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“Mother of five, you said.”
Maya nodded.
“So the cute one with the short, raven hair who’s tending bar and sending me daggers would be…?”
“That’s my sister Melusine. She’s kicked the stuffing out of some of the baddest men in town. Some of them for far less serious offenses than calling her cute.”
He lifted his brows. “But she’s so small.”
“She’s strong and she’s fast, and most importantly, she’s mean. Hot tempered anyway. Rides a motorcycle and takes karate lessons. Goes rock climbing. She’s a year younger than me, but she kind of sees herself as the protector of the bunch. Guess she figured if our father wasn’t around to do it, someone had to.”
He nodded, searching her eyes. There had been a flash of pain when she’d mentioned her father. “Would I be out of line if I asked what happened—to your father, I mean?”
She smiled up at him as they moved to the music. “Stick around this town more than five minutes and you’ll hear all about it. It’s the juiciest gossip Big Falls has ever had.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Most everyone is.”
The music stopped, the dance ended. Maya turned to her group. “Ten-minute break. You know the drill.” Some of them wandered off to tables, the rest room, the bar, while others just stepped closer together and wrapped their arms around each other as a slow, sad song came wafting from the speakers.
Before Maya could turn to go, Caleb slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close, started moving her slowly in time to the steel guitar. She tilted her head curiously but didn’t pull away. She put her arms around his neck and smiled a little nervously.
“Tell me about your father,” he urged her. He wanted to know all about this woman for some reason. Why did she so intrigue him? Was it because she was exactly the opposite of the political wife his father and the others had described to him? Or was it something more?
She shrugged. “Okay. It’s public knowledge, anyway. My father met my mother when she was seventeen. They had a brief affair, and then he went his way and she went hers. By the time she found him again to tell him she was pregnant, he was on the East Coast with a wife of his own. Still, time passed, and he came back. Told Mom things hadn’t worked out with his first wife, that they’d split up, and he asked her to marry him. She did.”
“Doesn’t sound so scandalous to me,” he said. He was listening as much to the sound of her voice as to her story. Her tone was deep, rich. Erotically husky.
“Well, that’s because I haven’t gotten to the scandal yet. See, Daddy-Dearest wasn’t divorced from his first wife at all. Not even separated from her. For ten years he managed to get by with two families. He traveled all the time on business—or we thought it was on business. What he was doing was dividing his time between the wife he had in Silver City and the one he had here in Big Falls, Oklahoma.”
“He was a bigamist?”
She waggled her brows. “Told you it was scandalous.”
“So what happened?” he asked. “Where is he now?”
Maya lowered her head. “He got involved with a bad crowd in Silver City. In the end he tried to mess with the wrong people and was murdered, along with his wife. I never did learn what became of the two kids he had with her. It was only after he was dead that we found out about his other life. By then my mother had five daughters, every last one of us illegitimate. I was young at the time, but I remember it like it was yesterday. It damn near destroyed Mom.” She lifted her head, looked across the room with admiration in her eyes. “But she came through it.”
“She must be one hell of a woman,” he said.
She looked up at him. “She is.”
“And she’s raised one hell of a daughter,” he said.
She lowered her head quickly. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“I know you well enough to know that I’d like to know you better, Maya Brand. I’d like that a lot.”
Thick lashes lowered; then she glanced up from beneath them. “I…think I’d like that, too.”
“I’m awfully glad to hear that.” He leaned in closer, intending to steal a kiss, but she artfully turned her face away before he could accomplish that. When he lifted his head again, he felt eyes on them from everywhere in the bar, and he thought maybe that was why. Her sisters, her mother—and for some reason, every customer in the place—seemed to be watching them intently.
Okay. So he was going to have to get her alone if he wanted to do anything more than dance with her. It shouldn’t be a problem. Nothing he’d ever wanted in life had been difficult for him to have. Especially women.
