Teresa Hill - His Bride by Design

“Chloe’s a very interesting person,” Adam said carefully.

“She is. I just need to make sure she’s okay,” James claimed, which was so obviously a lie. He was acting like a madman over her.

“Hey, I like Chloe. She’s great,” Adam began.

“You swear you never slept with her?” James just couldn’t help but ask.

“I swear. My life is screwed up enough—”

He broke off as James scowled at him.

“I mean, complicated. My life is really complicated. The last thing I need is to get involved with any woman. Even one as interesting and cute as Chloe.”

“Okay,” James said, satisfied for the moment on that count.

After about twenty minutes, he looked out the car window, and there, a block away, was Chloe’s shop, that huge, old Victorian where she lived with her two cousins and Addie. He saw some kind of commotion out front and two, no, three camera crews and some of those big, tall lights the TV people used when they filmed things.

James charged into the mass of crazy, garment-bag-wielding brides, just as one of them drew back to take a swing at Chloe, who looked like a waif in her pajama bottoms and one of those stretchy little spaghetti-strap tops she liked to sleep in.

He thought those were the sexiest things he’d ever seen.

Especially when she wore one of those tops and nothing else except a little scrap of lacy panties. Chloe at her softest, most inviting, rumpled best.

God, he’d missed her!

Just then, another bride took a swing at her with her garment bag. The blow sent her stumbling backward. James stepped in and caught her hard against him, feeling a huge surge of relief, just having his arms around her. She went limp like she suddenly didn’t have any bones and looked absolutely stunned, either from the blow or seeing him, he couldn’t be sure. He lifted her up into his arms, glaring at the garment-bag-slinging woman, daring her or anyone else to come close to Chloe now that he had her.

Chloe reached out a hand to ever so lightly touch the side of his face, like she needed to know he was real. “James?”

“It’s okay,” he said, tucking her face against his chest, trying to reassure himself that she was truly okay. “I’ve got you.”

When he lifted his head, he realized the crowd had quieted, finally.

They were all staring at him and her, and he realized there were a few still photographers there and that they were clicking away at the scene.

He didn’t care.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked, spotting Chloe’s half sister, who’d always been the sanest one of the family.

“They want their money back for their dresses,” she said, glaring at him.

“Write them checks, if that’s what it takes to get them to leave,” he said.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Adam, who’d fought his way to James’s side. Adam, who had a check James had just written in the car, a check with lots of zeroes on it. Let everyone think Adam was covering the new debts, too. James would find a way to explain exactly what was going on to Chloe later.

His first thought was to get her away from this crowd, inside, maybe even carry her upstairs to her cute, quirky attic apartment, where he’d bumped his head on the low, sloped ceilings more than once. To the big cream-colored iron bed he used to share with her.

He hesitated, wondering if he was making a mistake by not taking her to his apartment in the city. Here she could kick him out whenever she pleased. When she got her second wind, she’d start her whole I-don’t-need-anyone routine. But he couldn’t risk giving this mob a second chance at her. That settled it. He took her inside.

Reluctantly, he set Chloe on her feet just inside the doorway. She seemed so slight standing there in front of him, so sad and defeated. He put his hand to the side of her face, tilting it up toward the light.

“Is it just this?” he asked, finding a slight swelling at her cheekbone. “Or are you hurt anywhere else?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

But her face was pale as could be, a few tiny, light brown freckles that he knew she hated spread across her nose and cheeks. He used to tease her that her freckles looked like fairy dust and kiss each one. God, he’d lost his head completely over this woman the first time and was clearly in danger of doing the same thing again.

He couldn’t help it.

He leaned down, his face lingering against hers, the tip of his nose pressed against her skin, soaking in the sweet, wild essence of Chloe, drawing his other hand through her pretty blond hair. It was even longer than it used to be and hanging loose and messy, the way he remembered it from rare mornings when she’d arisen from her bed before he left.

She was not a morning person, had always said she did her best work late at night. He didn’t mind. It was fine to get up and dressed and be able to stand there and stare at her in a rumpled bed, her hair all wild around her face, those little sprinkles of fairy dust on her bare cheeks.

How had he ever managed to drag himself away?

How would he do it again?

Was he not going to think of saving himself from her a second time? Self-preservation was usually one of his strong suits. But he just couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment.

He picked her up once again and carried her upstairs.

Chloe was still thinking it all had to be a dream.

Monkeys escaped from zoos at times and attacked people. Bears walked out of the woods and into camping areas. Every now and then an elephant got loose from its ankle stakes.

But who got attacked by crazy, garment-bag-wielding brides?

Didn’t happen.

She’d never heard of it happening, never read about it, never imagined it. What made it even more improbable was that James Elliott IV would show up, charge into the crowd and rescue her from them. Yet, in her muddled mind, that’s what had happened.

He laid her gently on the unmade bed in her little attic apartment, then sat down by her side, looking concerned and strong and tall and absolutely gorgeous.

She whimpered and then said, “Pinch me.”

He frowned, touched his hand to the side of her face, feeling the spot where she thought the shoes in one of the brides’ garment bags had gotten her. “Do you need a doctor? I’ll take you.”

“No, I mean … I think I’m dreaming …” Then thought how that might sound to him.

I was dreaming you came charging to my rescue, after a year without a word from you …?.

No, not going there.

Not with James, especially if he really was here.

“I dreamed I was being attacked by brides with bouquets,” she said.

Which had him looking even more concerned. “Flowers? Chloe, those were garment bags—”

“No, I know that! I’m just confused,” she said. “Not in that concussion sort of way. In that this-is-really-weird kind of way. You know?”

“Yes,” he agreed, still looking worried.

God, he smelled so good, so familiar.

Chloe winced.

Not now. Her life was falling apart already. She could not do this now with him. She looked at him warily.

Collapsing in his arms the minute she saw him again was not how she’d ever imagined any reunion they might have. She was supposed to look her best, maybe all done up for a show, and he was supposed to look bleak and sad and lonely without her. He was supposed to say he missed her terribly, that he had never stopped thinking about her.

That’s how it was supposed to go.

“All of that really happened just now?” she asked him.

“Yeah, it did.”

“Pinch me,” she said. “I have to be sure.”

James smiled for the first time since she’d seen him again, looking heartbreakingly sexy and so appealing she thought about dragging him down into the bed with her right that minute.

“I’m not going to pinch you,” he whispered, ever so slowly lowering his head to hers.

Her whole body started trembling before he even touched her, and she could have stopped it. Truly, she had time. And some sense of self-preservation that was still alive inside of her.

After all, her most recent ex-fiancé had just been outed as a sometimes-gay man, having an affair with Chloe’s model’s boyfriend, outed on the runway at her Fashion Week show. Even Chloe, stupid as she could be about men, knew that the last thing she needed was for James Elliott to kiss her, even just once.

But he’d charged to her rescue like Prince Charming, saving her from hysterical, rioting brides, after all. She still wasn’t convinced this was real. So she let him kiss her. It wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d done lately, and it was one thing she actually wanted to happen.

He let his whole body sink into hers, those chiseled abs, the hard chest, wide shoulders. They sank into the feather mattress on her bed like they used to do. He’d loved this bed with her in it. She whimpered, a rush of hurt and longing washing over her, sending her arms around his shoulders and pulling him closer.

“Don’t be scared,” he said, tenderly, sweetly, his mouth merely a breath from hers.

And then he finally closed that last bit of distance between them, his lips soft and firm, heartbreakingly familiar, and yet as tentative as he’d ever been with her. As if he knew how much this meant to her, and he truly didn’t want to hurt her. As if he knew what they were both risking, and yet just couldn’t stop himself.

She let her eyes drift shut, drew in that wonderful man scent of his. Her hands came up to frame his face, to slide into his hair. He had beautiful, thick black hair. He took his time with the kiss, didn’t attack with his mouth as so many men did. He coaxed. He soothed. He smiled against her mouth, teasing ever so softly with his tongue, while she wanted to open up and devour him whole.

He had to know that.

It had always been that way between them.

He took little nibbles of her, her mouth, her ear, her neck, back to her mouth, so carefully, so sweetly, with a kind of power and control that drove her crazy at the same time it left her in complete awe of him.

He could seem so cool, so reasonable, so strong. Was this some sort of game to him, a corporate takeover he’d planned out in minute detail and executed to perfection? But then she caught a glimpse of his face, his eyes, and she saw. He was burning up inside, as desperate for her as she was for him.

Was he still desperate for her? Had he missed her? Thought about her? Could he possibly want her back? At this, the worst moment in her life?

She lay there beneath him, in complete awe, her head still spinning, that perfect, hot, hard body of his pressing into hers, which was positively purring with pleasure.

He’d finally stopped teasing. Now he was kissing her for real, his body thrusting ever so slightly against hers in time with the thrust of his tongue in her mouth, everything about this, about him, as exciting as ever.

He could have her clothes off in seconds. She knew it. She could be naked beneath him, wrap her legs around him, open herself up to him in every way, and he could be inside of her, hers again, at least for a few moments. She wanted it, and so did he.

It would be so easy, and so good.

And then they’d be right back to where they’d started, everything that had gone wrong between them still there for them to deal with. She couldn’t trust him. She knew it. She’d caught him with a model named Giselle, seen it with her own two eyes, and that had finally been the end of her and James.

Chloe drew in a big breath of him, of everything he was, everything she felt, everything she’d missed so much about him, and somehow found the strength to turn her head away, to break the kiss, kill the moment.