The Accidental Bridegroom

by Ann Major

  “Did Mike go out to steal?” she asked impishly.

  Rafe nodded glumly.

  Her face lit up. “Sounds like fun, but I’d rather stay here with you. How sweet of you to take the night off to entertain me.”

  “So, what do rich girls do for fun?”

  “For starters, I want to watch you shave,” she said, taking his hand and leading him to the bathroom. “Your whiskers made my skin burn. And I want to see what you really look like under there.”

  “And I thought it was my lips that made you hot.”

  “Your lips were okay,” she said, smiling from the doorway, as he smeared lather on the lower part of his face and began to rake away a week’s worth of black whiskers with the sure, deft strokes of Mike’s razor. When Rafe was done, she came up to him, peering from behind him so she could see his face in the mirror.

  “Better,” she whispered in an awed tone as she studied his lean jaw and sensual mouth and rampantly male features. “Much better.”

  He spun around. “I was worried you wouldn’t approve.”

  But she had already vanished into his bedroom. She came out a few minutes later wearing one of his shirts. Tangles of gold spilled messily out of her dangling diamond clips.

  Damn those big liquid black eyes of hers, and that yellow hair. And why did her mouth have to look so succulent and moist?

  He thought she looked incredibly sexy in his shirt. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her. To drag her into his bedroom for more.

  “It’s not too late for me to drive you home,” he said hoarsely, reminding himself of his credo.

  “Oh, no! I definitely want to stay here in the hideout with you.”

  “Right. And what do you want to do in the hideout?”

  “Oh, anything,” she whispered. “Everything.” Her dark gaze was brilliant. “Maybe we could plan your next heist.”

  “Uh, how about some popcorn?”

  While she wandered around the living room inspecting everything, he made popcorn. They watched an old movie together. Then they talked. Which was a mistake, because he found out he was right about the loneliness he had seen in her eyes.

  She hadn’t always been so rich. When she was eight, her mother, a moderately well-to-do Houstonian, had married Armi Calderon, a Mexican national. Armi was a super wealthy, world-famous, international businessman in electronics and communications, real estate and mining. For a long time, Cathy had had a hard time believing all the houses and nannies located all over the world were for real. The only nanny who’d ever made her feel loved was someone named Pita who’d taken care of her in a remote Mexican village when the Calderons had been entertaining on their vast hacienda in Mexico.

  Cathy told Rafe that her parents had jetted around the world, leaving her to be raised by paid employees. When her parents had shown up to see her, they always showered her with meaningless gifts they’d sent their servants out to buy. Armi had told her incessantly that no one would ever be as interested in her as in her money.

  All his life, Rafe had thought of the rich being powerful, not vulnerable. He’d grown up with a sense of abandonment, and he’d never realized a rich child might have everything and still feel abandoned.

  She explained that instead of making her happy, the Calderon money had made her feel trapped and vulnerable and isolated, less sure of herself, less sure of her friendships, less sure a man would ever want her just for herself.

  Rafe had felt some hard part of himself softening as she described the way her family put money and power and status before everything else. The way they saw her as a pawn they expected to marry off to someone who was as rich as her stepfather. She was expected to make some brilliant economic alliance that would help diversify and enlarge two great fortunes.

  Cathy told him of her real father, the man who her mother had married for love, the simple man who had retreated to his plantation to hunt and trap on the Louisiana bayous after her glamorous mother had divorced him to marry Armi so she could pursue her glittering social ambitions.

  “My father died of a broken heart, but Mother doesn’t care. Not because she’s mean, but because she just doesn’t understand what she did to him. All that matters to her are her beautiful houses and her beautiful friends and her beautiful parties. Everybody thinks she’s so sweet. But the sweetness is not nearly the biggest part of her. My mother is every bit as ambitious and ruthless as Armi. I’m afraid she can’t help herself. She loves being feted and admired and finds no pleasure in the responsibilities of motherhood.”

  “I’m beginning to see why you climbed over that wall.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking off with Jeff. I just needed someone to go for a walk with me in the gardens, somebody who was too scared of Armi to tell him I had run off after I ditched him.”

  “So where were you going tonight?”

  “Anywhere—just away from them. I just needed space, freedom. I wanted to find a cafe, maybe talk to some real people. To be somewhere where I wasn’t watched. I know that probably sounds silly to you.”

  When she lightly touched the back of his hand, the muscles of his forearm bunched. The heat emanating from her fingers felt good. Too good.

  Rafe closed his eyes and took a deep tense breath and somehow managed to delude himself that he was still in control.

  “Boy, I sure struck it lucky when I found you,” she went on softly. Her shining eyes teased, luring him.

  Rafe’s throat tightened; he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “But I don’t want to talk about myself. I want to hear about you.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Please…” Her voice trailed off.

  He tried to tear his eyes away from her, but he couldn’t. He was too aware of her warm compassionate nearness, of the sweetness of lavender, of her soft physical presence. She aroused all sorts of emotions so easily, emotions and yearnings he could usually keep tightly controlled—the deep need for tenderness and for something as simple but essential as feminine friendship.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  If he felt alarmed by the disturbing intimacy he felt toward her, he was stunned when he started spilling his guts. When he admitted he was the offspring of a fling his wealthy father had had with a Las Vegas showgirl. When he told her about his unmarried mother blaming him for ruining her chances to be a big star. When he told her about his mother’s drinking and boyfriends. And about Mike and him growing up in the same rough neighborhood in the projects and attending the same dangerous schools. About their becoming best friends in high school when they’d played football, about their learning to protect each other, and going to the University of Houston on football scholarships.

  He thought maybe he was being a fool to reveal so much of himself, but her presence was curiously soothing.

  “What did you major in?” she asked gently.

  “Drama,” he replied.

  “Because you were talented?”

  “Because I was lazy. Because lying came easy for me. I’d always had a knack for mimicking people’s mannerisms, their accents. I used to want to be an actor. I even went out to Hollywood and got a few bit parts. I guess I took after my mother and wanted to be a star.”

  “Have you ever used any of it since then?”

  He grinned. “All the time.”

  “I want to be a photographer when I get out of college.”

  She wanted to hear about why he and Mike had turned to crime after college, so he’d told her the tragic life story of a friend of a friend of his who hadn’t been able to get a job after graduation and was now doing time in Huntsville. Rafe had learned a long time ago that it was easier to use someone else’s true story than to make up his own lie because it was easier to remember all the details later if he had to.

  Rafe and she didn’t do anything extraordinary, but just being with her began to feel extraordinary. She was barely more than a girl, but no other woman had ever touched so deep a chord within him.

 
; Stifling a sleepy yawn, she slid across the couch and kissed him shyly. And then not so shyly. Why he didn’t jump up and run when her tongue traced lightly across his lower lip, he didn’t know. He only knew he was powerless to do so.

  What happened next had been inevitable from the first.

  There was only the briefest discussion.

  “I’ve never had a rich girl before,” he murmured as her lips continued to nibble and explore his.

  “I’ve never had a thief,” she murmured softly.

  “Then this will be a first for both of us.”

  “Yes.” She drew a sharp little breath. “Are you going to talk all night?”

  Her achingly sweet expression touched Rafe to the heart. “I was trying to be strong and noble.”

  “I thought maybe you didn’t want me.”

  “Oh, I want you.”

  So much for control. So much for his lifelong credos.

  He was lost. And he knew it.

  With a callused fingertip he traced the line of her nose. “But you’re so young.” His voice was husky. “Too young for me. And way too classy.”

  “What is this—honor among thieves?”

  “Hell.”

  Cathy stared wordlessly at him as his finger moved from her nose to tilt her chin back. Then he bent his dark head to brush a soft, sweet kiss across her lips. Although his mouth lingered for less than a heartbeat, he felt an instant leaping excitement.

  “I can’t figure you out,” she whispered against his mouth. “You were dressed like a thief, but then you tried to save me from Jeff. You’ve had me here practically all night in your hideout, and you haven’t—I never thought a thief would be so protective, so gentlemanly.”

  Rafe’s eyes warmed over her face as she reached up and unzipped his jacket.

  Her glossy hair framed her delicate face like a golden aura. She was so beautiful, and somehow so vulnerable she stole the breath from his lungs. His pulse was throbbing as she stripped his jacket off. After a fumbling kiss or two, she shyly pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it behind him. Then she began to kiss him everywhere, with a shy urgency, as if all during the movie and their long conversation she had been waiting for this moment.

  As he had. Even though he’d done everything in his power to prevent it.

  Her lips paused when they came to his tattoo.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you go in for art?” he demanded huskily.

  Still, she hesitated.

  He twisted, and she gasped as he showed her the bandage in the center of his back. “That’s where a—er, guard dog bit me last night.”

  She went white with shock.

  “I haven’t lived soft. Ready to run for cover, Skinny?”

  “If only I could,” she whispered almost desperately, caressing the hurt place very tenderly.

  “I know the feeling.”

  “And…call me Slim.”

  “Slim.” He fused his mouth to hers. Very gently he lifted her in his arms and carried her to bed, getting up only to lock his bedroom door. When he came back to the bed, she reached for him and clung.

  His eyes moved from the enchanting beauty of her face and tousled yellow hair down the creamy column of her throat. His expert fingers began to unbutton the shirt she’d borrowed from him. Slowly, almost reverently, he pushed the material aside and gently fondled her breasts, seeking her nipples which beaded at his rough and yet gentle caress.

  She wrapped her legs around him and ran her hands down his spine. And the bedroom walls began to spin faster and faster until they became part of the wild, dark splendor of their night.

  She flamed to his mouth and caresses as if she had been made for him. She did erotic things to him no other woman had ever done. At his every touch, she emitted soft purring sighs of pure sensation that made him know her blood pulsed as hotly as his. She was wild, wilder and more eager than any woman he’d ever had. Soon, even the lightest brushing of his lips across her heated flesh brought violent tremors of fresh desire shuddering through her.

  When he slid his hand between her legs and she arched feverishly closer, he felt he would die if he didn’t take her. Quickly, urgently, he lowered his body over hers and parted her thighs with his knee. But when he pushed inside, she cried out in startled anguish.

  She was too tight, he realized in cold panic, recoiling instantly. With a frustrated groan, he rolled away from her glorious warmth to the far side of his bed, shocked to the core at the discovery that this wild, eager girl was a virgin.

  Of all the rotten luck…

  “Don’t you like me?” she whispered.

  She was Armi Calderon’s virginal stepdaughter. He had heard unsavory rumors about what Calderon did to people who crossed him.

  There were tears in her voice, and Rafe was as shaken as she was. He let a minute or two go by before he turned back and gently smoothed her hair. “Of course, I like you. I just don’t like hurting you. I never would have done this…if I had thought for a second—Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I acted like I was fast and experienced…because you looked like the kind of guy who was used to fast women. I was afraid you’d lose interest if I didn’t.”

  “Oh, my God—”

  She was very still. He could feel her staring up into the darkness. “How old were you the first time?” she asked.

  “Fourteen,” he replied thickly, not liking her question.

  “There—you see?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with tonight!” He reached in a drawer for his cigarettes and shook one out. When it was lit, he inhaled deeply, slowly. “You and me—we’re not alike. You’ve got to understand that. I grew up in a jungle.”

  “So did I.”

  “I should have protected you. I should never have touched you.” His grim voice was filled with self-loathing.

  “Why, when I’m sick of everybody protecting me.”

  “I’m through with your bright ideas. I’m taking you home.”

  “I thought guys liked to be the first.”

  He squashed out his cigarette furiously. “For a virgin, you’ve got a lot of dumb ideas on this subject.”

  He was getting up angrily, when she reached for him, sliding her hand over his hair-roughened chest. “I don’t care about being your first. All I care about is being your last.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve said yet! Look—you and I come from two different worlds. I should never have let myself forget that. I’m a good ten years older than you. I don’t have a dime. Nothing I could give you. It wouldn’t work.”

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Okay.” His voice was clipped. He grabbed a pillow and a blanket off the end of the bed. “But I’m sleeping on the couch.”

  That unsatisfactory arrangement lasted an hour.

  Until he heard her cry, and the thin tragic sob tore through him like a knife.

  He got up and went to her. For a long moment, he stood in the doorway, studying her, thinking he was weak not to be able to resist her tears. But he had caused them.

  She lay in his bed, her loose, butter yellow hair spilling everywhere, her face buried in his pillow, her slender body shaking with sobs.

  No matter what he did, he would hurt her. But he couldn’t bear her thinking he wanted to reject her. So even though he knew he shouldn’t, he went to her and with shaking hands pulled her into his hard arms, caressing and comforting her until she quieted.

  Taking her sweet face gently between his hands, he tenderly kissed away her salty tears, murmuring apologies.

  She leaned up toward him shyly and touched his cheek. “You’ve got to finish what you started.”

  “No!”

  “Love me, Rafe. Please, just love me. I—I can’t begin to tell you how much I need you…and want you inside me again.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You say we come from different worlds, but I don’t fit in with my family’s world. I never will. I know you’re a thief an
d I’m a millionaire’s stepdaughter, so I’m not asking for tomorrow. Just for tonight. All my life…I’ve been so alone. Please, Rafe… I just want to be with you.”

  He understood the desperate pain in her voice because he’d lived with the same kind of loneliness. He’d prided himself on being tough and independent. In the past he’d used women for sex and steered clear of real closeness. Somehow he knew that wasn’t going to be possible with her.

  In a flash of blinding insight, she stripped him of his protective shell. He had to have her. Even though he already knew he wanted way more than her body. Even though he already sensed they were doomed.

  Gently he kissed her mouth. Within seconds they were both on fire. He tugged off his shirt. Dropping his pants, he pulled out his wallet and found a condom. Opening the package, he rolled it on as she watched, her eyes shining eagerly. Then his hands were in her tangled hair as he lay down beside her on the bed. Tracing the length of her spine, he cupped her bottom as he fiercely pulled her toward him and fitted her against him. Soon he was lost to the tantalizing pleasure of her delectable body melting into his.

  When he flipped her onto her back and eased himself into her, this time pushing very gently, she kissed him bravely, with only the tiniest moan escaping her lips. After the first tight stroke, she relaxed and, smiling radiantly up at him, opened herself to him endlessly, and he took everything she had to offer because he was even more starved for it than she.

  The final rapture when she cried out was soul-shattering; the joy he found in her was so wondrously profound it seemed boundless. He made love to her a second time and a third, and each time it was better. Each time made him know that he wanted more than tonight. More than tomorrow.

  He was staking a claim on forever.

  He had found a tenderness in loving her that his life, for all its adventure and physical passion, had lacked until this one night with her.

  But later, as Rafe lay awake in the first glowing light of dawn, his hard body moist and cool with sweat as he cuddled her close, he was coldly furious with himself.

  Out of all the virgins in the world to bed, he could hardly have made a more dangerous choice than Armi Calderon’s precocious stepdaughter, the girl he’d been hired to protect.