The Wedding Assignment Read online

  He’d never seen her cry. The realization shook him. He’d seen her furious plenty of times, and breathless with passion, and engulfed in laughter. But the helpless expression on her face wasn’t one he’d ever associated with Rae-Anne Blackburn.

  “Rae-Anne, I’m sorry.” He started across the road but paused. The tight, protective way she was holding herself was somehow like a physical barrier between them, warning him away. “I still think you need to hear all this. My God, honey, you can’t possibly want to marry a man who’s capable of doing half of what Rodney’s done. He’s involved with some very dangerous people, and I just don’t want to see you stumble into the middle of a situation you don’t understand.”

  She didn’t answer right away. The tears in her eyes trembled slightly but didn’t fall. Wiley could tell how hard she was working at holding them back. The breeze was still lifting her veil gently to one side, tossing it up and down, the way someone might lift a baby’s hand to teach it to say goodbye. The motion looked forlorn, almost mournful.

  Wiley shook his head. Where the hell had that image come from? He didn’t usually indulge in fanciful thinking, and he certainly didn’t intend to say goodbye to Rae-Anne this time until he was absolutely certain she was safe and happy.

  “You haven’t given me a single shred of proof about any of this,” she said finally.

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as we get to somewhere a little more comfortable.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?”

  “What are you planning to do instead?”

  She looked around her. They were halfway up the long slope of a hill, with cattle pasture on both sides of them. One of the ranchers had been cutting deadwood and piling it up next to the fence, and the tall stack of weathered gray roots and branches seemed to catch Rae-Anne’s eye for a moment.

  In the distance Wiley could hear the sound of a cow lowing, and an even more distant one answering. He’d never been wild about the countryside, having spent far too much of his childhood staring out the window at it, wondering when the better future his parents had promised him was ever going to arrive.

  But he knew Rae-Anne loved the Texas landscape, especially the hill country. He saw her blue eyes scanning the tree-dotted fields and the long curve of road ahead, and wondered if she was trying to think of a way to fade into the scenery, free of Wiley and the questions he’d raised.

  Before she could answer his most recent question, though, Wiley caught the grinding noise of an engine laboring up the far side of the hill. Rae-Anne’s face lit up with renewed hope as she heard it, too.

  “That’ll be my ride,” she said, with more energy. “And about time, too. Excuse me, would you, Wiley?” She stepped farther away from him, into the very center of the road.

  “Rae-Anne…”

  She didn’t answer, but kept her gaze on the crest of the hill.

  “Rae-Anne, I’m not sure climbing into a truck with some stranger is a great idea.”

  “It’s not your problem. And if you hadn’t given those guys in the last truck the high sign, I’d have gotten a ride and been on my way to a telephone right now.”

  He felt a sudden tug of panic somewhere deep inside him. She wouldn’t just walk away on him, would she? After all they’d once meant to each other, after the disturbing scenario he’d just outlined for her—

  But that seemed to be what she intended to do. Wiley didn’t want to have to drag her bodily into his car if he could avoid it. But he’d be damned if he was going to let her disappear into the sunset, either, just because she didn’t like what he was saying.

  There had to be some middle ground, something between brute force and quiet submission. And suddenly Wiley knew what it was.

  “Sorry about putting the kibosh on that last ride for you, honey,” he said, making his voice sound as unconcerned as possible. “I was just reminding those guys of the cowboy’s code of honor. You know—never mess with another man’s woman.”

  He saw her blue eyes flash and felt a sense of relief that she’d gotten past the helplessness he’d glimpsed a moment ago. He hadn’t known what the hell to do with that new, unexpected side of Rae-Anne. But this one—the spitfire, the scrapper—was as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror.

  “I am not your woman!” She flicked her billowing veil out of her way with one hand as she answered him. “And I’ve waited tables and tended bar in enough little joints to know all about cowboys, thank you.”

  “Then you should have realized that folks around here aren’t given to interfering in each other’s business.” Wiley moved to his car and leaned against the hood with his arms crossed, looking just as casual as he could. “Although if you want to try again, I guess that’s up to you.”

  The truck he’d heard approaching had cleared the top of the hill, and the driver was slowing down as he took in the sight of Rae-Anne in her wedding dress waving at him from the middle of the road. Wiley could see the surprise on the rancher’s weather-lined face even before the truck had slowed to a halt.

  “I need a ride,” Rae-Anne was saying. “How far are we from the nearest town?”

  “Well, now.” The man tipped his hat back from his face and surveyed her from veil to hem. “It’s kind of a ways.”

  “Does that mean a mile? Ten miles?”

  “Closer to ten, I’d say.”

  “Can you take me there?” Wiley saw her eyes flick in his direction, daring him to interfere.

  He didn’t bother. He just held his pose—resigned, patient, puzzled. The rancher was taking it all in, looking more and more dubious.

  “Bit soon to be having a parting of the ways, isn’t it?” he wondered out loud.

  “We’re not married.” Judging by the tightness of RaeAnne’s tone, she realized just how unlikely her words sounded to the stranger.

  “That so?” The man appealed to Wiley, who shrugged.

  “Somebody told me it was bad luck to try to see the bride before she walked up the aisle,” he said. “Guess I should have listened.”

  “Well, I guess so.” The driver chuckled, but there was something pitying in the sound. “Your car working okay, mister?”

  Wiley nodded. “Car’s not the problem,” he said, looking significantly at Rae-Anne.

  She was looking at him with her blue glare turned up to its full voltage. The setup had worked perfectly—the rancher had come across an arguing couple, apparently newly married or just about to be, and he wasn’t about to get into the middle of what was clearly a complicated mess.

  “Well, as long as you folks aren’t stranded out here, I’d better be getting on,” he said.

  “Wait a minute—”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” He touched the brim of his hat in apology. “But this is between the two of you. Hope you get it sorted out.”

  He eased the protesting gearshift into first and the truck chugged away along the winding road.

  Rae-Anne stood looking after it in silence for almost a minute. She seemed to be replaying the scene in her head, trying to figure out whether there was anything she could have done to counteract the impression she and Wiley were bound to leave on people’s minds. He saw her look at the wide, glittering skirt of her own gown and shake her head slowly.

  “Don’t you dare say I told you so,” she warned him.

  Wiley uncrossed his arms and held his hands out palms up. “Am I saying anything?” he asked.

  “You’re thinking it. And you’re thinking that the same damn thing is going to happen no matter who comes along this road. And now the sun’s starting to go down—”

  Her voice faltered a little over her last words, and Wiley felt a renewed twinge of alarm at the sound. He’d spent a lot of time this past week imagining this scene, but it had always featured a Rae-Anne who was as feisty and combative as she’d been when he’d known her ten years ago. The thought that she might be on the verge of falling apart on him was one he wasn’t sure what to do with.r />
  But she seemed to have gotten herself in hand, although she’d crossed her arms over her belly again in that protective gesture that seemed so unlike the Rae-Anne he knew. “Do you have anyplace definite in mind to go?” she asked him abruptly.

  “Yeah.”

  She didn’t ask for details. He watched her look around at the fields on both sides of the road and saw her frown into the early twilight that made it hard to focus on the scenery around them. Was she actually going to get into his car and come with him?

  Not without one last attempt to do it her own way, she wasn’t. She started to sigh but suppressed the sound and turned in the direction the pickup truck had come from. With her shoulders set at a square and determined angle and her veil drifting out behind her again like a gentle cloud, she started to walk.

  It was nearly ten miles to the next town, the driver had said. It was at least that far to the last settlement they’d passed on their way here, and even ranch dwellings had been few and far between along the route. But Rae-Anne was walking again anyway, seeming determined to keep moving under her own steam if she could.

  The problem was that she couldn’t. She’d only taken a few steps when he heard a low exclamation of pain, followed by a quiet curse. She paused, then started again. But this time it was clear that she was hobbling awkwardly, and that the cause of it was the pain in her feet.

  They must be badly blistered, Wiley thought. She’d covered at least three miles in those ridiculous little fairyprincess slippers on a road that wasn’t designed for foot traffic in the first place, unless you were a cow. He couldn’t blame her for limping.

  He wondered how long she would keep it up. As it turned out, it wasn’t long.

  She was halfway to the crest of the hill when she turned around. Her expression, or what Wiley could see of it in the quickly dimming light, was defiant.

  “Now I know exactly how Cinderella felt just before the clock struck,” she said.

  Wiley chuckled. This was the Rae-Anne he remembered, all right. He slid into the driver’s seat of his car and caught up with her in seconds.

  “Will you take me someplace where I can use a phone?” she asked.

  “I’ll take you someplace where we can finish the conversation we started about Rodney. If you still want to call him when we’re done that, you’re welcome to.”

  She considered it, and seemed to decide it was the best she was going to do at the moment. She nodded without speaking, and Wiley was out of the car and striding around to hold the passenger door open for her almost before she had completed the gesture.

  “Your coach awaits, your ladyship,” he said.

  His relief was making him flippant. But he almost wished he could take the words back when he saw the look that crossed Rae-Anne’s face. He wondered whether she’d been going up the aisle to meet Rodney Dietrich because she’d hoped he could give her all those fairy-tale things—like love, and contentment, and happily ever after—that Wiley himself had never promised her. If that was the case, his news about Rodney must be hitting her hard.

  And Wiley was no more able than he’d ever been to offer promises about anything at all. The only thing he could promise Rae-Anne was his honesty and a ride to where they were going.

  And she seemed to know that. Her voice was sharper as she said, “I know this kind of coach, Wiley. It’s the one that turns into a pumpkin when you least expect it. Let’s get on the road before that happens, all right?”

  It took a while for her to fit the folds of her wedding dress into the small space of the car’s front seat. Neither of them spoke as she was doing it. Wiley closed the door gently on that creation of lace and satin and pearls and headed to the other side of the car without any idea what was going through Rae-Anne’s mind. And they both stayed silent as he got into the driver’s seat and drove toward the darkening western sky.

  The cabin looked small from the outside, but it had two bedrooms and a huge bathroom behind its log exterior.

  “And no phone,” Rae-Anne pointed out.

  “The phone’s in the office. We’re supposed to talk, anyway, before you use the phone, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  She didn’t sound any too pleased about it, either. She seemed happier about the news that Wiley had brought a change of clothes—”Assuming you’re still the same size,” he’d told her—and that there was a pair of sneakers as well as some jeans and a T-shirt in the small overnight bag he had stowed in the trunk of his car.

  It was disconcerting to think about Wiley standing in a women’s clothing store trying to remember the exact shape of her waist and hips, but she didn’t tell him that. And she certainly wasn’t about to mention the fact that her old size wasn’t likely to fit her for too much longer, anyway.

  For the moment it was enough to know that she could get out of her wedding dress and into some clothes that would make her feel more like her real self. Darker thoughts about Rodney kept nudging at her, and so did all her unanswered questions about Wiley’s reappearance.

  But she’d decided, on that windswept, lonely stretch of farm road, that there was no way she could sort everything out all at once. The smartest thing she could do was to take one step at a time. And the first step involved getting out of her wedding dress.

  Unfortunately, as soon as she tried it she discovered that it wasn’t something she could manage without help.

  The dress had a long row of buttons that ran down her back from mid-spine to below her waist. With her upper body hemmed into the tight bodice and her arms restricted by the short off-the-shoulder sleeves, there was no way she could twist her arms far enough to undo the buttons.

  She tried anyway. She contorted herself every way she could think of, and then invented a couple more, but the dress stayed firmly in place. The only thing she accomplished was to come up with some very unkind ideas about what to do with the guy who’d designed the thing in the first place.

  Asking Wiley for help was out of the question.

  But so was spending the rest of her mortal life trapped in her wedding gown. And the more she thought about herself as a prisoner, the more uncomfortable and fidgety she felt inside the satin-and-pearl casing that Aunt Lindie and Renee had buttoned her into this afternoon.

  It would have been much easier to march into the next room and say, “Wiley, I need help,” if she hadn’t still been fighting off the memory of the way his arms had felt closing around her.

  And the scent of his skin.

  And the dimple that had creased his tanned face once or twice while he’d been needling her this afternoon. He’d always looked unbearably sexy with that dimple showing. The accompanying dazzle of his smile and the glint in his dark brown eyes had never hurt, either.

  How the hell was she supposed to walk out there and ask for his help undressing when her whole body felt invaded by memories that she’d managed to suppress for so long? Wiley’s hands on her body… Wiley’s dark, devilish grin curving against her bare skin… his hoarse cry of delight as they’d met and joined each other in a passion that had never been matched in Rae-Anne’s experience or even in her imagination…

  It was impossible. And she couldn’t think of any way around it.

  She pressed her hands over her belly again and fought for sanity. If Wiley wasn’t dead and Rodney wasn’t who she’d thought he was, what on earth could she rely on?

  The answer came quite calmly out of some hidden corner of her mind. You can rely on yourself, the same as you always have. The words were quiet but definite, and she felt herself listening hard, hanging on as hard as she could to this much-needed scrap of wisdom.

  She had to rely on herself, now more than ever. There was another human being depending on her, counting on her to do the best thing for both of them. It was amazing how the knowledge of that tiny, unformed life inside her was able to cut through her confusion and put her fears into some kind of perspective.

  It made it easier to see, for example, that she was going
to have to get out of her wedding dress one way or another, and that she had only one option for assistance. Limping badly on feet that had become far more painfully blistered than she’d realized, she went to the front bedroom that Wiley had claimed as his.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “But the plain truth is that this dress just isn’t designed for solo operation. It took two people to get me into it, and if I’m going to get out of it again, Wiley, you’re going to have to give me a hand.”

  Chapter 4

  Wiley had turned on the lamps around the front room, and the place looked unexpectedly cozy after the darkness outside. The red blanket on the double bed glowed warm in the light, and the carpet on the floor was soft under RaeAnne’s blistered feet.

  The look on Wiley’s face, though, was anything but soothing. He was giving her a head-to-foot assessment, deliberate and thorough, and his eyes were darkening from brown to nearly black as he looked at her. Rae-Anne felt something inside her responding to the change in him, something primitive that kept getting past all her efforts to prevent it.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked slowly.

  “Believe me, I’m sure.” If she could just hold on to this matter-of-fact tone, she thought, she would be all right. She half turned, sweeping aside her veil so he could see the little row of buttons at her back. “I can’t reach these buttons, no matter what.”

  She let the veil fall again, shivering slightly as its light folds settled themselves over her bare shoulders. “Let’s just do it and not talk about it, all right?” she added.

  It seemed to take him forever to answer, but maybe that was because of the way time seemed to have slowed down since she’d entered his room. Something strange was happening, Rae-Anne thought, something unsettling, almost magical. She could feel the quiet solitude of the cabin wrapping itself around her like a cloak, closing her in with all the unresolved memories and desires that Wiley’s disappearance had left in her life.