A Cowboy to Marry (9 page)

Her feet, Holden noted, were as stunningly attractive as the rest of her. His eyes roved over her slim ankles, nicely formed arches and heels, and those dainty toes gleaming with hot-pink nail polish.

“In normal cases, I would agree.” Libby leaned forward to snag her boots. Soft blue denim molded her derriere and thighs.

Grabbing hold of a boot with both hands, she tugged it on, then changed legs and donned the other. Finished, she rose to her feet and whirled to face him. “But this isn't the usual situation….”

Figuring this argument could go on for a while, Holden decided to get comfortable. He reclined on one side, his head propped up on his hand. “I agree,” he said lazily, a little irked to find Libby pretending the two of them hadn't just enjoyed really outstanding lovemaking—the best of
his
life, anyway!

Locking eyes with her, he stated firmly, “It's better.”

Color flooded her cheeks. “Because there are no strings?”

“No expectations,” he qualified, determined to hold on to what they had, whether she cooperated or not.

Her brow furrowed quizzically.

“You keep saying you don't want to be anyone else's ball
and chain,” he pointed out with as much patience—and common sense—as he could summon.

Libby ran both hands over her hair, restoring order to the sensually mussed strands as best she could. “Never mind your responsibility—out of grief and guilt.”

Holden surveyed her head to toe before returning with laser accuracy to her green eyes. “So isn't it better if we forget trying to plan ahead and just let what's bound to occur happen all on its own?”

It was a good question, Libby thought, and one she would have preferred not to have to answer.

“Look, Holden, I enjoyed making love with you.”

He pulled back the sheet and stood. “And I really enjoyed making love with
you
.”

Libby swallowed at the sight of all that masculinity. She tried not to think about the sizzling sexual promise of his body joining with hers. Forgetting for a moment how good it had felt to be clasped in his arms, she continued sternly, “But sex wasn't part of our rebound-romance agreement.”

He grinned, striding toward her in all that naked glory. Stopping just short of her, he reached down and snagged his boxer briefs. Slid in one leg, then the other. “I agree.” He brought the gray jersey up his rock-hard thighs to his waist, a move that did nothing to disguise his eagerness to make love with her again. “It's a totally separate clause in the implied contract between us.”

Libby propped her hands on her hips and locked eyes with him once again. “One we haven't negotiated,” she pointed out.

“Until now.”

Was she ready for this?

She inhaled a jerky breath. Put up a staying palm. “Holden…”

Disappointment flared in his eyes. “I'm guessing you need time to think about it.”

Libby stiffened. “We both do.”

He gave her a look that indicated this was not the case for him. “You're pulling away,” he said, his eyes darkening.

“It might be good for both of us to take a day or two to clear our heads,” she volunteered softly.

“I disagree.” Frown lines bracketed his sensual lips. “I see nothing to be gained by losing momentum. Unless—” he came a step closer, his assessing glance roving over her upturned face “—that's what you're counting on?” He caught her wrist and lifted it to his lips. “To get us both to a place where we can't just pick up again?”

Skin tingling, she pulled away. “I can't believe you just said that to me.”

He didn't back down. “You'd prefer I be my usual gallant self?”

Libby struggled to maintain her composure in the face of all that masculine determination. “Well, yes,” she admitted.

“Sorry.” He seduced her with his deep, sexy voice. “For once I'm going to speak what's in my heart and on my mind—whether you want to hear it or not.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair then cupped her cheek in his hand. “I enjoyed making love with you just now. Actually…” He paused to sit on the edge of the bed and pull her onto his lap. “Not enjoyed. Loved. You have no idea how amazing it felt to have you beneath me and me inside you as deep as I could go.”

Able to feel the strength and heat of his arousal, she stared at him in disbelief. “Holden!”

Arms laced around her waist, he regarded her steadily. “And whether you want to admit it or not, you enjoyed it, too.”

His honesty triggered something deep inside her, something she'd never dared face before. She tried to act with a coolness she couldn't really feel. “You want the truth?” she countered, unsure whether to kiss him again or send him away. “I loved making love with you, too.”

His mesmerizing eyes met and held hers again. “So?”

Aware they were headed into dangerous territory, Libby said, “The fact that our chemistry is so good scares me.”

“Why?” Holden countered calmly. “You know I'd never hurt you.”

That was the problem. She looked down at her jeans and pleated the denim between her fingers. “I know you wouldn't mean to, any more than I'd mean to hurt you. But…” Her voice caught for a moment before she could go on. “Sometimes things that happen in the heat of the moment don't last.”

Looking as conflicted as she felt, he ran his palms over her shoulders and down her arms, eliciting sensations everywhere he touched. “Are we talking about you and me now? Or you and Percy?”

Libby slid off his lap and sat beside him. “Percy.” She sighed.

Holden took her hand gently. “I'm listening.”

She grimaced. “I feel disloyal saying it.”

He squeezed her hand before releasing it. Tenderly, he touched her face again, cupping her chin with his palm. “You owe yourself more than you owe him. You always have.”

Her emotions in turmoil, Libby vaulted off the bed once again. “I know that. But it doesn't make it any easier.”

Holden followed her to the window, where she stared out at the bleak darkness of the night. She knew she had to unburden herself to someone if she was ever to have any peace. She wanted it to be Holden.

She looked at him and forced herself to admit the truth. “Percy married me only because his parents wanted him to get married.”

Holden did a double take. “What?”

An unsettling silence fell between them. “It came out in that last fight we had, before Percy went off to South America with you.”

Holden's mood shifted from concerned to perplexed. “I don't understand.”

“I told you that we were arguing about having a baby. I wanted one…he wasn't ready. In the heat of the moment he finally admitted that. If it hadn't been for unrelenting pressure from his parents to produce an heir that would one day carry on the family business, he said he never would have asked me to marry him.”

Holden's jaw hardened. “That's true,” he confirmed, beginning to see the full picture. “Percy's folks were on his case, big-time, right before he met you. They wanted a grandchild while they were still there to enjoy one.”

She nodded, beginning to feel a little better now that this was all coming out. “And Percy thought I was perfect,” she recalled with weary resignation, reciting the facts that had come out in her last awful argument with her husband. “I was shy and sheltered enough to please his parents and be easily malleable, with no familial commitments of my own to mess with his. And yet eager enough for excitement and adventure to do most anything he wanted, too.”

“Sounds…calculated.”

“I know.” Libby hitched in a breath, forcing herself
to be fair. “But I don't think it was at the time. I believe Percy was just trying to please everyone while still being able to please himself. I think he thought it would work out. That our love for each other would be strong enough to withstand the dullness of everyday married life.”

Holden leaned toward her. “Only it wasn't.”

“Once the ring was on my finger,” Libby admitted, “he lost interest in sex.”

“That must have been devastating for you!”

Shrugging off the humiliation, Libby rushed on. “I told myself it was normal. That all couples went through that, and we couldn't stay in the honeymoon phase forever. And I concentrated on pleasing him in other ways.”

Holden held her gaze. “But Percy didn't care about home-cooked meals or a nice apartment or your devotion to learning his family business.”

“No.” Libby smiled sadly. “He wanted adventure, in increasingly risky venues.”

“Like rock climbing and white-water rafting and black diamond skiing.”

She threw up her hands. “And I just couldn't do it. I was afraid. So—” she shrugged and moved away from the window “—I suggested he do more of those things with you, and he was happy for a time.”

“Until?” Holden lounged against the wall while she paced.

“I told him I wanted a baby.” Libby knitted her fingers together. “And then the sex pretty much stopped altogether.”

She strode forward and forced herself to continue, despite the lump in her throat and the tears gathering behind her eyes. “I couldn't bear it if the same thing happened with you and me, now that we've gotten through the awk
wardness that followed my hysterical pregnancy, and have started to become friends on our own.”

“Which is why you need some space.”

She warmed at the understanding in his level gaze. “Yes. I know you've been lonely, Holden. So have I. But I have to really think about this.” She paused and drew an innervating breath. “Before we get into a place where we could do real damage.”

 

“I
COULD HAVE TOLD YOU
agreeing to date Libby platonically was a bad idea,” Kurt told Holden the next evening, when he went over to his cousin's house for dinner. “Setting up parameters like that boxes you in.”

Paige handed Holden a cup of coffee and shooed everyone away from the dinner table. As she led the way to the family room, where the triplets were already playing, she stated her view. “Romances start all kinds of ways. Look at ours….” She flashed a grin at her husband, then turned back to Holden. “Kurt and I absolutely loathed each other—until the triplets were left on his parents' doorstep and I was drafted as their official foster mother.”

“True.” Kurt smiled, remembering his unconventional introduction to fatherhood. He sat down beside his wife on the sofa and kissed her temple. “Just goes to show what idiots we were.”

Paige leaned over to kiss him back.

Holden held up a hand, only half teasing. “Guys! Stop with the PDAs.” If he was going to work his dilemma out as quickly and efficiently as he wanted, he needed the two lovebirds' full attention. “I've got a problem here.”

Paige straightened. Suddenly more love doctor than pediatric surgeon, she stated soberly, “Yes, you do. And
it's more than the jelly and barbecue sauce that the triplets got all over your shirt during dinner.”

Holden looked down at the mess, abruptly wishing he and Libby had such little domestic problems every day, instead of the really big one confronting them.

Kurt toasted him with a coffee mug. “If you want to pursue Libby, you have to forgot about your chances of success and go after her with everything you've got.”

Paige snuggled into the curve of her husband's arm. “Kurt's right about that. We women respond to persistence.”

That, Holden knew. It was the rest of the situation that bothered him. “How can we be sure it's not a rebound thing for either of us?”

Paige tightened her fingers on Kurt's forearm. “Is she still in love with Percy?”

Holden frowned. “I don't think so.”

“Do you still have unrequited feelings for Heidi?”

“Definitely not.”

Paige went to her computer and looked a few things up. Finally, she sat back in relief and said, “Then, technically, it can't be a rebound romance for either of you, no matter what you're calling it. For that to occur, you still have to be reeling from your breakup.” She paused and looked up from the screen. “According to the experts, once you've come to terms with what happened, it doesn't matter how much time has or hasn't elapsed. It's safe to go on and start dating seriously again.”

One problem down.
“That's good to know,” Holden murmured.

The big question was, how was he going to convince Libby that he would never lose interest in her the way her late husband had?

 

B
E CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
, Aunt Ida had often cautioned. And in this situation, Libby thought Friday evening, her late aunt might just be right.

Libby had asked Holden to give her space.

And he had. For the past forty-two hours and thirteen minutes she had not heard from or seen the handsome rancher.

He hadn't even shown up for toddler library hours at her home. Miss Mim had served as her volunteer, helping patrons select and check out books. And now the two of them were headed to the Lone Star to meet Miss Rosa for dinner.

As Libby drove to the restaurant and dance hall, which was owned by Holden's mother, the retired librarian sized her up from the passenger seat. “You seem depressed, dear.”

Libby was. So much so that she felt like crying. And she never cried.

“Are the holidays getting you down?”

“A little,” she admitted.

The rest was Holden and the notion that she might be walking away from the best thing that had ever happened to her.

“The cure for the yuletide blues is staying busy.”

Libby smiled. “I know. And I have been.” She had even more activities planned for the upcoming weekend.

Sadly, none included Holden, who in just one week had become much more important to her than she could have imagined.

Miss Mim took her arm as they walked across the parking lot. “I hope you have your thinking cap on. Miss Rosa and I are going to need every bright idea you can muster up this evening.”

“I'll do my best to be brilliant,” she promised, tongue-in-cheek.

Miss Mim smiled.

Always happy to be helping someone, Libby smiled back.

Her spirits lifted even more as they walked into the restaurant. A beautiful tree stood in the lobby. Christmas music wafted from the stereo system. It being Friday evening, the place was crowded with families and couples on dates.

Greta McCabe met them at the hostess stand and showed them to a table by a window. “Your dinner partners should be here momentarily.”

“Dinner partners?” Libby echoed in confusion. She thought they were only meeting Miss Rosa.

“I invited someone else to help us brainstorm ways to solve the library crisis,” Miss Mim said, with sudden choir-girl innocence. “I hope you don't mind.”

“Why should I…” Libby took in the librarian's sudden smile and followed the direction of her wave.

Holden McCabe. Of course.

Why had she not seen this coming?

And why did he have to look so devastatingly handsome in a black blazer, light blue shirt and well-fitting jeans?

“Ladies,” Holden said, inundating Libby with his sexy scent as he neared. The familiar aromas of leather and soap mixed with the familiar masculine fragrance of his skin.

A shiver slid down Libby's spine as he paused to greet her with a casual hug and kiss to her brow that spoke volumes about his intentions—to everyone in the place.

Still smiling, he held out a chair for Miss Rosa, then paused to gallantly clasp Miss Mim's hand and say hello to her, too. Having worked his magic on all three women,
he circled the table and sat down next to Libby, his knee nudging hers slightly as he settled his tall frame.