The Maverick's Midnight Proposal

by Brenda Harlen

  “I said that I didn’t expect you’d be home already,” Bella repeated.

  “It doesn’t take a lot of time to eat a meal.”

  “Maybe not.” She dropped onto the opposite end of the sofa, with her back against the arm so that she was facing him. “But I thought you might linger over coffee and dessert—because I know Eva would have made something fabulous for dessert or—” she drew the word out, then let it hang for a moment “—the good-night kiss.”

  He refused to let his sister goad him into saying anything about the kiss that he was desperately trying not to think about.

  “Trifle,” he said instead. “And yes, it was fabulous.”

  “And the kiss?” she prompted.

  “Bella,” he said, his tone admonishing.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, refusing to be admonished. “You can’t expect me to believe that you shared a romantic dinner with a beautiful woman then went on your way without even a kiss good-night.”

  “It was a friendly dinner.”

  She rolled her eyes at that. “A woman doesn’t usually offer to cook for a man because she wants to be friends.”

  “Eva knows that I’m not looking for any kind of relationship.”

  “So there was no wine? No candlelight?”

  “No candlelight,” he confirmed.

  “No kiss?”

  He ignored her question to ask his own instead. “How was your dinner?”

  The speculative gleam in her eye warned that she was aware of his redirection—and his refusal to deny that there was a kiss—but she seemed willing to let it slide, at least for now.

  “Spectacular,” she said. “We had chateaubriand with a peppercorn glaze, roasted new potatoes, sautéed julienned vegetables and the most amazing caramel pecan cheesecake for dessert.”

  “Good,” he said. “If you’ve already had dessert, then you won’t expect me to share my trifle.”

  “You didn’t say what kind of trifle,” she noted.

  “My trifle,” he said again.

  Bella laughed softly. “Okay, your trifle.”

  “Where’s Hudson?” he asked, because his sister’s husband never seemed to be too far away from her when he was home.

  “Not digging into your trifle,” she promised. “He’s in the office—he had some calls to make.”

  “At—” Luke glanced at the clock “—ten thirty-seven p.m.?”

  “It’s already tomorrow afternoon in Sydney.”

  “He works hard, doesn’t he?”

  “Harder than his brother ever gave him credit for,” she said. “But he plays hard, too. He believes balance is important.”

  “Smart man.”

  Bella offered him a cheeky smile. “Smart enough to marry me anyway.”

  “Smart and lucky,” he noted.

  “Actually, I’m the lucky one,” she said. “After everything that happened in the past, I never thought I’d find anyone who would love me. And I never dreamed that someone could love me the way that he does.”

  It was possible that nothing would have been different for Bella if he’d stayed, but that didn’t prevent Luke from wishing he’d made different choices twelve years earlier. Not just after the funeral, but before their parents were killed.

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  He blinked, caught off guard—again—by the abrupt shift in the conversation. “Where did that come from?”

  She shrugged. “You’ve been gone for almost twelve years—I’m curious about where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, who you’ve been with.”

  “I’ve been in Wyoming,” he reminded her. “Working on various ranches here and there.”

  “Who you’ve been with,” she said again.

  “I’ve dated some, had a few relationships, nothing serious.”

  “Not yet,” she teased.

  But he suspected the issue was something more than timing. “I’m not sure I’m capable of falling in love,” he confided.

  “Why would you say something like that?” she asked.

  “I’m thirty-three years old,” he reminded her. “If it was going to happen, don’t you think it would have happened by now?”

  “Not necessarily,” she argued. “Maybe your heart needed a chance to finish grieving before it could start loving again.”

  He frowned at that.

  “I was so hurt when you left,” she admitted. “I didn’t think about the fact that you were hurting, too.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  She nodded. “But I still remember the emptiness I felt inside when you and Bailey and Danny disappeared from my life. I didn’t think anything could be worse than losing Mom and Dad, but then I lost three of my brothers, too. And, only a few weeks later, both of my sisters.”

  “At least you and Jamie got to stay together,” he said, because he had nothing else to offer. She’d been dealt a crappy hand—there was no disputing that fact.

  “I would have been so lost without him,” Bella said softly. “And then, when he went away to school, I really was lost—desperate for attention and affection. And I found it...in all the wrong places.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked uneasily.

  “I got pregnant, Luke.”

  Pregnant?

  He was certain his jaw had dropped, but even when he closed it again, he couldn’t find any words.

  “I was fifteen—still a kid myself and facing the prospect of having a kid,” she told him.

  “Did you...have the baby?”

  She shook her head. “I miscarried in the first trimester, but not before I’d told the grandparents about my pregnancy. A few months after my baby died, Grandma died, too, and Gramps blamed me.”

  “Oh, Bella, I’m so sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  But it was. He’d abandoned his siblings. Yeah, he’d thought it was the right thing to do at the time—the only thing he could do. Discovering what had happened after that, how his family had fallen apart and scattered, he couldn’t help but wish he’d made different choices.

  “I wish I’d been here for you,” he said.

  “You’re here now,” she said.

  “You’re too forgiving.”

  “I carried a lot of hurt and anger for a lot of years,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t your fault. None of what happened was your fault.”

  “Ah, Bella, you were twelve years old.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “What do you remember about what happened?”

  “More than you would think,” she told him.

  But she couldn’t remember what she’d never known—that he was responsible for tearing their family apart.

  * * *

  The long pause across the telephone line had Eva wishing she’d ignored the instinct to share the excitement of her evening with her sister. But when she’d watched the lights of Luke’s truck disappear down the road, she’d been bursting to tell someone about the kiss they’d shared. And the someone who was her usual confidante was also her sister and best friend.

  Delphine was five years older than Eva—and infinitely wiser. Married for nine years to the man she’d fallen head over heels in love with in her first year at college and the mother of three adorable boys, Del was living Eva’s dream.

  Of course, Eva hadn’t been at college long enough to fall in love. She’d decided to take her first year to focus on her studies, adjust to living away from home and being independent, and then her father’s diagnosis had prevented her from returning for a second year.

  She had no regrets about the choices she’d made, but she did sometimes wonder if changing course had completely derailed all her dreams. But tonight, after dinner with Luke, she was confident that her l
ife would soon be back on track again.

  Her sister was much less optimistic.

  “Honey, when a guy says that he doesn’t want to get involved, you’d be smart to listen to him,” Del said to her now. “Ignoring that kind of blatant warning is a tried-and-true recipe for heartache.”

  “I know you’re right,” she acknowledged.

  “So why do I get the feeling that you’re not going to heed my advice?”

  She didn’t deny it. “Because despite what he said, the way he kissed me—” Eva couldn’t help but sigh, because her lips were still tingling and her blood still humming with the aftereffects of that incredibly delicious lip-lock. “I’ve never been kissed like that before.”

  “I’m sure it was a fabulous kiss,” her sister said kindly. “But you can’t spin dreams of a future on the basis of a single kiss.”

  “He’s the one, Del. I know it.”

  “And a few months ago, Zach Dalton was the one. You were certain of it then, too.”

  Another truth she couldn’t deny. Because Zach had been honest and up-front about what he wanted, and when he described his perfect woman, Eva met all of his criteria. Unfortunately, his heart wasn’t in sync with his head, and he’d fallen in love with Lydia Grant instead.

  “This time is different,” she insisted.

  Del’s silence spoke volumes. She didn’t need to point out that Eva had said those words before, too. Not just about Zach, but about Bobby Ray before Zach, and Jason before Bobby Ray. But the truth was, as much as Eva had wanted each of those men to be “the one” at the time she was with them, none of them had made her feel the way she felt when she was with Luke.

  “You have such a warm and generous heart,” Del finally said. “But if you keep giving pieces of it away, you’re not going to have anything left for the man who truly does love you.”

  “How long am I supposed to wait for him?” Eva asked, not bothering to hide her frustration. “You were already married to Harrison for four years by the time you were my age.”

  “Love doesn’t happen on any particular schedule, but when the right man comes along, you’ll know it,” Del promised.

  But Luke was the right man, and Eva did know it.

  She also knew better than to say so to her sister when Delphine was only trying to protect her from herself.

  “In the meantime,” she said instead, “is there any harm in spending time with a handsome cowboy?”

  “That depends on whether you can spend time with him without falling in love,” her sister cautioned.

  “I can kiss a guy without expecting it to lead to a ring on my finger,” she insisted.

  “Without expecting it maybe,” Del acknowledged. “But I don’t think you can stop yourself from hoping for it.”

  “It’s hard being single when everyone else I know is falling in love,” she confided.

  “Not everyone,” her sister denied. “Amy is still single, and she’s older than you.”

  In fact, Amy Wainwright was the same age as Delphine and, when they were growing up, she’d spent so much time at the Armstrong house that Eva had sometimes felt as if she had three sisters. Eva had always liked and admired her sister’s friend, who was pretty and smart and seemed to excel at everything she did.

  “How is Amy?” Eva asked now. “She hasn’t been back to Rust Creek Falls for a long time.”

  Del sighed. “She’s busy—too busy to make the trip home.”

  “And probably too busy to worry about pairing off,” Eva guessed.

  “Speaking of pears, with an e-a-r-s,” her sister said in a deliberate effort to shift the topic of their conversation. “Harrison’s mom gave me a recipe for cranberry sauce with plums that I was thinking I’d make for Christmas dinner.”

  “What’s the connection between pears and plums?” she wondered aloud.

  “They both grow on trees.”

  Eva laughed, her mood immediately lighter. “Well, don’t tell Dad about the plums. You know he’s particular about his cranberry sauce.”

  “I know,” Del confirmed.

  They talked for a while longer about the upcoming holiday.

  Her sister confided that the kids’ wish lists to Santa had been getting longer and longer every day until their parents had instructed them to pare—“p-a-r-e,” Del clarified—them down to three things.

  As Eva listened to her sister and laughed over her nephews’ antics, she knew there was only one thing she wanted to find under the tree on Christmas morning: Luke Stockton.

  Paper and bow optional.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite tossing and turning for a long time the previous night, Luke was up before the sun on Wednesday. Years of early morning responsibilities had created an internal alarm that invariably woke him before his clock ever did. And although he was technically on vacation and there was nowhere he had to be this morning, he resisted the urge to pull the covers over his head and go back to sleep, because slumber failed to provide any escape from the grief and guilt that continued to plague him.

  He’d anticipated that being back in Rust Creek Falls would force him to confront the demons of his past. What he hadn’t anticipated was his preoccupation with a certain sexy baker who, although not part of his past, kept slipping into his dreams. Tempting and teasing him.

  He’d meant what he’d said to his sister the night before—he didn’t know if he was capable of falling in love. He did know that he wasn’t bothered by the prospect of spending his life alone. In fact, he preferred it that way.

  Sure, he’d enjoyed spending time with Eva. She was good company and a definite pleasure to look at. And as delicious as her culinary creations were, her pies—and even her trifle—didn’t begin to compare to the intoxicating flavor of her lips.

  Everything about her was a feast for the senses. She smelled good—a temptingly sweet combination of vanilla and sugar—and she felt even better when she was in his arms. She was slender but with curves in all the right places, and even now his blood rushed hotly through his veins at the memory of those sweet curves pressed against him.

  Muttering a curse under his breath, he shoved back the covers and headed into the bathroom for a shower.

  A very cold shower.

  * * *

  “You’re up early,” Hudson noted when Luke wandered down to the kitchen a short while later.

  “Old habits,” he said. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Conference call with London.”

  He nodded. “Not so early in the UK.”

  “The joys of doing business in other time zones,” Hudson noted, refilling his mug with coffee, then pouring another cup for his brother-in-law.

  “Thanks.”

  Hudson nodded. “So what are your plans today?”

  “I thought I might head over to Jamie’s ranch, give him a hand with the morning chores.”

  “Mucking out stalls your idea of a good time?”

  He shook his head. “Just another old habit.”

  “No doubt your brother could use the help. Whether or not he’ll accept it is a whole other issue,” Hudson warned.

  Luke mulled over those words as he drove out to the Short Hills Ranch.

  Jamie had always been determined to prove himself to his big brothers—eager to do everything they did and angry whenever they left him behind. And while Luke wanted to believe that Jamie’s apparent refusal to accept help was just another example of this, he suspected that his youngest brother’s stubbornness was rooted in something else. After Luke, Bailey and Danny left, Jamie had been forced to do everything on his own because there was no one around to help him.

  With that thought weighing heavily on his mind, he stepped out of his truck. His boots crunched in the snow as he made his way toward the barn. Anot
her set of prints led from the house to the same place, suggesting that his brother was already inside.

  The Short Hills Ranch wasn’t half as big as some of the spreads he’d worked in Wyoming. On the other hand, Jamie managed all the responsibilities of this land mostly on his own, with only occasional help from a neighbor’s kid. Luke had surveyed the property on his first visit, and though everything had been—and still was—covered in snow, he’d noted that the perimeter fence was in good repair and the barn sported a new roof and recent paint. The horses were in the paddock now, wearing light blankets as added protection against the frigid temperatures, which suggested to Luke that his brother was likely mucking out their stalls.

  He muscled open the heavy door, then stepped inside and closed it quickly behind him again so the heat wouldn’t escape. He walked down the center aisle, breathing in the scents of fresh hay and old leather. The familiar and welcoming fragrance helped ease some of the knots in his belly.

  “What are you doing here?” Jamie asked, the sharp edge in his voice tightening those knots again.

  “I thought I could lend a hand around here while I’m in town,” Luke offered.

  His brother continued to mix fresh bedding with the unsoiled straw that he’d tossed aside while he cleaned out the stall. “You think a few hours’ labor will make me forget that you abandoned us twelve years ago?” Jamie challenged.

  “No,” Luke said, his tone heavy with guilt and regret. “I just figured that I’m a ranch hand without work right now, and you’ve got a ranch that could use an extra hand.”

  “I manage okay.”

  “You’ve done more than manage okay,” he said. “You’ve succeeded in building up a herd and providing for your family.”

  Jamie finished spreading the straw so that it covered the floor, then stepped out of the stall and turned to look at his brother. “You gonna stand there talking all day or muck out some stalls?”

  “I’m gonna muck out some stalls,” Luke told him.