Dark Horse: Bad Boy Cowboy Romance (14 page)

"You're in no condition to drive," I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral. "Give me the keys, and I'll drive us home."

Marsden opened his mouth as if to argue, but apparently thought better of the idea, thankfully, and fished around in his jacket pocket for the keys instead. I took them from him and pushed him into the passenger seat, feeling a bit like I'd just been handed an adult baby to watch and monitor.

Finally, as we arrived back at my house, I couldn't hold back any longer. But at least, I told myself, I'd see if maybe Marsden really was on a different page than I thought.

"So, now you're going to lend me a hand with some of the wedding planning, right?" I asked as I unlocked the front door and let Marsden inside.

The lights in most of the house were turned off, suggesting that Lance had vacated the premises, or at least headed up to his own room, I observed. That was good - at least he wouldn't come in and interrupt any conversations, possibly raising up Marsden's jealousy.

Inside, Marsden didn't answer my question right away, instead moving unsteadily into the living room and dropping down with a sigh of relief onto the couch. He lifted his legs and plopped them up on the coffee table, totally oblivious to my annoyed glare at him as he performed this action.

He huffed, unbuttoning his jacket. "Ugh, fine, wedding," he said loudly with a sigh. "What still needs to be done for this wedding thing?"

I blinked at him for a moment, trying to work out where to start. "Everything!" I burst out in response, forgetting for a second about his inebriated state.

As his mouth opened up, I held up my hand, ticking off the items on my fingers. "I still need to figure out guest lists, especially for your family, and whether we need to offer special meals for anyone. We need to print up invitations, get a photographer, find a band, figure out what sort of bar we want to have - there's a million things to plan!"

For a minute, Marsden just kept on gawping back at me, as if I'd overloaded his brain. "Wow, I thought it was way simpler," he finally managed, forcing his mouth back shut. "Can't we just, like, get married?"

"Is that really what you want?" I fired back. "Just to go up in front of a judge and have him declare us married?"

"Well, no," Marsden defended himself, shaking his head a bit more strongly than he might have intended. He paused for a moment to recollect his thoughts, and perhaps to try and make the room stop spinning.

"We need to invite everyone, of course," he said once he'd managed to apparently stabilize his inner ear. "Have it in the papers and things, right? Announcing it! Get all the newspaper reporters there to report. Report on it, I mean. I mean, one of the oldest Virginia families marrying into one of the wealthiest!" He pointed at me, and then him, as if the identities of these two families wasn't clear. "That's the sort of thing that everyone should hear about, I bet! Famous."

He sounded pretty emphatic, but I still wanted to delve in deeper. Given how he seemed to be avoiding helping out, this couldn't really be what he wanted, could it?

I sat down in the chair next to the couch, leaning forward and resting my elbows on my knees as I peered at Marsden. I took a deep breath, hardly able to believe the words that were about to come out of my mouth.

"Listen, are you sure that this is what you want? With us?" I said slowly, looking into the man's mop of shaggy hair as he hung his head down a bit, looking at his feet. "I mean, if you're feeling something else, you can tell me-"

Marsden lifted his head up at that - but instead of looking either agreeable or romantic, I was surprised to see his eyes blazing at me, anger clear on his face. "What I want? I'm not the one backing out!" he burst out, glaring at me.

"Backing out?" I felt totally lost. What was he talking about? "I'm not backing out! I just feel like-"

"No, I see how you're trying to put words in my mouth," Marsden kept on going, rolling over me. He leaned forward, wobbling a little but clearly trying to climb up to his feet. "How dare you! I bet you're cheating with that guy here, aren't you? That's what this is about!"

"Calm down, would you?" I snapped. "Why are you getting all worked up? I just wanted to have a normal conversation! When's the last time that we actually talked to each other?"

"Well, maybe that's because I'm not living here!" Marsden snapped back. "See, you'll invite some other guy to live here, but not me? I see how you're consp- con- you're ganging up against me!" He shook his head, making another attempt to stand up, but fell back down on the couch once again.

My mouth hung open for a second. He thought that I was the one who'd turned him down for moving in together? He'd been the one to say no to me, claiming that he needed his own place so that he could get up early for business appointments!

"Marsden, I'm not-"

"Not telling me that you're cheating!" he finished, waving a hand at me angrily and nearly smacking me in the face. "I knew that something wasn't right with him! Tell me the truth, no lies!"

For a moment, I did feel a little twinge of shame hit me. Could Marsden know about how I'd compared him to Lance occasionally over the last few weeks, how I might have been having second thoughts?

But no, even that wouldn't be reason enough to yell at me like this! Before I knew what I was doing, I was up on my feet, glaring down at him as he kept on trying to stand.

"I'm not cheating on you with Lance - but maybe this should be your wake up call," I told him in icy tones, feeling something click inside of me. "Because you know what, Marsden? Right now, this man in front of me? He's not one that I want to marry!"

Inside my chest, as I spoke these words, I felt my previous concern and uncertainty suddenly lock into cold certainty. I was speaking the truth. Staring down at this drunken, out of control man accusing me of cheating on him because he couldn't handle being together with me and taking the next step, I didn't feel a single note of regret.

Marsden's mouth dropped open for a moment. His hands grabbed the armrest of the couch, and he finally managed to pull himself up to his feet. I stood my ground, staring back at him and wondering what he was going to do next.

Would he try and apologize? Would he perhaps try and kiss me, to reassure me that he was still the man who had asked me to marry him a few months previously?

I was ready for him to either sweep me up in his arms, or to back down and away from him.

But I wasn't ready for him to bring his arm around, swinging at me with his open palm.

I wasn't ready for him to hit me.

Chapter twenty-two

The slap caught me right on the cheek, and for a second, my vision flashed into whiteness as the pain hit me.

I staggered back, one of my hands flying up to my injured cheek as I stared in shock at the man standing across from me, his hands tightened into fists and breathing heavily as he glared back at me. I could see his chest rising and falling, up and down, in his suit.

I opened my mouth, but I didn't even know what to say. I just stared, unable to think or make sense of what was happening, as Marsden took another step towards me. His face was twisted in anger, a scowl stretched across his lips.

Almost in slow motion, I saw his hand come up to hit me again.

It never connected.

I wish I'd managed to keep my eyes open, but, anticipating that hand connecting with me, I started to close my eyes and try and turn my face away. I knew that I wouldn't be able to fully dodge, but I at least didn't want to get the full brunt of the blow. With my head turned, I only saw a streak of something flying past me.

I heard a thud, a bit like someone chucking a hunk of steak down at the floor.

A moment later, I heard a louder thud, like the rest of the cow hitting the floor after the steak.

In a second, when nothing had connected with my face, I opened my eyes to see what had happened.

I had to pause for a moment, just staring at the scene in front of me.

Marsden lay down on the floor, sprawled out on his back on the ground in between the couch and the coffee table. He groaned as I looked down at him, but his eyes stayed shut, and I could see that one of his cheeks looked almost white. His hands were splayed out to either side, one of them on the side of the couch, the other underneath the coffee table.

Standing over him, breathing heavily and with both of his hands tightened up into fists, Lance glared down at the other man. Lance stood with one foot in front of me, tilting his body in front of me as if to shield me.

"What- what just happened?" I stammered out, staring with wide eyes at this tableau in front of me.

For a second longer, Lance remained frozen, his eyes focused down at my fiancé on the floor. But then, just as I got ready to repeat the question, he sighed and took a step back, a little of the tension slipping out of his shoulders.

"Maybe Marsden had a reason for hitting you," he said softly, shaking his head a little as if he doubted that such an explanation could exist. "But I just saw a man stepping forward to hit a woman, and I intervened."

I remembered Marsden's hand swinging towards me for a second slap, even as I still recoiled from the sting of the first hit. "Thank you," I said on autopilot, still feeling like my thoughts were being slowed by a thick layer of gauze inside my brain.

Down on the floor, Marsden groaned again, one of his hands rising up to tentatively probe at his cheek. I could already see the skin under his eye beginning to darken into a bruise. "What... what the hell?" he asked thickly, finally opening his eyes - or at least making the attempt to do so. The eye above where Lance hit him only opened partially, the cheek beneath it already swelling up.

Lance returned his attention back down to the man on the floor, and I saw my lodger's lips curl briefly in a scowl. "God, you're drunk, aren't you?" he grunted. "Well, that's just great. Can't throw you out, since you can't drive home."

Instead, he reached down and grabbed Marsden's lapels, hauling the semi-conscious drunkard up and depositing him roughly on the couch. Marsden opened his mouth and let out some sort of wordless grunt of protest, but he didn't seem to have the coordination to speak out or fight back against the rough handling.

For a moment, Lance kept on scowling down at Marsden as he splayed out on my couch. But then, giving himself a little shake, Lance turned to take a look at me. His dark eyes, previously filled with simmering anger and rage at his target, immediately softened and widened into concern.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently, his hands rising up towards me to touch me - but pausing before they made contact, as if he felt afraid that I'd shatter at a touch. "How do you feel?"

I shook my head. All of a sudden, I became acutely aware of the blood pounding in my ears, so loud that I could barely hear anything else. The fuzziness in my head intensified, and I suddenly felt myself wobbling on my feet, barely able to stay vertical.

I teetered forward, and Lance's arms were suddenly around me, the only thing keeping me from falling forward and hitting the floor just like my fiancé had done a minute previously. "I think I might faint," I murmured into his arms.

Lance carefully steadied me, and then peered a little closer. "Your color doesn't look good. I'm going to take you upstairs."

He turned first to Marsden, however, leveling one finger down at the man's face. I saw Marsden's eyes almost cross as they tried to focus on the fingertip hovering right in front of him.

"You need to lay right there and not move," Lance commanded, his volume soft but his words absolutely dripping with menace and anger. "If I come down and find that you've moved, at all, I'm going to find you, drag you back here - and I won't be gentle about it. And then, once I get you back here, I'm going to tie you down. Understand?"

Something about Lance's slight Southern drawl lent extra tension and gravity to his words. Despite looking nearly cross-eyed as he tried to watch the finger hovering in front of his face, Marsden immediately nodded, and his expression looked thoroughly cowed.

"Good." With that last word, Lance dismissed my fiancé completely from his mind, instead turning back to me. Once again, I saw his expression switch from rage to nothing but open concern.

"Still feel unsteady?" he asked me, watching me as I tried to lift my hand to take a step forward - but then let it fall back.

I nodded. "Yeah. My head hurts."

Lance nodded, as if he'd been expecting this - and then his arms slid forward, slipping around me. Before I knew what was happening, he was lifting me up off of my feet, picking me up in his arms like a child.

"Hey, you don't need to do this," I protested, but the words were half-hearted. Besides, he seemed to have no problem hefting me up, lifting me as though I weighed next to nothing. "I can walk!"

"Better safe than sorry," he replied, giving me a little smile despite tightly pressed together lips. "Now, let's get you upstairs."

Lance carried me out of the living room, pausing only to use one elbow to whack at the light switch and turn it off to leave Marsden in the darkness. Remembering how many martinis the man had tossed back at dinner, I suspected that he'd be sleeping and snoring loudly in a matter of minutes.