His Shotgun Proposal

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  “You’re sure you want to go to Little Rock?” Mac asked all of a sudden, turning his head to look at her. “It won’t give you much time to be by yourself, you know.”

  “Home is the best place for me to go,” she said. “And with any luck at all, the boys will wait for Mom and Dad to get to the ranch later today before they all pack up and head for home. That’ll give me nearly two whole days alone. It’ll be enough.”

  He nodded, looked as if he was going to say something else, then closed his mouth and stared out the window for a moment. A plane taxied to the gate and a few minutes later, arriving passengers began to straggle out into the terminal and waiting passengers began gathering their things, listening for the announcement that it was time to board. Mac frowned, and his gaze returned to her as if he didn’t have a choice. “There’s one thing I’d like to know, Abbie.” He hesitated, gave the hat in his hands a quarter turn, then a quarter turn back until it was positioned exactly where it had been. “When you said you could tell me and Cade apart, were you just saying that? Or did you mean it?”

  She shouldn’t answer. Abbie knew it was stupid to think he’d believe her now, on this one very unimportant answer, when he’d believed not another word she’d said. But wounded pride urged her to leave him with at least one little nagging question to remember her by. “I meant everything I’ve said to you from the beginning, Mac. And yes, I believe I could tell you from Cade no matter what the circumstances.”

  His expression turned skeptical but curious. “I don’t see how.”

  “No, I don’t imagine you could, because you and your twin are truly identical. But I know the difference because of the way I feel when it’s you.” She inhaled, wanting him to know, embarrassed by what it revealed about her feelings for him but no longer caring. She was long past the point of thinking it could make any difference. “When Cade walks into a room or talks to me or smiles at me, it’s like talking to Alex or your Uncle Randy, or one of my own brothers. Nice, but nothing special. But with you, there’s always a little clutch on my heart, a sense of connection, and that’s how I know.” She picked up her carry-on, slung her purse strap across her shoulder and stood. “Goodbye, Mac.” Then, without a backward glance, she walked over, handed in her boarding pass and headed down the ramp.

  At long last, and however much she might regret it, it was time for her to go home.

  MAC KEPT TRYING TO BLAME his foul temper on a sleepless night. He told himself he’d done the right thing…the only thing he could do under the circumstances. By the time he reached the Desert Rose, it was well into the regular workaday routine. The morning chores were done, Stanley and Olivia were already working with their respective students, a few of the boarders were riding their horses in the outdoor arena. The sun was up and climbing, the summer heat rolling in with the promise of a sweltering afternoon. Cade was waiting at the barn, ostensibly watching the workouts, when Mac drove in.

  But it wasn’t difficult to ascertain he was there with an agenda and the way he turned immediately and strode over to the truck told Mac it wasn’t going to be pleasant. “Where the hell have you been?” Cade asked tight-lipped. “Abbie’s disappeared and her brothers are fit to be tied. We were all hoping she was with you.”

  “She was.” Mac slammed the truck door and started for the barn. “I drove her into Austin to the airport.”

  “You what?”

  Mac stopped, deciding to lay this on the line and be done with it. “She wanted to go and she went. There isn’t going to be a wedding and that’s the end of it.”

  “She left?”

  “Yes.”

  Cade frowned. “What happened?”

  “We talked. She said she didn’t want to marry me, never wanted to marry me, and that she was leaving. So I drove her to the airport and bought her a ticket and she left.” It sounded dry, emotionless, not at all the way he felt. “She won’t be coming back, either.”

  “You okay with that?” Cade asked, his voice dipping into sympathy.

  “Fine.” Mac purposely responded with an uncaring syllable and a shrug. “I’m saved from going through a wedding with a shotgun in my back. Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

  “You don’t look happy.”

  “Just goes to show you can’t tell by looking.” He made a move to pass his twin and go on to the barn, but Cade waylaid him.

  “Go after her, Mac. She loves you. Everyone could see that, except you. Follow her. Find her. Tell her you love her and persuade her to come back here where she—and your baby—belong.”

  Anger rose inside him, dark and frightening and directed completely and only at himself. “Why would I pull a damn fool stunt like that? She’s gone and I’m glad. Do you hear me? I’m glad she’s gone.” As strong as the words were, as forceful as they came out, it should have been a convincing argument. But Mac didn’t come within a mile of convincing himself. “She lied about everything, Cade. Right from the start. Even the last thing she said to me was a lie, meant to manipulate me into believing she felt something…love, maybe…when we were together.” He snatched off his hat, ran a restless hand through his hair and shoved the hat back into place. “She said she could tell us apart because of how she felt when she was with me.” He gave a humorless laugh. “It was a last-ditch, masterful maneuver. But not smart. Even Aunt Vi can’t tell us apart when we decide to pull an identity switch. Abbie can no more tell us apart than Alex can!”

  Cade pursed his lips, pushed back the brim of his hat. “Not to burst your bubble, brother, but we couldn’t fool Serena, either. We’re not going to ever put this to a test, but I believe my wife when she tells me that even on the blackest night, she’d know which of us is which.”

  “How?” Mac asked, wanting to hear the reply, knowing what it would be even before his twin gave it. “How can she tell when no one else can?”

  “She says it’s how she feels, the connection that isn’t there with you.” He clapped Mac on the shoulder. “So, this time, I’m taking Abbie’s side. She loves you, Mac, whether you believe her or not. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have left.”

  “She left because I didn’t give her a choice.”

  “Isn’t it because you wouldn’t give yourself one?”

  Mac couldn’t answer that. “I have work to do,” he said, and turned away.

  “You can say that again,” Cade nodded toward the house. “They’re all there. I’d suggest you face the music now, tell them what you’ve done, and get it over with.”

  Mac followed the line of his brother’s gaze and felt greater reluctance than he’d ever thought possible. “I guess I’ll go have a little talk with the Jones boys.”

  “Not to mention Mom, Jessie and Aunt Vi. But just a word of advice, Mac. Practice looking happy before you go in there, unless you want them to know you’re as miserable as you look.” Cade turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Mac to square his shoulders and head for the next inquisition.

  THERE WAS A GOOD CROWD around the long kitchen table—all of Abbie’s brothers, Jessie, Rose, Vi and Randy, Ella and Hal, Serena, Savannah and a couple of other boarders—and the mood was not at all what Mac had expected. They were laughing, several talking at once in a loop of conversation that seemed inclusive of everyone at the table…and stopped abruptly the moment he walked in.

  Brad pushed back his chair and started to rise, but Tyler clapped a hand on his shoulder and they both remained seated. “Well?” Quinn voiced the question that apparently was on everyone’s mind. “Where is she?”

  “If she’d wanted you to know that, I guess she’d have told you in her note.” Mac moved along the kitchen counter and poured himself a cup of coffee, as if that was the only answer he could, or would, provide.

  “Did she tell you?” Brad asked sharply.

  Mac was not going to lie about this, no matter what. “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, then what are you doing here?” Jaz and Jessie demanded in near unison.

  “Why didn’t you go aft
er her?” Vi asked.

  “We thought you’d gone after her,” Serena said.

  “We’ll help you find her,” Uncle Randy volunteered.

  “Put that coffee cup down,” directed Ella. “Time’s a wastin’.”

  “She’s got to be back here in time for the wedding,” Quinn stated forcefully.

  Mac stopped the runaway comments with a look. “She isn’t coming back. I’m not going after her. We aren’t getting married.”

  For a second, there was silence. Then a cacophony of disbelief, which Mac ended with a sharp, “Stop it! When I asked Abbie to marry me, she said no. She meant no. No. Could that be any clearer?”

  “You don’t know her like we do,” Tyler said.

  “She hasn’t known what she wanted since she was a kid,” Brad said.

  “She’s pregnant,” Quinn said. “You have to marry her.”

  Mac looked from the face of one brother to another. “Have the four of you ever listened to a word Abbie says? Have you ever given her the benefit of the doubt? Just once?”

  “We’re her family.” Brad shrugged off Ty’s restraining hand and pushed to his feet. “We want her to have what she deserves.”

  Anger returned, flooding Mac with confidence this time. “She deserves to be heard. She deserves to make her own decisions, regardless of whether or not the four of you agree with them. And when she says something, she deserves to be believed.”

  The sheer force of the words drove into the air, but it was Mac who nearly fell backward from the impact. She deserves to be believed. She deserves to be believed. She deserves to be believed. Abbie had said the baby was his. She had said she didn’t set out to trap him. She had said she didn’t want a loveless marriage. She had said she could tell who he was simply by the way she felt when she was with him. And until this moment when the words left his mouth, he hadn’t known he believed her.

  “So what do you wish to do, Makin?” Rose asked softly, comfortingly, her mother love reaching across the kitchen toward him, as it had been reaching toward him all those years from the cells of her prison. “Should we cancel the wedding?”

  It was, he realized, the last thing he wanted. He loved Abbie. He believed her. He wanted to be her husband and a father to their child. She had said it best when she told him he hadn’t learned anything from his experience with Gillian if it meant he couldn’t tell the difference between a deceitful heart and real love. He’d lived in such fear of treachery that he’d fulfilled the expectation and betrayed his own heart, and hers. “I’m going after her,” he said, sure suddenly it was the right thing to do. “I’ll bring her back if I can.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Quinn offered. “We’ll make her see she needs to come back, for the baby’s sake.”

  “Just tell us where she is,” Brad said. “We’ll be sure she’s back in time for the wedding tomorrow.”

  It felt good to be able to say, “No. I love her. She’s having my baby. It’s my responsibility to find her and ask her what she wants.”

  “You have a lot to learn about our sister,” Tyler suggested, shaking his head. “You have to tell Abbie what she needs to do. She’s not much of a decision maker.”

  “She will be from now on,” Mac said, eyeing each of her brothers in turn. “I do have a lot to learn about Abbie, that’s true. But I can tell you this much, she’s an intelligent, rational and wonderful woman who deserves to make her own choices, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she does.” Then grabbing his hat, he made eye contact with Jessica and asked her without words to follow him. He needed Abbie’s address in Little Rock, because he’d go door-to-door throughout the city before he’d give away her hiding place by asking her brothers for directions.

  ABBIE COULDN’T REMEMBER ever being alone in her parents’ house before, and she wandered from room to room, aimlessly recalling holidays and other times in this sprawling but graceful place she’d always known as home. She could remember admiring the model airplanes in Quinn’s room, the meticulously painted soldiers and warships in Brad’s. She’d browsed the books and comics stacked in neat piles around Jaz’s bed and she’d played endless hours with Tyler’s collection of cars, trucks and things that go. Her room was still much as it had been before she’d left for college—pink, frilly, fussy with a few traces of a little girl trying hard to grow up. It was, she thought, partly her fault that she’d never taken a solid stand against her brothers’ meddling. Certainly her parents had offered at least some support for her claiming of independence, but she was the baby of the family, the only girl after four rowdy, death-defying, arrogant and endearing boys. They’d watched out for her before she learned to walk. They’d adored her from the start and wanted nothing but to protect her.

  She should have started early if she’d truly wanted to be independent of them. She should have learned how to wrap them around her little finger instead of going along with all their plans since she was old enough to talk. She should have done so many things she hadn’t done. With a sigh, Abbie sank onto the powder-puff pink bedspread in her room and looked at the fashion statements of her own Barbie collection. Placing her hands on her stomach, she pushed in lightly and felt the baby kick out in response. No way would this little one let someone else direct her life. She—Abbie was beginning to think of the baby as a girl—wouldn’t let her uncles dictate to her. No sir. She would have her father’s fire, as well as his dark eyes and regal carriage. No one would dare tell Mac Coleman’s daughter what she ought to do. Abbie thought it might be a tough ride from time to time, but when this newest Sorajheean princess was grown, she’d be strong and sure and fiercely wonderful. And for that alone, Abbie couldn’t regret what had already come to pass.

  She’d made it all the way to Little Rock alone. She’d taken a cab to the house, let herself in with the key her family insisted she always carry with her, made herself eat a meal, even if it had tasted mainly like cardboard. Then she’d slept several hours and awakened to roam the silent house, waiting for the inevitable stampede of brothers. Probably parents, too. The Joneses would definitely put in their share of traveling miles this week. But in the future, Abbie figured they’d all stay pretty close to this house, the home they all kept coming back to. Over the years, her brothers had moved out, gone on to pursue their own interests, but they gathered here routinely, and Abbie wondered if taking care of her had somehow provided them an acceptable excuse to postpone starting their own homes, their own families. Were her brothers perhaps, in their own way, as afraid of making that commitment to love as she had been with Mac?

  It was an interesting thought and Abbie might have considered it further if the doorbell hadn’t rung just then. With a sigh, she pushed up from the edge of the bed, figuring they’d rung the doorbell only to give her fair warning before they unlocked the door and burst in around her in a plethora of affectionate chastisements and reprimands. But when she reached the entry hall, there was only a single silhouette on the other side of the sheer curtains that covered the half glass of the front door. Her heart gave a funny little clutch, told her even before she turned the knob and pulled open the door that Mac was standing on the porch. His hat was in his hands, as it had been when she’d left him in the airport. His hair was disheveled, his clothes the same ones he’d worn this morning, and his eyes showed the weight of whatever he’d come here to say. He looked tired, worried, scared and arrogantly determined not to show it.

  “Mac,” she whispered, happy just to see him, despite having every reason not to be. “What are you doing here?”

  “I love you,” he said in a voice that betrayed his tight attempt at controlling his emotion. “Will you marry me?”

  Abbie blinked. “What?”

  “I love you,” he repeated. “Will you marry me?”

  She frowned, looked past him. “Where are they?” she asked, sure her brothers were there somewhere, certain they’d convinced him this was what he had to do. “My brothers put you up to this, didn’t they?”


  “No.” Mac gave a barely noticeable shake of his head. “They don’t know you’re here. I didn’t tell them where you’d gone. I told you I wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, I know, but they can be very persuasive.”

  “Abbie, I like your brothers, but they couldn’t persuade me to take off my hat if it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

  She wouldn’t allow herself to project out the meaning of that statement, denied herself the seed of hope stirring in her heart. “But you asked me to marry you.”

  “And you haven’t answered.”

  “I said no the last time.”

  “I remember. If you say no this time, I’ll respect that, but I reserve the right to try and change your mind.”

  This was strange. Wonderful, maybe, too. Or not. Abbie didn’t know what to think. “Do you want to come inside? It’s hot out there.”

  “It’s hotter in Texas,” he said, and she laughed, a soft, nervous, happy sound.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “it is, but it’s hot enough here, so come in. Please.” He hesitated and she encouraged him with a wry smile. “I promise there’s no one here waiting to jump out and accuse you of ruining my already tattered reputation.”

  “I’m sorry, Abbie. I’ve made a real mess of things.”