The Dream Wedding

by MJ Rodgers

  “Just to hold back the truth for a while. All I could think of was those forged checks in the hands of that accountant. With Natalie dead, I feared he would take them right to the police.”

  Rory directed his next statement to Briana. “You were in a coma, not expected to live. I went to Mama to explain about what I had done.”

  Rory shook his head, a look of wonder coming over his face. “I found her holding your hand, trying to talk you back to life. After all the humiliation Natalie had put her through, she still loved her. I couldn’t tell Mama that Natalie had found out about the checks and what she had planned to do. I just couldn’t tell Mama how rotten she was.”

  “So you let her believe I was Natalie,” Briana said.

  Rory nodded. “I hired a detective agency to find out about Briana Berry. I learned the only family she—you—had was a grandmother with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. I knew no one would be claiming your body or looking for recompense. Forgive me, but I was glad.”

  “Why?” Briana asked.

  “Because I could contact the insurance company representing the boutique and make them a deal they couldn’t refuse.”

  “Which was?” Michael asked.

  “That they pick up all Natalie Newcastle’s medical bills, throw in a hundred thousand for pain and suffering, and kill any follow-up news stories that named the victims. I told them I’d have Briana Berry cremated and notify the nursing home of her death. And that would be the end of the matter. They jumped at the deal. Like I knew they would. I let them off dirt cheap.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I needed money quick. And who could it hurt? Natalie was dead. The doctors had no hope for you.”

  “Why did you make that stipulation about the news stories?”

  “I didn’t want it to be known that Natalie was in an accident. If her accountant heard, the next part of the plan wouldn’t work.”

  “What was the next part of the plan?” Briana asked.

  “To cover the checks my mama forged, of course.”

  “And how did you do that?”

  “I cashed the check I got from the insurance company and sent a typed note from Natalie to the accountant, along with enough money to cover Mama’s forged checks, plus ten percent. In the typed note I told the accountant that Natalie had found the forger, gotten reimbursement, along with an apology, and was now satisfied to let the matter drop.”

  “What did the accountant do?”

  “He sent back the checks he had verified as forged, along with a note saying he was glad the matter could be settled out of court. And that was that. He never mentioned it again.”

  “But your whole plan was based on my subsequent death.”

  “Yes. When the doctor called Mama and me in the middle of the night to tell us you were not only recovering but had regained consciousness, I thought I’d have to admit everything and go to jail. I was prepared to say I forged the checks. When we arrived at the hospital to find you had amnesia, I sighed with relief. Mama promised you she’d help you rebuild your life as Natalie. For all our sakes, I hoped she would.”

  “Still, you had to be worried that I might remember who I really was. That’s why you told Carlie a story about Natalie thinking she was the orphan, Briana Berry, being raised by her Grandmother Hazel Doud.”

  “Yes. I made up that story and told it to Mama in those first anxious days when I didn’t know whether you would regain your memory. Only I told Mama that it was something I had learned when Natalie was ten and I went to her birthday party.”

  “So you did see Natalie then?”

  “Mama had to stay in the gardener’s truck, for fear of being recognized by the servants. She could only catch a glimpse of Natalie. I just joined the other kids. I was so excited to meet my beautiful older sister. Mama had talked so lovingly of her. What a joke. When I said hello to Natalie, she threw cake in my face and called me a dirty name. I walked away from her that day, never having told her I was her brother. When I met her again, seventeen years later, she hadn’t changed.”

  Rory stopped and looked directly at Briana. “We took you to the best plastic surgeon in the world, and he reconstructed your face into Natalie’s flawless features. But when you smiled out of that face, you made it lovely to look at for the first time.”

  Rory’s eyes broke away from Briana’s face to stare down at his hands, hanging loose by his sides.

  “You were so damned nice. Mama wanted to believe it was the near-death experience that changed Natalie into the warm, loving, funny, generous daughter she had always wanted. You can’t blame her for fooling herself into believing what she wanted to.”

  “But you knew the servants would figure out Briana wasn’t the real Natalie,” Michael said.

  Rory nodded at him. “The housekeeper had been around nasty Natalie since her birth. She certainly would have had trouble accepting such a complete personality metamorphosis. That’s why I came home from Europe a few days earlier than Mama and got rid of the old servants and any pictures of the old Natalie.”

  “Because the real Natalie Newcastle’s eyes didn’t change color like mine?” Briana asked.

  “Yes,” Rory said. “Mama wanted you to be Natalie so bad, she convinced herself that Natalie had been dyeing her hair all along and that her eyes had always changed color. But I knew others would be more logical and skeptical.”

  He stopped, took a deep breath. “I know what I did wasn’t legal. But I didn’t do it for myself. I did it for my mama. And it all worked out for the best, don’t you see?”

  “Worked out for the best?” Briana said. “Rory, you denied me my identity. My life.”

  “What life? You were a plain, poverty-stricken struggling architect. Your only family was a grandmother who was so mentally gone she didn’t even recognize you anymore. I gave you Natalie Newcastle’s beauty and wealth! And a mama who loved you like her own. And a brother who—You were happy with us as Natalie. I swear you were.”

  “And would I have been happy as Sheldon Ayton’s wife?”

  “Mama didn’t know who he was when she pushed you into marrying him. When I returned from seeing you in Louisiana, I told her about his detectives, his spying. She understands now.”

  Rory stepped toward Briana, extending his hand, a hopeful shine in his dark eyes.

  “You don’t have to stop being Natalie,” he said. “You can divorce Ayton. Come home with Mama and me. The money is all yours. You can have any kind of life you wish. Don’t you see? No one need ever know the truth.”

  “I’d know the truth, Rory,” she said.

  Briana signaled to Michael and turned to go.

  Carlie’s voice rose anxiously behind her. “Don’t go! Please!”

  Briana stopped, half turned. “Carlie, you can’t possibly be willing to go along with this charade now that you know I’m not your daughter?”

  Tears trickled down the older woman’s cheeks. “I lost my daughter when she was just a babe. You gave her back to me. The love I have felt for you—the love you have shown to me and Rory—was no charade.”

  Briana walked over to Carlie and put her arms around her.

  “You’re right. I don’t remember our time together, Carlie, but my heart sure seems to. Thank you for taking care of me, and for caring for me.”

  Then Briana quickly released Carlie and walked out the open door, before she could be tempted to stay.

  BRIANA HUNG UP THE PHONE at the institute an hour later and turned to Michael.

  “According to Natalie’s lawyer, she never made out a will.”

  “Which means her estate would have automatically gone to her mother. As it will now.”

  Briana nodded. “I’m going to tell the authorities that this was all just a case of mistaken identity, that no one knew I wasn’t Natalie until I suddenly remembered my life as Briana Berry on Christmas Eve.”

  “You want to keep quiet about the fact that Carlie forged the checks and Rory switched your identity with his d
ead sister?”

  “I don’t want to hurt them, Michael.”

  His eyes were steady on hers when he smiled. Then she watched him purposely turn away.

  “I’ve put in an official request for a copy of your old driver’s license record,” he said.

  Briana leaned her leg against the edge of his desk and watched him not watching her.

  “I’ve also sent a formal request to Dr. Chennault in Paris for your records while you were under his care,” Michael said. “Keith is going to get a court order for the accident victim’s records from Sunrise Hospital. Once we have everything in hand, we can go to the police and present them with the evidence of who you really are.”

  Briana’s attention wasn’t on his words—it was on him. The sun streamed through the windows to halo his head. It turned his tanned skin white-hot, the prominent muscles on his exposed forearms into mounds of gold dust.

  His deep blue eyes rose to hers. “Briana?”

  She scrambled for a response. “So you’re saying I’ll soon be back to being me.”

  “You always were you,” Michael said. “Your personality didn’t change during the time you believed yourself to be Natalie. Everything we’ve heard from everyone proves that. You never acted like the mean, vindictive person she was. You remained yourself, warm, sweet, loving—”

  Michael caught himself, just not quite in time. He cursed silently as he feigned a cough to give himself some cover. It was so unlike him to make such a mindless mistake. He blamed the far too many sleepless nights fighting his dreams. Of her. He was a man who needed his dreams.

  He was a man who needed the woman looking up at him now with eyes that he’d recognize anywhere—on any face.

  Of all the women in the world, he had fallen for precisely the one he must not.

  He couldn’t believe it could happen this way—without conscious thought or intent or action, without a lick of control. A week ago, he would have bet anything that it was impossible.

  He would have lost that bet.

  Something had happened to him that night Briana Berry awakened in his arms.

  He didn’t even know precisely what it was. He only knew that when her beautiful, crystalline eyes opened, whatever poured out of them had poured right into his soul.

  Briana’s heart was thudding hard. He had called her warm, sweet, loving. And from the sound in his voice, the warmth of his rich blue eyes, she knew he had meant it.

  And it had been so marvelously unprofessional.

  She could not believe how incredibly giddy and weak she felt hugging that knowledge to her. Michael had seen her face, her real face, and he had seen her in it.

  He had seen who she was inside. And he was attracted to who she was.

  But he hadn’t wanted her to know. That was obvious. As was the reason. He had no intention of doing anything about it. The small slip of the tongue was all that superb control of his would allow.

  He was still on the other side of that line he had drawn between them. He still had no intention of crossing it.

  “There are your missing memories of the last three years to reclaim, of course,” Michael said, looking away from her as he made a heroic effort to keep an even tone. He suddenly realized his hands were shaking, and shoved them into his pockets.

  “With the holidays coming to a close, you’ll soon be able to take your pick of a number of very good psychiatrists who can help you to—”

  Briana moved to him, standing at the edge of his breath, before she gave any thought to what she was doing. “Michael, I don’t want anyone but you.”

  His balsam scent was rich and drugging. His heart was racing right next to hers. Her breasts were nudging his chest, her arms circling his neck, her lips seeking the smooth, firm contours of his, before a second of sanity could intrude to stop her.

  It was a hungry kiss, wild, slightly off center, filled with a dizzying need that she barely understood and could not control.

  She felt his instant shock, the stiff amazement that hardened his chest and shoulders into a solid brick wall. She tasted panic, and the delectable smoky heat of desire, on his lips before he tore his mouth from hers.

  “Briana, please, listen—”

  He was pleading for mercy, and she knew it. She did not feel merciful. She felt achy and wanting and way past the point of turning back.

  His voice rose in a desperate attempt to sound formal and firm. “Briana, the affection you’re feeling for me is called transference. It isn’t real. It won’t last. It happens quite frequently when a doctor and patient work closely together—”

  “Michael, we’ve just proved I’m perfectly sane, so I never really needed a doctor. You’ve refused to take a dime from me, so that means I’ve never officially been your patient”

  She could feel the tension in his straining muscles, hear the unevenness of his voice. “Briana, whether you needed a doctor or not does not mitigate the fact that I have been performing as one with you. And as your doctor, I must not—”

  “Michael, I didn’t fall in love with the doctor in you. I’ve fallen in love with the man. And just for the record, I’ve been wanting to make love to you since the moment I first awoke to your kiss, before I even knew who you were or what you did for a living.”

  She leaned forward to nip his earlobe lightly with her teeth, and felt the erratic hammering of his heart against her own.

  “So if you don’t want me, Michael, you’re just going to have to come up with a better argument—and fast.”

  Michael knew he was fighting a battle he couldn’t win— nor did he want to. He let out a sound that might have been a sigh of defeat or triumph, or simply a laugh. And then he closed his arms around her and crushed her to him, abruptly and forcefully taking the initiative from her.

  Briana’s lips parted, exultation driving through her at the fierce demand of his kiss. His mouth was hot and hard and heaven, and his arms were like branding irons around her. He picked her up as though she weighed nothing and set her on his desk. She wrapped her legs wide around his muscled thighs, her breath already ragged, she was so ravenous for him She prayed he would understand that she had no time to waste on buttons and zippers and soft words.

  The blood sung through her veins as his mouth and hands claimed her. She vibrated in harmony with his every caress, totally tuned in to the greedy pleasure of his possession. His tongue licked a trail of molten lava down to her neck as his eager hands pulled open her blouse to expose her breasts. She arched her back, and his thumbs flicked her nipples into pebble points.

  When his mouth replaced his thumb, a whimper broke through her lips as a spear of sharp desire pierced her womb.

  His hand traveled down the length of her body to the hem of her skirt and then dipped underneath to trail up the inside of her thighs, leaving a path of fire in its wake. When he reached the satin of her panties, he slipped inside.

  His intimate touch was firm and focused.

  She pulsed in a rich, trembling pleasure beneath the perfect rhythm of his long, hard fingers. His mouth continued to lave her breasts, teasing her nipples as his fingers teased the core of her desire.

  She was so wet, so ready. Surely, if Michael didn’t take her now, she would go insane. With need.

  Please.

  She hadn’t said it aloud, and yet somehow he seemed to have heard. He plunged inside her, deep and hard, a happy tortured sound tearing through his throat

  She cried out as she came, so full, so fast, it lifted her into an incredible intensity of feeling that seared through her mind in black fire and a cascade of icy white stars.

  And he was right there with her.

  It seemed a long while later before her thoughts began to return. And then they were mere feathers falling back to earth.

  She became aware that her head lay on his shoulder. That she was totally wrapped in his arms as he was in hers. That the wisps of clothing that remained between them were soaked. That the desk was slightly hard beneath her bare derner
e. She didn’t care.

  “Briana,” he said, and his voice held a tone of wonder. “Do you know what torture it’s been for me not being able to touch you?”

  She sighed in pure pleasure at his words. For she had no doubt now that all along he had wanted this—that he had wanted her. And every cell in her body was pulsating with happiness at the thought.

  “This can’t be comfortable for you,” he said solicitously from somewhere behind her ear.

  “Are you kidding? I want to be buried this way.”

  He chuckled as he kissed the top of her head.

  “So, Michael, I suppose this transference thing means that I’m going to have to worry about all of your clients falling in love with you?”

  He leaned back to look at her, and the warmth of his smile made her heart stumble to a stop.

  A twinkle of mischief in the blue of his eyes belied his somber tone. “I think you’ll find that most of the men will restrain themselves.”

  Her chuckle ended in a sigh as his hands moved up her neck and his fingers massaged her nape and scalp. He knew exactly where to touch, and just how much soothing pressure to apply. And all the while his hands worked their magic, he feathered gentle kisses at every pulse point in her neck and throat.

  She closed her eyes, sinking farther into the warm, afterglow of his intimate, mind-melting touch.

  “I never realized how great it would be to make love with a man who knows so much about anatomy.”

  “I’m going to burn in psychiatric hell for this,” Michael said, but he chuckled against her ear.

  “I didn’t know psychiatrists have a hell all to themselves. Your touch is absolutely incendiary. When I come visit, I’ll bring you some ice water.”

  His laugh ended with his mouth on hers. It was a tender kiss this time, but it had a growing insistence behind it. And, incredibly, she felt the heat once more gathering inside her, humming through her blood. She was never going to get enough of this. She was never going to get enough of him.

  Then the telephone rang, and he grunted an annoyed oath as he drew out of the kiss. “That’s my private line. It’s only used for emergencies. I can’t ignore it, Briana.”