Abbie sighed and repeated, “Just a man on a horse.”
OLIVIA WAS KEYED UP from her win in the mare and foal division and returned to the subject again and again on the trip home. Abbie, who had asked for the shotgun seat in Livy’s truck, listened absently as the details were replayed yet again. “I told Mac he could do it,” she said, and Abbie smiled, as if she hadn’t heard this at least once already. “Khalid is going to break every record out there, you wait and see. Mac wasn’t sure he was ready, but I knew he’d settle down the minute he realized there was an audience. For a four-month-old colt, he has a lot of presence, don’t you think?” Livy was too excited to wait for an answer. “I’m predicting he’s going to win so many ribbons in the next few years, they’ll have to make up whole new divisions for him to enter. He’s going to make every other Arabian colt look like a slug. I told Mac he was ready for this.” She slapped the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “Mac wasn’t sure, but I knew. I just knew.” She sobered for a half a second. “You don’t think Mac was upset, do you?”
“Upset?” Abbie repeated, hoping no one—and especially not impressionable Olivia—had noticed the tension between her and Mac. “I can’t imagine why he’d be upset when you won your division.”
A smile flashed in Livy’s violet eyes and high spirits returned to carry the day. “You’re right, Abbie,” she continued. “Mac asked me to work with Khalid because I bonded with the little guy right off. And we won, so why should he be upset?” She grinned at Abbie across the front seat of the truck. “I mean, he won his class, too.”
Abbie nodded and wished a couple of things. One, that she had as much enthusiasm for life as Livy. And two, that someday she could feel as completely competent in her work as Livy felt in hers. Olivia had a gift, and whether she realized it or not, the knowledge of it invested her with authority. Abbie didn’t feel she had a gift for anything except getting herself into impossible predicaments. She’d wanted to be a teacher from as far back as she could recall, but now that she’d been summarily dismissed from Miss Amelia’s Academy, she’d probably be lucky ever to teach anywhere again. Well, maybe that was a bit too pessimistic, but even if she had another teaching position lined up, there was the baby to think about, the logistics of child care and quality time, and time to grade papers, prepare lessons, be the kind of teacher she wanted to be. So before she could even find out if she had a future in her chosen field, her long-awaited independence had taken a swan dive and landed her in this pickle of pickles. She’d made one impulsive choice, taken one foolish chance, and now her future was framed within the parameters of a much more daunting career—motherhood.
“Maybe he’s not upset, but I still think Mac was a little off this weekend,” Livy continued. “I mean, didn’t you think he seemed tense the whole time? Worried, maybe? Well, you probably don’t know him well enough to tell, but something was bothering him. Sultan was really showing out today, stuff Mac never lets any horse get away with. I think he was distracted.”
“Sultan won,” Abbie pointed out, knowing she sounded somewhat defensive. “Mac can’t have been too preoccupied.”
Livy’s sharp glance darted to Abbie. “Probably only somebody like me, who’s worked with him a lot, would have noticed anything. And I wasn’t saying that whatever it was kept him from giving an outstanding performance. He just seemed off to me, a bit off balance in his concentration, that’s all, and I just can’t help wondering what—or who—is on his mind.”
Abbie could have provided a list of reasons Mac seemed “off” in Livy’s words. A list beginning and ending with her. She figured if Mac was in any way, shape or form unhappy with his and Sultan’s accomplishment in the ring, it would wind up being her fault. She was a distraction. She had made him angry. She had put a burr under the saddle blanket. She had messed up the hotel reservations and that meant he had ended up on a lumpy mattress, or been kept awake all night by noisy neighbors, or couldn’t sleep for worrying how she would try to trick him into marriage—or all of the above. There was no way for her to win with Mac. She should just get out at the next rest stop and thumb a ride to Arkansas or Kalamazoo. But she didn’t want to go either place. She wanted one more week to prepare her speech, to beef up her resolve, to be alone with the knowledge of her baby’s existence.
Well, Mac knew, but he didn’t count. In fact, she didn’t know why she cared if she was a distraction to him. He’d won, for Pete’s sake, and even if he’d done it only because he looked the part of a desert prince, he still had no reason to complain. She’d asked nothing of him up to this point. And she wouldn’t in the future, either. All she wanted was to be with her friend, to have just another week in which to gather strength before she faced her family. If that kept him off, well, too bad. She had done nothing wrong, unless she counted falling for a Texas sheikh and failing to realize he was just a man on a horse.
Chapter Six
“It’s clear as glass, she planned the whole thing, beginning to end. And I don’t see why I should have to be the bad guy just because she’s manipulated her way into being Jessie’s friend.” Mac braced his arms on the top rail of the pasture gate and set the sole of his boot on the bottom rail as he concluded the entire, unexpurgated story of his involvement with Abbie. Beside him, Cade assumed the same position, one foot braced against the bottom rail, arms propped across the top, his gaze—like Mac’s—centered on the mares and their foals grazing contentedly on the summer grasses. There was a sense of wholeness when he was with Cade, something about the alignment of their individual stances, the tilt of their hats, the way they looked at things, the knowledge that someone understood him about as well as he understood himself. It was their twinship that made them not only physically identical down to the last hair on their heads, but also gave them the shared history that fostered a special insight each into the other. There wasn’t any other person Mac wanted to talk to about Abbie and her baby. No one else he trusted enough to confess the whole sordid story to. He knew Cade would see things his way, or show him where he lacked perspective. For good or ill, Cade would tell him the truth. “I think,” Mac continued, “that I should tell Jess what her friend is really like and insist she be the one to ask Abbie to leave the ranch.”
“Is that what you want to happen? For Abbie to just go away?” Cade paused, then specified the answer he expected. “Truth.”
“Yes,” Mac said without hesitation, then realized with a jarring twist in his gut that he really wasn’t going to be any happier when she was gone. “No. I don’t know. She’s a liar, a schemer. Worse even than Gillian was. I shouldn’t give a solitary damn if she disappeared from the face of the earth. But right now, the truth is, I feel this crazy impulse to protect her, to step in and save her from the mess she’s made and I’m really not sure how I’m going to feel once she’s gone.”
“You want my opinion?” Cade asked.
“No, I want Stanley’s,” Mac replied dryly. “Of course, I want your opinion. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about this. I wouldn’t have just confessed to you my part in this soap opera or told you how really stupid I was for falling for her innocent facade in the first place.”
“You’re in love with her,” Cade said confidently. “It’s the only explanation.”
Mac turned his head and stared at his brother. “This is no time for jokes,” he said.
“Consider the possibility, Mac. You fell in love with her back in December, you’ve thought about little else except her ever since—your words, not mine—and when she showed up here at the ranch, you panicked and started imagining it was all a setup to trap you into marriage and fatherhood. With what Gillian did to you, that knee-jerk reaction is—”
“Knee-jerk?”
“That’s what I said,” Cade continued calmly. “You reacted to Abbie’s announcement about the baby by jumping to a perfectly understandable conclusion, considering your history with the last woman—actually, the only other woman you ever fell hard for. But that do
esn’t mean you automatically jumped to the right conclusion.”
“I’m not wrong about this, Cade.” But even as he said it, Mac knew he wanted his brother to convince him he might be. “And I am not in love with Abbie. I slept with her once five months ago. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as lust, not love.”
“If it had been nothing more than lust, you’d have forgotten about it the next day when she skipped out. And by your own admission, you didn’t. Love can happen that fast,” Cade assured him. “Look at Serena and me. One minute we’re married due to a cultural misunderstanding and the next thing you know, I’m head over heels for her. When it’s the right woman, Mac, logic really plays no part in it.”
“If this is all the help you’re going to be, I think I’ll just ride out and have a talk with a scrub oak.”
“You’re not listening to me, buddy. You’re in denial.”
“And you’re still in that annoying stage of romance where you think everyone is or should be in love with everyone else. You’re wearing rose-colored glasses, Cade. Probably will be for months to come. You and Alex. What a time for both my brothers to be so besotted with their respective brides that they haven’t a sensible word to say to me.”
“The word I have for you is, give it a chance.” Cade pulled down the brim of his hat and took his boot off the bottom rail, breaking the syncronicity as his gaze shifted toward the property line and the green acres on the other side. “I’ve asked Nick Grayson and Uncle Randy if Coleman-Grayson Corporation will help Serena and me buy the McGovern place. It’ll give the ranch room for expansion and give me a little more privacy with my wife. If McGovern agrees to sell at our offering price, and Nick thinks he will, we could be moving in by September.”
“That’s good news,” Mac said, honestly pleased by his twin’s plan but wishing he had a better answer for his own situation. “That way you and Serena can make a home of your own and you can still be home.”
“Exactly what we thought, although I have promised Serena we’ll spend at least a month or two in Balahar every year. She’s excited about that.” Cade continued to look across the distant fence that divided the Desert Rose from the McGovern property. “Okay. Here’s my best advice, Mac. Up to now, you’ve tried ignoring Abbie. You’ve tried confronting her with her lies. You’ve tried to force her to admit she’s exactly like Gillian. I’m not saying she isn’t lying, Mac. I’m only saying you ought to consider the idea that maybe she isn’t.”
“She is,” Mac protested, trying to keep his rocksolid belief in her duplicity from crumbling like sandstone. “We spent one night together, Cade. One night. We used protection against pregnancy—I wasn’t completely blindsided by lust—and it just seems too strange to me that five months later she turns up pregnant…here, of all places.”
“It is an odd set of circumstances, Mac, but what if everything she told you is the truth? Stranger things have happened.”
“Lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
“Sorry, brother, but even science isn’t going to back you up on that angle. It’s true you got burned pretty badly by Gillian, but that doesn’t mean Abbie is just like her. It just means you’re more suspicious than maybe you ought to be.”
“I have a right to be suspicious,” Mac argued. “Her story doesn’t hold up. Haven’t you noticed how she carries that little cell phone everywhere she goes? Never lets it out of her sight, and she gets mysterious phone calls all the time from some guy. I’ve heard her talking to him. Now tell me there’s not something downright sneaky about that. About her.”
“Maybe,” Cade said. “And maybe not. If Abbie is as devious and sly and downright sneaky as you’re convinced she is, then it’s going to come as a big surprise to everyone except you. Jessie adores Abbie. Serena likes her. Hannah likes her. Aunt Vi and Mom like her. Every other male on this ranch breaks out in a grin anytime she glances in their direction, and that includes me. Why don’t you stop torturing yourself with trying to figure out how she’s like Gillian and start trying to figure out how she’s different? What if Abbie actually is the special person you first thought she was? What if you tried to have an honest conversation with her about what happened and what she expects from you instead of baiting her at every turn and waiting for her to make a mistake?”
Mac frowned. “I can’t just pretend to believe her all of a sudden.”
“No, but think about it this way. What would happen if you suddenly discovered solid evidence that she’d been telling the truth all along?”
Mac thought about that. Remembered Abbie’s sleek body beside him, naked on the bed, beneath him, welcoming him inside. Remembered how he’d fallen in love with her laugh, how he’d felt wrapped in warmth just hearing it. Remembered how lost he’d felt when he realized she was gone without a trace. “If I thought for a minute she was telling the truth, I suppose I’d have to marry her.”
Cade grinned. “That’s it, then. Love in the first degree.”
Mac offered no answering grin in return. “That is no help, Cade. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Okay, then, let’s put this on a level you’ll understand. Come with me.” He led the way to the barn, his gaze searching the ground, until he found what he wanted—a wayward stem of hay. Holding it out, he said, “We’ll draw straws. You get the short straw, you have the talk with Jessie and get Abbie evicted. I draw the short straw, you take my advice and spend time—and I do mean quality time—being nice to Abbie. Agreed?”
Mac studied the piece of straw. “You want to draw straws to decide whether or not I have to follow your dumb advice? You’re not just making another stupid joke?”
In answer, Cade snapped the straw in two, showed Mac that they were of different lengths, then put them in his palm and put his hands behind his back. When he brought his hands forward again, the ends of the straw extended out evenly. “Take your pick, twin.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mac said, eyeing the straws.
“Afraid you’ll lose?”
“How much quality time are we talking about?”
“How much can you stand?”
“An hour, maybe.”
“A week,” Cade countered.
“A day.”
Cade shook his head. “Today’s Monday. You have to give it at least through this coming weekend.”
“That’s six whole days.”
“Yeah, plus what’s left of this one. You’re not chicken, are you, Mac?”
What was he worried about? Mac wondered. He’d won at this game before. “You’re on,” he said, and chose his playing piece…and came up the loser.
ABBIE EXPECTED THE WORST when Mac slipped into the seat beside her at dinner. His nearness unnerved her. His pleasant “Mmm, this looks good, doesn’t it?” made her edgy. His under-his-breath suggestion to her of “You’re going to want an extra helping of that casserole, trust me” knotted her healthy appetite into a lump of anxiety. When he asked, solicitously, if Jessie had given her the day off so she could recover from the demands of her weekend at the horse show, then accused his cousin of overworking the best help she was ever likely to get, Abbie couldn’t imagine what mischief he was plotting. But when he smiled at her—a really bone-melting smile—over the bowl of mashed potatoes, she knew that whatever he was doing, it was going to get her into trouble.
He was going to tell the whole table she was here under false pretenses. He was going to lull her into a false security, then pull out the guns of accusation and shoot holes in any defense she offered. He was going to embarrass and humiliate her in front of his family. He was going to…
He did nothing, as it turned out. He made several pleasant comments to her over the course of dinner and went out of his way at every turn to include her in whatever discussion he had with anyone else. As dessert—Ella’s fantastic blackberry cobbler topped off with homemade vanilla ice cream—was being passed out, Alex rose and tapped a spoon against his water glass. When the murmur of conversation died back, he cleared his thr
oat and placed his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “I have an announcement,” he said. “Hannah and I are…” His face creased with a grin. “She’s pregnant, and the doctor said today he thinks it’s twins!”
“Congratulations!” Cade was the first one to jump up to slap his older brother on the back and give Hannah a kiss on the cheek, but Mac was right behind him and Jessica followed close on their heels. Rose and Vi seemed a little misty-eyed, and Ella was so excited she let the ice-cream scooper drip all over the dining room floor while she hugged first Alex, then Hannah, then her own husband, Hal, for good measure.
After that, there were periodic whoops of laughter, a bubble of excited chatter that rose and fell…and rose again. Through it all, for the rest of the evening, Mac stayed at Abbie’s side. He told her how he and Cade had prompted Alex into courting Hannah, suggested that if Abbie still wanted to learn about the Arabians, he’d be happy to continue her lessons, asked if she wanted more cobbler or ice cream, offered to get her a footstool, a pillow to place behind her back, even suggested a glass of milk would be good for her and help her sleep soundly. By the time she pleaded that it was well past her bedtime and time for her to go upstairs, she half expected him to insist upon tucking her into bed and reading her a bedtime story. Arabian Nights, probably.
She fell asleep thoroughly confused and with her suspicions in a complete muddle. What in the heck was he up to?
MAC HADN’T THOUGHT being nice to Abbie could be so easy. He’d refused to think about how easily Cade’s advice could backfire, and pulled out all the charm he could muster. For the next two days, he sat next to her at dinner. He made sure she was included in his conversations. He smiled. He asked her opinion. He smiled some more. The only thing he didn’t do, didn’t dare do, was touch her in even the most casual gesture. For one thing, he didn’t want her to slap his hand, and for another, he was afraid of what would happen if he did. Touching Abbie might tempt him to do something more than just touch her, kiss her, perhaps. And that could ignite the embers of a physical attraction sizzling just beneath the surface. And that would spell disaster in more ways than one. He could wake up and find himself not only married to her, but an expectant father, as well.
His Shotgun Proposal Page 10