Stand-in Groom

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Time to sit up,” the voice said again. It was a familiar voice, husky and deep and sexy. She’d recognize that voice anywhere. It was … It was …?

  “If you sit up, you can see the sunrise. It’s incredible—you’ve got to get a look at this.”

  The voice was very persuasive—and very familiar. Why couldn’t she remember who it belonged to?

  “Please let this just be a dream,” Chelsea mumbled, snuggling into her pillow. “I’m too tired to wake up.”

  “Come on, sleepyhead, open your eyes.”

  “They’re open,” she murmured.

  He laughed, and she remembered who he was. He was her husband.

  Her husband …?

  Chelsea opened her eyes and found herself staring directly at the fly on Johnny Anziano’s pants. She sprang up, bumping her back on the tray table in front of her seat and hitting her head on the luggage compartment.

  She had been sleeping with her head in his lap.

  “Whoa,” he said, reaching out to steady her and help her down into her seat.

  “I’m sorry.” She was out of breath, her heart pounding. “I didn’t know I’d taken over your seat as well as mine.”

  “I didn’t mind.”

  Chelsea found herself gazing into Johnny’s chocolate-brown eyes. He was smiling very slightly and she knew he was telling the truth. He hadn’t minded. In fact, on the contrary …

  Her hair was falling down, and she used the excuse to look away from him as she pulled the remaining pins free. Searching her handbag, she found her brush and ran it through her hair.

  “Check out the sunrise,” he said, gesturing out the window.

  It was amazing. The tops of the clouds were pink and orange and glowing. It didn’t look real, yet there they were.

  There they were, indeed.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Did you sleep at all?” Chelsea had to ask.

  Johnny didn’t say yes or no. He just smiled. “I’m fine.”

  In fact, he was better than fine. True, he hadn’t slept, but he hadn’t wanted to sleep. Chelsea had fallen fast asleep, leaning against the side of the plane. But then she’d shifted, trying to get comfortable, resting her head against his shoulder. He’d pulled up the armrests that were between their two seats in an effort to make her even more comfortable, and his movement had pushed her down so that her head was on his lap.

  That had fueled a few hundred thousand fantasies or so.

  He’d allowed himself the luxury of touching her silky-smooth hair. It was baby fine and so soft underneath his fingers, glistening in the dim cabin light like the most precious gold.

  He’d spent the night watching her gentle breathing, letting her hair slide between his fingers, thinking about all that she’d told him.

  If Chelsea loved him, really loved him, there was no place he wouldn’t go to be with her. Dallas, Boston, Timbuktu. If she were there, he’d be there, guaranteed. If she loved him.

  But she’d made it more than clear that love wasn’t on her agenda.

  He’d spent some time thinking about Benton Scott. Chelsea had been in love with the man—maybe she was still in love with him. If there were ever a guy more different from Johnny than night was from day, it was Benton Scott.

  Could the man’s name sound any more Anglo-Saxon? He was one of Troy’s Harvard chums. He was the crown prince of the “us” club, while Johnny was the heir apparent of “them,” born into his place—or lack of place—in the social registry, the same way Bent Scott had been born into his.

  Money. Education. Bent Scott had it over Johnny in every way imaginable. Looks. A woman who went for fair-haired, blue-eyed, slender men like Bent wouldn’t give Johnny a second glance.

  Night and day.

  He’d had to stop and untangle a lock of Chelsea’s hair from where it had gotten caught around his wedding band, and he’d realized something he’d been trying his best to ignore.

  It wouldn’t take much for this woman to entangle herself around his heart. If he wasn’t careful, he could very easily fall head over heels in love … with his wife.

  EIGHT

  “YOU SURE I can’t talk you into coming into the water?” Johnny asked. “It’s great. You should see the fish, just swimming around out there—all colors, like something you’d see in someone’s tank, only huge. They’ll swim right up to you.”

  Chelsea looked up from her powerbook to see Johnny smiling at her, water dripping off of his hard-muscled body, his wet hair plastered against his head, water beading on his eyelashes.

  His bathing suit was the loose-fitting, knee-length kind, but on him, it looked transcendently sexy.

  Standing there on the white sand, with the turquoise Caribbean ocean and the crystal-blue Caribbean sky behind him, her husband looked like a walking, breathing advertisement for hedonistic temptations.

  Husband in name only, she reminded herself.

  He held out his hand. “Come on, Chelsea. You can do whatever you’re doing later, can’t you?”

  She steeled herself before looking into his eyes. “I really can’t,” she lied. “I have to fax these reports to Moira first thing in the morning.”

  He sat down on the edge of the lounge chair next to hers. “Okay,” he said reasonably. “You take a couple of hours, finish up those reports, and then we’ll have dinner together. I was reading one of the guidebooks about this place called the Mafali—it’s an open-air restaurant up on the side of the mountain, overlooking the harbor. The food’s not fancy—mostly grilled steaks, but the view’s supposed to be—”

  “I can’t.”

  “—fabulous. Why not?”

  He knew damn well why not. Sure, she could give him more excuses. She had more reports to write, more work to do. She’d brought enough with her to keep her occupied every waking moment of this trip. But she didn’t want to play games.

  “I don’t want to have dinner with you,” she told him bluntly. “I don’t want to pretend that we’re newlyweds, I don’t even want to be friends with you. I think it would be best if we just went our separate ways over the next three days.”

  Johnny laughed. “This is perfect,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Here I’ve gone and married you, and you still won’t go out on a date with me. How pathetic is that?”

  It was pathetic. But she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t dare let herself get any closer to him. Instead of waking up with her head in his lap, God knows where she’d find herself waking up next.

  “I can’t talk you into changing your mind?”

  Chelsea shook her head. She refused to acknowledge the disappointment she could see in his eyes. She focused all of her attention on her power-book screen as she tried to distance herself from him, to pull back, to not care. After all, disappointment was a part of life.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see him, still sitting next to her, just watching her work for several long minutes after she had, in a sense, dismissed him.

  Finally, he stood up and walked away.

  Chelsea looked up then, unable to resist watching him head for the resort bar, unable truly to keep her distance, despite what she would have him believe.

  Because she cared. Somehow Giovanni Anziano had gotten under her skin, and try as she might, she couldn’t help but care.

  “Do the names Edward and Susan Farber ring any bells?” Johnny said into the telephone as soon as Chelsea picked up.

  “Um,” she said, “yeah. The Farbers. Friends of my parents—from the country club, I think?” He could picture her doing a mental double take, realizing what he had asked her. Her voice went up an octave. “Oh my God, are they here?”

  “They’re sitting in the resort dining room right this very minute,” he told her.

  Chelsea swore sharply. “Have they seen you?”

  “Of course they’ve seen me.” Johnny let his frustration ring in his voice. This trip wasn’t turning out the way he’d hoped—not by a long shot. The
last time he’d even gotten within range of Chelsea had been two days earlier, in the afternoon, on the beach. She’d been plugged into her computer and had barely even looked up to tell him to forget about dinner, forget about talking, forget about anything. She wasn’t interested. Since then, she’d done her best to avoid him. “You don’t honestly expect that I’d recognized them after meeting them for fifteen seconds in a receiving line—two out of the five hundred and something people I met for the first time a few days ago?”

  “You sound annoyed.” There was real surprise in her voice.

  “I am annoyed. You better get your butt down here, unless you want Eddie and Sue getting the word back to Mumsy and Dadsy that they saw Chelsea’s bridegroom eating dinner all by himself three days after the wedding.”

  “Can’t you come up—pretend we’re ordering in tonight?”

  “No,” Johnny told her flatly. “I was already sitting in the restaurant when they saw me. I told them you were running late—that you’d be down in a minute.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” she finally asked.

  He had to answer her truthfully. “No,” he said. “Not mad. Disappointed. I thought we were starting to become friends.”

  He heard her sigh, heard the rustling of papers on the other end of the telephone. “Have you ordered your dinner yet?”

  “Yes, I did. I thought I’d give the so-called chef a chance to ruin some swordfish steaks tonight.”

  She laughed nervously. “Wow, this is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess the honeymoon’s over, huh?”

  “Could you order me a large salad?” she asked. “No cheese, no bacon, vinaigrette dressing on the side? Then give me three minutes, and I’ll be right down.”

  Johnny hung up the phone and briefly closed his eyes. God bless the Farbers. Chelsea was going to have dinner with him.

  It took Chelsea a little bit longer than three minutes, but not much. When Johnny spotted her coming into the lobby, she was wearing a loose-fitting, long flowing blue island print sundress, and her hair was up on top of her head.

  She looked beautiful, and Johnny let himself stare while she was still all the way across the room, while she stopped at the Farbers’ table and said a brief hello. He knew that once she sat down across from him, he wouldn’t be able to look at her this way. She wouldn’t want him to.

  How the hell had he ever gotten himself into this situation?

  “Hi,” she said almost shyly, and he rose to his feet to greet her.

  “How’s work?” he asked, sitting down across from her.

  There was a candle in the middle of the table, and its flickering flame threw light and shadows across Chelsea’s face as she gazed at him. “I’ve gotten quite a bit done.” She looked out across the patio, toward the beach and the moonlit water. “It’s a beautiful evening, isn’t it?”

  Johnny felt a flash of frustration. Small talk. They could go on like this all night. But he didn’t want to talk about the weather. He had bigger fish to fry. He leaned forward. “I don’t understand what the problem is, Chelsea,” he told her. “I signed the agreements you wanted me to sign, and I promised to keep sex out of the picture. I gave you my word, but you won’t trust me. And I’m finding that hard to deal with.”

  He more than expected her to slip into Ice Princess mode and regard him with haughty disdain. But she didn’t. Instead, she sighed, and gazed out at the moonlight, unable to meet his eyes. Up close like this, she looked a little anxious and a little tired, as if she weren’t sleeping well at all. “I guess you don’t want to talk about the weather.”

  “The weather here is perfect. There’s nothing to say about it.”

  Chelsea took a sip from her water glass, trying to pretend that her hand wasn’t shaking as she glanced up at him. “So what do you want to talk about? My deeply rooted problem with trust? It probably goes back to my childhood—we could be here for quite some time.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  Chelsea let herself really look at the man sitting across the table from her. He was quite possibly the man they had in mind when they coined the phrase tall, dark, and handsome. He usually seemed to be on the verge of smiling—except for now. Right now he was uncharacteristically solemn, his dark eyes sober yet no less intense as he watched her.

  “Maybe we could start by talking about something easier,” Chelsea said.

  “You’re afraid of me, because I’m legally your husband,” he guessed with unerring perception.

  She drew in a deep breath. “Or we could start with something even harder.”

  “Or maybe you’re afraid that you’re going to like being married to me too much.”

  Chelsea forced a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, then?” He spoke softly, urgently. He really wanted to know. “We were doing fine on the flight from Vegas, then all of a sudden, we’re at the hotel and you’re telling me that you don’t even want to be my friend? What the hell is that about? What did I do? Did I offend you in some way? Chelsea, did I say or do something that makes you think you can’t trust me?”

  She briefly closed her eyes, then told him the truth. It was the least she could do. “I do trust you,” she said, gazing at him in the candlelight. “It’s my own self I don’t have any faith in.”

  Johnny struggled to understand. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “You don’t trust yourself …?”

  “To stay away from you,” she finished softly, glancing up at him almost shyly, her eyes filled with chagrin.

  He was stunned. Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that was last on the list.

  “Every time I’m near you, I want … things I shouldn’t want,” she admitted quietly. “I can’t stop thinking about the way you kissed me. …”

  She looked away from him, as if embarrassed, and Johnny reached for her hand, moving out of his own chair and into the seat next to hers, wanting to reassure her she was not alone. “Is that really so awful?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She spoke vehemently, her blue eyes sparking as she looked up at him, but still, she didn’t pull her hand away.

  He tried to make a joke. “Last time I checked, no one went to hell for kissing.”

  “It’s not the kissing—it’s where those kisses would lead that has me worried.”

  Where those kisses would lead … They wouldn’t lead anywhere—at least not if he kissed her here, in the resort’s restaurant. And not if he kissed her anyplace else, either. Not unless both of them absolutely wanted it to.

  Johnny leaned even closer to her, catching her chin with his other hand. Her skin was as soft and as smooth as he remembered, and he felt a wave of giddiness. He was going to kiss her. Right now. The way he’d been dying to kiss her since Vegas. “Let’s try it and see exactly where it will lead.”

  “John—” She tried to pull away and he let her go.

  But his soft words kept her from standing up and running away. “The Farbers are watching.”

  Johnny saw her glance across the room, saw all of her uncertainty and trepidation in her eyes. But he saw longing too. And he knew without a doubt that she wanted him to kiss her—as much, if not more, than she didn’t want him to kiss her.

  He leaned forward, closing the gap between them, capturing her mouth with his, drinking her in. Whether she parted her lips willingly or in surprise, he didn’t know—and he didn’t care. For every inch she gave him, he was determined to take a mile. He pulled her closer, touching the softness of her arms and the delicate fabric of the dress that covered her back. He kissed her harder, deeper, feeling her hands against the back of his neck, first tentatively, then possessively, as she kissed him with equal abandon.

  And he knew in that instant that he was dead wrong. This kiss wasn’t just a kiss. It didn’t lead nowhere. In fact, it did quite the opposite. It led directly to temptation
. It burned an unswerving path out of the restaurant, into the lobby, and up the stairs to the second floor, where they had adjoining suites. It pushed open the door to Chelsea’s bedroom and flung them both down upon her bed, arms and legs intertwined, clothing quickly removed until they were pressed together, skin to skin, soft flesh against hard muscle, straining to become one.

  The images that flashed into his mind were sharp and clear. Chelsea, naked, on her bed. Pale skin, perfect and smooth. Blond hair like spun gold fanned out against the stark white of the sheets. Her smile of welcome as she reached for him. Her soft hands gliding across his body. Her drawn-in breath and the expression of sheer pleasure on her face as he filled her …

  With herculean effort, Johnny pulled back, away from Chelsea’s lips. He watched her eyes flutter open, watched her pulse pounding in her delicate throat.

  His own breathing was ragged, and as she met his eyes he knew he’d only succeeded in thoroughly proving himself wrong.

  “Okay,” he said, reaching for alternatives. “So we don’t kiss. We can spend tomorrow together and just … not kiss.”

  She put her head in her hands. “How did I ever get myself into this?”

  “Tomorrow’s our last day here. I just want to be with you, Chelsea. I want to talk to you—”

  She didn’t even lift her head. “I don’t think I’m strong enough.”

  “I can be strong enough for both of us.”

  “But if you can’t?”

  “I can,” he insisted. “This is about more than just sex. I want to go to the beach with you tomorrow. I want to show you this great place to snorkel—I want to spend the day with you.”

  She rested her chin in her hand, looking at him for several long seconds before she spoke, searching his eyes, as if trying to read his mind. “And what about tonight?”

  Johnny took a deep breath. “I can say good night to you at the door to your room and then walk away. I can do that.”

  Her eyes lingered on his lips and she didn’t try to hide her attraction for him as she looked back up into his eyes. “And what if I tell you I want you to kiss me again? What if I ask you to come into my room and spend the night with me? Would you be strong enough to turn me down?”