Spur-Of-The-Moment Marriage

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “To set you free,” Cisco explained, letting her know in a glance that if anyone knew how to effectively deal with her ex-husband, it was Cisco and indeed the whole McKendrick clan. Nevertheless, the fact remained that she knew what they were up against in Phillip; they did not. She folded her arms in front of her.

  “I know you want to help, but I am not going back into that nightmare,” she announced.

  Cisco stepped closer, gave her a pitying look, then said quietly, “You’ve never left.”

  CISCO’S PROPHETIC WORDS still echoing in her ears, Gillian spun around on her heel and marched defiantly back to the cottage. She had known getting this close to anyone, never mind someone like Cisco, was a mistake, she thought as she charged up the stairs, tears streaming down her face. No matter what she did, no matter how far or how hard she ran, she could not escape her past.

  “What are you doing?” Cisco’s calm voice, seeming to come out of nowhere, made her jump.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” Ignoring her jittery state in the hopes that Cisco would, too, Gillian grabbed her suitcase and cosmetic case. “I’m doing what I should’ve done when Pete Lloyd thought I looked familiar. I’m getting out of here before anyone gets hurt on my account.”

  Cisco remained in the doorway, rock-hard thighs girded, shoulders braced for battle, blocking the only exit out. “You don’t want to do that,” he told her quietly, still looking as if he would defend her to the death.

  Gillian ground her teeth on a hundred feisty replies. “Don’t tell me what I do or do not want to do,” she announced with a haughty toss of her long auburn hair.

  Cisco sighed but looked no less determined. He moved closer. “Haven’t you run from your past long enough?”

  Gillian shook her head as tears of loss and longing blurred her eyes. Maybe it was unrealistic, but she had come to hope that they could work things out between them. Make this, if not a real marriage, a real romance, at least for a couple of wild and wonderful days. But that was not going to be, she realized sadly, and the truth was she had known that to be the case the moment she saw their photo in the Internet version of Monday’s USA Daily newspaper. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself.

  She held her ground and kept her distance. “Get out of my way, Cisco.”

  Ignoring her directive, he closed the distance between them, gently took her chin in hand and tilted her face up to his. They stood near enough that she could see the lines of strain on his face and the old hurts from his past in his eyes. And along with that the determination that their future would be better. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Gillian,” he told her, his expression hard, defiant. “Neither will Max or Trace or Cody or any of the men or women on the Silver Spur.”

  That said, he pulled her against him. Gillian buried her face in the warmth of his shirtfront and put her arms around him despite herself. “You can’t protect me,” she murmured, her voice muffled against the solid wall of his chest

  “Yes, I can, and I will.” Cisco buried his face in the sweet-smelling softness of her hair. “In your heart, you know that,” he whispered gently, tugging her even closer against his hard length. “That’s why you’re afraid.” She gasped in surprise and wanting as his hands ghosted up and down her back. “Because it might mean you’d have to start taking risks again.” His lips moved across her temple, down her cheek, to her lips, where they hovered over hers with tantalizing nearness and sent her heart slamming against her ribs. “It might mean,” he said softly, looking deep into her eyes, “you’d have to stay.

  “I know how hard this is for you, Gillian,” Cisco said in a low husky voice that brooked no dissent as he lowered his head and kissed her with a rough possessiveness that stole her breath. “It was hard for me, too, when Max brought me here, but I gave it my all, and I’ve never regretted it. And.that’s what I’m asking you to do,” he whispered.

  “Oh, Cisco—” The sound of longing in her throat was cut off as his lips covered hers once again. His arm clamped around her back and he lifted her against him; and she had no choice but to feel the depth of his need for her. Or hers for him. She’d been running scared and alone for years. And now a strong, caring man had come into her life. It might not be wise, it might not be safe, but she couldn’t resist the offer of a forty-eight-hour-long fantasy and marriage any more than she could resist Cisco’s tender kiss.

  Groaning with a mixture of despair—that this couldn’t last—and exultation—that they’d found each other at all—Gillian returned his searing embrace with all her heart and soul. His hands moved to her breasts, cupping them through the fabric of her shirt. He parted her lips and slid his tongue into them, kissing her as if he had every right to do so, kissing her with a need that was deep and elemental and blatantly, unabashedly carnal. Melting into him helplessly, giving herself over as his wife, she took up the rhythm of his plundering lips and tongue, answering his hunger with a kiss that had him groaning, too.

  He danced her backward, until he had trapped her against the wall and his body, and for that moment, there was nothing else between them—no promise of inheritance, no forty-eight-hour marriage—only this moment in time and the sweet, searing need. She wanted him. How she wanted him. And he wanted her, too.

  His hands slid down the front of her shirt, unbuttoning as he went. His kiss grew wilder, more urgent, as he unclasped her bra and molded her breasts with his hands, drawing the nipples into pebble-hard tips. Her knees turned to putty. She melted against him, on fire and wanting…so much more….

  “Cisco—” she whispered as another thrill swept through her.

  “I know.” He kissed his way from her temple to her shoulder, and pulled her against him, his legs on either side of her, his arousal pulsing between her thighs. “If I’m going to love you, we’ve got to get these clothes off.”

  Urgently they set about doing just that. Her body throbbing with unslaked need, they fell back on the queen-size bed, the sunlight spilling over them in a pool of soft golden light Gillian had not seen how beautiful his body was the night before. She had only felt it, hot and hard and undeniably male. This afternoon she saw it. Reveled in it. The satin-smooth skin and muscle, and whorls of soft dark hair. Unable to help herself, she touched his flat male nipples. The sweat-slick skin of his chest and sinewy legs. She trembled at the intensity of her desire and the consequences it could bring. No longer caring, her hand moved lower still, to curve around him. He pressed against her, letting her know just what she did to him. She let her knees part. Her head fell back. She let her eyes shut.

  Moving so she was beneath him, he took her nipple between his teeth and flicked it with his tongue. She gasped and arched off the bed and increased the caressing pressure of her hand.

  Groaning, as if her touch were more than he could bear, he touched his lips to hers. Kissed her deeply, evocatively. He feathered soft, slow kisses along her hairline then slowly, ever so slowly and deliberately, kissed his way down her body. Pinning her hands on either side of her, he moved lower still. Her whole body was trembling with the need to take him inside her, but he wouldn’t relent, not yet, not until she felt the searing stroke of his lips and tongue. She gasped as he found the feminine essence of her. And found it until it was all too much, until her heart was full and she shook with the force of her need. “Cisco, please. Let me…do…for you…what you’re…”

  He moved swiftly up her body. Lifting her with his hands, he brought her to him. “This is what I want,” he whispered, staring down at her as he surged inside her.

  Trusting as she had never trusted before, wanting as she had never wanted before, she gave herself over to sensation, over to him. This was a depth of feeling they didn’t want and couldn’t avoid. And as they moved together, surging up and over the edge, she knew it was a complication that was not likely to go away.

  For long moments after, they lay locked together, breathing harshly in the silence of the room. “I’m not going to apologize for that,�
�� Cisco said finally.

  “I don’t want you to,” Gillian murmured back, burying her face in the solid warmth of his chest. For she knew better than anyone that there was no tomorrow, only today.

  She had this moment, this man, this feeling of being protected and cared for and loved. And for the moment it had to be enough. Because it could all end tomorrow, she thought, waiting quietly for the reckoning to come.

  Chapter Nine

  “You all know I wouldn’t have called this family meeting unless it were of paramount importance to all of us,” Cisco began at four o’clock Sunday afternoon, as they gathered in his office. Aware how pale and nervous Gillian looked, he made sure everyone had coffee, then settled down beside Gillian and clasped her cold hand in his. He knew she had no desire to do this, just as he also knew it was absolutely necessary. Gillian had lived a life of terror long enough; working together, he and the McKendricks would help end her nightmare once and for all.

  “We know that, son,” Max reassured gravely, as he rested his Stetson on his buckskin-clad knee.

  “What I don’t get is why I was invited,” Pearl interjected quietly as she passed around a plate of homemade Ranger cookies she’d brought over from the diner.

  “Because you’re as much a part of the McKendrick family as I am,” Cisco told her gently.

  “And you could be even more a part of it if you’d just give me a chance to make things right with you,” Max interjected emphatically, looking straight at Pearl until she blushed.

  “All right,” Pearl said, still looking as if it was going to be a very hard sell, convincing her of his love. “I’ll hear you out, Max.” She glared at him stonily as she settled on the opposite side of the room from him. She folded her arms in front of her. “But only after the family meeting has concluded.”

  Max nodded. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it would do. He turned to Cisco. “Back to the emergency that brought us here.”

  Briefly Cisco explained what Gillian had told him. Everyone listened quietly. Not surprisingly, they were all clearly as concerned for Gillian as he was. When he had finished, Gillian broke in, looking more uncomfortable than ever. “I wanted to leave well enough alone, rather than involve any of you in my past.”

  Patience reacted as generously as Cisco had predicted she would. “Nonsense, Gillian. That’s what family is for,” Patience said, settling into the curve of Josh’s arm.

  “Patience is right. You should let us help you,” Susannah said softly, taking her husband’s hand in hers.

  Cody nodded and swept a hand through his long wheat gold hair. “Take it from me, Gillian. I spent seven years withdrawing from the world in the old outpost, only to discover that all I’d done was take my troubles with me and make them worse, in refusing to deal with them.”

  Remembering the sweet, giving way Gillian’s body had felt beneath his a few hours before, Cisco kept a firm clasp on Gillian’s hand. “The only way out, the only way you will ever be able to have a full life, Gillian, is if you face this situation head-on and let us call in Sheriff Anderson.”

  “The law can help you,” Patience’s husband, Josh, interjected quietly, putting his two cents in. “I know they’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe from harm, as will all of us.”

  Gillian sighed. She plaited the fabric of her split skirt between her fingers and stared down at her knee. “I’m scared.”

  Cisco heard the tears in her voice even before he saw them brimming in her eyes.

  “I don’t want anyone to be hurt on my account,” Gillian finished on a husky whisper of soul-deep regret that only made Cisco’s heart go out to her all the more.

  “I felt the same way,” Callie said softly as she wrapped her hand in Cody’s. “But Sheriff Anderson and Cody helped me fight and win a years-long battle with my kin.” Callie sent Gillian a reassuring look. “Because I stood up to them, I’m safe now. And you will be, too, if you let us all work together to help you.”

  Gillian looked at Callie, then at Cisco, then the rest of the clan. As he had figured she would, when confronted with such love, warmth and understanding, she gave herself over to them. “All right, then,” she said, forcing a tremulous smile, first at Cisco, then at everyone in the room. “Let’s go for it.”

  “I TALKED TO PETE LLOYD,” Clsco told the group assembled in Sheriff Anderson’s office thirty minutes later.

  “Did he recall how he knew me?” Gillian asked, aware she did feel safer with Cisco beside her.

  Cisco put his arm around her and drew her in close to his side. “Not until I told him you’d been a student at Kansas State University, but had had to leave the state because of threats against your life. Then it all came back to him—your alleged suicide leap off the Kansas River bridge, and the suspected abuse at the hands of your ex-husband before that. Apparently, the local papers carried the story—and your photo—for weeks afterward.”

  Gillian rubbed the back of her neck anxiously, feeling as though the tension there would never leave, no matter what she did.

  “What happened to her husband?” Callie asked.

  His expression serious, a clipboard full of notes in his hand, Sheriff Anderson joined the family members gathered round. “That’s what I need to tell you,” he said quietly. “I just got off the phone with the Kansas police.”

  Gillian drew in a quavering breath and wished like hell she could get a grip. But that was something easier hoped for than accomplished. Just talking about her ex had brought back all the ugly memories with jarring force. “And?” she asked.

  “Phillip Wingate’s dead.”

  Gillian felt the blood drain from her face. She swayed, feeling as if she might faint, while everyone clamored at once.

  “When?” Gillian demanded as Cisco tightened his grip on her protectively.

  Sheriff Anderson looked as reluctant to be relaying the information as Gillian was to hear it. “He took his own life about a year after you were presumed dead.”

  Gillian paused and bit her lip. “That doesn’t sound like him.” And because it didn’t, she found she had a hard time believing it.

  Sheriff Anderson regarded Gillian solemnly. “Apparently your ex-husband was distraught by the note you left behind. For a long time he didn’t believe you’d committed suicide. He made a real nuisance of himself looking for you and was arrested on disorderly conduct charges several times.”

  “How did the police react to that?” Cisco asked, reminding them all that in the ten years that had passed, law enforcement had taken a much tougher stance against domestic violence, and stalking laws had been changed and strengthened in many states.

  “Although they couldn’t prove anything, since Gillian—” the sheriff paused to consult his clipboard and correct himself “—or Meg Wingate’s body was never found, they considered Phillip a suspect in his ex-wife’s disappearance, as did many other people in the KSU community. Unable to live with the damage to his reputation, and the loss of his teaching assistantship at the graduate school—the university dismissed him when it all came out—Phillip Wingate drove to the same bridge where Gillian’s car had been found, and took a suicide leap into the river. There were several witnesses that saw him jump, but as in your case, a body was never found to verify his death.”

  “Which means—like me—he could still be alive,” Gillian whispered as that information sank in, her nerves stretched tight on the razor’s edge.

  Sheriff Anderson and Cisco exchanged concerned looks with each other and the rest of the McKendrick men. “The police there admit it’s possible, but they deem it highly unlikely that anyone, no matter how determined or strong a swimmer, could have survived a plunge into the river that night,” Sheriff Anderson said finally. “The Kansas River was swollen from recent heavy rains, and the current was very fast. It’s more likely that he drowned and his body was swiftly swept away.”

  “I’m sorry, Gillian,” Josh said softly.

  “We all are,” Cody agreed.

  Trac
e nodded. “We wish you’d never had to go through that.”

  “But now it’s over,” Callie concluded with heartfelt relief, taking Gillian’s hand and squeezing it hard. “And you’re finally free to go on with the rest of your life,” Susannah whispered joyfully as she and Patience embraced Gillian, too.

  “All that’s left to do is confirm the facts,” Max said, “which we’ll do immediately with the help of my crack private investigating team.”

  “And, of course, clear up a few legal matters after that,” Cisco said.

  Everyone seemed to think it really was over, Gillian noted as the grief and guilt she knew she ought to feel mysteriously continued to elude her.

  But if that were truly the case, Gillian wondered uneasily, if her ex-husband was really no longer a threat to her, then why did she still have this sick, scared feeling in her heart?

  “I’M SURE the dining hall is fine,” Cisco insisted as they drove toward the logging camp a short while later. Gillian knew it was, too, but she had to be doing something to settle her nerves, and in the past, it was her work, her love of cooking, that had calmed her. “I’ll feel better if I check it and make sure there are no more raccoons taking up residence in the storeroom,” Gillian said, trying her best not to let on how uneasy she still felt. Besides, the business was soon going to be hers, and she needed to show some responsibility so Max wouldn’t think he’d make a mistake in willing it to her in the first place.

  Cisco slanted her a concerned look. “You think the family of raccoons that tried to move in last night might have made an encore appearance?” he asked with a look that said he knew exactly what she was worrying about.

  Even though they were married, she didn’t want him feeling anxious on her account. Gillian settled back in her comfortable leather seat. “It’s possible, especially if their original home was destroyed in the storm we had the other night. Not to mention the fact the plastic we taped over the window was pretty flimsy. I’d hate to think of the chefs who will show up tomorrow being scared the way I was last night.”