Promises Keep (The Promise Series) (52 page)

“It’s the way they’re brought up.” Millicent threw in her two cents. “All their lives they’re told what delicate, fragile creatures we are. From day one, some older man is impressing upon them how women don’t have a brain in their head, how it’s always the man’s responsibility to take care of his woman.”

“Makes for an awful load of guilt,” Dorothy sighed. “I almost lost Doc that way.”

“Doc? But he told me he asked you to marry him.”

“Ha! He would like you to believe that, but truth be told, I had to compromise that proposal out of him.”

“But he loved you.”

“Sure he did, but he had it in his head that he wasn’t good enough for me. He wouldn’t listen to a word I said, so I climbed through his hotel window and then screamed blue murder for the manager.”

“You didn’t,” Millicent laughed.

Dorothy shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Sometimes a woman has got to take matters into her own hands.”

“Which,” Pearl hastened to interrupt, “is exactly what Mara is going to have to do.”

“I agree.”

“Me, too.”

Mara stared at her three conspirators cautiously. “Just what do you suggest I do?”

“If Cougar’s got it in his head that he’s responsible for you losing that baby, it’s going to have to be pretty drastic.”

Millicent agreed with Pearl. “How’s your stomach girl?”

Mara touched her belly. “Fine.”

The older women nodded as one. “Good, because it’s going to take everything you’ve got to pull this off.”

“Pull what off?”

“Our simplest and most devious plan to date,” Dorothy explained, actually rubbing her hands together with her glee.

Mara held up both hands as if she could stop this, but she might as well have tried to halt a freight train. Once Pearl, Millicent, and Dorothy got the bit between their teeth, she discovered, they tended to run with it. Pearl dragged in a battered valise from the hallway. As she pulled out the contents, Mara felt her face go up in flames and her heart take wing.

The ladies of the secret society of W.O.M.B. might just be able to pull this off after all.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I can’t believe I’ve come back to this,” Mara muttered, standing in the doorway to Cougar’s bedroom. Her bedroom. On the big bed where she and Cougar had loved so vigorously, rolled her husband with a dark-haired woman. Mara’s hand slid through the slit seam in her skirt to rest on the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh. And not just any woman. She’d recognize that profile anywhere. Nidia.

“Goddammit, woman! Get off me.”

Mara’s eyebrows rose. “I might believe she took advantage of you once, but twice is more than I can manage.”

“Holy shit!” Cougar swore as he emerged from under layers of ruffled petticoats. He swallowed as his worst nightmare stared him in the face. Mara stood in the doorway, and any hope he had that she might be understanding about this wilted under the heat of her glare. He ran his hand through his hair.

“It’s not what you think.” He began. Nidia’s arm snaked around his neck. He struggled to throw it off. Damnation, the woman had more tentacles than an octopus.

Mara pulled her knife free. “On the contrary, it’s exactly what I think.” She advanced on the bed. Reaching around Cougar, she grabbed Nidia by the hair. “I warned you before about touching what’s mine.”

Nidia tossed her head. Mara tugged, but Nidia plastered herself to Cougar’s bare back.

“Move, Cougar,” Mara ordered in a voice that gave her husband pause.

He didn’t believe Mara would really hurt the woman, but then again, her eyes were hot enough to scorch glass. “Now, Mara,” he began.

Mara dropped the knife to his groin. A tiny prick through his denims, and Cougar knew she had drawn blood. “Now.”

Cougar moved. The triumphant smirk faded from Nidia’s face when she realized Cougar had no intention of protecting her from Mara. Nidia eyed the knife in Mara’s hand speculatively. Very slowly, she slid toward the edge of the bed.

Mara flashed a hard smile. As Nidia gathered her muscles to pounce, Mara used her grip on her hair and yanked her to the floor. She hit with a thud. As Nidia spun over, Mara placed the tip of her knife to her throat. Cougar had never guessed that she could be like this.

“The only thing saving you from me doing to you what I did to Cecile is the fact that he’s still dressed and you didn’t get what you wanted,” Mara stated with a cold conviction that heated his blood. Damn, she was sexy when mad. Stepping back, Mara motioned Nidia to her feet.

“Get out.”

Nidia turned to him. He held up his hands. “I’m not calling the shots right now.”

It was a rather novel experience. One he didn’t have much time to appreciate because as soon as Nidia left the room, Mara turned to him.

“I’m glad you understand that.”

Something in the tone of that soft statement caused Cougar to study his wife more closely. She looked as fresh as a spring day in her red and white striped dress. He remembered that dress. If she moved just right, all that frothy lace at the neckline moved in such a way as to give some intriguing glimpses. He’d missed those breasts and the woman they were attached to.

Mara’s gaze dipped to his groin, and her smile stretched to something he couldn’t translate. “We have to talk, McKinnely.”

The knife winked in the morning sunlight. “Put the knife down, Mara.”

“When I’m ready.”

“Now.”

“Not until after we talk.” She motioned to the door with the knife. “In your study.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Make me.”

Mara pulled her arm back until the knife was in perfect throwing position behind her shoulder. Her gaze focused with unerring intensity on his groin.

“You wouldn’t.”

“After what I just walked in on, I wouldn’t push it, McKinnely.”

Cougar decided now was not the time to challenge Mara’s authority. She was mad enough to spit bullets, and everyone knew an angry woman was an unreasonable woman. Maybe unreasonable enough to take a knife to a man’s pride and joy. With as much dignity as he could muster, he headed out the door and down the stairs. “You know you have me at a disadvantage,” he remarked casually over his shoulder as if his wife wasn’t strolling in his wake, a knife pointed at his back. “You know damned well I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head.”

Mara’s only acknowledgment was another enigmatic smile.

“Don’t you feel a little guilty wielding a knife on a defenseless man?” he asked as he entered the study.

“Nope.”

Cougar spun around. “Why the hell not?”

With a hard push of her small hand in the middle of his chest, Mara toppled all six foot four inches of him into the big leather chair behind his desk.

Mara braced one hand on the chair and with the other, strategically placed the knife at his groin. “After the way you deserted me, I’m not inclined to feel guilty about much. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m damned pissed.”

“You’re not the only one,” Cougar muttered as cold steel bit into his flesh. Anger began to perk along with desire. “And if you don’t remove that knife immediately, you’re going to find out how dangerous it is to cross a McKinnely.”

Mara glared right back at him. “You’ll have to let me know how it feels. Because you’ve already crossed one, and that McKinnely is madder than hell.”

“That McKinnely is going to get her fanny tanned.”

“It would take a better man than you to do it. You’re nothing but a low-down cheating coward!”

“You know there was nothing going on between Nidia and myself.”

“And how do I know that?”

Cougar folded his arms across his chest. He did his best to ignore the back of the knife as it pressed on his erection. “Because you know I didn’t get hard until you walked into the room.”

The knife bit into his flesh as she blinked. “You’re still outrageous.”

“And you’re still out of line.”

“No.” Mara shook her head. “For the first time in the last month, I’m on the right path.”

Cougar arched a brow at her. “Threatening your husband’s manhood is the right path?”

“It beats the hell out of sitting in some damned boarding house blubbering over why you left me, and blaming myself for your stupidity.”

Cougar winced. He knew that his decision would devastate Mara, but he didn’t like hearing it put into words. He also didn’t like the unladylike mannerisms she’d picked up from Millicent. “Your language needs improvement.”

Mara remained unfazed by the rebuke. She merely shrugged. “So do your manners, but you don’t hear me complaining.”

“My manners?”

“It’s not gentlemanly to abandon your wife immediately after she’s had a miscarriage.”

“It wasn’t immediate,” Cougar muttered, remembering how hard it was to leave at all.

Mara’s grip on the knife handle tightened and her expression went from angry to determined.

“Watch it,” Cougar snapped as the knife bit into his flesh, wondering what the hell was wrong with him that his cock was so hard, it felt like it would split his flesh.

“Sorry.” Mara took a deep breath. “Now, I want you to explain why you deserted me after handing me that stupid agreement.”

“Now she calls it stupid,” Cougar muttered into the air. “A month ago it was serious enough for you to leave me because of it.”

Mara shrugged. “When you give it to me as a sop to your conscience and a prelude to divorce, it became meaningless.”

Cougar bristled, nearly castrating himself on the blade of the knife. He subsided back into the chair, but his eyes burned golden fire. “There will be no divorce, and the deed was not a sop to my conscience.”

Mara tilted her brow skeptically as she hunched her shoulders slightly. “Then what would you call it?”

Cougar’s eyes were drawn to that tiny gape in her bodice like a magnet. “I wanted to give you something that would make you happy.”

“You make me happy.”

Every muscle in his body pulled tight as she dropped her voice an octave. Her eyes met his. “If you stripped down right now and took me here on the carpet, I guarantee I would be very happy.”

Cougar swallowed against the rise of lust that surged. It’d been too long since he’d been in that lithe body. Too long since he’d had those nipples in his mouth. Knowing that it was going to be a hell of a lot longer was the worst kind of torture. He closed his eyes against the urge to take her, to risk it just this once. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because you could get pregnant.”

“Not if you come in my mouth.”

Jesus! His body jerked as if flicked by a whip. When had she learned to play his game?

“I couldn’t stop there.”

Her “I know,” didn’t sound the least upset. Which didn’t make sense. He opened his eyes as a hard coil of rope dropped over his shoulders.

“What the hell…?” Even as he collected his muscles to leap, Mara had him trussed as neatly as a Christmas goose, the rope wrapped around the back of the chair and his hands bound to the arm rests. The only part of him he could move was his feet. And then that freedom was taken away.

Mara looked up from where she was binding his ankles to each chair leg. Her speech was a little jerky owing to the struggle he was putting up. “Pearl suspected you might be thinking along those lines.”

Cougar jerked on his arms to no avail. “Pearl knows what you’re up to?”

Mara nodded.

He pulled on his bindings again, but not one gave. “Who the hell taught you to tie knots?” he growled.

Mara sat back on her heels and smiled her satisfaction at him. “Clint.”

“Damned traitor.”

“Oh no. He loves you very much,” Mara corrected, retrieving her knife. She began to saw at the legs of Cougar’s denims. “He’s just sick and tired of living with a jackass.”

Cougar caught his breath as she sawed over his knee, nicking his kneecap. “It’s a pity he didn’t teach you how to use a knife.”

“It would be easier if you’d hold still.”

Cougar sucked in his lip as Mara’s hand skimmed the inside of his thigh. The feeling was sublime. “Do you mind telling me what would be easier?”

“Why, your rape, of course.”

“A woman can’t rape a man.”

One by one, she popped the buttons that held together the front of Cougar’s shirt. “I don’t see why not,” she argued. “As I see it, rape has to do with unwillingness.” She arched her brow at him. “Do you want to make love with me?”

Cougar bit his tongue against the unqualified “yes” that leapt to the fore. “I won’t risk you to childbirth,” he said tersely. “Since I don’t trust myself to keep my hands off you, I’ll maintain a separate home.”

Mara nodded her head sagely as she spread the red cotton material clear of Cougar’s chest. “Dorothy said that was your problem. You have a marvelous chest, you know.”

“First Pearl and Clint, and now Dorothy. Have you been all over town crying on every available shoulder?”