Too Stubborn To Marry Read online

  “I’ve been trying.” Brutus tried not to whine. He knew how Caesar hated it when he whined. “I—I’ve been calling each name on the list, but most times I—I get answering machines…”

  Caesar only held up two fingers this time. It was enough to cut off Brutus’s stumbling voice. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t I just inform you that I don’t care to hear any further excuses?”

  Brutus bowed his head. “Yes, Caesar.”

  “Then get the job done. Or I’ll do it myself.”

  WHEN THE TIME CAME for Fred to say good-night at her front door, Courtney wasn’t surprised that Ryan just stood there, refusing to leave them alone. She knew it would be useless asking him for some privacy. Not in the mood he was in this evening. He was hell-bent on making trouble.

  Which left her with one option. Cupping Fred’s face with her hands, she planted a huge kiss, a kiss that meant business, on his mouth. Then, giving Ryan a triumphant look, she sashayed into the apartment leaving a stunned Fred and a furious Ryan behind.

  Once he’d collected himself enough to go inside, Ryan found Courtney standing in the middle of the living room, her arms wrapped around her waist, her toe tapping impatiently, her big brown eyes flashing angrily. “I don’t believe your unmitigated gall!”

  “Me?” he shot back. “What about you? You’re the one who bit me. And then you actually had the nerve to kiss that pencil-pushing wimp as if you meant it.”

  “I did mean it. And that wimp…I mean Fred can offer me more than you ever could.”

  The expression on his face tightened. “More money you mean?”

  “No.” Stung, she took several steps back. “You never knew me at all, did you?”

  “I knew you pretty damn well.”

  “My body, maybe. Not my heart. Fred can offer me the security of a commitment, which is more than you were ever willing to do. You wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t been ordered to, if it didn’t involve a case you were working on. So don’t you dare think you can waltz into town and stir up trouble and ruin my life here. I’ve worked hard to create the new me—a woman who is serious and dependable.”

  “Why would you want to? There was nothing wrong with the woman you were in Chicago.”

  There obviously had been something wrong with her or he wouldn’t have left her. But that was all water under the bridge. She’d built new bridges here, going in new directions. And she’d steamroll over any sexy U.S. Marshal who got in her way, lopsided smile or not.

  She picked up his sleeping bag and tossed it to him. “Don’t get too comfortable, you won’t be here long.”

  BY THE NEXT MORNING Ryan was honestly able to say that he hadn’t gotten too comfortable sleeping on her floor. But that was as much the fault of his mind—which refused to stop replaying every moment he’d ever spent with Courtney between a pair of cool sheets—as it was his body, which contributed to the problem by remaining in a state of high alert.

  There was no denying that the change in her disturbed him. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted back the exuberant woman he’d known in Chicago. He refused to think about what he wanted to do with her once the original Courtney resurfaced.

  He missed the old Courtney’s spontaneity. That’s the way she’d always been and he wanted her that way again. Normally he was the methodical one, planning each step forward. Well, he wasn’t about to forget his official reason for sticking with Courtney: keeping her safe and keeping his own job.

  Before he did anything, he had to get Courtney to trust him again. She wasn’t about to reveal her uncle’s location if she was so mad at Ryan she wasn’t speaking to him.

  So he tried to make amends over a bowl of cornflakes, all the while remembering the wild mixtures of kids’ cereals that Courtney used to concoct when they’d been together. In those days he’d often wished she’d had a more mainstream taste in breakfast food.

  Trying to be courteous, he attempted to come up with a neutral topic of conversation. “How did you end up in Fell, Oregon anyway?”

  “I liked the look of it.” She wasn’t about to tell him that this is where her money ran out after leaving her last job working in a ski resort in Colorado.

  “It’s a strange name for a town.”

  She immediately defended her new hometown. “I like it. It got its name from the first family that settled here. They were traveling the Oregon Trail when they tried to take a shortcut and got lost. The family’s covered wagon hit a big bump in the trail and the son fell out of the back. Miraculously he wasn’t hurt. In appreciation, they named the place Fell and set up housekeeping.”

  Imagining setting up housekeeping with Courtney again had a certain amount of appeal for Ryan. They had had a lot of fun together. More than that, he’d fallen for her like he’d never fallen for a woman before, or since. But his job still stood as a wall between them getting back together, now more than ever. Yet he couldn’t help thinking what it would be like having her in his life again.

  “So, what are we going to do today?” he asked.

  She’d hoped to attend a Little League baseball game, but didn’t feel up to introducing Ryan to her friends and their children. He’d already aroused Fred’s suspicions. And aroused her. “I have no idea what you’ll be doing, but I have some errands to run and some wash to do.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll be doing.”

  She shot him a skeptical look. “Last I heard you didn’t know one end of a washing machine from the other.”

  “I’ll watch, not wash.”

  “Watch like you did last night?” she demanded.

  Ryan didn’t want her reminding him of last night and the kiss he’d seen her give Fred. “He’s not right for you.”

  “Like you’d know who is right for me,” she scoffed, getting up to rinse her cereal bowl in the sink.

  Ryan watched her. The leggings she wore showed off her lovely long legs better than anything he’d seen her dressed in so far. Her T-shirt was loose and baggy. She’d probably chosen it to hide her figure, but it only made him long to slip his hands beneath it and feel her soft skin, hold her breasts in the palms of his hands.

  “This act of yours is bound to ricochet back on you, you know,” Ryan murmured.

  His words made her nervous. “What act?” Did he suspect that it was Anton, not a girlfriend, who’d phoned her last night?

  “This act that you’re a beige woman with neutral furniture.”

  “You’re not making any sense. You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and already you’re incoherent.” She stole a quick glance in his direction, noticing that he’d changed his T-shirt beneath the flannel shirt Today it was navy blue instead of white.

  He still looked entirely too good for comfort. You’d think that spending the night in a sleeping bag on her living room floor would make him look a little worse for wear. His tousled hair and bedroom eyes were sexier than ever. Her fingers twitched with the temptation to comb through his hair. Curses. “How long do you think this setup can last?”

  “However long it takes to catch Anton. You could try helping me instead of fighting me and maybe we’d get this matter solved faster. Unless you enjoy having me around?” he suggested with feigned hopefulness.

  She stopped her busywork tidying the kitchen and faced him, obviously eager to help him on his way. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything you know about your uncle.”

  “I’ve known my uncle since I was a little girl,” she said. “There’s no way I can tell you everything in a few minutes.”

  Ryan made himself more comfortable in the kitchen chair, leaning it back on two legs while lazily remarking, “Take your time.”

  “So that you can try to trip me up into revealing something I shouldn’t?”

  “What do you have to hide?”

  The fact that Anton had called her. The fact that he had no intention of turning himself in to the authorities, authorities he felt were not capable of protecting him.

&
nbsp; Maybe if she explained that to Ryan…“You have to understand something about my uncle. He has good reason to distrust government agents.”

  “He had no reason to distrust me.”

  “So you were the one who was in charge of this mess. I knew it!”

  Ryan thunked the chair back on all four of its legs, irritation evident in both his body language and his voice. “I trusted your uncle to behave himself without supervision in the bathroom for ten minutes. He crawled out of the damn window. I still don’t know how he managed that, it wasn’t big enough to spit through.”

  Courtney smiled with satisfaction, pleased at how annoyed Ryan was. “It’s in his blood. His parents were in the circus. He’s something of a contortionist.”

  “You don’t have to sound so proud of it. He did something very stupid and dangerous, not to mention illegal. He’s been subpoenaed to testify in the case against the Zopos.”

  “Given his experience in communist Czechoslovakia, he doesn’t trust anyone wearing a uniform. That includes you.”

  “I don’t wear a uniform.” Ryan tugged on his flannel shirt to reiterate that fact.

  Courtney refused to get distracted by his sexy body. “That’s a technicality. He doesn’t trust a government bureaucracy to take care of him.”

  “But you could convince him to trust me.”

  “How can I do that when I don’t trust you myself?”

  Her words angered him. “You were the one who walked out on our relationship.”

  “Only after you made it clear that you had no room for me in your future.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he denied.

  “It most certainly was. And I don’t aim on making the same mistake twice.”

  “Is that why you’re hanging out with Fred the friendly banker?” Ryan growled.

  “We already had this discussion last night.” Grabbing a towel, she wiped down a kitchen counter that was already spotless. It was amazing she didn’t erase the gold flecks in the Formica, so diligently was she scrubbing.

  “I can’t believe how you kowtowed to him.”

  Turning to face him, she growled, “I do not kowtow to anyone!” She wished she had a dirty dish sponge to throw at him.

  “You were practically simpering.”

  Taking a deep breath, she regained control of her anger. “I know what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to pick a fight with me, hoping I’ll say something I shouldn’t.”

  “I’m hoping to find the woman who made love with a passionate intensity that blew my mind. The woman who loved to lick raindrops from her face in a storm and belt out Everly Brothers’ hits in the shower so loudly you could hear her a block away.” The shower had been quiet this morning. There had no been verses of “Bye Bye Love” or “Wake Up Little Susie.” And that upset him more than he’d thought “The woman who defied the odds and dared to do her own thing.”

  “I told you,” she said flatly. “That woman is gone.”

  “Convince me.” In a flash, Ryan was on his feet and at her side. Snaring her in his arms, he kissed her.

  4

  FROZEN. She’d been frozen in a block of ice all these years and Ryan was applying a blowtorch to set her free. It sounded painful, but it sure didn’t feel that way. It felt incredible. Both liberating and frustrating. He was teasing her with the tip of his devilish tongue, coaxing her to part her lips.

  When she did, he rewarded her by intensifying the already heated kiss to a new level of thermal dynamics. Merging mouths and darting tongues. Slick, wet and hot. Luscious and molten.

  Her breasts were tightly pressed up against his chest, her hands resting above his racing heart. She felt the beat pounding into her open palms. Ryan’s large hand easily encompassed the back of her neck, holding her in place while he hungrily devoured her mouth.

  She wasn’t going anywhere. She couldn’t get enough of him.

  Rampant need coursed through her, keeping time with her throbbing heartbeat.

  Closer. She needed to get closer.

  Her hands slid down his torso, registering the softness of his flannel shirt, measuring the warmth of his body beneath the layers of clothing. She curled her fingers into the belt loop of his jeans, preparing to tug him closer as she’d done so often in the past.

  This time her hands brushed against something foreign. Stunned, she pulled herself out of his arms. “You’re wearing a gun.”

  “That’s right.” His voice was husky with passion even if his inflection was mocking as he added, “It would be pretty hard to protect you with a slingshot.”

  He’d been right. The passionate woman Courtney had once been was still there, beneath the beige exterior. But what had he proved?

  That he still wanted her more than he’d ever wanted another woman in his entire life? That her mouth was the stuff poets write about? That her tongue could bring him to the point of no return and make him want more?

  All of the above were true. The question was, what was he going to do about it?

  Courtney looked as if she were grappling with some questions of her own. But when she spoke it was to issue an ultimatum. “Keep your kisses and your guns to yourself.”

  Ryan made one more attempt. “This Fred guy is all wrong for you, can’t you see that?”

  Lifting her chin, she got a stubborn look on her face. “No, I can’t see that.”

  “He’ll kill your spirit.”

  “Impossible.” Courtney delivered the final shot. “Because you already accomplished that yourself back in Chicago.”

  “AH, THAT WENT WELL,” Muriel said with satisfaction as she perched atop the refrigerator in Courtney’s kitchen. “They’re finally kissing. What?” she added as Hattie shook her head in dismay, the droopy brim of her lime hat flopping against her forehead.

  “Didn’t you hear what she said? She said he killed her spirit.” Hattie spoke the words with great drama and sorrow.

  Muriel shrugged. “She was exaggerating.”

  Hattie’s look was reproachful. “She’s still hurting.”

  “Well, she should get over it!” Muriel’s impatience clearly showed on her face and in the way she ran her fingers through her hair, restoring the short white strands to their customary bushy look. “This is no time to get emotional. I swear, humans are impossible. Next time I want to work with animals. Cats and dogs; Horses. They’ve got to have more sense than humans.”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like Betty.”

  Muriel glared at Hattie. “There’s no need to be insulting.”

  “I heard that,” Betty interjected, having just appeared at their side in a burst of cosmic energy. She was still wearing the same Columbo-style baggy raincoat that had been her attire since the drive-in movie the night before. “And while you two were here squabbling amongst yourselves, I paid the Zopo brothers a little visit to check things out. That glitch we put in their computer is still messing things up nicely.”

  Muriel’s frown deepened. “Hey, I’m as much a mystery fan as the next fairy godmother, but sabotaging criminals is really beyond our realm of expertise.”

  “We don’t actually have a realm of expertise yet,” Hattie felt compelled to say. “We’re still working on that.”

  “For petunia’s sake, I’ve seen every episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ and ‘Columbo’ and read every case of Sherlock Holmes,” Betty bragged, throwing back her shoulders with confident bravado. “I think it’s safe to say that I’m an expert on mysteries and that I have a surplus of deductive reasoning myself.

  “We need to concentrate on the present.” She continued. “We have a delicate balancing act to perform here, between uniting Ryan with his soul mate and protecting all involved from the Zopo brothers.”

  “We’ve never been good at balancing things. That’s how we got into trouble in the first place,” Muriel reminded her. “You couldn’t balance your jelly jar of fairy dust.”

  “I wasn’t the one who spilled my dust,” Betty immediately deni
ed. “You were the one who spilled yours from that weird container. I sneezed on my fairy dust.”

  “Listen, I hate to keep harping on this,” Hattie interrupted while meticulously fussing with the puffy sleeves on her lime-colored silk chiffon dress, “but a petri dish is simply not an appropriate place for a fairy godmother to keep her fairy dust, Muriel. And that vest you’re always wearing isn’t really appropriate, either. I’ve told you again and again, the color completely washes out your complexion—especially up here on this atrocious avocado green refrigerator.” Hattie shuddered. “You’d look much better in something like this—” With a wave of her magic wand, Hattie turned Muriel’s beloved khaki photographer’s vest a dainty periwinkle blue. “That’s much better.”

  Muriel was not amused. “It is not. I look like a blue blimp!” With a sharp whisk of her wand, she restored her vest to its original color.

  “You do not look like a blimp.” Zap, the vest was periwinkle blue again. “You look nice. Feminine and dainty.”

  “I hate dainty and feminine.” Muriel’s magic wand was turning crimson red with fury as she brandished it like an avenging knight. “If you like this stupid color so much, you wear it.”

  Hattie tried to duck as a bolt of the dreaded khaki color scored a direct hit on her, drenching not only her dress, but her hair, her hat, even her nails. Appalled, she instantly shot back a flash of periwinkle as she and Muriel engaged in a veritable chromatic war. She might be soaked, in garish tints that only magic could make, but she was pleased to see that Muriel was faring no better.

  It was left to Betty to finally lay down the law, using her own powers to forcibly remove her dueling sisters’ magic wands.

  Propping her hands on her hips, she gave them each an exasperated look before adding her own fashion observations. “I hear that the tie-dyed look of the sixties is coming back,” she mused. Both Muriel and Hattie had splotches of every color of the rainbow splattered across their clothing and their faces. “It would serve you both right if I left you this way for a decade or two.”