Out of Town Bride

by Kara Lennox

  She didn’t, of course. Never had. And she’d never exactly gotten over him. Even when Marvin had come along and swept her off her feet, she’d still sometimes lain awake at night, wondering how it might have been if McPhee had responded to her romantic overtures that night so long ago.

  Now, maybe it was time she got over it. She wasn’t some teenager with a crush, even if she still felt that way sometimes. She was grown up. Holding on to a ten-year-old grudge was stupid, especially when she knew McPhee couldn’t help it that he hadn’t wanted to get involved with her. Just as she hadn’t been able to control her own emotions.

  “McPhee, I’ve been horrible to you. And I’d like to apologize. I know one apology can’t make up for ten years of bitchiness…”

  “Whoa, whoa!” McPhee shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind of some untenable thought. “Did you just apologize to me?”

  “I was trying to. But if you’re going to be ugly about it—”

  “No, please. Go on.”

  She tried to ignore the trace of amusement evident in the set of his mouth, the sparkle in his brown eyes. “Mother’s illness has brought some things into focus for me. You just never know when you’re going to lose someone. I want to appreciate the people in my life before they’re gone and it’s too late.”

  “I…thanks. Does this mean you forgive me?”

  “For what?” she asked, pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “You know what. That night. When everything changed.”

  “Oh, that.” She waved away the notion that it was important. “I had too much to drink and I put you in an awkward position.”

  “I could have handled the situation with a little more tact.”

  “It’s ancient history, as far as I’m concerned.” And she was very proud of herself for having such a mature discussion about it. “We should have cleared the air about that years ago. But better now than never. I don’t want us to be enemies,” she added.

  “No, I don’t want that, either. I don’t want to leave here on bad terms with you.”

  Sonya sat up straighter. Suddenly all that burgeoning maturity fled like a flock of sparrows when a hungry cat jumps into their midst. ‘You’re not really leaving, are you?”

  He looked at her the way he used to when she would ask a particularly dumb question about motorcycle maintenance. “I already told you that, right? That I’m going to work for the Sheriff’s Department?”

  “Yes, but that was when you thought I was getting married.”

  “I’m still going. My last day is still January 8.”

  “But Mother—”

  “—will have to get used to the idea. I want to go now, while my father is determined to stay off the sauce. If I stay, it might give him an excuse to give up, since he knows I’ll be here to rescue him.”

  A few days ago, Sonya had actually been worried that she’d be stuck with her bodyguard for the rest of her life. She should have been immensely relieved that she would finally be rid of him.

  But what she felt wasn’t relief, she was pretty sure.

  She reached for another chocolate, but McPhee slid the box out of her reach. “You’re going to be sick if you eat any more of those.”

  Come to think of it, she did feel uncomfortably full. How many had she eaten? Three? Four?

  “You ate seven,” McPhee said, reading her mind in that annoying way he had.

  “Seven! Oh, why did you even let me get started? You know how I am.”

  “You’re not exactly the queen of moderation,” he agreed.

  “How many did you eat?” She started to count the empty squares, hoping to discover he’d eaten at least as many as she, but he put the lid on the box.

  “I’ll get rid of the rest.”

  “Good idea.”

  “So I’m forgiven?” he persisted.

  “Assuming you don’t force me to eat any more of those chocolates. Or do anything between now and January 8 to make me mad.”

  “Sometimes all I have to do is say ‘Good morning’ to make you mad.”

  She stood and gave him an imperious look, but for some reason she was about to laugh and ruin her exit line. “You’ll want to try not to smirk at me when you say ‘Good morning.’”

  “I do not smirk.”

  “You do. In a really annoying and condescending way like one of those English servants who know everything. Admit it.”

  “It’s possible,” he said carefully, “that I sometimes lift a sardonic eyebrow in a sort of Heathcliff-esque way. I wouldn’t refer to it as a smirk, which would involve pursing my mouth in some unattractive manner.”

  “You’re getting into semantics now. Whatever you call it, a smirk or a sardonic eyebrow lift, it gets my goat. If you’ll make an effort to stop doing it, I will try not to get mad more often than you really deserve.” And she whisked out of the room in search of some Pepcid.

  JOHN-MICHAEL WATCHED HER GO, his stomach lurching in an odd way that had nothing to do with eating too many chocolates. Who was this woman? She certainly wasn’t acting like the spoiled debutante. She’d jumped out of that neat pigeonhole into which he’d had her safely stuffed all these years. And he wasn’t comfortable with the situation, not at all.

  A spoiled, petulant Sonya, putting him in his place, was far easier to deal with than a kind, sensitive, funny Sonya. She’d actually shown him her sense of humor just now, something she hadn’t directed his way in forever. First he’d had to accept her cloak-and-dagger activities. Now this.

  All right, he was going to have to face the fact. His lust for Sonya was turning into something else, something dangerous. For the first time in many years, he wasn’t sure he could hold himself back, pretend indifference.

  But maybe he didn’t have to. Hell, he was soon to be off the Patterson payroll. Sonya would no longer be forbidden fruit. He let himself roll that idea around in his head, intrigued with it.

  Whistling, he carried the chocolates into the kitchen, where he found Matilda. Normally the roly-poly Patterson cook was perky as one of her own orange-marmalade muffins. But ever since Muffy’s heart attack, Matilda had been sulking over the fact that she had to completely change the way she prepared Muffy’s meals. Now he found her sifting through her recipe box, sorting cards into “keep” and “throw away” piles. The throw-away pile was much larger than the keeper.

  She eyed the box of chocolates suspiciously. “Oh, so it’s all right for you to be peddling this fattening stuff,” she said as she took two candies, “but not me?”

  “You don’t have any heart problems, do you?”

  “Not a one. Doc says I’m healthy as a horse. Good genes.”

  “Well, not all of us were born so lucky. C’mon, Mattie, you can adapt. Think of it as a challenge, a chance to try some new recipes.”

  “But those recipes Mrs. Patterson’s doctor gave me are so boring, so tasteless.”

  “So, invent your own recipes. Maybe if you and Eric work together you can come up with some gourmet heart-healthy recipes and we can all eat healthier.”

  “Healthier, right.” She nodded toward the candy. “Where did you get those?”

  “Tootsie. Sensitive soul that she is, she brought them for Mrs. Patterson.”

  “Ugh! What’s she trying to do, kill her best friend? Just because she’s a skinny twig and can eat anything she wants. Take those chocolates out of here.”

  “Mattie?” said a disembodied voice. “Mattie, are you there?” It was Muffy on the intercom.

  Matilda walked over to the kitchen unit, on the wall near the phone. “Yes, Mrs. Patterson?”

  “Could you send my daughter up here? I can’t find her.”

  “She’s probably hiding from you,” Matilda said without pushing the talk button, and John-Michael smiled. Muffy was loving all the attention having a heart attack brought her. She’d always been something of a hypochondriac, imagining that every ache and pain was the symptom of a fatal tumor. Now that she had an actua
l illness, she took full advantage of having everyone at her beck and call, especially Sonya. She’d become quite the tyrant.

  Unfortunately, Sonya was feeling the strain. She had a hard time saying no to Muffy, so long as what Muffy wanted didn’t jeopardize her recovery.

  John-Michael pushed the intercom button. “Is it anything I can help you with, Mrs. Patterson?”

  “No, it’s wedding stuff. I’ve just located the most wonderful Belgian lace for Sonya’s gown. It’s in Los Angeles, of all places. She’ll have to go there personally to pick out the pattern she wants, though I have some ideas. And I’ll want you to go, too, of course.”

  A trip to California didn’t sound so bad, he mused. A warm beach, Sonya in a bikini… “I’ll find her.”

  He searched all over the estate until he finally located Sonya swimming laps in the indoor pool. When she was stressed he could usually find her here or working out on the treadmill or soaking in the whirlpool.

  He waited at one end of the pool until she completed a series of laps. When she paused to catch her breath, he called her name.

  “Huh?” she sputtered. “Oh.”

  “Working off some stress?”

  “Working off some calories. Of course, it would take about a million laps to burn off all that candy.” She hoisted herself out of the pool, and he handed her her towel. She wasn’t wearing a bikini, but an ultra-modest tank suit.

  “Your mom wants to talk to you.”

  Sonya sighed. “Okay. Is it urgent? I was planning to sit in the sauna.”

  “Something about Belgian lace in California. She wants you to go there personally and pick it out.”

  “I am not going to California.” She blotted herself with the towel and suddenly the coverage wasn’t enough. Sure there was fabric over all the key areas, but the way it clung…

  John-Michael suddenly couldn’t figure out where to direct his gaze. He couldn’t look at her when her nipples showed plainly through her pale-green suit. But if he looked away, she would know he was deliberately not looking at her.

  “It was bad enough when I spent two days in Dallas,” she continued, oblivious to his discomfort. “But Mother was in the hospital under constant medical supervision. Now I’m the one responsible for her care. I can’t leave.”

  “There are plenty of people here to look after Muffy. Anyway, she’s not an invalid.”

  “But her medications—”

  “She can handle them. Her heart suffered a blow, but her brain is fine. Sonya, you need a break. You’ve hardly left your mother’s side for an entire month. She loves the attention, but she needs to start taking responsibility for her own care. It’s a good sign that she’s willing to turn you loose for a couple of days. You should take advantage of it.”

  “Yeah, but all the way to California? To pick out lace for a dress I’m not going to wear?”

  “Can you think of a nicer place to go in December?” he countered.

  “We could look for Marvin! Maybe we could visit his parents in Boston and see if they could help us.”

  That was one idea John-Michael didn’t want to encourage. The idea of Sonya chasing after some felon with no thought of the danger made his teeth hurt. But now that she’d landed on the idea, she seemed enamored with it. “I’ll call Cindy and Brenna. This’ll be fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Fun,” she confirmed. “It was terrible, what Marvin did to us, what he might be doing to another woman even as we speak. But when I tracked down Brenna, and then together we found Cindy, and then the three of us were working together to catch Marvin—it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

  The way her eyes sparkled just recalling her adventure, John-Michael didn’t doubt her words. She was more animated than he could remember seeing her. And he was turned on more than he wanted to admit. Thankfully, she wasn’t paying attention to him or she might have noticed. His gym shorts didn’t hide much.

  “You really like those girls, huh?”

  “I feel that for the first time in my life I have friends, real friends.”

  “You’ve always had a lot of friends.”

  “I’ve always had lots of girls around me,” she corrected him. “But the rich girls flocked together because of our parents’ money and the insular world we lived in, not because we necessarily were drawn together by common interests. And a lot of girls made friends with me because of what they thought I could do for them. They wanted to hang out here, have Matilda cook for them and wait on them, have Muffy take us all out to lunch at the ritziest restaurants.

  “But Brenna and Cindy—I know they like me for me. Neither one of them cares about being rich or having the latest designer whatever or seeing their names mentioned in a magazine. And the more time I spent with them, the more I started to realize where my priorities ought to be.”

  Sonya toweled her hair dry, and it formed a tousled blond cloud around her head. Left to its own devices, it tended to curl wildly. He liked it better this way, John-Michael decided. Sort of like she’d just tumbled out of bed.

  He clamped down on that line of thought. He’d long ago learned not to wish for something he couldn’t have. Oh, maybe he could have had Sonya once upon a time. In the back seat of his car, or sneaking into spare bedrooms when Muffy was away. But that would never have satisfied him. He didn’t want to be a rich girl’s walk on the wild side.

  Anything more was out of the question. Debutantes did not marry their bodyguards.

  Of course, he wasn’t going to be just a bodyguard forever. He had a future now. He had a career beyond the World of Patterson. He would be someone independent of this family and their wealth. Someone who could be taken seriously…

  “McPhee?”

  The sound of his name brought him back.

  “You zoned out there for a second. Sorry. I must have bored you silly with all that talk about friendship and adventure and having a purpose to my life. Those are probably lessons you learned a long time ago.”

  “You didn’t bore me,” he said. What she’d done was set his own imagination into overdrive. But now he forced himself back to reality. Yeah, he was looking forward to starting his job in law enforcement. But he’d still never be able to even take Sonya out for dinner. He was still the gardener’s son.

  Chapter Four

  Sonya felt better than she had in days. She’d gotten up before dawn and packed. Now she was eating shredded wheat, fruit and skim milk—part of Matilda’s new menus—and looking forward to a trip to Cottonwood. Brenna was meeting her there, and they were all going to stay at the B&B. Luke, Cindy’s husband, was off for the weekend, and he’d agreed to look after Adam, Cindy’s toddler.

  Yesterday she’d spoken to the nice woman in Los Angeles who imported the Belgian lace and explained that she wouldn’t be visiting after all. Then, out of guilt, she’d ordered ten yards of the stuff sight unseen. If it didn’t arrive at some point, Muffy would wonder.

  McPhee wandered into the kitchen just as Sonya added a few more blueberries to her bowl, then some toasted, slivered almonds for good measure. Anything to give the cereal some flavor.

  “Is that breakfast?” he asked, nodding toward the box of shredded wheat. McPhee didn’t need any extra flavor. He looked delicious in a pair of khakis and a starched burgundy shirt. He’d even gotten a haircut, though Sonya didn’t mind it when he grew his hair out longer. “What happened to waffles and bacon?”

  “You won’t find them here.”

  “Just because Muffy’s on a restricted diet, do the rest of us have to endure it?” he grumbled, getting himself a bowl and spoon from the cabinet.

  “We could all stand to eat better,” Sonya said. “So in thirty years we won’t be in cardiac rehab. Are you packed?”

  “Yeah. Are we taking the limo?”

  “The last time we took the limo through Cottonwood, we nearly caused a riot.” Cindy had gotten a kick out of it, but Sonya didn’t want to draw that kind of attention when she was trying to keep a low
profile. “My car will be less obtrusive.”

  “I’m driving,” McPhee said.

  “Says who?”

  “Says anyone who’s seen you drive.” He watched, waiting for her to take the bait and escalate the argument.

  But she was in too good a mood to argue. Besides, he was right. She hardly ever drove her own car, so she wasn’t confident behind the wheel. Either Tim chauffeured her in the limo, or she let John-Michael drive. He’d been trained, after all, in evasive maneuvers in case there was ever a kidnapping attempt.

  “All right, you can drive,” she said. “But I’ll never get better if I don’t practice.”

  “You’re certainly easy to get along with this morning.”

  She shrugged. It was true. The prospect of working with Brenna and Cindy again, as a team, filled her with joy. When they were tracking Marvin, she’d had a role, a purpose. And even if most of the time her most important function had been to bankroll the search with her credit card, she’d known her contribution was important.

  “You have a very strange look on your face,” McPhee said.

  It was no wonder. She’d just had an epiphany. “McPhee, I never thought I’d be saying this, but you were right about me all along. I’m spoiled. And useless. I’m almost thirty years old and I don’t do anything. I fill my days with social engagements and shopping.”

  “What about your charity work?”

  “Oh, you mean those board meetings I attend once a month? Or the committees I serve on two or three times a year so I can maintain the illusion that my life has a purpose?”

  “Maybe now is not the time to reevaluate your entire life,” McPhee said, his voice gentle. “You’re under a lot of stress, what with your mother’s illness and the wedding and the little problem with Marvin—”

  She groaned. “Marvin. What was I thinking? Even if he wasn’t a conman, I was going to marry him and move to Boston and become another Muffy or, God forbid, a Tootsie.”