Ann Major - Wild Enough For Willa

To Willa, the moment was all. Nobody had more fun than Willa. Nobody got into more trouble. As a little girl, she hadn’t cared a fig about making good grades.

“She even fails subjects she’s a whiz in,” her teachers complained. “She could be so brilliant in math. And she’s fast when she takes a notion to be.”

But math had bored Willa. Why should a little girl waste precious life working problem after problem she already knew how to do? Especially when one preferred staring at mysterious creatures such as butterflies or pill bugs and wondering what the world was like to them? Did pill bugs have schools that were dreadfully boring with dull books and endless, repetitive exercises?

She never painted the same design twice on her T-shirts. She never cooked a recipe the same way, either.

Willa, the woman, had a fatal weakness for the wrong kind of man, the bossy, judgmental McKade running true to her type. He wanted to tie her down but blamed her for his own desire.

But surely, surely he wasn’t as horrible as Brand.

Ditch McKade. The sooner the better, said Mrs. Connor.

But he’s so cute. And he thinks I’m cute.

A girl does love to have fans.

I’d think you’d have learned your lesson.

He’s fun to tease.

With McKade on her mind, Willa drifted off to sleep and was instantly enveloped in nightmarish visions from hell.

Ever since her parents’ accident, she’d had bad dreams. Tonight, the monster was Brand. As always he was dressed elegantly. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Unaware that she clawed the sheets, unaware of Luke McKade growing alert in his dark chair, she moaned aloud.

Dreams move more quickly than reality and make connections and reveal secrets that terrify. At first, Brand was sweet and loverly—her very own Prince Charming. Then he was holding a plastic bag over her face and she was gasping, clawing holes in it to get air.

The bag shredded. Brand laughed and said he’d been trying to pull it off.

Then she told him about the baby.

“A baby?” He was smiling; that meant he wasn’t listening. “This is good, princess.”

“Oh, Brand, I’m so in love.”

He was laughing, but there was something dark about his eyes. “In love? With me? This is good. I love you, too.”

“What about our baby?”

“Willa, my princess, you’re so young.”

“You said you loved me.”

“And I do. But are you ready for a baby?”

“I’m pregnant. We have to marry.”

“Of course we do.”

She could tell he wasn’t listening.

“You’ll tell your parents?”

“The sooner the better. They’ll love you. We’ll have a huge wedding. We’ll go to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We have a house in Maui, you know. This is good.”

“We’ll be so happy…as happy as I was when I was a little girl and my parents were alive.”

She thought of all the sexy, shameful things Brand had forced her to do even when she’d told him she hadn’t wanted to. Oh, she’d tried so hard to please him. So hard, she often hated herself after they’d finished making love.

Irrational fear consumed her. Suddenly, she was running from something dark and monstrous that had a fiery green tongue.

Brand was so beautiful and golden, so rich and powerful. She had loved him ever since she’d been a little girl. He’d been so much older, he’d never noticed her back then.

If Brand was smiling, why was she terrified?

Not going to be a baby. Not going to be a baby.

Who had said that?

“Let’s get married tonight. In Mexico.” How Brand’s green eyes had sparkled.

“What about your parents? Our big wedding?”

“We’ll tell them later, my love. We’ll have a second wedding.” He’d made her drink…to toast the baby. She’d choked on the bitter stuff and then gotten woozy.

“Not good for the baby…”

“There’s not going to be a baby.”

That’s when he’d said it. Brand had said it. In Mexico. In the shack. Before he’d told her what he was really going to do.

Two men held her. She was weak, drunk or drugged, not herself in any case. Brand was ripping off her nylons, not caring that those awful men with those lust-filled eyes were watching them. She didn’t care much, either, not when she knew what he was up to. He was tying her hands and her ankles to the bed.

The baby. Don’t hurt the baby.

Brand leaned over her with a syringe. She felt a sharp prick in her left arm. His face whitened in a blinding blaze that looked a lot like a halo.

“There’s not going to be a baby. Everything will be okay. You love me, and I love you. And we’ll go on as before.”

Before her eyes a green horn sprouted from Brand’s thatch of golden curls, and his halo fell and dangled there. Brand winked at her, his green eyes sparking fire.

She screamed and screamed. Somebody else was there—a wiry, sickly looking fellow with haunted eyes and greasy, spiked red hair. Moonlight glinted off something black in his hand.

Brand dove behind her, using her as a shield.

She was staring up into stormy gray eyes. “Don’t shoot my baby!”

Gunshots. Little bits of concrete falling onto her face.

They were all gone. Except McKade looming over her, his contemptuous, piercing gaze more lustful than Brand’s or his men’s. When she struggled, McKade brandished a broken beer bottle near her face, slicing his own finger with those razor-sharp edges. A drop of his blood fell onto her cheek. Who could have illusions about such a man?

She wanted Brand, who was elegant and golden, Brand whose family was rich and famous and respectable.

By comparison, McKade was big-boned and rough, his appetites blatantly carnal.

Brand was her Prince Charming…not…

Not going to be a baby.

A tongue of green fire shot out of McKade’s mouth.

Then Brand, toppled halo and all, returned. The vision caught fire and turned the most livid shade of green.

She began to scream.

It was deliciously disconcerting to awake in Mc-Kade’s arms, her lips pleasantly smothered against the villain’s warm, wide furry chest, the very same villain who’d caused her nightmare. Brand had made her do awful things in bed. McKade, who had rescued her, had not forced her to earn that money.

Then McKade, his voice tense with the strain, said, “Not going to be a baby. What did you mean? Whose baby?”

“Nobody’s,” she lied, nestling closer because his warmth was so lovely. The last thing she would tell him about was the baby.

She was pregnant.

The powerful father of her baby, for all his surface charm, didn’t want her or their child. He would have killed her. McKade had saved her from Brand and other worse dangers in Mexico. He’d saved her baby. But McKade didn’t respect her. A man of his obvious limitations never would. And he certainly wasn’t the fatherly type.

Not going to be a baby. Oh, yes, yes. She was going to have her baby.

I saved your cute little ass.

McKade wanted that cute little ass. He’d paid a thousand dollars for it.

And he would get it, pregnant or not, if she didn’t get out of town—fast. She couldn’t go home. No telling who Brand had at her aunt’s house waiting for her to return. Too bad for McKade that her purse, her car and her money were at her aunt’s because that meant she needed his. If he was as rich as he said he was, he could get more.

McKade’s large hand stroked her hair, her back. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

Safe? When the Baineses controlled Laredo? When Brand had said he’d never let her go? When the rogue who’d found her tied up in Mexico, and bought her because he thought her cheap and awful, held her in his arms? When the brain beneath her mussed curls was spinning worriedly with ideas about how to best him?