The Kidnapped Bride

Lorelei yanked away the rest of the sheet and threw it on the floor. “Jack Storm, either you turn this thing around right now or I’ll...I’ll jump out.”

“I wouldn’t recommend doing that,” he said calmly, pushing his foot down on the accelerator. “You’d end up splattering that pretty face of yours on the road, and I’d just come back and get you anyway.”

Lorelei swallowed past the lump in her throat as she watched the speedometer climb to near eighty. She looked at the smug expression on his face. Refusing to let him intimidate her, she unhooked her seat belt and grabbed the handle of the door. “I mean it, Jack. Stop or I’ll jump out.”

He continued to ignore her. He didn’t think she’d do it, she realized. He thought she didn’t have the guts. Hadn’t he accused her of as much two weeks ago when she’d refused to meet with him? She’d show him. How hard could it be? Stunt people did this all the time for a living. She’d seen them do it countless times on movie sets when she’d been growing up and shuffling from one location to another with her parents. One of the extras whose makeup her mother had done had even shown her how it was done. Tuck and roll. That’s all she had to do. Tuck and roll. Taking a deep breath, Lorelei pushed down on the handle and shoved against the door.

Nothing happened.

She caught Jack’s smirk. More determined than ever, she punched the unlock button and heard another click just as she jerked down on the door handle.

Jack moved his hand from the driver’s-door panel back to the wheel. Flashing her another smile, he said, “These new automatic-lock features are pretty amazing. I’ll have to remember to write the manufacturer and thank them for making it standard equipment.”

Anger escalated to fury, and Lorelei clenched her hands into fists. She wanted to hit him. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She wasn’t the same reckless girl she’d been ten years ago. She was older, wiser and not given to emotional outbursts. “Jack, I demand you take me back right now.”

“Sorry, beautiful. Can’t do that. If I took you back, you’d marry that stuffed shirt, Herbert.”

“I want to marry Herbert. And he is not a stuffed shirt!”

Jack snorted and continued to cruise down the highway. “Sure. he is. Why else would the guy have been wearing a suit and tie in the middle of the week in this heat?” he asked, reminding her of their encounter two weeks ago.

“At least he owns a suit and tie,” Lorelei countered.

Jack shrugged, obviously unfazed by the barb. “And the fellow’s got sissy hands. I swear when he shook hands with me they were as soft as a baby’s bottom. I bet he even has them manicured.”

“I happen to like the way Herbert dresses and I like his hands.”

“Hey, if it turns you on, I’ll get a suit and tie,” he said. “But that’s where I draw the line. No way am I going to let anybody slap sweet-smelling creams on my hands.”

Lorelei looked at Jack’s hands gripping the steering wheel. Large and strong, with a long white scar that sliced through the bronzed skin on his right hand. There was nothing soft or nice about Jack Storm’s hands. There never had been. His were a man’s hands—roughened and callused by hard work and physical labor. Yet she knew just how gentle those hands could be. How carefully they could unearth a delicate seashell buried in wet sand. How tenderly those fingers could be when caressing a woman’s body.

Flushing at the unbidden memory, Lorelei dragged her thoughts back to the present “Oh, this is a ridiculous discussion. I don’t give a hoot what you wear or what you do to your hands. Turn this thing around immediately and take me back to my wedding.”

“Sorry, beautiful. That’s something I’m not willing to do.”

“Why not?” she demanded.

He looked at her then, and for once there was no laughter in those deep blue eyes. He was deadly serious—a rarity for Jack Storm. “Because, sweetheart, you promised a long time ago to marry me, and I’ve decided to hold you to that promise.”

He’d shocked her. Jack knew it from the expression on her face, from the way she opened her mouth to say something, only to clamp it shut again without murmuring a word.

“You can’t be serious,” she finally managed to say.

“I assure you, I am.” Despite the conviction in his voice, he hadn’t been at all sure he could pull this off. Hell, he still wasn’t sure he could pull it off. But his instinct—that same gut feeling that had saved his skin on treasure hunts more times than he cared to count—had told him he had to try. Because the moment he’d seen her again, he’d realized she was what had been missing in his life. Of all the treasures he’d discovered and lost through the years, she was the only one he’d regretted losing.

“That was ages ago. We were just kids.”

“It was ten years ago, and there was nothing childlike about our relationship or the way we felt about each other. You gave yourself to me,” Jack reminded her. “You said you loved me and promised to be my wife.”

“I wasn’t the one who forgot to show up for the wedding!”

Jack flushed, shame and regret reddening his face, his neck. “I was late. I—”

“You stood me up!”

“Lorelei, I—”

“I waited for you at that justice of the peace’s house,” she told him, her voice breaking. “I sat in a battered old chair in a dreary little room with the man’s wife looking at me with pity in her eyes and I waited for you. I waited all that day and all that night When the sun came up the next morning, I knew you weren’t coming.”

The pain in her voice felt like a one-two punch to his gut. Jack jerked the wheel of the truck to the right and pulled off onto the side of the road. He turned to her.

She looked away.

He felt the slam to his ribs again and knew he deserved it. “Lorelei, listen to me. I did come.” Gently he turned her head so he could see her face—the face that had haunted him while he’d trekked through the jungles of Colombia, when he’d crossed the mountains of Peru, as he’d searched the floor of the Atlantic. A part of her had always stayed with him...kept him on course. He’d known that someday after he’d made his big strike, he would find her again and make things right. Only the years had somehow managed to slip by without him ever making that big strike. Then he’d walked into that bookstore and seen her again. He realized at once that she was not only still the love of his life, but she was his lady luck. With Lorelei beside him, he would find the treasure. Fate had brought her to him again, and he had never been one to question fate.

He looked into those whiskey-colored eyes, the siren’s eyes he’d remembered filled with laughter, filled with love. But there was no laughter in those eyes now. There was no love. There was anger. And hurt. And he was the cause. Guilt washed over him, and for a moment he contemplated doing as she asked—taking her back to the church. No. He dismissed the notion. He couldn’t let her marry another man.

He’d make it up to her, Jack promised himself. All he needed was a chance—the chance he’d stolen for himself today. “I came, Lorelei.”

He saw the doubt, the questions as she narrowed her eyes and searched his face. “It’s true,” he insisted. “I came the next afternoon. I was late. I’d been offered a chance to go out on a dive. There was this ship, part of a fleet of Spanish—”

She yanked away from his touch. “You jerk! You stupid, insensitive jerk! I lied to my parents and my sisters for you. I hurt them, telling them I didn’t want to spend my spring vacation with them because I wanted to be with my friends. I hurt them deliberately so we could elope the way we’d planned. And now you tell me the reason I hurt them, the reason you left me waiting in that godforsaken little justice of the peace’s office, was so that you could play treasure hunter?”

“I wasn’t playing, Lorelei. I was on a diving boat. There was no way to get to a phone and call you.”

“You didn’t need a phone. You were supposed to be there!”

“I’m telling you I was there. But I was late. Sweetheart, I knew you were worried about the future, about how we would live.”

“Do you blame me? Treasure hunting isn’t exactly the most reliable profession.”

He managed not to wince at the verbal cuff. “I wanted to surprise you with a stake,” he said tightly, his own temper beginning to shred—partly out of anger, partly because he knew she was right. He’d had nothing to offer her ten years ago. He had little more now—except for the map and his gut feeling that he could find the mine. And that the mine would be the key to their future. “I earned nearly a thousand bucks on that dive. And I—”

“You nearly destroyed my life. I loved you, Jack. I loved you and trusted you. But all you cared about was finding some blasted treasure.”

Her words carried the sting of a slap and took the edge off his temper. “Lorelei, that’s not true. I—”

“I’ve had enough of this trip down memory lane with you. I’m not interested in discussing it further,” she said, her voice cool, her eyes even cooler. “I want you to take me back to the church so I can marry Herbert.”

Jack recalled the sight of her standing in the back of the church, a vision dressed in white and looking so damn beautiful she’d stolen his breath away.

And she’d been about to marry another man.

He gritted his teeth. Shoving the truck into gear, he pulled out onto the road and stole a glimpse in his rearview mirror. The sprawl of the city dissolved behind them as he veered the Explorer east to the Highway 60 Loop and headed toward the Apache Trail and the Superstition Mountains.

“Jack, I said to turn around. Now. I want you to take me back to the church. I’m going to marry Herbert.”

“Not if I can help it, you’re not.”