“I’m staying at the house up the road for a few weeks,” he said, inviting her to offer similar information.
“How nice for you. Enjoy your stay,” Bronwynn said politely, dismissing him again. For now, she couldn’t let herself think about having this all-American hunk as the nearest living soul within miles.
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold from the inside out. She began to shake. How had she let Ross Hilliard fool her so? she wondered, wandering to stare out the dirty front window. Wade Grayson’s big yellow dog had found one of Ross’s custom-made Italian loafers and was chewing on it as he rolled onto his back and stuck his paws in the air.
She almost had married Ross Hilliard. All her life she had wanted to fall in love the way her parents had—madly, wonderfully, totally in love. She had wanted to love with her whole being, to cherish and be cherished. She had so much love inside her to give. Yet she almost had married Ross Hilliard, and she hadn’t loved him any more than he had loved her. She had been fond of Ross, comfortable with Ross, but she hadn’t loved him. When she had discovered him with Belinda, she had been stunned and angry, but she hadn’t hurt the way she knew she would have had she truly loved him. What was the matter with her, making such a horrible mistake?
“What are you doing here?” Wade asked pointblank. He felt a little uneasy breaking into her thoughts. She seemed detached, as if she wasn’t quite in touch with the real world.
“Why, I’ve come here to stay, of course.”
He looked around them. The house was a shambles. It smelled of mice and mold. There was no electricity. He doubted the plumbing was in working order. Who knew what kind of wildlife had taken up residence. It was hardly the sort of place a woman like Bronwynn Prescott Pierson would stay. He couldn’t picture her staying anyplace that didn’t have a complete staff and Jacuzzis in every room. She looked too delicate, too fragile for anything less than elegance. “You’re kidding.”
She gave him a blank look over her shoulder and turned back to stare out again at the overgrown lawn, remembering how it had looked when she and Zane had played croquet there as little girls. It had been like a fairy-tale house to them, the woods beyond like an enchanted forest. Her heart twisted at the memory of all the imaginary princes that had rescued them from one dragon or another. There were no princes in her life today. And she felt like Alice tumbling down the long, black rabbit hole.
Wade gave a half laugh and ran a hand back through his hair. “Lady, you can’t be serious. You can’t stay here.”
“I most certainly can. This house belongs to me. My great-uncle Duncan willed it to me nineteen years ago.” She had been twelve and thrilled with the prospect of owning this gingerbread castle, but then she had gotten older and her interests had turned in other directions. Until she’d sped away from the church earlier, she’d all but forgotten about the house.
“And it’s been remarkably well kept up ever since,” Wade remarked dryly. He crossed the room to a Victorian sofa covered in water-stained burgundy velvet. The upholstery was ripped and someone or something had made off with a good deal of the stuffing. Dirty shreds of the stuff trailed out of the hole in the center of the seat. He gave it a little shove with his foot, and three mice catapulted themselves out of the couch and disappeared into a hole in the baseboard.
Brows dropping low over her exotic eyes, Bronwynn stomped across the room and gave Wade a shove. “Keep your feet off my furniture, you man. Were you born in a barn?”
Wade stepped back and scowled at her. “No. This is as close as I’ve come to being in a barn in a long time.”
“How dare you say such a rude thing about my house!” she said. Somewhere in the dim reaches of her mind she knew it was an unreasonable thing to say. The house was a standing disaster area. For the moment, though, she preferred to see it as it had been, bright and pretty with its fancy old furniture, and Mrs. Foster, her uncle’s housekeeper, serving little tea cakes on hand-painted china to Zane and Bronwynn and their dolls and teddy bears. Life had been so much better then. She’d had her parents and her dreams. Now she felt as if she had nothing.
She felt emotionally isolated. Even at the wedding, surrounded by hundreds of people, she had felt alone. Zane, too, hadn’t seemed close to her, though her sister had tried to penetrate the strange wall of confusion Bronwynn had felt encased by for the last two days.
It was a frightening way to feel. To distract herself from it, she tried to ignore the confusion and focus her fading anger on the man in front of her. “Who do you think you are, barging in here insulting my house and telling me what I can and can’t do? Who died and made you king of Vermont?”
“I don’t need this,” Wade muttered, shaking his head. He’d been sent to Vermont for peace and quiet, not to argue with some goofy broad who probably didn’t have sense enough to wear a hat in a hailstorm. “I’m leaving.”
“Fine,” Bronwynn said, running her hands up and down the slick, cool satin of her dress. A tremor of shivers shook her, then subsided. She tried to swallow the knot of fear that felt like a tennis ball lodged in her throat. “The last thing I want around tonight is a man,” she mumbled.
Wade took a step back toward the door.
Go and don’t come back till she’s gone,
he told himself. One night alone in this rodent’s paradise, and the little rich girl won’t be able to drive her Mercedes back to Boston fast enough. His feet dragged reluctantly back another step. “I mean it. I’m going. You can stay here alone with the mice and whatever else might be living here.”
“Fine.” She stood there looking lost and pale and cold with her toes peeking out from under the dirty hem of her wedding dress.
“There’s a perfectly nice motel in Shirley—and three inns. There’s no light or heat in this house,” he pointed out to her. She just stared at him in the fading light. Something in her look tugged at his heart.
Oh, no, Grayson,
he told himself,
get your fanny out of here and away from this silly, strange woman. Don’t go turning into a marshmallow simply because she’s got that kitten-up-a-tree look.
He pointed a warning finger at her and shook his head. “I’m not coming back.”
“Good,” she said, trying to ignore the panic that threatened to rise up in her throat.
Wade told his body to turn and leave, but it didn’t. Dammit, he thought. There was an almost frightening haunted quality in her eyes. Her square jaw had begun to tremble. She was shaking all over. He had the impression that if he touched her or spoke too loudly, she would shatter into a million tiny bits like a piece of fine crystal.
He snarled a little under his breath. He was a practical, levelheaded person with a solid Midwestern upbringing. He didn’t get involved with silly women like Bronwynn Prescott Pierson. It didn’t matter that she was beautiful and, apparently, available. She was the last person he wanted to get tangled up with.
He would stay away from her—even if she did look as vulnerable as a lost fawn. When she left he could contact her lawyer about purchasing the property, but he wanted nothing to do with Bronwynn herself.
“I’m going now,” he said, not moving an inch. As an added threat he threw in, “And I’m taking my dog with me.”
Dropping a mutilated shoe on the floor, Tucker sat down in the doorway and leaned against the jamb.
Bronwynn barely took notice of either of them. She felt the darkness closing in on her and wished for the bright flame of anger that had burned inside her all afternoon. Anything would have been preferable to the cold emptiness that was threatening to swallow her whole. Her long, fine-boned hands were like ice when she pressed them to her cheeks.
Her life was a mess. She’d walked out on a wedding she never should have agreed to in the first place. She’d almost married a man she didn’t love. What was the matter with her?
“Ah, hell,” Wade said. He had lost the battle within himself and placed the blame on Bronwynn as if she had been begging him to stay instead of waiting for him to leave. “All right, I’ll stay.”
Not listening to him, she looked up with a tortured expression on her pretty face and whispered, “This would have been my wedding night.”
Then the dam burst inside her and the tears began to flow, and without giving it a second thought, Wade took her into his arms and held her.
TWO
S
HE DIDN’T CRY
like a socialite, Wade reflected, trying to distract himself from the automatic flash of male panic at the sight of a woman’s tears. Hers were no delicate sniffles designed for just the right touch of dramatic effect, the kind that barely dampened a monogrammed, lace-edged linen hankie. She sobbed, and the sound was so full of pain and confusion and despair, Wade almost joined in.
Even as he held her close, stroking his hand over her crunchy, white tulle veil, he cursed himself for being embarrassingly softhearted. There was little room for such a trait in his professional life. On the job he was very much the hard-nosed politician—tough, businesslike, a granite-willed rock of determination. Off the job it was all he could do to walk by a puppy in a pet-store window. He got choked up when an American won a medal at the Olympics or fell in the attempt on the speed-skating oval.
It wasn’t a trait he liked other people to see. A man was a lot better off having people think he was formidable but compassionate than having them think he was made entirely of putty. So he blinked back the slight mistiness in his eyes and tried to think of what he should do with the woman who was leaning against him like a wilting rose, her tears soaking into his shirt.
He turned with Bronwynn in his arms and backed the two steps to the sofa, sitting down and pulling her onto his lap. The move wasn’t going to win him any style points, but he doubted Bronwynn noticed. She was about as cooperative as a corpse, dragging her feet then falling onto him, never lifting her head from his shoulder. While she went on sobbing, he tried to arrange her into what looked like a comfortable position, bending her knees and tucking her wedding dress around her bare feet. Then he heaved a sigh and wrapped his arms around her again and wondered why it wasn’t her wedding night.
She certainly was dressed for the occasion, and the luggage she’d been so set on destroying had been packed with a man’s clothes. So where was the groom? Had he stood her up? Even if Bronwynn Prescott Pierson did seem to be a bit strange, the idea of her standing at the altar, lovely and hopeful, then distraught at the prospect of an errant groom, was enough to break his heart.
He held her a little tighter, his pulse jumping unexpectedly as he felt the soft round globe of her breast press into his chest. For so slender a woman, she wasn’t without feminine curves. Of its own will his right hand slid down to the flare of her hip and settled there.
Bronwynn lifted her head and looked at Wade. She sniffled and hiccuped and tried to wipe away some of the moisture from her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She looked about ready to reveal some deep, painful secret to him. Fresh tears brimmed up in her eyes and her lower lip trembled as she cried, “I don’t have a hankie!”
Wade had been holding his breath, waiting for her to say something significant. His shoulders sagged. He leaned forward, reaching into his hip pocket only to find it empty. “I don’t have one either.”
He could just as well have told her it was the end of the world. Bronwynn dropped her head back to his shoulder and began sobbing all over again. Nothing was right. The man she had trusted, the man she almost had married had betrayed her. She had betrayed herself by almost marrying him when she should have known he wasn’t the right one. The house she remembered as a dream castle had turned into the
Amityville Horror
house. And she was having a nervous breakdown while sitting on the lap of a man she didn’t know from Adam, while he was reaching a hand under her dress.
“What are you doing?” Bronwynn yelled. She pushed herself away from Wade and tumbled to the floor with a thud as material ripped.
Wade gave her a look and handed her a large square of silk that had been part of her slip. “Finding you a hankie,” he said.
“Oh.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “Thank you.”
Wade watched her dry her eyes and blow her nose. Outside it was almost dark and getting cold. Part of him was dying to know what she was doing there, but the more practical side of him said he was better off not knowing. The best thing for him to do was point her in the direction of the nearest motel, bid her adieu, and go home. His stomach was complaining bitterly that suppertime was at hand. He had planned on spending the evening doing paperwork and eating a Mexican dinner with a baseball game playing on the TV in the background.
“Just to set the record straight,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and running a hand back through his dark blond hair, “I don’t go around molesting bawling debutantes. My tastes run in another direction entirely.”
“I’m sorry,” Bronwynn said, struggling to her feet as her gown caught around her legs. “But how was I to know? I’m not very keen on men in general at the moment. You could be the next Ted Bundy for all I know. You could
be
Ted Bundy.”
Her eyes widened as she stared at him, thinking for the first time of how isolated they were. Wouldn’t that be the corker? she thought. Leaving one louse at the altar only to be done in by another in the wilds of Vermont. A day couldn’t get much worse.
Wade rubbed a hand over his face. He’d had her pegged correctly from the start: She was certifiable. “Ted Bundy is on death row in Florida. I’m going home. Drive straight through Shirley; there’s a motel out near the highway. It’s not the Waldorf”—he glanced around the gloomy, run-down house—“but it isn’t straight from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe either.”
Bronwynn hung her head and looked at the crumpled piece of fabric in her hand. Wade Grayson had held her while she’d cried. He’d found her a hankie when that task had seemed like the most important thing in the world. And there she was insinuating that he could be a serial killer. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to leave.
“Thank you,” she said, “but I’m not leaving.”
Wade was ready to live up to her imagination’s image of him and strangle her. “Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, there hasn’t been electricity in this house since Roosevelt was president.”
“Nixon,” she corrected, going to the table where she had left her bag of groceries.
“What’s that?”
“Nixon was president when Uncle Duncan passed away. I remember because Uncle despised Nixon as he despised all politicians.”
Wade’s perturbed look deepened into a bona fide scowl that went unnoticed by Bronwynn.
“He actually voted for Pat Paulsen,” she said, digging through the bag. There was a candy bar in there somewhere, she was sure. “You know, the comedian from
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.”
Wade watched her unpack a box of Twinkies, a bag of potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, orange soda, and string cheese. His stomach growled. In the doorway, Tucker raised his head and growled back.
“The point is,” Wade said with a sigh, “there isn’t any electricity, and unless you’re planning on dragging that suitcase in here and lighting it up again, there isn’t any heat. It gets cold up here at night.”
“I realize all that,” Bronwynn said calmly. She felt much better, much more in control now that she had had a good cry. “I planned for a few minor inconveniences.” She hadn’t planned on the house requiring a condemned sign, but she hadn’t expected the utilities to be hooked up. “I stopped in Shirley and bought a camp stove and a sleeping bag.”
That must have wowed them at the hardware store, Wade thought. The mental image of Bronwynn strolling into Hank’s Hardware in a wedding dress and plunking down her gold credit card for a sleeping bag and a camp stove was almost enough to make him crack a smile. The fraternity of old men that hung out at Hank’s would be buzzing about the event for months.
“You really mean to stay here—mice and mold and all?” he asked, simply unable to reconcile the idea with the image he had of Bronwynn Prescott Pierson and her ilk.
“I knew there was a Snickers bar in here!” she whispered triumphantly, pulling the thing from the bag. Clutching it in her hand, she looked up at Wade like a child who’d caught her first trout. “Yes, I really mean to stay here. I appreciate your concern, Mr. Grayson, but I want to be alone.”
Planting his hands on his hips, Wade ground his teeth. Did she really expect him to walk away and leave her here in this dump?
That’s what you ought to do, Grayson. It’ll teach her a lesson.
In the back of his mind he could see his parents frowning at him. They had raised him to be a gentleman. He shook his head. “I can’t let you stay here; it’s probably not safe.”
Bronwynn set her candy bar down. If it had been lighter in the room, Wade would have had no trouble recognizing her “I’m peeved” look. Of course, she thought, he was so hardheaded he probably wouldn’t have taken heed anyway. “I’ve got a news flash for you: This is my house. I’m staying in it. I don’t need your permission or approval. And, as I believe I pointed out earlier, the last thing I want around tonight is a man, so feel free to leave.”
“Oh, fine!” He raised his hands in resignation. He’d tried to save the goofy woman and this was the thanks he got. He took a step closer to her so he could really look down at her, not counting on being stricken by how pretty she was in her unusual way. The subtle scent of her perfume drifted in the air and enticed him to lower his head toward her wide, sensuous mouth. Suddenly it seemed hard to get a good breath. He blamed it on the mustiness of the house.
His voice was as rough as steel wool when he spoke. “That’s fine because—” He lost his train of thought and blinked hard to clear his head, then narrowed his eyes at Bronwynn. It was her fault he wanted to kiss her. He didn’t normally go around wanting to kiss women who wouldn’t use the sense God gave them to stay at a decent hotel. “Because I’ve got a lot better things to do than hang around here.”
“I’m glad for you,” she said, backing away from him. She didn’t like the look in his eyes or what it was doing to her blood pressure. She had enough things to worry about without adding unexplainable attraction to a perfect stranger to the list. She gestured toward the door. “Why don’t you go do them?”
“I will.” He jammed his hands in his pockets only to pull one back out to point a finger at her. “And don’t come crying to me when something big and hairy goes bump in the night.”
Bronwynn sniffed indignantly. “The only big hairy thing that’s going to go bump in the night is you when I throw you out of here. Leave me alone.”
“With pleasure!” He turned on his heel and almost tripped over his dog, who still was sprawled in the doorway to the parlor. “Come on, Tucker. We know when we’re not wanted.”
Tucker didn’t seem as sure about it as his master. As Wade stormed for the front door, the dog hung back, his nose sniffing the air for the scent of junk food. At a warning snarl from Wade he hung his head and slunk out.
Bronwynn dropped down on the couch with a sigh, pulled her veil off, and scratched her head. What a strange interlude. One minute they’d been fighting, then she’d been in his arms, then they’d been fighting again—fighting each other and a strange sort of attraction. All in the span of what, an hour? She hadn’t gone through so many emotions in six months with Ross.
Ross. She shook her head and sighed again. There was so much she needed to sort out in her mind, and she had come to Vermont for that reason. When she had left the church, all she had been able to think of was getting away, away to someplace safe and quiet. Immediately her uncle’s old house had come to mind, even though she hadn’t thought of it in years.
Foxfire, Uncle Duncan had named it. The Retreat at Foxfire, the society columnists had called it. They were a pretentious bunch. She wondered if they knew foxfire was a light caused by fungal growths on rotting wood—Uncle Duncan had always gotten a kick out of wondering that, as if it were a private joke. Uncle Duncan had always been a little weird.
At any rate, the columnists were going to have plenty to say about the day’s events. Too bad they hadn’t gotten a picture of the look on Ross’s face when she’d denounced him for the cad he was. She didn’t envy Zane the task of fielding all the phone calls and facing all the questions, but her sister had told her not to worry when she’d called her from a phone booth at a rest stop in New Hampshire. Because she didn’t want the people she loved to be worried sick about her, Bronwynn had called and told Zane where she was going. No one else except Zane’s husband, Tom, would find out.
On second thought, she felt sorry for the busybodies who would be trying to get the details. Her older sister was fiercely protective of her family and friends. The scrap hounds would be going up against a tigress.
“And what are you up against, Bronwynn?” she asked herself.
Confusion, hurt. Hunger, she added as her stomach growled. Forcing herself to her feet, she wondered what Wade Grayson was having for supper.
“No way am I giving you one bite of these burritos.”
Tucker perked his ears and tipped his head in a way that usually won him what he was after. Wade was a sucker for a pleading look.
“I know that look. Don’t give me that look.” Wade scowled as he settled himself in the corner of the sofa with his plate on his lap.
His doctor would have an attack of angina if he could see the pile of burritos smothered in sour cream and salsa that Wade was about to eat. Mexican food was not part of the recommended diet for someone with a budding ulcer, but nothing went better with a ball game and paperwork, in Wade’s opinion. He figured as long as he followed the spicy dish with an antacid chaser, he’d be okay. He needed one anyway after his encounter with Bronwynn. At his feet, Tucker sighed and whined, thumping his tail hopefully.
“Forget it. The last thing I need tonight is a dog with gas.” Punching the volume button on the TV remote control, he tried to concentrate both on watching the start of the game and on reading a report on the homeless.
Two bites into his meal, his gaze wandered to the floor. The big yellow dog had his head planted firmly on his outstretched legs and his most poignantly sorrowful look riveted on Wade. Wade rolled his eyes as he cut a burrito in two, put half on a coaster, and offered it to his pet. “I should have gotten a cat. Cats don’t stoop to begging.”