On The Way To A Wedding

by Ingrid Weaver

  At the feel of his big body stretched full length against hers, Lauren’s thoughts scattered. His arm was still around her shoulders, pressing her to his bare chest. Even through her blouse and loose sweater she could feel his heat. Somehow her skirt had become hiked up and his good knee was wedged between her legs, denim rubbing intimately across her sensitive skin.

  The embrace was entirely accidental. Meaningless. But somehow their bodies had molded together as naturally as if they were longtime lovers.

  Her gaze met his, their faces so close together she could feel his breath on her cheek. Instant awareness flashed in his eyes, intense and unmistakable.

  With a muttered curse, Nick lifted his arm away from her and rolled to his back. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Lost my balance.”

  Her pulse pounding, her face flushed with feelings too tangled to analyze, she pushed to her knees and slid backward off the bed.

  Neither of them acknowledged what had just happened between them. Neither of them could. In the next instant, a key scraped into the lock of the front door.

  Chapter 5

  Lauren pulled the bedroom door closed behind her and raced for the living room. She reached the couch, snatching Nick’s shirt from the floor and stuffing it behind a cushion just as her sister stepped into the apartment.

  Angela tucked her keys back into her purse, a wobbly smile spreading across her face. Her hair, several shades darker than Lauren’s and damp from the rain, corkscrewed loosely around her head. “Lauren.” She draped her yellow raincoat on the closet doorknob and walked toward her. “I’ve been so worried. I had to come and see you for myself.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, inhaling deeply a few times to catch her breath. “Sorry I didn’t return your call yet, but...”

  “No, no, I understand.” She opened her arms and enclosed Lauren in a warm hug. “I should have come last night. No matter what you said, you shouldn’t have to go through this alone.”

  Alone? Even though Nick was safely out of sight, she still felt his presence. “Thanks, Angela, but I’m really okay.”

  “That’s what you always say, keeping things inside, trying to make out that nothing bothers you.” She pulled back to look at her, concern shining in her eyes. “You look tired. You should be in bed.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea right now.”

  “You’re not going to work, are you?”

  “Not for a while.”

  Angela glanced past her shoulder and stifled a gasp. “Oh, Lord. What’s all that for?”

  Lauren turned to follow her gaze and saw the first aid supplies she’d left on the coffee table. She thought quickly, deciding to bend the truth only slightly. “I lost my shoes in the crash. The soles of my feet got scratched from walking barefoot. It’s nothing serious.”

  “Why don’t you sit down and let me fix you some tea?” she offered.

  From the corner of her eye Lauren spotted the edge of a blue chambray cuff between two ivory cushions. She sat down, poking it back out of sight. “Thanks, Angela.”

  Her sister smiled and walked to the kitchen.

  Lauren used the opportunity to do a more thorough check of the living room. She’d already put Nick’s sweatshirt in her closet and his bundle of wet clothes in her laundry hamper, so apart from the envelope of notes that he’d dropped on the dining table, there wasn’t anything in sight. She gathered up the bandages and disinfectant, storing everything neatly in a clear plastic box, then straightened the coffee table and returned to sit on the couch. She lifted her hand to smooth back the hair that had slipped out of its clip and realized with chagrin that her fingers were trembling.

  This was crazy. How could she possibly think she could participate in Nick’s deception? How was she supposed to sit here calmly and listen to her sister rattle teacups while a half-naked man was hiding in her bedroom?

  Her pulse still hadn’t returned to normal. And she knew her agitation was due as much to the situation as to the lingering feel of Nick’s body against hers.

  Not exactly her usual uninvolved, detached way of dealing with life, was it?

  Unlike Lauren, Angela probably wouldn’t have any trouble dealing with a man like Nick. She wouldn’t be awkward about putting on a bandage or helping him into bed. His vibrant male energy wouldn’t send her scrambling for the safety of professional objectivity. And before she’d met Eddy, Angela certainly wouldn’t be fighting the tug of Nick’s pheromones.

  Somehow, even though she and her sister had grown up in the same household, the bleak circumstances of their childhood had affected them in completely different ways. Lauren had been eight when their father had left, and she’d coped with the aftermath by withdrawing behind a defensive wall. Angela, three years younger, had done the opposite, becoming more outgoing and eager to please, constantly seeking the affection that was denied them.

  By the time they were adults, the pattern had been firmly established. Lauren still preferred to distance herself from emotions and from the risk of involvement. Except for that one time, six years ago...

  “Lauren, do you have company?”

  At the sudden question, Lauren turned to look at her sister, forcing herself to resist the urge to glance toward the bedroom. “What makes you ask that?”

  “I couldn’t help noticing this. It isn’t yours, is it?” she asked, Nick’s leather jacket dangling from her hand.

  “Oh.” Lauren had left it draped over one of the kitchen chairs. She crossed the room and took it from Angela. “No, it isn’t mine. It belongs...” She hesitated. “It belonged to the man who sat beside me on the plane. He gave it to me to hold for him while he went back into the lake.”

  “Oh, my Lord. Not that policeman who drowned trying to save those other people?”

  “I take it you saw Gord’s story?”

  “At least half the country has by now. It’s so tragic. That poor man must have been such a kind, noble person, to sacrifice his life that way.”

  Her conscience stirred at the lie she was helping to perpetuate. Kind and noble? Nick? Unable to reply, she carried the jacket to the closet and hung it up. Her fingers brushed over the lining, and she remembered those small, square packages she’d found in the pocket that morning. With disbelief she felt another flush spread over her cheeks.

  Ridiculous. She was thirty years old, well acquainted with the facts of life. Considering the story about Duxbury that Nick had just told her, she had far more important things to worry about than a handful of condoms.

  Unwilling to let the conversation, or her thoughts, continue along this track, she joined her sister on the couch and deliberately changed the subject.

  It wasn’t much of an improvement. Now that she was reassured about Lauren’s condition, it didn’t take long for Angela to bring up the very subject her sister had been doing her best to avoid facing.

  The wedding.

  The bridal shower. The dress fitting. The hall, the caterers, the flowers.

  Life went on. Even when she was sitting on a “dead” man’s clothes, the ordinary details of life went on.

  Lauren felt like tipping back her head, opening her mouth wide and letting loose with a good old-fashioned therapeutic scream. Instead, she lifted her cup and drank her herbal tea.

  The feminine voices that drifted through the bedroom door were faint. Nick held himself motionless, straining to hear what Lauren was saying. He could distinguish no more than a word here and there, snatches of disconnected phrases, but so far the conversation seemed to be centering on someone’s wedding.

  Good. She wasn’t panicking. From the sound of it, she was behaving normally. That was a far smarter way to handle things than trying to rush her sister out of here.

  He felt his muscles cramping and flexed his leg. Pain stabbed outward from his knee, and he ground his teeth in frustration. It hadn’t felt too bad while he’d been stretched out on Lauren’s couch, but he knew from past experience with sprains that it would be several days before
he could hope to move normally.

  At least the headache had mellowed from a screeching ache to a rumbling throb. As long as he took things easy for a few more days...

  Damn, he hated having to wait. All he’d done so far was to buy time. And it was rapidly being used up.

  So far Lauren seemed to be cooperating with him, yet he wasn’t completely comfortable about trusting her. He didn’t know whether or not she believed him, but as she’d said, it didn’t make any difference. She’d get her story, one way or another.

  She could prove to be a valuable ally. She was one cool lady, keeping whatever thoughts she had safely concealed behind those gorgeous green eyes. There had been countless opportunities for her to give him away, yet she hadn’t. Still, he’d hate to meet up with her in a poker game.

  He wouldn’t mind meeting up with her in a bed, though. Preferably when he was in better shape than this.

  He scowled, but the memory of their awkward tumble across the mattress refused to go away. He might be officially dead, but he wasn’t that dead.

  Moving carefully so that the springs didn’t creak, he rolled to his side. The bed had a brass frame, but instead of fussy scrolls and curlicues, the headboard was composed of two long, sedately curving rails. The bedspread he was lying on was green and slippery, smooth satin instead of ruffles or lace. It was elegant and sensual at the same time. Kind of like Lauren.

  This place was nothing like his, he thought, letting his gaze roam over the shadowed room. Neatly framed prints of restful, civilized landscapes decorated the walls. A spotless ivory carpet stretched across the floor to the long, lacquered oak dresser. The top of the dresser was bare, except for a small jewelry box and a low dish that sprouted silk flowers.

  There wasn’t a dust ball or a stray sock in sight.

  Nick smoothed his palm over the bedspread. His large, tanned hand looked rough, out of place. What would it look like smoothing over Lauren’s thigh?

  He curled his fingers into his palm and moved his gaze to the corner of the room. Beside the window there was an L-shaped desk. It was the same lacquered oak as the dresser, but it didn’t hold any feminine touches like flowers or jewelry boxes. It held a computer.

  What kind of woman kept a computer in her bedroom? Probably one who wouldn’t want anyone like him feeling her satin bedspread or her thigh.

  She could ruin everything.

  He eased onto his back, and the rumbling throb in his head crested sharply, forcing him to close his eyes against the pain. Through the door the murmur of feminine voices seemed more distant.

  Getting Duxbury. Getting justice. That’s all he wanted. That’s all he could allow himself to want.

  Lauren nibbled at a wedge of cantaloupe as she spread out the Sunday paper. More than a day had passed, yet the front page was still filled with news of the crash and photos of mangled wreckage. Two of the survivors who had been listed as critical had died. More bodies had been recovered from the lake yesterday, bringing the number of missing down to twelve.

  Chicago was in mourning. All the flags in the city had been flown at half-mast since yesterday and would remain that way until the memorial service that was scheduled for next week. It was still too early for anyone to know for certain what caused the crash, but most speculation pointed to mechanical failure. Aviation experts were arriving from all over the world, as much to find the cause of the tragedy as to explain why it had been possible for anyone to survive.

  A sense of unreality stole over her as she read the headlines and scanned the photographs. Sitting at her dining room table, with her coffee cup by her elbow and the ordinary, Sunday sound of church bells in the distance, she almost might have been able to convince herself that she hadn’t really been there.

  But then she turned the page.

  A face stared at her from the top left-hand corner. It was the same as the face on the man who was sitting on the other side of the table.

  Well, not exactly the same. The picture must be a few years old. It showed Nick in his uniform, clean shaven, with his hair short and neatly combed. Although he wasn’t smiling, he didn’t appear as hard or as... dangerous as he did now.

  Biting off another chunk of cantaloupe, she looked up. Despite the fatigue that lingered in his eyes, he indeed looked dangerous. He wore his crumpled shirt open at the throat and rolled up at the sleeves, revealing the lean muscles of his forearms. The stubble that had prickled over his jaw had darkened, emphasizing the deep lines beside his mouth. He’d finger-combed his hair with casual indifference. One dark, sleep-tousled wave fell across the bandage on his forehead. On another man, that rebellious hair might have looked boyish. On him, it looked... tempting.

  And Lauren couldn’t stop thinking that he’d spent the night in her bed.

  Not that she’d had much choice in the matter. By the time Angela had left, he was already asleep. Lauren had decided not to disturb him—considering the way he’d been pushing himself since the crash, she thought that he needed rest more than anything else. So she’d covered him with a blanket and done what she could to make sure he was comfortable.

  Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening she’d checked on him frequently, and to her relief he’d shown no signs of growing feverish and had seemed to be sleeping normally. He’d roused enough around midnight to drink some fruit juice, but he’d dozed off again almost immediately. She’d tucked an extra blanket around him, taken her clothes and spare bedding to the living room and had done her best to sleep on the couch.

  Not that she’d been able to sleep.

  She sipped her coffee and tapped her nail against the newsprint in front of her. “You made the paper, Nick.”

  He reached out to slide the paper toward him, taking a minute to scan the article. “Still missing and presumed dead,” he said. “Good. Even if he never watches TV, Duxbury’s bound to see this.”

  “Probably. It looks as if the papers were quick to pick up on Gord’s story. Dead heroes make good copy.”

  “I’m no hero,” he muttered.

  She watched him read in silence for a while, wondering whether he was right. She now knew that the dramatic rescue work he’d done had been deliberately staged to draw attention to himself so the camera would capture his drowning. Not a very heroic kind of motivation.

  And yet he could have staged his drowning earlier. He hadn’t needed to keep helping until the rescuers had arrived. The longer he’d kept it up, the more chance there had been that the camera would move to some other scene.

  And there were his reasons for putting himself through all this in the first place, for ignoring his injuries and driving himself to exhaustion. He was pursuing justice and protecting his family.

  As motivations went, those were far nobler than her own.

  Yes, well, some people were more suited to making the news, others preferred simply to report it.

  “I’ll be going down to the station later this morning,” she said, “but only if you think you’ll be all right here on your own.”

  He looked up quickly, then tightened his jaw and breathed hard through his nose.

  After almost a day with him, she recognized the signs of pain. “How’s your head?” she asked.

  “Getting better, as long as I don’t move too fast. Why are you going to work? On the plane you told me you had the weekend off.”

  “Gord wants to interview me.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I won’t lie. I just won’t tell him the entire truth.”

  He grunted. “I bet you’re good at poker.”

  “I prefer chess.”

  “Yeah. I should have guessed.”

  “Why?”

  “You strike me as the type of person who would like a cool, sophisticated game. Something intellectual.”

  “And, of course, you’d prefer poker. Something fastpaced and risky.”

  “Depends on the stakes. Not much point gambling unless the stakes are worthwhile.”

 
“I suppose one could say that about anything.” She took the paper back from him and stacked the different sections into a neat pile. “While I’m at the station, I thought I’d pull all the background material I gathered for the Duxbury story. It might be useful to you.”

  “Does this mean that you believe what I told you about him?”

  Did she? Part of her wanted very much to believe. Yet that part had very little to do with the logic she preferred to rely on. “Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind.”

  “Thanks, that’s all I need.” He lifted his steaming mug from the table in front of him. “And thanks for the blanket last night. I didn’t mean to take over your bed. I’ll use the couch tonight.”

  “You’re too tall for the couch.”

  “I’ll manage, as long as you don’t have any more surprise visitors who have their own keys.” He swallowed a mouthful of coffee, propped his elbows on the table and gazed at her over the rim of the cup. “Anyone besides your sister who has keys?”

  “No.”

  “What about a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “You mean no boyfriend, or no boyfriend with keys?”

  “What difference would it make?”

  “I don’t know how long I’m going to be staying here. I wouldn’t want to cramp your love life.”

  What love life? she thought wryly. “That won’t be a problem.”

  “So it wasn’t your wedding you were discussing yesterday?”

  She fiddled with the plate of cantaloupe, nudging the slices until they were all neatly aligned. “No, it was my sister’s. I’d planned to hold a bridal shower for her here next Friday. I’d hate to disappoint her by canceling altogether, so I’ll try to find somewhere else—”

  “No, don’t change your plans. We’ll work something out. Maybe I’ll get lucky and this’ll be over by then.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  He drummed the fingers of one hand against his coffee cup. “I noticed a computer in your bedroom. Do you subscribe to any of those information networks?”

  “Several. Why? Did you want to use it?”