AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I sure do. Dirk Atwater’s paper ran a telephone poll in the same issue as the story. Caleb, your numbers have gone through the roof since they last ran this same poll, two weeks ago. Then you were neck and neck with the other likely candidates. Now you’re leading them by more than thirty percent.”
Caleb’s brows rose. That was his only reaction. His father, on the other hand, looked stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “The voters are actually falling for this nonsense?”
“Voters have hearts, Cain,” Bobby told the older man. “I tried to tell you that years ago, but you never wanted to hear it.”
“Well the voters in this family have stomachs,” Vidalia said firmly. “And if I hope to feed them, I’m going to need the bunch of you to take your backsides out of my kitchen.”
Maya nodded and started to get to her feet, but Caleb put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. “Stay put. Have some tea. Relax,” he told her. “I’m gonna take my father over to the boarding house, get him settled in. I think I, uh…need to have a talk with him. Get some things…straight.”
She nodded. “Don’t be hard on him, Caleb. He’s your father, no matter what.”
Caleb glanced at his father, who must have overheard that remark. Maya wondered if the man was still scowling at her but didn’t turn to look.
“Maya, we have all the arrangements in place. I don’t want you fussing or worrying about anything at all. All you have to do is wake up in the morning. We’re getting married at ten o’clock.”
She felt her brows shoot upward. “But…how did you pull everything together so fast?” She looked from Caleb to her mother and back again.
“Your mom can fill you in on the details. Okay?”
She nodded. “O-okay. I guess. Caleb, there’s so much I want to talk to you about before we…you know…do this thing.”
“I know.” He looked at her so intensely she could almost feel the touch of his eyes. “I know. I’ll come back early, I promise. We’ll have time to talk. All the time you want. Okay?”
She nodded. Then sucked in a breath of surprise when he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her mouth. It was quick, brief, but not a peck. It was firm and moist. A kiss that…seemed to mean something. But what?
Then he was gone, Bobby and his father with him.
“See that?” Selene said, still wafting her steam with her hands. “Cleared away the negativity so well that it even chased the old grouch away!”
“He’s not as bad as he seems,” Maya said.
“No one could be as bad as he seems,” Vidalia said.
“Gee, what did I miss?” Mel asked.
Kara grinned. “It’s just as well you did miss it, Mel. Otherwise that old goat would have been carrying his walking stick in a new place.”
“Kara!” Vidalia scolded—or tried to, but it was ruined when the grin she tried to suppress broke through.
Everyone laughed. Then Maya said, “So my wedding is all planned?”
Vidalia smiled at her. “I’m under strict orders from that man of yours to get your approval on everything first. But I’m supposed to do that without giving you the slightest cause for stress or tension.” She shrugged. “Guess he’s never been around too many brides before if he thinks that’s possible.” She turned to pull her notebook from the top of the fridge and, flipping it open, sat down at the table. “It’s amazing what that man manages to do with a few phone calls. I’m telling you, hon, having all that money and clout is not a bad thing.”
Neither, Maya thought, was being so popular in the polls. For some reason, though, that news didn’t make her as happy as it should. Because it meant he would probably decide to run after all, even though he’d said repeatedly that he hadn’t made that decision yet. He would make it now. He would run, and he would win. And he would have to spend half his time, or maybe more, in Washington, D.C., and the other half in the state capital, or traveling around doing…political stuff. If she did get her dream house, she would be in it alone.
Well, she thought, a hand on her belly, not entirely alone. Just not with him. And for some reason that felt like the same thing.
Then again, he hadn’t promised they would be together constantly, or even live together at all. That was one of the things they needed to talk about. Their living arrangements. Because she had no intention of moving away from her family. Especially when they might be all she and the kids had, if Caleb turned out to be the kind of man who would break his word, let her down. The kind of man who wouldn’t be there when she really needed him.
More and more, she doubted Caleb was that kind of man at all.
If only she could be sure….
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
“Maybe…it can work after all.”
Cain Caleb Montgomery II spoke the words as if they were being forced from his lips. And he had a grimace on his face while he did it. Caleb had been sitting before the fire in the parlor of Ida-May Peabody’s boarding house, talking with his father for the better part of an hour, hearing all the same arguments and keeping his father’s teacup filled with tea steeped from the little packets Selene had handed him on his way out of the Brand house tonight. He didn’t like the gray tinge to his father’s skin. He didn’t like the dizzy spell the old man had had earlier. And he didn’t like it that his father refused to admit to feeling even slightly less than peak.
