The Stolen Bride. Jacqueline Diamond
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if from very far away, she heard one of the workmen shout. Finally, they’d spotted her.
She had to survive. She had to tell someone what she’d seen. The danger was enormous, not only for her but also for her mother.
Erin’s shoulder hit the ground and a thousand stars exploded. Then there was only darkness.
Chapter Two
“You’re the most beautiful bride I ever saw!” Tina Norris, Erin’s maid of honor, gushed as they studied themselves in the full-length mirror.
“Thanks. And you look gorgeous in that shade of green,” Erin responded.
“I guess we’re just a pair of femmes fatales.” Her friend grinned.
Erin had to admit that her mother’s ivory heirloom wedding gown fit her five-foot-five-inch figure to perfection. Above the scooped neck glittered a diamond choker, and a matching tiara sparkled in her chestnut hair, which was folded into a French twist. Except for the pallor of her skin, the image was smashingly bridelike and yet it seemed to her that it belonged to a stranger.
A buzzing filled her head and the bridal dressing room at the Sundown Valley Country Club began to spin. With the ceremony less than an hour away, Erin didn’t want to get sick.
In the six weeks since the accident, her memory had been a complete blank about that day. She’d also been plagued by confusion, anxieties and nightmares, which the doctor attributed to post-traumatic stress.
Erin pressed her temple. The dizziness ebbed.
“Do you want to sit down?” Tina asked. “You don’t look well.”
“It’s not bad,” she said. “Just nerves.”
She wished the wedding could have waited until she was stronger, but by next month Chet would be caught up in the full swing of his congressional campaign. Even now, he only had time for a short honeymoon in Lake Tahoe. Erin knew she ought to be excited at the prospect of being alone with her groom, since she’d saved her virginity for her wedding night, but in the past few weeks it had become difficult to summon any emotions at all.
According to Chet, she’d been bubbling with enthusiasm when she called him to accept his proposal. Since her head injury later that day, however, she’d experienced what the doctor called emotional flattening. With her inner compass out of whack, she’d relied on family and friends to guide her.
Thank goodness Chet had proved a rock-steady source of support. No wonder she’d been so eager to marry him, Erin thought. She didn’t doubt that the happy emotions would come flooding back in time and, meanwhile, it would be a relief to move forward with their lives.
She was grateful, too, for Tina, her best friend from high school. Tina, now a junior high school life-skills teacher, had come to see Erin after she was transferred to the local hospital. She’d continued to visit during the past month while Erin recuperated at her mother’s home.
No one from Tustin had visited or accepted the wedding invitation. Erin had been particularly disappointed when Alice reported that Bea had declined.
Tina broke into her reverie. “How’s your leg? Think you can make it down the aisle without limping?”
Between her badly bruised hip and the head injury, Erin had been mostly housebound until now. “Probably. If Chet doesn’t step on my feet.”
“I’m sure he’ll be careful. If he isn’t, I’ll pound him into dust.”
“Spoken like a true friend!”
A loud knock startled both women. “Not the photographer again!” Erin didn’t think she could summon one more artificial smile.
“It’s probably Chet.” He planned to walk Erin down the aisle, since her mother was recovering from yet another bout of bronchitis.
She’d declined to let her stepfather fulfill that function. Although Lance had been pleasant this past month, Erin couldn’t bring herself to like him. She hadn’t entirely lost touch with her emotions after all, she supposed.
Tina peeked outside. Before Erin could see who was there, her friend stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her.
It had to be Tina’s boyfriend, Rick, a detective sergeant who braved her father’s disapproval to date her. One might expect more sympathy from a chief of police who’d risen through the ranks, but Edgar Norris had always been a bit of a snob. Now that he’d joined the country club, he preferred that his children move in elite social circles.
Fortunately, Tina didn’t share her father’s preoccupation with social status. Erin hoped he would come around eventually, because she liked Rick.
Her friend hurried back. “There’s a detective here to see you. Can you talk to him?”
“You mean Rick?” she asked.
“No. Someone with a few questions about your accident.”
“Now?” Erin could hardly believe the timing, less than an hour before the ceremony. Besides, she’d told the Tustin Police Department everything she remembered—which was a big fat zero. “They drove all this way on a Saturday to talk to me?”
“It’s someone local.” Tina cleared her throat. “Erin, it’s Joseph.”
Joseph. It couldn’t be him. She knew he’d joined the police force and that he was friends with Rick, but she hadn’t expected to meet him. Not unprepared like this. Not in her wedding dress.
Once, she’d been closer to him than to anyone in the world. Then he’d broken her heart, or maybe she’d broken his. Most likely both.
“My accident was in Tustin,” she heard herself say. “That’s a different jurisdiction.”
“I know.” Tina picked up her bouquet and fingered the ivory, blue and green flowers. “Joseph investigated your mom’s accident. He thinks there might be a connection with what happened to you.”
“How could they be connected?” Alice’s near drowning and Erin’s hit-and-run had occurred four months and fifty miles apart.
“I’d better let him explain it. He promised it won’t take long.” Tina sounded torn.
“I can’t see him.”
“He said he tried to talk to you before, but Lance objected and my father ordered him to back off. He seems to think it’s important.”
The boy she’d adored when she was fifteen was standing right outside in the hallway. Joseph might not belong at her wedding to Chet, but he was already here. How could she send him away? But how could she see him when she already felt so shaky?
The woman Erin had been until six weeks ago could have handled the situation with quiet self-possession. Now, she didn’t trust her own reactions. During the past month, she’d found herself doubting everyone around her and getting upset for no reason. How could she maintain her poise with Joseph?
She remembered something that had slipped her mind. At the hospital, she’d learned that, when admitted, she’d been wearing the broken-heart pendant he’d given her in high school.
She wished she knew why she’d put that on, apparently right after calling Chet to accept his proposal. It didn’t make sense.
A lot of things didn’t make sense, she acknowledged with a start. She didn’t know why her friends in Tustin had abandoned her. Also, at her mother’s house, she’d imagined that conversations stopped abruptly when she entered a room. That the phone rang and was answered in hushed tones so that she couldn’t understand.
In high school, Joseph had been the one she’d turned to with her thoughts. Maybe he could help her sort things out now. In any case, she refused to send him away without saying hello.
“All right,” Erin said. “For a minute.”
“I’ll