The Right Man

by Anne Stuart

  He looked like the man she loved.

  She was still out of her mind, she decided briskly, throwing back the covers. “What about the wedding rehearsal? The rehearsal dinner?”

  “You didn’t want a rehearsal dinner, remember? You said there was too much stuff going on this week already, and you wanted the night before the wedding to be peaceful. And your mother stood in for you during the rehearsal. She said you were tired and needed your rest. Obviously, since you’ve been asleep since Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Obviously.” She looked down at her familiar/ unfamiliar body. She was wearing an oversize cotton T-shirt and panties, and she supposed she should find a bathrobe or something or wrap the sheet around her, but she couldn’t bring herself to bother. Jake was a grown-up—he would hardly be overcome with lust.

  “I need coffee,” she said. “Good coffee that doesn’t come in a can.”

  “Hey, I can arrange that. You take a shower and get dressed, and it’ll be waiting for you.”

  Her head was pounding. She reached up to thread her fingers through her hair, shocked at the thick, close-cropped length of it. And then she looked up at Jake. “You still didn’t tell me who Alex is.”

  There was only the faintest softening in Jake’s cynical expression. “I think you can guess, Susan. He’s your father. He came back for your wedding.”

  The day had definitely gone from bad to worse, Susan thought, standing under the shower as she tried to wash the fog from her mind. Her small breasts felt unfamiliar beneath her soapy hands, her skin felt odd, prickly, and for the first time she didn’t feel cold. She felt hot, edgy, confused.

  Somewhere she’d managed to lose three days, and now she was back, just as if nothing had ever happened. Back with Jake Wyczynski, a man almost as unsettling as the dreams that had plagued her.

  Or was it a dream? Had she slept for days, or had she really traveled back in time, into her Aunt Tallulah’s body? There was only one way to tell. If it were true, then she’d manage to change history. Aunt Tallulah hadn’t died in a train wreck on her way to her honeymoon, she hadn’t married Ned Marsden. She’d run off with the man she’d always loved, and maybe she was still alive somewhere, having the time of her life.

  It felt good to wear a thin wisp of a lace bra again, good to slip into baggy jeans and an oversize T-shirt. By the time she wandered out into her mother’s kitchen, the smell of French Roast coffee was strong in the air.

  He handed her a mug without speaking, and it was just the way she liked it, black and strong and sweet. She didn’t bother asking him how he knew she took her coffee with sugar only. There were other, far more important questions plaguing her.

  “Your mother’s waiting for you in the living room,” he said. “And I think I’ll make myself scarce. I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to wear for your wedding. Assuming it’s still on?” There was a faint question in his voice.

  “It’s still on,” she said grimly, wondering if she was out of her mind. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to come.”

  “You’ve said that before. I’m ignoring you. I promised Louisa I’d come, and I keep my promises.”

  “I thought I told you the last time I saw you that I didn’t want you coming to the wedding?”

  “Funny you should mention the last time you saw me. I don’t remember that we did much talking.”

  She could still taste him. His mouth against hers, slow, deliberate, a kiss that could destroy a lifetime of well-laid plans.

  “Really?” she said in a light voice. “I’d forgotten.”

  He didn’t say a word, his expression of disbelief was enough. “Don’t waste your time, kid. Go talk to your mother. She wants to see for certain you’re all right.”

  “Is she alone?”

  “Yup. She sent Alex away when I told her you were up. You gonna give her a hard time?”

  Susan took a deep breath. Four days ago the answer would have been an unequivocal yes. Now life was no longer the certainty she’d counted on. Mary Abbott had been her best friend, her confidante, her savior. Both in this life and in the past. “That’s my business, don’t you think?”

  He shrugged. “You’ve got some wedding presents from your godmother to catch up on. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She didn’t want him to leave. Standing in the kitchen, barefoot, defiant, she didn’t want him to leave her. She wasn’t ready to face her mother. She wasn’t ready to face her life. Instead she wanted to throw everything away and run off with him. Crazy, because she’d worked so hard to get what she wanted, and Jake was just the kind of man she’d always avoided.

  “Sure,” she said carelessly. “I’ll be the one in white.”

  “Will I get to kiss the bride?” It seemed like a smart-ass, casual question, and maybe Susan only imagined the thread of tension beneath the light tone.

  “You already did,” she said.

  “I could do it again.”

  She looked up at him, startled. She wanted him to. Desperately. She moved, almost imperceptibly, and he reached out his hand, almost touching her, when Mary appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “Susan?” she said in her soft voice. “I’ve been so worried about you, sweetie.” She swept her into a deliciously scented embrace, smelling of her classic Chanel. The last time she’d hugged Mary she’d smelled of chocolate.

  “I’m fine, Mother,” she said, pulling away just a little to look down into her mother’s eyes. The same warm brown ones, but far wiser than they had been at age nine. “I was just very tired.”

  “I’d say that was an understatement,” Jake drawled, back in his corner of the kitchen.

  Mary was looking up at her with an odd expression on her face. “Go away, Jake,” Susan said. “I need to talk with my mother privately. After all, I am getting married tomorrow.”

  “Honey, if you don’t know the facts of life yet I’ll be more than happy to save your mother the trouble of explaining them to you.”

  “You’re annoying, you know that?” Susan said severely.

  “I try to be.”

  “You succeed beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “Susan!” Her mother admonished her. “Why in the world are you treating Jake like that? He’s been absolutely wonderful, running errands, calming my fears, sitting by your bed for hours on end. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I can’t even begin to tell Louisa how grateful I am, and you should be grateful, as well.”

  Jake grinned, pushing away from the kitchen counter. He didn’t touch her as he passed her. He didn’t need to. For some reason his very presence, the heat from his body, was palpable. “I don’t know how grateful your daughter is.”

  She wanted to kick him, but she didn’t have the right shoes on. And she’d already done it.

  No, that was Tallulah. Lou had kicked Jack McGowan, a perfectly reasonable move since she was madly in love with him. Whereas Susan had no logical reason to kick Jake Wyczynski. Apart from the fact that he was terminally infuriating.

  “She’ll express her thanks later,” Mary said, shooing him out of the house with such perfect manners that most men wouldn’t even realize they’d been dismissed. Jake wasn’t most men, however, and he didn’t miss much.

  Susan took her coffee and wandered back into the living room, looking at it with fresh eyes. She recognized the secretary desk in the comer—it had been in Tallulah’s bedroom. So had the china dogs on the mantel. She was holding one when her mother came back into the room.

  She set the porcelain figurine back on the mantel and turned to her mother. There was only one way to find out whether she’d dreamed it all. “Will Aunt Tallulah be coming to the wedding?”

  It was a stupid way to phrase it, and for a moment Mary Abbott looked truly shocked. And then she sat on the toile-covered sofa, small and graceful, not much bigger than she had been at age nine, and looked up at her daughter. “You know perfectly well my sister died on her wedding day in 1949, Susan,” she said. “She’s hard
ly going to rise from the grave at this late date. If that’s your idea of a joke then I must say it’s in extremely bad taste.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susan muttered, guilt and disorientation warring with the tangled memories. “It’s just that I had the strangest dreams while I was asleep, and they seemed so real.”

  “Did you? What did you dream?”

  “That I traveled back fifty years and saved Lou’s life.”

  Mary’s odd expression was tinged with sorrow. “You can’t change the past, Susan. You can only change the future. As a matter of fact, I had strange dreams about my sister as well, and I haven’t dreamed about her in years.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her for you.”

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t, too, sweetie. But I’m very happy to have you back among the living, wideawake. There’s something I want to talk to you about. Your father’s back.”

  “I know. I saw him before I fell asleep.”

  “And?”

  Her mother was utterly patient, seemingly focused on her daughter’s reaction. She would send him away if Susan told her to, send him away without hesitation. And part of Susan wanted nothing more than to banish the man who’d abandoned them.

  But if she’d learned one thing from the past few days, she’d learned that things weren’t always as they seemed. And if Alex had married little Mary Abbott, daughter of Ridley and Elda, then the odds would have been stacked against him in the first place.

  “Why did he come back? Does he think he’s going to give me away? He never had me in the first place, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Mary said patiently. “He left, and nothing will change that. Shall I tell him to go away?”

  “Do you want to?” Susan already knew the answer. The answer to questions that had plagued her all her life. She still didn’t know why or how her parents had parted, but she knew why her mother had never remarried. She was still in love with her husband.

  Her mother still hadn’t said anything. In the fifty years since she’d last seen her, Mary Abbott had become a master of diplomacy and caution, a far cry from the passionate girl who’d lost her older sister.

  Susan gave herself a little shake. Hadn’t she already proven that it was nothing more than a crazy dream? “Invite him to the wedding,” she said finally. “He can sit with you.”

  “I already did.”

  She hadn’t changed that much in fifty years. There was still a streak of stubborn mischief beneath the calm exterior. “I know,” Susan said.

  “I should call Edward and tell him you’re awake,” Mary said, and there was only the hint of a question in her voice.

  “I suppose you managed to send him into a panic, as well. I was just tired, mother.”

  “That’s what Edward said. He had no doubt that you simply needed a good long rest and you’d wake up in plenty of time for the wedding. He seemed slightly annoyed that you had to miss the rehearsal and two of the dinner parties planned in your honor, but he carried on without you, once I assured him you looked quite healthy.”

  “He didn’t check for himself?”

  “No, dear. I suspect Edward is like most men—absolutely useless around any kind of illness. He reminds me a bit of my father.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say!” Susan protested hotly.

  Mary looked at her strangely. “Your grandfather died when you were three years old, Susan. You’d hardly remember him.”

  There was no way Susan could explain her sudden revulsion. In truth, Ridley Abbott could have been a charming, devoted father. Mary had certainly never said otherwise. And she’d never voiced a single criticism of Elda. Or mentioned that Elda was her stepmother rather than her real mother.

  It was all a dream, Susan told herself. None of it happened, none of it was real. Tallulah died in a train wreck on her wedding day, Ridley and Elda were devoted parents, and Mary had no secrets.

  “Do I look like Elda?” she demanded abruptly. There were only a few family pictures at the Abbott house, and none of Ridley’s wife. The Elda Susan had dreamed about was small, dark, brittle and sophisticated. The antithesis of Susan.

  “Not likely,” Mary said. “Elda was my father’s second wife. My stepmother. There’d be no reason for you to resemble her.”

  Susan felt suddenly chilled. “You never told me that.”

  “Didn’t I?” Mary said vaguely. “I would have thought I’d mentioned it. And no, you don’t look like her at all.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Elda died over twenty years ago, Susan. Why would you care?”

  “Humor me. She was in my dreams.”

  “Then you know what she looked like.”

  “Mother!”

  Mary sighed. “She looked a little like Joan Crawford, actually. She was dark and tiny and very polished. And she always wore orange lipstick. Odd, I almost forgot about that.”

  Susan could see her so clearly it shook her—Elda’s thin, chilly smile, painted in orange.

  “I’m going out,” she said abruptly.

  “You can’t! It’s after ten o’clock.”

  “I need to...to talk with someone.” She had no idea who she could turn to, she only knew she had to get away from her mother.

  “Susan, you’re getting married at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

  “Why do people keep asking me that?” she demanded. “Why shouldn’t I marry Neddie?”

  Mary turn pale. “Edward,” she corrected her in a shocked voice. “You’re going to marry Edward.”

  “Maybe,” she said. Thinking of Neddie Marsden and Jack and Jake, the two of them so different and yet so alike. Maybe, she thought.

  Maybe.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jake Wyczynski was in a foul mood. One of the worst he could ever remember. He kept trying to think back to some time in his thirty-five years when he’d felt this cantankerous. There was the time in Singapore, when he and his uncle Jack had gone drinking at some waterfront dive. Uncle Jack had had one of his rare fights with Louisa, and Jake had felt like raising a little hell.

  A broken hand and seventeen stitches later, he’d felt a little more mellow, and Uncle Jack had been inordinately proud of himself. There weren’t many seventy-two-year-olds who could still hold their own in a barroom brawl.

  And then there was the time in Kenya, when Jake had run afoul of a local official and barely escaped with his skin intact. His uncle hadn’t been with him that time, though he’d bemoaned that fact later.

  But now Uncle Jack was dead, and Jake was still getting into trouble. It had been years since he’d gotten himself into such a mess—Aunt Louisa used to tell him he was getting positively staid. All he needed was a wife to make him as conservative as a banker.

  He’d laughed at her, of course. She was just needling him—there was no way he’d ever settle down, not completely. And he certainly didn’t need anything as ordinary as a wife. Not the same woman, day after day, year after year, through good times and bad. Not unless she was someone like Louisa.

  But that was before he’d met Susan Abbott.

  Funny, but she reminded him of a younger Louisa, and he wasn’t quite sure why. They were both tall, though Louisa was stooped with age. They had different eye color, but there was something similar in their expression. A sort of a vulnerable, to-hell-with-you bravado that was both infuriating and enchanting. He’d spent half his life with his uncle Jack and aunt Louisa, and now he’d fallen for her clone.

  No, she wasn’t a clone. It would be easier to ignore her if she was. He’d always had a kind of crush on the magnificent Louisa—what young kid wouldn’t have, and finding a youthful version of her was tempting. And he was so damned tempted he was going nuts.

  The doors on the old garage were ridiculous—giant French doors with filthy glass. He shoved them open, letting the air rush into the place. It was late, the heat of the day had faded, and the wind was picking up, riffling through the
trees. It felt more like home now—his tumbledown house in Spain, or the ruined palazzo in Venice. He wanted to be home now. But somehow the thought of it seemed empty.

  Hell, he thought in total disgust, he was lying to himself, when he’d always made a practice of being scrupulously honest. He didn’t want to go back to Spain, to that house, without Susan Abbott along to drive him crazy.

  He shoved his wet hair back from his face. He’d gone swimming on his way back to the old garage—there was a pond hidden deep in the woods that was clear and cool, but it hadn’t managed to chill his blood. Keeping watch over Susan while she slept, watching the rise and fall of her small, perfect breasts, the flicker of her eyelids as she dreamed, the softness of her lips, had driven him half-crazy with desire.

  Maybe once he was out of here he’d forget about her. If he had any sense he’d skip the wedding and head on out tomorrow morning, and to hell with his promises to Louisa. It would be a simple matter to book passage on a tramp steamer and make his excuses later. Louisa would understand.

  Or would she? He’d never been a coward in his entire life. Not a physical coward, not an emotional one. Why the hell was he starting now?

  There was a sudden gust of wind, and he looked up. And froze. Susan Abbott was standing just inside the open door, and for a moment he had the strangest vision. She looked different, with long, flowing clothes and a mane of dark hair.

  And then he blinked, and she was still standing there. In the jeans and T-shirt he’d last seen her in, looking as lost and confused as he felt.

  He didn’t move, afraid to make the wrong one. He was wearing nothing but an old pair of cutoffs that he’d pulled on after his swim, and maybe he should find a shirt, or maybe he shouldn’t, if he was just going to take it off again. He watched her.

  There was no electrical power in the old, abandoned building, and the place was only lit by a couple of oil lamps. It didn’t matter. He could see her quite clearly, see the doubt and frustration in her eyes.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” she said.

  “Don’t you?” He kept his voice even, noncommittal. He felt like a horny teenager, acutely aware of the rumpled bed behind him. Wondering if she was thinking of it, too.