The Inconvenient Bride (17 page)

God knew she was hurting him!

“Because,” Sierra said, her voice choked, as if she'd been crying. “Because there are things you don't know.”

“What things?” He was baffled, shaking his head. “What are you talking about? Why are you crying?”

She wiped a hand across her eyes hastily. “I'm
not
crying! The sun was in my eyes!”

“What things?” he persisted.

“Things you haven't settled. Things that will make a difference.” She struggled out of his grasp and moved quickly away, not looking at him.

He stared at her. “You always used to make sense.”

She gave a quick desperate shake of her head. “Go into the village. There's a little house on Harbor Street. A shop where they sell paintings. It's blue with white shutters.”

“Do you have sunstroke?” He tried to feel her forehead, but she pushed him away.

“Damn it, no! I don't have anything! Just go!” When he didn't move, she glared at him. “Do it, damn you! Go!”

Stubbornly he shook his head. “You come, too.”

“No! I can't! I've got to—” She broke off and started into the house.

And he knew exactly what she was intending to do, and took three strides across the deck and grabbed her arm. “I'll go,” he said fiercely. “But you'll stay. You have to promise me. You can't leave. Don't you dare leave until I get back!”

She glowered at him, but he wouldn't let her go until she promised.

“I'll be here,” she said finally. “Just go.” Her throat sounded tight, her tone agonized.

He went.

But not without a long and desperate look back.

 

She waited.

It was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

Harder than standing up to Terry Graff at the pool when she was seven. Harder than moving to New York when she was twenty. Harder than staying out of Dominic's arms when she'd so desperately wanted to be in them those weeks after she had learned he didn't want out of their marriage what she wanted.

She waited, and paced, and bit her nails and fretted. She didn't want to be there when he came back, didn't want to have to put on a brave face while he gravely agreed that she was right, they needed to get a divorce.

Even more she didn't want to be here if he came back and said they didn't. She didn't want to be the reason he was torn.

She prowled and fumed and agonized. And finally, because she could stand waiting alone no longer, she grabbed his cell phone and called Pammie. It would help to know what the outside world was doing. It would be good to know how Frankie was getting along.

So she rang Pammie on the cell phone she had now—the one she had to carry everywhere so that the transplant people could always get in touch with her.

Even so she was surprised when Pammie answered so quick and breathlessly.

“It's Sierra,” she said.

And Pam said, “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“They found Dan.” Frankie's father, she meant. The man she hadn't seen in all those years. “He took the test. He's a match. He's here. We're at the hospital. They're doing the surgery within the hour!”

Abruptly Sierra sat down. And a good thing, too, or her legs would not have held her. “They found Dan?” she echoed. Were missing fathers turning up everywhere these days?

“Long story,” Pammie said. “I can't believe it. But it's true. He came back the minute he heard. He's changed, Sierra. He's grown up.” She sounded as wobbly as Sierra felt. “I'm not hoping for fairy-tale endings, you know—Dan, me and Frankie together forever—but at least Frankie knows his dad cares. And that's something, isn't it?”

“Of course it is,” Sierra said. She felt faint and just a little bit hollow. “That's…wonderful.” Her throat was tight. She thought she might start to cry.

“How did you know?” Pam asked again. “Did Dominic find out? He would. He's so good at everything.”

“He didn't find out,” Sierra said. “He's had…other things on his mind.”

“Is everything okay?” Pammie demanded. “Are you having a good time? A good honeymoon?”

“Yes,” Sierra said. “Oh, yes.”

She was sure, under the circumstances, God would forgive her the lie.

“Give Frankie my love,” she said a little desperately. “Tell him…tell him I'll see him soon.”

“I'll tell him,” Pammie promised. Then, “Love you, Sierra. And thank you. Without you this couldn't have happened. You and Dominic.”

 

So something good had come out of it.

Frankie was getting a transplant. He was getting a father, maybe. At least that's what it sounded like. And Lacey was getting a father, too. And Dominic would, perhaps, get Carin back.

All because of Sierra.

It was just dandy being so useful.

But if it was, why did she feel lower than dirt?

She stood on the deck, clutching the railing and tried to swallow her misery, tried to be happy for everyone else—and then she heard the sound of footsteps, Dominic's footsteps coming up the path.

He was grinning. Laughing. Actually
laughing
when he spotted her!

Sierra shut her eyes. Damn him!
Lucky
him! she thought miserably. And as much as she knew she should feel glad for him, she couldn't show it.

Personal magnanimity had its limits. Sierra had met hers.

He came up the steps two at a time. “Sierra!” His tone was urgent. “Sierra?” Now it was questioning because she wouldn't turn around.

She felt his hand on her arm and had to force herself not to pull away. She held still, didn't move.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice soft and serious and just a little choked up.

“You're welcome,” she muttered, still looking away.

Silence descended. He still held her and she cried inside,
Let me go! Please just let me go!

Then he said, his tone a little strained, “But I don't understand why you want the divorce?”

She whirled on him. “You don't understand? How could you
not
understand? That's Carin!
Your
Carin! The woman you loved—maybe still do! And there's Lacey! Lacey is…Lacey is…”

“My brother's child.”

“What!”

He nodded and repeated what he'd just told her. “She's Nathan's child.”

Once more Sierra sat down. Only this time it felt more like she fell. She stared up at him, shaking her head, disbelieving, astonished. “I don't understand.”

“I do,” Dominic said softly. “Now.”

He sat down on the deck beside her, pulled her close, wrapped one arm around her and took one of her hands in his, as if he needed to hang on. Sierra thought she knew how he felt.

“Tell me,” she urged.

“It finally makes sense. I don't know why I didn't see it
years ago. You know how I told you our fathers got us together? Well, mine proposed, but hers apparently did a bit more than that. He said he'd found her the man she was going to marry. And she, dutiful daughter that she was—besides being young and inexperienced—agreed.”

“She didn't…love you?” Sierra had to ask.

“She liked me. I liked her. I guess I thought I loved her. I didn't know what love was then.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “And neither did she. Until she came down here to spend those three weeks. Nathan was already here. He'd been doing a shoot in Venezuela and he came up early to spend some time. He didn't know she was coming. Didn't know her! But what happened to them was, well—” he slanted her a glance “—a lot like what happened to you and me.”

“Hormones?”

“Instant attraction. And instant resistance. She, after all, was supposed to be going to marry me. She said Nathan tried to stay away, but then the night before Dad and Rhys were going to arrive there was a storm and they ended up in very close confines and one thing led to another and it got…”

“Sort of like in Kansas,” Sierra said softly.

“Sort of,” Dominic agreed. “And as soon as the storm was over, Nathan left. He'd done the unthinkable—made love to my fiancée. And so he cut out, called Rhys, told him to take over. He had no idea what Carin was going to do. I don't think Carin even knew until after he was gone. She loved him. She liked me. There was never any contest.” He sounded wondering and not at all hurt now. He actually seemed relieved.

Sierra touched his cheek. “Why didn't she just tell you? Why did she run?”

“Because there was no time. Because she was young and scared and her father was expecting her to marry me in the morning. Everyone was expecting her to marry me in the
morning. And she knew if she said she wasn't going to, it wouldn't wash, Daddy would lean on her to do it.”

“She could have told you!”

Dominic shrugged. “I didn't give her a chance. I brushed her off, told her to get some sleep because she couldn't expect any on our wedding night.” He shook his head. “God, I was an ass.”

“No!” Sierra shook her head. He'd been hurt. But he didn't look hurt now. He looked almost happy. “Where'd she go?”

Dominic's eyes narrowed just a little. “To stay with Estelle and Maurice.”

Sierra's eyes bugged. “Estelle hid her?”

“Just let her lie low. Dad and Mr. Campbell were checking ferries and seaplanes and boats and every damned thing you could think of, but no one remembered seeing her leave. No wonder. She never went. And—” he grinned a little “—she's been here ever since. Got herself a nice little shop and a decent career. And none of us ever knew—until now.”

They sat in silence then. The sunset sounds of the ocean and the jungle were the only things to be heard.

Sierra let it all settle in, reshuffled reality, put Nathan with Carin and Lacey and wondered what the future was for that. Then she redealt the hand that fate had played her—and wondered, too, if she dared hope.

“I thought Lacey was yours,” she admitted. “When I met Carin, I just thought…” She couldn't say the words, because even though they were untrue, they still had the power to hurt.

“I never made love with Carin. I was never
in
love with Carin. I've only loved one woman in my life—besides my mother,” Dominic said with a wry smile. He touched her chin with his finger and turned her face so that she had to look at him or shut her eyes. “And that woman is you.”

He loved her.

He actually said he loved her. And she could see his heart
and his soul in his eyes, and she knew what he said was true.

It was scary being loved like that. It was scary mattering so much to another person. It was easier to love, she thought, than be loved.

“Have I waited too long?” he asked her. There was a hint of hesitation in his voice, a thread of nervousness.

“Too long?”

“Once you said—” he swallowed “—that you…loved me…” He stopped and looked away and she saw the fear in his eyes and understood.

“I do, Dominic,” she swore. And it was a vow every bit as deep and passionate as the ones she'd made at their wedding. She put her arms around him and felt his wrap around her in an embrace that promised to last a lifetime. “I love you, Dominic. I do, I do.”

 

She did.

When a man was lucky enough to be married to a woman like Sierra, he could have no doubts. Dominic's doubts were well and truly assuaged, that was certain.

He came down the sand of another beach—a Long Island beach—to find his wife was playing in the water with Frankie and his parents.

Three months after his surgery, Frankie's future looked bright. And not just because he had a new kidney. He had a father now as well.

“I don't believe in fairy tales,” Pammie had insisted when she'd debated marrying Dan last month.

But Sierra had said, “You believe in love, don't you?” And she'd smiled over the top of Pam's head and her eyes had met Dominic's. “Then that's all you need.”

That was what they had—the two of them. Love.

More love, Dominic thought, than any man had a right to. He basked in Sierra's love every day of his life, and he never stopped thinking how damned lucky he was.

He understood now how Rhys could have been terrified to love again after Sarah. It put that kind of fear into a man. It took a good woman to persevere, to remove one-by-one all the roadblocks men were so good at constructing. Mariah had done it for Rhys.

Sierra had done it for him.

The months he had been married to Sierra had been the best time of his life. He wouldn't trade Sierra for all the mergers and takeovers and positive balance sheets on earth. She brought joy to every day and pleasure to every night.

She had enriched his life in ways he never thought possible.

He hoped Carin someday might do the same for Nathan. If Nathan could ever get past the guilt.

“You did me a favor,” Dominic had told his brother when he and Sierra got back from their honeymoon.

Nathan was just about to leave again and he'd stared, shocked, when Dominic had confronted him with the news that Carin was living on Pelican Cay—and that he now understood why all those years ago, she'd jilted him.

“It's all right,” he'd told his brother. “We didn't love each other. We were friends, that's all.”

But Nathan wasn't having any of it. “I betrayed you.”

“Well, it didn't happen the best way it could have,” Dominic conceded. “But that's past. It's over. That doesn't matter now.”

Nathan had grunted, resisting just the way Dominic remembered resisting.

“I suppose you could just forget I told you,” he'd said mildly. “Spend your life at the four corners of the earth and miss out on the best part of it.”

Nathan had kept right on packing.

“Carin's made a good life for herself. She probably doesn't care if she ever sees you again,” Dominic went on ruthlessly. “Can't say the same for Lacey.”