The Perfect Bride (7 page)

She wondered how long it would be before anyone came looking for her.

If
they came looking for her.

Either way, she couldn’t stand there forever. There was probably more of a chance she’d encounter
a vehicle on the main road than on the one to Sutton Hall. She’d be better off heading back into town and hoping someone passed by.

She was about to start in that direction when lights suddenly swept over her, followed quickly by the sound of an approaching engine. Foreboding prickling the skin at the nape of her neck, she glanced up.

It looked like a car, coming up on the road. She
could barely make out its details in the darkness.

She wondered if the driver saw her, if she needed to flag his or her attention....

Or if she even wanted to, she suddenly thought with a trace of nervousness. Maybe it was no coincidence the car had appeared on this lonely stretch of road so soon after hers broke down. Whoever it was, the driver had her all alone out here....

Before
she could shake her doubts and decide what to do, the car began to slow as it approached. The driver had clearly spotted her. Or been looking for her, knowing she was likely to be here?

She had no weapon, no way to defend herself—

The car came to a stop beside her. The window slowly rolled down, and even before she bent to peer inside she knew who she’d see.

Adam Sutton looked back
at her, one eyebrow raised, his face shadowed in darkness, lit only by the console in front of him. “Problem?”

Don’t you already know?
she nearly asked, biting back the words. Whether or not he was responsible, this probably wasn’t the best time to tick him off, not when she was alone and defenseless on the side of the road.

“My car broke down. I’m not sure what’s wrong with it.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t acknowledge it. He simply nodded. “Come on,” he said with a tip of his head. “I’ll give you a ride back. You can call the rental company to come check it out.”

She hesitated just the slightest moment, her suspicions lingering a little too long, asking whether she really wanted to get in that car with him....

But the offer was entirely reasonable, of course.
And if he wanted to do something to her, he could have done it here, where he had her alone, under the guise of helping her with the car.

She reached for the door handle, her gaze meeting his.

She saw from the steady frankness in his eyes that he hadn’t missed her pause. He didn’t comment on it, but simply waited.

She wished she could read what lay in those cold black depths.

He didn’t even smile, or try to offer her some reassuring gesture. He simply sat there, waiting.

Doing her best to shake the feeling she was willingly stepping into a trap, she pulled the door open and climbed inside.

Chapter Six

They rode in silence for a few minutes, the quiet lying thick and heavy between them. Adam did his best to keep his eyes on the road and off the maddening woman beside him.

Of course her car would have to break down just before he came along—if that was what had even happened. For all he knew he’d simply caught her when she was up to something out there and she’d
used the breakdown as an excuse. He wouldn’t put it past her.

Swallowing a sigh, he grimaced. Damn. The woman had him so turned around he barely knew which way was up.

Jillian cleared her throat gently, an obvious prelude to speaking, and he braced himself. “I didn’t know you’d gone into town,” she said mildly, though he thought he almost detected a hint of accusation in the words.

“No reason you should. I left after you did.”

“What took you into town?”

“Just some errands. What about you?”

She hesitated for a moment before saying, “I stopped by the library to see what I could learn about Sutton Hall.”

He fought the urge to frown. On the one hand it would make sense that she’d be interested in learning more about the place she intended to hold her
wedding. On the other, someone with less up-front motives would probably do the same. The fact that she’d chosen to go into town to do her digging instead of asking people at Sutton Hall only raised his suspicions. “You didn’t need to go into town for that. You could have asked anyone at the house. I’m sure they would have been happy to tell you anything you wanted to know.”

“I’m so not sure
about that. Other than Meredith, no one at Sutton Hall seems that talkative, and the place is still new to her, too.”

“I hope no one’s made you feel unwelcome,” he said automatically, unable to keep a hint of dryness from the words.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her turn her head and look directly at him. “Do you?”

“We want every
bride
who comes to Sutton Hall to have a good
experience for her special day,” he said, pointedly emphasizing the relevant word.

“Or at least a better one than the first bride to come here?”

At the thought of Courtney Miller and what had happened to her, everything inside him went cold. “None of us want anything like that to happen ever again.”

“Did you know Jacob Sutton used to sit out on the balcony overlooking the road leading
up the mountain and just stare for hours, like he was still waiting for his wife to return?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” he said, already guessing where she was going with this.

“That’s the same balcony that woman fell from, isn’t it?”

As if she didn’t already know. “Yes.”

“It’s kind of a strange coincidence.”

“Not really. That balcony has the best view in the house. That’s
why Meredith chose that room for her. It’s only understandable he would have chosen to sit there as well.”

“I guess so,” she said vaguely.

“It’s just as much of a coincidence as your car breaking down on the same road his wife’s went off of,” he pointed out.

Adam sensed her tense slightly. “Is that where it happened?” she asked faintly.

“Not at that particular spot, I’m sure.
It’s not steep enough there for her car to sustain much damage if it went into the ditch. It was probably farther up the road, closer to where we are now.”

She turned her head and peered out the window at her side, though it was unlikely she could see anything in the darkness. “How far are we from the house?”

“About two miles,” he said. “You would have had quite a walk ahead of you.
An even longer one if you’d decided to head back toward town. You’re lucky I came along when I did.”

“Hmm. Lucky,” she said, as though she had reason to doubt that.

Of course, given their previous encounter, she might have reason not to want to spend too much time around him. But was it because she knew he was on to her, or because he’d been rude to her?

She ran her hand idly over
the leather lining along the inside of the door. “By the way, nice car.”

“It gets the job done.”

“I’d say it does a lot better than that. Something like this couldn’t have been cheap.”

“Are you asking how much I paid for it?” he asked, amused by her audacity in spite of himself.

“No,” she said with a faint smile. “I’m just guessing it means you were successful at whatever you
did before you decided to start this wedding business at Sutton Hall.”

“I was.”

She turned that assessing gaze on him. He didn’t even have to look directly at her to know it. He could feel it. “Yet you gave it up to open a wedding business in Vermont.”

“It was important to Meredith.” Adam shot her a look. “It
is
important to her. That’s something I take very seriously. And I don’t
appreciate anyone wasting her time.”

He might have expected her to proclaim the purity of her intentions here once again. She didn’t, surveying him gravely with those startling green eyes.

“Your sister must mean a lot to you,” she said.

“She does,” he said firmly. “Remember that.”

“Were the two of you always close?” she asked blandly, as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Always,”
he confirmed. “I was six when Meredith was born. Our father worked a lot and wasn’t around much, and our mother wasn’t exactly the nurturing type, so I always watched out for her. All we really had was each other.” Until she’d needed him most, he acknowledged bitterly. He hadn’t been there for her then.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Jillian said softly.

The sentiment sounded genuine, but
hearing it come from her, knowing that he couldn’t really trust a word she said, sent a fresh wave of anger through him. “What about your family?” he challenged. “Why aren’t they here with you?”

“I don’t have any.”

He didn’t know if he should believe her. It could be a lie, like he suspected so many other things were that she’d told him, a ploy for his sympathy, to get him to back off.
But something in the simple way she said it—without hesitation, without emotion—made him think she was telling the truth. “I’m sorry,” he said, and was surprised to find he meant it.

“It’s all right. I’ve had a long time to get used to it.”

“Well, you won’t have to be used to it much longer. Once you’re married, you and your husband will be your own family.”

“That’s true.”

I don’t believe it is,
he was tempted to reply, but it was clear she wasn’t going to budge from that particular story anytime soon.

“You know, the other bride, Courtney Miller, didn’t have any family, either. That was one reason she was here alone. The wedding was just going to be her, her groom and some of their closest friends. Just like you.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jillian said after
a beat, not slowly enough for him to tell if she was lying.

“Interesting coincidence.”

“There seem to be a lot of those going around,” she noted wryly. “It makes sense, though. It’s a lot easier to have a wedding in an out-of-the-way place with a small wedding party than it would be when you have a lot of people who’d have to travel. And when you don’t have a lot of family, it’s only
natural you’d want to do something extra special for the wedding.” She paused again. “At least that’s how I thought about it.”

Adam almost shook his head. She had an explanation for everything, didn’t she?

They fell back into silence. Adam did his best to focus on the road, but no matter how hard he tried, he found his gaze kept drifting back to her, unerringly drawn by the sight of
her out of the corner of his eye.

He didn’t know what it was about her that he found so compelling. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t as though he hadn’t met plenty of beautiful women in his lifetime. She was strong, but he’d encountered any number of strong women in the business world and gone toe-to-toe with them, and none of them had captured his attention like this. She was smart and quick-witted
and fearless, all qualities shared by plenty of other people. But he’d never met the unique combination of those particular qualities that was Jillian Jones, and that made all the difference. And no matter how much he knew he should look away, he simply couldn’t.

The appearance of lights up ahead provided a welcome distraction. Adam looked at the road to see they’d finally arrived back at
Sutton Hall, the building looming in front of them, lights blazing from its many windows.

He almost sighed, a sense of contentment falling over him. A year ago when he’d first seen it, he never would have imagined a place this massive and imposing could feel like home. Yet it did, the feeling stronger than ever each time he found his way back to it.

He circled the driveway and pulled
up directly in front of the house. By the time he got out and rounded the vehicle to her side, Jillian was already climbing out.

Closing the door, she turned to face him. “Thank you for the ride.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You should call the rental company about your car.”

“I will.”

At the reminder of her vehicle, a flicker of worry passed over her features, and she looked
vulnerable for a moment. He’d never seen her look that way before. Even when he’d confronted her last night in the tower bedroom and she’d stood there, dwarfed by the size of the room around her, the wind blowing against her, she hadn’t seemed vulnerable. She’d exuded confidence. She didn’t now.

He didn’t like it. It looked wrong on her. The urge was there to reach out and say something comforting,
to do what he could to erase that look from her eyes.

Which was foolish, of course. He managed to hold himself in check. Having her worried was exactly what he should want to get her to call off this lie he was convinced she was perpetuating.

He took a step toward her, forcing her to tilt her head back slightly to look up at him, and hardened his tone. “About what I said before... I
wasn’t kidding. Meredith is the only family I have in this world. I’m not going to let anyone hurt her. So if you are wasting her time or do anything to cause her grief, you will answer for it. I promise you that.”

If he’d hoped to intimidate her, he saw immediately that he’d failed. The fire in her eyes sparked back to life. Her expression smoothed, and she raised her head with a stubborn
jut of her chin.

He knew he should consider her defiance a bad sign, an indication she wasn’t going to back down. But damn if it didn’t look good on her.

“Just because I don’t have any family doesn’t mean I don’t understand what it means to be willing to do anything for the people I care about.”

Something in the words, in the way she said them, struck an uneasy chord inside him.
“So we understand each other.”

“Absolutely,” she shot back.

There didn’t seem to be anything left to say. He waited for her to turn on her heel and storm into the house in a huff.

She didn’t. She stood there, glaring up at him, eyes spitting fury. The moment went on. And he realized she didn’t want to be the first to break or back down any more than he did.

The insight only
stoked his own anger, and it was all he could do not to growl at her. The reaction startled him. He never came close to losing control of his emotions like that. But there was something about this woman... She really wouldn’t give in the slightest. Not when it came to the truth. Not when it came to leaving here. Not even when it came to staring him down.

They stood there, gazes locked, the
tension so thick he could almost feel it crackling in the air between them. Neither of them 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 the distance seemed to shrink the longer they stood there, as though they were slowly drawing together.

The light from the house poured down over her face, illuminating every
flawless line and beautiful feature, so much that she almost seemed to glow. Yet it was those blazing green eyes that drew him, radiating every ounce of fire she had burning inside, every inch of determination, every bit of
passion....

Suddenly anger wasn’t the only thing he was feeling, and the emotion that had been slowly building deep inside finally burst forth.

Want. Pure, raw want.

There must have been a change in his gaze. He saw the instant she 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.

A purely masculine sense of triumph surged from deep in his gut as it registered.

No,
not just anger.

It had been too long since he’d been with a woman. The past year he’d been so consumed with this place, not to mention fairly isolated up here trying to get it into shape, that he hadn’t really had the time or the opportunity to seek out female company. That had to be it. This was just the effect of his unplanned celibacy taking its toll.

Except he hadn’t reacted this
way to the last bride to come here, hadn’t felt anything for her. Hadn’t felt anything for anyone in longer than he could remember.

Yet here he was. Here
she
was.

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.

To see how
she responded, if she’d have as much fire kissing him back as she had matching him word for word.

It could be incredible. He suspected it would be, every inch of his body taut with the drive, the need, to do it.

It would also be a mistake. That most of all.

And before he did anything he would end up regretting, he quickly turned and walked away.

* * *

A
DAM
STEPPED
AWAY
so suddenly Jillian felt a jolt of surprise that rocked her onto her heels. Trying to regain her equilibrium, she watched him stride away toward the side of the house, his back disappearing into the darkness.