“Blame the General.” He shifted to insert himself between her and the door. “He ordered me to marry you, not take you to the movies.”
“Is that what this is about? The General? What if I don’t want to marry you? Will he send me packing?” Wye stared up at him.
“You don’t want to marry me?” He folded his arms over his chest, bracing himself for her answer.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She tried once more to reach around him for the doorknob, but as the front of her hoopskirt pressed against his legs, the back of it tilted up again. “This stupid dress!” She retreated, her color high, and Emerson noticed she hadn’t answered his question. Did that mean there was hope?
“So you don’t want to marry me today,” he clarified. “I’ll let the General know, but I’m pretty sure I can guess his next question.”
“What would that be?” Wye snapped. He could tell she was trying to figure out how to get to the doorknob without sending the back of her skirt upward again. He sent a silent thank-you to Alice for picking such an impractical style.
“When will you want to marry me?” He ducked when she shoved him. “Hey, you can’t blame me for asking, can you? Like I said, I like you, Wyoming Smith, and more to the point, I have my orders. If I defy my superior officer, I could be court martialed.”
“I don’t think so.” She crossed her arms, shivering a little. He’d better get her inside soon, but first he wanted an answer.
“Think of it as me serving notice of my intentions,” he said placatingly. “We can take as long as we want to get to the altar, but at some point we have to get there.” He nearly smiled at her incredulous expression. He had a feeling Wye had pegged him as someone as practical as she was, and this outrageous proposal had thrown her for a loop. He figured he might as well make the most of his advantage. “So pick a date,” he said. “It’ll make everyone happy—me especially—and it’ll get the General off our backs.”
Wye snorted in a decidedly unladylike manner. “That’s the problem with men in a nutshell, isn’t it? They’re always on your back. They don’t really want a partner in life; they want a servant.”
“Hold on, wait a minute, that’s not true at all.” Emerson straightened up. He wasn’t going to let her tar him with that brush.
“Isn’t it?” she demanded. “If I became your wife, you’d expect me to cook and clean, take care of the kids, wash your laundry, iron your uniform—” Those were the kind of things her mother had done before she took off for greener pastures. That’s what she’d done for her father for years once Randi was gone. Those years of caring for her father and brother had given her some insight into why her mother would take off the way she had. Her father never did have any respect for women’s work, as he called it.
“No, I wouldn’t.” Emerson took Wye’s hands, which were ice cold, and began to chafe them to warm them up. He really did need to get her back inside. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but no one’s taking care of me now, and they haven’t in a hell of a long time. I’m the one playing nursemaid to the General, and I don’t mind it one bit because he’s a man who deserves respect—and help. I don’t want you to be my mother, Wye. I want something entirely different. You can name the date any time you’re ready, if that’s all that’s holding you back.”
She jutted out her chin. “That’s not what’s holding me back, and you know it. I’m not like Cass or Alice or any of the others. You can’t just arrive here and whisk me off to the altar and expect it to turn out all happily ever after. Things like that don’t happen to people like me.”
“Why not?”
“They just don’t.”
“You think Cass and her sisters have some kind of lock on romance?”
“You know what I mean.”
He hated that he did. Wanted badly to make Wye believe she deserved a fairy-tale ending as much as her friend did. Her words struck home, though. He wasn’t the kind of person happily-ever-afters happened to, either. “So we won’t marry in December or January,” he joked lightly, wishing he knew how to tell her he wanted to fight for a better future for both of them. “How about Valentine’s Day?”
“You are pushing your luck, soldier.” She yanked her hands away from his.
Time to change tactics. Jokes weren’t working.
He reached for her hands again. Ran his thumbs over her soft skin. “I know you don’t love me yet, and I know I’m going about this all wrong, but you know what the General is like. He was adamant I had to tell you tonight that he’d ordered us to wed, and if I hadn’t, he would have been impossible. You don’t want him to cause a scene at Alice’s wedding, do you?”
Wye rolled her eyes, but she softened a little, too. “No, of course not.”
“I’ve said my piece, and we can move forward. I want that, you know—to move forward in getting to know you. And not because the General told me to.”
“Move forward in what way?”
“Dating. Spending time together. Seeing what this is between us.” He wondered if she’d deny something was. “Do you think we could do that?”
“I… guess.”
Emerson couldn’t help smiling. Now they were in business. “I can be as patient as you need me to be. I could even wait until St. Patrick’s Day for that wedding.”
“You’re impossible.” Wye shook her head, but a little smile tugged at her lips.
“Memorial Day? The summer solstice?”
“Emerson!”
“July Fourth it is,” He backed up when she took another swipe at him. “Seems like a fitting time to marry a soldier, don’t you think?”
“You know what? That’s it,” Wye said. She shoved him aside, pushed the door open and escaped into the front hall, but just as Emerson cursed himself for going too far, she reappeared with their winter coats in her arms. “Come on.” She tugged him right off the front steps, her hoopskirt trailing in the snow as she set off around the house, pulling on her coat as she went.
“Where are we going?” Emerson asked, shrugging into his own and then wincing when he came down hard on his ankle on the uneven ground while hurrying to keep up. The last thing he wanted was for Wye to notice his limp.
“To the maze. We’re going to settle this right now.”
Hell. Emerson tried to slow his steps, but Wyoming was nothing if not determined, and she dragged him right around to the back of the house, across the yard past Sadie’s snow-covered garden to the hedge maze. He gave up fighting. The tall hedges loomed far above their heads, and when they entered the maze, they plunged into a gloom that was hard to penetrate despite the moonlit night.
Emerson had walked these passages a number of times, but that didn’t stop the tickle of uneasiness that danced across the back of his neck. Like Wyoming had said, Two Willows was a place where strange things happened, and the maze was one of the ranch’s most uncanny features. At least she’d slowed a little in the darkness and he could keep up without reinjuring himself.