through his eyes, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. A weeping, hysterical woman knocking back double scotches and losing control of herself in front of a roomful of people was in no position to take out her misery on the one person who’d shown her compassion. “I was left at the altar,” she confessed, the very act of speaking the words aloud leaving her hollow with pain.
“When?”
The sneaking suspicion that she owed her savior something more than the bare bones she’d so far offered overcame her earlier reticence. “This morning.”
“Oh, boy!” He whistled through his teeth. “Small wonder you’re such a mess.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t entitle me to be rude to you, or to intrude on your time. I’m sure your plans for the evening didn’t involve playing nursemaid to a jilted bride.” She squared her shoulders and did her best to project the image of a woman in control and well able to stand on her own two feet which, considering her recent bout of weeping, was a lost cause from the outset. “Please don’t feel you have to stay out here with me. I’ll be perfectly all right by myself,” she said, her voice wobbling dangerously.
“Garbage!” he declared flatly. “You’ve been dumped on what should be the happiest day of your life, and you shouldn’t be alone. Surely there’s someone who could be here with you—a friend, or a family member?”
“No! I don’t want…people to…know where I am.”
He stepped back and searched her face incredulously. “Are you saying that after being stood up at the altar and left emotionally distraught, you just disappeared without a word to anyone?”
“That’s right.” She returned his gaze defiantly.
“What about your relatives and friends? They must be worried out of their minds. Or didn’t that strike you as important?”
The censure in his voice stirred her to an unwelcome guilt which, in turn, put her once again on the defensive. “What would you have done in my place? Invite all the guests to the reception and have it turn into a wake with them all commiserating with the forlorn bride?”
He rolled his eyes. “Cripes, do you always go overboard like this? Couldn’t you have found a happy medium and shown some consideration for your family’s feelings? They’re probably beside themselves with concern for you.”
“If you only knew…!” she began, then clamped her mouth shut and turned away from him because, even if she tried to explain, he’d just think she was trying to milk her situation for more sympathy than he had to spare. And to be fair, how could a stranger be expected to understand the hopes and expectations her family had pinned on her marriage to one of the city’s wealthiest financiers?
“We’ll finally be accepted where we belong,” her mother had crowed to her father. “Doors will open, you’ll see! We’ll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. Mark will give our son a position in the firm, something appropriate for a young man of Glen’s ability. And with a few words dropped in the right ear, Amber’s career will be made overnight.”
“He’s marrying Jenna, not the whole family,” her father had tried to point out. “Mark doesn’t owe the rest of us any favors.”
But her mother had been undeterred. “Why not, when he can so easily afford them?”
Was that what had made Mark change his mind at the last minute? Had he felt he was nothing more than a cash cow, even though Jenna would have loved him just as dearly if he’d been dirt-poor?
The breeze picked up, tugging at the formal hairdo her stylist had created just that morning. Hugging her arms against the chill, Jenna swung back to the stranger. “I left a note at my parents’ house telling them I’d be away for a few days and not to worry about me. Satisfied?”
“I guess,” he said, “but I still don’t see why you’d want to cut yourself off from them.” He inclined his head toward The Inn perched majestically on the rocks to their right. “Or why you’d want to hole up in a place designed for couples and lovers. Seems to me that’s just rubbing salt in the wounds.”
He subjected her to another penetrating stare and she felt color stealing into her cheeks. “Oh, brother, let me guess!” he exclaimed, enlightenment dawning. “You were supposed to honeymoon here, right?”
“At least I knew I’d have a room reserved,” she said defensively. “The bridal suite, in fact, complete with champagne on ice and flowers by the bucketful.”
He circled her as if she were some rare species of sea life accidentally washed ashore. “You’ve got to be kidding!”
She stared at her feet, feeling more foolish by the minute. “At least it’s the last place anyone would think to come looking for me.”
He laughed then, a rich warm rumble of amusement borne away on the breeze. “You’re going to be okay, you know that?” he said, tipping up her chin with his finger and smiling down at her. “Any woman with the guts to face her demons in the one place she’d expected to find true love is a real survivor. What say we head back to The Inn and I buy us both a drink to celebrate?”
Well, why not? The only thing waiting for her in the suite was a bed big enough for two and no one to share it with. “All right,” she said. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“Yeah,” he said, tucking her hand under his arm and towing her back the way they’d come. “But keep it under your hat, okay? I don’t want the word to get out.”
His name was Edmund Delaney and she found herself enjoying his company more than she’d have thought possible an hour before. He was an entertaining host, articulate, amusing, and unquestionably the most attractive man in the room. She sat by the fire and sipped the cognac he ordered and, for a little while, she was able to push the fiasco of her wedding day to the back of her mind. Eventually, though, the evening came to an end.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” he offered and because she dreaded being alone, she accepted.
Taller than Mark, broader across the shoulders, and more powerfully built, he loped up the stairs with the graceful ease of an athlete at the peak of fitness. “Give me your key,” he said, when they arrived at her door, and as she handed it over, she noticed his hands were lean and tanned and capable, and just a little callused as if he worked with tools. Mark had a manicure every week and wouldn’t have known one end of a hammer from the other.
“Here you are.” Edmund pushed open her door, dropped the keys into her palm and folded her fingers over them.
If he’d said, “Sleep well,” she’d probably have managed to end the evening with a modicum of dignity, but his more sensitive “Try to get some sleep,” had the tears burning behind her eyes all over again.
Mutely, she looked up at him.
His fingers grazing her cheek were gentle. “I know,” he murmured. “It isn’t going to be easy.”
He left her then and she knew a shocking urge to call him back and beg him not to make her face the night alone. It wasn’t that she wanted him to make love to her or anything like that; she just needed the warmth of human contact, the feeling that someone in the world cared—not that a two-thousand-dollar wedding dress had gone to waste, or that four hundred guests had been cheated
