THE BADDEST BRIDE IN TEXAS

by Maggie Shayne

  Not this time.

  Kirsten sat on the ground and watched the horses drink. Adam hadn't followed. She'd half expected him to. He had a determined, stubborn look in his eyes tonight, and she didn't like it. She knew that look. He could be so damned persistent when he made up his mind about something.

  She closed her eyes, sat and rehearsed in her mind the words she would say. The way she would tell him. The truth she had to speak. Had to. Because she'd figured something out back there at Sky Dancer Ranch when they'd "borrowed" the horses. When Adam had kissed her. She'd suspected it before, but now she was certain. He still cared. Maybe he'd never stopped. And while his love for her had never been the soul-shattering, gut-wrenching kind she'd felt for him, it had been real. And, fool that he was, he still felt it. He deserved the truth. He deserved to hate her for what she'd done. He deserved to be let off the hook.

  Oh, but what might have happened between them tonight if she didn't have to confess?

  Tears burned. She blinked at them, but they pooled anyway. Damn Adam for being so beautiful, and so strong, and so … so Adam.

  "Kirsty?"

  Sniffling, she lifted her head, wiped her eyes. He stood behind her. She didn't turn to face him.

  "You've been out here awhile. The horses came back without you."

  Licking dry lips, she glanced at the water hole where the animals had been, then at the sun resting low on the horizon, halfway to setting already. "I was … thinking."

  "Yeah. A lot on your mind, I imagine."

  "Yeah."

  "Think you can eat? You haven't had a damned thing since breakfast."

  A tight smile tugged at her lips. It was just like him to keep track of what she was eating, and how often. To worry. To care. "I could probably manage a few bites. What have you got? Hardtack and beans?" Another brush at her eyes with the heels of her hands. The tears didn't show anymore. Did they?

  She looked at him. The smile pulled his lips tight, but it didn't reach his eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her, hat cocked back on his head. Sun painting his face bronze and gleaming in his eyes.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "Sure I am. I'm tougher than I look, you know."

  "Yeah. Well…" He sounded doubtful but didn't elaborate. Instead, he held out a hand. She took it and let Adam pull her to her feet. Then she went still, because he held on, his eyes probing hers. "There didn't used to be so many secrets in those brown eyes of yours, Kirsten. They used to sparkle. Now they're dull with worry and … I don't know. Pain."

  "Chalk it up to looking down the business end of a murder charge, Adam."

  "That's all?"

  "Isn't that enough?"

  He pursed his lips. Said nothing.

  "I smell coffee."

  With a sigh and a slight lowering of his chin, he let it go. All of it. His unspoken questions, his suspicions, his need to know. For now. He let it go for the moment, for her, as she'd known he would. Not for anything would he push too hard when he could see pain in her eyes. But she knew him too well to think he wouldn't come back to it later. And keep coming back until he had the answers he wanted. And even if he didn't, she would have to tell him … all of it. And soon.

  Adam turned, tucking her hand to his side and heading back toward the fire. "Don't get your hopes up. It's been a while since I've brewed coffee in a tin pot over an open fire."

  "Damn. And here I was hoping for cappuccino."

  She chose a spot near the fire and sat down. Adam set a small cooler beside her, then used his shirtsleeve as a pot holder and poured coffee into two tin cups. Kirsten opened the cooler and peered inside. Cold fried chicken, a pair of large ice packs, assorted fruit and small covered dishes in varying shapes, sizes and colors were wedged into the thing.

  "Elliot tends to be of the belief that so long as there's plenty to eat, all is right with the world," Adam said.

  "I remember that about him. And the idea does have merit." She hauled out a golden brown drumstick and bit into it. Flavor exploded in her mouth, and her stomach growled for more.

  "He stuffed bread and canned goods into the other pack," Adam said. "Even remembered to include a can opener."

  "If I ever see your kid brother again, remind me to thank him."

  She took another bite, chewed, swallowed. Reached for the coffee cup and burned her fingers. When she drew her hand away fast, Adam was there, gripping her hand, turning it. "It's okay."

  "Let me see," he insisted, when she would have pulled away. He examined her hand by the fading blaze of the orange sunset, ran his fingertips over hers. Electric contact. It burned more than the hot tin had.

  Kirsten closed her eyes. She wanted him. Damn, how she wanted him.

  Satisfied she was okay, he brought her fingers to his lips, kissed them softly.

  She drew her hand away so fast she hurt her wrist. "Why did you do that?"

  Adam shrugged, but there was fire in his eyes, a spark she knew well. "Old habits … you know." He held her gaze for a long moment, then finally broke eye contact and sighed. He sat down beside her, reaching into the cooler for a piece of chicken. "Sorry. Kissing singed fingers doesn't help much, I imagine. It was something my mother…" He cut himself off there, not finishing the sentence.

  Kirsten's stomach turned over. Her appetite fled. "Something … your mother used to do?"

  He nodded without looking at her and bit into his chicken.

  "You never talked about her. Your mother," she said, very slowly, not even sure why she wanted to torture herself this way. "Not even to me."

  He didn't reply. Not until he'd cleaned the meat to the bone and started on a second piece. Then he paused, saw she was still looking at him, awaiting a reply, and shrugged. "Some things … a man just doesn't want to discuss."

  "Not even with a woman he claimed to love?"

  Adam stilled. "I never claimed to love you, Kirsty. It was real, not alleged. Hell, never mind. How did we get on this subject, anyway?"

  "I asked you about your mother. How old were you, Adam, when your parents were killed? Sixteen?"

  His lips thinned, but he answered. "Fifteen."

  "You must have been … crushed."

  "That'd be one word for it." He sipped his coffee, looked back toward town, in search, she thought, of another subject. A safer one. But there was an old pain in his eyes. One she had put there.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  Adam got an odd, squinty look. "Nothing for you to apologize for, Kirsty. It wasn't your fault."

  Oh, but it was. "Adam…" She drew a breath, squeezed her hands together. It was time. "Adam, I—"

  "I should be the one apologizing," he said.

  Kirsten's brows drew together. "What—"

  "For never talking about … about that. To you. I mean, it was the worst time of my life, and, hell, let's face it. It changed me. You had a right to know about that. To understand why I was … the way I was."

  She had understood. Or she'd thought she had. But he was right, they'd never discussed it. And she wasn't sure she wanted to now. Why the hell had she started this?

  "The truth is, it damn near killed me, losing them."

  She closed her eyes. Felt his pain. Heard it in his voice and sensed it emanating in waves from his soul.

  "I knew the second Garrett came to me that something terrible had happened. I'd never seen that big lug cry before. Never in my life. It scared the hell out of me. He … gathered all of us together in the parlor. Me, Ben, Elliot, Wes … even little Jessi, though she was so damned tiny she didn't really know what was going on. Thank God for that."

  Kirsten's mind told her to look away, not into his eyes, into his pain-racked face as he remembered. Change the subject, shut him out.

  But her heart cried more loudly. Heal him. Hold him. Make his horrible pain go away. But how could she, when she was the one who'd put it there?

  "He made us all hold hands, and then he told us. Mama and Dad wouldn't be comin
g home to the Texas Brand again. He said they'd gone to heaven, that they were safe with the angels now, and watching over us just the way they always had. But from above."

  Her heart broke. It just shattered. He was opening up to her in a way he'd never done before.

  "The others cried. All of them. Even Jessi, when she saw her big brothers all reduced to tears like that. But not me. I didn't shed a tear. I got mad," he confessed, lowering his head, sweeping his hat off and holding it between his knees by the brim. "Furious. I kept asking myself how my parents could do something like that, how they could go off to live with the angels while the six of us stayed behind to fend for ourselves."

  Kirsten touched his face. "It wasn't really anger, Adam. It was pain. You just had to direct it somehow. You were a child."

  "Oh, it was anger. I blamed them. Both of them, for abandoning us. Abandoning me. I vowed then and there that I'd never love anyone that much again. Never give anyone the chance to leave me that way again."

  "It was," she whispered, searching for words, "it was a natural reaction."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. If it was, it should have passed. I should have been able to work through it, do my mourning, make my peace. I didn't, Kirsten. To tell you the truth, I'm still angry." He lowered his head, shook it slowly. "But then you came along."

  She nodded. "I know. And you wouldn't let yourself fall all the way in love with me. Because you were half convinced I'd leave you the same way they did."

  "I was fully convinced you'd leave me the way they did," he said very slowly. "And totally determined not to fall all the way in love with you. I told myself I wouldn't. I even convinced you of it, didn't I?"

  Studying his face, she nodded.

  Adam looked into her eyes. Lifting one hand to cup her cheek, he let his gaze move from her forehead to her chin and back to her eyes again. "Fooled everybody, then. Because I did fall all the way. I did, Kirsty. And when you walked out on me, I didn't think I'd survive. Wasn't even sure I wanted to."

  She closed her eyes. She'd wanted so badly to hear him speak to her this way, once. A long time ago. But not now. Sweet God, not now.

  "And I never really fell out again, either," he went on.

  "Don't, Adam—"

  "That's my deep dark secret, Kirsty. The one I've been fighting tooth and nail to keep, even from myself. That's it. And I thought it was about time I told you."

  Tears streaming down both cheeks now, she opened her eyes and stared through hazy pools at him. "Why, Adam? Why now?"

  "Because," he said slowly, "it's only fair. It's your turn now, Kirsten. Tell me the dark secrets you've been keeping. Tell me the truth."

  Sniffling, she shook her head. "I … I can't…"

  "Yeah, you can," he told her. "'Cause neither one of us is leaving here until you do."

  Sitting up straighter, Kirsten drew her knees to her chest, hugged them, stared into the flames. What was she waiting for? Why didn't she just blurt it all out? Her throat hurt. Her head ached. The fire danced. She licked her lips. Where the hell was she supposed to begin? Her voice hoarse, she closed her eyes and forced words through the narrow space in her throat. "What do you want to know?"

  Adam sat very still beside her. "Did you ever love me?"

  She nodded into her knees without hesitation. "I've never loved anyone else." And even to her own ears, her voice sounded desolate. Utterly without hope.

  She didn't look at him. She couldn't. She just listened. The night was slowly coming to life now. A distant bird called. A coyote cried the way her heart was doing—a mourning, warbling, broken sound that said better than words could what her life had become. The fire hissed and snapped.

  "Then you never loved Cowan."

  "I never even liked him."

  "He forced you to marry him," Adam said softly. Leading her by the hand with his words, trying to make it easier for her to get to the truth. "He had something on you, something he held over your head. And you married him to keep him quiet."

  Kirsten nodded.

  "What was it, Kirsten?"

  Silence. She tried to part her lips, to speak, but her jaws seemed to have locked up. He waited a long time. She tried to make herself say the words. I killed your parents. I orphaned your baby sister and your brothers. I took away your life and changed it forever.

  "Tell me."

  "Please, Adam, don't make me do this."

  "It's time, Kirsten."

  She shook her head hard. "I … I can't!"

  He was silent for a long moment. Brooding. "Maybe I can help get you started. Whatever he had on you, it had to have been pretty bad." Less patience in his tone now. A hint that maybe he couldn't quite conceive of anything that bad. "Bad enough that you were willing to become his wife—not just on paper, but in every way. Willing to lie in his bed."

  Her head came up, eyes wide.

  "You talk more than you should when you're drunk," he told her. "You talked about him trying to get you pregnant. About him grunting and sweating on top of you night after night…" He closed his eyes as some emotion rushed through them—an emotion that looked to her like disgust.

  She felt Adam's anger, understood it. Jealousy. It enraged him to think of her making love to another man. Of course it did. But it enraged her to hear him talk to her this way. "I was never willing. I had no choice."

  "You had a choice!" His temper long gone, he shouted the words, lost now to reason. "The choice was to come to me, Kirsty. To tell me the truth. You think I wouldn't have stopped him? You think I'd have let him make you his—" He bit his lip, slammed his hat to the ground and kicked it viciously.

  "His whore?" Kirsten finished softly.

  Adam turned, blinking, a little of the rage fading. "No. That's not what I—"

  "Why not? That's exactly what I was. His whore. He paid for my services by keeping quiet about what he knew. And I lay there and took it just as often as he demanded it. I lay there, and I felt nothing but revulsion. I thought about running. I thought about suicide. And yes, I thought about murder. But hell, Adam, you know me. You know how stubborn I am. I decided I'd beat him. I'd get something just as damaging on him, and then I'd turn the tables. But it never happened. The only thing that happened was that I let him use me just the way you say I did. Night after night, over and over, I lay in his bed, and the only thought in my mind was that I wished it were you there with me. Your hands on me. Your body… But it wasn't. It wasn't. It never will be again."

  She lowered her fisted hands to her sides, stubbornly refusing to cry anymore. She would not cry anymore.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be," she said.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off.

  "I shouldn't have said… Kirsten, the thought of him touching you…"

  "I was paid well. Hell, I inherited everything the bastard owned. Or will if I ever find proof I didn't murder him."

  Adam put a hand to the back of her head, stroked her hair. "You don't want his money. You never wanted it."

  "You don't know a thing about what I want. Hell, Adam, you don't even know what you want anymore."

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do." But he took his hand away. As soon as he did, Kirsten got to her feet and walked away from him. And he let her go.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  Great. Couldn't he have waited at least until she'd finished her meal to insult her, alienate her and take his frustration out on her? What the hell kind of idiocy possessed him with Kirsten, anyway? Jealousy, that was part of it. Plain old jealousy, bigger and more powerful than anything he'd ever felt in his life. And anger. Yes, anger at her for not coming to him with all of this two years ago. For not trusting him with the truth. For not letting him fix it for her. And at himself, for walking away. For not seeing the truth behind her lies. For letting her go.

  God, he never should have let her go.

  She belonged with him. The very thought of Cowan having touched her, much less…<
br />
  No. He wouldn't think about that now. He'd let his anger come out all wrong, directed it at her when she'd been as much a victim in all of this as anyone. He shouldn't have done that. His anger belonged to a dead man. And that made it all the more frustrating. There was no target now. No use for the fury raging like a cyclone inside him. He had to let it go. He had to let it go.

  But letting it go was harder than it sounded. Because there was still that other fury swirling around in his heart, feeding this one, empowering it. And that old anger had been around for so long, he wasn't sure he knew how to get rid of it.

  Kirsten lay bundled up in a blanket on the ground, all the way on the other side of the fire. She was not sleeping. There was nothing relaxed or restful about her. Still, yes, but taut, rigid. He doubted she would close her eyes all night.

  He should have kept his mouth shut. There would be time enough for the truth later. After Cowan's murderer was caught and put behind bars. After Kirsten's name was cleared and things got back to … normal.

  Hell, things hadn't been normal since his would-be wedding day. He didn't think his life would ever be normal again.

  And he had blown it with Kirsten tonight. That was for sure. She would never open up to him if he kept putting her on the defensive about Cowan. And they would never have a chance if he couldn't find a way to forgive that … to forget. To put it in the past.

  But right now, it was just a little too fresh for that.

  With a sigh, Adam gathered up the cooler, tied a cord around it and carried it to the water hole to keep the leftover food relatively cool for the night. Then he picketed the horses near the grass and carefully doused the campfire. He did every job he could think of to do, just to kill the time. To vent his frustration. To ease the tension in his mind and his body. But when he'd finished them all, Kirsten still hadn't moved so much as a muscle, and he was still as tense as a whipcord. He didn't know what to say to her. What to do. How to fix this.

  He chose a boulder with a good view of both the surrounding night and of Kirsten, and he sat watch. It was going to be, he thought, a very long night.