The Cowboy's Bride

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Nor, to her growing dissatisfaction, was she. If she wasn’t careful, if she let Cody move too fast or for all the wrong reasons, she might get her heart broken again, too.

  Callie swallowed and flattened her hands over the hardness of his chest. “Maybe we are still technically married, but since that marriage was never consummated, it can’t possibly be valid.” Could it? And how could he be affecting her this way, after all this time, when she knew he didn’t want her here? He hadn’t kissed her because he loved her and wanted her back. He had kissed her to put her in her place.

  Cody’s hand slid down her spine, eliciting tingles of awareness wherever he touched. Lower still, there was a peculiar weakness in her knees, a melting ache.

  “Fortunately for us that’s something that’s easy enough to remedy,” Cody drawled.

  Like heck it was. If he thought she was going to sleep with him and consummate their marriage now, after the way he had just treated her, and thereby forever ruin any slim chance they had of ever getting back together, he had another thing coming. “Dream on.” Her pulse skittering with reaction, Callie pushed him aside. If and when Cody ever made love to her, it was going to be because he loved her and wanted her back in his life, from this day forward. It would not be to collect on his inheritance.

  Deciding the best thing to do was to stay busy, she did an about-face and marched back toward the pickup truck.

  “You can’t run away from me forever,” Cody predicted, dogging her every step of the way. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to settle the score, Callie.”

  She regarded his he-man expression with a defiant one of her own. “Now you are really deluding yourself.” Callie yanked open the door on the passenger side, reached behind the seat and brought out her duffel bag.

  “I’m not going to be used again, Callie. If I put myself on the line for you again, I expect to get something out of it this time. Something I want.”

  CALLIE STARED AT CODY, her heart pounding. “Which is?” she taunted.

  “For starters, our marriage certificate,” Cody plainly specified.

  She stared at him. “I don’t have it!”

  His shock turned to dismay. He leaned forward urgently. “You must have it.”

  Callie shook her head. Suddenly, she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. As if he didn’t believe her. Didn’t want to believe her.

  “If you’re playing a game with me,” Cody growled, “hoping to get even more out of this than Max offered—by holding that over my head—”

  “Oh, stop,” Callie cut him off, completely exasperated by his continuing and utterly groundless, as far as she was concerned, suspicions. “As if I would. And as for you, Cody McKendrick, you stand to get plenty out of this arrangement. You stand to get the ranch, all quarter million acres of it. So don’t you stand there and lecture me.” Callie slammed the door and tossed the duffel bag over her shoulder in one jaunty motion.

  He stepped to block her way, all tough, indomitable male. “I’ve already earned the ranch.” His voice dropped a husky notch that reverberated with sexual undertones. “And as for what I want, aside from the marriage certificate, which should probably be burned or at least somehow nullified so it doesn’t show up later and muck up or otherwise complicate our eventual divorce, let’s just say I’m thinking about something infinitely more satisfying.”

  And they both knew what that was. “Trust me.” Cutting a wide swath around him, Callie lugged her duffel bag all the way to the front porch. She tossed it down with all the fire of an activist making a hugely political statement. “Making love to me —” for any reason other than that you love me desperately, Callie amended silently “—would not fall into that category, Cody.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Stepping back, he regarded her with a smug look. Apparently deciding he was doing an excellent job of getting under her skin, he drawled, “Come to think of it, seems like I might enjoy the next two days more than I thought.”

  Don’t count on it, Callie thought. But not wanting to give him the satisfaction of a comeback, she remained silent. “What happens after that?” she asked finally.

  Cody shrugged. “We get married, just as Uncle Max willed that we must, we divorce as soon as his will allows, and then we go our separate ways.”

  Callie tossed her hair. There was no way she was letting him get away with such a lame proposal. “I think I’ll pass. Now, if you don’t mind I’m tired, and I’d like to go inside.” She pushed on the door. It swung open with a creak. “Where’s the light?”

  Almost as an afterthought, Cody picked up her duffel and tossed it inside. “The candles are inside.”

  Callie took a quick look around. The interior of the cabin appeared to be divided neatly in two, one half acting as a living area and kitchen, the other the bedroom. Unlike the outside, it was clean and neat. But very, very spare.

  “You’re joking, right?” If he wasn’t, he was definitely taking this revenge kick too far. “C’mon, Cody. It’s going to be dark soon,” Callie pointed out.

  He flashed her an unrepentant grin, determined, it seemed, to be as difficult and rascally as possible. “Then we’d better find those candles, hadn’t we?”

  Callie drew a tranquilizing breath. “Surely you have a flashlight,” she persisted.

  “Only for emergencies,” Cody allowed.

  Obviously, to his frame of mind, this wasn’t one of them.

  She looked around, her displeasure growing. “There’s no refrigerator.”

  Cody nodded, feigning surprise. “So there isn’t.”

  Callie silently counted to ten and back down again. Keeping her eyes locked with his, she inquired, “No bathroom?”

  Cody shrugged in a way she was sure he meant to irritate her. “Nature’s right outdoors.”

  She exhaled brusquely. “I am not amused, Cody.”

  He nodded, not the least surprised. “Then you better use the powder room out back.” Jerking a thumb over his shoulder, he pointed to a dilapidated building that most certainly did not come equipped with any plumbing.

  “Surely you jest,” Callie muttered, as she spun around to see where he was pointing. She hadn’t used a latrine since the summer she’d been sent to camp. Never mind one that looked rickety and unkempt.

  Cody shrugged his broad shoulders. “Suit yourself, but if you don’t use it you might be getting a mite uncomfortable after two days.”

  CALLIE FOLDED HER ARMS in front of her. “I can’t believe Max wanted this for me.”

  Neither could he, Cody thought.

  Only a few hours had passed since they’d met up with each other again, and he’d already done what he’d silently sworn he would not do in the forty-eight hours before their wedding. He’d taken Callie in his arms again and held her and kissed her as if she were, and always would be, the only woman in his life.

  He’d tried everything to finally get her out of his system — with little or no success—the past seven years. Which was, no doubt, why Uncle Max had ordered up something this crazy. Max had probably figured that more time together would be the only way they’d ever know in their hearts that this relationship of theirs was not meant to be. Heck, maybe if he made Callie’s life miserable enough, Cody thought, she would even let him buy her out. And then she could go and settle elsewhere and he could live his life in peace.

  Either that, Cody scoffed inwardly, or they’d find out they were madly in love after all and meant to spend the rest of their days together, just as Max, he and Callie had all once hoped.

  Aware Callie was studying him curiously, as if wondering just what he was ruminating on for so long, Cody remained stone-faced as they looked around at the stiff velvet love seat, the shade of canned peas, and the rough-hewn table for two, complete with straight-backed chairs. Aside from a supplies shelf, which contained a bag of self-rising flour, a bottle of real maple syrup, a can of shortening, box of powdered milk, salt, coffee and two tins of canned vegetables, plus a cast-iro
n skillet, coffeepot and set of tin camp-style dishes and cutlery, there was nothing else in the place. It was spare and efficient to the extreme, just the way he liked it. Seeing Callie’s displeasure, Cody asked, “What’s the matter? This place not fancy enough for you?”

  His temper simmering, he still couldn’t get over the way she had run out on him without so much as even a note or a word of goodbye. Cody reminded himself of his promise to proceed with caution where Callie was concerned. “I thought you were dying to be a rancher’s wife.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.” Cody forced a tight smile. He was very interested to see just how far Callie would or would not take her quest for a buck. “Then like a good little ranch wife, you’ll be rustling us up some supper.”

  Callie’s chin slid out in an unruly pout. Her green eyes shimmered with temper, too. “Thanks, I’ll pass. Besides, we’re not completely married yet, Cody. And considering the fact neither of us have the wedding certificate, we may not even have an in-name-only marriage, either. So you have no right to try and act like a husband to me, even an unruly, surly one. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  So, Callie was already laying out the con. Giving precious little herself and expecting a lot in return. Cody regarded her steadily. He couldn’t believe how easily he had almost been suckered in. Again. Of course, Callie responding so passionately to his kisses and then looking up at him all misty-eyed had been a nice touch. Had he not been at the receiving end of her innocent act before, and landed in a heap of trouble because he’d allowed himself to be taken in by the vulnerability beneath her typically feisty attitude, he might even have believed she had waited all this time for him.

  But these days, he was older and wiser and he knew better.

  Callie had saved her most convincing display of passion yet for the time when she needed it most. In other words, the big con. The one that would set her up for life. And she was here with him for one reason only, Cody reminded himself sternly. To collect on the land that Uncle Max had left her in his will. Pretending to be falling for him all over again was only a means to distract him, while she and her kin tried to con him out of everything.

  Well, it wasn’t going to work this time, Cody swore silently to himself. He was going to keep her at arm’s length emotionally, even if he had to be mean as a rattlesnake to do so.

  “Don’t worry,” he said dryly. “We can get another copy of the marriage certificate from the judge who married us in Mexico.” Which would maybe, if he was lucky, save him from having to marry her again. “In the meantime, consider this a trial run,” he advised succinctly, wishing she didn’t look so all-fired beautiful or vulnerable in the fading daylight.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Cody?” Callie stepped forward to confront him toe-to-toe, quickly letting him know he wasn’t the only one who could dish it out. “If I leave, you lose everything.”

  So what? Cody thought. Because, unlike Callie, he could not be bought. He was only going through with this lunatic exercise of his dear departed uncle because he wanted to see where all this would lead. As far as the Silver Spur cattle operation went, Cody thought, he had already earned that through seven years of unrelenting hard and devoted labor. This marriage business was merely the paperwork and bureaucracy he had to suffer through to cement the deal.

  “If I lose, so do you,” Cody pointed out matter-of-factly to Callie. “Is that what you want?” he asked as he towered over her. “To walk away from this windfall empty-handed?”

  They stared each other down in an age-old battle of the sexes.

  Eventually, Cody won as he knew he would, and Callie gave a resigned sigh. “Fine. Point me to the kitchen, wherever it is.”

  With a grin, Cody inclined his head to the left. He couldn’t wait to see her reaction to that. “You’re looking at it,” he said.

  CALLIE KNEW Cody was giving her a hard time on purpose. No doubt he was angry at his Uncle Max for attaching such a ridiculously provincial stipulation to his inheritance. But that was not her fault and she’d be damned if she’d be the outlet for his frustration. “That’s a fireplace, Cody, not a stove.”

  Cody tugged the brim of the Stetson low across his brow. “A pity,” he sighed. “If you can’t figure out how to cook on it, you’ll probably have to go hungry, then.”

  Callie edged closer, aware it was getting darker with every second that passed. She knew how to cook over an open fire but saw no reason to tell him that, lest he find yet another way to make her miserable just so she would be hurting as much as he was. “Don’t you mean we’ll both go hungry?”

  “No,” Cody announced with complete disregard to her comfort and well-being, “’cause I know how to cook over an open fire.”

  Too nervous to eat earlier, Callie had merely picked at her breakfast and had forgone lunch altogether. Now her stomach was growling hungrily. “Meaning what exactly, Cody?” Callie prodded, balling her hands into fists at her side.

  “Meaning I can cook for myself.”

  Callie fought to contain her growing exasperation. “Would you at least carry in some firewood so I can build a fire in here?” she asked with a sweet gentleness that would have done any Southern belle proud.

  Cody sprawled on the love seat and stretched his long, jean-clad legs out in front of him. “Nope.”

  Callie could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he was up to something again. She might as well know what it was. Falling for the bait, she asked politely, “Why not?”

  Cody pointed a thumb at his chest. “’Cause I won’t be needing a fire in here. I’m sleeping in the bedroom.”

  Callie glanced at the love seat, which would barely accommodate the two of them sitting down, and then back at him. “Where am I sleeping?” she asked curiously. Was there a loft in the bedroom beyond?

  Cody shrugged and glanced around thoughtfully. “On the floor?”

  “That’s not funny!” Darn his ungallant soul, he was really going to make her sleep on the sofa, while he took the bed!

  “Probably won’t be, come tomorrow morning,” Cody agreed as he pushed lazily to his feet. “By the way, we get up early around here. Ranch life starts at dawn. Perhaps even a little before.”

  Callie folded her arms in front of her. “Rest assured, cowboy, I have no illusions that you’ll do anything but try and make my life hell.”

  Cody’s eyes gleamed with vengeful lights. “Just returning the favor. You made my life miserable the last seven years. It’s my turn to do the same for you, for at least the next—” he glanced at his watch “—forty-five hours.”

  She really had hurt him, Callie thought. “Can you at least loan me a pillow and blanket?” she said.

  Again, to her frustration, Cody refused to be even the least bit accommodating. “Sorry, no can do,” he allowed calmly as she walked over to the bedroom and peered in. There was a very comfortable-looking double bed, with two pillows and a wealth of blankets, a dresser, and a fireplace, and nothing else. Still, for him not to share...

  Doing his best to rile her up, he patted her shoulder condescendingly. “Look at it this way, Callie. At least you’ve got a piece of furniture to sleep on.” He inclined his head toward the love seat. “We ranchers don’t always even have that.”

  He wanted to give her a hard time. He thought she couldn’t take it. He was dead wrong about that. She pivoted to face him and regarded him impatiently. “I need matches.”

  “Let’s see.” He searched around without any particular energy.

  Though the afternoon had been warm, the June evening looked as if it were going to be dipping down into the fifties. There was no way she’d be able to sleep without some source of warmth. “I’ll buy them from you,” she said desperately.

  The mention of money made him frown. “No need for that,” Cody said brusquely as he swiftly located a canister on the top of the supply shelf, opened the lid and tossed her a pack. “Have it.”

  Determined to show him what a trooper she co
uld be, Callie asked, “Where is the water?”

  “In the pump out front.”

  They had to pump their own water, too? Damn. Callie looked around with a sigh. It was going to be a long night.

  43:47

  No WONDER Max had summoned her via his will, Callie thought long minutes later. She couldn’t believe the changes in his nephew Cody, either. Okay, so seven years had passed since she’d seen Cody, she acknowledged as she tossed off her blue blazer and rolled up the sleeves on her long-sleeved white T-shirt and got down to work building a fire. But when she had known him he had been easygoing, generous to a fault and gallant beyond belief. The Cody who’d confronted her at the Fort Benton Gentlemen’s Club was tough, suspicious, intense. Not at all like the Cody she had once known and loved with all her heart.

  As if on cue, Cody came in with an armload of wood and unceremoniously took it into the bedroom. “Doesn’t look like you’re doing too good,” he drawled as he strode past.

  “I’ll get it,” Callie vowed meditatively as she lit the long twig that was going to serve as kindling. Just as I’ll eventually get you back on track or die trying.

  “Let’s hope so,” Cody called over his shoulder. “Otherwise you’ll be a mite chilly tonight.”

  Callie sat back on her haunches. Cody always had a touch of hellion in him, just as she did in her, but in the past his disorderly, reckless side of him had always had a playful quality lurking underneath. Always before, she had known if he teased her he would also be sweet and loving. Now as she studied him she wondered if, beneath the bad-boy persona that had always been Cody’s best defense, at heart he was still the deeply sensitive, innately gallant man she’d fallen in love with, or if he’d become someone else. Someone she didn’t want to know. Not surprisingly, she found herself hoping for the first alternative. If only there was some surefire way to bring the goodness out in him again, she thought. “You could give me a hand with the fire in here, you know,” she suggested gently. Maybe simple kindness, in continual doses, and some tender loving care were all Cody really needed to get himself back on track. But to her disappointment, her efforts fell on deaf ears.