7

      “Marriage,” Little Red had said.

      McKade studied her, his gaze alert. “Don’t even think about it.” His low tone was suddenly brusque, strange. “Marriage? A girl like you…” He laughed, but uneasily.

      He can’t compete with that offer. He’s a little scared she thought, pleased. Too pleased…because he cared.

      Because Brand had not cared.

      But still…

      Marriage. The word reverberated in that tender, dark corner of Willa’s heart, that hopeless, unfurnished corner where she’d longed to hang curtains, that forlorn corner she’d been afraid to visit ever since Brand had set her straight about how he intended to handle her accidental pregnancy.

      Marriage.

      To an unwed mother-to-be, a terrified mother-to-be, the word and all it implied—respectability, a nest to raise her precious child…and it, not it, a human being, her child, he or she, would be so precious.…Ah, respectability…in New Mexico…far, far from Laredo…far, far from Brandon Baines, who had designed a sordid role for her in his life…a role she did not want to play. With a new name, she might be safe in New Mexico.

      She saw a darling house. Yellow. Yes. A yellow cottage with white shutters and a picket fence. Vivid bright, her yellow. And on that picket fence she would grow sweet peas. She could see those delicate, pastel blossoms aflutter in a cool evening breeze, while she rocked her baby. No. New Mexico was all red rock. Desert and dirt. Like Laredo.

      Not like Laredo. Not so hot, hopefully. Far away from Laredo. Far from her aunt, Mrs. Brown, whose scandalous reputation would sully the baby’s name…as it had hers. Not that she was ungrateful to her aunt, who’d given her a home, if you could call it that. But Willa wanted to give her darling baby the kind of childhood she’d had before that desperate stormy night that had left her an orphan.

      Never would her baby stand on a porch with a shabby suitcase and a door open and a scarlet-haired woman stare at him in wonder and say, “A child? What on earth will a woman like me do with a child?”

      Her parents had been reckless. As a result, she’d grown up in an inappropriate environment. Willa was determined to settle down, to provide a loving, respectable home for her baby.

      Marriage. Her baby needed a father.

      “Tell me more,” said Willa, her voice soft now and a little too eager as she considered the thin young man and his outrageous offer.

      “This conversation has gone entirely too far,” cautioned the know-it-all, ever bossy McKade.

      “For you, maybe,” Willa said.

      Willa was aware of a speculative gleam in the boy’s eyes as he watched her now, savoring McKade’s growing ire. She said no more, for she deemed it smarter not to.

      Willa would wait, see where this bizarre rivalry between this quarrelsome pair went.

      Yes, she would learn more about this boy who wasn’t really a boy. He was older than she. Was he serious? And if he was, what sort of marriage did he have in mind?

      Prison? Could an ex-con who’d come after his lawyer with a gun his first day out possibly make a good father? The fact that Brandon Baines was deserving of punishment swayed her just a tad in favor of the boy.

      But a husband? And not just anybody’s. Hers. Would he expect her to sleep with him? His rangy, birdlike body held no appeal. She could not imagine herself in bed with him while it was all too easy to do so with the well-built, insolent McKade.

      Still, marriage wasn’t just about sex which was all McKade seemed to want from her. Perhaps…