Hayley Gardner - Kidnapping His Bride

In the seconds it took to reach his shiny, silver-blue truck parked on the edge of the road, she was beyond the shock she’d experienced in the church, past the physical attraction, and all the way up to irritated. Very. He plopped her onto the driver’s side seat, and she caught the breath that being thrown over his shoulder and bouncing the dozen yards had knocked loose from her. “What in the world do you think you are doing?”

“We’re fixing to have a talk.”

“You always did insist on having everything your way, didn’t you?”

“If I had, darlin’, you’d have married me when I graduated the Academy and come with me all over the world, and I’d have been toting you off to celebrate our wedding anniversary this month. But that’s water under the bridge, isn’t it?”

“Definitely.” She gave her head an emphatic nod. “In fact, as far as I’m concerned, that bridge just crosses a dusty, dried out, old creek bottom now.”

Griff’s mouth twisted, and his ink-blue eyes scolded her. “All I’m trying to do is keep you—and my brother—from making a mistake.”

“Like you and I made?”

“A mistake? Yeah, sure.” He gave her another long look. “I’m good at making those.” Then, to her embarrassment, he put one hand on her bottom and started to push her toward the passenger side. He didn’t have to expend a lot of effort; the second his hand touched her, Tessa bolted right as though she’d been zapped with electricity.

Griff slid in beside her and shut the door.

“The sheriff is probably investigating right now why I’m not walking down the aisle. Kidnapping me is not a good idea, Griff. I could have you arrested.”

The grin that was uniquely Griff’s appeared as the truck roared to life, and they pulled out onto the narrow country road. She hadn’t seen that grin for years, not since before the two of them had broken up. It was half-curved and kind of devilishly appealing, and it still had the power to melt her heart.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “you could. But you won’t. Getting me arrested would keep me in town a long time, wouldn’t it? I’d be around to interfere in your plans.”

He had a point. Griff, in town, was something she definitely did not desire.

“Besides, you don’t want your wedding day to be a scandal the whole town talks about for years, do you?”

No, she didn’t. It was already half-ruined, of course, and if Griff got his way, it would be totally shot, but it wasn’t a scandal—not yet. She could still keep her personal business from becoming a tasty morsel for the town to munch on.

He rounded a corner carefully, heading away from the church down Highway 518 toward Athens, away from Claiborne Landing. Leaving town was something he was really good at, she thought bitterly, and then she wondered why she was giving him that much energy. She was over him.

“You’re making a mistake, Tessa.”

“The mistake being marrying your brother?” Tessa asked, her chin matching his for stubbornness. With great care, she kept herself from examining every inch of him with hungry eyes. She was marrying Clay as soon as she could get loose from Griff, and it wouldn’t be right looking at another man.

He shook his head. “The mistake being not marrying for love. Did you really think for one minute that I wouldn’t try to stop you from doing that?”

“Did you really think for one second that you’d have anything at all to say about it?”

“No,” he admitted quietly. “But I’d like to. I’m an expert on why you shouldn’t marry without love.”

She remained silent, which was not what Griff had expected, because before, she’d always had a comment or opinion about everything. And so, being careful to check the roller coaster hills for oncoming traffic first, he ventured another look at her to see if he could tell what she was thinking.

When he’d thrown her over his shoulder and carried her out of the church, apparently he’d caused her veil to tilt. Her topknot was tipped, and curls from her long, ash-blond hair were now tumbling down around her temples. Even a little bedraggled, she was still the prettiest thing he’d ever laid eyes on, and still the most desirable woman he’d ever met. The years of being without her hadn’t changed that.

Tessa took a deep breath, which got his attention. “So tell me about this e-mail.”

“It came three days ago and mentioned all the particulars of the wedding—when, where, and whom—and then asked me to come stop it so you didn’t end up marrying someone you didn’t love.” The other thing it had said, he didn’t want to get into with her yet. Maybe not even ever.

“And you came, even though it’s been over between us a long time?” Tessa didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

“Like I said, I know what it is to marry someone you don’t love, and go through the agony of a divorce. I’m sure you heard Janie and I—”

“Yes, I heard.” She didn’t want to discuss his former marriage with him. Talk about pain.

“I wasn’t only thinking of you, you know, when I pulled you out of there. My brother’s mixed up in this mess.”

“With how little you’ve been back to see your family since you left home, I’m surprised you’re that worried about Clay. You needn’t be. His heart is safe with me.”

“Mine wasn’t.”

“The broken heart worked both ways, Griff.” She worked her teeth over her bottom lip, her slim shoulders stiffening with the memories under satin sleeves. “But Clay and I won’t divorce. I’m positive of that.”

“You were positive we would get married when I got my commission, too, and look at what happened.”

The situations were totally different, but Tessa wasn’t about to get into that. There was nothing else she could say without telling him a whole lot more than she was willing to.

“This is getting us nowhere.” Removing her lacy gloves, she reached up and started to pull out the hairpins that were now, thanks to him, tangling up her carefully done hair. “We need to get whatever your problem is settled and me back to the wedding. So tell me what you want.”

There was a long silence in the truck, and the air was heavy between them. “I want you to reconsider marrying Clay. I want you to find a man who will make you happy.”

“I had one of those once, and he left town,” she pointed out.

He winced. She didn’t want him hurt, Tessa thought, but really, why was he here? She couldn’t believe he had come home merely to “rescue” her—what was the point? He didn’t want her. And how had he been able to get off on short notice anyway? Then she remembered. Six years he’d promised the Air Force for sending him to college. And those six years were up this month. June.

Her breath caught. “Are you home to stay, or planning to reenlist?” She was afraid to hear the answer; afraid to hear he’d changed his mind about the excitement he could experience “out there.” If he stayed in Claiborne Landing, what on earth was she going to do, because she was still marrying Clay.

She had to.

“At this point, reenlist. I had vacation days coming, so I took them.”

Relieved, Tessa kept her eyes averted and didn’t answer, too afraid that if she looked at him or spoke, he would sense the fear she felt that he would stay…and the worry she felt that if he did go, she would never see him again. Never have that thrill course through her that she got whenever she looked at him, never—

But she would be married to someone else, so maybe it would be better if she never.

He steered skillfully around a curve as the roller coaster road turned into more of a snake, and she braced one white pump against the floor to keep from sliding toward the middle and touching him. She caught the movement of his head and looked at him, and that jolt came one more time, the one that said that somehow, she had to get him to leave town as fast as possible, or she could very well say or do something that could ruin the precarious happiness she’d fought so hard for in the years since he’d left.

With a long sigh, she put her hairpins she’d been gripping in the cup holder on his dashboard and took her veil off, carefully folding and smoothing it out on her lap. “Where are we going?”

“Someplace to talk. Not your house. That’s the first place people would think of to look. Casey’s Kitchen still open this time of day?”

She nodded. Casey’s Kitchen was a cozy restaurant underneath a bunch of shady oaks on a well traveled highway that bisected Claiborne Landing. Its owner, Doc Casey, was a retired doctor in his sixties who had always claimed to love cooking more than doctoring, even though he’d been tremendously successful at medicine. He was also Tessa and her grandmother’s best customer at the bakery they owned, buying sweets for his customers, which included lunch and dinner crowds of mostly truck drivers, farmers, ranchers and an occasional mom and small children out for a break. By two any afternoon, the place was usually deserted, and Tessa was happy to see from the empty parking lot that today was no different.

Before she got out of the truck, she laid her gloves and the veil on the console between the seats, and then fixed her hair and makeup as best she could in the tiny mirror on the visor. By the time she finished, Griff had come around and opened the truck door on her side, and was waiting there to help her down.

As his hands touched her waist, an involuntary wave of desire went through her, as well as a glimpse back into the past when she’d loved his touching her. But whatever she’d felt then wasn’t important now. Griff didn’t say a word, but by the impenetrable look on his face, she would guess he wasn’t affected at all by touching her. That was all right. She didn’t want to have to deal with Griff wanting her.

Doc Casey himself was behind the counter when she walked in, and Tessa nodded at him as though nothing at all were out of the ordinary and she wasn’t attired in a white satin wedding dress. Trusting Griff would follow her, she went into the larger side room and settled at a small, relatively private table far to the rear of the place, hoping she was less noticeable back there. Griff sat down, too, close enough that their shoulders touched. She gave him a pursed mouth, questioning stare.

“If I sit on the other side of the table, I’ll have to talk louder,” he said, his voice low. She realized he was right and let him stay where he was, wishing she didn’t feel like a quivering mass of emotions just because he was home.

Back, she corrected silently. Griff didn’t want this to be home. He’d made that clear a long time ago.

Within seconds, Doc Casey came to take their order, his mirth-filled, green eyes gazing down at her from his round Irish face. “Griff. Welcome home. Welcome. Tessa, aren’t you a little too fancied up for this place?”

“You have a dress down code?” Tessa lifted both hands into the air in a plea for him to spare her.

“It’s my fault,” Griff said, leaning back in his chair to look up at the former doctor. “I kidnapped her from her wedding.”

“That so?” Doc Casey gazed down at Tessa with the same concerned, yet detached, expression he’d always used whenever she’d described her sneezes and sniffles.

“Plopped her right over my shoulder and carried her out kicking and screaming. Wanted to play a trick on my brother.”

Although he was exaggerating, his excuse for her being here, having a private meal with her fiancé’s brother when she was supposed to be at her wedding, was as good as any Tessa could make up. She glanced at Griff, and he winked, making her realize that saving her from having to give any explanation to Casey herself was exactly what he’d intended. His thoughtfulness caught her off balance.