The Buckhorn Brothers Box Set: Sawyer\Morgan\Gabe\Jordan (46 page)

Casey blinked, then quickly averted his gaze. “I didn’t see a thing.”

“Make sure you don’t repeat a thing, either.”

Casey waved him off, too sleepy to care. Misty groaned. “How do you always embarrass me like this?”

“Why would you be embarrassed?” He went down the hall to his room and once inside he nudged the door closed. He didn’t immediately put her in the bed; he liked the feel of her in his arms, the trusting way she accepted him.

“What will Casey think?”

“That I’ve got too much sense to sleep alone with you nearby.” When she didn’t comment on that he turned her slightly to see her face. Her eyes were closed, her expression relaxed. Not really wanting to, he gently lowered her to the mattress and climbed in beside her. “Sleep, sweetheart. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Before he could pull her against him, she had her arm around his waist, her head on his shoulder and one thigh covering his. And damn, it felt right. He wanted to sleep this way every night for the rest of his life.

Misty kissed his chest. “I’m awake now, you know.”

Her voice was even huskier, and he eyed her in the darkness. “Shh. Don’t tempt me. It’s late and we both need some sleep.” And he fully intended to explain a few things to her before he made love to her again.

Her soft little hand slipped down his stomach, making him suck in a deep breath. “Malone,” he growled in warning. “Behave yourself.”

She sat up, and he expected her to start arguing. He grinned, wondering what she would say, if she’d come right out and admit that she wanted him enough to force the issue.

Instead, she shifted around, and when she curled up against him again, she was naked. She shimmied onto his chest, cupped his face in both hands and said teasingly, “Don’t make me get rough with you, Morgan.”

He stroked the long, silky line of her back to her lush bottom and gave up. “All right, but be gentle with me. I’ve had a trying night.” She laughed at that, her first kiss kind of ticklish and silly. But he had both hands on her bottom now and the second his fingers started to explore she groaned, and for the next hour neither one of them thought of sleep.

* * *

M
ORNING SUNLIGHT
nearly blinded him when he heard Misty’s soft, pain-filled moan. He immediately sat up to look at her. She had both hands holding her middle, her mouth pinched shut and her eyes closed. She looked pale. He said very quietly, “Morning sickness?”

She gave a brief nod. “It hasn’t been this bad lately. But I don’t usually wake up with a hairy thigh over my belly, either.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Morgan shifted away from her, trying not to shake the bed overly, then said, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Malone?”

“All right.”

He pulled on jeans and darted into the kitchen. Honey was there, and Casey and Gabe. They all smiled at him and treated him to a round of inanities. He grumbled his own greetings, then stuck bread in the toaster and water on to boil. He glanced at Casey, who pursed his mouth, silently assuring Morgan he hadn’t said a word about Misty.

Not that it mattered now, anyway. The world would soon know how he felt about that woman.

“What exactly are you doing?” Gabe asked as Morgan dug out a tea bag. Everyone in the family knew for a fact he wasn’t a tea drinker.

“Misty has morning sickness. Mom said nibbling on dry toast and sipping sweet hot tea before she got out of bed would help.”

“Ah.”

Honey started to rise from her chair. “If Misty’s sick—”

Gabe caught her arm, earning Morgan’s gratitude. “It’s nothing Morgan can’t handle. Isn’t that right, Morgan?”

“It’s under control.” He set the toast and tea on a tray and left the room. He heard Gabe chuckling, then some whispering, but he didn’t care. He was going to ask Misty to marry him, so they could gossip all they wanted.

Misty was still flat on her back in the bed when he reached her side. “I have a remedy here. First, nibble a few bites of toast…that’s it. No, don’t argue. I promise, it’ll help.”

Crumbs landed on her chest, and he brushed them away. He imagined he’d have to change his sheets more often if this ritual continued, though his mother had claimed the morning sickness usually didn’t last that long. Generally not past the first trimester, and Misty should be about through that.

“Now some hot tea.”

“I hate tea.”

“Tough. It’ll help. And I made this real sweet.”

She sipped carefully while he held her head, then sighed. “Not bad.”

After several minutes of repeating the procedure, she cautiously sat up and smiled. “You’re a miracle worker. I won’t even need to sneak off to the lake.”

Morgan smoothed her hair, thinking she was about the most precious-looking woman first thing in the morning, with her eyes puffy, a crease on her cheek from the pillow. He frowned at himself. “If you ever do want to go to the lake, let me know and I’ll keep you company, okay?”

Instead of answering him, she asked, “You’ve taken care of a lot of pregnant ladies, huh?”

“No, you’re my first. Why?”

“How’d you know the toast and tea would help?”

She was naked under the sheet, which barely kept her nipples concealed. Now that she no longer felt sick, talking required major concentration on his part. “I asked my mother.”

She jumped so hard she spilled her tea. Yep, his sheets were in for a lot of washing.

He eyed the spill on the top sheet and started to pull it away from her before she got soaked, but she gripped it tightly to her chin and glared at him. “You did what?”

She sounded like a frog. “I asked my mother. I figured she had four kids so she had to have had morning sickness, right? She told me what worked for her. And by the way, she sends her love.”

Misty pulled her knees up and dropped her head. “I don’t believe this,” was her muffled complaint.

Morgan smoothed her hair again. He loved her hair, shiny black and silky. Between the two of them, they’d likely have dark-haired children. He wondered if their eyes would be dark blue like his, or vivid blue like Misty’s. It didn’t matter to him one whit. “Will you marry me, Misty?”

She jerked upright and thwacked her skull on the headboard. With a wince, she rubbed her head, then eyed Morgan. “What did you say?”

Damn. Morgan took in her expression of stark disbelief and faltered. Her eyes were narrowed, her pupils dilated. Her soft mouth was pinched tight.

And he was hard again.

“I said,” he muttered through his teeth, “will you marry me?”

“Why?”

Morgan stiffened, and he knew his damn face was heating. He hadn’t blushed since sixth grade! “What the hell do you mean,
why?
”

She didn’t blink, didn’t look away from him. As if talking to a nitwit, she asked slowly, “Why do
you
want to marry
me?
”

A knock on the door saved him from trying to give a stammering reply. He sure as hell hadn’t expected her to answer his proposal with an interrogation. He gave her a glare, waited until she’d pulled the sheet higher, then called out, “Come in.”

Gabe stuck his head in the door. He kept his gaze resolutely on Morgan, and not on Misty. “You have a phone call.”

“Take a message.”

“Uh, Morgan, it’s from out of town. I think you’ll want to take it.”

He could tell by Gabe’s tone who the caller was. Hating the interruption, even while he was relieved by it, he stood. “I’ll be right back.”

Misty nodded, her face almost blank.

He put his hands on his hips. “We’ll finish this conversation when I get off the phone.”

“All right.”

She sounded far from enthusiastic, and he wanted to demand to know how she felt, but knew he’d do better to bide his time. Patience, more often than not, wasn’t his virtue.

He didn’t look at her again as he left the room.

Twenty minutes later he was lounging against the wall outside the hall bathroom when Misty finally emerged, fresh from her shower. She put on her brakes when she saw him and stared at him warily without saying a word.

Morgan noticed her wet hair, her pink cheeks, her bare feet. She had on a T-shirt and loose cotton drawstring pants. “You going somewhere?”

“I have to be at the diner in about an hour.”

He wanted to curse, to insist she skip work today, but he knew without even asking that he’d be wasting his breath. The woman was bound and determined to make all the money she could. Well, that’d be over with soon enough.

“All right. Then I guess we ought to get right to it.”

“You’re going to tell me why you want to marry me?”

There was no one else in the hallway, but he’d definitely prefer more guaranteed privacy. He took her arm and led her to his room. When he closed the door, he leaned against it and watched her. “Do you remember a woman named Victoria Markum?”

Misty backed up until her knees hit his mattress, then dropped onto it. “Yes. She was Mr. Collins’s girlfriend.”

He nodded. “Well, I hired some people to talk to her.”

She frowned in confusion. “You hired people?” At his nod, she asked, “But why?”

“To prove your innocence. And don’t give me that look, Malone. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to start squawking about me spending my money. This is something I wanted to do, all right?”

“I’ll pay you back—”

“The hell you will.” Morgan went to her and sat beside her, then took her hands. “Can’t you just accept that I care and I want to help?”

She searched his face for a long time before she grudgingly said, “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

“You could ask me what I found out.”

“All right.” She bit her lip, her face filled with anxiety. “I hope, judging by the way you’re acting, it’s good news?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. You see, Malone, I believed you when you said you hadn’t taken the money. That meant someone else did, of course. I wondered if perhaps Ms. Markum might have done it.”

Misty squeezed his fingers; her hands were ice cold. “I never even considered that. I kept wondering if someone had managed to slip into the store and open the register while I was in the rest room, or if maybe the money had just been miscounted, but…Victoria didn’t seem like a thief to me. She was…I don’t know. Too ditzy. And I think they were planning on getting married, so she’d have been sort of stealing from herself, right?”

Morgan held both her hands between his own to warm them. “Actually, they were planning on marrying, or at least, Ms. Markum was. But we found out that Ms. Markum and your boss had a falling out. He, it seems, took the money she’d been holding for him in her own savings account, and ran with it, so she was more than willing to talk to us. It didn’t even take much prodding, from what the investigator told me. You see, she didn’t steal the money…but he did.”

“What?”

“Collins had been skimming from himself. Ms. Markum may be a ditz, but she has facts and dates and exact amounts that should corroborate her testimony. All we need to do now is contact your lawyer, who can file for a motion for the first trial to be declared a mistrial, based on the new evidence. The second trial should be scheduled quickly, probably within a month, because they won’t want you serving more of a sentence than you’ve already had to.”

She shook her head. “It can’t be that easy.”

“Actually it is.” He smiled, trying to reassure her. “Well, you’ll have to see the judge again, of course, but this time I’ll be with you.”

She stared at him in amazement, her bottom lip starting to quiver.

“Now, Malone,” he said uneasily, “don’t cry. I can’t stand it.”

Big tears welled in her eyes anyway. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”

He pulled her close and kissed the tip of her nose, which was starting to turn red. “I want you to be happy.”

She launched herself against him, knocking him back on the bed. She kissed his face, his throat, his ear. Morgan laughed even as he felt himself harden. There was no way Misty Malone could crawl all over him without turning him on. He caught her mouth and held her still for the deep thrust of his tongue, but pulled back slowly before he completely lost control.

He held her head to his shoulder and smiled. “That’s one problem taken care of.”

She squeezed him tight. “You are the most amazing man.”

Laughing, Morgan growled, “So you keep telling me. Now answer my other question. Will you marry me?”

She went still. Very slowly she raised her face. “You still haven’t told me why you want to marry me.”

Because he’d had a few minutes to come up with a reply, he said easily, “You’re sexy and beautiful.”

Her smile was radiant. “You’re sexy and beautiful, too, but that’s not a good reason to tie yourself to someone for life.”

He snorted at her compliment. “We have great sex together. Hell, I still feel singed.”

Her smile melted away and her eyes darkened. “Me, too. It was the most incredible thing. I’d never imagined sex could be like that.” She brushed a kiss over his jaw, then added, “But we don’t have to get married to have great sex. For as long as I’m here, I’m willing, Morgan.”

His stomach started to cramp. She wasn’t saying yes, and in fact, she was making a lot of excuses to cancel out every reason he gave her. But there was one reason she couldn’t refute. “You’re pregnant.”

“The baby isn’t your responsibility.”

“It is if I want to make it my responsibility.”

“Oh, Morgan. You’re not thinking straight. You can’t really want to be a fill-in for another man’s child.”

“The baby will be mine if you marry me.”

She touched gentle fingers to his mouth and her expression was one of wonderment. “You say that now because you’re feeling protective of me, just like you feel about everyone. But I don’t need you to take care of me, Morgan. I can take care of myself, and the baby.”

Morgan moved swiftly, rolling her beneath him before she could draw a deep breath. “Let me tell you something, Misty Malone. What you know about men doesn’t add up to jack. And for your information, I don’t care that the baby isn’t mine. It’s yours, and that’s all that matters to me.”

She shook her head, making him curse. He caught her hands and raised them over her head. “I’m going to tell you a little story.”