Not that any change in his plans wouldn’t have been startling, but being kidnapped from the jaws of matrimony had thrown him into a particularly strange state of mind. He felt…well, free, for lack of a better word. Free. And very fortunate, as if he’d just been handed a reprieve. That feeling could be nothing more than simple relief that he was here and not face-to-face with his fiancee, attempting to explain the odd sequence of events that had led to his missing the wedding she had planned to perfection.
Of course, Leanne would eventually understand that he had had no choice in the matter. But right now, amidst the rubble of the wedding that hadn’t come off, she would not be in a reasonable or forgiving mood. In fact, he figured that by this time she had cut out his face from every one of her photographs in which he had the audacity to appear. To show her support, Mother Bankston probably had had him blackballed from the country club. His own mother, too, would still be thinking the worst. And his grandfather…well, Grandfather never knew what was going on anyway. As Eliza had so aptly put it, this had not been a banner day.
But Mack was in good spirits. Better spirits, actually, than he’d been in before Eliza had crash-landed in the limousine. Of course, his high spirits could be attributed to any number of things. Surviving a kidnapping was one. Having no bullet holes anywhere in his body was another. Even the fact that he’d been stripped naked in a barn had its humorous side. He doubted he would ever admit that to anyone, except maybe Eliza. She had a sense of humor. And courage. She had that, too.
Wait a minute. He looked around the shadowed barn. Where was she? A few seconds ago she’d been standing right in front of him, chattering nervously, pretending she didn’t mind the awful awkwardness of their situation, keeping her chin high, as if she wasn’t just as embarrassed as he. Now where could she have gone? “Hello?” he said tentatively. “Eliza?”
A cricket chirped in reply. It was clear she was no longer in the barn, so she must have walked outside while he was concentrating on phone numbers and the mood back home.
“Eliza?” he called more forcefully as he moved to the doorway. The moon bathed the countryside in a shaded glow, spreading enough light to reveal that she was not in the immediate vicinity.
A fearful dread struck his heart dead center. What had happened to her? How could she have disappeared so fast? Had Chuck returned and nabbed her the moment she’d left the barn? Had she hurt herself somehow? Where in the hell was she?
“Eliza!” he snapped, and the cricket stopped chirping.
She walked around the near corner of the barn as if taking a stroll in her birthday suit was nothing out of the ordinary. Her head tilted back, she was looking up at the sky, stargazing with the curious expression of a child contemplating the universe. The moonlight cast a soft, luminous glow over her skin, shading the contours of her full breasts, trim waist and long legs, revealing her natural beauty as an artist might in painting her portrait. He swallowed hard and focused his energy on an assumed annoyance rather than a very real attraction. “Eliza,” he said irritably.
At the sound of his voice, she stopped and looked at him with surprise. “Mack. Hi. Were you looking for me?”
“You shouldn’t wander off by yourself.” His tone was gruff, overly intense, and he cleared his throat to soothe it. “It could be dangerous out here.”
“I don’t see how. It’s so quiet. Did you notice? And the stars are so close, I think if I were a little taller, I could grab a whole handful of them.”
Her smile was bright and beguiling, but he refused to give in to it. “Where were you?”
Her smile vanished. “I came outside for a little privacy. You seemed lost in thought and I figured you could use a few minutes by yourself, too.”
“You could have told me you were leaving.”
Her chin rose. “You could have watched me walk out of the barn, if you hadn’t been so busy staring at the wall.”
“I was being courteous and considerate of your feelings.”
“Yes, Mack, I know. And I appreciate what a gentleman you’ve been throughout this whole thing. But I like to look at a person when I’m talking to him and I like for people to look at me when they’re talking to me. And when you look past me instead of at me, it only reminds me of the reason you can’t look at me and—and I wish you’d just stop it.”
He wished he’d stop it, too. What did he find so all-fired appealing about this voluptuous little sprite? Considering all the trouble she’d caused, he shouldn’t have the remotest desire to put his hands anywhere on her, except maybe around her neck. But her neck was slender and pretty, and a man could trail his hand right down…
Catching his gaze before it dropped any lower, he made another effort to recall Leanne’s phone number.
“See? You’re doing it again,” Eliza said, sighing. “Can’t you just pretend we’re visiting a nudist colony?”
What a ridiculous thought that was. “Sorry, but that is beyond my powers of imagination.”
She tipped her head to the side and frowned at him. “You’re lost without a pocket to put your planner in, aren’t you, Mack? Look, will it help if I say that I have no designs on your virtue or your body? Not that it isn’t a great body, you understand. I mean, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look. But I can’t even remember the last time I seduced a man. I’ve completely forgotten how. Even if I knew how, I have a strict rule about seducing married men…and if we hadn’t gotten kidnapped, you would be married, so you can see that you’re completely safe with me. And when this is all over, I will happily explain to Leanne how you behaved like a perfect gentleman.”
“I’m planning to leave out this part of the story.”
“Really?” Her forehead furrowed, showing her confusion. “I don’t see why you would. Knowing you’re a gentleman out of your clothes as well as in them will only strengthen the respect she has for you.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, knowing exactly what kind of respect Leanne would give any such explanation…if he was idiot enough to offer it. Or worse, if Eliza tried to do so. “Let’s just concentrate our energy on getting home safely, shall we?”
“Oh, Mack, I forgot!” Her eyes widened with excitement. “You’re never going to believe what I found. I was coming to tell you when you walked out. Come over here. You have to see this.”
He started forward, thinking rescue was just around the corner, wondering how she could have forgotten to tell him immediately. “A house?” he guessed. “A car? Clothes?”
“A haystack.”
He stopped walking. “A haystack?”
“Yes. Can you believe it? Not a bale of hay anywhere in the barn, but there’s a whole haystack right out there in the field. I’ve never seen one, except in movies. With the moon shining on it, it looks like a big, gold thimble.”
“A haystack,” he repeated.
She pursed her lips. “Oh, come on, Mack. There’s no need to act so incredulous. I just want you to see it.”
“Eliza, we’ve been kidnapped, stripped and left in the middle of nowhere. At this moment, I’d be glad to see almost anything except a haystack. Now, I am going for help and I don’t want to have to worry about you getting snared up in a barbed-wire fence while I’m gone. So, please, go back inside the barn and wait for me.”
“A snowman,” she said, confidently nodding. “I bet you wouldn’t be glad to see one of those at this moment.”
He stared at her, wondering how she could be lost, naked and cheerful all at the same time. “You’re right. If I had to choose between a snowman and a haystack, the hay would win hands down. Now, will you go back inside the barn?”
She balanced on one foot and rubbed the back of her calf with her toes. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on, Eliza. You can’t go wandering all over the countryside. Not…like that.”
“Like what?”
He recognized the flash of contrariness in the faint lift of her chin. “You cannot wander around out here without any clothes on.�
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“Why not? You are.”
“I am going for help.”
“And I am going to get a closer look at the haystack.” She took a step backward while offering him a persuasive smile. “Who knows when I’ll ever be in western Kansas again? And it’s a nice, warm night. The moon is out. And since we have to cut across the field to go for help anyway, we can stop to look at the haystack on our way.”
Her logic exhausted him. “The road is in that direction.” He pointed the other way. “And that silly haystack is not on our way anywhere. Now, here’s how this is going to work. You will stay in the barn. I will go for help. Period. End of discussion.”
“End of discussion,” she repeated with a definitive nod…just before she turned and disappeared around the corner of the barn, leaving him in the shadows, feeling like he’d been sideswiped by a John Deere tractor.
“Eliza!”
Silence. He tried again, louder and more insistently. “Eliza!”
A second passed, and another, before her head popped around the corner. “Yo!”
“Would you come back here?”
“Is the discussion reopened?”
“No. But I can’t go for help until you’re safe inside the barn.”
“How do you know I won’t be safer outside the barn?”
He tamped down his irritation. “Please go inside and wait for me.”
She lifted her one visible shoulder in a shrug. “Can’t. Sorry.” Her voice expressed her regret. “I just can’t be this close to the only haystack I’ve ever laid eyes on and not go and look for the proverbial needle.”
“Eliza!” But she was gone again. Damn. No wonder they were in this predicament. The woman had no focus. No ability to make a plan and stick to it. He would have thought she’d be anxious to stay inside the barn where she’d be safe and reasonably comfortable while he braved the perils of a strange countryside. But, no. She went running off to see a pile of straw. In the middle of the night. In her bare feet. In the buff.
That thought produced a provocative image of Eliza running through a freshly mown field, her dark hair bouncing in the moonlight, her body moving in sen suous slow motion. And in his mind’s eye, he watched her approach, admiring her beauty, smiling as she neared, opening his arms to take her in, falling back into a nest of hay….
He slapped at a mosquito. He must be out of his mind. She had brought more mischief into his life in the last several hours than he’d experienced in all of the preceding years. He was going to marry Leanne. If not for Eliza, he’d already be married. So why was he walking purposefully around the corner of the barn, heading toward the field like some moonstruck Romeo?
Concern for her safety, he told himself…and wished he believed it.
SHE WAS MAKING A MESS of an already messy situation.
Eliza reached the haystack and that conclusion at the same time and didn’t like either one. The haystack had appeared romantic from a distance, a touch of nostalgia plunked into a night of misadventures. Just like her feeble idea that if she could get Mack to look at the haystack, he magically would forget all the havoc she’d caused tonight.
Wrinkling her nose, she inhaled the musty scent of the hay, then reached out to touch it. A single piece poked into her palm and promptly broke in half. Fragile stuff, she thought. It was a wonder it could be stacked like this. She gave it a push with the butt of her hand. Sturdy, too. Stepping back, she looked up at the rounded top, a foot or more above her head. She’d seen movies that showed people hiding on top of haystacks. She could even remember one movie in which a couple made love up there.
Of course, that was Hollywood in its hay-day. Smiling at her pun, she moved closer and tested the sturdiness of the stack with a second, stronger punch. A few straws snapped beneath the pressure, but that was it. She was impressed. She knew that haystacks were mostly a thing of the past, relics of an era when harvesting a field depended more on muscle power than on machines. Modern hay balers were undoubtedly more efficient, but a dozen precision-tied bundles would never have the appeal of one honest-to-goodness haystack.
It made her proud to know that at least one Kansas farmer still knew how to stack his hay. She took her hat off to whoever had built this straw bulwark. That is, if she had a hat to take off in tribute, she would. Instead, she bumped the haystack with a simultaneous one-two jab of her shoulder and hip, like a football player congratulating a fellow team member on a great play.
“What in the hell are you doing?” a deep voice blared into the quiet, scaring her out of her wits. With a high-pitched shriek, she dove for cover…and the whole, stalwart haystack crumbled on top of her.
“GOOD GRIEF, Eliza, you could have suffocated under there.”
She raked her teeth across her tongue and spit out a piece of hay. “If you hadn’t snuck up on me, I wouldn’t have been under there.”
Mack fell back against the hay, put his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars. “If I had a lick of sense, I’d be a mile away from here by now.”
“Trying to hitch a ride on a deserted road.” She dropped back onto the hay beside him. “In my opinion, hitchhiking represents less than half a lick of sense. You could get picked up by some evil, twisted person. Or you could be abducted by space aliens.”
“I wish you’d told me I had other options,” he said. “I thought renting a limousine and getting kidnapped by an evil, twisted person was my only choice.”
“Very funny. And just for the record, I don’t believe Chuck is evil or twisted.” Eliza shifted on the straw bed, trying to get comfortable. “He’s a liar…that goes without saying. And a thief. That goes without saying, too. But he didn’t shoot us. And he did buy a round of Buddy’s Burgers. Of course, you ate mine. But all things considered, I think he treated us pretty decently.”
The hay rustled as Mack turned his head to look at her. “Would that ‘all things considered’ include the bullet that missed my foot by a half inch? Or the half hour or more we spent tied up in jumper cables? Or would that just include the demoniac laugh he gave as he walked out of the barn with our clothes?”
He had a point. “All right,” she conceded. “So it would have been more fun to be abducted by aliens.”
“At least we could have sold an abduction story to the tabloids.”
“You can sell the kidnapping story, if you want. I hereby relinquish my rights.”
“Thank you, I accept…considering that I did risk my sensitive skin to save you just now.”
“That makes twice in one day you’ve saved me.” She scratched her elbow. “I hope you don’t expect me to be indebted to you for the rest of my life, though. I wouldn’t be very good at following you around, waiting for an opportunity to save your life and repay my debt.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Eliza, no matter how many times I save you.”
She yawned, feeling warm and sheltered, if a bit itchy, in her pocket of hay. “Well, what if all of a sudden a big herd of cows stampedes through this field and you have to throw yourself in front of the biggest one and scare it away so the rest of the herd will swerve to miss me? And what if the big cow steps on your foot and breaks your toe? What about that?”
“In case of stampede, no debt.”
“No compensation for the broken toe?”
“Just one of the hazards of being a hero. I should have been more careful.”
“Hmm.” She stared at the brilliant sky and absently scratched her stomach. “Well, what if some big, black clouds roll in and all of a sudden a tornado swoops out of the sky and whirls us away to Idaho or some strange place?”
“Oz or Idaho. I’ll see that you’re returned to Kansas.”
She would have frowned at him, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble of turning her head. “All right, MacKenzie, what exactly do you expect to get out of this bargain?”
“Peace of mind.”
Raising herself on her elbow, she picked up a fistful of hay and dropped it on his face. “I’ll be
t you say that to all the girls.”
In one neat toss, he clobbered her with straw. She sputtered under the onslaught…and retaliated with a blind pitch. A moment later, she was inundated with flying fodder and the agreeable sound of laughter… her own and Mack’s. Scrambling for advantage in the slippery hay, she managed to smash a handful of straw into his hair before he grabbed her wrist and wrestled her down.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you to pick fights with somebody your own size?” he asked.
Using her foot as a pitchfork, she deluged him. “What my Auntie Gem told me,” she said between gasps of laughter, “was that men…are poor…losers.”
He bowed his head against the smothering shower…and she caught a mouthful of straw and sucked it in on a snort of laughter. She choked, coughed and wheezed in the effort to catch her breath.
Mack grabbed her arm, jerked her upright and whopped her between the shoulder blades with the heel of his hand. “Spit it out,” he said fiercely, thumping her back between instructions. “Don’t swallow. Get it out of your mouth. Cough. Come on, spit it out.”
She coughed. And spit. And coughed some more.
Mack gave her another whack on the back and she all but toppled off the collapsed haystack. As she wheezed a great gulp of air into her lungs, she grabbed his hand and yanked it away from her back. “That is not…the way—” she gulped more air “—to do the…Heimlich…maneuver.”
“Well, excuse me. Next time you’re choking, I’ll ask for instructions.” With a shaky sigh, he put his head back and closed his eyes. “At least I wasn’t trying to give you mouth-to-mouth.”
She swiped her hand across her lips, trying to get rid of the dry, dusty taste, trying not to imagine what would have happened if he’d put his lips on hers for any reason. “Do you even know how?”
“How to what?”
“To resuscitate someone.”
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