‘Nope. Don’t think I’ve met them. You haven’t told me what you’re going to call the place.”
“Shangri-La?”
“Hah. That is so totally not you, Will.”
“How about the Flying C?”
At that, she nodded. “I like it.” And then she sent him a smile.
He felt pleased—with himself, with the sunny afternoon outside the quad cab, with just about everything. “That settles it, then. I’m calling it the Flying C.”
She bent and got something from her purse—an elastic band, he saw a moment later, when he glanced her way again. With her gaze on the road ahead, she put her hair up in a ponytail. The action lifted her small, firm breasts even higher.
About then, he realized he was staring. Before she could catch him at it, he faced front again and told himself to quit drooling over her and drive the damn truck.
She said, “So tell me your secret. How’d you get your ranch so soon? I remember when you used to talk about it back home, you always said you hoped that you might swing it by the time you were in your forties.” Apparently, she had no clue he’d been staring at her breasts.
Good. “Yeah. That was the plan. But maybe you remember my great-aunt Wilhelmina?”
“Of course. You were named after her, right? And she made it big in real estate in San Diego...”
“That’s Aunt Willie. About six months ago, she passed on.”
“Oh, Will. I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard.” She reached across the console and gave his shoulder a light squeeze then quickly retreated to her side of the cab again. He wouldn’t have minded at all if she’d held on for a moment or two longer. The impression of her soft hand seemed to linger through the fabric of his shirt. “How old was she?”
“In her eighties, and she’d been frail for a couple of years. It happened peacefully.”
“I’m glad for that.”
“She went to sleep one night and never woke up. Aunt Willie had married five times, but never had any children.”
“And she doted on you...”
“She was the greatest. I miss her. She left me a generous nest egg and a final letter that told me to ‘live my dream’ and ‘follow my heart.’” He sent her a grin.
“Oh, I like that.” Jordyn’s eyes got that shine to them. She was a pretty woman. But that shine in her eyes made her downright beautiful. “Your aunt Willie was a romantic.”
He chuckled. “To you, everyone’s a romantic.” They passed the Manor. He didn’t turn in.
And Jordyn’s eyes went from shining to guarded. “What’s up, Will?”
He kept his tone casual. “I just thought we’d go on into town for a little, take a walk in the park.”
She was pinching up her mouth again. “I told you. I’ve done enough lying for one day.”
“If we see anyone, we’ll just smile, say thank-you when they congratulate us—and walk on by.”
She muttered something unpleasant under her breath. He had the good sense not to ask her to say that again.
* * *
Will stopped his quad cab in the lot between the park and the veterinary clinic. It was the same lot where Jordyn vaguely remembered Elbert Lutello pulling a briefcase from his pink Cadillac on Saturday night.
Jordyn tried again to get through to her temporary husband. “I don’t feel like a walk right now, Will.”
“It’ll be good for you, a little fresh air, some exercise.” He said it so cheerfully, as though he had nothing more on his mind than a late-afternoon stroll.
Bull. “I’ve known you all my life. You think I can’t tell when you’re playing me?”
He turned off the engine and adjusted his straw Stetson on his handsome head. “Okay, Jordyn. The truth is I was kind of hoping that a walk in the park might jog loose a few memories of what happened Saturday night.”
“But we already know the main points of what happened in the park. The mystery is how we got to your hotel room and what we did once we were in there.”
“I admit I don’t remember what we did when we got there, but I know we drove there in this pickup.” He tapped the steering wheel for emphasis. “That’s easy to figure out because I left the pickup here in this lot for the wedding and the party—and the next morning, it was at the Manor.”
“Listen to yourself. That is scary. We’re lucky we made it to the hotel that night without ending up in a wreck.”
“Exactly. Another reason that whoever drugged us needs to be called to account for it.”
“That’s assuming we were drugged in the first place.”
“Jordyn, would you just walk in the park with me? Please?” He said it so nicely.
She knew she was weakening. She grumbled, “Anyone ever tell you that you’re like a dog with a bone once you get fixated on something?”
He tugged on the brim of his hat again. “Humor me?”
She cast a glance toward the headliner and puffed out her cheeks with a hard breath. “Oh, fine.”
He rewarded her for giving in with a slow, way-too-sexy grin. “You’re the best wife I ever had, you know that?”
“You silver-tongued devil, you.” She shoved open her door and climbed down to the blacktop. He went around the rear of the truck to meet her. When she started off toward the park, he caught her hand and twined his fingers with hers. She slanted him a wary look.
“We’re newlyweds, remember? Newlyweds should hold hands.” His hat shadowed his eyes, and she couldn’t really read his expression.
But hey. It felt good, his big, warm hand all wrapped around hers. As if she wasn’t alone. As if...they really were married. Or at least, intimate. Close...
Better not to overthink it. She squeezed his fingers. “Let’s go.”
They set off. “I think we should start at the beginning,” he said, “at that spot by the gazebo, where they set up the punch table and the portable dance floor.”
A half an hour later, they’d strolled through most of the small park hand in hand, stopping at any spot either of them could recall from Saturday night. They’d waved and smiled and said hi to a couple of young mothers and some kids tossing a ball.
And neither of them had remembered anything new from the night in question.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” Will said as they started across the parking lot on their way back to the quad cab.
“If you say so.” They were still holding hands. She slanted him a smile. “And the walk actually turned out to be kind of nice.”
“I knew you’d enjoy it.”
“Don’t get smug, Clifton.”
“I am never smug.”
“Yeah, right.”
He tugged on her hand, pulling her closer. “And see? No one asked you a single question.”
She beamed wider. “True. It was fine.”
“Told you so.” He tipped his head down to her.
They stopped walking and just stood there, on the edge of the blacktop, grinning at each other. She caught herself on the verge of going on tiptoe to press her lips to his.
Oh, a girl could get so confused in a situation like this. Married for the world to see, both of them playing their parts.
Maybe too well.
Gently, and much too regretfully, she pulled her hand free of his. “I, um, have some homework I should get busy on...”
He frowned, puzzled at first. But then he remembered. “Right. Those online classes you’ve been taking.” He took off his hat, smoothed his black hair and slid the hat back in place. “So. Back to the Manor?”
“That would be great. I’ll get out my laptop and get to work.”
* * *
Will seemed kind of quiet on the drive to the hotel. But then, Jordyn was quiet, too, thinking about how she’d almost tried to kiss h
im, about how she had to watch herself with him.
That walk in the park had failed to spark any lost memories from Saturday night. But lost memories weren’t the only kind. What about the things she hadn’t forgotten from Saturday night?
Like for instance, Will’s kiss. Ironic? Oh, yeah. She couldn’t recall if she’d had sex with him or not. But kissing him? She remembered that just fine. And she might as well be honest with herself. She wouldn’t mind at all if he kissed her again.
However, given their situation, kissing Will probably fell directly into the “things not to do” category. Their situation was plenty complicated already. No need to make it more so.
At the Manor, he walked her to the room and then went off to find his brothers, suggesting she order up room service if she got hungry and promising to be back by ten or so. That gave her four hours on her own. She got out her laptop and went to work.
Once she’d caught up with her assignments, she grabbed a quick shower and put on a comfy pair of terry-cloth shorts and a Grizzlies T-shirt suitable for sitting around in—and sleeping in, when the time came. She had a chicken sandwich and a soda then brushed her teeth and stretched out on the bed to watch a little TV.
The next thing she knew, she heard the shower running. She opened her eyes to the end of a Scandal rerun and realized that Will must have come in while she was sleeping.
She switched off the TV and sat up against the pillows and wondered why her heart had started racing a thousand miles a minute. There was nothing to get all excited about. Yeah, it was weird, her and Will in one room with one bed.
But come on. They’d already spent a night together, even if she couldn’t remember a thing about what had happened when they did. He was...just Will. They’d known each other forever, and it was not a big deal.
Eventually the shower stopped. She sat there staring at the bathroom door, ordering her silly heart to slow the heck down.
He came out on a cloud of steam, wearing sweats and a soft gray T-shirt that clung to the hard muscles of his chest and outlined those corrugated abs of his. His feet were bare, and his hair was wet, and her mouth was suddenly desert dry. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Oh! You didn’t. I was...I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” Lame. Utterly, completely lame. If she wasn’t a virgin, she certainly sounded like one—a virgin from way back in the day, one who knew nothing about sex or pleasure or what to do with a man in her room.
Well, she did know. She’d read plenty of books about pleasing her special guy—as well as herself. She was ready and then some for whenever he finally bothered to come along.
True, she lacked experience at being intimate with a man and she would be counting on her special guy to help her with that. But she wasn’t afraid of her own desires. She was a healthy, normal grown woman who took care of herself in every way, including sexually.
He studied her for a moment. “You okay, Jordyn?”
“Sure. Fine. I mean, all things considered.”
His mouth quirked at the corners. “Tell you what. Just give me a pillow. I’ll take the couch, and you can turn off the light.”
That wasn’t right. “No.” It kind of popped out without her actually planning to say it. “I mean, come on. It’s a big bed, and we’ve already spent one night together in it.”
“I’m taking the sofa.”
“But it’s too short for you, hardly more than a love seat, really. You won’t be comfortable on that.”
He had that look, the one she’d always thought of as his noble look. When she was younger and he got that look, it always meant he was about to start telling her what to do. But now that noble look seemed more directed at himself. He said grimly, “I promised you separate rooms. Tomorrow we’ll have them. Tonight the couch will do me fine.”
She folded her arms across her breasts and executed a serious eye roll. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not right that you should have to—”
“Shush,” she commanded. He surprised her and actually shut up. She wasted no time jumping from the bed, pulling back the covers and climbing in. “There’s a blanket in the closet. Grab that. You can sleep outside the covers. I promise not to try and put a move on you.”
He chuckled at that and then looked at her sideways. “You sure?”
“Absolutely. Come to bed.”
Chapter Five
Will was stretched out beside her in the dark.
She could smell him—all clean and masculine and freshly showered. She stared at the shadows up near the ceiling and wondered if she would ever get back to sleep.
“Jordyn Leigh?” His voice kind of filled up the darkness, so deep and manly and just rough enough to make her wish...
Well, never mind about what she might wish. “Yeah?”
“What’s the matter?”
She should tell him there was nothing. But suddenly she felt so safe in the dark, in the bed, with Will. She wanted to share her thoughts, to tell him the thing that kept preying on her mind. “It’s just too strange, that’s all.”
When she said no more, he gently prompted, “What’s strange? Tell me.”
“Well, I mean, to wait all these years for that special night. And then, not to know if it happened or not.”
“It really gets to you, huh?” His voice just wrapped around her, soothing and comforting and wonderfully deep.
She let out a sigh into the darkness. “Yeah, it gets to me.”
“You could go to a doctor, get an exam, find out for sure?”
“But see, that’s just it...”
A silence. She matched her breathing to his. And then he encouraged her in a near whisper, “Come on. You can tell me.”
She thought what a great guy he was. All those years she’d found him so annoying. How wrong she’d been. She confessed, “I looked it up online yesterday while I was trying to get my mind around the whole idea that I can’t even remember if we did or we didn’t.”
“Looked what up, exactly?”
“You know, about hymens.”
Another silence from him. He didn’t even breathe. She suspected he might be trying not to laugh.
And strangely enough, that he might be holding back a chuckle didn’t bother her. Why wouldn’t he chuckle over the idea of her madly searching the web for the scoop on her possibly lost virginity? It was kind of funny, she supposed.
Just not to her.
Finally, he asked, “Hymens, huh?”
“Mmm-hmm. Turns out they’re something of a myth.”
“Wait. You’re trying to tell me there’s no such thing as a hymen?”
“No. They do exist.”
“Whew.” His voice was teasing now. She smiled to herself in response to the sound of it. “Had me worried there for a minute.”
“The thing is some women hardly have one, even when they’re really young. And it can get thin and slowly disappear if a woman is an athlete, thus the old wives’ tale that women should ride sidesaddle to preserve the proof of their virginity. And by my age, even if a woman’s never had sex, she very well might not have much of one left, anyway—and also, a woman can actually have sex and her hymen can stretch, but still be there. So it’s a problem, because whether or not I have one wouldn’t necessarily tell a doctor anything, unless there was scarring or bleeding or some kind of injury. I don’t feel as though I’ve been injured. And Sunday morning, there was no blood, and I wasn’t the least bit sore.”
She stared into the darkness, waiting for him to say something else. But he didn’t.
So she finished in a small, sad voice, “The plain fact is the most reliable way to find out if a woman’s a virgin is to ask her—unless she got drunk off her ass and can’t remember, that is.”
She waited again, hoping for a
few more words of support and comfort from him. But he remained totally silent beside her.
Had he dropped off to sleep?
Not that she’d blame him if he had. What guy wanted to lie in the dark with his clothes on next to his wife who wasn’t really his wife and listen to her babble endlessly about hymens?
“TMI, huh?” she asked in a trembling whisper.
And that was when she felt his hand, down between them, next to hers. His warm fingers brushed her cool ones. She gave him her hand. He twined their fingers together and lifted their joined hands toward his face. She felt his breath across her knuckles, followed by the soft brush of his lips on her skin.
Jordyn let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Her eyes drifted shut. She fell asleep thinking that as temporary husbands went, she could have done a whole lot worse.
* * *
She woke to daylight and the smell of fresh coffee.
“Mornin’.” Will was already up, sitting on the sofa, eating eggs delivered from room service. He indicated a still-covered dish on the tray on the coffee table. “I ordered you the breakfast scramble, wheat toast. Hope that’ll work.”
She sat up and stretched. “Perfect.”
He gave her a look that made her empty tummy feel warm. “Come on, then. Dig in before it gets cold.”
So they ate, sitting side by side on the sofa.
After breakfast, he let her hog the bathroom. She had to hurry to get ready for work.
He followed her to the door and pulled it open for her as she juggled her purse and her laptop. “What time will you be through for the day?”
“About three.”
“I’ll meet you there. We can go by the boardinghouse and get your things. Then you can follow me out to the ranch.”
“You don’t have to—”
He waved away her objections. “Three o’clock. I’ll be there.”
She clutched her laptop to her chest. “Wow. Today’s the day, huh?”
He looked so pleased with himself. “Closing is at ten.”
“Allow me to congratulate you again on the total fabulousness of having your own place at last.”
The Maverick's Accidental Bride (Montana Mavericks: What Happened At The Wedding Book 1) (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) Page 6