The Right Man

by Anne Stuart

  “You’re not very accommodating, are you? Is it just me, or are you this contrary with everyone?”

  “I can be extremely accommodating when it counts,” he murmured. “And I do admit, you bring out a certain contrary streak in me. So apart from putting on a shirt, what do you want me to do for you?”

  “Stop bringing me presents.”

  He shook his head. “No can do. I promised Louisa, and I always keep my promises.”

  “Well, leave them in my mother’s garage where I don’t have to see them. They upset me.”

  “Upset you? Why should they? Louisa went to a great deal of trouble, planning things for each day. Don’t you think it’s a little self-absorbed of you to simply reject them?”

  “I’m allowed to be self-absorbed, I’m the damned bride!” she said.

  He rose. “Calm down, princess. You’ve got the worst case of bridal jitters I’ve ever seen. Are you absolutely sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  It didn’t take a psychic to figure out she wasn’t sure of any such thing. “Of course I’m sure. I just don’t need you and your gifts distracting me.”

  “I’m a distraction? How so?”

  She glared at him, standing her ground as he approached her, tilting her head back to look at him out of those flinty green eyes. He had a weakness for tall women, and Susan Abbott was a suitably strapping wench. It was probably something as simple as that—he was attracted to the sheer size of her, and it made him randy.

  He stopped within inches of her, curious to see whether she’d back away. She took a deep, shuddering breath but didn’t move, squaring her shoulders. “Go away, Jake,” she said in a deceptively firm voice. “Please.”

  It would be the worst mistake of his life if he touched her. He was still haunted by the feel of her skin beneath his hand when he’d caught her wrist last night. He still dreamed about the creamy smoothness of her back when he’d ripped the wedding dress off her. But he knew perfectly well he was more likely to regret the things he didn’t do than the things he did.

  He slid his hand underneath her short cropped hair, cupping her slender neck. She made a choking sound, but she didn’t pull away from him. She simply looked at him out of huge, wary eyes, her soft, pale lips parted. He could feel the pulse pounding in her neck, and he moved closer still, crowding her, so that their bodies almost touched.

  “You can’t run away from everything you’re afraid of,” he whispered.

  “I’m not,” she said in a raw voice. “I just want you to go away.”

  “Tell me why I should?”

  “Because I’m asking you, as a favor. I know you don’t owe me any favors, but maybe you could consider it a gesture of goodwill.”

  “Why do you want me to go away? Why do I disturb you?”

  She wasn’t going to answer, and he knew it. “Maybe I should show you,” he said finally. And he put his mouth against hers.

  She could have broken free quite easily—they both knew it. He held her lightly, one hand cupping her neck, the other at her waist, but she made no effort to escape. She simply held very still as he kissed her, slowly, tasting her lips and nothing more.

  He felt her strong hands on his shoulders, cool against his hot flesh. They tightened for a moment, clinging to him, and desire surged through him with such powerful force that he shook. He pulled her closer against him, so that her body was plastered up against his nearly nude one, so that she could feel how hard he was, how much he wanted her. She tasted of fresh strawberries and coffee, and he wanted more, he wanted to taste every part of her, he wanted to strip off her clothes and drag her over to that narrow, sagging bed.

  “Open your mouth,” he whispered against her soft lips.

  Her eyes shot open, and she jerked away from him so fast he couldn’t even attempt to hold on to her. Even though he wanted to. Before he realized it she was halfway across the room, and he was hard as a rock and freezing cold.

  She didn’t look back. She ran as if she were being chased by a pack of wild pigs, and he was half-afraid she’d tumble down the rickety side steps in her hurry to get away from him. By the time he moved over to the window she was disappearing into the woods, down a different path than he was used to. The early-summer greenery swallowed her up, and she was gone, as if she’d never been there.

  He began to swear. Swearing was one of his many talents—he could curse in more than twenty languages, usually with an inventiveness that impressed men around the world. He rose to new heights in the moments after Susan Abbott ran away from him, and it was only a shame that no one was there to appreciate his colorful invective.

  He was covered in a cold sweat, he was as hard as a lust-crazed teenage boy, and worse than that, he’d betrayed Louisa. His uncle’s wife had been like a second mother to him, and he’d always considered it an honor to perform the rare, small tasks she’d asked of him.

  Coming to America and being stuck here for a week at a society wedding was no small task, of course, but he’d agreed to it willingly enough. But she hadn’t expected him to end up sabotaging her goddaughter’s peace of mind. And maybe even the wedding itself.

  And then there was Alex Donovan. He’d ended up going to Winnie’s Diner instead of a bar, and he’d sat nursing a cup of coffee while Donovan tried to find out anything he knew about his daughter. It wasn’t Jake’s nature to pry—he’d spent too many years in cultures where privacy was of utmost importance—but Donovan had been wryly informative, making no excuses. His marriage to Mary Abbott had ended before Susan could even remember him, and his ex-wife and her family had made it clear he wasn’t welcome.

  There was something more to it than that, but Jake wasn’t about to push it. So he told Donovan about his daughter, trying to keep it as neutral as possible, until Donovan’s sharp green eyes, a match to his daughter’s, looked at him shrewdly and he said, “You’re in love with her.”

  He’d laughed. “And you’re out of your mind. For one thing, I don’t even know her. For another, she’s not my type. And for a third, she’s about to marry Mr. Perfect.”

  “My mistake,” Donovan said softly. Clearly, annoyingly, unconvinced.

  He was a man who’d abandoned his daughter for all her young life, for whatever reasons he might have. But Jake had the unpleasant suspicion that he wouldn’t stand by and abandon her now, particularly if he saw someone intent on screwing up her life.

  Hell, Susan Abbott was screwing up her life quite nicely without any help from him. If he could just keep his hands to himself, keep his damned mouth shut then she could go ahead and make her own mistakes, and he could go back to Louisa with a clear conscience and a full report.

  Maybe she was right, maybe he should just go away. He could drop off the other two presents with Susan’s mother and make a quick getaway, and chances were he could avoid ever seeing her again. Or by the time he did, his hormones and his brain would be back in working order, and he’d see her as she would then be: an overbred, overeducated Connecticut matron with a yuppie husband, two kids and a van.

  He didn’t like the idea of her having Edward’s kids, but it was none of his damned business. Louisa would be disappointed in him if he ran away, but she’d be a hell of a lot more upset if he screwed up Susan Abbott’s wedding.

  He was going to get the hell out of there, as fast as he could.

  But first he was going to find the coldest body of water he could find and jump in. And maybe then he’d stop thinking about Susan Abbott’s mouth.

  Chapter Five

  She wasn’t used to running away, but Susan raced through the tangle of early-summer growth that strangled the access to the deserted garage, oblivious to the scratching branches and the uneven footing on the neglected path. Her mouth burned, her skin burned, and she wanted, needed, to run away and hide.

  She’d left her car parked by the edge of Matchfield Commons, and she fumbled with her keys, her hands shaking. It was early afternoon on a weekday—the streets were empty, which was a damne
d good thing, she thought, shoving her hair out of her face. She was driving like a maniac, with nothing more important than making it back to her mother’s house and the privacy of the guest bedroom. She’d had too little sleep, too much stress. A few hours of quiet, maybe a nap, would put it all in perspective.

  She peeled into the driveway, much too fast, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw her mother’s Saturn was gone. She wasn’t in the mood to answer any questions at the moment, and her mother had the unfortunate gift of seeing through most of Susan’s most tactful evasions.

  She slammed the door behind her and stared at her reflection in the mirror. It was a damned good thing Mary was out. Susan Abbott looked as if she’d been most thoroughly kissed.

  As she had. She didn’t remember being that shaken by another man’s mouth in years. Maybe in her entire life. Edward wasn’t much for kissing—Susan suspected that deep down he considered it a bit unsanitary.

  Her face felt tender from the scratch of Jake’s unshaven face. Edward didn’t have that heavy a beard, and yet he still shaved twice a day. She touched the faint red mark by her mouth, her fingers delicate, curious. In truth, it hadn’t even been that much of a kiss. She’d panicked before he could deepen it, which was a good thing. She had already been close to succumbing to the erotic pressure of his mouth against hers. If he’d used his tongue she probably would have dragged him over to the bed she’d been far too aware of.

  She pushed away from the mirror in disgust, shaking her head. What in God’s name had come over her? She’d never been prey to irrational, surging hormones, she’d never been emotional, irresponsible, filled with the kind of aching desire better suited to a Titanic addict.

  She heard the phone ring, but she ignored it. It was probably something she’d forgotten, one of those thousands of questions that only the bride could answer. They could leave a message and Mary would call them back.

  The answering machine clicked on, and Susan started nervously as Edward’s disembodied voice floated toward her from the answering machine. “Susan, dear, are you there? I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay in the city tonight, but I’ll need you to take care of a few things. Have you got a pencil? There’s my dry cleaning at Cecil’s French Laundry on Dugan Street, and the jeweler told me the gifts for the ushers are in. And if you could possibly...”

  She had her hand out to pick up the receiver, wanting, needing to remember why she was marrying him. But she couldn’t move. She just stood there listening to the list of errands as they sailed right past her consciousness.

  She was still standing there, five minutes later, when she heard someone drive up the driveway. Her immediate reaction was flight, out the kitchen door, but the backyard was a cul-de-sac, and there would be no escape. Besides, what did she have to escape from? As far as she knew Jake Wyczynski had no car—he wouldn’t be able to follow her that quickly and finish what he started.

  And Edward was still in the city—she was safe from him, as well. And she wasn’t going to even consider why she was suddenly considering Edward to be as big a threat to her peace of mind as Jake.

  It was probably just a delivery company with more of the interminable wedding gifts. Susan liked crystal and silver as well as anyone, but she couldn’t really see centering her life around them. She’d simply pile the latest boxes in the garage and let Edward have the joy of opening them.

  She swung open the front door, then stopped. It was no brown-shorts-clad UPS hunk but a tall, older man. He looked beyond surprised to see her standing at the door, he looked frankly appalled.

  “May I help you?” Susan managed to be deceptively polite. She wasn’t in the mood for religious fanatics or vacuum cleaner salesmen, though this man didn’t actually look like either. He looked vaguely familiar, and Susan knew she must have met him at some point in her life.

  “Er...is Mary Abbott home?”

  “Sorry, she’s out at the moment. I’m her daughter. May I give her a message?”

  A faint, reluctant smile formed at his mouth. “‘May you?’” he echoed. “She brought you up well.”

  Susan shrugged. “She did, as a matter of fact. Are you a friend of hers?”

  “An old acquaintance. I should have called instead of just showing up, but I was in the neighborhood and I stopped by on a whim. I’ll call next time.”

  He seemed to want to get away from her, back to the anonymous dark car he’d left parked in the driveway. And for some reason, despite her earlier desperate need for solitude, she didn’t want to let him escape.

  She followed him out into the driveway. “You could come in and wait for her,” she suggested, wondering if she were out of her mind. A moment ago she’d been desperate for solitude. “I’m sure she won’t be long—”

  “No!” He sounded surprisingly vehement, and then he softened it with an oddly familiar smile. “I wouldn’t think of intruding. I’ll come back.”

  Something wasn’t adding up, and Susan’s instincts were infallible. “Who are you?” she demanded abruptly as he reached his sedan.

  “Who am I?” he echoed, startled, his hand on the door.

  “Are you the police? FBI?”

  “God, no. Why would you think such a thing?” He looked seriously bewildered.

  “The bland rental car, the dark suit, the mysterious manner,” she said. “Of course, you aren’t wearing dark glasses and you’re not traveling in pairs, but still...”

  “Maybe my partner is circling around the back.”

  She suddenly realized how absurd the whole thing was. “Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t had enough sleep, and my imagination is going haywire.”

  “You don’t have any reason to think the police or the FBI would be coming around, do you?” He suddenly looked worried, disproportionately so.

  She shook her head. “No, my mother and I live very ordinary lives. It would make things more interesting if they did,” she said. “So who are you?”

  “Just tell your mother Bill came by. I’ll be in touch.”

  She stood in the yard, watching as he drove away. Odd, he didn’t look like a Bill. She racked her brain for any of the Williams her mother might have mentioned over the years, but the tall, older man didn’t fit any of them. She’d seen him before, she knew she had, but she couldn’t place him no matter how hard she tried.

  She headed back into the house. It was midafternoon, and if she was going to accomplish any of Edward’s list of tasks she needed to get moving.

  But she knew perfectly well she wasn’t going to do anything of the kind. She was going to have a very tall glass of iced tea, stuff some carbohydrates in her mouth and take a long, long nap. At least it was a relatively quiet night in this wedding week—she and her mother were supposed to go out for drinks, but it would be simple enough to cry off.

  She was in the kitchen, mixing her iced tea and humming under her breath, a tuneless little hum. She didn’t particularly feel like singing, but she couldn’t get the song out of her mind.

  She dropped several ice cubes in the tall glass of tea and brought it to her lips as the song danced through her mind. It was an old show tune, one that used to make her mother cry. Something about an ordinary guy....

  The glass shattered at her feet, drenching her legs with iced tea, but she was frozen in place. The song was “Bill,” from Showboat, and it had been her parents’ special song for the short time when they’d been happy together. So special that Mary Abbott had called her husband Bill instead of Alex.

  She cleaned up the mess in a daze, her brain simply shutting down. She wasn’t going to think about the familiar/unfamiliar man who’d come by; she wasn’t going to think about Jake Wyczynski’s mouth; she wasn’t going to think about all the things that Edward wanted her to do. She was going to her bedroom, and if everyone was extremely lucky she’d get up by her wedding day. But she was making no guarantees.

  She closed and locked the door behind her, pulled the shades, stripping off the tea-stained clothes and dumping t
hem in a pile. Her doomed aunt’s wedding dress hung over the closet door, a reminder of all that lay ahead of her. Right now she was feeling just as doomed as poor Tallulah had been. Maybe she was crazy to wear that dress.

  On impulse she pulled it off the padded hanger and slipped it over her head. It slid down her body in a shimmer of satin, settling around her like a caress.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror. The short-cropped, honey-blond hair, the high cheekbones, the green eyes stared back at her, familiar as always. And then the image shifted and melted, and for a moment she was looking at a different reflection, wavery, as if through candlelight. The woman in the mirror had a cloud of chestnut curls tumbling to her shoulders, huge brown eyes and a full, redpainted mouth. Her body was softer, less muscular, more rounded. She blinked, and the image vanished, and it was Susan again, biting her pale lips, staring at her reflection.

  “You’re out of your freaking mind, Abbott,” she said out loud. “You kiss a stranger you barely know, much less like, you start imagining your long-lost father showing up at your doorstep, and now you’re having hallucinations. Get a grip, woman!”

  She glared at her reflection, daring it to shift again, but it stayed the way it was, a tall, frustrated bride in a beautiful dress who didn’t know what in the world she really wanted.

  The reflection shimmered again, suddenly, like a funhouse mirror, and the other woman was back, with her mane of dark hair, her saucy dark eyes, and her lipsticked mouth curving in a naughty smile. She looked like a movie star from the forties—a cross between Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner. Susan reached out a tentative hand toward the strange reflection, and the woman in the mirror reached for her. But it wasn’t Susan’s hand. This hand had nail polish, and the biggest diamond she’d ever seen in her life, glittering through the wavering glass, sparkling.

  A shaft of light speared through the room, sending rainbows of light dancing around the room as if shot from a crazed prism.

  Everything went black. Still and dark and black.

  And Susan was gone.