“Oh, no, I…of course, Lucia and I would love to get married together.” She glanced at Lucia, who wore an enigmatic smile. “But I need to get married in Minnesota. I can’t get married here.”
“Why not? Get married now, have your reception in Minnesota.”
“I don’t have a dress, and besides, my family isn’t here.”
“That’s right, Benito,” Lucia said. “Her family isn’t here.”
Benito pressed another kiss to her hand. “At least you have family. My bride has no one. We must make sure your bridesmaid is here to celebrate with you. No more seasickness. We’ll move the rehearsal dinner to the cabana tonight.”
Then he bent down and kissed Scarlett’s cheek. “Thank you for finding her.”
But Scarlett only noticed the keen pressure of Luke’s hand on hers. Which probably ended up saving them when a voice shrilled through the pavilion. “What is going on in here?”
Luke looked at her, eyes wide. For a second, she wanted to see if perhaps she could take flight. “Uh…”
Bridgett, now attired in a long, breezy dress, and her two remaining bridesmaids marched down the center aisle, right up to Scarlett. “I thought I told you to stay away from my wedding.”
“I…”
“She’s not in your wedding,” Lucia said, casting Scarlett a look. “She’s in mine. She’s my maid of honor.”
Bridgett glanced at Lucia. “What are you talking about? She’s my maid of honor.”
“No, I’m not,” Scarlett said, ignoring the confusion on Bridgett’s face. And then something took a hold of her and she said, “I don’t even know you.”
Bridgett recoiled as if she’d been slapped. “What? You’re my sister.”
Scarlett frowned and gave thanks for once that she hadn’t inherited a drop of Bridgett’s beauty. She resembled their Irish mother, thank you very much, with her height issues, her curves, her green eyes and dark unruly hair. “C’mon Lucia, let’s get you ready for your party tonight.” She reached out her hand.
Benito caught it. “Wait a second here.” He turned to Bridgett. “Who are you?”
“I’m Bridgett Hanson. And this is my sister, Scarlett.”
Benito raised an eyebrow. “Her sister? What are you doing here?”
“I’m getting married.” She looked at Lucia. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting married, too.” Lucia tightened her hold on Scarlett’s hand. “Tomorrow night.”
“I’m getting married tomorrow night. Here.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucia said, glancing at Luke.
“Well, if not here, then somewhere on this resort.” Bridgett said. “I am just heading in now to arrange it with the coordinator.” She turned to Scarlett. “So, what are you doing here? Why are you with him? What’s going on?”
What would a real spy do, or say? What—
“I’m her fiancé. Remember, we met yesterday? In the spa?” Good thing Luke had her hand or she might fall right over.
“Of course I remember you. When did this happen? In the taxi ride to the island?” She turned to Scarlett. “You said you barely knew this guy! What about Dylan?”
Benito’s eyes narrowed dangerously.
“Well, see, Luke and I have a sort of on-again, off-again—”
“On-again,” he said quickly.
“—relationship.”
“Yeah, I surprised her here when I heard she was coming.”
“But didn’t you and she come for our wedding?” Benito asked.
“We did, but we had a big fight a few weeks ago, and she called it off. So I thought I’d try and see if this romantic setting wouldn’t woo her back into my arms.” As if to emphasize his words, Luke pulled her into a side embrace. “And it worked.”
“There was something strange about you two that first night on the yacht,” Benito said.
“You spent the night on a yacht with him?”
Scarlett rolled her eyes and didn’t even try to defend her virtue to her sister.
“But I don’t understand. Whose wedding is she in?” Benito asked.
“Mine!” Bridgett and Lucia chorused.
Oh, boy.
“I don’t understand.” Benito’s tone had a muscle twitching in Luke’s jaw. “Do you know her or not?”
That’s when the words finally arrived. Scarlett stepped out of Luke’s embrace. “Yes, but sometimes I don’t want to.”
Bridgett’s eyes widened, her mouth opening.
“And this entire coincidence is my fault. See, as soon as I found out about Bridgett’s wedding, I told Lucia about the destination on Isla Mujeres—”
“I knew I was here first!” Bridgett said. “I should have the pavilion!”
Scarlett ignored her. “Lucia loved the idea of a destination wedding, although I had no idea that they’d actually pick the same dates. And then, when Bridgett fired me as maid of honor—”
“She fired you?” Benito said.
“Twice. So I thought it wouldn’t be a problem for me to attend your wedding, but then Bridgett needed me again, so I thought I’d just attend both—”
“As the maid of honor?”
“What can I say? I’m popular.”
She didn’t miss Luke’s smile. And it sent warmth through her, emboldened her.
“I’m sorry for the mix-up. But don’t worry, Benito, I’m fired again, so I’ll be here for Lucia. Right by her side the entire time.”
Luke’s smile vanished as a slow grin slid over Benito’s face. “So, this is your sister!”
Perhaps he’d been in the sun too long?
“You can get married!”
“Married?” Bridgett asked.
“Married?” Lucia said, her eyebrow rising.
“Married?” Scarlett echoed.
“Yes. Right here, tomorrow, beside Lucia.”
Luke’s arm tightened around her.
“I can’t think of any reason why not, can you?” Benito asked.
Luke’s mouth opened yet nothing came out.
Scarlett couldn’t work with nothing.
“Then it’s a double wedding.” He leaned down, kissed Scarlett on the cheek, then clamped Luke on the arm. “C’mon, Luke. Let’s get you a suit.”
Luke looked hard at Scarlett and she managed a smile and a nod.
“You’re getting married?” Bridgett asked, her gaze going between Lucia and Scarlett.
“Huh. Yeah. I don’t suppose you want to be my maid of honor?”
Luke looked like an albatross. He stared at himself in the mirror in Benito’s bedroom on the yacht and realized he’d lost his mind.
For a second, when he saw his reflection, clad in a white suit, a gray ascot at his neck, shaven and showered, he actually saw himself standing at the altar, watching his bride—his bride?—walk down the aisle.
He imagined Scarlett’s dark caramel hair piled high on her head, tendrils curling around her face, those big green eyes pinned on him, as if he might actually be her hero.
How he suddenly wanted to be, wanted to rescue her from this mess he’d created. Fired, again, from her crazy sister’s wedding. Roped, one wrong word at a time, into danger, and now cajoled into marrying him.
Except he wouldn’t let it get that far. No, he’d come up with a plan, something to oust her from the wedding, off the island and preferably out of Mexico.
A doozy of a fight should do it, although the ideas that entered his brain made him a little sick.
“The suit is a good fit. Perhaps a little wide around the waist.” Benito sat at his bar, nursing a drink, as his valet tried to fit Luke into Benito’s clothes. “But trust me, she’ll only see you.”
The guy who should have been her date? Or the guy who had dragged her into trouble? Who would Scarlett see?
“Benito, are you really sure this a good idea? I mean, maybe she’s not ready.”
“She said yes, correct?”
Yes? To what? To his mythical wedding proposal? He nodded.
“And you wouldn’t ask her to marry you if you weren’t ready, correct?”
Luke managed a smile.
“So, why wait? Do you love her?”
Did he love her? He nodded, but the words cut inside him. He loved the way she laughed, her eyes lighting up her entire face. He loved her spontaneity, the way she could keep up with his stories and add to them. He loved her willingness to help Lucia, and even her sister.
He loved the way she listened to him without judgment. And how she yielded in his arms.
And he loved the way she’d given him her secrets, looking at him with trust in her eyes.
Most of all, he loved how…how he trusted her back.
Yes, a part of him, the part that didn’t live in a crazy world of danger and lies, the part that wanted to be just her wedding date, could easily love her.
“Of course I do,” he added to his nod.
Benito smiled. “The first time I met Lucia, I knew she would be my wife. She saw a good man in me. A man I wanted to be. She makes me feel like I am that man.” He stared out the window. “I would kill for her.”
Cold streaked down Luke’s spine at Benito’s words, but he just kept staring at his reflection. Suddenly, he wished he could go back to that moment when Scarlett opened his taxi door. He should have taken one extra second to ask, to confirm. Are you Stacey?
When she said no, he should have pushed her out of the taxi.
He raised his gaze, met Benito’s in the mirror. “Me, too. Scarlett makes me feel like I’m the man I should be.”
Benito nodded and took a drink.
Yes, tonight, somehow, Luke would have to make a spectacle to make sure Scarlett hadn’t a prayer of attending tomorrow’s wedding. Or…
Plead with her to dump him. Publicly.
Both options made his chest clench.
“I need to find a wedding ring,” he said, leaving the suit in Benito’s care. Benito gave him a strange smile as Luke left the yacht and headed down the dock, hoping to find Scarlett and Lucia.
He’d left them alone long enough. Yes, Scarlett had the pager, but without him nearby, it would offer little in the way of rescue. If either of them got hurt, he’d never forgive himself.
Not that he ever forgave himself. He just piled his mistakes on top of each other. You need to forgive yourself, Luke.
Scarlett’s words from last night wound through him. As did his retort, I can’t erase what happened.
No, his mistakes still woke him in a cold sweat.
If only he hadn’t been so thirsty for a woman’s laughter, her touch. Her acceptance. And that only made his realization worse. He was like his father. A person who let his emptiness destroy the lives of others. His father went from woman to woman, shattering their hearts, and eventually their family.
I keep waiting for Him to betray me, to walk away. When he’d spoken those words in the darkness on the boat, he’d meant them to be about God, but they could apply to his father, too. He couldn’t believe he’d actually said that, had actually let her that far inside. Thankfully, she’d been gentle. God isn’t like your father, Luke.
If he’d never forgiven his father, how could he possibly forgive himself for being just like him?
He doesn’t treat us as we think we should be treated. He wanted to flinch at the quiet accuracy of her statement. He couldn’t bear to trust God’s love—His forgiveness—for him. Not after his sins.
Which meant that even if he did want to imagine Scarlett in a white dress, her eyes shining as she looked at him, as she walked down the aisle, he had to purge that thought from his mind and thank God that this gig was temporary.
He could love Scarlett. In fact, he might be halfway there already.
But he didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve to be happy.
Sweat filmed his spine as he passed by the cabana and cut through the open-air bar to catch some shade.
Bridgett sat at a high-top table alone, nursing some orange drink, her blond hair piled high on her head. With her regal cheekbones and full lips, he could see her on a cover of a magazine or strutting down some runway. Suddenly he veered toward her, something hot sizzling in his chest.
“I just have to tell you something,” he said, his voice apparently running the show, the tone dark and angry.
Bridgett looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed. That might have told him something, might have sent off a warning, but he flew right past that.
“Your sister is amazing. She’s funny and brave and compassionate, but you don’t see that, do you? You see the kid sister who divided your family, but you don’t see what it cost her. She dropped everything to come down here and help you plan your wedding, and you’re firing her because of a mistake the chef made—”
“Duncan was in love with her.” Bridgett’s words, so softly spoken, stopped him cold. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “He just never had the courage to ask her out. But he did love her, and I stole him.” She looked up at Luke, and her eyes filled. “I stole him because I hated her. I’m not even sure why, but I blamed her for the fact that my parents always ran back and forth between us.”
Luke inhaled slowly, still trying to believe her words. “It’s because you felt guilty. And you hated that feeling. So you hated her.” He wasn’t exactly sure where that came from, but it felt right.
“Yeah.” She pressed her manicured fingers to her face. “I never dreamed that one agent meeting in Minneapolis would lead to so many sacrifices. Yes, a part of me loved being in the limelight. But I never expected it, and I walked into it without realizing the cost. For a long while, I thought that being in front of the camera was where I belonged, but you know, it blinds you. You always see yourself through the lens of others until…until you don’t know who you are. Until you don’t know yourself at all.”
Luke rested his foot on a rung of the high-top chair. “Why did you come to Rochester?”
She stared at her drink. “I fell in love with the wrong man.” She closed her eyes. “He was a photographer, and he made me feel beautiful. I don’t know why I needed his love so much, but I ate up his words as if I’d been starving for years. He told me that he wanted to marry me.”
Luke knew the rest but waited for it anyway, a fist tightening in his gut.
“But he was already married.”
Yes, that might cause someone to move across the ocean and find a life in a different town. Like Rochester.
Like Prague.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But that doesn’t give you an excuse to hurt your sister. Or marry a man you don’t love.”
“But I do love Duncan. See, I started out wanting to hurt my sister for her perfect, easy life. For taking my parents from me. But then I fell in love.” She looked up at Luke, her eyes glossy again. “I love him more than I ever dreamed. He’s solid and kind and he doesn’t see me through a lens. Duncan doesn’t need me to be any more than I am. He sees me without makeup and with all my blemishes and loves me anyway.”
“But he loved Scarlett.”
She drew in a breath. “I thought, when she confessed that she loved him at my engagement party, that he’d dump me and run back to her. So I cut her out of my life and shamed her.”
“She loves you, Bridgett. You underestimate her. She came here with a full heart to help you. I think she wants you to be happy.”
Bridgett looked up at him. “I guess I don’t deserve her.”
Well, that made two of them.
“I even set her up on a blind date this weekend with one of Duncan’s geeky cousins. I called it a favor. But really, I just wanted to pour salt in the wound. Who knew that she was already engaged? I can’t believe it—you two are really getting married? Tomorrow?”
And if he said no, then what? Scarlett would probably end up on the arm of Dylan from Davenport, dumped yet again.
So he said it with conviction, with so much of his heart in the words, for Scarlett and her honor. “Yes. I’m marrying your sister tomorrow a
t sunset.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I barely know you. Can I have your word that you won’t hurt her? Won’t betray her in any way?”
He dug deep and found a smile that didn’t belong to him, a voice that he didn’t own, and said, “Yes. You have my word.” And he knew that there would never be forgiveness for him.
ELEVEN
“You are so beautiful.”
The words out of the salesclerk’s mouth didn’t have the impact that they might have if issued from Luke, but Scarlett would embrace them, because yes, she looked beautiful. She stood in her so-called wedding dress on the tiny platform that elevated her above the floor, her reflection captured in three giant mirrors that revealed all sides of her dress, as well as Lucia, seated in the viewing chairs, a grin on her face.
“I’m not getting married, you know,” Scarlett said when the salesclerk stepped away. Although as soon as she ventured into the tiny boutique of all-occasion dresses—including spur-of-the-moment wedding dresses—a switch flipped inside her brain. She started smelling flowers and hearing dance music, and she saw in her mind’s eye Luke standing at the end of the aisle, grinning at her.
Her groom.
No, not her groom!
“It’s all pretend, let’s not forget that.”
Lucia made a face, got up and straightened the train. The dress had a fairy-tale aura about it with tiny capped sleeves, a row of pearl buttons up the back, layers of ruffles that spilled down the train. “Well, you should be. The way Luke looks at you—if I didn’t know it was all for my benefit, I would buy that you two were madly in love.”
Well, one of them might be. Wait, no. Had she really thought that? She didn’t love Luke. She barely knew him. Sure, he’d come after her, listened to her, and yes, when he looked at her she could believe that she just might be the only girl on the planet. But she needed to focus on the word pretend. Fake. For the benefit of the mission.
“He’s a good actor.”
“Apparently, so are you.”
Scarlett averted her face before Lucia spotted the truth. She could love Luke Dekker. She could quit her job—not that she had a real one—and move across the ocean with him to Prague, to start a new life. She saw herself—foolishly, she knew that—becoming his partner, maybe going undercover again, a new identity every weekend.
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