The Runaway Bride

by Patricia McLinn

  “Probably annoyed to death,” Gran muttered, pushing back the afghan to cover only the nonbandaged side the way she liked it.

  Helga showed no sign of hearing that, or of recognizing that her manner was not winning over her audience. “I am certain you have found the temporary aide satisfactory, but now I—”

  “More than satisfactory,” Gran interrupted with a warm look toward Judi.

  “Oh. You’re from the agency? But I thought you were a member of the family. You—you called the patient Gran.” She made it sound like Judi had been caught spitting in the patient’s medicine.

  “Near enough to being a member of the family,” Gran said. “And as for the temporary aide, we told the agency I already had all the care I needed, and not to send one. As a matter—”

  “You did?” Judi spluttered.

  Could Gran have possibly talked to the agency without finding out that she wasn’t Helga? Whatever Gran knew, Becky was clearly in on it, too, or she would have been demanding answers in her usual Spanish Inquisition style. But if Gran and Becky knew… Judi’s head pulsed with a beat of combined panic and hope so strong that she expected it to burst right here—what did Thomas know?

  “Why would you do that?” Helga asked.

  “As a matter of fact,” Gran resumed, ignoring both interruptions, “we told them not to send you, either. So you have no reason to be here, and you might as well leave.”

  “Well, really, this is most extraordinary. I don’t know what to say—”

  “How about goodbye,” Becky suggested in a low voice.

  Judi fought a grin, and Gran couldn’t hide all her amusement even as she said, “Manners, Becky.”

  “Yes’m.”

  But Helga was shaking her head. “The last word I had from the agency was to report here as soon as possible. I won’t have it be said that Helga Helgerson did not do her duty.”

  “Call the agency, but you have no duty here.”

  Gran’s certainty seemed to shake Helga’s. “Maybe I should call. If—”

  “Becky will show you the phone in the family room.”

  “Right this way.” Becky hooked Helga’s arm and propelled her out of the room.

  That left silence and a lot of questions. Not to mention guilt.

  “Gran…why?” That was all she could get out.

  “We’ll talk about that later. First, let’s get rid of this other Helga.”

  “Helga’s not my name. My real name—”

  “No, don’t tell me. And whatever you do, don’t tell Becky. If one of us slips in front of Thomas, there could be hell to pay. And she’d never forgive herself.”

  Judi’s hope sank like the mercury in a Chicago thermometer in January.

  “Thomas doesn’t know I’m not the health aide?”

  If she’d needed any more answer than the expression in Gran’s eyes, it came from Becky’s squawk behind her.

  “Thomas just drove up!”

  Becky was staring out the window over the kitchen sink that looked toward the outbuildings.

  “Oh, God, if he sees the other Helga—”

  “Don’t swear,” Gran said automatically. “Becky, you go stall that woman. Keep her in the family room until I call you. You—” she said to Judi, “go get Thomas away from the house. Do whatever you have to.”

  “But— He never listens to me. How will I—”

  “It’s not his listening skills you need to appeal to—now, git! Both of you.”

  “Hi!”

  Thomas turned from the open truck door at the sound of that bright greeting.

  He closed the door before answering with a cautious “Hi.”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Looking for Gandy to give me a hand.”

  “He’s not here. Can I help you?”

  She said it so fast it almost came out as one word. Thomas tipped his head to study her better. He hadn’t been sure what was going on when she’d run off Saturday night. But he’d gotten the message loud and clear Sunday when she sidled around him like he was a coiled rattler.

  He’d run it through his head more times than he cared to admit since then. She had been as involved in the kissing as he had; he hadn’t misread that. It was after they were in the kitchen that things had changed. If he’d said something that had triggered the change he sure didn’t know what it was. If he’d done something…well, he’d done what he’d felt. Deciding she didn’t like it was her right.

  And he would live with that for two more weeks if it killed him.

  “You don’t even know what I need help with.”

  “I’m pretty handy. What is it?”

  She wanted to be in the same square mile with him? That was a change since Saturday night. Something was going on. It was clear as day, as clear as the expression on her face. He could try to get it out of her, which hadn’t worked so far. Or he could try to figure it out—but how much time did a man have in one day?

  “Working Dickens around water and another horse. He gets hepped up about that.”

  “Oh, good!” She sounded more relieved than excited. But that was another clue he would have to let go in the interest of sanity and getting work done. “I’ve got jeans on and I’m all set—let’s go!”

  She had her hand tucked into his elbow and was tugging toward the corral where Dickens and Xena waited.

  “All right, all right, I’m comin’. Awfully eager aren’t you?”

  “I’ve got a free afternoon, and I want to ride the ranch.”

  He spotted an unfamiliar vehicle parked at the front of the house.

  “Whose car is that?”

  “Alice is here.”

  “That’s not Alice’s car.”

  “She borrowed her sister’s.”

  “Nita’s in town?”

  She shrugged. “All I know is what they tell me. Are we going or not?”

  He seriously doubted the statement, but he satisfied himself with answering the question: “We’re going.”

  “So, you not only led the horse to water, you got him to drink. Pretty impressive, Thomas.”

  He stretched his legs out on the tarp he’d laid on the ground for them to sit on while they let the horses rest. It covered a flat area up a sharp grade from creek level. It was big, about the size of a double bed. She swore at herself. Now why did she have to think of that? It wasn’t like anything was going to happen. If this slick tarp he’d had rolled up behind his saddle had really been a bed they’d be about ready to fall off opposite edges, that’s how careful they were being not to touch.

  “I’d say I had mixed results along those lines lately.”

  First, they’d ridden nearly an hour, taking the edge off Dickens, he’d called it. She wished it had taken an edge off what she was feeling.

  He’d taken Dickens across the water alone, with Xena following, with Xena ahead, with the horses side by side, then repeated the variations several times and in different order. Dickens had passed with flying colors. The reward for both horses was the freedom to drink, and a chance to wander as far as the combination of a tied lead-line and hobbles let them.

  Her reward was sitting on a tarp, trying to pretend she didn’t want to make full use of this time alone with Thomas.

  “Mixed results in getting a horse to drink, I mean,” he added, leaning back on his elbows, and looking at her. When she met his eyes, she had her suspicions confirmed—he wasn’t talking about horses, or drinking water.

  His green gaze dropped to her lips, and she felt a pulse through the center of her body, as strong from that look as she’d felt from his touch.

  A second pulse followed immediately on the first—this one stronger and hotter. It was the knowledge that if she let there be a this time, he would not show the restraint he had on the porch swing.

  And she didn’t want him to.

  “Sometimes you think a horse is going to drink, might even start on it, but then he changes his mind and stops. But that’s okay. Drinking water’s
not something a horse should be forced into.”

  She turned away, facing the creek. She’d worked this out, and knew all the reasons she couldn’t do this. But desire was rushing up against her resolutions like flood water overtaking a raft.

  “Oh, look at the flower.” She stood and started for the bright yellow bloom at the edge of the creek embankment.

  “You shouldn’t pick wildflowers.”

  From his voice, he’d sat up, but she didn’t look around.

  “I’m not going to pick it. I just want a closer look.”

  “Don’t go too far out, because—”

  It was the strangest sensation she’d ever felt. Like the earth under her feet had become one of those moving walkways in an airport—only downhill and fast.

  A band of human steel wrapped around her middle, and swung her away from the edge. She and Thomas stumbled a few feet more, to the edge of the tarp, and looked back to see that a two-foot section of earth had slid into the creek.

  They straightened, his arm wrapped around her midriff, his hand spread wide against her side, his thumb brushing the underside of her breast. She leaned back against him.

  “Thank you. If you hadn’t—”

  “Are you okay?” Thomas still had the vision of the earth sliding out from under her in his head.

  “I’m fine. I’m…”

  Only when her voice trailed away did the details of their contact hit home to him. He was stroking her, letting his hand flirt with the curve of her breast, while her hip snuggled against his fast-hardening groin.

  He dropped his hand, and she immediately sank to the tarp, sitting cross-legged with her head down. If she was crying…

  “It’s okay. Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to…” Nothing was going to happen? How could he tell her that when it was already happening. But there was one thing he could swear to her. “I won’t—”

  She interrupted with something close to wail. “Don’t be nice to me.”

  Her hair covered her face. Slowly, he sat beside her, careful not to touch. “Don’t be nice to you?”

  “Don’t any of you be nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”

  This woman who’d never once backed down, who’d coped with everything thrown her way with humor and pleasure was on the edge. Enough of a push, and she’d be over. All he had to do was ask the right question, or maybe ask the wrong questions enough times, and he’d have his answers. One push, and she’d crack like Humpty-Dumpty, revealing the truth at last.

  Automatically, she tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing moisture sparkling in her lower lashes.

  Splinter like Humpty-Dumpty…and never be put back together again?

  Moving slowly he reached out and wiped at the tears with the pad of his thumb. It left a tiny trail of mud on her cheek.

  He bent his head for a better angle as he wiped it again. Her eyes opened and pulled him in like a straw in a twister. “Thomas…”

  “Damn. I won’t, unless… But if you…?”

  “Yes.”

  He made himself wait. Gave her a chance to reconsider. Just not much of a chance. His hands on her face turned her to him, and then their mouths met. She gasped, and he swallowed it like he’d craved nothing more in life.

  She was holding onto him, too. Her hands urging his head closer to hers.

  Heat, pleasure, need. They cycled through him fast enough to make him dizzy. So dizzy the world seemed to have tilted so he was looking down at her.

  No, he really was looking down at her. She was lying on the tarp and he was half on top of her. His shirt gone, hers opened, his hands at the open waist of her jeans, and he didn’t remember the steps that had gotten them here.

  “Hel—”

  She covered his mouth with her hand. “Shh. No more talking.”

  He shook his head. This had to be said. “If you don’t want this to go farther, you better say it now.”

  “I didn’t want it to not go farther last time.”

  Before he’d untangled that, she’d brought his mouth back down to hers, and gave him an answer he understood fully.

  “The ground’s too hard. Here…” He rolled, pulling her on top of him, cushioning her body with his.

  She breathed a soft kiss at the center of his chest. Enough heat surged through him to mold a horseshoe.

  Under her shirt, he stroked his palms down her silken back, dipping to her waist, under the loosened jeans and the top of her panties, and over the soft, rounded flesh below. His movement drew her panties and jeans lower and lower. Pressing down brought her in full contact with his erection straining against the material separating them. She made a small sound and rocked her hips.

  He wanted to have her naked and under him, so he could plunge into her heat and softness. But the ground was no welcoming mattress, the tarp no satin coverlet.

  “We should have a bed—”

  “Now, Thomas. We should have now.”

  She slid down so her thighs bracketed his, and set to undoing his belt buckle. He sat up to interrupt her, one arm at a time, as he pushed aside her shirt and bra, revealing the delight of her rounded, perfect breasts. She shivered and arched when he drew his thumb across one tip. But she pushed him down with a hand to his chest.

  “I can’t concentrate.”

  She fumbled with the button at the top of the jeans zipper, the flesh of his belly clenching and shivering with pleasure at each misguided brush of her fingers. If she didn’t get that button, soon…

  Ah, the button slipped through, and the zipper started down. He covered her hands with his, to keep the motion slow and nonlethal. But as soon as it was down, he released his hold.

  She slid her hands under his briefs and cupped him, and he was this close to making now literal.

  He jerked up, swinging her off him. For an instant she looked startled, dismayed, then as he tugged at the denim and lace still covering her, she smiled and lifted her hips to let him pull it free. He yanked off his jeans and briefs. And thanked providence that a faint crackle reminded him to take a packet out of his pocket.

  “I could—” she started to offer.

  “No, you couldn’t.” Or they’d be back to that now problem.

  How, he didn’t know, but he did it, and then took her mouth as he wrapped his arms around her and leaned back, encouraging her to stretch atop him again. He stroked into her mouth, and she picked up the motion, brushing the tips of her breasts against his chest. It was eternity and less time than a clock could measure before she sat up to position herself over him. His hands guided her hips as he raised his own, pushing into her.

  A sound came through her parted lips and she closed her eyes, as she sank down to take him fully.

  Then she opened her eyes, and the driving, pulsing force between them rushed into full throat. A shout refusing to be stilled.

  He saw it catch her, saw the flush rise up her body. He touched the rosiness on her, traced it up her abdomen, and absorbed the hardened pebbles of her nipples under his fingers. He felt her shudder with it, then clench and squeeze and pulse around him. And then it had him, too. Lifting, pressing, driving… Soaring.

  And coming back to earth with her collapsed atop him. His oxygen-greedy lungs raising and lowering her, creating a fine, delicious friction of her nipples against his flesh.

  When he had the strength and the breath, he shifted her enough to deal with necessities, then dropped back with her still half sprawled across him. He pulled his shirt across her back, and drifted, beyond content with the sensation and satisfaction.

  A shudder of her shoulders pulled him back.

  “Cold?” He placed one leg over hers to give her more of his heat.

  “It’s the crickets.”

  “They bother you?”

  “Not usually. But they sound…sad.”

  He listened. His mouth nuzzled against her temple. “They sound sad to you?”

  “Uh-huh. Or desperate.”

  “Desperate crickets, huh? Maybe they know i
t’s getting toward the end of the summer and their days are numbered.”

  Their days are numbered. His own phrase sent a chill through him as surely as a January wind.

  It shouldn’t. Their days were numbered, too. He knew that, so why the chill? Had hopes of a future been lying somewhere underneath his conscious mind? He wasn’t going to fall into that trap. Dammit, he wasn’t.

  “Do they always call hur-ry, hur-ry when it’s not even August yet?”

  “Summer ends fast around here.” Long before summer ended, she’d be gone. “We better get going now.”

  He reached for his clothes.

  She sat up, still naked. He looked away.

  “But you still have the memories. The memories you can pull out to make yourself warm.”

  Was she trying to convince herself or him? He didn’t turn around.

  “Right, you have memories. All you have are memories.”

  She wouldn’t cry. She would absolutely not cry. What did she expect? He’d spelled it out. She knew, and she’d still made love with him—practically begged him.

  Someone practical and levelheaded, who’s never impulsive and never gets in scrapes.

  Practical and levelheaded—she’d made love with him here on the ground.

  Impulsive—it should have been her middle name.

  Never gets in scrapes—if he knew that she’d run away from her own wedding, knew why she’d run and how she was lying to him…

  She was nothing Thomas Vance was looking for in a woman, and everything he didn’t want, including a liar. No wonder he’d pulled back. No wonder when his brain resumed operations, he’d realized this could never work.

  But she couldn’t regret it. The aftermath maybe, but not making love with him.

  If he’d run into the real Helga earlier today, she never would have had the chance to make love with him. Now she might not have another chance. No, she couldn’t regret it.

  Becky popped out of the barn when Judi rode up.

  “I thought you’d want to know it’s all clear. Gran and I—”