Cathy Thacker - The Bride Said, 'I Did?'

Dani scowled and planted her hands on her hips. No way was this handsome cowboy running a scam on her. “So where is it?”

Beau quirked an eyebrow and continued to regard her with confusion. “Where’s what?”

“The hidden camera.”

“Camera?” Beau repeated, doing, Dani thought, a fine job of acting perplexed.

But she wasn’t buying it. Not for one red-hot instant. She waved her hands excitedly. “We’re on the Celebrity Hoaxes TV show, aren’t we?” Stepping forward, she pointed an accusing finger at his chest. “This is all a practical joke. On me. And everyone in Laramie is probably in on it. My sisters, Lacey McCabe and the people right here at the hospital.” Which meant, of course, she wasn’t really pregnant, either, since they hadn’t really made love or gotten married in Mexico. So she could stop worrying about that right now, Dani concluded with relief. Since this was all part of a giant joke on her.

“Come on, where are the cameras?” Dani began to search the examining room.

Beau followed her, looking even more nonplussed as she searched behind the cabinets, beneath the sink. “What cameras?”

Dani whirled to face him. “The ones that are taping us for the TV show, of course.”

Beau placed his hands on her shoulders, then said very quietly and very calmly, “Dani, there are no cameras.”

She smiled thinly, aware that she had never wanted to haul off and slug him more than she did at that minute. “Of course you would say that.” He wanted her to make a fool of herself in the worst way!

Beau’s eyes darkened. “I mean it, Dani. There are no cameras,” he repeated firmly. Hands slipping back to her waist, he lifted her up and onto the examining table. Trapping her with his body, bracing a hand on either side of her, he leaned in close, “We are not being filmed.”

Dani ignored him as another flare of mistrust swept through her. “If you say so, but for the record—” she looked straight into his midnight-blue eyes “—this is all a colossal waste of time. Since I will never in a million years give you permission to air what is taking place right here and right now.” That said, she leaned back and neatly folded her hands on her lap.

“That’s good.” Beau looked pleased as he stepped between her knees and pulled her close. “Because I don’t think I’d want what is taking place right now aired anywhere.” He angled his thumb at his chest, winked facetiously. “I don’t want to be made a fool of, either. I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

Speaking of reputations, they had been in here—alone—an awfully long time, Dani thought. Enough to get the local gossip mill going, big time. “Too bad you didn’t think of that before you convinced me to go off to Mexico with you.” Dani pushed him away with both hands, hopped off the table and exited the examining room. Dashing to the front desk, she paid her bill, then headed out the doors into the shimmering late-afternoon heat.

Beau caught up with her just past the entrance and steered her toward his vintage pickup. Made in 1960, the cherry-red truck was in mint condition inside and out, the only change to it modern safety belts and a topnotch stereo system. It was not exactly the kind of vehicle Dani would ever have expected a Hollywood star to drive. She figured he’d drive something expensive and strictly for status. But the cherished old pickup, so sturdy and reliable and masculine, suited him just the same. Maybe because it was the kind of truck a real cowboy would drive.

“Too bad we didn’t think of a lot of things before we flew off to Mexico together.” Beau opened the door and, still holding her elbow, gallantly helped her inside.

A prickle of uneasiness moved through Dani as the next thought hit. She watched as he circled the truck and slid behind the steering wheel. “Were there cameras in Mexico, too?” she asked, aghast, noticing without wanting to the way his white cotton shirt delineated the sexy contours of his shoulders, chest and abs. Was it her imagination or could she actually remember the way it had felt to be held against that rock-solid chest, with nothing between them but heat and bare skin?

Beau turned the key in the ignition and shot her an astonished look. “I sincerely hope not!” he said, thrusting the truck into reverse. Sliding one arm along the back of the seat behind her, he pulled out of the space, then put the truck into first. His large capable hands on the wheel, he guided the truck toward the exit and onto the street.

“I don’t know why I didn’t see it earlier,” Dani said, incensed she had been such an idiot. She shook her head as Beau stopped at the light at the corner of Johnson Drive and Main Street and turned her eyes to the people coming in and out of the businesses in the center of town. A group had gathered in front of the courthouse and were talking animatedly. A mother and two children were carrying a cake out of Isabel Buchanon’s bakeshop. Men were lined up in Tom’s barber shop, awaiting haircuts and shaves. The afternoon edition of the Laramie Press was being loaded into trucks for delivery. Comforted by the homespun familiarity of the scene, Dani turned back to Beau and continued matter-of-factly, “This is all payback for our feud.”

Beau’s jaw set as he drove down Main Street and then onto the street where she lived. He turned into her driveway and parked behind Dani’s car. He cut the engine with a snap. Released his seat belt and faced her. “For the last time,” he said quietly, “I am not playing a prank on you.”

Dani wished she could believe him. Her feelings in turmoil, she glared at him emotionally. “I want to call a halt to this, Beau. Right now.” She wanted not to be pregnant and not to be married.

“I just bet you do,” Beau said sarcastically as he reached over and released the catch of her safety belt. “Unfortunately, my darling wife—” the words were pushed through gritted teeth, and his hot gaze glided over her from head to toe, before returning with heart-stopping accuracy to her face “—it’s not that simple.”

Wasn’t it? Dani wondered. And darn it all, anyway, why did he keep insisting on calling her his wife, never mind his darling wife? Couldn’t he see she hated that? How uncomfortable it made her? Of course he could! That, she supposed, as the word continued to echo in her head like a mantra, was precisely the point.

She knew what the evidence said, but the two of them couldn’t be married. They just couldn’t be! She wouldn’t—couldn’t—have been that foolish. No matter how secretly attracted to him she was or what movie-star moves he’d put on her! No, this was all a bad joke or a bad dream. And it would be over soon enough. All she had to do was take a page from the exasperating cowboy’s book and kick a little butt. His.

“Okay,” Dani retorted slowly and succinctly, letting him know with a glance this…whatever it was could not and would not go on. “If you won’t call a halt to this lunacy now, then when exactly will you?”

BEAU KNEW DANI would never believe it, the way she was feeling now, but he wished this lunacy was a practical joke every bit as fervently as she did. Heaven knew he’d initially had the same suspicions she was harboring.

Never before had he blacked out anything, let alone awakened in a bed with a beautiful woman having no idea how he’d gotten there, or when or why. But that it had happened was indisputable, Beau reminded himself sternly.

Making matters worse, kissing her at the hospital had brought back a snippet of lovemaking with her that was so incredibly spectacular it might have been a dream. And yet he knew instantly from the startling clarity of this snippet—the image of Dani naked and in bed beneath him—that it was no fantasy he was having, but a memory. Otherwise, how would he know she had a beauty mark on her left breast, right next to the nipple? How would he have such a clear image of the creaminess of her breasts, the lissome lines of her spread thighs and the sweet triangle of coppery curls the exact shade of her hair? How would he know, even as he took her in his arms tonight, that the sassy cynical-to-the-max Dani kissed with a mixture of innocence and enthusiasm that was daunting in the extreme? How would he know about the soft sexy sounds she made in the back of her throat when they made love, or how much she liked making love in the missionary position? But he did know all that. Just as he knew when he took her in his arms tonight that when they started kissing, that when they were together like that, it was all either of them could do to stop.