With This Kiss (3 page)

“These smell good, but they’re so messy.”

Sean knew she was expecting him to say something, to tell her who he was or what he was doing staring at her like that, but for the moment, he was just enjoying
listening to her speak. Her soft, melodic voice was another piece of the puzzle he’d been putting together from the moment he’d seen her silky hair glide across her back.

But most of all, her smile made him want to smile back.

Which was crazy.

She finally shook her head and said, with a small frown, “I’m sorry, you don’t need to listen to me babble about roses.”

But he did
. Just as he hated seeing the frown replace her smile.

No, not just crazy.
Insane.

Sharpening her focus on him, she continued with, “I didn’t think anyone new was checking in today, so I wasn’t monitoring the front desk.” The welcoming smile on her face instinctively drew him closer to her. “Can I help you with something else? Are you visiting a guest at the inn, perhaps?”

Finally, he told her, “I’m Sean Murphy. I’m here for my brother’s wedding.”

In an instant, her smile disappeared. Her mouth opened slightly in surprise and her cheeks grew even more flushed.

She took a quick step backward and bumped into one of the covered folding chairs.

He waited for her gaze to drop to his scar and hold there, certain that was the reason for her sudden, too-strong reaction. But her eyes never left his, never once raked over the mark that bisected the lower half of his left cheek, from earlobe to chin.

“Oh my gosh. Of course you’re Sean. I knew something about you looked familiar. I should have realized it earlier, but the wedding must have scrambled my brain.”

All the while, as she spoke, she was blinking up at him,
her big green eyes stealing his brain cells away one at a time. It felt like a hammer was pounding away in his brain.

How did she know his name when he couldn’t for the life of him think of hers?

She bit her lip, drawing his attention to their full, soft shape. For all the conservative nature of her dress and shoes and jewelry, her full mouth and silky hair seemed to show a deeper truth about her. A sweet sensuality she couldn’t hide.

Half of him wanted to ask her how she knew his name. The other half wanted to ask her to say it again, to let her soft voice wrap itself around him like it had just a minute ago.

“Do you know where Stu is?” he asked, instead.

Her eyes grew even bigger. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, more than a little horrified.

“You don’t know what happened?”

The hammer pounded harder, joined by a warning bell inside his brain that told him something was definitely wrong. Hadn’t he known it from the minute he’d walked into the inn and realized there was another wedding taking place?

Immediately worrying that something had happened to his younger brother, a brother he’d always looked after when they were kids but hadn’t been around to check on much over the past few years, he said, “Tell me now. What happened?”

The woman’s eyes were wide enough now that he saw how green they were, like fresh growth on bare trees in spring. She was clasping her hands together in front of her so tightly that her knuckles were turning white and the rose petals were getting crushed beneath her grip.

“I was sure he was going to tell you, that he was going to talk to you.” She shook her head, tightened her hands more. “He should have told you. You’re his brother.”

He moved toward her then, worry for his brother making him put his hands on her shoulders before he realized it.

“Where is my brother?”

Her muscles and frame were surprisingly strong beneath her soft flesh. Her sweet scent wrapped around him, a faint blend of maple and vanilla.

“I don’t know where he is.”

Suddenly, he could feel her starting to tremble beneath his hands.

What was he doing manhandling a total stranger?

“I’m sorry,” he said automatically. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.” Sean started to lift his hands off her when he suddenly realized why she looked familiar.

“You’re Stu’s fiancée.”

Stu had sent a picture of her when they’d announced their engagement and Sean’s secretary had laid it out on top of the rest of his business correspondence. He’d been between meetings and had barely had time to look at the picture before it was filed away. But from what he recalled, while he’d thought his brother’s fiancée had seemed pretty in the picture, nothing about her had drawn any special notice.

He could hardly place this woman before him to the one beside Stu in the staged photo. Same hair, same eyes, same face, same features, but totally different.

As if she’d somehow come into focus since that photo was taken.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Rebecca. I was his fiancée.”

He couldn’t miss the
was
.

She hadn’t intended for him to miss it.

“You’re supposed to be getting married tomorrow.”

“Yes,” she said again, but she was shaking her head even as she agreed with him. “We were, but—”

A door flung open and Sean heard his mother’s voice. “Rebecca, have you seen my wrap? I think I left it at my sea—”

The words fell away as Elizabeth realized her oldest son was standing there. She was dressed in a long, sparkling silver dress and even though he hadn’t seen her in the audience, he’d known she had to be at the wedding. Local weddings had always been a town affair.

She looked back and forth between him and Rebecca with surprise—and then a deep, confused frown.

Rebecca jumped out of his grasp so fast he swore he felt a blast of cold air in the spot she’d been standing.

“Sean?” His mother moved toward him, her gaze immediately going to his scar and holding there for several seconds. Finally, she pulled it away. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for Stu’s wedding.”

“I thought he would have told you,” Rebecca said again.

But before he could return his focus to Stu’s ex-fiancée, Sean’s mother was exclaiming, “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re finally home. It’s all been such a mess. For all of us. Your father and I kept trying to reach you, but your secretary always said you were in a meeting.” She lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to leave such a personal message with a stranger.”

“So there’s no wedding?” He directed the question to Rebecca rather than his mother.

“No,” Rebecca said. “I’m afraid not.”

“Why?” Again, he directed the question to Rebecca, but this time she didn’t answer. She simply stood there and stared at the floor.

His mother reached for his hand and gripped it hard. “Stu didn’t say. He just left me and your father a note saying he needed to go away for a while to think about things and that the wedding was off. Isn’t that right, Rebecca?”

Rebecca finally came unstuck and took a step forward. Her chin tilted slightly up to face his mother, who was several inches taller, and she said, “Yes,” and for a moment he was struck by her surprising strength.

The impression deepened as she turned to Sean with her explanations. “Stu and I both agreed that the engagement and wedding were a mistake, but that we’re still friends.” Her words were soft but firm. “There are no hard feelings between us. None at all. We both just want what’s best for each other.” She paused. “Unfortunately, in the morning he was gone.”

Rebecca’s earnest words seemed genuine, but Sean wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. Clearly, his mother wasn’t either, as she said, “I just wish he’d come to tell me that himself, instead of disappearing in the middle of the night with only a note saying he’d left you in charge of the inn. I just don’t feel right about it at all.”

Yet again, the woman who’d trembled in his arms stood strong in front of his mother.

“Your son is a wonderful man. And I’m sure he’ll be back soon to let us all know what’s going on.”

“When?” Elizabeth asked.

To anyone else’s ears, Sean knew his mother’s question was simply full of worry for her youngest child. But
there was ice at its core. It didn’t make sense that his first instinct was to protect Rebecca. But sense or not, the instinct was still there.

Fortunately, Rebecca didn’t seem to need his protection. She simply shook her head and said, “I wish I knew. But I don’t.”

Again, Sean knew Rebecca was telling the truth simply because there was no hesitation behind her words. Only when asked why Stu had left had she stayed quiet.

She turned her face to his again. “Are you sure he didn’t try to reach you, Sean?”

His name on her lips sent another jolt through him. Telling himself it was simply that he was feeling every one of the two hours of sleep he’d gotten on the red-eye—or rather, the twenty-two he hadn’t gotten—he ran a hand over his face before answering. “Not as far as I know.”

Damn it, if Stu was in trouble, why hadn’t he come to his older brother? Had Sean done that bad a job of taking care of his brother these past years that Stu didn’t know his door was always open? Stu was the one person he’d always loved with his whole heart. Stu was the only person he knew he could trust wholly and completely.

But now, out of the blue, his brother had done a runner. Not just on his fiancée and family. But on the inn as well.

Sean hated feeling that his trust had been misplaced. By absolutely everyone he’d ever loved.

“He left the rest of us letters,” Rebecca said. “Perhaps yours got lost in the mail.”

“I’ve been out of the country for three weeks. I came here straight from the airport. I’ll have my assistant go through my mail tonight. If there’s a letter waiting for me, she’ll find it.”

And hopefully if there was a letter, it would give them all more of a clue as to where his brother had gone.

The door creaked again and footsteps sounded on the old wooden floorboards. “Rebecca, I think I’ve got a tear in the seam of my dress and I was wondering if you could—”

Andi skidded to a stop halfway into the room, looking between Sean and Elizabeth and Rebecca.

“Sean, what a nice surprise it is to see you.”

He forced a smile for the bride. “Congratulations, Andi.”

His smile had been mostly teeth, but when she smiled back at him, she was so full of happiness he could almost feel it cutting a little hole through the frustration in the room.

“Thanks, Sean.”

But then, as she looked from him to Rebecca and his mother, her smile fell away. “Rebecca, I really don’t want to interrupt, but I think I’d better stitch my dress up before it turns into a full-on tear.”

“No problem, Andi. I’ve got a sewing kit upstairs.” Rebecca hurried to the bride’s side. “I’ll just run up and get it.”

“Great, I’ll come up with you.”

A moment later, Sean and his mother were standing in a room full of empty chairs and hundreds of flower heads and petals.

“What exactly did Stu’s letter say, Elizabeth?”

His mother’s eyes flashed with hurt at the way he’d used her proper name. He hadn’t called her Mom since he was fourteen. He wasn’t about to start now.

“Just that he was sorry, but he and Rebecca had decided not to get married. And that while he was gone, he trusted Rebecca to run the inn as she saw fit.”

She looked away too quickly and the hard knot in his chest tightened, the way it always did when he spoke with her. After all these years away from Emerald Lake, he’d believed he could be in complete control over himself during Stu’s wedding weekend. But that had been when he’d thought it was going to be nothing more than a couple of parties.

Nearly certain that she was hiding something from him, he asked, “Is that all his letter said?”

His mother was an attractive woman, but as they stood together while the sunlight disappeared behind a cloud, she looked every one of her fifty years.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Sean. Don’t you know that? I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

He didn’t say anything in response to her non sequitur. They both knew he couldn’t say anything, not if she wanted him to continue keeping her secrets, just like he had for the past twenty years.

Her shoulders rounded ever farther as she sighed. “Stu said none of this was Rebecca’s fault and that if anyone should take the blame, it was him.” Her eyes were filled with tears as she added, “But you and I both know he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s always been such a good boy.”

Another wave of exhaustion swept over Sean. “Don’t worry,” he finally told her, knowing it was what she wanted to hear. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

Looking relieved, her gaze went back to the side of his face. “Your scar looks much better. You must be using that cream I sent you. I know how much it’s always bothered you.”

No. He’d never really cared about the scar, but what
was the point in bothering to clarify things twenty years after the accident that had scarred his face?

“It’s been a long day. I’m going to head upstairs to take a shower.”

“Come with me to say hello to your father and grandmother first.” He let his mother take him into the reception room. “Look who I found talking with Rebecca in the other room.”