Wildfire in His Arms (45 page)

Sliding her gun back in its holster, Max shook her hands briefly before positioning her right hand just above her gun. She could do this. The rest of her life depended on it. “Okay, I'm ready.” She finally glanced at him. He hadn't just sounded amused, he looked it, too.

“This isn't—”

“One.”

“—necessary.”

“Two.”

“Max.”

“Now!”

For once, she was pretty damn fast, but that's not why she ended up wide-eyed. He drew on her like a tinhorn, about as slow as it was possible to be. Her smile lit up the room. He wanted to stay married!

She dropped her gun and raced across the room to leap at him. And sighed in bliss when he wrapped his arms tightly around her.

“
Why
didn't you tell me?” Max exclaimed as she sprinkled kisses over his face.

“Because you had stated conditions that hadn't been met yet. It didn't matter that I love you, Max. I still would have let you go if you didn't have your happy reasons for staying married.”

“Oh, my God, I love you so much! How could you not figure that out, fancy man?”

“I was fooled once before. Understanding a woman's heart is not something I wanted to guess at ever again. But I would have courted you as soon as my family issues were settled. I wasn't going to give up on you easily.”

She held his face gently. It was still hard to believe that this man, hard and cold on the surface for everyone else, had let love in for her. “You'll never have to guess again—well, unless I'm teasing you. But you like being teased, don't you?”

“No.” He sounded serious until he added, “But I like making you happy, so I'll put up with it. As long as you don't mind the consequences.”

“Oh?” He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Max laughed as he dropped her on it. “I'm going to have to tease you more often.”

They spent the rest of the day and the night in bed. Degan caught a maid passing in the hall and ordered food to be brought up to their room before the hotel kitchen closed for the night, and they ate that in bed, too. Then an unexpected knock came at the door. Degan put on his pants to answer it. Max burrowed under the sheets. But she wasn't at all pleased to hear Allison's voice.

“Flint is sleeping peacefully for the first time in years. I thought you might want to know that.”

Degan didn't open the door enough to allow entry. “It could have waited until tomorrow.”

“I wanted a chance to speak to you alone.”

“I'm not alone.”

“I know your wife is here. I meant without Flint hearing me. I just wanted to assure you that your brother is going to be okay now. He never believed that I loved him. That was half of his difficulty. The guilt for betraying you was the other half.”

“Was he the real reason you wanted me here—at any cost?”

“I'm sorry for the lies, I truly am. Not that your father
hasn't
gone batty,” Allison added with a laugh.

“He's hardly that. He merely turned in one way of life for another, just as I did. And he's happy doing what he's doing, which is really all that matters.”

“I suppose, though we still worry about him. You know he gets so engrossed in reading those stories that he loses track of time and even sleeps in his new offices half the time. And he won't even talk to his old friends anymore, since all they do is ridicule him about this venture. He's become a laughingstock, which
is
scandalous.”

“I really don't think he cares, nor should you.”

Allison tsked. “Exactly why I didn't tell you any of this to lure you home. It amuses you, doesn't it?”

Degan laughed. “A little.”

Allison sighed. “I didn't come here to argue about your father's odd hobby. I was sure you wouldn't help me with the real problem if I told you that single indiscretion five years ago was still ruining our lives, which was why I resorted to lies instead. Flint wouldn't admit he loves me when he hated himself so much for driving you away. Thank you for forgiving him. It's made a world of difference for him.”

“We're not going to be staying, Alli. But we won't be so far away that we can't visit from time to time.”

“Thank you, Degan, for fixing this.”

Max smiled to herself as Degan closed the door on his ex-fiancée. He was good at fixing things, even broken families. But she wondered, “Where are we going that we won't be so far away?”

He returned to the bed and pulled her close again. “Nashart, Montana, I think. I already know the people, and there's actually a job waiting for me there. I always figured by the time I got around to seeing Texas it would be time to decide if there was anywhere in the West I might want to settle, or if it was time to head back East.”

“Do you
want
to stay here?”

“No, not any longer than we have to. I don't feel like I belong here anymore. I might have missed fine cuisine and sleeping in a soft bed every night instead of once a month if I got lucky, but cooks can be hired. I did miss having a permanent residence to come home to. And my stay with Zachary Callahan's close-knit family this year made me wonder if I was ready for one of my own. Then I met you and it all simply fell into place perfectly.”

“What do you mean?”

He hugged her closer. “I stopped wondering. I knew.”

“H
UNTER TOLD ME ONCE
that a house could be built here in a day if everyone pitched in. I didn't believe him, certainly not a house this size.”

Standing next to Degan with his arm around her, Max admired her new home, but she was as surprised as he was that it was almost done. It seemed as if every time she blinked today, another room was finished. But the whole town had turned out to support their new sheriff. When Degan had told her he had a job in Nashart, she'd thought he meant one of his usual in-and-out jobs, not a permanent one such as sheriff.

“They should break for the day,” Max said. “It's not as if we can move in tonight. And the food is almost ready.”

Zachary Callahan had donated a cow for the barbecue that was set up in the yard. Long tables had been carried over to hold the fixings other townsfolk had brought.

“I know,” Degan agreed. “The artisans won't arrive for another day or so anyway to put on all the finishing touches. And it still needs to be painted and wallpapered, carpets laid, furniture moved in. I figure by the end of the week we'll have our first dinner here.”

They'd spent a few extra days in Chicago buying furniture and picking out colors and patterns for the walls and floors. She would have liked to have had more time with so many choices to pick from, but Degan had assured her she could change anything she didn't like later, as often as she wanted to. She'd thought that was one of his jokes, but it wasn't. He wanted this house to be just right for her. It already was, simply because it was theirs.

Five bedrooms: one for Ella, one for Johnny when he got school breaks, and a couple more for the children they hoped to have eventually. Until then they would serve as guest rooms. Degan's father had warned them at a big dinner party he had hosted for them in Chicago that he planned to visit often. Flint had expressed interest in visiting them in Montana, too, but Max doubted that Allison would ever come West again. And after Max sent off a telegram to Luella to let her know where Max could now be reached, she'd gotten a reply. Luella had actually married Big Al and was now the co-proprietor of Big Al's Saloon. She promised to visit, too. Maybe five bedrooms weren't going to be enough, after all.

But the house was built on the edge of town, so they could expand if they needed to. The yard was a decent size, too, in case Ella wanted to putter around in a garden. Degan had also included an extra room whose walls were mostly windows just so Ella would have good lighting when she did her painting. Ella was delighted with Nashart and with Degan.

Max was delighted with Nashart, too. It was a nice, peaceful town filled with friendly people where she could ride for miles if she wanted and go hunting whenever she felt like it. Though she'd heard all about the Callahan-Warren feud that had ended earlier this summer, having met both families, she found it hard to believe that they'd ever been enemies. The young men in both families behaved as if they were the best of friends. And Tiffany and Hunter, whose marriage had ended that feud, were so in love Max couldn't help smiling whenever she saw them together.

But Hunter Callahan took some getting used to. Max had never met anyone who teased and laughed as much as he did. She took to his wife, Tiffany, right away. Despite their different upbringings, Max already considered her a good friend.

“I used to be so nervous around Degan when he and I were staying with the Callahans,” Tiffany had confided. “That was prior to Hunter's finding out I was his promised bride. But Degan fairly reeked of danger. Weren't you scared of him when you first met him?”

Max grinned. “No.”

“Really?”

“He wondered about that, too. I'd like to think that I knew, deep down, that he was the man for me. But I didn't. I just knew he wouldn't hurt me.”

“He's changed,” Tiffany marveled. “
You've
changed him. Goodness, I even saw him laugh yesterday!”

Max had smiled. Degan did that a lot lately. The gunfighter wasn't guarded around her anymore, and he'd let his guard down here, too, with these people, because he considered them friends. Already, he thought of this town as home. Max knew it made a big difference when you felt you belonged.

A few days after the house went up, they learned that the carved moldings that Degan wanted at the top and the bottom of every wall, in every room of their house, were going to take longer than they'd figured, even though the craftsman had brought two assistants with him and the local carpenter had pitched in, offering his shop for them to work in. But with everything else done, they moved in at the end of the week anyway and invited the Callahans to dinner to celebrate their first night in their new house. The cook and his assistants, as well as the two maids that Degan had hired in Chicago, weren't due to arrive for another week, so Ella had volunteered to cook with Max's help.

Degan had brought so much here from the East, even servants, that Max worried he was only settling down in the West for her sake. Until he told her about the scarcity of women in Montana and if they wanted servants before the next ­century . . . She got the idea.

Sam Warren and John Callahan had both applied to be Degan's deputy. He hadn't made up his mind yet which one he was going to choose.

“You could just hire them both,” Max suggested.

“The town doesn't need that many lawmen.”

“Or you could hire me instead.” She batted her eyes at him.

He swatted her backside. “You might be good with a gun and intimidating as all hell—”

“I am not!”

“—but I can't protect the town if I'm protecting you instead. Besides”—he drew her into his arms for a long kiss—“you're far too distracting.”

She'd been on her own for so long that she knew it was going to take time to get used to having someone else looking out for her. But she adored Degan's protectiveness. She adored his strength and tenderness. She adored everything about her husband.

As for deputies, while Degan probably didn't need any help, she'd feel better if he had it, since she felt as protective of him as he did of her. Luckily, the town was peaceful, though it might not stay that way for long. She knew Degan expected trouble to find him here. She thought he must have confided the same thing to Hunter when the cowboy stopped by the day after the dinner party and she joined them on the porch, catching the tail end of their conversation.

“You worry too much,” Hunter was saying. “Once it gets around that you turned lawman, and it will get around, the glory hunters will stop seeking you out. They'll be afraid you'll just jail them instead of giving them their showdown.” But then Hunter spotted Max behind them and exclaimed, “Maxie! I don't think Killer here is very happy.”

Hunter got back on his horse, laughing as he rode away, and she frowned. “What are you not happy about?”

Degan rolled his eyes. “He wasn't referring to me. He was talking about his housewarming gift for us. At least he didn't bring us a pig!” Degan grinned as he handed her the puppy in his arms.

“Oh, how sweet!” Max cooed in delight, and yelled after Hunter, “Thanks, Callahan!” Then in a whisper to Degan: “But we're changing his name.”

“I agree since it's a female.”

She laughed. “Your friend is ornery.”

“No, he's just happy. But so am I. I never thought I would end up with everything I could want in this life. Thank you for loving me, Maxie.”

“I didn't have a choice, fancy man.”