Читать книгу Kidnapping His Bride - Hayley Gardner, Hayley Gardner - Страница 11

Before Tessa could decide what to tell Griff, the small cowbells on the front door jingled again and seconds later, two elderly men in overalls came into the section where she and Griff were, greeted the third man already there and sat down with him at a long table near the front of the room, all facing her. Tessa frowned. Doc Casey came in with her and Griff’s ice teas, then stopped at the other table to take orders, wearing a totally unfamiliar grin on his face. As Doc Casey turned to head back into the kitchen, the bells clanged again, and another elderly patron moseyed in to join the other three.

“Just my luck,” she muttered. “The bakery’s mid-morning coffee club showing up in the afternoon to see the town’s favorite deputy sheriff’s intended bride meeting with his brother. By the time they’re done building this story up, everyone’s going to think I’ll make Clay a terrible wife.”

“They’d be right, but for the wrong reasons.”

Her irritability level rose another notch, like mercury in a thermometer. She leaned in close to him and whispered, “You’re wrong. Unlike you, who had to prove the only way you could be content is to be totally free, your brother liked being married.” He’d loved his deceased wife Lindy tremendously. The whole town knew that. “Clay and I both want the same thing—to stay in Claiborne Landing among family and friends—which is why we will be compatible. That compatibility will bring us happiness.”

Griff didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. His eyes did his talking for him, and suddenly, Tessa realized how close the two of them were, almost face-to-face, mouth to mouth. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek. Without knowing how it happened, she found herself wanting, desperately, to kiss him.

Her emotions were doing her thinking again, that’s how it had happened. She backed up abruptly. “Just how long are you going to be in town, anyway?”

“Long enough to figure out who made the effort to get me here.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Somebody besides me thought you two getting married was not a great idea. I’m kind of thinking it might be good to stick around long enough to find out who and the why behind it. Stock up ammunition.”

“It’s a wedding, Griff, not a war.”

“Divorce is a war, and I figure that’s where you two will eventually wind up if you don’t think this through all the way.”

Tessa groaned. She was going to have to get Griff out of town, and the sooner, the better. To not do so could only lead to disaster.

“I’m going to call Clay.” She rose and turned as Doc Casey rounded the corner again, this time carrying catsup and mustard bottles to the other table. Then she remembered Sadie had her purse, and she would need a quarter for the pay phone. Rather than ask Griff for anything, she walked up to Doc Casey to ask him to let her use the phone in the back, just in time to catch his last words, “Don’t worry, boys. Things’ll pick up right soon now.”

“Looks like you’re having a sudden surge of business, Doc.” She frowned with disapproval. “Could it be the entertainment?”

Doc Casey’s eyes twinkled. “Naw. There hasn’t really been any.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“But there’s fixin’ to be,” he added gleefully. “Clay just arrived.”

“You called him?”

“Have to stir up the pot for the audience,” he said, without one lick of guilt whatsoever coming from him.

Sure enough, the now grating jangle of the bells announced Clay’s entrance through the front door. He saw Tessa and came to the doorway between the dining rooms, where he stopped and stared from her to his brother with a look that asked them both, What now?

Her heart went out to him. Clay had had enough to deal with being a deputy sheriff and a single father to a six-year-old for the past year after his wife Lindy’s death from cancer; he didn’t need to be in the middle of an argument between his only brother and his soon-to-be second wife, and definitely not in front of the biggest gossips in town.

“Doc, sometimes you go too far,” Tessa said, indicating the elderly men with a nod of her head.

“C’mon, Miss Tessa, don’t spit bullets over this. Deputy sheriff’s fiancée gets carried off from the wedding by his own brother and ends up here? Biggest thing to happen around Claiborne Landing in ages. Usually Athens sees all the action. If this had been happening at your grandma’s doughnut shop, she would have called in her favorite customers, too. Have to be loco not to.” Doc Casey lumbered over to the other table and left her to deal with Clay.

“Tessa, what is going on?” he asked quietly, his face now unreadable.

“Your brother kidnapped her, deputy!” the old man next to Tessa said. “Picked her up, plopped her over his shoulder and carried her right out of the church.” He slapped his knee with his Casey’s Kitchen cap. “Wish I’d a been there.”

Tessa glanced at Griff, who was frowning at both of them. She frowned right back. If he’d only been ten minutes later, she’d be married to Clay and wouldn’t be in this predicament. Speaking of happiness, well, to say the least, she’d been happier. A lot happier.

Like when she’d been in Griff’s arms. She hushed that thought away and turned her attention back to Clay, the one she couldn’t let get away, the same second as Doc Casey reappeared with a tray, headed for Griff. With this anonymous e-mailer loose, she didn’t want to let anyone alone with Griff for long, so she grabbed Clay’s sleeve and led him well away from the table with the elderly customers, to an empty area where she could talk softly to him without being overheard and still keep her eyes on Griff. Even across the room she could feel his eyes on her. Warmth drifted up through her body like the smoke before a fire.

“We’ve got to get Griff out of here. Someone sent him an e-mail telling him we aren’t in love.”

“So he came and kidnapped you from the wedding.” Clay ran his splayed fingers through his wavy black hair, looking, Tessa thought, as disconcerted as he had after his wife’s death over a year before, only without the pain this time. “Who would send him news like that?”

“I don’t know,” Tessa said grimly. Noting with relief that Casey didn’t say a word to Griff as he delivered their food, she gestured for Clay to lean down. “What I’m worried about is,” she whispered, “what if this person somehow has found out the truth behind our engagement, gets Griff aside while he’s here and tells him. We can’t let that happen.”

Clay agreed. “I’ll stick to him like glue for the rest of the day, but after that, since I’m not getting married today, I’ll probably need to go back to work.”

“After that,” Tessa said, “it’s my turn anyway. What we need is a way to make him leave. If he does, maybe the e-mailer will think Griff doesn’t care about our getting married and leave him alone.”

Clay gazed down at her for a long minute. “I think I might have an idea, but let me think about it. I’ll let you know. You sure his leaving is what you want?”

“I swear,” Tessa said. “Where Griff is concerned, I’m ice.” She’d have to be. Everyone in town knew that she’d been in love with Griff Ledoux when she’d been younger, even while he was in the Academy. It hadn’t been easy to convince them all that she’d fallen for Clay. But the people in the town were family, and she cared what they thought of her, so she had. She wasn’t about to gamble with her future now by showing that she had any feelings at all left for Griff.

Even though she did. Just physical, she assured herself, but even that was more than she wanted to deal with.

“What about the wedding?” she asked.

“It’s off for now. The pastor had another one in Ruston to get to. I told everyone we’d be in touch. I think they headed over to your grandma’s for the free food.”

“Let’s hope that’s where they went,” Tessa said, staring grimly at the small crowd in the diner watching them. “We sure don’t need any more help here.”

Across the room, Griff worked on the burger Doc Casey had brought right before Tessa started whispering in Clay’s ear, which had made Griff tense up inside something awful for some reason. His brother said a few words, then Tessa looked at Clay with those jewel-blue eyes of hers, and her hand briefly brushed Clay’s sleeve. Griff felt a sudden flush of heat as though it were he whom she was touching. He quickly pushed down the surge of jealousy that followed, fully aware he had no right to that feeling.

The two of them began to walk over, and he quickly reminded himself that his intentions were very honorable. He was only there for one reason—to make sure they weren’t fixing to do something they would regret, leading to a bad marriage. As soon as he was sure, then he’d be gone, since he had no right in Tessa’s life. He knew full well he wasn’t the settling kind. No use fooling himself about that. It was just too bad that seeing Tessa again had been an uncomfortable reminder of what he had missed out on.

“Kidnapping, Griff?” Clay asked, making no attempt to keep his voice down. “If this is a joke, it’s not very funny.”

Griff could say the same thing about his brother marrying Tessa, knowing how close Griff and she had been at one time, but he didn’t. It wasn’t the place. Besides, he was here to convince Clay to call off the wedding, not to end up in a brawling heap with his own brother.

Turned out he didn’t have to say anything in reply. One of the old men from the other side of the room slapped his thigh and called out, “Not funny? It’s pretty darn amusing to us, Deputy!”

“Better than the Two Worlds Collide soap opera,” the grizzled man next to him, Jasper Tremaine, agreed, grinning. “Where’s your sense of humor, Clay?”

“Must have left it behind at the altar,” Clay said.

Jasper chortled. “Yeah, marriage has a way of turning a man grim, that it does. But that usually don’t happen until after the nuptials and the honeymoon.”

“Yeah, well, most people don’t have a brother like Griff, either,” Clay said amiably enough, but Griff could feel the tension behind his words.

The strain wasn’t evident to the other side of the room, though—they were all laughing. Bemused, Clay shook his head as he sat down next to Griff, taking the seat Tessa had formerly vacated. “Now I remember why we didn’t invite that bunch to the wedding.”

Tessa shook her head as she slipped into a chair opposite them, her back to the elderly onlookers. “We didn’t invite anyone but your parents and Sadie. She was the one with the stamps.”

“I take it Tessa told you about my e-mailed invitation?” Griff asked Clay. When his brother nodded, Griff suggested, “Maybe Sadie sent it.”

Tessa’s gaze flew to him. “I don’t think so. Anonymous isn’t really my grandmother’s style.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the table and, at last, Clay asked the question Griff had been expecting. “So why did you steal Tessa away?”

“I haven’t done that yet,” Griff replied, his eyes penetratingly intense. “Have I, Tessa?”

“Of course not,” she protested, bracing both hands on the table and taking a long breath. “And neither are you going to. Clay and I are still going to be married.”

“So why aren’t you two already driving back to the church?” Griff said, picking up his burger.

“The wedding has been temporarily postponed,” Tessa told him. “The pastor had another engagement.”

“Good.” Griff barely kept himself from grinning.

Clay’s already grim expression deepened even more. “Yeah, well, since you’re so pleased about it, and it’s all your fault anyway, we’ll let you be the one to explain everything to Sadie. She’s already madder than a wet hen. Make sure, little brother, that you take all the blame.”

“Guilty,” Griff agreed. “I’m surprised she isn’t here with you.”

Clay began to loosen his tie as he spoke. “I took off right after I told everyone the news to avoid Sadie’s questioning me. I doubt she’ll look for us here.” He indicated the second plate that was in front of him. “You want that?” he asked Tessa.

She shook her head. “You can eat Griff’s food after what he’s done to our wedding?”

“The way I figure it, he owes me a meal after the worry he caused me. I thought you’d changed your mind, Tessa.”

“Never!”

Her reply came so swiftly, Griff’s eyebrows rose in question. She lifted her chin. “One broken engagement in a lifetime was enough.”

And they all knew what that referred to. As she and Griff did battle with their eyes, Tessa was wondering if there wasn’t something to what he’d said earlier about war. Oh, no, he’d meant with divorce. The two of them weren’t even close, let alone married. It beat her why she would have purposely struck out at him with words, wanting to get a reaction out of him.

“Yeah, well…” Clay removed his tie and placed it on the table in a heap, as Griff continued to watch Tessa. “It’s really too crowded to talk privately here, and the food’s served. No sense wasting it.”

“No sense,” Tessa echoed, feeling stunned. Griff broke eye contact and ate another fry. Men! How could they be so peaceable about the whole thing? Her insides felt topsy-turvy, and her emotions were in an uproar with Griff so near.

Making a decision, Tessa rose. “Griff, I’m sure Clay can straighten you out a lot better than I ever could. He’s had years more practice.” She didn’t have anything more she wanted to say to Griff, anyway. She’d said it all years before, when she’d broken it off with him. “I’m thinking that you’ll reconsider and be leaving town just as soon as you have a chance to talk to Clay privately, so goodbye, and take care of yourself.”

Griff rose swiftly and came around the table to take hold of her arm. Tessa didn’t wish to be reminded of how warm his hands could be on her body, or how gently he could caress her skin, but she could feel his heat through the satin as his thumb stroked her forearm, and was powerless to break away, even with Clay and everyone else there, witnessing everything. They silently looked at each other, neither moving, until a voice sliced through whatever it was holding them together.

“You get your hand off my granddaughter, Griffin Ledoux. She’s been spoken for.” Like a bolt of lightning, seventy-year-old Sadie Newsom herself appeared in the space between the rooms, still decked out with the pink rose corsage, burgundy silk dress and matching hat she’d worn to the wedding.

Griff dropped his hands to his side. “Yes, ma’am.” Almost immediately, Tessa felt her cheeks flush. Now she’d done it. The only thing she could think of to do was to play innocent.

“Grandma, I’m glad you’re here. I need a ride home.”

The cowbells started ringing steadily as Sadie was swiftly joined by two other ladies around Sadie’s age, her closest friends, sisters Claudette and Reba, and by an assortment of ten or so other guests, all in their Sunday best, and all looking rather perturbed. Tessa couldn’t blame them. She was feeling that way herself.

“Not so fast, Tessa.” Peeling off one of her white gloves, Sadie marched right up to the three of them. “You put that tie right back on and get out of that chair, Clay.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Clay agreed and rose to his feet out of respect for Sadie, but made no move toward his tie. “Why?”

“Because we’re all fixin’ to return to that church and wait for Brother Jonas to finish over in Ruston. I got to him before he left, and he said he could be back at the church after five. Are you three ready to go?”

“Yes,” Tessa said, hoping the problem of Griff would go away if she were married.

“No,’ Griff and Clay said simultaneously.

Tessa’s mouth fell open. Griff would say no, but Clay? “Why not?” she asked him.

“Yes, why not?” Sadie repeated, her mouth pursing.

“My brother and I have something to discuss, and besides, quite a few of our guests have probably gone home.” He gave Sadie a smile of genuine fondness. “Since I know you want the wedding to be a memory you’ll cherish forever, let’s reschedule so the church is filled.”

“Is that what this wedding is going to be, Tessa?” she heard Griff ask, his voice low. “A wedding you’ll cherish forever?”

To a man she didn’t love. With Griff’s eyes on her, never wavering, Tessa felt the room grow close.

Sadie was not fooled. “You want to postpone your wedding so you can discuss something with your brother?” Sadie gazed at them all, one by one, her eyes lingering on Griff and then coming back to Tessa. A lightbulb seemed to click on, and Sadie nodded. “I guess you’re right, Clay. No sense in rushing these things.”

“It’s not what you’re thinking, Grandma,” Tessa hastened to say. Sadie turned to her.

“Then what is it? What on earth pulled you away from your own wedding which I waited your lifetime for?”

“She wasn’t pulled, Sadie,” one of the elderly men informed her gleefully from behind them. “She was carried! Kidnapped right out of the church! When Doc Casey called, he said Griff had slung her over his shoulder like a sack of meal.”

Tessa groaned.

Sadie moaned.

The elderly ladies tittered.

Sadie’s eyes focused on Griff, blinked, then focused again. “Good grief. Is that how your mother raised you? No, I know the answer to that. That is not how your mother raised you.”

“I’ll say,” Clay interjected.

The side of Griff’s mouth turned downward, and Tessa realized she was in trouble. Sure enough, he had something to say.

“I guess your grandmother wasn’t the one who emailed me to come and stop the nuptials, huh?”

In reflection, Tessa thought, maybe she should have told Griff to take her into the woods to talk and let him drive until he ran out of gas somewhere. They would both have been a lot better off.

“Stop the nuptials?” Sadie asked, looking from Tessa back to Griff in bewilderment. “Why on earth would I want to do that?” She slapped him with her glove. “Or anyone else, for that matter?”

Griff looked as if he was going to laugh, and that would have been the end of him as far as Sadie was concerned—she demanded respect from anyone under forty, and quite a few over, too. Even though Tessa was annoyed with Griff and wouldn’t have minded seeing Sadie unleash her irritation on him with Griff powerless to stop her, Tessa took her grandmother’s arm.

“I have no idea why anyone would want to stop my wedding, Grandma,” Tessa told her. “But you don’t have to challenge Griff to a duel over it. I’ll forgive him—someday—and Clay’s going to talk to him. Let’s go home, and we can talk about rescheduling this wedding for a later date.”

“Later? How much later?”

With all the eyes staring at them, Tessa did not want to pursue this subject. “We can talk at home,” she told her.

“Yes, let’s. Clayton, Griffin, we’ll get this ironed out there, and everyone—” she turned to the crowd, most of whom were now displaced wedding guests, and gave a regal sweep of her arm “—I’ll let you know the rescheduled date as soon as possible.”

“I’ll bet you five dollars they never make it to the altar,” Jasper said to the man next to him. Reba, his wife, walked over and shushed him.

Tessa loved the community and almost all the townspeople and, normally, would have been grinning ear to ear at the old men’s antics, but all she could think about now was that Griff was following her every movement with his eyes, and how much she needed to get out of there before she began to like it.

Tessa was almost to the door when the bells rang again, and a six-year-old boy with a Huckleberry Finn smile entered and grinned up at her. “Hey, Tessa, where’s my Dad?”

Grinning back, Tessa felt the stress of the day wane a little. Being around Jeb Ledoux, Clay’s son and the real reason she was marrying Clay, now that his wife, Lindy, her good friend, had passed on, always had that effect on her.

“Around the corner, Jeb.” She pointed. “Who brought you?”

“Grandma and Grandpa,” he said, referring to Clay and Griff’s parents. “They’re looking for a parking space.” He didn’t move. “How come you didn’t marry Dad?”

“That’s the question of the hour.” Sadie sniffed.

“Grandma,” Tessa scolded gently, then turned back to the boy she so badly wanted to be a mother to. Jeb looked confused.

“There was a temporary problem.” Well, at least part of that was very true. Griff was a problem, but Tessa could only hope he was a temporary one. “Your dad and I will be having the wedding as soon as we figure out how to fix it.”

“Okay.” Jeb darted off around the corner to where Clay was still sitting. Tessa lingered and watched as the child stopped when he saw Griff.

“Uncle Griff! You’re back! We going fishing?”

“Come along, Tessa.” Sadie nudged her arm.

She didn’t have to be asked twice. Outside, Tessa hurried to Griff’s truck and got her veil and gloves. With a wave at Griff’s parents at the other end of the parking lot, she came back to her grandmother’s car just in time to see Sadie fish her keys out of her dress purse.

Tessa reached for them, and Sadie frowned and slapped at her hand, the way only the person who raised you could get away with. Sighing, Tessa let Sadie drive, but made sure the passenger side air bag was turned on and her seat belt snug. Seconds after the elderly woman started the engine, she started in on Tessa, just as expected.

“Darling girl, how on earth could you let yourself be thrown over someone’s shoulder and carted away?”

“It wasn’t like that, Grandma,” she said, gripping the armrest as her grandmother turned onto the highway and gunned the engine. Actually, now that her irritation had worn off a bit, Tessa realized that it had been exciting—which was Griff’s way. Romantic, even…With her eyes closed, she could see Griff’s image clearly in her mind. He was smiling, and touching her shoulder, and pulling her into his arms, and then he was—

“He didn’t kiss you, did he?”

Tessa’s eyes flew open. “No, nothing like that. He wouldn’t.” And she didn’t want him to. She swore she didn’t.

But her grandmother’s astute question pulled her back to reality. She definitely shouldn’t be fantasizing about Griff Ledoux. “It’s been over between us for years.”

“Hmm. Sounds like you’re protesting too much. Why on earth did he tote you off?”

“It was a joke on his brother,” she said softly, staring straight ahead. Her grandmother seemed to accept that and fell silent, giving Tessa all too much time to think on the ride home about Griff, and what he was really doing back in Claiborne Landing for more than a day’s visit.

One thing she did know for sure. As soon as Griff figured out he wasn’t going to stop her from marrying Clay—couldn’t stop her—he would be returning to the Air Force. He’d told her while they’d dated in high school that ever since he was a small child, the only thing he’d ever wanted to do was to fly planes, and the second he’d learned he could earn a free education at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and they would train him to fly, he’d worked all during high school toward that goal. Four years in the Academy and six years mandatory commission. Ten years of his life promised away meant nothing to him.

And everything to her, since she’d had such different goals for her life.

“Don’t let his return mess up your life, honey,” Sadie said unexpectedly. Startled, Tessa gazed over at her. “Make sure you reschedule the wedding with Clay. He’s a good man, and he can give you what you want.”

A perfect family, and a home in what she thought of—after a childhood on the road with parents who made dysfunctional sound fun—as paradise. Claiborne Landing. A place she never wanted to leave again—and where Griff usually never stayed long enough to hang up his hat.

“I know he can.”

“And you’ve already got a lot between you. Don’t mess up your chances like your mother did.”

“You never talk about Mom,” Tessa said, reaching for her gloves and holding them tightly in her hands.

“You look a lot like her.” Sadie shot a smile in her direction as she turned onto the highway that would take Tessa and her to where they had split a two-story home into their own apartments. “But you’re a lot more levelheaded. You didn’t go following Griff around the world like she did your father. That’s no kind of life for a married couple. Let alone kids.”

“She did want to come back home toward the end,” Tessa admitted. “But Dad always promised her there was more fun around the corner, if she would just stay with him. That he needed her, couldn’t survive without her. So she kept staying, even though she hated the life we had. The bill collectors calling, the skipping out at night on the rent. She spent a lot of time crying.” Just like Tessa had, when Griff had left and she’d known it had to be over between them.

Sadie sniffed. “Men always think there’s something better around the next corner. What is it with them, anyway?”

It was a rhetorical question, one that both Sadie and she had asked themselves many times while she was getting over Griff.

“You never told me all that about your parents before,” Sadie added.

“I didn’t want you to feel badly, I guess.” It had been worse than she’d ever admitted to Sadie. Her father had left her with her mother, who’d had pneumonia, Tessa had been told later, not wanting the responsibility of either of them, she supposed. She’d only been eleven, but she’d nursed her mother until she’d gotten really bad, and then Tessa had called the police for help, not wanting to, knowing that when they took her mother away, she would die and Tessa would never see her again. She’d been right. Her mother’s heart had simply stopped beating. The doctor had said it was a defect in a valve, but Tessa had always figured her mother had died of a broken heart.

Afterward, she’d ended up without a real family in foster homes for almost a year, before she’d remembered where her grandmother, whom her mother had hardly ever talked about, lived. Sadie had come for her as soon as she was called, and Tessa had made every effort to put her former life out of her mind.

“I really thought I’d forgotten all of it, but the memories seem to pop up when I’m upset.”

“Or when Griff comes to town, you mean.”

“I suppose so.” Tessa willed away the sad heart she always got when she thought about the distant past. “Anyway, he knows I want to be married and have children. As soon as he figures out the e-mailer was wrong and Clay and I will be perfectly happy together, he’s going to leave.”

“You think so, huh?” Sadie pulled into their driveway.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Tessa asked.

“Maybe the boy has figured out what your father never did,” Sadie said as she proceeded slowly up the two hundred slightly rutted feet to their home. “That the grass doesn’t get any greener than right here in Claiborne Landing.”

“He can’t stay here, Grandma,” Tessa said, her stomach doing funny flip-flops at the very thought. “It would ruin everything.”

“Then you’ll do what you’ll have to to make sure he has no reason to stay, won’t you? Hard as that might be.”

And it would be. As long as Tessa could remember, she’d dreamed of having a husband who doted on her and her children. When she’d met Griff, she’d thought he would be that man—right up to the point where his dream had become more important than hers and she’d broken it off with him, because she didn’t want to ruin his life the way her father had ruined her mother’s by his extreme need.

Sadie had been wonderful, of course, but Tessa had this dream of being part of the perfect family, and once she’d realized that the dream would never come true for her as a child, she’d changed to wanting to create it as a mother. With all her heart. If she married Clay, she would have Jeb—and, after all that had happened, that would be her dream come true.

The trouble was, while Griff was in another state, she could easily tell herself she didn’t love him anymore until she was blue in the face. But now that he would be so close to her that she could reach out and touch him anytime she wanted, well, she was a little afraid that the electricity that still sparked in the air between them might become a higher voltage than she could handle.

She would just have to, that was all. Jeb needed her as his mother, and that was that. No one at all could be allowed to stop the wedding, not even Griff.

Not for any reason.

She wondered, worriedly, just how clear Clay was making all of this to his long lost brother, whom she definitely didn’t love.

Or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself.