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Authors: Cindy Gerard

BOOK: A Bride For Abel Greene
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He nodded, then knelt beside the dog and ran his hand over her back.
No wonder he’d looked so angry when they’d run into him. They’d thrown things at his pregnant dog. The boom box had narrowly missed making a direct hit.
Clutching the blankets around her, Mackenzie leaned forward and peeked worriedly over his shoulder. “Is she all right?”
“I didn’t hurt his damn dog,” Mark snapped.
Up until now he’d been ignoring them in martyred silence. He threw a sullen, resentful look at the dog before turning his anger on Greene.
“Because of that mutt, my box is ruined.”
“Mark,” Mackenzie cautioned, knowing he only pretended disdain for the dog’s condition. She remembered him as a little boy who used to sneak stray cats into their apartment and feed them milk.
“Don’t ‘Mark’ me!” he shouted above the din of quiet his outburst prompted. “Don’t even talk to me!”
Shoving the broken radio to the floor, he shot off the sofa and stalked to the window. Her tough, macho, little brother hadn’t turned his back soon enough, though. Mackenzie caught the shine of moisture crowding his thick-lashed eyes. Her heart ached for him even as he railed at her.
“I hate this!” he snarled between clenched teeth. “Why did you make me come here? It’s the middle of freaking nowhere! You take me away from everything I know to...to what?” He spun around and glared at Abel then Nashata. “Mad Max and a knocked-up wolf?”
Glaring at Mackenzie, he muttered a gutter-bred expletive. “The radio was my only connection with civilization, and now I don’t even have that!”
Snagging his jacket from the coatrack by the door, he shoved his feet into his army boots and slammed out of the cabin into the storm.
She was too tired to do anything but watch him go. Watch and wonder if she could ever heal the huge, festering hurts inside his thin, gangly body. And to wonder how, with Mark as a selling point, she was going to convince Abel Greene that this particular “two-fer” was a bargain he just couldn’t pass up.
 
Abel stared at the door long after the boy had slammed it behind him. Reluctantly he let his gaze swing to Mackenzie Kincaid where she sat huddled on his sofa. The kid’s outburst had hurt her.
It wasn’t his problem, he reminded himself coldly. At any rate, he sure as hell didn’t want it to be. Just like he didn’t want to be aware that the woman who’d been gutsy enough to find her way through a snowstorm, then lay into him with a wicked roundhouse punch, had lost her fire when the kid had stalked out.
He brought his hand to his jaw. It still throbbed from the impact of her small fist. And his mind was still railing at him for putting himself, and them, in this position.
He damned his friend J. D. Hazzard for his stupid idea. Then the U.S. mail that evidently hadn’t delivered his letter calling things off. Ultimately, though, he had no one to blame but himself. J.D. may have been the button pusher, and the whiskey the two of them had consumed that one fateful night might have lowered his guard, but he was the one who’d knuckled under. He’d submitted to a weakness, and now he had to deal with it.
They couldn’t stay, of course. But neither could they go. Not tonight, at any rate. Not in this storm. Tomorrow, at first light, he’d lay it all out for her. He was sorry she’d come all this way. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t gotten his letter calling the arrangement off. She’d either accept it or she wouldn’t. Either way he was going to drive them the thirty miles to Bordertown and put them on the first bus back to L.A.
An uncomfortable quiet had settled over the cabin. He’d intended to ignore her, yet when she rose on shaking legs, bent on going after the boy, he reacted.
“He’ll be all right,” he said when her eyes—as green and fresh as the forest in spring, yet as old as a hundred cold winters—met his.
“He could freeze out there.”
Her voice was a sandpapery whisper of concern, as weary as the look in her eyes. She was too young to have eyes that old. And she was too tired to succeed in hiding her vulnerability with a smart. mouth and a lift of that stubborn chin.
He didn’t much like that he’d let her get to him, but it didn’t stop him from trying to reassure her. “He’ll be back long before it comes to that.”
She looked toward the door again. “He could get lost.”
“He’s too smart for that, too. He’ll be all right,” he repeated with more gentleness than he’d thought he had in him. “Let him walk it out.”
She shook her head, a small, tired smile barely tipping the corners of her mouth. “There aren’t enough miles between here and L.A. for Mark to walk off all the anger inside him.”
“Then why the hell did you bring him here?”
The question burst out before he could stop it. This was a road he didn’t want to travel. He didn’t want to know why they were here. He didn’t want to know anything about her—until she raised her head and those green eyes of hers touched him again.
“Maybe for the same reasons you ran the ad.”
She had deadly insight. He’d concluded that it had been despair that had sent her here, and she’d just told him she knew it had been his own desperation that had initiated the ad.
He clenched his jaw, wanting to deny that she—that anyone—could so easily understand that part of him. He liked even less that he understood her motives. She may have a smart mouth, but those eyes held secrets and sorrow.
She was running from something. He was certain of it. Just like he was certain he didn’t want to know what it was. Ignorance might not necessarily be bliss, but it went a long way to help maintain distance. And distance was the only good thing that could come between them.
When she weaved on her feet and grasped the back of the sofa to regain her balance, he muttered a curse.
“Would you mind if we finished this conversation sitting down?”
He’d been so absorbed in denying what she was doing to him, he’d looked past the obvious. She was exhausted. She’d been close to frozen when he’d found her.
“Sit,” he ordered gruffly. “You need food.”
And he needed space. And time to decide what he was going to do about her.
His mood blackened along with his scowl. A moment ago he’d known exactly what he was going to do. He was going to send her back to L.A.
But that had been a moment ago. Before he’d let himself look into her eyes and glimpse a soul that too closely mirrored his own.
 
He watched her from the kitchen as he heated thick stew, and refused to be impressed with her grit. She could have been—should have been—wailing about everything from the cold to his surly company. But she didn’t say a word. She just curled her shivering limbs into a ball and wrapped herself up in his blankets.
For lack of anything better to do, he damned J. D. Hazzard again. Ever since he’d married Maggie Adams, J.D. had been trying to come up with a way to get him paired up with a woman.
“So you can share the experience,” J.D. had said. He regularly badgered Abel when he called from Minneapolis, where he and Maggie lived part of the time to be close to J.D.’s air-freight business and Maggie’s new photography studio.
“Marrying Maggie was the best thing that ever happened to me,” J.D. assured Abel whenever he returned to the lake, his face splitting with that candy-eating grin he got whenever he looked at his wife.
That road went both ways. Marrying J.D. was the best thing that had ever happened to Maggie, too. When Abel had stumbled onto her in the little cabin in the next bay last spring, she’d reminded him of a deer caught in a hunter’s spotlight. She’d been afraid of her own shadow, hiding out alone. When J.D. had literally dropped out of the sky in his float plane, he’d fixed whatever was wrong with Maggie’s life.
It was damn lucky for Hazzard that he had. Maggie was one of the few people on the lake Abel called friend. J.D. fell in that category now too, after the battle they’d waged against a nasty bunch of poachers last year.
But, friendship notwithstanding, if J. D. Hazzard were within grinning distance right now, Abel would cheerfully knock his pretty-boy blond block off for getting him into this situation.
He had little to give a woman, nothing to give a woman like her. Nothing good, anyway. No woman—not even one foolish enough to answer that ad—deserved the grief that tying herself up with him would bring.
She may be gutsy. The fact that she was here was proof of that. But despite the wisdom in her eyes, he could tell she was an innocent. Innocence deserved reward, not punishment. He wouldn’t—no matter how tempting—drag her down with him. And he couldn’t, no matter what she thought, solve the problem that had made her run to him.
When the stew was hot, he took her a bowl. She thanked him, but merely played with it while casting worried glances toward the door.
He’d decided, even before she’d told him, that the boy was her brother. The blood relationship was evident. It wasn’t just the unusual green of their eyes or the cinnamon brown of their hair. The boy’s features, though more sharply drawn in the ragged gauntness of gender and youth, mirrored hers.
He didn’t want to, but he watched her while she finally began to eat. Her features, like her size, were understated. Her nose was upturned just enough to give her a waifish, elfin look, her bone structure sufficiently refined to lend elegance. She was small and...birdlike, he finally decided, wondering where that analogy had come from. Maybe it was the flighty way she moved. Maybe it was that she appeared so fragile yet was so obviously resilient.
His growing fascination with her eyes and the rosy glow of her winter-bitten cheeks irritated him. And despite his determination to send her on her way in the morning, his increasing speculation about the soft curves rounding out her sweatsuit couldn’t be ignored.
He’d become unaccountably aware of her presence. He didn’t want to analyze why, but there was a subtle difference in the feel of the cabin with her in it. Dark, empty shadows seemed full of light and space. Hard, sharp edges felt somehow softer—and he was soft in the head for letting his thoughts stray in that direction.
“If he’s not back in another ten minutes, I’ll go find him,” he said, as much to break the silence as to get his mind out of places it had no business going.
His offer seemed to satisfy her.
Satisfaction, however, was a far cry from what he felt as he watched her.
 
She was asleep when the boy came back ten minutes later. The scent of horse and hay followed him in the back door telling Abel he’d found the stable and the pair of black Belgian mares inside. The horses’ calming nature and the harsh winter night had wrestled the fight out of the kid. He was as dead on his feet as his sister.
Abel didn’t wake her. He left her curled up on the sofa, and in a silence that matched the boy’s, he fed him, showed him to the bathroom, then shoved a sleeping bag and pillow into his arms and pointed in the direction of the loft.
Too exhausted to do more than climb the stairs, the boy crawled into the bag and fell immediately asleep.
For Abel, however, sleep was a long time coming.
He sat in the chair across from the sofa, an elbow propped on the armrest, his chin on his fist, his eyes on Mackenzie Kincaid.
She stirred. And so did his sex, as her scent—a sweet, exotic blend of winter and summer and the softness of woman—reminded him what was missing from his life.
It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Even at that, the pull of desire that tugged deep and low was too strong. The catalyst was far too weak.
Abstinence notwithstanding, his past was littered with memories of far more alluring women. Mackenzie was a woman, yes, but a small, untidy package of disheveled brown hair, green urchin eyes and boyishly slim limbs. A pretty, colorful little bird, like those who visited his feeders.
A siren she was not. But still an arresting, provocative presence.
An innocent, he reminded himself, and he knew he should go to bed.
Yet he sat there long into the night and watched her sleep.
Three
“C
rimson Falls to Greene’s Point. Come in Greene’s Point. Hey, Abel, it’s Casey. How’s our little chief doing? Is she a momma yet? Over.”
The crackle of static, a shrill whine that sounded like feedback from a microphone and a muffled, feminine voice infiltrated Mackenzie’s sleep-drugged fog.
She tugged the blanket over her head and snuggled deeper into the pillow, bent on ignoring it.
“Come on, Abel. Answer me. Mom’s worried about how you’re weathering the storm over there and I’m worried about Nashata. Over.”
Mackenzie pried one eye open. Okay. So she wasn’t going to be able to ignore it, she realized when the voice, sounding like that of a young girl, spoke again, more persistent this time.
Unfolding slowly to accommodate the deep ache in every joint, she rose to a sitting position. She finger-combed her short hair, winced at the stiffness in her right hand and cast a squinty look around for the source of the noise. In the process, she made a major discovery.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” she murmured, and reacclimated herself to the fact that California was a couple thousand miles away and she’d just spent the night on a sofa in a cabin belonging to a man she didn’t know but was about to marry. And that he had a granite jaw, she reflected, wincing when she flexed her sore knuckle.
“That’s life in the fast lane,” she mumbled around a huge yawn, then opened her eyes fully.
“Abel are you there? Over.” The voice was pretty and profoundly feminine but was beginning to sound downright pouty as it drifted over the airwaves.
At least Mackenzie assumed it was airwaves. Her assumption was confirmed when she followed the sound of the disembodied voice to a doorway tucked beneath the loft stairs.
The door stood open, revealing a small room that had all the earmarks of an office. Two four-drawer file cabinets and a wall of shelves overflowing with books, magazines, loose papers and assorted sketches stood against one wall.
Strategically placed, where the light from a set of casement windows gave the best advantage, was a draftsman’s desk. An old pine desk, nestled in the opposite corner, held a computer, phone, fax and what she assumed was a shortwave radio.
While this was all very interesting, the biggest surprise was that Mark was sitting at that desk, studying the radio while the wolf dog lay on the floor at his bare feet.
“Abel, come on. Answer me, will you? Over.”
Mackenzie was about to investigate the radio when Mark picked a switch, flipped it and groused into the microphone. “He ain’t here.”
She groaned inwardly at his surly delivery. Before she could admonish him, the anonymous voice came back on the air.
“Is this Abel Greene’s base? Over.”
“Well, it ain’t Mick Jagger’s.”
Mackenzie closed her eyes and shook her head, but something made her hang back in the doorway.
A protracted silence followed before the girl tried again. “Who are you...and where’s Abel? Over.”
“Who are
you
and how’m I supposed to know where he is?”
“Well you don’t have to be so rude,” she snapped right back. “Over.”
“And you don’t have to be so snotty. You woke me up, ya know.”
“Well,
excuuuuuse
me. Over.”
Good for you, Mackenzie thought with a grin. And what’s this? Mark’s back was to her, but he turned his head enough that she caught the whisper of a cynical smile tip up one corner of his mouth. Her best guess was that Mark was enjoying the fact that the girl on the other end could give back as good as she got.
“So, what’d you say your name was, sweet thing?”
From her spot in the doorway, Mackenzie rolled her eyes. Testosterone had taken over. Every mother’s living nightmare, or in this case, every sister’s living nightmare could be blamed on that one, obnoxious chemical.
“Wouldn’t you like to know. Over,” came back the flinty but flirty reply.
“Not necessarily. But it beats sitting here watching this stupid dog slobber on my feet.”
“Nashata? Is Nashata with you? Over.”
“Yeah,” Mark drawled, trying to sound disgusted but not quite pulling it off. “The mutt’s here.”
“Is she all right? Did she have her puppies yet? Over.”
The girl’s voice had risen with anxiety. Amazingly, Mark responded to it—with as little empathy as possible, but with empathy, just the same.
“She’s fine,” he said, and unaware that he was being watched, he reached down and stroked the wolf dog’s head.
Mackenzie brought her hand to her throat where her heart had suddenly lodged. And for once, when she looked at her brother, the tears that stung her eyes weren’t prompted by worry, frustration or fear. The openly affectionate gesture lit a small flame of hope inside her.
“And no,” he continued, back in his tough punk role, “she ain’t had any little mutts yet. What’s it to you, anyway?”
“You are really a creep, you know that? Over.”
“And you’re really a bore.”
Mackenzie sighed. So much for pleasant interaction with the locals.
While he’d never admit it, Mark was enjoying this little airwave sparring. When the girl didn’t respond, she sensed disappointment in the sudden droop of his shoulders.
“What’s the matter?” he said, attempting to lure her back on the air. “Did I scare you off, little girl?”
“Who am I speaking to please?”
Uh-oh. A new voice had joined the discussion. This one, while ringing with the same pleasant tones as the girl’s, was the mature voice of a woman. Mackenzie bolted away from the door and grabbed the mike before Mark had a chance to alienate yet one more unknown person.
“Which switch?” she asked Mark, who shot her a surprised look before shrugging, flipping a lever and stalking out of the room, the wolf dog at his heels.
“Good morning,” Mackenzie said, a little hesitant as she tried to smooth things over. “I’m Mackenzie Kincaid, and that charming young man who just offended that sweet young lady is my little brother. I’m sorry he was so rude. He’s...he’s been under a bit of a strain the past few days.”
Strain
, she thought with a grim press of her lips. That benign summation was the understatement of the decade.
“Well, hi, Mackenzie. I’m Scarlett Morgan and the pouty little prima donna he was offending is my daughter, Casey. And don’t worry about it. We don’t have to be proud of how they sometimes act. We just have to bear it. Over.”
Settling into the chair Mark had vacated, Mackenzie relaxed a little, liking this woman and her tolerance, sight unseen. “Amen to that.”
“So, Mackenzie, is Abel around? Over.”
She sensed even before he leaned over her that Abel was definitely around.
A watershed of sensations swamped her as she looked up over her shoulder and saw him standing there. His size was every bit as imposing as she remembered from last night. And he was still every bit as beautiful.
His hair, which he’d tied at his nape, trailed over one shoulder, dragging across the desktop as he leaned toward the radio. His chest brushed her back in the process. It was just a brief touch, yet a ripple of awareness shimmered down her spine.
He was scented of winter-crisp air and warm cedar smoke, telling her he’d just come in from outside and had made a stop to stoke the fire before discovering her in his office. And she was far too aware of the heat and strength of his body just a deep breath away from touching her again.
When his fingers brushed hers as he took the mike from her hand, a jolt like an electric shock sizzled through her blood. She bolted out of the chair and backed a few feet away, hugging her hand, still warm and tingling from his touch, to her breast.
Unable to look away, she watched him in profile as he ignored her and spoke into the mike.
“Morning, Scarlett. How are things over at Crimson Falls? You holding up okay in this storm? Over.”
Another sensation slammed through her chest at his words. Not his words so much as at his tone of voice. The sensation was jealousy. Even though it caught her off guard, even though it made no sense, she didn’t pretend to mistake it for anything other than what it was.
Those few words, spoken to a faceless woman, held tender concern, an intimate, affectionate regard. After hearing little but curt, hard-edged tones from him yesterday, it was like comparing sandpaper to velvet, reminding her how precarious their position here was.
“We’re fine, Abel. This storm’s a doozy, isn’t it? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen snow set in this fast and deep so early in the season. Over.”
“Looks like we’re in for a long winter,” he said, casting a glance out the window. “So, are you going to be able to handle it? Over.”
“No problem. We’ve got plenty of wood. I just stocked up on groceries, and even though the phones are out, as long as the radio works, we won’t go stir crazy up here. Over.”
“I’ll hear from you if you need anything. Over.”
It wasn’t a question as much as it was a command. Clearly he cared about this woman and her daughter. And evidently, there wasn’t any other man in their life to take care of them.
“You know we will. What about things there? Casey says Nashata is still holding out on us. Over.”
“Won’t be much longer now. Tell her not to worry. She’s still got first pick of the litter. I’ll radio just as soon as I can after the big event. Over.”
“And what about you, Abel? Are you holding out on us too? Is Mackenzie the, ah,
guest
J.D. told me you were expecting?”
Listening in silence to the conversation, Mackenzie quickly added two and two and came up with a colossal six. Scarlett Morgan could only be referring to J. D. Hazzard. It was J.D. and his wife, Maggie Hazzard, who had been listed as references in Abel’s ad. Scarlett’s mention of J.D implied that she was a friend of his, too. Based on the familiarity and the affectionately curious quality of her question, it also suggested Scarlett knew about the mail-order bride business.
Mackenzie held her breath, waiting for Abel’s reply.
“J. D. Hazzard’s got a big mouth,” he muttered.
“And a big heart,” Scarlett reminded him with a laugh. “I swear, that man is not going to be happy until he sees us both married and—”
“Miss Kincaid and her brother got caught in the storm,” he cut in, dodging any further discussion about marriage. “It seems Mother Nature is indiscriminate about who she strands and where. Over.”
Mackenzie’s heart, along with her hopes, sank a little lower. He was deliberately letting Scarlett think she and Mark were accidents of the storm and nothing more. He obviously didn’t want Scarlett to know the significance of Mackenzie’s presence. Which made her even more uneasy about what he planned to do about them.
Scarlett was evidently disappointed, too. After a long pause she came back on the air. “Oh. Well. I was hoping that maybe... well... you know.”
Abel hit the switch. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Scarlett? Over.”
It didn’t take a degree in advanced psychology to figure out that Abel wanted to close this conversation. Scarlett took the hint.
“No,” she said carefully. “As I said, we’re fine. Maybe we can do something for you, though. You’re not exactly set up for unexpected company over there. Would you like to bring Miss Kincaid and her brother over to the hotel? We can put them up here at Crimson Falls until the storm lifts. Over.”
Here it comes, she thought. His chance to get rid of them.
“Not an option,” he quickly said, surprising her. “Until this bad boy blows itself out, no one’s going anywhere. You make damn sure you stay put, too. Don’t go outside if you don’t have to. And don’t let Casey even think about firing up the snowmobile until the snow stops and the wind dies down. She’d get lost so fast in this mess she’d freeze to death before anyone found her. Over.”
Soft laughter rang over the air. “There you go, sounding just like J.D. He’s already radioed. By the way—did you know he and Maggie are at their cabin? They drove up from the Cities to spend a long weekend. Got here just before the storm hit. Anyway, he’s already checked on us. I’ll tell you the same thing I told him—we don’t need any brother hens clucking over us. Casey and I can take care of ourselves. Over.”
“Just see to it that you do. Over.”
“Mackenzie,” Scarlett continued, addressing her instead of Abel, “if you had to get stranded in a snowstorm, you couldn’t pick a better man to rescue you than Abel. He’ll take good care of you. Over.”
With a reluctant scowl and a long look, Abel handed her the mike, taking great care this time to avoid touching her hand.
“Thanks, Scarlett,” she said hesitantly. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“And don’t let his big bad wolf routine intimidate you. It’s all an act. Over.”
“Thanks again,” she said, and unable to resist she added, “I’ll keep that in mind the next time he bares his teeth.”

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