by Laura Moore
“It was a beautiful ceremony, wasn’t it?”
He smiled. “Indeed it was.” No need to be hostile. Erica had obviously gotten the message. She’d been pleasant and gracious. Carrie had mentioned that Erica had been back east on business. Maybe she’d met someone to pique her interest during the trip.
She walked alongside him toward the newlyweds. “I’m glad so many people came here to celebrate Carrie’s big day. Christine and Dad’s friends, too. There’s one old family friend I think you’d really enjoy meeting. After the photographer’s finished with the wedding party shots, perhaps?”
“Why not?” Might as well kill time before he could go find Tess.
The photo session took perhaps twenty minutes. Liz Reading had a comfortable style that put everyone at ease. There was a lot of laughter as everyone changed positions at her bidding. Even Brian’s mother and father cracked grins.
When it was over, Erica turned to him. “Shall we go, Ward?”
He was surprised by the eagerness of her smile. Frankly, he’d already forgotten about the introduction she wanted to make. But he couldn’t see how he could wiggle out of it after agreeing earlier. “So who is this family friend?” he asked as she led him toward the tent, where guests were mingling and already drinking from champagne flutes.
“Edward Bradford.”
He’d thought he’d had the list of guests memorized. After all, he’d heard Phil muttering about them every time he and Tess sat down with him for a meeting. “I don’t recall his name.”
“Oh, he was Dad’s boss for years. Such an interesting man. And very wealthy.”
Ward gave a mental shrug. Here was Erica, reverting to type. As she led him through the throng of guests, he thought for the umpteenth time that he’d dodged a bullet. Thank God he wasn’t engaged to Erica, and that Tess had entered his life. He’d shake the hand of this very wealthy captain of industry and then make his excuses.
“Mr. Bradford,” Erica said, laying her hand on the arm of a patrician-looking man in his midsixties. “I’m so glad that you were able to change your itinerary and come.” To Ward she said, “I made a special call to Mr. Bradford, knowing how happy it would make Dad to have him here. Mr. Bradford, I’d like to introduce you to Ward Knowles.”
Ward extended his hand, wondering about Erica’s seeming fixation with this man. Was she hoping to get a job at his company? “How do you do, Mr. Bradford?”
“Ward and his family own this ranch,” Erica supplied.
Mr. Bradford inclined his silver head. “Quite an impressive place. I won’t be able to stay long—I’m catching a flight to Japan. Are your parents about?” He asked Erica. “I’d like to say hello to them and offer my congratulations to the happy couple as well. It was a lovely wedding.”
“They’re with Carrie and Brian but should be here shortly.” Erica replied. “It was a lovely ceremony, wasn’t it? Tess Casari is Silver Creek’s events planner. She planned the whole thing. So very talented. I’m sure Ward would be happy to introduce you to her—”
Mr. Bradford had reared back in shock at Erica’s words. “Tess Casari?”
“Yes,” Erica said, smiling blithely as if she didn’t notice that the older man’s face had drained of color. “Oh, that’s right. Your son was married to a woman named Tess Casari, too, wasn’t he?” She turned to Ward. “Did Tess ever mention a David Bradford or how tragically he died? It’d be such a small world if this turned out to be the same Tess. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, making sure everything is running smoothly—she’s strikingly efficient.” She scanned the crowd. “Ah! I see her!” she exclaimed, lifting a slender hand in greeting.
Reeling from the sucker punch Erica had delivered, Ward turned in the direction she was waving. Tess was there, not more than fifteen feet away, her face an ashen hue to match Mr. Bradford’s.
Tess felt the blood leave her face. They were together—Ward, Erica, and Mr. Bradford. How had it happened? She had calculated how long the photography session would last and was sure she’d be able to find Ward and talk to him—at least warn him that Mr. Bradford was there and who he was. But Ward hadn’t been with the wedding party. Liz had still been snapping away because the light was beautiful and Brian and Carrie were a photogenic couple. It was Allie, Brian’s sister, who’d enlightened her to Ward’s whereabouts, informing her that he and Erica had left in the direction of the tent. They’d probably worked up a thirst, Allie said with a smile.
But Ward hadn’t been near any of the bars, either inside or outside the tent. And then she’d seen him. And them.
How could he have met Edward Bradford so soon when Carrie’s mother and stepfather—the logical people to introduce the two men to each other—were still standing and watching the young couple smile into the camera lens? The question was no sooner asked than the answer came to her. There was no need to look at Erica’s satisfied face for confirmation.
Cold lead settled in her stomach.
The shock and confusion were plain on his face. As his eyes met hers, she glimpsed the hurt, too. She stood only a few yards away but suddenly the distance between them yawned as wide as the Pacific.
Oh God, what had she done? She’d lost her chance to explain things fully, properly. To give him time to understand. It was impossible now to tug the sleeve of Ward’s suit and tell him she needed to speak to him urgently for about thirty minutes to an hour—because that’s probably how long it would take to tell him the story of that grim period in her life when her estranged husband hovered at death’s threshold.
It was too late. The thought hammered at her. She’d ruined everything by not being open with Ward. Though her heart shrank against the despair filling her, she fought for control. She couldn’t let her fear win. This was Ward, the man who loved her with such tenderness, such generosity.
As she reached the group, she said, “Ward, I don’t know what David’s father has told you—”
Edward Bradford cut her off. “Oh, I can tell him plenty, I assure you, but I’m much more interested in your version. Would you like to tell him how you seduced my son into marrying you?”
Why should she be surprised that his outsized hatred for her hadn’t diminished? She was such a fool. “I did no such thing. David was the one who insisted we marry. I thought he loved me.” Perhaps one day she’d find consolation in the fact that her voice hadn’t broken when she uttered those words. It would be cold comfort.
“I can only think that David was already suffering from the effects of the brain tumor when he met you. It’s the only way you could have duped him into marrying you.”
“You’re wrong and you’re insulting. You don’t know me and you don’t know anything about David and my relationship.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “You had such a wonderful relationship that it took a million dollars to make you stay by his side while he was dying?” His voice quivered with rage and pain.
Tess’s throat constricted, making the words she forced out feel as sharp as broken glass. “Yes, I took your money. I regret that.” She met his crystal blue eyes. “I should have followed my instinct and ripped up the check.”
Bradford’s laugh was short in duration but infinite in cruelty. “I wasn’t born yesterday. You kept my money because you were afraid you’d failed to sweet-talk David into making you the beneficiary of his trust fund.” His gaze raked her. “You underestimated yourself. The lawyer has been trying to locate your whereabouts—to no avail. David obviously was as bad a judge of lawyers as he was of women.”
“What trust fund? What are you talking about? I didn’t ask David for anything!”
“I don’t believe you. But you know what I do believe? That you saw a chance to squeeze as much money out of my family as you possibly could and you took it. I think you are nothing but a heartless gold digger.”
With a cold abruptness to match his speech, he dismissed her. He turned to Ward and Erica. During the course of the exchange, she had inched closer to Ward. “I
don’t know what your relationship to this woman is, young man, though I can guess,” Bradford said, “but I suggest you take care. She can’t be trusted and she’s brought only misery to the people I love. I’m leaving now. I won’t stay another minute in her presence.”
“Good. Because I would have been forced to ask you to leave. My family doesn’t tolerate people speaking to our employees in this manner.”
The spurt of elation and hope she felt at the beginning of Ward’s reply was short-lived. It lasted about a second before it was crushed by disappointment and shock. Was she now nothing but an employee to Ward? Had he somehow recognized her in Bradford’s description?
With a terse nod of goodbye for Erica and Ward, Bradford left. With his departure, the sounds of the guests enjoying themselves returned, as if someone had turned the knob on the volume. Focused on Edward Bradford, she’d forgotten her surroundings. Luckily, no one seemed to have overheard the nasty conversation unfolding in their midst. No curious glances were being cast their way. There was only laughter and amiable chatter and the clink of glasses as the servers wove their way in and out of the crowd, passing hors d’oeuvres on silver trays. So far the ugliness of her past hadn’t marred Brian and Carrie’s day.
“Well, that was certainly illuminating.” Erica’s voice oozed satisfaction.
Tess ignored her. She wasn’t going to give her the added pleasure of seeing how much damage she’d wrought. She’d used Edward Bradford to destroy her, setting up the ambush with the ruthlessness of a mafia don.
“Ward, can I talk to you, please?”
He looked at her. Oh God, she thought. The love-killing doubt was there, in his eyes, in the rigid set of his mouth.
“You were married to his son?”
“Yes.”
“He paid you a million dollars to stay by his son’s side?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t like that—please, can we talk?”
A muscle twitched along his lean jaw as if he were biting back more angry questions. “No, not now.”
A part of her longed to scream and beg and plead. Shake him for not saying, “Christ, Tess, what kind of messed-up situation did you land in?” But another part was too numb to act. After all, the fault lay with her. She’d kept Ward at bay emotionally, too fearful to put her heart on the line, to put herself on the line. Now, for the first time, he was closing himself off to her. The hurt was unimaginable.
A rustle of commotion swept through the tent as people began to murmur excitedly. Carrie and Brian had entered with their parents; Brian’s sister, Allie; his brother-in-law, Paul; and their girls, Hannah and Grace, who were still wearing their flower girl wreaths upon their heads.
It was time to introduce the married couple to the guests. Then the toasts would begin. As members of the wedding, Erica and Ward should be standing with them.
“You both should go,” she told them tightly. Then to Ward, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before about David and his family, but it’s not like Edward Bradford described.”
“And yet he was so convincing, wasn’t he, Ward?” Erica’s voice was mild, all reasonableness. With a smile, she tucked her arm inside his. “I suppose she’s right. We should go join the others. I can’t wait to hear your toast, Ward. Will you make Brian squirm?” Erica’s laugh was light.
“Ward, please?” She didn’t know what she was asking for. Some kind of sign that it would be all right.
He didn’t reply. He didn’t acknowledge her plea. He simply turned away.
And she could do nothing. She couldn’t call him back. He was Brian’s best man and had duties to perform. She had duties as well. This was the most important day of Brian and Carrie’s lives. It didn’t matter that it had suddenly become, in a horribly frightening way, the most important of Tess’s life, too.
She watched as he walked away with Erica, her mind in chaos, her happiness in jeopardy. Thoughts skittered, racing through her head. Would talking to him have even done any good? She tried to remember what she’d said just now. She’d admitted that she’d accepted a million dollars from the Bradfords. But David’s father had made it seem as if he’d had to bribe her to stay at the hospital. It hadn’t been like that, but would she have been able to make Ward understand the situation from her point of view?
She’d failed again at love. The first time with David, she’d opened her heart completely, leaving herself vulnerable when he used his words like lethal weapons. With Ward, fear and shame had made her veer to the opposite spectrum. She’d guarded her heart too carefully, afraid to share her past with him and let him see the real, imperfect her.
A part of her had hoped she’d find only indignation and outrage in Ward’s eyes as Edward Bradford hurled his accusations. Neither emotion had been evident. When she considered how much she’d withheld from him, she realized it was too much to ask.
It was over.
From the beginning she’d sensed that the love she had for Ward ran far deeper than any she’d felt before. With David, she’d believed she’d learned all about the pain that came with failing at love. It turned out that she hadn’t even scratched the surface.
WARD WAS WORKING on getting drunk. Not sloppy, falling-down, puking-behind-the-rhododendrons drunk. Just sloshed enough to turn his brain to slush and to anesthetize his heart. Ordinarily he was pretty good at accomplishing his goals. Quinn and Reid often ribbed him for being an overachiever. Tonight, however, he was failing big-time. His brain had yet to succumb to the bourbon, and his heart felt like Tess had driven one of her spiked heels through it.
He’d held off on the hard liquor—no way was the job going to get done on champagne—until after he’d given his best man’s toast. The toasts were scheduled at the end of dinner, just before Carrie and Brian would cut the first slice of their wedding cake. The interim left far too many minutes—interminable minutes—for him to covertly spy on Tess and track her as she whisked in and out of the tent, tending to the myriad details still on the docket before this hellacious evening was over.
Each time he spotted her, his mind circled back to Bradford’s accusations. The picture the man had painted was bizarre and ugly—unfathomable, in that it was radically unlike the Tess Casari whom Ward had fallen hard for. It had been a shock to hear her admit to taking a million dollars from Bradford. But the greater shock had been that she’d never breathed a word of any of this to him. Why had she never told him about it? He’d been open with her, had even shared the story of why Erica decided he wasn’t worth marrying. Yet he’d never heard a peep from Tess about an episode that must have been a pretty fucking big deal.
A million-dollar fucking big deal.
There was definitely something screwy about the money. Even were he to consume an entire bottle of bourbon, he wouldn’t accept the fact that she had a million dollars lying around; after she bought that car from Mike O’Roarke, he’d be surprised if she had three thousand dollars.
Though the topic of the money and what exactly had happened between Tess and the Bradfords while David Bradford lay critically ill in a hospital was troubling, what bothered Ward most, and poked at a still-raw wound, was the suspicion that the reason Tess hadn’t spoken a word to him about any of this business with the Bradfords was that he meant nothing to her. What else could he conclude but that she’d never intended to go the distance with him? That she’d never loved him.
If that was the case, was she any different from Erica? A damned depressing thought, especially after having stood up in front of the ninety-plus assembled guests, raised his glass of champagne, and launched into an account of how Brian had fallen for Carrie Greer, knowing from the first time he laid eyes on her at a football game that she was “the one.” Ward had managed to keep his smile firmly in place as he recounted Brian’s calling him after his first date with Carrie. Half an hour later Brian had still been talking about her pretty blue eyes.
Ward had gotten the guests to chuckle, while inside, battered and reeling from the blow, he cursed love as the
nastiest joke ever played on mankind. He’d gotten through the rest of the speech somehow, and Brian and Carrie, blind with happiness, didn’t see that his smile was more a rictus of pain.
He should go find her. Demand some answers from her. He at least deserved to know why the hell she’d hidden so much about herself.
Instead, he took another swallow of his bourbon. Slouched in a chair by the small table he’d claimed as his own, he stared at the dancers on the wooden dance floor. He didn’t need to check his watch to know that by now he should have had Tess in his arms, swaying to the slow beat of the band, anticipating the night ahead of them. She’d be tired; he’d take care of her, kissing her slowly, deeply, as he caressed her lazily. It would have been an easy, gentle loving. And when she came with a shuddered cry, he’d have wrapped her in his arms and kissed her damp brow until she drifted off to sleep.
“I’ve come to claim my dance, Ward.” Amazingly—or perhaps not—Erica’s voice was light and cheerful.
He didn’t straighten, remaining in his indolent pose. “Sorry, after the stunt you pulled, I think not. You set this up. You set Tess up. Edward Bradford hadn’t accepted any invitation to come to the wedding.”
“He and his wife, Hope, were in Switzerland. They have a home on Lake Geneva. The invitation must not have reached them. Or maybe it did and they simply couldn’t bring themselves to respond to a wedding invitation.”
“But you figured out that Tess was connected to them.”
“She looked like she was going to pass out when Carrie mentioned the Bradfords. I thought that was funny since she couldn’t possibly have known them. But then I remembered hearing something about David’s sneaking off and marrying some nobody from New York and how furious Mr. Bradford had been when he discovered what David had done. I put two and two together and then called up Mr. Bradford and asked him to come, knowing how much it would mean to Dad.”
“And knowing how much it might embarrass Tess.”
She sat down on the empty chair beside him as if they were having the nicest of chats. She lifted a bare shoulder that gleamed like gold dust in the lantern’s light and gave a careless shrug.