The Groom's Stand-In (Special Edition)

by Gina Wilkins

  “If we’re where I think we are, this is a million-acre forest. Federally protected wilderness, no development encouraged. We’re bound to come across someone before too much longer, but it’s not so strange that we’ve been able to wander around for two days without finding our way out.”

  “What if we’re wandering in circles? Maybe heading away from people instead of toward them.”

  “We’re not traveling in circles. Zigzagging a bit, but not circles.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Either he really was certain—or he lied as well as he did everything else.

  “I’m not giving up,” she said wearily.

  “I know you’re not. But I can’t blame you for being discouraged. You’re exhausted.”

  “You must be, too.”

  “I’m tired, but I slept well last night.”

  So had she, actually. She’d roused only a couple of times to strange sounds, and both times she’d drifted straight back into sleep, safe and warm in Donovan’s arms.

  Her growing attachment to him—dependence upon him?—was beginning to worry her. She’d been fascinated by him since the moment she’d met him, but it seemed to be developing into something more than that. Was it only proximity? Only the fact that her safety—perhaps her very life—depended on him now?

  Or was it more than that?

  She’d long since given up on finding a real hero—a true soul mate. The kind of man she’d fantasized about meeting when she’d been younger and more idealistic. She’d convinced herself that she was willing to settle for a compatible partner—someone she liked very much, with whom she had a great deal in common. Someone like Bryan.

  She was beginning to understand how close she was coming to making a huge mistake.

  “You’re being very quiet all of a sudden,” Donovan murmured. “Blaming me for getting you into this mess?”

  “I’m trusting you to get me out of it,” she replied more lightly than she felt.

  “I hope I can justify your faith in me.”

  “Something tells me you will.”

  Though it was too dark to see his face clearly, she sensed his frown. “I’ll do my best. But, Chloe—I’ve made mistakes in the past. And people have been hurt because of them.”

  “We’ve all unintentionally hurt people.”

  Shaking his head, he muttered, “That’s not what I meant.”

  She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the tenseness of his muscles. “I know you’ve led a…colorful past. And I won’t deny I’m curious, which is only natural considering how much time we’ve spent together. But whatever mistakes you’ve made, I can’t imagine anyone more capable or resourceful or tenacious than you’ve been since those men grabbed us.”

  She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but he covered her hand with his and spoke quietly, “I’ll get you out of this, Chloe.”

  “We’ll get each other out,” she replied, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We just need some rest tonight. Tomorrow we’ll find civilization.”

  “And then you can have that salad you’ve been fantasizing about.”

  In response to the mention of food, her stomach growled softly. “Actually, that red meat you mentioned is starting to sound pretty good.”

  “Then I’ll buy you a steak as soon as we find a restaurant,” he promised rashly. “With a salad on the side. Followed by sherbet—pineapple or orange, right?”

  “You’re starting to know me well,” she teased.

  When he spoke again, his mouth was very close to her ear. “Maybe I am.”

  All she had to do was turn her head and their lips would touch. Her curiosity about kissing him would finally be satisfied.

  Only a few days ago, Chloe wouldn’t have had the courage to move. But the last forty-eight hours had changed her. She had learned to take advantage of every opportunity that presented itself to her.

  She turned her head.

  Chapter Ten

  Chloe’s lips brushed Donovan’s jaw, just as they had the night before when she’d given him that impulsive good-night kiss. And then she adjusted her aim so that their lips met.

  For only one tantalizing moment he responded. His lips moved against hers, warm and firm and skilled. It was wonderful—but unsatisfying. She wanted more.

  She could almost feel his urge to take her into his arms and deepen the embrace. A short, hard tremor seemed to course through him at the same time a jolt of pleasure shook her—and then, abruptly, he drew away.

  “I’ll consider that a very nice thank you,” he said, and though he tried to speak lightly, his voice was rough-edged.

  She moistened her lips, which still tingled in reaction to that brief contact and ached with a hunger for more. “Donovan—”

  “Bryan will be glad to see you if—when—we do find our way back,” he added, drawing even farther away from her physically so that they were barely touching now. “Your sister, too, of course. I just hope she doesn’t blame all this on Bryan, since she seemed so eager to find fault with him, anyway.”

  He’d used Bryan’s name like a shield—and she realized now it wasn’t the first time he had done so.

  Leaning back against the cool rock wall, she told herself she shouldn’t take his withdrawal as a personal rejection. Under the circumstances, he was being prudent to hold back. After all, he worked for the man with whom she’d been discussing marriage. And he probably wondered—as she did—if their emotions were being heightened by the drama of their situation. If there was a natural tendency to turn to each other because they had no one else to turn to.

  “Grace won’t blame Bryan for this,” she said, deciding to follow his example. “At least…I don’t think she will,” she added a bit less confidently.

  “If she does, she’ll just have to get over it. This wasn’t Bryan’s fault.”

  “I’ve already assured you that I know that. And Grace will understand once she hears all the facts.”

  Donovan grunted. “Yeah. Then she’ll probably blame me.”

  “She’ll blame the people who are responsible. Just as I do. And you aren’t one of them.”

  After a short pause, Donovan asked, “You and your sister are very close, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. We’re twins. And best friends. I know your first impression of her wasn’t good, but she’s really a lot of fun. She’s big-hearted and generous and has a great sense of humor.”

  “And a temper.”

  “And a temper,” Chloe agreed wryly.

  “Did she get it all? Or have you been known to blow your top occasionally?”

  “Oh, I have a temper. It just takes longer to set mine off than it does Grace’s.”

  There was another pause, and then Donovan spoke again. “Do you think your sister will accept your decision to marry Bryan? It would be difficult for you if your twin couldn’t get along with your husband.”

  He’d spoken without any particular emotion, but the word husband seemed to reverberate for a moment in the shallow cave.

  Chloe swallowed, then replied, “I’ve told you repeatedly, Donovan, I have not agreed to marry Bryan.”

  “He’s asked you, hasn’t he?”

  “He suggested it might be an advantageous arrangement for both of us,” she replied carefully. “I told him I would consider his proposition.”

  “You decided to accept, didn’t you? You wouldn’t have agreed to spend this week with him if you hadn’t pretty well made up your mind already.”

  He was getting to know her well. And, truth was, she had almost made up her mind to marry Bryan when she’d agreed to join him here. But things had changed since then.

  Was Donovan trying in his not-so-subtle way to find out her true feelings for Bryan? Was he interested only as Bryan’s friend—or for more personal reasons?

  She decided to answer him candidly. “I had almost convinced myself that I would never have a better offer. Bryan is an extraordinary man and I’ve
grown quite fond of him during the past few weeks. I want a family—children—and I’m not getting any younger. I thought I would be foolish not to at least give his flattering offer careful consideration. But that was before—”

  “Before?”

  Before I met you. She hadn’t grown quite brave enough to let those words escape.

  “Before I decided that my sister was right about one thing,” she answered instead. “I don’t want to marry anyone because it seems like the logical and practical thing to do at the time. I want it to mean more than that.”

  “You, uh, really shouldn’t be making any decisions under these circumstances,” Donovan said somewhat awkwardly. “You’re exhausted and scared, and you can’t think clearly like that. Things that you feel out here—well, you can’t trust that they’re real.”

  So Donovan was worried that their emotions were being influenced by their situation. Maybe he was warning himself as much as her. And while she acknowledged the validity of his concerns, she didn’t really believe she was letting herself be overly influenced by circumstances.

  True, the past forty-eight hours had thrown them together so that they’d had no choice but to get to know each other, to lean on each other and depend on each other. But there had to be more to it than that.

  What she was starting to feel for Donovan was too powerful to be mere infatuation, too compelling to be simple attraction. She had never been the sort of woman who fell in love easily—and she wasn’t quite ready yet to say she was in love with Donovan—but it was more than circumstantial.

  Because she wasn’t at all sure of his feelings for her, she said simply, “I’m not making any big decisions tonight.”

  That seemed to satisfy him—at least enough that he let the subject drop. “You’d better get some sleep. We’ll start early in the morning.”

  An outcropping of rock jutted from the cave wall beside her. Using her arm for a pillow, she laid her head on it and closed her eyes while Donovan leaned against the opposite wall. The only sound in the cave came from the wildlife outside.

  They wouldn’t be nestling together tonight. Donovan had deliberately withdrawn from her since he’d brought up Bryan’s name.

  He was absolutely right to do so, of course, she reflected as she pretended to sleep. As he’d said, this was no time to make important decisions. Or to take rash actions. After that, she needed to have a long talk with Bryan. And after that…

  She couldn’t say now whether she and Donovan would ever spend time together after they were rescued. But she suspected that it wouldn’t be her decision if they did not.

  Grace had worried about her being hurt during this vacation. Chloe had wondered if there was a chance she could fall in love this week.

  She spent a long time reflecting on the ironic aspects of those uncanny predictions. It gave her something to do besides think about how very close Donovan sat to her—and how nice it would have felt to be lying in his arms rather than against a cold, hard rock.

  A wireless telephone in his hand, Bryan Falcon sat in the den of his Ozarks vacation home and gazed somberly at the woman sleeping restlessly on the couch across the room. He’d draped an afghan over her earlier and she had stirred, but, to his relief, she hadn’t awakened. He’d needed a break from her pacing and questioning.

  He’d tried to talk her into taking one of the bedrooms for the night, but she’d refused. She wouldn’t sleep, she had vowed, until Donovan and Chloe were safe.

  She’d lasted until nearly 2:00 a.m. before sleep had claimed her. Bryan couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, but he couldn’t rest yet.

  She looked so much like Chloe, he thought, studying Grace’s face in the soft glow of the only lamp he’d left on in the room. And yet they were so different. When he was with Chloe, he always felt comfortable. Peaceful.

  Peaceful was not the first word that came to mind when he thought of Grace. Neither was comfortable. He felt as though there were several large strips of his skin missing after spending the past several hours with her. She most definitely blamed him for the danger her sister was in now.

  He’d held on to his patience only because he understood how greatly she had suffered today as the hours had crept by with no word of Chloe. He’d talked her out of calling her parents, but there’d been no way he could make her stay home and leave everything to him. She had insisted on joining him here, on knowing every detail of what he was doing to find Chloe.

  There had been no further ransom calls, and that was starting to make him even more nervous.

  The kidnappers should be pushing him, demanding that he hand over the money immediately. Even if—and he had to swallow at the thought—even if Chloe and Donovan were dead, the kidnappers should be bluffing, working to convince Bryan that they were unharmed and would stay that way if he paid the ransom.

  But something was very wrong on that other end. He knew it…and so did Grace.

  Rubbing his forehead, he wondered how he could live with himself if anything had happened to Chloe because of him. And losing Donovan was something he couldn’t even think about right now.

  Grace shifted on the couch, opened her eyes, then sat straight upright. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A little over an hour.”

  She looked at the phone in his hand. “Have you…?”

  “There’s been no word yet. I had the phone set to vibrate so it wouldn’t startle you if it rang.”

  She shoved the afghan away. “What time is it?”

  “Just after 3:00 a.m. Are you sure you won’t lie down upstairs for awhile? I promise I’ll wake you if I hear anything at all.”

  Wearing the stubborn look he’d come to expect from her, she shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep in that room with Chloe’s things all around me.”

  “You could take one of the other rooms.”

  “I don’t want to sleep. I want to find my sister.”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Grace.”

  “Then do more.”

  “I know it looks as though I’m not doing enough, but believe me, I am. I’m just trying to keep it quiet. I want to keep the media away from this as long as possible. It hasn’t been easy doing so this long, and we won’t be able to hide it much longer, but if the press gets wind of what’s happened, we’ll have a circus on our hands. That could be dangerous for Chloe and Donovan.”

  He’d explained that to her before, but he figured it was worth reiterating. Grace had never experienced the press in full feeding frenzy. He had.

  She started to say something else, but was interrupted when Jason Colby walked into the room, a look of grim satisfaction on his face.

  Bryan jumped to his feet. Across the room, Grace did the same.

  “I’ve got news,” Jason announced.

  As if she needed reassurance—even if it came from him—Grace moved closer to Bryan. “Tell us,” she said, her voice strained. “Where is my sister?”

  With Chloe cradled in his arms, Donovan watched the gray light of another cloudy dawn creep slowly into the shallow cave. The temperature had dropped during the night, and he’d sensed Chloe shivering in her sleep.

  He still had the old vet’s matches in his pocket, and he had considered building a small fire. But since the cave wasn’t ventilated and he was more likely to asphyxiate them than warm them, he’d turned to the only other source of warmth he’d had to offer—body heat.

  Chloe hadn’t roused when he’d pulled her into his arms, which only proved the extent of her exhaustion.

  He decided the cool nights were much preferable to what they’d have been suffering if they’d been stranded in the forest in August rather than April. Dangerous heat, burning sun, higher risk of dehydration, more problems with insects and snakes…he supposed if they had to be lost in the woods this was the best time for it to happen. The biggest problem with spring was the threat of severe weather—and he’d been hearing thunder rolling in the distance for about an hour now.

 
Though Chloe still shivered occasionally, her face felt warm when he laid the back of his hand against her cheek. He hoped she wasn’t getting sick, though he wouldn’t be surprised if she was.

  He honestly didn’t know how she kept going. Little sleep, less food, only occasional sips of water from the stream, the bottoms of her feet shredded. He was hardly in top shape, himself, but he’d had more experience with this sort of thing—from boot camp to Saudi Arabia and assorted other demanding locales.

  As he’d thought several times before, Chloe was definitely tougher than she looked.

  He could still almost taste her lips on his. Could still feel their texture, their warmth, their softness. And it took very little stretch of his imagination to fantasize about taking the kiss further and making love with her—in a bed or here in this wannabe cave. Those fantasies had kept him awake all night.

  Being neither stupid nor oblivious, he was well aware that Chloe had developed an attraction for him. As mutual as those feelings might be, he was making a massive effort not to let them get out of hand.

  He had seen his share of what he’d always thought of as “battle-zone romances”—relationships that developed rapidly under intense conditions, then fizzled just as swiftly when life returned to normal. He wouldn’t risk anything of that sort with Chloe.

  For another thing, he would be betraying Bryan—something he’d long ago vowed never to do.

  Even if Chloe was starting to have doubts about her future with Bryan, Donovan had no intention of taking advantage of those misgivings. Despite her repeated assertions that she didn’t blame Bryan for this situation, he wasn’t sure that she wasn’t secretly harboring some resentment. The very natural anger she surely felt had to find an outlet. After the kidnappers themselves, she probably directed at least part of it toward Bryan.

  Considering Bryan’s renowned charm, Donovan didn’t think it would take his friend long to get past that repressed resentment once Chloe was safely back with him.

  But it wasn’t just loyalty alone that was making Donovan hold Chloe at emotional arm’s length, though that would have been enough in itself. There was also the niggling suspicion that his own emotions were being unduly influenced by their circumstances. It seemed uncharacteristic of him, but how else could he explain his growing fascination with her?