Full Throttle & Wrong Bride, Right Groom Read online

  A firm hold on her elbow steadied her against the buffeting streams of pedestrians pouring out of the shuttle. Abby felt his strength right through her layers of wool and mohair. Frowning slightly over her reaction to this stranger, she paced beside him. They were halfway through the main terminal before she recalled her reason for catching up with him in the first place.

  “I booked a room—well, a cottage, actually—for Jordy and Beth at the Pines Inn and Resort. You’re welcome to use it.”

  He glanced down at her, polite refusal forming in his eyes. Shrewdly Abby guessed he didn’t like accepting favors. From anyone. Then his dark blue gaze swept the jam-packed terminal.

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on the offer,” he said slowly. “That’s the Pines, right?”

  “Right. I should warn you, though, it’s about fifteen miles north of the city.”

  “No problem, as long as a taxi driver can find it.” He slowed to a halt a few yards from the main exit and extended his hand. “Thanks, Abigail.”

  She put her palm in his, absorbing the heat and roughness of his skin against hers. “You’re welcome.”

  He hesitated, and then his mouth hitched in that crooked smile. “About that kiss a while ago. It was out of line. Way out of line.”

  “You’re right. It was.”

  “I should apologize.”

  She arched a brow. “Yes, you should.”

  “The problem is, I’m not sorry.”

  Now that her anger had cooled, Abby wasn’t all that sorry, either. But that wasn’t something a woman admitted to a man she’d only met a few minutes ago. One she wasn’t even sure she liked.

  “Would you accept dinner instead of an apology?”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Pete could have kicked himself. He needed sleep, about two or three days’ worth. Even more important, he needed to nip this reluctant attraction he felt for Abigail Davis in the bud. One look at her had been enough to tell Pete she wasn’t his type.

  Although the lady certainly didn’t pull any punches, she had that warm, delicious, womanly aura that spelled big trouble to any man with enough sense to recognize it. Unlike her fun-loving sister, Abby Davis no doubt expected more from a man than a weekend in Soho. Everything about her shouted quality. And respect. And permanence. The kind of permanence that came with long-term relationships, maybe even marriage.

  Pete had learned the hard way that there wasn’t anything permanent in a military marriage. Not in his, anyway. It had been plagued from the start by too many absences, too few joyful reunions. After the stormy breakup eight years ago, he’d sworn to avoid the kind of relationships that demanded more time and attention than he could give them while he wore a uniform. Which meant, he decided with a flicker of real regret, avoiding women like Abby Davis.

  From the uncertainty chasing across her face, she didn’t appear too thrilled with the prospect of having dinner with him, either. He couldn’t blame her. Not after the way he’d manhandled her. Before he could think of a graceful way to withdraw his offer, however, she took him up on it. More or less.

  “I’ll tell you what. There’s a nine-course wedding dinner and a chocolate-rum-raisin wedding cake waiting for the missing bride and groom at the Pines. Why don’t we share the dinner, so we can tell our respective sister and subordinate what they missed later?”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  Abby regretted the offer the moment she stepped outside the terminal. Icy sleet drummed down on the overhead canopy with a tinny staccato beat. Alarming little mounds of slush were piled up along the pavement. It splashed over her feet whenever a car whooshed by. What was more, the lowering gray sky gave every indication that the storm was only going to get worse.

  Shoulders hunched against the piercing wind, she jammed her hands in her pockets and waited for the bus to the parking lot. As she shifted from foot to foot to keep the cold from seeping through her thin soles, she weighed the pros of dinner with Pete O’Brian against the cons of a thirty-mile round-trip in this mess.

  She was careful by nature, and overly cautious as a result of years of acting as a foil for the high-strung, effervescent Beth. Her every instinct screamed at her to back out of the trip to the Pines. The sensible thing to do would be to inch her way home through the heavy traffic and curl up with a good book under the down-filled comforter that covered her iron bedstead.

  She was framing the words to renege on her offer when the parking-lot shuttle bus pulled up. Once inside, Pete settled his long frame on the seat beside her, stashed his carryall under his legs and reached down with a strong, blunt-fingered hand to massage his knee.

  Abby frowned, then looked up and caught his glance. This time, she wasn’t about to let him off with the excuse of jet lag.

  “I made a bad jump a few weeks ago,” he muttered, reading her expression. “Hit the ground a little harder than I’d intended to.”

  “A jump? You mean, like out of a plane?”

  Nodding, he tucked his hand into his jacket pocket and eased his shoulders back against the seat. Abby found herself squeezed between his solid frame and a portly Georgia football fan in a red ball cap with an equally portly bulldog emblazoned on its bill.

  “Do you do that often?” she asked, edging sideways to keep her hips and thighs from bumping O’Brian’s. “Jump out of planes, I mean?”

  “I guess that depends on your definition of often. Sometimes we go for months with nothing but our requal jumps. Other times, it seems like we’re popping the chutes every week.”

  “Once would be too often for me,” Abby admitted, shuddering. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone would want to jump out of an airplane that wasn’t diving straight down.”

  He slanted her an amused glance. “If it was diving straight down, your chances of jumping out would be pretty slim.”

  The sound of an audible gulp brought their heads around.

  “I’m flying back to Schenectady after the game tomorrow,” the portly football fan next to her said sheepishly. “Would you two mind talking about some thing other than planes going down?”

  Pete laughed and obligingly changed the subject to the odds of the Bulldogs’ awesome offense plowing right through Georgia Tech’s injury-ridden defensive line. The others on the bus were quick to add their opinions, and the conversation soon degenerated into an unabashedly partisan debate. Although Abby had her own opinions about Georgia’s so-called powerhouse offense, she let the lively discussion flow around her. She much preferred to watch Pete’s face as he refereed the debate.

  It was an intriguing one, she decided again, with character stamped in the lines fanning from the corners of his eyes and bracketing his mouth. Character and, she guessed, perhaps a residue of pain. Obviously he still hadn’t recovered from that bad jump he mentioned, which no doubt explained why he hadn’t accompanied Jordy and the rest of his unit on their unexpected deployment. Maybe he’d come back to the States on convalescent leave. Idly Abby wondered how long he’d be in the States…and who he might have left behind in England.

  The thought jerked her out of her contemplation of his strong, firm chin and bumpy nose. Startled, she realized she’d agreed to have dinner with a man she knew absolutely nothing about. He might very well have a wife and three kids waiting for him overseas.

  She frowned, trying to remember whether the hands tucked in his jacket pockets sported any rings of the plain-gold-band variety. She didn’t think so, but that didn’t mean much these days. For safety reasons, a good number of men and women in hazardous professions didn’t wear rings. Jumping out of airplanes ranked right up there among the most hazardous, in Abby’s book.

  Nor did that bone-melting kiss rule out the possibility that he was otherwise attached. Abby hadn’t tangled with many married men on the prowl, but she’d come across one or two in her time. Her frown deepening, she stole another glance at Pete O’Brian’s face. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe he was a membe
r of that particular subspecies. She’d make it a point to find out, though, over dinner.

  It wasn’t until she was unlocking the door to the Antiquemobile that Abby realized she’d unconsciously decided to make the drive to the Pines after all. Well, she could only hope the weather didn’t worsen and make her regret her decision.

  Gripping the wheel with tight fists, she eased out of the parking lot and into the stream of traffic heading north on slick, slush-covered roads. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the slush splattered and disappeared under the churning tires. The stuff was ugly, but not icy.

  “I’m sorry the heater doesn’t work,” she murmured, hunching her shoulders against the frigid air in the van. “It went out a few years ago, and I never bothered to get it fixed. We don’t usually get this kind of weather in Atlanta.”

  She threw him a quick smile. “Although I suppose it doesn’t faze a man who slept on an ice floe.”

  Pete smiled back, but his eyes held concern as he surveyed the gray drizzle on the windshield.

  “Maybe driving to the Pines isn’t such a good idea. I don’t like taking you so far out of your way, especially on roads like this.”

  “They’re not as bad as I was afraid they’d be. I don’t think we’ll have any problem.”

  Careful, cautious Abby mentally crossed all ten fingers, and those of her toes that weren’t frozen from the cold and dampness. She would have worried herself to a quiet frazzle if Beth had been the one out driving in this kind of weather.

  “Besides, I really need to speak to the manager. The chocolate-rum-raisin cake’s already paid for, but maybe there’s a chance I can recoup a few of the other costs of this unwedding.”

  “Are you saying your sister left you holding the bag and the bill when she backed out on Jordy?”

  Abby dragged her gaze from the road and leveled him a look as frosty as the air in the van. “I think we’d better settle something right now, O’Brian. My sister isn’t perfect, I admit, but I won’t tolerate criticism of her, particularly from someone who doesn’t even know her.”

  He didn’t take offense at her blunt speaking. If anything, Abby thought she caught a glint of approval in his dark eyes. Military men, she supposed, appreciated the concepts of loyalty and brotherhood. Or, in this case, sisterhood.

  “Fair enough,” he replied. “For the record, though, I do know Beth. Or maybe I should say I’ve met her. I was with Jordy the weekend he bumped into her and—” his mouth curled downward “—went off the deep end.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” she agreed, relenting a little. Personally, she’d used a few stronger phrases during the nights she tossed and turned and fretted over Beth’s rash decision to marry a near stranger.

  “It’s the only polite way to put it.”

  Abby shot him a quick glance. “I take it you don’t subscribe to the theory of love at first sight?”

  “No. Lust at first sight, maybe. The right mix of chemicals will always generate a spontaneous combustion, but that kind of fire flares hot, and usually burns out fast.”

  Abby suspected he spoke from personal experience. Given the way he’d ignited tiny flames in her blood within seconds of their meeting, he’d probably sparked his fair share of good-size conflagrations with other, more willing partners. Still, the cynicism in his reply bothered her.

  “Is that what you think love is?” she asked curiously. “A purely chemical reaction?”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “But I hope it’s more. Much more.”

  Deciding that the conversation had drifted into far-too-personal channels, she steered it toward the soaring Atlanta skyline on their left. Tomorrow’s big game. The unusual weather.

  Pete followed her lead, his hands shoved into his pockets and his long legs stretched out as far as the van would allow. The fact that the lady didn’t have any better definition than he did of the hazy, indefinable and, in his opinion, highly overrated emotion called love intrigued him. So she wasn’t involved with someone she considered herself in love with.

  The thought gave him a twist of pleasure at some deep, visceral level. He wrote off the sensation as a mindless male response to the knowledge that an attractive female was available. An attractive female who just happened to fit in his arms perfectly. One whose sexy, tantalizing mouth would no doubt drift through his dreams tonight.

  Regret once again stirred beneath his layers of bone-deep tiredness. Regret, and the realization that one taste of Abby Davis wasn’t quite enough to satisfy him. It was just as well that he wouldn’t see Doug Jordan’s almost-in-law again after tonight. Tasting her could fast become addictive.

  Banishing an insidious image of a private feast that included Abby as the main course, Pete responded easily to her conversational gambits. After a few miles, however, he let the conversation die away altogether. The wet roads required her attention. Not wanting to distract her, he crossed his ankles and gave every appearance of being absorbed in the gray landscape outside.

  He had plenty of time to absorb it. Rush-hour traffic, and the driving rain slowed the already sluggish pace around Atlanta’s busy loop. When they finally exited onto a less busy state road, the traffic moved a little more quickly, but the air in the van grew progressively colder with every mile north they progressed. Gradually the weak afternoon light faded to a purplish gloom. Headlights flickered on. The windshield wipers worked steadily.

  By the time they passed through a small village appropriately called Pineville and turned off at tall brick pillars announcing the Pines Inn and Golf Resort, Pete felt distinctly uncomfortable about taking Abby so far out of her way. He didn’t say anything while she negotiated the narrow, winding access road that cut through timber-covered hills. But when she pulled up at the sprawling two-story artistry of weathered cedar, native stone and soaring glass that constituted the resort’s main lodge, he stopped her before she got out of the van.

  “Why don’t we pass on dinner?” he suggested. “I don’t like the idea of you tackling these roads after dark.”

  Abby didn’t particularly like the idea herself, but she’d come this far. A hot meal—particularly one she’d already paid for—would go a long way toward dispelling the ice crystals in her blood and make the drive home a less daunting prospect.

  “I’m here now,” she replied with a small shrug. “I might as well indulge myself with a taste of that rum-raisin cake before heading home.”

  “You can take it with you. Or,” he amended slowly, his eyes holding hers, “you could stay at the inn tonight. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about you driving home alone—and we could share an unwedding breakfast, in addition to dinner.”

  Abby stared at him, her jaw sagging. Then she gave herself a mental shake. For heaven’s sake, the man wasn’t suggesting she spend the night with him.

  Was he?

  She peered at him through the gloom. For the life of her, she couldn’t tell. His face was in shadows, and his eyes were a deep, impenetrable black. She opted for a neutral response.

  “I doubt if they’ll have room. We only got the honeymoon cottage on such short notice because it’s so isolated from the main lodge.”

  And so outrageously expensive, she added silently. “Let’s get you checked in and track down our dinner. Then I’ll head home, and you can sleep off your jet lag in a bed you’ll have to see to believe.”

  They walked through the tall, weathered oak doors of the inn and stepped into a scene of total chaos. A chartered busload of University of Georgia alumni, sporting heavily jowled bulldogs on everything from designer jackets to diamond-encrusted pendants, filled every square inch of the lobby. They laughed and chattered among themselves while harried desk clerks tried to sort out what appeared to be a major foul-up in reservations. Leaving Pete to work his way through the amorphous, free-flowing lines, Abby sought out the manager.

  He’d left half an hour ago, she soon discovered. As h
ad the special events coordinator. Unable to confirm exactly what charges had been incurred at this point, a distracted assistant manager promised Abby someone would call her tomorrow with concrete figures. He also assured her that he’d notify the justice of the peace who was supposed to perform the ceremony in less than an hour that the wedding was off.

  Disappointed that her long trip hadn’t produced more concrete results, Abby returned to the lobby. She found Pete a few paces closer to the front desk, still caught in the throng of alumni. At his insistence, she gave him the confirmation number, then slipped off her cloak and settled down to wait in a wingback chair done in rich burgundy fabric.

  Palming her hands down the slim, calf-length skirt of her black velveteen dress, she smoothed away the worst of the wrinkles. With its wide collar of delicate Brussels lace and its bone buttons, it would do well enough for dinner at a four-star restaurant. She just wished she could slip off her thin-soled granny boots and massage some warmth back into her frozen feet.

  Pete made his way over to her some twenty minutes later, a rueful smile in his eyes and tired lines etched deep in his face.

  “I’m checked in, but it’s going to be a while yet before I can get to the cabin to clean up. Their shuttle service is overwhelmed at this point.” He rasped a hand across a chin stubbled with dark shadows. “If you don’t mind waiting another few minutes, I’ll find a men’s room and scrape off a few layers.”

  Abby pushed herself out of the chair, ignoring the instant protest from her still-numb toes. “Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you to the cottage. Besides, I’d like to see if it lives up to its extravagant advertising.”

  “At these prices, it better,” Pete said wryly, shepherding her through the lobby with a hand at the small of her back. The casual touch was probably nothing more than an unconscious gesture on his part, but it sent a sudden dart of awareness through Abby.

  “Which reminds me,” he added casually. “You’ll need to sign the credit slip when we come back.”

  “Credit slip?”