Wedding Party Collection: Don't Tell The Bride: What the Bride Didn't Know / Black Widow Bride / His Valentine Bride

‘Yes.’

‘Did you give it to me for when you weren’t around?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thought so.’

The lift door opened and they stepped in. Lena didn’t release his arm when he thought she would. The old Lena wouldn’t have taken his arm at all. He looked at the picture they made in the mirror, she was looking at the picture they made too, and her eyes were like bruises. He’d wanted this—them—for so long, but not like this. He needed the old Lena back before he pursued this.

‘I must have a really excellent personality,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Look at you.’

He eyed himself warily. Same oversized buffoon who’d failed to protect Lena. Again.

‘You look like a Hollywood action hero.’ She frowned when he didn’t reply. ‘You’re not, are you?’

‘Pass.’

‘Professional athlete?’

‘No.’

‘Fireman? I hear those boys lift a lot of weights in their spare time?’

‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘So you are a fireman?’

‘No.’

She stood there in silence, but not for long. ‘So what do you do? A wife should probably know.’

‘I work for Australia’s Special Intelligence Service.’

‘You’re a spy? Are you serious?’

‘You work for them too.’

The lift doors opened and before Lena could protest, Trig lifted her into his arms and headed for the room. She’d done enough walking for the day and maybe, just maybe, he needed to hold her for a little while and pretend that she was safe.

‘Do you carry me often?’ she asked as she wound her arms around his neck and relaxed into his arms.

‘As often as I can.’

And then Lena pressed her face to the hollow of his neck and took a deep breath and her arms tightened around him.

‘I remember this,’ she murmured. ‘I remember the way you smell.’

Trig didn’t need to die and go to hell. Hell had come to him.

She pressed a tentative kiss to his neck and his arms tightened around her. ‘Why do I call you Trig?’

‘Because I tutored you in trigonometry back in high school.’

‘So, I needed help. Meaning I’m not exactly a scholar.’

‘Depends on the company. You topped your state in mathematics, which for most seventeen-year-old girls is an excellent result. You just happen to have a couple of geeky geniuses in the family. It skews your expectations.’

‘I sound insecure.’

She was insecure. More so since East Timor. She just couldn’t get it through her head that her family cherished her for who she was. That her common sense and iron will often carried them.

They’d reached the door and Trig set her down reluctantly and opened it. His bag stood just inside the door, he’d had the hotel staff shift it from last night’s room back to this one. The doctor had said to monitor Lena through the night. He’d figured he could do that better from her room than from his. At that point he’d still been under the impression that Lena knew she wasn’t his wife.

She looked at the two beds and slanted him a sideways glance. ‘Not exactly the honeymoon suite. Or the Ritz.’

‘Yeah, about that...’ Was now the right time to tell her that they weren’t married or would that news only confuse and alarm her more? Did he let her sleep on it and hope to hell she woke up with her memory back?

Who the hell knew?

‘Sometimes your leg bothers you and you need the extra space to stretch out. And tonight, for example, what with your head and your leg and the fact that you really don’t remember me...it’s probably a relief to you that we have twin beds tonight, right?’

She didn’t say ‘right,’ she said ‘oh,’ and for a moment looked utterly lost.

‘So, your gear’s all here,’ he continued doggedly and gestured towards the cupboard and her suitcase. ‘I, ah, can run you a bath while I have a quick shower. The bath takes a while to fill.’

‘No bath,’ she said. ‘I’ll shower after you and then jump into bed. This bed.’ She pointed to the one nearest the window. Trig nodded and slung his bag on the other one and rifled through it for clean underwear and a T-shirt and sweats. He needed a shower and a lot more distance from Lena than was currently available, but sometimes a man had to take what he could get.

He reached for the shutter divider between bathroom and bedroom.

‘Can you not?’ Lena asked hurriedly.

‘What?’

‘I mean, you can shut them, of course you can. But if you wanted to leave them open you could do that too. It’s just...I feel better when I can see you.’

How could he possibly close them after that?

He left them open. He walked around the other side of that half wall and into the bathroom and shucked his clothes quickly, no showing off allowed. He didn’t want Lena looking and wondering. He most emphatically didn’t want her coming and touching.

Much.

He stepped into the shower before he’d even turned on the taps. He washed away the stench of fear and let icy resolve replace it. He could offer Lena comfort and reassurance tonight. He’d spent plenty of nights in the chair beside her hospital bed—tonight would be a lot like that, what with Lena wounded and aching and him half worried out of his brain. They’d done this before. Nothing to sweat about.

Except for the bit where she thought he was her husband.