The Bridal Chronicles

by Lissa Manley

  A long, agonizing second later, his mouth gently brushed hers, once, twice and then he pressed down and settled his lips over hers.

  Oh, yes! His lips were firm but soft and so, so warm. His minty breath washed over her and she sighed in delight, opening her mouth slightly.

  He groaned under his breath and slanted his mouth on hers, deepening the kiss, touching her lower lip with his tongue. Shocked by the deep, searing pleasure overtaking her, she tentatively darted her tongue out, wanting to experience every facet of his wonderful kiss.

  His tongue touched hers and she thought she would combust on the spot. Pleasure and a profound, yet strange sense of rightness mixed inside of her, making it impossible to think about anything but wanting him closer, and then closer still.

  She fisted her hands around his tux jacket. On a whimper she opened her mouth and pressed nearer, hazily thinking in the back of her stupefied brain that she had suddenly found something rare and wonderful.

  Loud applause jerked her back to reality. She dazedly yanked back from Ryan, breathing like she’d run a marathon, and looked up at him. He was breathing heavily, too. Good heavens, he looked like their kiss had been as exciting and as earth-shattering to him as it had been to her!

  Not very likely. Mr. Cool affected by a mere kiss?

  She took a shaky step away, shocked by how easily she’d lost control. This was a show, for pity sake, not real.

  What did the fact that this was just a show have to do with it? Would her response to his kiss be less shocking if the kiss had been real? A mind-exploding kiss was a mind-exploding kiss no matter how she looked at it. At least she could rest assured she wouldn’t be kissing him again.

  That was a good thing, right?

  As she scrambled around in her suddenly uncooperative mind, trying to scrounge up an acceptable answer to her mental question, the minister said something. Ryan took her hand and tugged her back down the runway. The crowd clapped and Anna walked along next to Ryan in a cloudy haze.

  Ryan led her back onstage. She followed him on shaky legs as he made his way backstage. People involved in the show congratulated them and thanked them as they passed by. Thankfully, the reporter she’d noticed earlier wasn’t around.

  He jerked open the first door he encountered and led her through. Luckily it was an unoccupied dressing room.

  He slammed the door behind them, and before she could utter a word, he took her shoulders and gently pushed her against the wall. Surprised, Anna looked up at him, her stomach fluttering.

  He stared down at her, his blue eyes burning with a strange yet thrilling light, and her heart began thundering again. He took a deep breath, clenched his hard jaw, looked at her mouth, then muttered, “Ah, what the hell,” before he flipped up her veil.

  And then he bent his head and kissed her again.

  And she kissed him back. With everything in her.

  The kiss was rougher than the first, but just as exciting, maybe more so. His mouth expertly plied hers open and his tongue swept inside.

  Firecrackers exploded inside of her, hot and bright, showering her body with fiery sparks, creating an ache deep within her.

  And the sense of rightness she’d felt during the first kiss came back with a vengeance.

  His hands slid from her shoulders around to her back to gather her near, and she went eagerly, needing to burrow as close as she could. She loved the feel of his big, hard body against hers and she adored his mouth on hers, kissing her hard and deep.

  He lifted his head and trailed kisses along her jaw to her ear. His rough chin rubbed delightfully against her cheek. “Anna, sweetheart, God you smell good,” he rasped in her ear, sending hot tingles down her spine.

  His words stoked the blaze in her, turning her already singed insides into pure, molten fire. Just when she thought she would burn up from the inside out, he abruptly jerked away.

  Her rubbery legs almost gave out. She pressed her hands back against the wall to steady herself.

  He drew in a heavy, ragged breath. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

  Even though she was still reeling from his kiss, and the hot, wonderful way it had made her feel, a shaft of disappointment traveled through her jumbled emotions to poke at her. “You’re sorry you kissed me?” she managed to say.

  “Hell, no,” he said, swiping a hand over his face. He looked at the ceiling and shook his head. “I’m not sorry I kissed you. I’m sorry I… came after you like that. But I had to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “If it was a fluke.”

  “A fluke?” She sounded like a parrot.

  “I had to know if the first kiss was a fluke.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. After the two world-altering kisses they’d shared, why did he have to ask the question? Maybe he was as rattled as she was. The last thing she’d expected to discover today was that Ryan’s arms felt like a safe, heavenly place.

  She met his intense ocean-blue gaze. Electricity jumped through the air. He shook his head.

  “It wasn’t,” he said at the same time she did.

  So. They were on the same wavelength. Both of them realized that their kisses weren’t any kind of odd coincidence.

  He spun on his heel, his mouth thinning, and walked away.

  Okay. So he didn’t look very happy about their realization. She understood that. She wasn’t overjoyed by how much she liked—loved—his kisses, either. She didn’t want to like anything about Ryan. She’d never wanted that.

  But there it was. The cold, hard truth. Though she’d been fighting it ever since she’d first seen him, though she feared she was stumbling into another mistake, she couldn’t ignore what was now obvious.

  She was falling for Ryan Cavanaugh.

  She sagged back against the wall and pressed a hand to her forehead, wondering when she’d forgotten how important it was to keep her guard up around an exciting man like him.

  The stunned, disbelieving look on Anna’s face rubbed Ryan the wrong way.

  Which was stupid, really. It shouldn’t mean anything to him one way or another how upset she was about their burn-him-up-from-the-inside kisses not being a fluke. But he always tried not to lie to himself, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  Her incredulity bugged the hell out of him.

  But damn if he didn’t understand so well why she was upset. He felt exactly the same way. Stunned. Disbelieving. Floored by how much her kisses affected him. As though his blood had been replaced by fire. As though he’d never known lips so soft and compelling. As though he’d found something rare and special.

  He paced away, suppressing a snort. After Sonya’s betrayal, he wouldn’t let any woman ever be special again.

  But obviously he was attracted to Anna. No surprise there. She was beautiful and strong and down-to-earth and normal and he enjoyed spending time with her. He admired how determined she was to make her business a success.

  And he was tired of fighting his attraction. Damn tired. This… feeling was nothing but old-fashioned lust. Maybe he just needed to spend some time with her to get her out of his system.

  He walked back toward her. “You want some dinner?” he asked her, not wanting to waste any time dealing with—and getting rid of—his lust.

  She blinked twice. “You want to eat now? Again? You’re a bottomless pit.”

  He shrugged, unwilling to share exactly why her assessment was correct. His poverty-ridden past wasn’t something he liked to admit to. “Sure. Why don’t we go back to my place and I’ll make something.”

  “You cook?”

  “On the grill. How do some grilled veggies and disgusting protein substitute sound?”

  She smiled. “You mean tofu.”

  “Yeah.” He made a face. “That staff.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, and he figured she was probably trying to decide whether to risk spending more time with him. It wasn’t too hard to see that she was just as upset by her attraction to him as he was by his to h
er.

  His chest tightened when he thought about that, but he ignored the tugging sensation.

  “Are you going to kiss me again?” she asked in a small voice.

  I’d like to kiss you all over. His thought lit fires all over his body. He took off his jacket. “Maybe. Is that a bad thing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His sentiments exactly. “Let’s just see how things go, all right? I won’t kiss you unless you want me to.”

  That didn’t seem to reassure her. She walked away then paced back, clenching her hands the whole way. “All right,” she finally said. “But it’s just dinner. Okay?”

  Surprised—and pleased—by her agreement, he said, “Fine with me. Dinner is all I’m interested in.” He smiled, ignoring the tiny voice in the back of his brain shouting “liar!”

  She smiled back. Sort of. “Good.”

  Somewhere deep inside of him, in a place he didn’t go very often, he was afraid he wanted much more from Anna than just one dinner.

  But he wouldn’t let himself think about that. Once he spent some time with her and proved to himself that his attraction was just simple lust, he could deal with it and move on.

  Because he had to move on. Sonya’s cruel betrayal had made sure that he’d never stay put romantically for long.

  It didn’t take much time for Anna to figure out that Ryan drove like a madman. An in-control, expert-driver kind of madman, but a madman just the same.

  He used every bit of considerable horsepower under the hood of his Porsche when he drove from the small market they’d stopped at for dinner supplies to his residence. On more than one occasion, she found herself gripping the granny handle on her door, wishing he would slow down. But, of course, he didn’t, and she wasn’t surprised. He was the kind of guy who would actually go bungee-jumping for publicity, for goodness sakes. No way was he going to drive his high-octane sports car like a little old lady.

  He took a tight curve and the car stuck like glue to the road. The engine revved when he gunned it to accelerate out of the curve. Her stomach, already in knots because of how nervous she was to be alone with him, slid into a tighter bundle.

  Ryan downshifted and came to a quick stop in front of a stoplight. He threw her a smile, showing his devastating dimples. “You okay?” He must have noticed her white-knuckling the door handle.

  She swallowed, sucked in a breath, and tried to return his smile. “Of course.” She wished she had driven her car to the Bridal Show instead of allowing Ryan to pick her up. That way she would have been able to follow him in her own car instead of having to ride with a Mario Andretti clone whose smile snatched away her sanity like a wily thief.

  He reached over and put his hand on her knee and gently squeezed.

  She jumped.

  His hand lingered, burning a hole straight to her skin through the jeans she’d changed into. “Is my driving making you nervous?” He returned his hand to the steering wheel when the light changed. He accelerated quickly, shifting gears like a pro.

  Everything about you makes me nervous.

  “No,” she automatically answered in a too-high voice, too distracted by the warm spot his hand had left on her knee. Why, oh why, had she ever agreed to this?

  When she thought about it, the reason was obvious. She’d agreed to have dinner with Ryan because she was out and out fascinated by him. She wished she wasn’t, but his skin-tingling, blow-up-her-heart, heavenly kisses had revealed her true feelings.

  And she couldn’t ignore that Ryan seemed to be remarkably concerned about her. He’d offered her an out before the ceremony and he’d reassured her during the ceremony when she’d wanted to bolt.

  She sensed something special underneath Ryan’s flash and charisma, something that controlled her like the moon did the tides.

  She was drawn to him. Tonight would be an excellent opportunity to discover why. As long as she was cautious, everything would be fine. Maybe then she could sort out her feelings for him once and for all.

  Maybe then she could tell him the truth about who she really was, a glaring omission that was starting to eat away at her.

  Here goes nothing, she thought.

  Or everything.

  Chapter Eight

  Anna took a deep, calming breath and stepped through the door to Ryan’s twentieth floor luxury apartment, her straw tote bag in her hand. Before she had a chance to look around, a black, curly thing came skittering across the polished tile entry and hurled itself at her legs, jumping up and down like a spring masquerading as a dog.

  “You have a dog?” she exclaimed, enthralled by the small bundle of fur. She put her bag down and bent down to pet the mutt, who put its paws on her knees and wagged its tail, its hind end moving from side to side with every wag. The fur on its head felt like soft wool.

  “Max, down,” Ryan commanded. “Sit.”

  Max ignored the command and remained where he was, his stubby tail wagging, his small body wiggling around in glee as Anna rubbed behind his soft little ears.

  Max whined and then stood on his hind legs, pawed the air and barked.

  Ryan’s face softened. He smiled, shoved his keys into his pocket and set the groceries on the floor. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I like it when she touches me, too.” He knelt on the floor and Max sprang into his arms with a hearty yip.

  Ryan’s statement sent pleasure rocketing through Anna. Grinning, she watched Ryan smother Max with attention, rubbing the dog’s back and ears with his big hands. “You like that, don’tcha, girl, oh yes, you do,” he murmured.

  Anna ignored the yearning to have Ryan’s hands on her like they were on Max and focused on the fact that Max had turned out to be a girl instead of a boy.

  “I thought she was a he,” she said.

  “Most people make that mistake. Max is short for Maxine. Isn’t it, honey,” he purred, looking down at Max. With Max still in his arms soaking up all of his attention with a thoroughly blissful look on her little doggy face, Ryan stood.

  He showered the small bundle of fur with love, and Anna’s heart contracted, then expanded until it felt like it was much too big for her chest. To take her mind off of the tightness inside of her, she looked around his apartment.

  Straight through the spacious entryway was the living room. A hall led left, probably to the bedrooms, and another led right, where she could see part of the kitchen.

  She moved into the living room, stepping onto plush, cream-colored carpet that looked like it had never been walked on. She was surprised to see only three pieces of furniture in the room—a huge, dark leather couch and love seat combination and a big screen TV. A large, ornate glass and marble fireplace dominated the other end of the room. A sea of empty space separated one end of the room from the other.

  That was it. There was no other furniture, no accessories and no artwork on the walls. Just an almost bare, impersonal room.

  He came up behind her. “I haven’t had time to decorate,” he said, a note of defensiveness in his voice.

  She slid him a speculative glance. “You have time to take care of a dog, but not to decorate?”

  “Max is my neighbor’s dog. I’m just taking care of her for a few days, right, Maxi?” He scruffed Max’s head. “Speaking of which, I need to take her out. Do you want to come with or stay here?”

  “I’ll stay here,” she replied quickly. She needed time to regroup.

  Ryan nodded. “Feel free to look around,” he said, moving back toward the front door. He grabbed a leash hanging on a hook by the door and carried Max out.

  Feeling like she could breathe a little easier with Ryan gone, she looked out the wall of windows, admiring what little she could see of the city, shrouded in gray, misty clouds, then she turned and headed in the direction of the kitchen. She didn’t intend on venturing down the hallway toward Ryan’s bedroom.

  Ryan’s bedroom.

  A hot flash of fire snaked its way into her stomach and she tried to ignore it. She intended to be cautious
and sane tonight, and cautious and sane definitely didn’t include Ryan’s bed in any way, shape or form.

  Refocusing her attention on exploring the safe parts of his home, she walked under an arched doorway, through the empty dining room to the family room/kitchen area. The kitchen on the right consisted of lots of modern, chrome-accented appliances. A huge granite island, complete with cooktop, dominated much of the floor space there. An eating area, devoid of a table, occupied one wall.

  Strangely, every surface was bare. The room was stark and plain, with no homey touches or decoration. How often did he actually eat here? The kitchen looked like it hadn’t ever been used.

  She moved into the adjoining family room. The far wall held large, built-in bookcases, which boasted another large TV, a few stacks of books and magazines, and not much else. One lone couch, upholstered in a functional plaid print, sat across from the TV. A dark wooden coffee table strewn with magazines was the only sign she’d seen, apart from Max, that someone actually lived here. No plants. No decorations. No pictures or personalization of any kind.

  Her curiosity about Ryan exploded. Was he simply too busy, as he’d said, to decorate? Granted, he’d built a large business on his own. He probably was very busy. But this empty, sterile apartment seemed like more than just the home of a busy guy.

  It seemed empty. Lonely. Uncared for.

  A ribbon of sadness twisted through her. Ryan seemed so put-together and on top of the world, but his apartment, while obviously very luxurious, was devoid of anything attached to him. And that almost broke her heart. She wanted to fill his living space with warmth and flowers and things that he’d enjoy.

  Looking for a distraction to keep herself from thinking about how she’d warm up Ryan’s apartment, among other things, she glanced around and spied a lone, framed picture on one of the bookcase shelves. Curious about why Ryan would have only one picture in his entire house, or at least the parts she’d seen, she rose and walked to the bookcase and picked up the picture.

  A little boy of about five or six; with big, brown eyes and black hair stared back at her. He wasn’t smiling; in fact he looked kind of sad. The picture looked like a generic school photo, nothing like the fancy portraits her parents had always commissioned.