Karen Whittenburg - His Shotgun Proposal

“So soon?” Brandi lurched forward to see, jostling Abbie in the process.

Mac wanted to grab her arm and tell her to be more careful. Abbie was pregnant, for Pete’s sake. But then he had no right or reason to think Abbie needed his protection. Or to give it, if she did. Truth be told, he should be thanking Brandi for providing him the protection of her chatter this far. “I’ll walk you in,” he said, as he parked in a No Parking space in front of the hotel, opened the door and stepped out.

Brandi slid out of the seat after him, not offering so much as a glance at Abbie, much less a word of goodbye, chattering instead to Mac like some silly magpie.

Abbie was the one who said a warm “nice to have met you,” even though she’d been mainly ignored throughout the trip. Mac felt irritated by one woman’s lack of manners and by the other one’s innate courtesy. And on top of it, he recognized a strong thrust of concern at the weary note that echoed in Abbie’s voice. Probably part of her act, a link in the plan to claim his future for herself and her baby. Well, she’d find it rough going. He had experience with women like her and their end-justifies-the-means attitude. It’d be a cold day in the Sahara before he set himself up to play the fool again.

When he got back into the truck cab, a full twenty minutes had elapsed. Most of it while he stood inside the lobby listening to Brandi as she did her best to persuade him to return later for cocktails, dinner and a late-night dessert in her room, but mainly while he watched the truck, making sure Abbie didn’t get out and signal for a cab. He didn’t know why he should care if she did. The sooner she figured out her little plan had run smack into the proverbial mountain, the better off both of them would be.

“I didn’t much figure you’d have the good sense to slip away when I gave you the chance,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “Your kind never does.”

“My kind, as you put it, does better at escaping when your kind leaves the keys in the truck.” Anger flashed in her eyes and he met it with cool deliberation. “Besides, if you were so anxious for me to leave, why didn’t you let me go at the airport instead of dragging me all the way into town?”

“I was only trying to be accommodating.”

“You were demonstrating to me that responsibility isn’t your forte. Fine, I got the message. Now, take me back to the airport and I’ll be out of your life for good.”

“If it wasn’t for Jessica, I’d do just that and call your bluff, but good.”

She looked down at her stomach. “You think this is a bluff?”

Easing the pickup into the flow of traffic that was always heavy in downtown Austin, he felt the sting of her righteous—now, there was a misnomer—anger and smiled lazily. “You’ll find I’m not one to mince words,” he said. “And I don’t take kindly to being accused of something I didn’t do.”

“What are you saying?” Abbie asked tightly. “That perhaps you have an identical twin who was in that hotel room with us last December and at the moment of conception it was him instead of you?”

Mac shot her an irritated glance. “As it happens, I do have a twin brother. Cade. But as we both know, he’s no more the father of that baby you’re carrying than I am.”

She blinked, then adjusted her glasses with a jab of her finger. “You mean you really do have a twin? For real?”

“Don’t play games. You probably know more about me and my family than I do.”

“I don’t see how you can say that. Until I saw you outside the airport, I didn’t even know your name.”

He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “The more lies you tell, the more apt you are to get caught in them,” he admonished. “You and Jessica became friends during grad school. Don’t try to tell me you never talked about your families.”

“I suppose someone of your kind would find it impossible to believe you weren’t the main topic of conversation every day of the week, every hour of the day, but believe me, stranger things have happened.”

“Yes, like you showing up here.”

“I’m here because Jessica was kind enough to invite me. As I said before, if I’d known you were one of her cousins, this is the last place I’d have chosen as a refuge.”

“Refuge? Now, that’s an interesting turn of phrase.”

She pressed her lips together and stared stonily out the windshield. “Look, Mac—it is all right if I call you Mac, isn’t it?”

“I usually require women to call me Sheikh Makin Bin Habib El Jeved, or Prince, but since you asked so nicely, I’ll make an exception for you and allow you to call me Your Royal Highness.” He slowed in response to the traffic and looked over at her. “I’m guessing my connection to the royal family of Sorajhee doesn’t come as a surprise to you.”

Her blue eyes took on something of a glaze at that. “Oh, no. I’m not surprised at all. I was sort of hoping for Prince William—he’s young, but so handsome, you know—but what kind of commoner am I to complain? I mean, any royal blood is better than none, right?”

She was making fun of him, the little witch. There was a hint of a dimple winking at him from her cheek, the dance of devilment in her eyes. She was laughing, and his stupid heart urged him to laugh with her! But he would not give her the satisfaction. He would never humble himself in that way. “I’m glad you find it so amusing,” he said stiffly. “You may not find it so in the days to come.”

“Day,” she corrected quickly. “I’m not staying any longer than it takes to convince Jessica I’ll be okay somewhere else.”

“Some other place of refuge?”

“I didn’t mean to say that. Refuge sounds…well, not the way it really is.”

“So how is it, Abigail Jones? Did you get into trouble and this looked like an easy way out? Or was this your plan all along?”

The laughter went out of her expression as quickly as a room goes from light to dark with the flick of a switch. “My plan was to take my graduate degree and teach. My plan was to be on my own and independent. My plan was to stay out of trouble altogether. I didn’t plan to get pregnant, I didn’t plan on ever seeing you again, and I sure as shootin’ didn’t plan to answer stupid questions about looking for the easy way out!”

Mac thought she sounded genuinely upset. Angry, too. He had to admit she was a consummate little actress. “Let’s be honest, Abbie. We had one night together. One. We weren’t careless. We used protection. You’ll forgive me if I refuse to believe I’m the father of your child.”

She was furious. It showed in every nuance, in every movement, in the white-hot gaze that scorched him in its outrage. “And you’ll forgive me if I believe you’re a jackass.”

“There’s no need to resort to name-calling.”

“No, much better to stick to your civilized way of calling me not only a liar, but a wh—”

“I did not say that.”

“But you did imply it.” She twisted irritably on the seat. “Well, I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Sheikh El Highness, but for your information, I don’t sleep around, using protection is no guarantee against pregnancy, and this is your baby. Much to my regret. Now, please, don’t talk to me anymore. No,” she snapped when he opened his mouth. “Don’t say another word. I’m dangerously hormonal and I might start screaming. I might dial 911 on my cell phone and accuse you of kidnapping. Or worse. I might take out a pair of needles and start knitting little booties. Believe me, you’ll be doing us both a favor if you keep quiet from here on in and just concentrate on driving.”

Mac thought maybe—this time, anyway—she had a valid point.

“I’ve been so excited all day, I barely got anything done.” Jessica led the way up the broad, curving staircase to the second floor, chattering away as she tossed speculative glances over her shoulder at Abbie, who trailed after her like a shadow with flushed cheeks and black-framed glasses. Something was wrong with this picture, Jessica had decided within two minutes of her friend’s arrival. Something more than the awkwardness of her circumstances had put those high points of color into Abbie’s cheeks and given her chin its stubborn tilt. She’d practically fallen out of the truck in her haste to meet Jess’s enthusiastic welcome, an action that could have been an indication of tremendous gratitude or an eagerness to get out of range of Mac’s formidable frown.

Jess had caught a glimpse of it, purely by chance, and her curiosity had spiked with the possibility that one thing had something to do with the other. Of course, it could be sheer happenstance that Mac’s brow was furrowed with thunderclouds and Abbie’s blue eyes seemed unnecessarily dark and stormy. There were probably any number of logical explanations, Jessica thought, although none occurred readily to her. Abbie looked like someone had popped her balloon, taken away her candy, made her drop her ice cream and left her plenty mad in the process.

Jessica pondered the possibilities on the trek up the stairs and maintained a bright stream of conversation to disguise it. “You’ll be in here,” she said, opening the door of the guest bedroom. “Mom and Dad have the master suite down the hall and my bedroom adjoins yours on the other side. It’ll be almost like being back at the grad house.”

“Except for sharing the bathroom with six other women,” Abbie said, her smile never quite reaching her eyes.

“And the raucous fraternity parties across the street,” Jessica added. “Mac is still living across the hall.” She indicated the suite of rooms on the other side of the stairs. “But he’s normally pretty quiet. He’s gone a lot, too, to horse shows and auctions and stuff. I accuse him of being lonely now that Cade is married and living in one of the guest houses with Serena. You did know Mac has an identical twin, didn’t you?”

“He mentioned it on the trip out,” Abby said in a voice just shy of snippy.

“There was quite a stir last month when Cade went off to Balahar pretending to be Mac and accidentally married King Zakariyya Al Farid’s adopted daughter and then wound up falling hard for her. Cade and Serena got remarried because they weren’t sure the first ceremony was legal in the States, since they’d used Mac’s name instead of Cade’s during the ceremony in Balahar. It was a big mess for a while there, but all’s well that ends well, you know.” Jessica stood aside and motioned Abbie into the bedroom. “Did I ever tell you that my cousins are really from a country called Sorajhee on the edge of Saudi Arabia?”

Abbie stopped abruptly, only a step inside the room. “I thought he was making that up. You mean, he’s not really American? Not really a Texan?”

“Don’t let any one of them hear you say that. They’re Texans through and through,” Jessica said with a laugh. “They’ve always had dual citizenship because their mother, my aunt Rose, didn’t give up her citizenship when she married the crown prince of Sorajhee. It was a big scandal in their country at the time, but she became a beloved queen in spite of it. Then when King Ibrahim was murdered, Aunt Rose believed her sons were in danger and got my dad to help smuggle the three boys out of the country and that’s how they ended up as Colemans in Bridle, Texas. It’s quite a story, but I won’t drown you in the family history—as interesting as it is—until you’ve been here at least long enough to unpack your bags.”

Abbie sank onto the edge of the bed as if her legs weren’t strong enough to support her. “You mean, he’s really a…a prince?”