The Bride Means Business

by Anne Marie Winston

  But even if he couldn’t have her, it was his turn to heal. If she didn’t want him back, didn’t want to try to save something of what they’d once had, she still deserved to be the vivid, shimmering butterfly with whom he’d first fallen in love.

  Crossing the hall, he was smiling, his plan of action determined. Kid gloves wouldn’t work; he knew that from last night’s patient approach. Jillian might not know it, but she was coming back to life.

  Her door wasn’t locked now. He found her exactly where he’d anticipated—packing—when he swung open it open without knocking, and he leaned against the door frame. Her head jerked up in alarm, but she said nothing, only turned back to her packing when she saw him.

  There was little life in her again this morning. Of all the things that had happened since he’d come home, this one bothered him most. Slowly, but surely, the woman he knew was disappearing.

  Her shoulders slumped as she moved from dresser to bed and back again, and her movements were sparse and sluggish, as if the effort were almost too much. Apparently, it was, because after another moment she let her hands fall from her task and picked up a single black overnight bag.

  “I’ll send someone over tomorrow to get the rest of it.” She made a languid gesture in the direction of the closet and attempted a smile. But he was blocking the door, not bothering to smile, and after one wary glance at him, she remained standing in the center of the room.

  “Running away?” His words were deliberately provocative. Where was the woman who’d stood toe-to-toe with him and spit in his eye? Suddenly, he was furious with himself. How could he have crushed her spirit this way?

  “No. Just leaving.” It was as hollow as the look in her eyes.

  “Like I said, running away.” His teeth gritted together with the effort to keep from throwing the damned suitcase out the window.

  “Unlike you, I do not run away from anything,” she said, spacing each word carefully.

  He raised an eyebrow, hating to hurt her more, but determined to reach beyond the despair to the still-vital core he knew, he prayed, was there. “Sure looks like running to me.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” She dropped the bag and faced him. “After all, you are the resident expert on the fine art of leaving your loved ones.” Her brows drew together so fiercely that they could have been a single line. Her cheeks were growing pink, and he thought he saw the first sparks of anger flaring in her eyes. Good.

  Delighted, at last, to have found a button to push, he gave her the nastiest smile he could muster. “That’s a good excuse, isn’t it? You’ve blamed me for just about everything that went wrong with your life since I left.”

  “That is not true.” It was a hiss.

  “Oh, yes, it is.” He took a step toward her; she stood her ground. “You never married, never had a child of your own. It bothered the hell out of you when you found out about Christine. And having to share your husband with his child by another woman is another strike against me.”

  “All right, I admit it. I was prepared to loathe the kid. But I didn’t. I can’t.” Her voice grew in volume until she was shouting. “She’s not just the combined genes of you and this woman you like to throw in my face. She’s a person in her own right and I love that person.”

  She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You want to know what really sticks in my throat? I’ll tell you! It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Christine.” Her eyes blazed with fury. “I thought we loved each other, Dax. We were going to get married because we loved each other. And the first chance you got, you were hopping in the sack with someone else. It tells me exactly how much I really meant to you all those years ago.”

  “I told you why.” He’d wanted to bring her to life again, but he hadn’t bargained on the naked aggression radiating from her. Tears, collapsing in his arms, maybe, but not an eruption the size of Vesuvius. “And you’re wrong. You meant everything to me.”

  “I don’t care,” she spat at him. “Leaving me was one thing. But you barely got out of town before you found somebody to replace me.”

  It would have been a good time to remind her that no woman could ever replace her. He’d been afraid his Jillian had vanished forever, crushed beneath the sorrows her life had piled on her shoulders...with his help. The blazing fire in her eyes was almost a welcome relief.

  “I hung around like a pathetic little puppy, waiting for your forgiveness for something I never even did,” she said bitterly. “And last night, I learned just what you really think of me. It was educational, Dax. It really was.”

  “I knew you would never vote against me,” he said defensively. “And I was right. Gerard told me all about your meeting with Roger.” His voice dropped. “He told me I was damned lucky to have a woman who loved me like you do.”

  “I don’t love you anymore,” she said, and again her voice began to rise. “I wouldn’t love you if you were the last man left on earth.”

  “Liar.” He hoped. He started toward her, intending to calm her down.

  Then she picked up the china clock on the nightstand.

  “Hey, wait a min—” He just had time to duck as the clock smashed into a million flying pieces of crockery and broken metal innards above his head. “Honey-bunch, I—”

  “Don’t you dare call me that stupid name!” A book thudded against the wall to his left; he feinted and when she hurled a relatively harmless pillow his way, he moved in before she could get her hands on anything else lethal.

  She saw him coming, and turned to dash around the bed, but he caught her with a flying tackle that sent them bouncing and rolling over the mattress and crashing to the floor. He twisted, rolling so that she didn’t take the brunt of the fall, then had to move fast not to lose his grip.

  “It’s not a stupid name,” he panted. How the hell could somebody who looked so fragile give him such a hard time? He grabbed her wrists before she could scratch him, and shifted his weight just in time to avoid the knee she tried to ram into parts of him that definitely didn’t like knees.

  “It is,” she said.

  “Honey-bunch. Honey-bunch, honey-bunch, honey-bunch.” Finally, he had her on her back, subduing her with his superior weight pressing her into the rug. Noticing, as he did so, how damn good she felt beneath him. Thank God that had never changed.

  “Stop it, Dax.” She was still glaring at him, and if those looks were bullets, he wouldn’t be breathing. “Go practice your charms on somebody else. I want to leave.”

  “We had a deal,” he reminded her.

  “Null and void. I’ll sign my stock over to you.”

  “Will you? Too bad,” he said. “Because I’m still not letting you go. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?”

  “Other than you? Oh, you bet there is. It isn’t enough that you came back, you ground me into teeny tiny pieces, and you presented me with your daughter. No, you have to end every argument we have like this.” She thrust her hips upward, into him, in an angry challenge. “If you didn’t outweigh me and you couldn’t seduce me every time you touched me, I’d have brushed you off long ago.”

  He laughed. “Isn’t that the point?” He dropped his head until he was inches from her face. “You’ve been leading men around by the nose for so many years you’re just a poor sport when it doesn’t work. Besides, that seduction thing works two ways. Before you get off on another raving tack, maybe you should think about the reason we keep coming back to each other.”

  “Sex.” The word was flat and sullen.

  “It’s more than that.” He shook his head, then his voice gentled. “It’s far more than that. You’re the other half of my soul. And I’m yours. Apart, we only exist. You said that once.”

  “At this point, existing would be a treat. It beats having my heart ripped out.”

  The pain in her voice sobered him immediately. “Forgive me.”

  “For what? For being born?”

  “For being the untrusting jerk who walked away from the on
ly woman in the world he’ll ever love. I realized last night—when you rushed out without letting me explain—that I do trust you. I believe you never shared more than friendship with Charles. The only person to blame for the years we lost is my own stupid self.” He dropped his head and gently kissed her forehead, praying that he was getting through. “I still love you, Jillian. You’re the only woman who’s ever owned my heart.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. Beneath him, her body went limp and he felt her chest heave as she tried to suppress sobs. “Do you know how badly I wanted to hear that? How many years I dreamed that you’d tell me you love me again? You—you creep.”

  The first faint stirrings of relief began to rise within him. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm. “Say you won’t leave.”

  “Tell me one good reason we should stay together.”

  He hesitated, took a deep breath. “I don’t want to live without you. If you send me away, if you leave, you’ll be making a mistake as monstrous as the one I made all those years ago.” He let go of her wrists and brought one hand down to stroke her cheek.

  Eyes the color of a summer sky, as wet as an April mourning, searched his, seeing deep into his soul. “I’d like to believe we could—”

  “Then let yourself believe, and we can.”

  She brought her hands to his shoulders, caressed his back. “I don’t want to live without you, either. But—”

  “Let me say it again,” he said. “I was wrong. We can’t forget the past. But we can accept it, and overcome it.” He risked a smile. “And I know you’ve always risen to a challenge.”

  “You know me better than I know me. I surrender.” She brought her hands to the back of his head and tugged his mouth to hers, pressing a sweet kiss to his lips.

  It took a fraction of a second for him to realize he’d won. His future was bright again, as bright as the hair of the woman he held in his arms. As comprehension came, desire rose, and he deepened the kiss, stroking his tongue around hers repeatedly until she tore her mouth away for a gasp of breath.

  “I love you, Dax.”

  He shifted his body more surely over hers, and the future stretched before him, full of promise and possibilities, and above all, the woman he loved. “I love you, too, honey-bunch. You’ll never know how much.”

  Her eyes gleamed, and she wriggled beneath him. “Gee, I guess you’ll have to keep showing me.”

  A long time later, she raised her head from where it rested on his chest. “I’m starting to like this floor sex.”

  He laughed. “Good. There are lots of floors in this house. Why limit ourselves?”

  “Of course, when I’m pregnant, we may have to forgo the floors for a while.”

  He didn’t answer her for a moment and when she looked up at him, she caught the diamond glitter of tears brightening his eyes.

  When he finally was able to speak, his voice was husky and deep with emotion. “When you’re pregnant, we won’t take a single, solitary chance. I want you to have my child more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. Except your love.”

  My love. As she wrapped her arms around him, feeling her body soften in welcome, she knew it was real. Dax had truly come home.

  Epilogue

  It was an Indian summer in September again. What a difference a year made, Jillian thought as she watched Dax leap out of his lawn chair, cheering. He was simply irresistible.

  They all were, she thought fondly, looking at the four men whooping and trading high-fives when the radio announced that their beloved Orioles’ center-fielder just smacked a grand slam over the padded center field fence to win the game by one run in the bottom of the ninth.

  Dax, Ronan, and Ben slapped shoulders and pounded backs, while Jack pounded his chest and howled in a hilariously off-target attempt to mimic Tarzan. No wonder Frannie called him that occasionally.

  Well, Jack might be a big clown, but when it came to loving Frannie he was more than serious. He was so dedicated it still brought a lump to her throat just watching them together with Alexa, Ian and little Brittany.

  Christine had Brittany right now, playing peekaboo and making the toddler laugh while Frannie fixed herself a sandwich at the picnic table in Jillian’s yard. Chrissy was going to miss all these little kids when school started next week, she thought, smiling as her stepdaughter intercepted a hug from a too-enthusiastic Maureen. The littlest Sullivan was two and a half now, and she chattered nonstop as she headed for the table where Deirdre sat talking with Frannie and Marina.

  Ronan grabbed Maureen just as she was about to climb into her mother’s plate, and she shrieked in protest. But her crying turned immediately to giggles when he set her on his shoulders.

  Dear Ronan. He’d healed Deirdre’s wounded heart and wrapped her in such love and tenderness that Jillian had forgiven him for behaving like a randy teenager during his courtship of Dee. And who was she to throw stones, she thought ruefully, recalling the early months of her reunion with Dax. They hadn’t been able to speak two civil words in succession, but their bodies had known exactly what to say.

  So she couldn’t blame Ronan. Besides, he was a really good guy. He had taken his stepsons into his heart and his life in a manner that still awed her. And anyone, she thought in amusement, watching as Ronan corralled Tommy and Lee—who had just finished shaking a Pepsi can and were about to open it directly behind Jack’s back—anyone who took on those two deserved a gold star in his crown on Judgment Day.

  Ben warned Jack of the impending danger and the big man turned and began stalking the boys, who screeched as they beat a hasty retreat. Ben was laughing, too, until he realized that John Benjamin had picked up the abandoned can, tugging at the tab with all his miniature might. Then he moved with the speed and grace she’d always admired, snagging his thirteen-month-old son and whirling him in circles to distract him until Marina came running, protesting that John B. would throw up if he didn’t stop.

  Marina had been incredibly lucky to have found a man like Ben so soon after being widowed. Jillian had thought he was annoyingly autocratic at first, and she still thought it, sometimes, but the similarities between him and her tall, dark, autocratic husband were amazing. They’d even been born in the same year.

  As the adults began to round up the children for ice cream, Dax left the crowd and came over to the chair where she sat, half-turned away from the others.

  “How’s he doing?” he asked, bending to survey his twomonth-old son, nursing at Jillian’s breast. Then he bent and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “And how are you doing? Getting tired? I’ll play host if you want to go and lie down for a nap.”

  Jillian shook her head, smiling up at him as she pressed a gentle finger against her nipple, releasing the suction Charlie created as he suckled. Her heart swelled with love as she looked from her husband to their infant son.

  She held Charlie up and Dax took the tiny body, putting him to his shoulder as he rubbed the little back and crooned deep, gentle noises.

  “He’s fine,” she said as she rearranged her clothing. “And so am I—fine and ready to party.”

  “When are you not?” Dax grinned as he offered her his free hand, pulling her out of the chair and wrapping his arm securely around her. And as they walked to rejoin their family and their friends, she realized it was true. She was fine.

  Her life had come full circle. And though she would always regret the lost years, she had moved on. After years of looking backward and covering her past with layers of dust, she was polishing her love to a high shine.

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-5804-4

  THE BRIDE MEANS BUSINESS

  Copyright © 1999 by Anne Marie Rodgers

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