The Bride Prize

I was thinking it might be a nice surprise for Shane if I asked you to supper tonight…

Had Shane said something to prompt Nick to show such a remarkable sign of acceptance? Not only acceptance of her, but of whatever Shane’s feelings for her might be? Granted, she’d expected nothing more than friendship from Shane. Until today. Today the things Shane had done, the things he’d said, were something more than friendship. How much more?

How much more than friendship did she want?

If she’d been confused and excited over Shane’s visit, it was nothing compared to the tizzy she was in for the next two hours. She raced through her chores and hurried upstairs to her room to rummage through her closet and drag out the things she’d bought six years ago.

Most were too formal for a “casual” supper, and that was good because she wasn’t sure she had the nerve to suddenly show up anywhere wearing them. Corrie Davis couldn’t go from cowhand to debutante in two hours without knocking the world a little off its axis. Nevertheless, she tried everything on to be sure of that, finally putting most of it away.

Feeling desperate and a little anxious, she went through everything else she owned, which wasn’t a lot besides work clothes, searching for something better than blue jeans but less dressy than the yellow sundress she’d hung on the closet door to think about. She had a denim skirt, but she rejected it too because it was a skirt.

She hoped the pair of white jeans she’d pulled out and the plain, pastel pink blouse were informal enough to qualify as casual, yet were feminine enough to show her in a little less “mannish” light. At least they wouldn’t look radically different from the shirts and jeans she usually wore.

She’d never worn the jeans and once she’d put them on, she wasn’t exactly happy that they were stiff and much snugger than her regular ones. The pink blouse was a simple, long-sleeved tailored shirt, and she carefully folded back the sleeves, then fussed with them to make both sleeves even before she remembered to add a belt with a plain gold buckle.

The few pieces of jewelry she’d bought were only costume quality, but the gold chain necklace and the gold clip-on earrings supplied a hint of sparkle that she liked.

As she looked into the mirror to consider the uncommon notion of maybe having her ears pierced, Corrie was reminded that she’d thrown away whatever makeup she’d had a couple years ago. Aggravated because she had no time left now to rush to town to buy some, she ran a brush through her hair and decided to pull a little of it back from the sides into a barrette, but leave the rest of it loose. She experimented with rolling her lips together to redden them before she gave her cheeks a little pinch and paused to inspect the results in the mirror. It would have to do.

Once she found the shoebox that held a pair of brown leather sandals she’d never worn, she put them on and got out the small brown leather handbag she’d hung on a hook in her closet. It was just as plain as the sandals and had also never been used, so she pulled out the wad of paper and tossed it to the dresser before she slipped her brush inside and added her wallet. She closed the catch on the handbag, lifted the long strap to her shoulder, then stood in front of the mirror for a final inspection.

It was as good as she could manage, and it shocked her a little to realize she’d been at this for close to two hours. Usually, she could be ready for anything in the time it took to brush out and braid, put on her clothes and grab her boots. It was a small consolation that she at least looked as if she’d done more than she usually did. A lot more.

She looked like she was out to catch a man.

The horrifying impression jolted her. The last thing she could stand was for anyone to think she was desperate to get a man.

Appalled, she pulled the strap off her shoulder and laid the handbag on the dresser top. She pulled off the earrings, about to toss them back into the old cigar box that held her meager collection of jewelry, when pride reared up.

She worked hard. Damned hard. Never in her life had she pushed herself on any man or chased one, and she never would. She’d never done anything to draw attention to herself, and even if she had, it was hardly a moral failure. She’d barely been kissed, because the only kiss she’d ever had had been a hilarious accident.

The glitter of anger in the gaze that met hers in the mirror made her eyes look jewel bright. However she normally dressed, she was a female. At twenty-four she was a woman. It was no one’s business but hers that she qualified for womanhood on account of gender and age rather than some notion of sexual experience.

Why wasn’t she entitled to wear pink, put on a little jewelry and carry a purse? Why would anyone be rude enough or cruel enough to challenge her or poke fun? If she’d had any makeup in the bathroom, she’d have every right to use as much of it as she pleased.

So what if she wanted to use this occasion to dress and act and be more feminine? And maybe even set out to attract a man? Why should she be denied the full right to express a bit of her biological and emotional nature just because she’d waited until some man had finally flirted with her a little before she’d again decided to change something about herself?

Most females had been doing far more than this little bit since before high school. She was long overdue to do likewise. And so what if she wanted to attract a man, marry and have a family? All she’d had of family had been a remote and rarely affectionate father old enough to be her grandfather, who’d barely paid attention and had seldom talked to her about anything besides ranching and markets and the weather.

Having a family one day was her highest and fondest hope, though most of the time she was forced to put it out of her mind. No sense pining for something that didn’t look likely to happen soon, if ever.

Her modest effort just now to make up for a little lost time surely wouldn’t register with either brother as a scheme to nab one of them. If they even noticed the difference.

And even if they took one look at her and decided she was manhunting, why would that be so unnatural and repulsive? There wasn’t an unmarried female under thirty-five in their part of Texas, or anyplace else the Merrick brothers had ever been seen, who hadn’t tried at one time or another to attract them. And probably more than a handful of those women had been much older than thirty-five.

Feeling better about this, Corrie refastened the earrings, fussed with her hair a little more, then snatched up her handbag before she started downstairs.

She was more than halfway to the Merrick Ranch before her tension began to ebb into a heady feeling of excitement. Not too long after that, the most unexpected question of her life popped into her head…

Which brother was she most excited to see?

She slowed the old pickup to make the turn off the highway onto the Merrick Ranch’s main road as she mentally raced to weigh the answer. Which brother?

The one she was comfortable with, who’d flirted and given her a sliver of hope for at least the possibility that he—or some other man—might one day fall for her a little?

Or was it the unattainable brother who’d shown up that afternoon to invite her to supper?

As she completed the turn and began to accelerate, nerves and indecision kept the question going around and around…

Was she more excited to see the brother who’d hugged her and taken her boots off, who’d spoken to her more as a female than a pal…the old friend whose blue gaze had shown a hint of the naughty thoughts he’d claimed other men thought about her?

Or was she more excited to see the brother who didn’t know—and probably wouldn’t care—that he could still make her feel as shaky and breathless around him as he’d made her feel at eighteen…the one who hadn’t needed to lay a finger on her to do that?

The novelty of the question and the way her mind shifted from one brother to the other and back, magnified her excitement so much that she suddenly realized how pathetic it was to get so worked up over so little.

Maybe she was desperate for a man, any man. Proof of that was how much she was making of all this. What if Shane had been teasing today? The idea that she could have mistaken being teased for being flirted with made her a little sick.

And she’d always been hopelessly infatuated with Nick. He hadn’t needed to invite her to supper for the first time in twenty-four years to achieve that. But his out-of-the-blue invitation had made her irrationally jump to the conclusion that the world—and him in particular—was overdue for her pink blouse and earrings debut.

Shame roared up and beat her down until she felt about two inches tall and unspeakably foolish. And pitiful.

If she hadn’t driven close enough by then to see Nick Merrick standing on his front porch as if he’d been watching for her, Corrie might have turned around and hightailed it back home while she thought up some lie to cancel supper.

But he was looking in this direction. He’d surely seen her old pickup and the rooster tail of dust it had kicked up, so she was as good as stuck.

Stuck being stupid and presumptuous and dressed like she was trying to look more feminine and attract a man. Stuck, and about to shame herself in front of the two men who’d inspired the foolish fantasies and outright overreaction that accounted for the insanity of the past couple of hours.

Pride wasn’t enough to help her salvage even a smidgen of that feeling of entitlement she’d had just a little over a half hour ago, but it was at least enough to help her get out of her twenty-year-old pickup without mussing the clean blanket she’d spread on the dusty seat to protect her clothes.

And though she didn’t have enough pride left over to help her hold her head high as she strode up the front walk, she had enough willpower to fill in as she struggled to give the impression that she dressed in pink and white all the time and was regularly invited to eat supper with handsome men.

If she survived the night, she’d dig out every remotely feminine thing she owned and burn them tomorrow. Then she’d never be tempted to repeat this mistake and embarrass herself again. Better to live alone the rest of her life than to chance being publicly humiliated. Or worse, cause folks to feel sorry for her.

With her insides churning, it took a lot to meet Nick Merrick’s dark eyes and force a faint smile she hoped would conceal her embarrassment. Only she couldn’t meet his gaze because it was traveling down her body in that same skim-and-linger way it had that afternoon.

A prickly kind of heat shot over her from scalp to toes and she steeled herself for some expression of either scorn or amusement. To her surprise, that dark, almost black gaze came back up and bore into hers with an intensity that made her feel invaded and a little weak.

She couldn’t detect either scorn or amusement, though she could see something there. Something a little like what she’d seen in Shane’s eyes that day, only now she felt breathless and she realized her body felt uncommonly warm in every place that gaze had lingered.

Nick’s low voice was a gravely drawl that made the phantom sensation of warmth repeat. “Evenin’, Miss Corrie. I’m glad you’re here.”

She gave a curt nod. “Thanks for having me.”

The stiff comeback was another excruciating little embarrassment, but if it had sounded wrong or awkward to Nick, he didn’t let on. He let her precede him inside the big house, and she tried to distract herself from his nearness by having a look around.

The two-story Victorian ranch house that had been expanded over the years was a showplace. The rooms inside were large—huge. The dark, high gloss oak floor of the entry hall had a large reddish-brown woven rug in the center of the floor that featured a heavy black outline of the Merrick brand. A wide, carpeted staircase curved up from the hall to the second story, and three portraits of what had to be Merrick ancestors had been placed at ascending intervals on the whitewashed wall by the staircase. Four other portraits were situated on the entry walls at eye level.

A hall table sat beneath an elaborately framed mirror to the right of the front door, and the moment Corrie took that in, her gaze flinched from the reflection of her wide-eyed gaze. She was barely into the house and she was already gawking like the backward hick she was.