The Bridesmaid and the Billionaire

by Shirley Jump

  “Leonard, I told you not to call me.” Kane paused. “I know you’re nervous about this deal, but you and Sawyer can handle it. A week won’t make any difference. Might even bring the price down.” Another pause. The lines deepened in Kane’s forehead and he turned, pacing a tight circle on the deck. “No. Don’t tell them a damned thing, Leonard. I’ll be back on Monday, and not a minute sooner.”

  Susannah headed inside with the dog, to retrieve Kane’s shirt from the dryer. By the time she returned to the backyard, Kane was tucking the phone away. “I’m sorry you had to step in and take over with the dog. But I appreciate it.” He took the shirt from her and began putting it back on, much to her disappointment. “Thanks for washing this. It looks like new again.”

  “No problem.” Though a large part of her wished the washer had messed up and either shrunk or ruined the shirt so she could have gotten that fabulous male view for a while longer. She gestured toward the cell. “Work issues?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. The easygoing friendliness from earlier had disappeared and an icy tension descended over Kane. “Something like that.”

  “You’re not the type of guy who answers a question with a paragraph, are you?” Susannah fell into step beside him as they crossed the yard. Rover found a stick, picked it up and brought it with him, ever hopeful. Kane ignored the offered game of fetch. What had that Leonard wanted that had made Kane turn on and off like a switch?

  “Thanks for the sandwich, but I better get back to my cabin. Come on, Rover, time to go.” He fished his keys out of his pocket, thumbed the remote on his rental car and waited for the answering beep.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I have…a mess I have to clean up. It seems it wasn’t as easy to take a break from my life as I expected.” He let out a sigh. “I don’t know why I thought it would be.”

  Kane placed a hand on the gate of her fence, then turned back to face Susannah. A flicker of regret filled his eyes, then disappeared, gone as fast as a cloud on a sunny day.

  Before she could read anything more, he pushed through the gate, climbed in his car and drove away, a man who clearly had a lot of secrets. And wasn’t sharing any of them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HOW did he get roped into these things? All his life, Kane Lennox had delegated. Prioritized. Said no to timewasters. He opened his mouth to do exactly that when Paul beat him to the punch.

  “Man, I hate to even ask you for a favor,” Paul said, grinning. “But you know I will.”

  They sat in Flanagan’s Pub in downtown Chapel Ridge—or what passed for downtown, considering it was nothing more than a couple of streetlights. The shamrock-decorated barroom played country music, served peanuts and reminded Kane of the ones he and Paul had frequented years ago. The easy camaraderie the two men had had in college had been restored, as if not a moment had passed since graduation. Over a couple of beers, Kane had caught up on Paul’s life, his job teaching history to high schoolers, his parents moving to Florida last year—just about everything.

  When it came to his own life, Kane remained closemouthed. What could he say, really? Life’s the same. Still rich. Still overworked. No one wanted to hear those complaints.

  “When was the last time you took a vacation, anyway?” Paul asked. “I mean, with your bank account, you must go on some pretty rockin’ trips.”

  “This is my first.”

  “First?” Paul let out a curse of disbelief. “Dude, in case you didn’t notice, you could buy the island. You don’t even have to rent a room there.”

  Kane chuckled. “The one thing I can’t buy is time. Every year, I’d plan a vacation, and then a crisis would arise. My father or someone at the company would need me. And with my father…” He let out a breath. “It was complicated. I’d stay, you know, because I’d keep hoping that this time if I stepped up and played the hero for the company, he’d beat the drum and say, ‘Hey, this is my son, would you look at him?’ But he never did. Still, like an idiot, I kept on making those sacrifices. After a while, I just stopped planning trips. My assistant ended up taking most of them, anyway.”

  “That’s sad, Kane. Totally sad.”

  He shrugged. “I’m here now. I got tired of beating a dead issue. When you called, it was like a lightbulb went off, and I said to hell with it all, walked out that door and came. Worked out great for both of us.”

  “And I totally appreciate it, too. I even get the whole mojito thing.”

  “Mojito?” Kane puzzled the word around. “Do you mean incognito?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. And I’m all for it, I mean, I’ve done the same thing a couple times.”

  “You have.” It wasn’t a question, but Kane put the words out there all the same.

  Paul nodded, then took a long gulp of beer. “There was this time, back before I met Jackie, so, it was…well, in my wilder days. You remember those, don’t you, Kane?”

  A grin crossed Kane’s face. “Barely.”

  “I know, you were a Lennox. And a Lennox doesn’t party.” Paul leaned over, lowering his beer and his voice. “Or at least, he doesn’t if Charles the butler’s watching.”

  “But when the butler’s sleeping…” Kane added sotto voce, smiling at the shared memory of sneaking out of the dorm rooms with Paul, the only guy on campus who hadn’t treated him like a leper because he’d arrived at Northwestern in a limo, and then later, with a butler for a roommate “…that’s when the fun can start.”

  Paul clinked his bottle against Kane’s. “You know it, buddy. God, there are days when I really miss those years.”

  “You and me both,” Kane said, taking a deep pull off the bottle, the feel of the glass against his lips foreign to him. Ten years had passed since he’d drunk straight from a bottle, and even then he’d only been able to do it when Charles hadn’t been around.

  Because a Lennox never acted common.

  A Lennox never raised his voice.

  A Lennox never created a scene.

  And most of all, a Lennox never did anything that would end up in the papers—except be born, get married and die. And all three of those things better be done in a dignified manner, by God, or he’d find himself on the other side of the Lennox name faster than a dog that had peed on the Aubusson carpet.

  But in those months before his father had sicced Charles on him, Kane and Paul had had fun. Kane would always be grateful to Paul for that—and for the nights they had snuck out on the eagle-eyed Charles because it had provided much-needed sanity and normalcy in a life as constricting as a straitjacket.

  Paul picked a few peanuts out of the small wooden bowl on the bar, popped them into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “So, have you told Susannah who you are?”

  “No. And I’m not going to.”

  Paul lowered his voice. “No one knows who you are? How is that possible?”

  “Nobody knows who runs a company, Paul. They see the ads for Lennox Gems, sure, but it doesn’t say CEO Kane Lennox at the bottom or anything. As long as my father doesn’t start some media frenzy, I’m fine. And I don’t want to tell Susannah or anyone else who I am because—” Kane toyed with his beer bottle “—I’m tired of people who look at me as a dollar bill first and a human being second.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me, Kane. I owe you.” Paul clapped him on the back.

  “You owe me? For what?”

  “You were my sanity for getting through college, too. My old man, he thought a history degree was a waste of time. A waste of my football scholarship to Northwestern.” Paul spun the bottle on the bar. “Who was I kidding, though? I was never going to play pro ball. You gotta get fairy dust for that kind of career. I needed a real plan. A real job. But my old man, he wanted the NFL or nothing. You…you understood, Kane. And I don’t know if I ever told you how much that meant to me.”

  Kane shrugged. “You didn’t have to.”

  “Yeah.” Paul nodded, in the near silent communication of men. Then he grinned and tapped
his beer bottle against Kane’s. “If Susannah tries to kill me for keeping a secret from her and her sister, you will hire me a bodyguard, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” He unearthed some cashews this time. “And you sure you don’t mind doing this favor for me tonight? It won’t be as fun as some of our midnight raids on the women’s dorm rooms, but it won’t be horrible, either.”

  “Now I know why you never went into sales,” Kane deadpanned.

  Paul chuckled. “Susannah’s my sister-in-law, Kane. She’s not a five-year-old dented Caddy I’m trying to unload. She’s…nice.”

  “I know she is.” Very nice, indeed. But Kane kept those thoughts to himself. If he spoke them aloud, Paul would be running a matchmaker service right in Flanagan’s. What Paul wouldn’t understand was why Kane and Susannah would be wrong for each other in the long run.

  Susannah Wilson was the kind of woman men had permanent thoughts about. The kind of woman a man married. And the exact kind of woman—

  His father would ship off to Europe for being “unacceptable” as a Lennox family addition.

  Paul dug through the bowl of nuts again. “Damn. All the cashews are gone. And the peanuts. Larry, are you getting cheap on the nut mix again?”

  “No, you’re just getting greedy,” the bartender said, giving Paul a good-natured grin.

  “Next he’ll be serving popcorn and calling it a meal.” Paul pushed the bowl away, then turned back to Kane and gestured over his shoulder after the stout bartender had crossed to the opposite end. “He’s a good guy, Larry is, but he’s had a hard time. I went to school with him.”

  “What do you mean, hard time?”

  “His kid’s got leukemia.” Paul shook his head. “’Bout breaks my heart. But Larry, you’d never know it. He’s got a smile for everyone who comes in here. The town threw him a benefit a few months ago, to raise some money for the medical bills. That’s what small towns are like, Kane. They’re like families, only bigger.”

  “And without the politics.”

  Paul chuckled. “Trust me, small towns still have politics. Speaking of weird things in small towns, don’t go running around barefoot on the lawn anymore, either. What was that about, anyway?”

  “My feet were hot.”

  Okay, that had to be the lamest excuse known to man, but Kane wasn’t going to get all honest with Paul. He had no desire to tell another guy—good friend or not—that he had had this sudden urge to feel spring grass beneath his toes. Paul would label him crazy for sure.

  Paul must have agreed with the lame part because he laughed, then shook his head. “Yeah. Whatever floats your boat. But don’t do it again. You’ll scare the neighbors.”

  Kane nodded. “Are you sure Susannah wants to go out with me?”

  “Let me put it this way. Jackie wants to be alone with me. Susannah lives with us, and I know for a fact she doesn’t have any plans for tonight, so she should be easy to persuade. Either way, we’re desperate, so if you don’t get Susannah out of the house…” He put up his hands.

  “You’re getting married in three days, Paul.”

  “In all the years you’ve known me, have you ever called me a patient man?” Paul tipped the beer to emphasize his point. “Exactly. Nothing against Susannah, but Jackie and I just want a night alone. I need to talk to Jackie anyway. She’s running through our wedding budget like it’s Halloween candy. I love her, but she’s got no concept of money, or taking things easy. But talking to Jackie requires a little…buttering up, if you know what I mean.” Paul grinned. “So do me a favor, Kane, take Susannah out. Let her show you the sights.”

  Kane laughed. “In Chapel Ridge? That’ll take, what, ten minutes?”

  Paul rose and clapped him on the back. “Improvise, my friend. If I remember right, that was your real major in college. Especially when it came to fooling the butler into thinking you were behaving.”

  “Fishing. You want to take me fishing.” Susannah stared at Kane Lennox, sure she had heard him wrong. Of all the vacationers she had met, this man looked the least like a fisherman. Especially wearing those designer shoes and pressed jeans. Granted, he’d exchanged his button-down shirts for a T-shirt and a green Chapel Ridge sweatshirt, but he still had that dressed-up air about him, despite the more casual attire.

  Nevertheless, Kane was well stocked with fishing accessories. He held out a pole to her, then raised a plastic tackle box into view. “It’s always more fun with two, don’t you agree?”

  “What about Paul? He’s your best friend, isn’t he? And fishing is a guy thing.”

  “Paul has…plans.”

  Susannah shot a glance at her future brother-in-law. He spread his palms up and gave her a blank look of innocence. “Plans. Sorry.”

  Plans? She couldn’t remember Jackie mentioning anything. “Wha—”

  Then over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of Jackie, setting out a trio of candles on the dining room table. Jackie, wearing a black skirt, and a sexy red V-neck shirt, her hair long and curled.

  Date hair. Date clothes. Date candles.

  The lightbulb burst in Susannah’s brain. Her face heated, and she took a step back. “Oh. Those plans. Uh…I should…uh…”

  “Fish,” Kane finished, filling her hand with the pole and giving her a grin. “You should go fishing. With me.”

  “Or you can stay with us,” Jackie said, with all the conviction of a low-willpower dieter in a cookie factory. “Paul and I were just going to rent a movie and—”

  “Kane’s really looking for a fishing partner,” Paul cut in, taking Jackie’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “You know how it is, Suzie-Q, when you go on vacation, and you want to do stuff, but you don’t really know anyone to do anything with.”

  No, she didn’t, she wanted to tell them. Because she had never been on vacation. Had never left this town. Instead, she pasted on a smile, gave the fishing pole a little shake, and grabbed her denim jacket. “Sorry I’ll miss the movie,” she said. “Save me some popcorn.”

  “Before you poke my eye out,” Kane said, slipping into the driver’s seat of his rental car, opposite Susannah, “let me take this and—” He took the fishing pole, rolled down the window and threw it onto the ground.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Disarming you. Before you blame me for what happened back there. Or…let me take all the blame, anyway.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Were you in on the plan?”

  “Well…” He swallowed. “Maybe a little. But I had no idea they were going to shove you out the door like a—”

  “Houseguest who had overstayed his welcome? Like a repo man who showed up to take away the family’s minivan just before the soccer playoffs? Like—”

  He put up his hands. “Truce. I get the hint. And I’m sorry.”

  Susannah sank further into the seat. “Apparently it’s me who can’t get the hint.”

  He started the car and put it into gear, pulling away from Jackie and Paul’s house. Rover settled down in the backseat, clearly content to go for a ride in the car. “Don’t feel bad. Paul and Jackie are just too focused on their own merger to realize the collateral damage they’re leaving in their wake.”

  “Either way, I won’t be here to be caught in the ripples anymore.”

  He glanced over at her. “Where are you going?”

  “Travel, see the world. As soon as the wedding’s over. I’m closing my shop and getting out of town for a few weeks.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because I want more. I want that life. The life everyone else seems to have and I seem to have missed.” She traced a pattern along the window.

  He let out a little laugh.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You find my idea funny.”

  “No. Just…ironic.” He took a left, not going anywhere in particular that Susannah could tell. They certainly weren’t going fishing, since the fishing pole was bac
k on Jackie’s lawn.

  “How so?”

  “Some people,” he began, seeming to choose his words carefully as he made yet another turn, “seek out the opposite of what you are looking for. They find the bright lights and big city aren’t all they’re purported to be, and instead, they reach for the solitude of the very life you already have.”

  Susannah shook her head. “I can’t imagine why. There’s nothing here that I want.”

  “Maybe so. For you.” He turned down one more road, then stopped the car. They had, after all, stopped by the far end of Lake Everett. A few feet away, the still waters glistened under the moonlight, dark and tranquil, holding their secrets in an almost ebony peace. Far across the lake, the lights of the hotel twinkled, flanked by the flicker of the occasional firepit from the cabins.

  “I thought we weren’t going fishing.”

  “We aren’t. But unless you have another plan, we still can’t go back to your house, and I didn’t think you wanted to be…well, alone in my cabin. And almost everything else in this town seems to shut down after five.”

  “Exactly why I want to leave and eventually move away, if I can take my business elsewhere.”

  Kane turned the car off and pocketed the keys, then grabbed a black leather jacket from the backseat. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

  Alone with Kane. In the dark. Temptation curled its grip around Susannah.

  She wanted to resist. Knew she should. She had no time for a man in her life, no room for a relationship, especially one with someone who would be gone soon. “I should probably go to work. Get some paperwork done—”

  He reached out and clasped her hand, cutting off her words and, with the electricity in his touch, her breath. “There’s always going to be time for work. Believe me. But there won’t always be a night as beautiful as this. Take it from someone who knows.”

  Then he got out of the car and came around to her side, opening her door before she could disagree. Rover clambered over the seat and leapt out of the car, bounding toward the lake.