Chapter 24
1099 Words
Chapter 24
Diana was waiting when Jed returned a few hours later. It was after midnight when he backed the trailer up and unloaded the horses. Diana stalked straight for him, and it was a good thing he’d just latched the corral gate, because she leaped up, wrapping her arms around him, and he grabbed her around the waist, sliding his hands over her bottom. She pulled his head down and kissed him. When he pulled away, breathing a little heavily, he said, “Well, that was a hell of a greeting.”
“Jed. I love you.”
He pursed his lips, and she detected the hint of a smile. “Marry me, Diana.”
If he had meant to shock her, he’d succeeded, as she loosened her grip from his neck and slid down, feeling every part of him.
“Oh.”
“You either want me or you don’t, Diana. You know I don’t have millions. I’ve got what I’ve earned with my own two hands. This is mine. And I won’t go looking for handouts from my family.” She felt him pull back. Damn the man, anyway. This man, she knew, could shatter her world if he walked away.
“No one has ever told me they loved me, Jed, but you’ve rocked my world and turned it upside down. And the truth of the matter is that I can’t imagine leaving here and you. I don’t give a damn what you have, or don’t have. I just want to be loved for me, for who I am.”
“I’ve been jerked around by women before, Diana, and I won’t be ever again.” He still kept his distance.
“But you know I’m not like that, Jed. I’ve never allowed a man to touch me before like you did, because I was afraid of being like my mother. But I’m not her, Jed. I’m me. And I don’t want millions. I just want you. And I’ve never lied to you.”
Jed stepped into her space and rested his hands on her shoulder. “And this justice you seek, have you figured out what that is yet? Because I don’t want it to become a fence between us. I want you, all of you, and not some vendetta for Andy and Todd. What they’ve done to women is not okay, but they are family, and I won’t stand by and let you try to destroy them, and yourself along with it. I’m not interested in that crap.”
Evidently, he took her silence as rejection, and he kicked the side of his trailer, startling Diana and the horses.
“Stop it.” She swatted his arm. “I want to marry you. And I don’t want to carry this hate for them anymore. To spend the rest of my life with a venomous grudge. I’m not their judge, and I want to be free from that hold with them that I’ve carried for most my life. I want to be happy, to be loved. I’m not a nobody. But meeting you, Jed, I didn’t plan, and you turned my world upside down, baby—”
He didn’t let her finish. What he did do was lift her in his arms, carry her back inside, and shut the door.
Jed didn’t want to wait to be married, and he insisted on the next weekend. But Diana wasn’t about to be rushed. This was her only wedding, a day she’d dreamed of since she was a little girl. So although he cajoled and charmed and bullied and did everything in his power to convince her not to wait, they finally reached a compromise, three weeks, and Diana agreed to allow Jed’s mom, Becky, to help.
She had been nervous as hell when she’d met his father, Rodney, who was tall and distinguished, and with his gray hair and his features, he unfortunately resembled Todd. But that was the only similarity. Watching Rodney with his wife, Becky, a short woman with warm brown eyes, Diana could see that the love flowed between them and pulled everyone who was around them into it. She’d instantly liked the woman, who was as different from Faye as a puppy was to a snake. When the day arrived, Jed’s family swooped in: his older brother, Brad, with that same startlingly handsome Friessen build, with his wife Emily and their three children, and Jed’s younger brother, Neil, who was single, devastatingly handsome, and owned a ranch with his father in the Yucatan Peninsula. Well, Diana couldn’t help being swept into this unusually close family, who fought and loved each other in a way that she’d always known families should.
Now Diana accepted the flowers from Emily, who’d stepped in to be her bridesmaid and was wearing a lovely pink chiffon dress, with soft folds down the back. Diana’s hair was curled and pinned up, looking stunning. But it was when Rodney waited at the front door in a black tux, and with eyes that shone with such love that she couldn’t hold back the tears.
“Diana, words can’t express how happy Becky and I are that you’re going to be part of our family,” he said. “I’m humbled and proud to gain another stunning and loving daughter-in-law. Would you allow me the honor of escorting you down the aisle to my son?”
Her heart was so full that she couldn’t trust her voice, so she could only nod as she furiously blinked back tears and accepted his arm and his support, as he escorted her outside into Jed’s yard, which had been transformed overnight into a garden paradise. He led her to Jed and the minister who presided over them, a graying, portly man dressed in a white shirt and collar and a black coat, as all ministers did. She was aware, and grateful, of the fact that Todd and Andy would not be present.
“By the powers vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife,” the minister announced proudly.
Diana searched out her husband’s dark eyes, his neatly slicked-back hair, his wide shoulders so finely outfitted in his own black tux. He cleaned up so nicely. He didn’t smile, but sought her out with those amazing dark eyes, the same way he did whenever she entered a room, an instant tug on her heart. The intensity of desire he could arouse from a glance, a touch, the scent of him could scatter all intelligent thought from her mind, as she struggled for one reasonable breath. That one glance told her that she was everything to him.
“You may kiss the bride.”
That was all Diana heard as Jed lowered his head and kissed her to the whoops and shouts and thunderous applause of Jed’s family and their friends from North Lakewood.
The Search
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