The Forbidden Groom_Texas Titan Romances

by Sarah Gay

  Maggie went faint for a second. He rides? The bidding paddle burned in her hand. She had a sudden urge to start the bid and take him up on his offer to go horseback riding.

  Cole continued, “There, we’ll have a picnic lunch and if it’s a hot one and she wants to cool off…,” he looked over at Maggie with a seductive smile, “…we’ll relax together in the refreshing water.”

  Maggie held her breath as several eyes in the room settled on her. She tried to control her rapid heart rate and stop her chest from rising and falling so dramatically. She had to be professional. How she handled this moment could propel, or end, her event planning career right here and now. She wished she were clouded in a mask of sugar, instead of blushing a shade of red to match the stage curtains. She blew out her breath, mustered up a polite smile, and tipped her paddle at Cole as she cursed him under her breath for reeling her in.

  The whole we’ll relax in the water as if she were just dying to see him with his shirt off made her livid. Even though he most likely had a cut abdomen that most women would coo over, he needed to get over himself. Almost every firefighter she knew was ripped and they never went around flaunting it like that. Her firefighter buddies might pose for a benefit calendar with their shirts off, but they wouldn’t have to beg women to bid on them.

  She hated to say it, but Cole’s plan was working, and not only on the other women in the room. It was working on her.

  “Folks, it looks like we have our first bidder!” the MC announced in her sweet, playful voice that Maggie wished would just hurry on with it. “Shall we start our first bid at fifty thousand?”

  With a nod, Maggie held her paddle high in the air. She held back as three or four other women held up their paddles as the bid climbed. Maggie would wait until a few girls backed out, then she’d chime back in. As the bid rose to one hundred seventy-five thousand, she took a steadying breath and prayed that Silver really meant for her to go that high.

  She sent a quick text off to Silver to verify that she wanted her to go higher, and if she expected Maggie to go on the date. She bit at her lip. The bid raised to two hundred thousand where it looked like it might stop.

  Maggie couldn’t wait for a response. She raised her paddle at two hundred twenty-five thousand. Man, what her family could do with all that money. Some people worked their entire lives to pay off a house that cost that much. She had to remind herself that this was for charity.

  It looked like it was now between Maggie and one other woman that sat precariously close to Cole’s table. Maggie had to wonder if the woman’s seating arrangement had been prearranged.

  “Two hundred thousand even. Going once. Going twice,” the MC announced.

  The MC hadn’t acknowledged Maggie’s bid.

  Cole held up a hand and motioned to Maggie. “I believe Margarita still has her eyes on me.”

  The MC adjusted her stance. “Excuse me. Two hundred and twenty-five.” She angled her body to Cole and raised a questioning eyebrow. “You’re on a first name basis with Margarita?”

  Maggie cringed at how the MC pronounced her name.

  “Yes,” he said with a broad smile. “I had an opportunity before the bidding to become acquainted with Margarita and Jackie.” He motioned to the other woman who was bidding against Maggie.

  “I see.” The MC released a nervous laugh. “During the mingle,” she affirmed more to herself than to the audience. “Just checking that you’re not pulling another Walker on us. We wouldn’t want to think that the most determined bachelor on the team has suddenly altered his play.” She raised an eyebrow. “Or do we women?”

  That got the ladies in the audience cheering.

  Cole acknowledged their exuberance with a glowing smile and wink. “I’d say my time to settle down with a nice girl who catches me when I fall is not that far off in the future.”

  A lump formed in Maggie’s throat, restricting her oxygen intake.

  The MC rose up onto the balls of her feet. “Did you hear that ladies?”

  Oh, yeah, Maggie heard it.

  The MC continued, “This may be one of the last opportunities to go on a date with this stud. And maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be the lady who will claim his heart and catch him when he falls. Do I hear two hundred fifty thousand?”

  A paddle went up in the back of the room.

  Suddenly, two small but strong arms wrapped around Maggie, constricting her arm movement.

  “I love you,” Gracie whispered.

  Maggie laughed out her relief. “I love you too, Gracie, but—”

  “Do I hear two hundred seventy-five?”

  Maggie panicked. “Gracie, sweetie, can you please let go so I can raise my arm?”

  Gracie looked up at her with a sad smile. “If you want me to. You look so pretty in Mommy’s dress.”

  “I do want to hug you, it’s just—”

  “Going once,” the MC announced.

  “Oh good.” Gracie hugged her even tighter.

  “Going twice. Sold! Congratulations, Jackie!”

  Maggie’s eyes fell to the ground. “Hey, Gracie?”

  “Yeah?” Gracie responded with excitement.

  “Can we go out in the hall to hug? I think I might be sick and I’d rather not mess up this pretty carpet like I’ve messed everything else up tonight.”

  “Don’t worry.” Gracie peered up at her with those big beautiful blue eyes. “I’ll help you clean up your mess.”

  Even though Gracie had impeded Maggie’s bidding and Silver would be upset, Maggie’s heart melted at Gracie’s tender heart and sweet smile. “I wish I could just bottle you up and take you home with me.”

  Maggie didn’t care to watch as Jackie claimed Cole on the stage. She shouldn’t be disappointed, but for some reason she was. She couldn’t put her finger on if her nausea resulted from losing the opportunity to go on a horseback ride with Cole, or because the entire evening had been a flop.

  Gracie grabbed onto Maggie’s hand as they went into the hall. “Or you could stay?” she pouted.

  “I don’t think that’s an option for me anymore.” Silver would never extend an offer to her after she’d botched everything up tonight. “Who brought you here?”

  “Ace. He’s kissing Mommy right now in the kitchen.”

  “Where’s the kitchen?”

  Gracie pointed to an entrance about five feet down the hall. Maggie and Gracie entered through the kitchen doorway to find a muscular Hispanic man racing through the chrome kitchen, opening, one-by-one, every low cabinet.

  “Ace?” Maggie ventured.

  “Oh, Gracie,” he breathed out, pulling Gracie into a hug, “I thought you were playing hide and seek with me.” He offered his hand to Maggie. “Thanks for finding her. You must be Maggie.”

  Maggie curtseyed. “Somehow bowing seems more appropriate in this dress. And I think Gracie’s the one who found me.”

  He laughed. “My family told me I’d like you.”

  “That’s where I’m headed, to the Dallas Dating event to check on your sister.”

  He nodded as he blinked his intense, yet soft, black eyes.

  Maggie gave Gracie a peck on her forehead then hurried back to her hotel to change. She threw her purse on the bed as soon as she entered her room and struggled to unzip the back of her dress. She resembled a crazed flamingo, hopping around on one leg to get the puffy dress over her head. After a few minutes of wrestling with the dress and throwing on a relaxed pair of jeans and a t-shirt, she sprinted for the door.

  On her way out, she received a text from Silver. “No need to go back to the venue. I sent a cleaning crew over and Ariana left some food for you at your front desk. BTW, that cobalt dress looks amazing on you. Keep it. Let’s chat tomorrow.”

  Maggie sank into the reclining chair that faced the window with a view of the parking lot. She was leaving Texas tomorrow with a puffy dress as a consolation prize. Silver had made it clear that she wasn’t wanted or needed any longer. Maggie allowed her self-pi
ty to well in her gut.

  A knock on her door jostled her from her disparaging thoughts. She opened it to an attentive, bug-eyed bellhop with a brown paper sack. “I was asked to deliver this to your room when you arrived,” his teenage voice cracked.

  “Thank you,” Maggie tried to sound chipper and appreciate. The whole, We are no better than our worst thoughts. Be positive and a positive outcome will follow, was getting more and more difficult to articulate.

  She handed the teenage boy a five-dollar bill and closed the door behind him before emptying the contents of the bag onto her miniscule nightstand. The leftover Mexican food had been tightly wrapped in shiny aluminum foil, but still leaked the scent of cinnamon and cilantro. She reached down to the bottom of the bag to find a petite white paper box. She knew exactly what it was, but held it next to her ear and shook it anyways; the way every child did with those little plastic eggs during an Easter egg hunt.

  Maggie slowly opened the box to find a single macaron. She hadn’t won the sports car, but here was her second consolation prize of the evening. And that’s all she wrote, folks. It had been the story of her life since her teens; becoming good friends with guys was easy, it was how to establish a more intimate relationship that eluded her.

  She sat in the comfy microfiber recliner and nibbled at her zesty lemon crème macaron and reminisced at how she had been moments away from spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of someone else’s money to possibly take a horseback ride with a gorgeous multi-millionaire, lawyer, pro-football player. But in the end, it was all a fantasy because she had met the real Cole in the market and he was no prince. Fairytales had a place in the hearts of children and were fun to imagine, but it was time for her to return to reality.

  Maggie took a slow bite of her macaron, savoring the last morsel of her culinary marathon. She closed her eyes, allowing its creamy tart flavor to consume her senses as she drifted off with a prayer that her night demons had not followed her to the Lone Star state.

  Cole rolled his eyes, opened his legs, and leaned back in his leather massage chair to enjoy the starry night from his large bow window. His bedroom, with its neutral colors of tan, cream, and hunter green, normally created the perfect ambiance for his mind to calm before he slept, but it wouldn’t happen tonight. Good thing Susan couldn’t see him, not just because he sat there at home in nothing more than his boxers; she wouldn’t appreciate his complete apathy toward the situation with Jackie.

  “Let me get this straight.” Cole leaned forward in his recliner and spoke into his phone set on the armrest on speaker mode. “Not only is Jackie refusing to come tomorrow, she’s also demanding to spend a few days here at the ranch during the year end celebration?”

  “Correct,” Susan, his PR rep. responded. “But her name is Josie, short for Joselyn. She wasn’t super happy about you calling her Jackie.”

  He had refused to give Josie his number, or any other form of contact info when she’d requested it at the end of the auction. He’d told her every communication would go through his PR firm. The plan was to have this all over with tomorrow, but it looked like he was stuck. Josie had donated a pretty penny for him and now she was doing everything in her power to call the shots.

  “Why does she want to wait?”

  “Ah.” Susan paused. “She didn’t make that clear, but if I were to guess, I’d say it has everything to do with that reality TV show.”

  Cole threw the stress ball he was working in his hands across the room. It bounced off the opposite wall and returned to him. “What options do we have here, Susan? Because this show is not about some bossy blonde. It’s about raising awareness for trisomy-21 and getting this program in every state.” He threw the ball again. “If she tries to steal the show, you know how I’ll respond. And there is no way she is spending a night here.”

  “We have some time to come up with a plan for that. There is a more pressing matter that we need to address.”

  Cole groaned.

  “Can we discuss your comment? I quote, ‘I’d say my time to settle down with a nice girl who catches me when I fall is not that far off in the future.’ Can you please explain that to me, Cole?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I thought we’d agreed that you weren’t ready for a serious relationship,” she scolded like an overbearing older sister. “I’m simply reiterating what you told me you wanted. We’d discussed how we would capitalize on your current relationship status, and, if anything changed, you and I would sit down and discuss how you would make that public.”

  “Okay. Let’s discuss it.”

  “Are you in a relationship, Cole?”

  “No.” Cole wasn’t in the mood for twenty questions tonight. He was already irritated Susan hadn’t come up with a solution to keep Josie from manipulating the situation to her benefit.

  “Do you plan to be in a relationship in the near future?”

  “Yes.”

  “With whom?”

  “Maggie.”

  “Do you mean Margarita, the caterer slash firefighter?” she questioned is a derogatory manner.

  He had only called her Margarita because Pineapple had advised him not to, but Cole wanted her attention and calling her Margarita and having her bid on him sure got her attention. “What’s wrong with Maggie?” Cole squeezed his stress ball as his heat rose. “Everyone loves firefighters. How can you not put a good spin on that?”

  “Exactly. She’s a powerful, yet pouty hero. When you break her heart in two weeks, how’s that going to look? I know we’ve been going for the noncommittal thing here with you, but that’s only to make girls want you more, sell more seats to watch you play, make your jersey fly off the shelf, etc. We’ve already got plenty of bad boys on the team who play that card really well. I don’t want to see this girl get hurt and I really don’t want to see you get raked over the coals by the press. It’s one thing to avoid dating to steer clear of the crazy, selfish plastics like Josie. It’s another to hurt the girl next door. Women will sympathize with Maggie; they’ll want to be her.”

  Cole placed his head back against the massage headrest of his recliner and rubbed his temples.

  “You still there?” Susan questioned.

  “Yeah.” He could have argued with her after that interesting monologue, but why? “All that aside, I need you to come up with a game plan in the event that I do date Maggie.”

  Susan released a frustrated groan. “Didn’t you just hear me?”

  “Yes.” But no one was going to tell him who he could or couldn’t date, especially someone on his payroll. “Here’s me giving you a heads up. The powerful pouty girl will have a presence in my life. I’ll expect you’ll want to figure out how to make that positive with the paparazzi.”

  Susan huffed out a sigh. “Please keep me informed.”

  “Always.”

  He had his eyes set on Maggie and wouldn’t allow Susan to divert his gaze, even if her intentions were as altruistic as she claimed. He ended the call with a slow yawn, then stretched out his spine, followed by his legs and arms. He’d lost sleep the night before, thinking about the girl from the deli. Tonight, he’d lose even more sleep with new images of her with sugar puffing out of her mouth, her toned arms clutching him and raising him up, and her standing in the corner—stunning everyone, especially him, in that blue dress.

  He grabbed his phone and started typing. “Meet me tomorrow?” Before sending the text, he glanced at the vintage clock on the wall with its exposed cogs and gears. 12:02. He closed out of his message app. It was too late to text. He’d check in with her first thing in the morning.

  8

  The sunrise came like a lightning bolt and struck Cole, but not in an almost dead sense; in an energized by the increased electricity pulsing through his veins sense. He jumped out of bed ready to hit the gym hard, but he needed to catch Maggie before she set out for the day.

  At eight in the morning, Cole felt more comfortable contacting her than at midnight. He sent a quic
k text, “Can you get together today? I could show you a few sights before you head home?”

  Reality check, Maggie would leave and may never come back. He needed to do some investigating to find out what had brought her here to work for Silver and how he could find a way to get her back.

  His phone buzzed with a return text from Maggie. “On my way to the airport. Decided to catch an earlier flight, but thanks. What’s your name? I’ll save it in my phone in case we connect in the future. Let me know if you’re ever in Park City.”

  Cole’s energy drained instantly with the realization that Maggie wouldn’t be around to hook up with later in the day.

  “My friends call me Maui,” he texted back. She’d eventually find out he was the man she knew as jerk-face, but he’d rather tell her in person. “Drop me a line sometime.”

  “I’ll let you know if I ever make it back to Dallas.” She finished with a smile emoji.

  He set down his phone on his king-sized bed and threw on a pair of gym shorts for his workout. Pushing his body increased his mental clarity, and he needed that clarity now more than ever as his mind clouded with incessant thoughts of Maggie—her soft voice, clear eyes, rounded lips…he’d run hard then finish with weights.

  Maggie drove into Pineapple’s parking lot with the sentiment of hope and joy burning in her chest. Even though she’d failed at the whole catering thing, something had happened to her between the time she’d left Park City and returned. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but whatever it was, her outlook on life had improved.

  Her good mood could have something to do with the quality and quantity of sleep she got last night. When she returned home yesterday, she hiked one of her favorite trails, took a long bath, and went to sleep before the sun set. Luckily, she didn’t have a nightmare. Come to think of it, she didn’t suffer from any nightmares during her stay in Dallas.

  “Excuse me?” A woman and her young daughter in matching bright white dresses with large red and yellow flowers came up to her. “Are you Maggie?”