And now Colt was being agreeable and kind and sweet and she was being a pill. She lowered the rifle to rest against her hip, and smiled a little at the way his gaze followed the move. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to shoot you.”
Colt nodded and his blue eyes once again met hers. “I suppose you were thinking I might be Russ.”
“I won’t say it didn’t cross my mind.”
He nodded again. “When Russ didn’t show up at my hotel Friday night for the bachelor party and didn’t return my calls…” He shook his head and turned the cowboy hat he held by the brim in a circle between his fingers. “I honestly thought he was just out with guys from his law firm and blowing off what he thought would have been a boring way to spend his last night as a single man. I figured he’d show up yesterday morning at his place with a hangover, and that’d be it. I never imagined he wouldn’t show up at all. I am so sorry.”
Chrissie was stunned at the apology. Colt was a nice man and obviously cared deeply for the people in his life, even those on the edges and those he never need see again. “Crap,” she groaned and stomped her foot. “How am I supposed to stay mad at you now? You just ruined it with kindness.” She sneered for a split second and gave a huge sigh. “Apology accepted, but honestly, it’s not your place to apologize for your brother.” She didn’t like seeing him feeling bad for something that was not at all his fault.
“All part of my charm, I suppose. If it’s all the same to you though, I’d rather you not be mad at me because Russ was stupid.”
He smiled at her, full and genuine, and her heart skidded to a near stop. Chrissie shook her head to dispel whatever message her brain was trying to send to the rest of her body and looked away. She’d never acknowledged to herself or to anyone else that she’d noticed how handsome he was, and there was no reason to start acknowledging such a thing now. No reason whatsoever to pay any mind to how blue his eyes were and how black his hair was except for right at his temples where it was starting to lighten. No reason to take note of his broad shoulders and long legs or to remember how stunning he’d looked in his suit at the church yesterday. “Maybe I should’ve married you instead,” she said absently, barely realizing the words she was speaking.
“Maybe you should have.”
His easy agreement had her gaze flying up to meet his. His smile, while gentle at first glance, understanding that her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, was also indulgent. It was unnerving, tempting even, and it wasn’t doing a damn thing to keep her from wanting to invite him inside and rut on the floor like a pair of animals.
This wasn’t what the jilted bride thought about when the brother of the groom came to check on her, but she couldn’t seem to rein her thoughts in. Was it finally hitting her that she was alone now? There was no fiancé, no husband. There wasn’t even a boyfriend.
No. That wasn’t it. Being alone didn’t bother her. She’d spent enough time that way since she moved away from Pembroke, and well, Russ worked so much that she spent more evenings alone than she did with him. Loneliness wasn’t her issue. Sure, she was still pissed at being left like that. She would probably be pissed for a long time to come. Sure, she was still hurt. She’d cared about him, loved him, would have married him had he shown up…
She gave herself a mental shake. No, these thoughts, unbidden and unseemly given the circumstances, had nothing to do with Russ and everything to do with the man on her porch. Nothing could come of her thoughts though. She wouldn’t put Colt in that kind of compromising position.
She had to go back to the subject of Russ. It was the only thing that could keep her from inviting Colt inside and jumping his bones.
It was going to take a hell of a monumental effort on her part.
“Have you heard from him?” She kept her voice and her gaze as steady as she could and was a little sad when Colt’s smile faded. The warmth that had sprung up between them was gone, and she realized she really didn’t want the answer to her question.
“He’s in Vegas.”
Chrissie’s eyes widened, then narrowed. Colt didn’t blink. “Did you say Vegas?” It was early in the morning, and it was entirely possible that her ears weren’t fully awake yet. She had also been deep in fantasy mode too, so… Colt nodded in response. Brow crinkled and lips pursed, she attempted to process that little tidbit. Cold settled in her middle that had nothing to do with the weather. “Do I want to know why he’s in Vegas?”
“No.”
She figured as much, but she plowed forward. She’d started down this road and she needed to get to the end of it. “Why? Did he marry a stripper?” She’d asked it with a smirk, but when he focused on something over her shoulder, her smirk dropped to a frown. “I see. Well…” What else was there to say? Christina Browning, daughter of a mayor in a small Georgia town, jilted at the altar by a man who flew across the country to Las Vegas and married a stripper, was, for once, at a loss for words.
Her mother’s idea of how to handle life’s dramatic moments—calm on the outside while falling apart on the inside—might not work in this situation. But Chrissie would try.
Seems she had a couple of revelations she needed to figure out how to process. After all, she had been ogling another man, her almost brother-in-law, less than five minutes ago. She was jilted, not dead, the voice inside her head whispered. But a case could be made for it being too soon for ogling.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and hoped that the smile she attempted was, in fact, a smile of gentility and not that of a crazy person. Her emotions were all out of whack, and she had no idea what she was supposed to feel or think or say. So she simply tried for courteous. “Thank you for stopping by and checking on me and… Thank you for telling me about his…” She faltered and knew tears, along with some screaming, were inevitable. She had to make it back inside the house with the door closed and him miles away first, though. He’d seen her broken and mad, and he was on the verge of seeing her vulnerability. She was a proud Southern woman. Her mother’s voice started ringing in her head, telling her to keep it together, that she couldn’t let Colt see her cry. For once, she would have agreed with the stoic Mrs. Browning.
With a flip of her hair and the best tight-lipped smile she could call up, she said, “Thank you, Colt. I appreciate you driving out here. None of this is your fault. Please have a safe flight back home.”
“Chrissie, I—”
Chrissie stood tall with her head held high in her baby-blue robe and red flannel pajamas with little green Christmas trees dotting the fabric, her hair tangled and going any which way, her makeup smudged, and her breath smelling like roadkill. She looked a sight, less like a woman and more like the rejected, walking dead. The longer she looked at him, the more she had to blink back the tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of this man with the sincere eyes watching her. She. Wouldn’t. “Merry Christmas, Colt,” she interrupted, effectively stopping whatever he had been about to say. She nodded with finality and closed the door on him.
Chapter One
“You’ve given me six months to think about it, and I have an answer for you.”
Chrissie’s head twitched to the side as she finished loading the Browning shotgun. She’d been dreaming about that voice nearly every night for months, and it seemed that it was invading her days now. Probably a sign that she’d finally lost her mind. She lifted the gun, lined up her shot, cocked the hammer, and fired. She was so used to the sound in her ear and the kickback of the butt into her shoulder that it didn’t faze her anymore.
“Nice touch with the wedding dress. New style for this year?”
Chrissie’s gaze darted toward the oak tree. “Well, the day after I saw you, I went to the bridal store, but they wouldn’t take it back, and I didn’t want it anymore. Plus, shooting your brother woulda been against the law. So, I did the next best thing I could think of,” she explained. Which was to hang the dress, rig the hanger with rope, anchor it to the tree, and blow so many holes in the gown, she’d had to go get another box of shells within thirty minutes.
What was left resembled some of her grandmother’s lace doilies.
“Chrissie? Will you look at me? Please?”
Definitely not a good idea. “Nope.” She fired another shot. Even though she didn’t hunt anymore and hadn’t for years, she loved shooting. It was a power she could control. Her mother thought it was a terrible hobby for a girl, but her father had ignored her protests and lavished guns, ammunition, and bows and arrows on his only child.
Chrissie liked the focus it took to hit a target. She liked the definitive sound of cocking a hammer and the pressure applied to pulling a trigger. And whereas shooting had been recreational for her in the past, it had helped her get over Russ. If she imagined Russ when she fired at a tin can or a picture tacked to a hay bale… If she shot her wedding dress all to hell between Christmas and New Year’s, well… At least she was over him and rightly so.
That she could crochet an afghan too? That was just something to do when it was too dark and too late to be making a bunch of noise playing with firearms.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
I might jump you and rip your clothes off if I do.
“Fair enough. I can talk to your back. My answer is yes, by the way.”
Something in his tone, the way it softened, lingered on the word “back,” sent shivers down her spine, shivers she chose to ignore.
“I was in Atlanta on business,” he continued, “and thought I’d fly down to Savannah to see how you were doing and give you the answer in person.”
“As you can see, I’m doing fine, and I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.”
Colt chuckled. The sound carried, even on the heavy summer afternoon air. “So the gun you brought out on the porch when I was here last time wasn’t just for show, huh?”
“Nope.”
“I didn’t know you could shoot.”
“Yep.”
“Russ said you had some unusual hobbies, but he never elaborated.”
Was he attempting small talk? “Guess he didn’t think it was important.” She tried lining up another shot, but it wasn’t working. Her brain was done concentrating on the gun and the target and kept trying to tell her to turn around and look at the man on her property.
After a few more minutes, she gave up and lowered the gun. With a sigh, she faced him and was immediately grateful for the fence at her back or she’d have stumbled.
Good God, he looked yummy. His hair was a little longer, curling along his collar, and his brilliant blue eyes, the ones that looked at her in her dreams with barely restrained lust, were shielded from her now by a pair of aviator sunglasses. That was probably a good thing. She didn’t want to see those eyes full of mild, friendly concern. That would totally ruin the fantasy life she had with him in the deep, dark recesses of her subconscious, sleepy-time brain.
“Happy now?”
“Getting there.” He said it with a smile and… Dear heavens. Chrissie almost lost her ability to think. She’d had the same issue when he’d come to see her that morning six months earlier, only now she was feeling unsteady, wobbly even. Holding a loaded gun in that state wasn’t good. She needed to unload the damn thing before she hurt one or both of them.
She lowered her gaze and unhinged the barrel. The remaining bullets popped free of the chamber, and she removed them. “You didn’t have to come down here, you know. You could have called or something.”
“Wouldn’t have felt right. Face-to-face is more personal.”
Personal wasn’t necessarily a good thing under the current circumstances. He was concerned for her, and she was trying to figure out how to strip him out of his nice clothes and have her way with him, ease the tension that had been building up inside her since the first night he’d popped into her dreams. No, personal was likely a bad idea. She was already caught off guard with him showing up.
She still wanted to jump his bones.
She’d been perfectly happy dreaming about him, having an affair in her head with him, getting her jollies in a make-believe bed with him, but in person? Oh, that just made her want him with a desire she wasn’t sure she could keep a lid on. He was potent in that Southern gentleman way with a come-hither Texas smile that beckoned her.
He needed to go back home. Only, he was closer now. She could see the toes of his boots from the corner of her eye. She picked up the bullets and, with shaky hands, stuffed them back into the box. On even shakier legs, she stood and walked a few feet to lay the gun in its case.
“What are you really doing here, Colt?” If she sounded a little antagonistic, well, so be it. Defense mechanisms and all that.
“I told you.”
“Right. To say yes about something and check on me. I’m a little confused, though. What’s the yes for, and what did I give you six months to think about?”
“Marrying you.”
Yeah, unloading the gun had been the smart thing to do. “What are you talking about?”
“You said maybe you shoulda married me instead. I figured I needed to take some time to think it over, and you needed some time to heal after Russ.”
He said it so casually she thought he was joking, just trying to make her laugh. “I didn’t say that.” But almost immediately heat flooded her entire body from the inside out. “Oh, God. I did, didn’t I?” She was light-headed now, feeling very faint, and “mortified” didn’t even come close to covering the rest of it. Couldn’t the ground open up and swallow her whole? “Well crap.”
“You did,” he answered quite matter-of-factly and with a slight, yet satisfied smile. He reached for her, and she couldn’t do anything but try and hold herself steady. Her feet wouldn’t move, not even when her brain was screaming at them to do so. His smooth businessman’s fingers tilted her chin as his other hand lowered his glasses. “And yes, you should have.”
She could see the truth in his crystal clear blue eyes. He meant it, and that made her want to run even more. Where to, she had no idea, but she needed to get away to think about how best to get out of this little mess.
“I can see you’re a bit shocked and need time to process my answer. Perfectly understandable. Let’s see, how about a week? Is that enough time? Two weeks to get your pretty head wrapped around it? I was thinking a wedding at the end of the summer would be nice. Maybe even early fall.”