Dark Horse: Bad Boy Cowboy Romance (13 page)

Still, it kept on annoying me how insistently she flirted with Lance whenever she wasn't talking with me.

By the end of the evening, Carrie and I had worked out a working menu, and she gave me a rough quote on the price per head for the setup. It was a little high, I thought to myself, but not unreasonable. I explained to her that I wouldn't want to finalize hiring her until I had more wedding details sorted out, but I told her that she was at the top of the list - and Carrie had smiled, thanked me, and told me that this was more than enough for her, at least for now.

"Just be sure to let me know with a couple of weeks' advance notice, so I can make sure to get everything done in time!" she encouraged me, giving me a little hug before heading back down the steps to her little car.

Now, as we both waved goodbye to the caterer as she drove away, I glanced over at Lance. "Did you really not notice her flirting with you?" I asked.

He looked back down at me, shrugging one shoulder. "I noticed, but it didn't seem right," he replied. "What am I going to do, start sleeping with your caterer? Besides, she isn't really my type."

"Not your type?" I repeated. "Lance, she's blonde and with tits the size of my head! What more could you want?"

I had no idea why I was even asking my friend about this. What was I hoping to prove with this line of questioning? Was I just trying to catch Lance in a lie?

But the man stubbornly refused to give in. "Hey, I don't make the rules," he replied. "She did have some great cooking skills, however. Those baked little tarts and that wedding cake are both a lot harder to pull off than she made them seem."

"I did really like her food," I agreed. "I think she's my top choice - even if she does keep on flirting with you whenever she thinks that she can get away with it!"

Lance just chuckled back at me. "What's the matter, afraid that you're going to need to make the wedding a double event?" he asked, nudging me with his elbow.

I poked him back in the side. "Not funny! And no, I'm obviously not jealous. I'm the one who's engaged, after all, remember?"

I tried to hit him again with my elbow, but he dodged this one. "I didn't say anything about you being jealous," he remarked. "Anyway, I still have a little more cleanup to do in the kitchen. I'm going to go finish up."

And before I could reply, he turned and headed back into the farmhouse, leaving me standing out in the night.

I blinked, looking out at the darkness. I caught a little bit of movement from the pasture off to one side, as Merlot moved away from where he had also been watching the car drive away. Now that I replayed the conversation in my head, I realized that Lance was right - he hadn't said anything about me being jealous of Carrie flirting with him.

But I couldn't be jealous, could I? As I'd pointed out, I was the one getting married in a month, not him. Why would I be upset if someone else flirted with this other man who was most definitely not my fiancé?

Before I could delve any deeper into that mystery, however, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pulled it out, and saw a text message from Marsden flashing on the screen. I unlocked the screen to read it.

"Hey, just saw ur message," the text message read. "Caterer still there? Food gud?"

I sighed, rolling my eyes. Of course he'd respond two hours late. For the hundredth time, I wished that Marsden would get a bit more involved. This was his wedding, too, after all!

"She's gone," I replied, my fingers tapping on the screen. "Good food - I think she might be the best choice for caterer."

After a minute: "$$$?"

My eyes narrowed. "Does it matter? It's not like you're helping out with this," I typed impulsively, hitting send before I could think twice and delete the words.

I waited for another few minutes before heading inside, but there was no response forthcoming. Apparently Marsden had just chosen to withdraw and sulk.

I sighed as I stepped back indoors. When had my fiancé turned into such a withdrawn, complaining, disconnected baby? It felt as though he barely had any time for me at all.

Chapter twenty

I didn't hear from Marsden for two days.

But finally, as the weekend approached, I got a message from him. It was short, just two words: "Talk 2nite?"

I hesitated for a minute before texting back. A little part of me wanted to tell him no, make up some excuse for how I was busy. After all, whenever we came together as of late, it seemed to cause more problems than it fixed.

Still, I knew that we should try and heal whatever rift had grown up between us. We were getting married! And I did love the man, I insisted to myself. Surely, I could either find a way to tell him what was wrong, or at least simply manage to move past it.

So I picked up my phone and texted him back, letting my fiancé know that I was available all evening.

Out in the barn with Merlot, combing him down after a nice afternoon trot, I heard the rumble of the approaching car from outside. I quickly finished brushing down Merlot's flank, giving him a little pat on the side of the head and letting him nibble the last bit of chopped up apple out of my hand.

"Be good, you big brute," I ordered him kindly before stepping out of the barn, dusting my hands off on the thighs of my jeans.

Once again, Marsden brought his Mercedes, and he looked as if he'd come straight from the office as he stepped out. He cut quite the dashing figure in his suit and tie, even if he didn't have quite the muscles underneath, I pointed out to myself. Even with the five o'clock shadow on his face, he looked strong and powerful, didn't he?

The illusion of power and control vanished a second later, however, as Marsden pulled a face and lifted up one of his shoes. "God, Jillian, can't you teach the animals to keep it out in the fields?" he grimaced, wiping off the shoe on the gravel with a sideways scraping motion. Reaching into his car, I saw him pull out that damn cane of his, stabbing it down into the ground and leaning on the bone handle as he waved his stricken foot around on the dirt. "This is totally unhygienic."

"Well, it's a ranch - I'm not sure that this place is ever going to be hospital room clean," I returned, unable to keep all the sarcasm out of my voice. "It's good to see you, though, even if you've got shit on your shoes."

I stepped forward, putting my arms around the man. He kept on looking down at his shoe for a second longer, but then abandoned the task of trying to clean the leather and returned my hug, leaving the cane stabbed upright into the ground. I felt a little better, taking in a deep breath of that cologne that he always wore. I didn't know the name of the cologne, but Marsden always seemed to smell of it whenever he came back from a long day at the office.

"So, here to help with the wedding plans?" I asked hopefully, as the hug ended. "Here, let's head inside."

Marsden followed me up the stairs and into the house, leaning the cane against the hallway wall inside the door, but he didn't confirm that he was there to help with planning. "Is that cowboy ruffian around?" he asked, sniffing, as he stepped indoors.

"Who, Lance?" The word ruffian seemed like a strange label. Cowboy certainly fit, but Lance showed a surprising amount of culture - sometimes more than Marsden had, I felt, despite my fiancé's airs and act of importance. "No, I think he went out for a ride. I didn't see Shadow, his horse, around, and his saddle's not in the barn."

"Well, whatever. I was thinking that maybe tonight we could go out, go downtown and get a drink at the Highball Club," Marsden went on, using one hand to brush over the couch, as if checking for dirt, before taking a seat.

Standing in the doorway to the living room, I crossed my arms beneath my breasts at him, raising one eyebrow. "And here I thought that you were actually here to help me out with wedding planning," I said.

Marsden smiled at me, spreading his hands out and trying his hardest to appear innocent. "Well, I could always help out when we come back?" he suggested, as if this stood any chance of actually happening.

Even though I knew that I ought to hold out and get him to help now, before we left, I could feel my resolve weakening. And halfway through sorting out my thoughts, my stomach loudly growled up at me, swaying me further.

"I guess maybe some food would help," I gave in. "I can't exactly do a lot of planning on an empty stomach, I suppose."

"That's the spirit!" Marsden hopped up from the couch. "Now, you're not going to go out like that, are you? Don't you want to go upstairs and make yourself actually look presentable?"

I glanced down at my dirty jeans and loose shirt, slightly marked from the sweat of the afternoon's ride. "I suppose so. I'll go change."

I came downstairs fifteen minutes later after changing into a dress. While undressing, I'd given myself a few sniffs and concluded that, as long as I changed my clothes, there wouldn't be too much smell of sweat coming from my body. Besides, if I took all the time to shower and then wait for my hair to dry, we wouldn't get out of the house and to dinner until well after nine o'clock.

Instead, I'd pulled on a nice white dress from the back of my closet, one that I hadn't worn in quite a while. I cautiously pulled it over my body and was delighted to find that it still fit. Twirling in front of the mirror, I thought that I looked quite nice, especially when I paired the dress with a royal blue necklace, wide belt, and some blue heels that had been languishing in the back of my closet for far too long, just begging to be worn out.

"What do you think?" I asked Marsden, putting on a little twirl.

He grunted back at me as he climbed up from the couch. "Yeah, that looks okay. All right, let's get going. I'm starving."

I pouted, annoyed that I hadn't gotten more of a compliment, but I followed him out to his car, locking the front door to the house behind me.

The Highball Club, Marsden's dinner choice, was actually quite a sophisticated place, and I didn't feel overdressed at all with my jewelry and dress. We'd been there several times before, and I knew it as Marsden's favorite - several of the waiters and waitresses gave him smiles or waves when he stepped inside.

"Oh, hi Marsden! Who's this?" Our waitress looked especially perky, tall and skinny with blonde hair falling down her back in a ponytail.

For just a moment, I thought that Marsden looked surprised to see the woman waiting on us, but the expression vanished before I could try and guess what it meant. "Hi there, Kristy," he greeted the young woman back. "This is Jillian. Um, can I get a drink going?"

"Your usual?" the young woman responded, smiling so sweetly that I swore her eyes twinkled. She turned to me, the smile dropping by a couple watts. "And anything for you?"

"Water is fine, thanks," I replied politely.

The waitress nodded to me, gave Marsden one last smile, and then darted off to fulfill our orders.

As she left, I looked curiously at my fiancé. "Do you know her from somewhere?"

"Oh yeah. I bring many of my clients here, and Kristy often helps us out," Marsden explained. "I just was surprised to see her working here for the dinner shift, that's all. She's usually just around for lunch."

The man quickly grabbed for his martini when Kristy returned with our drinks, but I guessed that he probably just flirted with the waitress a bit when here for lunches, and he'd never confessed to her that he had a fiancé. No harm in a bit of flirting, I told myself, as long as he didn't go past that.

By the time that Kristy returned to take our food order, Marsden had gulped down most of his first martini, but he looked as if he'd recovered from his surprise at seeing her waiting on our table, and we placed our orders. But as we waited for the food to arrive, I looked across the table at this man that I'd agreed to marry, and I felt some of those concerns that had been welling up over the last few weeks bubbling up, fighting to reach the surface.

I kept them down, but it took an effort, and Marsden didn't seem to be in any particular hurry to pick up the slack in the conversation.

We ate most of our meal in silence.

Chapter twenty-one

From the moment our food arrived in front of us at the Highball Club, to our trip back home in Marsden's car, I kept on trying to figure out how to address some of the concerns that kept on welling up in my mind, demanding for me to address them out loud with my fiancé.

Marsden, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind the silence. Instead, as I silently sipped at my water across the table from him, he took advantage of the moment to apparently try and put as much alcohol into his body as possible. By the time we'd both finished off our entrees, he was on either his fifth or sixth martini, and I could see him wobbling a little bit, back and forth. I even found myself wishing that he'd brought that damn cane he loved so much along with him, so that he could use it to stagger out of here!

In the end, however, he ended up only making it out to his car by draping one big arm over my shoulders and leaning heavily on me for support. At the car, he paused, confused, as I dropped him off on the passenger side and then held out my hand for the keys.

"What?" he slurred, blinking at me.