The Bride Said, 'I Did?'

“That’s what you’d like to think, sweetheart, but I’m here to tell you it just ain’t so. I checked it out, both in Mexico and with my attorney in Los Angeles. Like it or not, legally we are as married as two people can be.”

Panic surged deep inside Dani, instantly giving way to incredibly warm and sexy and totally out-of-the-question romantic fantasies. “Then we’ll have it annulled,” she insisted, stepping back and away, telling herself she was not going to get roped into any wildly exciting or potentially devastating romantic drama with him.

“With the possibility of a baby on the way?” Beau advanced on her, becoming once again the same kick-butt take-charge cowboy America had fallen in love with on-screen. He looked down at her and shook his head. “Forget it. There is not going to be—now or ever—an annulment.”

“JUST TELL ME it’s not true,” Dani said half an hour later as she sat on the examining table in the Laramie Community Hospital family clinic, nervously awaiting the verdict from her physician friend, Lacey Buchanon McCabe, who’d been drafted to do her this enormous favor right away. Dani had only agreed to this test to quickly and efficiently and as scientifically as possible put an end to Beau’s claims of possible parenthood once and for all. As far as she was concerned, Dani thought, the sooner Beau Chamberlain was out of her life the better. She knew they couldn’t possibly have made love, no matter how married—or naked—they had been. The sooner Beau knew it, too, the better.

Lacey pulled up a stool and scooted closer. A newlywed herself, she had never been happier, now that she was married to staff surgeon Jackson McCabe, and she looked it. “Can’t,” Lacey said gently. She regarded Dani solemnly. “You are.”

Dani gulped as her heart began to gallop. Pleating the soft linen hospital gown between her fingers, she protested emotionally, “But—”

“The test I just ran is very accurate,” Lacey interrupted in a firm tone. “If it says you are, you are.”

Lacey paused. In full physician mode, she studied Dani’s face, then eventually patted her knee. “Do you want me to call in Beau?” she asked gently.

Normally, Dani knew, that was the next step. “No. Yes.” Dani ran her hands through her hair, shoving it off her face. “I don’t know.” This had to be a dream. It couldn’t possibly be real, could it? But if it was a dream, why couldn’t she wake up? And why couldn’t she shake the sudden sharp image of herself holding Beau Chamberlain’s baby in her arms, with Beau standing right beside her? Why couldn’t she shake the image of her and Beau and their baby becoming an incredibly happy and contented family?

What was happening to her? She wasn’t romantic! She was anything but. Their public feuding had shown her that Beau was not the man for her. From the first moment they’d met at a party two years ago, he had tried to tell her that real life could be every bit as good as in the movies. While she had tried to tell him that real life was rarely as fair or kind or predictable over the long haul, as he made it out to be. Worse, he was doing the moviegoing public a disservice by making films that led people to believe that right always prevailed over wrong, because bitter experience had taught Dani that just wasn’t so. Sometimes the worst happened for no reason at all.

“Maybe you need a minute?” Lacey asked as Dani put a hand to her tummy and let it hover there, contemplating the unexpected miracle within. She didn’t feel any different. She didn’t look any different. And yet, deep inside her was a tiny baby that was part Beau and part her, growing, thriving and in need of a tremendous amount of tender loving care from both of them. If that wasn’t a miracle of life and love, what was?

“I definitely need a minute,” Dani said firmly as she pushed the happiness and wonder from her heart. She had always wanted a baby. But not like this. And definitely not with the man who had never even been her friend!

“Jackson and I are both going to be here at the hospital all evening. We’re heading up the search committee for the new family practitioner to take his dad’s place as chief of Family Medicine. And we’ve got a hundred résumés to read through. So if you want to talk or you think of any questions, just call me or come by. In the meantime, you need to set up an appointment with an obstetrician on staff. And start taking these prenatal vitamins.” Lacey sifted through the supply cupboard, pulling out samples of vitamins and several pamphlets. “Also, read these. They cover the basic dos and don’ts of pregnancy. Okay?”

“Okay.” Still in shock, Dani stared at everything Lacey put in her hands.

Lacey touched her shoulder gently. “Are you going to be okay?”

Dani drew a deep breath and tried not to think about how irked Beau had been with her because she had never seen things his way and probably never would. “Sure,” she fibbed. “It’s just a lot to take in.”

“I know, but like I said, Jackson and I are here for you, so don’t hesitate to call.”

Lacey slipped out. Seconds later the door opened. His expression both hopeful and wary, Beau stepped in. He looked at her. “Guess I don’t need to ask the results.”

Dani slid off the end of the examining table. Her legs were trembling as she put the pamphlets and prenatal vitamins aside and reached for her clothing. “I do not understand how this could have happened,” Dani muttered. Under the cover of her hospital gown, she slipped on her panties, and then her white linen slacks. Her fingers were shaking so badly she could barely manage the zipper and button clasp.

Arms folded in front of him, Beau leaned against the corner of the examining table. “Make that two of us,” he muttered, for a moment looking as taken aback as she felt.

Silence fell as she pulled on her bra beneath her gown.

“Well, it could be worse,” he said eventually as she turned her back, removed her gown and slipped on her blouse.

“How?” Dani demanded, distressed. Turning back to him, she found her sandals. She hated that he was now trying to make the best of this! She wanted him to be as upset—as simultaneously ecstatic and upset about her unexpected pregnancy—as she was. But now that his shock had faded, Beau Chamberlain was looking downright happy about it all! As if it was yet another example of life always working out for the best, instead of the unmitigated disaster it could very well turn out to be.

Beau grinned and shrugged. “You could be pregnant and unmarried.”

Straightening, Dani glared at him. She did not appreciate his quip and she let him know it with a look. “That’s not funny.” She pushed the words through tightly clenched teeth.

He sighed, then grimaced. “Okay.” He shoved a hand through his hair again. “Obviously this has caught us both off guard and we have a lot to figure out.”

“You’re not kidding there.” Dani grabbed a brush from her purse and, stepping over to the mirror, ran it through her hair. Tucking the curving ends behind her ears, she looked steadily at Beau, who was standing just left and behind her, in the mirror. “Like when, where and how we are going to get an annulment without anyone—other than my sisters, thanks to your blurting it out the way you did—ever finding out we were married.”

Instead of agreeing with her, as Dani had hoped and expected he would, Beau Chamberlain merely shook his head. He gave her a look stony with resolve. “I meant what I said, Dani. No annulment. And no divorce. I don’t know exactly how or why we entered into this marriage, but I’m not about to let us look any more foolish than we already do,” he warned flatly. “The two of us are staying married.”

Dani whirled to face him. A pulse pounding in her throat, she tipped her head up to his. “But we don’t love each other!” And as far as Dani was concerned, love was the only reason to get—or stay—married.

Beau clamped his hands on her arms, his expression no less confident. “Then maybe we’ll grow to love each other,” he suggested with customary optimism. His glance narrowing, he continued to hold her gently but firmly, “Meanwhile, you’re having our baby. And our baby is not going to be born illegitimate.”

Beau waited for Dani’s reaction. It wasn’t long in coming.

“This is ridiculous,” she stormed, pulling herself free of him yet again. She stomped away, her slender hips swaying provocatively beneath her tailored linen slacks. “We don’t even like each other!”

Content to go ahead and have it out with her right there in the Laramie Community Hospital family clinic, if that was what she wanted, Beau braced himself for a battle. After all, he’d known getting things worked out between them wouldn’t be easy. That was why he’d taken the time to make sure he’d figured out all of the angles before he showed up on her doorstep.

Now that he was here, he found it was worth the wait. Well worth it. For she had never looked more beautiful to him, nor feistier, than she did at that moment. Soft silky hair, the color of copper gleaming in the Texas sun, framed her delicate oval face. But it was more than the soft swell of her breasts, the slender indentation of her waist, curvaceous hips and long sexy legs that put his hormones into overdrive whenever he was around her. It was the sassy tilt of her chin, the intelligence and wit that sparkled in her eyes. Without even trying, Dani challenged him in a way no other woman ever had or ever would.

Physically they were a match. Emotionally…well, emotionally was another matter. From the first moment they’d met at that party, Dani’d had her dander up. Probably because her previous romance with another actor had ended badly. But that was no reason for her to mistrust him. Especially now that a damn miracle had occurred and they were having a baby that, like it or not, would bind them together for life.

“We could like each other, given half a chance,” Beau said finally. That was, if Dani would put her usual cynicism aside and let them get to know each other the way he had wanted to from the very start. But to his dismay, once again Dani wasn’t about to let that happen.

“That’s not very likely,” Dani shot back, her amber eyes darkening defensively, “given that we have completely different views on just about everything that matters.”

That was true, Beau thought resting one hip against the edge of the examining table. But once again, it wasn’t something insurmountable. “Nevertheless, we need to stay married.”

“Until the baby is born,” Dani wearily guessed.

Beau shook his head. “Until we figure out what happened to make us go off and do such a foolish thing as get married.”

Dani stared at Beau. “I already told you,” she repeated impatiently. “I can’t remember anything.”

Beau lifted a skeptical brow, figuring if he had some fuzzy memories, she surely had some, too. “Not even why we ended up in Mexico?”

“Well, of course I remember that!” Dani retorted, incensed.

WEARY OF THE PUBLIC SNIPING that had been going on almost from the moment they’d met, the two of them had decided to try to work things out. Dani had wanted to stay in Laramie to talk. But in desperate need of some real rest and recreation after completing work on Bravo Canyon, Beau had insisted they take his private jet and go to his villa in Mexico. Dani had agreed for three reasons. One, she had known that getting Beau to understand her view of what movies should be and not his was going to be a long slow process. Two, she had seen how genuinely tired he was after the long arduous shoot in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas. And three, because she had wanted to try to end the fighting with Beau out from under the watchful eyes of her sisters and John and Lilah McCabe, who were likely to see any personal conversations between Beau and Dani as reason for romantic speculation or matchmaking. And, Dani was reluctant to admit, they wouldn’t have been far off.

The truth was, she had been secretly attracted to Beau Chamberlain from the very first. So attracted, in fact, that she’d had to use every ounce of attitude she possessed to keep him at arm’s length. At first he had been amused. But as time wore on, he’d become increasingly irritated by her standoffish behavior. To the point he had begun sniping back, annoying her and getting under her skin every chance he got in much the same way the boys had used to tease her at recess. Dani—and everyone else in Hollywood, it seemed—had sensed that a mutual attraction was behind Beau’s verbal sparring and increasingly public attention to her. To stop it, all she had to do was let her defenses down, talk to him with the same openness and vulnerability she showed her other friends.

But that hadn’t been an option for Dani two years ago, not in the film industry. She had mixed business and pleasure once before, and been stung when she gave the movie that her boyfriend, Chris Avery, was in one star and then been dubbed the Lady with the Poison Pen. It was a moniker everyone in Hollywood, including Beau, had repeated at one time or another either in anger or in jest. Dani had no intention of letting that happen again. So she had kept her attraction to Beau to herself. And she hadn’t let any of what went on between them color her reviews of Beau’s movies. She had made sure she was just as tough on him as she was with everyone else.

And she had known, even if the impossible happened and they did manage to become friends when they went off to Mexico together, that would continue. Dani did not do favors for people she knew in the business; her professional reputation was much too important to her.

Which made what had eventually happened—the two of them ending up married and in bed together—even more puzzling. Not just for her, but for him.

“And what else do you remember?” Beau prodded.

Dani spread her palms helplessly on either side of her. “I remember arguing with you in sort of a flirtatious way all afternoon and into the night, and that’s it.” Dani paused, aware they hadn’t actually gotten married until the next day if the date on the marriage certificate he had shown her was correct. That left a very big blank in her memory. A thirty-some-hour blank she found very dismaying, especially after all the bantering and teasing that had been going on prior to that. Like it or not, from the moment they stepped on that plane, her defenses had been going down. And apparently so had his.

Reminding herself not to be too trusting, Dani asked cautiously, “What about you?” Up until this afternoon, she had assumed he was the mastermind of this whole folly. That he had designed the whole thing as payback to embarrass her and throw her for a loop for the not-so-glowing reviews she had given his movies and the way she had deliberately held him at arm’s length, refusing to let him work his movie-star charm on her. But now, given the stunned and curious way he kept looking at her, she couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t as much an innocent victim of whatever had happened to them as she was. And if that was the case, she had no reason at all to be mad at him. And that was a notion she found even more unnerving. Because it was her anger, their mutual resentment, that she had been counting on to keep them apart and prevent them from doing whatever it was they’d done down in Mexico again.

Beau frowned, stroked his jaw and continued filling her in matter-of-factly. “When it comes to that night, I draw a complete blank. I’d like to think it’s because the whole evening was so traumatic,” he teased, beating her to the punch with a wink.

“Har-de-har-har, cowboy,” Dani responded, determined not to let him joke his way out of anything when it came to the two of them. “And if that evening was traumatic,” she asserted stubbornly, “it was traumatic for both of us.”

“True.” Beau paused, stroked his jaw again. As the thoughtful moment drew out, his eyes sparkled wickedly. He rolled his weight onto his toes and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “And yet there must be some reason we got married that night and made a baby,” he said.

“Complete utter insanity?” Dani quipped drolly. The only reason she would ever have gotten married—knowingly anyway—was for love. Her heart quickened its pace as she feared where this line of questioning was leading. Deftly she stepped back.

He stepped toward her. “That, sweetheart, goes without saying.” He laced his hands around her waist and tugged her against him until they were touching breast to chest, tummy to tummy, thigh to thigh. “The truth is,” Beau continued resolutely, looking down at her with soft serious eyes, “whatever happened that night had nothing to do with where we were or what we were doing at the time or even what we were arguing about. Instead—” his velvety voice dropped another compelling notch “—it had everything to do with what has been going on with us since the first day we met.”

He sounded so sure. So smugly certain! “And that is what exactly?” Dani prodded, afraid from the amorous gleam in his eyes she already knew precisely what he was going to assert.

“Desire,” Beau whispered softly, sifting a hand through her hair, watching it as it fell in silky copper strands across her cheek. “Pure unadulterated desire.”

Dani laughed uneasily and tried, unsuccessfully, to step out of the warm confining hopelessly erotic circle of his arms. “Now I know you’re insane,” she claimed as she splayed both hands across his chest and felt the strong heavy thudding of his heart, so like her own. “I have never, not for one day, not for even one second, desired you!” Dani fibbed as his gaze traced the parted contours of her lips.

Beau’s sexy smile widened. He slid a hand beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his. “Sure about that now?” he asked as his head slowly lowered.

“I’m positive,” Dani whispered. Trembling at his nearness, she drew in a jerky breath. This was not going to happen. He was not going to kiss her.

Beau touched his lips lightly to hers once, and then again. “Okay, let’s see,” he murmured seductively. The next thing Dani knew her eyes were closed and his lips were on hers, nudging them apart. It was the kind of kiss you saw in the movies. Tender, evocative, erotic. Sensitive, searching. It was the kind of kiss you never really expected—in real life—to get. But getting it she was, and she had to admit that, even as she stood on tiptoe and let herself be drawn into the seamlessly sexy kiss, it was rocking her to her very soul. Making her tingle all over. Making her want. Need. Desire. Oh, heavens, she had never felt such desire. Or experienced anything so wonderful and dangerous and right. And it was then, just as she should have suspected, that Beau let the soft kiss come to a slow effortless conclusion.

Still holding her in his arms, Beau searched her eyes. “Now do you remember?”

Chapter Two

Suddenly Dani knew what was happening and why. She couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. Worse, she had almost—almost—bought the I’m-head-over-heels-in-love-with-you look in his eyes! Only her common sense had saved her from admitting something equally foolish to him. But thank heaven she was one woman who was firmly rooted in reality. She knew—better than most—that this life did not come with happily-ever-afters. Especially ever-afters that good. She might wish one of the most famous movie stars in the world was totally enthralled with her, but it wasn’t happening. No matter how hard the Texas lothario was currently pushing to convince her otherwise.

“Now I get it,” Dani said as she shoved away from him.

“Get what?” Beau studied her with highly exaggerated confusion.

Dani scowled and planted her hands on her hips. No way was this handsome cowboy running a scam on her. “So where is it?”

Beau quirked an eyebrow and continued to regard her with confusion. “Where’s what?”

“The hidden camera.”

“Camera?” Beau repeated, doing, Dani thought, a fine job of acting perplexed.

But she wasn’t buying it. Not for one red-hot instant. She waved her hands excitedly. “We’re on the Celebrity Hoaxes TV show, aren’t we?” Stepping forward, she pointed an accusing finger at his chest. “This is all a practical joke. On me. And everyone in Laramie is probably in on it. My sisters, Lacey McCabe and the people right here at the hospital.” Which meant, of course, she wasn’t really pregnant, either, since they hadn’t really made love or gotten married in Mexico. So she could stop worrying about that right now, Dani concluded with relief. Since this was all part of a giant joke on her.

“Come on, where are the cameras?” Dani began to search the examining room.

Beau followed her, looking even more nonplussed as she searched behind the cabinets, beneath the sink. “What cameras?”

Dani whirled to face him. “The ones that are taping us for the TV show, of course.”

Beau placed his hands on her shoulders, then said very quietly and very calmly, “Dani, there are no cameras.”

She smiled thinly, aware that she had never wanted to haul off and slug him more than she did at that minute. “Of course you would say that.” He wanted her to make a fool of herself in the worst way!

Beau’s eyes darkened. “I mean it, Dani. There are no cameras,” he repeated firmly. Hands slipping back to her waist, he lifted her up and onto the examining table. Trapping her with his body, bracing a hand on either side of her, he leaned in close, “We are not being filmed.”

Dani ignored him as another flare of mistrust swept through her. “If you say so, but for the record—” she looked straight into his midnight-blue eyes “—this is all a colossal waste of time. Since I will never in a million years give you permission to air what is taking place right here and right now.” That said, she leaned back and neatly folded her hands on her lap.

“That’s good.” Beau looked pleased as he stepped between her knees and pulled her close. “Because I don’t think I’d want what is taking place right now aired anywhere.” He angled his thumb at his chest, winked facetiously. “I don’t want to be made a fool of, either. I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

Speaking of reputations, they had been in here—alone—an awfully long time, Dani thought. Enough to get the local gossip mill going, big time. “Too bad you didn’t think of that before you convinced me to go off to Mexico with you.” Dani pushed him away with both hands, hopped off the table and exited the examining room. Dashing to the front desk, she paid her bill, then headed out the doors into the shimmering late-afternoon heat.

Beau caught up with her just past the entrance and steered her toward his vintage pickup. Made in 1960, the cherry-red truck was in mint condition inside and out, the only change to it modern safety belts and a topnotch stereo system. It was not exactly the kind of vehicle Dani would ever have expected a Hollywood star to drive. She figured he’d drive something expensive and strictly for status. But the cherished old pickup, so sturdy and reliable and masculine, suited him just the same. Maybe because it was the kind of truck a real cowboy would drive.

“Too bad we didn’t think of a lot of things before we flew off to Mexico together.” Beau opened the door and, still holding her elbow, gallantly helped her inside.

A prickle of uneasiness moved through Dani as the next thought hit. She watched as he circled the truck and slid behind the steering wheel. “Were there cameras in Mexico, too?” she asked, aghast, noticing without wanting to the way his white cotton shirt delineated the sexy contours of his shoulders, chest and abs. Was it her imagination or could she actually remember the way it had felt to be held against that rock-solid chest, with nothing between them but heat and bare skin?

Beau turned the key in the ignition and shot her an astonished look. “I sincerely hope not!” he said, thrusting the truck into reverse. Sliding one arm along the back of the seat behind her, he pulled out of the space, then put the truck into first. His large capable hands on the wheel, he guided the truck toward the exit and onto the street.

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier,” Dani said, incensed she had been such an idiot. She shook her head as Beau stopped at the light at the corner of Johnson Drive and Main Street and turned her eyes to the people coming in and out of the businesses in the center of town. A group had gathered in front of the courthouse and were talking animatedly. A mother and two children were carrying a cake out of Isabel Buchanon’s bakeshop. Men were lined up in Tom’s barber shop, awaiting haircuts and shaves. The afternoon edition of the Laramie Press was being loaded into trucks for delivery. Comforted by the homespun familiarity of the scene, Dani turned back to Beau and continued matter-of-factly, “This is all payback for our feud.”