Missing: One Bride

Alex knew what the clerk was seeing: a disheveled woman in a gaudy, droopy gown, barefoot, with hair going in twelve different directions. She knew that without prior knowledge of the situation, the conversation she and Thorn had held discussing whether they should stay or leave must have sounded very odd coming from a supposedly newlywed couple. But she didn’t like Candy’s challenging stare or the condescending tone of the woman’s voice, so, crinkling her eyes, Alex looped her arm through Thorn’s arm, and said, “Thank you ever so much.”

Thorn’s brow wrinkled as he glanced down at Alex.

“Let’s go, sweetheart,” she added.

Shaking his head, Thorn led her to the elevator, one step behind Roger.

The car was the topic of conversation as they rose to the third floor. Roger carried the ball while Thorn grunted now and then and Alex stopped to consider what she’d just agreed to—namely, spending the night in the same room with Thorn. She’d dropped his arm the minute the elevator doors closed, and now she snuck him a clandestine look and bit her lip. She wondered why she was allowing herself to be swept up in this man’s life and what he would expect as far as sleeping arrangements were concerned. After all, he was a stranger.

They followed Roger down a hallway, waiting patiently while the young man opened the oversized door of the honeymoon suite. As he switched on various lights and set the suitcase on the small cherry trunk at the foot of the bed, Alex stood off to the side, looking around the huge room, her shoes clutched against her chest.

Four glass doors opened onto a balcony, which apparently faced the sea. The wallpaper was a collage of cabbage roses; the bed was covered with deep pink satin and a dozen lace pillows, and there were silk flowers on every flat surface. A brocaded sofa and two fragile-looking armchairs cupped a low table in one corner, the wood dark and glossy from repeated waxing. The decor made the room look opulent, romantic and sexy in a warm hazy kind of way.

Roger was again assured that eventually he’d see a tip. Then he left, a small smirk on his lips that Alex caught and Thorn didn’t as he was already standing on the balcony, his back to the room. Muted sounds of breaking surf came through the open doors.

Alex took a step toward him, then stopped. She hated to intrude, but she was suddenly so tired, she ached. She caught sight of herself in a mirror again and shook her head. The last time she’d faced her reflection she’d looked silly. Now she looked like a bride who had been dragged behind a car for a couple of miles. No wonder Candy had been so smug.

Thorn came through the doors, and Alex’s overwhelming feeling was that it wasn’t fair. He’d had an even worse day than she and yet he looked incredible. While it was true the emotions the man had been subjected to during the past twelve hours had sharpened the edges of his face and etched new lines around his eyes and mouth, it was also true that these very things somehow enhanced the sheer masculinity that seeped through his pores. For a few seconds he stared at her with a dark, brooding expression and she felt a quivering in her stomach.

“You look beat,” he said.

Alex tried patting her hair back in place, but she knew that at this stage, it was pointless. “I am,” she admitted.

“I am, too,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

Maybe that was what had caused the uneasy feeling. “A little.”

He nodded absently, sighed, and looked around the room. “There’s only one bed,” he said.

Alex smiled. “I noticed.”

“You can have it. I’ll take the sofa.”

“Thorn, what are we going to do next?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

As it was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to make rational decisions until he got his feet back on the ground, Alex once again took charge. “Order us something to eat,” she said, gesturing at the phone.

“I’m not hungry—”

“But you should have something to eat, and I’m suddenly ravenous. I’m going to take a bath.” While he stood rooted to the floor, she closed herself in the bathroom. With some difficulty, she got the dress off, then the bulky truss. She stuffed the whole mess into a corner, which instantly reminded her of Natalie’s wedding gown, abandoned on the closet floor.

Was the woman nuts? How could she walk away from a man like Thorn?

Alex shook her head. This wasn’t any of her concern. This thing was between the two of them; she was just here as a disinterested third party.

She ran a deep bath of steaming water and lowered her body all the way under until only her nose broke the surface. Heaven. After washing her hair, she towel dried and faced herself in yet another mirror. That’s when she realized she didn’t have a comb or a toothbrush or a robe.

She just couldn’t face, the dress again. Maybe the hotel had robes hanging in the closet. She wrapped herself in a huge towel and knocked on the door.

“Thorn? Are you out there?”

No answer came.

She knocked louder and called his name again with the same results. Tentatively, she opened the door and stared into the empty room.

She crossed quickly to the closet and chuckled to herself when she found two thick white terry-cloth robes hanging side by side—his and hers, bride’s and groom’s. She plucked one off a hanger, darted back to the bathroom, replaced the towel with the robe and did her best to finger-comb her shoulder-length hair.

Thorn was still missing. Alex paced the floor and wondered what, if anything, she should do about it. What if he’d found Natalie and the two of them had kissed and made up and completely forgotten about her? How long should she hide out in the room?

A few minutes later, she answered a brisk knock on the door without asking who it was, flinging it wide open to find another man in another teal uniform, this one behind a covered cart.

“Room service,” he said, rolling past her. Within a minute, he’d removed both the covers and himself, leaving Alex alone with a huge platter of cheese, a bowl of fruit, a basket of crackers, a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses.

Did this mean Thorn was eventually coming back?

She nibbled on the food but ignored the wine. She’d never been much of a drinker—in fact, her sister teased her that she was a “cheap date,” because she got giddy on the fumes alone. She wandered out to the balcony. The wind was cold and salty, and smelled like seaweed. The surf sounded distant—it must be low tide. She listened intently, wishing it was closer, louder, so that it would drown out her thoughts, because they kept circling back to her current role as Thorn’s faithful sidekick. Truth of the matter was she suspected she didn’t belong here, that she should put on her frilly dress and find a way home.

But not tonight, she told herself, shifting her gaze to the left. The curve of the building allowed her a view of the front of the inn where they had first arrived. In fact, she could make out Roger standing beneath one of the lights, which probably meant that the shaving cream previously decorating Thorn’s car was now a thing of the past.

She wheeled around as a key rattled in the lock. The door opened and Thorn appeared. He looked defeated as he scanned the room with weary eyes, but Alex doubted the expression he wore had anything to do with concern for her whereabouts.

She closed the glass doors behind her. “You were out looking for Natalie, weren’t you?” she asked as she poured him a glass of wine.

“Yes.”

“Did you find her?”

He swallowed the contents with one long gulp. “No. If she’s here, she’s behind a closed door.”

Alex looked down at the floor. She didn’t need him to explain what he was imagining, what they were both imagining: Natalie wrapped in another man’s arms, Natalie sharing another man’s bed, while her groom stood rejected and alone.

Not alone, Alex amended internally. I’m here.

Chapter Three (#ulink_92543079-d2df-5235-b3b1-084f39db3f40)

Thorn’s head hurt in a major way, as if a great big bull were tap dancing inside his skull. The sofa was too short and too narrow to offer much of a retreat. In fact, when he tried turning over, he came close to sliding off onto the floor. Head pounding, he gave up trying to sleep and sat on the edge of the cushion, listening for a moment to the barely perceptible sound of Alexandra’s breathing.

This was not the way he’d imagined this particular night would pass, him on a sofa, a virtual stranger in his bed, and Natalie with some other guy.

Hell, this whole thing didn’t even seem real. Real things were the fences he mended, especially the one running east to west near the stand of fir trees marking the southern border of his land. He liked throwing the lumber and tools into the back of his pickup, liked the bumpy road that crisscrossed through the cattle fields, liked finding, a broken post or a sagging wire and fixing it. It was satisfying work, clear-cut, over and done with. And afterward, there was the shade of the trees, a perfect place for a cool drink and a well-earned lunch. Life reduced to basics, understandable, his to control.

Not like this. Not like wondering what the hell was happening to him, not like having his fate in someone else’s hands. Damn Natalie! He would never let himself be this vulnerable again. Never.

He popped to his feet and paced for a few minutes. Five steps to the wall, five steps back, over and over again while his thoughts jumped around in his miserable brain.

He was suddenly flooded with memories of her. The first time he’d seen her in the flower shop, standing behind the counter, all smiles and green eyes with those beautiful strawberry curls surrounding her face. He’d needed flowers sent to his grandmother. He remembered how she’d insisted on showing him every photo in a book full of floral arrangements, how she had touched his arm with her hand when she spoke, and how, when he’d finally asked her to dinner, she had smiled up at him as though she knew something he didn’t.