Shotgun Grooms

by Susan Mallery

  Wedding?

  Jackson stared at her, a dark curl of suspicion tightening in his gut. “You saw Lucas yesterday?”

  She laughed and shook her head as she set the coffeepot back down. “Of course. How else would I have known where to find you?”

  How else, indeed? She’d come to this place specifically to find him. And Lucas had sent her. Still, this didn’t mean she wasn’t crazy. “And there was a wedding.”

  She nodded, and her features tightened as impatience settled in. Crazy or not, the redhead clearly had a temper that was right close to a boil. But mad or not, he needed some answers. He had to know just what was going on. And what exactly Lucas had had to do with it.

  “Whose wedding?” he asked, though something inside him told him he really didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Whose wedding?” she demanded, and planted both hands at her hips. “What is this about, Jackson MacIntyre? Are you tryin’ to pretend you don’t know who I am?”

  “Lady,” he said, “I don’t know you from Adam’s great-aunt. So why don’t you climb down off that high horse of yours and just spit it out?”

  “Spit what out?”

  “What’s stuck in your craw.”

  “A lovely sentiment,” she told him, one red eyebrow lifting into an arch.

  Jackson sighed. Yesterday he’d felt sick as a dog, and today he didn’t have the strength to deal with whatever the redhead had in mind. He was tired and hungry and flat out of patience. “Whose wedding?” he asked again through gritted teeth.

  “Whose do you think?” she snapped, clearly as irritable as he. “’Twas our wedding, you great oaf.”

  She held up her left hand and his gaze flicked to her ring finger. Sure enough, there was a shiny, brand-new gold wedding band glittering at him. Something cold settled in his chest and he told himself there had to be a mistake here. A man couldn’t forget his own wedding. Not even if his fever was high enough to fry an egg on his forehead. And damn it, Jackson would never have willingly gotten married. Not again.

  “Our wedding,” he repeated, and heard the frustration rippling in his own voice. “And just how did we get married when I was here, on the mountain?” Warming to his theme, he took a step forward, cocked his head to one side and added, “Don’t you think if I’d gotten married I would have been there?”

  “Shove off, matey!” a voice from behind him screeched.

  Jackson dropped into a crouch and spun around, instinctively looking for an enemy. What he saw had his jaw dropping open. His Winchester rifle, hanging in its rack above the fireplace, had become a perch for the ugliest bird he’d ever seen in his life. And the damn thing was staring at him through beady little eyes that didn’t look any too friendly.

  “What in the sam hill is that?”

  “That,” the woman told him, “is Captain Blood. My parrot.”

  “Well, what’s it doin’ on my gun?”

  “Sitting.”

  “Get it off!” He’d be damned if his prize rifle was used as an open-ended birdcage.

  “We’ve better things to discuss than Captain Blood.”

  He swung around to glare at her again. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t losing control of his life. His house wasn’t being invaded by women and birds. And he damn sure wasn’t married. “You’re right,” he snapped. “We do. So why don’t you start by telling me how I managed to marry you while I was home sick in bed.”

  Her foot tapped against the floor in a sharp, brisk tattoo of sound that fought with the rain still pounding away on the rooftop. That thin red eyebrow lifted high again as her green eyes narrowed. She was hoppin’ mad. And ordinarily, any man with a lick of sense would steer clear of a female on the warpath. But this one was standing in his house, so if somebody was leaving, it was going to be her.

  “It was a proxy marriage,” she said, that foot of hers picking up speed as she glared at him. “Your brother stood in for you.”

  Lucas.

  “He was very helpful,” the woman was saying now, implying with her tone that Lucas was the brother with good manners.

  “I’ll just bet he was,” Jackson muttered, already planning exactly how and when he was going to kill his brother. Damn the man anyway. He’d told Lucas that he wasn’t going to get married just because of Uncle Simon’s will.

  “And did he mention why I wasn’t at my own wedding?” Jackson asked hotly. “Didn’t you wonder?”

  “Of course,” she said, and folded both arms across her chest. “He said you were sick. And you were,” she reminded him. “Feverish all night.”

  So he had been. But how did she know? It had come on him fast early yesterday and laid him out flat. He could remember feeling as though he were on fire. And he remembered cool hands and damp cloths running across his hot skin. Vaguely he recalled the sensation of relief whenever he felt soft fingers trace across his brow, his chest. Mostly he remembered the aftermath, what he’d thought of as a dream, the naked woman in his bed. And how she’d felt in his arms.

  But maybe, he thought now, just maybe that hadn’t been a dream after all. He had to know.

  “Lucas wanted me to wait to come up here until today, when he would bring me himself—”

  That would have been convenient, Jackson thought. He could have buried his younger brother somewhere in the woods without having to go all the way to town to kill him.

  “But I knew that you were sick,” she was saying, “and rented a buggy and came on my own.”

  That caught his attention. Cocking his head, he stared at her. “Just when exactly did you get here?”

  “Last night,” she said.

  Last night. She’d been here all night. Alone. With him. Well, that tore it. She was his dream woman. The cool-handed, soft-voiced female who’d somehow reached him despite the fever racking his body. She…a tall redhead with a temper as pushy as a wounded mountain lion…was his wife.

  Pushing that notion to the back of his mind, Jackson shoved a hand through his hair, stalked across the room and snatched up one of the cups of coffee. Taking a good, long gulp of the hot, thick brew, he let the coffee work its way through his system. And before it had even hit the pit of his stomach, he was wishing desperately that it was whiskey. Any kind of whiskey. He wasn’t picky at the moment. But then liquor wouldn’t change anything anyhow. So instead, he took another gulp of that coffee, looked her dead in the eye and said, “I don’t want a wife.”

  “But you sent for me. You advertised for a wife.”

  “Lucas,” he muttered, and even his brother’s name conjured a red haze that blurred his vision. “That was his idea. Not mine.”

  She blinked, opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again.

  He took advantage of her silence to add, “We’ll get the damn marriage annulled. Today.”

  “Oh no we won’t,” she said, lifting her chin defiantly.

  This close up, he could count the handful of freckles on her pale skin. Five on her right cheek, six on the left and two across the bridge of her nose. Gold dust in buttermilk. That’s what they looked like. And the green of her eyes was as deep as the forest in springtime, and the red of her hair shone like polished copper.

  And none of that mattered, he told himself, since she wouldn’t be staying.

  “I told you, I don’t want a wife.”

  “That’s a bloody shame, since you have one,” she told him.

  “Look, lady—”

  “Molly,” she interrupted him with her name. “Molly MacIntyre.”

  He winced. Lucas was a dead man. He didn’t care what it took or how long he went to prison for it. His brother was as good as dead.

  “There’ll be no annulment,” she told him, wagging her index finger at him as she might to a schoolboy.

  “And why not?”

  “Because we’ve already had the honeymoon.”

  He gave himself a mental kick in the behind. Of course. If she was the dream woman, then they’d damn well consummated the marriage. W
ell, this was just fine, wasn’t it? Because he’d been sick, out of his head with fever, he’d been roped into a marriage he hadn’t wanted. And now, because he’d already bedded her, there might be a child on the way. Damn it, a man shouldn’t be held responsible for what he does when he’s insensible with fever.

  But that excuse was no good at all and he knew it. Jackson MacIntyre was a man who always did the right thing, no matter the cost to him personally.

  Little brother, he thought grimly, say your prayers.

  Molly looked at the man she’d married sight unseen and felt the warm curl of last night’s welcome dissolve inside her. He didn’t want her here, clearly didn’t remember the passion that had leaped up between them, and was obviously already planning how best to get rid of her.

  Well, he had another think coming.

  “This wasn’t my doing,” he told her, and reached out for one of the chairs in front of him. Curling his fingers around the ladder-back, he held on tight and squeezed. “I never wanted a wife.”

  She sniffed and let her gaze sweep the cabin dismissively. “That’s a pity, since you so obviously need one.”

  “What I need,” he nearly shouted, “is peace and quiet and to be left the hell alone!”

  “Keelhaul the bastard,” Captain Blood screamed, his voice scratching the air like nails on a blackboard.

  Jackson sent the bird a look that should have dropped him from his perch. “You keep out of this, stew-meat,” he threatened.

  “Don’t you be thinkin’ you’ll harm that bird.”

  “You keep him quiet or I swear I’ll be seeing him stuffed before supper.”

  Molly had put up with a lot so far. But she’d been raised around seamen—Irish ones at that, and she was no stranger to a temper. Besides, she did have a bit of temper herself…sometimes. And she was willing to admit that there would have to be a lot of compromising in a new marriage. But now her husband had gone too far. And as her uncle was wont to say, “Set your course at the beginning of your journey.” So with that thought in mind, she let him know in no uncertain terms just what he could expect from her.

  “Now you listen to me, Jackson MacIntyre,” she said, coming around the edge of the table to stand directly in front of him. “Whether you wanted a wife or no, the deed is done. So, I’ll take care of you and our home. I’ll bear your children and be the helpmate you so obviously need.”

  “I told you—”

  “But,” she interrupted him, poking him in the chest with her index finger, “what I won’t do, is stand still to be insulted or shouted at.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult—”

  She cut him off again and he gritted his teeth in frustration. “Shout at me, and you can expect to be getting some of your own back. You’ll be met temper for temper, shout for shout.”

  “All right,” Jackson growled, glaring down at her. “Now you listen.”

  “I haven’t finished,” Molly told him, whipping her hair back behind her shoulder and meeting that flinty gaze of his with a cold, determined stare of her own.

  “Fine,” he said, throwing his hands wide. “Finish.”

  “You think on this, husband,” she said, the music of Ireland in her threat, “you lay one hand on that parrot and, by Saint Patrick’s staff, I’ll shave the rest of your body as bald as I did your cheeks.”

  Blue eyes wide, he lifted both hands to his jaws and, when he felt nothing but smooth skin and sandpapery stubble, he loomed over her and shouted, “What did you do to me, woman?”

  “Abandon ship!” Captain Blood screeched.

  Chapter Four

  “Damn it, woman,” he growled, clapping one hand to the scarred side of his face, “I’ve had that beard for ten years.”

  “Aye,” she said, “and it looked as though rats and birds had been nesting in it.”

  He hadn’t cared what it looked like. It was what the beard had been hiding that bothered him. For ten years, he’d managed to avoid looking at the scar he’d picked up on a battlefield in what seemed like another lifetime.

  That rebel saber blade had sliced more than his cheek. It had cut him down to the soul. It was as if all the misery of the years spent fighting the war had been wrapped up in that one vicious swipe. But the jagged mark on his face was just the memory now, the echo of what had once been, and he was no more interested in looking at it today than he had been yesterday.

  “You had no right,” he told her flatly. Damn it, he felt almost naked. No one had seen that mark on his face since the surgeon who’d botched the stitching of it.

  “I had every right,” she said, and he noticed that the madder she got, the more musical her voice became. It was as though when she was talking without thinking, the Irish in her came through. He was guessing that’s where she got her hot temper, too. “You’d a fresh cut on your cheek that needed tending. However did you get it?”

  “Rockfall,” he said, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, it won’t scar if it’s cared for,” she said. “’Twasn’t as deep as the other.”

  “No,” he said tightly, “it wouldn’t be.” This had been just a glancing blow from a chip of rock, not a swinging, razor-sharp sword being wielded by a desperate man in a losing battle.

  Outside, the storm raged and a clap of thunder made his memories all that more real. The skies shook and sounded like the roar of cannon fire. He closed his eyes briefly and pushed those old images back as he had so many times before.

  “You’re a handsome man, Jackson,” she was saying, and he looked at her as if she was as crazy as he’d first thought her.

  “Yeah,” he said with a snort, “I win prizes at county fairs all the time.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve no need to hide beneath that scraggly beard.”

  “That’s my business,” he told her, fully intending to grow the damn thing back as soon as he was able.

  Oh, Lucas is going to regret this, he thought. Not only sneaking a wife in on him, but one with a head as hard as the rocks he mined.

  “You’ve a hard head, haven’t you?” she mused aloud, tipping her head to one side to study him.

  “I have a hard head?” he said, and choked out a laugh. “Lady, I’ve seen mules with easier temperaments.”

  She inhaled sharply and blew the breath out in a rush. “So, it’s not going to be an easy first day for us, is it then?”

  Now maybe some men wouldn’t mind waking up to find themselves married to a woman like this. But he wasn’t one of ’em. The last thing Jackson wanted—or needed—was a wife. No point in pretending otherwise.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” he admitted. “No.”

  “Well then,” she told him, “if we’re going to go on arguing, you’ll need your strength.”

  “What?” he asked, a reluctant laugh shooting from his throat.

  “It’s not an easy business, arguing with me,” she said, and added, “or so I’ve been told.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Aye, ’tis.” She waved one hand at the table and said, “You must be starved. Sit down and have something to eat. We can continue the fight when you’re feeling better.”

  “Continue the fight?” Most women he knew would have gone all weepy by now, turning to tears to either win or end the argument. Figured that this woman would be different. What do you say to a female who’s willing to stop arguing long enough to feed you?

  “It’s no fun arguing with a man who’s not at his best.”

  “Fun? You think arguing’s fun?”

  “And why not? Two people getting to know each other with a spirited exchange of opinions.” She picked up a skillet and Jackson kept a wary eye on her, not sure whether he should be looking forward to a meal or getting ready to duck.

  She must have read his expression.

  “Tryin’ to understand me, are you?” she asked, her lips quirking into that wide, gorgeous smile again. “Well, don’t worry if you can’t. Uncle Michael always said I was
the eighth wonder of the world.”

  “You and the Gardens of Babylon, huh?”

  She gave him a look of pleased surprise.

  “Folks west of St. Louis do read occasionally,” he said wryly.

  Molly dipped her head briefly, then nodded. “Yes, well, Uncle Michael liked to say that I was as mysterious as the pyramids and twice as deep as the sea.”

  He’d go along with that. “Uncle Michael?”

  “The man who raised me,” she said, and that smile slipped a bit as her green eyes softened in memory. “He died several months ago.”

  Jackson experienced a pang of sympathy he really didn’t want to feel. He knew the pain he saw glimmering in her eyes. He’d gone through it himself. Odd, wasn’t it, that both of them had been raised by uncles and they’d both lost those men just recently. Something in common, he thought, and knew that slender thread of connection wasn’t nearly enough.

  She was a beautiful woman, married to a man who’d spent most of the past ten years hiding his scarred face from everyone. She had a spark of something warm and vital in her eyes and that spark had been wrung out of him too long ago.

  Shaking off the trail his mind was taking, he said gruffly, “Lucas and me, we were raised by our Uncle Simon. He died too. Not long ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and reached out one hand to touch his arm.

  Heat skittered up the length of his bare arm and ricocheted around his chest like a spent bullet looking for somewhere to land. He pulled back, mostly because he enjoyed that warmth too damn much.

  Silence stretched out between them and, for a long minute, he wasn’t sure what to do. What to say. Hell, it wasn’t every day a man woke up from a fever to find he’d acquired a wife.

  “Man overboard!” the parrot shouted, splintering the moment, and Jackson was almost grateful for the distraction.

  Wincing, he looked over his shoulder at the stupid bird and mentally had it plucked, cleaned and simmering.

  “Captain Blood belonged to Uncle Michael,” she said. “He’s really all the family I have left.”