The Bridal Arrangement Read online

  It Was Her Wedding Day.

  It was the day her oldest, most cherished dream was coming true.

  Ellie wanted to be ready. She wanted to be perfect for this perfect man whom she had adored from the moment she could say his name. Lee.

  She walked to the closet and the carefully preserved wedding gown that awaited her. It was a dress made for a princess. Antique lace and virginal white satin hung in luxurious folds from a padded hanger.

  “How pretty you must have looked in this dress, Momma,” she whispered. “How Daddy must have loved you.”

  Just as Lee would grow to love her.

  She knew that he would. In time. Once he got to know her better. Once he understood that she was a woman, not a child….

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with six passionate, powerful and provocative romances! And you can take romance one step further…. Look inside for details about our exciting new contest, “Silhouette Makes You a Star.”

  Popular author Mary Lynn Baxter returns to Desire with our MAN OF THE MONTH when The Millionaire Comes Home to Texas to reunite with the woman he could never forget. Rising star Sheri WhiteFeather’s latest story features a Comanche Vow that leads to a marriage of convenience…until passionate love transforms it into the real thing.

  It’s our pleasure to present you with a new miniseries entitled 20 AMBER COURT, featuring four twentysomething female friends who share an address…and their discoveries about life and love. Don’t miss the launch title, When Jayne Met Erik, by beloved author Elizabeth Bevarly. The scandalous Desire miniseries FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS continues with Fortune’s Secret Daughter by Barbara McCauley. Alexandra Sellers offers you another sumptuous story in her miniseries SONS OF THE DESERT: THE SULTANS, Sleeping with the Sultan. And the talented Cindy Gerard brings you a touching love story about a man of honor pledged to marry an innocent young woman with a secret, in The Bridal Arrangement.

  Treat yourself to all six of these tantalizing tales from Silhouette Desire.

  Enjoy!

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  The Bridal Arrangement

  CINDY GERARD

  This book is dedicated to those who understand that

  courage is often silent and proud.

  Books by Cindy Gerard

  Silhouette Desire

  The Cowboy Takes a Lady #957

  Lucas: The Loner #975

  *The Bride Wore Blue #1012

  *A Bride for Abel Greene #1052

  *A Bride for Crimson Falls #1076

  †The Outlaw’s Wife #1175

  †Marriage, Outlaw Style #1185

  †The Outlaw Jesse James #1198

  Lone Star Prince #1256

  In His Loving Arms #1293

  Lone Star Knight #1353

  The Bridal Arrangement #1392

  CINDY GERARD

  If asked, “What’s your idea of heaven?” Cindy Gerard would say a warm sun, a cool breeze, pan pizza and a good book. If she had to settle for one of the four, she’d opt for the book, with the pizza running a close second. Inspired by the pleasure she’s received from the books she’s read and her longtime love affair with her husband, Tom, Cindy now creates her own evocative and sensual love stories about compelling characters and complex relationships.

  This number-one bestselling author of close to twenty books has received numerous industry awards, among them the National Readers’ Choice Award, multiple Romantic Times Magazine nominations and two RITA Award nominations from the Romance Writers of America. Cindy loves to hear from her readers and invites them to visit her web page at www.TLT.com/authors/cgerard.httm.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  One

  Lee Savage felt like a man on a collision course with disaster. Guilt settled, heavy and solid as he climbed out of his pickup, thumbed back his Stetson and worked to ignore the sad condition of Shiloh Ranch. Even the dark tint of his sunglasses couldn’t dim the ragged edges of neglect.

  Every building and fence within eyesight needed painting or repair. A pair of black shutters, faded to a chalky gray, hung crookedly from a broken hinge on the second story of the house. And those were just surface blemishes. Still, it all registered on a peripheral level as he climbed the front porch steps and a rotted floorboard creaked beneath his booted foot.

  With a resolute set of his jaw, he squared his shoulders and shut out everything but the job he’d come to do. He raised his hand, made a fist and knocked on the door of the only real home he’d ever known.

  Only moments passed before small, delicate fingers brushed aside an age-yellowed lace curtain and a pair of soft violet eyes peered out at him from behind the wavy windowpane.

  He knew those eyes, but he knew them as a child’s eyes. At nineteen, it seemed that Ellie Shiloh was hardly more than a child now. Yet, as the door flew open and she slipped outside, he recognized both an ageless knowledge and an endless innocence in their sparkling, velvet depths.

  Involuntarily he felt his mouth soften with tenderness as she tugged the door shut behind her. The scent of cinnamon and vanilla and a sweetly musky fragrance he couldn’t quite identify wafted lightly in her wake, stirring rich reminders of home—along with unsettling twinges of awareness.

  “Hello, Ellie,” he managed in a rusty voice, swamped by memories of sugar cookies cooling on a baking rack, stunned by more immediate sensory impressions of silken skin and sensual, probing eyes—eyes completing a smile that was too huge and too hopeful and unreasonably happy under the circumstances.

  “Mornin’, Lee.” Her voice was as pure and perfect as the Montana air. “And what a fine morning.”

  Tugging the belt of her fussy pink robe tighter around her tiny waist, she tipped her face toward the golden glow of the horizon. She drew in a deep, pleasured breath, then tilted her head, giving him a playful, assessing once-over. “A little early for someone of your advanced years to be up and around, though, isn’t it?”

  She was messing with him. He’d been eighteen when he’d left Shiloh, and he’d rarely made it back in the fifteen years since. When he had, she’d always liked to tease him about being older and wiser…practically ancient in the face of her youth. Not only couldn’t he smile at her gentle barb as he once might have, it took effort to keep from cringing. He notched his chin instead and stared past a truth he couldn’t ignore—and beyond an unnerving notion that the laughter bubbling in her eyes was prodded as much by blissful ignorance as it was by mischief.

  She had no idea. No idea at all, what she was getting in to. The fact that she found humor instead of uncertainty in the situation proved it—though it didn’t change what had to be done.

  He tugged off his sunglasses, folded them into the breast pocket of his shirt and transferred his attention toward his polished boot tips, only to be thrown off balance again. Damn if his heart didn’t catch—just a little half hitch—at the sight of the tiny pink toes peeking out from beneath her floor-length flowing robe.

  He cleared his throat. Got down to business. “So. The fourteenth will work out for you, then?”

  He could sense the softness of her gaze even before he lifted his head, struggling with his bad feelings about all of this.

  Her nod was quick and certain. “Oh, yes, the fourteenth is perfect. I’ve ordered sunshine. And a sweet breeze. It only seems right, don’t you think?”

 
He studied her gamine features—the saucily turned-up nose, delicately winged brows, tiny fairy ears partially hidden beneath a silken fall of riotously tangled copper and gold curls that tumbled midway down her back. She looked as though she ought to be running barefoot through a sun-dappled forest, flower petals woven in her hair, hummingbirds and butterflies flitting around her head as she conjured up her sunshine and her sweet breezes.

  “Would that be all right, Lee?” he heard her ask and knew he’d been so immersed in the daydream the sight of her invoked that he must have missed something.

  He shook his head, glanced toward the porch overhang where the spring breeze set a glass and copper wind chime singing. On a deep breath, he met her eyes again. “I’m sorry, Ellie. Would what be all right?”

  Her small hand reached out, touched his arm with gentle care, as if she was suddenly in charge of looking out for him—him, who, at six foot two and 210, towered over her by a full foot and outweighed her by a good hundred pounds.

  “Are you okay?” Her too-perfect brows were knit together in studied concern.

  “I’m fine,” he grumbled abruptly, then made a concentrated effort to relax as he pulled away from the warm, tingling sensation that flowed along his arm where her fingers had lingered with the lightness of air.

  Forcing a patience that neither fitted his dark mood nor eased his tension, he softened his tone. “I’m fine, Ellie. Now what was it that you asked me?”

  “The church?” That beatific smile lit her face again. “I’d like for it to be in the church, if it…if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  Her voice was as soft as meadow grass. Like her eyes. Like her sweet, curvy little body bundled in that fussy pink robe that he had no business thinking about. That he hadn’t stopped thinking about since she’d breezed out into the morning to compete with the spring sunshine.

  He made himself concentrate. She wanted a church. It was the first direct request she’d voiced since this whole sorry business started.

  He gave her a clipped nod and bucked a sudden and unreasonable need to call the whole thing off. “Not a problem,” he said instead, because he really had no choice. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He didn’t want to catalog the effect of yet another one of her radiant smiles. He didn’t want to acknowledge how innocent, how trusting she looked. How unrelentingly bewitching.

  Bewitching. Well. There was someplace he definitely didn’t need to go. What he had to think about was duty. His. And a debt owed. A debt he had every intention of repaying as soon as he tidied up some unfinished business back in Texas.

  “If you’re sure you’ll be okay, I’ll be taking off then. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

  He hadn’t meant to sound so stiff and formal, but there it was, and there was nothing to be done for it now. He turned his back on those velvet eyes that pinned him with so much hope. Hope, when in fact, the situation seemed pretty hopeless at this point. Nothing to be done for that, either. Not at this late date.

  He dug out his sunglasses, slipped them on and headed for his truck. He stopped abruptly, squinted against the burning ball of the morning sun and cupped the back of his neck where he swore he felt a sudden and soothing sensation of a caress.

  She was watching him. He knew it. Just like he knew it was a bad idea to turn around. He did it, anyway.

  She’d walked to the edge of the porch. The bare toes of those impossibly tiny feet were curled against the morning chill; one arm hugged a porch post. With a china-doll cheek pressed against the peeling wood, she smiled with a shimmering expectancy that made his mouth go dry.

  He drew in a bracing breath. “Everything’s going to be fine, okay?”

  She nodded, her eyes trying to make him believe it. The best thing for both of them was that he did. He didn’t like the idea of leaving her on her own—even though he’d arranged for the neighbors to look in on her—and even if it was only for a couple of weeks while he tidied up those loose ends.

  “I’ll pick you up around ten on the fourteenth then,” he croaked around the lump that had somehow found its way to his throat.

  “Ten would be wonderful. Ten would be superb!” Her smile was far too buoyant for her to have yet grasped how drastically her life was about to change. “If…if it’s not too much bother, that is,” she added quietly.

  Not too much bother? If the situation weren’t dead serious, he’d laugh out loud. Hell. Picking her up and taking her to town was the least of the things that was bothering him.

  For her sake he forced the requisite response. “You call now if you need anything. You’ve got my number, right?”

  When she nodded, he headed back down the path toward his truck.

  “Lee.”

  It took a long stride for him to stop, stiffen, react too strongly to the sound of his name on her petal-soft voice. He turned slowly—and found her shy smile touching.

  “Thank you.” A wealth of pride and far too much happiness colored her appreciation.

  He merely nodded, knowing she was thanking him today for what would happen in two weeks that would change both of their lives forever.

  In a church, he reminded himself when the sinking sensation that he was about to make the biggest mistake of her life, coupled with the realization that he still needed to pick up a wedding ring.

  Ellie stood in the sun-drenched light of her east bedroom window. Excitement bubbled just beneath her skin like water dancing along a pebble-strewn brook.

  She hugged her arms to her chest, bursting with feelings too big to contain. It was her wedding day. It was the day her oldest, most cherished dream was coming true.

  Outside her window birdsong floated on a crisp breeze, a joyous harbinger of what was about to happen. In less than an hour Lee would be here.

  He’d called her last night from the Sundown Hotel where he’d spent the night. She’d nearly melted at the sound of his voice. And she’d pictured him there—lying on the bed, his long legs crossed at the ankles, that deep frown that she found both endearing and sad creasing his brows. His dark hair would be a little mussed, his blue eyes would be crinkled with concern, with worry, and with the fatigue of his long drive from Houston—and, she hoped, with a little of the sweet anticipation she was feeling.

  “And he’s on his way to pick you up this very minute,” she reminded herself, and felt another fluttering ripple of excitement.

  She wanted to be ready. She wanted to be perfect for this perfect man that she had adored from the moment she could say his name.

  She’d hurried through her morning chores—feeding the horses, gathering eggs—then given in to the luxury of a long, soaking bubble bath. And now she would get ready for her bridegroom.

  Heart racing, she flew back to the full-length pedestal mirror in the corner of the room—the room she would soon share with Lee as his wife.

  A flush crept from her checks to her throat and spread downward to stain the gentle round of her breasts revealed above the lacy white cups of the exquisite bra that had arrived just yesterday in the mail. She touched her fingers to sheer silk and delicate lace, blushed anew at the way her nipples hardened and pressed against the gossamer fabric.

  Was she big enough to please him, she wondered with a critical frown and a tilt of her head as she turned sideways and studied her reflection in the beveled cheval mirror encased in ornately carved oak? A long, assessing look took in the matching lacy panties and thigh-high white hose that barely covered the rest of her. Was she pretty enough? Would the cobalt-blue of his piercing, thick-lashed eyes darken with desire when he saw her this way? Would his skin get all warm and tingly and his long, strong body go weak with yearning the way hers did at the mere thought of seeing him?

  Or would he be disappointed?

  Would she be less than he expected…or needed…or preferred?

  Gaze fixed critically on her reflection, she saw a slim, slight woman with pale skin, average-size breasts and a long tumble of copper-colored hair that she’d had m
arginal success taming into a complicated tangle of curls on top of her head.

  “It’s your crowning glory, princess,” her momma used to say when they would sit together in the pale evening light and Ellie had groused about the thick, unruly mass of it.

  From the time she’d been a little girl, she had loved it when her mother had brushed her hair. The long steady strokes soothing her, lulling her into believing in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters.

  “Someday a handsome prince will come and make me his princess, just like Sleeping Beauty, right, Momma?”

  “Right, princess,” her momma would agree, but with such a sad and guarded smile that Ellie had known her momma had thought there would be more frogs in her future than princes.

  “Well, he came, Momma,” she whispered to the empty room as the familiar ache of loss edged in to undercut her joy. “My prince came. I wish you could be here. I wish you and Daddy could be with us today.”

  Three years her mother had been gone. Time had eased the grief but not the sense of emptiness that had been compounded when her father died a month ago in March—and for the first time in her life, Ellie had been alone.

  Turning away from the mirror and the melancholy that threatened to overtake her, she thought, instead, of the man who would come for her in less than an hour—and she knew she wouldn’t be alone any longer.

  She walked to the closet and the carefully preserved wedding gown that awaited her. It was a dress made for a princess. Antique lace and virginal white satin hung in luxurious folds from a padded hanger. On the floor beneath the dress, age-softened slippers of the same pristine, shining fabric lay waiting.

  “How pretty you must have looked in this dress, Momma,” she murmured, and taking great care slipped it from the hanger. “How Daddy must have loved you.”

  Just as Lee would grow to love her.