A Bride For Abel Greene (6 page)

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Authors: Cindy Gerard

BOOK: A Bride For Abel Greene
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Abel was as beautiful by sunlight as he was by shadows and fire glow. His dark hair was highlighted to a blue-black sheen, his thick lashes tipped in feathery gold. But it was his face and the way the light played across the bronze planes of his cheeks and rugged jaw that defined and dramatized the character of the man within. And the inner struggle he was waging.
While she understood that he hadn’t yet accepted their fate, she felt enfolded in a warm, almost prophetic sense of rightness. In this unlikely place, at this unexpected time, she saw them kneeling together again—but at an altar, about to become husband and wife. And she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She’d learned something about this man in the last three hours. All her uncertainty had left her as they’d held vigil over Nashata here in the loft. Abel Greene’s gruff, stoic. aloofness was a ruse. All the posturing about sending her away was a defense. The gentleness he’d shown with Nashata as she’d struggled to bring her puppies into the world, the patience he’d shown Mark, who had worried over the event like a nervous godparent, all spoke to qualities any woman would want in a man. It had also told her that he didn’t really want to be alone. He had a lot to give to a relationship. He just didn’t know it yet.
The fact that they barely knew each other was irrelevant. People married all the time and didn’t
really
know each other. Her mother and father had been married almost twenty years. They still hadn’t known each other when they’d parted ways.
Mackenzie wouldn’t make that mistake. She might not know Abel now, but she would get to know this man. She wasn’t foolish enough to believe in something as fanciful as love might actually happen between them. She’d come here accepting that and was willing to settle for mutual respect.
Coming to Abel Greene had been exactly the right thing to do. For both of them. In spite of his determination to do otherwise, she wasn’t going to let him make the mistake of sending her back.
 
“It seems I need to thank you again.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table some time later. She’d followed him there after leaving Mark with Nashata and the pups.
He raised a fresh cup of coffee to his mouth.
She lifted her chin in the direction of the loft. “You were wonderful up there with Mark—the way you trusted him and made him feel you were counting on him to help you with Nashata.”
He shrugged. “I did need his help.”
“No, you didn’t.” Her smile was one of warmth and confidence. “Neither did Nashata. She was just doing what comes naturally. And I think you were doing what comes naturally, too. You made him feel necessary. Other than me, no one’s ever extended that kind of trust to him before.”
His response was to rise, snag his heavy coat from the coatrack by the door and shrug his broad shoulders into it.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the snow has stopped. As soon as I get the lane cleaned out, I’ll take you back to the bus terminal.”
Her heart fell. She’d known he wasn’t ready to roll over and play dead in terms of allowing her to stay. But she had hoped she’d have some more time to convince him.
A quick glance out the window gave her new hope. There wasn’t—in the most literal sense—a snowball’s chance in hell that he was going to get that lane cleaned out anytime soon.
“It’s going to take a mighty big shovel to clear out all that snow.”
He shoved his hands deep into thick leather gloves. “It just happens I’ve
got
a mighty big shovel.”
He snagged a set of keys from the key caddy by the door.
“You need keys for a shovel?”
“I need keys for the Cat.”
She felt another stirring of unease. “Cat?”
“As in Caterpillar. I’ll have the drive cleared out within the hour. You might want to use the time to pack.”
“Well, hell,” she sputtered, as she shivered in the wake of the winter-cold air that had sneaked in when he’d stalked out the door. “Now what are you going to do, Kincaid?”
As it turned out, she didn’t have to do much of anything. Fate—and the interference of Abel’s friends—did the doing for her.
Five
W
hen she first heard the roar of an engine shortly after Abel stalked outside, she assumed he was firing up his plow. Then it dawned on her that the sound had started out faint and gotten louder.
Mackenzie scooted away from the table and peeked out the kitchen window—just as a pair of sleek, black snowmobiles crested a ridge and zigzagged through a stand of trees, shooting snow in their wakes.
She’d seen snowmobiles in pictures and films—but none had done justice to the gleaming pair of space-age-looking machines that slowed to a crawl, then idled to a stop by Abel’s back door.
The riders were as futuristic in appearance as their transportation. Dressed in black boots and gloves, snug black suits and black, visored helmets, they looked like a pair of Darth Vader clones gone ice age. The drama of their entrance was offset only by the antics of a big, brown Labrador retriever that bailed out of the sidecar attached to the bigger machine.
Mackenzie watched as the riders each threw a leg over the back of their snowmobiles and stood, knee-deep in snow, while the dog leapt in comical, animated circles around them.
“Woa! Check out those machines.”
“Yeah. Woa,” she repeated, as Mark, apparently drawn by the roar of the engines, had left his vigil in the loft and joined her by the window.
“Who is that?”
As fascinated as Mark, she watched the pair approach the kitchen door. Even more fascinating was the way they met Abel there. The taller one of the two, obviously male and almost as tall as Abel, extended his hand. The smaller rider, undoubtedly female and model slim, embraced him.
“Looks like we’re about to find out,” she murmured, and braced herself for meeting some people who were evidently important to Abel.
 
“It’s her,” Mark whispered, just short of openmouthed gaping. He stared in star-struck awe as J.D. and Maggie Hazzard pulled off their helmets, zipped out of their snowmobile suits and made themselves at home in Abel’s kitchen. “It’s Maggie.
The
Maggie,” he repeated, unable to stop himself.
The statuesque brunette, whose face and figure were recognizable to every male who had a heartbeat and every female who’d ever dreamed about being perfect, just smiled.
“She had that effect on me, too, the first time I saw her.” A grinning J. D. Hazzard was quite openly as smitten as the rest of the world with his famous wife, who had recently, and at the top of her career, retired from the world of fashion modeling to try her hand behind the camera. “But you get used to it after a while,” he confided, and gave his wife a sympathetic look. “Too bad she’s so plain. But hey, love is blind, right Stretch?”
“Deaf, too,” Maggie retorted, with as much teasing warmth as her husband, “or I never would have fallen for that line of bull you dish out, Blue Hazzard.”
Mackenzie listened to the playful banter, as overwhelmed as Mark by Maggie’s beauty and fame. She was just as taken by J.D.’s blond good looks and how perfect the two of them looked together. Overriding everything, however, was the fact that the Hazzards had been the references listed in Abel’s ad—and both of them had made it clear that they thought Abel Greene could walk on water and make it rain.
“Taking a bit of a risk—coming out in this snow, don’t you think?”
This from a scowling Abel, who had been brooding and silent since he’d ushered the Hazzards into the cabin and made curt, unembellished introductions.
“No risk. Not now that the storm has blown itself out. You’re forgetting, we’re only ten minutes away by snowmobile. Besides, we were going a little stir crazy in the cabin.”
“Who
was going stir crazy?” The smile Maggie gave her husband sold him out.
“So when the sun came out to play,” J.D. said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “we came out to play, too.”
“And to snoop,” Maggie added with an apologetic glance at Mackenzie.
When J.D. winked at her, Mackenzie couldn’t help but grin over his lack of guile.
“Okay, so we heard you had company over here. It was only the neighborly thing to do to extend a Northern Minnesota welcome.”
“News travels fast,” Abel grumbled, and they all knew that Scarlett had been busy on the radio.
J.D. ignored Abel’s scowl, his grin encompassing the room in general before lighting on Mackenzie again. “It’s nice to meet you in person, Mackenzie.”
Clearly J. D. Hazzard wasn’t going to be content until Abel’s bare-bones introductions were fleshed out.
Abel’s gaze cut to Mackenzie, the dark slash of his brows hooding his eyes. “In person?”
“I spoke with the Hazzards on the phone a couple of weeks ago.”
“The ad, remember?” J.D. prompted. “When I sent it in, I listed Maggie and me as references.”
Again Abel’s gaze returned to hers.
“Well, it wasn’t like I was going to come into this completely blind,” she said defensively.
Maggie’s soft, lyrical voice intervened, lessening the tight-wire of tension between them. “We’re very excited about you being here, Mackenzie. But we’re sorry you arrived in the midst of this terrible storm. Now that it’s over, I’m sure Abel will show you how beautiful and how much fun Minnesota can be in the winter.”
Mackenzie was tempted to tell them that the only part of Minnesota Abel wanted to show her was the part that appeared in a rearview mirror of a bus heading south.
She might have, too, if Nashata hadn’t made an appearance right then.
“Nashata.” Maggie reached out to pet the wolf dog. “How are you, girl?”
Hershey, the chocolate lab, who had until this time been lying on the rug by the door, rose with a tail-wagging, hip-wiggling gait and approached Nashata. The two animals nosed each other with affection.
“She had four puppies this morning,” Mark volunteered, then turned a brilliant red when Maggie grabbed his hand.
“She had her puppies?” she squealed in delight.
“Hershey, you old dog you!” A grin split J.D.’s handsome face from ear to ear, his chest swelling like a proud grandfather’s. “You’re a daddy.”
Mackenzie had to smile at the thought of the unlikely pair of animals together. The lab was as different from the wolf dog as silk was from sandpaper. As different as
she
was from Abel, she conceded on an afterthought, when their eyes met and held for a telling moment.
When Nashata nuzzled Hershey, then turned to leave the room and head for the loft, Hershey followed. If those two could get together, then there was hope for her and Abel. No matter how surly he looked at the moment.
“Can we see them?” Maggie asked, her excitement shining in her eyes. “Will it hurt anything if we take a peek?”
Mark looked to Abel for approval. When he nodded, Mark beamed.
“Come on. I’ll show you where they are.”
 
Abel wasn’t sure exactly when he’d lost control over his life. He just knew that with Mackenzie Kincaid’s appearance in it, control had slipped away like ice in a sun melt. With J.D. and Maggie’s arrival he felt as if he’d become a spectator to a major disaster—a disaster he could do nothing to avert. It would have done no good to tell them that Mackenzie and her brother weren’t staying. They wouldn’t have listened, anyway. They were too busy interfering and matchmaking.
At Maggie’s urging, Abel had reluctantly radioed Scarlett and Casey to tell them about the puppies. Even before he’d made the contact, he’d known the result. He’d promised Casey the pick of the litter. She’d been calling daily for the past two weeks, and he’d had no doubt she would badger her mother into coming over.
That’s why, two hours later, he had a houseful of people—all of them alternately cooing over the pups or grinning sly, expectant grins at him and Mackenzie. None of them were the least bit successful in hiding the fact that they thought the idea of him getting married ranked right up there with winning the lottery.
Then there was the pot luck. Damned if they weren’t having pot luck in his kitchen. J.D. had run back home on his machine and, following Maggie’s instructions, had brought half the contents of their refrigerator back to his cabin. With the snow stopped and the snowmobile trails clearly marked, it hadn’t taken Scarlett and Casey long to pack up their contributions and ride the trails from Crimson Falls to his back door.
So here he was, sitting on the outer edge of four different conversations—all of them less-than-artful attempts to find out more about Mackenzie and Mark, and all of them, in the process, dishing Mackenzie the goods on him.
He’d learned more than he’d wanted to about her. Like the fact that she had worked as a bookkeeper for a small paper supply company and had been going to school at night studying business management. And that Mark liked motors and music, in that order.
Of course, his friends made sure Mackenzie learned a few things, too. J.D. was just putting the finishing touches on the story about how the four of them—he, Maggie, J.D. and Hershey—had put a dramatic end to a bear poaching ring last summer, when Maggie gently but firmly called a halt to the storytelling.
“Blue, stop. You’re embarrassing Abel,” Maggie admonished J.D. “And you’re embarrassing me.”
“Because I called you an avenging angel?” J.D. grinned unapologetically as Maggie reddened. “Well, shell, Stretch. If you could have seen yourself, brandishing that shotgun and telling that thug what for—”
“Enough,” she insisted. “Eat. That ought to shut you up for a while.”
But not for long, Abel realized, as he dug into his meal in silence and wondered how he was going to get out of this. Clearly everyone present—including a smiling Mackenzie Kincaid—assumed that they’d gone past the point of no return. Everyone had chalked this marriage up to a done deal.
As he sat there, listening to the good-natured joking and warm overtures of welcome toward Mackenzie and Mark, he actually found himself wishing it could happen.
He axed that thought in a heartbeat. What J.D. had with Maggie was special. It was also beyond him. He’d learned long ago that he wasn’t like other people. Someone had always been willing to point that out to him. He’d made it a point to prove them right.
The Hazzards and Scarlett were among the few who accepted him as he was, no questions asked. He’d met Scarlett and Casey through J.D. and Maggie. An attractive strawberry blonde who’d passed her good looks on to her daughter, Scarlett was struggling to make a go of it with the historic Crimson Falls Hotel. It wasn’t easy for a woman on her own. But then, life didn’t often serve things up easy—as Scarlett knew too well.
She’d been stung by a bad man and a bad marriage. With pain came wisdom. She knew that happily ever afters were reserved for fairy tales and rare exceptions. Even at that, though, he could see in Scarlett’s eyes that she envied the love Maggie and J.D. shared, even if she’d given up hope of having it for herself. And he could sense that she’d be as mad as a bear with its paw in a trap if she thought he was throwing away the chance to have it, too.
She didn’t waste the opportunity to bring it up to him.
“I like your Mackenzie,” she said softly, lagging behind in the kitchen with Abel when the others had trooped into the living room by the fire.
“She’s not
my
Mackenzie.”
“Not yet,” she said with gentle speculation. “But she can be. All you have to do is say the word.”
He let out a deep, frustrated breath. “It’s not going to happen.”
“Oh, I know—it’s not exactly conventional. But that doesn’t mean it can’t work. It’s so...romantic,” she added with a wistful smile, and tucked a runaway strand of hair back into her French braid.
He snorted. “It’s lunacy and you know it.”
She studied him closely. “No. I don’t know it. And I think that even though you don’t want to admit it, you want to go with this. I say, why not? Think hard—real hard, before you throw this chance away.
“Besides,” she said, her eyes flitting to the living room where Mark and Casey had dropped their pretense of ignoring each other. “I think Casey’s smitten. Mark, too. Those shy, flirty little glances they keep sneaking each other’s way when they think no one’s looking are sure signs of infatuation.
“Even though they got off to a rough start, I’d say that little girl of mine has a big bad crush on Mark. She’d never forgive you if you send them back to California before they even have a chance to have their first real fight. I overheard them making plans to meet tomorrow. Casey wants to come over and take Mark snowmobiling after she’s had her fill of drooling over the puppies.
“Think about it real hard, my friend,” she said in earnest, her gaze following his to where he had latched on to Mackenzie like a tractor beam.
With that, Scarlett walked out of the room, leaving him to either stew on that juice or join the gathering by the fire.
He opted for the shadows of the kitchen, even though his gaze was drawn repeatedly to Mackenzie. The firelight glanced across her shining cap of flyaway hair. The smile on her face was open, accepting, attuned to the warmth extended around her.

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