Stolen Bride

As the chaos of shouting, milling bodies erupted in the church doorway, Cara breathlessly stumbled almost headlong down the steps and then down the deserted street. The stranger was fumbling in his pockets as he ran, pulling out some keys and then opening a car door. He got in and pushed open the door on the other side. ‘Get in,’ he ordered.

Cara stood irresolute. ‘But—’ she began.

‘No buts,’ he snapped. ‘We haven’t time. Your family will come round that corner in ten seconds flat, and they’re not going to be carrying violin cases.’

Cara took one wild glance back and then somehow squeezed herself and the billowing dress into the passenger seat. Her veil parted from the wreath of fresh flowers on her head and bobbed briefly in the air behind them before dragging down onto the dust. It was the last thing she saw before the stranger wrenched the car round a tight bend and she finally managed to shut the door.

They drove in silence for several miles, the stranger concentrating tautly on driving as fast as he could, his eyes constantly flicking to the rear-view mirror.

Cara tightly clasped her hands, which were trembling almost uncontrollably. Was this really happening? It was so... She shrugged and gave up looking for a description. Her brain seemed to have simply frozen in shock.

She pinched the skin on the back of her hand. Could she be dreaming all this? It was hot in the car, and the sun was blazing straight in her eyes. Blinking a little, she moved her legs slightly, and the silk of her dress rustled coldly against her skin. She definitely wasn’t dreaming.

She looked at the stranger out of the corner of her eye. What on earth had she done? He could be anybody. He could be the sort of attacker her uncle and Luca were always on guard against. And she had actually let him take her away. Luca had once called her stupid, she remembered, and she had been furiously angry. Maybe he had been right after all.

She turned her head to look carefully at the stranger’s face and then back at her lap. ‘Who are you?’ she said at last. And then without waiting for an answer demanded, ‘Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me? Are you kidnapping me? What—’

He lifted one hand off the steering wheel, and she instinctively recoiled. Was he going to hit her, like Luca had once done? But the stranger was merely holding his hand, palm outward, like a traffic policeman.

“My name is Finn Cormac,’ he said at last.

English. He was speaking English. But how did he know she would understand? Her eyes widened at the implications of that. No one had spoken English to her for a long, long time. But it was not something she could ever forget how to speak. It was the language of her childhood, of happy times, of the finishing school she had been to when she was eighteen, when she had had her one and only glimpse of freedom.

She stared at him, wondering exactly how much he did know about her. ‘But who—’ she began.

‘No.’ He waggled his hand and she fell silent. ‘If you’re going to jabber at me, you can get out of the car. Now is not the time for twenty questions.’

Her mouth closed and she looked at him warily. He didn’t look like a kidnapper. But then what did one look like? And besides, it had been her defiance at the altar that had set this whole thing in motion.

She subsided in her seat, confused by the strangeness of his name and the unreality of what was going on. Questions still buzzed around her brain, but she recog-nised the sense of what he had said. Now was not the time for them.

‘I am Carenza Gambini,’ she said at last. ‘But everyone calls me Cara.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

She breathed in deeply, then looked sidewise at him. He was driving very fast, with utter concentration on the road ahead. She almost didn’t like to disturb him. She tried to think of what her family was doing. Her uncle had been furious. The way he had shouted at her had been almost enough to stop her in her tracks.

And he had turned so paper white when she had followed the stranger that he had looked ill. She felt a sudden shaft of guilt and then thought about the way Luca had pulled her to him. Did he care enough about her to follow?

‘Do you think Luca will really come after me?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Are you joking?’ demanded Finn, his foot hard on the accelerator. ‘Is this Italy or Iceland?’

She breathed out slowly. Of course Luca would come after her. They all would. It had been a stupid question. She knew her family better than anyone. But she had been thinking in terms of how Luca felt about her. Maybe he did love her, after all. ‘Maybe she had just made a terrible mistake.

‘He doesn’t love me,’ she offered, hoping Finn would contradict her. Hoping she had been wrong.

‘You’re his property, sweetheart,’ replied Finn matter-of-factly. ‘And you’ve hurt his pride.’

She felt as though all the air had been knocked out of her. She had just heard, for the first time, someone else—and a complete stranger, at that—express all her secret doubts about the way Luca regarded her—that she was a piece of property. Valuable, maybe, in terms of what marrying her meant. But that was all.

It was something that up until now she thought only she knew. Just who was this man sitting next to her? Helping to boot Luca so surely, right in the middle of his pride?

‘Maybe he won’t...hurt you,’ she offered, not sure at all what she was saying. ‘I mean, when I’ve explained...’

‘I heard you trying a bit of explaining at the altar,’ replied Finn drily. ‘Maybe I’m not very observant, but somehow, he didn’t look too bowled over by your reasoning.’

‘He’s... he’s very hot-blooded,’ began Cara.

‘So am I,’ drawled Finn, taking the turn for the autostrada. ‘And I’d like to stay that way.’

The entrance to the autostrada was getting closer, but before they reached it, Finn took a sharp right turn down a cart track into a small wood. He drove carefully through the trees, the car’s suspension protesting loudly at the pits and bumps, before coming to a stop as the trees began to thin out by the side of another road.

He switched off the ignition and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll wait here until dark. I don’t want to take any chances of someone spotting you. I don’t think anyone saw the car, and only an idiot would expect us to hide right under your relatives’ noses.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that Luca is exactly in the genius class. But I reckon this is our best chance. We’ll be all right here for a while.’

She breathed out, a little shakily, noting the use of the word we and not sure what it implied. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I want to know—’

He sighed and she stopped, uncertain once more about the kind of man she was dealing with. ‘Don’t thank me,’ he drawled. ‘You’re in deep trouble, if you hadn’t already realised it.’ He waved his hand at the trees and smiled. ‘We are not out of the woods yet.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t care,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Nothing could be worse than being Luca’s wife.’

Finn shifted easily in his seat. ‘Well, there’s something in that,’ he conceded.

She decided to begin again. ‘Who are you? Are you...’ She swallowed. ‘Are you someone with a grudge against my uncle?’

He looked at her reflectively. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘And before you start on that catalogue of questions you’ve obviously got, I might as well say that I’m not sure I want to tell you too much about me. You’re a rather dangerous woman to know, Cara Gambini.’

She stared at him, amazed. ‘Dangerous?’ she echoed. ‘Me?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, you. I don’t know you, and I don’t know how serious you are about getting away from your family.’

‘I want to get away from Luca, not my family,’ she said hotly.

‘Is there a difference?’ he asked gently.

There was silence while Cara looked woodenly at her dress. Then he asked, ‘Have you any idea what you want to do now? A plan, maybe?’

‘A plan?’ she echoed blankly. She had never in her life been asked such a question. Everybody else always made plans for her. Suddenly Cara found herself thinking of possibilities and consequences. And all of them looked black.

She eyed the stranger doubtfully. ‘What about you? Do you have a plan?’

He scratched his jaw. ‘Oh, plenty,’ he agreed. ‘But unfortunately I made most of them before I attended your wedding. And none of them included a runaway bride with half the thugs in Naples on her tail.’

She bit her lip and stared at him in astonishment. ‘You mean you have no idea what we’re going to do at all?’

He gazed levelly at her. ‘No.’

She met his eyes and noticed little dark flecks in the deep blue. With an impatient shake of her head, she tore her gaze away and stared out the window. For the first time in her life, she was truly on her own. And she would have to start making some decisions. Fast.