Bride in Trouble

by Serenity Woods

  At just before six p.m., Phoebe pulled up in the car park next to the fire station. She’d spent the morning at the bridal shop, but around one p.m. had started flagging, and Noelle had sent her home. After a two-hour nap, she felt much better physically. Emotionally, though, her thoughts were still whirling. She wanted to talk to Rafe, and decided she’d catch him straight out of work and take him to dinner.

  She rounded the building and stopped in surprise as she saw one of the fire trucks out the front. Clearly, it had just returned from a call, because the firefighters getting down from it were all in uniform, some of them covered in soot and sweat.

  Until now, she hadn’t given much thought to Rafe’s career. She’d liked the idea that he did something important, and that he had a steady and stable job, but she’d assumed he’d fallen into it, rather than it being a role he’d dreamed about from his youth.

  But as she watched the firefighters talking and laughing, she knew that this wasn’t a job that someone could do without putting in a hundred percent. They had to be able to work as a team, and the physical nature of the job meant they had to be at the peak of fitness all the time.

  Phoebe’s breath caught in her throat as her gaze fell on Rafe, standing to one side and directing some of the others as they sorted out the equipment. He’d told her he was a senior firefighter, so maybe he’d been in charge of the firefighters on the call. He must have gone with them because he was in uniform, his helmet under his arm.

  After finishing his conversation, he turned to walk into the fire station and then saw her. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and he immediately crossed the forecourt toward her.

  “Hey,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Everything okay?”

  Phoebe nodded. He looked huge in the thick jacket and trousers, and his blue eyes blazed in his soot-stained face. His hair was spiky with sweat.

  He frowned and dipped his head to look her in the eye. “Are you feeling all right?”

  The speech center of her brain was refusing to work. She just nodded again, her heart racing. Clearing her throat, she forced herself to say something. “I’m… um… fine. I thought I could take you out to dinner. I forgot that you might have been out on a call.”

  “That sounds great. Give me five minutes for a shower and I’ll be with you.”

  She nodded. Mmm. The guy looked amazing. She could have pushed him onto the concrete and done him then and there.

  He continued to frown at her, and then, like the clouds clearing in the sky, his frown lifted, and his lips curved up. “I can leave the uniform on if you like,” he said silkily.

  Her eyes widened. “Jesus. You’re filthy and sweaty. That’s the last thing I’d want.”

  “Yeah, right. I know what you’re thinking. Your eyes have glazed over.” He moved closer to her. “Give me a kiss.”

  “Rafe!” She shoved him away, and he laughed.

  “All right. Five minutes.” He walked away, sending her a last, hot look over his shoulder.

  Mumbling under her breath, she walked back to her car. What was it about him that scrambled her brain whenever he was near? All thoughts except lewd ones fled her mind whenever he looked at her.

  In the end, it was seven minutes before he joined her. His hair was damp, curling at the temples, and he smelled of warm, clean male, his body wash filling her nostrils with the scent of lemon and lime. He made her mouth water.

  “Better than sweat and soot,” he said, and she realized she’d said the words out loud.

  “Much better,” she agreed, although part of her wished he had kept the uniform on.

  His eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking, but he didn’t tease her. He just smiled and said, “So where are we going?”

  *

  Phoebe had booked a table at the local Italian restaurant, and they walked there slowly, Rafe draping an arm around her shoulders.

  “If you wanted to get in my boxers, you could have just said so,” he murmured in her ear, smiling when she blushed.

  “I just thought it would be nice to eat out,” she said. That might have been so, but she was looking at him as if she wanted him for dinner, and Rafe couldn’t stop his own thoughts turning to images of her last night, soft and willing beneath him.

  She pushed his arm off her shoulders as they entered the restaurant. “Will you stop looking at me like that?”

  “It’s your fault.”

  “How’s it my fault?”

  He waited until they were seated at their table, and the waiter had handed them their menus and retreated. He liked this restaurant, and although Phoebe obviously didn’t remember it, they ate there often, usually at this table, on the flagstones outside, lit by the rays of the evening sun, with the citronella candles keeping away the insects. The tables were wooden and covered with checked cloths, and the menu was simple, but everything was cooked fresh. The scent of garlic and herbs mingled with the sound of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing in the background.

  “You turned up at the station looking like a piece of summer in that dress,” he said, “staring at me as if you were thinking about a reenactment of last night. You switched my brain to lust, and now it won’t go back again.”

  She wore a long white beach dress that was completely transparent when the sun was behind her. He was betting she hadn’t realized that. He’d tell her about it later.

  She tore her gaze away to look at the list of dishes. “I did nothing of the sort. It’s all in your imagination.”

  He chuckled. “If you say so.”

  “I think I’ll have the fettuccine,” she said.

  “Steak for me. Gotta keep my strength up.” He folded the menu shut, leaned on the table, and winked at her.

  “You’ve changed your tune.” She closed her menu and leaned back, obviously trying to put some distance between them. “Last night you were all, ‘Don’t touch me, Phoebe. I mustn’t.’” Her eyes taunted him. She was flirting with him again, even if she didn’t realize it. Jeez. The woman really was insatiable.

  “I was trying to help,” he said mildly.

  “I was right though,” she pointed out. “Everything went fine.”

  “Only because we were in missionary and I took it easy.”

  Her gaze dropped to his lips. “What would you have done normally?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but the waiter was approaching, so instead he smiled and gave his order, and Phoebe gave hers. They chose a soft drink each, and the waiter went to relay the order.

  “You were saying,” Phoebe said.

  He gave her a wry look. “I think we should change the subject. Have you seen the weather report? Apparently, there’s a cyclone on the way.”

  She pouted, but soon replaced it with a smile. “I thought it was getting windy earlier. We’ll have to batten down the hatches.”

  “Yeah. How has your day been?”

  “It was good. I spent until one o’clock in the shop, and even did some sewing.”

  “Oh, great. I’m glad.”

  “And I spent some time with mum and the girls.” She sucked her bottom lip, giving him an appraising look. “Can I ask you something?”

  His heart skipped a beat, but he forced a smile onto his lips. “Of course.”

  “Was there ever anything between you and Bianca?”

  That took him completely by surprise. “No! Never.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Rafe, it’s not fair when I can’t remember.”

  “I’m not lying.” Her words shocked him. “I have no romantic feelings for Bianca, and she doesn’t have any for me, as far as I’m aware. Why would you think that?”

  She frowned and looked down, turning the pepper pot in her fingers. “It’s like there’s a riptide running beneath everything, and everyone else knows where it is except me. It keeps tugging at me, threatening to pull me under, then disappears just as I catch sight of it.”

  Rafe leaned back
as the waiter delivered their drinks, and he took a minute to take a few sips of his soda. Noelle had texted him that morning, asking him to call her when he was on a break. He’d done so mid-morning, and she’d told him that Phoebe was starting to ask questions. Alarmed by this, Rafe had told Noelle that it was time they told Phoebe everything. For a start, it wasn’t fair to keep secrets from her. And if she were to get her memory back, she wouldn’t appreciate that they’d tried to keep her in the dark.

  But Noelle had begged him to keep quiet a little longer, and he’d reluctantly agreed. Now, he wished he hadn’t. It was clear that Phoebe was picking up on an undercurrent running through her family. She’d always been astute, and she must have been able to sense Bianca’s resentment of their plans. He hated that she thought it might be due to jealousy of their relationship.

  “I just wish I could remember,” she whispered. “Everything, I mean. My father dying. And why it changed me so much. Why don’t I feel that now? I have no urge to run or stop eating meat! And as for the shop…” She met his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

  “What?” he said softly.

  “I know you want promotion,” she said. “And I want to support you all the way. But the shop’s so amazing… I can’t believe I’m giving it all up…” Her gaze came back to him, holding a touch of resentment.

  Jesus, she blamed him.

  For a moment, Rafe couldn’t think what to say. The last thing he wanted was to be an ogre in her eyes, and it stung that she thought he was making her leave. But he didn’t want to have that conversation now. Not in the restaurant, spilling the truth over the dinner table as sure as if he’d sliced a knife through his guts. Maybe later, maybe tomorrow. Not now.

  “This was supposed to be a romantic dinner,” he said, leaning forward again. “There’s plenty of time to talk about the future. Why don’t we concentrate on the here and now tonight?”

  She surveyed him for a moment, and then gave a little smile and nodded. “All right,” she said. “So, to return to our earlier conversation, you implied last night was tame by our standards. Describe to me a normal state of affairs in bed.”

  He gave a short laugh and turned his fork in his fingers. If talking about sex would keep her mind away from more serious matters, maybe he should give in. “Okay,” he said. “Normally, we’re very mobile. We change positions several times. So… I guess I’d have started on the bed like we did, then had you on top, then tossed you onto your front and fucked you from behind.”

  Her jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

  He leaned back as the waiter brought over their rosemary bread, and waited for the guy to depart. “What?” he said, breaking off a piece of the bread and holding it out to her.

  “You like to shock me,” she scolded, dipping the bread in the little bowl of olive oil, then in the salt.

  He did the same and winked at her. “Maybe.”

  She chewed the bread, eyeing him, and he could see the questions plaguing her like mosquitoes.

  “Ask away,” he said, dipping another piece of bread.

  “We can’t sit at the dinner table and talk about sex,” she scolded.

  “Of course we can. We’re getting married next week. It’s almost legal.”

  That made her laugh. “I don’t know what to say. It makes me go all hot.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “I mean it makes me embarrassed.”

  “After last night? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It’s as if that was another Phoebe, as if I’m possessed and she takes me over.”

  He smiled at her fondly. It must be hard for her, he thought. In her head, she was only eighteen, with none of the sexual experiences she’d had over the years. She couldn’t remember the first guys she’d been with. He kind of liked that. But oddly, something within her obviously retained her sexual experiences, because she hadn’t reacted to him like a virgin. In bed, she’d very much been his Phoebe, as sexy and energetic and lusty as always.

  “So what would innocent Phoebe like to know?” he asked.

  “I don’t know… um… Have we ever had sex outdoors?”

  He laughed. “Ah, yeah. A few times.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. On the beach, more than once. In the forest. And on the domain, behind a tree.”

  “Oh my God, seriously?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “That must have been your idea,” she said.

  “That one was, yeah. We were walking home, and I was feeling horny. You didn’t object though, I have to point out.”

  “You’re very persuasive,” she said. “I bet I only did it to please you.”

  “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

  The waiter came to take away the plate, and they watched each other as he laid out the cutlery and refreshed their drinks.

  “Tell me more,” she said when the waiter had retreated again.

  “Like what?”

  Her eyes held a wistful longing. “I don’t remember anything, Rafe, not our first time, or our last time, or anything in between. You have all these memories, like hundreds of photographs stored in an album I never get to see.”

  His heart went out to her, and he leaned on the table and took her hand in his. “Our first time was in the house I used to share with Elliot. He was out, under strict instructions not to return for a few hours.”

  “A sock on the door?”

  “Pretty much. We made out on the sofa for a while, and then went into my room. You were shy to begin with, a bit nervous, and I think I must have been too, because I got my watch caught in your hair, and then my zipper got stuck… We started laughing, and then it just got better from there.”

  “How did we do it?” she whispered, leaning her chin on her hand.

  “You on top, for a while. You were amazing.” His gaze drifted into the distance as he remembered that moment when she’d climbed on top of him. Her skin had gleamed in the sunlight, her rosy nipples tightening in his fingers. He’d wanted to take it slowly, to make sure he didn’t hurt her, but she’d lowered herself on top of him and he’d slid all the way in, and only seconds later they were moving together as if it was their hundredth time.

  “Then I rolled you underneath,” he said. “I tried to be all gentlemanly about it, and go slowly, but you said, ‘Don’t hold back, Rafe, I won’t break.’”

  She gave a short laugh. “I said that?”

  “You did, so I didn’t. I’m surprised the bed held up. Apparently, next door thought I was putting up a shelf because of all the banging.”

  Phoebe blushed. “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah. We’ve had a few complaints over the years, actually. Usually in hotels.”

  Their dinner arrived at that moment. Rafe watched her while the waiter placed their plates before them, and tried not to laugh at her scarlet face.

  He waited until the waiter had left before he added, “Normally, I ask for a room at the end so the bed’s not against a neighboring wall.”

  She twirled a fork in her fettuccine. “Now I know you’re teasing me.”

  “I’m really not. We’re very…” He stopped cutting into his steak and thought about it for a moment. “Enthusiastic,” he chose, popping the piece of steak in his mouth.

  She surveyed him as she ate, her eyes curious.

  “I am,” he said. “Telling the truth. I can’t think of anything that two people can do on their own in the bedroom that we haven’t done.”

  Her fork paused. “Even…”

  “Even that.”

  She gave him a wry look. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “You were going to say anal sex.”

  She gasped and looked around to make sure nobody had overheard them. He laughed, captivated by this innocent, blushing Phoebe.

  “I can’t believe you said that out loud,” she whispered.

  He leaned
forward, looked her in the eye, and mouthed the words clearly: “Anal. Sex.”

  She inhaled again, but her lips curved up and her eyes danced.

  “Did you know that the word anus comes from the Latin, meaning ring?” He had a sip of his drink. “Puts a whole new perspective on the question of exchanging rings at the wedding ceremony.”

  “You’re so wicked!” she scolded.

  “I’m what you made me, sweetheart,” he said. And he cut another piece of steak, guessing by the glitter in her eyes that he was going to need every ounce of iron and energy the meat could afford him that evening.

  Chapter Twenty

  Phoebe ate the rest of her dinner without tasting a single bite. Once again, Rafe had bewitched her with his incessant talk of sex and kissing and licking and God-knew-what-else, tempting her throughout the rest of the meal with tales of things they’d done and things he’d like to do.

  Did he know what he was doing to her? She was pretty sure he did. Now they’d had sex and she’d not fallen into a coma, he appeared to think it was okay to tease her into a sexual stupor, and he also appeared to know exactly how to do it.

  Phoebe would not have guessed that she liked a man to talk dirty to her, but she couldn’t deny that the wicked things he whispered to her over her pasta sent her aquiver with yearning. When he told her about the first time he’d brought home a vibrator and tried it out on her, she felt a twinge between her thighs as her muscles contracted involuntarily. When he described—in great detail—about the time he’d first tied her down and spent an hour licking her from head to toe, she nearly came on the spot.

  “Tell me you’ll have sex with me tonight,” she whispered as they shared a portion of Tiramisu.

  He licked the coffee-and-chocolate dessert off the spoon in a way that made her shiver. “We’ll see,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes. He smirked.

  “You’re not in charge in this relationship,” she told him.

  He had another mouthful of Tiramisu. “We’ll see,” he repeated. “Want me to tie you down again?” He flicked his eyebrows up.

  Ooh, this man was so sexy she could have eaten him for dessert instead of the Tiramisu. In fact… maybe she would. That was an idea.