Do You Take This Maverick?

“I’ve missed you, little darlin’,” Levi said, smiling down into his daughter’s face. “Did you miss me, too?”

More than anything in the world, Claire thought, observing the way he was with Bekka. And more than you’ll ever know.

With more than a little effort, she blocked and shut down her feelings. She was not about to own up to what she was thinking or say the words out loud.

That was all she needed to do, Claire upbraided herself. If Levi had a clue as to what she was thinking, he would just take it to mean that he could move back into their apartment and, just like that, it would be business as usual.

Would that be so bad? she questioned herself.

Yes! Yes, it would be that bad. She’d be back to spending all her time taking care of the baby and missing Levi, while he’d be spending all his free time away from her.

Supposedly securing their future… if she were to believe him.

She had to remember how that felt—missing him, being taken for granted—she silently counseled herself.

But all that staying angry required effort. Effort that was hard to maintain when part of her kept longing for the touch of his hand, the feel of his lips on hers.

* * *

Montana Mavericks: What Happened at the Wedding? A weekend Rust Creek Falls will never forget!

Do You Take This Maverick?

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

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To Gail Chasan,

who is always in my corner.

Thank you.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

“I don’t see what you’re so mad about.”

Levi Wyatt stared at his wife of two years in absolute confusion. The second he had opened the door and walked into their room, Claire had lit into him, reading him the riot act.

Granted, it was almost dawn and he had never stayed out anywhere near this late before, but that was no reason for Claire to be so upset.

This was definitely a side of his wife he had never seen before.

Industrious, ambitious and hardworking, Levi rarely, if ever, took any time off from his job at the furniture store. As the recently promoted store manager, most of the time he even worked on the weekends, but this weekend—the Fourth of July—he’d taken off to escort Claire to a wedding in Rust Creek Falls. He could have skipped it, personally, but it seemed to be really important to Claire that he attend, too. Her grandparents were putting them up for the weekend at the boarding house that they ran.

The wedding was held in the town’s park, and it was a great afternoon. The ceremony was crowded and joyous, the reception even more so. A few of the attendees had decided to get up a little friendly game of poker. Levi wasn’t quite sure why, but he was really tempted by the game, so he’d joined in.

Since he, Claire and their eight-month-old daughter, Bekka, were all spending the weekend at the boarding house, he felt that Claire wouldn’t lack for company while he was gone. Especially since Melba Strickland, Claire’s grandma, had graciously offered to babysit so the couple could enjoy the wedding together. This seemed to be the perfect opportunity for him to knock off a little steam.

Besides, he noticed that Claire was busy talking to a woman she knew at the reception when he’d allowed himself to be lured away by the promise of a little harmless diversion.

It was only supposed to be for an hour—two tops.

It had run over.

Way over.

But that still wasn’t any reason for Claire to explode this way.

“Oh, you don’t, do you?” Claire cried heatedly. Up until this point she had managed to keep her ever-growing discontent under control. She’d never allowed Levi to even catch a glimpse of it, just as she wouldn’t dream of letting him see her without her makeup on or with her hair looking anything but perfect. For Claire, it was all about maintaining the illusion of perfection. It always had been.

But tonight, for some reason, she was feeling rather light-headed, although all she’d had to drink at the reception was some of the wedding punch. Despite her petite frame, punch wouldn’t affect her like this, she reasoned.

Still, because of her light-headedness, her discontent had slipped out of its usual restraints, and before she knew it, the second Levi had walked into their room at the boarding house, she was giving it to her husband with both barrels.

“No,” Levi answered, standing his ground and waiting for Claire to say something that made sense to him, “I don’t. I’ve been working really hard lately, putting in some really long hours. I came to the wedding because you wanted to come and when this poker game came up, I didn’t see the harm in taking a little time off—”

“Didn’t see the harm?” Claire echoed incredulously. Her eyes narrowed into angry, accusing slits. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Well, I’ll tell you what the harm is. The harm is that you just walked off and left me—again.” Not wanting to wake up anyone at the boarding house, she struggled to keep from shouting at him, but it wasn’t easy.

“Again? What again?” he demanded, stunned. “Claire, what are you talking about? When did I leave you?”

Was he serious? He couldn’t possibly be as clueless as he was pretending to be, could he?

“When didn’t you leave me?” Claire countered, her anger all but running over like a boiling pot of water. “You’re always going off out of town to some sales meetings or other. And if it’s not a meeting, then it’s a seminar.” She said the word as if it was a lie that he fed her. “I never get to see you anymore,” she complained.

Levi felt his own temper surging, something that almost never happened. Ordinarily, he could put up with his wife’s fluctuating moods, but right now he felt as if he’d had more than he could stand.

“You’re seeing me now.” Levi spread his hands wide, as if to highlight his presence. “I’m standing right here,” he pointed out.

Was he mocking her? His attitude just kept fueling her anger. “You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean,” he told her, feeling more and more bewildered and put upon by the second. “I’m going to those sales meetings and seminars because my job demands it. I’m doing it for you and the baby,” Levi stressed.

But Claire saw it differently. “You’re doing it to get away from me and the baby.”

Levi blew out a long breath as he gave up. There was no reasoning with her. “You’re tired, you don’t know what you’re saying,” Levi concluded, feeling rather desperate. He just wanted this to stop.

Her big brown eyes—eyes he had fallen in love with the first time he saw her—were all but shooting daggers at him. “Oh, so now I’m just crazy?”

Where had that come from? “I didn’t say that,” Levi insisted.

She was twisting everything, he thought helplessly. He felt as if he had stepped into quicksand and was sinking fast, no matter how hard he tried to pull himself free.

“Maybe you didn’t say it but that’s what you implied,” Claire retorted haughtily. “And who could blame me if I was crazy—which I’m not,” Claire underscored. “The only one I get to talk to all day is a colicky, crying baby. Don’t get me wrong, Levi, I love Bekka, but you’re never around.” It was an angry accusation, one she dared him to deny.

“Yes, I am,” Levi insisted. “I come home to you every night,” Levi told her.

“Sure, you come home,” she jeered. “You come home to fall into bed, dead asleep before your head hits the pillow.”

“I put in long hours, Claire, and I’m tired,” Levi tried to explain.

Claire’s back went up as she instantly took offense at what she thought he was implying. “Oh, and I don’t and I’m not?”

Levi threw up his hands, thoroughly frustrated. He had stayed longer at the game than he had intended and lost money, to boot. He hadn’t meant for any of that to happen. He wasn’t really sure why it had happened. But he knew that her anger was way out of proportion.

“Look, let’s not get into this now,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay—and you’re not sorry,” she told him angrily. “But I am. I’m sorry I ever met you. I’m sorry I ever married you!”

Levi was close to being speechless. “Claire, what are you saying?”

Heightened fury was all but etched into her fine features and had colored her cheeks to a bright shade of pink.

“What I’m saying is that it’s over,” she retorted furiously. “I made a mistake. We both made a mistake. We should have never gotten married in the first place.”

All this because he stayed out playing poker too long? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Claire—”

“Get out!” she cried. Circling him, she put her hands on his back and started pushing him out the door into the hallway. “Get out now!”

“Claire—” It was all Levi could get out of his mouth. He was completely stunned and unable to even understand how they had gotten to this impasse so quickly.

“Now!” she yelled, managing to shove him out all the way only because she had caught him so completely off guard.

The second he was across the threshold and in the hall, Claire pulled off her wedding ring.

“Here, I don’t want this anymore, either!” she cried, throwing her wedding ring at him.

The next second she slammed the door shut behind him.

He heard the click and knew she’d flipped the lock. Claire had the only key.

Levi stood there in front of the door to their room for several moments, dazed and wondering if he was hallucinating all this for some reason. What had just happened seemed to have come out of nowhere.

This trip was supposed to have picked up Claire’s spirits. Instead, he felt that he had just witnessed his marriage falling apart.

What the hell had just happened here? Levi wondered. He hadn’t a clue.

As he walked away from the door, Levi heard Bekka beginning to wail from inside the room.

“You and me both, kid,” he murmured under his breath. “You and me both.”

Chapter One

Almost a month had gone by since the disastrous night of the wedding, and Levi still didn’t know exactly what had happened. What he did know was that he wanted his wife back.

He missed her.

Missed the baby.

Missed being a married man more than he had ever thought possible.

In one all-too-quick swoop his orderly world had fallen into a state of formless chaos, and he absolutely hated it. He felt directionless. When he and Claire had been together, his life had had purpose, he’d had goals. Now he was just blindly going from one end of the day to the other. He still showed up for work at the furniture store every morning, but he lacked his usual energy, feeling lost and so alone that he literally ached.

Without Claire, absolutely nothing seemed to make any sense to him anymore.

Initially, as he had walked back to his truck right after Claire had thrown him out, his own anger at what he felt was her uncalled-for reaction to his late arrival continued to grow—along with his confusion. Why had she blown a gasket? After all, he’d just been playing poker with some of the guys he’d met at the wedding, not playing around with some little flirt.

He knew lots of men who took any opportunity to cheat on their wives, claiming that marriage hemmed them in, and that they needed something besides the “same old piece of stale cake” to get their adrenaline flowing.

But he wasn’t like that. And he certainly didn’t feel that way about his marriage.

The moment that he had first laid eyes on Claire in that cute little sundress she’d been wearing the day they met, peering into the show window of the furniture store where he worked, he had fallen for her like the proverbial ton of bricks. He’d even taken the initiative and gone outside the store to tell her that the set she was looking at was on sale. It really wasn’t. He’d made that up just to have an excuse to talk to her.

Had she actually wanted to buy that set, he would have had to come up with the difference out of his own pocket, but he was so taken with her, he would have done it and gladly. The way he saw it, it would have been more than worth it to him.

From that day forward, Claire Strickland had always been the only girl for him. He’d loved her so much, he’d been willing to wait until she graduated from college before they got married. In fact, he’d insisted on it. First the degree, then the ring. Because it was best for her, and he didn’t want to be the reason she had dropped out of college. From the first moment he met her, it had always been about what was best for her. He felt that she brought out the best in him.

And now he had lost her...and he wasn’t even sure why.

He could still see that look on her face as she’d pushed him out of the room. She’d been so angry at him, and he hadn’t done anything to warrant that degree of fury. One of the men in the game had actually bet and lost the house he was living in. Now that was stupid.

What would have been her reaction if he’d done something like that?

Trying to be optimistic, Levi had hoped that whatever had gotten her angry to this degree would blow over once they got back home.

But when they did get back home—she’d had her grandmother drive her and Bekka home while he’d driven himself—he’d found that his belongings had all been thrown out on the lawn in front of their apartment.

This, in addition to having thrown her wedding ring at him, made the message clear.

It was over.

Except that he didn’t want it to be.

Desperate, thinking that maybe she needed a little bit of time to come around, he gave Claire her space. By definition, that required his staying out of her way, so he’d bedded down in the storeroom at the furniture store. He alternated between that and spending the night in his truck. It was August so at least he didn’t have to worry about cold weather. But that was small consolation in the face of what was going on in his life.

With each passing day, he kept hoping that Claire would relent and take him back. But she never came to the store, never answered the phone when he called, even though he called her at least three times a day, if not more. For all intents and purposes, Claire was acting as if he didn’t exist.

And it was killing him.

Frustrated, Levi decided that enough was enough and went to the apartment where they’d lived for the past two years for a face-to-face confrontation with Claire.

But as he drove up, he saw that there were no lights on in the window to greet him, and he had a very uneasy feeling as he unlocked the front door.

Holding his breath, praying he was wrong, Levi cautiously walked in.

“Claire? Claire, it’s me. Levi. Your husband,” he added uncertainly. Nothing but silence answered him. “Claire,” he called out, “where are you?”

Still nothing. Nothing but the hollow echo of his own voice.

Growing progressively more agitated as well as aggravated, Levi went from room to small room, looking for his wife, for his baby. Finding neither.

“Come on, Claire, this isn’t funny anymore. Where are you?”

Nervous now, he debated calling Claire’s parents. He didn’t want to worry them, but then on the other hand, there might be a chance that they knew where their daughter and granddaughter were.

They might even be staying with her parents, for that matter.

He took out his cell phone and was all set to press the appropriate numbers on the keypad, but then he paused, thinking. Maybe calling her parents wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Claire’s parents, Peter and Donna Strickland, had initially been very hesitant about their daughter getting involved with someone who was several years older than she was and who didn’t have a college education. It had taken him a bit of doing to win them over.

But after her parents saw how much he really loved their youngest daughter, how he’d treated her as if she were made out of pure spun gold, they came around and gave their blessings. The older couple, who had been going strong for the past thirty years, had one of those rare, really happy marriages and according to Peter Strickland, they saw no reason why Claire and he couldn’t have one, too.

If he called them, asking after Claire, then her parents would realize that they were having marital problems. He had a feeling that Claire wouldn’t tell her parents what was going on. Because if she did, it was as good as admitting that their initial concerns about her getting married had been right. That he wasn’t good enough for her. And even though she might actually believe that, he knew Claire well enough to know that she wouldn’t readily admit that fact to her parents.

Who did that leave? he thought as he wandered around the empty apartment.

There were her two older sisters, Hadley and Tessa, but they were both professional career women who lived and worked in Bozeman, Montana, too. If Claire called either one of them, asking to be taken in, that would be as good as admitting failure, and she wouldn’t do that. There was just the slightest bit of competitiveness among the sisters—at least as far as Claire was concerned.

No, she wouldn’t call either one of her sisters, either. She would have rather died than allow her sisters to know that her marriage was in jeopardy.

But she had to call somebody, Levi reasoned. Claire couldn’t opt to go it alone. She had the baby to think of.

The answer suddenly came to him. Of course. Claire would have turned to her grandparents for emotional support.

Her grandmother, Melba, was a lively, full-steam-ahead woman who had raised four children, including Claire’s father, and had still managed to be a businesswoman. She and her husband, Gene, ran the Strickland Boarding House, where he and Claire had stayed when they’d attended the wedding that had ultimately torn them apart.

Claire admired her grandmother, so it was only natural that she would turn to the older woman. And, as he recalled, the crusty Gene Strickland really doted on his granddaughter and her baby girl, too.

Levi was by nature a private person. He had never gone to anyone with his hat in his hand before, pleading his case, but then, he’d never been in this sort of a situation before, either. He wanted his wife and his daughter back in the worst way. Getting them back meant more to him than his pride, even though the latter was a difficult thing for him to swallow.

But he’d do it. To get Claire back into his life, he’d do whatever was necessary.

Levi slowly looked around the apartment. Claire’s clothes were gone. The closets were empty on her side.

He knew that since Claire was gone, he could stay here again. The familiar surroundings were infinitely more comfortable than bedding down in the storeroom or utilizing the flatbed of his truck.

But staying here wasn’t going to get him any closer to Claire. He needed to go into work every day—taking any more time off was out of the question since the store was introducing a new line of furniture and he was needed to handle whatever problems might come up. That meant that in his off hours, he needed to maintain close proximity to Claire. So he needed to stay somewhere close by to where she was staying.

And that, he concluded, would most likely have to be at the boarding house. There’d been a couple of vacancies there last month when they were there for that damn wedding.

And even if there hadn’t been, her grandfather was the type to find a way to make room for his granddaughter and his great-granddaughter even if it meant that he had to go sleep in his car. Gene Strickland would have thought nothing of it if doing so meant helping out Claire.

He needed to go see her grandparents, Levi decided. Her grandmother wasn’t exactly a fan of his—the woman had made no bones about telling him that she thought Claire was too young to get married the first time she met him. But he did get along with Gene. If he could win the man over to his side in this, he’d have a fighting chance of winning Claire back, he reasoned.

Taking one last long look around, Levi closed and locked the front door behind him—fervently hoping that it wasn’t for the last time.

* * *

How had she gone from feeling like a fairy-tale princess to being Cinderella before the fairy godmother had come into the picture in such a short amount of time?

Claire asked herself that question for the umpteenth time since she had come to her grandparents, asking if she could move into the boarding house until she could get on her feet again.

She could remember the way her grandmother had looked at her that day. Melba Strickland had never been what could be called a sentimental woman by any stretch of the imagination. But the woman was fair and she was family, which was what Claire felt she needed at a time like this.

At the time, her grandfather, a somewhat crusty bear of a man, had asked her, “What’s wrong with your place?”

That was where she had broken down and cried. “I don’t have a place anymore, Grandpa. I’ve left Levi.”

“Left him?” Taking the fussing Bekka into his own arms, Gene cooed a few syllables at the baby, calming her down, and then looked at his granddaughter incredulously. “Don’t you just mean that you’ve had a lovers’ spat?”

Claire shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. When she finally could, she showed the two her bare left ring finger and said, “No, not a lovers’ spat, Grandpa. Levi and I are separated.” She took a ragged breath, telling herself that saying the words didn’t hurt—but it did. She felt as if a jagged knife had just ripped through her heart. “We’re getting divorced.”

“Now hold on there, that’s a big word, honey,” Gene had told her. “Do you know what it means?”

Melba had frowned at her husband, annoyed. “Of course she knows what it means.” And then she turned toward her granddaughter. “What happened, Claire? Did he disrespect you?” Her expression suddenly darkened. “He didn’t lay a hand on you, did he? Because if he did, your grandfather is going to kill him.”