THE BADDEST BRIDE IN TEXAS

by Maggie Shayne

  She finished doing what she could with her hair and went still. Nothing more to do. No more time to kill. She stood there staring at him for a moment, as if drinking in the sight of him. And then she looked away from him and closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. When the words came, they were forced, clipped and short.

  "I was fourteen. No driver's license. No clue. I took Daddy's car without permission. Went joyriding. There was an accident. It was my fault."

  Her jaw was tight as she spoke. He could almost feel her teeth grating between the words. Was that all? An accident? For just an instant a hint of relief began to ease his knotted muscles, despite the tension in her voice, her stance, her very breath. She stood so still, so rigidly. She was like a sculpture. Like the way she'd described her mother. Golden stripes of sunlight crisscrossed her body in the middle of the dusty, hay-strewn barn. Her hair was loose and flowing. But she stood utterly still. Venus in blue jeans. And for just that brief instant he thought that was all, and that it wasn't as bad as she'd made him believe.

  "Fourteen?" he heard himself ask. "This terrible secret you've been keeping happened when you were only fourteen?"

  She nodded. "Joseph Cowan was in the car behind me with that odd, quiet driver of his … Phillip Carr. The two of them rushed me away from the scene before I really even got it clear in my head what had happened. By the time I did, I was at the estate."

  So stiff. Forcing the words out as fast as she could, barely pausing for a breath. "You left the scene?" Adam asked. She didn't seem to hear him.

  "Joseph said I should forget it had ever happened. He and Phillip had checked on the people in the other car, and they told me they were fine. Shaken up, too shaken to remember me … what I was driving or … or anything else … but otherwise, fine. Joseph said there was no harm done. That he and Phillip would take care of everything. Inside an hour, my father's car had been repaired. It was as if nothing had happened, and Joseph took me home. And I thought it really was for the best."

  Adam shook his head. "I don't understand. Why would a man like Cowan want to help a fourteen-year-old kid cover up an accident?"

  She glanced at Adam briefly. "He knew what he was doing. He knew who I was, who my father was. He and my father … they never got along. But I didn't know any of that at the time. I just agreed, did what he said. Because of my father … his heart, you know … I thought it would be better for him if I just went along with Joseph's plan. Acted like none of it had ever happened. I kept picturing myself telling him that I'd taken his car out and caused an accident. Picturing his face going gray and sweaty like it had four years before, when my mother had damned near killed him with her confession…"

  She finally stopped for a breath. Adam moved closer to her. The relief he'd felt before was fading. Because she wasn't finished. He knew she wasn't. The worst was yet to come. It flickered like the flames of hell in her eyes. She was still dreading the end.

  "There … has to be more to it than that," he said softly.

  She said nothing.

  "Kirsten?"

  She stared into his eyes for a long, tense moment, and he could almost see her heart breaking. No. It had already broken … a long, long time ago. He was only just now identifying that change in her once lively eyes. "Tell me the rest."

  She had to look away. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that she couldn't tell him while looking him in the eye.

  Dust motes danced in the sunbeams between them. Like the small lies that had kept them apart all this time.

  "Joseph lied to me that day. I never knew. Not until years later. After we'd moved here to Quinn, my daddy and I. After I'd met you and fallen … fallen in love with you." She bit her lip. "I never learned what really happened on that stretch of Highway 5 until our wedding day."

  Her words shook Adam to the marrow. But he didn't move. Didn't speak. He just stood still in the hay, waiting.

  "Joseph came to my house that day. Daddy had suffered a minor episode with his heart the night before, and he was resting at the hospital. I was shaken up about that. I hadn't called you yet to tell you about it, because Daddy had insisted I not interrupt the bachelor party your brothers were throwing for you over at La Cucaracha. I was about to call you, to tell you about it. And that Daddy probably wouldn't be able to come to our wedding, but he was insisting we go on with it all the same. But then Joseph came. Didn't knock, just walked in. I was standing in my bedroom in front of a triple mirror I'd bought just so I could be sure I looked all right. I was wearing my wedding gown. I looked…" A sigh stuttered from her lungs. "Oh, Adam, I wish you could have seen me. Daddy was okay. His doctors had assured me it had been a minor episode. And I was about to live out my fantasy. I was more alive, standing there, wearing that gown, thinking of the day ahead … than I'd ever been in my life. And far more than I have been since."

  She licked her lips, lowered her head. "Except, maybe, for last night."

  She met his eyes, held them, and for just a second the fire flared between them again. Then she looked quickly away. Impatience nipped at Adam's heels, but he tried to keep it from coming through in his tone. He was angry. The thought of Cowan, that bastard, going to Kirsten on the day she was to marry Adam… He wanted to kill him. "What did he say to you?"

  "He said that I wasn't going to marry you, Adam. He said that I was going to marry him instead, that very day. That he needed a young, pretty, trophy wife. One who could be controlled, manipulated, counted on to keep her silence when necessary, and capable of producing an heir, which was his main goal. He made it sound as if it had already been decided. As if there was no question of my refusing him. He said he'd gone over all of his options and had chosen me. That I should thank my lucky stars. That I was about to become Quinn's newest millionaire."

  She lifted her head, staring up at the dark, splintering beams that crisscrossed above. A swallow swooped and dived, and she never even blinked. "I laughed at him. Thought he was joking, at first. I hadn't seen him in all that time, not since I was fourteen years old. But then I realized he was serious, and I asked him how he planned to make me do such a thing. Why I would even consider marrying a man I didn't even know, much less love—a man old enough to be my father—when my beloved was even now waiting at the chapel for me."

  Slowly, she lowered her head.

  "And he said that if you didn't do what he wanted," Adam filled in slowly, "he would turn you in for an accident that had happened all those years earlier." He shook his head. "Did you really think it would be that big a deal? That you'd go to jail over a teenage lapse in judgment?"

  "Of course not. And that's exactly what I told him." She turned now, and seemingly by sheer force of will, she faced him. "And then he told me the rest." Her knees bent just a little, but she snapped them straight again. "The people in the other car were not okay, Adam. Joseph told me they were at the time, just to make sure I'd go along with what he wanted. So he'd be able to hold it over my head later. He did that, you know. Collected things like that … things he could use to own the souls of the people who had been unlucky enough to cross his path. Some he never used. Some came in handy later. Years later, in my case."

  Adam blinked, staring back at her as intensely as she was staring at him. "The people in the other car … were hurt?"

  Unblinking, chin quivering, she whispered, "Dead. They were dead."

  Adam's eyes slammed closed, even as he instinctively reached for her. His hands closed on her shoulders, offering comfort, support. "My God," he whispered. "Oh, my God."

  Gently she took his hands away. "Joseph said I would go to prison if he turned me in. He'd kept the evidence. Photos somehow taken at the scene without my knowledge. God knows I was so shaken at the time that I wouldn't have noticed Phillip snapping them, anyway. The documentation of the quick repairs made to my father's car. His own testimony as an eyewitness."

  Adam lowered his head. So she'd chosen to break his heart, desert him and marry a man she didn't love just to avoid prosecution.
Hardly a noble motive. But honest, at least. He wouldn't have expected it of her.

  "I told him to go ahead. Told him I didn't care if I ended up in prison, that I wouldn't leave you standing at the altar without a bride. I couldn't bear to do that to you."

  Slowly, Adam's head came up. "But you did do that to me."

  "Yes," she said. "I did. Because he told me the rest of it then. He told me my relationship with you was over anyway. That even if I refused him, I'd never have you. That you'd hate me before that day was out, one way or another. Either because I stood you up, or because you learned what I had done."

  "And you believed him? You believed I'd hate you because of an accident that happened when you were barely out of middle school?"

  She held his gaze for a long moment; then her face crumpled, and she squeezed her eyes tight. Tears worked through anyway. "I believed him because he told me the names of the people in the other car. The people my … my carelessness, my recklessness, had—had—had destroyed." Sobs came like hiccups now. Her chest rose and fell in staccato breaths, and her words came in broken whispers. "They were … they were…" Head down, palms to temples, eyes tight. "Orrin and Maria Brand."

  Adam didn't hear her. He just kept looking at her, while the words she'd spoken took the slow path to his brain. To his awareness. To his conscious mind. And then he interpreted them. And every ounce of blood seemed to drain to his toes.

  "My parents?" he whispered. "My parents? Oh, my God, Kirsten, it was you? You killed my mother and father?" His legs went out from under him. His backside slammed down onto a bale of hay, and his head spun. He couldn't look at her. She was rushing on, spinning explanations.

  "I never knew, Adam. I would never have kept it from you if I'd known."

  He sat there, head in his hands, stunned and blinking in shock, as a swirling storm of memories attacked him from every direction.

  "I never would have let Joseph cover up the accident if I had known that people had been hurt … that people had … had been killed." Kirsten paced away, pushing her hands through her hair. "But I didn't know. Joseph … he lied. He cajoled and convinced me that his way was for the best. I was just young enough and naive enough to let myself be convinced. Because it was easier that way. It was the biggest mistake I ever made, Adam. And I've been regretting it ever since."

  He didn't look up when she paused, though he could feel her eyes on him. She came closer. He felt her. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  He flinched away from her touch. And he heard the pained gasp that was her reaction.

  "When Joseph came to me on our wedding day and told me what I'd done … I knew he was right about one thing, Adam. You were going to hate me either way. So my choice then wasn't whether or not to go through with our wedding. Because Joseph would have seen to it that you knew, and the wedding was never going to happen. My choice was whether to let you hate me for standing you up at the altar, or to let you hate me for murdering your parents."

  Gasping for enough air to fuel his words, he managed, "Exactly. That was your choice. And you made the wrong one."

  "Joseph helped me make the wrong one," she said. "I'm not excusing what I did. But I had to act quickly, Adam, and I was totally in shock. Utterly devastated. Horrified at learning I'd not only killed two people, but that they were the parents of the man I loved. Learning only hours before what I had thought would be the happiest moment of my life that it was never going to happen.

  "Joseph said that he knew about my father's health. He said that if the truth about the accident ever came out, it would kill Daddy. Kill him. And he was right, Adam. Daddy was already bad enough that he needed in-home care, a nurse on call."

  "Oh, I know. I remember." His voice was thin, harsh. "We planned for that, don't you remember, Kirsten? Don't you remember all those ridiculous dreams? We were going to buy the biggest ranch around and turn it into a resort. A dude ranch with mock cattle drives and camp-outs for the customers. We were going to have plenty of room for Max. He would have been in his glory playing cowboy in full costume. We were going to give him a role to play in our lives, in our business. Make him feel needed, keep him active and vital. Do you remember all that, Kirsten? All the nights we spent talking, making plans?"

  She nodded, looking almost too tired to hold her head up. "I remember everything."

  "You threw those plans away. Instead of playing cowboy, Max Armstrong is living out his days in a nursing home with a yard the size of a dog kennel and nary a horse nor a Stetson in sight. All because his little girl didn't want to confess that she was less than perfect to a father who idolized her. Isn't that what it really comes down to, Kirsten?"

  She lifted her head, met his eyes. "Is that what you really believe?"

  He looked into Kirsten's brown wounded eyes and shook his head. "I don't really know what the hell I believe anymore."

  "Believe this," she whispered. "This lie has been eating me up inside for a long time now. It's been killing me to keep it from you. It had to come out, Adam, and no matter what happens from here on in, I'm glad it finally did. At least … at least you know the truth now," she whispered.

  Tears burned behind his eyes. But he knew they wouldn't spill over. They never had. Never. His throat went so tight he could barely pull air through it. His lungs spasmed painfully. "What I don't understand is how you could have kept something like this from me for as long as you have, Kirsten."

  "Joseph promised prison for me if I told. He promised to let my father know exactly where I was, even to fly him in for my trial. He swore Daddy wouldn't last through the D.A.'s opening statement, and I knew he was right, Adam. I had no choice."

  He looked up, his eyes narrowed. "You always had a choice. The choice was to trust me."

  Unable to argue with that, she looked away.

  He made a sound of disgust in his throat, yanked up his hat and slammed it down on his head. He needed to escape. He needed to run. Now. "I'm out of here. You made this mess on your own, Kirsten—you can just get out of it the same way. I've given up enough for you. My family has given up enough for you. No more." He was striking back, returning pain for pain, he knew that. It didn't stop him from doing it anyway.

  He headed for the barn door, lifted the crosspiece, shoved it open. Sunlight spilled blindingly onto his face, heated him through his clothes. He smelled grass, freshly cut. And grain and cattle. He stood still, some small part of him knowing he shouldn't keep going. Some kernel of sanity telling him to slow down. To digest this shock and think it through and not just storm off this way. To pause and think first.

  "It's all right," she said from behind him. "I knew you'd walk away once I told you the truth. I've been expecting it, Adam, and I don't blame you. I deserve it. I deserve worse. I ought to go to prison for murder, and I know that. If it wasn't for Daddy, I'd stand up like I ought to and face the music. But for his sake, I have to wait … I have to let him go on believing in me … just for a little bit longer."

  "You do whatever you have to, Kirsten. I don't give a damn anymore."

  Even as he said it, though, he knew it was a lie. But he stomped away, all the same. He left her alone. Walked off in a temper just the way he'd done two years before when she'd left him standing there in the chapel, alone. A groom without a bride. Looking and feeling like the biggest fool in Texas. Only it was different this time. Because this time his love for her went deeper. It went clear to his soul this time. And it hurt ten times more than it ever had before. He should have stayed the hell away from her. Kirsten had never been anything but trouble to him and his, and she never would be.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  « ^ »

  Kirsten watched him leave. He walked for a time along the dusty, early-morning street of the tiny west Texas town. Then he ran. As if he couldn't get away from her fast enough. When he rounded a corner and vanished from sight, she lowered her head and let the tears come. She'd known what to expect. She had always known he wouldn't love her anymore
once he knew the truth. She had been preparing herself for this very reaction from him for two years now. So why did it still come as such a shattering blow? Why the hell did it hurt so much? Was there truly some stupid, naive little girl inside her who had believed his reaction would be … could be … any different?

  What had she expected? That Adam would take her into his arms and whisper that he forgave her? That he would tell her it wasn't her fault, that he didn't hate her for what she'd done? That he still loved her?

  "Grow up, little girl," she whispered to herself. Angrily she backhanded hot tears from her eyes. "Okay. So it's time. Time to figure out what the hell to do. Time to face the consequences of my actions, once and for all. God knows it's long overdue."

  Pushing her hair into some semblance of control, wishing to God she had a makeup kit or a hairbrush nearby, she stepped back into the dimness of the barn and walked to the far end, where the horses stood contentedly munching hay. As if the whole world hadn't just collapsed around them. As if everything were as fine and normal as it had been before.

  She saddled them both and led them outside. She would return them to Wes … or see to it someone did. Soon. First things first, though. She had no time to grieve, no time to mourn. It was time to act. She had no reason to stay in Texas a moment longer. No reason at all. She would make just one stop before she made her way out of Quinn forever. One stop to nurture the small hope that maybe … just maybe … a clue had turned up somewhere. One that pointed to someone else having put that bullet between Joseph Cowan's eyes.

  She almost wished it had been her.

  She mounted Mystic, the mare she'd been riding since she and Adam had left Sky Dancer Ranch with the borrowed pair, and led the other horse, Layla, along beside her. Riding around behind the barn to avoid Quinn's main street, she kept watch but saw little activity. She took to a trail that ran behind most of the shops and businesses in town. She would be less visible that way. She didn't have far to go. Stephen Hawkins' law office was in his home, and that was just a half mile away.