Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (7 page)

A shudder passed through Nick. Whatever the cause, the woman was F-I-N-E, fine.

He’d been damn tempted to ask for her phone number, but it was clear from the huge rock on her ring finger she was deeply involved with someone else. And to Nick’s way of thinking, there was nothing more off-limits than a woman who was spoken for. Too bad. A little sexual healing would have been a very nice way to pass his recovery time until Dr. Van Zandt got back from Guatemala.

Yeah, right, like you would ever have a chance with her even if she wasn’t engaged. She’s filet mignon, and you’re a hot dog.

Determined to burn her off his brain, Nick decided a workout was in order.

He ambled out to his pickup truck, favoring his achy knee, and drove over to Gold’s Gym. Strenuous cardio was out of the question, but he could do upper-body strength training, and Doc Van Zandt had endorsed swimming.

After twenty minutes in the lap pool, Nick emerged winded with water trickling down his bare chest and abdomen. He dried off with a thin white cotton towel, his heart punching hard against his rib cage, his lungs burning. Fatigue weighted him, but his thoughts were still locked on his mystery woman. He kept picturing her on his bed, in that girly pink raincoat, knowing full well that she was wearing next to nothing underneath.

What was the inexplicable pull? Where had it come from, this continual, aching need that had dogged him for two long, agonizing days?

He hit the weight machines. Working out his triceps, his biceps, his pecs. He pushed himself until his arms quivered, desperate to sublimate his sexual desires with exhaustion. But this time, instead of easing his mental torture, exercise seemed to have fueled it. He was doubly aware of his body, of his physical needs.

Face facts, Vinetti, you can’t have her. The woman is already spoken for.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Because she was strictly off-limits. Dammit. What the hell was so special about this one?

His cell phone rang.

Relieved to finally have something else to focus on, Nick snatched up the cell phone from his gym bag and punched the TALK button. “’Lo?”

“Nicky, it’s your nana.”

Immediately the muscles at his shoulder blades tensed and his grip tightened around the phone. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, yes. I just needed to talk to you about something.”

“What’s up?” Sweat ran down his forehead and he swiped it away with his gym towel.

“I’m ready to go through your grandfather’s personal effects. Could you drop by tomorrow afternoon, say three-thirtyish, and help me start packing things up?”

Nick hesitated.

It wasn’t that he had anything else to do tomorrow. Nor was it that he minded in the least helping his grandmother. He’d move heaven and earth for her. What he hated was the thought of saying good-bye to his grandfather once and for all.

Nick had been just seven years old when his father, his two younger brothers, Richie and Johnny, and his sister, Gina, had moved in with Nana and Grampa in their three-story Victorian on Galveston Island. Over the course of the last year, everything in Nick’s life had changed. His bride had left him on their honeymoon. His knee had gotten mangled, forcing him off the job he loved for weeks, and his grandfather had passed away. He simply wasn’t prepared to handle any more changes.

“Are you sure now is the right time?” he said. “It’s only been two months.”

“It’s time,” she said. “It’s got to be done.”

“There’s no reason we can’t wait a while longer.”

“Yes, there is, Nicky. I’m selling the house,” she said, her firm tone telling him she’d brook no argument.

Nick couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d reached through the phone and punched him squarely in the gut. “Nana, no, absolutely not. You can’t sell the house.”

“I can’t talk about this now. There’s someone at the front door. We’ll finish this discussion when you come over tomorrow afternoon.” And with that, she hung up on him.

The dial tone mocked his ear.

Nana had hung up on him!

Feeling as if he’d just gone fifteen pulverizing rounds with a heavyweight boxing champ, Nick slipped his cell phone back into his gym bag.

All right then, if that’s the way it was going to be, he’d look at the upside. At least he had something to do besides fantasize about the woman in the raincoat and fret over his knee—confront his grandmother and convince her she couldn’t sell the only real home he’d ever known.

On Sunday evening, Delaney got her rain check.

Evan took her to La Maison Vert, the only five-star French restaurant in Houston. He wore a tux. She had on a little black cocktail dress. The decor was elegant, the service impeccable. And the pan-seared, pecan-encrusted mahimahi bathed in a rich buttery caper sauce was definitely worth the three additional hours on the treadmill the extra calories were going to cost her.

It should have been a magical evening.

Instead, Evan talked nonstop about his work, spoiling the romantic mood. Any other time, Delaney wouldn’t have minded. Evan was passionate about his job and she was a good listener, but tonight she found herself wishing that he were half as passionate about her as he was about medicine.

She’d still planned on seducing him, but extreme embarrassment—following what had happened outside Evan’s office—caused her to give up on the hostage-taking fantasy and go for something a little lower key. She had reserved a room at the Hyatt and worn a dress that showed lots of cleavage with sexy underwear underneath, and she’d ordered oysters on the half shell for an appetizer.

But Evan hadn’t wanted any.

Glumly, she’d sucked down the delicacies alone while her husband-to-be extolled the virtues of a new hip replacement procedure. Delaney zoned out on the details. She didn’t know how to tell him he was boring her to tears.

This is how the meals are going to go for the rest of your life.
Skylar’s voice rang in her head.

Now that was a depressing thought.

It’s okay,
she reassured herself. She had her work too, and she loved it. Evan probably got just as bored listening to her talk about All the World’s a Stage as much as his shoptalk bored her. Except she never really talked about her job with him.

She’d gotten into the business of staging houses quite by accident. She had received her master’s degree in liberal arts and was trying to decide what to do with it when Tish, who’d been struggling to make a big mortgage payment after her divorce, asked Delaney to help her fix up her house so she could sell it.

She had given her friend’s place a complete makeover, and it sold the following week at ten thousand more than the asking price—and that was after the house had been on the market for over a year. Delaney had found her niche, and on the plus side, it was also a career her mother endorsed.

Excited by the headiness of that first success, she’d borrowed money from her father and started All the World’s a Stage last summer. But while the business was breaking even, it was only because of her mother’s friends. To date, besides Tish, only one other of her clients had not come from the pool of people who regularly kissed up to Honey Montgomery Cartwright.

But Delaney was eager to change all that. She was determined to succeed on her own, without her mother’s help.

She ordered another glass of wine to loosen her up enough to proceed with her plans for seduction. Evan was leaving for Guatemala tomorrow morning. If she couldn’t coax him into bed tonight, she wouldn’t have another chance before their wedding.

She assessed him through the glow of a pricey zinfandel. He was classically handsome—flawless to a fault, perfectly symmetrical features, manicured fingernails, complexion like a baby’s, every hair combed smoothly into place.

And Delaney couldn’t help comparing him to the rugged guy she’d tarped outside Evan’s office.

Now there was a man.
Ha-cha-cha.

Immediately her mind conjured up a picture of him. Beard stubbling his firm jaw, calluses on his hands, tanned skin, unruly hair curling around his collar. He put her in mind of Gerard Butler, the rugged British actor who’d played the phantom of the opera in the recent film version of the famous musical. It was one of her favorite movies. He possessed the same hauntingly mesmerizing quality of extreme masculinity that Mr. Butler did.

Her heart thumped faster just thinking about him.

He was everything she had never wanted. Bold, brash, cocky. And yet, again and again, over the course of the last couple of days, her mind had been drawn to thoughts of him.

He’s a fantasy; forget him. Your future is sitting right in front of you.

But those biceps. Those piercing dark brown eyes. She sighed.

She squinted at Evan in the candlelight and tried to get worked up, but an undertow of anxiety tugged at her thoughts. He was a very good-looking man. Why couldn’t she get stoked over him the way she did over this stranger? What was wrong with her?

“And by then,” Evan was saying, “we’ll be ready to have kids, and then you can give up your business and stay home.”

“What?” Delaney blinked, realizing she’d spaced out. “What did you say?”

Evan repeated what he’d said.

“I’m not giving up my business. I love my business. What made you think I would give up my business?”

“We don’t need the money, and our children will require your undivided attention.”

“What about your undivided attention? Don’t kids need a dad as much as a mom? Why don’t you give up your job?”

He laughed, the braying sound affecting her like fingernails on a chalkboard. When had the sound of his laugh first started to irritate her? She’d never really noticed before what an unattractive sound it was.

“Okay, point taken,” he said. “You can keep the business as a sideline and we’ll hire a part-time nanny.”

“Oh, thanks so much for your permission.”

“You’re mad?” Evan looked bewildered. “Why are you mad?”

“Nothing. I’m not mad.” She held up her palms. He didn’t even realize he’d been patronizing her. “Never mind.”

“No, no, let’s talk this through.”

His calm rationality was getting on her nerves. Which was weird. His steady sensibility was one of the things Delaney liked most about him.

Thankfully, her cell phone picked that moment to ring.

Evan gave her a gently chiding look. “You left your cell phone on? This is our last dinner together for six weeks.”

“You leave your cell phone on whenever we go out,” Delaney said, feeling a little defensive as she searched in her clutch purse for the slim flip phone.

“I’m a doctor; there could be emergencies,” he said. “You stage houses for a living.” There it was again, that slightly condescending tone in his voice.

She found the phone and checked the caller ID. It was from Trudie Klausman, the one client who had not come to her from her mother’s sphere of social influence. “Excuse me, Evan, I need to take this.”

Delaney put her napkin on the table, pushed back her chair, and hurried to an out-of-the-way alcove to take the call.

“Trudie,” she greeted her caller. “How are you?”

“Fine, just fine.”

“How’s the new condo?”

“Wonderful, I love it. There’s so much to do here, so many activities, and lots of handsome widowers to chase after in my golf cart.”

“That’s great to hear.”

“Listen,” Trudie said, “I’ve got a friend who’s looking to sell her house.”

“Really.” A smile flitted across her lips. At last, a referral that had nothing to do with her mother.

“My friend lives on Galveston Island in an old Victorian. It’s a beautiful place, but needs work. Her husband died a couple of months ago and she’s really lonely.”

“That’s sad,” Delaney said. “I’m so sorry to hear it.”

“It’s been rough on her. They were married fifty-two years, and Leo was the love of her life.”

Delaney made a noise of sympathy. “Tragic.”

“Well,” Trudie said, “they did get fifty-two wonderful years together. Most of us aren’t so lucky. Anyway, a condo came open here at Orchid Villa right across the courtyard from my place. But she can’t afford the condo until she sells her house. The condo won’t last long. You know how quickly the properties are going around here, so she needs to sell the house as soon as possible. Can you drop by tomorrow afternoon and give her your expert opinion?”

“Trudie,” Delaney said, “I’d be happy to do what I can for your friend.”

“Can you come around three? Got a pen so I can give you the address?”

“Three would be perfect. Hang on, I’ve got my BlackBerry right here.” She dug the device from her purse and powered it on. “Go ahead.”

“Her name is Lucia Vinetti.” As Trudie gave her the address, Delaney felt her excitement growing. She hadn’t had a project in a couple of weeks, and she was eager to work and get her mind off the wedding plans.

In the course of a two-minute conversation, Delaney had completely forgotten about seducing Evan. If she couldn’t find the magic that was missing from her life through love, then she would do it through her work. Now, all she could think about was making sure Lucia Vinetti’s house sold quickly and for the most amount of money possible.