Читать книгу: «Texas Bride»

Chapter One

As he slid another CD into the car’s player, Josh Walker frowned. Damned if he’d admit it, but—he was lost. Smack in the middle of the biggest nothing he’d ever seen. No trees, no houses, no other traffic. Aside from some stubby wildflowers edging the road, this western half of Texas held nothing but cactus and rocks.

And weather, Josh amended. The blue-black clouds that had begun piling up along the horizon just an hour ago now filled the sky.

Josh swore. He’d encountered one—count ’em, one—intersection since leaving the interstate and he must have made the wrong turn. Dammit, he should be in San Angelo by now.

Not that it really mattered. The case in Midland had wrapped up unexpectedly this morning when his client accepted a new settlement offer. Josh had called his office back in Virginia, but there was nothing pressing at the moment.

So he’d packed away his suit and tie, donned jeans and a well-washed chambray shirt—and the boots he still favoted over athletic shoes, even after years of living back East—and climbed into his outrageously expensive imported car to indulge in the one pleasure he could always count on: a long, solitary road trip. Ordinarily, the silent slipping of miles beneath the wheels relaxed him and chased the stress from his mind.

Only it wasn’t working this time. Hell, nothing was working these days. His work no longer absorbed him; his house was just an investment; even sex—The last careful, casual physical relationship had left him completely cold. Dissatisfied. Empty.

Damned if he’d admit that, either. He was only twenty-nine. His life was not empty. Everything was fine.

Josh growled at the bright, cheerful April wildflowers dancing in the wind. Well, okay. Maybe his life was a little sterile, predictable and lonely, but—No, not lonely.

Solitary. By choice.

Because that was the only safe choice. He’d learned that lesson six years ago in earth-shattering fashion, when his girlfriend had disappeared for a weekend. To get rid of his baby. Without asking him. Without even bothering to tell him. If it hadn’t been for that blabbermouth friend of hers, he might never have discovered the truth.

But he had. For a day or two, anguish and anger had threatened to devastate him.

Then he’d fought back. Slammed a permanent lid on useless emotion. Stayed busy.

It had worked, too. He’d finished first in his class in law school. Built a successful practice, specializing in environmental issues. And he’d never been hurt by a woman again. Therefore, even though he’d been a little...restless lately, he still thought he was perfectly happy.

Certain other people disagreed. His secretary, Marletta, was making retirement noises, even though she was only forty-eight. And his sister-in-law—

Josh snorted softly at the way Matt’s wife had taken his inventory last month when he’d gone back to Montana to attend his newest nephew’s christening. When his younger brother, Dan, showed up with Mei Li, his new Amerasian bride, Annie had teased Josh about being the last unmarried Walker. Told him he’d better get moving.

He’d snarled back that hell would freeze over before he’d get involved with a woman again—and stalked out of the house.

Annie had strolled outside after him, folded her arms on the top rail of the corral and calmly asked him when he was going to stop feeling sorry for himself.

It wasn’t self-pity, he’d protested. It was wisdom won the hard way.

As he put the car through a curve, Josh shook his head, recalling how Annie had just steamrolled on. You don’t hold the patent on being hurt, Josh. Everybody gets wounded. It’s part of living. If you want to suffer, that’s your choice. But if you want to heal—stop picking at the scab!

The best way to do that is to find someone who’s hurt worse than you are and help them.

Nonsense, of course. But somehow Annie’s words had stuck in his head. Even now, weeks later, he couldn’t seem to forget them.

He didn’t understand what her suggestion was supposed to accomplish, though. Was he supposed to feel smug and self-satisfied for doing a good turn? Or grateful because he was so much better off by comparison?

Besides, Josh thought as the rumble of thunder drowned the CD’s music, he didn’t know anyone who’d been hurt worse than he had....

As the old pickup coasted to a stop, Dani Caldwell guided it toward the edge of the pavement. Unless she missed her guess, the truck had thrown a rod, which meant...

Dani swallowed the panic rising through her, since there was no point to it The disaster had already happened; now she just had to pick up the pieces and move on.

“I should be getting good at this,” she muttered as she collected the small sack of groceries she’d spent her nearlylast dollar on, then clambered awkwardly down from the pickup cab. “I’m sure getting enough practice! Maybe that’s what I’ll do after the baby comes—give seminars in coping.”

To keep her mind occupied with something besides the stifling afternoon heat, her crippled finances, the terminally ill truck or her real problems, Dani elaborated on the silly theme as she trudged down the narrow, seldom-used state road toward the primitive cabin that was now both refuge and prison.

“I’ll start small, with free lectures to church groups. Then hotel ballrooms at a fee. In no time at all, I’ll be the Queen of Coping, with infomercials, books, videos—”

Her foot slipped on a stone and she had to fight to stay upright. That might do it, Dani conceded as she shifted the groceries to the other arm and continued on. So far, she’d fought her difficulties to a standstill, but a broken ankle—out here in the middle of West Texas Nowhere—might actually convince her to give up.

But her ankle wasn’t broken, she reminded herself firmly. And she was young, strong and determined. Also broke, widowed, pregnant and just about job skill-less....

The baby kicked her so hard she staggered. Dani grinned and patted her bulging abdomen. “That’s your first comment today,” she said, “and you’re right, tiger. No self-pity. We’ll figure something out. Besides, we’re almost home.” Just before the next dry streambed, she turned off the road at the odd half-palm, half-yucca tree. It marked the beginning of the narrow rocky path that followed the wash for a few yards, then curved around a big boulder before rising to her latest hiding place, a one-room hunting cabin that belonged to a schoolmate’s uncle.

Dani had to pause to rest at the boulder. The book said that tiring easily was natural so close to delivery.

“Just a couple more weeks, darling,” she whispered to the precious burden she carried beneath her heart. “Then we’ll begin our new life together.” As she rested, Dani stared out over the stark desert landscape, so unlike the lush Piney Woods of East Texas where she’d grown up.

A wave of homesickness swept over her and she allowed herself one minute for wishing things were different. For wishing she could have stayed in Lufkin to have her baby.

For wishing her baby could have known its father.

Dani closed her eyes, but the pain she’d once felt over Jimmy’s death had faded to weary acceptance in the six months since he’d caught a bullet meant for one of his hotheaded barroom buddies. When the doctors declared him legally dead the next day, the very last of her hopes and illusions had died too.

And she’d had so many! She’d fallen in love at first sight—the instant she’d bumped into Jimmy Caldwell while filing into the high school cafeteria for freshman orientation. Within weeks they’d been going together, and four years later, on her eighteenth birthday, she’d married him and settled down to live happily ever after.

Dani sighed. “Ever after” had turned out to be five years. As for the happily part, well... They’d been happy for a while, but Jimmy had changed so much—especially in the last two years—that by the time he’d disappeared into the night that final time, the boy she’d loved had become a complete stranger.

“But don’t worry, baby. I won’t make the same mistake twice.” Dani didn’t have time to nurse another broken heart; she had a baby to bring into the world and raise.

Oh, she wasn’t naive enough to think that doing it alone would be easy, but she had no choice and that at least made it simple.

No choice. Dani smoothed her hand over the baby. Her parents were gone, killed in a car wreck only weeks after her wedding. And Jimmy’s folks... Dani held them largely responsible for her husband’s unhappiness and self-destructive behavior. They’d pressured him relentlessly to be the first, the best, the most. When he couldn’t measure up, he’d sought comfort with casual drinking companions instead of his wife.

Well, they weren’t getting a chance to damage her child with their heavy-handed treatment.

Unfortunately, her in-laws had different ideas. They also had money, powerful contacts throughout the state, and no qualms about using any means necessary to get what they wanted.

And what they wanted—now that their only son was dead—was sole custody of their grandchild. Dani refused to give up her child, but she had no resources to fight them.

So she’d run. And run. And run again.

She’d planned to wait out the last of the waiting here, then head for a good-size town and use her tiny emergency fund to pay for a midwife and a night or two in a cheap motel. After the due date, she was going to clean houses or baby-sit while she worked out the details of a real career path.

“So much for plans,” she muttered. The truck breaking down had not been in her scenario. Now what?

A deep rumbling made her look up. Dark clouds filled the sky, flashing streaks of lightning over the desert like party streamers.

“Thank you.” Dani addressed the thunderheads with a little laugh. “I was just about to waste my time worrying—as if that ever created a solution.”

The first, chilly raindrops splattered the dust around her. “I do have a roof to put over us,” Dani told her unborn child, pushing off from the rough limestone and resettling the grocery sack. “And I think I’d better hurry up and do itl”

As she hustled up the path, making it through the cabin door just before the rain started in earnest, Dani welcomed the distraction of the storm. She tried to think positively for the baby’s sake, but she didn’t honestly know how much longer she could keep up her brave front.

With no car, no job, no money, alone and a baby coming...

“Oh, stop whining,” she ordered herself. “Lots of people are worse off than you are.” Smoothing her hand over her baby’s current address comforted Dani, as usual. “I don’t know how we’ll manage, but we will,” she promised the son or daughter who was kicking merrily against her rib cage. “Because no matter what—I won’t give you up.”

While the storm grew in intensity, Dani kept herself busy mixing up corn bread and doctoring black-eyed peas to make Texas caviar.

Biting back a swearword, Josh fought to keep the car on the road as downdrafts from the thunderstorm buffeted it. Then the rain hit—the fat, individual drops splatting on his windshield quickly became a deluge his wipers could barely handle.

Josh pressed on the gas pedal, eager to drive out of the storm, find a town and check into a motel. He was tired. He’d had enough of the desert. Enough of being lost.

When the rain thickened into a solid curtain, he slowed a little.

An inch or so of water covered the road in a few spots. The car hydroplaned across them, but the tires regained their traction almost immediately. He relaxed against the leather upholstery.

Suddenly a dark shape loomed in front of him and Josh swerved just in time to avoid sideswiping it. A truck, he realized as it disappeared into the grayness again. Some damn fool hadn’t pulled completely off the pavement.

Just ahead, another shallow layer of water stretched from one side of the pavement to the other.

At least he wasn’t the only person ever to drive down this road. Which meant it went somewhere, too. With a sense of relief he refused to acknowledge, Josh increased his speed.

And drove right into hell.

The nose of Josh’s car hit the edge of the water, forward momentum carried the rest of the vehicle into the torrent before his foot could hit the brakes. Like a greedy child snatching up a toy, the angry current grabbed the car, pulled it off the side of the road, then spun it—once, twice, three times—slamming Josh’s head against the doorpost with each furious revolution.

One more shuddering impact with something and the car came to a halt.

Josh managed to unfasten the seat belt, but the churning torrent held the door shut against his dazed efforts to open it. The electric window controls didn’t work. He tried the passenger door, but it was jammed shut, too.

Before his head cleared enough to think straight, a large piece of debris smashed into the car. The impact sent Josh bouncing off the steering wheel into the doorpost again, then rammed his head into the dash. Stars exploded behind his eyes.

Through the haze of pain disorienting him, Josh noted water seeping into the car, filling the floorboards, rising.

He was going to drown here. In this gritty, muddy water. As consciousness faded despite his efforts to stay alert, Josh tasted real regret. Maybe my life is empty, he thought, but...I don’t want to die!

The oven baking the corn bread threatened to toast Dani, too, so she went out on the porch to breathe some raincooled air.

She was about to step back inside when an odd sound came thinly through the storm. It took her a moment to recognize... Then she was struggling into a jacket and scrambling for the flashlight and turning back for the length of old rope she wouldn’t trust to hold a cat’s weight. It was all she had.

“That sounded like metal, baby. Like a car being hit! If someone’s in trouble, we can’t turn our back on them, so hang on,” she said, finding a way, despite her loaded-down arms, to pat her stomach encouragingly. “Hang on!” she yelled into the misty gloom. Thank heaven, the rain seemed to be slowing.

As carefully but as quickly as possible, Dani slid down the path to the big boulder, then scrambled past it to peer at—Oh, God. It was a car. In the creek. Caught for the moment against her boulder’s twin out in midstream.

The furious, foaming runoff was trying to pull it away from the rock and drag it downstream. If she was going to rescue the passengers, she’d have to act quickly.

Maybe there isn’t anyone inside. Dani grasped at the possibility. Maybe they’d gotten out. Maybe the car had broken down—like her truck—and been abandoned. Maybe she didn’t have to risk the baby....

Biting her lip, Dani aimed the flashlight beam at the vehicle. A dark human shape slumped over the steering wheel.

“Well, that makes it simple,” she muttered, tucking the flashlight into her windbreaker. She tied one end of the rope around the yucca tree and the other end under her breasts, took a deep breath and waded into the torrent.

Letting the rough current push her toward and around the rear of the car, Dani grabbed for and found a handhold on the midstream boulder. After crawling awkwardly to its top, she inched along it, wiping the now-occasional raindrop from her eyes. And babbling, she realized as she reached a spot near the front of the car. That idiot pleading and praying aloud was her.

Okay. God probably has the idea. Now do your part.

Pulling out the flashlight, Dani pointed it at the still figure in the car. The ray of light showed only a few details clearly: the gleam of dark gold hair, a firm jaw, and broad, unmistakably male shoulders. His eyes were closed, but... Dani steadied the shaking beam and peered through the raindrops beading the windshield. Yes, the man’s chest moved. He was unconscious, but alive.

Dani’s sigh of thanksgiving became a groan as the flashlight revealed another problem. There was water inside the vehicle, already lapping over the console. Clamping her jaws together, Dani put away the flashlight. The man in the car was going to die unless she did something. Now.

The top of the boulder was littered with loose rocks. Picking up the biggest one, Dani lifted it over her head, aimed it at the windshield and let fly. She repeated the process until the glass starred, then heaved the rock one more time. As the spray of safety-glass nuggets subsided, Dani leaned down and peered through the opening she’d created to get a better look at the man she was trying to rescue.

Heat coiled deep inside her. Completely inappropriate reaction, she told herself. But just as completely undeniable.

Okay, so cope with it. And get back to work.

Despite her urgency, Dani couldn’t help studying the man for a few long seconds. He was unrelentingly male. Exceedingly handsome. Even unconscious, he exuded a sense of leashed power, like a sleeping cougar.

And she had to get him out of the car before he drowned.

But how? The man looked to be a muscular six-footer, she was a very pregnant five-three. She couldn’t even get her hand far enough inside the car to touch him.

Dani tugged on her lower lip for a second.

Then, taking a deep breath, she did the only thing she could think of. She started shouting.

Regret was still there as a thought slowly emerged from the blackness. So this... is...being dead.

Josh struggled to form another thought, but—What was that infernal noise?

“Dam it, wake up! Come on, mister. Open your eyes!”

With a groan, he obeyed. Where—Was he in a car? The windshield looked like a silvery net—except for a hole on the right side.

Through the opening, he could see a light. He’d heard about that. He was supposed to go toward it, wasn’t he?

A face appeared, floating in the light. A beautiful face. Soft glowing skin, a wide luscious mouth, huge greenish eyes. Surrounded by a fuzzy, burnished halo. An angel. Straight out of della Robbia.

“That’s it. Wake up.”

Josh blinked. One or two angels. He couldn’t tell for sure. Their edges blurred and melded as they gestured frantically. He closed his eyes. Better.

“Are you hurt?”

Sensation crept to the front of his awareness. He was cold. Wet, And...everything hurt. Especially his head.

“Answer me!” She sounded scared.

Huh? Angels weren’t afraid, were they?

“C-can you move?” This one was. Palpably.

Through the reverberating pain, Josh knew he ought to ease the angel’s anxiety. “Yes, ma’am....” He flapped a hand to demonstrate his mobility.

“Come on, then! There’s no time to waste. Crawl out through the windshield.”

No. His head would explode if he moved. Better just stay here.... “Don’t want to,” Josh mumbled.

“I didn’t ask you if you want to, mister. I told you to move. Now do it!”

Bossy damned angel, Josh thought grumpily, but began to inch his body up the steering wheel at her insistent nagging, gritting his teeth against the waves of pain that washed over him.

A couple of eternities later, Josh heaved himself over the dashboard and partially through the windshield opening. It seemed to be lined with blue nylon. A small angelic hand grabbed a wad of shirt and added its upward pressure to his efforts.

Eventually, he lay on rough, wet rock.

His rescuer sat beside him, breathing raggedly.

Breathing. Not an angel, then. Real. Me, too.... Yes, now it seemed obvious. He was still alive.

For one thing, he hurt too much to be dead.

Josh opened his eyes briefly and stared at a shapely nearby ankle. He wondered vaguely who it belonged to. But he couldn’t focus right now. On anything, except—“Thanks.” He let his eyelids fall shut again, hoping to ease the dizziness.

“Don’t thank me yet.” The words were tinged with a soft Southern accent—and more concern.

“Why not?” Josh countered, although he barely managed to form the words through the whirling in his head. “You got me out of the car. You saved my life.”

“Not yet.”

“Close enough.” Keeping his eyes shut, Josh pressed his cheek contentedly against the stone. A little rain didn’t bother him. He’d just take a short nap and...

A faint whiff of flowers and woman alerted him to her closeness. Then his rescuer’s hands were gentle as they smoothed over his limbs and fingered a lump on his temple.

Her heart, however, was as hard as surgical steel. Her next words proved it. “You’re soaked,” the woman barked. “And this is the desert—with night comin’ on fast. You ever heard of hypothermia, mister? Get up!”

Damn the woman! Okay, he owed her his life, but—

Josh pulled himself to his knees. And threw up. “Sorry,” he croaked after his stomach stopped cartwheeling.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, amusement now warming her tone. “I’ve sure done my share of that.”

Josh didn’t get the joke. It didn’t matter; a second later, Ms. Stormtrooper dragged him to his feet Made him slosh a hundred miles or so through a snarling stream. Forced him to stagger uphill for a couple of centuries....

He threw up again. Conquered a tall step. Crossed a creaking floor. Wondered why heaven smelled like corn bread, then remembered he was still in Texas.

The gentle hands touched him again and his clothes went away....

Then he was warm and dry and lying on something soft. In the distance he heard his rescuer tell him not to go to sleep. Every time he opened his eyes, though, the room started spinning. Darkness like thick, black cotton pressed in around him.

But he was alive. He’d been given a second chance. Josh felt a smile curve his mouth. Okay, he’d admit it. His life had seemed empty lately. But that could change. Would change. Because now he had time to fill the emptiness.

“Thanks,” he whispered. “Thanks again.”

With a slow sigh, Josh let the blackness claim him....