To Be A Bridegroom

‘And you aren’t about to, either,’ Jarrett bit back. ‘In another couple of hours Jonathan and Gaye will leave the reception. So far they have had a perfect day; I don’t intend letting you ruin it for them!’

‘That’s a very cruel thing to say to me, Jarrett. But then you always were unfeeling,’ Stella told him emotionally.

As displays went, it was certainly a good one, Jordan acknowledged cynically; tears swam in those huge brown eyes, and her chin quivered ever so slightly in an effort to control herself. But Jordan knew as well as Jarrett did that it was all an act; Stella had never cared for anyone else in the whole of her life, and she was too damned old to change now—despite her cosmetic surgeon!

Jordan’s mouth pursed contemptuously. ‘Jarrett is right, Stella,’ he said coldly. ‘You aren’t staying.’

He inwardly acknowledged he hadn’t exactly been the life and soul of the party today himself—for which he probably owed Stazy an apology. No wonder she had decided to leave so abruptly; she had been as sick of his company as he was!

But he also knew that Stella’s presence at the wedding reception was tantamount to introducing a cat amongst the pigeons. ‘I’ll take you wherever you want to go,’ he offered. ‘But you aren’t staying here.’

‘Oh, but I am,’ Stella informed him confidently. ‘Quite literally. I have a suite booked on the fourth floor!’ she announced triumphantly.

Where she had no doubt waited out the first part of the evening before coming down here to make her entrance! For Jordan didn’t doubt this whole thing had been premeditated, and he could see by Jarrett’s narrowed eyes that he knew it too.

‘What do you want, Stella?’ Jarrett snapped impatiently.

Her head went back defensively. ‘Why should you assume I want anything?’

Jarrett sighed. ‘Because your sort always want something—’

‘My sort!’ she repeated in a voice rising with hysteria. ‘How dare you? How dare you—?’

‘Believe me, he dares,’ Jordan told her dryly, still retaining that firm grasp of her arm; there was no way she was going to slip past both of them and make her entrance as planned. ‘And so dare I. Let’s go. Quietly,’ he instructed firmly, aware that he and Jarrett couldn’t remain out here for much longer before attracting attention to the fact they were both missing from the reception.

He didn’t give Stella any more opportunity to argue with him, pulling her along beside him down the hallway and back into the main reception of the hotel.

She waited only that long before pulling her arm out of his grip, glaring up at him, her face set in an angry mask. ‘You have no right, Jordan—’

‘I have every right!’ he returned icily. ‘And so does Jarrett. Jonathan too, if he knew you were here.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t believe the nerve of you, just turning up here and expecting a welcome!’

‘I am your mother!’ she cried furiously.

He looked at her dispassionately. Yes, this woman had given birth to him. To Jarrett and Jonathan too. But his mother...?

He didn’t think so! He had been fourteen when she’d walked out on him, his two older brothers, and her newly bankrupt husband. The previous years of his life had been filled with a long line of his mother’s lovers, and her verbally violent rows with their cuckolded father. As for the loving and caring part of motherhood—! Jarrett and Jonathan had more or less brought him up, looked out for him, even before their mother left; in fact, he couldn’t remember a single occasion when she had been there for him...

‘Mother is only a word, Stella,’ he said frigidly. ‘And in your case it isn’t even correct.’

He looked at her critically, her beauty, the slender figure, the fashionable clothes. None of it impressed him. He had seen this woman only once in the last twenty years, very briefly, after her second marriage had fallen apart and before she’d found husband number three. She had come to London to seek out her ‘little boys’, though at twenty-five, twenty-seven and twenty-nine they had hardly been that any more. If, indeed, they ever had been...

‘What’s happened, Stella?’ he asked dryly. ‘Has husband number three grown tired of you too?’

The angry flush that coloured her cheeks told him he had guessed correctly. It hadn’t been too difficult; they might have no contact with her, but Jarrett, in his wisdom, kept a weather eye on her life—in the hopes of ensuring it never interfered with theirs!

Stella looked at him accusingly. ‘You’re becoming as hard and unfeeling as Jarrett!’

‘We both had a good teacher,’ he returned hardly.

Stazy should be back at her apartment by now. If he could get away from Stella, return to the reception and make his excuses to Jonathan and Gaye, he might just be in time to call on Stazy before she went to bed...

Stazy in bed... That lithe, silken body naked, her only adornment her long flaming red hair...

Now there was something worth seeing. How ever could he not have noticed what a stirringly beautiful and desirable woman Stazy was?

He had been acting like a complete idiot all evening, scowling at everyone, barely speaking, and paying absolutely no attention to the woman he had brought with him. No wonder Stazy had walked out on him. What a fool he was! He might have sworn off marriage, but not women. There had been a beautiful female living next door to him for three months, and he hadn’t even noticed. Get your act together, Jordan, he remonstrated with himself. Stazy must think he was—

‘Why are you smiling?’ the woman who had given birth to him thirty-five years ago demanded indignantly. ‘This isn’t in the least bit funny—’

‘I couldn’t agree more, Mother.’ His mouth twisted derisively at the way she flinched at the name; a woman trying to look thirty-five did not want to be reminded she had a son of that age—and two more even older than that! ‘This situation isn’t funny, but you are hilarious. You want something, Stella, and we all know it, so I suggest you stop playing games and get to the point. But a word of advice: don’t use Jonathan’s wedding as a way to get what you want from Jarrett. You would regret it!’

‘Don’t threaten me, Jordan,’ she warned, her face pale now, set in harsh lines.

He shook his head wearily. ‘I said it was advice, and that’s exactly what it was. Go ahead and gatecrash the wedding.’ He waved invitingly towards the hallway leading to the reception room. ‘You’ll find yourself marched out of there again so fast you’ll wonder what happened to you! You think I’m becoming hard and unfeeling? Push Jarrett some more and see what happens. And heaven help you—because no one else will!’

She met his gaze for several seconds, and then she wavered, before dropping her eyes away completely, as she obviously rethought her game-plan.

Because this was a game to her, Jordan knew. She had been playing one game or another with them all her life. Playing mother had lasted long enough for her to produce the three boys, and for their father’s money to run out Then she had run off looking for another game to play. And, as Jordan had guessed earlier, this sudden urge to be ‘Mother’ again had something to do with her third marriage. Without a rich husband to support her she couldn’t maintain her lavish lifestyle. She needed money for that, and in the last twenty years her three sons had managed to amass quite a lot of that!

With a mother like her was it any wonder he was a cynic where women were concerned?

‘I really don’t have any more time to waste standing here talking to you, Stella,’ he told her hardly before turning away.

‘Running after Cinderella?’ she called after him tauntingly.

Jordan turned slowly back to face the woman he had once known as Mummy, feeling absolutely nothing towards her now. Not even hate, he realised. She was just a very sad woman, trying desperately to cling onto the things that mattered to her—her looks and the money to keep them. Outwardly she was beautiful, inwardly she was ugly. And there was nothing that plastic surgery could do to change that!

‘I’ve never run after a woman in my life,’ he replied before going back down the hallway to the reception.

He wasn’t ‘running after’ Stazy; after he had made the appropriate excuses to Jonathan and Gaye, he was simply going home. Stazy just happened to live in the apartment next door to his!

And who knew? Maybe tonight would be the night Stazy would kiss a prince and he wouldn’t turn into a frog...

She was a long time answering his ring on the doorbell. Probably she was surprised to hear the internal doorbell and not the entryphone. But she was certainly worth waiting for when she did finally open the door, having changed out of the blue dress into a pair of figurehugging blue denims and a skimpy blue top, her hair—beautiful, gloriously red hair, like a Renaissance painting—falling the length of her spine like a moving flame. And the freckles on her nose seemed more pronounced—and more endearing.

‘Jordan?’ She looked taken aback to see him standing there.

‘You didn’t have any champagne earlier.’ He smiled, holding up the cooled bottle of bubbly liquid and two glasses, that he had taken from the wedding reception on his way out. ‘An oversight I felt needed rectifying,’ he added huskily. It had been his own morose temper earlier that had created the ‘oversight’; he hadn’t even given her the common courtesy then of ensuring she was provided with a drink!

Her eyes widened, the deepest, clearest blue he had ever seen. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be sharing that with Stella?’ she queried, making no effort to open the door wider and move aside so that he could enter her apartment.

Not that he could blame her for that, either; he hadn’t exactly been attentive so far in their acquaintance. And from the cool way she was looking at him, he wasn’t sure he was going to be given the chance to make amends!

‘Stella is something else that needs rectifying,’ he drawled dismissively.

‘You don’t owe me any explanations, Jordan—’

‘I know that,’ he replied sharply. He didn’t owe any woman anything! ‘I just thought it would be nice if we shared some champagne together,’ he continued less aggressively—so much for making a fresh start with Stazy!