His Shotgun Proposal. Karen Toller Whittenburg

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      Chapter One

      A steady stream of travelers lugged baggage of every shape, size and color out of the air-cooled Austin airport and into the muggy Texas heat. Mac Coleman tugged the brim of his cowboy hat down low on his forehead, shielding his face from the blazing haze of afternoon sun as he leaned against his Silverado and watched for his passenger. Not that he had even a faint hope of recognizing her. He’d been volunteered to pick up Abigail Jones because he had business in the city on the day she was scheduled to arrive and because his cousin, Jessica, had an annoying way of getting around arguments. His last-ditch effort to avoid chauffeur duty had met with a confident “Don’t worry, Mac, Abbie will find you. I told her to look for a scowling cowboy next to a black truck.”

      His wasn’t the only black truck parked outside the baggage claim area and he certainly wasn’t the only man wearing a Stetson, but if she showed, he was here. And if not? Well, he’d wait a reasonable while, then head back to the ranch. Visitors to the Desert Rose weren’t his responsibility and he planned to keep it that way.

      A sassy blonde passed him, displaying enough leg and flirty tosses of her tresses to attract his attention. He watched her sashay by, caught the full effect of the smile she flashed not quite accidentally in his direction and touched the brim of his hat in the half hope she might be his pickup.

      She changed direction and came back toward him, tugging her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and giving him a thorough looking over from above the tortoiseshell frames. He could all but hear her internal calculator chi-ching as her glance moved past him to note the Desert Rose crest on the side of the truck and then quickly returned to take in what his older brother, Alex, laughingly called the Coleman ask-me-the-size-of-my-ranch look. “Do you know where I might find the Four Seasons shuttle?” she asked in a sultry voice, lightly stressing the name of the hotel.

      Okay, so she wasn’t Abigail Jones, who wouldn’t be asking for a ride to an Austin hotel. But that was just as well. He had enough four-legged fillies to take up his time and attention this summer, as it was, and he didn’t need any other distractions. Especially not of this variety. “No, ma’am,” he said without regret. “Can’t say that I do.”

      “I suppose I could take a cab to the hotel,” she said with another toothy blaze of a smile. “Unless I get a…better offer.” She tossed her hair again…a fine, sun-streaked mane of it, too. Her legs were long and lean, her body slender and supple. No two ways about it, she was candy for the eyes, and had exactly the sort of California looks he most admired. He wished he was interested—he really did—but in truth, he wasn’t even tempted to raise the brim of his hat for a better view.

      “I sure hope you get that offer, ma’am,” he drawled, not giving an inch of encouragement…or discouragement, either, for that matter. “’Cause it’s a fair piece of walking to get from here to downtown Austin.”

      She pouted, as he’d expected she would, unconvinced as yet that with a bit more encouragement he wouldn’t be hers for the asking. Women, he’d discovered over the course of his thirty years, could be as predictable as a hill country armadillo and just about as faithless. “Married?” she asked point-blank.

      That made him smile. “No, and never going to be.”

      That made her smile. “Really? Well, it just so happens, I prefer men who have strong opinions about matrimony…one way or the other.”

      Another time, another place, he might have taken her up on her thinly disguised offer, escorted this sun-bleached beauty to her hotel and stayed over for breakfast. But for the past several months, he’d been hung up on a mysterious lady who had seduced and deserted him all within the span of one incredible night. A short, sandy-haired, blue-eyed elf of a woman who continued to intrude on opportunities such as this with annoying regularity. A slip of a gal, whose name he hadn’t been able to discover, whose vanishing act was still as inexplicable to him as her appearance in his hotel room that night last winter, and whose throaty laughter had echoed in all his dreams since. He was damned tired of thinking about her, too, but somehow this just didn’t seem the right moment to prove it.

      The blonde took off her sunglasses and sucked lightly on one plastic-and-wire earpiece. “Is everything in Texas this hot?” she asked, eyeing him suggestively.

      Mac offered her a lazy smile, appreciating her efforts, futile as he’d decided they ultimately would be. “Oh, no, ma’am. Some things in Texas are a whole lot hotter.”

      ABBIE WRESTLED her red plaid suitcase off the steel-jawed baggage carousel and let it fall with a thud on top of the two other bags she’d already rescued—one medium-sized black faux leather and one large faded sea-green paisley. Turning back, she scanned the conveyance for the remaining suitcase, a brown tweed with gray stripes. Well, in truth, the stripes were duct tape, fashioned by Tyler, the youngest of her four older brothers, as a gag gift for her graduation from grad school last December. She had a matched set of brothers and luggage at home, a four-piece, stair-step assortment of each. But for this trip, she’d had to make do with suitcases borrowed helter-skelter, because she didn’t want anyone in her family to know this time away from them was going to last considerably longer than she’d led them all to believe. The truth of the matter was she’d told some major whoppers just to get here without them finding out where she was going or why.

      It was embarrassing to think she’d gone from magna cum laude in December to magna cum baby in May, losing the perfect job along the way. She’d had the world on a string, a prestigious teaching position, a future bright with promise, and independence within her grasp. But her fall from grace had been swift and humiliating, even if only a few people knew about it at this point. Everyone would know soon enough. She supposed she should have gone straight home after she’d been fired from Miss Amelia’s Academy for Young Ladies, but she just couldn’t bring herself to face her parents with the truth. Not yet, anyway.

      And if her brothers knew…well, that didn’t bear thinking about. If they had even a faint suspicion of the mess she was in, the four of them would descend like warrior angels to fight for her honor and protect her from all harm, even if they suffocated her in the process. They meant well, Tyler, Jaz, Brad and Quinn, in their big-brotherly ways, but if it were up to them, she’d never make a single decision for herself. They’d do it all, they’d do it their way, and they’d do it for her own good. Oh, she loved her rowdy brothers with all her heart, and she hadn’t liked having to scheme and plan and plot her way into having a life of her own, but it had been the only way to escape their overly protective and bullheaded-times-four, brothers-know-best attitude.

      Of course, practically the very second she’d managed to claim her independence and get out on her own, she’d gotten herself into quite a pickle. But the longer she could keep the family ignorant of her dilemma, the more choices she could keep open for evaluation. There were some decisions a woman had to make for herself, and it was not selfish to want a little bit of peace and quiet while she made them, either.

      So if that meant traveling with borrowed and battered suitcases, and throwing herself on the kind and generous aegis of her college friend, Jessica Coleman, so be it. Sooner or later, a person had to cut those apron strings and Abbie’s time to snip, snip, snip had come. Her plans were a little loose at the moment, but a week or two at the Desert Rose would give her time to figure СКАЧАТЬ