Ruth Dale - Hitched!

“Okay, I stand corrected. I’ll level with you. I just got off the phone with Mom and I need help with her.”

“Meg’s okay, isn’t she?”

“She’s fine. Here’s the deal. I want to claim my inheritance from Great-grandpa.”

“You’ll never break that will,” Boone said. “Guaranteed.”

“I don’t want to break it—I want to comply with it.”

Boone, an expert at reading between the lines, put two and two together in a flash. “You called Meg to tell her you’re married. I’d have expected her to be pleased.”

“If she believed me, which I don’t think she did. Do me a favor and convince her, okay? I got married this morning in Mexico and…”

As the boy explained, Boone could hardly keep from chuckling. He didn’t blame Meg for being dubious and said so first chance he got, ending with, “If you want my help, bring your wife here and give us all a chance to meet her and decide for ourselves if you’ve fulfilled the conditions of that will. It’s the only way.”

A sigh. Then Rand said, “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to do that. You can’t blame me for hoping, though. Give my love to Aunt Kit, okay?”

“Will do.”

“I was sorry to hear about her cancer surgery.”

“That was three years ago.” Boone hated to be reminded of the toughest ordeal his wife—or he—had ever faced. “We had a happy ending, anyway.”

“That’s what Mom said. The kids okay?”

“Yeah, they are.” Travis was eighteen and had just entered his senior year at Showdown High School; Cherish was an adorable eleven-year-old and still Daddy’s girl.

“That’s good. Okay, Uncle Boone, I’ll be in touch soon.”

Boone doubted it. He really did. For some reason, Randy wanted the ranch he’d ignored for nearly ten years and was willing to hustle his own family to get it.

What the hell. Taggart family life had been way too tame since Thom T. had died.

THE TELEPHONE was ringing when Trey Smith finally got the door open to his ranch house in the San Fernando Valley. This was Rachel’s day to work at the free clinic and the kids were in school, so his footsteps made lonely echoes across the hardwood floors.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone, “I’m here.”

“Uncle Trey, it’s Rand.”

“Rand who?” Trey looked down at the mail on a small silver plate next to the phone, then began sifting idly through it.

“Ha, ha, very funny. Randy, your favorite nephew, who else?”

“Oh, that Rand. What’s up, kid?”

“Nothing much. I was hijacked to Mexico and I got married. You’re the next stop on the family gauntlet.”

“Married?” Trey straightened. “What took you so long?”

“That’s the spirit.” The kid sounded relieved. “Mom and Uncle Boone were less enthusiastic.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Who knows?” Rand sounded disgusted. “The deal is, I want to claim that inheritance Great-grandpa left me and I’ve only got something less than two weeks to do it in. I thought Mom or Uncle Boone could start the ball rolling, but they seem to have a problem with this marriage.”

“There’s an easy way out of that.”

“Name it!”

Ah, such eagerness. No wonder Meg and Boone weren’t buying the boy’s story. “Take your blushing bride on the grand family tour. Where are you calling from, by the way?”

“Mexico.”

“Oh, yeah, the hijacking.”

“How did you—?”

“It figures, that’s all. Anyway, bring your bride here to meet your dear old Uncle Trey and Aunt Rachel—we’re closest and easiest to convince. Then you can tackle the rest of ’em.”

“Time is of the essence here.”

“Time’s been of the essence for damn near ten years. Now all of a sudden you’re in a hurry?”

“Good point,” Rand said. “Okay. Gotta go, but you’ll be hearing from me.”

“Wanna bet?” Trey asked nobody in particular. He hung up the phone. Wait until he told Rachel about this. That kid was up to something, sure as the world. Trey wished him luck but knew it would take more than that to get anything past Daniel Boone and Jesse James Taggart, even if their wives tended to be soft touches.

“WELL, HELL.” Rand gave Maxine a dour look. “I must have been nuts to think that would work.”

“I told you so.” She picked up another tortilla chip from the basket on the tray delivered earlier by room service, painfully aware of the trembling of her hand. “I guess that’s that, then.”

“Not so fast. I haven’t given up yet.”

She waited, her heart in her throat.

Suddenly his eyes widened. “Why didn’t I see this before? We have to really get married. That should be easy in Mexico, and equally easy to get unmarried once we’ve achieved our ends.”

Maxine gasped. “You can’t be serious. When I get married it will be once and for all.”

“This won’t count against that,” he argued, “because this will be a business arrangement.”

“You just said—”

“It will be legal but not real, in that we won’t really be husband and wife.”

“Meaning no sex and I wouldn’t have to live with you?” Blunt but precise.

“Meaning no sex but you would have to make what Trey called the ‘grand family tour’ to convince everyone concerned that we’re married and madly in love. Then you can do anything you want to do, with my blessings.”

She regarded him for a moment in silence, her heart throbbing erratically. She had never expected anything like this, even in her wildest imaginings. Finally she said, “Isn’t that kind of a dirty trick?”

He obviously didn’t want to consider that aspect, but she’d forced the issue. “I guess it might look that way,” he said slowly, “but…my back’s to the wall, Maxine. There are complications you know nothing about.”

“Go on.”

“Not now. Look.” He hauled out his checkbook. “Let’s be businesslike about this. I want to hire you for a maximum of…say, one month? That should be enough time to do what I have to.”

“Hire me?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“That’s right. I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars now and another twenty if we pull this off and I get my inheritance.”

She gasped. “What makes you think I can be bought?”

“You’re out of a job, right? Besides, I don’t want to buy you. I just want to rent you for a little while. What do you say?”

“Give me a minute to think.” She pressed her palms to her temples. “If I do this—and I’m not saying I will—there will be absolutely no sex.”

His expression said he had absolutely no interest in her that way. “No sex. Agreed.”

“Put it in writing.”

“Sorry, no can do. You’ll have to trust me on that.”

“Why should I? Why should you trust me?”

He eyed her solemnly. “Maxine,” he said slowly, “I always go with my first impressions. My first impression of you is that you’re a woman who can be trusted. I liked the way you handled yourself on that airplane and the way you stood up for yourself when we had to share that room. As Great-grandpa Taggart would say, ‘Girl, you got spunk!’”

She couldn’t return that smile. “I suppose your first impressions are always right.”

“I wish. Sometimes you just have to go on faith.” He put out his hand. “Is it a deal?”

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