Almost To The Altar

by Neesa Hart

  “Can you do that?” he asked as he began to move with her once more. “Can you put it out of your mind?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you’re a better person than I am, because I’m consumed with it.”

  She shuddered. She had to make him understand. Had to. Across the floor, she saw Parker laughing with Shelley. “Please, Wil,” she said, her voice just above a whisper. “Please understand. For the first time in my life, I have what I want. I don’t want anything to jeopardize that.”

  “Look me in the eye and tell me that seeing me again didn’t give you serious doubts about marrying Parker Conrad, and I’ll do what you want,” he told her.

  As usual, he’d cut to the heart of the matter, without all the polite preliminaries. Deep inside her, where she’d carefully locked away her doubts and fears, her memories and longings, the lock threatened to give way. Wil’s challenge lay before her like a thrown gauntlet. Impaled on the intensity of eyes the color of a midnight fog, she couldn’t find the words. “Please…” was all she could say.

  He brought his face closer. “How many times this weekend did you look across the table at Parker and think of me?”

  “None,” she lied.

  “You want to know how many times I thought of you?”

  She did. “No.”

  “Every time I breathed.”

  Elise’s stomach flipped over. “This isn’t right.”

  “What’s not right about it?”

  “You. Here. This.” She knew she sounded inane, and didn’t particularly care. He had to leave her alone.

  “Oh, it’s right, all right.” He leaned even closer, and her nostrils flared when she caught his scent. “Admit it. It affected you just like it affected me.”

  She shook her head in mute denial.

  Wil’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “Then let me see you again.”

  “What?”

  “If you’re not affected by what’s going on, let me see you again.”

  She hedged. “I’m very busy right now. Perhaps after the auction.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Her stomach clenched. “Tomorrow?”

  “Have lunch with me tomorrow.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have an appointment.”

  “There’s nothing on your calendar.”

  “It’s on the one I keep at work.”

  Wil moved his body against hers in a suggestive rhythm that made the blood sing in her ears. “I don’t think so. Come on, Elsa, see me tomorrow. Say yes.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say no, so she asked, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because you’re complex, and full of contradictions, and I’ve never forgotten what it was like to care for you.”

  “Did you try?”

  “For ten years.”

  At the slightly vulnerable admission, her resolve began to crumble. As usual, she found herself powerless to resist his persuasion. Wil had a sorcerer’s power over her. She’d never been able to deny him. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re not going to walk away, are you?”

  “Not this time.”

  She hesitated, still torn. “Not even if I begged you.”

  “No.”

  With a shuddering sense of resignation, she asked, “Just lunch?”

  For the first time that evening, his mouth relaxed into an easy grin that chased away the haunted look in his eyes. “Just lunch.”

  Chapter Three

  Elise, you know I’m counting on you to see this thing through with no complications.”

  Elise gritted her teeth as she studied the man across her desk. Roger Philpott, senior partner at her law firm, held her career future in his hands. In three months, the voting members of the firm would elect one of the three eligible associates as a partner. There wasn’t a chance in hell that mere coincidence had prompted Roger to dump the mundane, if monstrous, responsibility of Chester Colling-!!ham’s will on her shoulders at a time when she needed the added edge of being able to show her talent in the courtroom. As far as he was concerned, the earth would end be-!!fore a woman would become a partner at his grandfather’s law firm.

  “Of course, Roger,” she told him. “Everything’s under control. The largest portion of the estate to be auctioned is the collection of antique cars. The restorations and certifications are being handled by a very reputable firm just outside the city.”

  She refused to let it fluster her that her mind was consumed with thoughts of that very reputable firm. All morning, her gaze had strayed relentlessly to the clock on her desk. Wil had left her last night without a time for their lunch date. As noon came and went, the anxiety of waiting had begun to give her a queasy feeling in her stomach. It was now a quarter to one. Perhaps he’d gotten tied up on the floor of the Merc. Maybe he’d forgotten their informal lunch date. If she was lucky, he would have considered it and changed his mind. She tried to be glad.

  Roger’s beady gaze rested on the reproduction Pierce-Arrow hood ornament she kept on her desk. “I suppose you realize the value of the collection.”

  “I estimate it at about three million dollars,” she told him, dragging her thoughts back to the present. “The firm I’m using is doing excellent work for us.”

  “And the rest of the collection?” he asked.

  Briefly she thought about the odd assortment of art, antiques and vintage items that comprised the Collingham estate. Except for the bizarre assortment of clothing, including a set of seven wedding dresses dated between 1825 and 1950, she’d found museums to purchase most of the antiques. Only the cars, the costumes and a few odds and ends would have to be sold at auction in order to complete the liquidation and pass the profits on to Chester’s heirs. “I have everything under control,” she assured him.

  “I hope so,” he said. “Chester Collingham and his family have been among this firm’s biggest clients.”

  “I’m aware of that. I—” The buzz of her intercom nearly sent her through the roof. With a sinking sense of dread, she punched the button. “Yes, Carrie?”

  “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” her assistant told her. “His name is Wil Larsen. Said you were expecting him.”

  Elise felt the color drain from her face. “Oh.”

  “Larsen?” Roger said. “Isn’t that the firm handling the automobile restoration for us?”

  Elise shook her head. “Actually, his father is doing the work. Wil and I are having lunch.”

  “Well, this is opportune. I’d like to ask the fellow what’s costing so much.”

  “Roger—”

  “Have Carrie send him in. By all means.” Roger moved his large frame out of the chair, giving the points of his vest a tug to settle it more firmly over his rounded belly.

  With her stomach twisting into knots, Elise asked her assistant to bring Wil into her office. When he appeared in her doorway, her hard-won calm withered in the resulting heat wave that spiked up the temperature. “Hello, Wil,” she said, proud of herself for managing to stand behind her desk without her knees giving way. “I’d like you to meet Roger Philpott.”

  Wil slanted a glance at her boss, then extended his hand. “Philpott,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

  Roger seemed taken aback by Wil’s steady confidence. He couldn’t have been prepared, she realized, for a man who’d made a reputation for himself as one of the most ruthless, and successful, commodities brokers in Chicago. Roger had expected the son of a mechanic, and come faceto-face with two hundred and twenty pounds of solid mas-!!culine power. She almost smiled.

  Roger cleared his throat. “So, Larsen, is it?” Wil nodded. Roger fiddled with the buttons on his vest. “Larsen, I understand Elise is quite pleased with the work your father is doing for the firm.”

  Wil gave her a speculative look. Why, she wondered, couldn’t Roger feel the sudden, too-stuffy tension in the room? She forced h
erself not to shuck her blue pinstripe jacket.

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  “I told you it was,” she said, hoping Roger wouldn’t notice the sharp note in her voice. Wil looked no less attractive, no less dangerous, today than he had last night at the party. He wore a pair of faded jeans that did nothing to disguise the firm, muscled contours of long legs. A Harvard University sweatshirt that might, at one time in its life, have been a shade of blue emphasized wide shoulders and a narrow torso, and his presence filled her office with the subtlety of a tornado ripping through the roof.

  To her acute mortification, he appeared to notice her discomfort. His lips twitched in the barest hint of a smile. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” he said, his voice even less sincere than a greeting card.

  “No, no,” Roger insisted. “We were just discussing you.”

  “Oh?”

  She hated the way his mouth twitched at the question. He’d always been too sure of himself, too secure, too certain. “I was telling Roger how well everything is coming along,” she explained, carefully keeping her tone impassive, “and how I don’t anticipate us having any problem finishing the restorations in time for the auction.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

  Roger coughed. “I must admit, though, Larsen, I’m a bit distressed at the cost of this. I was led to believe that Chester Collingham’s collection was in excellent condition.”

  “It is,” Wil assured him, “but to auction vintage autos at book price, they have to be showroom quality. That kind of work requires precision parts, and quality time. It’s not cheap, but it’ll pay off in the long run.”

  Elise felt a wave of irritation as Roger readily accepted from Wil the same explanation she’d been trying to give him for the past eight weeks. “I suppose that makes sense, “ he said. He gave Elise a tight smile. “Just see that you keep up with the paperwork.”

  Elise forced a cool reply. “I will.”

  He nodded briefly at Wil. “Nice meeting you, Larsen.”

  Wil regarded Roger for several tense seconds. “You too.”

  “Don’t forget to have that report on my desk by this afternoon, Elise,” Roger added, as he exited her office.

  Without waiting for her invitation, Wil dropped into the seat Roger had recently vacated. “What a jerk,” he said.

  Elise fought a desperate battle for self-control before taking her seat. She ignored his comment about Roger. “I guess you’re ready to go,” she said, still holding out hope that he’d changed his mind.

  “Are you?”

  “Of course.” She rummaged through her desk for her leather pocket calendar. On business days, when she didn’t wish to carry a purse, it doubled as a wallet. She found it, slipped it into her pocket, then faced him once more. With a sweep of her hand, she indicated his casual clothes. “I expected you to be back at work today.”

  “I am,” he told her.

  “Is that what they’re wearing on the floor of the Merc these days?”

  He merely shrugged as he studied the plush interior of her office. The environment that had once seemed comforting to her now made her feel uneasy as she watched Wil scrutinize the mauve carpet, burgundy leather furniture and dove-gray walls. When his gaze found the collection of polished hood ornaments on her credenza, his mouth pressed into a narrow line. “Nice office,” he said conver-!!sationally.

  She refused to rise to the bait. “Yes/,” she said with controlled calm, “It’s also busy. How long do you think it will take us to eat lunch?”

  He ignored her not-too-subtle warning as he continued to scrutinize her desk. Finally his gaze rested on the Pierce-Arrow hood ornament she used as a paperweight. Elise felt exposed as he studied the chrome archer. “You still have that,” he said.

  She had to fight the urge to snatch the incriminating object from sight. On her twenty-first birthday, Wil had pre-!!sented her with the chrome archer and a corny note about how she could pierce a man’s heart one day. It might have been corny, but she couldn’t have been more impressed with Shakespeare. In the bottom of her cedar chest, buried in a box of memories, she still had the note. “Of course.” She tried to keep her voice even.

  “I’m glad.”

  He was deliberately taunting her, and she knew it. He seemed to find her discomfort vastly amusing. Elise decided not to allow him the edge. In the long run, things would be easier if she simply cleared the air between them, no matter how unpleasant the prospect seemed. “Look, Wil, I don’t want to play games with you. Both of us would be better off if we just left the past alone.” She swallowed. “I know you don’t like me, and it wasn’t easy for me to spend that much time with you on Friday. I was expecting your father. When you showed up, I was surprised. That’s all.”

  Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been the shock that registered on his face. “I don’t dislike you.”

  “No? You could have fooled me.”

  “Elsa—”

  “Really/,” she said, interrupting him. “I thought it was a foregone conclusion. I seem to recall something being said ten years ago about me being a selfish little girl who cared more about myself than the people around me; about how I didn’t care who I hurt, and whose life I destroyed as long as I got my own way. Did I get it right, or did I forget something?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his whiskered chin. “That was ten years ago, Carina.”

  At the childhood nickname, she flinched. In Swedish, it translated as “little heroine.” For years Wil had taunted her with the name. When he used it now, it brought back a painful memory of a time when the nickname had changed to an endearment. ‘Aina’ he’d called her. With a twinge of regret she realized she’d never asked him what it meant. “Don’t call me that,” she said softly.

  He studied her for several long seconds. “I’m sorry. Not for the nickname. For all of it.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. He’d never said that before. “You are?”

  “I am. I didn’t want things to turn out this way.”

  The soft tone in his voice made some of her convictions teeter precariously on a ledge of indecision. “Wil—”

  He held up his hand. “Before you say anything else, I’d like to apologize for Friday. I think you should know that Pop hasn’t exactly been honest with you.”

  “Honest about what?”

  “I wasn’t just home for the weekend,” he told her. “I work there. At the garage.”

  She stared at him for several long seconds. “You work there?”

  “Full-time.”

  “But—” quickly she shuffled mental puzzle pieces in her mind, trying to make that piece of information fît into what she knew “—the Merc. What about your job at the Merc?”

  “I quit.”

  “You quit?”

  “Two years ago. I guess no one told you.”

  “I— No. No one.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t want the stress anymore.”

  “Stress? You were on your way to the top, Wil. I remember reading that article about you in the Tribune. You were close to making partner at your firm.”

  He shrugged. “One day I decided there were more important things in life than a seven-figure salary.”

  “One day?”

  He paused for long, tense seconds. “The day I had a heart attack on the floor and nearly died before they got me to the hospital.”

  Elise gasped. “Wil!” she said. “Oh, my God!”

  “I see you didn’t know.”

  “Of course I didn’t know.” She sank back in her chair, stunned. “If I’d known, I would have—”

  “What? Come to see me? Commiserated?”

  “I don’t know. Something. How could you think I would have just ignored something like that? Not after—Well, I wouldn’t have.”

  He shrugged. “Had the roles been reversed, I probably would have.”

  Stung, Elise swallowed. “Oh.”

  “Sorry,�
� he said. “That sounded more blunt that I in-!!tended.”

  “At least you were honest.”

  “Maybe.”

  Elise drew a shaky breath. “Are you all right? Now, I mean.”

  Wil nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “I can’t believe Nikki didn’t tell me,” she said, referring to her brother. “Surely he knew.”

  “He knew.”

  “Why didn’t he say anything?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe for the same reason he didn’t tell me you were engaged and using a different name now. I guess he figured it was easier to be my friend if we didn’t talk about you.”

  At the comment, Elise frowned. Her family had always been close to Wil and his father. She’d merely assumed that he knew the whole story of how her relationship with her father had gone sour. Evidently he, too, had been kept in the dark about many things. Briefly she thought about the way he’d consumed her thoughts for the better part of the weekend. The fact that she’d been unable to exorcise Wil from her mind was one of the major reasons her weekend at Parker’s parents’ home had been so stressful.

  For ten years, she’d managed to keep the bitter hurt of her father’s rejection at bay by refusing to think about it. For ten years, she’d tried to pretend that losing Wil’s love hadn’t stolen an irreplaceable piece of her soul. Seeing Wil again had brought the painful memories back to the fore. The day she told her father that she’d legally changed her name from Elsa Krestyanov to Elise Christopher because she felt her legal career would benefit from the “Ameri-canized” version, he’d accused her of being ashamed of who she was, of turning her back on her family.

  Her father’s anger had hurt, deeply, but at some level she’d been able to understand that their relationship had always been strained. Both too stubborn and too willful for their own good, she and her father had struggled for years. The argument that ended their relationship had been merely a catalyst, not a cause. A proud man, he’d spurned every effort she made to reconcile with him. After five years, she’d quit trying.

  But she’d had nothing, no emotional armor, to protect her when Wil rejected her as well. She’d given him everything she had to give, her heart, her body, her soul. With Wil, everything was supposed to be forever. His bitterness had shocked her, wounded her. The man she’d thought she knew had disappeared. In his place had stood a man with a haunted look in his eyes that chilled her soul. And she’d walked out of his garage and never looked back.