it, Rabb. I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I don’t know—”
Rabb avoided the hand his brother offered and quickly got back on his feet. “I know exactly what’s wrong with you. You’re in love up to your eyeballs with Hope Butler, and you’re marrying Amanda Carter out of some misplaced sense of honor. You’re not doing either one of them any favors.”
“Hope’s too young for me,” Jake said bleakly.
“Yeah, I know. And because Amanda’s the right age you’re going to marry her and live miserably ever after. I’m giving you fair warning that I intend to do everything in my power to stop this wedding.”
“Amanda loves me, Rabb. I don’t want to see her hurt.”
Rabb was taken aback by Jake’s statement, because it was something he feared might very well be true. “Maybe she does. And maybe she doesn’t know her own mind.”
They were both distracted by a commotion in the gazebo.
“What the hell?” Jake muttered.
Hope screamed.
Rabb was left standing by himself as Jake raced to the rescue.
Rabb quickly followed after him, but while Jake’s attention was focused on Hope and the cowboy whose arms were wrapped tightly around her, Rabb had eyes only for Amanda.
She looked distressed as Jake marched up the steps of the gazebo and yanked Hope free of the cowboy’s drunken embrace. When the man took a swing at him, Jake ducked, then planted his powerful fist in the cowboy’s solar plexus.
The man stumbled backward, then went crashing through the delicate lattice that formed one of the five sides of the gazebo. That would have been bad enough, but as the drunken cowboy stumbled, he careened into another guest, who windmilled helplessly before smashing backward through another one of the fragile walls.
“Oh, no!” Amanda cried.
Rabb was beside her an instant later. “It’s all right, Amanda,” he said. “I can fix it.”
“I don’t care about the gazebo,” she shot back. And then realizing who was standing beside her amended, “Well, of course I do, but…”
He followed her gaze to the gazebo and saw what was really troubling her. Jake was gripping Hope Butler tightly by the arm, dragging her out of the gazebo behind him and hauling her toward the house.
“That poor girl,” Amanda said, staring after them. “I’d better go see what I can do to help.”
For a moment Rabb was tempted to let her follow his brother, because he had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen when Jake got Hope alone. But he didn’t want Amanda hurt any more than necessary. Which meant he had to distract her long enough for Jake to finish his “talk” with Hope.
“Wait,” he said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Jake can handle Hope.” Which was probably the biggest lie he’d told in a good long while. “You’d better see to your guests,” he said, pointing toward the disaster in and around the gazebo.
She glanced once more toward the house, where Jake and Hope had disappeared, then turned back to the gazebo. “You’re right. I’d better see what I can do to smooth things over.”
Rabb went with her, to make sure the drunken cowboy didn’t repeat whatever insult had created havoc with Hope in the first place. He found Hope’s twin Faith standing beside the fallen cowboy, her boyfriend Randy at her side.
“I’m so sorry,” Faith was saying. “I swear I thought Hope said she liked you. But maybe it was some other cowboy,” she was explaining.
“You’d better saddle up and move along,” Rabb said as he approached the man.
“No argument from me,” the cowboy muttered as Faith’s boyfriend helped him to his feet.
The other guest who’d fallen turned out to be Amanda’s principal, Mr. Denton. And his arm was broken.
“I’m so sorry,” Amanda said as she stared helplessly at the older man.
“Aw, hell,” Denton said as Rabb helped him to his feet. “I’ve been hurt worse. But this is going to make it a little harder to put together some of the Christmas presents I bought the kids—bicycles, baby carriages and the like.”
“I can help you with that,” Rabb volunteered.
“I’ll help, too,” Amanda said. “Just let us know when and where to show up.”
“You got it,” Denton said.
Rabb could see Amanda’s hands were trembling as a couple of other teachers escorted Denton toward a car to take him to the hospital. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It could have happened—”
“I should have been watching more carefully,” she said. “I should have kept an eye on—”
“You can’t watch everyone all of the time,” Rabb interrupted.
“My beautiful gazebo,” she said as she stared at the destruction. Her chin was wobbling and tears began to brim in her beautiful blue eyes.
Rabb put an arm around her waist, wanting to comfort. “I can fix it, Amanda. Really, I can.”
She turned her face up to him and said, “Can you? Really?”
He wondered if she was talking about the gazebo…or her relationship with Jake. Amanda Carter was no dummy. She must have some inkling of what was going on between Jake and Hope. But if she did, why didn’t she call off the wedding herself?
A moment later, Amanda had her face pressed against his shirtfront, sobbing.
“I’ll start tomorrow,” he promised her. And be at her back door every day for the next two weeks, he promised himself. He enfolded her in his arms, rocking her and murmuring soothing words, his eyes warning the guests not to make anything of it. He was merely deputizing for his brother.
But where the hell was Jake? Why hadn’t he come back to comfort his fiancée?
CHAPTER TWO
HOPE
HOPE HAD BEEN TRYING ALL afternoon to get Jake’s attention. Now she had it. But after knocking down the cowboy who’d been bothering her, Jake’s blue eyes were cold, his granite features set in angry lines.
“I saw this coming from the moment you set foot in Amanda’s backyard,” he said as he grabbed her arm and hauled her out of Miss Carter’s gazebo—or what was left of it. Two of the five sides were lying splintered on the ground, a result of the brief fracas between Jake and the young cowboy who’d gotten drunk enough to lay a hand on Hope in a place where it didn’t belong.
Hope spared one glance for the cowboy, who lay groaning on the ground, before Jake’s implacable grip propelled her toward Miss Carter’s kitchen. This confrontation had been coming all afternoon, and she welcomed it. At least Jake would be forced to talk to her.
When they got to the kitchen, it was full of women, so Jake nodded curtly and kept moving. Down a narrow hallway. Through the parlor.
Up the creaking wooden stairs. Down another hallway. And into a bedroom that obviously belonged to Miss Carter.
The baby-pink bedspread was girlish, but that was the extent of the frivolity in the room. Miss Carter had always been a no-nonsense English teacher. Her bedroom gave proof that there hadn’t been much fun in her life.
A shepherdess figurine with a broken arm sat on the dresser, along with what appeared to be a plain wooden jewelry box. An iron lamp and a paperback book—a horror novel by Stephen King—rested on the bedside table. A painted green kitchen chair occupied the corner. A worn pink bathroom rug was all that stood between Miss Carter and the wooden floor on a cold morning.
Hope