Duncan's Bride Read online

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she’d taken Number Two to the cleaners, too, but he bit it back. It would be petty of him in the face of Erica’s grief. Once he would have said it, once he had been bitter enough that he wouldn’t have cared who he wounded. Maddie had changed that.

  “She had started drinking heavily,” Erica continued. “We tried to convince her to get therapy, to control it, and for a while she tried to stop on her own. But she was sad, Reese, so sad. You could see it in her eyes. She was tired of living.”

  He drew in a sharp breath. “Suicide?”

  “Not technically. Not intentionally. At least, I don’t think so. I can’t let myself think it was. But she couldn’t stop drinking, because it was the only solace she had. The night she died, she’d been drinking heavily and was driving back from Cape Cod. She went to sleep, or at least they think that’s what happened, and she became one more statistic on drunk driving.” Erica’s voice was calm and unemotional, but the pain was in her eyes. She reached out and awkwardly touched his arm, a woman who found it as difficult to receive comfort as she did to give it.

  On the taxi ride into the city he asked, “Why did she make me her main beneficiary?”

  “Guilt, I think. Maybe love. She was so wild about you in the beginning, and so bitter after the divorce. She was jealous of the ranch, you know. After the divorce, she told me she would rather you’d had a mistress than own that ranch, because she could fight another woman, but that chunk of ground had a hold on you that no woman could equal. That’s why she went after the ranch in the divorce, to punish you.” She gave him a wry smile. “God, how vindictive people can be. She couldn’t see that she simply wasn’t the type of wife you needed. You didn’t like the same things, didn’t want the same things out of life. When you didn’t love her as much as you loved the ranch, she thought it was a flaw in her rather than accepting it as the difference between two very different people.”

  Reese had never thought of April in that light, never seen their marriage and subsequent divorce through her eyes. The only thing he had seen in her had been the bitterness, and that was what he had allowed to color his life. It was a blow to learn the color had been false, as if he had been wearing tinted lenses that had distorted everything.

  He spent the night in a hotel, the sort of hotel he had once taken for granted. It felt strange to be back on firm financial ground again, and he wondered if he had ever truly missed the trappings of wealth. It was nice to be able to afford the posh minisuite, but he wouldn’t have minded a plain motel. The years without money had rearranged his priorities.

  The reading of the will the next day didn’t take much time. April’s family, too caught up in their grief to be hostile, was subdued. So was her father. April had thoroughly thought out the disposal of her possessions, as if she had anticipated her death. She divided her jewelry and personal possessions among family members, likewise the small fortune in stocks and bonds she had owned. It was her bequest to him that left him stunned.

  “To Gideon Reese Duncan, my former husband, I leave the amount of his divorce settlement to me. Should he precede me in death, the same amount shall be given to his heirs in a gesture of fairness too long delayed.”

  The lawyer droned on, but Reese didn’t hear any of it. He couldn’t take it in. He was in shock. He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, staring at the Oriental rug under his feet. She had given it all back, and in doing so had shown him the stark futility of the years of hatred.

  The most ironic thing was that he had already let go of it. The inner darkness hadn’t been able to withstand Maddie’s determination. Even if he had never been able to rebuild the ranch to its former size, he would have been happy as long as he had Maddie. He had laughed with her and made love with her, and somewhere along the way his obsession had changed into a love so powerful that now he couldn’t live without her, he could only exist.

  His heart suddenly squeezed so painfully that he almost grabbed his chest. Hell! How could he have been so stupid?

  Come home with me.

  Give me one good reason why I should.

  That was all she’d asked for, one good reason, but he hadn’t given it to her. He’d thrown out reasons, all right, but not the one she’d been asking for, the one she needed. She’d all but told him what it was, but he’d been so caught up in what he needed that he hadn’t paid any attention to what she needed. How simple it was, and now he knew what to say.

  Give me one good reason why I should.

  Because I love you.

  HE STRODE THROUGH the door of Floris’s café and stood in the middle of the room. The increase in customers was still going strong, maybe because Floris was safely isolated in the kitchen and Maddie was out on the floor charming everyone with her lazy drawl and sexy walk.

  As usual, silence fell when he entered and everyone turned to look at him. Maddie was behind the counter, wiping up a coffee spill while she exchanged some good-natured quips with Glenna Kinnaird. She looked up, saw him and went still, her eyes locked on him.

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt and winked at her. “Riddle me this, sweetheart. What has two legs, a hard head and acts like a jackass?”

  “That’s easy,” she scoffed. “Reese Duncan.”

  There was a muffled explosion of suppressed snickers all around them. He could see the amusement in her eyes and had to grin. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice dropping to a low, intimate tone that excluded everyone else in the café and made several women draw in their breath.

  Her mouth quirked in that self-amusement that made him want to grab her to him. “This isn’t one of my good days. The only thing holding me together is static cling.”

  “Come home with me, and I’ll take care of you.”

  She looked him in the eye and said quietly, “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  Right there in front of God and most of Crook, Montana, he drew in a deep breath and took the gamble of a lifetime, his words plain and heard by all, because no one was making even the pretense of not listening.

  “Because I love you.”

  Maddie blinked, and to his surprise he saw her eyes glitter with tears. Before he could start forward, however, her smile broke through like sunshine through a cloud bank. She didn’t take the time to go around the counter; she climbed on top of it and slid off on the other side. “It’s about time,” she said as she went into his arms.

  The customers broke into applause, and Floris came out of the kitchen. She sniffed and looked displeased when she saw Madelyn hanging in Reese’s arms with her feet off the floor. “I suppose this means I’ve got to get another waitress,” she muttered.

  Someone muttered back, “Hell, Floris, if you’ll just stay in the kitchen we’ll find you another waitress.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said, and startled everyone in the café by actually smiling.

  HE DIDN’T WAIT to get back to the house before he made love to her; as soon as they were on Duncan land he stopped the truck and pulled her astride him. Madelyn thought her heart would burst as she listened to his roughly muttered words of love and lust and need. She couldn’t get enough of touching him; she wanted to sink into his skin, and she tried to.

  When they finally got to the house he carried her inside and up the stairs to their bedroom, where he placed her on the big bed and began stripping her. She laughed, a drugged, wanton sound, as she stretched languidly. “Again?”

  “I want to see you,” he said, his voice strained. When she was naked he was silent, struck dumb and enchanted by the changes in her body. They were still slight, but obvious to him because he knew every inch of her. There was just beginning to be a faint curve to her belly, and her breasts were a little rounder, even firmer than before, her nipples darkened to a lush reddish brown. He leaned forward and circled one with his tongue, and her entire body quivered. “God, I love you,” he said, and laid his head on her belly, his arms locked around her hips.

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