The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (14 page)

Her mother stood, too, but she didn’t seem to know she had done it.  She clasped her hands to her chest, as if something beneath her ribs was in pain.  Neither of them seemed to even remember that Joey was in the room.

“Marly, it’s normal...I mean...any mother would want to—”

“No.  It’s not normal, and you’re not like
any mother
.  You’re like the queen in the fairy tale, the one who had all the spinning wheels burned for fear her daughter would prick her finger.  You burned every reckless, rebellious, spontaneous impulse you ever saw in me.  You gave lectures, and you imposed curfews and groundings and limits.  But it happened anyhow.” 

She made a strange choking sound, and blinked hard.  Unshed tears made prisms of the overhead lights.  “
It happened anyhow
.” 

Her mother’s head moved backward an inch, as though she’d been struck.  Her eyes glistened, as if she, too, were seeing prisms.  “I know I was strict.  But only because—”

“It’s not all your fault,” Marly interrupted, unable to stem this flood now that it had started.  “I didn’t have to let you do it, but I did.  I caught the fear.  I gave up all dreams of the dangerous hometown bad boy, and I agreed to marry the steady, professional man instead, even though I wasn’t physically attracted to him.  Heck, maybe
because
I wasn’t attracted to him.  That was safer, wasn’t it?  He was the man who could never hurt me.” 

Suddenly, she began to laugh, an unnatural sound that alarmed her.  “It’s pretty funny, if you think about it.  The man who would never hurt me turned out to be the man...”

Her throat closed up, and she couldn’t finish the sentence. 

“Turned out to be the man...”

She couldn’t even remember what she’d planned to say.  She had to get out of here.  Half blind, she snatched her purse from her desk and slung it over her shoulder.

“I tried it your way, Mom.  Now it’s time for something else.”

“I knew you were good, Rick, but this is incredible.”  Drake shook his head.  Incredible, meaning
unbelievable
, was the perfect word.  He hadn’t believed for a second that Rick Styles could get an offer on Three Horses in the first week of the listing.  And yet, apparently he had.

“Aren’t there nearly a dozen other, bigger ranches for sale around Marietta right now?”

Styles smiled, tilting back his hat.  “Yeah,” he said, “but I tried to tell you.  Real estate isn’t like diamonds or plasma TVs.  Bigger isn’t always better.  Some people don’t want to take on that much land.  Three Horses is picturesque, well-run, and a manageable size.”

“Well, how about that.”  Drake knew he ought to be elated.  Selling the ranch meant he could start over anywhere, doing anything he wanted.  It meant he could drop the old baggage, escape the old ghosts.

So why was he having to remind himself to smile? 

Maybe it was just too sudden.  He’d expected to have months to get used to the idea of selling.  A week wasn’t long enough to answer the big questions. 
Where
, exactly, did he want to start over, and
what
, exactly, did he want to do? 

Every time he pondered it, he kept bumping up against the same brick wall.  What he wanted to do was run a small ranch in Montana.

“Anyhow, this guy is solid.  Cash buyer.  You don’t get many of those anymore.”  Rick, who still stood just inside the open door of his car in Drake’s driveway, patted the hood.  “I’ve got the offer right here, ink on the dotted line.”

Drake nodded noncommittally.  He knew he should invite the man in, but he kept not doing it.  He’d had a long day with the horses.  He ached, and he probably stank of the stables.  All he wanted was a shower and dinner and an early bed with the window open, the night breeze carrying in the smell of melting snow. 

He slapped his cap against his thigh absently.  “They’re offering full price?  And they don’t have a problem with keeping Ibby on?” 

“Ah.  Well.”  Styles tilted his head.  “We need to talk about the Ibby part, Drake...”

“You know that’s non-negotiable.”  Drake did not want to debate this all over again.  “If it’s a deal-breaker, we’ll wait for another deal.”

Styles sighed.  He dropped his head toward his chest, holding himself up with one elbow hooked over the door, the other propped on the hood.  The door swayed under his weight.

“Come on, Drake.”  He tilted a weary look up at his obstinate client without lifting his head.  “You don’t want to lose this guy.”

“Non-negotiable,” Drake repeated.  He’d repeat it a hundred times if he had to. 

But they were spared the argument when another car slowly turned in through the wrought- iron gates and came toward them up the curving drive.  Drake couldn’t be sure in the gloaming, but he thought it looked like Marly’s rental sedan.

He took a couple of steps toward the mouth of the drive, to get a better view.  Couldn’t really be Marly.  That had to be wishful thinking.  He hadn’t seen her since Sunday, at Fly’s cabin, and it was even odds he’d never see her again, not if she saw him first. 

He hadn’t read anything in the Courier about Robin’s switched applications yet, but that didn’t necessarily mean the story wouldn’t be plastered all over the front page tomorrow. 

Marly would need time to nail the details down.  Particularly after he’d questioned her ethics, she’d be dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘T,’ then doubling back to dot and cross them all again.

But the car was only twenty yards away now, and though its beige contours were still too nondescript to identify, the pale, heart-shaped face of the woman driving it was not.

It was Marly. 

He waited for her to come to a stop.  She didn’t turn off the engine, though.  She seemed to be staring at Rick Styles’s truck, as if the man’s presence was an unwelcome surprise.

He moved to the driver’s side of the car, refusing to get his hopes up.  She might have come just to get a quote for publication. 

“
How do you feel about losing your fianceé to your ranch manager
?” 

“
Can you explain why, six weeks ago, Robin Armstrong made a video claiming to be engaged to you
?”

She could be here just to see if she could get him to say something stupid.  She might figure that even a “no comment” was damning enough to be useful. 

But here’s what a fool he was.  Even if she’d come only to help him hang himself, he was happy to see her.

When he propped one forearm on her hood and leaned down, she opened her window with a muted electric hum.

“Hey,” he said neutrally.  “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry.”  She glanced at Rick’s truck one more time.  “I’ve interrupted—”

But something wasn’t right.  Something about her voice....and her face... 

He reached in, taking her chin between his fingers, and tilted her head so that the last of the sunlight reached her.

God
.  He exhaled a syllable that wasn’t quite a word.  She’d been crying—and not long ago.  The tears were dry, but they’d left a streaky trail on her cheeks.  Her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed.  Her lips were unsteady, her nose congested on the “m” sounds.

“What’s wrong, Marly?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, really.  I just...”  She glanced yet again at Styles, who was watching them from his position by his own vehicle, obviously curious.  “I just hoped you might have a minute.  But you’re busy, so—”

“I’m not busy.”  He gestured toward his realtor and raised his voice slightly.  “Sorry, Styles.  I’m going to need to take this.  How about you get back to me tomorrow, after you’ve talked to the buyer about that clause?”

Styles was a good salesman, good at reading non-verbal cues.  He would hear the absolute finality underlying Drake’s polite sentence.  It was time for him to go, and that was as non-negotiable as the Ibby clause.

“Okay.”  Styles swung himself into his truck reluctantly, but without argument.  “I’ll talk to him.  For whatever that’s worth.”

Drake nodded, though he hadn’t taken his eyes from Marly.  A wadded tissue peeked from between her fingers, trapped between the steering wheel and her palm.  Others littered the seat beside her. 

She’d been driving and crying for a long time.  And then she’d ended up here.  He very much wanted to know why.

The instant Styles’s truck was pointed away from them, he touched her shoulder.  “Come inside,” he said.  “We can talk better in there.”

She opened her door, swung her legs out, and followed him into the ranch house, all without saying a word.  In the foyer, with his father’s prize deer head staring down at them, he hesitated.  He wasn’t sure where to take her.

“Do you want something to eat?  Coffee?”

“No,” she said.  “Thank you.”

Though she’d never visited the ranch before, she didn’t even glance at her surroundings.  She didn’t seem to feel the need to orient herself.  She might as well have been in a bare warehouse, not looking because there was nothing to see.

Perversely, Drake liked that.  His father would have been highly indignant, because he’d always aimed to impress people.  Their bedrooms had been small and stuffy, the kitchen ill-planned and uncomfortable, but the foyer had to be grand.

“The family room is in the back,” he said, gesturing past the staircase.  “You can get comfortable there, and then we’ll talk.”

“No.”  She shook her head.  “I don’t want to talk.”

She didn’t?  He looked at her, what little he thought he understood about the situation evaporating.  If she hadn’t come defiantly, to get a quote for her story, and she hadn’t come in hopes of sorting out their quarrel, then why was she here?

He should turn on the chandelier.  When he’d gone out to meet Styles, the house had still been bright with the glow of sunset, but darkness was falling fast, and the foyer was so murky he could barely see her face. 

He needed to read her eyes, if he had any chance of figuring out what she needed.  He reached over and touched the wall plate.

“No,” she said, her voice low and urgent.  She clutched his forearm.  “Please.  Leave it off.”

He let his hand fall without flipping the switch. 

“Marly, what is it?”  He took her chin between his fingers again, again angling her toward what little light reached through the windows.  The movement revealed a sparkling glint of new moisture on her lashes.  Had she started to cry again?

“Sweetheart.”  He spoke the endearment without intending to, really—the same way he might have said it to a child, or a frightened horse, or any injured creature in need of gentling.  “Tell me what’s wrong.  Tell me how to help.”

“I need you,” she said.  She looked up at him, and he knew her gaze was searching his face, because the almond-shaped outlines of her lashes were rimmed in glittering teardrops, as if her eyes were set in diamonds.

“I’m here,” he said.  He wasn’t sure what else to say.  He couldn’t be sure what she meant.

Need him...how?  As a friend?  As a source?  As...

As a lover?

Even as he tried to comfort her, he hadn’t dared to take her into his arms.  He’d allowed himself to touch only the warm, silken skin of her chin, that sweet low point of her heart-shaped face. 

And yet, standing this close to her, surrounded by darkness, had given his body ideas—ideas his brain knew he had no business considering. 

But his brain wasn’t calling the shots, clearly. 

“I’m here,” he said again, and his thumb moved across her chin, grazing the edge of her lower lip.  Oh, this wasn’t smart.  Desire began to thrum through his veins, making his heart hammer, and sending a powerful heat to the awakening ache between his legs.

“I want you, Drake.”  She spoke the words with a certainty strangely at odds with her damp lashes and trembling chin.  She touched one hand to his cheek.  “I want to make love to you.”

His body was already saying
Yes, yes
. 
Right now
. 
Yes
.  A swooping sensation moved through his chest, the way it might on the steepest fall of a roller coaster, and he was instantly hard, his erection straining painfully against the rough denim of his jeans.

But he couldn’t allow himself to be just a body, swelling and thrusting and demanding what it wanted.  He had to remember that he was also a brain, a heart, a spirit.  He was a man.  Not an animal.

“Marly.”  He slid his fingers across her cheek, and tucked her hair tenderly behind her ear.  “You don’t really want that, baby.  You’re hurt.  Something... someone... has made you feel unhappy, or frightened, or alone.  But I’m here.  We don’t have to make love—”

“
I want you
,” she said again, her voice still low but fierce and hot, the perfect echo, the mirror image of the ache inside him.  “I’ve wanted you for ten years, Drake.  I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”

She put her other hand on his face, too.  And then, slowly, she raked her fingers back, across his ears—a cascade of icy shivers fell through him—across his temples, and finally let them sink into his hair.

“Be careful,” he said, thinly, because his lungs were too tight to let much air through.

“Why?” She shook her head.  “I’m tired of being careful.” 

Hungrily, she continued tunneling her fingers through his hair.  Greedily, she tugged and stroked and burrowed.  He didn’t stop her.  If she wanted to explore him—to toy with any part of him—he was only too willing to let her. 

Every tug on his hair created more shivers, more pleasure and more pain.  It went on a torturously long time, until he, too, understood that it was, indeed, a sexual act.  But still he didn’t stop her.

When she’d had her fill of that, she let her hands drift down his neck, across his shoulders, and then to his chest. 

She opened the first three buttons of his shirt, and pulled the cotton apart, low enough to slip her hands inside and knead his chest with velvet fingers.

She explored him slowly, carefully...as if she needed to memorize him.  As if, sometime later, her life would depend on intimate knowledge of his body.  As he tried to remain passive, letting her set the pace, everything on him broke out in rippled shivers.  She traced his muscles, his nipples, his ribs...the swells, the mounds, and the hollows between.  Every sensitive inch of pebbling flesh.