His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) (6 page)

“Don’t tell me I’m the first guy who’s lost his head over kissing you. What was a cowboy to do, ma’am?”

“You’re no cowboy.” She studied him the way he’d felt her eyeing him the other night—before she’d gotten around to acknowledging that he existed. A whisper of a smile transformed her heart-shaped features into the timeless beauty of a pocket Venus. “That was . . . the lamest line I’ve heard in a long time.”

“So now we’ve established that I’m nice and lame?” He ticked the two words off on his fingers.

And she smiled.

Damn, he was a goner if she didn’t stop doing that. Bowing out of this mess would be the best thing for both of them. He knew that. He knew who she was now, and that he should leave well enough alone. Sure, flirting with her was fun. But it was risky fun, and he didn’t do risky.

“I’m sorry people are talking.” He really was. “I didn’t mean to make trouble for you.” Not when she seemed to have more than enough of it already. “I haven’t said a word to people about Thursday night. I wouldn’t do that, when you made it the best first shift of any job I’ve ever worked.”

She rewarded him with a rueful head shake and a soft laugh, making today the best Sunday brunch of his life.

“I don’t know why . . .” she said, sounding mystified. “But I believe you. I should have thanked you the other night. It was sweet, what you tried to do. Sweet, if misguided.”

She had no idea.

“You’re welcome.” He ignored the impulse to keep her there talking, even if she only kept telling him how crazy he was. “And no worries. Tell your brothers I’ll stay out of your way while I’m—”

“Wow!” Her young friend rushed over with two plates of cheesecake, handing one to Bethany. She grinned at Mike. “You really are a cowboy.”

“I’m not.” He touched his finger to the brim of his Stetson in a clichéd greeting. “The hat just comes in handy. I do a lot of outdoor work and hiking.”

Bethany’s attention dropped to his scuffed hiking boots. “Well, that explains that.”

It didn’t explain anything important, to Mike’s way of thinking. He knew a lot more about her than a stranger should. And he didn’t know how to tell her that without disrupting her life even more. But he didn’t know nearly enough about Bethany to satisfy his curiosity. He could stand there talking to her the rest of the day, and he doubted it would be long enough.

Which was a definite cue for him to be on his way.

He reached into his back pocket for his money clip, pulling out enough bills to cover whatever the check would be plus a healthy tip.

“Wow.” The teenager snatched away the clip for a closer inspection. “That’s cool. It looks like an oversized paper clip. Where did you get it?”

“Shandra . . .” Bethany handed it back to Mike, her fingers brushing his palm, his entire body responding. “Don’t grab other people’s things.”

“It’s no big deal,” he mumbled.

He dropped his money and bent to pick it up, his ears buzzing the whole time while he wondered if Bethany’s skin was just as soft everywhere.

“It’s something I’ve had for a long time,” he said to the teenager she’d called Shandra. “My . . . someone important gave it to me.”

It was a Tiffany piece. Sterling silver. His brother had left it to Mike in his will, along with another priceless possession that their Park Avenue parents would have likely thought was meaningless and thrown away.

Nicole showed up, delivering the rest of Mike’s lunch.

“Welcome to Grapes & Beans,” she said, eyeing Bethany. “Fancy you two hooking up again in my place.”

“Accidentally,” Bethany corrected.

“The way you
accidentally
made out with him Thursday night?” Her friend smiled between Bethany and Mike. “Did you trip and fall?”

“He was lurking in the corner,” Bethany insisted.

“I was eating soup,” Mike corrected. Soup that was now cold. He’d have someone pack up the rest of his food to go.

“I wanted to settle things,” Bethany said. “And I guess we have.”

“Once you two finish talking”—Nic directed a mockery of a sultry smile at Mike—“maybe I’ll
settle
a few things myself.”

“Don’t you have a business to run?” Bethany snapped. “Customers to schmooze?”

Nicole gave Mike a schmoozy smile. “How’s your lunch, Cowboy?”

“You make soup”—Mike checked out the lettuce wraps she’d placed on the table—“and sandwich magic.”

“Nic’s brunch is the yummiest in town.” Shandra beamed at Bethany’s friend. “The best cheesecake in three counties.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“I’ll send you over some,” Nic offered. “On the house.”

“I appreciate it, but I’ll have to pass. Dessert and I aren’t a good fit.”

“You mean like food allergies?” The teenager glanced to Bethany. “Like Camille?”

The house phone rang over the voices and brunch sounds around them.

“It’s for you, Nic,” a male voice shouted from the other side of the place.

Nicole’s chin dropped to her chest.

“If that’s your sister-in-law again,” she said to Bethany, “I’m going to drive over to her and Oliver’s new house and beat her senseless with her lesson planner. I know helping with Dru and Brad’s wedding is her first official contribution to the Dixon family, but—”

“Besides Camille,” Shandra corrected.

“But,”
Nicole said, “Selena’s obsessing. All over town. And the event’s a month out. Everything with the catering is on track, including her special orders. She needs to give it a rest, but she keeps checking the plans, rethinking them. Maybe we’ll do lemonade. Or should it be just iced tea? What about hot tea and coffee? It might be chilly after sunset, even in early September . . .”

Nicole’s rounded eyes and
OMG
expression made Bethany laugh.

“She just wants Dru and Brad’s day to be perfect.” Bethany swiped off a piece of her cake with her finger and licked it clean, torturing Mike. “We all do.”

“It will be perfect,” Nicole insisted. “I have all the sub-vendors lined up. I’m personally doing the project management on this one. It’ll be frickin’ incredible. Even if I have to shoot Mrs. Selena Rosenthal Bowman with a tranquilizer dart.”

Nicole took the edge off her threat by circling an arm around Shandra.

“You come eat your dessert with me while I take this call,” she said to the teen. “Then you can learn how the barista machine works.”

“We’re supposed to be having girl time.” Bethany looked guiltily from Mike to her sister. “I didn’t mean to throw another wrench in that.”

“I don’t mind,” the kid insisted.

“Good,” Nicole said. “That way when I steal you away from the Dream Whip, you’ll already have started your training.” She steered the teenager toward the coffee bar, glancing back over her shoulder. “You two sit, so everyone else can get back to their food.”

Bethany surveyed the roomful of people waiting to see what she’d do next. The flash of vulnerability in her bright eyes blasted away at Mike’s best intentions. He shoved the wad of money he’d meant to toss onto the table back into his pocket along with his money clip. He palmed her elbow and eased her toward the chair across from the one he’d vacated, letting her go almost as soon as he’d touched her.

She stared daggers at him in a way that he found perversely enticing.

“You could cut and run.” He planted himself in his own chair. “But that’s not your style, is it, Bethie?”

“I’ll stay for a few more minutes.” Her spine ramrod straight, her plate of cheesecake clutched in her hands, she eased down until she was sitting, too. “As long as you promise never to call me that again.”

He placed his unused fork in front of her and then spooned up a mouthful of surprisingly tasty cold soup. “Eat your dessert. We’ll keep things light and friendly. It’ll stop everyone from thinking that each time you’ve headed into Atlanta, I’ve been your big-city boy toy. People will look their fill, get tired of eavesdropping, and move on to juicer gossip.”

“And then?” she asked uneasily. As if she wanted to believe he was genuinely trying to help, but she just couldn’t get there.

“Then we go our separate ways.” After he’d snagged a few more minutes with her. Just a few. “It’s a big town. I won’t be here all that long. No harm, no foul.”

Because who did walking away clean from places and people better than him?

Chapter Four

Bethany let the mini backpack she carried instead of a purse slide off her shoulder. It thudded to the ground, mocking her plan to zip in and out G&Bs with Shandra, ordering their cheesecake for the road.

That would have meant Bethany not needing to shut down the rumors about her and Mike. Or not starting any rumors in the first place Thursday night, by running from her brothers and a guy who’d been really, really good at making her want to stay. She could remember the panicked shock of looking down at McC’s and finding her fingers tangled up with Mike’s, even though she’d been just as furious with him at that point as she’d been with herself and her brothers.

That funny, gorgeous, infuriating guy was now sitting across the table from her, haloed in the daylight streaming through Nicole’s sparkling windows. While Bethany was so hungry she could dive headfirst into the slab of cheesecake Nic had sliced up for her.

Begrudgingly, she picked up his fork while Mike took a long swallow of his iced tea. He wiped his lips with one of the cloth napkins Nicole insisted on using instead of paper ones, even though it dipped into her anemic profit margin. Bethany suddenly found herself fantasizing about being that napkin. Feeling Mike’s soft mouth on hers. The strength of his hands on her body. His hard muscles bunching and rolling and steadying her as he eased her into his lap, too—

Oh, good grief!

“Eat.” He finished his soup and wrapped a helping of pork in a crisp leaf of iceberg lettuce. “At least stop looking like you’re going to stake me with my own utensil.”

“What?” She was holding the fork the way she would a butcher knife. “Oh . . .”

She shoveled in a heaping portion of cheesecake. Groaning, she closed her eyes, her taste buds oozing with sugary goodness.

“So good,” she murmured through her next bite.

She blinked, realizing that Mike’s focus on her had intensified. And not in a
let’s silence all those crazy rumors
way. He was staring as if she were a decadent treat he wanted to gobble up.

She brandished the fork again. “No dessert for you, remember?”

He cleared his throat with a teasing wink. “Doesn’t mean I don’t crave something sweet every once in a while.”

He bit into his lettuce wrap. The man even chewed sexy. A metal bracelet glimmered at the cuff of another long-sleeved shirt.

“MedicAlert?” She recognized the symbol. Oliver’s daughter, Camille, wore something similar. The little girl never left the house without it. Not since she’d had an allergic reaction in the spring that had landed her in the ER and scared everyone to death. “Is that what the sugar’s about?”

“I can have a little.” He didn’t seem to mind her nosiness. It had been his idea to sit and chat like buddies. “As long as it’s in careful combination with other foods. It’s easier to lay off the stuff entirely when I eat out, though. I don’t feel deprived, not these days. When I get sick of cooking and cleaning for myself, farm-to-table places like your friend’s are great.”

“Farm-to-table? Cooking and cleaning? That makes you, what, a citified cowboy?”

“I’m not a cowboy, remember?”

She wiped her own mouth, telling herself to stop teasing him.

He smiled every time she did, making her think far too seriously about how easy it would be to chat away the afternoon. She had a class of kids in Atlanta she and her sister needed to get to. And she was already enjoying herself way too much for flirting to be a good idea under any circumstances.

“So, Grapes & Beans is great.” Mike polished off another wrap.

She nodded. “I usually stumble in here for breakfast after I’ve been—”

“Up all night painting?”

“How did you . . . ?”

She followed his glance to the gossamer peasant blouse she’d thrown on yesterday under her cut-off overalls. Paint was blotched here and there on all of it. She crossed her legs, her boots clunking into the café table’s center leg. A wedge of her super-short hair slid in her eyes. She waved it back and discovered a smudge of oil paint at her temple, where she often tucked a smaller brush behind her ear.

She’d been working with shades of reds and pinks and oranges. Which one had made it to her face? She hadn’t even bothered to check her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Everyone’s used to me like this,” she admitted, not caring if he understood. Really. What did it matter?

“Everyone?”

“Nic’s staff. Customers who know I eat here because my friend lets me mooch on whatever she’s made too much of.”

“So you stumble in here most mornings . . .” He checked his watch. “Afternoons. And you wield your cake fork like a lethal weapon at whoever snags your attention?”

“No.” She took a less-outrageous bite of her cake. “Evidently you bring out the worst in me.”

“Or your painting is making you cranky, hence the all-night grudge match.” He smiled, as if he approved.

“I couldn’t get something . . . right.”

“Something?”

“The canvas I’m working on. The light, the way it’s reflecting off everything. The dimensions. The depth. The heart of it. It won’t come to life. At least not the way I’m used to painting. It’s been that way for a long time. I . . .”

She realized she was rambling and he was listening and that she was telling him things she hadn’t yet worked up the courage to even discuss with her parents. And he’d been right: no one was paying them any attention anymore. Well, almost no one. She glanced toward the pastry case, where Nicole was on the phone still. She and Shandra both smiled, Shandra giving Bethany a campy thumbs-up.

The kid would be chattering about Mike all the way to Midtown. And Bethany would have to indulge her—this was Shandra’s day. All while the things Bethany didn’t understand about the guy or her reaction to him would continue to swirl inside her, distracting,
agitating, refusing to take shape, just like her painting.

“I’m working on a piece for my foster parents,” she explained, cautioning herself that Mike was simply listening to be polite. That his seemingly genuine interest in what she was saying was a figment of her imagination.

Her paintings meant nothing to a total stranger. And maybe that’s why it felt so easy to vent to him—someone, unlike her family and friends, who wouldn’t be trying so earnestly to help, who’d just let her talk so she could figure things out for herself.

“It’s important to get it right, you know?” she asked him.

He nodded, as if he did. “For your foster parents?”

“They come with the foster brothers who welcomed you to town the other night. And another foster sister, Dru, who’s half-owner of the Dream Whip, in case you’re hankering for the best burger, fries, and shake around. Just please . . . try not to make another scene if I’m on the clock.”

“You work there?”

“I help out when they need me, which has been a lot lately. Dru and Brad are pretty distracted.”

“By the wedding? Your sister’s marrying one of the angry guys from the bar, right?”

“Brad’s usually more laid-back than that. But with a baby on the way and a wedding next month, he’s a little on edge.”

“Then maybe he should have been the one to deck Benjie.”

She snorted. “Oliver did enough damage on his own.”

Mike refolded his napkin beside his empty plate. “This wedding I invited myself to sounds pretty important to everyone.”

The cake Bethany had polished off without realizing it began to curdle in her stomach.

“You couldn’t have known it would set my brothers off like that.” She’d already given Mike a pass a dozen times in her mind, while she’d made a point of not fantasizing about what he would look like decked out in a suit, his face cleanly shaven, no hat shadowing his features. Or maybe he could keep the sexy hat. She wouldn’t quibble over a technicality. “But it’s a big deal. An even bigger day than usual. Dru and Brad have waited a long time to do this right. And my dad . . .” Joe deserved a perfect memory almost as much as the bride and groom. “My foster family’s been through a lot lately.”

“Is that why this Selena is driving your friend crazy about the catering?”

“Yeah.”

“And Selena is . . . ?”

“Oliver’s wife.” He’d married his high school sweetheart in June, in a simple civil ceremony at the county courthouse, with just close family there as witnesses. His and Selena’s seven-year-old daughter, Camille, had been beaming ear-to-ear, reigning supreme as Selena’s maid of honor and one-girl wedding party.

“And the lesson planner?” Mike asked.

Bethany frowned. It took a minute for Nic’s rant to come back to her. “Selena’s a teacher at Chandler Elementary.”

“Armani married a schoolteacher?” Mike sounded genuinely confused for the first time. “So what, exactly, does all of that have to do with your painting yourself into a stupor to finish something for your parents?”

She blinked at his intuition, caught off guard by how carefully he’d kept track of the scattershot details of her story. “You know all that stuff I mentioned my family going through?”

He nodded, not rushing her, not jumping back into the conversation, not looking around for an exit as if he didn’t really want to know the answer to his question.

“A chunk of it’s been about me,” she said. “At least recently it has. I’ve been a wild card for years, no matter how hard my parents tried to help me settle in around here.”

Mike ran his thumb along his chin. He’d let his beard grow in even thicker. “I know how that goes. I get it.”

Did he?

“I just want them to know . . .” She braced her arms on the table. “How much it all meant to me, even if it’s taken me years to realize it. Their support and the way they’ve always been here, waiting for me to come to my senses. I want them to see it hasn’t been a total waste.”

He’d propped his elbow on the table, his chin on his hand. His soft gaze brushed hers like velvety brown suede, his expression brimming with . . . something indescribable.

“I’m sure”—he reached across the table for her hand, the gesture easygoing, natural as could be—“that the last thing your foster parents think you’ve done is waste the fresh start they’ve helped you make.”

Her fingers tangled with his, making her ache to feel his body supporting hers again, the way he had when they’d faced down Benjie.

“How do you do that?” she asked.

His thumb stroked her wrist. “Do what?”

“How do you understand . . .”

Me
, she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“I don’t.” He let her go and brushed the streak of paint on her temple. His hand retreated to his side of the table. “Not really. But I’ve done my own kind of searching for years. From one drifter to another, it looks like you’ve finally landed where you want to be.”

She shivered, desperate to believe him.

“Do any of those wild cards of yours,” he asked, “have anything to do with
BenALoserAllHisLife
?”

She laughed at his hijacking Nic and Clair’s running joke. She slapped her hand over her mouth when she realized people were staring again.

“Only the part,” she told him, “where five years ago he passed off several of my paintings as his to get himself accepted to the New York art school we were going to together.”

Mike’s expression hardened with the kind of swift fury she’d seen on her brother’s face just before Oliver punched Benjie.

“He stole your work—plagiarized it—while he was dating you?”

“I’m pretty sure,” she conceded, “that painting was the
only
reason he was dating me.”

“He wanted you to teach him how to do what you did?”

“As if I knew. And when I couldn’t . . .”

“He outright took credit for something you created.”

“Several somethings. Flattering, huh? And I’d thought it was true love. It took me a while to sort myself out after that.”

“And now he’s sniffing around again? The guy’s lucky Armani didn’t take him apart before Thursday night.”

“It was a long time ago.” Years of wrong men and wrong turns. She slid to the edge of her chair. “My mistakes with him are a distant blip on the radar.”

“Then why invest so much energy into avoiding him?” Mike asked, putting two and two together and coming up with far more than he should have.

She smiled and got to her feet. “I’m not avoiding him anymore. Thanks in no small part to you. And now you know the story behind the story. So, thank you again.”

“You’re welcome again. But—”

“No worries about the wedding, of course. I’ll make sure my family knows the truth. They won’t bother you about Thursday anymore.”

“No worries.” He rose, too. The buzz of countless conversations quieted as diners tuned in for the big finish. “Helping someone should always be this much fun. I hope I haven’t added to the issues with your family. And in case we don’t get the chance to talk again, I—”

Shandra rushed back over. She crashed into Bethany, nearly toppling her with a hug that wasn’t really a hug, but it felt like the best hug Bethany had ever gotten. Because her carelessness that morning hadn’t dimmed her sister’s enthusiasm for the day.

“We’re going to be late,” Shandra said. “Class starts in forty-five minutes.”