Midnight Wedding

She sighed. ‘It’s understandable, I suppose. I was only seventeen and I’d lived in Lansing Mills for less than two years. Everyone had known Donna since before she was born. And Brendan since he married her. I suppose people thought they were just trying to take care of me. Stopping me doing silly things. All for my own good.’ For a moment she looked unbearably sad.

Jack knew that look. He had seen it too many times. It was the look of a prisoner resigned to the trap she was in. It always turned something over in his stomach, making him rage, making him want to make the prisoner rage.

Instead he said woodenly, ‘So you took the law into your own hands. You ran.’

The sad look dispelled. For a moment she looked naughty—and very young.

‘Yup.’

‘Why, exactly? Why then?’

She evaded that. ‘My daddy left a will saying that Donna was to look after me until I’m twenty-five unless I get married.’

All the bright naughtiness vanished. She looked as if she were tasting poison.

Jack said slowly, ‘And no one gets married at seventeen, right?’

She evaded that too. ‘They thought that meant I should stay at home, not go to college or travel or anything. Donna,’ she added, ‘never travelled.’

‘They were unkind to you?’

Holly stared into the fire.

‘They wouldn’t have thought so,’ she said at last, carefully.

Jack pondered in silence. ‘You were afraid of that man this afternoon,’ he said at last. ‘I saw it.’

Holly’s head reared up. Startled hazel eyes met his. They were unguarded for a moment and very, very wary.

And blazing.

‘You don’t trust me an inch,’ Jack said on a note of discovery. ‘Do you?’

Her lids fell, veiling the betraying expression. She gave a shrug.

‘Why should I?’

He made an exasperated noise. ‘I got you away from Brendan Sugrue. Twice.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she said coolly. ‘I ask myself why.’

There was a blank silence. ‘Not an inch,’ Jack repeated.

She shrugged again. ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Because you don’t have many choices. And you need help.’

Her spine snapped vertical. ‘No, I don’t.’

He ignored that. ‘What made you run away from home?’

Their eyes met: hers alarmed, furious; his impassive. Hers were the first to fall.

She said flippantly, ‘I didn’t like having to be in by ten.’

A longer silence this time. She turned her head away but his eyes never left her profile.

Then Jack said very softly, ‘Why don’t I believe you?’

The barman interrupted. ‘Mr Armour. There is a phone call for you.’

Jack hesitated, not taking his eyes off her. Holly sat still under the raking inspection. But when he shrugged and went to the bar she sagged in the chair as if an interrogation light had been turned off.

Oh, boy, had she misjudged Jack Armour, she thought. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. She did not often do that. She had learned to sum people up quickly. On the road, these last five years, her survival had depended on her getting it right.

Yet she had looked at Jack Armour and got him one hundred and eighty degrees wrong. She had seen all that overwhelming male confidence and dubbed him Gorgeous Jack. Oh, she was right about the confidence—those slanted, unreadable eyes; the arrogant handsome features; the air of contained power…

Sexy as hell, thought Holly dispassionately. She could manage dispassion now that he was at the bar with his back to her, talking hard into a telephone. Sexy as hell, but much, much more than that. He had known she was not telling him the whole truth. Most people did not. And no one, in her experience, had tried to make her spread out her secrets on a platter for inspection.

She had only just held out, too. In his own way Jack Armour was as determined as Brendan. In fact, he was almost as bad as Homer.

Holly caught herself. She gave a little superstitious shiver. No one was as bad as Homer, she reminded herself soberly. No one. That was why she had run in the first place. And why she was going to keep on running until she was twenty-five and none of Brendan’s clever lawyers could find a way to pull her back.

Hang on to that, she told herself. Two and a half more years to freedom. You’ve come this far. You can do the rest.

CHAPTER THREE

JACK finished his phone call and came back to her.

‘I’ve got to work,’ he told her briefly.

Holly thought, Work! That’s all he’s interested in. I’m getting in the way of it.

She nodded, not looking at him. ‘I’ll wait for your friend to bring my things and then I’ll go.’

Inexplicably, that did not please Jack. ‘It will be late. And what if that guy has found out where you live?’

Holly could not help herself. She shuddered at the thought. But giving way to panic was no solution. She had learned that well over the last five years.

So she tilted her chin and said flippantly, ‘I won’t open the door.’

In spite of the fact that he should be working, Jack did not go. He tapped his foot impatiently. But he did not move from the spot.

‘You could stay here.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? I’ve reserved a room for you.’