Please Say I Do

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  He looked thunderstruck as he bent to lift Sam into his arms. “I don’t know anything of the kind. This isn’t something that happens to me every time I check into a hotel. I’ll admit I have no idea how we’ll work out the logistics of this relationship, but—”

  “This is the relationship, Rik. This room, this hotel, now. That’s it. We’re as much a creation of this damn hurricane as the havoc it’s wreaked on Stephanie’s wedding.”

  “Are you saying we’re a disaster, Hallie? You and me?” His voice was tight with anger and Sam began to cry. Rik comforted him, and for a moment, Hallie wished she could seek solace in his arms, as well.

  “I’m saying, Rik, that you’re mistaking sexual satisfaction for deeper emotion.”

  Surprisingly, and without much humor, he laughed. “Men don’t confuse sex with emotion, Hallie. That’s one of our charms.”

  “Well, women do. Which is why I’m telling you this now, so there won’t be any misunderstanding when I leave. You don’t love me, Rik. You don’t even know me. I’m just someone you enjoyed being with for a few days during a hurricane. One of those, “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’ kind of deals.”

  ” That’s the way you see this?” he asked hoarsely. “ That’s the way you think of me?”

  “Don’t take it so personally.” She tried to sound nonchalant, as if her heart wasn’t throwing itself against her ribs in protest.

  “Don’t take it personally,” he repeated. “I’m talking about seeing you for the first time and feeling a strange, compelling attraction. I’m talking about the way your hair feathers around your face and the way you pretend you have everything in perfect focus, even though you can’t see a thing. I’m talking about what happened to me when you started dancing the bossa nova in the lobby. I’m talking about falling genuinely, deeply in love with you somewhere between the lobby and the thirteenth floor. And you’re telling me I shouldn’t take it personally when you say I don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  “Look, Rik. The truth is, I don’t dance,” she said in her best no-nonsense tone of voice. “Not the bossa nova or the Macarena. Not in the privacy of my own home and never, ever, in a hotel lobby. No matter how much tequila I’ve had to drink or how often you tell me it happened.”

  “What about your fantasy? You dance there. You told me so.” She shrugged. “I was lying.”

  “You’re afraid.” He said it with conviction. “You’re afraid to risk an upset stomach, so you don’t drink orange juice. You’re afraid of ultraviolet rays, so you avoid the sunlight. You’re afraid of failing, so you take no risks. Your wedding wasn’t the biggest disaster of your life, Hallie. Neither was your marriage. The biggest disaster is the way you’ve focused on creating the perfect wedding for someone else, the way you’ve shut yourself off from discovering who you might be if you took that leap of faith and admitted you’re in love with me, too. The forever kind of love, Hallie. The kind that doesn’t fit a timetable or a schedule. The kind that happens to you when you’re lucky enough to accidentally fall into it”

  “Ah. There’s your mistake, Rik. We had great sex and I’m really appreciative of how loving and tender you’ve been. But it had very little to do with luck and nothing at all to do with love.”

  “That’s what you think.” He started toward her, Sam in his arms, determination in his eyes, and Hallie held up a hand to stop him. Incredibly, regretably, he stopped. “I don’t want to hurt you, Hallie. I just want to talk.”

  “Send me a singing telegram,” she said, and walked out of the hotel room, leaving a resonant silence in her wake. Unless one counted the storm, Sam’s baby gurgle and the plaintive cry of her own foolish heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What do you mean, the cake is gone?” Hallie had spent the entire afternoon trying to salvage what remained of her painstaking plans for Stephanie Brewster’s wedding. The orchids were gone, innocent victims of early delivery and no extra room, refrigerated or otherwise, in the hotel. The lanai was a wind tunnel, separated from the rest of the hotel by flapping canvas and the hellacious storm. The musicians had canceled, the minister had called in his regrets. Even the bride was stuck in Honolulu. The wedding wasn’t going to happen. At least, not on the luxurious scale Hallie had planned. Certainly not on the extravagant one Babs had envisioned.

  Rik would be thrilled, though. He’d sabotaged the wedding without lifting a finger—other than shuffling his nephew into the card deck. Superman to the rescue.

  Hallie banned thoughts of Rik and turned her attention to Chef Charles, who lounged, loose-limbed and the worse for champagne, in his former boss’s chair. “I made the cake,” he said with a slack-jawed grin. “All six nillie-vanillie layers of it. Then we ate it.”

  “Who ate it?”

  “The staff. By two o’clock this morning, it was pretty evident the hurricane was heading this way. We were all exhausted and hungry and stuck at the hotel. I thought they deserved a treat, so when the cake was done, we ate it. So sue me.”

  “You and the rest of the staff ate six layers of wedding cake.”

  Under different circumstances, Hallie would have chewed him up one side and down the other. But frankly, she was glad the cake, at least, had served a useful purpose. Nothing else about this wedding had turned out pleasurably.

  “So, what kind of dessert can you whip up for tomorrow?” she asked. “On the outside chance this illfated couple decides they still want to get married.”

  Charles smiled and leaned across the desk. “I can get you a heck of a deal on the cake they’re using tonight for the party. It’s mostly cardboard, but it’s a big cake.”

  “What party?”

  “The bachelor party. There was supposed to be a stripper inside the cake, but she couldn’t get here because of the road being out and all.”

  Hallie did not want to know this.

  “So, what about a dessert for tomorrow? What can you do?”

  He grinned. “Not interested in the big cake, huh? Well, that’s okay. Now, about tomorrow. Supplies could get a little low, depending on how long the storm lasts, but I think I could manage a fruit salad or maybe a coconut pudding.”

  “Fine. I’ll be in touch.” She stood, suddenly angry about a lot of things, all of them having to do with Rik and the bachelor party and the big cake in the kitchen.

  Hallie went straight to the kitchen with a half-formed idea of sabotaging Rik’s plans for the bachelor party. She found the cardboard cake and the scattered remains of the wedding cake. Pinching off a bite of one, she observed the other. Stuck back out of the way, the party cake was a good size and prettily decorated. Only a male would think of this setup, she decided. Putting a woman inside a cake for the entertainment of a group of otherwise sane men who pulled out their rowdiest, raunchiest behavior for the occasion called a bachelor party.

  Brad had had the mother of all bachelor parties. At least, that’s what he’d told her. And the stripper had had the body of a Playboy centerfold. Or so he’d said. Hallie winced at the memory, wondering why she’d thought it was all right for him to say such things to her, wishing she had had then the confidence she had now.

  But for all her confidence, the Brewster wedding was one happy ending she couldn’t deliver. Much as she hated to admit it, Rik was right. Stephanie and Jack weren’t in love. She knew that simply because she knew Rik wasn’t the kind of man who would betray a friendship. He would never have entertained thoughts of being in love with Jack’s fiance unless he’d been absolutely certain there was no love involved in the match. So why were Jack and Stephanie getting married? And what difference did it make? She’d been hired to deliver the wedding they’d bought and paid for and she was going to fail. Miserably.

  “Darn newlyweds,” grumbled a voice behind her. “Always kissin’ and huggin’ and leavin’ cake crumbs on the floor.”

  “Oh, hello.” Hallie smiled at Dave, who was sweeping cake crumbs off the floor. “I guess yo
u’re stranded here, too, huh?”

  He looked up, seeming a little surprised to find anyone nearby. “Why would I want to go home, anyway?” he said. “No one there. Just a house. Like me. An empty, old house.”

  “I thought you were married.” Hallie pinched off another bit of wedding cake and stuffed it all in her mouth at once when she saw him frowning at the crumbs that drifted through her fingers to the floor.

  “Was.” He angled the broom between her flip-flops and swept up the fresh crumbs. “Five times I married the same woman. Same stubborn old woman. She left me five times, too. Came back. Left. That was our whole married life. Darn stubborn old woman.”

  Hallie swallowed the cake and felt sorry for him because there didn’t seem much point in feeling sorry for herself. “You don’t like being alone,” she said.

  “Nah. I don’t mind that. It’s bein’ lonely that bugs me. I see all these young couples kissin’ and huggin’ and it makes me wish…”

  “Makes you wish…?” Hallie prompted.

  He lifted his old blue eyes to hers. “I’ll tell you, missy. If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t get married five times to the same stubborn old woman. I’d do whatever it took to keep her.”

  “Oh.” Hallie didn’t know if there was any underlying wisdom in Dave’s statement. He just kept on sweeping, grumbling under his breath. A lonely old man in a place swarming with couples young with love. Her glance strayed to the cardboard cake. Maybe it was only lust that brought these couples together. Maybe none of them had started out really in love at all. Maybe they only had the hope of love, the confidence that what they felt was enough to stake their dreams upon, enough to last a lifetime.

  She wouldn’t know. She’d thought she loved Brad and look how that had turned out Now she loved Rik and look how that was ending. She’d go back to Boston, tail between her legs, her first—well, okay, second, counting her own—failure of a wedding under her belt, and he’d stay here. With Stephanie. Who probably wouldn’t be married to Jack. Who probably would have Rik wrapped around her little finger in no time. Well, Stephanie could have him.

  Wait a minute. Hallie stopped herself from nibbling on the remaining wedding cake. What was she doing? Maybe she didn’t believe Rik could fall in love with her overnight, but why was she so ready to cast aside any chance that he might grow to love her over time? Why was she turning him over to Stephanie without so much as a whimper, much less a fight? Wasn’t she as worthy of having a wonderful man like Rik in love with her as Stephanie was? She didn’t even know Stephanie. But she knew Rik. She knew the tenderness in his touch, the fire in his kiss, the utter abandon she felt when she was in his arms. This might not be love, but it was a damn fine substitute.

  So, what to do? Go back upstairs in the hope he was there? Apologize? Grovel? Say she’d been wrong to call him a liar, to throw his declaration of forever love back at him with a hateful remark about their lovely affair? She’d lied to him, too. She’d said she didn’t dance, not even in her fantasies.

  Her gaze strayed to the cardboard cake and she gulped. There was nothing like action to convey a message. Nothing like showing rather than telling. And sometimes there was nothing to do except take your pride in your hands, stuff it down the bra of your bikini and pop out of a cake. If that’s what it took to keep Rik in the first place, what was she waiting for?

  THE HURRICANE CHANGED course, lashing the Hawaiian Islands in a final, furious tail-whip of an attack. But as the wind wreaked havoc outside, the Lanai ballroom was awash with males determined to ignore the danger and enjoy the moment. Rik hadn’t been keen on the idea of this bachelor party until Hallie had left him wrung out and utterly frustrated. Women made no sense, he thought. One minute they were all cuddly and lovey-dovey, the next minute they were telling a guy he knew nothing about commitment and less about how to communicate. So, what was a guy to do?

  The obvious answer had come from an unexpected source. Dan Brewster had taken one look at Jack and Rik earlier in the day and pronounced that they needed a party. So Dan delivered a party. The room was decorated for a luau. Or maybe New Year’s Eve. Rik couldn’t be sure. There were long, polished canoes filled with hors d’oeuvres and a couple of bars stocked with premium booze. There were glittery hats and freeflowing champagne. He didn’t see any good-time whistles, but there was plenty of bawdy behavior to go with the cocktail waitresses, who wore low-slung pareus around their hips and scanty bras over their breasts. As a bachelor party, it was a smash.

  Except for the bridegroom and the best man.

  “Hey, great party!” A stranger whopped Rik on the back and he spilled his beer. “Hell of a way to wait out a hurricane!”

  The stranger moved into the crowd of unfamiliar faces. Who were these people? Rik wondered as he set down his empty glass and looked for the nearest waitress. He hadn’t invited anyone. Dan had supplied the party, the guests and the introductions. The only person Rik remembered clearly was Carter DeHaven, Stephanie’s sister’s husband. Seemed like a nice guy, even if he had kept eyeing the exit with furtive glances.

  Catching a glimpse of loose-jointed hips and the sway of long, silky black hair, Rik took off after the scantily clad waitress. It was pretty obvious that the only way he’d get through this party was to down a fair number of beers. Enough so he could sleep standing up, because it was a cinch Hallie wouldn’t be inviting him into her bed tonight.

  She was driving him nuts. One minute, a love match. The next, a sordid affair. No wonder he was confused. He’d wanted to talk to Lynn about it, but when he finally managed to get an outside line, the static was so bad he barely had time to assure her that Sam was doing fine. Truth to tell, he was just as glad he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask her advice. It was embarrassing to have to admit he couldn’t handle one petite, farsighted and totally unpredictable woman.

  Lynn would have told him to do something dumb, like apologize for falling in love too fast. What the hell was wrong with that, he’d like to know. Some people took years to make a commitment. He could do it in an instant and be confident it was right. Some people would consider that a risky practice, but he considered risk an integral part of life and the only way he knew how to live.

  Hallie obviously considered him an idiot. All because he wanted to stop her silly wedding. Her wedding. As if she had anything to do with Jack’s future happiness. Or Stephanie’s. She didn’t even know them. The wedding—that was her focus. No wonder she didn’t wear her glasses all the time. She didn’t want to see things too clearly. She wanted to be a martyr to the perfect ceremony, a sacrifice to the gods of disasters, a casualty of the wedding she had failed to give herself.

  And with that thought, Rik suddenly understood the reason she had banished him from Paradise. She had built her safe, insulated world to protect herself from risk, and he had leapt over the protective walls like Superman to the rescue, discarding her superstitions like pesky gnats, demanding her love because he deserved it, exposing her to a whole world of risks in one sitting. He was an idiot.

  But now he was an idiot with a plan.

  “Don’t let Jack slip out of here before the main event.” Dan Brewster laid claim to Rik’s shoulder and attention. “I’ve never seen a man so determined not to enjoy himself.”

  “Jack’s just nervous.” Rik cast a furtive glance at the exit himself. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Good man.” Dan started to move off, but Rik stopped him.

  “Wait, Mr. Brewster…Dan. What main event?”

  Dan smiled that uncannily aristocratic smile. “I took it upon myself to make sure Jack’s party had all the essentials.” He winked and turned away, leaving a parting sentence to hold the place he vacated. “They ought to be rolling her out any minute now.”

  Unless Dan had been able to get a roll-out bandstand and a female singer, Rik figured Jack was in for the routine, bachelor-party striptease. Hell. Jack would never forgive him for letting this happen. They’d agreed years ago that when the time came, t
hey’d behave like dignified adult males and not embarrass the other with sleazy girl-jumps-from-cake pranks.

  Oh, sure, Rik had teased Jack at every opportunity in the last few days with remarks designed to make a groom nervous. That, after all, was only fair, a traditional guy thing. But he hadn’t booked a stripper for this gig, and if Dan had asked—which he hadn’t—Rik would have vetoed his plan flat out. But now they were in for it. He’d better warn Jack. Casting one last, wistful look around for a waitress, Rik frowned and set his sights on finding his soon-to-be former best friend.

  “Mr. Austin?”

  Turning, he found Kimo beside him, holding out a glass of champagne. “Mr. Brewster…” Kimo indicated Dan with a wave of his hand, which Dan reciprocated with a smile and duplicate wave. “He asked me to tell you it’s time.”

  Rik took the glass, although the last thing he wanted at the moment was champagne. “Time for what?”

  “The cake,” Kimo said. “They’re bringing in the cake now, and Mr. Brewster wants you to get Jack up front.”

  “Hell.” One look across the room brought Rik a thumbs-up from Dan. The trap was set There wasn’t going to be any escape. Not for him. Certainly not for Jack. “Thanks, Kimo,” he said, then, squaring his shoulders, he headed for a spot close to the obscure door that provided access to the kitchen. He cleared his throat and pitched his voice above the chatter. “Could I have your attention, please? Can I have everyone’s attention? Would the man of the hour step up here, please?”

  Everyone turned to look for Jack, who was standing next to Kimo near one of the exits. Kimo? Rik decided that young man had to be on roller skates. “Jack?” he called. “Get your butt up here.”

  Jack’s gaze was murderous as he approached, and Rik figured this was not the time for lengthy explanations. Considering that a gigantic cake was already being wheeled into the ballroom by three scantily clad waitresses, it was obvious to Rik that any explanation at this point would be redundant. Jack knew what was about to happen, and from the look on his face, he was in no mood to be understanding. Rik felt sorry for him, but he took care to step aside and out of the way.