“We can’t have it sound as if I dumped you—no one votes for a heel,” Wes countered.
“Which is why I agreed to make at least one public appearance with you after you make the announcement so everyone can see that there are no hard feelings.”
“Still…”
Shannon knew at that moment that she was likely to come out of this looking like the bad guy. But at this point, she was even willing to accept that to have it over with.
“Just do it, Wes,” she said definitively then. “Just do it!” she repeated before hanging up on him.
For a moment she remained where she was, leaning against the island counter, keeping her back to Dag, considering what to say to him.
After the phone call, she thought that he might well have guessed that the engagement was off. And if that was the case, then it seemed better to come clean so she could impress upon him the importance of keeping her secret.
Having made her decision, she turned around. Dag was adjusting the fireplace screen, his suede coat still on.
“You could take off your coat and stay awhile…” she said softly, removing her own coat now that the fire was roaring and providing enough heat so that she didn’t need more than the jeans and heavy cable-knit sweater she was wearing.
“Okay,” he agreed without the need for more persuasion.
He removed his coat, too, tossing it on the sofa where Shannon had placed hers. Then they each sat on a bar stool at the island counter, sitting at angles to face each other.
“I’m sure you heard some of that call,” Shannon said then, opting to cut to the chase.
“I tried not to listen,” he said with a smile full of mischief. “But this is a pretty small place…”
“If I tell you the truth, you have to make a solemn promise that it stays just between you and me.”
“Things are not what they appear with you and the potential future-Governor,” Dag guessed.
“You have to make a solemn promise,” Shannon repeated.
“Cross my heart,” he joked, using a long index finger to draw an X over one side of that impressively massive chest of his.
“I’m not joking,” Shannon said when she’d forced herself not to feast her eyes for too long on that portion of his body and looked at his ruggedly gorgeous face again. “I gave my word that this wouldn’t get out until Wes’s public relations people have found exactly the right time, exactly the right spin to put on it.”
“And you think I might rush out of here, put in a call to the newspapers and news stations, and tell them whatever you tell me? Come on,” he cajoled. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She was aware that she barely knew this man, and yet she somehow did believe that he wouldn’t do anything to bring harm to her.
“Okay, I’m trusting you…” she said anyway before she confided, “I’m not engaged to Wes Rumson.”
Dag grinned a grin so big it was clear he wasn’t sorry to hear that. And he didn’t pretend to be. But he did say, “So explain, because I saw it myself—nobody could have missed it since the news stations played it over and over again. First Rumson announced he was running for governor, then he took you by the hand to stand next to him at the microphone and said if you’d have him, he wanted to introduce you as the future Mrs. Wesley Rumson.”
Shannon remembered the moment vividly. The crowd of Wes’s supporters and the bevy of reporters had cheered, Wes had raised her hand into the air as a gesture of victory, and what else could she do but smile even as panic had rushed through her?
And of course the assumption had been that she was accepting his proposal…
“I know it looked as if I said yes,” she said. “But if you’ll recall, I didn’t say anything at all. In fact, I had already made up my mind to break things off with Wes before that. I just hadn’t found a minute alone with him to do it—which was part of why I wouldn’t marry him.”
“Take me back to square one—how did you get together with Wes Rumson in the first place?”
“Three years ago my friend Dani and her husband treated me to a ski trip to Aspen for New Year’s. Dani’s husband is…well, he’s rich, so everything we did—where we stayed, where we skied, where we ate—was top-of-the-line, among a whole lot of bigwigs. Wes and his cousin were some of those bigwigs. Wes noticed that I was the third wheel with Dani and her husband, and since he was the third wheel with his cousin and his cousin’s wife—”
“You formed your own couple?”
“It actually started as a running joke, something he used to flirt with me. Then he asked me for a drink. We started staying in the bar after the couples went up to their rooms for the night. We were both from Montana, so we had that in common. He lives primarily in Billings, I live in Billings. He asked if I’d go out with him once we were both home again, and I…” Shannon shrugged. “I did say yes to that.”
“And it went from there.”
“Wes called soon after we were both in Billings again, and yes, it went from there. We started dating and eventually we were serious enough to talk marriage.”
“But…”
“Dating a Rumson is not like dating someone else. Wes is the Rumson family’s hope for the future in politics. He’s the center of their political machine. That’s his priority and the priority of everyone around him—his personal life doesn’t really exist. His personal life is more a tool used to make him look good to voters, it isn’t something he actually indulges in much.”
“No seeing more and more of each other until you became an inseparable couple?”
“Dating Wes meant we saw each other when it worked out—and that definitely didn’t make us inseparable. But until about six months ago, that was okay with me. I liked Wes. I grew to care about him—I still care about him. He’s a decent man. But I was swamped myself. I was working and taking care of my parents, so I didn’t really have any more time for Wes than he had for me.”
“Until six months ago,” Dag repeated what she’d said.
“Actually, I began to have doubts about the relationship when my Dad died. I would have liked to have had Wes be there for me more than he was.”
“But he wasn’t?”
“He made it to the funeral, he sent flowers and condolences, he had his secretary check with me every day for a while, but no. Things were the same with him—he was busy. And it really hit home for me then that I wasn’t his top priority, even when there was a reason I should be.”
“But you didn’t break it off with him then?”
Shannon shrugged again. “I still had Mom to take care of and Gramma was with us, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I did start considering whether or not I wanted to go through life never being who or what came first with Wes.”
“Then your mom passed away—did he step up any better for that?”
Shannon shook her head. “It was about the same and then out of the blue, Gramma died…”
“Which was a shock,” Dag recalled.
She didn’t know why it touched her that he remembered how difficult it had been. But it did touch her and suddenly tears threatened. She looked at the fire for a moment to blink them away before she brought her gaze back to his chiseled features.
“I just couldn’t believe I’d lost Gramma, too,” she confirmed. “And I really didn’t know where to turn, so Wes was the first person I called. But I got his cousin—”
“The campaign manager?”
“Right—Mose Rumson. Mose said Wes was having a drink with an important contributor and I couldn’t talk to him. I said it was an emergency, that my grandmother had had a heart attack. Mose still wouldn’t put Wes on, he said he’d have him call me back, and Wes didn’t even do that until the next day—”
“You have to be kidding me?”
“Mose held off telling him, so it wasn’t really Wes’s fault—”
“Still! Did he deck that guy when he found out?”
Shannon shook her head. “Wes made excuses for him.”
/>
“He took the cousin’s side?” Dag said, sounding outraged on her behalf.
“Basically. And when it came to the funeral I thought—I was hoping—that since I really was alone for that one, Wes would do more—”
“But he didn’t.”
“He sent his mother. And she was great, she stayed with me, she went through all the arrangements with me, I couldn’t have done it without her. But no, Wes came to the funeral, he paid for a catered luncheon after the burial, but he didn’t show up for it, and after spending so much time with his mother and talking to her about her own marriage and how this was life as the wife of a Rumson, I was just about done.”
“Just about, but still not completely?”
“I was so…alone then,” she said. “And Wes was always apologetic about how little we saw each other, about his distractions and all the interference. When Gramma died and he didn’t do more, he promised to make it up to me with a month in Europe. Just the two of us. I thought there might be some hope for us…I guess I was hoping there might be some hope for us.”
“I heard that Chase tried to get hold of you but couldn’t for a long time because you were in Europe, so Rumson must have come through on the trip?”
“He did. We did go to Europe. But not by ourselves. We went with Mose and his wife, and it ended up being Wes and Mose working on the campaign while Mose’s wife was dispatched to take me sightseeing. And that was when I’d really had it,” Shannon said conclusively. “I wanted—want—a bigger life, and being the woman-behind-Wes, being Mrs. Wes Rumson, could have been that. But I also want the kind of relationship my parents had with each other and I knew then that that would never be what I had with Wes.”
“Plus, maybe I’m wrong,” Dag ventured, “but it doesn’t sound like you had the kind of feelings for him that your parents had for each other, either.”
Shannon couldn’t deny that. “I kept thinking that might come with time, but no, I finally admitted that to myself, too.”
“So you were going to end it with him,” Dag prompted.
“But again, once we got back, I kept trying to get a minute with him and never could. I didn’t want to break up over the phone, but I had told him that I needed to see him alone, that we needed to talk—which seemed like it should have been a clue as to what I was going to do—”
“It would have been to me,” Dag agreed.
“But Wes couldn’t fit me in before the announcement that he was running for governor. He said he wanted me there with him for that and I said I would come, but only if he swore that afterward we could talk. The next thing I knew, I was by his side in front of all those people and there was that public proposal and the assumption that of course I would marry him. The minute we were behind closed doors after that I told him I wouldn’t. That cleared the room, let me tell you…”
Dag laughed. “I’ll bet.”
“So there never actually was an engagement,” Shannon concluded.
“But that was almost a month ago and—”
“I know! Since it looked as if I’d said yes, it became a big deal how it was presented that we aren’t getting married. I agreed to let Wes’s public relations people handle making that announcement in a way that won’t damage Wes’s run for governor. But it keeps not happening! When his secretary called to tell me to watch the news tonight, I thought for sure it was because they were finally going to say it—”
“But they didn’t…”
Why had Dag’s tone turned so ominous when he said that?
“Is that because Rumson is hanging on, hoping you’ll change your mind?” Dag asked.
“There’s a little of that,” Shannon admitted.
“Maybe he has deeper feelings for you than you think.”
“It isn’t that I don’t think Wes has feelings for me. But I don’t believe that’s what’s really causing the delay. He keeps talking about how much attention the engagement is getting his campaign. He doesn’t want to lose that more than he doesn’t want to lose me. And he certainly doesn’t want to lose any of the votes that a wedding might have gotten him.”
Dag didn’t say anything to that, he just looked slightly skeptical.
“But the bottom line is that I am not engaged to Wes Rumson,” Shannon said firmly. “You just can’t tell anyone.”
“Chase and Logan and Hadley and Meg would keep the secret,” Dag said then.
“I know they probably would, but I said I wouldn’t say anything until Wes’s people handled it the best way possible and I’m trying to stick to that…”
“Well, I won’t tell anyone. But if you decide to, you could. Without worrying about it.”
The power came on then—light from outside could suddenly be seen through the windows and the sound of the refrigerator running again alerted them to it.
Dag got up and turned on the lamp beside the sofa. “Looks like we’re back in business,” he said.
But it was so nice sitting here in the fire glow—come back…
Apparently he couldn’t hear her thoughts because rather than rejoining her, Dag snatched his coat from the couch and said, “And it’s late so I should let you get to bed and turn in myself—if I get an early start shoveling us out tomorrow, we might be able to make it to see Liz Rudolph in the afternoon.”
Disappointed, Shannon stood up to walk him to the door.
It was there that he put his coat on, leaving it unbuttoned but jamming his hands into the pockets.
And out of the blue Shannon wanted to snake her hands inside the fleece-lined suede and snuggle between its open ends, up against that broad chest…
She chased away the urge and the image, and glanced up at Dag’s face. But that didn’t help much since the man was so heart-stoppingly handsome and he was standing so close in front of her, peering down at her with those piercing black eyes. “Not engaged, huh?” he said in a voice that was quiet and deeper than it had been. “Not engaged. Not now. Not ever. Never have been.”
“That changes things, doesn’t it?” he mused. “That means you’re a free agent…”
“I guess I am,” she said.
“And I am…”
“Are you? We haven’t really talked about that…”
“Oh, I am! Believe me, I am!”
His enthusiasm made her curious. But all she did was smile because quizzing him on his romantic past wasn’t what she was really interested in doing at that moment. Not when, once again, thoughts of kissing him were tiptoeing around the edges of her mind. And hope had a new hold on her…
Then Dag took one hand from his coat pocket and raised it to the side of her face. Her cheek, her jaw, fit into the sturdy palm he laid there.
He went on looking into her eyes and even though he still wasn’t kissing her, she was at least glad that he hadn’t gone for a peck on her hand again.
Then he used a gentle pressure to tip her head slightly back. He came forward, and after what seemed like an eternity of hovering a scant inch from his target, he pressed his mouth to hers.
She couldn’t help the tiny sigh that escaped when that finally happened. But if Dag noticed it, it didn’t make any difference because he merely went on kissing her.
His lips were tender and adept and parted just slightly. His breath was warm. And there was a sweet sway to his head that Shannon was caught up in as she answered every bit of that kiss, letting it—helping it—grow and deepen and go on long enough for her to savor it and wish with all her might that it would go on and on…
For a little while it did just that. It went on as if Dag didn’t want it to end any more than she did. But eventually it had to, and when it did Shannon found herself light-headed.
“Not engaged,” Dag repeated in a husky voice for her ears alone.
“Not engaged,” Shannon echoed.
Then he opened the door and went out into the cold winter night, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and disappearing down the stairs.
But Shannon ignored t
he chilly air and craned her head out the door so she could watch him go, still feeling the heat he’d left behind on her lips, in her blood.
And thinking that that kiss had just added one more thing that Wes couldn’t compare to.
Chapter Eight
As Dag shoveled snow the next day, his mind was in turmoil and not even the quiet of the winter countryside or the rhythmic repetition of the work could stop it.
So Shannon was not engaged, he kept thinking.
But she still wanted a bigger life.
She wasn’t engaged.
But she still had Wes Rumson hot on her trail.
She wasn’t engaged.
But even if she stuck to her guns about Rumson, she was probably headed for a bigger life with that school in Beverly Hills.
So if anything, he should give her a wider berth now than he had before, he told himself. Because before, he was just struggling with his attraction to someone who was engaged to someone else and completely off-limits to him. But now?
Now what made her off-limits to him was less concrete. No less valid. But a whole lot more wobbly a barrier to protect him from himself and his own inclinations when it came to Shannon.
Inclinations like the one to kiss her.
He’d managed to control that when he’d believed she was engaged to another guy. But last night? Last night he’d kissed her. And wanted to kiss her again and again and again…
Jeez, he thought he’d learned his lesson about staying away from a woman who had another man on the hook in any way. He thought he knew, inside and out, to avoid women who weren’t satisfied with who they were or what they had.
But maybe he didn’t know anything, maybe he hadn’t learned anything, because what was he doing now?
He was panting after a woman who had her sights set on greater things than a small ranch in a small town—whether it was being a politician’s wife or owning a school in Beverly Hills. A woman who might be saying that her relationship with Wes Rumson was over, but who was still having contact with him, still admitting that she cared for him, still not completely finished with him.
The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride Page 10
