensconced in Molly’s chair by then, getting her hair rolled for a perm. Like Donetta, Emmie kept an ear to the ground when it came to town tittle-tattle. “Good at heart, he truly is.” Which meant that, while he didn’t have a job, at least he didn’t knock Dixie around the way most of her other boyfriends had. “I’m sure they’ll both be very happy.” Emmie met Molly’s eyes in the mirror, and Emmie’s large, thin-lipped mouth stretched into the widest, most saccharine of smiles.

Molly, accustomed to talk about Dixie and her boyfriends, smiled calmly in return and went on rolling Emmie’s expertly tinted sable-brown hair. “Make an appointment for some color, Emmie, before you leave today. These roots are starting to show.”

After Dixie and Ray’s upcoming nuptials, the talk moved on to Lena and Dirk. “A whole year till the wedding. What is that about?” Emmie wondered aloud.

Donetta said, “A big wedding takes time. You know that. But did you hear her? A sit-down prime rib dinner for two hundred. Good old Heck had better sell a lot of cars.”

“And didn’t she say Lori Lee will have to come?” asked another customer.

“Hah,” said Donetta. “Can’t wait to see that—and that little boy of hers, too. Nine years old. And she was married for six. Just widowed, did you hear? Met her husband in San Antonio three years after that kid was born. I heard that when she found out she was pregnant, she wouldn’t tell who the father was. Heck yelled and threatened and snapped his belt around, but Lori Lee refused to say. The minute she finished her senior year, Heck packed her up and sent her to San Antonio. I’ll sure be intrigued to see who that little boy resembles.”

“She hardly dated,” said Emmie. “Always the quiet one. I’d guess the father is no one we know. More than likely some stranger who blew into town and then blew right back out again. We all know that does happen.” Emmie sent Molly an arch kind of look. After all, that was just what had happened to Dixie, now wasn’t it—with Molly the result?

Molly gave Emmie her very blandest smile and then tuned out the avid speculation as to the missing daddy of Lori Lee’s love child. She also tried not to think about the things Donetta and Emmie would be saying as soon as the word got out that Molly was having Tate Bravo’s baby.

It was not going to be pretty. But she figured she had at least a month or two—maybe even longer if she watched what she ate—before she started to show and the tongues started wagging. Molly was determined to fully enjoy the time left before scandal engulfed her.

Molly rolled up Emmie’s hair quickly and had just donned her plastic gloves to sponge on the solution when the bell over the door tinkled and Donetta, who’d been talking nonstop for fifteen minutes, suddenly shut up. As a matter of fact, the whole shop went pin-drop quiet. Molly glanced toward the door.

Tate.

Oh, please, God, she thought, not here. Not now…

“May I help you?” asked Molly’s receptionist Darlene, hopefully.

Tate barreled right on past Darlene and went straight to where Molly stood. He made a sick face at the smell of the solution and then announced, “Molly. I’d like a word with you. Now.”

Behind her Lucky magazine, Donetta gasped. In the mirror, Emmie’s eyes were wide and bulging, like a Pekinese just prior to a barking fit.

Calm, Molly silently commanded herself. Stay calm. Don’t let him get to you. “Well, as you can see, I am busy right now.”

“Get unbusy.”

She tried a little noble outrage. “I cannot believe you have the gall to march right into my place of business and start giving me orders, Tate Bravo.”

He grunted. “Yeah, so? I’m big in the gall department and you know it, too. You damn well should have figured this would happen last night when you walked out on me.”

Donetta and Emmie gasped in unison that time.

In the mirror, Molly saw that her face had flushed the same color as the walls and the reception chairs. She could have scratched out his eyes on the spot for that, for making her blush deep red in her own place of business. She opened her mouth to order him out and then shut it before she spoke. She could see by the granite set to his square jaw that demanding he leave would be an exercise in futility. He would still be here and she would look more ineffectual that she looked already.

So what, then? Call the chief of Tate’s Junction’s two-man police department? Yeah, right. Everyone knew Police Chief Ed Polk was in Tate Bravo’s pocket—just like most of the other officials in town.

“I’m sorry,” Molly said, tone sweet as honey, teeth clenched tight. “I can’t talk right now. I have to finish this perm. And after that, I have four cut-and-blow-dries and three weaves to do.”

“Take a break.”

“I will not.”

Tate grabbed for the bowl of solution. Molly snatched it away, almost spilling it down the back of Emmie’s neck. Emmie let out a cry of distress.

“Look.” Molly set the bowl down, stepped right up to Tate and lifted her face so they were nose to nose. “You are scaring my customers. Kindly get the hell out of my shop.”

He stepped back, stood straight to his full six foot three and folded those big, hard arms across his wide chest. “Not until we have a talk.”

“We have talked,” she reminded him in a tone so low he probably wouldn’t have heard it if everyone else in the shop hadn’t been holding their breaths and sitting absolutely still, staring with wide, eager eyes.

“We sure as hell haven’t talked enough.”

“It doesn’t matter how much we talk,” she told him. “Nothing is going to change.”

“We’ll see about that.” He glanced around. “You got an office in this place where we can have a little privacy?”

A thought came to her. She would stall him. Maybe if she stalled long enough, he would give up and go away. She tugged neatly—for emphasis—on her latex gloves and then picked up her bowl of solution again. “I can’t speak to you right this minute. A perm simply can’t wait. Have a seat in the reception area—enjoy a cup of coffee or some cold tea if you’d like. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

He looked at her sideways, those fine, sculpted lips curling in obvious suspicion. “Molly.” He muttered her name, making a warning of it.

“I’m sorry, Tate. You’ll just have to wait.” She pointed at the one free chair—right next to Donetta. “Go on. Sit over there.”

It worked. He wasn’t happy about it, but he strode over to that chair and dropped into it.

Donetta kind of craned back away from him, gulped and tried weakly, “Well, hi there, Tate. How’ve you been?”

“Hello, Donetta,” he growled. He picked up a magazine, looked at the cover of it and tossed it right back down.

“How is that brother of yours?” asked Donetta. “I haven’t seen him in years. He’s been missing longer than the Bravo Baby, and that’s a fact.” She was grinning by then, as if she’d said something really clever.

Tate didn’t seem to see the humor. The Bravo Baby—no relation to Tate or his brother—had been kidnapped years and years ago. Coast to coast, everyone knew the story of how he’d vanished from his crib in his wealthy parents’ Bel Air mansion. A huge ransom had been paid, but the baby was never returned. He’d been found, a grown man, alive and well, a few years back, after going missing for three decades.

Tucker hadn’t been gone nearly that long.

Tate, however, had sense enough not to point that out. He probably knew it would only encourage Donetta. Instead he replied stiffly, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Tucker, myself.”

Donetta tried again to get a little more information out of him. “Loves to travel, doesn’t he?” she asked brightly. “I hear he’s been all over the world.”

Tate looked at her, dead on. “That’s right,” he said. The set of his shoulders and the icy look in his eyes clearly indicated that the conversation was concluded.

Donetta took the hint. She raised her magazine and pretended to read it with all her might.

Tate gave up looking for reading material. He sat in the red chair and stared straight ahead. For a while, the Cut was way too quiet. In time, though, the women did begin talking again—but furtive and soft, the way people whisper at funerals or in church.

Molly finished putting the solution on Emmie, set the timer and moved her to another chair. She took off her plastic gloves. “Donetta, let’s have Charlee get you shampooed.”

Donetta eagerly put down her magazine and headed for the sinks where Charlee, the shampoo girl, would take good care of her.

Tate stood. The place went dead silent again.

Molly shook her head. “Sorry. No can do right yet.” She beamed him a big, fake smile.

Tate glared—but he did sit back down. Molly went over and made a show of checking on Emmie, though really there was nothing to check on as yet. Then, since it would be a few minutes until Charlee was done with Donetta, Molly headed for the back door. Out in the alley, she crouched behind the big shop Dumpster and waited for enough time to pass that she could start on Donetta.

Five minutes later, she reentered the shop. Tate was right there waiting by the door. “Where did you get off to?” he demanded.

She edged around him. “Excuse me. I’m working, here.”

Charlee had already led Donetta to the chair and put the cape on her. Molly set to work on Donetta’s hair. Tate, who had followed behind her from the back door, hovered a few feet away, looking dangerous. But after a few minutes of that, he gave up and went back to sit down.

Molly cut and blew Donetta dry. By then, Emmie was ready for the setting solution and the rinse. Molly put her gloves back on and took care of it. Then Emmie had to be dried and combed out.

By the time she whipped the cape off of Emmie—about an hour and a quarter after Tate had first entered the shop—he was getting pretty edgy. Molly kept sending him careful sideways glances.

Uh-uh. Not good. He wasn’t giving up and going away as she’d secretly hoped he might—and he wasn’t sitting still for this waiting game much longer.

Just as she’d expected, two or three minutes later, he stood. “Molly, I’ve had it. Either you talk to me in private—now—or we will have our little conversation right here with all these lovely, interested ladies listening in.”

Molly looked in his eyes and knew she couldn’t stall him another minute longer. So all right, she thought. She would take him into her office and tell him all over again what she’d told him last night.

How many times was she going to have to tell him? Judging by his mulish expression, too many.

Or maybe he actually had something new to say. It could happen. After all, anything was possible.

“Emmie, you can settle up with Darlene and she’ll get you scheduled for that color—next week?”

Emmie nodded and moved to the reception desk. The place had gone deathly quiet again. And though Donetta had already had her cut, she hadn’t left. Oh, no. She’d plunked herself right back down in that red chair and picked up the same magazine she’d already read at least twice.

A feeling of equal parts bottomless dread and glum resignation dragged on Molly. Those two scandal-free months she’d been anticipating were starting to look more and more unlikely.

She turned to Leslie Swankstad, her next customer. “Sorry, Leslie. I’ll be a few minutes.”

“Oh, no problem,” Leslie said, sounding breathless. “No problem at all.”

“This way,” Molly told Tate and turned for the hall at the back of the shop.

She led him through the last door on the right before the exit door at the end. Inside she had her desk and computer, a couple of four-drawer file cabinets, some display shelves with various hair-care products on them and two red plastic guest chairs. She signaled Tate toward the guest chairs and shut the door, closing them into the small space together, instantly feeling that there wasn’t enough room.

In an effort to get as far away from him as possible, she went around behind the desk and dropped into her swivel chair. “All right. What?”

“You know what. Marry me.”

Oh, wonderful. Of course. More of the same. “Tate. We’ve been through this.”

“Marry me.”

Just great, she thought. He had one tune on this subject and by golly, he was going to play it until he drove her out of her mind. “Listen. Please.” She really was trying to be gentle, to be reasonable. “Be realistic.”

“I am. You’re having my baby. The way I see it, that means you and me are getting married.”

“No, Tate. We’re not.”

“Oh, yeah, we are.”

Calm, she thought. Stay calm. Be reasonable. “I want you to just think this over a little. Think about how poorly suited we are to each other, how marriage could never work for us. Tate, I’m an independent woman from the wrong side of town and you’re a domineering rich man raised to think you own the world.”

He looked at her from under the heavy ridge of his brow, his lip curled in a sneer. “So now you’re insulting me…”

Molly sighed deeply and shook her head. She leaned back in her chair. “No. I promise you. I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just trying to make you see.”

“What’s there to see? You’re pregnant and it’s my kid and we need to get married immediately.”

“Tate. We’re a match made by the devil himself. You used to know that.”

“Everything’s different now. There’s a baby on the way.”

“No. No, really, nothing is different. Nothing has changed. You’re still you and I’m still me and for us to get married would be a disaster. The baby would only suffer for it if we did.”

Tate stood. He didn’t look encouraging. He looked…about to start shouting. “I know what’s right, and damn it, right is what I intend to do.”

Molly stared up at him in despair. So much for my month or two, scandal-free, she thought. “Oh, Tate…”

“Molly,” he said way too loudly, “you are going to marry me.”

“No, I am not,” she replied, her voice soft and low and steady as a rock. She stood. They confronted each other across her desk. “And I want you to leave now.”

“You’re not keeping this a secret,” he said. “Don’t think that you will. This isn’t going to be like it was when we started in together, something only you and me will know about. And you can’t end this the way you did when you dumped me, moaning about how you’re tired of sneaking around and lying to the people who trust you. You are having my baby and by God, I’ll shout it to the rooftops.”

It was a challenge. What could she do but accept it? She felt a deep sadness then—for him. For herself. For the innocent baby who would have them for parents. Were there ever two people in the world so poorly suited to the state of matrimony? She didn’t think so. And why couldn’t he see that? Why did he have to be the kind of man who got something in his head and wouldn’t let go of it?

“No way I can hide it in the end, Tate,” she told him flatly. “So you go ahead. You shout it as loud as you want to. It won’t change a thing. I’m not marrying you.”

“Oh, but you will.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

Calmly, he went over and opened the door. Out in the shop, it was quiet—very, very quiet. Molly could just picture them all out there—Donetta and Emmie and the rest of them—straining their ears in hopes of hearing just a few words of what was going on in Molly’s office.

Tate made sure they got an earful. “Molly,” he said, aiming the words out the door and speaking loudly enough to be heard all the way out past the shop’s front door and onto Center Street, “you are having my baby and by God, if it’s the last thing I do, I will see to it that you marry me.”

He turned and looked at Molly, square chin up, hard jaw set. She said nothing. Really, Tate had pretty much said it all.

Out in the salon, it was so quiet, if she hadn’t known better, Molly would have guessed that everyone had left.

Tate said, his voice soft now, but thick with suppressed anger, “Satisfied?”

“Get out of my shop,” she replied, her tone every bit as soft and full of fury as his. “And do me a big favor. Never come back.”

With a final curt nod, Tate turned and went out—and not through the back door either, which was two feet from her office door and would have been the quickest way.

Oh, no. Not Tate Bravo. He marched right through the shop and out the front door. She heard the bell tinkle when he pulled the door open. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said.

The bell jingled cheerily again as the door shut behind him.

Chapter Five

B y the next morning, the news was all over town.

Tate Bravo had gotten Molly O’Dare pregnant. He wanted to marry her. And she was having none of it.

The men shook their heads. The women took sides. All through the breakfast shift at Jim-Denny’s Diner on Center Street, where Dixie had been waiting tables for fifteen years, there was lively debate.

“What is her problem?” Lena Lou, who’d dropped in for her usual decaf and English muffin, wanted to know. “Tate Bravo is studly and rich as they come.” Lena paused to admire the way her engagement diamond glittered in the glare from the overhead florescent lights. Then she got back on topic. “When’s Molly O’Dare gonna do better? She should snap that man up while she’s got the chance.”

“Oh, never,” argued Emmie Lusk, fluffing her new perm. “Never in this life. Our Molly has guts and gumption. She’s not marrying anyone just ’cause she’s pregnant. So what if he’s handsome and rolling in dough? There’s more to life than money, a good-looking husband and legitimate children, after all.”

“Well, now, Emmie,” Donetta said, “don’t go discounting a fat bank account. It is a proven fact that the older a woman gets, the more she needs a rich husband—or at the very least, a viable retirement plan.”

“If she marries him, what about her position as mayor of our town?” demanded Rosie Potts, whose mother was a shut-in and likely to benefit greatly from some of Molly’s programs. “You know he’ll corrupt her. Just see if he doesn’t. I’m inclined to wonder if he hasn’t already. Y’all have to admit, it’s a shock. In bed with the enemy, that’s where she’s been.”

“More coffee?” asked Dixie, pot poised over Donetta’s cup. Donetta nodded and Dixie poured.

“Dixie,” said Rosie. “She’s your daughter. What do you think?”

Dixie smiled her secret smile at Ray, who sat sipping coffee in his favorite spot at the end of the counter. Ray gave her a wink. “Molly said she wouldn’t marry him, didn’t she?”

“Well, yeah, so?” Lena rattled her own cup.

Dixie filled it. “If Molly says she’s not marrying him, then it doesn’t matter a bit what Tate Bravo does or anybody says. She won’t be marrying him. It’s as simple as that.”

“But that is plain stupid,” Lena declared, rising and laying her money on the counter. “Why have a baby without a husband if you don’t have to?” Lena bit her pretty lip. Everyone knew she had to be thinking about her twin sister, Lori Lee. But then she covered her own discomfort with, “No offense, Dixie.”

Dixie’s beatific smile only widened. “None taken. And it just may be that I, personally, agree with you. But like I said, what I think or you think isn’t what matters. It’s Molly’s decision and so far anyway, she has said no.”

Molly had just climbed into bed and turned out the light when the tap came at the window that faced the front walk. Her first thought was Tate, and she scowled into the darkness. If he kept this up, she would be looking into getting a restraining order on him. Just because he thought he had to marry her wasn’t any excuse for the man to turn stalker.

But then there was another tap—as soft and cautious as the first.

Hmm. Soft and cautious. Not Tate’s style. More like…

Molly slid from her bed and went to pull back the curtain. Dixie stood on the other side, smiling. She held up a brown bag with the neck of a liquor bottle sticking out of it and smiled wider.

Molly pushed up the window. “You know, you could have just—” Dixie cut her short by putting a finger to her lips. Molly finished in a whisper, “—come to the door.”

Dixie shook her big platinum-blond head of hair and whispered back, “Hon, I don’t need to hear your granny go on about my sweet Ray-boy and me getting married. She wears me out, and I’m just not up for it tonight, you know?” She waved the bottle some more, causing her chunky charm bracelet—silver balls dripping with pink plastic hearts—to rattle in a cheerful kind of way. The scent of White Diamonds, Dixie’s favorite perfume, wafted in through the screen. “Can I come in?”

“What’s in the bottle?”

“Jack Black, baby girl—and I don’t mean the movie star.”

“Didn’t you hear? I’m pregnant.”

Dixie made a big show of rolling her eyes. “Oh, I heard. All day long, I heard.”

Though Molly had never been much of a drinker, getting blotto right then did hold some appeal. But no. She had to think of the baby. “No liquor for me.”

“Well, that’s fine.” Dixie leaned a little closer to the screen. “I pretty much figured you’d say that. But you know how I am. Never had a problem with being the only one drinkin’.”

Molly unhitched the screen and held it up. Dixie handed Molly the bottle and swung a leg over the sill, and Molly thought fondly about all the times she’d watched her mother climb through the window in the middle of the night.

Once she’d slithered inside, Dixie straightened her short, tight skirt, tugged on her tank top and then held out her hand. Molly gave her back her bottle. Dixie grabbed it by the neck, still in the bag. She screwed off the top and took a swig. Scrunching up her face tight, she swallowed. “Ungh!” she exclaimed, pounding her chest with a fist. “Ooo-wa!” And then she put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Oops. Too loud,” she whispered. “Mustn’t forget your granny.”

“Good thinking,” Molly said dryly.

“Jack Black,” Dixie murmured contentedly as she recapped the bottle, “really hits the spot.” Bracelet rattling, she grabbed Molly’s hand. “Come on. Let’s sit.” They both perched on the edge of the bed. “So, now. How’re you holding up?”

“I’m getting by.”

Dixie smoothed Molly’s hair and gently cupped her chin. “You look kinda tired, baby.”

“Yeah. Guess I am. It’s all starting to get to me. Endless advice from any and everyone who comes in the shop. And some of the women in town are disappointed in me for sleeping with Tate in the first place, when he’s the main one standing in the way of all the good things I want to do as mayor. Those women have let me know, in no uncertain terms, that they consider my having had sex with Tate to be nothing short of a betrayal of all I’m supposed to be standing for.”

“Oh, pooh on them. They are just jealous. Tate Bravo is untamed and all man. Just let him crook a finger at any one of them. You’d better believe the chosen one would be naked and flat on her back faster than chain lightning with a link snapped.” Dixie snapped her fingers high and sharp, just to show how fast that might be.

“Tate.” Molly was shaking her head. “He’s most of my problem. He keeps popping up out of nowhere to order me to marry him. He didn’t show up today, but he might as well have. I stayed on edge every minute just worrying he might.”

“So you’re saying you don’t—” Dixie paused to take another belt from her bottle, screw up her face and swallow “—want to marry him, right?” Molly looked away. “Well, do you or don’t you?”

“It would never work.”

Dixie took her face and guided it back around. Molly pushed her hand away. Dixie sighed. “You planning on answering my question? Sometime soon would be nice.”

“I can’t answer it.”

“Because…?”

“Since it’s not gonna work, it doesn’t matter what I want.”

Dixie looked kind of thoughtful. “So,” she said, and paused for yet another big gulp. “You do care for him, then. Am I right?”

Molly hung her head and nodded.

Dixie’s whisper got softer. “But the way he’s been acting, he’s not reassuring you that he would make a decent husband?”

Molly shrugged. “I guess. And then there’s me. You know how I am. I do like to run things. And I have no idea at all about how to try to be a wife.”

“Well, baby, some things you just do, you know? You learn as you go.”

Molly looked straight at her mother. “It isn’t going to work. Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

Dixie giggled—but softly, ever-mindful that Granny shouldn’t know she was there. She leaned close to Molly and whispered in her ear. “I know! I’ve been meaning to ask you. Be my maid of honor?”

Molly grunted out a scoffing sound and put her hand on her stomach. “Some maid.”

Dixie grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Oh, silly girl. Who’s a virgin at thirty, anyway?”

“I was…for a month or so.”

Dixie let go of Molly’s hand—and then wrapped her arm around Molly’s shoulders. She gave a squeeze. “Say you will.”

Molly looked up at her mother, smelling White Diamonds again—and the heady scent of Tennessee whiskey, as well. “You know I will.”

“That’s my baby.” Dixie gave Molly’s shoulder another squeeze. “And I might not have been much use to you while you were growing up, but maybe I can help now. I think I will have a little talk with that man of yours.”

Molly pulled out of her mother’s embrace. “He’s not my man—and you better not.”

“Is that a ‘please don’t’?”

“It’s a ‘why waste your breath!”’

Pink plastic hearts clattered together as Dixie raised her bottle of Jack Black high. “Baby, give your mama just a little bit of credit.”

It was after eleven at night when the doorbell rang. Tate was in his study going over some of the accounts. Miranda had long since retired to the apartment over the garages that she shared with Jesse.

So Tate got up, turned off the alarm and answered the door himself. It was Molly’s mother, Dixie O’Dare.

“Tate Bravo, I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

Since his study was right off the entry, he ushered her in there. “Sit down.” He gestured to the sitting area.

“Thank you.” Dixie smiled that pretty smile of hers, but didn’t move beyond the doorway. In her mid-forties, she was still a woman who turned heads. She had that fine, sweet smile and the kind of figure that got men thinking things they shouldn’t. “Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’ll stand.”

Tate went over to the liquor cart in the corner. “Drink?”

Molly’s mother licked her full pink lips. She had a woozy look. Tate guessed she’d already had a few. “Better not,” she said. “But thank you.”

“Well, then. What can I do for you…?” Uncertain about how to address her, he let the question trail off.

“Dixie,” she helpfully provided. “You just go ahead and call me Dixie.”

“Dixie,” he repeated, returning her smile, wishing that Molly could be half as agreeable as her mother.

“So, Tate…”

“Yeah?”

“I heard you want to marry my Molly.”

He went around and dropped into his studded leather swivel chair. “That’s right. Molly’s having my child, and I’m going to marry her.”

“Molly says you’re not.”

He sat forward. “Molly is wrong.”

“See?” said Dixie. “See there, that’s your problem. You’re a man used to giving orders and having everyone say yes, sir. Right away, sir. Now, with a lot of women, that kind of he-man approach will work just fine. A lot of women go all weak in the knees when a real man starts bossing them around. But in case maybe you didn’t notice, Molly’s not like a lot of women.”

Good-looking as Dixie was, she was starting to get on his nerves. “Your point?”

“Well, maybe you could try cozying up to her a little.”

He grunted. “Since she’s not letting me near her, cozying up is not looking real likely.”

“Well, and see? That’s just what I meant. How you gonna marry my baby if she won’t let you near her?”

It was a problem. He realized that. “So?” he demanded gruffly.

“So, maybe you oughtta start by making sure you’ll be welcome when you come calling at her house.”

He thought of Molly’s grandmother—on the porch with the shotgun. “I could get killed trying that.”

Dixie giggled. “Well, Tate. That’s why I’m here. I aim to help you out.”

He regarded her with frank suspicion. “How do you plan to do that?”

“You know that expression, ‘salt the old cow to get to the calf’?”

“Dixie, you’re hardly an old cow.”

Dixie glowed with pleasure at the compliment. “Why, thank you, Tate. But I wasn’t referring to myself.”

Tate understood then. He made a sour face. “Dusty? You want me to suck up to Dusty?”

“Sucking up isn’t exactly what I would have called it.”

“But it is what you meant.”

“Oh, now, Tate. It’s not going to kill you.”

“Sucking up? Maybe not. But that crazy mother of yours just might.”

“You only need to know how to make up to her. You need to know her likes and dislikes. Her secret yearnings…”

“Dusty O’Dare has got secret yearnings?” The idea kind of scared him.

“My mother’s tough as a roll of barbed wire, but she is still a woman in her heart.”

“Oh, yeah?” Could have fooled Tate.

“Now, Tate. That there’s a big part of your problem. You need to get yourself in courting mode. And courting mode means you are always polite and respectful when referring to or addressing your darlin’ one or any member of her family.”

Tate wasn’t sure he liked the idea of sucking up to Dusty. But he was getting the picture. “And that’s why you’re here? To help me make nice?”

Dixie got a kind of wistful look. “I could never have another child after Molly. It was a tough birth and…well, as a result, she is my one and only. I have been somewhat…distracted, when it came to being a mother. But like all mothers, I do want to see my only child happy, with a good man who’ll love her till she pleads for mercy and provide her with a platinum no-limit credit card. I think you just might be that man. And I do believe that deep in her heart, Molly would prefer to be married to her baby’s daddy. You say you want that, too.”

“I do want that, Dixie,” Tate said quietly.

The sad look vanished as Dixie smiled her dazzling smile. “Then grab a pen and a full-size piece of paper. This will be a long list….”

The next day, which just happened to be Friday the thirteenth, Molly got a lot more advice at work—and couple of expressions of deep disappointment that she’d gone and crawled into bed with Tate Bravo, of all people.

And like the day before, she kept waiting for Tate to come barreling through the door, demanding that she marry him on the spot. Also like the day before, he never appeared. Maybe, she thought philosophically, as time went by and he didn’t come busting through the door, she would learn to relax a little again—if her customers would ever shut the heck up about him.

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