Finally a Bride

by Sherryl Woods

  * * *

  When Luke had nudged open the door to her room, Katie gasped in amazement. He’d filled the room with flowers—bright, splashy, fragrant flowers. The ceiling fan created a deliciously scented breeze. A bottle of champagne was on ice in an elegant silver bucket.

  And somehow he had found the filmy negligee that had been meant for her wedding night. It had been shoved in the back of a dresser drawer, behind oversize T-shirts and warm flannel gowns. At the thought of Luke’s hands sorting through her things, a delightful heat began to spread slowly through her. Just the sight of that pale chiffon, shimmering against the bed’s dark green comforter, warmed her.

  “You’ve been busy,” she observed, looking into eyes filled with anticipation and blatant masculine desire, rather than the smug satisfaction she might have expected under the circumstances.

  “I thought this called for a celebration,” he said.

  “Do you intend to celebrate like this whenever you get your way?” she asked, unable to resist the tart question.

  “If I do, will you give in more often?”

  She grinned at the teasing note in his voice. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Somehow I thought that would be your answer,” he said, sounding surprisingly pleased. He held up the negligee. “Want some privacy while you change into this?”

  She snatched it from his hand and headed for the adjoining bathroom.

  “Don’t take too long,” he pleaded in a voice that had grown husky.

  “You can keep busy opening the champagne,” she said, wishing she had a glass to take along with her. She wasn’t sure where she’d get the nerve to emerge from the bathroom in that revealing gown without it.

  She recognized as soon as she’d closed the door behind her that she would collapse with a bad case of stage fright if she didn’t hurry. She was all thumbs as it was as she stripped off her clothes, took a hurried shower, then pulled the filmy gown on. She stood in front of the steamy mirror and marveled at what she saw.

  There was a faint hint of curl in her tousled hair. Her cheeks were bright with becoming color. Her eyes were sparkling with anticipation. She looked...like a bride, every bit as radiant as the picture-perfect bride Peg had described for her with such longing. Dear heaven, she told herself with a sense of amazement, after what seemed to be an eternity of waiting, she really was about to be a bride in more than name only. Luke’s bride.

  Drawing in a deep, trembling breath, she finally opened the door. She had to cling to the frame for support when she saw Luke standing at the window, wearing only his dark trousers. The well-defined muscles in his shoulders and back seemed to beckon for her touch. His skin was more bronzed now than it had been when he’d first arrived back in Clover. He looked even more breathtakingly masculine than he had six years ago.

  Yet she knew exactly how he would feel if she stroked her fingers over his bare flesh. The skin would be supple, and it would burn wherever she dared to caress. She absorbed all of this in the space of a heartbeat.

  At the sound of the door opening, he turned, facing her, his expression avid as his gaze swept over her. The hunger and electricity charging that gaze could have lit up the entire town of Clover, maybe the entire state of South Carolina.

  Since Katie couldn’t seem to move, he picked up the two flutes of champagne and came slowly toward her. She accepted the glass. Her pulse skittered wildly as their fingers brushed.

  “You look...breathtaking,” he said in a voice that had turned low and seductive.

  “I feel...” Katie found she couldn’t begin to describe the sensations rippling through her. She felt slightly breathless, slightly anxious and deliciously aroused all at once.

  Luke carefully set his glass down and reached for her. “You feel,” he began, turning her words around and filling in the space she’d left blank, “like fire and silk.”

  His fingers skimmed along her arms, leaving heat in their wake. That same delicate stroking over sheer chiffon made her skin tingle with shivery awareness. Her nipples hardened at once, responding to the repeated return of tormenting touches. When he lowered his head and took one sensitive, thinly covered peak into his mouth, she shuddered, reaching for his bare shoulders and clinging just to remain upright.

  The sensation was exquisite, sweeter than she’d recalled in her wildest memories of that other time, that other tender claiming.

  Unfortunately, rather than adding to the provocative sensations Luke was stirring in her now, the memories suddenly cooled her ardor. Oh, her body was his, responding to his touches with predictable abandon. She couldn’t have prevented that if she’d tried. She’d waited far too long for this moment.

  But her heart withdrew into a protective shell. Even as Luke entered her with a slow, thrilling stroke that filled her and lured her toward an explosive release, somewhere deep inside she remained aloof and terrified.

  Terrified that once again their love was an illusion, that once again it wouldn’t last.

  And when Luke saw the silent tears spilling down her cheeks, when he asked what was wrong in a voice that shook with concern, Katie couldn’t answer. She simply wrapped her arms around him and held on for dear life, hoping that somehow, some way she would never have to let go.

  * * *

  Ironically, after all his sneaky conniving to make it happen, Luke found that making love to Katie was bittersweet. As perfectly attuned as they had been in bed, as sweetly erotic and wickedly demanding as the night had been, something had been missing. Something had gone terribly wrong, leaving Katie in tears she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain.

  A few weeks ago, absorbed with his single-minded pursuit of marriage, not love, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the lack at all, but now he recognized it for what it surely had to be. Katie had made love with him, but she wasn’t in love with him. She had held something back, some essential part of herself.

  Sitting in the kitchen at dawn, drinking a cup of coffee, he couldn’t help thinking about the first time they had made love. Katie had been totally inexperienced. He had been young and anxious. But love had made every touch magic, every kiss joyous. There had been no holding back for either of them.

  Last night, with Katie asleep in his arms, he’d felt a fleeting sense of triumph. This morning, after hours of lying awake analyzing it, he realized that it had been a shallow victory. Katie had shared her body, but not her heart. He wondered bleakly if he would ever get that back again.

  It all came back to this damned bargain they’d struck. He wondered if either of them would ever trust the other’s motives as long as their deal remained on the table. Even as they had been lifted to the height of passion, even as she had murmured his name over and over, Luke couldn’t help remembering everything that had led to their being together in that bed.

  And perversely he couldn’t help thinking that if Katie loved him, if she had ever loved him, she would have told him to take a flying leap when he’d suggested this marriage of convenience. She would have held out for the declaration of love and commitment she deserved.

  No, the truth of it was that all she wanted from him was a way to save her boarding house and support this surrogate family of hers.

  He had thought sex would make him part of Katie’s life, part of her family. Instead, it had left him feeling lonelier than ever.

  He wondered what would happen when the boarding house’s bottom line was in the black and the custody suit was over. Would Katie stick with him or leave? He was more certain than ever that he knew the answer. She would go.

  In those gray minutes of first light, he reached a decision. He had gotten them into this mess by thinking only of his own short-term need for a wife and a mother for his son. He would get them out again by focusing on what he really needed, Katie’s love.

  It shouldn’t take more than what? A little ingenuity? He was acclaimed for that. A little determination? The word mule-headed had been applied to him more than once. And a lifetime of knowing Katie? T
here was no one on earth who knew her better.

  To accomplish a miracle, though, he needed time. More time than the wheels of justice he’d oiled would give him. With that in mind, he called his attorney, oblivious to the fact that he might be waking Andrew Lawton from a sound sleep. But Andrew had disrupted his share of Luke’s nights when he’d been going through his own very messy divorce.

  “When are we due to go to court for the custody ruling?” Luke asked without even a “good morning” for the man he’d first met within weeks after he’d arrived in Atlanta. They’d been friends ever since, as well as business associates.

  “Luke, what the devil...” Andrew muttered, sounding both sleepy and disgruntled.

  Luke repeated his question.

  “It’s on the judge’s calendar for the end of the month. It could be anytime that last week in June,” Andrew told him, sounding considerably more alert once he grasped that this wasn’t just idle curiosity on Luke’s part. “Tommy’s lawyer has been pressing to have it moved up, though. He agrees with us that for Robby’s sake this needs to be concluded as quickly as possible.”

  It was exactly as Luke had feared. His time with Katie was running out. “Delay it,” Luke said.

  There was a lengthy silence before Andrew responded. “I thought you wanted to get it over with,” he said, sounding confused. “We’re prepared. The reports are into the court. Why wait for—?”

  Luke cut in. “I want you to drag this out as long as possible.”

  “Luke, you’re not making any sense,” Andrew protested. “Just last week...”

  “I don’t give a damn what I said last week.”

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Andrew asked quietly. “You and Katie aren’t having problems, are you? Do you need time to work them out? If that’s the case, the longer we delay, the more likely Tommy will find out about the problem and use it against you.”

  Luke sighed. “There is no problem, at least not one that I can’t solve, if you’ll just buy me some time. Please, Andrew, do what you can. Take a vacation. Tell them you’ve got a case in Tasmania or something. Just get the case delayed.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Andrew agreed finally. “If you need to talk, buddy, let me know.”

  “I don’t need to talk,” Luke said curtly and hung up. He turned to find Katie staring at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

  “I think you do,” she said quietly, her gaze cutting straight through him.

  “Do what?”

  “Need to talk.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, seated herself very precisely across from him at the kitchen table and regarded him expectantly. “You can start anytime now. Why would you ask your lawyer to delay the custody case?”

  Luke looked everywhere but at his wife. “I just told Andrew that I want to be sure we’re fully prepared. This is too important to make mistakes.”

  “Does Andrew think everything’s ready? Is he in the habit of making mistakes?”

  “Andrew doesn’t know everything, and everyone makes mistakes.”

  “What is it that your attorney doesn’t know?”

  The direct question stymied him. He didn’t want to admit that he was buying time for the two of them, that he wanted to solidify what they had begun the night before—a real marriage. And there was also the possibility that Katie had been right about Tommy. Perhaps with just a little more time he and his brother could mend fences and Tommy would drop the suit. Time seemed the answer to everything.

  “I just think it’s for the best,” he said finally.

  Katie regarded him incredulously. “For whom? What about Robby? Don’t you think he’s beginning to suspect that something serious is going on? He can’t help but feel the tension every time Tommy calls here. Sooner or later he’s going to start asking why he hasn’t met his uncle. And how much longer do you think you can keep Tommy from barging in and telling him the truth? If you’re going to drag this out intentionally, then you’d better sit down with your son and tell him exactly what’s happening, before he hears it from your brother.”

  “Katie...”

  Before he could get out another word, she’d grabbed her cup of coffee and headed out the back door, letting it slam behind her. Luke stared after her.

  “Well, that certainly went well,” he muttered to himself. At this rate, his damned plan would land them in divorce court.

  * * *

  Katie had no idea what had happened to Luke between the time they went upstairs together and the moment he’d slipped out of bed and abandoned her that morning a few days earlier. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t begin to figure out why Luke had placed that call to his attorney.

  Over the past few days, though, she had watched in bemusement as Luke seemed to be transformed before her eyes.

  She had come home one day to find him tutoring Ginger in math, leading her step by step through a tricky problem with admirable patience. Ginger’s head bobbed in understanding as he explained each step. And when she reached the correct answer to the next problem completely on her own, she beamed at Luke with an expression akin to hero worship.

  The next night, unable to sleep, Katie had wandered down to the kitchen at midnight and found Mr. O’Reilly and Luke there ahead of her, huge bowls of ice cream in front of them. She stayed back in the shadows and listened. Mr. O’Reilly was telling Luke all about the time he’d saved a little girl from a blaze in the rat-infested basement of a tenement. Katie had heard the story a dozen times and each time tears had come to her eyes. Luke seemed equally shaken by the near tragedy.

  “Dear God,” he murmured. “Maybe we’d better take a look through here tomorrow. Make sure all the alarms are in working order.”

  “They are,” the retired fireman assured him. “I see to it myself. Nothing like that’ll happen to Katie, if I’m around to prevent it. That girl is like a daughter to me.” He met Luke’s gaze. “And that boy of yours, he’s a real pistol. Livens the place up. Mrs. Jeffers is looking downright young again, now that she has a little one to do for.”

  Luke’s expression turned speculative. “So you’ve noticed what a fine figure of a woman Mrs. Jeffers is.”

  Red crept into Mr. O’Reilly’s cheeks. “Now don’t you go getting any ideas. I’m too old to be carrying on.”

  Luke’s low laughter warmed Katie’s heart.

  “You’re never too old,” he declared.

  Pleased more than she could say by the scene she had stumbled on, Katie had slipped away before either of them saw her.

  Just this morning she found a stack of neat little printed notices on the table where whoever picked up the mail each day left it for the others. She picked one up and was stunned when she read that the weekly rent was being cut by ten percent. She couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Luke had clearly lost his mind. She’d wanted him to loosen up, but at this rate he would bankrupt her.

  With one of the slips in hand, she headed straight down the street to his office. He was leaning back in his fancy new leather chair behind his fancy new mahogany desk, looking pleased as punch about something.

  “Are you okay?” she asked straight out.

  He grinned. “Better than ever.”

  She plucked the little white notice from her purse and shoved it across his desk. “Then maybe you can explain what you were thinking when you did this.”

  “The economy’s tight,” he explained without batting an eye. “We have to be competitive.”

  “With whom? There’s no place else in town that offers people room and board. And last I heard the manager of the hotel wasn’t tutoring his guests in his spare time.”

  Luke shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “What happened to all that talk about sound fiscal responsibility? Are you trying to bankrupt me?”

  “We can afford to absorb a few losses on the boarding house. I have other investments that will more than balance things out.”

  Katie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Those are your in
vestments. The boarding house is mine. You promised to get it onto a sound financial footing.”

  His expression perfectly bland, he said, “Some things are more important than money.”

  Katie regarded him suspiciously. A statement like that sounded like heresy coming from him. “Such as?”

  “Family,” he replied quietly.

  “Family?” she repeated as if it were a foreign concept. “Luke, what is going on here?”

  He leaned forward, his gaze locking with hers. “I have finally figured out what’s important in life,” he said. “Now I intend to do everything in my power to see that I get it.”

  If there hadn’t been such a note of grim determination in his voice, Katie might have laughed. She recalled the night she’d hauled everyone back to the boarding house as a way of throwing a gauntlet down in front of her husband. It seemed he’d just returned the challenge.

  She still wasn’t certain exactly what was going on in Luke’s head, but she was beginning to grasp one thing. Finally it appeared they were both chasing the same dream.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “We’re going out tonight,” Luke announced when he was finally able to snag Katie for a second during the morning rush at Peg’s Diner.

  There was a spark of mischief in his eyes she hadn’t seen since they were teenagers. “Where?”

  “You’ll see. Just put on your party clothes and be ready by six.”

  “Who’s baby-sitting Robby?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of.”

  “You think of everything,” she said, though her tone wasn’t entirely complimentary.

  Ignoring the jibe, he winked at her. “Six o’clock,” he reminded her and headed for the door. He stopped briefly to whisper something to Peg, who laughed and sneaked a quick look in Kate’s direction.

  “What the devil were the two of you conspiring about?” Katie asked her aunt.

  “We were not conspiring,” Peg said, regarding her indignantly. “Luke was just making a comment about the weather. It’s gonna be another scorcher today.” She fanned herself with a menu as if to emphasize it.