Three Times A Bride

“I know. I’ll be careful.”

He held open the driver’s door of her car.“Then you’d better get going.”

She had never loved him more. Heavy with the knowledge that she was playing fast and loose with a man who was a prince by any standards, she backed down the driveway and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping only at the supermarket where she stocked up on enough groceries to get her through the next few days, and again at the service station to fill up with gas.

Daylight was just beginning to fade as she left Piper Landing and took the highway north toward the mountains.

Adam went for a long walk along the far side of the river that afternoon, partly as therapy to help restore the muscle tone in his injured leg and partly to get away from the general curiosity that his reappearance was arousing.

He supposed it was natural enough that people were interested, but what they didn’t seem able to appreciate was that he felt a bit like a goldfish in a bowl. And it was a difficult adjustment for a man who’d spent over a year in an isolated hunting camp in the Arctic.

What had really rattled him, though, had been running into the Chamberlaine women at lunch, with half Piper Landing society witness to the confrontation. He thought he’d acquitted himself well enough in the verbal exchange, but when he’d happened to glance up halfway through his meal to see Georgia being whisked away, he’d been unable to stop himself from swiveling in his chair and gazing after her with the lovelorn fascination of some twerp in an old black and white melodrama.

The plain fact was, she’d changed, and he wanted to acquaint himself with the new woman. Where before she’d been sculpted angles from her short, smart haircut to her elegant suits, now she flowed in softly feminine lines. Her hair kissed her shoulders, swirling over the ruffled nonsense of her blouse collar.

Her coat, winter-white where once she’d have chosen red or black, flared almost to her ankles. Her boots, her sole concession to the late November weather, were suede, with little dainty heels and tassels. Dancer’s footwear, delicate enough to perform a pas de deux.

But most of all, her eyes were different. Not in their color, that brilliant teal blue arresting enough to stop traffic, nor in their dramatic, heavily lashed shape borrowed from God knew which exotic ancestor, but in their intensity. The sharp, dissecting focus was gone, replaced by a muted dreaminess. Her gaze seemed to slide over the world, a hazy blue waterfall that didn’t quite notice the objects in its path.

It disturbed him. More, it annoyed him. He wanted to shake her, shock her into awareness, before it was too late.

Too late for what? For them? Hell, there was no“them” anymore; hadn’t been since she’d told him to forget marriage. And he really must be missing a few marbles to be freezing his butt in the cold, damp mist rising from the river, and rehashing something which he ought, by now, to have accepted.

His grandmother was intensely annoyed at being left to her own devices all afternoon and let him know it the minute he let himself in the house.“May one assume you intend to dine at home tonight, Adam?” she inquired frostily, appearing in the doorway to the library with her thick white hair skewered in a knot and held in place by a knitting needle on top of her head.“Or do you plan to abandon me for the evening, too?”

He grinned, his good humor restored by the roaring fire and the good, stiff Scotch she had waiting for him.“I thought I’d stick around and wipe the floor with you at cards since I don’t have a better offer,” he said, not the least bit perturbed by her sharp tongue.

She snorted and mumbled that absence hadn’t done much for his manners, but once dinner was over and she was three hundred points up on him at two-handed bridge, she mellowed a little.

“Pour me another vodka,” she ordered, and thought he didn’t notice that she leaned over to sneak a look at his cards when his back was turned.

“You’re the only eighty-one-year-old I know who downs vodka like water and who cheats at cards,” he said, refilling her glass.

“Don’t be a sore loser, boy,” she said, delving into the box of Russian Sobranis at her side and lighting up the one cigarette she allowed herself every evening.“It’s the mark of poor upbringing.”

The doorbell spared him the necessity of having to field an answer to that observation.“Expecting company, Bev?”

“No,” she said.“Get rid of them, whoever they are.”

But that was easier said than done. When Adam opened the door, the man who knew him better than almost anyone else on earth waited on the other side.“Hi,” Steven said.“I heard you were back.”

“Yeah,” Adam said, an unsettling mix of pleasure and rage taking hold of him at the sight of his one-time best friend.“I should have called you.”

“Why haven’t you?”

Adam threw him a level look.“You know why.”

“Yes. And I think it’s time we talked about it.”

His grandmother’s imperious tone floated out from the library.“Who is it, Adam?”

“Steven,” he said, then added to the man still standing on the front porch, “You’d better come in. This might take some time.”

Beverley greeted the visitor with a marked lack of conviviality.“Why aren’t you out celebrating with all your male friends and cheering raucously as some halfnaked female jumps out of a cake, Steven Drake, since I know for a fact that you’re getting married very shortly?”

“Because I don’t know that for a fact,” Steven said.“And that’s the reason I’m here now.”

“Why? It’s none of our business how you choose to ruin your life.”

Steven’s gaze swung from Bev to Adam and remained there.“I’m not sure Adam and I agree with you, Mrs. Walsh.”

They had met when they’d been assigned as roommates in their first semester of boarding school. It had been one of those tough establishments whose Latin motto loosely translated into: WE MAKE MEN OF THEM IF WE DON’T KILL THEM FIRST.

In that sort of environment, a kid of thirteen needed an ally he could trust. Adam and Steven had liked each other on sight and long ago had perfected the sort of telepathic communication that exists between true friends. There was no need for Steven to elaborate on his statement now.

That didn’t stop Beverley, however.“I hope you’re not accusing Adam of—” she began, tottering to her feet.

“Shut up, Beverley,” Adam said, and when she prepared to protest such uncavalier treatment, said again, “Sit down and shut up. This is between me and Steven.”

“Is it?” Steven asked levelly, cutting to the heart of the matter.“Or is it still between you and Georgia?”

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ffd96f62-e711-567b-a746-14f9bd3fe6d2)

FIFTEEN miles from where the private lane to the Drake chalet branched off from the main highway, it started to snow, dense fat flakes that cut visibility in half and added quickly to the foot or more that had fallen during the previous week.

Cranking up the car heater as high as it would go, Georgia huddled over the steering wheel, stepped gently on the accelerator, and prayed she wouldn’t come to grief on the last long incline that led to the cabin. If the car got stuck, she’d have no choice but to climb out into the teeth of the blizzard and try to fit her tires with the chains she kept in the trunk in case of emergency.

The problem was, she was far from certain she knew how to go about the task since such an emergency had never before arisen. And crouching on a mountainous back road, in the dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, didn’t strike her as a propitious place to find out.

As it happened, she had nothing to worry about. Someone had taken a blower and cleared a swath wide enough to enable her to drive right up to the property and park in the lee of the chalet’s wide, overhanging balcony.

The same someone had turned on the electric generator and split enough wood to heat a church. In the big main room, a pyramid of kindling lay waiting in the fireplace, with a basket of seasoned alder logs close by. A lamp burned on a side table, next to a thermos of coffee.

Although her down-filled coat shielded her from the worst of the weather, by the time Georgia had unloaded her supplies and hauled them inside, her hands and feet were numb with cold. Before stowing everything away, she set a match to the kindling and poured herself a mug of the coffee.

She was only partially thawed when footsteps clumped up the steps and a fist banged on the door. It was Arne Jensen, the Drakes’s nearest neighbor and the only year-round resident of the area. A tall, spare man in his late fifties who lived alone and socialized little, his sole concession to modern amenities was the telephone he’d had installed in his A-Frame cabin three winters before.

“Oh, ja, you got here then,” he declared, his singsong Scandinavian accent as pronounced as the day he’d first come to North America.“I wanted to make sure.”

Georgia smiled for what seemed like the first time in days.“I might have known you’re the one I have to thank for all this, Arne. How did you know to expect me?”

“Mr. Drake, he phoned late this afternoon. Wanted me to check up and see that you had everything you need.”

“That was thoughtful of him, and I do, thanks.”

“Good. Then I will go. The weather is getting worse. We’re in for a very big storm tonight.”

He was right. In the last half hour, the wind had risen to a mournful howl, a fitting accompaniment for Georgia’s mood. How could she jeopardize her future with Steven like this, she wondered, closing the door on Arne. What perverse streak of madness had brought her up here, away from a man who loved her enough to make sure she was safe and comfortable, even when she was running away from him?