The Bride Said Never!

“The ring, Damian!”

The ring. Of course. The best man was searching his pockets frantically, but he wouldn’t find it. Nick had asked Damian to have it engraved and he had, but he’d forgotten to hand it over.

He dug in his pocket, pulled out the simple gold band and dropped it into Nick’s outstretched hand. Across the narrow aisle, the maid of honor choked back a sob; the bride’s mother, tears spilling down her cheeks, reached for her ex-husband’s hand, clutched it tightly, then dropped it like a hot potato.

Ah, the joys of matrimony.

Damian forced himself to concentrate on the minister’s words.

“And now,” he said, in an appropriately solemn voice, “If there is anyone among us who can offer a reason why Nicolas Skouras Babbitt and Dawn Elizabeth Cooper should not be wed, let that person speak or forever—”

Bang!

The double doors at the rear of the church flew open and slammed against the whitewashed walls. There was a rustle of cloth as the guests shifted in the pews and turned to see what was happening. Even the bride and groom swung around in surprise.

A woman stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against the sunlight of the spring afternoon. The wind, which had torn the doors from her hands, ruffled her hair wildly around her head and sent her skirt swirling around her thighs.

A murmur of shocked delight spread through the church. The minister cleared his throat.

The woman stepped forward, out of the brilliance of the light and into the shadowed interior. The excited murmur of voices, which had begun to die away, rose again.

And no wonder, Damian thought. The latecomer was incredibly beautiful.

She looked familiar, but surely if he’d met her before, he’d know her name. A man didn’t forget a woman who looked like this.

Her hair was the color of autumn, a deep auburn shot with gold, and curled around her oval, high-cheekboned face. Her eyes were widely spaced and enormous. They were...what? Gray, or perhaps blue. He couldn’t tell at this distance. She wore no jewelry but then, jewelry would only have distracted from her beauty. Even her dress, the color of the sky just before a storm, was simple. It was a shade he’d always thought of as violet but the fashion police surely had a better name for it. The cut was simple, too: a rounded neckline, long, full sleeves and a short, full skirt, but there was nothing simple about the body beneath the dress.

His gaze slid over the woman, taking in the high, rounded breasts, the slim waist, the gentle curve of her hips. She was a strange combination of sexuality and innocence, though the innocence was certainly manufactured. It had to be. She was not a child. And she was too stunning, too aware of herself, for it not to be.

Another gust of wind swept in through the open doors. She clutched at her skirt but not before he had a look at legs as long and shapely as any man’s dream, topped by a flash of something black and lacy.

The crowd’s whispers grew louder. Someone gave a silvery laugh. The woman heard it, he was certain, but instead of showing embarrassment at the attention she was getting, she straightened her shoulders and her lovely face assumed a look of disdain.

I could wipe that look from your face, Damian thought suddenly, and desire, as hot and swift as molten lava, flooded his veins.

Oh, yes, he could. He had only to stride down the aisle, lift her into his arms and carry her out into the meadow that unrolled like a bright green carpet into the low hills behind the church. He’d climb to the top of those hills, lay her down in the soft grass, drink the sweetness of her mouth while he undid the zipper on that pale violet dress and then taste every inch of her as he kissed his way down her body. He imagined burying himself between her thighs and entering her, moving within her heat until she cried out in passion.

Damian’s mouth went dry. What was the matter with him? He was not a randy teenager. He wasn’t given to fantasizing about women he didn’t know, not since he’d been, what, fifteen, sixteen years old, tucked away in his bed at night, breathing heavily over a copy of a men’s magazine.

This was nonsense, he thought brusquely, and just then, the woman’s head lifted. She looked directly up the aisle, her gaze unwavering as it sought his. She stared at him while his heartbeat raced, and then she smiled again.

I know what you’re thinking, her smile said, and I find it terribly amusing.

Damian heard a roaring in his ears. His hands knotted at his sides; he took a step forward.

“Damian?” Nick whispered, and just at that minute, the wind caught the doors again and slammed them against the whitewashed walls of the old church.

The sound seemed to break the spell that had held the congregants captive. Someone cleared a throat, someone else coughed, and finally a man in the last pew rose from his seat, made his way to the doors and drew them shut. He smiled pleasantly at the woman, as if to say there, that’s taken care of, but she ignored both the man and the smile as she looked around for the nearest vacant seat. Slipping into it, she crossed those long legs, folded her hands in her lap and assumed an expression of polite boredom.

What, she seemed to ask, was the delay?

The minister cleared his throat. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the congregants turned and faced the altar.

“If there is no one present who can offer a reason why Nicolas and Dawn should not be wed,” he said briskly, as if fearing another interruption, “then, in accordance with the laws of God and the State of Connecticut, I pronounce them husband and wife.”

Nick turned to his bride, took her in his arms and kissed her. The organist struck a triumphant chord, the guests rose to their feet and Damian lost sight of the woman in a blur of faces and bodies.

Saved by the bell, Laurel thought, though it was more accurate to say she’d been saved by a C major chord played on an organ.

What an awful entrance to have made! It was bad enough she’d arrived late for Dawn’s wedding, but to have interrupted it, to have drawn every eye to her...

Laurel swallowed a groan.

Just last week, during lunch, Dawn had predicted that was exactly what would happen.

Annie had brought her daughter to New York for the final fitting on her gown, and they’d all met for lunch at Tavern on the Green. Dawn, with all the drama in her eighteen-year-old heart, had looked at Laurel and sighed over her Pasta Primavera.

“Oh, Aunt Laurel,” she’d said, “you are so beautiful! I wish I looked like you.”

Laurel had looked across the table at the girl’s lovely face, innocent of makeup and of the rough road that was life, and she’d smiled.

“If I looked like you,” she’d said gently, “I’d still be on the cover of Vogue.”

That had turned the conversation elsewhere, to Laurel’s declining career, which Annie and Dawn stoutly insisted wasn’t declining at all, and then to Laurel’s plans for the future, which she’d managed to make sound far more exciting than they so far were.

And, inevitably, they’d talked about Dawn’s forthcoming wedding.

“You are going to be the most beautiful bride in the world,” Laurel had said, and Dawn had blushed, smiled and said well, she certainly hoped Nick would agree, but that the most beautiful woman at the wedding would undoubtedly be her aunt Laurel.

Laurel had determined in that moment that she would not, even inadvertently, steal the spotlight. When you had a famous face—well, a once-famous face, anyway—you could do that just by entering a room, and that was the last thing she wanted to do to the people she loved.

So this morning, she’d dressed with that in mind. Instead of the pale pink Chanel suit she’d bought for the occasion, she’d put on a periwinkle blue silk dress that was a couple of years old. Instead of doing her hair in the style that she’d made famous—whisked back and knotted loosely on the crown, with sexy little curls tumbling down her neck—she’d simply run a brush through it and let it fall naturally around her shoulders. She hadn’t put on any jewelry and she’d even omitted the touch of lip gloss and mascara that was the only makeup she wore except when she was on a runway or in front of a camera.

She’d even left early, catching a train at Penn Station that was supposed to have gotten her into Stratham a good hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin. But the train had broken down in New Haven and Laurel had started to look for a taxi when the station public address system announced that there’d be a new train coming along to pick up the stranded passengers in just a few minutes. The clerk at the ticket counter confirmed it, and said the train would be lots faster than a taxi.

And so she’d waited, for almost half an hour, only to find that it wasn’t a train that had been sent to pick up the passengers at all. It was a bus and, of course, it had taken longer than the train ever would have, longer than a taxi would have, too, had she taken one when the train had first ground to a halt. The icing on the cake had come when they’d finally reached Stratham and for endless minutes, there hadn’t been a cab in sight.

“Aunt Laurel?”

Laurel looked up. Dawn and her handsome young groom had reached her row of pews.

“Baby,” she said, fixing a bright smile to her face as she reached out and gave the girl a quick hug.

“That was some entrance,” Dawn said, laughing.

“Oh, Dawn, I’m so sorry about—”

Too late. The bridal couple was already moving past her, toward the now-open doors and the steps that led down from the church.