Linda Howard - Prey

Dream? What dream? Completely distracted, she shook her head, then belatedly realized that her dream might be a good way to distract him, because there was nothing admirable about her wedding.

“Fine.” She dropped her arm and glared at him, squarely meeting his gaze and ignoring the rugged attractiveness of his stubbled face. His expression didn’t change; he didn’t try to hide who he was and what he wanted. “I dreamed about mud and bears and wedding cake icing.”

His eyebrows did that quirking thing again. “Icing?” He blinked, and she could tell he was trying to connect a wedding cake to the bear.

“I was drowning in it. Mud at first, then it turned to icing.” She scowled at him. “You know I got married a few years back, right?” They lived in a small community. Everyone pretty much knew everything about everybody else, at least the pertinent information, though some details were less well known than others. Her dad had been at her wedding, of course, and had comforted and supported her afterward, but he’d never said what he’d told Harlan or anyone else once he got home, and she’d never asked.

“I heard you were supposed to, but something happened.” A cautious note entered his rough voice, as if he thought she’d been ditched at the altar, or something like that.

“I had it annulled.”

Surprise flickered in his eyes. “Annulled, huh?” An annulment wasn’t like a divorce; you could pretty much get a divorce for anything. Even something as simple as liking different colors could be the basis for incompatibility, but an annulment had very specific legal requirements.

“A divorce would have been easier,” she admitted grimly. “Even my lawyer advised me to just get a divorce, and he was right. But I was so… I just wanted it to be erased, as if it had never been, and there was no reasoning with me.”

He snorted. “ You , unreasonable? Fancy that.” But there was no nastiness in his tone, just dry amusement.

He touched a fingertip to her cheekbone. Surprised, Angie put her hand up, and to her consternation discovered the damp track of a tear. Furiously she wiped it away. Crying over this, even getting just a little teary, would be so stupid. “Don’t pay any attention to that,” she ordered brusquely. “It’s nothing, and I’m not crying.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. And if I did, it would be because I’m so angry at myself, and embarrassed. I was an idiot.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing earth-shattering. That’s what makes it so embarrassing.”

He waited in silence while Angie sorted through all the anger and hurt feelings and sheer irrationality she still felt whenever she thought about the subject. Finally she fixed her gaze on the ceiling and firmed her lips.

“I’ve never been much of a girlie-girl,” she confessed. “I never knew how. You know-the makeup, the fussing with hair, all that stuff. It wasn’t like Dad could teach me any of that, and really, when I was a teenager, I wasn’t all that interested anyway. Even though I did more of it when I lived in Billings, I wasn’t-I’m still not-certain if I was doing it right and looked okay. But for my wedding I wanted to be pretty, I wanted my hair and makeup to be perfect.”

Exposing her uncertainty made her cheeks turn hot. She knew she wasn’t a beauty queen, but she wasn’t unattractive, either. Normally she didn’t give her looks any thought at all, beyond brushing her hair and using moisturizer with sunscreen. Admitting all of that to a man-to Dare Callahan, specifically-was still uncomfortable.

“How come your mom wasn’t around to teach you stuff like that?” he asked bluntly. “I don’t think I ever heard anyone say, not even Evelyn French, and that woman can talk the ears off a donkey.”

Despite her embarrassment, Angie had to grin. Anyone who ever set foot in the hardware store learned exactly how much Evelyn liked to talk. “Then she must never have got up enough nerve to ask Dad about it, otherwise she’d have told it. It’s no big deal. I don’t remember my mother. She left Dad and me before I was two. She had some sleaze she was cheating on him with, and I guess she liked the sleaze more than she liked being with us. So she left.”

His eyes narrowed. “That sucks.”

“It could have,” she agreed. “I can’t say I haven’t wondered what it would have been like if she’d stayed. But at the same time, Dad was great. He never talked bad about her, and when I asked he told me what had happened, and left it at that.” She paused. “I went through his papers, after he died, and found their divorce decree. She gave him full custody, signed me away, and I guess never looked back, because she never tried to see me or contact me in any way. I’ve returned the favor.”

“Pissed you off, huh?” His full attention was on her face, as if he wanted to catch every nuance of her expression. What? Did he think she was all messed up because her mother had abandoned her?

She started to deny it, then stopped herself. “In a way. I don’t feel traumatized, because I don’t remember her at all, but I think Dad must have been more torn up about it than he ever let on to me. That pisses me off, on his behalf. And, looking back, I wonder if he never dated much because he was so focused on taking care of me. It can’t be easy for a man, for anyone, to suddenly be left with the sole care of an infant.”

“I’d sure as hell panic,” he observed.

“Bull,” she scoffed. She had no doubt he’d handle it. He wasn’t someone who panicked, he was a man who got the job done, regardless of what the job was. “Anyway. She was a quitter, and I guess you can say it affected me in that I won’t let myself be a quitter. I don’t want to be like her.”

“You aren’t,” he said after a brief pause, his rough voice quiet. “You’re not a quitter.”

For some reason, hearing him say that made her throat feel thick, as if she was about to get teary. Horrified at the thought, she cleared her throat. “That’s enough of that. Do you want to hear about my wedding, or not?” she asked, scowling.

“Yeah, I do. We kind of got sidetracked.”

“You mean you did. I was telling you what happened when you went off on a tangent.”

“I was curious. So shoot me. Back to your makeup and hairdo for the wedding.”

She gave him a warning squint and considered refusing to say anything else, but what the hell, she’d already gotten this far, she might as well finish.

“I hired someone to do my hair and makeup, because I knew I couldn’t manage it. Getting ready took hours . But when she was finished, I looked good. I looked even better than I’d hoped, and I was so happy. I thought he’d be-”

“He, who?” Dare interrupted. “Does the asshole have a name?”

“Todd,” she said, then stopped, struck by the fact that Dare had automatically assumed the man she’d married was an asshole. “Todd Vincent. He wasn’t… I mean, he kind of was, but I completely overreacted.”

“Overreacted to what?”

She sighed and resumed her inspection of the ceiling. “He pushed cake in my face. Not a small piece, either, but a huge chunk that was covered in thick icing. It went up my nose, it was in my eyes… and he laughed when he did it.” Everyone had laughed, but she didn’t feel it was necessary to elaborate on that detail.

“The bastard,” Dare said blandly.

He was going to make light of it, like everyone else had. He was going to tell her that she’d definitely overreacted. The bad part was that she knew she’d been unreasonable, and as a result she’d broken up with and ended her marriage to someone who was essentially a good man, someone she’d loved-all because of her wounded ego. But Dare didn’t say anything else, and after a minute she continued.