The Maverick Meets His Match (13 page)

“Right, Mandy?” Ty repeated. She felt more pressure from his thigh.

Nudged out of her dismal thoughts, she nodded.

“Say hi to Lyle Thorton. Hear his wife had a bad bout of arthritis after Houston’s rodeo,” Harold said.

Mandy nodded again and took the tiniest piece of lettuce into her mouth, hoping her stomach would accept it.

“I’ll be worried about you up in that plane the whole time you are gone,” Sheila said, taking a sip of the champagne she’d insisted be poured for all of them. Mandy hadn’t touched hers, but maybe she should. If this wasn’t a reason to get drunk, what was?

“It’s the only way we’ll be able to see all the committees we have to see and still make the rodeo in Washington this coming weekend,” Ty said. “Mandy’s not worried, are you?”

Again she lied, nodding even though she was petrified to get into that puddle jumper of his. She’d never seen his plane, but how big could a two-seater prop plane be? This week had been nothing but a nightmare, and it would only get worse. From flying in that plane to introducing Ty as the head of Prescott to sleeping in the same bedroom with the man, her life for the foreseeable future would be nothing but one long bad dream.

But only for six months. And she’d have had to do the first two things regardless. The last had been her choice, and it was too late to second guess her decision now.

Ty reached for his champagne glass, and the sleeve of his black tuxedo softly brushed against her bare arm.

“I’m an experienced pilot, Sheila. I’ll take good care of your daughter.”

Sheila turned to say something to Harold, and Ty leaned toward her, his warm body touching hers, to whisper in her ear. “I’ll take very good care of you, if you let me.” A slow heat spread through her starting at her toes and climbing up her body to nestle right between her thighs. She crossed her legs.

After taking another sip of champagne, Ty set his glass back on the table.

“How difficult is it to fly a plane?” her mother asked.

Mandy reached for her goblet. Maybe the champagne would calm her stomach. Tipping back her glass, she felt the bubbles tickle her lips

“Takes training. Key is knowing the right switches to flip,” Ty said.

The waitress interrupted to check if there was anything they needed.

Ty leaned in again, this time pressing his torso against her as he whispered, “I’d like to flip your switches.”

A flush engulfed her. She had another sip of champagne.

“Dessert, dear?” her mother asked as all eyes, including the waitress’s, turned toward her.

She shook her head.

“Oh, we have to have something,” her mother chided. “They just got married today,” she told the waitress.

The waitress looked from Mandy to Ty—and stayed looking at Ty—as she said her congratulations. Ty did that to women. Attracted them. And she, damn it, was no exception. This time she took a
gulp
of champagne.

“I’d go for some cake,” Harold spoke up.

“Cake all around. And coffee,” Sheila ordered. “No fuss, though. This is just a celebration for us,” she told the waitress. Looking at Mandy’s barely touched salad and the half-filled glass of champagne, Sheila frowned. “And my daughter’s not finished with her salad yet, so leave that plate,” she said as the busboy the waitress had signaled over began clearing.

“You need to eat something, Mandy. You barely ate breakfast this morning,” Sheila said above the clacking of plates being cleared.

Mandy felt a funny swaying in her head. Maybe she should eat something. “I’ll have the cake.”

From under the table she felt Ty’s hand on her thigh. She should remove it, but the swaying in her head prevented her.  She turned to look at him and felt a little dizzy again as she stared into dark lust-filled eyes at odds with his amused grin. Under the table, his hand brushed the hem of her dress up her thigh and then landed back on bare flesh. Her legs uncrossed.

His thumb swirled over her skin, focusing her attention on that spot on her inner thigh, worrying that he would move it even higher. Then what would she do?

“You’re going to love dessert. What follows the main event, Mandy, is always the best part,” he said. The heat flushing through her body had her wondering if he wasn’t right.

Married.
Certainly not where he had expected to find himself, Ty thought as he gazed into the steamed glass of the bathroom mirror. He wiped off the fog, creating a watery space, and glared at the somber face that stared back at him. What had he been thinking? Problem was, he’d let his dick do his thinking—and that had never worked out well for him.

He and Mandy were sharing a bedroom, like the will said, but not a bed. They’d wrangled over whether to use the ranch house’s guestroom, which Mrs. Jenkins had already made ready for them, with its king-sized bed and its own bathroom situated next to her grandfather’s room, or the smaller bedroom down the hall with twin beds and a bathroom shared with a vacant room on the opposite side.

With arms crossed and heat in her cheeks, Mandy had been adamant it would be the twin beds. After dinner and several glasses of champagne at the Cattle Baron’s Grille, he thought she’d be primed for tonight. He’d been wrong.

He’d given in on the bedroom issue, for this evening at least.

Tomorrow they’d hit the road to meet with the various rodeo committees and offer assurances. They’d be staying in hotel rooms. He had to get lucky and have at least one place where they would have a room with a single bed. He’d make sure of it.

Tonight he’d just have to steel himself to frustration. Not quite how he would have guessed his wedding night would go, but then he’d never imagined it. Mandy must have. Every woman he’d met had thought about her wedding day at some time. Getting married in an office with only Brian, Shelia, and Harold to witness and before a strange judge must have been quite a letdown for her. He swiped a towel across his chin and secured a larger towel around his waist.

He’d always slept in the nude. He had no plans on changing. He’d use the towel to be discreet, but it wasn’t like she’d never seen a man before. And he had no problem with her checking him out. He had nothing to hide in that department.

She wasn’t in the bedroom, though the bed closest to the bank of windows had been turned down. He went and opened one of the windows. The soft cooling breeze of a late spring evening fluttered the sheer curtains. He looked around the yellow-walled room. It was simply furnished, containing two beds with old-fashioned iron headboards painted cream and covered in white bedspreads, one maple dresser, and a small vanity in the same wood. Obviously a room meant for JM’s grandkids when they were young. Not for someone’s wedding night.

Why had JM put him smack-dab in the middle of such a mess? It was one thing to want financial security for your family, but a whole other kettle of fish to try to play matchmaker to two people who were temperamentally unsuitable for each other.

Nothing to do but go to bed, he figured. They would be flying out in his plane at eleven the next morning and heading for Abilene, Texas, to talk to the folks there, and then they’d hit three more stops before flying back on Friday so they could make a Saturday rodeo Prescott was putting on in Washington. It would be a hectic week, but those Texas rodeos were influential. If the Texans held, they might not have to make more trips. Besides, there was an AFBR board member in Texas he’d like to see. He’d done a land deal with him a while back.

As he dropped the towel and slid under the thin cover, cool sheets greeted his hot body, hot for reasons unexplained by the mild temperature in the room. He was flying at half-mast even knowing tonight wasn’t going to be that kind of night. Damn.

He’d left the light on for Mandy and was just contemplating getting up and going to find her, when the door pushed open. She stood there dressed in nothing but a pink oversized T-shirt. Those long, shapely, tanned legs made his mouth dry and his shaft harden. An image of her wrapping those legs around his waist as he took her up against the door flitted across his overactive mind.

Mandy stilled in the doorway and stared at a bare chest displaying abs that looked like they’d been fashioned from corrugated steel. He had the kind of chest seen in fitness magazines and women drooled over. Tight skin, brown nipples, and a thin line of dark hair trailing toward the blanket bunched at his waist. Staring back, he propped up on his elbow to rest his head on his hand. The movement caused well-defined muscles to ripple and the blanket to slide down to his hips. Dangerously low. Below his belly button low. He was totally nude under that threadbare blanket.

That was knowledge she could have done without, knowledge that formed a pool of moisture between her legs.

She felt light headed, no doubt the residual effect from the poor decision of too much champagne, though she’d sobered up fast enough after stepping into her grandfather’s house. Too many memories.

“Make yourself at home, Ty.”

The words snapped in the air with more crackle than she’d intended. Partially to dispel her physical reaction. Partially because she’d just been down the hall in her grandfather’s room—remembering.

She flicked the wall switch off, killing the light. In the gray darkness, she picked her way past their two suitcases and the foot of his bed, toward her own.        

“You okay?” he asked.

She flipped back the chenille bedspread and backed onto the mattress so she faced the window, not Ty. The cool sheets sent a chill through her as a slightly stuffy smell greeted her nose, probably from bedding that hadn’t been used for a number of years. She’d found them in the linen closet after she’d won the battle of the beds. Now here she was spending the night in the room she’d shared with her brother when they had stayed over at their grandparents’ in her younger years, when their grandmother had still been alive.

“Yes,” she mumbled. Could he tell she’d been crying?

She hadn’t planned on stepping into JM’s bedroom, the place she had last seen her grandfather alive. But being in the house, she’d felt an almost morbid need to confront the emptiness of that room. So much had happened since his death, she hadn’t had much time to grieve. The will was part of the reason, the rodeo, Mitch and Ty, the other parts, and somehow all interconnected. Regardless, she hadn’t had space to be alone, to process JM’s death.

The ache in her heart started the moment she’d set foot inside JM’s room. It looked the same, like it was waiting for his return. The comb on the dresser, that special book on the bed stand, the corduroy slippers tucked beside his chair. Only the empty hospital-like bed suggested the truth.

During the last days of his life, she’d read to him from the pages of
Anne of Green Gables
. When she’d been young, he’d bought her the book and insisted she read it aloud to him in the evening so she could practice her reading. They’d laugh over Anne’s stubborn, feisty ways. JM had said he’d chosen the novel for her because Mandy had reminded him of Anne.

She’d kept the book, and as his condition deteriorated, she’d sit and read to him as he listened with his eyes closed, a smile on his frail face. She’d just reached the part where Matthew had died…and the next day, so had JM.

Tears burned the back of her eyes. Her throat constricted. Her chest labored to breathe. She scrunched her body in a tighter curl.

She’d never hear JM say her name again, never feel his warm hand on her shoulder, never see that twinkle in his eye. She’d never again talk with him or ask him the thousand questions she’d yet to think of about running PRC. She’d never again be able to tell him she loved him.

Or ask him why he had done this to her.

To hurt her? Her grandfather had never been cruel in his life.

To teach her a lesson? For the life of her she couldn’t understand what he wanted her to learn.

To break her spirit? Because that’s what it was doing.

This was her wedding night. And circumstances had made it one of the saddest nights among several in her young life.

She hadn’t meant to cry again. She hadn’t meant to sob. She hadn’t meant to feel sorry for herself. But she no longer had the fortitude to fight the loneliness and stubborn ache that continued to dog her since the funeral. She turned her face into the softness of the musty pillow and, with the escape of one muffled sob, she lost the struggle.

Ty heard the first garbled choke and prayed it wasn’t what he thought. But stifled as the sound was, he knew his prayer wasn’t going to be answered.

Mandy was crying.

On their wedding night.

Even if this was a sham of a marriage, each sob felt like a knife was being plunged through his gut. He was at least partially to blame, if for nothing else than being a tool in JM’s crazy proposition and convincing her to go through with it.

Why had JM wanted this for either of them? That question just wouldn’t be answered by any logic he could come up with.

He could tell by the dampened bursts of sound she was trying to stop the waterworks, trying to conceal them. It hit him that Mandy had hardly had time to breathe these last few days, much less grieve. And here she was staying in her grandfather’s house, knowing she’d agreed to this marriage in part to keep it in the family. The memories alone had to be tough.

He counted the seconds as the muted sobs continued. He didn’t get past sixty before he was out of bed, the breeze from the open window nipping at his skin as he padded the short distance to where she lay.

Taking a deep breath, he squatted on the edge of the mattress, glad the lack of light would conceal his state of undress. And the degree of his arousal. Her rose-tinged scent surrounded him.

She didn’t move as he slid down next to her, spooning against her back with only the coverlet separating them. He shifted his hips so his hardened flesh wouldn’t touch her. Despite everything tonight, he hadn’t yet been able to tame his lust for her. The need was so strong he wasn’t sure even her tears could do the trick.

He struggled for something to say that would provide comfort, but nothing profound came to him. “I’m sure this is rough for you.” She didn’t move a muscle as he wrapped an arm around her, careful to aim for the safe territory of her waist. She didn’t answer. Only a strangled sob.