The Wilde Bunch

He allowed himself to contemplate kissing that sweet mouth. The heat in his loins flared pleasantly. Yes, he liked the idea of kissing her. This past week, he’d finally come to terms with the necessity of having a wife. After all, a woman had to know more about kids than he did; women possessed the acclaimed maternal instinct to guide them. And the availability of a wife would certainly be sexually convenient for him. Having a woman living under his roof and sharing his bed meant he would not have to go elsewhere for feminine companionship. He had discovered that the concept of dating was logistically impossible with four children around. Especially those four!

As for having sex...well, he wasn’t. An ache spread through his body, reminding him that there had been no woman in his bed since the children had come into his life. The long period of enforced celibacy was taking its toll on his nerves and his temper. He couldn’t wait to rectify the situation with his brand-new wife!

Kara cast a covert glance at him, feeling uncomfortable by the intense, almost predatory, glint in his eye. Her experience with men was woefully at odds with her chronological age. She was suddenly tense and on edge. “Is—is it a long drive to Reverend Will’s house in Bear Creek?”

“About three hours to Bear Creek and another twenty-five minutes to the ranch.”

“What ranch?”

“My ranch.”

“You have a ranch?” Interest replaced her vague unease. “A real Western working ranch?”

“Didn’t the Rev tell you about the Double R?” Mac was confused. He’d assumed the pastor would have provided her with at least the basic facts about her new home.

Kara shook her head no. “He talked a little about his own house,” she added, wondering why Mac appeared to be so perplexed. Was his ranch such a showpiece that he assumed it was the natural topic of conversation between any Bear Creek resident and visitor?

Tai chose that moment to utter an earsplitting meow which seemed to echo throughout the Helena airport.

“I can see that Autumn is going to have some competition in the screaming department,” Mac murmured. Just what the household needed, a cat whose meow could shatter glass.

Kara gulped, not quite sure what he was referring to, but had no doubts that he did not appreciate Tai’s no-holds-barred, executive meow. “Tai isn’t a good traveler,” she apologized. “This was his first flight and he’s very unhappy.”

Mac kept staring at her. She found his silence unnerving. “I—I’m glad that I insisted on bringing Tai in the cabin with me, though.” Mac Wilde’s eyes were a deep, dark brown, piercing and intent. When she felt his gaze sweep over her once again, a warm blush stained her cheeks.

“I know he wasn’t too popular with the crew and the other passengers, but I just couldn’t consign him to the freight area of the plane,” she continued, averting her eyes from Mac. “Tai’s never traveled before—it might’ve left lifelong emotional scars.”

“A cat with emotional scars,” Mac repeated. He decided her concern boded well for the kids. After all, if she had empathy for a cat, she would undoubtedly have it for four young orphans who had been uprooted for a second time after their parents’ demise.

“Come on, we’ll pick up your luggage. It should be in the baggage area by now. Then we’ll head out to the ranch.”

“I—I’d rather go to Reverend Franklin’s house.” Kara stood stock-still, clutching Tai’s carrier. “It’s been so long, I just can’t wait to see Uncle Will. Oh, and—and Ginny and the girls, too,” she added quickly.

Mac was not pleased, but he decided her request was not unreasonable. The pastor used to be her stepfather, and it had been five years since they’d seen each other. “Okay,” he agreed. “But I can’t leave the kids for too long.” The prospect of them on the loose made him shudder, considering the havoc they managed to wreak when under supervision. “We’ve really got to get going!”

He headed toward the baggage area, leaving Kara to follow him. She watched his tall muscular frame stride away from her. He had children. It was inevitable that an attractive, virile man such as he would be married with children. She wondered where his wife was and why, if he didn’t like leaving the children for long stretches of time, he had agreed to drive all the way to the airport to pick her up.

She thought about the way he had been looking at her. It didn’t seem right for a married man to stare in that particular way. Unless she was overreacting and misinterpreting? Was she turning into a suspicious spinster who spied a slavering sex fiend in every male who glanced her way?

The notion depressed her. She’d always despised that dreadful old card game Old Maid; now it appeared she was turning into the personification of the losing card. Kara flinched at the thought.

Her shoulders drooping, she trailed after Mac to retrieve her luggage, with the yowling Tai announcing his arrival and issuing complaints to everyone in the airport.

* * *

“How many children do you have?” Kara asked politely as they left the outskirts of Helena in Mac’s sturdy Jeep Cherokee. She’d taken Tai out of his carrier and held him on her lap, which had finally quieted him. But the cat was still tense and on guard, his blue eyes darting around the roomy interior of the vehicle.

“Four,” Mac replied. Surely the reverend had mentioned the children, the sole reason for her journey out here! He glanced across the seat at Kara and saw her stealing a quick glance at him. She flushed a little, embarrassed to be caught looking at him.

“How nice.” Kara continued in those same courteous, impersonal tones.

Mac noted that she was able to say “how nice” with a straight face. Exactly what had the pastor told her, anyway?

The radio was on, and an intensely romantic song pulsed over the airwaves. Kara stroked Tai’s fur and tried to calm her own increasingly taut nerves. She and Mac were alone, enclosed inside, and suddenly the atmosphere seemed disturbingly intimate.

She was acutely aware of his strong masculine presence. She couldn’t keep her eyes from straying to him. His big hands on the wheel, his broad shoulders, the wide powerful chest—Kara took inventory of them all. As if of its own volition, her gaze abruptly dropped lower to glide over his long, muscled legs, though she was careful to avoid the button fly of his jeans.

She was ogling him! Kara was shocked by her own blatant—and completely inappropriate—behavior. She had never actively ogled a man in her entire life and her first chosen target was a married man, a father of four!

It must be jet lag. Kara quickly strove to remedy her appalling lapse.

“How old are the children?” she asked, toying with Tai’s orange-and-black collar. Tai owned twelve different ones and Kara changed them monthly, the color and motif of each coordinating with whatever holiday or activity was associated with that particular month. Orange and black were for October and Halloween.

Mac frowned. This was not going as planned. In the scenario he’d envisioned, Kara arrived in Montana knowing all about her future family, as told to her by her former stepfather. Or was Kara Kirby simply playing dumb, trying to break the ice by asking questions to which she already knew the answers?

The sexy, smoky sounds of a sax filled the car, conjuring up images of a couple moving in rhythm to its beat. His eyes traveled to the curve of Kara’s slender neck where the skin looked as silky soft as her slightly flushed cheeks. He found himself wondering about the taste and feel of her mouth.

“What are the children’s names?” Kara asked a little frantically, her voice rising. He didn’t seem inclined to talk to her, but he was definitely not ignoring her, not when he kept looking at her in that dark, disturbing way. How well did Uncle Will know this man he’d sent to fetch her? she wondered nervously. What if he were one of those seeming pillar-of-the-community types with a hidden Dr. Jekyll alter ego?

“You want to know about the kids.” Mac sighed. “Well, it wouldn’t be fair to sugarcoat it, so I’ll give it to you straight. Lily just turned seventeen. She’s manipulative, sneaky and rebellious, and those are her good points. Brick will be fourteen on New Year’s Day and when he doesn’t find the trouble he’s looking for, he creates it. Autumn is ten and a little ghoul who sees danger in everything and is obsessed with crime and disaster. And finally, Clay, the youngest, is a seven-year-old hellion who lives by his own rules and sees no reason to follow anyone else’s. Needless to say, living with that crew has not been easy.”

Kara gulped. “I suppose not.” Perhaps he was just having a bad day and was venting steam? She decided that that must be the case and tried to come up with some diplomatic comment to offer. “The children’s names are interesting. Rather different.”

“Yeah, rather different,” Mac agreed grimly. “Like they are. Their parents—my brother Reid and his wife, Linda—wanted their names to be something besides a name. They wanted their names to be attached to the earth and be part of nature and the planet or something like that.”

“I think I understand,” Kara murmured. They’re not his children?

Mac was pleased. She hadn’t condemned the kids nor scoffed at Reid and Linda’s hug-a-tree philosophy of life. Kara seemed nonjudgmental and tolerant, exactly what they needed. Relief surged through him. He had made the right decision, bringing her out here. The sooner she moved in, the better for all of them.

“And the children are staying with you now?” Kara tried to put the pieces together.

“They’re living with me permanently. Their parents were killed in a car accident in a chain-collision pileup on one of the L.A. freeways nearly two years ago.”

“How tragic!” Kara was horrified. “Those poor children.”

Mac nodded. “It’s been rough. At first, Linda’s mom moved in with the kids but she barely lasted three months. She couldn’t handle them and was only too glad to escape to her retirement village condo, where kids under twenty-one are banned—even as visitors.”

“Oh, dear,” Kara murmured.

“Next, my brother James and his wife, Eve, decided it was their duty to take the kids. That arrangement lasted one miserable year.”

“The chemistry wasn’t right between the children and their aunt and uncle?” Kara surmised, her voice warm with sympathy.

“You could say that.” Everybody else, himself included, had said a lot more about the kids’ incorrigibility and James and Eve’s repressive rigidity. Not the right chemistry. Now that was putting a benign spin on an impossible situation! Mac liked her lack of negativity. She was going to need it, living with those four young terrorists.

“And after things didn’t work out, you took the children?” Kara prompted.

“They’ve been with me since June. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know much about raising kids. Aside from being one myself a long time ago, I haven’t had any experience with children.” Mac cast a sidelong glance at her. “It’s become clear to me that I’m not cut out to be a bachelor father.”

He was not a married man. Kara felt a peculiar heat suffuse her. She was dealing with the ramifications of having ogled a bachelor when Mac reached for the car phone.

“I’m going to call the kids and tell them we’re on our way.”

Ten rings later, he debated whether or not to hang up. “Why doesn’t someone answer? Where are they?” He glanced at his watch as the phone rang on and on. “It’s five o’clock, they should all be home from school by now.”

“Perhaps they—uh—were detained after school,” Kara suggested. Assigned to detention. Given Mac’s description of the kids, the possibility of punishment could not be ruled out.

Finally a small scared voice came over the line. “Hello?”

“Autumn, it’s Uncle Mac.” Mac breathed a sigh of relief. “What took you so long to answer the phone?”

“I was in my room and I pushed the dresser in front of the door, so it took me a while to move it,” Autumn whispered.

“What were you doing barricaded in your room, Autumn?” Mac braced himself for the answer. “And where are the other kids?”

“I was watching TV, Uncle Mac.”

“In your room? You don’t have a television set in there.”

“I do now,” Autumn said rather proudly. “I dragged the TV from the living room into my room. Uncle Mac, do you know that bad guys in jail try to get pen pals? And if you write to killers in jail, when they get out they’ll come and find you and try to steal your money or kill you.”

“Autumn, I told you that you weren’t allowed to watch any more of those tabloid news shows or talk shows, either,” Mac said sternly.

“Everything else is a rerun,” whined Autumn.

“And you are not to move the TV from the living room. I want you to put it back,” Mac ordered, then paused. “You never did say where the other kids are, Autumn.”

“They’re gone,” Autumn said gloomily. “I don’t know where, they just left. Uncle Mac, what if one of those killers who got out of jail is on his way to kill his pen pal and sees Lily or Brick or Clay and—”

“That’s enough, Autumn,” Mac cut off her morbid speculations. “Don’t you have any idea where the kids are?”

“Not Lily or Brick, but Clay said he was going to ride that big black horse.”

“Blackjack?” Mac choked. “The stallion? God almighty, Autumn, you have to—”

“Uncle Mac, someone’s knocking at the door!” Autumn shrieked into the phone. “Knocking real loud and hard like a murderer!” She let out a bloodcurdling scream audible to everyone in the Jeep.

Tai dug his claws into Kara’s thighs and growled a warning.

“Is she all right?” Kara asked with concern.

“Autumn!” Mac shouted her name a few times before finally reclaiming his niece’s attention. The screaming ceased.

“He says he’s Webb Asher, Uncle Mac. He says he has Clay,” Autumn reported. “He says to open up the door. I’m not going to, though. I think it’s someone pretending to be him. A killer from jail who’s pretending to be Webb,” she concluded dramatically.

“Autumn Wilde, you open that door and put Webb on the line, right now!” Mac commanded.

A few terse moments later, Mac hung up the phone. “My ranch manager caught Clay in the stallion’s pen tossing cookies at Blackjack, trying to make friends so he could get a ride. This is a wild-tempered stallion who could’ve killed him with just one kick. If Webb hadn’t gone down there when he did...” Mac’s stomach lurched. “I’ve got to get back there immediately. Lily and Brick are God-knows-where, and I can’t leave the two little ones home alone. I told Webb to stay with them till I got back, but his tolerance for children doesn’t go far.”

Kara glanced at her watch. “How much longer till we’re in Bear Creek?”

“We’re not going into town. I’ll take another road that will bypass Bear Creek and get us to the ranch faster.”

Kara swallowed her disappointment. Under the circumstances, she could hardly demand that Mac Wilde take her to the Franklin’s house in town before going to his ranch to check on his recalcitrant nieces and nephews.

“I’ll call Uncle Will as soon as we get to the ranch and ask him to pick me up. Then you won’t have to leave the children again to drive me into town.”

Mac frowned. “Can’t you wait until tomorrow to see him? You’ve had a long trip, and there’s no need for the reverend to come out to the ranch after dark.”

“Wait till tomorrow?” Kara echoed. “That’s impossible. I—”

“Let me put this another way. Nobody is going anywhere tonight. We’ll talk about getting you into town to visit the Rev tomorrow.”

“I can’t stay at your ranch overnight!” Kara felt a bolt of panic flash through her.

“Honey, you can and you are. Okay, you’re having an attack of nerves, thinking about meeting the kids. Who wouldn’t? I understand completely. I didn’t spare you the truth, and they are an intimidating bunch. But let’s not forget the reason why you’re here in Montana—”

“Yes, let’s not!” Kara cut in. Paradoxically, the fear she was feeling instilled her with an uncharacteristic boldness. “I’m here to visit Reverend Will Franklin.”

“It’s time to drop the charade, Kara. Let’s be honest with each other and cut the game playing. You know you’re here to marry me and help me raise those kids.”

Two

Kara gaped at him, stunned into speechlessness. Mac’s words seemed to hover tangibly in the air between them. Once again, she felt the heat of intensified color turn her cheeks a scalding pink.

“If—if this is your idea of a joke, I don’t appreciate it.” Kara finally found her voice. She wished she sounded less anxious and more sternly forceful. She had never felt so off-balance in her careful quiet life. “Uncle Will bought my plane ticket and he—”

“No, he didn’t. I paid for that ticket. If the Rev told you otherwise, he was—well, lying.” Mac shrugged at her shocked look of outrage. “Hey, the man is only human, after all. ‘Let he who is without sin’ and all that...”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe that Uncle Will would invite me here, implying that he was paying for my ticket,” she emphasized the word, for Will hadn’t come right out and said that he’d bought it. “That he would be part of some plot to get me out here to m-marry you without ever mentioning you to me? That’s right, he never even mentioned your name, let alone this—this crazy notion you seem to have about—”

“It’s not the way I would’ve handled things myself,” Mac said, frowning his disapproval. “I thought the Rev would be up-front with you. After all, he was the one who came up with the idea in the first place.”

“He wouldn’t do such a thing!” Kara cried. “Not Uncle Will.”

“Listen, baby, Uncle Will dreamed up the whole thing. I didn’t even know you existed, until the Rev told me. He knew I was having trouble with the kids, and we both knew I needed a wife to help me with them. He suggested that you might be willing to come out here and marry me. When you accepted my ticket, I assumed you’d accepted the—uh—position.”

“Ohhh!” Kara covered her burning cheeks with her hands. “This can’t be true!”

“But you know it is.” Mac’s voice was firm.

“No!” Kara closed her eyes, fighting a crushing urge to burst into tears. “I came out here to visit my uncle—”

“He’s your stepfather,” Max said bluntly. “The Rev told me all about his marriage to your mother. I was surprised to hear it. I don’t think anybody in Bear Creek knows he was married before or has a grown stepdaughter.”

“Ex-stepdaughter,” Kara corrected tightly. “Ginny, his wife, made the ex very definite over the years. When I was still a little girl, she told me that I wasn’t allowed to call him Daddy anymore, that he had daughters of his own and I was not to think of myself as one of them.”

“Ouch.”

“Yes, it hurt. He told me to call him Uncle Will, instead. I did as he asked, but for a long time afterward I still thought of him as my dad. My real father died shortly after I was born, and Will was the only father I’d ever known.”

“So he placated his wife at your expense?”

“He had no choice,” Kara loyally defended her former stepfather. “A husband does what he has to do to make his wife happy.”

“Let me rephrase that for you—a wimp caves in and lets the woman have the upper hand,” Mac said scornfully. “And it’s always a big, big mistake.”

“One you’d never make, I’m sure,” Kara murmured, because she simply could not let his chauvinistic remark go unchallenged.

“That’s right,” Mac agreed proudly. It seemed he’d interpreted her challenge as a compliment. He shook his head, bemused. “None of this sounds like the Rev and Ginny I’ve known for the past fifteen years.”

“Uncle Will was heartbroken when my mother left him for another man. So was I.” Kara’s voice grew bleak, remembering that sad time. “Mom always claimed he married Ginny on the rebound and Ginny knew it. That’s why she resented Will’s relationship with me so much. I was a reminder that my mother, and not Ginny, was the great love of his life.”

“It’s hard to imagine the Rev in the role of romantic lead,” Mac said wryly. “And even harder to picture Ginny as a possessive shrew, nasty to little girls. She’s always been so helpful and upbeat.”

“I doubt that even the most helpful, upbeat woman likes to think of herself as second best when it comes to love. Women always found my mother a threat because she was—and still is—a very beautiful woman.”

Kara felt Mac’s eyes upon her, assessing her. Doubtlessly trying to imagine how a very beautiful woman had managed to produce such an ordinary daughter. It was not the first time she’d been confronted with that particular puzzle.

“Unfortunately, I look nothing like my mother. From the pictures I’ve seen, I take after my dad’s side,” she felt compelled to explain. “Average in every way.”

“There is nothing wrong with the way you look,” Mac said gruffly.

Kara shifted uncomfortably and turned her attention to her cat, kneading his fur with gentle fingers. She had never discussed herself or her past so frankly with any man, and she suspected she’d sounded downtrodden and filled with self-pity. Which she was not! She felt a surge of anger at Mac Wilde for putting her into this unholy predicament.

Mac reacted to her silence. “Are you waiting for me to counter with a feature-by-feature rave of your face and figure?” He heaved an impatient sigh. “Look, I’ve never been one of those touchy-feely types who ooze syrupy compliments and pour on the charm. And I—”

“Obviously not,” Kara cut in tartly. “You seem extremely practical with no time or patience for anything dealing with emotion or sentiment. I guess that falls into the dreaded touchy-feely department? Well, has it occurred to you that there might be a direct correlation between your hardheadedness and your need to—to attempt to buy a wife?” She had never been so caustic or outspoken in her life, but somehow Mac brought it out in her.

Mac arched his brows. “At the risk of sounding redundant—ouch!”

He lifted his hand from the wheel to run one long finger along the length of her arm, from her shoulder to her fingertips. “The lady has claws, hmm? Just like her kitty.”

Kara shivered. Though well-protected under the heavy cotton of her sweater, her skin tingled along the path that he’d traced. “Don’t patronize me,” she growled.

“Whatever you say, sweetie.” He flashed a teasing grin.

A quivering spiral of tension coiled in her stomach. When he smiled like that, he was devastating. A fact he probably well knew, lectured a stern little voice in her head. Some cautious feminine instinct warned her that Mac Wilde was not averse to turning on the charm, should it serve his purpose.

Silence descended between them. Kara’s nerves felt stretched to the screaming point as she reviewed this decidedly bizarre situation. Mac Wilde had footed the bill for her journey and in return expected her to marry him and help him raise his four unruly nieces and nephews.

What a preposterous idea! Was he dreaming? Perhaps she’d fallen asleep on the plane and when she opened her eyes, the flight would be landing and Uncle Will would be waiting eagerly at the gate for her.

Mac, on the other hand, did not seem affected by any tension whatsoever. “This is one of my favorite songs,” he announced cheerfully. He turned up the volume and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the beat. “Merle Haggard. ‘That’s the Way Love Goes.’”

It did not go well, according to the lyrics. And Kara knew this absurd idea of his was just doomed to fail.

“I’ll repay you for the cost of my plane ticket, of course.” Kara gulped, wishing she could appear cool and controlled, but failing utterly. “I—I’m terribly sorry about the misunderstanding. This is all so embarrassing. No, it’s beyond embarrassing. It’s absolutely mortifying!”

“I don’t want to be reimbursed. I expect you to honor the terms of our agreement and marry me.”