“Holy Maloney, this is awkward.”

“And here I am, thinking that seeing you after five months is such a pleasure,” Mac responded.

“Yes, well, you haven’t seen that much of me yet,” Abbie said.

“How have you been since…December?”

Abbie’s blue eyes shifted doubtfully to him, she opened her mouth, closed it again, then sucked in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and said in a rush, “Pregnant. How have you been?”

Mac’s smile faded, along with the excitement and possibility that seeing her again had evoked. Pregnant? Had she said…? “Pregnant?” he said, his gut clenching in protest as his gaze dropped helplessly to her midsection.

“Pregnant,” she confirmed, thrusting the suitcase at him and revealing the unmistakably rounded contours of her belly beneath the oversize white shirt. “Congratulations, it’s yours.”

Dear Reader,

This month, Harlequin American Romance delivers your favorite authors and irresistible stories of heart, home and happiness that will surely leave you smiling.

TEXAS SHEIKHS, Harlequin American Romance’s scintillating continuity series about a Texas family with royal Arabian blood, continues with His Shotgun Proposal by Karen Toller Whittenburg. When Abbie Jones surprised Mac Coleman with the news of her pregnancy, honor demanded he give her his name. But could he give his shotgun bride his heart?

Another wonderful TOTS FOR TEXANS romance from bestselling author Judy Christenberry is in store for you this month with Struck by the Texas Matchmakers, in which two children in need of a home and several meddling ladies play matchmakers for a handsome doctor and a beautiful lawyer. Harlequin American Romance’s theme promotion, THE WAY WE MET…AND MARRIED, about marriage-of-convenience romances, begins this month with Bachelor-Auction Bridegroom by Mollie Molay. And old passions heat up in Leandra Logan’s Family: The Secret Ingredient when Grace North’s first crush, now a single father, returns to town with his precocious little girl and ends up staying under the heroine’s roof.

Enjoy this month’s offerings and come back next month for more stories guaranteed to touch your heart!

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance

Texas Sheikhs:

His Shotgun Proposal

Karen Toller Whittenburg

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Toller Whittenburg is a native Oklahoman who fell in love with books the moment she learned to read and has been addicted to the written word ever since. She wrote stories as a child, but it wasn’t until she discovered romance fiction that she felt compelled to write, fascinated by the chance to explore the positive power of love in people’s lives. She grew up in Sand Springs (a historic town on the Arkansas River), attended Oklahoma State University and now lives in Tulsa with her husband, a professional photographer.

Books by Karen Toller Whittenburg

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

197—SUMMER CHARADE

249—MATCHED SET

294—PEPPERMINT KISSES

356—HAPPY MEDIUM

375—DAY DREAMER

400—A PERFECT PAIR

424—FOR THE FUN OF IT

475—BACHELOR FATHER

528—WEDDING OF HER DREAMS

552—THE PAUPER AND THE PRINCESS

572—NANNY ANGEL

621—MILLION-DOLLAR BRIDE*

630—THE FIFTY-CENT GROOM*

648—TWO-PENNY WEDDING*

698—PLEASE SAY “I DO”

708—THE SANTA SUIT

727—A BACHELOR FALLS

745—IF WISHES WERE…WEDDINGS

772—HOW TO CATCH A COWBOY

794—BABY BY MIDNIGHT?

822—LAST-MINUTE MARRIAGE

877—HIS SHOTGUN PROPOSAL

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

A steady stream of travelers lugged baggage of every shape, size and color out of the air-cooled Austin airport and into the muggy Texas heat. Mac Coleman tugged the brim of his cowboy hat down low on his forehead, shielding his face from the blazing haze of afternoon sun as he leaned against his Silverado and watched for his passenger. Not that he had even a faint hope of recognizing her. He’d been volunteered to pick up Abigail Jones because he had business in the city on the day she was scheduled to arrive and because his cousin, Jessica, had an annoying way of getting around arguments. His last-ditch effort to avoid chauffeur duty had met with a confident “Don’t worry, Mac, Abbie will find you. I told her to look for a scowling cowboy next to a black truck.”

His wasn’t the only black truck parked outside the baggage claim area and he certainly wasn’t the only man wearing a Stetson, but if she showed, he was here. And if not? Well, he’d wait a reasonable while, then head back to the ranch. Visitors to the Desert Rose weren’t his responsibility and he planned to keep it that way.

A sassy blonde passed him, displaying enough leg and flirty tosses of her tresses to attract his attention. He watched her sashay by, caught the full effect of the smile she flashed not quite accidentally in his direction and touched the brim of his hat in the half hope she might be his pickup.

She changed direction and came back toward him, tugging her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose and giving him a thorough looking over from above the tortoiseshell frames. He could all but hear her internal calculator chi-ching as her glance moved past him to note the Desert Rose crest on the side of the truck and then quickly returned to take in what his older brother, Alex, laughingly called the Coleman ask-me-the-size-of-my-ranch look. “Do you know where I might find the Four Seasons shuttle?” she asked in a sultry voice, lightly stressing the name of the hotel.

Okay, so she wasn’t Abigail Jones, who wouldn’t be asking for a ride to an Austin hotel. But that was just as well. He had enough four-legged fillies to take up his time and attention this summer, as it was, and he didn’t need any other distractions. Especially not of this variety. “No, ma’am,” he said without regret. “Can’t say that I do.”

“I suppose I could take a cab to the hotel,” she said with another toothy blaze of a smile. “Unless I get a…better offer.” She tossed her hair again…a fine, sun-streaked mane of it, too. Her legs were long and lean, her body slender and supple. No two ways about it, she was candy for the eyes, and had exactly the sort of California looks he most admired. He wished he was interested—he really did—but in truth, he wasn’t even tempted to raise the brim of his hat for a better view.

“I sure hope you get that offer, ma’am,” he drawled, not giving an inch of encouragement…or discouragement, either, for that matter. “’Cause it’s a fair piece of walking to get from here to downtown Austin.”

She pouted, as he’d expected she would, unconvinced as yet that with a bit more encouragement he wouldn’t be hers for the asking. Women, he’d discovered over the course of his thirty years, could be as predictable as a hill country armadillo and just about as faithless. “Married?” she asked point-blank.

That made him smile. “No, and never going to be.”

That made her smile. “Really? Well, it just so happens, I prefer men who have strong opinions about matrimony…one way or the other.”

Another time, another place, he might have taken her up on her thinly disguised offer, escorted this sun-bleached beauty to her hotel and stayed over for breakfast. But for the past several months, he’d been hung up on a mysterious lady who had seduced and deserted him all within the span of one incredible night. A short, sandy-haired, blue-eyed elf of a woman who continued to intrude on opportunities such as this with annoying regularity. A slip of a gal, whose name he hadn’t been able to discover, whose vanishing act was still as inexplicable to him as her appearance in his hotel room that night last winter, and whose throaty laughter had echoed in all his dreams since. He was damned tired of thinking about her, too, but somehow this just didn’t seem the right moment to prove it.

The blonde took off her sunglasses and sucked lightly on one plastic-and-wire earpiece. “Is everything in Texas this hot?” she asked, eyeing him suggestively.

Mac offered her a lazy smile, appreciating her efforts, futile as he’d decided they ultimately would be. “Oh, no, ma’am. Some things in Texas are a whole lot hotter.”

ABBIE WRESTLED her red plaid suitcase off the steel-jawed baggage carousel and let it fall with a thud on top of the two other bags she’d already rescued—one medium-sized black faux leather and one large faded sea-green paisley. Turning back, she scanned the conveyance for the remaining suitcase, a brown tweed with gray stripes. Well, in truth, the stripes were duct tape, fashioned by Tyler, the youngest of her four older brothers, as a gag gift for her graduation from grad school last December. She had a matched set of brothers and luggage at home, a four-piece, stair-step assortment of each. But for this trip, she’d had to make do with suitcases borrowed helter-skelter, because she didn’t want anyone in her family to know this time away from them was going to last considerably longer than she’d led them all to believe. The truth of the matter was she’d told some major whoppers just to get here without them finding out where she was going or why.

It was embarrassing to think she’d gone from magna cum laude in December to magna cum baby in May, losing the perfect job along the way. She’d had the world on a string, a prestigious teaching position, a future bright with promise, and independence within her grasp. But her fall from grace had been swift and humiliating, even if only a few people knew about it at this point. Everyone would know soon enough. She supposed she should have gone straight home after she’d been fired from Miss Amelia’s Academy for Young Ladies, but she just couldn’t bring herself to face her parents with the truth. Not yet, anyway.

And if her brothers knew…well, that didn’t bear thinking about. If they had even a faint suspicion of the mess she was in, the four of them would descend like warrior angels to fight for her honor and protect her from all harm, even if they suffocated her in the process. They meant well, Tyler, Jaz, Brad and Quinn, in their big-brotherly ways, but if it were up to them, she’d never make a single decision for herself. They’d do it all, they’d do it their way, and they’d do it for her own good. Oh, she loved her rowdy brothers with all her heart, and she hadn’t liked having to scheme and plan and plot her way into having a life of her own, but it had been the only way to escape their overly protective and bullheaded-times-four, brothers-know-best attitude.

Of course, practically the very second she’d managed to claim her independence and get out on her own, she’d gotten herself into quite a pickle. But the longer she could keep the family ignorant of her dilemma, the more choices she could keep open for evaluation. There were some decisions a woman had to make for herself, and it was not selfish to want a little bit of peace and quiet while she made them, either.

So if that meant traveling with borrowed and battered suitcases, and throwing herself on the kind and generous aegis of her college friend, Jessica Coleman, so be it. Sooner or later, a person had to cut those apron strings and Abbie’s time to snip, snip, snip had come. Her plans were a little loose at the moment, but a week or two at the Desert Rose would give her time to figure out what to do next and how, exactly, she was going to tell her father, mother and four burly brothers about this unexpected and completely embarrassing dilemma.

They wouldn’t kill the guy who’d gotten her pregnant, because she would never tell them who he was. Not because he deserved her protection, but because she didn’t know who he was, either. Just the thought of that night, of hot kisses and wild passion made her skin tingle with a thousand memories, made her shiver with remembered desire, made her wince with humiliation. She had never, ever, done anything so stupidly impulsive before. Would never, ever, do anything so stupidly irresponsible again. But, as it turned out, once had been plenty. One chance in a million, and she’d gotten pregnant.

If Jessica hadn’t offered her a job at the ranch…

But Jess was a good friend, and true. “Come and stay with me,” she’d said the minute Abbie had blurted out her troubles. “I could really use your help in the office. I mean it. You’ll be doing me a big favor.”

Of course, Abbie knew who was getting the most benefit out of this impromptu visit, and she loved her friend all the more for pretending otherwise. After all, how much office work could there be at a ranch? Especially anything Abbie might know how to do. She was an excellent teacher—well, had been, at any rate. She was also a whiz with math and could fill out a tax form while flipping it like a pancake, but what did she know about hay? Or horses? She wouldn’t know one end of a ranch from the other. She knew the Colemans raised Arabians on the Desert Rose, and she knew that particular breed of horse had originated in—duh—Arabia. But if she was asked to pick the Arabian out of a horse lineup, she’d be playing the odds and they wouldn’t be in her favor.

On top of being a real greenhorn, she couldn’t fit into her blue jeans anymore, either, and she’d never in her life worn a pair of cowboy boots. But, bottom line, she had nowhere else to go except her parents’ home outside of Little Rock, and since that was out of the question, she’d lug these mismatched suitcases outside and look for a cowboy with a big black truck, who was probably scowling in earnest because she was taking so long to get out there.

When all the misfit suitcases were stacked together on a woefully inadequate foldout rolling wire rack, which had been salvaged from the trash at Miss Amelia’s, she dragged them past the attendant, who barely even glanced at her baggage check. Probably figured no self-respecting thief would claim such a motley assortment. Abbie bumped her rickety pile of bags toward the exit, balancing the stack carefully and hoping a kind soul would offer some assistance in getting the bulky bundle through the automatic doors. If she’d been a month further along in her pregnancy, someone probably would have. Or if she’d been a month back, when some of that early pregnancy glow had burnished her cheeks with healthy color and given her sandy-brown hair a saucy bounce, she probably could have gotten a helping hand with nothing more than a smile and a please, would you mind? But she was five months along, past the glowing phase of impending motherhood and just rounded enough all over to look chubby. At least, she wasn’t waddling yet. Well, she didn’t think she was, anyway. Although, for all she knew, her rear end might be swaying like a duck’s tail.

She bullied the suitcases through the doorway, all on her own, only to have them tumble into an uncooperative pile just on the other side of the electronic eye, which stopped the doors from closing, which subsequently caused a backup of departing passengers and an unsettling beep, beep, beep sound. “Sorry,” she apologized to the frowning faces in the doorway behind her. “Sorry.”

No one offered to help her gather the luggage. One man stepped over the jumble of suitcases, another edged around, but Abbie finally managed to scoot the cases out of the way and off to the side until she could get them straight again. No small task that, as the paisley suitcase seemed to have lost an essential bit of hardware in the tumble and was no longer completely closed. So where was a man when she needed one?

Ah, but she didn’t need one. Wasn’t that what this entire flight to Texas was about? Wasn’t that why she’d told her parents she was spending the summer at a math and science camp in the Pocono Mountains? Wasn’t she here to escape from the men in her life? All of them. The only one she would honestly like to see at this moment was the stranger who’d gotten her into this predicament with his dark good looks and a smile that buckled her knees. And the only reason she’d like to see him was to thumb her nose and tell him she didn’t need anything from him. Well, except, maybe, some duct tape.

A glance over her left shoulder didn’t reveal any black pickup trucks or scowling ranch hands, and a glance over her right showed nothing more than a cluster of people blocking her view. She knew from past arrivals in Austin on her way to the University of Texas grad school that the airport was always crowded and that trying to find a familiar vehicle among the slow tide of cars, buses, trucks and taxis moving past the building could be a formidable task. In the past, she’d been mainly looking for the bus, but hopefully a black truck would be easy to spot. Especially one accompanied by a cowboy.

Regrouping, she shifted the paisley suitcase to the top of the luggage stack so she could keep its contents safely intact with the weight of her hand. Slinging the shoulder strap of her purse high up on her shoulder, she prepared to tilt the baggage onto the wheels of the wire rack and head out to find Jessica’s cousin, Mac. But just as she braced the rack with her foot, tipped it back on the rollers and pushed it like a baby buggy toward the curb, the crowd thinned and her heart pulled taut in a little clutch of recognition as she saw him. Him. He’d been wearing a hat that night, too, and even though she couldn’t see his face in full now, the hammering, yammering beat of her heart would allow for no mistakes. It was him. The mysterious stranger. The man of her dreams. The father of her baby.

Oh, great. Of all the times to run into him again, this seemed the worst of all possible moments. Maybe she could duck back inside the building, get a drink, visit the ladies’ room and give him time to move along. She didn’t want a confrontation here, now. Not when her hair was limp and lackluster and tethered by a rubber band in a holding pattern at the back of her neck. Not when she was wearing stretch pants and a comfortably oversize, albeit somewhat sloppy, shirt of her brother’s. Not when she’d put on an old pair of black-framed glasses instead of her contacts. Not when she looked and felt about as sexy as leftover oatmeal.

On the other hand, if she didn’t march right up to him right now and demand whatever a pregnant, practically penniless woman demanded from a man whose name she didn’t know but whose baby she was carrying, the opportunity might never come again. Then again, back to the other hand, she wasn’t exactly in the mood to be humiliated and he looked pretty engrossed in conversation with a tanned, long-legged, skinny and obviously not pregnant blonde.

Perfect, Abbie thought. She’d just waddle right over there and let him get a good side-by-side comparison of her at her dumpy, lumpy, travel-weary worst with the disgustingly slender sun goddess whose smile seemed to have him mesmerized. On second thought, laying claim to his arm and his virility would put a definite crimp in his flirting and that would serve him right. Hi, she could say brightly. Remember me? Graduation party last December? So nice to see you again. What do you think we should name our baby? Oh, yeah, that would cool the ardor in those dark Arabic eyes but good.

Arabic. Arabian.

Oh, now that was just plain silly. Just because Jessica’s family raised Arabian horses and December’s mystery man had a slight Arabic ethnicity was hardly a reason to link him to the Colemans. That was like setting out to step over a ditch and then taking a running jump at the Grand Canyon instead. There was no basis, no reason at all to jump to such irrational conclusions. She’d just steer her luggage back into the airport, where the air was cool and conducive to logic. Why, five minutes inside and she’d probably realize he didn’t even resemble the man she’d met that night. Not even close. And Jessica’s cousin would turn out to be a leathery redhead and all would be well.

The cowboy glanced up. His gaze moved past her and returned with a jerk of recognition. Abbie hadn’t known she could move so fast. Her foot shoved the base of the wire rack, a move calculated to get the wheels angled and rolling. Worked beautifully, except for that initial wrench of the castors, which caused the luggage to shift and tumble like an avalanche of untimely disaster. The paisley suitcase flew open on impact and a good deal of Abbie’s private life sprawled out across the concrete. She knelt to scoop it out of the public domain, tossing panicked looks at the stranger who was already pushing away from the big black truck he’d been leaning against, moving away from the startled blonde, coming straight toward Abbie.

Black truck. Oh, jeez…

“You?” he demanded without preamble.

Abbie shoved her belongings into the suitcase, uncaring of order or wrinkles or that her hands shook so hard she had to pick up some items twice. “You who?” she said in a strangled voice. “You, uh, must have me mixed up with somebody else.” She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t solidify the supposition with the fact that he was who she thought he was and that she was…gulp…who he thought she was. “You don’t have to help me.” Scooping up scattered items with new fervor, she kept her head bent and her face averted. “My, uh, boyfriend is here somewhere, he’ll be here to help me any minute now. I can’t imagine what held him up in there. He was right behind me. Back there. At the baggage claim. Inside.”

“Boyfriend?” His voice cracked the word like a whip.

There was probably some special corner of hell reserved for liars, but Abbie clung to the hope she would be pardoned simply because she was so very bad at lying. Boyfriend? Now, that was a stroke of insanity. “Look, whoever you are,” she said in a rush of desperation, “I’m not who you think I am, so go away.”

He stooped and stared, pushing up the brim of his hat until his familiar dark eyes were peering at her with all the warmth of polished onyx, trying to catch her in a stray glance. And just the feel of his gaze on her created a hurricane of hot remembrance inside her. She couldn’t look at him and she couldn’t not look at him. The most magical night of her entire life had been spent with this man, wrapped in his arms, clothed in his smile, naked in his bed…on the floor, the chair, the vanity…Abbie wrestled the memory into submission. She didn’t want to deny the experience, but she was scared to death to claim it, too. What if the blonde was his wife? What if he had mistaken Abbie for someone else? What if he thought she’d stolen his wallet or something? What if he believed they’d met at a bar mitzvah instead of at the street dance? What if he kissed her? Right here, right now? He was still staring at her and she struggled to locate a tone of offence. “You have mistaken me for someone else,” she pronounced defiantly.

“No,” he said coldly. “It’s you, all right.”

Abbie swallowed hard, willed him to move on, get along, disappear, as she lifted her chin with completely false bravado. “Well, I don’t know you, even if you are standing on my underwear.”

He was, too. And of course, it had to be a pair of her serviceable, sedate and completely unattractive maternity underpants. They were new, but that was about the most complimentary thing anyone could say about them.

He seemed stuck for words as he stared at the scrap of unimaginative white peeking out from beneath his boot. So Abbie gave another verbal nudge to shoo him on his way. “Would you mind moving your big foot?”

With an economy of movements he scooped up the panties without even looking at them and let them dangle, without dignity, on the end of his index finger. “With my compliments,” he said.

Abbie snatched the lingerie and stuffed it into the mangled suitcase. “Yes, well, thanks. Hope you find whoever it is you’re looking for.”

He shrugged, straightened and turned to walk away. Abbie knew she was a fool to let him go without a word. She owed him an explanation. Well, at least, she owed him the knowledge of his impending fatherhood. If she’d never seen him again, she could have lived with knowing she’d had no chance to tell him. She could have found a way of explaining to their child that one parent would always remain a mystery. But now he was here and he deserved to know, whether or not she wanted to tell him.

Gathering the rest of her scattered belongings, she closed the suitcase as best she could and stood straight, holding it tightly in her arms. She’d just stack the luggage on the rack, get it out of the way, then she’d walk over and admit she was indeed the you he’d thought she was. With a glance, she noted the well-formed shape of his backside and remembered vividly the way that same backside had looked without tight-fitting jeans. She jerked her gaze from the hip pockets of his Levi’s and checked to see if the blonde was still there. She was. As was the truck. The big, black truck with the emblem of a horse’s head stamped on the side. A horse head with full Arabian show gear—horse savvy or not, Abbie recognized the regalia—and, in case she hadn’t, the words Desert Rose circled across the top and Arabians looped up from the bottom.

Oh, no! This couldn’t be happening. Couldn’t be true. Fate wouldn’t play this kind of joke on her. The mystery man couldn’t be Jessica Coleman’s cousin. That would be too—she couldn’t even think of a word to describe how perfectly awful that would be. It didn’t help to think the sequence of events made an odd sort of sense now, either. The party after the graduation she’d shared with Jessica, about three hundred other grad students and whoever else had shown up to help celebrate, the fact that both their families were there, but somehow, in all the fanfare and folderol, none of the Colemans had gotten introduced to any of the Joneses. The way she’d met the mystery man at the outdoor, portable bar moments after Jessica had mentioned her cousin had gone to get a drink. It was all so impossible, and yet suddenly so completely plausible that Abbie forced her gaze up from the Desert Rose crest to the face of the man she now knew without a doubt was here to pick her up. Could this situation be any more embarrassing?

“Mac,” she whispered aloud, because she had to feel the shape of his name in her mouth, had to affirm that he was both mystery man and Jessica’s cousin, had to do something to keep from melting into a puddle of humiliation right there on the hot Austin airport pavement.

He couldn’t have heard her whisper. Yet he turned, nevertheless, still questioning her presence, her identity, her denials. But one look at her ashen face must have told the story. His gaze tracked hers to the Desert Rose insignia on the door of the truck and then returned with a flare of comprehension. His chin came up as he tugged the brim of his hat down to shade his eyes, and she noted, as if from a great distance, that his shoulders were moving up and down, up and down, in coordination with the rapid expansion of his chest as he inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

It was a loud moment, unique in that while she was incapable of hearing anything except the frantic flutter of her own breath rasping like a bellows from her lungs, she absorbed the noise of traffic, of planes taking off overhead, of voices all around, of arrivals and welcomes, and car engines starting, revving, receding. She listened, though, only to the echoes of his voice in her mind and knew he was grappling with the same set of impossible, improbable, implacable chain of events she’d just worked her way through. She knew, too, the instant he reached the same inevitable conclusion.

“Abbie?” His voice was incredulous, hesitant with dismay, rough with amazement. “Are you Abbie?”

Chapter Two

Mac’s boots might as well have fused with the hot pavement for all his ability to move them. He couldn’t seem to do anything except stare at Abigail Jones, his mystery date, his cousin’s friend, the woman he’d come to the airport to meet. How was it that fate had turned aside every attempt he’d made in the past five months to discover who she was only to unaccountably drop her back into his life at this precise instant? Why had she denied knowing him when he remembered her so vividly? How could she have forgotten him when his whole body held the memory of hers?

She looked the same, but different, too. She’d worn a short, slender, sensational dress the night they’d met—except for later, when she’d worn nothing at all—and now she was dressed in a baggy shirt that was too big for her by half, but which made her look small and absurdly sexy. She might be a little more filled out than before, but that could just be the clothes and the way her hair was pulled back at her nape instead of curling loosely about her shoulders as it had that night. The glasses were definitely new, though.

She must have been wearing contacts when they’d met. Or maybe she hadn’t needed glasses then. Or maybe she had but hadn’t gotten them yet. What if she hadn’t seen him clearly at all that night, and that was why she claimed she didn’t recognize him now? Except she had recognized him. Her bowed head, the way she wouldn’t meet his gaze, the breathy, scattered tones of her voice all belied her spoken doubt. He’d have known her anywhere, anytime…the eyes as blue as Texas bluebonnets, hair not quite blond, not quite brown, but a soft, honeyed shade in between; the slight upward tilt at the end of her nose; the deceptively demure lift of her chin; the set of her shoulders; the warm tones of her skin. In that one glimpse, memory had flooded his mind’s eye with images of her. His body, too, remembered, and he’d known her as much by the physical response as by sight.

Jessica must have set this up somehow. But how could she have known he and Abbie had ever met? He hadn’t even made the connection until just now. And Abbie looked equally astonished. Appalled, even, as she stood there, clasping a dilapidated suitcase in her arms and staring at him as if he were the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. He was surprised to see her, but not shaken, as she appeared to be. She’d said there was a boyfriend with her, which had made Mac unaccountably angry. But there was still no sign of another man, and Jess certainly was expecting only one guest. Mac figured any significant other of Abbie’s was a long way from here, or invented on the spot to save embarrassment.

But whether or not there was a boyfriend, Abbie had been traveling and she obviously needed help with her luggage. Mac couldn’t just keep standing there, stuck in the moment, awash in unaccustomed emotion, wondering how he could keep from scaring her away again, wondering if it was all right to admit he was glad—so glad—to see her again.

“Hey, remember me?” said a voice near his ear. The leggy blonde, who’d been in the process of inviting him to spend some quality time with her at the Four Seasons. Betsy or Bambi or whatever the hell she’d said her name was had been completely forgotten the moment his gaze had fallen on Abbie. Abbie. Abigail Jones. What a plain and glorious name. How well it suited her, too. He wanted to say it over and over. He wanted to welcome her back into his life with a kiss. Oh, yeah, he especially wanted to kiss her. But his knees were stupidly weak and his heart was beating ridiculously fast and she was just standing there staring at him as someone tugged at his elbow, demanded his attention.

“What’s the matter?” the blonde asked. “Is the heat getting to you? You were about to offer me a ride, remember?”

“I was?” He couldn’t take his eyes off Abbie, who continued to clutch the one suitcase with its wispy flags of underwear peeking out around the edges, as she trundled the whole rickety stack of luggage toward him. He stepped out, offering in a gesture to take the suitcase from her arms, but she stopped like a skittish filly at his first advance and eyed him nervously.

“You’re Mac?” Her voice was a shaky whisper, and he edged closer to hear her.

“Mac Coleman,” he said, as if they needed an introduction. “I’m Jessica’s cousin.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Abbie wrinkled her nose, then tried to adjust her glasses via facial contortions because her hands were wrapped around the broken suitcase, and, for some reason, she didn’t seem to want to let go. “Holy Maloney, this is awkward.”

“Doesn’t need to be.” He put his hands on the suitcase, wanting to be gallant and charming and helpful, but when he gave the bag a tug, she clasped it all the tighter. “I can show you Jess’s picture in my wallet,” he offered, “if it’ll reassure you and make you feel more at ease. She really wanted to come in to meet you today, but there’s a lot of work at the ranch, what with my brothers getting married recently and not spending as much time helping as usual, and I had business in town today anyway, so here we are.” He was talking too much, trying too hard, wanting quite desperately to see her smile.

She sighed instead. “This is really awkward.”

“And here I am, thinking that seeing you again is such a pleasant surprise.”

“Yes, well, you haven’t seen that much of me yet.” She glanced at the other woman, licked her lips, pressed them together, and Mac, interpreting the glance as anxiety, hurried to reassure her.

“She was just asking me where she could catch the hotel shuttle,” he said, gesturing dismissively at the blonde, never transferring his full—and hopefully charming—attention from Abbie. “How have you been since…December?”

Her blue eyes shifted doubtfully to him. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then sucked in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and said in a rush, “Pregnant. How have you been?”

His smile faded, along with the excitement and possibility that seeing her again had evoked. Pregnant? What had she said? “Pregnant?” he repeated, his gut clenching in protest as his gaze dropped helplessly to her midsection.

“Pregnant,” she confirmed, thrusting the suitcase at him and revealing the unmistakably rounded contours of her belly beneath the oversize white shirt. “Congratulations, it’s yours.”

ABBIE COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d just blurted it out that way. But then, there probably wasn’t a good way to tell a complete stranger you were having his baby. Miss Manners ought to put together a pamphlet of suggestions. Mac’s expression was turning grimmer by the second, but oddly enough, Abbie felt a certain amount of relief. It had been a strain to keep the secret and now, whether for better or worse, it was out of the bag. She turned her attention to the other woman, who was eyeing her with a curious hostility. “Hi,” she said, offering a handshake with her now unencumbered hand. “I’m Abbie Jones. I’m sorry to have interrupted. I know this must seem a little strange.”

“This is Bambi.” Mac’s voice had all the warmth of a refrigerator as he butted in to make the introduction. “We’re giving her a ride to her hotel before we head out to the ranch.”

“Brandi,” the blonde corrected amiably. “But maybe I should go look for that shuttle and let you two work out your…problem.”

But Mac—pale beneath his dark skin—stayed her with a glance. “No. Please,” he requested in a voice no one in their right mind would argue with. “I want to give you a ride to the hotel. It will be my pleasure. Once her—” he jerked his head toward Abbie “—boyfriend gets out here, we’ll be ready to roll and as friendly as four coyotes on a foggy day.”

“There’s no boyfriend,” Abbie admitted in a rush, determined to be truthful from here on in. “You startled me and I…well, I just made him up for protection. Before I knew we were going to have to get better acquainted.”

Mac looked at her, clearly unimpressed with the truth. “Get in,” he said.

Abbie didn’t know how this could work out, but she wasn’t getting into that truck, and she didn’t really think Brandi should do so, either. “I’m not going to the ranch,” she announced with more gusto than guts. “Not now.”

Mac tossed her suitcase into the back of the truck and reached for another, his gaze dropping to her rounded waistline and skittering quickly away. “You’re going to the ranch. Jess is expecting you. She’s expecting me to get you there safe and sound. You’re going.”

Abbie raised her chin. “I’m not.”

The red plaid suitcase landed in the pickup bed, and was quickly followed by the duct-taped brown tweed. “Yes,” he said, “you are.”

“I can get a cab.” Brandi edged toward the curb, but Mac touched her arm and his voice warmed. “I want to take you to the hotel. So, please. Get in the truck.”

Brandi looked at Abbie, assessing perhaps the odds of getting caught in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel against the odds of getting a cab against the odds that this awkward situation might be resolved in her favor. Her glance skipped to the Desert Rose insignia on the truck, flickered over Abbie’s tousled appearance and then returned to Mac, accompanied by a beatific smile. “Well, if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” Although anyone listening might have thought otherwise. “Happy to do it.”

He wasn’t happy about anything, Abbie thought, as she watched him toss in the last suitcase, uncaring as to where—or even if—it landed. Okay, so she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Anger was a perfectly understandable first reaction. Impending parenthood wasn’t always welcome news, even under far better circumstances than this. He hadn’t, obviously, been expecting to see her ever again, had been as surprised by her as she had been by him. Even without the pregnancy, he might be forgiven a lack of excitement at seeing her. He had, after all, been flirting rather successfully with beautiful Brandi before Abbie appeared and put his agenda on the skids. Well, thinking she had done anything more than delay the outcome of his flirtation was probably stretching it, considering that Brandi was sitting pretty in the middle of the truck’s bench seat at this very moment.

Still, Abbie didn’t see how any good could come from letting a darkly handsome Texan tell her what to do. He’d been her accomplice in getting into this sorry situation in the first place and that was quite enough help, thank you very much. “I’m not going with you,” she said firmly. “Take my bags out of the back of the truck right now so I can put them on the first plane out of here.”

He looked at her across the expanse of pickup bed and luggage. “Too late for second thoughts, Abigail. If you hadn’t wanted to stake your claim on me, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Now, get in and let’s go.”

“Stake a claim?” Abbie repeated, not certain she’d heard him correctly. “What does that mean? You think I knew you and Jessie were cousins? Is that what you’re saying?”

He shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”

“Well, that’s insane. If I’d known you were Jessica’s cousin, you’d better believe I’d be anywhere but here.”

“Easy enough to say now that you are here. But regardless of what I believe to be true and not true, I’m taking you to the ranch. Jessica wants you there and I’m not going to be the one to explain to her why you’ve suddenly changed your mind. Now, get in and let’s go as planned.” He stressed the word, making it sound ominous and threatening.

“You can’t force me to go with you.”

“The hell I can’t. You’ve just accused me of being the father of your baby. I think that gives me a little say in where you go from here. Cut to the chase, Abigail Jones. The Desert Rose has been your destination for months. There’s no good reason to balk now, when you’re so close to your goal.”

Oh, he was arrogant. And maddening. And sure of himself. And wrong, wrong, wrong. He was also so handsome it made her chest hurt. “Fine,” she said, mainly because her choices at the moment were extremely limited and because she was weary all the way to the roots of her hair. “But I’m not staying.”

He just looked at her, coolly disbelieving. “Your display of reluctance is duly noted. Now, get in.” Then he got in on the driver’s side and started the engine.

Abbie debated her options and decided that kicking truck tires would be about as pointless as any other show of defiance. She thought about climbing into the back of the pickup and tossing out her luggage as haphazardly as he’d tossed it in. She could be in Dallas in an hour, in Little Rock an hour after that. But now that she knew who he was, now that she’d told him the truth, sooner or later, in one place or another, she’d have to face him again. And now was as good a time as any. He was a jerk, but he might as well learn straight away that she was no coward.

She scooted in beside Brandi and slammed the door.

“…AND WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT? Right in the middle of the presentation, the thing breaks and all my careful planning vanishes as quickly as the available balance on my credit card!”

Mac changed gears and merged into the lane of traffic while bubbly Brandi filled the stilted atmosphere inside the truck with chatter. He wished he hadn’t insisted she come with them, wished he’d never pretended an interest in her at all, wished he could yell mightily at Abbie, who was all but hugging the passenger side door in a wretched silence. Not that she deserved even the slightest hint of his compassion. She’d set him up, dammit. Laid her trap so cleverly he’d practically begged to walk into it.

A baby.

Well, it wasn’t his baby, that was for sure. No way in hell was she going to pin this on him. No, sir. Uh-uh. No two ways about it. She’d already admitted she was a liar. Claiming there was a boyfriend with her at the airport. Ha! That had been her first mistake.

No, choosing him as her target had been her first mistake. He was no gullible Gus, ready to accept her claim as truth, her accusations for fact. She was grasping at straws if she believed he was so easily duped. He knew what she was after—the Coleman name, the Desert Rose ranch, the royal heritage of a lost prince of Arabia. Most likely Jessica had been manipulated into filling in all the blank spaces of his life that Abbie hadn’t been able to ferret out on her own. No doubt, Abbie knew the story of his past as well as he did, himself. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover she had a scrapbook containing all the newspaper clippings that made up his history—Rose Coleman’s storybook wedding to Ibrahim El Jeved, the crown prince of Sorajhee. The birth of a son, Alim, now called Alex. The birth of twins, Makin and Kadar, whose names were later changed to Mac and Cade. Ibrahim’s murder. Rose’s banishment and reported death. The rescue of three young princes by their uncle. The success of the Coleman-Grayson business partnership. The prime Arabian stock bred and trained on the Desert Rose. The secrecy, the speculation, the scandals of the royal family of El Jeved.

Mac figured Abbie knew it all, right down to the last decimal point in his personal bank account. Oh, yeah. She’d snowed Jessica, somehow, and gotten close enough to find out all she needed to know to seduce him. Sweet, innocent little Abbie had a calculating heart and a devious agenda. Well, he’d be damned if he’d give her even a penny for her trouble, much less his name and heritage. It wasn’t his baby. It couldn’t be his. One night? A million-to-one chance? No. No. She didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. He knew her type, had been badly burned before, and it was not a lesson he had any intention of repeating.

He should have made her find her own way out to the ranch. But some masochistic impulse had made him order her to get into his truck, had urged him to punish himself at the same time he let her know, in no uncertain terms, that he was nobody’s fool. Chances are, though, even had he tried to send her on her way, she’d have beaten him home. Women like her always had a backup plan.

“Even the best-laid plans can’t guarantee success,” he said pointedly, for Abbie’s benefit. “Sometimes a scheme is doomed from the inception.”

“My, my, don’t you have a cynical attitude,” Brandi observed in cheery tones as she rubbed her shoulder against his arm. “But, as it turned out, I still managed to snag the account. There’s more than one way to get a man to say yes. Isn’t that right, Abbie?”

Abbie raised her head and for a second, her eyes locked with Mac’s before she turned away. “Frankly, I’ve never thought a man was worth that much effort.”

Brandi laughed and blithely continued on with her chatter while Abbie returned to staring out the window and Mac fumed over her haughty tone of voice. She had no business taking the offensive like that, sounding wounded, somehow, in spite of the sting in her words. He heartily wished he’d left both women on the curb at the airport. “Four Seasons hotel,” he said, relieved to see the hotel come into view.

“So soon?” Brandi lurched forward to see, jostling Abbie in the process.

Mac wanted to grab her arm and tell her to be more careful. Abbie was pregnant, for Pete’s sake. But then he had no right or reason to think Abbie needed his protection. Or to give it, if she did. Truth be told, he should be thanking Brandi for providing him the protection of her chatter this far. “I’ll walk you in,” he said, as he parked in a No Parking space in front of the hotel, opened the door and stepped out.

Brandi slid out of the seat after him, not offering so much as a glance at Abbie, much less a word of goodbye, chattering instead to Mac like some silly magpie.

Abbie was the one who said a warm “nice to have met you,” even though she’d been mainly ignored throughout the trip. Mac felt irritated by one woman’s lack of manners and by the other one’s innate courtesy. And on top of it, he recognized a strong thrust of concern at the weary note that echoed in Abbie’s voice. Probably part of her act, a link in the plan to claim his future for herself and her baby. Well, she’d find it rough going. He had experience with women like her and their end-justifies-the-means attitude. It’d be a cold day in the Sahara before he set himself up to play the fool again.

When he got back into the truck cab, a full twenty minutes had elapsed. Most of it while he stood inside the lobby listening to Brandi as she did her best to persuade him to return later for cocktails, dinner and a late-night dessert in her room, but mainly while he watched the truck, making sure Abbie didn’t get out and signal for a cab. He didn’t know why he should care if she did. The sooner she figured out her little plan had run smack into the proverbial mountain, the better off both of them would be.

“I didn’t much figure you’d have the good sense to slip away when I gave you the chance,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “Your kind never does.”

“My kind, as you put it, does better at escaping when your kind leaves the keys in the truck.” Anger flashed in her eyes and he met it with cool deliberation. “Besides, if you were so anxious for me to leave, why didn’t you let me go at the airport instead of dragging me all the way into town?”

“I was only trying to be accommodating.”

“You were demonstrating to me that responsibility isn’t your forte. Fine, I got the message. Now, take me back to the airport and I’ll be out of your life for good.”

“If it wasn’t for Jessica, I’d do just that and call your bluff, but good.”

She looked down at her stomach. “You think this is a bluff?”

Easing the pickup into the flow of traffic that was always heavy in downtown Austin, he felt the sting of her righteous—now, there was a misnomer—anger and smiled lazily. “You’ll find I’m not one to mince words,” he said. “And I don’t take kindly to being accused of something I didn’t do.”

“What are you saying?” Abbie asked tightly. “That perhaps you have an identical twin who was in that hotel room with us last December and at the moment of conception it was him instead of you?”

Mac shot her an irritated glance. “As it happens, I do have a twin brother. Cade. But as we both know, he’s no more the father of that baby you’re carrying than I am.”

She blinked, then adjusted her glasses with a jab of her finger. “You mean you really do have a twin? For real?”

“Don’t play games. You probably know more about me and my family than I do.”

“I don’t see how you can say that. Until I saw you outside the airport, I didn’t even know your name.”

He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “The more lies you tell, the more apt you are to get caught in them,” he admonished. “You and Jessica became friends during grad school. Don’t try to tell me you never talked about your families.”

“I suppose someone of your kind would find it impossible to believe you weren’t the main topic of conversation every day of the week, every hour of the day, but believe me, stranger things have happened.”

“Yes, like you showing up here.”

“I’m here because Jessica was kind enough to invite me. As I said before, if I’d known you were one of her cousins, this is the last place I’d have chosen as a refuge.”

“Refuge? Now, that’s an interesting turn of phrase.”

She pressed her lips together and stared stonily out the windshield. “Look, Mac—it is all right if I call you Mac, isn’t it?”

“I usually require women to call me Sheikh Makin Bin Habib El Jeved, or Prince, but since you asked so nicely, I’ll make an exception for you and allow you to call me Your Royal Highness.” He slowed in response to the traffic and looked over at her. “I’m guessing my connection to the royal family of Sorajhee doesn’t come as a surprise to you.”

Her blue eyes took on something of a glaze at that. “Oh, no. I’m not surprised at all. I was sort of hoping for Prince William—he’s young, but so handsome, you know—but what kind of commoner am I to complain? I mean, any royal blood is better than none, right?”

She was making fun of him, the little witch. There was a hint of a dimple winking at him from her cheek, the dance of devilment in her eyes. She was laughing, and his stupid heart urged him to laugh with her! But he would not give her the satisfaction. He would never humble himself in that way. “I’m glad you find it so amusing,” he said stiffly. “You may not find it so in the days to come.”

“Day,” she corrected quickly. “I’m not staying any longer than it takes to convince Jessica I’ll be okay somewhere else.”

“Some other place of refuge?”

“I didn’t mean to say that. Refuge sounds…well, not the way it really is.”

“So how is it, Abigail Jones? Did you get into trouble and this looked like an easy way out? Or was this your plan all along?”

The laughter went out of her expression as quickly as a room goes from light to dark with the flick of a switch. “My plan was to take my graduate degree and teach. My plan was to be on my own and independent. My plan was to stay out of trouble altogether. I didn’t plan to get pregnant, I didn’t plan on ever seeing you again, and I sure as shootin’ didn’t plan to answer stupid questions about looking for the easy way out!”

Mac thought she sounded genuinely upset. Angry, too. He had to admit she was a consummate little actress. “Let’s be honest, Abbie. We had one night together. One. We weren’t careless. We used protection. You’ll forgive me if I refuse to believe I’m the father of your child.”

She was furious. It showed in every nuance, in every movement, in the white-hot gaze that scorched him in its outrage. “And you’ll forgive me if I believe you’re a jackass.”

“There’s no need to resort to name-calling.”

“No, much better to stick to your civilized way of calling me not only a liar, but a wh—”

“I did not say that.”

“But you did imply it.” She twisted irritably on the seat. “Well, I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Sheikh El Highness, but for your information, I don’t sleep around, using protection is no guarantee against pregnancy, and this is your baby. Much to my regret. Now, please, don’t talk to me anymore. No,” she snapped when he opened his mouth. “Don’t say another word. I’m dangerously hormonal and I might start screaming. I might dial 911 on my cell phone and accuse you of kidnapping. Or worse. I might take out a pair of needles and start knitting little booties. Believe me, you’ll be doing us both a favor if you keep quiet from here on in and just concentrate on driving.”

Mac thought maybe—this time, anyway—she had a valid point.

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