Three Times A Bride

If only he’d chosen to disappear in a puff of smoke…!

Stepping out of the shower, Georgia swathed her hair in a towel and checked the clock on the wall. Eight twenty-five. Four hours, give or take a few minutes, before she met her mother and sister. Four hours in which to digest the reality of Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot’s resurrection from the dead and make her peace with it.

She had thought herself safe from such upheaval. Had spun a cocoon around herself so intricately woven that she’d been sure nothing could threaten it. Not passion, or hate; not rage, or joy. Just calm affection, subdued pleasure, serene indifference.

She had turned to Steven, her new house, her work-and yes, the thousand and one busy things associated with a wedding that, this time, her family wholeheartedly approved of—hoping these things would be enough to compensate for what she had lost.

Beverley Walsh, Adam’s grandmother, had tried to warn her, the day they’d accidentally met downtown about six months after Adam had supposedly died.“It takes two years, foolish child,” she’d said, referring to the fact that Georgia and Steven were spending a lot of time together.“After that, although you won’t have forgotten your first love, you will have accepted its loss. Then, and not before, will you be ready to start over with someone else.”

Georgia hadn’t been able to wait that long; the pain was too crushing, the guilt too severe. It wasn’t just the fact of Adam’s death, it was knowing she’d sent him to it.

She’d been with him, the day he received the call from his C.O. asking him to postpone his retirement for an extra two months, “just long enough to put this prototype fighter jet through its paces and identify the bugs bothering our other pilots. You can spare me that, can’t you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t sir. I’m getting married in six weeks,” Adam had said, but Georgia had seen the flare of excitement in his eyes, the sudden longing he’d tried to hide, and she’d known that, if it had been up to him alone, he’d have snatched at this last chance to fly the most exciting fighter aircraft yet to leave the drawing boards.

“I think you should go,” she’d said, after he’d hung up the phone.

“No. All that’s behind me.” He’d tried to sound accepting but she’d heard only the regret, the sudden resurgence of uncertainty that had dogged the months before he’d finally reconciled himself to giving up military life and settling down as a civilian.

Sensing this, and because she loved him, she had offered him an escape, manufacturing a reason that had everything to do with what she thought he needed, at the cost of what she desperately wanted: a man she adored for her husband—and a father for the child he did not know she had conceived.

“I’m not sure getting married is such a good idea,” she’d said, giving voice to the most barefaced untruth of her life.“I think a cooling-off period might be very good for us.”

“Haveyou lost your mind?” he’d said.“What about the three hundred guests your mother had to invite to the wedding? What about the dress and the veil and all that other paraphernalia?”

“What about the things that really matter to us?” she’d countered, and because they’d once been valid, she was able, with a conviction that left him stunned and angry, to rattle off all the reasons for not going ahead with their wedding.

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t love me, Georgia?” he’d asked at last.

To deny that was more lie than she could bring herself to utter.“No—just that I’m not sure either of us loves the other enough to give up our freedom. Let’s put the wedding on hold for now and see how we feel when you get back.”

It had been a not unreasonable gamble, she’d thought at the time. She’d found out only the day before that she was five weeks pregnant. Once his two month term was up, they’d still have plenty of time to get married before the baby was born.

“I thought we’d decided we couldn’t be happy away from each other, Georgia,” he’d said, but although his voice had been somber, his eyes had betrayed him. He was behaving like a gentleman when all he really wanted was to be an officer on active duty again.

She hadn’t been able to bear it.“Oh, please!” she’d cried.“Just go, and stop pretending it’s not what you want, too.”

Some of the light had gone out of his eyes at that.“Since you put it so kindly, maybe I will.”

“Terrific!” She’d wrenched his ring from her finger and flung it at him.“There, now it’s official. The engagement’s off until you finally decide you can live without the Air Force. Go and fly your damned toy. Fly it off the edge of the earth if it pleases you!”

He’d caught the ring, deftly tossed it in the air like a coin, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.“Okay,” he’d said flatly.

Then he’d done as she’d asked. Without a touch, a kiss, or another word, he’d turned and left her.

In the dreadful days that followed, she had not known how she would endure the rest of her life without him. But now that he was alive after all, she could have outlasted eternity before having to face him again.

She was not granted more than two hours. Shortly after her ten o’clock clients left the studio, the buzzer at the front entrance sounded. When she peered through the burglar-proof glass double doors fronting onto the street, Adam stood on the other side. Clad in narrow navy jeans, a royal blue turtleneck sweater and a doeskin suede jacket, he looked so thoroughly gorgeous that, for a very little while, all the problems and complications inherent in his reappearance took second place to the sheer miracle and pleasure of being able to look at him again.

He had changed. Was thinner, cut closer to the bone, without sacrificing any of that startling male beauty that had first drawn her to him. His cheekbones carved a more austere angle beneath the smooth, slightly tanned skin, and in the revealing light of day she noticed that his curly black hair was now touched with gray at the temples. His mouth, that used to laugh so easily and often, assumed a severity that was new. But his heavily lashed eyes were exactly as she remembered them, smoky blue and direct, even though the lines fanning from the outer corners were etched more deeply.

A feeling like nothing she’d ever known rolled over Georgia, much like a door that had been firmly locked and bolted suddenly creaking ajar and threatening to release all kinds of demons. It left her panic-stricken.“What do you want?” she asked through the intercom.

“To talk to you, obviously,” Adam replied grimly, “though not with me standing out here on the street for all and sundry to hear, so you might as well let me in. You and I do, after all, have rather a lot to say to one another, don’t you think? And just because I was gentleman enough last night not to push you into a mutual expose of everything that’s befallen us since the last time we saw each other doesn’t mean I’m willing to put it off indefinitely.”

She could have made excuses; said she had a dental appointment in another country or something, but what was the point? Sooner or later, she’d have to deal with him and time wasn’t exactly on her side.

“Some fancy system you’ve got here,” he observed as the electronic device that protected her inventory admitted him through the outer door and then the inner.“When did you become so safety-conscious?”

She blushed a little at the lightly sugared scorn underlying his words.“When it was pointed out to me that my stock makes me a target for theft on a grand scale. Taking precautions seemed the safe and sensible thing to do.”

“Safe and sensible? The Georgia I used to know never concerned herself with being either safe or sensible.”

“She changed in the months after…”

“I died?” He stepped closer, his smile so reminiscent of his old sweet smile that she almost mistook it for the real thing. Almost.“It’s okay, sweet pea,” he assured her dryly.“You can say it.”

An absurd, unreasonable guilt made her hide her left hand behind her back.“It’s not okay,” she blurted out, retreating.“And you can’t call me ‘sweet pea’, not anymore.”

“Why not?” His smile didn’t slip an inch but she realized now what made it different. It did not touch those blue eyes whose gaze dissected her with such acute, unwavering interest.

“Because…” She faltered, the words damming up for all that she wished she could let them spill out and be over with.

“Because you’re wearing another man’s ring?” He nodded calmly at her startled gasp, and unzipped his suede jacket as if this were just another in a long list of social calls he had to make that day.“Yes, I know. You’re engaged to my best friend, Steven.”

“Who—how did you…?”

“Beverley told me. Who else?”

Georgia sagged against the desk at her back.“Of course. I should have known.”

Adam lifted his shoulders disbelievingly.“Did you expect her to keep quiet about it?” he asked, and she realized that, beneath his composed facade, disgust warred with cold anger.“She’s my grandmother, and very loyal to those she loves—unlike some I could name.”

“I bet she couldn’t wait to tell you.”

He continued to pin Georgia in that sharp, unforgiving gaze.“She waited over a year. Nearly fifteen months, to be exact, during which time she mourned my apparent death. How did you spend the time, Georgia, my love? Running want ads in the Lonely Hearts column of the Piper Landing Daily News? How many poor slobs did you reject before you decided to save yourself a lot of bother and settle for good old Steven, who was so conveniently handy once I’d vacated the scene?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, flushing at the brazen contempt in his tone.“I didn’t date anyone, not even Steven at first. But you and he had been friends for years, and he was the only one who really understood what I went through when you—when I thought you were…dead.”

“You’re wrong. He wasn’t the only one. Beverley would have understood, if you’d cared to give her the chance to share whatever small portion of grief you decided I deserved.”

There were many things Georgia could have said in retaliation, among them that Beverley Walsh hadn’t particularly wanted to share her grandson in life and had been damned if she’d allow anyone to intrude on her sorrow at his death; or that Georgia’s own anguish had been so keen that, for a while, it had taken all her strength to face each unrelenting day; or that many had been the time that she’d wished for nothing but an end to her own miserable, guilt-ridden existence, so empty and pointless had it seemed without Adam. But his greatest misconception—that she’d turned easily to another man—was the one she felt most compelled to address.

“Steven was never more your friend than in the days and weeks after you…disappeared. I think I would have died without him. He gave me back my sanity when I thought I’d lost it forever. He helped me to accept what I couldn’t change and would never understand. And he asked for nothing in return except the solace of sharing memories of you. It’s only over the last four or five months that we’ve…grown closer.”

“And how close is that, Georgia?” Adam leaned against a glass presentation cabinet with careless disregard for its fragility.“Close enough that he makes you forget the times you made love with me? Close enough that you cry out his name instead of mine when the passion takes hold? Close enough—”

“Stop it!” Georgia clapped her hands to her ears, her earlier flush a pale imitation of the real thing as a wave of embarrassment and indignation left her face flaming.“It’s no longer any of your business!”