Shotgun Vows (17 page)

“I turned him down.” Her voice caught, and she was silent for several moments. But emotion crackled through the phone line. Finally she said, “It was the second stupidest thing I've ever done in my life.”

“What was the first?”

“Pushing him away with my constant demands.” She sighed. “Dawson, he came to
me.
He admitted that he'd had a midlife crisis and took all the blame. He said that I was the great love of his life. But my pride wouldn't let me forgive him.”

“Again, I have to ask what your point is, Mother.”

“I hear something in your voice when you talk about Mattie. You've never sounded that way before when telling me about the women in your life. I suspect she's the one.”

“The one?”

“Don't be dense, dear. The great love of
your
life. My neediness robbed you of your childhood. I won't let the lessons of my behavior cheat you out of the happiness you deserve. Make it work with Mattie. Bare your soul. Get in touch with your feminine side.”

“I don't have one.” He chuckled. “You've been taking psychology courses again, haven't you?”

“Yes, but that's beside the point. If your father was right, and I think he was, we only get one good shot at love. He and I had it and were too stupid to hold on to it. Don't repeat our mistake. Don't be like me. Don't miss out on life because of stupid, stubborn, senseless pride. Do as I say, not as I did.”

Dawson rubbed his thumb over the tines of Mattie's fork, which he still held. “She told me she loves me.
The first words out of her mouth when she woke up this morning.”

“I hope you responded in kind,” his mother said.

“Actually, I told her we had something better than love. Respect.”

“Dawson Geoffrey Prescott. I can't believe I raised such a dunderhead.” She sighed again. “We reap what we sow. Unfortunately, I sowed some seeds that made you far too cautious. I assume all the blame for your being relationship-impaired. Not to mention spontaneity-challenged.”

“Is that the diagnostic term for it now?”

“Sarcasm is so unattractive, dear. But it's my fault that you've messed up so badly. Maybe I can help. Put Mattie on the phone.”

“She's not here. She trains horses at the Double Crown, and she left a little while ago.”

“Then go after her, Dawson. Tell her what's in your heart.”

“I don't know, Mother—”

“Do it, son,” she said. There was a thread of steel in her voice that he'd never heard before. “I let pride and hurt tarnish all the good times your father and I had. Pushing him away condemned me to a life of loneliness without the only man I will ever love. Don't make the same mistake, Dawson.”

“I'll talk to her.”

“Good,” she said firmly. “I'm looking forward to meeting Mattie.” She stopped for a moment, and he could almost hear her thinking. “One more thing, Dawson.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

That startled him. She didn't say that often. Neither did he. He hesitated for a few moments before answering truthfully, “I love you, too, Mother.”

I
t was midmorning when Mattie found Lily Fortune in the great room at the Double Crown. She'd been unable to make any progress with the problem horse she'd been given to train. Her concentration was nonexistent. Thanks to Dawson. Respect, indeed! How dare he insult her intelligence. At least her gut instinct told her he had. But what did she know about men?

How she longed for her mother to talk to, but she couldn't upset her family with a long-distance phone call. The next best thing was her aunt.

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Aunt Lily?”

The older woman turned. “Of course.” She stood in front of the great room fireplace with garland in her hand. A Christmas tree, already decorated, graced a corner of the room. “I could use a break. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

“No, thanks.” Mattie shook her head. The thought of coffee turned her stomach. Usually she had a cast-iron constitution. Since she'd never experienced love before, she figured the queasiness was the way her body reacted to man trouble.

“What can I do for you?” Lily asked.

“If you were my fairy godmother, you could turn my frog into a prince,” she said, trying to joke. She sat down on the leather couch facing the fireplace.

Lily walked around the coffee table and took a seat beside her. “What's wrong, dear?”

Mattie met the older woman's sympathetic gaze. “Since I was a little girl, all I've ever wanted was to love and be loved. And have a baby.”

“That's what most women want. You've taken the first steps to make that happen. You and Dawson found each other and fell in love.”

“That's just it,” she said, twisting her fingers together. “We found each other, sort of. But we didn't exactly fall in love,” she added, remembering his words that morning. Her heart wrenched with sadness.

“I've seen the way you look at him, dear. If it's not love, then I don't know what is.”

“It's not me. It's him. He has this whacked-out sense of honor, and it's messed everything up. He makes my body hum, then breaks my heart. He talks about the ‘right' thing, but it all feels so wrong.” She felt a wave of tears cresting, and covered her face with her hands.

The couch dipped as the other woman slid beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. “Tell me everything.”

That was all she needed to hear. Mattie lowered her hands and looked at her aunt. She told her everything that had happened to make her so miserable.

“And why did you agree to the marriage?” Lily asked after listening intently. “Given your attire at the wedding, I have a feeling no one could force you, or Dawson either for that matter, to do anything you truly didn't want to do.”

Mattie sighed. “At the time, I thought it was because Griff threatened to go to my folks with the story. Now I realize that I'm in love with Dawson.”

“So what's the problem?”

“He doesn't love me back.”

“Are you sure about that?” Lily reached out and tucked a strand of Mattie's hair behind her ear. “I've seen the way he looks at you, too. It's not the expression of a man who has no feelings for you.”

“Oh, he's got feelings, all right. Something better than love,” Mattie said bitterly. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

“Did he tell you that?” Lily asked, astounded.

Mattie nodded. “This morning. In bed. After the most wonderful night I've ever—” Her voice broke, and she bit her lip to hold back the sobs.

“Blockhead,” Lily mumbled, tightening her arm around Mattie.

“Exactly.” Mattie sniffed. “So, I've been thinking, and I've come up with a plan.”

“What?”

“I'll stay with Dawson a decent length of time to spare my parents the embarrassment of knowing what really happened between us. Then we'll split up and tell everyone it just didn't work out.”

“Mattie, sweetheart, don't rush into a decision like that. It's only been three weeks since the wedding. You need to give the relationship time to grow. Unless I miss my guess, Dawson Prescott is very much in love with you. All this respect nonsense is a smoke screen. He's afraid to say the words.”

“But why?”

Lily shrugged. “I don't know all the history. But I think it has a lot to do with his parents' breakup.”

“Silly Aunt Lily,” Mattie said fondly as she shook her head. “Thanks for trying to spare my feelings. And don't take this the wrong way, but I think you're
mistaken. Dawson isn't afraid of anything. If he loved me, he would say so.”

“Sweetie, you grew up with five brothers, but you don't know squat about men. No offense. The men in this family, including Dawson, could face down a grizzly, go nose to snout with an alligator, wrestle a mountain lion to the death for the ones they love. But saying that one small four-letter word scares the hell out of them.”

“Aunt Lily!” Mattie exclaimed in mock outrage. She grinned, and the other woman smiled in response.

“Just give it some serious thought before you do anything you'll regret,” Lily said.

“I will.” Mattie leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thanks. You're a terrific stand-in mom.”

“You're welcome.” Lily hugged her. “Anytime. And just you leave everything to me.”

 

“Leave everything to me,” Mattie mumbled.

“What?” Dawson asked, glancing at her momentarily, then back to the winding road he drove.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
For practice,
she added silently. Because she planned never to talk to anyone ever again. Her last bare-her-soul, heart-to-heart chat with her aunt had resulted in Ryan and Lily's thinly veiled plan to save her marriage.

Because of that conversation, Mattie now found herself sitting in Dawson's BMW on the way to the Fortune family cabin near a lake. It belonged to a friend of Lily's. Because of the threat Clint Lockhart presented, Ryan was concerned about sending them to the family cabin. He was afraid the deranged man might know about it. If Mattie had known the words “Leave everything to me” meant that her aunt and uncle
would give her and Dawson a surprise honeymoon, she might have thought twice about spilling her guts to the older woman.

Last evening, Dawson had come to the Double Crown because he'd said he was worried when she didn't come home on time. Hah! Worry about someone you merely
respected?

But Ryan and Lily had sat the two of them down and said that since they'd married so quickly and hadn't planned a honeymoon, they were to take it now. Ryan gave Dawson an executive order to take some time off, and insisted Mattie have a vacation from her work on the ranch. They were not to show their faces for at least a week.

And now they were stuck with each other. Alone.

“I think we're there,” Dawson said.

He pulled the car into a drive and stopped beside a single-story wooden cabin. Through a thicket of leafless trees, Mattie saw the blue water of the lake.

They got out of the car and unloaded the suitcases from the trunk. Dawson had the cabin key and let them inside where they explored the fully appointed kitchen, living room with stone fireplace on one wall, and four bedrooms. It wasn't fancy compared to the Double Crown, but it was cozy and comfortable.

And far too isolated, Mattie thought. Not a computer or calculator, or horse and saddle in sight. Nothing to distract them or take the heat off.

But heat wasn't their problem. That's what had landed them here in the first place.

She noticed that Dawson put all their luggage in the same bedroom. Was that a good sign? She couldn't afford to let herself hope.

When they'd unpacked clothes and a week's worth
of groceries, they stood on opposite sides of the center island in the kitchen and stared at each other for a few moments.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Talk,” he answered. “A person would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to miss what Ryan and Lily are doing.”

“Marriage counselors,” she answered.

He nodded. “Along with my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah. Contrary to the rumor about me being discovered under a cabbage leaf, I actually have a mother. She called yesterday morning. Right after you left,” he added. “She found out about our wedding.”

“Is she upset?”

He shook his head. “She pretended to be miffed, but I'd have to say she sincerely wished us every happiness.”

“We might be able to be happy. If we get a divorce,” she said grimly.

“What?” he looked genuinely shocked.

“Obviously this marriage was a mistake.”

“Obvious to whom?” he asked.

“I don't mean to sound ungrateful.” She took a deep breath to ward off the pain of the heart-breaking proposal she was about to make. Quite different from the one she'd always dreamed of having from a man. “I think we should wait a decent interval and then separate. We'll tell everyone that it just didn't work out. The rest of the details are easy. I don't want anything. I'm just as responsible for this situation as you are. And I sincerely appreciate what you tried to do. But it just seems wrong for both of us to be unhappy for the rest of our lives.”

“This is because I told you I respect you. Because I didn't say I love you.” His shocked expression gave way to something that closely resembled anger. “That was stupid. But you have to understand something, Mattie.”

“What?” she asked.

“I didn't grow up like you with a normal, loving couple for role models. My father left my mother for a much younger woman when I was ten. It was devastating for her, especially because she felt the age factor left her no weapons to fight with. From then until I left for college, I had my work cut out for me trying to undo the damage my father had done to my mother's self-esteem.”

“I'm sorry, Dawson. It must have been horrible for you both to go through that. But I don't see—”

He held up a hand. “I'm not finished yet. All these years I blamed my father for using her, then walking out when he found a younger woman. But my mother told me yesterday that she bears some responsibility, too. She resented the hours he devoted to his patients, his being on call, his long office hours. She demanded more time than he had to give her. She constantly threw in his face that there wasn't enough of him left over for his family.”

“I'm so sorry you had to deal with all that.”

“I don't want your pity,” he said angrily. “I'm just trying to explain that I don't know a lot about relationships. All I learned is that it's not easy to make it work when the people involved are so different. They suffer. And not just the ones
in
the relationship. It's the people around them. Kids.”

“What are you trying to say, Dawson?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I guess I'm trying
to say that two mismatched people have the deck stacked against them.”

Mattie felt as if he'd just stabbed her through the heart. Cupid would be hard-pressed to find a man and woman more mismatched than the two of them. The miserable look in his eyes confirmed her suspicions. He agreed that they should separate. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how much she'd wanted him to talk her out of her divorce idea. Or how deeply she'd hoped voicing it would shake him up and make him realize that he
did
love her.

But he agreed with her. The pain of losing Dawson, of losing the man she loved, settled around her heart like a stone. It took her breath away. Before she made a fool of herself in front of him, she needed to be alone to compose herself.

She turned away from him and headed for the front door.

“Where are you going?” he asked. His tone smacked of surprise or annoyance, or both.

She didn't have the energy to care. “I need some air. Please don't follow me. I'd like to be by myself.”

She walked outside and slammed the door behind her. The December wind made her cheeks tingle. For a few seconds she focused on that, rather than the fact that her heart was breaking. She knew there would never be anyone for her but Dawson. Her mother was a one-man woman, and Mattie had no doubt it was the same for her. How could she go on without him?

She saw a trail through the woods and started walking. Her pace was brutal, probably because she was trying to leave her demons behind. But as tears started to trickle down her cheeks, she knew she would never be able to outrun the pain of living without Dawson.
She brushed the moisture from her cheeks, trying to clear her vision and focus on the path in front of her.

The sound of a twig snapping behind her made her stop. Had Dawson ignored her request? Was he following? Foolishly she hoped that was the case, and waited for him to catch up. As she stood in front of a tree, she struggled to catch her breath. Suddenly a wave of dizziness swept over her, followed by a disorienting light-headedness. Blackness closed in, eating up the light. Her body felt heavy, and she felt herself falling.

At the same time, from a great distance, she heard an explosion. Then nothing.

 

Pacing the cabin like a caged tiger, Dawson heard what sounded like a car backfiring. Not likely, since this area around the lake was way too isolated for other vehicles. A hunter? The noise he'd heard didn't sound like a rifle. Could it have been a pistol shot?
Clint Lockhart?
That threat had been on his mind ever since the day he'd married Mattie and—

Another loud explosion rang out.

“Mattie?” he whispered.

Fear was a vise squeezing his chest as he raced from the cabin. Ryan had charged him with Mattie's safety, and he'd let him down. More importantly, he'd screwed up what he'd vowed to do. He'd left the woman he loved unprotected. He stopped and frantically looked around, cursing himself for not going with her. Which way had she gone?

“Mattie?” he called as loudly as he could. The echo of his own voice was the only response.