Runaway Temptation

“Hey now,” he said, that deep voice rolling along her spine again. “Are you all right?”

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. The humor in his eyes was gone, replaced by concern and she responded to it. “I have to get out of here. Now. Can you help me?”

His eyes narrowed on her and his delectable mouth moved into a grim slash. “You’re running out on your wedding?”

Disapproval practically radiated from him and Shelby’s spine went stiff as a board in reaction. “Just as fast as I can,” she said. “Can you help me?”

Before he could say yes or no, another voice erupted behind her.

“Shelby! What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

Spinning around until the cowboy was at her back, Shelby watched as Margaret Goodman stalked toward her, fire in her eyes. “Your guests are waiting.”

“They’re not my guests,” Shelby said. Heck, the only people she knew in Royal was the family she was supposed to marry into and frankly, if they were the best this town had to offer, she was ready to run back to Chicago.

“Of course they are.” Margaret waved her hand impatiently, dismissing Shelby’s argument. “Don’t be foolish.”

Shelby moved back until she felt the cowboy’s tall, strong body press up against hers. Cowardly? Maybe, but she’d live with it. Right now, this tall, exceptionally well-built man was the safest spot she could find.

Margaret’s gaze snapped to the cowboy. “Caleb, bring her along inside right this minute.”

Caleb. His name was Caleb. For a second, Shelby worried that he might do just that. After all, he didn’t know her and the Goodman family, as they kept telling her, were a big deal here in Royal. Maybe he wasn’t the safe harbor she’d thought he was.

Then the cowboy stepped out from behind her and moved to partially block Shelby from the woman glaring at her. While Shelby watched, he tipped his hat and said, “I don’t take orders from you, Mrs. Goodman.”

Margaret inhaled through her nose and if she could have set the cowboy on fire, she clearly would have. “Fine. Please bring her along inside. The wedding is about to start.”

“Well now,” Caleb said slowly, that deep drawl caressing every word, “I don’t believe the lady wants to go back inside.”

“No,” Shelby said, exhaling in a rush. “I do not.”

“There you go. She sounds pretty sure,” Caleb said, shrugging as if he couldn’t have cared less which way this confrontation turned out.

“Well, I’m sure, too.” Margaret took a menacing step forward. “This woman is engaged to my son, God help me.”

Insulted, Shelby frowned, but the older woman kept going.

“We have a club full of people waiting for the ceremony to begin and the Goodman family has a reputation to uphold in Royal. I refuse to allow some city tramp to ruin it.”

“Tramp?” Okay, now she was more sure than ever that running had been the right thing to do. The very idea of having to deal with this woman as a relative for the rest of her life gave her cold chills.

Shelby took a step toward the woman with the plan to tell Margaret exactly what she thought of her. But the cowboy alongside her grabbed her arm to hold her in place.

“That’s enough, Margaret,” he said quietly.

“It’s not nearly enough.” Margaret fired a hard look at the cowboy before shifting her gaze back to Shelby. “You stay out of this, Caleb Mackenzie. This has nothing to do with you.”

Though the urge to stand here and have it out with this appalling woman was so strong Shelby was almost quivering, she knew it would be a waste of time. And, since the most important thing was to escape before any more Goodmans showed up, she turned her head to stare up at the man beside her.

“Can you get me out of here?” Shelby asked, staring up into those cool, blue eyes.

“What?” Ignoring Margaret, the man looked at her as if he hadn’t heard her right.

“Take me somewhere,” she blurted, and didn’t even think about the fact that she didn’t know this man. Right now it was enough that Margaret clearly couldn’t stand him. The enemy of my enemy, and all that.

“You want me to help you run out on the man waiting for you at the altar?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds terrible,” Shelby admitted, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

“What other way is there to put it?”

“Okay fine. I’m a terrible human being,” she whispered frantically as Margaret heaped curses on her head. “And I’ll apologize to Jared later. But right now...”

Caleb stared down at her as if trying to see inside her. And Shelby was grateful that he couldn’t. Because right now, her insides were tangled up into so many knots she’d probably look like a crazy person. Heck, she felt like a crazy person. One that had just made a break from the asylum and was now looking for a ride back to sanity.

Hitching the yards of tulle higher in her arms, Shelby murmured, “Margaret said your name’s Caleb, right?”

“That’s right.”

God, his voice was so deep it seemed to echo out around her. His blue eyes were focused on her and Shelby felt a flutter of something she’d never felt for the man she’d almost married. Probably not a good thing. “Look, I don’t have much time. If you can’t help me, I need to find someone else. Fast.” She took a breath and blew it out again. “So. Are you going to help me, Caleb?”

One corner of his mouth lifted briefly. “What’s your name?”

“Shelby,” she said, mesmerized by the motion of that mouth. “Shelby Arthur.”

“I’m Caleb Mackenzie,” he said. “My truck’s over there.”

He jerked his head toward a big, top-of-the-line black pickup that shone like midnight, its chrome bumpers glittering in the sun. At that moment, the huge black truck looked like a magical carriage there to transport her away from a nightmare. Shelby sighed in relief and practically sprinted for it.

“Where are you going?” Margaret’s voice, loud, desperate, followed her. “You can’t leave! What will people think?”

“Whatever the hell they want to,” Caleb tossed over his shoulder. “Just like always.”

He opened the passenger door and helped Shelby to climb in. “We have to hurry,” she said, throwing frantic looks at the building behind them.

“It’d be easier if you didn’t have so damn much dress,” he muttered, grabbing a fistful of the material and stuffing it into the truck.

“Never mind the dress,” she said, staring down at him. She was doing it. Getting away. But she wasn’t gone yet. Grabbing at the dress, she shoved it between her knees and then ignored the rest of the hot mess gown still hanging down the side of the truck. “Just get in and drive.”

He looked up at her and again, Shelby felt that rush of something hot and unexpected. That was just too weird. A few minutes ago, she’d been set to marry another man and now she was getting all warm and shivery for a cowboy in shining armor? What was wrong with her?

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re the boss.” Then he slammed the truck door, leaving a couple of feet of dress hanging out beneath the bottom.

Shelby didn’t care. All she wanted was to get away. To feel free. She pushed her hair out of her face as it slipped from the intricate knots it had been wound into. While Caleb walked around the front of the truck, she stared out the window at the woman still cursing her. Shelby had the oddest desire to wave goodbye and smile. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked away from her would-be mother-in-law and when Caleb climbed into the truck and fired it up, she took her first easy breath. When he threw it into gear and drove from the parking lot, Shelby laughed at the wild release pumping through her.

He glanced at her. “Are you crazy?”

She shook her head and grinned. “Not anymore. I think I’m cured.”

* * *

Caleb told himself that if she wasn’t crazy herself, she was probably a carrier. How else did he explain why he was driving down the long, nearly empty road toward his ranch with a runaway bride sitting beside him?

Two words repeated in his brain. Runaway bride. Hell, he was helping do to Jared what Mitch and Meg had done to him four years ago. Was this some kind of backward Karma?

Caleb shot a sideways look at his passenger. The dress was god-awful, but it was fitted to her body like a damn glove. Her high, full breasts were outlined behind yet another layer of lace. The high neck only made a man wonder what was being hidden. Long sleeves caressed her arms and a damn mountain of white net poofed out around her body even while she fought it down.

Her face was pale, making the handful of freckles across her nose stand out like firelight in a snowstorm. While he watched, she rolled down the window and her hair was suddenly a wild tangle of dark red curls flying in the wind.

She closed her eyes, smiled into the wind, then turned to look at him and smiled even wider. “Thanks for the rescue.”

Yeah. He’d rescued her and helped to humiliate Jared, just as he himself had once been. Caleb didn’t much care for Jared Goodman, but that didn’t make what he’d done any easier to take.

“Why’d you wait to run?” he asked.

“What?”

“Why wait until the last damn minute to change your mind?”

“Good question.” She sighed, pushed her hair back, then propped her elbow on the door. “I kept thinking it would get better, I guess. Instead, it just got worse.”

He could understand that. It was the Goodmans, after all.

“And you couldn’t leave before today?”

She looked at him and frowned. “I could have. But I gave my word. I said I’d marry Jared—”

“But you didn’t.”

“Couldn’t,” she corrected, shaking her head. “Staring at myself in the mirror, wearing this hideous dress, listening to Margaret tell me about the honeymoon plans she made...” Her voice died off and it was a few seconds before she spoke again. “It finally hit me that I just couldn’t go through with it. So I ran. I suppose you think that’s cowardly.”

“Well...”

She shifted in her seat, hiking all of that white fabric higher until it was above her knees, displaying a pair of long, tanned legs. When she stopped just past her knees, Caleb was more than a little disappointed.

He looked back at the road. Way safer than looking at her.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “It took more strength to run than it would have to stay.”

Frowning to himself, Caleb thought about that for a minute. Was it possible she had a point?

She threw both hands up, the fabric spilled off her lap to the floor and she muttered a curse as she gathered it all up again to hold on her lap. Caleb spared another quick look at her long, tanned legs, then told himself to keep his eyes on the road.

“Honestly,” she said, “I could have gone through with it and not been called a ‘tramp.’ I could have stayed, knowing that I didn’t really love Jared after all, but going through with the wedding to avoid the embarrassment. But it wasn’t right for me or fair to Jared for me to marry him knowing I didn’t want to be married, especially to him, you know what I mean?”

Before he could say anything, she rolled right on.

Waving one hand, then grabbing up fabric again with another curse, she said, “I know he’ll be angry and probably hurt today but sooner or later, he’s going to see that I did the right thing and who knows, maybe he’ll even thank me for it at some point.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Caleb muttered.

“What? Never mind.” Shaking her head, she took a deep breath, looked out over the open road and said, “Even if he doesn’t thank me out loud, he’ll be glad. Eventually. This is better. I mean, I don’t know what to do now, but this is definitely better. For both of us.”

“You sound sure.”

She looked at him again until he felt compelled to meet those forest green eyes of hers however briefly. “I am,” she said. “So thank you. Again.”

“You’re welcome.” Caleb didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with her, so he was headed home. Back at the ranch, she could call her own family. Or a cab. And then she could be on her way and he could get out of this damn suit.

With that thought firmly in mind, Caleb focused on the familiar road stretching out ahead of him and did his best to ignore the beautiful woman sitting way too close to him.

There were wide sweeps of open land dotted with the scrub oaks that grew like weeds in East Texas. Here and there were homes and barns, with horses in paddocks and cattle grazing in the fields. The sky was the kind of clear, deep blue he’d only ever seen in Texas and those few gusting clouds he’d glimpsed earlier had gathered up a few friends.

Everything was absolutely normal. Except for the bride in his truck.

“Weird day,” he muttered.

“It is, isn’t it?” She whipped her hair out of her eyes to look at him. “I never thought I’d be a fugitive from my own wedding. And I know I’ve said this already, but thank you. I kind of threw myself at you and didn’t give you much room to back off, so I really appreciate you riding to the rescue.”

“I could have said no,” he reminded her.

She tilted her head to one side and studied him. “No, I don’t think you could have.”

He snorted. “Is that right?”

“Yeah. I think so.” She shook her head. “You’ve got the whole ‘responsible’ vibe going on. Anyway, I didn’t know how I was going to get away. Didn’t even think about it. I just ran.”

“Right into me.” And he had gotten a real good feel of the body beneath that ugly-ass gown. High, firm breasts, narrow waist, nicely rounded hips. He frowned and shifted as his own body suddenly went tight and uncomfortable. Hell. Just what he needed.

“Yeah, I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”

He glanced at her. “No, you’re not.”

She grinned. “No, I guess I’m really not. Hard to be sorry about finding a white knight.”

He let that one go because he was nobody’s hero.

“So now what?” he asked. “What are you going to do from here?”

She sat back and stared at him. “I have no idea.”

“Well, what was the plan?”

“Like I said, there wasn’t a plan. I just had to get away.” Shaking her head, she stared out the windshield. “I didn’t even know I was going to run until just before I did.”

She’d torn down her hair and now it was a tangled mess of dark red curls that flew around her face in the wind whipping through the opened windows. He’d had the AC on, but she’d shut it off and rolled down her window, insisting she needed to feel the wind on her face. Caleb didn’t know what it said about him that he preferred that hair of hers wild and free to the carefully pinned-up style she’d had when she ran from the club.

She still had the skirt of her wedding dress hiked up to her knees and Caleb took another admiring look at her long slim legs. Then he fixed his gaze on the road again. “Look, I’ll take you out to my ranch—”

“Your ranch.”

“That’s right.”

“Jared said he had a ranch.”

Caleb snorted. “The Goodmans used to run a ranch, generations ago. Now they rent the land out to other ranchers so they can live in town.”

“So I discovered.” She held her hair back, narrowed her eyes on him and asked, “Anyway, we know I’m not crazy.”

“Do we?”

She ignored that. “Now I have to ask. Are you a crazy person?”

Both eyebrows lifted and he snorted a laugh. “What kind of question is that?”

“One I probably should have asked before I hopped into your truck.”

“Good point.” A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth.

“Well, I thought I should ask before we go much further down this pretty empty road.”

Amused in spite of everything, he asked, “What happened to me being a damn hero rescuing you?”

“Oh, you’re still a hero,” she assured him, “but you could be crazy, too. You aren’t, though, are you?”

“Would I admit it if I was?”

“You might.” She shrugged. “There’s no telling with crazy people.”

“Know a lot of nut jobs, do you?” Caleb shook his head, he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

“A few, but you don’t seem like you’re one of them.” A wide swath of lace lifted into the wind and she snatched it and held it down on her lap. “Have you ever seen so much tulle?”

“What’s tulle?”

“This.” She lifted the swath of netting again. “It’s awful.”

“If you don’t like it, Why’d you buy it?”

“I didn’t.” She sighed. “Jared’s mother picked it out.”

Caleb laughed. “Sounds like her.”

“Okay, you’re not crazy.” She nodded and gave a sigh of satisfaction. “If you don’t like my almost mother-in-law you’re obviously stable.”

“Thanks.” Still shaking his head, he said, “Like I was saying, I’ll take you to the ranch. You can figure out where to go from there.”

“I don’t know where I can go,” she said quietly turning her head to stare out the window at the scenery flying past. “I don’t have my purse, my wallet. God, I don’t even have clothes.”

Caleb didn’t like the sound of the rising hysteria in her voice.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, and her words tumbled over each other in their rush to get out. “My God, I don’t have anything with me.”

“I can take you to an ATM—”

“No purse,” she interrupted. “No wallet, remember? No clothes except for this giant marshmallow of a dress.” She slapped one hand to her chest as if trying to hold her heart inside her body.

“You’re starting to panic,” he pointed out.

“Of course I am.” Her eyes were wild. “Now that I got away, I can think about other things and what I’m thinking is that I’m alone. In a strange place. Don’t know anyone but the people I’m escaping from.”

He watched from the corner of his eye as she shook her head frantically.

“I can’t exactly go over to the Goodmans’ house and say please can I have my things? My clothes. My purse. My ID. My phone.” She dropped her head into her hands and now her face was covered by what looked like an acre of tulle. “This is a nightmare,” she muttered.

“Remember, you wake up from nightmares.”

She lifted her head to glare at him. “Easy for you to say since I’m assuming you actually have a change of clothing.”

“Good point.” He nodded. “Yeah, you’re about the same size as my sister-in-law. You can wear some of her stuff.”

“Great. And what if she doesn’t feel like being generous?”

“She’s out of town.”

A short laugh shot from Shelby’s throat. “So I’ve been on my own about fifteen minutes and already I’m stealing clothes.”

“Not stealing. Borrowing.” He paused. “Are you always this dramatic?”

“Only when my world implodes,” she said and looked at him again. “So basically, I’m homeless and destitute. Well, hasn’t this day turned out all sparkly?”

He laughed.

She narrowed her eyes on him, then reluctantly, laughed herself. “This is not how I pictured my life going.”

“Yeah, not how I saw my day going, either,” he replied, grateful that she seemed to be coming down from that momentary panic.

“Honestly,” she said with another shake of her head, “I didn’t think beyond moving to Texas to marry Prince Charming who turned out to be a frog.”

“And you didn’t notice that right off?”

“No.” She huffed out a breath and turned her face into the wind. “Usually I’m a terrific judge of character.”

When he didn’t agree, she reminded him, “I picked you to rescue me, didn’t I?”

Amused again, Caleb laughed. “Yeah, but your choices were limited.”

“I could have just run screaming down the street,” she pointed out. “Which was first on my to-do list until I saw you.” She paused for breath. “Did you ever notice how appropriate the name Grimm was for an author of fairy tales?”

“Can’t say I ever thought about it.”

“Well, I’ve had the time lately. And the motivation. I mean, seriously. Look at this mess. It’s got it all. The feckless fiancé who’d gone from hero to wimp. His vicious mother and creepy father, not to mention his grabby brother.”

“Grabby?” Caleb scowled at the road ahead and admitted silently that he was really starting to sympathize with his runaway passenger. The Goodman family wasn’t exactly the best Royal had to offer and Shelby Arthur had discovered that the hard way.

She shuddered. “Justin is not someone a woman should be alone with. The only bright spot in that family was Jared’s sister, Brooke. She must be adopted,” Shelby added under her breath, then continued, “but by now, even she’s probably furious with me.”

“Do you need me to respond or are you good to talk all on your own?”

“God this is a mess.”

“Seems to be.”

She turned to look at him. “Not going to try to console me?”

“Would it do any good?”

“No.”

“Then it’d be a waste of time, wouldn’t it?”

“Are you always so chatty?” she asked.

“Yep.”

Shelby laughed, and the sound was soft and rich and touched something in Caleb he didn’t want to acknowledge. Still, her laughter was better than the anxiety he’d just been listening to.

“Look,” he said. “You come out to the house and you can stay there a day or two. Figure out what you want to do.”

“Stay there. With you.”

He shot her a look. “Don’t look so damn suspicious. I’m not offering you a spot in my bed.” Damn shame about that, he admitted to himself, since just looking at her made him want to reach out and cover her mouth with his. And a few other things besides. But not the point.

“You can stay on the other side of the house,” he said. “My mother died a couple years ago. You can have her wing. We won’t even see each other.”

“Her wing?” Shelby frowned. “How big is this house?”

“Big enough.”

* * *

At the Texas Cattleman’s Club, the reception for the wedding that didn’t happen was in full swing. A band played dance music as a Goodman wedding would never have accepted something so pedestrian as a DJ. The tables were decorated with snowy white cloths and a bud vase on each table held a single pink rose. The soft clink of china and crystal was an undercurrent to the music and, while the crowd gathered in knots to exchange gossip about the runaway bride, Rose Clayton sat alone at a table watching it all.

At sixty-seven, Rose was an attractive woman with a figure she took care of, stylishly cut dark brown hair with just a hint of gray—thanks to a talented stylist—that swung in a loose fall at her jawline, and her sharp, smoke-colored eyes never missed a thing.

Conversations rose and fell around her like a continuous wave. She was only half listening, and even at that, she caught plenty of people talking about the upcoming TCC board elections. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have given them a thought. But, now that women were also full-fledged members in the Texas Cattleman’s Club, she was more than a little interested.

As far as Rose was concerned, their current president, James Harris, was doing a wonderful job and she saw no reason to make a change. It was nice to eavesdrop and hear that most of the other members felt the same way.

As people passed her table, they nodded or smiled, but kept moving. Rose’s reputation as the uncrowned queen of Royal society kept people at bay even as they treated her with the respect she’d earned through years of a stubborn refusal to surrender to the unhappiness in her own life.

Rose knew everyone at the reception. She’d watched many of them grow up. Including Margaret Fraser Goodman. The woman, Rose thought, had been born an old stick. She had always been more concerned with appearances than with what really mattered. But even as she mentally chastised Margaret, Rose had to admit that she had done the same. The difference was, she assured herself, that Rose found enjoyment within the parameters that had been forced on her so long ago.

Her gaze fixed on Margaret Goodman briefly and noted the crazed look in her eyes and the grim slash of a mouth she kept forcing into a hard smile. Rose had already heard bits and pieces of chatter, no doubt started by Margaret, that had turned the situation around. Now, the story went, it was Jared who had changed his mind at the last moment. Told his unfortunate bride to leave.