The Cowboy's Bride

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “I know,” he said. “Cisco Kidd told me.”

  “I found a note.”

  He struggled to break the spell that had them so aware of each other. “Mind if I see it?”

  A self-conscious blush heating her cheeks, Callie pulled the note from her pocket and handed it over to Cody for his perusal. As she watched him scan the note, she noticed he did not look surprised or even displeased at anything in it.

  “So,” Cody said eventually, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. In no hurry to go back inside, he leaned against one of the square posts that supported the porch roof. “Max is a-rootin’ for you.”

  He’s a-rootin’ for us, Callie thought.

  “And he wanted you to have a trousseau.”

  And quite a trousseau it was, Callie thought, mulling over the sexy nature of some of the nightclothes that had been provided for her. She leaned against a post opposite him, marveling at the fact Cody didn’t seem to resent the sentiment plainly displayed in Max’s note. “How did the clothes get in there?” she asked, wrapping her arm around the sturdiness of the wood. “And when? Were you able to find out?”

  Cody nodded. “Cisco brought them over while we were out at the wheat fields this afternoon. He has a key to the ranch house, since technically it still belongs to Uncle Max and is part of the estate, so it was no problem for him to let himself in.”

  “And my old clothes?”

  “That’s the funny thing.” Cody gave Callie the note back, his fingers brushing hers in the process. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, the unconscious action drawing the fabric tighter across his lower torso. “Cisco said he wasn’t anywhere near the utility room.”

  Callie sighed and tore her glance from the front of his jeans.

  “Any idea what might have happened to them?” Cody asked curiously.

  Yes, Callie thought, blushing all the harder. Pa or Buck could have stolen into the house and removed them from the washer and dryer. They would probably think a prank like that was downright hilarious.

  But not wanting to share her suspicions with Cody for fear it would spoil his newly amiable mood toward her, Callie shook her head. “Maybe Max arranged that, too. With someone else like Pearl or Shorty. With Cisco running interference for all three couples, he has a lot to do.”

  “You’re right about that,” Cody said, mulling the possibility over.

  And speaking of the others, Callie asked, “Have you talked to Patience or Trace?” She wondered if things were faring any better for the other two McKendrick heirs.

  Cody shook his head. His eyes locked on hers. It was clear he had noticed the pains she had taken with her appearance and appreciated the way she looked; he could barely take his eyes off her. Max was right. These clothes were lethal weapons.

  Cody lifted a hand and tangled it in the ends of her hair, caressing the tousled waves gently. It was a teasing gesture, one he had bestowed upon her often in the past. “Dinner’s almost ready. Come on in the kitchen.” He took her hand, tugging her forward playfully when she hesitated, and led her into the house and back to the kitchen.

  The table was set for two, Callie noted. Another good sign. Or was it? she wondered, considering that Cody still suspected she’d had a part in the prank involving Zeus and the fire in his wheat field. She studied him warily, hoping she wasn’t falling into a velvet-lined trap. “You cooked for both of us?”

  Cody lifted his broad shoulders in a careless shrug. “Thought I owed you for what you did to make the ranch house more of a home. One good turn deserves another and all that.”

  Callie looked into his eyes again and was immediately disappointed. Cody hadn’t done all this because be loved her. He had done it because he didn’t want to be beholden to her. And because she had made him feel ashamed of his bad behavior.

  Score one for her civilizing influence on him.

  “Besides,” Cody said over his shoulder as he checked the meat for doneness and took the sizzling steak out of the broiler, then teasing her with a lighthearted wink, “I figured it was safer than letting you near the stove again.”

  Callie made a face at him. “Cute.”

  She edged closer, knowing she probably should not be so quick to forgive his rude behavior, and yet she figured any reason for a truce between them was better than none. After all, she reasoned, every journey began with a single step. Maybe Max was right. Maybe there was reason for them to hope for a happy ending after all, since their mandatory prenuptial period was only half over. Cody had done this much. She could go the rest of the way and at least try to make this a civil, if not downright romantic evening. “Can I lend you a hand?” she asked quietly.

  “Just have a seat.” He slid the sautéed mushrooms onto the steak with the ease of an accomplished cook, brought out twice-baked potatoes, broccoli and a tossed salad.

  “It all looks delicious,” Callie said as Cody poured the wine. He had gone to an awful lot of trouble, she thought appreciatively. Was it simply to make up for his unkind words to her earlier? Or because, deep inside, he was tired of fighting, too?

  CODY DIDN’T WANT TO SEE the admiration in Callie’s eyes as she propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm, any more than he wanted to notice how intimate sharing quarters with her had become. But there was no denying either.

  “Where did you learn to cook like this?” she asked softly, looking as if her simply being there with him like that, so romantically, were a dream come true.

  Welcoming the chance to talk about something not connected with their forced marriage, Cody spread his napkin across his lap. “Susannah, Trace’s first wife, got me started when the two of them were first married. I was only twelve at the time, but she took a special interest in me and showed me the basics. We were both a little lonely at the time — Trace was almost never home—and it was a way for us to pass the time. Max liked it, of course, ’cause it kept me out of trouble. Later, when I began spending a lot of time on my own, it just made sense to be able to cook something for myself besides freeze-dried camping food and frozen TV dinners.” And it had taken the edge off the loneliness, Cody thought as he spread steak sauce liberally on his meat. “What about you?” he asked curiously as he cut into his meat. “How come you never learned to cook?”

  Callie shrugged. “I don’t know. I always meant to, but I never got around to it.” She paused, a dark cloud passing across her face. “I guess it just seemed like an awful lot of effort to go to for just one person.”

  Cody stared at her. Had she been as lonely as he had been all this time? The notion was as comforting as it was distressing. Silence fell between them.

  “Cody?” Callie asked finally.

  “Hmm?”

  “I have something to ask you.” Something she did not seem to think he would appreciate being asked, Cody noted emotionlessly. Curious as to what that could be, he gave her the go-ahead with a single look.

  Suddenly looking a little nervous, Callie wet her lips, put her fork down and forged on. “What did you do to my pa and Buck in Acapulco to make them so angry with you?”

  Cody gave Callie a considering look, his mouth set in a grim line. “I thought you had nothing to do with all that.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He waited.

  Callie toyed with a piece of broccoli. “I guess I want to know how much I was worth. What kind of ransom did you have to pay to get me back?”

  Not a lot, she obviously hoped. Cody didn’t know why, but he took heart at that, too. “Twenty-five thousand,” Cody said.

  Callie did a double take. “That’s all they asked?” She appeared not to be able to imagine that.

  “No,” Cody clarified with a disgruntled frown. “They asked a million.”

  Callie’s emerald eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But you didn’t know it was my brother and Pa doing the asking at that time, did you?”

  Cody sighed. He figured they might as well discuss this. “Sad to say, I ha
dn’t a clue,” he admitted.

  Callie’s teeth sank into her lower lip. “Weren’t you worried that the kidnappers would get angry when they found out how little money you showed up with?”

  No, all I worried about was you and your safety, Callie, Cody thought. Unwilling to give that much of his feelings away just yet, he replied in a deliberately careless tone, “That’s all I could get on short notice.” He looked deep into Callie’s eyes and was pleased when she didn’t flinch in embarrassment or look away. “Besides, I had it bundled so it would all look authentic.”

  To Cody’s surprise, Callie began to look a little pale. “Did Pa and Buck know how little you were giving over to the alleged kidnappers?”

  Cody frowned, remembering how well be had been duped. “No, as far as they were concerned, I had gotten together one million dollars.”

  “Why did you tell them that?”

  At the time, Cody really hadn’t been able to say. Now he knew. “Because I didn’t trust them, even then,” he said gruffly.

  Callie started to take a bite of her broccoli, changed her mind, put her fork down and took a sip of wine instead. “What happened when you went to make the exchange?” she asked, a little nervously.

  Cody scowled, recalling. “We were supposed to go to this beach around three in the morning. Your brother and father had been instructed not to come. Of course they were there anyway, supposedly to help grab the kidnappers once I had gotten you safely out of the line of fire, but they were out of sight, some distance away.”

  Callie was completely enthralled by his tale. “Then what happened?” she pressed.

  “The kidnappers showed up with a young woman in a long white dress and cloak, a hood over her face. She had her hands tied behind her. They had a gun in her ribs.”

  Callie paled even more. “And you thought it was me.”

  Cody felt the blood leave his face. “Yes.” Abruptly needing to get up and move around, he stood and poured himself some more wine. “They asked me if I was ready to make a deal. I said yes. But I also told them they weren’t getting all the money from me until the deal was complete and I had you safely out of the way.” Cody downed his wine in a single gulp. “The next thing I know, I’m surrounded by Mexican police and being hauled off to jail as the prime suspect in a murder-for-hire scheme.” Cody regarded Callie contemptuously. “Apparently they’d had a tip—probably from Buck and your pa, I realize now—that I was really the one responsible for the mysterious disappearance of my bride and was paying to have her killed so I could collect on the insurance. So the police brought a decoy to the beach, as bait, to lure me out into the open. Then arrested me on the basis of the cash and illegally obtained weapon I had.”

  Callie looked utterly miserable. “Didn’t you explain?” she asked, incensed.

  Cody poured himself another glass of wine. “For all the good it did me. It took me three weeks and Uncle Max’s help to get everything straightened out. By then, your brother and father were long gone, allegedly chasing down a lead they’d gotten on you. The briefcase full of cash had mysteriously disappeared from the evidence room, along with the crooked Mexican cop who had set up the bust. Max and I tried and were unable to turn up anything on you that indicated you were still in Mexico or actually had been kidnapped.

  “So we headed back for Montana. Shortly after we arrived, who should turn up again but Buck and your pa. Claiming no luck in finding you, either—their lead had turned out to be a wild-goose chase—they asked me for money. But I had nothing left in my own accounts to give them, and besides—”

  Callie regarded Cody gravely. “You were suspicious, weren’t you?”

  Cody nodded grimly and then explained why. “In Mexico they’d been beside themselves with grief over your alleged kidnapping and disappearance. One month later, they displayed no grief whatsoever and only a sort of vague, nervous curiosity about you. Had you turned up? they wanted to know. Had I heard from you or anyone pretending to be you? They seemed curiously convinced you were still alive and well, despite all other indications to the contrary. So following my gut instinct, I promised to let them know if anything did turn up and I sent them away empty-handed.”

  Callie sighed and rubbed her eyes. Either she was a very good actress, Cody thought, or she was really distressed.

  Finally, she said, “I think you’re right in figuring Buck and Pa tried to pull a con on you, but if it makes you feel better, I don’t think they ever saw any of the cash. I think the Mexican police—or whoever helped them—got it.”

  Cody took another sip of wine. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for them for being double-crossed.”

  Callie’s chin jutted out stubbornly. “I’m glad they got double-crossed,” she said passionately. “I only wish that they’d ended up in jail instead of you. Maybe it would have taught them something.”

  “Unfortunately,” Cody drawled, not sure whether he should believe her, only knowing that, deep down, somewhere, he did, “it didn’t happen that way.”

  She met his eyes beseechingly. “If only I’d known what was going on at the time, I would have come forward to save you, implicate them and set the record straight.”

  Wary of being suckered in again—he could feel his defenses slipping away with every moment he spent with Callie—Cody studied her bluntly. “That’s what Max said, too,” he said tersely as he sat back down at the table. He had gone to enough trouble to cook this meal, he figured he might as well finish it, particularly since Callie did not look as if she had an enormous appetite, either.

  “What do you mean?” Callie said, completely stunned. “Are you telling me that Max didn’t know about my kidnapping, either?”

  Cody nodded reluctantly. He knew how it had been a mistake for him not to go to his uncle from the start; that was one of the reasons he and Max had quarreled and never made up. Cody scowled. He knew that for the rest of his life he was going to regret the fact that Max had died before the two of them could make up.

  But his actions had been inevitable, Cody realized with regret. His guardedness, his inability to let others in on what he was thinking and feeling had started when his parents had died.

  But to his increasing frustration, dealing with his grief and getting on with his life hadn’t been as easy for him, then or now, even though he was made of the same rough-and-tumble McKendrick stock as his brother and sister.

  Not wanting to let his Uncle Max and the others down, knowing it was what they all expected of him, Cody had drawn on every ounce of willpower he had and forced himself to toughen up. To his pleasure and surprise, he’d eventually found he could be every bit the sturdy westerner that the rest of them were. Unfortunately, there’d been a downside to all that self-imposed toughness.

  Since recovering from his grief, Cody had found it almost impossible to open up, to let himself love anyone except Patience and Trace. Callie had almost changed that once. She was trying to change it again. He just wasn’t sure he should let her. He didn’t want to go back to feeling like he could take a shot through the heart again. He didn’t want to put himself at risk of being hurt, or abandoned, however involuntarily, again.

  Aware Callie was still waiting for an explanation and that she wouldn’t rest until she got one, he went on reluctantly. “When your pa and Buck showed me the ransom demand, it specifically mentioned Max. It said his phone lines were tapped and if I tried to go to him for help in rescuing you, you’d be dead within minutes. Because I didn’t want to take a chance of anything happening to you, I didn’t confide in him. I just withdrew all the cash I could get to on my own and tried to bluff my way through the rest.”

  Callie sighed. She regarded him with compassion. “Max must have been hurt when he found out what had happened.”

  “Yeah, he was, but he also knew I’d done what I felt I had to do then. Just as I’ve gotta do what I feel I have to do now.”

  Callie held her breath. “And that is?”

  “Much as we want to, we can’t go b
ack and change things, Callie,” Cody said tightly, reining in the heartfelt passion he felt for her and replacing it with good old-fashioned horse sense. “We can’t pretend the kidnapping and my setup by your con artist family never happened. Because it did.”

  19:00

  MAYBE THEY COULDN’T change the past, Callie thought as she began to clear the table, but she had a chance to influence her and Cody’s future, if only she could find a way to get rid of her brother and father. They had ruined her chances with Cody once. She didn’t want it happening again. And she knew if Cody saw either one of them hanging around, he would go ballistic.

  “I’m going to call down to the bunkhouse and the cattle barns, make sure everything is okay,” Cody said gruffly.

  Callie knew, after all the intimate talk just now, that he wanted to put some physical distance between them. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. She didn’t want to feel she was in a marriage or a relationship on her own, with her doing all the giving and getting nothing in return. Yet Cody, with his challenging manner and surprising vulnerability, was tempting her to take the risk and do just that.

  “Cisco is supposed to stop by in a few minutes with some papers for me to sign. He usually comes in the back,” Cody continued. “In the meantime, I’ll be in the study.”

  Callie set the dirty dishes in the sink. “I’ll let you know when he gets here,” she promised. In the meantime, maybe she could figure out how to handle him.

  Callie wasn’t used to charging in where she wasn’t wanted. She wasn’t sure she liked the sensation. But too much was riding on the outcome of their forty-eight hours for her not to give it at least one last concerted try. And she was no longer too shy to admit it.

  She wanted to own a ranch, some place of her own, something strong and solid. She wanted to have a fresh start so she could make something of herself. And she wanted a family, and a good, strong, honest husband who wasn’t afraid to stand up for what was right, someone who would not neglect to show his love for her.