Almost a Bride Read online

  ALMOST A BRIDE

  Patricia McLinn

  ~

  This edition published by Patricia McLinn at Smashwords

  Copyright Patricia McLinn

  First published 2001 by Silhouette

  NEW YORK

  ~

  Discover other titles by Patricia McLinn at Smashwords:

  Hoops

  A New World

  Prelude to a Wedding

  Rodeo Nights

  Not a Family Man

  A Stranger in the Family

  A Stranger to Love

  The Rancher Meets His Match

  Widow Woman

  Almost a Bride

  Match Made in Wyoming

  My Heart Remembers

  Lost and Found Groom

  The Games

  Principal of Love

  ~

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ~

  Wyoming Wildflowers Trilogy:

  Almost a Bride

  Book 1: Indian Paintbrush

  Match Made in Wyoming

  Book 2: Fireweed

  My Heart Remembers:

  Book 3: Bur Marigold

  ~

  ~

  To Toby, a very special reader.

  Thank you for your loyal support.

  ~

  Dear Readers: If you encounter typos or errors in this book, please send them to me at:

  Patricia (at) PatriciaMcLinn (dot) com .

  Even with many layers of editing, mistakes can slip through, alas. But, together, we can eradicate the nasty nuisances. Thank you! - Patricia McLinn

  CHAPTER ONE

  Matty Brennan's plan to save the Flying W Ranch began forming even before she charged out of her lawyer's office.

  It exploded into full bloom in the instant her nose collided with Dave Currick's collarbone.

  A lot was jammed into that instant, since a particular corner of her mind also registered that the hands she'd instinctively put up to brace herself had discovered that Dave had an even nicer chest than she'd remembered.

  "Off to a fire, Matty?"

  Running into Dave had to be an omen, she thought as she recovered her equilibrium, straightened away from his chest and rubbed her nose.

  When Taylor Anne Larsen delivered the dire legal news – on top of the financial mess Matty had already discovered – there'd been one throat-closing, stomach-grinding moment when Matty had feared there might not be any way out.

  Taylor had suggested selling some of the ranch – as if Matty would ever do that. She was the last of the Brennans, and she would not be the one who shredded the Flying W into splinters and flakes.

  It wasn't the lawyer's fault for not understanding – she'd been raised in some suburb in Ohio. Of course, even some people right here in Knighton, Wyoming didn't share Matty's feeling. There was only one person she knew for a certainty would understand, and that was Dave – as soon as that thought had surfaced, she'd veered away from it like a rattlesnake in the middle of the room.

  "I truly am sorry about the grant, Matty," Taylor had said. "And I'm afraid there are more papers to sign for the estate now, too."

  If Great-Uncle Henry had had a grain of sense, the Flying W wouldn't be encumbered with exorbitant inheritance taxes, not to mention the bank note coming due in two years. But the same optimism that had persuaded him no caution was needed in running a cattle ranch had also convinced him he had no need to bother with estate planning.

  As Matty prepared to leave after her signing duties, Taylor held out a sheaf of papers. "These are the grant regulations. Maybe you'll see something that will help for next year, if ..."

  If Matty Brennan still owned the Flying W.

  The thought her attorney refrained from voicing dropped a sour lump into Matty's stomach as she flipped through the papers while crossing the empty reception area toward the outside door.

  She had to find a way out. Any way out. Whatever it took.

  That's when she saw it – the one loophole that might let her save the Flying W. She needed just one thing ...

  The next moment she'd flung open the door and started across the board sidewalk that lined the string of pseudo-frontier-town offices, only to run nose-to-chest into David Edward Currick.

  Exactly the person she needed.

  Definitely an omen.

  She shrugged off the hands he'd cupped around her shoulders to steady her.

  "Fire? No, there's no fire. I was – I was going to go look for you," she improvised.

  "Me?" His deep voice edged toward uncharacteristic astonishment. Usually his western drawl stayed unhurried, unfazed and with a hint of dry amusement. He had the kind of deep, faintly raspy tone that often came from a few decades spent smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too much whiskey. But she'd been around when his voice had shifted from a childish soprano to this sexy register, and she knew it was all nature's doing.

  Sometimes Mother Nature didn't play fair.

  "Yes. I have something to talk to you about."

  "Now, that's nice to hear, Matty, Seems like you've spent these past weeks avoidin' talkin' to me." His voice was back to normal, and that irked her.

  "I have not."

  "If I recall, the phrase you used when I called to ask you to dinner a few weeks back was Don't call me again unless it's to tell me you're dead. The logic was a shade hazy, but I got your drift. No dinner dates."

  She recalled the phone call vividly. Six years after leaving for what she'd vowed would be forever, she'd arrived late the night before Great Uncle Henry's funeral, which entailed an exhausting day-long series of condolences, ceremony and casseroles. The next day, she'd decided that before she did anything else, she needed to know how the ranch stood. So she'd tackled Henry Brennan's business affairs, now hers since she was the only one left to inherit the Flying W.

  She'd spent the entire morning opening "past due" and "final warning" notices that had filled the bottom two drawers of Great-Uncle Henry's desk.

  Still reeling from the knowledge that she was totally alone in the world now, with not another living relative, she had been left almost numb by the reality of the mess she'd inherited.

  That's when the phone rang. She'd answered automatically.

  And there had been Dave's voice. Assured. Familiar. Once loved. Asking her to dinner as if nothing had changed in all the years since their last date.

  Not a "sorry," not a "we should talk," not a "life hasn't been the same without you," much less a "I'll crawl across every inch of rock, creek and prickly pear between my place and yours if you'll only smile at me once more."

  Goaded by despair over the Flying W and the jumble of emotions his voice stirred, she'd lashed out. Acted on impulse, she supposed. Which should have come as no surprise to him, considering the number of times he'd criticized her for doing that very thing when they were growing up.

  And then he'd never called back. Since then, whenever their paths crossed in the tiny community of Knighton, he'd acted like he was an amused older brother and she was an idiot child.

  "This is business," she informed him now with every scrap of dignity she could muster. "Sort of a … a business proposition."

  "Well, I'd be happy to talk to you about business, but I'm heading for an appointment right now. To see Ms. Larsen."

  "Why?" she dema
nded, then caught herself. Despite the late April chill, he wore no jacket – Dave rarely got cold as fast as normal people – so she could see every detail of his outfit. He was wearing new jeans and a crisp white shirt with the cuffs rolled back and a black cowboy hat atop his neatly trimmed saddle-brown hair. It was a nice compromise between his more formal lawyer attire and his ranch clothes. Just right for a casual date. Taylor Anne Larsen was very attractive. Single and unattached. Intelligent. And they had lawyer stuff in common. Why was pretty damned obvious.

  "Not that it's my business," Matty added hurriedly.

  "No, it's not."

  She scowled at his equable agreement.

  Three years her senior, Dave had been her measuring stick all through childhood – learn to read like Dave, to ride like Dave, to rope like Dave, to get good grades like Dave. Constantly trying to catch up, and never quite making it.

  He'd been the first to kiss her, of course. The first to hold her in his arms. The first to make her blood feel like it was melting. The first to make love to her.

  And the only one to break her heart.

  Now, of course, she could see what children they'd been then, with him still in law school and her still in college. But at the time, his ending their romance had been heart-breaking, soul-wrenching tragedy.

  She'd left vowing to make him sorry. To make him rue the day he'd let the dazzling Matty Brennan get away.

  She'd been a little hazy on exactly how she was going to dazzle him. But it didn't matter in what arena – dancer, actress, financial whiz, literary genius or married-into-royalty – she dazzled him, as long as he was dazzled within a hair's-breadth of his Wyoming's-good-enough-for-me life.

  It didn't help that he'd gone on to get his law degree with ease, passed the bar on the first try, then settled down to a thriving law practice. And since his parents retired to indulge a yen for adventurous travel a few years back, he'd combined that with successfully running his family's ranch.

  He was living exactly the life he'd always wanted, the life she'd once dreamed of sharing with him. And doing it right next door to the Flying W ... which she would lose if she couldn't pull this off.

  That was what mattered, she reminded herself.

  "It's just that my business is important," she said stiffly. "Very important."

  "I could come see you tomorrow – "

  "No!" Twenty-four hours? No way. If she thought about this too much – if she thought about it at all – she'd lose her nerve. Or regain her pride. "It's, well, it's real important to me. It's urgent."

  "Urgent?" Now he was frowning. "Are you okay, Matty? Is something wrong?"

  "No. I mean, yes, but not the way you mean."

  She took a deep breath and looked around. A young couple was coming up the steps at one end of the sidewalk, probably heading toward the real estate office next to Taylor's. Matty grabbed the rolled back cuff of Dave's white shirt and tugged him toward the opposite end, where they'd have more privacy.

  "What is it, Matty? You're worrying me. Is it that Cal Ruskoff you've got working for you?"

  She stared up into his narrowed hazel eyes in astonishment. "Cal? No. Why would you think that? He's great. Works like five men and never complains."

  Dave's frown didn't ease, but some of the tension went out of his broad shoulders. "Then what is it?"

  "Give me a second here," she said irritably.

  She tried to think of a way to say this, a way to make it more palatable, and couldn't. It was like going into the swimming hole on a spring day when they were kids. There was no edging into it, inch by inch, or you'd never do it. The only way to go was to take the plunge.

  She took a breath and leaped.

  "I want to marry you."

  For a second, she could almost believe she'd really jumped into the swimming hole. She felt the same shock of cold surround her and the same sensation that all sound in the world was muffled and distant. The only thing she could hear clearly was the beating of her own heart.

  Then a single word from Dave brought her back.

  "Pardon?"

  He hadn't moved an inch and his expression hadn't changed. He sounded as if he was certain – as only Dave could be certain – that he'd heard wrong.

  Of course he was going to make her repeat it. Dave had never made anything easy on her. Not since he'd told her, then all of five years old, that if she couldn't keep up, she should go back and play with dolls.

  "I want to marry you. In fact, I have to marry you."

  He seemed to come out of a trance. He pushed his cowboy hat back off his forehead, and leaned against the pole that held up the roof over the sidewalk, crossing one leg over the other with an air of total nonchalance.

  "Have to? You sure it's me you're thinking of?" The amusement was back in his voice. At least she thought it was amusement. It had an edge to it and the look he was giving her didn't strike her as a laughing matter, but maybe that's how he showed amusement these days. After all, she hadn't been around him for years. "Darlin', either I missed something in the past few weeks that I'd truly hate to think I'd missed or you're setting to make medical history. Unless there's someone else more, let's say, recent?"

  "Don't be an idiot, Dave. I'm not pregnant."

  "That's a relief. I'd hate to have you be the subject of all those tabloid newspapers for bearing a child six years after the fact. As for the more usual time frame, well a gentleman doesn't like to think he's forgotten things like that. And if someone else –"

  "Oh, shut up, Dave. It's nothing like that."

  "Nothing to do with oh, say, an affair of the heart?"

  "Why would it have to do with an affair of the heart?"

  "Well," he drawled, "marriage sometimes does."

  "Not this time. I told you, it's business."

  "Business?" he asked politely. "I'm sorry. I'm not following this. Call me stupid, but I associate marriage with romance, not business."

  "Yeah, right. You've had enough romances to make Don Juan look like Barney Fife, and I've never heard anything about you getting married."

  "Been paying attention to my social life, have you?"

  "It's like the wind around here – it's only remarkable when it's not making its presence felt."

  "Matty, if this is the way you ask all the men to marry you, I can see why you're still single. I thought I taught you better than that."

  "You taught – Why you ..."

  She swallowed the words with the greatest of effort. He'd gotten under her skin from their earliest days. Even when she'd thought she was in love with him, he'd been able to yank her chain with the flick of his finger. But no more. And certainly not now. She couldn't afford it. The Flying W couldn't afford it.

  "This is all beside the point." She barely gritted her teeth at all; she was proud of that.

  "And what is the point, Matty?" His mouth twitched.

  "The point –" She figured she couldn't be blamed for a little teeth-gritting now. "– is that I want us to get married. Right away. But only temporarily."

  "Temporarily?"

  "Of course, temporarily." She was miffed. "You don't think I'd ask you to get married for good, do you?"

  "I didn't mean any disrespect. But not having been proposed to before, at least not by you –" She glared at him. Because of the mock humble tone; not, definitely not, because of his intimation that he might have been proposed to by other women. "– I want to keep this all straight. Orderly. Since it's business. Isn't that what you said?"

  "That's what I said. We'd get married, then after a while, we'd get divorced. Uncontested. Nice and clean."

  He raised one eyebrow. "Not sure I've ever heard of a clean divorce, much less a nice one."

  "That's because all those other divorces were between people who were married."

  "You got me there, Matty, That's a fact."

  "Oh, quit with the Gary Cooper act, Currick. You know what I mean. We would be pretending to be married. I mean, we'd get married, but we woul
dn't be married. We wouldn't – " She shot him a glowering look to be sure he got her point. "– do things married couples do. So the divorce would be no big deal."

  He rubbed his chin. God, he'd gone from Gary Cooper to Gabby Hayes. If he said Well, Goooolllleeee, she'd belt him.

  "Uh-huh. Okay, so we get married – without really being married – and then we get divorced. I have that right?"

  "Yes."

  "How long?"

  "How long what?"

  "Before we get divorced?"

  She hadn't thought that out yet. If the Flying W didn't get the grant this year or if one year's grant wasn't enough to get it back on its feet, she'd be back where she'd started. Better give herself some leeway.

  "Five years."

  He jerked up from the pole as if it had caught fire. "Five years!"

  She crossed her arms and braced her legs. "Five years isn't a life sentence, you know. It's not like we'd have to be together all the time. We'd only have to make it look like we were married."

  He rested back against the pole. "So it would be okay if I fooled around on the side?"

  "No!" She would have taken that back if she could, especially when he got smug. "We have to keep up proper appearances. That's part of the deal."

  "Matty, honey, be reasonable. Unless you're going to rethink your position on conjugal rights –"

  "No!"

  "– And you don't want me running around on you, five years is definitely out of the question."

  She gave in with ill grace. "Four years, then."

  "Six months."

  "No way. Three years."

  "One year."

  "Two years."

  "Eighteen months."

  She figured furiously in her head. She'd just have to get the grant this year. Surely she could turn the Flying W around with two years' worth of grants. And paperwork for a divorce would take time, so with some luck ... "Twenty-two months before we start the divorce proceedings."