His Shotgun Proposal

With an economy of movements he scooped up the panties without even looking at them and let them dangle, without dignity, on the end of his index finger. “With my compliments,” he said.

Abbie snatched the lingerie and stuffed it into the mangled suitcase. “Yes, well, thanks. Hope you find whoever it is you’re looking for.”

He shrugged, straightened and turned to walk away. Abbie knew she was a fool to let him go without a word. She owed him an explanation. Well, at least, she owed him the knowledge of his impending fatherhood. If she’d never seen him again, she could have lived with knowing she’d had no chance to tell him. She could have found a way of explaining to their child that one parent would always remain a mystery. But now he was here and he deserved to know, whether or not she wanted to tell him.

Gathering the rest of her scattered belongings, she closed the suitcase as best she could and stood straight, holding it tightly in her arms. She’d just stack the luggage on the rack, get it out of the way, then she’d walk over and admit she was indeed the you he’d thought she was. With a glance, she noted the well-formed shape of his backside and remembered vividly the way that same backside had looked without tight-fitting jeans. She jerked her gaze from the hip pockets of his Levi’s and checked to see if the blonde was still there. She was. As was the truck. The big, black truck with the emblem of a horse’s head stamped on the side. A horse head with full Arabian show gear—horse savvy or not, Abbie recognized the regalia—and, in case she hadn’t, the words Desert Rose circled across the top and Arabians looped up from the bottom.

Oh, no! This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be true. Fate wouldn’t play this kind of joke on her. The mystery man couldn’t be Jessica Coleman’s cousin. That would be too—she couldn’t even think of a word to describe how perfectly awful that would be. It didn’t help to think the sequence of events made an odd sort of sense now, either. The party after the graduation she’d shared with Jessica, about three hundred other grad students and whoever else had shown up to help celebrate, the fact that both their families were there, but somehow, in all the fanfare and folderol, none of the Colemans had gotten introduced to any of the Joneses. The way she’d met the mystery man at the outdoor, portable bar moments after Jessica had mentioned her cousin had gone to get a drink. It was all so impossible, and yet suddenly so completely plausible that Abbie forced her gaze up from the Desert Rose crest to the face of the man she now knew without a doubt was here to pick her up. Could this situation be any more embarrassing?

“Mac,” she whispered aloud, because she had to feel the shape of his name in her mouth, had to affirm that he was both mystery man and Jessica’s cousin, had to do something to keep from melting into a puddle of humiliation right there on the hot Austin airport pavement.

He couldn’t have heard her whisper. Yet he turned, nevertheless, still questioning her presence, her identity, her denials. But one look at her ashen face must have told the story. His gaze tracked hers to the Desert Rose insignia on the door of the truck and then returned with a flare of comprehension. His chin came up as he tugged the brim of his hat down to shade his eyes, and she noted, as if from a great distance, that his shoulders were moving up and down, up and down, in coordination with the rapid expansion of his chest as he inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

It was a loud moment, unique in that while she was incapable of hearing anything except the frantic flutter of her own breath rasping like a bellows from her lungs, she absorbed the noise of traffic, of planes taking off overhead, of voices all around, of arrivals and welcomes, and car engines starting, revving, receding. She listened, though, only to the echoes of his voice in her mind and knew he was grappling with the same set of impossible, improbable, implacable chain of events she’d just worked her way through. She knew, too, the instant he reached the same inevitable conclusion.

“Abbie?” His voice was incredulous, hesitant with dismay, rough with amazement. “Are you Abbie?”

Chapter Two

Mac’s boots might as well have fused with the hot pavement for all his ability to move them. He couldn’t seem to do anything except stare at Abigail Jones, his mystery date, his cousin’s friend, the woman he’d come to the airport to meet. How was it that fate had turned aside every attempt he’d made in the past five months to discover who she was only to unaccountably drop her back into his life at this precise instant? Why had she denied knowing him when he remembered her so vividly? How could she have forgotten him when his whole body held the memory of hers?

She looked the same, but different, too. She’d worn a short, slender, sensational dress the night they’d met—except for later, when she’d worn nothing at all—and now she was dressed in a baggy shirt that was too big for her by half, but which made her look small and absurdly sexy. She might be a little more filled out than before, but that could just be the clothes and the way her hair was pulled back at her nape instead of curling loosely about her shoulders as it had that night. The glasses were definitely new, though.

She must have been wearing contacts when they’d met. Or maybe she hadn’t needed glasses then. Or maybe she had but hadn’t gotten them yet. What if she hadn’t seen him clearly at all that night, and that was why she claimed she didn’t recognize him now? Except she had recognized him. Her bowed head, the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze, the breathy, scattered tones of her voice all belied her spoken doubt. He’d have known her anywhere, anytime…the eyes as blue as Texas bluebonnets, hair not quite blond, not quite brown, but a soft, honeyed shade in between; the slight upward tilt at the end of her nose; the deceptively demure lift of her chin; the set of her shoulders; the warm tones of her skin. In that one glimpse, memory had flooded his mind’s eye with images of her. His body, too, remembered, and he’d known her as much by the physical response as by sight.

Jessica must have set this up somehow. But how could she have known he and Abbie had ever met? He hadn’t even made the connection until just now. And Abbie looked equally astonished. Appalled, even, as she stood there, clasping a dilapidated suitcase in her arms and staring at him as if he were the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He was surprised to see her, but not shaken, as she appeared to be. She’d said there was a boyfriend with her, which had made Mac unaccountably angry. But there was still no sign of another man, and Jess certainly was expecting only one guest. Mac figured any significant other of Abbie’s was a long way from here, or invented on the spot to save embarrassment.

But whether or not there was a boyfriend, Abbie had been traveling and she obviously needed help with her luggage. Mac couldn’t just keep standing there, stuck in the moment, awash in unaccustomed emotion, wondering how he could keep from scaring her away again, wondering if it was all right to admit he was glad—so glad—to see her again.

“Hey, remember me?” said a voice near his ear. The leggy blonde, who’d been in the process of inviting him to spend some quality time with her at the Four Seasons. Betsy or Bambi or whatever the hell she’d said her name was had been completely forgotten the moment his gaze had fallen on Abbie. Abbie. Abigail Jones. What a plain and glorious name. How well it suited her, too. He wanted to say it over and over. He wanted to welcome her back into his life with a kiss. Oh, yeah, he especially wanted to kiss her. But his knees were stupidly weak and his heart was beating ridiculously fast and she was just standing there staring at him as someone tugged at his elbow, demanded his attention.

“What’s the matter?” the blonde asked. “Is the heat getting to you? You were about to offer me a ride, remember?”

“I was?” He couldn’t take his eyes off Abbie, who continued to clutch the one suitcase with its wispy flags of underwear peeking out around the edges, as she trundled the whole rickety stack of luggage toward him. He stepped out, offering in a gesture to take the suitcase from her arms, but she stopped like a skittish filly at his first advance and eyed him nervously.

“You’re Mac?” Her voice was a shaky whisper, and he edged closer to hear her.

“Mac Coleman,” he said, as if they needed an introduction. “I’m Jessica’s cousin.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Abbie wrinkled her nose, then tried to adjust her glasses via facial contortions because her hands were wrapped around the broken suitcase, and, for some reason, she didn’t seem to want to let go. “Holy Maloney, this is awkward.”

“Doesn’t need to be.” He put his hands on the suitcase, wanting to be gallant and charming and helpful, but when he gave the bag a tug, she clasped it all the tighter. “I can show you Jess’s picture in my wallet,” he offered, “if it’ll reassure you and make you feel more at ease. She really wanted to come in to meet you today, but there’s a lot of work at the ranch, what with my brothers getting married recently and not spending as much time helping as usual, and I had business in town today anyway, so here we are.” He was talking too much, trying too hard, wanting quite desperately to see her smile.

She sighed instead. “This is really awkward.”

“And here I am, thinking that seeing you again is such a pleasant surprise.”

“Yes, well, you haven’t seen that much of me yet.” She glanced at the other woman, licked her lips, pressed them together, and Mac, interpreting the glance as anxiety, hurried to reassure her.

“She was just asking me where she could catch the hotel shuttle,” he said, gesturing dismissively at the blonde, never transferring his full—and hopefully charming—attention from Abbie. “How have you been since…December?”

Her blue eyes shifted doubtfully to him. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sucked in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and said in a rush, “Pregnant. How have you been?”

His smile faded, along with the excitement and possibility that seeing her again had evoked. Pregnant? What had she said? “Pregnant?” he repeated, his gut clenching in protest as his gaze dropped helplessly to her midsection.

“Pregnant,” she confirmed, thrusting the suitcase at him and revealing the unmistakably rounded contours of her belly beneath the oversize white shirt. “Congratulations, it’s yours.”

ABBIE COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d just blurted it out that way. But then, there probably wasn’t a good way to tell a complete stranger you were having his baby. Miss Manners ought to put together a pamphlet of suggestions. Mac’s expression was turning grimmer by the second, but oddly enough, Abbie felt a certain amount of relief. It had been a strain to keep the secret and now, whether for better or worse, it was out of the bag. She turned her attention to the other woman, who was eyeing her with a curious hostility. “Hi,” she said, offering a handshake with her now unencumbered hand. “I’m Abbie Jones. I’m sorry to have interrupted. I know this must seem a little strange.”

“This is Bambi.” Mac’s voice had all the warmth of a refrigerator as he butted in to make the introduction. “We’re giving her a ride to her hotel before we head out to the ranch.”

“Brandi,” the blonde corrected amiably. “But maybe I should go look for that shuttle and let you two work out your…problem.”

But Mac—pale beneath his dark skin—stayed her with a glance. “No. Please,” he requested in a voice no one in their right mind would argue with. “I want to give you a ride to the hotel. It will be my pleasure. Once her—” he jerked his head toward Abbie “—boyfriend gets out here, we’ll be ready to roll and as friendly as four coyotes on a foggy day.”

“There’s no boyfriend,” Abbie admitted in a rush, determined to be truthful from here on in. “You startled me and I…well, I just made him up for protection. Before I knew we were going to have to get better acquainted.”

Mac looked at her, clearly unimpressed with the truth. “Get in,” he said.

Abbie didn’t know how this could work out, but she wasn’t getting into that truck, and she didn’t really think Brandi should do so, either. “I’m not going to the ranch,” she announced with more gusto than guts. “Not now.”

Mac tossed her suitcase into the back of the truck and reached for another, his gaze dropping to her rounded waistline and skittering quickly away. “You’re going to the ranch. Jess is expecting you. She’s expecting me to get you there safe and sound. You’re going.”

Abbie raised her chin. “I’m not.”

The red plaid suitcase landed in the pickup bed, and was quickly followed by the duct-taped brown tweed. “Yes,” he said, “you are.”

“I can get a cab.” Brandi edged toward the curb, but Mac touched her arm and his voice warmed. “I want to take you to the hotel. So, please. Get in the truck.”

Brandi looked at Abbie, assessing perhaps the odds of getting caught in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel against the odds of getting a cab against the odds that this awkward situation might be resolved in her favor. Her glance skipped to the Desert Rose insignia on the truck, flickered over Abbie’s tousled appearance and then returned to Mac, accompanied by a beatific smile. “Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” Although anyone listening might have thought otherwise. “Happy to do it.”

He wasn’t happy about anything, Abbie thought, as she watched him toss in the last suitcase, uncaring as to where—or even if—it landed. Okay, so she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Anger was a perfectly understandable first reaction. Impending parenthood wasn’t always welcome news, even under far better circumstances than this. He hadn’t, obviously, been expecting to see her ever again, had been as surprised by her as she had been by him. Even without the pregnancy, he might be forgiven a lack of excitement at seeing her. He had, after all, been flirting rather successfully with beautiful Brandi before Abbie appeared and put his agenda on the skids. Well, thinking she had done anything more than delay the outcome of his flirtation was probably stretching it, considering that Brandi was sitting pretty in the middle of the truck’s bench seat at this very moment.

Still, Abbie didn’t see how any good could come from letting a darkly handsome Texan tell her what to do. He’d been her accomplice in getting into this sorry situation in the first place and that was quite enough help, thank you very much. “I’m not going with you,” she said firmly. “Take my bags out of the back of the truck right now so I can put them on the first plane out of here.”

He looked at her across the expanse of pickup bed and luggage. “Too late for second thoughts, Abigail. If you hadn’t wanted to stake your claim on me, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Now, get in and let’s go.”

“Stake a claim?” Abbie repeated, not certain she’d heard him correctly. “What does that mean? You think I knew you and Jessie were cousins? Is that what you’re saying?”

He shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”

“Well, that’s insane. If I’d known you were Jessica’s cousin, you’d better believe I’d be anywhere but here.”

“Easy enough to say now that you are here. But regardless of what I believe to be true and not true, I’m taking you to the ranch. Jessica wants you there and I’m not going to be the one to explain to her why you’ve suddenly changed your mind. Now, get in and let’s go as planned.” He stressed the word, making it sound ominous and threatening.

“You can’t force me to go with you.”

“The hell I can’t. You’ve just accused me of being the father of your baby. I think that gives me a little say in where you go from here. Cut to the chase, Abigail Jones. The Desert Rose has been your destination for months. There’s no good reason to balk now, when you’re so close to your goal.”

Oh, he was arrogant. And maddening. And sure of himself. And wrong, wrong, wrong. He was also so handsome it made her chest hurt. “Fine,” she said, mainly because her choices at the moment were extremely limited and because she was weary all the way to the roots of her hair. “But I’m not staying.”

He just looked at her, coolly disbelieving. “Your display of reluctance is duly noted. Now, get in.” Then he got in on the driver’s side and started the engine.

Abbie debated her options and decided that kicking truck tires would be about as pointless as any other show of defiance. She thought about climbing into the back of the pickup and tossing out her luggage as haphazardly as he’d tossed it in. She could be in Dallas in an hour, in Little Rock an hour after that. But now that she knew who he was, now that she’d told him the truth, sooner or later, in one place or another, she’d have to face him again. And now was as good a time as any. He was a jerk, but he might as well learn straight away that she was no coward.

She scooted in beside Brandi and slammed the door.

“…AND WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT? Right in the middle of the presentation, the thing breaks and all my careful planning vanishes as quickly as the available balance on my credit card!”

Mac changed gears and merged into the lane of traffic while bubbly Brandi filled the stilted atmosphere inside the truck with chatter. He wished he hadn’t insisted she come with them, wished he’d never pretended an interest in her at all, wished he could yell mightily at Abbie, who was all but hugging the passenger side door in a wretched silence. Not that she deserved even the slightest hint of his compassion. She’d set him up, dammit. Laid her trap so cleverly he’d practically begged to walk into it.

A baby.

Well, it wasn’t his baby, that was for sure. No way in hell was she going to pin this on him. No, sir. Uh-uh. No two ways about it. She’d already admitted she was a liar. Claiming there was a boyfriend with her at the airport. Ha! That had been her first mistake.

No, choosing him as her target had been her first mistake. He was no gullible Gus, ready to accept her claim as truth, her accusations for fact. She was grasping at straws if she believed he was so easily duped. He knew what she was after—the Coleman name, the Desert Rose ranch, the royal heritage of a lost prince of Arabia. Most likely Jessica had been manipulated into filling in all the blank spaces of his life that Abbie hadn’t been able to ferret out on her own. No doubt, Abbie knew the story of his past as well as he did, himself. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover she had a scrapbook containing all the newspaper clippings that made up his history—Rose Coleman’s storybook wedding to Ibrahim El Jeved, the crown prince of Sorajhee. The birth of a son, Alim, now called Alex. The birth of twins, Makin and Kadar, whose names were later changed to Mac and Cade. Ibrahim’s murder. Rose’s banishment and reported death. The rescue of three young princes by their uncle. The success of the Coleman-Grayson business partnership. The prime Arabian stock bred and trained on the Desert Rose. The secrecy, the speculation, the scandals of the royal family of El Jeved.

Mac figured Abbie knew it all, right down to the last decimal point in his personal bank account. Oh, yeah. She’d snowed Jessica, somehow, and gotten close enough to find out all she needed to know to seduce him. Sweet, innocent little Abbie had a calculating heart and a devious agenda. Well, he’d be damned if he’d give her even a penny for her trouble, much less his name and heritage. It wasn’t his baby. It couldn’t be his. One night? A million-to-one chance? No. No. She didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. He knew her type, had been badly burned before, and it was not a lesson he had any intention of repeating.

He should have made her find her own way out to the ranch. But some masochistic impulse had made him order her to get into his truck, had urged him to punish himself at the same time he let her know, in no uncertain terms, that he was nobody’s fool. Chances are, though, even had he tried to send her on her way, she’d have beaten him home. Women like her always had a backup plan.

“Even the best-laid plans can’t guarantee success,” he said pointedly, for Abbie’s benefit. “Sometimes a scheme is doomed from the inception.”

“My, my, don’t you have a cynical attitude,” Brandi observed in cheery tones as she rubbed her shoulder against his arm. “But, as it turned out, I still managed to snag the account. There’s more than one way to get a man to say yes. Isn’t that right, Abbie?”

Abbie raised her head and for a second, her eyes locked with Mac’s before she turned away. “Frankly, I’ve never thought a man was worth that much effort.”

Brandi laughed and blithely continued on with her chatter while Abbie returned to staring out the window and Mac fumed over her haughty tone of voice. She had no business taking the offensive like that, sounding wounded, somehow, in spite of the sting in her words. He heartily wished he’d left both women on the curb at the airport. “Four Seasons hotel,” he said, relieved to see the hotel come into view.

“So soon?” Brandi lurched forward to see, jostling Abbie in the process.

Mac wanted to grab her arm and tell her to be more careful. Abbie was pregnant, for Pete’s sake. But then he had no right or reason to think Abbie needed his protection. Or to give it, if she did. Truth be told, he should be thanking Brandi for providing him the protection of her chatter this far. “I’ll walk you in,” he said, as he parked in a No Parking space in front of the hotel, opened the door and stepped out.

Brandi slid out of the seat after him, not offering so much as a glance at Abbie, much less a word of goodbye, chattering instead to Mac like some silly magpie.

Abbie was the one who said a warm “nice to have met you,” even though she’d been mainly ignored throughout the trip. Mac felt irritated by one woman’s lack of manners and by the other one’s innate courtesy. And on top of it, he recognized a strong thrust of concern at the weary note that echoed in Abbie’s voice. Probably part of her act, a link in the plan to claim his future for herself and her baby. Well, she’d find it rough going. He had experience with women like her and their end-justifies-the-means attitude. It’d be a cold day in the Sahara before he set himself up to play the fool again.

When he got back into the truck cab, a full twenty minutes had elapsed. Most of it while he stood inside the lobby listening to Brandi as she did her best to persuade him to return later for cocktails, dinner and a late-night dessert in her room, but mainly while he watched the truck, making sure Abbie didn’t get out and signal for a cab. He didn’t know why he should care if she did. The sooner she figured out her little plan had run smack into the proverbial mountain, the better off both of them would be.

“I didn’t much figure you’d have the good sense to slip away when I gave you the chance,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “Your kind never does.”

“My kind, as you put it, does better at escaping when your kind leaves the keys in the truck.” Anger flashed in her eyes and he met it with cool deliberation. “Besides, if you were so anxious for me to leave, why didn’t you let me go at the airport instead of dragging me all the way into town?”

“I was only trying to be accommodating.”

“You were demonstrating to me that responsibility isn’t your forte. Fine, I got the message. Now, take me back to the airport and I’ll be out of your life for good.”

“If it wasn’t for Jessica, I’d do just that and call your bluff, but good.”

She looked down at her stomach. “You think this is a bluff?”

Easing the pickup into the flow of traffic that was always heavy in downtown Austin, he felt the sting of her righteous—now, there was a misnomer—anger and smiled lazily. “You’ll find I’m not one to mince words,” he said. “And I don’t take kindly to being accused of something I didn’t do.”

“What are you saying?” Abbie asked tightly. “That perhaps you have an identical twin who was in that hotel room with us last December and at the moment of conception it was him instead of you?”