Almost To The Altar

by Neesa Hart

  She slid her sodden penny loafers off to wriggle her toes in the comforting heat along the floorboards. Yes, she’d been a fool not to anticipate this possible confrontation. Worse, she’d underestimated the effect he’d have on her. Ten years should have been enough to diminish the way his presence sharpened her awareness, the way he made her flesh feel sensitive beneath her clothes, the way her blood ran hot and the pulse pounded in her throat at the sight of him. But it hadn’t. The sensations were just as acute as she remembered, and, judging from the way his knuckles had turned white from his grip on the steering wheel, he wasn’t exactly immune to her, either.

  She found satisfaction in that, but the more she considered his attitude, the more she allowed aggravation to help conquer the unsettling experience of seeing him again. No matter what his opinion of her, Wil Larsen had no right to treat her as if she had the plague. His disapproval crowded in on her like a palpable thing in the close confines of the truck. It was no surprise that she found she resented it as much today as she had ten years before. So why did the sight of his muscled thighs encased in grease-stained jeans raise unwanted goose bumps on her forearms?

  Frustrated with herself for reacting to him, she jerked the elastic band from her thick braid, so that she could work the tangles from her hair. She’d put Wil, and his memory, behind her, where they belonged. If she kept her head about it, once she made it through today, she could again close the door on that part of her life.

  Wil stared at the road as his mind raced in a thousand different directions. His father must have known. He had to have known. Despite the fact that Jan hadn’t met with her face-to-face in the two months since she’d hired them, there was simply no way he hadn’t been aware of who she was. His father might be getting older, but he was sharper than most men half his age.

  She continued to play with her hair. Wil resisted the urge to watch as her fingers combed through the dark waves. He was concentrating so hard on not looking at her that his heart nearly skipped a beat when her arm brushed the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

  Nothing, it seemed, had changed. As always, the merest touch from her heated his blood.

  No woman on earth had ever had the power to affect him like Elsa. When he was a teenager, all he’d had to do was look at her and his pulse would shoot to the moon. By the time childish infatuation evolved into teenage tust, anything—a whiff of her perfume, a note stuck in his cap, even a thought of her—had made him rock-hard. For years, he’d waited for Elsa to quit looking at him as her older brother’s best friend—to see him, and not a substitute for Maks. Elsa was three years younger than he. It had taken longer for her teenage crush to blossom into the kind of very adult emotions he craved from her.

  To the day he died, he’d never forget the moment when he’d first seen the recognition in her eyes. She’d been twenty, home from college. He’d been twenty-three, ready to leave for graduate school in Boston. She’d been sitting on the fender of his Mustang, handing him tools as he tuned the engine. He’d requested a quarter-inch socket wrench. When she placed it in his hand, he’d glanced at her, only to find himself mesmerized by the way her storm-blue eyes were studying his hand. Breathless seconds had passed as he waited for her to meet his gaze. When she finally lifted her eyes to his, the look in them had all but sent him to his knees. Desire, mingled with a heart-stopping wonder, had chased away her childhood, and left in its place a woman’s wants, a woman’s needs.

  He’d waited too long, spent too many sleepless nights, waiting for that look. On impact, hunger had seized him. Nothing in the world could have prevented him from making love to Elsa that night. Warning bells had screamed in his brain, cautioning him that it was too soon for her, her awareness was too new, her desire too untested. His mind had known he should give her time, not rush her into accepting the feverish passion between them, but a searing urgency had forced every consideration aside. At that moment, he’d have sworn that he’d die if he didn’t have her.

  Elsa had fallen into his arms with an eagerness that lessened the guilt he felt for rushing her. With equal fervor, she’d torn at his clothes, pressed hot, needful kisses to his skin. The feel of her had fulfilled every fantasy he’d ever had, and awakened some he hadn’t even known existed. That night, she’d become the center of his world. When he was inside of her, he’d finally found the meaning of forever. Without her, he’d known, he’d never be complete again.

  And he’d spent years paying the price for losing control that night.

  With his body and his actions, he’d promised Elsa forever. When he made love to her, he’d given her a piece of himself, and taken a piece of her in return. Even if he wanted to, he could no more give her back what he possessed than he could claim what she now owned of him. It didn’t matter that he’d intended to marry her, didn’t matter that he’d told her he loved her. He’d made a commitment to her that night that had never been kept.

  And he’d spent ten years trying to pretend it didn’t matter.

  Unbidden, those images from the past skittered across his mind, creating a deep sense of panic as he struggled to find his balance in the face of her sudden reappearance in his life. He wasn’t ready to face Elsa, might never be ready, but fate, and what he suspected was his father’s interference, had tossed him over the threshold. Whether he liked it or not, he couldn’t run from the past any longer.

  Despite his better judgment, he stole a look at her. With her head bent, her damp hair trailing over her shoulder as she combed it with her fingers, she looked more than a little vulnerable. For ten years he’d fed his sense of betrayal by cultivating an image of Elsa as an invincible, selfcentered snob. That image was a hell of a lot safer for his peace of mind than the one she presented now. The woman who sat in his truck bore an unsettling resemblance to the one he’d been ready to sell his soul to possess.

  With a mental shake, he dragged his mind back to the present. Jan had known, all right, he decided, but not Elsa. He could feel her trembling beside him, knew she’d been as disconcerted as he when he met her in the parking lot. Evidently he wasn’t the only one who’d been kept in the dark. If she hadn’t known he’d gone back into business with his father, she probably didn’t know why. That thought calmed him. He clung to it as the storm of panic began to abate. If he could get through the afternoon without having to explain himself to her, he might just survive.

  The delicate scent of her perfume carried on the dry, heated air, effectively destroying his efforts to ignore her. Damn her to hell. Unless he missed his guess, she knew exactly what she was doing to him as she sat there and unmatted her hair. Unbidden, his gaze slid to her feet. As he’d expected, he found them bare, wet, and far too appealing. Elsa never had liked wearing shoes. It didn’t surprise him that she’d shed her loafers, but as long as he lived, he’d never know what was so sexy about a woman’s ankle. And hers were better than most.

  Those ankles were the first thing he’d noticed about her when he stopped seeing her as the pesky kid sister of his best friend. The day he finally realized that what he felt for her didn’t have a damned thing to do with brotherly love had been the beginning of the end for him. If his present reaction to her, the way his blood was running hot and his gut had tightened into an uncomfortable knot, was any indication, she hadn’t lost her touch. His wayward gaze found the spot where her skirt lay against her damp thigh. Soon, he promised himself, it would be over.

  Blissfully he saw the dark shape of a car just ahead on the highway. “That it?” he asked. He knew his voice sounded harsh, but couldn’t seem to help it. He was getting desperate to put some distance between them.

  Elsa nodded. “Yes.”

  He whipped the truck in a sharp U, then backed it quickly into position. “You want me to try and fix it here, or tow it?”

  “I don’t think you can fix it here. I think it needs a new fuel pump. Besides, I don’t think you should mess with it out in this storm. Why don’t we just take it somewhere dry?”

  He
didn’t question her diagnosis of the car. When things were different, he’d taught her all about engines. If she said it was the fuel pump, it probably was. “Fine.” He put the truck in park and fled into the rain, where finally he felt the air refilling his lungs, his heart began to beat a normal rhythm, and he could force the image of her—cold, trembling and tempting—from his mind. She reminded him of the mythical sirens who’d lured men to their death with the sound of their voices. All she had to do to lure him to destruction was climb into his truck, damp and smelling like violets.

  Elise huddled in the cab, mentally estimating how much more of this nightmare remained. With any luck, Wil would get the car to his father’s shop, she’d call Parker to come get her and she could be back on the road, back to her life, in less than an hour. She clung to that thought as if it were a lifeline.

  In the rearview mirror, she watched as he struggled in the rain to secure the car. There’d been a time when the sight of him, the warmth of his smile, the light in his eyes, was enough to send shivers of longing down her spine. Evidently things hadn’t changed as much as she’d thought. When she climbed into the truck, she’d been trembling from the cold. The chill that now left goose bumps on her skin had nothing to do with the temperature.

  Determined to think of anything but how the feel of him next to her in the truck had made her skin tingle, she found a clean-looking hand towel behind his seat. She used it to wring the bulk of the water from her hair, relying on the mundane task to take her mind from his troubling presence.

  By the time he climbed back into the truck, her hair was almost dry. He was soaked. Somehow, that gave her an added measure of confidence. With the dampened towel lying in her lap, she felt more in control than before. Even the cool look he gave her failed to elicit another round of shivers.

  “That’s an expensive car you’re driving these days,” he told her.

  She recognized the condemnation in his voice, contemplated not answering, then changed her mind. She’d done nothing wrong, and she saw no reason to let him bait her. “It’s not mine. It belongs to my fiancé.”

  She felt his gaze slide to her left hand. “I see.”

  Tension began to crowd in on her, knot her muscles and churn her stomach. “Wil, I don’t think we should talk about this.”

  The look he gave her could have frozen lava. He ignored her quiet plea. “You’re engaged to a man who drives an eighty-thousand-dollar sports car, you’re wearing a disgustingly enormous engagement ring, and you’ve been deceiving me for the last two months. Seems like ten years hasn’t changed you a whole lot.”

  At the snide taunt, she bristled. “I don’t know what you think you have to be so angry about, Wil, but I really don’t want to listen to this. I haven’t been deceiving anyone.” He slammed on the brakes so suddenly, she pitched forward in her seat. “What are you doing?”

  He jerked the tow truck back onto the shoulder and shoved the gear lever into park before turning to stare at her. With his arm stretched along the back of the seat, she felt pinned, caged, between him and the car door. “We might as well hash this out now, Elsa—or is it Elise, now?” When she didn’t answer, he leaned closer. “I don’t know what you’re up to, or what game my father is playing—”

  “There isn’t any game.”

  He ignored her. “But I don’t like being lied to, and I sure as hell don’t like being manipulated.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If Pop decided this was a good idea—”

  Tired of feeling intimidated, she held up her hand. “Stop it. Whatever you think is going on here, your father had nothing to do with it.”

  “Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “I just don’t think it’s going to do either of us any good to have another argument.”

  “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me just what the hell you’re doing here.”

  She glanced at the car attached to the back of the truck. Her long trek through the rain had been more than a little exhausting. She was perilously close to losing her temper. “You know what I’m doing here.”

  “Don’t split hairs with me, Elsa. That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “Wil—”

  “Since you seem to be having trouble grasping the concept, let me spell it out for you. I want to know why you’ve decided to drop back into our lives after ten years of not giving any of us the time of day.”

  The angry charge caught her off guard. “Drop back—?” she bit off the sentence with the self-reminder that she owed this man nothing. “That’s not what happened at all.”

  “No? When was the last time you spoke to your parents?”

  “Wil—”

  “Did you know your mother slipped on the ice over the winter and broke her hip? You didn’t, did you?”

  “I did. Nikkitoldme.”

  He ignored the reference to her brother. “Did you know your father’s business is growing so fast he had to add extra help? Did you happen to hear that when Nick got his promotion to detective they had a block party in his honor, at which you were conspicuously absent? Maybe you were so busy getting yourself engaged you missed the fact that your parents celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary without you.”

  When the tirade seemed to have ended, Elise straightened in her seat. No matter what he thought, she didn’t have to take this from him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t believe you haven’t discussed this with my parents, with your father.”

  “What were they going to tell me that I didn’t already know?”

  “You don’t know anything. All you know is what you’ve concocted in your mind.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, it’s a fact. You were never willing to listen to my side of this, so I just quit trying.”

  “Your side?” His eyes widened in disbelief. “You don’t have a side.”

  Stung, Elise struggled for control. From almost the day her relationship with her father ended, Wil had turned on her. At the time, it had hurt unbearably. Losing his love, on top of her father’s rejection, had been like a double wound. She’d loved him, and when he cast her aside, she’d been devastated. But she’d had ten years to come to terms with his rejection. And ten years to resent him for it. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  He frowned at her. “I’m the guy that used to care about you, remember? I’m one of the people you left in the dust when you decided you couldn’t stand being Elsa Krestyanov, the Russian kid from the ethnic neighborhood.”

  The anger in his voice stung her. Time had obviously done little to lessen his rage. Years ago, she’d tried to make him understand, tried to explain the situation to him, but he’d refused to listen then, and she knew from his palpable anger that he’d refuse now. “You’ve made a lot of decisions about me, and most of them are wrong. And if you want to know the truth, I just don’t have the energy to try and correct them.”

  When he leaned close enough to envelop her with his heat, she felt the familiar, unwanted quickening of her pulse. “Then let’s get one thing straight right now,” he said, his voice a lethal whisper. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing by involving my father in this, but you’ve hurt a lot of people, my people. Last time you breezed through our lives, I let sex get in the way of my better judgment. It’s not going to happen again. I’m not going to let you off as easily the second time.”

  The bitter accusation laid bare an old wound. “You have it all figured out, don’t you?” she asked, horrified when she heard the thready note of tears, dangerously close to the surface, in her voice. She would not cry in front of him.

  “All I know is that you left some pretty heavy-duty destruction in your wake. I didn’t know any better then, but I do now, and I’m not letting you get away with it.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she told him.

  She saw a flash of anger in his eyes. “You did a hell of a lot more than you think.”r />
  Staring at him, she felt the full measure of his bitterness, like a weight against her heart. How could decisions made in the innocence of youth lead to such turmoil? All she’d ever wanted was to build a better life, to have the kind of security her parents had never enjoyed. Once, she’d believed that Wil shared that vision, but he, too, had turned on her. When she was cast out of the inner circle of her family’s warmth, he’d been one of the first to lock the gates.

  Seeing him now, she wondered how the tender love they’d once shared could have become so tainted. There’d been a time when she would have given five years of her life for each moment with him, but his choices were made, as were hers, and the only thing left to do was face the consequences.

  With a heavy sigh, she turned to stare out the window, afraid he’d see the tears that lurked behind her eyes if she continued to hold his gaze. “Just tow the car, Wil,” she told him. “That’s all I want from you.”

  An hour later, Wil slammed shut the hood of the black Jaguar and met Elsa’s gaze across the roof of the car. “Yep,” he said. “Fuel pump.”

  A frown marred her forehead. Dry now, she looked less bedraggled, but no less unsettling, standing amid the relative clutter of the garage he operated with his father. She hadn’t spoken to him again since their argument in the truck, but had watched while he examined the car. Still, her soft hands, and soft hair and soft scent, worked their way into his consciousness. Too many unwanted memories crowded in at the feel of Elsa standing so close to his shoulder. Twice he’d turned his head and caught her staring at him. After the second time, she’d moved away from him to study the cream-colored 1928 Stutz he’d been restoring when she called.

  Now she looked at the black sports car as if it had somehow betrayed her trust by landing her in this position. “And you don’t have one in stock, do you?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s a specialty part.”

  Jan had returned from his errand at the salvage yard shortly after Wil left to fetch Elsa in the rain. When they towed her car into the garage, Elsa had fled to Jan’s welcoming smile. Unlike Wil, his father had greeted her with a warm embrace and a noticeable lack of antagonism, a fact that merely served to heighten Wil’s growing frustration. Now Jan came out of the back room. His blond hair, so like Wil’s own, had begun to thin on top, but even that didn’t hide the definitively youthful twinkle in his eyes, or the spring in his step.