Runaway Groom (3 page)

His nod and quick smile made butterflies dance a little jig in her stomach. She ignored them and frowned in return. “But for now… You. Out.” She pointed toward the front of the house.

Without another word, he left her and the shining faces of the Shasta daisies on the counter as he went.

Chugging more coffee, she sighed. The sweet things Braxton Dean did weren’t enough—could never be enough—to make up for ditching her at the altar…

Still, he remembered, after all these years, her hangover cure.

Sober, with only a mild headache clinging to remind her of last night, Abigail beat him to Point Park by an hour. Lunch, snagged from her favorite seafood joint, sat in a Styrofoam container untouched beside her as she found a spot on the grass overlooking the lift bridge at the Point. The place was rich in memories of Braxton—like the feel of safety in his arms while they talked about the future. They planned to get out of this one-horse town, to see the world. Her best friend from childhood, the kid she ate mud with who taught her to climb trees, starred as her first lover in those memories.

She swallowed back the warmth of her past, reminding herself he’d seen the world and she’d been remained behind in the shadow of him leaving.

No other man filled the hole he carved out of her heart.

The last time he kissed her on this hill was the night before the wedding, when he left for his bachelor party.

All that night, she’d lain in her bed, unable to sleep. Fears about what they were doing, what the future would hold, kept her tossing and turning. She’d graduated from community college earlier that summer, and her whole life stretched out full of possibilities.

Tired nerves had knotted in her stomach as she rode with Mother to the church. Putting on her dress, fixing her hair and makeup…all of it seemed to take forever. Forever to grasp the gravity of the vows she would speak, the changes they would bring.

Knowing the long walk down the aisle loomed moments away.

Her whole life up to that point flashed before her eyes, while others messed with the veil.

And then she found out he wasn’t at the other end of the church, waiting for her. At first there had been terror, thick enough to clog her throat. The vivid fear still left a sour taste in her mouth.

Something happened to him.

Two days filled with that terror. Some of her friends were parents and they’d told her that losing the kids, even for a moment at a zoo or whatever, was horrifying. She lived in that place of panic for two days.

Then, after a missing person’s report had been filed, his pager went unanswered, and no one knew anything…

She’d tried to talk to his parents. It seemed so logical at the time. She’d walked into the tool store, up to the man who was going to be her father-in-law, and asked if he heard from Braxton.

To this day, she remembered the humiliation of that afternoon.

Whore. Daughter of a crazy woman. Did she really expect he would go through with it?

Mr. Dean’s words hurt, but she knew—she knew—he was wrong. Braxton loved her.

Finally, she’d gone to his apartment, where he’d made love to her so many times, and looked for some clue…not caring if she got in trouble for breaking and entering or whatever.

Unlike everyone else who looked, she saw the truth right away. The things that mattered most weren’t there anymore. He must have packed them.

That knowledge, that nothing happened to him, he packed and left by choice, and didn’t tell her… All her fear and panic transformed in less than five minutes to the anger she carried today. A thin line marked the difference between love and hate and she’d hated him for so long. The knowledge wasn’t comfortable.

A silver pickup truck pulled up, shattering the silence on the hill. He was so stereotypical, with his country boy bow-legged walk, corn-fed broad shoulders, dark curling hair and laughing green eyes. His jeans were faded in all the right places, worn thin enough that a girl would have to have a foot in the grave not to want to rip them off him. It should be criminal, really, to look that edible, be so damn fine, and yet be such a jerkwad.

She opened the lunch, found it no longer warm but figured it would give her something to do other than gaze at him. He plopped on the grass and leaned back on his muscular, tanned arms to look down toward the bridge through sunglasses.

She wished she’d thought to wear sunglasses to hide her own expression from him. Better to hide than show him her heart missed him, her body sang for him, because she damn sure wasn’t getting involved with him again.

Chapter Five

July 4, 2009

Abby,

I’ve been drinking.

Supposed to be my bachelor’s party. I’m supposed to get married.

I can’t do it.

I have to call it off.

Probably you’re the last person I should be telling about that. But all I can think of is the feel of your skin under my hands. Remember that time you didn’t wear panties? All I could think about through the movie was the fact that under that cute little skirt there was nothing between me and the folds of your body. I wanted to slide my hand up that skirt and when I finally caved and felt how wet you were… Well, I knew you weren’t paying attention to the movie either. Do you even remember what movie we were supposed to be watching?

Yeah, like I said, if all I can think about is you, I can’t put a ring on her finger.

It isn’t just the sex either. I miss my best friend.

But the sex…well, I miss your body. I miss the little sounds you made when I touched you.

I’m older now. There are things we never tried…I want to try them with you.

Sorry. Like I said. I’m more than a little drunk.

Anyway, love you.

I’d give anything to taste your sweet lips one more time.

Love, B

She looked relaxed and he realized it might not matter what he had to say.

Her hair, which used to be so long and dark it hung around her like a cloak, was short and sleek. The look was more mature, more sophisticated, than what he was used to, but he had to admit it framed her heart-shaped face and showed off the pale line of her neck in a very lovely way. Her eyes looked tired, but they remained the familiar chocolaty brown. How many hours did he stare into those eyes?

He left a girl full of life, fun and ready to take on the world. He returned to one who seemed somehow poised, calm and collected, her expression so guarded, he couldn’t guess at what went on behind her fathomless dark eyes.

Somewhere, under all that careful masking,
his
Abby still lurked.

He leaned back on his arms, remembering the many nights spent on this very hill, her like liquid electricity in his arms. When they were kids, she climbed trees with him, fished with him…she was his best pal. One day, he boosted her up a tree to pretend to be a pirate and the next—

Seemingly overnight, she’d grown tits. Truly the most outstanding breasts he’d ever seen, he’d fought every testosterone-driven instinct not to brush up against them. He spent every waking moment resisting the urge to graze them with his fingertips to watch the nipples harden through the paper-thin material of her T-shirts.

One hot summer evening, they were cooling off down at the pond behind Manda Watkin’s farm, wrestling around in the water, and their eyes had locked. The moment was engraved in his mind like some kind of mental tattoo. Her pupils dilated, even though the sun beat down on them. She’d bumped into his cock, hard and aching for her. Finally, after months—
years?—
of jerking off to the thought of his best friend, she knew his secret. The water was far too cold for any other explanation, and she was smart enough about boys to get that, even though she was a virgin. He’d answered all of her boy questions, so he knew she understood.

It seemed an eternity, frozen in the water, legs pumping to keep them afloat, while she stared at him, seeming to digest the information. The whole time, her body hung in his arms, held tight to his as he throbbed for her.

When her lips began to curl into a smile, and he sensed she was about to turn it into a joke so they could laugh it off, something inside him snapped.
Fuck that.
He wasn’t going back to the way things were because it was easier.

His lips crashed over hers, more enthusiasm than skill, and hungry for one taste before she banished him back to best friend status.

Instead of pushing him away, her fingers delved into his hair, clinging, as they both went under the water and his hands finally filled with the breasts that’d kept him awake more than one night.

Their relationship became a steamroller from there. In a small town, they were two kids who thought they could change the world, and they were no match for everyone else’s expectations for what they would become.

Proms, engagement, wedding plans…all of it seemed to flow in a well-organized, predetermined way. As if the town decided the first time he saw Abby skin her knee on Main Street when she was four and pulled her up to her feet, they were destined to marry.

None of it scared him. Not while she was in his arms.

But when she wasn’t…

The doubts crept in. And at his bachelor party, too young to buy his own damn beer, when his buddies joked about balls and chains and the reality sank in—
he would be responsible for her
—he ran.

He ran hard and fast.

He’d stopped running now and, as he refused to look at her on the hill and the sun beat down on him like an accusing fist, he told her all of it.

“And even though I never felt about anyone the way you made me feel, Abby, I wasn’t even twenty. How could I keep a roof over our heads? How could I take care of you if you got sick? We’d been lucky so far, not like Ben and Stella, and you hadn’t gotten pregnant, but what if you did one day? One little slip and two becomes three and could I take care of us? Keep a job? Be a man?”

Her eyes were steady on him. “I never asked you to take care of me, Braxton. We planned to be a partnership. We didn’t plan on the picket fence or—”

“See? That’s just it, Abs. You plan and you plan, but my parents didn’t plan me! How many kids in this town were the results of a moment of passion in the back of a Chevy? Shit happens. Birth control is fucking wonderful except when it isn’t. Darcy Buchannan tells the story of Denny all the time and how he is her miracle baby born from spermicide and a condom. And one round of antibiotics can throw off the pill. Shit happens. How long until more of the chains of this town wrapped around us and—”

“You selfish sonofabitch.”

Her quiet words stopped him cold. She blinked damp eyes and something inside him flopped, sickly. “Abs—”

“No, you talked. I heard you out. But what about me? I couldn’t leave, d’ya know that? The day of our wedding, my grandmother got sick. We found out later it was a mini stroke and when she died, I was left here, taking care of my mom. You know Gracie wasn’t going to help me so I took care of her, wore the chains of this town that you’re bitching about because I love her. You’re right. Shit happens. But if you love someone, it doesn’t matter.”

“Abby, I get that now. I get it because for years, I looked for you. Really. I dated women, tried to fit them into the mold of you. Lou was the one who pointed it out, that all my relationships failed because there was only one you. And I left you. I get what a dumb little piss ant I was. At twenty, I ran scared. I’m not running anymore.”

“But
at
twenty,
you
left
me
here alone.” Standing, she brushed off her pants and bent to pick up the box from the grass. “At twenty you
disappeared
and left me to wait, to wonder and suffer, terrified that something happened to you.”

“I wrote you every day that I was gone, Abs. There’s no reason for you to have been terrified. Did you read the damn letters or were you too stubborn?”

Her blank look ripped a piece of him.

“You didn’t even read them?” He knew she was stubborn but she never, in ten years, read the letters he wrote her every single day?

“Braxton, I knew you were a lot of things, but I never knew you were a liar.”

She turned to leave and it was crunch time.
One last moment to touch her, even if her betrayal of their friendship stabbed into him.

Catching her arm, he spun her. “I’ve done a lot of shit I feel terrible about, Abbiegirl, but I didn’t lie to you.”

With that, he took her lips, knowing she was sober enough to feel him this time.

No longer a fumbling teenage boy, he didn’t crash into her. He teased the crease of her tight lips with his tongue, and with a sigh, she gave into him.

Her surrender, like everything she did, was complete. Rising on tiptoes, her arms wound around him and he lifted her by the ass to hold her against his body. The feel of the sun, the sound of cars moving down the hill, all of it faded in the taste of her and the sensuous slide of her against him.

His hunger for Abby was something he’d known from the first stirrings of his cock in his shorts. He lived with needing her as long as he lived with wanting her. The taste of her, both familiar and exotic, was a flavor that burst on his taste buds and soaked his body in lust.