The Pregnant Bride

He subjected her to another penetrating stare and she felt color stealing into her cheeks. “Oh, brother, let me guess!” he exclaimed, enlightenment dawning. “You were supposed to honeymoon here, right?”

“At least I knew I’d have a room reserved,” she said defensively. “The bridal suite, in fact, complete with champagne on ice and flowers by the bucketful.”

He circled her as if she were some rare species of sea life accidentally washed ashore. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

She stared at her feet, feeling more foolish by the minute. “At least it’s the last place anyone would think to come looking for me.”

He laughed then, a rich warm rumble of amusement borne away on the breeze. “You’re going to be okay, you know that?” he said, tipping up her chin with his finger and smiling down at her. “Any woman with the guts to face her demons in the one place she’d expected to find true love is a real survivor. What say we head back to The Inn and I buy us both a drink to celebrate?”

Well, why not? The only thing waiting for her in the suite was a bed big enough for two and no one to share it with. “All right,” she said. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

“Yeah,” he said, tucking her hand under his arm and towing her back the way they’d come. “But keep it under your hat, okay? I don’t want the word to get out.”

His name was Edmund Delaney and she found herself enjoying his company more than she’d have thought possible an hour before. He was an entertaining host, articulate, amusing, and unquestionably the most attractive man in the room. She sat by the fire and sipped the cognac he ordered and, for a little while, she was able to push the fiasco of her wedding day to the back of her mind. Eventually, though, the evening came to an end.

“I’ll walk you to your room,” he offered and because she dreaded being alone, she accepted.

Taller than Mark, broader across the shoulders, and more powerfully built, he loped up the stairs with the graceful ease of an athlete at the peak of fitness. “Give me your key,” he said, when they arrived at her door, and as she handed it over, she noticed his hands were lean and tanned and capable, and just a little callused as if he worked with tools. Mark had a manicure every week and wouldn’t have known one end of a hammer from the other.

“Here you are.” Edmund pushed open her door, dropped the keys into her palm and folded her fingers over them.

If he’d said, “Sleep well,” she’d probably have managed to end the evening with a modicum of dignity, but his more sensitive “Try to get some sleep,” had the tears burning behind her eyes all over again.

Mutely, she looked up at him.

His fingers grazing her cheek were gentle. “I know,” he murmured. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

He left her then and she knew a shocking urge to call him back and beg him not to make her face the night alone. It wasn’t that she wanted him to make love to her or anything like that; she just needed the warmth of human contact, the feeling that someone in the world cared—not that a two-thousand-dollar wedding dress had gone to waste, or that four hundred guests had been cheated of a seven-course dinner, but that she somehow survive the crushing blow to her self-esteem and live to face another day.

Not until his footsteps had faded into silence did she venture into the room. A fire burned in the hearth and beyond the wide windows a half-moon floated over the ocean. The maid had turned down the bed on both sides and left foil-wrapped chocolates on each pillow. Hadn’t she noticed there was only one set of luggage, only one toothbrush in the bathroom?

Unable to face the bed, Jenna sank down on the rug before the fire and because there was no longer any ignoring them, let the ghastly events of the day wash over her.

It had begun well enough, with sunshine and clear skies. There’d been no hint of impending disaster as she’d ridden with her father to the church, no sense of something amiss as her bridesmaids fussed with her veil and whispered that the groom and his family had not yet arrived. Mark and his father were often late, held up by international phone calls and such. “That’s the price of doing business,” Mark had said, when she’d once had the temerity to complain. “Money before pleasure any day of the week.”

Including their wedding day, it had seemed!

“They’ve taken a wrong turn and got lost,” her father joked. “Or been stopped for speeding.”

But as the minutes stretched and still no groom, the smiles had shrunk and the speculation had begun, rippling over the congregation like wind over a cornfield. Finally, “I have another wedding in half an hour,” the minister had said, coming out to where she waited in her wedding finery. “I’m afraid that unless Mr. Armstrong and his party arrive in the next few minutes, we’ll have to reschedule your ceremony for another time.”

By then, though, a dull certainty had taken hold and Jenna knew that Mark wasn’t going to arrive, not in the next few minutes and not ever. Instead, Paul King, his best man, had shown up, red-faced and apologetic.

“So sorry, Jenna,” he’d stammered, handing her an envelope. “Wish I didn’t have to be the one to bring you this. Wish there could have been a happier ending….”

The letter was brief and full of empty excuses aimed at softening the blow of rejection. …afraid I won’t make you happy…can’t give you what you want…you deserve better, dear Jenna…a wonderful woman who’ll make some lucky man a wonderful wife…forgive me…some day you’ll thank me…this hurts me as much as I know it will hurt you….

“What does it say?” her mother had asked in a horrified whisper, and when she hadn’t replied, had snatched the paper out of Jenna’s hand, read it for herself, and let out a squawk of outrage. “He can’t do this!” she’d cried. “We’ve got sixty pounds of smoked salmon waiting at the club! Your father had to extend his line of credit at the bank to finance this wedding!”

The bad news had spread quickly, rolling through the church like an anthem. Heads had turned, necks craned, feet shuffled. And throughout it all, Jenna had stood at the door, bouquet dangling from one limp hand, wedding veil floating in the May breeze, silk gown whispering around her ankles and a great empty hole where her heart had been.

What was the correct protocol for a bride left waiting at the altar? Throwing herself off the nearest bridge hadn’t appealed although, when she first read the letter, she had, briefly, wished the floor would open up and swallow her. But what her mother referred to as her “infernal pride” had come to her rescue. Somehow, from somewhere, she’d manufactured a kind of frozen calm to get herself through the ordeal suddenly confronting her.

Hooking her train over her arm, she made her way back to where the limousines waited and climbed into the one which had brought her to the church and had her honeymoon luggage stowed in the trunk. “There will be no wedding,” she informed the startled driver as he raced to close the door for her, and directed him to her apartment.

While he transferred her suitcases to her car, she’d changed into the first clothes she laid hands on, scribbled a note for her parents and given it to him to deliver, and within twenty minutes was speeding down the highway to the ferry terminal. What was supposed to have been the happiest day of her life had turned into a nightmare of titan proportion, witnessed by half the social elite in the province and another hundred from out of town, and she had known only that she had to escape, quickly, before the blessed numbness passed and the pain took hold.

She’d managed pretty well—or so she’d thought. Bolstered by a confidence which in reality was nothing more than a continuation of the daze which had steered her through the hours since her aborted wedding, she’d ignored the voice of caution and decided to brave The Inn’s dining room. Why should she hide away in her suite? She’d done nothing to be ashamed of!

But confronting the other diners had proved more of an ordeal than she’d expected. If she’d worn a sign plastered to her forehead, declaring her Abandoned Bride of the Year, she couldn’t have felt more exposed or vulnerable.

She owed Edmund Delaney a huge debt of gratitude….

As if they had a will of their own, her eyes swung from their contemplation of the flames in the hearth to the telephone on the little occasional table beside the fireplace.

Should she call him? Invite him to lunch, perhaps, as thanks for his having saved her from making an even bigger fool of herself at dinner?

Not a smart move, Jenna, her cautious conscience scolded. Chasing after a man you hardly know, only hours after you were jilted by the man you planned to marry, smacks more of desperation to find a replacement than gratitude!

True enough! So why was she lifting the receiver, why requesting that a call be put through to the room of one Edmund Delaney? And why, having gone that far, did she stare in horrified fascination at the telephone when he picked up on the second ring, then immediately hang up and flee to the bathroom as if he were in hot pursuit?

There was a phone in there, too. It rang before she had the door closed. “We must have been cut off,” Edmund Delaney said, when she finally found the courage to answer. “Good thing it was an in-house call and the front desk was able to reconnect us. What can I do for you?”

CHAPTER TWO

“…UM…” SHE muttered. “Er…who is this? That is, I…um…”

Duplicity didn’t come naturally to her and he clearly recognized an amateur when he heard one. Cutting short her bumbling reply, he said curtly, “It’s Edmund Delaney, Jenna. And you just phoned me, right?”

“Yes,” she admitted faintly, wishing for the second time in a day that seemed doomed never to end, that she could disappear off the face of the earth and spare everyone further grief. “I wanted to make sure I’d…thanked you. Properly, that is. For coming to my rescue at dinner.”

He sounded as if he might be having a hard time choking back a laugh when he replied, and she could scarcely blame him. Her pitiful attempt at subterfuge was as transparent as glass. “You thanked me,” he said. “And you were very proper.”

“But just saying the words doesn’t seem enough. I feel you deserve more than that.”

Dear heaven, woman, rephrase that quickly before he decides you’re making a play for him and offering more than you’re prepared to give!

“Wh…what I mean is, may I buy you breakfast in the morning? As a token of my gratitude, you understand? Say about nine, in the main dining room?”

“Afraid not,” he said cheerfully. “I won’t be here.”

Either it was just one rejection too many, or else she was courting insanity to be so crushed by his answer. Clearing her throat to dislodge the great lump of disappointment threatening to strangle her, she aimed for nonchalance. “Oh, that’s too bad. Then I guess we won’t see each other again.”

“I’ve chartered a boat to take me fishing at dawn and don’t expect to be back much before noon.”

The rush of relief she experienced at that piece of news was almost as disconcerting as hearing herself suggest, with an eagerness which could only be described as pathetic, “What about lunch, then?”

“I have a better idea,” he said, after a small, contemplative pause. “Why don’t you come fishing with me? There’s nothing like reeling in a fighting salmon to take your mind off your other troubles.”