“A little quarter-moon?” She pointed to his left hip. “Up here, on your left cheek?”
Seth’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, steam practically oozing from his ears. “No. What’s come over you, Hannah? You’re acting odd.”
An overwhelming sense of panic hit her. “Seth, tell me why you want to marry me.”
His eyebrows narrowed. “What?”
“Please, just tell me. Why do you want to marry me?”
He ran a hand through his hair, spiking the ends. “We talked about this before. We make a good match, Hannah. We work well together. Have the same goals. We’re both doctors.”
“What about passion?” Hannah asked, desperate for something to cling to.
His face flushed. “I…I thought we decided sex could wait. That passion wasn’t really important.”
No, but love was.
“Seth, do you love me?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I…I care about you…”
“But you don’t really love me,” Hannah finished for him.
“We’ll have a good life, Hannah. We work well together, we’re compatible—”
“I’m sorry, Seth.” Tenderly, she laid her palm on his cheek. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe passion is important.”
He shook his head. “Can’t we discuss this later? The guests are here, the preacher. We have cake, we have a schedule….”
Typical, all business, no emotional response.
The vision of the other man appeared again, briefly but intensely, and she blinked Seth back into focus, a sickening knot balling in her stomach. Yes, Seth was the wrong man for her— No toe-curling or blood-boiling kisses. What if she married him, had children, then discovered they’d made a mistake? She never wanted to put a child through a divorce—not after the pain she’d experienced. And if she didn’t love Seth passionately, it wouldn’t be fair for her to marry him. He deserved better.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t marry you, Seth. You’re a wonderful guy, but you deserve a woman who loves you with all her heart and soul. And I deserve a man who feels the same way. I…”
Hannah spotted her sisters hovering at the door. “I’ll go tell Dad,” Alison whispered.
“I’ll tell my parents,” Seth said tightly.
Hannah reached for Seth’s hand. “No, I’ll do it.”
Raising her head up high, she snatched the tail of her dress and marched to the church entryway. Cameras, guests, her father, Seth’s parents—all stared back at her. The organist’s eyebrows shot up as if to signal it was time for the wedding march. A reporter started running toward her, his camera angled to catch her face. On his heels, a half a dozen others seem to come out of the woodwork, camera lights flashing.
Hannah panicked and blurted out the announcement, “I’m sorry, everyone. We’ve called off the wedding.”
A gasp rumbled through the room, Wiley shot forward, Mrs. Broadhurst jumped up and shrieked, and Hannah swung around and stumbled toward the back door, searching for an escape. Alison and Mimi stood at the side door, waving her forward. She darted past Seth, who scowled at her, and jogged outside, scanning the parking lot for her car before remembering she’d left it at her house. Mimi had driven her over. The honeymoon getaway car, a white Cadillac convertible complete with clanking cans and streamers, winked at her in the sunlight. Hannah darted toward it.
The last thought she had before she climbed inside the plush white interior was that later that night she would see herself on TV. Everyone had black sheep in their family, but the Hartwells had a whole flock of weirdos grazing the southeast. Uncle Elroy had served a stint in prison, Aunt Betty-Jo was a kleptomaniac, cousin Wally claimed he’d been an ostrich in a former life…the list went on and on. She’d spent her adult life trying to overcome her infamous family image.
But now her worst nightmare had come true—Hannah Hartwell, respected doctor and hater of public scenes, had just become another Hartwell spectacle.
DETECTIVE JAKE TIPPINS was having a terrible, no-good, very rotten day. As paramedics lowered his gurney from the ambulance to the ground outside Sugar Hill General, a camera flashed and he ducked his head. Damn. He couldn’t even hide his humiliation. He’d been shot in the butt, the EMTs had shredded the seat of his jeans, exposing his backside for the whole world to see, and now the media had jumped on the bandwagon, wanting the story. Thank God the hospital banned the vultures from entering the ER. They might blow his cover at Wiley’s.
He scrubbed a fist over his stubbled jaw, then dropped his forehead on the gurney as the EMTs quickly pushed him through the doors and wheeled him toward one of the exam rooms. Pain shot from his hip down his leg like a razor blade. Still, he reached behind him to try to cover his wound with his hand. A man had a right to a little privacy, didn’t he?
“BP high. One-fifty over ninety. Respiration twelve and even. Pulse eighty-eight and steady,” the EMT called.
The nurse pulled the sheet down around his knees and lifted the bandage. A gust of cold air hit his backside. “Still bleeding.”
He gritted his teeth as she applied more pressure to his wound, then tried to cover himself again. To think that the day had started out so simple. Most of the employees at Wiley Hartwell’s used-car lot had taken off early to attend the wedding of Wiley’s oldest daughter, Hannah. Wiley lived and breathed for his kids. He had boasted nonstop about his daughters ever since Jake had come to work for him, so Jake felt as if he knew them. But he didn’t get that whole hoopla about family stuff himself; he’d grown up being shuffled from one place to another, without a mother or father to speak of, and he was used to being alone. Weddings to him signified the death of a man’s bachelorhood, his whole identity. No wonder the groom partied the night before and wore black to the ceremony.
To avoid the uncomfortable formality, he’d volunteered to man the car lot during the wedding, hoping to take advantage of the opportunity and sneak into Wiley’s office. But after Wiley’d left, some punk kid had tried to steal a sports car right off the lot, and when Jake had tried to apprehend him, the black-leathered twerp had shot him. The reporters had dogged him from the site of the shooting at breakneck speed, calling him a hero.
A heavy-set nurse began to fire insurance questions at Jake, taking his medical history. A second nurse checked the bandage, tsking under her breath. “I need to get you another IV, sir.” He nodded as she left the room, then lifted his weary head and glanced through the glass-topped doorway on the opposite side of the room. He could swear he saw a beautiful blonde streak right past the window then dart into the room across from him—wearing a full-length wedding gown. She looked like an angel. Or maybe a princess.
Nah. No princesses or fairy tales in the real world. He closed his eyes, giving in to the fatigue. He must be seeing things.
Hell, he might even be delirious.
HANNAH BREATHED a sigh of relief to find the locker room empty. She quickly shed her wedding dress and crammed it into her locker. It actually felt good to pull on fresh
