Ruth Dale - Hitched!

“Yes, but you don’t.” She sounded completely exasperated. “Inside, I could be…Madonna.” She glared at him.

“Maybe so, but outside, where the rest of the world can see it, you’re…you’re…”

“I’m what, Rand Taggart?”

“You’re…” Inspiration hit him right between the eyes. “You’re not a bimbo. In fact, you’re just the kind of woman I need to get my family to approve my inheritance.”

“I’M WHAT?”

“Take it easy, Maxine. You’re just the kind of woman I need to get my family to—”

“I heard that part. What I want to know is what you meant.”

“Just that you’re smart,” he said quickly, wondering why she didn’t calm down. “Did we work great together to foil those hijackers or what?”

“Yes, well—”

“And you’re serious. I mean, you’re a serious person. You work for a living.”

“You don’t. Does that mean you’re not a serious person?”

That stung. “I’m getting serious, okay? It’s just a little case of arrested development.”

“Oh, really.”

Despite her scorn, the idea uttered in jest was seeping deeper into his consciousness. Maxine was an ideal candidate for a make-believe bride. Surely he could get her to see that.

The bus rattled on down the road. After another ten miles or so she said, “I can’t imagine you’re talking about a real marriage.”

“No way.” He shuddered. “I could just call my folks and tell them I’m married, let them speak to you, you back me up. Voilà! Inheritance released.”

“Voilà! You’ve got to be joking. They’d fall for that?”

“I don’t know. I never tried to scam my own family before.”

“But you have scammed others?”

“I didn’t say that.” He gave her an annoyed glance. “Hell, at this point, anything’s worth a shot.”

“Desperate times…”

“You got that right.”

The bus passed the turnoff to Ensenada. Eventually a highway sign indicated that Tijuana was just up the road.

She said, as if curiosity had gotten the best of her, “So give me details.”

“No details. I’ll just tell my mom I’m married. In a perfect world, she’ll swoon with delight and declare the terms of the will fulfilled.”

Maxine looked pained. “Rand, that will never work.”

“I can at least feel her out on the subject.” Traffic was increasing, cutting into his concentration. The old junker of a bus rumbled from lane to lane, the driver ignoring the indignant honking of many horns.

Maxine shook her head. “That’s crazy.”

“Not as crazy as letting a multimillion-dollar inheritance slip through my fingers without even taking a shot at it. What’s the worst thing that can happen? Even if they turn me down, I’ll be no worse off than I am now.”

She pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Why did you wait until the last minute to do this?”

Her question produced silence. He couldn’t tell her that he’d never expected to need the Rocking T.

Finally he said, “Something…happened. I don’t have access to the majority of my funds at the moment, plus the time just got away from me. Now I’m at the point where I’ve got to do something even if I do it wrong.”

“I see.” Strangely enough, she looked as if she really did.

Another long silence ensued and then he said, “It wouldn’t hurt you to help me out a little here.”

“Probably not.”

He frowned. “Maxine, you’re not getting into the spirit of this thing. After all, my great-grandpa wanted me to have the ranch or he wouldn’t have left it to me, right?”

“He wanted you to have it under certain conditions as specified by him.”

“Sure, but that’s because he was such an old busy-body.” Rand couldn’t help smiling, remembering Thom T. Taggart. “He was a real character, Maxine. He loved taking credit for getting my folks together, and both my uncles and their wives, too. He was quite the Cupid.”

“I’ve never had a grandpa myself, great or otherwise, but you sound vaguely disrespectful to me.”

“I would never disrespect Thom T.,” Rand said indignantly. “Neither would anyone else who knew him. He was just about the finest man ever to walk this earth, but he liked playing games. This is one of them. He couldn’t hang around long enough to get me and my sister and my cousins married, so he’s pulling strings from the grave.”

“Rand!” She gave him a scandalized glance. “You can’t believe that.”

“I sure as hell do.” The streets had narrowed and traffic kept increasing. The bus slowed almost to a crawl. “Looks like the main business district is right up there,” he said. “What say we dump this buggy?”

“I’m not sure they’ll let us.”

“Why not? We’re just innocent victims.”

“I suppose you could try.”

“Got to. The battery’s dead on my cell phone and I need to put through that call. You wouldn’t happen to have…?”

“Sorry. I don’t believe in the things.”

“In that case, we’ve got to make our break and find a phone. You’re with me on this, right?”

“Up to a point. I’m not promising anything, though.”

“If worst comes to worst, I’ll let my mom speak to my blushing bride. That’ll be you.”

She grimaced and said, “All right,” again.

Being nobody’s fool, he didn’t push it.

MEG TAGGART ANSWERED the telephone on the second ring, her arms overflowing with flowers freshly picked from the garden she cultivated outside the back door of the Hells Bells ranch house. Fresh flowers helped her deceive herself into believing that this rustic existence held a candle to life in her hometown of Boston.

She’d been battling such natural inclinations ever since she’d met Jesse James Taggart, the love of her life. A rodeo cowboy and a Boston socialite were an uneasy mix at best, but somehow they’d managed to work everything out—obviously, since they’d been married thirty-plus years and had two children to show for it.

She supposed one of those children would be on the other end of the line—Clementime, probably, who called at least once a week from her job at Taggart Oil in Houston. Meg said a cheery, “Hello,” then buried her nose in the shaggy bouquet of daisies.

“Mom? It’s me, Rand.”

Meg straightened in surprise and pleasure. “Randy? Honey, it’s been so long since we’ve heard from you.” She dropped the flowers on the kitchen counter, instantly alert. Unlike his sister, her only son called rarely. When he did, you could bet he’d slip some bombshell into the conversation. Once, it had been the announcement that he was dropping out of college; another time, that he was moving to Europe.

Still another call was to explain that they shouldn’t believe everything they read in the newspapers. That call had occurred just before photos hit the newspapers of him attending the Academy Awards with some actress— “Taylor Thompson and her fiancé, wealthy Texas playboy Rand Taggart…”

“Sorry about that, Mom. I’ve been…busy.”

His voice crackled on the line as if he was a very long way away. Bracing herself for the worst, she said, “Where are you, Randy? This connection is terrible.”

“Uh, I’m in Mexico.”

“Mexico! What in the world are you doing there?” She’d probably regret asking that.

“Actually…I was hijacked.”

“This is a terrible connection. It sounded as if you said you were hijacked.”

“I did. I was. Have you heard about the hijack yesterday of a flight from Chicago to some village in Mexico?”

Meg’s heart fluttered painfully in her breast and she pressed a hand to her chest. “You mean those two prison escapees who—Randy, you were on that plane?”