The Bride Ran Away

As if she’d lied to him. As if she’d married him under false pretenses.

“What are you doing?” Shock made his voice too harsh to recognize.

She eased her hand just beneath her lips. “Hiding behind a marble column, listening to you end our twenty-minute marriage.”

“I don’t want to end—”

“I need a bathroom. I’m gonna be sick.”

He pointed down the hall, and she ran, her feet smacking the marble. Just in time, she flung open the door and bolted into a stall. Thank God Ian wasn’t chivalrous enough to follow.

At last, with her stomach as empty as her heart, she braced her hands on the stall and stared at the tile through watery eyes. Longing to sink to the floor, she plucked up enough pride to stay on her feet.

Her idiotic tears were a side effect of being ill and pregnant and hormone ridden. Nothing more. It wasn’t as if she loved Ian.

She stumbled to the pedestal sink and twirled a squeaking handle imprinted with an old-fashioned H for hot. Nothing happened, but C for cold worked.

The hinges on the washroom door squeaked in a long, low protest as someone slowly entered. Someone. Who was she kidding? Ian couldn’t pass up a chance to lope to the rescue.

Bending farther into the sink, she splashed cold water on her face. Long legs in black gabardine appeared in her peripheral vision. Straightening, she turned off the water and met his I-dare-you-to-face-the-truth stare.

“This is the women’s room.”

“Men’s, actually.” He jerked a thumb toward the far wall where three urinals hung in a row. “I’ll bet the faucets work in the women’s room.”

His dry sense of humor had seduced her from day one. Not tonight.

She grabbed a paper towel that protruded from a black plastic holder, jumping as she glimpsed her mascara-streaked face in the mirror. “Where’s Jock?” She wiped her hands and concentrated on sounding as if she didn’t care, as if nothing too terrible had happened.

“He went home.”

She took refuge in patting water off her cheeks. “Ian, I won’t stay with you.”

“You heard something I never would have said to you.”

She considered pulling the sink off its pedestal and throwing it at him.

He licked his lips as if he couldn’t get enough saliva and went on, “I have to protect you and my child, and I agreed to something I actually didn’t believe in, but I am committed.”

“You don’t get it.” She had believed they might come to love each other, and she’d only married him because she’d thought he’d felt the same.

Turning away from him, she ended up in front of the mirror, facing their reflections. Neither of them looked familiar.

He was clearly scared. She was too furious to think straight. And whacking him with a bathroom sink might not help.

She held on to the anger, a nourishing, healthy rage that would keep her on her feet and make her a strong mother for her child. Since her own mother had left home, Sophie had vowed never to need anyone. “I didn’t ask you to marry me. I don’t want your pity, and I despise your sense of duty.”

He reached for her, his long fingers curling into nothing as she moved away. “I protect people. Why wouldn’t I protect you?”

She grabbed the edge of the sink. Unfortunately, it didn’t budge. Misunderstanding her urge to brain him, he moved closer and pressed his palm against the small of her back.

“Are you still sick?” he asked.

She shook her head, unable to speak over a lump in the back of her throat. Who knew the truth could hurt this much? She wanted—no, she needed to be far away from Ian Ridley. She danced out of his reach again.

“You only had to admit you didn’t want the baby. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I’ll take care of myself and my child.”

“We’ll take care of our baby,” Ian said. A sound from outside the rest room turned his head toward the door. On the alert, twenty-four hours a day.

Even so, she had a nasty surprise for him. “We’re not staying together,” she said as she wadded the paper towel into a ball and shoved it through the flap of the waste container. “If you’d told me the truth an hour ago, instead of telling Jock after we were married, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now we’re going to have to find a way to annul our marriage when I look pretty damn consummated.”

“Sophie, don’t swear in church.” He smiled, no doubt to persuade her he was teasing, but the twist of his mouth looked more like a bloodless threat.

“I’d like to commit murder in a church. I’m only holding back on the off chance that killing you here would make you eligible for sainthood.”

She had to run before she started to reconsider. Start saying things like. We can try to make the best of this. We care about each other. Our child matters most. We can be parents. We can make marriage work.

Claptrap. He’d only married her because she was pregnant. She refused to be rescued. “I’ll never thank you for doing the right thing.”

He looked confused, but that was because he knew next to nothing about her. She’d caused her own parents’ divorce because she’d come home early from school one day and walked in on her mom making love with a stranger, and then she’d asked her father who her mother had been wrestling. When he’d confronted her mom, Nita had tried to lie. She’d accused Sophie of making up a story, and her father had tried to believe his wife. Wanting to believe lies was her family’s flaw.

They’d failed, of course, and her parents’ split had been unbearable for Sophie. She’d felt abandoned.

She’d never been vulnerable in another relationship until she’d let herself care for Ian. If he’d only married her because she was pregnant, he didn’t care as deeply, and she couldn’t allow herself to be the one with the most to lose. Better to leave Ian before he left her.

She clasped the mound of her belly with both hands. God help her, she was willing to sacrifice her child’s chance at a family to save her own soul.

“My feet are cold.” She pointed at her cranberry toenails as if she had no deeper care. She pulled open the door. “Get in touch if you want to know about the baby,” she said over her shoulder. “E-mail me, or call my office.”

She reached the hall before he caught a handful of her sweatshirt. “Wait a minute. I made a mistake, okay?”

“Several.” She tugged, but he held on tighter.

“Tell me you’re more sure than I am,” he said. “You only looked twice at me because your aunt wanted time to talk to James Kendall alone. Otherwise, I was, probably still am, just a big dumb ox to you.”

“I don’t care about your job.” Now she was stretching the truth. She had assumed bodyguards were all brawn, no brains. She freed herself from his grip and shook her shirt back into place. “It’s true. At the anniversary party Aunt Beth wanted me to occupy you for an hour, so she could talk to James Kendall alone, but I’ve wasted a lot longer than an hour on you.” What more did he want from her? She’d reshuffled her life and her patient schedules to see him in Chicago. “I meant what we said in that ceremony.” Honesty forced her to expand. “Maybe I thought for a second that I didn’t know you well enough to marry you, but I planned to work at our marriage. It wasn’t some temporary penance.”

“Like it was for me?” He tried to catch her hand, but once more she slipped away. He obviously didn’t know how to handle an antagonist he couldn’t drop like a bag of fertilizer. “I don’t care what you heard me tell Jock. I’m serious about our marriage, too. I wish we’d done things the right way, but—”

“You mean with a string of dates and a proposal and a virginal wedding and eventually a baby? You can’t have that with me. I don’t know what happened between us, and I must have been in a daze until tonight, but I’m not binding myself to a man who’s doing me a favor.”

He curved his hands around her shoulders, his grip tight but not painful—as if he knew just how much strength to use. “What you overheard was panic. I want you and our baby.”

She shrugged, and he tightened his fingers instinctively to hold her. She gripped his wrists and pushed him away. “I—don’t—need—you.”

Something shattered behind his eyes. She’d managed to hurt him, but she couldn’t afford to care and she didn’t look back.

The rest room door swished closed behind her and this time Ian stayed put. She made straight for the bride’s room and finished dressing, though her arms and legs seemed to refuse input from her brain.