The Bride Said, 'Finally!'. Cathy Thacker Gillen

and French beans. “When Alex was younger, she didn’t seem to mind the fact that her mother lived in Europe and rarely jetted over to see her.” Jake filled the plates and brought them over, one at a time. He sat down opposite Jenna and dug in. “The truth is, even when we were still married, when Alex was a baby, Melinda never paid much attention to her. So when Melinda moved out—well, Alex couldn’t miss what she’d never had. I wasn’t about to leave her home alone. And though my parents would have taken her, that wasn’t an option, either. I didn’t want Alex adopting some of their snobbish attitudes. So she traveled with me on business. Everywhere I went, Alex went—with Clara usually coming along and doubling as driver and nanny, depending on what I needed at that moment.”

      Jenna regarded Jake with the inherent kindness that was so much a part of her personality. “And Alex was happy with the arrangement?”

      “Very.” Jake exhaled. “But when she went to school this past fall and all the other kids in her kindergarten class had moms fussing over them and picking out their clothes, it hit her hard. And suddenly, she just started refusing to wear dresses—not that she’d ever really liked them. But at least when I needed her to brush her hair and wear a dress so I could take her to some fancy restaurant, I could get her to do so.”

      “But no more?” Jenna guessed, as the CD player switched from a Trisha Yearwood album to one of Garth Brooks’s.

      “No more. I guess Alex figured if she couldn’t be like everyone else and have a mom and a dad living at home with her, she’d just be different. And that was when Alex went full-bore into this tomboy stage. I thought it was a phase and just didn’t push it. But now Melinda has heard about Alex’s increasingly disheveled appearance from mutual friends. She’s embarrassed, upset. Thinks it reflects poorly on her. Next thing I know she’s threatening to sue for custody and planning to leave Italy—where she’s been living the past couple of years—for good.”

      Jenna looked at him quizzically. “You don’t want Melinda to come back to the States?”

      Jake sighed, knowing it sounded lousy of him, but also knowing if he was going to drag Jenna into the middle of this mess, he owed her the plain, unvarnished truth. “If I thought it would do Alex some good,” Jake hedged. “If I thought Melinda would be any kind of loving mother, or positive influence in Alex’s life, I’d be lobbying for it in a red-hot minute.”

      Jenna’s eyes softened compassionately. “But you don’t think that’d be the case.”

      Jake sighed. “Bottom line, Melinda doesn’t have a maternal bone in her entire body. She cares about money and appearances and finding another husband whose only goal in life is to make her happy, and that’s it.”

      “So in coming to me you’re trying to head Melinda off at the pass.”

      Jake nodded, more sure than ever now—from Jenna’s sympathetic reaction to his dilemma—that he had been right to come to her. “Unfortunately, clothes aren’t all she needs.” Jake looked at Jenna seriously. “Alex needs a crash course in being a lady before her mom gets back.”

      Jenna made a face, no longer quite as eager to help out or get involved. She went back to polishing off her redfish. “Can’t you get your mother to help with that?”

      Jake shook his head, knowing that as much as he loved his mother, and he did, that she was long on lecturing and interfering and short on patience. “My mother is not the one for the job,” he said firmly. “You are.”

      Jenna looked at him as though he had lost his mind. Finished with her entrée, she got up to see what else was on the side table. Jake stood up, too.

      “Think of it this way,” he said as Jenna helped herself to very small slivers of chocolate cake, praline cheesecake and warm peach-and-blueberry cobbler. “You’d be doing something for me I desperately need.” Jake settled on just the chocolate cake. “I’d be doing something for you that you desperately need. We’d be helping each other.”

      They returned to the table in silence. Jenna shook her head in silent censure, even as she enjoyed her dessert. “After the way you treated me—” she said, as if unable to believe his gall.

      Tired of taking all the heat for what had happened between them, Jake angled a thumb at his chest. “Hey! I’m not the one who got cold feet and refused to elope at the last minute!” In fact, he still felt if Jenna had just gone off with him then, they would be married today.

      Jenna rolled her eyes as she got herself a cup of coffee. “We were caught, suitcases in hand, by your parents!”

      Jake discounted that with a shrug. “We still could have gotten away,” he said levelly, pouring his own cup of coffee. “What would they have done? Chased after us?” He mocked her with a lift of his brow. “I don’t think so. That’s way too undignified for my folks.”

      As for the rest of the complications, they had thought about everything. Jenna was underage, but she was also just a couple of weeks away from her birthday. As long as she went willingly with Jake, and they didn’t cross any state lines, and waited until Jenna was legally of age to actually consummate the marriage, then they wouldn’t be breaking any laws. Of course, if they married without the permission of her guardian their marriage would have been technically invalid. But they had that covered, too, deciding if they just waited until after Jenna’s birthday to return to Laramie that no one would kick up a fuss about what was more or less a “done deal” for nearly three weeks. They recognized that his family’s lawyers could easily take care of any legalities, even if it meant another quickie ceremony.

      Jenna sighed. “Okay, so maybe there wouldn’t have been a car chase or some big scene at the justice of the peace, even if your parents had managed to figure out exactly where we were going as well as physically head us off before we got there.” She waved a lecturing finger beneath his nose. “But your folks still would have tried to convince you to have our marriage annulled when we returned and my big sister probably would have done the same thing.”

      “So what?” Jake argued right back. “If we had already been married, a baby potentially on the way, my parents and Meg both would have backed off, if only to avoid an even bigger scandal than just us running off and getting married.” He knew Meg. She cared about Jenna and wanted her to be happy. And he knew his folks. No way would they want any grandchild of theirs born out of wedlock, or Jake taking advantage of a young innocent girl. In fact, it was their training on that fact that had kept Jake from ever making love to Jenna in their younger days. Even at the very end, when she’d been willing, he had insisted on waiting until they were actually married. And, truth to tell, as much as he still wanted to make love to her, he still didn’t lament that fact. He was glad he had treated Jenna with respect, glad they had waited until they were old enough and or the time was right. The truth was, as much as they had wanted to be married then, they hadn’t been ready for it.

      “Your parents didn’t approve of me, Jake. Not from day one. They didn’t even want us being friends.” She looked at him steadily, all the hurt she had felt, then and now, in her clear blue eyes. “Over the long haul, a marriage between us never would have worked and you know it.”

      Jake reached across the table and covered Jenna’s hand with his own. “All I know is that we let our relationship go,” he confessed huskily, “and I’ve spent every day since regretting it.” He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life the same way, and if he were right in his assessment of her feelings, Jenna didn’t, either.

      Jenna jerked her hand from his. She pushed away from the table angrily and vaulted to her feet. “If that were true, you would have come after me then. You would have called, tried to see me. Something. Anything—”

      Remembering how miserable they both had been, Jake pushed to his feet, too. “I wanted to,” he said roughly, going after her.

      “Then why didn’t you?” Jenna squared off with him, tears glistening in her eyes.

      Jake clasped her shoulders. “Because I couldn’t,” he told her with a weariness that came straight from his