The Marriage Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  He just smiled a small smile that said she’d made things more interesting for him. And that he knew it was only a matter of time before she admitted defeat.

  It made Victoria all the more determined. Even as she realized she’d gotten herself into somewhat of a pickle.

  Despite the fact that she’d grown up on a ranch it hadn’t taught her much about what to do with the animals. As far as she’d been concerned, when she’d wanted to ride a horse she’d gone out to the barn, told one of the ranch hands and they’d saddled and bridled the animal of her choice and then led it to her. When she was finished riding she’d handed the reins over to someone else who had taken care of whatever needed to be done.

  She had no idea what to expect of these four horses she was now supposed to catch—or how to go about that.

  “Are they trained?” she asked, hoping to finesse some information out of Adam.

  “Yep.”

  So much for that.

  “Will they come if I whistle for them?”

  That made him smile bigger. “You can try,” he said as if he knew it wouldn’t work but he’d get a kick out of seeing it.

  Since Victoria didn’t trust him, she made a circle out of her thumb and index finger, put them between pursed lips and let out an ear-splitting whistle.

  The blood bay raised his head but none of the others paid any attention at all. And not one of them took so much as a step.

  Adam seemed to enjoy it, though. “They’ll likely be rusty and a little wild after being left on their own all this time. It’ll take some reminding of their training before they’re back up to speed,” he said, almost as if the whistle might have otherwise worked.

  “What should I do, whisper in their ears what they’re supposed to do?”

  “Takes more than that.”

  But still he didn’t give her any more help than that. Just as she’d ordered.

  “Will I be able to ride up to them, slip the halters on and lead them back here?” She tried again.

  Adam shrugged, taking her too much at her word—damn him anyway. “See where it gets you. You never know,” he said casually enough.

  “Is there a better way?” she demanded.

  “Do you want me to do this?” he asked as if she might be ready to give up before she’d even begun.

  “No. I don’t want you to do this,” her silly bluster made her say. “I was just trying to save time by getting your opinion.”

  She could tell he saw through her but all he said was, “You can try luring them with some grain.”

  Adam dismounted then, letting the reins of his own horse fall forward before he added, “You’ll find a sack of it in your saddlebag.”

  Adam had done the packing of both horses, tying bedrolls behind the saddles and stuffing the saddlebags with whatever else was needed, so Victoria had no idea what they’d brought with them beyond her own few personal items. She took his word for the fact that there was a sack of grain in one of hers.

  “Shall I stay in the saddle or get down on foot?” she asked.

  “I’d ride out a little closer then get down on foot. If your own horse is nearby it’ll save you walking the whole way back, but if you ride right up to them they’ll likely shy away. But the first thing I’d do is string a tether line between those two trees over there so you have something to tie them to when you do get a hold of them.” Then he added with another amused smile, “That’s just me, though. Feel free to do it your own way.”

  He was enjoying this, Victoria realized. But she tried to ignore it.

  “What if I don’t tie a rope to tether them to first?” she asked out of pure contrariness.

  “If you don’t, you won’t have anything to tie them to when you get them back here, will you?”

  Good point.

  Since there was a coil of rope hanging from her saddle, she got down off her horse and took the rope to tie around one tree trunk, stretching it to another to tie the other end around that one. Although neither knot was fancy, when she stood back to assess her handiwork, she judged them adequate.

  Adam took four leather halters from his saddle and held them out to her. “Looks like you’re ready. If you still think you want to take this on, that is.”

  That came out dubiously, as if he didn’t think her knot-tying was quite as adequate as she did.

  Or maybe he was just trying to rattle her. She decided not to let him. “Just sit back and watch me.”

  She took the halters, got back on her horse and headed toward the other end of the pasture.

  When she was several feet away from the horses she dismounted, slung two of the halters over her shoulder, searched her saddlebags for the sack of grain, and turned toward her quarry.

  With a handful of grain in her palm and the rest of the sack stuffed in the pocket of her jeans, she said, “Hi, boys,” in a gentle, soft voice, heading toward one of the older stallions who was nearest.

  He watched her coming, seemingly curious about her and what she was offering him, but stayed where he was.

  “Good boy,” she cooed. “Bet you haven’t had a treat all summer, have you? This’ll taste better than grass for a change.”

  The horse let her come close so he could nibble the grain from her hand and once he had, Victoria tried to slip the halter over his head.

  But just as she thought she was going to get it there, he caught it in his mouth.

  A bridle had a mouthpiece and was meant to be used when a horse was ridden. But for merely leading the animal, a halter was used, and it wasn’t supposed to go in the horse’s mouth.

  But now that the stallion had it there, he’d clenched his teeth around it and wouldn’t let go.

  “Come on,” she cajoled, tugging it.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Having trouble out there?”

  Adam’s voice wasn’t loud across the distance and Victoria decided to pretend she hadn’t heard him.

  Again she tried to get the horse to release the halter by tapping lightly on his nose. But he ignored her as effectively as she was ignoring Adam.

  She was about at her wit’s end when she remembered the grain and reached into the sack for more, coaxing the horse into finally opening his mouth so she could release the halter and get it properly over his head.

  “I won’t make that mistake again,” she confided to the stallion as she fastened the halter.

  Taking the first horse with her, she approached the second the same way—grain in her palm, speaking softly to him.

  The technique worked again and, true to her word, she was careful when she slipped the halter on, not giving the second horse a chance to get it in his mouth.

  Before she knew it she was back on her own horse and leading the two older of the stallions to her tether line.

  So there, Benson! she thought, still paying him no outward attention whatsoever even though she was dying to cast him a smile as smug as those he so frequently threw her way.

  “Two down, two to go,” he said from where he sat with his back against one of the trees, his legs bent at the knees and spread wide apart, his wrists resting on them, his hands dangling.

  Victoria didn’t honor his comment but just remounted and headed back for the other horses, confident that she wouldn’t have any more trouble with the two younger stallions than she’d had with the older.

  Unfortunately her confidence was unwarranted.

  The two younger horses seemed to find her as amusing as Adam did.

  She proceeded exactly the way she had with the other animals, but these two were less interested in the proffered grain than they were in toying with her.

  They let her get close, then dipped their heads and darted away with a snort that sounded very much like a horse version of a laugh.

  Victoria tried to have patience, but when this went on for a good half hour, patience got less and less easy to come by.

  “Could you give me a break, boys?” she f
inally said.

  That perked up the ears on the blood bay so she went on talking to it as she slowly, very slowly, approached yet again.

  “I’m in a bind here. See that guy sitting under the tree over there? Well, he’d like it if I’d go whining to him that I can’t do this. But I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. So we could be at this all night, but sooner or later you’ll have to give in because I won’t have it any other way.”

  And with that she got the halter over the horse’s head and felt a huge surge of relief.

  Three down, one to go.

  She tried the monologue with the remaining animal, but he was less sympathetic. The blood bay wasn’t helping matters. Every time Victoria got close enough to lunge for the sorrel, the blood bay pulled the other way. The elusive sorrel dodged out of reach and she ended up grasping thin air over and over again.

  To make matters worse, she caught sight of Adam and could tell even from that distance that he was grinning at the spectacle she was making.

  “Have you boys ever heard of the glue factory?” she asked her mischievous charges.

  But the threat didn’t do her any more good than anything else had and it took her another half hour of trial and error before she finally haltered the last horse, too.

  Regardless of how long it had taken, she was feeling pretty pleased with herself as she walked the animals back to where her own horse was waiting. She never expected the two horses to team up against her.

  The sorrel abruptly veered in front of her, just as the blood bay, in mulish stubbornness, came to a sharp stop then dug in his heels and pulled her backward.

  Down she went, landing on her posterior and being dragged just enough to cost her her grip of both lead straps so the two animals could merrily trot out of reach once more.

  The sound of Adam’s roaring laughter echoed through the canyon, dwindling only as he rode the big black stallion to where she was just getting to her feet.

  “You all right?” he asked, barely suppressing the humor in his voice.

  “Just dandy,” she answered curtly since only her pride was injured.

  “Guess I’d better take over from here if I ever want to get this done tonight. Do you still want to try setting up camp or do I need to do that, too?”

  “I can do both,” she went on insisting despite the evidence to the contrary.

  “Just set up camp,” Adam said decisively.

  Then he pulled his rope from his saddle, formed it into a lasso and trotted off to rope the ornery horses before Victoria even had time to get to her mare.

  “I’d brush off some of that dirt on your backside if I were you,” he suggested as he rode past her, leading the blood bay and the sorrel behind him.

  Victoria muttered the whole way back to the trees about arrogant showoffs who got their jollies at other people’s expense.

  She stopped muttering as she joined Adam at the trees and instead said, “So what do I do to set up camp?” You big jerk, she added in her head.

  “You’ll need wood to burn and rocks to put around it to keep the fire from spreading. You can fill the coffeepot with water from that stream over there—it has been tested and it’s drinkable—and then lay out the sleeping bags while I fix dinner.”

  “You’re fixing dinner?” she said with far more surprise and sarcasm in her tone than she’d used the previous night when he’d broiled steaks.

  “I didn’t bring enough food to take the risk of you burning it,” he informed congenially.

  Victoria bit back a nasty retort because she knew that if she let herself get started telling him what she thought of him she might never stop.

  Instead she simply went to work, heading in the direction of the stream and the stones that lined its banks.

  When she’d gathered everything she went to work building a fire. It took her several tries but by the time night settled over them she had a pretty decent blaze going.

  As she laid out both bedrolls—at exact opposite sides of the fire—Adam emptied cans of chili and beans into an iron frying pan he held over the flames.

  When the chili and beans were warm he ladled them onto tin plates, handed Victoria one and sat across the fire from her to eat.

  He wore a smile on his face, as if he were replaying her mishap with the horses in his mind’s eye and enjoying it as much as the first time.

  Obviously whatever demons he’d brought with him to breakfast that morning had been dispelled. Or passed on to Victoria.

  “I’m so glad I can provide you with comic relief,” she heard herself say before she’d weighed the wisdom of it.

  “Me, too,” he agreed.

  “I think the level you’ve sunk to today is uncalled for.”

  “Do you now. Why is that?”

  “You seem to delight in humiliating me.”

  “If you’ll recall it was your idea to go after the horses, not mine. Seems to me that makes it you humiliating yourself. I was just lucky enough to be your audience.”

  “Lucky enough? Luck has nothing to do with my being in this whole situation. It’s all by your design.”

  “If you hadn’t spent so many years as the pampered pet, you’d know how to do a thing or two. Maybe you should think of this as a belated education.”

  “Kind of like throwing someone who doesn’t know how to swim into a lake,” she said facetiously. “And you’re sadistic enough to laugh if it looks like they might drown.”

  “I don’t think I’d call what’s going on here sadism.”

  “What would you call it? Oh, wait, I know—comeuppance.”

  “First of all let me remind you—again—that what you just did was your own choice and it was you who told me to sit back and watch. But over and above that, what I’d call it is the same kind of thing that went on at that slumber party you had the last summer I was on your father’s ranch. The one when you had your old man get me out of bed to dive after Bridget Moss’s heirloom ring that you all claimed she’d lost in the pool when you were swimming. As I recall I spent an hour at that while you and your girlfriends sat on the patio watching and giggling as if I was a sideshow monkey giving you all a private performance. And then didn’t Bridget Moss just happen to find the ring in her pocket, after all. Surprise, surprise! Now that was uncalled for.”

  “Okay, fine. Guilty as charged. I was a despicable little creep as a teenager—”

  “At my expense,” he said, echoing her earlier thoughts about his amusement at hers.

  “At your expense—” she confirmed, having her words cut off again when he went on.

  “With no thought whatsoever to my feelings or to how you might be embarrassing me or to what even worse consequences could come out of those games you played with me.”

  “Yes, all of it. Every bit of it,” she shouted at him. “I regret it. I’m sorry. And I’m here trying to make up for it. As far as I’m concerned what I did as a kid may have been horrible and hurtful and selfish and cowardly and snobbish, but I was a kid. What you are is a vindictive man who can’t seem to let go of any slight that was ever committed against you. Well, fine. You want me to jump through hoops and embarrass myself and work my tail off and take all the venom you’ve saved up for twenty years, that’s what I’m here to do. But the truth is that you don’t even know what you want from me.

  “One minute you’re cracking the whip, the next minute you’re working by my side, the minute after that you’re flirting with me and then you’re punishing me for that. Except for the times when you’re coming on to me and then leaving me hanging to prove how mean and rotten it is to lead someone on. So okay, you want your pound of flesh? I’m giving you your pound of flesh. But let’s keep this where it belongs. You hate me, you want me to suffer the way you suffered, you want to get back at me for everything I ever did to you, knowingly or not. But in the meantime, keep your distance from me because you’re so successful at your revenge that I’m beginning to hate you right back. Congratulations!”

  O
kay, so maybe she should have stuck to her previous policy of keeping her mouth shut. Because she’d been right—once she’d gotten started she’d also gotten carried away.

  But at that moment she didn’t care. In fact, she could have said even more now that she was on a roll.

  She didn’t, though.

  Instead she took her eating utensils, stood and marched to the stream to wash them off, still fuming but in more control of herself as she began to think about the swimming pool incident he’d brought up.

  She remembered it well. But she hadn’t been at fault for that. Bridget Moss had claimed she’d lost the ring and put up such a fuss that Victoria had been forced to ask her father to get someone to go into the pool, to look for it.

  Bridget had suggested Adam. She’d said that she’d seen him go into the caretaker’s house that he and his family lived in only moments before, so she knew he was awake and couldn’t Mr. Rutherford please, please, please ask him to see if he could find her ring.

  So, all right, yes, the eleven teenage girls had all sat on the patio watching Adam dive for the ring. And yes, there had been giggling. But no one had been making fun of him.

  On the contrary, those giggles were over the fact that he’d looked so incredibly good in nothing but his swimming trunks.

  Every time he’d come up for air, that gloriously handsome face had broken the surface with water streaming off him, his broad chest rising into view, thick arms reaching up so massive hands could wipe the moisture out of his eyes and slick back hair that had been longer then.

  Victoria remembered that image vividly. The sharp vee of his torso. The muscles of his back swelling behind his ribcage. His biceps as defined as if they’d been carved from stone. The strong column of his neck. The narrowness of his waist. The line of hair that went from his navel to disappear into trunks that hadn’t left a whole lot to the imagination—

  She was doing it again, she realized suddenly. She was letting her mind wander to mental pictures of Adam that did intolerable things to her insides. Even when she was furious with him.