Kiss the Bride (37 page)

She sat up, pushed back a strand of hair that flopped across her face. “Oh, dear.”

“What is it?”

“There’s scratches all over your back. How did they get there?”

His laugh was deep and rich. “You clawed me.”

“I did?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember feeling all shook up.”

“Yep.” He grinned up at her. “You were wild, out of control.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I loved it.”

She leaned down and gently pressed her lips to the scratches she’d inflicted upon him in the throes of desire. She would never have thought herself capable of such passion. It renewed her excitement.

When she finished kissing the scratches she kept going, tracing her lips down the curve of his spine to the high, tight mound of his bottom. Once there, she bit down tenderly on a nice chunk of butt.

“Watch out, woman, you’re playing with fire.”

“Promises, promises,” she teased. “We’ve already made love twice today.”

“Are you questioning my stamina?”

“Stop bragging and back it up.”

Quick as a cobra, he flipped her over. She giggled as he grabbed her around the waist and tackled her to the mattress. “There’s two more seascapes on the wall. Wanna go for double or nothing?”

Looking into his eyes, a thrill so rich and true she
would never be able to express it filled her up. He kissed her and they were off again. Riding the crest of their passion.

They woke again at dawn on Monday morning, locked in each other’s arms. He leaned in to kiss her.

“No, no, morning breath.” She put a hand over her mouth.

“I don’t care. I want to share everything with you, including morning breath.”

“That’s yucky.”

“That’s life, baby.”

He kissed her, then pulled back laughing. “Okay, so maybe it’s a little yucky.”

Teasing each other, they filed into the bathroom to brush their teeth. They stood side by side, naked in front of the mirror, making silly faces at each other. Delaney felt lighter, freer, than she’d ever felt in her life.

She realized with a start that she had never been naked in the bathroom with a man before she’d been with Nick. How had she managed to get to the ripe old age of twenty-five without such intimacy?

Nick wandered back into the bedroom and flicked on the television. It was the first time they’d had the TV on all weekend. He channel surfed, looking for the morning news. And stopped cold when he saw Delaney’s face flash across the screen.

Uh-oh.

He thumbed up the volume.

“Delaney Cartwright has been missing since she was kidnapped from the chapel on her wedding day,” said the News 4 anchorwoman. “Police departments all across the country have been looking for her. This morning we have stunning new revelations in the case. We go now to our
correspondent, Joe Sanchez, outside the main precinct of the Houston Police Department.”

Delaney came running in from the bathroom, her toothbrush still in her mouth, wearing nothing but her underwear. Since they’d been holed up together, she’d stopped flatironing her hair and it curled around her face. Nick said it made her look like an erotic sea nymph and she liked the sound of that.

“New revelations,” she mouthed around the toothbrush. “What new revelations?”

“Kelly,” Joe Sanchez addressed the anchorwoman. “Here’s what we’ve learned. James Robert Cartwright, Senior VP of Cartwright Oil and Gas, and his wife, Honey Montgomery Cartwright, received a ransom note asking for ten million dollars or their missing daughter will be executed.”

Delaney pulled the toothbrush from her mouth and waved it at the TV. “They can’t execute me,” she shouted. “I’m not being held hostage.”

“Your parents don’t know that,” Nick said quietly and the full extent of his words hit her like a slap.

Guilt took hold of her then, sharp and raw. What a horrible daughter she was. She hadn’t thought about her parents or Evan from the moment Nick kissed her on the balcony. She imagined how frantic they must be and recalled how crushed they had been after Skylar’s death. She thought the note she’d left for Evan would ease their minds, let them know she’d gone off on her own.

The taste of shame filled her mouth. She’d wanted to punish her mother for lying, for deceiving her all these years, but this was too cruel. How thoughtless she’d been. How selfish.

Nick loosely hooked his elbow around her neck and
drew her against his chest and whispered, “Don’t browbeat yourself.”

“In a stunning revelation,” the newscaster continued, “Honey Montgomery Cartwright revealed that she was being blackmailed by her biological mother and that her real name is Fayrene Doggett. Thirty-five years ago, she assumed the identity of a dead woman. For over three decades, Fayrene Doggett was posing as a Philadelphia blue blood. The scandal has rocked Houston high society, and the police have put out an APB on Paulette Doggett Wilson and her stepson Monty Wilson, who are suspected of holding Delaney Cartwright hostage. Their fingerprints were all over the ransom note.”

Delaney’s mouth dropped open and she sat down hard on the floor. “Mother went public? She admitted she’s Fayrene Doggett? She’ll be drummed out of the society that means so much to her. I can’t believe she confessed.”

“She did it for you,” Nick said.

Her mother had come clean in order to get her back. Letting go of her too-high standards, telling the truth, risking everything for Delaney. Guilt and shame mixed with sadness and concern inside her. There’d been too much pain and misunderstanding on both sides of the fence. It was time for open and honest communication between mother and daughter.

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face. “Take me home, Nick. Take me home.”

As Nick drove Delaney up to the security gate of the mansion she called home, he felt decidedly out of place.

Delaney told him the security code and as he punched it into the keypad, he wished he could disappear. The driveway was crammed with unmarked police cars. Nick
recognized the Feds when he saw them, standing guard outside the house. Before he even stopped the pickup, they were running toward him, guns drawn.

He got out with his hands up, identifying himself.

The FBI yanked open his truck door and pulled Delaney out. They ushered her inside the house, while another batch of agents surrounded him. Nick stood watching Delaney go, and he’d never felt more like an outsider in his life.

“Delaney!” Honey swallowed her daughter up in the tightest embrace she’d ever given.

The last two days had been a living hell. Right in front of the FBI, she and James Robert had fought and cried and argued and slammed doors and relived the day Skylar had been killed. But he’d stayed and they’d fought it out. Then they’d talked in a way they hadn’t talked in years, if ever. Honey didn’t hold back. She told him all her secrets, her fears, her terror of losing him. Letting down the guard she’d held up so high for so long wasn’t easy.

When they could argue no more, James Robert took her in his arms, kissed her tenderly the way he’d kissed her in the early days, and told her he forgave her, but that for them to go forward, she was also going to have to forgive herself.

That was the hard part. Letting go of thirty-five years of self-recrimination and guilt. But she was trying her best.

Honey kissed her daughter’s face over and over. They were both sobbing and apologizing profusely. Delaney for running away from her wedding, Honey for keeping a lifetime’s worth of secrets and lies.

The FBI debriefed Delaney at her parents’ home and
then went off to find Paulette and her stepson Monty. Honey would eventually have to deal with her blackmailing mother face-to-face, but for now, her only concern was her daughter.

“I’m so sorry,” she told Delaney. “The way I raised you was wrong. In trying to keep anyone from finding out that I was living a lie, I forced my fears and anxieties onto you. I emphasized perfection, because I couldn’t afford to slip. I demanded too much from you and Skylar. I know that now, and I’ll go to my grave regretting what I did to you.”

“No, Mother,” Delaney said. “I don’t want you to have regrets. You were strict, yes, but you taught me a lot. And now that I understand where you came from and why you did what you did, it makes it easier to accept your flaws. I forgive you, Mother, and I only hope you can forgive me for hiding out from you for two days. I was just so angry when Nick told me your real identity. I couldn’t believe you’d kept such a dark secret for so long. I mean, if you weren’t who you said you were, then who was I? I needed time to sort it all out. I should have called you. It was so wrong of me to let you worry, fearing I was dead.”

And then she told Honey about how Nick had rescued her from the kidnapper.

“Where is he?” Honey asked softly. “I’d like to meet the man you’re in love with.”

“Who says I’m in love with him?” Delaney’s eyes widened.

“You can’t hide it, sweetheart. It’s in your face. You look the way I felt when I first met your father.”

“I guess he wanted to give us our space,” she said.

Honey reached over and squeezed Delaney’s hand. “I’m so happy you didn’t marry Evan. And I’m sorry you felt pressured into a wedding. I’m so glad that you knew
better than I did and stuck to your convictions, even if your methods were a bit unorthodox.”

The maid appeared in the dining room where Honey, Delaney, and James Robert had congregated. “There’s a visitor at the door to see Delaney,” she announced.

“Nick!” Delaney cried. She was up and out of her seat. She ran down the hall, threw open the door.

“Hello, Delaney,” Evan said. “May I come in?”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known this moment would come; she’d just hoped it would be later rather than sooner. But here was Evan, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t going away until he’d had his say.

“Evan,” she said.

“Delaney.” His eyes were tinged with sadness, and she just felt awful. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

She ushered him over the threshold. “Come on in.”

He followed her inside and then they just stood awkwardly in the foyer, avoiding looking each other directly in the eyes. It hurt her to realize how she must have hurt Evan. He’d been her best friend for as long as she could remember.

“Evan,” she started, “I’m so—”

“Shh.” He raised an index finger. “Don’t say it. You don’t have to apologize to me.”

“Yes, yes, I do. I’m so ashamed of the way I treated you. Arranging my own kidnapping.” She shook her head. “It was cowardly.”

“It’s all right. I understand. In fact, I’m glad you had the courage to dump me at the altar. Granted, your methods were a bit unorthodox.” His laugh was shaky.

“You were glad?”

“Yeah.” He smiled ruefully. “I didn’t want to marry you either.”

Flabbergasted, she stared at him. “Then why didn’t you just say something?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Good question. “Because we were perfect for each other, everyone said so.”

“Same here.”

“Why did you ask me to marry you in the first place?” she asked.

“Because my family was pressuring me to get married, to give them a grandchild. It’s a drawback to being an only child born late in life. Your parents fear they’ll die before they’ll get to see their grandchildren. I wanted to make them happy, and you’re one of the finest women I’ve ever known. But after going to Guatemala, I realized I love that kind of primitive medicine. I want to move there, live there. I want to make a real difference in those children’s lives. And I do love you, Laney—”

“But not in the way we both deserve,” she finished the sentence for him.

“Yeah.” He pressed his lips together tight.

Tears misted her eyes. He was a good man. Just not the man for her.

“I was looking for the magic that was missing between us,” he said. “And I found it in Guatemala.”

Delaney smiled. Tears were in his eyes too. “I understand completely.”

They looked at each other and then burst out laughing, as tears slid down their cheeks.

“Friends?” Evan stuck out his hand.

She took it. “Friends.”

He reached out and gently touched her cheek in a sweet brotherly gesture that she cherished but did not yearn for. “You’re an amazing woman, Laney. I hope you know that,
and I hope you find the same kind of happiness in your life that I’ve found in Guatemala.”

“I’ve already found it,” she said.

“Good for you.” Evan kissed her on the forehead and then he was gone, leaving her feeling a little startled by his admission and a lot relieved. She was also stunned by what she suddenly realized about herself.

All this time she’d been looking outside for the answer to what was missing from her life. And here it turned out the magic had been inside her all along. Afraid of her own power, she’d hidden it, covered up beneath a fake facade, a false image. By trying so hard to please others, she’d denied her true essence.

Nick alone had seen her potential. He was the one who had shown Delaney her real self.