ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories) (103 page)

“I'm sorry, I just came to check out on you and see if you were awake,” he said in a low voice that rumbled through her body to the very core.

“What happened? Where am I?” she said, finally regaining her senses and pulling herself together.

“You were in a car accident and I brought you here,” he said, moving closer to her, his male scent hitting her hard and making her blood boil within.

“Is this a hospital? It sure doesn’t look like one.” she asked, throwing her hands in the air.

“No, I brought you over to my brother’s house so that his wife could take a look at your wound,” he said, reaching his hand to her forehead as she evaded it quickly. “Relax. I only want to see if your wound has dried up.”

She let him touch her, ashamed at having ducked when he meant no harm. She felt much better when his thumb flicked lightly over her skin.

“This looks much better now. You must be hungry. Imelda, my sister in law, has fixed some soup for you. You have been asleep for hours. By the way, I'm Ted, Ted Wilkins” he said, looking into her eyes, and in his she could see something that she had never seen in another man's eyes: passion, heated passion. It was so intense, it almost scared her.

“Diana Blake. Thank you for all your help, but I'm not really hungry. Besides, I have to get going,” she said, remembering that she had a mission to complete and get back to her normal life other than admire this gorgeous hell of a man.

“It is late, and you can't go out in this condition,” he said as she followed him out of the bedroom, noting with admiration at the way that his muscles practically struggled with the material of his shirt.

“Where are my phone and my things?” she asked, remembering that she had to call Mark and let him know what had happened.

“This way, I got all your things out of your car and brought them along,” he said, pointing to her bags by the door.

She dashed to her things and located her cell phone. She had several missed calls from Mark and Amanda, and a message from Amanda, ‘Call me as soon as you get this message’. Ignoring Amanda, she dialed Mark's number and he picked it up on the second ring.

“Finally, why the hell weren’t you picking up your phone?” he said into the phone.

“I was in a little accident,” she said, nodding at Ted as she stepped out of the main door for privacy.

“Accident? Is the rental car damaged? Did you get insurance on it? Holy shit, what have you done, Diana,” Mark said, and she could not believe that instead of asking if she was ok, he was more interested in whether the rental car was insured.

“Mark, did you hear what I just said?” she said, beginning to fume within at the fact that he did not care about her.

“I'm sorry; it’s just that they could charge us a fortune for the damaged car. How are you? Did you go to hospital?” She hung up on him without another word, now angrier than ever, and when she turned around, she almost bumped into Ted. She snapped, “Do you always eavesdrop on other peoples conversations?”

“No, I just came to see if everything was alright,” he said as tears shot to her eyes.

“Is everything okay?” a woman stepped out of the house onto the porch.

“Ah, Imelda, I would like you to meet Diana Blake, and Diana, this is my sister in law, Imelda,” Ted said quickly, turning to look at the sexy looking blonde.

“Diana, it is a pleasure to finally get to know you,” the lady said, walking towards her, and although she was overwhelmed by a series of bad emotions, the woman's good mood quickly rubbed off on Diana.

“Hi, I'm sorry I'm such a mess. There is so much that has been going on the past few hours, and I'm still trying to come to terms with it,” Diana said, reaching out her hand to greet Imelda. “It is a pleasure, and thank you for helping me.”

“I think it would be proper to thank Ted here, because he is the one who brought you here. Come on in, I have fixed up something for you, you must be famished. Where are you from?” Imelda asked as the women made their way into the house, leaving Ted behind to close the door.

“I'm from Chicago, I'm just here to settle some business and get back home to my normal life,” Diana replied, not wanting to go into the details of her business.

The kitchen smelled of delicious food, and for the first time, Diana realized that she had not had anything since breakfast and the sun was already going down. They made idle talk, discussing several different topics, and Diana was only too aware of the gorgeous man that was seated opposite her at the dining table, and could not seem to get his eyes off her, studying her. She had the feeling that he had even undressed her with his thoughts and was making love to her with his eyes, and the thought made her start to become wet between her thighs as her pussy began to pulsate. He was beyond attractive, and Diana could only imagine how he looked without his clothes on. He was well mannered, and judging from the clothes that he was wearing, he had to be very rich; music to her heart. After dinner she helped Imelda with the dishes, while Imelda fed her baby and put her to sleep.

“It has really been a pleasure meeting you guys.  It is a pity that I could not meet Alex because I really have to leave,” she announced as she walked back into the living room, determined not to intrude into their space. She could get a hotel or something, if there was any close by.

“Why don’t you stay for the night? There is plenty of room.” Ted asked, looking disappointed that she wasn’t staying, and Diana wondered if it was because he would miss her.

“I really can't, Ted,” she said, avoiding his eyes since she kept blushing when she looked at him directly. “There is something very important that I must do today in order to begin fulfilling whatever brought me here.”

“Oh, that is too bad. But if you are still around, make sure that you drop by. It is not every day that we get to meet new people in these parts,” Imelda said.

“Well, if that’s the case, I guess that I'm going to have to drop you off wherever you are going, since your car was towed to a shop for repairs,” Ted said grandly as he stood up, and Diana did not want to imagine how it would be like being with just him alone in the car.

“That is very kind of you, Ted, I'll have to find a way to repay your kindness,” she said, looking at Imelda and afraid that Imelda might notice how hard her nipples had become as her mind wandered off in fantasy about Ted.

*****

Ted and Diana were both silent in his Range Rover as they drove out of the compound. Ted wondered what she was thinking about as she pretended to look out at the setting sun.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Riverdale Ranch, do you know where that is?” Diana replied, turning to look at him and giving him a glimpse of her sexy cleavage.

“Yeah, I hear the lady who lived there died a few weeks ago, are you a relative of hers?” he had heard the news from some of his men at his ranch.

“I don’t really wanna talk about it, Ted. Maybe some other time,” and from the look in her eyes, Ted could tell that something awful had happened to her and she did not want to relive it.

He wished that he knew what it was so that he could tell her that it was going to be okay. Being so close to her, he could smell her scent mixed with her perfume, and it made his erotic senses dance with desire. As he drove towards the direction of the small town that was nearby, Diana seemed to have gone into a world of her own, and had started to turn as white as a sheet. He looked at her twice just to make sure he was seeing right, and from the way that she was twisting her knuckles, he could tell that something was bothering her.

“Diana, are you okay? You look like a ghost.” he asked, a worried look on his face, but she avoided his gaze and looked out of the window.

*****

“Nothing, I'm just a little tense, that is all,” she replied, just as her cell phone went off. She reached for her handbag and pulled it out. It was Amanda. “Hi Amanda, sorry I couldn’t pick up your call earlier. There has been a lot going on here, but I'll tell you about it later. What’s up?”

“Girlfriend, a lot has been going on here since you left,” Amanda said quickly, but Diana was not ready to listen to gossip just yet. She was thinking of how she was going to live for the next week in that house that had so many painful memories for her.

“Trust me, honey; I think that you will want to hear this one. It’s about Mark,” Amanda continued.

“Mark. What about him? Is he okay?” Diana was suddenly fully awake.

“You aren't going to believe what I have to tell you. I’ll just be blunt here. He is running around with his secretary. Remember that woman about the same age as his mother? I just came from your place to drop off your laundry, and I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but I found him in a very compromising position with her. They were having raw sex and they jumped away from each other when I walked into the room. You never told me that the bugger has such a tiny cock. What were you doing with such a dude in the first place?” the words came as a shocker to Diana, even if she knew that there was no love that existed between them.

“What?” was all that she managed to say.

“Yep, you are out of the city for a few hours and he is already dishing out his goodies to old women,” Amanda said. “I really think that it is time for you to move on.”

All of this information was coming too fast for Diana to handle it all, and she felt tears coming to her eyes. She did not even understand why she was crying over someone that she did not love. Maybe it was because she had at least expected him to respect their relationship the way that she had respected it. She knew that he would come looking for her when his dad refused to add him to his will, and when he did, Diana would not be available.

“Diana, are you sure that you are okay?” Ted asked, looking genuinely worried.

She wiped her eyes and nodded her head from side to side. “No, Ted, everything is going so wrong for me. Take me somewhere and buy me a drink.”

“Anything to make you feel better. I hate seeing women as beautiful as you upset. Is it the guy called Mark? Because if it’s him, I'm gonna look for him one of these days and skin him alive,” Ted said, handing her a white handkerchief from his pocket.

*****

Ted looked at Diana with curiosity. He really wanted to understand her but she was not giving him the chance. She was playing hard to read, but from the look and sound of things, some of her sorrow definitely had to do with a man.

“Yeah, the asshole is cheating on me. The stupid thing is that I never really loved him, but it still hurts me so deep,” she said, and Ted reached his hand out to her and pulled her into his side so that she was leaning against him.

“Don’t you worry, nobody is gonna hurt you when you’re with me,” he soothed her, knowing that it was true.

He drove into the small town and parked outside a high-end martini bar there. He led her in and he was shocked when she began draining shot after shot of tequila. He sat quietly on the bar stool watching her with amusement as she became drunk and was soon flying like a bird, seeming to have forgotten all about Mark and whatever had brought her to Texas.

“Barman, don’t you people here play any drinking games?” she asked the barman, who looked at Ted, and Ted nodded back at him.

“Actually, there is a game, and I think it’ll work perfectly for you. I'm gonna give you tequila, and after every shot you will shout out secrets that you have never told anyone before,” the barman smiled at her, getting a couple of glasses and setting them in front of her.

“That is perfect,” Diana slurred as he set lemons and salt next to the glasses and watched as the bartender filled the glasses with tequila. She took the first tumbler and threw the drink down her throat. “I still watch cartoons!” she shouted as she set the glass down and reached for the next.

Ted watched with amusement as she drained shot glass after shot glass, and by the time that she got to her seventh glass, she was slurring and could barely stand. He took the next glass away from her as she took it to her mouth.

“I think that you have had enough,” Ted said to her, holding her to steady her.

“There is one more thing that I would like to tell you,” she said. “I want you to fly me to Vegas and marry me, Ted.”

Ted was not sure if he had heard right or not, but from the claps of the other patrons in the bar, it had to be right. “I think that you have had a little too much to drink, Diana, come on, I'll drive you to your destination.”

“I am not moving one inch from here if you are not going to marry me tonight,” she said loudly and stubbornly.

“Lower your voice,” he said, still trying to steer her away from the bar unsuccessfully. She had definitely had a little too much to drink. He reached into his pocket and threw a number of bills onto the counter. “Come on, stop being stubborn, Diana, let's go.”

“Are you going to marry me or not? I want you to say it in front of all these people here.” she refused adamantly, putting him in the most awkward situation that he had ever been in. “I want you to marry me and then fuck me like it is the end of the world.”

The small crowd that had now gathered clapped and cheered, and from the look of things, she was not going to budge. He weighed his options, pondering what to do and from the way that the crowd was cheering Diana, Ted knew that he did not have very many options. Getting married so suddenly sort of excited him in a thrilling way, and he could always look for one of the best lawyers to begin the divorce as soon as she became sober and realized that she had just gotten married in the most bizarre way. Diana would also probably think that it was him who had taken advantage of her drunken state and married her without her consent, although there would be many witnesses in these townsfolk who were here cheering him on. Ted wondered how the headlines would look like tomorrow, ‘Texas Billionaire Forced into Marriage by Drunk Woman.’ Whatever, he would deal with the consequences later, but right now he needed to get her the hell out of there.