The Pregnant Bride

E
DMUND
noticed her the minute she came into the dining room, not because she was beautiful, which she was, but because, in a roomful of people, she was so profoundly alone.

He was alone, too, and wallowing in it. Not so with her. The eyes staring at the menu were blank, the face wiped clean of expression. For some reason he couldn’t begin to fathom, she’d shut down inside so completely that if the room had burst into flames, she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Not your concern, buddy,
he told himself, gesturing for his bill.
You’ve got enough problems of your own, without taking on a perfect stranger’s.

Still, he lingered at his table, watching her; noting the absence of rings on her fingers, the formal, upswept hairdo incongruously at odds with her sweater and slacks. When she spoke to the waiter, she cupped her chin in one hand to support her mouth because that was the only way she could control its trembling. Oh yeah, something was definitely wrong!

Her server knew it, too. He didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t hover obsequiously, reciting the chef’s special creations of the day. He wanted away from her quickly, before whatever ailed her infected him, too. Her barely contained misery was an affront.
Romantic ambience
were key words when it came to describing The Inn. Tragic heroines, however lovely, had no place there.

Just briefly she looked up, a glance so wary and fearful that when their gazes locked, Edmund caught himself smiling at her and shrugging conspiratorially.
Hang in there, sweet pea! Don’t let him spook you. You’ve got as much right to be here as anyone.

She glared back at him and stiffened her already poker-straight spine.

He felt his face crack into a grin he couldn’t control. Damn, but he admired her spirit! Faced with personal crises, the women he’d dated over the last couple of year either fled to the therapist’s couch or a weekend at one of those fat farms where, for the price of a mere few thousand dollars, their stress and cellulite could be flushed away in one fell swoop.

But not this woman. She was the kind who’d go down fighting—or so he thought, until her drink arrived. Scotch, if he was any judge, and a double, to boot. Confronted by it, she sort of reared back in her seat and regarded the liquor suspiciously. Finally, after debating matters for a full thirty seconds or more, she picked up the glass. Her expression reminded him of a child faced with a dose of foul-tasting but good-for-you medicine, and he pretty well guessed what was coming next.

Willing her to look his way again, he shook his head.
Don’t do it, lady! It’s not going to solve a thing!

Whatever mental powers he possessed failed him though, because she clearly didn’t get the message. Raising the glass, she tossed back half the contents in a single gulp.

Clearly, from the way she gagged and choked, she and whiskey weren’t on familiar terms, and the effect was immediate, devastating and irreparable. The heat of the liquor burning down her throat chewed away the icy calm in which she’d encased herself, and what started as a booze-induced sting to her eyes rapidly dissolved into silent, body-wrenching sobs.

She gulped, dipped her head to try to hide her face, struggled to draw a breath. But once started, there was no stopping the flood and the tears kept coming. Caught in the rays of the westerly sun, they splashed off the end of her nose and dribbled down her sweater like crystal beads come unstrung.

Well, hell! Hard-boiled where women and their sob sessions were concerned he might have become, but he couldn’t just sit there and watch her fall apart, especially since no one else was going to help her and she was beyond being able to help herself. “Put the lady’s drink on my bill,” he directed the waiter and, shoving back his chair, waded in to slay whatever dragons were tormenting her.

She was making a public spectacle of herself! Of all the hurt and embarrassment she’d suffered that day, the fact that she couldn’t control the hideous sobs gurgling and sputtering out of her mouth was the ultimate indignity. That morning, someone else was accountable for having humiliated her; now she was the perpetrator and had no one to blame but herself.

Knowing that and being able to do something about it, though, were two different things. Try as she might to control them, the sobs choked out and echoed around the room, a socially obscene gaffe which no one could have missed. Although too polite to stare openly, everybody was sneaking a look, from the teenage busboy in the corner, to the man seated two tables away, the one who, just minutes before, had tried to pick her up with his sly smile and the practiced shrug of his no doubt impressive shoulders.

Lounge lizard! If it weren’t that she was openly slobbering into her napkin, a sight surely guaranteed to put off even the most determined skirt-chaser, he’d no doubt have made his next move by now and offered to buy her a drink, followed by the suggestion that they go somewhere private to admire the sunset.

And part of you would have welcomed the suggestion,
an obnoxious little voice inside her head sneered.
Any man sparing you a second glance not dripping with pity is preferable to this morning’s unmitigated rejection.

But there was a limit to what even he was prepared to tolerate. From the corner of her eye, Jenna saw him mutter something to the waiter, then head straight past her, anxious to escape before she made an even worse exhibition of herself. And because she was a fool, too steeped in self-pity to care about the impression she was creating, her tears flowed even faster.

Then, shockingly, a hand—warm, firm and unmistakably masculine—touched her shoulder, slid down her spine almost to her waist, and urged her to her feet. And a voice, deep and resonant with authority, murmured in her ear. “Okay, sweet pea, enough of this. What say we take the rest of the show outside?”

Sweet pea, indeed! She should have been offended at the familiarity, the condescension. If she’d been in her right mind, instead of wallowing in useless self-pity, she’d have told him so in no uncertain terms. But she hadn’t been herself since that morning and beggars couldn’t be choosers. At that moment he was the only savior she had so, when he offered her his arm, instead of slapping it aside, she grabbed hold as if it were a life belt and let him shepherd her past the stares and the whispers infiltrating the dining room.

Outside, the cool evening air brushed her face and marginally restored her composure. “Thank you,” she sniffled, except that it came out sounding more like
“Phn-k!”
because her throat was so waterlogged with tears still.

“Sure,” he said, steering her toward a covered flight of steps. “Just hang on till we get to the beach, then you can howl to your heart’s content. There’ll be no one there to hear but the gulls and they’re so busy making their own racket, they won’t even notice yours.”

She stepped down to a vast stretch of shoreline scoured clean by the receding tide and deserted except for a couple with two children and a dog, far enough away that they were mere dots on the horizon. Except for the man at her side, Jenna was alone. She could shriek until she was hoarse, but what was the use when, at the end of it all, nothing would have changed?

So instead, she fell into step beside the man as he struck out for the water’s edge, grateful that he didn’t feel a need to fill the silence between them with empty conversation. Seeming bent on his own thoughts, he adjusted his stride to hers, shoved his hands in his jacket pocket, and fixed his gaze to where the lowering sun painted the tips of the waves gold.

Gradually, the convulsive sobbing eased and she could breathe again—deep, reviving breaths, laced with the clean tang of salt and the sharp bite of an early, west-coast May evening. The constriction which, since morning, had gripped her throat and made swallowing painful, softened. Except for the gritty aftermath of tears inflaming her eyes, she was almost herself again. “Thank you,” she said again. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t stepped in when you did.”

He nodded. “Glad to help. Feel like talking about whatever’s got you tied up in knots?”

“I…no, I don’t think so.”

“It might help and I’m a pretty good listener.”

“I made a mistake, that’s all,” she said.

He gave a nonchalant shrug. “So you’re fallible like the rest of us. Don’t go beating yourself up about it.”

“A
huge
mistake.”

“Most mistakes can be rectified, one way or another.”

“Not this one.”

He let his glance flicker over her before returning his attention to the sunset. “That bad, huh? What did you do, kill somebody?”

It was the wrong question to ask. “I should have!” she said fiercely. “If I’d had a gun, I
would
have!”

“Uh-oh!”

She glared at him. “What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“When a woman overreacts like that to a purely hypothetical question, it’s either because she’s got man trouble or she’s criminally deranged. If you were the latter, you’d have gone for the waiter with your steak knife. Instead, you tried to put a brave face on things—and you might have succeeded if you’d steered clear of the booze.”

“I am not a drinker,” she said stiffly. “At least, not as a rule. But tonight…”

“Tonight you needed something to dull the pain.”

“Yes.”

“So this is about a man?”

“Yes.”

“I take it the relationship, such as it was, is over and that he’s the one who ended it?”

“Yes.” The word exploded on a sigh that seemed to start in the soles of her feet and drag every ounce of energy out of her.

He rocked back on his heels and surveyed her critically. “Even with your face all red and puffy from crying, you’re a fine looking woman. Beautiful, in fact. Seems to me you could take your pick of men. What made you latch on to such a bozo?”

Jenna thought of Mark’s spaniel brown eyes, as different from this stranger’s penetrating blue stare as melting chocolate from ice; of his endearing grin, more reminiscent of a little boy’s than a hard-nosed financier’s. “I fell in love with him,” she quavered.

“A hell of a lot more than he fell in love with you, apparently! If you want my opinion, you’re well rid of him.”

“I don’t want your opinion,” she snapped. She’d gone through enough already that day without this…this
creature
pontificating on her situation and handing out Band-Aid solutions when she was
bleeding
inside!

“I thought a bit of down-to-earth common sense might help, but if you’d rather wallow in misery…” He lifted his shoulders in yet another shrug so graphically executed that there was no need for him to finish the sentence.

Suddenly, she saw herself through his eyes, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. A weeping, hysterical woman knocking back double scotches and losing control of herself in front of a roomful of people was in no position to take out her misery on the one person who’d shown her compassion. “I was left at the altar,” she confessed, the very act of speaking the words aloud leaving her hollow with pain.

“When?”

The sneaking suspicion that she owed her savior something more than the bare bones she’d so far offered overcame her earlier reticence. “This morning.”

“Oh, boy!” He whistled through his teeth. “Small wonder you’re such a mess.”

“Perhaps, but that doesn’t entitle me to be rude to you, or to intrude on your time. I’m sure your plans for the evening didn’t involve playing nursemaid to a jilted bride.” She squared her shoulders and did her best to project the image of a woman in control and well able to stand on her own two feet which, considering her recent bout of weeping, was a lost cause from the outset. “Please don’t feel you have to stay out here with me. I’ll be perfectly all right by myself,” she said, her voice wobbling dangerously.

“Garbage!” he declared flatly. “You’ve been dumped on what should be the happiest day of your life, and you shouldn’t be alone. Surely there’s someone who could be here with you—a friend, or a family member?”

“No! I don’t want…people to…know where I am.”

He stepped back and searched her face incredulously. “Are you saying that after being stood up at the altar and left emotionally distraught, you just disappeared without a word to anyone?”

“That’s right.” She returned his gaze defiantly.

“What about your relatives and friends? They must be worried out of their minds. Or didn’t that strike you as important?”

The censure in his voice stirred her to an unwelcome guilt which, in turn, put her once again on the defensive. “What would you have done in my place? Invite all the guests to the reception and have it turn into a wake with them all commiserating with the forlorn bride?”

He rolled his eyes. “Cripes, do you always go overboard like this? Couldn’t you have found a happy medium and shown some consideration for your family’s feelings? They’re probably beside themselves with concern for you.”

“If you only knew…!” she began, then clamped her mouth shut and turned away from him because, even if she tried to explain, he’d just think she was trying to milk her situation for more sympathy than he had to spare. And to be fair, how could a stranger be expected to understand the hopes and expectations her family had pinned on her marriage to one of the city’s wealthiest financiers?

“We’ll finally be accepted where we belong,” her mother had crowed to her father. “Doors will open, you’ll see! We’ll be rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. Mark will give our son a position in the firm, something appropriate for a young man of Glen’s ability. And with a few words dropped in the right ear, Amber’s career will be made overnight.”

“He’s marrying Jenna, not the whole family,” her father had tried to point out. “Mark doesn’t owe the rest of us any favors.”

But her mother had been undeterred. “Why not, when he can so easily afford them?”