Stranded with the Groom Read online

  And not only desire, but also something dark and lonely, something that might have been regret.

  Katie’s mouth went dust-dry. This was danger—a danger far beyond any threat a mere fortune hunter might pose. Peril to her tender heart, to her very soul.

  No doubt about it. She wanted him—with a kind of bone-melting yearning, with a merciless desire the like of which she’d never known before.

  It was…a physical aching. A hunger in the blood.

  Oh, she would have to watch herself with him. She would have to exercise a little caution, or she’d be in way over her head.

  Somewhere far back in her mind, a taunting voice whispered, Katie. Come on. You’re already over your head. Over your head and falling fast….

  Chapter Four

  He shouldn’t have kissed her.

  It had been a major error in judgment and Justin damn well knew that it had.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her. Not so soon, anyway—and certainly not in a prickly bed of hay on the frozen dirt floor of the shed out back, with that irritating old mare looking on.

  Getting hot and heavy so fast had spooked her. She had her guard up and now he couldn’t get past it.

  They spent the rest of the endless day playing checkers, watching the snow fall, stoking the fire in the stove out front and reading books and magazines they found stacked in the storage room. Whenever they spoke, she made sure it was in polite generalities.

  The snow kept falling. The radio played only static. And the phone stayed dead.

  Justin could have kicked himself with his rummage sale Converse All-Star. The big loss of ground with her was his own damn fault. He’d sucked her in beautifully, had her right in the palm of his hand once he’d told her the story of that lonely week in the cabin when he was thirteen. He’d hit the perfect common nerve: a lonely childhood; parents who weren’t all they should have been.

  It was going so well.

  Until the kiss.

  And even that could have been okay—could have been tender and sweet and worked beautifully to lure her closer.

  But he’d gotten his arms around her and her mouth under his and that sweet body pressed close against him…

  He’d lost it. Lost every last shred of control.

  The bald truth was that he’d seriously underestimated the power of his own lust for the shy brown-eyed librarian with too much money and an adopted family he despised.

  It was funny, really—though he wasn’t laughing. A royal backfire of his basic intention: he was supposed to seduce her.

  Not the other way around.

  At six that evening, they sat at the kitchen table, reading—or at least, Katie was reading. He knew it because he kept sneaking glances at her and losing his place in the thriller that should have been holding him spellbound—or so it said in the cover notes. As “taut” and “edge-of-your seat” as the book was supposed to be, he kept having to go back and read the same paragraph over and over again.

  Katie, though…

  She seemed to have no trouble at all with her concentration. She’d laid the heavy volume she’d chosen open on the table, rested her forearms on the tabletop and bent her brown head to the page. She’d barely budged from that position for over an hour. He knew. He’d timed her. Occasionally, she’d catch her soft bottom lip between her teeth, worry it lightly and let it go. Sometimes she smiled—just the faintest hint of a smile. As if what she read amused her.

  Justin scowled every time she smiled like that. He wanted her to look up and smile at him, damn it. But she didn’t.

  And he ought to be glad she didn’t look up. If she caught him scowling at her, he’d only lose more ground than he already had.

  And what the hell was his problem here, anyway? He was getting way too invested in this thing with her. She had nothing to do with the main plan and if she never let him get near her again it wouldn’t matter in the least.

  So why should he care if she smiled at him or not?

  He decided he’d be better off not thinking too deeply on that one.

  Luckily for him, he’d just looked down at his book again when she glanced up and announced, “You know, when we went through the cupboards in here yesterday, I noticed some cans way in the back.”

  There was something in her tone—something easier, a little more friendly.

  His pulse ratcheted up a notch and he quelled a satisfied smile. Better, he thought. Now, don’t blow it….

  He shut the battered paperback without marking the page. Next time he picked it up, he’d have to start over, anyway. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a hell of a lot more offhand than he felt. He gestured toward the cabinets on the far wall. “In the bottom, on the left.” He started to rise.

  “No. I’ll look.”

  He sank back to his seat and she got up and went over there, leaving him debating whether to follow her. He decided against it. She was loosening up a little. Better let her get looser before he got too close.

  She went to her knees, pulled open the cupboard and stuck her head in there. He looked at her backside. Great view. Even with the ugly baggy sweater and too-loose frayed corduroy pants.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice muffled by the cabinet. “Here they are.” She pulled her head out and craned around to grin at him. “Lots of soup, but I see some canned fruit, too.”

  He got up, after all, and went to stand over her—just to be helpful. She passed him the dusty cans and he set them on the counter above the cabinet.

  “That’s it.” She shut the cabinet doors and stood to read the labels. “Vegetable beef, chicken noodle, cream of asparagus, pears, applesauce…” She gave him a pert look. “Justin. Not a single can of cream of mushroom soup. And no peaches.”

  Absurdly pleased that she’d remembered the details of his childhood ordeal, he allowed himself to chuckle. “That’s a relief. I admit I was getting worried.”

  “No need to.” She brushed his arm—the lightest breath of a touch. Beneath the green sleeve of his sweater, his skin burned as if she’d set a match to it.

  Their eyes met. Zap. His heart raced faster and the air seemed to shimmer around them. Damned amazing, her effect on him.

  Katie smiled wider, a nervous kind of smile. Yes. She was trying. She wasn’t cutting him out anymore. “So…soup with your sandwiches?”

  He nodded. “Vegetable beef—unless that’s your favorite?”

  She admitted, “I have this thing for cream of asparagus.”

  “Well, then. Looks like we both get what we want.”

  Katie went to get ready for bed at ten. Justin said he wanted to read a little longer and then he’d be in.

  She knew it was only a pretense. In the hours they’d sat reading, he’d hardly made it through the first few chapters in that book of his. No. He was being thoughtful, giving her a chance to get ready and go to bed in private.

  In the ladies’ room, she rinsed out her underwear and hung it over the stall door. She washed up and dressed for bed in a wrinkled old pair of red flannel pajamas—thanks, again, to the bags of clothing in the storage room.

  She looked at herself in the mirror over the sink and scrunched up her nose at what she saw. Tomorrow, if they were still stuck here, she would have to wash her hair. Maybe she could find some bath towels in the rummage sale stuff—or if not, well, she’d work it out somehow. And really, Justin didn’t need to be sitting in the kitchen pretending to read, respecting her need to keep her distance from him after the kiss that had gone too far out in the shed.

  “Stupid,” she muttered to her own reflection. “I’m being stupid about this and I need to stop.” There was nothing alluring or lust-inspiring about the sight of her in flannel pajamas. They buttoned up to here and bagged around her ankles. If Justin saw her getting into bed in them he would not be the least tempted to make mad, passionate love to her.

  Truly. In pajamas like these, she was safe from the potential to have sex of any kind.

  She peered closer at herself, cr
aned her head forward so her nose met the glass. The question was, why did that depress her?

  Oh, come on. She knew why.

  Because there had not been nearly enough sex—of any kind—in her life.

  “I, Katherine Adele Fenton,” she whispered, her breath fogging the glass, “am a cliché. I’m right out of The Music Man. I’m Marian the librarian—hiding in the stacks, waiting for some cocky con man to show up and let down my hair for me.”

  Really, it had to stop. She owed it to librarians everywhere, who, she knew, were a much more outgoing, ready-for-anything bunch than most people gave them credit for.

  She pulled back from the mirror and then used her flannel sleeve to wipe the steamed-up place her breath had left. She stood straight and proud. “I wanted him to kiss me and I’m glad he kissed me,” she announced to the sink and the toilet stall and her soggy underwear hanging from the stall door. “I’m not afraid of my own feelings. I’m an adult and I run my own life and I do it very well, thank you.” She liked Justin and he clearly liked her and she wasn’t running away from that. Not anymore.

  Yes, there was always danger—when you really liked someone, when you put your heart on the line. Things that mattered inevitably involved a certain amount of risk.

  Her shoulders back and her head high, Katie marched to the ladies’ room door and pulled it wide.

  Justin looked up from his book when she entered the kitchen. The bewildered expression on his handsome face made her want to grab him and hug him and tell him it would be all right. She didn’t, of course. There were a few things that needed saying before they got around to any hugging.

  “Katie? Everything okay?”

  She marched over, yanked out the chair opposite him and dropped into it. “It was very sweet of you, to sit in here with that book you’re not really interested in and wait until I had time to put on these ugly old pajamas and get into bed. But it’s not as if we had to share a bathroom or anything.” She raised her arms and looked down at her baggy bedroom attire. “And as you can see, this outfit reveals absolutely nothing of my, er, feminine charms. We’re both perfectly safe from any, um, dangerous temptation, don’t you think?” She lifted her head and met his eyes.

  They were gleaming. “Well, Katie. I don’t know. You look pretty damn tempting to me.”

  “Liar,” she muttered, flattered in spite of herself.

  He put up a hand, palm out, as if testifying in court. “Sexiest woman I ever saw.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.”

  “Must be the color. You know what they say about red. The color of power. And sex.”

  She sat up straighter. “Power, huh? I kind of like that.”

  In his eyes she could see what he almost said: But what about sex? He didn’t, though.

  Probably afraid she’d get spooked and shut him out again.

  “Justin?” Her heart pounded painfully inside her rib cage. She had things to say and she was going to say them, but that didn’t make it easy.

  “Yeah?”

  “Justin, are you after my money?”

  With zero hesitation, he replied, “No.”

  She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Money’s not an issue for me. I have plenty of my own. Now, anyway. And I earned every damn penny of it.”

  Her face felt as if it had turned as red as her pajamas and her heart beat even faster. She did believe him. If that made her a total fool, well, so be it.

  He added, “But don’t take me wrong. I don’t mind that you’re rich. Hey, I’m glad you are. It’s always better, don’t you think, to have money than not to?”

  Katie thought about that. “Sometimes I’m not so sure. Money can…isolate a person. It can make it so it’s hard to believe that someone might like you, just for yourself.”

  “Katie.”

  She put her hand against her heart. Really, did it need to keep pounding so awfully fast? “Yeah?”

  “I do like you. For yourself.”

  She realized she believed that, too, and her galloping heart slowed a little. But she wasn’t finished yet. “There’s more.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Did you know that I was…?” Oh, this was so awkward.

  He helped her out. “Rich?”

  She gulped. “Yes. Did you know I was a wealthy woman before you got up on that stage at the town hall and ‘married’ me?”

  “I did.”

  She blinked. “Who told you?”

  He chuckled. “Some of those spectators were pretty damn drunk. When they heard I’d be playing your groom, I got a lot of ribbing. You know the kind. How you were not only a cute little thing, you were loaded, too. How, if I played my cards right, I might catch myself an heiress.”

  Katie scrunched up her nose. “A cute little thing?”

  He shrugged. “Drunk talk. You know how it goes. And you might like to know, I got more than one warning that I’d better be good to you. They were joking—but the look in every eye said I’d pay if I messed with their favorite librarian.”

  That brought a smile. “They did? They told you to be good to me?”

  He nodded. “So you’ve got backup, in case you were worried.”

  She looked him directly in the eye. “I guess I was worried. And scared. The truth is, in the past couple of years, I’ve had a tendency to let fear run my life. But I’ve had a little talk with myself. Fear is not going to rule me. Not anymore. I…well, I like you. And I think you like me.”

  “I do. Very much.”

  A sweet warmth spread through her. “So then. I’d like to get to know you better.”

  His gaze didn’t waver. “And I want to know you.”

  Chapter Five

  They talked for hours, lying in their separate beds in the central display room.

  Katie told him about Ted Anders. She’d met Ted at CU. He was tall and tan and blond, a prelaw student. Interesting to talk to, with a good sense of humor—and charming, too. Extremely so. Ted had lavished attention on Katie. She’d started to believe she’d found the right guy for her—until she went to a party up on “the hill,” where a lot of the students shared apartments. The place was packed, a real crowd scene. She got separated from Ted and when she found him again, he had his arm around a cute redhead.

  “He was so busy putting a move on her, he didn’t even see that I was watching,” Katie said. “I heard him tell her how he’d like to, uh, ‘jump her bones,’ but he couldn’t afford to. He had a ‘rich one’ on a string and he wasn’t blowing that ’til he’d clipped at least a couple of her millions.”

  “I hope you reamed him a new one right there and then.” Justin sounded as if he wouldn’t have minded doing that for her.

  She laughed—and it felt so good. To think about something that had hurt so much at the time and realize it was just a memory now, one with no power to cause her pain. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m not big on public displays.”

  He chuckled. “Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, I did notice. So, what did you do?”

  “I went home to my apartment. Eventually, Ted must have realized I’d left. He came knocking on my door. I confronted him then. He started laying on the sweet talk. But I wasn’t buying. Once he saw he couldn’t talk his way back into a relationship with me, he said a few rotten things, trying to hurt me a little worse than he already had. But he knew it was over.”

  “And that made you sure every man you met would be after your money?”

  “Well, there was another, er, incident.”

  “At CU?”

  “No. Right here in town, not long after I came home to stay and took the job as librarian. He was a local guy, Jackson Tully. He’d grown up here and gone to Thunder Canyon High ten years before I did. After high school, he’d moved away—and then moved back and opened a souvenir shop on Main. He asked me out and he seemed nice enough. We had several dates and…oh, he was funny and sweet and I started to think—”

  “That he was the
one.”

  She made a face at the shadowed rafters above. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought that we had something good, I guess. That it might really go somewhere.”

  “As in wedding bells and happily ever after?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So then…?”

  “Well, he proposed.”

  “Marriage?”

  “What else?”

  He made a low sound. “I can think of a few other things, but I won’t go into them. So the money-grubbing shop owner proposed and you said yes.”

  She pushed the blankets down a little and rested her arms on top of them. “Well, no. I didn’t say yes. I did…care for him, but I wasn’t sure. I said I wanted to think about it. And while I was thinking, his mom came to see me. She’s a nice woman, Lucille Tully is. A member of the Historical Society, as a matter of fact.”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “In Thunder Canyon?” She considered. “Well, just about everyone over forty or so is.”

  “And Lucille Tully said…”

  “That she loved her son, but I was a ‘sweet girl’ and she couldn’t let me say yes to him without my knowing the truth.”

  “Which was?”

  “Jackson had had two bankruptcies. His souvenir shop—which Lucille had given him the money to open—wasn’t doing well and he’d told his mother more than once that as soon as he married the librarian, she could have her money back. He’d close the store. Why slave all day long, catering to pushy tourists in some stupid shop when he’d be set for life and he could focus on enjoying himself.”

  “Spending your money, I take it?”

  Katie sighed. “Lucille cried when she told me. I felt terrible for her. It just broke her heart, the whole thing.”

  “So you said no to the gold-digging Jackson Tully.”

  “I did.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Couldn’t say. His shop went under and he left town. So far as I know, he hasn’t been back.”

  “And what about the mother?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Katie. I’ve known you for two whole days and I can already guarantee that you took care of her.”