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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 was absolutely normal. Except for the bride in his truck.
“Weird day,” he muttered.
“It is, isn’t it?” She whipped her hair out of her eyes to look at him. “I never thought I’d be a fugitive from my own wedding. And I know I’ve said this already, but thank you. I kind of threw myself at you and didn’t give you much room to back off, so I really appreciate you riding to the rescue.”
“I could have said no,” he reminded her.
She tilted her head to one side and studied him. “No, I don’t think you could have.”
He snorted. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She shook her head. “You’ve got the whole ‘responsible’ vibe going on. Anyway, I didn’t know how I was going to get away. Didn’t even think about it. I just ran.”
“Right into me.” And he had gotten a real good feel of the body beneath that ugly-ass gown. High, firm breasts, narrow waist, nicely rounded hips. He frowned and shifted as his own body suddenly went tight and uncomfortable. Hell. Just what he needed.
“Yeah, I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
He glanced at her. “No, you’re not.”
She grinned. “No, I guess I’m really not. Hard to be sorry about finding a white knight.”
He let that one go because he was nobody’s hero.
“So now what?” he asked. “What are you going to do from here?”
She sat back and stared at him. “I have no idea.”
“Well, what was the plan?”
“Like I said, there wasn’t a plan. I just had to get away.” Shaking her head, she stared out the windshield. “I didn’t even know I was going to run until just before I did.”
She’d torn down her hair and now it was a tangled mess of dark red curls that flew around her face in the wind whipping through the opened windows. He’d had the AC on, but she’d shut it off and rolled down her window, insisting she needed to feel the wind on her face. Caleb didn’t know what it said about him that he preferred that hair of hers wild and free to the carefully pinned-up style she’d had when she ran from the club.
She still had the skirt of her wedding dress hiked up to her knees and Caleb took another admiring look at her long slim legs. Then he fixed his gaze on the road again. “Look, I’ll take you out to my ranch—”
“Your ranch.”
“That’s right.”
“Jared said he had a ranch.”
Caleb snorted. “The Goodmans used to run a ranch, generations ago. Now they rent the land out to other ranchers so they can live in town.”
“So I discovered.” She held her hair back, narrowed her eyes on him and asked, “Anyway, we know I’m not crazy.”
“Do we?”
She ignored that. “Now I have to ask. Are you a crazy person?”
Both eyebrows lifted and he snorted a laugh. “What kind of question is that?”
“One I probably should have asked before I hopped into your truck.”
“Good point.” A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth.
“Well, I thought I should ask before we go much further down this pretty empty road.”
Amused in spite of everything, he asked, “What happened to me being a damn hero rescuing you?”
“Oh, you’re still a hero,” she assured him, “but you could be crazy, too. You aren’t, though, are you?”
“Would I admit it if I was?”
“You might.” She shrugged. “There’s no telling with crazy people.”
“Know a lot of nut jobs, do you?” Caleb shook his head, he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.
“A few, but you don’t seem like you’re one of them.” A wide swath of lace lifted into the wind and she snatched it and held it down on her lap. “Have you ever seen so much tulle?”
“What’s tulle?”
“This.” She lifted the swath of netting again. “It’s awful.”
“If you don’t like it, Why’d you buy it?”
“I didn’t.” She sighed. “Jared’s mother picked it out.”
Caleb laughed. “Sounds like her.”
“Okay, you’re not crazy.” She nodded and gave a sigh of satisfaction. “If you don’t like my almost mother-in-law you’re obviously stable.”
“Thanks.” Still shaking his head, he said, “Like I was saying, I’ll take you to the ranch. You can figure out where to go from there.”
“I don’t know where I can go,” she said quietly turning her head to stare out the window at the scenery flying past. “I don’t have my purse, my wallet. God, I don’t even have clothes.”
Caleb didn’t like the sound of the rising hysteria in her voice.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, and her words tumbled over each other in their rush to get out. “My God, I don’t have anything with me.”
“I can take you to an ATM—”
“No purse,” she interrupted. “No wallet, remember? No clothes except for this giant marshmallow of a dress.” She slapped one hand to her chest as if trying to hold her heart inside her body.
“You’re starting to panic,” he pointed out.
“Of course I am.” Her eyes were wild. “Now that I got away, I can think about other things and what I’m thinking is that I’m alone. In a strange place. Don’t know anyone but the people I’m escaping from.”
He watched from the corner of his eye as she shook her head frantically.
“I can’t exactly go over to the Goodmans’ house and say please can I have my things? My clothes. My purse. My ID. My phone.” She dropped her head into her hands and now her face was covered by what looked like an acre of tulle. “This is a nightmare,” she muttered.
“Remember, you wake up from nightmares.”
She lifted her head to glare at him. “Easy for you to say since I’m assuming you actually have a change of clothing.”
“Good point.” He nodded. “Yeah, you’re about the same size as my sister-in-law. You can wear some of her stuff.”
“Great. And what if she doesn’t feel like being generous?”
“She’s out of town.”
A short laugh shot from Shelby’s throat. “So I’ve been on my own about fifteen minutes and already I’m stealing clothes.”
“Not stealing. Borrowing.” He paused. “Are you always this dramatic?”
“Only when my world implodes,” she said and looked at him again. “So basically, I’m homeless and destitute. Well, hasn’t this day turned out all sparkly?”
He laughed.
She narrowed her eyes on him, then reluctantly, laughed herself. “This is not how I pictured my life going.”
“Yeah, not how I saw my day going, either,” he replied, grateful that she seemed to be coming down from that momentary panic.
“Honestly,” she said with another shake of her head, “I didn’t think beyond moving to Texas to marry Prince Charming who turned out to be a frog.”
“And you didn’t notice that right off?”
“No.” She huffed out a breath and turned her face into the wind. “Usually I’m a terrific judge of character.”
When he didn’t agree, she reminded him, “I picked you to rescue me, didn’t I?”
