A flare of anger scorched through her at the idea of such deception. She felt both disillusioned and betrayed by this previously unrevealed manipulative streak of Uncle Will’s. At least Mac Wilde had been upfront and open on the subject. His honesty and unwillingness to hoodwink her was definitely a point in his favor!
“You should’ve checked with Mac, Uncle Will. He would’ve never agreed to the pretense of a courtship. He loathes the very idea. He expects an immediate return on his investment without any foolish pandering. He thought you’d filled me in on all the details, and he wanted to avoid— Oh!” She jumped as the kitchen door swung open with such force that it hit the wall.
Mac was back in the kitchen, his expression thunderous. “I’d like to speak to the reverend, right now.”
Kara was certain that whatever he was about to say to the older man wouldn’t be pleasant. She did not like confrontations. Her quiet life had been devoid of them—until now. Now she feared a confrontation of nuclear proportions between the man she’d loved like a father and the man...
She stared at Mac. The man who had tricked the reverend out of coming to the airport to meet her, the man who thought the price of a plane ticket was enough to buy her as a wife. She swallowed hard. He was also the man who’d made her laugh, the man who had kissed her and touched her as if she were the passionate, attractive woman she’d always wanted to be. The man who had nobly taken in his brother’s kids and was trying his best at child-rearing—even though he seemed befuddled by the task. Though her own experience with children was limited, she knew satellite dishes and bribery were questionable methods, however well-meaning. His mail-order bride scheme fell into the same realm.
One thing she had learned about Mac Wilde in the short time she’d spent with him: he was good-hearted but impulsive and aggressive. Sometimes those traits could clash, causing trouble. Like now.
Kara put the phone behind her back, to keep it from him. “You should wait and cool off before you talk to him, Mac. You’re liable to say something you’ll regret.”
“It’s very generous of you to want to protect the Rev and me from ourselves,” Mac murmured huskily. “And very sweet.”
He had moved closer to stand directly in front of her. So close that she could feel his breath rustle her hair, could feel the heat that his body generated. She was heart-stoppingly aware of how well his shirt fit his muscled torso, how his jeans molded to his powerful thighs and gloved his sex.
Kara tried to breathe and couldn’t. Her breasts were suddenly full and aching, and she could feel the phantom touch of his hands on them, cupping them, teasing her taut nipples, like he’d done earlier tonight. The realization of how much she wanted him to do it again shocked her out of her state of dazed immobility.
She took a step backward. Mac moved a step forward to eliminate the small space between them, his dark eyes glittering. His smile was pure male sensuality.
The phone dropped from her nerveless fingers and hit the tiled floor.
“Mac,” she said, using his name as an admonishment, holding out her hand, trying to literally keep him at arm’s length. She touched his chest, feeling the hard warmth of him beneath her fingers. Lily’s words were ringing in her ears. “Girlfriends falling all over themselves to get to him—and into his bed.... My uncle has had them all at one time or another....”
“Kara.” He used her name as an endearment. His hands gripped her, his thumbs rotating over the blades of her hipbones, drawing her lower body nearer, closer to the throbbing male heat of his.
She felt herself melting, moistening in response. “Mac,” she whispered. This time his name was an incantation. The sight and the sound and the feel of him combined forces to block out Lily’s voice in her mind. Her senses were too filled with Mac to have room for anything or anyone else.
“Hello!” Reverend Will’s voice sounded from the telephone receiver, lying forgotten on the floor. “Kara? Mac? Hello? Is anyone there?”
Mac groaned. “Ignore him and maybe he’ll go away,” he muttered hopefully, then gave the phone a light kick, sending it skittering across the floor.
“Hello! Hello! What’s going on?” Reverend Will’s disembodied voice sounded loud and clear and rather eerie, coming from the opposite corner of the kitchen.
Kara blinked, once again, emerging from the power of Mac’s sensual spell. “Uncle Will!” She pulled away from Mac and hurried over to pick up the phone.
“Tell him you’re staying here,” Mac ordered softly.
“I—I...” She averted her eyes from the intensity of his commanding dark gaze. “Uncle Will, is Tricia allergic to cats?” she heard herself ask stupidly, in a breathless voice that sounded nothing like herself.
Uncle Will was silent for a moment, clearly perplexed by the non sequitur. And then: “She certainly is! On her eleventh birthday, Ginny and I bought her a kitten because she’d been badgering us for months for one...”
He went through the whole story, not leaving out a single detail. Kara tried not to look bored, but she was. It was a very long, very dull story, though Uncle Will tried to give it dramatic flair, at times.
Mac sank into one of the kitchen chairs, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “You asked for it,” he murmured wickedly. “Now you’re getting it—the unabridged trials of Tricia.”
“We found the cat!” Clay burst into the kitchen, his poxy little face flushed with excitement. “He’s on top of the beams in your bedroom, Uncle Mac, right above your bed.”
“Naturally,” Mac drawled. “Where else would he be? Has he gotten sick on my bed, yet? I’m sure he has a nervous digestive tract and will hurl everything he’s eaten within the past twenty-four hours. Probably right on my pillow.”
“Cool!” Clay exclaimed happily.
“Uncle Will, I have to go now,” Kara said quickly into the phone. “I—I’m staying here at the ranch tonight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
She hung up quickly and followed Mac and Clay down the narrow hall into a dark wood-paneled bedroom, dominated by a king-size bed which was covered by a thick goose-down quilt. There was a fireplace on one wall—granite, like the one in the living room but not nearly as large—and above it was the mounted head of a ram with a magnificent set of curled horns and shiny, accusing coffee-brown eyes.
Kara winced. At least the moose and the elk had blank stares, seemingly resigned to their fates. The ram looked furious. Vengeful, even. “Are there heads of dead animals in every room?” she asked uneasily. She found it a disconcerting decorating scheme.
“There’s a mountain goat in my room,” boasted Clay. “He’s cool!”
“My room has a bear,” Autumn, who had just joined them, piped in. “I tried to pretend he was Smokey but he looks so mean! I was scared of him so Uncle Mac put a blanket over its head.”
Kara thought a similar cover was in order for the ram’s head. Who could sleep with such blatant ill-will directed at them?
“Grandpa was a big game hunter,” Mac said dryly. “And he left future generations of Wildes plenty of souvenirs.”
“There’s Tai!” Clay pointed up to the ceiling where Tai was crouched on top of one of the exposed, polished beams, gazing down at them with a ferocity matching the trophy ram.
Clay hopped onto the bed and began to jump up and down, trying to reach the beams with his outstretched arms. Autumn joined him in his efforts. Though neither of them came close, Tai considered them bothersome enough to hiss threateningly.
“I could lure him down with some food,” Kara suggested. “He must be hungry, he hasn’t eaten a thing all day. I packed some cans of his favorite food in my suitcase. I’ll have to be alone with him, though,” she explained to the bouncing kids on the bed. “He’s very shy around strangers.”
“So am I,” Clay announced.
“Strangers are dangerous,” Autumn said solemnly. “I’m scared of them.”
“Let’s not get started on stranger danger again, Autumn,” Mac soothed. “You know I’ll always protect
you and not let anything happen to you.” He scooped Autumn up under one arm and Clay under the other. “Kara, we’ll leave you alone to deal with the cat. Take all the time you need.”
He left the room with a shrieking, wiggling child under each arm.
It was strange, being in Mac’s bedroom. After Kara had spooned some minced ocean-fish feast onto a plate and placed it on the floor to lure Tai down from the beams, she glanced around the room. There were no photographs on the nightstand or bureau, no books or knickknacks or any other personal touches to distinguish this as his own particular turf.
Her eyes kept straying to the bed and images of him lying on it, under that thick down quilt, filled her mind’s eye. She wondered what he slept in. Pajamas? Underwear? Nothing? The provocative melting warmth between her thighs grew hotter as she mentally stripped him.
Kara sank down onto the big bed with a moan of despair. What was happening to her? She had never had such thoughts about any man in her whole life! How was she going to hold strong against his demands for a marriage of convenience when she was almost in thrall to him after only a few hours’ acquaintance?
She didn’t know how long she sat there, nervous and preoccupied, yet dangerously excited, filled with a wildness and a hunger she’d never dreamed had been lurking within her. Every time she tried to plan her imminent departure from the ranch, she was sidetracked by imaginary erotic scenes of Mac Wilde kissing her, touching her, tumbling her back on this mattress and doing things to her she’d only read about, had only seen in R-rated movies!
Kara gripped her head with her hands. She was exhausted, that had to be it. The time difference had caught up with her, along with her lack of sleep the night before. She wasn’t thinking clearly and so these unknown, unwelcome thoughts had infiltrated her previously cautious, well-ordered mind.
“I see Tai has decided to climb down and have his dinner.” Mac’s voice was low and quiet, so as not to disturb the cat, who had indeed left his refuge in the rafters and was on the floor, chomping on his favorite meal.
Kara’s head jerked up and her eyes met Mac’s. He was standing in the doorway, watching her with a sexual intensity that made her leap to her feet and move swiftly away from the bed.
The house was amazingly quiet, compared to the noisy chaos earlier.
“The two younger kids went to bed. Lily turned in, too, after finally confessing that Brick is spending the night at his friend Jimmy Crow’s house.” Mac sighed. “The team of Brick and Jimmy are notorious in Bear Creek for such adventures as the ‘photos in the girls’ locker room’ marketing scheme and the deflating of the tires of every car in the teachers’ parking lot, to name only a couple.”
“You do have your hands full with the kids,” Kara said quietly. “Taking them to live with you must’ve turned your whole life upside down. I admire you for taking the responsibility, Mac. Lot’s of men wouldn’t.”
Mac shrugged. “Don’t make the mistake of believing I’m some kind of saint, Kara.” He crossed the room to stand beside her. “I assure you that I’m not. I’m just a man.” He slipped his hands under her arms and pulled her closer.
Kara gulped. She kept her arms straight at her sides, fighting a temptation to slide them around his neck. “According to Lily, you’re a man who hasn’t had sex since the kids moved in. And you’re not accustomed to such long periods of...going without. You’re the type who’s had girlfriends falling all over themselves, hoping to get into your bed.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, especially not when Lily is the one telling the tales,” Mac said, holding her eyes with his.
“Naturally, you’d say that,” Kara said shakily. “I’d hardly expect you to brag about your...your...” She sought a tactful word to describe his bedroom adventures.
“My exploits? My conquests?” Mac grinned, his dark eyes teasing. “What makes you think an alleged stud like me wouldn’t flaunt my scorecard or even embellish it? Haven’t you seen all the notches on my bedpost? I keep a penknife handy so I can carve in my latest success, moments after the act.”
He trapped her head between his hands. “Aha! I caught you! You were surreptitiously trying to sneak a look to see if the bedpost really was carved.”
“You don’t have a bedpost.” She knew he was making fun of her, making fun of himself, as well. Part of her wanted to smile along with him. Another darker, jealous part wanted to retaliate in fury at the thought of him with any other woman.
But being Kara, she did neither. Instead, she replied with prosaic calm, “You have a rectangular headboard that doesn’t have a single mark on it.”
“And doesn’t that tell you something?” Mac asked huskily. He rubbed his bristly cheek against her soft smooth one, sliding his hands along the curvy length of her.
“It tells me that you’re adept at twisting the conversation around until I’m so confused I’m not sure what we were talking about to begin with.”
“We were talking about the past, which is irrelevant.” Mac eased her into his embrace, bending his head to press his mouth into the sensitive curve of her neck. He kneaded the small of her back with firm, strong fingers. “What matters is right now, Kara. And the future we’re going to have together.”
Delicious shivers ran through her body. He was doing it again, seducing her with his words and his caresses, his husky voice as potent as his big warm hands. It would be so easy to succumb to this sensual heat he aroused in her, to yield mindlessly to his rampant masculinity. Temptation surged through her. Did she dare?
“Forget all about that girlfriend nonsense, Kara.” Mac scooped her up into his arms, lifting her off her feet with the same ease as when he’d hoisted the two children under each arm. “You’re going to be my wife.”
He carried her over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, holding her on his lap. “You’re so sexy,” he breathed, his mouth brushing hers. “So beautiful. I want you so much, baby.”
Four
Kara froze.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Mac asked solicitously. One moment she had been snuggling against him, soft and warm and pliable, the next she sat straight and rigid as a cattle prod. His hand slipped to the nape of her neck to massage the taut muscles there.
Kara leapt up, as if she’d been ejected by a spring, and headed for Tai, who was lapping water from a dish. Mac watched her, bemused. Perhaps she had some sort of hang-up about making love in the cat’s presence. Though he had no such aversion himself, he was certainly willing to accommodate her own particular quirks. “Should we put the cat in another room?” he offered.
“The cat can stay here if he wants. But I’m going to another room,” Kara announced, walking to the door.
Mac rose slowly to his feet and followed her. “Will you at least clue me in on what happened to make you change your mind?”
Kara paused in the doorway and stared out into the narrow, darkened hall. “You told me I was sexy and beautiful.”
“And that turned you off?” Mac was baffled.
She whirled around to face him. “Yes. Because it was such an obvious lie. Not to mention one of the most laughably generic compliments ever!”
“Generic?”
“You tell every woman you want to take to bed that she’s sexy and beautiful, don’t you? You say how much you want her and call her baby.” Kara’s hazel eyes flashed. “You were making a pass by rote, using the same words, the same phrases you use every time with every woman, I could tell. And it’s insulting!”
“That’s not true!” Mac protested, indignant. Was it? He scanned his memory. Those particular phrases did have a familiar ring. But who could remember what was said at certain crucial moments? And who cared, anyway?
Kara obviously did. She stalked into the hall without looking back. The floor plan of the ranch house was atypical and confusing, having been added to over the years by various generations of Wildes. The children’s bedrooms were off to the left, down a side corridor. She did not take that turn but heade
d straight toward the lighted vestibule, instead.
She had no idea what she was going to do. Tai was still ensconced in Mac’s bedroom and she had no transportation into town. Even if she managed to get there, she had nowhere to stay.
Mac was suddenly behind her. He put both hands on her shoulders, and though his touch was light, she felt the strength in his fingers, anchoring her in place.
“You’ve got to be hungry,” he said, before she had the chance to try to break away from him. “I know I’m starving. We didn’t stop to eat dinner, which was definitely an oversight on my part. We should’ve gone to a restaurant in Helena and—”
“You were in a hurry to get back to the kids,” she reminded him. Mac’s big hands were cupping her shoulders, his fingers gently stroking. Kara quivered. For one who claimed not to be a “touchy-feely” type, Mac Wilde certainly did a lot of touching. In this one brief evening they’d spent together, he’d touched her more than any man ever had. As for feeling...
She blushed at the wayward direction her thoughts were taking. It was past time to derail this latest seduction attempt of his, if that’s what it was. “Anyway, from your point of view, why bother wining and dining a sure thing? You assumed that I was here to marry you, so who needed to waste time with anything remotely resembling courtship behavior?”
She stepped away from him, but putting physical distance between them did not dispel the lingering warmth of his hands upon her. She could feel the effects of his touch spread through her like a fever.
“I think I’ve been firmly put in my place,” Mac remarked dryly. “No doubt deservedly so. But since you’re stuck here tonight, can we call a truce and get something to eat? Mrs. Lattimore was here today and left—”
“One of her putrid casseroles?” Kara quoted Lily. She felt exceedingly lightheaded, probably the result of an empty stomach and an overexcited nervous system. And the dizzier she felt, the more outspoken she seemed to become. “I think I’ll pass.”
“I won’t tell Mrs. Lattimore you said that. Come on, we could both use a heaping plateful of her notorious ground meat surprise.” He took her arm and guided her into the kitchen.
Wilde Bunch Page 7