The Best Man's Bride (11 page)

“It’s kind of common knowledge around town.”

When her face paled, Nick regretted his admission. Obviously, she’d not realized anyone knew what she’d done all those years ago. He stepped out from the doorway to join her beside her desk. “Are you okay?”

She reached a slightly trembling hand toward her hair, pushing back a strand that had slipped from the knot at the back of her neck. “I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “Everyone loves you.” Even him, he was afraid.

She blew out a breath that stirred the hair that hadn’t stayed behind her ear. “Then they don’t know everything.”

He laughed. “I can’t imagine anyone keeping secrets in this town.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He stepped closer and slid his hand along her cheek.

“What’s your secret, Colleen? The one no one knows?”

“Someone knows.” She sighed. “Someone always knows.”

“About the running away. Yes.”

Her breath hitched. “They knew. All of them knew, but they never looked for me.” She shook her head, tears shimmering in her eyes. “The whole town knew, but nobody ever tried talking to me.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to ignore a person’s pain,” he admitted, his throat thickening with emotion, “than to figure out how to talk to them and find the right words to make them feel better.”

She blinked hard, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. It was as if she faced her past instead of facing him. “I wouldn’t have needed words. I would have just liked someone to look for me, someone to be with me, so that I wouldn’t have felt so alone.”

“I looked for you, Colleen,” he reminded her. “I found you.”

Irony tinged her laugh. “Now.”

He narrowed his eyes to study her. She was in such an odd mood and she was obviously exhausted. There were dark circles running beneath the bottom fringe of her thick lashes.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve only noticed me now.”

“I noticed you the minute you stepped out of the bride’s dressing room at church. I’d never seen anyone as beautiful as you are.”

She laughed harder, so hard that her dark eyes streamed tears.

“Colleen?”

“You’ve seen me before, Nick.” Her laughter faded, but the tears kept falling. “No, you didn’t.”

His emotions torn by her crying, he reached for her, closing his arms around her delicate frame. “I don’t understand…”

“No, you don’t. See. Me.”

“Colleen, I can’t take my eyes off you.”

She wriggled loose from his embrace. “I’ve volunteered at the hospital for years, Nick, twice a week. I’ve seen you at least one of those days every week.”

He dropped his arms to his sides. “What?”

Her voice shaking, she spelled out what he was unable to grasp. “You. Never. Saw. Me.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. She was one of those girls, the volunteers who hung around the hospital hoping to catch a doctor. “I didn’t know…”

Colleen’s blood chilled at the expression on Nick’s handsome face. He wasn’t quite disgusted, but he was obviously disillusioned. “I’m not at the hospital for the reasons you think I am.”

“No?” He sighed and pushed his hands through his hair now. “You’re not like your sister?”

She shook her head. Molly hadn’t been at the hospital for that reason, either. She’d been there because she intended to be a doctor. And she was smart and determined enough to get whatever she wanted. “No, but I wish I were like Molly.”

“You wish that you would have gotten Josh to propose?” His voice deepened as if his throat was closing up. “Or me?”

She laughed, as she had earlier, with no humor only irony, at the horrified expression on his handsome face. “No. I’ve been hanging around the hospital for a while, Nick. I know you’ll never propose. To anyone. Ever.”

“You have me at a disadvantage, Colleen. You know me much better than I know you.”

“Then let me tell you my deepest, darkest secret. The reason I do penance at the hospital.”

“Penance?”

She sighed, disgusted with herself. “No. I thought it would be, but I find I get more from reading to the kids in the cancer ward than I give to them.”

He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. “The pediatric cancer ward—that’s a tough unit. Nurses don’t last there for years, but you did?”

She nodded. “There are some volunteers who are there for reasons other than landing rich husbands, you know.”

He laughed now, bitterly. “You couldn’t prove it by me.”

“Oh, poor, handsome doctor,” she said with mock pity. “You have all the women chasing you.”

He wiped a hand across his face again, his eyes gleaming with amusement despite himself. “My best friend met both his brides at the hospital where they volunteered.”

“I don’t know about his first wife, but I know my sister. She wasn’t looking for a husband,” Colleen insisted. She hated that she constantly had to defend Molly to him.

“I don’t care what she was looking for. I want to know why you’re there, why you’re doing penance. Tell me your secret, Colleen.”

“You’ve met the colonel.”

He grimaced. “I know him. He’s not a friend, or he wouldn’t have interrupted what he did that day in the park.”

“The colonel has a way of bringing you to your senses,” she admitted. “He wasn’t the only one who lost his head that day. I wasn’t myself.” She sighed. “Actually, I was. I was my
old
self. The impulsive, reckless self, who acts without thinking.”

“Are you talking about running away when you were a kid?” he asked. “The way your dad died…”

“Cancer.”

“That sounds like it was a tough situation,” he acknowledged, his eyes soft with sympathy. “Anyone would have needed to get away from it for a while.”

“No, my brother didn’t. Molly didn’t. My mom…” Her voice cracked as she remembered how strong her mother had been. “I acted like a selfish brat, running away when I should have been sticking with the rest of my family, supporting them. Instead, I stole my best friend’s car and plowed it through the town park.”

Nick’s face paled. “Were you hurt?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Some cuts and bruises. Anyway, I got off easier than the colonel.”

“You ran into the colonel?” he repeated, obviously stunned.

“Guilty.” Confessing the truth lifted some of the weight from her shoulders. Telling Nick meant more to her than telling the truth to her younger brother. He meant that much to her. “But I let my friend take the blame.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“You don’t know me,” she reminded him. “Until the wedding, you never even noticed me.”

Nick squeezed the back of his neck, as if trying to ease his tension. “Maybe I did. Maybe that’s why it struck me so hard when I saw you, as if there was a connection between us. Maybe it was recognition.”

“Recognition,” she agreed. That was better than love at first sight. Safer. But all those years ago in the hospital, the first time she’d seen him, catching sight of him in the cafeteria…That had been when her crush began. Just a crush—not love.

“So I do know you,” he pointed out, “and I think there’s more to your story, to your letting someone else take the blame.”

“Abby insisted,” she admitted. “It was her car. She was known as a bad driver. She didn’t think anyone would believe me, anyway.” She laughed again. “Hell, my own mother admits that no one would have probably heard me. There was so much going on.”

And that was why she’d run away.

Nick couldn’t blame her, so why did she blame herself? “Why are you doing penance, then?”

In the roughest ward at the hospital. He remembered the gossips in the hardware store, how they’d shared with him that she was the most sensitive McClintock. How had she survived visiting that ward twice a week, seeing all those kids hurting? Dying, just like her dad had died.

He shook his head, awed by her strength. “Colleen, you’re really…” An incredible woman. How had he never noticed her at the hospital? “When I heard about you running away, it haunted me—the image of your being all alone, crying, with no one to hold you.”

She blinked hard, as if fighting tears. “That was a long time ago. I’m fine,” she insisted. “I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t pity you,” he insisted. “I understand you, though.”

She shook her head, as if she doubted him or thought he was feeding her another line, making another play in their little game of cat and mouse.

“Come upstairs with me, Colleen,” he said.

She shook her head again. “No, that’s not a good idea. Not now.” Not when she was most vulnerable, he understood that, but he was vulnerable, too, right now. To think that she had almost done…what Bruce had done.

“I just want to talk,” he insisted. “I want to tell you something.”

She’d shared her deepest, darkest secret. It was time he shared his.

He dragged in a deep breath, bracing himself to reveal something only a few people he trusted implicitly knew. And he hadn’t had to tell them. They’d been there.

He turned toward where she sat on the leather couch in her brother’s sun-drenched living room and said, “I understand feeling guilty for stuff in your past, for stuff you did or didn’t do.”

She shook her head. “Doctors can’t blame themselves for losing patients, Nick. I’ve been around the hospital long enough to know that no doctor—not even you—is God. You can’t save everyone.”

“I couldn’t save my brother.” He’d said the words with such force that they seemed to echo eerily through Clayton’s apartment.

“What?”

“It wouldn’t have even taken that much. I didn’t need to be a surgeon yet, then, to know he’d been hurting.” He dragged his hand over his face, wishing he could wipe away the past. “His wife took off on him, but not before she told him that she’d been sleeping around their entire marriage. She even claimed that the baby she was carrying wasn’t his. She’d been his whole world, he’d loved her so much. More than life itself.”

Colleen’s breath hitched. “He killed himself?”

Nick nodded. “Not quick and clean. But slowly—bit by bit until there was nothing left of him.” His breath shuddered out. “And because it was slow, I could have stopped him. I could have saved him. But I did nothing.”

He hadn’t wanted to admit that his big brother—his idol—hadn’t been infallible. Josh had tried to point out to him that Bruce was in trouble, that someone had to help him before he drank himself to death. Nick hadn’t wanted to listen, hadn’t wanted to believe that his brother needed help.

“How old were you?” she asked, her voice tender.

“Seventeen.” He’d been pretty screwed up for a while afterward.

“Nick, you were just a kid.”

But Bruce had been just a kid—even younger—when he’d saved Nick.

“You were just a kid when you ran away,” he pointed out.

“You didn’t let that absolve you of guilt.”

“I blame myself for
my
actions, for what
I
did. Not for what someone else did.”

“I’m blaming myself for my
lack
of action, for doing
nothing
to stop my brother from killing himself.” He hadn’t talked about Bruce in so long that the emotions came rushing up, choking him, but he managed to add, “No one died over what you did.”

But she could have died. The thought crept into his mind, scaring him. “Did you…did you do it on purpose?”

“Hit the colonel?” she asked. “No. Abby’s car had bad brakes, and I hadn’t even taken drivers’ training yet.”

“So give yourself a break, okay?” he ordered her.

Her eyes, so big and soft, filled with tears again. “I have—really,” she insisted. “You’re the one who has to give himself the break.”

“Colleen…”

“How’d he do it?” she asked.

“Slowly, with the bottle, drinking himself into oblivion. And then he got behind the wheel of his car one night and crashed into a tree.”

“He was drunk. It was an accident.” Her voice was insistent. “Like when I hit the colonel.”

“That’s the funny thing,” he said, although he could find nothing humorous about his brother’s death. “That one night he hadn’t been drinking. He’d been perfectly sober when he crashed into that tree.”

“Nick…”

“He was still alive when the police got there. Still alive when the paramedics got him to the hospital. They lost him in the E.R., in trauma.”

“That’s why you became a doctor,” she said. “Because even though you hadn’t been able to save him, you might be able to save someone else.”

Nick shook his head. For years Josh had tried to convince him to let himself off the hook, but he couldn’t. “I wouldn’t have had to be a doctor to save Bruce. I only had to be his brother, his friend, but I let him down. I left him alone when he needed me most.” The only time Bruce had ever needed him, and his little brother had failed him.

“That’s why you’re pushing so hard to find out where Molly is,” she said. “You’re worried that you’ll lose Josh the way you lost your brother.”

He nodded.

“You won’t,” she insisted. “Josh isn’t like that.”

“My brother was the strongest man I knew.” He shared with her more than he’d ever shared with anyone—even those few people who’d been there. “My hero.”

“How much older than you was he?”

“Ten years.”

“He wouldn’t have listened to you,” Colleen said. “I know how it is to be a younger sibling, trying to talk to older siblings. He wouldn’t have listened to you—no matter what you said—what you tried.”

Nick sighed, and the pressure that had always been there on his chest, for fifteen years, began to ease. “You’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right.” Colleen stood up and closed the short distance between them. Then she wrapped her arms tight around his broad shoulders, shoulders that had carried an unnecessary burden for far too long. She wanted to offer the comfort she instinctively knew he’d never accepted from anyone. Because he’d been too consumed with guilt over how he’d failed his brother, he’d failed himself, as well.

He cupped her head, lifting her knot of hair slightly so that the tension in her neck eased. “I don’t want your pity, Colleen.” His other arm wrapped around her back, clasping her tight to the hard length of his body. “I just want
you.
”

“Then take me,” she offered.

“I won’t be able to stop this time—no matter who walks in or whose head falls off.”

“As long as it’s not yours and we lock the door, we should be good,” she said, stepping back toward the hall. “Clayton won’t be home for hours.”

Despite her flirtatious words and willing acquiescence, Colleen recognized the risk she was taking. She was giving her heart to a man who hadn’t asked for it; he only wanted her body. Whether he was ready or not, he was going to get both.

He lifted her and carried her the few short steps down the hall to the guest bedroom, setting her down only so that he could close and lock the door. “Done.”

“It’s nice to know someone listens to me,” she mused.

“I’m listening, Colleen,” he promised. “Tell me what you want.”

His
heart. But that would be asking for too much. “You.”

He pulled his T-shirt, which was spattered with paint, over his head and tossed it onto the gleaming hardwood floor. Then he undid the snap of his jeans. The teeth of the zipper rasped as he dragged down the tab. He pushed the denim down his legs, along with his knit briefs, dropping them onto the floor at his feet, so that he stood naked—gloriously naked—before her.

Suddenly she was too hot in her silk blouse and linen skirt. Her skin burned, and her mouth grew dry as she stared at him. His heavily muscled chest, ripped abs and those long, golden-hair-dusted legs. He was too much. Especially the long, hard length of his erection.

“You’re flushed,” he observed, stepping closer and pressing a hand against her forehead. “Do you have a fever?”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to play doctor. I don’t want to play any games at all.”

“Colleen,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion.

Already, they’d shared so much—more than Colleen had ever shared with anyone. And now she wanted to share more. Her body. She reached for the buttons of her blouse, her hands amazingly steady as she edged the mother-of-pearl clear of the silk. When the buttons were undone, she tugged the garment from her waistband and shrugged it off so that it joined his clothes on the floor. She eased the hook free of the clasp on her skirt, and the linen joined the silk, leaving her covered only by two scraps of lace.

Nick’s breath shuddered out. He was awed, as always, by her beauty. But he kept his hands clenched at his sides and touched her only with his lips, his mouth brushing across hers in a featherlight caress.

She moaned, parting her lips for his possession. He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue in and out of her mouth. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer, but it still wasn’t enough.

He backed her toward the bed until her knees connected with the mattress and she tumbled onto the soft cotton sheets. She lifted her arms, reaching for him. But he stood above her, staring down at her long, graceful legs and her lean torso.

Only those bits of lace kept him from seeing all of her. He reached down and undid the front clasp of her bra. She eased up and pulled the straps from her arms. Leaning back on her elbows, she lifted her legs—those long, sexy-as-hell, bare legs.

“Colleen…” he groaned as his body pulsed, demanding he take her quickly, insisting that he make her his.

But she deserved more. She deserved someone who wasn’t afraid to offer her everything—including his heart. The thought of her with any man other than him had his fist clenching harder as jealousy gripped him. She was his.

Not forever. He didn’t trust forever. But for this stolen moment of time, she would be his. He wanted to savor every minute, every inch of her silky skin—every taste of her sweet mouth.

Bracing his hands beside her head, he leaned over and once again just brushed his mouth across hers.

Colleen wanted more than kisses. She’d waited so long for someone she cared about to notice her, and now she wanted it all. She reached for him, digging her nails into his shoulders, pulling him down onto her.

His erection throbbed against her hip. She knew he wanted more, too. But he caught her hands and held them above her head. “Let me take my time.”

And he did. Kissing her cheek, her chin, her throat, every inch of her shoulders. He even nibbled along the ridge of her collarbone. Colleen squirmed on the bed, loving every sensation but wanting more.

He gave her more.

His mouth closed around one nipple while his hand stroked the other, then lower, over her quivering abdomen to the edge of her panties. He teased her with his mouth and his fingers until her body tensed, and then she shuddered and screamed his name, “Nick!”

“You’re so easy…”

“Easy!” She flashed back to high school, to the things said about her after she’d given her virginity to the quarterback.

“How dare…”

“Shh,” he murmured against her lips as he kissed her again.

“You’re easy to please. You make me feel…”

Things he’d never felt before. Like love. But he wouldn’t admit that to her. He couldn’t say the words, but he could show her. He worshipped her with his hands and his mouth, making her sob with pleasure. Then, when he could put off his own desires no longer, he reached for a condom, sheathed himself and slid into her wet heat.

Her muscles resisted; she was so tight. “Colleen…”

“It’s been a long time,” she admitted. But she wrapped her legs around his waist, not letting him pull away. Her hips arched, taking him deeper.

He stared into her face, which flushed with pleasure as he started to move again. Slowly. She was hot. “How long?”

She shifted beneath him and murmured, “A while. You’re so big, so deep…”

He thrust deeper, and she cried out. But not with pain. Her pleasure poured over him. He thrust again and again, gently, but with passion until she dug her nails into his back and shouted his name. Then he let himself go, burying himself deep inside her as he came.

“Colleen!” Unwilling to leave her, he rolled over so that she lay across his chest, her body limp and spent.

“Wow,” she murmured. “I think I understand why all the women chase you. I never paid much attention before, but now I know…”

How had he never paid any attention to her? She’d been so close to him, twice a week, and he’d never noticed her. His arms wound tight around her, unwilling to believe he’d been so ignorant.

Or maybe he’d been smart to ignore her, rather than doing what they’d just done. “Colleen, why has it been so long for you?”

She lifted her bare shoulders in a slight shrug.

“Did you get your heart broken?”

Teeth nibbling her bottom lip, she shook her head. “No. My pride but not my heart. Once, I was stupid enough to let some guy use me, and I never intended to do that again.”

“I’m not using you, Colleen,” he insisted.

“You’re not offering me marriage and babies, either,” she observed.

Was that what she wanted?

“It’s okay,” she assured him with a quick laugh. “I understand that you won’t let yourself believe that every woman isn’t like your sister-in-law or Josh’s ex.” She obviously knew him well. “You’ll never trust a woman enough to love her. I know that.”

It wasn’t that he mistrusted every woman. He simply didn’t trust himself not to fall for the wrong one, as Bruce and Josh had done. “Then why…”

“Because I
could
love you.”

His heart, still beating hard from making love, raced into overdrive. “Colleen…”

She pressed her fingers against his lips again. “Don’t worry. I don’t. I know you don’t want that.” She sighed. “I can’t blame you. I don’t want to love anyone, either.”

“Because of some stupid ass?” Whom he wanted to beat up for hurting her.

“No. He has nothing to do with my reasons.”

“Because of your dad?” he realized.

She nodded. “My mom was destroyed when he died. We lost both of them for a while. But she’s fought back. Hell, she’s even dating again. She’s a stronger woman than I am, though. I wouldn’t survive a loss like hers.”

“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for being.”

N
ICK’S WORDS RANG IN
her mind. She hoped he was right. That she was stronger than she thought. She would need to be to get over him. Despite what she’d told him, it was too late. She couldn’t make herself not love him because she hadn’t been aware of when she’d begun to love him. Before the wedding? Had she had more than a crush on the dashing Dr. Jameson?

And now, having gotten to know him so well, both intimately and emotionally, she loved him more. When would she stop acting so recklessly? How could she have fallen for anyone, let alone a man who wanted nothing to do with love?

The kitchen door slammed open, startling her where she sat on a stool at the center island. Masking her extreme emotions, she turned toward the woman who’d just walked in dripping water on the tiled floor.