Home of Her Heart (Hearts of the War Book 2) Page 9

  Emotionally astounded at her confession of love, the miracle of it made him want to linger in the moment, bask in the glory of it, but he didn’t have time. If he didn’t get on with what he needed to say, he’d never get the words out. He kissed her forehead and pushed her back.

  Before he changed his mind, he lifted the velvet ring box and pushed open the lid, revealing a round diamond deeply set into a wide white-gold band. Lover’s knots embossed the circumference of the ring with the ends creating two hearts that surrounded the diamond.

  “Oh, Klayne! It’s gorgeous!” Delaney started to reach for the ring, then yanked her hand back and stared at him.

  Klayne lifted the ring from the box and took her left hand in his, sliding the ring down her slender finger. He’d guessed well on the size because it fit perfectly. “I have no right to ask this Delaney Danvers, but would you marry me? Would you give me someone to leave behind, someone who’ll remember me when I’m gone? I’m not asking for more than a marriage on paper so you’ll receive the benefits when I’m dead. Honestly, that’s all I’m asking of you. I don’t expect a single thing from you, other than to give me the comfort of knowing I won’t die completely forgotten.”

  Chapter Seven

  Delaney gazed at the ring, holding it up so it caught the afternoon sun streaming in the window behind her. A sunbeam refracted in the diamond, sending splinters of luminescent light dancing on the wall near the fireplace. She released a long breath then pinned Klayne with an angry glare.

  “How could you? How could you buy the most perfect ring I’ve ever clapped my eyes on and ask to marry me with such a pathetic, stupid, horrid proposal. No, I won’t marry you just so you can go off and get yourself killed. Don’t be an idiot!” The length of several heartbeats passed as she glared at him. His eager look of expectation wilted into one of wounded surprise.

  Finally, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek, softening her harsh tone. “If you can come up with a better, more compelling, convincing reason for me to marry you, I might change my answer.”

  Immediately, Klayne dropped to one knee and took her hand in his, kissing the ring he’d slid onto her finger. “Delaney, from the moment I set eyes on you, you’ve captivated me. I’ve never met a woman like you. You’re determined and stubborn and full of sass, but you’re also exciting and beautiful, and so smart. You can fill a room with the vibrancy of your presence not to mention how thoroughly you fill my heart with your smile. Would you do me the great honor of becoming my wife? I love you and would do anything in my power to make you happy. I can’t promise you anything at all, except my heart for as long as I live, which may very well be a short time into the future.”

  “That’s much better,” she said. Ever pragmatic and sensible, she nodded in agreement. “I’ll take it.” Delaney wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a tight hug before pulling back. “Now, Sergeant Campbell, that’s how you propose if you want a woman to say yes.” She tugged on his hand. “Come on up here and properly kiss the girl you plan to wed.”

  Klayne swept her into his arms and settled back on the sofa with her across his lap. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He poured all the love he wanted to give her into that kiss and freely accepted what she offered in return. After several bone-melting kisses, they stopped to catch their breath. Delaney rested her forehead against his chin. “Wow, Klayne. That was… I don’t have words for that, but I’d like to do it again.”

  “Me, too, sweetheart, but I think you should know two things before we proceed.” Klayne kissed her nose and leaned back.

  Curious, she gazed up at him. “And those two things are?”

  “First, is that I truly do love you and think you’re an amazing, incredible woman.”

  She blushed. “Thank you, kind sir. I love you, too. As my nephew might say, I think you’re the bee’s knees.”

  He grinned then sobered. “The second thing is that I really will only marry you on paper. I can’t and won’t ask more of you than that.”

  The elation she’d felt since he said he loved her slipped into annoyed frustration. “We’ll discuss the particulars later. Do you have to be back at the base soon?”

  “Nope, I’ve got all day to spend with you.”

  She grinned and pecked his cheek again. “Then let’s make the most of it.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Klayne set her on her feet and stood. “I know it’s sudden and we might not even be able to make it happen, but would you marry me today?”

  Emotions flicked over her features, as though she processed his request. Surprise, consideration, doubt, then accord.

  Resolute, she nodded. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Just give me a few minutes to comb my hair and change and then I’ll be ready to go.” She moved toward the doorway. “It’s too bad Dad isn’t here. I hate to do this without him.”

  Klayne looked dismayed. “I planned to ask your father’s permission and all that, but I hope you’ll explain to him the extenuating circumstances.”

  Delaney waved a dismissive hand his direction. “Don’t worry about it. Dad will understand. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Would you please call the courthouse and see if Judge Rawlings is available today. If so, ask for an appointment to see him. He’ll do the ceremony for us.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Klayne headed toward the phone in the kitchen while Delaney raced upstairs.

  He thought she’d looked beautiful before, but fifteen minutes later when she floated down the stairs wearing an airy white dress with her hair pinned up on her head, his mouth fell open in awed astonishment.

  “Gosh, Delaney, you look… I don’t even know words, honey. You’re… enchanting and completely glorious.” He strode over to her and watched twin blossoms turn her cheeks pink.

  “I wore this dress to a summer party two years ago. It might not be the best thing to wear in the middle of the winter, but since it’s white and elegant, it seemed like it would work for a wedding dress.” Self-consciously, she brushed at the lace overlay of her skirt. Round, puffed shoulders gave way to gathered sleeves while white silk-covered buttons marched up the front of the bodice to a sweetheart neckline.

  “You take my breath away,” he said, brushing his lips over hers before enfolding her in a tender embrace. “Thank you for being willing to marry me.”

  “Thank you for asking.” She pulled back and studied him. “Did you get an appointment with the judge?”

  “I did,” Klayne said, holding Delaney’s coat as she slipped her arms in the sleeves. “We need to be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Then we better shake a leg,” she said, grabbing his hand after he pulled on his coat and leading him back through the house to the front door.

  It wasn’t until they started down the porch steps that he noticed Delaney wore a pair of fashionable heels. She certainly couldn’t walk through the snow in them, so he carried her out to his borrowed car, settling her on the front seat.

  He closed the door, jogged around, and slid behind the wheel while she pinned a smart white hat on her head.

  “I have some questions I’m going to ask and I want you to answer them,” she said, giving him a look that said she wouldn’t tolerate any evasive replies or nonsense.

  “Ask away.” He glanced her direction then shifted his gaze back to the road.

  “Have you been married before?”

  Taken aback by the question, he gave her an honest answer. “No. I haven’t. I’ve never met a girl I liked that well.”

  “Good. And you don’t have any children?”

  Shocked, he whipped his head around and glowered at her. “No! Of course not! What kind of questions is that, for Pete’s sake?”

  “Well, I know sometimes men don’t… especially those who… well, don’t they um…” Delaney stammered. Abruptly, she changed the subject. “What’s your middle name?”

  “Thomas.” He looked to her again. “What’s yours?”

  “Marie. It was my grandmother’s name.�
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  “Delaney Marie,” Klayne said with an approving nod. “I like it.”

  “Thank you. I like it, too.” She glanced out the window at snow covering the countryside then back at him. “Do you really not know anything about your parents?”

  Klayne shrugged, hesitant to tell her what he did know, but compelled to share the truth. Since she had agreed to marry him, she deserved that much. “Remember I told you I broke into the office at the orphanage and read my file?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I didn’t tell you was that every orphanage I was in, they treated me like the lowest kind of scum. I didn’t know why. Sometimes I’d try to be real good, obey every order and rule, but it was always the same whether I was angelic or acted like a little devil. They treated me like I was nothing.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She placed her hand on his leg and gave it a gentle pat.

  He wondered if she had any idea what her simple touch did to him, the fire it ignited in his veins. Purposely ignoring it, he continued. “The file I found that day had a list of orphanages where I’d lived and places I’d been picked up.” He waggled his eyebrow and tossed her a rascally, boyish grin. “I escaped fairly regularly and made my way to a new town quite often. Anyway, I did find a record of my birth. I was born April 19, 1912, in Guymon, Oklahoma. My father’s name was listed as C. Campbell with a question mark behind it. My mother’s name was Francine Thomas.”

  Klayne sighed and stared out the window, watching horses in a fenced pasture run through the snow. “I took that slip of paper and saved it. When I was thirteen, I ran away from yet another orphanage and made my way to Guymon, determined to find one of my parents.”

  Delaney sat wide-eyed, waiting for him to continue. “Did you find them?”

  “In a way,” Klayne said, hating to divulge more, but felt compelled to tell her everything. This conversation would go down as the worst pre-wedding chat in the history of marriages. Then again, nothing about this marriage was typical. “I asked around town if anyone knew a Francine Thomas. I discovered that Francine was known as a… well, she was a…” Klayne glanced at Delaney. Despite her tendency to be bold and speak her mind, sweet innocence rested on her face as she waited for him to continue. He forced out the words. “She was like one of the girls at Miss Clementine’s. She worked in a, um… well, she had a business in a nearby town. A drunken customer strangled her to death in 1913.”

  “Oh, golly, Klayne. That’s horrible!”

  “I went to the local newspaper office and read the article they’d published. The man who killed her was Carl Campbell. I can only assume he was my father.” A short, derisive laugh escaped him. “It’s no wonder all those people at the orphanages treated me like garbage. It’s basically what I was, what I am. Born from a killer and a…”

  “Don’t say it!” Delaney clapped her hand over his mouth, then gave him an admonishing look. “I don’t care who gave birth to you, it’s who you are now that matters. You’re a good, kind, honorable man. One I’m proud to know and pleased to love.”

  The words she said winged their way to his heart. Tenderly, he kissed her fingers. “And I’m proud to know you, Delaney. You’re smart and lovely, sassy and silly, and perfectly wonderful.”

  Eager to know more about him, Delaney shifted the conversation. “How’d you end up in the army?”

  “After I left Oklahoma, I ran into another kid with a story similar to mine. His name was Billy. We were close to the same age and both determined we wouldn’t end up in another orphanage. Together, we rode the rails, worked whenever anyone would hire us, and made do the rest of the time.”

  Delaney’s eyebrow hiked upward. “Made do? What’s that mean?”

  “Well, sometimes we were so hungry and desperate that we’d sneak into a henhouse after dark and steal a bunch of eggs. Since we didn’t have a way to cook them, we’d just eat them raw.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “And that’s why you said raw eggs are on the list of things you don’t like to eat.”

  “Yep. I can’t even stand the sight of a cooked egg with a runny yolk.” He offered her an exaggerated grimace. “One winter, we hunkered down in an abandoned warehouse. There was a bin of turnips there. We assumed someone forgot to ship them, so we supplemented our meager diets with those. If I never eat another one, it will be too soon.”

  She laughed and lifted a hand in the air, as though making a solemn vow. “I promise I will never feed you turnips, okra, or raw eggs.”

  “Thank you. See, you already sound like a loving, devoted wife,” he teased.

  “I really will do my best, Klayne.” Her eyes shimmered with emotion. “And I should probably admit that I have a terrible temper, I sometimes speak before I think, and I have opinions on everything.”

  He laughed. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  She feigned affront, then wrapped her hands around his arm, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “How long did you and Billy stay together?”

  “A long while. Billy and I worked our way to California. When we ran out of jobs there, we decided to try our hands at being cowboys. We made it as far as Kansas before we got kicked off a train we’d jumped and spent a few months working in the area on a ranch.” He gave her a playful wink. “I’m not as hopeless with cattle and horses as you might think. Anyway, the rancher was kind and treated us well, but after the fall work was completed, he didn’t have anything for us to do, so we decided to spend the winter someplace warm. We made it to Florida and spent a year working there doing odd jobs.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Billy and I had been down on our luck. We hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks and were living on the streets. One day, we were walking past a building and saw a sign about joining the U.S. Army. With nothing better to do, we went inside and listened to what the man had to say. It took all of five minutes for us to decide anything had to be better than our current situation, so we enlisted. Turns out all those years of living in orphanages, following orders and feeling insignificant, made it easy for us to adjust to Army life. Billy and I both enjoyed it. We never went hungry, always had nice, warm clothes to wear, and a little money to jingle in our pockets.”

  “Is Billy here in Pendleton, too?” Delaney asked, looking forward to meeting someone Klayne clearly thought of quite highly.

  Klayne grew quiet, shaking his head. “No. Billy died three years ago. The plane he was riding in crashed. Everyone died. Billy was the only real friend I’ve ever had and I miss him every day.”

  “Oh, Klayne, I’m so sorry. Losing him must have been like losing a brother.” Delaney leaned her head against his shoulder and sighed. “If anything happened to Mac, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Then we better hope he comes home safe to you and his little family,” Klayne said, giving her an encouraging smile. He cleared his throat and lifted her left hand in his, caressing the backs of her fingers. “This is a terrible conversation to have on our way to get married.”

  Delaney laughed. “Well, it’s certainly nothing like I pictured.”

  Klayne frowned. “I’m sorry, Delaney. I should have realized you probably would want flowers and a big wedding with a long dress, although that one is beautiful, and…”

  She shook her head. “No, Klayne. When I thought about getting married, I always pictured it in our backyard with just those who mean the most to me there. I wouldn’t know what to do with a big, fancy wedding.” Her head settled back against his shoulder. “In fact, this seems just right.”

  “Thanks for being a good sport.” He blew out a long breath. “I couldn’t eat breakfast or lunch because I was so nervous, trying to think of the best way to ask you to do this.” He cast a quick glimpse her way as they drove into the outskirts of Pendleton. “I appreciate you being willing to marry me, Delaney, even if it is in name only. It means the world to me to be able to leave something behind for someone who really cares.”

  She gave him an observant glance fo
llowed by a saucy grin. “I do care, Klayne. In fact, I probably would have said yes to your proposal even if all you’d done is said you loved me.”

  His eyes widened in astonishment as he turned down a street and parked near the courthouse. He jogged around the car and opened her door, giving her a hand as she climbed out. He held onto her fingers as they started down the sidewalk, then gave her an apologetic look and ran back to the car. From the backseat, he lifted a large brown paper sack and handed it to her with a sheepish grin.

  She opened the bag and gasped, surprised to see a small bouquet of pink and red carnations.

  “It’s not much, but every bride should have a bouquet,” he said as she glanced from the bouquet to him and back at the flowers.

  “It’s wonderful, Klayne. Thank you!” she wrapped her arms around his neck and give him a tight hug before twining their fingers together and tugging him across the street and up the steps of the imposing brick building.

  Inside, she tossed away the bag that kept the cold air off the flowers, led them down a hall, and up another flight of steps.

  At an open door halfway down another hall, she stepped inside.

  “Hi, Betty. We have an appointment to see Judge Rawlings.” Delaney spoke to a woman seated at an old oak desk that took up a large portion of the room. A foot-high stack of papers sat on one corner of her desk while a pile of file folders with slips of paper, notes, and photographs spilling out in disarray occupied the other corner.

  The woman glanced up with a wooden smile. “I didn’t realize the appointment was for you, Dee. How come no one knows about this young man of yours?”

  Delaney turned to wink at Klayne although she spoke to the woman. “Would you want to share him?”

  Betty gave Klayne a thorough perusal that left him feeling a bit ill at ease before she rose to her feet. “I certainly would not want to share him. In fact, you best keep this one under lock and key.” She pointed to three chairs pushed against the wall by the door. “Have a seat. I’ll see if the judge is ready for you.”