The Bridegroom's Secret

Oddly enough, it was Regina, the least confident Belle unless she was behind her camera, who ended the indecision. “If Julie’s lost her faith, girls, we have to have it for her. No fears shown. No hesitation or uncertainty. I nearly lost Dell because of a lack of faith. I kept everything a secret, from him more so than from you, but all of you as well.”

“Me, too, with Kane,” Serena added soberly.

“Pride, fear and embarrassment can be a recipe for disaster,” Audra sighed.

“I believe we all met for a reason, and that Julie came to us for a reason. And I believe it’s partly because of Julie and Matt that we’re all so happy now. It’s our turn to give.” Regina looked around at each of her dearest friends. “I think Belle’s right. If Julie won’t share her worries with us, then we’ll keep throwing her together with Matt and see what happens. And believe the best will happen for them both, because we love them. Now, I don’t know about you girls, but I have a four-thirty about to come in and I have to turn the studio into a Carnivale in fourteen and a half minutes.”

The others smiled at Regina, still with the same uneasiness, but turned and walked into the building.

He was about to lose the entire contents of his stomach. Or maybe it was his heart that was coming up. It sure felt as if it was in his mouth about now.

Despite his plans to win her over, all the things he’d worked out to say, he barely spoke until he took the turnoff to the airport. He couldn’t make the words form. All he could think to say was, Do you still love me? But how could he, when he was almost sure he knew the answer and there was no way in hell he was prepared to hear it?

The clock was ticking. He had less than ninety minutes left to tell her, and trust that she’d be the strong, understanding woman he’d fallen in love with. The woman he’d relied on through the worst time of his life. His beautiful Julie…

“So,” she said, holding her flowers with fingers about to snap the stems, her voice over-bright. “The girls said we’re going to the airport. I hope you had things packed for me? Where are we heading—skiing? The Caribbean islands?” The final two words bordered on sarcastic. Obviously, his silence had given away that this wasn’t the kind of surprise it seemed.

She’d given him the opening he needed, but he refused to jump in and say it, to shock her that way. “Jules, you know I’ve been trying to get you alone since the day after our engagement party. I need to tell you something important, but you’ve been—” he paused so she’d get the full sense of his meaning “—very busy. But I knew you wouldn’t say no to the Belles if they helped me arrange time off for you.”

She flushed, as he’d expected she would. Julie’s honesty compelled her to say what came next. “I know it seems like I’ve been avoiding you…”

“Seems like?” He heard the rip-roaring fury in his voice, and knew it came from months of hurt. “You have avoided me, for almost two months now. You don’t call me or come to see me. When we have to be together, you only touch me in front of the cameras or to reassure your friends.” He held up a hand as she began to speak, her face filled with weary resentment. “And I’m sick to death of hearing that it’s the job. I see the other Belles spending time with their men, so stop making excuses.”

“So you’re more intelligent than me,” she snapped. “I believed your excuses for months on end. And your work never came in a prettier package than Elise.”

He refused to dignify that with a retort. Surely she must know he’d been faithful to her! Her problem had come from finding out about his work arrangements from a stranger. “You’re right about my making excuses. I have done that, but not for the reasons you think.” Once he’d turned onto the freeway leading to Logan International Airport, he said, “Time’s run out, Julie. It’s time for us to be honest—both of us.”

Beside him, he felt her freeze. “So, I gather this isn’t the romantic getaway the girls believed it was when they helped you?”

“No.” He kept his gaze on traffic. “But you already knew that.”

“So you lied to them, to our friends?”

He shrugged. “They drew their own conclusions. I didn’t correct them.”

“Sliding out of the truth is lying in my book,” she said, her tone left sarcasm behind, and headed straight into belligerence.

You ought to know, you’ve been doing it for months, he almost said; but an innate sense of honesty made him admit she was right: she’d only followed his example.

She’d been flashing her anger as bright as sunlight. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She didn’t want to know. Avoiding him had been all she could do to stop this final confrontation from happening—and time was up. Luring him into a fight was her last stand against the end.

“It wasn’t their place to know, Julie. I had to tell you first. After today, everyone will know anyway.”

The blood drained from her face, making her freckles stand out in sharper contrast. “I see,” she whispered. Her head lowered to where her thumbnails scratched at her index fingers. One of a legion of nervous habits he’d learned to read: she was nervous as hell and hiding it with belligerence.

But why? Why didn’t she take the opening he’d given her, and ask him to stop the car so she could get out, or just throw the ring back in his face?

The Belles. She’s staying in this engagement for her friends’ sake.

Since the Vandiver cancellation, the mammoth event that had gone belly-up without payment, the whole business had been on the rocks. Proud and fiercely independent, the women of The Wedding Belles wouldn’t take a cent from their men to stay afloat. But when it had hit the media rounds that The Belles, in debt themselves, were giving Julie and Matt the best wedding they could afford, Julie Montgomery and Matt McLachlan were suddenly hailed as the love match of the year, and the Belles as “wedding planners with heart.” Since then, brides and their mothers had flocked to The Wedding Belles to book their weddings…but, as ever with this kind of business, payments were slow to come in. They couldn’t afford a single cancellation now.

The Belles couldn’t afford to lose the McLachlan-Montgomery wedding.

He couldn’t be angry with her for caring about her friends, no matter how it hurt, no matter how damn rejected he felt, how alone in a love story he’d believed was forever.

What he had to say, to ask, was far too important to blurt out in anger, or in retaliation for whatever she threw at him. Given what he’d put her through, he deserved it.

“You haven’t asked why we’re headed to the airport,” he said abruptly.

Her mouth was half-open, ready for a retort, but then it closed. As she thought, her lower lip pushed out, almost like pouting but far sexier because it was natural. Like her sensuality, it was so much a part of her she didn’t think about it.

Suddenly his body reminded him that it had been a long time since she’d shown him the full extent of that loving sensuality. He ached with the need for her touch, for the beauty of their union—and even more he ached for the connection that, to him, meant he’d found his one and only, the commitment to forever he’d made in his heart the night she’d said the words he’d cherish all his life. “All I want is you.”

A shaft of pain pierced him like a gunshot, as he thought of the way she’d loved him right from the moment she’d tripped and landed at his feet the first day. She’d looked up, laughing at her clumsiness, willing to share the joke against herself in a way he’d come to know was uniquely Julie. Then the look in her eyes turned to wonder as she saw him. “Here’s my number,” she’d said within a minute in that adorable accent of hers, writing with a permanent marker on his hand. “And here’re my lips,” she’d whispered when she’d finished writing. She’d kissed him with a sweetness and desire he’d never known in his life. It was so amazing he’d forgotten they were in the middle of a milling crowd on a busy city street. He’d forgotten he was in a convenient, please-the-parents relationship with Elise, and he’d vowed never to cheat on a woman in his life. He hadn’t been able to think beyond the moment, the woman whose name he hadn’t even known. He’d drawn her into his arms and kissed her right back.

She hadn’t known his name, either. For the first time a woman hadn’t known he was Matthew McLachlan of McLachlan Marine Industries, one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. And when on their second date he’d told her, she’d said, “Oh?”, with a semblance of polite interest when she so obviously didn’t care that it had made him laugh out loud, something he’d rarely done in his lifetime. “So does that mean I don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pay for dinner?”

And she’d stood by him after his father’s sudden death eight weeks later, and he’d discovered how deep the problems at McLachlan’s ran. The mess in which his father had left the business with schemes and investments that had failed time after time.

“I never had wealth in my life to care about, Matt,” she’d said, holding him close. “I care if it hurts you—but whether you want to save the business or you want to start over—no matter what, I’ll still be here.” And then she’d said those beautiful words he’d never forget. “All I want is you.”

He was about to test “no matter what,” and “all I want is you” to their limits. Would she still be here tomorrow? Would he still be all she wanted? Would she want him at all?

“So, why are we going to the airport?”

In their fourteen months together, he’d never heard such a distant tone from her.

He exited onto the airport turnoff. They were almost there. He swallowed the bitter bile rising in his throat and said the words he’d rehearsed ever since he’d recruited The Belles to help him “kidnap” her. “I realise this is terrible timing. I wouldn’t blame you if you never want to see me again. But I’m asking you not to walk away, not today. I need you, Julie.”

After a few moments, she asked, simply, “Why?”

There was nothing else to do but blurt it out. “My ex, Kirsten, was married on Saturday—”

“You…you were married?” The shock, the pain of quick jealousy in her voice made him want to hit himself, and yet a small part of him rejoiced. What a stupid jerk to shock her like that—but she wouldn’t feel any pain, surely, unless she still cared?

“No,” he was quick to reassure her. “We never married. Kirsten’s my ex-girlfriend. But that isn’t the point. We had—have a child together. Molly’s seven, and she’s on her way to stay with me for two weeks while Kirsten and Dan are on their honeymoon. Her plane lands in an hour.”

CHAPTER THREE

ONE moment passed, then two, before Julie made a small, choking sound, then another and another. “You…you…?” Further words were impossible, as she doubled over herself, coughing and spluttering.

But as she choked on her words, she couldn’t stop them going round and round in her head. He has a daughter?

She must have spoken them aloud at some point, for he answered in a restrained, polite tone that made her long to biff him over the head. “Yes. I should have told you about Molly long ago. I didn’t. There’s no excuse I can give you.”

Somehow she found her voice, even if it came out as a croak half-lost in a cough. “Just like that?” The words came out strangled as she coughed again and again, choking on saliva.

He must have pulled the car over sometime in the past minute, because she felt the stillness around her, and a gentle hand patting her back. He didn’t speak until her fit subsided. “What do you want me to say?”