Claiming His Bride

She moved quickly across to the window, wobbling a little on her ivory satin high heels. She couldn’t look at her mother or Lucy, afraid they might see the flare of guilty panic in her eyes, the flickering fear that she was about to be exposed as a fraud.

Tristan didn’t know her at all. Not the real Suzie—the scruffy, impulsive, slapdash Suzie. He only knew the elegant, coolly composed, immaculately groomed Suzanne, as he preferred to call her—the sedate, ladylike image she’d been trying so hard to keep up for the past three months—with her mother’s encouragement.

From the moment Suzie had caught the eye of the young leather-goods tycoon at the Australian fashion awards three months ago, her mother had been determined not to let Tristan get away. Even Tristan’s mother, the snobbish Felicia Guthrie, had come to accept her future daughter-in-law, despite Suzie’s modest upbringing and unexceptional background.

It would have helped, of course, that Suzie had recently won the Gown of the Year award. She was now somebody. A talented young designer with a bright future.

Suzie’s mouth went dry as she saw the huge crowd gathered in the garden below. As well as the rows of seats for the invited guests, which were filled already, there was a milling mob behind, with a daunting sea of cameras and giant zoom lenses, all waiting to see her latest spectacular design.

She nervously fingered the long sleeves of her elegant lace gown and the tiny pearl beads scattered over the tight-fitting bodice with its dropped waistline, then let her hand flutter down over the flared skirt.

Her natural curls were nowhere in sight, skillfully straightened into gleaming sleekness, the way she’d worn it for the past three months. On her head she wore a small pearl tiara, with a gossamer-sheer veil. Nothing must hide or detract from her wedding gown.

“Where’s Tristan?” She swung around, her voice higher than usual. “It’s the bride who’s supposed to be late, not the bridegroom.” Not having a father to give her away, she’d decided to walk into the garden arm in arm with her future husband.

“He’s not late,” her mother soothed. “He’ll be here any minute.”

Lucy ran to the door and peeked out. “He’s coming up the stairs! Are you ready, Suzie?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Suzie gulped in some air. Once she saw Tristan, once he smiled at her with his golden smile, she would feel a whole lot better.

He entered the room a few seconds later, a picture of sartorial elegance in formal white, his golden hair burnished by the crystal chandelier above. Outside, in the bright afternoon sunlight, it would gleam even more.

“Suzanne…you look like a dream. A princess.”

As she felt the warmth of his golden smile and saw the loving pride beaming from his gentle gray eyes, her qualms slipped away. She was going to have a very safe, secure and tranquil life with Tristan. Peace, security and contentment were what she longed for after the fights and frustrations and wildly swinging emotions that she and her mother had had to endure with Suzie’s charming, talented but totally irresponsible father.

The kind of life Suzie would have had to endure with Mack Chaney if she’d been mad enough to give in to her foolish passion for him.

Getting tied up with Mack long-term would have been a disaster. The Mack Chaneys of this world weren’t cut out for a secure, settled, pipe-and-slippers kind of life—the kind of life she wanted. All Mack cared about was speeding around on his Harley-Davidson and playing with his computer, idly surfing the Internet and dreaming wildly impractical dreams—pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams. She shut her mind to his other vices.

“Are you ready to go down?” Tristan asked, and she jerked herself back to earth. This was the most important day of her entire life and she was thinking of—

No, she wasn’t.

She let Tristan steer her toward the door, but they never reached it. Someone burst through the doorway first.

Suzie’s eyes widened in disbelief when she saw Mack Chaney bearing down on her like an avenging angel—or devil—in a black leather jacket, tight-fitting black leather pants, and black boots. His dark eyes were glittering with purpose and his thick black hair was as wild and untamed as it had always been.

“You’re actually intending to marry this pampered fraud?” he barked, halting abruptly in front of her. “I never thought you’d go ahead with it, Suzie. I thought you’d see the light long before today.”

“How dare you burst in here and—” Suzie stopped. “What do you mean—fraud?” She glared at him.

“Get him out of here!” sputtered her mother. “Call security!” she commanded Lucy.

“Wait!” Mack held up a hand. “You can’t marry Tristan Guthrie, Suzie. Not if you want your marriage to be legal!”

Suzie felt Tristan’s body shudder against her and heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath. She glanced up at her shocked bridegroom, but he didn’t meet her look, or make any move to draw her into the comforting protection of his shoulder, not even offering her a reassuring hand. Shock seemed to have robbed him of movement—and of his voice. His stunned gaze was transfixed on Mack Chaney’s dark-eyed, ruggedly good-looking face.

Suzie’s mother stepped forward, her face contorted in fury. “You’d try anything, wouldn’t you, Mack Chaney! I always knew you were trouble!”

Mack’s darkly sensual mouth curved a trifle. “I think the fact that Tristan Guthrie is already married justifies my presence here.”

Suzie swayed, feeling faint. It was Mack whose hand shot out to steady her, not Tristan’s. Tristan was still frozen and speechless with shock.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” she hissed at Mack as the faintness began to recede and anger took over. It wouldn’t be the first time Mack Chaney had played a practical joke on her. But never one like this. Never one so cruel.

“Why not ask your bridegroom?” Mack suggested, his tone derisive.

“I don’t need to,” she retorted. “It’s laughable.” But Tristan wasn’t laughing. Nobody was laughing. And no wonder. This was outrageous! “You’ve obviously made a mistake. Or made it up!” Her scorn lashed Mack, hiding a growing apprehension. Why was Tristan being so quiet? Why wasn’t he denying it? Getting mad? Demanding that Mack Chaney be thrown out?

“Tristan, tell me it’s not true.” Her eyes sought her bridegroom’s face. The clean-cut, perfectly sculptured features were ashen, his long-lashed gray eyes stricken. Would he look so pale and shocked if it wasn’t true? “Tristan…” Her eyes caught his, pleading with him. “Tell me he’s wrong.”

Tristan found his voice at last, a hoarse croak. “Of course he’s wrong.” He turned accusing eyes on Mack, but there was little fire in the gray depths, and his voice shook as he demanded, “Where’s your proof? You’ve been listening to malicious idle gossip.”

“It was a piece of idle gossip that led me to check up on your past,” Mack rasped. “It didn’t take long to uncover your shabby secret. You married a woman ten years ago while you were a student at university, and you’ve never obtained a divorce!” He pulled some papers from his pocket. “Here’s a copy of your marriage certificate, and confirmation in writing that no divorce has been filed.”

Lucy gasped. Tristan’s pale face seemed to crumple. He cast an anguished look at Suzie’s mother. No sympathy there. Just fury, shock and disbelief.

Tristan turned back to his stunned bride, brushing Mack Chaney aside to seize her hand. “We can work this out,” he promised hoarsely. “I’ll fix it.”

“You mean it’s true?” Suzie recoiled. Tristan had a wife he was still married to, and he’d kept it from her? Her perfect, high-principled, reliable Tristan had lied to her? Deceived her? That realization was almost as bad as knowing that her bridegroom was married and contemplating bigamy! She’d always thought Tristan so honest…so upright…so honorable.

Still reeling, unable to believe it, she asked carefully, spelling it out to make doubly sure. “You married another woman ten years ago and you’re still married to her?”

Tristan began to bluster. “It was never a real marriage, I swear it. Love never came into it. It was purely a—” he hesitated, his handsome face contorting in guilty anguish “—a marriage of convenience,” he mumbled, so low she could barely hear. “She was a foreigner—an overseas student—who wanted my help to stay in Australia. I was doing her a favor,” he asserted lamely. “We married in secret and kept it quiet. After a few months we split up and went our separate ways.”

“And where is she now?” Suzie forced out the question, feeling sick. If today’s wedding had gone ahead, she wouldn’t have been Tristan’s legal wife. She would have been married to a bigamist! And wasn’t it an offence, she wondered dazedly, to marry under false pretences, the way Tristan had? How could he be so dishonest and unprincipled! How could he?

Tristan wrung his hands. “I don’t know where she is. I heard the year after we…married that she’d left Australia and gone to some remote part of Africa to be a missionary or something. So much for wanting to stay in Australia!” He gave a disgusted snort. “I tried to trace her to send divorce papers, but she’d vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody knew where she’d gone. I’ve never heard anything of her since. She’s probably dead,” he said with a dismissive toss of his golden head.

“You would have been notified if she was dead,” Mack interjected coldly. “As her husband, you’re her next of kin.”

Next of kin…Suzie felt dizzy. No words could have made the nightmare more real.

“I’ll find her, darling.” Tristan gripped her arm. “I’ll get a divorce. We’ve been apart for years, so even if I can’t find her, there should be no problem….”

She looked up into his pale, handsome face, at his quivering jaw, at the long-lashed gray eyes that couldn’t quite meet hers, and saw him for the first time as he really was. A shallow, spoiled, weak-willed fraud, just as Mack had said.

“How could you, Tristan?” she cried. “How could you keep a thing like that from me? From the woman you say you love and want to marry and share your life with!”

“I—I’d forgotten about it,” he said weakly, but one look at his face was enough to tell her that was patently a lie. She wondered if he’d ever made an effort to find his wife, or if that was a lie, too. “It was so long ago, darling…we were just kids. Impetuous young students. It never meant anything…I hardly knew her…and now…well, she left Australia years ago, so why drag it up again?”

Suzie gave a choked cry. “Because you’re still married to her, Tristan…. Don’t you understand?” He still didn’t accept that he’d done anything wrong. He just wanted to shut it out of his mind and blot it out of his pampered existence as if it had never happened.

Oh, Tristan, she thought with a despairing sigh. I don’t know you at all. And here I was, feeling guilty about you not knowing the real me!

“Just go, Tristan.” She couldn’t bear to see the pained, self-righteous hurt in his eyes, or to listen to any more of his blustering self-justification. “I would never marry you now, whether you had your divorce or not.”