His Shotgun Proposal. Karen Whittenburg Toller
when some of that early pregnancy glow had burnished her cheeks with healthy color and given her sandy-brown hair a saucy bounce, she probably could have gotten a helping hand with nothing more than a smile and a please, would you mind? But she was five months along, past the glowing phase of impending motherhood and just rounded enough all over to look chubby. At least, she wasn’t waddling yet. Well, she didn’t think she was, anyway. Although, for all she knew, her rear end might be swaying like a duck’s tail.
She bullied the suitcases through the doorway, all on her own, only to have them tumble into an uncooperative pile just on the other side of the electronic eye, which stopped the doors from closing, which subsequently caused a backup of departing passengers and an unsettling beep, beep, beep sound. “Sorry,” she apologized to the frowning faces in the doorway behind her. “Sorry.”
No one offered to help her gather the luggage. One man stepped over the jumble of suitcases, another edged around, but Abbie finally managed to scoot the cases out of the way and off to the side until she could get them straight again. No small task that, as the paisley suitcase seemed to have lost an essential bit of hardware in the tumble and was no longer completely closed. So where was a man when she needed one?
Ah, but she didn’t need one. Wasn’t that what this entire flight to Texas was about? Wasn’t that why she’d told her parents she was spending the summer at a math and science camp in the Pocono Mountains? Wasn’t she here to escape from the men in her life? All of them. The only one she would honestly like to see at this moment was the stranger who’d gotten her into this predicament with his dark good looks and a smile that buckled her knees. And the only reason she’d like to see him was to thumb her nose and tell him she didn’t need anything from him. Well, except, maybe, some duct tape.
A glance over her left shoulder didn’t reveal any black pickup trucks or scowling ranch hands, and a glance over her right showed nothing more than a cluster of people blocking her view. She knew from past arrivals in Austin on her way to the University of Texas grad school that the airport was always crowded and that trying to find a familiar vehicle among the slow tide of cars, buses, trucks and taxis moving past the building could be a formidable task. In the past, she’d been mainly looking for the bus, but hopefully a black truck would be easy to spot. Especially one accompanied by a cowboy.
Regrouping, she shifted the paisley suitcase to the top of the luggage stack so she could keep its contents safely intact with the weight of her hand. Slinging the shoulder strap of her purse high up on her shoulder, she prepared to tilt the baggage onto the wheels of the wire rack and head out to find Jessica’s cousin, Mac. But just as she braced the rack with her foot, tipped it back on the rollers and pushed it like a baby buggy toward the curb, the crowd thinned and her heart pulled taut in a little clutch of recognition as she saw him. Him. He’d been wearing a hat that night, too, and even though she couldn’t see his face in full now, the hammering, yammering beat of her heart would allow for no mistakes. It was him. The mysterious stranger. The man of her dreams. The father of her baby.
Oh, great. Of all the times to run into him again, this seemed the worst of all possible moments. Maybe she could duck back inside the building, get a drink, visit the ladies’ room and give him time to move along. She didn’t want a confrontation here, now. Not when her hair was limp and lackluster and tethered by a rubber band in a holding pattern at the back of her neck. Not when she was wearing stretch pants and a comfortably oversize, albeit somewhat sloppy, shirt of her brother’s. Not when she’d put on an old pair of black-framed glasses instead of her contacts. Not when she looked and felt about as sexy as leftover oatmeal.
On the other hand, if she didn’t march right up to him right now and demand whatever a pregnant, practically penniless woman demanded from a man whose name she didn’t know but whose baby she was carrying, the opportunity might never come again. Then again, back to the other hand, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to be humiliated and he looked pretty engrossed in conversation with a tanned, long-legged, skinny and obviously not pregnant blonde.
Perfect, Abbie thought. She’d just waddle right over there and let him get a good side-by-side comparison of her at her dumpy, lumpy, travel-weary worst with the disgustingly slender sun goddess whose smile seemed to have him mesmerized. On second thought, laying claim to his arm and his virility would put a definite crimp in his flirting and that would serve him right. Hi, she could say brightly. Remember me? Graduation party last December? So nice to see you again. What do you think we should name our baby? Oh, yeah, that would cool the ardor in those dark Arabic eyes but good.
Arabic. Arabian.
Oh, now that was just plain silly. Just because Jessica’s family raised Arabian horses and December’s mystery man had a slight Arabic ethnicity was hardly a reason to link him to the Colemans. That was like setting out to step over a ditch and then taking a running jump at the Grand Canyon instead. There was no basis, no reason at all to jump to such irrational conclusions. She’d just steer her luggage back into the airport, where the air was cool and conducive to logic. Why, five minutes inside and she’d probably realize he didn’t even resemble the man she’d met that night. Not even close. And Jessica’s cousin would turn out to be a leathery redhead and all would be well.
The cowboy glanced up. His gaze moved past her and returned with a jerk of recognition. Abbie hadn’t known she could move so fast. Her foot shoved the base of the wire rack, a move calculated to get the wheels angled and rolling. Worked beautifully, except for that initial wrench of the castors, which caused the luggage to shift and tumble like an avalanche of untimely disaster. The paisley suitcase flew open on impact and a good deal of Abbie’s private life sprawled out across the concrete. She knelt to scoop it out of the public domain, tossing panicked looks at the stranger who was already pushing away from the big black truck he’d been leaning against, moving away from the startled blonde, coming straight toward Abbie.
Black truck. Oh, jeez…
“You?” he demanded without preamble.
Abbie shoved her belongings into the suitcase, uncaring of order or wrinkles or that her hands shook so hard she had to pick up some items twice. “You who?” she said in a strangled voice. “You, uh, must have me mixed up with somebody else.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t solidify the supposition with the fact that he was who she thought he was and that she was…gulp…who he thought she was. “You don’t have to help me.” Scooping up scattered items with new fervor, she kept her head bent and her face averted. “My, uh, boyfriend is here somewhere, he’ll be here to help me any minute now. I can’t imagine what held him up in there. He was right behind me. Back there. At the baggage claim. Inside.”
“Boyfriend?” His voice cracked the word like a whip.
There was probably some special corner of hell reserved for liars, but Abbie clung to the hope she would be pardoned simply because she was so very bad at lying. Boyfriend? Now, that was a stroke of insanity. “Look, whoever you are,” she said in a rush of desperation, “I’m not who you think I am, so go away.”
He stooped and stared, pushing up the brim of his hat until his familiar dark eyes were peering at her with all the warmth of polished onyx, trying to catch her in a stray glance. And just the feel of his gaze on her created a hurricane of hot remembrance inside her. She couldn’t look at him and she couldn’t not look at him. The most magical night of her entire life had been spent with this man, wrapped in his arms, clothed in his smile, naked in his bed…on the floor, the chair, the vanity…Abbie wrestled the memory into submission. She didn’t want to deny the experience, but she was scared to death to claim it, too. What if the blonde was his wife? What if he had mistaken Abbie for someone else? What if he thought she’d stolen his wallet or something? What if he believed they’d met at a bar mitzvah instead of at the street dance? What if he kissed her? Right here, right now? He was still staring at her and she struggled to locate a tone of offence. “You have mistaken me for someone else,” she pronounced defiantly.
“No,” he said coldly. “It’s you, all right.”
Abbie swallowed hard, willed him to move on, get along, disappear, as she lifted her chin with completely false bravado. “Well, I don’t know you, even if you