The Wedding Date: A Christmas Novella (13 page)

He hated to rush, it went against his nature, but he moved faster than he usually did. Even so, what with the traffic, by the time he parked his truck and went through all the rigmarole to get to his terminal, the plane had already boarded and they were preparing to detach the Jetway.

Though he was in no frame of mind for it, he forced himself to dazzle and cajole the pretty girl at the gate into letting him pass, then settled back into his black mood as he walked down the Jetway. Well, at least he wouldn’t be squished into coach with his knees up his nose all the way to Paris. He’d sprung for first class and he intended to make the most of it. Starting with a double shot of Jack Daniel’s.

“Tyrell Brown, can’t you move any faster than that? I got a planeful of people waiting on you.”

Despite his misery, he broke out in a grin at the silver-haired woman glaring at him from the airplane door. “Loretta, honey, you working this flight? How’d I get so lucky?”

She rolled her eyes. “Spare me the sweet talk and move your ass.” She waved away the ticket he held out. “I don’t need that. There’s only one seat left on the whole dang airplane. Why it has to be in my section, I’ll be asking the good Lord next Sunday.”

He dropped a kiss on her cheek. She swatted his arm. “Don’t make me tell your mama on you.” She gave him a little shove down the aisle. “I talked to her just last week and she said you haven’t called her in a month. What kind of ungrateful boy are you, anyway? After she gave you the best years of her life.”

Loretta was his mama’s best friend, and she was like family. She’d been needling him since he was a toddler, and was one of the few people immune to his charm. She pointed at the only empty seat. “Sit your butt down and buckle up so we can get this bird in the air.”

Ty had reserved the window seat, but it was already taken, leaving him the aisle. He might have objected if the occupant hadn’t been a woman. But again, Texas courtesy required him to suck it up, so he did, keeping one eye on her as he stuffed his bag in the overhead.

She was leaning forward, rummaging in the carry-on between her feet, and hadn’t seen him yet, which gave him a chance to check her out.

Dressed for travel in a sleek black tank top and yoga pants, she was slender, about five-foot-six, a hundred and twenty pounds, if he was any judge. Her arms and shoulders were tanned and toned as an athlete’s, and her long blond hair was perfectly straight, falling forward like a curtain around a face that he was starting to hope lived up to the rest of her.

Things are looking up
, he thought.
Maybe this won’t be one of the worst days of my life after all.

Then she looked up at him. The bitch on wheels.

He took it like a fist in the face, spun on his heel, and ran smack into Loretta.

“For God’s sake, Ty, what’s wrong with you!”

“I need a different seat.”

“Why?”

“Who cares why. I just do.” He slewed a look around the first-class cabin. “Switch me with somebody.”

She set her fists on her hips, and in a low but deadly voice, said, “No, I will not switch you. These folks are all in pairs and they’re settled in, looking forward to their dinner and a good night’s sleep, which is why they’re paying through the nose for first class. I’m not asking them to move. And neither are you.”

It
would
be Loretta, the only person on earth he couldn’t sweet-talk. “Then switch me with someone from coach.”

Now she crossed her arms. “You don’t want me to do that.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t and I’ll tell you why. Because it’s a weird request. And when a passenger makes a weird request, I’m obliged to report it to the captain. The captain’s obliged to report it to the tower. The tower notifies the marshals, and next thing you know, you’re bent over with a finger up your butt checking for C–4.” She cocked her head to one side. “Now, do you really want that?”

He really didn’t. “Sheeee-iiiiit,” he squeezed out between his teeth. He looked over his shoulder at the bitch on wheels. She had her nose in a book, ignoring him.

Fourteen hours was a long time to sit next to someone you wanted to strangle. But it was that or get off the plane, and he couldn’t miss the wedding.

He cast a last bitter look at Loretta. “I want a Jack Daniel’s every fifteen minutes till I pass out. You keep ’em coming, you hear?”

Be sure to watch for

THE WEDDING VOW

the second novel in the
Save the Date
series by

CARA CONNELLY!

Available from Avon Impulse in Fall 2014!

F
IVE YEARS AGO,
as a bloodthirsty young prosecutor, Madeline St. Clair damn near took down Adam LeCroix for lifting a Renoir out from under half a dozen armed guards. That’s a brush with justice that the billionaire playboy can’t forgive or forget.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Adam’s favorite—and legally acquired—Monet has been heisted from his Portofino mansion, and the insurance company, citing his questionable past, refuses to pay up. So Adam hunts down Maddie, now an associate at a high-dollar law firm, and gives her an ultimatum—work for him against the insurance company, or he’ll use his influence to make sure she doesn’t work at all.

Maddie would rather chew glass than work for Adam, but as he draws her deeper into his life, Maddie learns there’s a heart hiding under the sexy villain’s hard-ass veneer. Is there a chance the law-and-order lawyer and the fast-and-loose felon can put the past behind them and write their own wedding vow?

Read on for a sneak peek at

THE WEDDING VOW

An Excerpt from

THE WEDDING VOW

S
IX THOUSAND EIGHT
hundred dollars and ninety-eight cents.

Maddie let the bill flutter to her desk, where it settled like a leaf between her elbows. She dropped her head into her hands.

Lucille, her lovable, irresponsible, artistic sister, wanted to do a semester in Italy, studying the great masters.

Well, hell, who wouldn’t? The problem was, Lucy’s private college tuition was already stretching Maddie to the max. The extra expense of a semester abroad meant dipping into—no, wiping out—her meager emergency fund.

Still, considering all they’d been through, Lucy’s carefree spirit was nothing short of a miracle. If keeping that miracle alive meant slaving more hours at her desk, Maddie would make it work somehow.

Knuckles rapped sharply on her office door—Adrianna Marchand’s signature staccato. Maddie slid a file on top of the bill as Adrianna strode in.

“Madeline. South conference room. Now.” Adrianna scraped an eye over Maddie’s hair and makeup, her sleeveless blouse. “Full armor.”

Maddie shook her head. “Take Randall. I’m due in court in two hours and I’m still not up to speed on this case.” Insurance defense might be the most boring legal work in the world, but it was also complex, and she was buried. She waved an arm at the boxes stacked on her cherry coffee table, the hundred case files that marched the length of her leather sofa. “Remember how you dumped all of Vicky’s cases on me after you
fired her for no reason
?”

Adrianna iced over. “
No one’s
job is guaranteed at this firm.”

Maddie glared, unwilling to show fear. But she was outclassed and she knew it. Adrianna’s stare could freeze the fires of hell, and as one of Marchand, Riley, and White’s founding partners, she could, and would, fire Maddie’s ass if she pushed back too hard.

“Fine, whatever.” Kicking off her fuzzy slippers and shoving her feet into the red Jimmy Choos she kept under her desk, Maddie whipped the jacket of her black silk Armani suit off the back of her chair and punched her fists through the sleeves. Then she spread her arms. “Full armor. Satisfied?”

“Touch up your makeup.”

Rolling her eyes, Maddie dug a compact out of her purse, brushed some color onto her pale cheeks, hit her lips with some gloss. Then she poked her fingers into her caramel hair to give it some lift. She wore it spiked, like her heels, to make herself look taller, but at a petite five feet she was still a shrimp.

Adrianna nodded once, then charged out the door, setting a brisk pace down the carpeted hallway. “Step on it. We’ve kept your new client waiting too long.”

Maddie had to trot to keep up. “
My
new client? Because I don’t have enough work?”

“He requested you specifically. He says you’re acquainted.”

“Well, who is he?”

“He wants to surprise you.” Adrianna’s dry tone made it clear she wasn’t kidding.

Before Maddie could respond to that ridiculous statement, Adrianna tapped politely on the conference room door, then gently pushed it open.

Meant for large meetings with important clients, the room was designed to impress, with Oriental carpets covering the hardwoods, and original landscapes by notable artists gracing the walls. But it was the long cherry table that really set the tone. Polished to a gleam and surrounded by posh leather chairs, it spelled confidence, professionalism, and prosperity.

Bring us your problem
, that table said,
and we will solve it without breaking a sweat.

And if the room and the table weren’t enough to convince a prospective client that Marchand, Riley, and White were all that, then the million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline through the forty-foot-wide glass wall would drive the point home. Who could argue with that kind of success?

Now Maddie’s new client stood gazing out at that view, his back to the door, one hand in the pocket of his expensively cut trousers, the other holding a sleek cell phone to his ear.

Through that phone, Maddie heard a woman’s tinkling laughter. He responded in rapid Italian. Not that Maddie understood a word of it. Her Italian began and ended with ordering risotto in Little Italy. But she’d had a short fling with a gorgeous Italian waiter, and she recognized the rhythm of the language. It was the sound of sweaty sex.

Clearing her throat to announce their presence earned her a wintry glance from Adrianna. But the man ignored them utterly. Maddie crossed her arms and looked him up and down with an affronted eye.

He was tall, over six feet, and she put his weight at a lean one-ninety. Broad through the shoulders, narrow at the hips, he bore himself like an athlete, graceful and relaxed—as if he wasn’t standing six scant inches from thin air, sixty stories above Fifth Avenue.

Though he claimed to know her, she couldn’t place him by the sliver of his face reflected in the glass, or by the sleek, black hair curling over his collar, too long for Wall Street, not long enough for the Italian soccer team.

Everything about him—his clothes, his bearing, his flagrant arrogance—screamed rich, confident, and entitled.

He must be mistaken about her, she decided, because she honestly didn’t know anyone like him. And given his casual assumption that his time was more important than theirs, she didn’t want to.

She held it together for as long as she could, tapping her foot, biting her tongue, but as the grandfather clock in the corner ticked into the fifth long minute of silent subservience, her patience ran out. She uncrossed her arms and reached for the doorknob. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

Adrianna’s hand shot out and clamped her arm. “Suck it up, Madeline,” she gritted through her teeth.

“Why should I? Why should
you
?” Under normal circumstances, Adrianna had zero tolerance for disrespect, so why was she putting up with this guy’s bullshit?

Flinging a resentful look at the mystery man, she didn’t bother to lower her voice. “This guy doesn’t know me. Because seriously, if he did, he’d know I won’t stand here burning daylight while he talks dirty to his girlfriend.”

“Oh yes you will,” Adrianna hissed. She released Maddie’s arm, but caught her eyes. “You’ll stand on your head if he says so. He could mean
millions
for this firm.”

The man in question chose that moment to end his call. Casually, unhurriedly, he slipped the phone in his pocket. Then he turned to face them.

Maddie’s heart stopped. Her lips went icy.

Adrianna started to speak but he cut her off, his vaguely European accent smoothing the edge from his words. “Thank you, Adrianna. Now give us the room.”

Without a word, Adrianna nodded once and left them alone, closing the door softly behind her.

His complete attention came to rest on Maddie, a laser beam disguised as cool condescension. Her blood, which had gone cold, now boiled up in response, pounding her temples, hammering out a beat called Unresolved Fury, Frustrated Objectives, Justice Denied.

“You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “How dare you claim an acquaintance with me?”

He smiled, a deceptively charming curve of the lips meant to distract the unwary from eyes so intensely blue and so penetratingly sharp that they might otherwise reveal him as the diabolical felon he was.

“Ms. St. Clair.” Her name sounded faintly exotic on his tongue. “Surely you don’t deny that we know each other.”

“Oh, I know you, Adam LeCroix. I know you should be doing ten to fifteen in Leavenworth.”

His lips curved another half inch, past charming, to amused. “And I know you. I know that if you’d taken me to trial, you’d have done an excellent job of it. But”—he shrugged slightly—“both of us know that no jury would have convicted me.”

“Still so cocky,” she simmered. “And so fucking guilty.”

A
DAM HELD BACK
a laugh. Madeline St. Clair might be tiny enough to fit in his pocket, but she had the grit of a two-hundred-pound cage fighter.

When he’d last seen her five years ago, she was a bloodthirsty young prosecutor, spitting nails as her then-boss, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York—who had his eyes on higher office—shook Adam’s hand and apologized for letting the case against him go as far as it had.

Playing magnanimous, Adam had nodded gravely, said all the right things about public servants simply doing their jobs, and with a wave for the news cameras, disappeared into his limousine.