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  “They can tackle you. I’ll carry the ball.”

  He glanced ruefully at the arm that was supporting her. “You might have to.”

  She touched his shoulder gently. “Does it really worry you so much?”

  “It used to,” he said honestly. “Until the first time you let me make love to you.” He drew in a long breath. “You can’t imagine how afraid I was to let you see the prosthesis. Then I was afraid to take it off, because I thought I might not be able to function as a man without using it for balance.”

  “We’d have found a way,” she said simply. “People do.”

  He frowned slightly. “You make everything so easy.”

  She lifted her fingers and smoothed away the frown. “Not everything. You don’t feel trapped?”

  He caught her hand and pulled the soft palm to his lips, kissing it with breathless tenderness. “I feel as if I’ve got the world in my arms,” he returned huskily.

  She smiled. “So do I.”

  He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he brought her close and wrapped her up against him instead.

  The arrangements were complicated. Instead of a wedding, they seemed to be planning a political coup as well. The governor sent his private secretary and the brothers ended up in a furious fight with her over control of the event. It almost came to blows before Simon stepped in and reminded them that they couldn’t plan the wedding without assistance. They informed him haughtily that they’d done it before. He threw up his hand and left them to it.

  Tira had coffee with him in her living room in the midst of wedding invitations that she was hand signing. There must have been five hundred.

  “I’m being buried,” she said pointedly, gesturing toward the overflowing coffee table. “And that mouse is getting to me,” she added. “I found him under one of the envelopes earlier!”

  “Cag will take care of him while we’re on our honeymoon. We can stay here until we find a house in Austin in a neighborhood you like.”

  “One you like, too,” she said.

  “If you like it, so will I.”

  It bothered her that he was letting her make all these decisions. She knew she was being cosseted, but she wasn’t sure why.

  “The brothers haven’t been by today.”

  “They’re in a meeting with Miss Chase, slugging it out,” he replied. “When I left, she was reaching for a vase.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “She’s a tough little bird. She’s not going to let them turn our wedding into a circus.”

  “They have fairly good taste,” she admitted.

  “They called Nashville to see how many country music stars they could hire to appear at the reception.”

  “Oh, good Lord!” she burst out.

  “That isn’t what Miss Chase said. She really needs to watch her language,” he murmured. “Rey was turning red in the face when I ran for my life.”

  “You don’t run.”

  “Only on occasion. Rey has the worst temper of the lot.”

  “I’d put five dollars on Miss Chase,” she giggled.

  He watched her lift the cup to her lips. “Should you be drinking coffee?”

  “It’s decaf, darling,” she teased.

  The endearment caught him off guard. His breath caught in his throat.

  The reaction surprised her, because he usually seemed so unassailable. She wasn’t quite sure of herself even now. “If you don’t like it, I won’t…” she began.

  “Oh, I like it,” he said huskily. “I’m not used to endearments, that’s all.”

  “Yes, I know. You don’t use them often.”

  “Only when I make love to you,” he returned.

  She lowered her eyes. He hadn’t done that since the day they got engaged, when the brothers had burst into their lives again. She’d wondered why, but she was too shy to ask him.

  “Hey,” he said softly, coaxing her eyes up. “It isn’t lack of interest. It’s a lack of privacy.”

  She smiled wanly. “I wondered.” She shrugged. “You haven’t been around much.”

  “I’ve been trying to put together an office staff before I’m sworn in the first of January,” he reminded her. “It’s been a rush job.”

  “Of course. I know how much pressure you’re under. If you’d like, we could postpone the wedding,” she offered.

  “Do you really want to be married in a maternity dress?” he teased.

  Her reply was unexpected. She started crying.

  He got up and pulled her up, wrapping her close. “It’s nerves,” he whispered. “They’ll pass.”

  She didn’t stop. The tears were worse.

  “Tira?”

  “I started,” she sobbed.

  “What?”

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were swimming and red. “I’m not pregnant.” She sounded as if the world had ended.

  He pulled out a handkerchief and dried the tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and looked it. “I really am.”

  She took the handkerchief and made a better job of her face, pressing her cheek against his chest. “I didn’t know how to tell you. But now you know. So if you don’t want to go through with it…”

  He stiffened. His head lifted and he looked at her as if he thought she was possessed. “Why wouldn’t I want to go through with it?” he burst out.

  “Well, I’m not pregnant, Simon,” she repeated.

  He let out the breath he was holding. “I told you I wasn’t marrying you because of the baby. But you weren’t completely convinced, were you?”

  She looked sheepish. “I had my doubts.”

  He searched her wet eyes slowly. He held her cheek in his big, warm hand and traced her mouth with his thumb. “I’m sorry that you aren’t pregnant. I want a baby very much with you. But I’m marrying you because I love you. I thought you knew.”

  Her heart jumped into her throat. “You never said.”

  “Some words come harder than others for me,” he replied. He drew in a long breath. “I thought, I hoped, you’d know by the way we were in bed together. I couldn’t have been so out of control the first time or so tender the next if I hadn’t loved you to distraction.”

  “I don’t know much about intimacy.”

  “You’ll learn a lot more pretty soon,” he murmured dryly. He frowned quizzically. “You were going to marry me, thinking I only wanted you for the baby?”

  “I love you,” she said simply. “I thought, when the baby came, you might learn to love me.” Her face dissolved again into tears. “And then…then I knew there wasn’t going to be a baby.”

  He kissed her tenderly, sipping the tears from her wet eyes, smiling. “There will be,” he whispered. “One day, I promise you, there will be. Right now, I only want to marry you and live with you and love you. The rest will fall into place all by itself.”

  She looked into his eyes and felt the glory of it all the way to her soul. “I love you,” she sobbed. “More than my life.”

  “That,” he whispered as he bent to her mouth, “is exactly the way I feel about you!”

  The wedding, despite the warring camps of its organizers, came off perfectly. It was a media event, at the ranch in Jacobsville, with all the leading families of the town in attendance and Tira glorious in a trailing white gown as she walked down the red carpet to the rose arbor where Simon and all his brothers and the minister waited. Dorie Hart was her matron of honor and the other Hart boys were best men.

  The service was brief but eloquent, and when Simon placed the ring on her finger and then lifted her veil and kissed her, it was with such tenderness that she couldn’t even manage to speak afterward. They went back down the aisle in a shower of rice and rose petals, laughing all the way.

  The reception didn’t have singers from Nashville. Instead the whole Jacobsville Symphony Orchestra turned out to play, and the food was flown in from San Antonio. It was a gala event and there were plenty of people present to enjoy it.

  Tira hid
a yawn and smiled apologetically at her new husband. “Sorry! I’m so tired and sleepy I can hardly stand up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

  “A nice Jamaican honeymoon is going to cure you of wanting sleep at all,” he promised in a slow, deep drawl. “You are the most beautiful bride who ever walked down an aisle, and I’m the luckiest man alive.”

  She reached a hand up to his cheek and smiled lovingly at him. “I’m the luckiest woman.”

  He kissed her palm. “I wish we were ten years younger, Tira,” he said with genuine regret. “I’ve wasted all that time.”

  “It wasn’t wasted. It only made what we have so much better,” she assured him.

  “I hope we have fifty years,” he said, and meant it.

  They flew out late that night for their Caribbean destination. Cag, who hadn’t forgotten the mouse, asked for the key to Tira’s house and assured her that the mouse would be a memory when they returned. She had a prick of conscience, because in a way the mouse had brought her and Simon together. But it was for the best, she told herself. They couldn’t go on living with a mouse! Although she did wonder what plan Cag had in mind that hadn’t already been tried.

  The Jamaican hotel where they stayed was right on the beach at Montego Bay, but they spent little time on the sand. Simon was ardent and inexhaustible, having kept his distance until the wedding.

  He lay beside her, barely breathing after a marathon of passion that had left them both drenched in sweat and too tired to move.

  “You need to take more vitamins,” he teased, watching her yawn yet again. “You aren’t keeping up with me.”

  She chuckled and rolled against him with a loving sigh. “It’s the wedding and all the preparations,” she whispered. “I’m just worn-out. Not that worn-out, though,” she added, kissing his bare shoulder softly. “I love you, Simon.”

  He pulled her close. “I love you, Mrs. Hart. Very, very much.”

  She trailed her fingers across his broad, hair-roughened chest and wanted to say something else, but she fell asleep in the middle of it.

  A short, blissful week later, they arrived back at her house with colorful T-shirts and wonderful memories.

  “I could use some coffee,” Simon said. “Want me to make it?”

  “I’ll do it, if you’ll take the cases into the bedroom,” she replied, heading for the kitchen.

  She opened the cupboard to get out the coffee and came face-to-face with the biggest snake she’d ever seen in her life.

  Simon heard a noise in the kitchen, put down the suitcases and went to see what had happened.

  His heart jumped into his throat when he immediately connected the open cupboard, the huge snake and his new wife lying unconscious on the floor.

  He bent, lifting her against his chest. “Tira, sweetheart, are you all right?” he asked softly, smoothing back her hair. “Can you hear me?”

  She moved. Her eyelids fluttered and she opened her eyes, saw Simon, and immediately remembered why she was on the floor.

  “Simon, there’s a…a…ssssssnake!”

  “Herman.”

  She stared at him. “There’s a snake in the cupboard,” she repeated.

  “Herman,” he repeated. “It’s Cag’s albino python.”

  “It’s in our cupboard,” she stated.

  “Yes, I know. He brought it over to catch the mouse. Herman’s a great mouser,” he added. “Hell of a barrier to Cag’s social life, but a really good mousetrap. We won’t have a mouse now. Looks healthy, doesn’t he?” he added, nodding toward the cupboard.

  While they were staring at the huge snake, the back door suddenly opened and Cag came in with a gunnysack. He saw Tira and Simon on the floor and groaned.

  “Oh, God, I’m too late!” he said heartily. “I’m sorry, Tira, I let the time slip away from me. I forgot all about Herman until I remembered the date, and you’d already left the airport when I tried to catch you.” He sighed worriedly. “I haven’t killed you, have I?”

  “Not at all,” Tira assured him with grim humor. “I’ve been tired a lot lately, too. I guess I’m getting fragile in my old age.”

  Simon helped her to her feet, but he was watching her with a curious intensity. She made coffee while Cag got his scaly friend into a bag and assured her that she’d have no more mouse problems. Tira offered him coffee, but he declined, saying that he had to get Herman home before the big python got irritable. He was shedding, which was always a bad time to handle him.

  “Any time would be a bad time for me,” Tira told her husband when their guest had gone.

  “You fainted,” he said.

  “Yes, I know. I was frightened.”

  “You’ve been overly tired and sleeping a lot, and I notice that you don’t eat breakfast anymore.” He caught her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “You were sure you weren’t pregnant. I’m sure you are. I want you to see a doctor.”

  “But I started,” she tried to explain.

  “I want you to see a doctor.”

  She nuzzled her face into his throat. “Okay,” she said, and kissed him. “But I’m not getting my hopes up. It’s probably just some female dysfunction.”

  The telephone rang in Simon’s office, where he was winding up his partnership before getting ready to move into the state government office that had been provided for him.

  “Hello,” he murmured, only half listening.

  “Mr. Hart, your wife’s here,” his secretary murmured with unusual dryness.

  “Okay, Mrs. Mack, send her in.”

  “I, uh, think you should come out, sir.”

  “What? Oh. Very well.”

  His mind was still on the brief he’d been preparing, so when he opened the door he wasn’t expecting the surprise he got.

  Tira was standing there in a very becoming maternity dress, and had an ear-to-ear smile on her face.

  “It’s weeks too early, but I don’t care. The doctor says I’m pregnant and I’m wearing it,” she told him.

  He went forward in a daze and scooped her close, bending over her with eyes that were suspiciously bright. “I knew it,” he whispered huskily. “I knew!”

  “I wish I had!” she exclaimed, hugging him hard. “All that wailing and gnashing of teeth, and for nothing!”

  He chuckled. “What a nice surprise!”

  “I thought so. Will you take me to lunch?” she added. “I want dill pickles and strawberry ice cream.”

  “Yuuuck!” Mrs. Mack said theatrically.

  “Never you mind, Mrs. Mack, I’ll take her home and feed her,” Simon said placatingly. He glanced at his wife with a beaming smile. “We’ll have Mrs. Lester fix us something. I want to enjoy looking at you in that outfit while we eat.”

  She held his hand out the door and felt as if she had the world.

  Later, after they arrived home, Mrs. Lester seated them at the dining-room table and brought in a nice lunch of cold cuts and omelets with decaffeinated coffee for Tira. She was smiling, too, because she was going with them to Austin.

  “A baby and a husband who loves me, a terrific cook and housekeeper, and a mouseless house to leave behind,” Tira said. “What more could a woman ask?”

  “Mouseless?” Mrs. Lester asked.

  “Yes, don’t you remember?” Tira asked gleefully. “Cag got rid of the mouse while we were on our honeymoon and you were at your sister’s.”

  Mrs. Lester nodded. “Got rid of the mouse. Mmm-hmm.” She went and opened the kitchen door and invited them to look at the cabinet. They peered in the door and there he was, the mouse, sitting on the counter with a cracker in his paws, blatantly nibbling away.

  “I don’t believe it!” Tira burst out.

  It got worse. Mrs. Lester went into the kitchen, held out her hand, and the mouse climbed into it.

  “He’s domesticated,” she said proudly. “I came in here the other morning and he was sitting on the cabinet. He didn’t even try to run, so I held out my hand and he climbed into it. I had a
suspicion, so I put him in a box and took him to the vet. The vet says that he isn’t a wild mouse at all, he’s somebody’s pet mouse that got left behind and had to fend for himself. Obviously he belonged to the previous owners of this house. So I thought, if you don’t mind, of course,” she added kindly, “I’d keep him. He can come with us to Austin.”

  Tira looked at Simon and burst out laughing. The mouse, who had no interest whatsoever in human conversation, continued to nibble his cracker contentedly, safe in the hands of his new owner.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0881-0

  BELOVED

  Copyright © 1999 by Diana Palmer

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