by JoAnn Ross
Claren tilted her chin. A faint, stubborn line appeared between her tawny brows. “It’s not just a house.” From the time she’d moved to the United States, Darcy’s sprawling residence had been the closest thing Claren had known to a real home. Her decision was made.
“I’ll take you up on that offer of a ride after all,” she declared.
“Terrific.” Dash reached over and opened the passenger door. “Where are we going?” he asked.
Claren didn’t disappoint him. After settling into the passenger seat with a flurry of lace and satin, she said, “To Port Vancouver.”
CHAPTER 2
HER SOFT SCENT WAS reminiscent of a summer meadow—blooming with lavender and wildflowers, and warmed by a bright buttery sun. It filled the car like a fragrant cloud, more aura than perfume. Against his will, Dash found himself drawn to it. To her. Frowning, he reminded himself that he was here to do a job; he hadn’t come all this way to start behaving like some libidinous teenager.
“Want to stop at your aunt and uncle’s and pick up some things on the way?”
“That’s not necessary,” she said quickly.
Too quickly, Dash thought, sensing the reason for her reluctance. So, she wasn’t entirely fearless. He’d have to keep that little fact in mind.
“I have my makeup in my bag. As for clothes and toiletries, I can buy whatever I need on the peninsula and send for the rest of my things later.”
That was the truth, so far as it went. But if she were to be perfectly honest, Claren would have to admit that after the way she’d ruined the wedding—a ceremony that had been twelve months in the planning—she was not all that eager to risk running into her Aunt Winifred and Uncle Richard.
Although she’d tried for years to avoid doing anything to earn their disapproval, she knew she would never forget their icy reaction to her news that she could not—would not—marry Elliott Byrd as planned.
“Whatever you say,” Dash said agreeably. He wasn’t about to push. She had, after all, had a rather eventful day, and he understood her reluctance.
Without seeming to take his eyes off the road, he glanced surreptitiously down at his watch. Damn. It was past time to check in. St. John had always been a stickler for punctuality, which just went to show how much the guys in the pin-striped suits knew about the unpredictability of this kind of work.
“I’ve got to stop and get some cigarettes.”
“That’s fine with me,” Claren answered absently as she struggled to extract the long hairpins holding her tiara in place.
He pulled into the parking lot of a drugstore.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.” She tossed the gossamer veil into the back seat. “I’ll wait to go shopping until we get to Port Vancouver.”
Claren sighed as she thought about all she’d left behind. It was a great deal more than clothing—that could be easily replaced, after all. What had her feeling so sad was the knowledge she’d also turned her back on all that was left of her family. She was, truly, all alone.
“You know, as hard as it is to believe, one of these days you’ll be able to laugh about this.”
His mouth curved in the barest hint of a smile, and although the glasses still hid his eyes from her view, Claren thought she detected honest concern in his tone. “I keep telling myself that.”
“If nothing else, running away from the altar will make a hell of a story to tell your grandchildren.”
Her appreciative laughter bubbled free, like the fresh clarity of a mountain spring.
Frowning at the way that clear sound had pulled some hidden chord deep inside him, Dash left the car and went into the store. Ignoring the clerk who was standing at the front counter, he headed straight to the back wall, where the pay phones were located.
Dash looked around the store, ensuring no one was within hearing distance. Other than the clerk, the only customer in the store was a harried-looking young woman with a baby waiting at the prescription counter. The baby, obviously ill, was fretful, his strident cries ensuring that neither the pharmacist nor the mother could overhear Dash’s conversation. A glance out the front window showed Claren sitting in the car where he’d left her.
He dialed, then deposited the required change into the slot.
The phone was picked up on the first ring.
“I’ve made contact,” he said.
The voice on the other end of the long-distance line asked a question.
“No, she doesn’t suspect a thing. And we hit a piece of luck—she’s going to be staying at the house.”
The heated response came quick and hard, like machine-gun fire.
“Calm down, St. John, I didn’t blow my cover. She came up with the idea all on her own. It turns out that since she’d planned to get married, she’d moved out of her own apartment and needed a place to stay.”
St. John asked a question, his voice calmer now.
“No. The wedding was called off. So we’re all set. Okay,” he said, “I’ll call you when I get to the house.”
* * *
CLAREN CLOSED her eyes and leaned her head against the back of the seat. She still couldn’t believe what she’d done. But that didn’t mean that she regretted her actions. Not even the teeniest bit. After what Elliott had done, after the lies he’d told, not to mention his treacherous betrayal, she should have pushed the cheating, unfaithful bastard, white tie and all, right into Lake Washington.
When she’d first arrived in America from County Clare, Ireland, after her parents’ deaths to live with an aunt she’d never met, Claren had been twelve years old. She’d also been heartbroken, frightened and unbearably lonely.
Although Winifred Wainwright Palmer had been nice enough, in a smooth, polite way, and had seen to all Claren’s physical needs, she kept an emotional distance from her young niece that was worlds apart from the unqualified love Claren had received from her mother and father.
Just when she thought she was going to shrivel up and die from loneliness, Elliott Byrd, the son of her aunt’s best friend and next-door neighbor, had stepped in to smooth the way.
Seven years older than Claren, tall, blond and unbelievably handsome, Elliott, who was home for summer vacation after his freshman year at Harvard, quickly became her protector, her knight in shining armor.
Not embarrassed to be seen with a little girl, he’d allowed her to tag along to the movies and later to the pizza place with his friends, who inevitably had quit grousing and had become accustomed to having the young Irish girl around.
Three blissful months later, Elliott had returned to college, leaving Claren bereft. She’d missed him terribly. Being young and incredibly naive, she’d written him long, impassioned letters, spilling her turmoiled emotions onto every page.
Instead of laughing at her or treating her with disdain, Elliott had simply suggested Claren would do well to learn to control her emotions. Having taken a genetics class his first semester, he understood that her Irish ancestry—from her mother’s branch of her family tree—tended to make her feelings closer to the surface. But after all, he’d written, she was in America now, and such tempers and emotional outbursts were perceived by most individuals in their social stratum to be unattractive. And immature.
It was the same thing her aunt had been telling her. And although Claren had tried her best to control her unruly emotions, inevitably the pressure would build up and she’d just have to explode, like one of the volcanoes that continued to rumble ominously in the Northwest’s Cascade Mountains.
It was like asking a fish not to swim. A bird not to fly. Or trying to insist that the sun stop coming up every morning. But hopelessly in love with Elliott, Claren had thrown herself into a self-improvement course that would have made a convent-trained German nun seem reckless by comparison. She had been determined to become a proper American lady, a lady suitable for the title of Mrs. Elliott Byrd.
Her hard work had paid off. By the time she was in her final year at the Univer
sity of Washington, Claren O’Neill Wainwright had become a near clone of Winifred Wainwright Palmer, her proper-society matron aunt. And although her uncle Darcy loudly and continually insisted that she was shutting off the best part of herself, Claren was satisfied with the serene, sophisticated young woman who looked back at her from the dressing-table mirror every morning.
As a reward for such selfless effort, Elliott had made eight years of Claren’s fervent wishes come true by telling her that her love was not one-sided.
They had announced their engagement in June, a year after she’d graduated from college with a degree in hotel management. Elliott was working for a Seattle brokerage house. Both the Palmer and the Byrd families, who’d been watching the evolving romance for years, had professed delight.
That had been three long years ago. It certainly hadn’t been Claren’s idea to wait. But Elliott had patiently explained that during those initial years at the brokerage house, he needed to devote a major portion of both his time and his energy to his work. He was, he told her, determined to make partner before he turned thirty. Then he was going to throw his hat into the Washington State political ring.
When he asked Claren how she’d like being the wife of a U.S. senator, she’d answered honestly: whatever made him happy, made her happy. When he’d assured her that she’d love living in the nation’s capital, having dinner at the White House with the president and first lady, Claren’s agreement had been a bit less enthusiastic.
Although she’d come a long way from the Irish country girl she once was, formal dinner parties—stiffly proper society events of any kind—always made her feel as if her stomach had been turned into a wildlife refuge for giant condors.
Elliott had made partner, exactly as he planned, a week before his thirtieth birthday. Shortly thereafter, rumors of his candidacy had begun appearing in the local papers. Everything was going precisely according to schedule. Finally, as he’d promised, he’d instructed Claren to set the date for their wedding.
Having already waited too long, Claren had wanted to get married as soon as the state of Washington would allow. That’s when both mothers had quickly stepped in, reminding her that the families were descendants of early Seattle settlers. As such, they had a certain obligation to uphold tradition. Besides, Mrs. Byrd had pointed out, community interest in the event would certainly not harm Elliott’s budding political career.
Reluctantly Claren had acquiesced, allowing her aunt and future mother-in-law to plan an “appropriate wedding.” That had been twelve long months ago, and with each passing day, the upcoming nuptials had become more and more lavish, until they rivaled the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Di. On more than one occasion, a frustrated Claren had accused her aunt of trying to outdo the British royal family.
The wedding was to have taken place in the formal gardens behind her aunt’s mock Tudor lakefront home. A trio of gardeners had been working overtime to ensure that every one of the red and white rosebushes would be in full bloom for the ceremony. The dark green rolling lawns, trimmed to perfection, rivaled a putting green. Peacocks, hired solely for the occasion, strolled that luxurious lawn, displaying their feathers.
Folding chairs—three hundred of them, their seats covered in white satin—had been set up in neat rows on the croquet green facing the gazebo, where Claren and Elliott were to have taken their vows. Nearby, sheltered by a white tent, were damask-draped tables groaning with gourmet delights and bottles of imported champagne.
At the front of the tent, tall sterling-silver urns were filled with small squares of spicy groom’s cake, wrapped in white tissue and tied with gold ribbons, intended as favors for the guests.
The wedding cake, displayed on a table by itself, consisting of nine towering layers of white cake topped with buttercream frosting, was surrounded by white roses. A porcelain bride and groom—created by a local artist and wearing Claren and Elliott’s faces—stood atop the cake. As a final touch, the tiny bride’s dress was a replica of Claren’s own bridal gown.
“It was just like a three-ring circus,” Claren complained now.
“What did you say?” Dash, who’d returned to the car, asked.
Having been immersed in her unhappy thoughts, Claren had failed to notice his arrival. “My aunt Winifred rented a tent for the reception.”
Dash, remembering the outrageous dog-and-pony show that had been his own formal wedding, frowned. “That’s not so unusual. In certain circles.”
There was something in his tone Claren couldn’t quite discern. Sarcasm? Anger? Resentment? Shrugging it off, she said, “I know. But it still seemed more like a circus than a proper wedding.”
“I can understand why you’d feel that way.”
Growing up poor, never knowing where his next meal would come from, forced to accept the charity of others in order to survive, Dash had spent years planning his escape.
Success. Money. Fame. As a boy, he’d thirsted for those elusive goals in the same way a parched man crawling across the Sahara Desert yearns for a drink of cool clear water. As a man, he’d learned the hard way to be very careful what you wished for.
“But it’s a moot point now,” he said gruffly, angry at the way she’d unearthed long-ago memories he’d spent a lifetime trying to bury. “Unless you’re going to change your mind again.”
Claren didn’t like the challenge in his tone. “Not on a bet.”
Not if Elliott Byrd crawled across a bed of hot coals on his hands and knees. Not if he quit his precious job at the brokerage house, bought a boat and invited her to sail off with him to the South Seas, where they could spend the rest of their days making love and feeding one another passion fruit.
Not even—and this would be a hard one to resist—if he bought back the O’Neills’ old horse farm overlooking the Shannon River in Ireland’s County Clare for a wedding present.
Dash heard both the anger and the hurt in her voice and narrowed his eyes. But he didn’t comment.
“Hey,” he answered with a shrug as he pulled the car into the flow of late-afternoon rush-hour traffic, “it’s your life.”
Thirty minutes later Claren was standing at the railing of a ferry slowly making its way across Puget Sound. The stiff breeze coming off the water tore at her formally coiffed hair and ruffled her satin skirts. Feeling wonderfully, blessedly free for the first time in months, Claren faced the wind straight on.
“It would be a lot warmer indoors,” Dash suggested, nodding toward the glassed-in enclosure.
Her attention on a pair of pelicans perched atop wooden pilings, Claren didn’t look at him. “True. But it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.”
Fun. When had it become such an alien word? she wondered. And knew the answer—ever since her parents had died in an auto accident returning from a successful day at the Ballinasloe horse fair, forcing her to leave the only home she’d ever known, the home she loved, to live with her father’s sister. From the time Claren was twelve years old, the only real fun in her admittedly comfortable existence had been those wonderful, unexpected visits from her uncle Darcy. But now he was gone and Claren felt as if he’d taken all the sunshine with him.
Sighing, she leaned against the railing. The setting sun had turned the water a shimmering copper.
Although you couldn’t tell it from the temperature out on the water, it was June. The ferry’s inside observation decks were crowded with vacationers and office workers commuting back home from the city.
A pair of boys—nine-year-old twins from the look of them—raced each other down the outside deck, oblivious to the frustrated shouts of their mother. The harried woman rushed past Dash, skidding to a stop long enough to take a startled look at Claren, still clad in her snowy bridal attire. The boys had reached the back of the boat and were leaning far over the railing, pointing at something bobbing on the water. The woman cast a last puzzled look Claren’s way, then took off running.
It was cold enough that everyone else had opted to stay indoors, lea
ving Dash and Claren alone on the deck. Dash leaned against the side of the boat and continued to watch her with an interest he tried to tell himself was purely professional.
But that didn’t stop him from noticing that her cheeks, kissed by the salt breeze, bloomed with the hue of late-summer roses, or that her hair, tangled wildly by the breeze, was like no other color he’d ever seen. Too fiery for chestnut, lighter than titian, it was a rare blending of copper, gold and bronze.
“If you don’t stop staring at me like that, I’m going to push you overboard,” Claren said after he’d studied her for nearly ten minutes without saying a word.
Dash’s grin was quick and arrogantly male. “I’m quaking in my boots.”
She’d had a very trying day, and his sarcasm triggered a temper she’d spent the past twelve years suppressing. She spun around. “You should be,” she retorted. “Because, for your information, Mr. Dashiell MacKenzie, I’ve taken judo—I could toss you right over that railing before you could say Jack Sprat.”
Dash watched her face and found himself intrigued by the passion underlying the ivory and roses. He lifted a challenging brow. “Judo?”
“I have a brown belt. All the better to handle the likes of men like you.”
He crossed the narrow width of the deck to her. “You know, Claren O’Neill Wainwright, there’s a good deal of Ireland in your voice when you get your back up. Sure and it’s a fine lesson in international cadence,” he drawled in an exaggerated brogue. “You remind me of your uncle.”
His eyes moved over her, from the top of her flame-colored head down to the white satin slippers peeking out from beneath her billowing skirts. “Except you’re a hell of a lot prettier than old Darcy.”
Claren shot him what she hoped was a lethal glare. “You are as mad as a hatter.”
He took a step closer, enjoying the temper in her eyes. “And you are lovely.”
He was a mere whisper away; his long legs, clad in black denim jeans, flattened the front of her skirt. Her fiery head barely skimmed his shoulder. Although he hadn’t touched her, they both knew he would. They also knew what it would be like. Heat and smoke and passion.