The Bridal Chronicles

by Lissa Manley

  Disgusted with herself, she glanced up and saw a man with long dark hair and glasses heading toward her, a notepad in hand.

  The press.

  Her heart sank. Real life once again. Funny how that always managed to intrude at the absolute worst moment.

  “Anna Simpson?” he called, stalking closer. “Or should I be calling you Miss Sinclair?”

  The reporter’s gall sent fresh, hot indignation ripping through her, galvanizing her into action. She put her dark glasses back on, shot to her feet, jammed the newspaper into her straw tote bag, threw the bag’s handle over her shoulder and ran.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “I have a few questions!”

  Her heart racing, she ignored him. Without looking back, she kept running, across the marble floor of the lobby, then out the door of the hotel toward the parking lot where she’d parked her car.

  She reached her car in record time, thankful that Ryan had kept his promise and had been considerate enough to have the rental agency deliver a working vehicle last night. She opened the door and flung her bag onto the front passenger seat. She quickly sat, inserted the key and turned the ignition, quickly heading out of the parking lot.

  As she drove with no particular destination in mind, the truth bored in on her. The story in the newspaper had forced her hand. She had to tell Ryan the truth.

  Even if he hated her for lying to him about something as important as her real identity.

  The thought of Ryan hating her twisted her stomach into a painful knot. Her hands gripping the steering wheel, she headed in the direction of his office, trying not to think about losing him and what that would mean to her. Even though she was a fool to care whether she lost Ryan or not, she simply wasn’t ready to go down that path yet.

  She refused to consider why.

  Fifteen minutes later, she drove into the parking structure beneath his office and saw his Porsche parked in its spot near the elevator.

  She parked and took a deep breath, willing herself to calm down and deal with her mistake. Hopefully Ryan would accept her incredibly belated honesty. A few minutes later she stepped out of the elevator and forced herself to walk down the hall to Ryan’s office, giving the receptionist a feeble wave as she walked by the front desk.

  The door to Ryan’s office stood wide open. Anna pressed herself against the wall, chewing on her lip, working up her courage to do what had to be done.

  Plastering a smile on her face, she poked her head around the jamb and saw Ryan at his desk typing on a laptop, his dark golden head bent in deep concentration. He wore a snowy-white dress shirt and colorful tie loosened around his neck.

  She wiped her damp palms on her jeans. Her stomach fluttered like it always did when she came near him, and she was struck almost dumb by his blatant male beauty. “Hello?” she quavered. “Anybody home?”

  His head popped up, his blue eyes narrowed slightly for a moment as though he resented being interrupted. Just as quickly, mild surprise lit his features and then he flashed the brilliant smile that always made her feel weak in the knees. “Anna.” He quickly stood and moved out from behind his desk. “What a nice surprise.”

  She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Good. He hadn’t seen the story yet. Even with that encouraging sign, she was barely able to look him in the eye and return his smile.

  Because the news she was about to deliver was going to ensure that her unexpected appearance here wasn’t going to be a nice surprise for long.

  If she were sane, that would be fine. But considering she’d lost whatever shred of sensibility she might have by letting Ryan matter to her, it didn’t please her at all.

  It simply depressed the heck out of her.

  A burst of pure, unadulterated pleasure blasted through Ryan when he saw Anna standing in the door to his office, a tentative smile on her lovely face. Good Lord, who would have expected that he would be so happy to simply have a woman unexpectedly drop by his office?

  But he was happy to see her. Ecstatic, even. He’d been counting the hours until he could be with her again, looking forward to the evening they’d planned to spend watching videos with an almost unreal amount of anticipation.

  Acting on pure instinct, he walked across his office toward her, unable to resist the pull he always felt when she was around. He took her hand and drew her close, simply wanting to hold her in his arms again, feel her heart beating next to his and smell her softly scented skin. He reveled in the knowledge that he’d found a woman like Anna, a woman who was exactly what she seemed, exactly what he needed.

  Unpretentious.

  Both feet planted firmly on the ground.

  Dedicated and hardworking.

  I love her.

  The truth detonated inside of Ryan like a bomb. And as much as he wanted to deny the surprising and unexpected thought, he couldn’t. Even though he’d steadfastly believed that romantic love didn’t exist, his world had somehow twisted around and he loved Anna more than he ever thought possible.

  His heart almost shaking with love for her, a deep, telling, satisfying sense of pure happiness falling down around him, he pulled away to look at her face, hoping to see his newfound, miraculous love reflected in her pretty brown eyes.

  Instead he saw ominous shadows lurking in the depths of her troubled, darkening gaze.

  He lowered his brows, ignoring the niggling sense of unease moving through him. “Hey,” he said, cupping her chin with his hand, trying to catch her eye. “What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes dull, she moved toward the couch. “I have something to tell you.”

  Cold, razor-sharp dread cut through him. That sure as hell didn’t sound good. “Okay, go ahead.” He steeled himself for the agonizing truth—Ryan, I don’t want to see you anymore—or some Dear Poor Little Ryan line he’d heard before.

  Instead of uttering those words, or any words, she simply reached into the tote bag and took out a newspaper. She silently held the paper out to him, looking at the floor, her hand shaking. Damn. She looked like she’d been caught copying someone else’s bridal designs.

  He reached for the paper. Something was very wrong, but he couldn’t imagine what it was. Something about her father? Something about “The Bridal Chronicles?” What?

  He clenched his jaw and opened the folded, wrinkled paper.

  And saw the headline.

  His cold foreboding freezing into a mantle of pure ice, he read the story that told him the sordid, astonishing, kick-him-in-the-teeth-again truth.

  Anna Simpson was really some rich woman named Anna Sinclair.

  His heart crumbling, he slowly looked up at her, hoping she’d deny that the story was true, tell him that it was just a big, fat, really bad joke. A mistake.

  But the truth was plain to see in her suddenly glassy eyes and the stricken, guilty look written all over her face. This was no mistake. No. The story was correct.

  She wasn’t your normal, hardworking, down-to-earth woman. She was an heiress for criminy sakes, the only child of one of the richest men in the entire country!

  She was a rich princess who had merrily led him down the garden path.

  And that familiar path was a terrible, hurt-filled place he’d vowed never, ever to go down again.

  “Why?” was all he could manage to say.

  “My father—”

  “I know that part,” he snapped. He swiped a hand through his hair, then drilled her with a rock-hard look. “I want to know why didn’t you tell me who you really were.”

  She bit her lip. “I was going to but—”

  “But you didn’t until you knew you’d be busted anyway.” He slapped the newspaper against his thigh and stalked closer, a cold fire blazing to life in his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I wasn’t sure, until very recently, that I could trust you.”

  Her doubting his integrity hurt. “Why the hell not? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?”

  Sudden heat burned in he
r eyes. “You haven’t, no. But many other men have. Men who only wanted me because of who I was. Men who used me to get to my money or wheedle their way into my family to get to my father, men who I trusted and then hurt me.”

  Horrified, he stared at her and asked, “Men have actually done those things to you?”

  She moved closer, nodding. “Every man I’ve ever trusted has betrayed me.”

  Ryan fought the sympathy moving through him, needing to stay focused on what she’d done, how she’d played him for a trusting fool. “So because of all of these other men, you lied to me.”

  She simply looked at him for a long, dark moment, then nodded. “Partly. But I also wanted to keep my identity a secret because I wanted to succeed on my own rather than as Anna Sinclair, Peter Sinclair’s daughter.”

  He stared at her, thoughts racing through his brain while he tried to absorb the awful truth.

  Not down-to-earth, normal Anna.

  Rich.

  Like Sonya.

  Betrayal.

  Pain.

  And even though he might be able to consider forgiving her for lying, the nail in the coffin holding his dying dreams was one jagged, slicing piece of crucial information:

  She was exactly the kind of woman he loathed—a rich, snooty princess who stepped on and lied to others to get what she wanted.

  Anger knifed through his heart.

  The truth was bitter, and he hated that he’d set himself up—again—for this kind of heartache. Numb with pain, he said, “I think you’d better leave.” He walked over to his desk and sat down, staring unseeingly at the computer screen in front of him, deliberately keeping his eyes off of her.

  Anna was silent for a long moment. “Ryan, I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, his tone deliberately icy. Uncaring. He looked up and stared right into her eyes to make his point. “It doesn’t matter.” He wouldn’t let it.

  She stared back, her lips quivering, her eyes filling with tears. “You’re not going to forgive me, are you?” Her voice cracked and she sounded very lost and alone.

  He quelled his stupid urge to comfort her. “I’ve been burned too many times by women like you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘women like me’?” She stepped closer, her scent coming with her.

  He steeled himself to ignore the wonderful way she smelled, the memories it evoked, and gripped the edge of the desk and rose.

  “Tell me,” she demanded.

  He stood, then stalked out from behind his desk and ran an impatient hand through his hair, moving over to stare out the window, unseeing. “Rich, snooty princesses who walk all over people they deem below them.” The minute the words left his mouth, he realized how cold and hard they sounded, how hurtful they might be to her.

  For a moment, she looked as if he’d struck her. A sick feeling moved through him and he wished he’d tempered his words a bit.

  After she stared at him for a long time, the slow fire burned in her eyes again. She came over to stand next to him. “Just for the record, I never, ever thought you were below me, Ryan. I may be wealthy, but I wasn’t raised to think I was better than anybody else because of it. My mother made sure of it.”

  “That may be true,” he said, scoffing. “But nothing can change the fact that you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth, right?”

  His words hung in the air like thick, acrid smoke, nearly choking the life from him. But, no, it wasn’t his words that had sucked him dry. Anna Sinclair had done that to him all by herself.

  She touched his arm. “That’s right. I have my demons, too, demons that color what I do, the decisions I make. Maybe we both need to forget the past and simply think about the future.”

  He looked at her small hand on his arm and felt her warmth through his shirt. Damn, he wished he could snap his fingers and forget who she was, wished he could think about a future with her. But he couldn’t. Cold, bleak reality—the reality she’d dumped on him like a truckload of concrete— wouldn’t let him.

  “It’s not that easy, Anna. You lied to me because of your past. So be it. And while I might be able to forgive a lie, my past makes it impossible for me to overlook that you’re the kind of woman I can’t let myself… be involved with. The past cuts both ways.”

  She withdrew her shaking hand, clamped her lips together, still staring at him with those glimmering yet sad brown eyes. Finally she stepped back and nodded stiffly. “Fine. I guess I can’t argue with that.” She moved toward the door, her shoulders rigid, and turned and stared at him for a few seconds.

  He quickly looked down.

  “I have a meeting with the president of Perfect Bridal in half an hour. I should find out whether I’m going to land the account, so I’ll be leaving Portland soon.”

  She paused and, damn, he wanted to ask her to stay. But he couldn’t. Her deception and the woman she’d proven herself to be had seen to that.

  And then, before he could reply, she simply said, “Goodbye, Ryan.” The next moment the doorway stood empty.

  He stood in his office, his chest twisting as an agonizing silence engulfed him, a silence that rang through his suddenly empty, aching heart like a death knell.

  The death of his “love” for Anna Simpson.

  Fool. Anna Simpson was just a fantasy, and so was the love he’d conjured up from some stupid place inside of him, a place that had somehow forgotten that love didn’t exist.

  He should feel good. He’d done what he’d had to do, what was necessary, what was best.

  He’d done what he’d known he should do since Anna Simpson had reeled him in and made him care.

  He’d discovered the horrible truth about her.

  His heart would stay safe. Whole. Complete.

  Strange that he’d never felt so alone in his life.

  Chapter Ten

  After her third meeting with Mr. Lewis, Anna returned to her hotel. Thankfully he hadn’t mentioned the story in the newspaper and had told her that after much consideration, and numerous meetings, he’d decided that he liked the freshness of her designs.

  He’d awarded her the account.

  The plan had worked. Her business, her dream, was sure to flourish. Now that she had the Perfect Bridal account, she would be able to make the necessary profit required by her father and she could get on with being a successful, well-respected bridal designer. She should be jubilant. Ecstatic. Relieved.

  But she wasn’t any of those things. As she walked across the lobby, thinking about what had happened at Ryan’s office just two hours ago, her heart weeping, a paralyzing, depressing numbness descended over her, obliterating any sense of accomplishment and joy about her business success she should feel.

  She’d lied and was paying the ultimate price for that betrayal.

  Wishing she’d been able to see past her ridiculous need to conceal her real identity long enough to be honest with Ryan from the beginning, she scurried through the lobby, her hat shoved down on her head, her dark glasses firmly in place. She breathed a sigh of utter relief when she reached the elevator without encountering anybody asking questions about Anna Sinclair, a blessing considering her frame of mind.

  The elevator opened and she stepped in. She turned around and a male hand—she could easily see it wasn’t Ryan’s—reached in and stopped the door from sliding closed. She shrank back into the corner, looked at the floor and shielded her face with the brim of her hat.

  A person stepped into the elevator. Anna peeked up.

  Her father.

  Incredulous and angry and intensely disappointed at his appearance right on the heels of Ryan’s bitter rejection, she literally couldn’t speak.

  “Anna,” her father clipped. “What in the world have you done to your hair?”

  She gave an unladylike but satisfying snort under her breath. “Well, hello to you, too, Dad. What are you doing here?” she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.

  He
straightened his tie. “I think you know why I’m here. Your time’s almost up.”

  Luckily she’d landed the Perfect Bridal account in the nick of time. She’d met the terms of their deal. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but the words wouldn’t come.

  The loss of Ryan’s respect lay like a stone in her heart, making everything else in her world pale and insignificant. Suddenly her father’s little deal seemed ridiculous, as did happily announcing that she’d landed an account so she would be able to meet his selfish terms and make a profit.

  With crushing sadness filling her and the prospect of living the rest of her life without Ryan bearing down on her, meekly bowing down to her father’s will bothered the hell out of her.

  Suddenly everything was so clear, so very glaringly apparent. Losing Ryan had put everything in perspective, had shown her what was important and what wasn’t.

  Dear Lord, she’d lost what was important. She wasn’t about to follow tradition and cave in to her father with that heartbreaking knowledge burning a hole in her heart.

  It was time, finally, to stand up for what she wanted.

  Why had it taken the death of her dream to be with Ryan to show her that?

  Indignant fire roared through her. “You know, Dad,” she said, stepping off the elevator when it stopped on her floor. “I’ve been thinking.” She stopped next to her door, drew herself up and looked right at him. “Since when do you get to decide what I do with my life?”

  He yanked his bushy gray eyebrows together and glared at her as he followed. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  She stuck her card key into the slot next to her hotel room door and yanked it out, finally determined to follow her own path. “It’s one I should have asked a year ago when we struck this stupid little deal.” She stepped into her room, forcing her chin in the air.

  “Stupid little deal,” he blustered, trailing her in. “Now, Anna, you agreed—”

  “Yes, I did,” she said, ruthlessly cutting him off. “And I shouldn’t have. I should be able to do what I want with my life without having to fulfill some ridiculous deal with you.”