The Inconvenient Bride (14 page)

Rhys crossed his heart. “And hope to die,” he said piously.

“Just do it.” Dominic gave him a push toward the stairs. He followed Rhys down at a discreet distance, ready to look the other way while Rhys knocked on the ladies' room door.

But before Rhys could do it, the door opened and three women came out, laughing and talking together like old friends.

Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill, Marjorie, and Sierra.

Discreet distance and deliberate indifference forgotten, Dominic gaped at them while Rhys stepped back and let them pass.

“I don't know how to thank you,” Marjorie, face flushed, was saying to Sierra.

“Not a problem.” Sierra replied cheerfully. “The same thing happened to me at my friend Katie's wedding. Only worse. My switch fell in the soup!”

Both the other women's eyes bugged, then all three burst out laughing, and Sylvia patted her hand and said, “I'll give some thought to that rinse you recommended. I've never thought of myself as a blonde.” She looked absolutely delighted. “It's intriguing.” She gave Dominic a cheerful smile and, as she slipped past him, said, “Lovely girl, your Sierra, Dominic. Trust you to find her.”

His eyes met Marjorie's for just a moment as she followed Sylvia. “I like her, Dominic,” she said.

So did he.

But he was a little dazed and confused about how she had managed to convert the enemy.

“Marjorie's switch came loose in the breeze when she went up on deck with your father,” Sierra told him simply. “She was in despair when I went to wash my hands. She couldn't get it up and fixed again. Neither could Sylvia.” She shrugged. “So I did.”

“You helped—but they were the ones who—” Dominic stopped as Sierra took his hand in hers.

She smiled at him, both her hands warm as they wrapped around his and she looked into his eyes. “They're guests. And it's true what I told Sylvia.” Her eyes simply sparkled. “She would look good as a blonde.”

 

It was a beautiful night.

Magical.

The skyline of Manhattan twinkled in the distance as the sun went down and the moon rose. People laughed and ate and drank and chatted. Children played and whooped and clapped. The band played lilting romantic melodies.

And for the first time in weeks Sierra was back in Dominic's arms.

It was required, of course. They had a duty dance down by the band, and he held her close and she could rub her cheek against the starched white of his shirt or the soft black of his tuxedo jacket. She did just that, couldn't help herself. But, all too quickly, the piece ended and her father was claiming her, and then Douglas and Rhys and Nathan and Finn and Gib and seemingly an endless stream of men.

Lovely men. Charming men. Dashing men.

She hugged her father, thanked Douglas profusely, assured Rhys that everything was fine, enjoyed a few moments with Nathan who, wearing a borrowed suit of Dominic's, looked remarkably like him.

But Nathan wasn't him.

And she wanted him. Desperately.

What Dominic wanted she had no idea. He was dancing with an equal number of women. She kept her eyes open, watching for him, aware every moment where he was—even when he was on the far side of the dance floor. She saw him with her mother, with Mariah and Izzy and Chloe and Pammie. She even saw him dance once with Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill.

She wanted him to dance again with her.

It reminded her of Rhys's and Mariah's wedding when she'd danced all night determinedly with other men, but had only had eyes for him.

The difference was, she hadn't danced with him first—or at all—that night, until the very end.

Then somehow they just happened to be standing near each other at the beginning of the last dance of the evening. And their gazes, which had been connecting and avoiding all night, met once more.

And this time neither had looked away.

“Dare you,” Dominic had said gruffly, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He held out a hand.

And Sierra took it and felt the electricity jolt through her.

“You're on,” she'd replied and stepped recklessly into his arms.

From that moment she was lost. She'd probably been lost from the first time she saw him, but she hadn't realized it then.

She was still lost in love with Dominic and she didn't know how, after tonight, she would be able to resist.

She stood now beside the staircase leading to the upper decks and watched the other couples dancing. She tried to find Dominic, but for once her radar failed her.

And then, quite suddenly, he was there.

Right next to her, his shoulder brushing hers, his fingers sliding in to lace with hers.

“Dare you.” The gruff whisper sent a shiver right to the center of her.

She whipped her head around to see him there, a wry grin on his face and a reckless look in his eyes.

She swallowed. “Dare me to what?”

“Dance with me.” He took her hand, but he didn't lead her to the dance floor. Instead he drew her up the steps, not to the next deck or the next, but to the very top open air deck where there was no one else, just the music drifting up to them. And then he shut the door.

He held out his arms. “Dance?”

Sierra blinked. “Oh, yes. Yes, please.” And she stepped into them again, felt one slide around her back and draw her close, felt the other close around her right hand, tucking it against his chest. Her hat bumped his nose.

He laughed. It was a strained laugh, rough with desire. And when she took the hat off and tossed it away, he wrapped his arms around her and they watched it float on the night sky into the water below.

Then he turned her in his arms and they danced. Alone. Together.

Then Dominic said, “I wonder if maybe we ought to go on a honeymoon after all.”

Sierra's heart leapt. She stepped back and looked up at him, trying to see his heart in his eyes. But there were too many shadows. The night was too dark.

But not too dark to hope.

“A
HONEYMOON
?” Douglas looked surprised. He stopped fidgeting in Dominic's office and regarded his son with curiosity. “Where?”

“I don't know where,” Dominic said irritably. He just knew it was a good idea. If he and Sierra were ever going to make anything out of this marriage, they needed some time alone together, to concentrate on each other.

He didn't stop to think when he'd decided that it was necessary that he and Sierra make something out of their marriage—something more than he'd originally thought, at least. He just knew it was. He knew she'd been right.

He only hoped he hadn't waited too long and blown it.

He didn't think he had. She had looked surprised but happy when he'd suggested it last night, which was why he was in the office on Saturday. He was trying to get things squared away, sorted out, finished up.

“You really want to put the past behind you and move on?” Nathan asked. He was lounging on the sofa, leafing through a magazine while he waited for their father. The two of them were going out to the old family home on Long Island to go fishing. They'd stopped by Dominic's place to see if he and Sierra wanted to go. Sierra had told them he was at the office.

“Idiot,” Douglas had said when he'd first burst in. “What are you doing here, leaving your wife home on the Saturday after your wedding reception? You'll lose that girl, Dominic!”

“I'm trying
not
to lose her, damn it!” Dominic had retorted, jabbing a pencil in his father's direction. “I'm trying to get things sorted out so I can take her away from here.”

“You should go to our place in the Bahamas,” Nathan said.

Dominic snapped the pencil in half. He glared at his brother. “That's the stupidest damn suggestion I ever heard! Take her where I got
jilted
last time?”

“Have you ever been back?” Nathan asked him.

Dominic raked a hand through his hair. “Hell, no. And why should I have?”

Nathan shrugged. “To get over it?”

Dominic slammed his hand on the desk. “I am over it!”

“I can tell,” Nathan murmured. He got up and paced the room, then tossed the magazine onto the coffee table, then glanced at his watch. “Come on, Dad. He's not going with us, and I want to get some fishing in. I'm only going to be here a week, then it's off to Antarctica.”

“Right,” Douglas said. He hoisted himself out of his chair, then regarded his son across Dominic's wide desk. “The honeymoon is a good idea.” He turned and started for the door, then stopped and looked back. “The Bahamas is a good idea, too. For a marriage to work, it needs a clean slate.”

 

She'd only been to the Bahamas twice.

In all the traveling she'd done on photo shoots all over the world, she'd only managed a week in Nassau.

“Nassau?” she'd said eagerly when he mentioned the Bahamas.

Dominic had shaken his head. “We have a place on one of the out islands. There's a small town, a fishing harbor, and a few houses scattered along the windward beach. Three miles of pink sand and usually deserted.”

“Sounds heavenly,” Sierra had said.

And now she knew it was.

They'd flown to the closest island airport, then had taken a water taxi to the island. It was called Pelican Cay, and it was picture-book beautiful, with rows of pastel-colored
houses climbing higgledy-piggledy up the hill from the harbor, and narrow asphalt roads that wound through town and then in two or three directions out of town into what looked almost like jungle.

One of the islanders met their water taxi, an old man named Maurice, who drove a purple Jeep and gave her a deep courtly bow when he took her suitcase and helped her in.

“My car,” he said, “she matches your hair.” And he beamed broadly when Sierra grinned.

Dominic, for his part, was quiet. He seemed nervous, wary, a little gunshy, Sierra would have said. She watched him openly as he got into the front seat next to Maurice. When he turned his head, she noted a tight line at the corner of his mouth and the fact that he hadn't taken off his dark glasses since they'd set foot off the plane.

“It's lovely,” she said, reaching up to put a hand on his shoulder and when he touched it automatically, she laced her fingers through his. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“My pleasure,” Dominic said. But he certainly didn't sound like it.

“It be our pleasure to have you back, Mr. Wolfe,” Maurice said as they bounced through the narrow streets. “We miss you.”

Dominic's mouth tightened even further. But at last he nodded at Maurice. “Thank you.”

Maurice smiled again with great good cheer. “But now you here, it be like you never left. Only good things. And you enjoy it!” He slanted Dominic a sidelong look. “This be your honeymoon, yes?”

Dominic hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

Maurice laughed, delighted. “You definitely enjoy then! My Estelle, she give you plenty of privacy. Estelle be the cook an' housekeeper,” he told Sierra. “I tell everyone to give you plenty of privacy.” He laughed again. And Sierra was enchanted to see Dominic blush.

“We've been married a while,” he said stiffly. “We're hardly newlyweds.”

“Hardly,” Sierra agreed, but then the imp within her made her say, “But we'll enjoy all that privacy, you can be sure!”

She and Maurice laughed together. Dominic retreated behind his sunglasses, and Sierra wondered if she'd made a mistake by teasing him.

But she knew she had to treat him as she'd always treated him. They were having a honeymoon. They were getting to know each other. They needed to be who they really were for this to work. They couldn't try to pretend.

They had to be themselves.

 

Nathan, not for the first time, had been wrong.

Why the hell had he listened to his stupid younger brother? What the hell did Nathan know about being married or making things work with your wife?

Nathan wasn't married, never had been!

He was as footloose and free as a bird. He'd never even been engaged, never been in love, never even looked at the same woman twice as far as Dominic knew.

So where did he get off telling Dominic what to do?

And why the hell had he listened?

Because in New York City in a steel-and-glass building where he was strong and clever and in control, it had made a certain sort of cockeyed sense.

And so he'd finished up his work and gone home to tell Sierra he'd made arrangements for them to fly to the Bahamas. He'd made it sound enticing, charming, delightful—the perfect honeymoon paradise.

But the closer they'd got, the more he'd choked.

The sight of the town as they'd crossed the water had brought it all back. All the memories. All the hopes. All the disaster.

And then Maurice had been there to meet them, which
had been his father's doing, no doubt. Maurice, who had come to him with the news that Carin wasn't there. Maurice, who had patted his arm and said sadly, “I think maybe she panic, you know?” Maurice who had then gone and told his father who had begun to send people on their way.

Maurice knew.

Dominic didn't know if Sierra knew anything or not.

He didn't see how she couldn't. He hadn't said anything, but Mariah probably had. Mariah, married to Rhys, would know something. Rhys would have told his wife about the place in the Bahamas. He'd even brought her and the children down here a couple of months ago.

“It was therapeutic,” he'd told Dominic after, because he'd had his own ghosts to lay to rest. “You ought to go back sometime.”

But Dominic hadn't wanted any therapy like that.

Not then. He didn't now, either, suddenly. He only wanted to leave.

But it was too late.

Sierra loved it. He could see it on her face. She didn't wear sunglasses often, even when he thought she ought to. So her emotions were transparent. She was enthusiastic about everything. She looked around eagerly, pointing out this, asking about that.

And then, when Maurice turned down the long winding lane that led to the Wolfe house, she leaned forward eagerly, and exclaimed with delight when the cathedral of jungly trees opened onto an island garden and a low-slung peach-coloured house, with trailing dark burgundy bougainvillea all over one wall.

“This is it? It's beautiful. Gorgeous.” And then she caught sight, beyond the house, of the beach and the turquoise water of the Caribbean. “Oh my! Oh, how wonderful!” And she leaned forward and threw her arms around Dominic's shoulders and drew him back into a hug.

It was oddly settling, the feel of her arms around him, the
whisper of her breath against his neck, the sound of her voice in his ear. She was Sierra, not Carin.

This was now. Not then.

They were married already.

They only had to make it work.

Maurice stopped the Jeep and got out. Dominic climbed out, then helped Sierra out, too. She stood, floppy hat clapped on her head with one hand, and turned in a circle admiring it all—the mangrove jungle, the shallow fishpond and stone patio of the garden, the white trellises with their bougainvilleas and the stands of multicolored oleander, the house, the hammock, the sand, the sea.

“I love it,” she said, and she put her arms around him and hugged him again.

And one by one, as he stood holding Sierra in his arms, Dominic's fears, his memories, his humiliations seemed to recede.

It was hard to remember Carin in the presence of as vibrant a woman as his wife. It was hard to think of the wedding that hadn't happened, when Sierra still talked happily about the one that had—and the reception his father had given them.

It was hard to dwell on the past, when the present was so much more fun.

He hadn't considered that coming back to Pelican Cay would be fun. He'd thought about it seriously, determinedly, with earnestness and resolution. He was going to banish the past and make a concerted effort to get to know this amazing woman he'd wed.

But it hadn't really sounded like much fun.

But then, he'd forgotten what life with Sierra—when she wasn't trying to avoid him—could be like.

They barely got in the house and she said, “Why don't we go swimming?”

“Now?” He was surprised, then willing. He had no reason to want to remain in the house, after all. He just remem
bered standing here that morning, waiting for Carin—and Carin never coming.

“Swimming? Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

She changed into a deep purple maillot, slathered her fair skin with sunblock, and rubbed something oily on her hair. “So I don't turn the ocean purple,” she explained, then grinned. “I'm kidding. It's to protect my hair.”

“Oh. Right.” He grinned, too. But his mind was less on her hair than on her nearly bare body which he hadn't seen in far too long. Something he should probably not be thinking about right now. “Go ahead. I'll get my trunks on and join you.”

She was waiting on the deck overlooking the beach when he came out a few minutes later. She was leaning forward, hands braced on the railing as she looked out down the beach which was empty as far as the eye could see.

“This is amazing,” she said. “This is paradise and it's deserted. This has to be the world's best kept secret.”

“We know it's here,” Dominic said smiling at her, holding out his hand to her.

She put hers in his. “Then let's keep it just for us.”

Once they were down on the beach she ran toward the water and he ran with her, remembering he'd probably been a teenager last time he had actually run into the surf.

It felt good. Liberating.

Then she let go of his hand and dove beneath a small wave, and he dove after her. They both came up sputtering and laughing.

“It's like a warm bath!” Sierra exclaimed. “It's heavenly.” And she ducked again and came up, purple hair streaming as she smiled at him so eager and alive that his heart seemed to lodge in his throat.

They swam and played in the water. Then they came out and flopped, exhausted, on the pale pink coral sand beach. Lying side by side on their stomachs, breathing hard, they
stared at each other. Then Sierra smiled. And he smiled back.

He didn't know how long they lay there. Sierra's eyes closed and he thought she had fallen asleep. So he got up and spread a light sheet over her to protect her from the sun, even though it was fairly late in the day. She smiled slightly, but she didn't open her eyes.

He just sat and watched. Traced the lines of her features, memorized them. Marveled at how young and innocent she looked. With the purple hair she reminded him of some sleek sea creature, a mermaid, perhaps. An enchantress.

From the very first she had enchanted him. Bewitched him. Got past his very well-developed guard. And now he couldn't imagine life without her.

He wished she would tell him again that she loved him. She hadn't said it since the night they'd fought.

Maybe he should tell her.

But he couldn't. He hadn't said the words in years. And every time he thought them, they stuck in his throat.

She was still sleeping by the time the sun went down behind the house, casting the beach in shadow. Darkness came early in the tropics. And as the sun fell a light breeze sprang up and blew in from the water.

Dominic touched her shoulder. “Sierra?”

Slowly her eyes opened and she smiled. “Hey.” The way she looked at him made his toes curl with anticipation. He wanted her now with a depth he couldn't have guessed at when he married her. It was so much stronger than anything he'd ever felt before.

“Ready for some of that dinner Estelle left us?”

She hauled herself to a kneeling position. “Sure. I'm starved.” She brushed off the sand from the front of her swimsuit. “I must have fallen asleep. Sorry. You must have been bored. You could have left me. Got some work done. Or—”