The Perfect Bride
Authors: Kerry Connor
SOMETHING OLD. SOMETHING NEW. SOMETHING BORROWED. SOMEONE DEAD…
Adam Sutton’s instinct for trouble failed him once before—and nearly destroyed his sister’s life. He’ll do anything to make amends, even help her turn their family’s mansion into a successful destination-wedding business. But when Jillian Jones suddenly arrives at Sutton Hall, this brooding businessman suspects the
bride-to-be isn’t what she seems. She’s asking too many “innocent” questions about the hall’s tragic history and the mysterious death of its first paying bride. She’s defying his orders to leave, even as strange accidents threaten her. And her fiery determination is making it impossible for Adam to resist getting dangerously close. Now their only chance to survive means gambling on an all-too-fragile
trust—even as someone in the darkest shadows prepares to dress another hall bride in black.…
They stood there, gazes locked, the tension so thick Adam could almost feel it crackling in the air between them…
Neither he nor Jillian had moved. There was a little more than a foot between them, the same amount of space since he’d taken that step forward, but it seemed to shrink the longer they stood there, as though they were slowly drawing together.
And suddenly the emotion
that had been building deep inside him finally burst forth.
Want. Pure, raw want.
There must have been a change in his gaze. Adam saw the instant Jillian recognized it, her eyes flaring the tiniest bit. With surprise. With awareness.
Yet still she didn’t move away. Still she stared into his eyes, hard and unblinking.
And the emotion radiating from her wasn’t anger, either.
It would be so simple to step forward and close the meager space that separated them, to pull her hard against him, to crush his mouth against hers, to see if her lips felt as soft and supple as they looked….
Kerry Connor
The Perfect Bride
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A lifelong mystery reader, Kerry Connor first discovered romantic suspense by reading Harlequin Intrigue books and is thrilled to be writing for the line. Kerry lives and writes in New York.
Books by Kerry Connor
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
1067—STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT
1094—BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
1129—A STRANGER’S BABY
1170—TRUSTING A STRANGER
1207—STRANGER
IN A SMALL TOWN
1236—SILENT NIGHT STAKEOUT
1268—CIRCUMSTANTIAL MARRIAGE
1334—HER COWBOY DEFENDER
1370—HER COWBOY AVENGER
1421—THE PERFECT BRIDE*
*Sutton Hall Weddings
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jillian Jones—
To solve her best friend’s mysterious death, she had to go undercover as a bride.
Adam Sutton—
The owner of Sutton Hall didn’t trust the woman who arrived at the mansion to plan her wedding—and vowed to uncover her true motives.
Courtney Miller—
She came to Sutton Hall for the wedding of her dreams, only to meet her death.
Meredith
Sutton—
Her idea to open Sutton Hall for weddings had taken a deadly turn.
Grace Bentley—
Sutton Hall’s longtime housekeeper considered the place her own.
Rosie Warren—
The cook couldn’t hide the cracks in her own marriage.
Ed Warren—
The handyman was all smiles, but what lay beneath his pleasant exterior?
Ray Hopkins—
The groundskeeper was a man of few words.
Zack Hopkins—
The groundskeeper’s son was a flirt who didn’t consider any woman off-limits.
To Vanessa I., a good friend for so many years,
for showing just how much she still is.
Prologue
She was going to be a beautiful bride.
Courtney Miller studied her reflection in the floor-length mirror and smiled. No matter how many times she tried on her wedding dress—and it was more than she’d ever admit—she couldn’t get enough of how she looked in it. She started to run her hand over the skirt, only to stop and pull her fingers away at the last moment. At
this rate, she’d handled the dress so much she was starting to worry she’d rub the satiny sheen right off the gown, and that wouldn’t do at all. The dress had to be perfect, just as she would be.
Just as the whole wedding would be, actually. She’d spent the past week at Sutton Hall, the stately nineteenth-century estate in the mountains of Vermont, ensuring that it would. The mansion had
just been opened by its new owners for weddings, and as soon as she’d seen the website she’d known she had to have her wedding here. It was a beautiful place, like something out of a storybook. She’d lucked out and managed to book early enough that her wedding would be the first one held here. That would only make it more special.
Tomorrow evening the rest of the wedding party would finally
begin to arrive and the festivities would begin in earnest. And in just a few days she would be Mrs. Eric West.
In the meantime, though, she was still a single woman, she thought, meeting her reflection in the mirror, a slow smile curling her lips. She’d been reminded of that fact more than once over the past week, whenever her eyes had met those of Zack Hopkins, one of the groundskeepers
here. The guy was temptation incarnate, with that shaggy dark brown hair, startling blue eyes and all those rough-hewn muscles. From the look in his eye and the smile that touched his lips whenever he caught her gaze, he knew it, too. The guy’s obvious ego weakened his appeal a little, but damned if she could resist looking.
She would never do anything, of course. She loved Eric with all
her heart. But some light, harmless flirting never hurt anyone. After all, she was still a free woman at the moment—
Bam!
The noise exploded in the room out of nowhere. She jumped, her heart seizing, her muscles tensing in surprise. Her hand reflexively flying to her chest, she whirled toward the sound.
The glass doors that opened onto the balcony rattled against the wind. Even
as she watched, another gust hit them, shaking them so fiercely it seemed the latch could barely keep them closed.
The wind. It was just the wind.
Pulling in a deep breath, she eyed the doors warily. They opened onto a wide balcony that looked out over the valley. For anyone else it would probably be a magnificent view. Courtney had done her best to avoid it, the same way she did now.
God, how she hated heights, she thought with a shudder. No one would catch her anywhere near that balcony.
The doors continued to shake under the force of the wind. Doing her best to ignore the noise, Courtney turned back to the mirror. The mansion had proven to be everything it was billed as. The weather, on the other hand, was not. It had been gloomy and overcast almost the entire time
since she’d arrived. She was trying not to view it as some kind of omen. It was looking as though they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the gorgeous landscape for photographs. Fortunately, the manor’s interior made up for it. There were plenty of places that would make great backdrops for pictures—
The face appeared in the mirror out of nowhere, directly over her shoulder, pure malevolence
glaring at her.
She whirled around to find she wasn’t imagining things. An intruder stood a few feet away, eyes dark with hatred, fists knotted in fury.
She couldn’t even scream, shock seizing her throat and choking off the sound.
“Take it off.” The words were snarled in a voice guttural with rage.
She could only gape in response. None of it made sense—the intruder’s sudden
presence, the words, the anger.
She somehow managed to find her voice. “What are you—? How did you get in here?”
The intruder lunged forward. “You don’t deserve to wear that dress. Take it
off!
”
Hands reached out to grab at the dress. Recoiling, Courtney lurched backward, trying to get away from her attacker. She tripped on the back of her skirt and stumbled. Teetering on her heels,
she struggled to regain her balance, throwing her arms out, flailing wildly.
Just as the intruder came at her again, hands thrust out, and shoved.
The push sent her careening backward faster, harder. She went straight into the doors behind her, the impact loosening the latch holding them shut and throwing them open. The wind burst in and grabbed at her as if with greedy fingers, grasping
at her hair, tugging at the dress, stealing the breath from her lungs. The room seemed farther and farther away as she continued to stumble, lurching onto the balcony.
Terrified, she tried to find her equilibrium, recover her senses, see what was in front of her...
She didn’t even realize what was happening as she landed hard against something behind her. She didn’t register what it
meant when hands closed around her and quickly lifted her off her feet.
She didn’t understand until the last possible moment, when she was hoisted upward and propelled right over the edge of the balcony.
No!
And then she was plummeting, diving relentlessly downward, in free fall, faster and faster.
All the while the howling wind screeched in her ears, drowning out the sound
of her own screams.
Chapter One
Jillian Jones had spent hours studying pictures of Sutton Hall, but she still wasn’t prepared for her first glimpse of the place in person. One moment she was driving up the long private road that led to the estate, the next the trees framing the driveway suddenly cleared and there it was, the massive building looming in front of her.
She automatically eased her
foot off the accelerator and stepped on the brake, bringing the rental car to a gradual stop. Her heart pounding, she stared up at the house she’d only seen in those photographs—and in her nightmares.
It was beautiful. In spite of everything, she couldn’t help but recognize that much. The immense structure rose three soaring stories above the earth. Its gray stone walls appeared as solid
and ancient as the mountains behind it and seemed to stretch as far. Each of its corners met at a round tower, giving it an appearance more like that of a castle than a simple mansion.
It was exactly as Courtney had described it, like something out of a fairy tale.
Unfortunately, as Jillian had been reminded all too recently, not all fairy tales had happy endings.
It was hard to
believe it had only been a month since her best friend had come here to plan her wedding, believing she would have that fairy tale.
Instead, Courtney had left in a body bag.
Eric, Courtney’s fiancé, was still inconsolable. This was supposed to be the happiest time of his life, and instead it had become the worst.
The guilt welled inside her again, bringing tears to Jillian’s eyes.
She did her best to choke back the feeling, but was unable to shake it completely.
She should have been here. That was the maid of honor’s job, to be there for the bride. But she’d been swamped with work, having recently launched her own freelance graphic design business. After months of effort, she’d finally begun to build a client list and had projects she’d needed to finish. Not to mention
the idea of dealing with flowers and dresses and seating charts had seemed like her worst nightmare. She’d even suggested to Courtney that she might want to choose someone else to be her maid of honor, someone who knew a lot more and possessed a great deal more interest in wedding arrangements than she did.
“It’s a job for the best friend,” Courtney had said. It didn’t matter that they lived
on different sides of the country and only got to see each other a few times a year, if that. Ever since they’d met in Mrs. Parks’s first-grade class at Thompson Elementary, they’d been best friends, as good as sisters. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you do any girlie stuff. All you have to do is be there for me.”
But Jillian hadn’t been. The only thing Courtney had asked of her, and she’d failed.
Courtney had been alone here for a week finalizing the arrangements before the rest of the small wedding party was scheduled to arrive. And that was exactly how she’d died. Alone.
The official determination was that Courtney’s death had been a tragic accident. She’d been on the balcony outside her room on a windy night, had come too close to the edge and fallen over.
Which was a
load of crap, Jillian thought, the now familiar anger rising. Courtney had been afraid of heights. She never would have been anywhere near a balcony, let alone close enough to fall from one. But the door to her room had supposedly still been locked from the inside. There’d been no indication of foul play or any reason the police could determine why anyone would want to hurt her. In the absence of
any hard evidence proving otherwise, the authorities had concluded it had to be an accident.
Leaving Jillian no choice but to come here herself and find out the truth.
She’d known if she came here as herself, it was unlikely anyone would talk to her or that she’d learn anything different from what the authorities already had. No, she’d needed another reason to be here. So she’d called
pretending to be a bride wanting to book her own wedding.
Her main concern had been that someone would remember her name as that of Courtney’s missing maid of honor. Luckily Courtney had always called her Jay—the only person who had—so Jillian knew if her name had come up at all, it would have been the nickname. The woman she’d spoken with on the phone—Meredith Sutton, one of the owners—had
given no indication she recognized Jillian’s name. She’d merely been cautious, wanting to be sure Jillian knew what had happened here. Unsurprisingly, it seemed that nearly all of the other weddings that had been booked at the manor had been canceled, their brides and grooms no longer interested in being wed anywhere near Sutton Hall. Jillian had assured the woman she was aware of the tragic death
and wasn’t deterred by the fact that such an unfortunate accident had taken place. Meredith Sutton had still hesitated, as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to try hosting another wedding here herself, before finally relenting.
Now Jillian was going to have to do all the things she’d shrugged off before—immerse herself in wedding arrangements, choose flowers and color schemes and whatever
else was involved. For Courtney she would do it, the way she should have the first time.
And more important, she was going to get the truth.
Sucking in a breath, Jillian finally moved her foot back to the gas pedal and proceeded on to the house.
Unsure where to park, she rounded the circular driveway and pulled up directly in front of the building. The car had barely come to a stop
when the front door to the house swung open. A woman stepped outside and stood on the stoop, raising her hand to wave.
This is it,
Jillian thought, bracing herself as she put the car in Park.
Showtime.
With one last deep breath, she climbed out of the car, fixing a smile upon her face as she waved back at the woman. Jillian recognized her from her research. This was Meredith Sutton,
the woman who owned the estate with her brother, Adam.
“Hello!” the woman called out, a trace of a tremor in her voice. “You must be Jillian.”
“That’s right. Meredith?” Jillian asked as if she didn’t know.
“That’s me,” the woman said, a touch of self-deprecation in her words. “It’s great to finally meet you in person.”
“You, too.” Meredith Sutton was a thin woman in her late
twenties with brown hair that hung to her shoulders. It was pulled away from her face, revealing pale skin and a faint smile. An air of vulnerability hung over her, as though a stiff breeze was capable of blowing her over. As soon as she made eye contact, her gaze almost immediately skittered away. A few seconds later, she managed to bring her eyes up again, this time meeting Jillian’s and holding
steady.
Jillian could almost feel the effort it took her to maintain eye contact. The woman radiated nervous energy. Considering what had happened to the first bride who came here to be married, that probably made sense.
Or was there more to it? Jillian couldn’t help wondering as a pang of suspicion struck low in her gut. Something beyond a simple accident had happened to Courtney, she
had no doubt about that. Someone was very likely involved, and as one of the owners, Meredith Sutton was more likely than not to know what had really happened here. Maybe she had good reason to be nervous. Guilty conscience?
Doing her best not to let her suspicions show on her face, Jillian leaned back and gestured toward the building. “This is so much more than I expected.”
“The pictures
don’t quite do it justice, do they?” Meredith said, following Jillian’s gaze. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging. Adam and I inherited the place almost a year ago and most days it still catches me by surprise that we actually own something like this. It’s hard to believe a place like this even exists anymore as it is.”
“Did you come here much before you inherited it?”
“Never,”
Meredith admitted. “We didn’t know it existed. The last owner was a distant relative we’d never heard of. He didn’t have any other relations, so the place fell to us. The whole thing was pretty amazing.”
Jillian had to agree. Inheriting a place like this from an unknown relative was pretty incredible, and so was the place itself. Still, as she took it in from this angle, a sense of foreboding
washed over her, sending her heart pounding faster. From a distance, with the sunlight shining down upon it, the massive structure had appeared majestic and regal. Standing this close, peering up at the building, it looked different. Gloomy. Oppressive. There were so many corners the sunlight didn’t touch or that had long shadows cast upon them, the windows a thousand hooded eyes staring back
at her. The house suddenly seemed as sinister as Jillian had thought it would be...and seen in her nightmares.
She wanted to believe she was just imagining things, projecting her own feelings on the building. She couldn’t quite manage it, as a chill slowly rolled down her spine.
Meredith fluttered a hand, drawing Jillian’s attention back to her. “Anyway, come in, come in. You’ve had
a long trip. I’m sure you’d like to get settled in.”
“Should I move the car?” Jillian asked.
“Just give me your keys and I’ll have someone take care of that and get your bags for you.”
The woman held out her hand for the keys. Jillian hesitated for a split second, suddenly unsure whether she wanted to be separated from her only means of escape from the place, the isolation and distance
from the closest town hitting her. Still, there was no reasonable way to turn down the offer. Telling herself she was being ridiculous, she dropped the keys in Meredith’s palm.
If the woman noticed Jillian’s hesitation, she didn’t show it, her expression never changing as she gestured for Jillian to precede her inside. “Please.”
Pushing aside the last of her misgivings, Jillian worked
up a smile and stepped through the entryway.
She’d barely made it over the threshold when she came to a stop, overwhelmed by the sight that met her eyes. Before her was a massive foyer that seemed to rise a full two stories. At the other end of the space stood a wide staircase that split in two halfway up and curved upward in either direction to reach the next level. A large glass chandelier
suspended in the center of the room glowed golden beams downward. High archways on the sides offered tantalizing glimpses of the rooms and hallways beyond.
For a moment, Jillian’s suspicions and her wariness of the place faded away, overshadowed by the reality before her. It really was magnificent, the kind of place it was hard to believe existed, as Meredith had said, or that she would ever
find herself in.
“Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?” Meredith murmured, stepping up beside her.
“It really does.”
As she continued to take it all in, a woman entered from the left and came to stand in the center of the foyer, folding her hands in front of herself as though waiting to greet them.
Meredith automatically moved forward, leaving Jillian to do the same a moment
later. “Jillian, this is Grace Bentley, our head of housekeeping here, though that title doesn’t begin to cover what she does. Grace has been here at Sutton Hall for almost thirty years and has been in charge for most of that time. She knows the place like the back of her hand, far better than I do, and she’ll be able to help you with any questions you might have, any logistical issues in terms of
locations for wedding events, that sort of thing.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Grace,” Jillian said.
“Likewise,” the woman returned with almost imperial formalness. “If there’s anything you require, please let me know.”
The words were polite, but there was no real warmth in them, and Grace Bentley didn’t seem particularly welcoming, giving off a distinctly chilly air. She was
a tall, thin woman in her fifties, dressed in a plain black dress, her dark hair tied back in a rather severe twist. She smiled faintly when she made the offer, her face a carefully composed mask that revealed nothing.
“Why don’t I show you to your room?” Meredith suggested. “I know you’ve been traveling all day and might want to get settled in a bit before we jump in to the wedding preparations.”
“That sounds great,” Jillian said, meaning it. After flying in from San Francisco, she’d had to drive over an hour to reach the small town of Hawthorne, Vermont, at the base of the mountain before continuing on to the manor. As eager as she was to begin asking questions and feeling her way around here, having a moment to take a breath and get her bearings would be more than welcome.
“Right this way.”
They walked down the long red carpet in the middle of the marble floor toward the stairs, allowing Jillian a better view of something she’d noticed from the far side of the foyer, but had been unable to examine closely. A portrait hung at the juncture of the staircase where it split in separate directions. A man and woman in wedding attire—clearly a bride and groom—posing
in this very hall. They were smiling, understandably enough, and the artist had managed to capture the glow of happiness on their faces so well Jillian could hardly imagine a photograph showing it better.
Judging from the style of the wedding dress, which was pretty but of a fashion several decades older, the portrait had clearly been hanging there for some time. Seeing it, Jillian had no
trouble understanding why Meredith had been inspired to open the place for weddings.
Then she thought of Courtney and Eric and how happy they had been, how happy they
would
have been on their wedding day, one that would never take place.
“This is the last owner of Sutton Hall, Jacob Sutton, and his wife, Kathleen, on their wedding day,” Meredith explained, a touch of wistfulness in her
voice.
“What happened to them?” Jillian asked. This was one area she didn’t know much about, not having done much research on the previous owners.
“Sadly she passed away five years later. A car accident. The vehicle she was driving went off the road on the way up the mountain during a storm.”
Looking at the woman’s smiling face, Jillian felt a twinge of sadness. She’d been so happy.
She’d had no idea what the future held for her. Just like Courtney.
“And him?”