Luke's Promise

“What I don’t understand is why you have to get married.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.” But life was forcing some changes in his plans. He’d sure as hell never intended to marry. He didn’t need his inheritance, didn’t want it. The ranch was his. He’d worked hard to build it and his reputation as a rider and a trainer. What he needed a lot more than money was a good rider, someone to handle some of the competitions where the horses gained both experience and the attention of potential buyers. He was getting stretched pretty thin.

He glanced at the woman beside him. Maggie was a damned fine rider. Maybe after their marriage ended…no, he thought, shaking off the thought. He was going to do his damnedest to make sure they came out of this friends. That was enough to hope for. “Even Jacob can’t pay for Ada’s treatments by himself,” he said.

“I know that. But…Luke, I know you don’t like talking about it, but you were married at one time. Doesn’t that fulfill the conditions of the will as far as you’re concerned? Or is there some stipulation about how long the marriage has to last?”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “No.” Meaning no to both questions, no to the memories. No to the whole, sorry subject.

She didn’t say anything, but she watched him expectantly, her hazel eyes solemn.

Dammit. This was the reason—one of the reasons—he’d always kept things light with Maggie. Casual friends, some teasing, a little flirting. No touching, no dating, no real come-ons. Not many people even knew about Pam, but Maggie did. She was Pam’s cousin. They’d roomed together in college. She’d been at the hospital that night…

Only he hadn’t always kept things light, had he?

“My father might have been slightly nuts on the subject of marriage,” he said, “but he wasn’t a hypocrite. His will doesn’t stipulate how long our marriages have to last, but all three of us have to be married when we petition to have the trust dissolved and stay married until it is. Pam and I divorced nearly ten years ago. Our brief, unlamented union doesn’t count.”

“Oh.” The hand without the cast started pleating the fabric of her T-shirt. “I see why you have to marry, then. But…I’m sorry, but that isn’t a reason for me to get married. There must be a thousand women right here in Dallas who would gladly take you on. And if we include the rest of Texas, why, the number would get sky-high.” She smiled at him hopefully.

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “But there certainly aren’t a thousand women I’m willing to marry.”

“But why me?”

He glanced at her, surprised. “Because I know you. If we agree on terms, I won’t have to worry about you deciding you want more and stirring up trouble trying to get it. This marriage…” He laughed, short and hard. “God, my throat tries to close up when I say the word. You know that about me, know that there’s no point in expecting too much, and there’s another reason to ask you. I can’t think of much worse than to be legally tied to a woman who thinks she’s in love with me.”

“Your ego’s showing.”

He shrugged. He knew himself. And he knew women. “With you…we can make things come out even, you and me. I need to get the trust dissolved. You need Dandy. Besides…” He grinned. “I like you.”

“Luke.” She sighed. “I like you, too. That’s part of the problem. We’re friends. I don’t want to mess with that.”

“We already did.” He didn’t look at her. “About a week before Christmas last year, we messed things up pretty thoroughly.”

“Oh, that!” Her breezy voice dismissed it. “That was a mistake, of course. A mutual mistake. We were both a little tipsy, a little emotional. But we’re adults, so we admitted we’d been a pair of prize idiots and put it behind us.”

No, he thought. They hadn’t put it behind them. They’d pretended it never happened. That was how she’d wanted to play it—how she still wanted to play it, obviously, and if he had some ideas about changing that, they could wait. “You’re right,” he said mildly. “We’re friends. I don’t want to lose that.”

“Okay, then.” She beamed at him like a teacher whose slowest student has finally given the correct answer. “We don’t want to risk our friendship on something as—as uncertain as marriage. Even a businesslike marriage can get sticky.”

She said the right things, said them with such matter-of-fact good humor that he might have believed her…if her hands hadn’t stretched the hem of her T-shirt all out of shape with their nervous pleating and unpleating. Or if he hadn’t remembered all too well the look in her eyes when he’d climbed out of her bed, given her a kiss and walked out the door.

She would probably try to climb out of the truck right here on the Interstate if he let on that he knew he’d hurt her. “I can’t argue with you about marriage being an uncertain business.”

“Exactly.”

“But it’s uncertain because people go into it with a lot of unrealistic expectations. We’ll make sure we’re both clear on what we want and expect from our deal. No emotions, no complications.”

“Luke…I’m sorry, but I don’t want to marry you.”

“But you do want Fine Dandy. And you want to continue to compete. I know you’d rather have a marriage based on the good stuff,” he said gently. “You deserve it—flowers and pretty words, moonlight and promises. Romance.”

“Romance? Good grief. You know me. Practical as a pair of old boots.”

He had his work cut out for him, all right. “Well, this would be a very practical way to meet both our needs.” Needs might have been the wrong word to use. It conjured vague, heated memories he couldn’t afford to indulge. “Think of it as a business arrangement.”

The stubby arcs of her eyelashes blinked once, slowly. “Like a marriage of convenience?”

“I guess.” He hadn’t heard the term before, and wasn’t sure what she meant. “If it were anyone else, I’d have to get a prenuptial agreement first. But I trust you. If we can agree to terms, I know you’ll honor them.”

She was thoughtful now, her fingers rubbing at her cast as if the wrist beneath it ached. “The problem is, I don’t trust you.”

“Ouch. I guess we can set our agreement down in writing. I’m thinking a million would be about right, once the trust has been dissolved.”

“I don’t—it isn’t—good grief, a million dollars? You can’t seriously propose to give me that kind of money!”

“Sure I can. I don’t know exactly what my share of the trust will come to, but a million won’t make that much of a dent in it.”

“You know what? You’re going to be a very rich man, Luke. I think you’ll need a bodyguard more than a wife to protect you from all the women who will be scaling fences and swimming rivers to get to you.” She chuckled.

Damn, he wished she wouldn’t do that. Her voice was whiskey and sex; her chuckle was worse. “A bodyguard would cramp my style.”

“And a wife wouldn’t?”

Best not to touch that. “So, do you want to run by the lawyer’s office and see how fast he can draw up some kind of prenuptial agreement?”

“I trust you about the money.” Her hands started fiddling again, this time with the zipper on her jacket. Up, down. Up, down.

“If you trust me about the money, then where’s the problem?”

“Sex.”

The truck swerved slightly in the lane.

“How long will this marriage have to last to get the trust dissolved once you’re all married? Two months? Six?”

“Maybe four months.” He had control of the truck, and himself, again. “Maybe more. I’m not the financial whiz in the family, but Jacob’s best guess is between four and eight months.”

“Well, I’m not crazy about getting a lot of pitying looks for the next four months or more because my husband has been seeing other women.”

His jaw tightened. “You think I’d embarrass you that way?”

She shrugged and went back to toying with the zipper. “I think you’d try to be discreet. The thing is, I do know you, Luke. Are you planning to swear off sex for the next four to eight months?”

He shot her an incredulous look.

She grinned. “For once, I can read your mind.”

No, she couldn’t. Or she’d be trying to climb out of the truck right now. Fortunately she hadn’t a clue what kind of images had popped into his head when she’d said “sex.”