The Accidental Bridegroom

by Ann Major

  Sooner or later, Calderon was bound to find out.

  And when he did, there would be hell to pay.

  Four

  In spite of the brim of his black cowboy hat pitched low over his face, the desert sun was in Rafe’s eyes as he drove. And no matter how he positioned himself on the seat cover of his truck, he couldn’t get comfortable. Which was partly because he was sitting on the 9mm Browning automatic pistol and a pair of handcuffs he’d hidden under the cover. And partly because the traffic had become heavy and dangerously fast. Like too many roads in Mexico, this twisting, rubble-strewn rut with no shoulders somewhere in the Sierra Madre Occidentals was under construction.

  Hell—the poor bastards on the sides of the road were practically building it by hand. He’d had to swerve no less than a dozen times to keep from hitting the laborers with picks and shovels who were chopping and hacking at the earth like slaves. The numerous street vendors clogging the shoulders selling huaraches, leather purses, belts and fruit drinks presented an even great hazard.

  Suddenly, an overly zealous vendor leaped onto Rafe’s running board and mashed a dead-looking iguana against the glass. The paralyzed creature looked both pitiful and frightful—like a lot of the animals down here. Like a lot of the people. Like he’d look, if Armi Calderon tipped off the wrong people that he was here. Rafe shook his head and slowed the truck, so the nut with the long-tailed reptile could jump off and try his luck on the next vehicle.

  Damn! This country! These people!

  But what he damned most of all was a beautiful girl with great dark Spanish eyes and glorious masses of golden hair that never did what it was supposed to do. Her hair clips came loose; her untidy knots unraveled at her slender nape, and tendrils of the silken stuff flew everywhere.

  Six and a half years ago, he’d had a yen for butter yellow hair that slipped through his hands like silk, a yen for vulnerable dark eyes that turned hot every time they looked at him. Hell, he’d fallen hard for the high-spirited rich girl who hadn’t known how to dress and couldn’t fit into her family’s glitzy world.

  More than a yen.

  No longer.

  She’d taken his heart and his soul.

  Armi Calderon had taken everything else, but had given him the money for a fresh start.

  The road veered west. When Rafe pulled down the visor because of the glare, dust poured swirling into his lap. To make matters worse, long clouds of powdery dirty spewed out from behind his pickup’s rear wheels and out from behind every on-coming vehicle as well.

  It was almost impossible to see, so he slowed his pickup as he took the blind curve. He was halfway into the turn, when he heard the blaring horn. Suddenly, a bus whose brakes must’ve failed, barreled out of the thick plumes straight at him. The thing looked like a rollercoaster car flying off its track.

  All he saw was chrome and steel.

  He was going to die!

  Rafe yanked the wheel hard to the right. With a shudder, he felt the bus crush his door into his elbow as it sideswiped him. The pickup jerked, careened, scraping against the jagged limestone mountain on his right side, as well. Mirrors and door handles crumpled and tore off.

  Then the bus was behind him, lost somewhere in the boiling dust, and Rafe’s truck shuddered violently against a big boulder and came to a standstill.

  Rafe’s seat belt caught at the very last moment. His air bag exploded. He hit his head on something, anyway, which bloodied the right side of his forehead. Other than the cut and a few scratches on his face from the air bag, he was okay. But one look at his brand new truck after he kicked out the window, and he knew it was totaled.

  An hour later, the traffic jam was at least a half a mile long on either side of the accident.

  There was a huge crowd of lean, dark men holding ropes and shovels and crowbars, gawking and discussing the dilapidated bus with its back tire hanging off the cliff. And every time another car or truck was forced to stop, one more driver would get out, grab a tool or anything he thought might be useful and march up the crumbling road to the wreck to talk to the bus driver to see what could be done. Rural Mexicans hadn’t formed the gringos’ habit of waiting for law officials to solve their problems.

  The dust had settled, and the empty bus now sat at a faint tilt, looking as dead and lost as a beached whale, its third-class carcass almost entirely, but not quite, blocking the road. A forlorn plastic crucifix dangled from the rearview mirror. A bald back tire hung over a nothingness that fell thousands of feet to a muddy river that boiled away into a lost chasm.

  A neatly folded, snapped denim shirt and Rafe’s black Stetson with its jaunty peacock feather lay on a large rock beside the bus. There was a peaceful quality about these items that belied the savage impatience their owner had felt as he’d slowly stripped out of them and gently laid them out of harm’s way.

  Rafe needed to get in and out of this country—fast. Before the wrong people traced the plates on his truck and found out for sure he was here.

  The laborers had quietly convinced him that the thing to do was to attach two ropes to the front axle of the bus so they could pull it back on the road.

  Primitive solution—but hell, this was Mexico.

  Rafe was now halfway under the bus with only the pointed tips of his scuffed brown boots sticking out. His usually glossy black head was caked with dirt as he tugged furiously against the second hemp rope he’d tied around the axle. When it broke, he fell hard into a nasty puddle of grease and rocks, cutting his wide, bare shoulders. He let out a great rumble of profanity. At the same time, he kicked out in frustration at whatever had begun pecking curiously at the cuffs of his jeans.

  His boot heel raised a cloud of dust as he sent the squawking rooster flying straight toward Jesus, the macho bus driver, and the clump of laborers clustered under the scrawny jacaranda tree clinging to the cliff. The tree was the single source of shade against the harsh sun.

  Impatient as Rafe was that this ordeal was taking too long—any minute the cops might show up—his cynical mouth curved with dark humor at the sight of a dozen dirty brown feet in worn huaraches scampering in terror from the enraged rooster.

  He twisted his head and bronzed torso out from under the bus and held up the frayed ends of the rope and shouted, “No es bueno!” No good! As always, the flat drawl that made him sound ridiculous even in English anywhere off his ranch in the Texas hill country brought smirks.

  A small grinning boy rushed up to him with a stouter-looking length of hemp.

  “Nuevo, señor,” the boy said proudly. “Fuerte.” New and strong.

  “Gracias.” Grumbling, Rafe edged his long lean body back under the bus. A blisteringly hot, black drop oozed from the bus and scalded his belly. He jumped, yelping like he’d been branded and banged his forehead again.

  “Damn.”

  Of course, the bloody place above his eyebrow began to throb. As he wrapped the hemp around the axle, he was sure that hell was dust and flies and anything to do with Spanish. Hell was All Saints’ Day or All Souls’ Day—or whatever you called this two-day farce that had every human being in this country jamming the highways. Hell was coming back to a land where there was a price on his head and getting anywhere near Cathy and Armi Calderon.

  Jerking hard against the new rope, he sighed in fierce relief when it held.

  As he inched himself out from under the bus, he couldn’t avoid all the rocks or pools of grease. Normally he would have let one of the laborers do a job this dirty, but he’d wanted to get the show on the road.

  The ragged Indian boy who’d brought the rope squatted, his wide smile shy and friendly. The boy began jerking a string so that the legs of his paper skeleton flapped.

  Rafe smiled gently back at him and then glanced beyond him to the leather-faced farm workers in their straw cowboy hats, canvas pants and worn huaraches who had regrouped under the jacaranda tree. They were smoking and drinking sodas. Every time they looked over the vertical drop to the narrow river, the
y crossed and recrossed themselves. Rafe listened as each farmer excitedly repeated his version of the burning smell right before the bus had slewed around that final curve.

  Suddenly, from the road behind the boy and the men, two short, impatient toots rang out in perfect rhythm with the movements of the kid’s puppet.

  Incredible as it seemed, a small car was boldly making its way through the stopped cars.

  Rafe swiveled on his shoulders in the dirt and saw the bottom edge of a red fender and a shiny chrome bumper gliding toward him. If he didn’t stay under the bus, the idiot would run over his legs.

  Rafe’s head was too far under the bus to tell what kind of car it was, other than that it was a sports car.

  “Guerra!” The laborers hooted.

  There was obviously a beautiful woman in the car.

  Suddenly, Rafe’s blue eyes narrowed on the radial tire inching toward his—

  “Not my hat!”

  Scrunch.

  Yes, his hat.

  He saw the huge black marks across denim; then, the crushed row of snaps down the front of his shirt. Whoever it was had run over his shirt, too.

  “Damn!”

  With a lunge, Rafe hurled himself out from under the bus to give the thoughtless driver a piece of his mind.

  Then he saw her.

  Or rather the back of masses of butter gold flyaway hair. She waved gaily at each driver and then at the laborers, who were now clapping and shouting, “Bravo!”

  Only one woman had messy hair like that—part flame, all sunlight and perfumed silk.

  Rafe went hot, then cold.

  Cathy…

  She hadn’t changed.

  Or if she had, she was more beautiful than ever.

  Rafe ducked back under the bumper. He’d taken a Peruvian freedom fighter’s bullet in his shoulder that had been meant for Consuelo. He’d been stabbed when he’d gone into an African prison to free an executive held hostage. He’d been bitten in the back by a groupie. Armi’s thugs had kicked in seven of his ribs. More recently, he’d been pinned down for seventeen hours by terrorists’ firepower in a failed state in Africa, where he’d gone on a routine job for the U.S. Government to act as a collections specialist and verify some rather disturbing satellite information about the country’s military movements.

  Rafe’s business was do or die.

  But the last thing he needed was for Cathy to see him and tell the wrong people, or he’d end up dead in some deep ravine with a bullet in his back.

  If he got lucky, maybe he’d be in Texas tomorrow, and he’d never have to set eyes on her again.

  But the sight of Cathy’s pale, slender fingers resting on that leather steering wheel brought a rush of unwanted memories that made his mouth go dry. He remembered her innocent, trembling hands running over his body, doing not-so innocent things a man like him could never forget.

  His heart began to pound as his body hardened.

  For a few brief months they’d had so damned much fun.

  He’d fallen madly in love the first night he met her.

  Things had gone great till he’d gone for the guy who’d pointed a gun at Armi’s heart, and Cathy had found out Rafe was really her bodyguard.

  Then she had refused to listen to anything he said. He’d figured out it was really a class thing. She’d liked sneaking around with a thief. But the last thing she wanted was an open, honest relationship with someone she considered a low-class boytoy. She’d thought she was better than a hired bodyguard—the same way his father had thought himself better than his mother.

  When Rafe had gone down on his knees and begged her to marry him, thinking to rescue her from a life she had told him she hated, she’d shouted furiously, “What kind of fool do you take me for? You lied! You lied about everything!”

  “I had to protect you!”

  “Well, I hate you! You are the last, the very last man I would ever marry!”

  Almost his father’s words to his mother.

  Then she’d used her money to erect an impregnable barrier. She’d told Armi to pay him off, to pay him a fortune for his services because he was so multitalented he’d earned every penny.

  His own father had left a suitcase full of money.

  Then she’d boarded Armi’s private jet and flown with her mother to the Italian Riviera. For the next month, there had been write-ups about Cathy and a dozen titled boyfriends. Then suddenly, she had fled Europe and vanished. Curiously, Rafe had missed the sensational stories even though they’d brought pain, for not knowing about her had been even worse. Except for a few articles in financial magazines about Armi’s lavish lifestyle and dangerously aggressive tactics in highly leveraged takeovers that had brought governmental investigators down on him, there hadn’t been anything on Cathy till she’d started dating Maurice Dumont.

  Rafe had written her and emailed her. He’d tried to text and call her as well, but his letters had come back and his emails had bounced. Her phone number had been changed. Too late he’d found out that Cathy had been the biggest mistake of his life. She’d made him feel abandoned and all alone, the way he had when his father had walked out.

  Then Armi Calderon had sent his goons to show him what he did to a man who double-crossed him. Together, Armi and Cathy had put Rafe through hell and damn near destroyed him.

  After Cathy, Rafe had felt more dead than alive. The few times he’d used women for sex, he’d felt only emptier and lonelier. The only thing that kept him going was the satisfaction of building his business and the thrill he got out of his dangerous missions.

  Then he’d seen the picture of the pixie-faced imp Manuel had claimed was Rafe’s.

  “Cathy…”

  When Rafe mouthed her name in toneless rage, the beige dust swirled up from the road, choking him.

  The top of her car was down, and her long fire-gold curls shimmered in the sun as they blew around her delicate nape. He knew just how soft her hair was, how it smelled like sunshine and lavender after she washed it and climbed into bed with him, her body still damp and cool from the shower but growing hot as soon as he’d stroked her.

  Her bare arms and shoulders were flushed from too much sun. Didn’t she know fair skin couldn’t take the sun?

  Hell, Cathy never did what she was supposed to.

  He remembered those arms wrapped around his naked body when she’d clung. God, she’d been wild in bed. And sweet and funny out of it. God, how hard he’d worked to forget the happy times.

  But he hadn’t forgotten a single hour. He remembered the night he’d serenaded her and told her he loved her.

  His thundering heart doubled its beat. He forced himself to remember that she’d left him and because of her, he’d nearly been beaten to death. The last thing he needed was to involve himself with Cathy again. The last thing he needed was Calderon’s people bringing their false wire-tapping charges against him again. Rafe was still deeply in debt from all the legal battles from fighting Armi’s people in court.

  Cathy Calderon and her nutcase of a stepfather, who used his money as terrorist weapon, were bad news.

  Suddenly, Cathy’s bright head turned toward the elegant blond man beside her in her car, and the man’s hand possessively stole up her arm. With a raw jolt of anger, Rafe looked away, unable to watch the rich jerk paw her.

  So, that was the much-written-about blue blood she was to marry—Maurice Dumont, the damned French aristocrat whose father owned bunches of castles.

  The glittering couple in the bright red sports car looked so damned rich, so self-important—so spoiled. So happy and carefree—like they believed they could buy anybody or anything they wanted. So perfect for each other.

  So perfect that it was impossible to imagine that Cathy had an illegitimate, pixie-faced daughter hidden away in a poverty-stricken Mexican village.

  Manuel had to be out of his mind.

  Or was he?

  Cathy Calderon had never played by the rules.

  Professional concerns
came swiftly to Rafe. A rich beautiful woman had no business on a road like this where anybody who wanted her could take her and hold her for ransom.

  Maybe she was crazy, but if that titled jerk really loved her, he wouldn’t let her drive around Mexico in a showy car without her bodyguards. And Cathy, who had grown up with bodyguards, had to know the risk she was taking.

  Rafe swallowed against the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Not that she cared about risks. But why was she here?

  Why was she sneaking off with Maurice to the same remote village Rafe was on his way to? Why weren’t she and her fancy boyfriend down in the valley at Armi’s hacienda, enjoying their wedding guests?

  Had she told Maurice she had a blue-eyed little girl? Was Cathy planning for her new husband to adopt her?

  Two more toots of the horn, and the red car made it past the bus and his truck. The laborers cheered as Cathy got out and took several pictures of the bus and the truck before driving away.

  When he was sure Cathy was gone, Rafe scrambled out from under the bus. Two dozen laborers grabbed the shabby ropes trailing from under the bumper. A peasant woman in an embroidered cotton blouse walked up to him hawking marigolds.

  Rafe shook his head and, pulling his wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open and saw the snapshot of the kid Manuel had said looked like him.

  Damn. The pixie-faced creature really did have the bluest eyes! Just like his mother’s! Just like his own.

  What the hell was he going to do if the kid was his?

  Slowly, Rafe bent down and picked up the dust-covered, broken felt pancake that had once been his hat. He slapped it against his thigh to shake the dust out of it. He ripped out the frazzled feather and then punched at the brim, reshaping the thing as best he could before carefully setting it on his head.

  A smart man wouldn’t have come down here looking for trouble. He would walk away. The way Cathy had. The way his father had. But Rafe had to know if the kid was his.

  And if she was, he’d claim her. No matter what it cost him.