by Tina Leonard
“And you’d rather not be in this hospital.” She covered him with a warm blanket and gave him a smile. “Try to get some rest before I bring you a small treat.”
His face lit up. “Chocolate?”
“Yes.” She placed a hand on his wrist, taking a pulse while he was thinking about his treat. “But you have to stop complaining every time I bring you your medicine. Please.”
He wrinkled his nose, his white brows beetling. “You realize that when I complain, you bring me chocolate.”
She sighed and took her clipboard from the table. “Yes, I do, Mr. Dearborn. I’ll be back later.”
She left his room and returned to the nurses’ station. “Why do men have to play games?” she asked Darla Cameron.
“It’s in their DNA,” Darla answered. She looked at Jackie, her bright-blue gaze excited. “You’re never going to believe it, but Candy Diamond has decided to sell her wedding-gown business.”
Jackie blinked. “Isn’t that bad? Diamond’s Bridal is the only place to shop for gowns and nice dresses for two hundred miles.”
“It might be bad,” Darla said, “except you and I are going to buy the business.”
Jackie shook her head. “I want no part of wedding gowns and nervous brides. I get enough complaining around here as it is.”
Darla flopped some papers down in front of her. “And yet, check out the income from Candy’s business.”
Jackie stared at Darla for a moment, realizing her friend was serious. Her gaze moved to the column of figures and the paperwork Darla was tapping with a graceful finger. “Why is she selling if her business is so lucrative?”
“Needs to retire. And so do we,” Darla told her. “Think of it, Jackie. No more bossy doctors. No more grumpy patients. We’d be our own bosses.”
Jackie thought about Mr. Dearborn, one of her favorite patients. She liked caring for people. Sometimes the hours were long, but she was single. There was no one to inconvenience in her life. No family counting on her.
No husband, either. Pete Callahan, the secret love of her life, didn’t care when she worked. Pete was the only man she’d ever made love with. He would marry her in a flash, he always told her—not that she believed him. He was an inveterate footloose cowboy, an enigmatic Prince Charming who claimed he was in it for the real kiss, only to drift off at the last second.
This bridal shop might be the closest she ever got to being a bride. “I don’t know,” Jackie said. “What do we know about running a business?”
“My mom runs the Books ’n’ Bingo,” Darla said. “I’ve learned a bit about managing a mom-and-pop shop.”
“But brides,” Jackie said, thinking about all the drama involved with weddings, “there’s a reason they’re called bridezillas.”
Darla shrugged. “It’d be nice to do something new for a change. I wouldn’t mind smelling gardenias and lilies instead of antiseptic and other things. Not that I don’t love most of my patients,” Darla said, “but I’m ready for a new challenge.”
“I guess you’re right.” Jackie looked at the line of figures again, her heart beginning to race with some excitement and a little trepidation. “Let me think about it tonight, okay? I need to come up with all the reasons I can why this is a very bad idea.”
“I’d let your name be first on the door,” Darla said.
Jackie blinked. “Samuels and Cameron’s Bridal Shop? I think we’d be better off with something else.”
Darla smiled. “Or Callahan,” she suggested. “Callahan and Cameron.”
“No.” Jackie grabbed a wrapped piece of chocolate from her purse to take to Mr. Dearborn. “Even if I go into the wedding-gown business with you, Darla, I guarantee none of those gowns will ever be on my body.” She only loved Pete, and the fact was, Pete only loved Rancho Diablo. He teased her about marriage, but both of them knew that he wasn’t serious. Underneath it all, Pete was happy with their noncommitted-committed relationship. They kept quiet about it, they met in absolute secrecy, keeping the town busybodies from planning their wedding and naming their future children—and after all these years, she couldn’t change the game. She had nothing to offer him in the way of family, if he wanted that, and surely he did.
They’d never talked about it. But even Pete had to notice, with his penchant for making love “bareback” as he put it, that a pregnancy had never arisen. There’d never even been a false alarm. It wasn’t that she was taking unnecessary chances; she was over thirty. She would have been thrilled to become pregnant. Even just making love on Saturday nights should have produced a bingo at some point.
She was infertile.
“Maybe once Pete sees you around all those beautiful white gowns, he’ll pop the question,” Darla said.
“I don’t think I can get pregnant,” Jackie said, “and I’m pretty sure he would want a big family like his own.”
Darla stared at her. “Aren’t you on the pill?” she asked in a whisper.
Jackie shook her head. “I rarely have a cycle. In all my life, I’ve probably had ten.”
Darla thought about that for a minute. “Maybe Pete’s been fixed. Or maybe he has a problem.”
Jackie laughed. “He has problems, but I don’t think fathering a baby would be one.”
“Some men have low sperm counts.”
“Maybe.” Pete was pretty virile, though. Jackie wouldn’t bank on him having a problem.
“Well, anyway. Think about the bridal shop. We’ll worry about getting Pete Callahan to the altar later. I’m sure we can spring a proper trap if we put our heads together.” Darla went off, whistling, to check her patients.
“That’s not what I meant!” Jackie called after her. Darla waved a backward hand at her and kept going. But it was true. Jackie wasn’t ever going to marry Pete. She knew it just as certainly as she knew the stars were going to shine in the dark New Mexico skies tonight. If she could get pregnant—maybe. But a family man would want a family, and so far, she wasn’t a baby-mama kind of girl.
I’d love Pete’s babies.
Short of magic, it wasn’t likely.
“DON’T WORRY SO MUCH,” Pete said as he climbed back through the bedroom window of Jackie’s small house. “If you’re going to jump around like that, I’m going to nail my finger. Then you’ll have to nurse me.”
Since there was nothing sexier than Jackie in her nurse’s uniform, he really wouldn’t mind her taking very good care of him. But she didn’t laugh, the way she usually did. She watched him fit the frame a second more, then she left the room. He made sure it slid shut without a whisper, then followed her into the kitchen.
“Coffee?” she asked, avoiding his hands when he reached to grab her.
“Just you,” he said, “as usual.”
“Pete,” Jackie said, “I think I’ll go to bed early.”
He looked at her, admiring her dark hair, darker eyes. She had springy little buns and an energy he loved, and he couldn’t wait to get her in the sack. Why else did a man fix a woman’s windows when they warped from drifting snow? He couldn’t wait to run his hands over that perky butt. She had a back that curved just right into his body, and a—
“Pete, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Jackie said, and he tried to snap his focus back to where it needed to be. His little turtledove was awfully jumpy. Tonight was clearly going to be conversation-first night, and he was okay with that. As long as he got to hold her, Jackie could talk all she liked. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
“All right.” Jackie turned delicious dark eyes the color of pure dark cocoa on him. He watched her lips as she hesitated. God, he loved her mouth. If she wanted to talk for an hour, he’d just sit and watch with pleasure. As long as she let him kiss that mouth, he was a happy man.
“I think it’s time for us to…”
He grinned. “To what, sugar?” He had a feeling he knew where this was going, and it couldn’t be more timely.
“I’m so sorry, Pete,” Jackie said, taking a deep breath. “But
I don’t want to see you anymore.”
Chapter Three
The jackass—he actually laughed. Jackie stared at Pete, all the tears she’d been trying not to cry drying up to nothing.
“Come here,” he said, reaching for her, “you’re tired. You’ve had a bad day. Come tell big ol’ Pete all about it.”
She squirmed out of his arms, though she never had before. “No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just time, Pete.”
He watched her, his dark-blue eyes wide with unspoken questions. Pete wasn’t the kind of man who talked a lot. He wouldn’t bug her to death about what she was thinking. In a minute, he’d shrug, decide the pastures were greener elsewhere, and off he’d go.
She just had to wait out this awkward moment.
Yet, as his gaze refused to release hers, she knew she’d not only caught him by complete surprise, somehow she’d also wounded him. She was shocked by that more than anything.
“Jackie, you mean a bunch to me,” Pete said.
“And you mean a lot to me.” Jackie reexamined her feelings for the hundredth time, and came to the same conclusion as before: It was time to end what was a non-serious relationship between them. Maybe these new feelings had started when Mr. Dearborn protested his medicine—for the hundredth time. Perhaps it had been knowing that nothing was going to change about her life, not tomorrow or the next day, if she didn’t stop going along with the currents that flowed in their predictable patterns in Diablo.
But when Darla had mentioned changing their entire livelihoods, Jackie had known she was being handed the only chance she might ever have to change her whole life.
Maybe it shouldn’t have meant ending her relationship with Pete, too, but what she had with him was just as much of a road to nowhere as anything else. By the hurt expression on his face, she wondered if she was being selfish. But the bottom line was that she was in love with Pete Callahan, and he was not in love with her, and after fifteen years of loving the man and five years of sleeping with him, she knew their pattern was just as predictable as any other in her week. She would find him in her bed, he would ravish her, adore her body from toe to nose and then he’d depart before dawn to feed cattle and horses.
And she’d see him again—the next Saturday.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the pain she saw in his eyes.
And he said, “I am, too, sugar.” He stroked one work-roughened hand down her chin-length hair, then her cheek, put his hat on and left.
This should feel different, Jackie thought. My heart should be shattering.
But her heart had shattered long ago, when she’d realized there was no future for her and the hottest cowboy to ever walk Diablo, New Mexico. Oh, she knew the ladies were gaga about the five other Callahan men, but in her opinion, only Peter Dade Callahan made her heart jump for joy every time she heard his name, saw his face, felt his hands on her.
Eventually, a girl had to move on with her life.
She grabbed her cell phone, dialed Darla. “I may run by and take a look at those papers again.”
“I was hoping you’d be tempted,” Darla told her.
“I just might be,” Jackie said, listening as Pete’s truck pulled from her drive. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
PETE THOUGHT HE WAS pretty good at reading women. In fact, there were times he’d thought he could write a book on the vagaries of the female mind.
Jackie had caught him so off guard he wondered how he could have missed the signs. Had he not just loved her within an inch of her life last Saturday night? She’d cried his name over and over so sweetly he’d been positive he had satisfied her every desire.
Now he was left to scratch at his five-o’-clock stubble with some puzzlement. Last Saturday night had been the last time he’d seen Jackie. He’d hidden his truck around back, as he always did. She liked to keep their relationship private, a plan he agreed with, thanks to the Diablo busybodies. Nobody wanted the Books ’n’ Bingo ladies fastening their curiosity on them—it was a recipe for more well-meaning intrusion than a man could stand.
Jackie had cooked him dinner, and then, because she’d worked all day, he’d rented a movie, a chick flick. As the movie rolled, and guy got girl, Pete had massaged Jackie, starting with her shell-shaped toes, the delicate arches of her darling feet, then had even bent over to plant tender kisses on her ankles. The flower-patterned sofa in front of her TV was soft and puffy, a veritable haven of girlieness, and he loved sitting there on Saturday nights like an old-fashioned date.
Then he always carried Jackie into her white-lace bedroom, his angel ensconced in gentle frills and woman’s adornments, and he made love to her with a passion that he felt from the bottom of his heart.
In his mind, there was nothing better than Saturday nights with Jackie. It was so much a part of his routine—their routine—that he wasn’t sure how he could live without it.
Apparently, she thought she could.
His heart felt as if it had been kicked.
He parked his truck and went inside the house. Aunt Fiona looked at him, her Cupid’s-bow mouth making an O. “You’re home quite early, Pete.”
“Change of plans,” he said, not about to share any details. Anyway, there was nothing to share. No one knew about him and Jackie, so there was nobody he could tell about the breakup, even if he wanted some sympathy, which he damn well didn’t.
He wanted a handle of whiskey and a quiet room in which to nurse his pain.
“Did something happen?” Fiona asked.
“Like what?” he asked, rummaging through the liquor cabinet. Damn if he knew where Burke kept the goods.
“I don’t know,” Fiona said. “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you home at this hour on a Saturday night. Probably not in five years—ohhh.”
He stopped moving bottles, pulled his head from the cabinet again. “What ‘ohhh’?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Fiona went back to crocheting something that looked like a tiny white Christmas stocking.
He stared at her creative project, perplexed. “Are you making a baby bootie?”
She shoved the white thing into a basket at her feet. “Pete, if you’re going to come home early on a Saturday night, that’s your choice. But that doesn’t mean you have the right to poke your nose into my business.”
His jaw went slack. Nosiness wasn’t something he’d been accused of before. He was known for being close-mouthed, secretive, even aloof. If Fiona was making baby booties, it was none of his business.
Yet, perhaps it was. Baby booties meant that Fiona had a taker for her plan. And that was a problem for him, because he wanted Rancho Diablo, and the woman he’d figured was a surefire deal had just given him the brush-off.
“Who are you making it for, Aunt Fiona?”
She cleared her throat. Got to her feet, sending him a cool, none-of-your-business stare worthy of a general. She took her basket and disappeared down the hall.
Pete lost his desire to drink. He shut the cabinet, then after a moment, left the house.
He felt lost in a way that he never had in his entire life. His woman had just left him; what would he do if he lost his home as well?
There was only one thing to do: He had to drive to Monterrey and watch the rodeo. Gamble a little, sing some karaoke, maybe let a sweet cowgirl calm his broken heart for the night. Chat with some buddies, go to cowboy church tomorrow morning—and then maybe this terrible problem would have gone away.
Maybe.
“COME TO BED, MY IRISH KNIGHT,” Fiona said two hours later when Burke came into the bedroom they shared clandestinely.
“My wild Irish rose,” Burke said, taking off his long coat and cold-weather cap. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Think quietly, husband,” Fiona said. “Pete came home tonight. We don’t know where he might be lurking.”
Burke glanced up as he stripped off the corduroy trousers he wore to oversee the locking-up of the old English-style house. A manor, her brother Jeremia
h had wanted, just like the ones he’d seen in England before he’d had money. So that was what he’d built.
Jeremiah hadn’t lived here long.
“Why is Peter here?” Burke asked.
“My uncomfortable suspicion is that he and Jackie may have had a wee falling-out.”
Burke put on a robe made of Scottish wool and sank into his comfy leather armchair in front of the fireplace and directly across from the bed where his wife looked darling in her frilly white nightcap and flannel nightgown. “He said nothing?”
“No. But Pete’s been the soul of discretion about his Saturday nights for so many years.” Fiona sighed. “He wouldn’t be here if something unfortunate hadn’t occurred between them.” Fiona hoped her pronouncement about the ranch hadn’t stirred some sort of disagreement between them. Privately, she’d had her money on either Pete or Jonas to be the first to the altar. Stubborn Jonas had shocked her by walking away from the deal stone-cold. Now Pete might not be in quite the position she’d hoped he was in for a small nudge toward marriage. That left Creed and Rafe, Judah and Sam—none of whom she’d put a long bet on.
“Then I may have other bad news,” Burke said, taking out his pipe carved from burled Irish wood. “All the other boys are in the bunkhouse.”
“All the boys?” Fiona sat up straighter. “They’re never home on Saturday nights! This is our night!”
“Be that as it may,” Burke said, “they’re engaged in a game of poker in the main bunkhouse.” He drew with satisfaction on the pipe, then leaned over to stoke the fire.
“Burke! How can you be so calm! They’re supposed to be competing against each other for Rancho Diablo!”
Burke smiled. “You’ve done an admirable job with the boys, Fiona. Now it’s our turn. As I said, I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” Fiona didn’t want to take her mind off her charges—although they weren’t really her charges anymore, she supposed. They were full-grown men, responsible for their own happiness.
Still, the only way a man was happy—truly happy—was with a woman. Look at Burke, after all. He was the happiest man she’d ever met. Fiona smiled with satisfaction. Of course, he’d always said he preferred his creature comforts of home and hearth.
