Married in Haste Read online

  With a nod and another sniffle, Dani left the room.

  Glory’s whimper turned to a wail.

  Brett caught Angie’s eye. He grinned the grin she’d known since childhood. She grinned back, thinking how, in spite of the never-ending family drama, she was glad to be home again. “I’d better scrub up,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s about time for this girl to start pushing.”

  Twenty minutes later the baby’s head crowned. It was not a quiet moment.

  Glory alternately strained and screamed. Aunt Stella loudly prayed. Dani stared out the window and sobbed uncontrollably for the child she’d yet to conceive.

  It got worse. Great-Grandpa Tony beat his fist on the wall of his bedroom and shouted, “Quiet!” and Rose yelled back, “You be quiet, yourself!” and downstairs, Bowie had returned to pound on the front door and holler, “Le’ me in! S’my baby, too! I don’ care wha’ you say. I got a righ’ to be there!”

  And then, smack in the middle of all the insanity, Brett looked up from between Glory’s legs and straight at Angie.

  Their gazes locked and Angie felt….

  Peace. A beautiful moment of glowing stillness and perfect understanding.

  No doubt about it. She and Brett were the only sane people in a madhouse of screaming, pounding, shouting, begging, praying, ranting fools.

  Chapter Two

  That evening, Brett asked his new nurse out for a first-day-on-the-job dinner at the Nugget Steak House on Main Street. He appreciated what a trooper she’d been at Glory’s delivery. Plus, sharing a drink and a meal would give the two of them a chance to do a little catching up—both professionally and as lifelong friends who’d been too long out of touch.

  They took a booth. As soon as they got their drinks, Brett offered a toast.

  “To Jonathan Charles Dellazola.”

  “Eight pounds, two ounces, with all his cute little fingers and toes.” Angie raised her vodka tonic and tapped her glass to his.

  Brett thought of his wild youngest brother. “Bowie’s going to be furious.”

  Angie sighed. “Because Glory didn’t give the baby his last name, you mean?” Brett saluted her again with his whiskey glass and Angie shook her head. “Oh, Brett. I know he’s your brother, but…”

  “Yeah. He’s a mess. Lately, he’s not getting much of anything right. Drinking all the time. Can’t hold a job…” Brett felt the wry smile as it twisted his lips. “Not that he ever was much good at being any man’s employee—and you know what?”

  She nodded. “It’s not our problem. Your little brother and my baby sister have to work it out between themselves.”

  “You always were a quick study.”

  “Some things, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out.”

  Nadine Stout, headwaitress and half owner of the Nugget, sauntered up to their booth and dropped a basket of hot rolls on the table between them. “You two need more time?”

  Angie spoke right up. “Not me. I’ll have the New York steak, medium-rare. Green salad. Italian dressing.”

  Brett did like a woman who knew how to order. Angie had never been the kind to dither and stall. “I’ll have the same. But make my steak rare.”

  Nadine scribbled on her order pad. When she had it down, she stuck her pencil behind her ear. “Angie, I said it once and I’ll say it again. It’s real good to have you back home.”

  “Glad to be back.” Like her six sisters, Angie was a pretty woman. Also like her sisters, cute dimples appeared in her cheeks when she smiled.

  Nadine said, “I hear you’re workin’ at the clinic now.”

  “That’s right.”

  The waitress aimed a joking scowl in Brett’s direction. “This one better treat you right.”

  “Well, it’s only my first day, but so far, so good.”

  “How’s Glory doing?”

  “She’s fine. Tired.”

  “I’ll bet. Easy labor, I heard.”

  Angie sent Brett a look. He knew she was remembering all the yelling and screaming. “Well,” she told Nadine. “It was fast.”

  “A little boy?”

  “That’s right.” Angie repeated the baby’s name and birth weight.

  Nadine said, “You give her my best.”

  “You know I will.”

  The waitress left them.

  “Word does get around, doesn’t it?” Angie smoothed her napkin on her lap.

  Brett sipped his whiskey. “In case you might have forgotten while you were away, in this town, there are no secrets. What you whisper to your best friend in the morning—”

  “—will be shouted from the rooftops by noon,” she finished for him. “I know, I know…” The light from the wagon-wheel chandelier overhead brought out red glints in her thick brown hair. Back in high school, she’d worn her hair short. It was shoulder-length now, pinned up at the moment into a soft knot at the back of her head. A few strands had gotten free and curled softly along her cheeks. She said, kind of wistfully, “The honest truth is, I’ve missed this town.”

  “Missed everybody minding everyone else’s business, you mean?”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “Not that. But the caring, you know? That’s the great thing about the Flat. People do care about each other, they truly do.” She laughed then, and Brett thought how he’d missed the warm, happy sound of her laughter—though he hadn’t realized it until right then. “They care.” Her brown eyes gleamed. “That’s why they’re all so damn nosy.”

  “Yeah.” Brett loved living in the Flat. But he hated the way people gossiped. All his life, people had whispered about his family, about his bad—and mostly absent—dad, Blake Bravo. About his wild oldest brother and his crazy youngest one. “I’ve learned to give them nothing to gossip about.”

  She teased, “Oh, they talk about you, anyway. You know they do.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “I know so. I’ve heard them. They think you should settle down. Both you and Brand.” At twenty-nine, a year younger than Brett, Brand was the town lawyer. Like Brett, Brand prided himself on being one of the normal Bravo brothers: meaning he had a decent job and he stayed out of trouble. Angie added, “In case nobody told you to your face, around here being a confirmed bachelor is frowned upon, especially if you happen to be a doctor. Or a lawyer. Ask my mamma. She’ll tell you that doctors and lawyers owe it to society to marry and support a family—preferably a large one.”

  He faked a look of mindless terror. “You are really scaring me now.”

  “Oh, I’ll just bet.”

  Brett told himself it didn’t bother him that everyone thought he should hurry up and get married. “Maybe they do talk about me around town. But I promise you, it’s never about how crazy, broke and out of control I am.”

  She looked at him steadily, her expression—what? Admiring, maybe. He liked that idea: Angie admiring him. She said softly, “You sound so proud.”

  He felt vaguely self-conscious and hoped it didn’t show. “All I’m saying is that I make it a point to lead a very boring, ordinary, undramatic life.”

  “Undramatic,” she repeated, and blew out a breath. “I can so relate.”

  Brett knew she meant because of her family. Dellazolas had lived in the Flat for a century and a half, since about 1850, when Tony and Stefano Dellazola got off the boat from Genoa at Ellis Island and decided to try their hands in the gold fields of California. They’d made the trek across the continent and they’d struck it rich working a claim a few miles up the river. The older of the two brothers, Stefano, didn’t survive to have children. But Tony did.

  From then on, down the generations, the first-born Dellazola male was always named Anthony. Often there would be three or four Tony Dellazolas alive at one time. They always had different nicknames: Old Tony, who was Glory’s great-granddad; Little Tony, Angie’s dad; Anthony, Angie’s big brother and Baby Tony, Anthony’s son.

  The Dellazolas were a rowdy bunch. There were a lot of them and they all seemed to live by
the credo that anything worth saying was worth shouting out good and loud.

  Angie sipped from her drink again. “So. What have you been up to for the past…what is it? Twelve years since you headed for UC Davis?”

  He pretended to look surprised. “Twelve years? Has it been that long?”

  She made a soft sound in her throat. “It has.”

  “Well, there was the usual—college and med school and my residency.”

  “And now you’re back in town. My mother, by the way, is thrilled that you took over when Doc Hennessey decided to retire.”

  “If Mamma Rose is happy, I’m happy—and in the eleven years I was away, I did manage to get back home at least five or six times a year. Unlike some people I could mention.”

  “Okay, okay. I should have come back more often and I know it.” She showed those dimples again—but her eyes, he thought, looked kind of sad. “What can I say? You know how it goes. Life happens. A girl doesn’t make it home as often as she should and before you know it, a decade has gone by….” Her voice trailed off.

  Brett felt no rush to fill the silence that fell between them. Funny. He’d always been comfortable with Angie. Since way back when she was eight and he was ten and she’d taken to tagging along after him wherever he went. He hadn’t minded her hanging around him. He hadn’t had a lot of friends as a kid. Back then, he’d been a loner and kind of shy. After school, he’d liked to take a book or a fishing pole and wander the surrounding hillsides, following the deer trails beneath the shadows of the tall trees.

  Angie was self-reliant, even as a little girl. She’d made it a point of pride to keep up, no matter where he led. Most important, she hadn’t found it necessary to fill every silence with breathless chatter. He studied her across the knotty-pine table of their booth.

  She looked at him sideways. “What?”

  “Just thinking how some things stay the same, no matter how many years go by. You remember that jail we built down by the river?”

  “Out of willow branches. Oh, yeah.” Her eyes were bright with the memory. “Lashed it all together with bark. That amazed me. How you made those long strips with your pocketknife and they were strong as lengths of rope. I was way impressed, I have to tell you.” She made a sound midway between a grunt and a chuckle. “And then Buck came along…” Buck was the oldest of his three brothers. “He tied us together, remember?”

  “How could I forget? Locked us both in our own damn jail.” Brett teased, “You always had a big crush on Buck.”

  She didn’t even blush. “Every girl in town had a big crush on Buck. He was so wild, he made Bowie look tame by comparison.”

  “Buck’s doing great, did you know?”

  “Oh, yeah. A world-famous author, no less.” Buck was now a successful journalist. He’d also written a bestselling book about the Texas oil industry.

  “He got married,” Brett added on the off chance she hadn’t heard.

  But of course, she had. “To some good-lookin’ rich woman from New York City.”

  “B.J.’s her name,” he said.

  “She’s expecting, isn’t she?”

  “That’s right. Her baby’s due next month.”

  Angie stared into the middle distance, a musing look on her face. “Buck Bravo, a big success—not to mention, about to be a dad. Who would have thought it?”

  Brett sipped more whiskey. “So you heard the whole story, huh?”

  “Yep. Glory told me everything. She really likes Buck’s wife. They keep in touch. You can bet Glory’s already called New York City to tell B.J. the big news about baby John.”

  Nadine trotted up with their salads. “Look at you two. Just like old times, huh?” The bossy, tough-talking waitress actually had a sentimental gleam in her eye. “Brett and his sidekick…”

  “Smile when you say that.” Angie pretended to look dangerous.

  Nadine put on her usual don’t-mess-with-me scowl. “Just eat your salads.” She plunked them down and strutted off.

  They dug in, reminiscing as they ate. The steaks came. They talked some more.

  After Nadine had cleared off their empty plates and brought them coffee, they hung around. Why not? It had been over a decade. They had a lot of catching up to do.

  And then there was the work they shared. Brett brought her up to speed on the ins and outs at the clinic and outlined some of the changes he hoped to make, most of which were going to cost money way beyond their operating budget.

  “Some things take time,” he said. “As of now, we’re doing damn well. A doctor and an R.N. on staff. Most small-town clinics are lucky to get one or the other.”

  “As long as you’re grateful,” Angie said jokingly. She wasn’t making anything approaching what she could get elsewhere.

  Neither was he, for that matter. “Hey. We both know you didn’t come home to the Flat to get rich.”

  “That’s right—and refresh my memory. Why did I move back home?”

  “The way everybody cares,” he said, trying to look grave. “The chance to be close, once again, to the friendly, loving, gentle people you’ve known all your life.”

  “Ah.” She made a wry face. “I knew there was something.” And they laughed together. Then she said, “Really, you are doing well. Not even two years out of your residency and my mamma says you own your own house.”

  “I’ll let you in on my secret. Three little words. No student loans.”

  “Scholarships?”

  “Some. But they didn’t cover everything. I worked, when I could find the time—which there’s never enough of in med school.”

  “So…?”

  “I learned to write grants. You’d be surprised how many big grants go begging because no one applies for them—or if they do, they don’t qualify.”

  Her eyes lit up. “That’s right. You’ve gotten grants for the clinic, too, haven’t you? You said the day you hired me that grant money would be paying a lot of my salary….”

  “A small-town doctor has got to use every resource at his disposal just to keep things up and running.”

  “Smart,” she said in that admiring tone that made him feel about ten feet tall. “You always were very, very smart.”

  An easy silence fell. After a moment he heard himself admit, “Okay. It does freak me out a little. That people talk about me.”

  “Brett. Come on. It’s the Flat. They talk about everybody. You got your equal opportunity gossipers around here.”

  “But, damn. It’s just not right. I’ve made one hell of an effort to be the kind of guy nobody would ever talk about.”

  “You mean, a reasonable guy? A levelheaded, responsible guy? The kind of guy people trust and look up to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then stop worrying. That’s just what you are. People respect and admire you. You’re a fine doctor and they all know it—and folks around here will talk about someone they respect almost as often as they’ll talk about the wild and crazy ones.”

  He felt right next door to gratified. “When you explain it that way, it sounds like a good thing.”

  “Hey. Probably because it is a good thing—even if it does mean every unmarried girl in the county is out to get your ring on her finger.”

  He leaned close to her again and lowered his voice. “The truth is, I am going to get married. I want that. Marriage. But not until I find the right woman—a woman who wants what I want out of life.”

  “Oh, I do understand.”

  He shot a glance around the restaurant. There was no one near their table. “And, well, keep it to yourself but…”

  “You know I will. I won’t say a word.”

  He believed her. Angie had always been good at keeping her mouth shut when it mattered. “There was someone. Someone serious. While I was still in med school.” He heard himself telling her what nobody else in the Flat knew and it seemed…right. It felt good. To finally tell someone he knew he could trust. “Her name was Lisa. I was crazy for her….”

 
Angie was shaking her head. “Crazy. That’s a dangerous word, Brett.”

  “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  “It ended…badly?”

  “A real mess. She had mood swings. Serious ones.”

  “Bipolar?”

  “The symptoms were all there. But while we were together, she would never get help. So I hesitate to diagnose her out of hand. She was deep into self-medicating. Alcohol. Prescription painkillers.”

  “Oh, Brett. I’m so sorry.”

  “I finally broke it off with her. It was…I was still wild for her when I told her it was over. It hurt like hell, to end it. I was a wreck for months, almost dropped out of school. But slowly, I got back on track. She went into treatment finally. I lost touch with her after that.”

  “Do you still…?”

  “Love her? Uh-uh. I think back on it and all I feel is sorry for her. She was such a mess. And I was such a fool—and that’s what bothers me, you know? That I would fall for one of the wild and troubled ones, when I know better. When I’ve always sworn that the drama queens just aren’t for me.”

  “Oh, yeah. I understand. Completely.”

  “And I can tell you this much…”

  She said it for him. “Never again.”

  “Exactly.”

  Nadine strolled by and refilled their coffee cups. They watched her saunter off.

  When they were alone once more, Angie said, “Really, Brett. I do know. I know just what you mean.” She licked her soft lips and swallowed. “It, um, happened to me, too.”

  “You’re kidding.” Not Angie, he thought. She would never fall for some wild-ass fool.

  But then she said, “I’m not kidding, truly I’m not—and I shouldn’t be telling you.” Her cheeks had flushed pink. She cast a glance at the knotty-pine ceiling. “Way to go, Angela. First day on the job and you tell your new boss what a total imbecile you are.”

  “Hey.”

  She wrinkled her cute nose at him. “What?”

  “I may be your boss, but I’m also your friend. And besides, I just told you what an idiot I was.”

  “Well.” She suppressed a smile. “There is that.”