When Honey Got Married (20 page)

His
intention
had been to get her alone and thank her for being such a gutsy little thing. To make sure she knew that she’d shown him, a guy who’d had more chances, more opportunities, more options than she’d ever been given, how to take charge of his own life.

If she hadn’t have left that night, if he hadn’t
made
himself let her do what she had to do, he might be heading up property development giant Delacroix Development to that day. And Building Blocks—the business he’d created from scratch that gave him such joy, such pride, and the belief that he finally deserved the good things that life gave him—might never have been.

Watching her laugh, her head thrown back to release that boisterously joyous sound, he found himself remembering the first time he’d seen her.

It had been the Fourth of July picnic, his first summer home from college. He’d been restless at school, even more restless about coming home, the future at Delacroix Development looming ever closer along with the impending sense that his life was hurtling down a path he didn’t want.

Hands in pockets, forehead by then in a near permanent scowl, he’d ambled down to the park to find his family, not sure how he was going to pull off a smile, when he’d heard a squeal of pure delight. He’d lifted his head, the summer breeze catching his hair, and bringing with it the scent of ketchup and mustard and blistered sausages. And the sound of female laughter, wild and free.

His eyes had followed the sound to find a girl, a couple of years younger than him, skinny in frayed jeans and a Bellefleur high T-shirt, dark hair flying, glinting hazel eyes bright, by then nearly screaming as she caught a football while Brent came at her like a Mack truck.

She’d swerved, ducked, and Brent, the Pirates’ first string left tackle, had missed her by an inch. She’d passed off, commando-crawled away, scrambled to her feet, then beckoned Brent with a fearlessness that had gripped Griff like nothing had gripped him in a long time.

This was the most unfettered person he’d ever laid eyes on. He could see it in every loose movement. Every hungry glance. And as someone with so many things anchoring him to the place, he was jealous and enthralled from that first second. He hadn’t even realized he was jogging toward the makeshift field until Brent had caught the girl, whipped her around, and planted a kiss on her laughing mouth that showed the town, and Griff, the girl belonged to him.

Griff rolled his shoulders. He’d been eighteen at the time. Pippa sixteen at most. He’d tried real hard to convince himself back then that she was young, too young, too flighty, too free. It had been the only way he’d survived it.

That Fourth of July, Brent had looked up and seen him, called his name, gestured him over to meet his girl. And Griff knew girls. It was the one thing that had come easy in his life that he’d never had a problem with. And when Griff’s eyes had slid to Pippa’s, the tilt of her chin, the straightening of her shoulders, hadn’t been able to hide the way her pupils had darkened, all for him.

While Brent had grinned and looked at her like a lovesick puppy, sparks had arced like Fourth of July fireworks between Griff and his little brother’s girl.

He’d started dating Debbie Camden that same day, and a different girl every holiday he’d come home. As if that might temper the flare in Pippa Montgomery’s soulful hazel eyes. Or the heavy tug in his own gut every time he thought of her.

It hadn’t made a lick of difference.

Neither, it seemed, had a decade apart.

The kiss in the kitchen all those years before wasn’t a fluke. The kiss in the hall upstairs had been incendiary. Every time he looked at her, touched her, thought of her, spoke to her, it was like a chemical reaction went off inside him.

A decade ago, she hadn’t been his to want, and it had had precious little to do with Brent. He’d had to let her go, needed for little Pippa Montgomery, with nobody to support her, nowhere to go, to make it out of there, to ignite his own emancipation.

Now she was single. He was single. They were grown-ups. He was free. And he wanted more.

He wanted Pippa.

So what the hell was he doing letting her dance with other men?

He pressed his feet into the floor, not allowing himself to take a single step. Because every time he’d caught her since that day, she’d
still
somehow managed to slip away.

She’d left Brent to forge her own life. He got that. But her mother had been a serial runner. What if Pippa had gotten the taste for it? What if she’d gotten good at it? What if it was in the blood?

He’d worked hard to start his own business, because his blood, Delacroix blood, meant something to him too - Delacroixes didn’t know how to fail. Meaning that he’d never had to actually chase anything his whole life.

If she ran, how far would be really be willing to chase her?

Chapter Six

Pippa was half-relieved, half-disappointed to find herself at a table in the reception tent a ways away from Griff’s.

Griff was near the front with his parents and Judge and Mrs. Moreau, while Pippa was at a table of singles, all from Bellefleur High—Go Pirates!—including a couple of ex-football players who insisted on singing a gin-soaked version of the school fight song every time Brent’s name was mentioned.

It would have been annoying, except she felt a tad sorry for one of the guys who had eyes for Eve Fortescue, a girl from a year behind them who was clearly smitten with Griff’s cousin Rainer. Even to Pippa’s inexpert eye, the feeling was mutual. Rainer seemed to enjoy turning Eve pink from head to toe by whispering in her ear about something that had her eyes widening as she gazed in wonder at Honey’s aunt Opaline.

When, during the speeches, Pippa realized she was poking at the remnants of her dessert, a crème brûlée with hazelnut gelato that the insanely talented chef Beau Vaughn—another Bellefleur High guy—had served up, she put down her spoon and rubbed at her eyes. Driving much of the night—after kicking off a fund-raising sleepover at the middle school in Austin, Texas, the evening before—too much champagne, catching up with so many old friends, and getting the monkey off her back had finally caught up with her. She felt like she could fall asleep where she sat.

And then every time she looked across the room and caught Griff watching her, she felt like she could go on all night. But then what? He’d go back to Boston, she’d meander her way back to LA. And all the regret she’d spent the day releasing would be replaced by a whole new batch.

A batch she honestly thought might be harder to negate than the first. Either way, she knew she needed to get some cold water on her face and fast.

When Aunt Opaline headed into the fifth stanza of the poem she’d written especially for the happy couple, Pippa pushed back her chair and, grabbing her purse, eased away from the table.

As she made to sneak out, like a moth to a flame, her gaze was drawn to Griff’s table. And as if he’d sensed that she’d hadn’t quite decided whether to find said water elsewhere in the house or elsewhere in the state, he stood as well. He raised an eyebrow in question.

Whatever she might have mimed in response was drowned out by Vance Tyler, the emcee. “Aunt Opaline, folks! So unless anyone else has some words for the bride and groom…?”

And that’s when Pippa found herself blinded by a spotlight.

“Pippa Montgomery, ladies and gents!” the emcee said. “Get her a microphone.”

When one of the younger cousins shoved a microphone at her, Pippa took it in self-defense so as not to end up with the thing up her nose. She made to shove it right back, but that’s when she saw Honey, leaning forward, expectation written all over her face.

Honey was the kind of girl who could have been friends with anyone. The kind of girl who’d spotted a new girl whose mother had morals as loose as duck’s skin in winter, and taken her under her powerful wing. A girl who’d apparently had a crush on Brent as long as she could remember, who’d been nothing but supportive when Brent had asked Pippa out. A girl who’d created a wedding enough for ten brides and who’d looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown for much of the evening. Just the kind of kind, loving, hopeful person Pippa hoped to unearth from inside of herself every time she wrote a
P.S.
blog. And most of all, a friend Pippa should have never left behind.

As Pippa lifted the mic to her mouth, she glanced across the tent to find Griff, hoping to get a shot of the confidence she felt when she saw herself through his eyes. But the spotlight was too bright in her eyes to see much of anything. So after the feedback settled, reverting southern, she said, “Hey y’all. Um, okay. So, those of you who remember me from Honey and Brent’s high school days would know that the two people sitting up there I once knew very well. In fact for much of my time in these parts they were my family.”

Honey’s hand went to her mouth, her eyes glistening, and Pippa suddenly found herself trying to hold herself together.

“Watching them together today, seeing the adoration in Honey’s eyes, the felicitousness and care in Brent’s every touch, well, it’s given even me hope. Hope that true love is really out there for those willing to open up to it. For those as intrepid and deserving as the two of them.”

Her words weren’t unique under the circumstances, but as Brent’s hand curled around his new bride’s and held it tight, they rang wretchedly true. Love, trust, and support buffeted Pippa in waves, and it was all she could not to choke on the swell of emotion swirling about inside of her.

The image of Griff slammed into her head, all six feet four inches of him in all his big, buff glory. She was totally in lust with him. Had been for forever. And he’d admitted he had the hots for her. But if, even for a second, she pretended what she and Griff felt for each other was even a fraction of what Honey and Brent felt, it’d make her a bigger fraud than she’d ever imagined possible.

She somehow found enough blood in her suddenly cold and shaky arms to find her glass of champagne and lift it high. “To the bride and groom, love to you both.”

As the crowd stood and toasted and spoons began clinking against glasses, Pippa grabbed her sparkly purse, turned, and headed for the opening of the tent, tears of exhaustion and hopelessness filling her eyes until she was walking, then running, through a blur.

She got as far as the steps leading up to the house when a hand clamped around her elbow. She didn’t need to turn to know it was Griff.

“Now what?”

He flinched at the volume of her voice, then looking around, drew her back down the stairs and along the side of the house into the garden of perfectly tended roses that masked the entry to a maze of sharp clipped hedges.

Once they’d gone several twists and turns, and found themselves in near darkness, Griff asked, “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“What does it matter? I’ve done everything I came here to do, and now it’s time for me to leave.”

“Who says you’ve done everything you came here to do?”

Pippa’s mouth popped open at the raw insinuation in his voice. But she was too tired, too emotionally wrung out by what she’d realized under the spotlight. She stuck her hand on her hip and glared at him. “Are you suggesting I can’t leave because I’ve yet to
do
you
?”

She couldn’t see his face. Moonlight rained down on the back of his head, his shoulders blocking out any ambient light reflecting off the big white house behind him. His eyes were dark circles above his now-rigid jaw.

“You can’t scare me away, Pip,” he said, his voice now eerily calm. “Brent might have wanted to smooth out your sass, but I like it just fine. In fact, it’s a good part of the reason I’ve never been able to get you out of my mind. From the day we first met to right now.”

Pippa shrugged—at least, she tried, but with his hands burning prints into her upper arms, his face all slicing shadows, the scent of him clawing at the deepest darkest parts of her desire, it came out as more of a sway in his direction. “Please. I can’t even remember when we first met.”

“Liar.”

She felt his smile even as she couldn’t see it, and it felt way more dangerous than his ire. Especially when he was dead right.

Great. She was a fraud
and
a liar.

“I was two years older,” he said, “a hell of a lot more experienced, home from college, twice your size, and that day you gave me this look that said, ‘I’ve heard all about you, boyo, and I for one am not impressed.’”

Pippa swallowed, but her mouth was now dry as sand. Drier still when his hands moved down her arms to cup her elbows. He stepped closer until she met with a hedge, the branches prickling against her bare back, making her curve into him.

Even so, she tilted her chin as she said, “Ever thought that maybe you weren’t that impressive?”

At that, Griff laughed out loud. His head thrown back, his face catching the moonlight. All angled cheeks and curving lips and eyes like a stormy summer sky.

She must have whimpered at the delectable sight, as Griff’s laughter stopped. He breathed deeply. Then with a groan that sounded exactly as frustrated and confused and aroused as she felt, he crushed his lips to hers.

She tried fighting it this time. Truly she did. She was pissed at him for being so sure of himself. So sure of her. But this was
Griff
, and the heat swelling through her like a wave of lava destroyed every remaining denial in its wake.

She threw her arms around his neck, pressed her whole self along his, and opened her mouth to him. His tongue swept inside, tracing her teeth, tangling with her tongue, driving her plum crazy.

Desperate for him, and for even the hint of something real and warm and true, she slid her hands beneath his jacket, shucking it from his back to gather at his elbows. Then her fingers were at his tie, tugging it free. At his shirt buttons, liberating them until his shirt lay open, revealing an expanse of hot male skin. Of Griff, all toned and muscled from years of football. Leaned down with a few random scars from years of building houses, and not from afar as it could have been, but with his own bare hands. Good God, she’d never thought the man could get any hotter. Turned out, for her, self-sufficiency was a hot button.

She traced her fingers over his chest, then splayed them flat to explore his ribs, her nails scraping down the arrow of dark hair that curled about his navel before disappearing south. Reveling in the way he flinched, flexed, his muscles at her command.

Until he tangled one hand in her hair, slid the other to her backside and pulled her to him, and kissed her until she thought she was going to pass out.

Her skin was so sensitized she had to bite her lip to stop from calling out as he kissed his way down her neck, his hand finding the bow at the back of her neck, sliding it open with a single tug as if he had magic in his fingers. And then his mouth was over her breast, drawing it in as though he couldn’t get enough. He gathered her acres of skirt with his talented hand before cupping between her legs, his gifted thumb sliding along the seam of her panties.

Soaking up every sensation, opening herself to him as she’d fantasized a million times over, she gripped his hair, his shoulders, anything she could so as not to crumble to the grass.

Which turned out didn’t matter as all too soon there they were, his jacket sweetly tucked beneath her head, the man of her dreams poised over her, an ever sweeter ache pouring through her as his thick hardness nudged against her, as if he waited upon her final acquiescence. As if he needed it.

All he’d ever had to do was ask.

She slid a hand behind his head, and he pressed inside her as his mouth took hers and smothered the cry as he filled her more fully than she’d ever known possible.

And okay, so she was impressed. By everything that was good and holy she was impressed! Hot skin, hot Griff, more, bigger, better, sending waves of pure pleasure rippling through her.

Heat spiraled into her center. Sensation tumbling and pressing and stretching and contracting. Then came a beautiful pinpoint of perfect silence before bliss rippled through her, and even Griff’s kisses weren’t enough to silence her. She wrapped her legs around him, wanting more, taking everything as his every muscle contracted and he found release inside her.

Pippa drifted slowly back to earth to feel a stick digging into her back and leaves crunching in her hair. Then the tinkle of laughing voices all too close brought her back to the present with a snap.

Her eyes found Griff’s. His hair was a gorgeous mess. His eyes wild. It was all she could do not to roll him over, straddle him and ride him until she screamed out his name. Again.

But he stood, slid his pants over his hips, then pulled her to her feet. His hands were gentle as he roped the ribbons behind her neck and tied the bow.

She buttoned Griff’s shirt. Found his jacket and flicked away the fresh-cut grass and bruised rose petals before holding it so that he could re-dress himself. Then before she could stop herself, she ran her hands through his hair, smoothing it down.

When he reciprocated, running his hands over her hair, pulling out a twig, then taking his time to add a curl at the end, the tenderness was almost her undoing.

She could have been forgiven for imagining a glimmer of love, trust, support in those gentle actions. But it was the occasion. Nothing more.

Because while their chemistry was potent, it wasn’t real. It was a moment in the moonlight. And if she was going to stop being a fraud, she was going to have to start trusting the voice she’d first heard in the peace and quiet all those years before.

“Pip,” Griff said, his voice ragged.

She said nothing, just tightened his tie.

“What you said in there,” he continued. “About being willing to open up to love. That was about me.”

Pippa let him go, ostensibly to tug a high heel from the damp grass, but also to begin the inevitable disentanglement. “It wasn’t about you, Griff. Or me. It was about them.”

“Pip—”

When he reached to cup her cheek, she shrank away. She couldn’t start thinking him tender. Or romantic. He was pragmatic, always had been. Leaving the family business behind to start one much more suited to him proved it. As did that long-ago night when he’d kissed her like he’d meant it, then drank his damn juice and wished her a safe trip.

“Pippa. Look at me.”

She took in a deep breath and did just that. Memorizing every angle, every inch of his beautiful face. Knowing she’d never regret being with him. With a man who managed to look at her like she was precious and brave all at once.

Then he surprised her by saying, “Thank you.”

“For?” she asked on a cough, wondering if she’d thought too soon.

His mouth kicked up sexily at one corner as he got her meaning. “For that too,” he said with a tilt to the grass, “but mostly for coming to Bellefleur. Back then. It changed us, Pippa. All of us. Showed us how to think beyond what we had, to what we really wanted. I hope in coming back you can see you’ve never been forgotten. That I never forgot you.”