A Wedding To Remember

Rory seized the opening, a look of dangerous dev-ilment replacing the derisive challenge of a few moments ago. He started walking towards her, unshakeable purpose in every step. “A kiss for the bride-to-be,” he said with a smile that torpedoed her stand of indifference to him.

“No.” Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she frantically fought a rush of panic.

“A wish-you-well kiss from your ex-husband,” Rory went on. “Make of it what you will, but kissed you certainly shall be.”

She took a defensive step backwards.

“What have you to fear if you’re free of me, Joanna?” he taunted. “Call it a gesture of final release. A graceful goodbye, demonstrating that bygones really are bygones and there’s not a thing left between us. Not a jot. Not a speck. Not a molecule of feeling. Prove it to me that there’s nothing left.”

He was using her own words against her, all so irrefutably reasonable that it robbed her of any grounds to protest. She swallowed hard and came up with a burst of defiance. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!”

“Then prove it to yourself.”

He took the hand at her throat and placed it on his shoulder as he slid his other arm around her waist and scooped her hard against the long, lean power of his body. Joanna was shocked into passivity by a rush of warm feeling, a sense of rightness that seemed so treacherous she trembled in fear of what it meant. Long-standing familiarity, her mind screamed, fiercely rejecting any other cause for the sensation of being where she belonged.

Then his lips were on hers, gently grazing, not forcing any rough mastery over her, allowing her a choice of accepting his kiss or evading it. Rory had always been good at kissing, but his expertise in every act of love had aroused only hostility in her towards the end of their marriage. She told herself it was only curiosity that compelled her lips to move to the persuasive pressure of his, to open to the seductive caress of his tongue. She closed her eyes, needing to concentrate on examining the feelings he stirred now, to sort them out to her satisfaction, to prove...

All coherent thought was lost as Rory deepened the kiss, and Joanna’s mind flooded with vibrant sensation. It was an invasion of all her deeply nursed defences against him, a shattering of bitterly held convictions, and it ignited a wild urge to make him experience the same inner turbulence.

Her mouth claimed his with a passionate intensity that sparked a response from him that spun them both out of any semblance of control. Her fingers dug into his hair, holding his head to hers. His hand splayed over the small of her back, arching her into intimate knowledge of the desire she was stirring.

A mad wave of exultation swept through Joanna. She wanted to goad him as he had goaded her, make him burn with the memories of all there had been between them, get under his skin in a way that defeated all the clever reasoning he could come up with.

She moved her body against his in deliberate incitement, recklessly uncaring of any consequences. An animal sound growled from his throat as he wrenched his mouth from hers. She opened her eyes to meet the raw blaze of searing questions in his, and whatever he read in them brought a heave of satisfaction and fast, decisive action.

He scooped Joanna off her feet and had her hugged against his chest in a whirl of male strength that left her gasping. He was heading for the door before she could collect her wits, then to compound the shock of what was happening the door opened and a woman stood there, gaping at them.

“You’ll have to stand aside, Monique. You’re in my way,” Rory instructed.

Monique either defied him or was too stunned to obey. She was a gorgeous brunette, with a beautiful face framed by cascades of wild curls and a fantastic figure poured into a brilliant fuchsia suit. She was not the kind of woman who was used to being told to stand aside, Joanna thought, particularly by men. Her look of utter bewilderment caused Joanna’s eyes to narrow suspiciously. Where did this woman fit into Rory’s life?

It shocked Joanna to realise she felt as jealous of Rory as he must have felt about her with Brad. It had to be a hangover of possessiveness from their marriage. It couldn’t have anything to do with loving.

“What are you doing?” the brunette finally found voice enough to ask.

“I’m abducting my ex-wife. Move aside and let us pass,” came the firm command from Rory.

Monique backed out, looking dazedly at Joanna as Rory carried her from the office. “Your ex-wife,” she repeated limply, then fired herself with purpose. “What about our dinner tomorrow night?”

“My apologies. There’s no telling how long I’ll be gone. Wife-napping is a time-consuming business,” Rory tossed at her without the slightest hesitation as he set off striding past the row of computer cubicles.

Joanna felt a totally wanton sense of elation at this dismissal of the beautiful brunette’s claims on him until she noticed the commotion Rory’s progress was causing amongst his employees. Heads were popping up everywhere.

“Put me down,” she commanded, taking swift stock of her position, which was extremely ambivalent, to say the least.

He ignored her and raised his voice to all those agog with interest. “One thing I want done while I’m away, and you can all get onto it. I want that Kawowski of Matchmakers Incorporated found and pinned down to a contract. We’ve never lost a customer yet, and we’re not going to start now. Is that clear?”

There was a chorus of “yes, sir”, while Joanna writhed between guilt and embarrassment. Impossible to admit to her fabrication about Mr. Kawowski in front of all these people, yet how could she let them waste so much time in looking for someone who didn’t exist? The dilemma was too much for her to cope with, and in the overall picture it was a minor detail. They would soon find out there was no such person.

“Let me go, Rory!” she cried, trying to push out of his hold.

His arms tightened around her, clamping her against him. “You and I need to be together, Joanna.”

“You can’t kidnap me. You’ve got no right! I’m not your wife any more.”

“The divorce was your idea, not mine.”

“That’s irrelevant. I won’t let you carry me off. Call the police!” she demanded of the onlookers.

“Yes, call the police!” Rory agreed. “But give me half an hour’s head start first. I’ll give them a merry chase after that. If I can’t get the story spread across the newspapers for all the world and Brad to read, my name’s not Rory Grayson.”

Joanna had sudden visions of Brad at his conference, with all his respected peers, being severely embarrassed by sensational tabloid stories about the woman he wanted to marry. “Don’t call the police!” she yelled.

“You heard the lady. Don’t call the police,” Rory reiterated strongly.

She thumped him on the back in furious frustration. “You’re ruining my life again.”

“Well, we might as well be ruined together,” he blithely replied. “That’s only fair. Will someone please open the door for me and summon an elevator?”

With the way cleared ahead of him, he strode into the reception room with Joanna still in his captivity.

“Mr. Grayson!” the young woman behind the desk called after him, her voice on the edge of hysteria. She had never witnessed such a scene before and was totally lost as to how to act. She wrung her hands. “Your appointments, Mr. Grayson! What will I do?”

“Postpone them until further notice.”

“But what will I say?”

“Say I’m off for the dirtiest weekend that any man could hope to have. That’ll satisfy everybody.”

He swept into the waiting elevator, pressed a button and grinned with wicked satisfaction as the doors slid shut.

CHAPTER THREE

AS THE ELEVATOR hummed downwards, Joanna’s mind reeled around Rory’s outrageous presumption in hauling her off with him, the indignity he had subjected her to in doing so, the scandalous proof that he still didn’t care what anybody thought of him and the terrible truth that she had instigated the whole chain of events by not freezing him off when he kissed her.

“This won’t do you one bit of good, Rory Grayson!” she said in his ear, letting him know she was not about to fall under the spell of his wild and irrepressible nature again.

“It’s done me a power of good already,” he said cheerfully.

“I was only getting back at you with that kiss.”

“If that was revenge, Joanna, I found it very sweet. The magic is still there for us. As strong as ever.”

“I am not going to have a dirty weekend with you.”

“Tell me about Brad, and why you’re going to marry him.”

The elevator doors rolled open and Rory strode into a basement garage while Joanna whirled through another bout of confusion. She should take pleasure in telling Rory how perfect Brad was for her, but she didn’t want to. She no longer knew what she wanted. Somehow Rory had turned everything upside down, including her.