Shotgun Vows. Teresa Southwick

dear,” Lily said. “We’ll entertain Dawson while you freshen up.”

      During her shower and then a quick combing and braiding of her hair afterwards, all Mattie could think was, Why me? Why did she draw the short straw and get stuck with the dude? Although if she had to be stuck with someone she didn’t like, at least he wasn’t hard on the eyes. She hadn’t been that close to him since their first verbal sparring. Then she’d been too annoyed to notice. But tonight, being in the same room with him, she couldn’t miss the intensity that made his hazel eyes seem more green, or the way the light picked up the sunstreaks in his brown hair, or how wide his shoulders looked in that white dress shirt, wrinkled after a day’s work.

      “Work?” she said to herself, slipping on a clean pair of jeans. “Number cruncher,” she said disdainfully as she put on a long-sleeved white cotton shirt. She couldn’t think of a more boring or lonely way to make a living. In fact, she might even feel sorry for him—if he was anyone but Dawson Prescott.

      She glanced one last time in the mirror, and sighed as she noticed the blond wisps of hair that curled around her face. No matter how hard she tried, her hair had a mind of its own. So she’d quit trying to make it do anything other than braid. Was it her imagination, or did her eyes look a deeper gray than usual? Must be the anticipation of that poker game, she thought.

      Mattie made her way to the kitchen. The floor of the large room was tiled with Mexican pavers. A distressed-wood table with eight ladder-back chairs stood in a cozy nook at one end of the room. At the other end was a center island work area, a counter cooktop set into the cream-colored tiles, and a built-in oven. Not to mention the largest side-by-side refrigerator she had ever seen.

      That was where she now saw Dawson, half bent at the waist as he scoped out the contents. She noticed that his gray slacks pulled tight across his legs, revealing muscular thighs. She wondered how he managed to produce all those muscles while poring over numbers all day.

      “See anything good?” she asked.

      “Lily and Ryan said to make myself at home,” he answered, as he continued to study the interior.

      Then he looked at her, and she thought his gaze lowered to just about her knees. No doubt he was trying to think of something to say to cut her off just about there. She resolved not to rise to any bait he might set out. She would be the lady her mother always scolded her into trying to be.

      She pointed to the open door. “I think pot roast and mashed potatoes were on tonight’s menu. If you’ll allow me?”

      He backed away with an outstretched palm. “Be my guest.”

      “Actually, I believe you’re my guest.”

      “Look, Matilda—”

      She held her hand up, palm out. “Stop right there, buster.” She tried to add a teasing note to her voice. “My aunt expects us to keep each other company for this meal. That implies making conversation. To do that you need to get my attention. Especially if I have my back turned. I’ll answer to ‘Hey, you,’ or ‘Yo, babe.’ You can even grunt if you’d like. But I despise being called Matilda. I let my family get away with it sometimes. But never ever, under any circumstances, call me that. Mattie is fine. Tildie will do. But if you call me Matilda, life as you now know it will cease to exist.”

      “Tilde?” He stepped back so that she could pull the leftovers from the refrigerator. “That funny little sideways squiggle used in words to indicate nasality? Or in logic and mathematics to show negation?”

      She was pulling two leftover dishes out, but stopped to shoot him an impatient glance. “I thought you had more to do at work.”

      “How’s that?”

      “You must have a lot of time on your hands if you can remember such useless, insignificant information. How do you do it?”

      “It’s a gift,” he said with a shrug. “But I could ask you the same thing. How do you do it? Training horses is a lot of work.”

      She thought about that as she took two plates and put meat, potatoes, gravy and string beans on them, then put them in the microwave to warm. Then she turned to look at him. “I can’t explain it. I just love animals—especially horses. I study their body language and mentally file away their disposition and character. They have traits, you know. Just like people.”

      “So you sort of do what I do. Tuck information away in your head. Some of it useless, some of it not,” he said.

      Damn the man. He had her there. Aunt Lily was right. Pride did indeed go before a fall. Her mother was right. She should behave like a lady and be gracious. She would eat a lot less crow that way.

      “I guess you’re right,” she said as sweetly as possible. “But you’ve had so many more years than I’ve had to gather information. How do you remember it all?”

      He folded his arms over his chest. A very impressive chest, she noted with a small surprising flutter of her heart.

      “A world-class memory,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting. “And fortunately, I’m not ready to take up residence in the geriatric ward yet.”

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that what you do boggles the mind. I’ve never been very good with numbers myself. I’m in awe of anyone who can make sense of it.”

      “A lot of what I do is guesswork and instinct. Just like you,” he said.

      She grinned. “But I bet your numbers don’t give you love and affection like my horses do.”

      He laughed. “You win that round. But I have no emotional investment in my numbers the way you do your horses. They can’t break my heart.”

      She saw a black look in his eyes. A remembered pain? She would have sworn that’s what it was, and in spite of who he was and how he tweaked her temper, she did feel sorry for him.

      “Who broke your heart?” she asked, automatically softening her tone as if she were working with one of the horses.

      Instantly the vulnerable expression was gone, replaced by a teasing grin. “What makes you think someone broke my heart?”

      “Mother says a person doesn’t get through life without some heartbreak. And you’ve lived so very, very long,” she said teasingly. “Surely there are skeletons in your closet.”

      “Only on Halloween.”

      “Isn’t there a saying in your country—no pain, no gain?”

      “I think I’ve heard that one.” He shrugged. “Either I’m emotionally backward, or I’ve managed to gain without the pain part. What about you? Was your mother right? Have you had your heartbreak in the year-and-a-half you’ve been on this earth?”

      “Cute. I’m not that young.” What she was was inexperienced, thanks to her brothers. Except for one single, painful episode. But a stampede of determined Texas mustangs couldn’t force her to share the details of that humiliation with him.

      “From where I’m standing, you look hardly more than a baby.”

      Her back started to rise at his comment, making her want to show him that she was a full-grown woman. Her next thought was that he’d turned the conversation away from himself and back to her. Interesting. The words were spoken in a joking manner, but she sensed currents of emotion in him. Had someone broken his heart? Or was his pain from something else? She instinctively knew that if she asked, he would put her off.

      Instead she watched him, mostly his eyes, then noted the tension in his square jaw. Noted also that he was a very good-looking man, in an older, businessman sort of way. Her heart began to beat very fast, and she grew warm all over. She hadn’t felt this way but once, when she had been hardly more than a baby. Barely sixteen, she’d managed to elude her brothers long enough to develop a crush on a boy. The incident was a disaster.

      But Dawson was a man—the first she’d ever been alone