by Cindy Gerard
“Look,” she said, determined to ignore the obvious and get them out of this fix. “My husband...” She groped for words and came up with the trucker’s. “He’s real particular about who he invites on our property. Trust me, you don’t want him to find you here. And if anything happens to us, he’ll come looking for you,” she added for good measure and prayed that the lie would trigger a reaction.
It did. More than she’d figured on. Between his stocking cap and the jacket buttoned tightly around his neck she couldn’t see much of his face. But she could see his eyes—and the coldness there was devastating.
“You’re telling me this is your property?”
His voice was dangerously soft, yet black-water deep.
She brazened it out, sticking to the lie like an ink stain to white silk. “Mine and my husband’s.”
“Yours and your...husband’s. And who might this husband be?”
His skepticism was unmistakable. So was his impatience. Yet his hold loosened marginally. She took it as a positive sign. Shooting Mark a warning look to keep quiet, she compounded the lie. “Abel...Abel Greene.”
He blinked once, slowly, his breath shooting frost from his nostrils like smoke from twin chimneys. “Abel Greene doesn’t have a wife.”
The calm deadly assurance of his statement sent her heart knocking.
“That...that may be true,” she said, backpedaling, very aware of the strength and breadth of the broad, gloved hand flattened between her breasts. “But it’s also about to change. We...he...Abel and I...we’re getting married.”
Something—surprise, disbelief and, if she read it right, resignation—flickered in his eyes before they raked her face with a long, slow and uncomfortably thorough assessment.
“You’re not...hell. Don’t tell me you’re Mackenzie Kincaid.”
Even as he asked, and her wary silence answered, he slowly shook his head.
He closed his eyes, uttered a short, concise oath. With a heavy breath he leaned back on his heels, letting her go so fast it took her a moment to register that she was free. Still another before it sank in that he knew who she was.
She scrambled to sit up, sifting through a dozen reasons why he would know her name. Only one made sense. She fought it with everything that was left in her—until common sense forced her to face the cold, hard facts.
Only one man in this open-air deep freeze could possibly know who she was—and his name wasn’t Santa Claus.
She studied his winter—cold eyes, his dark, dangerous scowl, his look of total and uncompromising displeasure, and accepted that this was the man she’d traveled halfway across the country to marry. This was the man who had advertised for a bride.
As the ultimate irony of the situation sank in, she couldn’t decide if she should laugh with relief or cry in outrage. She probably would have done both if she hadn’t felt so much like screaming. In truth, though, she didn’t have it left in her to do anything but stare.
She’d envisioned old and hairless. She’d imagined burly and bushy. She’d been prepared for anything but mean. The jury was still out on that one, but she tried to rationalize that since they’d just attacked him, his reaction was probably justified. Rationalizing, however, didn’t help. She’d had too much. Too much fear, too much anxiety, too much everything.
An even break. That’s all she’d wanted. That’s all she’d needed to pull this off. She wasn’t going to get it—not from the powers that be and not from him.
His eyes were as hard as diamonds. As dangerous as a cornered animal. Only the bottom line kept her from giving it up, begging him to forget the whole thing and hightailing it back to L.A. They couldn’t go back. She needed Abel Greene.
He didn’t know it yet, but he was going to be their savior. This place was going to be their sanctuary. It took only one swift, graphic memory to reinforce the necessity of coming here: the boy lying in his own blood on the street in front of their apartment.
The brutal picture was the push she needed to get focused again. But there was a problem. She’d maxed out on her self-control quotient. The last thirty-six hours had extracted too high a price. The last thirty minutes had redefined fear as she’d known it.
The next words out of her mouth confirmed she was slipping over the edge.
“I realize I’m not familiar with how things are done up here in Club Deep Freeze,” she began, her voice escalating with her loss of restraint. “But if it’s a local custom for prospective bridegrooms to maul the women they intend to many, I’d like to lodge a protest!”
The last three words erupted on a yell that would have made an L.A. Lakers cheerleader proud. She was out of control and she knew it. All her fears, all her failures, erupted as reckless, righteous outrage.
Drawing a deep, ragged breath, she tried to settle herself down. She tried to gather her composure. She even tried to smile—but when his scowl only deepened, she did the one thing she couldn’t have stopped if the earth had tilted and stopped turning.
With all the force of her one hundred five pounds—and emotions tried beyond all limits—she hauled back and slugged Abel Greene in his jutting masculine jaw.
She got a grunt of surprise for her efforts...and possibly a broken knuckle.
Past shock, beyond fear, she stared, as above the thick collar of his wool jacket, the veins on his neck expanded, full and pulsing. Beneath the edge of his black stocking cap, another vein bulged at his temple. And over the roar of blood rushing through her ears, she heard yet one more distinct, crude oath that in English or any other language could never be mistaken for “Glad you could make it.”
Two
All things considered, Mackenzie took it as a positive sign that he didn’t hit her back—and that he didn’t leave them out in the cold. After digging around in the snow for their duffels, he walked them silently to the cabin. Once inside, he showed them where they could change into dry clothes, then settled them on a sofa by a warming fire. All of this was accomplished without a word or a direct glance her way.
That worked fine for her. She needed the time to settle herself down. To remind herself she was safe and warm—or would be as soon as the fire did its job. More importantly, she was here and so was Mark. She had to pull herself together if she was going to keep it that way.
Abel Greene was not a happy man. With good reason. He wasn’t expecting her. He certainly wasn’t expecting Mark.
Both she and Mark knew he’d written to call things off. His letter had arrived the day before they were scheduled to leave L.A. He’d had second thoughts. He was sorry.
She hadn’t had the luxury of second thoughts. And of the many things she was sorry for, the fact that she was going to start their relationship off with a lie topped the list. It went against the grain. But to save her brother, she wasn’t beyond the deception. Abel Greene would never know she’d gotten his letter. As long as he thought she hadn’t received it, she had justification for being here—and hopefully the ammunition to keep him from sending them back.
She shivered. They couldn’t go back. They had nothing to go back to.
Wrapping her hands around the mug of hot coffee he’d given her, she snuggled inside her drab but dry, gray sweats and bundled up in the blanket he’d provided. Then she watched him in a silence caused as much by what she suspected was a mild case of shock, as by how he looked sans his Nanook the Barbarian battle gear.
He was not what she’d expected. Neither was he the throwback from the ice age that she’d thought he was at first glance. While still formidable in his silence and size, he was one of the most exotic looking men she’d ever seen.
As the fire crackled inside and the wind whistled around the windows outside, she took stock of him as he moved around the cabin. He was dressed in old, faded jeans and a chamois-colored flannel shirt that hugged his impressive body with the intimate familiarity of a possessive woman. And this man, upon close inspection, was a man any woman would love to possess—if she had the guts to try.
> Mackenzie only prayed she had what it was going to take.
She’d always felt short-changed at five foot three, but she’d never felt dwarfed by anyone’s presence. Until now, she amended, watching as he slipped into a pair of soft, doeskin moccasins. She would put him at three or four inches over six feet, his large-boned frame was two hundred pounds of masculine angles and lean, powerful muscle. Aside from all that length and strength, however, what repeatedly drew her attention, as he moved with catlike grace about the cabin, was his hair and the dramatic beauty of the face it framed.
Flowing like a straight, blue-black curtain midway down his back, it was tamed only by a navy bandanna he’d folded into a headband and tied around his high forehead. His thick, coarse hair showcased the bold, clean features of his face; his proud high cheekbones and blade-straight nose. Even if he hadn’t had long hair, it was apparent that somewhere in his ancestry was a strong Native American gene or two. It didn’t take much imagination to picture him wearing nothing but a loincloth, a war lance clutched in his hand, sitting astride a spotted pony as they splashed their way along the shoreline of a clear glacial lake.
The cabin, a story and a half of honey gold wood, lofty multiple-angled ceilings and open, unstructured rooms, reinforced those images. From any point in the house, the stone and mortar fireplace was a visible, dramatic focal point. Books—all kinds of books—well used and well read lined shelves built into every conceivable nook and cranny. Vibrantly colored woven rugs lay scattered across the polished pine floors. A pronounced Native American theme influenced stunning prints of everything from wildlife to wild horses and a way of life long over but never forgotten. At least not by this man.
His presence seemed to fill every inch of breathing space, as daylight reluctantly gave way to dusk, and shadows danced like ghosts on the walls. Like the shadows, her gaze danced again from the fire to Abel Greene.
His jaw was square and strong, yet his face was saved from being savagely severe by the warm bronze tint of his skin and the generous width of his mouth. Even tensed into a tight, grim line, that mouth spoke to what she chose to believe was irritation, not anger. If he’d been truly angry, they wouldn’t be warming up by his fire right now. If he’d been truly angry, he would have sent them away.
Annoyed, definitely. Unsettled, without a doubt. But now that her panic had subsided her unfortunate outburst of anger was spent, her deepest, strongest impressions were of a man who protected not only what was his, but who he was and what he was.
She shivered when those eyes, as black as a cold, deep cave, cut to hers and caught her staring at the long, scythe-shaped scar that ran from his right temple down to his jawline. Embarrassed, but no less intrigued, she refused to look away.
By the time they finally broke eye contact, ripples of awareness were coursing through her body, warming the chill that had settled bone deep. There were so many unknowns here. It wasn’t that she was helpless. She knew how to take care of herself or she wouldn’t have risked coming. Yet she was a small woman, and Mark, for all his tough-thug posturing, was just a boy. They were alone with a man who could use all that strength, all that power against them. He already had. Yet, she reminded herself, he hadn’t hurt them. Not even when she’d provoked him.
She’d always relied on her instincts. She counted on them as they cautiously suggested there was a decency in him that would outdistance any threat. They were safe with this man. This man who would be her husband.
Husband. A sensation similar to cresting a hill on a roller coaster before plummeting down the other side flipped her stomach upside down.
Husband. The word caught like a sharp needle on a scratched record.
Mail-order brides had gone out with the gold rush and pantaloons, yet here she was, setting back the feminist movement by a hundred years. That and the concept of good sense. It wasn’t that she’d come into this completely blind. She had given some thought to caution. When she’d finally come to terms with the fact that answering his ad was her only remaining option, she’d checked the character reference the ad had offered. She’d been enthusiastically assured that Abel Greene was the equivalent of saint, savior and salvation. Someone out there thought he walked on water. It had been good enough for her.
She’d answered the ad. She’d given up on any correlation between love and marriage long ago, anyway. Just as she’d given up on the American Dream. She didn’t want Mark to give up, though. She wanted him to have a chance. This business arrangement of a marriage would provide it.
Right now, however, business had little to do with her awareness of Abel Greene as a man...and the resulting awareness of herself as a woman. She hadn’t counted on that. She hadn’t been counting on anything but getting out of the city.
Settling deeper into the sofa, she reflected on the “sell job” she’d received when she’d called the reference listed in his ad. The endorsement she’d been given had been a little too enthusiastic to be taken at face value. “Owned his own business,” they’d said. “Stable,” they’d said. While their optimism hadn’t been guarded, their details had.
She had the details now—at least the physical ones.
Never, in her wildest dreams, had she anticipated tall, dark and dangerous. And never had she come up with a game plan for dealing with a man who offered what this one did in the sex appeal department—or of how lacking she was in that area.
She was a plain Jane. Her short, shaggy hair, at its descriptive best, could be summed up as brown. Not sable, not chestnut, not any of those pretty, poetic synonyms, just brown. Statuesque? Hardly. She was shorter than her gangly fifteen-year-old brother by six inches but slim enough in the hips that she could wear his jeans if she rolled up the pant legs.
Mark drew the line at letting her wear his T-shirts though.
“I don’t want you putting bumps in them,” he’d grumble, making her grin.
It was true, she did have bumps, but they were just your garden variety B-cup bumps. Again, nothing to write home about. Other than her green eyes, which people seemed to find unusual, she was a blank white page compared to the canvas of rich, vivid color that was Abel Greene.
Tough, she thought, with the same stubbornness that had gotten her this far. He’d taken the same risks she had when he’d run that ad. For better or worse—Mark possibly being the “worse” part—she was going to make sure he saw this through. She had no choice. She’d closed the book on all options but one when she’d left L.A.—and that one option was glaring at her as if she’d arrived by space capsule.
Huddling deeper into the blanket, she comforted herself with the knowledge that even though Green’s welcome was cool and grudging, the cabin was blissfully warm and welcoming.
True to form, Mark was still a brooding, angry presence. He sat on the far end of the sofa, fiddling with his boom box, which had been damaged when he’d thrown it at the wolf.
The wolf. Mackenzie shivered and wrapped her hands tighter around her coffee mug. Flinching when her sore knuckle screamed in protest, she stared uneasily at where the wolf in question was curled up on a braided rag rug by the fire.
This, she hadn’t been prepared for.
“You live with a wolf,” she blurted out into a silence that emphasized how badly disbelieving she found her conclusion. It also told her she didn’t have as solid a grip on her composure as she’d hoped.
Greene handed her another blanket then added more wood to the fire. “Nashata is only half wolf.”
“Only half wolf,” she mused, considering his stoic response. “Well. I feel much better knowing that. Does that mean he’ll only take off half of my leg when he decides he doesn’t want to share the fire anymore?”
Some women cried when they were nervous. Some women clammed up. Unfortunately, she got mouthy. One-liners were her specialty. As a defense mechanism, it lacked both tact and wisdom. Knowledge of that pitfall wasn’t enough to take the edge off. Neither was it enough to shut her up.
She couldn’t s
top herself from sniping now. She was too tired. Her knuckle hurt. Her thawing fingers and toes burned as life returned to her frozen digits. Her stomach growled, complaining that the greasy donut she’d fed it at seven-thirty that morning had long ago lost its miserly attempt at appeasing her hunger.
Aware of the quiet that had settled, she lifted her gaze to his.
“What?” she demanded defensively.
“She,” he said, as if repeating a point he was trying to make.
When her frown relayed she wasn’t connecting, he tried again. “Nashata...she’s female.”
“Oh. Better and better. Maybe I can appeal to her on a woman-to-woman basis to eat her dog chow tonight instead of us.”
Greene’s impossibly broad shoulders rose with a very huge, very weary breath. “You don’t have to be afraid of Nashata.”
“Excuse me,” she snapped, wishing she hadn’t, wishing everything hadn’t set her on such a sharp edge. She jerked the blankets tighter around her shoulders. “It’s just that in my experience, low feral growls and bared teeth don’t generally say ‘nice doggie’ to me.”
Just like your nasty scowls don’t exactly spell out happily ever after, she thought glumly.
Only the possibility that his response would be “So leave,” kept her from voicing those thoughts. As unsettling as the idea of actually marrying this sullen, beautiful man was, even more frightening was the thought that he might send them away.
When she braved another look at him, he was still staring, but his expression had shifted from irritation to thoughtful contemplation. And the softness of his voice when he spoke sparked a flicker of hope.
“She was only protecting her property.” His gaze, but not his attention, drifted to the dog before returning to her. “Now that she knows I’ve accepted you, she has, too.”
Mackenzie eyed the wolf-dog as she made an amazingly human-sounding groan and stretched out full-length on the rug.
She had to admit that here, in the warmth of the cabin, lazy and relaxed by the fire, the animal did look harmless. Overpowering that conclusion, however, was Greene’s use of the word accepted in reference to her. It eased her mind marginally. Acceptance was what she needed.