A Bride For Saint Nick

by Carole Buck

  Crossing to her quilt-covered bed, Leigh slipped off her shoes and began to undress. The process was methodical. Unthinking. She was down to her ecru-colored brassiere and matching panties when she caught a glimpse of her seminude body in the mirror in the corner.

  Her first impulse was to turn away. Although she disguised it more cleverly than Deirdre Bleeker, she was as wary about the implications of her appearance as her assistant was about the messages sent by hers. But something inside her overrode this wariness. After a few moments of mental struggle, she succumbed to the lure of her mirrored image and moved slowly toward the cheval glass. She came to a stop about a foot in front of it.

  The pattern of her breathing ruffled as a strange quiver of awareness shimmered through her nervous system. She watched as a flush of color stole up her throat and into her face. Outside, the wintry night wind continued to blow with haunting force.

  Slowly, Leigh lifted her hands to the small clasp that nestled at the base of the cleft between her creamy-skinned breasts. She undid the fastener with trembling fingers, then brushed the flesh-toned bra cups aside. A second or two later she slipped the garment off and let it drop to the floor.

  Bared to the waist, she contemplated her reflection. Her heart had begun to thud with hammer-to-anvil deliberation. There was an aching tightness between her thighs.

  Suzanne Whitney had been slow to achieve physical maturity. Her breasts had seemed little more than bee-sting bumps until she was nearly seventeen, and she’d been targeted for a great many mocking gibes because of it. As a result, she’d been terribly self-conscious about her shape when she’d finally started to develop a figure.

  Not only had she bloomed late, she’d bloomed a lot less than most of the girls she knew. In fact, to say she’d “bloomed” was probably an exaggeration. The only child of Nancy and George Whitney had graduated from high school feeling as though she’d barely budded. The indifference she’d seemed to inspire in members of the opposite sex—she hadn’t even had a date to the senior prom, for heaven’s sake!—had underscored her bruised sense of feminine inadequacy.

  Unfortunately, there had been no one for her to talk to about her self-doubts. Her mother had been a straitlaced, dutyconscious woman who had handed her a pamphlet about menstruation rather than sit down for a face-to-face conversation about the facts of life. And her father—Lord! While he’d been a dependable and decent man, he’d been even more distant than his wife. Suzanne could no more have initiated a discussion about her sexual insecurities with him than she could have sprouted wings and flown away to Florida.

  As for friends…well, she hadn’t really had any. Acquaintances, yes. But she’d been too shy to venture beyond casual chitchat with them. As often happened in such situations, those around her had interpreted her innate reticence as snobbery. Rather than realizing that she held back because of very shaky self-esteem, her classmates had categorized her as stuck-up and far too sure of herself.

  Her mother had died of ovarian cancer two months after she’d turned eighteen. Her father had been felled by a massive coronary seven weeks later. Their sudden deaths had shattered Suzanne Whitney’s insular world, leaving her bereft of economic as well as emotional support. Her concerns about her physical endowments—or lack of them—had ceased to matter. So, too, her worries about her nonexistent social life.

  Digging deep inside the numbness that had descended upon her in the wake of her devastating loss, Suzanne had discovered a strength she’d never known she had. She hadn’t questioned its source. She hadn’t wasted time regretting that she hadn’t found it sooner, either. She’d simply grabbed on to it with both hands and prayed that it would be enough to see her through.

  It had been. Somehow, some way, she’d survived. Not thrived, exactly, but endured.

  And after a little more than four years of enduring, she’d met Nicholas “Saint Nick” Marchand.

  She’d known who he was the Friday morning they’d shared an elevator in the office building where she’d been working as a secretary for nearly three years. She’d also known what he was supposed to be. She should have been afraid or appalled or both. Instead, she’d been instantaneously attracted.

  He’d been enamored, too. Or so it had seemed. Although he’d spoken not a word to her in the elevator, he’d had a dozen pale pink, tightly furled roses delivered to her desk within an hour of their encounter. The flowers had been accompanied by a handwritten card that had boldly asserted, “These made me think of you.”

  He’d also turned up outside the building when she’d left work at the end of the day. She’d spotted him lounging indolently against a low-slung, imported sports car that had undoubtedly cost several times her annual salary. If he’d had any qualms about the fact that his vehicle was angled into a clearly marked No Parking zone, she hadn’t been unable to detect them.

  “Have dinner with me, Suzanne,” he’d said in a velvet-soft voice, opening the passenger-side door of the shiny black car.

  She’d hesitated, a long list of reasons for refusing his invitation—or was it closer to being an order?—unspooling in her brain. The reasons had been individually sound, collectively convincing. She would have bowed to them but for one ineluctable fact.

  She’d wanted to say yes. No matter that she’d understood with absolute certainty she should do anything but. She’d wanted to say yes to Nicholas Marchand.

  “Thank you,” she’d finally replied, then gotten into the car.

  They’d dined at a quietly expensive restaurant where no one had seemed aware of Nick’s identity. While the taste of the beluga caviar he’d coaxed her into sampling had been a bit much for her unsophisticated palate, she’d feasted on the freshly broiled lobster he’d ordered for her with such greedy relish that he’d laughed aloud.

  Having picked and sucked every delectable shred of meat from her entrée, she’d asserted that she was too full for dessert. Brushing aside her protests, Nick had insisted that she try a single bite of the hot chocolate souffle he’d claimed was a famous specialty of the house. One luscious spoonful and she’d been hooked. She’d ended up eating an entire serving of the voluptuously delicious concoction. The temptation to lift the soufflé dish and lick it clean had been strong, but she’d managed to resist.

  After dinner they’d gone dancing at a noisily extravagant club where her suavely dictatorial companion was obviously well-known. Her presence on his arm had generated a great deal of attention, not all of it flattering. The man nicknamed “Saint Nick” had fended off his acquaintances’ curiosity with a ruthless politesse that she might have found unnerving under other circumstances. As it was, she’d been thankful for his coolly efficient method of parrying people’s questions.

  He’d driven her home shortly before one. He hadn’t bothered to inquire about the address, he’d simply taken her to it.

  He’d kissed her good-night at the door to her apartment, wooing her lips with carefully controlled ardor. Braced for a sexual aggressiveness that seemed in keeping with his reputation and imperious manner, Suzanne had been stunned by the eroticism of his restraint. Nicholas Marchand had not sought to “take” from her. Rather, he’d aroused in her a searingly sweet urge to yield up all she’d had to give.

  Whether the nearly-twenty-three-year-old virgin she’d been that night would have gone to bed with the man she’d known for less than nine hours was a question Leigh McKay had never pressed herself to answer. Suffice it to say that the man involved hadn’t asked and Suzanne Whitney, for all her nascent sensuality, had lacked the confidence to offer.

  Suzanne had tormented herself with questions about what else she may have lacked during the three weeks that had followed that first mind-blowing kiss. She’d done so because Nicholas Marchand had dropped out of her life as suddenly as he’d dropped into it.

  He hadn’t come by.

  He hadn’t called.

  He’d made no effort whatsoever to contact her.

  Bitterly hurt and desperately confused, she�
��d ripped up the provocatively worded card and thrown out the roses. She’d also spent several miserable nights sobbing into her pillow. Finally she’d reviewed all the things she’d heard whispered about her escort-for-a-single-evening and tried to persuade herself that she’d actually had a lucky escape.

  Twenty-one days after he’d deserted her on her doorstep, Nick had shown up at her apartment unannounced. “I couldn’t stay away,” he’d told her, his voice low and strained, his posture tense.

  “I’m glad,” she’d said with helpless honesty, then stepped back a pace and gestured him inside.

  She’d wondered later whether Nick had come hoping that she would turn him away. If so, he’d badly miscalculated. This was not to say that she hadn’t experienced a fleeting urge to slam her door in his face in the first few seconds after she’d opened it. The pain he’d inflicted by his unexplained withdrawal from her had been acute. But the impulse to reject had dissolved in a rush of compassion when she’d looked up into his deep-set brown eyes and realized that he’d been hurting, too. Steering clear of her had cost him in ways that she, in her inexperience, could only vaguely imagine.

  They’d become lovers six weeks later. Two months after that, Nicholas Marchand had been killed in a fiery car crash. And in a very real sense, the woman he’d been en route to visiting had perished that same night.

  Leigh closed her eyes for a moment, allowing herself the dangerous indulgence of summoning up the devilishly handsome image of the man upon whom Suzanne Whitney had willingly bestowed both her physical innocence and her heart.

  The dark, rakishly styled hair.

  The classically chiseled cheekbones and cleft chin.

  The sensual, crook-cornered mouth.

  “Nick,” she murmured. “Oh…God. Nick.”

  She opened her eyes, focusing once again on the reflection in the mirror. For the first time in five and a half years, she assessed herself as a woman. Not as a mother. Not as a…victim.

  Although her breasts had gotten a little fuller with maternity, they were hardly the stuff of centerfold fantasy. The nipples were more prominent than they had been, though. They’d darkened from a fragile petal pink—the exact shade of the bouquet Nick had sent her, to be precise—to a rich, dusky rose sometime during her pregnancy.

  Leigh lifted her hands, cupping her softly curving flesh with her palms. A moment or two later she feathered the pads of her thumbs over the stiffening peaks and the pebbling areolae that encircled them. Her breath snagged in her throat as a thrill of response arrowed downward toward her womb.

  The muscles of her legs started to tremble. The ache between her thighs became a melting, pulsating warmth. The crotch of her demure cotton panties dampened.

  She wanted to be able to want again, she thought with a fierce surge of conviction. To want freely. Without fear or shame. And she wanted to be wanted in return by a man to whom it would be safe to entrust herself and her son.

  Could John Gulliver be that man?

  Her long, pale lashes fluttered down to rest against the upper rise of her flushed cheeks. The masculine visage that filled her mind was very different from the one she’d conjured up with such foolish vividness a few moments ago.

  The hair was no longer glossily dark and fashionably long. It was now heavily brindled with gray and neatly barbered around the ears and at the nape.

  Matinee-idol handsomeness had given way to features that were harshly hewn and angularly irregular, yet compelling in their masculine integrity. They were also irreparably scarred.

  One of the hands that had caressed her earlier in the evening had been disfigured, too, she remembered with a pang. But the sensations that hand had evoked had been so poignantly beautiful, it had seemed unblemished and whole.

  Leigh opened her eyes once again, her breathing shallow and unsteady. Gazing at her reflection, she stroked her right hand downward from her breasts. Pregnancy had softened her oncetaut figure in a way that no amount of exercise or dieting could fully undo. It had also marred the skin of her hips and stomach with silvery striations.

  Her fingertips brushed the elasticized waistband of her panties. She traced the top edge of the garment with her nails for a few tremulous seconds, then slipped her hand beneath it. Her palm felt very warm.

  A moment later she touched herself through the fine golden fleece that clustered at the juncture of her pale thighs. A voluptuous heat suffused her, rushing through her veins, inundating her already primed senses.

  She touched herself again. Something deep within her clenched as she stroked the slick, folded flesh that marked the portal of the passage to her feminine core. Her body spasmed in shockingly potent response.

  So long, she thought, arching into the sensation. It had been so…long.

  A single-syllable name teetered on the tip of her tongue, then broke from her lips. The name wasn’t Nick.

  Outside, the wind continued to howl—a cruel reminder of how unwise it could be to consider oneself safe in a fundamentally insecure world.

  Downstairs, the man Leigh McKay had recognized at some inexplicable level the first time her eyes had met his, slept. And as he did so, he dreamed of the woman reflected in the cheval glass.

  Hundreds of miles away, Anthony Stone lay in a cell fantasizing about his possession of Suzanne Whitney and the murder of Nicholas Marchand.

  Chapter 7

  The feeling of being stared at summoned John Gulliver out of an intensely sensual paradise early the next morning. Although the transition from blissful oblivion to full awareness was an instantaneous one, he opted to pretend he was still asleep. The decision to do so was instinctive. Until he knew for certain who was scrutinizing him and why—

  “John?”

  It was Andy. His little boy, Andy.

  “John?” The repetition of his name was hushed but penetrating and accompanied by a kittenish puff of breath. A second or two later something—a finger? the handle of a tacky plastic tomahawk?—nudged his right shoulder. “Are you still asleep?”

  John opened his eyes with melodramatic suddenness. His son, who was practically nose-to-nose with him, gave a yelp of surprise and jerked back. The feather-decorated war club he’d had clutched in his left hand slipped from his grasp and hit the floor.

  “Yes,” he replied in a grave monotone, closing his mind to the heaviness in his groin. “I’m still asleep.”

  Andy stared at him for a moment, his eyes round with shock. Then he started to giggle. The sound was a tad shaky at first, but quickly steadied into genuine merriment.

  “No, you’re not,” he contradicted, his tender features acquiring a smug, you-can’t-fool-me cast. “You’re awake!”

  “How can you be so sure?” John challenged, willing himself not to shift his position. He wasn’t certain how his sexually charged body would react to movement.

  “Because—” there was more fizzy laughter “—you’re talking!”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of people talking in their sleep?”

  The giggling stopped. Andy blinked several times, obviously thrown by this inquiry. Finally he conceded, “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Maybe that’s what I’m doing.”

  Andy chewed on his lower lip, considering. Whether the mannerism was inherited or acquired through unconscious imitation, it reminded John very strongly of Leigh. Where was she? he wondered. He didn’t sense her presence in the room. Perhaps she was still upstairs—

  “Nuh-uh,” the little boy interrupted his speculation. The tone of the assertion was very definite. “You can’t be. Cuz people who talk in their sleep don’t have conber—um—conber-say-shins.”

  John was amused by the mispronunciation but proud that Andy had attempted such a sophisticated word in the proper context. “Is that what I’m doing?” he countered. “Having a conversation?”

  “Yep.” Andy gave an emphatic nod. “With me.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Totally sure!”

  “Well…”
He paused, manufacturing a sigh of resignation. “I guess that must mean I’m not talking in my sleep.”

  “It means you’re awake!” Andy bent to pick up his tomahawk, then fixed John with a pointed look. “Just like I telled you already.”

  “Pretty smart, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” The acknowledgment was endearingly matter-offact. Andy punctuated it by scratching the tip of his faintly freckled nose with the edge of the tomahawk’s plastic head. “Mommy says I’m ‘ceptional. I heard her. Did she ask you to sleep over?”

  “Sort…of.”

  “Huh?”

  Deciding he was going to have to risk embarrassing himself, John tossed back the eiderdown coverlet Leigh had given him the previous evening and sat up. He shivered, his nearly-naked body protesting the sudden exposure to the room’s cool air. He didn’t dare glance down to check his below-the-belt reaction to the chill. “My car wouldn’t start and I couldn’t go back to my hotel.”

  “Oh.” Andy seemed perfectly content with this explanation. “Well, she’s still sleepin’. Mommy, I mean. I opened her door a little before I came downstairs and tippy-toed over to her bed, really quiet. I think she was havin’ a nice dream. Her face looked all soft and she was smilin’.”

  A vision of a smiling-in-her-sleep Leigh McKay blossomed in John’s highly suggestible mind. He did his damnedest to root it out. Surging to his feet, he reached for the pair of trousers he’d draped over the back of the sofa before he’d bedded down for the night. He donned the garment swiftly, turning away from Andy in the interests of modesty as he did so. He then pivoted back to face his son. He was startled to find himself the target of an unblinking, blue-gray stare.