The Runaway Bride

by Adrianne Lee

  “Sure.” Jake turned to Laura and handed her his keys. “Go get in the car. I’ll be right there.”

  “No,” she mouthed, fear bright in her eyes.

  “You’re freezing,” he whispered, curling her fingers over the keys. “Quit being stubborn and listen to me for once.”

  She glanced nervously back at the hospital, at the cops, then spun on her heel, hurried to his car and let herself in.

  A moment later, he was opening the driver’s door. The interior light illuminated the inside of the car. The keys hung in the ignition. But Laura’s purse was gone.

  And so was she.

  Chapter Six

  Headlights swept the expansive adobe house that seemed sculpted from the desert hillside it hugged. The circular drive was framed by tall cacti and shorter flowering scrub brush. No lawn, no grass like the Wilder house in Riverdell; this yard grew huge rock formations, their designs man-made, calculated, artistic, resplendent.

  Shivering in the cold night, Laura hunkered behind a plump saguaro, the beams of light brushing the air around her. The garage door rumbled open. The car slowed. A dim light from within spilled across the tarmac, illuminating the car and its driver, both of them known to her.

  She released a shuddery breath.

  Brake lights glowed red as the vehicle edged into the garage. She stole in behind it, ducking quickly beneath the descending door. Her heart thundered against her chest, making swallowing difficult.

  He shut off the engine, but continued sitting in the car. She saw reflected in the rearview mirror that his eyebrows were drawn into a tight frown as though his thoughts consumed him. The only sound in the garage: the ticktock of the cooling motor. Then the door latch clicked, and she ran her tongue across her dry lips, shrugging deeper into his jacket

  He stepped out.

  “Jake?”

  He jolted around. His eyes widened then narrowed. “Where…the…hell…?” Each word choked from him, bitten off, bitter. His warm eyes grew glacial, turning dark blue, like the center of an icicle.

  She’d expected he’d be ticked, offended even, but this was so much more it startled her.

  He moved toward her, deliberately, one step at a time, a stalking wild cat, an avenging devil. Although she’d seen him angry before, never had the anger been directed at her. “Jake, I—”

  The words died on her tongue. He seemed ready to throttle her, his fingers curling and uncurling at his side. His eyes opened wider, the teal now hot as a storm-roiled sea, dazzling and dangerous, churning with hate and fury and even an inexplicable speck of fear.

  She wondered at the fear. Heat climbed her face. Cold swept from her neck downward. She felt as though she were drowning, a hapless swimmer who’d wandered into unsafe waters and was now being sucked into the undertow. She’d crossed some invisible line tonight. Pushed him too far. Set him off. She moved away from him, shoved backward by his silent rage, the force of it like giant hands thrusting her away. “You have to understand…”

  He didn’t speak, just kept coming at her, the energy issuing from him like a river at spring thaw, rampaging. She bumped against the plaster-boarded wall as he closed in and pinned her there without laying a finger on her.

  His scar stood bold on his cheek, intensifying his fearsome expression. He laid his palms against the wall on either side of her head and leaned his face to within inches of hers, his heated breath a slap on her mouth. She could barely swallow, but she made herself say, “I—I’m sorry I took off like that.”

  “Do you have any idea the trouble you’ve caused?” He snorted. “Do you even care?”

  Trouble? She’d caused? For whom? Him? What kind of trouble? When he stood this close she couldn’t reason, couldn’t hold the old feelings at bay. Couldn’t deny them. She blinked hard as a sudden heat crashed through her. “I…I was afraid.”

  “That’s your excuse for everything.”

  He spat in disgust, his words hot sparks against her mouth, pulling her gaze to his mouth, stirring memories of those lips on hers, on her. She swallowed hard. He leaned impossibly closer.

  “What about my fear?”

  “Your…?” She lifted her gaze to his, and in his broiling emotion she saw it again, that fear she hadn’t understood a moment ago, but she recognized it now: the fear one feels for something beloved and lost. Did he feel that about her? Had he been afraid for her? “You were afraid?”

  “God, Laura—” His voice cracked with pain.

  The agony in his tone rent the dike of self-protection she’d built around herself this past year, opening a vulnerable gash across her heart, and need as intense as the tides ripped through the gap, dragging her against him. The contact electrified her flesh from head to toe. She felt the whole length of him tense in response.

  Yet he didn’t pull way. Didn’t reach for her, either. Just supported her without holding her. His chest began rising and falling quicker than before, as though he ached to set her away, but hadn’t the strength or the desire to purposely touch her. She drew a ragged breath and lifted her arms, brought them swiftly around him and hugged his broad back. A long weighty sigh slipped through her lips.

  A tortured groan sounded in his throat.

  She raised her head and found him leaning back, his eyes closed, his face a grimace of internal agony. Her heart skipped a beat; her pulse danced higher. She curled her fingers into his hair and gently tugged.

  He opened his eyes and she read confusion and desire and self-reproach in them. He shook his head. “No, Laura—”

  Ignoring his protest, she offered her lips to him, motioning without word or gesture, something unspoken, something so personal between them their hungry spirits understood. Their lips touched, one tender feathering sweep, and need rushed in to deepen the contact, a connection too long denied, too fierce to be destroyed by time and distance, by the connivance of others.

  Like one of the desert flowers in his garden opening to the sun, Laura opened to Jake, first her lips, then her heart, then her mind, as she welcomed his rejuvenating heat, matched his life-stirring passion touch for touch, tingle for tingle.

  Jake groaned, a low, sensuous moan that sent shards of desire spiking through her. She traced every inch of his back, from shoulder to buttocks, again and again, and with each downward sweep of her hands, she pulled him closer, wanted to pull him into her, ached to feel him inside her, here and now.

  He pinned her to the wall again, this time with his body, plunged deeper into her mouth with his tongue, and with bold hands stroked her hips, her thighs, her bottom, his touch ardent, fevered, needy.

  “Oh, Jake…” she whispered.

  He pulled away, as breathless as a terrified crime victim. His chest heaved. He lurched back, held his hands up and away from her. “What the hell are we doing? What the hell am I?”

  Also breathless, Laura stepped toward him, reached for him. “Jake—”

  “No.” He moved farther back, his expression reeking self-disgust. “I’ve been caught in your spider’s web once too often today. No more.”

  “But I—”

  “No.” He cut her off, holding a palm toward her, a warning to keep her mouth shut. “I told you I’d take you wherever you wanted to go, so why did you run off?”

  She heaved a sigh, still trying to catch her breath, to steady her pulse, her trembling knees. “What do want me to say? I already told you I was afraid. Whoever was driving that florist’s van at the hospital came to kill me.”

  Jake jammed his fingers through his short, golden blond hair. “Did you get a look at his face? Do you even know if it was a man?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know who was driving that van.” He wasn’t asking her; he was telling her. An accusation. “Or why they stole it and left it at the emergency entrance.”

  But she did know. In her heart. Exasperated, she glared at him. “Never mind.”

  “No. I’m tired of that game. I want some answers and I want them now. You can ei
ther come inside and give them to me, or you can hit the road for good.”

  Laura stared at him, his finger poised over the automatic garage door button. Anger stood on his face as fresh as it had been before their kiss. She sensed, however, that this anger wasn’t about her leaving him at the hospital. This anger was old, twelve months old.

  The self-preservation part of her wanted to “hit the road for good.” But she couldn’t cut and run. Not this time. Not after that kiss. She had to find out if Jake could love and trust her, again. As much as he’d wanted her moments ago, his passion had had nothing to do with love and trust, but with anger and need—a need to prove something to both of them. She could see that need lingering in his narrowed eyes.

  She started toward him. “We should talk.”

  Jake’s eyes widened and he nodded, a glint of satisfaction in the comers of his mouth, as though he’d won some important point in a game of wits. Laura wondered if he’d feel the same an hour from now.

  He gestured for her to precede him into the house. The garage opened into a laundry room with a tiled floor and gleaming white appliances. The faint homey odor of soap and fabric softener filled her nostrils, but the pleasant scent couldn’t calm her anxiety at entering Jake’s home for the first time. A home without memories of her.

  She waited for Jake to turn on the lights, then trailed after him into a restaurant-sized kitchen where rust-colored adobe tile and gleaming chrome dominated. The house had been impressive outside, but inside it was incredible, huge, expensive, masculine, inviting.

  An eating bar with four rough-hewn stools appealed to her weary limbs, her throbbing head. She trudged toward them, her gaze surveying the rest of her surroundings. A table and chairs similar to the bar stools divided the kitchen from a massive sunken family room. Pale leather couches, wearing Navajo throws, hugged either side of a ceiling-high adobe fireplace. Clay pots and bronze artwork occupied tables and corners with the ease of belonging that she did not feel in Jake’s home.

  The windows were sheets of glass held in place by giant unfinished beams, displaying the lights of the mingled towns below as though the Milky Way had fallen to Earth and now twinkled up from a black velvet cloth.

  This house spoke of wealth, the kind of wealth she’d never associated with the Wilders of Riverdell. Jake sure hadn’t paid for all this from money saved on a cop’s salary. She shrugged out of his coat, then placed it on the seat of one of the stools and edged her hip onto another. “Your new business must be a gold mine.”

  He looked at her oddly. “It’s profitable.”

  He went straight to a cupboard, pulled out two chimney glasses. From the refrigerator, he gathered orange juice, ice cubes and a bottle of 7UP for a drink they’d shared a fondness for as far back as she could recall. He hadn’t even asked if she wanted something. Just assumed.

  It warmed her. She watched in silence as he settled the ingredients on the counter. Still reeling inwardly from their kiss, she couldn’t stifle old images of Jake’s possessive way with her, with her body. Jealousy reared inside her at the thought of other women enjoying his special touches, nurturing his wounded heart. How many had there been this past year? Was there one now? Someone special? Bile rose in her throat, twisted her stomach.

  Jake watched Laura from beneath his lowered lids as he poured orange juice over the ice cubes. Half an hour ago, he’d decided he was better off with her gone. Out of his life permanently. Finally. And glad to be rid of her. But damn it all, what the hell had happened in the garage just now? He’d like to put it down to residual feelings, a few smoldering ashes that hadn’t cooled in the past year. But he was scared to death it might be more. “How’d you get here?”

  “Taxi.”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “You’re listed in the phone book.” She tossed her head, making her shimmery hair sway across her shoulders.

  He felt a jab of desire in his groin and pressed his lips together, went back to adding 7UP to both glasses. God, he was a Grade A jackass. He might still be willing to bed Laura, but he didn’t love her anymore. Without trust, there was no love. And he didn’t trust her…in or out of his sight. Everything she’d done reenforced that.

  On the other hand, someone had blown up the Corvette. Someone had meant to kill her. Maybe her paranoia about the florist’s van wasn’t so far-fetched.

  Then again, how the hell had she avoided being hurt worse than she was? The bomb hadn’t been rigged to the ignition. Otherwise she’d have been behind the wheel when it blew. Had it been a time-activated bomb? He stirred the mixture and slid one of the drinks across the counter to her.

  Laura thanked him, curling her fingers around the damp glass.

  How would someone guarantee she’d be in the car at a given time? He studied her delicate hands and had an ugly thought. Had she learned to make a bomb in the past year? Would she go to that much trouble to convince him that someone was trying to kill her? The idea contradicted everything he’d known about this woman before she left Riverdell. But then, the woman he’d thought she was would never have run off with another man.

  She was staring at him. “Where do you want to start?”

  He took a sip of the tangy concoction, thinking he should add a shot or two of vodka to it “Why don’t you tell me who this ‘he’ is that you insist is trying to kill you?”

  Laura lifted her brows slightly. If she knew that she’d have told him immediately. “I—”

  “Is it Cullen?”

  “Cullen?” She frowned at him, the suggestion so unexpected it disoriented her. She knew only one Cullen and she couldn’t imagine Jake meant him. “Cullen Crocker?”

  Something about her response seemed to throw him. Jake set down his glass and glanced away from her. “Look, if you want to call him, you can use that phone.”

  Why would she want to call Cullen Crocker? she wondered, her confusion growing. “Maybe my brains got rattled a little more than I thought—because you’re not making a whole lot of sense. Why would I want to call someone you think might be trying to kill me?”

  “I didn’t mean to imply…” He blew out a breath, crossed to another cupboard and pulled out a bottle of vodka, then added a huge dollop to his glass. “I sh—would have called him earlier, but I don’t remember the number.”

  “Well, neither do I.”

  His head jerked up and concern shone in his eyes. “Because of the concussion?”

  “No. Because I haven’t called him recently.” She fingered her temple, knowing she’d be glad when the dull ache stopped completely, wishing the confusion would stop, too. “If you really want Cullen’s phone number, you can probably get it from Riverdell information.

  He cocked his head to one side and she’d have sworn his expression of befuddlement matched the one controlling her own features. Then he planted both palms flat on the counter and leaned toward her. “You know damned good and well that Cullen is not in Riverdell.”

  Her mouth dropped open. She shut it, then shook her head. “I left Riverdell a year ago. How would I know what Cullen Crocker was or was not doing?”

  “Because you left with him.”

  She came off the stool as though pulled by an invisible rope. “I what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Her hands landed on her hips. “I did no such thing, Jake Wilder.”

  He slapped the tile countertop, glowering at her. “Laura, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing now, but I got the note.”

  Note? Did he mean the note she’d sent in the package of evidence? Had he had the evidence all along? Dared she hope? “What note?”

  “The ‘Dear Jake’ letter you sent me on our wedding day.” His voice low and menacing, he closed the distance between them and she felt his hot breath on her mouth again. Her pulse skipped. He said, “Nice of you to let me know you were eloping with another man.”

  “E-eloping?” Laura flinched, feeling as though he’d slugged her with a closed fist—some
thing Jake would never do to any woman. Annoyance brought her inches closer to him. “Jake, I did not send you a note when I left. I didn’t have time. And I certainly didn’t elope—especially not with Cullen Crocker.”

  She couldn’t believe this. Cullen? Oh, the lab assistant was gloriously handsome—in a dark, perfect sort of way that had never appealed to her. Besides, Izzy Dell, her best friend, was the one who’d set her cap for him.

  She started to remind Jake of this, but the hurt in his eyes stopped her cold. In that moment, Laura realized the depth of pain he’d suffered from believing that she’d chosen a drop-dead gorgeous man over him, and she knew the scar from that wound cut a swath deeper and meaner than the one on his face.

  He seemed to realize he was standing too close and took a step backward. Impotent rage gripped her. When she found the person responsible for ruining their lives—he or she would be lucky to make it to trial. “Cullen and I were friends, Jake. Period.” She took a half step toward him. “I’m so sorry—”

  “I don’t want your pity,” he interrupted her, halting her approach.

  “We were friends.” She shook her head. “That’s all.”

  God, how Jake wanted to believe that. So much so, he hated himself for the weakness. He stared long and hard into her eyes. She didn’t blink. Didn’t back down. He’d swear she wasn’t lying. But could he trust his instincts where Laura was concerned? Was she the unstable woman who’d kidnaped him this morning? Who’d run off from the hospital without so much as a note to ease his worry? Or was fear making her desperate?

  He wished he knew. Wished he’d looked through her purse when he’d had the opportunity. But he hadn’t had the guts.

  Since she’d removed that wig and he’d realized who she was, his logic had been at the whim of his emotions, tugged this way and that. Damn. Had she left with Cullen or not? Had she sent him that note or not? If she hadn’t…if she was telling the truth…“Then where is Cullen?”

  She shrugged. “I thought he was still in Riverdell. Still working for Dell Pharmaceuticals.”