Her Bodyguard (35 page)

Jenny crossed the room and slipped her arm around her husband’s waist, giving him a reassuring squeeze. “So we can anticipate a long engagement?”

“That sounds good,” Trace piped up. “Five years.” When his wife sniffed and rolled her eyes, he amended it. “All right, I’ll go as low as three.”

Mari met her stepmother’s gaze. “Not an inordinately long engagement, no, Mama. Just long enough to plan a wedding, I should think.” She chastised her father with a frown and added, “Certainly not three years.”

“Well, you can’t fault a fellow for trying,” he muttered.

“One thing concerns me,” said Jenny. “It’s probably not fair to you, Mari, but we dare not ignore the issue. Luke Garrett is Rory Callahan’s brother. Bringing that connection into our family will be difficult for Kat.”

“I know, Mama. Believe me, I know. Before Kat and I came home, I told Luke we didn’t have a future together because of Kat.”

“She gave you her blessing?” Jenny asked, her brows arching in surprise.

“Not exactly.” Mari gave her father a significant look as she added, “Despite the fact that Luke is a blood relative of the man who so viciously betrayed her, Kat is trying to be open-minded about him.”

Jenny’s lips twisted as she tried, and failed, to stifle a smile. Trace folded his arms and shook his head. “Cheeky little thing. Your daddy obviously didn’t swat you often enough when you were little, Maribeth McBride.”

“My daddy hardly ever swatted me,” she responded, her grin going wide. “He loves me, you know. He only wants me to be happy.”

Trace’s sigh was long and heartfelt. “That he does, Mari-berry. That he does.”

ANOTHER WAVE of thunderstorms blew in just as Luke departed Willow Hill, so he took refuge beneath the spreading, leafy boughs of a cottonwood tree and waited out the worst of the storm. It had been an interesting evening, to say the least. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his duster and leaned against the tree trunk, whistling.

She’d asked
him
to marry
her
. Didn’t that beat all?

He was a little worried about her at the moment. Luke wondered if Trace McBride intended to have it out with Mari tonight or wait until morning. Luke had wanted to see her before he left, but her mama had shuffled him right out the front door following his little chat with her daddy, Jenny’s excuse being that her daughter had retired for the evening.

As if Luke believed that. More likely she’d hid in the bushes beneath the study window, hoping to hear just what was being said inside.

All in all, the evening had gone much better than anticipated. Infinitely better. He’d half expected to be met by the business end of a Remington. Instead, he’d left with the promise of a future.

This line of thunderstorms moved fast, blowing out of town as quickly as it had swept in, and soon Luke continued his way down the hill. In the wake of the storm, a three-quarter moon and a myriad of stars illuminated Luke’s path and revealed a shadowed figure coming toward him. Luke recognized the man’s walk and let out a string of curses blue enough to make a whore blush. “Rory Callahan, tell me you’re looking for me and not headed up to Willow Hill.”

“Hey, Luke. What are you doing here?”

Well, that answered his question. “It’s after ten, Rory. You can’t go calling on a family at this time of night.”

“I’m not calling on the family. I need to see Kat.”

Tonight? Over my dead body
. “Have you been drinking, brother?”

“Hell, no. I’ve been digging. In a graveyard no less. Have to tell you, Luke, it’s creepy to get caught in a graveyard during a thunderstorm.”

Luke wondered why he was surprised at Rory’s first action upon his return to town. First things first, after all. “So, you retrieved your pirate treasure.”

“No, I didn’t. That’s why I have to speak to Kat right away. It’s gone. She must have taken it.”

“Why would Kat have taken the cross?”

“To sell it. It’s worth a lot of money, and she’s gonna need cash, what with the baby and all.”

A baby and no husband, Luke thought. He grabbed his brother’s arm. “Look, you’re not going up to that house tonight.”

“Yeah, I am. I need to see my wife.”

“She is
not
your wife.”

Rory waved Luke’s objection away. “A technicality. That’s all.”

“Listen, Rory, I left there right as this latest storm blew through. Now is not a good time for you to go to Willow Hill.”

“Why?”

Because I don’t want you interfering with my plans
. Luke sighed heavily. “It’s late. I’m sure they’ve all gone to bed by now.”

“Good. I don’t want to see any family other than Kat. Our conversation needs to be private.”

Luke shut his eyes and shook his head. Hell, maybe it would be best to get this over with before the hour grew any later. Luke knew his younger brother. The only way he’d stop him from pestering poor Kat this evening would be to knock him out and tie him up. Frankly, Luke was too tired to fight that particular battle.

“All right. But I’m going with you.”

Minutes later, the two men stood beneath Kat McBride’s bedroom window. Rory scooped up a handful of pebbles and began pegging them toward her window. Both his arm and his aim were poor. Finally, Luke grabbed the small stones and got the job done.

Kat’s window opened, and she leaned her head out. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, honey-dove. Your Rory.”

The window slammed shut.

“Again,” Rory said, motioning toward the remaining stones.

Luke rolled his eyes but did as his brother asked. It took three full minutes of steady rock throwing to get Kat to appear at the window again. “Would you go away! My father will kill you.”

“Not until you talk to me.”

“I do believe we’ve said all there is to say to one another.”

“Kat, please. It’ll just take a minute. Come downstairs. Look, what I have to say affects the baby.”

She hesitated, but Luke could tell Rory had chosen the right string to pull. Moments later, she nodded and closed the window. When she exited the house, Rory said, “You can excuse us, Luke.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

He considered Kat his sister-in-law, one way or another, and he decided he should stay around in case she needed protection.

She gave Luke an appreciative look, then turned to Rory. “If you’re looking for some frolic in the gazebo like your brother enjoyed, you are totally out of luck.”

“Frolic?” Rory asked.

“Never mind.” Kat folded her arms. “What do you want, Rory?”

If Mari had asked him that question, Luke would have responded,
You
. Rory, being Rory, said, “I went to the graveyard tonight. The cross is gone. What did you do with it, Kat?”

For a minute, Luke expected Kat to draw back and wallop Rory. Instead, her voice grew even chillier. “Let me see if I have this right. You show up on my doorstep uninvited. You don’t bother to ask me how I’m doing, or how your baby is doing. Instead, you ask me if I stole the stolen altar cross from you. Is that what you’re saying?”

Dumb, brother. Dumb
.

“Well, it’s not where I hid it, and it is worth a lot of money. You have the baby coming and all, so…”

“So, of course, I took it.” She braced her hands on her hips. “You really take the cake, Rory Callahan. It’s missing, so I took it. Like I haven’t had more important things to take care of during the past two weeks. Admitting to the Spring Palace fire. Explaining to every person I meet where I’ve been for the past four months. Trying not to see the disappointment painted on my parents’ faces over the fact that in a few months I’ll be giving birth to their first grandchild, a grandchild born out of wedlock.”

“Hey, about that. I have good news. I’m not married after all, so we can tie the knot.”

Kat shook her head in wonder. “Have you always been this senseless, and I simply didn’t see it? Was I that dazzled by your charm?”

Rory winked nervously at Luke. “Did you hear that? She thinks I’m charming.”

“Actually, I heard her say you’re downright stupid, and I quite agree.”

Kat laughed without amusement. “Listen to your brother, Rory. He’s smart. He also knows how to treat a woman. There was quite a difference between the way he greeted my sister tonight and the way you greeted me.” She sighed then, long and sadly. “I didn’t take your silly stolen cross, Rory. Either you told someone else what you did with it, or somebody else stumbled across it. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m tired and my doctor has advised me to get lots of rest. Stress-free rest. Good night.”

Luke watched Rory’s face as she turned to leave. “Somebody else,” his brother murmured. “The letter. But he’s so far away…”

At the doorway, Kat paused, moonlight painting her complexion ghostly pale. “By the way. About your oh-so-romantic proposal? I intend to think about it. I know how I want to respond, but I need to make certain it’s the best thing for my child.”

When Willow Hill’s back door shut behind her, Rory turned to Luke and gave a smug smile. “See? I told you she’ll forgive me. They always do.”

Luke shook his head sadly and headed back down the hill. “Maybe so, brother. However, I suspect that one of these days, you won’t be able to forgive yourself.”

CHURCH BELLS tolled eight o’clock as Mari turned onto Main Street and made her way toward Indulgences. She noted a stir among the women congregated in front of the dress shop that had advertised a sale beginning that morning. One lady carried a newspaper and two others peered over her shoulders, avidly reading. Wilhemina’s column, no doubt. “Kat, I hope you’re ready for this.”

Yesterday, three weeks after Luke and his brother returned to Fort Worth, that lying snake Rory held an interview with notorious gossip Wilhemina Peters for her newspaper column,
Talk About Town
. In an effort to force Kat’s hand in marriage, Rory had told the story of their elopement with a dramatic flair that had little to do with the truth.

The front-page scandal proved good for Mari’s business. When she opened the shop at nine, a half-dozen people were lined up outside the door. By noon, she’d sold a record number of chocolates and answered more questions than a kindergarten teacher. She hung the Closed sign on the doorknob, locked the door for her lunch break, and drew the window blinds with relief.

No sooner had she taken a seat at one of the shop’s tables and unwrapped her sandwich than she heard a rap on the back door. “I’m not expecting any deliveries,” she mused aloud.

Mari attempted to ignore the summons, but the knocking continued, grew louder and more insistent. “Grr…” Mari murmured.

She rose and peeked through the blinds. “Kat?”

She unlocked the door and her sister slipped inside.

Kat looked harried, her expression tired and drawn. Concerned, Mari slipped her arm around Kat’s waist and led her toward a chair. “Honey, are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m just…I decided to face the gossip head-on. I went to the general store and to Aunt Claire’s bakery and I even stopped by the Ladies’ Benevolent Society meeting. I have to tell you, Mari, Genevieve Broussard’s oatmeal cookies taste awful.”

“Are you sick to your stomach, then?”

“Yes, but not because of what I ate. Oh, Mari.” Kat sank into her chair and dropped her chin to her chest. “It’s just so hard. I could kill Rory Callahan!”

“I know, honey.”

“Did you read this morning’s paper?”

“I did, I’m afraid.”

“What a liar he is! ‘A minor legal technicality voided my marriage to Kat McBride and now she refuses to make an honest man out of me.’ Can you believe that drivel? A wife and son are a minor technicality?”

“I hate to say I’m not surprised by anything Rory does,” Mari replied.

“The swine. Have you noticed that every time Luke gives you a gift, Rory sends one to me? Luke brings you flowers, I get a bouquet. Luke writes you a love letter, Rory recites a love poem beneath my bedroom window. He’s not doing it because he wants me, you understand. It’s a contest. He doesn’t want Luke to win. That, and he thinks I have the blasted altar cross.”

“Honey, you need to calm down. This isn’t doing the baby any good.”

“I can’t calm down. He’s taken our private business public. To the cruel, awful public. Mari, when I left Willow Hill this morning, I knew to expect the stares and the catty remarks and the questions and suggestions, but I didn’t anticipate they’d bring up every mistake I’ve ever made. For the first time in my life, I understand your aversion to being called a McBride Menace.”

“Oh, Kat. I’m sorry.” Mari walked to the counter behind her display cases and poured her sister a glass of lemonade, then placed a selection of her best chocolates onto a plate. Carrying both to the table, she set them in front of Kat. “It was brave of you to face them.”

Kat sipped her lemonade. “I wanted to get it over with. I thought facing the worst of the gossip all at once would do the trick. I wanted to fight back, to give them my side of the story. As much of my side as I could bear and still live in Fort Worth, anyway. But when they bring up that prank the three of us played on the Butler boys when I was only six years old, it makes me realize that I’ll never live anything down, not in this town. Not even when I’m old and gray. Whether I bow to pressure and marry that charming, low-down snake or not, I’ll be hearing about this for the next fifty years.”

Mari helped Kat the only way she knew how. She pushed the plate toward her sister, saying, “Here, have a chocolate.”

Katrina chose two. “Luella Renfro was the worst. Can you believe she had the nerve to tell me to my face that my situation was all my fault because I pushed Rory Callahan into marriage? Like he wasn’t the one who asked me to elope? Like he wasn’t the one who conveniently forgot to mention that he already had a wife? A pregnant wife?”

“Luella Renfro is not a nice person.”

“No, she certainly is not. She turned her poisoned tongue on you and Emma, too. Can you believe that?”

“Emma! Emma hasn’t done anything worthy of ugly gossip.”

“That didn’t stop Luella. She said Emma has overstepped her authority with the Harrison children. She said she’s trying to usurp their mother’s role.”