Susan Mallery - The Best Bride

He leaned across the bleached oak table and laid his hand on top of hers. Heat flooded her fingers, warming her blood and making its way up her arm. She told herself to ignore it, and him, but she couldn’t seem to look away from his dark gaze.

“It’s just nothing,” he said. “Everything is going to be all right. I’ll make it all right. I’m the sheriff. I can do anything.”

“I believe you,” she said and was rewarded with a smile. She did believe him. That was the problem.

She picked up her fork. It was only for a few weeks, she reminded herself. She just had to stay strong and resist the powerful charm of Travis Haynes. She could do it, she had to. Her life depended on it.

* * *

Elizabeth sat in the family room and stared at the television. The screen was blank. She picked up the remote control, then tossed it down. She didn’t want to watch television; she wanted to be with her daughter on her first day of school.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat, but the pressure didn’t go away. Her eyes burned and she wanted to scream at the unfairness of it all. Little Mandy had gone off with Travis an hour ago. She’d waved and smiled, and promised to make her mom something pretty in class.

“I should have been with her,” Elizabeth said softly, fighting the frustration. She touched her side, feeling the bandage under her shorts and panties. There was no way she could have made it from here to the school and back. It took all her strength to walk from the kitchen to the family room. But she’d so wanted to see Mandy’s classroom and meet her teacher. Her daughter would only enter the first grade once and she’d missed it. What kind of mother did that make her? It wasn’t enough she’d taken Mandy away from everything she knew in the world, but now the girl was going to a strange school, escorted by a strange man. It wasn’t fair.

“Television is generally more interesting when you turn it on,” Louise said.

Elizabeth looked up at her. The other woman stood in the doorway to the family room. She had a mug of coffee in each hand. “I wasn’t really planning on watching,” she said.

“Would you like some company?”

Elizabeth nodded. “That would be nice, if you have the time.”

Louise handed her one of the mugs and plopped down at the opposite end of the butter-soft leather sofa. “I’ve got plenty of time. That boy hasn’t even furnished most of the rooms in this monstrosity. There’s not that much cleaning to do. I suspect he hires me so that he can have a taste of someone else’s cooking and a friendly face to come home to a couple of days a week.”

“Are you saying Travis is lonely?”

“Could be.”

Louise fluffed up her bangs with her fingers. Elizabeth noticed she painted her long nails a bright red and had thin stripes of gold dotted on the tips.

“So what do you think of him?” Louise asked.

That was certainly subtle, Elizabeth thought, fighting a grin. “He seems very nice.”

Louise’s eyes narrowed. “Now I don’t think any of the Haynes boys would appreciate being called ‘nice.’ Ladies’ men, maybe. Irresistible, certainly. But nice?” She shook her head and smiled. “You’d better keep that opinion to yourself.”

“I guess I’ll have to.” She took a sip from her mug. “Travis mentioned he has three brothers.”

“That’s right, and his daddy is one of five.” She leaned her head back against the leather sofa. Her expression got soft and dreamy. “That means there are nine Haynes men walking around on this earth tempting women with their wicked ways. When I was in high school, Earl—that’s Travis’s father—came to speak to my class about drinking and driving. I don’t remember a word he said, but I do remember how handsome he looked in his uniform. When he smiled, I about melted in my seat.” She straightened and shrugged. “I was barely seventeen, and my boyfriend and I had just broken up. Earl Haynes looked mighty good. Of course he was a much older man.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth murmured. Louise was certainly a little left of center, but Elizabeth found herself liking the other woman.

“And his uncles. Hell-raisers all of them. I don’t think they were ever faithful longer than a minute. Heaven help the women who tried to tame ’em. Of course the Haynes men did give this town something to talk about. Then when Earl went ahead and had four more boys of his own, there was even more talk. Do you know there hasn’t been a girl born to the Haynes family in four generations?”

“Travis mentioned that.”

Louise laughed. “Travis is the most easygoing of the four boys. Not like Jordan. That one’s always been a mystery. But Travis knows what he wants and gets it.” She winked. “Maybe he’ll decide he wants you.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m not interested in a relationship. Certainly not with a man like him. The last thing I need is some Don Juan upsetting my life.”

“Oh, you can’t believe everything you hear about him. He’s not exactly the heartbreaker everyone says. Despite what he thinks, he’s nothing like his daddy.” Louise grew serious. “You can trust me on that one, honey. I know for a fact.”

It didn’t matter how much of Travis’s reputation was real and how much hype. Enough of what Louise had said was true for Travis Haynes to be trouble.

Sam had been a charmer, too. His easy smile and quick wit had seduced her in a matter of hours. Of course she’d been a willing participant. And young. Far too young for a man like him. She’d never had a clue as to what was going on. She’d known the relationship was in trouble, but even that hadn’t prepared her for the police showing up at her doorstep in the predawn hours of morning. If she lived to be a hundred, she would never forget the feeling of horror when the Los Angeles Police Department officers had taken Sam away. Thank God Mandy had slept through it all.

Louise leaned forward and patted her leg. “You feeling better?”

“What?”

“I thought you might be a little down, what with missing Mandy’s first day at school. You feel better now?”

Elizabeth looked at Louise, with her bright makeup and dangling earrings. The left one was a teapot, the right, a cup and saucer. “You probably don’t want to hear this any more than Travis, but I think you’re nice, too.”

Louise gave her hand a squeeze and rose to her feet. “Just don’t let word get out. I have my own reputation to keep up. Now I’m going to get to work on lunch. I heard Travis’s truck in the driveway. He can tell you all about Mandy’s classroom. Don’t worry, honey. You’ll get to see it soon enough.”

She left the room and passed Travis in the doorway. Elizabeth half turned to face him. “How did it go?” she asked.

He studied her for several seconds. There was an odd look in his eyes, as if he’d never seen her before.

“Travis, is something wrong?”

“No. Everything went fine. Mandy loved her teacher and when I left, it looked like she’d already started making friends.”

Elizabeth sagged back in the sofa. Some of the tension left her body. Maybe, just maybe, she hadn’t destroyed her daughter’s life.

“These might help,” he said as he walked toward her. He held out several instant photos.

“You took pictures?”

“I thought they might make you feel like you’d been there.”

She smiled up at him. “That was so thoughtful.”

She took the photos and looked through them. The first showed Mandy smiling in front of the school. There were three shots of the classroom and one of Mandy with her teacher. The little girl was laughing at something the woman had said. Elizabeth felt tears forming in her eyes. She blinked them away.