Bedded Then Wed (14 page)

“Where are you running off to in such a hurry?” she asked, mincing to keep up with him in her too-tight, too-high heels as he crossed the yard to his truck.

“None of your business,” he said, yanking open the driver’s side door and climbing inside.

“Let me make something perfectly clear. I don’t want to see you, Suzanne,” he told her, not bothering to beat around the bush. “We’re divorced and have been for four years. We’ve got nothing to say to each other. I’m not sorry you left, and I’m not interested in getting back together.”

“But, Mitchy—”

“No. No buts,” he said, finally meeting her pampered hazel eyes. “I’m married to Emma now. I love her and we’re having a baby. You’re not welcome here, Suzanne, so don’t come around anymore.” He turned the key, listening to the big V-8 engine roar to life. “If you do, I’ll call the sheriff and have you hauled away for trespassing. And if you think I’m joking…try me.”

With that, he put the pickup in gear and peeled out of the yard, leaving his ex to come or go or rot, for all he cared. He just wanted to find Emma, pronto, and bring her home.

He’d told Suzanne he loved Emma, and it was absolutely true. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before now.

That’s why he’d been willing to marry her, even after the fiasco of his first marriage to Suzanne. Not because Wyatt asked him to or offered his land in exchange for wedding vows to his daughter, but because he’d been in love with Emma the whole time.

Oh, wild horses couldn’t have dragged such an admission out of him. He wasn’t sure he’d even realized it, consciously. But somewhere, deep inside, he’d known.

The question was, could he convince Emma of that before he lost her forever?

Flipping open his phone, he punched numbers with the side of his thumb while steering with one hand and trying to keep his eyes on the road. When his mother picked up, he got straight to the point, asking if she’d seen or heard from Emma. She hadn’t, but promised to call him if Emma showed up.

Then he dialed his brother, hoping he was still home instead of off on another one of his high-powered business trips.

“Ramsey,” Chase answered.

“Emma’s missing,” he said without preamble, knowing his brother would recognize his voice. “Is she there with you?”

“God in heaven, Mitch. When are you going to cut out the jealous, suspicious crap? You never used to be like this. And it’s starting to tick me off that you think I’d ever hit on or sleep with your wife…or any woman you were interested in.”

“Chase,” Mitch muttered between clenched teeth. “Shut up. I’m not asking if Emma is in your bed. I trust her a little bit more than that. And I trust you, too,” he added, realizing it was the truth.

Emma would never cheat on him the way Suzanne had. She didn’t have it in her. He suspected he’d known that all along or he never would have married her in the first place. Not even after he found out she was pregnant.

And if there was anyone he could trust as much as Emma, it was Chase. As brothers went, he’d gotten a good one.

“I’m calling because I’m worried about her, and I thought you might know where she was. I thought she might have come to you to tell you what a jerk I am.”

“What kind of jerk are you?”

“The first-class, dumb-as-an-ox kind.”

Chase chuckled, but his amusement fled as soon as Mitch told him about the deal he’d made with Wyatt Davis and the papers Emma had found in his office.

“Geez,” his brother said with a long, drawn-out whistle. “Just when I thought you couldn’t screw up any bigger than letting that blow-up doll, Suzanne, get her claws into you.”

“Yeah,” Mitch agreed, feeling his face heat with shame and embarrassment. “Not two of my finer moments, I’ll give you that. But I love her, Chase.”

“Who, Suzanne?”

The horror in his brother’s voice made him chuckle, despite the concern coursing through his bloodstream.

“No, not Suzanne,” Mitch told him with complete conviction. “Emma. I’m in love with Emma, my wife, and I don’t want to lose her over some stupid agreement I made with her father that I never even cared about. Will you help me find her?”

“You know I will. Give me an idea of where to look.”

Mitch didn’t have the first clue, not if she wasn’t at her father’s. But he asked Chase to help him make some phone calls, and they divvied up areas of Gabriel’s Crossing to search.

Then he hung up and began to pray. That he’d find Emma, and she and the baby would both be safe and healthy when he did. That she would give him a chance to talk, to explain, to beg forgiveness before she gave him the boot.

And that she would believe him when he told her he loved her.

He pulled in beside her at an awkward angle and jumped out. It was tempting to just start pounding on doors, or to take a guess that Emma’s room would be the one directly in front of where she parked. But he couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to cause a scene or do anything to scare her unless he had to.

Marching to the motel lobby with its neon Vacancy sign in the window, he asked which room his wife was in, then had to provide proof of his identity before the teenager working the counter would tell him.

Lucky he hadn’t burst through the door he’d first wanted to, because it turned out she was two rooms down. He found the number and lifted his fist to knock.

When no one answered, he rapped again. “Emma? Emma, it’s Mitch. I know you’re in there. Open the door. Please.”

“Go away.”

His heart swelled at her response and a wave of relief washed through him. She was here and she was all right.

But just as quickly, his stomach clenched at the sound of tears in her voice.

He laid his palm flat on the flimsy wooden panel and rested his forehead on the ridge of his knuckles. “Emma, honey. Open up. Please? I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. Go away or I’ll call the front desk and tell them you’re harassing me.”

A muscle along his jaw ticked as he gritted his teeth in frustration. How was he ever going to apologize and make her understand if she wouldn’t even let him in?

“Dammit, Emma, open this door right now or I’ll kick it in. All I want to do is talk to you. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave.”

Silence met his plea.

“All right, here goes,” he said, taking a step back and readying himself to follow through on his threat. “One…”

Still nothing.

“Two…”

He heard a muffled “Fine” and then the chain on the other side jingled. The door opened with a squeak and Emma stood there staring out at him, her face pale, her eyes red and swollen from what he suspected were hours of crying.

Her obvious misery hit him like a punch to the gut, and he wanted to fall to his knees right then and there and beg forgiveness.

She crossed her arms, emphasizing the sexy swell of her breasts and the rounded paunch of her adorable pregnant belly.

“Are you all right?” he asked, needing more than anything to know she and the baby were okay. Then he shook his head. “I know you’re not all right. I know you saw the papers for the agreement I made with your father. But I mean physically. Are you and the baby okay?”

“We’re fine,” she said grudgingly. “But I’m not coming back with you. I’m leaving. I’m filing for divorce and taking the baby, and I never want to see you or my father again.”

He knew it was her hurt and anger talking, but her words stabbed straight through his heart.

“Don’t do that,” he said, his own voice low and scratchy with desperation. “Please, just listen to me.”

Reaching for her wrist, he moved forward, forcing her to walk backward farther into the room. He kicked the door closed with his booted foot, telling himself he deserved her wariness when she pulled out of his grasp and shot a fearful glance over his shoulder at her only mode of escape.

“I know you hate me right now, and you have every right. I hate myself for what I’ve put you through. But I’d like a chance to explain. Please.”

Her arms went back across her chest and she took a defensive stance a few feet away. “There’s nothing you can say that will ever make up for what you and my father did.”

Moisture gathered on her lashes, twisting his insides.

“You’re absolutely right. You can’t know how sorry I am about that. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I don’t care about your father’s ranch. He came to me with this bizarre proposal to leave the Double D to me in his will, as long as I became part of the family by marrying you. And I don’t think he did it because he was in some all-fired hurry to marry you off. He was more concerned about the land ending up in the wrong hands, afraid you wouldn’t want to run things after he passed.

“And I agreed because…” He took a deep breath to slow his racing pulse and garner courage for what he was about to say. “Because I love you.”

He’d expected her to doubt him at first, but he hadn’t expected the snort and eye-roll that accompanied her skepticism.

She sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the bedside table to wipe her nose. “Right. I’m supposed to believe that the man who accused me of cheating on him with his own brother and then wouldn’t touch me after we were married was in love with me.”

“Would it help if I told you I’m an idiot?”

“No. I already knew that.”

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Moving slowly so he wouldn’t spook her, he stepped forward and took her by the arms, steering her in the direction of a worn vinyl chair.

“Sit down for a minute. Please.”

For a moment, she looked like she might argue but then did as he asked. He lowered himself to one knee in front of her so they were eye to eye.

She was so beautiful, so precious to him, and he’d royally screwed up his chances of keeping her.

If he lost her now, he didn’t know what he would do. Cry like a baby. Stop breathing. Crawl into a hole and die of loneliness. All those options held some appeal, since living without her would be no life at all.

“I’m an idiot for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is that I let Suzanne’s betrayal make me think I could never trust a woman again. Which is complete hogwash. I could always trust you. I knew it, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it.

“I didn’t think I could handle the pain and humiliation of marrying another woman only to have her cheat on me, too. And the best way to keep something like that from happening, I thought, was to shut down, cut myself off. Pretend I didn’t want or feel.”

He wrapped one hand lightly around her wrist, feeling the pulse beating there, rubbing his thumb back and forth across the delicate veins beneath her skin.

“But I did want—I wanted you. And I did feel—I felt so many things for you, they scared me. That’s why I agreed to your father’s asinine plan, Emma. Not because I was interested in the land, but because I wanted you and didn’t know how else to get you, keep you. Your father’s offer gave me an excuse to marry you without having to admit that I felt something for you.

“And then when you told me you were pregnant…” Covering her expanding stomach with his free hand, he let his head fall forward until their brows met. “God, I was so happy. But I was petrified, too. I’d done such a thorough job of cutting myself off from my emotions, I wasn’t sure I could turn them on again enough to raise a healthy, happy child. But I wanted to try. And it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bind you to me. Legally. Forever.”

He leaned back, searching her damp, lovely blue eyes for some sign that she was listening and might be willing to forgive him.

“Don’t be angry with your dad, baby. Please. His intentions were good, even if he went about them in a very bad way. And don’t hate me, either. Please. I love you so much, it feels like my heart is going to explode if you leave me.

“I know I don’t deserve it, and I have no right to ask, but give me a second chance. Come home with me and let me prove to you that I’m telling the truth. We’ll tear up that damn codicil, burn it in the fireplace. Then we’ll go over to your father’s and do the same with his copy. And I told Suzanne to leave us alone or I’d have her thrown in jail, so she shouldn’t bother us ever again.”

Seconds ticked by while he kept his gaze locked on her face, his chest tight with panic and the effort to draw air into his lungs.

“You hurt me, Mitch.” Her bottom lip trembled and tears spilled over her lashes to run down her cheeks. “You really, really hurt me.”

Gathering her close, he wrapped his arms around her and let his fingers tangle in the fall of her hair. “I know, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I never meant to. I’d rip out my own heart before I’d hurt you on purpose.”

She sniffed against his shoulder and he felt a small shudder roll through her fragile frame. He squeezed her even tighter, afraid that if he let go, if he loosened his hold for even a minute, she would slip away from him again.

“I’d like to tell you I’ll never hurt you again, but I’ve still got that idiot thing going for me, so chances are, I will. The best I can do is promise you that I’ll try not to. And if I do, you can tell me. You can hit me, beat me, yell at me. Just don’t leave me.”

He ran his hands through the hair at her temples, loving the soft texture of it against his skin. Then he gently kissed one corner of her mouth, followed by the other.

“Don’t leave me, Emma. Stay with me and be my wife, my lover, the mother of my children. Help me run the ranch and show the folks of Gabriel’s Crossing that even though I was stupid enough to hook up with the wrong woman once, I finally wised up and married the right woman. The only woman I could ever love.”

She pulled back a little, and for a moment he was afraid she was going to turn him down. That his words meant nothing and he was going to lose her, anyway.

“Do you really love me?” she asked in a low voice.

He answered immediately, relieved to finally be able to express his feelings for her. “More than my own life.”

“Would you really have married me, even if my father hadn’t made that ridiculous offer? Even if I hadn’t gotten pregnant?”

“Yes. It probably would have taken me a while to figure out that that’s what I wanted, though—” he made a face “—since we’ve already established that I’m not the brightest bulb in the lamp when it comes to that sort of thing.”

A soft smile started to curl her lips. “No, you’re not. I’ve been in love with you since I was a little girl, and you never once looked at me like you might feel the same.”

He pulled back, stunned by her admission. He didn’t know what to focus on first—the fact that she’d said she loved him or that she’d had feelings for him longer than he’d ever imagined.

“Did you just say you love me?” he asked, wanting to be one hundred percent sure.

She nodded, lifting her own arms to fan her fingers through his hair and across his scalp. “Since we were kids. Then you went and married that bimbo and broke my heart.”

Her grasp on his head tightened and she gave him a little shake. “No more bimbos,” she told him sternly. “No more stupid deals with my father or anyone else, and no more pretending you don’t care about me. If we’re going to make this marriage work, then you have to be honest and open with me and stop punishing me for your ex-wife’s behavior.”

The hard knot of worry that had taken up residence in the pit of his stomach began to loosen as her meaning sank in, and his grin felt like it was about to split his face.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you have to tell me you love me at least once a day. Twice if you do something idiotic.”

He laughed, enjoying the vibrating sensation in his chest and moving up his throat. It had been too long since he’d laughed, too long since he’d been truly happy.

“Yes, ma’am.” He would tell her a dozen times a day, if it would make her happy. Hell, it would make him happy.

“So will you come home with me?” he asked, not ready to completely abandon his fears until he heard her say the words.

“Yes, I’ll go home with you. After we stop at Pop’s to rip up those damn papers.”

He chuckled again and hugged her close, pressing his lips to her ear, her throat, her cheek until he reached her mouth.

“Deal,” he whispered and sealed it with a kiss.