CHAPTER NINE
The best room in the French Town Inn was large and bright and made Heather feel even shabbier. She and her twin had often discussed what it would be like to stay in the best hotel on the Ridge. They had speculated and talked to their friends who worked there. Wait till she told Amber she had slept here.
She had never imagined a carpet so deep you sank right into it, or gilded furniture. Not to say it wasn’t pretty, but it sure was fussy. She sneaked a peek at her groom to see how he was taking it. Patrick was looking around as if he smelled something bad. So it wasn’t just her he was disappointed in.
“It’ll do,” he told the bellman. He peeled something off a big roll of cash and stopped Reggie Miller from telling him how to turn on the television. Reggie looked disappointed, but he took his twenty and left. Probably to spread gossip about the newly married couple.
This was so not how she had dreamed of her wedding day. “Are they gone?”
“Who?” Patrick asked, as if her kinfolks had not just forced them to marry at gunpoint.
“The clan Dupré. They’re probably in the parking lot drinking and planning some new mischief.”
“Whatever for?” He was perfectly serious. “They’ve gotten us married. What more could they possibly want?”
He made her feel tired. Tired, and green around the gills. She had better check out that en suite bathroom Reggie had been gabbing about so passionately. It was a sparkling wonderland of blue and white tile and fancy porcelain fixtures she had never seen the like of.
This didn’t look like the sort of bathroom you threw up in. Not that splendor had stopped her in Madeline’s guest bathroom. She’d spent quite a lot of time bent over that commode. The doctor had promised that the morning sickness would pass. Like a kidney stone. But it hadn’t. It was like that damned Energizer Bunny, it just kept right on going.
The mirrored wall above the double sinks showed her she looked as bad as she felt. The shirt she had borrowed from Cousin Dougie to go visit Amber was the worse for wear. One sleeve was dirty, probably from when her cousins had manhandled her. She had a smudge on one cheek and her hair was a mess. She washed her face and combed her hair with her fingers and felt a little better.
But nothing was going to change the fact that she wasn’t dressed like a bride ought to be. Wasn’t much of a wedding either, anyway you looked at it. She would never have dreamed that she would have to say her vows without her own twin in the room. Not that Amber would have approved. Likely, if she had been present at the rectory, she would have turned that ruckus into full-blown war.
Eventually Heather had to leave the safety of the palatial hotel bathroom. She gave the deep soaking tub one last longing look and opened the door. Patrick was standing right outside, arms folded, face stony with impatience.
“If you had knocked, I’d have hurried.”
“I was getting worried about you. You look worse than you did the other day.” He didn’t look worried. He looked pissed.
“Still the same charmer, I see,” she retorted. She turned her back on him and went to see if there was any way you could get into the bed without removing a half a ton of silver and blue pillows and the satin comforter. There wasn’t. She began to pile the slippery cushions on one of the armchairs.
“I only meant, that I’m worried about you.” He still sounded pissed. As usual. “What are you doing?”
“I’m turning the bed down, so I can lie down before I fall down.”
He swept her into his arms and was holding her tight against his chest before she had quite finished speaking. “I knew it,” he said. “I’m going to get that doctor over here this very minute.”
“I just need some sleep,” Heather muttered. She gave in to temptation and set her aching head against his chest. She could hear the steady thump of his heart. He still smelled the same. Sexy. Strong. Safe. Even his scent was deceitful.
Patrick didn’t make any move set her down on the bed. He pulled her closer. She shut her eyes and pretended he loved her. “You’ve lost weight.” It was an accusation.
Her eyes popped back open. “Not weight. Muscle. You try not being able to keep down your food.”
“That can’t be good for the babies.”
No shit, Sherlock. “I already told you, I’m not taking drugs.”
Instead of taking her over to the bed, he sat down in the oversized armchair that faced the French windows and kept her on his lap. His arms tightened around her. “I don’t want you taking stuff that’ll hurt our babies.” The angry edge had left his voice. “But I don’t want them harmed by you being sick for your whole pregnancy. I think you need a second opinion. My sister-in-law thinks highly of Dr. Robichaud.”
“He brought me and my sister into the world. He’s had plenty of experience. But Jenna is a midwife. She says I just need to keep quiet and have less stress.”
“That’s a plan. Will you see what Dr. Robichaud says?”
“I guess. I just want a nap.”
“Tell you what. I’ll call the clinic and see if he’s still there. And you get some sleep, and I’ll order us room service. What do you think you could keep down? Soup?”
“Tea. Everything else seems to make me sick.”
“You can’t live on tea.” He stood up and carried her across to the bed, juggling her so he could sweep the comforter back and lay her down.
He bent down and removed her shoes. He looked at them as if they were something he’d stepped in, but he didn’t make any more personal remarks. Maybe he was trainable. If she was the kind of girl who had wanted a trainable husband. Seemed you were better off to start with one that you liked, rather than hoping you could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Boar’s ear. Whatever.
She didn’t think she would be able to sleep, not after the excitement and the terror of the morning and afternoon. She closed her eyes and saw again her Uncle Bobby’s angry face. Heard the nastiness he and his sons had shouted at her. Suddenly she wasn’t sleepy anymore. Her eyes popped open. The plastered ceiling of the best suite of the French Town Inn soared above the bed. She was safe here, even if she didn’t feel safe.
“They’re not going to bother you anymore,” Patrick said. “Go to sleep.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t take orders, but it seemed like too much effort to start her fight again. She let her lids fall and this time she drifted off.
* * *
Dr. Robichaud promised that he would stop by on his way home. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. But Patrick insisted. It couldn’t be right that a girl of twenty-two should be so sick just from being pregnant. It was true that everyone said she was having triplets, but why should that make her sick all the time?
She was a big girl, with wide hips and long legs. Built on a robust scale that his ancestors would have admired. He had trained himself to prefer his women constructed on more modern lines. Now he was stuck with the sort of cozy armful that Zeke and Gil had always told him suited bears best. The kind they always said were built for birthing bear cubs. So why was she so sick?
For a man who’d spent his entire life making sure his beast was never in the ascendant, he had certainly fucked up. For the foreseeable future, he was stuck with Heather Dupré. Heather Bascom. Even if they wound up divorced, as seemed probable, those kids would always be a tether binding them together. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. He had hoped to do better by his children than his father had done by him.
Jeremy was on working on his latest divorce. His stepmother Diana had taken her dismissal reasonably well. She had gone back to Chicago and left the house she had spent so much time redecorating to her successor. Patrick hadn’t officially met Tiffany yet. But he had a feeling he had encountered her last year while she was dating his cousin Calvin.
Now there was a nice dysfunctional mess to drop his little backwoods bride into. What the hell was he going to do with Heather? She wasn’t going to fit into his world. Compared to French Town, Denver was Paris, France. She would stand out there like blue jeans at a ball.
The one thing about her having married him was that he could buy her new clothes. Shoes that didn’t have cracked soles. A coat that wasn’t threadbare. Maternity clothes. Get her hair done so she didn’t look like a teenager.
Not that she was far removed from one. It was all very well and good to say she had lured him that day in the woods, but the truth was she was nothing more than a kid. He was older than her in every way, and it was his fault that she was pregnant. His fault that she was going to have to leave her rural home. His fault they had been married at the point of a gun.
It was a relief to have his musing interrupted by a rap on the door. He expected room service. It wasn’t. It was a different set of hillbillies. Laughing and jostling and roaring. They ignored him when he asked them to be quieter.
One of them produced a sack. They were faster and trickier than their elders had been that afternoon. He fought back, but they had him trussed up like a pig in a poke before he could say ‘unhand me, you villains.’ What the hell were they doing to Heather?
He kicked and tried to shout. But someone had stuffed a foul rag in his mouth. Jocular voices ordered him to behave himself. A fist drummed on top of his head to the accompaniment of cackling. They carried him out into the damp late-afternoon air. They manhandled him into what he assumed was the bed of a pickup.
“You just lie still, Bascom. Enjoy the ride.” A few voices made crude jokes which were greeted by raucous, drunken laughter.
The pickup drove off. The driver made a special effort to connect with every rut and pothole. Patrick was jounced around. His head kept banging against something hard and irregular. What the fuck where they up to? What the fuck had they done with his wife? He wriggled around but he couldn’t undo the ropes that bound him.
The bag they had thrust over his head made it hard to breathe, but provided no cushioning from the bumps. He was going to have a concussion if his head didn’t stop ramming into that hard object.
He squirmed away from whatever it was his skull had been banging against. His feet hit the tailgate hard. He deduced they were going uphill and when he was flung sideways, that the road was winding. Which was about like saying they were on Yakima Ridge.
The ride seemed to go on forever, Patrick tried to keep track of the time, but without being able to see, and not knowing where they were headed, he didn’t have much idea. If they were planning to hold him for ransom, which seemed a bit strange for a bunch of drunks, they were going the wrong way about it.
Unless the person they planned to hold for ransom was Heather. It didn’t bear thinking about. He could only hope that Dr. Robichaud would arrive before they could hurt her. But judging by the way no one at the hotel had stopped his abductors, he couldn’t hold out much hope for that.
Eventually the bumping and joggling and sliding stopped. Patrick slid headfirst into whatever spiky object was stationed up by the cab. Clumsy hands grabbed his heels and hauled him over the tailgate and held him upright.
He was thumped between the shoulder blades. “This here’s a Yakima Ridge custom, cousin.” a boozy voice roared in his ear.
He was spun this way and that as the yokels argued how best to get him out of his bindings. When they took the bag off his head he could see it was most of the party that had taken him from the hotel.
Someone took out the gag. “Where’s my wife?” he croaked.
This time the laughter was mean. “She’s up mountain,” said a dirty youth with cracked front teeth. He smacked his knee as if pearls of wisdom had fallen from his unclean mouth.
“This here’s your shivaree.” Pat thought he recognized the bellman. He had taken off the French Town Inn livery and was wearing jeans and T-shirt. “Heather’s snug as a bug in a rug up in the Dupré hunting cabin. All you have to do to have your wedding night is find her.”
By the laughter that greeted the bellman’s instructions, this task was not supposed to be easy. Maybe not even possible.
“Is she alone?” Patrick wanted to bang their leering faces together.
“Course she’s alone. Wouldn’t be a wedding night, if your bride had a chaperone.” There were more guffaws and back slaps. “You best see if you can track her, Bascom. That is if you’re worthy of her.”
“You know I’m a stranger. How do I do that?”
A dirty scrap of paper was pushed into his hand. “We gotta get home to supper,” said a wit. Guffawing, they all piled into the pickup and drove away, leaving him staring at an inadequate, hand-drawn map.