The Maverick Fakes a Bride!

by Christine Rimmer

  “Do we have to stop?” she whispered. He made himself nod. “Why? Let’s turn off the lamp, Trav. Let’s see where this takes us.”

  He balled his hands into fists to keep from grabbing her again. “You’re making me crazy.”

  She reached for the lamp. The tent went dark. “Are you sure that’s a bad thing?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Right now, I’m not sure of anything.” Travis uttered the words like a confession into the darkness between them.

  But they were a lie. He was sure of one thing: he wanted her.

  And that wanting was growing. Every hour he was near her, he wanted her more.

  She was a handful, Brenna O’Reilly. Any man would have a hell of a time trying to tame her.

  But then again, he didn’t want to tame her. He wanted her untamed. Wanted her just as she was and always had been—a little bit wild, sometimes kind of crazy. Beautiful. Strong. Willful and true.

  She moved in the darkness. The sweet scent of her drifted closer. And then she framed his face between her two cool hands. “Think about it.” Her breath touched his lips. “Think real hard.”

  “Bren.” It came out on a groan.

  And then she moved again—away from him, damn it.

  He didn’t realize she’d grabbed his pack until she shoved it into his arms. “Oof.”

  “Go on, cowboy. Have that shower.”

  “Bren...”

  And she bent close and kissed him again, a sweet brush of her mouth on his. “Go.” She gave a low laugh. “Before I grab you and have my evil way with you.”

  * * *

  When he got back to the tent, the light was still off. He could make out the shape of her in her sleeping bag. He stripped down and slid into his own bag.

  “’Night, Trav.” Her voice was thick and lazy, hovering on the edge of sleep.

  “’Night.” His cold shower had taken the edge off his need for her. Now he just felt good to be lying there beside her in the dark.

  He laced his hands behind his head and stared up into the darkness and thought about condoms. He had one, because even a guy who’d sworn off women should have the sense to carry a condom just in case. It was in his battered wallet in the bottom of his pack. One condom in a creased-up wrapper. It was probably out of date by now.

  And that was probably a good thing. The next time kissing her threatened to get out of hand, he would just remind himself that you couldn’t trust an old condom with a creased-up wrapper and he needed to behave himself.

  Yeah. Right. Sure. That would work.

  “Trav? You still awake?” Her sweet, sleepy voice tempted him out of the dark.

  He gave her a low “Um” for an answer.

  “I’ve been thinking...”

  “Um?”

  Her whisper went lower. “You may be right. About the sex? We probably shouldn’t go there. We need to, you know, keep our heads on straight, focus on the game. Right?”

  “You’re right.” They were just about the hardest two words he’d ever said.

  “You’re...okay with that?”

  “I’m good,” he lied. “Go back to sleep.”

  * * *

  They finished branding the calves before noon the next day and filmed the first elimination in front of the canteen right after lunch.

  Brenna stood next to Trav, who’d seemed kind of distant all day. Was he upset with her? Did he think she was a big tease or something, to be all over him one minute and then change her mind?

  Did they need to talk it over?

  Ugh. It had been hard enough telling him she’d had second thoughts. And now, to bring it up again?

  Not her idea of a fun conversation.

  But still. They needed to be strong together, as a team. And how could they be strong if there were simmering resentments between them? They had to keep straight, stay on point, be clearheaded and ready to face whatever the game threw at them.

  So okay. In the interest of keeping things straight between them, if he still seemed distant tonight, she would bring it up to him and they would talk it out.

  And then she spotted Summer maybe eight feet away, on the far side of Seth and Leah. The blonde kept sliding glances at Trav. Planning her next seduction attempt, no doubt. Brenna flashed the other woman a bright smile and leaned into Travis. He glanced down at her, and she tipped up her face for a quick kiss.

  He gave it, brushing his lips across hers, lightening her heart, making her smile.

  If he had been annoyed with her, he seemed to be getting over it.

  When she slid another glance at Summer, the blonde was facing front, pretending to care what Jasper was saying.

  Dag Dodson, the judge with the medium-sized hat, announced the three top scores in the branding challenge. “Steve Simon, Travis Dalton and Fred Franklin, step right up, please.”

  No one was that surprised when Jasper declared Fred the winner. They all applauded as the twins’ dad claimed his immunity bracelet from the carved box. Fred had been the perfect boss—fair, considerate and firm, with a good handle on how the job should be done. Brenna would be proud to work for him anytime.

  “And now,” said Jasper, suddenly solemn as a preacher at a funeral, “it’s time to say goodbye to one of you.”

  The three judges burst into a song. It was an oldie, by Woody Guthrie, “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh.”

  Those old guys were good, too, in perfect harmony. They sang one verse and the chorus. Trav returned to Brenna’s side as Rusty Boles whipped out a harmonica and played it soft and low and lonesome sounding.

  The third judge stepped up to read the names of the three lowest scorers. Brenna grabbed for Trav’s hand. He wrapped his warm fingers around hers nice and tight. She really didn’t think she’d end up in the bottom three, but she couldn’t be sure.

  And she was right. The judge didn’t call her name.

  Not surprisingly, Dean Fogarth was among the three. He got lucky, though. Another guy, a truck driver from Colorado, was the first to go. The judges sang another Woody Guthrie song, and the truck driver was sent to take down his tent, grab his gear and move to the lodge.

  As one of the wranglers led him off, another clanged the chuck wagon bell.

  Jasper laughed. “That’s right, folks. It’s your big chance to take a mini challenge. Who’s in? Everybody? That’s what I like to see.”

  It was a cooking challenge that time.

  Skillet chili and corn bread. Each of them had to have their own recipe in their head or know how to fake it. With a flourish, Jasper gestured them all into the canteen, where their choices of ingredients were arrayed on two long tables, including several big bottles of Jack Daniel’s whiskey—for the chili, supposedly.

  Trav grabbed one of the bottles and then just stood there, at a loss.

  Good thing Maureen O’Reilly made the best corn bread chili in three counties. And she’d taught her daughters well.

  Trav looked at Brenna hopefully.

  She put him out of his misery. “Yes, I can make my mother’s chili.”

  “Score!” He waved his bottle gleefully.

  “But her recipe doesn’t call for whiskey.”

  “I’m not letting go of this bottle. See, I always cook with whiskey. Some of it even ends up in the food.”

  “Har-har. Just do what I do.”

  He wrapped an arm around her neck and yanked her close. “Damn, you’re gorgeous.” He laid a big smacker square on her mouth. “And you can cook. I am a lucky, lucky man.”

  She laughed and ducked away, feeling good about everything at that moment. He really didn’t seem the least distant now. Maybe they didn’t need to talk, after all.

  Trav stuck close to her as they started on the mini challen
ge, grabbing the same ingredients she gathered, taking a space next to her at one of the prep tables, watching everything she did and then doing the same.

  A couple of hours later, the judges started tasting.

  Turned out old Wally Wilson used to cook for more than one outfit. The old man knew his corn bread chili. And he had experience making it over an open fire.

  Wally won. His prize was a whole night at the lodge in a real bed.

  He tipped his hat to the judges. “These old bones thank you kindly.”

  Travis’s entry turned out burned on the bottom. But Brenna’s chili was pretty darn good, if she did say so herself. They ate their entries for dinner. Brenna and Wally had plenty to share with Trav and the other bad cooks.

  After the meal, Wally happily followed one of the wranglers off to claim his prize.

  Not much of the Jack Daniel’s had ended up in chili—which Brenna assumed had been the plan all along. She’d watched enough reality TV to know that when contestants got tipsy, good TV happened.

  Everyone hung around the fire as night came on. They were unmic’d by then, but Roger had put a couple of cameramen on them, and there were also cameras mounted in the nearby trees. Nobody seemed to care that they were being filmed. Already, having a camera watching their every move had become normal for all of them, just the way that they lived.

  They sipped whiskey from their tin cups as wranglers came to collect them, one by one, for their turns in front of the green screen.

  When all the OTFs were done, most of the guys remained by the fire sipping whiskey, telling tall tales of their ranching and rodeo adventures. Roberta and Steve had gone off for a walk together. Brenna headed for the showers. When she got back, Trav showed no inclination to budge from his camp chair.

  She thought about whispering to him that she needed to talk to him. But did she really? By afternoon, he’d seemed to be over whatever had been bothering him. No reason to ruin his buzz. They could talk later. Tomorrow night or the next.

  Yeah, it might be a bad idea to leave him alone out there with the other men, a couple of the women she didn’t know at all—and Summer. But she wasn’t his babysitter, and she couldn’t really blame him for wanting to get a little loose, shoot the breeze with the other guys.

  Brenna ducked into the tent and shut the flaps. In the dark, she wriggled out of her clothes and into her sleep shirt and crawled into her sleeping bag.

  Outside, she heard laughter from the men at the fire and thought of her childhood, of summer nights outside around a campfire, the glow of firelight warming the smiling faces of the ones she loved and—

  A shout had her sitting straight up in her sleeping bag.

  She scuttled to the tent flaps and peeked out.

  Dean Fogarth and Randy Teasdale, a horse rancher from Idaho, circled each other on the far side of the fire. Dean threw a blow and connected. Randy landed on his butt in the dirt.

  “Get up,” growled Dean.

  Randy grabbed Dean’s boot and gave it a tug. Dean went down, too. The men rolled in the dirt together, grunting and punching each other.

  Summer stood not far away, watching with an unreadable expression on her pretty face. The cameras were rolling.

  Trav sat on Brenna’s side of the fire, maybe twenty feet from their tent. Brenna threw a small rock and hit the back of his camp chair with it.

  He twisted to look over his shoulder at her. “Hey, sleepyhead.” He gave her a lazy, liquored-up grin.

  “What’s going on?”

  He raised his tin cup to her. “Dean and Randy are havin’ a li’l disagreement.”

  “Over Summer?”

  Travis laughed. “How’d you guess? C’mon out, baby. Time to party.”

  Baby. Why did it sound so good when he called her that? She was definitely tempted to pull on her jeans and join him.

  But no. Not tonight. She shook her head and retreated to the relative safety of the tent.

  The fight went on for a while. She heard a whole bunch of scuffling and a lot of angry swearing, words that were never going to make it onto network TV.

  After the fight, somebody brought out a guitar. They all sang together—rowdy cowboy songs at first, “Friends in Low Places” and “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight.” Eventually they slowed things down and sang some great old ballads.

  Somewhere in the middle of “Down in the Valley,” Brenna dropped off to sleep.

  * * *

  “Bren? You ’sleep?” She felt a tap on her shoulder. “Bren?”

  “Not anymore,” she grumbled, rolling onto her back and blinking up into the darkness at the silhouette of Trav bending over her. “What time is it?”

  A burst of whiskey breath hit her face. “Late. S’very, very late.”

  “Who won the fight?”

  “I think they called it a draw. Summer got disgusted and stormed off.”

  “I don’t really get it. What was the fight about, exactly?”

  “Hmm. Two hotheaded drunk cowboys an’ a flirty woman. ’Nuff said.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “As in you mean, it’s not. Right?”

  “Trav?”

  “Um?”

  “Time to lie down in your sleeping bag and get some sleep.” She started to turn over.

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I got my boots off and got in my bag and then I jus’ couldn’t stan’ not t’ say ’night to you.”

  “You’re drunk,” she whispered gently.

  “Unfort’nately, s’true.”

  “Well, good night, then.” Again, she tried to roll back onto her side.

  That time he held her in place with a hand on her shoulder. “Aw. Don’ go...”

  She stifled a chuckle. “Oh, Trav. You’re going to be so sorry tomorrow.”

  She watched his white teeth flash in the darkness. “Oh, yes, I am. And you are so beaut’ful, Bren.”

  Something sweet and warm uncurled in her belly and she teased, “It’s pitch-dark in here. You can’t even see me.”

  “I don’ need t’ see you. I got you in here.” He pointed in the general direction of his head. “Jus’ how you look, with your skin like cream an’ your red hair all sleek or, like lately, with it crazy curly so you gripe about it all the time an’ put it in a braid down your back. With that bold smile on your mouth and those gold freckles so cute on the bridge of your nose. And those eyes, Bren. Where’d you get those eyes that are blue as the ocean sometimes and sometimes like a stormy sky?”

  “Oh, Trav. What you just said? That’s beautiful.”

  “What I’m tryin’ to tell you is that I see you even when I don’t see you. Does that make any sense? Nope,” he answered his own question. “No sense at all. But it’s the truth, anyway. You are burned in my brain. Like a brand, y’know?”

  Like a brand. Her heart went to mush. She tried really hard to remember that he was drunk and he probably wouldn’t recall any of this tomorrow. “You need to get some—”

  “No. Lissen.”

  “Trav—”

  “I shouldna got drunk, I know it. Ver’ unprofessional of me. But I needed to blow off a li’l steam, you know?”

  “It’s fine. I get it. Now, just go to—”

  “Bren. There’s been no one for me. Not for over a year.”

  “Trav, you don’t have to—”

  “Jus’ wait. Let me finish, ’kay?”

  She was torn—curious about what he might reveal, and also oddly protective of him, of his privacy. In the morning, he might very well regret that the whiskey had loosened his tongue tonight.

  “Yer quiet,” he whispered. “So I’m gonna take that as a yes. Bren, you know how I’ve always been kind of busy with the ladies.
”

  Busy with the ladies? She couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  “You laugh,” he said with great solemnity. “But it’s really not funny. I’m sick an’ tired of bein’ the hot player of Rus’ Creek Falls. An’ tha’s why I haven’ been with anyone in a year—not since this good-looking woman from Denver came lookin’ for me.”

  The last thing she wanted was to hear about him and some other woman. “Trav, I—”

  “Shh. There’s a point to this. Jus’ give me a chance to get there, will ya please?” He waited for her low hum of reluctant agreement before he went on. “This woman, she asked around town about me. Somebody gave her my number. We met up the next night, early, at the Ace. I asked her to dinner. And she said, ‘Oh, honey. I don’t need dinner. Le’s jus’ get a room.’ I took her to a nice hotel I know in Kalispell. And afterward, when she was getting dressed to leave, she tol’ me I was exac’ly as advertised, as good as her girlfriend said I would be.”

  “Oh, no.” Brenna reached up in the darkness and put her hand against his beard-rough cheek. “I’m so sorry, Trav. What a horrible thing to say to you.”

  “Well, ackshually, she did mean it as a compliment. When I was younger, what she said wouldn’ta bothered me at all. I was jus’ out for a good time back then, an’ I didn’ care what anybody thought. But lately, well, it had started to get so it wasn’ much of a thrill, spendin’ a night with a stranger. The past few years, I’d been wantin’ more but not exac’ly sure how to go about gettin’ it. A man acts like a player fer long enough, that’s all any woman sees when she looks his way. An’ that’s why what that woman said that night was kind of a wake-up call. Y’know what I mean?”

  She stroked the hair at his temple. “Tell me her name. I’ll find her and beat the crap out of her for you.”

  He gave a low laugh. “You al’ays were a bloodthirsty li’l thing—an’ I mean it. S’okay, really.”

  “You know you’ll always be a hero to me.”

  He let out another big gust of whiskey-scented breath. “Thanks, Bren.”

  “It’s the truth.” And it was. It really was.

  “An’ y’know, a wake-up call ain’t necessarily a bad thing. ’Cause I think it was time.”