Falling For The Rebound Bride

Instinctively clutching his camera bag, he frowned into a pair of sweet, wary blue eyes he was pretty sure he’d never seen in his life. Clearly he was even more tired than he’d realized, letting her sneak up on him like that.

With a squeaky groan, the carousel lurched into action, the contents of the plane’s belly tumbling down the chute, bags and boxes jostling each other like a bunch of sleepy drunks. The other passengers closed in, ready to pounce, many sporting the standard assortment of cowboy hats and beat-up boots you’d expect to see in New Mexico. Colin squinted toward the business end, keeping one grit-scraped eye out for his beat-up duffel, then faced the young woman again. Crap, his backpack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Not to mention his head.

“Have we met? Because I don’t—”

“I was a kid, the last time I saw you,” she said, a smile flicking across a mouth as glossy as her long, wavy hair, some undefined color between blond and brown. “When I visited the ranch.” She tucked some of that shiny hair behind one ear, the move revealing a simple gold hoop, as well as lifting the hem of her creamy blouse just enough to hint at the shapely hips her fitted jeans weren’t really hiding. Hell. Next to this perfect specimen of refinement, Colin felt like week-old roadkill. Probably smelled like it, too, judging from the way the dude next to him on that last leg from Dallas kept leaning away.

The smile flickered again, although he now saw it didn’t quite connect with her eyes. She pressed a slender, perfectly manicured hand to her chest. “Emily Weber? Deanna’s cousin?”

Deanna. His younger brother Josh’s new wife. And their dad’s old boss’s daughter. Now, vaguely, Colin remembered the gangly little middle schooler who’d spent a few weeks on the Vista Encantada that summer more than ten years ago. Vaguely, because not only had he already been in college, but she was right, they hadn’t talked much. If at all. Mostly because of the age difference thing. That she even recognized him now...

“Oh. Right.” Colin dredged up a smile of sorts, before his forehead cramped again. “You don’t look much like I remember.”

Humor briefly flickered in her eyes. “Neither do you.”

He shifted, easing the weight of the backpack. “Then how’d you know it was me?”

A faint blush swept over her cheeks. “I didn’t, at first. Especially with the beard. But it’s hard to ignore the tallest man in the room. Then I noticed the camera bag, and I remembered the photo I spotted at your folks’ house, when I was there a few months ago for the wedding. Josh’s wedding, I mean.” She grinned. “There’s been a few of those in your family of late.”

Seriously, his brothers had been getting hitched like there’d been a “buy one, get two free” sale on marriage licenses. First Levi, then Josh—his twin younger brothers—and soon Zach, the oldest, would be marrying for the second time—

“In any case,” she said, “enough pieces started fitting together that I decided to take a chance, see if it was you. Although you probably wondered who the creeper chick trying to pick you up was.”

Colin glanced back toward the carousel. “Thought never crossed my mind.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her gaze lower to her glittery flat shoes. “Crazy, huh?” she said, looking up again. But not at him. “After all this time, both of us being on the same plane to Albuquerque.”

“Yeah.”

This time the sound that pushed from her chest held a definite note of exasperation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy or whatever. I just thought, since I did recognize you, it’d be weird not to say anything. Especially since we’re probably both headed up to the ranch. Unless...” Another flush streaked across her cheeks. “You’re not?”

Colin shut his eyes, as if that’d stop her words’ pummeling. True, he was exhausted and starving and not at all in the mood for conversation, especially with some classy, chatty chick he barely remembered. A chatty chick who clearly didn’t know from awkward. Or didn’t care. But she was right, he was being an ass. For no other reason than he could. Cripes, his father would knock him clear into next week for that. Not to mention his mother.

“No. I am,” he said, daring to meet her gaze. And the you’ve-gone-too-far-buster set to her mouth under it. A mouth that under other circumstances—although what those might be, God alone knew—might have even provoked a glimmer of sexual interest. Okay, more than a glimmer. But those days were long gone, stuffed in some bottom drawer of his brain where they couldn’t get him in trouble anymore. “And I apologize. It was a rough flight. Part of it, anyway.”

Although not nearly as rough as the weeks, months, preceding it.

Emily’s gaze softened. Along with that damn mouth. Yeah, sympathy was the last thing he needed right now.

“From?”

Since his name was plastered all over the magazine spread along with the photos, it wasn’t exactly a secret. “Serbia.”

A moment of silence preceded, “And why do I get the feeling I should leave it there?”

His mouth tugged up on one side. “Because you’re good at reading minds?”

She almost snorted, even as something like pain flashed across her features. “As if. Then again...” Her gaze slid to his, so impossible to read he wondered if he’d imagined the pain in it. “Perhaps some minds are easier to read than others?”

Nope, not taking the bait. Even if he’d had a clue what the bait was. His arms folded across a layer of denim more disreputable than his yet-to-appear duffel, he said, “You get on in DC? Or Dallas?”

“DC.”

“And nobody’s picking you up?”

Her mouth twisted. “It was kind of last-minute. So I told Dee I’d rent a car, save her or Josh the five-hour round trip. They’ve got their hands full enough with the kids and the ranch stuff this time of year, and I can find my own way.” Her eyes swung to his again. “What about you?”

“They don’t know I’m here.”

That got a speculative look before she snapped to attention like a bird dog. “Oh, there’s one of my bags—”

“Which one?”

“The charcoal metallic with the rose trim. And there’s the two others. But you don’t have to—”

“No problem,” Colin said, lugging the three hard-sided bags off the belt. Gray with pink stripes. Fancy. And no doubt expensive. His gaze once more flicked over her outfit, her hair and nails, even as his nostrils flared at her light, floral perfume.

Rich girl whispered through his brain, as another memory or two shuffled along for the ride, that his new sister-in-law’s mother had hailed from a socially prominent East Coast family, that there’d been murmurings about how Deanna’s aunt hadn’t been exactly thrilled when her only sister took up with a cowboy and moved to the New Mexico hinterlands. Something about her throwing her life away. A life that had ended far too soon, when Deanna had only been a teenager.

Not that any of this had anything to do with him. Didn’t then, sure as hell didn’t now. Never mind the knee-to-the-groin reaction to the charmed life this young woman had undoubtedly led. The sort of life that tended to leave its participants with high expectations and not a whole lot of understanding for those whose lives weren’t nearly so privileged—

“Hey. You okay?”

Colin gave his head a sharp shake, refusing to believe he saw genuine concern in those blue eyes. Apparently the long trip had chewed up more than a few brain cells.

“I’m fine. Or will be,” he said as he grabbed his bag off the belt, dumping its sorry, chewed-up self on the airport’s floor beside the shiny trio. “Nothing a shower, some food and a real bed won’t fix.” Not to mention some sorely needed alone time. “And the sooner we get—” home, he’d started to say, startling himself “—back to the Vista, the sooner I can make that happen.” Slinging the duffel over his shoulder with the camera bag and commandeering the smaller two of Emily’s bags, he nodded toward the rental car desk across the floor. “So let’s go get our cars and get out of here.”

Jerking up the handle of the larger bag, Emily frowned. “Um...why rent two cars? Wouldn’t it make more sense to share one? Besides, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do not look like someone up for driving through a couple hundred miles of nothing. In the dark, especially. So I’ll drive, how’s that?”

That got a momentary sneer from the old male ego—because Old Skool Dude here, the man was supposed to drive—until weariness slammed into him like a twenty-foot tidal wave. And along with it logic, because the woman had a point. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense to rent two separate vehicles when they were going to the same place.

Not to mention the fact that passing out and careening into a ravine somewhere wasn’t high on his to-do list. However...

“You might not want to be confined with me in a closed space for two-and-a-half hours.” Her brows lifted. “I think I smell.”

She laughed. “Not that I’ve noticed. But it’s warm enough we can leave the windows open.”

“Once we get up past Santa Fe? Doubtful. Spring doesn’t really get going good until May, at least.”

A shrug preceded, “So I’ll put on another layer—”

“But what’ll you do for a car once you’re there?”

“Dee said there’s a truck I can use, if I want. So I was gonna turn in the rental tomorrow in Taos, anyway...”

First off, that shrug? Made her hair shimmer around her shoulders, begging to be touched. So wrong. Second, the image of Emily’s perfectly polished person collided in Colin’s worn-to-nubs brain with whatever undoubtedly mud-caked 4x4 her cousin was referring to. The ranch vehicles weren’t known for being pretty.

Unlike the woman with the shimmery hair who’d be driving one of them.