Second Chance Bride (Montana Born Brides) (6 page)

“So that’s a yes?” Damn, did she sound too hopeful?

“Sex is actually outside this arrangement.”

“So, that’s a no?”

He smiled and that killer combination of blue eyes and smiling mouth almost did her head in. “That’s not what I said.”

Oh hell.
What was that supposed to mean?

“So what’s it to be Scarlett?”

“Hang on a minute, I have to think about this.” She squeezed her mouth and her eyes tight shut, the cogs in her mind spinning around, putting the brakes on the
Hell yes!
response that she was renowned for. If she was going to be more responsible she was going to have to stop doing that. She was going to have to seriously think about this. Think about the pros and cons and what could possibly go wrong, because sure as God made little green apples—if she didn’t, something would.

Pro
, she thought: it was quick easy money, quicker than even Bella’s had promised to be. And it was all expenses paid.
Bonus
.

Pro:
she wouldn’t even have to confess to Tara that she’d been sacked from a brothel.
Yes!

Pro:
she’d get to spend the next few days with a guy who came with an electric touch that made her toes curl. All that rampant electricity. All that masculine heat. Just remembering how he’d felt naked and next to her sent her pulse tripping all over again.

Oh hell. She turned her mind to the cons before she’d talked herself into it on the pros alone.

Con:
she’d jumped before at the chance for quick easy money, and look how that had turned out.

Con:
she didn’t really know this guy. He could be an axe murderer for all she knew. Why should she believe his story about a jilted lover and her need for revenge when he could be packing an axe?

Con:
if she ended up dead, Tara would never forgive her. Oh, maybe that should be a pro?

Con:
she’d get to spend the next few days with a guy who came with an electric touch that made her toes curl. All that masculine heat. Ooh, but that was a pro too. Then again...

“Excuse me?”

She was still tossing up whether spending more time with this guy was a pro or a con. She didn’t appreciate the interruption. She didn’t bother opening her eyes. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

She cracked open her eyes and peeked up at him. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m thinking.”

“So why’s it taking you so long?”

“Because I’m weighing up the pros and cons. Making a sensible decision. I always jump into things and it always goes wrong. This time I’m determined to do the right thing.”

“Fine,” he said, “just keep in mind that the wedding is Saturday.”

“That’s three whole days away.” She closed her eyes again.

“But our plane leaves in two.”

She cracked them open again and looked at him. “What plane? Where’s the wedding?”

“Broome, on the north west coast. Pearl capital of Australia. Sandy beaches, camel rides at night and the best sunset in the world. And if the weather gods are favorable, the not-to-be-missed Staircase to the Moon. Are you coming?”

She blinked, his words adding six more
pros
to the mix right there. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” She’d heard about Broome while she’d been waiting tables in a cafe in Perth. Heard the buzz about the Staircase to the Moon effect across the mud flats at full moon and how it wasn’t to be missed if she could get there. She’d given up all hope of getting there this visit. Assumed it was just another addition to the bucket list of things in Australia that she’d have to go home without seeing this time.

“So?” he said, staring at her like she was
crazy, “Will you do it?”

“Hell, yes!” she said, punching his arm and with a smile that felt a mile wide. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to let you turn up alone and look like some kind of loser.”

“What’s your name?”

Scarlett
was sitting on an arm chair in his rented apartment doing a Sudoku while Mitch was on the phone to his travel agent or airline or something. He’d found her a single apartment in the same complex and she’d stashed her pack away and hung up her dress—
the wedding dress—new, with tags—that continued to go irritatingly bid-less on eBay
—in the little closet. And now she was waiting for him to finish whatever he was doing so they could go out for Chinese food.

“Hey!” He was frowning when she looked up. “What’s your name?”

“Scarlett,” she said back, wondering why he was having such trouble remembering her name. She’d told him, what, twice already?

“No. Your second name.”

“Oh. Buck.”

“What?”

“Buck. Scarlett Buck. Have you got a problem with that?”

“Buck? No, no,” he said shaking his head to who
mever was on the phone, though they would miss the head shaking completely. “I said Buck. B-U-C-K. B. For brandy. Not—” he laughed. “Yeah, not that.” He raised his eyebrows at her and she laughed and went back to her Sudoku as he pulled out his credit card and finished the reservation.

“All done,” he said,
repocketing his cell, “Ms. Scarlett Buck.”

Something about the way he said her name alerted her. She looked up from her puzzle. “Yes?”

He was smiling. “Cute name.”

“Yeah. Bella thought so too.”

His smile widened. “I bet. Probably thought she was going to make a killing. Guess you must have had a bit of a rough time growing up though.”

She screwed up her nose. “You better believe it. Tara and I spent an entire childhood being pooped on from a great height because of our name.” She shrugged. ‘”We got so used to it after a while that someone would say something and we’d just laugh and say it was water off a Buck’s back.” She grinned up at him. “They breed us tough in Montana.”

He liked it. “Beer?” he asked, as he pulled a Corona from the fridge and held it up. He pulled out another and flipped both lids when she nodded. “What’s she like, this sister of yours?” he asked, as he handed her the longneck and sat down in the other arm chair, his elbows resting on wide-apart knees. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up and his forearms were strong and lean, and she didn’t know what it was about him but just looking at him was intoxicating and one beer would likely put her over the limit. Lucky she wasn’t driving. “Same as you?”

She laughed at that, happy to be distracted. “Hardly.”

“But you’re twins, right?”

“We’re twins, but not identical. We’re pretty different, when all
’s said and done.”

“How so?”

She shrugged. “Tara’s real pretty—”

“Not so different then,” he said, and she felt a bloom of heat burst open inside her right there.

She bowed her head and raised her beer at him. “Thank you, kind sir. What I was going to say, is Tara’s real pretty only she doesn’t like to show it too much. I mean, she’s got the most gorgeous long blonde hair, but she pulls it back real tight and wouldn’t be caught dead getting a color—well,” she lifted up her hair, “anything like this. And she’s real sensible and does everything right.” She took a sip of her beer. “Whereas, and you may have noticed this, I tend to be the one who jumps in feet first and, more often than not,
bucks up
.”

He laughed into the neck of his beer before he took a draught. “Sounds like you’re pretty hard on yourself. She can’t be that perfect.”

“Ha, then listen to this. She doesn’t just have a good job, she’s a cop—a patrol officer over at Bozeman and she’s marrying sensible Simon the history teacher later this year. No doubt about it, Tara is the perfect daughter.”

“Definitely hard on yourself.”

She shook her head and threw her legs over the arm of the chair and looked up at the ceiling, the bottom of her beer resting on her belly. “You know, I think I’m just starting to realize how much grief I’ve put everyone through these past twenty-six years. Tara’s the sensible twin and I’m the flaky one, the one who dropped out of school, the one who spent more time under the bleachers researching anatomy with boys than cheering my sister on her ribbon-winning way from up top. And sometimes I’ve thought Tara’s just being a party pooper when she gives me advice or tells me not to do something, but I’m starting to see that sometimes she’s even a little bit right. Well, a lot right, actually, come to think of it. Sometimes I think I should be more like her.”

He sipped his beer. “Interesting.”

He was being polite, she was sure. She’d seen Amtrak timetables that were more engaging than the details of her family’s dynamics. “What about you? Have you got family somewhere around?”

“Mum’s still going well in Melbourne. Dad died a few years back. Heart attack.”

“Nasty. Our Dad left when we were thirteen. I think Mom would have been a lot happier if he’d had a heart attack.” She looked over. “Oh, damn, I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay.”

She smiled her thanks. “So, any other family?”

His lips pulled tight. “I had a sister. Once.”

Crap. She’d done it again. She really had to learn to quit while she was ahead. She put her beer down. “I need the bathroom.”

She was half way to her feet when he said, “Thank you,” from whatever dark place he was inhabiting.

“What for?”

His eyes, when he looked up, were more gray than blue, a clear sky scudded with clouds. “For not saying you were sorry like it was somehow your fault, like most people do.”

That was a hard one to respond to. “I am sorry though, but for your losses. Especially for your sister. Because as much as my own sister drives me crazy trying to protect me, I can’t imagine life without her.”

He took a deep breath and smiled uncertainly as he raised his beer. “To sisters, then,” and she picked up her beer and they clinked bottles.

“I’ll drink to that.”

They had Chinese
food in a restaurant nearby, honey shrimp—except they were called prawns here—and crispy duck with fried rice washed down with an almost local Margaret River white wine. The food was small-town Chinese restaurant good, and Mitch talked about his fly-in fly-out job at the mines, about the fourteen day shifts filled with twelve hour work days and big meals in the mess and maybe a swim before bed and then getting up the next day to do it all over again. Scarlett listened and crunched shrimp tails between her teeth and sucked honey off her fingers and thought that maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea that she’d come to Australia after all, or she would never have known about any of this kind of lifestyle.

Or more importantly, that otherwise she would never have met Mitch. Maybe she should send Travis a thank
-you postcard from Broome? She was halfway tempted.

And Mitch watched a woman who could follow his every word and ask questions while eating with gusto and relish and who wasn’t afraid to get her fingers dirty in the process. And he liked it. A lot.

When she licked her fingers clean, he wished she’d offered them to him first.

And then he smacked his lustful thoughts down hard. He was trying to help her out. Offer her a solution to her problems, so that whatever was bothering her would disappear.