Читать книгу Three Times A Bride - Catherine Spencer - Страница 8

HE STOPPED and turned back to face her. He looked at her long and thoughtfuly then, as he retraced his steps, said with ominous intent, “Did I really? Well, that’s one mistake I certainly don’t have to repeat.”

Georgia’s heart flapped around behind her ribs like a chicken trying to save its neck from the hatchet but Adam didn’t care. He just kept moving until he loomed no more than twelve inches from where she stood rooted to the plush blue carpet under her feet.

Trapped by the desk behind her and the reckless words she’d flung at him, she did the only thing she could without losing what was left of her pride. She tilted her head to one side and with regal condescension, offered him her cheek.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, capturing her face in cool fingers and turning it back toward him and bending his head to hers.“Not like that at all. Like this.”

As soon as he touched her, she fell apart. A soft roaring filled her mind, dimming her hearing and clouding her vision. Her legs buckled, sending her reeling into him for support. She grabbed at him blindly, intending only to anchor herself upright, and instead found herself smoothing her hands over his face in tactile renewal of its beauty.

His mouth lowered. She felt the warm drift of his breath against her lips. And then, in excruciating slow motion, he kissed her.

It wasn’t aggressive, as kisses between a man and a woman often were. There was no audacity, no thrusting invasion of privacy. He simply settled his lips on hers and let them rest there. Yet, for all that, it was a lover’s kiss, delicately, temptingly erotic. A hothouse flower on the brink of bursting into fragrant bloom—or more accurately, an echo so painfully sweet of a splendor she’d once known that she couldn’t bear to let it end.

She pressed herself to him, winding her arms around his neck and softening her mouth in acquiescence. A murmur escaped her—a plea for just a little more, just a little longer—soft enough that only he could hear it, yet able to deafen completely all those parts of her brain that were trying so hard to scream out a warning.

The hopeless, helpless longings she’d stored away, having found a crack through which to escape, took full advantage but she was too enthralled to notice. All she cared about was that Adam responded to her overtures by sliding his arms tightly around her and directing the seductive finesse he’d always employed so well to a different turn, one no longer defined by propriety.

His mouth grew bold, investigative, cajoling. As if she weren’t willing enough to surrender to its assault! He tested her lips, tasted them and, when they opened to him, accepted the implicit surrender they offered.

At least, she thought he did. Was so convinced, in fact, that it took a while for her to comprehend that he was declining after all. Not that he was so ungallant as to shove her away and remind her that she was supposed to be engaged to another man. He merely ended things. Slowly, regretfully even, but quite firmly, leaving her no choice but to abide by his refusal.

“Will that suffice?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around her waist as the cool aftermath of his rejection infiltrated every pore of her skin to lay an icy wreath around her heart. Drawing in a great shuddering breath, she managed to nod.“Yes,” she said.

He prepared to leave again and had one foot out the door before he tossed a final word over his shoulder.“Liar,” he said.

Adam strode across the sidewalk and out into the rainslick road, narrowly missing being hit by a van that turned the corner too quickly. He barely noticed. It wasn’t his time to die; he’d already proved that with the business up north a year ago. And he had weightier things on his mind right now, like the lingering feel of Georgia in his arms, and the fact that some parts of him hadn’t been the least bit impaired by crash-landing in the frozen tundra of the Arctic.

“Hah,” he muttered with fake insouciance to the bronze statue of Eugene Piper that presided over the little public garden in the middle of the square, “that’ll teach her!”

But it had taught him, too—a lesson he’d briefly been disposed to forget: she was about to marry another man. While he’d been recovering from multiple fractures of the thigh, a dislocated shoulder and four broken ribs, not to mention a coma brought on by trauma to the brain and major bruising of just about every internal organ he owned, she’d been casting her net at Steven Drake.

The woman to whom he’d given his heart and his ring, and for whom he’d been willing to give up a career that he’d truly loved, had taken his apparent death in stride and gone ahead with her life without missing a beat. So what did he think he was doing, getting himself all fired up over a kiss when he ought to be congratulating himself on his lucky escape?

“Not that I expected her to spend the rest of her life alone, draped in widow’s weeds and burning a candle under my photo, you understand,” he grumbled to Eugene.“But couldn’t she have waited a decent interval? And chosen to look a bit further afield than my best friend?”

Eugene stared sightlessly ahead, rain dripping off his face mournfully. Some best friend, Adam, old buddy!

“I don’t blame him,” Adam said defensively.“He’s a nice guy who didn’t see what was headed his way until it was too late to duck. And at least he didn’t sweep me under the carpet the way she did. He showed some sort of conscience about the whole affair.”

In fact, from what Beverley had said, Steven had done a lot more than that. During the weeks immediately following the jet’s disastrous test flight, he’d been a frequent visitor at her house. He’d taken time out from consoling the bereaved fiancée to offer comfort to an opinionated, autocratic old lady who didn’t have another soul in the world who really gave a damn about her once her grandson had apparently shuffled off.

“He actually asked my permission to court that foolish child,” Beverley had told Adam, stemming her pleasure in his survival long enough to allude to Georgia with the customary disdain she reserved for all the Chamberlaines.“Under the circumstances I gave him my blessing and wished him luck. Heaven knows he’s going to need it, marrying into that straitlaced lot.”

She’d been referring, of course, to the long-standing feud between the Walshes and the Chamberlaines, two of Piper Landing’s founding families. It went back two generations, to the time when his maternal grandfather, Simon, had dumped Georgia’s paternal grandmother, Celeste, to marry Beverley. Well, the tables had been turned now, with a vengeance!

“In the long run it’s probably just as well that things fell apart between Georgia and me,” Adam confided to Eugene.“Hell, there’s enough grief in the world without a man finding himself caught in the crossfire between warring in-laws, wouldn’t you say?”

Although Eugene continued to stare commiseratingly into space, a young woman pushing a baby carriage through the little park heard Adam muttering to himself, flung him a startled glance, and gave him a wide berth.

Just then, the Courthouse clock struck the quarter hour, reminding him that he was taking Beverley to lunch at one.“Well, enough of this rubbish,” he decided, turning up the collar of his jacket and heading for his grandmother’s 1979 Rolls-Royce which he’d prudently parked on the far side of the square, just in case Georgia had spotted it and decided not to answer the door to her chichi little establishment.“All I need is to have it rumored abroad that I’ve come back from the dead with half my marbles missing and was spotted wandering around town talking to myself!”

The minute they were seated at their usual window table at the Riverside Club, Natalie Chamberlaine went into a recital of the prenuptial affairs being hosted during the coming week in Georgia’s honor. What she forgot to mention, Samantha, Georgia’s younger sister, supplied.

Georgia bent her mouth into what she hoped passed for a smile and tried to look interested. Apparently, she didn’t try hard enough.

“You know, Georgia,” her mother commented, visibly annoyed, “people are going to quite a lot of trouble for you. It seems to me that the least you could do is show a little enthusiasm and appreciation in return. It is the second time they’ve done this, after all.”

“Yes.” Samantha nodded smugly, secure in the knowledge that, unlike her older sister, she’d managed to get married on the first try without making a botch of things.“Smarten up, Georgia. It’s not as if we’re just recycling leftovers from the first time.”

Except for Adam! Georgia thought, and fought to stifle a burst of hysterical laughter.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, dear?” Her mother peered at her narrowly.“You really don’t seem yourself today.”

Georgia toyed with her spinach salad. All morning long she’d debated on when and how to tell her family the news that was doing a great job of turning her nicely ordered world upside-down. But she’d held back because she knew there’d be an uproar from both her mother and sister when they heard. On the other hand, Adam wasn’t exactly sneaking around in secret, so how long could she afford to wait before letting them in on the fact that he’d turned up again?

Perhaps now was as good a time as any, after all. If nothing else, it would keep the outcry of protests down to a dull roar because nothing less than seeing her daughters held up at gunpoint would allow Natalie Chamberlaine to indulge in public hysteria. It wasn’t considered seemly behaviour for members of the upper echelon of Piper Landing society.

“Actually, there is something I need to tell you,” Georgia admitted.

“I don’t like your tone of voice,” Natalie broke in, playing nervously with the string of pearls around her throat.“I don’t like it at all, Georgia. It’s not bad news, is it?”

“That all depends on your point of view, I suppose…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Georgia!” Samantha leaned back in her chair and rolled her eyes, very much the smart young matron thoroughly in charge of her own affairs and unable to comprehend why everyone else coudn’t follow her fine example.“Are you going to spit it out, whatever it is, or would you like us to drag it out of you, one syllable at a time?”

When they had been children, Georgia had sometimes found Samantha so intolerable that she’d forgotten she was always supposed to act like a little lady and had hauled off and smacked her sister. She felt like doing the same thing now.

“I’m trying to find the words to lead up to this gently, Samantha,” she said.“It’s not something I feel I can just ‘spit out’.”

Doing her best to ignore Samantha’s heaving sigh of exasperation, she glanced around the dining room, searching for the inspiration that would enable her to detonate her little bombshell casually and discreetly, with a minimum of aftershock. However, when her gaze fastened on the sight of Adam and his grandmother entering the dining room and being shown to a table not ten feet away, all thought of nonchalance or restraint fled her mind.“Adam isn’t dead,” she blurted out.

Natalie’s head shot up, though not quite as high as her voice. “What did you say?”

“Adam isn’t dead, Mother. I saw him last night, and again this morning.”

“Georgia, if this is your idea of a joke…” Natalie groped for her wineglass.

But Samantha, too, had seen, and was staring fixedly across the room.“She isn’t joking, Mother,” she confirmed faintly.

Natalie swiveled round in her chair, her gasp of dismay attesting to what most of the other people in the room also were noticing: the not-so-late Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot, large as life, sitting across from his grandmother and inspecting the menu.

Gradually becoming aware that the dining room had grown unusually silent, he looked around and found himself the object of everyone’s stunned attention, not the least among them Natalie and Samantha. Excusing himself to his grandmother, he rose from the table. Georgia supposed it was too much to hope he wouldn’t come over to theirs, and she was right.

“Hello, Mrs. Chamberlaine,” he said, as easily as if he’d last seen her only the week before.“How are you?”

If there was one thing a person could depend on, Georgia thought, watching the exchange with horrified fascination, it was that Natalie Chamberlaine never forgot her manners. She rose beautifully, if shakily, to the occasion.“Very well, thank you, Adam. And you?”

“Never better,” he said, all charming smiles.

Samantha didn’t fare quite as well as her mother.“We thought you were dead,” she said.

Adam’s smile assumed an edge that would have cut glass.“Lovely to see you again, too, Sammie.”

“People don’t call me by that name now that I’m married,” she said, smoothing her impeccably cut hair.

“Married? Little Sammie?”

Only Samantha could have missed the amused irony in his tone.“Yes,” she said, and held out her hand defiantly to show off her broad platinum wedding ring.

Adam inspected it with the tolerant awe of an uncle admiring his niece’s latest toy.“Very nice, Sammie.”

Flushed with annoyance at his continued lack of proper respect, Samantha unwisely attempted to punish him.“In case you haven’t heard, Georgia will be wearing one, too, next month at this time.”

His smoky blue gaze switched then and settled gravely on Georgia. His smile faded.“Will she?” he said softly.“Are you sure?”

If his first question was directed at her sister, his second was meant exclusively for her. Georgia knew Adam too well to be mistaken about that.

She tried to look away but he held her prisoner in his gaze and refused to let go. To her horror, she felt herself being drawn into those sultry blue depths and suffused with another bout of unspeakable longing.

“Very sure,” she croaked, her mouth so dry she could scarcely get the words out. But when she tried to relieve the situation by taking a sip of wine, her hand shook so badly that she had to set the glass down again in a hurry.

No, you’re not, his eyes said. You’re remembering how it felt when I kissed you this morning and you’re no longer sure of anything.

“Why are you here?” Samantha asked belligerently.

“To have lunch with my grandmother. Does that offend you?” Adam answered, never once allowing his gaze to stray from Georgia.

“Of course not, Adam. That wasn’t what Samantha meant at all. You can understand, I’m sure, that we’re…well, ‘taken aback’ scarcely describes it.” Fully in control of herself again, Natalie flicked her serviette much as a matador might have tried to deflect the attention of a wayward bull.“I’m sure you have a quite remarkable explanation for your absence and we’d love to hear it, but this is not the time. Your grandmother is obviously anxious to have you rejoin her. Please don’t keep her waiting on our account.”

“Oh, she’s waited fifteen months for the pleasure of my company at lunch,” Adam said, ignoring the hint and keeping his gaze glued to Georgia.“I think she can wait a couple of minutes more, or as long as it takes for me to offer my congratulations to the bride and her family.”

“Listen, Adam!” Samantha, who never had learned when to leave well enough alone, wagged a finger at him.“We don’t know where you’ve been for the last year or more and we don’t particularly care, but one thing we do want to make clear: we won’t stand for your causing trouble for the Chamberlaines again and disrupting another wedding. You’re not going to make us the laughingstock of this town a second time.”

“Were people laughing the last time?” he inquired mischievously.“How very unkind, considering that everyone thought I’d died a hero’s death.”

Samantha puffed up with righteous indignation.“Stop twisting my words. No one wished you dead in the first place and no one does now—as long as you don’t try to disrupt Georgia’s plans. But she’s finally making the right marriage and we won’t put up with your trying to spoil things for her.”

Adam lifted his shoulders in a puzzled shrug.“Why are you so worried?” he said smoothly, his gaze continuing to burn into Georgia’s soul.“If, as you claim to believe, everything’s perfect, nobody can spoil things. But if there are hidden flaws…” He smiled and dropped his glance to Georgia’s mouth, then down her throat to where her heart was fluttering madly beneath her silk blouse.“…well then, I’m afraid they’ll surface sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to ignore them. Have a nice lunch, ladies.”

“I never did like him,” Samantha declared, stating the painfully obvious as he wove a path back to where Beverley Walsh waited for him. But her sister was in a minority, Georgia decided, watching as his progress was hampered by a number of other diners eager to express pleasure in his return from the dead.

Natalie, however, had other things on her mind than taking a poll of Adam’s enduring popularity.“Georgia,” she said urgently, her pretty brown eyes full of anxiety, “you’re not having second thoughts about Steven, are you?”

“No,” Georgia said, feeling as if an intolerable weight were compressing her chest.

“Are you sure, dear?”

“Yes,” she said, because she wanted it so badly to be true. But the sad fact was, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Adam Cabot flirting merrily with the waitress who’d come to take his order, and the sight sliced like a blade through Georgia’s heart. What had happened to those invisible lines of defense that had served her so well in recent months? Why had they fallen apart now, when she needed them most?

“Because you know, dear, everything’s in place for the wedding,” her mother went on.“The flowers, the caterers, the church—”

“Not to mention all the loot,” Samantha cut in.“You don’t want to go through that routine again, do you, Georgia, having to return all the gifts and write those tedious little notes of explanation and stuff. Remember how embarrassing that was?”

“Yes,” Georgia said, clenching her hands under cover of the table to prevent herself from racing over and yanking out that brassy blond waitress’s hair by the fistful. Wouldn’t that set Piper Landing on its ear!

Completely out of patience with her daughter’s inattention, Natalie gathered up her purse, gloves and daughters.“Girls, I think we should get out of here before another disaster occurs.”

“I agree,” Samantha said, her first sensible comment of the day, as far as Georgia was concerned.“For God’s sake, Georgia, stop staring at him like that. You’ll be drooling next.”

They hustled her out of the club and into the car with a speed that verged on panic.“You drive, Samantha. I want to talk to your sister,” Natalie ordered, handing over the keys to the Cadillac before climbing into the back seat with Georgia.

And talk she did, all the way back to the studio. Nonstop and frantically, pointing out all the things that Georgia already knew: that she’d got her life on track finally; that Steven was the most eligible bachelor in town and was completely devoted to her; that Adam Cabot had always been too much of a maverick to make good husband material and she was lucky—blessed, in fact-not to have ended up marrying him because it would have spelled disaster.

And somehow, Georgia wrapped herself in the remains of that fuzzy shroud of remoteness that had been her salvation in the past, and managed to nod and smile in all the right places. Did it so well, indeed, that when they dropped her off in the square outside her studio, she stood on the pavement and waved calmly until the car turned the corner.

Then she let herself into the studio, pulled the blind down over the window, turned out all but the security lights, and set the alarm system before letting herself out into the street again and locking the door. She wouldn’t be designing any more custom jewelry that day, nor the next, either.

It took very little time for her to drive home and pack a few essentials. Steven arrived just as she took the last load out to her car.

“Well,” he said, taking in the suitcase stowed neatly in the open trunk.“It seems I got here just in time.”

“I was going to stop by the bank and leave a note,” she said.

“Note, Georgia?” The gentle reproof in his tone made her feel very, very small and unworthy.“Don’t you think I deserve better than that?”

“You know what’s happened, don’t you?” she said miserably.“I wondered when you’d find out.”

“Everybody knows,” he said.“The whole town’s buzzing.”

“I imagine he’ll be in touch with you before the day’s over.”

Steven eyed the suitcase again.“I gather he’s already been in touch with you and that’s why you’re running away.”

“I’m not running away,” she insisted.“I’m in a state of shock and I just need to spend a little time alone to sort through a few things.” She made a helpless gesture with her hand.“I can’t do that here, Steven, so I thought I’d go up to your family’s chalet. Between commissions at work and a social calendar that’s fully booked from now until the wedding day, I won’t have a minute to myself and….”

He watched her, his honest gray eyes full of compassion.“Are we still going to have a wedding day, Georgia?” he asked, when at last she dribbled into silence.

He was a good man, a fine man. He was her best friend. If she married him, she would never know a moment’s insecurity or want. He would love her, cherish her, and gladly forsake all others for her. At the very least, he deserved her honesty now.“I don’t know,” she said.

He nodded sadly.“Then you must go and find out. Take your time, love. I’ll cover for you here.”

The fine thread by which she’d been hanging on to her control snapped at that. Like a child, she covered her face with her hands and burst out crying.

He reached out and held her, sheltering her in his arms, and she wished with all her heart that she could stay there and not have to face tomorrow.“I hate him,” she sobbed.“I don’t want things to be spoiled like this, and it’s all his fault.”

Steven stroked her hair.“It’s nobody’s fault, Georgia.”

“But I was so sure about us, until he showed up again.”

“I know.” He pulled away a little and just for a moment his resolution wavered enough to let his own pain show.“Georgia, marry me tonight. Let’s just go away and leave all this behind. So what if Adam has come back? You and I have been happy together, haven’t we? We can be again.”

Temptation lured, promising the easy road. But for how long? She shook her head.“I can’t,” she whispered.

He sighed heavily and slackened his hold.“No, I suppose not.”

She pulled away and accepted the handkerchief he offered.“Will your parents mind my using the chalet?”

“Of course they won’t. But will you be all right by yourself? There’s already been snow in the mountains and more is expected. The road might be bad.”

“I know. I’ll be careful.”

He held open the driver’s door of her car.“Then you’d better get going.”

She had never loved him more. Heavy with the knowledge that she was playing fast and loose with a man who was a prince by any standards, she backed down the driveway and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping only at the supermarket where she stocked up on enough groceries to get her through the next few days, and again at the service station to fill up with gas.

Daylight was just beginning to fade as she left Piper Landing and took the highway north toward the mountains.

Adam went for a long walk along the far side of the river that afternoon, partly as therapy to help restore the muscle tone in his injured leg and partly to get away from the general curiosity that his reappearance was arousing.

He supposed it was natural enough that people were interested, but what they didn’t seem able to appreciate was that he felt a bit like a goldfish in a bowl. And it was a difficult adjustment for a man who’d spent over a year in an isolated hunting camp in the Arctic.

What had really rattled him, though, had been running into the Chamberlaine women at lunch, with half Piper Landing society witness to the confrontation. He thought he’d acquitted himself well enough in the verbal exchange, but when he’d happened to glance up halfway through his meal to see Georgia being whisked away, he’d been unable to stop himself from swiveling in his chair and gazing after her with the lovelorn fascination of some twerp in an old black and white melodrama.

The plain fact was, she’d changed, and he wanted to acquaint himself with the new woman. Where before she’d been sculpted angles from her short, smart haircut to her elegant suits, now she flowed in softly feminine lines. Her hair kissed her shoulders, swirling over the ruffled nonsense of her blouse collar.

Her coat, winter-white where once she’d have chosen red or black, flared almost to her ankles. Her boots, her sole concession to the late November weather, were suede, with little dainty heels and tassels. Dancer’s footwear, delicate enough to perform a pas de deux.

But most of all, her eyes were different. Not in their color, that brilliant teal blue arresting enough to stop traffic, nor in their dramatic, heavily lashed shape borrowed from God knew which exotic ancestor, but in their intensity. The sharp, dissecting focus was gone, replaced by a muted dreaminess. Her gaze seemed to slide over the world, a hazy blue waterfall that didn’t quite notice the objects in its path.

It disturbed him. More, it annoyed him. He wanted to shake her, shock her into awareness, before it was too late.

Too late for what? For them? Hell, there was no“them” anymore; hadn’t been since she’d told him to forget marriage. And he really must be missing a few marbles to be freezing his butt in the cold, damp mist rising from the river, and rehashing something which he ought, by now, to have accepted.

His grandmother was intensely annoyed at being left to her own devices all afternoon and let him know it the minute he let himself in the house.“May one assume you intend to dine at home tonight, Adam?” she inquired frostily, appearing in the doorway to the library with her thick white hair skewered in a knot and held in place by a knitting needle on top of her head.“Or do you plan to abandon me for the evening, too?”

He grinned, his good humor restored by the roaring fire and the good, stiff Scotch she had waiting for him.“I thought I’d stick around and wipe the floor with you at cards since I don’t have a better offer,” he said, not the least bit perturbed by her sharp tongue.

She snorted and mumbled that absence hadn’t done much for his manners, but once dinner was over and she was three hundred points up on him at two-handed bridge, she mellowed a little.

“Pour me another vodka,” she ordered, and thought he didn’t notice that she leaned over to sneak a look at his cards when his back was turned.

“You’re the only eighty-one-year-old I know who downs vodka like water and who cheats at cards,” he said, refilling her glass.

“Don’t be a sore loser, boy,” she said, delving into the box of Russian Sobranis at her side and lighting up the one cigarette she allowed herself every evening.“It’s the mark of poor upbringing.”

The doorbell spared him the necessity of having to field an answer to that observation.“Expecting company, Bev?”

“No,” she said.“Get rid of them, whoever they are.”

But that was easier said than done. When Adam opened the door, the man who knew him better than almost anyone else on earth waited on the other side.“Hi,” Steven said.“I heard you were back.”

“Yeah,” Adam said, an unsettling mix of pleasure and rage taking hold of him at the sight of his one-time best friend.“I should have called you.”

“Why haven’t you?”

Adam threw him a level look.“You know why.”

“Yes. And I think it’s time we talked about it.”

His grandmother’s imperious tone floated out from the library.“Who is it, Adam?”

“Steven,” he said, then added to the man still standing on the front porch, “You’d better come in. This might take some time.”

Beverley greeted the visitor with a marked lack of conviviality.“Why aren’t you out celebrating with all your male friends and cheering raucously as some halfnaked female jumps out of a cake, Steven Drake, since I know for a fact that you’re getting married very shortly?”

“Because I don’t know that for a fact,” Steven said.“And that’s the reason I’m here now.”

“Why? It’s none of our business how you choose to ruin your life.”

Steven’s gaze swung from Bev to Adam and remained there.“I’m not sure Adam and I agree with you, Mrs. Walsh.”

They had met when they’d been assigned as roommates in their first semester of boarding school. It had been one of those tough establishments whose Latin motto loosely translated into: WE MAKE MEN OF THEM IF WE DON’T KILL THEM FIRST.

In that sort of environment, a kid of thirteen needed an ally he could trust. Adam and Steven had liked each other on sight and long ago had perfected the sort of telepathic communication that exists between true friends. There was no need for Steven to elaborate on his statement now.

That didn’t stop Beverley, however.“I hope you’re not accusing Adam of—” she began, tottering to her feet.

“Shut up, Beverley,” Adam said, and when she prepared to protest such uncavalier treatment, said again, “Sit down and shut up. This is between me and Steven.”

“Is it?” Steven asked levelly, cutting to the heart of the matter.“Or is it still between you and Georgia?”