Once.
“You think I didn’t consider it?” Javy shot back. “It’s my restaurant! My responsibility. My family—”
“Mine, too.”
“Yeah,” his friend agreed, frustration and anger draining away. “But I should have been the one to come up with a solution. And you shouldn’t be the one paying for it now.”
“I made my choice, and I would do the same thing again. In a heartbeat. So, tell me, you gonna drink that?” Connor asked, pointing at the shot glass sitting untouched between them.
Javy slid it across the bar without spilling a drop. “Look, man, I’ve been trying to pay you back for years. You’ve gotta let me—”
“Forget it. After all your family did for me, it was the least I could do.”
“Then we’ll draw something up. Make you a partner in the restaurant. And I’ll talk to Kelsey.”
Connor shook his head. “No.”
“What do you mean ‘no’?” Javy demanded. “Why don’t you want to tell her the truth?”
“She knows the truth. I took the money.”
“Oh, come on, Connor! That’s not the whole truth, and you damn well know it! If you told her why, Kelsey would understand.”
Yeah, maybe she would…this time. But what about the next time she had to choose between him and her family?
Chapter Eleven
It had been three days since Kelsey had seen Connor. Three heartbreaking, regret-filled, uneventful days.
At first she’d been too hurt to do more than curl up on her sofa and cry. But Kelsey never believed self-pity helped anyone, so by the second day she had thrown herself into working on her shop, finishing up the details that transformed the place from a simple suite into the office of her dreams.
She’d had photographs from previous weddings enlarged and wrapped in gilded frames: an elegant wedding cake with a single piece missing; a bridal bouquet in midair with ribbons streaming; a close-up of an unseen couple’s hands, fingers entwined, showing off sparkling wedding rings.
She’d hung sheer curtains and floral drapes at the windows and found a bargain on a secondhand wicker coffee table, which displayed a crystal vase and fresh flowers from Lisa’s shop. She’d brought a CD player from home to fill the air with soft, lilting music.
And if her heart broke a little more with every romantic touch she added, not once did Kelsey let that slow her down.
If she had any doubts about her hard work paying off, she’d received encouragement from an unlikely source. When Charlene called earlier, the talk had centered around the rehearsal dinner that night, but nearing the end of the conversation, Charlene had fallen silent before saying, “If I haven’t told you before now, Kelsey, I appreciate all you’ve done for Emily’s wedding. We never would have been able to pull this off so quickly if not for you.”
After saying goodbye to her aunt, Kelsey hung up the phone and looked around her shop. She had everything she wanted: her shop was up and running, Emily’s wedding was only days away and her hard work had gained her aunt’s approval.
Congratulations, Kelsey. Your family must be so proud. Seems like you’re a real Wilson after all.
Guilt wormed its way through her stomach, but Kelsey pushed it away with a burst of anger as she grabbed her purse and keys. She had no cause to feel guilty, she decided as she locked the front door behind her with a definitive twist of the key. None at all. Connor was the one who’d kept secrets, told lies of omission.
And yet maybe he had a reason. After all, hadn’t he encouraged her to consider that her father might have had his reasons for taking the money? At the time, Kelsey thought Connor was talking only about her father. But could Connor have been talking about himself? Hoping that she might understand why he’d taken the ten thousand dollars? And what had she told him?
Nothing he could say would matter, nothing he could do would ever make up for taking the money.
Little wonder, then, that he hadn’t bothered with explanations!
She had to talk to Connor, Kelsey decided as she climbed into her car and turned the air on full blast. If she expected him to tell her the truth, she owed it to him to listen without making judgments based on her own past.
Her phone rang, reminding Kelsey that she couldn’t drop everything to go see Connor. After the rehearsal, she vowed as she pulled out her cell and flipped it open.
“Kelsey?”
Startled by the unexpected male voice, Kelsey asked, “Yes?”
“It’s Javy Delgado. Connor’s friend.”
“Javy?” She couldn’t imagine why he’d call her unless…“Is Connor okay? Has something happened?”
He paused long enough to strip a few years off Kelsey’s life before he said, “Do you still care about him?”
“Of course I care about him! I—” Love him, Kelsey thought.
“I wasn’t sure after the way you treated him.”
“The way I treated him? I know you’re Connor’s friend, but—”
“Not as good a friend as he’s been to me,” he interrupted. “And that’s why I called even though he asked me not to.”
So Connor didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t even want his friend talking to her. That didn’t give her much hope. “Why wouldn’t he want you to talk to me?”
“He doesn’t want me to tell you the truth. He’s afraid it won’t matter. I hope he’s wrong about that. About you. Just like you’ve been wrong about him.” Javy sighed. “The money he took, the money your uncle paid him—Connor gave it to my family. He used it to save our restaurant.”
“I have what you need.”
Even though Connor had been waiting for the damn call for days, it took him a moment to recognize the voice on the other end. He pushed away from the small table in his hotel room, pent-up energy surging through his veins.
“Jake, it’s about time you called. Tell me what you’ve got is good. I can’t wait to get out of this town.”
The words were the biggest lie he’d told in the past five minutes. Which was about how long it’d been since he’d last tried to convince himself Kelsey Wilson wasn’t worth the effort, and he’d forget all about her the second he got back to California.
“Good? No, I wouldn’t call it good,” Jake ground out.
Jake sounded nothing like his normal self, and although he and Connor were close, their relationship didn’t include a lot of heart-to-heart talks. Still, he had to say, “You sound like hell, man.”
“Doesn’t matter. I got the job done. I found what I was looking for.”
A garbled voice over a loudspeaker sounded in the background. “I have to go. They’re calling my flight. I’m e-mailing everything you need right now. Just do me one favor.”
“What is it?”
“Use it to nail that guy.”
“I will.”
“Good. It’s about time he gets what he deserves.”
As Connor flipped the cell phone closed, his friend’s voice rang in his ears. Connor supposed most people would say he was getting what he deserved, too. That Kelsey turning her back on him was just desserts for the way he had taken the money and left Emily years ago.
Except maybe Kelsey’s anger wasn’t about his relationship with Emily or the past he couldn’t change. Maybe it was about their relationship right now, and the truth he’d kept from her.
Okay, yeah, she’d told him nothing could excuse what her father had done when he’d taken money to leave her mother, but maybe if Connor had explained about the Delgados’ restaurant…maybe if he’d told her about the money up front so she wouldn’t have had to hear about it from Charlene, of all people…
Could he really blame Kelsey for reacting the way she had? Between the money her father had taken and the secrets her mother had kept, she had every right to be wary.
Sure, it would have been nice if she’d learned about the money and had still been willing to believe the best about him. But he hadn’t placed all his faith in Kelsey, either. He’d been afraid to t
ell her about the money because he’d feared his reasons—his love and loyalty to the Delgados—wouldn’t matter. He’d been holding on to his own past and his own fears that he wouldn’t matter. He should have trusted her more than that.
His computer e-mail alert sounded, letting him know Jake’s report had arrived. A few taps on the keyboard, and Connor understood his friend’s anger. “Don’t worry, Jake. We’ve nailed the guy.”
After Javy’s call, Kelsey longed to turn the car around to go immediately to Connor’s hotel, but she couldn’t skip the rehearsal, not as Emily’s wedding coordinator and not as a member of the Wilson family.
When her phone rang again, her heart skipped a beat as Connor’s number flashed across the screen. Still, she hesitated a split second. She wanted to be able to look into his eyes when she apologized. To see that he believed her when she told him she understood why he took the money and she wouldn’t expect any less of him than the sacrifice he’d made for his friends.
But after the way she’d treated him, she offered a quick whisper of thanks that he wanted to talk to her at all. Flipping the cell open with one hand, she turned into a nearby parking lot. She immediately sucked in a quick breath, but Connor interrupted any greeting or apology she might have made. “Kelsey, it’s Connor. Don’t hang up.”
She pressed the phone tighter to her ear as if that might somehow bring her closer to Connor. “I’m not. I won’t.”
“Look, I can explain about the money, I swear—”
“You don’t have to—”
“But not now—”
“I talked to Javy—”
“Jake called—”
“What?”
“Jake called. He found Sophia, the Dunworthy’s former maid.”
Trying to switch gears while her thoughts were going one hundred miles at hour, Kelsey said, “Did he find out why she quit?”
“Turns out she was fired after Dunworthy Senior caught her and Junior together.”
“Caught them?”
“From what Sophia says, he’d been hitting on her for months before she finally gave in. Only to lose her job because of it.”
“But didn’t you say she stopped working for the Dunworthys only a few months ago?” Kelsey asked, mentally going over the timing and coming to an unbelievable conclusion. “Todd and Emily started dating six months ago. They were engaged two months ago!”
“Yeah, they were. Evidently sleeping with the maid was the last straw. The way I figure it, Todd proposed to Emily as a way to try to win back his family’s approval.”
“I can’t believe he would do that to Emily!” Anger for her cousin’s sake started to boil inside Kelsey, along with a disgust at the way Todd had smiled and charmed his way into her aunt and uncle’s good graces.
“It gets worse.”
“Worse! How can it possibly get any worse! Is there someone else?”
“In a way.” Connor paused. “Sophia’s pregnant.”
“Preg—Are you sure the child is Todd’s? Considering the money his family has, and after the way Sophia lost her job—”
“Jake is sure of it. He believes her, and I believe him. Judging from his family’s reactions, I’d say that the Dunworthys believe it, too. The family doesn’t want anything to do with Todd. That’s why they aren’t here for the wedding.” He hesitated. “You were right, Kelsey, and I should have listened to you.”
“It doesn’t matter now. You did it, Connor. You found the proof you needed.”
“Yeah, I’ve got everything I need,” he agreed, his voice sounding hollow. “Look, Kelsey—”
She waited, her heart pounding for everything she wanted to hear, everything she wanted to say. But the silence stretched on, the words unspoken. Finally she said, “The wedding rehearsal is tonight. I’m already on my way to the chapel.”
“I’m at the hotel now. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Kelsey echoed quietly, before hanging up the phone.
She had fallen in love with the small chapel the first time she saw the cottage-style building, with its cobblestone walls and stained-glass windows. The close proximity to the hotel made it an ideal location. Right now Kelsey wished the chapel were a world away, anything to delay the inevitable end. Once Connor stopped the wedding, he’d have no reason to stick around…and if he did, Kelsey feared it wouldn’t be for her.
Minutes later Kelsey stood inside the empty chapel. It was as beautiful now as when she’d first laid eyes on it. She’d immediately known the perfect arrangement of flowers and candles for alongside the carved pews. Just the right placement of the wedding party on the steps leading to the altar. Exactly where the video and photographer should stand to best capture the light streaming through the windows. She’d known all of that months before Emily had gotten engaged. When Emily had bowed so easily to her suggestions, Kelsey had set in motion the wedding of her own dreams.
She was as guilty as Charlene in pushing her own ideas on Emily. It was her dream location for the wedding and reception. All of her friends were working side by side to make the day memorable. Maybe if she hadn’t been so focused on what she wanted, she would have stopped a long time ago to ask if any of it was what Emily wanted.
But she hadn’t, and now all their dreams were going down the drain—the perfect wedding to make her business, Emily’s dream of marrying the perfect man, Gordon and Charlene’s perfect son-in-law. Only Connor had succeeded. He was stopping the wedding as he’d said he would.
He was a man of his word, a good man, and she should have trusted him. Kelsey knew how much it must have hurt when she turned her back on him, just as much as regret and heartache were hurting her now.
A door squeaked behind her, letting in a rush of summer air, and Kelsey took a deep breath. Turning to face her aunt and uncle, she said, “Aunt Charlene, Uncle Gordon, I need to talk to you…” Her voice trailed away when she saw Emily and Todd following a few steps behind.
The one time Kelsey had counted on them being late.
“What is it, Kelsey?” Gordon asked.
“I—” She’d hoped to have a chance to talk to her aunt and uncle alone, to prepare them for what Connor had discovered, so together they could find a way to tell Emily. “I was wondering if I could speak to the two of you in private.”
She tried to make the suggestion as casually as possible, but there was nothing casual about the way Charlene’s eyebrows arched toward her hairline. “What’s wrong? Is it the flowers? The music?”
“Relax, Char,” Gordon interjected. “Weren’t you saying this morning that Kelsey has everything under control?”
Her uncle’s reminder and confident smile sent a sick feeling through Kelsey’s stomach. How was she supposed to tell them about Todd?
Taking note of her watching him, Todd crossed his arms over his chest, a not-so-subtle challenge in his expression. “You have something to say, Kelsey?”
She took a deep breath, but before she had chance to speak, the chapel door swung open again. She heard Connor’s voice a second before he stepped through the doorway. “Actually, I’m the one with something to say.”
“McClane! What are you doing here?” Gordon demanded, a lightning bolt of wrinkles cutting across his thunderous expression.
Todd draped a proprietary arm over Emily’s shoulders. “I told Emily inviting him was a mistake. He’s still in love with her, and he’s probably here because he thinks he can stop the wedding.”
“I’m not in love with Emily,” Connor insisted.
I’m in love with Kelsey. His heart pounded out the words he never thought he’d say, but damned if he’d say them for the first time with the Wilsons and Todd Dunworthy as witnesses.
He felt the irresistible pull of Kelsey’s gaze and he couldn’t help meeting her gaze any more than he could resist the earth’s gravity. Not now. Not like this, he mentally pleaded as he looked into her eyes, willing her to understand.
“Then maybe you’d like to explain
exactly what is going on here?” Gordon repeated.
This was his moment, Connor thought. His chance to prove he was right and the Wilsons were wrong. Wrong about Todd. Wrong about him. But his triumph rang hollow. He didn’t need the Wilsons’ approval. He wasn’t sure why he’d ever thought he did. All he needed was Kelsey. Her faith. Her trust. Had his past and his secret destroyed that?
“Connor?” Kelsey’s voice called to him.
Dressed in a blue-green print dress that hugged her curves, her hair free to curl around her face, she looked absolutely beautiful—strong and vulnerable at the same time, and he couldn’t look away.
Whatever Gordon and Charlene saw in his expression had them quickly closing ranks around Kelsey. Surrounded by her aunt and uncle, the Wilson misfit suddenly looked at home within the golden circle, and Connor was alone on the outside.
Tearing his gaze away, he focused on Gordon and pulled the information he’d printed from his back pocket. “Your golden boy has a history of using women. His blue-blood family, who mean so much to you, has completely cut him off after he got one of their maids pregnant.” He slapped the pages into Gordon Wilson’s reluctantly outstretched hand.
Charlene gasped, color leaching from her face, but doubt pulled Gordon’s silver eyebrows together.
“Todd, what is Connor talking about?” Emily asked, her eyes wide as she stared at her fiancé.
“He’s lying,” Todd scoffed. But instead of trying to console Emily, he looked to Gordon with a can-you-believe-the-nerve-of-this-guy expression. “You know you can’t trust anything McClane says.”
“But you can trust me, Uncle Gordon,” Kelsey insisted as she stepped closer.
“What do you know about this?” her uncle asked, taking a look at the papers.
“I know Connor is a good man.” She spoke the words to her uncle, but her gaze never broke from Connor’s. “He’s here because he’s worried about Emily. That information is true.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Todd issued sharply. When Gordon’s steely gaze cut his way, filled with the same distrust he’d pinned on Connor’s seconds earlier, he quickly backed down. Relaxing his features into a more conciliatory expression, he said, “I’m afraid Kelsey has fallen for McClane’s lies, but it’s all a smear campaign to stop the wedding.”
Once Upon a Wedding Page 18
