Almost To The Altar

by Neesa Hart

  Until Friday.

  By the time Parker arrived at the garage, her nerves had been shot. It hadn’t helped that his only reaction to her rescue by Adonis the mechanic had been a solicitous concern for her well-being and a generous offer to pay Wil for his time. If she’d been threatened by Wil’s presence, by the obvious energy that crackled between them, certainly Parker should have been. Even last night, after the encounter at the Devonshire event, Parker had been aglow from his renewed acquaintance with Shelley, whose father, Elise had learned, was in a position to give Parker a seven-figure contract. He’d failed to notice her agitation.

  Nervously her gaze flicked to the strip of tanned flesh where the crew neck of Wil’s sweatshirt rested against the corded strength of his neck. A tiny drop of perspiration worked its way down her spine. “Why are you really here?” she asked him, and wondered if he heard the thready note of panic in her voice.

  Wil surged, to his feet and began pacing her office. A barely checked energy pulsed beneath the surface of his taut body. She felt it all the way across the room. The afternoon sun turned his blond hair to a coppery gold, and Elise watched him with something akin to dread as he roamed the thick Persian carpet. “Good question,” he told her. “All weekend I kept telling myself it was just a fluke. Seeing you again had been unsettling. That had to be the rea-!!son it affected me so deeply.”

  “Affected you?”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” The look he gave her made her stomach flutter. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but what it would feel like to touch you since you slid into my truck on Friday afternoon.”

  “I don’t think—”

  He shook his head. “After last night, it just got worse.”

  Bleakly she thought of the cold shower she’d taken before going to bed. It hadn’t stopped the sweats that kept her up most of the night. “Worse?”

  “Yeah. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t feel it. I could feel the energy in you, Elsa. I could practically smell it on you.”

  Her nerve endings screamed a warning. She supposed she should have been insulted by the statement, but instead it made the soles of her feet tingle. “I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.

  “Tell me you felt it, too.”

  After several breathless seconds, she nodded. “I did.”

  His rigid posture relaxed. “Thank you for telling me that.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “Do about it?”

  Elise nodded. “This can’t go on, Wil. We’re different people now. We can’t let this consume us.”

  “I’m already consumed.”

  “No. Both of us are overreacting. I’m sure that’s all it is.”

  “I’m glad you’re sure,” he said, though his expression told her he didn’t believe it.

  Feeling suddenly weary, Elise stood. “I think we should just go to lunch and get this over with. I haven’t slept well in days.”

  “Neither have I.”

  With a brief nod, she preceded him out the door.

  “So,” she asked him fifteen minutes later as she studied him across a plate of onion rings and tried not to feel nervous, “what do you want to talk about?”

  He glanced at her as he took a bite of his grilled chicken sandwich. “What do you think I want to talk about?”

  “Did you come here today just to argue with me?”

  “No.”

  “Then stop being a pain.” Searching for a neutral topic, she settled on his career change. “Tell me how you like working with your dad.”

  “You mean as opposed to trying to kill myself on the Mere trading floor for some guy who wants to corner the market on pork bellies?”

  Elise frowned. “You don’t have to get defensive,” she told him. “This was your idea, you know.”

  He nodded. “Sorry.” After a long drink of his ice water, he set the glass down with measured precision. “I love working with Pop. You know how much I’ve always loved working with the cars.”

  As his fingers rubbed slow, mesmerizing circles on his water glass, Elise felt her skin grow warm. The way her body seemed attuned to his every movement was beginning to eat away at her sanity, like the slow, consistent drip of a faucet, or a splinter beneath the skin. She had only to think of him, to see him, to wonder what it would feel like to have him touch her, to touch him in return. Forcibly she dragged her thoughts back to neutral ground. “You know, I’m surprised you never got married,” she told him, tearing her gaze from his hand.

  “You are?”

  “Sure. You always seemed like the big-family type. You used to talk about how you wanted at least half a dozen kids.”

  “Until two years ago, I was too busy trying to get rich to worry about anything as important as family.”

  “You don’t miss it at all, do you?” Despite herself, she couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. Wil had once been full of ambition, eager to make his mark in the financial community. Now he seemed as content as she’d ever seen him, perhaps more so.

  “I really don’t,” he told her. “Why should I? I’m doing something I always loved.”

  “But you were so talented. You were on your way to being one of the top brokers in the city, in the country, even.”

  “I’m pretty talented with a socket wrench, too, Elsa,” he told her.

  “Oh, damn. Why do you keep insisting on twisting around everything I say? I’m not trying to find fault, I just feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

  The tension visibly ebbed out of him. “It’s a lot more fun watching a car come back to life after restoration than gambling with billions of dollars on the trading floor. So I’m happier—” he waved the chicken sandwich at her “-and healthier.”

  “I’m really glad.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad. So how do you like being a corporate lawyer?”

  “You mean as opposed to doing something really meaningful, like being a snake-oil salesman?” The afternoon had grown warm, and she slowly unknotted the white silk scarf at her throat.

  To her immense satisfaction, he laughed. She’d forgotten how much she liked the sound of his rich baritone rumble. She was startled to realize, perhaps for the first time, that most of the men she now knew rarely laughed at all. Certainly they didn’t do it naturally, and when they did, it was generally at someone else’s expense. And their laughter never, ever, sent tingles racing down her spine the way Wil’s laugh did.

  “I should have known,” he said. “I imagine there are just as many people who insult lawyers as there are people who insult mechanics.”

  “More. You know,” she said, idly twirling her straw in her glass, “I looked into your father’s references in the field before I gave you this restoration job.”

  “I should hope so. Three million in merchandise isn’t something you want to play around with.”

  “Your shop has developed quite a reputation. Some say you can compete with the best in the country.”

  “We’ve won a couple awards,” he acknowledged. “Nothing really serious, but it’s mostly a hobby, anyway.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather do the restorations full-time?”

  “Sure.” He polished off his ice water. “The regular repairs pay the bills, though. There are a lot more people driving sedans with bad plug wires than there are antique cars on the road.”

  Elise finished her lunch, then tossed her napkin on the table. “Why did Jan decide to move the shop from West Chicago out to Valdona?”

  “More space and cheaper rent. We need more room to do the restorations.”

  “Is the work you’re doing for us the largest job you’ve ever done?”

  He nodded. “Definitely. Elsa?”

  “What?”

  “Why are we talking about cars?”

  She swallowed. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Us.”

  “There is no‘us.’”

  His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Is that so?�
�

  “Of course. I told you. It’s been a long time, we didn’t part on the best of terms, and it was only natural that we would both feel somewhat uneasy about seeing one another again.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really. It was good to see you. I’m glad to know you’re doing well, and now we’ll just forget the whole thing ever happened. I’ll go back to my office, you’ll go back to Valdona, and we’ll continue with what has become the status quo.”

  His laugh was a rich burble that made her hair tingle. “I’ll bet you’re hell on wheels in the courtroom.”

  “I’m very serious about this.”

  “So am I. I can’t remember the last time I was more serious about anything.”

  “Then why don’t you act it?”

  “Just because I’m not trying to explain it away, that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about it.”

  “We don’t even like each other,” she insisted.

  “That hasn’t got a damned thing to do with what’s going on here, and you know it. Every time I look at you, I want to touch you. I can’t stop thinking about what it felt like to have my bands on you while we danced. I can’t stop remembering what it used to feel like when I could touch you, make love to you.” The look he gave her threatened to wilt her eyelashes. “Tell me, did you have to take a cold shower before you went to bed last night? I did.”

  She glanced quickly around, relieved to find no one watching them. “Have you forgotten that I’m engaged?”

  His gaze slid to her ring, then back to her face. “Are you engaged, or are you hiding?”

  Frustrated, she pushed her chair back from the table. “Stopit, Wil.”

  “Too close to the mark?”

  She stood. “Too rude.” Without waiting for him, she turned to leave.

  Muttering a soft curse, he tossed some bills on the table. Once again, she’d left the leather-bound calendar behind. He stuffed it into his back pocket, then hurried after her. She was waiting at the crosswalk when he caught up with her. Grabbing her elbow, he pulled her from the stream of pedestrian traffic into the empty doorway of a high rise, “Listen to me.”

  “I want to go back to work.”

  When she would have looked away, he grabbed her chin with his fingers. This wasn’t going at all the way he’d planned, yet, somehow, he was powerless to stop himself. Something about her always did this to him, destroyed his concentration, ruined his better intentions. With her, and only with her, he was a man of passion, not the calculated decision-maker he could trust to do the right thing. That passion scared him, but just as before, he was helpless to do anything about it. “Listen to me,” he said again. “I don’t like this any more than you do. I want you to know that, but just because I don’t like it, that doesn’t mean I can stop it from happening. I feel things for you. I can’t turn them off anymore than I can stop the earth from spinning.”

  “You can just leave.”

  “And you think if I leave it’ll go away, don’t you?”

  “Of course it will.”

  He brought his mouth within inches of hers, so close he felt her breath fan across her lips. “It won’t. Once, I tried to ignore it, but it didn’t work then, either. I don’t know about you, but I was miserable.”

  Elise pulled in a weak breath. The trapped look in her eyes held him immobile. The sight of her full mouth, so close to his, threatened to send him crumpling to the pave-!!ment.

  “We can’t do this,” she said, sounding desperate. “I don’t want to do this.”

  He ignored the plea in her voice. “Did it go away over the weekend?” At the question, her eyelids fluttered shut, but too late to disguise the revealing spark in her eyes. “It didn’t, did it?”

  When she didn’t answer, Wil narrowed the space between them, until the weight of his body pressed her against the cold concrete of the office building. “What about last night? When you left that party, could you still feel my hands on you? Could you stop thinking about what it was like to be close to me? It’s not going away, Elsa. Trust me on this. I waited ten years, and it didn’t go away.” His gaze lowered to her mouth. “Just because we want things, that doesn’t make them so.”

  And right there, amid the skyscrapers and afternoon traffic, heedless of the surging lunch crowd on the sidewalk, oblivious of the consequences, reckless and impas-!!sioned, he captured her mouth in a kiss that sent shivers to the soles of her feet.

  Chapter Four

  “Right there in the middle of the sidewalk? Right in front of everybody?” LuAnne, Elise’s hairstylist and close friend, stared at her in the mirror as she busily styled Elise’s hair the following Wednesday.

  Elise met her friend’s gaze. With her singsong Jamaican accent, impossibly big hair and even bigger heart, LuAnne had become one of Elise’s favorite people on the planet the day she first walked into her shop. “Right in the middle of everybody,” Elise confessed. Wil had left messages with her secretary twice in the days that followed, but Elise had studiously avoided returning his calls. She was trying, hard, to convince herself that time would ease the twinge of awareness that seemed to have permanently worked itself under her skin.

  It wasn’t working. To make matters worse, Parker had left the country on business, and she’d had nothing but time to think about the way her body had responded to the feel of Wil Larsen.

  “Um-hmm…” LuAnne shook her head, then clipped another piece of Elise’s hair. “So you tell me, what did it feel like?”

  “I don’t know. It felt like a kiss, more or less.”

  “More like a kiss, or less?”

  Elise ignored the leading question. “It’s not that big of a deal, LuAnne. I’ve known the man for years.” She glanced around the small beauty shop. “I was in love with him. We used to be lovers. He just provoked me. That’s all.”

  “No, no.” LuAnne dropped her scissors in their holder. Reaching for her hair dryer, she said, “I mean, what did it feel like? Was it good, was it bad?” She paused. “Did the earth move?”

  Elise tried not to squirm. The earth had moved, all right. They’d hit about a nine on the Richter scale of emotional experiences. “I was surprised. I wasn’t paying that much attention.”

  “It was good, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

  LuAnne gave her a look that spoke volumes. “Sure you haven’t.” She flipped on the hair dryer. “It was good. You wouldn’t be telling me otherwise if it wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t say it was good.”

  LuAnne made a comment that Elise couldn’t hear over the buzz of the hair dryer. So she thought about what it had felt like to kiss Wil, to have him kiss her. Was’ it good? Somehow the word seemed inadequate. It couldn’t begin to describe the current of emotion that had surrounded them. Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries and sunny afternoons and weepy movies were good. This… this had nothing to do with life’s lesser delights. This was more like a cataclysmic experience. Good like she’d never imagined it could be. Good, she admitted, like it had never been with Parker.

  “So—” LuAnne switched off the hair dryer “—you gonna tell Parker?”

  “What?”

  “You know, your fiancé? The tall guy with the dark hair?” LuAnne met her gaze in the mirror. “You gonna tell him you kissed this guy?”

  “I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “I see. So then, what you got to be so upset about?”

  “I’m not upset.”

  LuAnne removed the all-but-shredded magazine from Elise’s lap. “That’s why you in here tearing up my stuff?”

  “I’m not-”

  “Elise.” LuAnne pivoted the chair so Elise faced her. “I know you a long time. You and me, we been friends, what—six years?”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven years. I know some things about you nobody else knows. I know you got worri
es about marrying Parker Conrad.”

  Against her will, Elise remembered Wil’s questions. He, too, had pressed her about her relationship with Parker Conrad. “That’s not true. Parker is exactly what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Maybe, but that don’t mean you in love with him.”

  Elise stared at her friend for several long seconds, then drew a quick breath. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I don’t think so, and if you smart, you gonna tell Parker you got doubts.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You better. He’s a nice man, Parker Conrad. Dull, but nice. His mother, now there is another story, but Parker, he don’t deserve what you’re doing to him.”

  “I’m not doing anything to him.”

  “You kissing other men on the sidewalk while Parker’s in Bangkok on business. That’s what you doing.”

  “I already told you—”

  “I know, he kissed you. You listen to me, Elise. You got two and a half weeks to make up your mind. Then Parker’s coming back from Bangkok, and you got to tell him. You the only one what knows who was kissing who on that sidewalk.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Lu. Wil’s an old friend, and we parted on bad terms. Of course I was off balance when I saw him again.”

  “Of course.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “What do I know? I’m just your stylist.”

  “And my best friend. And the person who’s supposed to be my maid of honor.”

  “Provided Parker tells his mama it’s none of her busi-!!ness.”

  Elise frowned. Parker’s mother had made her dislike of Elise’s choice of maid of honor abundantly clear. “He will,” she said firmly. “You will be in my wedding.”

  “If you and Parker ever pick a date. You gonna do that soon?”

  Again Elise tried not to squirm. “Soon. You know how things have been for me, with this auction coming up.”

  “Sure. I also know that all six times I was engaged, we picked a date.”