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“We’re going right into town to see about that. And if I can’t find what I want there,” Toby announced, “we’ll drive into Houston.” He dropped one arm around Naomi’s shoulders and pulled her up close to him. “But we wanted you to know our news before you heard about Maverick’s video.”
“No one pays attention to people of that sort,” Vanessa said with assuredness.
Naomi wondered how she could say it, since the whole town of Royal had been talking about nothing else but Maverick for months. But Vanessa didn’t care to see what she considered ugliness, and it was amazingly easy for her to close her eyes to anything that might disrupt her orderly world.
“Now, Naomi, don’t you worry over this Maverick person,” her mother said firmly. “You and Toby have done nothing wrong. Perhaps you haven’t done things in the proper order—”
Meaning, Naomi thought, courtship, engagement, marriage and then a baby. Still, her mother was willing to overlook all that for the happy news that her daughter would finally be settled, with a more than socially acceptable husband. Which meant that when she had to tell them that she absolutely was not going to marry Toby, the fallout would be epic.
“We should be going now. We need to get Naomi all moved in and settled at the ranch. Sorry for interrupting your tea,” Toby was saying, and Naomi told herself to snap out of her thoughts.
He was going to hurry her out of the house before she could tell her parents the truth. And she was going to let him. Sure, she’d have to confess eventually, but right this minute? Naomi just wanted to be far, far away.
“Nonsense,” Franklin said. “You’re always welcome here, Toby. Especially now.”
Naomi muffled a sigh. All it had taken was the promise of a “good” marriage to fling the Price family doors wide-open. She could only imagine how fast they would slam shut once they knew the truth.
“I appreciate that, Mr. Price.”
“Franklin, boy. You call me Franklin.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” Toby promised, but didn’t. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I think we’ll just go get Naomi’s things and find that ring we talked about before Naomi changes her mind and leaves me heartbroken.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened. “Oh, she wouldn’t!”
Toby winked at Naomi, completely ignoring how tense she’d gone beside him. To her parents, this suddenly imagined marriage was very real. She knew Toby thought he’d made things better, but in reality, he’d only made the whole situation more...complicated.
“You two enjoy yourselves, and, Naomi, we’ll talk about a lovely wedding real soon,” her mother called after her. “We’ll want to have the ceremony before you start...showing.”
“Oh, God,” Naomi whispered.
Toby squeezed her hand and hurried her out of the house. Once outside, he bundled her into his truck before she could say anything, so it wasn’t until he was in the truck himself, firing the engine, that Naomi was able to demand, “What were you thinking?”
He blew out a breath, squinted into the sun and steered the truck away from the front door and back down the flower-lined drive. “I was thinking that I didn’t like the way your folks were looking at you.”
His profile was stern, his mouth tight and a muscle in his jaw flexing, telling her he was grinding his teeth together. Naomi sighed a little. She hadn’t thought he’d take her parents’ reaction so personally on her behalf, though in retrospect, she should have. He’d always been the kind of man to stand up for someone being bullied. He took the side of the underdog because that was just who Toby was. But she didn’t want to be one of his mercy rescues.
“I appreciate the misguided chivalry,” she said, striving for patience. “But it just makes everything harder, Toby. Now I’m going to have to tell them that I’m not moving in with you, our engagement is off and make up some reason for it—which my mother will never accept—and then I’ll still be a single mother and they’ll be even more disappointed in me than ever.”
“They don’t have to be.” He shot her one fast look. “We move you out to Paradise today. We get married. Just like I said.”
Naomi just stared at him. Since he was driving, he didn’t take his eyes off the road again, so she couldn’t see if he was joking or not. But he had to be joking. “You’re not serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“Toby,” she argued, “that’s nuts. I mean, it was a sweet thing to do—”
“Screw sweet,” he snapped with a shake of his head. “I wasn’t doing it to be sweet and, okay, fine, I didn’t really think about it before saying it, but once the words were out, they made sense.”
“In a crazy, upside-down world, maybe. Here? Not so much.”
“Think about it, Naomi.”
She lifted one hand to rub her forehead, hoping to ease the throbbing headache centered there. “Haven’t been able to do much else since you blurted out all that.”
“Then think about this. There’s no point in you raising a baby on your own when I’m standing right here.”
“It’s not your baby,” she pointed out.
