Here Comes the Bride (11 page)

She’d been aware of his appreciative male gaze on her last night, and other times, a slow, thorough survey of her attributes. And when they’d danced alone in the gazebo, she’d felt the evidence of his arousal, had known that he’d wanted her.

And dammit, she’d wanted him.

More than she thought she could ever want any man. The intensity of it had made her tremble in his arms.

Then the music had stopped and the darkness crept into his eyes. He’d set his jaw firmly … and led her back to the party.

A slow sigh shuddered up from someplace deep inside her. Nick bore a pain in his soul that she didn’t fully understand. And that she wasn’t sure could be healed.

He’d be returning from L.A. tonight and would no doubt be at Winnie’s for dinner, an invitation Fiona had neatly sidestepped. For
two reasons. First, she’d hoped he’d have some private time with Winnie.

The second had to do with need,
her
need. She didn’t know how she could sit across the table from Nick and make small talk when just his glance consumed her.

She gave in to another deep sigh, then crossed the room and slipped naked between the sheets for a late-afternoon nap. Maybe later she’d order up room service and make her evening as decadently lazy as this afternoon had been.

Fiona awoke to the intrusive sound of the phone ringing. She thought she’d been asleep only a short while, but the room was dark. Hours must have passed. The faint red glow of the alarm clock’s dial showed it was late, indeed. Nine thirty-five.

A faint wisp of a dream still lingered in the darker recesses of her mind. A dream about Nick—slightly erotic and so real she was bathed in a sheen of sweat.

At the continued insistent jangle she reached for the phone, trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep and the fading dream from her head.

“Hello.” Her voice sounded froggy and deep, like it belonged to someone else.

“Fiona?”

Nick wasn’t sure it was Fiona. She sounded different. Her voice low and sexy with sleep. It made him want her so badly he ached from the need. He’d missed her all day, had thought of her at moments when his mind should have been on other things.

He remembered her scent last night in the gazebo, the fragrance of her hair when they’d danced, clean and fresh, like a bouquet of newly picked flowers that still carried the scent of the sun.

“Oh, Nick, hi.” Fiona sat up in bed, trying to orient herself. The sheet fell to her waist and she remembered her nakedness. The hotel’s air-conditioning had chilled the room and she raised the sheet to her shoulders.

“Had you gone to bed already? I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She dragged a hand through the tumble of her hair. “You didn’t … I mean, that’s okay. I’d just taken an afternoon nap.”

“Fiona, it’s not afternoon.” Nick wondered what she slept in, a funny little nightshirt or … nothing. He groaned. Either way the image was too tantalizing to deal with right now. He needed to know if Fiona was all right. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re not ill or anything?”

“No, I’m not ill.”

He heard her shift, heard the faint rustle of sheets, and for one crazy moment found himself
jealous of those sheets that touched her body.

He sighed and tried to get a grip. “We missed you at Auntie’s.”
He
missed her at Auntie’s. Very much. Had expected to see her there. And when he didn’t, when Walter said she wasn’t coming, disappointment, all-pervasive and swift, settled over him.

Not a good omen, not for a man who believed he didn’t need a woman, one special woman, in his life. He could only hope it was a need that would pass.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope Winnie’s not offended, but I just needed some time alone.”

“Alone?” He didn’t like to think of her being alone. Or more honestly, he didn’t like to think that Fiona preferred being alone to being with him. That she didn’t need to see him as much as he needed to see her.

“I could come over,” he said, then cursed himself for the words. If he got within ten feet of her, saw her looking soft and inviting and warm, he’d want to make love to her. “I mean, what are you going to do about dinner?”

“I’d planned to order up something from room service.”

“Oh.” For the second time that night he tasted swift disappointment. He really had to get a grip.

“Nick …”

“Yes?” His answer was too quick, telltale quick. He hoped she was going to say that she’d changed her mind, that she wanted to see him.

He realized he was holding his breath. Like some adolescent schoolboy who’d asked the prettiest girl in class to the prom and was praying she’d smile at him and say she’d go.

Never before had a woman had this kind of hold on him.

“I was going to say …”

She had him on tenterhooks.

“I was going to say I had a talk with my father today and—”

“A talk with Walter?”

“Yes.”

It was back to business, the business of their wayward relatives. Was that what had occupied the better part of her thoughts today? The wedding? Not him? Not what was happening between them?

“And how did it go? The talk with your father?”

“Nick, he says they’re in love, that—”

Fiona heard Nick’s derisive snort on the other end of the line. He clearly didn’t believe for a moment that they were in love. After spending the day consulting on another divorce case, his cynicism would be running high.

Maybe he had a right to be cynical. Marriage
was a risky proposition these days and Nick was in a position to know that. “My father seems so sure everything will work out.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure.”

Fiona didn’t know how she felt anymore. All she knew was that just the sound of Nick’s voice as it purled over the phone line made her heart thump faster, made her wish he was here so she could see him … touch him.

Then she remembered her resolve, the reason she’d stayed away from dinner at Winnie’s. She needed to keep her distance from Nick.

Before she did something foolish like fall in love with him. A man who didn’t believe in love.

“I’m just a little down after my day,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to inflict that on you. I know you’re worried.”

“You didn’t inflict anything on me, Nick. I understand how you feel.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Fiona didn’t want the conversation to end. She wanted to hear his voice, its velvet timbre that did such dangerous things to her senses.

She fluffed the pillow at her back and leaned against its softness, drinking in the knowledge that Nick was there. Close—yet a safe distance away.

“I don’t know if it’ll do any good or not,
but I’ll have a talk with Auntie,” he said finally.

“Thanks, Nick.”

Nick didn’t want to end the conversation, didn’t want to let Fiona go, but there was nothing else to say. He didn’t understand what it was that was happening to him with this woman, but he knew he was playing with fire.

“I … I’d better go. I’ll call you in the morning and let you know if I had any luck with Auntie.”

Nick did not call the next morning. Instead he showed up. Fiona opened the door to her hotel room to find him standing there in the hallway, looking tall, dark, gorgeous …

And worried.

Her eyes widened in surprise and her breath caught in her throat, both at the sight of him and at the concerned expression on his face.

“It’s Auntie,” he said. “She fell off a stepladder while she and Camille were decorating the gazebo. Your father just called me from the hospital.”

“Oh, Nick.”

“I don’t know how badly she’s hurt. I just told Walter I’d come get you; we’d be right there.”

Fiona swept back her hair with one hand.
She didn’t have time to run a brush through its thickness or even change clothes from the pink shorts and Las Vegas T-shirt she’d slipped on after her shower. From the look of Nick, he was eager for them to get on their way.

He was clearly worried about his aunt, and Fiona was worried about her father. If Winnie was seriously hurt, her father would be a wreck.

Fiona remembered when she was ten years old and had fallen out of a tree and broken her collarbone. Her father hadn’t left her side. Instead he’d paced beside the gurney they’d placed her on in the emergency room, ordering the doctors to do something and generally getting in the way.

“I’ll just grab my purse,” she told Nick. She snatched it off the bed, checked to see if she had her room key, and followed Nick out the door.

After an endlessly slow elevator ride they reached the lobby. Nick was three paces ahead of her across its expanse. He looked like he’d been dressed for the office, though he’d shed his suit jacket and tie somewhere along the way and turned back the sleeves of his soft blue shirt. His hair was tousled, either from the desert breeze or from raking his hands through it. She didn’t know which.

“Is the hospital far?” she asked when they’d reached the hotel entrance.

Nick shook his head and held the door for her. “Not more than ten blocks.”

Nick had left the Porsche in a no-parking zone when he’d raced inside to get Fiona. He tipped the doorman ten bucks for not having the car towed. When he turned back, Fiona was sliding into the passenger seat. Her pink shorts rode up a delectable few inches on her tanned legs, a view he wished he had more time to enjoy. Swallowing a groan, he rounded the car and slipped in behind the wheel.

“I told Auntie to wait until Walter and I could string those damned wedding garlands for her,” he said, pulling out into traffic. “But she wouldn’t listen.”

If Winnie was stringing wedding flowers in the gazebo this morning, she hadn’t listened to Nick’s little talk last night, Fiona surmised.

She didn’t even need to ask how the conversation had gone. She knew it chapter and verse. She was certain it was the same she’d gotten from her father. The couple knew their own minds. And a few well-pointed objections from Fiona and Nick weren’t about to change it.

Within minutes Nick pulled into the crowded visitors’ parking lot, then grasped her
hand as they hurried toward the ER entrance. Inside, they spotted Camille. She sat on the edge of a waiting-room chair, nervously thumbing the glossy pages of a magazine that she didn’t look like she was reading. She jumped up as they entered.

“Is she okay?” Nick asked. “Did she break anything?”

“They’re waiting for the X-ray reports now. It’s her ankle. This is all my fault,” Camille said. “I shouldn’t have let her climb on that stepladder to hang those silly flowers.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Camille,” Fiona told her. “Is my father with her?”

“Yes. They would only allow one person in there. Have a seat. Walter’s been giving me progress reports.”

Nick paced the length of the waiting room. Fiona joined Camille on a chair and listened as Camille explained how the unfortunate accident had occurred and how the headstrong Winnie never listened to reason.

The pair—her father and Winnie—were well matched on that score at least, Fiona thought. Headstrong and stubborn to a fault.

A short while later Walter stepped into the waiting area. He looked a little pale and his sandy-gray hair was mussed, no doubt from nervous fingers, but he was smiling.

Nick approached and grasped his arm. “Is Auntie okay? What did the doctor say? Is he a
good one?” He didn’t want Winnie treated by some snot-nosed intern no older than Doogie Howser.

“Her ankle isn’t broken,” Walter reported. “It’s just a bad sprain. At the moment Winnie’s giving the doctor what-for about the thick wrap he’s putting on to immobilize it.”

Nick studied his face to be certain that this was the whole truth, that Walter wasn’t holding anything back. Auntie wasn’t married
yet
. Nick was still responsible for her welfare.

Just then the ER doors slid open and Winnie hobbled through, leaning inexpertly on a pair of crutches. Her right foot was encased in the cumbersome-looking wrap.

Nick hurried to her side at the same moment Walter did. She listed to the left, accepting Walter’s strengthening arm—not Nick’s.

Nick took a step back, relinquishing his hold. He’d always been there for her—and now she didn’t want his help, just Walter’s.

“Good gracious,” Winnie muttered. “You didn’t all have to come down here.”

“We were worried about you, Mother,” Camille said.

“Worried? It’s nothing but a silly sprain. I tried to tell that nervous Nellie of a doctor just that, but he trussed me up like a partridge and told me I had to use these cursed crutches.
I’m telling you I’ll really break something trying to get used to them.”

“Now, Winnie dearest, it’s for your own good,” Walter soothed. “Let’s get you home, then Nick and I will finish stringing those flowers for the wedding.”

“The wedding?” Winnie’s brows all but descended to the bridge of her nose and her eyes narrowed. She looked askance at her trussed-up leg. “There isn’t going to be any wedding. Not tonight. I’m not about to march down the aisle to my intended looking like this,” she said, then hobbled her way toward the exit, Walter in tow.

Fiona and Camille spent the afternoon calling all the wedding guests, explaining that the ceremony was off until some future date and accepting regrets about Winnie’s infirmity. These they passed on to the patient, who lounged nearby on a blue-green chaise in the family room, alternately fuming over her ruined wedding and enjoying her future husband’s loving ministrations.

Walter catered to her every whim, plumping her pillow, bringing her fresh-made lemonade, and settling tiny kisses on her brightly painted toes, which peeped out from the thick elastic wrap.

Finally the last guest had been contacted.
So had the minister, the caterer, and sundry others who were to have performed services connected to the night’s festivities.

Fiona breathed a sigh of relief, excused herself from the group, and headed for the kitchen for a tall glass of lemonade like the one Winnie was enjoying. Nick glanced up from the crossword puzzle he’d been frowning over at the breakfast bar.

“What’s a six-letter word for
interloper
?” he asked. “W-a-l-t-e-r doesn’t fit.”