Maid of Dishonor Page 17

  It wasn’t a lie, not really, she had been thankful in the end—after all the tears and the soul-searching and the mind-numbing grief. Thankful that she would never get the chance to screw up motherhood, the way she’d managed to screw up everything else.

  ‘I’d managed to pull my life together in the process and get clear of my father,’ she added, when he didn’t respond. ‘So it was all good.’

  ‘How could it be good?’ The shock cleared from his eyes to be replaced by hurt and confusion—and temper. ‘If I’d had any idea, I never would’ve gone through with the wedding. You should have told me. I had a right to know.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And why the hell didn’t you tell me now? We’ve been sleeping together for over a week, living in each other’s pockets, and you didn’t think it was worth mentioning?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, the anger edged with disbelief. ‘How could I be so damn wrong about you? I thought we had something going here.’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong.’

  ‘I never would have guessed anyone could be so hot in the sack and yet so heartless out of it.’

  She let the accusation wash over her, like all the others.

  He can’t hurt you, unless you let him.

  ‘I suppose that’s one of the many mysteries of the universe, isn’t it, Lover Boy.’ She scooped her purse up off the bed, slung it over her shoulder, and fisted her fingers on the strap so he wouldn’t see them shaking. ‘I’ll catch a cab to the airport. If you could have my luggage sent on, I’d appreciate it. I’ll email you when the website and blog are live.’

  He didn’t say anything as she walked away. But while the panic pushing against her chest began to ease as she ran through the mansion’s hallways, the pain she’d spent ten years running away from turned into a living, breathing thing—as sharp and relentless as it had ever been as it consumed her.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Gina, I need a favour.’ Reese’s furious whisper interrupted Gina’s listless gaze out of the large mullioned window of the Manhattan city clerk’s office.

  ‘A favour, right.’ She forced a smile, trying to get into the party spirit, which had eluded her ever since they’d arrived twenty minutes ago at the newly refurbished, and suitably ornate Manhattan Marriage Bureau in preparation for Cassie’s wedding.

  Reese threaded an arm through Gina’s. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You look exhausted?’

  Gina sighed, wondering why on earth she’d bothered to spend half an hour plastering on foundation. ‘I had the flu that’s been going around,’ she said, giving the stock excuse she’d prepared earlier, after a similar interrogation from both Marnie and Cassie when they’d all convened at Amber’s Bridal two days ago, to bully Cassie into picking out a proper wedding gown. ‘But I’m on the mend now.’

  Or I will be, eventually.

  What a fool she’d been, to think she could carry on an affair with Carter and not plummet back down the black hole that had claimed her once before. If she hadn’t been feeling so fragile she’d have kicked her own backside.

  Reese gave her arm a gentle squeeze. ‘So that’s why you disappeared off the radar and bailed on all the party planning.’ She sent her a curious glance. ‘You could have let me know. I happen to be a champion pamperer. My chicken soup is legendary.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t feel up to company,’ Gina replied, deflecting the sympathy she knew she didn’t deserve. Lying to her friends about Carter had been almost as unconscionable as lying to herself.

  ‘So what’s the favour?’ she asked, keen to steer them onto a new, less debilitating topic.

  Reese dipped her head towards the trio of guys collected on the other side of the office’s grand art deco antechamber—who made a fascinating tableau as they awaited Cassie’s arrival with Marnie.

  Tuck, Cassie’s husband-to-be, stood chatting with his witness, Dylan Brookes. With his rangy athlete’s build and tousled blond hair, Tuck looked rugged and gorgeous in a perfectly tailored designer suit, the incessant tapping of his foot on the marble floor the only sign of wedding jitters. Dylan, on the other hand, looked more relaxed and debonair as he kept Tuck’s mind off his nerves.

  Standing apart from the two close friends, Mason, Reese’s ex-husband and current fiancé—and the guy who had effectively stolen her away from Dylan on the eve of their wedding earlier that summer—had his hands buried in the pockets of his suit, the silk tie already tugged loose and listing to one side.

  While Dylan was covering any awkwardness with his customary dignity, Mason looked agitated and a little surly. Gina would hazard a guess the ex-marine would rather be charging into a war zone under enemy fire than having to make polite conversation with Reese’s former fiancé while wearing a suit.

  ‘I’m about to go rescue Mason, before he rips off his tie altogether—but could you run interference with Dylan later—once Tuck’s all loved up with Cassie at the Tribeca.’

  Oh, please, just kill me now.

  Gina bit the tip of her tongue to stave off the inevitable eye-roll. After her aborted two-week fling in Savannah she wasn’t sure she’d be able to flirt again in this lifetime. But how could she mention that to Reese without dragging her friend into her pity party? Which would be pointless in the extreme. What could Reese say about it? Except maybe I told you so?

  Carter and her had always been a mistake. Even without the miserable secret of the miscarriage lying in wait to trip them up, it never would have worked.

  The cold, judgmental look when she’d told him the truth was all the proof she needed that the two of them had never been in line for a happy ever after.

  The only thing she hadn’t quite accounted for was how horrendous the fallout would be after a measly two weeks with him. And she laid the blame for that squarely at Carter’s door. The sex should have been enough for him. But he’d insisted on wanting more, forcing her into an intimacy she couldn’t handle, and tricking her into loving him again.

  ‘I can see how it’s going to get a little awkward, once you and Mason and Tuck and Cassie are paired off,’ Gina observed, trying to concentrate on the problem at hand instead of the insoluble one in her past.

  She watched Dylan give Tuck a hearty pat on the back—the two men sharing a joke. ‘But I think you may be worrying unnecessarily. Dylan appears to be way too smooth to allow a minor social catastrophe like being jilted at the altar to throw him off his stride.’

  ‘I didn’t jilt him,’ Reese snapped. ‘If you’ll recall, he jilted me.’ She waved her arm, to dispel the subject. ‘But that’s beside the point. I don’t want him to feel like a fifth wheel at the TriBee. So I could use your super power. If you’re sufficiently recovered from the flu, that is?’

  The flu—real or imaginary—wouldn’t have stopped her before, she thought miserably. Dylan Brookes, with his handsome face, immaculate manners and exceptional dress sense, was exactly the type of guy Gina would once have enjoyed zapping with her super power. But that was before her super power had met its kryptonite in Savannah. A kryptonite that had refused to stay buried.

  Carter had attempted to contact her several times since her return home, but she’d deleted his emails and texts unread and erased his answerphone messages—and communicated exclusively with his PA about the commission. Her bags had arrived by special courier the day before with a note attached, addressed in his looping black scrawl, which she’d also thrown away unopened.

  She didn’t doubt that he had a lot to say to her on the subject of her heartlessness, but she had no desire to get into some long-distance slanging match about the choices she’d made ten years ago. It would only prolong the agony—and, although she despised herself for the weakness, she didn’t think she was quite strong enough yet to cope with his contempt—even from a distance of eight hundr
ed miles.

  She shook off the depressing thought, and struggled to think of a way to deflect Reese gracefully. ‘What about asking Marnie to run interference with your tempting ex? She’s young, free and single—and she needs more practice than I do.’ She tilted her head as if assessing Dylan’s appearance—instead of measuring him against another man she couldn’t seem to forget. ‘And I bet he’d be her type.’

  ‘You are kidding, right?’ Reese did a double take. ‘Dylan’s exactly the opposite of her type. As you well know Marnie has a phobia of guys who command six-figure salaries and wear tuxes on a regular basis—something to do with the trauma of her debutante upbringing and having them thrown at her on a regular basis.’

  Oh, yeah, there was that.

  Reese gripped Gina’s arm to propel her towards the guys as Gina silently cursed Marnie and her Post-Traumatic Tux Disorder. ‘Come on, there’s no need to give him the full Gina today,’ she continued, sailing across the marbled hallway in full matchmaker mode. ‘We don’t want to blind him.’

  * * *

  The blushing bride arrived ten minutes later—in the nick of time to save Gina from slow death by polite conversation. Cassie’s low-cut silk dress looked incredible. The silver thread accenting the fabric shimmered in the afternoon light while the snug bias-cut displayed a figure that Cassie had hidden for far too long behind baggy T-shirts and jeans. But it was the expression on Cassie’s face as Tuck grasped her waist and swung her around in a circle that had tears threatening to ruin Gina’s mascara.

  ‘You look sensational, Cassiopeia!’ Tuck announced as his newly crowned Geek Goddess beamed with love and excitement.

  The carefree laugh that floated across the antechamber brought forth memories of a certain wicked grin and seductive gaze that had once turned Gina into a giggler too.

  She gnawed on her bottom lip—the abject feeling of loss warring with the foolish glow of nostalgia and starting to give her a tension headache.

  Thank goodness, she would never lay eyes on Carter Price again or she’d be liable to turn into a complete basketcase.

  But as the thought registered it was interrupted by Marnie’s choked whisper. ‘What’s my brother doing here?’

  Gina’s head snapped up, her startled gaze focusing on a tall figure in a dark business suit weaving his way towards them through the other bridal parties waiting in the antechamber. Her mind steadfastly refused to acknowledge what her eyes were seeing, but as his gaze found hers the heavy weight pressing on her chest began to crush her ribcage.

  ‘Who is that guy?’ Tuck asked as he sent them all a questioning look. ‘He looks pretty mad about something and he’s headed this way.’

  ‘That’s Carter, Marnie’s brother,’ Reese said, stating the obvious. ‘Did you guys have a meeting?’ She turned to Marnie, who shook her head in confusion. He didn’t look pretty mad. Gina thought, her chest collapsing, he looked exceptionally mad—and his gaze was locked on her like an Exocet missile.

  Cassie sent Gina a sympathetic look. ‘I’m not sure it’s Marnie he’s here to see.’

  Gina wrapped her arms around her churning stomach as questions bombarded her from all sides.

  ‘Why is he staring at you, Gina?’ Marnie sounded wounded and confused.

  ‘Is something going on between you two, again?’ Reese’s voice rang out, urgent and concerned.

  Gina shook her head but nothing would come out of her mouth. She could feel their worried looks but all she could see was Carter charging towards her and threatening to send her life into freefall again.

  ‘Cassie? Do you know?’ Reese’s anxious enquiry buzzed in her head.

  Before Cassie could reply, Carter marched through the gathered throng and grasped her arm. Yanking her towards him, he snarled, ‘Why the hell didn’t you answer my emails, or my phone messages, or my damn texts, or the letter I sent with your stuff?’

  ‘Hey, buddy.’ Dylan was the first of her shocked friends to come to the rescue—which in some small part of her brain Gina thought was remarkably gallant of him, given that she’d almost bored him to death with her sub-par flirting. ‘Do you want to take your hands off the lady and ask her nicely?’

  ‘Butt out, Wall Street,’ Carter sneered back, not even sparing him a glance, his Southern manners apparently having gone the same way as his easy charm.

  ‘The hell I will,’ Dylan bristled, squaring up for a fight.

  ‘Calm down.’ Reese stepped in front of Dylan and touched Gina’s arm. ‘Gina, is everything okay?’

  Gina managed a shell-shocked nod, all her focus on the pads of Carter’s fingers digging into her arm, and the glitter of temper in those painfully familiar blue eyes.

  What was he doing here? Had he come all this way to humiliate her in front of her friends? Surely she didn’t deserve that? She tried to gather her outrage, her indignation, but she couldn’t stop trembling.

  ‘L-let go of me,’ she stammered, disgusted by the chatter of teeth. To her surprise, his fingers released and he stepped back to thrust a hand through his hair.

  Reese puffed out an exasperated breath. ‘Now, can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ Carter said, the tone low as he bypassed Reese’s request. ‘I didn’t plan to do it in public but I will if I have to.’

  She tightened her arms, struggling to protect herself from the hard glare. ‘No, we don’t need to talk.’

  She knew what he had to say and she didn’t want to hear it. He’d rejected her twice already, once more might break her.

  ‘Fine, you don’t want to talk, you can listen.’ The frustration in his voice snapped like the lash of a whip.

  ‘Now wait a minute...’ Dylan charged back into the fray.

  ‘Who did you say this guy was, because he’s starting to make me pretty damn mad too...’ Tuck added, standing behind his friend.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Gina lifted shaking palms to get her knights in shining Armani to back off.

  For God’s sake, pull yourself together and deal with this, before Cassie’s special day degenerates into a complete fiasco.

  ‘I can handle this,’ she added, thinking no such thing as the tremor in her body refused to subside.

  She could smell him, that unique combination of man and soap and tangy cologne—the memory making the emotion rush through already shaky limbs. She locked her knees in a desperate attempt to keep the trembling under control. ‘What is it you wanted to say? I’m listening.’

  To her astonishment the glitter of temper disappeared, to leave something she couldn’t decipher. He stepped forward and took her arm again but this time his touch was gentle, tentative, the pad of his thumb pressing into the inside of her elbow.

  ‘Let’s start with I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? What for?’ she asked, staggered.

  He dropped his chin to his chest and let out a heavy sigh. ‘Damn, this is tough.’ He swung his head round, taking in her friends, who were watching with varying degrees of curiosity and astonishment on their faces—and, in Marnie’s case, outright shock. ‘Especially with an audience,’ he added, sucking in a breath as if preparing to face a firing squad.

  His hand dropped from her arm. ‘Sorry for everything, I guess. Sorry for getting you pregnant that night.’

  ‘What?’ Marnie’s shocked yelp had him glancing over his shoulder, but he turned his attention back to Gina without acknowledging his sister.

  ‘Sorry for walking away, and letting you think I blamed you for what we did together. Sorry for leaving you to deal with losing our baby alone.’ His eyebrow lifted. ‘Although, I don’t consider myself entirely to blame for that one.’

  ‘How could I tell you when—’ she jumped in, but he pressed a fingertip to her lips, silencing her protest.

  ‘Hey, don’t. I ge
t it. How could you tell me when I was too busy marrying the wrong woman?’

  She looked away, not sure she could hear him say this now, when it was too late to make a difference. She chewed her lip, the metallic taste of blood doing nothing to stop the single tear slipping over her lid. He brushed it away with his thumb, then hooked a finger under her chin.

  ‘You’re such a faker, aren’t you, sugar? You had me fooled there for a while, with your tough cookie act, but I figured it out.’

  She raised her chin, blinking rapidly to stop any more stupid tears materialising. ‘Figured out what exactly?’

  * * *

  Damn, she looked so forlorn and so determined not to show a single sign of weakness. How could he ever have doubted the existence of that brave, generous, honest heart behind the tough girl facade?

  He’d screwed up. Not just ten years ago by not recognising how perfect she’d always been for him. But also a week ago, when he’d tried to bully her into admitting her feelings, without having the guts to admit his own. He just hoped to hell he wasn’t too late to stop those screw-ups from destroying whatever chance they might have at a future.

  But he had to tread gently now. She’d had her confidence battered over the years—not just by her old man, but by him too. He’d left her high and dry when she’d needed him the most, because he’d been too busy dealing with his own issues to appreciate what was right under his nose. The news of her miscarriage had been a shock—but once he’d got past the knee-jerk feeling of betrayal, the much bigger shock was how much it had hurt to know she had carried his child and he’d had no idea.

  ‘You want to know my biggest regret, sugar?’

  ‘Not particularly, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway.’ She sniffed, still channelling the tough cookie act, even though the sheen of moisture in those large green eyes meant it was a total wash.

  ‘My biggest regret is that while I was busy browbeating you last week into staying in Savannah, I didn’t take the time to tell you how I feel about you.’

  Now for the tough part.