THE BADDEST BRIDE IN TEXAS

by Maggie Shayne

  "You do have," he said, and he squeezed her hand.

  Adam finished with the copies, returned the file to the drawer. "If you're finished making kissy faces with Kirsten, Elliot, you can take these copies. Show 'em to Garrett and then stash them someplace safe."

  Straightening, a little red in the face, Elliot nodded and took the sheaf of papers Adam held out. "All right. You two gonna be okay?" He was talking to Adam, but his eyes were on Kirsten.

  She nodded. "Thanks for the help, Elliot. You're a real knight in shining armor."

  "Yeah," Adam said. "A real prince. Get your backside home, now, Galahad, before Sir Garrett catches you out here and tosses us both in the dungeon."

  Elliot faced his brother. Adam held out a hand. Elliot took it. "Thanks, little brother," Adam said. And his eyes said he meant it.

  "Holler if you need me." Elliot let go, tipped his hat to Kirsten and left Doc's office.

  Adam sighed, slid the file cabinet drawer closed and faced Kirsten again. "I'm sorry," he said. "Seems like I'm forever saying and doing the wrong thing with you. I just want this to be over. I want this garbage and all the lies out of the way."

  "I know."

  "I'm just trying to be realistic. Kirsten, it's time for you to wake up and realize that the only way out of this is for you to tell the truth. All of it. And you can start by telling it to me."

  His face swam because of the tears in her eyes. "I know that, too."

  "I'll understand. I promise, whatever you might have done, it isn't going to make a difference in the way I feel about you."

  Her smile was bitter. She closed her eyes, unable to look at the pain and the love in his any longer. "It will," she said. "But maybe there's just no way around that. I have to face it. And when I do, I'm going to lose you all over again, Adam."

  "You won't. God, I hate to see you hurting like this. It's killing me not to be able to take away that pain in your eyes."

  "Do you really want to take this pain away for me, Adam?"

  He stared at her, a puzzled frown bending his brows. "You know I do. I'd take it on myself if I could." He knelt in front of her and gathered her close in his arms. Dropping soft kisses in her hair, he kneaded her shoulders and spoke softly. "I'd take away every bad thing that's ever happened to you, sweetheart. If you'd just tell me how."

  A shuddering sob worked its way out of her, and she nodded against his chest. "Okay," she whispered. "I'll tell you how."

  Adam went still, not moving, waiting for her to go on, she knew.

  "Take me away from here, Adam. Take me someplace … soft … and dark … and make love to me, one last time. You were the first, and I want you to be the last. Maybe all that happened in between will stop haunting me then. And in the morning I'll tell you what you want to know. And you'll hate me, and it will be over … for you. But I'll have one sweet memory to hold on to. And I'll cherish it, no matter what else happens. I'll be able to face the rest, the truth, all of it, if I can just have this one night to be with you."

  He leaned away slightly, searching her face. "You can have as many nights with me as you want, lady. But it won't be like you think it's going to be. Have a little faith in me, Kirsty."

  "I have all the faith in the world in you, Adam. But that's the way it will be."

  "I—"

  She pressed a finger to his lips. "No. Don't talk about the secrets I have to tell you. Not now. Not again, not until morning. Promise me."

  He probed her eyes for a long time. And finally he nodded. "Okay. Okay, Kirsty. I won't talk. I'll show you instead." And then he kissed her. Long, and slow, and deep. When he stood, he took her with him, scooping her up into his arms. And then he carried her out of Doc's tiny office and into the night.

  Adam carried her into the hay-scented barn at the west side of town and up the ladder into the loft. It was dark in here, dusty and warm. It smelled good. Fresh and clean. He lowered her into the hay. It scratched the denim she wore and pillowed her aching head. She could hear the horses in the barn below them, where Adam had put them for the night.

  He came down beside her, ran a hand through her hair. "Kirsty, do you know where we are?"

  Her throat tightened just a little. She nodded, but she doubted he could see her in the darkness. All she could see of him was the tiny gleam of light shining in his eyes. The rest of him was just a darker shadow among shadows. "It's the Recknor place, isn't it?"

  "Yeah. Do you remember the first time I brought you here?"

  Tears tried to choke her. She'd been seventeen. He'd been eighteen. And they'd both been holding themselves in check for way longer than any of their friends. Until one day after school, when they'd sneaked into old man Recknor's hayloft. It was too private, too intimate, too safe, to keep them from exploring further.

  "I couldn't see you," Adam whispered. "Just like now. It was so dark, I had to look at you with my hands. I had to feel how perfect you were. How right."

  "I remember," she whispered.

  Adam pushed the denim shirt down her arms, and his palms, hot and callused, skimmed her flesh. He ran his hands over her T-shirt, cupping her breasts, squeezing her and releasing his breath in a shaky sigh. "I've made love to you a thousand times in the past two years," he told her. "In my mind. In my sleep. My pillow becomes your face." He pushed the T-shirt up, baring her breasts to the cool night air. Then he touched them again, rough palms on tender crests. Shrill sensation clawed through her. "I'd bring the sheets to my lips and imagine these breasts. I'd touch myself and imagine your body."

  "Adam," she whispered. "I swear I never wanted anyone but you. Never…"

  "There hasn't been anyone but me," he told her. "Not in any way that matters." He kissed and suckled her breasts, then her throat, then her jaw and cheek. "Let the time melt away, Kirsty. It's been you and me all along. I think we both know that." He moved his hand to the zipper of her jeans and slid it slowly down. When he slipped his hand inside, she arched against his touch.

  "I haven't been alive without you," he told her, kissing her, speaking brokenly, passionately, against her lips, against her skin. "And you haven't, either. Neither of us has existed without the other. So nothing that happened was real. None of it matters. None of it exists. Just this. Just us, Kirsty. Just this life that only lives when we're together."

  He shoved her jeans down and moved to cover her body with his own. She felt him there, hard and real, and she believed everything he was saying to her. That this was all that mattered, all that was real. That nothing in between had ever really happened. That right now was their forever.

  Adam slid inside her, and she closed her eyes, twisted her arms tight around him and held on. She loved this man. She could never love any other. It was him; it was only him.

  He completed her.

  "I love you, Kirsty," he whispered. "I never stopped. I never will."

  He pushed her to the edge, then over, and when she spiraled downward, he caught her and began carrying her up again. He made love to her over and over again that night. And she didn't want it to end. She didn't ever want it to end. Because when it did … it would end forever.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  Dread. The feeling hit him along about the time he stirred awake and noticed the soft dawn beams that poked their way through the cracks in the barn walls and painted pale amber stripes on Kirsten's face, in her hair and across the fragrant hay around her. It was morning. The morning when she had promised she would tell him her deepest secrets … and he had promised that those secrets would make no earthly difference to him.

  A cold fist closed around his belly and squeezed. A deep burn traced the path of his sternum and spread its wings into his chest. As he sat up, staring down at Kirsten and wondering what the hell was happening to his logical, strategy-prone mind, she moved closer. A soft moan in protest of his absence, before she snuggled against him, nestled her head into his chest. And the sensations raging through him intensified. His
heart went into meltdown, and his pulse seemed erratic and electrified. His scalp tingled. His spine shivered. He was alternately hot as hell and cold all over.

  He'd done it, then, hadn't he? He'd conjured up the kind of love he hadn't been able to feel for Kirsten before. The kind he had always secretly known she deserved. An all-consuming, sickening, bigger-than-life kind of love. The kind Garrett and Chelsea had found with each other. The kind Ben and Penny had cherished and nurtured from the time they were schoolkids. The kind that had turned his hot-tempered brother Wes into a pussycat and had turned peace-loving Lash Monroe into a tiger, ready to take on all his lady's big brothers, if that was what it took to win her heart.

  Adam loved Kirsten in a way he had never realized he could love anyone. And it brought a huge shadow of ice-cold fear over his soul. And an old pain came creeping with it. A surge of the feelings he'd kept locked away for a long, long time. Darkness. Heartbreak. Loss. Betrayal. Abandonment. The fear of it happening all over again. The grim certainty that it would. That it would always happen to him.

  If he lost her, he realized slowly, it was going to destroy him. And he couldn't shake that ingrained belief that he was about to do just that—lose her. He knew where the feeling came from. You take a kid who believes with everything in him that his parents will always be there, and you rob him of that faith … and there is no doubt that kid will lose his faith in everything. In everyone. In any kind of permanence. It ceases to exist for him from that moment on. He becomes convinced that there is no such thing as forever. That, for him, nothing good will ever last more than a few brief moments.

  Adam didn't want to believe those things, but he couldn't help it any more than he could change the genetic structure of his own DNA. It was too ingrained, too deep. Too well learned.

  He was scared, plain and simply scared.

  He reached down, his hand trembling, and stroked Kirsten's hair away from her face. She opened her eyes. Met his. Frowned slightly. "Adam?"

  "I changed my mind," he said, very softly, barely above a whisper, as he studied her dark lashes and the way they brushed her cheeks when she blinked up at him.

  "What?" She blinked the sleep haze from her eyes and sat up, leaning on her elbow. "Changed your mind about what, Adam?"

  He tried to swallow and couldn't. "I don't want to know this secret you've been keeping. Don't tell me, Kirsty," he whispered, voice choked, throat tight. "I just don't think I want to know anymore. Maybe I don't need to know."

  She closed her eyes very slowly, left them closed for a long moment, and drew a deep breath. "You need to know," she said slowly. "It's taken me a while to figure it out, but you do. And I need to tell you. I owe you the truth, Adam. You were right last night when you said it was … the only way out for me."

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I was afraid you'd say something like that."

  "It might just be the only way out for you, too," she said, looking into his eyes again. "The only way you can let go of whatever it is you think you feel for me and move on with your life."

  "Don't do that," he said. "Don't try to make it easier by telling yourself I'm imagining what I feel for you, Kirsten, because we both know that's a lie."

  "Is it?" She sat up straighter, brushed hay from her hair and reached for her discarded T-shirt. Her bare skin amber in the morning light, she slowly covered herself, and Adam sighed softly as he looked on. "That's what my father told my mother once, you know," she went on. "I was a kid. Wasn't supposed to be hearing their arguments." She laughed bitterly. "Do you know how many parents think their kids aren't hearing their arguments? What do they think, the sense of hearing develops only during adolescence?"

  Sensing this subject was important, that this meant a lot to her and maybe had something to do with the two of them now, Adam moved closer, sat down on a bale of hay and let her talk it through. He didn't know where this was leading, was half afraid to follow her there. But he didn't think he had a choice. "What were they fighting about?"

  She shook her head. "It was awful. Dad's heart was so bad, even then. Somehow he'd found out that Mother had done … something in the past. Before they were married. And he kept saying that he loved her, that it didn't matter to him, that all he wanted from her was the truth." Kirsten's lips thinned. "So she gave him the truth."

  He could see the remembered pain in her eyes. They were wide, pupils dilated as she remembered. "I was ten. I remember sitting on the stairs, with my hands wrapped around two of the spindles in the railing, and my face peering between them. Mom and Dad were just below, in the living room. He was pacing. She was sitting as still as a statue in the rocking chair. Just like stone. I'll never forget her face. She knew. I could see that she knew what would happen. It was going to make a difference to him. And I remember, even though I was only ten years old, I sat there thinking as hard as I could at her, Don't tell him, Mama. Whatever it is, just don't tell him."

  Sniffling, Kirsten lowered her head, so Adam could no longer see her eyes.

  "But she told him anyway, didn't she?" he asked.

  Head turned away, Kirsten nodded. "She told him anyway. She said she'd been with another man while she was engaged to marry Daddy. She said this other man had gotten her pregnant. And that when Daddy had believed she was spending a summer in Europe, she'd actually been out of town, making arrangements to get rid of the unwanted child."

  Adam reached out, touched her face. "She aborted the baby?"

  "I don't know. Those were the words she used.

  Cold words that sent a chill right up my spine. 'Get rid of it.' She didn't elaborate on what had become of … my unborn sibling. She never got the chance, really."

  Swallowing against the dryness in his throat—part of his reaction to seeing Kirsten relive such a painful experience—Adam squeezed her hand briefly.

  She nodded and went on. "It was obvious my father had known parts of this already. I don't know how he found out, but I think he knew who the man was. I never heard the name, just Daddy, muttering, swearing, calling the man a bastard, using other words I had never heard him use before."

  Adam lowered his head and brought her hand to his lips. He wanted to kiss away the remembered pain, but he knew he couldn't. "I'm sorry, Kirsten."

  "Daddy was devastated. He just kept pacing, faster and faster, and I could see his face going pale, and then ashen. I could tell that something horrible was happening to him. The way he kept yanking at his collar. The way the sweat popped out on his face. Mama got up, went to him, asked what was wrong. And Daddy just rolled his eyes back in his head and sank to the floor."

  "My God," Adam whispered. "It was his first heart attack, wasn't it?"

  Kirsten nodded. "He'd been seeing a cardiologist. We knew his heart was bad. Until then, he'd only had a few episodes of angina. But this … it was massive. It did a lot of damage, and he never really recovered from it."

  Adam could see it all so vividly in his mind. Kirsten, small, innocent, seeing her hero fall like that. Her face peering from between the spindles on the stairway, big brown eyes stricken as she witnessed a nightmare that would bring an adult to tears.

  "I ran to him," she said, her voice having gone softer than the smallest whisper. "I went a little crazy just then, I think. I kept screaming, shaking him, crying. I was hysterical. And I shouted things at my mother. Things I never should have said. Things no child should ever say, or even think of saying, to a parent. I told her I hated her. I told her that this was all her fault, that if my father died, I would never forgive her."

  Tears flowed silently from Kirsten's eyes now. Slow and shiny as glycerin, they slid down her cheeks.

  "She called an ambulance for my father. And took me with her to the hospital. And she stayed … all night, she stayed. But the minute the doctors told us that Daddy was going to live, she left us there. And I never saw her again."

  Adam lowered his head. Such heartache was tough to get past, tough to deal with. Tougher not to, though. "And you blamed y
ourself for her leaving? Blamed it on the things you had said to her?"

  Kirsten looked him in the eyes, and hers were red and wet. "For a while. But I realize now it wasn't entirely my fault. It wasn't even entirely her fault. She made a mistake in her past, and then she hid it from the man she loved. She knew what was going to happen when she told him the truth. She'd always known. And all those years they had together, she must have realized that sooner or later the day would come when she would have to tell him. She must have known. It must have eaten away at her soul every minute of every day. I just never realized that … until it happened to me."

  "Kirsten—"

  "I didn't sleep with another man, or have a child I never told you about, Adam. What I did was far worse. Far worse. And I know, just as my mother knew, that when I tell you—" sighing, she lowered her head "—it's going to change everything. The way you look at me. The way you feel about me. Everything."

  Drawing a deep breath, Kirsten got to her feet. She seemed to test her balance, then touched her fingertips gingerly to her bandaged head.

  "Is it hurting again?" Adam asked. Maybe to delay the inevitable. To change the subject. He wanted to keep on insisting that whatever she was about to say would make no difference to him, but he was afraid now. So afraid … that maybe it would.

  "It's a lot better than it was last night." She reached for her jeans, stepped into them and pulled them up. Already he could feel the distance yawning wider between them. She seemed to be putting it there. Deliberately.

  He watched as she tucked her shirt carefully into her jeans, then zipped and buttoned them. She pulled on the denim shirt then, rolling the sleeves, straightening the collar. Then she finger-combed her hair. Adam thought that, if she could, maybe she would be slapping on a coat of makeup right now, and hiding herself behind some expensive designer suit.

  He wished they could go back to last night. Make that time go on longer. Forever, maybe. He wished he didn't have to face this thing, because he'd never known Kirsten to exaggerate. He wished he had a cup of coffee. Or, better yet, a stiff drink.