Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (41 page)

But maybe she'd always secretly loved him. Maybe the feelings had started on that Saturday night long ago, when he'd caught her swinging on the gate, waiting eagerly to pass judgment on Caitlin's new beau.

"Well, I reckon that's it, then." He turned to her, his packing finished, and tipped back his hat with his thumb. In the golden brilliance of the morning sun, he looked like he was made of bronze and copper, his cheeks sporting the tiniest hint of chestnut stubble to match the gleaming curl that spilled across his brow. He smiled at her, a flash of dazzling teeth and disarming dimples, and his eyes took on an earthy glow.

She knew that look. She knew that smile. She gazed upon him as dispassionately as her twisting heart would let her.

"I reckon this is good-bye," he prompted when she made no move to obey his silent summons. He held out his arms.

Her throat constricted.

She imprinted his image on her memory for all the days to come: the white, breeze-riffled shirt; the fluttering red bandanna; the faded jeans and weathered chaps; the sun-darkened hands. They reached for her as if they actually cared about what they were leaving behind. She wondered if his heart did too.

She drew a ragged breath.
This might be the last time he'll ever offer to hold you,
her female side screamed.
What are you waiting for? Run to him. Kiss him! Plant your memory on his lips and his brain. Make him want to come back, baby or no.

She blinked against the sting of tears. She wanted him to come back, yes, but not because she gave him sexual favors.

"Have a safe journey, Zack," she said quietly, and turned to walk away.

* * *

The cramping began late Thursday.

At first, Bailey tried to ignore the telltale sign. She told herself she'd just strained a muscle reaching into the sheep-dipping vat to haul out Pokey, who, clumsy little mischief-maker that he was, had toppled into it.

Then, when the pains returned after dinner, she desperately tried to convince herself she was suffering a stomachache from her own attempts to cook chili. After all, pinto beans were notoriously rough to digest.

By dawn on Friday, though, all the excuses, all the rationalizations, were futile wastes of energy. The proof could no longer be denied. Old faithful had come right on time.

White-lipped and red-eyed, she stared at her naked reflection in her full-length mirror. The tears she had shed at the first sign of spotting had left her looking wan, ghostly pale. She barely recognized herself. Nothing had changed, and yet everything was different. She wasn't a mother.

She'd lost Zack.

How could her body do this to her? The one thing it was good for—the
only
thing—was making babies, and it had failed to hold Zack's seed. She wanted to scream and rant. She wanted to throw things, shoot things, break the damned mirror—anything that would take away the agonizing knowledge that tomorrow, when he returned to take her dancing, she would have to set him free.

He doesn't have to know right away,
a nasty little voice whispered inside her.
If the dance goes especially well, maybe, just maybe, he'll want to mate with you again. Then you'd have him for at least another month....

She shuddered. God forgive her. Even her mother hadn't stooped that low.

"It's over," she told her reflection, ignoring the fresh tears as they rolled down her face. "He's no fool, and neither are you. You both deserve better."

You both deserve love.

She turned away on shaking legs. A sob bubbled up in her throat, and even the hand she pressed to her mouth couldn't stifle the sound.

She heard a worried whine.

"Pokey," she whispered brokenly.

The puppy's ears pricked. He scrambled out of the lumpy depression that had engulfed him on Boo's old, fur-sprinkled pillow, and hurried toward her, his tail wagging. She curled her toes against the floorboards when she saw his soulful gaze fixed so anxiously on her face. Without Zack to distract him these last five days, the puppy had finally started coming to her for love.

Stooping, she pulled the baby into her arms and buried her face in his fur. "You're all I have left of him now," she whispered thickly.

He whimpered and tried to lick her cheek.

On tremulous legs, she began pacing, trying to form a coherent plan. Pokey's furry warmth was a comfort against her breasts, but even he couldn't take the aching loneliness away. Zack's presence still haunted her room. She gazed glassily around her at the discoloration on the floorboards, where she had stood dripping beside him the night of the storm; at the blackened hearth, where the ashes still remained from the fire he'd lighted to warm her; at the rumpled linens of the bed, where he'd loved her so thoroughly that she'd thought heaven couldn't compare to the sheer pleasure of his possession.

And yet his possession had never taken hold. For the first time in her life, she asked God why she couldn't have been more of a woman.

He gave her no answer.

Dashing away fresh tears, she halted before her rocker. Her porcelain doll was waiting there in its petticoats and lace, waiting patiently, as it had done these past fourteen years, for her to give it the attention her father used to deny her. She smiled mirthlessly, setting Pokey down to pick up the doll. Its china-blue eyes and blond ringlets could just as easily have been hers at an earlier age.

Mac had gifted her with the doll on her eighth birthday, the same birthday on which her daddy had given her boy-sized chaps and spurs. Mac had never said so, but she knew he'd saved for months to buy her the peaches-and-cream porcelain creation that most eight-year-old girls would have killed for. Someday, he'd told her gravely, after she was finished being her daddy's boy, he would like to see her wear a dress like her baby doll wore.

She blinked tearfully over the doll's head at the newly sewn columbine-blue dress hanging in her open armoire. It was the dancing gown she'd had fashioned to please Zack. Maybe she should have fashioned it to please Mac instead.

Regrets and wishes, hopes and failures, a hundred jumbled memories of childhood tumbled through her mind. Throughout all the joys and sorrows, Mac had stood beside her. Maybe she should have listened to common sense, not her silly heart, and accepted his proposal.

Mac was a good man. A kind man. When Zack left her, Mac would still be her rock, her adviser, her friend. A woman could do worse than share her bed with her best friend.

A woman could do worse than marry Mac.

The day inched by, hour after hour of unbearable heat and hellish loneliness. After a late lunch, she dragged herself outside to sit in the shade of the back porch, waiting for what seemed like forever for Mac to return from his weekly visit to the post office and general store. He was late. She was nervous. The combination was making her stomach roil.

Again and again she went over the speech she'd prepared. She'd come to her senses. She'd been living a pipe dream. She wanted to accept his proposal, if he was still willing to have her as his wife. The reason to marry Zack no longer existed.

She'd never proposed a business arrangement quite like this, but her friendship with Mac was a loving one, and she was sure he'd see the sense of her plan. He respected her. He valued her opinion. He treated her like an equal rather than a conquest. She felt certain she could get used to him as her partner in bed, just as she had learned to accept him in business. After all, she'd lived her entire twenty-two years with him. She knew what to expect.

The sun limned the canyon, turning the walls a fiery orange-red, and Bailey spied the first puffs of dust that heralded a visitor. Soon her mule's plodding silhouette could be detected along with the bump and sway of a buckboard.

Mac was coming home. He was almost there.

Restlessly, she wandered toward the barn, Pokey trotting in her wake. Their passage distracted Pris from her daily harassing of the geese, and she caught up with them at the bridge. Bailey tried to imagine the rest of her life: rocking on the back porch, waiting for Mac. She wondered if he'd ever chase her through the rain. She wondered if they'd have children....

"Whoa."

She waved as he reined in and waited for him to step to the ground. Dust covered every inch of his thickset frame. He slapped a layer or two off with his hat.

"Is everything all right, lass?" he asked, alerted to her unease, no doubt, by the uncharacteristic wringing of her hands. She hastily stuck them inside her back pockets.

"Yep." She pasted on a smile. "Are you hungry?"

"A wee bit."

When he circled around the mule and rested his hand on its sweaty neck, she tried for the time being not to think how little his pluglike fingers resembled Zack's.

"A letter was posted to ye."

"It was?" Momentarily distracted from her proposition and her nerves, she eagerly stepped forward. "Did it come from Kansas City?"

"Actually..." He leaned over the driver's seat to rummage in his carpetbag. When he straightened, he was holding an envelope. "It came from Boston."

Lucinda.
Bailey stiffened.

"You know better than to bring her trash back here," she said through clenched teeth.

"She's written ye a dozen letters over as many months, lass. Ye really should think about opening one."

Bailey snorted. As if she cared what was happening in her mother's life. Lucinda had a lot of nerve writing letters.

"What if she's sick? And trying to make peace?" Mac prompted, pushing the letter toward her again.

"That's what doctors and priests are for," Bailey retorted. "Get rid of it."

Mac cocked his head, his gray eyes wise and discerning. "I'll put it in the box with all the rest."

"Makes no difference to me."

He nodded, but a mirthless smile curved his lips as he unhitched the mule and led her inside the barn.

Bailey fidgeted, her outrage ebbing as quickly as the tidal wave had struck. Marriage was just another business arrangement, she told herself staunchly. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Mac?" She followed him into the barn, wishing she weren't so damned nervous. Better yet, she wished she had more time before the Woolgrowers meeting to sit with Mac and discreetly broach the subject. Just how did one propose to a man anyway?

"Do... you have time for dinner before the meeting?" she asked, praying that Zack wouldn't change his mind and return a day early to ride with Mac, before she could properly frame her marriage question.

"I willna be going to the meeting, lass." His gaze slid toward her before he hung the feed bag for the mule. "I have to be about my packing."

"Packing?"

"Aye. I'll be leaving in the morning."

Her brows knitted. He'd never said anything about leaving. "For where?"

"Maggie's ranch. It seems the Rio Grande hasn't been quite as good to that Basque husband of hers as they were hoping. His consumption is getting worse."

Bailey sucked in her breath. "Oh, no, Mac. Why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged, concentrating on the curry brush he was running over the mule's charcoal hide. "Ye had other things on yer mind."

She felt her cheeks burn. God forgive her. Between the wire cutters, the rodeo, One Toe, and Zack, she hadn't been paying much attention to Mac of late. Now she understood why he'd been so diligent about his trips to the post office.

"I'm sorry," she whispered hoarsely. "I had no idea."

"Of course not, lass. I dinna tell ye."

"No, I mean... I'm sorry I wasn't around when you needed me."

His brush strokes faltered for the tiniest fraction of time. Then he donned his classic Rock-of-Gibraltar expression. "There's nothing ye could have done," he said gravely. "And I willna have ye talking on the guilt."

Dear Mac. So strong, so selfless, while she'd been a heel.

"What can I do now?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Let me go."

The quiet request hit her like a sledgehammer. There was an underlying finality in those simple words, one she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge.

"L-let you go? Well, of course. You have to go to them. How long do you think you'll be gone?"

"I willna be coming back, lass."

Her knees quaked, and she dug her fingers into the stall door beside her. Surely she hadn't heard him right.

"Is he... that bad off?"

Mac's gaze held hers for a heartbeat, no more, before it flickered away. "Bad enough."

She swallowed. He'd confirmed her suspicions. He wasn't leaving because of his brother-in-law. He was leaving because of Zack.

"Mac, don't do this—"

"It's time to go, lass. I promised ye a year. It's been two."

"But I need you!"

"Maggie needs me, lass. You have Zack."

Her chin trembled. Ashamed, she hung her head.
Mac doesn't deserve to be torn,
she told herself harshly.
You've bungled everything, and now it's time to grow up. Be a man. Face the consequences.

"I'll miss you," she whispered.