Reckless Promise (24 page)

The silence after their departure made
Poppy's ears ring and she didn't want to look at Mac, didn't want
to see whatever he felt in his eyes. He'd figured it out. He'd
probably hate her now, and she couldn't bear it.

He put a finger under her chin and made her
look up at him. "So all that flirting with Tom was an act?" he
said.

"You might say it's my fault," Jase
offered.

Mac quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Well, I asked Poppy to help Tom."

"Because he's such a good friend of yours."
Mac's voice dripped sarcasm. "Even though I've never heard him
mention you."

Jase shrugged. "Because I owe him. A couple
of years ago at the airport in Butte, a few of your local good ole
boys thought Jerry and I might want to go for a ride with them. See
a little of the countryside. I don't think they meant for us to get
back in time for our connecting flight. Tom helped us convinced
them otherwise. So I owe him. He had dinner with us when he came
back east last month, and Poppy was there too, and, well, things
just sort of snowballed from there."

Poppy closed her eyes. He should stop there,
please. Honesty was good, but she didn't want Mac to know how
childish and stupid she'd been. She especially didn't want him to
know she'd been stupid enough to actually do the other woman thing
more than once. She'd had to practice, after all, but it sounded
so... so bad.

"And you let Poppy pay off your debt?" Mac
curled his lip.

"She offered," Jase said.

Poppy let out a silent breath of thanks.

"How nice of her." Anger bled back into Mac's
voice. He turned to Poppy. "Were you out of your mind, woman?
Whatever possessed you to come to a strange place for two weeks and
act like a husband-stealing tramp? What if Alice were the violent
type?"

"That's why I came. I worried," Jase said.
"Since I got Poppy into this—"

"If it makes you feel any better, I was
scared," she said. "And I'm never going to do it again."

"That goes without saying," Mac told her.

Her temper flashed at the note of command in
his voice, and fizzled when she realized she agreed.

"I think I'll leave now," Jase said.

"Good idea," Mac said when the door slammed
behind him. "No other men, Poppy," he told her. "Not for pretend,
not for real."

"No. I'm so mad at you for not trusting me I
could just kill you, but there isn't going to be anyone else."

A wicked grin flirted with one corner of his
mouth. "Does it make it any better that I couldn't resist you even
when I didn't trust you?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. I wish you had
trusted me, just a little. But I did my best to be convincing."

"Let's call it a draw." He put his arms
around her and she leaned into him.

"I don't know where this thing with us is
going, Mac, but there won't be any other men while we're finding
out. Trust that."

He bent his head and kissed her, a kiss like
a brand.

Poppy melted against him and closed her eyes.
She wanted this. But she needed to straighten out the mess she'd
left in Boston.

"I know where it's going. Right straight into
the shower. We've got half an hour to get cleaned up and get up to
dinner."

She laughed, a shaky little thread of sound.
"I could use dry clothes too. These are still a little damp." She
turned toward the bedroom. Mac followed along with her.

"I thought I'd shower with you, and then grab
some clean clothes when we get up to the house. If you don't mind."
He ran a finger along her chin, tilting her face up for another
kiss. That special smile lit his face, a little evil and a lot
enticing.

Twenty five minutes later, Mac urged Poppy up
the stairs to the main lodge. "Go on in, honey. I'll go change and
be back in a—"

Tom barreled down the hall, pale and
sweating. He grabbed Mac's arm. "You've got to stop her."

Dread streaked through Poppy when she saw his
wild eyes and shaking hands.

"What's wrong now?" Mac demanded.

"Alice. She won't tell me what's wrong. She's
leaving."

Mac bolted down the hall to Tom and Alice's
suite, Poppy and Tom right on his heels. He didn't bother to knock.
The door slammed back against the wall, and he ran through the
empty sitting room into the bedroom.

Poppy fetched up the doorway and clung to the
doorframe keep from crashing into Tom. Alice stood beside the bed,
carefully, precisely folding clothes into an open suitcase. She
ignored the tears that left shiny streaks on her face.

"Well?" Mac demanded.

"I'm leaving." She added a sweater to the
case.

"The hell you are."

With Mac's anger directed at someone else,
Poppy had no difficulty hearing the fear that lay under the
words.

"What happened to your new-found wisdom about
staying out of affairs that don't concern you?" Alice didn't look
at Mac, but her fists clenched in a handful of silky underwear. She
wadded it up and threw it at the suitcase. It missed, and fell to
the floor.

Mac recoiled and reached for Poppy's hand.
"You leaving concerns me."

"I'm sure I'm replaceable. Maybe your fancy
city woman here can take over my duties. Including Tom, since
that's what he asked her here to do." Alice threw a pair of shoes
at the suitcase.

Poppy flinched at that bitter voice. That's
exactly the way she'd felt when she decided to be the other woman:
suffering, angry, guilty, ready to strike out at anyone who came
near just because she hurt so much.

In her case the guilt had been because she
should stay to fight for her job and her reputation. Heaven only
knew what Alice had to feel guilty about. Time to find out, though,
even though she knew Mac wouldn't like the next few minutes. She
squeezed his hand and edged in front of him.

"Throwing away your life because your
feelings are hurt isn't going to help," she said to Alice.

Alice ignored her.

Mac tugged at her hand. "What are you
doing?"

Poppy grimaced. Mac and his 'protect the
little woman' mode.

"I'm trying to find out what's got your
sister so upset," she said evenly. "Unless you want to just let her
leave."

"She's not leaving."

"You can't stop me," Alice said.

"Yes, I—"

"Shut up, both of you," Poppy ordered.

Alice threw down the clothes she'd been
holding and turned on Poppy. "Keep out of this. You've done enough
damage here. This isn't any of your business."

"I know," Poppy said in her most calm,
I'm-in-control-here teacher's voice. "But it appears that I'm in
the middle anyway, so sit down and listen." Alice didn't move.
Poppy put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down to sit on the
edge of the bed. "Now pay attention, all of you."

Feeling very much as though she were standing
in front of a class with no lecture notes, Poppy looked from Alice
to Tom to Mac. "Let me summarize, just to be sure we all understand
the situation. Tom loves Alice. Tom thinks that Alice no longer
returns his feelings. Mac will do anything to protect his sister.
Am I correct so far?"

Mac nodded.

Tom's mouth set in a grim line and he chipped
the words out. "You know you are."

"I do love him." The words burst from
Alice.

"Then why the hell are you leaving?" Tom
glared at Alice, fists clenched.

"She feels guilty about something," Poppy
said. Her statement lay in the sudden silence like a rattlesnake,
fat with menace.

As she expected, Mac started to protest, but
subsided after one look from her.

"Come on, Alice," Poppy said. "Whatever your
secret is, it can't be so bad that it's worth destroying a
marriage, a family, and two men who love you."

Alice stared straight ahead, at the wall.
Color rose in her cheeks but she didn't speak, and wouldn't meet
Poppy's gaze. Poppy planted herself squarely in front of Alice,
prepared to wait for as long as it took.

Silence filled the room. Tom shifted uneasily
and Poppy nailed him with a paralyzing glare. Mac cleared his
throat. Poppy shifted the glare to him and his words died
stillborn. The misery on his face tore at her but she wouldn't,
couldn't, break the silence. Alice had to tell them.

Finally Alice drew in a long shaky breath and
looked up at Poppy. Poppy concentrated on maintaining her
implacable stare.

Alice glanced at Tom. She went pale and
turned to Mac. "Mac?" she said, her voice a soft plea. "I
can't—"

"Mac's not going to help you this time,
sweetie," Poppy said with a warning look at him. "This is between
you and Tom, remember?"

"Then what are you doing in my bedroom?"
Alice shouted as she came up off the bed.

"Refereeing." Poppy pushed Alice back down.
"Now stop stalling and tell Tom what's going on."

Alice clamped her lips shut, her expression
mutinous.

"You spent the savings account on the
Shopping Channel?" Poppy suggested. "Hit and run when you were in
town? Contemplating a sex-change operation?"

Alice made a muffled sound of pain.

"No?" Poppy watched her, torn between
sympathy and exasperation. Mac straightened away from the wall and
Poppy motioned him to stay. "No. This is one time you can't save
her. So. When did she start acting like this, Tom?"

"About five or six months ago," Tom said,
misery written clear on his face.

"Late winter or early spring, then. What
happened here then?"

Alice put her hands over her face. Her
shoulders quivered. Poppy compressed her lips, biting back words of
comfort. She couldn't quit now. Alice would break any minute. This
had to be done, like lancing an infected wound, but the pain and
sorrow in the room were almost too much to bear. Mac looked
dangerously near explosion.

"We were happy," Tom said. His voice cracked
on 'happy'. "The last guests were gone. It's always the best time
of the year for us. Every year it's like another honeymoon. We’ve
never been closer. We were even talking about having a baby. And
then out of the blue, Alice was crying all the time, and half the
time she slept on the couch—" Tom broke off, red staining his
cheeks. "And she wouldn't talk to me."

Poppy pulled Alice's hands away from her
face. "That's it, isn't it?"

Alice pushed her away so violently that Poppy
stumbled backward. Mac caught her and she leaned into his warmth
for a minute, praying she'd read Alice correctly. "Come on. You
might as well tell us."

"I can't. It will destroy everything." Alice
bowed her head and refused to look at anyone.

"It's destroyed already. You might as well go
for it, babe."

The 'babe' did it.

Alice looked up at her through tears. "How
could you know?" she whispered.

"I saw," Poppy said. She held Alice's gaze.
Oh, please. Please let me do this right. She reached out for Mac's
hand, and latched on to it as if it were a life line. "I watched
you at the doctor's when your friend showed off her new baby. I saw
your face when Chickie said she was pregnant. I saw the way you
looked at Tom, with so much love and so much pain in your eyes, as
if your heart were breaking. You were hurting with something that
didn't have anything to do with me."

Tom pushed past Poppy and grabbed Alice by
the shoulders. "All this is because I said it was time to think
about a baby?"

Poppy stepped back into the circle of Mac's
arm. He radiated heat, and what she'd just done, what she'd seen in
Alice's eyes, had left her shaken and shivering with cold. He
wrapped both arms around her and held her in front of him. She
looked up at him, but his gaze was fixed on his sister.

Alice had turned her head away, not looking
at Tom.

"Is that what this is all about?" Tom
demanded. "I thought you wanted kids. We even talked about it
before we got married."

She didn't answer, and he flung away with an
angry curse.

Poppy felt Mac's muscles bunch. She gripped
his arm in warning and he subsided. "For heaven's sake, Alice, stop
being such an idiot and tell him. You're throwing the baby out with
the bathwater here."

Alice burst into tears.

Mac jerked toward her. Poppy held him.
"Wait," she murmured.

The tears slowed. Alice blew her nose. "I
can't have children," she said, facing Tom as if he were a firing
squad.

Mac jolted and Poppy pressed back against
him. So he hadn't known. But she couldn't stop to soothe Mac right
now.

"Well, hell," Tom shouted. "Why didn't you
just tell me? So we can't have kids. What kind of squirrel-brained
logic says I'd rather have nothing at all? I'd have liked kids but
it's not the end of the world. I'd still have you and the ranch.
What a hell of a time for you to have a mega-blonde moment." Tom
turned to Mac. "She's your sister. You tell me. What's she using
for brains?"

Poppy watched Alice intently. "I think
there's something more," she said, her voice gentle, and Alice shot
her a look that combined intense dislike and gratitude.

"She's right." Alice faced Tom. "I knew when
we got married that I couldn't have children." She went even paler
and stood stiff as a poker, white-faced and shaking. "I lied."

Tom stopped as though he'd been shot.

Mac went rigid. Poppy felt the shock as every
muscle in his body tightened.

"That would do it, all right," Poppy
murmured. "Mac, I think perhaps we are
de trop
. Tom and
Alice need to talk about this." She pushed him toward the door.

"But—" Mac resisted.

"Forsaking all others, Big Brother. That
includes you. Let's go." She shoved until Mac started moving, and
kept pushing until they were in his room. Poppy shut the door and
leaned back against it. "Well, that was fun," she said, her voice
just a shade too bright. Her hands shook and she clasped them
tightly in front of her. She really, really hated scenes.