The Wedding Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  It should have been that disappearance, that betrayal of their love, that was uppermost on her mind as she waited for him to come to some kind of decision about helping her with her dress. But it wasn’t.

  It was the buried hunger in his eyes as she turned to meet his gaze again.

  And the way her heart seemed to be beating in unison with the pulse point at the open collar of his white shirt.

  Rae-Anne swallowed hard. Think about Rodney, she ordered herself. Think about the fact that you’re wearing this wedding dress because you’re engaged to another man. Think about why you’re engaged to him.

  It should have worked.

  But it didn’t.

  The part of the world that had Rodney in it seemed a million miles away from this isolated cabin. Out there, somewhere, was a storm of questions and decisions and realities that Rae-Anne knew she would have to deal with before long. But right now, right here, none of it seemed to matter.

  What did matter was the look in Wiley’s dark eyes. Was it frustration or desire that she was seeing there? Or, like Rae-Anne herself, was he in the grip of both at the same time, held together by a restless current that was oddly and unexpectedly exciting?

  All of those things came through clearly in his voice, cutting through his words as he said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to take the veil off first?”

  “Maybe.”

  She’d left the veil on because without it her gown suddenly seemed much more daring than she’d intended. The low bodice followed the curves of her breasts in a long, revealing line, and despite the small sleeves, her arms and shoulders were bare.

  But Wiley was right about it being in the way. Rae-Anne leaned her head forward slightly and raised her hands to the complicated arrangement of pins and clips that held it in place, wishing her fingers were steadier and her heart wasn’t starting to thud at her ribs so insistently.

  There was something far too suggestive about removing her veil for Wiley like this. And the suggestion escalated into outright temptation when she realized what he’d really intended.

  He’d stepped close to her before she’d seen him move. All of a sudden she felt encircled by him, the way she’d been this afternoon when they’d stepped out of the limo.

  “Let me do that,” Wiley said. His voice was soft and rough, and his fingers, where they curled around her wrists, felt warm and strong.

  “I don’t think—”

  She couldn’t get the rest of the words out. It didn’t seem to bother Wiley.

  “I can see the top of your head, and you can’t.” His words were surprisingly practical, and for a moment RaeAnne let herself relax a little as he let her arms go and turned his attention to her veil. She would feel calmer, she told herself, as soon as all this wedding paraphernalia was out of the way.

  Her moment of relaxation didn’t last. Wiley broke it— casually, it seemed—with one of the many questions she didn’t feel like tackling this evening.

  “So how long have you been engaged to Rodney Dietrich?” he asked, dropping the first pin onto the bedside table at his side.

  Rae-Anne swallowed. “Not long,” she said.

  “But you’ve known him a while.”

  It didn’t sound like a question. In fact, it sounded suspiciously as though he already knew the answer.

  “What makes you say that?” she demanded.

  He shrugged, his big shoulders blocking her vision entirely for a moment. “I keep my ears open,” he said.

  “No kidding.” She shifted to try to look him in the eye and winced as one of the pins holding the veil dug into her scalp.

  “Hold still,” Wiley ordered. “Why can’t they just tie these things on with string or something?”

  Rae-Anne snorted. “Hardly high fashion,” she said. “Monsieur Antoine would not approve.”

  “That who did your hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have had him check with me first. I’d have told him it doesn’t look much like the real Rae-Anne Blackburn.”

  Wiley had always done this to her, Rae-Anne remembered with sudden clarity. She’d never been able just to be angry with him, or just disappointed, or just anything. He’d always called up too many emotions in her all at once, and he was doing it again now.

  She shook her head at him, ignoring his muttered curse as he lost his grip on her veil. She took a couple of steps away from his oversize presence and raised her hands to finish what he’d started.

  “I couldn’t ask your opinion about my hair,” she said pointedly, “for the very good reason that I believed you were dead.” How had Monsieur Antoine attached this thing, anyway? Rae-Anne felt her fingers shaking with frustration as she tried to find the hidden pins.

  Wiley was standing his ground, although she could tell by the set of his shoulders that he wasn’t any happier with her line of questioning than she’d been with his.

  “We had a date one night about ten years ago,” she went on. “You probably don’t remember. We were going to go to a movie.” She found one of the recalcitrant pins and pulled it free. “I waited for you, but you never showed up. I called your apartment and you weren’t there. I called you at work the next day and they wouldn’t tell me anything. I couldn’t imagine what else to do—”

  She was never going to find the final pin at this rate. She made herself stop talking and took a deep breath before she started again.

  “I kept calling the DEA until they finally told me you were dead—killed in the line of duty, the guy said. By that time I’d gotten through to your immediate boss, so I figured he would know what he was talking about. I guess I was wrong.”

  She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. She’d known Wiley’s job was dangerous, but somehow she’d never let herself imagine the awful possibility that he might die doing it. And the man she’d talked to had hardly been sympathetic. “It happens,” had been his blunt comment, as though it were no big deal that he’d just shattered RaeAnne’s whole world.

  And maybe it really was no big deal. She’d seen happiness beckoning to her before, only to have it disappear when she reached for it. But with Wiley, she’d really believed her dreams had been coming true at last.

  And then they hadn’t.

  She waited for him to speak, suddenly not trusting her voice. His answer was slow and surprising.

  “I didn’t know,” he said finally. “When you were trying to find out what had happened to me, I was in an intensivecare ward under an assumed name, with a whole lot of knife holes stuck in me.”

  Rae-Anne drew in a quick breath. She’d always hated this side of Wiley’s life, even before it had come between them.

  “My boss didn’t know who you were,” he went on. “Nobody knew I had a girlfriend. And since nobody knew you, and I wasn’t around to ask, the boys followed standard procedure in a case where the agent’s life is endangered.”

  She didn’t like the official tone that had come into his voice. “In other words, they lied to me,” she said bluntly.

  “Yeah.” She’d expected his usual mocking grin, but his face stayed very serious. “Rae-Anne, I swear to you that if there had been a thing on earth I could have done to keep it from happening, I’d have done it. Hell, I never meant for you to be hurt like that. And when I went looking for you—”

  “You looked for me?”

  “Of course I did. Looked all over the map. Where the hell did you get to, anyway?”

  “I worked as a stewardess on Caribbean cruise ships for a couple of years. It was a way to… keep moving.”

  “And to keep hidden. By the time I gave up looking for you, honey, I was an expert in missing-persons searches. It was about the only good thing that came out of that whole mess.”

  Something sudden and hopeful fluttered in Rae-Anne’s chest. She tried to tamp it down and concentrated on her veil again instead of on Wiley’s dark gaze. She found the last pin and pulled it free. The white mist of the fabric swirling between them was as ghostly an
d elusive as her memories of the love she and Wiley had shared and lost.

  When she met his eyes again, she could almost feel the heat of his gaze. He seemed to be thinking that they might actually salvage something out of the bitterness of the past, some warmth from the fire they’d always ignited in each other. That must be why he’d interrupted her wedding day and carried her off like a knight on a white horse rescuing his lady from a dragon.

  For a knight, his timing was rotten. And the dragon he’d snatched her away from was the father of her unborn child and a man she was actually quite fond of.

  But Rodney had never made her feel the things Wiley could. And even if there was nowhere for this unlikely rescue attempt to go, it was still exhilarating to know that he hadn’t just walked away from her coldly, without a second thought. That he’d bothered to look for her after she’d hit the road again.

  And that he’d cared enough to come back for her now.

  “Wiley,” she said, picking her words carefully, “what, exactly, are you doing here?”

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she felt the dangerous tug of his gaze drawing them together. No, her mind said firmly. There are too many reasons not to let this happen. But her body was pulsing unmistakably in places that only Wiley had ever stirred into life.

  “At the moment,” he said matter-of-factly, “I’m waiting to help you undo those buttons. Or have you changed your mind?”

  She almost said yes and fled to the safety of her bedroom. But it wasn’t like Rae-Anne to back down. And besides, she really did want to get out of her dress. She took a determinedly deep breath and turned her back to Wiley.

  He started briskly at the top of the row, twisting the tiny pearl buttons free of their satin loops. For a minute RaeAnne hoped that she was the only one feeling any reaction to their closeness, and that Wiley might just finish what he was doing and let her go. But then he paused.

  She couldn’t tell why. She only knew that his sudden stillness had a charged, erotic quality to it, and that she was startled to realize she’d been letting herself revel in the heat of his hands so close to her skin.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His voice was a slow growl, nothing more. Rae-Anne held herself very straight, hoping he didn’t notice her breathing was quickening.

  She wished she could see his face, his hands. He seemed to have paused with one of the buttons half-undone. She could feel his knuckles just barely brushing against the skin of her back, touching her as lightly as her gossamer veil.

  “It’s been occurring to me,” he murmured, “that you can’t be wearing much underneath this dress.”

  “You’re right.” The huskiness in her voice astonished her. “There’s a strapless bra. You’ll come to it soon.”

  “I think I just did.”

  “Oh.”

  Rae-Anne had always prided herself on knowing what to say in even the most difficult situation. She could strike up a conversation with almost anyone, defuse a brewing fight with a well-placed word or two, cut to the heart of an argument with sharp-edged clarity.

  She never found herself saying oh like a blushing schoolgirl. But Wiley’s comment had stopped her.

  He stayed still for what felt like an eternity, while the heat at the center of Rae-Anne’s body spread until it had touched every part of her. She could tell him to stop, she knew. She could insist that he finish undoing her buttons and let her go, and he would do it.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

  He had come back to her. However ill-timed and unwelcome his reappearance was, she couldn’t deny her pleasure at knowing he was alive and knowing he cared enough about her to come back. Surely, just for one sweet, stolen moment, she could let herself savor the thousand sensations Wiley sparked in her soul and her body.

  It was almost as though he knew what she was thinking. As she drew in another long breath, he let out the breath he seemed to have been holding and eased his fingers slowly inside the edges of her gown.

  He found the clasp of her strapless bra on the first try and flicked it open with wordless efficiency. Rae-Anne reached a hand out as though looking for some way to steady herself, but the only fixed point in her world at the moment was Wiley, silent and absorbed at her back, exploring her smooth skin as though this was a new delight and not one he had discovered a hundred times before.

  “Wiley-”

  “Shh.” His voice was as gentle as his hands. “Don’t say anything, honey. Not now.”

  “We can’t—we shouldn’t let this happen.”

  “Are you telling me you honestly want to stop?”

  She couldn’t say it, not honestly. By the time he’d resumed his progress down the row of buttons, Rae-Anne’s blood was thundering in her veins, and her knees felt weak for a whole set of reasons that had nothing to do with how much she’d eaten or slept recently.

  He’d reached the small of her back now. Rae-Anne closed her eyes, remembering how he’d once kissed her all over, resting his face in that warm, curved hollow and murmuring that he could happily spend all of eternity without ever moving again.

  “I have a question for you.” His voice was rough at her ear.

  Was he going to ask her about Rodney? Rae-Anne felt her body tense slightly, unwilling to let all the complicated realities of her life intrude into this moment of sensuous peace.

  “What is it?” she asked. The words wouldn’t come out any louder than a whisper.

  “I’ve been looking at you for hours now, Rae-Anne, and I still can’t believe how beautiful you are.” He raised his hands as he spoke, cradling her shoulders in his palms so gently that she wanted to lean back to feel the warmth of his skin meet hers more fully. “I thought I remembered everything about you—how blue your eyes are, and that little place where your pulse beats at the center of your collarbone, and the way you hold yourself up so straight when you’re so tired you want to fall down.”

  Rae-Anne had given up disguising the quickened pace of her breath. The idea that Wiley had been thinking about her this way was almost as seductive as his hands on her skin.

  “But somehow I forgot just how beautiful you really are.” He raised one hand, sliding a long forefinger along the soft curve of her jaw and then cupping her chin with gentle possessiveness.

  “You said—You had a question.” She dredged the words from somewhere.

  “I know.” His hand swirled over the intricate arrangement of her hair, and then down to the back of her neck. The warmth of it made Rae-Anne’s body ache to feel his touch everywhere, arousing her as only Wiley had ever known how to do.

  “I was just wondering—whether I had any right to ask to kiss the bride.”

  She didn’t know what to answer. This was all wrong—it shouldn’t be happening. There was no way to still the storm in her blood as she remembered the pleasure the two of them had always been able to give each other.

  “Wiley, you son of a bitch…”

  His name came out on a half-pleading note, and he laughed as he heard it. “Why does it sound so good to hear you say that to me?” he rumbled at her ear.

  “Probably because you deserve to hear it.” His laugh had broken the tension that had been gripping her, and she laughed with him. She was still smiling as she turned to meet him, and the gleam in his dark eyes struck something inside her that gave off a whole shower of sparks.

  Sparks turned to fire as Wiley recaptured her face and brought it up to meet his. Her laugh seemed to release something in him, too. Or maybe he’d just reached the end of his willpower.

  That was what she could taste on his lips—an almost desperate need for her kiss, for her admission that she was rocked by the same longings that were tearing him apart. His request to kiss the bride had been slow, almost formal. But his kiss was something very different.

  Rae-Anne parted her lips and met his mouth with a desperation of her own. He felt so good, so strong, so right. Everything else
was going wrong around her, but just now, just for this moment, there was comfort in Wiley’s arms, and more passion in his kiss than she’d ever hoped to know again.

  His arms had tightened around her almost convulsively, and she had to struggle to free herself far enough to wrap her arms around his neck. He smelled of soap and fresh air, and when she closed her eyes and let her hands drift into his thick, dark hair, she felt swept away into a world colored by her own senses, where the familiar masculine scent of Wiley merged seductively with the heat of his skin and the slickness of his tongue alongside her own.

  His mouth was explicit, demanding. And Rae-Anne suddenly couldn’t imagine wanting to hold back anything from this man who had always seemed to know her so intimately, so completely. She urged the kiss deeper, capturing his lower lip between her teeth and tugging it gently, suggestively. The feeling of his slanted grin blossoming under her lips turned her half-liquid inside.

  “This beats any receiving line I ever stood in,” he growled, and Rae-Anne laughed again, light-headed with delight.

  Her laughter turned to a gasp as she realized what had been on his mind in breaking the kiss. His hands were at her hips, and her wedding dress, with its buttons finally undone, was gaping open along her back. Wiley took hold of the pearl-encrusted fabric and slowly began to ease the dress toward the floor, freeing Rae-Anne at last.

  Wiley followed the dress downward, pausing just long enough to shed his own clothing in the process of helping Rae-Anne out of hers. He kissed the spot where her pulse pounded at the base of her throat and then moved lower to the soft hollow between her breasts. He paused long enough to tease each pink nipple into taut attention, leaving RaeAnne trembling in his strong grip, not certain how much longer she was going to be able to rely on her legs to hold her up.

  Wiley’s warm breath fanned across her belly like the sun’s embrace, and she threaded her fingers once more through his hair. This couldn’t be wrong, she thought dizzily, not when her mind and her body were so united in pleasure and crying out for the all-embracing comfort of Wiley’s presence. It had been so long since she’d felt this whole, this certain. Everything in her life was so tangled up right now— surely, just for the moment, she could reach for the one thing that seemed simple and right.