A Lawman's Christmas_ A McKettricks of Texas Novel - Linda Lael Miller [45]
Thoughts still clamored through her mind, though, and her hand shook slightly when she signed “Dara Rose McKettrick” on the line reserved for the bride.
What had she done?
Suppose Clay was really a rascal and a drunk, instead of the solid man he seemed to be? Suppose he already had a wife tucked away somewhere, and he’d just made them both bigamists? And what if this stranger had spoken falsely when he promised not to exercise his rights as a husband unless and until she declared herself ready and willing?
The room felt hot, even with a chinook breeze sweeping in through the open door.
Edrina tugged at Dara Rose’s hand, bringing her back into the present moment. “Now you’re Mrs. McKettrick,” the little girl crowed. “Can Harriet and I be McKettricks, too?”
Dara Rose had no idea how to answer.
Clay, who had clearly overheard, judging by that little smile resting on his mouth as he bent to scrawl his name on the marriage certificate, said nothing. He waited while Mayor Ponder and both witnesses added their signatures where appropriate. Then money changed hands, and the ordeal was over.
The official part of it, at least.
Mayor Ponder and his companions took their leave, and Dara Rose was alone with her new husband and her delighted children.
“We want to be McKettricks, too,” Edrina insisted.
“You’re Nolans,” Dara Rose reasoned. “What would your papa think if you changed your names?”
“You changed yours,” Edrina pointed out. “And, any how, Papa’s dead.”
Harriet’s eyes rounded. “Papa’s dead?”
“Of course he is, dolt,” Edrina snapped. “Why do you suppose we put flowers on a grave with his name on it?”
“Edrina,” Dara Rose reprimanded. “Stop it.”
“I can’t read,” Harriet lamented, looking up at Dara Rose now, with tears welling in her eyes. “You said Papa was gone—”
Dara Rose exchanged glances with a somber-faced Clay and then bent her knees so she was crouching before her daughter, in the dress she’d worn to marry Luke, and then Parnell, and now Clay.
“Sweetheart,” she said softly, “that’s what ‘gone’ means sometimes. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but you have to try.”
Harriet turned, much to Dara Rose’s surprise, and buried her face in one side of Clay’s fancy suit coat, wailing in despair. This was unusual behavior, especially for even-tempered Harriet, but Dara Rose put it down to all the excitement of a front-room wedding.
“There, now,” Clay said gruffly, as Dara Rose straightened, hoisting Harriet up into his arms. “You go right ahead and cry ’til you feel like stopping.”
Dara Rose sank onto the settee, close to tears herself.
She was married, and there was so much she didn’t know about Clay.
So much he didn’t know about her.
Harriet bawled like a banshee—Dara Rose realized the child was going for effect now—her face hidden in Clay’s shoulder.
“Here’s what I think we ought to do,” Clay said, to all of them. “We ought to go out to my ranch—I’ll rent a buckboard and a couple of stout mules—and find ourselves a Christmas tree.”
Harriet immediately stopped wailing.
Edrina lit up like a lightbulb wired to a power pole.
“A Christmas tree?” Dara Rose repeated, confounded.
“The roads are pretty muddy,” Edrina speculated, but she was obviously warming to the idea, and so was Harriet, who had reared back to look at Clay in wet-eyed wonder.
“That’s why we need mules,” Clay replied.
“Do you believe in St. Nicholas?” Harriet asked him, in a hushed voice.
Clay looked directly at Dara Rose, silently dared her to say otherwise and replied, “I do indeed. One Christmas Eve, when my cousin Sawyer and I were about your age, we caught a glimpse of him flying over the roof of our granddad’s barn in that sleigh of his, with eight reindeer harnessed to the rig.”
Edrina blinked, swallowed. “Really?” she breathed, wanting so much to believe, even at the advanced age of six, that she’d been wrong to think there was no magic in the world.
Dara Rose’s heart ached.