The Best Man's Bride

by Anne McAllister

  “I’m telling you,” Jack said. “It’s going to be crazy.”

  He would know crazy better than she did, that was for sure. Life with South Face was its own kind of crazy. And while he might not have participated in a royal wedding before, she suspected he might have attended one or two. In the two years she’d worked for Maggie, there had been no royal weddings on the docket.

  “I believe you,” Celina said.

  They were on the other side of the village now on the road heading west. Jack drove swiftly. The small sleek car handled the narrow roads better than the bigger one she and Maggie had arrived in from the airport.

  “Where are we going?” she asked eventually when he drove past the turning to Combe St Philip, which she’d thought might have been their destination. It was the site of the wedding, after all.

  “Hope’s brother recommended a place,” Jack said vaguely. “You know Max?”

  Celina smiled. “I know Max. Roscoe loves him.”

  “Roscoe?” Jack frowned.

  “My puppy.” Our puppy, she couldn’t help thinking. “Or do you even remember getting me a puppy?” she asked.

  Jack’s knuckles seemed to whiten on the steering wheel. He flexed them. “Of course I remember getting you a puppy. What’s Max got to do with him?” he asked gruffly.

  “When he was in San Michele in February for the engagement party, he was missing his dogs. So he walked Roscoe with me.”

  “You’ve still got him? Roscoe, I mean?”

  “Of course I’ve still got him,” Celina said indignantly. “What did you think? I’d just get rid of him?”

  “You moved halfway around the world.”

  “And Roscoe moved with me. He’s family. Max liked him a lot.”

  “Max is engaged,” Jack said tersely.

  Celina blinked. Which was apropos of what? she wondered. “I know that.” She gave him a long look.

  More finger flexing. Jack grunted. “Good.”

  They kept driving past more turn-offs as the road wound into a forested area that blotted out much of what remained of the early evening sun.

  “How much farther is it?” Celina asked as they drove into the shadows.

  “Not far.”

  He had slowed down and was glancing at the side of the road now. But they passed three more lanes to turn into before he apparently saw the sign he was looking for and made a sharp left turn onto a narrow country lane.

  “How does Max know about this place?” Celina asked.

  “He’s been there.”

  “Good food?”

  “He recommended it.” Jack wasn’t paying as much attention to her as he apparently was to looking for a place to turn.

  There didn’t seem to be any villages nearby, but after they’d passed one farm lane, at the next one, Jack made a right turn.

  “Lane’s End?” Celina had read the sign when they’d turned. “Is that the village?” Surely not. “Or the restaurant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which?” Celina pressed. “Jack?” she prodded when he didn’t answer, just kept his eyes on the road. “What’s going on?” She sounded shrill and she knew it.

  “We’re having dinner, spending the evening together,” Jack said. He didn’t glance her way.

  “Where?” Celina demanded.

  “You’ll see.” He shot her a quick smile.

  Celina wasn’t reassured. She felt her heartbeat quicken. “Jack, you said dinner,” she reminded him.

  “We’re going to have dinner.” He made one more sharp turn down an even narrower lane, barely more than a track through the woods. Jack slowed instantly or the ruts would have taken out the undercarriage of the earl’s car.

  “What sort of restaurant is this?” Celina squinted through the shadows, trying to see the building just coming into view ahead.

  “It’s a hunting lodge.”

  A two-story timbered building that had probably been there for centuries sat in a small clearing. It was totally dark.

  “It’s closed,” Celina said, breathing a sigh of relief. They could turn around now and go back to civilization.

  But Jack shut off the engine and was getting out of the car. “I’ve got the key.”

  “What?” She stared, her head whipping around to follow his movements in the fading light as he came to open the door for her.

  She stayed right where she was. “What do you mean, you have the key?”

  He held it up, dangling it in front of her. It was another of those old-fashioned I-can-open-anything brass keys. “Come on, Celie.”

  She gave him a hard look at his use of the nickname. “I’m not moving out of this car until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I told you. We’re having dinner. Aren’t you hungry?”

  She ground her teeth. “I am hungry. But I don’t see any way to solve that here.” The lodge was still and silent in the twilight. “Who’s cooking?”

  “Me.”

  She stared at him.

  He shrugged. “I never said it was a restaurant.”

  “You don’t cook,” she objected.

  “I didn’t cook,” Jack corrected her. “I learned. I had to do something while I was trying to keep my sanity while the vocal chords were healing.”

  “So you learned to cook?” That seemed so unlike Jack.

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “I had to eat.” He jiggled the key and gave her a hopeful look. “Judge for yourself.”

  He held out a hand to her. For a long moment Celina still hesitated, unsure what Jack was up to. But what was she going to do? Sit in the car while he went inside and cooked dinner? She knew Jack. He wasn’t going to get back in the car and drive her somewhere else. Whatever he was doing, he had made up his mind.

  He hadn’t moved. His hand was still outstretched. His smile was still that combination of lopsided and hopeful.

  Reluctantly Celina put her own hand in it and he hauled her out of the car. She stumbled forward and nearly crashed against his chest. She was close enough to feel the heat from his body, to smell the soap she’d smelled in his room when she’d talked to him earlier, when he was wearing the towel.

  She wasn’t going to think about the towel.

  She stepped back smartly. “Fine. Let’s see how many Michelin stars you rate.”

  He laughed. “Let’s just hope it’s edible.”

  He got the door open to the lodge rather more smoothly than she would have imagined, the key looking like it was centuries old. But inside, he flipped on an electric light that was clearly not original equipment, and she could see that the lodge might be ancient, but it was also surprisingly comfortable.

  Dark beams, low ceilings and a fireplace you could roast an ox in marked it as being of some distant century. But the walls had been freshly painted and on the flagstone floors there were scattered rugs that looked soft and inviting.

  He led her further in, turning on lights as he went, and she saw an old leather sofa, comfortable upholstered armchairs and a rocking chair next to the fire. Beyond, at the back of the house, there was a table made of thick dark oak planks and four wooden chairs, and to its left a kitchen area with reasonably modern appliances – a cooktop, an oven and a small refrigerator.

  “All the comforts of home,” Celina said, looking around.

  She also saw a staircase leading to the upper floor where no doubt the bedrooms were. It felt far too homey. She yanked her gaze right back down.

  “What was wrong with a restaurant?” she asked peevishly.

  “Too noisy. People poking their noses in, wanting a selfie or an autograph.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Good food, no doubt. But not what I wanted.”

  Exactly what she wanted. Safety in numbers. “Why not?”

  He looked at her. “Why do you think?”

  She didn’t know what to think. She shook her head irritably, then shrugged, hugged her arms across her chest, and changed the subject. “What are you going to cook?”

  “You’ll
see. Nothing fancy.” He was opening drawers, looking in them, checking out the equipment apparently. “You cold?” He was looking at her arms wrapped across her breasts. “I’ll just get a fire going in the fireplace first.”

  “You’ll need a redwood for that fireplace.” Celina was still feeling grumpy at what she considered a change in plans.

  “Hope not.” Jack grinned, then hunkered down with some kindling he took from a copper vat next to the fireplace and, in quick order, got a fire started. Celina had never seen him in woodsman mode before. Like everything else, he did it well.

  “You never had to start fires back in Ames,” she remarked without thinking.

  “Too civilized,” he said. “I did in Montana.” He was still fiddling with the wood, arranging it with a poker so that within a few minutes he had a nice steady blaze. “This place reminds me of the cabin my grandparents built up on the mountain above the ranch house. Well, this one is maybe three hundred or so years older,” he admitted wryly, “and a bit cozier. But still –” He stood up and handed her the poker. “Poke at it once in a while, will you? I have to get some stuff from the car.”

  She stood staring at the fire, wondering if she’d awakened in some alternative universe. This one felt all too similar to the one where she was married to him. She shivered again. This time had nothing at all to do with the cold.

  He returned a few minutes later with a couple of bags, which he carried into the kitchen. “How’s it going?”

  Celina just looked at him. She had no words. So she poked uselessly, irritably, at the logs in the fireplace. She’d never dealt with a fire in her life. She knew all about polite. She didn’t know the first thing about how to keep warm.

  “Here you go.”

  She turned to find Jack right behind her offering her a glass of wine.

  Celina wet her lips. “Um, thank you.” She took it from him, careful that their fingers didn’t brush. She could tell from the glint in his eyes that he noticed, that he was aware of what she was doing.

  “Ah, Celie,” he growled almost too softly for her to hear. But before she could bristle or steel herself against whatever that growl meant, he had turned and gone back to chopping something in the kitchen.

  Celina studied his back, his shoulders big and muscled even in the very civilized shirt he wore. She knew that back, had run her fingers over it countless times. She knew the spot below his right shoulder blade that knotted up whenever he got obsessed with working out some particular phrasing on the guitar. She knew the scar above his left kidney, courtesy of a horse, spooked by a mountain lion, who had thrown him into a thicket.

  She allowed her gaze to drift lower, to the way his jeans hugged his backside and his thighs.

  “– asparagus?” Jack said.

  Color flooding her face, Celina jerked her gaze up to see him looking around at her again, obviously waiting for an answer. She had no idea what the question had been.

  “Um, sorry,” she said. “Woolgathering.” And he didn’t have to know about what.

  “I don’t remember. Do you like asparagus? I got some from the cook. But she also gave me fresh green beans. We can have either or both.”

  “I love asparagus,” Celina said, glad he wasn’t laughing at where her gaze had been. “Can I help?”

  It was the polite thing to ask, after all. Even though working alongside Jack in the kitchen was not something she wanted to do. It felt too homey, too intimate.

  “Set the table.” He jerked his head toward a tall dresser at the end of the dining area. “I think everything you need will be in there.”

  She set the table while Jack got the oven hot and put the asparagus in to roast. He had commandeered some sort of new potatoes with a creamy sauce from the kitchen at the manor house, and a couple of steaks that he fixed on the cooktop grill.

  They worked together in companionable silence for the most part. Now that they had talked, she felt easier. It wasn’t as fraught with tension as her earlier encounters with him this weekend.

  Perhaps she really was going to be able to salvage a friendship with him.

  But she could feel the pull of attraction at the same time she felt increasingly comfortable with him. She finished setting the table and picked up her glass of wine so she’d have something to do with her hands.

  Otherwise she might find something else to do with her hands – things she’d done in the kitchen with Jack before. The memories made her face heat. She tried to shove them away. But they came crowding back.

  That was the trouble with being in a kitchen with Jack. It was all too familiar, too easy, too tempting. It reminded her too much of the days when they were courting, when they were in love, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

  “When are the steaks going to be ready?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself, nearly spilling the rest of the wine in her glass.

  “Still cold?” Jack glanced her way.

  “A little,” she lied. She was getting warmer by the minute. “I dressed for the pub.”

  “You dressed for battle,” Jack said. There was no judgment in his tone, but she hated that he could read her so easily.

  Keeping up the fiction that she was cold, she set down her glass and fetched her blazer from where she’d laid it on the arm of the sofa. More armor, she thought wryly. But Jack was sweeping it out of her arms before she could put it on.

  “Here.” He lifted her hair and draped his own lightweight jacket over her shoulders.

  Then she did shiver from the warmth of his jacket and even more from the way that the closeness of his body heated her the way it always had. And, too, there was the scent of Jack in his jacket. It was like being wrapped in one of Jack’s warm hugs.

  “What else can I do to help?” Celina asked, determined to get this show on the road.

  “Pour some water,” Jack suggested, then walked out into the main sitting area, fiddled around with something on one of the bookshelves. The next thing Celina knew there was music in the background. Not South Face. It was instrumental, softer, romantic.

  “Why don’t you play some of South Face’s music?” she asked. Something strident or at least bluesy.

  “Doubt the collection here runs to that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I don’t want South Face here tonight.” The look he gave her then was heated, almost hungry.

  Celina looked away quickly and went hunting for glasses in the cupboard. She didn’t want South Face, either. But she didn’t say that. It would have been safer – saner – to have South Face blaring in the background, reminding her of the end of their relationship, keeping front and center what Jack was going back to in a matter of days and that they were, at most, going to be friends. She had no part in his life anymore.

  Finally the steaks were done. The asparagus came out of the oven. The potatoes were heated through in their sauce. Jack put everything on the table, then went to add another log to the fire.

  “It’s not necessary,” Celina said as she sat down at the table. “We won’t be here that long.”

  But Jack did it anyway, then sat down opposite her across the heavy ancient table. His gaze was on her, his dark slumberous eyes regarding her unblinkingly over his wineglass.

  Celina swallowed, remembering other times Jack had looked at her that way. But no longer! They were going to be friends, she told herself. She pasted a smile on her face.

  Jack nodded, then raised his glass toward her in a toast. “To us.”

  Us? Celina, who had lifted her glass, jerked, startled. Her face flamed. “To friendship,” she countered hastily, then raised her glass to her lips and took a long swallow.

  Jack didn’t bring his to his lips at all. “We’re not friends, Celie.”

  She stiffened. “Well, if you don’t want to be –”

  He shook his head. “I don’t.”

  “Fine! Then why are we here, having dinner together if you don’t want to even be friends anymore?” she demanded.

 
“I don’t want to be your friend. Not only your friend,” Jack qualified.

  “But you said –!”

  “No,” he countered. “You said. Not me. It won’t work.”

  Flustered, she wanted to argue. But before she could form a single sentence, he went on.

  “I love you, damn it, Celie. And whether you want to admit it or not, you love me.”

  Desperately she shook her head.

  “You do,” he insisted.

  She shifted in her chair. “All right, fine, I do,” she muttered ungraciously. “But that’s precisely why there isn’t an us, why there can’t ever be an ‘us,’ Jack!”

  He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it does. It makes perfect sense. We shouldn’t ever have got married.”

  He stared at her, looking astonished. “What? Why the hell not?” Now he was glaring at her as if she’d offended him.

  “Because we don’t want the same things. We don’t have the same goals.”

  “Bullshit,” he countered. “I want you. You want me. We want to be together.”

  But Celina shook her head. “You want your music, the band, fame, fortune, traveling all over the world, being footloose and fancy free. And well, yes, maybe after all that, you want me. But that won’t work. It’s not what I want!”

  There was a pause. Then he leaned forward, his forearms on the table as he stared into her eyes. “Then tell me what you do want.”

  “I’ve told you that a million times!”

  “A million?” The look he gave her was equal parts sceptical and amused.

  “It’s not much of an exaggeration,” she muttered. “I want a home, Jack. I want to settle down. I want a family! And don’t say I never told you that!”

  He sighed and shook his head. “No, I know. You told me.”

  “And you gave me a dog!”

  “You love the dog.”

  “I do. He’s pretty much all the family I’ve got. And I want more. So, we want different things!”

  “I never said I didn’t want a family,” he protested.

  “You told me you didn’t often enough!” Celina reminded him. She wanted to get up and pace. She wanted to throw things at him. Had he really never heard anything she said? “Every time I suggested we start a family, you said no, Jack. You said you couldn’t be home right then. You had obligations, commitments. You had the band!”