Wilde Bunch Read online

  Mac gaped at him, speechless. He’d known Will and Ginny Franklin for the past fifteen years, ever since the pastor had arrived in Bear Creek. The couple and their two daughters, now aged sixteen and twelve, were the picture of domestic harmony. This was the first time he had ever heard of a previous Mrs. Franklin.

  “It’s no secret, although I rarely speak of my first marriage,” Reverend Will said. “There is really no reason to and, well, Ginny doesn’t care to recall that I was married before. I’ve kept in touch with Kara through the years, though I haven’t seen her as much as either of us would’ve liked.” He handed Mac the picture. “This was taken nearly five years ago. I was in Washington for a conference at the time and visited with Kara there.”

  Mac stared at the snapshot. Kara Kirby’s smile looked forced, as if she’d been commanded to say “cheese” just as the picture was being taken. Her hair was brown and blunt-cut in a straight bob, which swung below her jawline. A light smattering of bangs—not those moussed, gel-stiff bangs that stood up like a cresting ocean wave—accentuated her large, wide-set eyes.

  Her nose was small and rather elegant, her teeth white and straight, her eyes a startling red, a casualty of the camera flash. Actually, her eyes were hazel in color, according to her former stepfather. In the picture, the young woman was slender, wearing white slacks and a peach-colored shirt, although in the past five years, she might have gained some weight.

  Like three or four hundred pounds? Mac swallowed. Well, if she possessed the sterling character and rock-solid virtues attributed to her by the reverend, if she were willing to commit herself to a desperate man and four disturbed kids, then he was damned lucky to get her.

  Clutching Tai’s travel cage, Kara deplaned and walked to the gate, her eyes flicking over the small crowd gathered to meet the flight. Reverend Will Franklin did not appear to be among them. In his carrier, Tai meowed piteously. He’d hated the flight and his constant raucous cries had earned him glares and scowls from the other passengers from takeoff until landing. The flight attendants hadn’t been too thrilled with him, either—or with her for bringing him aboard.

  “Excuse me. Are you Kara Kirby?”

  Kara started at the sound of the deep voice. “Yes.” She looked up—way up, for she was just five foot three, and the man standing in front of her was at least ten inches taller. He looked like the quintessential cowboy, wearing jeans, a chambray shirt and a pair of well-worn Western boots, one of those macho sorts featured in a beer or a Jeep commercial.

  “I’m Mac Wilde.” He surveyed her intently. She looked the same as she had in that five-year-old picture. Her hair was exactly the same shade and style and her big wide eyes really were hazel, not vampire red. She was slender, small-boned with a slight frame, although the parts of her figure which interested him the most were not revealed. Her breasts were concealed beneath her thick, tunic-style beige sweater, her legs well-hidden in the slightly baggy pleated gray slacks.

  Her clothes were certainly tasteful if not a tad dull—and a lot shapeless. Mac found himself wondering how she would look in brighter colors, more revealing styles. He frowned at the direction his thoughts had taken. Certainly he did not expect her to dress like teenage Lily, whose flamboyant sexy outfits frequently caused him bouts of avuncular shock.

  His frown deepened. He’d caught Lily in the act of sneaking back into the house yesterday shortly before 3:00 a.m. and the little conniver had refused to tell him where she’d been. Or with whom.

  Kara shifted uneasily, registering the man’s frown of disapproval. She guessed he’d been sent by the reverend to meet her plane—and that he was not pleased with his assigned chore. Probably not with her, either. Men who looked like Mac Wilde—who was tall and dark, but whose sharp blade of a nose and hard mouth saved him from classical masculine perfection, thereby making him even more interesting and attractive to her—men like that never noticed plain, uninteresting women like her.

  Uncle Will had informed her that the distance from Helena to his home in the small town of Bear Creek was about one-hundred-seventy-five miles. That meant several hours in the company of this man, who would undoubtedly be heartily bored with her at journey’s end.

  Kara searched her brain for something to say, wishing that some devastatingly clever bon mot would spring to mind, but of course, one did not. She’d never tossed off a clever bon mot in her entire life.

  “I guess Reverend Franklin couldn’t make it to the airport and asked you to give me a ride,” she said, and immediately scorned herself for stating the obvious. When it came to the dull and the bland, she always delivered!

  “I wanted to come,” Mac replied. Having paid for her ticket—he’d even sprung for first class—having braced himself for matrimony, he was champing at the bit to see his bride-to-be.

  Kara smiled. “That’s kind of you to say.” She knew he didn’t mean it, and she appreciated his politeness.

  Mac stared at her. Her smile was completely unlike that uncomfortable grimace that passed for a smile in the photograph. This smile was genuine, lighting her face and transforming it. Mac was intrigued. That sudden flash of animation revealed a very pretty woman. For the first time he took note of her skin, luminous and smooth as ivory, quite unlike the weather-tanned skin of the locals. Would her cheek be as soft to touch as it looked? And what about her skin elsewhere? He felt a stirring in his midsection which slowly twisted lower.

  Kara quickly composed her face into the placid, guarded mask she’d been wearing since they’d met. Mac’s eyes narrowed. Suddenly that mask she wore interested him, too, because he knew there was another woman behind it. One whose hazel eyes sparkled with warmth when she smiled, whose mouth was wide and full and sensuous.

  He allowed himself to contemplate kissing that sweet mouth. The heat in his loins flared pleasantly. Yes, he liked the idea of kissing her. This past week, he’d finally come to terms with the necessity of having a wife. After all, a woman had to know more about kids than he did; women possessed the acclaimed maternal instinct to guide them. And the availability of a wife would certainly be sexually convenient for him. Having a woman living under his roof and sharing his bed meant he would not have to go elsewhere for feminine companionship. He had discovered that the concept of dating was logistically impossible with four children around. Especially those four!

  As for having sex...well, he wasn’t. An ache spread through his body, reminding him that there had been no woman in his bed since the children had come into his life. The long period of enforced celibacy was taking its toll on his nerves and his temper. He couldn’t wait to rectify the situation with his brand-new wife!

  Kara cast a covert glance at him, feeling uncomfortable by the intense, almost predatory, glint in his eye. Her experience with men was woefully at odds with her chronological age. She was suddenly tense and on edge. “Is—is it a long drive to Reverend Will’s house in Bear Creek?”

  “About three hours to Bear Creek and another twenty-five minutes to the ranch.”

  “What ranch?”

  “My ranch.”

  “You have a ranch?” Interest replaced her vague unease. “A real Western working ranch?”

  “Didn’t the Rev tell you about the Double R?” Mac was confused. He’d assumed the pastor would have provided her with at least the basic facts about her new home.

  Kara shook her head no. “He talked a little about his own house,” she added, wondering why Mac appeared to be so perplexed. Was his ranch such a showpiece that he assumed it was the natural topic of conversation between any Bear Creek resident and visitor?

  Tai chose that moment to utter an earsplitting meow which seemed to echo throughout the Helena airport.

  “I can see that Autumn is going to have some competition in the screaming department,” Mac murmured. Just what the household needed, a cat whose meow could shatter glass.

  Kara gulped, not quite sure what he was referring to, but had no doubts that he did not appreciate Tai’s no-holds-
barred, executive meow. “Tai isn’t a good traveler,” she apologized. “This was his first flight and he’s very unhappy.”

  Mac kept staring at her. She found his silence unnerving. “I—I’m glad that I insisted on bringing Tai in the cabin with me, though.” Mac Wilde’s eyes were a deep, dark brown, piercing and intent. When she felt his gaze sweep over her once again, a warm blush stained her cheeks.

  “I know he wasn’t too popular with the crew and the other passengers, but I just couldn’t consign him to the freight area of the plane,” she continued, averting her eyes from Mac. “Tai’s never traveled before—it might’ve left lifelong emotional scars.”

  “A cat with emotional scars,” Mac repeated. He decided her concern boded well for the kids. After all, if she had empathy for a cat, she would undoubtedly have it for four young orphans who had been uprooted for a second time after their parents’ demise.

  “Come on, we’ll pick up your luggage. It should be in the baggage area by now. Then we’ll head out to the ranch.”

  “I—I’d rather go to Reverend Franklin’s house.” Kara stood stock-still, clutching Tai’s carrier. “It’s been so long, I just can’t wait to see Uncle Will. Oh, and—and Ginny and the girls, too,” she added quickly.

  Mac was not pleased, but he decided her request was not unreasonable. The pastor used to be her stepfather, and it had been five years since they’d seen each other. “Okay,” he agreed. “But I can’t leave the kids for too long.” The prospect of them on the loose made him shudder, considering the havoc they managed to wreak when under supervision. “We’ve really got to get going!”

  He headed toward the baggage area, leaving Kara to follow him. She watched his tall muscular frame stride away from her. He had children. It was inevitable that an attractive, virile man such as he would be married with children. She wondered where his wife was and why, if he didn’t like leaving the children for long stretches of time, he had agreed to drive all the way to the airport to pick her up.

  She thought about the way he had been looking at her. It didn’t seem right for a married man to stare in that particular way. Unless she was overreacting and misinterpreting? Was she turning into a suspicious spinster who spied a slavering sex fiend in every male who glanced her way?

  The notion depressed her. She’d always despised that dreadful old card game Old Maid; now it appeared she was turning into the personification of the losing card. Kara flinched at the thought.

  Her shoulders drooping, she trailed after Mac to retrieve her luggage, with the yowling Tai announcing his arrival and issuing complaints to everyone in the airport.

  * * *

  “How many children do you have?” Kara asked politely as they left the outskirts of Helena in Mac’s sturdy Jeep Cherokee. She’d taken Tai out of his carrier and held him on her lap, which had finally quieted him. But the cat was still tense and on guard, his blue eyes darting around the roomy interior of the vehicle.

  “Four,” Mac replied. Surely the reverend had mentioned the children, the sole reason for her journey out here! He glanced across the seat at Kara and saw her stealing a quick glance at him. She flushed a little, embarrassed to be caught looking at him.

  “How nice.” Kara continued in those same courteous, impersonal tones.

  Mac noted that she was able to say “how nice” with a straight face. Exactly what had the pastor told her, anyway?

  The radio was on, and an intensely romantic song pulsed over the airwaves. Kara stroked Tai’s fur and tried to calm her own increasingly taut nerves. She and Mac were alone, enclosed inside, and suddenly the atmosphere seemed disturbingly intimate.

  She was acutely aware of his strong masculine presence. She couldn’t keep her eyes from straying to him. His big hands on the wheel, his broad shoulders, the wide powerful chest—Kara took inventory of them all. As if of its own volition, her gaze abruptly dropped lower to glide over his long, muscled legs, though she was careful to avoid the button fly of his jeans.

  She was ogling him! Kara was shocked by her own blatant—and completely inappropriate—behavior. She had never actively ogled a man in her entire life and her first chosen target was a married man, a father of four!

  It must be jet lag. Kara quickly strove to remedy her appalling lapse.

  “How old are the children?” she asked, toying with Tai’s orange-and-black collar. Tai owned twelve different ones and Kara changed them monthly, the color and motif of each coordinating with whatever holiday or activity was associated with that particular month. Orange and black were for October and Halloween.

  Mac frowned. This was not going as planned. In the scenario he’d envisioned, Kara arrived in Montana knowing all about her future family, as told to her by her former stepfather. Or was Kara Kirby simply playing dumb, trying to break the ice by asking questions to which she already knew the answers?

  The sexy, smoky sounds of a sax filled the car, conjuring up images of a couple moving in rhythm to its beat. His eyes traveled to the curve of Kara’s slender neck where the skin looked as silky soft as her slightly flushed cheeks. He found himself wondering about the taste and feel of her mouth.

  “What are the children’s names?” Kara asked a little frantically, her voice rising. He didn’t seem inclined to talk to her, but he was definitely not ignoring her, not when he kept looking at her in that dark, disturbing way. How well did Uncle Will know this man he’d sent to fetch her? she wondered nervously. What if he were one of those seeming pillar-of-the-community types with a hidden Dr. Jekyll alter ego?

  “You want to know about the kids.” Mac sighed. “Well, it wouldn’t be fair to sugarcoat it, so I’ll give it to you straight. Lily just turned seventeen. She’s manipulative, sneaky and rebellious, and those are her good points. Brick will be fourteen on New Year’s Day and when he doesn’t find the trouble he’s looking for, he creates it. Autumn is ten and a little ghoul who sees danger in everything and is obsessed with crime and disaster. And finally, Clay, the youngest, is a seven-year-old hellion who lives by his own rules and sees no reason to follow anyone else’s. Needless to say, living with that crew has not been easy.”

  Kara gulped. “I suppose not.” Perhaps he was just having a bad day and was venting steam? She decided that that must be the case and tried to come up with some diplomatic comment to offer. “The children’s names are interesting. Rather different.”

  “Yeah, rather different,” Mac agreed grimly. “Like they are. Their parents—my brother Reid and his wife, Linda—wanted their names to be something besides a name. They wanted their names to be attached to the earth and be part of nature and the planet or something like that.”

  “I think I understand,” Kara murmured. They’re not his children?

  Mac was pleased. She hadn’t condemned the kids nor scoffed at Reid and Linda’s hug-a-tree philosophy of life. Kara seemed nonjudgmental and tolerant, exactly what they needed. Relief surged through him. He had made the right decision, bringing her out here. The sooner she moved in, the better for all of them.

  “And the children are staying with you now?” Kara tried to put the pieces together.

  “They’re living with me permanently. Their parents were killed in a car accident in a chain-collision pileup on one of the L.A. freeways nearly two years ago.”

  “How tragic!” Kara was horrified. “Those poor children.”

  Mac nodded. “It’s been rough. At first, Linda’s mom moved in with the kids but she barely lasted three months. She couldn’t handle them and was only too glad to escape to her retirement village condo, where kids under twenty-one are banned—even as visitors.”

  “Oh, dear,” Kara murmured.

  “Next, my brother James and his wife, Eve, decided it was their duty to take the kids. That arrangement lasted one miserable year.”

  “The chemistry wasn’t right between the children and their aunt and uncle?” Kara surmised, her voice warm with sympathy.

  “You could say that.” Everybody else, hims
elf included, had said a lot more about the kids’ incorrigibility and James and Eve’s repressive rigidity. Not the right chemistry. Now that was putting a benign spin on an impossible situation! Mac liked her lack of negativity. She was going to need it, living with those four young terrorists.

  “And after things didn’t work out, you took the children?” Kara prompted.

  “They’ve been with me since June. I’m the first to admit that I don’t know much about raising kids. Aside from being one myself a long time ago, I haven’t had any experience with children.” Mac cast a sidelong glance at her. “It’s become clear to me that I’m not cut out to be a bachelor father.”

  He was not a married man. Kara felt a peculiar heat suffuse her. She was dealing with the ramifications of having ogled a bachelor when Mac reached for the car phone.

  “I’m going to call the kids and tell them we’re on our way.”

  Ten rings later, he debated whether or not to hang up. “Why doesn’t someone answer? Where are they?” He glanced at his watch as the phone rang on and on. “It’s five o’clock, they should all be home from school by now.”

  “Perhaps they—uh—were detained after school,” Kara suggested. Assigned to detention. Given Mac’s description of the kids, the possibility of punishment could not be ruled out.

  Finally a small scared voice came over the line. “Hello?”

  “Autumn, it’s Uncle Mac.” Mac breathed a sigh of relief. “What took you so long to answer the phone?”

  “I was in my room and I pushed the dresser in front of the door, so it took me a while to move it,” Autumn whispered.

  “What were you doing barricaded in your room, Autumn?” Mac braced himself for the answer. “And where are the other kids?”

  “I was watching TV, Uncle Mac.”

  “In your room? You don’t have a television set in there.”

  “I do now,” Autumn said rather proudly. “I dragged the TV from the living room into my room. Uncle Mac, do you know that bad guys in jail try to get pen pals? And if you write to killers in jail, when they get out they’ll come and find you and try to steal your money or kill you.”