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“Upstairs.”
“Get your clothes. You’re going home with me.”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no. N-O. It’s a two-letter word signifying refusal.”
He flattened his hands on the table to keep himself from grabbing her and giving her a good shaking, or from pulling her onto his lap and kissing her senseless. Right at the moment, he wasn’t certain which it would be. “I’m not putting up with this,
Maddie. Get upstairs and get your clothes.” Despite himself, he couldn’t keep his voice down, and the two cowboys were openly staring at him.
She slid out of the booth and was on her feet before he could grab her, and he was reminded that, when she chose, Maddie could move like the wind. “Give me one good reason why I should!” she fired back at him, the chill in her eyes beginning to heat now.
“Because you’re carrying my baby!” he roared, surging to his own feet.
“You’re the one who said, quote, that you didn’t care what the hell I did and that you regret marrying me, unquote. I was carrying the baby then, too, so what’s different now?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Well, bully for you! You also told me that I’m not what you want and I don’t have what it takes to be a ranch wife. That’s another quote.”
One of the cowboys cleared his throat. “You sure look like you’ve got what it takes to me, Miss Maddie.”
Reese rounded on the cowboy with death in his eyes and his fist clenched. “Do you want to wear your teeth or carry them?” he asked in an almost soundless voice.
The cowboy still seemed to be having trouble with his throat. He cleared it again, but it took him two tries before he managed to say, “Just making a comment.”
“Then make it outside. This is between me and my wife.”
In the West, a man broke his own horses and killed his own snakes, and everybody else kept their nose the hell out of his business. The cowboy fumbled in his pocket for a couple of bills and laid them on the counter. “Let’s go,” he said to his friend.
“You go on.” The other cowboy forked up a fry covered in ketchup. “I’m not through eating.” Or watching the show, either.
Floris came through the kitchen door, her sour expression intact and a spatula in her hand. “Who’s making all the noise out here?” she demanded; then her gaze fell on Reese. “Oh, it’s you.” She made it sound as if he were about as welcome as the plague.
“I’ve come to take Maddie home,” he said.
“Don’t see why she’d want to go, you being so sweet-tempered and all.”
“She’s my wife.”
“She can wait on men here and get paid for it.” She shook the spatula at him. “What have you got to offer her besides that log in your pants?”
Reese’s jaw was like granite. He could toss Madelyn over his shoulder and carry her home, but even though he was willing to bully her, he didn’t want to physically force her. For one thing, she was pregnant, but more important, he wanted her to go home with him because she wanted to. One look at her face told him that she wasn’t going to willingly take a step toward the ranch.
Well, he knew where she was now. She hadn’t gone back to New York. She was within reach, and he wasn’t giving up. With one last violent look at her, he threw his money on the table and stomped out.
Madelyn slowly let out the breath she’d been holding. That had been close. He was evidently as determined to take her back to the ranch as he was to believe she was a clone of his first wife. And if she knew one thing about Reese Duncan, it was that he was as stubborn as any mule, and he didn’t give up. He’d be back.
She picked up his untouched coffee and carried it back to the counter. Floris looked at the door that was still quivering from the force with which Reese had slammed it, then turned to Madelyn with the most incredible expression on her face. It was like watching the desert floor crack as her leathered skin moved and rearranged itself, and a look of unholy glee came into her eyes. The two cowboys watched in shock as Floris actually smiled.
The older woman held out her hand, palm up and fingers stiffly extended. Madelyn slapped her own hand down on it in victory, then reversed the position for Floris’s slap as they gave each other a congratulatory low five.
“Wife one, husband zero,” Floris said with immense satisfaction.
HE WAS BACK the next day, sliding into a booth and watching her with hooded eyes as she took care of the customers. The little café was unusually busy today, and he wondered with a sourness that would have done credit to Floris if it was because word of their confrontation the day before had spread. There was nothing like a free floor show to draw people in.
