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The hopelessness in her voice touched his heart—and made him a little uneasy. The word “marriage” always had that effect on Forrest. He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know, Becky. I suppose you will, if you want to.”
She turned her gaze to the pasture, squinting hard, as if in doing so she might be able to see into the future. “I don’t think I will,” she murmured after a long moment. “All the guys just think of me as one of them, never as a female.” She choked back a laugh that sounded dangerously close to a sob. “I can see it now. Thirty years old, a dried-up old maid and still working the Rusty Corral all by myself.”
Forrest dug his boot heels in the heat-dried grass, bringing himself alongside her. He looped an arm around her shoulders, and hugged her to his side. “Aw, now, Becky. It’s not as bad as all that.”
“No,” she said miserably, “it’s worse.”
Forrest heard the defeat in her voice, as well as the loneliness. “Tell you what, Becky,” he offered. “If you’re not married by your thirtieth birthday, hell, I’ll marry you.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide. “Do you mean it?”
“Damn straight.” He pecked a kiss on her cheek, then scooted back against the trailer, dipping the bnm of his hat low over his eyes again. “Of course, by the time you turn thirty, you’ll probably be married and have a litter of snot-nosed kids hanging onto your belt loops.”
Or at least he hoped she did. Forrest Cunningham was a man whose word was as good as law...but he sure as hell wasn’t planning on getting married. Even the thought of marriage and spending the rest of his life saddled with one woman made him shudder in revulsion.
One
Royal, Texas 1999
West Texas.
Damn if it wasn’t the prettiest sight in the whole universe. And Forrest Cunningham should know. Over the years, his travels in the military and those as head of his family’s cattle empire had provided him with the opportunity to see a good portion of the world.
But considering how, at the moment, his view of West Texas was limited to the interior of the Royal Diner with its smoke-stained walls, cracked vinyl-topped bar stools, chipped Formica-topped tables and a beat-up jukebox that had been sitting in the same spot since the Fifties...well, even thinking West Texas was the prettiest sight in the world was probably grounds enough to commit a man.
But, then, Forrest was already questioning his sanity.
It had all started a little over two weeks ago while he and several other members of the exclusive Texas Cattleman’s Club had been on a secret mission in Europe to rescue a princess and her young son.
He snorted at the reminder of the woman whose rescue seemed to be at the core of his current level of discontent. A princess for God’s sake. He glanced in the direction of the counter where the woman in question worked.
Beautiful. That was the only word to describe Anna von Oberland. A mane of thick blond hair. Dark green eyes. A figure that would make any man stand up at attention. Hell, even with an apron tied around her waist she managed to look regal.
A princess.
He snorted again and gave his head a shake as he turned his gaze to the smudged window and the view of the Royal Diner’s parking lot where the wind was thickening the air with sand. A princess in Royal, Texas. Who’d have ever thought? But she was there. And she was a princess. Forrest could attest to both because he’d played a part in snatching her away from the squirrely prince who had wanted to force her into a marriage after her sister’s tragic death so that he could gain control of her estate and merge their kingdoms.
The rescue mission—code-named Alpha—had been the brainchild of Gregory Hunt. Gregory’s brother Blake and Sterling Churchill had made up the rest of the team. Hank Langley had footed the bill for the mission, though Forrest knew damn good and well Hank would have preferred to have been in on the action, rather than staying home and overseeing the operation from the comfort and safety of his office above the Texas Cattleman’s Club.
The thought of his old friend and owner of the private men’s club plowed a deeper row of discontent on Forrest’s brow. Hank Langley was one of his oldest friends and the most eligible bachelor in Royal...or at least he had been. Now Hank was a married man.
And Sterling, too. Who would have ever thought Sterling would walk down that long aisle again? Not after his first marriage had gone sour on him. But he had. And now he had a wife, same as Hank, and seemed as happy as a dog with a new bone. And he was going to be a daddy before long.
Sterling a daddy...
Forrest felt the sense of desolation digging its way deeper inside of him and tried to rope it in before he sunk into a blue funk so deep he couldn’t crawl out. Hell, he told himself, he had just turned thirty-five, was in the prime of his life, had more money than he could shake a stick at, and was the owner of the biggest ranch in West Texas. What did he have to feel blue about?
His shoulders slumped in despair. He didn’t need a psychologist to figure out the answer to that question. He’d already spent hours cogitating on the problem himself and he’d finally come up with the answer.
He needed a wife.
And children.
What was the use of having an empire if a man didn’t have somebody to pass it on to? Someone to carry on the Cunningham name?
The problem was there wasn’t a woman in the entire county whom he wanted to marry. He’d already made a list of all the eligible females he knew, and one-by-one had crossed through their names, ruling them out as possible candidates for the position of the future Mrs. Forrest Cunningham.
“Would you like more coffee?”
Forrest whipped his head around to find Anna standing beside his booth. She held up the coffeepot in silent invitation, its chipped and scarred handle a startling contrast to the graceful and delicate fingers curled around it. He wondered, not for the first time, if the Royal Diner was the best place to try to hide a royal princess. Anna von Oberland—dubbed Annie Grace by the members of the Alpha team in an effort to hide her true identity—stuck out like a rose in a patch of grease wood. He reared back, giving her room, and gestured toward his cup. “Yeah, you can warm it up for me.”
She leaned over to pour and Forrest noticed that her hand shook a bit. Before he could dodge the hot steaming brew that sloshed over the cup’s rim, it splattered across his lap, soaking quickly through his jeans and scalding his flesh.
Seeing what she’d done, Anna cried, “Oh, no!” and whipped a dish towel from the waistband of her apron and began dabbing frantically at the stain. Forrest sucked in a raw breath as her fingers moved dangerously close to his privates. He quickly closed his hand over hers.
“Keep that up and you’re liable to warm up more than just my coffee.”
She snapped her gaze to his. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth formed a perfect O as his meaning slowly registered. Quickly she snatched her hand from his and fisted it behind her back. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, dropping her gaze in embarrassment.
Damn, but she was pretty, Forrest thought as he watched her cheeks turn an engaging shade of pink. Maybe... He quickly squelched the idea. Though nothing had been said, he was sure that there was still something between Anna and his buddy Greg Hunt. After all, it was Greg who Anna had contacted for help, and it was Greg who had headed up the mission to rescue her. And Forrest Cunningham wasn’t the kind of man to trespass on another man’s territory.
He shot her a grin, hoping to put her at ease as he reached for a napkin to finish the job she’d started. “No damage done.”
She gave a cautious look around, then eased closer. “Forrest? I was wondering...have you heard anything from Blake?”
The worry in her voice was obvious and explained the trembling in her hands. He supposed he’d be worried, too, if he was in her shoes. Blake was the last leg of the Alpha mission, and the one assigned to deliver Anna’s niece and nephew to her in Royal.
A bachelor traveling halfway around the world with two babies in tow.
Forrest bit back a grin. He’d give anything to be a fly on the wall right now, so he could see Blake Hunt in the role of a nanny. Changing diapers, singing lullabies. Somehow the picture just didn’t fit. But if anybody could do it, Blake could, he reminded himself. Blake was nothing if he wasn’t resourceful.
Forrest gave Anna an encouraging smile. “Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours about Blake. He’ll get ‘em here safely. You’ll see.”
“It isn’t that I don’t trust him,” she said uneasily. She caught her lower lip between her teeth again. “It’s just that...well, being a single man, I doubt he knows very much about caring for infants.”
Forrest shot her a wink. “That’s what you think. Before he left on the mission, Blake spent days at the library reading every book they had on the subject. He even interviewed ladies around town on how to properly care for an infant. Created quite a stir with his questions, too,” he added, chuckling.
Anna inhaled deeply, then managed a smile. “I’m sure you’re right.” She leaned to give his hand a grateful pat. “Thank you, Forrest. For everything,” she added in a whisper, before turning away.
Forrest watched her cross back to the bar, his eyes going unerringly to the seductive sway of her hips. He gave his head a shake and forced his gaze back to the window. Don’t even think it, he warned himself. Even if he didn’t suspect that Greg had a prior claim on the princess, he knew that Anna wasn’t the woman for him.
So who is? he asked himself, his frustration returning with a force stronger than the wind outside that was currently sandblasting his truck in the diner’s parking lot. He’d already ruled out every eligible woman within a three hundred mile radius of Royal. There wasn’t a single woman left with whom he’d want to share his name, much less his life.
Frowning, he glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was almost two. He had promised to meet Becky at twothirty and inspect a mare that he was having delivered to her ranch.
He started to rise, then slowly sank back down in the booth, his eyes going wide. “Rebecca Lee Sullivan,” he whispered under his breath. Why hadn’t he thought of Becky before now?
Becky as his wife. He toyed with the idea for a moment, weighing the possibilities. She’d lived next door to him for as long as he could remember and was as good a friend as a man could ask for. She liked ranching and horses and wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, unlike most of the women he knew. She wasn’t hard to look at, was self-reliant, and could rope and ride as well as any man, himself included.
Hell! Becky was the perfect woman for a rancher like him!
He quickly fished money from his pocket, tossed it on the table and grabbed his hat. As he strode for the door of the diner, he recalled a conversation that he and Becky had had years before, and a promise he’d made to her at the time.
If you’re not married by your thirtieth birthday, hell, I’ll marry you.
The good news was that Becky hadn’t married and, if memory served him right, her thirtieth birthday was in November, less than six weeks away.
It was all he could do to keep from kicking up his heels as he headed for his truck. If he had his way—and Forrest usually did—he and Miss Rebecca Lee Sullivan would be married by the time her birthday rolled around.
It was all just a matter of him popping the question.
Forrest parked his truck about fifty feet from the round pen where Becky was working a colt and settled back to watch. The colt was one of Forrest’s, bred and raised on the Cunningham ranch, the Golden Steer. He’d hauled the horse over to the Rusty Corral, Becky’s family’s place, just before leaving on the mission to Europe so that Becky could begin training him while he was gone. By the look of things, she’d made good use of the time. The colt was trotting smoothly along the wall of the pen, moving in and out of the obstacle course Becky had set up, while Becky turned a tight circle in the middle, her attention fixed on the young horse. Her arms were outstretched, forming a widemouthed V, one hand gripping a longe line clipped to the colt’s halter and the other dragging a whip along the ground aimed at the colt’s rear hooves.
Forrest pursed his lips thoughtfully and watched, his gaze focused not on the colt, but on the woman. He assessed her as he would a brood mare he was thinking of buying, or a registered cow he was thinking of adding to his herd—one eye narrowed, his brow furrowed in concentration, while he studied her conformation.
Though she was skinny as a rail, she was built tough; Forrest knew that for a fact. And tough was important when a man was thinking of taking on a wife who would be required to live on a ranch as big and isolated as the Golden Steer. He moved his gaze on a slow journey from her battered, sweat-stained hat, down her spine and settled it on the seat of her faded jeans. A frayed tear just below one cheek of her butt exposed a strip of olive-toned skin.
When he realized that he was staring and what he was staring at, he forced his gaze back up to her hips. They were a little narrow, he acknowledged with a frown, trying not to think about that strip of bare skin, but seemed wide enough to handle a birth without much trouble. And though her breasts were small, he didn’t figure size counted much when it came to nursing a babe...and Cunningham women always nursed their young. The natural way, Forrest’s dad had always insisted, whether discussing animals or humans, was the only way. Like his father, Forrest believed that nature knew best and lived by her rules.
She’ll do, he told himself confidently and shouldered open the door of his truck. Standing, he paused a moment to stretch out the kinks in his legs, then slammed the door and headed for the round pen. Becky glanced up at the sound.
A smile bloomed on her face when she saw him. “Hey, Woody!” she called, shoving her hat farther back on her head.
“Hey, yourself,” he returned, not even wincing at the nickname she’d assigned to him years before. He propped a custom-made boot on the corral’s lowest rail, his forearms along the rail at shoulder level, and gave her a nod of approval. “He’s lookin‘ good.”
“Better than good,” she corrected. “Watch this.” Taking a firmer grip on the longe line, she gave the whip a snap in the air and ordered, “Lope.” The colt stepped easily into the faster gait, his head high, his tail streaming behind him. Becky turned slowly in the center of the ring, her gaze fixed on the animal as he circled the pen, weaving a path around the barriers she’d set up, and pushing his way through a tarp she’d strung between two poles. “Whoa!” she called suddenly and followed the command with a slight tug on the line. The colt sank bank on his haunches, churning dust as he slid to a stop.
Pleased with the demonstration, Becky moved to the colt’s head and rubbed the white star that ran from his forehead to his nose. “Good, boy,” she murmured, pressing her cheek against his. “Good, boy.” He turned his head slightly and gave her a playful nudge. She laughed as she coiled the longe line in her gloved hand, then led the colt to where Forrest stood. “Better than good, right?”
Though he knew she was looking for praise, Forrest couldn’t resist teasing her a little. “Depends on a person’s definition of good.”
Becky shot him a sour look, then turned to tie the colt at the rail. “How many green horses have you seen that wouldn’t have spooked at that flapping tarp?”
“A few.”
Her scowl deepened and she gave her slip knot a yank, testing it, before she headed for the gate. Forrest opened it for her and waited while she stepped through.
“Ingrate,” she muttered darkly as she passed by him.
“Show-off,” he returned, grinning, then locked the gate behind her.
“Where’ve you’ve been keeping yourself?” she said irritably. “I haven’t laid eyes on you since before you took off on that vacation in Europe you were so hushhush about.”
Though he knew exactly where he’d been—wining and dining the female population of Ward County while ruling out all the possibilities as candidates for the position as his future wife—Forrest thought it best not to tell Becky that. She was a woman, after all, and might not like the idea that she wasn’t his first choice. “Oh, around,” he said vaguely.
She snorted and pulled off her hat. “When are they delivering the mare?”
“Anytime now,” he replied, watching as her red hair settled around her shoulders. He’d never noticed how thick her long hair was, or the golden highlights hidden in it, until that moment when the sun hit the red mane, panning the gold from its depths. But then he’d never really thought much about the feminine side of Becky. To him, she was a buddy, same as Sterling and Hank.
While he watched, fascinated by this new side of her he was discovering, she bent at the waist and scrubbed her fingers through her hair, separating the damp locks, then straightened, flipping her hair back over her head and behind her shoulders. The sun caught the red and gold highlights and turned them to fire.
Redheaded kids. Forrest pondered the idea for a moment, wondering if Becky’s red gene would dominate his black one... then decided a redhead might be a welcome change among the traditionally black-headed Cunninghams.
Yep, Rebecca Lee Sullivan would do just fine as the future Mrs. Forrest Cunningham. Trying to think of a way to pop the question to her, he draped an arm along her shoulders and guided her toward the barn and the only strip of shade in sight. “Did you miss me while I was gone?”
“‘Bout as much as I’d miss a toothache.”
He bumped his hip against hers. “Aww, come on now, Becky. You know you missed me.”
She stopped once they reached the shade and folded her arms over her breasts as she turned to look up at him. “Did you miss me?” she returned pointedly.
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
Her brows shot up at his unexpected response, then down into a frown. “Yeah, right,” she muttered and slapped her hat against her thigh to shake the dust from it. She turned her back to the barn and propped a worn boot heel against its side as she settled her shoulders against the weathered wood.
“No, I really did,” he insisted. “In fact, I was thinking about you just this afternoon while I was eating lunch at the Royal Diner.”
She glanced up at him. “Why?” she asked dryly. “Did you have indigestion, or something?”
Forrest laughed and reached over to tousle her hair. “Naw. I was just thinking about you—us. You know,” he said, suddenly feeling awkward, “how long we’ve known each other, and all.”
She peered at him closely. “You didn’t get hit in the head, or anything, while you were in Europe, did you?”
Forrest snorted and pulled off his hat, slowly turning it by its brim as he studied it. “No. There’s nothing wrong with my head.”
Becky gave her chin a quick jerk of approval. “Good. You had me worried there for a minute.”
Forrest moved to stand beside her, mirroring her posture—boot heel and shoulders braced against the barn wall. He stared out across Sullivan land to the fence that marked the border of the Golden Steer. “How long have you and your dad lived here?” he asked. He was close enough to feel her shoulder move when she lifted it in a shrug.
“I don’t know. ‘Bout twenty years or so, I’d guess.”
“Twenty years,” he repeated, then shook his head. “That’s a long time. A mighty long time.”
Becky gave him a curious look. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“You have a birthday coming up, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” she replied slowly, then scrunched up her nose and leaned to look more closely at him. “Are you sure you didn’t get hit in the head?”
Frustrated, Forrest pushed himself away from the wall, and whirled to face her. He’d forgotten how aggravating Becky could be at times. “Why do you keep asking me if there’s something wrong with my head?”
She lifted a shoulder again, then slid down the wall until she was sitting on the ground. Dropping her hat over her upraised knees, she brushed dust from its crown. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I guess it’s because you’re not usually this sentimental.”
He hauled in a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He couldn’t very well propose marriage while they were arguing. “No, I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about things now and again.” He hunkered down in front of her. “Do you remember the time we were out rounding up steers? You would’ve been eighteen or so at the time, and you were crying because no one had invited you to the Cattleman’s Ball.”
Her lips thinned at the reminder and she looked up at him, her green eyes sparking fire. “I don’t cry,” she informed him coldly. “And I don’t give a hoot about going to any old ball. Never have.”
Forrest had to count backward from ten to keep from debating the issue with her. He knew damn good and well she’d cried. He remembered the day well, because he’d never seen her cry before...and not once, since. “Yeah, well, anyway, you said something that day—or rather asked me something—that I’ve never forgotten. You said to me, ‘Woody, do you think I’ll ever get married?’” He gave his head a rueful shake as he turned his gaze to his hat. “Damn near broke my heart.” He cocked his head to look at her. “I promised you right then and there that if you weren’t married by your thirtieth birthday, that I’d marry you myself.”
