Читать книгу Just Married!: Kiss the Bridesmaid / Best Man Says I Do - Cara Colter - Страница 8

“YOUR boyfriend?” Ethan asked Samantha.

“Worse,” she told him, still smiling sweetly at him. “My brother.” She reached up and brushed her lips on his, he presumed to make sure he was really in trouble.

But the kiss took them both by surprise. He could tell by the way her eyes widened, and he felt a thrilled shock at the delicacy of those lips touching his, too.

But she backed away rapidly, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And that will teach you to take twenty bucks to pretend you’re interested in me. Oh, hi, Mitch, this is Ethan. He just asked me to marry him.”

Then she wagged her fingers at him and disappeared into the throng of people milling about discussing the tiff between the bride and groom.

Her lips, Ethan thought, faintly dazed, had tasted of strawberries and sea air.

He watched her go, troubled not so much by the impending arrival of her brother, as by the fact she thought someone would have to pay him to show interest in her, and that she thought, even on the shortness of their acquaintance, that he would be such a person.

Of course, he was trying to buy a bride, not exactly a character reference.

The man stopped in front of him and folded hamsized hands over a chest so wide it was stretching the buttons on his dress shirt.

“I’ve got a question for you,” Mitch said menacingly.

In a split second an amazing number of possibilities raced through Ethan’s mind. What were you doing outside with my sister? What are your intentions? Why are you kissing someone you just met? You asked my sister to marry you? None of the answers Ethan came up with boded well for him.

He braced himself . Ethan did not consider himself a fighter, but he wasn’t one to back down, either.

“You really are Ethan Ballard, aren’t you?”

The question was so different than what he was bracing himself for that Ethan just nodded warily.

“I gotta know why you left the Sox. One season. No injury. Great rookie year. I gotta know.”

Despite the menace, Ethan felt himself relax. He could tell Samantha’s brother was one of those hardworking, honest men that these communities, once all fishing villages, were famous for producing.

Ethan had his stock answer to the question he had just been asked, but he surprised himself by not giving it. In a low voice he said, “I wanted to be liked and respected for who I was, not for what I did.”

A memory, painful, squeezed behind his eyes, of Bethany saying, her voice shrill with disbelief, You did what? And that had been the end of their engagement, just as his father had predicted.

Samantha’s brother regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, made up his mind, clapped him, hard, on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll get you a beer and you can meet my brothers.”

“About that marriage proposal—”

The big man’s eyes sought his sister and found her. He watched her for a moment and then sighed.

“Don’t worry. I know she was just kiddin’ around, probably kissed you to get me mad, as if I could get mad at Ethan Ballard. Nobody’s gonna marry my little sister.”

“Why’s that?” Ethan asked, and he felt troubled again. Samantha Hall was beautiful. And had plenty of personality and spunk. Why would it seem so impossible that someone—obviously not a complete stranger who had just met her, but someone—would want to marry her?

“They’d have to come through me first,” Mitch said, and then, “And even if they didn’t, she’d have to find someone who is more a man than she is. My fault. I raised her. Don’t be fooled by present appearances. That girl is as tough as nails.”

But it seemed to Ethan what Samantha Hall needed was not someone who was more a man than her at all. It was someone who saw the woman in her. And who could clearly see she was not tough as nails. He thought of the softness of her lips on his and the vulnerability he had glimpsed in her eyes when he had joined her outside. And he wondered just what he was getting himself into, and why he felt so committed to it.

Sam couldn’t believe it. A complete stranger had asked her to marry him. She knew Ethan Ballard was kidding—or up to something—but her heart had still gone crazy when he had said the words! Having been raised by brothers, Sam knew better than to let her surprise or intrigue show. There was nothing a man liked better than catching a woman off guard to get the upper hand!

She was annoyed to see her brothers liked him. She watched from across the room as they gathered around him, as if he was a long-lost Hall, clapping him on the shoulder and offering him a beer. Ethan Ballard had wormed his way into their fold effortlessly.

Well, she thought, that’s a perfect end to a perfect day. Her feet hurt, she was tired of the dress and she felt sick for Charlie and Amanda. Fighting on a wedding night had to be at least as bad for luck as the bouquet not getting caught. Sam had just postponed the inevitable by making her heroic save.

Still, her work here was done. Much as she would have liked to know what that proposal was really about, she didn’t want Ethan Ballard to think she cared! No, better to leave him thinking she shrugged off marriage proposals from strangers as if they were a daily occurrence!

Sam made her way to the front door and finally managed to get away. Outside, she kicked off her heels and went around the parking lot toward the yacht club private beach that bordered it, the shortest route back to the small hamlet of St. John’s Cove.

“Hey!”

Samantha turned and saw Ethan Ballard coming toward her, even his immense confidence no match for the sand. If she ran, he’d never catch her. But then he might guess he made her feel afraid in some way she didn’t quite understand.

Not afraid of him. But afraid of herself.

She thought of the way his lips had felt when she had playfully brushed them with hers, and she turned and kept walking.

He caught up to her anyway.

“I see you survived my brothers.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“They usually run a better defense,” she said. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t from the exertion of walking through the sand.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

A different girl might have said, Midnight swim, skinny-dipping, but she couldn’t. She didn’t quite know what to make of his attention. She was enjoying it, and hating the fact she was enjoying it. “Home.”

“I’ll walk you.”

No one ever walked her anywhere. She was not seen as the fragile type; in fact her bravery was legend. She was the first one to swim in the ocean every year, she had been the first one out of the plane when the guys had talked her into skydiving. When they were fourteen and had played chicken with lit cigarettes, she had always won. She was known to be a daredevil in her little sailboat, an old Cape Dory Typhoon named the Hall Way.

Sam was a little taken aback that she liked his chivalry. So she said, with a touch of churlishness, “I can look after myself.”

“I’ll walk you home, anyway.”

There was nothing argumentative in his tone. Or bossy. He was just stating a fact. He was walking her home, whether she liked it or not.

And she certainly didn’t want him to know that she did like that feeling of being treated as fragile and feminine.

“Suit yourself.”

He stopped after a moment, slid off his shoes and socks. Since she was stuck with him anyway, she waited, admiring the way he looked in the moonlight, silver beams tangling in the darkness of his hair, his now bare feet curling into the sensuousness of the sand.

He straightened, shoes in hand, and she saw the moonlight made his dark eyes glint with silver shadows, too.

She started walking again, and he walked beside her.

“Do you want to talk about the proposal?”

A renegade thought blasted through her of what it would be like to actually be married to a man like him. To taste those lips whenever you wanted, to feel his easy strength as part of your life.

Maybe that’s why Amanda and Charlie had rushed to get married even when the odds were against them, pulled toward that soft feeling of not being alone anymore.

“I already said I’d marry you,” she said, her careless tone hiding both her curiosity and the vulnerability those thoughts made her feel. “My brothers, strangely enough, liked you. What’s to discuss?”

He laughed, and she didn’t feel like he was laughing at her, but truly enjoying her. It would be easy to come to love that sensation. Of being seen. And appreciated.

“Setting a date?” he kidded.

“Oh. I guess there’s that. How about tomorrow?” She reminded herself most of his appreciation was thanks to the costume: the dress and the hair and the makeup.

“I’m free, and by happy coincidence that’s when I need a wife. Just for the day. Want to play with me?”

The awful thing was she did want to play with him, desperately. But what she considered playing—a day of sailing or swimming—was probably not what he considered playing. At all. His next words confirmed that.

“I’m a real estate investor. I buy higher end properties that have gone to seed, fix them up and flip them.”

Oh, he played with money.

“I thought the market was gone,” she said. She thought of the real estate sign hanging in front of her own rented premises, and thanked the wedding for its one small blessing.

She hadn’t thought of that all day.

Because ever since the sign had gone up, she’d been getting stomachaches. Her business relied on its prime Main Street, St. John’s, location, the summer people coming in and buying grooming supplies, the cute little doggy outfits she stocked, the good-grade dog foods, the amazing and unusual pet accessories that she spent her spare time seeking out. But she knew she’d been getting an incredible deal on the rent, which included her storefront and the apartment above it. A new owner meant one of two things, neither of them good. She would be paying higher rent, or she would get evicted.

“I’m in a position where I can buy and hold if I have to,” he said with easy self-assurance, “though the market is never really gone for the kind of clients who buy my properties.”

“Oh,” she said. He dealt with the old rich, like the St. John family who had founded this town.

“One of my scouts called in a property down the coastline from here a few miles, a little closer to Stone Harbor than here. It’s ideal—beachfront, a couple of acres, an old house that needs to be torn down or extensively remodeled, I’m not sure which yet.”

The private beach they were walking down intersected with a boardwalk. Sam leaned over to put on her shoes to protect her feet from splinters on the weathered old boardwalk. When she raised up one foot, she took an awkward step sideways in the sand.

She felt a thrilled shock when Ethan reached out quickly to steady her, his one hand red-hot on her naked shoulder, his other caressing as he took her remaining shoe from where she was dangling it from its strap in her hand. He slid it onto her foot, his palm cupping the arch for a suspended second before sliding away.

He stepped away from her, acted as if nothing had happened as he sat down and put on his own socks and shoes.

How could he possibly not have felt that current that leaped in the air between them when he touched her foot? His touch had been astoundingly sexy, more so than when she had touched his lips earlier. She felt scorched; he appeared cool and composed.

Which meant even considering his proposal would be engaging in a form of lunacy she couldn’t afford!

She didn’t wait for him to finish with his shoes, but went up the rickety stairs in front of him, though she soon realized putting back on her own shoes had been a mistake, the heels finding every crack between the boards to slide down between. She was with one of the most elegant, composed, handsome men she had ever met, and she felt like she was in the starring role of March of the Penguins.

On the seaside of the boardwalk she was passing a scattering of small shingle-sided beachfront homes and cottages. Ethan caught up to her.

She slipped up the first side street of St. John’s Cove, where it met the boardwalk, and now less wobbly on the paved walkway, marched up the hill past the old saltbox fishing cottages, one of which she had grown up in and where her brother Mitch still lived. The lobster traps in the front yard were real, not for decoration. He must have brought them home to repair them.

The side street emptied onto the town square, and she crossed the deserted park at the center of the square and went past the statue of Colton’s great-grandfather. His great-grandfather looked amazingly like Colton—tall, handsome, powerful—but he had a stuffy look on his face that she had never seen on Colton’s. The walkway that bisected the park led straight to Main Street, St. John’s Cove.

The colorful awnings over the buildings had been all rolled up, the tables and umbrellas in front of the Clam Digger put away for the night. The streetlights, modeled after old gaslights, threw golden light over the wonderful old buildings, Colonial saltboxes, shingle-sided, some weathered gray, some stained rich brown.

All the window, door, corner and roof trim was painted white, and old hinged store signs hung from wrought-iron arms above the doors. Each store had bright flower planters in front, spilling over with abundant colorful waves of cascading petunias.

St. John’s Cove Main Street was picturesque and delightful—bookstores, antique shops, art galleries and cafés, the bank anchoring one end of the street, the post office the other.

And right in the middle of that was her store, Groom to Grow.

With the Building for Sale sign, that she had managed not to think about for nearly twelve whole hours, swinging gently in front of it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she could see the nose of Amanda’s yellow convertible parked at a bad angle beside the staircase that ran up the side of her building to her apartment above the storefront.

Well, where else was Amanda going to go? She had given up her own apartment in anticipation of spending the rest of her life with Charlie, starting tonight.

“Well, this is home.”

“This is your business?”

She turned at the surprised note in his voice. “Yes. I live in the apartment above it.”

He put his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels. “That’s a strange coincidence. I looked at it today.”

“To buy it?” she asked, not succeeding at keeping the waver of fear out of her voice. So far, because of the economy, there had been very little interest in the building.

He shrugged, watching her closely. “I’d only pick it up if I bought the other property, as well. The price is reasonable, probably because the building needs a lot of work. Cape Cod is always a good investment.”

“Oh.” She tried to sound unconcerned, but knew she failed miserably. “What would you do with it, if you bought it?”

“Probably do some much needed maintenance on it, and then rent it out. Just think,” he teased, “I could be your landlord.”

“I doubt that. The rent is a song right now. Once the roof didn’t leak and the hot water tap actually dispensed hot water, it would probably be a different story. I can’t pay any higher. Once the building sells, I’ll probably be looking for a new home. I was counting my lucky stars that there hasn’t been much interest in it since it went on the market.”

She wished she hadn’t admitted that. The Hall family was notorious for keeping their business to themselves, but she knew Ethan had registered the slight waver in her voice. She pointed her chin proudly to make up for it.

She wished she could afford to buy the building, but she couldn’t. Her brothers would probably help her if she asked them, but she knew the lobster business was a tough one. The Hall brothers had invested in a new vessel recently, and she hated to think of putting more stress on their finances.

Her future, and the future of Groom to Grow, were clearly up in the air.

“Hmm,” Ethan said easily, teasingly, “maybe I’ve found just the lure to get you to agree to be my wife.”

As if he wasn’t lure enough, damn him!

She wasn’t in the mood to kid about Groom to Grow and her future. She had parlayed her love of animals into this business and if it wasn’t exactly what she had planned for her life, at least it allowed her to live in the town she loved, surrounded by the people she cared about.

“Tell me the details of your proposal,” she said reluctantly.

“When my lawyer made some initial inquiries about the property for sale up the coast, the couple informed him they were interviewing potential buyers. They’re old people. They have a sentimental attachment to the place. They want to see another family in there. They’ve been interviewing buyers and turning them down for two years.”

“That’s kind of sweet, isn’t it?”

He groaned. “Sweet? It’s sentimental hogwash. What does that have to do with business?

“They could sell it to what they think is the perfect family, and that family could turn around and sell it in a year or two, disillusioned with life at Cape Cod.”

He was being very convincing, and she knew that happened all the time. The sumpies were fickle in their love of Cape Cod.

They came and bought cottages and properties here during those perfect months of summer. Then they discovered they hated the commute. Or that outfitting and running two households was not very relaxing. That there were really only two or three true months of summer to enjoy their expensive real estate. Spring and fall were generally cold and blustery; winter in St. John’s Cove was not for the faint of heart.

“So,” Sam said uneasily, “you want me to pretend to be your wife for one day. To go dupe those old people out of their property.”

He didn’t just play with money—he played with people.

“I don’t see it like that,” he said evenly. “It’s business. It’s unrealistic of them to think they’re going to control what happens to the property after they sell it.”

He was right in a pragmatic way. If she could be as businesslike as he was maybe the future of Groom to Grow wouldn’t be so uncertain. She made a decent living at what she did, she loved it and it allowed her to stay in St. John’s Cove. But it had never taken off to the point where she could sock away enough money to buy her own property.

“I said I’d make it worth your while.”

So, here was the truth about him. She should have known it the first time she had looked into those devil-dark eyes. Ethan Ballard was Lucifer, about to hold out the one temptation she couldn’t refuse, the future of Groom to Grow. Though her eyes slid to his lips when she thought that, and she realized he might have two temptations she would have trouble walking away from.

“If the deal goes the way I want it to, I’ll buy this building, and you can rent the space from me. I’ll guarantee you the same terms you have now for at least a year, since you’d be putting up with some noisy and inconvenient repairs.”

Sam, of all people, knew life didn’t have guarantees, but a reprieve from that For Sale sign almost made her weak in the knees.

“You want that place badly,” she said, trying not to act as shocked as she felt.

“Maybe. The initial assessments look very promising.”

“Enough for you to throw in a building?” she asked cynically.

He shrugged. “So, I end up with the beachfront house and some of St. John’s Cove Main Street. The price on this building was very fair. Sounds win-win to me.”

“And if the deal doesn’t go the way you want?”

“How could it not?” he said smoothly. “With you as my wife?”

In other words, if she played the role well, things would go exactly as he wanted them to. She had a feeling things in Ethan Ballard’s life went his way.

“If, despite my best efforts to play your devoted wife, they don’t sell you their property?” she pressed. “What then?”

“The deal is off. I’d be heading up a development team to work on the other property—carpenters, plumbers, electricians, roofers—so it would be no big deal to send them over to do some work on this building while we’re here. But it wouldn’t make good business sense to send them in for this building alone. I’m hands-on. If I can’t be here to supervise, I’m not doing it.”

“Oh.”

“Take a chance,” he said in his best charm-of-thedevil voice. “You won’t be any further behind if things don’t work out. Besides, it might be fun.”

Oh, sure. Of course it was fun to dance with the devil, but there was always a price to be paid.

“I have to think about it,” she said, deducing he was a man far too accustomed to getting his own way.

She certainly didn’t want him to see how easily she was swayed by his charm, or how much she wanted what he was offering. He didn’t have to know she was already ninety percent at yes.

Though in truth more than fifty percent of that yes was that she was reluctantly intrigued by him, even if she was uneasy about the deal.

A light turned on in her apartment.

They both turned and looked up at the lighted window. Amanda, still in her bridal gown, was pacing in front of the window.

I’m getting a stomachache, Sam noted to herself. Out loud, she said coolly, “It was nice meeting you. Thanks for walking me home.”

“I’ll drop by in the morning, around nine. I’ll pick you up right here, outside, so it’s not awkward if you decide against it. If you’re here, great, and if you’re not, I’ll assume you didn’t want to come. No problem.” He looked at her for a long moment, and she could feel herself holding her breath. He was debating kissing her! She knew it. And she didn’t know if she was relieved or regretful when he walked away!

By nine the next morning, the other ten percent had swung over to Ethan Ballard’s side. The truth was, Sam would have thrown in with Genghis Khan to get away from the intensity of emotion that had swept into her life with the runaway bride. Sam had spent most of the night trying to console her friend, who was inconsolable, but who wouldn’t tell her what horrible crime Charlie had committed this time.

Despite her cynicism about love and marriage, Sam would have done anything to make Charlie and Amanda’s relationship work, to see her friends happy. Her sense of powerlessness in the face of Amanda’s distress made her eager to escape.

Still, even though she was waiting at the curb for Ethan Ballard, Sam was determined he wasn’t going to have it all his way.

No, the girl Ethan had proposed to last night was banished. Gone was the makeup and the hair, gone was the suggestive dress.

Sam’s face was scrubbed clean, her hair loose but covered with her favorite ball cap. She was wearing an old pair of faded khakis, and a T-shirt that belonged to her brother Bryce. She had an uglier one that belonged to Mitch, but Amanda was shuffling around the apartment in it this morning since everything Amanda owned was at Charlie’s house.

Still, Sam was satisfied that she certainly would not be what anyone would picture as the wife of Mr. Ethan Ballard.

And she had the new dog, Waldo, with her, too. People dropped off strays with her, counting on her to work her magic with them and then to find them good homes. Sam had never said no to a dog who needed a place to go.

This dog was particularly sensitive to emotion, and when Amanda had become so overwrought that she was puking, he had started sympathy-puking right along with her.

Sam and the dog were actually sitting on the curb when Ethan drove up the street slowly in a gorgeous newer-model luxury car. Waldo, half Chinese pug and half mystery, was dressed in an army camo hoodie since the morning fog had not quite lifted, and the breeze coming off the ocean was sharp. Sam could not stop herself from spoiling the dogs and cats that had temporary refuge with her.

Sam saw the look on Ethan Ballard’s face when he saw her sitting by the curb with her mutt. She thought about the mission they were about to embark on and had the uncharitable hope that the dog would puke in his luxurious car.

If Ethan even stopped to pick them up! Maybe he would take one look at the real Samantha Hall and drive right on by!