Finally a Bride

by Sherryl Woods

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking of how this might look.” He reached for her hand, which was ice-cold. Impulsively, he brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “I’m serious, we can turn right around and stay at a motel out on the highway. We don’t even have to stay at the hotel here in town.”

  “That’s a little like closing the barn door after the horse has gone,” she observed dryly. “Obviously everyone already knows we cut the honeymoon short. They’ve been invited here to celebrate our return.”

  “Maybe they’ll just think Peg got it wrong.”

  “Yeah, right,” she said in a voice laden with skepticism. “Peg has been taking orders at the diner for thirty years without making a note. She’s never made a mistake. Do you honestly think anyone will believe she made a little error about something as important as our scheduled return from our honeymoon?” She shook her head. “No way. We’re just going to have to brazen it out.”

  Filled with self-loathing for having put her in this position, Luke regarded her worriedly. “Can you do that?”

  Katie’s chin rose a determined notch. “I’ll have to, won’t I?” She turned to him, eyes suddenly blazing with fury. “But when this little charade ends, Luke Cassidy, you’d better have some damned good answers ready or this could well be the shortest marriage on record in the entire state of South Carolina. In fact, I might very well go for an annulment.”

  Apparently assured that Luke understood the implication of that threat, she flung open the car door and exited with the regal demeanor of a queen going to greet her subjects. Luke was left to trail along in her wake and wonder if she would make good on the threat. He decided he’d better do something damned quick to better the odds against it. Tommy would have a heyday in court with news that his brief marriage had been annulled because it had never been consummated, to say nothing of the blow it would be to Luke’s ego to have the information bandied about.

  Just outside the door he captured Katie’s elbow and brought her to a halt. There was only one way he knew to keep Katie from blowing their charade, only one way he’d ever known to silence her—by kissing her senseless. Though he’d refrained from using the tactic thus far, he wasn’t above hauling it out whenever it suited his purposes. It most definitely suited him now.

  “Let’s make it look good, darlin’,” he said.

  Before she could offer a protest, he scooped her into his arms for the traditional trip across the threshold. While he was at it, he planted a slow, lingering kiss on lips that clearly had been about to shout a vehement protest. He suspected that only the fact that a cheer had gone up at the sight of their entrance kept Katie from landing her fist squarely against his nose.

  Luke discovered he rather liked holding Katie captive. It was the first moment since this entire debacle had begun that he truly felt like a newlywed. He sure as hell hadn’t felt like one while he’d been trying to sleep—alone—on that cramped sofa the night before. He decided he might as well take advantage of the moment and steal another kiss that Katie would otherwise deny him. No doubt he would pay for it later, but the way his pulse was bucking told him it would be worth the cost.

  As he shifted her in his arms to lower her slowly to her feet, he made very sure that Katie slid down his body until every square inch of him blazed as if it had been touched by the summer sun.

  When she would have made a dash for it, he cupped her cheeks in his hands and held her face perfectly still. Katie’s eyes widened as she watched him warily. Her lips parted, probably to form another vehement protest. But Luke swooped in to steal the words, sealing his mouth over hers, savoring the sweet taste.

  Katie’s entire body tensed for the space of a heartbeat, but if there was one thing Luke knew it was the nuances of a kiss. From that first possessive claiming, his lips turned gentle, persuasive.

  The coaxing worked. He knew the precise instant when Katie stopped fighting him and became an enthusiastic participant. Her skin heated. Her pulse skittered wildly. Her tongue tentatively sought out his.

  From gentle persuasion, the kiss quickly escalated into a dark, moist, mysterious invitation that had his blood roaring through his veins. Suddenly he wanted Katie upstairs, in his bed, under him. He wanted it with a desperation that stunned him.

  Staggered by this unexpected need to claim her, Luke forgot all about where they were and how the game had started. A single whoop of approval, echoed by a half dozen more, and punctuated by applause, snapped him back to an unfortunate reality. He and Katie were definitely not alone. From the dazed look in her eyes, she was no happier about that discovery than he was.

  All too quickly, though, their true circumstances took the blush out of her cheeks and made her eyes blaze not with passion, but with fury. Luke knew with certainty that he would hear about this when they were alone. Worse, he suspected that would be just the beginning of what Katie had to say, none of it pleasant.

  “Later,” he whispered in a determinedly seductive purr he hoped would remind her of the provocative intimacy they’d just shared.

  “You’d better believe it,” she said tightly.

  Katie might have been thinking about that bone-melting kiss, but Luke doubted it. Her tone was more in keeping with a deadly courtroom cross-examination.

  Before he could try to defuse her temper, Peg swooped in to hug Katie, and Robby rushed up to hurl himself into Luke’s arms. Within seconds Robby was racing off with another boy about his own age. Luke stared after them with amusement. He realized with a start how rarely he’d seen his child playing with friends. It was yet another confirmation that coming back to Clover had been the right decision.

  By the time Luke glanced around, Katie was surrounded by her friends, most of whom had barely a word to spare for him, though he’d known them all his life. He hadn’t thought it possible in a town where he’d grown up, but apparently six years away had made him an outsider. And if the scowl on Lucy Ryder’s face was an indication, at the moment she wished he’d stayed in Atlanta forever.

  Maybe people just had long memories, he speculated. Maybe they remembered with absolute clarity that he and Katie had been best friends. Maybe they suspected how far things had gone before he’d walked out on her. And maybe they resented being left behind to deal with the aftermath of his lousy treatment of a woman they all adored.

  Whatever it was, everyone welcomed Katie home as if she’d been off on a safari for months, rather than an abbreviated one-day honeymoon. Peg, in particular, surveyed her niece as if looking for signs that Luke had done anything, anything at all to make her miserable. Katie’s bright smile and glowing cheeks—the products of determination and makeup—apparently convinced her all was well.

  Katie, whom he would have sworn didn’t have a shred of artifice in her, turned out to have superb acting skills. Not a single person in the room—with the possible exception of Lucy—would have guessed from her cheerful demeanor that their marriage was an unconsummated farce. Only he seemed to notice the tiny lines of strain around her mouth, the faint shadows under her eyes, the forced note of her laughter, the way she fiddled nervously with a strand of hair.

  For three hours he accepted cursory congratulations on winning the prettiest woman in town, he endured less-than-subtle winks about the honeymoon, and took advice from half the women in town on how to keep his new bride happy and content. Hannah, Sophie and Emma had some very intriguing ideas for the future bliss of the woman who’d been their bridesmaid.

  Through it all he kept his gaze pinned on Katie, wondering exactly when she would break, worrying whether be would be able to clear out the guests before it happened. He was still worried about that when Peg cornered him.

  “I’m keeping Robby at my place a few more nights,” she informed him in a tone that invited no argument. Facing him defiantly, she added, “I’ve also arranged for the boarders to go to the hotel for the rest of the week. I can understand your feeling a need to be in Clover in case your brother decides to make good on his threat, but I will
not allow you to spoil my niece’s honeymoon.”

  Luke didn’t have the heart to tell her that Katie was probably thrilled to be back among friends or that the last thing Peg’s niece wanted was to be left alone with him. And, given the dire looks Katie had been directing at him for the past couple of hours, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be left alone with her.

  “I’ll pay for the rooms at the hotel,” he volunteered since it seemed unlikely that anyone was going to go contrary to Peg’s plans.

  “That’s what I told them,” Peg said dryly.

  He grinned at her. “You think of everything.”

  “I do try,” she said cheerfully. “How did Katie take the news about the custody battle?”

  Luke swallowed hard and admitted, “I haven’t told her yet.”

  Muttering something that sounded suspiciously unladylike under her breath, Peg latched on to his elbow and dragged him into the kitchen. “Luke Cassidy, what in tarnation were you thinking of? She has a right to know. Does she have any idea at all what brought you back here in such an all-fired hurry?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “So for all she knows, you just got tired of being alone with her,” she snapped.

  “Of course not,” he said, but knew it was possible that that was exactly what Katie thought.

  Peg clearly didn’t buy the denial any more than he did. She regarded him as if he were slightly lower than pond scum. “I swear if you don’t tell her everything by tomorrow morning, then I will. I can’t begin to imagine what she must be thinking. Wasn’t it bad enough that you walked out on her once before? Ripped the hell out of her self-esteem, you did. Now you’ve got her thinking you don’t even want to spend three days alone with her. My glory, why’d you even bother asking her to marry you?”

  Luke was very much afraid if Peg had too long to think about that question, she’d hit the answer square on the head. “As soon as everyone is out of here and we have the place to ourselves, I’ll tell her everything.”

  “See that you do,” Peg ordered, her voice tight. “Just to speed things up, I’ll start clearing these folks out. Don’t worry about the mess. I have someone coming in to clean up first thing in the morning.”

  Luke couldn’t imagine Katie being patient enough to leave the dirty dishes scattered around the house. While Peg hustled everyone toward the door, he began picking up, carting trays of glasses and dessert plates into the kitchen and loading them into the industrial-size dishwasher that looked like a relic from the early days of Peg’s Diner.

  He’d just hauled a sack of trash to the garbage cans out back, when he looked up and spotted Katie waiting for him in the kitchen door. For one fleeting instant, he imagined that they were a typical couple, tired but elated after a night of entertaining. He could almost envision the two of them settling on the sofa side by side to nibble on leftovers, share bits of gossip, maybe even steal few sweet kisses tasting of wine. It was an image that had once filled his dreams back in the days when he’d had his entire life planned out and Katie had been at the center of it.

  But as he neared the back door, one quick survey of Katie’s expression told him there would be nothing sweet or simple about the next couple of hours. She clearly hadn’t forgotten for one single minute her determination to get the answers that he’d been unwilling to provide earlier.

  “There’s a nice breeze,” he observed, hoping to distract her. “Want to sit in the hammock for a while?”

  She glared at him. “No, I do not want to sit in the hammock. We need to talk.”

  “Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Last I heard we could talk in the hammock.”

  “But we won’t and you know it,” she said flatly.

  Luke grinned. “I see you remember that old hammock Peg had in the backyard and the use we put it to.”

  She sighed. “I remember a lot of things, Luke Cassidy, including the fact that you’ve been hiding something important from me.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I was trying to get you to recall.”

  “I’m sure. Come on, Cassidy. Stop dawdling. It’s time to face the music.”

  Luke sighed as he trudged up the back steps with Katie watching him every step of the way, probably to make sure he didn’t take off. In the doorway, he could easily have walked around her, but he made sure he squeezed past, brushing tantalizingly against breasts and thighs just enough to stir his own senses, if not hers.

  Sure enough, heat flared in her eyes. He seized on that. “You know, Peg went to a lot of trouble to see that we had some time alone here. It would be a shame to waste it, don’t you think?”

  “What I think is that you’re trying to make me forget all the questions I have,” she said, frowning at him.

  “No doubt about it,” he admitted candidly. He grinned unrepentantly.

  “Why is that? What are you hiding? And what makes you think a few kisses—”

  “Or more,” he taunted.

  She scowled. “Or anything on God’s green earth will make me forget what’s on my mind?”

  Luke stubbornly resisted being drawn into that discussion. “If I can’t distract you with images of all the wild, provocative things we could do in that hammock, let’s talk about that big, old featherbed of yours.”

  “Luke, you could dance around the living room stark naked and I wouldn’t forget what’s on my mind.” She waved an envelope he hadn’t noticed before in his face. “Especially since this apparently arrived while we were gone. Any idea what it might be?”

  From her tone, he guessed that she knew precisely what was inside that thick envelope.

  “A sweepstakes entry?” he suggested.

  Katie looked as if she were about to explode. “Dammit, don’t you dare try to make a joke out of this,” she snapped without any pretense of tolerance.

  Luke heaved a sigh. It looked as if they were going to have this discussion whether the time was right or not. “Okay, you’re the one who’s opened the envelope. Why don’t you tell me what’s inside.”

  “Offhand, I’d say they’re custody papers,” she said, her voice flat. Her gaze swept over him before settling into a challenging glare. “Why the hell would your brother be fighting you for custody of Robby?”

  Despite his promise to Peg, Luke really hadn’t wanted to get into this tonight. They’d had a long, exhausting, stressful day as it was. He’d hoped when he laid it all out in the morning—before Peg had a chance to do it for him—Katie would be fresh, maybe even receptive. Right now she looked anything but. In fact, she seemed inclined to tar and feather him. He couldn’t in all honesty say he blamed her. He reminded himself that he’d invested ten thousand dollars thus far in at least getting her to listen.

  “It’s a long story,” he said wearily.

  “As I recall our vows, there was something about till death do us part,” she said. “We have time.”

  Luke winced at her sarcasm. It appeared the honeymoon was over.

  * * *

  Katie’s cheeks burned with humiliation as she squared off against her new husband. It appeared she had let Luke make a fool of her not once, but twice. The papers she clutched in her hand proved that he had lied to her. As if his spoken reasons for marrying her hadn’t been flimsy enough, now it appeared they were nothing compared to those he’d kept silent. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that whole story was. Why the dickens would Tommy think he had any claim at all to Robby?

  “I’m waiting,” she said, glaring at Luke.

  “Maybe we’d better sit down. This could take a while,” Luke said.

  With some reluctance, Katie sat, choosing a chair rather than the sofa, to keep Luke from sitting next to her and clouding her ability to reason. The immobilizing effect he had on her brain was what had gotten her into this mess.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Luke swore, his gaze pleading with her to believe him.

  “Why didn’t you? Did the cat have your tongue?”

  “You said you didn’t
want to get into anything serious,” he reminded her.

  “When did I say that?”

  “Friday night.”

  Katie regarded him incredulously. “The night before the wedding? Wasn’t that a bit late to be bringing up the little matter of a custody dispute over your son? Don’t you think you should have mentioned it, oh, perhaps when you first asked me to marry you?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid if I got into everything, you’d turn me down.”

  Katie didn’t deny it. She had a gut-deep feeling his fears had probably been justified. “Maybe I’d better hear what everything is before I tell you what my response would have been. Come on, Luke. Spit it out. From the beginning.”

  Luke walked over to the window and stood staring out. “It all started six years ago,” he said.

  His voice was so low Katie had to strain to hear him. “Six years ago,” she repeated just to be certain she had heard correctly.

  Luke nodded. “Betty Sue Wilder came to me and told me she was pregnant.”

  Katie had already guessed that much. As much as it hurt to think that Luke had slept with another woman around the same time he had made love to her, she had accepted that. “So you did the honorable thing,” she said.

  “It was a little more complicated than that. She wasn’t carrying my baby.”

  She stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. “I beg your pardon? The baby wasn’t yours? Then what did it have to do with you?” she asked, even though she was already beginning to get the picture.

  “Tommy is Robby’s natural father.”

  “Tommy is Robby’s father,” she repeated slowly, realizing even as she said it that she wasn’t nearly as surprised as she should have been.

  “No,” Luke said angrily, turning to face her. “Robby is my son. I’m his father in every way that counts. When Tommy wouldn’t accept responsibility for Betty Sue’s pregnancy, I stepped in. I was there in the delivery room when he was born. I gave him my name. I’ve stayed up nights with him when he was sick. I was there for his first step. I took him to his first day of school. Tommy has never even laid eyes on him.”