by Tami Hoag
If only she could get her own life to work out so well, she thought glumly.
“Oh, go on,” she said, stepping out of the circle of his arms. She forced her lips into a smile and waved Nick and Katie toward the door. “Go on. Y’all have a hic honeymoon to get to.”
“She’s right.” Nick smiled down at his bride, his dark eyes warm with anticipation.
There was a lingering trace of concern in Katie’s gaze as she looked at her friend. “I’ll call you as soon as we get back.”
Maggie nodded and waved as they disappeared through the door, then sank down on the bed beside Katie’s wedding gown. She ran the back of her hand over the tiny seed pearls on the bodice as misery throbbed inside her like a toothache.
She looked up at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Her face wasn’t going to stop any hearts—neither from awe nor shock. It was sort of heart-shaped. Her chin was a tad too long. Her eyes were her best feature, her nose her worst. She thought it too plain, not feminine enough. She’d always believed she might have had nice cheekbones, except you couldn’t see them because of her cheeks.
At any rate, she wasn’t unattractive. She hadn’t lacked for dates over the years. No doubt she could have found an easier man to fall in love with, but her heart was set on Rylan Quaid.
Now Rylan Quaid had asked her to marry him. But he didn’t love her.
They’d had fun together over the last eight weeks, but their dates had been for the most part very casual, often in the company of friends. Much of that time had been spent in a joint effort to mend the rift between Katie and Nick.
The status of her relationship with Ry hadn’t really changed since they’d started dating. They’d been friends of a sort for the last five years, ever since she’d moved to Briarwood and she and Katie had gone into business as interior design consultants. She and Ry hadn’t been close friends, but the kind who teased and wisecracked.
Now they were a couple, but romance hadn’t brought that sensation of everything being new and wonderful and fascinating. Maggie was sure she would have found Rylan fascinating if he hadn’t kept her an emotional arm’s length away at all times. And Ry seemed to find her about as fascinating as cheddar cheese. He treated her as if she were a comfortable old shoe; she was convenient and familiar, and he’d decided he might as well keep her. He made her feel about as loved as the dozen or so stray dogs that trotted around his farmyard.
Well, a pat on the head and an occasional bone weren’t quite what she’d had in mind.
“Bye, princess,” Ry said, giving his sister a hug and helping her into Nick’s Trans Am. “Have a nice time in Williamsburg.”
“We will.” Katie smiled up at him. “Take care of Maggie.”
“Yeah. Sure,” he muttered as the wine-colored sports car rolled down the driveway. Behind him the rest of the wedding guests were talking and laughing as they filed back toward the festivities on the lawn. He stood there for several minutes scuffing his boots on the gravel.
He had planned on taking care of Maggie. There was just one small hitch—she’d all but told him to go take a flying leap. That wasn’t the reaction he had imagined getting from her. Maggie could be as silly as the next woman, but most of the time she was practical. Didn’t she see the sense in his plan?
Maybe not, he decided, sipping his beer thoughtfully. He had taken her by surprise with his proposal. Maybe what she needed was to discuss the logic of marrying him. He reached a hand up and rubbed the back of his sunburned neck. Yeah, that was what he’d do. He would calmly explain to her why they should get married, she would see reason, then he would outline the plan. Simple.
“Maggie, I think we need to talk,” he said, intercepting her at her car. His hand encircled her upper arm. Sandwiched between the car and the car door, she glared up at him with brown eyes rimmed in red and black. Ry grimaced. “Crimeny, you look like a hung-over raccoon.”
“Thank you for hic pointing that out to me, Rylan.” She nearly spat the words up at him. “Did they teach you that in charm school?”
Another layer peeled away from his thin supply of patience. “For Pete’s sake, Mary Margaret, what’s gotten into you? I asked you to marry me. Hell, you’re acting like I just handed you a dead fish or something.”
She gave him a disgusted look. “You have a way with words that would make Shakespeare throw up.”
“Well, since he’s been dead a few hundred years. I’m not gonna worry about it.” He turned and headed toward the long white stables with Maggie in tow. A coon hound, a half-grown collie, and a cocker spaniel trotted after them.
“I wouldn’t be following you”—Maggie was jogging to keep up with his long strides and her pink satin pumps were scuffed on the rocks—“but I happen to hic use that arm every once in a while. So where are you dragging me and for what purpose?”
“We need to have a discussion, and I’d just as soon not have half of Briarwood listening in.”
“Now he wants privacy,” she muttered to herself.
Ry let go of her once they were in the paneled office of the stable. He leaned back against his big oak desk, motioned Maggie to a chair, and crossed his arms over his massive chest.
“I’d rather hic stand, thank you,” she said primly, crossing her own arms and looking down at the jagged hemline of her dress. It probably would be a more practical dress this way, she told herself, trying to console herself over the ruination of what had been the most beautiful creation she’d ever worn.
Ry shrugged, his nervousness coming across as indifference. “Suit yourself. I thought we should talk over this marriage business a little more. You didn’t seem to agree with me.” He watched for her reaction from the corner of his eye as he scratched at the stain on his shirt pocket.
“Oh?” Maggie’s brows lifted in mock innocence. “What gave you that idea? Was it the names I called you or the champagne I threw in your face?”
“A little of both, I’d say.” He frowned, picked up a pencil, and rolled it between his fingers. “I don’t understand your reaction. I asked you to marry me. I thought women generally wanted to get married. I thought—”
“Why?” Maggie asked. She didn’t want to stand and listen to Ry’s philosophy of women. She wanted to cut to the heart of the matter and ask the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. The odds were probably astronomical against him giving the answer she wanted to hear, but she had to ask.
Ry looked baffled and a little annoyed at the interruption. “Why? Why what?”
“Why did you ask me to hic marry you?” The drum roll began in her head.
“Because,” he started. A strange feeling wiggled around in his stomach. He couldn’t quite identify it. It must have been the shrimp cocktail.
Why had he asked Maggie McSwain to marry him? Well, the answer to that was simple, he told himself. Practical. His mind latched onto the word like a hound on a bone. That was why—practicality. Right. It really didn’t have that much to do with the way his palms sweated when his gaze lingered on her full breasts—that was a bonus. And it didn’t have anything to do with the way she looked at him after he kissed her—as if he had been transformed from a frog into Prince Charming. That look was something he didn’t want to know anything about, probably because it caused his heart to flutter, and the last thing he needed was a fluttering heart. Practicality was his motto.
He shook a finger at her. “This is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. We make a good team. We’re compatible, complementary. I think we’re both at an age when it’s time to settle down—might as well be with each other.”
“Might as well be with each other,” she repeated, though it really was more a matter of lip-syncing than speaking. The anticipatory drum roll in her head ended with a noisy clashing of cymbals. The din made her ears ring. “Amazing.”
“It makes sense,” Ry said, not quite able to decipher Maggie’s expression. She hadn’t thrown anything at him, so he had to be on the right track. “It’s the practic
al thing.”
“The practical thing.”
Ry’s formidable scowl snapped into place, his lips thinning to a hard line above his rock-solid jaw. “Gosh almighty, Mary Margaret, you’re starting to sound just like a damn parrot.”
“Maybe you ought to buy yourself a hic parrot then, sugar,” Maggie said sharply, “if you’re looking for companionship in your old age.” She began to pace the width of the room, which smelled of leather, horses, and dust.
“I don’t want companionship. I want a wife.”
Maggie threw her hands in the air. “Now there’s a gem!”
“I want a wife and a family,” Ry went on, ignoring her sarcasm. “I can’t have a family by myself.”
“Oh, but you could try,” she said with a malicious smile.
Lord, was he truly so blind he couldn’t see it? All these years she’d been in love with him, and he really didn’t have a clue? Maggie shook her head. No, she hadn’t made it plain that she was in love with him. She’d kept it to herself for a long time because he hadn’t seemed interested in her. But she had hoped once he asked her out things would progress.
Things had progressed all right. Things had progressed to the point that she wanted to tear his head off and use it for a bowling ball.
“Rylan,” she said, trying to muster some patience. She stopped her pacing and took a deep breath. “People start IRA’s because it’s practical.”
“I know,” he said absently, his gaze involuntarily riveted on the rise and fall of her cleavage. “I’ve got one.”
“Figures.” She turned her head and stared in the direction of the photographs on the wall, photographs of the horses Ry raised. They were pictures of his show jumpers winning at some of the most prestigious horse shows in the world. To Maggie the pictures were nothing more than squares with blobs of color on them; her concentration was elsewhere.
Ry’s frustration came out in a humorless laugh. “I don’t understand the problem here, Maggie. I’ve listed every perfectly good reason for us to get married. What more do you want from me?”
Maggie closed her eyes on her tears. All she’d ever wanted since she’d been a goofy freshman at William and Mary was for Rylan Quaid to fall in love with her. But he couldn’t have cut those words out of her with a knife. If she couldn’t have Ry’s love, she would at least hang on to her pride.
She lifted her chin and gave him a belligerent stare. “I won’t have you propose to me simply because I’m convenient. I’m an admiral’s daughter, dammit, not some brood mare you picked up cheap at an auction. So you can take your offer on an extended honeymoon, Rylan Quaid, because I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in the cosmos!”
Ry kicked the side of his desk and let loose a string of expletives as his office door slammed shut. He flung himself into his creaky old desk chair, planted his elbows on the ink blotter, and raked his fingers back through his dark hair. They’d hit the root of the problem, hadn’t they?
She was an admiral’s daughter, and when you came right down to it, he wasn’t anything more than a farmer. His crop might have been animals with price tags that ran into six figures, but that didn’t keep him from sweating and getting dirt under his fingernails. The truth was, Maggie didn’t think he was good enough for her.
She’d probably only gone out with him because she thought he was rich. Most people did think that. On paper he was rich, but everything he had was tied up in the farm, in the horses. He worked from sunup to sundown to keep the place in the black.
It had been a long, hard struggle to get Quaid Farm to the point it was now. When his father died, Ry had been going to the university in Charlottesville on a football scholarship. His dream had been to become a veterinarian. Instead, he’d inherited a huge debt and a load of responsibility.
A lot of dreams had died and been buried along with Tom Quaid. One had surfaced—to build the farm up into one of the finest in the country. He had done that. Many of the best horses in the national and international show rings had been bred and raised at Quaid Farm. At the top of the list was his own stallion, Rough Cut, who would soon be retired from competition and syndicated to stand at stud.
With a sardonic smile twisting his lips, Ry wondered if Maggie would find him acceptable as a husband once she heard the amount of money Rough Cut had been syndicated for. He would be rich then. No doubt women would be lining up to marry him.
Oddly that idea didn’t appeal to him. He wanted Maggie McSwain. He’d spent too many years as a horse breeder not to know a good cross when he saw one. Maggie might have her irrational female moments, but she was his match in every way. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. She wasn’t afraid to stand toe to toe with him in a shouting match. She had a body that tempted him until he didn’t trust himself to get within three feet of her. She had a nurturing quality that would make her a wonderful mother.
All he had to do was close his eyes and he could see her nursing his baby son at her beautiful, ripe breast. The scene brought a surge of warmth to his heart and his loins. Opening his eyes, he denied both feelings and set his mind to the task at hand.
He wanted Maggie McSwain for his bride, and he was going to do whatever he needed to get her.
Everything short of falling in love.
TWO
THE LONG, TREE-LINED drive of Poplar Grove Plantation was a welcome sight, until Maggie pulled her car into the parking area and realized that the last of the day’s tourists had yet to go home. Half a dozen cars were parked there. Now, not only was she going to have to get past her landladies in her torn dress and tearstained face, she was also going to have to negotiate her way through a crowd of strangers. Lovely.
She gazed at the brick Georgian mansion with its twin chimneys and two-story pillared portico. It had been a case of love at first sight between her and the old house that was situated only a mile outside of Briarwood. The elderly sisters whose family had owned Poplar Grove for eight generations had been in need of a boarder. Maintaining a two-hundred-year-old showplace was an expensive business. The ladies were living on meager retirement funds and the money garnered from giving guided tours of the house, but that had left little extra for the work that was necessary to maintain it.
It had been an ideal situation for Maggie, who specialized in historical preservation and restoration in her decorating work. Poplar Grove and the Darlington sisters—Miss Emma Darlington and Mrs. Betsy Darlington-Claiborne—had offered pleasant companionship, the home of her dreams, and an opportunity to work at preserving a piece of history.
Of course, the arrangement wasn’t without its pitfalls. Privacy was sometimes hard to come by. She and the ladies lived on the second floor. The first floor was often crawling with tourists, being open to the public daily, year-round. And Miss Emma and Mrs. Claiborne, while darling ladies that Maggie had grown to love, seldom minded their own business. Miss Emma said they were at an age when they didn’t have to worry about propriety, that old ladies were entitled to be snoopy and say whatever they wanted.
If she were very lucky, Maggie thought, pulling her square black sunglasses out of her purse and slipping them on to cover her puffy, red-rimmed eyes, both ladies would be in the dining room with the tour group, telling them the story of how their grandmother saved the family silver during The War by dumping it in a gunny sack and sinking it in the well. She really wasn’t in the mood to give a play-by-play account of what had happened between herself and Rylan at the reception.
She wanted to get to her room so she could start planning her strategy. If Rylan Quaid thought he could propose to her like that and get away with it, he was sadly mistaken. Even now she was envisioning the successful resolution of her upcoming campaign, the way a general envisions his opponent surrendering on the field of battle. Yes, she could see it now: Rylan Quaid on his knees, pouring his heart out, proclaiming his love for her, begging her to marry him and put him out of his misery.
Just as she started up the wide front steps, the double doors swun
g open wide, and a dozen tourists filed out onto the porch. They were followed by a pair of diminutive gray-haired ladies, their hostesses, Miss Emma and Mrs. Claiborne, who wore cotton print dresses with the snug bodices and long, full skirts that had been popular in colonial times.
Miss Emma took one look at Maggie and pressed a hand to her mouth as if to keep from blurting out something imprudent in front of their guests. Mrs. Claiborne didn’t bat an eyelash. Twitching her long skirt aside, she descended one step, took Maggie’s limp hand in hers, and led her up to the center of the group.
“This is Ms. McSwain,” she said in a perfectly modulated voice of a true Southern lady, “our resident expert on historical preservation.”
If she hadn’t been so miserable, Maggie would have smiled at the title that made her sound like a paid consultant instead of a boarder. She hiccupped and nodded a greeting to the people who were stealing glances at the frayed bottom of her dress.
As Mrs. Claiborne ushered her into the house, she heard Miss Emma comment in her sweet way, “Darlin’ girl, and simply amazin’. She’s blind as a bat, you know.”
When they reached the parlor on the second floor, Mrs. Claiborne released Maggie’s arm and broke the silence with a harmless-sounding question. “How was the reception?”
Maggie searched for an appropriate word as she watched her landlady go to the mahogany Queen Anne serving table and pour a shot of bourbon from a crystal decanter that dated back to the War of 1812. “Oh…memorable. If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Claiborne, I believe I’ll hic go change.”
As she turned to go, Miss Emma charged to the top of the steps, across the hall, and into the room, her long dress hiked up to her knees, revealing a pair of high-top Reeboks on her tiny feet. “What have I missed?” she asked breathlessly, tucking back a strand of hair that had escaped her bun. Her bright blue eyes focused on Maggie, taking in the mussed hair, sunglasses, and ruined dress. “That must have been one hell of a party, sugar.”
“It was certainly eventful,” Maggie said dryly.