Small Town Romance Collection: Four Complete Romances & A New Novella

by Brown, Carolyn

  "Well, I'll never know sitting here," he said aloud and opened the door, just as a small red car whipped into the driveway in front of the house. A tall, dark-haired man clambered out. Hunter watched him comb his hair back in the mirror of the car, the way he had just last Sunday when he thought he was going to meet Mercy inside the Ardmore church. The man crossed the yard in a few long paces and made himself right at home on the porch swing. He kept glancing down the street until he finally spotted the same familiar car Hunter was looking for.

  "Hell's bells!" Mercy said when she saw the church youth director's vehicle in the driveway. Her parents had fixed her up with Cody, but she wasn't interested in any kind of relationship right now . . . friendship or other. Then he'd called on Tuesday, and she'd refused to go out with him. On Wednesday, she reiterated her position, but on Thursday, he showed up at the house to play dominoes with her folks, and of course they needed a fourth hand. The sly looks and smiles meant to melt her heart just made her more stubborn and she didn't even offer to walk him to the door at the end of the evening. And now it was Friday and he was waiting in her parents' porch swing, when all she wanted was to unwind in a long, hot bath. She hopped out of the car, grabbed her briefcase and didn't even bother to tug down the bright blue tight mini-skirt below a matching jacket.

  "Hello, Mercy." Cody's eyes lit up when he saw her. "I thought I'd kidnap you for a hamburger and a movie."

  "I don't think so," a familiar voice said behind her. "Mercy's already spoken for this evening."

  "Hunter, where in the hell did you come from?" She turned abruptly. "I'm not going out with you," she snapped.

  "Then you'll go with me," Cody said brightly, hoping that he'd arrived at an opportune moment and could take advantage of the ill-feeling between her and this cowboy. Maybe the man standing behind her was the very person her parents had told him she was trying to get over.

  "Shut up." She pointed at Cody but didn't take her eyes from Hunter. "I'm not going with you either, so quit bugging me to death. Now, what are you doing in Floresville?" she asked.

  "Do we have to discuss it in front of him?" Hunter nodded toward the other man, who crossed his arms over his chest and kept swinging as if he had sole claim and all rights to the porch swing.

  "We have nothing to discuss," she said. "I'm going in my house and I'm taking a long, hot bath. Then I'm watching a video in my bedroom or reading a book until the wee hours of tomorrow morning. If you both want to sit on this porch until you starve to death, then that's your business. But I hope you'll both be gone when I look out tomorrow at noon, which is when I intend to wake up. Good day, gentlemen," Mercy said, then slammed the front door in their faces as she disappeared behind it.

  She threw her expensive silk suit on the floor of the private bathroom just off her bedroom, ran a deep bath topped with frothy bubbles, pinned her hair up and sunk down in the hot water. Something inside her heart made her giggle as she thought of Cody, with religion oozing out of his pores, and Hunter, with anger pouring out of his eyes, sitting on the porch together. Well, hell's bells, it was good enough for both of them!

  "Mercy?" Her mother knocked on the bathroom door, then opened it and came in. 'You've got a couple of tomcats out on the front porch, and I do mean that tall fellow who came here a little while ago, and our youth director."

  "I know." Mercy slid down further in the water, letting the bubbles cover everything but her face.

  "What are you going to do about them? They both look furious," her mother said.

  "I'm not doing anything about them. They can kill each other for all I care. If one dies and one leaves, don't tell me which one is alive. I don't want to know." She shut her eyes.

  "You never could lie," her mother said. "But if you don't want to take care of your problem, then I will. Just remember you had a chance." Angie grinned but it was wasted on Mercy, who didn't open her eyes.

  The hot water soothed the tension in her muscles but it didn't reach into her soul and ease the ache there. She had really thought she could face Hunter and not even experience a little, bitty flutter in her heart, but she'd been dead wrong. When she'd heard his deep voice behind her, she'd almost dissolved in tears. If she hadn't made it to the tub when she did she would have been a puddle of blue silk and desire lying at his boots, begging for him to wrap her in his arms and carry her away to a silver cloud in the sky.

  Mercy heard someone rumbling around in her bedroom, but she didn't care if her mother was putting away laundry or dusting the spotless dresser. This was one problem she had to solve herself. Her mother certainly wouldn't know how to take care of the Hunter Wilson issue.

  "Mercy!" Her mother knocked on the door for the second time and didn't wait to be asked in. "Your bubbles are going flat and the water must be getting cold." She opened the vanity drawer and took out a makeup kit and Mercy's toothbrush.

  "What are you doing?" Mercy sat up, not caring if her mother saw her big breasts seem to float on top of the bathwater. "That's my toothbrush, and you've got your own makeup."

  "Yep, I do." Angie nodded with a knowing smile that made Mercy's toenails curl up. "Where is that special stuff you use to clean your face?" She opened the medicine cabinet door and reached in. "Oh, here it is."

  "Mother! What in the devil are you doing?" Mercy almost shouted as she wrapped a big towel around her dripping body and followed her mother into the bedroom.

  "I'm taking care of your problem, daughter!" Angie threw the items into the suitcase she'd gathered up in the bathroom and snapped it shut. "Now get dressed. There is a point where a mother has to hand the reins to the daughter and tell her to ride the horse or fall on her face. That point has come. It's time for you to ride this horse or else sell it to the glue factory and forget it. Life's too short."

  "What are you talking about?" Mercy grabbed a pair of blue jeans from her closet.

  "Just meet me in the living room." Angie picked up the suitcase and shut the bedroom door behind her.

  Bob Spenser gave Hunter Wilson a long look. The young man was telling the absolute truth and Bob knew it because a trusted friend from Oklahoma named Jake Thomas had confirmed the stories behind both of Hunter's wives. The very same friend had known Hunter's parents, and Hunter himself as a boy and Bob Spenser couldn't argue with a character reference like that.

  "I've got her ready." Angie set the suitcase down in the middle of the living room floor. "If you make me sorry I played a part in this, Hunter Wilson, I will personally shoot you right between the eyes and then feed your sorry carcass to the buzzards. I'm trusting you, and you'd better not ever betray that trust, no matter what happens in these next three days. I'm damn sure not used to giving my daughter to some stranger to carry off for three days."

  "Yes, ma'am." Hunter smiled brightly. "I give you my word. Mercy will be perfectly safe with me."

  The lady in question stomped downstairs.

  Mercy's hair hung in limp strings around her face which was washed clean of makeup. Her red tennis shoes weren't tied and her T-shirt had wet spots where she hadn't had time to towel off. Hunter looked like the coyote who just found a way inside the hen house, and her father forced a weak smile.

  "I told you not to come in my house." She glared at Hunter.

  "Your parents invited me inside their house." He stood up and took a step toward her. "We've been talking and—"

  "And what's this?" She backed up and practically fell over her own suitcase.

  "I told you to take care of your problem or I would.'' Her mother's tone didn't leave room for argument. "You're going away with Hunter for the weekend and resolve this one way or the other. Either way, I expect that look to be gone from your face on Monday night."

  "I've got a job," she started.

  "And Monday's a holiday," her mother reminded her.

  "What if I would rather be with Cody?" Mercy said crossly and was amazed at the look on her father's face. There was no doubt as to which one he'd rather have knocking on the front d
oor, but Hunter's good looks and green eyes had evidently wowed her mother just as they did every women who got near him.

  "Then on Monday night, you can call Cody and tell him you're ready to see him," Angie said. "He's quite taken with you, but no man wants to walk around in the shadow of an old love. Our church youth director deserves better than that. But right now you two have to work things out somehow."

  "I'm not going anywhere with Hunter, and that's a fact." Mercy sat down on the floor and leaned back on the suitcase. "I'm twenty-four years old. That's too old for you to make decisions for me, and it's too damned old to be kidnapped. I'm staying right here."

  "Scared?" Hunter asked.

  "I'm not scared of the devil himself," she declared vehemently.

  "I think you're scared of your feelings," Hunter said.

  "Oh, yeah?" She jumped up and faced him. "By the time this weekend is over, you'll wish I'd never walked into Sancho's Cantina. You might even put me on an airplane and send me home rather than spend six hours in a truck bringing me back."

  "I might." He picked up the suitcase. "Nice meeting you folks. I'll bring this sassy baggage home on Monday night."

  "And I bet she goes straight to the phone and calls Cody when she walks through the door," Bob Spenser chuckled when his daughter slammed the front door with enough force to rattle the pictures on the wall.

  Angie sighed as she sat down in his lap. "How much are you willing to bet? Because I bet she chooses Hunter. Only someone that could make her that mad could ever capture the love of Mercy."

  Mercy might forgive her parents someday, but she would never forget this.

  She refused to look at Hunter as he drove through town. But then she didn't need to look at him to know what he looked like. She didn't need to inhale deeply to know that she was in the close quarters of a truck cab with him. All she had to do was shut her big blue eyes and the back of her eyelids became a television screen where only movies starring him were playing.

  Hunter had never seen a woman so angry or so damned beautiful. He could see a few very light freckles sprinkled across her nose, and the recollection of her stomping into the cantina, demanding that he turn off the jukebox filled his mind. That was the only other time he'd ever seen her without makeup. He allowed a fantasy of her beside him in bed to filter through his mind. She wouldn't have makeup on then, and her blond hair would be tangled across the pillow. But the best he could hope for in the next three days was that she would at least listen to him and realize that he didn't kill his first wife or beat his second one. Maybe they could at least build the beginnings of a relationship so she wouldn't let that Cody back in her life.

  "You turned the wrong way," she snapped when he veered off the highway to the south instead of north. She'd assumed that they were going back to the spread in Denton to take care of their differences. He probably had another big barn dance planned. Maybe she'd feed him to Kim a bite at a time, and maybe she'd play up to his buddy Grady until Hunter saw red through his twinkly green eyes.

  "Nope, we're going on a little three day holiday to Mexico. That's where all this started, so we'll settle it there. Tonight we have reservations in a hotel on the border. Tomorrow morning we cross over and spend Saturday, Sunday and Monday until noon at Sancho's Cantina. My friend Mickey and his wife wanted a few days off to fly to Boston. They've got exciting news for his folks. Mickey's wife is pregnant and it'll be their first grandchild."

  "Stop this damned truck right here. I'll hitchhike home. God almighty, Hunter, I'm not about to go back to that forsaken place. I hated it there. And I'm not playing barmaid in a Mexican cantina, either, so stop or I'll jump." She grabbed the door handle dramatically.

  He patted her shoulder and tingles ran down her arms. "Mercy, I promised your parents I'd bring you home safe and sound. I'd planned on taking you to dinner tonight and making you listen to me, but when I told your folks I was on my way to Mexico, your mother said I should take you with me and we'd have time to resolve whatever our fight was about. It sounded like good advice to me. And your mother said she'd shoot me if I didn't do right by you."

  Mercy snorted loudly. At least her mother had offered to shoot him . . . but what in hell did he want to do with her for three whole days?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mercy slapped her suitcase down on the bed closest to the bathroom. The least Hunter could have done was get separate rooms but apparently he didn't intend to let her out of his sight, probably for fear she might call her father or Cody to rescue her. As if she needed any man to come charging out of nowhere and protect her honor. She could sleep in a motel room with Lucifer himself and not be coerced into doing something she didn't want to do. If Hunter Wilson thought he was even going to get a good night smile, he'd better think again!

  "Pizza for supper?" He picked up the order card from the top of the television set.

  "Sure. Black olives, extra cheese, and mushrooms," she said. "I'm taking the first shower and I'm using all the hot water in the state of Texas. Then I'm drinking all the cold water I can because tomorrow we're going to be in Mexico with no showers and no water fit to drink."

  "Good idea," he nodded as he reached for the phone to place the order for pizza to be delivered to their room. "Except you only got out of the tub about three hours ago, and except for a few dirty words and thoughts, you haven't done anything to need another shower so quickly."

  "Go rot in hell." She glared at him. "I may stay in the shower all night long. I hate Mexico and I hate to sweat."

  "Yes, ma'am." Hunter tipped an imaginary hat toward her and picked up the remote control.

  Mercy rifled around in her suitcase searching for a nightshirt and could have killed her mother on the spot for packing only a long blue, silky gown with spaghetti straps—and no robe. Well, if her own mother wanted to throw her into the lion's den in that attire, then so be it.

  When she came out of the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a white towel and the flowing electric blue gown leaving little to the imagination, Hunter had to fight hard to control his desire to take her in his arms and forget about his promise to her parents.

  "I'm starving." She threw back the covers on her bed with a flourish and fluffed up the pillows.

  "Pizza should be here in . . ."he checked his watch, ". . . three minutes or else we get it for free according to the order card."

  A hard knock on the door let them know they'd have to pay for the pizza after all. Hunter gave the boy a bill and told him to keep the change. Then he filled two plastic motel glasses with ice he'd gotten at the machine right outside their door while Mercy was in the shower, and poured Cokes from two cans. He crawled up in the middle of the bed and set the box with her pizza in front of her and then put the Coke in her hands. "Sorry, it's not a strawberry daiquiri, but the vending machine outside didn't have anything but soft drinks. However, supper is served, my lady. Now can I eat at this table with you, or should I eat on my own bed"

  "It's your party, Hunter. Eat wherever you want to!" she said flatly as she opened the box and took a huge bite of pizza, surprised at how good it tasted.

  "Then I shall eat with you." He walked back across the bed on his knees and got his own pizza and drink. "Besides, I want to talk while we eat. I've got something to get off my chest, and maybe if you've got food in your mouth you won't argue with me."

  "Don't bet on it," she mumbled around a mouthful of hot cheesy pizza.

  Where should he begin to tell the tale? He'd thought about it all the way to south Texas as he drove, and he had a condensed version all ready since he was sure she probably wouldn't listen to him very long. Maybe through dinner if he was lucky, but probably more like thirty seconds while she was busy smashing his nose flat as she slammed the door in his face. Somewhere between the first and second bites of pepperoni pizza he knew that the details didn't matter. Either she would believe him or she wouldn't . . . and on that alone hinged the success of this weekend, and their lives—together or apart.


  He looked up into those true blue eyes and wished he could see into her soul. Was she as nervous as he was at this moment? Hunter sighed. At this moment, she looked . . . mostly mad.

  "I want to tell you about Carla and Tammy," he began. "I'll admit I should've come clean about it in the beginning, but it seemed like such a morbid subject when we were enjoying that peaceful lunch on the church house lawn, and then later, I just wanted to be with you . . . not talk about the past. Before I begin, you got any skeletons in your closet you want to rattle? Any husbands?"

  "Nope. And precious few boy friends. Not many men like a woman who's nearly six feet tall and could beat them at arm wrestling and run a four minute mile. Seems to make them feel less masculine. Most of them like a little five-foot-two delicate sweetheart that needs someone big and brawny to protect and defend them," she pointed out.

  "Okay, then . . ." He raked his fingers through his hair like he did when he was nervous. "Where was I? I fell in love with Carla when we were in the fourth grade. She was one of those little women like you just said. Red hair, big brown eyes, and freckles. I loved her all the way through high school and we married when we were juniors in college. I saw my life laid out before me in one straight, happy line. Carla was going to be a music teacher and I was studying agribusiness. We graduated and came back to the ranch. Momma never knew her—she died when I was just a little kid, but Daddy loved Carla as much as I did. We went out one Saturday night. Dancing." The edge in his voice let her know this story wasn't something he enjoyed telling.

  "Eat." Mercy nodded toward his pizza, which was getting cold.

  "Later," he said. "She drank too much. Never could hold her liquor, but she was having a wonderful time. We were driving her car instead of my truck, and she got mad when I told her she was too drunk to drive and tried to take her keys from her. She said she'd drive and told me to find my own way home. Said I could walk or talk one of those women who'd been flirting with me all evening into bringing me home. We had a hellacious fight in the parking lot and I tried to grab her purse to get the keys again, and she ran to the car and slammed the door before I could get to her. She had it locked and laughed at me when I pounded on the window. She pulled out onto the highway in front of a semi-truck, not three blocks from the club where we were dancing. Five minutes from the time she was laughing at me, she was dead. I saw the ambulance going past when I was calling my daddy to come and get me so we could find her. And suddenly my whole world crumbled around me and there was nothing but a cold wind howling through my heart. God, I thought I would die. I wished I would die. I knew I should have thrown her down and just taken the keys from her. Somehow I got through the funeral and wished I could crawl in the six-foot hole with her and let them cover me up. I'd never known life without Carla. She was the only girl I'd ever kissed. We made love when we were sophomores and I'd never had another woman. Her temper kept me on my toes. Her love made me whole, and I was as good as dead!"