Another sign, she told herself as the friends and family standing at attention and musicians playing barely registered. Instead, her attention zeroed in on Nate himself, so tall and handsome in the black tuxedo he wore with boots, a broad-brimmed Stetson hat and silver-and-turquoise bolo tie. He was smiling at her—the smile that had launched a thousand rodeo fangirls before his accident last December. But there was a tension around his coppery brown eyes, too, along with a subtle shifting of his feet that only a longtime friend would recognize as deep discomfort.
She looked from her maid of honor to her bridesmaids, all in a beautiful deep red to complement the trim on her gown, to the groomsmen and the best man, who were dressed to match Nate. Not one of them showed any sign of noticing the groom’s reluctance to be saddled with a woman as far from his taste in females as the Wheeler Ranch’s champion cutting horses were from common donkeys.
Or maybe April was just projecting because of what she’d seen from the upstairs room where she was getting ready, when she’d looked out the window. What she couldn’t unsee, no matter how hard she tried.
When her long walk finally ended, Nate stepped up beside her, both of them standing before a minister whose words she couldn’t hear over the roaring in her ears. As she fought to keep from breaking down, another voice cut through the static, that of the mother whose death had brought her home to tiny Rusted Spur six months earlier.
There’s still time to stop this, sweetheart. Still a chance to save this Christmas season and save your heart for love.
It was the shock of hearing her that made April gasp, snapping out of her daze to lay her hand over her middle. Nate turned to look at her, the concern on his face morphing into bewilderment as she blurted loudly, to be heard over an even more ominous growl from the heavens, “I’m so sorry. I can’t do this.”
A hush followed, the minister gaping, the groom’s face draining of all color, and a tall, white-haired man—Nate’s father—bearing down on her.
Instinctively, she shied away just as a loud crack split the silence. A thunderbolt, she thought at first. Except the festive floral arrangement behind her exploded, and there was so much blood.
One hour later...
Looking back on his final seconds as a professional bull rider, Nate Wheeler could pinpoint the instant when his life had changed forever, when the whip-crack of a bull’s gyration coincided with the massive animal’s sudden stumble. Up until that moment, Nate had been a champion with a swagger in his walk and the attention of every buckle bunny on the rodeo tour. Attention he was only too happy to reciprocate—especially when it came to curvy blondes.
It had all changed, that rough-and-tumble, beer-and-brass-balls lifestyle ending in the crunch of bone, the collective gasp of the Saturday-night crowd and a blur of movement as rodeo clown Kara Pearson had appeared from nowhere to save him from being skewered by a pair of wicked horns.
But a goring would be nothing compared to the shock he was feeling now, as he raced to follow the helicopter that had airlifted his injured father from the wedding during a brief break in the stormy weather. A shock that began when Nate’s fiancée, April Redding, had blindsided him in front of everyone assembled for their outdoor wedding by saying she wouldn’t marry him. Before her rejection could sink in, chaos erupted with the explosion of gunfire—from where, he still had no idea—and people scattering and screaming.
Swallowing hard as the pickup’s windshield wipers slapped out a two-step rhythm, he cut his eyes to look at her. The silky auburn hair she’d worn in some kind of fancy updo had fallen down around her shoulders, strands of it clumped with the same blood that had dyed her once-white bridal gown to match its Christmas-crimson trim. Blood that could have just as easily been hers.
“You could’ve damned well gotten yourself killed,” he said, the sharpness of the first words either one had spoken in the past hour making her jump a little.
But he was still pissed, thinking of how she’d left the shelter of the big, bare-limbed pecan where he’d dragged her after the first gunshot. How she’d rejected his instinctive move to keep her and the child she carried safe.
“What were you thinking,” he asked, “crawling out from behind that tree after I told you to stay put?”
“Once I saw your father, I didn’t stop to think. I acted.” She shuddered and wrapped herself more tightly in the blanket Nate had given her. The green wool contrasted garishly with the blood that she was wearing, the clash of colors a lurid mockery of the Christmas season.
He opened his mouth to argue, wanting to lash out, to punish her for her role in what was turning into the worst day of his life. But he couldn’t stop seeing her kneeling beside his gasping father, applying direct pressure to the spurting wound in his neck. It came to Nate then that whatever else she’d done today, her quick response had saved George Wheeler—or at least had given him some chance of survival.
Nate clamped his mouth shut, his head pounding as he tried to sort out what he should be feeling and what the hell had happened. When he glanced back at April, he saw she’d returned to staring out the window, mutely watching the rain pound the tough prairie grasses flat.
She looked bedraggled now, so sad and tired that something twisted in his chest to see it. And so pale behind the grime that marred a face that should be smiling, laughing on their wedding day.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked, burning to know why she’d bailed at the last minute. He’d done the right thing by her, hadn’t he, proposing once she’d confessed she was expecting?
Expecting his child after one misguided tumble four-and-a-half months ago, both of them half-drunk as they’d lamented the recent changes of fortune that had trapped each of them in tiny Rusted Spur. He still couldn’t believe he’d messed up everything, using a platonic friend he’d known since childhood to ease his disappointment.
She looked back at him, her brown eyes damp and worried...and more attractive than he’d ever realized, with contacts replacing the tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses he was used to seeing. Sighing, she moved one hand to the baby bump her A-line gown had concealed so well before she’d gotten soaked.
That simple, protective gesture sent a pang through him, worry for the tiny life they’d both seen on the ultrasound a week ago, the pictures that finally made the abstract child real. A son, according to the sonogram technician, and Nate had instantly pictured himself teaching the boy to ride in such a way it felt as if he and his mount were all one creature, to rope as if the lariat was an extension of his own arm. And to stay the hell off the backs of bucking bulls if he didn’t want to ache some days like he was eighty instead of only thirty-two.
April had been smiling that day, too, a smile that lit her whole face as if she’d stepped into a sunbeam. You’re going to be a great mom, he’d told her, picturing her laughing this time next year, the baby in her arms as Nate wrestled a big tree through the doorway for them to decorate together. This is going to be all right.
Damned fool that he was, he’d even made himself believe it. Or maybe he’d just wanted to, which wasn’t the same thing.
“You warm enough?” he asked, frowning as he noted how the looming sky had darkened, and the outside temperature on his truck’s gauge had dropped yet another ten degrees. “You aren’t having any pain or—?”
“I’m sick, Nate, sick to death about this. Wondering how your father’s doing, if he’ll make it to the hospital.”
At the mention of his father, a spiraling sensation hit him. Why would someone do this? And why do it today?
Forcing his attention back to April, he said, “I mean with the baby. Are you all right?” With the trauma center in Lubbock a three-hour drive from Rusted Spur, they’d be lucky to make it there by nightfall, and there were few towns of any size between the two. No medical facilities, either, since he’d opted to take the more direct county road to the old state highway.
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
He glanced toward her to se
e tears running down her face and reached out to touch her arm. “Then, don’t cry. Please, don’t, April.”
Outside, the rain swelled to a hard, metallic drumming, forcing Nate to slow his speed.
She wiped her eyes, the hand that held the tissues shaking. “I’m crying because—because it’s my fault.” Her voice cracked as she competed with the sound. “I’m the reason this all happened.”
His heart stumbled through an extra beat. “What do you mean, you’re the reason? You can’t possibly think your getting cold feet had anything to do with some maniac out to kill my father.” Though Nate couldn’t begin to imagine anyone gunning down a rancher known for charming everyone from his humblest neighbors to the governor in Austin.
She shook her head. “Don’t you understand? The shooter wasn’t trying to kill your father. He wants me dead, Nate. Only me. Just like Martin Villareal.”
* * *
April hugged herself and shivered, devastated to think that the same person who had killed her boss might have tracked her to Rusted Spur. Though she was a paralegal rather than an attorney, she could follow the chain of events as well as anybody else.
But Nate was shaking his head, arguing, “His death was ruled an accident. The poor guy was out jogging after sundown on a road without a shoulder.”
It had been all over the news two weeks ago, how the hills outside of Austin had been a tragic choice, along with the dark running clothes the well-known attorney-activist had chosen for his usual after-work run. But no matter how often Nate tried to force her to accept it, he didn’t have all the facts. No one did but the authorities, even if they’d failed to take her suspicions seriously.
“Listen, April. You’ve been through a lot,” he said. “Losing your mom so suddenly, having to leave a job you loved to come deal with your brother. Then there was the shock of finding out about the baby and—”
Face burning, she straightened her spine. “Don’t patronize me, Bull Boy.”
As the rain began to slack off, he turned down the windshield wipers. She noticed how he’d clamped his jaw, that telltale twitching of a muscle in it signaling his irritation, the same way it had all the way back when he’d been that rowdy second-grader who’d driven all their teachers crazy.
“Nobody’s patronizing you, Geek Girl,” he said, reverting to the name he’d called her back then, when she’d worn the world’s ugliest glasses, blazed through the contents of their tiny library in no time and always earned gold stars for classroom conduct. “I’m just trying to get you to consider that sometimes, terrible accidents happen—”
“And lots of times, men don’t listen,” she said, frustration boiling over. “Especially stubborn Neanderthals who’ve been tossed on their heads once too often by those smelly monsters you couldn’t wait to climb back on.”
He glared at her, the anger in his handsome face sparking a fear that he might drop her somewhere along the muddy roadside. But Nate could never do that, and besides, there was something more in his eyes. A wound that she’d inflicted, deep and raw and painful.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “Sorry I hurt you when I couldn’t go through with that farce of a wedding—”
“Farce?” Nate shot back. “Maybe you should’ve told my parents that before my mom worked herself to exhaustion and my dad insisted he would pay for everything.”
But April kept right on talking, desperate to make him understand that things weren’t as they seemed. “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw your father coming toward me. Maybe he thought he could smooth things over, get the ceremony back on track. Or maybe he meant to wring my neck. But I ducked away from him just as I heard the gunshots. That should have been my head and not his neck.”
Nate stared straight ahead, his Adam’s apple working, the tension rolling off him like heat waves from a live coal. Watching him struggle to process what she’d told him, she fought to control her body’s shaking. She wondered when, if ever, the adrenaline would burn off.
“I don’t get why you did it,” he murmured, still stuck on her rejection. “I did right by you, April, stood prepared to man up and take my medicine, to give our child my name.”
Take my medicine? She made a scoffing sound, tamping down her own pain as he confirmed her suspicions. “I saw how prepared you were when I peeked out the upstairs window before the ceremony started. You were talking to Brady by the barn, fidgeting with that bolo tie like it was strangling you to death.”
Nate had lost the tie at some point, and the crisp, white shirt he’d worn with his black tuxedo coat and Stetson was now spattered with blood. There was a smear, too, along his strong jaw, and the wind and rain had tangled his longish sandy brown hair. Still, he somehow managed to look as tempting as a plateful of Christmas cookies—and twice as ill-advised.
A hazy, wine-soaked memory rose to torment her, a memory so achingly sensual, it was enough to make her swear off alcohol, even after she had the baby. And maybe men as well, not that any of Rusted Spur’s few candidates were likely to be looking for a woman with the kind of baggage she was toting. Along with someone out to kill her. She couldn’t forget that.
“I was only a little nervous, that’s all,” Nate protested. “My folks invited a ton of their bigwig friends to the wedding.”
“Don’t give me that, not when you made a career of being the center of attention. It was the idea of settling down with me—settling for me—that had you freaked out. Looked to me like Brady was trying to convince you not to jump on one of the horses we had saddled and make a break for it before I could get out there.”
“But I didn’t run. I would’ve gone through with it.”
“What on earth makes you think I want to be anybody’s noble sacrifice?” Her vision hazing with tears, she ached for those uncomplicated years of childhood, years when both had been quick to tell anyone who’d listen that they were only friends. At least until she’d first begun to notice the core of decency behind the cocksure attitude and ripped physique that drew all the wrong girls to him. She’d been smart to bury her changing feelings as deeply as she could.
“What about the kid, then?” Nate demanded. “You can’t think I’m gonna stand still while you kick him to the curb, too?”
She stared at him, heart thumping. How he could ask a thing like that when she had never for a moment thought of ending the unplanned pregnancy?
Outside, the rain eased, and up ahead, a thin shaft of wintry sunshine punched through the thick cloud layer. But it did nothing to lighten the darkness of her mood.
“Because if you try to adopt him out, I swear to you, I’ll fight you in court,” Nate vowed. “Our son has a family that wants him.”
“A mother, too, I swear it. He’ll always have me, Nate. And if you think threatening me is the best way to—” she began before she caught the nauseating scent of the drying blood on her dress. The stark reminder of the horror they had both witnessed had her swallowing hard and struggling to rein in her temper.
“I very much hope,” she said, choosing her words as carefully as footsteps through a minefield, “that he’ll have you and your family in his life, as well.”
Nate turned down the windshield wipers, which had begun to squeak as they passed beyond the heavier shower. “So now I’m supposed to settle for seeing him on weekends and every other holiday? Having to run back and forth to Austin once you get your brother in that group home and move back there for your job?”
“We’ll work it out, I promise,” she said, her voice shaking. “And as for Rory, I told you before, it could take years, what with the waiting lists for any place I’d let him go.”
Though she’d long argued that a group home would help Rory progress socially, she still wasn’t certain she could move her brother from the only home he’d ever known. Deeply traumatized after witnessing their seemingly healthy widowed mother clutching at her head and falling dead, he’d regressed to the point where even the slightest change was likely to set him off.
�
��It’s enough I have to deal with it.” As much as April loved her brother, giving up the life she’d worked so hard to build to see to his care had been a huge adjustment. She’d managed to do some freelance legal research online, but even that was proving difficult with Rory’s interruptions, and the modest inheritance her long-widowed mother had left wouldn’t last forever. “You don’t need to be saddled with that burden, too.”
“I damned well knew what I was getting into. Who better?” he asked, reminding her of how kind he’d always been to Rory, how patient, as Nate had tried to teach him how a real man treats a woman.
No hitting and no screaming at ’em. They’re littler than we are, so we have to be strong for them—even when they make you real mad.
As sweet as the memory was, she turned her eyes from Nate, remembering the grim look on his face when he’d suggested they get married. And her worry, even then, that she was only latching on to him to ease the loneliness she felt. Oh, she had friends, good friends who did their best to help out, but her brother’s outbursts made her uncomfortable having people over. And she was rarely able to get out on her own, with her aunt and uncle, the only other caretakers Rory was used to, living too far from town to come by more than once or twice a month so she could stock up on groceries and run a few essential errands.
Nate cleared his throat before admitting, “I know it wasn’t all flowers and romance, the kind of proposal that a woman dreams of. And I know it was a little late in coming, too.”
“It’s all right,” she lied. “I understand. The whole thing was so—so unexpected.” She flushed, remembering that mortifying moment when she’d woken up, limbs tangled with his, and realized that both of them were naked. Rory had been pounding at her bedroom door, pleading for her to come out and make him his favorite French toast.
Cowboy Christmas Rescue Page 13