Dark Horse: Bad Boy Cowboy Romance (2 page)

Also just as he'd said before, the man had rigged up a rainproof tarp strung between a few trees at an angle, providing a dry area beneath its cover as it funneled the falling rain off to one side. On the edge of that cover, Lance had built a comfortable little fire in a small area scraped clear of any grass that could catch light. The fire was covered by the tarp to prevent the rain from extinguishing it, but the angle of the hanging kept the smoke from building up beneath the covering, instead venting it off and up into the trees' canopy.

It was a smart little setup, but I didn't waste any time admiring it or complimenting the man on the setup. Instead, I quickly made a beeline for the drier area beneath the tarp's cover, crawling up as close to the fire as I could move in.

"Ahh," I let out, the sound slipping out from between chattering teeth as I held my hands out to the crackling little fire. "That's some good stuff."

I heard a rustle as the man, Lance, moved in beside me to sit alongside the fire as well. He didn't say anything, but I could sense his presence, no matter how much I tried to ignore it.

"Fine!" I finally burst out, turning to him. "Thanks for saving me, okay? Are you happy, now?"

I saw Lance's eyebrows climb up his forehead as he leaned away from my sudden outburst. "Um, sure?" he asked, clearly unsure what reaction he wanted from me.

I dropped my eyes after a moment, shaking my head. "Sorry," I apologized, returning my gaze back to the fire. I was already almost burning myself, but I still felt cold as ice. I tried to scoot in a little closer. "I wasn't expecting to be caught out here at all. I really do need to thank you for rescuing me."

The man shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. "It's nothing," he brushed it off. "How are you feeling?"

"Cold," I replied, even that single word broken up by my teeth chattering together. "Any way that you can turn this thing up a little higher?"

I at least gave a little chuckle at my weak joke, but when I glanced over at my rescuer to see why he wasn't laughing at my amazing sense of humor, I saw a concerned look on his stony, hard-lined face. Instead of replying, he scooted in closer to me, reaching out and throwing an arm around my shoulders.

"Hey!" The touch of his arm felt warm, even despite the stinging pain that I felt when he pushed on my injured shoulder, but I didn't want to admit that he felt comforting. "What do you think you're doing?"

I turned - and found myself caught by the man's eyes as they stared into my face. Lance had dark eyes, so dark as to be nearly black. I could see a subdued little glint in their depths, but they seemed to mostly just drink in the flickering light of the campfire.

"You can't stop shivering," the man answered me, pulling me in closer against him. "And with all those wet clothes, you're going to keep on losing heat. If I don't help warm you up, you'll probably pass out from hypothermia."

"No I won't," I insisted, stubbornly fighting against reality. I knew that Lance was right, but for some reason I couldn't quite articulate, I refused to admit it to him. "I can stay perfectly fine on my own, if you'd just turn up this fire!"

Lance studiously ignored this retort. "It would be better if you got out of the rest of the wet clothing," he remarked, examining me. "Most of that looks like cotton, which isn't going to help retain any heat."

"Get out of my clothes? I'm a happily engaged woman, I want you to know!" I snapped, waving my left hand at the man to show off the large diamond ring on my fourth finger. Even in the dim light from the campfire, it still sparkled alluringly. Of course, my finger's trembling as I shivered didn't help any. "I'm not going to get naked in the woods with some stranger!"

For a moment, I saw a brief look of irritation flash across Lance's face, and I felt a brief little spurt of jubilation, as if I'd scored a point in whatever game we were playing. But that expression was gone as fast as it had appeared, and he was almost immediately calm once again.

"That's your choice, Gilly," he said, far too politely. "But let me know if you feel yourself drifting off. You need to stay awake."

I could already feel that little tug, urging me to just relax and let it happen, to slip into unconsciousness. I narrowed my eyes at Lance as I fought against that urge. "Who are you, anyway?" I snapped at him, trying to distract myself. "What are you doing here? Do you know that you're trespassing on my land, here?"

Lance, of course, just shrugged. "Sorry," he said, although his tone didn't sound sorry in the slightest.

I narrowed my eyes and examined the man. Lance was tall, and he had broad shoulders. Judging from the strong lines of his face, he probably looked as though he'd been chiseled out of a single block of granite by a sculptor. I estimated that he was somewhere in his middle thirties. His black hair was quite curly, even soaking wet, and he wore a leather jacket over a long-sleeve wool sweater and a pair of stained, fatigued blue jeans. I guessed that he hadn't bought the jeans pre-stressed.

Another shiver shot through my body, and before I consciously realized what I was doing, I had scooted in closer to Lance. I moved in across the leaf-covered ground until I was pressed up against him from my ass up to my shoulder, burrowing in against his jacket to try and absorb as much of his warmth as possible. I still refused to consider removing any of my wet clothing, but I could at least try and soak up more of his heat.

He wasn't actually unattractive, I caught myself thinking. In fact, if he'd just put on some sort of smile, something other than that stony, blank expression, he'd be quite handsome.

I shook my head at that thought. Get your mind out of the gutter, Jillian! I told myself. Just because you're snuggled up against him like he's not a total stranger doesn't mean that you should be checking him out!

For a few minutes, we just lay together in silence. Lance didn't move except to use one foot to nudge a large log a bit further into the fire, sending up a spiral of sparks into the air. I felt as though I should be talking, should fill the silence, but no words came to mind.

After a few more minutes, Lance nudged me, glancing down at me. "Hey," he said, shaking me a little. "Still awake?"

I'd actually been starting to drift off a little. "Yeah," I replied, shaking myself, already feeling my joints growing stiff. "I'm still here, still awake."

Lance nodded, but he didn't look convinced. "Maybe you should talk to me, to keep yourself awake," he suggested.

I managed to glare up at him. "Oh, really? You want to find out more about me, even though you're a stranger?"

For a moment, I saw the man clearly struggling to not roll his eyes at me. "Okay, fine," he gave in. "You talk to me and tell me how you ended up out here, and I'll tell you about why I'm here. Deal?"

I didn't consider the trade for more than a second or two. I could definitely feel myself drifting off, and while I still didn't know how much I trusted this man, I'd much rather be awake around him than asleep. Blearily, I reconsidered whether waving my big diamond ring under his nose was a good idea.

"Yeah, I guess that's a deal," I said. "Where should I start?"

"Start with the beginning, and just move forward until you get to now," Lance suggested. "It's not like we're going to run out of time - we've got all night, judging from how the storm's still raging."

Sure enough, the lightning, thunder, and rain didn't show any sign of abating. I nodded, casting my mind back and trying to find a good place to start telling my tale.

"Well, my full name's Jillian," I began. "Jillian Monteclaire. And this morning, I thought that today was going to be great..."

Chapter three

"Oh, my dear, it's absolutely LOVELY to see you, just LOVELY! And that man of yours, too! I hear that you two are ENGAGED now, aren't you?"

I beamed back at Mrs. Riviello, trying to match her incredible level of enthusiasm. The old woman might be small, wrinkled, and sprouting a full head of iron gray hair, but she still managed to sound as though she was overflowing with excitement whenever she opened her mouth.

"I am engaged now, yes!" I replied, showing off the ring on my finger. "Marsden proposed two months ago - it was so beautiful! I'm already dreading all the wedding planning that's going to start up any day now."

"Lovely, just lovely!" Mrs. Riviello trilled, clapping her little hands together as she peered down rather nearsightedly at the ring. "Dorothy, Helen, come and look at this ring! It's just AMAZING!"

At her call, a couple other fellow gray-haired little old ladies of high society detached themselves from the crowd and ambled over. They all tugged at my hand to display the ring in front of their faces and added their own little pleased exclamations to the din.

"It's gorgeous, dear!" Helen assured me, patting my hand in between her own. "And he only just recently proposed, did he? How did he do it?"

I immediately felt myself pinned by three sharp-eyed little stares. I scrambled to respond to the question.

"It was in his family's home," I told my trio of attentive listeners. "It's his grandmother's ring, you see. All of his relatives were there for their Fourth of July celebration, and after I said yes, all of the fireworks went off for me!"

Dorothy clapped her hands together in delight. "Simply the most ROMANTIC thing I can imagine!" Mrs. Riviello called out, nodding. "That Marsden, he must have planned it out for months, entire MONTHS!"

For just a second, the smile on my face felt forced, and I had to remind myself to nod to the little old ladies. Inside my head, I winced a little at the tiny little white lie, but I clamped down, refusing to let anyone else know how I truly felt inside my head.

It wasn't Marsden's fault, of course. I knew that, had to remind myself of it every time I found myself doubting my decision. The man was under a lot of pressure at his law firm to pull off his current cases, and he was up for making partner. It wasn't his fault that he hadn't fully planned out a huge, majestic proposal for me - and didn't it say enough that he'd proposed in the first place?

It had been romantic, I reassured myself, even if it wasn't quite what I'd imagined when I used to daydream about my proposal as a little girl. And I knew that Marsden loved me, even if the man was completely hopeless at planning.

In front of me, I could see the little old ladies opening their mouths to ask further questions, and I quickly pulled my eyes up to scan the crowd for someone I hadn't said hello to yet. I was okay with telling these women the broad gist of my proposal, but I knew that I'd need to start lying if they started probing into the little details, and I was sure to end up hopelessly entangling myself in my own web of lies.

Fortunately, just as Dorothy started to ask a question, I heard the loud, unmistakable laugh of my future husband, and cut the little old lady off. "Excuse me," I said politely, grasping the woman's wrinkled little claw in both of my hands, "but I need to go check in with Marsden for a moment. If you'll excuse me?"

"Why, of course, of course," Dorothy answered quickly, beaming back at me. "Oh, young love! So adorable, so romantic!"

The other ladies nodded and murmured their agreement as I stepped away. I made sure that several taller gentlemen blocked their view of me before I rolled my eyes.

Ah, the demands of high society! I had made careful small talk with old women like Dorothy, Helen, and others since I was barely old enough to walk on my own, and I could do it in my sleep, but I still sometimes had to sigh at how ridiculous it could feel.

To the elegantly dressed and composed men and women around me, everything was wonderful, every occasion was civilized, and every event happened perfectly. The idea of a proposal that was ill-conceived and executed in a stumbling, clumsy manner by a man already more than half drunk would be unimaginable to these ladies.

That wasn't how high society functioned, after all.

And, no matter how I might feel at times, I was most definitely a member of high society. After all, the Monteclaires had been a part of Virginia nobility since before there even was a Virginia, for heaven's sake! We'd always contributed to charity, shown our faces at every high society gala and event, and, in the last hundred years, we'd never failed to enter a horse in the Virginia Derby.

Even now, with our family finances in ruins and little of our legacy left in my name and possession, we still had a horse here. My own horse, Merlot, whom I'd trained exhaustively for this. I had high hopes that I might go home with a ribbon, or maybe even some prize money.

The race would be beginning soon, I knew. But until it started, I needed to continue making small talk as I moved around the room of notables in the VIP box, overlooking the track with its plate glass floor-to-ceiling windows. I had to show them that, no matter my family's current financial situation, the Monteclaires were still keeping up all of their proud Virginia traditions.

From ahead of me, I heard Marsden let out another loud laugh. The man's laugh was unmistakable, sounding a bit like a braying horse himself. I slipped in between two elderly white-haired gentlemen with matching monocles and three-piece suits, and spotted him, standing near the bar.

Marsden looked to be in animated conversation with two other men standing near him, and he slapped at his knee with one hand as I stepped up to him. "-and that's when I realized that the horses were out in the pasture!" he chortled out, laughing so hard his words were hard to make out. "And instead, the stables were filled with cows!"