The Bride Price

by Ginna Gray

  With every painful breath she drew, his scent invaded her being—clean, musky, uncompromisingly male. The heady aroma made her head swim.

  This close, she could see tiny flecks of charcoal in his eyes, each individual black eyelash, feel his breath feathering over her cheek, moist and warm.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth. Slowly, he bent his elbows and leaned in closer. Maggie caught her breath and waited. Her eyes drifted shut.

  It seemed forever before his mouth touched hers. The kiss, when it came, was soft, a mere feather touch, but she felt it all the way to the soles of her feet. Her toes curled inside her bunny slippers. She leaned back against the refrigerator, her spine flat against the cool enamel, her body on fire.

  She expected him to take her into his arms, perhaps even carry her into the bedroom. At that moment she wasn’t sure she would have tried to stop him, but she never got the chance to find out. The next instant he straightened and stepped back, leaving her slumped there, weak and shaken and quivering with a yearning so strong she hurt.

  The look in his eyes said he knew exactly what he’d done to her. He touched her cheek with his fingertips and smiled. “Soon,” he whispered. “Very soon.”

  Abruptly, he turned away and picked up his shirt. “Give me a minute and I’ll cook us some breakfast,” he said as though the last few minutes had not happened.

  For several seconds after he had disappeared into the bathroom Maggie remained absolutely still, staring at the closed door. “Och, Margaret Mary Muldoon, now see what a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into with your cockiness. You should never have let him come with you,” she murmured to herself. She raised a trembling hand to her lips. “You’re in trouble, my girl,” she whispered. “The man is lethal.”

  It was several seconds before she realized she still had the milk carton in her hand. Muttering a curse, she jerked open the refrigerator and shoved it back inside.

  A slight noise in the bathroom threw her into a tizzy and she turned in a circle three times before she finally yanked open the silverware drawer and grabbed a handful of flatware.

  When the table was set, she dashed into the bedroom, threw on the first pair of jeans and T-shirt her hand encountered, dashed back to the sitting area, snatched up the rough draft of the Mergatroid and Arbuckle adventure she’d started the night before and parked herself on the sofa.

  Wyatt reappeared a short time later, fully dressed, hair combed, clean-shaven and devastating. After one covert glance, she kept her gaze riveted to the manuscript pages.

  Normally once Maggie got started on one of her stories she became so engrossed she was oblivious. The sofa could blow up beneath her and she wouldn’t notice.

  Not that morning. The instant Wyatt stepped from the bathroom, every cell in her body sat up at attention.

  Maggie kept her head down and her eyes on the paper, but her nose twitched as the smells of soap and shaving cream reached her. A tingle raced over her skin as though someone had run a feather over it.

  Pretending she hadn’t noticed him, or that her skin wasn’t pebbled with gooseflesh, she gritted her teeth and turned a page. Oh yes, she was definitely in a fix.

  Wyatt paused in rolling up the cuffs of his chambray shirt and glanced at the set table, then at Maggie. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, her nose buried in a stack of papers. He assumed she was working on another of her children’s books.

  She had changed into a pair of jeans and an emerald green T-shirt with a devilish leprechaun and the words Life’s Too Short Not To Be Irish emblazoned in white across the front.

  A grin tugged at his mouth. If all the Irish were like Maggie that was probably the truth. He’d never met anyone who relished life more.

  “What would you like for breakfast? You’ve got your choice of bacon and eggs, frozen waffles or cereal.”

  “Mmm?” She raised her head slowly and blinked, as though pulling herself back from some faraway place. Wyatt sucked in his breath.

  He felt as though he’d been kicked in the gut. It didn’t seem possible that eyes could be that blue, or a face that innocently lovely.

  She had obviously attempted to do something with her hair, but the unruly mane would not be tamed. It billowed around her face and shoulders in a glorious cloud of burnished curls that flamed and sparked like fire in the early-morning sunshine pouring in through the window at her back. He itched to touch those silky strands. He wanted to run his hands through them, feel them slide between his fingers and twine and cling, bury his face in those fragrant curls.

  Her feet were bare. So was her face. But then, cosmetics on Maggie would be superfluous, he realized. Her skin was dewy fresh and creamy, her lips and cheeks rosy with healthy color—and perhaps a lingering trace of excitement. He hoped so, anyway.

  Everything about her was colorful—emerald shirt, red hair, rosy cheeks and lips, auburn brows and blue, blue eyes.

  Dear God. Had he ever truly considered her to be merely cute? It was true, she wasn’t beautiful in the accepted sense, but there was an ethereal loveliness about her, an innocence and purity of spirit, that took his breath away.

  “What do you want for breakfast?” he asked again, when he realized she was waiting for a reply.

  “Oh, anything. It doesn’t matter,” she answered absently, returning her gaze to the papers she held.

  His jaw tightened. It irked him that she seemed to be able to dismiss him so easily from her mind, but he turned to the stove without a word.

  When they sat down to eat a few minutes later, Maggie’s expression registered surprise at the meal he’d produced. After one bite her eyes lit up. “This is really good.”

  Wyatt’s half smile was wry. “Somehow, coming from a woman who eats pickle and peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast, that compliment doesn’t carry a lot of weight. Anyway, it’s hard to mess up scrambled eggs and microwave bacon. You should try your hand at it sometime.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said with a grin, and popped another bite into her mouth.

  For a while they ate in silence, but curiosity got the better of Wyatt. “Tell me, what made you so jubilant this morning?”

  “Oh, I just felt energized and happy because my book is going so well. Then when I saw the pink and orange sunrise it made me feel like dancing and singing.” She shrugged and stabbed another forkful of eggs. “That’s all.”

  Wyatt digested that as he watched her devour her breakfast. She was truly a creature of impulse. Maggie skipped headlong through life, embracing it with open arms. He had never known anyone like her.

  “Tell me about your life in Ireland.”

  “Och, ’tisn’t all that interesting. Mainly, when I wasn’t in school, I spent my time running free about the countryside like a wild animal.”

  Wyatt paused in buttering his toast. “Didn’t your guardians worry?”

  “Och no. Not as long as the support checks came on time each month. Of course, they knew I could take care of myself,” she added, noticing his expression. “Truth to tell, I doubt they even noticed I was gone most of the time.”

  “You mean they only kept you for the money?”

  “Now don’t go gettin’ the wrong idea, Your Nibs. They weren’t bad people...merely poor, and the support money came in handy, what with having twelve children of their own. And ’twas a wee tiny cottage they lived in. I always felt penned in when I had to stay inside with that many people in so small a space. That was all.”

  Wyatt thought about the spacious loft she lived in, and put two and two together.

  Was that why she guarded her freedom so fiercely? Because she’d felt trapped and used in that house?

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then laughed. “Stop trying to psychoanalyze me, Wyatt. I promise you, I don’t fit into any of the profiles that you read about in psychology class back in college. But just so you know, I like my freedom because it’s my nature to roam.”

  “That’s not the only reason, though, is it?”


  Her smiled faded a bit. She took a sip of coffee and studied him over the rim of her cup. Elbows propped on the table, she cradled the cup in both hands and held his gaze for an interminable time. Wyatt was beginning to think she wasn’t going to answer him, but after a while she nodded.

  “You’re right. It isn’t. From the time I was a tiny child until her death, I watched my mother pine away for a man she adored.

  “The place John Hightower bought for her was a bonnie cottage, I’ll give him that. White it was, with emerald green shutters and doors and roses climbing all around. Och, the roses were glorious. Reds, pinks, yellow, all kinds. My mother spent all her time tending them.” Her vivid eyes were slightly out of focus, fixed on a time and place far removed from the present. Wyatt wondered if she realized how thick her brogue had become, or how revealing that was.

  “But for my mother the cottage was a prison. She never left it, for fear that he would come and she’d be gone. I did the marketing for her, ran all the errands. She didn’t even go to church...although...that was probably due more to shame. She went nowhere, did nothing, had no friends. She had no life beyond the waiting...and the grieving. And all it got her were the crumbs of affection that John Hightower tossed her now and then.

  “I made up my mind years ago that I would never let myself be shackled to anyone that way. That I would never let love rob me of my freedom. All my mother’s love brought her was pain and betrayal and a lifetime of loneliness and shame. If that’s what loves does for you, I want no part of it.”

  “Maggie,” he began hesitantly. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  She seemed to snap back to the present and shake off her mood. Sitting up straighter, she sent him a twinkling look and snorted. “I don’t believe this. I’m getting advice on love from the likes of you? Have you ever even been in love?”

  “Well...no. But there are plenty of successful love matches around. Just look at your grandparents. They were married for...what? Thirty-five, forty years?”

  Maggie nodded. “Something like that.”

  “There. You see. Why, Asa can’t even talk about his Jessie without getting choked up.”

  For the first time since he’d known her, Maggie looked uncertain. She chewed her lower lip and stared out the window at the activity in the campground, but after a moment she seemed to gather her defenses, and when she looked back at him she was her old cocky self again.

  “I’m sure there are a few exceptions, but from what I’ve seen, love is highly overrated. For most people it usually turns sour. Just look at the divorce rate in this country. I’m sure most of those couples married for love.”

  “Come on, Maggie. Sure there are a lot of broken marriages, but the data on divorce is not all that reliable. The numbers are skewed by the people who marry and divorce over and over. They make it seem like every other couple is splitting up, but we both know that’s not so.”

  What the devil was he doing? He’d become an expert at avoiding marriage, and here he was extolling the institution.

  Maggie apparently saw the irony in the situation, too. Her eyes twinkled at him over her coffee cup. “Och, such sage advice. Does this mean you’re contemplating taking the leap into matrimony?”

  “No, it does not,” he said with more force than was necessary, and Maggie grinned. “But we were talking about you, not me. And I believe the subject was love, not matrimony. I think it would be a mistake for you to cut yourself off from love because of your mother’s experience.”

  Maggie leaned closer. “I tell you what, Your Nibs. If I ever meet a man I can’t live without, I’ll give it a go. But don’t hold your breath.”

  The statement infuriated Wyatt. If? What the devil was he, totally resistible? Evidently she thought so. She couldn’t have made it plainer that she could get along quite well without him.

  * * *

  They spent the day taking in the rodeo and stock show. Maggie cheered the cowboys on during every event, and she got so excited during the children’s calf scramble Wyatt thought she was going to fall right out of the stands. Her enthusiasm and delight in everything charmed him. While touring the stock show she oohed and ahhed over every animal. When she cuddled a newborn lamb he got the strangest sensation in his chest, a warm and fuzzy feeling.

  In the early evening they return to the RV. Outside the camper Maggie turned in a circle, her face tipped up to the sinking sun, arms wide. “Hasn’t it been a beautiful day?”

  “If you say so.” It was scorching hot and humid as a steambath, but he wasn’t about to do anything to spoil her mood.

  “And just look at that sky.” She gestured toward the west where silver-lined clouds of orange, pink and mauve billowed just above the horizon. “It’s much too nice to go inside. I feel like going for a ride. How about you?”

  “A ride on what?”

  “My bike.” Without waiting for his agreement, she dashed around to the rear of the RV and opened the trailer.

  Great, Wyatt thought, following more slowly. He could just see them riding double down the highway on a rickety bicycle. They’d probably die of heat stroke if they didn’t get squashed by an eighteen wheeler first.

  “Just wait ’till you see it,” Maggie called from inside the trailer. “She’s a beaut.”

  I’ll bet, Wyatt thought. Cocking one hip, he leaned a shoulder against the rear of the RV, and tried to come up with a legitimate excuse to beg off. The next second Maggie came around the corner of the trailer, rolling the biggest, meanest looking machine he’d ever seen.

  Wyatt’s jaw dropped. He straightened slowly away from the RV, his muscles tightening one by one. All he could do was stand there and stare. Finally he shook his head and muttered, “I don’t believe it.”

  Maggie beamed, her pixie grin stretching wide. “See. Didn’t I tell you she was great?”

  “That’s a motorcycle,” he said in a dazed voice.

  “Och, man, ’tisn’t just a motorcycle. ‘Tis a Harley-Davidson. She’s got enough horsepower to peel the paving right off the highway.”

  “Good Lord.” Life poured back into Wyatt’s body as his heart began to pump like crazy. He walked slowly around the wicked-looking bike. Even idle, it looked like a ferocious black beast, straining to break free and race the wind. “You actually ride this thing?” The bike was so monstrous and Maggie so tiny he didn’t see how she even held it up.

  “Of course. All the time.” She gave him an eager look. “You ready to go for a spin? Here, put this on.”

  Taking his agreement for granted, she grabbed the two helmets strapped to the back of the Harley, tossed one to him, fastened the other one on herself and slung a leg over the saddle with all the confidence of a cowboy mounting a horse. “Well? C’mon. What’re you waitin’ for? Let’s get goin’,” she said, giving a little bounce on the seat.

  Wyatt eyed the motorcycle, then Maggie. If ever he’d seen a formula for disaster, there it sat. The words “Not on your life” hovered on his tongue, but the delight and anticipation in her pixie face held them back.

  With a sigh, calling himself all manner of fool, he pulled on the helmet and gingerly climbed onto the saddle seat behind her.

  His hands settled naturally on either side of her waist, almost spanning its tiny circumference. Their bodies fitted together spoon fashion, his thighs bracketing hers, Maggie’s round little derriere snuggled intimately against his crotch. The feel of that firm flesh almost made him forget the trepidation that squeezed his chest.

  “You ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Maggie turned the key in the ignition, kicked the starter, and the bike roared to life with a deep rumble. A few twists of the throttle revved the engine up to a throaty roar that sent a wave of gooseflesh crawling up Wyatt’s back and neck and made the hairs on his nape stand on end. His knees pressed in on Maggie’s legs, and his grip on her waist tightened.

  She glanced over her shoulder, eyes alight. “Okay. Here we go. Hold on,”
she shouted.

  The order was unnecessary. Wyatt’s whole body clutched around Maggie. You could not have pried him loose with a crowbar.

  She gave the engine a couple more good revs, then poured on the gas. The back wheel spun and gravel spewed. They burned rubber for about twenty feet, then suddenly the bike leapt forward like a wild animal released from a cage.

  “Holy—” Wyatt’s heart jumped up into his throat as they tore out of the campground and down the drive toward the fairground exit.

  There was almost no traffic on the interstate. Maggie shot out onto the highway without slowing, leaning the bike into the turn at an angle so sharp Wyatt could feel the heat radiating off the paving. He fully expected to go body surfing down the road at any second. Then, miraculously, they were upright again and zooming westward. Ahead there was only open highway and a brilliant sunset.

  Maggie let out a whoop and kicked up the throttle, and the Hog almost jumped out from under them. The G-force popped Wyatt’s head back, and he held on for dear life.

  They flew down the highway. He would have sworn they were going at least a hundred miles an hour, but when he glanced over her shoulder at the speedometer, the needle was sitting steady on sixty-five. Which was plenty fast, he decided. Especially when there was nothing between you and the pavement but a two-wheel vehicle and air.

  “Isn’t this great?” Maggie yelled over her shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah, great,” Wyatt replied through gritted teeth, but the words were ripped away by the wind.

  Maggie laughed and kicked the throttle up another notch.

  They rode west for miles. After a while Wyatt began to realize that Maggie handled the powerful bike with skill and self-assurance and that, though she drove fast, she observed all the rules of the road and did not take risks or cause a hazard for other motorists.

  Gradually his heart rate slowed and the tightness in his chest eased, along with his death grip on Maggie, and he began to relax and enjoy the ride.