Duncan's Bride Read online

  “I’ll call Robert,” he said gently. “But don’t hope too much.”

  She put her shoulders back and took a deep breath. “Call Robert if you want, after I tell you what I have to tell you. You’ll be in a different situation then and—” She stopped, looking at him helplessly, and began again. “I paid off the mortgage with my trust fund.”

  For a moment he didn’t react at all, just watched her silently, and she started to hope. Then his eyes began to chill, and she braced herself.

  “What?” he asked very softly.

  “I paid off the mortgage. The papers are in my underwear drawer.”

  Without a word he turned and went upstairs. Madelyn followed, her heart pounding. She had faced his anger before without turning a hair, but this was different. This was striking at the very basis of his feelings.

  He jerked her underwear drawer open just as she entered the bedroom. She hadn’t stuffed the papers in the bottom; they were lying right there in plain sight. He picked them up and flipped through them, noting the amount and date on the documents.

  He didn’t look up. “How did you arrange it?”

  “I went to Billings last week, the day you told me about the mortgage. Banks don’t care who pays off loans so long as they get their money, and since I’m your wife they didn’t question it.”

  “Did you think presenting me with a fait accompli would change my mind?”

  She wished that he would stop using that soft voice. When Reese was angry he roared, and she could handle that, but this was something new.

  His head came up, and she flinched. His eyes were like green ice. “Answer me.”

  She stood very still. “No, I didn’t think anything would change your mind, and that’s why I did it behind your back.”

  “You were right. Nothing would change my mind. I’ll see you in hell before you get any part of this ranch.”

  “I don’t want to take the ranch away from you. I’ve never wanted that.”

  “You’ve played your part well, Maddie, I’ll give you that. You haven’t complained, you’ve acted like a perfect wife. You even carried it so far as to pretend you love me.”

  “I do love you.” She took a step toward him, her hands outstretched. “Listen—”

  Suddenly the rage in him erupted, and he threw the sheaf of papers at her. They separated and swirled around her, then drifted to the floor. “That’s what I think of your so-called ‘love,’” he said with gritted teeth. “If you think doing something you knew I couldn’t bear is an expression of ‘love,’ then you don’t have any idea what the real thing is.”

  “I didn’t want you to lose the ranch—”

  “So you just took care of the mortgage. Any divorce court now would consider you a co-owner, wouldn’t they? They’d figure I talked you into investing your inheritance and the prenuptial agreement wouldn’t mean a damn. Hell, why should you get less than April? This isn’t the operation it once was, but the land is worth a hell of a lot.”

  “I don’t want a divorce, I haven’t even thought of divorce,” she said desperately. “I wanted to keep the ranch for you. At least this way you have a chance to rebuild it, if you’ll just take it!”

  He said sarcastically, “Yeah, if it’s worth more, you’ll get more.”

  “For the last time, I don’t want a divorce!”

  He reached out and pinched her chin, the gesture savagely playful. “You just might get one anyway, dollface, because I sure as hell don’t want a wife who’d knife me in the back like that. You weren’t my first choice, and I should have listened to my instincts, but you had me as hot as a sixteen-year-old after my first piece in the backseat. April was a bitch, but you’re worse, Maddie, because you played along and pretended this was just what you wanted. Then you slipped the blade between my ribs so slick I never even saw it coming.”

  “This is what I want.” She was pale, her eyes darkening.

  “Well, you’re not what I want. You’re hot between the sheets, but you don’t have what it takes to be a ranch wife,” he said cruelly.

  “Reese Duncan, if you’re trying to run me off, you’re doing a good job of it,” she warned shakily.

  He raised his eyebrows. His tone was icily polite. “Where would you like to go? I’ll give you a ride.”

  “If you’ll climb down off that mountain of pride you’ll see how wrong you are! I don’t want to take the ranch away. I want to live here and raise our children here. You and I aren’t the only ones involved in this. I’m carrying your baby, and it’s his heritage, too!”

  His eyes went black as he remembered the baby, and his gaze swept down her slender figure. “On second thought, you aren’t going anywhere. You’re staying right here until that baby’s born. Then I don’t care what the hell you do, but my kid is staying with me.”

  Coldness settled inside her, pushing away the hurt and anger that had been building with every word he said. Understanding could go only so far. Sympathy held out only so long. He didn’t love her, and he didn’t believe in her love for him, so exactly how much of a marriage did they have? One made of mirrors and moonshine, and held together by sex. She stared at him, her eyes going blank. Later there would be pain, but not now.

  She said very carefully, “When you calm down you’ll regret saying this.”

  “The only thing I regret is marrying you.” He took her purse from the top of the dresser and opened it.

  “What are you looking for?” She made no effort to grab it from him. In any test of strength against him she would be humiliated.

  He held up the car keys. “These.” He dropped her purse and shoved the keys into his pocket. “Like I said, you’re not going anywhere with my kid inside you. The only moving you’re doing is out of my bed. There are three other bedrooms. Pick one, and keep your butt in it.”

  He stalked from the room, being very careful not to touch her. Madelyn sank down on the bed, her legs folding under her like spaghetti. She could barely breathe, and dark spots swam in front of her eyes. Cold chills made her shake.

  She didn’t know how long it was before her mind began to function again, but finally it did, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. She began to get angry, a calm, deep, slow-burning anger that grew until it had destroyed all the numbness.

  She got up and began methodically moving her things out of Reese’s bedroom and into the room where she had slept the night she had visited him. She didn’t move a few token things in the hope that he would get over his temper, reconsider and tell her to stay put; she purged the bedroom of all signs of her presence. She left the mortgage papers lying where they were in the middle of the room. Let him walk over them if he didn’t want to pick them up.

  If he wanted war, she’d give him war.

  Pride prompted her to stay in her bedroom and not speak to him; pregnancy insisted that she eat. She went downstairs and cooked a full meal in an effort to rub a little salt in his wounds. If he didn’t want to eat what she had prepared, then he could either do it himself or do without.

  But he came to the table when she called him and ate his usual hearty meal. As she was clearing the dishes away she said, “Don’t forget the doctor’s appointment in the morning.”

  He didn’t look at her. “I’ll drive you. You aren’t getting the keys back.”

  “Fine.”

  Then she went upstairs, showered and went to bed.

  The next morning they didn’t speak a word all the way to Billings. When her name was called in the doctor’s office, which was filled with women in various stages of pregnancy, she got up and walked past him to follow the nurse. He turned his head, watching the graceful sway of her retreating figure. In a few months she would lose her grace and the sway would become a waddle. His hand tightened into a fist, and it was all he could do to keep from swearing aloud. How could she have done that to him?

  Madelyn was questioned, stuck, checked, probed and measured. When she had dressed she was directed into the doctor’s office, and in
a moment Reese joined her, followed shortly by the doctor.

  “Well, everything looks normal,” the doctor said, consulting his charts. “You’re in good physical shape, Mrs. Duncan. Your uterus is enlarged more like thirteen or fourteen weeks than the nine or ten you think it should be, so you may be off on your conception date. We’ll do an ultrasound when you’re further along to get a better idea of the baby’s maturity. It could just be a large baby, or twins. I see that your maternal grandmother was a twin, and multiple births usually follow the female line.”

  Reese sat up straight, his eyes sharpening. “Is there any danger in having twins?”

  “Not much. They usually come a little early, and we have to be careful about that. At this stage of the game, I’m more worried about a large baby than I am twins. Your wife should be able to have twins without a problem, as their birth weight is usually lower than that of a single baby. The total is more, but the individual weights are less. How much did you weigh when you were born, Mr. Duncan?”

  “Ten pounds, two ounces.” His mouth was grim.

  “I’ll want to keep a very close eye on your wife if this baby approaches a birth weight of anything over eight pounds. She has a narrow pelvis, not drastically so, but a ten-pound baby would probably require a C-section.”

  That said, he began talking to Madelyn about her diet, vitamins and rest, and he gave her several booklets about prenatal care. When they left half an hour later, Madelyn was weighted down with prescriptions and reading material. Reese drove to a pharmacy, where he had the prescriptions filled, then headed home again. Madelyn sat straight and silent beside him. When they got home, he realized that she hadn’t looked at him once all day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING as he started to leave she asked coolly, “Can you hear the car horn blow from anywhere on the ranch?”

  He looked startled. “Of course not.” He eyed her questioningly, but she still wasn’t looking at him.

  “Then how am I supposed to find you or contact you?”

  “Why would you want to?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I’m pregnant. I could fall, or start to miscarry. Any number of things.”

  It was an argument he couldn’t refute. He set his jaw, faced with the choice between giving her the means to leave or endangering both her life and that of his baby. When it came down to it, he didn’t have a choice. He took the keys from his pocket and slammed them down on the cabinet, but he kept his hand on them.

  “Do I have your word you won’t run?”

  She looked at him finally, but her eyes were cool and blank. “No. Why should I waste my breath making promises when you wouldn’t believe me anyway?”

  “Just what is it you want me to believe? That you haven’t worked it so you have just as much claim to the ranch as I have? A woman made a fool of me once and walked away with half of everything I owned, but it won’t happen again, even if I have to burn this house to the ground and sell the land for a loss, is that clear?” He was shouting by the time he finished, and he looked at her as if he hated the sight of her.

  Madelyn didn’t show any expression or move. “If that was all I’d wanted, I could have paid off the mortgage at any time.”

  Her point scored; she saw it in his eyes. She could have followed it up, but she held her peace. She had given him something to think about. She would give him a lot more to think about before this was over.

  He banged out of the house, leaving the car keys on the cabinet. She picked them up, tossing them in her hand as she went upstairs to the bedroom, where she already had some clothes packed. In the two nights she had spent alone in this room, she had thought through what she was going to do and where she was going to go. Reese would expect her to go running back to New York now that she had a claim on the ranch, but she had never even considered that. To teach him the lesson he needed, she had to be close by.

  It would be just like him to deliberately work close by in case she tried to leave, so she didn’t, and felt fierce satisfaction when he came home for lunch after telling her that he would be out all day. Since she hadn’t cooked anything, she made a plate of sandwiches and put it in front of him, then continued with what she had been doing before, which was cleaning the oven.

  He asked, “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “I’ve already eaten.”

  A few minutes later he asked, “Should you be doing work like that?”

  “It isn’t hard.”

  Her cool tone discouraged any more conversational overtures. She wasn’t letting him off that easy. She had told him twice that she wasn’t going to pay for April’s sins, but it evidently hadn’t sunk in; now she was going to show him.

  When he left again she waited half an hour, then carried her suitcase out to the car. She didn’t have far to go, and it wouldn’t take him long to find her, a few days at the most. Then he could take the car back if he wanted, so she didn’t feel guilty about it. Besides, she didn’t need it. She fully expected to be back at the ranch before her next doctor’s appointment, but if she wasn’t, then she would inform Reese that he had to take her. Her plan had nothing to do with staying away from him.

  There was a room above Floris’s café that was always for rent, because there was never anyone in Crook who needed to rent it. It would do for her for as long as she needed it. She drove to Crook and parked the car in front of the café. The idea wasn’t to hide from Reese; she wanted him to know exactly where she was.

  She went into the café, but there wasn’t anyone behind the counter. “Floris? Is anyone here?”

  “Hold your water,” came Floris’s unmistakable sour voice from the kitchen. A few minutes later she came through the door. “You want coffee, or something to eat?”

  “I want to rent the room upstairs.”

  Floris stopped and narrowed her eyes at Madelyn. “What do you want to do that for?”

  “Because I need a place to stay.”

  “You’ve got a big house back on that ranch, and a big man to keep you warm at night, if that’s all you need.”

  “What I have,” Madelyn said very clearly, “is a pigheaded husband who needs to be taught a lesson.”

  “Hmmph. Never seen a man yet wasn’t pigheaded.”

  “I’m pregnant, too.”

  “Does he know?”

  “He does.”

  “He knows where you are?”

  “He will soon. I’m not hiding from him. He’ll probably come through the door breathing fire and raising hell, but I’m not going back until he understands a few things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as I’m not his first wife. He got a dirty deal, but I’m not the one who gave it to him, and I’m tired of paying for someone else’s dirt.”

  Floris looked her up and down, then nodded, and a pleased expression for once lit her sour face. “All right, the room’s yours. I always did like to see a man get his comeuppance,” she muttered as she turned to go back into the kitchen. Then she stopped and looked back at Madelyn. “You got any experience as a short-order cook?”

  “No. Do you need one?”

  “Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t. I’m doing the cooking and waitressing, too. That sorry Lundy got mad because I told him his eggs were like rubber and quit on me last week.”

  Madelyn considered the situation and found she liked it. “I could wait on tables.”

  “You ever done that before?”

  “No, but I’ve taken care of Reese for nine months.”

  Floris grunted. “I guess that qualifies you. He don’t strike me as an easy man to satisfy. Well, you in good health? I don’t want you on your feet if you’re having trouble keeping that baby.”

  “Perfect health. I saw a doctor yesterday.”

  “Then the job’s yours. I’ll show you the room. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s warm during the winter.”

  The room was clean and snug, and that was about the limit of its virtues, but Madelyn didn’t mind. There wa
s a single bed, a couch, a card table with two chairs, a hot plate and a minuscule bathroom with cracking tile. Floris turned on the heat so it would get warm and returned to the kitchen while Madelyn carried her suitcases in. After hanging up her clothes in the small closet, she went downstairs to the café, tied an apron around her and took up her duties as waitress.

  WHEN REESE GOT home that night he was dead tired; he’d been kicked, stepped on and had a rope burn on his arm. The cows would begin dropping their spring calves any time, and that would be even more work, especially if a cold front moved in.

  When he saw that the car was gone and the house was dark, it was like taking a kick in the chest, punching the air out of him. He stared at the dark windows, filled with a paralyzing mixture of pain and rage. He hadn’t really thought she would leave. Deep down, he had expected her to stay and fight it out, toe-to-toe and chin to chin, the way she’d done so many times. Instead she’d left, and he closed his eyes at the piercing realization that she was exactly what he’d most feared: a grasping, shallow woman who wasn’t able to take the hard times. She’d run back to the city and her cushy life-style, the stylish clothes.

  And she’d taken his baby with her.

  It was a betrayal ten times worse than anything April had done to him. He had begun to trust Maddie, begun to let himself think of their future in terms of years rather than just an unknown number of months. She had lain beneath him and willingly let him get her pregnant; for most of a year she had lived with him, cooked for him, washed his clothes, laughed and teased and worked alongside him, slept in his arms.

  Then she had stabbed him in the back. It was a living nightmare, and he was living it for the second time.

  He walked slowly into the house, his steps dragging. There were no warm, welcoming smells in the kitchen, no sound except for the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock. Despite everything, he had a desperate, useless hope that she’d had to go somewhere, that there was a note of explanation somewhere in the house. He searched all the rooms, but there was no note. He went into the bedroom where she had spent the past two nights and found the dresser drawers empty, the bathroom swept clean of the fragrant female paraphernalia. He was still trying to get used to not seeing her clothes in the closet beside his; to find them nowhere in the house was staggering.