the last damn minute to change your mind?”
“Good question.” She sighed, pushed her hair back, then propped her elbow on the door. “I kept thinking it would get better, I guess. Instead, it just got worse.”
He could understand that. It was the Goodmans, after all.
“And you couldn’t leave before today?”
She looked at him and frowned. “I could have. But I gave my word. I said I’d marry Jared—”
“But you didn’t.”
“Couldn’t,” she corrected, shaking her head. “Staring at myself in the mirror, wearing this hideous dress, listening to Margaret tell me about the honeymoon plans she made...” Her voice died off and it was a few seconds before she spoke again. “It finally hit me that I just couldn’t go through with it. So I ran. I suppose you think that’s cowardly.”
“Well...”
She shifted in her seat, hiking all of that white fabric higher until it was above her knees, displaying a pair of long, tanned legs. When she stopped just past her knees, Caleb was more than a little disappointed.
He looked back at the road. Way safer than looking at her.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “It took more strength to run than it would have to stay.”
Frowning to himself, Caleb thought about that for a minute. Was it possible she had a point?
She threw both hands up, the fabric spilled off her lap to the floor and she muttered a curse as she gathered it all up again to hold on her lap. Caleb spared another quick look at her long, tanned legs, then told himself to keep his eyes on the road.
“Honestly,” she said, “I could have gone through with it and not been called a ‘tramp.’ I could have stayed, knowing that I didn’t really love Jared after all, but going through with the wedding to avoid the embarrassment. But it wasn’t right for me or fair to Jared for me to marry him knowing I didn’t want to be married, especially to him, you know what I mean?”
Before he could say anything, she rolled right on.
Waving one hand, then grabbing up fabric again with another curse, she said, “I know he’ll be angry and probably hurt today but sooner or later, he’s going to see that I did the right thing and who knows, maybe he’ll even thank me for it at some point.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Caleb muttered.
“What? Never mind.” Shaking her head, she took a deep breath, looked out over the open road and said, “Even if he doesn’t thank me out loud, he’ll be glad. Eventually. This is better. I mean, I don’t know what to do now, but this is definitely better. For both of us.”
“You sound sure.”
She looked at him again until he felt compelled to meet those forest green eyes of hers however briefly. “I am,” she said. “So thank you. Again.”
“You’re welcome.” Caleb didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with her, so he was headed home. Back at the ranch, she could call her own family. Or a cab. And then she could be on her way and he could get out of this damn suit.
With that thought firmly in mind, Caleb focused on the familiar road stretching out ahead of him and did his best to ignore the beautiful woman sitting way too close to him.
There were wide sweeps of open land dotted with the scrub oaks that grew like weeds in East Texas. Here and there were homes and barns, with horses in paddocks and cattle grazing in the fields. The sky was the kind of clear, deep blue he’d only ever seen in Texas and those few gusting clouds he’d glimpsed earlier had gathered up a few friends.
Everything was absolutely normal. Except for the bride in his truck.
“Weird day,” he muttered.
“It is, isn’t it?” She whipped her hair out of her eyes to look at him. “I never thought I’d be a fugitive from my own wedding. And I know I’ve said this already, but thank you. I kind of threw myself at you and didn’t give you much room to back off, so I really appreciate you riding to the rescue.”
“I could have said no,” he reminded her.
She tilted her head to one side and studied him. “No, I don’t think you could have.”
He snorted. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She shook her head. “You’ve got the whole ‘responsible’ vibe going on. Anyway, I didn’t know how I was going to get away. Didn’t even think about it. I just ran.”
“Right into me.” And he had gotten a real good feel of the body beneath that ugly-ass gown. High, firm breasts, narrow waist, nicely rounded hips. He frowned and shifted as his own body suddenly went tight and uncomfortable. Hell. Just what he needed.
“Yeah, I’m sorry you got dragged into this.”
He glanced at her. “No, you’re not.”
She grinned. “No, I guess I’m really not. Hard to be sorry about finding a white knight.”
He let that one go because he was nobody’s hero.
“So now what?” he asked. “What are you going to do from here?”
She sat back and stared at him. “I have no idea.”
“Well, what was the plan?”
“Like I said, there wasn’t a plan. I just had to get away.” Shaking her head, she stared out the windshield. “I didn’t even know I was going to run until just before I did.”
She’d torn down her hair and now it was a tangled mess of dark red curls that flew around her face in the wind whipping through the opened windows. He’d had the AC on, but she’d shut it off and rolled down her window, insisting she needed to feel the wind on her face. Caleb didn’t know what it said about him that he preferred that hair of hers wild and free to the carefully pinned-up style she’d had when she ran from the club.
She still had the skirt of her wedding dress hiked up to her knees and Caleb took another admiring look at her long slim legs. Then he fixed his gaze on the road again. “Look, I’ll take you out to my ranch—”
“Your ranch.”
“That’s right.”
“Jared said he had a ranch.”
Caleb snorted. “The Goodmans used to run a ranch, generations ago. Now they rent the land out to other ranchers so they can live in town.”
“So I discovered.” She held her hair back, narrowed her eyes on him and asked, “Anyway, we know I’m not crazy.”
“Do we?”
She ignored that. “Now I have to ask. Are you a crazy person?”
Both eyebrows lifted and he snorted a laugh. “What
