Kidnapping His Bride. Hayley Gardner
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were out of the ordinary and she wasn’t attired in a white satin wedding dress. Trusting Griff would follow her, she went into the larger side room and settled at a small, relatively private table far to the rear of the place, hoping she was less noticeable back there. Griff sat down, too, close enough that their shoulders touched. She gave him a pursed mouth, questioning stare.
“If I sit on the other side of the table, I’ll have to talk louder,” he said, his voice low. She realized he was right and let him stay where he was, wishing she didn’t feel like a quivering mass of emotions just because he was home.
Back, she corrected silently. Griff didn’t want this to be home. He’d made that clear a long time ago.
Within seconds, Doc Casey came to take their order, his mirth-filled, green eyes gazing down at her from his round Irish face. “Griff. Welcome home. Welcome. Tessa, aren’t you a little too fancied up for this place?”
“You have a dress down code?” Tessa lifted both hands into the air in a plea for him to spare her.
“It’s my fault,” Griff said, leaning back in his chair to look up at the former doctor. “I kidnapped her from her wedding.”
“That so?” Doc Casey gazed down at Tessa with the same concerned, yet detached, expression he’d always used whenever she’d described her sneezes and sniffles.
“Plopped her right over my shoulder and carried her out kicking and screaming. Wanted to play a trick on my brother.”
Although he was exaggerating, his excuse for her being here, having a private meal with her fiancé’s brother when she was supposed to be at her wedding, was as good as any Tessa could make up. She glanced at Griff, and he winked, making her realize that saving her from having to give any explanation to Casey herself was exactly what he’d intended. His thoughtfulness caught her off balance.
“You haven’t changed a mite,” Doc Casey said, looking as if he wanted to laugh. “It was always you who did the hell-raising, and your brother who calmed everyone down.”
“Oh, I think Clay will probably do some hell-raising when he gets here,” Griff told him affably, as though he wasn’t worried a bit.
Casey let out a loud chuckle. “Ain’t that the truth, you taking his bride and all. Okay, what all you having?”
“Two burgers with everything and home fries. Also, two ice teas, sweet,” Griff said.
Casey scribbled down the order and set off. As soon as he rounded the corner out of sight, Tessa heard him chuckle again. Since the doctor seldom reacted outright to anything, she wondered what his doing so now meant.
It didn’t matter; she had more important things to deal with right now. She pointed toward the kitchen. “You’re eating every bite you ordered,” she told Griff. “I’m not going to cancel the wedding because I burst out of my gown.”
“No, you’ll cancel it because you don’t really want to marry Clay.”
“Who said I don’t?” She watched Griff’s blue eyes narrow, but then she thought of something and looked back to the doorway through which the older man had disappeared. “You know, Doc Casey has e-mail, and he seemed uncommonly glad to see you.”
“Whoever wanted me down here to stop the wedding would have had to know what my e-mail address was. I never gave it to Doc Casey.”
“Well, who did you give it to?”
He shrugged. “My parents, Clay, Sadie—”
“Shoot, if you gave it to Gran, the whole town could have it.” Suddenly Tessa sat up straight and frowned. “My grandmother never told me she was staying in touch with you.”
“She didn’t stay in touch with me, apart from an electronic Christmas card or two. I just wanted her to have my address in case she ever needed me.” Or if you did, Griff added silently.
Relieved that her grandmother was not reporting her every move to Griffin Ledoux, Tessa found her thoughts wandering to the enticing way the muscles in his shoulders had moved when he’d shrugged seconds ago. And that made her think more unwanted thoughts, like how good it had felt to be held by him ten years ago, when her dreams centered around having the perfect family with Griff, someday, when they were both ready—but there was no sense thinking about that. It was too late, too much had happened.
Someone came through the front door, making the bells on it jingle. The arrival reminded her that, at any minute, she and Griff could be joined by Clay and a whole bunch of her friends, and her grandmother Sadie. They would part without anything resolved between them, and there would still be someone out there, this mysterious e-mailer, who had already known, or guessed, too much about her life, and was maybe itching to tell Griff more.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s get this conversation wrapped up. I need to call Clay so he can bring me back to the wedding.”
Griff leaned back in his chair and met her stare for stare. “Since you aren’t in love with him, why exactly are you marrying Clay?”
“That’s none of your business.” Tessa’s heart picked up its rhythm, and she took a deep breath to try to keep calm. “We aren’t that close that I would tell you my secrets.” They could never be that close again, she thought sadly. “I never cross-examined you about your marriage to Janie, did I?”
“My life’s an open book,” Griff said. Tessa couldn’t believe he was as nonchalant as he sounded. “What do you want to know?”
“Nothing!” That was true. She didn’t want to know the personal, intimate details of any facet of Griff’s life, or risk an emotional involvement with him ever again. She’d learned her lesson the first time. Besides, it would ruin everything. She had to remain determined to do what was right.
“I caused my ex a great deal of heartache by marrying her for the wrong reasons, and that’s why I’m trying so hard to get you to walk away today. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you and my brother.”
“You keep saying that. How do you know I would bring Clay heartache? You’ve been living elsewhere almost ten years, Griff. The Air Force Academy, then all that military service. None of us are the same people as when you left. Maybe marrying me would make your brother happy. Did you ever consider that?”
“Is that why you’re marrying him? He’s fallen in love with you, and you think one of you being in love is enough to hold you together? Because it isn’t. I know this from experience. It won’t give you your dream of a loving husband and a family forever after, Tessa.”
“I’m not discussing this with you.”
“Fine. Call Clay. He’ll tell me what I want to know.”
No, Tessa thought, Clay wouldn’t tell him. Clay, like she, would do anything to keep their secret, as would the only other person who knew—Sadie, her grandmother. Which made her wonder how this mysterious e-mailer could have possibly found out what he had, and what else whoever it was might know that he could tell Griff.
She couldn’t chance Griff finding out anything else about her marriage to his brother. She had to get him to leave town.
But how? Sitting back in her chair, Tessa lifted her gaze to meet Griff’s. If she pushed him too much to leave, would he begin to suspect there was something else behind her not wanting him there? Something that could change his life—and others’—forever?
Chapter Two
Before Tessa could decide what to tell Griff, the small cowbells on the front door jingled again and seconds later, two elderly men in overalls came into the section where she and Griff were, greeted the third man already there and sat down with him at a long table near the front of the room, all facing her. Tessa frowned. Doc Casey came in with her and Griff’s ice teas, then stopped at the other table to take orders, wearing a totally unfamiliar grin on his face.