Married by Accident Read online

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Books by Christine Rimmer

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Copyright

  “You go on now. You put the rings on the hand of your bride.”

  Cole blanched at his father’s words. Melinda turned her head, met Cole’s eyes. She saw him swallow. And then his mouth became a flat, determined line.

  He looked at his father. “Dad...”

  Melinda realized that Cole was going to do it: tell the truth that she hadn’t managed to reveal.

  And Melinda couldn’t bear it. She grabbed Cole’s hand. He flinched at her abruptness, but didn’t pull away, only gaped at her in disbelief as she passed him the ring box.

  “Yes, darling,” she said softly. “It’s only right that you should be the one to put them on me for the first time.”

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Special Edition...where each month we publish six novels celebrating love and life, with a special romance blended in.

  You’ll revel in Baby Love by Victoria Pade, our touching THAT’S MY BABY! title and another installment in her ongoing A RANCHING FAMILY saga. In this emotional tale, a rugged rancher becomes an instant daddy—and solicits the help of Elk Creek’s favorite nurse to give him lessons on bringing up baby.

  And there’s much more engaging romance on the way! Bestselling author Christine Rimmer continues her CONVENIENTLY YOURS miniseries with her thirtieth novel, about an enamored duo who masquerade as newlyweds—and brand-new parents—in Married by Accident. And you won’t want to miss Just the Three of Us, Jennifer Mikels’s tender love story about a high-society lady and a blue-collar bachelor who are passionately bound together for the sake of an adorable little boy. Then an estranged tycoon returns to the family fold and discovers unexpected love in The Secret Millionaire by Patricia Thayer—the first book in her WITH THESE RINGS series, which crosses into Silhouette Romance in September with Her Surprise Family.

  Rounding off the month, Lois Faye Dyer will sweep you off your feet with a heartwarming reunion romance that results in a surprise pregnancy, in The Only Cowboy for Caitlin. And in Child Most Wanted by veteran author Carole Halston, a fiercely protective heroine hides her true identity to safeguard her nephew, but she never counted on losing her heart to the man who could claim her beloved boy as his own.

  I hope you enjoy these books, and each and every novel to come!

  Sincerely,

  Karen Taylor Richman

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  CHRISTINE RIMMER

  MARRIED BY ACCIDENT

  For Sandra Dark,

  who has made me feel so very welcome in my new home.

  Thanks, Sandra, for the books and the honey,

  the good talks and the Brown Bag Tuesdays.

  Books by Christine Rimmer

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Double Dare #646

  Slow Larkin’s Revenge #698

  Earth Angel #719

  *Wagered Woman #794

  Born Innocent #833

  *Man of the Mountain #886

  *Sweetbriar Summit #896

  *A Home for the Hunter #908

  For the Baby’s Sake #925

  *Sunshine and the

  Shadowmaster #979

  *The Man, The Moon and

  The Marriage Vow #1010

  *No Less Than a Lifetime #1040

  *Honeymoon Hotline #1063

  †The Nine-Month Marriage #1148

  †Marriage by Necessity #1161

  †Practically Married #1174

  *A Hero for Sophie Jones #1196

  Dr. Devastating #1215

  Husband in Training #1233

  †Married by Accident #1250

  Silhouette Desire

  No Turning Back #418

  Call It Fare #458

  Temporary Temptress #602

  Hard Luck Lady #640

  Midsummer Madness #729

  Counterfeit Bride #812

  Cat’s Cradle #940

  The Midnight Rider Takes

  Bride #1101

  Silhouette Books

  Fortune’s Children

  Wife Wanted

  *The Taming of Billy Jones 1998

  *The Jones Gang

  †Conveniently Yours

  CHRISTINE RIMMER

  came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a salesclerk, a janitor, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Those who know her best withhold comment when she makes such claims; they are grateful that she’s at last found steady work. Christine is grateful, too—not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma.

  The Bravos

  Chapter One

  When the pickup truck hit Melinda Bravo in her cute little BMW, she was giving herself a pep talk.

  “Relax, breathe deeply,” she had said aloud, though there was no one in the car to hear but herself. “You are a few minutes ahead of schedule. You are calm and collected, appropriately dressed and one hundred percent ready to make this presentation. Evelyn Erikson is glamour personified and the designs are gorgeous, perfect for her. She will adore them. You were right to insist that Rudy let you do this one yourself.”

  Melinda paused in her pep talk as the light in the intersection ahead turned yellow. She glanced to both sides. The adjoining street looked clear. In fact, there were no other cars in sight.

  She pressed the accelerator to gain a little more speed, and picked up the pep talk right where she’d left off. “You are going to make a huge sale and Rudy is going to realize just how capable and talented you—”

  It happened right then, before she could even finish her sentence. A flash of midnight-blue exploded in her side vision, stunning the words right out of her.

  Then came the impact. The sound of it—a thunderous, crackling crunch—seemed to eat up the world. The car went flying sideways, tires squealing in an agony of peeling rubber as they tried to hold the road and failed.

  Melinda caught a glimpse of her own stunned face in the rearview mirror, eyes wide, mouth a silly, slack O. She gripped the wheel and waited to die.

  A fraction of a second later, the car hit something that stopped it cold. Out of nowhere, a huge pillow came at her. Her face was smothered in softness.

  Air bag, she thought in numb shock. It’s just the air bag...

  Metal groaned.

  The air bag went instantly flat, collapsing over the steering wheel in a soft puddle of rubber.

  And then there was silence.<
br />
  Out of that eerie quiet came a tiny pitiful whimper: her own. Melinda sucked in a tight, whistling breath through a windpipe that had somehow become way too small. And then she just stared—past the slack form of the deflated air bag, beyond the dashboard, out the windshield, where the L.A. sun beamed down and the sky was a bright, clear expanse of pure blue.

  An accident, she thought stupidly, I’ve just been in an accident. She dared to turn her head—toward the passenger side window first. She saw that her car had been rammed against the right-hand concrete curb. A big wooden telephone pole loomed about eight inches from the passenger door.

  Another weak whimper escaped her. She turned her head the other way, looked out her own side window and then a bit farther back.

  Melinda let out another sound—a cry of pure dismay. A shiny dark blue pickup had taken a nosedive into the rear half of her car. The left end of its front bumper stopped not five inches from her driver’s side door.

  Melinda blinked, faced front again and looked down at her body. No blood. No bones sticking out of torn flesh. Not even any bruises that she could see yet. With a shaking hand, she grabbed the rearview mirror and angled it so that she could see her face.

  She looked just as dazed and disoriented as she felt. But as for injuries, she couldn’t see a one. Even her hair remained sleek and perfect—a simple and businesslike French twist, which she’d smoothed into place a few hours before.

  Unharmed, she thought numbly, and tried to be grateful for that. But then, in the mirror, she caught a glimpse out the rear window. Her trunk was sprung, and ridiculously bent out of shape.

  The lingerie. Oh, no...

  She pictured the pretty gold and pink boxes, which she had stacked in there so carefully under Rudy’s critical eye. “Please God,” she muttered under breath, “let the lingerie be all right...”

  She heard a creaking sound. She let go of the mirror and whipped her head to the left in time to watch the driver’s door of the pickup swing open.

  A Stetson got out. The hat was connected to a tall cowboy in battered jeans, old boots and a plaid shirt. The cowboy shut the pickup door and then skimmed off the hat. She saw that he had thick brown hair, hair that gleamed in the bright sun. And his kind-looking eyes found her immediately—no great feat since she continued to sit there, staring foolishly back at him, from her ruined car.

  The cowboy shut the pickup door. It took him a single step and he was right beside her car. He pulled her door open and leaned toward her. She saw that the kind eyes were hazel. Light hazel. Mostly green, with hints of blue and brown. “You all right, ma’am?”

  “I...yes. I think...I’m fine. Not hurt. No injuries at all.” She fumbled for her seat belt, found the latch. But her fingers weren’t working right. She couldn’t get it to give.

  The cowboy slid his hat back onto his head. “Here.” He reached inside the car.

  Melinda felt a flash of warmth, from his body. There was the scent of some aftershave or clean-smehing soap. For a split second, he was actually leaning across her, his hard chest brushing her breasts. Then he retreated back outside the car again, giving her no time at all to stiffen in reaction to his sudden, uninvited closeness.

  “There.”

  She realized he had popped the latch of the seat belt for her. “Thank you,” she said, as graciously as she could manage, considering that her brain seemed to have shut down and her tongue felt like a slab of wood in her mouth.

  “Happy to oblige.” He stepped back a little more and stood behind her door, holding it open all the way—so that she could get out, she realized. Too bad her body felt as numb and dead as the air bag, which had deflated so completely, it was draped over her knees.

  A frown creased the tanned skin between the cowboy’s straight eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes. Of course. I am fine. Just...disoriented.”

  “Shock,” he said in a tone of authority. “It’s nothing to fool with. We probably oughtta call an ambulance and—”

  She put up a hand. “Please. I told you. I’m all right.” She didn’t have time for any ambulance right now.

  He was still frowning. “You don’t look all right.”

  “Well, I am. There is nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all.” She shoved at the rubber folds of the air bag and somehow managed to swing her feet to the pavement. Then, for a minute, she just sat there, gathering the strength to stand, watching a minivan and then a convertible rolling by in the free lane a few feet away, the drivers shaking their heads and staring, the way people always do when their drive by an accident.

  The cowboy’s broad shoulders lifted as he shrugged. “All right. It’s your life.” He held out his hand. It was big, the knuckles large and the fingers long. It looked very capable. “Come on.”

  She let him help her to her feet, thinking that his hand was warm and rough and that hers felt safe inside it. She pulled free as soon as she was upright and she took in a long. slow breath. It was okay. Her legs would hold her up.

  “Feeling better by the second,” she told him, and forced a smile.

  “Glad to hear it.” He smiled back. He had a square jaw and a cleft in his chin. And that smile of his didn’t stop at his mouth. It went all the way to those kind hazel eyes.

  For some sick reason, she thought of Christopher. Christopher’s jaw was narrow, fine-boned, his forehead high and smooth, belying his forty-plus years. His hair was fine, and as pale as her own. Christopher rationed his smiles very carefully. He certainly wouldn’t be giving them out for free to some woman he’d just pulled from a smashed up BMW, some woman who should have looked closer at the intersecting street before speeding through a yellow light.

  The cowboy was frowning again. “Feeling dizzy?”

  “No. No, not dizzy at all.” She looked away from him, toward the pickup. In the cab, on the passenger side, she saw a young woman. The woman smiled—the same kind of smile as the cowboy’s, open and generous, all the way to the eyes.

  Melinda turned to the cowboy again. “Your passenger. Is she all right?”

  “Annie’s okay.” His smile turned to a grin. “And I’m just fine, too, in case you were plannin’ to ask.”

  Melinda didn’t smile back this time. It seemed dangerous, somehow, to start smiling too much with this man. “Good,” she said firmly. “Then at least no one’s been hurt.” She looked at the two vehicles again.

  The sight did not cheer her. From where she stood, it appeared she wouldn’t be driving the BMW again any time soon.

  The urge came, very powerfully, to break down and cry. To just go ahead and give in, throw back her head and wail out her misery and frustration at the fabulous blue sky above.

  But she didn’t. She held it together. She was going to salvage as much of this mess as she could.

  “Ma’am,” said the cowboy, “why don’t I—?”

  She cut him off by whirling on her heel and striding around the end of his big pickup, heading for the sprungopen trunk of her car. A station wagon, rolling by slowly so its occupants could gawk, honked at her because she stepped out in front of it. She cast the driver a killing glare and kept on walking until she reached her destination.

  She looked down into the open trunk.

  Thank God for small favors. It wasn’t that bad. The boxes, so tastefully embossed in their lower left corners with the name of Rudy’s shop, Forever Eve, had tumbled all over each other. Some of them looked a little less fresh, a bit frayed and bent. But the pink and gold ribbons had held. For the most part, her merchandise seemed to be intact.

  “How ’bout I see if I can get my pickup free of your car and out of the road?” It was the cowboy. He had followed her around the pickup and now stood a few feet behind her.

  She turned to him. “Fine. Do it.”

  He ambled back to the other side of the pickup and climbed in. He said something to his passenger, then started the engine and put the thing in reverse. The truck came free easily, though th
e crunching and groaning of metal was not pleasant to hear. The cowboy backed around and pulled in at the curb on the intersecting street.

  Melinda dared to approach her car again. It was a disaster. The rear half looked as if it had taken a direct hit from a huge steel fist. And something was wrong with the rear wheels. They slanted at a bizarre diagonal to the road. She cast a glance at the pickup. The only thing wrong with it was a battered front grill and bumper.

  The cowboy strode toward her again and stopped when he reached her side. They stared at her ruined car together for a moment. Then he said, “Whoa. Looks like that rear axle’s bent up pretty bad.” He took off his hat once more and hit it twice against his lean thigh.

  Just like Zach, she thought, feeling a little curl of wistfulness down inside. Zach was her big brother and she loved him, even though she’d never understood him. He ran the family ranch in Wyoming. His lifelong fascination with cows and wide-open spaces had made him almost as big a disappointment to their parents as Melinda was herself.

  The cowboy caught her watching him. He smiled again. Melinda recognized the gleam in those nice eyes of his: male appreciation.

  The gleam wasn’t new to her. She saw it often in men’s eyes. All her life, Melinda had been told how beautiful she was. And she’d grown rather tired of fielding unwanted passes over the years. But somehow, this man’s admiration didn’t bother her at all—as inappropriate as it probably was, considering the sweet-faced girl who waited in his pickup.

  Melinda broke the hold of those gleaming eyes and the cowboy put his hat back on. “I’d say you’ll have to call yourself a tow truck.”

  “Marvelous,” she muttered, as the reality of this grim situation struck her anew. She resisted the sudden urge to shout accusations, to demand, What were you thinking of? Why didn’t you keep those gorgeous eyes of yours on the road?