James Bravo's Shotgun Bride Read online

  Devin said, “You heard how he came after me?”

  James nodded. “Levi mentioned something about that yesterday.” While he had me at gunpoint.

  Devin explained, “We’d had a fight, me and Carm, and I’d gone off to Laramie to start my life over again.”

  Carmen said, “I was too proud to tell him that I was pregnant. I’m ashamed to say I lied to PawPaw and told him that Devin had turned his back on me and the baby.”

  “I would never do that,” said Dev.

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Carmen answered tenderly.

  Dev went on. “That time, Levi knew where to look. He got in that ancient green pickup and drove to Laramie. He got the jump on me, kidnapped me at gunpoint, tied me up and drove me back to Colorado.”

  Carmen chuckled. “Where I promptly went ballistic that my insane old grandpa had kidnapped poor Devin. But then Devin was so glad to see me and I’d missed him so much. I cried and confessed about the baby. And Dev said of course he wanted our baby and he wanted me, too.” Carmen and Devin shared a long, intimate glance. And Carmen said, “So PawPaw put away his shotgun and Dev and I got married and I moved to Laramie with him.”

  “And since then they’ve been busy, having their babies and living happily ever after,” said Addie fondly. Then her voice turned harder. “And to this day, PawPaw prides himself on doing what had to be done—his words, not mine—so that Carmen and Dev could find the love and happiness they so richly deserve. The way he looks at it, he and his shotgun made everything right.”

  “Wow,” said James. “I guess he figures it worked before, so why not try it again?”

  “Exactly.” Addie bumped his shoulder again. “Go on. Tell us the rest. What happened when you talked to him just now?”

  “It was like talking to a wall.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I tried to make him see that he should listen to you. That it is Brandon’s baby and not mine, that it couldn’t be mine, that I never even managed to get you to go out with me, let alone...well, you know.”

  A soft smile curved her plump lips. A soft smile just for him. He thought how he’d never even gotten a kiss from her, of how much he’d like to have one. Even after all the months she’d kept him at arm’s length, even now that he knew she was having Brandon Hall’s baby.

  There was just something about her. She made the world feel fresh. Brand-new. He’d had more fun taking care of her and helping out with her crazy-ass grandpa over the past twenty-four hours than he’d had in years.

  He’d meant what he’d told her. He liked helping out—when the one he was helping out was her.

  She prompted, “We’re listening.”

  He went ahead and told them. “I knew I wasn’t getting through to him, but I kept talking to him, nice and quiet and low, trying to get him to admit he had it all wrong. I kept reminding him that he needed to focus on getting well, that he should listen to his nurses. I said that all of us only want to help him get back on his feet. He mostly just lay there with his eyes shut, now and then opening them and glaring at me like he didn’t believe a word I was saying. Finally, I just thought, well, if I could get him to take some liquids, at least, that would be something. I started pushing for that, coaxing him, you know? Telling him to try just a few spoonfuls of broth...”

  “And then?”

  “Out of nowhere, after several minutes of deathly silence, just as I was about to give up and slink out, he spoke again. He agreed he might have some broth if I would be reasonable.”

  Carmen made a low, knowing sound in her throat.

  Dev said, “Uh-oh.”

  Addie groaned. “You thought you were working him.” She let out a frustrated cry. “I can’t believe you let him do that to you. You should know better.”

  He couldn’t deny it. “Yes, I should. I really should.”

  “After the way you’ve worked me in the last twenty-four hours,” she scolded, “to get me to let you stay, to coax me to eat, to convince me to keep that suite that is way more than we need and way more than I should ever allow you to—”

  James put up a hand. “Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”

  She made a humphing sound. “Yes. Go ahead.” She glared as hard as Levi had.

  He conceded the point. “You’re right, okay?”

  “Of course I’m right.”

  “Your granddad puts me to shame when it comes to manipulation. And I have to say, he can be damn charming when he wants to be.” Carmen, Addie and Dev all nodded. James frowned. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. So he asked me if I would be reasonable. I said of course I was reasonable. He let me feed him a spoonful of broth, and then another spoonful, and I was feeling like I was really making some progress at last. A couple of the nurses caught my eye and nodded in approval that I was getting nourishment down him. He ate all the broth. I felt like a million bucks and I wanted him to try the Jell-O and...”

  Dev clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture of support and understanding.

  James said, “I don’t know how it happened. Somehow I became totally invested in getting him to eat just a little bit more. And then, quietly, in a ragged but kindly tone of voice, he asked me if I would just try to talk to you, if I would only try to convince you to go ahead and marry me. I don’t know. I had that spoonful of Jell-O right up to his mouth and...I agreed. I just said yeah, that I would do that. And he smiled and I smiled and then he took the spoon out of my hand and ate the rest of the Jell-O himself.”

  There was a silence. Then Carmen sighed.

  And Addie said, “That is just not right and you know it’s not, James. You’ve set us back in getting through to him. You realize that, don’t you?”

  He gave a hopeless shrug. “I’m sorry. I know I blew it.”

  Carmen hurried to reassure him, “But it’s good he ate the broth and the Jell-O.” Dev made a low noise of agreement.

  Addie shot them each a baleful glance and demanded, “So after he ate the Jell-O, did you at least make it clear that you knew he was playing you? Did you at least say that you shouldn’t have agreed to do what he asked, because the baby is not your baby and you and I are not getting married?”

  He stared at her, at her soft, plump lips and her round cheeks and her golden eyes, which gazed back at him reproachfully. All he wanted to do was reach out, curl his hand around the back of her soft neck and pull her close. She was altogether too independent and she needed someone to lean on.

  Those plump lips thinned in annoyance. At him. “James. I have asked you a question.”

  He made himself answer her. “He ate the Jell-O and he had this pleased gleam in his eyes and... I don’t know. I just couldn’t stand to disappoint him.”

  “You are telling me that you didn’t even take back your promise to try to convince me to marry you?”

  “Yeah,” he said bleakly. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Well, that does it,” she announced. “You’re not getting near him again.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Addie went back in to deal with Levi herself. She told him what James hadn’t managed to say, what she’d already told her grandfather more than once before—that she and James were not getting married and the baby was not James’s baby and Levi needed to forget about all that and focus on getting well.

  Levi turned his head away. He pretended not to hear her.

  And three days later, when he should have been in a regular hospital room and getting close to getting the okay to go home, he was still in CSICU.

  Could a man will himself not to get better?

  Apparently, Levi was doing just that.

  He wouldn’t eat—or not much, anyway. Just enough to keep the nurses from sticking a feeding tube down his throat. But not really enough to get better.

 
Instead, he got weaker. He suffered a minor incision-area infection and then another on his leg, where they’d harvested the vein for the bypass grafts. His blood counts refused to return to anything approaching normal. He had shortness of breath and he claimed he was too weak to get up and try to walk a step or two. And when the respiratory therapist worked with him, he put in zero effort to do the exercises she gave him.

  He should be improving, the nurses said. But he seemed to have lost the will to get better. They feared pneumonia would be next if he didn’t start working to clear his lungs, if he didn’t start making an effort to sit up and then walk.

  All of them—the nurses, his doctors, Addie, Carmen, Devin and James—they all knew exactly what he was doing. He was betting his own life, scaring them all to death in the interest of getting what he wanted most: Addie and James married.

  It was so wrong. Wrong and deluded, dangerous and terrifying. Addie was worried sick and furious, simultaneously and constantly.

  Finally, on Monday, a full week after Levi’s heart attack and surgery, Addie had James drive her back home. She needed a vehicle and she wanted to check on Red Hill. They set out nice and early, so that James could have the whole day to catch up on his work. He dropped her off at the ranch at a little after eight and headed for the county courthouse. She would take her own pickup back to Denver.

  Thanks to Walker and Rory McKellan, everything was in order at the ranch. The horses were all groomed and sleek and healthy. They greeted her with happy chuffing sounds and eagerly munched the carrots she offered them. She couldn’t resist saddling her own gray mare, Tildy, and indulging in a long, relaxing ride. Her garden didn’t need much care this early in the season, but she spent some time digging in it, getting the rows ready for planting.

  At the house, she averted her eyes every time she walked past the ragged hole in the kitchen floor. She would have to take care of that. But not today.

  She went through the mail that had piled up in the past week and separated out the bills she needed to pay, sticking them in her shoulder bag to deal with later. She tried not to think how far behind she was getting on her little side business of making scarecrows on order and for sale on Etsy. Red Hill wasn’t a working ranch, really, and it hadn’t been since her grandpa was a boy. Over the years, the Kenwrights had sold off the land little by little. Now there were two hundred and fifty acres left, a barn, stables, the large, rambling main house and a foreman’s cottage. Addie did whatever she had to do in order to make ends meet. Like boarding horses, growing most of the produce they ate and making cute scarecrows for sale.

  She had some new orders, for a bride, groom and baby scarecrow family. For a Raggedy Andy scarecrow and a ballerina, too. Plus, she had shipments of clothes and straw and other supplies that had been delivered in her absence, signed for by Walker or Rory and left in the barn. She checked them over to see what had come.

  It was one in the afternoon by then. And being behind on her scarecrows wasn’t the priority.

  Getting PawPaw to see the light, give up his crazy plan to get her married to James and instead focus on his recovery: that was the priority.

  And that was another reason she’d had James bring her home.

  Addie went upstairs to the back bedroom she used as her office. In the file cabinet there, she found the paperwork from the sperm bank where Brandon had stored the sperm that had made their baby. She took the file, gathered a few fresh changes of clothes from her bedroom closet and ran back downstairs. Five minutes later, she was out the door and behind the wheel of her trusty pickup, headed back to Denver.

  * * *

  After reluctantly leaving Addie on her own at Red Hill, James drove to the county seat forty miles from Justice Creek. He spent the morning at the courthouse, handling legal matters for various clients. Then he drove back toward Justice Creek, stopping at the Sylvan Inn a few miles outside town, where he joined his half sister, Nell, his half brothers, Garrett and Quinn, and Quinn’s wife, Chloe, for lunch.

  Together, Garrett and Nell ran Bravo Construction. Quinn, who owned a fitness center in town, had recently started buying houses to flip. His wife, Chloe, an interior designer, would draw up the plans to redesign the dated interiors. Then Garrett and Nell would bring in their crews and start knocking out walls. Once the renovation was complete, Chloe would stage the rooms with furniture and attractive accessories before they put the house up for sale.

  James liked all of his siblings and half siblings. They’d had some rough patches growing up, natural resentments created because their father, Franklin Bravo, refused to choose between his wife, Sondra—who gave him four children, James included—and Willow, his mistress, who gave him five more, including Garrett, Quinn and Nell. Over a decade ago, when James’s mother died, Frank had promptly married Willow and moved her into the mansion he’d originally built for Sondra. Now Frank was gone, too. Willow lived alone in the house that had once belonged to her rival.

  James and his siblings and half siblings were fine with how things had turned out. The years had mellowed everyone. They all tried to show up for the major events: weddings, births, christenings, whatever. James enjoyed having such a big, close-knit family.

  He also liked doing business with his brothers and sisters. He’d not only had Bravo Construction build his new house, but put money into Nell and Garrett’s company, and he was planning to buy some commercial real estate and then have Chloe, Garrett and Nell fix it up before he put it back on the market. Quinn had expressed an interest in going in with him on that.

  It was a good lunch, James thought. Productive. They talked business, kicking around ideas as to which properties might be right for them.

  They’d all heard about Levi’s heart attack, about how Walker and Rory were looking after the Red Hill livestock and babysitting Addie’s dog while Levi was in the hospital. James admitted that he’d been there when the heart attack happened, but he kept the details to himself.

  Nell said, “Heard you’ve been spending a lot of time with the Kenwrights in Denver.”

  He played it off. “Just helping them out a little when things are tough, that’s all. Levi’s not recovering as fast he should.”

  They all expressed their sympathy and offered to pitch in if there was any way they might be needed.

  Nell kept after him. “I was at your new house installing the kitchen cabinets a couple of weeks ago, remember?”

  He knew exactly where she was going and accepted the inevitable with a shrug. “I remember.”

  His half sister, who was the beauty of the family with killer curves and a face that brought to mind the sultry singer Lana Del Rey, flipped a hank of thick auburn hair back over her shoulder and reminded him, “Addie stopped by that day.”

  “She stopped to say hi, that’s all.”

  “I’ve got eyes, Jamie. You’ve got a soft spot for Addie Kenwright.”

  James didn’t deny it. Why should he? He did have a soft spot for Addie. And he hoped she was managing all right, whatever she just had to do at Red Hill.

  He thought of the hole Levi had blown in the kitchen floor and almost asked Garrett and Nell to take care of it. They could get the key from Walker and do the work while the house was empty.

  But he knew he’d better discuss it with Addie before he set anything up. She could get testy when he took care of her business without consulting her first. Plus, Nell was bound to ask who’d made that hole and how. He supposed he could tell them what he’d told Sal, the med tech—that Levi had been cleaning his shotgun.

  But no. Better not to go there until he’d had a word with Addie about it.

  They finished up the meal at a little before two and walked out to the parking lot together, climbing into their separate vehicles, everyone headed back to town. James led the way out of the lot onto the highway, with the others falling in behind him. His plan was t
o return to the office, where he would catch up with clients, go over his calendar with his secretary and deal with any correspondence that had piled up since he last came in on Friday. Then at five, he would be on his way to Denver again.

  It was a nice, sunny day and he drove with the windows down—which meant he smelled the smoke long before he had a clue what might be on fire. Also, he heard the sirens wailing in the distance, to the northeast.

  Calder and Bravo, Attorneys-at-Law, had offices on West Central, but he could see the black smoke billowing skyward to the east. His pulse ratcheted up several notches. Damned if it didn’t look as though the fire was right there in town.

  So he went east on Central, toward the smoke and the sirens. A glance in his rearview mirror showed him that Quinn and Chloe, Garrett and Nell had made the same choice.

  Four long blocks later, past most of the shops and businesses that lined Central Street, he saw that the building his sister Elise owned jointly with her best friend, Tracy Winham, was on fire.

  The gorgeous old brick structure had three shops on the bottom floor: a jewelry store, a gift shop and Bravo Catering, which Elise and Tracy owned and ran. Tracy and Elise also each had a large apartment on the upper two floors.

  Or they used to. Judging by the extent of the fire, the building would end up a complete loss.

  The firefighters were on it, though, hoses rolled out, dousing the blaze that had engulfed all three floors. Flames licked out of every window and the smoke, thick and black, turned the blue sky murky gray.

  He spotted Elise and Tracy on the sidewalk, well away from the fire. They had their arms around each other as they watched both their homes and their business go up in smoke. In the arm that wasn’t wrapped tight around her best friend, Elise clutched her big orange cat, Mr. Wiggles.

  James’s other full sister, Clara, stood with them, as did his other half sister, Jody. He recognized the owner of the jewelry store and the couple who ran the gift shop and dared to hope that everyone had gotten out safely. Plus, he saw neither flames nor smoke coming from the structures to either side. So far at least, they’d kept the fire from spreading to any other buildings.