The Right Bride: Book Three: The Hunted Series

by Jennifer Ryan

  Marti grabbed her plate and dug into the aromatic pie. Baked apples and cinnamon. The scent made her mouth water. At the first bite, she moaned with pleasure. She looked over the ledge of the bar and grabbed the bowl of olives. She dipped one in the whip cream and ate it. God, that’s good.

  “You are so weird.” Jenna shared a look with Elizabeth.

  “I’m hungry. Oh, Elizabeth, I forgot to tell you something about the dress for Emma. Please make sure she wears her necklace from George? She’ll want to wear it like a crown.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell Jimmy to bring it when he drops her off at the penthouse after school.”

  “Perfect,” she said around a huge bite of pie and whip cream.

  “How are things going between you and Cameron? I know he’s miserable. Frankly, you don’t look much better.”

  Jenna suspected the strange food combo meant Marti was pregnant.

  “Things went from unbearable to downright devastating the other night. Then, he moved his fiancé into my house and she asked me to make her eggs this morning. Over easy, I believe she requested.”

  “You didn’t make her eggs,” Elizabeth said.

  “No, I did not. Instead, I was a complete bitch to her and implied Cameron and I had slept together the other night.”

  “What did she say? Did she ask Cameron if you guys slept together?”

  “I doubt it. She’s too stupid to figure out what I meant. Correction, she doesn’t care to figure it out because Cameron is worth too much money for her to care if he slept with me.”

  “Do you think she’s pregnant?” Are you pregnant, is what Elizabeth wanted to ask.

  “I think it’s more likely Cameron is pregnant than Shelly. He won’t listen, though. After everything I’ve said to him, what he learned about George being his father, and everything else, he still won’t believe she’s lying and only after him for his money. It doesn’t matter to him I love him. He chooses her each and every time I make a case for him to be with me.”

  She stabbed at the pie with her fork with each word. “I feel like the more I show him he has a choice, the more pathetic and desperate I look. He made love to me the other night, and in the next breath he tells me he’s holding the wedding at the house, my house, and he and Shelly are moving in the next day.”

  Marti sighed deeply. “Thanks, guys. I’m so happy I got all of that off my chest. I feel so much better.” The sarcasm didn’t fool them. She took another big bite of pie. “I feel like crap,” she said around the bite.

  “Chew your food, for God’s sake. I’ve never seen anyone eat pie so fast,” Jenna teased.

  “So he loves you, wants you, and turns around and is a complete asshole to you.”

  “Thanks for summing things up for me, Elizabeth.”

  “Speaking of the asshole, here he comes,” Jenna said.

  Cameron saw all of them the minute he came through the door. He’d been in a bad mood all day. He’d left thinking of all the questions she’d asked him to answer about her and he couldn’t answer one. Her last name was at the top of his list of things he wanted to know.

  Besides the questions, he couldn’t get the memory of making love to her in the rain out of his head. His body acted like he was a testosterone-strung-out teenager, keeping him in a perpetual state of arousal.

  He walked right up to her, spun her seat at the bar around to face him, and leaned over her and took her mouth with his. He held her face in his hands and wouldn’t let her turn away. He kissed her hard and insistent until she opened her mouth to him. He rubbed his tongue over hers, tasted apple pie and chocolate on her lips. He didn’t stop until he knew she was kissing him back with all the ardor he gave to her. When he pulled away, he looked her right in the eye and asked, “What’s your last name?”

  She went from stunned silence to spitting mad and shoved him away and stood. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t kiss me like that, come home tonight, kiss her hello, and think it doesn’t hurt me.

  “Tell me, Cameron, will you kiss me like that now and sleep with your fiancé tonight? Do my feelings mean so little to you, you think it doesn’t matter how you treat me, so long as you get what you want? Did you ever once consider my feelings before you did any of this?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply. She grabbed her purse and ran out of the restaurant crying.

  “You’re an asshole,” Elizabeth and Jenna said.

  “Thanks. I didn’t know that already.” He sat in the chair Marti fled and rubbed his hand over his face and neck, digging his fingers into the tense muscles. “Do either of you know her last name?”

  “We wouldn’t tell you if we did,” Jenna said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “You’re an idiot. She loves you and you treat her like some cheap piece of ass. Shelly is a cheap piece of ass and you ask her to marry you. Tell me, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Shelly is pregnant.”

  “And you love Marti,” Jenna said. “Finish Marti’s pie.”

  He looked at her plate. Less than half of a piece left, it had chocolate sauce, ice cream, and whip cream on top. Olives on the side?

  “What’s with the chocolate sauce and olives?”

  “I think she was having a craving.”

  “That’s just gross,” he said and pushed the plate away.

  “You’re an idiot.” Jenna walked away with that parting shot.

  Elizabeth left and went back into the kitchen, carrying a package.

  Cameron was left sitting there alone, brooding.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  * * *

  CAMERON ARRIVED HOME and found Shelly having a fit because the staff wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. She wanted to get the house in order for the wedding, but Marti stepped in and told her she couldn’t move any of the furniture. He pointed out she shouldn’t be doing anything like moving furniture when she was pregnant. He’d never forget the look on her face, almost like she’d forgotten.

  He made everyone dinner, disappointed Marti didn’t come down to join them. He made enough for all of them, but as he was cleaning up the kitchen, she came in long enough to grab a bottle of water, banana, and a spinach, chicken, and berry salad, and go back up to her rooms.

  The whole time she was in the kitchen, she spoke on the phone in Italian. Maybe it was Italian. It sounded like Italian. He wondered how many languages she spoke and how and why she’d learned them all. He wondered if she was talking to a friend or doing business. He still had no idea what it was she did for a living. Hell, the woman didn’t even speak English when it was a business call.

  He spent the evening avoiding Shelly and doing homework and playing with Emma. Shelly went on and on about the plans for the wedding. She talked about the flowers, the caterers, the tables and chairs she’d ordered to be set up on the back lawn. He didn’t care about any of it.

  When he thought about Marti, he was hard as stone. When he thought about Shelly, his rock-hard cock turned into a limp noodle. He wondered if he’d spend his marriage thinking about Marti in order to make love to Shelly. He wondered if he’d ever be able to make love to her.

  After putting Emma to bed, he went to Shelly’s room to talk to her. The minute he’d stepped through the door, she complained her back ached from the pregnancy and would he rub it for her. He’d have a lot more nights like this once she rounded with the pregnancy. She claimed a headache and refused to engage in more than a few words, despite his best efforts to talk to her about their future.

  She tried to seduce him, but the more she tried, the less interest he could muster. Eventually he grabbed her hands, stilled them, and pulled her next to him on the bed. He covered with a lie, telling her he hadn’t slept well since George’s death and he was exhausted.

  How many lies would he have to tell over the coming years?

  Marti, and his thoughts about her, were the reason he hadn’t slept, not George. After he’d made love to her in the rain and she’d left telling hi
m he’d left her no choice, he’d stayed up wondering what she meant. She planned to leave, which made it even harder to sleep. He was afraid he’d wake up and she’d be gone.

  He woke up in Shelly’s bed, the woman he didn’t want snoring at his side. Disgusted with himself, he rubbed his hand over his tense neck. He was supposed to be happy about marrying her. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about another woman, or wanting another woman. A man in his prime with a beautiful woman in his bed, he should have been able to make love to her hard and fast and long.

  He rolled off the bed. His jeans weren’t even buttoned and he didn’t have his shirt on. He glanced at the clock. After one in the morning, he didn’t want Emma to find him in Shelly’s room. After the wedding, he’d explain to her a wife and husband slept together, but not until then. He didn’t know why he was putting it off, he just was.

  He walked out of Shelly’s door and ran smack into Marti in the hall.

  “Well, I guess I don’t have to ask what you’re doing up.” She looked at his unbuttoned jeans and the shirt in his hands. “Well, I guess you aren’t up anymore. I’m sure Shelly took care of it for you.” She couldn’t help it. She was angry. He was on her side of the house and sleeping with Shelly right across the hall from her rooms.

  “I wasn’t doing anything. If you want to know the truth, I couldn’t.”

  “Sure. It’s one in the morning and you’re half naked and sneaking out of her room because you didn’t sleep with her. I’m not blind, or stupid.”

  “I did not sleep with her.” Frustrated, he dropped his head and stared at the floor and her pretty bare feet. “What are you doing up anyway?”

  “Working. Why do you even care?”

  “I care about you. You’re working every night and into the morning. You’re pale and you look ill. You don’t take care of yourself. You hardly ate anything tonight. And what the hell where you doing eating pie and olives for lunch? That’s not a proper meal, or even a good one,” he said and made a face of disgust over her choice of lunch foods.

  “Like I said, why do you care?”

  He pushed her up against the wall and held her there with his body. “I care, dammit. Don’t you think I wish and hope everyday for you? Don’t you think I’d rather it was you who is pregnant, rather than Shelly?”

  “Wish granted.” She planted both hands on his hard, bare chest and shoved him away. She tried to move on to the stairs and head for the kitchen for something to eat, but he stopped her.

  “What do you mean, ‘wish granted’?”

  “You want me to be pregnant and not Shelly. I am, and I’ll bet everything I have she’s not.”

  “You aren’t pregnant. You’re lying. You just don’t want me to marry her.”

  She threw up her hands. “Are you kidding me? Why is it you take her side over me every time and on everything? She tells you she’s pregnant and you believe her. I tell you I’m pregnant and you call me a liar.”

  She grabbed his hand and marched him straight through her bedroom into her bathroom. “You want proof. Fine.”

  She opened the drawer and pulled out one of the pregnancy tests. She pulled down her pants, sat on the toilet, and peed on the stick.

  “Marti, for God’s sake. This is ridiculous.”

  She capped the stick, put it on the counter, wiped, and flushed the toilet. She pulled up her pants, faced him, glaring.

  She took out the other three tests she’d already taken over the last few days and held them up to him.

  “Sometimes we need to be reminded good things can happen, even when we’re in the worst of circumstances.”

  She put the first test down on the counter.

  “Sometimes we need to be reminded even when there is death, life brings us hope.”

  She put another test on the counter.

  “Sometimes we need to be reminded when someone makes us feel like we’re worthless, another can make us feel like a god.”

  She put the test on the counter. She pointed to the test she’d just taken.

  “Sometimes we are reminded people are willing to tell the truth and back it up, no matter what the cost.”

  He stared at all the tests. They all had two lines indicating she was pregnant. Beyond stunned, he had no words. He’d called her a liar to her face.

  He’d put that hurt look on her face again.

  “Don’t worry, Cameron. She was pregnant first, so you just go ahead and marry her. Your child with her will have the full time father it deserves. My baby will be just fine having a part-time dad, because he’ll have a mother who wants him and loves him. Shelly doesn’t want to be a mother. You know it, and I know it.”

  She took a steadying breath. “You wanted me to prove I’m pregnant and I have. I wouldn’t lie to you. I thought you’d know that much about me. Now, I see just how little you really do know about me, and it makes me sad. How can you love me when you don’t even know me? The answer is you don’t.”

  She put her last pregnancy test box on the counter.

  “Why don’t you make her prove it? In all this time, you never once thought to make her take a test you can pick up at the drugstore.”

  She turned and left the room, grabbing her purse from her bed and left the house.

  Cameron, rooted to the floor, stood in the bathroom staring at all the pregnancy tests when he heard her car engine rev up and she drove away. Her words echoed in his mind. She thought he didn’t love her. He’d called her a liar. She didn’t want him to marry her. She thought she came second because Shelly had gotten pregnant first.

  She doesn’t think I love her.

  It kept ringing in his mind. She doesn’t think I love her.

  She was gone and he didn’t know if she’d be back. He didn’t even know where she would go. He didn’t know how he’d find her.

  She was having his baby and he didn’t know her last name.

  Chapter Forty

  * * *

  JENNA MARCHED INTO Cameron’s office to demand some answers for why the president of the company had canceled all his appointments, wasn’t taking any calls, and had essentially locked himself in his office. She wanted to yell, but when she saw him, she couldn’t. The devastated look on his face and the desolation in his eyes stopped her cold.

  “Cameron? What happened?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Not Shelly, Marti.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He waited for her to explain.

  “Who eats apple pie with chocolate sauce, whip cream, and olives? You’re an idiot.”

  “That’s what you and Elizabeth meant yesterday. It was right in front of my face, and I didn’t even see it.”

  “Shelly has been right in front of your face, is she pregnant?”

  “She swears she is. She showed me the lab report.”

  Jenna waved away that last statement. “Those things can be faked.”

  “She goes to the appointments. She says all the right things.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Marti obviously told you she’s pregnant and you believed her.”

  “I called her a liar, told her she was only saying it so I wouldn’t marry Shelly, and pretty much made her feel like crap.”

  “Nice. So what made you change your mind and believe her?”

  “She actually took me into the bathroom and peed on a pregnancy test right in front of me. It was positive. She handed me another test kit and dared me to make Shelly prove it.”

  “God, I like her. You’re an idiot.”

  “Thanks, again.”

  “So, did you make Shelly take the test this morning?”

  “No, I was too busy getting Emma ready for school and worrying about whether I’d ever see Marti again. After she took the test, she walked out the front door and drove away. She never came back. I don’t know where she is, if she’ll be back, and the worst part, I don’t even know her last name, so how can I even begin to try to find her?”<
br />
  “You know, you should concentrate on what you do know about her and less on what you don’t.”

  “Is this another lesson where you already know something and I turn out to be the idiot?”

  “Yes, it is.” Jenna had a pretty good idea who Marti was. She couldn’t be certain, but since she’d met Marti, Merrick had gotten a new deal with Fairchild Industries for a building contract and someone from the Fairchild family was allowing them to use Sofia Fairchild’s paintings for the charity benefit. Jenna had spoken to Marti about both things and she’d promised it would work out. It had.

  “You know there’s one thing I know about Marti for sure. If she makes a promise she keeps it.”

  “Another thing I’m supposed to be an idiot about?”

  “Apparently,” she said and sighed. Cameron really needed to clear his head and think straight if he was ever going to figure out what was real and what was a lie. He was so busy seeing what he thought was true, instead of seeing things as they are.

  “Why is it you’re so reluctant to make Shelly prove she’s pregnant? You take her word for it over Marti’s. They say love makes us blind. Perhaps you love Shelly and you don’t want to find out she’s lying. Or maybe you love Marti, and that’s why you can’t see her for who she really is. Either way, you’re an idiot.”

  “You already told me that.”

  “It bears repeating. Believe it and move forward. You’re stuck in the same place you were two months ago. You believe Shelly. You don’t believe Marti. What’s wrong with that picture?”

  She watched him trying to sort it all out in his mind. It was like watching a hamster running on a wheel, using a lot of energy to get nowhere.

  “Go home and sort out your life. Until you do, you’re no good to me.”

  “Are you kicking me out of my office?”

  “I’m kicking you out of my building. Go home. Figure out fact from fiction, and do it quickly. Doomsday is Saturday.”

  “I’m getting married Saturday.”

  “And who will you marry? Shelly because she might be pregnant, or Marti, who we know for sure is pregnant and the woman you truly love.”