One corner of his mouth lifted briefly. “What’s your name?”
“Shelby,” she said, mesmerized by the motion of that mouth. “Shelby Arthur.”
“I’m Caleb Mackenzie,” he said. “My truck’s over there.”
He jerked his head toward a big, top-of-the-line black pickup that shone like midnight, its chrome bumpers glittering in the sun. At that moment, the huge black truck looked like a magical carriage there to transport her away from a nightmare. Shelby sighed in relief and practically sprinted for it.
“Where are you going?” Margaret’s voice, loud, desperate, followed her. “You can’t leave! What will people think?”
“Whatever the hell they want to,” Caleb tossed over his shoulder. “Just like always.”
He opened the passenger door and helped Shelby to climb in. “We have to hurry,” she said, throwing frantic looks at the building behind them.
“It’d be easier if you didn’t have so damn much dress,” he muttered, grabbing a fistful of the material and stuffing it into the truck.
“Never mind the dress,” she said, staring down at him. She was doing it. Getting away. But she wasn’t gone yet. Grabbing at the dress, she shoved it between her knees and then ignored the rest of the hot mess gown still hanging down the side of the truck. “Just get in and drive.”
He looked up at her and again, Shelby felt that rush of something hot and unexpected. That was just too weird. A few minutes ago, she’d been set to marry another man and now she was getting all warm and shivery for a cowboy in shining armor? What was wrong with her?
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You’re the boss.” Then he slammed the truck door, leaving a couple of feet of dress hanging out beneath the bottom.
Shelby didn’t care. All she wanted was to get away. To feel free. She pushed her hair out of her face as it slipped from the intricate knots it had been wound into. While Caleb walked around the front of the truck, she stared out the window at the woman still cursing her. Shelby had the oddest desire to wave goodbye and smile. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked away from her would-be mother-in-law and when Caleb climbed into the truck and fired it up, she took her first easy breath. When he threw it into gear and drove from the parking lot, Shelby laughed at the wild release pumping through her.
He glanced at her. “Are you crazy?”
She shook her head and grinned. “Not anymore. I think I’m cured.”
* * *
Caleb told himself that if she wasn’t crazy herself, she was probably a carrier. How else did he explain why he was driving down the long, nearly empty road toward his ranch with a runaway bride sitting beside him?
Two words repeated in his brain. Runaway bride. Hell, he was helping do to Jared what Mitch and Meg had done to him four years ago. Was this some kind of backward Karma?
Caleb shot a sideways look at his passenger. The dress was god-awful, but it was fitted to her body like a damn glove. Her high, full breasts were outlined behind yet another layer of lace. The high neck only made a man wonder what was being hidden. Long sleeves caressed her arms and a damn mountain of white net poofed out around her body even while she fought it down.
Her face was pale, making the handful of freckles across her nose stand out like firelight in a snowstorm. While he watched, she rolled down the window and her hair was suddenly a wild tangle of dark red curls flying in the wind.
She closed her eyes, smiled into the wind, then turned to look at him and smiled even wider. “Thanks for the rescue.”
Yeah. He’d rescued her and helped to humiliate Jared, just as he himself had once been. Caleb didn’t much care for Jared Goodman, but that didn’t make what he’d done any easier to take.
“Why’d you wait to run?” he asked.
“What?”
“Why wait until the last damn minute to change your mind?”
“Good question.” She sighed, pushed her hair back, then propped her elbow on the door. “I kept thinking it would get better, I guess. Instead, it just got worse.”
He could understand that. It was the Goodmans, after all.
“And you couldn’t leave before today?”
She looked at him and frowned. “I could have. But I gave my word. I said I’d marry Jared—”
“But you didn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” she corrected, shaking her head. “Staring at myself in the mirror, wearing this hideous dress, listening to Margaret tell me about the honeymoon plans she made...” Her voice died off and it was a few seconds before she spoke again. “It finally hit me that I just couldn’t go through with it. So I ran. I suppose you think that’s cowardly.”
“Well...”
She shifted in her seat, hiking all of that white fabric higher until it was above her knees, displaying a pair of long, tanned legs. When she stopped just past her knees, Caleb was more than a little disappointed.
He looked back at the road. Way safer than looking at her.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “It took more strength to run than it would have to stay.”
Frowning to himself, Caleb thought about that for a minute. Was it possible she had a point?
She threw both hands up, the fabric spilled off her lap to the floor and she muttered a curse as she gathered it all up again to hold on her lap. Caleb spared another quick look at her long, tanned legs, then told himself to keep his eyes on the road.
“Honestly,” she said, “I could have gone through with it and not been called a ‘tramp.’ I could have stayed, knowing that I didn’t really love Jared after all, but going through with the wedding to avoid the embarrassment. But it wasn’t right for me or fair to Jared for me to marry him knowing I didn’t want to be married, especially to him, you know what I mean?”
Before he could say anything, she rolled right on.
Waving one hand, then grabbing up fabric again with another curse, she said, “I know he’ll be angry and probably hurt today but sooner or later, he’s going to see that I did the right thing and who knows, maybe he’ll even thank me for it at some point.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Caleb muttered.
“What? Never mind.” Shaking her head, she took a deep breath, looked out over the open road and said, “Even if he doesn’t thank me out loud, he’ll be glad. Eventually. This is better. I mean, I don’t know what to do now, but this is definitely better. For both of us.”
“You sound sure.”
She looked at him again until he felt compelled to meet those forest green eyes of hers however briefly. “I am,” she said. “So thank you. Again.”
“You’re welcome.” Caleb didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with her, so he was headed home. Back at the ranch, she could call her own family. Or a cab. And then she could be on her way and he could get out of this damn suit.
With that thought firmly in mind, Caleb focused on the familiar road stretching out ahead of him and did his best to ignore the beautiful woman sitting way too close to him.
There were wide sweeps of open land dotted with the scrub oaks that grew like weeds in East Texas. Here and there were homes and barns, with horses in paddocks and cattle grazing in the fields. The sky was the kind of clear, deep blue he’d only ever seen in Texas and those few gusting clouds he’d glimpsed earlier had gathered up a few friends.
Everything