The Inconvenient Bride

by Anne McAllister

  But Dominic hadn’t wanted any therapy like that.

  Not then. He didn’t now, either, suddenly. He only wanted to leave.

  But it was too late.

  Sierra loved it. He could see it on her face. She didn’t wear sunglasses often, even when he thought she ought to. So her emotions were transparent. She was enthusiastic about everything. She looked around eagerly, pointing out this, asking about that.

  And then, when Maurice turned down the long winding lane that led to the Wolfe house, she leaned forward eagerly, and exclaimed with delight when the cathedral of jungly trees opened onto an island garden and a low-slung peach-coloured house, with trailing dark burgundy bougainvillea all over one wall.

  “This is it? It’s beautiful. Gorgeous.” And then she caught sight, beyond the house, of the beach and the turquoise water of the Caribbean. “Oh my! Oh, how wonderful!” And she leaned forward and threw her arms around Dominic’s shoulders and drew him back into a hug.

  It was oddly settling, the feel of her arms around him, the whisper of her breath against his neck, the sound of her voice in his ear. She was Sierra, not Carin.

  This was now. Not then.

  They were married already.

  They only had to make it work.

  Maurice stopped the Jeep and got out. Dominic climbed out, then helped Sierra out, too. She stood, floppy hat clapped on her head with one hand, and turned in a circle admiring it all—the mangrove jungle, the shallow fishpond and stone patio of the garden, the white trellises with their bougainvilleas and the stands of multicolored oleander, the house, the hammock, the sand, the sea.

  “I love it,” she said, and she put her arms around him and hugged him again.

  And one by one, as he stood holding Sierra in his arms, Dominic’s fears, his memories, his humiliations seemed to recede.

  It was hard to remember Carin in the presence of as vibrant a woman as his wife. It was hard to think of the wedding that hadn’t happened, when Sierra still talked happily about the one that had—and the reception his father had given them.

  It was hard to dwell on the past, when the present was so much more fun.

  He hadn’t considered that coming back to Pelican Cay would be fun. He’d thought about it seriously, determinedly, with earnestness and resolution. He was going to banish the past and make a concerted effort to get to know this amazing woman he’d wed.

  But it hadn’t really sounded like much fun.

  But then, he’d forgotten what life with Sierra—when she wasn’t trying to avoid him—could be like.

  They barely got in the house and she said, “Why don’t we go swimming?”

  “Now?” He was surprised, then willing. He had no reason to want to remain in the house, after all. He just remembered standing here that morning, waiting for Carin—and Carin never coming.

  “Swimming? Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  She changed into a deep purple maillot, slathered her fair skin with sunblock, and rubbed something oily on her hair. “So I don’t turn the ocean purple,” she explained, then grinned. “I’m kidding. It’s to protect my hair.”

  “Oh. Right.” He grinned, too. But his mind was less on her hair than on her nearly bare body which he hadn’t seen in far too long. Something he should probably not be thinking about right now. “Go ahead. I’ll get my trunks on and join you.”

  She was waiting on the deck overlooking the beach when he came out a few minutes later. She was leaning forward, hands braced on the railing as she looked out down the beach which was empty as far as the eye could see.

  “This is amazing,” she said. “This is paradise and it’s deserted. This has to be the world’s best kept secret.”

  “We know it’s here,” Dominic said smiling at her, holding out his hand to her.

  She put hers in his. “Then let’s keep it just for us.”

  Once they were down on the beach she ran toward the water and he ran with her, remembering he’d probably been a teenager last time he had actually run into the surf.

  It felt good. Liberating.

  Then she let go of his hand and dove beneath a small wave, and he dove after her. They both came up sputtering and laughing.

  “It’s like a warm bath!” Sierra exclaimed. “It’s heavenly.” And she ducked again and came up, purple hair streaming as she smiled at him so eager and alive that his heart seemed to lodge in his throat.

  They swam and played in the water. Then they came out and flopped, exhausted, on the pale pink coral sand beach. Lying side by side on their stomachs, breathing hard, they stared at each other. Then Sierra smiled. And he smiled back.

  He didn’t know how long they lay there. Sierra’s eyes closed and he thought she had fallen asleep. So he got up and spread a light sheet over her to protect her from the sun, even though it was fairly late in the day. She smiled slightly, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  He just sat and watched. Traced the lines of her features, memorized them. Marveled at how young and innocent she looked. With the purple hair she reminded him of some sleek sea creature, a mermaid, perhaps. An enchantress.

  From the very first she had enchanted him. Bewitched him. Got past his very well-developed guard. And now he couldn’t imagine life without her.

  He wished she would tell him again that she loved him. She hadn’t said it since the night they’d fought.

  Maybe he should tell her.

  But he couldn’t. He hadn’t said the words in years. And every time he thought them, they stuck in his throat.

  She was still sleeping by the time the sun went down behind the house, casting the beach in shadow. Darkness came early in the tropics. And as the sun fell a light breeze sprang up and blew in from the water.

  Dominic touched her shoulder. “Sierra?”

  Slowly her eyes opened and she smiled. “Hey.” The way she looked at him made his toes curl with anticipation. He wanted her now with a depth he couldn’t have guessed at when he married her. It was so much stronger than anything he’d ever felt before.

  “Ready for some of that dinner Estelle left us?”

  She hauled herself to a kneeling position. “Sure. I’m starved.” She brushed off the sand from the front of her swimsuit. “I must have fallen asleep. Sorry. You must have been bored. You could have left me. Got some work done. Or—”

  “No.”

  She looked surprised. “No?” She said the word almost hopefully.

  Slowly Dominic shook his head. “No. This is our honeymoon, remember. It’s just for the two of us.”

  The smile that lit her face then took his breath away. She stood up and drew a deep breath, then looked all around before her gaze came back to him. She held out her hands to him and went up on her toes to touch her lips to his.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “My pleasure,” he replied.

  And this time he meant it.

  Late that night he realized as he was shutting out the light and preparing to go to bed with her, that he’d never once thought of Carin. He’d never remembered the last time he’d been here.

  It was time.

  All day she’d been waiting. No, actually longer. She’d been waiting since Dominic had suggested they have a honeymoon after all, since he’d decided to see her as more than a mere bed partner.

  She didn’t know if he loved her yet. But she thought there was a chance now that he might. They’d had a wonderful day on the beach, at dinner on the deck, then after, walking along the sand once more.

  And now it was time.

  Time to go to bed with Dominic again.

  To make love with him for the first time.

  There had been love in it before, subliminally, subconsciously—at least on her part. But it hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t happened with this need, with this depth, with this commitment.

  She felt awkward as she prepared for bed now. There was none of the silly spontaneity of their earlier couplings. None of the frenzied need with which they’
d wrestled each other down. He wasn’t even in the room. He’d gone to shut out the light in the living room while she changed into the soft white gown that Mariah had given her yesterday afternoon.

  “I know this isn’t a traditional honeymoon,” her sister had said. “But it means just as much—maybe more. You need to have a few trappings to make it special, besides Dominic.”

  The gown was special. Almost virginal in its simplicity.

  Sierra felt oddly virginal. And she supposed emotionally she was. She’d never made love like this before.

  She settled on the bed and lay waiting, hoping, praying that Dominic would feel as committed as she did, would want things to work as badly as she did.

  And then he was standing in the doorway, looking at her, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. He wore only a pair of boxer shorts, and she could see that his chest and legs were slightly reddened from the sun. His normally neat hair was salt-stiffened and tousled. He looked gorgeous—strong and muscled and one-hundred percent virile male. All Sierra’s hormones went on alert.

  The need for him was as great as it had ever been, the depth of feeling, the seriousness of loving this man forever was still there. But as Sierra smiled, she suddenly didn’t feel awkward at all.

  “No tie?” she teased.

  And Dominic’s brooding expression faded. A smile touched the corners of his beautiful mouth. “I didn’t even bring one,” he said. “Damn it.”

  Sierra held out her arms to him. “Don’t worry. I think we can improvise.”

  They improvised.

  They kissed and stroked and touched and licked. Even though he’d showered earlier, she could still taste a slight saltiness on his skin as she nibbled his shoulder. And she gave a delicate shudder as he nibbled hers, then moved up her neck and along her jaw before covering her lips in a soul-searing kiss.

  She drew him down over her and splayed her hands across the breadth of his back. His skin was warm to the touch and smooth. With her fingers she walked the ridge of his spine, then pressed her fists alongside it and felt his muscles bunch and flex.

  Then he rose to kneel between her legs and part her soft flesh. His touch made her shiver with longing, and she reached for him. “Now, Dominic. Please.”

  There was no teasing tonight. No wrestling. Only hunger and passion and the need to become one as fully and quickly as possible.

  He nodded and slid inside her, filling her, making her whole. It was as if some part of her that had been missing was suddenly there, found, home. The wonder of it made Sierra’s breath catch in her throat.

  She shifted to take him more deeply within and heard him draw a quick breath. “Dominic?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right?” His tone was incredulous. “I’ve never been better in my life.” And she heard a ragged little catch in his voice this time.

  And then he began to move. Slowly, languorously, lazily almost. At first. But then there was a subtle change, an increase in tempo, a tension in his body. She could feel it just as she felt the change in her own. She locked her heels against the backs of his thighs as she rocked to meet him.

  He drove down one last time, then stopped dead, quivering violently, shattering in her arms. Lost. Found. Shattered.

  And, Sierra hoped desperately as her own body splintered, made whole.

  Singing in the rain.

  That’s what they did the next morning. She actually got him down to the beach in the middle of a downpour—“We’re going swimming anyway! Who cares at what point we get wet?”—and danced along the sand.

  He didn’t dance. But he felt like it. His heart danced. And his soul. And every other part of him but his feet.

  And even they did a couple of quick shuffles when he was sure no one—except maybe Sierra—was looking.

  “You’re a wonderful dancer,” she protested when he wouldn’t. “You danced on the Sloop John B.” That’s what she was calling the yacht now.

  “But there was music then,” he argued.

  “There’s music now. In my heart.” She grabbed him and pressed his head against her breasts. “Can’t you hear it?”

  He heard enough music of his own. He kissed the tip of her breast and then grabbed her up into his arms and ran with her into the ocean, then sank down, submerging them both.

  They came up sputtering and laughing. And then they teased and tickled and wrestled and played. And when the rain stopped they came out and lay on the damp sand, breathless and hungry for each other.

  “I could make love to you right here,” he muttered.

  “If we didn’t have an audience.” Sierra nodded her head in the direction of a couple of little girls down the beach perhaps quarter of a mile away.

  “They’d never know.”

  “They won’t know,” Sierra said, hopping to her feet and pulling him up with her. “Because we’re going back up to the house to do it. I’m not sharing you, even voyeuristically, with anyone.”

  That was fine with him. Dominic had no desire to be shared. They went back to the house and made love in the shower, then in the bed, and barely managed to be dressed and respectable when Estelle arrived to clean.

  “You sleepyheads,” she admonished gently.

  “Oh,” Sierra said brightly, “Dominic’s been up for hours.” And then she giggled, and he felt his face flush.

  He pulled her into his arms and hugged her hard. “I’ll take this hussy out of your way,” he promised Estelle. “Come on. We’ll go back down on the beach.”

  They didn’t swim this time. They sat on the sand and dug tunnels and made sand castles because that was what he and his brothers had done here years ago and it seemed right that he do it with Sierra. She was family now.

  “We can do this with our kids,” he said.

  She looked up from digging a tunnel and her eyes were wide. “Kids?” she said in barely more than a whisper.

  “You want kids, don’t you? I figured you did. You’re good with kids. Frankie. Stephen and Lizzie.”

  “I’d love to have kids.” She looked like he’d given her the moon. “I wasn’t sure you…” Her voice died out and she shrugged a little awkwardly.

  “I want kids,” he said firmly. “I would always want them. No matter what. I couldn’t believe Rhys turning his back on Mariah when she was carrying his child.”

  “I remember you didn’t fight too hard to keep his whereabouts secret,” she said with a mischievous grin.

  Dominic remembered that day, too, remembered being astonished when this purple-haired virago had invaded his office and threatened his manhood unless he surrendered his brother’s address.

  “I wouldn’t have given it to you,” he said, “despite the turn-on, if I hadn’t thought you were right. A man has a responsibility to his child. And to its mother.”

  Their gazes met across the castle. Then they were kneeling right in the middle of it, kissing with a desperation that might have led them to be a public spectacle if Sierra hadn’t pulled back suddenly.

  Dominic groaned, needing her now.

  “I wonder if Estelle has finished in the house,” Sierra said raggedly.

  He hauled her to her feet. “She’s done, whether she’s finished or not.”

  They walked into the small harborside village that afternoon because Sierra insisted. “I know honeymooners are supposed to spend every minute in bed. But I do want to see where I’ve been.”

  “In bed,” Dominic said, grinning. “Why does it matter where you’ve been?”

  “It does,” Sierra insisted. “We’ll have a good time. We can pick up some groceries, and stop and tell Estelle we’ll cook for ourselves tonight.”

  “And then she won’t come back and…” Dominic could already see possibilities in that.

  “And I’d like to find something to take home to remember this by. A souvenir.”

  “You might already have a souvenir,” he said with a grin and a glance at her midriff.

  The heat of h
is gaze made Sierra warm all over. And the thought that he, too, wanted a child thrilled her to bits.

  If he would only say, “I love you.”

  She stopped herself even as she thought it. She knew of other men who couldn’t say the words. Her own father, according to her mother, had barely managed to get them past his lips half a dozen times in his life.

  Which was six more than Dominic had, she thought. But then she slipped her hand in his and leaned up to kiss him.

  And he kissed her back with such fervor that she wondered how she could ever doubt.

  He would never have told her it at all if she hadn’t asked.

  They’d gone out fishing that afternoon with Maurice’s brother, Victor, and Victor had said, “Ain’t seen you in years an’ years. Not since your weddin’ what wasn’t.” And then he’d clamped his mouth shut and seconds later when he opened it again, everything he’d said had to do with fishing.

  But that night when they were in bed, lights out, hunger sated, sleepy and warm in each other’s arms, Sierra asked, “Will you tell me about it?”

  He knew she wouldn’t press. It wasn’t so much of a question as an invitation, and though he would never have guessed he would take her up on it, now that she was asking, he did.

  “It was the year after my mother died,” he told her and felt the familiar lump lodge in his throat. “I was twenty-four. Finished with my M.B.A. I’d been working for Wolfe’s since high school in one capacity or another, being groomed to take over, my dad directing every move. And that year I’d moved out of the subsidiary offices to New York. I was his right-hand man—and loving every minute of it. And he was missing my mother. We both were. Rhys had Sarah and Nathan had his photography and was gone a lot. But the two of us were sort of…lost, I guess. Him for sure, and I just wanted to be like him. And then he said, ‘You ought to get married.’”

  He rolled onto his back, folded his arms under his head and stared at the ceiling fan that moved lazily in the moonlit room. “Just like that. And I agreed.”

  He remembered it so well, how sure he’d been that his dad was right, that it was time to get married, even when he didn’t even have a woman in mind.