Marriage By Necessity Read online

“Yeah. And once that’s done, we’ll be back here. Forever. Got that?”

  Sonny gulped. “Well, yeah.”

  Nate looked Meggie’s cousin up and down, then challenged, “So what do you think?”

  “Uh, it sounds...”

  “Good.” Farrah provided the word for her floundering husband. “It sounds real good. If Meggie loves you and you love her, then we’re happy for you both.”

  “And there’s more,” Meggie piped up.

  She must mean the percentage she wanted to promise them. Nate gave her the floor. “Right. Meggie, tell them what you have planned.”

  Meggie gave him a look of pure adoration. Then she smiled at her cousin and his wife. “As soon as the terms of the will are met, Nate and I want to go into a real partnership with you two.”

  “A partnership?” Sonny looked a little dazed.

  “Yes,” Meggie said. “If everything works out, and Nate and I have the baby we need to keep the Double-K, I intend for you two to have a twenty-fivepercent share of the place.”

  “No, Meggie...” Now Sonny looked stunned.

  “Don’t argue. You’ve worked hard for the Double-K for three years now. And you’ll have to run things yourselves this winter. You deserve to be working for something you can call your own. When all this trouble is through, this will be partly your ranch, too. We’ll all be in this together, in the best and truest sense.” She turned her wide smile briefly on Farrah, and then focused on her cousin again. “So, what do you say?”

  “I... Meggie, are you sure?”

  “I am. Now, please. Make your peace with Nate, because the two of you will be working together from now on.”

  Sonny nodded. “All right.” He met Nate’s eyes. “I guess maybe I... jumped the gun a little.”

  Nate shrugged. “Forget it.”

  “No. The truth is, I heard a few things about you. That you were a wild kid. And not the kind of man who would ever be settling down. And I judged you on rumor. I can see now that I was wrong.”

  Nate felt about two inches high. Simple, hardworking men were always too damn easy to deceive. Still, the agreement he and Meggie had made was just between the two of them. He would keep up the act. He held out his hand. “Let’s start fresh from here.”

  They shook across the table.

  “You take good care of her,” Sonny warned.

  “I will,” Nate promised. That wasn’t a total lie. He would take good care of Meggie. He would give her what she needed to keep what she loved. And then, as her cousin had guessed before Nate started conning him, they would go their separate ways.

  Chapter Four

  Nate and Meggie said their vows that Saturday, at the Johnson County Courthouse in Buffalo, with Sonny and Farrah as witnesses. They planned to drive back to Medicine Creek, stop for dinner at Arlington’s Steak House and then head on home to the ranch. Meggie walked out of the courthouse on her new husband’s arm, feeling happy and full of hope—almost as if she and Nate had just married for real and forever. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky.

  They didn’t get five steps along Main Street before Cash, the blond, blue-eyed charmer of the Bravo cousins, pulled up beside them in his Cadillac. He slid across the seat and shoved open the back door. “Get in.”

  “What the hell is this?” Nate demanded.

  “A kidnapping, what do you think?” Cash met his cousin’s dark stare. “So just do what I tell you—for once. Or there will be hell to pay.”

  “Says who?”

  “Edna.”

  Nate turned to Meggie, a sheepish grin on his face. “If Edna wants us, then I guess we’d better go.”

  Meggie laughed. “Fine by me.”

  Nate took her elbow to help her into the car. But then he stopped and looked around. “What happened to Sonny and Farrah and the kids?”

  “They’re already on their way where we’re going,” Cash said. “Now, get in. We were supposed to be there ten minutes ago.”

  Cash took them to Medicine Creek—but not to Arlington’s Steak House. Instead, he delivered them to the big house he shared with Abby and their son on North Street.

  “March up to the door and knock,” he commanded.

  They did as they were told. Edna Heller answered, all dressed for a party in a blue silk shirtwaist, looking so dainty and feminine it was hard to believe that she possessed a will of iron and the relentless determination of a drill sergeant.

  “Oh, here you both are, at last.” Edna kissed Meggie. “Oh, my dear. I am so thrilled about this.” She held out her arms to Nate, who obediently moved in for a hug. “Congratulations, Nathan.” She patted his broad back. “You are a very lucky man.”

  She stepped back, blaming, and turned to lead them into the high-ceilinged living room.

  Friends and family were waiting there. In unison, everyone shouted, “Surprise!”

  Abby stepped right up, her pretty face alight and her blond hair, as usual, falling in her eyes. She grabbed Meggie and hugged her. “I said this would happen,” she whispered in Meggie’s ear.

  “You did?”

  “Yep. Last year. On my own wedding day.”

  Meggie had no time to respond to that, because Zach grabbed her, spun her off the floor and hugged her hard. She was passed from embrace to embrace. It felt wonderful.

  After all the hugging was through, Meggie looked around in delight. Cash and Abby had spared no expense. They’d hired a caterer from Sheridan, the same one, Abby whispered, who’d put on their own wedding reception—in this very house, the year before. An array of tempting dishes waited on white-clothed tables and the bar had been fully stocked. The caterer had also brought along a four-piece band.

  “Oh, you really shouldn’t have.” Meggie sighed.

  “Oh, yes, we should,” Abby shot back. “Now, get out on that floor and dance.”

  Meggie didn’t hesitate. She danced with Zach and Cash and Sonny. She whirled from partner to partner, having the time of her life. Everyone seemed genuinely happy for her and for Nate. And she was happy, too.

  The only grim moment occurred when she danced with Barnaby Cotes.

  “I wish you the best, Meggie,” he told her stiffly. “But I can’t say I believe you’ll be happy with a man like that.”

  “Take a hike, Cotes,” Nate muttered, cutting in on them before she had the chance to tell Barnaby that she could do without his condescending remarks.

  Barnaby faded away into the crowd and Meggie found herself whirling in her husband’s arms. She closed her eyes and smiled and wished the dance would never end.

  “What did that creep say to you?” Nate asked in her ear.

  “Nothing important.”

  “I never could stand him. He’s a smug, self-righteous little—”

  She put a hand over his mouth—her left hand, on which her wedding band gleamed. “Shh. Just dance.”

  He pulled her closer and didn’t say another word.

  They drove back to the Double-K together, long after dark, in the rental car that Nate planned to turn in on Monday. From then until they left for L.A., he would use the old GMC pickup from the Rising Sun to get around.

  The nearly full moon seemed to light their way home. Meggie leaned her head on Nate’s shoulder and watched it through the windshield, a silver disk with one side missing, in a night of a thousand stars. The moonlight spilled down on the rolling grasses, so they looked like sheets of liquid silver, rippling before the wind.

  At last, Nate pulled into the yard., The lights were on in the bunkhouse. Sonny and Farrah had left the party to take the kids home over an hour before. Sonny’s old hound dog, Scrapper, barked twice from the bunkhouse steps. And then he must have decided things were all right, because he didn’t bark again.

  Nate swung the car around and pulled up in front of the main house. He turned off the engine and the lights. They sat there, for a moment, with the wind sighing outside and the moonlight pouring down, silvering the yard.

  Then Meggie lifted he
r head from Nate’s shoulder. They shared a long glance.

  And Nate said softly, “It shouldn’t be in a bedroom.”

  She knew just what he meant. “Let’s get going, then.”

  Half an hour later, Meggie rode out beside her husband, toward the Big Horns, black and craggy, like an absence of light against the night sky to the west. She rode Patriot, a fast little mare sired by her dear old Renegade. Nate had chosen a big black gelding that Meggie had named Indigo, since his coat shone almost purplish in the sun. Nate carried a rifle in his saddle scabbard, just to be on the safe side. And both of them had bedrolls tied on in back, with jackets wrapped inside.

  They rode clear of the home place and then, as one, they reigned their horses in. For a moment, they just sat there, looking out over the land. Meggie leaned on the saddle horn, smiling into the wind, smelling sage and just a hint of pine from the mountains not far off. Somewhere an owl hooted. And a coyote let out one long, lonely howl.

  They clucked their tongues softly at their horses and started out again. They didn’t need words. They knew where they were going: to that spot by Crystal Creek where they had sat and talked for hours so many afternoons those first two years when they were almost children—and the best of friends. They rode overland, in and out of gates that took them back and forth from Rising Sun pastures to ones that belonged to the Double-K. They came up quiet and easy on the cattle in those pastures. As they went by, the long heads would lift. Wide-set bulging eyes, gleaming in the moonlight, would stare at them curiously. Then, in dismissal, the eyelids would flicker down—and the long heads would turn away.

  At last they came to the dirt road that Nate had used at fourteen, when he went for a joyride in his grandpa’s pickup. Meggie dug in her heels and Patriot took off, headed for the rise and the creek beyond. With a low laugh, Nate followed.

  They raced over the ridge and down to the creek, laughing, the cool, clean wind in their faces, the moon showing the way. Over the years, successive spring thaws had changed the channel slightly. The old spot they used to favor no longer existed. They had to slow down and ride along above the bank, peering into the shadows of the willows and cottonwoods, looking for a likely place.

  “Here,” Nate said to her at last.

  They unsaddled and hobbled their horses several yards from creek side. Then they hauled the saddles and bedrolls down to the grass near the water, where the trees and the lowness of the land made a break from the incessant, keening wind. Nate spread his sleeping bag on the grass; they would use Meggie’s to put over them.

  Finally they sat side by side on their makeshift marriage bed and pulled off their boots and their socks. Shyness found Meggie just as she started unbuttoning her shirt, making her heart beat too fast and all her fingers turn to thumbs. She sat still, licking her lips that had become as dry as late-summer grass, staring at the dark water rushing past not far away, thinking that she was absolutely terrified.

  “Need some help?” Nate knelt before her.

  A break in the tree cover overhead showed him to her, silvered in moonlight. Unreality assailed her. Was this really happening?

  It was. She knew it. He was her most precious, hopeless fantasy. And he was here with her tonight because she had sought him out and begged him to help her. And, in the end, he had come to her, unable to refuse her need. Her knight in shining armor, in spite of himself.

  Wordless, she stared at him, at the shaggy jet hair, the chiseled face. His dark eyes, which so often watched the world in cold appraisal, were less cold now, maybe—but no less watchful.

  To escape that gaze, she glanced down. He’d already taken off his shirt She found herself staring at the hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, at the silky trail of black hair that curled out across his chest and then went down in a line over his hard belly, to disappear beneath the waistband of his worn jeans.

  “Meggie?”

  She made herself look into his eyes again. “I’m so scared all of a sudden....” The words came out sounding as weak as the cry of a sick calf, because her silly throat had clamped tight on her.

  A rueful smile took one corner of that full Bravo mouth. “Meggie. You didn’t go and save yourself, now, did you?”

  Her face was flaming. She couldn’t speak. She closed her eyes.

  “Hell, Meggie,” he whispered tenderly.

  Not far away, one of the horses whickered softly. And the wind, beyond the shelter of the bank, whistled and moaned.

  “Come on,” he said. “Look at me.”

  She did, with great effort. And she tried to explain.

  “I just, well, I didn’t see any point, with anyone else, you know?” She laughed then, a pained sound, at herself more than anything. She remembered the girls he used to date, the wild ones, when he was so busy breaking her heart for the first time. “How could I ask you that? Of course you don’t know.”

  “Meggie....”

  She closed her eyes again, willed the hurts of the past away. Nate had never made any promises to her: He had always been honest. Brutally so. She had known she would never lie down with him. Because she wanted forever—and he wanted to be free.

  Yet by some crazy miracle, here they were. On their wedding night. One moment in time that would never come again. “Meggie.”

  She looked at him and gave him a smile that quivered only slightly at the corners. “Yes. I could use a little help,” she said. “Somehow all my fingers have stopped working.” She took his big hands, so warm and so strong, and put them on the top button of her shirt. “Please?”

  His fingers moved, from one button to the next. The cool night air kissed her skin. He pulled the shirt out of her jeans, then took her wrists, one at a time, and undid the buttons there. His hands moved to her shoulders. And the shirt was gone.

  Her bra was white lace; she’d worn it beneath the knee-length white dress she’d married him in. It had a front clasp. His fingers worked briefly there, pressing at the exact center of her chest. And the clasp came apart. He slid the bra off her shoulders and away, gently, considerately, reminding her of the way a child will do a task, with serious and complete concentration on every move:

  He put his hands on her hips. “Stand up.”

  He steadied her as she rose. When she stood above him, he looked up the length of her body and she looked down at him, between the mounds of her own breasts, into the darkness of his eyes, a darkness she had longed for, always, all of her life, it seemed to her. She put her hands on her own belly, undid the top button of her fly. Then pulled. The zipper came open.

  He hooked his hands in her waistband and took her jeans down, along with the white lace panties that matched her bra. She had to rest a hand on his shoulder for balance when she stepped clear of everything.

  Swiftly, before she had time to ponder her own nakedness, he rose before her, and stripped down his own jeans. They faced each other at last, each totally nude. The wind blew. crying low. She shivered a little, still somewhat tearful—and poignantly aware that he was very much ready to make a baby with her.

  He reached out a hand, ran it over the goose bumps on her arm. “More than damn near naked now.”

  She smiled, remembering that first day, when she had ridden up on Renegade without her jeans to find him beating out a fire with blanket.

  “Cold?” he asked.

  She rubbed her arms. “Yeah.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He guided her down to their bed on the grass, and pulled the cover over them. The sudden, cozy warmth was sheer heaven. He held her close, his body against hers, and he stroked her back—long, slow strokes. She understood his intention: that she become accustomed to his touch.

  Meggie breathed slow and deep and let the sensations wash over her. She took in the scent of him. To her, he had always smelled like home, like breathing in the wind on the prairie: sage and dust and a hint of pine.

  His body felt hot, hotter than her own, really. And big. And so strong, all sleek bone and ready muscl
e. The hair on his thighs scratched her a little. But it felt good. It felt right.

  A few minutes before, he might have looked at her with tender pity, thinking her foolish to have saved herself. But right now, this moment, wrapped up tight with him, naked, she didn’t feel foolish. She felt glad, right down to the deepest part of herself, that she would have the one man she wanted. That she had never settled for less.

  He continued to stroke her, his hands moving over her neck, her shoulders and then between their bodies. He touched her breasts, tenderly, knowingly, bringing the nipples to hard, hungry peaks. His mouth followed his hands. When he took her nipple in his mouth, she threw her head back, moaning, as the sensation trailed its way down to her woman’s core, which suddenly felt like a hot, moist flower, blooming, opening.

  His hands were all over her. She lost track of each individual touch. The caresses were all one. He touched the blooming center of her, and she opened all the more for him.

  Then he was rising above her, blocking out the dark trees, the night sky and the moon. He braced himself on his elbows. She knew he gazed down at her, serious and intent; though, with the moon behind him, she could not actually see his eyes. She felt him, at her tender entrance, as he positioned himself.

  He thrust in, hard and clean. She let out one sharp, wounded cry.

  And he lay still inside her, letting her body know him, giving her time to accept his invasion. He bent his head and found her mouth. The kiss they shared went on forever.

  Three times, she thought. Three times, she had kissed this man. Once fourteen years ago, on the Fourth of July. Once just hours ago, so briefly, a light brushing of his lips on hers, to seal their wedding vows. And now. A third kiss. As they lay mated on the grass by Crystal Creek, beneath a cottonwood tree....

  Down where he pressed into her, there was pain. And a fullness. Slowly, as he kissed her, the pain was fading. Becoming pleasure. And a hunger, to move. To seek a rhythm that would bring fulfillment shattering through them both.

  With a long sigh, she adjusted herself, wrapping her legs around his. He simply kept kissing her, pausing only long enough to make a growling sound and to smile against her mouth.