His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage

The week went by very quickly. Natalie was almost certain to graduate, because she knew she did well on her finals. The only real surprise would be her final grade, and it would include the marks she received for her practice teaching. She hoped her scores would be good enough to satisfy the school where she would begin her career next term.

When Friday rolled around, she breathed a sigh of relief as she left the English classroom where she’d finished her final round of questions. It was like being freed from jail, she reflected. Although she would miss her classmates and her professors, it had been a long four years. She was ready to go out into the world.

She hadn’t heard from Mack all week. Vivian called her Thursday night to ask if she was still planning to go out with them. She didn’t sound very enthusiastic about the double date. Natalie tried to smooth it over, but she knew that her friend was jealous, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She must discuss it with Mack, she decided.

She tried his cell phone, and he answered with a voice that held both terse authority and irritation.

“Mack?” she asked, surprised by the tone, which he never used with her.

“Nat?” The impatience was gone immediately. “I thought you’d have forgotten this number by now,” he added in a slow, smooth tone that sounded amused. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you.”

There was a pause. She heard him cover the mouthpiece and talk to someone in the tone she’d heard when he first answered the phone. Then his voice came back to her. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“Not over the phone,” she said uncomfortably.

“All right. I’ll come over.”

“But I’m ready to leave,” she protested. “I have to drive to town to buy a dress for tonight.”

There was a pause. “Good for you.”

“It’s your fault. You keep making fun of the only dress I’ve got.”

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” he said.

“I told you, I’m going—”

“I’m going with you,” he said. “Ten minutes.”

The line went dead. Oh, no, she thought, foreseeing disaster. He’d have the women in the clothing store standing on their heads, and before he was through, the security guards would probably carry him out in a net.

But she realized it wasn’t going to be easy to thwart him. Even if she jumped in her car and left, he knew where she was going. He’d simply follow her. It might be better to humor him. After all, she didn’t have to buy a dress today. She could wear the one he didn’t like.

He drew up in front of the door exactly ten minutes later, pushing the passenger door open when she came out of the house and locked it.

His dark gaze traveled over her neat figure in gray slacks and a gray and white patterned knit top. He wasn’t wearing chaps or work boots. She assumed he’d been instructing his men on how to work cattle instead of helping with roundup. He looked clean and unruffled. She was willing to bet his men didn’t.

“How many of your men have quit since this morning?” she asked amusedly after she’d fastened her seat belt.

He gave her a quick glare before he pulled the big, double-cabbed truck out of her driveway and into the ranch road that led to the highway. “Why do you think anyone quit?”

“It’s roundup,” she pointed out. She leaned against the door and studied him with a wicked grin. “Somebody always quits. Usually,” she added, “it’s the man who thinks he knows more than you do about vaccinations and computer-chip ear tags.”

He made an uncomfortable movement and gave her a piercing glance before his foot went down harder on the accelerator. She noticed his boots. Clean and nicely polished.

“Jones quit,” he confessed after a minute. “But he was going to quit anyway,” he added immediately. “He thinks he knows too much about computer technology to waste it on a cattle ranch.”

“You corrected him about the way he programmed your computer,” she guessed.

He glared at her. “He did it wrong,” he burst out. “What the hell was I supposed to do, let him tangle my herd records so that I couldn’t track weight-gain ratios at all?”

She chuckled softly. “I get the picture.”

He took off his gray Stetson and stuck in into the hat carrier above the visor. Impatient fingers raked his thick, straight black hair. “He was lumping the calves with the other cattle,” he muttered. “They have to be done separately, or the data’s no use to me.”

“Had he ever worked on a ranch?”

“He worked on a pig farm,” he said, and looked absolutely disgusted.

She hid a smile. “I see.”

“He said the sort of operation didn’t matter, that he knew enough about spreadsheet programs that it wouldn’t matter.” He glanced at her. “He didn’t know anything.”

“Ah, now I remember,” she teased. “You took the computer programming courses last semester.”

“I passed with honors,” he related. “Something he sure as hell didn’t do!”

“I hope you never take a course in teaching,” she said to herself.

“I heard that,” he shot at her.

“Sorry.”

He paused at the highway to make sure it was clear before he turned onto it. “How did exams go?”

“Much better than I expected,” she said with a smile. “Thanks for helping me with the biology test.”

He smiled. “I enjoyed it.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that, and when he glanced at her with a sensuous smile, she flushed.

“What sort of dress are you going to buy?” he asked.

She gave him a wary look. “I want a simple black one.”

“Velvet’s in this season,” he said carelessly. “You’d look good in green velvet. Emerald green.”

“I don’t know…”

“I like the feel of it in my hands.”

Her eyes narrowed and she glared at him. “Oh, does Glenna wear it?” she asked before she thought.

“No.” He studied her for as long as he dared take his gaze off the highway. He smiled. “I like that.”

“You like what?” she asked irritably.