A Wedding At Ruby Lake

by Jennifer Hayward

  “She—we—” Felicity started after her. Joshua grabbed her arm. “Let her go. If we deny it, she’ll only gossip more.”

  She’d prefer to set the record straight. But she trailed along beside him to the boat because Joshua was a force of nature and always had been. Getting caught up in him had always been her fear and when she had that night, it had scared her to death. So she’d picked up her stuff the morning after and left before she’d had to analyse any of it.

  Joshua bypassed the marina. She darted a look at him. “Where are we going?”

  “To my place. It’s not like you have a rehearsal dinner to go to, is it?”

  True. The rehearsal dinner had been cancelled.

  Joshua opened a bottle of wine and promised dinner after that. They drank it standing at the railing looking out over the lake, the sun casting everything in that hypnotic, famous Ruby Lake soft pink glow.

  “Why did you leave?” he asked quietly.

  “You were on the rebound, Josh. I was only a one-night thing.”

  He shook his head. “I had a thing for you forever, Felicity. You just kept running away.”

  She turned to face him, her heart taking flight. “You did?”

  “Always. You stole my boat deliberately today, didn’t you?”

  “It was the first boat I saw, Joshua.”

  “Liar.”

  He kissed her again. Dinner went the way of ancient history. And the sun sank deep into the trees behind Ruby Lake.

  ***

  The night before the Westwood wedding, the Ruby Lake gossip mill had reached a fever pitch. Georgia Westwood had been found, apparently in a far greater mood than she’d disappeared in; the bride still hadn’t appeared and the word was if Ariana didn’t get hitched, Felicity Kane and Joshua Peters just might. The only thing to do was to tune in tomorrow to find out.

  Chapter Six

  The knock on the cottage door sliced through her like a rifle shot.

  Ariana Westwood, heir to the Westwood oil-and-gas fortune and imminent bride to Jackson O’Connell, dug her fingernails into her palms and froze in place on the sofa.

  The knocking turned to pounding.

  “Ariana, open the door.”

  Hunter Joseph, multimillionaire real-estate developer, scorchingly hot male and instigator of her massively cold feet was reacting just as she’d thought he would.

  He was not a think-first kind of guy.

  She walked to the door of Riley James’s rustic cabin tucked deep in the woods on his private island, undid the deadbolt and swung the thick wooden door open. The black look on Hunter’s face made her heart pound.

  “I’m thinking this is a bad idea.”

  “Too bad,” he growled, pushing his way past her. “This conversation is happening seven years too late thanks to your mother and it isn’t waiting a minute longer.”

  She pushed the door shut and turned to face him. “You haven’t exactly been crying into your cereal, Hunter. You never could make up your mind between Rachel and me, but I guess you finally did.”

  “I came for you that night, Ari.” His blue gaze blazed into her, singeing her skin. “You knew it was killing me here. That there was no way I could stay. But your mother convinced me it would be best for everyone if I left you alone. She made it clear I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  Her heart splintered apart. “I was in love with you, Hunter. I would have followed you to the end of the earth. You should have known that.”

  His face darkened. “You were a Westwood, Ari. You were untouchable. And what did I have to offer? The legacy of my father?”

  “So you shacked up with Rachel? How in the world did you think that would make me feel? Seeing you with her nearly killed me.”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “She wanted me. She made me feel like I wasn’t a second-class citizen.”

  “And I didn’t? God, Hunter, you were everything to me.”

  His mouth twisted. “My father annihilated half your father’s retirement funds. How do you think he would have felt about me carting his baby off to New York?”

  “You are not your father,” she snapped, waving her hand at him. “I hope you’ve at least had that epiphany.”

  He wasn’t listening. His gaze was trained on her hand. On the two-carat solitaire Jackson had placed on it.

  “He couldn’t even get the ring right.”

  “The ring is beautiful, Hunter.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not you. Ari. You always said you wanted a square-cut diamond. That a square-cut was solid…that it would last forever.”

  A solitaire was too delicate, too tenuous…As if when love fell off the edges, it had nowhere to go.

  She felt the colour drain from her face as she remembered her words. “So here are the rules,” she told him hoarsely, feeling herself fall off the edge. “We talk. You stay there—” she pointed to one end of the sofa in the living room where a fire was burning, “—and I stay there.” She pointed to the other.

  His eyes glittered. “Scared if I touch you your wedding will go up in flames, Ari?”

  She was afraid it already had.

  She pointed wordlessly at the sofa. Hunter sat. But somehow she knew it was far too dangerous to do even that, so she paced. “Why now? Why do this now when I’ve finally found happiness? When I’m about to marry someone else?”

  “You know I wouldn’t be here right now if you loved him, Ari.”

  A hot wetness stung the backs of her eyes. “You’re asking me to give up everything. Jackson is a good man, Hunter. He has never let me down. Ever.”

  “Neither will I.” He clenched his hands into fists as she paced toward him. “‘Sit down or I swear I will put my hands on you and I promise, if I do, I won’t take them off.’

  She sat, her heart slamming against the wall of her chest.

  “I was hurting, Ari,” he said roughly. “Your mother was right about one thing. It wasn’t the right time for us. I needed to go away and find myself. To figure out who I was before I could be with you.”

  “ You got engaged to another woman. That’s more than finding yourself. That’s moving on.” Fury mixed with heartbreak, sending her hurtling beyond the point of no return. “I hate you for that.”

  “Hate, I can work with,” he said grimly. “Do you want to know why I broke off my engagement, Ari? Because I bought that piece of land on the point. And I built a house there.”

  If her heart wasn’t already in a million pieces it was now, knowing he’d built a house on the land that had been their place. Without her.

  He took her hand. “Not once when I was building that house did I mention it to Rachel. It was insane, here I was planning my future and I didn’t even tell her about it.”

  “Hunter—” She wasn’t sure she could do this.

  He kept his gaze on hers, willing her to listen. “The day the house was finished, I got out of the boat, stood there looking up at it and the only thing I knew for sure was that it was your house, Ari. Our house.”

  She heard a sound and realized the broken “Oh” had come from her.

  “I went back to New York and ended things with Rachel that night. Your wedding invitation came a day later.”

  “You built us a house?”

  He shook his head. “I built us a future. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted. The only thing I doubted was whether I was good enough for you or not.”

  Her gaze fell away from his as her heart went into free fall. Jackson’s diamond glinted in the firelight.

  “Take it off,” Hunter said softly. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving my love for you.”

  A moment of blinding certainty came over her. It came from the place deep down inside her that had never stopped loving him even for a moment. She tugged off the ring and set it on the coffee table without taking her eyes off him. The square-cut, canary-yellow diamond he pulled out of his pocket made her gasp.

  He dropped down on one knee and slid it on her fin
ger. “You marrying me tomorrow?’”

  Her head was spinning far too much to even contemplate answering that question. Hunter smiled and scooped her up into his arms. “Allow me to convince you.”

  ***

  Tyra Brown climbed the steps to Riley James’s cottage, the sight of him standing there with a dish towel slung over his shoulder doing funny things to her stomach.

  “You shaved.”

  “It was time I cleaned up.”

  And how he cleaned up.

  He cocked his head to one side. “You managing a wedding tomorrow?”

  “I have no idea. The whole thing is a shambles. Claire and Bradley aren’t talking to each other, Jackson was working his way through a bottle of Scotch when I left, and Ariana is still nowhere to be found.”

  Riley shrugged. “Out of your hands.”

  She nodded. What was within her control was a kiss, however, and tonight she was getting one from Riley James.

  Tomorrow? Who knew what would happen. Quite frankly, she was prepared for anything.

  Chapter Seven

  The sky over Ruby Lake was a clear and perfect blue the morning of the Westwood wedding. “The most perfect day of the week,” the DJ on RL 99.9 announced.

  Nick Taylor, best man to the groom Jackson O’Connell, thought that ironic given the unsettled nature of the weather leading up to today’s nuptials and the fact that it was anyone’s guess whether there was even going to be a wedding. He and Jackson had drunk themselves into a stupor last night. And every time he’d asked his best friend what he was going to do, Jackson had mumbled, “I don’t know,” and kept staring into the fire with that deep, contemplative look that was driving Nick slowly stark, raving mad.

  Someone had to talk some sense into him… Good thing Nick happened to be the biggest cynic on the face of the earth.

  He picked up the coffee pot, poured himself a large mug of the lethally strong java Jackson had apparently needed to function this morning and walked down to the dock. The lake lay silent, not a ripple on it. Jackson sat, feet dangling over the edge, another of those pathetic, philosophical looks on his face.

  “All right,” Nick said, kicking off his shoes and sitting down beside him. “Enough’s enough. You can’t marry her, bud. You and Ariana are two times perfect and you know what that equals?” He made a circle with his fingers. “Nothing. Zero. A big fat black hole.”

  Jackson actually smiled. “ You’re saying this? The man with the first-date qualifying list? Hell, Nick, if a woman eats her peas the wrong way she loses five points. If she doesn’t use her fork and knife, she’s dead in the water. And God forbid she bites her nails.”

  Nick shrugged. “It’s a bad habit. Somebody needs to point it out.”

  Silence fell. Jackson looked out over the lake. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  “No, I don’t.” Nick shot him a sideways look. “That’s called hormones, my friend.”

  Jackson assumed the contemplative look again. Nick swore under his breath.

  “You didn’t fall head over heels for Ariana the first time you met her.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Nick braced his hands on the edge of the dock. “Okay, so tell me one thing. Do I put on my monkey suit today? Are you marrying this girl? Because I really, really hate wearing a tux.”

  His friend got to his feet. “Put your monkey suit on,” he confirmed, a genuine, bona fide Jackson smile curving his lips. “We have a wedding to go to.”

  Nick watched his best friend walk up to the cottage. A curse split his lips. The damn fool was going to do it.

  ***

  This was getting ridiculous. Two hours before the wedding and not only was Ariana still missing, but now he couldn’t find Jackson.

  Nick headed outside, looking for Tyra. Halfway around the tent he saw the cute-looking member of the catering staff he’d been chatting up at the rehearsal dinner standing precariously close to the lake edge, hanging candles in the trees. It gave him the willies because his brother Tom had almost drowned in the lake as a kid. But Miss Cut-You-Off-At-The-Knees-With-A-Look could fall in for all he cared. He’d never been so effortlessly rebuffed in his entire life.

  Splash.

  A piercing scream sent him running for the shore. Her flailing movements had him ripping off his jacket and diving in.

  The lake was deep and murky and it took him a few seconds to find her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her to shore. When he reached shallow water, he swung her up in his arms and carried her to solid ground.

  “Good Lord, put me down,” she protested, pushing her hands against his chest. “What did you do that for?”

  He lowered her to the ground, staring uncomprehendingly at her as his heart pounded out of his chest. “You can’t swim. I was rescuing you.”

  “Of course I can swim. I just—” she shoved a hand against her heaving chest “—panicked for a minute there.”

  His mouth compressed. The woman could not swim.

  She groaned, her eyes moving over him. “You’ve ruined your suit.”

  He looked down. The several-thousand-dollar Armani he’d bought to match Jackson’s did not look as though it liked water. He grimaced. “Please tell me I did just rescue you.”

  She sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. “I don’t swim well. I’m so sorry about that. I thought I was fine, but I—I just lost my footing.”

  Water dripped from her dark hair, from the long lashes shading her hazel eyes and a T-shirt that was doing its best to show off a figure that wouldn’t quit.

  Her cheeks turned pink at his blatant perusal. She pulled ineffectually at the soaked material but the current zigzagging between them turned the pink into fire-engine red. Nick told himself not to do it, but the question tumbled out of his mouth anyway. “You blew me off at the party. Why?”

  She pushed her hair out of her face, a wry smile curving her mouth. “What’s the matter, Mr. Taylor? Not used to getting the brush-off?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “I’m not.”

  She tipped her head to one side. “I’m sure flashing your gold card tends to work. If not that, then the cocky attitude.”

  The insult bounced off his Teflon coating. “What does work for you then?”

  She smiled. “Nothing, Mr. Taylor. I’m a med student. If my nose isn’t buried in books, I’m trying to keep my part-time job, which by the way, is why I would never, ever flirt with the best man.”

  “Even when he jumps in a lake fully clothed for you…?”

  “Even then.”

  “Too bad,” he drawled. “I’d be willing to prove you wrong about me.”

  Tyra appeared on the bank above them. Her eyes widened as she took in their soaked state. “What in the world happened? Are you guys okay?”

  Nick waved a hand at her. “Yes. And don’t ask.”

  She blinked. “Okay, well Jackson’s looking for you. He’s up at the restaurant. Emily, grab your uniform. We apparently have a wedding to put on.”

  She disappeared before Nick could ask her whose wedding that would be. He levelled an even look at the girl he now knew was named Emily. “So?”

  She lifted her chin. “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Taylor. I’m thankful for the rescue. And flattered by the attention. Just not tempted.”

  His jaw was somewhere near the ground when she turned and hiked up the hill, her soaking-wet, tight-fitting jeans making him groan out loud. He watched her go, replaying the conversation in his head. Recalling the slight flicker of indecision in those hazel eyes. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

  He might just believe in love at first sight after all.

  Chapter Eight

  When Ariana Westwood had visualized her wedding at sixteen, she’d pictured herself in a wispy, shirred white gown, lily of the valley in her hands, and tall, dark handsome Hunter Joseph at her side.

  Now that she had all three, she wasn’t about to let any of them slip through her fingers.

&
nbsp; She clung tightly to Hunter as he docked the boat on the shore below the historic old church tucked among the trees of Ruby Lake.

  “Okay?” Hunter’s fingers tightened around hers.

  “I saw my future this morning,” she said huskily. “How could I not be?”

  “You liked the house?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  He helped her from the boat. The sun cast everything around them in a shimmering, gold-tipped perfection. She wanted to revel in it. To tell the world she loved Hunter. But there was one shadow left to banish.

  She had to talk to Jackson.

  “Go,” Hunter said, squeezing her fingers. “I’ll be here.”

  Jackson was waiting for her underneath the rotunda as she’d requested. Spectacularly handsome in his dark tux, not a blond hair out of place, he looked achingly familiar. Yet different somehow.

  She walked toward him, dreading this conversation, dreading what she was about to do, but Jackson shook his head and took her hands in his.

  “You were never mine, Ariana. How I didn’t see that before… How I didn’t see what was missing for both of us… I don’t know.”

  She swallowed hard. “We wanted to believe it could work.”

  His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Perfect on paper doesn’t mean it’s right.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jackson.”

  “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m okay, I promise. Now go marry your man before I give in to the impulse to flatten him.”

  She kissed him on the cheek, then turned to walk away. Stopped and turned around.

  “Jackson?”

  He turned back.

  “You searched for me with Sarah that night.”

  “Yes.”

  She studied the ruddy colour staining his cheeks. “She’s the reason you’re different.”

  He frowned. “Why would you say that?”

  “The other night at the bachelorette party she said you were the type of guy who needed to be shocked out of his complacency. I thought it was very interesting commentary.”

  He gave an awkward shrug, his gaze not meeting hers.