“Selective memory,” Cody agreed. “I hear it happens a lot in old folks.”
“You think your sisters were trouble, maybe we should start dredging up the grief you all caused me,” Harlan shot right back. “Let Clint weigh that and see whether he’d rather Angela delivered a girl or a boy.”
Luke’s expression softened at once. “Girls are a blessing,” he admitted. “Angela could always light up a room. I’d come home at the end of an exhausting day and one smile on that little girl’s face would cheer me right up.”
“Indeed,” Cody chimed in. “Sharon Lynn has been a joy compared to that brother of hers. Harlan Patrick must take after Daddy. He surely doesn’t take after me.”
“Who are you trying to kid?” Harlan demanded. “That boy is all your own worst sins come home to haunt you.”
Clint chuckled at the nonstop and obviously affectionate banter. “Do you all ever let up on each other?”
“Never,” Luke said.
“Why should we?” Cody asked. “Daddy acts as if we’ve made his life a torment, but there’s another side to that story we could share with you.”
“Never mind,” Harlan said hurriedly. “We’d better be getting back and cleaned up before the women get dinner on the table. We’ll never hear the end of it if we’re late for Christmas Eve supper.”
“Who cooked the turkey?” Cody asked worriedly. “Maritza or Janet?”
“I’m going to tell Janet you asked that,” Harlan swore. “You’ll be lucky if you get out of here in one piece.”
“When was the last time you ate anything she cooked?” Cody retorted.
His father grinned. “Not since I married her, I guarantee you that. When we were courting, I had to be polite. Fortunately, most of the time she had the good sense to try to sneak food in from some restaurant and pretend she’d fixed it.”
“Now who’s telling tales?” Luke asked. “Isn’t a husband duty bound to gloss over all his wife’s flaws in public?”
“This isn’t public, Luke,” Harlan declared. “Clint’s practically part of the family.”
“Well, I still say we should be setting an example for him,” Luke protested. “The first time he gives away any of my daughter’s little idiosyncrasies, I can just about guarantee there will be fireworks.”
“Your daughter has idiosyncrasies?” Cody asked, feigning astonishment. “Since the day she was born, you’ve had us believing she was perfect.”
“She is,” Luke said quickly, then grinned. “For the most part.” The grin quickly shifted to a scowl when he faced Clint. “That’s something I can get away with saying, son. You can’t. Just a word of caution.”
“Believe me, that’s advice I won’t have any problem taking. I’ve seen your daughter’s temper at close range.” He gestured to a tiny slash over his lip. “Have the scars to prove it, too.”
“She hit you?” Harlan asked incredulously.
“With a skillet,” Clint claimed, though the truth was even more humiliating. He’d actually walked straight into the danged thing while she was waving it around as a threat. “It pretty well ended the last discussion we had before she tore off and disappeared on me.”
“You must have riled her pretty good.”
Clint realized he’d just waltzed himself straight into a dangerous trap. Maybe they suspected the fight had been over Angela’s pregnancy, maybe they didn’t. It wasn’t a topic he particularly wanted to discuss with them.
“The same way you all rile your wives, I suspect...by disagreeing with them,” he said.
The response drew the expected laughter and the potentially tense moment dissipated. They were still laughing when they walked inside.
Angela looked up from the pie crust she was filling with pumpkin and promptly caught Clint’s eye. She looked worried. He walked over and brushed a kiss across her lips, plainly startling her.
“There’s nothing to worry about, angel. We were just doing a little male bonding.”
“That’s what worries me,” she responded.
“Shouldn’t you be sitting down to do that?” he asked, deliberately changing the subject. He reached for a chair. “Sit.”
“It’s easier if I stand.”
They scowled at each other in a stubborn test of wills. Clint finally shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m going up to shower and change.”
“Supper’s in an hour,” she called after him.
“Then you’d better get upstairs, too. I’ve never known you to take less than that to get ready.”
“Uh-oh,” Luke and Cody muttered in unison.
“I’m out of here,” Harlan said, patting Clint on the back as he passed. “Good luck, son. If you figure a way out of this one, let me know.”
Their wives vanished right along with them, leaving Clint with only Consuela and Maritza to run interference. The two housekeepers took one look at Angela’s stormy expression and muttered something in Spanish that sounded dire. Then they, too, retreated.
“Take it back,” Angela said, advancing on him with a spoon covered with pumpkin.
“You wouldn’t want me to lie now, would you?” he taunted, edging around the table and trying to keep it between them. He figured he was safe enough. She wasn’t half as quick as she’d been the time she’d caught him off guard with that skillet.
“Who spends twenty minutes just polishing his boots?” she demanded. “And another twenty in the shower?”
“Do the math, angel. That still puts me ahead of you.”
“We haven’t even gotten to the amount of time you spend shaving and admiring yourself in the bathroom mirror.”
“Are you suggesting I should grow a beard to save time dressing?”
“No. What I am suggesting, Mr. Brady, is that you are a bald-faced liar.”
“Takes one to know one.”
She paused at that. The spoon, which she’d been waving threateningly, drooped to her side. From across the room he couldn’t be sure, but he thought there might be tears in her eyes.
“Angel?”
“What?” she asked with a telltale sniff.
“Don’t cry.”
“I am not crying, even if that was another particularly low blow.”
He circled the table to reach her, ready to take her in his arms and kiss away the tears. She whapped him on the butt with that damnable spoon. When she would have done it again, he wrenched it away from her and pulled her into an embrace that stilled her frantic movements.
Gazing down into her upturned face, he saw that he had been right about the tears, but there were also glints of laughter sparkling in her eyes now as well.
“Got you, didn’t I?” she said with obvious pride.
“Only because you’re sneaky. Truce?”
She sighed and slid her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. “Truce,” she murmured.
Clint felt a rare and unexpected surge of contentment steal over him as he held her.
“Think we can keep the truce through New Year’s?”
“I doubt it,” she said honestly.
He grinned. “Me, too.”
She sighed again. “Clint?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that means we should give up on any idea of a future together?”
“Just because we can’t go ten minutes without arguing?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see why, as long as we have sense enough to stop and listen to each other occasionally. Some relationships are just plain volatile. It keeps the adrenaline pumping.”
“Are you saying we’re excitement junkies?”
“I suppose.” He regarded her curiously. “Do your parents argue?”
“All the time,” she admitted.
“Have you ever doubted their love for each other?”
> “Never.”
“See there,” he said. “Maybe they’ll tell us how they make it work.”
“Sex,” Angela said without hesitation, then blushed. “I mean I don’t know this for a fact or anything. It’s not something we discussed. Haven’t you noticed, though, that they’re always touching, always stealing a kiss when they think no one’s looking?”
“Like us,” Clint pointed out.
“At least the way we used to be,” she said thoughtfully.
“You can’t steal a kiss from someone who’s run off to another state, angel.”
She met his gaze evenly. “Point taken. No more running,” she promised. “I swear to you that I will stay right here and try to work things out.”
“You’re making a commitment?” he asked, surprised by the renewal of the vow she’d made before coming to White Pines.
“A commitment to try,” she amended. “It’s not going to be easy, you know. There’s a mountain of distrust between us.”
“Our baby deserves nothing less than our best efforts,” he responded. “He deserves to know that we’ve done everything possible to give him a real family.”
“Everything,” she echoed.
Clint pressed a kiss against her forehead. Anything more and neither one of them would have been ready for dinner on time. Of course, time wasn’t the only thing frustrating them at the moment. This baby of theirs was a built-in warning to cool down.
As they went upstairs hand in hand, he couldn’t help wondering, though, whether Angela would remember her promise tomorrow when she saw one of the gifts he had bought for her. Maybe he ought to give it to her now, when she was in such an amenable mood. In his experience it was best to capitalize on moments like these to pin her down about anything. A day from now, even an hour from now, the winds might be blowing another way entirely.
11
Male bonding, indeed, Angela thought irritably. They’d probably been out there conspiring to get her married to Clint with the least amount of fuss. They’d probably been indulgently listing all of her idiosyncrasies and giving Clint advice on how to cope with them. Men! Especially Adams men!
She hurriedly took her shower and rushed to get dressed in a half hour, just to make the point that she could move quickly when the situation called for speed.
She thought back over the conversation they’d just had. The truce she and Clint had declared was just dandy. It would make the holidays peaceful.
But, she resolved, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t put him in his place occasionally. After all, the women in this family had to take a stand once in a while or be completely run over by their stubborn, willful and thoroughly unpredictable mates.
Goodness knows, she would never have guessed that both her father and her grandfather would take such an immediate shine to Clint, despite their natural protectiveness of her. They seemed to understand the man who’d tracked her down all the way from Montana. They talked the same language—ranching and testosterone. Clint was becoming one of the family before she could spit. On the one hand, she could see the benefits of that. On the other, it was darned annoying.
To her surprise, Clint seemed to be settling in quite nicely. He was showing no inclination to duck out and run home, no matter how she infuriated him. He seemed to have made up his mind to stick this out.
In fact, instead of being scared off, he seemed to be endlessly fascinated with everything about her and her family. And, if the truth be told, he also seemed every bit as intrigued by her swollen body as he had been on the day they’d met, back when she’d actually had a figure to brag about. For a woman who was feeling especially ungainly that alone would have been enough to endear the man to her.
She was also beginning to understand just how deeply she’d hurt him by taking off as she had. His anger over having missed so much of her pregnancy appeared genuine. Her heart just ached, thinking about all they could have shared if she hadn’t denied them the chance by running away. Every time she turned around she saw fresh evidence of the kind of devoted father he would be, the kind of father any child would be blessed to have.
In fact, to her very deep regret, she was beginning to weaken. She was beginning to recall just why she’d fallen in love with the man in the first place. He was kind and gentle and amazingly patient. For the most part, anyway.
His touches made her sizzle from the inside out. And his kisses could have ignited a bonfire in a soaking rain.
But that didn’t mean she would marry him...if that was what he was after with this truce. He hadn’t actually said the words, not lately, not since that impulsive declaration he’d made when he’d first arrived. His entire focus seemed to be on the baby she was carrying.
In the dead of night, when she was feeling restless and uncomfortable, she couldn’t shake the very real possibility that his child was all he really wanted, that when the baby came he’d fight her for custody. He’d hinted at that often enough. In fact, he’d virtually threatened her with the possibility.
Still, in the past couple of days, aside from an occasional verbal dig, they had pretty much managed to put all her lies behind them. The truce had sealed their pact to leave the past in the past. It was either a terrific start or the greatest lie of all, made to lull her into a false sense of complacency. Was it possible he meant only to win her trust, then abandon her, as she had him?
As she ran a brush quickly through her hair and dashed on a hurried dusting of makeup, she wondered if the risks of this truce didn’t outweigh the benefits. Maybe it would be smart to start building a wall between them, one that would protect her when the inevitable time came for him to go, and the fighting started over their child.
She wasn’t sure she would be able to bear that kind of ugly battle. She feared, too, that when the whole truth came out about how she’d deceived Clint, her family would desert her and support him. They were all honorable people and Clint was bound to have their sympathy on his side.
She was an Adams, though, she reminded herself sternly. That still counted for something. Even if every one of her relatives disapproved of what she’d done, they would back her in any kind of struggle for her child. She had no choice but to believe that they would fight to claim an Adams heir, no matter the circumstances of his conception.
She looked at her watch and grinned. Forty minutes precisely. She cast one last glance in the mirror and nodded approvingly. The dark green velvet maternity dress she wore was the perfect foil for her pale skin and auburn hair. The pendant Clint had given her rested between her breasts, drawing attention to their new lushness. She concluded she looked about as sensual and provocative as it was possible for an eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant blimp to look.
She also squared her jaw and stiffened her resolve. She would maintain Clint’s truce, because she had promised, but she would keep her own defenses squarely in place.
“Remember that,” she said sternly as she reached for the knob to open her door with fifteen minutes to spare.
Confident that she’d done the impossible in getting ready so quickly, she hurried downstairs and walked toward the living room.
To her chagrin, Clint was there before her, wearing a well-tailored suit and silk tie that had her gaping. He was a handsome man in denims and flannel. In a charcoal gray suit with his hair tamed, he was devastating. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d brought that suit along because Christmas was coming or because he intended it to be his wedding suit. Her pulse fluttered wildly and her determination flew out the window. It either proved just how weak her resolve was or how extraordinarily potent he was.
His gaze locked with hers and she gravitated toward him across the room as if he were reeling her in with some invisible line.
“You look incredible,” she admitted. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before.”
“There’s not a lot of call to wear one when I’m out with the cat
tle.” His gaze swept over her appreciatively. “You’ve never put on such a fancy dress before, either. The color becomes you. You should wear it all the time.”
It was the longest and prettiest compliment he’d ever paid her. Another brick thumped out of her recently erected and still-uncertain wall of defenses.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “Harlan’s brought in some nonalcoholic champagne just for you.”
“I’d love a glass,” she said, hoping it would take him a very long time to pour it. She could spend the time gathering her composure.
“It’s a good sign when you can get a man to wait on you,” Sharon Lynn teased, coming over to stand beside her. “It means he’s totally, thoroughly smitten.”
“Does Kyle Mason wait on you?” Angela asked, then regretted it when she saw the sad expression on her cousin’s face.
“He doesn’t even know I’m alive,” Sharon Lynn confessed irritably, then sighed. “It’s humiliating. I’ve tried flirting. I’ve tried making him double-rich shakes when he stops by the drugstore. I’ve even considered asking him out, but my pride balks at that.”
Glad to have her own relationship sidelined as the topic of conversation, Angela asked, “Who is he? He didn’t go to school with us, did he?”
“No. He’s new to the area. He turned up about six months ago.”
“And just how often does this Kyle Mason come into Dolan’s?”
“Every day or so,” Sharon Lynn said.
“And where’s his ranch?”
“About thirty miles north of Los Pinos. He bought the old Carlson spread at Cripple Creek.”
Angela grinned. “Doesn’t that strike you as a long drive to take so frequently if the man hasn’t noticed you? Unless, of course, he’s addicted to milk shakes,” she added.
Sharon Lynn paused, her expression thoughtful. “I never thought about that. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Likely, in fact. Maybe he’s just shy,” Angela suggested. “And the Adams name might be intimidating to a newcomer around here. Could be you’re going to have to take the initiative. Call him right now and invite him to the open house tomorrow.”
The Heart of Hill Country Page 13
