THE BADDEST BRIDE IN TEXAS

by Maggie Shayne

  "I'm going over there," Penny interrupted.

  That stopped Adam in his tracks. He spun around even before Garrett could speak. "I don't want you going anywhere near that place, Penny."

  "She's my best friend, and she needs me."

  "And there's a killer on the loose. Ben, don't let her go over there."

  Ben frowned at his brother but knew better than to mistrust him. "Honey, if Adam thinks it's dangerous…" he began.

  "Well, if it's dangerous for me, then what about Kirsten? Somebody ought to be over there watching out for her. She shouldn't even be there, for the love of heaven! I have to go. She'll listen to me."

  Ben stroked his wife's hair. "Hey, slow it down, will you? I lost you once, honey, and I'm damned well not going to risk losing you again." He pressed one hand to her slightly expanded belly. "And you have the baby to think about now, too."

  She pressed her lips together as Garrett and Chelsea both chimed in, backing Ben up one hundred percent. "But what about Kirsten?" she asked.

  Adam sighed heavily. "I've got that covered, hon."

  All three of them stared at him as if he'd grown another head, while Garrett just sighed as if he'd been expecting this.

  "Adam, do you really think that's the best idea?" Ben asked. "One of us could probably handle watching out for Kirsten for a few days while all this sorts itself out. I could go over right now, and—"

  "Right. Look, Ben, you have the martial arts school and a pregnant wife. Garrett's got the ranch to run, and with just him and Elliot to do it, he can't spare the time. Not to mention his duties as sheriff. Wes is busy with the mares about to foal, and Jessi and Lash are whooping it up with the big mouse in Orlando. I'll handle it."

  He turned again.

  As he headed up the stairs, he heard Ben very softly asking Garrett, "What the hell is up with him?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine," was Garrett's soft-spoken reply.

  Then Chelsea sighed and whispered, "I sometimes think you Brand men are awfully slow on the uptake. I've gotta go call Jessi and tell her she was right all along. That chapter really wasn't over."

  Oh, but she was wrong, Adam thought. If she was talking about the chapter in Adam's life that involved a relationship between him and Kirsten, she was dead wrong. He would go over there, and he would watch over her whether she liked it or not. Because he felt he ought to. Because if he got a phone call tomorrow saying she'd been murdered in her sleep, he would have to live with it, knowing he could have prevented it and hadn't. And because maybe this was the only way he would ever prove to himself and to everyone else in this family—in this entire town—that he was over her. Over her. Once and for all.

  He'd finally figured out what his sorry mind had been lacking all this time where Kirsten was concerned. Closure. Maybe this was his chance to have it. Maybe in the process of getting her out of this mess, he would have time to make her answer the questions he'd never asked her. The questions he'd been avoiding all this time. Get that finality he needed to close her out of his soul for good. And she would give him the answers, too. Hell, she owed him that much. Yes, he thought. She owed him.

  Kirsten's shaky grip on control broke down as soon as she closed the door of the mansion on Stephen and watched him walking back to his car. The shaking came first. Then the chills, and, finally, the tears. They were loud, and they were ugly. But for once it didn't matter. There was no one here to witness her falling apart.

  Don't leave town. We'll be wanting to talk to you again, real soon.

  She told her mind to be silent, and she headed for the stairs, sobbing hard, barely able to see through the blur of the tears in her eyes. A good thing, too, she thought as she moved through the huge house, because the study doors were open, and she didn't want to see what was in there. The blood on the floor. The marks of her bare feet drying in it.

  But the images kept replaying over and over again in Kirsten's mind as she ran to her room, closed the door behind her and brushed the wetness from her face. She dragged a suitcase from under the bed, opened it, then went to the closet.

  He changed his will, Kirsten. Named you his sole heir.

  "Shut up!" She rapidly tossed clothes onto her bed. Don't leave town…

  As if they really expected her to sit here, just sit here, waiting for them to show up at the door with an arrest warrant. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, but somehow Joseph was responsible for this. All of it.

  And he was thorough. If he wanted her destroyed, she would be destroyed. There would be no stopping whatever hideous wheels the bastard must have put into motion. He was capable of anything. Anything. She was scared. She was as scared as she'd been at fourteen when she'd first met Joseph Cowan, right after the horrible accident she'd caused. Joyriding in her daddy's car without permission. Without a license. Without a freaking brain! The one stupid, foolish act that had sealed her fate for good.

  Joseph Cowan had owned her, body and soul, from that day on, even though she hadn't known it then. She hadn't known it until her wedding day, years later. Or … it would have been her wedding day. But the bastard had shown up to claim what she'd unwittingly sold to him long ago. Just like Satan claiming a damned soul.

  She had to run.

  "Kirsten?"

  She spun so fast she almost fell over her feet. Adam Brand stood in the bedroom's doorway, looking from the pile of clothes on the bed to the open suitcase beside them … then focusing on her face. That was when his expression changed. His brows went up, and his lips thinned. She turned away fast. "I told you to stay away from me, Adam. I meant it."

  "Yeah. I remember. You also told me you were fine, but you look like you just picked a fight with a hurricane and lost. So I'm thinking maybe you're not so fine, after all."

  "It's none of your business, Adam."

  "It is if you're planning to skip town," he said. "That is what you're planning, isn't it?"

  She straightened, but didn't face him. Instead she strode into the bathroom, leaned over the sink and cranked on the water. She didn't bother closing the door. He would come in if he wanted to. He had obviously made quick work of the locks on the doors downstairs. Or had she even thrown them?

  "Kirsten, you don't have to run. We can figure this out."

  Bending over, she splashed water on her face. Then she lathered a cloth with cleansing lotion and began to scrub. Nobody was going to look at her with Tammy Faye streaks running over her cheeks, no matter what the circumstances might be.

  "Figure this out, Adam. The bastard left me everything he had. And the minute the cops learn that, I'll be taken out of here in handcuffs. I don't plan to wait around for them."

  Adam stepped right into the bathroom. She heard his booted footsteps, and when she reached for the towel, he handed it to her. "So you lied about the will?"

  "No, I didn't lie about the freaking will. He changed it." She snatched up a brush and began tugging it through her hair.

  "I see."

  "You don't see a damn thing, Adam Brand. Go home. Leave me alone."

  "I'm afraid I can't do that."

  She paused with the brush in midair. "Why the hell not?"

  "Because my brother gave the rangers his word he'd see to it you didn't leave town. He trusted you not to make a liar out of him, which is, apparently, just what you're about to do."

  She drew a deep, calming breath. Time to lie. And she'd better make it good. It shouldn't be hard. Hell, she'd had years of practice. "I wasn't leaving town. Just this house." She finished her brushing, set the brush down and reached for the makeup case she kept in there. "I decided you were right about it not being safe. I thought I'd go to a hotel."

  "Come to the ranch." He said it so fast she wasn't even sure he'd planned to.

  "You've got to be kidding."

  "No. Actually, the more I think about it, the better the idea seems. Penny's worrying herself sick about you, chomping at the bit to get over here—"

  "You keep her away from here, Ad
am."

  She stilled then. Because she'd whirled on him and gripped his arm, and she hadn't meant to. Closing her eyes, she relaxed her grip, but not before she felt his warmth, the tensing of his biceps, the shiver of awareness that moved through him. And something familiar, something precious, shimmered through her body and her mind. It left her shaken. She let go of him, but her hand still tingled with warmth and awareness. "I don't want Penny getting involved in this mess."

  "I told her pretty much the same thing."

  She swallowed hard. "If I go to the Texas Brand, I'll be dragging all this trouble there with me."

  "We've done trouble before," he said. "We can handle it."

  "Well I can't. It's bad enough I have to live through it. I'm not going to drag you … and Chelsea and little Bubba and Penny … no. I can't go to the ranch with you, Adam. And to tell you the truth, I'm a little surprised you even asked."

  "To tell you the truth, so'm I." He shrugged. "Okay, then, what hotel?"

  Frowning until her brows touched, she searched his face. "What?"

  "What hotel?" he repeated. "Better call, tell 'em to make it a double room. Two beds."

  "For God's sake, Adam, you can't possibly think you're going with me."

  "If I'm not going with you, then you aren't going." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door frame.

  Sighing, she lowered her head. "Okay. Okay, I'll bite. I have to admit, you've got me damned curious. Why are you doing this, Adam?" When he didn't answer, she lifted her head again, met his eyes. "You hate me for what I did to you. And you have every right to. You ought to be crowing like a rooster to see me finally getting my just deserts."

  He drew a deep breath that made his chest expand, then blew it all out again. "Maybe I should. But I'm not. Nobody deserves this."

  "You don't know the half of what I deserve," she said slowly.

  "No? Well, I know a couple of things. You didn't shoot Joe Cowan."

  It felt so good to hear those words—someone actually believing her, after facing the skepticism in the faces of everyone else she'd seen today. Every cop who'd questioned her. Even her own lawyer. She almost melted on the spot. And then he went on.

  "And you didn't marry him for the money, either."

  She went still. "How do you know that?"

  "Because up until today, you thought you weren't getting a dime of it. I know you well enough to know when you're lying, hon. And I don't think you were lying when you told me and Garrett that. So the big question on my mind is, why did you marry him?"

  She shook her head, faced the mirror, fumbled in the makeup bag and pulled out some powders and brushes.

  Adam came closer and stood behind her, hands on the back of her chair, looking at her in the mirror. She couldn't look back at him, and she dusted makeup over her face as fast as she could.

  "What made you decide not to show up for our wedding, Kirsten?"

  "You shouldn't ask a question like that, Adam. Because you sure as hell don't want to hear the answer."

  "I think I do. I think I need to hear the answer. So go on. Give it to me, Kirsten. I'm a big boy. I can take it."

  She still didn't meet his eyes. "I'm not going to discuss this with you."

  "Did you love him?" The question seemed to have been tugged out of him almost against his will.

  She flinched when he asked it. She could pretend all she wanted. She could hide the truth and keep her secrets better than anyone she knew. But there was no way in hell she could look Adam Brand in the eye and tell him that she'd loved another man. A man she'd hated with every breath she drew. She couldn't do that. So she pressed her lips together and tried to pretend he wasn't there. She focused on her own reflection in the mirror, and slowly, methodically, she put her mask on and hid her dark truth away from those prying blue eyes.

  Adam watched her face. It was amazing, the transformation. Her hands flew from one brush to another, and bit by bit the woman he remembered, the woman he'd loved, disappeared. She literally painted a new woman over her. She didn't answer his question. Not until she looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of some businesswoman's magazine. Not until she gathered her beautiful brown hair up into a tight little knot and stuck pins into it so viciously it seemed as if she were stabbing the old Kirsten to death in the process. Not until she'd sprayed it stiff, and he'd had to turn his head to get a breath of air that didn't choke him.

  When she faced him again, she was the ice queen he hated. Not the vulnerable girl in the fight of her life who needed him. And she said, "I had my reasons for marrying Joseph. And none of them are any concern of yours."

  "Did you love him?" he asked her again. He knew the answer before he asked the question. The woman sitting there with her painted-on face was incapable of loving anyone. But the girl underneath had been … once. Was she still?

  "I really think," she said, rising slowly from her little stool like a phoenix from the ashes—transformed, strong, stubborn—"one interrogation a day is more than enough for me."

  He only nodded. But he'd thought of something, and he couldn't stop until he probed just a little deeper.

  "How's your father, Kirsten?"

  She went utterly still. A doe caught in somebody's high beams. She blinked, averted her eyes. So she was still as firmly, even wildly, devoted to her father as she had always been. It was one of the things he'd loved best about her. And he'd never understood how even that could have changed. How she could have shipped him off to a home when she'd vowed to keep him with her always, no matter what. She'd even made it a condition when she'd accepted Adam's marriage proposal. She would marry him only if her father would always have a home in their household.

  "Is he still in that nursing home in Dallas?" he asked her.

  She nodded, her motions jerky as she turned her back to him and pretended to straighten the colorful containers and tubes on the countertop. "It's the best facility in the state." Her hands were shaking. The makeup stood in neat rows when she finished.

  "I always wondered why you decided to ship him out there. I mean, it's not like there wasn't plenty of room right here. And God knows, you could have paid for a nurse to come in."

  She stilled again, her head bent, her back still toward him. "Don't you dare question my love for my father, Adam Brand."

  "I'm not questioning it. But I imagine he is."

  She whirled, her hand slamming across his face so fast and so hard that he rocked back on his heels. He felt the sting. The surprise. Saw the fresh tears welling in her eyes. Felt an odd surge of relief that her feelings for her father hadn't turned to ice like everything else about her seemed to have done.

  "I'd die for my father, you son of a bitch. He's where he is because it's the best place for him to be. And it's a good thing he is, because a shock like Joseph's murder would probably have killed him."

  Adam stood there and saw raw honesty in her eyes, blazing bright. It was good to see it there for a change, instead of all those deceitful shadows he'd been trying to see past all day. "His heart's still that weak, is it?"

  "His heart is shot," she said slowly, a little of the anger fading, a little of the stiffness easing from her body. "He's been on the transplant list for over a year now."

  That knocked the wind out of his sails. Adam swore softly. "I didn't know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said what I did."

  "No," she said. "You shouldn't have."

  He drew a breath and sighed, not knowing what the hell to say or do next.

  "I've changed my mind," she said finally. "I'm not going to a hotel. I'm going to stay right here. You can go home, Adam."

  He shook his head. "Wish I could oblige you, Kirsten. But I can't. If you're staying here, I'm staying, too. I'll try to stay out of your hair."

  "I suppose I could call the rangers and have you thrown out."

  "I suppose you could. But you know damned well I'd only come back."

  She stood glaring at him. He held her gaze with barely
an effort. Looking into her eyes was like staring at a jigsaw puzzle and trying to find the missing pieces. He had a feeling he could look forever and not see everything going on inside her. Finally she sighed in defeat.

  "Fine. Get the hell out of my room, then. Leave me alone."

  He nodded. "I'll do that," he said. "But one word of warning, Kirsten. Don't try to leave this house. If you do, I'm gonna know about it, I promise you that."

  She narrowed her eyes. He could see her wondering just what the hell he meant by that. But she didn't ask. It would only prolong this conversation, and it looked as if she was too relieved to finally see an end to it within reach. "Just go. Just get out of here and leave me alone, will you please?"

  He gave a brief nod, turned and walked out of the bathroom, through the bedroom and out the door.

  Kirsten followed him. She closed the door behind him, and he heard the lock turn. He stood there for just a moment, shamelessly listening, waiting.

  Soft sobs came through loud and clear. And then another sound. The sound of liquid being poured into a glass.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  « ^ »

  He shouldn't have made the remarks he had about her father. He had hurt her. But he'd learned something. She loved Max as much as she ever had. And her dad would have been living with her if it had been possible. Adam figured Max Armstrong might really be too weak to be out of the home, but on the other hand, that might not be the case. There might be some other reason why Kirsten hadn't wanted her father here with her. Adam intended to look into that—see if he could find out what the reason might be.

  He tried to remember the name of the facility where Max Armstrong had been shipped right around the time of Kirsten's elopement. He'd heard it once. It would come to him. Meanwhile, he reprogrammed the security codes on the alarm system. He hadn't been bluffing. He would know about it the second Kirsten opened a door or a window. Or the second anyone else did.