The Accidental Bridegroom

by Ann Major

  “You are not Sadie’s father! Not in any sense other than…than basic biology!”

  “Which is pretty damn basic.” He punctuated this mild statement with a broad grin.

  “You don’t even know her!”

  Rafe flinched. “Whose fault is that?” he growled, stung by her absurd accusation that he was somehow a negligent father. “You ran off. When I tried to get in touch with you, you never answered—”

  “Because I knew you would lie to me again…and that I might be tempted to believe you. Do you think I wanted to have a baby alone? I—I would have told you except that…” She swallowed back the sob that rose in her throat. “Except that…I knew you wouldn’t want her, except…maybe to use her existence to get more money out of Armi.”

  The muscles along his jaw flexed as he remembered Armi tossing the wad of bills down on top of him into that blood-spattered sewer. “You never gave me a thought,” Rafe said coldly. “And as for me using Sadie to extort money from your stepfather—” Rafe’s sensual mouth curved bitterly. “I wasn’t for sale six and a half years ago. And I’m not for sale now. Although I’m even willing to forgive that cut, too—”

  “You fool! I don’t want your forgiveness! I just want you gone. Get out of here! This minute!”

  “Sexual fidelity means a lot to me, Skinny,” he countered softly.

  “You conceited…ma­cho…idiot! The only reason I never slept with anybody else is because the whole wretched experience with you was so distasteful, and I dreaded the thought of repeating it.”

  “Really? Well, you damn sure repeated it—the first chance you got to do it with me again. All I had to do was touch your hand to know how hot you were for me. You nearly jumped a foot.”

  “So did you!”

  “I’m not denying it. And don’t try to pretend you didn’t enjoy the sex. Because—”

  “Last night …it meant nothing!”

  “Then why are you so upset this morning, if it meant so little?” He touched her throat, letting his fingers become a gliding caress. The instant his fingertips came in contact with her warm skin, she shivered.

  Violently, she flung his hand away. “It was just the champagne,” she began stiffly, primly.

  “Oh, really?”

  “The champagne! Pita!” A shrill new note came into Cathy’s voice. Her frantic gaze flew to the empty bottle. “How…how much did we drink?”

  “Every last drop. I’ve got a splitting headache to prove it. Why?”

  Her eyes popped bigger. “Oh…oh, no reason,” she said casually, and yet not casually at all. Her cheeks had gone chalky; her dark eyes blazed queerly.

  “It was pretty potent stuff on an empty stomach, but I didn’t make love to you because I drank too much. I made love to you because I wanted you, more than I’d ever wanted anything or anyone in my life. I feel the same way this morning, cold sober with a splitting headache, even in the middle of this ridiculous argument. I’m sorry I deceived you.”

  She continued to stare up at him, her pale, frozen expression growing wilder and more hysterical. “You shouldn’t have pretended to be Maurice. You’ve ruined everything! All my plans! Pita…” Cathy opened her mouth to say more but suddenly seemed unable to choke out a single word.

  “All I know is that when I took you in my arms, I couldn’t help myself,” Rafe said gently. “You were magic. Something came over me. The feeling was so powerful, I simply couldn’t resist it. It was like a spell—”

  “Stop!” she whispered in that same odd, strangled tone.

  She closed her eyes. But a single tear rolled down her cheek. When he brought his hand to her cheek to wipe it away, she shrank, shivering again from his touch.

  “Dear God,” she moaned, her terrified eyes flying open. “It really worked. But on the wrong man! What have I done?”

  “Cathy—I love you. I always have. Nothing else matters…except that fact…and that we have a beautiful daughter.”

  Self-consciously, Cathy averted her eyes, her color heightening. “You don’t understand. What you feel isn’t real.”

  “I know what I felt, what I’m feeling, Slim.”

  “No. I let Pita put something in the champagne.”

  Dimly, he remembered Pita in the kitchen and the pink powder and the blue flames of the stove turning green.

  “Pita’s mother was a famous witch. Pita concocted a potion from her mother’s diary and cast a spell to make Maurice and me fall in love,” Cathy said. “Only you and I… drank the champagne.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Do you think I give a damn about Pita’s putting something in the champagne? All that matters is that after six and a half years without you, I found you again. I love you, you little idiot, in spite of everything you did to me. And you—”

  “No…” Cathy’s voice was low and choked. “You really hate me, and I—I hate you. But Pita’s potion makes us feel that we are attracted—”

  “We are attracted! I don’t give a damn about Pita or her dumb potion. All I know is that for years I believed you were all wrong for me. I was furious when Manuel wrote me a letter and sent me a picture of you and Sadie. But last night changed everything. I want to take you home. I want to marry you.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” She flashed her left hand at him. “This is reality. I’m already engaged—to Maurice. My mother has been planning this wedding for a year. Her high-society friends are already at my family’s hacienda.”

  “So—tell Maurice you love me and stand up to your mother. Let her throw her rich friends a party instead of a wedding. You can’t marry that titled sissy now that you’ve slept with me. What if you’re pregnant again?”

  “You can’t break off a wedding that’s a major social event. You don’t understand how it is. Important people from all over the world have flown here to see me marry Maurice.”

  “Yeah—I do understand. Tell him you love me and that I love you.”

  “I would have to be crazy—”

  “It’s one of your more adorable traits.”

  “Would you quit?”

  “Okay, we’re both crazy.” He hesitated. “The best things in life can’t be planned. They just happen. Like accidents. They take us by surprise just when we think we have the whole rotten mess figured out. You either go with them. Or you lose everything. You thought you’d caught the perfect bridegroom. And I came down here to make sure Manuel was wrong. Instead, I found out she’s mine, and you’re going to end up with me.”

  “So you really think you’re going to be my…accidental bridegroom?”

  “Yeah. I really do.” When Rafe’s hand gently touched the locket nestled against her warm throat, he felt her pulse flutter beneath his fingertips. “Tell me one thing,” he demanded huskily, caressing her neck. “Why are you still wearing this?”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Just go. I want my life back.”

  “So do I.” Lightly, he kissed her head. “I never had a life…after you. You feel the same way, and it scares you.”

  “How could I? You lied to me. You spent time with me because you were paid to. I was just a girl—”

  “You were twenty.”

  “I was a virgin.”

  “Come off it. You came on to me like a house on fire. You wanted me the first night we met. You weren’t afraid that night.”

  “Oh!” she lashed out, deeply upset. “You would remember only that and throw it up to me now!”

  “Hey—I wasn’t complaining. I was trying to set the record straight.”

  “You were ten years older, experienced. You knew exactly how to play me to make it look like that’s how it happened. You deliberately deceived me from the first. You made yourself seem exciting to a girl who wanted to rebel against her sheltered life.”

  “Why were you rebelling? Because you hated that life. I bet you live in this village ’cause you still do.”

  “The only reason you did any of the things you did or pretended to care about me was
for the money.”

  Rafe bristled at her cutting insults and low opinion of him. “Like a lot of rich people, you are so obsessed with your money, you let the power of it destroy everything in your life that has any real value. Okay—so you started off as a job to me. Okay—so Manuel promised to pay me double to keep you entertained. Okay—some of us aren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouths and we have to do all sorts of disgusting things—like work—to earn a living. Back then, I had to suck up to rich people I didn’t particularly like. I’ve handcuffed myself to all sorts of people I wished I’d never met. But I liked you. That part wasn’t a lie. Hell, I loved you. If you want to believe that the only reason I had an affair with you was because I got paid to spend time with you, go ahead. But I’ll say it again. I cared about you then. And last night I found out I still do. For years, I believed you used me. But I want to forget the past. To start over.”

  “If only I could believe you ever found me the least little bit desirable. But Armi said—”

  “Damn it! I desired you from the first moment I saw your long skinny foot and gorgeous leg coming over that wall. I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t care.”

  She sighed weakly, and he thought for a second he was gaining ground. Then Maurice’s chunk of expensive ice sparked wickedly and made her wonder about the plight of her fiancé.

  With big worried eyes, she glanced at Rafe. “What did you do to Maurice? Why didn’t he come last night?”

  “He’s okay. Let’s get back to the important stuff—us.”

  “Rafe, I asked what did you do—”

  “He’s okay.”

  She glared at him.

  “He’s taking a little nap in his closet.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid I handcuffed him and tied and gagged him.”

  “Dear God!”

  Forgetting she didn’t have a stitch on, she threw back the sheet. Except for the loose mantle of tangled gold falling around her shoulders, her lush body was completely exposed. “I’ve got to let him out!”

  For one long moment, Rafe stared down at her, hypnotized, the mere sight of her naked making desire flood through him. Hungrily, his eyes slid over her, lingering possessively on her full soft breasts. If he let her go to Maurice now, he would lose her forever.

  “Not till I prove to you that you love me, Slim,” Rafe murmured, pulling her back into his arms.

  “Never! Not in a million years. There’s never been anything between us that was real. Six and a half years ago, you were my paid bodyguard. You pretended to be a thief just to excite me, the way a babysitter would try to entertain a spoiled child with a new game. Last night, you stole Maurice’s place and drank the potion that was meant for him. You’re a lying snake. You shouldn’t have gone to bed with me, and you don’t belong here this morning. Maurice does. I don’t want you. I don’t even know the real you—”

  “Yes, you do,” Rafe said huskily. “And you will get to know me better and better. And this time, I promise you, there will be no more lies.”

  “This time?”

  When he traced the arch of her throat with a fingertip, she shuddered slightly. “See? You’re as eager for it as I am.”

  “N-no.” When she struggled, he eased his body on top of hers, pushing her so deeply into the bed that the mattress dipped and the bedsprings groaned.

  Even before he kissed her, she had begun to tremble.

  Hell—so had he.

  “You want me,” he whispered. “Only me. The same way I want you. Only you.”

  “N-no.” Cathy, caught off guard, uttered the negative automatically even as he began to trail his fingers over her soft curves, touching all the secret sensitive places that he knew would inflame her. “I want the keys to those handcuffs and closet. Maurice—”

  “All his life he’s been spoiled and pampered. It won’t hurt him to cool his heels a few more minutes. A rich guy like him can find another bride—easy. For me, there’s only you.”

  “N-no. I don’t believe-”

  “Then I’ll have to convince you.” His fingertips caressed her gently.

  She shut her eyes and said weakly, “I—I thought women always chased you.”

  “But you’re the only one I ever wanted.”

  She didn’t stop him when he kissed her eyelids, her forehead, her lips… And she almost purred as he told her again and again how much he wanted her, how much he cared.

  “Hurry,” she whispered, “so I can release Maurice.”

  Rafe’s hands moved over her, parting her legs, and neither of them even heard the soft moaning sound rising from deep within her throat when he touched her down there.

  She forgot Maurice and thought only of Rafe.

  Eight

  Rate’s kiss was long and thorough.

  The real world seemed to drift away as Cathy felt herself sinking into a red haze of voluptuous sensuality. Only vaguely was she aware of the earth trembling beneath the bed.

  Another baby earthquake?

  Had Pita’s spell gone haywire, or could this be love?

  Cathy knew she was already lost even before her lips parted helplessly to admit his tongue. As his hands shaped her against his nakedness, her own fingers slid convulsively around his neck, guiding him down, clinging even as her fingers glided through the thick black hair at his nape.

  His mouth was fused to hers, and when she felt him hot and hard and pulsating against her, she knew an exquisite happiness she had never imagined in her wildest dreams. All too soon she was returning his kisses wildly, loving the heaviness of his hot muscular body poised across her own. When he lowered his head to each breast, a fresh ripple of pleasure surged through her as his lips ate her nipples.

  His long lean hands were probing, caressing, exciting her until he had her wet with desire. Then his equally talented mouth moved over her belly. Lower still, to taste the torrid essence that was hers alone. And only when she was beyond reason from his skilled, intimate tongue, only when she was beyond shame, did he drag his mouth away.

  “Do you want me?” he asked softly. He did not wait for an answer, but pulled her beneath him, settling himself on top of her so that she fit him perfectly. His long legs parted hers.

  When she refused to say that she did, his lips claimed hers more ruthlessly, his hands sliding over her with rough expertise. She shut her eyes, stubbornly willing herself to resist him.

  “Say it,” he ordered huskily against her earlobe. “Admit that you want me.”

  She shivered. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want just your body. I want your heart and your soul.”

  So he could destroy her again.

  “Maybe… I—I don’t believe you. Armi told me about Consuelo and all those other women you protected and made love to.”

  “Damn it! I didn’t touch Consuelo.”

  “Did you or did you not spend a week in a Peruvian jungle handcuffed to her?”

  “That story has followed me for years. But it was a week fighting snakes, trying to stay alive in a flooding river on a shoddy raft after Consuelo’s freedom-fighter boyfriend shot me in the shoulder. I nearly bled to death.”

  “Armi showed me a newspaper picture of you kissing her when a military helicopter picked you up in Bolivia. She was all over you.”

  “She was kissing me,” Rafe drawled ominously, his voice softly arrogant. “I was too weak from the loss of blood to fight her off.”

  “I find that a little hard to believe.”

  “Look, I don’t care what sordid lies your stepfather told you—you were special to me. Yes, there were other women before you. Yes, I’ve made a few unsatisfactory attempts since.” His blue eyes shone tenderly. “But…there won’t ever be any more…if you’ll have me.

  “How can I believe—”

  “Believe this.”

  Rate’s black head dipped and his mouth was suckling her breast again and Cathy felt like she was melting in a huge furnace, so great was the passionate he
at that consumed her. Every part of her femininity felt swollen and moist from his kisses—achingly ready.

  She wanted him so much. She would die if she couldn’t have him.

  Rafe withdrew and rolled away from her.

  For a long moment, she lay there feeling warmly aroused, needy. He was breathing hard, too, so she was puzzled when he didn’t continue. After a minute or two, she scooted nearer and pressed her hot mouth into the curve of his neck.

  “Rafe…” She inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of him, savoring it. He shuddered. When she nibbled at his neck, his breath seemed to stop. But other than balling his fists at his side, he didn’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” she whispered as she ran a teasing finger down his shoulder and left arm. That’s when she noticed the scar where his tattoo had been. “Hey—where’s your cute little Chinese dragon?”

  “I stopped smoking, too. So what if I’ve been on a self-improvement kick,” he muttered. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Rafe—” Gently, she kissed the scar, letting her lush breast swing against his arm, letting its fullness brush his hand.

  “Say it,” he ordered thickly. “Tell me you want me the way I want you. Tell me you’ll make the same commitment to me that I am willing to make to you.”

  “But I—I’m not sure I can.”

  There was a fine sheen of sweat upon his forehead. His whole body felt tense and hard.

  “Did you know that every night for the past six and a half years, I’ve gone to bed alone and lain awake—longing for you?” he rasped. “Damn it. Why can’t you tell me, at least, that you thought of me…if only just once.”

  His words mirrored her own lonely existence without him so exactly, she wondered if he were a mind reader. “Does my saying it matter so much?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Okay,” she began lightly. “So—I—I kind of missed you.” But she could not conceal the tremor in her voice. “And I—I do want you. It’s just that I’m afraid to trust you or my own feelings when it comes to anything deeper.”

  His eyes met hers. “Could you, at least, take Maurice’s ring off, and promise me that you’ll never put it on again?”