A moment later Rebecca found herself trapped in the rocker as Zach wrapped his powerful hands around each of the arms and leaned over to put his nose an inch from hers.
“This isn’t a game to me, kid,” he said in a feral voice. “I need a wife. And I intend to find one.”
Rebecca swallowed over the sudden lump in her throat. “You’ve found her. I’m right here.” She looked up at him, her heart pounding crazily, careful not to let the love she felt show in her eyes. Zach didn’t want or expect love from a wife.
Zach suddenly stood and shoved all ten fingers through his hair. “It would never work.”
Rebecca was startled by his response, which suggested he might have considered the idea. She leapt from the rocker and put herself directly in front of him, hands on hips, chin up, shoulders squared in a fighting stance. “Why wouldn’t it work? Actually, if you think about it, I’m the perfect woman for the job. I know everything there is to know about a working ranch—you taught me yourself—and I’m familiar with every inch of Hawk’s Pride. You know I’m honest and responsible.” She flushed and said, “And I can provide a doctor’s report to ensure I’m capable of having children.”
She purposely didn’t mention the compliant part, hoping he would forget about it. She took a deep breath and continued. “And I, more than any other applicant, know exactly why you don’t want or expect love to be a part of the bargain.” Meaning, she knew how much he had loved Cynthia.
When he didn’t immediately refuse her, she let herself hope. When his teeth clenched, when the muscle in his jaw began to work, she felt a desperate sense of loss.
“Zach, just think about it.”
“No, kid. And that’s my final word on the subject.”
He took one step before she managed to block his path with her body. “I refuse to accept that answer.”
Zach grimaced. “That is exactly why you’d make me a terrible wife. There’s not a compliant bone in your body.”
“At least you know what you’d be getting,” Rebecca argued. “You know me, Zach. You like me. Isn’t that important?”
“Why do you want to marry me?” Zach demanded. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. What would you get out of an arrangement like this?”
Rebecca managed to keep herself from blurting You! Any hint of love would be the death knell to whatever hope she had of marrying Zach. She searched frantically for some reason Zach would accept and believe. And hit on the perfect response.
“Ever since I started working at Children’s Hospital I’ve dreamed of starting a summer camp for kids with cancer. I could never afford that sort of thing on my own. If I were your wife, I could realize my dream here at Hawk’s Pride.”
His lip curled. “I see. So it’s my money you find attractive.”
“Well, you’re not bad-looking, either,” she quipped. One look at his face, and she knew she had better do some fast talking.
“The camp really is a wonderful idea, Zach.” Her voice filled with enthusiasm as she warmed to her subject. “Hawk’s Pride would be a perfect place to bring kids who’ve never seen a horse or a steer. We could teach them to ride horseback, or take them for rides in a hay wagon. It would be so good for them. If only you could see how hard they work just to stay alive, never mind to get well, you’d realize what a perfect reward a week at a working ranch would be.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed, as though to assess the truth of what she had said. He tucked his thumbs in his back pockets. “I suppose I would finance this camp of yours.”
Rebecca nodded.
“How would you manage the four kids I want and a camp, too?”
“I’d hire good help.”
“For the camp…or the kids?” Zach asked cynically.
“I’d be a good mother, Zach,” Rebecca said seriously. “I lost my mother when I was born, so I know how much a child needs one. I’d give your—our—children all the love they could ever want or need.”
Zach shook his head. “I don’t know, Becky. I have to admit that camp idea sounds good. I’ve got a niece, Susannah—my brother Falcon’s stepdaughter—who has leukemia. She’d love to go to a camp like the one you want to start. But it would be a lot of work.”
Rebecca took great heart from the fact he hadn’t called her kid. “I can handle it, Zach. Believe me, I’m the woman you’re looking for. Admit it. I’m perfect for the job.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “I haven’t forgotten what you said when you were seventeen.”
Rebecca couldn’t keep the stricken look off her face. If she couldn’t disabuse him of the notion that she still loved him after all these years, she might lose everything. She managed to put a ladle of scorn in her voice. “I hope you’re not going to hold the foolish words of an adolescent against me. I might have been infatuated with you at seventeen, but I’ve grown up a lot since then.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said. “And I can’t say I’m not attracted. I am.” He took the steps necessary to close the distance between them. “I’d forgotten how green your eyes are, like spring grass. And I love the feel of your hair,” he said as he fingered a handful of the silky strands.
“I’m attracted to you, too, Zach. In a physical way,” she corrected hastily.
Rebecca laid a tentative hand on Zach’s chest, near his heart. She could feel the hard muscle even through his Western shirt. Her hand slid up his chest and curled around his nape into untrimmed hair that was soft and thick.
She saw what was going to happen, waited for it, wanted it. He was going to kiss her. He watched her with dark, unfathomable eyes, until he was so close she was forced to lower her lids. He paused, a breath away, then touched his lips to hers.
Goose bumps popped up on her arms, and her knees buckled. Fortunately he caught her with an arm around her waist and pulled her close.
And deepened the kiss.
His tongue was hot and wet and came slow and deep into her mouth. She made an animal sound low in her throat and heard an answering growl from him. His arm tightened around her waist, and he cupped her behind and lifted her enough to fit their bodies intimately together.
She arched toward him, enthralled by his need for her. Her arms clung to his shoulders, while her mouth clung to his.
Suddenly she was standing by herself, chest heaving, legs wobbling, hands trembling. She stared, dazed, at Zach, who had backed up a good three feet from her.
“Well, I guess that’s settled,” he said.
“What’s settled?”
“We’d be all right together in bed.”
“Oh.”
He tunneled splayed fingers into his hair. “I don’t know, kid. This is so incredible. When I put that ad in the paper, I never imagined that someone I knew would answer it. I have to think about this.”
Rebecca knew that if she gave Zach time to think, he would come up with a dozen excuses to reject her. “You won’t find a better candidate than me, Zach. You’ll be getting exactly what you want—a wife who’ll marry you without expecting love and who’ll give you children—without having to waste any more time looking. You have the added advantage of marrying someone you know, someone your family will accept and approve.”
She saw Zach’s eyes widen as he realized the truth of her pronouncement. According to Callen, Zach’s parents disapproved of his method of choosing a wife. Marrying Rebecca Littlewolf, someone they knew, was bound to lessen their concern.
“Don’t think too long, Zach. I have to return to Dallas in a couple of days.”
“Then maybe I’d better make this decision right now.”
Rebecca felt her heart begin to thud in her chest. Surely Zach could hear it, surely he knew how much she wanted to be his wife, and not at all for the reason she had told him.
“There are a few things we need to get straight first.”
“Such as?”
“Don’t delude yourself into thinking I’ll fall in love with you. I won’t. I’ll never love another woman. Not after Cynthia
.”
Rebecca felt her stomach roll. “All right. What else?”
“I’m marrying because I want children. But I’m a man, and I have needs that I’ll expect my wife to satisfy.”
Goose bumps prickled her flesh at the thought of lying beneath him…above him…beside him in bed. “I’ll be glad to satisfy those needs, presuming I’m the only woman who’ll enjoy those pleasures,” she said, answering his demand for sexual services with her demand for fidelity. “Anything else?”
“I’ll expect you to devote yourself to the children first and foremost. In exchange, I’ll see to it you get the financing and whatever other help you need for that camp you want for sick kids.”
“Agreed.”
“One more thing. If you’re not pregnant a year from now, we get a divorce. After all, what I want is children, not a barren wife.”
She sucked in a harsh breath, appalled at this unforeseen condition. “That’s a cold-blooded thing to say.”
He shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
For the first time since she had fallen in love with him at thirteen, Rebecca wondered if she was mistaken about Zach. The man she had found lovable could never have been so ruthless. Clearly this man was. What if she couldn’t make him love her? What if Zach truly had become a heartless man? What if she spent the next year of her life falling deeper and deeper in love with him and then failed to become pregnant? Were the rewards to be had from marrying Zach Whitelaw worth the risks?
“If we divorce, I continue to run the summer camp here at Hawk’s Pride, and you continue to fund it. I want that in writing,” Rebecca said.
“No demand for alimony?”
Rebecca shook her head. “I told you what I want from this marriage.” Or almost all of what I want.
“Given everything I’ve just said, do you still want to marry me?” he asked.
“I do.”
It wasn’t until Zach heaved a sigh of relief that Rebecca realized he hadn’t been at all certain of her response. And that he seemed pleased by it. The grin that appeared moments later confirmed his feelings. “I guess we have a deal.”
“How soon do you want to have the wedding?” Rebecca asked.
“Tomorrow. We can get Judge Smithers to officiate.”
“No.”
“There you go again, disagreeing with me,” Zach said. “What am I going to do with you, kid?”
He gave her that same playful cuff he had administered when she was a girl of seventeen. She looked into his eyes, wondering what he saw when he looked at her. She wasn’t the young girl who had left Hawk’s Pride six years ago. She had a woman’s needs, a woman’s dreams and desires. She wanted much more than Zach seemed to be offering.
She had a moment’s qualm, but fought it down. She wasn’t going to lose the brass ring just because she hadn’t reached for it.
“I have to give at least two weeks’ notice at the hospital, Zach.”
“All right, two weeks. Not a day more.”
“Deal,” Rebecca said, extending her hand.
Zach took it and pulled her close. “I’d rather seal our bargain this way,” he said as his mouth claimed hers.
She felt his need and answered with her own. His strong arms, the ones she had dreamed about for so many years, closed around her, and he lifted her enough so that she felt his sure and certain arousal. His breathing roughened, and she heard a guttural sound of triumph issue from his throat.
It was going to be a rare match of wills, all right. Rebecca was gambling that she could tame the savage beast. She only hoped he didn’t devour her before she got the chance.
CHAPTER TWO
ZACH WANTED A WOMAN. It wasn’t the first time he had stared at the bedroom ceiling and denied his body’s raging need. But tonight the object of his desire had a face and a name.
Rebecca Littlewolf.
It wasn’t a bad thing to physically desire one’s future bride, Zach thought. But he was surprised by the intensity of his need and at his inability to banish the tantalizing image of her green eyes and flowing black hair from his mind. He could imagine her eyes, lambent with passion, feel her silky hair draped over his naked torso.
Zach rose and paced restlessly into the living room, where a picture window overlooked the vast acres of Hawk’s Pride. It was nearly dawn, and he could see the silhouette of rocky outcroppings that marked the entrance to a deep canyon on his property. He could see a windmill flying in the Texas wind and cattle feeding on the prairie grass.
On his twenty-first birthday, his father had given him this piece of property carved out of land that had been in the Whitelaw family for generations. He had looked forward to marrying and raising a family who would bring love and laughter into his life. That was all before Cynthia Kenyon.
Cynthia had been his first love and, filled with tales of his parents’ romance told by the fireplace on long winter nights in his youth, he had fallen hard. She had moved in with him as soon as they were engaged. Two days before their wedding, he had discovered Cynthia in his bed with another man.
He had knocked the man unconscious with one blow; it had taken every ounce of self-control he had to keep from hitting her. He had carefully uncurled his knotted fists and shoved his thumbs into the back pockets of his jeans.
“Get out, Cynthia, and take that carcass on the floor with you.”
“It didn’t mean anything, Zach. He works for a New York modeling agency. He’s going to offer me a contract. It has nothing to do with us.”
It had amazed him that she could so cavalierly share her body with another man. And that she expected him not to care. “It means something to me,” he said. “Get out, Cynthia. And don’t come back.”
“Don’t do this, Zach,” she pleaded. Big tears welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. “I love you. I made a mistake. Please, forgive me.”
“Some things are unforgivable.”
“I’m pregnant, Zach.”
“With whose kid?”
He would never forget the look on her face, a mixture of confusion and fear.
“It’s yours, Zach.”
He didn’t believe her. What man would have under the circumstances? She wasn’t pregnant, or if she was, it wasn’t his kid. He felt like a fool and an idiot. He had trusted her, and she had betrayed him. He didn’t think there was any way he could ever forget the sight of her flesh joined to that of another man in his bed. He felt physically ill.
“Get out, Cynthia. And don’t come back.”
“All right, Zach, I’m going, but you’ll be sorry someday. This is your baby I’m carrying, and I’ll prove it. Then you’ll pay. Will you ever pay!”
Cynthia and her lover had boarded a private plane headed for New York. It crashed shortly after takeoff, killing everyone on board.
Zach had asked the coroner whether Cynthia was pregnant.
“I’m afraid so, son,” the man had replied. “I’m truly very sorry.”
The guilt he felt over Cynthia’s death had been bad enough. It didn’t approach the horror he experienced at knowing a child—his child?—had died with her. There was no way he could ask for any kind of test to prove things one way or the other without revealing his doubt. So he grieved the baby’s death. But he had always wondered whether she had made a fool of him in the end by making him mourn some other man’s child.
It had been especially painful to see the tears in his mother’s eyes, the haggard look on his father’s face, when they heard the news of the death of their unborn grandchild. He had been too hurt, too humiliated, to admit to his family the possibility that the child wasn’t his. Maybe it had been his. He would have to live with that uncertainty the rest of his life.
It had been almost impossible to graciously accept the sympathy offered to him on the death of his bride only two days before their wedding. Nobody knew of Cynthia’s perfidy, and he didn’t believe it would serve any purpose to expose her. The truth would certainly hurt her parents, who were good friends of his
parents. He had simply gone into seclusion after her death and let people draw their own conclusions.
He must have loved her an awful lot to be so torn up.
Imagine losing your future bride and your unborn child at the same time. What a tragedy!
It must have been true love. He’s been devastated by her death.
It wasn’t only grief he had felt, it was bitterness, and a deep and abiding anger. Cynthia’s prophetic words had come true. He would have to live the rest of his life with the consequences of throwing her out.
In the years after her death he had gone through women one at a time, testing them and finding them wanting. Flighty creatures. Dishonest creatures. Tantalizing, tempting, titillating creatures. He couldn’t keep himself from looking at them with a jaundiced eye any more than he could keep himself from needing them to assuage his physical desire.
So why is a bitter cynic like you marrying a nice kid like Rebecca Littlewolf?
Zach heaved a mammoth sigh. What on earth had possessed him? He wanted to think it was a simple matter of expedience. He had interviewed enough women to realize he wasn’t going to find the perfect wife through a newspaper advertisement. But he hadn’t wanted to court a woman because that would have suggested he wanted affection to be a part of their relationship. Since he didn’t intend to love his wife, he didn’t think it was fair to expect her to love him.
And Rebecca Littlewolf was a known quantity. He had been a little surprised at her interest in using his money to start a camp. But it eased his conscience to know she had mercenary motives for marrying him. Money he could freely offer. Love was out of the question. It helped that she assumed, like everyone else, that he was still in love with Cynthia Kenyon.
It was an added bonus that he was physically attracted to Rebecca. He had been astonished at his body’s instant response to the sight of her when she appeared at his kitchen door. Rebecca only came to his shoulder, but her body curved in all the right places. It was something he had noticed six years ago, although he had refused to act on his interest at the time, in spite of her invitation.
Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach Page 14