Heat burnished her cheeks as she peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I deserved that, I suppose, but I’m no longer a husband-seeking debutante, but a woman who has chosen to walk away from that lifestyle in order to serve others.”
“Uh-huh …” Voice soft, he drilled her with a look that made her blush. “Or run away, as the nurse chatter implies.”
Maggie’s chin rose. “We’re all running away from something, Mr. Donovan, whether it’s an unwanted lifestyle in New York or the fear of commitment right here in Virginia City.” She arched a brow. “At least according to the aforesaid nurse chatter, which I wager is far more vociferous than any gossip I might arouse.”
A rich chuckle drifted into the air, doing funny things to her stomach. “And you think I’m stubborn,” he said with a scratch of his bristled jaw. He leaned his head on the back of his chair while he rocked. “Just goes to show you can’t trust idle gossip.”
“Or desperate cowboys draped in sheets?”
His mouth hooked. “Especially desperate cowboys draped in sheets.” Extending a hand, he offered a sideways smile. “What do you say we start over, Miss Mullaney, fully clothed?”
Cheeks hot, she hesitated before carefully shaking his hand, his powerful grip sending skitters all the way down her arm. “I think that’s wise,” she said before quickly pulling away, swallowing hard to deflect the butterflies in her belly, “especially given that Aunt Libby and I will be living here for a while.”
“Agreed.” His large, work-roughened hands casually rested on the arms of his chair, fingers relaxed over the edge. “And since we’ll be under the same roof like family for the next six months, maybe we should forego on the formality as well.” He met her gaze head-on with a glint of challenge. “What do you say, Maggie?”
She nodded slowly. “I think that makes a lot of sense, Blaze, especially if we’re going to be friends.”
With a painfully slow perusal from the curls atop her head down her shawl-covered shirtwaist to her skirt and back, his eyes took on a hint of a sparkle she hadn’t seen before. “That’s generally not what most women are looking for, Maggie, so you think we can? Be friends, that is?”
The flirtation caught her off-guard, warming her face. “I certainly hope so,” she said with a thrust of her jaw, determined to establish a friendship and nothing more. “The next six months could be pretty taxing without it.” Ignoring his lazy grin, she forged on, tone serious. “So, is Blaze your given name?”
“No. My name is Brendan Zachary Donovan, but my brother used to call me BZ for short, which for some unknown reason, ended up as Blaze.”
“‘Some unknown reason?’” A grin tugged at the edge of her smile. “Well, Blaze, the way I hear it, you have a reputation for being a womanizer who sets hearts on fire, leaving charred ruins in your wake.”
He tugged his hat down and grinned. “Naw, that’s just sour grapes from some of the mothers in town because I prefer spending more time with the girls at the Ponderosa than with their daughters, so you can’t believe everything you hear.”
Maggie crooked a brow. “It was Sister Fred.”
He scowled and scooped up an acorn, firing it into the yard with a grunt. “Yeah, well that explains it. The woman flat-out doesn’t like me.”
“Sure she does,” Maggie said in a matter-of-fact tone, bundling up in her shawl. She snuck a teasing look his way. “She just doesn’t want any other women liking you. Says you’re a menace to the female society.”
“Ha! That’s the toad calling the frog jumpy if ever there was.” He slid back in his chair to roost his head on the back, hands behind his neck and eyes closed while he crossed long denim-clad legs at the ankles. “More like the female society is a menace to me,” he muttered.
Maggie shifted in her chair to assess him more closely. “And why is that?” she asked, curious as to the root of his notorious reputation.
“Why?” He glanced up as if he wanted to toss her over the front rail like the acorn. “Because respectable girls are just looking for a husband, that’s why, and I have no intention of ever getting married. Already told Rachel and every other woman in this confounded town that I am not the marrying kind, so they best not get any ideas.” He grunted. “Sweet mother of sanity, the last thing I need is to be shackled to a so-called good girl, who will just harp on me about God and church the rest of my days.”
Maggie blinked, eyes spanning wide. “You don’t believe in God?”
“Of course, I believe in God,” he said with an even bigger scowl than before. “I just don’t like Him a whole lot, that’s all. Nor do I believe He has my best interests at heart. And I can tell you right now that my best interests don’t lie in some church-going woman judging or pushing me around.” He cut loose with a grunt. “Or trying to change me.”
Maggie sucked in a breath, taken aback by the sharp edge to his tone. “Goodness, sounds like you have a few sour grapes of your own.”
His eyes narrowed beneath the brim of his Stetson. “Yeah? Well you’d have a few sour grapes, too, lady, if you were raised in a so-called Christian home where one parent lived a lie and the other flat-out abandoned you.”
Maggie’s heart cramped at the thread of pain she heard beneath Blaze’s anger, the same thread that had tried to strangle her own faith after her mother had died. Drawing in a deep breath, she laid a gentle hand on his arm, shocking him enough to bring his rocker to a halt. “Actually, I did, Blaze,” she said softly, her gaze gentle to convey the unlikely kinship she suddenly felt, “so I understand your pain and I’m truly sorry.”
It was his turn to blink. “You?” His brows dug low as he commenced rocking. “How?”
Expelling a weary breath, she sagged back into her chair, the creaks and groans of her rocker suddenly in tune with his. “My father died when I was about three or so, so my memories are dim, but I do remember how much he loved my mother and me and that he was a godly man who prayed with me every night.”
Blaze nodded. “Sheridan was four when our mother died, and it breaks my heart that neither she nor Shaylee have any woman in their lives they can relate too.”
“That would definitely be harder, I think,” Maggie said quietly, heart aching for Blaze’s sisters, “than losing a father at a young age because mothers are so critical to a daughter’s development.”
A tic twittered in Blaze’s jaw as he stared into the dark yard, fingers curling into fists over the arm of the chair. “It was, but Uncle Finn, Dash, and I have worked real hard to give them the family they need.”
Maggie smiled. “That’s more than obvious, Blaze, from the closeness your family shares and from the way the girls adore you, Dash, and Finn.”
“Yeah.” His facial muscles relaxed along with his hands.
“I would have been lost without my mother,” Maggie continued. “We were very close.” The muscles in her throat tensed. “Until she married my stepfather, that is, when I was barely thirteen.” A once-familiar veneer glazed Maggie’s voice, reminding her of the hurt that sometimes still reared its ugly head. “My mother tutored students in our flat to support us, but when I became very ill, it wasn’t enough for our medical bills, so she was desperate. That’s when she met my stepfather at church, whom she discouraged at the onset, but he eventually wore her down. On the outside, he appeared to be a fine, upstanding Christian man who was desperate to sweep Mother off her feet, you see.” Maggie’s lips compressed. “But in actuality, he was a cold, calculating magistrate equally desperate to sweep me out of their lives.”
Maggie sighed, shoulders sagging with her exhale. “He promptly sent me to a boarding school, convincing my mother I needed polish if I was going to properly ‘come out’ in society, so she agreed at first. But then she missed me so much—and I her—that she begged my stepfather to allow me to return home and attend nursing school.”
Leaning her head back, Maggie closed her eyes, remembering all the arguments that ensued between her mother and stepfather when they discov
ered The Judge’s plan to marry Maggie off to the highest bidder. “My mother and I rekindled our close relationship during her final years even though I’d felt abandoned after she married The Judge. That’s when she’d encouraged me to seek a marriage of faith rather than one of convenience as my stepfather wanted me to do. And with her help, I was able to thwart a number of my stepfather’s truly horrendous matchmaking efforts.”
Melancholy stole into her voice as her shoulders lifted in a resigned shrug. “But when she died last year”—tears pricked before she could blink them away—“it almost felt like I’d been abandoned again. Which is why I fled both New York and a fiancé I didn’t love.”
“I’m truly sorry about your mother, Maggie,” Blaze said quietly. He was silent for several seconds before he leaned forward to stare her down. “But you’re engaged?”
“Was engaged,” she emphasized with a pointed look. “I broke it off with David in a letter I sent the morning I left New York, so I am completely unattached and plan to stay that way.”
A grunt tripped from Blaze’s lips. “I thought respectable women weren’t supposed to lie.”
That lit some sparks in her eyes. “I’ll have you know, sir, that I do not lie,” she said in a clipped tone, hoping to strongly convey she was one “respectable woman” who had no interest in marriage or in the town’s most eligible bachelor. “I have absolutely no desire to marry, Blaze Donovan, so between my aversion to womanizers and marriage and your aversion to women of faith and church, I’d say you’re fairly safe.”
“Only fairly?” His teeth flashed white in the moonlight.
“Yes.” Maggie jerked her shawl closer to her body, thinking it would be far easier to wait for Aunt Libby up in their room than on this porch with this truly cocky cowboy. She hunkered down in the rocker, determined to stand her ground. Lips pursed, she slid him a gaze as thin as the smile that twitched on her lips. “You know—in case I throttle you?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Cold?” Finn shot Libby a sideways glance, battling a chuckle as her sheet-clad body sat ramrod straight on the buckboard bench, as white and prickly as a White Persian Cat Cactus under the light of the moon. “I’m talking about your body, not your heart,” he teased, remembering all the times he’d rib Libby out of a bad mood, one of the most effective means of disarming his beautiful wife during their three-month marriage.
After kisses.
Nothing moved but her gaze as she seared him with a nasty look out of the corner of her eyes, setting free the laughter he’d tried so hard to restrain.
“Come on, Libs, I was willing to make this easy on you, but admit it—your dad-burned temper got in the way as usual.” He chuckled as he lightly snapped the reins.
Her profile notched up, and he hated how that made her all the more attractive. Confound it, the woman’s blasted spunk and fire had always drawn him like a moth to flame. His mouth tipped up on one side.
Or a man to wildfire.
Where said man could be seriously burned. And Libby had burned him but good. Not only with her temper, but with her fire and spirit that had torched all interest in any other women. Of course, three months of wedded bliss with that rare flash of fire sure didn’t hurt either, convincing Finn she was the only one for him. And after years of head-butting in high school, Finn had finally convinced her he was the only one for her too. His humor abruptly evaporated like desert warmth in the cool of night. But that’d been way back when she loved him as much as he loved her. His jaw stiffened. Now she was in love with some namby-pamby professor she intended to marry.
Over my dead body.
A droll smile returned to his lips. Which, given the stone scowl on Libby’s face at the moment, might be sooner than he thought. Fingers stiff with both resolve and cold, Finn realized the chill in the air didn’t come entirely from the woman beside him, who hadn’t moved or said a word since they’d left the hotel ten minutes prior. Which might mean she was frozen as stiff as she was stubborn. After all, all she had on under that thin sheet was—
“Whoa, boy.” Body suddenly too warm to suit, Finn tugged on the reins, bringing Lightning to a halt a quarter of the way to the ranch in the middle of nowhere.
“Why did we stop?” Her head lashed his way to stare wide-eyed, reassuring Finn that any stiffness in her manner was more from stubbornness than cold.
“You’re freezing,” he said in a definitive tone, intending to undo his belt from her sheet like he’d done when they’d left town. But the dad-blamed woman had promptly taken off like a shot, pert near killing herself when she tripped on her way back to the hotel. So, Finn had had no choice but to truss her up again until they were a safe distance away.
He reached to unbuckle the belt, and she instantly lunged to the far edge of the seat, feet poised to kick.
He shook his head and grinned. Maybe “safe” wasn’t the right word.
“Come on, Libby,” he coaxed in a husky tone that had always worked wonders in their past, “your lips are blue and goose bumps are popping out on your sheet, so let me untie my belt so you can cover up with the blanket.”
“This is nothing but unadulterated kidnapping, Finn McShane, and when my fiancé finds out, he’ll wrap you up in a lawsuit so fast, you’ll wish you were wearing a sheet on F Street instead.”
“Not much of a case, Libs—a husband kidnapping his wife? Besides,” he said, shaking his head while sucking air through a clenched smile, “when your professor finds out you’ve been married all along, I doubt there’ll be any engagement.”
“Ooooooooooooo!” She promptly stomped her foot, which was now as blue as her lips.
He grabbed the blanket puddled on the seat around her—the one that had shimmied off her shoulders when she’d tried to jump from the wagon right outside the city limits. “Look, Libby, you’re a bloomin’ icicle sitting there, and although I’m not any happier with you than you are with me at the moment, I sure don’t want you to catch your death out here in the frigid desert air. So, let me take off the blasted belt so we can wrap you in this blanket, all right?”
Eyes skittish, she studied him with a cautious air. “If you touch anything but that belt, mister, you will be so sorry, do you hear?”
“I hear,” he said while he gently unbuckled the belt, his somber gaze locked with hers as he quietly looped it back into his jeans. “And I’m already sorry, Libby. Sorry that the only woman I have ever loved despises me enough to risk pneumonia, falling out of a wagon, or jumping out of window to break her silly leg.”
“Ha!” She grappled with the sheet until her arms were free, swiftly wrapping the blanket around her body. “If you loved me, you wouldn’t break into my room and hog-tie me like a steer, rolling me in a sheet and dragging me through a public lobby.”
Finn leaned in, going eye to eye. “First of all, Libby O’Shea McShane, I didn’t break in, I used a key after waiting two blasted hours for you to honor Don’s request to check out.”
“I wasn’t ready.” Her voice tapered off as she clutched the blanket to the neck of her lace-collared nightgown, jaw stiff as she stared straight ahead.
“Secondly, yes I hogtied and rolled you in a sheet because frankly I was tired of wrestling with a wildcat who clawed till I was near bleeding.”
Inside and out.
“And finally,” he continued, pinning her with a pointed gaze, “I didn’t drag you, I carried you, Miss Bell, through an empty public lobby because it was the only way to get your stubborn carcass in the bloomin’ wagon and take you home. Where, I might add, your goddaughter and family are worried sick about where you are.”
“It’s not my home,” she whispered, guilt obviously tempering her resistance.
He relented with a heavy sigh. “No, it’s not, Mrs. McShane.” He mauled the back of his neck. “But it will be for the next six months if you want to marry your professor, so I suggest you make the best of it, Libby, because that will make all of our lives a whole lot easier.”
Resi
gned to the fact that he wasn’t going to conquer Rome—or his mule-headed wife—in a day, Finn clicked his tongue. “Come on, boy—let’s go home.”
The wagon lurched forward, and Libby bobbed so much, Finn gripped to steady her before quickly letting go. “And for your information, Liberty Bell, I do love you and never stopped, which is why I never married anyone else, if you must know.”
She turned his way, her sweet smile appearing way more innocent than it was. “Really? I just figured it was because every girl in this town finally woke up one day to realize you were a nightmare of a bully.”
Finn grinned, the barest trace of tease in her tone giving him hope. “Nope, can’t keep up with all the pies, casseroles, and dinner invitations as it is, from all the hopeful mothers and widows out there.” He shot her a wink, pretty sure his next statement would ruffle her sheet but good. “Especially Jo Beth.”
That porcelain profile hardened to granite as her chin jutted high. “Good—she deserves you,” she said in a near snarl that made his grin grow. It was nice to know that the woman Finn stepped out with before he married Libby could still flare his wife’s fuse. One of the things he’d always enjoyed about Libby was all the sizzle and spark their sparring brought out, lighting those green eyes on fire and setting that wild auburn hair aflame.
Among other things.
Like now, when even the desert breeze couldn’t cool the heat she generated a mere three feet away. The memory of waking up with her in his bed after that unexpected honeymoon night filled him with a fierce longing, causing an ache in his chest over all they had missed. If not for Libby coming home from college that fateful summer and Mrs. Poppy’s inadvertent poppy-seed overdose, Finn might very well be married to Jo Beth right now. A shudder traveled his spine, making him realize once and for all that Libby O’Shea was the only woman for him. And whether she knew it or not, he was the only man for her.
Now, Lord, he thought with a brisk flick of the reins.
Don’t let it take six months to prove it.
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