by Amy Olle
Had he lived here, with his wife? Had he really slept here, with her, in the same bed where Emily had been sleeping with him? Emily rubbed her forehead.
He’d been married, and he didn’t tell her.
She’d told him about the guy she slept with three times in college, more than ten years ago, and he didn’t bother to mention he’d had a wife? A wedding, a marriage, presumably a divorce. Any one of those things might’ve warranted a mention.
Whatever happened to no lying?
Guess that only applied to her.
Sick with humiliation, she fumbled through the bedsheets with shaking hands, searching for her discarded clothing.
“Let me explain,” he said, an unsettling soberness in his voice.
Words piled in the back of her throat. Angry, ugly words she stood no chance of getting out. She yanked on her T-shirt and jeggings and careened toward the front door.
He hounded her steps. “Please, don’t go.”
She stepped into her winter boots, but didn’t bother lacing them, and threw open the door.
He caught her arm. “Emily, please.” He peered into her face a moment, and then brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. “Stay. Talk to me.”
A lifetime of frustration and impotence welled up, closing the back of her throat. With the torment, a choked sob broke from her and she plunged out into the frigid morning.
She drove home in a haze while cruel memories snuck up on her. She recalled the time her mom bought her a play-pretend princess gown. Her heart filled with joy, Emily had twirled so that the gown’s skirts billowed out around her. She rushed to show her dad, pointing out to him all the things she loved about the dress and sharing her secret plan to one day marry a prince.
Harrison had frowned down at her. “No man’s going to want you as long as you chatter like a dimwit.”
His words had etched on her heart, never to be forgotten, and echoed around inside her head as she struggled to make sense of Luke’s treachery.
When she tripped through the back door, Noah looked up from the kitchen table.
“What are you doing up?” he asked. “We can fend for ourselves for a day.”
All she wanted to do was hide away in her bedroom and cry and scream and throw things. “I, uh, couldn’t sleep.”
“Mina was the same way on our wedding day.”
Emily snatched up the box of muffins and tossed them on the dining table with a heavy thud. She returned to the kitchen just as the back door banged open, shattering the quiet.
Luke loomed in the doorway. He wore ancient blue jeans and a black fleece and his chest rose and fell with his labored breathing, as though he’d run to get to her.
Max appeared through the kitchen door, a crumbling doughnut in his hand. “Where are the pancakes?”
Noah plucked a plate off the stack at his elbow and passed it to him. “No pancakes today.”
“It’s Saturday,” Max argued. “Luke makes banana pancakes on Saturdays.”
Luke’s eyes burned like live coals.
She scrambled around to the far side of the island. “I don’t w-want to talk.” Her gaze darted to the table. “Not right n-now.”
“Too damn bad.” He stalked toward her.
Noah’s eyebrows inched upward. “Everything all right, you two?”
Drew slipped through the kitchen door carrying the box of doughnuts and settled at the table beside Max. “These were in the dining room for some reason.”
Emily snapped. “Because that’s wh-where you’re all supposed to be eating. In the dining room. Not the kitchen. M-my kitchen.”
Three pairs of eyes blinked at her.
“Everything beyond that door is my house. M-my p-p-private house.” She whirled on Luke. “Y-you should have told me y-you were m-m-married.”
A utensil clattered against a plate.
“You’re married?” Noah said. “Jesus, a guy leaves town for a decade and a half and he misses everything.”
“Divorced.” Luke pressed his palms to the countertop and peered into her face. That ripple of vulnerability disturbed the emerald pools of his eyes. “And you’re right, I should’ve told you. But it was a long time ago and I don’t think about her. Ever. I’m an awful person, but there you have it. I didn’t tell you because she isn’t worth mentioning. She was just a mistake.”
Emily flinched, his words stinging like a slap to the face. “And here I thought I was your only mistake.”
“Dammit, Emily—wait—”
She slammed the door to the half-bath behind her. The intensity of the emotions whipping through her choked her, and when he looked at her with those wounded eyes, she couldn’t think. So she fled.
She withdrew her cell phone from the butt pocket of her jeggings and opened a new text.
His fists pounded on the door at her back. “Emily, let me in.”
Her fingers hammered out a message. Did you love her?
The pounding stopped and Luke’s voice carried through the door. “We have a problem. Leo’s home.”
She hit Send.
“He’s here now?” The alarm in Noah’s tone carried even through the door. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He left—” Luke’s cell phone buzzed.
A short pause followed, and then he erupted. “Oh, hell no.” His pounding fist thundered. “Emily, open the goddamn door, or so help me, I’m going to break it down.”
Her terror pushed sudden tears to the surface. She flung open the door and bolted past him, scurrying well out of arms’ reach. “How long w-w-were y-you married?”
Tension radiated off him as he circled toward her. “One month.”
“H-how long ago?” She put the kitchen island between them.
“We’ve been divorced ten years.”
“Then wh-why is she here now?” She hated the ring of anguish in her voice.
“I don’t know, except there’s only one thing Natalie loves more than herself, and that’s drama.”
Her name was Natalie. A grueling name for Emily to enunciate correctly.
“She doesn’t care about me,” Luke said. “Or that I’m remarrying, or even who I’m marrying. Leo’s right, she’s had her fun. We won’t hear from her again.”
He slipped around the side of the counter.
She backed away. “Wh-what happened?”
A weary sigh eased from him. “It just… it was never right for us. She grew up on the island, but she hated living here, and she hated being married to a cop.”
“T-too dangerous?”
“Too boring and too poor. She didn’t mind the seventy-hour workweeks or the risks, but she couldn’t stand the working-class lifestyle.”
He pushed into her space.
She bumped up against the refrigerator.
“Does she live here now?”
“No. She’s a flight attendant and lives in Traverse City, near the airport.” He leaned close. His head bent low and he inhaled deeply. “She makes an appearance once a year or so around the holidays to visit her parents. We just got lucky that she was heading home when Leo showed up on her flight and was too drunk to keep his damned mouth shut about our wedding.”
Her throat worked and it took her many moments to push out the words. “Did y-you love her?”
He pulled back and a muscle twitched where his jaw met his cheekbone. “No.”
“He hesitated,” Drew observed casually from the table.
Luke’s head whipped around. “What the fuck did I know about love?” He turned back. “I was a twenty-three-year-old with a permanent hard-on.”
“God, I hate that,” Max muttered.
“So I married her,” Luke said. “And in less than two days, I realized I couldn’t stand her. And she couldn’t stand me. And the sex wasn’t even all that good.” He cast another glance over his shoulder. “I mean, it wasn’t bad, it was sex after all, but—”
With a disgusted gasp, Emily twisted away from him.
A curse hissed through
his clenched teeth and he drove a hand through his hair.
She retreated to the other side of the room. The leg of a chair scraped against the hardwood floors and set off a domino effect of chair scraping. Noah approached them while Max and Drew slipped through the kitchen door.
Noah’s serious dark eyes shifted between them. “You two okay? You’re supposed to be getting married in approximately six hours.”
An uneasy knot twisted Emily’s stomach. She always thought she’d marry and have a family one day, but only in a vague sort of way. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined marrying a man like Luke, or the unusual series of steps—make that missteps—that’d bring about her wedding.
“We’re okay.” Luke’s intense green gaze remained clamped on her face. “Or, we will be.”
“Do we need to deal with Leo before then?” Noah asked.
Luke dropped his head heavily. “Yeah, we better. Give me just a minute here?”
Noah backed away. “Stop by the carriage house and pick me up on your way out.” He disappeared into the mudroom and the sound of the back door closing soon followed.
From across the room, Luke tracked her movements. “What are you thinking?”
Her hand flitted through the air, as if she might pluck an intelligent thought from the sky. “Haven’t you dated, or married, any average-looking women?”
One corner of his mouth twitched, but no smile formed. “Not a single one.”
Warmth rushed to her cheeks. “Don’t you dare try to charm me. This is serious.”
“I know it is.” His gaze remained straight. Direct. “You wouldn’t consider Natalie attractive if you knew her. She’s quite possibly the ugliest woman I’ve ever known. She lied about everything, all the time.” The hitch of vulnerability in his voice was subtle, but unmistakable. “She cheated on me.”
A burst of anger expanded in her chest.
His weary sigh held a ring of defeat. “I couldn’t forgive her for it, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to run all over town beating up the guys she slept with, which only pissed her off more. She wanted drama, and all I wanted was her gone from my life.”
The confession notched a wound on her heart. At least now she understood his hang-up about lying.
“I wish you had told me.”
“Honestly, I never once thought to do so. Our marriage was so short-lived, it’s like it never happened.” He held up his hands to ward off her protest. “But I should’ve told you. Things moved kind of fast between us and I… fucked up.”
She fiddled with a dishtowel, folding and refolding it. “I’m sorry she treated you like that.”
“I’m sorry I was too stupid to see it coming.” He shook his head. “Man, it was like having another full-time job, dealing with all her crazy.” An injured expression touched his features. “Don’t you dare laugh at me. It’s not funny. I was in hell.”
“It’s a little funny.”
A smile teased his lips and he eased closer to her. “I can’t believe they walked in on us.”
Heat burned her face. “That’s not funny.” She smacked his arm. “Why are you smiling?”
“I’m ashamed to say it.”
“You don’t look ashamed. Go on and say it.”
“She wanted to stir up trouble. It serves her right she got an eyeful.” A wicked light came into his eyes. “What we were doing, that’s something I never did with her, and I know that’s going to drive her mad.”
His eyelids fell just the slightest bit, and his gaze wandered to her mouth. He wet his bottom lip with his tongue.
Her stomach jumped.
“I’m sorry she ruined your wedding day, though.”
“I don’t care about that.”
His hand slipped to her waist and he pulled her close. “Are we okay?”
She didn’t know how it’d turn out for them, but she couldn’t shake the sense she’d stepped into a dream. Not just since her arrival on the island, but all the years leading up to it. Her mom’s illness. The loss of control. The spiral into helplessness and the dark, empty hole of hopelessness that’d ripped open inside her.
And then there he was, and the craziness didn’t stop, but took on a new texture, irresistible and true, and she couldn’t help but believe it’d all brought her to this moment, as if by a certain thinning of the fabric between choice and fate.
Now, in this moment, they were definitely okay. Or they would be, once they were married and he trusted her enough to open up to her.
“Promise me, no more lies,” she said. Then added, “Or omissions of crucial facts.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “You have my word.”
She breathed in his soothing scent.
“I have to go.” He took a step back, toward the door. “I’ll see you later, at the church?”
He was her prince and Harrison was wrong. She would marry him. She couldn’t not marry him.
A slow sigh slipped from her. “I’ll be there.”
Luke collected Noah and they made their way through the frigid morning air to their vehicles parked in the driveway. Snow crunched under their feet as they trampled across the side lawn.
“Where do we start?” Noah asked.
“The bars,” Luke said. “Let’s split up. You start on Main Street and I’ll check in at the station to make sure he hasn’t already made his presence known.”
“What the hell happened to him?”
The question set Luke’s heart racing. “What makes you think something happened?”
“From what you guys have been saying, it sounds like Leo’s gone off the deep end. I’m wondering why.”
“He has gone off the deep end.” Luke pulled his keys from the pocket of his fleece. “But why is that a surprise to you? It’s in our DNA.”
Noah’s steps slowed.
Luke stopped and turned back.
Noah’s dark eyes latched onto Luke’s face. “That’s not how it works.”
“Okay.” Luke twisted away.
Noah fell in step beside him. Their long strides ate the ground beneath them.
“Do you have any idea what war was like for him?”
“He won’t talk about it,” Luke said.
“Probably nothing good then.”
A dry snort escaped Luke. “I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
In the driveway, Luke headed to his SUV while Noah went around to the driver side of a black crew cab truck.
In the pocket of his blue jeans, Luke’s cell phone vibrated. He slid the device from his pants and opened the message from the alert system used by the county police to send out warnings and widespread calls for backup.
He cursed.
Over the hood of the truck, he met Noah’s gaze. “I think I found him.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ten minutes past the time their ceremony was to begin, the groom was missing.
At the front of the church, Maisie flung her little body across the steps to the altar and her skirt kicked up to cover her face. Isobel gently reminded her to sit like a lady while Shea tried to distract their toddler, Connor, from an impromptu striptease.
Mina finished talking with the church receptionist and when she turned toward Emily, a too-bright smile appeared frozen on her face.
“What did she say?”
“There’s a church function tonight. The sooner we start the ceremony the better.”
Ten minutes later, Jack and Shea roamed the church vestibule, each of them with a cell phone pressed to their ear.
The color heightened on Mina’s cheeks. “He was probably held up at work.”
Emily shook her head. “He didn’t w-work today.” She headed up the aisle.
Jack turned to her with an easy smile. “Seriously, what is Luke trying to do to me? He knows I have a thing for redheads.”
Emily forced a weak smile. “Have you talked to him?”
A beat of silence greeted her question.
“We’re trying to get ahold of him
.” Shea’s brilliant blue eyes fixed on Mina. “Have you talked to Noah?”
“I’ll try him again.” Peering down at her cell phone, she turned away.
Jack shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “The cellular service has always been bad on the island, even before the storm knocked out a tower.”
Haven had commented on the poor cellular service that morning when she’d called Emily to report her flight had landed in Traverse City and she was working on making her way to the island amidst a few more weather-related travel complications.
Nonetheless, Emily’s heart started to pound. Were they hurt? Had something happened with Leo?
She went to the front doors of the church and peered out. Behind her, the brothers carried on a hushed conversation.
Understanding reached her in stages. They were worried. Worried about Luke. Not that he was unwell or in danger, but that he wasn’t coming.
Fierce heat rushed into her face with her mortification.
Mina held up her cell phone. “Still no answer.”
Twin scowls appeared on the brothers’ faces.
“But don’t worry. Noah’s with him.” Mina’s voice clouded with uncertainty. “He’ll make sure Luke—gets here soon. Safely.”
Her words twisted inside Emily like a betrayal. Even Mina thought Luke might jilt her? Wishing to block out their troubled expressions, Emily wandered back to the church and lowered herself into a pew.
Luke wouldn’t do that to her, he wouldn’t jilt her at the altar. Just that morning, he’d had the perfect opportunity to stop the wedding and he didn’t take it. She’d recalled the thread of vulnerability in his green eyes when he’d asked if she’d be there today.
She’d said yes, and he’d been relieved by it.
She stared straight ahead. That way she wouldn’t see the nervous exchange between Jack and Father John when Jack informed his uncle of their suspicions.
Mina settled next to her in the pew. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Emily pasted a smile on her face, but it felt strained and brittle.
“I still can’t believe how fabulous you look in that dress. When Luke sees you—”
The church door banged open with enough force it bounced off the stone wall.
