Greta mentally pictured just that and felt her mood plummet even farther. “Exactly what I'm afraid of. They're going to be mortified when we tell them what we've done.”
Shane shrugged, his expression grim. “So much the better, wouldn't you say,” he queried in a low, surprisingly serious voice, “after the prank they played on us last night that landed us in the same bed?”
Greta thought about what it had been like to lie beneath a very naked, very virile Shane. It didn't matter how they had gotten there. Or why they had started to kiss the way they had. As long as she lived she would never forget his sexy kisses or the way his body felt pressed against hers. As long as she lived she would wish they had been able to take it all the way to fruition. But that wasn't the case now, nor would it ever be. Because she didn't make love with someone casually. Nor would she ever. For her making love was a commitment; not necessarily so for Shane. Hence, it was unlikely, despite their steamy start, they'd ever go all the way. And like it or not, she was going to have to live with that disappointment the rest of her life. “You're right,” Greta replied with a sigh. “That was low of our mothers.”
“Exactly.” Finished shaving, Shane wiped his face and playfully tapped the end of her nose. “Now you get a move on, too, Greta, darlin'. Our chariot of fate awaits.”
Â
WHEN GRETA AND SHANE ARRIVED, all four parents were already inside John and Lilah McCabe's sprawling stone-and-cedar ranch house, waiting. Shane wasted no
time in getting down to brass tacks. To Greta's chagrin, he said hello and told everyone about their elopement the previous evening in the same breath. Not surprisingly, his announcement caused the expected chaos.
“You did what?” Bart Wilson demanded, every inch of his five-eleven bearlike frame tensed and poised for battle. Dressed in a sport coat, starched shirt and tie, he was ready for work at his insurance agency in Laramie. He was also flushed beet-red from his neck to the roots of his white-blond hair.
“Got married,” Shane repeated patiently but politely, while Lilah and Tillie both hung on to their husbands, tightly gripping their forearms.
“M-a-r-r-i-e-d ”
He spelled it out.
John McCabe gave Shane a sharp look and shoved a hand through dark-brown hair threaded liberally with gray. “There's no need to spell, Shane.” John McCabe fixed his son with a penetrating gaze. “We know what you mean.”
Lilah threw up her hands as she regarded her youngest son. “Honestly, Shane! Of all theâ! I just can't believe you'd go off and do something so foolhardy!”
“That goes double for us!” Tillie Wilson cried, equally upset, her face almost as pink as her summer-weight sweater set. “Greta, for heaven's sake, what were the two of you thinking?”
Shane stepped in to wrap a protective arm about Greta's shoulders. “It's the only way I could figure to save Greta's reputation.” Shane gave his mother a telling look. “Of course, had I known Greta was staying at Wade's place last night, in advance of arriving there, if someone had just bothered to leave me a note on the front door or call me on my cell phone, I never would've
accidentally crawled into bed with her, never mind been naked at the time.”
Tillie fanned herself wildly, again looking as though she was going to faint. Bart eased her into a chair.
John McCabe closed the distance between himself and his son. “Are you being smart with us, son?” he demanded, and it appeared he wasn't above taking Shane to the woodshed then and there.
“No, sir, I am not.” Shane held his ground in the face of his father's wrath and continued to look completely ticked off. “I'm merely stating what everyone in Mom and Tillie's bridge club already knows. What the whole town of Laramieâif not the entire state of Texasâwill be privy to before breakfast is over. Unsavory as it may. be, we have to deal with the facts as they happened. Now, if it will make you all feel betterâ” Shane paused to look all four parents in the eye, one by one “âour hasty marriage has not been consummated just yet.”
“Thank heaven for small miracles,” Tillie and Lilah McCabe murmured in unison, exchanging commiserating glances and clasping hands.
“But,” Shane continued, “as soon as Greta makes up her mind to invite me back into her bed, that can be remedied.”
Greta flushed bright-red.
It was Bart Wilson's turn to step forward. Blond brows raised, he gave his only child a stern look. “What have you got to say for yourself, young lady?”
Maybe it was his tone, the fact he was treating her like some wayward teenager instead of a twenty-eighty-ear-old woman who'd just put together her own business, but. it rankled Greta.
“Did Shane push you into this?” Lilah McCabe demanded.
Her hand shook as she freshened everyone's coffee.
“No one talks Greta in to or out of anything,” Tillie Wilson stated emphatically, before thoughtfully biting her lower lip. “But it could very well have something to do with that rascal Beauregard Chamberlain.”
Shane blinked in amazement. Clearly he wasn't following. “What's that movie star got to do with Greta?” he demanded.
All four parents sighed and shook their heads. “Honey, where have you been?” Lilah said.
“Greta has been dating that blackguard for two whole years!” Tillie said. “He's taken her to every awards show there isâGolden Globes, Academy Awards, People's Choice. You name it. If Beauregard Chamberlain has been there in the past two years, so has Greta!”
Lilah nodded. “They've been on TV together at least two or three dozen times. In magazines and tabloids. Tillie even gave me a videotape of all the TV clips.”
Tillie turned back to Greta. “Honey, I know I told you to give that bounder a wake-up call when it came to marriage, but not this!”
“Mom, I told you!” Extricating herself from Shane's lightly possessive arm, Greta took a seat on one end of the sofa and explained, “Beau is not the marrying kindânot anymoreânot since his divorce.”
Bart looked at Greta in stunned amazement, trying to make sense of what his daughter had said. “So this elopement of yours is a rebound thing then?”
“No!” Greta cried, leaning forward and wringing her hands together in frustration. “Beau and I are just friends! I've told you guys that a hundred times, at the very least!”
Shane frowned but was silent as he sat down on the arm of the sofa, next to Greta.
“That's not what the tabloids and all the magazines say,” Tillie argued. “They say you're one of the hottest couples going, and the reason you've left Los Angeles is because Beau wouldn't marry you.”
Greta planted her palms on either side of her head, as if she were losing her mind. “But that's not what I say,” Greta repeated, even less patiently.
“What do you say?” Shane asked, ever so casually, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I say I better try and call Beau and let him know what's happened before he finds out some other way,” Greta muttered as she leaped off the sofa and rushed into the hall.
Unfortunately he wasn't in. The best she could do was leave a message for Beau to call her. All too aware everyone was waiting for her, and that thus far nothing had gone as they'd planned, she hung up and returned to the group gathered in the McCabe living room. “I forgot how early it is out there,” she said, “barely the crack of dawn.”
“Forget the different time zones!” her father fumed. “Did you or did you not pull thisâthis stunt just to get Beauregard Chamberlain's attention?” he demanded.
Greta sighed, wondering what it would take to show her parents that she was an adult, fully capable of living her own life without their constant commentary and interference. “No, Dad. Beau had nothing to do with what went on last night.” Greta looked at her father, then her mother, then Shane's parents, before finishing heavily, “What went on last nightâwhat is going on here this morningâonly has to do with Shane and with me.”
SHANE WISHED he could believe that. Maybe if past experience hadn't taught him to question when a woman claimed she and the man she constantly spent time with were just friends, he would have believed it. But as it was, he was suddenly full of doubts. As was everyone else in the room.
“You didn't answer my question,” Lilah said gently. “Did Shane push you into this?”
“No. Shane did not coerce me into anything.”
Although
, Shane thought,
I
might
have
tempted
her.
“Then why,” Bart roared, incensed, “would you go off and do such a reckless, foolhardly thing, instead of turning to me and your mama to make everything better and get you out of this mess?”
How about the fact she's a grown woman, perfectly capable of running her own life and obviously has been for some time, Shane thought.
“Because I don't need you and Mama to make everything better, Daddy,” Greta told her father hotly, with so much gumption it was all Shane could do not to stand up and cheer her on. “I can do that for myself!”
“Not like thisâ” Bart pointed to the marriage license and certificate they'd brought with them for proof “âyou can't!”
John McCabe held up a hand, commanding everyone to silence. He looked at Lilah, Bart and Tillie. “Maybe Shane has a point here,” John said quietly.
At last!
Shane thought.
Someone is finally listening.
The other adults turned to John, gaping in astonishment.
John continued with typical McCabe self-assurance, “A hasty marriage isn't what any of us would have wanted for Greta and Shaneâ”
You're right about that too, Dad
, Shane thought, as
the other three parents in the room murmured their assent.
“But now that they've gone and done it,” John McCabe continued firmly, “I think we ought to let them stick with it. And try and make this marriage of theirs work.”
Chapter Three
“T
hat's the last time I let you play John Wayne,” Greta fumed as she and Shane smiled and waved and drove away, several minutes later.
“What do you mean?” Shane asked, slanting her an astonished glance. “I thought it went very well.”
Greta blinked at the happiness glittering in his eyes. “Are you completely loco or did you just fall down at the rodeo too many times?” She turned toward him as much as her seat belt would allow. “They've decided they like the fact we ran off and eloped. At J. P. Randall's Bait and Tackle shop, no less!”
His large hands circling the wheel, Shane shrugged off her concern. “Ah, they're just pulling our chains, trying to make us cry uncle first.” He predicted with a wicked smile.
Greta drew a bolstering breath. “Well, it's working!”
“Maybe for you,” Shane drawled, continuing to radiate a distinctly male satisfaction. “Not for me.”
Greta shook her head and tugged her fingers through her hair, pushing the heavy length of it off her face. “Meaning?” she prodded mercilessly.
Shane's jaw set. “They haven't learned their lesson yet about interfering in our lives. If they had, they
wouldn't still be calling us onto the carpet and telling us what to do!”
Much as Greta didn't want to admit it, Shane had a point about that. They were a little too old to be getting lectures from their parents on the state of their love lives. Any mistakes they made these days were theirs to make and pay for, no one else's. And that was a rule she'd still like to drive home to them. “So what are you suggesting we do now?” Greta asked impatiently as they bumped along the gravel road leading to the highway back to town.
Shane squinted against the rising morning sun and reached up to pull a pair of aviator-style sunglasses from the visor. He opened them with one hand and slid them on, managing in that one instant to look sexier and more emotionally unapproachable than ever. “I'm suggesting,” he said slowly as he turned to give her an enigmatic look, “that we play along until they cry uncle and promise never to interfere in our lives again.”
“How long do you think that'll take?”
“Trust me.” Jaw set, he stared at the road straight ahead. “If we play our cards right, they'll be begging us to get an annulment by the end of the week.”
Wonderful
, Greta thought. “And in the meantime?” she asked dryly, amazed at Shane's ability to keep his cool in the face of so much familial angst. But then, he'd grown up that way, always getting himself in and out of one scrape after another. Whereas she rarely, if ever, did anything to upset her parents in the slightest, even if it meant forgetting all about what
she
wanted and concentrating only on what
they
wanted for her.
“Until then, we keep to our plan and prove together in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we are about as mismatched a couple as they come. After a while our
families will stop wanting us to be a cute couple. They'll be relieved when we split. And not at all inclined to match either of us with anyone again, which will in turn leave us free to pursue our own lives exactly as we pleaseâwithout comment from our folksâexactly as we should've been doing for years now,” he finished stubbornly.
Was his convoluted logic beginning to make sense? Greta wondered uneasily. Or had she simply gone loco, too? With a great deal of effort Greta forced her mind back to even more important matters they had yet to touch on. “Normally, Shane, that would be fine,” she told him. “Unfortunately I have a reputation to maintain.”
Shane slanted her a bad-boy smile that was enough to make her stomach drop. “That's what I thought we were workin' on, Greta, darlin,” he teased in a soft, sexy voice that had her tingling all over.
And it was then Greta knew she couldn't even think about ever kissing him again. Because if she did, there was no telling what would happen.
“A
professional
reputation,” Greta said. “You may not have heard, but I've just bought a business. My dinner and dance hallâ”
“The Lone Star Dance Hall, right?”
“Right.” Greta nodded, then continued. “It's opening on Saturday night.”
Shane shrugged his broad shoulders, unconcerned. “And I close on my new horse ranch later this afternoonif all the paperwork is in order by then and I suspect it will be.”
Her new “husband” wasn't the first person not to take her seriously but by golly he was sure going to be the
last. Greta's lips set stubbornly. “I don't want to lose any bookings because of this.”
“You need publicity to open a place like that, don't you?”
“Of course.” She twisted the wedding band on her left hand, hating the cheap insubstantial feel of it even as she relished the memory of their wildly exciting escapade the night before.
“And publicity is expensive?” Shane persisted in that excessively smooth, practical tone that always preceded one of his misadventures.
Greta regarded Shane cautiously, aware it would be all too easy to get hopelessly caught up in whatever Shane was planning next. To her own detriment, of course. Determined not to let him get her into any scrape she couldn't handle, Greta calmly answered his question about publicity. “Some types are...like radio and newspaper advertising.” She'd done a limited amount already, but unfortunately her budget had fallen far short of what she would have liked to do.
“Think of all the free publicity our elopement will get you,” Shane continued enthusiastically as he reached over and gave her bare knee a warm, companionable squeeze. “Everyone's going to be talking about it. And everyone's gonna want to get a gander at the two of us.”
Greta plucked his warm, callused handâwhich was causing far too many tingles just sitting thereâfrom her skin and set it on his own. “You think they'd show up at Greta's just to see us?”
“Oh, yeah.” Shane braked as they approached the turn-off from the main highway to a less-traveled ranch road. “Come opening night,” Shane predicted boldly,
“I think it's gonna take a fire marshal to keep the crowds away.”
Greta wasn't so sure about that. She did know if they were in for a penny, they were in for a pound. Like it or not, it was simply too late to back out now, she thought, as she passed the drilling platform the Wyatt Oil company had erected. Greta sighed as Shane bypassed several large fields, filled with yellow grass and wildflowers, and a large grove of scrub oak and cedar, before turning his pickup into the lane leading to his brother's Golden Slipper Ranch. Greta frowned contemplatively. “It would seem we have a lot.of work to do.”
Shane nodded his agreement as he circled around the barn and parked beside her car. “We better get started.”
Â
“SHANE MCCABE, what are you doing back so soon?” Lilah asked several hours later when she caught him standing in front of the cabinet that held their collection of videotapes. “And where's Greta?”
Shane bit back an oath of frustration. He'd assumed his mother would be at the hospital now, where she was busy turning over the reins to Meg Lockhart, the Laramie Community Hospital's newest nursing supervisor.
Or, at the very least, planning the repeat of her wedding vows to his dad or their retirement or second honeymoon. Something! Instead she was here at the ranch, catching him red-handed. Masking his discomfort, he continued studying the vast collection of tapes in front of him, most of which were not clearly marked.
“She's working,” he said finally.
“Today?” Lilah McCabe pulled on her favorite white cardigan over her blue nurse's uniform and made no effort to hide her surprise. “When you just got married last night?”
Shane deliberately kept his gaze from his mother's gentle countenance. He shrugged. “Her Lone Star Dinner and Dance Hall opens on Saturday night. She has a lot to do to get ready for it.”
A beat of silence followed. “Then, shouldn't you be there helping her?” Lilah persisted as she paused to put on her name tag and badge.
Shane knew a golden opportunity to prove himself unworthy of his new bride when he saw it. And since that was the plan, he did his best to look dumfounded. “It never occurred to me.”
Lilah's brows knit together in a disapproving frown. Shane felt a lecture about how to treat a lady coming on. He circumvented it with a change of subject. “Greta wanted to see the videotape of her and Beauregard Chamberlain.”
Lilah gave him a look that let Shane know he hadn't fooled his mother for one single second. About that or anything else. “Greta wants to see it or you do?” Lilah asked dryly.
When he was up to something, his mom had always been able to read him like a book.
Right now Shane did not want his thoughtsâor feelingsâread. “We both would,” he said simply, figuring it didn't do any good to deny his curiosity. Lilah would see right through it, anyway. “She was gonna tell me all about himâthemâwhatever.” At least she would when he asked.
“Hmm.” Lilah plucked the requested tape off the shelf and handed it over to him.
“Don't let me keep you,” Shane said politely, hoping to hurry his mother along.
“I don't have to be anywhere just yet,” Lilah replied, just as smoothly.
Knowing he didn't have all day, as he had other things to do, too, and that if he wanted to watch the tape he'd have to watch it here since Wade did not have a VCR at his place, Shane switched on the VCR and popped the tape in.
“Should I make some popcorn?” Lilah asked sarcastically.
Shane wasted no time calling his mother's bluff. “Actually, Ma, that'd be great,” Shane quipped as his lips formed his most devil-may-care smile. “Some lemonade, too, if you wouldn't mind.” Seeing as how he and Greta hadn't stopped to eat breakfast, he was a little hungry in any case.
Lilah rolled her eyes. “I'll fix you a sandwich,” she said in a knowing tone of voice. Before Shane could comment, she was gone.
Relieved, Shane hit the play button on the remote. To his frustration the videotape had barely started to roll when Shane's older brother, Travisâa successful cattle rancher who should never have been there at that time of a day, eitherâstrode in, dressed as always in the plainest blue chambray shirt a person could find and work-worn jeans.
“What are you doing here?” Shane grumbled as the TV screen showed Greta on Beauregard Chamberlain's arm at the Golden Globes two years ago. They were walking up the carpet, photographers and film crews on either side of them. Fans screamed in the background. Greta looked incredibly beautiful in a low-cut, beaded gold dress that showed off her dancer's figure to stunning advantage. Her long blond hair floated over her shoulders and down her back in long, sexy waves. She looked stunning and completely at ease in a way she never had back in high school when he'd known her.
Travis frowned and slapped his dusty hat against his thigh. “I'm here to ask Mom's advice on some flowers for a friend.”
“What friend?”
“Annie Pierce. She and her three boys just moved back to Laramie. She's taking over the ranch her dad left her. I figured I should do something to welcome her.”
Maybe. But flowers? That didn't sound like the Travis he knew. “You sweet on her?” Shane cut right to the chase.
Travis gave Shane a quelling look. “I'm just being neighborly, that's all.”
Unable to resistâit was rare his serious older brother gave him anything to tease him aboutâShane drawled, “Funny, I don't recall you sending any of your other neighbors flowers.”
Travis frowned and slapped his Stetson back on his head, tugging it down low over his eyes. “That's cause they're all men and it'd look a little funny.”
“I'll say!”
Travis shot a look at the TV screen, which was now showing Greta with Beauregard Chamberlain at the Academy Awards the previous spring. “So it's true,” Travis murmured, immediately seeing all, as most older brothers could. He reached over and tapped the cheap dime-store wedding ring on Shane's left hand. “The two of you did elope last night.”
“How'd you hear?” Shane demanded, incensed that Travis had all the details so quickly.
“Jackson,” Travis replied. Shane's other brother. “How'd he hear?” Shane demanded, as Greta and Beau appeared onscreen again looking equally as glamorous.
“From Dad, at the hospital.” Travis sat on the cushioned
arm of the sturdy, brown leather sofa that had seen all four of the McCabe sons through their adolescence, into adulthood.
Lilah came in, carrying a tray with a brisket sandwich layered thick with beef and barbecue sauce, an apple, and a glass of icy lemonade. “A sandwich at this hour?” Travis asked, studying the contents of the tray.