Once Tempted (42 page)

“I can only think that David was already suffering from the effects of the brain tumor when he met you. It’s the only way you could have duped him into marrying you.”

“You’re wrong and you’re insulting. You don’t know me and you don’t know anything about David and my relationship.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “You had such a wonderful relationship that it took a million dollars to make you stay
by his side while he was dying?” His voice quivered with rage and pain.

Tess’s throat constricted, making the words she forced out feel as sharp as broken glass. “Yes, I took your money. I regret that.” She met his crystal blue eyes. “I should have followed my instinct and ripped up the check.”

Bradford’s laugh was short in duration but infinite in cruelty. “I wasn’t born yesterday. You kept my money because you were afraid you’d failed to sweet-talk David into making you the beneficiary of his trust fund.” His gaze raked her. “You underestimated yourself. The lawyer has been trying to locate your whereabouts—to no avail. David obviously was as bad a judge of lawyers as he was of women.”

“What trust fund? What are you talking about? I didn’t ask David for anything!”

“I don’t believe you. But you know what I do believe? That you saw a chance to squeeze as much money out of my family as you possibly could and you took it. I think you are nothing but a heartless gold digger.”

With a cold abruptness to match his speech, he dismissed her. He turned to Ward and Erica. During the course of the exchange, she had inched closer to Ward. “I don’t know what your relationship to this woman is, young man, though I can guess,” Bradford said, “but I suggest you take care. She can’t be trusted and she’s brought only misery to the people I love. I’m leaving now. I won’t stay another minute in her presence.”

“Good. Because I would have been forced to ask you to leave. My family doesn’t tolerate people speaking to our employees in this manner.”

The spurt of elation and hope she felt at the beginning of Ward’s reply was short-lived. It lasted about a second before it was crushed by disappointment and shock. Was she now nothing but an employee to Ward? Had he somehow recognized her in Bradford’s description?

With a terse nod of goodbye for Erica and Ward, Bradford left. With his departure, the sounds of the guests enjoying themselves returned, as if someone had turned the knob on the volume. Focused on Edward Bradford, she’d forgotten her surroundings. Luckily, no one seemed to have overheard the nasty conversation unfolding in their midst. No curious glances were being cast their way. There was only laughter and amiable chatter and the clink of glasses as the servers wove their way in and out of the crowd, passing hors d’oeuvres on silver trays. So far the ugliness of her past hadn’t marred Brian and Carrie’s day.

“Well, that was certainly illuminating.” Erica’s voice oozed satisfaction.

Tess ignored her. She wasn’t going to give her the added pleasure of seeing how much damage she’d wrought. She’d used Edward Bradford to destroy her, setting up the ambush with the ruthlessness of a mafia don.

“Ward, can I talk to you, please?”

He looked at her. Oh God, she thought. The love-killing doubt was there, in his eyes, in the rigid set of his mouth.

“You were married to his son?”

“Yes.”

“He paid you a million dollars to stay by his son’s side?”

“Yes. But it wasn’t like that—please, can we talk?”

A muscle twitched along his lean jaw as if he were biting back more angry questions. “No, not now.”

A part of her longed to scream and beg and plead. Shake him for not saying, “Christ, Tess, what kind of messed-up situation did you land in?” But another part was too numb to act. After all, the fault lay with her. She’d kept Ward at bay emotionally, too fearful to put her heart on the line, to put herself on the line. Now, for
the first time, he was closing himself off to her. The hurt was unimaginable.

A rustle of commotion swept through the tent as people began to murmur excitedly. Carrie and Brian had entered with their parents; Brian’s sister, Allie; his brother-in-law, Paul; and their girls, Hannah and Grace, who were still wearing their flower girl wreaths upon their heads.

It was time to introduce the married couple to the guests. Then the toasts would begin. As members of the wedding, Erica and Ward should be standing with them.

“You both should go,” she told them tightly. Then to Ward, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before about David and his family, but it’s not like Edward Bradford described.”

“And yet he was so convincing, wasn’t he, Ward?” Erica’s voice was mild, all reasonableness. With a smile, she tucked her arm inside his. “I suppose she’s right. We should go join the others. I can’t wait to hear your toast, Ward. Will you make Brian squirm?” Erica’s laugh was light.

“Ward, please?” She didn’t know what she was asking for. Some kind of sign that it would be all right.

He didn’t reply. He didn’t acknowledge her plea. He simply turned away.

And she could do nothing. She couldn’t call him back. He was Brian’s best man and had duties to perform. She had duties as well. This was the most important day of Brian and Carrie’s lives. It didn’t matter that it had suddenly become, in a horribly frightening way, the most important of Tess’s life, too.

She watched as he walked away with Erica, her mind in chaos, her happiness in jeopardy. Thoughts skittered, racing through her head. Would talking to him have even done any good? She tried to remember what she’d said just now. She’d admitted that she’d accepted a million
dollars from the Bradfords. But David’s father had made it seem as if he’d had to bribe her to stay at the hospital. It hadn’t been like that, but would she have been able to make Ward understand the situation from her point of view?

She’d failed again at love. The first time with David, she’d opened her heart completely, leaving herself vulnerable when he used his words like lethal weapons. With Ward, fear and shame had made her veer to the opposite spectrum. She’d guarded her heart too carefully, afraid to share her past with him and let him see the real, imperfect her.

A part of her had hoped she’d find only indignation and outrage in Ward’s eyes as Edward Bradford hurled his accusations. Neither emotion had been evident. When she considered how much she’d withheld from him, she realized it was too much to ask.

It was over.

From the beginning she’d sensed that the love she had for Ward ran far deeper than any she’d felt before. With David, she’d believed she’d learned all about the pain that came with failing at love. It turned out that she hadn’t even scratched the surface.

W
ARD WAS WORKING
on getting drunk. Not sloppy, falling-down, puking-behind-the-rhododendrons drunk. Just sloshed enough to turn his brain to slush and to anesthetize his heart. Ordinarily he was pretty good at accomplishing his goals. Quinn and Reid often ribbed him for being an overachiever. Tonight, however, he was failing big-time. His brain had yet to succumb to the bourbon, and his heart felt like Tess had driven one of her spiked heels through it.

He’d held off on the hard liquor—no way was the job going to get done on champagne—until after he’d given his best man’s toast. The toasts were scheduled at the end of dinner, just before Carrie and Brian would cut the first slice of their wedding cake. The interim left far too many minutes—interminable minutes—for him to covertly spy on Tess and track her as she whisked in and out of the tent, tending to the myriad details still on the docket before this hellacious evening was over.

Each time he spotted her, his mind circled back to Bradford’s accusations. The picture the man had painted was bizarre and ugly—unfathomable, in that it was radically unlike the Tess Casari whom Ward had fallen hard for. It had been a shock to hear her admit to taking a
million dollars from Bradford. But the greater shock had been that she’d never breathed a word of any of this to him. Why had she never told him about it? He’d been open with her, had even shared the story of why Erica decided he wasn’t worth marrying. Yet he’d never heard a peep from Tess about an episode that must have been a pretty fucking big deal.

A million-dollar fucking big deal.

There was definitely something screwy about the money. Even were he to consume an entire bottle of bourbon, he wouldn’t accept the fact that she had a million dollars lying around; after she bought that car from Mike O’Roarke, he’d be surprised if she had three thousand dollars.

Though the topic of the money and what exactly had happened between Tess and the Bradfords while David Bradford lay critically ill in a hospital was troubling, what bothered Ward most, and poked at a still-raw wound, was the suspicion that the reason Tess hadn’t spoken a word to him about any of this business with the Bradfords was that he meant nothing to her. What else could he conclude but that she’d never intended to go the distance with him? That she’d never loved him.

If that was the case, was she any different from Erica? A damned depressing thought, especially after having stood up in front of the ninety-plus assembled guests, raised his glass of champagne, and launched into an account of how Brian had fallen for Carrie Greer, knowing from the first time he laid eyes on her at a football game that she was “the one.” Ward had managed to keep his smile firmly in place as he recounted Brian’s calling him after his first date with Carrie. Half an hour later Brian had still been talking about her pretty blue eyes.

Ward had gotten the guests to chuckle, while inside, battered and reeling from the blow, he cursed love as the nastiest joke ever played on mankind. He’d gotten
through the rest of the speech somehow, and Brian and Carrie, blind with happiness, didn’t see that his smile was more a rictus of pain.

He should go find her. Demand some answers from her. He at least deserved to know why the hell she’d hidden so much about herself.

Instead, he took another swallow of his bourbon. Slouched in a chair by the small table he’d claimed as his own, he stared at the dancers on the wooden dance floor. He didn’t need to check his watch to know that by now he should have had Tess in his arms, swaying to the slow beat of the band, anticipating the night ahead of them. She’d be tired; he’d take care of her, kissing her slowly, deeply, as he caressed her lazily. It would have been an easy, gentle loving. And when she came with a shuddered cry, he’d have wrapped her in his arms and kissed her damp brow until she drifted off to sleep.

“I’ve come to claim my dance, Ward.” Amazingly—or perhaps not—Erica’s voice was light and cheerful.

He didn’t straighten, remaining in his indolent pose. “Sorry, after the stunt you pulled, I think not. You set this up. You set Tess up. Edward Bradford hadn’t accepted any invitation to come to the wedding.”

“He and his wife, Hope, were in Switzerland. They have a home on Lake Geneva. The invitation must not have reached them. Or maybe it did and they simply couldn’t bring themselves to respond to a wedding invitation.”

“But you figured out that Tess was connected to them.”

“She looked like she was going to pass out when Carrie mentioned the Bradfords. I thought that was funny since she couldn’t possibly have known them. But then I remembered hearing something about David’s sneaking off and marrying some nobody from New York and how furious Mr. Bradford had been when he discovered
what David had done. I put two and two together and then called up Mr. Bradford and asked him to come, knowing how much it would mean to Dad.”

“And knowing how much it might embarrass Tess.”

She sat down on the empty chair beside him as if they were having the nicest of chats. She lifted a bare shoulder that gleamed like gold dust in the lantern’s light and gave a careless shrug.

He looked at her, trying to recall what he’d ever seen in her.

“I thought you’d be grateful to have avoided a terrible mistake by falling for Tess’s act. What better way to open your eyes to what she was really like than to introduce you to one of the people she’d hurt?”

“So charitable of you.”

She gave a light laugh as if he’d just delivered a really good joke. “I simply wanted you to see, Ward. I’m sure you’ve had some less-than-charitable thoughts about me since I stupidly called off our engagement, but now that you know what Tess is really like, maybe you’ll recognize—”

“Actually, the only thing I recognize is your role in this scheme. I assume the point in setting up this nasty encounter during your stepsister’s wedding was so that I might see you in a new light. Let me show you how successful you’ve been. The only reason I’m even willing to give you the time of day is because of Carrie—though I doubt she’d blame me if I refused to do even that. Unlike you, she’s got a heart.”

She looked at him. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”

For the first time in more than an hour he managed a genuine smile. “God, I hope not. Goodbye, Erica. I hope you find the man you deserve.”

He picked up his highball—it still had two fingers full of dark gold liquid—without bothering to watch her
leave; for all he cared, Erica could go to the devil. He had more important things to do. He took a healthy swallow of the liquid fire and waited for numbness to settle like a heavy blanket over him.