Shane grinned at the reminder as he sipped his tea. “You're right.” His gloom faded abruptly and his eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Uh-oh. What are you thinking, Shane?” Greta asked, knowing by his slow, thoughtful smile that he was up to something again.
Shane helped himself to more of the delicious enchilada casserole. “Maybe it's time we made a point about any future actions like this.”
“And how would we do thatâconvince them that it's a bad idea to interfere in our marriage?” Greta took a bite of the delicious chicken, cheese, corn tortillas, sour cream and green chiles mixture. It melted on her tongue. And even more unhappily, put her own cookingâwhich she'd yet to share with Shaneâto shame.
Shane shrugged his broad shoulders restlessly. Still regarding her intently, he waggled his eyebrows at her
in a teasing manner. “By dramatizing our displeasure and staging a giant newlywed spat, of course.”
Â
“I DON'T THINK I'm going to be able to do this,” Greta said an hour and a half later as they parked in front of Jackson and Lacey McCabe's home in downtown Laramie. After doing the dishes together, both of them had showered and dressed for an evening out. Shane was wearing a clean pair of jeans, dress boots and a nicely pressed fancy blue-and-black Western shirt. Greta was wearing delicate white sandals and a long white-and-yellow floral print sundress that showed off her shoulders and back. They looked like a very respectable young couple. Too respectable, in fact, for what they were planning.
“Sure you can.” Never one to dwell on the negatives of any situation, Shane reached over and gave her knee a friendly pat through the smooth cotton fabric of her dress. “Just be your usual sweet, sassy self. And I'll be the bad guy. I've had plenty of experience doing that.”
He wasn't giving himself nearly enough credit. “But I'm no good at lying,” Greta protested.
“Then you'll just have to trust me to get you genuinely ticked off, won't you?”
Prophetic words, Greta decided short minutes later, as she smiled at her husband like some bright, overeager kindergarten teacher.
No sooner had they walked in the door, than Shane began his merciless assault, swaggering around as if he were heaven's gift to women in general and her in particular and tweaking her about anything and everything that came to mind.
“We all hear you got some help setting up house,”
Jackson said. His arm around his new bride, Lacey, Jackson looked supremely happy.
“Good thing, too,” Shane drawled. He smiled at her guilelessly in a way clearly meant to provoke. “âCause Greta hereâgood as she is at kicking up her heels on the dance floorâprobably never would have gotten around to it.”
“Shane McCabe!” Lilah admonished in shock, astonished at the merciless way her youngest son was egging his new bride on.
“It's true,” Shane said. “I didn't realize how undomestic Greta was till we got home tonight and had that delicious dinner waiting for us. She didn't even know she had to have a pot holder to get the dish out of the oven. If I hadn't been there to stop her, she would've burned her hand.”
Guffaws abounded as Greta gave Shane a look. “So I don't know much about cooking,” Greta admitted with an indifferent shrug that had Shane's three brothers chuckling all the more. “I think the man should pitch in around the kitchen, anyway.”
“Not in our marriage,” Shane said.
Greta gave him a fiesty smile. “Want to bet?”
“Now, now,” Tillie said, waving her hands nervously. “Of course Greta will cook, once she gets her business up and running and the two of you get settled in, won't you, dear?”
“Why should I?” Greta returned, still holding Shane's gaze. She let out an aggravated sigh and continued a great deal more petulantly than she felt, “He's likely to make fun of anything I serve him, anyway.”
“No, honey, he won't,” Lilah McCabe said hastily, attempting to smooth things over.
Shane smirked and made no effort to do anything that
would lessen his bad-boy rep one iota. “Sure I will.” Shane reeled her in to his side and imprisoned her in the circle of his arms. “If it deserves to be made fun of. But you've got one thing right, Greta, honey,” he drawled, holding her even tighter as he gave her a completely uncalled-for smack on the bottom, “like every other woman on this earth, you were put here to serve your man. And that being the case, I'll expect you toâ
ow
!” He looked down at her elbow as he made a big show of rubbing his ribs. “Now, honey, that hurt.”
Not half as bad as she wished it had. Sorry she'd ever agreed to come here with him tonight, and even sorrier she'd let him enact his plan to stage a newlywed spat for everyone to see, she loosened her hold on her temper, stepped back and slammed her hands on her hips. “And that's not all that's going to hurt if you don't stop with the male chauvinist behavior.”
Shane gave her one of his
Who, me?
looks. “What male chauvinist behavior?” Shane asked innocently.
“Smacking me on the bottom, for one thing!” she retorted, as the gazes of everyone in the room snapped to her, then to Shane and back again. “Pretending I'm ever going to exist only to serve you
just
because you happen to be my husband, for another!”
Shane's brothers were openly nudging each other and guffawing now.
Their mission accomplished, Greta was sure he would privately blame the tension on the familial interference and cease and desist.
She should have known better.
Shane wasn't about to be left looking like an idiot in front of his brothers. Never mind a
hen-pecked
idiot.
“That's not what you said the other night,” Shane declared, fabricating merrily as he went along. He
wrapped his arms snugly around her waist and tugged her against him once again, so they were touching chests, tummies and thighs. “In fact,” he said, his voice becoming a husky murmur as he ran his hands up and down her spine, “you not only said you'dâ” he paused to kiss the shell of her ear “âyou actually wanted me to...”
Okay, Greta thought, that did it. It was time this cowboy was brought to heel, family audience or no.
“Ouch!” Letting her go, Shane hopped around comically on one foot and rubbed the other where she'd stomped on it. “Now, Greta, honey, you gotta start watching where you're putting your heels and elbows,” Shane cautioned loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“Gladly,” Greta snapped right back. And knowing exactly where she wanted them to go, she turned on her heel and walked out.
Â
“YOU CAN START SPEAKING TO me anytime now,” Shane said as he parked his pickup in front of the ranch house and came around to help her out.
Mindful of the difficulty of getting in and out of the truck gracefully when wearing a dress, Greta gathered the long, swirling skirt of her sundress with one hand and braced her other on the door Shane was holding. “To make that possible, I'd have to
want
to speak to you,” she told him haughtily. Ignoring the hand he offered, she jumped down. “I don't.”
He caught her around the waist, steadying her, as her delicate sandals hit the ground. “You're not still mad at me for kissing your ear and smacking you on the bottom?”
Greta shrugged off his warmly possessiveâeven tenderâgrip. “As a matter of fact,” she told him even
more haughtily, knowing she still wanted to sock him for his hopelessly outdated, totally chauvinistic, behavior, “I am.”
Half of his mouth quirked up in typical insolent fashion. “Never happened before, huh?”
Greta did her best to look down her nose at himânot easy when he was a good four inches taller than she was. “Not without me completely decking the offender,” she told him sweetly.
“Now that would have been sexy!”
Greta stormed inside, switching on lights as she went, and headed for the kitchen. “And in front of both sets of parents and all your brothers and their wives, too!”
Shane trailed after her lazily. “I thought we'd agreed we were going to make it look good!”
“We did that, all right.” Greta jerked open the refrigerator and pulled out a can of cherry soda.
Shane spread his hands wide. “So?”
Greta rolled her eyes as she slammed the refrigerator with her foot. “So did you have to enjoy it so much? And don't deny itâyou loved every second of being the lout!”
Shane helped himself to a soda, too. “Only because it brought so much color to your cheeks.” He popped the top and licked the fizz before it bubbled over onto the side. “I haven't had so much fun teasing a girl since recess in third grade.”
Greta jerked her glance away from the sensual motions of his tongue. “Well, I hope you enjoyed it because I am not going to give you a chance to do it again!” she said sullenly, pulling out a chair.
Shane sat down across from her. He tossed his hat onto the table and stretched his long legs out in front of
him. “Hey, come on. You knew I was just teasing, even if no one else did.”
Greta popped the top so quickly it bubbled over in an explosion of fizz. Swearing at the mess she had just made, she got up to get a dishcloth. “Too bad I wasn't teasing,” she grumbled bad-temperedly as she dampened the cloth at the sink.
“What do you mean?”
Greta shut off the water with a snap of her wrist, wrung out the cloth, then returned to the table. “I mean I'm not cooking for youâever.”
Shane sipped his cherry soda indolently. “Did I ask you to cook?”
“Noâ” Greta wiped the table and then her can with quick angry strokes “âbut it was very clear we were headed that way.”
“And how did you figure that?”
Greta threw down her cloth. “Because I've been here before, that's why!”
Â
SHANE NEARLY CHOKED on his soda. “You've been married?” He did a double take.
“Engaged.” Ignoring the ladylike thingâwhich would have been to get a glassâGreta lifted her can to her lips.
“To whom?” Shane demanded, peculiarly upset by the news. He straightened abruptly, his feet hitting the floor with a thud. “Not Bucklehead Chamberwaist?” he declared.
“No, not to
Beauregard Chamberlain,”
Greta replied in utter exasperation, not sure why she had even started this. “To a guy named Walter.”
Her revelation did not soothe Shane in the slightest. “Who's he?”
“A wealthy businessman I got involved with when I was still living in Dallas.”
“Let me guess.” Shane's lips curled cynically. “He met you when you were a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.”
“Bingo.”
Shane thought about that for a second. “Do you always date rich guys?”
“No.” Greta sat down across from Shane again. “And for the record I didn't even know Walter had money when we started dating.”
Shane's eyes gentled. “How did you meet?”
Greta's glance dropped to Shane's hand and the way he was running his thumb and index finger around the rim of the can in absent, circular motions. “At the children's hospital.” With effort, she tore her glance from the soothing ministrations of his hand. “I was doing volunteer work there in my spare time. He was helping with a fund-raiser. Several dates later, I found out his family had just donated a new wing of the hospital, but I didn't know that when I started going out with him. When he said he sold cars for a living, I thought he meant at a car lot, not owned a string of dealerships all through Texas.
“Anyway, it was a whirlwind courtship. I was so busy with the football games and other events, and the rehearsals for them, plus I was teaching dance lessons to children in a studio there in the off season and volunteering every second I could at the children's hospital, I didn't really have time to think. When Walter proposed at Christmas about two months after we started dating, I just said yes.” Which had been just about the biggest mistake of her life, as it had turned out, Greta remembered.
“Your parents must have been happy,” Shane observed.
“They were thrilled.” Greta noticed Shane's nimble fingers had gone completely still. Greta shook her head and sighed. “All my mother could say was âWhat a catch!'” Remembering, she felt an arrow of pain lance her heart. “You know how they always wanted me to be competitive.” Shane nodded, his expression sympathetic. “Well, finally I'd done something no other young woman my age in Laramie had doneâlanded herself a multimillionaire for a prospective husband.”
Shane took another sip of his soda. He probably would have heard all about this if he'd ever shown any interest in local gossip, but he hadn't. “What happened to break the two of you up?” he asked in a low, curious tone.