The Wedding Ransom (33 page)

Light o’ love?
Rafe wanted to deck him for that alone. “I didn’t murder Rosa, Nick. Let me tell you—”

“No!” his brother shouted. “I don’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t believe it anyway. Most likely this story about your lady is all a lie, your sly way to try to escape the noose. You are a liar and a thief, Malone. I’ve caught you in the act. You broke your damned parole, and I have two men with me who saw you do it. I’m a Texas Ranger, sworn to uphold the law. Even if I wanted to let you go I couldn’t and I wouldn’t.”

“You sure about that?”

Callahan paused for a moment, then shot Rafe a narrow-eyed glare. “Yes. Yes, I am. It’s my duty.”

“Well, shoot, Nick.” Rafe reached up to scratch behind his ear, then with the speed and menace of a striking rattlesnake, he threw his fist and coldcocked his half brother. As Nick Callahan slid to the floor unconscious, Rafe stood over him, rubbing his aching knuckles. “I always did consider ‘duty’ a four-letter word.”

B
arlow Hill scratched his name across the bottom of the paper, and Maggie swallowed a sigh of relief. He’d bought it. The conceited fool had bought it. Smiling, she watched him sign a second copy, then accepted the pen he offered and wrote her own signature on the specified lines.
God bless you, Lester Bodine, Attorney at Law
. Not even Gentleman Rafe Malone, thief extraordinare, could have done it any better. Part one of her campaign to legally wrestle Hotel Bliss away from Barlow Hill was a fait accompli. Now all she had to do was marry the toad.

Maggie’s smile dissolved like a wet sugar cube.

Hill lifted the paper to blow a soft stream of air over fresh ink. “I didn’t expect you to suggest a marriage contract, Maggie, although I will agree it is good business. You certainly learn from your mistakes, don’t you?”

“My mistakes?” Maggie asked, more because she felt he expected a reply than out of curiosity.

“It was the lack of attention to legalities that brought us together to begin with, was it not? Your guardians should have researched the title they purchased instead of assuming its validity. Of course, it’s all worked out in the end, hasn’t it?”

You only think this is the end, you weasel
. Maggie responded to his insipid smile with a fake grin of her own.

Hill handed her one copy of the contract, saying, “I agree it is a good idea to legalize our union before we spring the secret wedding entertainment on our guests at the reopening of Hotel Bliss. Matters are tidier that way. I’m happy you thought of the idea, my dear.”

Staring at his signature, she said, “As I explained earlier, my grandfathers aren’t particularly pleased with the idea of my marrying—you or anyone. It’s best we have matters concluded before Lucky and Gus return and all four of them join forces against me.”

“I will not allow them to cause you trouble, my dear. As of noon tomorrow you will be my wife. Your grandfathers will no longer have you under their control. I will.”

With great difficulty, Maggie managed to keep her mouth shut, but her mind rumbled phrases about who would control whom. She folded the document and tucked it into her pocket.

Hill continued, “I don’t want the surprise wedding compromised. I trust you will find a way to ensure your grandfathers won’t speak out of turn and make our news public? That is very important to me, Maggie. I have grand plans for that party. I won’t see them spoiled.”

“You needn’t worry about what my papas will say, Barlow,” Maggie said with a smile. Better he concern himself with what they might do. Maggie knew she’d be hard-pressed to keep them from making her a widow before the sun set tomorrow.

“Very good. Now, I am needed across the lake today. The workers are laying the Italian tile in the front parlor, and I intend to oversee their efforts. You should have seen the mess they made installing the marble hearth. It was dreadful!”

“Dreadful,” she repeated, her mind not on any stupid marble hearth but on the event scheduled for the following day. “Well, I’d best let you get to it, then.”

She exited the study, slipped outside, and allowed her smile to break free. She’d done it. Now she needed to store this most important of documents in a safe place. With that thought in mind, she headed for the bathhouse. Ever since a dishonest guest had rifled her bedroom and swiped her favorite string of pearls a little over a year ago, she’d kept a lockbox secreted away behind a storage bin in the bathhouse. It was the perfect place to keep this treasured possession.

The wooden door creaked as she pulled it open and the sulfuric smell of the mineral springs hit her like a fist. Hoping to catch the cross breeze off the lake, she left the door propped open while she fetched her box from its hiding place.

As always when she opened the box, Maggie spent a moment enjoying each of the treasures stored inside. Sitting on the packed dirt floor, she smoothed the creases from the skirt of a linsey-woolsey doll’s dress. She lifted a shell from the pink sand beach of a South Sea island to her ear and listened to the ocean. Returning it to the box, she removed the breathing tube she’d brought back from the cenote, Rafe’s tube, the one he’d used to save her life. The smooth, yet knobby cane glided beneath her fingertips. She brought it to her mouth and tasted the jungle and the salty tang of the sea. But she didn’t taste Rafe. The taste of him, the scent of him had faded from the tube and from her life.

Where was he now? She wondered. Had Papa Lucky reached him in time? What had he thought when he read her note? Was he saddened by her news? Relieved?

Maggie replaced her prizes, added the marriage contract, and tucked the box back into its hiding place. Sighing, she rose and began to pace the three—sided bathhouse. Between the log-lined pits that formed the mud bath and the springs bath, she paused and gazed out toward the lake. Heat shimmered above the surface, and the water beckoned. Maggie eyed her bathing sarong hanging on the wall and thought,
Why not?

She closed the bathhouse door, and her fingers quickly worked the buttons on her bodice. She hummed a tune as she slipped her arms from her sleeves. The dress slid past her hips and billowed to the floor.

When she bent to pick it up and hang it on a peg, a groan ghosted from the shadows. Maggie wasn’t alone. She whirled around. “Rafe!”

~~~~~~~~~~

He loved her so damned much.

He would have told her, too, if he weren’t so godawful angry at her. Marrying Barlow Hill. Over his dead body.

Rafe felt dangerous. Reckless. It didn’t help his temper any to realize that despite his fury, one good look at her made him hard enough to drive a railroad spike, even before she’d taken off her dress. He gritted his teeth against the need that pulsed through his veins. Even as his fingers lifted to rip at the buttons on his shirt, he told himself he wouldn’t indulge. He had questions to ask her, one in particular that had vexed him every inch of the way from Triumph Plantation to Hotel Bliss. He ground his teeth and spat out the words, “Am I too late?”

“Too late? How did you get here so fast?”

“I forked the saddle and never quit, that’s how.” He stripped off his shirt and flung it onto the ground. “Dammit, woman, have you done it? Have you married that lowdown, cold-blooded fool-headed ferret yet, or am I in time to stop you?”

Maggie’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. “Rafe, I…”

In a flash of revelation, he realized it didn’t matter. She was his. His and no other’s. “How do you feel? Lucky said you were better. Are you better?”

Wide-eyed, she nodded.

Good. Great. She looked good. She looked wonderful.
Ah, shoot
. Rafe took a step toward her knowing that nothing—not his temper, not her foolishness, not even a sea slug scum of a husband—would keep him from loving this woman. Here and now. And always.

He took another step toward her, and she said, “Rafe, you must understand. I—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders. He wanted to know. He couldn’t bear to know. “Are you married?”

She opened her mouth, but Rafe didn’t really want to hear the answer. He jerked her against him, and his mouth crushed down on hers, angry and desperate. If she’d fought him he might have stopped, but instead she wrapped her arms around him and held him tight.

She tasted of molasses and moonlight and Maggie, and Rafe strained against the tethers of his control. He groaned against her lips. “Don’t let me hurt you. Tell me if I do and I’ll stop. I swear.”

“I don’t want you to stop. Oh, Rafe, I need you.”

He dragged her down to the ground. The man who’d cared for her so gently, so tenderly at Gallagher’s didn’t exist on this hot, steamy summer afternoon. Full of fear and fury and exhaustion, Rafe hovered on the edge of violence. His teeth scraped down her neck, his hands ripped her chemise, baring her breasts to the heat of his gaze and to his mouth. He suckled greedily.

His need was like the cenote at night, dark and dangerous, an underground river of hellish lust that swept him powerlessly along its molten tide. He wanted her with him, to share this glorious, gleeful heat. His mouth devoured. His fingers delved.

And Maggie writhed right along with him, bucking and choking back a scream when her muscles gripped his fingers, contracting in the waves of her release.

But Rafe wasn’t through with her. Not yet. He took her up again, groaning along with her as she shivered and shuddered and called out his name. Naked now, they rolled as the pressure built inside him to a fevered pitch. His legs extended out over the sunken bath and grazed the heated water of the springs. Purposely, he rolled again and they slipped into the bubbling water. Currents of heat gushed around them and inside him.
Now, it must be now.

His feet found purchase and he stood, holding her at the waist, lifting her, backing her against the wooden wall. “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered.

She arched her neck, her back, and gasped a quaking breath. And he took her standing up.

He drove himself deep inside her. Pounding her. Again and again and again. Panting. He watched her face as she plunged over the peak once more.

Then, as the tide of his lust was swept up in a turbulent, tumultuous, tempestuous storm of love, he emptied himself into her, calling out her name.

“Mary.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Rafe was embarrassed. Maggie could tell. She also picked up on the fact that he was still a little bit angry. If she’d any bones left in her body, she might have worked up a good snit over that. But as matters stood, she felt entirely too good to feel bad.

She sat on the rock ledge in the springs bath staring dazedly at the opposite wall.
The
wall. The wooden wall that probably should be bronzed. A smile played across her lips.

Sitting next to her, Rafe noted it and scowled. “What are you laughing at?”

“You. Me. Us.” She sighed contentedly and added, “If separations mean homecomings like that one, I think I’ll send you away more often.”

“You didn’t send me away.”

“I know. You left. On a fool’s mission, I might add.”

Rafe formed an oval with his hands, then eyed her neck as though he were measuring it.

Maggie shut her eyes, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. They needed to talk about this, obviously, but she sure could use a little more peace before engaging in the battle certain to come.

Her wish proved futile when he dragged a hand across his face and said, “We need to talk, Maggie.”

“Can’t it wait?”

His eyes narrowed, glowing like a cat’s in the shadows of the bathhouse. “It has waited too danged long already. Have you done it yet, Maggie?”

“We just did it.”

He cleared his throat. “Not that.”

“Then what?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and spoke matter-of-factly. “Murdered Barlow Hill.”

“Murder!” She sat up straight. “What makes you say that? I intend to marry him, not murder him.”

He pinned her with a glare. “Same thing. If you’ve married him, then I have to murder him. I’d just as soon not have his death on my conscience. Not when it’s a needless one.”

Maggie folded her arms. “You obviously have been spending way too much time with my grandfathers. Why would you want to murder Barlow Hill?”

“I don’t bed married women!”

“Well, you didn’t bed me. You walled me.” She glanced at the structure under discussion and smiled smugly. “Quite nicely, too.”

“Maybe you are the one I should kill, after all. I’m really angry with you, Maggie.”

The sentiment warmed her heart. Now that blood was flowing to her brain again, Maggie had managed to put it all together. He wouldn’t be so angry if he didn’t care. He wouldn’t have made such tumultuous love to her if he didn’t care. Maybe there would be a future for them yet.

After her marriage to Barlow Hill ended, of course.

She pushed across the water and sat beside Rafe. Looping her arm through his, she said, “Let me explain, Rafe. Listen to me, please.”

His hand stroked up and down her bare thigh. “Did you marry him, Maggie?”

“Not yet.” She tangibly felt the tension leave his body. It returned in a flash when she added, “The wedding is scheduled for noon tomorrow.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

Maggie shrugged. “Yes, it is. The sooner I marry him, the sooner I can save the hotel. I have a wonderful plan, Rafe. Let me tell you about it.”

With crisp, concise language, Maggie told him about her meeting with Lester Bodine and the intricacies he’d explained about marriage laws in the Republic of Texas. “It’s a widely known fact that women have community property rights in this country. We counted on Barlow being aware of it.”

“Barlow?” Rafe’s voice rose to a near roar. “You call him Barlow now?”

“Most women do call their fiances by their first names.” Beneath her hand, Rafe’s thigh muscle tensed. She hurried on with her explanation. “What is not so well known, and what I counted on Hill being unaware of is the dispensation of gifts in a divorce case. This will be his first marriage. There is no reason why he would know that gifts are not listed as community property. I gave him a long, obscure reason why I wanted him to give me the hotel as a wedding gift, but all the time I was playing to his greed. I told him I was soon to come into a large amount of money. I told him about the treasure, Rafe.”