Before he could talk himself out of it, Griff took Pippa’s hand and placed it back in the crook of his elbow, and found himself excessively glad when she let him.
Walking down the stairs, someone sneezed from the left. Someone else sneezed from the right. Griff was a fast learner. He breathed through his mouth.
“The bride or the groom?” a snooty-voiced usher asked.
“Neither,” said Griff. “I am but a simple guest.”
The usher barely flared a nostril.
“I thought you said you didn’t do bad jokes,” Pippa said, as she dragged him down the groom’s side. And for the first time since the engagement was announced and the wedding party revealed, and it had become obvious that not all of his family had forgiven him for going out on his own, Griff thought that he might actually enjoy the day after all.
Pippa pointed out seats away from the aisle and near the back, but Griff knew enough about such events to know he ought to sit up front with his parents. He was about to mention as much when Brent and the other groomsmen ambled onto the grass, laughing and joshing as they took their places by the arbor.
Any thought of moving fled as Pippa grabbed his arm so tight he winced.
He glanced at her to find her bright eyes locked onto Brent. Her throat working. Her warm honey-colored skin glowing from the heat. Small dark curls stuck to her cheeks and neck. The swell of her breasts rose and fell beneath the soft folds of her dress as she breathed deeply.
And while he couldn’t quite stretch his imagination so far as to picture her tackling Honey as she walked up the aisle, he found himself unwilling to watch her watching Brent.
He dragged his eyes away and looked unseeingly out onto the extensive grounds. Grounds that had been Delacroix property at one time. Determined to recount the history as a neat form of distraction, he failed, as Pippa, now holding onto him for dear life, pressed her determined way to the forefront of his mind.
Or more specifically, the night she’d left.
He’d been home from college to see his little brother graduate high school. After which, while his parents went to one party, the graduates to another, he’d stayed home, for some reason too restless to go anywhere, or be with anyone.
That night, unable to sleep, he’d padded down to the kitchen to find Pippa. Eyes wild, bags packed. She’d told him she’d broken up with Brent, and that she was leaving town. There’d been no doubt she was looking for a reaction from him. It was right there in her gorgeous hazel eyes; fear, exhilaration, and the flicker of something hot and hopeful.
Knowing all she’d given up by rejecting the security of the Delacroix name, he’d reacted all right. With that one brave move, she’d ripped open the cynicism that had until that point saturated his life.
Being a Delacroix had given him endless privileges he’d never been able to reconcile himself with. He’d railed against them, more and more as he’d gotten older, only to find that the rebellion only added to the mystique. Being a Delacroix in Bellefleur had made him invincible. It had made him a god. Made him wonder why he’d bothered fighting it at all.
But all that changed the night he discovered that simply being a Delacroix did not get you everything.
It did not get you Pippa Montgomery.
Chapter Three
The music swelled, the chatter faded, and when it turned out to not be the “Wedding March,” again, the crowd deflated like a badly timed soufflé and went back to their noisy chatter.
But Pippa didn’t move at all. She couldn’t. Not when she had the perfect view through the backs of the Delacroixes’ heads to the groom himself. Her focus shifting from Brent to his folks, and back again, she felt like a live wire—all energy and danger. Like one false move and someone could get burned.
The guy at her side sure didn’t help either.
So the seat was a little flimsy for Griff, but did he have to nudge her thigh with his every time he shuffled? Did he have to lean his arm across the back of her chair every time he moved to talk to someone new? Did his thick chestnut hair have to fall that way, in chunky waves, as if it had just been raked back by his long fingers? Did he have to lean in, his heavy blue eyes looking right into hers, his voice lowered to that exact timbre when he wanted to catch her up on some little morsel of gossip? Did he have to smell so good while doing it, like satin sheets and citrus and sin?
She concentrated harder on Brent instead, while trying to look like she wasn’t. He looked so much the same—with his lopsided smile and those famously knee-weakening Delacroix-blue eyes. But now, he looked more the senatorial hopeful that the rumors swirling around the wedding suggested he’d soon be.
Which was ironic, really, as it had been that exact ambition that he’d saved as the pièce de résistance of the ten-year plan he’d set out for her in color-coded bullet points as the audiovisual portion of his marriage proposal. She, a politician’s wife? She, who’d apparently read the dress code for a posh southern wedding as slut-widow?
Whereas Honey, sweet funny darling Honey, she’d never make such a colossal fashion error. No, this was as it should be.
A little of the tension rolled away from her shoulders and she sat taller as Brent’s eyes swept over the crowd. Her breath caught a moment when they moved past her. And landed on Griff.
Brent’s nostrils flared at the same moment she felt Griff stiffen at her side. Two alpha males squaring off, even at a distance. She read the same old mix of love and respect and competition in Brent’s puffed-up countenance. He’d adored Griff, to whom everything had come so easy, yet had rued having to always strive to keep up, to out-reach, to outdo.
Then Brent laughed. Relaxed, easy, shaking his head at his brother.
Pippa glanced in surprise at Griff, to find he was gesturing with his fingers for to Brent to run, and run now, while he still had the chance. And she wondered how he truly felt at not having been asked to be in the wedding party. Watching the interplay, a veil was pulled away from her eyes, and it occurred to her that perhaps this was Griff’s perfect gift, letting Brent have the limelight for once in his life.
And that thought, along with the bad jokes, made her feel kind of fuzzy all of a sudden. It was all just so very…sweet. And sweet was not a word she would ever have pinned on Griff Delacroix. More like wayward, shameless, dangerous, so beautiful it hurt just looking at him.
Confused, she looked away, only to find her heart felt like it was squeezed two sizes too small as Brent’s eyes landed on hers. Then swept back to Griff. To Griff’s arm slung lazily over the back of her chair.
Brent narrowed his eyes slightly and tilted his head at her as if to ask, “Hey Pip. How you doing?”
She managed a small shaky smile. “I’m doing all right.”
At that he gave her a nod and a barely there wink. “Glad to hear it.”
Pippa’s hand moved to her heart. “Thank you.”
Brent’s looked around the big fancy wedding, the size of which would have made her run if she hadn’t already, and did the same. “No. Thank you.” And then his mouth curved into a grin as he tilted his head toward Griff. “So what’s that all about?”
But a couple squeezed into the aisle in front of Pippa, cutting off her view, saving her from answering. She felt like she’d come to from a million miles away. Her breath was choppy. Her heart racing. Her emotions all scattered. But in a good way. Like in some kind of magic trick, a long-held knot inside of her had exploded into a million butterflies.
Could it really be that easy? Was that the closure she was after? Would she no longer think back on Bellefleur and feel desperately bittersweet? God, she hoped so.
“Having second thoughts?” a deep voice asked at her side, and the butterflies came zooming back to her belly.
“Not for a second,” Pippa said, then slanting Griff a dark look, added, “Not that your brother isn’t a catch, of course.”
“Of course,” Griff said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “So if he’s such a catch why aren’t you
up there staking your claim?”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “You really want to know?”
“Try me,” he said with a wolfish smile, but she couldn’t not sense the serious note. Couldn’t escape how breathless it made her feel.
“Brent’s a great guy. But he’s not…”
Not you came so close to spilling from her lips she was forced to nip her right cheek between her teeth. Which was just plain nuts. Griff was… Okay, so he’d always been beautiful. Loose-limbed. Irredeemable. And created more sparks in her belly doing nothing than Brent ever had with all his natural likability.
“Not right for me any more than I was for him,” Pippa finished. Then she looked around, made sure anyone within listening distance wasn’t listening, then curled her hand around the edge of her chair and leaned toward Griff. “He proposed that night, you know.”
She wouldn’t have been sure Griff had heard her if not for the muscle that flickered in his cheek. Then when pink began to rise up his neck, she figured she’d only made things worse. And for some reason she really wanted Griff to understand why she’d turned his perfectly lovely brother down.
“I was eighteen, Griff. Had literally just graduated from high school. I’d been dragged all over the country by mom my entire life, without a whisper of a say in where we’d end up, or for how long. And you know Brent. When he explained to me in detail what our next ten years would be, I saw red. And no matter how wonderful your family had been to me, taking me in when Mom ran off after beau number a hundred and eight, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t choose to discount what I wanted, not when I’d been forced to do it my whole life. Leaving was my only choice.”
She finished and dragged in a deep breath. It was a great speech, exactly what she’d wanted to say, to the Delacroixes, Honey, Brent. Everyone bar the unsettling man at her side. And yet, as she waited for his response, her heart thundered in her chest. Because if he didn’t get that, then he didn’t get her. And somehow, deep down, she’d always felt like he had. More than the rest lumped together.
He slid his arm farther along the back of his chair until their shoulders were millimeters from touching, and he said, “I’m glad you’re not marrying him, Pip.”
Whoa. “You are?”
He nodded. The once. His deep blue eyes burning into hers. The heat emanating from his skin, the beat of a pulse at his throat, sending a flood of warmth right to her belly.
That long-ago night came back to her with a whump.
The emotion, the fear, the deeply entrenched desire to run.
The scent of honeysuckle pouring through the open French doors of the Delacroix kitchen as she went in search of something to eat on the road.
Instead she’d found Griff standing in front of the open fridge door surrounded by a white cloud of vapor. No shirt. Pajama bottoms riding low on his hips. Unconsciously scratching at his flat belly with one hand.
She’d made a noise, possibly a groan of pure and unadulterated sexual frustration at the feast of perfect manhood before her, as Griff had turned from the fridge, a bottle of juice halfway to his mouth. The muscles of his torso had clenched at the sight of her, making her mouth water so hard and fast she’d had to swallow. Then his eyes, unreadable in the low light, had traveled down her body to the battered old suitcase at her feet.
An age had passed before he lifted the juice to his mouth and drank. The muscles of his throat working as he’d closed the fridge door slowly, leaving them in darkness bar the moonlight streaming through the huge windows.
“Going somewhere?” he’d asked.
“I’m leaving. I’ve broken up with Brent,” she’d added as an afterthought.
“Have you now?” he’d asked, as if for him the breakup with his brother had been the larger of the two pretty darned big announcements.
He’d put the juice on the bench, his eyes never leaving hers as he’d walked her way. She could still feel the ache in her fingers as she’d gripped the handle of her suitcase. Could still hear the blood pounding in her ears. Feel the flood of heat rising in her body as he’d neared.
Confused, excited, terrified, she’d frowned down at her shoes, but he’d slid a finger— cold from being wrapped around the juice—beneath her chin, making her look up and up and up.
He’d looked from one eye to the other. “You okay?”
“Not really,” she’d admitted, her voice shaking. “Not right now. But I will be.”
He’d nodded, as if he’d believed her, and then his finger dropped away. She’d expected him to leave her then, but he’d stayed right where he was. Hot, half-naked, believing in her. Unlike her boyfriend and Honey, who’d acted like she was mad not to submit.
Griff said next, “The folks will be back in the morning, if you’d care to wait.”
Her heart had squeezed so tight at the thought of the Delacroixes coming back and her not being there, after all they’d done for her. But if she hadn’t left then, she might never have left at all. And the minute she agreed not to have a voice in her relationship with Brent, the precedent would be set. And she’d never have a say again.
Breathing long and deep, she’d shaken her head. “Can you tell them I’ll call when I’m settled? And thank you. And…”
That’s when the tears had begun to fall. Streaming down her cheeks so fast there was no stopping them. She’d sniffed, and tilted her chin higher as if trying to defy gravity, but it’d made no difference.
Griff had watched her for a beat, two, his features all bold strokes and incisive angles, like a painting. Then, swearing beneath his breath, he’d hauled her into his arms. Wrapped himself about her. All strength and heat and comfort. And something else. He’d held her a little tighter, until the strokes down her back had become less comforting, more like a caress. While every point where her body touched his had felt like it was going up in flames.
Confused, overwrought, and incomprehensibly turned on, Pippa had pulled back, looked into his stunning blue eyes, wanting, needing something she barely understood. Wanting it from him.
Griff’s big hands had slid achingly slowly up her arms, had cupped her face with more gentleness than she’d have thought possible, and then he’d leaned in to kiss away her tears. His smooth lips trailing down her cheeks at a torturously slow pace, until they pressed gently against the corners of her mouth, before finally, finally finding her lips.
The second they’d kissed everything that had happened that night—the fight, the breakup, the furious drive home, the realization she’d never belonged in Bellefleur and never would—fled away into the darkness.
And all that had mattered was Griff. Big, bad, beautiful Griff Delacroix. And that kiss. Soft, gentle, slow, deep, lush. Like a dream.
And then he’d pulled away. Moved away. Grabbed the juice. Slugged it down so that a small stream slipped from the corner of his mouth. He’d swiped it with a bare arm before tossing the bottle in the trash.
“You going right now?” he’d asked as if they hadn’t been pressed together like they’d wanted it to happen for the longest time.
She’d nodded, not yet able to form anything so complicated as words.
Then with one last, long, dark look he’d said, “Drive safe,” then padded his way through the opposite door and was gone.
And that was the last time she’d seen Griff Delacroix in the flesh. The night he’d kissed her like she was something precious, and then let her go.
“Pippa?” Griff’s deep voice dragged her back to the present.
She lifted her fingers to her temple as she blinked against the last of the sunshine creating halos around the heads of people in front of her. The noisy chatter of well-lubricated guests waiting on a late bride knocked about against the inside of her skull.
“Everything okay?” Griff asked, taking her arm, his unexpectedly rough palm—not the hand of a man who could easily have had an easier life—running from her shoulder to her wrist, her hairs springing up in the wake of his rasping touch.
E
ven as she knew it was the last thing she should do, she glanced up at him, into his hot, blue eyes.
She’d forgotten how intense the man could be. The way he held her arm, the way he angled his big body toward hers, the way he looked at her like the world behind her could be erupting into flames and he wouldn’t notice. It had a way of making the attentions of any other man feel insipid. Irrelevant. Impossible.
No wonder being back made her feel like such a fraud, her usual mantras—the ones she used constantly in her blog—things like P.S. trust your gut, and P.S. you don’t need a guy to make you happy, you just need you, made not a dent in the desire, the want, the need racing through her.
As the tempting Delacroix vortex threatened to suck her under all over again, Pippa stood so fast her chair rocked back and landed on the knees of the man behind her. She apologized profusely, righted the chair, and ignored Griff’s shadow looming over her. “I…I remembered I forgot something. Something important.”
Then she left.
No, she ran.
Because that’s what Montgomery women did best.
Chapter Four
Doors, doors, everywhere doors.
Pippa just needed somewhere to sit and get her bearings. All without the scent, proximity, and memories of Griff Delacroix messing up her head. But the gargantuan Belles Fleurs mansion just had so, so many doors!
On the second floor she finally found one unlocked, shot through, and banged it shut behind her. Back against the door, eyes shut tight, she dragged fresh air into her lungs, only to find it thick with the scent of honeysuckle. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know she wasn’t alone.
“Oh, Pippa!”
Pippa barely had time to register acres of tulle and lace and luscious waves of corn-silk blond hair before she was enveloped in a squeeze tight enough to cut off her air supply.
Honey, she thought. Closing her eyes as too many happy, confusing memories swarmed over her. Her first days in a new town. The sly looks from the beautifully manicured local girls at the new girl with the long, kinky hair, in the frayed jeans and too-big Joanie Loves Chachi T-shirt. And Honey, the most lovely and popular of them all, bearing down on her like a tornado, taking her by the hands and insisting it was the coolest top she’d ever seen, and where could she get one, and their friendship was sealed.
When Honey Got Married Page 18