Society Bride

The crunch of gravel in the driveway made Garrett’s plan evaporate, and he prepared himself to be overrun by expensive luggage, killer lapdogs and a woman more suited to the Four Seasons Hotel than a Wyoming ranch. But when he opened the front door, what greeted him bore no resemblance to any of his ideas. Because there, against the backdrop of a wide-open sky stained pink and purple and orange in the wake of a setting sun, was a blast from his past he wasn’t likely to forget.

Renee Riley.

Oh, man…

She was standing on the opposite side of a bland, four-door sedan that just screamed rental, reaching into the back seat for something—so she wasn’t paying attention to him. Which was good, because it meant she couldn’t see him gazing at her with what he hated to think was probably a profound, poetic longing.

Damn.

With the spectacular sunset looming behind her and with those riotous curls falling forward, obscuring part of her face, she almost looked like a painting. One of those Pre-Raphaelites he recalled from a humanities prerequisite at college—a lush, rounded woman gathering wheat at dusk. Garrett shook his head to clear it of the odd idea and tried—without much success—to tamp down the heat and desire that jumped to the fore. This was all he needed—Renee Riley as a houseguest.

Kate’s houseguest, he reminded himself. So she was the one who had some serious life choices to work out.

What kind of life choices could a woman that young have to ponder that she would exile herself to the very back of beyond? Because that’s exactly what the Final Destination was. A retreat in the fullest sense of the word, tucked in the middle of nowhere, barely in reach of society. They were on the very edge of available electricity and water, too far out for any kind of decent TV or radio reception. This was a place to do two things—raise cattle and get away from life.

It suited Garrett perfectly.

Renee, however… Well, she didn’t quite seem the exile type. On the contrary, the impression he’d received of her at Mac’s wedding was of a warm, outgoing woman who doubtless made friends faster than most people made messes, someone who thrived in social surroundings.

Even though they’d only spent a short time together, they’d shared a surprisingly meaningful conversation. Among other things. And somehow, in that brief time, Renee had crawled under Garrett’s skin and set up housekeeping there. Over the last three months, no matter how hard he’d tried—and he’d tried awfully damned hard—he hadn’t been able to drive her out of his system. She lingered constantly at the fringes of his thoughts, crept into his brain at the oddest moments and just more or less left him tied in knots.

All because of a few little kisses that had left him thinking, What if…

Which was another thing he wished he could figure the hell out. He’d shared more than a couple of chaste kisses with more than a couple of women, but no encounter he’d ever had with the opposite sex had come close to shaking him up the way a few little pecks with Renee had. There had been nothing to that embrace, he tried to tell himself, not for the first time. Nothing. But it had haunted him like no other experience he’d ever shared with a woman.

It made no sense. She was too young, too naive, too insignificant to have this effect on him. But as she straightened and hauled an oversize tote bag over her shoulder, slinging her hair back in the process, the evening breeze nudged a dark curl over her forehead. And Garrett, God help him, found himself wanting to run to the yard to tuck the errant strand of hair where it belonged.

He just wanted to touch her. Badly. As he’d wanted to touch her for three months. Three long, agonizing months. And now here she was, almost within reach, as if someone were bestowing upon him a wondrous gift. Someplace deep down inside Garrett, a little spark he would have sworn had been doused years ago flickered to life, sputtered a bit, then kindled into a small, fragile flame. And strangely enough, he felt a smile—an honest-to-God genuinely happy smile—curl his lips for the first time in years.