“We’ll see, Rita.”
It took her only a week to surrender.
A week of Jack coming to the bakery daily, helping out, making sure she got off her feet. He ignored his own business and showed up in jeans, scuffed cowboy boots and T-shirts, making her heart skip just looking at him. He stacked pallets of supplies, carried trays of cookies, rang up sales and won Casey over. That last part wasn’t hard at all, Rita allowed. But as for the rest, he wore her down with his relentless pursuit and dogged determination.
“You owe me twenty bucks,” he said when she told him she’d marry him.
“This isn’t funny.” Should she have held out? Refused him? Possibly. But in the last week, she’d caught repeated glimpses of the old Jack, and though they were brief, they’d given her enough hope to think that just maybe it was worth trying to get past the ice he’d packed around his heart.
“No one’s laughing.”
“I’ll marry you, but I can’t get married without my family there,” she said. “They’d never understand.”
They weren’t going to understand a quickie wedding or a divorce so soon after that wedding, either, but one problem at a time.
“Fine. Us. Our families. Small ceremony,” Jack said like he was ticking things off a to-do list.
“And I don’t want anyone to know this is a...business deal,” she said for lack of a better way to put it. “Also, I don’t want you to buy me a house.”
“Nonnegotiable,” he said. “When we split, you can pick something out or I will.”
It didn’t make sense to argue with him now, but Rita could be as stubborn as Jack. And she wouldn’t be bought off or given a “going away gift.” But this, too, was a worry for another day. God knew she had enough for today already.
“Okay, then,” she said, sighing heavily. “I guess we’re getting married.”
He grabbed a black leather jacket off a hook by the back door and shrugged into it. “I’ll take care of the details. I’ll send packers to get your stuff out of your apartment. Bring it to the penthouse.”
She blinked at him. “Packers?”
He stopped, looked at her. “You want this to look real, then we’ll be living together at my place.”
At his place? She didn’t even know where he lived! Oh, this wasn’t something she’d even thought about.
Before she could say anything to that, though, he was gone.
* * *
“It’s a surprise, that’s all I’m saying,” Jack’s sister, Cass, said for the tenth time in the last hour. “I’m glad you found someone, but it would have been nice to meet her before the wedding.”
He looked at Cass and read the worry in her eyes. God, would he ever get used to seeing that emotion on his family’s faces? And if not accustomed to it, could he please, God, reach a point where it wouldn’t tear at him? “It was sudden. I met her six months ago—”
“Clearly,” Cass said wryly.
“Right.” The baby. His family had been shocked not only with the announcement that he was getting married, but that he was going to be a father. Soon.
Cass flipped her long brown hair behind her shoulder, threaded her arm through his and watched Rita with her family. “I like her already.”
“Good. That’s good.” Jack nodded thoughtfully and kept his gaze locked on his wife. Wife. He swallowed hard and told himself it would be all right. The important thing here was that he’d done the right thing by his kid. He could survive three months of marriage and then his life would go back to what it had been. Quiet. Alone.
“Jack?”
He looked at his sister and nearly sighed. She was watching him so closely, trying to read every expression on his face, he might as well have been under a microscope. But judging by her own expression, she wasn’t happy with what she was seeing. In fact, she was giving him the serious, concerned look he was pretty sure she gave her patients.
As a general practitioner, Cass was adept at cutting through the bull to make a diagnosis and it was clear to him she didn’t like what she was seeing in him.
“Relax, Cass,” he said, “I’m fine.”
“Sure. It’s what you’ve been saying for months.”
“Then you should believe me,” he said, patting her hand on his arm.
“No, you remind me of this one patient. He’s ten. And he always insists he’s fine even when his fever is spiking or his throat is sore.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t want me asking questions, you see. And neither do you.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, giving her a tired smile. “But I’m not one of your patients.”
“Good thing,” she told him. “We’d butt heads even more than we do now. Jack, I have to ask you something. Will you let her in?”
“What?” He looked down at her and tried to hide his impatience. It wasn’t the family’s fault that he couldn’t give them what they wanted. Be who they wanted.
Cass moved to stand in front of him and put both of her hands on his forearms. “I’m asking you. You’re married now. Going to be a father. And yet I still see that distance in your eyes.”
He let his head fall back and he stared unseeing at the overcast gray sky for a second or two. The steady roar of the ocean was a constant white noise in the background. The sea itself was as gray as the sky and the waves rolling to shore just a few feet away were edged with foam that looked like lace.
“Cass...”
“Don’t bother to deny it. We all know it’s true. You’ve shut down, Jack and we don’t know how to reach you.” She leaned in and looked up into his eyes. “Will you let Rita try?”
What no one understood was, he couldn’t allow himself to be reached. Couldn’t be pulled from the shadows because the darkness was where he belonged now. He felt his own helplessness rise as he watched his sister’s face.
Jack wished he could reassure his whole family. Wished that this marriage was changing something. But the truth was, nothing had changed for him. He was who he was now and everyone would eventually accept what he already had.
The old Jack Buchanan died on his last tour.
Cass must have read the resignation on his features because she sighed, went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I love you, Jack. Give yourself a chance to be happy.”
He nodded again, gave her a quick hug, and then sighed in relief when she walked off to join her family. Jack looked to his father and brother as they stood with Rita’s parents, laughing and talking. There was no respite for Jack today. He’d dropped himself into a crowd. Yet he was still a man on the sidelines, watching as life went on around him.
Both families were gathered and they seemed to be getting along fine. His sister’s family, husband and two kids and his brother Sam’s group, wife and three kids, actually looked small compared to Rita’s.
Her parents, her sister and two brothers with all of their kids and spouses made quite a crowd. Her sister’s four kids, each brother had five and one of the wives was as pregnant as Rita. The Marchettis were clearly devoted to family and Jack was glad to see it. When this marriage ended, when he was out of her life, Rita would have their support to help her through.
Another straw of guilt dropped onto his shoulders and he nearly winced at the added weight. Had he done the right thing here? Marrying her with the promise to divorce in three months? Setting her up to have to explain what went wrong to a loving family who were assuming