Outlaw Marriage

by Laurie Paige

  Tenderness was replaced by wariness in his eyes. She felt the loss deep inside. “Laws have been passed against that. The courts frown upon those who try it.”

  “Tell that to your father.”

  “If he loses, he’ll be more than difficult.”

  Collin touched her cheek and ran a finger along her jaw to the corner of her mouth. “Let’s not borrow trouble. We’ll face whatever happens.”

  Together.

  She heard the promise of the unspoken word. Warmth started in her heart and radiated outward until it joined the heat where their bodies touched. She pressed her face against his chest and kissed him through the wiry hairs.

  Inhaling his scent, she marveled at his strength and his tenderness, at the fiery explosion of passion between them and how right it had felt. At last…she thought hazily as his hands grew more urgent upon her. At last, she was experiencing all of life.

  “Collin,” she murmured.

  He was exploring her breast now and didn’t raise his head. “Hmm?”

  “Nothing. Just…it’s more than I ever dreamed.”

  He looked at her then. For several heartbeats, for all of eternity. She felt her heart opening, slowly, like a door that hadn’t been used in a long time. He smiled, his eyes gleaming in the soft glow of the table lamp.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll make it be.”

  When he dipped his head, she raised her lips to his and let trust come into her heart.

  Hope frowned when she arrived at the office on Wednesday morning. Another car was in her usual parking space. She selected another spot, climbed briskly out with her briefcase in hand and headed for her office.

  She had dressed with unusual care that morning. Her beige silk suit, with a smoky blue shell and blue and pink scarf, was one of her business uniforms, as Collin called them, but she felt feminine in it.

  In fact, she felt feminine all the way to the core of her being for the first time in years. She knew why. Collin had spent the weekend with her. They had eaten and made love, swam and made love, watched old movies on TV and made love. He’d left early Monday morning to return to Elk Springs for meetings with the ranch foreman and some cattle buyers. He would return Friday.

  Once she’d hated the weekend. She would rather be working than face forty-eight hours alone in her condo. Now she could hardly wait for the week to end.

  Smiling, she entered her office.

  “Your father would like to see you in his office,” her secretary told her as soon as she stepped inside. Selma looked worried.

  “Good morning, and thank you,” Hope replied, unfazed. She knew her father and his moods. In her briefcase was the carefully worded settlement offer, composed by her and Collin over the weekend…when they’d had time.

  Warmth tingled through her. Neither of them had mentioned love after his first shocking announcement, but the feeling had buzzed in the air around them, wrapping them in golden light and a thousand promises of the heart.

  She tossed her purse onto the credenza, poured a cup of coffee, extracted the folder with the new proposal from the case and headed to the corner office.

  “Go on in. He’s waiting,” her father’s executive assistant informed her. A brisk woman with little time for small talk, she didn’t commingle with the other workers.

  Hope smiled her thanks. She entered her father’s office with the smile still lingering on her mouth.

  “About time,” he greeted her.

  She glanced at the designer clock on the wall. “I’m fifteen minutes early.”

  “I’ve been here since seven.”

  This was said in such a way as to imply she should have been in at that time, too. The familiar going-down-in-a-fast-elevator sensation attacked her. She had accepted long ago that she was never going to be able to please her father. She wasn’t the son he’d wanted.

  The warm glow of the weekend closed around her. She was fiercely, proudly glad to be female. Collin had made her feel perfect just as she was. She hadn’t had to prove anything to him. She hadn’t had to be witty or charming or anything. Only herself.

  “Was there something you wanted to see me about?” she asked, taking a chair and setting her cup on the corner of his desk. She kept the folder in hand.

  “What’s happening on the case?”

  She smiled as warmth stole over her. “I have some good news. The Kincaids brought us a new proposal.”

  Her father’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What is it?”

  She opened the folder and extracted the paper. After handing it to him, she settled back in the chair and sipped the mocha-flavored blend while waiting for him to finish reading the offer.

  He snorted and threw the proposal onto the desk, then leaned back in the black leather executive chair and stared at her in disgust.

  The tiniest qualm broke through the insulating glow that surrounded her. “The land being substituted for the property sold to the reservation is prime pasture with a year-round pond.”

  “It isn’t Baxter land,” he said coldly.

  “It’s equal acreage,” she said, going quiet and still inside, the way she did when she’d evidently displeased her sire for no reason that she could discern. “It’s a surprisingly generous offer.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you advising me to accept it?”

  “As your attorney, I think it would be in your best interest—”

  “Is that your considered opinion?”

  She hesitated, a sense of danger striking a note of alarm in her. She studied her father, unable to fathom his mood. He appeared to be furious with her, yet there was a hard, triumphant gleam in his eyes.

  “What are you upset about?” she finally asked.

  He bounded out of the chair and leaned both hands on the protective glass covering the expensive desk. “Not a thing, other than my daughter carrying on like some empty-headed, love-struck teenager with the Kincaid grandson, that’s all.”

  Hot words sprang to her lips in defense of the wonderful weekend she and Collin had shared. She would not let her father destroy the wonder of it for her. She retreated behind the icy calm she was able to summon when her father’s anger threatened to overcome her.

  “My private life has nothing to do with the offer being presented,” she said.

  He gave her a pitying look. “You’re thinking with your heart, not your head. You let Kincaid get to you.” He sighed. “I’d hoped to spare you this, but you leave me no choice.”

  Her heart rose to her throat. She swallowed painfully, not sure what was coming but knowing she wasn’t going to like it.

  He opened the entertainment center built into one wall and flicked a button on a tape recorder. Collin’s voice came at her from the four speakers mounted behind decorative screens built into the walls.

  “Yeah, she’s gentling down real good,” he said with wry humor in his tone.

  “You think you’ll have her under control before the big event? Otherwise I’ll have to find something else.”

  “No problem,” Collin assured his grandfather. “I have the touch. She’ll come to my whistle before I’m through.”

  “Got her eating out of your hand, huh?” Garrett inquired skeptically.

  “Naturally. Has the Kincaid charm ever failed?”

  “Don’t get too cocky, boy. You never know with females. She might decide to show you who’s boss—Wait a minute. What?”

  Hope heard Gina’s voice in the background, then Garrett told his grandson, “Got to go. Finish up there and hurry back to Whitehorn before that little lawyer gal gets some fool notion in her head.”

  Collin laughed as if in delight. “She won’t,” he said confidently, his voice dropping to a lower note.

  A frisson of pain shook through Hope. A sense of déjà vu left her disoriented as if time had somehow looped back and she was twenty again, staring at a canceled check for twenty thousand dollars and listening to her father tell her that her lover wouldn’t be returning.

&n
bsp; A thousand dollars for each year of her life, she recalled thinking at the time, that was what she had been worth. She took a deep breath and locked all feeling deep inside, then faced her father calmly.

  “He was using you to get to me,” Jordan said, fury darkening his face. “The Kincaids thought I’d change my mind if they could get you on their side.”

  “Then you decline the offer?” she asked, her voice level and devoid of emotion. “As your attorney, I must advise you that the courts may wonder why you would walk away from a settlement that is more than fair—”

  “Fair!” he interrupted. “What’s fair about being cheated out of your rightful inheritance by the trickery of the Kincaids? What’s fair about using my own flesh and blood for their ends? They’re all bastards, if you ask me, no matter which side of the blanket they were born on. Don’t you see that, or are you too starstruck at having one of the mighty Kincaids wine and dine you?”

  She suddenly knew who had informed her father of the weekend spent with Collin. That weasel, Kurt Peters.

  “No,” she said quietly, “I’m not starstruck.”

  Her father paused in his tirade and studied her. He came around the desk, sat on the arm of her chair and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, bumpkins. I never meant for you to be hurt or to have to learn a lesson the hard way in dealing with the Kincaids. They stoop to anything to get their way.”

  His sudden kindness and the use of the childhood nickname—earned for her breakneck pace of rushing into things as a child—nearly broke through the reserve she’d erected around her emotions.

  She laid her cheek against his hand for a second, then straightened. “Shall I tell Garrett you decline the offer?”

  “I’ll call the old buzzard and tell him myself. The Baxters aren’t dead meat yet.”

  Hope smiled grimly at her father’s words. “I’ll handle it. It’s my job.” She rose and, taking her cup and folder with her, walked to the door. “By the way, that was obviously a taped telephone conversation between Collin and his grandfather. You might remind Kurt it’s against the law to tap people’s lines without a court order. All the lawyers in the world won’t be able to keep him—and you—out of prison if you’re caught.”

  Her father had the grace to look uncomfortable. “At least we know Kurt is on our side. You would go far before you found another man as smart and loyal.”

  She returned his gaze levelly. “Loyal to whom?” she asked softly before opening the door and departing.

  Walking down the tastefully carpeted hallway, she contemplated her parting shot to her father. She didn’t trust her father’s right-hand man. Kurt made her uneasy with his watchful eyes, his cunning and ambition.

  But then, she had been wrong about two men in her life, both of whom she had trusted. The pain went deep, but she couldn’t think about it now. She had work to do. Grateful for the mind-absorbing details of the law, she entered her office, secure behind her icy shell.

  Selma shot her a sympathetic glance. Hope smiled to dispel the worry in the other woman, then went into her office and closed the door.

  A few minutes later she left word at the Kincaid ranch for Collin to call her at his earliest convenience. When she hung up, she stared out the window at the mountains.

  Now what?

  “Now we wait,” she said to the empty room, and refused to think of lies and deception, of trust and sharing. She pressed her hands tightly together as if by doing so she could hold fast to the dream.

  But it had already flown.

  Collin stared at the brief letter, typed on expensive letterhead from the Baxter Development Corporation and signed by Hope with her title, Corporate Attorney, under her name. He swore as he glared at her neat signature.

  “I can’t believe he turned it down,” he said to his grandfather. “It doesn’t make a lick of sense. The man is crazy. He ought to be locked up.”

  Garrett nodded, his expression also angry.

  Collin pushed the breakfast plate back and crossed his arms on the table. It was Friday. He’d gotten up in the wee hours of the morning, anxious to get back to Whitehorn to see Hope.

  His heart bucked around in his chest like a rodeo bronco in the national championships. He’d planned on going to her place as soon as he got in, but his grandfather had been up, eating a solitary breakfast when he arrived.

  Collin had cooked up some sausage and eggs and joined the old man. When he’d asked what was wrong, Garrett had shown him the letter.

  “I’ll call Hope and find out what’s going on,” he promised, eager to do it. He needed to hear her voice, that sweet way she said his name.

  His body went into red alert.

  With an effort, he controlled the hunger and focused on the difficulties presented by her father. The man had to be certifiably insane—

  His grandfather let out a heavy sigh. Collin studied the older man. For the first time that Collin could ever recall, Garrett looked tired, almost defeated.

  Damn Baxter and his lawsuit. This wasn’t a dream; it was an obsession.

  “Elizabeth been up this week?” Collin asked to distract the old man.

  No brightness entered Garrett’s eyes. He wasn’t to be diverted this morning. “She flew in Wednesday for a half day. What do you think Baxter will accept?”

  “Nothing less than all the Kincaids being drawn and quartered and deposited outside Montana, preferably in grizzly country to finish off the pieces,” Collin replied, unable to keep the bitterness hidden.

  Garrett gave him a quick glance. “This going to interfere with your plans for the little lawyer gal?” he asked, quick to discern his grandson’s concern.

  “Not if I can help it.” Collin heaved a deep breath. “I’ll call her and find out what’s the problem. The man can’t refuse our offer just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “He’s crazy.”

  Growing more furious with Jordan Baxter the more he thought about the letter, he filled his coffee cup and went to the office.

  He called Hope at her apartment but got her answering machine. “Hello. Are you at the office already? All work and no play,” he scolded, then spoiled it by laughing. “I’m back in Whitehorn. Drove half the night to get here. I’ll see you at your office around ten. If you’re in the shower…”

  Pausing, he thought of last weekend and all the things they’d shared, including the shower. Heat ran rampant over his body. He pushed the images aside with difficulty.

  “…call me as soon as you can.”

  For the next three hours he stayed close to a telephone, expecting her call at any moment. At nine-thirty he drove into town and parked in front of the impressive headquarters of Baxter Development.

  “She’s not available,” the secretary told him when he arrived at her office.

  He studied the woman’s bland smile. “Is that the truth?” he finally asked. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Truly, she’s in a meeting with Mr. Baxter. She’ll be tied up most of the day.”

  He mentally cursed, but managed a smile for the woman. “Tell her to call me when she gets a moment. Here’s my cell phone number.” He scribbled it on a notepad on the desk and left the building, although not without a strong urge to search every room until he found Hope.

  A sense of disaster loomed over him. He had a feeling he needed to talk to Hope right away. Quelling the impatience, he stopped by the sheriff’s department to see one of the deputies, Sterling McCallum.

  “Come in,” Sterling invited. Sterling and his wife had adopted Jenny as a baby before learning the girl was Jeremiah’s child. Sterling was the main trustee of the Kincaid ranch for his daughter. He removed some folders from a chair and indicated Collin should be seated.

  Collin showed him the letter.

  “The man’s crazy,” Sterling said with a frown, handing the letter back. “I can’t believe any court would back up his claim against our offer.”

  “I’ll follow up and find out what the problem is
,” Collin promised grimly. “Or else I’ll just shoot him and get this over with.”

  Sterling’s smile was wry. “Better let the law handle it,” he advised. “I’ll shoot him.”

  They discussed the next step, which was a court hearing a couple of months away. Ross Garrison, the ranch attorney, and Elizabeth Gardener were consulting on the case. While Elizabeth specialized in criminal law, she was an expert trial attorney and was advising Ross on the presentation of their facts to the court.

  At eleven-thirty Collin returned to Hope’s office. Her door was closed. “They’re having lunch sent in,” the poker-faced secretary told him.

  He stared at the closed door to Hope’s inner sanctum. Without explaining his action, he walked over and thrust the door open. The office was empty.

  His ears hot, he turned back to the openmouthed secretary, muttered “Thanks” and walked out before he made a bigger fool of himself.

  He called and left word on her office line, then twice more on her home phone, reminding her to call as soon as possible. He waited until midnight before going to bed.

  Saturday was a frustrating repeat of the previous day as far as talking to Hope was concerned. So was Sunday. She didn’t return his calls, which admittedly were growing angrier in tone as he left messages for her. He was aware of Garrett’s worry and was grateful that his grandfather didn’t question him.

  Sunday evening, Collin drove into Whitehorn. He went by Hope’s place, but she didn’t answer the door. Driving back through town, he spotted her car on the main street. He whipped into a parking space and headed for the café. The Hip Hop was one of the few places open on Sunday.

  Sure enough, she was there, having dinner with her friend, the wedding planner. Meg’s little boy was seated in a high chair between the two women.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked, then took a chair without waiting for a response.

  “Not at all. Collin, right?” Meg inquired with a welcoming smile and a quick glance at Hope.

  “Right.” He turned to Hope. “Hello.”

  His voice came out husky, a spoken caress. He watched her eyes flicker to his, then away. Yeah, she was avoiding him. Anger gnawed at his control.