“Backing into a barbed wire fence is not exactly how I would've expected you to spend your honeymoon,” his brother Jackson McCabe drawled, as he cleaned the jagged cut across Shane's left arm with hydrogen peroxide. “What's going on?”
Shane grimaced. He couldn't believe he'd been so clumsy and inattentive himself. “I don't know what you mean.”
Jackson numbed the area with a topical anesthetic. “Last night at your wedding you looked on top of the world.” With a surgeon's skill, Jackson began to stitch the edges of the jagged cut together. “Less than twelve hours later, you drag your sorry self in here looking as though you've lost your best friend.”
Shane grimaced and stared at the walls of Laramie Community Hospital. “Maybe I have.”
“Want to tell me about it?” Jackson continued stitching with the patience of a saint. He paused to give his younger brother a compassionate look. “I may not have all the answers, but I'm usually a pretty good listener.”
Shane knew that was true, and it had been that way long before Jackson had become a doctor. When they were kids, Jackson had been the one Shane turned to with problems, when he turned to anyone. Shane usually hadn't listened to the advice Jackson gave himâhe preferred to go his own way, in his own timeâbut he'd always felt better after they talked. More understood. And still more important, Jackson had never betrayed
any confidences. Given the tom-up way he was feeling inside, Shane knew he had to confide in someone before he backed into more than a strand of barbed wire. He sighed. Clenched his hands around his torn, bloodied shirt. “I think I blew it with Greta.”
Jackson shook his head in silent dissent. Finished stitching, he applied an antibiotic ointment over the wound to help prevent infection. “Impossible. Counting the elopement, you haven't even been married to the woman a week.”
“Yeah, but that was plenty long enough for me to act like a complete Neanderthal.” Shane sighed and briefly explained about the deal he and Greta'd had and the conversation they'd had that morning before he left the ranch house.
To Shane's increasing displeasure, Jackson did not look at all surprised.
Jackson ripped open a package of sterile gauze. “We all thought it might be something like that. Until we started seeing you and Greta together.” Jackson fit it over the cut, then taped it in place. “Are you sure you're not in love with her?”
Shane's fists clenched. His gut churned. His whole body was tense, his emotions in turmoil. “That's just it. I thinkâhell, I know I am.” There. He'd said it out loud.
“But you couldn't tell her,” Jackson surmised, preparing a tetanus shot.
“No.” Shane grimaced as Jackson swabbed his other arm with alcohol. “Instead I acted as if it was all about sex.”
Jackson primed the needle. “When you know it's a helluva lot more.”
“Right.” Shane was so upset he barely felt the injection
his brother gave him. He sighed and shook his head as, finished, Jackson swabbed the injection site with alcohol. Shane watched Jackson tear the wrapper off a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid. “I don't know why I couldn't have just been honest with her, told her what was in my heart,” Shane muttered. After all, two of his brothers and his father had been able to do so.
“I do.” Jackson grinned as he ripped off the plastic strips and stuck the Band-Aid over the pinprick of blood that had appeared on Shane's arm. “You already had everything planned out just perfectly and you didn't want your world rocked on its axis. Which is what admitting that you loved her and wanted to turn what started out as just another one of your damn fool escapades into a real marriage, would do.”
For the first time all day Shane relaxed. Jackson did understand. The bond between him and his brother had never been stronger. Shane shrugged on his shirt. “What should I do?”
Jackson deposited all the used swabs and syringes in a covered waste can, stripped off his surgical gloves and dropped them in, too. Finished, he turned back to Shane. “Level with her.”
Shane buttoned his shirt. “I'll talk to her tomorrow.”
Jackson shook his head, disabusing Shane of that notion in an instant. “You don't want to wait even that long.”
Good idea but impractical as hell, given the circumstances, Shane thought. “The grand opening of her dance hall is tonight. Everyone we know is going to be there.” Not exactly the surroundings he'd choose to make the single most romantic declaration of his entire life.
“Even more of a reason for you to set things straight right this instant,” Jackson advised soberly.
Â
IT WAS ALMOST TWO O'CLOCK in the afternoon when Shane appeared in the service entrance of the dance hall kitchen. He nodded at Greta. “I need to talk to you.”
Greta wondered at the plain blue chambray shirt he had on. It was store bought, not custom-made, and so new it still had the boxlike creases in it across the middle. Wondering what had gotten into him, she nodded at the three chefs busily preparing that evening's dinner specials and went back to writing on the chalk-board that would sit just inside the entrance. “It'll have to wait.”
Shane strode past the pots of bubbling potatoes and cooling fruit pies. “It can't wait.”
“Well, it will have to,” Greta said as she continued neatly printing out the day's menu.
The head chef turned to Greta. “It's about time for you to go home and get ready, anyway.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Shane said, happy to find he had an ally at her place of business. He swept Greta into his arms honeymoon style and, ignoring the stiff, uncompromising set of her limbs, carried her out to his pickup truck.
“Must you always make such a show?” Greta demanded as he set her down on the ground next to the passenger side.
Shane opened the door and helped her in. “I'll do whatever I have to do to get your attention.”
She regarded him grimly, looking anything but rested and relaxed. She stubbornly folded her arms in front of her. “I have to be back in two hours.”
Shane noticed she was no longer resisting. “I'll get you back here in plenty of time, I promise,” he said
gently. He had no choice. She'd never forgive him if he didn't.
The ride out to the ranch was swift and silent.
“So what couldn't wait?” Greta asked as soon as they arrived.
Eager to prove himself every bit the gentleman she deserved in a marriage partner, Shane rushed around to get her door. Although she didn't look as if she wanted his help with much of anything, she let him open it for her, anyway.
“I want to apologize for this morning.” Hands around her waist, Shane swung her down from the pickup truck.
“Why?” Greta curled her fingers around his bicep as her feet hit the ground. Steadied, she dropped her hand and stepped back. “You said exactly what you feel.” Hurt glimmered in her pretty blue eyes.
“That's just it,” Shane said earnestly. Taking her hand in his, he led her toward the porch. “I didn't.” He ushered her into the coolness of the ranch house. “I said I wanted to stay married to you because it was convenient.”
“Don't remind me,” she muttered cantankerously.
“That's not it.”
She regarded him warily. “Then what is?”
Shane sank into one of the easy chairs and pulled her down onto his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, shoring up his courage to try again. “I want you to stay my wife because I love you. The way I've never loved anyone else. The way I am always going to love you.”
Greta turned to him, her eyes shimmering moistly. Not sure she'd understood him, he repeated it all, verbatim, again. Greta gulped. And this time, tears spilled over her
lashes and flowed down her face. “Oh, Shane,” she whispered, looking happier than he'd ever seen her.
Shane rushed on, fighting panic, not about to leave anything unsaid this time. “I don't care if you don't love me, too,” he told her earnestly, stroking her hair, her face, her neck, her trembling lower lip. “I'm willing to give it time,” he told her hoarsely. “I want you to give us time. Because I feel sure, with enough time, with enough loveâyouâweâ”
“Shane?”
“Hmm?” What had he said wrong this time?
“Hush,” Greta whispered. And then she gave him a look. That look. The one that said all his worrying had been for nothing. She wasn't going anywhere.
She wreathed her arms around his neck. Tears still streaming down her face, she pressed her lips to his. “I love you, too, Shane,” she whispered thickly. Trembling now, all over. “Do you hear me? I love you, too.” He would have kissed her then but she shook her head, caught her breath and held him at bay with one hand pressed against his chest. “That's why I was so upset this morning when you said what you said, because I thought I was the only one feeling this way.”
How could he have hurt her that way? When hurting her was the last thing he'd ever wanted to do. Shane held her even closer. “You're not alone in this,” he whispered, kissing her thenâher eyes, her lips, her hair. “If I have my way, you'll never be alone again.”
He lifted her off his lap, carried her upstairs, to the bed. And there, in the sunny bedroom, on the rumpled sheets of their bed, he made love to her as if they had all the time in the world. He caressed her feet, stroked her ankles, the backs of her knees, her inner thighs. He kissed breasts, belly, thighs, held her bottom in his
hands. Brought her closer still and watched her body respond, savoring. the sweetness of her, the fire, the way she looked at him, in wonder and yearning, as if she couldn't help but feel that way.
And she kissed him and loved him, too, her actions unspeakably tender, gentle, passionate. She stroked him with her hands, loved him with her lips and tongue, until he couldn't stand it anymore, until he had to have her, had to claim her and make her his. He rolled, so she was beneath him, her hot body pressed up against him. He slid his hand down her tummy, to the sleek nest of curls and the dampness beneath. She lifted her hips to him, arched against his hand as he stroked and kissed and touched. And then he was easing into her; there was no more waiting, only the two of them soaring, flying free.
After, he held her close and savored the. feel of her in his arms. He pressed a kiss into the fragrant softness of her hair, wishing they didn't have to go, knowing they did.
“What are you thinking?” Shane murmured, keeping his arms wrapped around her as their heartbeats slowed.
“That I've never been happier,” Greta murmured, reluctantly rising and leading him from the bed, “than I am right now.”
“Me, too,” Shane said, kissing her again. “Me, too.”
To save time, they climbed into the shower together. Shane stepped beneath the spray and shook his head ruefully. “I should have known better than to listen to anything Bonnie Sue had to say.”
Greta froze in the act of putting shampoo into her hair. “Why? What did she say?”
Shane turned her away from him and began to work the shampoo into a lather. “It's too ridiculous,” he said with obvious chagrin.
I knew she was going to cause trouble
. And gut instinct told Greta that trouble was not over yet, no matter what Shane thought. Greta closed her eyes and braced herself against the wall. “Humor me and tell me, anyway, so we'll never fight over this issue again.”
So I'll know what to do.
Shane massaged her scalp with firm, sensual strokes and slow, lazy circles. “She had some idea that you were using me to get to Beauâ”
“Why would I want to do that?” Greta asked in stunned amazement as rich bubbles of shampoo spilled across her shoulders onto her back.
Shane turned her around to face him, so the water from the showerhead spilled directly over her hair. “To make him marry you.”
At the mention of Beau and the memory of her most recent conversation with him, Greta felt the color leave her face. Aware Shane was studying her intently, Greta sputtered, “Beau and Iâwe were neverâI mean, I told you, marriage was never even on the horizonâ”
“I know,” Shane said. He looked at her expectantly. “That's what I told Bonnie Sue.”
Swearing inwardly at the second predicament she'd foolishly gotten herself into, in the space of a week, Greta turned away from Shane's calmly assessing gaze and plucked the conditioner from the shelf. “But she didn't believe it,” she guessed grimly.
Shane took the bottle from her, put a dollop on his palm, rubbed his hands together, then spread the silky lotion through her hair. “She thinks every woman thinks the way she does.” Shane shook his head, continuing, as inwardly Greta's guilt built and built. “But I should have known better. I should have trusted you. I should have known you'd never use me to get to Beau, or make
a fool of me by deceiving me. Or cheat on me the way Bonnie Sue cheated on me.”