Please Say I Do

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Hallie felt a sudden chill. “The road washed out? When?”

  “A little while ago. Some of our employees are stranded on the other side and can’t make it in to work, so we’re a tad understaffed.”

  “The road washed out.” She repeated the words as the ramifications began to sink in. “But isn’t there another road?”

  Kimo shook his head, slapped mustard onto a bread slice and mayonnaise on another and cut a tomato into thin sandwich slices with perfect precision. “We’re stranded, too,” he said. “Stranded in Paradise Bay.”

  “I’VE GOT IT under control, Lynn.” Rik paced as far as the phone cord would allow. “Everything is fine. Sam’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine. The hotel is already battening down the hatches in case Hurricane Bonnie should come ashore. From the last report I caught, the worst scenario is that we’ll catch the tail of the storm sometime later tonight. I swear to you, Sam is getting the best of care. Between me, Jack and the chicken, he’s got the best nest in the hotel.”

  “Chicken?” Lynn repeated dubiously.

  Rik paced back to the bedside table. “Just another way of saying you have nothing to worry about. Now, go on home before the weather takes another turn for the worse. I’ll call as often as I can get a line out of the hotel, but if you don’t hear from me, do not…I repeat…do not panic. Sam is in good hands.” He heard the key card slide into the slot and looked toward the door. “I’ve got to go, Lynn. My roommate is back,”

  “Roommate?” his sister asked. “What roommate?”

  “Your future sister-in-law’ he said into the receiver, then hung up as Hallie entered the room. She looked great…for a woman who must have been standing in the path of a cake when it exploded. Her hair was dotted with flecks of batter and there was a clump high on her cheek and another on her chin. The apron she wore rode low on her muumuu, and a forensics expert would have had a field day with the stains.

  Rik had never wanted to kiss a woman more than he did at that moment. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello.”

  Cool tone. Standoffish manner. But not unfriendly. “Is the cake done?”

  She leveled a very patient gaze on him. “No. The road’s washed out’”.

  “I heard. So, what happened to the pastry chef? Did he get stranded in town?”

  “He banished me from the kitchen.” She would have walked on past Rik and into the bathroom, but he caught and held her hand. “Bad day in Paradise?” he asked softly, and when she nodded, he squeezed her hand with sympathy. “Me, too.”

  Her hazel eyes came up to meet his, transfixing him with their compelling blend of colors. “Really?”

  “Really. It’s been a hell of an afternoon…but suddenly, things are looking up.”

  She sighed. “Maybe for you.”

  “Does that mean you aren’t glad to see me?”

  “It means the only person I’d be glad to see right now is the weatherman, and only if he was predicting sunny skies.”

  “We’re only catching the tail end of Hurricane Bonnie, and although that’s bad enough, it isn’t as devastating as a direct hit would be. Things could be much worse, Hallie. Much worse.”

  “Nice try, but nothing less than sunshine is going to cheer me up.”

  “Ah, a challenge.”

  She pulled her hand free of his. “Forget it. There’s nothing you can do to make me feel better.”

  “Ooh, a double-dog dare.”

  She resumed her trek toward the other room. “We can’t even order room service.”

  “We can’t?”

  “You should see how crazy things are in the kitchen. Even Kimo’s making sandwiches.”

  “That young man is going to wind up as employee of the month. He’s everywhere.”

  “But never where you might expect. I wonder what his real job is.”

  She didn’t sound as if she really cared one way or the other, and Rik cleared his calendar for the evening in one imaginary swipe. Not that he had had much to do, anyway. Certainly nothing as pressing as finding out if what he’d experienced with Hallie last night could possibly be as great as he remembered. And checking on Sam. That was it. Sam and Hallie.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “I don’t suppose…No, never mind.”

  Surely she wasn’t too shy to invite him into the shower with her. “What?” he asked, settling his fingertip just below the ribbon of cake dough on her chin. “You don’t suppose what?”

  “The airline found my luggage?” she finished.

  Hallie was definitely tough on his ego. “No such luck.”

  “Thirteenth floor,” she said.

  “Thirteenth room,” he agreed.

  She sighed again, then, with a shrug, stepped inside the doorway.

  Rik followed her, unwilling to be as far away from her as the other room. “You know, I was just about to take a shower myself.”

  “You just got out of the shower. Your hair’s still damp.”

  “Rain,” he said quickly, indicating the window with a wave of his hand. “It’s raining out there.”

  Her glance confirmed it “Rain is something of an understatement You don’t expect me to believe you were out in that, do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe not.”

  He leaned down to kiss the words right off her lips. “I’m. lying. I just got out of the shower. But I’ll happily go to the kitchen and dunk myself in cake batter if it means I can shower again with you.”

  Her eyes widened, and a slow, sensual smile punched him in the backs of the knees.

  “But it’s such a long way to the kitchen.” She pulled his head down, brought her face to his, and the phone rang.

  HALLIE SHOWERED ALONE, thinking of various—and not entirely painless—ways to tattoo “hot” and “cold” onto Rik’s ears, so she’d have some way of knowing when he was going to rev her up and then dump her for the nearest distraction. All in all, things looked pretty bleak.

  She wasn’t going to be able to stop this hurricane from destroying Saturday’s wedding. The hotel wall facing the ocean quivered from the knockout punches of the wind. Even inside the bathroom, there wasn’t enough insulation to block the noise of the storm outside. The resort was under siege and Stephanie’s wedding was the sacrificial lamb.

  Even if Saturday dawned clear and sunny, even if the hurricane did no damage whatsoever, even if a miracle occurred at this minute, Hallie knew she could never put this wedding together again. Like Humpty Dumpty, it was cracked beyond repair.

  On the other hand, she’d thought the same thing about her own heart. Until Rik kissed her, loved her, mended her mistaken beliefs. So what was she going to do?

  All she could do about the weather was to admit she had no control over it, wait it out and do what she could when it was over. All she could do about Rik was enjoy what time the storm would give them and try not to lose her whole heart when it was over. That…and unplug the phone.

  But when she came out of the bath, all freshly scrubbed, sweet smelling and as naked as the day she was born, he wasn’t on the phone. He was standing by the window, as naked as she, holding a Hershey’s bar in his hand. “I’ve solved our problem,” he said with a smile.

  “What problem?”

  “The interruption thing.” He gestured behind him at the locked door. “I put out the Do Not Disturb sign.”

  “That should put a stop to the walk-in traffic.”

  “I also unplugged the phone.”

  “Oh,” she said softly, wanting this seduction to unfold like a slow-motion ballet, so the images of Rik would imprint themselves on her memory and she could have them to remember during the long, cold winter ahead. “What’s the candy for?”

  He looked at the naked chocolate bar in his hand. “I know how much you love chocolate kisses, so I thought maybe you might think of this as a substitute for cake batter.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, wow.”

  SOMEONE KNOCKED on the door. And kn
ocked. And knocked.

  “Someone’s at the door,” Hallie whispered, her voice raspy, her body heated with soft yearning. “Can’t they read?”

  Rik rolled out of her arms with an apologetic murmur. “Guess not. I’ll get rid of them.”

  “They’ll go away if we ignore them.”

  “I’m not taking any chances.” He stubbed his toe on a chair and tripped over a shoe in the middle of the room before he found his clothes and hastily pulled them on. Hallie listened to his every move, smiling to herself in the dark, stretching a little as she heard his footfalls past the bed and the locks on the door being pulled back.

  “Jack,” Rik said, and then the door closed as he stepped into the hall, leaving Hallie alone in a bed already growing cold without him in it.

  She had this bad, she thought. As bad as the wind howling outside the window. She wondered what Jack was doing and what time it was. And she decided if Rik left her for Jack, she would do something drastic, like enter a convent and become a singing nun.

  But Rik returned a few minutes later, slipping into bed beside her and rescuing her from a dismal future. “It was Jack,” he said, finding again the exact spot under her ear that, when nuzzled, drove her insane with need.

  “Mmm,” she said on a sigh. “What did he want?”

  “A place to bunk for the night.”

  “What’s wrong with his place?”

  “He’s allergic to chicken feathers.” Rik nuzzled right on down to the hollows of her shoulder, then moved on to her breast, and Hallie was so glad she didn’t have to sign up for singing lessons right away that she completely forgot to ask what Jack was doing with a chicken.

  RIK LEFT EARLY the next morning to see what he could scavenge for breakfast and came back with a baby.

  “I really just wanted a bagel,” Hallie said as she stared, dumbfounded, at the infant. “Where did he come from?”

  “See, Sam—” Rik directed his smile at the baby boy “—I told you she’d be delighted to have you join us for breakfast.”

  “Rik,” Hallie said, keeping her tone pleasant but insistent, “where did you get this baby?”

  “From Jack.”

  “Jack?”

  Rik nodded. “Well, in all honesty, Jack got the baby from me. Although he doesn’t know that”.

  “This is your baby?”

  Rik extended one baby hand to her in a marionette kind of handshake. “This is Sam, Hallie. Sam, this is your aunt Hallie.”

  Hallie reluctantly wrapped her hand around Sam’s, then discovered she was reluctant to let go. “He’s so little,” she said. “And so cute.”

  “That’s his job. Not being little—he’ll outgrow that soon enough—but cute. Cute’s his job.” He made a clucking noise and Sam laughed. “He does it really well, too, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, you do, don’t you?” One baby smile and Hallie was in the cooing spirit, her face right in Sam’s when he stuck out his baby tongue and blew a spray of bubbles at her. It was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to her. “He’s so precious. Can I hold him?”

  Sam seemed a little unsure about the switch, but Hallie jostled him in her arms until his weight felt natural against her side. “Where did you come from?” she asked him, then turned the question to Rik. “What are you doing with this baby?”

  “Baby-sitting him so Jack and Dani can get some sleep.”

  “Jack and Danny?” Hallie suddenly felt a little nauseated. “Jack’s sleeping with Danny?”

  “Remember me telling you about the chicken? That’s her.”

  “Danny is Dani.” Hallie concentrated…hard. “But Jack’s marrying Stephanie, so why would he sleep with Dani? I mean, even sharing the same bed would be a bit risky at this stage.”

  “Depends on what you believe the risk to be.” Rik all but radiated delight.

  “And you believe the risk is…?”

  “Marrying Stephanie. But I’m hoping Dani and Sam, here, have changed his mind.”

  “Jack’s mind,” she clarified. “Changed Jack’s mind about marrying Stephanie.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He put his hands over his face and played peekaboo with Sam, who seemed much more interested in inspecting Hallie’s haircut. “Too early to tell, but there are definite signs of strain in the bridegroom.”

  “Are you telling me you set Jack up with another woman and her baby to change his mind about marrying Stephanie?”

  Rik had the grace to look guilty. “No, I didn’t. Not exactly. It’s not the way it sounds. Not the way you put it”.

  “Then how is it, Rik? Because I don’t see a positive angle to this…this prank.”

  “It isn’t a prank. I consider it a rescue effort”

  “For Jack? You think you’re rescuing Jack?”

  “Look, I didn’t set up this thing with Dani. I called Patty’s Party-Grams and ordered a singing telegram special delivery, thinking someone in a costume would drop off Sam and leave Jack holding a thoughtprovoking dilemma. That’s all I intended. But somehow Jack talked Dani into staying and helping out with Sam and the road washed out and…well, she’s still here.”

  Hallie grappled with the facts as he related them. “And what about Sam? He’s still here, too, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Now, wait a minute, Hallie. I know this sounds really nuts. Hell, even my sister told me it was crazy, but she didn’t have a problem with it and I don’t think you have any business getting upset over it, either.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Lynn. Sam’s mother.”

  “She let you use Sam as a bargaining chip?”

  “I was baby-sitting, anyway. And she knows Jack. It’s not as if she left him with complete strangers.”

  “No, just complete idiots.”

  Rik’s lips tightened. “She’d have been here to get him last night if the road hadn’t washed out, and besides, she knows Sam is okay. I’ve been in touch with her by phone.”

  “That was considerate of you.” Hallie felt the tug of Sam’s little fingers in her hair and she reached up to gently untangle them. “Here, you’d better take him. He’s been passed around to too many people in the last few hours as it is. He doesn’t need another stranger in his life.”

  Rik took the baby without comment, put him on the floor and gave him a set of keys to chew on. Then he turned to Hallie again. “Look, I’ll admit this isn’t the brightest idea I’ve ever come up with, but I was desperate to stop this wedding.” “

  “My wedding?”

  “You’re just the wedding coordinator, Hallie. It isn’t your wedding.”

  “It’s a Bernhardt Bridal wedding, Rik. That makes it mine, and frankly, I can’t imagine why you’d do something so stupid to try to stop it, no matter whose wedding it is.”

  “Because it’s a mistake.”

  “Oh.” She was conscious of being angrier than she had reason to be, but it didn’t matter. He had no right to interfere. “In your opinion, Jack shouldn’t marry Stephanie.”

  “They’re not in love.”

  “Really? And how do you know that?”

  “Because I know him. And I know Stephanie.”

  Something in the way his gaze glanced off hers and dropped to Sam alerted her, and an uncomfortable possibility pinched her with annoying precision. “So, you’re planning to rescue Jack and Stephanie from this disastrous marriage.”

  “I’m doing my level best.”

  “And once you do, then what, Rik? Are you sending Jack back to the Amazon to lick his wounds, leaving you to comfort Stephanie?”

  His gaze came up and his shoulders went back in an angry affirmation, but Hallie had the pieces together now and could only wonder why she hadn’t caught on before. Men didn’t try to rescue other men from making a mistake. She’d observed too many best men who weren’t crazy about the groom’s choice of bride. They’d shrugged and minded their own business. Just as Rik would have done…if he hadn’t “had his eye on Jack’s bride. “You’re in love with Ste
phanie,” she stated flatly, not wanting to make it a question and have to hear his answer. “That’s why you said your own relationship was on hold. You’re not trying to rescue Jack. You’re in love with his fiancée and that’s the reason you want to stop this wedding.”

  A reflection of her own hurt and anger flashed in his eyes, as fierce as the storm outside. He paced to the window, parted the drapes and looked out. “Maybe my original motives weren’t entirely unselfish.”

  Sam tired of the keys and crawled after Rik.

  “So what does that make me? Any port in a storm?”

  “Hallie.” He reached for her but she turned away. “I was wrong about Stephanie,” he continued. “Not about stopping the wedding, but about my feelings for her. I only imagined I loved her. Until I met you and discovered what love really is.”

  Hallie would have liked to believe that, but the odds were against it being true, no matter how sincere Rik sounded. She was here. Stephanie wasn’t. It was only natural he’d hedge his bets and try to keep his options open. Then, if Stephanie did marry Jack, Rik would have a backup woman to warm his bed and assuage his wounded pride. Maybe he did love Stephanie. Maybe he really believed she was the wrong woman for Jack. Either way, it made no difference now. Love didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen between two people who had nothing in common except the bad luck that had landed them in the same thirteenth room on the thirteenth floor of a honeymoon hotel.

  Hallie gathered her courage before she looked back at him. “You don’t have to say you love me, Rik. It’s thoughtful of you to try and make me think I’m someone special to you, but it isn’t necessary. I’m in the business of making happy endings for other couples, not for myself.”

  “Hallie,” he said. “Listen to me. I love you.”

  “Oh, please, Rik. Be honest with yourself, if not with me. This has been a lovely affair, but that’s all it’s been. When the storm’s over, we’ll say goodbye and never see each other again. You know that as well as I do.”