Runaway Vegas Bride (7 page)

Jane sighed. It was hard work, taking proper care of two women in their eighties, especially two active, stubborn women who didn’t want to be taken care of. “I just…I worry about the two of you.”

“Well, we worry about you, too, Jane, darling,” Gram said gently. “But we try not to overreact and let you live your own life, even if you’re doing so in a way we disagree with at times.”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Jane apologized, feeling ridiculous and so relieved.

Everything was okay. Nothing really bad was happening. She could relax, back off, never have to deal with Leo Gray again and maybe never see Wyatt again.

That was a good thing, wasn’t it?

She felt vaguely disappointed and just…out of sorts. Which was silly, because this had to be a good thing.

Gladdy got up, came over to Jane, smiled down at her and gave her a little kiss on her forehead, like she used to do when Jane was little. “You’re so sweet to fuss over us like this, but we’re fine. Honestly. And I hate to rush off, but I made plans to meet a friend for bridge. Bye, darling. Bye, Kathleen.”

“Bye,” Jane whispered.

Gladdy left, and Jane for once relaxed that rigid posture of hers and fell back against her chair. “I’m so glad we got that cleared up.”

But then she looked at Gram, and it appeared as if nothing at all had been cleared up, Gram’s expression suggested that she had to tell Jane something and she was dreading it.

“What?” Jane asked.

Gram gave a shrug and a smile, then a sigh. “I just…Don’t get upset, all right? You get upset over everything, Jane.”

“Upset? Why would I get upset? You two said you’re not fighting, that you haven’t gone nuts over Leo Gray and that everything is fine. There’s nothing upsetting about that. That’s all good news. I’m happy. See? Happy Jane.”

“The thing is, that isn’t…entirely true,” Gram confessed. “We haven’t told Gladdy yet, although honestly, I don’t believe it’s going to be such a problem. I mean, I know she really likes Leo, but she hasn’t said anything about being in love with him, and you know Gladdy. She doesn’t do love.”

“Neither do you,” Jane said.

“Still…there’s nothing official yet, but Leo and I’ve been talking, and…I’m fairly certain he’s going to ask me to marry him! Jane, I’m just so happy, darling. Isn’t it fabulous!”

“Y
ou can’t do that,” Jane said, after a long moment of stunned silence.

“Of course, we can. We can do anything we want.”

“But…why would you want to?” Jane tried.

“Because that’s what people in love do!” Gram gave her a huge, glowing smile.

Jane winced. Her head hurt. Her ears hurt. She could not listen to this anymore. She had no calm reasoning abilities left in her where Leo Gray was concerned.

“People in love do a lot of things,” Jane said.
A lot of really stupid things
. “And you’ve only known him for two weeks, Gram.”

“I know, but when it’s right, Jane, you just know. This is right, and honestly, he’s eighty-one—”

“No, honestly, he’s eighty-six. He’s lying about being eighty-one.”

Gram laughed. “Well, I’m lying about being seventy-six, so I’d say we’re even on that score.”

“He was in Gladdy’s room, necking with her just yesterday! That’s what made me so mad! That’s why I stormed off after him! Because he acted like it was nothing, to be messing around with you and her, like he could hurt you both and laugh about it.”

“She said she had something in her eye, and I believe her, of course,” Gram said sternly. “Now she may like him and enjoy spending time with him but she’s not in love with him, and we’ll all just sit down, talk this out and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t trust that man. You shouldn’t, either.”

“Things will be fine. Leo’s going to tell her everything. Just wait and see.”

Gladdy, just as Jane feared, was with Leo Gray!

When she finished with Gram, Jane went to the card room, where Gladdy wasn’t, and then kept asking if anyone had seen her or Leo. She eventually tracked them down to a secluded bench near the tennis courts. Someone said it was a particularly favorite spot of Leo’s to take his lady-friends.

Jane contemplated strangling him with her bare hands when she saw him and Gladdy sitting there, laughing hilariously, Gladdy’s hand on his knee, Leo toying with a bit of Gladdy’s long, pretty white hair.

Was the man on some new combination of Viagra and steroids?

This was ridiculous.

Jane crouched down behind a bush and tried to figure
out what to do next. It was like both Gram and Gladdy had completely lost all sense. Granted, they’d never been the most sensible women, but they hadn’t been crazy, either.

Marry Leo Gray?

Gram would be safer jumping off a cliff.

He was like those wackos who founded cults and could get people to do anything he wanted, no matter how illogical or inherently dangerous.

Drink the Kook-Aid for Leo Gray.

And here was Jane, the only sensible one in the group. Well, maybe Wyatt was, too.

She had to see Wyatt again—and firmly ignored a little happy feeling that came along with that thought. There was simply no choice. He at least would help her.

She was getting ready to creep away from her hiding place behind the bush when Leo got up, kissed Gladdy on the cheek and headed Jane’s way.

She gave a little yelp, fell to her knees and tried to crawl into the midst of the bushes. It was all the cover she could find that quickly, but it just wasn’t big enough for hiding purposes. She was sure her butt was sticking out, and the stupid bush scratched her cheek, her arms, maybe even her ear and was likely ruining her pretty-yet-sensible, low-heeled pumps she’d just bought on sale.

Jane waited there, cuts stinging, knees sinking into the dirt, wondering how her life had been reduced to this—hiding in bushes—until she heard a man’s voice.

“I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with that little girl.”

Leo, of course.

Groaning, even swearing under her breath in the bushes,
Jane couldn’t bring herself to crawl out of there. It was too much. She had no dignity left, and Jane Carlton placed a great deal of value on her own sense of dignity. Every woman should, she believed. And hers was simply gone, all because of that man!

“You can come out now. He’s gone,” Gladdy said, sounding sad and worried herself.

Jane backed out on her hands and knees, then sat back on her heels, simply unable to look Gladdy in the eye.

“Honestly, Jane. Is there something going on that you’re not telling us? Because you just aren’t acting like yourself lately,” Gladdy said.

“Of course I’m not acting like myself. I’m trying to save you and Gram from that man!”

“And we keep telling you, we don’t need saving.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Did he tell you what’s really going on? What he did? What he and Gram are talking about?”

“Oh, please! What is going on? We’re all going dancing together. We have dinner together. We just told you this. You remember, don’t you, darling?”

“Of course I remember! There’s nothing wrong with my memory! It’s just…he’s…I knew he wouldn’t tell you. I just knew it.”

“Tell me what?”

“About what’s really going on here!” Jane was just all done in. She had dirt all over her knees and her new shoes, scratches on her face. She’d been caught hiding in a bunch of bushes, spying on her aunt, and two days ago, she’d nearly attacked an old man.

“Jane, everything’s going to be fine. I’m sure of it. Kathleen and I are as happy as we’ve ever been. Life is very, very good.”

“You’re both crazy about the same man. This cannot end well!”

“Well, Leo will just have to pick one of us. Or…maybe not.”

“Maybe not? What do you mean, maybe not?”

Gladdy hesitated, looking uneasy for once in the whole Leo Gray situation. “Jane, are you really sure you want me to answer that question? Because you have to think, before you ask some things, whether you really want to know the answers.”

Jane shook her head. “What? What could I possibly not want to know?”

“Well…it wouldn’t exactly be the first time Kathleen and I have…shared.”

Jane got a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Shared?”

Gladdy nodded.

“Shared…a man?”

“Yes,” Gladdy whispered, a tiny smile on her pretty face.

When he got back to his office that afternoon, Wyatt got Leo’s doctor on the phone. Wyatt was mostly getting the runaround about patient confidentiality and privacy laws, a thoroughly frustrating exchange.

“Look, he’s just acting…funny,” Wyatt finally said.

“Funny-sad or funny-odd?”

“He’s definitely not sad, just…more stubborn about things,” Wyatt explained. “And a little reckless.”

“Ignoring what seem like perfectly reasonable requests?”

“Yes.”

“And good advice from people trying to take care of him?”

“Exactly. What is that?”

“The most common complaint I hear from people trying to take care of older relatives,” the doctor replied. “And unfortunately not a disease, as far as the medical profession has been able to identify.”

Wyatt wanted to beat his head against his desk. “He’s driving me crazy!”

“Me too, most of the time,” the doctor admitted. “I can’t get him to listen to a thing I say.”

“Me either. What do we do?”

“Unfortunately, he’s an adult, he’s competent to make his own decisions—according to the law, at least—and he gets to go on making his own decisions until you can convince a court to find him incompetent.”

Wyatt groaned.

“Look, you’re always welcome to come with him to his appointments with me, if he’ll let you, and then if you have concerns, I can try to play medical referee. If you’re trying to look out for his health and safety, I’ll back you up all the way. But I can’t force him into anything.”

“I feel like I’m the grown-up and he’s the teenager,” Wyatt complained. “Or maybe even a toddler.”

“In my experience, most family members caring for older relatives feel that way eventually,” the doctor sympathized. “Come to his next appointment. We’ll talk.”

Wyatt said he would, was just hanging up the phone with the doctor when his secretary buzzed, sounding agitated. “There’s a woman here to see you.”

“Lucy, I’m a fortunate man. There’s almost always a woman here to see me,” he spoke into the intercom.

“This one’s different,” Lucy claimed.

Wyatt shook his head. “Different, how?”

“She says she just crawled out of some bushes and she has to talk to you right now. It’s about Leo.”

Wyatt grinned broadly. Jane coming to him? This was a good day.

He opened the door, and then gaped at her.

She looked like a woman who’d been in a fight with a bush. There was a small twig of some kind sticking out of her hair, which was half falling down, half still in a droopy bun on her head. She had small scratches on her face and hands, leaves stuck to her skirt and bits of dirt clinging to her knees.

“Jane!” He went to her side, looking her over more carefully to make sure she wasn’t really hurt. “What happened?”

“I hid in a bush,” she said, as he took her hand and led her carefully into his office to a seat on his sofa. “Because I was spying on Leo and Gladdy, and then Leo left, and I didn’t have time to really get out of the way. It was the bush or nothing. Not that it worked. They saw me anyway. And…” ended up like this.”

“Lucy, would you get…any thing you can find to help clean her up, please?” he called out the open office door, then turned to Jane, pulling stray leaves off her skirt, because that looked like the easiest place to start.

She looked so sad.

Wyatt carefully pulled the little twig out of her hair.

“Oops,” she said. “I thought I got it all.”

“It’s fine now,” Wyatt insisted, smoothing her hair back into place as best he could, which wasn’t really all that well, but she didn’t need to know that. He looked at her knees, dirt ground in, and asked, “You two didn’t get into another fight, did you?”

“No,” she responded meekly. “I refused to come out of hiding until he left.”

Wyatt got an image of the scene in his mind, then said, “Good thinking, Jane.”

Lucy returned with a damp cloth, and Wyatt gently cleansed the scratches on her face, which were red and angry looking but not deep.

“You poor thing,” Lucy said, looking at Jane like she came from Mars or something.

She certainly wasn’t Wyatt’s usual type. He’d admit that. But it wasn’t like she came from Mars, either. She was just…a little reserved, serious, all buttoned-up, although today’s white blouse was coming untucked from her dark blue skirt in a couple of places.

“Lucy, will you run to the market on the corner and get some antibiotic ointment for these cuts?” Wyatt asked.

“No, it’s okay,” Jane said. “I can do that at home.”

Wyatt shook his head. “You took care of me when I hurt my eye. I’m going to take care of you now.”

That got Lucy’s attention as she was walking out the office door. She’d been sure his black eye had something to do with a woman, and he’d refused to explain anything about it. Which made Lucy all the more curious. He gave her a curt nod to get out of there, then started cleaning up Jane’s knees.

“So, do you think we’re going to survive taking care of these three?” Wyatt asked, thinking he might at least get a smile out of Jane with that.

She looked even sadder. Her bottom lip started quivering. She sniffled once, then again. Tears filled her pretty blue-green eyes.

“No, no, no, don’t do that,” Wyatt begged.

He couldn’t stand the idea of Jane crying. Not tough little Jane, who could handle anything. Her expression just crumbled. The harder she fought to control it, the more difficult it become.

Wyatt dabbed at the corner of her eyes with a tissue. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. See? No need to cry.”

Finally, she just blurted out, “Do you think I’m a prude?”

“No! My uncle called you a prude? I’ll kill him—”

She shook her head, tears falling in earnest. “No, my aunt Gladdy did the other day, right before I ran into Leo and almost hit him. And I thought about it, but I didn’t really think it was true. But today…today, I wasn’t sure anymore.”

Oh, God
.

What had Leo done? What had Jane seen from those bushes to have her thinking she was a prude?

Ooh. Ick
. This was like teenagers walking in on their parents having sex.

Jane was sobbing now, and Wyatt was thinking he probably wouldn’t be too out of line if he just kissed her until she stopped. It wasn’t as if he’d had many opportunities to grab Jane and kiss her, when he didn’t think she’d maybe slap him for trying. But she was genuinely distressed now and kissing was a great distraction, he reasoned. Maybe taking advantage of the situation, just a little, but he felt certain he could stop her crying, and that was what was important. Wasn’t it?

Poor thing had been attacked by a bush, called a prude and seen God-only-knows-what that had left her in this condition. Serious comforting was in order, Wyatt calculated.

He took a seat beside her and then just lifted her onto his lap.

Her eyes flew wide open, and she looked at him as if she wasn’t quite sure what was up and that she might need to protest. He’d been right to be wary. Kissing her right now was not a good idea.

“It’s okay, Jane,” he said softly, then urged her to let herself lean on him, put her head on his shoulder.

She sat ramrod straight on his lap, stubborn to the core and resisting with all she had. She might just tell him she didn’t need comforting, and if she tried that, it would be all he could do not to laugh. It would be such a ridiculous assertion, but he could imagine Jane trying to make it.

“Just for a minute,” he suggested. “I won’t tell. If anybody ever asks, you’re the toughest woman I know. I’ll swear to it.”

She sniffled again and finally, ever-so-slowly, settled herself against him, her head falling to his shoulder, her sobs leaving her whole body shaking.

Wyatt closed his eyes and let his face find its way to her hair, inhaling the scent that was Jane, taking in the warmth of her body, the softness of her, the satisfaction of finally having her in his arms.

He was going to get her on her back on this couch and kiss her before this was over. He promised himself. As soon as she stopped crying.