Claiming His Bride

Her mother had mistrusted Mack from the start and warned her to keep right away from him. Suzie had known in her heart that Ruth was right about him, that he was the last man in the world she should be seeing, let alone falling for, but try as she might she hadn’t been able to keep away from him. Until that awful night three years ago—the night Mack had demonstrated, with painful clarity, that he was no different from her father.

Disillusioned, she’d refused to see him again, refused his phone calls, even refused to speak to him when he’d turned up at her father’s funeral a few months later. She’d wanted to make it clear to Mack that whatever they’d shared together was now dead, and that she was severing all connections with him.

“We’re here now, Suzie, you can let go of me,” Mack drawled, and she realized they’d pulled up near his front steps and that she was still clinging to him. She released him as if her hands were suddenly on fire, and scrambled off the big machine, groaning as she looked down at her mud-spattered ivory satin high heels and the soaked skirt of her elegant wedding gown.

“My dress and shoes are ruined!” she moaned. “Haven’t you ever thought of buying a car?”

“And give up my Harley?” Mack grinned at her through the rain. In the glow of his porch light, drops of water beaded his heavy eyebrows and thick lashes, giving his dark eyes a pearly sheen. “Come on inside, Suzie, out of this rain. We’ll have to get these things off. We’re both soaked.” His wet T-shirt clung to his muscled chest like a second skin.

We’ll have to get these things off? Alarm shot through her. “I’ll be fine,” she babbled, wondering why she’d ever agreed to come to his home with him. Was she mad? This wasn’t a real marriage, for heaven’s sake! They’d agreed it wasn’t going to last. “Your jacket has kept me nice and dry and warm,” she mumbled.

“Only the top half of you.” He was still grinning, damn him, as he surveyed her sodden gown and shoes. “But I can’t see your wedding dress surviving somehow. I hope you’re not having second thoughts about marrying Tristan when you’re both free again, assuming he ever gets his divorce, of course!”

She almost snapped back, “No, I’m not!” but she caught the words back, scowling instead. A bit of doubt on Mack’s part might be a good thing. As a protective device. Mack had supreme powers of persuasion, as he’d demonstrated before when she’d been determined to keep away from him. Until he’d shown his true colors on that last soul-destroying night, and she’d made it quite clear to him that he was out of her life for good.

But she still wasn’t immune to him, she realized in dismay. Not entirely immune. Having to keep her body pressed up against him all the way to his home, and her arms wrapped tightly around him, had shown her that. The feel of his taut muscles under her hands had sent her heartbeat haywire and her pulses soaring, and even now she could still feel her nerve endings twitching. She would have to be well and truly on her guard against him, every second she spent with him.

As Mack whisked her up the rickety front steps to the shelter of his small covered porch, she fingered her wet tangle of curls and wondered ruefully what Tristan would have thought of her smooth, sleek hair sprouting rebellious curls before his eyes. Would he have laughed, and loved her just as much? Or would he have sent her off to have her hair professionally, permanently, straightened?

She simply didn’t know. What madness had made her want to rush into marriage with a man she didn’t really know? A man she’d only known for three months?

It had been nothing but a dream. And dreams weren’t real. Fairy tales weren’t real.

She heard a thud, and then another, and realized that Mack was tugging off his boots. As he peeled off his socks, revealing dark-skinned bare feet, she gulped and looked away, kicking off her own mud-spattered satin shoes.

Mack unlocked his front door and waved her in. “I’m glad to see your curls are back, Suzie,” he commented as he led her into the front room—a combined sitting room and workroom—and switched on the overhead light. Only one of the three bulbs was working—typical of Mack Chaney, Suzie thought, glancing upward. On her past visits here, he’d often overlooked practical household basics, his mind too absorbed, no doubt, with the Internet and his latest brilliant idea.

But at least the lighting was softer than it would have been with all three bulbs working!

“What on earth did you do to your hair before?” Mack asked, fingering a stray damp curl. He was thinking how cute she looked with her wet curls clustered round her cheeks, and how dewy and moist and kissable her lips looked, and how she’d die if she knew she had mascara running down her face. “And why?”

Suzie jerked her face away. “I needed a change.” No way would she tell him the real reason she’d dispensed with her curls—to impress Tristan Guthrie on the night of the Gown of the Year awards. Tristan, as head of the Guthrie Leather Goods empire, one of the sponsors for the event, had presented the main award.

Knowing he’d be there, her mother had urged Suzie to make an effort to look more elegant and sophisticated in the hope that her daughter would catch the eye of the eligible young bachelor. Dolled up in her award-winning gown, with her new sleek hairstyle and ladylike demeanor, Suzie had done her mother proud. Tristan had had eyes for no one else all night—or for the following three months.

“I had it straightened, that’s all,” she said with a shrug. “Every woman likes a new look occasionally.”

“Why change what’s perfect already?”

A tremor quivered through her. Mack was the only one who’d ever thought her perfect as she was. Everyone else preferred her new sleek-haired, sophisticated look—her mother, her workmates at Jolie Fashions, Tristan, his snooty mother.

“And you don’t need all that eye makeup and mascara,” Mack chided. “You’re too fair. It looks unnatural.”

“Tristan liked me like this.” He’d never taken a second look at the natural Suzie. He’d come to Jolie Fashions once to pick up his mother after a fitting, and he’d walked straight past her without a glance.

“He should have liked you as you really are.”

She twitched a shoulder. He never noticed me as I really was.

Mack reached up to brush a finger over her cheek. “Your mascara has run,” he mocked softly. “The hazards of makeup. Still, I’m sure Tristan appreciated your glamorous new look.” His dark eyes taunted her. “He’d like the cool, sophisticated ice-maiden look, from what I found out about him. Nothing too hot or passionate or unbridled for our straitlaced golden boy.”

He was so close to the mark that she forgot she hadn’t intended to let him get under her skin, and she lost her cool. “From what you found out about him?” she lashed back. “I still can’t believe you actually had the nerve to check up on my fiancé’s past—just on a vague, spiteful hunch!” She was too incensed to acknowledge that if he hadn’t, he would never have discovered and exposed Tristan’s secret marriage, and she would be the wife of a bigamist by now.

“There was nothing spiteful about it. I was merely looking out for your welfare. But we can discuss your errant ex-fiancé when you have a soothing drink in your hand. And when you’ve removed those wet things.”

She flinched away from him. “Oh…you mean your jacket.” She hurriedly slipped it off and handed it back to him. “Thanks.” She paused, glancing down. “I don’t suppose it matters that I’m leaving muddy splotches and watery drops on your carpet. How long since you’ve had it cleaned? Sometime last century?” She screwed up her nose in distaste at the stained, threadbare carpet.

“Oh, that old thing, it’ll be going soon.”

Yeah, I’ll bet, Suzie thought. And pigs might fly. She was still frowning at the carpet. “What did you do—hold a wild party in here? What are these stains—red wine? Or did someone get stabbed?”

His lip quirked. “It’s grease. I took my bike apart in here and made a bit of a mess.”

She rolled her eyes. “Heavens, Mack,” she exclaimed, looking around the room properly for the first time, “this whole room’s a mess. It’s a disgrace.”

There were piles of papers and cardboard cartons stacked on the floor, and more cluttering the tables and desktops, where a computer and keyboard were just visible. The armchairs had newspapers and computer magazines strewn all over them. “Don’t you ever tidy your house? Or do any cleaning?”

“I’ve been busy. I’m not going to die because of a bit of dust or a few messy papers and boxes. Besides, nobody sees the mess but me.”

“I’m seeing it.”

“Since when did a bit of mess bother you, Suzie?” His dark eyes glinted. “There was a time when you only noticed me, and the chemistry that flared between us every time we looked at each other. And we had more than just chemistry going for us.”

Suzie wanted to stop him, but his next words brought such nostalgic memories flooding back that they formed a lump in her throat, making speech impossible.

“Remember how we used to love listening to the band concerts and feeding the pigeons in Hyde Park, Suzie? And watching the yacht races on Sydney Harbour at weekends? And how we loved a good joke? And talking about everything under the sun? Music, sports, politics, books, movies, our dreams, our ambitions?”

She unlocked her throat. “Pipe dreams, in your case!” Her heart rate had picked up to a disturbing degree at his reminder of three years ago, and scorn seemed the best way to cover her turmoil. “You were always full of talk about what you were going to do with your life when your brilliant ideas hit the jackpot and you made tons of money, but I don’t see any sign that you’ve become rich and famous in the past three years!”

She raked a disparaging look around. “Nothing’s changed, has it, Mack? When I first met you, you’d just thrown in a perfectly good job and dropped out of university, and you’ve never knuckled down to a proper job since as far as I can see—let alone hit a jackpot!”

No, nothing’s changed, she thought, stifling a sigh. He’s just like my father. All his dreams of becoming rich and famous—in his case with his paintings—had come to nothing, too.

Mack gave a snort. “What was the point in staying at uni? I knew more about computers and programming than my lecturers. And the job I had with that computer firm was leading nowhere. And I have been working since then. Every time I sit down at my computer I’m working.”

“Playing games,” she scoffed.

“Inventing new games,” he corrected. “New programs. New software.”

“That nobody’s interested in!”

She would never have been so harsh or so discouraging three years ago—she would have put his failures down to being ahead of his time and urged him to keep trying—but she was still bitter at the way Mack had killed her trust in him on that last traumatic night, revealing a side of him she’d never seen, and never wanted to see again.

“So little faith!” Mack sighed. He seemed amused rather than devastated, she noted in exasperation. “How you’ve changed, Suzie. You encouraged me once.”

“Until I realized you were just like my father…living on your dreams and never facing reality,” she retorted. Didn’t he even care? “You’re going to end up just like him, with nothing to show for your life.” And look what that had done to her father.

“Is that why you cut me out of your life as if I’d never existed?”