The Gift-Wrapped Groom Read online

  Noel raised her hand, halting the minister. “Excuse me, but Nicholas and I have prepared our own vows.”

  “Uh-oh,” Winsome muttered.

  Noel turned to face Nicholas, her voice clear and resonant.

  “I, Noel Winsome, take you, Nicholas Baranov, to be my lawfully wedded husband, promising always to serve you the right amount of pepper in your vodka, to never borrow your good boots without permission and to faithfully brush your yak each and every day for as long as we are married.”

  Absolute stunned silence struck the hall. All eyes flashed quickly to the groom.

  “And I, Nicholas Baranov, take you, Noel Winsome, to be my lawfully wedded wife, promising to always replace the cap on the toothpaste, to always share at least half the blankets on the bed and to faithfully program the VCR for as long as we are married.”

  Winsome groaned. Muffled giggles began to erupt throughout the room. The minister’s mouth cut into a quirky smile. “Some...interesting choices. Do you have the ring?”

  Nicholas took it out of his pocket and slipped it on Noel’s finger.

  “Is there anything else you wish to say to each other?” the minister asked.

  “No,” they chorused.

  “Then I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

  From the flush beginning to make its way into Noel’s cheeks, Winsome guessed that this was one part of the ceremony these two had not rehearsed. He eagerly watched to see what would happen.

  They stood there a moment looking into each other’s eyes and Winsome’s hope grew. Then slowly, Nicholas leaned forward to stamp a gentle, firm kiss at the very top of Noel’s forehead. Her eyes brightened in approval as she slipped her arm through his. Together, they turned to walk back down the aisle, the photographer scrambling to snap pictures, the guitarist and flutist hurrying to accompany them.

  The audience’s amused grins followed their every footstep. Winsome shook his head. A grandfather’s lot was not an easy one.

  * * *

  NICHOLAS LOOKED around the elegant home of his grandfather-in-law in stunned surprise, staring at all the beautiful decorations that had suddenly appeared everywhere and inhaling the wonderful smells coming from long tables filled with food.

  Rough-hewn people with calluses on their hands and wool and cotton on their backs milled around the enormous room, among the expensive brocade drapes, fine furnishings, porcelain plates and silver dishes—all seemingly oblivious to the surroundings, focusing on one another and looking happy just to be a part of this thing called a reception.

  Every few minutes, Nicholas felt a mild punch in the arm or a clap on the back followed by the hearty congratulations of some stranger wearing a smile. A couple of hefty women treated him to hugs and a few tears with their version of good wishes.

  She stood beside him in that lovely dress, her glorious hair full around her shoulders, her cheeks slightly flushed, her eyes steady and cool. She was more beautiful than any woman, than anything, he had ever seen.

  Then to Nicholas’s continuing surprise, tuxedo-clad musicians in one corner began to play a light waltz.

  “Dance with your bride, Nicholas,” he heard his grandfather-in-law say.

  He led Noel to the center of the room, and carefully circled his right hand to the middle of her back, feeling her warmth wrapped in white satin. He netted her hand with his left and inhaled, finding himself suddenly filled with her sweet scent. He eased her into their first steps of the waltz.

  He thought he would be rusty. It had been so long since he had danced. But he found that his body had not forgotten the movements. It easily established an instant synergy with the sweet music. He thought that she would be awkward, needing time to become familiar with his moves. But she glided gracefully with him from the very first step, responding to the slightest signals from his hands.

  Their first sweep of the room rushed by as quickly as his breath. Nicholas drank in the music’s buoyancy and lightness of spirit. Growing energy and enthusiasm flowed through him with each subsequent sweep. It had been such a long time, he’d forgotten how good it felt to dance. And having this beautiful woman as his partner, a woman whose hand lay captured in his, whose body moved at his every direction, proved heady indeed. The rest of the room blurred. Only she remained in focus. Only her cool face fanned by the flames of her flying hair.

  “Aw, play some real music,” a male voice finally yelled. “Something the rest of us can dance to.”

  The beautiful waltz faded to the mournful close of a single, lonely violin note. Nicholas swung to a stop with more than a little disappointment.

  Winsome approached, looking like a messenger with unwelcome news. “Sorry, son. Afraid this crowd doesn’t take much to waltzing.”

  Nicholas nodded, understanding that Winsome must have arranged this waltz just for his benefit. His claim to know of Nicholas’s past bore truth through this gesture. Winsome had been most considerate. Nicholas should not be greedy for more. He was in a new culture with new people. He should learn what they enjoyed. But it was with reluctance that he released Noel and stepped aside.

  She disappeared quickly into the crowd that began to take the floor as a far different tune spun up from the orchestra.

  The music blared loud and strange into Nicholas’s ears. Nothing like the sweet waltz. The long, luxuriant notes of the violins shortened to fast, stubby notations. One of the musicians even began to stomp his foot, as though it had fallen asleep and he was trying to awaken it.

  Another musician stepped up to the microphone. Nicholas thought he meant to sing. But, instead, he seemed to be grieving an “achy breaky” heart. Couples young and old, tall and short, stout and thin, began dancing to the beat of this mournful lament.

  A tall, skinny man in a cowboy hat and boots took off his hat and yelled quite happily at intervals, seemingly without provocation. His partner deserted him for the sidelines, where she stood barefoot, a beaming smile on her face and a glass of champagne in her hand.

  Children ran through the room, shouting and shooting at one another with plastic pistols. Several couples, young and old, cuddled in dark corners, holding hands and sometimes even kissing sweetly as they listened to the music and watched the dancing. One lady’s nylons had unrolled to her ankles. She sat unconcerned on a lemon-brocade chair, her bare legs crossed at the ankles, her cheeks red. She seemed enormously content to just be bouncing a dribbling two-year-old on her knee, gossiping simultaneously with four other ladies around the table and helping herself to tiny chicken legs in warm brown sauce simmering next to her in a silver dish.

  Everyone around him seemed to be talking, eating, dancing, drinking and cavorting in a chaotic wave of happy, nonstop confusion.

  They were not what he expected at all, these Americans. Change the music, add some borscht to the table, put some vodka in the champagne glasses, and this could be a Russian celebration. Dr. Nicholas Baranov was beginning to think he might get to like these Montana men and women, after all.

  But as fascinated as he was to be watching these surprisingly likable natives in their natural habitat, he was even more fascinated with watching Noel. His eyes searched the room until they found her. She was handing her wedding bouquet to a very tall, statuesque brunette, who Nicholas might have thought attractive, if she had not been standing next to Noel.

  All woman paled next to his bride tonight. Noel’s form was a shining silhouette of gentle curves in the satin and lace of her wedding dress. Her silver-green eyes glowed as she laughed over some shared confidence with the brunette. Her long, red-gold hair streaked across her shoulders and down her back like a flash fire.

  He would never forget the moment he first saw her in that dress, running out onto the back porch of the community center, the sparkling lace like a thousand snowflakes, her hair glowing like a million suns. A vision of ice and fire—stalling the breath in his lungs, bringing that strange intense heat to his hands. Too beautiful to be real.

 
There lay the sad truth. Her beauty was not real, only surface. Real beauty—the beauty of a clear conscience and a loving heart—that was the beauty his Dotnara had possessed. It dwelt so deep beneath her skin, beneath even her bones, that not even her illness had robbed her of it.

  But he could not deny that this other beauty drew his eyes to the face and form of his American bride and never let them tire there. It was that beauty he had had to battle before he could approach her on the back porch of the community center and confess he could not give voice to false pledges.

  But he could also not lie to himself. He had to admit he had been happy to hear her suggest that they do away with those pledges and go through with this marriage. He told himself such happiness was his because he would have a chance to pursue his work, after all.

  But he couldn’t forget how her small waist had felt beneath his hands, how her cool lips had felt on his cheek, how her sweet scent had invaded his senses when he kissed her on the forehead. How her response to his slightest direction on the dance floor had made the rest of the room fade away.

  Suddenly, a hand clapped him on the shoulder, a big, male hand. Unlike the others that had taken similar liberties tonight, this hand laid on unnecessary pressure.

  Nicholas checked his initial desire to react to the feel of that hand, reminding himself he was in a new land, a new culture, playing by new rules. He turned in the direction of the man behind the heavy hand. He found himself eye-to-eye with a burly giant sporting a toothy grin, enormous bushy eyebrows, a prematurely balding head of brown hair and matching eyes. The man’s other paw held a glass, the smell of which was unmistakably whiskey.

  “So, you’re the Russkie our Noel has been keeping such a big secret until now. Peculiar, mighty peculiar that.”

  He paused and Nicholas knew from the expectant gleam in the stranger’s bark-brown eyes beneath those bushy eyebrows that this man was waiting for Nicholas to ask him why it was so “peculiar.”

  Nicholas had no intention of discussing his relationship to Noel with this stranger. He thoroughly resented the impertinent implication that this man thought he would discuss it. His steady black eyes met the brown ones and bored in.

  The silence stretched uncomfortably across the man’s squinty scrutiny. The heavy paw dropped from Nicholas’s shoulder. “Suppose we ought to get the handles exchanged here. Name’s Kurt Haag.”

  Haag’s paw stretched toward him.

  “Nicholas Baranov.”

  He immediately felt the clamminess of the other man’s palm as the fingers closed over his and the big paw deliberately squeezed far harder than necessary.

  A new culture and a new country. But the old rules still seemed to be in play.

  Nicholas had met at least a dozen men like this Kurt Haag, men who liked to use their size, or their authority, to try to intimidate others. There was only one way to deal with such men. He returned the hard squeeze of the clammy hand with an emphasis that made Kurt Haag’s eyes widen and his grip go limp. Only then did Nicholas slacken his hold.

  Haag withdrew his hand, stepped back and began to rub the blood back into his fingers as he gave Nicholas another toothy grin.

  “Well, well. Looks like our little Noel has latched onto a no-backing-down kind of man this time.”

  A no-backing-down kind of man this time?

  “I’m not disappointed, Baranov. Nope, not disappointed at all. That little filly has needed the kind of taming that only a real man could give her. I can see that you’re the take-charge type. I think you and me are going to get along just fine.”

  Nicholas said nothing. He did not like this man. He could not envision “getting along” anywhere with him.

  “I own the Shot in the Heel.”

  Nicholas looked down at the man’s boots. “A recent injury?”

  Haag grunted into what might have been interpreted as a derisory laugh, if Nicholas had chosen to be offended.

  “Well, hell, no mistakin’ you for a Montana man, that’s for sure. Shot in the heel means a drink of whiskey to us folks hereabouts. And I’ve got the best.”

  Nicholas looked up, paying marked attention to Haag’s girth and the nearly full drink in his hand before calmly meeting the mockery in the man’s eyes.

  “I prefer vodka, myself.”

  The burly man was clearly becoming impatient with his inability to make himself understood and more than a bit suspicious that Nicholas might be putting him on.

  “The saloon, Baranov. My saloon is called Shot in the Heel. Only decent drinking hole this side of the Rockies.”

  The word saloon fit snugly and securely in Nicholas’s mind, along with Hollywood movie images of dusty, thirsty men ordering “shots” and frequently shooting others with the six-shooters they kept strapped to their hips.

  “Yep, my place is sort of a valley fixture. Me, too. So, I’ll give it to you straight. See, the situation here in Midwater ain’t what you’ve been told. You being from out of the area...hell, what am I saying? You being from out of the country, it’s a sure bet you ain’t heard the other side of the story yet.”

  Again the expectant gleam. Again Nicholas remained silent.

  Haag’s free hand went to his hip. “Well, you’re sure the least curious man I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s the lingo. Yeah, that’s probably it. Haven’t quite caught on yet, huh? Well, don’t let it throw you. I can translate anything that don’t seem too clear. Now about this gold—”

  “Gold?”

  “Well, yeah, gold. Of course, gold. Don’t tell me the old man hasn’t told you about our streets being paved with gold?”

  “No, this old man hasn’t told Nicholas about the gold, Haag,” William Winsome’s voice cut in with definite irritation.

  Nicholas had been aware of his grandfather-in-law making his way toward them from the other side of the room with a growing scowl on his face. It had erupted full force by the time he stepped forward to stand beside Nicholas, but it was directed at Haag.

  Haag emptied the whiskey in his glass in one enormous gulp, eyeing Winsome uneasily the whole time. He didn’t look happy at Winsome’s sudden appearance. Nicholas got the distinct feeling that Haag had wanted to have this talk he had been pursuing so diligently with him in private.

  Haag was three inches taller, three decades younger and a hundred-and-thirty pounds heftier than Winsome. But as the two men faced each other, Nicholas had the impression they were an even match. A dark look emerged on the fleshier face.

  “So you gonna tell him?”

  “When I’m ready.”

  “Well, tell it to him straight, Winsome, not with any of those highfalutin, sentimental speeches Noel is so fond of making about our precious little village being bulldozed to death.”

  “Noel isn’t the only Winsome who believes in keeping Midwater alive. Perhaps I should start making a few of those highfalutin, sentimental speeches myself.”

  Haag’s face colored quickly. “You ain’t got no business butting in. The Consolidated Mining Consortium don’t need your land. Hasn’t offered you a dime. It has offered me and a lot of other needy families in this valley some major cash to buy ours. Let those who have a stake in the outcome decide what to do. You stay out of it.”

  Haag swung his bulky frame away, lumbering back toward the open bar and another glass of whiskey.

  Nicholas watched as the scowl remained on Winsome’s face.

  “This man forgets his manners in your home, Mr. Winsome. Why do you permit him to stay?”

  Winsome raised the champagne goblet in his hands to his lips and took a small sip.

  “Haag never had any manners to forget. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Nicholas. Under different circumstances, I’d throw him out in a minute. But this is Noel’s reception. Can’t let a confrontation with that cantankerous Haag take away from the meaning of these festivities.”

  Winsome turned to face Nicholas then, his scowl not quite receding. “And as long as we’re on the subject of taking the meaning away from things
, those were some modifications you and Noel made to the marriage ceremony.”

  Nicholas didn’t say anything, just let his eyes once again seek out Noel across the room. He watched as Noel bent down to pick up a tired-looking little girl who’d begun crying. She cradled the child on her hip as she tempted her with a selection of candy from a silver plate. The little girl wiped her eyes and reached for a chocolate.

  “Oh, I don’t blame you,” Winsome went on. “I know it had to have been Noel’s idea. After the few shots at the altar, she even told the photographer to get lost.”

  Nicholas still watched Noel. She had gotten the little girl to laugh and was laughing along with her. He wondered what she had said, how her laugh sounded.

  Winsome exhaled into a tired sigh. “Knew I shouldn’t have let that granddaughter of mine get you alone before the wedding. She’s always been a fast talker. No less dangerous than a fully loaded and cocked six-shooter, when she’s got a mind to be.”

  Nicholas was still watching Noel. Yes, he had seen her fire. Noel as an exploding gun was not too difficult an image to envision.

  The little girl in her arms was still eating chocolate when her mother came to retrieve her. The mother wore a coat and held a small one for her child. Noel set the child on her feet and helped to put on her coat. The little girl stuffed the rest of the chocolate into her mouth. She waved shyly. Noel blew her a kiss, a smile lingering on her lips as she watched mother and daughter head out the door.

  She looked...different with that smile. A difference Nicholas could not immediately identify. A difference that resulted in a skipped beat through both chambers of his heart.

  Noel turned then and locked eyes with Nicholas for one very full, deep breath. Nicholas could feel the heat burgeoning in his hands, that strange heat that her direct stare always seemed to bring to a boil.

  He could tell she was not unaffected by the contact, either. The smile faded from her face, but not the glow from her cheeks. She turned quickly, deliberately away.

  “She’s always been good with kids—children,” Winsome’s voice commented beside Nicholas, full of pointed meaning.