Almost a Bride (Wyoming Wildflowers Book 1)

  "Okay," he snapped, and walked away, heading toward the family room.

  "Okay?" she demanded, following him.

  "Yes, okay. No harm done. No apology necessary. You've made it clear it was a celebration and I happened to be handy. Fine. As long as you don't get carried away like that with anyone else while we're married. I don't think my reputation could take it."

  "Oh, that's so damned male possessive, Currick." Even as she flared up, a voice in the back of her head noted that she might be a tad eager to embrace a nice, clear-cut reaction like anger. "Like you're worried people will think you can't control the little wife, and you couldn't take the ribbing."

  "No," he said calmly as he sat in his usual spot on the sofa next to the end table stacked with a jumble of ranching and law journals. "I couldn't take the sympathy."

  "Sympathy? You mean for being married to me?" she started indignantly, hands on her hips as she glared at him from across the trunk coffee table.

  "No, I mean everybody thinking there goes that poor bastard Dave Currick, who got his heart broken twice by Matty Brennan."

  She stopped dead. She felt as if she was lost in a maze and every path was blocked by a wall of evergreens. Her heartbeat picked up a quicker cadence.

  "Of course," continued Dave in that maddeningly calm way of his, "they wouldn't know they were wrong this time."

  "This time? Both times. They'd be wrong both times."

  "This time."

  "Are you trying to make out that you were heartbroken six years ago?"

  "You find that hard to believe? Why? Are you doubting I have a heart?"

  She ignored the last part. "Hard to believe? Yeah, I find it hard to believe, since you dumped me!"

  "Dumped you? I did not dump you, I–"

  "The hell you didn't! You broke it off."

  "I did not break it off. I said–"

  "You did too. You said we should take a break from each other and–"

  "–see other people."

  "–see other people," she repeated bitterly. "The international code for get lost."

  Take a break from each other. God, she could still feel the pain of his words. She'd been so in love. Always had been. She would have followed him anywhere, lived any sort of life as long as they were together.

  "I said we should see other people for a while, and that's what I meant." His calm tone from the start of the sentence was slipping away with each word. Good. "You're the one who bolted away like all you'd been waiting for was someone to open the cage a crack."

  "Cage? I never said anything about a cage. You kicked me out. Like I was a baby bird in the nest and you were the mother bird and you wanted to see if I'd go splat on the ground."

  "I have never felt the least like a mother bird toward you, Matilda Brennan!"

  She opened her mouth for a hot retort, but before she could, the image of Dave outfitted in feathers and sitting in a huge nest took hold of her mind. Instead of words, a chortle came out of her mouth. Then a full-blown laugh.

  Dave put his hands on his hips, and asked in resignation, "All right, Matty, what's so funny?"

  "You...feathers...nest...mother bird!"

  And she was gone, laughing so hard she had to sit down. Dave eased into a few chuckles, too. And soon they were seated side by side on the couch.

  Dave leaned back, but she was aware he was watching her. Unable to take it any longer, she shifted around to put one arm across the couch's back and face him.

  "What, Currick?"

  "If you thought I was such an ogre why did you ask me to...to get into this business arrangement with you."

  "I never said you were an ogre. You simply realized we weren't meant to have a future sooner than I did. And that doesn't change that you're still probably the most honorable, responsible man I know."

  "At least among the single men living in Clark County," he added with cool wryness. "Did you really think I'd dumped you?"

  "Of course I did. I was twenty years old–a very sheltered twenty, thanks to Grams and Gramps and your parents and you–and so in love I couldn't see straight. I felt like I'd had my insides ripped out." She shifted her focus from his face to over his left shoulder, where the hazy past seemed to reside. "And I couldn't do any of the things I'd done before when I was hurting. I couldn't go to your parents. I couldn't run back to Grams without everyone around here knowing. And I sure couldn't go to you."

  She blinked at the memory of those dark days that had stretched into weeks that had stretched into months. She risked a glance at him, then looked away before she was even certain the intensity of his look was real and not her imagination.

  "You know, it wasn't only losing you, though that doesn't do a girl's ego any good," she said with a twisted smile. "I felt like I lost your family, too. And to some extent my own home. And my future. I'd always known exactly what I was going to do–be your wife and help you run the Slash-C–and all of a sudden that was gone. Just a yawning blank ahead of me."

  From the corner of her eye she caught the movement of his jerky nod. "Yeah, I know. That's what my parents, even Grams said."

  "Grams? What do you mean? What did she have to say about it?"

  She looked at him fully, and saw no hint of the intensity she thought she'd seen a moment earlier. Instead, his eyes were shuttered, his face expressionless.

  "They all were worried you were coasting on the tail of my dreams and not bothering to find your own."

  Matty stared at him. "That's why you dumped me?"

  "I didn't–" he started, then stopped when he looked up, obviously recognizing her goading for what it was. "I thought I was doing the honorable, responsible thing, giving you some time to test your wings. I didn't know you'd forget the wings and go straight to rockets so you could blast off."

  "I came back for visits."

  "For visits."

  Maybe it was her imagination, or maybe she really did hear an element of pain in that flat echo.

  She'd visited Wyoming off and on after leaving so abruptly. She'd worked hard at building a new life, but she hadn't cut all ties with the old one, especially before her grandmother's death four years ago. On those short trips she'd done her best to keep up a good front of the cosmopolitan sophisticate amusing herself in humble surroundings, like Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid. And she'd done her absolute best to not see Dave.

  She'd succeeded remarkably well. Until Great-Uncle Henry's death had brought her back for good. There'd been no doubt in her mind about what she'd do when she received the notification. Because the alternative was selling the Flying W, and that was no option at all.

  "And I came back for good."

  "After six years. And the first thing you did was make it real clear you wanted nothing to do with me." His tone was so damned neutral. "And the second thing you did was make Cal Ruskoff your foreman."

  "So? That has nothing to do with it."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "Of course not," she said emphatically, glad to be on sure ground. "Great-Uncle Henry should have done it a long time ago. Cal was really running the place as best he could around Henry's oddities. It's not much of a title, considering we only have a couple other hands who come in now and then. Besides, he's a top hand. And a reliable worker. And he'd been around the past two years, which I hadn't been. He knew what had been going on with the operation–and what had been going wrong."

  "I'm sure he's all that...and more."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "What do you suppose it means?"

  "Are you saying...are you trying to imply...? Good Lord, you make it sound as if Cal's my boy toy or something."

  "Boy toy wouldn't have been the first phrase that came to mind," he said in his judicial voice, "but if that's what you want to use..."

  "That's ridiculous. Absurd. In the first place, Cal Ruskoff has too much self-respect to be anybody's boy toy, and in the second–"

  "Self-respect has nothing to do with it."

  "–pl
ace, it's absolutely absurd to make it sound as if all I'd have to do was snap my fingers and a man–"

  "Not snap your fingers. Less than that. Just the right look."

  "–would...he'd..."

  "Be in your bed? Be your lover? Those phrases will do if you think boy toy lacks dignity."

  "That's...that's ridiculous."

  "Is it? Did he ever kiss you, Matty?"

  "No!" She said it too fast, too vehemently, and he spotted it immediately.

  "Ah, you kissed him."

  "It's not like you're trying to make it sound. Nothing happened."

  "Your choice, I take it."

  "It was mutual if you must know." She tried for dignity, then gave that up in favor of disbelief. "You make it sound as if I'm some sort of femme fatale, when it's damned obvious I'm not going to be the next super model. So what's this junk about every man–"

  "Not every man."

  "Oh, now that sounds more like the old Dave Currick talking. So you think only Cal's got weird enough taste to be attracted to me, huh? And–"

  "Not that either. You don't jump to conclusions, you leap to them, girl. Weird doesn't come into this discussion. I said not every man would be attracted to you–I doubt there's a woman alive who would turn on every man–but you have your fair share. Ruskoff isn't a lone wolf when it comes to looking at you that way. You've never seen it. Maybe that's some of the appeal–you're so damned oblivious."

  "Oblivious?"

  "You don't like oblivious? How about obtuse, then?"

  Instead of rising to that bait, she sat back and considered him. Something else she remembered about Dave–when something was cutting a little too close to the bone for him, he often resorted to word games. And they'd been talking about the possibility of her and Cal having something going on...

  Interesting. Very interesting.

  "Quit looking at me like that, Matty."

  "Like what?"

  "Like those wheels turning in your head are going to catch me up and grind me into powder."

  "Oh, yeah, right, like anyone could do that to Mr. Cool Currick. And even if I could, it wouldn't come out powder, it would be shaved iced. Besides, I was just wondering..."

  He closed his eyes momentarily, apparently resigned. "Wondering what, Matty?"

  "What kind of man it is who finds me attractive."

  "One with a lot of patience."

  "Fine. I won't try your patience any longer, Currick." She got up, but he grabbed her arm as she started to pass him.

  "You want to know what kind of man finds you attractive? One who finds himself reaching his hand out toward the fascinating reds and oranges and yellows, even though he knows the flames can burn him."

  He's a smart one, that Dave of yours. Grams had always told Matty that, back when Dave Currick was hers. A smart one, all right.

  And smart ones who thought they could get burned learned their lesson quickly, and stopped reaching for what they perceived as flames. Dave certainly had.

  "Oh." She blinked at a sudden feeling of deflation that stung her eyes. "Guess I should be looking for a fireman, then."

  He dropped his hand from her arm.

  "Maybe so."

  * * * *

  Lying in bed staring at the ceiling was nothing new for Matty. It was how she'd started most nights after returning to Wyoming. Always hoping the ceiling arithmetic she computed would arrive at better solutions than she'd come up with on paper for the Flying W's books.

  But this time what kept her awake weren't calculations.

  Odd how Dave had homed in on her relationship with Cal. Odder still that he'd asked about kissing.

  The night after Great-Uncle Henry's funeral–only a few short hours after she'd discovered the financial mess, and then turned down Dave's invitation to dinner–Cal had come up to the main house to talk about what he intended to do the next day. A late-season snow had started that afternoon and hadn't let up. When Cal had prepared to follow the narrow path through the snow to his small cottage, she'd said it was plain stupid for him to leave.

  People will think more's going on than's going on, he'd said.

  She'd stared at him, seeing the kindness in his eyes and, to be totally honest, the muscled, hard body. At that moment it seemed like the most reasonable thing in the world. If her memories had slid to the sight of Dave at the graveside, so handsome and somehow distant, she couldn't be arrested for that. So maybe we should prove them all right.

  Matty–

  She'd given him no time to say more, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him. He'd cooperated. And there'd been a spark. A genuine spark. They both agreed on that. But the spark had cooled and gentled in no time flat.

  With her arms still around his neck, she'd backed off enough to look into his face. He looked shocked.

  Damn, Matty, I thought when we... It's why I've held off. I never...

  Well, at least that was balm for her ego. He'd expected a conflagration, too.

  I guess this comes under the heading of Not Meant to Be.

  She'd gotten that much out with dignity, but then she'd burst into tears.

  In the end, Cal had stayed all night at the main house, but it was spent at the kitchen table over leftover brownies and hot chocolate, listening to her disjointed woes, fears and disappointments. The one area she hadn't strayed to was Dave.

  Cal had been the most understanding shoulder to cry on–literally and figuratively–that she'd ever had. He'd said little about himself, but a few phrases had let her know she wasn't the only one at that table who felt life wasn't in the best shape possible. Maybe that was what had connected them–a comradeship of loneliness. And a fond protectiveness for a fellow wayfarer.

  Her eyelids started to drift down.

  Whatever it was, it now felt like a durable, reliable friendship, which required little conversation and raised no doubts in her mind.

  She cuddled closer into the pillow.

  It would have been so much easier if she'd felt with Cal the way she'd felt kissing Dave in the barn.

  Her eyes popped wide open.

  The way she'd felt kissing Dave.

  It all poured back through her in long, rolling waves. Heat, sensation, desiring and being desired, satisfaction that somehow brought even deeper longing. There was no use denying it, she still wanted Dave Currick. As badly as ever. And he'd demonstrated that maybe he wanted her, too.

  But that wasn't the question. The question was whether she could risk letting herself slide back into believing in this, in them. Because if she did, and it didn't work out, she didn't know if she could survive a second time. To lose it all again–the sense of family, the sense of belonging, the sense of being loved.

  To lose Dave again.

  But how could she even hope for anything else to happen when whatever was happening between them had started with a masquerade? Last time had at least started off honestly, and look how that ended. So what chance was there when they started off with a lie?

  Besides, she knew wanting wasn't enough. He'd wanted her before–that hadn't seemed to change right up until the moment he said they should see other people–so that certainly wasn't anything to base hopes on this time.

  No, she had to be levelheaded, and remember what was most important–the future of the Flying W.

  And while she did that, she could spend her nights appealing fervently to the ceiling for some mathematical equation that would halt memories and desire.

  * * * *

  What the hell had he been thinking bringing up Ruskoff?

  Not thinking, not thinking at all.

  But dammit, it should have been him beside her at Henry's funeral, not Ruskoff. That image ate at his gut. Ruskoff standing beside her at the grave. Ruskoff with his arm protectively at her waist. Ruskoff handing her into the car.

  It should have been him.

  But he'd never meant to let her know. Jealousy had goaded him into that. Yeah, he was jealous, and he didn't like it.

&nb
sp; It had started with one of her flying visits right after Henry hired Ruskoff.

  Riding out alone on Brandeis, Dave had topped a rise near the fence that divided the two ranches, and he'd spotted them. He hadn't even known Matty was home, so there'd been shock, but it had been more, too. There she was, smiling up at the new hand, and handing him a water jug. It wasn't something he hadn't seen her do a thousand times with a hundred or more men in the years they were growing up. But this was different. Maybe because he didn't know Ruskoff. Maybe because he no longer had a claim to Matty. Maybe because it had started the drumbeat of a single thought in his brain.

  It should have been him.

  Standing beside her. Consoling her. Protecting her. Loving her. Always.

  He shook his head at his own foolishness.

  Always looked damned shaky, he thought dryly. But he did have now. So instead of letting stuff he couldn't change eat at him, he should do his damnedest to protect her. And right now where she needed protection was with the Flying W.

  She'd been so excited about getting the grant.

  But would it be enough? And what would happen if the commission ever found out she'd only married him to get an address that qualified?

  She'd put everything into the ranch, that was clear from what Joyce had said.

  There were so many things that could go wrong with a ranch, and without a financial cushion each could be a death knell. But Matty was letting her love for the Flying W push her. She was being impulsive, as always. And this time her leap could land her down in the depths of a chasm.

  Unable to sleep, Dave got up and headed for the kitchen counter where he'd left his briefcase. Might as well get some work done.

  But on his way through the family room, he saw the official envelope atop the stack of Flying W papers Matty was still working her way through. He stopped and stared at it for a moment, before continuing on. Then he stopped again, walked back and picked up the envelope. The light wasn't good enough to read it, so he took it with him to the kitchen.

  He read the acceptance letter quickly. The multiple sheets of instructions, warnings, musts and shall nots, he read through more slowly. After two readings, he put the papers down safely out of harm's way and got himself a drink of orange juice. He sipped it slowly as he stared out the window over the sink. If his eyes had been focused on the moment, he'd only have seen himself reflected back in the glass. But he was looking at something else entirely. Something without form or substance–possibilities, specifically possibilities for trouble.