The Bride Who Was Stolen In The Night

She closed her eyes. He was making so many demands, all at once. She needed time to think, to plan, to argue her case.

“You don’t want to move it forward, do you, Abby?” he asked bluntly. “You don’t want to marry me at all.”

“I do!” she protested, turning in her seat to look at him with wild eyes.

He sighed softly. “Okay. That’s all I needed to know. I thought you were going to try to back out of it. In fact, Dad said you might.”

“Your father? Sid? But why?” she asked, stunned.

He changed gears as they went onto a dirt road that led to the holding pens of his father’s ranch. “He said that you were in love with Chayce Derringer.”

She stared at his hands on the steering wheel. They were clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. That was when she knew that she couldn’t lie to him any longer. But she couldn’t tell the whole truth, either. She decided on a compromise.

“All right,” she said after a minute, not looking at him. “I had a frantic crush on Chayce when I was about sixteen. He found out and we had a long talk.” She turned her hands over and looked at them. “He’s fifteen years older than I am and he never wants to get married. I knew then that it would never matter how I felt about him, because he didn’t want me.” She looked out the window. “I can’t stop caring about him, Troy. I don’t know how. But he doesn’t feel that way about me, and he never will. So you’re not going to be competing with Chayce.”

“If that’s true, why did he try to warn me off you last summer?”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” she said resignedly. “He only wants to make sure that we’ll have a good marriage. He’s taken care of me for a long time. Maybe it’s hard for him to let go, even if he doesn’t see much of me.”

“And you’re not the divine Delina, after all,” he said without meaning to wound her further. “She’s such a knockout.” He shrugged. “I guess I overreacted. I didn’t think past what he said. But when you come to think of it, not many women could compete with a Hollywood goddess. And she is. Heaven knows, my blood pressure shoots up every time I see her picture in a magazine.”

“Apparently so does Chayce’s,” she replied, “because he spends most of his free time with her.”

“And if he ever does marry, she’ll be in the front running,” he agreed.

“Yes.”

He glanced at her. “I didn’t mean to sound as if I don’t think you’re pretty,” he said. “You’re sweet and cute and I love being around you. When you aren’t acting like one of the cutups in my history classes,” he added darkly.

“I’m not cut out to be staid and retiring, Troy,” she said firmly. “I won’t change. If you want to marry me, you have to accept me the way I am.”

“You’re fine, with a few minor adjustments,” he commented imperturbably. “You need to tone down that sense of humor and learn how to act with a little dignity in public. And you need to let your hair grow out, while we’re on the subject,” he added with a glance in her direction. “I don’t like short hair on a woman. In fact, I don’t like those tight jeans, either. You’ll have to wear something more staid when we’re married. After all, I have a reputation to maintain, in my profession.”

She tried to convince herself that it was a big joke, that he was kidding. But he wasn’t. His somber expression was proof of that. She could see herself in long dresses and no makeup with her hair in a bun, trying to live down to Troy’s image of the perfect woman.

“You should have proposed to Eve Payne,” she remarked, referring to a fellow teacher of his who was the very image of a conservative woman.

“Oh, Eve doesn’t like me,” he said easily.

“Why not?”

“She thinks I’m damaging my reputation by being seen with you!”

CHAPTER TWO (#u6b91281c-3182-5baf-8782-0d240c97cd74)

“I beg your pardon!” Abby flared.

He laughed, but not with any real humor. “You’re not exactly the soul of discretion, Abby. And after that stunt with the bull, a lot of people around here think you’re totally out of control. In fact, my mother did wonder if you needed therapy.”

Her chest puffed up. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to remember that this was the sweet, kind, biddable young man who’d been her good friend for over a year and had pleaded with her to marry him only three months before.

She glared straight ahead through the dirty windshield. So she needed therapy, did she? And a bun and long dresses and to tone down her personality…!

“Don’t smolder. You know I’m right,” he commented. “You’ve run wild too long already. You needed a strong hand and you never got one.”

She had, when Chayce had been part of her life. But after he retired from the field, there was no one else to hold her back. She had run wild. Perhaps she did it to try to make him notice her. But it had never worked.

“Which reminds me, there’s one more thing we have to talk about,” he continued.

“What other fault of mine needs correcting, pray tell?” she asked through her teeth.

He changed gears again after they reached the top of the hill. “I want you to give up that environmental rights group you belong to. Putting wolves back on the range around here is the government’s way of wiping out private ownership of land. It’s subversive. We don’t need wolves taking down cattle.”

“I’ve explained this to you a dozen times,” she began. “In the old days before wolves were almost hunted to extinction, the rodent numbers were kept down by them. Predators do much more to support the balance of nature than they do to harm it.”

“That’s right. Nature.” He looked at her coldly. “Cattle-raising isn’t part of nature. It’s a business, like any other. If wolves multiply, cattle herds diminish. We’ve already got enough trouble trying to fight the government for water rights and public grazing. Other cattlemen are having fits because the buffalo in the national park are roaming free and infecting our cattle with brucellosis. Do you know what it is? It’s a disease that causes cows to abort calves before term. Have you any idea how much money we lose every time a calf isn’t born alive?”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Chayce owns a ranch,” she added sarcastically, “and I do read cattle journals. But I’m not backing down on this. We have to preserve the…”

A huge black pickup truck with a double cab was bearing down on them on the narrow road. It was one of several that belonged to the Derringer ranch. She recognized the small white pistol emblem on a black field in a white circle that denoted the Derringer brand. It could have been handsome Kirk Conroy, a confirmed bachelor who ran the ranch in Chayce’s absence. But it wasn’t. Because Kirk drove like a preacher on Sunday visits compared to the way Chayce did it. And whoever was behind the wheel of that powerful machine was driving like a bat out of hell.

“Well, I’ll be,” Troy murmured. He pulled off onto the side of the road as the big truck came alongside them. “I thought you said he wasn’t coming home.”

“I didn’t know he was,” she said through her teeth.

A window powered down, and there was Chayce framed in it, his black eyes snapping in a face so handsome that it drew women everywhere he went. His hair was black, like his eyes, and he looked formidable.

“How are you, Chayce?” Troy asked with an effusive grin, trying to placate him. “Good to see you!”

Chayce didn’t answer. He sat there as if he were carved out of stone, with a powerful chambray-clad arm resting on the steering wheel as he glared past Troy, whose complaints about Chayce seemed to have become a thing of the past.

Chayce glared at Abby and she glared back. Four years, almost, and he couldn’t even smile at her. She was bitter, and she looked it. But along with the bitterness was a painful maturity, and that showed, too.

“I thought you were in the Bahamas,” Abby said curtly.

“I was. I got your letter this morning. They forwarded it to California, but it was held up.” He glared at both of them. “What’s this nonsense about the two of you getting married in August?”

“N-nonsense?” Troy blurted out. “We…we just want to get married, Chayce. Now you don’t have to do a thing, except give Abby away. I’ll even buy her wedding gown…”

“I’ll buy the gown,” Chayce said icily. “When she marries.”

Troy went as red as his hair and began to look nervous.

Abby’s chin came up as she faced Chayce. “You heard him,” she told her guardian. “We’re getting married. And we’ll probably be moving the ceremony up.” And you can do what you please, her eyes added coldly.

“Why the rush to the altar?” Chayce replied curtly. He glanced at Abby with eyes so intimidating that she actually moved back an inch. Seconds later, his gaze fell on Troy. “Is she pregnant?” he asked in a tone so soft and cutting that Troy swallowed visibly and put an arm around Abby for comfort and support.

Abby didn’t even feel the arm, she was so outraged. “How dare you, Chayce!”