The Inconvenient Bride

by Anne McAllister

  But no one ever did, Sierra had discovered, if you didn’t try to know them. So that’s what she set out to do. Every person Dominic introduced her to was an interesting individual. And she made sure to show she understood that. Most of them responded politely and, if they were reserved at first, the majority, by the time she’d finished talking to them, responded with at least a little warmth.

  A few, of course, did not.

  She told herself she didn’t care. For herself she did not. But she hated that they thought less of Dominic because of her.

  Not all of them did.

  Tally Thomas, for instance. What a delightful surprise to see Tally there. The sprightly octogenarian had been one of Sierra’s first clients when she’d come to New York. Tally had been a regular at the little salon on Madison where Sierra had first found a job cutting hair, and one day when her regular stylist was ill, she’d made do with Sierra.

  After that she’d insisted on Sierra always doing her hair.

  She’d followed Sierra through three more salons until Sierra had told her she was going to go to Paris. Then Tally had given her a series of French lessons. “So you don’t let them get the best of you,” she’d said, with a twinkle in her eye.

  Sierra had loved the lessons and she hadn’t forgotten Tally’s kindness. Though she hadn’t seen Tally much since she’d come back and was working on photo shoots now, she was delighted to see her first real client.

  Tally was equally thrilled to see her. “Who’d have thought it!” she’d said, clasping Sierra’s hands in her own. “Never would’ve dreamed one of Douglas’s boys would have such good sense!”

  “Dominic’s brilliant,” Sierra had assured her, watching her husband out of the corner of her eye. He had stiffened at the voices of two women behind them, and what they were saying made Sierra stiffen, too, though she did her best to pretend she hadn’t heard.

  They didn’t matter, she assured herself.

  Only people like Tally mattered. Kind people. Loving people.

  And, of course, Dominic.

  “My secretary, Shyla,” Dominic was introducing her to now.

  And Sierra put the other women out of her mind and took Shyla’s hand. “I’m so glad to meet you. How does Deirdre like her Yankees’ cap?”

  Shyla laughed. They talked, compared notes on Dominic, and, Sierra was delighted to see, made him blush.

  Then Mariah appeared and said, “It’s time to go sit down and eat.”

  “You okay?” Dominic asked her.

  And Sierra nodded. Yes, she was.

  She’d said she was fine.

  Then she disappeared.

  They ate dinner, cut the cake, fed each other bites of it, and she was smiling and happy, then told him she needed to wash her hands, headed for the ladies’ room—and disappeared.

  “You’re supposed to be dancing. The bride and groom lead out the dancing,” Rhys said into his ear. Dominic was pacing the deck. He’d been over all of them looking for her when she hadn’t reappeared. He’d seen everyone, smiled and shook hands and met some curious gazes, and he could hardly say he’d mislaid his bride, so he’d kept looking by himself.

  But she didn’t seem to be anywhere!

  “You and Mariah dance,” Dominic said now, brushing Rhys off.

  “We’re not the bride and groom.”

  “Well, pretend you are,” Dominic said through his teeth. “Sierra’s not here!”

  “What the hell do you mean, not here? This is a boat, for God’s sake! Where could she be?”

  “How the hell should I know? She went to the head and she never came back.”

  “Maybe she’s still there.”

  “It’s been half an hour!”

  “Did you look?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t go busting in. It’s not a unisex bathroom.”

  “Did you ask?”

  Dominic grunted. “You don’t go around asking for your lost bride.”

  “Well, no, I never have,” Rhys said cheerfully, “but I’ve never lost mine.”

  “Since you married her,” Dominic said pointedly. He wasn’t going to allow Rhys very much smugness. His brother had screwed things up pretty badly with Mariah before he’d come to his senses and begun to live happily ever after.

  “Since then,” Rhys agreed. “Want me to ask?”

  Dominic didn’t want anything of the sort, but it was better to have Rhys ask than to do it himself. “If you want,” he said offhandedly. “But don’t tell them I sent you!”

  Rhys crossed his heart. “And hope to die,” he said piously.

  “Just do it.” Dominic gave him a push toward the stairs. He followed Rhys down at a discreet distance, ready to look the other way while Rhys knocked on the ladies’ room door.

  But before Rhys could do it, the door opened and three women came out, laughing and talking together like old friends.

  Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill, Marjorie, and Sierra.

  Discreet distance and deliberate indifference forgotten, Dominic gaped at them while Rhys stepped back and let them pass.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Marjorie, face flushed, was saying to Sierra.

  “Not a problem.” Sierra replied cheerfully. “The same thing happened to me at my friend Katie’s wedding. Only worse. My switch fell in the soup!”

  Both the other women’s eyes bugged, then all three burst out laughing, and Sylvia patted her hand and said, “I’ll give some thought to that rinse you recommended. I’ve never thought of myself as a blonde.” She looked absolutely delighted. “It’s intriguing.” She gave Dominic a cheerful smile and, as she slipped past him, said, “Lovely girl, your Sierra, Dominic. Trust you to find her.”

  His eyes met Marjorie’s for just a moment as she followed Sylvia. “I like her, Dominic,” she said.

  So did he.

  But he was a little dazed and confused about how she had managed to convert the enemy.

  “Marjorie’s switch came loose in the breeze when she went up on deck with your father,” Sierra told him simply. “She was in despair when I went to wash my hands. She couldn’t get it up and fixed again. Neither could Sylvia.” She shrugged. “So I did.”

  “You helped—but they were the ones who—” Dominic stopped as Sierra took his hand in hers.

  She smiled at him, both her hands warm as they wrapped around his and she looked into his eyes. “They’re guests. And it’s true what I told Sylvia.” Her eyes simply sparkled. “She would look good as a blonde.”

  It was a beautiful night.

  Magical.

  The skyline of Manhattan twinkled in the distance as the sun went down and the moon rose. People laughed and ate and drank and chatted. Children played and whooped and clapped. The band played lilting romantic melodies.

  And for the first time in weeks Sierra was back in Dominic’s arms.

  It was required, of course. They had a duty dance down by the band, and he held her close and she could rub her cheek against the starched white of his shirt or the soft black of his tuxedo jacket. She did just that, couldn’t help herself. But, all too quickly, the piece ended and her father was claiming her, and then Douglas and Rhys and Nathan and Finn and Gib and seemingly an endless stream of men.

  Lovely men. Charming men. Dashing men.

  She hugged her father, thanked Douglas profusely, assured Rhys that everything was fine, enjoyed a few moments with Nathan who, wearing a borrowed suit of Dominic’s, looked remarkably like him.

  But Nathan wasn’t him.

  And she wanted him. Desperately.

  What Dominic wanted she had no idea. He was dancing with an equal number of women. She kept her eyes open, watching for him, aware every moment where he was—even when he was on the far side of the dance floor. She saw him with her mother, with Mariah and Izzy and Chloe and Pammie. She even saw him dance once with Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill.

  She wanted him to dance again with her.

  It reminded her of Rhys’s and Mariah’s wedding
when she’d danced all night determinedly with other men, but had only had eyes for him.

  The difference was, she hadn’t danced with him first—or at all—that night, until the very end.

  Then somehow they just happened to be standing near each other at the beginning of the last dance of the evening. And their gazes, which had been connecting and avoiding all night, met once more.

  And this time neither had looked away.

  “Dare you,” Dominic had said gruffly, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He held out a hand.

  And Sierra took it and felt the electricity jolt through her.

  “You’re on,” she’d replied and stepped recklessly into his arms.

  From that moment she was lost. She’d probably been lost from the first time she saw him, but she hadn’t realized it then.

  She was still lost in love with Dominic and she didn’t know how, after tonight, she would be able to resist.

  She stood now beside the staircase leading to the upper decks and watched the other couples dancing. She tried to find Dominic, but for once her radar failed her.

  And then, quite suddenly, he was there.

  Right next to her, his shoulder brushing hers, his fingers sliding in to lace with hers.

  “Dare you.” The gruff whisper sent a shiver right to the center of her.

  She whipped her head around to see him there, a wry grin on his face and a reckless look in his eyes.

  She swallowed. “Dare me to what?”

  “Dance with me.” He took her hand, but he didn’t lead her to the dance floor. Instead he drew her up the steps, not to the next deck or the next, but to the very top open air deck where there was no one else, just the music drifting up to them. And then he shut the door.

  He held out his arms. “Dance?”

  Sierra blinked. “Oh, yes. Yes, please.” And she stepped into them again, felt one slide around her back and draw her close, felt the other close around her right hand, tucking it against his chest. Her hat bumped his nose.

  He laughed. It was a strained laugh, rough with desire. And when she took the hat off and tossed it away, he wrapped his arms around her and they watched it float on the night sky into the water below.

  Then he turned her in his arms and they danced. Alone. Together.

  Then Dominic said, “I wonder if maybe we ought to go on a honeymoon after all.”

  Sierra’s heart leapt. She stepped back and looked up at him, trying to see his heart in his eyes. But there were too many shadows. The night was too dark.

  But not too dark to hope.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “A HONEYMOON?” Douglas looked surprised. He stopped fidgeting in Dominic’s office and regarded his son with curiosity. “Where?”

  “I don’t know where,” Dominic said irritably. He just knew it was a good idea. If he and Sierra were ever going to make anything out of this marriage, they needed some time alone together, to concentrate on each other.

  He didn’t stop to think when he’d decided that it was necessary that he and Sierra make something out of their marriage—something more than he’d originally thought, at least. He just knew it was. He knew she’d been right.

  He only hoped he hadn’t waited too long and blown it.

  He didn’t think he had. She had looked surprised but happy when he’d suggested it last night, which was why he was in the office on Saturday. He was trying to get things squared away, sorted out, finished up.

  “You really want to put the past behind you and move on?” Nathan asked. He was lounging on the sofa, leafing through a magazine while he waited for their father. The two of them were going out to the old family home on Long Island to go fishing. They’d stopped by Dominic’s place to see if he and Sierra wanted to go. Sierra had told them he was at the office.

  “Idiot,” Douglas had said when he’d first burst in. “What are you doing here, leaving your wife home on the Saturday after your wedding reception? You’ll lose that girl, Dominic!”

  “I’m trying not to lose her, damn it!” Dominic had retorted, jabbing a pencil in his father’s direction. “I’m trying to get things sorted out so I can take her away from here.”

  “You should go to our place in the Bahamas,” Nathan said.

  Dominic snapped the pencil in half. He glared at his brother. “That’s the stupidest damn suggestion I ever heard! Take her where I got jilted last time?”

  “Have you ever been back?” Nathan asked him.

  Dominic raked a hand through his hair. “Hell, no. And why should I have?”

  Nathan shrugged. “To get over it?”

  Dominic slammed his hand on the desk. “I am over it!”

  “I can tell,” Nathan murmured. He got up and paced the room, then tossed the magazine onto the coffee table, then glanced at his watch. “Come on, Dad. He’s not going with us, and I want to get some fishing in. I’m only going to be here a week, then it’s off to Antarctica.”

  “Right,” Douglas said. He hoisted himself out of his chair, then regarded his son across Dominic’s wide desk. “The honeymoon is a good idea.” He turned and started for the door, then stopped and looked back. “The Bahamas is a good idea, too. For a marriage to work, it needs a clean slate.”

  She’d only been to the Bahamas twice.

  In all the traveling she’d done on photo shoots all over the world, she’d only managed a week in Nassau.

  “Nassau?” she’d said eagerly when he mentioned the Bahamas.

  Dominic had shaken his head. “We have a place on one of the out islands. There’s a small town, a fishing harbor, and a few houses scattered along the windward beach. Three miles of pink sand and usually deserted.”

  “Sounds heavenly,” Sierra had said.

  And now she knew it was.

  They’d flown to the closest island airport, then had taken a water taxi to the island. It was called Pelican Cay, and it was picture-book beautiful, with rows of pastel-colored houses climbing higgledy-piggledy up the hill from the harbor, and narrow asphalt roads that wound through town and then in two or three directions out of town into what looked almost like jungle.

  One of the islanders met their water taxi, an old man named Maurice, who drove a purple Jeep and gave her a deep courtly bow when he took her suitcase and helped her in.

  “My car,” he said, “she matches your hair.” And he beamed broadly when Sierra grinned.

  Dominic, for his part, was quiet. He seemed nervous, wary, a little gunshy, Sierra would have said. She watched him openly as he got into the front seat next to Maurice. When he turned his head, she noted a tight line at the corner of his mouth and the fact that he hadn’t taken off his dark glasses since they’d set foot off the plane.

  “It’s lovely,” she said, reaching up to put a hand on his shoulder and when he touched it automatically, she laced her fingers through his. “Thank you for bringing me.”

  “My pleasure,” Dominic said. But he certainly didn’t sound like it.

  “It be our pleasure to have you back, Mr. Wolfe,” Maurice said as they bounced through the narrow streets. “We miss you.”

  Dominic’s mouth tightened even further. But at last he nodded at Maurice. “Thank you.”

  Maurice smiled again with great good cheer. “But now you here, it be like you never left. Only good things. And you enjoy it!” He slanted Dominic a sidelong look. “This be your honeymoon, yes?”

  Dominic hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

  Maurice laughed, delighted. “You definitely enjoy then! My Estelle, she give you plenty of privacy. Estelle be the cook an’ housekeeper,” he told Sierra. “I tell everyone to give you plenty of privacy.” He laughed again. And Sierra was enchanted to see Dominic blush.

  “We’ve been married a while,” he said stiffly. “We’re hardly newlyweds.”

  “Hardly,” Sierra agreed, but then the imp within her made her say, “But we’ll enjoy all that privacy, you can be sure!”

  She and Maurice laughed together. Dominic re
treated behind his sunglasses, and Sierra wondered if she’d made a mistake by teasing him.

  But she knew she had to treat him as she’d always treated him. They were having a honeymoon. They were getting to know each other. They needed to be who they really were for this to work. They couldn’t try to pretend.

  They had to be themselves.

  Nathan, not for the first time, had been wrong.

  Why the hell had he listened to his stupid younger brother? What the hell did Nathan know about being married or making things work with your wife?

  Nathan wasn’t married, never had been!

  He was as footloose and free as a bird. He’d never even been engaged, never been in love, never even looked at the same woman twice as far as Dominic knew.

  So where did he get off telling Dominic what to do?

  And why the hell had he listened?

  Because in New York City in a steel-and-glass building where he was strong and clever and in control, it had made a certain sort of cockeyed sense.

  And so he’d finished up his work and gone home to tell Sierra he’d made arrangements for them to fly to the Bahamas. He’d made it sound enticing, charming, delightful—the perfect honeymoon paradise.

  But the closer they’d got, the more he’d choked.

  The sight of the town as they’d crossed the water had brought it all back. All the memories. All the hopes. All the disaster.

  And then Maurice had been there to meet them, which had been his father’s doing, no doubt. Maurice, who had come to him with the news that Carin wasn’t there. Maurice, who had patted his arm and said sadly, “I think maybe she panic, you know?” Maurice who had then gone and told his father who had begun to send people on their way.

  Maurice knew.

  Dominic didn’t know if Sierra knew anything or not.

  He didn’t see how she couldn’t. He hadn’t said anything, but Mariah probably had. Mariah, married to Rhys, would know something. Rhys would have told his wife about the place in the Bahamas. He’d even brought her and the children down here a couple of months ago.

  “It was therapeutic,” he’d told Dominic after, because he’d had his own ghosts to lay to rest. “You ought to go back sometime.”