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The Pregnant Bride
Catherine Spencer
Getting jilted at the altar was bad enough, but falling for the sympathetic stranger at her honeymoon hotel was much worse!Jenna Sinclair didn't regret it, though; one passion-filled night with Edmund Delaney proved she'd never truly loved her ex-fiance. But when Jenna told Edmund she was pregnant, he was far from dismayed. It seemed he had his own agenda, and marriage to Jenna was just what he needed…. Why?
“Your tea’s made and I found the crackers. And I must say that if this is your normal diet—”
“It’s not,” Jenna said shortly. “It just happens to be brought on by the fact that I’m expecting your baby.”
“Ah, yes, the baby. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk about,” Edmund said. “The way I see things, your family and friends are going to have a feeding frenzy over your latest crisis. They’ll be merciless in doling out the pity and advice.”
“If this is supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working. I’ve already come to the same conclusion, and I’d hardly call it comforting.” Jenna replied.
“So head them off at the pass. Show up with a husband.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” she said tartly, “they’re a vanishing species where I’m concerned. How do you propose I find one?”
“You’ve already got your man. I’m volunteering for the job.”
Back by popular demand…
Relax and enjoy our fabulous series about couples whose passion results in pregnancies…sometimes unexpected! Of course, the birth of a baby is always a joyful event, and we can guarantee that our characters will become besotted moms and dads—but what happened in those nine months before?
Share the surprises, emotions, drama and suspense as our parents-to-be come to terms with the prospect of bringing a new life into the world. All will discover that the business of making babies brings with it the most special love of all….
Our next arrival will be For the Babies’ Sakes by Sara Wood
Harlequin Presents #2280
The Pregnant Bride
Catherine Spencer
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
EDMUND noticed her the minute she came into the dining room, not because she was beautiful, which she was, but because, in a roomful of people, she was so profoundly alone.
He was alone, too, and wallowing in it. Not so with her. The eyes staring at the menu were blank, the face wiped clean of expression. For some reason he couldn’t begin to fathom, she’d shut down inside so completely that if the room had burst into flames, she probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Not your concern, buddy, he told himself, gesturing for his bill. You’ve got enough problems of your own, without taking on a perfect stranger’s.
Still, he lingered at his table, watching her; noting the absence of rings on her fingers, the formal, upswept hairdo incongruously at odds with her sweater and slacks. When she spoke to the waiter, she cupped her chin in one hand to support her mouth because that was the only way she could control its trembling. Oh yeah, something was definitely wrong!
Her server knew it, too. He didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t hover obsequiously, reciting the chef’s special creations of the day. He wanted away from her quickly, before whatever ailed her infected him, too. Her barely contained misery was an affront. Romantic ambience were key words when it came to describing The Inn. Tragic heroines, however lovely, had no place there.
Just briefly she looked up, a glance so wary and fearful that when their gazes locked, Edmund caught himself smiling at her and shrugging conspiratorially. Hang in there, sweet pea! Don’t let him spook you. You’ve got as much right to be here as anyone.
She glared back at him and stiffened her already poker-straight spine.
He felt his face crack into a grin he couldn’t control. Damn, but he admired her spirit! Faced with personal crises, the women he’d dated over the last couple of year either fled to the therapist’s couch or a weekend at one of those fat farms where, for the price of a mere few thousand dollars, their stress and cellulite could be flushed away in one fell swoop.
But not this woman. She was the kind who’d go down fighting—or so he thought, until her drink arrived. Scotch, if he was any judge, and a double, to boot. Confronted by it, she sort of reared back in her seat and regarded the liquor suspiciously. Finally, after debating matters for a full thirty seconds or more, she picked up the glass. Her expression reminded him of a child faced with a dose of foul-tasting but good-for-you medicine, and he pretty well guessed what was coming next.
Willing her to look his way again, he shook his head. Don’t do it, lady! It’s not going to solve a thing!
Whatever mental powers he possessed failed him though, because she clearly didn’t get the message. Raising the glass, she tossed back half the contents in a single gulp.
Clearly, from the way she gagged and choked, she and whiskey weren’t on familiar terms, and the effect was immediate, devastating and irreparable. The heat of the liquor burning down her throat chewed away the icy calm in which she’d encased herself, and what started as a booze-induced sting to her eyes rapidly dissolved into silent, body-wrenching sobs.
She gulped, dipped her head to try to hide her face, struggled to draw a breath. But once started, there was no stopping the flood and the tears kept coming. Caught in the rays of the westerly sun, they splashed off the end of her nose and dribbled down her sweater like crystal beads come unstrung.
Well, hell! Hard-boiled where women and their sob sessions were concerned he might have become, but he couldn’t just sit there and watch her fall apart, especially since no one else was going to help her and she was beyond being able to help herself. “Put the lady’s drink on my bill,” he directed the waiter and, shoving back his chair, waded in to slay whatever dragons were tormenting her.
She was making a public spectacle of herself! Of all the hurt and embarrassment she’d suffered that day, the fact that she couldn’t control the hideous sobs gurgling and sputtering out of her mouth was the ultimate indignity. That morning, someone else was accountable for having humiliated her; now she was the perpetrator and had no one to blame but herself.
Knowing that and being able to do something about it, though, were two different things. Try as she might to control them, the sobs choked out and echoed around the room, a socially obscene gaffe which no one could have missed. Although too polite to stare openly, everybody was sneaking a look, from the teenage busboy in the corner, to the man seated two tables away, the one who, just minutes before, had tried to pick her up with his sly smile and the practiced shrug of his no doubt impressive shoulders.
Lounge lizard! If it weren’t that she was openly slobbering into her napkin, a sight surely guaranteed to put off even the most determined skirt-chaser, he’d no doubt have made his next move by now and offered to buy her a drink, followed by the suggestion that they go somewhere private to admire the sunset.
And part of you would have welcomed the suggestion, an obnoxious little voice inside her head sneered. Any man sparing you a second glance not dripping with pity is preferable to this morning’s unmitigated rejection.
But there was a limit to what even he was prepared to tolerate. From the corner of her eye, Jenna saw him mutter something to the waiter, then head straight past her, anxious to escape before she made an even worse exhibition of herself. And because she was a fool, too steeped in self-pity to care about the impression she was creating, her tears flowed even faster.
Then, shockingly, a hand—warm, firm and unmistakably masculine—touched her shoulder, slid down her spine almost to her waist, and urged her to her feet. And a voice, deep and resonant with authority, murmured in her ear. “Okay, sweet pea, enough of this. What say we take the rest of the show outside?”
Sweet pea, indeed! She should have been offended at the familiarity, the condescension. If she’d been in her right mind, instead of wallowing in useless self-pity, she’d have told him so in no uncertain terms. But she hadn’t been herself since that morning and beggars couldn’t be choosers. At that moment he was the only savior she had so, when he offered her his arm, instead of slapping it aside, she grabbed hold as if it were a life belt and let him shepherd her past the stares and the whispers infiltrating the dining room.
Outside, the cool evening air brushed her face and marginally restored her composure. “Thank you,” she sniffled, except that it came out sounding more like “Phn-k!” because her throat was so waterlogged with tears still.
“Sure,” he said, steering her toward a covered flight of steps. “Just hang on till we get to the beach, then you can howl to your heart’s content. There’ll be no one there to hear but the gulls and they’re so busy making their own racket, they won’t even notice yours.”
She stepped down to a vast stretch of shoreline scoured clean by the receding tide and deserted except for a couple with two children and a dog, far enough away that they were mere dots on the horizon. Except for the man at her side, Jenna was alone. She could shriek until she was hoarse, but what was the use when, at the end of it all, nothing would have changed?
So instead, she fell into step beside the man as he struck out for the water’s edge, grateful that he didn’t feel a need to fill the silence between them with empty conversation. Seeming bent on his own thoughts, he adjusted his stride to hers, shoved his hands in his jacket pocket, and fixed his gaze to where the lowering sun painted the tips of the waves gold.
Gradually, the convulsive sobbing eased and she could breathe again—deep, reviving breaths, laced with the clean tang of salt and the sharp bite of an early, west-coast May evening. The constriction which, since morning, had gripped her throat and made swallowing painful, softened. Except for the gritty aftermath of tears inflaming her eyes, she was almost herself again. “Thank you,” she said again. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t stepped in when you did.”
He nodded. “Glad to help. Feel like talking about whatever’s got you tied up in knots?”
“I…no, I don’t think so.”
“It might help and I’m a pretty good listener.”
“I made a mistake, that’s all,” she said.
He gave a nonchalant shrug. “So you’re fallible like the rest of us. Don’t go beating yourself up about it.”
“A huge mistake.”
“Most mistakes can be rectified, one way or another.”
“Not this one.”
He let his glance flicker over her before returning his attention to the sunset. “That bad, huh? What did you do, kill somebody?”
It was the wrong question to ask. “I should have!” she said fiercely. “If I’d had a gun, I would have!”
“Uh-oh!”
She glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When a woman overreacts like that to a purely hypothetical question, it’s either because she’s got man trouble or she’s criminally deranged. If you were the latter, you’d have gone for the waiter with your steak knife. Instead, you tried to put a brave face on things—and you might have succeeded if you’d steered clear of the booze.”
“I am not a drinker,” she said stiffly. “At least, not as a rule. But tonight…”
“Tonight you needed something to dull the pain.”
“Yes.”
“So this is about a man?”
“Yes.”
“I take it the relationship, such as it was, is over and that he’s the one who ended it?”
“Yes.” The word exploded on a sigh that seemed to start in the soles of her feet and drag every ounce of energy out of her.
He rocked back on his heels and surveyed her critically. “Even with your face all red and puffy from crying, you’re a fine looking woman. Beautiful, in fact. Seems to me you could take your pick of men. What made you latch on to such a bozo?”
Jenna thought of Mark’s spaniel brown eyes, as different from this stranger’s penetrating blue stare as melting chocolate from ice; of his endearing grin, more reminiscent of a little boy’s than a hard-nosed financier’s. “I fell in love with him,” she quavered.
“A hell of a lot more than he fell in love with you, apparently! If you want my opinion, you’re well rid of him.”
“I don’t want your opinion,” she snapped. She’d gone through enough already that day without this…this creature pontificating on her situation and handing out Band-Aid solutions when she was bleeding inside!
“I thought a bit of down-to-earth common sense might help, but if you’d rather wallow in misery…” He lifted his shoulders in yet another shrug so graphically executed that there was no need for him to finish the sentence.
Suddenly, she saw herself through his eyes, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. A weeping, hysterical woman knocking back double scotches and losing control of herself in front of a roomful of people was in no position to take out her misery on the one person who’d shown her compassion. “I was left at the altar,” she confessed, the very act of speaking the words aloud leaving her hollow with pain.
“When?”
The sneaking suspicion that she owed her savior something more than the bare bones she’d so far offered overcame her earlier reticence. “This morning.”
“Oh, boy!” He whistled through his teeth. “Small wonder you’re such a mess.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t entitle me to be rude to you, or to intrude on your time. I’m sure your plans for the evening didn’t involve playing nursemaid to a jilted bride.” She squared her shoulders and did her best to project the image of a woman in control and well able to stand on her own two feet which, considering her recent bout of weeping, was a lost cause from the outset. “Please don’t feel you have to stay out here with me. I’ll be perfectly all right by myself,” she said, her voice wobbling dangerously.
“Garbage!” he declared flatly. “You’ve been dumped on what should be the happiest day of your life, and you shouldn’t be alone. Surely there’s someone who could be here with you—a friend, or a family member?”
“No! I don’t want…people to…know where I am.”
He stepped back and searched her face incredulously. “Are you saying that after being stood up at the altar and left emotionally distraught, you just disappeared without a word to anyone?”
“That’s right.” She returned his gaze defiantly.
“What about your relatives and friends? They must be worried out of their minds. Or didn’t that strike you as important?”
The censure in his voice stirred her to an unwelcome guilt which, in turn, put her once again on the defensive. “What would you have done in my place? Invite all the guests to the reception and have it turn into a wake with them all commiserating with the forlorn bride?”
He rolled his eyes. “Cripes, do you always go overboard like this? Couldn’t you have found a happy medium and shown some consideration for your family’s feelings? They’re probably beside themselves with concern for you.”
“If you only knew…!” she began, then clamped her mouth shut and turned away from him because, even if she tried to explain, he’d just think she was trying to milk her situation for more sympathy than he had to spare. And to be fair, how could a stranger be expected to understand the hopes and expectations her family had pinned on her marriage to one of the city’s wealthiest financiers?
“We’ll finally be accepted where we belong,” her mother had crowed to her father. “Doors will open, you’ll see! We’ll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. Mark will give our son a position in the firm, something appropriate for a young man of Glen’s ability. And with a few words dropped in the right ear, Amber’s career will be made overnight.”
“He’s marrying Jenna, not the whole family,” her father had tried to point out. “Mark doesn’t owe the rest of us any favors.”
But her mother had been undeterred. “Why not, when he can so easily afford them?”
Was that what had made Mark change his mind at the last minute? Had he felt he was nothing more than a cash cow, even though Jenna would have loved him just as dearly if he’d been dirt-poor?
The breeze picked up, tugging at the formal hairdo her stylist had created just that morning. Hugging her arms against the chill, Jenna swung back to the stranger. “I left a note at my parents’ house telling them I’d be away for a few days and not to worry about me. Satisfied?”
“I guess,” he said, “but I still don’t see why you’d want to cut yourself off from them.” He inclined his head toward The Inn perched majestically on the rocks to their right. “Or why you’d want to hole up in a place designed for couples and lovers. Seems to me that’s just rubbing salt in the wounds.”
He subjected her to another penetrating stare and she felt color stealing into her cheeks. “Oh, brother, let me guess!” he exclaimed, enlightenment dawning. “You were supposed to honeymoon here, right?”
“At least I knew I’d have a room reserved,” she said defensively. “The bridal suite, in fact, complete with champagne on ice and flowers by the bucketful.”
He circled her as if she were some rare species of sea life accidentally washed ashore. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
She stared at her feet, feeling more foolish by the minute. “At least it’s the last place anyone would think to come looking for me.”
He laughed then, a rich warm rumble of amusement borne away on the breeze. “You’re going to be okay, you know that?” he said, tipping up her chin with his finger and smiling down at her. “Any woman with the guts to face her demons in the one place she’d expected to find true love is a real survivor. What say we head back to The Inn and I buy us both a drink to celebrate?”
Well, why not? The only thing waiting for her in the suite was a bed big enough for two and no one to share it with. “All right,” she said. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“Yeah,” he said, tucking her hand under his arm and towing her back the way they’d come. “But keep it under your hat, okay? I don’t want the word to get out.”
His name was Edmund Delaney and she found herself enjoying his company more than she’d have thought possible an hour before. He was an entertaining host, articulate, amusing, and unquestionably the most attractive man in the room. She sat by the fire and sipped the cognac he ordered and, for a little while, she was able to push the fiasco of her wedding day to the back of her mind. Eventually, though, the evening came to an end.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” he offered and because she dreaded being alone, she accepted.
Taller than Mark, broader across the shoulders, and more powerfully built, he loped up the stairs with the graceful ease of an athlete at the peak of fitness. “Give me your key,” he said, when they arrived at her door, and as she handed it over, she noticed his hands were lean and tanned and capable, and just a little callused as if he worked with tools. Mark had a manicure every week and wouldn’t have known one end of a hammer from the other.
“Here you are.” Edmund pushed open her door, dropped the keys into her palm and folded her fingers over them.
If he’d said, “Sleep well,” she’d probably have managed to end the evening with a modicum of dignity, but his more sensitive “Try to get some sleep,” had the tears burning behind her eyes all over again.
Mutely, she looked up at him.
His fingers grazing her cheek were gentle. “I know,” he murmured. “It isn’t going to be easy.”
He left her then and she knew a shocking urge to call him back and beg him not to make her face the night alone. It wasn’t that she wanted him to make love to her or anything like that; she just needed the warmth of human contact, the feeling that someone in the world cared—not that a two-thousand-dollar wedding dress had gone to waste, or that four hundred guests had been cheated of a seven-course dinner, but that she somehow survive the crushing blow to her self-esteem and live to face another day.
Not until his footsteps had faded into silence did she venture into the room. A fire burned in the hearth and beyond the wide windows a half-moon floated over the ocean. The maid had turned down the bed on both sides and left foil-wrapped chocolates on each pillow. Hadn’t she noticed there was only one set of luggage, only one toothbrush in the bathroom?
Unable to face the bed, Jenna sank down on the rug before the fire and because there was no longer any ignoring them, let the ghastly events of the day wash over her.
It had begun well enough, with sunshine and clear skies. There’d been no hint of impending disaster as she’d ridden with her father to the church, no sense of something amiss as her bridesmaids fussed with her veil and whispered that the groom and his family had not yet arrived. Mark and his father were often late, held up by international phone calls and such. “That’s the price of doing business,” Mark had said, when she’d once had the temerity to complain. “Money before pleasure any day of the week.”
Including their wedding day, it had seemed!
“They’ve taken a wrong turn and got lost,” her father joked. “Or been stopped for speeding.”
But as the minutes stretched and still no groom, the smiles had shrunk and the speculation had begun, rippling over the congregation like wind over a cornfield. Finally, “I have another wedding in half an hour,” the minister had said, coming out to where she waited in her wedding finery. “I’m afraid that unless Mr. Armstrong and his party arrive in the next few minutes, we’ll have to reschedule your ceremony for another time.”
By then, though, a dull certainty had taken hold and Jenna knew that Mark wasn’t going to arrive, not in the next few minutes and not ever. Instead, Paul King, his best man, had shown up, red-faced and apologetic.
“So sorry, Jenna,” he’d stammered, handing her an envelope. “Wish I didn’t have to be the one to bring you this. Wish there could have been a happier ending….”
The letter was brief and full of empty excuses aimed at softening the blow of rejection. …afraid I won’t make you happy…can’t give you what you want…you deserve better, dear Jenna…a wonderful woman who’ll make some lucky man a wonderful wife…forgive me…some day you’ll thank me…this hurts me as much as I know it will hurt you….
“What does it say?” her mother had asked in a horrified whisper, and when she hadn’t replied, had snatched the paper out of Jenna’s hand, read it for herself, and let out a squawk of outrage. “He can’t do this!” she’d cried. “We’ve got sixty pounds of smoked salmon waiting at the club! Your father had to extend his line of credit at the bank to finance this wedding!”
The bad news had spread quickly, rolling through the church like an anthem. Heads had turned, necks craned, feet shuffled. And throughout it all, Jenna had stood at the door, bouquet dangling from one limp hand, wedding veil floating in the May breeze, silk gown whispering around her ankles and a great empty hole where her heart had been.
What was the correct protocol for a bride left waiting at the altar? Throwing herself off the nearest bridge hadn’t appealed although, when she first read the letter, she had, briefly, wished the floor would open up and swallow her. But what her mother referred to as her “infernal pride” had come to her rescue. Somehow, from somewhere, she’d manufactured a kind of frozen calm to get herself through the ordeal suddenly confronting her.
Hooking her train over her arm, she made her way back to where the limousines waited and climbed into the one which had brought her to the church and had her honeymoon luggage stowed in the trunk. “There will be no wedding,” she informed the startled driver as he raced to close the door for her, and directed him to her apartment.
While he transferred her suitcases to her car, she’d changed into the first clothes she laid hands on, scribbled a note for her parents and given it to him to deliver, and within twenty minutes was speeding down the highway to the ferry terminal. What was supposed to have been the happiest day of her life had turned into a nightmare of titan proportion, witnessed by half the social elite in the province and another hundred from out of town, and she had known only that she had to escape, quickly, before the blessed numbness passed and the pain took hold.
She’d managed pretty well—or so she’d thought. Bolstered by a confidence which in reality was nothing more than a continuation of the daze which had steered her through the hours since her aborted wedding, she’d ignored the voice of caution and decided to brave The Inn’s dining room. Why should she hide away in her suite? She’d done nothing to be ashamed of!
But confronting the other diners had proved more of an ordeal than she’d expected. If she’d worn a sign plastered to her forehead, declaring her Abandoned Bride of the Year, she couldn’t have felt more exposed or vulnerable.
She owed Edmund Delaney a huge debt of gratitude….
As if they had a will of their own, her eyes swung from their contemplation of the flames in the hearth to the telephone on the little occasional table beside the fireplace.
Should she call him? Invite him to lunch, perhaps, as thanks for his having saved her from making an even bigger fool of herself at dinner?
Not a smart move, Jenna, her cautious conscience scolded. Chasing after a man you hardly know, only hours after you were jilted by the man you planned to marry, smacks more of desperation to find a replacement than gratitude!
True enough! So why was she lifting the receiver, why requesting that a call be put through to the room of one Edmund Delaney? And why, having gone that far, did she stare in horrified fascination at the telephone when he picked up on the second ring, then immediately hang up and flee to the bathroom as if he were in hot pursuit?
There was a phone in there, too. It rang before she had the door closed. “We must have been cut off,” Edmund Delaney said, when she finally found the courage to answer. “Good thing it was an in-house call and the front desk was able to reconnect us. What can I do for you?”
CHAPTER TWO
“…UM…” SHE muttered. “Er…who is this? That is, I…um…”
Duplicity didn’t come naturally to her and he clearly recognized an amateur when he heard one. Cutting short her bumbling reply, he said curtly, “It’s Edmund Delaney, Jenna. And you just phoned me, right?”
“Yes,” she admitted faintly, wishing for the second time in a day that seemed doomed never to end, that she could disappear off the face of the earth and spare everyone further grief. “I wanted to make sure I’d…thanked you. Properly, that is. For coming to my rescue at dinner.”
He sounded as if he might be having a hard time choking back a laugh when he replied, and she could scarcely blame him. Her pitiful attempt at subterfuge was as transparent as glass. “You thanked me,” he said. “And you were very proper.”
“But just saying the words doesn’t seem enough. I feel you deserve more than that.”
Dear heaven, woman, rephrase that quickly before he decides you’re making a play for him and offering more than you’re prepared to give!
“Wh…what I mean is, may I buy you breakfast in the morning? As a token of my gratitude, you understand? Say about nine, in the main dining room?”
“Afraid not,” he said cheerfully. “I won’t be here.”
Either it was just one rejection too many, or else she was courting insanity to be so crushed by his answer. Clearing her throat to dislodge the great lump of disappointment threatening to strangle her, she aimed for nonchalance. “Oh, that’s too bad. Then I guess we won’t see each other again.”
“I’ve chartered a boat to take me fishing at dawn and don’t expect to be back much before noon.”
The rush of relief she experienced at that piece of news was almost as disconcerting as hearing herself suggest, with an eagerness which could only be described as pathetic, “What about lunch, then?”
“I have a better idea,” he said, after a small, contemplative pause. “Why don’t you come fishing with me? There’s nothing like reeling in a fighting salmon to take your mind off your other troubles.”
He was being kind. Again. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I don’t know the first thing about fishing.”
“Only one way to learn,” he said. “I’ll be leaving here about five-thirty. Meet me in the lobby downstairs if you change your mind.”
Well, it was out of the question. For a start, all she’d brought with her was her honeymoon luggage and it didn’t include hip waders and oilskins, or whatever it was that fishing persons wore. Furthermore, she’d be lousy company and he’d already put up with enough of that. He didn’t need the aggravation of wondering if the weepy woman hanging over the side of the boat was planning to end it all by diving headfirst into the saltchuck.
But when, after a night of fitful sleep, she found herself wide-awake at five the next morning, with the beginning of another beautiful day hovering on the horizon, watching the sunrise with Edmund Delaney didn’t seem such a bad idea after all.
Because she and Mark had planned to walk on the beach, she did have a pair of jeans in her suitcase, and a lightweight jacket and a pair of rubber-soled shoes. The day stretched before her, depressingly empty. And there was nothing more enervating or unattractive than a woman so steeped in self-pity that even she was getting tired of herself. So why not take Edmund up on his offer?
She found him leaning against the front desk, thumbing through a map of the area. Dressed in jeans also, with a heavy cream sweater over a navy turtleneck and his dark hair still damp from the shower, he was an undeniably handsome sight. But it was his aura of confidence and strength that brought to her mind the shocking thought that he’d never take the easy way out by appointing someone else to do his dirty work, the way Mark had.
Edmund Delaney was made of sterner stuff.
“Well, what do you know!” he said, his smile touching the cold recesses of her heart with surprising warmth. “Looks as if I’m going to have company, after all.”
He drove a dark green Lincoln Navigator, a big and powerful vehicle to match the man who owned it. It smelled of leather and a pleasant hint of the Douglas firs which grew in such profusion along the coast.
Settling himself behind the wheel, Edmund fired up the engine and slewed a glance her way. “Ready to catch some fish?”
“Willing to try, at any rate.”
His grin was startlingly white in the faint glow of early morning. “Good woman!”
Mark favored a Porsche so sleek and low-slung that, most of the time, the view from the windshield was largely blocked by the rear end of the car in front. In Edmund’s vehicle, she was perched up high enough that, if there’d been any other traffic on the road at that hour, she’d have been able to see clear over it to the fishing village nestled at the foot of a steep hill three miles away.
Except for those times when he tuned in to a news station to keep track of the stock market, Mark preferred to listen to classical music. Edmund plugged in a Best Of Rock ’n’ Roll CD and throughout the journey, thumped the rim of the steering wheel in time to the manic din of Jerry Lee Lewis belting out “Great Balls of Fire.”
She was out of her element. She was with a man who could be a serial rapist for all she knew about him. She was planning to spend the day at sea with him. No one knew where she was. No one would miss her—at least not for at least a week, by which time she could be fish food. Her situation had all the makings of a TV murder mystery.
At the very least, she should have been nervous. Instead, she felt safe and warm. Removed from the familiar world and the cares it had thrust at her.
She knew the reprieve was temporary, that ultimately, she’d have to go back and start to put her life together again. But for now, being able to focus on something new and different was enough to let the healing of old wounds begin. And that, surely, was a gift she couldn’t afford to turn down.
By the time the Navigator rolled to a stop on the fishing dock, the sky had lightened to a pale aquamarine which reflected coldly off the quiet waters of the harbor. Slinging a canvas bag over one shoulder, Edmund took Jenna’s hand and guided her down the ramp toward a fleet of boats bobbing gently on the tide.
“The twenty-four-foot Bayliner on the end is ours and it comes complete with breakfast. If we hustle, we could be out on open water in time to see the sun come up over the mountains.”
Not in her wildest dreams had she expected she’d truly enjoy herself. She’d viewed the excursion as just another way to distract herself from dwelling on the shambles of her wedding day. But the peace and beauty of the setting worked an amazing magic.
Although the air was chilly, the sky was blue, the waves a gentle rolling motion beneath the boat, and the coffee and freshly baked sweet rolls which Hank the skipper served for breakfast, pure heaven.
“You doing okay?” Edmund asked, as they motored out to a point about five miles north of the village. “Not feeling queasy or anything?”
She shook her head. “I’m more relaxed than I’ve been in weeks. The days leading up to the wedding were hectic, what with the various parties and showers.” Cradling her coffee mug in her hands, she leaned against the bulkhead, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the sun. “In fact, I’m so comfortable I could easily fall asleep.”
She hadn’t intended acting on the words, especially not so promptly, but when she next became aware of her surroundings, the boat rocked at anchor, her head was cushioned by a life jacket, a blanket covered her from the waist down, the sun was riding high above the mountains, her watch showed a quarter to nine—and she needed a washroom in the worst way.
Above her on a sort of raised deck, the men were chatting idly. Hank sat in a swivel chair which allowed him to keep an eye on the fishing poles angled in brackets attached to either side of the back of the boat. Edmund lounged against the instrument panel. Trying to be inconspicuous, Jenna slithered off the bench and down the laddered steps to the cabin, trailing the blanket behind her.
Below, she found a table flanked by two upholstered benches, a sloping desk covered with navigation charts, a kitchen of sorts—and, praise the Lord, a washroom! Heaving a sigh of relief, she made a beeline for the latter.
She returned on deck to a scene of high excitement. Edmund hauled on one of the lines while Hank hung over the side of the boat with a net in his hand, all the while bellowing, “Keep the tip up! Keep reeling him in!”
She saw a flash of silver a few yards off, a thrashing just below the surface of the water, and shortly after, Hank scooped a salmon into the net and brought it on board.
Jumping down to where she stood, Edmund seized her around the waist and practically hoisted her off her feet. “Would you look at that beauty!” he gloated. “A coho, and sixteen pounds at least!”
Personally, the closest she ever came to any kind of salmon was after it had been nicely filleted, perfectly grilled, and served on a plate with a lemon and parsley garnish. Although she found it delicious, it certainly never stirred her to the kind of exuberant delight infecting Edmund. But she hadn’t the heart to tell him so. Staggering a little as he released her, she said instead, “You’re right, it’s beautiful! Now what do you do with it?”
“Club it over the head and put it out of its misery,” Hank informed her laconically. She must have blanched at the image he brought to mind, because he went on, “Might be best if you went back below deck and scrambled up a dozen eggs while we take care of business.”
Edmund nodded agreement. “Go,” he said. “You don’t need to see this and it’s been a long time since we had fresh coffee. You know how to use a propane stove, or do you want me to light it for you?”
“I can manage,” she said, unable to drag her gaze away from the fish still flopping around on the deck, and mortified to find her eyes suddenly filling with tears. Poor thing! Just moments before it had been wild and free; now it had to die to satisfy the primeval hunting instincts in a couple of otherwise civilized men.
Noticing her distress, Edmund said quietly, “You want me to toss it back overboard, sweet pea?”
“No,” she said, dashing away the tears. “From the looks of it, it would probably die anyway.”
“I’m afraid you’re right.”
“You must think I’m an absolute fool to get so overwrought about a mere fish.”
His blue eyes darkened and his voice was almost tender when he replied, “I don’t think any such thing. Go crack some eggs in a bowl and find a frying pan. And if you need help with the stove, just give a shout.”
She found butter, eggs and mushrooms in the cooler, more rolls in a bag on the tiny counter, coffee in a jar by the sink, and a cast iron frying pan in the oven.
When Edmund swung down into the cabin fifteen minutes later, she’d buttered half a dozen rolls and had a huge mushroom omelet sizzling in the pan.
“Came to lend a hand,” he said, “but I can see I’m not needed.”
“Not in the kitchen, at least.”
He ducked his head until his eyes were on a level with hers. “On a boat, it’s called a galley, Jenna.”
Kitchen, galley—call it what he liked, it wasn’t designed for two, especially not when one of the occupants stood over six feet and weighed close to a hundred and ninety pounds. No matter how careful she was, every time she moved, whether it was to turn the omelet or pour boiling water over the coffee grounds, one part of her or another brushed against him.
She could detect the faint smell of soap on his skin, feel the warmth of his breath in her hair, the heat of his body at her back. The experience left her oddly short of breath.
“You want to eat outside?” she practically wheezed.
“You bet. Got to keep an eye out to make sure the fishing lines stay clear.”
She stuffed the rolls into a basket, plunked three coffee mugs on top and shoved the lot into his hands. “Then make yourself useful and take all this on deck while I finish the eggs.”
“Sure. And don’t even think about trying to climb into the cockpit with that coffeepot. I’ll bring it up.”
I pay other people to take care of things like that, Mark had informed her, the one time she’d made the mistake of asking him to help clear away the dishes after she’d made dinner for him at her apartment. Once we’re married, you won’t have to lift a finger. We’ll have an entire staff to look after the cooking and housekeeping.
But I like cooking, she’d protested. And I like being in charge of my own kitchen.
There’s a difference between being in charge and taking on the role of household drudge. Armstrong wives don’t appear in public with dishpan hands.
Lithe and agile, Edmund swung down into the cabin and closed in on her again. “How much longer before those eggs are ready, woman?” he said, eyeing the frying pan devoutly. “The smells floating up top have driven us to drink. Hank’s lacing the coffee with rum.”
“They’re done,” she said, dividing the omelet into three unequal parts and sliding the two larger portions onto plates. “These are for you and Hank and I’ll be right behind you with mine.”
When he’d gone, she fanned her face with a dish towel and decided there was a lot of truth to the old saying about getting out of the kitchen if a person couldn’t take the heat. She definitely couldn’t take the kind of heat Edmund Delaney generated!
His head reappeared in the open hatch. “Want me to bring up anything else?”
What she wanted was a few minutes in which to collect herself, because try as she might, she found herself constantly comparing him to Mark and finding her former fiancГ© coming up short. How could that be when Mark was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? The possible answers were too disturbing to contemplate.
“Good grub,” Hank announced, when she came up on deck. “You ever want a job, you’ve got one. Tourist season’s just around the corner and I could use a cook like you.”
The idea had merit. Her bruised spirit craved the prospect of a simple life, uncomplicated by the demands of a family who, sadly, had viewed her marriage to Mark as a passport to high society and easy living. The anonymity of being a stranger in a remote village cut off from the stress and bustle of the Lower Mainland held enormous appeal.
Edmund was watching her closely. “Tempted by the idea?”
“Good grief!” she said, pressing her palms to her cheeks. “Am I that easy to read?”
“Clear as glass,” he said, his blue eyes disconcertingly intent. “Your face is an open book. You’d make a lousy poker player.”
I make a lousy everything, she almost replied, the self-pity she’d managed to subdue suddenly rearing up again.
Was it the bright, sunny day that made her fight it? The grandeur of the scene around her beside which her little tragedy seemed pitifully insignificant? Or the man sitting across from her and seeing into her heart so much more clearly than Mark ever had? “Then I’d better stick to cooking,” she said, drumming up a smile even though the effort made her face ache.
Hank looked hopeful. “You takin’ me up on my offer?”
“Thanks, but no,” she said, her smile more genuine this time. “I have other things I need to do.”
Like fighting her demons, laying certain ghosts to rest, and facing the rest of her life without Mark.
She gave an involuntary shudder at the enormity of the task facing her, and hugged her elbows close to her chest.
“Wind’s pickin’ up,” Hank observed, squinting at her in the sunlight. “Usually does about this time of day. Might be best if you found something a bit heavier to wear than that flimsy jacket you brought with you.”
“I don’t need—” she began, but Edmund cut her off.
“Yes, you do.” He reached into his canvas bag and pulled out an extra sweater. “Put this on, sweet pea. It’ll cut the wind out and keep you from catching cold.”
It was easier not to argue, and truth to tell, comforting to have him care. Obediently, she slipped the sweater over head. Thick and heavy like the one he was wearing, its sleeves hung well below the tips of her fingers and the hem reached almost to her knees.
“Sure it’s big enough?” Hank snickered. “Looks to me as if there’s room for two in there.”
“Not quite,” she said, her senses swimming as Edmund slid his fingers along the back of her neck to free her hair trapped inside the collar. “But you’re right. I won’t make any Best Dressed Lists with it.”
“It isn’t the packaging that counts,” he said, slinging a arm around her shoulders and giving her a friendly hug. “I thought you were smart enough to know that.”
He meant nothing special by the gesture, she was sure. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to lean into his solid strength, and pretend, just for a minute, that she was on her honeymoon and married to a man like him.
Heavenly days, where was her head, that she’d even entertain such an idea?
“Is it too late for me to try my hand at fishing?” she said, hurriedly pulling away and pretending an interest in the contents of the tackle box before she showed herself completely lacking in good judgment and wrapped her arms around him.
“Sure you want to try?”
She inspected the wicked-looking hooks and grimaced. “Not if I have to use one of these. They’re instruments of torture.”
“You can use a barbless hook,” Hank said. “Lots of folks do if they can’t stand the sight of blood.”
She ventured a glance at Edmund. “I suppose you think I’m ridiculously squeamish.”
“You suppose wrong—again. We’ve already got one salmon in the cooler. We don’t need another.”
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “if you’re sure you don’t mind…?”
“I’ll make you a deal. You can throw back anything you catch if you’ll come with me to The Dungeness Trap tonight.”
“Dungeness Trap?”
“Don’t look so suspicious. It’s a restaurant in town that serves the best crab you’ve ever tasted, not the local den of iniquity!”
“I don’t know….”
“I’m not asking you to sign over your firstborn, Jenna,” he said persuasively. “I’m simply inviting you to have dinner with me.”
“But I can’t keep imposing on your time like this. You’ve already done so much and been so…kind.”
“Hey, I’m no Boy Scout, if that’s what you’re thinking! The way I have it figured, you owe me. I’ve had to listen to your tale of woe and it’s your turn to listen to the grisly details of mine.” He extended his palm. “So what do you say? Do we have a deal?”
She placed her hand in his and tried to dismiss as indigestion the little spurt of pleasure churning her stomach as his fingers closed around hers. “We have a deal.”
“Sweet pea,” he said, his grin so disarming that she went slightly weak at the knees, “you just made my day!”
From the outside, the restaurant looked like little more than a dimly lit shack perched on pilings over the water. Inside, though, it was cosy and comfortable, with oil lamps on the tables, heat blasting from the big open hearth, and fishing nets strung with glass floats anchored from the ceiling. A wine rack covered one wall. At the rear of the room, a woman played a guitar. Beyond a serving hatch was the kitchen with a brick bread oven and huge stainless steel pots simmering on a gleaming range.
“Just as well I made a reservation,” Edmund said, after they’d been shown to a table overlooking the harbor. “The place is packed.”
None of the men wore ties, though, and for the most part, the women were in slacks and sweaters. “I’m afraid I’m very much overdressed,” Jenna said, nervously smoothing the full skirt of her velvet dinner dress.
Edmund looked up from the wine list he’d been perusing and frowned. “Didn’t you hear me, this morning? It’s what’s underneath the surface that matters.”
“Mark felt appearances were critically important.”
“Mark sounds like an ass.”
Determined to be fair, she said, “No. It’s just that his family is well-known and he has a reputation to uphold. He was brought up to believe that since he’s handling other people’s money, it’s important to project the right image. Clients like to feel they’re in capable hands.”
“And you bought that load of rubbish?”
She looked away, embarrassed. What would he say if she admitted that, after they became engaged, Mark had gradually taken over picking out her wardrobe for her, right down to the shade of her stockings? As an Armstrong wife, you’ll be scrutinized from head to toe every time you appear in public. Slip up and your photo will be plastered all over tomorrow’s newspapers.
“Hey, I’m sorry!” Edmund reached across and covered her hand with his. “You’ve got enough to deal with, without me getting on your case. I’ve never met the guy and have no business passing judgment on him. But just for the record, what you’re wearing now is stunning. Blue suits you.”
“It’s part of my trousseau. The only clothes I brought with me were those I’d packed for my honeymoon.”
He leaned back and gave her such a thorough inspection that she practically squirmed. “Mark doesn’t know what he’s missing, Jenna. If he did, he’d surely be here now, instead of me.”
“Oh, no!” she exclaimed, more rattled by his compliment than she cared to admit. “This isn’t his kind of place at all!” Then, realizing what she’d said, she clapped a horrified hand to her mouth.
“Too upscale, you mean?” Edmund’s eyes danced with mischief.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You must think me so ungracious!”
His face took on a sober cast and he rearranged his cutlery before finally saying, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“What was it about this Mark person that made you decide to marry him?”
She lifted her shoulders, mystified that he couldn’t figure that out for himself. “I loved him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t understand what you mean. Love doesn’t have to have a reason.”
“Sure it does, Jenna. We might like a lot of people, but as a rule, we love very few. What made him special?”
She thought about that for a minute, then said, “At first, he was interesting and fun and exciting…and…”
And a little bit insecure. Too much under his father’s controlling thumb. Too much in thrall to the family name and reputation.
“Go on.”
“He seemed to need me.” I made him feel important in his own right. With me, he was somebody other than the son who always did his father’s bidding. “We became friends.”
“And lovers?”
“Eventually, yes.” Silly to feel uncomfortable with the admission. She was twenty-seven, after all; well past the age of consent. “We were compatible. Comfortable with each other. His family accepted us as a couple. So, when he proposed…”
I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
“…I accepted. I was ready for marriage and I thought we’d be happy together.” Irritated to find herself trying to justify a decision which, at the time, had seemed absolutely right, she flung out her hands. “What does it matter? He obviously didn’t agree, and now I have to accept that, too.”
“How did he break the news that the marriage was off?”
“He had his best man deliver a letter to the church.”
“He had his best man deliver a letter?” Edmund made no effort to mask his disgust. “Jeez, I take back my apology. The guy’s pure pond scum!”
“He’s not nearly as bad as I’ve made him sound. If anything, he’s a rather unhappy man. I thought I could change that. Apparently, I was wrong.”
“A guy who sends someone else to do his dirty work isn’t fit to be called a man, Jenna! And what I find hard to understand is why you feel compelled to go on defending him.”
“Because if I don’t,” she cried, at her wits’ end with his probing questions, “I look like an even bigger fool for having agreed to marry him in the first place. And my pride’s taken enough of a beating for one week.”
Edmund drew in a long breath and gestured for the waiter. “Mark’s the fool, sweet pea,” he said, “but if you can’t see that without my having to beat you over the head with the idea, we might as well drop the subject.”
They feasted on steamed crab dipped in melted butter and washed down with white wine, but although the meal was every bit as delicious as he’d promised, Edmund became increasingly withdrawn and never did make good on his promise to share some of his own history. Nor did he suggest lingering once they’d finished eating. Indeed, his taciturnity during the drive back to The Inn made her wonder if he regretted having invited her to dinner to begin with.
The path from the parking area to The Inn wove among plantings of shrubbery interspersed with the pale faces of daffodils. Concealed floodlights showcased the mighty cedars looming in the background. Strategically placed benches just big enough for two lurked in the shadows. Piano music drifted through the darkness, the notes falling soft and clear in the night.
Everything about the place spelled couples, romance, honeymoons, happy-ever-after. Added to Edmund’s aloof silence, it was more than she could bear.
Just a few yards farther on, the path forked, with one way leading directly to The Inn’s front door and the other descending to the beach. As they approached it, Edmund stopped. “I’m too restless to turn in, so I’m going for a walk,” he said, looking pointedly at her high heels. “I’d ask you to join me but you’d break an ankle in those shoes, so I’ll say good night instead. You should sleep well after the day you’ve had.”
Numbly, she watched him turn away, and willed herself to do the same. To walk into The Inn and not look back. To accept that her interlude with him had come to its inevitable end.
His silhouette became indistinct, swallowed up by the night. The sound of his footsteps crunching over the gravel grew fainter.
Do him and yourself a favor and disappear inside before you say something you’ll live to regret, Jenna! He can’t fix what’s broken in your life and you have no business expecting him to try. He’s already done enough.
She swallowed, and braced herself to face the night alone. Her self-confidence had already eroded into near oblivion. Why expose it to further abuse? But no amount of common sense could ease the raging loneliness in her heart, or prevent her from calling out just before he disappeared from sight, “Edmund, wait! Don’t go without me, please!”
CHAPTER THREE
HE THOUGHT he’d done it—removed himself, permanently, from a situation grown too complex, too fast—but the naked pain in her voice caught up with him just before he moved out of earshot and much though he’d have liked to, he couldn’t walk away from it.
Burying a sigh, he waited as she stumbled over the coarse gravel toward him. A gentleman would probably have rushed forward to steady her before she broke her neck in her flimsy little shoes, but he’d never aspired to be anything other than what he was: a working guy who’d made a pile of money by learning from experience never to make the same mistake twice.
A fat lot of good that rule of thumb was doing him now, though. Knowing he’d always been a sucker for a bird with a broken wing should have been reason enough for him to steer clear of her in the first place. That he’d persisted in ignoring the warning bells clanging loud and clear in his mind and had chosen instead to protract the association, was nothing short of foolhardy.
“What?” Frustration, as much with himself as her, had him barking the question at her.
If only she’d taken umbrage or flight at his brusque tone! But she was too wounded, too crushed in spirit. “I can’t…face going up to that empty room,” she said wretchedly, flinging herself at him.
Good idea or nor, his arms closed around her. She was so slight, so fragile, that to shove her away was unthinkable. But to let her remain pressed close against him like that…! Jeez, it was all the encouragement needed for certain parts due south of his brain to rise to action.
“Listen, Jenna,” he said, sounding as if he’d just choked on ground glass, “this isn’t such a good idea. I know you’re going through a bad time right now, but it’d be better if you were to turn to the people who care about you.”
“No,” she said, clinging to him and lifting her face to his so that, even though he’d thought it was black as Hades under the trees, enough light filtered through from the gardens for him to see the tears glimmering in her huge dark eyes, and feel himself drowning in them. “I don’t need them. I need you!”
“How can you need someone you don’t even know?”
“For precisely that reason! When you look at me, you don’t see a pathetic bride without a groom, or a daughter who’s made a laughing stock of her family. You see me— an ordinary woman, just like any other.”
Ordinary, my hind foot! She was a lovely, sensitive, tenderhearted creature who felt other people’s pain as deeply as her own. A woman in desperate need of the kind of loving which would restore her faith in herself—the kind of loving his brain told him she’d do better to seek elsewhere, but which his less cerebral components clamored to accommodate. Another good reason to put an end to things before they grew even more seriously out of hand!
“I can’t give you what you’re looking for, sweet pea,” he said hoarsely. “I come with too much excess baggage of my own.”
Briefly, she sagged against him as if all the fight and courage had been blasted out of her. Then, with a flash of the courage which had drawn him to her from the first, she pushed herself away from him. “Of course you can’t,” she whispered, her voice tinted with shame and her body—every slender, desirable inch of it—poised for escape. “Whatever possessed me to suggest that you could?”
For the second time in as many minutes, he had the chance to cut and run out of her life as easily as he’d blundered into it. So what the devil prompted him to haul her back into his arms, and stroke the soft, dark hair away from her face? What sort of masochist was he to search out her mouth and kiss her as if she was the last woman on earth and there was no tomorrow?
The insatiable kind, that’s what, and she’d have done them both a favor if she’d smacked him across the head for his nerve. Maybe that would have spared them both a lot of grief. Instead, her mouth softened beneath his and she sank against him in total surrender.
To his credit, he tried to put a halt to the situation. But when he went to break the kiss, her little whimper of distress scored a direct hit to…
What? His heart? Impossible! He was thirty-five, for Pete’s sake, not fifteen, and knew better than to buy that kind of codswallop on the strength of a twenty-four-hour acquaintance with a pretty woman. His conscience? Hell, it was nothing more than a dying whisper desperately trying to make itself heard over the caterwauling of rampant lust! Good deed for the day? Fat chance! He’d been telling her the truth when he said he was no Boy Scout.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered, dragging his lips away from hers before he made things even more dangerously volatile by bringing his tongue into play. “It was a very bad idea.”
She didn’t argue, at least not in so many words. She just brought her soft, smooth little hand up to his cheek and touched him as wonderingly as if she’d just discovered her own personal guardian angel.
“Jenna,” he croaked, afraid that the distant thunder echoing in his blood boded no good for either of them, “you’re pushing your luck.”
She slid both arms around his waist and leaned her head on his chest. “My luck,” she said dreamily, “hit rock bottom yesterday. But thanks to you, it’s starting to improve.”
If his survival instincts weren’t all tangled up in hunger for something he had no right wanting, he’d march her back to The Inn, pack her off to bed by herself, in her own room, then hightail it out of her life before he compounded his already manifest sins.
If he possessed one ounce of decency, he wouldn’t be tracing a path from her chin to her throat and fantasizing about how she’d look without any clothes on.
If he had a grain of self-respect, he’d back away from her instead of letting her know he was primed for seduction in the most obvious way a man could convey such a message to a woman.
And if the damned Inn weren’t so fixated on honeymooners, it wouldn’t have made it so easy for a couple to be alone at every turn. There wouldn’t be shadowed spotlights pearling the night, or a lullaby of surf whispering ashore, or the scent of cedar and fir and hemlock sweetening the air.
“Maybe,” he said, wrestling with vanishing control, “we should figure out what’s happening here before we let things go any further.”
“Oh, Edmund,” she murmured, her hands wreaking havoc over his rib cage, “I’m so tired of trying to look for answers that aren’t there. Sometimes, things happen without reason or warning. Just this once, can’t we live for the moment and never mind about tomorrow?”
“So what are you suggesting?” He forced the question past a throat gone dry as sandpaper.
“That we follow our feelings, whether or not they make sense.”
And just in case he hadn’t picked up on what she meant, she tilted her hips against him and lifted her mouth to his again.
He made one last stab at rational argument. “Your feelings are all tied up with another man, Jenna, and I’m not interested in being his stand-in.”
“Nor am I,” she said, her lips so close that the words brushed his mouth.
Her skin was smooth and warm to his touch. She smelled of flowers, she tasted of innocence, she trembled with need. Her breathing was almost as ragged as his own. He could feel her pulse racing.
“Please make love to me,” she whimpered, taking his hand and closing it over her breast. “Please, Edmund, make me feel whole again!”
“Not here,” he said thickly, urging her back toward The Inn. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t such a lowlife that he’d risk their being discovered by other guests. If they were going to make love—and he knew that, barring some cataclysmic natural disaster, nothing would stop them now—it would be in private. Not in her room but in his. Removed from anything that might remind her of the man whose place he was taking.
The lobby lay deserted, the elevator doors stood open. Pulling her after him into the empty car, he pressed the third-floor button. The doors had barely glided closed before he was searching for her mouth again, the fever to discover her more intimately roaring at fever pitch now that it had been given free rein.
She melted against him, opened her lips to him, clenched her fingers in his hair as his tongue probed the depths of her mouth. So moist, so sweet. So like that other part of her which taunted him with urgent little pelvic thrusts.
She was driving him crazy! How else to justify the insane urge to hit the Stop button and take her, right there on the elevator floor? How otherwise to contain the aching fullness testing his control beyond anything a mere man should have to withstand?
The doors whispered open with a melodious ding! “Talk about saved by the bell,” he panted, fairly racing her down the hall.
Moonlight left the corners of his room dark, and swathed the bed in drifts of purple shadow. Her skin took on the luster of pale silk, her hair the sheen of dark satin. He framed her face in his hands and bent his mouth again to hers, hoping to imbue his seduction with at least a little finesse.
But the feel of her, the touch of her, defeated him at the outset. Driven by unwise hunger, he tugged at her clothing, flinging aside one item after another until, at last, he could feast his gaze on her breasts, cup their slender fullness in his hands and take their dusk-tinted peaks in his mouth.
She sagged, as if he were drawing the last ounce of strength from her. Uttered his name on a long, despairing breath. A tremor raced through her.
The same frenzied urgency that possessed him was tearing at her, too, stripping her more naked than he ever could, and reducing her dignity to ashes. They were clawing at each other, their hands delineating every curve, every angle. He heard the soft hiss of ripping fabric. His shirt? Her panties? Egyptian cotton, fine French lace?
It didn’t matter. Nothing was more immediate than that they cleave to one another, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Nothing, that was, except the primeval tide which had stalked him from the moment he’d kissed her and which, patience at last outrun, refused to hold back a moment longer.
Groaning in defeat, he tumbled her to the floor and buried himself inside her mere milliseconds before the first shattering waves depleted him.
She lay beneath him, her mouth trembling, her eyes wide pools of disappointment.
He bent his forehead to hers and whispered, “Sweetheart, I’m sorry!”
She touched a finger to his face, traced the outline of his upper lip. “It’s all right.”
“No,” he said, rolling free and drawing her to her feet. “It’s all wrong.”
He took her hand and led her to the bathroom. Turned on the shower and when the water ran hot, pulled her under the spray with him. He soaped her long, lovely spine, her arms, her legs, until the tension seeped out of her, and her eyes took on a dreamy, unfocused gaze.
Lips slightly apart, she reached for the soap. Her hands roamed over him, lathering the length of his torso in slow, erotic strokes.
Quickly, before she brought him to the brink of destruction a second time, he imprisoned her hands in his and growled, “Uh-uh, Jenna! Cut it out!”
“We aren’t going to make love again?” she asked him dazedly.
A firm believer in the efficacy of cold showers, he adjusted the water until it ran at little more than blood temperature. “You know full well that we are,” he said, rinsing them both off. “But this time, we’ll take it slowly.”
And they did. Slow and easy, with a fire burning in the hearth, and brandy to sip between caresses, and the bed soft beneath them. With leisurely delight and the sort of murmured words a man and a woman exchange when they find untold pleasure in each other.
He explored her from head to foot. Tasted the wild honey of her response as her body yielded to his seduction. Held her tight as she splintered with passion. And when she begged for mercy and whimpered that she could not…could not reach orgasm again, he drove himself deep inside her and taught her that, with him, she could.
When at last she fell asleep, some time after midnight, he did not think it likely that she dreamed of the absent Mark.
Light, too bright, too persistent, speared her eyelids and had her squinting into the pillows. Her limbs lay heavy with delicious lassitude. Her mouth felt slightly swollen, her skin a little chafed. She ached pleasurably in hidden places, the way she’d always thought a woman might when she’d been thoroughly loved.
Had she…?
With Edmund…?
Or was she still caught in the web of an unusually vivid dream?
Tentatively, her hand stole out to verify reality, checking the other half of the bed. Finding the dent in the other pillow where another head had lain. She stretched her leg under the covers, explored with her toe the barely perceptible warmth of other feet recently removed from the mattress.
As if floodgates had suddenly burst open, memory rushed in.
Cautiously, she opened one eye and took quick inventory of the room. Like hers, it overlooked the Pacific. The cold ashes of last night’s fire lay in the hearth. The empty brandy snifters still stood on the bedside table. But of the man who’d brought her to the edge of delirium with his mouth and left her sobbing for release; who’d filled her with his vitality and ridden with her to heights of pleasure she’d never before experienced, not once but over and over again throughout the night—of him there was no sign.
Clutching the duvet to her, she sat up. A thick terry-cloth robe lay across the foot of the bed. Someone had folded her clothes and left them over the arm of a chair, with her shoes neatly placed on the floor below them. The bathroom door stood ajar with no light showing from the interior. Clearly, he wasn’t in there.
With a tiny click which seemed deafening in the silent room, the digital clock beside the bed rolled to eight-thirty. How could she have slept so late? How could she have slept at all?
By exhausting herself, physically and emotionally until she was as limp as a rag! By curling up next to Edmund’s hard, warm frame, sated in body and soul, and refusing to think about what yesterday had brought or what tomorrow might hold because, right at that moment, with nothing but a silver dollar moon to witness the event, the here and now had been enough.
Of course, what they’d shared wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. Because she loved Mark.
Didn’t she?
Of course she did! But he’d deserted her and left her at the mercy of self-doubt and a hurt so deeply wounding that she’d wanted to crawl into a hole and never again come out. Instead, she’d turned to Edmund and, miraculously, passion had flared between them with scorching intensity. Because of him, she’d begun the long process of restoring her confidence in herself as a woman.
Recognizing that was a blessing she’d never expected to find. She knew now that, in time, she would recover. The rest of her life would not be blighted because Mark Armstrong had reneged on his promise to marry her. A whole different world from the one he’d offered waited to be discovered. And one day, when she was ready, she would find a better and a truer love. In the meantime, there was Edmund, and today, and perhaps even tonight.
Sliding her legs to the floor, she reached for the robe and was securing the belt around her waist when a knock came at the door.
“Well,” she said, a rush of anticipation warming her cheeks as she ran to open it, “there’s no need to be so polite! It’s your room, after all!”
A uniformed busboy stood outside, holding a tray. “Your breakfast, ma’am,” he announced pleasantly. “May I come in?”
Breakfast for one, she noticed with mild dismay, waving him across the threshold.
Placing the tray on a table by the window, he drew up a chair and removed the fluted paper cover from a tall glass of orange juice. “Another lovely morning, ma’am. A number of our guests are already enjoying the beach.”
Of course! And Edmund was probably one of them.
“May I pour your coffee?”
“I’ll wait a while, thanks.”
“In that case, I’ll leave you to enjoy your meal. No,” he insisted, backing toward the door when she reached for her purse to tip him, “that’s already been taken care of, ma’am. Have a very nice day.”
She thought it entirely possible that she would—an amazing concept, all things considered. The rich aroma of coffee underscored by the delicate scent of the single bud rose which completed her breakfast tray, added to the stunning view from the window and the stream of sunlight slanting over the polished wood floor surely made for a great start to the morning.
Buoyed with sudden optimism, she picked up the glass of juice and silently toasted the bright morning. Life really did go on, one day at a time. Trite, perhaps, but true. The secret was to look forward, instead of back.
She did not find Edmund on the beach, nor in the lounge where guests were taking morning coffee when she returned to The Inn two hours later. The Navigator was not in the parking lot. The message light was not blinking on the phone in her room.
“Mr. Delaney checked out early this morning,” the clerk told her when, with a growing sense of unease, she inquired at the front desk.
“Checked out?” But he’d told her he was staying for a week. He’d slept with her the night before. He’d ordered breakfast for her. She’d thought…she’d thought…
What? That a new love could be so easily born to replace the one she’d lost? In fairy tales, perhaps—or the mind of a self-delusional fool!
Still, she looked for a reason that at least hinted of a happy ending. “And you’re sure he left no message?”
“He was in a hurry,” the clerk said kindly. “I was already on duty when the call came through. Normally, we don’t intrude on our guests when they’ve specifically requested us not to do so, but his wife insisted he be contacted right away—some sort of emergency, I understand. Fortunately, he happened to come into the lobby just then—he’d been down at the pool for an early swim, I believe—and I was able to convey the message right away.”
Wife? She’d spent the night in the arms of another woman’s husband? No wonder he’d phoned the front desk the minute he’d closed his door behind them, and asked not to be disturbed! Risking a call from his wife while he was in bed with another woman would have seriously hampered his performance!
Jenna thought she was going to be sick, right there on the floor in full view of whoever happened to be passing by.
The clerk seemed to think so, too. “Are you feeling unwell, ma’am? Shall I send for a doctor…?”
“No,” she said, somehow managing to articulate a response even though her insides were shaking. “Thank you for your concern but I’m perfectly fine.”
Dazed with shock, she reeled toward the front door and the cool fresh air outside.
I come with too much excess baggage, he’d said, the night before, but she’d never for a moment supposed he was talking about a wife. He’d seemed too straightforward for such arcane half-truths.
And she…she had only herself to blame for the guilt and regret now hemming her in on all sides. It was one thing to accept the end of a relationship, and quite another to imagine that flinging herself headlong into the start of another was any solution. New hopes weren’t built on the ashes of broken dreams. A person had to heal before she was ready to begin again with someone new.
Furious to find tears brimming yet again, Jenna drew in a shaking breath and squared her shoulders. So, okay! She’d made a mistake. But the damage was done and no amount of weeping and wailing was going to change it. At the very least, she could stop compounding her problems, instead of adding to them.
Her life, her future, lay elsewhere and this place…oh, it had provided the refuge she’d needed during those first long, dreadful hours after she’d received Mark’s letter, but at best it was a temporary reprieve only. Sooner or later, she had to go back and face the people and situation she’d left behind.
As for Edmund Delaney, in all fairness, her anger toward him should be tempered by gratitude. Unquestionably, he’d deceived her, but he’d also made her feel desirable again. And for that, she owed him a debt he could never begin to imagine.
“You know,” Valerie Sinclair said, regarding Jenna through narrowed eyes, “I don’t think it’s necessarily over with Mark. If you hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth so suddenly the way you did, I truly believe you’d be married to him by now. He’s phoned here, you know. Several times. Says he’s tried phoning you as well, but you never return his calls. From what I can gather, he got cold feet at the last minute but he came to his senses soon after.”
During the month since her return to Vancouver, Jenna had fielded an endless outpouring of sympathy and numerous offers to hook her up with a new man. She’d refused every one, not because she didn’t appreciate the concern of her friends but because she was actually enjoying being free to do and wear and eat what she pleased. Not until he was out of her life had she realized how completely Mark had tried to control it—or how close he’d come to succeeding.
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