Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month) Read online

  Frog started to grin. “You mean like cooking?”

  “No, I don’t mean like cooking, I mean about girls. And—well, I can, but I’m not all that good at it.”

  “About girls?”

  “About cooking,” she snapped. “The first thing we need to do is get you somewhere warm and feed you. I’ll bet you haven’t had a bite to eat in days, have you?”

  “No, ma’am. Not hardly nothing.”

  She opened her mouth to remark on the triple negative, but Kurt elbowed her in the side, and she closed her mouth.

  “I think we’d better do what the lady says, don’t you? We can settle the details later. By the way, you’ve got some homework to catch up on if you expect to go out with me tomorrow.”

  A long time later, Kurt joined Deke at Montrose’s Motor Inn, where he’d booked her a room as his fiancée. Gossip was already making the rounds. There were times when he wished Swan Inlet wasn’t such a small place, but there were other times, such as now, when he didn’t give a sweet damn in hell where he was or what was said about it as long as she was there with him.

  “Is he all right?” Deke asked anxiously when Kurt closed the door, fixed the safety chain and shed his leather jacket.

  “Stuffed to the gills and out like a light. I gave him a pass on homework, but he’s going to have to make it up this weekend.”

  She came into his arms as naturally as a flower turned to the sun. “Nobody ever said it was easy…raising children.”

  “We’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for. A lot of bad history to overcome.”

  He was nuzzling the side of her neck in that place that sent goose bumps coursing down her flank. “He’s worth it.”

  “Damn right he is.”

  They were down to broken murmurs, neither of them thinking about the long years ahead, both of them thinking of more immediate concerns. Like how quickly they could shed their clothes. How wild and utterly wonderful it was to have found each other against all odds. How long it would take to arrange things so that they could be together for keeps.

  A long time later, Kurt lay exhausted on his back with Deke sprawled across his body. He couldn’t bear to let her get farther away than that. “Did I tell you I love you?” he murmured.

  “You didn’t have to. I knew it.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. His patch was somewhere on the floor, along with his clothes. He was going to have to clean up his act and quit diving into the nearest bed the minute he saw her.

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “No, not really,” Deke drawled sleepily. “Only, if there’s one thing I do know, it’s happy endings. All children’s books have them. They’re as necessary as—as, well, vitamins.”

  “I thought you were going to say love.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  Kurt sighed with contentment. His body was already reacting to the feel of her small breasts pressing on his chest, of the burning heat pooled in her loins…and in his. “Honey, I’ve got news for you. It’s not going to go without saying in our house. Maybe if I say it often enough, I’ll come to believe I finally got lucky.”

  “There are lots of different ways of saying I love you,” she whispered, and proceeded to demonstrate a few.

  Epilogue

  The sun shone down with fierce splendor over a parking lot filled with pickup trucks, beach buggies, a few cars, one pink Jeep and one John Deere tractor. Errol Flynn Gaskill’s car wouldn’t start. Most of the wedding guests lined the wharf, as there was room in the cockpit of the R&R for only the preacher, the bride and groom, the best man and a very pregnant Mariah Wydowski, wife of one of Kurt’s two best friends, who had offered to stand up with Deke in the absence of any other candidates.

  Frog, resplendent in his very first suit and tie, which, contrary to expectations, they hadn’t had to hog-tie him and force him into, paid more attention to the wedding guests than he did to his duties as best man. To one wedding guest, at least. The girl in the pink Jeep wiggled her fingers at him and giggled.

  Alex, Kurt’s other best friend, and his new wife, Angel, had taken over preparations for the reception at Oyster Point, while Gus Wydowski dealt with what he termed the organ transplant. He’d sent a truck and crew north to haul Deke’s belongings, organ included, to Swan Inlet, where the organ would go even more out of tune on account of the humidity. Not that it mattered. Nobody ever played it, anyway, but having it around was like having a part of her family there.

  “Dearly beloved, friends and—My Lord, will someone please turn off that noise?”

  Frog ducked inside the salon and shut off the CD player.

  “Now, where were we? Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of—”

  Someone yelled from the parking lot, “Hey, Kurt, the blues have hit the Cape. Big ’uns! Feller caught one that weighed near on to forty-five pounds!”

  There was an immediate exodus of trucks, with the John Deere chugging along behind.

  A few minutes later, a gray truck with a construction company logo on the door pulled up beside the marina office. Rising several feet above the cab was a monstrous shape covered with canvas and secured with ropes. “Hey, somebody wanna tell me where to put this thing? It weighs a ton and a half!”

  “I’ll go show ’em!” Frog cried, and Kurt reached out and grabbed him by the necktie.

  “Not yet, you won’t. We’re going to get through this wedding before anyone else moves a foot from this place, is that clear? Now, Reverend Stowe, if you’d be so kind, I’d like to take me a bride, and then we can all head on out to Oyster Point and—”

  “Pig out!” shouted Frog.

  Kurt turned to the woman at his side. She was wearing a peach-colored suit with a lacy gadget at the throat. Her hair was blowing across her face, her cheeks were pink—so was the tip of her nose—and her eyes were suspiciously bright. She had never looked more beautiful. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into, sweetheart? I think we’re about to get to the part about for better or for worse, so if you want out now, you’d better speak up fast.”

  A big outboard roared past, the crew waving and yelling congratulations. The huge wake rocked every boat in the marina. Deke clutched Kurt’s arm and yelled over the noise, “If you think I’m giving up that easy, you don’t know your woman. Reverend Stowe? If you please?”

  And so they were married. On Thanksgiving day, with friends and acquaintances gathered around—at least those who hadn’t gone fishing. Much later that day, half a dozen or so of the guests lingered over the remnants of a barbecue feast. Etheleen wept a little, but mostly she was too busy playing with Alex and Angel’s infant son. Frog and Sandy, Alex’s teenage daughter, compared shoe sizes. Gus made his pregnant wife lie down on Deke’s yard-sale sofa and then sat beside her, feeding her from his own plate. She and Angel had spent the afternoon discussing what kind of shrubs and trees would grow best in the low, damp soil.

  Much, much later, Kurt and Deke waved off the last of their friends—Frog was spending the Thanksgiving holiday with the Hightowers, Alex, Angel, Sandy and the baby, on Hilton Head. Arm in arm, they turned to go inside their new-old home. They both agreed that it was still ugly as sin, but as Kurt said, it was built to last.

  “And so are we, sweetheart,” he added, a familiar gleam beginning to light his one gray eye.

  “Do you think Frog will be all right with the Hightowers? What if he feels out of place and decides to run off again?”

  “Alex can handle him. Besides, I think he’s ready to take on some polish. He knows things aren’t the way they used to be.”

  “I hope he knows they’re going to get even better,” Deke mused as she followed him inside and closed the door on a perfectly splendid sunset.

  “You’re the expert on happy endings,” Kurt whispered, taking her in his arms. “All you have to do is lead the way. I’m right behind you, sweetheart.”

  * * * * *

  eISBN: 978-14592-79
08-7

  STRYKER’S WIFE

  Copyright © 1996 by Dixie Browning

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office. Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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