The Bride Said, 'I Did?'. Cathy Thacker Gillen

throw her for a loop for the not-so-glowing reviews she had given his movies and the way she had deliberately held him at arm’s length, refusing to let him work his movie-star charm on her. But now, given the stunned and curious way he kept looking at her, she couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t as much an innocent victim of whatever had happened to them as she was. And if that was the case, she had no reason at all to be mad at him. And that was a notion she found even more unnerving. Because it was her anger, their mutual resentment, that she had been counting on to keep them apart and prevent them from doing whatever it was they’d done down in Mexico again.

      Beau frowned, stroked his jaw and continued filling her in matter-of-factly. “When it comes to that night, I draw a complete blank. I’d like to think it’s because the whole evening was so traumatic,” he teased, beating her to the punch with a wink.

      “Har-de-har-har, cowboy,” Dani responded, determined not to let him joke his way out of anything when it came to the two of them. “And if that evening was traumatic,” she asserted stubbornly, “it was traumatic for both of us.”

      “True.” Beau paused, stroked his jaw again. As the thoughtful moment drew out, his eyes sparkled wickedly. He rolled his weight onto his toes and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “And yet there must be some reason we got married that night and made a baby,” he said.

      “Complete utter insanity?” Dani quipped drolly. The only reason she would ever have gotten married—knowingly anyway—was for love. Her heart quickened its pace as she feared where this line of questioning was leading. Deftly she stepped back.

      He stepped toward her. “That, sweetheart, goes without saying.” He laced his hands around her waist and tugged her against him until they were touching breast to chest, tummy to tummy, thigh to thigh. “The truth is,” Beau continued resolutely, looking down at her with soft serious eyes, “whatever happened that night had nothing to do with where we were or what we were doing at the time or even what we were arguing about. Instead—” his velvety voice dropped another compelling notch “—it had everything to do with what has been going on with us since the first day we met.”

      He sounded so sure. So smugly certain! “And that is what exactly?” Dani prodded, afraid from the amorous gleam in his eyes she already knew precisely what he was going to assert.

      “Desire,” Beau whispered softly, sifting a hand through her hair, watching it as it fell in silky copper strands across her cheek. “Pure unadulterated desire.”

      Dani laughed uneasily and tried, unsuccessfully, to step out of the warm confining hopelessly erotic circle of his arms. “Now I know you’re insane,” she claimed as she splayed both hands across his chest and felt the strong heavy thudding of his heart, so like her own. “I have never, not for one day, not for even one second, desired you!” Dani fibbed as his gaze traced the parted contours of her lips.

      Beau’s sexy smile widened. He slid a hand beneath her chin and tilted her face up to his. “Sure about that now?” he asked as his head slowly lowered.

      “I’m positive,” Dani whispered. Trembling at his nearness, she drew in a jerky breath. This was not going to happen. He was not going to kiss her.

      Beau touched his lips lightly to hers once, and then again. “Okay, let’s see,” he murmured seductively. The next thing Dani knew her eyes were closed and his lips were on hers, nudging them apart. It was the kind of kiss you saw in the movies. Tender, evocative, erotic. Sensitive, searching. It was the kind of kiss you never really expected—in real life—to get. But getting it she was, and she had to admit that, even as she stood on tiptoe and let herself be drawn into the seamlessly sexy kiss, it was rocking her to her very soul. Making her tingle all over. Making her want. Need. Desire. Oh, heavens, she had never felt such desire. Or experienced anything so wonderful and dangerous and right. And it was then, just as she should have suspected, that Beau let the soft kiss come to a slow effortless conclusion.

      Still holding her in his arms, Beau searched her eyes. “Now do you remember?”

      Chapter Two

      Suddenly Dani knew what was happening and why. She couldn’t believe she had been such a fool. Worse, she had almost—almost—bought the I’m-head-over-heels-in-love-with-you look in his eyes! Only her common sense had saved her from admitting something equally foolish to him. But thank heaven she was one woman who was firmly rooted in reality. She knew—better than most—that this life did not come with happily-ever-afters. Especially ever-afters that good. She might wish one of the most famous movie stars in the world was totally enthralled with her, but it wasn’t happening. No matter how hard the Texas lothario was currently pushing to convince her otherwise.

      “Now I get it,” Dani said as she shoved away from him.

      “Get what?” Beau studied her with highly exaggerated confusion.

      Dani scowled and planted her hands on her hips. No way was this handsome cowboy running a scam on her. “So where is it?”

      Beau quirked an eyebrow and continued to regard her with confusion. “Where’s what?”

      “The hidden camera.”

      “Camera?” Beau repeated, doing, Dani thought, a fine job of acting perplexed.

      But she wasn’t buying it. Not for one red-hot instant. She waved her hands excitedly. “We’re on the Celebrity Hoaxes TV show, aren’t we?” Stepping forward, she pointed an accusing finger at his chest. “This is all a practical joke. On me. And everyone in Laramie is probably in on it. My sisters, Lacey McCabe and the people right here at the hospital.” Which meant, of course, she wasn’t really pregnant, either, since they hadn’t really made love or gotten married in Mexico. So she could stop worrying about that right now, Dani concluded with relief. Since this was all part of a giant joke on her.

      “Come on, where are the cameras?” Dani began to search the examining room.

      Beau followed her, looking even more nonplussed as she searched behind the cabinets, beneath the sink. “What cameras?”

      Dani whirled to face him. “The ones that are taping us for the TV show, of course.”

      Beau placed his hands on her shoulders, then said very quietly and very calmly, “Dani, there are no cameras.”

      She smiled thinly, aware that she had never wanted to haul off and slug him more than she did at that minute. “Of course you would say that.” He wanted her to make a fool of herself in the worst way!

      Beau’s eyes darkened. “I mean it, Dani. There are no cameras,” he repeated firmly. Hands slipping back to her waist, he lifted her up and onto the examining table. Trapping her with his body, bracing a hand on either side of her, he leaned in close, “We are not being filmed.”

      Dani ignored him as another flare of mistrust swept through her. “If you say so, but for the record—” she looked straight into his midnight-blue eyes “—this is all a colossal waste of time. Since I will never in a million years give you permission to air what is taking place right here and right now.” That said, she leaned back and neatly folded her hands on her lap.

      “That’s good.” Beau looked pleased as he stepped between her knees and pulled her close. “Because I don’t think I’d want what is taking place right now aired anywhere.” He angled his thumb at his chest, winked facetiously. “I don’t want to be made a fool of, either. I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”

      Speaking of reputations, they had been in here—alone—an awfully long time, Dani thought. Enough to get the local gossip mill going, big time. “Too bad you didn’t think of that before you convinced me to go off to Mexico with you.” Dani pushed him away with both hands, hopped off the table and exited the examining room. Dashing to the front desk, she paid her bill, then headed out the doors into the shimmering late-afternoon heat.

      Beau caught up with her just past the entrance and steered her toward his vintage pickup. Made in 1960, the