Runaway Temptation. Maureen Child

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СКАЧАТЬ himself, for letting things slide. He never should have kept Simon on. He and Caleb’s father had been great friends so that didn’t speak well of the man.

      He’d let the lawyer relationship stand mainly because it was easier than taking time away from work to find someone new. Between running the ranch and expanding the oil-rich field discovered only twenty years before, Caleb had been too damn busy to worry about a lawyer he only had to deal with a few times a year.

      Looking for a change of subject, Caleb said, “Since you’re here, that means the new deputy’s in charge, right?”

      Nathan winced. “Yeah. Jeff’s doing fine.”

      Caleb laughed. “Sure, I can hear the confidence in your voice.”

      Sighing, Nathan pushed one hand through his hair and shook his head. “With Jack retired, I needed a deputy and Jeff Baker’s working out. But he’s from Houston so it’s taking him some time to get used to small town living.”

      Caleb had heard about it. Jeff was about thirty and a little too strict on the law and order thing for Royal. The new deputy had handed out more speeding tickets in the last six months than Nathan had in years. Folks in Royal hit an empty road and they just naturally picked up speed. Jeff Baker wasn’t making many friends.

      “Hell,” Caleb said, “I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m still not used to it.”

      “I hear that,” Nathan replied, shifting his gaze to where his wife stood with a group of friends. “But I’ve been getting a lot of complaints about the tickets Jeff’s handing out.”

      Caleb laughed. “He’s not going to slow anybody down.”

      “Maybe not,” Nathan agreed with a nod. “But he’s going to keep trying.”

      “I expect so,” Caleb mused, then glanced over at Nathan’s wife who was smiling and waving one hand. “I think Amanda wants you.”

      Straightening up, Nathan gave a heartfelt sigh. “That’s it, then. I’ll see you after. At the reception?”

      “I don’t think so. Soon as I’m clear, I’m headed back to the ranch.”

      Another sigh. “Lucky bastard.”

      Caleb grinned and watched his friend head toward the Texas Cattleman’s Club building. The place was a one-story, rambling sort, made of dark wood and stone, boasting a tall slate roof. It was a part of Royal and had been for generations. Celebrations of all kinds had been held there and today, it was a wedding. One he’d have to attend in just a few minutes.

      * * *

      Shelby Arthur stared at her own reflection and hardly recognized herself. She supposed all brides felt like that on their wedding day, but for her, the effect was terrifying.

      Her long, dark auburn curls were pulled back from her face to hang down to the center of her back. Her veil poofed out around her head and her green eyes narrowed at the gown she hated. A ridiculous number of yards of white tulle made Shelby look like a giant marshmallow caught in netting. The dress was her about-to-be-mother-in-law’s doing. She’d insisted that the Goodmans had a reputation to maintain in Royal and the simple off-the-shoulder gown Shelby had chosen wouldn’t do the trick.

      So instead, she was looking at a stranger wearing an old-fashioned gown with long, lacy sleeves, a cinched waist and full skirt, and a neckline that was so high she felt as if she were choking.

      “Thank God for air-conditioning,” she muttered, otherwise in the sweltering Texas heat, she’d be little more than a tulle-covered puddle on the floor. She half turned to get a look at the back of the dress and finally sighed. She looked like one of those crocheted dolls her grandmother used to make to cover up spare toilet paper rolls.

      Shelby was about to get married in a dress she hated, a veil she didn’t want, to a man she wasn’t sure she liked, much less loved. How did she get to this point?

      “Oh, God. What am I doing?” The whisper was strained but heartfelt.

      She’d left her home in Chicago to marry Jared Goodman. But now that he was home in Texas, under his awful father’s thumb, Jared was someone she didn’t even know. Her whirlwind romance had morphed into a nightmare and now she was trapped.

      She took a breath, blew it out and asked her reflection, “What are you doing?”

      “Good question.”

      Shelby jumped, startled by the sudden appearance of Jared’s mother. The woman was there, behind her in the mirror, bustling into the room. Margaret Goodman was tall and painfully thin. Her face was all sharp angles and her blue eyes were small and judgmental. Her graying blond hair was scraped back from her face into a bun that incongruously sported a circlet of yellow rosebuds. The beige suit she wore was elegant if boring and was so close to the color of her hair and skin the woman simply disappeared into her clothes.

      If only, Shelby thought.

      “Your veil should be down over your face,” Margaret chastised, hurrying over to do just that.

      As the veil fell across her vision, Shelby had a momentary panic attack and felt as though she couldn’t breathe through that all-encompassing tulle curtain, so she whipped it back again. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

      “You will.” Margaret stepped back, took a look, then moved to tug at the skirt of the wedding gown. “We’re going for a very traditional, chaste look here. It’s unseemly that this wedding is happening so quickly. The town will be gossiping for months, watching for a swollen belly.”

      Shelby sucked in a gulp of air. “I’ve told you already, I’m not pregnant.”

      “We’ll soon see, won’t we?” One blond eyebrow lifted over pale blue eyes. “The Goodman family has a reputation in this town and I expect you to do nothing to besmirch it.”

      “Besmirch?” Who even talked like that, Shelby thought wildly. It was as if she’d dropped into a completely different universe. Suddenly, she missed Chicago—her friends, her life, so much she ached with it.

      Moving to Texas with a handsome, well-connected cowboy who had swept her off her feet had seemed like an adventure at the time. Now she was caught up in a web that seemed inescapable. Her fiancé was a stranger, his mother a blatant enemy and his brother had a way of looking at Shelby that had her wishing she’d paid more attention in self-defense class.

      Jared’s father, Simon, was no better, making innuendoes that he probably thought were clever but gave Shelby the outright creeps. The only bright spot in the Goodman family was Jared’s sister, Brooke, and she couldn’t help Shelby with what was about to happen.

      Somehow, she had completely lost control of her own life and now she stood there in a mountain of tulle trying to find enough scraps of who she was to cling to.

      “Once the ceremony is finished, we’ll all go straightaway to the reception,” Margaret was saying.

       Oh, God.

      “You and Jared will, of course, be in the receiving line until every guest has been welcomed personally. The photographer can then indulge in the necessary СКАЧАТЬ