Just Married!: Kiss the Bridesmaid / Best Man Says I Do

“You look perfect,” he said gruffly, and then tried to short-circuit his own vulnerability, to make her stop looking at him like that, in a way that made his heart feel like it would swoop out of his chest and land in the palms of her hands. “Let’s go dupe the Finkles.”

The happy look faded from her face, and he was sorry even though he knew it was better for both of them if they didn’t forget what this was all about.

“This is the one,” she said, suddenly cool. “Let’s go.”

He mourned the loss of the magic of the moments they had just shared, even as he knew they made things way too complicated.

At the front desk, Samantha went outside while he paid. The clerk offered to package up the old clothes for him, but he just shook his head. Even if she was mad at him, he never wanted to see her in those clothes—that particular lie—again.

She didn’t ask about her clothes when he joined her. Her eyes were challenging him to back down, to say the subterfuge had gone far enough.

But the look of disdain in her eyes was so much safer for him than the look in her eyes when she had been twirling in front of him, filled with glorious certainty of herself, that he felt more committed than ever to his plan. They’d visit the Finkles, he’d take her home. Leave her with the outfit to assuage some faint guilt he was feeling. If he did end up buying her building, he would keep it strictly business.

Though he wasn’t sure how, since he had utterly failed to keep things strictly business so far.

What if it could be real?

He didn’t even know her, he scoffed at himself. But when he looked at her, her eyes distant, her chin pointed upward with stubbornness and pride, he felt like he did know her. Or wanted to.

“What’s the plan now?” she said.

“We’ll go to the Finkles. Let’s just say we’re engaged instead of married,” he told her.

The stiff look of pride left her face and something crumpled in her eyes. “Even dressed up, I’m not good enough, am I?”

“No!” he said, stunned at her conclusion. “That’s not it at all. The problem is you are way too good for me. Duper of old people, remember?”

And then he hurriedly opened the car door and held it for her, before he gave into the temptation to take her in his arms and erase any thought she’d ever had about not being good enough, before he gave in to the temptation to kiss her until she had not a doubt left about who she really was, a woman, who deserved more than she had ever asked of the world.

He knew if he was smart, he would just pass the turnoff he was looking for and take her straight back to St. John’s Cove, cut his losses.

But now he felt he had to prove to her it was him that was unworthy, not her.

It was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done, to continue this charade.

But looking back over the events of the last day, since he had first seen Samantha Hall standing at the altar beside his cousin, it seemed to Ethan Ballard he had not made one smart decision. Not one.

He glanced at the woman sitting with her dog slobbering all over her new silk skirt, trying to read her expression.

“Look,” he said awkwardly, “any man would be lucky to call you his wife. And that was before we went shopping.” He was a little shocked by how much he meant that, but he had failed to convince her.

He wanted to just call this whole thing off, forget the Finkles and go home to the mess-free life he took such pride in.

“Humph,” she said skeptically.

If he did call it off now, was Samantha really going to think she had failed to measure up to his standard for a wife? He sighed at how complicated this innocent little deceit had become.

Here he was smack-dab in the middle of a mess of his own making.

Samantha Hall looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes, but the dog slid him a contemptuous look and growled low in its throat.

Ethan Ballard thought he had heard somewhere that dogs were excellent judges of character.

“I used to play baseball,” he said. It was a measure of his desperation that he was trying to win her respect back this way, when he hated it when people liked him for his former career. But the truth was, right about now, Ethan would take her liking any way he could get it.

He wanted that look back in her eyes, he wanted the radiance back, even though it was a very dangerous game he played.

“Didn’t we all?” she said.

“I meant professionally. I played first base for the Red Sox for a season.”

“And you are telling me this why?” Not the tiniest bit of awe in her voice.

“I’m trying to impress you,” he admitted sadly, “since I’ve managed to make such a hash of it so far.”

“Humph.”

“I’ll take that as a fail.”

“I grew up with three brothers,” she told him, and he could hear the sharp annoyance in her voice. “Every single special occasion of my entire life has been spoiled by their obsession with sports. You know where my brothers were the night I graduated from high school?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“In Boston.”

“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Red Sox?”

She nodded curtly and went back to looking out the window.

It occurred to him he really had stumbled onto the perfect woman for him, a woman capable of not being impressed with what he’d done, who could look straight through that to who he really was.

Not that he’d exactly done a great job of showing her that. Maybe he’d even lost who he really was somewhere along the way, in the pursuit of ambition and success.

And maybe she was the kind of woman who could lead him back to it. If he was crazy enough to tangle with her any longer than he absolutely had to.

With relief he saw the sign he’d been looking for—Annie’s Retreat—and he pulled off the main road onto a rutted track.

The first thing that would need work, and a lot of it, was the road, he thought, and it was such a blessed relief to be able to think of that rather than the stillness of the woman beside him.

Life was just plain mean, Sam thought, getting out of the car after the long, jolting ride down a rough road. Waldo bounced out with her. He had snagged her skirt, so she had managed to look upscale for all of fifteen minutes.

Ethan, of course, looked like he was modeling for the summer issue of GQ, in dun-colored safari shorts that looked like he had taken a few minutes to press them before he left his hotel this morning. Ditto for the shirt, a short-sleeved mossy-green cotton, with a subtle Ballard Holdings embroidered in a deeper shade of green over the one buttoned pocket.

No wonder she had been downgraded to fiancée! No matter what he said, she was pretty sure it was because she didn’t fit in his world.

“Maybe we should leave him in the car,” Ethan suggested carefully, as if she was made of glass.

But she was all done being what Ethan wanted her to be, and Waldo came with her, especially if he didn’t fit into Ethan’s world and Ethan’s plans.