CULLEN'S BRIDE

by Fiona Brand

  Cole drew a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. "You're crazy, Sis. How long have you known Cullen? How well do you know him? Damn it, if Adam wouldn't st—" He stopped abruptly, pale beneath his tan. "Cullen won't stay," he continued bluntly. "If you expect any kind of long-term commitment you're buying into a world of trouble."

  Rachel flinched. The movement was tiny, almost instantly controlled. Cullen almost missed the betraying flicker as he fought down a surge of fury at Cole's callous statement. If Rachel's body hadn't been so closely moulded to his, he wouldn't have picked up the only visible outward sign that Cole had hurt her—intolerably—and he suddenly realised just how guarded, how controlled, Rachel was. Even if her emotions were tearing her apart, she would still work to hide them, to hold them deep inside and absorb them into herself, where they would do the least damage to anyone she loved. She bore the cost. She was the one who paid. It gave him a savage sense of satisfaction that, if nothing else, he could protect her in this now. "She's moving in with me as soon as we can arrange it. Marriage is just a formality. Or would you rather see your sister just living with me?"

  "Hell, no," Cole growled, his eyes narrowing with frustrated fury. "With anyone else it wouldn't matter, but with your reputation, Logan…" He shook his head, jammed his fingers through his hair again. "I'll talk to you later, Rachel." He fixed Cullen with a cold glare. "Don't hurt her."

  His booted feet thudded down the stairs. The door slammed behind him, sending a vibration shimmering through the sturdy timbers of the old building.

  Don't hurt her.

  The words hit Cullen with the same sharp force of the heavy door meeting solid hardwood. Don't hurt her the way his own father must have hurt Celeste, the way Cullen had been hurt before social services had taken him beyond the older man's reach. And then finally, completing the natural cycle of violence that was as inevitable as the turning seasons, in the way Cullen had hurt his father—and enjoyed doing it.

  He bowed his head, resting it in the crook of Rachel's neck, allowing himself the luxury of filling his nostrils with her scent, her warmth, before he had to let her go. "I take it that was an acceptance."

  "I take it that was a proposal." She wrenched free and spun to face him.

  Oh, baby, she was mad.

  Now that Cole had gone, the gloves were well and truly off, and Cullen couldn't help the satisfaction that filled him at the tilt to Rachel's chin, the half-wild fury in her eyes. He realised that one of the things that drew him to Rachel so strongly was her strength, the knowledge that no way would this lady ever allow herself to be a victim. She carried her pride and courage deep within her, and while her first husband might have put one hell of a dent in her self-esteem, ultimately she'd used the hurt to make herself stronger. "Yeah," he said warily. "It's a proposal. I'd go down on my knees if it would help, but somehow I don't think that would make any kind of difference. We both know I'm no gentleman."

  "You don't have to marry me, Cullen."

  "I took a risk, and I accept the responsibility that goes with it. We'll get married as soon as we can arrange it. Is a week long enough for you to get organised?"

  Rachel was chilled by the lack of expression in Cullen's voice. He could have been reeling off a grocery list. When he'd declared so unconditionally that she was his, hope had flared. Against everything she'd already decided, against every logical reason there was for refusing him, she'd grabbed at his offer. But the only reason he wanted to marry her was because he felt he had to. "I accepted my share of the risk."

  "I should've seen to your protection."

  "I should have seen to my own! But I didn't, and I'm pregnant, and I take complete responsibility. It's my body, my baby—"

  "Mine, too," he growled, stepping so close that his hot, restless vitality seemed to charge the very air she breathed. With a curiously possessive gesture he cupped her abdomen with one big hand, as if he could feel the small pulse of life deep inside her. "I won't let you do this alone." His hand fell away, and coldness rushed in to replace the warmth of his palm. "When the baby's born, then you can make some decisions."

  Rachel hugged her arms across her middle—trying to hold on to the sensation of his touch, she realised with a sharp, exasperated breath. She watched him pace to the window above the street and stare out at the sporadic flow of evening traffic. "What do you mean, 'make some decisions'?" she demanded, caught and held by the tenseness of his posture. And then she realised he wasn't watching the street, he was watching her reflected image.

  "Getting you re-established in the city. Whatever you need to get your life back in order."

  "I don't want to live in the city! You'd hate it."

  He didn't turn around, and in the darkening room the shadows clung to him, shrouding his shoulders. "I live in barracks when I'm in the country," he said evenly. "And once the baby's born, you'll have more chance of meeting someone if you're back amongst your own. On your own."

  Rachel blinked; then the full meaning of Cullen's words hit her. He not only didn't want to marry her, he didn't want any kind of relationship with her and was already planning for her to meet someone else. "I don't intend to move away from Riverbend. In case you hadn't noticed, this is my home. And I don't want to meet 'someone.'"

  "But you will." Finally he faced her. "After the baby's born, we can dissolve the marriage. And if you're far away, and I don't know who's touching you and taking you to bed, maybe, just maybe, I can stand it."

  The flatness in Cullen's voice hit her like a blow. If she'd knocked him off balance with her news about the baby, he'd evidently recovered, because he expected her to tamely agree. And then another revelation completely eclipsed most of what he'd said.

  Cullen was jealous.

  Blindingly, burningly jealous. She repeated it to herself, biting back the furious need to argue with him, to fight and throw things and rage at the way he'd planned to neatly cut her out of his life. For her own good, of course.

  He was jealous. Possessive. He couldn't bear to be in the same room with her and not touch her. He couldn't bear the thought of anyone else touching her, either. And she had seven months of this pregnancy left to run. Seven months.

  Rachel lifted her chin, almost disdaining that last, feeble straw. But she was beyond shame, beyond anger. Beyond anything but feeling her way through the bewildering minefield of emotion she'd stumbled into. Time was all she had to hold on to, and she was going to clutch at it, because she knew with a sudden stunning clarity that she was in love with Cullen. That if he disappeared from her life, she wouldn't want anyone else. Ever.

  She'd got over Adam.

  But she could admit now that most of her hurt had been the pain of failure and lost dreams, and the terrible blow to her feminine pride. She'd let Adam go without a fight—there hadn't seemed to be anything left to fight for.

  She stared into Cullen's level metallic gaze and knew she was going to fight for him. He felt more for her than simple physical desire, otherwise he would never have touched her. His emotional involvement was the reason he'd stayed away from her—and why he was so intent on controlling the situation now. The baby they'd made together was giving them both a second chance, and she was grabbing it. For all their sakes.

  Taking a deep breath, she hugged her arms tighter around her middle. "We can talk about living arrangements after the baby's born. In the meantime, I'll check to see when we can book the church."

  "No church. I was thinking registry."

  "Then think again, cowboy, because I won't feel married unless it's done in a church."

  She could feel the force of his regard, his desire to control the situation; then, abruptly, he ran a hand over his hair. The uncharacteristic uncertainty of the gesture filled her with renewed hope. She was beginning to know him, to be able to read him.

  When he spoke, his voice was low and raspy, and it was becoming so dark she could barely see his face. "If a church is what it takes to make you feel married, then okay. But the sooner we get
this settled, the better."

  * * *

  Cullen retrieved his mobile phone from the glove box as soon as he was seated behind the wheel of his truck.

  His call was picked up on the third ring without any call diversion, which meant that his cousin and company Commander, Blade Lombard, was carrying his mobile with him.

  "Lombard," a gravely voice snapped.

  "Don't tell me I've caught you at a bad time again," Cullen murmured with real amusement. In the regiment, Blade's reputation with women was legendary. If Blade was off duty, chances were it would be a "bad time" to reach him.

  There was a grunt of laughter, a rude suggestion concerning where the cell phone should go from a feminine voice, followed by a high-pitched squeal.

  Blade came back on. "You'd better make it fast, mate."

  "I'm getting married next week, and I want to take some unpaid leave—seven months, give or take a few days."

  There was a stunned silence, then, "I take it this means you're not coming on exercise with us? The Australians will be ticked. They were really looking forward to taking you down after the damage you did to their sabotage team last year. They're still trying to figure out how you managed to do it before they'd even made it to the target."

  "I only got three," Cullen growled impatiently. "You and the boys got the rest."

  "West and I bagged one each," Blade murmured. "Carter and Ben had to fight over who got to take the last guy."

  "Is the leave on?" Cullen asked curtly.

  There was another small silence, and Cullen could almost hear Blade's mind grinding through the regulations governing leave. "I take it there are extenuating family circumstances?"

  Cullen briefly outlined the situation.

  Blade muttered a string of inventive curses but, typically, didn't hang out for details. "When did you say this wedding is happening?"

  "Next week. Saturday, I guess. Why?"

  "Because I intend to be your best man. Ring me if there's any change of plan."

  There was a brief garbled conversation in the background, some muffled grunts as if a struggle were in progress, then the phone went dead. Cullen stabbed the transmission button, snapped the wafer-thin phone closed and tossed it on the passenger seat. Darkness settled around him, along with the relative quietness of night. He glanced up at Rachel's flat. Her windows glowed with a soft radiance. He could hear music, classical music. She would be sitting down on one of those cosy sofas, maybe reading a book, eating from the fine porcelain he'd seen set out on her kitchen table.

  A sudden vision of his house, his kitchen, replaced the gentle warmth of Rachel's.

  He was going to have to make some changes. Damn, but his place was … rough. Clean, but rough. Suited to a bachelor who didn't spend any time there except to do the basics like cook, eat and sleep.

  Frustration had his hands curling into fists as he gripped the wheel. He didn't know anything about making a house into a home. And that house was going to take a substantial injection of funds to make it into anything that resembled comfortable.

  He had money. But the farm was soaking most of it up. He had access to other funds. Funds he'd never touched, and never wanted to touch, because it was his mother, Celeste Lombard's, trust money—her slice of the Lombard financial empire. Because he was her only child, it was legally his.

  Cullen jammed his key in the ignition and started the truck. After his mother had abandoned him, he'd never wanted a thing from her that she wasn't there to offer in person. But she could help this baby, this child. It went against everything that he was to access his mother's fortune, but he would break the vote he'd made for Rachel and the baby.

  He would take the money and use it for them.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  « ^ »

  Rachel sat at the reception desk, enjoying the Friday afternoon sun and sipping a cup of herb tea as she used her coffee break to sort through the salon mail.

  Over the past few days she'd managed to achieve more than she'd thought possible. The flowers for the church were ordered. She'd managed to find a wedding outfit, and had organised a removal firm to shift her furniture out to Cullen's house some time over the next week. Helen had quickly volunteered to take over tenancy of the flat. Cole had even agreed to come to the wedding.

  She stopped at a letter that wasn't a bill. Curiously, she noted that it didn't have a stamp on it. It must have been delivered to the salon or somehow slipped directly into her post office box. Picking up the paper knife, she slit it open, pulled out a single sheet of paper and placed it on the reception desk. It wasn't the wedding card she was expecting.

  Letters and words had been cut out of a magazine and glued onto a half sheet of paper, spelling out a crude sentence: "Cullen Logan is a murderer."

  Rachel stared at the message, absorbing the ugly intent of it.

  The nausea that was now her faint but ever constant companion roiled up. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take deep, even breaths, sighing with relief when the sick feeling receded.

  "Whoever has done this," she told herself, "is cowardly and malicious. And they've been watching too many television shows."

  But she wasn't going to take it as a joke. Carefully, so as not to put any more of her fingerprints on the sheet of paper, she nudged it back into the envelope with the help of a pen. She put the envelope inside another larger envelope before storing it in her bag. She would hand it to Dan Holt just as soon as she could. Whoever had it in for Cullen in this town had just made a very big mistake. Rachel wasn't about to back down from this kind of intimidation, just as she wasn't going to let the furor of gossip surrounding her impending marriage, and the occasional nasty comment, get to her.

  Many more people had wished her luck than had predicted gloom and doom, and she had a room full of cards and small gifts to prove it. The gossip was having an effect on the salon, but it wasn't the effect the person who'd sent the glued-on message would have hoped for. She and Helen were so busy with all the extra custom that she was seriously considering taking on an apprentice.

  Helen sauntered breezily past, seeing one of their regular clients to the door, but instead of ushering her next customer to her workstation, she stayed at the open double doors. The quality of her silence made Rachel look up, then join her.

  "Oh, man," Helen breathed. "Look what just rolled into town. I think I just died and went to heaven."

  Rachel saw the extended-cab truck pulled up outside the garage. Four men got out and started prowling around. A tall dark guy with military short hair took charge of the petrol pump, relieving weedy Sal Tremaine of the job with an abrupt, unquestionable authority. Rachel wouldn't have argued with that man, either. The way he was filling out his cutoffs and T-shirt, she would have given him way more room than old Sal had. A muscular guy disappeared into the shop, while the two others lounged against the truck and surveyed the town.

  They were both tall and dark and built, and just as casually dressed as the guy taking charge of the petrol filler. The bigger of the two had sleek black hair caught back in a ponytail and an earring in one ear. All of the men had a restless, edgy aura of danger about them, but the one with the long hair kept drawing her attention. Something about him reminded her of Cullen. And it wasn't just the hair or the restless sweep of his watchful gaze.

  She shook her head as the blond guy who'd walked into the garage shop sauntered out with several cans of soda. She must be farther gone than she'd thought. It was bad enough that Cullen dominated her thoughts and her dreams; now she was seeing his face in a stranger's.

  * * *

  "Yo, Blade, West," Carter said as he tossed two cans over the bonnet of the truck.

  Blade caught his, more by instinct than sight; he was too busy looking around, really looking, and wondering what the hell it was holding Cullen in this totally ordinary country town. And what it was that had drawn Cullen into marriage and family when Blade had never known him to indulge in anything beyond the m
ost casual of sexual liaisons. He'd assumed that Cullen was like him—and a lot of other special forces soldiers—damn poor marriage material. The very thought of commitment made Blade break out in a cold sweat. As much as he loved women—plural—he couldn't imagine settling down with one woman, in one place.

  "See anything?" West drawled.

  "Uh-uh," Blade grunted and tore the tab off the can before drinking most of it. He wiped lingering traces of moisture off his mouth with the back of his hand. "Do you?" he demanded.

  West shrugged and crushed his can before making a potshot in the rubbish tin. "Nope."

  "I see babes," Carter said, squinting toward what locked like the local hairdressing salon.

  "When don't you see babes, Carter?" Ben asked drily as he shoved the nozzle of the petrol pump back in its slot and peeled some notes out of his wallet for the nervous old guy who was standing around staring at them as if they were going to pull out a couple of sawn-off shotguns and start blasting. "Nice place you got here," he said, smiling. "Don't worry about the change."

  West shook his head sadly. "Carter's problem is he's never been married."

  Blade tossed his can in after West's. "He's too promiscuous for marriage."

  Ben grinned. "Not to mention ugly."

  "Ah, you guys are just jealous," Carter returned cheerfully, swinging into the driver's seat. "Cullen's about to have the noose tightened around his neck, Blade's the kind of husband material that would send any sane woman running, and you two shoulda stayed married to your guns instead of involving those poor females in your plans."

  "Poor females?" Ben muttered. "Mate, I've felt safer jumping out of an aircraft at thirty thousand feet into pitch-black nothingness than trying to reason with my soon-to-be-a-wife. What about you, West?"

  West swung into the back with Ben and snapped the door closed. "She kept the house. She figured I didn't need it, since I was never there."