The Unwilling Bride (8 page)

Out this story spilled, so fast that Stefan had trouble following. It seemed that when the three Stanford sisters were growing up, Abby and Gwen had been as good as gold. Not Paige. She claimed she drove her parents nuts worrying about her. She’d been a rebel, a troublemaker, a daredevil.

In high school, she’d worn short skirts and tight sweaters and enough makeup to financially support the mascara industry. Stefan was unsure of the mascara word, but he picked up the drift. She was ashamed of this girl she had been. And it shamed her to tell him this story—yet she persisted. There’d been no end to the trouble she volunteered for. She flirted with all the boys, stayed out late, skipped school, guzzled beer, indulged in crazy pranks. She was Ms. Cool. The leader of the wild pack. And the boys lined up to go out with her.

“There was a reason for my so-called popularity,” she admitted painfully. “I knew exactly what the boys thought. They were real sure I was the kind of girl who’d put out—”

“Put out?”

Her eyes dropped, and seemed to fixate on his shoulder. “Put out means to sleep with, to have sex with. The boys assumed because I was the wildest girl in school that I must be easy. And I didn’t do anything to correct that reputation, even though it wasn’t true. The point was…I liked the attention. I liked the boys chasing me. I loved that whole kick of hormones, loved that I could attract them.”

When she ran out of breath for a second, Stefan unscrewed the thermos and poured her a cupful of wine. She drained the whole cup in big gulps, but the wine neither seemed to calm nor slow her down. She went on.

“There was a boy named Johnny, who trailed after me as faithfully as a hound. He just wasn’t cool enough for me to go out with, Stefan—and if that sounds insensitive and cruel, all I can tell you is that that’s how I was then. So Johnny decided to do something real wild to catch my attention. One Saturday night, around two in the morning, he slugged down a six-pack and gunned his dad’s Chevy going down Main Street. Only he wrapped himself around a lamppost. And he died.”

Stefan’s heart slowed way down. He couldn’t stop looking at her face. Snowflakes landed on her cheeks, her chin, and her eyes were glistening from the cold, but beneath that, her skin looked so pale. And her expression, so fragile. It cost her to confess this whole traumatic tale, and from the look in her eyes, she seemed positive that this story would completely change his opinion of her.

It
did
change things, but not, perhaps, the way she intended. All along, he’d sensed she was afraid of something. But all along, he’d thought it was something
about him that worried her, not that she had some burden chewing like a raw sore on her soul. “And you have blamed yourself for this, lambchop?” he asked quietly.

“I didn’t make him drink the beer. I didn’t make him race the car. And believe me, I had no idea what he intended to do. But yeah…I blamed myself.”

She met his eyes with painful honesty. “I let hormones rule my whole life when I was teenager. Maybe the accident would never have happened if I hadn’t been so insensitive, so blind to that boy’s feelings. And I turned myself around from that girl I used to be, Stefan. I wanted to do that, needed to do that, but the thing is…I really
did
change. I’d make a terrible
‘lyubeesh’
for you. Trust me. There’s a good chance I’d bore a lover to death. I’m a dead-serious lady these days. Discipline and control are really important to me—”

“Important to you to be straight-arrow now,” he interjected, remembering when she had brought up that phrase before.

“Yes. It is.”

“Love is…messy. You let leopard out of bag, and who knows? Could be chaos. Could be out of control. Could be hurt. I know chaos theory well. Mathematical nightmare.”

“You understand,” she said. He could hardly miss her huge exhaled sigh of relief.

“Am very glad you explained. Understand many, many things much better now.” No snowflake landed on her cheek at that instant, but he pretended one did. It gave him the excuse to brush the pad of his thumb across her soft, soft skin. “But we would not throw the whole world into chaos, I think, by going on a
sleigh ride. Have fun, laugh together, few minutes sleigh ride…these are little things. No risking any of that nasty chaos that I can see.”

She chuckled, a little nervously, but her smile was real. “You’re right. Let’s go for it,” she said lightly.

He instantly clicked the reins. As if Willie Nelson had only been waiting for permission, the frisky Belgian took off. Perhaps Stefan had sharpened the runner blades a little too well, because they skimmed the glazed snow surface at luge speeds.

Her yard disappeared from sight, then his, and that was the last of the view of civilized buildings. Snow pelted down. The bells jangled faster than rock ‘n’ roll. Wind burned their cheeks like fire. They headed for an open meadow, where the whole snowy landscape looked diamond-dipped and blinding bright. Beneath the snow, though, no matter how thick the layers, Vermont seemed to hide a lot of stones. The sleigh teetered once. Then again.

Stefan figured he’d better take charge and slow down Willie Nelson before the sleigh overturned and tossed them both…but then Paige laughed.

Really laughed. As he’d never heard her laugh before. Maybe she’d been in no mood for laughter minutes before, but the peel of a throaty female chuckle escaped from her. That chuckle helplessly escalated into a carefree, outright, can’t-help-it-if-I-feel-joyful belly laugh. She was
happy
…and loving this ride.

To hell with whether the sleigh overturned. Stefan gave Willie Nelson free rein. They flew over the field on dancing wings, racing, chasing, the snow coming down in bushels now and blanketing their hats and shoulders with white. A stand of pines with a silverrunning creek loomed ahead. Willie needed a rest,
whether he realized it or not, and when Stefan finally pulled up the reins, both animals and humans were exhilarated and breathless.

He let out a roar of exuberant laughter for the sheer joy of it. And so did she.

“That was insane and crazy,” she said.

“Insane and crazy…and good fun.”

“Great
fun,” She corrected him with another grin. She looked at him, her eyes full of light and laughter, snowflakes melting in her hair, her face so damn beautiful he just wanted to look at it. And look some more. Too soon, though, way too soon, her smile faded. “Stefan-”

She was worrying about chaos again, he suspected. She was worrying about a boy named Johnny from a long time ago. And he felt unsure exactly what that whole convoluted story meant to her, but he was pretty sure about some of the highlights. Somehow his lady had convinced herself that some terrible, reprehensible hell would break loose if she dared let go of her emotions.

He pushed her hat off, framed her face between his gloved hands and kissed her. The kiss was not meant to reassure her. He could not. What she feared was a probable risk. All hell broke loose when he kissed her. And the chaos loomed as a guaranteed threat whenever she kissed him back.

Their lips met, clung, heated. Bodies warmed to tropical temperatures. Willie Nelson, perhaps suddenly realizing the damn fool Russian had finally dropped his guard, tried a couple of dance steps forward, and when no one yanked his reins, took off at at a fox-trot.

Stefan didn’t give a damn. It seemed all he could give her was exactly what she was afraid of. Risk. Of the most monumental kind. But her self-perception, this perceived need of hers to be a button-down straight arrow, was both wrong and crippling to the woman he had come to know. His lover was so painfully full of emotion. So exquisitely full of passion. So beautiful—so giving, so caring and sensitive, and so full of love. She tasted like mulled wine and snowflakes. She tasted like desire. She tasted like a woman who could drive him straight to the cliff of chaos—and tip him off for the sheer feminine pleasure of it.

The sleigh teetered. His hand groped blindly for the reins. She had her arms around his neck at that moment, and he wasn’t about to sever a kiss just because their lives were in imminent peril. When Paige was feeling high and heady and wild on her feminine powers, life and death issues seemed pretty paltry.

“Whoa,” Paige whispered.

Willie Nelson, as if expecting the humans to finally come to their senses, slowed up.

“Whoa,” Paige said again.

The Belgian tossed his head on the snort of a sigh, gave in and stopped.

She wasn’t talking to the horse. Her eyes were on his. Luminous, dark, dazed eyes, with the truth reflected in them like a mirror. It was herself she was trying to “whoa.” Not him.

He was not the enemy she feared. Stefan would have willingly slayed dragons for her, but he had no idea how to slay a dragon that was locked, padlocked-tight, in her own heart.

N
o saint could feel more self-righteous. When Paige pulled into her driveway, she’d leveled her entire rotten chore list—gas, groceries, drugstore; she’d express-mailed an order of cameos to Harry and hit the bank. She’d even fed the bank some money before she was overdrawn.

Carrying packages, she hustled inside and peeled off her jacket, ignoring the bills on the counter—she’d been virtuous for about as long as she could stand—and aimed straight for the refrigerator. She’d missed lunch, and her stomach was growling like a restless bear. She had in mind a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

As quickly as she opened the refrigerator door, she saw the Raspberry Fool concoction on the first shelf. Stefan had brought it over on Monday, told her it was
made with raspberries, sugar, cream and a splash of rum. There was—maybe—two bites of it left.

On the second shelf was the gift he’d carted over on Tuesday. With the devil’s own grin, he claimed the recipe was called Cream and Sugar Slave, and the ingredients in
that
temptation were vanilla, sour cream, dark brown sugar and real cream, all heaped on top with a mound of fresh blueberries. There was—maybe —two slices of that one left.

Yesterday he’d brought over the White Chocolate Passion Fruit Mousse. She didn’t know what all was in it. She didn’t want to know. It was beyond decadence. It could drive a nun to sin. And no, she hadn’t been able to resist that, either.

Paige slammed the refrigerator door closed, no longer in any mood for peanut butter. No longer in any mood for anything.

The man was a menace to her health.

She glanced at the kitchen clock. It was just past one. Plenty of time to get a couple of hours work in before the Russian Menace popped over for
Star Trek—and
did something new and dangerous to destroy her life
that
day.

She hustled upstairs to change into working clothes, thinking that she needed to do something about that man. Something soon. Something effective.

The trick was knowing
what.

In her bedroom, she peeled off her town jeans and dived into a skinny sweater and overalls. She was just reaching for socks when her elbow bumped a heap of things on the dresser. A linen pillowcase slipped to the carpet, revealing the jade cameo. She’d almost forgotten covering the cameo in a fit of aggravation, but she easily remembered why she’d done it now. The
jade woman glowed in the pale afternoon light, invoking the same uneasy, disturbing feelings she had from the start.

It was past time she dealt with that problem.

Impatiently, determinedly, Paige turned the cameo woman to face the dresser mirror, then hunched over the mirror herself and studied both. Heaven knew why she hadn’t done it before. The comparison factor was immediately and enormously reassuring. She was nothing like that wanton, sensual woods nymph. Her braid was comfortingly, familiarly skewed, with messy tendrils escaping all over the place; her face was clean, no show-off makeup; and her clothes were practical old friends. She looked exactly what she was. A worker. A serious person. A plain old sturdy, responsible woman…leaning toward the dull, ordinary side.

And dammit, she’d
told
Stefan. Told him that whole shaming story about Johnny, just so he would know that she had done things she was ashamed of, things that should have made him doubt her character. God knows, she did. And she’d been honest with him about being pit-rotten lover material.

She just wasn’t the type, not anymore, to entice a guy or blithely throw caution to the wind. It wasn’t sex that was the problem. Or having an affair, or falling in love. It was just that there had to be rules. She had to be in control. That was one of the rules. It had taken her years—long years—to build up a mountain of repressive inhibitions, and she was well aware that most men hardly appreciated those ingredients in a lover. Somewhere out there, she kept thinking that there had to be some men who were handily, happily repressed, too.

Stefan wasn’t one of them.

Stefan probably couldn’t define “inhibition” with a Russian dictionary, if his life depended on it.

Paige slugged her hands into her overall pockets and hiked downstairs toward her workroom. Every embrace they’d shared clung in her mind in technicolor; every word replayed in stereo. All those memories shook her up. But he’d kissed her on that crazy sleigh ride as if he never noticed she was shook up. He’d kissed her as if she were the only woman on his planet, and then he came bearing presents. And more presents. He was more underfoot than a new puppy.

Stefan was lonely. And he was going to move on. It was only for a temporary period that he needed someone, and she was handy. Any minute now, he’d come to his senses and realize how impossibly different they were. She’d been straight and honest and completely herself with him. For that matter, he had made no pass since that winsome, wild afternoon on the sleigh, so maybe he
had
come to his senses.

Maybe he was just trying to tempt her beyond all sanity with desserts.

She closed the door on her workshop, switched on lights, opened her tool drawers and took out Gwen’s coral. The cameo was coming fast now, but even the slightest mistake at this point could ruin the whole piece. Forget him and concentrate, she told herself.

And she did. For a while. But some instinct made her glance at the clock when it was four. It was time for
Star Trek
to start, and he wasn’t here. There was a break, she told herself.

Except that he hadn’t shown up by four-thirty, either. Certainly there was no reason he
had
to show up for
Star Trek—
or for that matter, at all—but it was the first day he hadn’t. Her relief was enormous, and a
measure of how much dread-anticipation she’d been living on, never sure when he was going to show, what he was going to do. For the first afternoon in weeks, she could
really
work in peace.

But his absence started to itch on her nerves. He
always
showed up. What if he were sick? What if he’d fallen down the basement stairs in the old Jasper house and broken a leg and no one knew? What if he’d taken a chain saw to some firewood and hurt himself and was lying bleeding somewhere? Who was there to check on him?

If she didn’t?

She decided to give him until six o’clock to bug her.

But at six o’clock, he hadn’t bugged her. Hadn’t called. Hadn’t sneaked anything new and disgracefully decadent into her refrigerator. And she found herself standing at the front windows in the living room, hands on her hips, trying to peer over the stone fence and past the pines to see if there were lights on in his house.

Unfortunately she couldn’t see his car or his lights or anything else—not from any window view in her house. There was no way to know anything for sure unless she hiked outside to look.

She grabbed her down jacket, thinking all she was going to do was make sure he was alive. That was it. No visit. No big deal. She was just going to say, hi, how are you, just wanted to make sure you weren’t dead, and when he answered in the affirmative, she’d leave right away.

There seemed something flawed in the plan, but the alternative was pacing around and worrying about him all evening. Better to go. She jogged across the road, memorizing her escape lines, noticing his car as she
aimed for the front door, noticing no lights. The outside clues weren’t providing enough evidence to help her draw any conclusions without going in.

She rapped on the back storm door. Then rapped again. No answer. She poked her head in, yoohooing, “Stefan?”

No answer to that, either.

Her pulse started scrabbling erratically. Even if the man were a menace to her health, even if he’d badly disturbed her from the day she met him…she’d die if he was hurt. It was one thing to lose car keys and forget to eat and sort of misremember to balance her checking account. She was used to losing things, but the fear of losing Stefan was an entirely different dimension. She never anticipated such panic that something could have happened to him. Somewhere, somehow, he had come to matter to her. Deeply, painfully matter.

She hadn’t been in the house since old man Jasper lived here—who’d terrorized all three sisters growing up, undoubtedly because they’d stolen raspberries from his backyard. The house layout was familiar enough to get around, though. A barn-size red kitchen led to a gloomy dark hall. She peeked into the laundry utility room, then a bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-foot tub.

She wasn’t going into the bedroom wing, she decided, because it would be impossibly awkward if she found him dressing or napping. Unless she hadn’t found him before then, in which case she’d just have to awkward-it out.

Her shoulders still hunched in her jacket—uncontestable proof she had no intention of staying—she rounded a corner into the living room. In old man
Jasper’s time, the walls had been painted the color and texture of cottage cheese; the room was stuffed with oversize furniture and the chief decoration had been a polished gun rack.

The guns were gone, the walls now painted a muted French blue. Wood was neatly stacked on the fieldstone hearth, a snap-and-crackle fire lapping the logs in the grate. The ponderous furniture had been replaced with a thick-cushioned navy couch and a mountain of high-tech equipment. She noted the TV and stereo, but her gaze instantly zoomed on the maze of a complex computer setup that had to challenge the electric system in the house.

Stefan was there. In front of the monitor. Dressed comfortably in a buffalo plaid shirt, jeans, and bare feet—huge bare feet. Her first inclination was to thwack him a good one upside the head. For Pete’s sake, she’d yoohooed his name a dozen times and worried herself to a near tizzy, and he’d not only ignored her but looked happier and healthier than a contented clam.

She never delivered that whomp, though. Even at first glance, she could see how hard he was concentrating. His eyes were intensely focused, his brow furrowed. Papers were stashed next to him higher than the windowsill. A zillion numbers showed on the monitor, and he was still keyboarding in more. His thick hair was rumpled, as if he’d shoveled a hand through it countless times.

Just like her. The thought lodged in her mind as if it were a sudden sliver. Over and over she’d told herself that Stefan was as unlike her as a fussbudget beaver and a wild, uncivilized bear. He was nothing like the nice, safe, repressed intellectual type she’d always
enjoyed fantasizing about…but in this, she’d just never expected to find a kindred spirit. Her damn Russian looked just like her when she was working, totally immersed, oblivious to fires or tornadoes or anything else…not even hearing someone yelling his name from the next room. And no one, but no one, could understand that love of work or intense concentration as well as she could.

Paige pivoted around, thinking she’d just tiptoe out of here—he hadn’t noticed her yet—since she now knew for sure that he was okay. Yet she hesitated.

She’d bet a blue-chip stock that he hadn’t eaten. She’d even bet her favorite pair of Uggs that he’d forgotten all about food. And guilt roiled within her conscience. Maybe she hadn’t asked, maybe she hadn’t wanted him to, but Stefan had been doing a dozen favors and chores for her. He’d given and given and given. And although he’d stolen a few kisses—and cracked a fissure on her sanity in the process—he had never asked for, nor even seemed to expect anything in return for all those nice things he’d done.

Slowly she peeled off her jacket, and winged it on a chair. Slowly she came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Stefan, it’s just me.” She expected him to half jump out of his skin—and probably bark her head off. It was what she’d have done if somebody had suddenly interrupted her concentration.

Yet his left hand immediately reached up and covered hers, as if he weren’t startled by her presence at all. He said, “I’m glad you’re here, lambchop. But I cannot stop what I am doing at exactly this second.”

And he didn’t stop—the fingers on his right hand kept poking keys, making more strange numbers and symbols show up on the monitor. But his left hand
seemed to weigh on hers as if it were a lead cuff, holding her hand tightly, warmly to his shoulder.

She managed to twist her hand free, but then she had to roll her eyes. What irony. It was extremely clear that Stefan was going to put work before a woman. Any sane woman was supposed to be smart enough to steer clear of a guy whose priorities were not on her. But damnation, she understood. There were times she got immersed, too, and just never figured any guy would understand that it wasn’t a matter of not caring, but that certain types of work were really sabotaged if you were interrupted in the concentration process.

She said, “I’m going to make you some dinner.”

No response.

“Stefan. I’m going to make you some dinner, and I don’t know what there is in the kitchen, but it’s bound to take me at least a half hour to throw something together. You have some time, but you need to start gearing down. You’re quitting to eat something, and that’s that. If you want to go back to work after dinner, I won’t bug you.”

No response.

“Say yes so I know this is registering at some brain level,” she ordered him firmly.

“Yes, you beautiful, adorable, understanding and irresistible woman.”

A simple yes would have done, but she told herself it was unfair to hold any verbal comments he made against him just then. Hells bells, she tended to babble when she was working hard, too.

In the kitchen, she scouted drawers and cupboards for potential dinner ingredients. Unlike her house, he had a full larder of choices. Stefan was a hedonist in
more areas than one. Her cooking skills couldn’t match him, either—he wasn’t getting any Russian Creams or Cream and Sugar Slave concoctions out of her. Regretfully he didn’t have any Lean Cuisine. Microwave button-pressing was really her best cooking specialty.

But she couldn’t mess up pasta too badly. And he had some fancy gourmet spaghetti-sauce stuff, and plenty of fixings for a fresh salad. She saw an unopened bottle of red wine, but guessed he’d rather have coffee in case he wanted to work later. She made the coffee, fussed with a salad dressing and found the ingredients for fresh rolls.