Luke's Promise. Eileen Wilks

didn’t even blink. “Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

      Two

      The front door closed behind Luke firmly. Maggie had allowed him to take her suitcase and boots, but she clutched her saddlebag-size purse herself.

      “My mother is not happy with you,” she said cheerfully. “She wasn’t crazy about it when you offered to spring me. Then you threatened my father’s car. Serious penalty points there, Luke.”

      Luke glanced at the woman who was all but skipping along beside him on the way to his pickup. Maggie wasn’t much bigger than a bite, but her pint-size body held enough energy for any three normal people. Her cheeks were round and freckled, her hair was very short, but otherwise undecided—neither curly nor straight, brown nor blond. Her clothes were more definite, being divided between the defiant and the sloppy. Above wrinkled khaki pants, her T-shirt was a scream of purple. The brown leather bomber jacket she wore looked like it had been through at least one World War. The cast that peeked out of her left sleeve was a radioactive-green.

      And she had a small, husky voice. A whiskey-and-sin voice that made a man think of rumpled sheets. He wanted to jump her bones. “I like your shirt.”

      She glanced down at her chest. Yellow letters sprawled across the modest bumps made by her breasts asked, What Would Xena Do? She grinned. “It’s a reminder. Part of my antiwuss campaign.”

      “Wuss?” His eyebrows lifted. “I’ve seen you compete. You could give lessons in determination to the Cowboys’ offensive line. Maybe you should, after their last season.”

      “Oh, I’m fine on the back of a horse. It isn’t until I’m standing on my own two feet that my wuss tendencies take over. If you hadn’t forced things, I probably would have wimped out and left without my purse.”

      He paused, his head cocked to one side, trying to figure out what was going on. He’d expected to have a hell of a lot more trouble talking her into this, but she was grinning at him as if they ran off together every other week. “You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

      “Damned right I am.” She said it with a certain relish.

      “That’s three.” He opened the pickup’s passenger door.

      “What?”

      “That’s the third time I can remember hearing you use a cuss word.”

      “The habits of a lifetime are hard to break. I’m working on it.”

      “Learning to cuss is part of your antiwuss campaign?”

      “Yep.” She tossed her purse onto the seat and climbed in. “Would you really have busted a window on my father’s car if my mother hadn’t given in and unlocked it?”

      He grinned. “Damned right I would.” Sitting on the bench seat of the pickup cab, she was slightly above him. He liked the perspective that gave him on those soft, smiling lips. He wasn’t crazy about the rush of heat and frustration that hit, along with the tantalizingly faint wash of memories.

      He’d have to get used to that. “We couldn’t leave without your purse. You’ll need ID when we get to Vegas.”

      “Oh, right. Of course. My mother would have thought of that sooner or later, wouldn’t she? If not, my father certainly would have when he got back. Then they’d never have believed we were really running away to get married.”

      “Ah.” He nodded. “Now I understand. You don’t think this elopement is for real. You just want your father to think it is.”

      “Well…the fact that he can’t stand you is a real plus, I’ll admit. I haven’t thanked you, Luke, but I do appreciate it. Asking me to run off with you was inspired. You think fast on your feet.” She chuckled. “The look on my mother’s face…anyway, I guess you came by to offer me a chance to ride Fine Dandy for you once my wrist is better, and I really, really appreciate that.”

      “I do want you to ride Fine Dandy.”

      “Then I’m sure we can work something out.” In the same friendly tone she added, “But I do wish you’d stop staring at my mouth that way.”

      “I’ve always been partial to your mouth.”

      “No offense, but you’re partial to any pair of lips attached to a female body.”

      The sudden grinding in his gut—was it anger? Or guilt? “Only the pretty ones.” He tossed her suitcase in the back of the truck and climbed in on his side. “We’d better get going. The flight leaves at one-twenty.”

      “You have a flight to catch? I guess you could drop me at Linda’s—her place is on the way. Or I can call someone from the airport to come get me. But maybe we could talk about Fine Dandy first?”

      “No, Maggie, I don’t have a flight to catch. We do. For Las Vegas.”

      Her eyes went huge, and her mouth parted—but no words came out. Satisfied, he started the engine.

      The driveway was a long, concrete yawn leading to an equally boring street. Expensive—but boring. The houses here had grounds, not yards, and they were cared for by professionals. A three-man crew was stringing Christmas lights in the naked branches of several live oaks at one home.

      Automatically Luke’s gaze flickered and veered away.

      He hated winter, hated the empty trees and sky, the creeping gray defeat of the season. Christmas was a hurdle to be leaped, the red-and-green mania that swept the world every December a trial to be endured before he could settle in to wait for the promise of spring.

      “Okay, Luke,” Maggie said abruptly. “It was a good joke. But enough is enough. You don’t want to marry me.”

      “I don’t?”

      “I suppose I’m not the last woman you’d want to marry, but there must be a hundred or two you’d prefer. They can’t have all turned you down already.”

      “I haven’t asked anyone else.”

      Silence. They pulled to a stop at the light and waited for the light to change, and she didn’t say a word—but he could almost hear her scrambling to pull her scattered thoughts together. He decided to help her out. “You know why I have to marry someone, the quicker the better, don’t you? Jacob must have told you about Ada when he proposed.”

      “Well—well, yes, he did.” She shook her head. “This is so weird. In twenty-seven years I’ve collected exactly zero proposals of marriage, then last week Jacob…and now you…and neither one of you—you’re both friends!” Her breath huffed out. “This is just so weird.”

      That was one word for it. Luke did take some satisfaction from hearing that Maggie thought of Jacob as a friend. “This proposing business comes as a shock to me, too.”

      Two weeks ago, if anyone had suggested to Luke that he would ever dabble in matrimony, he would have laughed. But two weeks ago, he hadn’t known about Ada.

      People outside the family didn’t understand. To them, Ada was just a servant—first his father’s housekeeper, now Jacob’s. But to the West brothers, she was much more. She was the one woman they all loved, the one constant in their lives. No matter who else had come and gone—and there had been one hell of a lot of comings and goings—Ada had always been there for them.

      And now she was dying. Or she would be, if she didn’t continue the experimental treatments Jacob had arranged—the incredibly expensive, near-miraculous treatments at a Swiss research center. The only way to save her was for the brothers to do what they’d each sworn never to do.

      They each had to marry. And fast.

      Luke had turned onto the ramp to the Interstate before Maggie spoke again. “Jacob did tell me about Ada’s illness. And I honor you and your brothers for wanting to take care of her. That’s wonderful. But I