Bride Included

“And you took advantage of him?” she demanded to know.

Seth laughed, the sound deep and rich despite the tension between them. “I know you’d like to believe I did, but I wasn’t the only one in the game. There were five of us present, but I seemed to be the one with all the luck. Your father lost all the cash he had on him and resorted to writing IOUs. At one point, he owed me over ten grand, and Gary Rial four grand.”

Josie groaned, staggered at the debt her father had incurred. “What happened?” she asked, not sure she really wanted to know.

“It came down to my hand against his, and since he had another three grand of IOUs in the pot and was about to write another just to stay in the game, I struck a deal with him.”

Her loathing gaze narrowed on him. “What kind of deal did my father make with the devil himself?”

He lifted a dark brow at her derogatory comment. “I told him if he put in the deed to the Golden M and he won the pot, I’d forgive his IOU to me and I’d pay off Gary’s. The same would apply if he lost. Either way, he’d have no outstanding debts.”

“My, wasn’t that generous of you!” Her fingers curled tightly around the deed in her hand. A deed that made the very porch she stood on, the house and ranch she grew up on, his. The thought made her nauseous.

He sat up in the chair, his gaze holding hers steadily. “He didn’t have to put in the deed, Josie.”

“Doesn’t sound like he had much of a choice.”

Anger flashed in his eyes, hot and dangerous. “He made every choice on his own. I offered a deal, and he accepted it with a stipulation of his own that I agreed to. If he wasn’t prepared to lose, then he never should have challenged me to join the game in the first place.”

He was right, she knew. Her father’s weakness was no one’s fault but his own. Still, she wasn’t going to lose everything that mattered to her without a battle. “I’m going to do everything in my power to get this ranch back.”

Slowly, he stood, looking entirely too sexy for someone she despised. “You can certainly try, but that document is legal and binding. Considering the ranch wasn’t in your name, you won’t have much of a leg to stand on.”

Her chest grew so tight it hurt to breathe. Oh, Lord! She’d never thought to change the deed to include her name, never believed her father could be so desperate as to risk their home in a poker game. She was the last McAllister, and the ranch would have been hers one day, passed on from father to daughter.

She found it ironic that Jake McAllister had lost the property to an O’Connor the same way her great-grandfather McAllister had won it from Seth’s great-grandfather so long ago—in a poker game.

That had been the beginning of the McAllister and O’Connor feud. Judging by the animosity vibrating between the two of them, that dissension was still burning bright and strong. But there had been a brief time when she believed she and Seth would be the ones to end the conflicts that had trickled down through three generations. She’d been so hopeful that the strife between their families would finally be over.

She’d been young and naive, and so wrong about Seth O’Connor’s intentions...so easily duped by a heart-stopping grin and so effortlessly seduced by the taste of her first real kiss and the promise of true love.

She was older now and certainly wiser about how the O’Connors operated. She’d learned the hard way their motives were always self-serving. With that thought, she hardened her resolve. “You won’t get away with this, Seth,” she vowed, and thrust the offending document back at him.

“I already have.” Expression uncompromising, he took the deed from her. When his fingers brushed hers, she felt as though she’d been zapped by a bolt of lightning. The sizzle coursed up her arm, spread through her breasts and settled in the pit of her stomach like a warm pool of molasses.

She shook off the unwanted sensation and jutted her chin up a notch, refusing to be intimidated by his superior height or the intense heat blazing in the depths of his blue eyes. “If you expect me to pack up and leave without a fight, then you better think again.”

“On the contrary, darlin’,” he said, his smooth drawl at odds with the resentment she detected in his voice, “I fully expect you to stay.”

Wariness pulsed through her with every heartbeat, making her feel like a cornered deer staring down the barrel of a rifle—with no means of escape. Was he tricking her somehow? Letting her believe that he wasn’t going to take away the only home she and Kellie had ever had? “I...I don’t understand.”

“There’s a stipulation to the deed,” he said very carefully, as if he wanted her to understand what he was about to say. “A provision your father set and I agreed to before I won that last poker hand.”

So, he’d made his own sacrifice to gain what he wanted—the property that once belonged to his family. She was certain whatever price he paid wasn’t as great as her father’s loss or her own dismal future. “What kind of stipulation?”

His smile was grim. “That we get married.”

CHAPTER TWO

JOSIE stared at Seth incredulously. Losing the ranch to him was one thing, but to marry him? She knew her father could be irresponsible, but she couldn’t imagine him making such a ridiculous demand, and an O’Connor, no less so.

“You’re joking!” He had to be.

“I wish I was.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest, his mouth twisting into a sardonic smile. “The stipulation states that I’ll marry you within one week in order to gain the Golden M.”

The way she saw it, if she refused her father’s terms, there was no way Seth could claim the property. Her father had outsmarted an O’Connor!

It was her turn to be smug. “What makes you believe I’d want to marry you to fulfill the terms of that stipulation?”

“Because it would be in both our interests to do so.”

He didn’t look the least bit concerned by her unwillingness to help him carry out the terms of her father’s stipulation, and that realization caused a niggling of unease to curl within her. “How do you figure it would be in my best interest to marry someone I despise just so he could claim my property?”

A hint of challenge flickered in his gaze. “Because if you don’t become my wife, you forfeit the Golden M.”

She frowned at him. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

From his shirt pocket where he’d tucked away the quitclaim deed, he now withdrew another folded piece of paper. Opening it, he held it toward her.

“Read the terms of the stipulation for yourself,” he prompted when she merely stared at the signed and notarized document. “It states that I’ll marry you within a week in order to procure the Golden M, at which time it will become joint property since we’ll be man and wife.” He gave her a moment to absorb that before continuing. “However, if you refuse to marry me within the specified week, then you lose the Golden M and I’ll have every right as the owner to toss you off the ranch. And if we do get married and one of us insists upon a divorce, that person forfeits their half of the land to the other.”

Unable to believe her father would enforce such binding conditions, she grabbed the document from him and read the contents. By the time she verified her father’s signature on the bottom line, panic and dread had balled in her stomach.

She stared up at Seth, tasting the bitterness of defeat. “You agreed to this...to this farce?”

“I’ve got nothing to lose.” He casually moved closer, and her heart rate accelerated. “And a whole lot to gain.”

She was the one who’d have to relinquish everything if she balked at the terms outlined in the agreement. It just didn’t make sense. Why would her father force her to marry someone who hated her as equally as she detested him, then set forth terms that made a future divorce nearly impossible unless she walked away from the only home she’d ever known?

“So, what’ll it be, Josie darlin’?” he asked, his voice dropping to a low, husky pitch. Reaching out, he stroked his knuckles over her cheek, the tender gesture at odds with the fierce light in his eyes. “Shall I make an appointment with Reverend Wilcox for this week?”

She opened her mouth to make a scathing response but found her throat suddenly dry. His thumb brazenly skimmed over her bottom lip as softly as a butterfly’s caress. Her stomach dipped and tumbled. Bolder still, he held her gaze and strummed his warm fingers down her throat and along the open collar of her blouse.

Her breathing deepened and she shivered, unable to stop the memories of how gentle those big hands of his could be as they slid over her body. How delightfully sweet and seductive.

It had been so long since she’d experienced such consuming passion, such awesome need...but it all came crashing back to her in that moment. She couldn’t help the tiny moan that escaped her.

Seth watched her with great interest, a faint, satisfied smile touching his mouth. “Seems to me there could be other advantages to our getting married,” he murmured as one long finger slowly followed the V of her blouse to where the last button ended between her breasts.

Her nipples automatically tightened, and she knew he could see the dusky rose tips through the thin cotton material. Horrified that he could manipulate her emotions so easily and still have so much control over her body’s response to him, she reached for her temper, embraced the flood of anger and let it explode.

She slapped his hand away from the button she knew he could so easily flick open with his fingers—he’d proved that particular skill eleven years ago. “I’ll see you in hell before I agree to marry you!”

She tried to move around him, but he was fast and agile, bracing both his hands on the porch railing on either side of her, trapping her against him. Before she could raise her knee and use it as a means of self-defense, he pushed a hard thigh between hers, immobilizing her lower body.

The heat that flared within her matched the flames in his eyes. She shoved at his shoulders, but he was a solid mass of muscle and strength, and the only thing her struggling accomplished was to make Seth press closer. Their position became as intimate as two lovers entwined in a sensual embrace.

Except they were enemies and hated one another. She doubted Seth found anything arousing about their situation. She certainly didn’t!