Here Comes the Bride (7 page)

Slowly he closed the door behind him, shutting out the hum from the outer office. She wanted to ask about the meeting, how it
had gone, but her words stayed on her lips. Whatever had happened, it had taken the starch from him.

He stared at her for a long moment. She tried to read his eyes, his face, the set of his shoulders. He was a man besieged, bothered. A man hurting.

He crossed the room and dropped his legal pad onto the desk, then came to stand in front of her. His arms went around her and he held her to him. Just held her.

She could feel the tremor in his body and she wanted to say something soothing, but before she could, his mouth found hers in a possessive kiss, a needful kiss, a taking kiss.

Instinctively Fiona gave. She crushed him to her, letting his mouth plunder, returning the hot thrust of his tongue. Her hands stroked him, caressed him, drawing him closer for warmth, for the solace he seemed to need.

She felt the tension in his shoulders, the strong column of his neck. His heart thundered against her breasts, and her own raced in rhythm. His hands tangled in her hair, his fingertips pressing into her scalp. They made hot circles against her back, her arms, touching every inch of her as if to assure himself that she was real, that she wasn’t going to disappear in a breathless moment.

His touch sent a languid heat seeping through every fiber of her until she wasn’t
able to give, only take, take more of his kiss, his heat, his hands.

Greedily.

Nick had vowed to keep hands off, but he’d needed to feel Fiona’s soft body against his; he’d needed to seek out her sweetness; he’d needed her solace before he lost his sanity.

But Fiona offered her own brand of insanity, the kind that stole all thought from a man’s brain, the kind that made him forget everything but this moment, an incredible moment out of time, a moment of stolen peace.

She made him forget, at least for a time, the horrors of bad marriages, of failed relationships.

He only felt the sweet heat of her mouth that he wanted to possess, the softness of her breasts as they pushed against him, the pliant curves of her body pressed to his. She was heat and fire and tempting madness.

She gave what he needed, with no question, as if she understood his pain. But he couldn’t take from her, couldn’t violate her sweetness unless he could give of himself.

And he had nothing to give.

With a muffled groan of regret, he tore himself away from the succor of her lips, away from the warmth of her body.

“Fiona …” He had to say her name, had to hear it hum on the air.

“What, Nick?”

He touched her cheek, red with the heat of desire. His fingers trembled on her face as they trailed over the velvet of her skin. Was she asking why he spoke her name? Or why he hurt?

He didn’t want to answer either.

He grasped her hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

Nick drove across the hot desert as if demons were chasing him. Fiona glanced at him. His posture was as unrelenting as the hard landscape they drove through, his jaw tense, the backs of his hands corded as they gripped the wheel.

“I think I understand, Nick,” she said quietly beside him.

He glanced over at her. “Understand what?”

“Why you suggested that prenuptial agreement to Winnie. Why you’re against the wedding—the real reason.”

Nick turned his gaze back to the road. He saw in her eyes that she did glimpse—at least in part—what ate at his soul. His jaded mistrust. Of marriage. Of love.

“I see a lot of divorces, Fiona. None of them are pretty.”

“Not all marriages end up in court,” she returned. “My parents’ marriage didn’t. They were happy, blissfully happy, for thirty years.”

Nick gave her a stony look. “They were the exception, Fiona.”

Marriage was a farce. For better or worse, they all promised. The
better
part was easy, but few stuck around for the
worse
. He knew that. His own marriage hadn’t lasted out a year.

He supposed, in all truth, he had to take most of the blame for its failure. His disillusionment had begun to show by then, his disillusion with love, caused by the unending parade of divorce cases that came through his office, the failed relationships.

It had colored his world, warped his viewpoint and eventually his marriage to Catherine. She had failed to see he was hurting—and he hadn’t known how to tell her.

He’d hurt from the time his mother died. His father hadn’t cared to stick around. Jake Killian had licked his wounds by nursing a stiff drink, until finally he’d walked away from his son and never looked back.

Maybe Jake had known what Nick came to learn later: Stay away from serious entanglements. They rendered a man vulnerable.

He turned to glance at Fiona. Especially
entanglements with women who believed in hearts and flowers and matches made in heaven.

“You love your aunt very much, don’t you?” Fiona said softly. She had seen that love shining in Nick’s eyes, had sensed his fierce protectiveness toward Winnie more than once.

“Auntie raised me like her own son after my mother died,” he said. And Uncle Gray stood in as father to a lonely little boy, he thought privately. He shrugged aside the memory.

Fiona wanted to offer sympathy, but sensed somehow that Nick wouldn’t accept it. She knew what it was like to lose a mother. “How old were you then?”

“Eight. Winnie and Gray were wonderful to me. They saw I had everything growing up. They put me through college, then law school. A few years ago Gray died, but before he did, I promised him I’d look after Auntie. Protect her and her interests.”

Protect her from men like Fiona’s father, Fiona thought with a small, private smile. But she had to admire Nick for his devotion to the family he loved, for offering to look after his aunt. But soon that task would fall to her father. She wondered how Nick would react to that. Would he relinquish responsibility gracefully once Winnie was married?

“It sounds like Gray loved her very much,” she said, returning her thoughts to their conversation.

Nick’s face showed the hint of a smile, the first she’d seen this afternoon. “Yes,” he said quietly. “They were very happy.”

“Another example of a marriage that lasted,” she felt compelled to point out, but wasn’t sure if it was for Nick’s sake or to reassure herself that it was possible, just possible, that marriage could work a second time. For her father. For Winnie.

Nick frowned over at her. “I said there were rare exceptions. Maybe it was because they’d known each other so well, and for so long. Auntie told me they’d been childhood sweethearts.”

His reply didn’t reassure her.

He grew silent then, withdrawing into his thoughts. She wanted to ask him more about himself, about his mother, the father he hadn’t mentioned, but she somehow sensed that this was an area where her probing questions wouldn’t be welcome.

She dragged her gaze away from him and turned it on the passing scenery, the bleached landscape, the struggling vegetation, the dust devils kicking up here and there across the desert floor.

That was what she felt like inside—a dust devil, whirling madly around. Emotionally.
Nick had reached into her heart and touched her on some level she hadn’t been fully aware of. She wasn’t sure she should respond. Feeling anything for Nick Killian could be dangerous.

“They’re miniature tornadoes,” Nick said, seeing Fiona studying the strange desert phenomenon. They’d always intrigued him and he’d even done a project for a science fair when he was in school, analyzing then recreating the activity.

“The kind that can’t hurt you, I hope,” she replied.

“They won’t hurt you, Fiona.” Nick turned his gaze back to the road ahead. He didn’t know where he was headed; he was just driving. Eating up miles.

He and Fiona were supposed to be plotting the demise of their relatives’ wedding plans, but the wedding seemed fated to take place, despite any attempt on their part to delay it.

Maybe he should just enjoy the day with Fiona. She’d be out of his life soon enough.

Yes, he would enjoy the day with her, come what may.

Then suddenly he knew where he wanted to take her. “There’s a place I want you to see,” he said. “It’s only a short drive from here. Are you game?”

Fiona didn’t know what she was promising, but she nodded. “I’m game.”

A lizard ran across her feet and Fiona squealed. But despite a few unwanted denizens the town offered, she was delighted they’d come.

Surprise, Nevada. A place time forgot.

A page out of the Old West.

The ghost town seemed lost in the desert. As different from the bright lights of Las Vegas as anything could get.

Feeling like she was on some kind of busman’s holiday, she stepped into a dusty antique shop and soaked up the atmosphere. Her eyes couldn’t take everything in fast enough. She gripped Nick’s arm, her fingers tightening around his biceps, as if for support.

“Oh, Nick, you knew I’d enjoy this.”

Nick smiled. The name of the town, Surprise, couldn’t begin to compare with the look of surprise shining in Fiona’s eyes when they’d reached their destination. It had been an expression he would remember long after she’d gone back to Boston, an expression he would cherish.

“Go on,” he said. “Look around.”

Fiona released his arm and went to peer into a locked glass case, full of artifacts and
treasures from a bygone era. “The inhabitants lived well,” she said.

“The gold they mined around here made people millionaires overnight,” Nick replied, and leaned in next to her to see what it was that had caught her eye.

“Then just like that, their wealth was gone again,” she said sadly, remembering what she’d learned in history class years before.

She was looking at bits and pieces of people’s lives, at dreams gone bust. In a twinkling. It made her want to reach out and hold on to life with both hands and never let go.

It was a feeling she often got when she acquired a prized antique for her shop, but it struck her even more strongly out here in the desert. Perhaps because she felt she was losing her father.

Perhaps because of Nick, a man she’d be walking away from in a few short days, a man she’d probably only see again occasionally when the two families met at Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Nick saw something flit across Fiona’s face and wondered what she was thinking about, but then her eyes brightened again as she moved on to a display of old dishes. He watched as she fingered a goblet, traced the gilt edge on a fancy plate.

He picked up a dusty purple bottle of dubious
value and held it up to the light, wondering what anyone saw in all this junk.

What Fiona saw in it.

Shards of light filtered through the bottle, fanning out in prisms of purplish hues. Kinda pretty, he thought, but then so were sunsets.

So was sunlight shining through Fiona’s fiery hair.

He set the bottle down with an unceremonious thunk. If anyone had told him a few short days ago that he’d be wandering through an antique store and musing about sunsets and a woman with tempting red hair that he’d only just met, he’d have laughed.

Raucously.

Still, the alluring sight of her bending over to touch a filigree trinket propelled him across the room. He slid in next to her and fitted his hand to the curve of her firm derriere just below her waist. The flowery fragrance of her special perfume sent him into a spiral of desire. Unadulterated want.

He’d never known another woman who could turn him on with just a look, a smile, a twist of her body, the way Fiona could. She glanced up then, her green eyes wide and expectant, and straightened to her full height. His hand slipped to a less intimate position at her waist.

She still held the trinket in her hand, a gilt bauble with old gemstones set in it—gemstones
as glittery as the lights shining in her eyes at that moment.

“What do you have there?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t betray the turmoil inside him.

“Oh, Nick, it’s a lady’s jewelry box. Old, delicate, tiny. I thought it was brass when I first saw it, but it’s gold.” Her hand touched it reverently.

The piece was ornate, a remnant of better times, when gold ran like a river through this desert, Nick thought. And he wanted Fiona to have it. Because she admired it. Because it brought a smile to her lips just gazing at it. And her smile was something he couldn’t seem to get enough of lately.

She whirled around in a sweeping gesture. “I’d like to buy all this and ship it back to my shop. Each antique is so unusual, at least compared with what I find in New England. It would sell well.”

“Including the jewelry box?”

She fingered a curlicue on the top of it. “This I wouldn’t sell.” She set it down gingerly.

While she was busy trying to figure out how an old miner’s sluice worked, Nick slipped the clerk the money for the tiny jewelry box and hoped Fiona didn’t return for another glance at it and find it missing.

Buying the antique bauble for her felt good. Strangely good.

He didn’t want to ponder why.

“Let’s stop at the Gold Slipper for a cool drink,” he said when she’d checked out every nook and cranny of her third antique shop in a single block.

When they were seated in the red-and-gilt room off the lobby of the old town’s restored hotel, sipping icy lemonades, he set the small filigree box in front of her. “For you,” he said simply.

Her eyes widened. “You … you bought it?”

“I wanted you to have it.”

“But …” Her gaze diverted from the small jeweled square to his face. “Oh, Nick, I—I can’t accept this. It’s too valuable.”

“It was too valuable to leave there for someone else to buy, Fiona, someone who wouldn’t appreciate it the way you would.”

“That’s not fair, Nick. To put it that way.” A way he knew would get to her, appeal to her sentimental side. How had he known that was her weakness? She often bought antiques she knew she couldn’t afford—and would never want to resell—just because she couldn’t bear to have them go to some grasping dealer.

She ran the tip of one finger gently over the box, knowing this was one time she should be strong. She and Nick were two people
who’d been brought together by a strange quirk of fate, nothing else. And to accept such a gift implied more.