Million-Dollar Bride

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “Oh, I didn’t meet him. I just saw him. In the mirror. And it could have been yesterday. I can’t remember.”

  “You saw the man of your dreams in a mirror,” he repeated. “Was he wearing a turban and did he tell you that Snow White was the fairest in the land?”

  “Wrong fairy tale,” she said. “He didn’t say anything, and he was wearing a tuxedo. Kind of like yours, come to think of it.” She yawned again and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. “He might even have licked a little like you.”

  Mack leaned closer, noting the droopy tilt of her eyelids. “Stay away from him, then. A little licker can be a dangerous thing.”

  “Hmm?” Her eyelids fluttered. “Don’t worry. I didn’t really see his face. And it was the dress, anyway.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then blinked them open again. “I have to get the dress back. You do understand, don’t you, Mack?”

  “Of course. It’s a million-dollar dress.”

  She offered a sweet, sleepy smile. “You’re a nice person, MacKenzie. I wish you weren’t already married.”

  He opened his mouth to dispute her statement, but she cut him off with a deep sigh and rolled away from him onto her side, curling into an enticing S. Fighting the desire to trace that alluring bare shoulder and hip with the palm of his hand, Mack leaned over her and realized that, like an exhausted child, she had simply closed her eyes and gone instantly to sleep. With her hand tucked under her cheek, she looked blissfully innocent and recklessly beautiful. Her hair fanned across her shoulder like a shadow and her eyelashes formed a crescent smudge against her cheek. Her lips were slightly parted, and he could measure the depth of her breathing by the rise and fall of moonlight on the curve of her breast. A treasure chest of tenderness spilled unexpectedly inside him, squeezing into the empty spaces around his heart.

  “I’m not married, Eliza,” he whispered. “You rescued me.”

  “Mmm.” Like a mantra, her answer blended into a throaty sigh and became an unintelligible, contented murmur.

  It was hard to imagine that a mere twenty-four hours ago he hadn’t known her. In fact, twenty-four hours ago he had been standing on the terrace outside his bedroom, under a moon barely a sliver different from tonight’s, contemplating an illicit trip out of the country. It gave him a chill now to remember the icy fingers of self-doubt and the desperate impulse to run before it was too late, before he deeded the rest of his life to Leanne in marriage.

  But because he was a Cortland, he had reasoned away the doubts and wrapped the impulse in a mantle of calm reassurances. Leanne would be a perfect wife. She’d been training for the part for years. She knew the right things to say and the right times to say them. She was a gifted hostess, a dynamo of focused energy who could move between managing the kitchen and entertaining the guests without missing a name or a detail. She worked tirelessly for whatever politically correct cause caught her interest. She was a solid-gold asset in his work on behalf of the Cortland Foundation. Leanne was everything he needed in a wife.

  Except a friend.

  “Shoo.” Eliza’s forehead furrowed in a frown and she pulled her feet nearer the curve of her hips. “Don’t lick me.” She mumbled a few more unintelligible admonitions before her frown smoothed out and she lay still, quiet and fast asleep in the hay.

  Mack bent his head to deliver a light, but rebellious lick across her shoulder, but stopped himself a half inch from her bare skin. She startled so easily that the touch of his tongue would probably evoke a shriek of alarm, and she might—accidentally—sock him in the nose. Or he might—intentionally—decide to quiet her with a kiss.

  And that way lay madness. She wasn’t the woman for him, wasn’t even close. She was just the woman who happened to be with him; the woman who—without his permission or consent—had enmeshed him in her problems, gotten him kidnapped, stripped and robbed, nearly had seduced him in a damned haystack, then all but reduced him to a soprano with one random, knee-jerk reaction. And she’d done it all by accident.

  He ought to be furious. He ought to be incensed at the demolition of his wedding plans. He ought to be enraged at being kidnapped, shot at and humiliated. He should not be sitting here, watching Eliza and wallowing in the mystifying attraction she aroused in him.

  Mystifying?

  Hell, there was no mystery about what he was feeling. She was as naked as he was. That accounted for the attraction. He might be a Cortland, but he was as susceptible to fantasy as the next man. Put him naked in a haystack with any woman and…

  He straightened and dragged his gaze away from her. He had spent too much time looking at her already. It was time to…The temptation was too great, and his gaze slid slowly back to her satiny skin, while his thoughts skidded over the edge into the danger zone once again.

  And once again, he jerked them back in line with reality. He should not still be here, looking at her, thinking about the taste of her lips, fantasizing, lusting….

  He had to get out of this haystack before he forgot what happened when she was startled and kissed her, anyway. Maybe later he could make sense of his reluctance to leave her and this fusty, uncomfortable mound of straw. And maybe later he’d take time to think about why he wasn’t angry about the chaos she’d created in his life. But for now, he was going to do what he should have done in the beginning—concentrate on getting some clothes and some assistance, hopefully in that order.

  All he needed was a direction—north, south, east or west. Where was the most likely location for a farmhouse in relation to a haystack? He narrowed his gaze on the abandoned barn and caught sight of the yellow dog. Eliza’s werewolf. He didn’t know much about canines, but this one looked fat and friendly, familiar with his surroundings. He undoubtedly belonged to some nice family in the area. And if Mack could follow him home…

  He slid across the slippery hay and pushed himself to his feet. With a last, tender look at Eliza, nestled in the hay like Little Boy Blue—only without the blue—he brushed the tendrils of straw from his skin and scratched a couple of persistent itches. He walked closer to the barn, then whistled softly and called to the dog. “Home, Wolfman. Go home, boy. Home. Food. You know, dinner. Or breakfast. A midnight snack. Something to eat. Are you hungry, old boy?”

  With a doggy grin and a floppy wave of his tail, the dog trotted across the field, clearly understanding at least one word of the request and just as clearly inviting Mack to tag along.

  “IF YOU THINK I’m going over another barbed-wire fence, you are stupider than you look.” Mack scowled at the big, friendly dog he had followed across one flat field after another. He might as well have stayed in the haystack with Eliza for all the progress he’d made finding help. If he had stayed, he wouldn’t be suffering from a hundred different aches and pains right now, either. As it was, he was scraped, scratched, bruised and dirty, and his feet couldn’t hurt any worse if he’d walked four miles on a bed of nails. To add insult to injury, he hadn’t seen so much as a tree stump to sit on in the whole time he’d followed the stupid dog.

  “Some guide you are,” he said to the lop-eared mutt. “After all this time, there’s still not a farmhouse in sight. And I trusted you, too.”

  The dog barked a sharp encouragement, then trotted off again, his yellow tail waving like an ostrich feather above the stalks of half-grown wheat. Mack looked in every direction, wishing he had some idea of where he was in relation to the rest of the world. The barn, the haystack—every point of reference he’d had was lost in the seemingly endless fields of hay and wheat. For all he knew, he’d been circling the same territory over and over, going from the hay field to the wheat field and back again, following that sorry excuse of a farm dog. Well, he wasn’t going to fight with another barbed-wire fence, that was for certain.

  Determined, he set off along the fence line and at an angle to the dog’s path through the wheat. When this was over, he was going to report that animal to the S.P.C.A. And the Lassie fan club, too.

  ELIZA OPENED her
eyes and bolted upright. Her heart pounding, her mind hovering between dreaming and wakefulness, she realized she was in unfamiliar surroundings. And she was alone. Outside. In the dark. And her dress was gone.

  No, wait, that was the dream. She’d been wearing a wedding dress made of straw, but a tornado came and blew the dress away and left her sitting in a haystack. Her tension eased with her softly exhaled sigh. What a stupid dream. Why would she be dreaming about a haystack?

  She yawned, stretched and froze as the rustle of hay accompanied her movements. Her fingers clenched and brought up a handful of straw. She was in a haystack. She raised her head and looked down at her nude body. Her dress was gone.

  Million-dollar gown. Limousine. Mack. Chuck. Kidnapped. Barn. Jumper cables. Haystack. Kiss. The associative flashes of memory brought her fully awake and she turned around to locate Mack. It didn’t take five seconds to conclude that he was long gone. He’d hardly even left an impression in the hay beside her. So where was he? And why had he let her go to sleep, anyway? He knew she didn’t want to be left behind. He could have waited.

  But men like MacKenzie Cortland didn’t wait around for women like her. The minute she’d dozed off, he’d headed for civilization. She hoped he’d avoided the road, but that was probably exactly where he had gone. And he’d probably flagged down a car and gotten a ride, despite her warning about hitchhiking.

  A flicker of anxiety slid down her spine at the thought. What if he had gotten picked up by some maniac? Why, at this very moment, he could be tied up in some secluded farmhouse while some maniac farmer sharpened his ax. Wait. She was being silly. Farmers were nice, helpful people. If Mack had hitched a ride with one of them, he was most likely sitting in a cozy farmhouse kitchen right now, eating fried chicken and drinking real milk drawn straight from a real cow.

  Her stomach growled with envy. How could he be stuffing his face and clogging his arteries with butter-fat while she was out here, waiting for him to remember where he’d left her? Maybe he didn’t intend to come back for her. Maybe he was already on his way back to Kansas City. No, he wouldn’t leave without her.

  Her shoulders and her spirits drooped. Of course he would. Look what she’d done to him. He could have been—should have been—on his honeymoon at this very minute with the woman he loved. With Leanne. On a train.

  Unwarranted jealousy attacked her and she scoffed at her silliness. She knew that if she were ever engaged to a man like Mack, she wouldn’t consider spending even one night—and especially not the first night of her married life—on a train bound for Miami. The whole idea lacked flair, romance. In her opinion, it lacked everything except a sense of humor.

  But this was no laughing matter. Her opinion didn’t count, and she had absolutely no business thinking about Mack’s honeymoon…even though it was her fault he’d missed it. She had no business thinking about him in any context, because he was practically married…although he had kissed her. And meant it. And not just because he couldn’t think of any other way to shut her up.

  Eliza sighed and lifted her chin. Well, Mack was gone, and she wasn’t going to sit around, waiting to be rescued like some helpless damsel in distress. Tilting her head to listen, she tried to distinguish just one man-made sound in the night noises all around her. But she couldn’t hear so much as a distant rumble of traffic, and the horizon wasn’t outlined by the dull haze of electric lights. She frowned, concluding that civilization had to be a stiff walk in any direction.

  Pursing her mouth in a contemplative pout, she tried to imagine Mack striding barefoot and confident across the field in search of a farmhouse. But the only image she could conjure in her mind’s eye was of his nice, tight end spotlighted by a moonbeam as he walked down the dark, dirt road in search of a ride to the nearest town. One thing was certain, at least. He’d gone to get help, leaving her behind because he thought it was the safest place for her to be. If she waited, he’d be back. Or he’d send someone for her.

  But she wasn’t good at waiting. She wanted a drink and something to eat. And a bath. She definitely wanted a bath. And if Mack could find his way to civilization in the dark, then, by golly, she ought to be able to find a simple, little farmhouse.

  THE HOUSE SAT like a snub nose on a flat face. It was boxy and small, and if it had been painted black instead of white, Mack might have walked past and never known it was there. His hand resting on a post of the barbed-wire fence, he paused to study the angle of the roof, the darker shadows of the outbuildings and the silver T of a clothesline pole in the backyard. He was going to have to cross the fence and a pasture to get to it, but the farmhouse was, at least, an affirmation that he was still in the good old U.S.A. and not the Twilight Zone.

  At least, he hoped it was an affirmation. More than that, he hoped he’d be greeted with food, clothing and compassion, and not the subtle, deadly insanity of a Stephen King character.

  He allowed himself a fleeting thought of Eliza, safe and sleeping in the haystack, and hoped that whatever nice, helpful farmer resided in this house would know by Mack’s description exactly how to find her. Squaring his shoulders, he faced the fence, gingerly spread the top and middle wires and courageously put one leg through the opening.

  With a friendly bark, the yellow dog dashed past on the other side, his tongue lolling from his mouth, his tail waving like a starter flag. Mack maintained his concentration and miraculously got through the fence and into the pasture without inflicting any further injury on his aching body. The dog barked again and raced ahead like Rin Tin Tin leading the soldiers to the enemy camp. “You don’t fool me,” Mack said, hobbling after him. “You were just as lost as I was.”

  The dog vanished around a shed in the middle of the pasture and started barking. A moment later, two distinctly bovine shadows trotted out from behind the building, herded by the yellow dog. Good thing Eliza wasn’t with him, Mack thought. One good snuffle from either one of those cows and she’d be shrieking her head off.

  He kept an eye on the cows as he drew even with the shed, but they were preoccupied with the yellow dog, which bounded around them, barking and nipping at their heels.

  “Stop that, you idiot.” Mack spoke sharply to the dog. “Not that you don’t deserve to get kicked, but at least let me get out of this pasture before you get them really riled.”

  The dog continued to bark, and the cows gave a few aggravated snorts. The kind of low, threatening snorts Mack had heard at a rodeo once…just before a Brahma bull charged a clown in a barrel. But the dumb dog kept barking. The aggravated snorts became low, angry bellows, and Mack took off like a gimpy sprinter, racing for the safety zone outside the cow pasture.

  There was a cattle gate in the barbed-wire fence, and he leapt onto it and climbed over, wincing as his hands and feet pressed down on the rough metal bars. The gate creaked under his weight, but he pushed himself up and over and landed with a bone-jarring thud on the other side. He bent over, grasping his knees for balance and gasping for breath.

  Something wet smacked him on the back of the leg, and he wheeled around to see the yellow dog sitting there, a big, dumb grin on his doggy lips. Mack refused to smile back. “You are a nuisance. Go away. I can handle everything from here on in.”

  The dog’s tail thumped the ground before he trotted off to investigate the two outbuildings behind the farmhouse.

  Mack wiped the dog slobber off the back of his leg and, with an assessing glance at the farmyard, moved toward the nearest outbuilding. A few steps later he realized it was a chicken coop, enclosed in a wire mesh cage. A few more steps revealed, through sound and smell, that the other outbuilding was a pigpen.

  He carefully negotiated the area between the two, trying not to breathe too deeply and inhale an overdose of the pungent odor. He stopped upwind of the livestock pens to study the back of the house, taking a moment to consider his approach.

  If he walked right up to the door and knocked, he ran the risk of scaring the people inside and getting himself shot as an i
ntruder. On the other hand, if he waited around until sunrise, Chuck would have several hours head start and Eliza would have even less chance of recovering the wedding gown. But a naked man at the back door in this part of the Bible Belt wasn’t likely to be greeted with a grin and a “Howdy, stranger, come on in,” regardless of what time of day or night he knocked.

  Mack shifted from one throbbing foot to the other, debating the wisest course of action and wishing there was a pair of pants hanging on the clothesline. But even in the uncertain moonlight, he could see that not so much as a dishcloth had been left out overnight. He glanced over his shoulder at the chicken yard, wondering if he could collect enough stray feathers to construct a decent loincloth.

  He glanced at the other building, thinking he could probably get enough mud from the sty to cover his body. But that wouldn’t exactly conceal the fact that he had no clothes on, it would just make him smell like a pig.

  Probably the best plan was to use his hands as a cloaking device and throw himself on the mercy of whoever opened the door. After all, it would be readily apparent that he wasn’t concealing a weapon.

  Squaring his shoulders, he headed for the farmhouse.

  VANGIE KEPT HER BIFOCALS, a romance novel, an alarm clock and an iron skillet on the bedside table. The glasses and the novel were there because she liked to read every night before going to sleep. The clock was there just in case she overslept…which hadn’t happened in twenty-two years. The skillet was there as a handy weapon against intruders…although she had yet to need it, either.

  Most warm nights she slept with the windows open, so Mr. Silk could come and go as he pleased. But lately that big yellow dog had been sniffin’ round the henhouse, and she didn’t want her Mr. Silk, her sweet little Yorkie, messin’ with that filthy derelict. So she kept the windows cracked an inch or two, kept the electric fan running and got up as necessary during the night to let Mr. Silk outside to do his deed.