The Bridesmaid and the Bachelor Read online

  “You can do this,” she told her reflection. “You learned about renovating a building, and health inspectors, and electrical codes, and advertising. You are a strong, independent businesswoman. You can get through this.”

  Yes. She would go back to the party and sit with the gaggle of bridesmaids, or maybe one of the grunting shoulder guys, and she would be bright and interested and ask all the questions she’d heard Paige ask over the years. She would draw out everyone else and they would never realize she’d said little to nothing about herself. She would nail this. Her business—her whole future –depended on it.

  With that in mind, she pulled open the bathroom door, marched into the hall, and almost shrieked when a hand settled on her shoulder.

  “Good to see you again—Kyrie.”

  ***

  Ben had to admit it. She had almost fooled him.

  He’d known it was Kyrie the minute he spotted her. Every line he’d ever dismissed about eyes meeting across a crowded room had stood up and laughed at him when he saw her. There hadn’t been a shred of doubt in his mind. Sure, the hair was different, and she was wearing something a lot more eye-catching than the jeans and sweaters he remembered, but it wasn’t like he’d ever seen her dressed up. Mostly he’d seen her naked.

  It was a good look on her.

  But then she’d spouted that line about being Paige, and she’d been so convincing that he’d almost bought it. Even though every cell in his body was busy reminding him in dozens of assorted ways that oh, yeah, they remembered her, his brain had said, well, they are twins, it’s understandable.

  Honestly. He thought he’d learned the importance of listening to his gut after that run-in with the street vendors in Guyana.

  Because the truth became apparent the moment she walked away from him, and there, playing peekaboo between the wisps of hair at her nape, he saw the mole on the back of her neck. It was so small it could barely be seen unless someone happened to be looking for it. Which he had. Not that he realized what he was doing until he spied the mole and remembered her saying it was one of the few ways people could tell her and Paige apart.

  I’m a half-inch shorter, though no one notices unless we’re side by side. She has dimples and I don’t. I sing alto, she squawks soprano. And I have a mole here on my neck, but she has one on the inside of her thigh.

  Any revelations that might have come after that were lost to him. Probably because he’d become distracted, kissing the mole and the non-mole and everything in between.

  But her words had done their job. Now all that mattered was getting some new ones out of her—the ones that would explain why she was lying to him and everyone else.

  She’d been in the bathroom so long he’d started to think there must have been another exit, but right about when he was ready to throw in the towel and try to wheedle her room number out of the desk clerk, she emerged. He let her get a couple of paces in front of him before he spoke. He wanted a full-body view of her reaction.

  “Good to see you again, Kyrie,” he said, and if he’d had any lingering doubts, the slight falter in her step would have erased them. She tipped a little sideways before she stopped and slowly turned to face him.

  Ben prided himself on being an observant man. Not just at work, where both safety concerns and research controls practically demanded that he notice and extrapolate, but in his travels to the locales where work took him. He loved discovering new people and places and facts. He really loved reaching the point when those people and places and facts ceased to seem new and started feeling like second nature, like something he had mastered.

  His time with Kyrie had ended before he’d gotten that kind of grip on her. He still couldn’t predict her. Her being here, now, was proof.

  She stayed three paces away from him. The hall pulsed with the voices of people walking past, the distant ringing of slot machines, and a faint hint of piped-in music, but between them, there was only silence. The waiting kind of silence that seemed to build a wall between them and the rest of the world.

  She opened her mouth. He braced himself for—what? Would she try to keep the farce going? Trot out a story of a multiple-personality disorder? Walk up to him and grab him by the collar and kiss him senseless in an attempt to make him forget that right now, she was at the top of his Do Not Trust list?

  Come to think of it, he kind of liked that last option despite himself.

  She did none of those things. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed. Somewhere in there, she shifted. He couldn’t say definitively what had happened, but just like seeing an actor break character, she changed in front of him. The act she’d been channeling in the welcome party had been retired.

  “I should have known this wouldn’t work,” she said. No smile.

  “I’ll have to hear the whole story before I can give you an answer on that one.”

  She glanced toward the function room, where laughter and the smell of shrimp reminded him that he was supposed to be doing his Best Man thing.

  “I’ll explain,” she said. “But please, can you play along for a little while? Please don’t say anything to anyone, especially not Siobhan. Just through dinner. Once it’s over, I’ll tell you what’s happening, and then, well, you’ll have to do what you think is right. But please just give me these couple of hours.”

  “You ran out on me once. Want to tell me why I should believe this time will be any different?”

  For the first time, her gaze shifted from him to the floor. “I guess I deserved that.”

  “Yep.”

  She nibbled on her lip before opening the little beaded bag she carried and digging around for a minute.

  “Here.” She handed him a key card. “I can’t lock myself in my room if you have this.”

  He took it, taking care to not touch her fingers. Touching was forbidden. Well—at least until he got some facts out of her.

  “This is a start. But you could have another key hidden away. Or you could get a different one from the desk. Or you could, just, disappear into the night. You’re good at that.”

  “Fine.” She thrust the bag in his direction. The beads made a design, he saw—a flock of birds. “Take it.”

  “What?”

  “Take my purse. Look, here are my credit cards, my cash, my driver’s license. If you want, you can check my room to be sure I don’t have more stashed up there.” The bag shook slightly as she waved it in his face. “Do you really thing I’m going to run around Las Vegas with no money, no credit cards, and no I.D.?”

  So now he felt like a heel. “Okay.” He pushed the bag back in her direction. The beads winked in the light, making it look like one of the birds was laughing at him.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, I’ll keep quiet for dinner. But as soon as we can get out of there . . .”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ll explain.”

  He would have been a lot more reassured if she hadn’t looked like someone was pulling her kidney out of her while she said it.

  Chapter Two

  Ben spent the entire dinner watching Kyrie. Not because he still thought of her as a flight risk, but because he couldn’t stop himself.

  He kind of hated that.

  She shouldn’t have made such an impact on him. They’d had one week together. Not even a full one at that, what with the day they spent pretending they weren’t going to fall all over each other. And the night she took off, of course.

  He had been using the main house of Siobhan’s family’s lake retreat to work on his dissertation. When Adam called him to say, Hey, Siobhan has a couple of friends who are going to use one of the guesthouses, but they know you’re working and won’t bother you, he’d thought nothing of it. He would take a half hour out of the day when they arrived, introduce himself, reassure them he wasn’t an ax murderer, and never see them again.

  Except the
m had turned out to be just her. Kyrie.

  And the half hour turned into a walk around the lake, followed by dinner. And a hike the next day. A canoe ride that morphed into a make-out session that spilled over into the best damned interruption he had ever known.

  Adam had been right about one thing, though—Kyrie was no bother. Not at all. At least, not until the last day, when he came downstairs from a shower and found an I’m so sorry, but, note on the table.

  He’d been pissed, then grumpy, then pissed again. He told himself it was better this way. They’d both known it was one of those moment-out-of-time things, what with her being in East Podunk and him on a fast track to his defense, then Brazil, then Antarctica. So even though he felt he was entitled to an explanation, he hadn’t bothered trying to track her down. They had been about the moment, not the future.

  But now that she had landed on his radar again, it seemed the moment had returned. So would the freakin’ meal ever end so he could get on with the program?

  He thought he’d kept his distraction covered until dessert, when Adam tore himself away from Siobhan’s side and knelt by his chair.

  “Awfully quiet tonight, Benjie. Everything okay?”

  Ben’s gut tightened when he heard the old childhood nickname. The last time Adam had used it was to say, Well, Benjie, the good news is, the doctor says they can save your leg. The bad news is . . .

  “Everything’s fine.” God, he hoped so. “Not used to the desert air yet.”

  Adam nodded. “I forgot to mention one last best-man duty.”

  Shit. Incoming.

  When Adam asked him to be his best man, he hadn’t had any qualms about saying yes. That was before he knew that they were talking Vegas, destination wedding, 492 events. He didn’t mind any of them alone. Rolled together, it was rapidly approaching the overflow stage, and they still had to get through this welcome party, the rehearsal, the poker and craps tutorials, the pre-rehearsal brunch, the post-wedding brunch, and—oh yeah—the wedding itself.

  “You know that I love your jokes,” Adam said, staring across the table at his laughing fiancée. “But Siobhan—well, she still isn’t over that thing with the rake and the pizza. She’s scared you’ve got something like that up your sleeve for the wedding.”

  The rush of relief was so intense, it left him almost light-headed.

  “Adam. Give me some credit. Even I know when to lay off the pranks. I won’t do anything to mess with the wedding. Or the rehearsal, or the reception, or any of those official things.” He paused for dramatic effect. “But I reserve the right to play hell with the bachelor party.”

  “Oh God.”

  “But even then, I promise, no hookers or dancing chickens or anything like that.”

  “Swear it. On Grandma’s strawberry-rhubarb pie.”

  “With her homemade ice cream.”

  Adam slapped him on the back hard enough to shove him forward an inch or two. “Good stuff. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Nice to know you have some faith in me.”

  “Ah, don’t get your panties in a knot, Ben. It’s Siobhan. She wants to keep things perfect, make sure everybody has a good time. If anything were to go wrong—well, I don’t know if I’d want to see what happened, you know?”

  Ben never would have pegged Siobhan to be one to turn into a lunatic bride, but maybe he wasn’t the stellar judge of character he thought he was. After all, look at Runaway Kyrie.

  Some of his doubt must have shown on his face, for Adam shook his head.

  “She’s not frothing at the mouth or anything. She’s just worked hard to make this special for everyone, and she doesn’t want it screwed up by, you know,”—he grinned—“a lapse in judgment.”

  “Nothing to worry about. I’m here to serve and protect and all that jazz. Not making waves, not doing anything wilder than bringing Uncle Lou a third beer. And by the way, she gets points for putting him on the guest list. Not everyone would be that forgiving after the mud-wrestling thing.”

  It was almost funny, how the mere mention of the event could make his big, strong football brother look like he was about to be dragged to the village well and tried as a witch. “That is not to be mentioned this weekend. Got it?”

  “Got it. Lips are zipped. Now, anything you need me to do at the moment, or can I go back to this excellent chocolate whatever?”

  “Eat. Enjoy. Have fun.” With another slap on the back—what was it with the brute force?—Adam was on his way. Ben shook his head and picked up his fork, but once again, he found himself looking across the room for Kyrie. His relief at seeing she was still there turned into a hard knot of dread in a nanosecond.

  He might not be up to anything nefarious this weekend.

  But Kyrie most definitely was.

  ***

  The problem with trying to have a private conversation in Vegas was that every space was either too public—restaurants, gaming floors, reception rooms—or too private. Like bedrooms. A bedroom was the last place she should be with Ben.

  Yet here she was, opening the door to her room with him right behind her.

  “You don’t have to be so cloak and dagger,” he said after she checked the hall for the fourteenth time. “Adam and Siobhan’s rooms are on another floor. They’re not going to see us. And if they did, all they would think is that I made a hell of an awesome first impression.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Especially when his mere presence seemed to be depleting the oxygen supply. Either that or she really was more jet lagged than she’d thought, because her head was definitely spinning.

  She flicked on the light and led him across the marble entry, tossing her purse onto the desk. He wandered over to the window and looked down.

  “Have you seen the fountains yet?” he asked. “The show, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “They play the music on the TV. So you can get the full experience even if you’re watching from behind glass.”

  “I don’t think it would be the same. Why aren’t you in Antarctica?”

  His shoulders tightened. One hand slipped to his left leg.

  “Had a little accident,” he said with what she was sure was forced lightness. “Turns out skydiving isn’t as idiot-proof as the commercials tell you.”

  “What? Oh my God, Ben, what—”

  “It’s okay, Kyrie. It happened about a month after the lake. It was a nasty break, and it knocked me off the track to the Pole, but these things happen.”

  “Will you still be able to go?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Crap. That didn’t sound very promising.

  “The more important question is, why are you crashing my brother’s wedding?”

  And so it began.

  “Ben, listen to me. I swear I’m doing my very best to make sure no one gets hurt this weekend.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets but continued to gaze outside. She almost asked him to turn around, thinking it would be easier to get through her story if she could read his face. But who was she kidding? As it was, she was soaking up the line of his shoulders, the wave of his hair along his collar, the way his pants bagged ever so slightly, as if they’d been picked out by someone who was still convinced he had some growing ahead of him. If she had to try to talk while taking in the crinkles around his eyes or the curve of his ears, she would be a goner.

  She perched on the edge of the chair and stared at the floor. Between Ben at the window and the bed looming in front of her, the beige carpet seemed like the safest bet. “Here’s the thing,” she began. “Remember I told you I wanted to open my own coffee shop? Well, I did it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, gave her a quick nod. “Congratulations.”

  She supposed she shouldn’t have expected a more enthusiastic reaction from him. After all, he didn’t know that he was the o
nly person to have heard that dream. He would never know that every time she felt herself slipping into a sea of doubts during the year of actually putting it together—in other words, every hour on the hour—she would resurrect the memory of him telling her to go for it, and the worries would fade away.

  He would definitely never know that every time that happened, it was as if she hadn’t left him behind after all.

  “I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I couldn’t get a big enough loan from the bank, and I only had so much saved, but just when I thought it wasn’t going to happen, Paige offered me a loan. I never could have done it without her. But with her help, just under a year ago I opened the doors to Brews and Blues.”

  “So you did name it that?”

  “I liked it. We have a very funky, retro kind of decor, and we bring in bluesy, jazzy singers, and it feels really homey and fun. People love it. I love it.” She dug her fingers into her knees. “As did my assistant, who, it turns out, was stealing from me.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Exactly.” She pulled her purse from the desk and ran a finger over the row of pink beads outlining the flamingo. “I’m going through legal channels, but there’s no guarantee I’ll ever get any of the money back. I’ve been able to keep the place open and the staff and bills paid, but between that and the bank loan, it’s been—well—tight.” He didn’t need to know that she’d had to give up her apartment and was now living in the second-floor storage room, or that she was mostly living off food left at the end of the day. There was no need to sound pathetic. “And on top of that, this all happened at the time I was supposed to start repaying Paige . I managed the first month’s payment, but then it got harder. I managed just a partial payment for the second month, and we’re into the third. But then . . .”

  Oh boy. This was where it was going to get tricky. So of course, this was when he decided to turn around and give her the eagle eye.