Here Comes the Bride (8 page)

She drew her eyes from the small trinket and looked up at him, her lips ready with a firm no, but he was smiling, a pleased-as-punch grin, and she couldn’t do it.

Nick was a puzzle to her. One moment he was as tough as an old miner’s boot, and the next he was—She decided not to finish that thought. It would be better to think of him as a tough miner’s boot than someone warm and—Skip that thought, too.

She was beginning to care entirely too much about Nick Killian. And that was not good. She’d only known him a few days. And in another few days she’d be out of his life, back in her own world.

For now she would accept his gift graciously. And perhaps later she could find a way to repay him. “Thank you. I know just the spot in my apartment where this will go.”

“Ah, where?”

“I have this big rosewood four-poster, something I bought to resell then couldn’t bring myself to part with. I’m going to set this on the night table beside it.”

“Beside your bed?”

“Yes.”

Why did the word
bed
falling from Nick’s lips sound so intimate? Fiona swallowed hard
and glanced away from the heat she saw in his eyes. It had been an innocent remark, but now it seemed far from that.

Nick glimpsed the sudden rise of color in Fiona’s cheeks. He wanted to see them heat like that in the throes of passion. He wanted to make love to her in that big four-poster, her flame-red hair spilled across the pillow. Wild love. Slow, thorough love.

A pulse point beat in her neck and he wanted to lean in close and kiss it. He wanted to sample every inch of her skin, taste its silken heat.

Damn, what was this woman doing to him?

He didn’t even know himself anymore. She had him acting erratically, rambling through old stores, perusing purple bottles, and wanting to know every little thing about her life.

“So, where do you find stuff like big rosewood four-posters?” he asked. He’d rather ask what she wore at night when she slipped between its covers, but decided it was better that he didn’t know. “Do you prowl around old dusty shops, go to sales, what?”

“I keep my eye open for any possibility,” she said. “I scour the newspapers for estate sales. I go on buying jaunts through every tiny burg within a hundred-mile radius of Boston.
Sometimes I travel farther afield, wherever I get the whiff of a good sale.”

“Like a bloodhound?”

She laughed and Nick loved the sound. It trickled up from her throat, more beautiful than the ripple of water purling over smooth stones in a brook.

“It takes a lot of hours to find the special things my customers will want, restore them to their original beauty, whether wood or pewter or brass, and still keep shop hours.”

“What do you do with your spare time?” He wondered what filled it, who filled it.

“What spare time? I trek around the countryside on Sundays and Mondays. At night I polish and stain. Tuesdays through Saturdays I’m busy with customers, if I’m lucky.”

He took her hand and turned it over, looking for calluses. A few had tried to mar the softness of her palms. He traced the edge of one gently with his fingertip, then lifted her hand and kissed the spot.

Her hand softened under the press of his lips, and when he glanced up into her face, he saw her eyes had dilated perceptibly. A small smile curved at her mouth and the pink blush on her cheeks turned a pretty rose.

He was glad he could affect her like that. “Why don’t you take on a partner?”

It took her a moment to speak, as if she needed to gather her wits. Or maybe her
voice. “A partner?” There was a slight trembling to her words. “My shop’s small and struggling. There’s hardly enough income for one person. Maybe in another year or two I could hire an assistant, at least part-time.”

“You love your work, don’t you?” He didn’t release her hand, just stroked it absently, tracing the tinge of a faint blue vein under her alabaster skin.

Her voice trembled again. “I must be boring you.”

“Not at all. I want to hear more. What you do for fun, what you do for … love.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed slyly. “If that’s your unsubtle way of asking if there’s a man in my life, there isn’t one at present.”

That was what he was asking—and the answer pleased him enormously. He couldn’t stop the smile that revealed his pleasure.

“There was someone once,” she continued. “Someone I thought I knew, then found out I didn’t. Fortunately before I married him.”

“Is that why you believe in being cautious?”

She withdrew her hand from his and dropped it into her lap, her gaze lowered. He much preferred to feel her looking at him, caressing his face in that way she was unaware of.

She nodded. “I thought love could happen
overnight, but … it doesn’t. At least if it does, it doesn’t last.”

“That’s why you want your father to wait rather than jump into a marriage with Auntie?”

Her eyes raised. They were solemn and wide. And sad.

“What happened, Fiona? With this man you thought you knew?” Nick hated the bastard. Would string him up by some tender part of his anatomy if he could. For what he’d done to her.

Fiona drew in a ragged breath. She hadn’t thought about Adam in a long time, hadn’t wanted to, yet she supposed Nick was right, her experience with Adam had made her cautious. It was why she didn’t believe in love at first sight, not for her father and Winnie, and certainly not for herself.

Love at first sight was merely lust in disguise, the purely physical attraction she felt for Nick being a prime example. Still, she’d never felt anything this strong, this overwhelming, this powerful with Adam. With any man. And she wasn’t sure how to gird herself against it.

“It was a long time ago, Nick. I was very young. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

“Are you sure, Fiona?”

“I’m sure.”

She didn’t want to tell Nick what a little
fool she’d been, that she’d misread Adam so completely, so stupidly. That she hadn’t recognized sooner that the man didn’t have a faithful bone in his body, that he’d come on to some of her friends, that he’d even had a reckless affair with one of them.

It had been painful for her when she’d learned of his betrayal, but now it was merely embarrassing. She’d refused to suffer that pain for long, had refused to waste the emotion on a man who wasn’t worth her time or energy.

But she knew Nick was right, the lesson she’d learned affected her today, colored her world, her belief system.

She didn’t want Nick’s sympathy, didn’t need him charging up on his white steed to save her from some old hurt, from some man who’d wronged her. “Come on, Nick, let’s go and watch the street entertainers.”

“Hurry, we’re going to be late.”

Nick raced through the airport, Fiona panting along behind him. She didn’t want to do this, she didn’t want to meet Camille. If the woman was on this flight as Nick expected her to be, the wedding would be on again all too soon.

But Nick wasn’t offering her much choice. His long legs carried him down the concourse. She had to hurry to keep up.

Part of her was still back in Surprise, back in the idyll of their afternoon together. She didn’t want to be dragged back into the present—and the set of worries she’d temporarily put aside.

The plane was already discharging its passengers by the time they reached the gate
area. Nick grabbed her hand and searched the crowd for a glimpse of his cousin.

“Maybe she didn’t make the flight. Maybe she missed her connection in New York,” Fiona said.

It was a hopeful wish, she knew, but a wish that would only put off the inevitable. Camille would be on this flight, or the next, if she missed this one.

“There she is.”

“Where?”

Nick didn’t answer, only boomed, “
Camille!
”

Fiona’s gaze threaded through the crowd to see which one of the milling passengers he was calling to. And then she saw her, recognizing her immediately from the picture on Nick’s desk.

“Nick!” Camille had spotted him, too, and waved.

Camille seemed to have stepped out of another era. Fiona smiled at the aura of the perennial flower child she projected in her loosely flowing skirts and her Birkenstocks.

Her hair—long, dark tresses—trailed down to the curve of her derriere. Three travel-battered duffels hung from one thin shoulder. Other than the hint of a little jet lag, she had a lively face, full of emotion and feeling.

And Fiona knew she liked her.

It would be hard not to like Camille.

“Am I too late?” Camille asked, wrapping her arms around Nick in a giant hug. “Did they do it, did they have the wedding without me?”

“No, they didn’t,” Nick assured her. “You wanted them to wait, and they did.”

She sighed in relief, then turned her smile on Fiona. “Hello, sister,” she said in a greeting that caught Fiona a little off guard.

Sisters? That’s exactly what this wedding would make them, Fiona realized with a start. But Camille’s warmth was undeniable.

“Hello, Camille,” she said, then they hugged like they were already family.

Nick shouldered his cousin’s bags. “Is this all or do we need to stop by baggage claim?”

“This is it.”

Camille linked one arm through Nick’s, the other through Fiona’s, smiling first at one then the other.

Their walk to the parking garage where Nick had left the car led them past the very baggage carousel where Fiona’s misadventure had begun. Had it been only a few short days ago?

“You were smart to carry your own bags,” Nick said. “These things are rough on them.” He indicated the spinning silver monster that had nearly mulched his wicked pieces of underwear.
“Remind me to tell you about it, cuz.”

“Oh? Is this something I should know about?” Camille was instantly curious.

He exchanged a look with Fiona, one only the two of them could share.

“Let’s just say Nick had an intimate encounter with the thing,” Fiona remarked.

“I want to hear about this,” Camille said, intrigued.

But the story would have to wait. Nick escorted the two women into the garage and Auntie’s Mercedes parked nearby. Winnie and Walter had wanted to be part of the welcoming committee, too, but Nick couldn’t be sure Walter wouldn’t insist on driving. He’d left the pair at Auntie’s, blowing up bright “welcome home” balloons for Camille.

Nick would like to skip the small impromptu party they had planned and spend tonight alone with Fiona. He’d enjoyed this afternoon with her. Very much. He hated reality intruding, the reality of this wedding that he knew his little cuz would be all for.

She and Auntie would have their heads together the minute she got there, plotting and planning down to the last orange blossom.

Maybe he could get Camille alone for a moment, for a small family discussion, and make her see this matrimonial idea of Auntie’s for what it was—one big mistake.

It was worth a shot, he thought, but given the fact that Camille saw the world through rose-colored glasses, he wasn’t holding out much hope of making her see reason.

Maybe Fiona had the best idea after all. Set them down and talk turkey to them—each separately, of course. Together they tended to gaze besottedly at each other—and no amount of reasoning could win out over that.

He glanced over at the two women as he made his way out of the parking garage and onto the airport road. Camille was relating some wild adventure about how she’d slept on the luggage rack in a train car and eaten biscuits out of a knapsack while she traveled into India’s remotest regions.

Fiona was listening raptly. Every time he looked at her he remembered this afternoon, the reverence in her eyes when she’d touched the small jewelry box, the look of disbelief on her face when she realized he’d bought it for her. He’d never been in the habit of giving such gifts to the women who passed through his life, but Fiona was different. Fiona was special. He wished that realization didn’t strike such terror into him.

But it did.

He caught Fiona’s soft laugh of amusement at something his cousin had said. What, he didn’t know. He was content merely to listen.

The traffic was unusually light on Sahara for this time of day. He leaned back into the Mercedes’s soft, plush leather, one arm draped over the wheel, while he breathed in Fiona’s hypnotic scent. She was muddling his mind, overloading his senses—and he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do about it.

He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do about
her
.

By the time they reached Auntie’s, the two women were fast friends, leaving Nick feeling like the uninvited guest at a wedding.

A poor pun, he thought with an agonized groan.

Furthermore, he didn’t like feeling unessential in Fiona’s life. It was a petty emotion and one that surprised him.

The woman was usurping too much of his peace of mind.

Everyone was gathered around the pool when they got there. Camille gave appropriate responses over the balloons tethered to everything stationary, and hugged Walter, already accepting the fact that he would soon be part of her mother’s life.

Auntie had invited half of Las Vegas’s permanent population, it seemed. Guests milled around everywhere. Nick avoided them, hovering by a potted palm, and quietly sipped his drink.

Fiona was being duly presented to friends,
old and new. He watched her move gracefully through the crowd, her hair shimmering a glorious russet under the patio lights. It brushed the tops of her creamy shoulders, left bare by the shirred top of her iris-colored dress.

Only two tiny straps kept the dress decent, he realized as his imagination played with the idea of sliding them down her arms.

He’d undress her slowly, very slowly, until he could feast his eyes on every lovely inch of her. Their lovemaking would be fevered and fierce, then they’d play it out again. This time he’d take his time, the way it ought to be. He’d dreamed of making love to her, perhaps from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.

“She’s beautiful, cousin,” Camille said, apparently having escaped the group to come and interrupt his parade of thoughts.

“Who?” he asked, feigning innocence.