The Bad Luck Wedding Cake (35 page)

His knees turned to water and he grasped the veranda’s railing, breathing hard. After a moment he chuckled, the ugly sound grating against his ears.
God, McBride. Aren’t you wallowing in a slop of self-pity. Guess it’s too much to ask a pig like yourself to act like a man
.

“Shut up,” he said to himself. He could still act like a man. For Claire’s sake, he would.

He walked back into his bedroom, where his wife lay peacefully sleeping, a heart-wrenching, contented smile on her angel’s face. Reaching down, he lifted a silken lock of her fiery hair and allowed it to slide through his fingers like tears.

God damn him, he had failed to protect her last night. Again. Caught up in the moment, in his own anguish and pain, he had acted the irresponsible fool and left the goddamned condoms in the goddamned drawer.

Bracing himself, he laid his hand on her shoulder and shook her. “Wake up, Claire. We need to talk.”

Bury a tear-soaked handkerchief beneath a cottonwood tree during a full moon to have good luck
.

CHAPTER 20

CLAIRE WOKE, TOOK ONE look at her husband, and felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped thirty degrees.

This Tye was a cold, forbidding stranger. His eyes were flat and empty, his jaw hard. He made her want to shrink back into the mattress.

“We need to talk,” he said, his gaze flicking imperviously over her nudity.

A chill shuddered down Claire’s spine. She sat up, gathering the sheet and her composure to her breast. “All right. What is it you wish to talk about?”

Had she not been watching closely, she wouldn’t have seen him flinch at the sound of her voice. So, he wasn’t as unaffected by her as he let on.

“Our situation. Obviously, with Trace and Jenny’s return, it has changed.”

“All right,” Claire said cautiously, trying not to get angry. In her opinion, a woman—especially a wife—deserved more…softness from a man on the morning following a night like the one they’d just shared.

He wouldn’t meet her gaze, looking past her, instead. “If we’d known Trace would come home so soon we could have managed all this a little differently. Not that I regret helping your family. The factory will be a good investment. But we could have avoided this other…uh…trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Marriage.”

“Oh.” Claire’s heart pounded. “Our being married is trouble.”

“Yeah.”

She reached for her robe lying at the foot of the bed, no longer trying to hold back her anger. The man certainly hadn’t had a problem with being married to her last night.

Knowing well the value of silence in an argument— her mother was a master of the technique—Claire said nothing more as she slipped into her robe and calmly knotted the sash. Then she sat on the edge of her bed and looked up at her husband, waiting. Showing no sign of the temper and hurt building within her.

He dragged his fingers through his hair. “You’re a nice girl, Claire,” he began.

A nice girl?
Her fingernails dug into her skin as she clenched a hidden fist. That one got her good.

“You’re beautiful, funny, and talented. You’ll make a man a good wife someday. But that man…well…it can’t be me. I told you that going into it. We need to get this marriage annulled.”

An invisible weight on her chest forced her to take shallow breaths, and her anger suddenly went cold. “Annulled.”

He still wouldn’t look at her. He walked over to the vanity, where he lifted the silver hairbrush and started flipping it around and around in one hand. “Yeah. It’s been such a short time. An annulment shouldn’t be a problem.”

An annulment. A rejection. He didn’t want her. The chill spread like a cancer through her body.

“An annulment.” As she repeated the word yet again, she felt a sudden surge of anger. Hot anger that battled the iciness of her pain. “But we consummated our marriage.”

He shrugged. “You and I are the only ones who know it I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

She wrenched to her feet. “You’re asking me to
lie?
”

“I thought it would be easier that way.” He set down the hairbrush and picked up the comb. He ran his thumb along its teeth as he casually added, “We could get a divorce, instead. Divorces are easy to get in Texas, and it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I just thought you’d prefer an annulment.”

She was breathing hard. An annulment rather than divorce. How considerate of him. Wasn’t it his good luck she had no weapon at hand at the moment.

He continued in an offhand manner. “Well need to do it in a way that won’t play in to the townspeople’s superstitions and hurt your business at The Confectionary. I’m sure if we put our minds to it we can figure a way to prevent another Bad Luck Wedding Cake disaster.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she agreed, her voice rapier-sharp.

He darted a quick glance her way at that, but his gaze remained unreadable. “I’ll come up with something. I just need to think on it a bit. But other than that I don’t see any problems. Do you?”

Problems? Oh, maybe one or two. Little things, like the fact that she loved him. And the fact that she might even now be carrying his child.

Faced with his outright rejection, that alone, she could not ignore. Fury bubbled like chili on the stove as she asked, “And if I’m increasing?”

The comb slipped from Tye’s grasp.

He started pacing the room, muttering in a low, angry tone. “I can’t believe I did this to myself,” he muttered. “Knew better. Went to all that trouble to buy the damned sheaths then didn’t have the patience to stop and put one on. Got the self-restraint of a randy rabbit.”

“Oh, be quiet.” Claire reached the end of her patience. She was dying inside and he was being such a…man. “And don’t curse at me.”

“I’m not cursing. I cussed and that’s different and I was doing it to myself, not you, anyway.”

“You you you.” She threw out her arms, anger and anguish adding fuel to her temper. “What
you
are, Tye McBride, is the most selfish man I have ever seen.”

That brought him up short. They stared at each other, his face going red, her chest heaving. “Selfish?” he repeated, bracing his hands on his hips. “Me? Honey, I’ll own up to a whole buckboard full of bad traits, but I’ll be damned if selfishness is one of them.”

“Well it’s one of those ‘s’ words then,” she shot back, blinking away furious tears. “Scheming, or scurrilous. Spineless, perhaps? No, I know. It’s stupid. You are stupid, Tye McBride. Your head is full of stump water instead of sense.”

She had captured his total attention now. Exaggerating his drawl, he said, “Not that I can argue with you, sweetpea, but I admit to being curious as to how you reached that particular conclusion.”

Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. Grief rolled over her in waves. How could he do this to her, to himself? It was so needless, so wasteful, so…stupid. “Lord, I hate stupid people. You want to know? Fine, I’ll tell you. It’s because you could have had so much and you are throwing it away. You’re throwing
me
away. And that, McBride, is completely, totally, absolutely,
stupid
because…because…”

“Why, Claire?” His gaze burned into hers. “Why?”

Too angry to control herself, she shouted it on a sob: “Because I love you!”

He took it like a lance, closing his eyes, flinching as if in pain. He took two heavy breaths, exhaling them audibly, sounding like he’d just run a mile long race.

“Then God help you, Claire.”

Suddenly weak, she sank down upon the bed.

Tye’s chin came up, his jaw hardened. He met her gaze with flat, emotionless eyes. “We’ll wait on the annulment until you know whether or not you are carrying my child. At that point we can decide how best to proceed. In the meantime, I’ll move into another bedroom.”

It would have been kinder, Claire thought, for him to use a real sword to slash her heart into shreds rather than the weapon of words.

He turned to go, but the thought of him leaving before everything was said drove her past reason. She stopped him at the door by speaking a single word, proudly stated, that demanded so much: “Why?”

As if against his will, he made a half turn. His voice ragged, he said, “I’m not the right man for you. My sins are too big…I’m not…I’m too…” He mouthed a curse. “You’ve offered me a gift I can’t in good conscience accept, Claire. No matter how much I…” his voice trailed off.

Something—the light in his eyes, the pain in his voice, the tension of his body—something gave her hope. “How much you what?”

He opened his mouth. She held her breath.

Then he shifted his gaze away from her and in that instant she knew the words he would speak were not the words he originally intended.

“How much I enjoy you in bed.”

The door slammed behind him, leaving her with the impression of a man running for his life. Claire would have been insulted had the realization of the truth not burst upon her like a cloud of smelly, half-cooked Magic vapor. She wrinkled her nose. “Why, that fraud. That big, tall, strong fool.”

A slow smile tilted the corners of her mouth. Her husband didn’t want to throw her love away. He was too scared to keep it. His excuse of sins too big to be forgiven was just that, an excuse.

Tye McBride was afraid to be happy.

She thumped her lips with her index finger as she thought. Tye McBride was afraid to be happy. It made perfect sense. Stupid, but she understood why he might feel that way. That old “Constance” wound again.

So Claire McBride needed something to conquer his fear. Some strong medicine. Something sweet and soothing and strengthening. Something tasty. Something spicy. Something irresistible.

The perfect treatment came to mind.

She felt better, rejuvenated. He thought to push her away, but she refused to accept it. She wanted this man, and she’d fight for him. Walking to the wardrobe to select a dress, she spied her reflection in a mirror and said, “That’s a good thing about being a baker. Always have a recipe or two up my sleeve.”

After washing and dressing, she headed straight for the kitchen. She crossed to the cupboard, removed a bottle from the shelf, then dabbed a little Magic behind her ears.

Then, a woman on a mission, Claire went off to find her husband.

***

“THAT WOMAN is driving me crazy,” Tye said to his twin a little over a week later as he burst into Trace’s office and dropped into a chair.

“Tell me about it,” Trace replied, tossing down his pen and glancing up from his latest architectural drawing. “I guess I shouldn’t have teased her so. But in my defense, she had just referred to herself as a whale, so why did my comparison to a circus elephant send her into such a torrent of tears?”

“I’m talking about my wife, not your wife, Trace,” Tye said with disgust. He drummed his fingers along the padded arm of the leather upholstered chair. “You know what she’s doing? Among other things I’m too polite to mention, the woman is sending me gifts. Courting gifts. Embroidered handkerchiefs. A new pocket knife. This morning I found a bouquet of posies on my damned pillow when I woke up.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Trace leaned back in his chair and linked his fingers behind his head, elbows outstretched. “Gifts are nice. I could use a new pocket knife myself. Shoot, I wouldn’t even mind flowers from Jenny. They’d be a helluva lot better than the buckets of tears I’m getting these days.”

Trace snagged the Blessings’ candy box off their father’s desk and opened it. “Well it was pur-dee stupid of you to make a crack about an elephant to a pregnant woman. You should have known better.”

“Yeah, well,” he grumbled. “She’s not the only one who is anxious about this baby.”

“True, but she’s the one who has been toting your kid around all this time. She has good reason to be acting a bit touchy. My wife doesn’t.” He chose a peppermint stick and returned the box to the desk.

“Oh, really?” Trace drawled, going for a piece of candy for himself. “Her husband moves out of her bed before she’s been married a month and she has nothing to get upset about? I don’t think so, Brother.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “What the hell is the matter with you?”

Tye stopped mid-lick on his candy. “Just let it go, Trace.”

“No, I don’t think I will.” Trace popped a lemon drop into his mouth. “This is my house. You’re miserable. Claire is miserable. It makes me miserable to look at you.” The look on his face turned sour and frustration sounded in his voice. “Dammit, Tye, y’all hardly speak, but the looks you give each other on the sly are hot enough to peel the paint from the walls. Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you doing it to me?” He crunched his candy, swallowed, and said, “I haven’t had sex in a month.”

“Sounds like a personal problem to me.”

“Well, it is my problem, but you aren’t making it any easier.” Trace took a second piece of candy and slapped the box closed. “Since I married Jenny, I’d gotten accustomed to frequent relations. Pregnancy is hard on a man, you know, and all this…this…tension in the house keeps a man’s mind on something he ought not to be thinking about when he’s got a good month or two left to sweat.”

Tye pointed his peppermint stick toward his brother. “I thought the baby was due any time now.”

“I’m not talking about the baby. I’m talking about sex and why neither one of us is getting any. At least I have a damned good excuse. What the hell is yours?”

At that point, Tye didn’t know whether to deck him or drink with him. Observing the wild look in his brother’s eyes and understanding his frustration—after all, he was suffering himself—he took a good lick of his candy and said, “Trace, do you remember Lieutenant Jenkins? Red-headed and covered with freckles.”

Trace nodded. “He got killed at Chickamauga, didn’t he?”

“Nope. Bought it at the Wilderness. Anyway, he had a saying I think fits this situation. Jenkins used to say that a man has two emotions: horny and hungry. Now, neither one of us can do much about the first at the moment, but it’s nigh on to noon and the Green Parrot Saloon serves a beefsteak special on Wednesdays. Besides, your daughters got into my root beer last night, and I need to restock my supply. What do ya say, want to buy me dinner?”

“No, but you can buy mine.”

Forty minutes and two rounds of root beer later, the McBride brothers sat at a table in the Green Parrot finishing up their meal. Their bickering over who should pay the charges ended when Big Jack Bailey and a pair of Lucky Lady ranch wranglers walked through the door, giving Trace his first opportunity since returning to town for a personal “discussion” with Bailey concerning his part in the love-potion mishap.

Because the rancher had been good to the girls once he sobered up, Trace had decided not to kill him. But because Bailey had kidnapped them to begin with, he had some trouble coming to him. Besides, Trace and his brother both needed a good fight.

It proved to be a most welcome distraction. The McBride brothers dusted the floor with Bailey and his minions.

“Damn, I feel better,” Trace said when the fisticuffs were finished. He wiped the blood dripping from a cut on his chin onto his shirtsleeve, flexed his bruised and scraped hands, and grinned. “Nothing like a little fight when a fella can’t…you know.”