Rescued by a Wedding: Texas Wedding / A Marriage Between Friends

“And a half!” Trent raised his eyebrow. “Also impressive. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

The boy’s face was a thundercloud. “Yeah, well, I hear that you—”

“Trent.” Susannah snapped the first aid kit shut and gave Trent a look that said enough already.

She was right, of course. It was ridiculous to get into an ego-tussle with a nineteen-year-old. But apparently, where Susannah was concerned, a part of Trent would always be nineteen. Ready to lock horns with any other young buck who tried to trespass on his turf.

“Did you need something, Trent? Were you looking for Zander? He’s still out in the orchard, finishing up the thinning.”

“He messaged me about the shaker. I wanted to let him know we’ve rearranged things at the Double C so that you can use Chase’s machine for the next couple of weeks.”

“You don’t need to borrow one,” Eli broke in eagerly, like the smarmy teacher’s pet everyone had hated in high school. “I’m good with machines. I bet I could fix ours.”

Ours? The kid had worked here one half of one day, and already he owned the equipment? Trent turned toward the brat, ready to let loose, but Susannah put out her hand and touched Trent’s forearm lightly.

“Thanks, Eli,” she said, “but unless you can actually raise the dead, I’m afraid it’s no use. We’ll be fine with the loaner. Please go let Mr. Hobbin know it’s arranged, okay?”

Eli was caught for a moment, wedged between his desire to avenge himself with Trent and his determination to impress Susannah.

Self-preservation won the day. He bobbed his head deferentially. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

After he was gone, the silence in the office was fraught with tension.

Susannah put the kit away, locked the cabinet and then finally turned to Trent. “Please tell Chase thanks. I appreciate the loan of the shaker.”

For some inexplicable reason, Trent was suddenly irritated. For one thing, Chase didn’t even know about the loan. Trent was in charge of all such details at the Double C. It was Trent who had made it possible.

But clearly there’d be snowball fights in Hell before Susannah would ever thank Trent for anything.

She lifted her chin. “Was there anything else you needed?”

That ice-cold tone was the last straw. “Yeah,” he said. “One other thing. I thought I’d just mention what a colossally bad idea it is to flirt with teenage boys who happen to be on your payroll.”

Her eyebrows dived together. “I wasn’t flirting with him.”

“Really? Are you sure he knows that?”

“I’m quite sure.” She stood ramrod straight, clearly offended. “Is that why you were being such an ass to him? Because you thought we were…flirting?”

Trent sat on the corner of Zander’s desk, the only spot not covered in files and papers and junk. “No, I was being an ass to him because he is a cocky little loser who hasn’t ever done an honest day’s work in his life, and I can’t believe you were dumb enough to hire him.”

She’d gone slightly pale, which he knew from long experience was a sign of fury. He braced himself for the storm, and as he did he realized that, in some strange way, he welcomed the fight.

At least it would be real emotion. A real connection.

And, God help him, he still craved that. All that crap about being too exhausted to desire her? He’d been sunk the minute he saw the curve of her back as she’d bent over Eli’s hand, and the way the sunlight created a halo around her head.

It had been enough to send the hunger raging through him all over again. He wouldn’t get what he really wanted, of course. But a good, rousing battle might at least siphon off some of this tension.

She took a couple of deep breaths, obviously determined to hold on to her temper. She placed herself behind the desk, as if she thought its scarred oak surface could provide the buffer zone she clearly needed.

But it wasn’t a very big desk.

“How I run Everly is none of your business.” She straightened some papers on the desk, a ridiculously futile gesture. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”

Her fingers trembled as they nudged another sheet of paper into line. The pause stretched until it shimmered in the room like ectoplasm.

“Oh, yes,” he said slowly. “The deal.”

She didn’t look up. But her grip tightened, crumpling the edge of the file she held.

“The deal,” he repeated. He reached out and took her wrist between his fingers. “We did have one, didn’t we?”

She tensed, though she didn’t try to pull back her hand. “Trent, I don’t think we should—”

“I do.”

She lifted her chin. “Look, I know you’re angry.”

He ran his thumb across the inside of her wrist, until he found the pulse, jumping and skittering between the delicate bones. “Am I?”

“Well, you’ve been gone all weekend. I’m not a fool, Trent. I know what that means.”

He thought of Peggy, of the secret trips he’d been making to Darlonsville for five years now. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. He hadn’t wanted to look as if he did it only for the good public relations it might bring.

“And what do you think it means?”

“It means…” She bit her lower lip. “I know where you must have been, who you must have been with. Even though, when we agreed to do this, you promised me that there would be no other women, not while we were married.”

He tugged her wrist slightly. She either had to wrestle herself free or come around the desk to meet him. She chose to come around, though it brought her close enough that he could see the nervous twitch next to the corner of her mouth.

Ah…she felt more fear now than anger. In a perverse way, that pleased him. It proved he still had power.

And he saw something else, too. A physical awareness of him that heated the surface of her cheeks.

It made him ache, being so close to her, smelling her, hating her and wanting her all at the same time. It was as if someone had shoved a hot brand against the small of his back.

“I did promise I’d be faithful,” he said, careful to keep his tone lightly ironic. “But that was when I believed I’d be getting what I needed here at home…within the marriage bed, so to speak.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, of course I see the difference. So that’s why I wanted to make you an offer. I understand that it’s a…a hardship to have to…to do without sex for a full year, and…”

He smiled. Her pulse had tripped on itself from the effort to even say the word sex.

“And?”

She swallowed, blinking as she tried to hold his gaze. “And I’d like to make it up to you. Financially, I mean. I was thinking ten thousand dollars for every month we’re married. That’s one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, when the year is up, when I can sell the acres I need, and—”

He tilted his head, chuckling softly. “You’re offering to pay me not to have sex with you?”

“No…I’m paying you for not having it with anyone else, not while we’re married. It’s hard to—” She swallowed and tried again. “If you have a mistress while I’m your wife, it’ll be—well, everyone will say it’s just like before. I’ll be the laughing stock of Texas. I’d prefer not to be shamed like that…not again.”

He cursed inwardly. It always came back to that, didn’t it? Eleven years ago, he’d made a mistake, and, in her eyes, it would forever define the man he was. He felt his hand tighten on her wrist, as the frustration, the anger and the hunger tied every muscle in his body into knots.

“You must agree it’s generous, Trent. A hundred and twenty thousand—”

“Oh, sure. It’s generous.”

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Without thinking, he pulled her toward him. She wasn’t expecting it, and she stumbled, practically falling into his arms. Her body was stiff, but her flesh trembled. He let his palms encircle her waist, and they met around the slim curves, just as they used to do.

She stared up at him. He didn’t apologize, didn’t let go. He stroked her rib cage with his thumbs.

“Trent…”

“Your offer is generous as hell, Susannah. But money isn’t what I want.” He angled her even closer, close enough to feel the heat that throbbed through him. “You know what I want.”

“But what you want—you can’t…what about the paper?” She seemed to be struggling to catch a breath, inhaling softly between each word. “You won’t…sign it?”

“No, I won’t sign it, Sue, but there are other ways.”

“Other ways to…what?”

Her lips were half-open, peach-pink wet and glimmering in the sunlight. They were ripe and soft. And he remembered exactly how they had tasted. How they had felt, on him, around him. For eleven long years, even in dreams, he had been haunted by the memory of their warmth, their hidden strength.…

A painful heat swelled inside him. She might hate him, but he must have this. He refused to go on burning and wanting, and being forever denied.

Though she wouldn’t admit it, she burned, too, and he would follow that fiery path until he found his way in.

“Trent. Tell me what you mean.”

He let his body answer her. He placed his palms against her buttocks, and moved her hips toward him slowly, by agonizing inches, letting his heat find hers. He watched what it did to her. He watched her eyes struggle not to lose focus, watched her throat hold back the moan that wanted to break free.

Somehow she hung on to her question, as if it were a life raft, as if it could take her to a different answer. “Other ways for what?”

“Other ways for husbands and wives to know each other. Please each other. Ways that don’t risk making babies.”

She stopped breathing entirely. “You can’t mean—”

“Yes, I can. There are lots of ways to make love, Susannah.” Trent let her go abruptly, smiled and moved toward the door. “And before this year is over, we’re going to discover every one of them.”

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WASN’T EASY to sleep that night. Every noise Susannah heard, even the familiar oak branch that had scratched against her window since she was six, made her heart race. Outside, the night seemed to go on forever, the mushroom-colored moon caught in a soup of gray clouds. Inside, every creaking floorboard, every snap, groan or sigh from the old house, sounded like Trent coming to find her.

Trent, coming to lie beside her in the darkness and, with his angry lips and determined hands, somehow force her to keep her promise.

She woke up feeling wrung out and muddy-headed. And oddly lonely. In some ways, she missed Nikki. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to. But sitting around gabbing was a luxury she could rarely afford—and it wasn’t something Nikki enjoyed much, anyhow. So she tried just to be glad she didn’t have to make breakfast for Nikki and nag her out the door to school.

She did have to get up, though. She was due at the burn center by nine, and there was no way to avoid it. She went in only two mornings a week during peach season, and Rachel, her gung-ho administrative assistant, would undoubtedly have scheduled a dozen meetings, phone calls and interviews.

So Susannah put on her best spring suit and extra lipstick, and made her way across town. She sent up a little prayer that no big problems would present themselves today, and that maybe she could get home early.

No such luck.

“Susannah, thank God you’re here.” Rachel stood up from her chair when she saw her boss. “You’re not going to believe what Dr. Mahaffey’s wife did.”

Susannah moved into her office and put down her purse, trying to refrain from pointing out that she didn’t care what Dr. Mahaffey’s wife did. Obviously, she couldn’t say such a thing. Dr. Mahaffey was the retired chief of surgery for the burn center, and his wife had organized some of their most successful fund-raisers. So what Mrs. Mahaffey did was always important.

Especially to the executive coordinator of donor/volunteer affairs. And that was Susannah.

“What did she do?” Susannah managed a smile, because she knew the answer would be something hilarious. Spunky, opinionated, energetic Maggie Mahaffey was eighty-two, nine years older than her exhausted husband, and most of the time she lived on Mars.

Rachel stood in the doorway between the offices and held out a plate heaped with pie. “She sent in a recipe for the peach book.”

Susannah set down the stack of color-coded phone messages she’d just grabbed and stared at the plate, as if she expected it to explode. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” Rachel nodded, her full lips pressed so tightly you almost couldn’t see her signature-red lipstick. “Taste it.”

Susannah laughed and took a step backward. “I’ll take your word for it. What’s wrong this time? Six pounds of sugar? How that woman has managed to avoid diabetes is a mystery to me.”

“No sugar. This time she added mint.” Rachel widened her eyes dramatically. “Mint. And…cashews.”

Susannah’s mouth just hung open, seemingly unable to respond to her order to close. “Cashews in her peach pie?”

“Yes. Cashews.” Rachel wasn’t easily rattled, but this clearly had shaken her. “What are we going to do, Susannah? It’s indescribably gross. I brushed my teeth twice, and I still taste it.”

Susannah sat on the edge of her desk, suddenly tired. Given what she was going through back at Everly, a disgusting peach pie simply didn’t seem important. “I’ll just have to create a typo. The line about the cashews will mysteriously drop off.”

“Again? You did that last year, with the sugar! Mrs. Mahaffey tried to get you fired then. If you do it again, she’ll have your head.”

“She’s welcome to it.” Susannah reached one more time for the phone messages. Red meant “urgent” and the stack was about ninety percent red. “Did the volunteer training session go all right?”

Rachel set the pie down on her desk, giving it one last grimace and a shudder. Then she turned back to Susannah, putting on her professional face. “Yeah, it’s going great. They’re on day two now, and it’s a pretty big group this time. Ten volunteers…no, wait, eleven.”

Susannah looked up. This was unusual. Rachel certainly had the authority to slip a latecomer into the training program without clearing it with her boss, but she didn’t often do it. The volunteer application had a box for Susannah’s signature, and Rachel wasn’t comfortable with empty boxes.

Susannah wondered who the new recruit was. Nell Bollinger had been promising to sign up, but word was the Bollingers had just found pinkeye in their cattle, so this probably wasn’t the week she’d finally decide to follow through.

“Eleven is excellent. Who is the new one? Do you remember her name?”

A stupid question, actually. Rachel was so detail oriented she undoubtedly knew the names, addresses, telephone numbers and shoe sizes of all eleven newbies by heart.

“Yes, of course! In fact, she said she was a friend of yours. Let’s see. That one was Missy Griffin.” She frowned slightly. “No, wait. She said she’d just gotten a divorce and gone back to her maiden name. Missy…Missy Snowdon. That’s right.”

Missy Snowdon…

Her chest suddenly tight, Susannah stared down at the telephone messages. She struggled to keep her face impassive.

Surely she’d heard wrong. Or else Rachel had remembered wrong.

For one thing, Missy Snowdon had left Texas years ago. She’d gone to Hollywood, or maybe Vegas…one of those cities that act like magnets on women who are mostly made of collagen and silicone and bleach.

For another, Missy Snowdon wasn’t the volunteering type. She was a player, not a worker. A taker, not a giver.

“Um…” Rachel tilted her head, obviously unsettled by something she saw in Susannah’s face. “I hope I didn’t do the wrong thing. I never would have let her sign up if she hadn’t said she was your friend. If that’s not true—”

“It’s okay,” Susannah said. “It’s true. We were…we went to high school together.”

She couldn’t bring herself to speak the word friends. Once, she’d thought so, but…

As she’d said, Missy Snowdon was a taker. And what she’d taken from Susannah was Trent.

Rachel still looked worried, her brow furrowed. “Are you sure? The class is observing in Restorative this morning. I could go over and pull her out—”

“No, no, don’t be silly. We don’t have so many volunteers that we can afford to chase one away.”

Rachel nodded. She knew what a struggle it was to fill the positions.

Susannah managed a smile. “I should get to these phone messages, I suppose. I can’t stay long today.”

“Oh, of course, what was I thinking? Call Dr. Grieve first. Then Mrs. McManus. Be sure to leave Des Barkley at the Daily Grower for last. He wants an interview about the peach party, which is good, but you know how he talks.”

Susannah nodded. She knew.

It wasn’t easy, but somehow she got through the stack by noon. Some of it really was urgent. Some of it was downright boring. But at least it kept her mind off other things.

Like Trent.

And Missy Snowdon.

Susannah wished she’d had the nerve to ask Rachel how Missy looked. Back in high school, Missy had been the fairy princess, with a waterfall of blond hair and round, lash-heavy blue eyes. But the looks had been deceiving. Underneath all that innocent beauty beat the heart of a tiger.

For Missy Snowdon, a day without risk was a day without sunshine. She shoplifted trinkets she could easily afford, cheated on tests she was sure to ace anyhow. She ignored stop signs and streetlights, even when she had all the time in the world, gaily waving her beer can at every policeman she passed.

And boys…she could have had anyone in the school, from the greenest freshman to the married principal himself. But she had been picky. She wanted only the best. And only the ones who were already taken.

Like Trent.

Susannah tapped her pen against the calendar blotter. Finally, she stood up, unable to resist temptation any longer. Forget playing it cool. She had to see Missy for herself.

It would probably make her feel much better. Surely another decade of bleaching, boozing and bed-hopping had taken its toll. If there was any justice in this world, Missy probably looked a rode-hard fifty, and that would be a sight for sore eyes.

Susannah made her way to Restorative, passing from the relative quiet of the administrative wing to the noisy corridors of the clinic. Though she hurried, it was the lunch hour, and the trail was a bit of an obstacle course.

When she reached the small room where special restorative nurses were feeding the patients, she realized she was too late. The volunteers didn’t hang out in any of the working areas. They would be intruding. They just stood to the side, observed quietly, then moved to a classroom for further discussion.

Darn. Susannah had lost her chance to do this the easy way. Of course, as the coordinator of volunteers, she had every right to poke her head into the training classroom and summon Missy Snowdon up for inspection any time she wanted. She had the power around here, not Missy. For once.

But she didn’t want to use it. What would be the point? If she treated Missy badly, it would only prove that she still held a grudge, which would make her look pathetic. Their troubles had happened nearly eleven years ago, practically in another lifetime. They’d barely been out of high school, for heaven’s sake. High school dramas had no power here, in the real world.

Just when she almost had herself convinced, a low, throaty laugh came from the west wing. The sound went right through her brave facade, like a dart busting a cheap balloon.

It had to be Missy. Because Susannah suddenly felt insecure and jealous and angry as hell.

She looked down the hall and saw a blonde woman moving toward her, flanked by two handsome, white-coated doctors who bent over her as solicitously as they would any critically ill patient in their care.

Susannah instinctively turned her head away, pretending to read a flyer at the nurses’ station while the trio floated by, still laughing. She caught only a momentary flash of Missy, but that was enough.

Damn it. The woman was more beautiful than ever, still a princess in her candy-pink pinafore, still sashaying her hips as if she walked to secret salsa music. Still flashing the wide white smile that dazzled quarterbacks, traffic cops, algebra teachers—and apparently surgeons—into instant enslavement.

“Ms. Everly?” Evelyn Marks, the charge nurse, had returned to the station and sounded surprised to see Susannah standing there. That made sense. This wasn’t Susannah’s part of the building.

“Sorry…I mean Mrs. Maxwell.” Evelyn smiled. “I guess I gotta get used to that.”

Susannah looked up just in time to see Missy and the doctors disappear onto the elevator. She turned to the nurse, who had been a casual friend for years. “Me, too, Evvy.”

Evelyn, a bouncy, round mother of six daughters, three of whom were also nurses at the center, grinned. “You look tired. How’s married life treating you?”

Susannah hesitated. But, like everyone else, Evvy knew the situation, so there was no point pretending to be a dewy-eyed bride.

“Well, it’s…tricky,” she admitted, opting for at least a degree of honesty.

Evvy laughed, but Susannah’s ears were tuned to the tinkling sound as the elevator doors slid shut.

Missy was gone. For now. But even as Susannah breathed a sigh of relief, she knew she’d been a coward. And it was only a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, she’d encounter her old nemesis face-to-face.

More importantly, so would Trent.

* * *

TRENT HAD his bulky work gloves on, and he’d just arranged the chain saw, pole pruner and baling cord under one arm and the old wooden paint ladder under the other, so naturally his cell phone chose that moment to ring.

He glanced back into the garage, where Zander was working on a broken hedge clipper.

The old man laughed. “Women,” he said with a snort. “They have the devil’s timing, don’t they? Want me to tell Trixie Mae Sexpot to get lost for you?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Trent wasn’t expecting any calls from females, but he stood still as Zander reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the phone. He would have let it go to voice mail, except that he was stealing these last few hours of daylight from the Double C and using them to cut back the worst dead branches on Everly’s old oaks. If the Double C had a problem, he was honor bound to deal with it.

“Trent Maxwell’s phone. Zander Hobbin speaking.” Zander listened for a few seconds, during which his teasing expression soured into one of real annoyance. “No, Maxy isn’t available. You can tell by how he didn’t answer the phone. See how that works, sugar?”

Trent felt his eyebrows draw together, and the chain saw slipped an inch under his elbow. Maxy? No one called him Maxy. Not anymore. Not since high school. And the only one who’d done it, even then, was…

“Who?” Zander cut a strange look toward Trent. “Missy Snowdon? Oh, you bet I remember you. Sure, I’ll tell him. But just between you and me, don’t hold your breath on that callback. Trent got married last week. You been gone a long time, so I’ll just assume you didn’t know, or you wouldn’t have called, right?”

Trent could hear the high, quick voice still talking on the other end as Zander snapped the phone shut. The older man glowered at Trent from under his bushy eyebrows.

“I heard that little minx was back in town, but I didn’t think she’d have the nerve to call you, just like that.” He ran his upper lip through his teeth, as if he were trying to comb the mustache that tickled down over it. “Unless…you didn’t make the first move, did you, son?”

Trent raised one eyebrow. That tone might have worked if Trent had been ten and had got caught with his hands in the wrong cookie jar, but not now. Trent wouldn’t have telephoned Missy Snowdon if she were the last woman surviving this side of Saturn, but frankly, who he called or didn’t call wasn’t Zander’s business.

“What’s wrong, Zan? She is pretty hot. You jealous?”