Читать книгу The Bride And The Mercenary - Harper Allen - Страница 11

“I look like a blob of pistachio fudge in this stupid dress, Aunt Lee. And when am I ever going to wear green satin shoes again in my life?”

“Next St. Patrick’s Day?” Ainslie gave her fourteen-year-old adopted daughter an unsympathetic glance and looked out the limo window. “Jeez, it’s a real October breeze out there. I hope this darn crown thing stays on.”

“It’s not a crown, it’s a headpiece,” muttered Tara, flopping back dramatically against the seat. Then she relented, peering at Ainslie through silky, for-this-occasion-only, mascaraed lashes. “Don’t worry, Aunt Lee, it’ll stay on. You look beautiful—the perfect bride.”

“Please.” Ainslie’s voice was gruff. “I don’t feel any more comfortable in this getup than you do. Why I couldn’t have worn a simple suit and tied the knot at city hall, I don’t know.”

“Because Pearson’s rich and stuffy and comes from one of Boston’s oldest families, maybe?” Tara looked immediately stricken. “Sorry. But he is an awful lot older than you, and he does seem to care about doing the right thing all the time. Doesn’t that bug you just a little?”

Ainslie framed her answer carefully. “Sometimes, pumpkin. Just like sometimes I guess it bugs him that I still run the gym downtown and manage a couple of the boxers. But he loves me and he wants me to be happy, so he makes compromises. And I want him to be happy, so I compromised on this wedding.”

“Compromised?” The teenager snorted. “What did he want originally, if this was the compromise?”

Tara had a point, Ainslie thought. In a few minutes they would be pulling up in front of St. Margaret’s Cathedral. There would be a red carpet leading up the stone steps to the massive church doors, and police had apparently been hired to hold back the crowds of spectators that were expected.

It was one notch down from a royal wedding, except for the bride, she told herself glumly.

“I know you like Pearson well enough,” she said reasonably. “If anyone’s supposed to get cold feet at this point it’s me, not my bridesmaid, for heaven’s sake.”

“I know.” Tara fiddled with the ribbons on her wrist. “But I’m worried you’re getting married to him mainly for my sake. You aren’t, are you, Auntie Lee?” She looked up at Ainslie, her smooth young features troubled. “Because if you are we could stop it right now. We could tell the driver to turn around and you could phone Uncle Sully at the church and—”

“Sweetie, calm down!” With a little laugh, Ainslie leaned over and clasped both of Tara’s hands in hers. She met the suddenly brimming eyes with a mixture of love and concern on her features. “Of course I’m not getting married just for your sake. Where in the world did you get that idea?”

“From Uncle Sully.” Tara’s flooded gaze widened in alarm and she hastened to elaborate. “Well, not exactly. I overheard him talking to Bailey about it. He said Pearson might be an old stick in the mud, but that your main concern was making sure I had a stable home and a father.”

“Your uncle Sully has no idea what he’s talking about,” Ainslie said tartly. “Listen to me, pumpkin, and listen good. I’m marrying Pearson because I want to marry Pearson. In fact, you were the reason I didn’t accept his proposal when he first popped the question.”

Tara looked dubiously at her, and she gave the girl’s hands a little shake. “Scout’s honor. I wanted to be sure you felt comfortable with this, too.”

“I guess I do, really. It’s just that he tries so hard to be nice all the time—buying us presents, telling you there’s no need for you to keep working at the gym.” Tara stuck her bottom lip out stubbornly and suddenly she looked very young, despite the mascara. “What does he have against boxing anyway? He never comes to the ring.”

“He’s old-fashioned enough to think that boxing’s a man’s sport—and even then he wouldn’t be caught dead at the fights.” Ainslie sighed. “I’m not going to make myself over into some society matron, if that’s what you’re worried about. We O’Connell females are a rough, tough breed, and Pearson knows that.” She slanted a quizzical gaze at Tara, and the outthrust lip curved into a reluctant smile.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Ainslie. I didn’t mean to spoil your wedding day. I just wanted to be sure you were happy.”

“I’m happy,” Ainslie replied promptly. “I’d be happier if I hadn’t let the saleswoman talk me into this ridiculous outfit. I look like Marie Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yeah, kind of,” Tara said judiciously, tipping her head to one side and then dodging Ainslie’s mock slap with a giggle. She sobered again. “But you do love him, right? Like Uncle Sully loves Bailey?”

She’d never lied to Tara, Ainslie thought regretfully, but there was no way she could answer that particular question with the truth. She fudged, telling herself it was in a good cause.

“O’Connell women only fall in love once, and that’s it for the whole of their lives,” she said. “Do you think I’d be marrying Pearson if he wasn’t the one?”

“I guess not,” Tara said slowly. She kept her gaze fixed on Ainslie’s for a second longer, as if looking for reassurance. Whatever she saw there seemed to satisfy her, and she straightened in her seat. “We’re almost there, Aunt Lee. Are you nervous?”

“I’d ten times rather be going into the ring to face Holy-field. Does that answer your question?” Ainslie put her hands gingerly to the headpiece to make sure it was straight, and managed to pull her veil sideways just as St. Margaret’s hove into view.

“Great,” she muttered. “By the time we drop you off at the side entrance I’ll be looking like a—” She blanched. “Oh, my God, it’s worse than I thought it would be. Look at all those people! Don’t they have lives?”

Oblivious to the fact that the limo windows were heavily tinted, Tara regally tilted a palm back and forth until they turned the corner and left the crowd behind. “Wow, this might actually be fun. There’s that cute usher getting off his motorcycle in the parking lot.”

“Don’t even think about it. Motorcycles are dangerous—why do you think I stopped riding them?” Ainslie said distractedly. “Okay, pumpkin, this is where you get out.”

Tires crunching over the gravelled parking lot, the limousine rolled to a stop, and almost instantly the uniformed driver was at their door. As he opened it Tara threw her arms around Ainslie impulsively, hugging her tight.

“I love you, Aunt Lee. If you’re happy, then I’m happy.”

How many times had she held this precious gift of a daughter close? Ainslie wondered, her own eyes tearing as she fiercely hugged Tara back. When her cousin Babs had died of leukemia, leaving the seven-year-old daughter she’d had out of wedlock in Ainslie’s care, she’d already been head over heels in love with the little girl. All the O’Connell clan had adored the child, and even Ainslie’s half brother Terry Sullivan had taken one look at her and handed her his heart. Tara had never wanted for love, and she had given it back in return.

But she hadn’t ever known the permanent presence of a father, and sometimes Ainslie had worried about that. Pearson would fill that void, she thought, giving Tara one last too tight squeeze.

“I’ll see you in there, pumpkin,” she said, clearing her throat and blinking rapidly. “I guess I’d better go run the gauntlet now. If your uncle Sully isn’t waiting for me on that darn red carpet, I’m going to have his hide.”

“He’ll be there.” Tara stepped out of the car, and then popped a thoughtful face back in. “Unless Megan Angelique picked today to be born. Bailey said she’s been feeling like the Goodyear Blimp these last few days.”

With a quick wave she turned and ran to the side entrance of the church, where Ainslie could see a knot of females already waiting for her. The O’Connell women, she thought fondly, catching a glimpse of her aunts Cissie and Jackie before her view was cut off by the driver closing the car door. A moment later the limo pulled sedately out of the parking lot and onto the street.

Ainslie folded her hands in the creamy satin and lace of her lap and chewed nervously at her bottom lip, wishing the day was over.

Immediately she felt a pang of contrition. Pearson had meant well when he’d arranged their wedding. He came from a different strata of society than she did—not to mention a different generation, she admitted honestly to herself—and this was the way things were done in his circle.

So how come when he finally decided to marry he picked a single mom twenty years his junior and an ex-boxer to boot? she wondered as she’d so often done before. But she knew the answer to that—at least, she knew the answer he’d given her.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Ainslie.” He never called her Lee, which was just one more instance, she supposed, of the stuffiness that Tara had referred to. “You’ve got a lot going for you. You’ve built up that derelict gymnasium of your aunt’s into a going concern, you’ve raised Tara as if she were your own child, and you even mended the relationship with your half brother, Terrence, despite the way his father left you and your mother in the lurch when you were a child. I look at you and I see strength. I admire that.”

“As long as it’s out of the boxing ring,” Ainslie hadn’t been able to resist adding, and his handsome features had relaxed into a rare smile.

“You can’t blame a man for not wanting to see the woman he loves take a beating in front of a crowd of lowlifes and riffraff, can you?”

“I prefer to think of them as paying customers, not riffraff,” she’d answered with a touch of tartness. “And I didn’t exactly stand around and take a beating, as you put it. I retired a champ, Pearson. Now I coach future champs. Boxing is an empowering sport for a lot of women.”

And it helped save my sanity two years ago, when I didn’t know if I could go on, she might have said, but didn’t. Pearson didn’t know about that part of her past. There was no reason for him to know. The girl she’d been then was dead, and the man that girl had loved was dead, too.

She hadn’t lied to Tara. The O’Connell females were one-man women. He’d been her first love, her last love, and her only love. She’d been twenty-five years old when she’d seen Malone’s coffin lowered into the cold, black earth, and she’d known that her own life had ended with his.

For a while she’d gone a little crazy, she realized now. Paul Cosgrove had been his partner, and although the government agency they both worked for was so security-conscious that it didn’t even have a name, he’d bent the rules enough to tell her that Malone had been shot in front of his very eyes. Although Paul had gotten him to a hospital, Malone hadn’t survived the head wound he’d sustained—a head wound so horrific that there had been no question of having an open coffin at the funeral.

But even hearing the terrible details of his death from the man who’d witnessed it hadn’t helped her to accept the reality of his passing.

For three whole days after his funeral she’d sat in her darkened apartment all alone, not bothering to change out of the somber black suit she’d been wearing. Only when Paul had actually pounded on her door, demanding to know if she was all right, had she roused herself enough to tell him to go away before returning to her vigil.

Because that had been what it was. For three days and three nights she’d sat, her hands folded quietly on her lap, her eyes open wide in the shadowy gloom, waiting for Seamus Malone to come back to her. Not from the dead. She just hadn’t accepted that he’d been killed. She’d been convinced it had all been some kind of insane trick.

And then on the third day she’d finally fallen into a state of semi-consciousness—not sleep, not true wakefulness, but a limbo halfway between the two. In it she’d relived every moment she’d ever had with him, from the moment they’d first met only a few weeks before, to the last time he’d left her arms. Measured in days, their time together had been cruelly short. But time was an irrelevant yardstick for what they’d had.

In two weeks they’d made a lifetime of memories.

They’d so nearly missed knowing each other at all. On a rare impulse she’d dropped by Sully’s house one night after seeing Tara off with a schoolfriend at Logan Airport. The month-long trip to Arizona had been planned for ages and Ainslie knew that the Cartwells would look after Tara as if she were their own daughter.

That night Sully had casually introduced her to his guest.

She’d stared into a pair of brilliant green eyes, and that had been it. Twenty minutes later, Malone and she had left a bemused Sullivan and had gone out to a Thai restaurant together. Two hours later they’d walked hand in hand along Beacon Street, then ended up back at her apartment and making love. The next morning, just before dawn, Malone had shakily told her he couldn’t imagine life without her.

Love at first sight really happened. They’d had it, and it had lasted, right up until the end.

On their last night together he’d asked her to marry him. She’d thrown her arms around his neck tightly enough to knock him backward onto the sofa. Half laughing, half tearfully, she’d told him yes, and in the middle of their kiss his pager had gone off. Forever after, Ainslie had wondered how things would have turned out if he’d ignored it, but wondering was futile.

He’d answered the page. He’d left her apartment a few minutes later, after one last, hard kiss and a quick grin, telling her he wouldn’t be gone long. Sometime in the hour that followed, he’d been killed.

It had been her love for Tara that had finally forced her to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and rebuild some kind of existence after Malone’s death. On the fourth day after his funeral, she’d stripped off the clothes she’d been wearing and stood under the shower until the hot water ran out. Then she’d pulled on a sweater and a pair of jeans, balled the black suit into a paper bag and thrown it down the garbage chute at the end of the hall. She’d returned to her apartment, taken a deep, shuddering breath and firmly closed a door in her mind.

But she still dreamed about him every night—saw those brilliant green eyes, that midnight-black hair, his slow smile. She hadn’t let those dreams stop her from agreeing to marry Pearson, however. Tara needed a father. Pearson wanted a wife. And what she’d told Tara a few minutes ago had been true—he was a good man, and she cared for him. He knew she wasn’t madly in love with him, but that wasn’t what he was looking for, he’d told her quietly. Mutual affection, the shared goal of creating a family of their own one day—if she could give him that, he would make sure that Tara never wanted for anything.

It was something a little more than a business agreement, something much less than a love match. And she was going through with it.

The limousine whispered to a stop in front of the red carpet. Before the driver could get out, Sully, impossibly handsome in a dove-gray morning suit with tails, was opening her door for her. He looked harassed. Behind him one of Boston’s finest was trying to keep onlookers away from the waist-high velvet ropes that created a barrier between the crowd and the carpet.

“What the hell was McNeil thinking?” he growled as he took her hand and helped her from the back seat.

“It’s like a damn circus,” she agreed, slanting her eyes sideways at the throng of bystanders just as a camera flash went off. “Let’s get into the church and get this over with.”

“My sister the romantic,” Sullivan murmured, stepping up his pace. “You should at least give them a smile, Lee. When Pearson and the rest of the McNeil clan arrived, they were glad-handing all over the place.”

“Goody for the McNeil clan,” Ainslie said tightly, almost tripping on a ruffle as she mounted the last step. Nonetheless she paused just before the open oak doors, pasting a stiff smile on her face and looking out over the milling crowd.

Sully was right—the least she could do was to be gracious. After all, these onlookers were ordinary people like herself. Most of the upturned faces were smiling at her.

But not all of them.

About to turn away to step into the church, Ainslie’s attention was caught by the incongruity of a figure at the edge of the crowd. Heavily bundled in an old army greatcoat, the derelict’s inappropriate clothing alone pegged him as odd. The knitted watch cap pulled low on his forehead only partially concealed the unkempt hair that straggled to his shoulders. His heavy beard was dark and ungroomed. He was wearing fingerless gloves, as if it was deepest winter instead of a mild autumn day. His ramshackle shopping cart was piled high with what appeared to be odds and ends of broken appliances. Riding on the top of the pile was what looked like a pair of used boots.

Although the shopping cart provided a physical barrier between him and those nearby, it was obviously unnecessary. Like so many street derelicts, there seemed to be an invisible demarcation line around him, as if drawing the attention of someone so obviously unbalanced would be dangerous.

Except there was no fear of that. His attention was fixed solely on her, Ainslie saw with a prickle of unease.

“Come on, champ,” Sully said wryly. “This is just the pre-bout warmup. The main event’s inside.”

He started to move forward, but Ainslie remained rooted to the stone steps, her grip on his arm tightening.

She could smell roses—smell them so strongly that it seemed as if she were enveloped in a perfumed fog. She knew her bouquet was inside the church; even if it hadn’t been, it was of white lilac and lilies. Yet she could smell roses—red roses—and for a moment she could almost swear she could feel cold velvet petals brush against her lips.

It wasn’t unease that was making her heart beat so madly, Ainslie thought, holding on to Sully for support. It was fear. She was going crazy, and she knew it.

The derelict’s hair was a matted tangle obscuring his eyes, but even as she watched he wiped at it with a gloved hand. Across the crowd, his gaze met hers, and she felt the blood drain from her face.

His eyes were a clear, brilliant green. She’d only seen eyes like that on one man, and that man was dead.

Abruptly the derelict turned away, wrenching his shopping cart around on two wheels so quickly that a man in a business suit had to scramble to get out of his path. Hunched over the handles, he started pushing it down the street toward a nearby alleyway.

He was trying to disguise his height, Ainslie thought faintly. He was trying to cover his features with that appalling beard, trying to become just another invisible cast-off from society with his strange assortment of clothing.

Either that, or he was exactly what he appeared to be—a lost soul, a denizen of the streets, a man who had slipped through the cracks and who had stayed there.

But she had to know.

“What the hell’s going on, sis?” Speaking out of the corner of his mouth, Sully tugged at her elbow, a faint frown creasing his brow as she turned to him. “Are you getting cold feet, or what?”

“Did you see him?” She forced the urgent question out from between lips that felt coldly numb. “Did you see him, Sully? Was it him?”

“See who?” Frowning in earnest, Sullivan looked over his shoulder from where a knot of ushers and bridesmaids waited just inside the oak doors. “What are you talking about, Lee?”

“I’m sure it’s him. See—there, with the shopping cart!” It felt like a gigantic weight was pressing down on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Ainslie heard the high quaver in her own voice, and turned to her half brother. “Don’t you see him, Sully?”

There was more than concern on his features now, there was alarm, and beyond him Ainslie caught Tara’s dubious look. The good-looking teenager she was standing with broke off whatever he’d been saying to her.

She was causing a scene. She was causing a scene at her own wedding, and she didn’t care, Ainslie thought desperately. It couldn’t be him—but she had to know for sure. She wrenched her arm from Sully’s grip and ran to the edge of the top step, leaning out over the black iron railing that framed it.

“Malone!”

Her hoarse cry was more of a scream, and with part of her mind she realized that the crowd had fallen silent and was staring up at her with avid curiosity. But she wasn’t concentrating on anything or anyone but the shuffling figure in the greatcoat, now almost at the entrance to the alleyway.

“Malone!” Her voice cracked on his name, and she felt Sullivan’s strong hand wrap around the lace on her upper arm. “Dammit, Malone—look at me! It’s you, isn’t it?”

“For God’s sake, Lee!” Sullivan’s voice was almost as shaky as hers. He thrust his mouth close to her ear. “Malone’s dead, sweetheart. You know that. Let’s get you inside—”

She shut out Sully’s words. The veil blew across her face and she impatiently pushed it aside, feeling the headpiece finally let go. It fell from her hair and tumbled down the top two steps. It didn’t matter, she thought as she watched the man in the greatcoat turn back to look at her from the entrance to the alleyway. Even at this distance she could see the pain etching his features.

There was no way he could be Malone, Ainslie thought faintly, her knuckles white against the iron railing as his eyes met and held hers for a heartbeat. No way at all. As Sully had said, Malone was dead.

It was him.

“Malone,” she whispered incredulously, her hand going to her mouth. She felt the hot rush of tears behind her eyes and blinked. Joy, so sweet and sharp it felt like pain, lanced through her. Unheeded, warm tears slipped down her face.

Through her blurred vision, she caught his one last, agonized glance before he turned and pushed his cart swiftly down the alleyway, his head bowed. He disappeared around a corner and was gone.

“No,” Ainslie breathed disbelievingly. “No—I won’t lose you again. I can’t have lost you!”

Breaking free of Sullivan’s grasp, she whirled desperately away from him and ran down the steps into the crowd.