“It’s clear as glass, she planned the whole thing, beginning to end. And I don’t see why I should have to be the bad guy just because she’s manipulated her way into being Jessie’s friend.” Mac braced his arms on the top rail of the pasture gate and set the sole of his boot on the bottom rail as he concluded the entire, unexpurgated story of his involvement with Abbie. Beside him, Cade assumed the same position, one foot braced against the bottom rail, arms propped across the top, his gaze—like Mac’s—centered on the mares and their foals grazing contentedly on the summer grasses. There was a sense of wholeness when he was with Cade, something about the alignment of their individual stances, the tilt of their hats, the way they looked at things, the knowledge that someone understood him about as well as he understood himself. It was their twinship that made them not only physically identical down to the last hair on their heads, but also gave them the shared history that fostered a special insight each into the other. There wasn’t any other person Mac wanted to talk to about Abbie and her baby. No one else he trusted enough to confess the whole sordid story to. He knew Cade would see things his way, or show him where he lacked perspective. For good or ill, Cade would tell him the truth. “I think,” Mac continued, “that I should tell Jess what her friend is really like and insist she be the one to ask Abbie to leave the ranch.”
“Is that what you want to happen? For Abbie to just go away?” Cade paused, then specified the answer he expected. “Truth.”
“Yes,” Mac said without hesitation, then realized with a jarring twist in his gut that he really wasn’t going to be any happier when she was gone. “No. I don’t know. She’s a liar, a schemer. Worse even than Gillian was. I shouldn’t give a solitary damn if she disappeared from the face of the earth. But right now, the truth is, I feel this crazy impulse to protect her, to step in and save her from the mess she’s made and I’m really not sure how I’m going to feel once she’s gone.”
“You want my opinion?” Cade asked.
“No, I want Stanley’s,” Mac replied dryly. “Of course, I want your opinion. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about this. I wouldn’t have just confessed to you my part in this soap opera or told you how really stupid I was for falling for her innocent facade in the first place.”
“You’re in love with her,” Cade said confidently. “It’s the only explanation.”
Mac turned his head and stared at his brother. “This is no time for jokes,” he said.
“Consider the possibility, Mac. You fell in love with her back in December, you’ve thought about little else except her ever since—your words, not mine—and when she showed up here at the ranch, you panicked and started imagining it was all a setup to trap you into marriage and fatherhood. With what Gillian did to you, that knee-jerk reaction is—”
“Knee-jerk?”
“That’s what I said,” Cade continued calmly. “You reacted to Abbie’s announcement about the baby by jumping to a perfectly understandable conclusion, considering your history with the last woman—actually, the only other woman you ever fell hard for. But that doesn’t mean you automatically jumped to the right conclusion.”
“I’m not wrong about this, Cade.” But even as he said it, Mac knew he wanted his brother to convince him he might be. “And I am not in love with Abbie. I slept with her once five months ago. I’m pretty sure that qualifies as lust, not love.”
“If it had been nothing more than lust, you’d have forgotten about it the next day when she skipped out. And by your own admission, you didn’t. Love can happen that fast,” Cade assured him. “Look at Serena and me. One minute we’re married due to a cultural misunderstanding and the next thing you know, I’m head over heels for her. When it’s the right woman, Mac, logic really plays no part in it.”
“If this is all the help you’re going to be, I think I’ll just ride out and have a talk with a scrub oak.”
“You’re not listening to me, buddy. You’re in denial.”
“And you’re still in that annoying stage of romance where you think everyone is or should be in love with everyone else. You’re wearing rose-colored glasses, Cade. Probably will be for months to come. You and Alex. What a time for both my brothers to be so besotted with their respective brides that they haven’t a sensible word to say to me.”
“The word I have for you is, give it a chance.” Cade pulled down the brim of his hat and took his boot off the bottom rail, breaking the syncronicity as his gaze shifted toward the property line and the green acres on the other side. “I’ve asked Nick Grayson and Uncle Randy if Coleman-Grayson Corporation will help Serena and me buy the McGovern place. It’ll give the ranch room for expansion and give me a little more privacy with my wife. If McGovern agrees to sell at our offering price, and Nick thinks he will, we could be moving in by September.”
“That’s good news,” Mac said, honestly pleased by his twin’s plan but wishing he had a better answer for his own situation. “That way you and Serena can make a home of your own and you can still be home.”
“Exactly what we thought, although I have promised Serena we’ll spend at least a month or two in Balahar every year. She’s excited about that.” Cade continued to look across the distant fence that divided the Desert Rose from the McGovern property. “Okay. Here’s my best advice, Mac. Up to now, you’ve tried ignoring Abbie. You’ve tried confronting her with her lies. You’ve tried to force her to admit she’s exactly like Gillian. I’m not saying she isn’t lying, Mac. I’m only saying you ought to consider the idea that maybe she isn’t.”
“She is,” Mac protested, trying to keep his rocksolid belief in her duplicity from crumbling like sandstone. “We spent one night together, Cade. One night. We used protection against pregnancy—I wasn’t completely blindsided by lust—and it just seems too strange to me that five months later she turns up pregnant…here, of all places.”
“It is an odd set of circumstances, Mac, but what if everything she told you is the truth? Stranger things have happened.”
“Lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
“Sorry, brother, but even science isn’t going to back you up on that angle. It’s true you got burned pretty badly by Gillian, but that doesn’t mean Abbie is just like her. It just means you’re more suspicious than maybe you ought to be.”
“I have a right to be suspicious,” Mac argued. “Her story doesn’t hold up. Haven’t you noticed how she carries that little cell phone everywhere she goes? Never lets it out of her sight, and she gets mysterious phone calls all the time from some guy. I’ve heard her talking to him. Now tell me there’s not something downright sneaky about that. About her.”
“Maybe,” Cade said. “And maybe not. If Abbie is as devious and sly and downright sneaky as you’re convinced she is, then it’s going to come as a big surprise to everyone except you. Jessie adores Abbie. Serena likes her. Hannah likes her. Aunt Vi and Mom like her. Every other male on this ranch breaks out in a grin anytime she glances in their direction, and that includes me. Why don’t you stop torturing yourself with trying to figure out how she’s like Gillian and start trying to figure out how she’s different? What if Abbie actually is the special person you first thought she was? What if you tried to have an honest conversation with her about what happened and what she expects from you instead of baiting her at every turn and waiting for her to make a mistake?”
Mac frowned. “I can’t just pretend to believe her all of a sudden.”
“No, but think about it this way. What would happen if you suddenly discovered solid evidence that she’d been telling the truth all along?”
Mac thought about that. Remembered Abbie’s sleek body beside him, naked on the bed, beneath him, welcoming him inside. Remembered how he’d fallen in love with her laugh, how he’d felt wrapped in warmth just hearing it. Remembered how lost he’d felt when he realized she was gone without a trace. “If I thought for a minute she was telling the truth, I suppose I’d have to marry her.”
Cade grinned. “That’s it, then. Love in the first degree.”
Mac offered no answering grin in return. “That is no help, Cade. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“Okay, then, let’s put this on a level you’ll understand. Come with me.” He led the way to the barn, his gaze searching the ground, until he found what he wanted—a wayward stem of hay. Holding it out, he said, “We’ll draw straws. You get the short straw, you have the talk with Jessie and get Abbie evicted. I draw the short straw, you take my advice and spend time—and I do mean quality time—being nice to Abbie. Agreed?”
Mac studied the piece of straw. “You want to draw straws to decide whether or not I have to follow your dumb advice? You’re not just making another stupid joke?”
In answer, Cade snapped the straw in two, showed Mac that they were of different lengths, then put them in his palm and put his hands behind his back. When he brought his hands forward again, the ends of the straw extended out evenly. “Take your pick, twin.”
“This is ridiculous,” Mac said, eyeing the straws.
“Afraid you’ll lose?”
“How much quality time are we talking about?”
“How much can you stand?”
“An hour, maybe.”
“A week,” Cade countered.
“A day.”
Cade shook his head. “Today’s Monday. You have to give it at least through this coming weekend.”
“That’s six whole days.”
“Yeah, plus what’s left of this one. You’re not chicken, are you, Mac?”
What was he worried about? Mac wondered. He’d won at this game before. “You’re on,” he said, and chose his playing piece…and came up the loser.
ABBIE EXPECTED THE WORST when Mac slipped into the seat beside her at dinner. His nearness unnerved her. His pleasant “Mmm, this looks good, doesn’t it?” made her edgy. His under-his-breath suggestion to her of “You’re going to want an extra helping of that casserole, trust me” knotted her healthy appetite into a lump of anxiety. When he asked, solicitously, if Jessie had given her the day off so she could recover from the demands of her weekend at the horse show, then accused his cousin of overworking the best help she was ever likely to get, Abbie couldn’t imagine what mischief he was plotting. But when he smiled at her—a really bone-melting smile—over the bowl of mashed potatoes, she knew that whatever he was doing, it was going to get her into trouble.
He was going to tell the whole table she was here under false pretenses. He was going to lull her into a false security, then pull out the guns of accusation and shoot holes in any defense she offered. He was going to embarrass and humiliate her in front of his family. He was going to…
He did nothing, as it turned out. He made several pleasant comments to her over the course of dinner and went out of his way at every turn to include her in whatever discussion he had with anyone else. As dessert—Ella’s fantastic blackberry cobbler topped off with homemade vanilla ice cream—was being passed out, Alex rose and tapped a spoon against his water glass. When the murmur of conversation died back, he cleared his throat and placed his hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “I have an announcement,” he said. “Hannah and I are…” His face creased with a grin. “She’s pregnant, and the doctor said today he thinks it’s twins!”
“Congratulations!” Cade was the first one to jump up to slap his older brother on the back and give Hannah a kiss on the cheek, but Mac was right behind him and Jessica followed close on their heels. Rose and Vi seemed a little misty-eyed, and Ella was so excited she let the ice-cream scooper drip all over the dining room floor while she hugged first Alex, then Hannah, then her own husband, Hal, for good measure.
After that, there were periodic whoops of laughter, a bubble of excited chatter that rose and fell…and rose again. Through it all, for the rest of the evening, Mac stayed at Abbie’s side. He told her how he and Cade had prompted Alex into courting Hannah, suggested that if Abbie still wanted to learn about the Arabians, he’d be happy to continue her lessons, asked if she wanted more cobbler or ice cream, offered to get her a footstool, a pillow to place behind her back, even suggested a glass of milk would be good for her and help her sleep soundly. By the time she pleaded that it was well past her bedtime and time for her to go upstairs, she half expected him to insist upon tucking her into bed and reading her a bedtime story. Arabian Nights, probably.
She fell asleep thoroughly confused and with her suspicions in a complete muddle. What in the heck was he up to?
MAC HADN’T THOUGHT being nice to Abbie could be so easy. He’d refused to think about how easily Cade’s advice could backfire, and pulled out all the charm he could muster. For the next two days, he sat next to her at dinner. He made sure she was included in his conversations. He smiled. He asked her opinion. He smiled some more. The only thing he didn’t do, didn’t dare do, was touch her in even the most casual gesture. For one thing, he didn’t want her to slap his hand, and for another, he was afraid of what would happen if he did. Touching Abbie might tempt him to do something more than just touch her, kiss her, perhaps. And that could ignite the embers of a physical attraction sizzling just beneath the surface. And that would spell disaster in more ways than one. He could wake up and find himself not only married to her, but an expectant father, as well.
Oh, it wasn’t that he suddenly believed her story and accepted Cade’s love-at-first-sight theory. He didn’t. Not at all. But he felt it was important to maintain at least one line he wouldn’t cross, some measure of just how far he was willing to go to prove his brother was wrong. Abbie was a liar. The baby was not, could not, be his. But he’d agreed to play the game and it wouldn’t kill him to pretend to have a change of heart for the rest of the week, just so long as he kept his hands off her. And who knew? Maybe Abbie would respond by letting down her guard. Maybe she’d decide, all on her own, to abandon her plans and leave the ranch. Maybe she’d get careless and he could catch her in her web of lies. Maybe, nothing would change.
Or maybe he’d discover that Cade was right.
Mac didn’t want to think about that possibility, but since his talk with his twin, the idea that Abbie’s baby could also be his baby had circled through his thoughts a million times. If there was one chance in ten million, even one in a billion, he had to consider what he’d do, although he knew in his heart the answer was a foregone conclusion. If a paternity test proved her baby was a Coleman, he would marry Abbie. And he would do it knowing that by insisting on that tangible, scientific proof, he had lost any hope of ever having her respect, trust, love or forgiveness.
MAC WAS HEADED into the kitchen, thinking that might be where Abbie had disappeared to after dinner. He was halfway there when he heard his mother’s laugh and her voice confessing, “When I was pregnant with the twins, there were a couple of months when I cried at the slightest thing. One time, Ibrahim offered me anything I wanted—jewelry, clothes, a pet monkey, a trip home to visit Randy, anything I wanted, if I’d just stop crying.”
Abbie’s laugh rang out, along with Aunt Vi’s and Hannah’s. “He offered you a monkey?” Aunt Vi’s voice was pitched high on the wave of her laughter. “As if that would make you feel better. Men are so inept when it comes to knowing how to deal with a pregnant woman. Why, when I was pregnant with Jessica, Randy used to watch me as if he thought I might suddenly pick up the BarcaLounger and throw it at him.”
Mac turned to escape, knowing he didn’t need to hear this, but then Abbie voiced a hesitant question and he felt it might be in his own best interests to eavesdrop a little longer. “Do you think it’s the crying, or the idea they might be held responsible for it that upsets the men?” she asked.
“It’s the tears,” Rose said confidently. “Ibrahim was the king of Sorajhee. He could do almost anything by saying ‘Make it so,’ but he couldn’t do a single thing to stop his pregnant wife from crying her eyes out.”
“Men always want to fix things,” Aunt Vi added her agreement. “If you’re mad, they tell you why you shouldn’t be. If you’re frustrated with a project, they believe the answer is to finish the project for you. Men think if their wife is happy, they did something right and deserve a pat on the back. If she’s not happy, they assume something must be wrong and it’s their duty to find out what it is and beat the problem to a pulp. But if a woman is crying, men are helpless and all they can think to do is try to make it stop, or better yet, prevent it from starting in the first place.”
“I guess they’re afraid the crying will go on and on endlessly and they’ll feel more and more helpless.” Hannah’s voice added to the discussion. “The doctor told me today to expect some mood swings and some teary moments, but I’m so happy about being pregnant, it’s hard to imagine I’d ever cry because of it.”
“Crying doesn’t mean you’re unhappy,” Aunt Vi assured her. “It’s just that the hormones in your body are going haywire and you can’t help it.”
“It’s strange,” said Abbie’s voice again, and Mac leaned in, listening even harder than before. “These past five months have not been easy, but I haven’t experienced much in the way of mood swings. Even when I got fired from a job I loved, I didn’t shed a single tear.”
“You got fired?” Hannah asked. “I can’t imagine why. Jessie says you can work circles around anyone else she knows.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t do my job,” Abbie said. “It was because I’m unmarried and pregnant.”
“What?”
“They can’t do that!”
“That’s illegal.”
“It’s an exclusive private school for young women and it is in the contract I signed that I agreed to keep my behavior as a model for my students. So I don’t really blame the administration, although they could have been a little nicer about the whole thing. But even when all that was going on, I didn’t cry. Didn’t even want to. Then the day before I came here, I was watching an old episode of I Love Lucy and suddenly I was sobbing. I cried and cried and I couldn’t stop it. Then suddenly, it was over. No warning either way.”
“That’s just the way I remember it, too,” Aunt Vi concurred. “One minute you’re fine, the next minute you’re flooding ocean city.”
Hannah laughed. “I can’t wait to tell Alex what he has to look forward to.”
“Oh, don’t tell him, honey,” Aunt Vi advised. “Let him muddle through just like every other guy has had to do since Adam worried over Eve.”
“You can warn him,” Rose said. “But I don’t think it’ll make a bit of difference. When the tears start, he’ll be as helpless as his father was with me. Don’t worry. Alex will survive.”
“I’m sure he will.” Hannah sounded as if she was certain of it. “But I want him to enjoy these next few months as much as I intend to. We’ll all hope that nothing happens to really upset my apple cart.”
“You’re right.” Abbie’s voice again. “Imagine what could happen if the mood swings and something really upsetting happened all at once.”
“That could scare every man on this place so bad they might all head for the hills. Course, there are days when I wouldn’t mind that a bit!” Aunt Vi said, laughing. In a moment, the other women were laughing, too.
Then, a chair scraped and Mac decided he did not want to get caught eavesdropping on that conversation. It might upset the expectant mothers—well, one of them, anyway—and he definitely did not want to be responsible for setting off the biggest cryfest this side of the Rio Grande.
“WANT TO GO FOR A WALK down to the dock?”
Startled, Abbie blinked and looked up into Mac’s face. “A w-walk?” she repeated, certain she must have heard wrong. “To the d-dock?”
Mac nodded, solemnly. “If you care…to take a dare, we can walk…to the dock.” His singsong rhyme teased her, toyed with her anxiety, but it was the warmth in his smile that put her heart at war with her head. “I will swear…it’s just for air, but if you’d rather…I can…” He stopped, laughed. “Sorry, I don’t have a clue what rhymes with rather. Will you come with me anyway?”
Okay, so he wanted to get her out of the house and yell at her or something. For three whole days now, he’d been nice as pie. He’d given her more attention, paid her more compliments than she’d ever received from anyone—with the exception of her brothers—and generally acted as if he wanted to be friends. She still hadn’t a clue what was behind this transformation, but she had a strong suspicion it wasn’t going to last. “Sure,” she said, and rose from the sofa. “If we’re going to swim, though, you should get your denim shirt.”
The corners of his mouth curved in a softer, somehow more genuine, smile. “Sorry, but this time you’ll have to provide your own swimsuit.”
The look in his eyes felt intimate, as if he were inviting her for more than a walk, as if he thought rather might be made to rhyme with kiss. “I don’t feel like swimming tonight,” she said crisply, and stepped out ahead of him.
“Walking’s good.” He followed her from the television and rec room where various members of the family and staff gathered after supper. He held open the door that led onto the courtyard and closed it as he followed her through. “I like a good walk after a good meal. What about you?”
She peered at him in the gathering dusk, genuinely perplexed by his new attitude. “I enjoy walking,” she agreed. “I can’t help thinking, though, that this must be how Little Red Riding Hood felt when she met up with the wolf on the road to her grandmother’s house.”
Mac grinned. “You think I have wicked designs on your basket of goodies?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I’m thinking you lured me out here so you could stuff me in a box and mail me to Timbuktu.”
“Nah. I’d have to look up the zip code and it’s just too nice a night to spend with my head in a book.”
“It is nice out. The temperature feels like it’s still on the high side of eighty, but it’s not bad.”
“There’s always a breeze off the lake.” His hand touched her elbow to turn her toward the dock, but then dropped quickly away. “Come on. I’ll race you.”
“That wouldn’t be much of a contest. You could win in a walk.”
“Or you could win in a waddle.”
Her face fell in an avalanche of dismay. She couldn’t help it. “Do I really waddle?”
He turned, started to put his hands on her shoulders, then took a step back. But oddly enough, his expression stayed disarmingly tender. “No, of course, you don’t. It was just a dumb joke. A really dumb, bad joke.”
She looked into his eyes and was embarrassed at how much she wanted him to kiss her, hold her, crush her against his chest. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better. I knew it. I waddle.”
“If I wanted to make you feel better, I’d apologize for being such a jerk the day you arrived, and for a few days afterward.”
She blinked. Her heart stopped, sped off again in a wishful thud-thud, thud-thud. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you swapped places with your twin and that he’s the one who invited me out for a walk and who’s been unnervingly nice to me all week long.”
Mac cocked his head to the side. “Do you know better, Abbie?”
“There might be some circumstances in which you could fool me with that kind of switch, but offhand, I can’t think of any.”
He didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “And how can you be so certain of who I am, and who I’m not?”
She couldn’t tell him how she knew. It had been stupid even to admit she could tell the difference. “I don’t want to tell you,” she said honestly, and moved away from him, down the slope to the dock.
He caught up with her in one long stride. “Even Aunt Vi still sometimes mistakes me for Cade or Cade for me. And if we’re really trying, we can hoodwink practically anyone. So why do you think you can tell the difference?”
She stopped halfway down the pier, braced both hands on the railing and breathed deeply of the fragrant air. “This is such a beautiful place. If I lived here, I’d build a house right over there, so I could look out at the lake every morning and every night.” She felt a change in him and realized how that had sounded. Proprietary. Grasping. Exactly the way he believed her to be. Sighing, she decided to try to explain. “I didn’t mean I intend to live here,” she began. “I only meant that I…oh, never mind. You won’t believe me, anyway.”
He was quiet for a moment, his hands folding over the top of the dock rail as he looked at the dark guest house just visible on the north side of the lake. “I’d like to ask you something, Abbie.” His voice was husky now, no trace of a smile anywhere in the words. “That night, the first time we met, was it as breathtaking as I remember? Or was it just the circumstances?”
A whole shower of memories washed over her, drowning her in remembered sensations. If this was a setup, if he intended to lash out with disbelief when he heard her answer, she would never, ever forgive him. “It was better than breathtaking, Mac. It was better than the best night of my entire life.”
He was still for a moment, staring past her at the water. “So why were you gone when I woke up?”
“I had a prior commitment.”
“A commitment that precluded leaving me a name, an address? I’d have been happy with just a promise to meet again at the same time, same place, next year.”
She could almost believe she’d hurt him, which she’d never, ever meant to do. “I’m sorry. I wanted a night of mystery and passion. I didn’t think about the consequences.”
“And now?” he asked.
“I think about the consequences every day.”
Mac stood apart from her, silent, contemplative, for so long she feared he’d forgotten she was there. Then he turned and, as if he was about to touch a glowing-hot coal, he reached out and placed his hand on the bulge of her tummy. “A baby,” he said. “That’s a lot of consequences to think about all by yourself.”
She laid her hand over his and looked up into his eyes. “I’m not asking you to share the responsibilities, Mac. I didn’t come here to ask you for anything. Please believe me.”
He answered by turning his hand until he was palm to palm with hers. Then he drew their conjoined hands down and around her, pulling her closer to him at the same time he tipped up her chin with his other hand. “I’d like to, Abbie,” he whispered. “I’d really like to.” Then his lips came down to close over hers and the sensations flooding her were suddenly real and not just remembered.
His kiss was tender tonight, unlike the anger-charged embrace her first night at the ranch. Where he’d been seeking an answer then, this time he seemed to be asking a question. The pressure of his kiss parted her lips and his tongue teased hers with a sensuous caress. Her knees turned to mush, as did the protests that flickered weakly in her brain before succumbing to the pleasure. She really had no choice but to lean into him, to accept what he offered, to realize that their chemistry was a powerful combination. The taste, the feel of him was familiar, despite the months of separation, and Abbie wondered why that didn’t seem strange to her, why being in his arms felt so much like being home. She’d been with Mac once and yet she knew things about him it should have taken her years to learn. Like knowing the slight tremor in his lips meant he was exercising a willful restraint. Like knowing he wasn’t conscious of the way his finger stroked her chin during the kiss. Like knowing he wanted her as much as he ever had and was still reluctant to admit it. Like knowing that if she asked for more, either by word or deed, he would withdraw. This kiss was a test, somehow, and try as she might, Abbie couldn’t think of any way she could pass.
But in a moment, miraculously, it seemed she had. The kiss melted into scattered caresses across her nose, her forehead, her eyelids. His arms tightened around her. His breath blew past her ear in a shaky, sensuous relief. “Abbie,” he whispered. “I’m not sure how this is going to work out, but—”
Her phone rang. From the back pocket of her maternity-banded jeans, the cell phone jangled a rude and inopportune summons. She thought about reaching back and turning it off. She thought about snatching it out of her pocket and tossing it and its annoying rattle into the lake. She thought about telling Mac to hold on to the words he’d been about to say while she gave the phone a proper burial at sea. But in the end, she knew the moment was ruined already, so as Mac stepped back, looking pale and as if he’d just had a narrow escape, she reached for the phone and answered her brother’s call.
MAC LEANED against the dock rail and tried to look as if he wasn’t interested in Abbie’s phone conversation. She was turning him into a compulsive eavesdropper, it seemed. But he couldn’t help but listen to her side of the phone call and if it helped him figure out her line of attack, the end would justify the means, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, he was obligated because of his agreement with Cade to do as his twin had suggested and keep an open mind about interpreting what the conversation might mean.
“Hello,” she said for openers, and Mac decided there was nothing sinister or sneaky about that.
“I know I said I’d call at seven, but I told you it could be later, too.” Her tone was impatient, but also conciliatory, as if she were sorry she hadn’t called at seven, but annoyed to be asked about it.
“I was busy,” she said. There was a definite note of frustration in her voice, possibly a thread of affection, too. No, he’d imagined the affection. Definitely, no affection.
“I’m working. Yes, as a counselor.”
Okay, so he had to call that one a lie. Unless she was a certified counselor and considered talking to him as work. There, Mac thought. That was incredibly open-minded.
“Didn’t I just say that?”
From her side of the conversation, it sure sounded like an escalating argument. Not the furious kind of argument he’d had with her several times since her arrival, but the less aggressive kind of argument where she didn’t want to do whatever the person at the other end of the line wanted or expected her to do. A tug-of-war kind of argument. That seemed a fair and unbiased assessment of what he was hearing. “No,” she was saying. “No, this isn’t a good time. I can’t talk right now.”
Suspicion reared its head. That had to mean she didn’t want Mac to hear what she had to say. On the other hand, a desire for privacy was perfectly normal. That, in itself, wasn’t necessarily suspicious. Score three for being open-minded.
“I’m exactly where I told you I’d be, Brad.”
Brad. The same guy who’d phoned her at the restaurant. She didn’t seem any happier to hear from him tonight, either. Although that could be because she’d been right in the middle of kissing another man, weaseling her way around his defenses, insinuating herself back into his good graces, planning how to turn…
Whoa, Mac reminded himself. Open mind. Keep an open mind. Maybe Brad was just a jerk who called at times she’d rather he didn’t. But if that were true, why didn’t she just turn off the phone?
Her voice suddenly rose with distress. “Why did you do that? I asked you to only use the cell phone number. You had no business at all to go calling Directory Assistance.”
Mac frowned. Brad could be her accomplice. Or simply someone who didn’t know where she was.
“Yes,” she said on a long and defeated sigh. “I know there’s not a Camp Two by Two in the Pocono Mountains or anywhere else in the northeast United States.” A pause, then a more agitated, “Because I wanted to be alone and, no, I am not going to tell you where I am. You’d just show up here and cause trouble for me and I don’t need any help with that!” Her voice shook like a willow in a windstorm and Mac turned toward her, no longer caring if she knew he’d been listening in. “Yes, I’m upset,” she said. “I’m doing my best to—” her voice broke “—to take care of…of…” Her voice trailed away entirely, giving way to a sniff that could only mean tears were close behind.
Brad, whoever the hell he was, had done about enough damage in one phone call. There was no reason for the guy to make her cry. What if this coincided with one of those hormonal mood swings? That would be bad. That would be very bad. Mac took two strides to reach her. With one hand he grasped her shoulder and pulled her gently but firmly against him, then he quickly slipped the phone out of her hand and put it to his ear. “Look, Brad,” he said, ignoring Abbie’s sudden, horrified gasp. “You’ve upset Abbie and in her condition, she may start crying and never be able to stop.”
With a strangled yelp, Abbie grabbed for the phone, but Mac evaded her attempt to reclaim it—he was doing his best to save her from the insensitive jerk, dammit—and continued talking. “She doesn’t want to talk to you anymore right now, so I’m turning off this phone and she can call you back when and if she wants to.”
There was a long pause and then a man’s voice, rough with worry, asking, “Who the hell is this?”
Mac saw no reason not to tell him. “Coleman. Mac Coleman.” Then he terminated the call with relish and turned off the phone altogether, feeling a bit proud at his quick thinking.
But when he looked to Abbie, expecting at least a hint of gratitude for his rescue, he saw the sag in her shoulders, the dejection in the lowering of her chin, the awful dismay in her eyes. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Don’t tell me you were enjoying talking to that guy.” Mac wasn’t sure what she thought he’d done, but he’d certainly expected her to be happier about it. “He was upsetting you.”
“Yes,” she said. “He does that on a regular basis. They all do.”
“Four, altogether. Each one as bad as the next.”
Mac thought fast. Four men. A gang. And somehow Abbie was mixed up with them. “Why were they calling you?”
“To make sure I’m all right.”
“And at the camp in the mountains,” he suggested, trying hard to keep an open mind, “where you told them you were.”
“It’s complicated,” she said, then sighed. “I really don’t want to talk about this. It’s bad enough that you told them…oh, well, never mind. It can’t be helped now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, although it irritated him to have to say it. “I thought I was helping.”
“I know you did. Maybe it’s best this way. My decision is made for me. And I was going to leave in a few days, anyway.”
“Leave?”
She almost smiled. “You’ve been trying to get rid of me ever since I got here, Mac. Don’t tell me you thought I’d just stay on indefinitely.”
“I thought the past few days might have changed your mind about what I wanted.”
“The past few days, while much more pleasant than the previous week, have only convinced me that you decided to try a different—and admittedly—nicer line of defense. I know you won’t believe this, either, but I never intended to stay at the Desert Rose more than a couple of weeks. Three, at the outside.”
So his attempt at being a nice guy hadn’t fooled her. But either way, he wasn’t sure his true aim had been for her to leave. “Where are you going to go?”
“Does it make any difference?” She took a deep breath and then frowned, as her hand slid to cup the underside of her swollen stomach. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
Mac’s heart gave a jerk of panic. “What? Are you all right?” Oh, God, what if she was in labor? It was too early. Something was wrong. She could be in real trouble. “Does it hurt?”
She nodded and rubbed her stomach.
“I’ll get you to a doctor,” he said, deciding on a course of action and sweeping her off her feet and into his arms. “Who should I call? Do you have a doctor here? Nevermind, I’ll take you to Dr. Graham. He’s Hannah’s doctor.” He was all but running, his boots striking a heavy clop-ka-clop on the wooden dock, his arms cradling her protectively against him. “It’ll be all right, Abbie. The baby will be all right. Don’t worry.”
“It’s only a muscle cramp, Mac. What are you doing?”
He stopped dead, frowned down at the amusement glinting in her eyes. “A muscle cramp,” he repeated dully. “You scared the living daylights out of me for a silly muscle cramp?”
“Well, it didn’t feel silly on this end. It hurts like crazy for the few minutes it lasts.”
“A muscle cramp,” he said again. “You had a muscle cramp.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But it’s much better now, thanks.”
There was laughter in her smile, a more relaxed look about her eyes, an appreciative warmth in the hand she had clasped around his forearm. Okay, so he was two for two in misunderstanding what she needed and attempting a rescue. “Maybe I’ll be a little less open-minded after this,” he said.
“Somehow, I sort of doubt it.” She looked at him and his heart, which was still racing from his scare, squeezed tight with the fierce longing to keep her near. “You can put me down now,” she said.
“Nah. I don’t think so. No point in taking any chances on another one of those painful muscle cramps sneaking up on you.” He shifted her a little more comfortably in his arms, bringing her closer to his chest. “I’ll just carry you all the way back to the house to be on the safe side.”
“I’m not going back to the house,” she said, a shadow descending once again across her pretty blue eyes. “They’ll be calling for me there.”
“Who?” Mac asked, but realized immediately who she meant. The gang. “They’re not going to call back. At least, not until you turn the phone on, and I’ll just keep it in my pocket to make sure you don’t do that.”
“You gave Brad your name. It won’t have taken him five minutes to connect Mac Coleman with my friend Jessica Coleman, and from there, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to finding the Desert Rose ranch. Trust me, he’ll have the house, the office, and probably the barn phone number before you can walk back up that hill and into the courtyard.”
“You don’t have to talk to him, Abbie. Or any of the rest of them.”
She sighed, as if he couldn’t possibly understand. “It’s complicated, Mac, and it’s easier if no one in the house can say for sure where I am.”
“How did you ever get mixed up with a guy like that?”
Abbie shook her head. “It’s the trying to get unmixed up that has caused me all the problems. Put me down. I’ll just stay out here for a while and hope no one decides to bring out the cordless phone.”
Mac decided he was zero for two in the rescue department. Maybe the third time would be the charm. “No reason you should have to take any chances. I know the perfect place.” Still holding her tightly against him, he headed off in the opposite direction. “No one will think to look for you there.”
“Great,” she said. “Now I’m being kidnapped.”
“Give me some credit,” he said, glad to hear the happier tone in her voice. “I’m doing my best to be a hero here.”