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  To make up for that and a few more shortcomings, he’d bought her two dozen roses.

  She’d started sneezing.

  “Okay, so maybe this isn’t the most romantic place for a proposal. I just wanted to let you know you had another option. Besides calling on the judge, I mean.”

  She snorted. No other word for it. He didn’t know if it was his proposal, which might have been somewhat lacking in finesse, or the mention of her grandfather. “You’re talking about a marriage of convenience,” she stated.

  “I am?”

  “Well, what else would it be?”

  “Legal, for one thing. As for the rest, I guess you could say it’s negotiable.” He had a feeling he was headed down a dead-end road, but wasn’t quite sure when he’d taken the wrong turn.

  “Get in the car,” he said. “I can’t stand too long in one position without my knee acting up.”

  Man, you are a real prize. Why not play on her sympathy? It worked before—she took you in after nearly running you off the road.

  To hell with that. “Okay, let’s cut to the chase. I need you, and you need—”

  “No, I don’t.” Arms still crossed, foot still tapping. Eyes flashing danger signs that could be picked up by any spy satellite.

  Oh, what the hell, man—if you’re going to blow it, might as well blow the works. “Yeah, honey, you do. But not as much as I need you, and if you want to know the truth, it’s not just because my mother happens to be hung up on weddings.” She swallowed hard. That was an encouraging sign, wasn’t it? “So I thought maybe if we start out slow—play things by ear for a while—I mean, go through with the ceremony and all, but my house has two bedrooms. We can set you up in one with a bed and a desk. I’ll get you a computer and whatever art supplies you need and you can—”

  “Carson?”

  “—back up your works, and maybe even write faster. I don’t know how it works with the kind of writing you do, but cleaning up mistakes is bound to be faster, so—”

  “Carson?”

  “—so anyhow, I’ll be at work mostly, and you can have the place all to yourself. It’d be nice if you dropped by to visit my mom every few days, but that’s up to you.”

  “Carson!”

  Carson heard laughter and glanced around at a handful of shoppers loading parcels into a green pickup two slots over. He looked back at Kit and felt his face grow hot. “Yeah? Sorry—I guess we’d better continue this discussion somewhere else.”

  “How about our room?”

  Our room. Our room? He hadn’t checked out yet, knowing that if things didn’t work out, he’d have to fall back on a hastily formed contingency plan.

  Without another word they climbed into the Yukon and buckled up. Carson started the engine, drove approximately fifteen feet and stopped. He pulled on the emergency brake. “Listen, I may as well level with you. It’s not fair, me asking you to go into this thing not knowing the score.”

  She looked at him as if he were an interesting specimen of insect and she couldn’t decide whether to step on him or let him live. Strong woman. She might look like a flake, he thought, not for the first time, but there was a core of tempered steel underneath that gaudy, irresistible facade.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  Oh boy. Crunch time. “I, uh—I’ve never done this before, so I might screw up.”

  “Never done what? Stop traffic in the middle of a parking lot on a busy Saturday afternoon?”

  Behind him, a car horn blared out. “Wait a sec,” he growled and pulled over to one side, beside the gardening display.

  He shut off the engine, unsnapped his seat belt, turned to her and said, “Okay, here’s the score. I think I might be in love with you. If that scares you, I promise never to mention it again, but—”

  “Carson.”

  “—but I just thought you ought to know going in what you’re up against. I mean, I really like you, too. Like and respect—”

  “Carson?”

  “So we could start out as friends, maybe go on like that for a few days—that is, a few weeks. Or even longer—it’s your call.” Not that he wouldn’t be doing his damndest every second of every day to make her change her mind.

  “Carson!” she shouted.

  “What!” he shouted back.

  “Would you please just shut up and kiss me?”

  Epilogue

  They decided on a morning wedding, as Kate Beckett tended to wilt early. Kit asked timidly if they could have it in the garden, and Kate clapped her hands in delight. The women collaborated on the guest list. Margaret hired the tables and handwrote the invitations. Carson’s Aunt Becky took care of the minister, the music and the food. It was a rushed affair, but everyone who knew them understood. Those who didn’t were simply not invited.

  Kit’s cousin Liza, who was expecting a baby any day, sat by with her feet elevated while she filled Kit in with details of the family she was about to become a part of. Kit spent most of her time in town, as Carson was working day and night, trying to catch up with a backlog of work down at headquarters. “You understand,” said Liza, “I can’t vouch for any of this, but if only half of it is true, then PawPaw, who died recently, was about one part financial genius and three parts scalawag.” They laughed quietly, and then Liza said, “Tell me something, cous—how much do you know about our Chandler ancestors?”

  Kit shook her head. She was snapping beans into a bowl in her lap. None of the Becketts appeared in any big hurry, but none was allowed to sit idle, either, except for Liza, who was busy gestating. It was as if the entire family functioned as one big unit. She rather liked the feeling, although it took some getting used to.

  “Well, let me tell you, our grandmother—no, she was our great-grandmother—she was a real pistol. They say she was almost as big as her husband, and could ride and shoot circles around any man on the ranch.”

  “Shoot circles?”

  “Figure of speech.” Liza laughed. “Hey, humor me, will you? Hormones gone haywire.”

  “Come on inside, ladies, it’s lemonade time,” someone called out.

  And so it went. Kit had been absorbed into the family from the very first. Carson’s mother, who was a dear and didn’t seem as if she were suffering from anything more than slight confusion, insisted on showing her all the scrapbooks she’d filled…and then showing her again and again. She called her Emaline, and sometimes Abigail, but that was all right. Kit knew plenty of women with large families who had to call the roll before they hit on the right name.

  Liza’s husband, Lance, who was a pirate chaser, of all things, had called her Kit Carson and told her how, on some of the smaller islands along the coast, where only a few family names prevailed, wives were called by their own and their husband’s given names, to avoid confusion.

  They were about to go inside for lemonade when Carson arrived, walking silently up behind her on the lush grass to slide his arms down around her shoulders. “Miss me?” he whispered in her ear.

  “I’ve been hearing stories.”

  “Uh-oh, I was afraid of that. Hi, Liza. Is the Buckett going to make it to the wedding?”

  “He’ll be in tonight. I told him he’s not going to leave again until after my coming-out party, so if you want company on your honeymoon…”

  “No thanks.”

  Carson’s father met them at the back door, holding his wife’s hand. Kate brightened when she saw her son, and greeted him by saying, “I can’t recall your name at the moment, but the Lady Baltimore cake is on the sideboard.” She frowned and her beloved Lancelot, third in a long line of Lancelots, led her back inside.

  “Your folks will be in late tonight,” Carson told Kit. “They’ll be staying with Aunt Becky and Uncle Coley.”

  Kit rolled her eyes, and he laughed. “Hey, don’t sweat it. Aunt Becky’ll charm the socks off old Cast Iron, you just wait and see.”

  “No thanks. I plan to be busy, starting at eleven tomorrow morning.” They’d scheduled th
e ceremony for eleven, with lunch in the garden to follow. After that, Carson and his bride would slip away to his cottage—more of a fishing retreat, really—on Kiawah Island.

  “Ready to go home?” he asked her now.

  Kit wanted to say she was already home, because she was. Carson’s Aunt Becky had admired her earrings. His father had asked her if she followed baseball, and as it happened, she’d known the names of a few Braves players. He’d immediately declared her to be just the daughter he’d been waiting for.

  Even Margaret had accepted her. “Lord, better you than me, honey. Have you seen that house of Car’s?” She’d laughed and added, “Well, of course you have, you two have been practically quarantined there ever since Car brought you home with him. Make him add a touch of color in the white paint, will you? Dead white is just so…you know. It lacks subtlety.”

  Margaret didn’t. Lack subtlety, that was. She made no bones about being relieved that she was now free to go as far as her own ambition and talent would take her. Kit, for one, would be there to cheer her on.

  “Tomorrow,” Carson whispered as he led her away some half hour later, pausing to speak to friends, neighbors and family as they set up the chairs and tables and pruned his mother’s flower garden. It was a promise, and Kit nodded, curling her hand into his warm, hard palm.

  Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0083-8

  BECKETT’S CONVENIENT BRIDE

  Copyright © 2003 by Dixie Browning

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  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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  *Outer Banks

  †Tall, Dark and Handsome

  ‡The Lawless Heirs

  §The Passionate Powers

  **Beckett’s Fortune