Outlaw Marriage

by Laurie Paige

  The hunger rose in him, physical, yes, but there were other elements, too. Again he sensed desperate need and knew it came from her, although she sat perfectly calm and still.

  Instinct urged him to grab her and run, to save her from some unseen danger.

  When he tore his glance away, he found her father’s gaze on him. The man had gray eyes, similar to Hope’s, but there was nothing soft in them. Collin returned the hard stare. Baxter looked away first. When Garrett rose, Collin did, too.

  “There’s nothing more to say,” his grandfather stated, and turned to leave.

  Walking to the door, Collin held it open for Garrett and the rest of their party to exit. He paused before following them. “I’ll see you after the trial,” he said to Hope, determined it would be so.

  “No,” she said, that stricken, panicked look returning to her eyes.

  Again he felt she needed rescuing. From her father? Or herself? Collin didn’t know, but he knew what had to be. He smiled grimly. “Yes.”

  Then he left quickly before he yanked her right from under her father’s nose and took off to the high country where no one would find them for months.

  Jordan would probably shoot him in the back if he tried it. His oily attorney Kurt would help. What would Hope do?

  Joining Garrett at the truck, he admitted his didn’t know.

  “It’ll work out,” Garrett said suddenly as Collin backed out of the parking space. “Life has a way of working out, son.”

  “Yeah,” Collin said, feeling the way he had at fourteen when he’d been sick at heart for the cool mountain valleys of Montana and his grandfather, the one person he knew he could count on. “Yeah,” he said again and sighed.

  Collin became aware of someone approaching from the house. He glanced at the darkening sky and realized he’d been standing for some time with his arms on the top rail of the paddock, watching the mares that had been sold and were to be picked up in a day or two by the buyer.

  “Hey,” Trent said to let him know who he was.

  Collin moved over a bit, giving his half brother room at the corner of the fence. Trent joined him in leaning on the top rail.

  “It must be hard to sell an animal when you’ve watched or even helped it being born,” he commented.

  “It’s part of ranch life you learn to accept early on,” Collin told him. “It’s worse when you lose one to lightning or an illness you couldn’t cure or didn’t notice in time.”

  They stood there in companionable silence while the moon rose over the far hills.

  “Don’t let her get away,” Trent finally said.

  Collin didn’t pretend to ignorance. “She doesn’t trust me. I can’t change that.”

  “Hmm. The way I figure it, you got to hang in there until you change her mind.”

  “Is that what you did with Gina?” Collin kept his tone light, but he was intensely interested in the answer.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t easy. Hard-boiled detectives are nearly as hard to crack as hard-nosed lawyers. Know what I mean?”

  “Uh-huh,” was all Collin would commit to.

  Trent chuckled, then became serious. “Don’t give up without a fight, bro.”

  “Then you think I should, uh, pursue the matter?”

  “That’s up to you and how serious you feel about the situation. And the woman.”

  “I feel like kidnapping her,” he admitted, “but that probably isn’t good form in this day and age.”

  “Probably not. Try talking a lot. Women like that. Of course she’ll say no to whatever you say. That’s when you kidnap her and head for the hills.”

  Giving Collin a cuff on his shoulder, Trent ambled back toward the house. He’d no sooner disappeared than another shadow emerged from the stable. His grandfather took Trent’s place at the fence.

  “I settled many a question in my mind by leaning on a fence and watching cows or horses,” he said.

  “Yeah? You going to give me the benefit of your life experiences, too?” Collin asked cynically.

  Garrett grinned. “Is that what Trent was doing?”

  “Yeah. He told me to talk to Hope, then kidnap her.”

  The older man snorted with laughter. “A good thinker, that boy. Are you going to follow his advice?”

  “I don’t know.” Collin sighed, feeling gloomier than the shadows cast by the craggy peaks around them. “I don’t know how to save a person from herself.”

  “She’ll have to come to her own conclusions,” Garrett agreed. “But that little lawyer gal is smart. She knows what’s what. She’ll come to her senses.”

  Collin wondered if that was true. Or if he was the one who needed to face facts.

  “But it can’t hurt if you use a little friendly persuading, can it?” his grandfather continued, giving him a sly smile. “I don’t let Elizabeth get too far away before I call and remind her I’m around and plan to be for a long time. I’m going down to see her in a couple of days.”

  “You think I should go see Hope?” Collin asked, not at all sure this was the thing to do.

  “Yes,” Garrett said simply and, with a smile, walked on to the ranch house.

  Brandon was next.

  “You got some advice for me, too?” Collin asked with more than a smidgen of irony.

  Brandon scowled, but his reply was friendly enough. “Not really.” He gazed into the starry sky as if searching for a navigation point. “But Baxters and Kincaids can be more than enemies, if both of you set your minds to it.”

  With that sage remark, he walked off, heading back to the wife whose side he rarely left these days.

  Collin stalked over to his truck, got in and revved up the engine. He yanked it into gear and shot off down the road before Cade, Blake, Gina, Emma or someone else in the growing Kincaid clan decided to offer an opinion on his love life.

  His frown eased as he considered how he felt about Hope Baxter. Worry and tenderness edged out despair and anger. It was asking a lot of a woman to want her to deny her closest relative, the father who had raised her, and come to him.

  But that’s what he wanted—her love and trust. A future. And children. They could have a good life in Elk Springs. The town needed a sharp district attorney. And he needed a wife. She was the only one who would do.

  It was that simple.

  Hope showered after her swim, then prowled through the condo, straightening pictures on the wall, rearranging her few personal belongings in the condo. Some of the pieces were antiques, inherited from her mother’s New England ancestors, who’d been ship’s captains first, then captains of industry later.

  However most of the furniture had been selected by the decorator hired by her father. Hope had been indifferent when she’d bought the model home, complete with furnishings. She’d just wanted a place of her own, a sanctuary to run to.

  That thought disturbed her, and she shied from it as a picture of the Kincaid ranch came to her. Occupied mostly by men, the ranch house still managed to convey an air of comfort and ease. Even the Native artifacts, all museum quality and displayed in glass cases along the hallway wall, seemed ready to be used.

  By contrast, the Western art her father favored somehow seemed contrived on its expensive pedestals. She shook her head at the disloyal thought while worry ate at her.

  Pulling a jacket around her shoulders, she left the condo and chose the path around the tiny lake in the complex. Her thoughts returned to the case as always.

  She thought her father was wrong not to take the Kincaid settlement. They’d had words about it after Garrett and his group had left the conference room that morning.

  Kurt had backed Jordan. No surprise there. He agreed with whatever pleased his boss. Disgust filled her, and she realized how much she despised the other attorney.

  And this was the man her father would have her become seriously interested in.

  She stopped on the far side of the lake and watched the sliver of moon rise over the crags between Whitehorn and the Beartooth Pass.
The wildness, the pure vastness, of the land flooded her heart. She pressed a hand to her chest as pain and longing erupted from a pit deep inside her.

  She wished she had never moved to Montana. She wished she’d never heard of Whitehorn or the Kincaids…

  Liar, the trees murmured. The wind whispered the word back to her. She lowered her head as tears, hot and unexpected, burned behind her eyes. She hurried back to her condo as if a pack of wolves nipped at her heels.

  “Hope,” a voice said out of the dark.

  She started as a dark form separated itself from the shadows near her door. Her heart nearly leaped from her body. “Collin,” she said on a gasp.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  He shrugged, a restless movement of his broad shoulders. She saw he wore no jacket. The night air was chilly. She pulled her coat more tightly around her.

  “What are you doing here?” She made no move to unlock the door. She didn’t want to invite him inside.

  Again he shrugged, a dark shadow against other shadows. She had a feeling of unreality, as if each of them were specters who had chanced to meet on their nightly prowl. They stood there for an eternity, both silent, waiting for the other to move.

  The wind caressed her neck with chill fingers. She shivered, then strode forward, stepping past his dark shape, careful that no part of her touched any part of him. When she unlocked the door, she heard his footfall, then felt his presence as an absence of the insistent night wind on her neck and down her back.

  “I want to come in,” he murmured.

  “Why?”

  “To talk.”

  His voice had dropped to a husky whisper, and again the pain and longing swept through her like a tidal wave. “No,” she said. “There’s nothing to say.”

  His ironic laugh brushed her temple when she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Then let’s not talk,” he said.

  Before she could do more than blink, his hands clasped her shoulders, turning her. She opened her mouth—to protest?—but his mouth touched hers just then.

  The hunger drove all coherent thoughts from her. With a low moan, she clutched his shirt and pulled him closer. She closed her eyes, blocking guilt, regret and other warnings from her conscience as she savored the feel of warm lips on hers.

  The kiss and the questions it asked—and the answers it found—went on for a long time.

  When they came up for air, she said, “If this is wrong…” she paused to search for words to complete the half-expressed wish that something could make it right, but none came.

  “It isn’t,” he told her. He lifted her, stepped forward and kicked the door closed behind them. Then his mouth was there again, seeking, demanding, giving….

  His lips left hers and roamed her face and throat, leaving a hot trail that caused shivers whenever he moved from one spot to another. His hands wandered over her back, then slipped under her sweatshirt, creating lava flows of yearning that rippled outward from every place he touched.

  She shifted restlessly. He touched her breast and the ache centered there. But it was ecstasy, too, and that’s what she didn’t understand. What was it about this man, this one man out of hundreds she had met, that stirred her so?

  He caressed her until she was dizzy with hunger. Against her abdomen, she was aware of the hot tumescent need in him. She could fulfill that need and find the answer to her own wild longing with him.

  “You can make me think the impossible is reasonable,” she said on a half laugh of despair, planting kisses along the base of his throat and down the vee of his shirt, knowing whatever was between them was never going to be fulfilled.

  “Anything is possible,” he assured her.

  Sorrow tempered the excitement of being in his arms and experiencing the raw perfection of his kisses. The chasm between them was too wide, too deep. He refused to see it.

  Tenderness, the most dangerous of all emotions, swept over her. She touched his face with her eyes closed, memorizing him through her touch.

  “Bliss,” he murmured, his mouth rapacious against hers, “The greatest bliss…touching you…”

  “Yes,” she agreed, sounding breathless and all too eager, ready to be swept away. “But it’s wrong…”

  “No.” He raised his head and glared at her. “Everything else in our lives is off kilter, but not this. This is the one thing that’s right.”

  “How can it be?” she asked, sanity returning in a cold steadying wave of painful frustration. “We’re on different sides. There will always be a gulf between us.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he said, ignoring her logic. “Come away with me. Come live with me.”

  Longing was a separate pain in each part of her. “I can’t. Please, don’t ask impossible things.”

  Desolation replaced the passion of a moment ago when his arms fell to his sides. Anger mixed equally with the hot desire in his eyes. She knew which she wanted to encourage.

  He leaned close without touching her and spoke. “I was wrong when I said I thought I was falling in love with you—”

  Her heart gave a frantic lurch.

  “—I am in love with you. For what it’s worth.”

  She turned from him, needing time to absorb this new declaration. Picking her jacket up from the floor, unaware of when it had fallen, she looked at it helplessly, then tossed it onto a chair instead of hanging it in the closet as she usually did.

  She sat on the sofa and cupped her hands around her elbows. Feeling betrayed by her body and its demands and by the yearning to take what Collin so generously offered, she sighed at the irony of the situation.

  “It’s impossible. My father…the case…”

  “I’m not your enemy,” he said softly, his eyes hot, angry and hungry…gentle and tender.

  “Sometimes I think I’m my own worst enemy,” she said with a brief, bitter laugh.

  “The lawsuit has nothing to do with us—”

  She stared at him as if he was out of his mind.

  He smiled slightly. “It has to do with land and old hurts and dreams that can never be recaptured. Jeremiah Kincaid is dead. Your father has no real quarrel with my grandfather. We have as much right to buy the land as anyone. When this case is over and forgotten, you and I will still exist.”

  “And we’ll still be enemies. You say the tapes I heard were doctored. I asked. My father says they’re not.”

  Fury blazed in Collin’s eyes, but his voice was quiet when he said, “So it comes down to my word against his. Who are you going to believe?”

  She met his probing gaze and realized how a witness must feel being questioned by a hostile prosecutor. “M-my father.” The tiny stutter gave away doubts she couldn’t let herself express.

  His gaze softened. “In the end, you’ll come to me.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the hot masculine appeal of him. When she looked at him, she saw strength, honor and steadfastness, all the things a woman wanted in a mate. An illusion. She’d learned that years ago.

  “I’ll wait,” he promised just as softly.

  She heard the door open and close. When she looked, he was gone. She touched her lips, the moments in his arms already seeming more a dream than reality.

  The night closed around her and still she sat, huddled on the sofa as if afraid to move, as if she would fall into a million pieces if she did.

  The moon rose higher. Its light through the window formed a rectangle on the carpet. She looked out and saw a star hanging low in the sky. “Star light, star bright,” she said.

  She wished…she wished…she wished she had never met Collin Kincaid.

  Liar, the night wind whispered.

  Nine

  Meg listened. Yes, there it was again. Someone was knocking at the door. She glanced at Gabe, happily splashing in the tub. “You expecting company?” she asked.

  “No,” he said as he did to every question nowadays, then giggled as he squirted himself in the face when he
squeezed his rubber duck.

  “I didn’t think so. Who is it?” she called down the hall. She had no time for guests. Unless it was Hope. Her best friend was always welcome.

  “Jordan,” replied a masculine voice.

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “Jordan Baxter.”

  “That’s who I thought you meant,” she said but to herself as her heart hopped around like mad.

  Grabbing a towel, she swept Gabe up without warning. He screamed in fury at being taken from his bath. Ignoring him, Meg rushed to the door and opened it. “Is anything wrong? Hope? Has she been in an accident?”

  Jordan’s smile was ironic. “No to all the above. May I come in?”

  “Of course.” They had to speak loudly due to the screaming Gabe. Meg stepped back and tried to smile. “He doesn’t like being taken from his bath. It’s his favorite playtime.”

  “So put him back in,” Jordan suggested.

  Meg considered. “I’ll put on some coffee first—”

  The crying toddler was taken from her arms. Both she and Gabe shut up as Jordan tucked the boy against his shoulder, folded the towel more securely around the naked little body, then headed down the hall.

  “I think I remember how to do this.” He grinned at the gaping Meg over his shoulder. “I raised Hope, you know.”

  Meg recovered her poise. “She’s a wonderful person, but I think she raised herself.”

  With that parting shot, she went into the cozy kitchen and put on a pot of decaffeinated coffee. When it was brewing, she returned to the bathroom. Jordan was seated on the commode beside the tub. He was telling a complicated story of a sea rescue involving Rubber Ducky of the Fire-and-Water Rescue Squad. He directed Gabe in squirting water on a “burning” boat. She watched silently until the story was finished, then gave her son a two-minute warning that bath time would soon be over.

  When she announced time was up, Jordan again surprised her by lifting Gabe out and drying him off before turning the child over to her for tooth-brushing.

  “Has he any more teeth yet?” Jordan asked. “Hope said you were getting worried about that.”