A Cowboy's Woman (7 page)

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Authors: Cathy Gillen Thacker

BOOK: A Cowboy's Woman
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“I wonder what's going on,” Greta said, in reference to the absent newspapers.
“Oh, don't tell me you're going to play innocent there, too,” Bonnie Sue Baxter fumed.
For a self-assured attorney, Bonnie Sue sure was acting awfully paranoid, Greta thought. Guess it just went to show how crazy even old love could make you. And Bonnie-Sue was still in love with Shane. That was getting more and more clear. “Now I really don't know what you're talking about,” Greta said dryly.
“Make that two,” Shane drawled.
Bonnie Sue marched back to her car and returned with an evening paper. She slapped it at Shane. “How's that for fulfilling a high school crush?” she demanded.
Shane and Greta looked down at the front page of the
Laramie Press.
Their pictures were plastered side by side beneath the headline:
Local Lovebirds Elope!
National champion rodeo star Shane McCabe surprised everyone when he eloped with local dinner and dance hall proprietor and former high school classmate, Greta Wilson. Greta was last seen on the arm of movie star Beauregard Chamberlain while Shane McCabe has reportedly not dated anyone seriously since his breakup with another former classmate, San Francisco attorney Bonnie Sue Baxter.
Parents of the happy couple are planning a joint wedding reception at John and Lilah McCabe's ranch Friday evening. John and Lilah McCabe, and Bart and Tillie Wilson, want everyone to know the entire community is invited to the celebration.
Shane looked at Greta. Greta looked at Shane. “Did you know about this?” he demanded.
“No,” Greta said, equally nonplussed. “Did you?”
Shane shook his head. “I guess we do now, though.”
Bonnie Sue leveled an accusing finger at Greta. “I always knew you had a giant-size crush on Shane, Greta Wilson, but this is too much!” she declared hotly.
Shane looked at Greta. Despite herself, she was blushing fiercely. “You really had a crush on me?” he said.
“All through high school!” Bonnie Sue Baxter fumed.
Refusing to deny or confirm it—there was a limit, Greta thought, as to just how much humiliation any one woman could stand in one day—Greta snatched the paper from Shane and stared down at the pictures of them. She was wearing her Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfit. Shane was in full cowboy regalia, accepting a rodeo award. You didn't get more Texas than that. Or more embarrassing.
Greta tucked the paper under her arm. “I'm going to call my mother!” She marched off.
Shane left Bonnie Sue Baxter where she stood and dashed after her. “I'll call mine, too.”
“No need for that!” Bart and Tillie said, as they walked up to join them. They were swiftly followed by John and Lilah McCabe.
It's just one big ol' reunion after another,
Greta thought.
“I see you heard about the party,” Tillie said happily.
“We were going in to have dinner and plan it right now,” Lilah said, motioning at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant.
“Perhaps you and Shane could join us?” John McCabe said, looking steadily at his son.
Bart nodded sternly at Greta. “I think it would be wise.”
 
“IT'S WHAT WE GET,” Greta moaned to Shane several hours later, when they'd finally returned to the Golden Slipper Ranch, “for moving back to such a small town.”
Shane paused to unlock the front door, then held the door for her. “You don't like being on the front page of the newspaper?”
“As your new bride in what we both know is a sham marriage?” Greta brushed past him and stepped into the darkened interior of the front hall. “I hardly think so.”
Shane switched on the lights, then headed straight for the kitchen. He took two beers from the refrigerator, twisted off the caps, handed one to her and kept the other for himself. “I really wish our parents hadn't joined together to throw us this big reception.”
Greta sipped the icy golden brew. It was just what she needed after the tense but polite dinner with their parents. “Did you get the feeling they were secretly challenging us?”
“To break down and confess all?” Shane grabbed her hand and led her into the living room. He waited for her to take a seat on the sofa, then dropped down beside her and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Yep. I did.”
Greta lay her head on the back of the sofa and sighed. “So did I.”
Shane slanted her an intrigued glance. “But you didn't do it,” he said softly, pleased.
Greta took another sip straight from the bottle and held his eyes. “Neither did you.”
“Why not?”
Because I don't want it to be over
. Greta shrugged. “Call me stubborn,” she said lightly.
“Guess so,” Shane allowed.
The seconds ticked by. Suddenly all Greta could think about was kissing him again. And this time not for show.
Shane swallowed, tensed, took another swig of beer, looked away. “I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.”
Greta tried not to be hurt by his abrupt change of mood. Or the switch from intimacy to tension. “Me, too,” she said softly.
Shane stood and began to pace the room restlessly. “Want to call it a night?” he asked.
Greta nodded. It was safer that way.
“I'll give you first shot at the bathroom,” Shane continued.
“Thanks.”
Greta showered, changed into a cotton nightshirt and told herself to be thankful there would evidently be no more kissing or talking or laughing that night.
She'd just belted her robe on when there was a commotion—Shane's voice and what sounded like a helicopter landing!—outside. “Now what?” Greta groaned, almost afraid to look. Hastily wrapping her damp hair in a towel, she emerged from the bathroom, strode down the hall to the head of the stairs. She was just in time to see Wade McCabe and his new bride, Josie, loaded down with suitcases, coming in the front door.
SHANE DIDN'T KNOW whether he was happy or sad to see his brother. The good thing was that he and Greta were no longer alone. The bad thing was that he and Greta were no longer alone. He strode forward to help them with their bags, setting them down just left of the front door. Straightening, Shane gave Josie and Wade a proper welcome home.
“I didn't think you'd be back,” Shane said, hugging them both.
Wade grinned and slapped Shane on the back. “I didn't think you'd be married when we got back.”
Shane did his best to suppress his chagrin. “You heard?”
“Who hasn't?” Josie said, kissing his cheek. “It's on the national news.”
“What!” Shane exclaimed as Greta came down the stairs to greet them, too.
Wade shrugged and offered Greta a warm, brotherly hug. “You can't be that surprised. I mean, Greta dumped one of the hottest movie stars in the country for you, Shane. Of course that's news.”
“Not to mention the fact that Shane is something of a celebrity in his own right,” Josie added, as she strode forward to hug Greta, too. “Which makes it quite a love triangle.”
“Make that quadrangle,” Greta muttered. She was obviously thinking of Bonnie Sue Baxter.
“Yeah, we heard Bonnie Sue's back, too,” Wade said as he wrapped both his arms around Josie's waist and tugged her against him. “Apparently she told half the town—before she even hit Laramie yesterday—that she'd made a mistake, giving you the heave-ho, and she'd decided to give you another chance. To say she
now has egg on her face—” Wade stopped and shook his head.
You're in for it now, buddy,
his look said.
And knowing Bonnie Sue, Shane thought, Wade was probably right.
Immediately Greta turned to Shane. “Did you know about this?”
Shane tensed, not sure how much he should tell Greta about what Bonnie Sue had said to him earlier. Or his own feelings on the matter. Besides, Greta was acting kind of jealous. And he liked that. For reasons that had nothing to do with the playacting going on between them.
“Maybe we should let them discuss this on their own,” Wade said.
“I'm ready for bed, in any case,” Josie teased as she turned to Wade and kissed him thoroughly.
Wade swung Josie up in his arms and headed for the stairs. “See you guys in the morning.”
There was no doubt what they had on their minds. Given that, Shane called after Wade and Josie. “Your hospitality has been great, but maybe we should leave, give you newlyweds some privacy.”
Unfortunately for them, Wade was not about to be so inhospitable as to kick his baby brother and his new wife out on the street. “Hey, it's no problem. Really,” Wade reassured them.
Sensing their hesitation, Wade continued in the same warm, brotherly tone, “We're both married.” It was easy to see in Wade's view, a little passion was nothing to be ashamed about. And if the situation were a bit more normal, Shane would have agreed.
“Josie and I'll take the master bedroom. You and Greta take the guest room. It'll work out fine. Unless—” Wade paused, Josie still cradled lovingly in his arms,
and studied their stricken, uneasy expressions, “—there really is something fishy going on here, as Mom and Dad suspect?”
 
“THAT,” GRETA TOLD SHANE breathlessly, seconds later as he shut their bedroom door with his foot, traversed the room gracefully and set her down, ever so gently, in the rumpled covers on the double bed, “was going overboard.” Even if it had gotten a lot of laughs!
“What?” Shane dropped down onto the bed and stretched out beside her, a picture of lazy male assurance.
“You know what!” Greta retorted hotly. “Grabbing me behind the knees, lifting me off my feet, throwing me over your shoulder like a duffel bag and carrying me up the stairs.”
Shane's eyes twinkled mischievously. “We are on our honeymoon,” he teased.
Determined not to let him wiggle out of this so easily, Greta grabbed the front of his shirt and kept him from exiting the bed. “Sure you weren't just competing with your older brother and his bride?” she demanded, because she didn't want to think what had happened between the two of them had anything remotely to do with Shane's two middle brothers' recent, hasty, but oh-so-romantic marriages to the women of their dreams.
Shane's eyes darkened with an emotion Greta couldn't quite identify. He cupped her face between his hands. “Maybe I carried you differently from the way Wade carried Josie just to put my own individual stamp on things. But as for the rest—what I do, I do for me.” That said, he extricated her hands from the front of his shirt. He brought one of her hands to his lips and kissed the back of it. Greta was still tingling long after he released
her, straightened and strode across the room to the door. He stuck his head out and peered into the hall. “Bathroom's free,” he reported. “I'm going to hit the shower.”
Before Greta could say anything else, he slipped out the door, shutting it behind him.
Greta sighed and shut her eyes. Was she really going to be forced to share this cozy double bed with Shane tonight? It appeared so. Not that she feared Shane would not respect whatever boundaries she set. No, she knew that despite his wild nature and unbridled thirst for adventure, he was a gentleman at heart. One “No way, cowboy!” from her, and that would be the end of it.
The question was, did she really want to say no?
Because Bonnie Sue Baxter had been right. Growing up, Greta—like most every other girl at Laramie High School—had suffered one heck of a schoolgirl crush on Shane McCabe. More than his sexy, come-hither cowboy looks, she'd been in love with his daredevil nature, how, even then he'd lived his life to the max, no matter what anyone else had thought or wanted for him. Always the first to stand up against unfair authority of any kind, he took on their childhood bullies as fearlessly as he climbed on the back of the wild broncs in the junior rodeo. Quick with jokes that never failed to get a laugh, incessantly flirting, always playing pranks, pulling stunts and thinking up escapades, he had a bad-boy rep unparalleled in their small town. And yet, everyone knew there beat a heart as good as gold beneath all the grandstanding.
She'd shaken her head at him. She'd admired him. She'd lusted after him with all her heart and soul. And hoped, in many ways, to grow up one day to be just like him.
And now, here she was, she thought dreamily, married to the man she had measured everyone else against.
Shane breezed back in, a damp towel draped around his waist, his tall, toned body glistening, his hair wet and scented with shampoo. Greta's heart began to pound as she vaulted to a sitting position and thought about what had gone on between them the night before, under almost precisely the same circumstances. With her body already tingling in anticipation, another kiss was not something she could afford. Nor could she guarantee things would end with a simple kiss. “Shane McCabe, you tell me,” she demanded, “that you have something on beneath that towel.”

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