Claiming His Bride
Claiming His Bride
Vivienne Wallington
Precious seconds slipping away, Mack Chaney crashed Sydney's Wedding of the Year to expose a betrayaL.and save the bride from marrying a snake in gentleman's clothing. Suzie Ashton had been his woman once, before their romance ended.Now, like some dark knight in black leather, Mack couldn't help but claim the vulnerable beauty in virginal white as his wife.For Mack, their whirlwind union meant more than sparing Suzie humiliation. It was as binding as the kisses and caresses they shared as Mr. and Mrs. But secrets still loomed between them, secrets Mack vowed to unveil once his bride fled the morning after….
“You’ll want to be married for real one day, Suzie.
You’re a woman who believes in marriage and happily-ever-afters. And children. And it will happen. When you find the right man.”
Suzie couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Afraid of what her own might reveal. “Please, Mack, I don’t want—” She stopped, taking a quick sharp breath. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking if your hair’s dry.” His hands were at her nape, his fingers threading through her curls. It was the lamest excuse she’d ever heard, but she didn’t immediately jerk away, her skin tingling under his touch.
“Don’t,” she whispered huskily, but she still couldn’t seem to move.
“He wasn’t the man for you, Suzie. Trust me.”
That made her jerk back away from him. “Trust you?” she breathed. “You’d be the last man I’d ever trust!”
Dear Reader,
The year is off to a wonderful start in Silhouette Romance, and we’ve got some of our best stories yet for you right here.
Our tremendously successful ROYALLY WED series continues with The Blacksheep Prince’s Bride by Martha Shields. Our intrepid heroine—a lady-in-waiting for Princess Isabel—will do anything to help rescue the king. Even marry the single dad turned prince! And Judy Christenberry returns to Romance with Newborn Daddy. Poor Ryan didn’t know what he was missing, until he looked through the nursery window….
Also this month, Teresa Southwick concludes her much-loved series about the Marchetti family in The Last Marchetti Bachelor. And popular author Elizabeth August gives us Slade’s Secret Son. Lisa hadn’t planned to tell Slade about their child. But with her life in danger, there’s only one man to turn to….
Carla Cassidy’s tale of love and adventure is Lost in His Arms, while new-to-the-Romance-line Vivienne Wallington proves she’s anything but a beginning writer in this powerful story of a man Claiming His Bride.
Be sure to come back next month for Valerie Parv’s ROYALLY WED title as well as new stories by Sandra Steffen and Myrna Mackenzie. And Patricia Thayer will begin a brand-new series, THE TEXAS BROTHERHOOD.
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
Claiming His Bride
Vivienne Wallington
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
VIVIENNE WALLINGTON
is an Australian living in Melbourne, Victoria, in an area with lots of trees, birds and parkland. She has been happily married to John, her real-life hero, for over forty years, and they have a married son and daughter and five grandchildren who provide inspiration for her books. Vivienne worked as a librarian for many years, but was always writing as well, eventually having a children’s book published. After two more years, she gave up writing for children to concentrate on romance. She has written nineteen Mills & Boon Romance novels under the pseudonym Elizabeth Duke, and is now writing for Silhouette under her real name. Her favorite hobbies are reading, research, family and travel.
Contents
Chapter One (#ud5e324ed-729e-5d69-91fb-a6ff961be88b)
Chapter Two (#u6fca25e3-000d-56c5-adef-70ba5287fc7c)
Chapter Three (#uff1d98fa-a680-5fc6-91a7-fb232008679e)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Sydney
“Wow, just look at all those cameras and photographers down there!” Ruth Ashton’s eyes widened as she looked down over the sweeping lawns and gardens of Bougainvillea Receptions from the bride’s dressing room. “And they’ve all come to see you, Suzie.”
Her daughter was pirouetting in front of the full-length mirror, swirling the long skirt of her embroidered ivory lace wedding gown—one of her own designs. Suzie’s sole bridesmaid, Lucy, in ice-blue silk, was fluttering around her, making sure everything was as it should be.
“They’ve come to see my wedding dress, not me—they want to see what fabulous design I’ve come up with this time.” Suzie’s voice shook a little. She’d wanted a simple, informal garden wedding, but it was fast turning into a media circus.
“Well, it’s not every day a young fashion designer without her own label wins the prestigious Australian Gown of the Year award.” Her mother’s face glowed with pride. “Today’s added publicity could really boost your career, darling. Fashion editors from all the top fashion magazines are here.”
“I’m only allowing all those cameras and fashion sharks in,” Suzie returned rather sharply, “to save Jolie Fashions, who’ve been so good to me. I don’t want to see them go under.” The Sydney-based fashion house was in severe debt and struggling for survival, thanks to a crooked accountant. “The media exposure will be great publicity for Jolie, especially with my bridesmaid and the bride’s mother and the bridegroom’s mother and a good proportion of the guests wearing Jolie designs.”
“Darling, the fashion media will take one look at your fabulous wedding gown and fall over themselves to get pictures of you, and fashion buyers will flood Jolie Fashions with orders. Your wedding will feature in every top fashion magazine, giving Jolie all the publicity they could possibly need. And you, too, dear.” Ruth’s eyes misted. “You look divine, sweetheart. I’ve never seen a more beautiful bride. Tristan’s going to be so proud of you.”
Tristan. Suzie swallowed. Her golden prince. Gentle, steady, reliable, responsible, charming, successful—the perfect husband-to-be. He might not be a man to inspire mindless passion, but mindless passion was dangerously misleading, blinding one to reality. She would always know where she was with Tristan. He was a man a girl could rely on, depend on, unlike…
She pushed the unwanted thought away, refusing to think of Mack Chaney on her wedding day. Or any other day, ever again. He was past history. And good riddance.
“You’re going to make a perfect couple,” Lucy said with a sigh. Tristan was so handsome, and so rich and Suzie, whom she’d known from their school days, had magically transformed herself from an unruly-haired imp into a regal, sleek-haired princess. “Just perfect.”
Yes, everything was perfect…almost too perfect. Suzie felt a momentary qualm. It all seemed unreal, like a dream. A glittering Cinderella fairy tale. She’d never expected to find the perfect man. She’d never believed that a perfect man existed. The only men she’d been close to in her life had been anything but perfect.
She was anything but perfect herself.
She moved quickly across to the window, wobbling a little on her ivory satin high heels. She couldn’t look at her mother or Lucy, afraid they might see the flare of guilty panic in her eyes, the flickering fear that she was about to be exposed as a fraud.
Tristan didn’t know her at all. Not the real Suzie—the scruffy, impulsive, slapdash Suzie. He only knew the elegant, coolly composed, immaculately groomed Suzanne, as he preferred to call her—the sedate, ladylike image she’d been trying so hard to keep up for the past three months—with her mother’s encouragement.
From the moment Suzie had caught the eye of the young leather-goods tycoon at the Australian fashion awards three months ago, her mother had been determined not to let Tristan get away. Even Tristan’s mother, the snobbish Felicia Guthrie, had come to accept her future daughter-in-law, despite Suzie’s modest upbringing and unexceptional background.
It would have helped, of course, that Suzie had recently won the Gown of the Year award. She was now somebody. A talented young designer with a bright future.
Suzie’s mouth went dry as she saw the huge crowd gathered in the garden below. As well as the rows of seats for the invited guests, which were filled already, there was a milling mob behind, with a daunting sea of cameras and giant zoom lenses, all waiting to see her latest spectacular design.
She nervously fingered the long sleeves of her elegant lace gown and the tiny pearl beads scattered over the tight-fitting bodice with its dropped waistline, then let her hand flutter down over the flared skirt.
Her natural curls were nowhere in sight, skillfully straightened into gleaming sleekness, the way she’d worn it for the past three months. On her head she wore a small pearl tiara, with a gossamer-sheer veil. Nothing must hide or detract from her wedding gown.
“Where’s Tristan?” She swung around, her voice higher than usual. “It’s the bride who’s supposed to be late, not the bridegroom.” Not having a father to give her away, she’d decided to walk into the garden arm in arm with her future husband.
“He’s not late,” her mother soothed. “He’ll be here any minute.”
Lucy ran to the door and peeked out. “He’s coming up the stairs! Are you ready, Suzie?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Suzie gulped in some air. Once she saw Tristan, once he smiled at her with his golden smile, she would feel a whole lot better.
He entered the room a few seconds later, a picture of sartorial elegance in formal white, his golden hair burnished by the crystal chandelier above. Outside, in the bright afternoon sunlight, it would gleam even more.
“Suzanne…you look like a dream. A princess.”
As she felt the warmth of his golden smile and saw the loving pride beaming from his gentle gray eyes, her qualms slipped away. She was going to have a very safe, secure and tranquil life with Tristan. Peace, security and contentment were what she longed for after the fights and frustrations and wildly swinging emotions that she and her mother had had to endure with Suzie’s charming, talented but totally irresponsible father.
The kind of life Suzie would have had to endure with Mack Chaney if she’d been mad enough to give in to her foolish passion for him.
Getting tied up with Mack long-term would have been a disaster. The Mack Chaneys of this world weren’t cut out for a secure, settled, pipe-and-slippers kind of life—the kind of life she wanted. All Mack cared about was speeding around on his Harley-Davidson and playing with his computer, idly surfing the Internet and dreaming wildly impractical dreams—pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams. She shut her mind to his other vices.
“Are you ready to go down?” Tristan asked, and she jerked herself back to earth. This was the most important day of her entire life and she was thinking of—
No, she wasn’t.
She let Tristan steer her toward the door, but they never reached it. Someone burst through the doorway first.
Suzie’s eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Mack Chaney bearing down on her like an avenging angel—or devil—in a black leather jacket, tight-fitting black leather pants, and black boots. His dark eyes were glittering with purpose and his thick black hair was as wild and untamed as it had always been.
“You’re actually intending to marry this pampered fraud?” he barked, halting abruptly in front of her. “I never thought you’d go ahead with it, Suzie. I thought you’d see the light long before today.”
“How dare you burst in here and—” Suzie stopped. “What do you mean—fraud?” She glared at him.
“Get him out of here!” sputtered her mother. “Call security!” she commanded Lucy.
“Wait!” Mack held up a hand. “You can’t marry Tristan Guthrie, Suzie. Not if you want your marriage to be legal!”
Suzie felt Tristan’s body shudder against her and heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath. She glanced up at her shocked bridegroom, but he didn’t meet her look, or make any move to draw her into the comforting protection of his shoulder, not even offering her a reassuring hand. Shock seemed to have robbed him of movement—and of his voice. His stunned gaze was transfixed on Mack Chaney’s dark-eyed, ruggedly good-looking face.
Suzie’s mother stepped forward, her face contorted in fury. “You’d try anything, wouldn’t you, Mack Chaney! I always knew you were trouble!”
Mack’s darkly sensual mouth curved a trifle. “I think the fact that Tristan Guthrie is already married justifies my presence here.”
Suzie swayed, feeling faint. It was Mack whose hand shot out to steady her, not Tristan’s. Tristan was still frozen and speechless with shock.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” she hissed at Mack as the faintness began to recede and anger took over. It wouldn’t be the first time Mack Chaney had played a practical joke on her. But never one like this. Never one so cruel.
“Why not ask your bridegroom?” Mack suggested, his tone derisive.
“I don’t need to,” she retorted. “It’s laughable.” But Tristan wasn’t laughing. Nobody was laughing. And no wonder. This was outrageous! “You’ve obviously made a mistake. Or made it up!” Her scorn lashed Mack, hiding a growing apprehension. Why was Tristan being so quiet? Why wasn’t he denying it? Getting mad? Demanding that Mack Chaney be thrown out?
“Tristan, tell me it’s not true.” Her eyes sought her bridegroom’s face. The clean-cut, perfectly sculptured features were ashen, his long-lashed gray eyes stricken. Would he look so pale and shocked if it wasn’t true? “Tristan…” Her eyes caught his, pleading with him. “Tell me he’s wrong.”
Tristan found his voice at last, a hoarse croak. “Of course he’s wrong.” He turned accusing eyes on Mack, but there was little fire in the gray depths, and his voice shook as he demanded, “Where’s your proof? You’ve been listening to malicious idle gossip.”
“It was a piece of idle gossip that led me to check up on your past,” Mack rasped. “It didn’t take long to uncover your shabby secret. You married a woman ten years ago while you were a student at university, and you’ve never obtained a divorce!” He pulled some papers from his pocket. “Here’s a copy of your marriage certificate, and confirmation in writing that no divorce has been filed.”
Lucy gasped. Tristan’s pale face seemed to crumple. He cast an anguished look at Suzie’s mother. No sympathy there. Just fury, shock and disbelief.
Tristan turned back to his stunned bride, brushing Mack Chaney aside to seize her hand. “We can work this out,” he promised hoarsely. “I’ll fix it.”
“You mean it’s true?” Suzie recoiled. Tristan had a wife he was still married to, and he’d kept it from her? Her perfect, high-principled, reliable Tristan had lied to her? Deceived her? That realization was almost as bad as knowing that her bridegroom was married and contemplating bigamy! She’d always thought Tristan so honest…so upright…so honorable.
Still reeling, unable to believe it, she asked carefully, spelling it out to make doubly sure. “You married another woman ten years ago and you’re still married to her?”
Tristan began to bluster. “It was never a real marriage, I swear it. Love never came into it. It was purely a—” he hesitated, his handsome face contorting in guilty anguish “—a marriage of convenience,” he mumbled, so low she could barely hear. “She was a foreigner—an overseas student—who wanted my help to stay in Australia. I was doing her a favor,” he asserted lamely. “We married in secret and kept it quiet. After a few months we split up and went our separate ways.”
“And where is she now?” Suzie forced out the question, feeling sick. If today’s wedding had gone ahead, she wouldn’t have been Tristan’s legal wife. She would have been married to a bigamist! And wasn’t it an offence, she wondered dazedly, to marry under false pretences, the way Tristan had? How could he be so dishonest and unprincipled! How could he?
Tristan wrung his hands. “I don’t know where she is. I heard the year after we…married that she’d left Australia and gone to some remote part of Africa to be a missionary or something. So much for wanting to stay in Australia!” He gave a disgusted snort. “I tried to trace her to send divorce papers, but she’d vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew where she’d gone. I’ve never heard anything of her since. She’s probably dead,” he said with a dismissive toss of his golden head.
“You would have been notified if she was dead,” Mack interjected coldly. “As her husband, you’re her next of kin.”
Next of kin…Suzie felt dizzy. No words could have made the nightmare more real.
“I’ll find her, darling.” Tristan gripped her arm. “I’ll get a divorce. We’ve been apart for years, so even if I can’t find her, there should be no problem….”
She looked up into his pale, handsome face, at his quivering jaw, at the long-lashed gray eyes that couldn’t quite meet hers, and saw him for the first time as he really was. A shallow, spoiled, weak-willed fraud, just as Mack had said.
“How could you, Tristan?” she cried. “How could you keep a thing like that from me? From the woman you say you love and want to marry and share your life with!”
“I—I’d forgotten about it,” he said weakly, but one look at his face was enough to tell her that was patently a lie. She wondered if he’d ever made an effort to find his wife, or if that was a lie, too. “It was so long ago, darling…we were just kids. Impetuous young students. It never meant anything…I hardly knew her…and now…well, she left Australia years ago, so why drag it up again?”
Suzie gave a choked cry. “Because you’re still married to her, Tristan…. Don’t you understand?” He still didn’t accept that he’d done anything wrong. He just wanted to shut it out of his mind and blot it out of his pampered existence as if it had never happened.
Oh, Tristan, she thought with a despairing sigh. I don’t know you at all. And here I was, feeling guilty about you not knowing the real me!
“Just go, Tristan.” She couldn’t bear to see the pained, self-righteous hurt in his eyes, or to listen to any more of his blustering self-justification. “I would never marry you now, whether you had your divorce or not.”
“I suggest,” Mack drawled, “that you go down to your mother, Tristan, and quietly lead her out of the garden, along with your closest relatives, to save them the embarrassment of a public scandal.”
Tristan’s stricken eyes flared in relief. “Yes, yes…thank you, I will.” He slunk out with a hoarse apology, his eyes avoiding his bride’s, as if too ashamed—or not brave enough—to meet her withering gaze.
Coward, Suzie thought, profoundly relieved that Mack had saved her from marrying such a lily-livered weakling—though she wished it had been anyone else but Mack Chaney who’d come to her rescue!
“Oh, darling, run after Tristan,” her mother pleaded. “Can’t you go ahead with the wedding and worry about…” Her voice trailed off as she caught the scathing contempt in her daughter’s eye. “Well, at least give Tristan a chance to—to extricate himself from this embarrassing—”
“Mum, I could never marry him now,” Suzie said flatly. “How could I ever trust him after this? After hiding a thing like an existing marriage from me? I thought he was a man of honesty and integrity. I th-thought he was perfect.”
She heard a snort from behind, and scowled. Mack was enjoying all this, no doubt…acting the big hero…sweeping to her rescue in the nick of time….
“Nobody’s perfect, darling,” her mother said pensively. “There’s good and bad in everybody. You’ll never find a perfect man. But Tristan is more perfect than any man you’re likely to meet.” She shot a virulent look at Mack. Ruth had never approved of Mack. “And he loves you.”
“Does he?” Suzie asked dully. Were a few chaste kisses a measure of a man’s love? Had she ever truly loved him? Or had she simply been dazzled by his golden looks and comforted by the thought of a calm, secure future?
“Well, what are you going to do?” her mother wailed. “Everyone is down there waiting for you, dear. All those cameras and fashion experts…all desperate to see your bridal gown and to feature your wedding day in their magazines. And Jolie Fashions are relying on you, darling, for the publicity. For their survival!”
“And what about all the food and champagne?” Lucy piped up. “You can’t waste it!”
Suzie’s head was spinning. The dream she’d thought so unreal had turned into a nightmare that was only too real. What could she do? There was no way she was going to run after Tristan and beg him to go through a sham wedding ceremony with her…no way in the world! Not even to save Jolie…
Pain pierced her at the thought. Jolie Fashions had taken her on as a struggling fashion student and given her time off to continue her course, even paying her study fees. They’d given her a job as a junior designer, and encouraged her to enter the Gown of the Year with her own design. She owed them everything!
“Suzy, remember what Jolie have done for us…for me as well,” her mother appealed to her. “You must go after Tristan.”
The sight of her mother’s distress wrenched Suzie’s heart. Jolie Fashions had been wonderful to her mother, too, taking her on as a dressmaker at a time when she’d desperately needed paid work. Ruth had supported Suzie through the long dark years, while she was still at school. How could she stand by and watch Jolie go under, taking her mother with them? Without her wealthy clients at Jolie Fashions, Ruth would have to struggle, all over again.
As she stood hesitating, Mack spoke up again.
“There is a way out.” His dark gaze pinned hers. “You could marry me, Suzie.”
Chapter Two
“We have special permission,” Mack was quick to assure her. “The celebrant already has the documents. They only need your signature, Suzie.”
She stared back at him, too stunned to think of asking how he’d wangled special permission. The black eyes piercing hers were deadly serious. If this was one of Mack’s practical jokes, there was no sign of it.
“We can go down into the garden now,” Mack continued coolly, “get married in front of all your friends and that media pack waiting for you, Suzie, soak in all the publicity you need to save your fashion house and to hold up your head as a rising star of fashion design, and we can dissolve the marriage afterward, if that’s what you want.” He glanced at Suzie’s mother.
Ruth’s eyes wavered. She knew all about holding up one’s head. She’d been keeping up appearances all her married life…making out that her marriage was a normal one, that her husband wasn’t the useless no-hoper he’d become. To have to stand by and watch her daughter marrying Mack Chaney would be intolerable, but if they planned to dissolve it afterward…
“But what would we tell everyone?”
“Just tell them your daughter realized she couldn’t go through with her wedding to Tristan Guthrie and decided to follow her true heart,” came Mack’s drawling response. “You can always tell them later it didn’t work out.” If he could win over Suzie’s mother…
Ruth looked as if she’d swallowed a lemon. “I meant what would I tell them about you? Everyone knows my daughter would never marry an aimless, unemployed biker!”
Suzie’s head swam. Their voices seemed to be coming from far away. Her true heart? Was she dreaming…or paddling through a nightmare?
“Just tell them I’m in computers,” Mack advised easily.
Ruth sniffed. “You can’t get married in black leather!”
“The fashion world will love a bridegroom in black leather,” Lucy interjected, excitement bubbling in her voice. “It’s so romantic!”
Ruth pressed a hand to her chest. “But why does it have to be you?” she croaked, glaring at Mack.
Mack clenched his jaw. “I guess because I was the only one who thought to check up on Tristan Guthrie. And because I care about what happens to your daughter, Mrs. Ashton.”
“And you think my daughter wants to get tied up with you?” Ruth’s eyes flashed daggers at him. “She doesn’t! She’s made that quite clear in the past.” She gulped down her anger, her gaze sliding away. “But if you’re serious about this being only a temporary arrangement…and if my daughter agrees…” To save face…to save Jolie Fashions…to save her daughter’s career…
“Well, Suzie?” Mack turned to his prospective bride, who’d remained silent until now. She’d been shocked into silence. “It’s your call.”
Suzie’s head was still spinning. It was impossible to think straight. Her mother’s bitter attack on Mack a second ago had had a curious effect on her, making her feel almost defensive of him, tempting her to point out his good points to her mother. Only with her mind in such a tumultuous state, she couldn’t think of any! She’d spent so much time over the past three years reminding herself of Mack’s many faults…his many sins…trying only to think of them…
Mack watched the conflicting emotions in her eyes and relaxed a trifle. She was coming around…it was going to be easier than he’d thought.
“Mrs. Guthrie’s leaving!” Lucy reported from the window. “So are the people she’s sitting closest to. There’s no sign of Tristan…he must have sent one of the staff to speak to his mother.”
Tristan hadn’t even had the courage to face his mother himself? How pathetic he was, Suzie thought in disgust. What a lucky escape she’d had…and such a close escape…and she could thank Mack….
Her eyes clouded. She didn’t want to be indebted to Mack Chaney.
Mack felt a tinge of anxiety. He’d seen that look before. Don’t get cold feet now, Suzie. “I promise I’ll give you your freedom afterward, Suzie, the moment you ask. I’ll sign anything you want me to.” His eyes burned into hers, challenging her—even as he held his breath.
As Suzie stared back at him dazedly, her mother spoke up again, Mack’s promise reassuring her. “Suzie dear, if you’re going to go ahead with this wedding, we’d better get moving. The celebrant will be waiting downstairs. You’ll have to brief her of any changes you want…”
“She’ll think we’ve gone mad,” Suzie said faintly.
Mack’s dark eyes glinted. She was actually going to go ahead with it! He hid his relief. “Mad about each other,” he corrected smoothly, trying to curb his impatience. He didn’t want her backing out now….
“I’ll go down to the garden and let people know that you’re coming.” Ruth was already moving toward the door. “I can just imagine their shock, Suzie, when you turn up with an unruly-haired biker in black leather instead of Tristan Guthrie!”
“They’ll only have eyes for the bride,” Mack murmured, “not for the man by her side.”
“Oh yeah?” Lucy breathed, eyeing him avidly. Mack was far more romantic, in his dangerous, brooding sort of way, than the impeccable, golden-haired Tristan, who’d turned out to be a bit of a wimp.
Mack held out his hand to Suzie. “Shall we go down?” He gave her a rallying smile.
The sight of his smile reassured Suzie as nothing else could. This was what she’d dreamed of once…walking down the aisle with Mack Chaney…before she’d realized she would never be able to rely on him…that he wasn’t the responsible, settling-down type.
But she didn’t have to worry about the future. They wouldn’t be married long enough. She could believe in the dream and just for today live the dream.
She took his hand and smiled back. A smile she knew she must keep up for the rest of the afternoon.
Somehow she managed it, but her head was still whirling and she was barely conscious of her feet touching the ground. She was barely conscious of anything, except vague impressions.
The official wedding photographer waiting at the foot of the stairs, the marriage celebrant coming forward to discuss the service and deal with the necessary paperwork, the barrage of cameras as she and Mack stepped out into the sun-drenched garden, the sighs of admiration as her bridal gown was duly inspected and approved and finally the stunned faces of the guests as she walked between them with Mack by her side, Lucy following close behind.
They exchanged vows in front of a shady gazebo, with Mack producing a wedding ring which, he confided, had belonged to his mother. Mack had been close to his mother, so the ring would mean a lot to him. Suzie was touched by the gesture.
“I do,” she heard herself answering when the time came, and suddenly she was married, and everyone was waiting for Mack to kiss her. He did….
The cameras went mad. As a newlywed couple, they had to sign more documents at a table in the gazebo, before enduring another barrage of photographs, not only from their own official wedding photographer, but from the clamoring fashion media. The guests, many resplendent in Jolie fashions, were also photographed. Suzie’s bosses were ecstatic.
It was a relief to finally escape the media circus, the bridal couple retreating with their guests to the reception house, where the media weren’t permitted. But they had their pictures and went away happy, dispersing quickly, keen to be the first with their fashion scoop.
As the guests spilled into the various rooms of the brightly lit, flower-bedecked reception house, champagne and appetizers were served, and the noise level rose. Everyone was having fun, the mood heightened by the astonishing turn of events.
Tristan and his mother had wanted a formal reception, but Suzie had insisted on a party instead, with a smorgasbord-style buffet set up in one of the rooms and a towering profiterole dessert instead of a formal wedding cake. A jazz band was playing in the conservatory, and some of the guests were dancing already.
“Can’t we get out of here?” Suzie begged Mack as they moved from room to room, neatly avoiding probing questions. A good few of the guests were Tristan’s friends, who’d stayed on out of curiosity. “I want to go home. You must want to escape, too. Nobody will notice we’ve gone. With all these rooms, we could be anywhere.”
“Fine with me.” Mack’s dark eyes were unreadable. “We’ll slip out the back way. But you’d better let your mother know.”
“I guess so. You wait here.” Suzie dashed off, weaving through the crush until she found her mother, flopped in an armchair. “Mum, I need to get away from everyone. I’m exhausted. I’m going to slip away.”
Her mother nodded in sympathy. “I’ll come home with you,” she offered. “You must need a comforting shoulder to cry on after all that’s happened.”
Suzie hid her alarm. The last thing she wanted was her mother’s sympathy—especially if she started commiserating about Tristan! She immediately changed tack. “Mum, Mack and I are going to have a quiet drink somewhere away from all the fuss. I’ll be home later tonight,” she promised. “I’ve no intention of spending the night with Mack,” she assured her mother, who nodded in relief.
“Don’t wait up for me,” she added, and fled.
Moments later she was out in the floodlit courtyard with Mack. The cool air hit them in the face. The afternoon had been sunny and mild—a perfect autumn day—but now it had clouded over, with one ominously dark cloud directly overhead, and there were already a few spots of rain.
She looked round. “The wedding car’s not here,” she groaned. “It must be round the front.”
“You won’t need the wedding car.” Mack was ushering her toward a big gleaming black motorcycle.
She balked. “I’m not riding on that thing. I hate motorbikes.”
“You loved riding with me once.”
“That was before—” She stopped, a deep shudder quivering through her. Before her father had crashed his high-powered Harley into a power pole.
“I know, Suzie, and I’m sorry about your father, but you’ll be safe with me, I promise.”
Safe with Mack Chaney? When had she ever been safe with Sydney’s wild-boy bachelor?
Only he wasn’t a bachelor now. He was her husband. She began to tremble. Reaction was setting in.
As she stood hesitating, Mack’s fingers closed over her shoulders—warm, strong fingers that sent a tingling heat through the delicate lace. “You know what they say when someone falls off a horse.” His voice held a seductively persuasive note—a familiar note that brought back disturbing memories. “Get right back on and get rid of the demons.”
She looked up into his compelling black eyes and shivered, her mouth twisting. The only demon she had to fight was Mack himself. She’d been fighting that particular demon for the past three years, and for another year before that, when they’d been together—on and off. When Tristan Guthrie swept into her life three months ago, she thought that she’d finally succeeded in ridding herself of the demon that was Mack Chaney.
Tristan. Her golden prince. Her charming, sensible, honorable, dependable, perfect…Pah! She should have known he was too good to be true. Hot tears pricked her eyes.
“You want to get away from here or not?” Mack was already mounting his shiny black Harley and waiting for her to make up her mind.
“Yes, get me away! But I—I’ve decided not to go home yet. Mum will be home shortly, and I just can’t face her again tonight. Let’s have a quiet drink somewhere.”
“We’ll go to my place. Hop on!”
His place? But she hardly cared where. She just wanted to get away from here, before someone saw them and tried to drag them back inside.
She looped the long skirt of her wedding gown over her arm—she’d discarded her veil and headpiece earlier—and jumped up behind Mack. He’d pulled his helmet on and had unhooked the spare one for her.
“Here, put this on,” he ordered, thrusting it at her, but she gave a reckless shake of her head.
“I want to feel the wind in my hair. I’ve a lot of cobwebs to blow away.”
“It’s illegal not to wear a helmet,” Mack reminded her with rare deference to the law. She laughed—a brittle, almost hysterical laugh. Illegal? Bigamy was illegal! Not wearing a helmet was hardly the crime of the century. But she took it and rammed it on her head. “Come on, are we going or not?”
“We’re going.” Mack revved the engine. “Hang on!”
She did, clinging to him for dear life as his high-powered machine sprang forward and roared off down the sweeping driveway to the street. The spatters of rain were increasing, great splashing drops now, gathering momentum by the second.
She shut her eyes, relishing the wind and rain in her face because it gave her something else to think about other than the shocking events that had taken place at Bouganvillea Receptions.
She could feel her carefully straightened hair sprouting curls as the rain seeped under the helmet. Well, it hardly mattered now. Tristan wasn’t going to see it. Mack, on the other hand, was bound to make some cutting remark about her new look—her artificial new look—when they finally reached the sanctuary of his home.
Sanctuary? A shiver feathered down her spine. By running off with Mack Chaney, wasn’t she jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?
As they careered round the first corner, Mack suddenly nosed his bike into the kerb and brought it to a halt.
“What are you doing?” she cried as he eased himself out of her grasp and leapt off.
What he was doing, she realized, was peeling off his leather jacket. He had a plain black T-shirt underneath which emphasized the breadth of his muscled chest and exposed the impressive muscles of his tanned arms. She pursed her lips, wondering if he’d added workouts in the gym to his other leisure activities.
“Here. Slip your arms into this.” He helped her into his jacket, which was several sizes too large for her, but felt beautifully snug and warm. “It might protect you a bit.”
Surprised at his unexpected gallantry—but then, Mac had always been a man of surprises, good and bad—she showed her gratitude with a light, “Thanks, Mack. Now you’ll get wet through.”
“Never mind about me,” Mack muttered as he threw a sturdy thigh over his bike and settled back into his seat. There was an edge of mockery in his voice, as if to say, When have you ever minded about me? “Ready to go? Hold on, Suzie!” The big machine shot forward.
The rain was tumbling down. She could feel her wet curls clinging to her cheeks, her neck. She thought of Tristan and her mouth dipped. What would it matter now if she reverted to her natural curls and dropped her sophisticated, ladylike facade? Who was going to care now that her golden prince had turned into a tarnished frog?
Just as her dark prince had, three years ago.
She wondered bleakly if an honest, dependable man existed anymore.
She turned her face into the driving rain, as if that might wash them both out of her mind and out of her life. But it was pretty futile when she had her arms around the dark prince, his ring on her finger and would shortly be arriving at his home.
Chapter Three
As Mack swung his bike into the narrow driveway of his modest weatherboard home, which he’d inherited from his mother about five years ago, Suzie felt herself trembling again. Not with reaction this time, or even with cold—Mack’s jacket had saved her from catching a mortal chill—but with a shivery apprehension.
She’d been to Mack’s house a few times during the roller-coaster months they’d been together—or more accurately, seeing each other. They’d never actually been together in that sense, though it had come close a few times and would undoubtedly have happened if Mack hadn’t shattered her faith in him—albeit blind, rebellious faith—by showing that he possessed the same destructive traits that had wrecked her father’s life.
Her mother had mistrusted Mack from the start and warned her to keep right away from him. Suzie had known in her heart that Ruth was right about him, that he was the last man in the world she should be seeing, let alone falling for, but try as she might she hadn’t been able to keep away from him. Until that awful night three years ago—the night Mack had demonstrated, with painful clarity, that he was no different from her father.
Disillusioned, she’d refused to see him again, refused his phone calls, even refused to speak to him when he’d turned up at her father’s funeral a few months later. She’d wanted to make it clear to Mack that whatever they’d shared together was now dead, and that she was severing all connections with him.
“We’re here now, Suzie, you can let go of me,” Mack drawled, and she realized they’d pulled up near his front steps and that she was still clinging to him. She released him as if her hands were suddenly on fire, and scrambled off the big machine, groaning as she looked down at her mud-spattered ivory satin high heels and the soaked skirt of her elegant wedding gown.
“My dress and shoes are ruined!” she moaned. “Haven’t you ever thought of buying a car?”
“And give up my Harley?” Mack grinned at her through the rain. In the glow of his porch light, drops of water beaded his heavy eyebrows and thick lashes, giving his dark eyes a pearly sheen. “Come on inside, Suzie, out of this rain. We’ll have to get these things off. We’re both soaked.” His wet T-shirt clung to his muscled chest like a second skin.
We’ll have to get these things off? Alarm shot through her. “I’ll be fine,” she babbled, wondering why she’d ever agreed to come to his home with him. Was she mad? This wasn’t a real marriage, for heaven’s sake! They’d agreed it wasn’t going to last. “Your jacket has kept me nice and dry and warm,” she mumbled.
“Only the top half of you.” He was still grinning, damn him, as he surveyed her sodden gown and shoes. “But I can’t see your wedding dress surviving somehow. I hope you’re not having second thoughts about marrying Tristan when you’re both free again, assuming he ever gets his divorce, of course!”
She almost snapped back, “No, I’m not!” but she caught the words back, scowling instead. A bit of doubt on Mack’s part might be a good thing. As a protective device. Mack had supreme powers of persuasion, as he’d demonstrated before when she’d been determined to keep away from him. Until he’d shown his true colors on that last soul-destroying night, and she’d made it quite clear to him that he was out of her life for good.
But she still wasn’t immune to him, she realized in dismay. Not entirely immune. Having to keep her body pressed up against him all the way to his home, and her arms wrapped tightly around him, had shown her that. The feel of his taut muscles under her hands had sent her heartbeat haywire and her pulses soaring, and even now she could still feel her nerve endings twitching. She would have to be well and truly on her guard against him, every second she spent with him.
As Mack whisked her up the rickety front steps to the shelter of his small covered porch, she fingered her wet tangle of curls and wondered ruefully what Tristan would have thought of her smooth, sleek hair sprouting rebellious curls before his eyes. Would he have laughed, and loved her just as much? Or would he have sent her off to have her hair professionally, permanently, straightened?
She simply didn’t know. What madness had made her want to rush into marriage with a man she didn’t really know? A man she’d only known for three months?
It had been nothing but a dream. And dreams weren’t real. Fairy tales weren’t real.
She heard a thud, and then another, and realized that Mack was tugging off his boots. As he peeled off his socks, revealing dark-skinned bare feet, she gulped and looked away, kicking off her own mud-spattered satin shoes.
Mack unlocked his front door and waved her in. “I’m glad to see your curls are back, Suzie,” he commented as he led her into the front room—a combined sitting room and workroom—and switched on the overhead light. Only one of the three bulbs was working—typical of Mack Chaney, Suzie thought, glancing upward. On her past visits here, he’d often overlooked practical household basics, his mind too absorbed, no doubt, with the Internet and his latest brilliant idea.
But at least the lighting was softer than it would have been with all three bulbs working!
“What on earth did you do to your hair before?” Mack asked, fingering a stray damp curl. He was thinking how cute she looked with her wet curls clustered round her cheeks, and how dewy and moist and kissable her lips looked, and how she’d die if she knew she had mascara running down her face. “And why?”
Suzie jerked her face away. “I needed a change.” No way would she tell him the real reason she’d dispensed with her curls—to impress Tristan Guthrie on the night of the Gown of the Year awards. Tristan, as head of the Guthrie Leather Goods empire, one of the sponsors for the event, had presented the main award.
Knowing he’d be there, her mother had urged Suzie to make an effort to look more elegant and sophisticated in the hope that her daughter would catch the eye of the eligible young bachelor. Dolled up in her award-winning gown, with her new sleek hairstyle and ladylike demeanor, Suzie had done her mother proud. Tristan had had eyes for no one else all night—or for the following three months.
“I had it straightened, that’s all,” she said with a shrug. “Every woman likes a new look occasionally.”
“Why change what’s perfect already?”
A tremor quivered through her. Mack was the only one who’d ever thought her perfect as she was. Everyone else preferred her new sleek-haired, sophisticated look—her mother, her workmates at Jolie Fashions, Tristan, his snooty mother.
“And you don’t need all that eye makeup and mascara,” Mack chided. “You’re too fair. It looks unnatural.”
“Tristan liked me like this.” He’d never taken a second look at the natural Suzie. He’d come to Jolie Fashions once to pick up his mother after a fitting, and he’d walked straight past her without a glance.
“He should have liked you as you really are.”
She twitched a shoulder. He never noticed me as I really was.
Mack reached up to brush a finger over her cheek. “Your mascara has run,” he mocked softly. “The hazards of makeup. Still, I’m sure Tristan appreciated your glamorous new look.” His dark eyes taunted her. “He’d like the cool, sophisticated ice-maiden look, from what I found out about him. Nothing too hot or passionate or unbridled for our straitlaced golden boy.”
He was so close to the mark that she forgot she hadn’t intended to let him get under her skin, and she lost her cool. “From what you found out about him?” she lashed back. “I still can’t believe you actually had the nerve to check up on my fiancé’s past—just on a vague, spiteful hunch!” She was too incensed to acknowledge that if he hadn’t, he would never have discovered and exposed Tristan’s secret marriage, and she would be the wife of a bigamist by now.
“There was nothing spiteful about it. I was merely looking out for your welfare. But we can discuss your errant ex-fiancé when you have a soothing drink in your hand. And when you’ve removed those wet things.”
She flinched away from him. “Oh…you mean your jacket.” She hurriedly slipped it off and handed it back to him. “Thanks.” She paused, glancing down. “I don’t suppose it matters that I’m leaving muddy splotches and watery drops on your carpet. How long since you’ve had it cleaned? Sometime last century?” She screwed up her nose in distaste at the stained, threadbare carpet.
“Oh, that old thing, it’ll be going soon.”
Yeah, I’ll bet, Suzie thought. And pigs might fly. She was still frowning at the carpet. “What did you do—hold a wild party in here? What are these stains—red wine? Or did someone get stabbed?”
His lip quirked. “It’s grease. I took my bike apart in here and made a bit of a mess.”
She rolled her eyes. “Heavens, Mack,” she exclaimed, looking around the room properly for the first time, “this whole room’s a mess. It’s a disgrace.”
There were piles of papers and cardboard cartons stacked on the floor, and more cluttering the tables and desktops, where a computer and keyboard were just visible. The armchairs had newspapers and computer magazines strewn all over them. “Don’t you ever tidy your house? Or do any cleaning?”
“I’ve been busy. I’m not going to die because of a bit of dust or a few messy papers and boxes. Besides, nobody sees the mess but me.”
“I’m seeing it.”
“Since when did a bit of mess bother you, Suzie?” His dark eyes glinted. “There was a time when you only noticed me, and the chemistry that flared between us every time we looked at each other. And we had more than just chemistry going for us.”
Suzie wanted to stop him, but his next words brought such nostalgic memories flooding back that they formed a lump in her throat, making speech impossible.
“Remember how we used to love listening to the band concerts and feeding the pigeons in Hyde Park, Suzie? And watching the yacht races on Sydney Harbour at weekends? And how we loved a good joke? And talking about everything under the sun? Music, sports, politics, books, movies, our dreams, our ambitions?”
She unlocked her throat. “Pipe dreams, in your case!” Her heart rate had picked up to a disturbing degree at his reminder of three years ago, and scorn seemed the best way to cover her turmoil. “You were always full of talk about what you were going to do with your life when your brilliant ideas hit the jackpot and you made tons of money, but I don’t see any sign that you’ve become rich and famous in the past three years!”
She raked a disparaging look around. “Nothing’s changed, has it, Mack? When I first met you, you’d just thrown in a perfectly good job and dropped out of university, and you’ve never knuckled down to a proper job since as far as I can see—let alone hit a jackpot!”
No, nothing’s changed, she thought, stifling a sigh. He’s just like my father. All his dreams of becoming rich and famous—in his case with his paintings—had come to nothing, too.
Mack gave a snort. “What was the point in staying at uni? I knew more about computers and programming than my lecturers. And the job I had with that computer firm was leading nowhere. And I have been working since then. Every time I sit down at my computer I’m working.”
“Playing games,” she scoffed.
“Inventing new games,” he corrected. “New programs. New software.”
“That nobody’s interested in!”
She would never have been so harsh or so discouraging three years ago—she would have put his failures down to being ahead of his time and urged him to keep trying—but she was still bitter at the way Mack had killed her trust in him on that last traumatic night, revealing a side of him she’d never seen, and never wanted to see again.
“So little faith!” Mack sighed. He seemed amused rather than devastated, she noted in exasperation. “How you’ve changed, Suzie. You encouraged me once.”
“Until I realized you were just like my father…living on your dreams and never facing reality,” she retorted. Didn’t he even care? “You’re going to end up just like him, with nothing to show for your life.” And look what that had done to her father.
“Is that why you cut me out of your life as if I’d never existed?”
She avoided his eyes. She’d never told him the full extent of her father’s sins. She’d only mentioned his depression, his drinking and the frustrations of a brilliant artist with a tortured soul. Both she and her mother had always tried to cover up her father’s destructive gambling, to protect the self-esteem of the man they’d both loved to the end. Loved, hated and despaired of.
“I was only nineteen,” she defended herself. “I was still a student. I had my career to concentrate on. I—I didn’t want to get involved with—with anyone.”
“Especially not with me.”
“All right—especially not with you! And you were never really in my life, so stop twisting the facts. We were never together. We were just friends.”
“Do you kiss all your friends with the passion you used to kiss me?”
The memory of their passion—the wild, steaming passion that had flared between them every time they’d looked at each other, every time they’d touched, and especially when they’d kissed—brought a remembered heat to her body. She seized on anger to douse it.
“How dare you throw my adolescent mistakes back at me, today of all days! And it was only a few kisses. You make it sound as if it were a grand passion.” Damn it, it was once…to her. It could have been—if he’d been less like her father, if he’d been able to resist the temptations her father had succumbed to. She could still see the elated look in Mack’s eyes the night he’d come home from the casino rolling in money and reeking of whiskey. She blinked the bitter memory away.
Something shimmered in Mack’s dark eyes, but he said nothing, moving to a corner cabinet to extract a half-empty bottle of Scotch and two glasses. Suzie compressed her lips. So he still drank whiskey!
He poured some into both glasses and handed her one. “Here, sip this while I fetch you something to change into. I don’t possess a dressing gown, but I might have a tracksuit that’ll do. You’d better have a hot shower and get out of that wet garb before you get pneumonia.”
He strode from the room before she could argue.
She took a gulp of her whiskey and coughed. She hated whiskey and rarely touched it, remembering what alcohol had done to her father. And Mack could end up the same way, if he kept on drinking. But this, she told herself, was medicinal! She took another more determined gulp, taking comfort from the hot spirit as it coursed a fiery path down her throat.
Mack came back as she was about to take another reviving sip. He hadn’t wasted time changing and was still wearing his wet T-shirt and black leather pants.
“Here. This will have to do.” He handed her a gray tracksuit. “It has a drawstring waist, so you should be able to keep the pants up.”
She had a strange sense of déjà vu. Mack had been wearing a similar gray tracksuit—maybe even this one—the day she’d first met him. Like most things about Mack, their meeting had been dramatic and unconventional.
Her boss had sent her to a house in Mack’s street to deliver a new outfit to a client. She’d borrowed one of the company cars, which she wasn’t familiar with. Worse, it was a manual, not an automatic. As she was about to drive off after making the delivery, she’d reversed the car by mistake and had collided with Mack as he careered out of his front gate on his Harley—far too fast to stop in time, and looking in the opposite direction.
It was only a glancing blow, but Mack had come off his bike and crashed to the pavement. She’d jumped out of the car and rushed to him, her heart in her mouth, horrified to see blood all over his face. It was only a nosebleed, she’d discovered, but at first glance it had looked far worse. She’d insisted on taking him inside his house to tend to his wounds.
He’d been more apologetic than she had, berating himself for not wearing a protective helmet. He’d only been planning to ride up his street and back, he’d told her ruefully, to test some work he’d just done on his bike.
He’d been lucky. Very lucky.
So had she. Her stupid mistake could have killed him!
“Suzie?” Mack’s voice penetrated her musings, and she realized he’d just said something to her.
“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I just said, you know where the bathroom is.” His dark eyes seemed to swallow her up, as if he were remembering their first meeting, too.
He turned away to pick up the glass of whiskey he’d poured for himself, tossing the contents down at a gulp, bringing a frown to her brow as the devil-may-care action reminded her of her father’s reckless drinking.
“I’ll change while you’re showering, Suzie,” he said as he led the way, “and then I’ll make us some coffee.”
She opened her mouth to tell him not to bother about coffee, that she wouldn’t be here long enough, but she snapped her mouth shut again. Where would she go? She couldn’t go home yet—her mother could be home by now, and she didn’t want to face her mother again tonight. She didn’t feel up to fielding questions or dealing with sympathy.
Mack certainly wouldn’t be offering her any sympathy.
He didn’t. His first words, after they’d settled into armchairs in the front room—she noted he’d removed the newspapers and magazines while she was in the shower—were, “What were you thinking of, Suzie, getting mixed up with a pampered pussycat like Tristan Guthrie? The jerk has no conscience and no backbone—obviously. And he’s never worked for anything in his life, as you must know—he inherited his money and his business success. He didn’t have to lift a finger.”
His voice dropped to a husky drawl. “As for passion—I don’t think he’d know the word, would he?”
As her breath caught, he leaned forward in his chair, his coffee mug cradled in his hands. He’d changed into faded blue jeans and a black polo shirt, which made him look marginally less tough than his black leather gear, while just as disturbingly masculine. But what he was saying was even more disturbing. She didn’t want to talk about passion!
“You must realize what an escape you’ve had, Suzie. Tristan Guthrie would have bored you to death. He’s far too weak and wishy-washy for a passionate—” he paused as Suzie’s eyes flew to his, sparking with hot blue fire. “—sorry…for an independent, strong-minded woman like you,” he amended.
“Is that why you checked up on him?” she snapped. “Because you thought he wasn’t right for me and you hoped you’d find some embarrassing skeleton in his closet?”
He didn’t deny it. “He struck me as too smooth, too smug, too picture-perfect. He didn’t ring true. I decided to dig around a bit and find out more about him.”
“You must have dug really hard…and deep…and low.” Her eyes told him just how low she thought him, for thinking of delving into her fiancé’s past in the first place—rightly or wrongly. Who did he think he was? Her keeper?
“I did. I checked records, spoke to people and finally found one of his fellow university students from ten years ago who mentioned this foreign woman he was with for a while. I delved a bit deeper and picked up rumors of overseas students marrying secretly to stay in the country. I thought it was worth following up. I examined marriage records, and bingo! Tristan Guthrie, large as life. But there was no record of any divorce.”
He settled back in his armchair with a satisfied smirk. Then, as if the whole sordid scandal was now explained, dealt with and behind them, he commented easily, “I’m glad to see you looking yourself again, Suzie. The curls, the natural face. You don’t need all that artifice and makeup. You’re beautiful without it. And I must say you look very fetching in my track-suit.”
Did she realize, he wondered, that it was the same tracksuit he’d been wearing when she’d knocked him off his bike on the day they first met? Not just off his bike—she’d knocked him off his entire axis. Through a whirl of stars, he’d found himself drowning in the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, eyes full of anxiety and compassion—for him. And when she’d opened her mouth to speak, his bedazzled gaze had settled on full, lush lips that had begged to be kissed—only he’d been in no position to kiss them, with blood pouring from his nose and a throbbing pain in his head.
Once she’d helped him inside, mopped him up and made him feel half-human again, she’d gone back to work—but not before he’d asked if he could call on her later to thank her properly. He still remembered the way she’d blushed and nodded.
Yeah, he’d been smitten all right. And not just by her looks. Young and innocent as she’d been, she’d possessed a maturity and a toughness beyond her years. He’d sensed hidden depths and hidden pain, yet her natural humor, her cheeky wit, kept bubbling to the surface.
Everything about her fascinated him. She was a heady mixture of mystery, allure, vulnerability, ambition and an awesome inner strength that he suspected had something to do with her home life, which he’d gathered had been pretty rough. She’d never liked to talk about it, though she’d dropped the occasional hint now and then—usually at times when she flounced out of his life, comparing him with her no-good father.
He and Suzie had had more breakups in the months they’d been seeing each other than he could remember. And just as many reunions—until she’d walked out on him for good, without a proper explanation.
And now here she was, back in his life again. Married to him, while it lasted. Whether it did or not could be up to him.
“Mm…very fetching,” he repeated, unable to take his eyes off her.
Suzie shivered under the hot sweep of his gaze. “Oh, sure.” She gave a snort, but she could feel her cheeks heating, her skin prickling under the gray fabric. “It’s about a mile too big and I’ve had to roll up the sleeves and the legs several times and they’re still too long. But at least I’m dry.”
“You look gorgeous. And naturally beautiful.” Suzie, baby, you’d look good in a sack, he thought, and found himself wondering what she’d look like in nothing at all. He quenched a sharp stab of desire and made an effort to steady his voice. “You’ll be much happier being yourself again, Suzie, not some untouchable ice maiden.”
Untouchable? Suzie’s heart jumped. What had made him say that? Did he know? She bowed her head over her hot coffee. Don’t be silly, how could he possibly know?
“I left my wedding dress on your bathroom floor,” she mumbled. Anything to switch the subject! “You might as well throw it out. It’s ruined now.”
“Well, it’s served its purpose. And knowing you fashion designers, you’ll want a new up-to-the-minute model if and when you ever decide to get married again…for keeps.” His dark eyes caught hers for a challenging second.
“At this precise moment, I can’t imagine wanting to be permanently married to anyone, ever,” she said fiercely, with a shudder.
Mack repressed a sigh. So, after all his efforts to save her from Tristan Guthrie and win her back, she still didn’t want to be married to him. At least not beyond tonight. But things could change. “Oh, you’ll want to be married one day, Suzie. You’re a woman who believes in marriage and happily-ever-afters. And children. And it will happen. When you find the right man.” When you realize you’ve already found him.
Suzie couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Or afraid of what her own might reveal. “Please, Mack, I don’t want—” She stopped, taking a quick sharp breath. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking if your hair’s dry.” His hands were at her nape, his fingers threading through her curls. It was the lamest excuse she’d ever heard, but she didn’t immediately jerk away, a strange languor sweeping over her, her skin tingling under his touch. Tristan had never run his fingers through her hair.
“Don’t,” she whispered huskily, but she still couldn’t seem to move, or twist her head round to shake him off.
“He wasn’t the man for you, Suzie. Trust me.”
That made her jerk back away from him. “Trust you?” she breathed. “You’d be the last man I’d ever trust!”
She gulped in a rallying breath. He was waiting for her to crack, to admit that his presence disturbed her. Waiting for her to throw herself back into his arms and confess how she’d missed him and how badly she wanted him back in her life, regardless of his faults and failings.
Well, you’ll be waiting, she vowed hotly. She’d had a lifetime of pain and disillusionment to harden her heart against irresponsible charmers like Mack Chaney and her father. She’d watched her mother being worn down, day after day, and had sworn she’d never end up like her.
Mack looked pained. “I saved you from marrying a potential bigamist, didn’t I?”
She scowled. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful to you.” Her voice trembled. “Well, all right, I’m glad you found out in time. B-but you had no right to interfere in my life. You should have asked someone else to check up on Tristan.” Anyone else!
“I thought I had the right as a friend, Suzie. Friends look out for each other.”
“A friend?” Her eyes seared his. “We haven’t been friends, or even spoken to each other, since—” She stopped, shaking her head. Since the night he’d come round to her place boasting of his big win at the casino, thinking she’d be happy about his stroke of good fortune and congratulate him.
“Since the day of your father’s funeral,” Mack finished for her, reminding her that he’d turned up unexpectedly on that somber occasion, a few months after their abrupt parting.
Suzie took a gulp of her coffee. Her mother had kept her closely under her wing from the moment Mack had shown up, so that he would have no chance to speak privately to her, except to offer his condolences to both of them. She’d turned sharply away from him afterward, making it plain that she wanted nothing more to do with him.
Any man so like her father! It would be disastrous to get involved with Mack again. He’ll end up the same way as your father, one of these days, her mother had warned her over and over again, and despite the feelings she still had for Mack, she’d known that Ruth was right.
Mack had taken the hint and kept out of her life after that, and a few weeks later she’d heard that he’d gone off to travel round Australia on his Harley-Davidson—a trip that could have lasted months or years. She wondered when he’d come back. Just as well he had! Nobody else had thought to check up on Tristan Guthrie’s past.
“It must have been tough, finding out that your bridegroom had a wife already,” Mack conceded, his voice a warm, deep rumble, “but you don’t seem too heartbroken, Suzie, I’m glad to see. You know in your heart, don’t you, that Tristan was wrong for you?”
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Vivienne Wallington
Precious seconds slipping away, Mack Chaney crashed Sydney's Wedding of the Year to expose a betrayaL.and save the bride from marrying a snake in gentleman's clothing. Suzie Ashton had been his woman once, before their romance ended.Now, like some dark knight in black leather, Mack couldn't help but claim the vulnerable beauty in virginal white as his wife.For Mack, their whirlwind union meant more than sparing Suzie humiliation. It was as binding as the kisses and caresses they shared as Mr. and Mrs. But secrets still loomed between them, secrets Mack vowed to unveil once his bride fled the morning after….
“You’ll want to be married for real one day, Suzie.
You’re a woman who believes in marriage and happily-ever-afters. And children. And it will happen. When you find the right man.”
Suzie couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Afraid of what her own might reveal. “Please, Mack, I don’t want—” She stopped, taking a quick sharp breath. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking if your hair’s dry.” His hands were at her nape, his fingers threading through her curls. It was the lamest excuse she’d ever heard, but she didn’t immediately jerk away, her skin tingling under his touch.
“Don’t,” she whispered huskily, but she still couldn’t seem to move.
“He wasn’t the man for you, Suzie. Trust me.”
That made her jerk back away from him. “Trust you?” she breathed. “You’d be the last man I’d ever trust!”
Dear Reader,
The year is off to a wonderful start in Silhouette Romance, and we’ve got some of our best stories yet for you right here.
Our tremendously successful ROYALLY WED series continues with The Blacksheep Prince’s Bride by Martha Shields. Our intrepid heroine—a lady-in-waiting for Princess Isabel—will do anything to help rescue the king. Even marry the single dad turned prince! And Judy Christenberry returns to Romance with Newborn Daddy. Poor Ryan didn’t know what he was missing, until he looked through the nursery window….
Also this month, Teresa Southwick concludes her much-loved series about the Marchetti family in The Last Marchetti Bachelor. And popular author Elizabeth August gives us Slade’s Secret Son. Lisa hadn’t planned to tell Slade about their child. But with her life in danger, there’s only one man to turn to….
Carla Cassidy’s tale of love and adventure is Lost in His Arms, while new-to-the-Romance-line Vivienne Wallington proves she’s anything but a beginning writer in this powerful story of a man Claiming His Bride.
Be sure to come back next month for Valerie Parv’s ROYALLY WED title as well as new stories by Sandra Steffen and Myrna Mackenzie. And Patricia Thayer will begin a brand-new series, THE TEXAS BROTHERHOOD.
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
Claiming His Bride
Vivienne Wallington
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
VIVIENNE WALLINGTON
is an Australian living in Melbourne, Victoria, in an area with lots of trees, birds and parkland. She has been happily married to John, her real-life hero, for over forty years, and they have a married son and daughter and five grandchildren who provide inspiration for her books. Vivienne worked as a librarian for many years, but was always writing as well, eventually having a children’s book published. After two more years, she gave up writing for children to concentrate on romance. She has written nineteen Mills & Boon Romance novels under the pseudonym Elizabeth Duke, and is now writing for Silhouette under her real name. Her favorite hobbies are reading, research, family and travel.
Contents
Chapter One (#ud5e324ed-729e-5d69-91fb-a6ff961be88b)
Chapter Two (#u6fca25e3-000d-56c5-adef-70ba5287fc7c)
Chapter Three (#uff1d98fa-a680-5fc6-91a7-fb232008679e)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Sydney
“Wow, just look at all those cameras and photographers down there!” Ruth Ashton’s eyes widened as she looked down over the sweeping lawns and gardens of Bougainvillea Receptions from the bride’s dressing room. “And they’ve all come to see you, Suzie.”
Her daughter was pirouetting in front of the full-length mirror, swirling the long skirt of her embroidered ivory lace wedding gown—one of her own designs. Suzie’s sole bridesmaid, Lucy, in ice-blue silk, was fluttering around her, making sure everything was as it should be.
“They’ve come to see my wedding dress, not me—they want to see what fabulous design I’ve come up with this time.” Suzie’s voice shook a little. She’d wanted a simple, informal garden wedding, but it was fast turning into a media circus.
“Well, it’s not every day a young fashion designer without her own label wins the prestigious Australian Gown of the Year award.” Her mother’s face glowed with pride. “Today’s added publicity could really boost your career, darling. Fashion editors from all the top fashion magazines are here.”
“I’m only allowing all those cameras and fashion sharks in,” Suzie returned rather sharply, “to save Jolie Fashions, who’ve been so good to me. I don’t want to see them go under.” The Sydney-based fashion house was in severe debt and struggling for survival, thanks to a crooked accountant. “The media exposure will be great publicity for Jolie, especially with my bridesmaid and the bride’s mother and the bridegroom’s mother and a good proportion of the guests wearing Jolie designs.”
“Darling, the fashion media will take one look at your fabulous wedding gown and fall over themselves to get pictures of you, and fashion buyers will flood Jolie Fashions with orders. Your wedding will feature in every top fashion magazine, giving Jolie all the publicity they could possibly need. And you, too, dear.” Ruth’s eyes misted. “You look divine, sweetheart. I’ve never seen a more beautiful bride. Tristan’s going to be so proud of you.”
Tristan. Suzie swallowed. Her golden prince. Gentle, steady, reliable, responsible, charming, successful—the perfect husband-to-be. He might not be a man to inspire mindless passion, but mindless passion was dangerously misleading, blinding one to reality. She would always know where she was with Tristan. He was a man a girl could rely on, depend on, unlike…
She pushed the unwanted thought away, refusing to think of Mack Chaney on her wedding day. Or any other day, ever again. He was past history. And good riddance.
“You’re going to make a perfect couple,” Lucy said with a sigh. Tristan was so handsome, and so rich and Suzie, whom she’d known from their school days, had magically transformed herself from an unruly-haired imp into a regal, sleek-haired princess. “Just perfect.”
Yes, everything was perfect…almost too perfect. Suzie felt a momentary qualm. It all seemed unreal, like a dream. A glittering Cinderella fairy tale. She’d never expected to find the perfect man. She’d never believed that a perfect man existed. The only men she’d been close to in her life had been anything but perfect.
She was anything but perfect herself.
She moved quickly across to the window, wobbling a little on her ivory satin high heels. She couldn’t look at her mother or Lucy, afraid they might see the flare of guilty panic in her eyes, the flickering fear that she was about to be exposed as a fraud.
Tristan didn’t know her at all. Not the real Suzie—the scruffy, impulsive, slapdash Suzie. He only knew the elegant, coolly composed, immaculately groomed Suzanne, as he preferred to call her—the sedate, ladylike image she’d been trying so hard to keep up for the past three months—with her mother’s encouragement.
From the moment Suzie had caught the eye of the young leather-goods tycoon at the Australian fashion awards three months ago, her mother had been determined not to let Tristan get away. Even Tristan’s mother, the snobbish Felicia Guthrie, had come to accept her future daughter-in-law, despite Suzie’s modest upbringing and unexceptional background.
It would have helped, of course, that Suzie had recently won the Gown of the Year award. She was now somebody. A talented young designer with a bright future.
Suzie’s mouth went dry as she saw the huge crowd gathered in the garden below. As well as the rows of seats for the invited guests, which were filled already, there was a milling mob behind, with a daunting sea of cameras and giant zoom lenses, all waiting to see her latest spectacular design.
She nervously fingered the long sleeves of her elegant lace gown and the tiny pearl beads scattered over the tight-fitting bodice with its dropped waistline, then let her hand flutter down over the flared skirt.
Her natural curls were nowhere in sight, skillfully straightened into gleaming sleekness, the way she’d worn it for the past three months. On her head she wore a small pearl tiara, with a gossamer-sheer veil. Nothing must hide or detract from her wedding gown.
“Where’s Tristan?” She swung around, her voice higher than usual. “It’s the bride who’s supposed to be late, not the bridegroom.” Not having a father to give her away, she’d decided to walk into the garden arm in arm with her future husband.
“He’s not late,” her mother soothed. “He’ll be here any minute.”
Lucy ran to the door and peeked out. “He’s coming up the stairs! Are you ready, Suzie?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Suzie gulped in some air. Once she saw Tristan, once he smiled at her with his golden smile, she would feel a whole lot better.
He entered the room a few seconds later, a picture of sartorial elegance in formal white, his golden hair burnished by the crystal chandelier above. Outside, in the bright afternoon sunlight, it would gleam even more.
“Suzanne…you look like a dream. A princess.”
As she felt the warmth of his golden smile and saw the loving pride beaming from his gentle gray eyes, her qualms slipped away. She was going to have a very safe, secure and tranquil life with Tristan. Peace, security and contentment were what she longed for after the fights and frustrations and wildly swinging emotions that she and her mother had had to endure with Suzie’s charming, talented but totally irresponsible father.
The kind of life Suzie would have had to endure with Mack Chaney if she’d been mad enough to give in to her foolish passion for him.
Getting tied up with Mack long-term would have been a disaster. The Mack Chaneys of this world weren’t cut out for a secure, settled, pipe-and-slippers kind of life—the kind of life she wanted. All Mack cared about was speeding around on his Harley-Davidson and playing with his computer, idly surfing the Internet and dreaming wildly impractical dreams—pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams. She shut her mind to his other vices.
“Are you ready to go down?” Tristan asked, and she jerked herself back to earth. This was the most important day of her entire life and she was thinking of—
No, she wasn’t.
She let Tristan steer her toward the door, but they never reached it. Someone burst through the doorway first.
Suzie’s eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Mack Chaney bearing down on her like an avenging angel—or devil—in a black leather jacket, tight-fitting black leather pants, and black boots. His dark eyes were glittering with purpose and his thick black hair was as wild and untamed as it had always been.
“You’re actually intending to marry this pampered fraud?” he barked, halting abruptly in front of her. “I never thought you’d go ahead with it, Suzie. I thought you’d see the light long before today.”
“How dare you burst in here and—” Suzie stopped. “What do you mean—fraud?” She glared at him.
“Get him out of here!” sputtered her mother. “Call security!” she commanded Lucy.
“Wait!” Mack held up a hand. “You can’t marry Tristan Guthrie, Suzie. Not if you want your marriage to be legal!”
Suzie felt Tristan’s body shudder against her and heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath. She glanced up at her shocked bridegroom, but he didn’t meet her look, or make any move to draw her into the comforting protection of his shoulder, not even offering her a reassuring hand. Shock seemed to have robbed him of movement—and of his voice. His stunned gaze was transfixed on Mack Chaney’s dark-eyed, ruggedly good-looking face.
Suzie’s mother stepped forward, her face contorted in fury. “You’d try anything, wouldn’t you, Mack Chaney! I always knew you were trouble!”
Mack’s darkly sensual mouth curved a trifle. “I think the fact that Tristan Guthrie is already married justifies my presence here.”
Suzie swayed, feeling faint. It was Mack whose hand shot out to steady her, not Tristan’s. Tristan was still frozen and speechless with shock.
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” she hissed at Mack as the faintness began to recede and anger took over. It wouldn’t be the first time Mack Chaney had played a practical joke on her. But never one like this. Never one so cruel.
“Why not ask your bridegroom?” Mack suggested, his tone derisive.
“I don’t need to,” she retorted. “It’s laughable.” But Tristan wasn’t laughing. Nobody was laughing. And no wonder. This was outrageous! “You’ve obviously made a mistake. Or made it up!” Her scorn lashed Mack, hiding a growing apprehension. Why was Tristan being so quiet? Why wasn’t he denying it? Getting mad? Demanding that Mack Chaney be thrown out?
“Tristan, tell me it’s not true.” Her eyes sought her bridegroom’s face. The clean-cut, perfectly sculptured features were ashen, his long-lashed gray eyes stricken. Would he look so pale and shocked if it wasn’t true? “Tristan…” Her eyes caught his, pleading with him. “Tell me he’s wrong.”
Tristan found his voice at last, a hoarse croak. “Of course he’s wrong.” He turned accusing eyes on Mack, but there was little fire in the gray depths, and his voice shook as he demanded, “Where’s your proof? You’ve been listening to malicious idle gossip.”
“It was a piece of idle gossip that led me to check up on your past,” Mack rasped. “It didn’t take long to uncover your shabby secret. You married a woman ten years ago while you were a student at university, and you’ve never obtained a divorce!” He pulled some papers from his pocket. “Here’s a copy of your marriage certificate, and confirmation in writing that no divorce has been filed.”
Lucy gasped. Tristan’s pale face seemed to crumple. He cast an anguished look at Suzie’s mother. No sympathy there. Just fury, shock and disbelief.
Tristan turned back to his stunned bride, brushing Mack Chaney aside to seize her hand. “We can work this out,” he promised hoarsely. “I’ll fix it.”
“You mean it’s true?” Suzie recoiled. Tristan had a wife he was still married to, and he’d kept it from her? Her perfect, high-principled, reliable Tristan had lied to her? Deceived her? That realization was almost as bad as knowing that her bridegroom was married and contemplating bigamy! She’d always thought Tristan so honest…so upright…so honorable.
Still reeling, unable to believe it, she asked carefully, spelling it out to make doubly sure. “You married another woman ten years ago and you’re still married to her?”
Tristan began to bluster. “It was never a real marriage, I swear it. Love never came into it. It was purely a—” he hesitated, his handsome face contorting in guilty anguish “—a marriage of convenience,” he mumbled, so low she could barely hear. “She was a foreigner—an overseas student—who wanted my help to stay in Australia. I was doing her a favor,” he asserted lamely. “We married in secret and kept it quiet. After a few months we split up and went our separate ways.”
“And where is she now?” Suzie forced out the question, feeling sick. If today’s wedding had gone ahead, she wouldn’t have been Tristan’s legal wife. She would have been married to a bigamist! And wasn’t it an offence, she wondered dazedly, to marry under false pretences, the way Tristan had? How could he be so dishonest and unprincipled! How could he?
Tristan wrung his hands. “I don’t know where she is. I heard the year after we…married that she’d left Australia and gone to some remote part of Africa to be a missionary or something. So much for wanting to stay in Australia!” He gave a disgusted snort. “I tried to trace her to send divorce papers, but she’d vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew where she’d gone. I’ve never heard anything of her since. She’s probably dead,” he said with a dismissive toss of his golden head.
“You would have been notified if she was dead,” Mack interjected coldly. “As her husband, you’re her next of kin.”
Next of kin…Suzie felt dizzy. No words could have made the nightmare more real.
“I’ll find her, darling.” Tristan gripped her arm. “I’ll get a divorce. We’ve been apart for years, so even if I can’t find her, there should be no problem….”
She looked up into his pale, handsome face, at his quivering jaw, at the long-lashed gray eyes that couldn’t quite meet hers, and saw him for the first time as he really was. A shallow, spoiled, weak-willed fraud, just as Mack had said.
“How could you, Tristan?” she cried. “How could you keep a thing like that from me? From the woman you say you love and want to marry and share your life with!”
“I—I’d forgotten about it,” he said weakly, but one look at his face was enough to tell her that was patently a lie. She wondered if he’d ever made an effort to find his wife, or if that was a lie, too. “It was so long ago, darling…we were just kids. Impetuous young students. It never meant anything…I hardly knew her…and now…well, she left Australia years ago, so why drag it up again?”
Suzie gave a choked cry. “Because you’re still married to her, Tristan…. Don’t you understand?” He still didn’t accept that he’d done anything wrong. He just wanted to shut it out of his mind and blot it out of his pampered existence as if it had never happened.
Oh, Tristan, she thought with a despairing sigh. I don’t know you at all. And here I was, feeling guilty about you not knowing the real me!
“Just go, Tristan.” She couldn’t bear to see the pained, self-righteous hurt in his eyes, or to listen to any more of his blustering self-justification. “I would never marry you now, whether you had your divorce or not.”
“I suggest,” Mack drawled, “that you go down to your mother, Tristan, and quietly lead her out of the garden, along with your closest relatives, to save them the embarrassment of a public scandal.”
Tristan’s stricken eyes flared in relief. “Yes, yes…thank you, I will.” He slunk out with a hoarse apology, his eyes avoiding his bride’s, as if too ashamed—or not brave enough—to meet her withering gaze.
Coward, Suzie thought, profoundly relieved that Mack had saved her from marrying such a lily-livered weakling—though she wished it had been anyone else but Mack Chaney who’d come to her rescue!
“Oh, darling, run after Tristan,” her mother pleaded. “Can’t you go ahead with the wedding and worry about…” Her voice trailed off as she caught the scathing contempt in her daughter’s eye. “Well, at least give Tristan a chance to—to extricate himself from this embarrassing—”
“Mum, I could never marry him now,” Suzie said flatly. “How could I ever trust him after this? After hiding a thing like an existing marriage from me? I thought he was a man of honesty and integrity. I th-thought he was perfect.”
She heard a snort from behind, and scowled. Mack was enjoying all this, no doubt…acting the big hero…sweeping to her rescue in the nick of time….
“Nobody’s perfect, darling,” her mother said pensively. “There’s good and bad in everybody. You’ll never find a perfect man. But Tristan is more perfect than any man you’re likely to meet.” She shot a virulent look at Mack. Ruth had never approved of Mack. “And he loves you.”
“Does he?” Suzie asked dully. Were a few chaste kisses a measure of a man’s love? Had she ever truly loved him? Or had she simply been dazzled by his golden looks and comforted by the thought of a calm, secure future?
“Well, what are you going to do?” her mother wailed. “Everyone is down there waiting for you, dear. All those cameras and fashion experts…all desperate to see your bridal gown and to feature your wedding day in their magazines. And Jolie Fashions are relying on you, darling, for the publicity. For their survival!”
“And what about all the food and champagne?” Lucy piped up. “You can’t waste it!”
Suzie’s head was spinning. The dream she’d thought so unreal had turned into a nightmare that was only too real. What could she do? There was no way she was going to run after Tristan and beg him to go through a sham wedding ceremony with her…no way in the world! Not even to save Jolie…
Pain pierced her at the thought. Jolie Fashions had taken her on as a struggling fashion student and given her time off to continue her course, even paying her study fees. They’d given her a job as a junior designer, and encouraged her to enter the Gown of the Year with her own design. She owed them everything!
“Suzy, remember what Jolie have done for us…for me as well,” her mother appealed to her. “You must go after Tristan.”
The sight of her mother’s distress wrenched Suzie’s heart. Jolie Fashions had been wonderful to her mother, too, taking her on as a dressmaker at a time when she’d desperately needed paid work. Ruth had supported Suzie through the long dark years, while she was still at school. How could she stand by and watch Jolie go under, taking her mother with them? Without her wealthy clients at Jolie Fashions, Ruth would have to struggle, all over again.
As she stood hesitating, Mack spoke up again.
“There is a way out.” His dark gaze pinned hers. “You could marry me, Suzie.”
Chapter Two
“We have special permission,” Mack was quick to assure her. “The celebrant already has the documents. They only need your signature, Suzie.”
She stared back at him, too stunned to think of asking how he’d wangled special permission. The black eyes piercing hers were deadly serious. If this was one of Mack’s practical jokes, there was no sign of it.
“We can go down into the garden now,” Mack continued coolly, “get married in front of all your friends and that media pack waiting for you, Suzie, soak in all the publicity you need to save your fashion house and to hold up your head as a rising star of fashion design, and we can dissolve the marriage afterward, if that’s what you want.” He glanced at Suzie’s mother.
Ruth’s eyes wavered. She knew all about holding up one’s head. She’d been keeping up appearances all her married life…making out that her marriage was a normal one, that her husband wasn’t the useless no-hoper he’d become. To have to stand by and watch her daughter marrying Mack Chaney would be intolerable, but if they planned to dissolve it afterward…
“But what would we tell everyone?”
“Just tell them your daughter realized she couldn’t go through with her wedding to Tristan Guthrie and decided to follow her true heart,” came Mack’s drawling response. “You can always tell them later it didn’t work out.” If he could win over Suzie’s mother…
Ruth looked as if she’d swallowed a lemon. “I meant what would I tell them about you? Everyone knows my daughter would never marry an aimless, unemployed biker!”
Suzie’s head swam. Their voices seemed to be coming from far away. Her true heart? Was she dreaming…or paddling through a nightmare?
“Just tell them I’m in computers,” Mack advised easily.
Ruth sniffed. “You can’t get married in black leather!”
“The fashion world will love a bridegroom in black leather,” Lucy interjected, excitement bubbling in her voice. “It’s so romantic!”
Ruth pressed a hand to her chest. “But why does it have to be you?” she croaked, glaring at Mack.
Mack clenched his jaw. “I guess because I was the only one who thought to check up on Tristan Guthrie. And because I care about what happens to your daughter, Mrs. Ashton.”
“And you think my daughter wants to get tied up with you?” Ruth’s eyes flashed daggers at him. “She doesn’t! She’s made that quite clear in the past.” She gulped down her anger, her gaze sliding away. “But if you’re serious about this being only a temporary arrangement…and if my daughter agrees…” To save face…to save Jolie Fashions…to save her daughter’s career…
“Well, Suzie?” Mack turned to his prospective bride, who’d remained silent until now. She’d been shocked into silence. “It’s your call.”
Suzie’s head was still spinning. It was impossible to think straight. Her mother’s bitter attack on Mack a second ago had had a curious effect on her, making her feel almost defensive of him, tempting her to point out his good points to her mother. Only with her mind in such a tumultuous state, she couldn’t think of any! She’d spent so much time over the past three years reminding herself of Mack’s many faults…his many sins…trying only to think of them…
Mack watched the conflicting emotions in her eyes and relaxed a trifle. She was coming around…it was going to be easier than he’d thought.
“Mrs. Guthrie’s leaving!” Lucy reported from the window. “So are the people she’s sitting closest to. There’s no sign of Tristan…he must have sent one of the staff to speak to his mother.”
Tristan hadn’t even had the courage to face his mother himself? How pathetic he was, Suzie thought in disgust. What a lucky escape she’d had…and such a close escape…and she could thank Mack….
Her eyes clouded. She didn’t want to be indebted to Mack Chaney.
Mack felt a tinge of anxiety. He’d seen that look before. Don’t get cold feet now, Suzie. “I promise I’ll give you your freedom afterward, Suzie, the moment you ask. I’ll sign anything you want me to.” His eyes burned into hers, challenging her—even as he held his breath.
As Suzie stared back at him dazedly, her mother spoke up again, Mack’s promise reassuring her. “Suzie dear, if you’re going to go ahead with this wedding, we’d better get moving. The celebrant will be waiting downstairs. You’ll have to brief her of any changes you want…”
“She’ll think we’ve gone mad,” Suzie said faintly.
Mack’s dark eyes glinted. She was actually going to go ahead with it! He hid his relief. “Mad about each other,” he corrected smoothly, trying to curb his impatience. He didn’t want her backing out now….
“I’ll go down to the garden and let people know that you’re coming.” Ruth was already moving toward the door. “I can just imagine their shock, Suzie, when you turn up with an unruly-haired biker in black leather instead of Tristan Guthrie!”
“They’ll only have eyes for the bride,” Mack murmured, “not for the man by her side.”
“Oh yeah?” Lucy breathed, eyeing him avidly. Mack was far more romantic, in his dangerous, brooding sort of way, than the impeccable, golden-haired Tristan, who’d turned out to be a bit of a wimp.
Mack held out his hand to Suzie. “Shall we go down?” He gave her a rallying smile.
The sight of his smile reassured Suzie as nothing else could. This was what she’d dreamed of once…walking down the aisle with Mack Chaney…before she’d realized she would never be able to rely on him…that he wasn’t the responsible, settling-down type.
But she didn’t have to worry about the future. They wouldn’t be married long enough. She could believe in the dream and just for today live the dream.
She took his hand and smiled back. A smile she knew she must keep up for the rest of the afternoon.
Somehow she managed it, but her head was still whirling and she was barely conscious of her feet touching the ground. She was barely conscious of anything, except vague impressions.
The official wedding photographer waiting at the foot of the stairs, the marriage celebrant coming forward to discuss the service and deal with the necessary paperwork, the barrage of cameras as she and Mack stepped out into the sun-drenched garden, the sighs of admiration as her bridal gown was duly inspected and approved and finally the stunned faces of the guests as she walked between them with Mack by her side, Lucy following close behind.
They exchanged vows in front of a shady gazebo, with Mack producing a wedding ring which, he confided, had belonged to his mother. Mack had been close to his mother, so the ring would mean a lot to him. Suzie was touched by the gesture.
“I do,” she heard herself answering when the time came, and suddenly she was married, and everyone was waiting for Mack to kiss her. He did….
The cameras went mad. As a newlywed couple, they had to sign more documents at a table in the gazebo, before enduring another barrage of photographs, not only from their own official wedding photographer, but from the clamoring fashion media. The guests, many resplendent in Jolie fashions, were also photographed. Suzie’s bosses were ecstatic.
It was a relief to finally escape the media circus, the bridal couple retreating with their guests to the reception house, where the media weren’t permitted. But they had their pictures and went away happy, dispersing quickly, keen to be the first with their fashion scoop.
As the guests spilled into the various rooms of the brightly lit, flower-bedecked reception house, champagne and appetizers were served, and the noise level rose. Everyone was having fun, the mood heightened by the astonishing turn of events.
Tristan and his mother had wanted a formal reception, but Suzie had insisted on a party instead, with a smorgasbord-style buffet set up in one of the rooms and a towering profiterole dessert instead of a formal wedding cake. A jazz band was playing in the conservatory, and some of the guests were dancing already.
“Can’t we get out of here?” Suzie begged Mack as they moved from room to room, neatly avoiding probing questions. A good few of the guests were Tristan’s friends, who’d stayed on out of curiosity. “I want to go home. You must want to escape, too. Nobody will notice we’ve gone. With all these rooms, we could be anywhere.”
“Fine with me.” Mack’s dark eyes were unreadable. “We’ll slip out the back way. But you’d better let your mother know.”
“I guess so. You wait here.” Suzie dashed off, weaving through the crush until she found her mother, flopped in an armchair. “Mum, I need to get away from everyone. I’m exhausted. I’m going to slip away.”
Her mother nodded in sympathy. “I’ll come home with you,” she offered. “You must need a comforting shoulder to cry on after all that’s happened.”
Suzie hid her alarm. The last thing she wanted was her mother’s sympathy—especially if she started commiserating about Tristan! She immediately changed tack. “Mum, Mack and I are going to have a quiet drink somewhere away from all the fuss. I’ll be home later tonight,” she promised. “I’ve no intention of spending the night with Mack,” she assured her mother, who nodded in relief.
“Don’t wait up for me,” she added, and fled.
Moments later she was out in the floodlit courtyard with Mack. The cool air hit them in the face. The afternoon had been sunny and mild—a perfect autumn day—but now it had clouded over, with one ominously dark cloud directly overhead, and there were already a few spots of rain.
She looked round. “The wedding car’s not here,” she groaned. “It must be round the front.”
“You won’t need the wedding car.” Mack was ushering her toward a big gleaming black motorcycle.
She balked. “I’m not riding on that thing. I hate motorbikes.”
“You loved riding with me once.”
“That was before—” She stopped, a deep shudder quivering through her. Before her father had crashed his high-powered Harley into a power pole.
“I know, Suzie, and I’m sorry about your father, but you’ll be safe with me, I promise.”
Safe with Mack Chaney? When had she ever been safe with Sydney’s wild-boy bachelor?
Only he wasn’t a bachelor now. He was her husband. She began to tremble. Reaction was setting in.
As she stood hesitating, Mack’s fingers closed over her shoulders—warm, strong fingers that sent a tingling heat through the delicate lace. “You know what they say when someone falls off a horse.” His voice held a seductively persuasive note—a familiar note that brought back disturbing memories. “Get right back on and get rid of the demons.”
She looked up into his compelling black eyes and shivered, her mouth twisting. The only demon she had to fight was Mack himself. She’d been fighting that particular demon for the past three years, and for another year before that, when they’d been together—on and off. When Tristan Guthrie swept into her life three months ago, she thought that she’d finally succeeded in ridding herself of the demon that was Mack Chaney.
Tristan. Her golden prince. Her charming, sensible, honorable, dependable, perfect…Pah! She should have known he was too good to be true. Hot tears pricked her eyes.
“You want to get away from here or not?” Mack was already mounting his shiny black Harley and waiting for her to make up her mind.
“Yes, get me away! But I—I’ve decided not to go home yet. Mum will be home shortly, and I just can’t face her again tonight. Let’s have a quiet drink somewhere.”
“We’ll go to my place. Hop on!”
His place? But she hardly cared where. She just wanted to get away from here, before someone saw them and tried to drag them back inside.
She looped the long skirt of her wedding gown over her arm—she’d discarded her veil and headpiece earlier—and jumped up behind Mack. He’d pulled his helmet on and had unhooked the spare one for her.
“Here, put this on,” he ordered, thrusting it at her, but she gave a reckless shake of her head.
“I want to feel the wind in my hair. I’ve a lot of cobwebs to blow away.”
“It’s illegal not to wear a helmet,” Mack reminded her with rare deference to the law. She laughed—a brittle, almost hysterical laugh. Illegal? Bigamy was illegal! Not wearing a helmet was hardly the crime of the century. But she took it and rammed it on her head. “Come on, are we going or not?”
“We’re going.” Mack revved the engine. “Hang on!”
She did, clinging to him for dear life as his high-powered machine sprang forward and roared off down the sweeping driveway to the street. The spatters of rain were increasing, great splashing drops now, gathering momentum by the second.
She shut her eyes, relishing the wind and rain in her face because it gave her something else to think about other than the shocking events that had taken place at Bouganvillea Receptions.
She could feel her carefully straightened hair sprouting curls as the rain seeped under the helmet. Well, it hardly mattered now. Tristan wasn’t going to see it. Mack, on the other hand, was bound to make some cutting remark about her new look—her artificial new look—when they finally reached the sanctuary of his home.
Sanctuary? A shiver feathered down her spine. By running off with Mack Chaney, wasn’t she jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?
As they careered round the first corner, Mack suddenly nosed his bike into the kerb and brought it to a halt.
“What are you doing?” she cried as he eased himself out of her grasp and leapt off.
What he was doing, she realized, was peeling off his leather jacket. He had a plain black T-shirt underneath which emphasized the breadth of his muscled chest and exposed the impressive muscles of his tanned arms. She pursed her lips, wondering if he’d added workouts in the gym to his other leisure activities.
“Here. Slip your arms into this.” He helped her into his jacket, which was several sizes too large for her, but felt beautifully snug and warm. “It might protect you a bit.”
Surprised at his unexpected gallantry—but then, Mac had always been a man of surprises, good and bad—she showed her gratitude with a light, “Thanks, Mack. Now you’ll get wet through.”
“Never mind about me,” Mack muttered as he threw a sturdy thigh over his bike and settled back into his seat. There was an edge of mockery in his voice, as if to say, When have you ever minded about me? “Ready to go? Hold on, Suzie!” The big machine shot forward.
The rain was tumbling down. She could feel her wet curls clinging to her cheeks, her neck. She thought of Tristan and her mouth dipped. What would it matter now if she reverted to her natural curls and dropped her sophisticated, ladylike facade? Who was going to care now that her golden prince had turned into a tarnished frog?
Just as her dark prince had, three years ago.
She wondered bleakly if an honest, dependable man existed anymore.
She turned her face into the driving rain, as if that might wash them both out of her mind and out of her life. But it was pretty futile when she had her arms around the dark prince, his ring on her finger and would shortly be arriving at his home.
Chapter Three
As Mack swung his bike into the narrow driveway of his modest weatherboard home, which he’d inherited from his mother about five years ago, Suzie felt herself trembling again. Not with reaction this time, or even with cold—Mack’s jacket had saved her from catching a mortal chill—but with a shivery apprehension.
She’d been to Mack’s house a few times during the roller-coaster months they’d been together—or more accurately, seeing each other. They’d never actually been together in that sense, though it had come close a few times and would undoubtedly have happened if Mack hadn’t shattered her faith in him—albeit blind, rebellious faith—by showing that he possessed the same destructive traits that had wrecked her father’s life.
Her mother had mistrusted Mack from the start and warned her to keep right away from him. Suzie had known in her heart that Ruth was right about him, that he was the last man in the world she should be seeing, let alone falling for, but try as she might she hadn’t been able to keep away from him. Until that awful night three years ago—the night Mack had demonstrated, with painful clarity, that he was no different from her father.
Disillusioned, she’d refused to see him again, refused his phone calls, even refused to speak to him when he’d turned up at her father’s funeral a few months later. She’d wanted to make it clear to Mack that whatever they’d shared together was now dead, and that she was severing all connections with him.
“We’re here now, Suzie, you can let go of me,” Mack drawled, and she realized they’d pulled up near his front steps and that she was still clinging to him. She released him as if her hands were suddenly on fire, and scrambled off the big machine, groaning as she looked down at her mud-spattered ivory satin high heels and the soaked skirt of her elegant wedding gown.
“My dress and shoes are ruined!” she moaned. “Haven’t you ever thought of buying a car?”
“And give up my Harley?” Mack grinned at her through the rain. In the glow of his porch light, drops of water beaded his heavy eyebrows and thick lashes, giving his dark eyes a pearly sheen. “Come on inside, Suzie, out of this rain. We’ll have to get these things off. We’re both soaked.” His wet T-shirt clung to his muscled chest like a second skin.
We’ll have to get these things off? Alarm shot through her. “I’ll be fine,” she babbled, wondering why she’d ever agreed to come to his home with him. Was she mad? This wasn’t a real marriage, for heaven’s sake! They’d agreed it wasn’t going to last. “Your jacket has kept me nice and dry and warm,” she mumbled.
“Only the top half of you.” He was still grinning, damn him, as he surveyed her sodden gown and shoes. “But I can’t see your wedding dress surviving somehow. I hope you’re not having second thoughts about marrying Tristan when you’re both free again, assuming he ever gets his divorce, of course!”
She almost snapped back, “No, I’m not!” but she caught the words back, scowling instead. A bit of doubt on Mack’s part might be a good thing. As a protective device. Mack had supreme powers of persuasion, as he’d demonstrated before when she’d been determined to keep away from him. Until he’d shown his true colors on that last soul-destroying night, and she’d made it quite clear to him that he was out of her life for good.
But she still wasn’t immune to him, she realized in dismay. Not entirely immune. Having to keep her body pressed up against him all the way to his home, and her arms wrapped tightly around him, had shown her that. The feel of his taut muscles under her hands had sent her heartbeat haywire and her pulses soaring, and even now she could still feel her nerve endings twitching. She would have to be well and truly on her guard against him, every second she spent with him.
As Mack whisked her up the rickety front steps to the shelter of his small covered porch, she fingered her wet tangle of curls and wondered ruefully what Tristan would have thought of her smooth, sleek hair sprouting rebellious curls before his eyes. Would he have laughed, and loved her just as much? Or would he have sent her off to have her hair professionally, permanently, straightened?
She simply didn’t know. What madness had made her want to rush into marriage with a man she didn’t really know? A man she’d only known for three months?
It had been nothing but a dream. And dreams weren’t real. Fairy tales weren’t real.
She heard a thud, and then another, and realized that Mack was tugging off his boots. As he peeled off his socks, revealing dark-skinned bare feet, she gulped and looked away, kicking off her own mud-spattered satin shoes.
Mack unlocked his front door and waved her in. “I’m glad to see your curls are back, Suzie,” he commented as he led her into the front room—a combined sitting room and workroom—and switched on the overhead light. Only one of the three bulbs was working—typical of Mack Chaney, Suzie thought, glancing upward. On her past visits here, he’d often overlooked practical household basics, his mind too absorbed, no doubt, with the Internet and his latest brilliant idea.
But at least the lighting was softer than it would have been with all three bulbs working!
“What on earth did you do to your hair before?” Mack asked, fingering a stray damp curl. He was thinking how cute she looked with her wet curls clustered round her cheeks, and how dewy and moist and kissable her lips looked, and how she’d die if she knew she had mascara running down her face. “And why?”
Suzie jerked her face away. “I needed a change.” No way would she tell him the real reason she’d dispensed with her curls—to impress Tristan Guthrie on the night of the Gown of the Year awards. Tristan, as head of the Guthrie Leather Goods empire, one of the sponsors for the event, had presented the main award.
Knowing he’d be there, her mother had urged Suzie to make an effort to look more elegant and sophisticated in the hope that her daughter would catch the eye of the eligible young bachelor. Dolled up in her award-winning gown, with her new sleek hairstyle and ladylike demeanor, Suzie had done her mother proud. Tristan had had eyes for no one else all night—or for the following three months.
“I had it straightened, that’s all,” she said with a shrug. “Every woman likes a new look occasionally.”
“Why change what’s perfect already?”
A tremor quivered through her. Mack was the only one who’d ever thought her perfect as she was. Everyone else preferred her new sleek-haired, sophisticated look—her mother, her workmates at Jolie Fashions, Tristan, his snooty mother.
“And you don’t need all that eye makeup and mascara,” Mack chided. “You’re too fair. It looks unnatural.”
“Tristan liked me like this.” He’d never taken a second look at the natural Suzie. He’d come to Jolie Fashions once to pick up his mother after a fitting, and he’d walked straight past her without a glance.
“He should have liked you as you really are.”
She twitched a shoulder. He never noticed me as I really was.
Mack reached up to brush a finger over her cheek. “Your mascara has run,” he mocked softly. “The hazards of makeup. Still, I’m sure Tristan appreciated your glamorous new look.” His dark eyes taunted her. “He’d like the cool, sophisticated ice-maiden look, from what I found out about him. Nothing too hot or passionate or unbridled for our straitlaced golden boy.”
He was so close to the mark that she forgot she hadn’t intended to let him get under her skin, and she lost her cool. “From what you found out about him?” she lashed back. “I still can’t believe you actually had the nerve to check up on my fiancé’s past—just on a vague, spiteful hunch!” She was too incensed to acknowledge that if he hadn’t, he would never have discovered and exposed Tristan’s secret marriage, and she would be the wife of a bigamist by now.
“There was nothing spiteful about it. I was merely looking out for your welfare. But we can discuss your errant ex-fiancé when you have a soothing drink in your hand. And when you’ve removed those wet things.”
She flinched away from him. “Oh…you mean your jacket.” She hurriedly slipped it off and handed it back to him. “Thanks.” She paused, glancing down. “I don’t suppose it matters that I’m leaving muddy splotches and watery drops on your carpet. How long since you’ve had it cleaned? Sometime last century?” She screwed up her nose in distaste at the stained, threadbare carpet.
“Oh, that old thing, it’ll be going soon.”
Yeah, I’ll bet, Suzie thought. And pigs might fly. She was still frowning at the carpet. “What did you do—hold a wild party in here? What are these stains—red wine? Or did someone get stabbed?”
His lip quirked. “It’s grease. I took my bike apart in here and made a bit of a mess.”
She rolled her eyes. “Heavens, Mack,” she exclaimed, looking around the room properly for the first time, “this whole room’s a mess. It’s a disgrace.”
There were piles of papers and cardboard cartons stacked on the floor, and more cluttering the tables and desktops, where a computer and keyboard were just visible. The armchairs had newspapers and computer magazines strewn all over them. “Don’t you ever tidy your house? Or do any cleaning?”
“I’ve been busy. I’m not going to die because of a bit of dust or a few messy papers and boxes. Besides, nobody sees the mess but me.”
“I’m seeing it.”
“Since when did a bit of mess bother you, Suzie?” His dark eyes glinted. “There was a time when you only noticed me, and the chemistry that flared between us every time we looked at each other. And we had more than just chemistry going for us.”
Suzie wanted to stop him, but his next words brought such nostalgic memories flooding back that they formed a lump in her throat, making speech impossible.
“Remember how we used to love listening to the band concerts and feeding the pigeons in Hyde Park, Suzie? And watching the yacht races on Sydney Harbour at weekends? And how we loved a good joke? And talking about everything under the sun? Music, sports, politics, books, movies, our dreams, our ambitions?”
She unlocked her throat. “Pipe dreams, in your case!” Her heart rate had picked up to a disturbing degree at his reminder of three years ago, and scorn seemed the best way to cover her turmoil. “You were always full of talk about what you were going to do with your life when your brilliant ideas hit the jackpot and you made tons of money, but I don’t see any sign that you’ve become rich and famous in the past three years!”
She raked a disparaging look around. “Nothing’s changed, has it, Mack? When I first met you, you’d just thrown in a perfectly good job and dropped out of university, and you’ve never knuckled down to a proper job since as far as I can see—let alone hit a jackpot!”
No, nothing’s changed, she thought, stifling a sigh. He’s just like my father. All his dreams of becoming rich and famous—in his case with his paintings—had come to nothing, too.
Mack gave a snort. “What was the point in staying at uni? I knew more about computers and programming than my lecturers. And the job I had with that computer firm was leading nowhere. And I have been working since then. Every time I sit down at my computer I’m working.”
“Playing games,” she scoffed.
“Inventing new games,” he corrected. “New programs. New software.”
“That nobody’s interested in!”
She would never have been so harsh or so discouraging three years ago—she would have put his failures down to being ahead of his time and urged him to keep trying—but she was still bitter at the way Mack had killed her trust in him on that last traumatic night, revealing a side of him she’d never seen, and never wanted to see again.
“So little faith!” Mack sighed. He seemed amused rather than devastated, she noted in exasperation. “How you’ve changed, Suzie. You encouraged me once.”
“Until I realized you were just like my father…living on your dreams and never facing reality,” she retorted. Didn’t he even care? “You’re going to end up just like him, with nothing to show for your life.” And look what that had done to her father.
“Is that why you cut me out of your life as if I’d never existed?”
She avoided his eyes. She’d never told him the full extent of her father’s sins. She’d only mentioned his depression, his drinking and the frustrations of a brilliant artist with a tortured soul. Both she and her mother had always tried to cover up her father’s destructive gambling, to protect the self-esteem of the man they’d both loved to the end. Loved, hated and despaired of.
“I was only nineteen,” she defended herself. “I was still a student. I had my career to concentrate on. I—I didn’t want to get involved with—with anyone.”
“Especially not with me.”
“All right—especially not with you! And you were never really in my life, so stop twisting the facts. We were never together. We were just friends.”
“Do you kiss all your friends with the passion you used to kiss me?”
The memory of their passion—the wild, steaming passion that had flared between them every time they’d looked at each other, every time they’d touched, and especially when they’d kissed—brought a remembered heat to her body. She seized on anger to douse it.
“How dare you throw my adolescent mistakes back at me, today of all days! And it was only a few kisses. You make it sound as if it were a grand passion.” Damn it, it was once…to her. It could have been—if he’d been less like her father, if he’d been able to resist the temptations her father had succumbed to. She could still see the elated look in Mack’s eyes the night he’d come home from the casino rolling in money and reeking of whiskey. She blinked the bitter memory away.
Something shimmered in Mack’s dark eyes, but he said nothing, moving to a corner cabinet to extract a half-empty bottle of Scotch and two glasses. Suzie compressed her lips. So he still drank whiskey!
He poured some into both glasses and handed her one. “Here, sip this while I fetch you something to change into. I don’t possess a dressing gown, but I might have a tracksuit that’ll do. You’d better have a hot shower and get out of that wet garb before you get pneumonia.”
He strode from the room before she could argue.
She took a gulp of her whiskey and coughed. She hated whiskey and rarely touched it, remembering what alcohol had done to her father. And Mack could end up the same way, if he kept on drinking. But this, she told herself, was medicinal! She took another more determined gulp, taking comfort from the hot spirit as it coursed a fiery path down her throat.
Mack came back as she was about to take another reviving sip. He hadn’t wasted time changing and was still wearing his wet T-shirt and black leather pants.
“Here. This will have to do.” He handed her a gray tracksuit. “It has a drawstring waist, so you should be able to keep the pants up.”
She had a strange sense of déjà vu. Mack had been wearing a similar gray tracksuit—maybe even this one—the day she’d first met him. Like most things about Mack, their meeting had been dramatic and unconventional.
Her boss had sent her to a house in Mack’s street to deliver a new outfit to a client. She’d borrowed one of the company cars, which she wasn’t familiar with. Worse, it was a manual, not an automatic. As she was about to drive off after making the delivery, she’d reversed the car by mistake and had collided with Mack as he careered out of his front gate on his Harley—far too fast to stop in time, and looking in the opposite direction.
It was only a glancing blow, but Mack had come off his bike and crashed to the pavement. She’d jumped out of the car and rushed to him, her heart in her mouth, horrified to see blood all over his face. It was only a nosebleed, she’d discovered, but at first glance it had looked far worse. She’d insisted on taking him inside his house to tend to his wounds.
He’d been more apologetic than she had, berating himself for not wearing a protective helmet. He’d only been planning to ride up his street and back, he’d told her ruefully, to test some work he’d just done on his bike.
He’d been lucky. Very lucky.
So had she. Her stupid mistake could have killed him!
“Suzie?” Mack’s voice penetrated her musings, and she realized he’d just said something to her.
“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I just said, you know where the bathroom is.” His dark eyes seemed to swallow her up, as if he were remembering their first meeting, too.
He turned away to pick up the glass of whiskey he’d poured for himself, tossing the contents down at a gulp, bringing a frown to her brow as the devil-may-care action reminded her of her father’s reckless drinking.
“I’ll change while you’re showering, Suzie,” he said as he led the way, “and then I’ll make us some coffee.”
She opened her mouth to tell him not to bother about coffee, that she wouldn’t be here long enough, but she snapped her mouth shut again. Where would she go? She couldn’t go home yet—her mother could be home by now, and she didn’t want to face her mother again tonight. She didn’t feel up to fielding questions or dealing with sympathy.
Mack certainly wouldn’t be offering her any sympathy.
He didn’t. His first words, after they’d settled into armchairs in the front room—she noted he’d removed the newspapers and magazines while she was in the shower—were, “What were you thinking of, Suzie, getting mixed up with a pampered pussycat like Tristan Guthrie? The jerk has no conscience and no backbone—obviously. And he’s never worked for anything in his life, as you must know—he inherited his money and his business success. He didn’t have to lift a finger.”
His voice dropped to a husky drawl. “As for passion—I don’t think he’d know the word, would he?”
As her breath caught, he leaned forward in his chair, his coffee mug cradled in his hands. He’d changed into faded blue jeans and a black polo shirt, which made him look marginally less tough than his black leather gear, while just as disturbingly masculine. But what he was saying was even more disturbing. She didn’t want to talk about passion!
“You must realize what an escape you’ve had, Suzie. Tristan Guthrie would have bored you to death. He’s far too weak and wishy-washy for a passionate—” he paused as Suzie’s eyes flew to his, sparking with hot blue fire. “—sorry…for an independent, strong-minded woman like you,” he amended.
“Is that why you checked up on him?” she snapped. “Because you thought he wasn’t right for me and you hoped you’d find some embarrassing skeleton in his closet?”
He didn’t deny it. “He struck me as too smooth, too smug, too picture-perfect. He didn’t ring true. I decided to dig around a bit and find out more about him.”
“You must have dug really hard…and deep…and low.” Her eyes told him just how low she thought him, for thinking of delving into her fiancé’s past in the first place—rightly or wrongly. Who did he think he was? Her keeper?
“I did. I checked records, spoke to people and finally found one of his fellow university students from ten years ago who mentioned this foreign woman he was with for a while. I delved a bit deeper and picked up rumors of overseas students marrying secretly to stay in the country. I thought it was worth following up. I examined marriage records, and bingo! Tristan Guthrie, large as life. But there was no record of any divorce.”
He settled back in his armchair with a satisfied smirk. Then, as if the whole sordid scandal was now explained, dealt with and behind them, he commented easily, “I’m glad to see you looking yourself again, Suzie. The curls, the natural face. You don’t need all that artifice and makeup. You’re beautiful without it. And I must say you look very fetching in my track-suit.”
Did she realize, he wondered, that it was the same tracksuit he’d been wearing when she’d knocked him off his bike on the day they first met? Not just off his bike—she’d knocked him off his entire axis. Through a whirl of stars, he’d found himself drowning in the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, eyes full of anxiety and compassion—for him. And when she’d opened her mouth to speak, his bedazzled gaze had settled on full, lush lips that had begged to be kissed—only he’d been in no position to kiss them, with blood pouring from his nose and a throbbing pain in his head.
Once she’d helped him inside, mopped him up and made him feel half-human again, she’d gone back to work—but not before he’d asked if he could call on her later to thank her properly. He still remembered the way she’d blushed and nodded.
Yeah, he’d been smitten all right. And not just by her looks. Young and innocent as she’d been, she’d possessed a maturity and a toughness beyond her years. He’d sensed hidden depths and hidden pain, yet her natural humor, her cheeky wit, kept bubbling to the surface.
Everything about her fascinated him. She was a heady mixture of mystery, allure, vulnerability, ambition and an awesome inner strength that he suspected had something to do with her home life, which he’d gathered had been pretty rough. She’d never liked to talk about it, though she’d dropped the occasional hint now and then—usually at times when she flounced out of his life, comparing him with her no-good father.
He and Suzie had had more breakups in the months they’d been seeing each other than he could remember. And just as many reunions—until she’d walked out on him for good, without a proper explanation.
And now here she was, back in his life again. Married to him, while it lasted. Whether it did or not could be up to him.
“Mm…very fetching,” he repeated, unable to take his eyes off her.
Suzie shivered under the hot sweep of his gaze. “Oh, sure.” She gave a snort, but she could feel her cheeks heating, her skin prickling under the gray fabric. “It’s about a mile too big and I’ve had to roll up the sleeves and the legs several times and they’re still too long. But at least I’m dry.”
“You look gorgeous. And naturally beautiful.” Suzie, baby, you’d look good in a sack, he thought, and found himself wondering what she’d look like in nothing at all. He quenched a sharp stab of desire and made an effort to steady his voice. “You’ll be much happier being yourself again, Suzie, not some untouchable ice maiden.”
Untouchable? Suzie’s heart jumped. What had made him say that? Did he know? She bowed her head over her hot coffee. Don’t be silly, how could he possibly know?
“I left my wedding dress on your bathroom floor,” she mumbled. Anything to switch the subject! “You might as well throw it out. It’s ruined now.”
“Well, it’s served its purpose. And knowing you fashion designers, you’ll want a new up-to-the-minute model if and when you ever decide to get married again…for keeps.” His dark eyes caught hers for a challenging second.
“At this precise moment, I can’t imagine wanting to be permanently married to anyone, ever,” she said fiercely, with a shudder.
Mack repressed a sigh. So, after all his efforts to save her from Tristan Guthrie and win her back, she still didn’t want to be married to him. At least not beyond tonight. But things could change. “Oh, you’ll want to be married one day, Suzie. You’re a woman who believes in marriage and happily-ever-afters. And children. And it will happen. When you find the right man.” When you realize you’ve already found him.
Suzie couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. Or afraid of what her own might reveal. “Please, Mack, I don’t want—” She stopped, taking a quick sharp breath. “What are you doing?”
“Just checking if your hair’s dry.” His hands were at her nape, his fingers threading through her curls. It was the lamest excuse she’d ever heard, but she didn’t immediately jerk away, a strange languor sweeping over her, her skin tingling under his touch. Tristan had never run his fingers through her hair.
“Don’t,” she whispered huskily, but she still couldn’t seem to move, or twist her head round to shake him off.
“He wasn’t the man for you, Suzie. Trust me.”
That made her jerk back away from him. “Trust you?” she breathed. “You’d be the last man I’d ever trust!”
She gulped in a rallying breath. He was waiting for her to crack, to admit that his presence disturbed her. Waiting for her to throw herself back into his arms and confess how she’d missed him and how badly she wanted him back in her life, regardless of his faults and failings.
Well, you’ll be waiting, she vowed hotly. She’d had a lifetime of pain and disillusionment to harden her heart against irresponsible charmers like Mack Chaney and her father. She’d watched her mother being worn down, day after day, and had sworn she’d never end up like her.
Mack looked pained. “I saved you from marrying a potential bigamist, didn’t I?”
She scowled. “I suppose you expect me to be grateful to you.” Her voice trembled. “Well, all right, I’m glad you found out in time. B-but you had no right to interfere in my life. You should have asked someone else to check up on Tristan.” Anyone else!
“I thought I had the right as a friend, Suzie. Friends look out for each other.”
“A friend?” Her eyes seared his. “We haven’t been friends, or even spoken to each other, since—” She stopped, shaking her head. Since the night he’d come round to her place boasting of his big win at the casino, thinking she’d be happy about his stroke of good fortune and congratulate him.
“Since the day of your father’s funeral,” Mack finished for her, reminding her that he’d turned up unexpectedly on that somber occasion, a few months after their abrupt parting.
Suzie took a gulp of her coffee. Her mother had kept her closely under her wing from the moment Mack had shown up, so that he would have no chance to speak privately to her, except to offer his condolences to both of them. She’d turned sharply away from him afterward, making it plain that she wanted nothing more to do with him.
Any man so like her father! It would be disastrous to get involved with Mack again. He’ll end up the same way as your father, one of these days, her mother had warned her over and over again, and despite the feelings she still had for Mack, she’d known that Ruth was right.
Mack had taken the hint and kept out of her life after that, and a few weeks later she’d heard that he’d gone off to travel round Australia on his Harley-Davidson—a trip that could have lasted months or years. She wondered when he’d come back. Just as well he had! Nobody else had thought to check up on Tristan Guthrie’s past.
“It must have been tough, finding out that your bridegroom had a wife already,” Mack conceded, his voice a warm, deep rumble, “but you don’t seem too heartbroken, Suzie, I’m glad to see. You know in your heart, don’t you, that Tristan was wrong for you?”
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Vivienne Wallington
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Precious seconds slipping away, Mack Chaney crashed Sydney′s Wedding of the Year to expose a betrayaL.and save the bride from marrying a snake in gentleman′s clothing. Suzie Ashton had been his woman once, before their romance ended.Now, like some dark knight in black leather, Mack couldn′t help but claim the vulnerable beauty in virginal white as his wife.For Mack, their whirlwind union meant more than sparing Suzie humiliation. It was as binding as the kisses and caresses they shared as Mr. and Mrs. But secrets still loomed between them, secrets Mack vowed to unveil once his bride fled the morning after….