The Bride Ran Away

Tonight, the prospect of marriage to Sophie froze the blood in his veins.

She’d helped him forget who he was. Unable to resist the mutual, blinding desire, he still distrusted its staying power. He’d met Sophie in Bardill’s Ridge, Tennessee, when he’d accompanied a client, publishing tycoon James Kendall, to the town to visit his daughter, Olivia. When Ian had left with Kendall, Sophie had seemed almost relieved.

Back in Chicago, he hadn’t anticipated the hunger he felt—for the scent of Sophie’s hair, for the endearing curve of her joyful smile, for the need of him that glittered in her green eyes and made him feel as if he mattered to her more than anyone else.

He’d resisted that hunger for a month. On his first free weekend, he’d located Sophie at her town house in D.C. Two months after that, he’d shown up at her office, and they hadn’t gone very far before she’d parked her car on the side of a dark road.

Another month later, she’d come to Chicago, and they’d eaten, slept and made frantic love in his bedroom for the first three days of her weeklong stay. Two more months and he was waiting in front of an altar, trying to become a father to the baby he’d created with Sophie.

He cared for her. Whatever raged between them wasn’t just sex, but Sophie and he had changed too quickly from strangers to lovers to parents.

Jock nudged his arm. “Here she comes.”

Candlelight brought her out of the shadows at the back of the church. Ian’s gut tightened.

Her dress caressed each curve of a body that nearly brought him to tears. Her stomach already rounded by their baby’s growth, she made him want to be better than he was, capable of promising to be with her when their baby came. He wanted to give his family what he’d gone without all those lonely boarding-school nights—love that went deeper than providing practical necessities.

She met his gaze, her eyes anxious, and he felt again the emotional coil of desire. He’d wanted Sophie in her grandparents’ apple orchard. He’d wanted her in the reception area of her OB/GYN office, surrounded by at least six women in different uncomfortable stages of pregnancy. He wanted her now, as urgently as he needed his next breath.

“Ready?” Jock asked.

Hell no. As if she could hear Jock and sense her husband-to-be’s less-than-heroic response, she lowered her head. Ian nodded.

Love was supposed to last. Lust burned itself out. How could he tell which had him in its grip?

Sophie carried no flowers and, staring at her hands, clamped together yet shaking, she moved down the gray flagstone aisle without music. They’d skipped all the usual trimmings except her dress and his black suit. As he watched Sophie approach, Ian could almost taste her skin. He tilted his head to catch the memory of her nighttime whispers. What secrets curved her mouth now even as doubt shadowed her eyes?

They hadn’t discussed what would happen after they left this church. He couldn’t just quit the only job he’d ever known and take up knitting. They hadn’t talked about her medical practice either. He slid moist palms down his thighs.

Tonight’s wedding had been their only goal, another sign that two people who’d planned each step of their lives until they’d met were bad for each other. His mind ought to be on the vows he was seconds away from making, and that summed up his problem in a nutshell.

Sophie had robbed him of his ability to distinguish priorities. With her practice in D.C. and his job in Chicago, they’d lived too far apart to get serious. They’d both known it. Neither had said so out loud. He hadn’t explained that he’d learned to protect other people because he’d once been unable to protect himself. She needed roots. He had none.

He didn’t want to hurt her. The salient facts all ran through his head, months too late, as she stopped at his side.

“Take each other’s left hands,” the minister said.

Ian silently forced Sophie to meet his gaze again. As she stared at him, her eyes filled with a strange conflict of trust and reservation. Her warmth seduced him as he rubbed his thumb over the fragile bones of her hand. Lifeblood pulsed beneath her skin.

He was wrong for her, but he wasn’t capable of walking away. Even if they were about to ruin their lives, he’d make Sophie Calvert his wife.

“Shall we begin?” The minister searched Sophie’s pale face and then Ian’s. “I assume you’ve both soberly considered what you’re about to do.”

Ian nodded again.

SOPHIE HAD SEEN almost six hundred patients through pregnancies both easy and difficult, deliveries both simple and dangerously complicated. Not one of those women had prepared her for the horror of experiencing morning sickness in a silk wedding dress that had looked alluring three weeks ago. With her twentieth week of pregnancy straining the seams, she felt like a huge white balloon on the verge of exploding.

The ceremony had passed in a blur. She still couldn’t think as she made her way into the bride’s room.

Three weeks earlier she’d anticipated Ian’s lustful appreciation as he watched her float up the aisle. Instead, she’d avoided looking at him, half-fearful of his dismay as he contemplated marrying such a bloated pregnant woman. Her snug dress foretold a load of responsibility for both of them.

She’d glanced at him as the minister asked them to take each other’s hands. After one peek at his flat blue gaze, she’d avoided him until he’d tilted her chin to kiss her.

That chaste kiss continued to confuse her as she struggled out of the dress. Nothing about their short relationship had been chaste. He was a fever that constantly burned in her.

Bending over, she undulated to work the dress over her head. And nearly passed out.

Grabbing the nearest chair, she caught her breath and gripped handfuls of material to slowly inch the dress over her shoulders. This wasn’t the wedding she’d dreamed of.

She’d imagined arguments with her mom, who would have become uncharacteristically maternal and tried to control everything—the wedding dress, the catering, even the setting—Bardill’s Ridge where her father lived, instead of D.C., where her mother had moved after the divorce. None of these would have mattered to her dad and her grandparents, her aunts and the cousins who’d stood in as brothers and sisters all Sophie’s life. They’d only want the opportunity to surround her with the unconditional love she craved tonight.

She hadn’t invited any of them, even though she’d wanted her cousin Molly to be a bridesmaid.

She’d been concerned that her family’s presence would make Ian feel bad about his parents’ absence. Rachel and Alex Ridley had turned down their son’s invitation, claiming they couldn’t get home from Ireland—where they’d retired for the golf—on such short notice.

Sophie would pay for the slight to her own family. Her mother would assume she’d planned her “elopement” just to get back at her parents for their divorce. The Calvert side, her father’s family, just plain expected invitations to all big events.

She smiled to herself, remembering the day she’d met Ian at one of those occasions. She’d been home to celebrate her grandparents’ anniversary, and he was there as a bodyguard to her cousin Zach’s father-in-law.

The moment she’d met Ian, she’d wanted him. He’d felt the same. Their undeniable attraction frightened her, but it was all they had. Passion and good intentions and a marriage certificate now duly signed and witnessed.

Initially, she’d been reluctant to tell Ian about the baby, but he had a right to know, and when she couldn’t avoid telling him any longer, he’d immediately wanted their child. He’d assumed they’d make a life together, a family. Everything he’d said had persuaded her he’d live or die for the child, whose only outward signs of life were her thickening waistline and her inability to digest anything with more taste or aroma than water.

He’d understood she wanted commitment that might lead to real love. She had no interest in simply being rescued. They’d been honest. No one could get hurt.

She yanked her dress. With the sound of a tearing seam, it flew over her head and fell into her open hands. She peeled off her hose and turned to stuff them into her bag. Taking stock of her green face in the tiny mirror the church provided for its brides, she blamed the harsh lighting for her horror-movie pallor.

No amount of crackers, no wishing morning sickness was all in her head, ever slowed the spin cycle in her stomach. “Damn,” she said and then prayed she wouldn’t burn in hell for swearing in church.

She pulled on jeans she hadn’t worn in two months and stared down at the parted zipper that refused to fasten. Her sweatshirt covered the problem and made her decent enough to go hunt for a washroom—which would have made a handy accoutrement for the bride’s dressing room.

Shivering in the damp cold, she tried each door along the corridor. At the sanctuary’s arched entrance, the eerie silence made her feel as if she was trespassing. Feeling sicker by the second, she tiptoed inside and crossed in front of the altar. They’d put the groom’s room over here somewhere, and Ian probably hadn’t needed extra time to wrestle out of his suit. He’d be in street clothes by now, and she’d just as soon he not get another glimpse of his perennially sick bride.

Nothing a palette full of makeup couldn’t repair once her stomach settled.

She eased around a cool marble column, still fighting waves of nausea. She was a strong woman. She just had to be stronger than morning sickness.

“Man, you’re sweating like a marathon runner. You shouldn’t have gone through with the ceremony. Sophie’s going to kill you.”

Brought up short, she recognized the voice. Jock, who judging from that statement knew her better than Ian.

“I promised I’d marry her. She’s carrying our baby. Backing out wasn’t an option.”

Ian, in decisive mode, usually turned her legs to Jell-O and her mind to mush, but just now her brand-new groom sounded like a man who’d looked the executioner in the eye and gone under a blunt blade.

He’d lied to her to convince her to marry him.

She was nearly sick right there on the floor. As she slammed her hand over her mouth, Ian came around the corner, his expression wary. He knew he’d screwed up. Unlike most of his overly buff, iron-pumping colleagues, Ian was lean and long, agile and—right now—furious.