Full Throttle & Wrong Bride, Right Groom Read online

  Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark-haired and seriously handsome, with an angel’s smile and a devilish gleam in his eyes. According to her sister, Jordy filled out his air force uniform like a Greek god and carried himself with an air of utter self-confidence that came with being a member of the air force’s elite combat pararescue force—whatever that was. Abby just hoped Sergeant Jordan’s self-confidence was up to being left at the proverbial altar.

  She arrived at the airport an agonizing forty-five minutes later, wound as tight as a coil by the slippery roads and heavy traffic. Breathless, she dodged hordes of holiday travelers and reached the international gate area just moments after the announcement heralding the arrival of Delta’s flight 73 from Heathrow.

  No one in uniform, godlike or otherwise, lingered in the waiting room just outside the customs checkpoint. Chewing her lower lip, Abby searched the crowds. From the corner of one eye, she glimpsed the head and shoulders of a tall figure in a brown leather bomber jacket. Abby’s first clue that this might be her man was the tight stretch of the leather across his broad shoulders. The second was the razor-short military cut of his dark brown hair. But it was his unmistakable air of authority that clinched the matter in her mind. Although he moved along with the stream of travelers, he seemed to hold himself aloof, apart, much as the leader of a pack would.

  “Jordy?”

  Abby’s call got lost in the waves of noise filling the thronged concourse. Flushed and still breathless from her mad dash through the airport, she hurried after the man. A few steps later, she caught hold of a patch of well-worn leather and tugged.

  “Jordy?”

  He swung around.

  “I’m Abigail, Beth’s sis—”

  She broke off as eyes so dark a blue they appeared almost black ate into her. Involuntarily she retreated a step.

  If this was Doug Jordan, Beth needed to work on her descriptive abilities. None of the adjectives she’d blithely tossed around fit this man. He sported a square, uncompromising jaw, a firm mouth, and a nose that had been broken once too often in the past. The rugged combination was arresting, but certainly didn’t come close to handsome in Abby’s book.

  She had no idea whether his smile could be classified as angelic, since he wasn’t wearing one, but the glint in his eyes could easily be considered devilish. He was older than Abby had assumed Doug Jordan would be. Well past thirty, she guessed, although the lines webbing the corners of his eyes could as well have been stamped there by experience as by age.

  “You’re Abby?” he responded with a lift of one dark brow. “Beth’s sister?”

  His deep, gravelly voice sent an unexpected shiver down her spine. No wonder Beth didn’t have the nerve to face him, she thought. This wasn’t the kind of man anyone shrugged off casually.

  The midnight-blue eyes raked her from the top of her damp, wildly curling hair to the tips of her granny shoes. When he brought his gaze back to her face, it held a bold, masculine approval that sent an electrical shock skimming along Abby’s nerves.

  Her shock quickly gave way to a jolt of anger. An engaged man had no business giving anyone except his fiancée that particular look, she thought indignantly. Before she could tell him so, however, he shifted his leather carryall to his left hand. Then, to her utter amazement, he swept her up against his chest and covered her mouth with his own.

  His lips were hard, as hard as the rest of the body pressed against hers. And warm. And altogether too seductive for a man about to be married.

  Stunned, Abby registered the faint tang of a spicy after-shave. The smoky taste of Scotch. The feel of a big, callused hand cradling the back of her head. When his lips moved over hers, deepening the kiss, astonishment erupted into a hundred different emotions, not the least of which was fury.

  Pete heard a muffled squeak, and felt the woman in his arms squirm. Firm breasts, discernible even through layers of wool cloak and leather jacket, pressed against his chest. Sudden, spine-stiffening awareness hammered through him, along with the realization that the brotherly kiss Doug Jordan had asked him to deliver to his new sister-in-law had slipped right past brotherly and was hovering somewhere around explosive.

  It had started out innocently enough. Pete hadn’t intended anything more than a good-natured exchange. A warm greeting. But her lips were sweeter than anything he’d tasted in a long, long time, and he discovered that he didn’t want to release them.

  Reluctantly he lifted his head and loosened the arm he’d wrapped around her waist. She jerked backward, leaving the scent of damp wool and flowery perfume behind. The glare she zinged at him packed twice the firepower of a Sidewinder missile.

  “Are you crazy, or do prospective in-laws customarily assault each other where you come from?”

  “Not customarily, but then, I’m not a prospective in-law.”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You’re not Doug Jordan?”

  “No, ma’am.” He sketched a salute with the tips of two fingers. “Senior Master Sergeant Pete O’Brian, at your service. I’m Jordy’s supervisor.”

  “His supervisor?”

  “I’m afraid Jordy couldn’t make it back to the States.”

  “Couldn’t make it!” she echoed blankly. “Why not? Where is he?”

  He thought for a moment. “About two thousand feet over a very cold, very hostile little country, about to jump into the middle of a civil war. Our unit got orders to deploy just an hour before Jordy was supposed to leave for home.”

  “Good grief! Didn’t the fact that he was supposed to get married today make any difference?”

  Pete lifted a brow at her faintly accusing look. “Not to me. Or to him, when the orders came down. Jordy’s a professional.”

  While she digested that one, he glanced around the emptying terminal. “So where’s the bride? I have a message for her.”

  A taut silence brought his gaze swinging back to the woman before him. She pursed her lips, then answered with obvious reluctance.

  “About twenty thousand feet over the Atlantic. On her way to Singapore, by way of Paris and Cairo.”

  “No kidding?” Pete’s mouth curled. “Well, what do you know? I bet Jordy she wouldn’t show.”

  “What?”

  The bet had just been a joke, although Pete hadn’t really expected the ditzy flight attendant Doug Jordan had met during a weekend in London to go through with their hasty marriage plans. From the little he’d seen of Beth Davis, Pete could tell she lacked the depth to live up to her rash promises.

  Jordy had fallen for her, though. Fallen hard, despite Pete’s caustic suggestion that the young sergeant was just experiencing a healthy dose of male lechery. Which pretty well described the feeling Beth Davis’s older sister was stirring in Pete this very minute.

  She stood ramrod-stiff before him, arms crossed, brown eyes flashing. She didn’t come close to the gut-twisting, throat-closing physical perfection of her sister, of course, but few women did. Pete had been around long enough, however, to recognize that Abigail Davis occupied a class all by herself.

  Her wildly curling hair was streaked with every color of the sun, from pale wheat to burnt umber, and her skin glistened with a dewy softness that reminded him of fresh-cut flowers and vanilla pudding. She stood a good six inches less than his own six-one, but that firm, tip-tilted chin warned Pete she didn’t consider either his size or his presence particularly significant. Her creamy skin and soft, full mouth pulled at him, though, almost as much as the intelligence in her brown eyes. Obviously, Abby Davis possessed more than her younger sister’s thimbleful of common sense.

  And, just as obviously, she wasn’t letting him off the hook. A delicately arched brow a few shades darker than her tawny hair lifted.

  “You were about to explain this bet?”

  “Considering the fact that the bride and groom had known each other less than thirty-six hours, it was a pretty safe bet. I know Jordy. When he makes up his mind, there’s no changing it. But your sister didn’t strike me
as…”

  “As what?”

  The slight narrowing of her doe eyes should have alerted Pete. If he’d had any sleep at all in the past seventy-two hours, he probably wouldn’t have missed the danger signal. But the bunged-up knee that had kept him from participating in the short-notice deployment hadn’t prevented him from overseeing the preparations for it. After a marathon round-the-clock planning session, he’d put Jordy and the rest of his squad on a transport plane, just hours before he had to leave for the States himself. Then he’d spent most of the long flight home reworking the ops plan in his mind, trying to convince himself that he hadn’t sent his men into a political and military quagmire with no escape route. Weariness now dragged at him like beggars in a back alley, and made him finish with more truth than diplomacy.

  “She didn’t strike me as the steady, reliable type,” he said with a small shrug.

  Abby bristled. Beth had her faults, which she’d have been the first to admit. Whatever she lacked in common sense or staying power, however, she more than made up for in spontaneity and warmth. Those she loved, she loved generously and unconditionally. Unfortunately, she tended to fall out of love as frequently as she fell into it.

  As Abby knew better than anyone, that instability stemmed from their childhood. Beth had been so much younger when their parents died in a car accident. She’d learned to transfer her affections as easily as a puppy, first to the aunt who took the Davis girls in, then to the series of foster homes they were sent to when their widowed aunt proved emotionally incapable of raising two children. Over the years, the bond between the sisters had proven the only bedrock in their transient lives.

  That bond had seen them through the difficult years, until Abby turned eighteen, got a full-time job, rented her first apartment and petitioned the court for custody of her younger sister. Ten years later, it still shaped Abby’s life, and served as Beth’s safety net in situations like this.

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to disparage my sister,” she replied acidly. “After all, Doug Jordan didn’t show up for his own wedding, either.”

  O’Brian’s smirk faded. “The circumstances are entirely different. In Jordy’s case, it was a matter of duty.”

  “I’m not sure I think very much of a man who puts duty before his wife.”

  “I wouldn’t think very much of a man who didn’t.”

  Their eyes locked, dark blue flint striking sparks off angry brown shale.

  “What about you?” Abby retorted tartly. “Shouldn’t you be off doing your duty?”

  He didn’t answer right away. When he did, a muscle twitched in his right cheek. “Yes, I should.”

  She watched the small movement with some surprise. Apparently she’d struck a nerve. He drew in a slow breath, and then a weariness seemed to settle over his face, etching deep lines in the tanned skin.

  “Look, I had to come back to the States anyway. Jordy asked me to swing through Atlanta and explain his deployment to Beth. He also wanted me to tell her…” His jaw worked. “To tell her that he loves her.”

  The words came out with a rusty edge, as though it pained him to acknowledge anything as human as emotion.

  Abby winced inwardly. In her irritation with O’Brian, she’d forgotten the other emotions involved in this little drama. Darn her sister, anyway.

  “I’ll give Beth the message.”

  O’Brian nodded, hefting his carryall. “Guess I’d better go find a cab and a hotel. It’s been a long flight.”

  Thinking of the thousands of football fans and holiday travelers thronging the city, Abby hesitated.

  “You don’t have a hotel reservation?”

  “No, I changed my flight at the last minute to get to Atlanta. I’ll find something, though.” He tipped her another salute. “Nice meeting you, Abigail.”

  She couldn’t quite bring herself to return the polite sentiment. “Happy Thanksgiving…er…”

  “Pete.”

  “Pete.”

  He was a good ten yards away before she noticed his uneven gait. Frowning, she shifted a few paces to one side and followed his progress down the concourse. It was more than just an uneven gait, she discovered. O’Brian walked with a decided limp. He held himself so erect and square-shouldered, it wasn’t noticeable immediately, but now that she focused on it, she wondered how she could have missed it earlier.

  As she watched him move away, embarrassment flooded through her. Oh, nice going, Abby! Nothing like deriding the man for not doing his so-called duty when he’d obviously been injured in some way, then sending him on his way, a stranger in an unfamiliar city.

  Resolutely Abby quashed her guilt. Hey, he wasn’t her responsibility. Having felt a few of his sharp edges, she’d be surprised if he was anyone’s responsibility but his own.

  Still, he had gone out of his way to do a favor for Jordy and Beth. He was going to have a heck of time finding anyplace to stay tonight…and she did happen to have a honeymoon cottage reserved.

  She glanced at her watch and barely stifled a groan. There was no way she’d get back her hefty deposit on the cottage, not at this late hour. Nor would she recoup any of the sunk costs for the two tiered chocolate-rum-raisin wedding cake Beth had requested. Or for the crown rib roast and delicate onion soufflé the Pines’s chef was probably preparing at this very moment.

  Her gaze swung to a disappearing patch of brown leather.

  Darn Beth anyway!

  Chapter 2

  Abby caught up with O’Brian while he waited for the shuttle to the main terminal. He acknowledged her appearance at his side with a quirk of one dark brow.

  “I don’t know how long you plan to be in the Atlanta area….” she began hesitantly.

  “A few days. When I changed my reservations, I had to take a layover I hadn’t planned on.”

  “You might have trouble finding a place to stay. The big Georgia-Georgia Tech game is tomorrow. The city’s under siege by sixty thousand or so avid fans.”

  A glimmer of something that might have been amusement stirred in his deep cobalt eyes. “I’ve slept on everything from a moving ice floe to a tree limb sixty feet above the jungle floor. If I have to, I can make myself comfortable on a park bench.”

  She would have written Mr. Macho off then and there, if his amusement hadn’t evolved into a slow, crooked and totally unexpected grin.

  “Thanks for the warning, though.”

  Abby blinked. Good grief! When he smiled, really smiled, those rugged features came dangerously close to handsome, after all.

  She was still dealing with the impact of that devastating arrangement of his facial features when the shuttle whooshed to a halt at the edge of the platform. An impatient traveler jockeyed for position, inadvertently thumping her suitcase into his right leg. Before Abby’s eyes, O’Brian’s heart-thumping grin twisted into an involuntary grimace. His knee buckled, and he wobbled for an instant.

  She caught his arm with both hands, concern lancing through her. Beth would have recognized the “mother” look on her face instantly.

  “Are you all right?”

  He righted himself. “Yes.”

  Her fingers curled into the soft leather sleeve. He didn’t look all right. Not with those deep grooves slashing into the skin at the sides of his mouth and his eyes gone hard and flat.

  “Are you sure?”

  The tight, closed look on his face gave way to a flicker of annoyance. He reversed their roles, tugging his arm free to take hers instead.

  “I’m fine. Just feeling a little jet lag.” He guided her across the platform. “Watch your step here.”

  She wedged herself into the shuttle car and snagged a few inches of hand space on a shiny metal pole. He followed, bracing a hand high above hers. His body bracketed hers. To Abby’s consternation, his scent seemed to envelop her. She suspected she’d never again catch a whiff of fine-grained leather without thinking of this man. And his kiss.

  As furious as that kiss had made her at the time, in retrospe
ct she had to admit it ranked right up there among the top dozen or so she’d received. Well, maybe among the top three.

  Come on! Who was she kidding? She’d never been kissed like that, not even by the man she’d thought she loved.

  No nun, Abby had managed to squeeze in a semirespectable social life while struggling to get Beth through college and flight school, putting in long hours at work and studying for her licensing as an appraiser. Along the way, she’d experienced her share of male embraces. Some had left her breathless. A few had made her ache for more. One man’s had made her think she’d found the permanency that had eluded her since her parents’ death.

  It wasn’t anyone’s fault that Derek’s interest had swung from the older sister to the younger the day Beth breezed back into Atlanta after a four-month rotation in South America. She was so beautiful, so full of mischief and life, few men could resist her. Derek couldn’t, anyway.

  His handsome image drifted through Abby’s mind, surprisingly hazy and indistinct. She was congratulating herself on the fact that thinking about him occasioned nothing more than a mild twinge of regret when the shuttle car jerked forward.

  Her shoulder bumped Pete’s chest.

  His hips nudged hers.

  Intimately.

  For several long seconds, she felt the length of him against her back and bottom. A suffocating heat that had nothing to do with the warmth in the jammed car climbed up Abby’s neck. Flustered, she pressed closer to the metal upright. The swaying, jostling crowd defeated her best efforts to preserve a modicum of airspace between her and the man behind her, however. By the time the underground train glided to a halt at the main terminal, she felt as stiff and compressed as corrugated cardboard.