And, from somewhere nearby, Carrie’s voice.
“Jessica? Jess, where are you?”
Jessie tore her mouth from Liam’s. Panic raced through her blood. “Liam!”
His arms tightened around her as she tried to pull away. “Come back here,” he said thickly.
“Liam, for the love of God, someone’s coming!”
He blinked, shook his head, whispered a word that might have been a blessing or an oath and stepped back, as if putting distance between them could change what had happened.
“I didn’t…” He stopped, cleared his throat. “Jessie, I never meant—I never meant this to happen.”
“Then—then it didn’t,” she said frantically. “Do you hear me? This never happened.” Her lips felt dry. She touched them with the tip of her tongue, tasted Liam and felt as if she wanted to die. “William must never find out. Do you understand?”
“Dammit,” Liam said harshly, “don’t you think I know that? But we can’t just forget. We—”
“Jess?”
Jessie spun around. Carrie stood a few feet away, staring at them. “Everyone is waiting,” she said slowly. “The judge. The guests. William.”
“Of course.” Jessie gave in to the temptation to touch her hand to her hair. She could feel some strands that had come undone, but the wind could have done that. Only the wind. She’d simply been out here, having a pleasant chat with William’s best man. Nobody had to know the truth, not ever. Nobody but Liam. And she. Oh God, she would know, she’d always know. “Certainly,” she said, and smiled. “I’m ready.”
Carrie cleared her throat. “I think—why don’t you just let me fix your makeup, Jess? Your lipstick. And your hair. The, uh, the wind must have…” Her voice trailed away as she hurried forward and clasped Jessie’s arm. “Come on up to the house, okay?” She smiled brightly. “A bride should look perfect on her wedding day. Isn’t that right, Mr. Malone?”
Liam nodded. It was the best he could manage.
“Why don’t you go tell William we’ll just be another five minutes? He can wait that long for the woman who’s going to be his for the rest of his life, don’t you think?”
The message might have been subtle, but the way Jessie’s maid of honor looked at him wasn’t. Could what they’d done be so obvious? Liam cleared his throat and decided to see if he could get out something more than a croak.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure he can.”
“Good.” Carrie wrapped an arm around Jessie’s waist. “Now, come on, honey. This is your big day. You don’t want to spoil it.”
“No,” Jessie said. “No, I don’t.”
Her eyes met Liam’s, and the terrible secret they shared burned hot between them.
“Jess?” Carrie said, and Jessie smiled brightly and let her maid of honor hurry her toward the house.
Liam waited until they were out of sight. Then he let out a breath that was almost a moan and ran his hands through his hair. How could he let her go? He’d only had one taste of Jessie, only held her in his arms for a moment.
“Stop it,” he said in a harsh whisper.
He walked deeper into the garden, found a bench, sank down on it and put his face in his hands. How could he have done this? She was to be Bill’s bride. Bill, who was the best friend he’d ever had. If only there were a way to wipe away what had happened.
But there wasn’t. And the longer he thought about it, the more he knew that nothing could have stopped him from kissing her, or make him regret the kiss. Now he knew how soft Jessie felt. How sweet her lips were. How it was to take her sigh into his mouth as she opened to him.
How right he’d been in his assessment of her.
Damn Jessica Warren to hell, and himself along with her! How could he let her marry Bill? And yet, he had to. He couldn’t tell Bill what had happened, not if saving him meant destroying him. Time slipped past as he tried to find a solution but, at last, he knew he had to admit there was none. He had to play his role in this farce. There was no other choice.
At last, Liam sat up straight. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there but it was time to put a smile on his face and do what was expected of him.
Liam stood, smoothed down his shirt, took a couple of deep breaths.
“Liam?”
Bill was hurrying toward him, his face tense, and for one awful moment, Liam thought he’d found out what had happened. But Carrie was trotting alongside him, looking just as bad.
“What is it?”
“It’s Jessica,” William said. “She’s—she’s gone.”
“What?” Liam eased an arm around Bill’s shoulders, led him to a bench and sat him down. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
Carrie knelt on the grass and took Bill’s hands in hers. She spoke to Liam, but her eyes never left Bill’s pale face.
“She wrote a note,” Carrie said, “and left it on the bed with her engagement ring and watch.”
Liam shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe it was the rest of the world that had gone insane. “Bill?” He squatted down beside the bench. “Talk to me. How can she be gone? Gone where?”
Bill took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Liam. “You can see how upset she must have been,” he said shakily. “Just look at how she scrawled the words.”
Upset? Oh, yes, Liam thought as he took the note, yes, indeed, the lady would have been upset. Beside herself, was more like it, afraid—no, terrified—that he’d break his promise and tell Bill what had happened.
Dearest William: I’m sorry. So terribly sorry. You’re a wonderful man. A fine man. That’s why I can’t marry you. You deserve more than I can ever give you. Forgive me, please.
He read the note again and again, until anguish blurred both his anger and the words Jessie had written. He had done this. He’d given in to a moment’s desire and this was the result.
Slowly Liam rose to his feet.
“Carrie? You took Jessie back to the house. What happened after that?”
“I started to fix her hair, but she said she wanted to do it herself. She asked me to go downstairs and make sure everything was ready. When I got back, she was gone.” Carrie gave Liam a look filled with loathing and accusation. “She was fine before she went out to the garden. Just bridal jitters, that was all. She was fine!”
Liam nodded. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d come back to Seattle to join in a happy celebration. Instead, he’d kissed a woman who wasn’t his to kiss, and now his best friend was behaving as if his life had ended. Like it or not, he knew what he had to do.
“Bill?” He squatted down again, put a hand on Bill’s knee. “Bill, you have to go after her.”
“Go where?” Bill looked up, his face tearstained. “She gave up her apartment when I asked her to move into the guest suite here.”
“Well, what about family? Friends?”
“Jessica has no family. And her friends are all here, at the…in the house.”
“Call the police,” Carrie said. “Hire a private detective.”
“No. No, I can’t do that. Jess isn’t a fugitive. She’s my fiancée and if she’s run away, it has to be my fault. I must have done something to make her—”
“You didn’t,” Liam said, so sharply that Bill stared at him. “I mean, there’s no reason to think that. You’d know if you’d done something to drive her away.”
“The only thing I know is that I have to get her back.” Bill clamped his lips together, bowed his head. Seconds passed before he looked up again. “Liam? You have to find her for me.”
Liam shot to his feet. “No. Not me.”
Bill stood up slowly, looking as if he’d aged five years in the past five minutes. “She’d run if she saw me. She has no reason to run from you.”
“Bill,” Liam said, “Bill, please—”
“And you know something about running away. You used to talk about it, remember? About how you’d run away all those times when you were a kid?”
>
“Yeah, but that was—”
“Let’s be honest, okay? I’m—what’s that phrase of yours? I’m a desk jockey. If I were going to run away, I’d probably tuck a couple of credit cards in my pocket and ring for the chauffeur to bring the car around.” Bill gripped Liam’s arm. “I’m afraid for her. I can’t imagine where she’ll go. Carrie says she didn’t even change her clothes or take anything with her. What will she do for money?”
“She took her car,” Carrie offered excitedly. “A white Civic. It’s not in the driveway anymore.”
“Well, then, she’ll drive until she runs out of gas.”
“Who knows where she’ll be by then?” Bill’s hand dug into Liam’s flesh. “I’m begging you, man. You’re like a brother to me, you know that. You’ve got to do it.”
There’d been times in Liam’s life when he hadn’t much liked himself. He’d thought that those times were all behind him. But as he looked into the pleading eyes of his oldest friend, he knew he’d never hated himself as much as he did at this moment.
“All right,” he said slowly, “I’ll find her for you.”
Bill expelled a breath. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until this is over.”
“I know you, Liam.” Bill put out his hand. “You’ll find my Jessica, and you’ll do the right thing.”
Liam looked at his oldest friend’s outstretched hand, clasped it and forced a smile to his lips. “I’ll do the right thing,” he said softly. “I promise you that.”
CHAPTER THREE
LIAM SAT BEHIND THE WHEEL of his rented Corvette as Bill leaned through the open window.
“Call me as soon as you find her, okay?”
“Look, I can’t guarantee—”
“Tell her I love her, that whatever’s wrong, we can work things out.” He gripped Liam’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to thank you, man.”
“Don’t,” Liam said quickly. “Not until I’ve brought Jessie back.”
“Jessica.” Bill’s voice broke. “Her name is—”
“Sure.” Liam shifted into gear. “I’ll be in touch.”
Bill said something else but Liam didn’t wait to hear it. He stepped on the gas and the Vette’s tires squealed as he shot down the long driveway. Another couple of minutes listening to Bill talk about Jessie and how he couldn’t think of a reason in the world she’d have done this, and he’d have blurted out the truth.
“I know the reason,” he’d have said. “It’s because I violated our friendship and my principles over a woman I don’t even know.”
“Hell,” he said softly, and clamped his hands more tightly on the steering wheel. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that there was no percentage in reliving the past. You made a mistake, you set it right and you moved on. That was exactly what he was going to do. Find Jessie, make her see reason, return her to Bill and move on.
He drove fast, slipping in and out of traffic, heading for his hotel so he could trade his morning coat and striped trousers for something that wouldn’t make him stand out in a crowd. The only thing as noticeable as a woman driving around in a bridal gown would be a man pursuing her rigged out in a silly suit. Besides, who knew what story Jessie might tell if people asked for explanations? The last thing he needed was interference from some helpful soul who might take him for the groom she was fleeing.
Liam dressed quickly, trading his formal wear for faded jeans, an ancient Princeton Tigers sweatshirt, sneakers and a leather bomber jacket he’d had so long that it felt like an old friend. Then he got into the Vette, doubled back toward Lake Washington and got on the road Jessie would have taken. An excited guest had told him she’d headed toward the city, but where would she go? No apartment, no credit cards, no cash…well, not exactly. Carrie had remembered that Jessie kept a fifty-dollar bill and her driver’s license in the glove compartment of her car.
“Mad money, she called it,” Carrie had explained, while Bill clutched her hand like a lifeline. “I always told her that was just making it easy for a thief, but—”
“It’s okay,” Liam had replied. “She won’t get far on fifty bucks.”
Now he tried putting himself in Jessie’s place. What would she use the money for? Like him, she’d want to get out of that bridal regalia. And she’d want a place to go to ground, but in a city like Seattle, how could anybody afford clothes and a hotel room on fifty bucks? That was the question, although the bigger one was what he could possibly do or say when he found her to make her see that kiss for what it really was.
Liam glanced in his mirror, gave the Vette a little more gas and switched lanes.
It was simple, really. What had happened between them was lust. That good old male-female, down-and-dirty, I-want-to-get-you-between-the-sheets thing called lust. They’d been sexually attracted to each other, she’d been all nerves, and he’d taken advantage. End of story.
He wasn’t a gentleman like Bill. And he couldn’t let a moment’s stupidity and weakness on his part ruin what Bill wanted. A wife, a couple of kids, a dog and a cat.
Some people were made for fairy tales.
Liam looked at the speedometer and eased his foot off the gas. He was driving too fast, and he could just imagine trying to explain this to a cop.
“Well, you see, Officer, I came on to my best friend’s bride maybe ten minutes before the ceremony, and she ran away.”
Oh, yeah. That would go over big.
Dammit, where had she gone? Forget the change of clothes. She was upset, probably close to hysterics by now. Her first priority would be a hotel room, but without money…
A horn blared as Liam shot across two lanes of traffic and made for the exit ramp. He looked in the mirror, saw the guy he’d cut off tell him what he thought with a universal gesture, and fought back the urge to respond. The guy was right. There was no need to be angry at him. Jessie, dammit, she was the one who’d made him lose control, made a mountain out of a molehill, ruined what should have been the best day of Bill’s life, and for what?
“For a kiss,” Liam said, with a snort of disbelief. Just a kiss. Just a moment torn out of time, when he’d held her in his arms and never wanted to let her go….
There she was!
He stood on the brakes, made a hard turn into a lot dominated by a huge Kmart, and brought the car to a jolting stop. A slender figure in ivory satin, little pink roses braided into her honey-gold hair, was marching—there was no other word for it—straight toward the store entrance, her satin train sweeping behind her.
Liam eased the car forward a safe distance, pulled into a space, shut off the engine and watched. Someplace between her car and the door, she’d picked up a gaggle of followers. Kids, a few housewives, a guy in coveralls, all of them shuffling after her, grinning at each other, peering around as if they suspected they might be on Candid Camera. Well, he couldn’t blame them. A bride in full regalia, going into a store that sold everything from aspirin to zippers, was definitely not an everyday sight, even in a city as sophisticated as Seattle.
Jessie had to know she was drawing a crowd, but her chin was up and her spine was as straight as it had been when she’d faced him down in the garden.
He got out of the car, pocketed his keys and started after her. He knew he’d have to approach her with caution. She might bolt or even scream. Given the insanity of the world, he’d probably end up trying to convince the crowd and then the cops that he wasn’t a mugger or worse. So he followed her into the store at a discreet distance and asked himself what a bride on the run could possibly want in a Kmart?
Everything, it turned out.
Jessie grabbed a shopping cart and sailed down the aisles. Her cheeks glowed with color, so he knew she wasn’t as oblivious to the gawkers as she tried to appear. She moved from counter to rack, snatching things only when there was a sale sign on view and dumping them into her cart. Jeans. A T-shirt. A desperately ugly lime-green nylon jacket whose claim to fame had to be the big sign that said not just Sa
le but Fifty Percent Off. She added a pair of sneakers to the stack, a tote bag, a toothbrush and things he’d always thought of as female survival gear.
Finally she headed for the register.
Liam hung back, observing her from behind a display that advertised a Blue Light Special on dinnerware. The clerk rang the items up, Jessie handed over a bill and got back only a couple of coins. Goodbye cheap motel room. He started forward as she scooped her packages from the cart, but she reversed direction so fast he almost stumbled as he scooted back behind the dinnerware.
When it was safe, he followed.
She led him straight to the rest rooms and disappeared into the ladies’ lounge. He leaned against a counter a couple of aisles over, folded his arms, crossed his ankles, looked down at his feet like any other guy, bored as he waited for the missus. Obviously, she was going to change her clothes, but then what? Maybe Carrie was wrong, and she had more than fifty bucks.
The minutes dragged by. Jessie’s followers wandered off. Liam shifted his weight, unfolded his arms, tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and planned his next move….
And then the door to the ladies’ room opened, and all coherent thought flew away.
Bill Thornton’s bride was gone. Proper, elegant Jessica had been replaced by Jessie, a woman ready to try anything, the quicksilver woman Liam had sensed was inside her from the beginning.
She’d stripped the roses from her hair and brushed it out so that it hung in honey-colored waves down her back. She was wearing the clothing he’d watched her buy, even the ugly lime-green jacket. But it didn’t seem ugly now. As Liam looked at her, at that face scrubbed clean of makeup and artifice, he knew, with gut-wrenching certainty, that everything he’d been telling himself was a lie.
He wanted Jessie still, wanted her in a way that frightened him. When she lifted her head and saw him, she suddenly stiffened. But what he read in her eyes in that single, unguarded moment told him that she wanted him in exactly the same way.
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