BEVERLY BARTON – Whitelaw's Wedding (страница 9)

Chuckling softly, he caressed her hand that lay on his shoulder.

“I’ve noticed that lovesick fools usually have pet names for their lady loves, so if you don’t like ‘baby doll,’ would you prefer honey or sweetie or sugar or darling or—”

“I don’t think a pet name is necessary. I have no intention of calling you anything other than Hunter.”

He slid his arm around the back of her chair, effectively encompassing her shoulders. “Manda Munroe, you’re still a stubborn, hardheaded brat. You want it all your way or— Hey, that’s it. I’ll call you ‘brat,’ the way Perry and I used to when you were a kid. People will find that endearing and amusing.”

“Brat? Oh, that’s just great.”

“Take your pick—baby doll or brat?”

“Go to hell,” she said through clenched teeth.

“I have a feeling that’s where I’m headed. When I told Perry years ago that I pitied the poor guy who married you, I had no idea that I’d wind up being that guy. Or at least the first guy to marry you. Once we nab Mr. Lunatic and you and I get an annulment, I’m sure it won’t take you long to find a real groom.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” She glanced away, unable to continue meeting his gaze. Had he really told Perry that he pitied the guy who married her? Had he disliked her that much all those years ago? If she’d had even one silly little notion in her mind that Hunter might actually be attracted to her, that he might genuinely care about her, his comment had vanquished that thought. For the next few weeks she was going to have to accomplish a difficult task—pretending to fall madly in love with Hunter, without him ever realizing that he still held the power to affect her sexually and emotionally, more so than anyone she’d ever known.

Chapter 4

M anda was glad this was a Saturday morning and she didn’t have to go to work today. She had slept fitfully last night, waking often between erotic dreams about Hunter Whitelaw and frightening dreams about a faceless killer pursuing them. In retrospect, she wondered if she was out of her mind for agreeing to go along with Perry’s plan to trap her tormentor. What if something went wrong and Hunter was killed? She knew she couldn’t survive another loss. It had taken her years to recover after losing Rodney, but at least when he died, she hadn’t been eaten alive with guilt that his death had been her fault. No one, not even the police, had suspected that his car crash was anything other than an accident. Even now, Perry insisted that all the evidence showed that, after one of his long intern shifts at the hospital, Rodney had been driving too fast when he had probably fallen asleep at the wheel and careered over a steep embankment. More than anything, she wanted to believe that was true.

She would never forget Rodney. A part of her heart would always belong to him. Except for her teenage infatuation with Hunter, Rodney had been her first love. Until they met at the hospital where he’d been an intern when her father had been a chemotherapy patient, she had gone systematically through young men as if they were disposable tissues. From the age of sixteen until she met Rodney, she had dated dozens of guys, but not one of them had been special to her. By the time young Dr. Austin came along, she was accustomed to being the center of attention. And she had to admit that she had loved being pursued by countless lovesick boys. What a silly, foolish girl she’d been.

Falling in love with Rodney had been a good thing for her. Everyone had said so. And her entire family had not only approved her choice, but had adored Rodney as much as his mother had adored her. It had been considered an ideal match. After dating exclusively for eight months, during her senior year of college, Rodney had proposed and their families had combined efforts to plan an elaborate autumn wedding. A wedding that was supposed to be the beginning of a perfect life together.

Although they had come close to giving in to temptation, she and Rodney had stopped their lovemaking time and again before it progressed to the final act. They had agreed that since Manda was a virgin they would wait to consummate their love on their wedding night. An old-fashioned notion for people of their generation, but Rodney had been an old-fashioned kind of guy. She supposed that was one reason Grams had thought the world of him.

Manda had once believed that the day Rodney died was the worst day of her life. She had never known such agony. And it had been a pain that stayed with her, that was even now a part of her. Losing her father six months later, when he finally succumbed to cancer, had only added to her misery. But she hadn’t know what true suffering was until someone killed Mike Farrar, a dear, kind man who had been murdered because he dared to care about her enough to ask her to marry him. Realizing that she had quite possibly been the cause of two men’s deaths had almost destroyed her. If it hadn’t been for Perry and Grams and the support of the other grief counselors at the clinic where she worked, she might have done something stupid. For several weeks after Mike’s murder, she had been so distraught that she’d actually contemplated suicide.

What was it about her, she wondered, that brought death to those she loved? Except for Grams and Perry, she had lost everyone who had ever been important to her. Her mother had died in childbirth, something practically unheard of at the time. And then Hunter had rejected her foolish advances and walked out of her life. He’d been the only man who’d ever broken her heart. And then she had lost Rodney, followed by her father’s death and then finally Mike’s murder. She could not risk ever caring about another person. Others had to be aware of the horrible truth—loving Manda put your life in danger. She supposed on a subconscious level she had steered clear of even close friendships with other women, fearing that the Manda Munroe Curse would strike again.

For the past five years she had kept all of her relationships, with men and women alike, on a strictly casual basis. By doing this, she had held the curse at bay. But now she was planning to tempt fate by announcing to the world that in two weeks she was going to marry Hunter Whitelaw.

Although Perry had insisted that he be their guest at the Munroe home on North Pine Street, Hunter had opted to stay at his grandmother’s old house out on Mulberry Lane. He supposed he should have sold the place after Granny died, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to sell a property that had been in his family for several generations. His grandfather had been born in this old house, and so had his great-grandfather, in the first month of the first year of the twentieth century—January 1, 1900.

When he’d been a young idiot, Hunter had thought that what he wanted more than anything was to get away from the farm, to figure out a way to become a part of the social set to which his good buddy Perry Munroe belonged. As a young man he had been overly impressed with the fine homes on North Pine Street, with the sleek sports cars the rich boys drove and with the snobbish little debutantes who wouldn’t give him the time of day because he was poor. Of course, there was one girl who’d been different. But at the time, Manda had been years too young for him.

Odd that what was so important to a guy when he was twenty wasn’t what mattered to him when he was forty.

In the best of all possible worlds, he would come back home, renovate the old house and either raise cattle or rebuild the once thriving fruit orchard. Maybe he’d do both. And in that fantasy life, there was always a woman and a couple of kids living here on the farm with him. But after his experience with Selina, he hadn’t found a woman he wanted to be his wife. Of course, he hadn’t been looking. Actually, he’d been doing the exact opposite. He steered clear of any woman who possessed the qualities he now wanted in a mate. Loyalty. Compassion. A desire to live a simple life, to build a home and have children.

He’d told himself more than once this past year that when he retired from the Dundee agency, he’d return to Dearborn. Maybe while he was in town on this job for Perry, he could see about hiring a contractor and getting some work done on the old place. He had enough money to turn the family farmhouse into a showplace. Once he and Manda announced their engagement, him renovating the house would create speculation among her acquaintances as to whether he would dare to bring Manda out here to live.

Hunter laughed. After they married, maybe he should bring her here to stay for a while. She’d be miserable. The place was terribly rundown and still decorated with his grandmother’s old furniture that had already seen better days when he’d been a child. No, there wasn’t any need to make things worse for Manda than they already were. If the nutcase who wanted to control her life came out in the open with threats and maybe an attempt on his or Manda’s life, she would have enough to deal with. But a part of him couldn’t help wondering how Miss Manda would cope with life on the farm.