Project: Runaway Bride

by Heidi Betts

Touché, he thought, biting back the ghost of a grin. “They’ll want to know where you are.”

  Her eyes narrowed, anger beginning to flash in their icy blue depths. “Well, don’t tell them,” she all but snapped.

  “You want me to lie to them?” He continued to bait her.

  “Of course not. Just tell them that I’m safe and don’t want anyone knowing where I am right now. I’ll be in touch after I’ve worked out a few things, and there’s no need to worry.”

  “Sounds good,” he said with a nod. “They might even believe it.”

  While she scowled at him, he moved around the island and returned to his perch on the stool. He took a casual drink of the orange juice he’d found in the refrigerator, waiting until she dropped her guard and sat down, too.

  “But how do I know you’re really okay? What if there’s something more nefarious going on that you’re not saying? What if I turn around and drive back to New York only to find out later that you were hurt or abducted or arrested?”

  Astonished, she raised her brow. “What would I be arrested for?”

  Her voice was sharp, sounding truly offended. And he knew why—no way in hell would Juliet Zaccaro ever behave in such a manner that would cause her to be arrested. He’d be surprised to discover that she’d ever even received a parking ticket.

  Juliet was a by-the-book kind of woman. She didn’t speed, she didn’t raise her voice and she most certainly didn’t break the law. Reid would be willing to bet that the only thing she’d ever done in her life that wasn’t aboveboard and filled her with guilt was...him.

  It was a bitter pill to swallow, and he tightened his jaw to maintain control of his annoyance. After a moment, he forced himself to relax, remembering that he was here to check on her, not to start a fight. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t continue to tease her a bit.

  With a shrug, he said, “I don’t know why you’re here or what you’ve been up to. Maybe you were pretending to be engaged to that guy so you could embezzle money from him, and now you’re running off to meet your real boyfriend.”

  Rather than shrieking like a banshee as he’d half expected, she shot him a withering glare.

  He shrugged it off. “Or maybe you’re a closet nudist and came up here so you could commune with nature au naturel without anyone seeing or recognizing you.”

  She continued to glare at him, but he didn’t miss the tremor of amusement that tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “I think it would be best if I stuck around for a while, just to make sure everything’s copacetic.”

  At that, her eyes went silver-dollar round and her mouth dropped open like a carp’s.

  “Oh, no. No, no.” She jumped off her stool as though it had suddenly turned into a high-temperature hot plate. “Absolutely not!”

  Ignoring her outburst, he slid off his own stool and started wandering around the rest of the house like a potential buyer. It was roomy and expansive, a “cabin” only in the sense that it was finished almost completely in polished oak—the floors, walls and exposed beams far overhead—and furnished in dark, woodsy colors. Millionaire rustic, for those whose idea of “roughing it” was leaving their gold card at home.

  Not that he had room to judge. If he didn’t work so much and had the time to get away, he’d probably build or buy a place just like this. He could certainly afford it, but along with the idea of purchasing a yacht and sailing around the world or retiring to a chateau in the Swiss Alps to spend the rest of his life skiing, it remained on his “one of these days” list.

  He wouldn’t mind sticking around here for a while, though. It would almost be a vacation, if he didn’t count the woman who was even now staring daggers at his back.

  “You’re not staying here, Reid.”

  He didn’t respond, instead glancing up at the loft visible from the living area before trailing toward a hall off the kitchen that he suspected would lead to more bedrooms.

  “I mean it,” Juliet continued, following behind with her arms tucked angrily across her chest.

  He stuck his head into the doorway of a luxury bath—sunken tub, separate oversize shower stall, marble vanity surrounding two basins with polished brass fixtures.

  “Why not? There’s plenty of space,” he told her without turning in her direction. She continued to follow.

  “Because I don’t want you here,” she stressed.

  After checking out another room—a nice master bedroom with attached bath, a few of Juliet’s things already spread on the dressers and near the bed—he faced her.

  “We don’t always get what we want,” he said quietly.

  He watched his meaning sink in and her features go taut. She took a step back until she was pressed against the hall wall. Fighting a smile, he brushed past, returning the way they’d come.

  “Fine,” she called after him. “Then you stay, and I’ll go.”

  He was in the kitchen again, her footsteps echoing as she moved toward him. He waited until she stopped before turning to meet her gaze. She looked nervous and uncertain, though she was obviously aiming for tough and unwavering.

  Lowering his tone, he leaned in until he was sure she saw the gravity in his own eyes.

  “Do, and I’ll follow you. Doesn’t matter where you go or how hard you try to get lost in the crowd, I will find you.”

  Five

  Juliet couldn’t decide whether she was more angry or frustrated. Annoyed or...oddly touched. Not only that her sisters had been worried enough about her to send Reid after her, but that she meant enough to Reid that he was refusing to leave her alone, even though he knew she was perfectly fine at her family’s lake house.

  Oh, it was a completely heavy-handed move on his part, which was maddening. He knew that sticking around would drive her batty, and that was exactly why he was doing it.

  But beneath that was a thread of honest concern and the need to be sure she was all right. She’d told him as much half a dozen times, but Reid wasn’t one to take anybody’s word over facts and his own observations.

  If she’d been anyone else, he probably would have accepted her assertion. Once he’d seen that his quarry was alive and well, and he’d been assured of her safety and location, he most likely would have turned around and headed back to New York to inform his clients of his findings.

  But she wasn’t anyone else. They had history together: a strange, complicated, wonderful yet awful history.

  Her time with him had been some of the best of her life, but even as it had been happening, she’d known it was something that was burning too hot and fast to last.

  Reid hadn’t been happy about that at all.

  She’d warned him from the beginning that it was just a fling. It couldn’t get serious.

  She’d been engaged to another man the first time she’d gotten swept up in passion and fallen into bed with him. And though she’d broken off the engagement immediately—so that she could continue to see Reid without being weighed down by suffocating guilt—she hadn’t wanted anyone to know about him.

  Hadn’t wanted them to know she’d strayed from her fiancé. Hadn’t wanted them to know she was seeing one man when she should have been planning her wedding to another. Hadn’t wanted to see her parents’ disappointed faces or hear the lectures about how lucky she’d been to be engaged to Paul, who came from such an upstanding and influential family.

  And even if she hadn’t wanted to keep her relationship with Reid a secret, he certainly wasn’t looking for anything permanent. Their affair had been wild and forbidden, and completely out of character for her.

  Juliet suspected that was another reason he insisted on sticking to her like double-sided tape. Unfinished business, in his mind. Not to mention a badly bruised male ego.

  Which wasn’t her fault. She’d been honest with him from the start. But apparently women weren’t the only ones capable of getting attached and letting their emotions overrule their common sense.

  She gave a snort of derision, hunching her
shoulders and doing her best to snuggle more deeply into her sweater because she refused to go back inside while Reid was using the kitchen as though he owned it.

  He’d insisted on fixing dinner—he said to thank her for her hospitality. Sarcasm alert on that one. It had fairly dripped from his tongue and glittered off the pearly white teeth he flashed in a wolfish smile.

  She suspected his offer was based more on the fact that she couldn’t cook. Well, not much, anyway. And he probably didn’t want to risk food poisoning so far from town and the nearest hospital.

  The good news was that whatever morning sickness she’d been suffering did tend to limit itself to the mornings.

  The bad news was that sitting across from Reid right now while they shared a meal was likely to knot her stomach in an entirely different manner.

  And what exactly was she supposed to do in the morning when her pregnancy symptoms did make an appearance? Every day, she tended to spend a few hours, at least, looking like an extra in one of those deadly virus outbreak movies: all sweaty and flushed and lurching around like a zombie between bouts of retching.

  Oh, yes, it was lovely. She was still waiting for the part where pregnancy was a beautiful experience and she started to “glow.”

  She’d also heard pregnant women were supposed to avoid undue stress, but she couldn’t think of anything more stressful than being this close to Reid right now. Not after the way they’d parted, how she’d just left her fiancé at the altar and given the fact that Reid had no idea she was pregnant with his child.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted him to know, and figuring that out while he was doing his best impression of “Me and My Shadow” didn’t help matters. It was going to be like counting to one thousand while someone else called out random numbers in your ear. She was starting to get a headache just thinking about it.

  Another shiver stole over her and she curled her chilly fingers into fists. She really should go in before she caught a cold or turned into a human freezer pop. Only sheer stubbornness kept her outside when she knew the house was toasty warm even without a fire in the hearth.

  Coming to her rescue—or perhaps luring her farther down the rabbit hole—Reid opened the front door and stuck his head out.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he said, then disappeared back inside.

  She toyed with the idea of ignoring him, just as she’d been toying with the idea of climbing into her BMW and driving away, regardless of his threat to chase after her. But in the end, she was simply too cold, too hungry, and edging toward too darn tired to fight it—him—anymore.

  Warmth surrounded her the minute she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, chasing away any trace of chill lake air that had trailed in with her. She released a sigh of relief, rubbing her hands together before shrugging out of her sweater and draping it neatly over the back of a chair.

  Then she turned her attention to the dining room table, where Reid had put out two place settings and even moved a small vase of artificial flowers from elsewhere in the cabin to the middle of the table as a centerpiece. If she hadn’t been so upset with him, she might have found the scene almost romantic.

  Without sparing her a glance, Reid moved between the kitchen and dining areas to fill their plates and pour a couple glasses of wine. Clearly, he’d discovered her father’s collection.

  Juliet’s nerves began to jump as she wondered exactly how she would manage to avoid drinking the stuff after it had already been poured. Especially when she’d never been one to turn down an offer of wine in Reid’s presence before.

  For that matter, she was also a little bit concerned about the food scents that were mingling to fill nearly every nook and cranny of the spacious cabin. If they started to make her sick, she would have nowhere to go to get away from them and nowhere to hide from Reid’s too-keen scrutiny.

  So far, though, she seemed okay. She couldn’t quite identify the fragrances assailing her at the moment, but they were rich and pleasant, and actually had her stomach rumbling rather than revolting.

  Taking a tentative step forward, she slipped her fingers into the front pockets of her casual navy slacks.

  “What are we having?” she asked as Reid took one last trip from the kitchen and deposited a platter of rolls on the table.

  He lifted his head to look at her, and she pretended not to notice the flash of heat reflected in his chocolate brown eyes. She pretended not to feel it, either, as it filled her and seeped into all of the dark, forbidden places that missed him most in the wee small hours of the night when she sometimes couldn’t sleep.

  “You’ve got a really well-stocked pantry here,” he said, pulling out a chair and waiting for her to take her seat. “Not to mention the freezer and fresh stuff you picked up on the way.”

  Rounding the table, he took his own seat straight across from her. “I found some beef medallions and a jar of sauce, and even some frozen bread dough for rolls. The only thing we’re missing is a spring lettuce salad with raspberry vinaigrette.”

  He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help shaking her head.

  “I can’t believe you cook,” she admitted honestly. It didn’t seem like something a man like him would stoop to.

  She happened to know that he was personally worth well over twenty-five million dollars. And his company, which was one of the most successful, high-tech investigation firms in the country, was worth probably closer to a billion.

  But unlike Paul, who liked to brag about his financial success and spend money on expensive items that would impress his peers whether or not he needed or even truly wanted them, one would never be able to peg the size of Reid’s bank account just by looking at him.

  She’d seen him in a perfectly tailored Armani suit and wondered why they bothered ever using anyone else on a cover of GQ. She’d even seen him in a tuxedo once and thought he made every James Bond ever to grace the silver screen look like a hunchbacked, bridge-dwelling troll in comparison. So without a doubt, he could flaunt his wealth and prestige.

  More often than not, though, he preferred slacks and a plain white dress shirt. Sometimes with a suit jacket. Often with a tie that didn’t make it much past noon.

  Even now, he was dressed in his usual business casual, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The style wasn’t fancy, wasn’t expensive. She knew he had pricey clothes in his closet, but doubted he spent much on his everyday attire.

  Yet it didn’t take away one iota from the man she knew him to be. The one who’d spent time in the military, become highly trained, then started his own investigation firm where he could use his brains as well as his brawn.

  Which was yet another reason she knew she would never manage to get away from him if he didn’t want to let her go. He would use the resources of his company, his own personal skills and finally his own unlimited finances, if necessary, to track her down without ever bothering to bill her sisters for the time and money he actually spent. He was that stubborn, that persistent and apparently still that determined to make her suffer.

  Luckily, just being in the same room with him for any length of time these days was enough to achieve that.

  Then again, dinner looked and smelled delicious, so it wasn’t all that bad.

  She picked up her fork and knife, but waited, not wanting to be the first to begin eating. Grabbing his own utensils, Reid inclined his head, gesturing for her to dig in.

  “My mother used to tell me that nothing impressed a woman more than a man who can cook,” he said, cutting into his meal. “So I let her teach me, then learned a few more things on my own along the way.”

  “And did it work?” she asked.

  He popped a piece of meat into his mouth, chewing for a minute before he replied.

  “I don’t know,” he said, lips quaking. “Are you impressed?”

  It pained her to admit it, to even be bantering so comfortably with him when there were vital issues lying just beneath the surface, but she found herself smiling in return and saying, “Actuall
y, I am.”

  “Then it worked.”

  He took another bite, as did she, and for a while they ate in companionable silence.

  “Why didn’t you ever cook while we were...” She stopped midsentence, not entirely sure of what she meant to say. While we were together? While we were having our torrid affair?

  A stony mask fell over Reid’s features, but otherwise he didn’t react to her blunder.

  “There never seemed to be time,” he responded instead. “We always seemed to be in a rush when we got together and fell right into...other things. Or we met somewhere without a kitchen that we wouldn’t have bothered using anyway because we were always too busy...with other things.”

  His innuendos couldn’t have been clearer if he’d drawn a picture on his cloth napkin, and her face flamed at the memories, as well as his suggestive tone.

  “Besides, you always seemed to want takeout or delivery. Not my favorite, but it made you happy.” He shrugged one broad shoulder, gaze turned down to his plate while he cut another slice of beef medallion. “And it gave us more time to do what we did best.”

  That was why she didn’t want him here. There was too much history between them that he wasn’t the least bit shy about bringing up. Something she suspected he would do quite often, both to needle her and remind her of what they’d had together. What she’d been missing ever since she’d left him and ended up right back where she’d been to begin with, engaged and planning her wedding.

  He also knew her far too well. She remembered how he used to watch her from beneath those hooded lashes, studying her every move. He was a detective; he profiled people for a living.

  She might be able to fool him for a while, but eventually he’d figure out that she was acting off. That there was more going on than simply cold feet and the decision not to go through with a wedding she’d been second-guessing all along. To steal a line from her British soon-to-be brother-in-law, he was too bloody smart that way.

  Glancing down to avoid the flesh-and-blood reminder of just what a fix she was in, she saw that her plate was nearly empty. She hadn’t realized how hungry she truly was after babying her stomach with saltines and weak sweet tea for so long.