CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
What are you doing here?” asked Maeve, giving her son a hug.
He glanced at me as he answered. “I had to do some packing and shopping. What are you doing here?”
“Picnic supplies. But didn’t you have plans to talk to Andie this morning about her project?”
Mack hid his surprise well. “Um, yeah. But I had to do this other thing first.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what . . . why don’t you bring her back with you so I can run by the party supply place and then the dry cleaner? She’ll get bored being with me all morning, and I think she said she needs to get back to work. Best get your business together worked out as soon as possible, right?” She patted him on the cheek and then put her hand on my upper arm. “See you back at the ranch, sweetie.”
I smiled. “Back at the ranch. I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“Go ahead then.” She stood there waiting.
“Okay. See you back at the ranch, Maeve.” I couldn’t keep the grin off my face.
“Hope to shout.” She walked off and left us standing there, Mack’s expression telling me nothing.
“What’d she just say?” I asked.
“Hope to shout.” He turned away from the store. “Come on with me, then. I’ll get you back to the ranch.”
“What does ‘hope to shout’ mean?” I shuffled along behind him in my sexy moccasins.
He walked up to another truck, this one red and brand new, pressing the button on his keychain to open the locks. “It means ‘I sure hope so’ or something close to that.”
“Huh. I’ve never heard that before.”
“It’s pretty country. Probably not your cup of tea.”
I climbed up into the truck with the help of a step that was attached to the side. “I wouldn’t say that.” I had to go back down when one of my shoes fell off. I grabbed it with my hand and just carried it in. Buckling up, I watched him get into the truck, waiting for him to look at me.
He studiously avoided looking in my direction, acting like he was very busy with adjusting mirrors and checking for traffic. He didn’t respond either.
I had my work cut out for me. Mack was my captive audience, unable to avoid me whether he liked it or not. Now I just had to get him to talk. My heart was pounding, and the adrenaline was rushing into my blood stream. Everything in me was telling me to run back home and forget this ever happened, except that one little part of my brain that said we needed to get this over with. Before Bradley showed up. Before my life completely imploded. I was already looking at the nightmare of canceling a wedding and sending back a pile of gifts. Luckily, I had a feeling Ruby wouldn’t mind helping me clean up that part of my mess. She’d probably throw a break-up party in Bradley’s honor. The question I still hadn’t even begun to answer was what I was going to do with myself after it was all over. Something told me life according to Andie’s lifeplan wasn’t going to be enough anymore.
I did a fake cough to get the ball rolling. “So . . . we were supposed to meet this morning at nine to talk. I get the feeling you’re avoiding me.” Oh good! Right out of the gate just confront him like that! Smooth move, Ex-Lax Andie. I wanted to slap myself in the forehead for being so confrontational. This was no way to get anywhere with Mack. He was too proud for that. The only reason I was sitting in his truck was because his mother had made him take me.
He pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main street. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m actually doing the opposite, but since you can’t read my mind, I’m not surprised you misunderstood.”
“You could have said something.” I had to hold back the pout that wanted to take over my face. Mack always seemed to have this effect on me, where I forgot I was a professional businesswoman who should have been above the sillier emotions like disappointment and bruised feelings.
“You were sleeping, and you’d had a hard day. I decided it would be kinder to leave you there than to wake you up just to give you a message.”
“I’ll bet you have paper and pen at your house. You could have left me a note.”
“Too impersonal.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “And disappearing without saying anything isn’t?”
A tiny smile snuck out before he could hide it.
I pointed at his face. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That smile! I saw you smile—don’t try to hide it. You like this, don’t you?”
“Like what?” He was all innocence.
“Like torturing me, that’s what.” I was grumbling now. I’ve never felt so out of my element and at a disadvantage as I did now. I hated myself for being such a wiener. If we were in the courtroom, I’d have Mack on his knees and the judge shaking his head in pity. But in this truck, wearing his mother’s slippers and my former dorm wear, I was the one being made a fool of. And the saddest part was, I was doing it to myself.
He said nothing to deny it. His tiny smile slid away to make his expression once more unreadable.
We drove in silence for a while, my stress elevating with every passing mile until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Listen, all joking aside, I have to talk to you. It’s really important.”
“So talk. I’m sitting right here.”
“I really need you to sign those papers.”
“No.”
I huffed out a big breath of frustrated air. I’d been expecting a run-around, but not a flat-out refusal. Time to change tack . . . “You don’t love me, Mack.”
“How do you know who I love and who I don’t love?”
“You don’t even know me! How can you possibly love me? That’s just . . . stupid. Asinine, even.”
He glanced at me, his expression dark. “I know you better than you think I do.” His brows turned down as he focused on the road, and his hands tensed on the wheel.
“Oh, yeah? I doubt it.” No one knew the real me. Not even Bradley. People who said you needed to be yourself when you were with your soulmate didn’t know the real me. If they did, they might change their perspective on that little happy thought. Some things were just better left unsaid, and some pasts are just better left behind.
“Okay, how about this . . . I know you grew up in the northeast and your father left when you were very young. I know your mother dated a bunch of men who were big partiers, before moving in with one who eventually abused her. I know you feared for your lives for years and that you finally convinced your mom to leave him when you were in high school, but she went back to him right before you started college. I know he almost killed her once and you saw the whole thing happen.” He paused and looked at me for a few seconds. “How am I doing so far?”
My heart rate went through the roof, and my mouth had gone suddenly dry. How could he possibly know all my secrets? Is he a mind reader? Did he do a background check on me?
He continued unraveling my secrets, not waiting for a response from me. “I know you started working on your, uh . . . lifeplan . . . I think that’s what you called it, when you were fifteen and have been following it to the letter ever since. Except for that little side trip you took from it in Las Vegas, everything’s been going according to plan. You’ve only dated guys who fit the mold and want the same things you want, and when they stopped fitting into the plan, you dumped ’em and found another candidate.”
“More like they dumped me,” I mumbled. My ears burned with shame. I felt like that teenager in the hospital again, signing off on documents I didn’t read, telling the doctors to go ahead and do whatever they could to save her.
“Dumped, got dumped . . . that’s all just semantics. I’m not done yet. So, then this guy asked you to marry him, and you checked all the boxes to make sure he fit, and when you realized he did, you said yes. And that’s when you decided to finally give me a call and take care of the little problem you started two years ago.”
I lifted my arm and rested it on the windowsill, the opposite hand pressed into the seat next to my left thigh. I felt like I was being attacked, only he was doing it in a normal tone of voice without a hint of malice. If the truck had been stopped, I probably would have jumped out.
My voice was shaky when it finally started to work again. “I didn’t start any problem—you did. And how do you know all that stuff about me? Have you been spying on me?”
He laughed bitterly. “Hardly. I didn’t even know where you were until you showed up in town looking for me. When Boog called and described you and told me what you’d said to Hannah, I knew it was you. It’s the first time I’ve even come close to you in two years.” He didn’t sound happy about that at all.
“That doesn’t explain how you know my personal history. I don’t share that with anyone. Not even my best friends.”
“Sure you do. You shared it with me.” He sounded proud, the jerk.
“No I didn’t.” My voice went higher out of panic.
“Are you calling me a liar?” He glanced at me as he turned onto another road.
“No, I’m just saying . . . you must be mistaken or something. I don’t share my past with anyone, not even good-looking cowboys.”
“Well, you shared it with me. And I’m not just some guy. I’m your husband. You should share that stuff with your husband.” He glanced at me once more. “You didn’t share it with that guy you’re engaged to, did you?”
“Would you stop saying that?” Sweat had broken out on my upper lip and under my arms.
“Saying what?”
“That you’re my husband!” I screeched. He was being too calm about everything, like his hand wasn’t hovering over the bright red button on my console that would set off all the nuclear missiles I kept under lock and key.
“The truth bothers you that much?”
“No, the joke bothers me that much. This is all just a big joke, don’t you get it?” I was panting, not able to get enough oxygen to my brain. Dizzy. I’m dizzy. Why am I so dizzy?
The muscles in his arms jumped a little. “No, I guess I don’t get it. Explain it to me.” He pulled onto the dirt road that had ended my Smart Car.
My left hand came up and started doing chopping-down motions as I explained. He absolutely had to understand this, because if he didn’t, I was going to implode. My voice went up and up, getting nearer and nearer to hysterical proportions with every sentence. “Okay, Mack . . . here it is. Two years ago I got dumped by a guy and was feeling vulnerable. I had too much to drink and I met you and you were all . . . you . . . and I got carried away. We both got carried away, I guess, since you don’t seem the type to go off plan much either. The next day I woke up, you were gone, and I went home. Okay? Do you get it now? Life went on for both of us, not just me. I started dating Bradley, you started dating Hannah, and now here we are, two years later, needing a divorce.” I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to release some of the stress. I felt like my head was going to explode.
“I’m afraid you’re missing part of the story, there, counselor.” A country drawl was flavoring his words a little and tempting me to smack him upside the head in a very violent way.
“I don’t think so,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I know so.” His phone rang, and he picked it up, frowning at the screen. He put it on the seat and ignored it. I glanced down and saw Hannah’s name there.
“Why aren’t you answering it? She’s your girlfriend, and I get the impression she wouldn’t appreciate being blown off.”
“She is not my girlfriend. I don’t know who told you that, but you should probably not listen to that person anymore.”
“It was Hannah who told me, and the fact that you live with her was kind of just a bonus, I guess.”
He blew out a huff of air. “You definitely shouldn’t ever listen to Hannah. And I don’t live with her. She lives with me—temporarily—since I was doing a favor for a friend, but that ends today. She’s all packed and ready to go.”
I laughed bitterly. “I think you forgot to mention that little fact to her. She’s in love with you, you know.”
“Bullshit. She’s in love with my family’s ranch, with our money, with my truck, and very possibly my little brother, but she’s not in love with me.”
“If she was, would you go out with her?”
“Hell no. She’s not my type.”
I found that really hard to believe, since Daisy Duke was every country boy’s type, and she wasn’t that far off. “What is your type, then if it’s not Daisy Duke?”
He took a few seconds to answer. “Headstrong. Smart. Beautiful. Funny. Good at blackjack. Maybe a little more conservative than Hannah Banana.” He glanced at me, smiling devilishly. “I like a little mystery to my women. I think the song lyric says it best: Lady on the street but a freak in the bed.”
I whacked him hard on the arm, my face burning. “Shut up. I am not your type. And I am not a freak anywhere.”
He reached over and took my hand in his warm one, pulling it against his leg. “I’m your type too, you know.”
“No, you’re not.” I tried to pull my hand away, but he had a hell of a grip.
“Sure I am. I’m educated, business minded, sexy—you said so yourself, so don’t try to deny it—and I can make you scream like nobody else can.” He lifted my hand and put it on top of his leg, very near his crotch.
My heart was hammering in my chest now, making me feel like I was going to start panting like a dog any second. Control yourself, Fido! He’s just a guy!
I pulled my hand back more insistently this time, and he let it go. “Sex isn’t love. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it is.” Memories of my mother flashed before my eyes. She was always in a dreamy state after being with her boyfriend in the bedroom at night, but it never stopped him from smashing her in the face later.
“You’re not her, Andie. You’re not your mother.”
“Shut up! You don’t get to talk about her to me!” My shouts echoed around the small space of the truck’s cab, making my ears ring. My face burned with embarrassment over losing my temper. “Sorry for shouting. Just . . . don’t talk about her, please. She’s off limits.”
“Sounds to me like you’d be better off talking about her rather than pretending she doesn’t exist, but I’ll leave it alone for now.” He reached over and put his hand on mine, stroking the side of it with his thumb. “I got some things for us, so we can take a little ride this afternoon.”
“A ride? Where?” I asked, suspicion ruling my emotions. “I don’t want to take a ride with you.” The words came out, but the feelings weren’t backing them up.
“Up into the hills a little bit. I think we need some privacy, so we can talk this out and get things straight. I know you have a lifeplan to follow and all, so no reason to delay anymore.”
I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or sad or anything else. “I’m surprised I met you that night,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because with that poker face of yours, I’ll bet you could make a lot of money at the poker tables instead of the blackjack tables.”
He smiled, sending a shock of attraction right through my chest and down to the space between my legs. “I do like to play poker now and again, but I always warm up with a little twenty-one first.” He patted my hand before putting his back on the wheel. “Glad I did that night, I can tell you that.”
I said nothing, not sure whether he’d changed my life for the better by playing blackjack that night or doomed me to a life of misery.