Charlotte Douglas - Montana Mail-Order Wife

The automatic door glided open at his approach. He rushed past the nurses’ station to her room and laid her on the bed. Drawing the covers to hide her long, sculpted legs, slender hips and the firm, round curves of her breasts from his covetous glance, he stepped back and shoved hands that ached to touch her into his pockets.

He was acting like such a damned idiot, no wonder she’d fainted at the thought of marrying him. Between the train wreck and her amnesia, she’d already suffered too many shocks. News of their engagement had been the last straw. Guilt seeped through him for telling her so abruptly.

And tenderness followed as he noted the sweet curve of her cheek against the pillow, reminding him of countless times he’d carried a sleeping Jordan to his room and tucked him in without waking him.

Ah, Jordan. I thought I’d worked out everything for you, and now look what I’ve gone and done.

“Will she be okay?” He shifted aside for the nurse to check Rachel.

Rachel’s lids fluttered, and she opened her eyes. “I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

The nurse concurred with Rachel’s assessment. “But no more outings until tomorrow. In the meantime, rest.”

Rachel propped herself on her elbows, watched the door close behind the nurse, then turned amazing emerald eyes toward him. “Sorry if I worried you. I’m fine, really.”

Weak with relief, he grinned. “Coulda fooled me. I thought you’d gone into cardiac arrest at the mention of marriage.”

A delightful blush brought the pinkness back to her cheeks, and a dancing smile brightened her eyes. “You’re the first man who’s ever proposed to me.” Her smile dimmed. “That I can remember, anyway.”

His face flamed with discomfort. Because she couldn’t recall the circumstances of their engagement, she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

Not that he blamed her.

Ever since she’d first met him, she couldn’t help noticing the unintended signals of his unexpected and definitely unwelcome attraction to her that he’d been relaying like a microwave tower. He had to set her straight before she embarrassed herself, or him, further.

He dragged a straight chair beside the bed, straddled it backward, and folded his arms on the backrest. Explaining in a letter would have been a lot easier, without his tongue wrapping itself around his teeth. And without the distraction of too-green eyes, kissable lips and a pert nose turned up at just the right angle.

“My, uh, proposal,” he said, “isn’t what you think.”

She had punched the automatic control and raised the head of the bed so her face was even with his. At his disclaimer, she grew so still that, if her eyes hadn’t blinked, he would have sworn she’d gone comatose again.

“If your proposal isn’t what I think, maybe you’d better tell me what it is.” Her clear, steady voice projected an inner strength he hadn’t noticed before.

“We weren’t, uh, aren’t…in love,” he blurted with more emphasis than he’d intended.

She blinked again, but didn’t move. He wished he could guess what she was thinking behind those wide eyes the color of summer leaves.

He tried to explain. “I didn’t want you to expect—”

He hit a dead end. How could he renounce caring for her when his rebellious heart contradicted him with every beat? But such attraction was ridiculous. A grown man didn’t fall head over heels for a stranger, no matter how perfect. Rachel O’Riley had cast a spell that had to be broken. Otherwise, his well-laid plans were ruined.

“What I mean,” he chose his words carefully, “is that sometimes people do fall in love just by exchanging letters, but…”

Her feathery eyebrows peaked, laughter sparked in her eyes and she blinked again. She seemed to be enjoying his discomfort.

Her amusement goaded him to be more blunt than he’d planned. “Anyway, I don’t love you.”

There, he’d said it.

When he looked at her, he wished he’d cut out his tongue before uttering the words. Her lower lip trembled, tears filled her eyes and her shoulders shook. For a horrible instant, he feared she would break into sobs.

Then, as if she could contain herself no longer, she burst out laughing.

He shoved his chair away from the bed and stood, scratching his head at her reaction. Maybe the knock on her head had caused more problems than amnesia.

“That,” she gasped, “is the most unromantic proposal I hope I’ll ever receive. If it was that awful the first time, I must have been crazy to accept. It’s probably best I can’t remember.”

She wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet and stared at him, her lips twitching as if she wanted to laugh again.

He stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and gazed out the window to avoid her ironic smile. He should be happy she wasn’t taking his proposal too seriously, but her amusement annoyed him. “Maybe talking about this should wait until your memory returns.”

“No, please.”

He whirled back toward her at the panic in her voice. “But without all the details, it sounds so…”

“Cold?”

He nodded. He hadn’t had a problem with their agreement before, but now, seeing her so fragile that a puff of wind could blow her away, staring at him from the hospital bed with those big eyes…

“Maybe you’d better tell me all the details,” she suggested in a calmer voice.

“The nurse wants you to rest.”

He needed time to think, to figure out the best way to explain. Time to cool his simmering desire, brought about, he assured himself, only by the intimacy of the hospital room and her scanty attire. He barely knew the woman. How could he be attracted to her?

“I’ll rest better once you’ve told me everything.” Her guileless expression pleaded with him. “If I know the facts, my imagination won’t exaggerate things.”

He couldn’t understand his reluctance. She’d known all the particulars before her accident and had agreed to the arrangement. Why should stating them a second time make any difference?

Because she’s not just words on a page anymore. She’s a real person, flesh and blood with feelings, who makes me feel alive again for the first time in years.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh of resignation, “I’ll try to explain.”

He opened his mouth, but again words failed him. He’d never felt this stupid before. If she’d been a lame horse or an ailing cow, a broken chainsaw or a clogged pump, he’d know exactly what to do, but she was a woman, a beautiful and charming female, and he had almost no experience to fall back on. What little know-how he’d once possessed was rusty from lack of practice.

“Maybe,” she suggested gently, “you should start at the beginning.”

In the beginning there was Maggie, he thought.

“I was married before,” Wade said.

Rachel tamped down her rising panic. What had she gotten herself into, agreeing to marry a man she didn’t know, a man whose first marriage had obviously ended in divorce?

Out of nowhere, a visceral reluctance to commit herself to any man bore down, engulfed her, then vanished as quickly as mist on the river evaporated in the sunlight. The irrational sensation made her fear the wreck had affected more than her memory.

Maybe she was losing her mind.

Or maybe Wade Garrett’s faltering revelation had induced her fleeting dread of intimacy.

He was taking his sweet time explaining their so-called engagement, but she wouldn’t pressure him. She wasn’t going anywhere, not anytime soon. And if his details were as disastrous as his proposal, maybe she had better absorb them slowly.

Clearing her face of any reaction, she waited.

“My wife, Maggie, died in childbirth six years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity, feeling stupid for jumping to conclusions about divorce.

His face had hardened when he spoke his wife’s name. Rachel swallowed hard. She remembered nothing about herself or her past, but at that instant, more than anything in the world, she hoped Wade Garrett would never look like that at the mention of her name.

His antagonism toward his wife, inscribed all over his handsome face, went a long way toward communicating why he had proposed to a woman he didn’t love. Maybe he’d married Maggie, expecting happily ever after, and when it hadn’t worked out that way, decided marriage wasn’t for him.

But why had the-Rachel-she-couldn’t-remember agreed to a loveless marriage? She wouldn’t know the answer until her memories returned.

Unless Wade could tell her.

“My son, Jordan, is eight now.” Affection mixed with frustration glimmered in his deep brown eyes.

An intriguing image of Wade as husband and father flitted through her mind. “It must have been tough, raising a child alone all those years.”

He settled back on his chair. “Ursula did most of the raising.”

“Ursula?”

“Ursula’s my housekeeper,” he said, “and she’s done a good job with Jordan. But now her arthritis is so bad, she can’t keep up with the little rascal.”

Comprehension flooded through her, leaving disappointment in its wake. “So that’s why you need a wife. To take care of Jordan.”

He nodded and relaxed. “I knew you’d understand. You did before when we discussed this in our letters.”

Letters. He’d already told her they’d never met. “Why did you choose me to write to?”

He leaned forward and rested his strong chin with its charming cleft on his forearms, crossed on the back of the chair. His tanned face beamed with enthusiasm. “Your letter was hands down the best answer to my ad.”

“I answered an ad?” She failed to keep the horror from her voice. What kind of woman was she to have answered a personal ad from a stranger?

Desperate?

Lonely?

Crazy?

All of the above?

“I saved your letters,” he said. “If you want, I’ll bring them next time I visit.”

She struggled to dredge up lost memories, but the vast hole where her recollections should have been yielded nothing. “What did I say in my letters?”

“You described how much you’d enjoyed growing up on a farm.”

“I lived on a farm?” The concept seemed so alien, she shuddered. Whatever trauma she had suffered had erased her memories so completely that she couldn’t imagine farm life, much less remember it.

“Until four years ago.”

Without evidence to contradict him, she’d have to take his word. “Anything else?”

“Your experience with country life is important, considering the way I live.”

What kind of life had she agreed to? “You’re a farmer?”

He frowned at the label. “No.”

“Then why is my farm experience important?”

“I’m a rancher. I raise cattle and timber.”

Nothing he said rang any bells, and her head swam with efforts to remember. A single mystery looming in her mind distressed her most. “Did I explain in my letters why I was willing to marry a perfect stranger and care for his child without—”

She floundered, searching for the right word.

Wade was no help. He just sat there, staring at her with amusement sparkling in his eyes. Again he reminded her of the Marlboro Man. A tall, rugged, sexy outdoorsman about as anxious to commit to love as a tumbleweed.

“Without…” She groped for a suitable phrase, bewailing silently that she’d lost not only her memories but her vocabulary, too.

“Without sex?” he suggested.

“That’s not what I meant.” Embarrassment scorched her face, and with relief, she latched on to the words she’d been searching for. “Without all the advantages of marriage. That’s what I was trying to say.”