The Cowboy's Bride, page 2
Meg ducked her head as the audience laughed appreciatively. Theo was laughing, too.
And after an interminably jokey summary of their last two and a half years, Mitchell finally got to the good part.
“So—and only because I’m forced to ask this question, by law—is there anyone here who has reason or can give just cause why these two lovely people should not be united in marriage? Speak now, or forever hold your—”
At the center of the chapel, a woman shot to her feet. A pretty, petite woman Isabella had never seen before. Dressed to the nines in ice blue with a netted, black-feathered fascinator perched atop her long, dark hair.
She pointed dramatically to her clearly pregnant belly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said quite loudly. “Is this reason enough?”
A collective gasp erupted from the entire crowd.
All the blood left Theo’s face and he dropped her hands.
A buzz thrummed suddenly in Isabella’s ears. What? What?
The woman began edging out of the pew row she was in, saying, “Excuse me. Pardon me,” as she bumped knees with the entire row. “Excuse me.”
Isabella stared first at her swollen belly, then disbelievingly at Theo.
He shook his head. “I-I-I don’t know her.”
“What did you say?” shouted the woman who was now marching up the aisle toward them. “Did you just say you don’t know me?”
Eliza Stanton shot to her feet, a look of horror on her face. She flailed her arms as if she could somehow command this all to stop. Isabella’s father yanked her, protesting, back down to her seat.
Theo took two steps back and pleaded with Isabella with a look. “This is … there’s been some kind of—”
“Mistake?” the woman in blue hissed, reaching the steps of the alter. “Oh, yes, Theo. There’s a mistake all right. But you’re the one who made it. You said you were going to marry me! Liar!”
To Isabella, he stammered, “I swear, I—”
“This can’t be happening,” Isabella breathed, her fingers loosening their grip on her bouquet, which fell to the floor with a plunk of finality.
Oh. My. God. All those long hours. Those nights away when he said he was working. How had she not seen it? How could she not have known?
Theo’s parents looked stricken, got to their feet, holding onto one another. A buzz of shocked sensibility careened around the room.
“I’m sorry,” the woman told the crowded chapel, hands raised. “I’m sorry,” she told Isabella. “But I didn’t know about you. Obviously. Until yesterday. Until I heard about … this. And clearly, you didn’t know about me. He’s been lying to you. To both of us. Did you plan to keep me as a side bit, Theo? Did you think you could just put me off forever? I’m having your child! Your son! You said you wanted to marry me!”
Theo took two steps toward the woman and grabbed her by the arm. “Gina, dammit—”
“Oh, look!” She laughed out loud. “He remembered my name.”
“Oh. Theo…” Isabella breathed.
“Isabella, I—” he began lamely, still shaking his head, unable to use his freaking words.
“Gaaaaahh!” She fled down the aisle she’d walked up only minutes before on her father’s arm.
As she ran, all eyes were on her, stricken with embarrassment for her. Or for Theo. She couldn’t imagine which. She didn’t care now. She couldn’t think. The buzzing in her ears grew louder.
Then she was outside, lifting her skirts and running, running. To where? No clue. Anywhere. Away from here! Tears blurred her vision and wet her cheeks. Cry for Theo? She sobbed. He didn’t deserve tears. That rat. That bastard. That—
Blindly, she ran toward the stupidly decorated limo—with its tin cans and ridiculous sign waiting for its happily-ever-after passengers who would never, ever climb aboard—and toward the tall good-looking driver she’d seen before who was suddenly at full attention as she headed in a collision course with his vehicle.
“Whoa! Whoa!” he shouted, catching her in his arms before she actually ran into the back end of his car. “Easy.”
“Aaaaahhhh!” she cried, furious and weeping and helpless to keep herself from pressing her face into the lapel of his jacket, wishing she could simply vanish.
“Hey, now…” he soothed.
She gathered the lapels in her fists. “Please! Get me out of here. Drive me somewhere. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“Where to?” he practically stammered, his hands hovering just over her shoulders as if he were afraid she might shatter into a million pieces if he touched her.
And she just might. “I don’t care. Anywhere! Anywhere far from here.” The words poured out like pieces of hail, so cold in her throat her insides felt frozen.
“Okay. Okay, wait. But lemme get this straight—”
From somewhere behind her came the sound of Theo’s voice. “Isabella! Wait!”
She lifted a desperate look at the driver. “Please!”
He looked from her to Theo, running their way, then he pushed her protectively behind him. He turned to Theo with his hand raised in a stop motion.
“Take your hands off her!” Theo demanded.
But the driver was big. Bigger than Theo and imposing. He stopped.
“Hey,” the driver said, “Back off.”
“Shut the hell up. I need to talk to Isabella.”
“She doesn’t seem to want to talk to you.”
Theo shot a look around the driver’s shoulder. “Isabella. I can explain everything.”
“Go to hell, Theo!”
“It looks bad, I know, but it’s … it’s … not what it looks like.”
In the distance, her parents and Theo’s parents and half the church were pouring out into the parking lot like a mob, heading hesitantly toward them.
She snarled at Theo. “Oh, I think it is exactly what it looked like. She looked very pregnant to me.”
Theo inhaled sharply and found somewhere far away to pin his gaze, his myriad excuses—make that lies—thumbing across his expression.
“Oh, damn,” the driver guy muttered. “You did not.”
“Am I talking to you?” Theo snapped.
“Nope. You didn’t have to, man.” He reached down and tugged the JUST MARRIED sign off the back of his car, bent it over one knee and broke it in half. He tossed the pieces to the curb.
“Stop hiding behind him,” Theo shouted at Isabella. “I can’t talk to you like this.”
“Go talk to Gina. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Maybe you should just give her some space,” the driver suggested, taking one step closer to Theo as he ripped a long string of tin cans from the car’s bumper and tossed them aside with, it seemed to her, more than ample force. They rolled musically across the parking lot.
“Maybe you should know your place,” Theo told him. “You work for me! I’m paying you.”
“My place?” He snorted. “Yeah. I don’t work for you anymore.” Walking Isabella behind him toward the far door, he opened it, and she dove inside. He shoved the bottom of her wedding gown in after her.
Theo tugged at the opposite door, but the driver had locked him out. Instead, Theo slammed his palms on the window. “It happened a long time ago with Gina. And the kid’s not mine. Probably not mine. It’s you I love, Isabella.”
They’d been exclusively together for twenty-eight months, two weeks and four days. Exactly how did he define a long time ago when that woman still hadn’t given birth to the child he was denying? And while we’re at it, how many others have there been?
She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at any of them, even though she knew her mother had joined Theo at the side of the limo and was calling her name.
“Isabella, sweetheart! Please! Let’s talk this out. Isabella!”
“Drive,” she told the driver as he slammed his door shut and started up the car. “Please, go now!”
He nodded. “You got it.” He pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires, leaving the crowd and their whispers and all the humiliation behind.
And for once in her life, she did not look back.
Chapter Two
Will Hardesty watched his runaway bride in the rearview mirror as he pulled out onto the I-635W for lack of a better direction. She’d been staring disconsolately out the window since they’d left, trying not to cry. She was not succeeding. It was pitiful, really. He didn’t know what to say.
So, he asked, “Where to?”
“I don’t know.” She honked into a tissue. “Just keep driving. Please.”
“I could take you home. To a hotel? Just say where.”
“Just … just give me a minute,” she said sharply, ripping off the veil that had covered her hair and tossing it to the seat. Then more softly added, “I’m not going home. I can’t go home.”
“Understood.” If her mother—he assumed it was her mother—was any indication of what awaited her there, he understood. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see her face. “Listen, there’s some … champagne back there. It’s cold. There’s a glass. And even if it’s clearly not for celebrating, it’s on ice and it’s alcoholic. Feel free. It’s all for you.”
“Thank you.” She choked back a sob but reached for the champagne.
He listened to her wrestling with the cork and after a small struggle, he heard it pop and the sound of the bubbly splashing into one of the two crystal glasses he supplied for occasions like this. Well, not like this exactly.
Nothing like this, actually. This would be a first.
That guy. What an ass. He’d met a lot of guys like him in his life, in the NFL particularly, but Theodore Margate, son of the great Dallas basketball team owner, Raphael Margate, might actually take the cake.
The kid isn’t even mine, he’d said. Probably not mine.
Wow.
In the rear view, he watched the runaway bride down the flute in a couple of gulps, then pour herself some more. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea. He had to get this woman somewhere safe and soon but getting her schnockered would certainly not help the situation.
“Excuse me,” she asked suddenly from the far back seat. “Do you have a phone?”
“I do.” He’d silenced the ringer in response to at least three calls from the ass she’d left behind.
“Can I borrow it?”
He never let people borrow his phone. Too risky. But today called for an exception to his rules. “Okay.” He unlocked it and passed it back to her.
Unsteadily, she made her way to the front and took it from him. “Can you … raise up this window thingy please? I-I’d like some privacy.”
Not a freakin’ thing private at this point, but he obligingly pushed a button to raise up the privacy window thingy, which divided the limo into distinct thirds. His third and her two thirds. Though he couldn’t hear her conversation, he could hear her crying into the phone. What a mess she was about to face.
Will concentrated on the drive. He headed toward DFW airport on the off chance she wanted to fly somewhere, which made sense, considering she wanted nothing to do with anyone behind her right now. Traffic was bad and in Dallas at this hour, it was officially the Wild, Wild West with few to no rules that he could discern. No cops patrolled the highways here. It was every man for himself. After coming from LA, where traffic was notoriously bad but at least had a set standard of passing and merging, Dallas freeways were another animal altogether.
He actually hadn’t personally driven a job in months since Isaiah Fordham had joined Will’s team and they’d expanded the fleet to ten cars, hiring as many drivers. The former all-star tackle from the Raiders—a good friend since college ball—had become his partner in the business, and it might be the best move Will had made since he’d started it four years ago. But Margate’s old man, Raphael, had insisted Will drive the happy couple himself, and who was he to refuse Raphael Margate? One hand washed the other in this business, and it was honestly how he’d gotten the limo company off the ground in the first place with players he’d shared a field with helping him out.
Whenever she gave him his phone back, he needed to call Isaiah and update him on the situation. And refund Margate’s downpayment. After that little scene at the church, it was a foregone conclusion that he wouldn’t be charging anyone in the Margate clan for this ride.
There was another phone call he should return as well. His brother, Liam, had already left him two messages. But he’d think about that after he dropped her off.
A few minutes later, a knock at the privacy window pulled him from his thoughts. He rolled it down and she handed him his phone.
“Thank you,” she said, returning to the back of the limo, staring out the window. He watched her for a moment. “And you can ignore all those calls from Theo. Please don’t answer him.”
He glanced at his phone. In fact, there were four calls from him now. “Okay. Hey, I’m Will. Will Hardesty. You’re Isabella, right?”
Surprised, she blinked up at him and nodded. Her eyes were a deep violet color. Not blue, exactly, but some rare color he’d only seen in gemstones. Of course, they were limned with red, and her makeup was a mess. But that did little to distract from her beauty. She had a girl-next-door look, but the kind of girl who would have once-upon-a-time had teenage boys climbing in second-story windows.
Not that he ever did that. Okay, maybe first-story windows. But only because there weren’t any second-story windows nearby when he was a teenager. His place and anyone else’s were miles apart.
Damn, that was all a long time ago.
“I suppose we should be on a first name basis,” she said, “considering what I just put you through. Thank you, by the way. I really should have said that before.” She lifted her glass in salute. How many times had she refilled her glass?
“No problem at all. Just doing my job.”
“Oh, no. I believe your only job was to drive the happy couple to the reception that was apparently canceled. Due to the”—she blinked hard, considering the word—“misogynistic, two-timing, unforgivable behavior of the groom.”
Amen to that. That guy. He didn’t deserve the woman occupying his back seat. “My job is to protect and take care of my passengers. That’s all I did.”
“Well,” she said, “thank you. You’re very kind to help me. You didn’t have to.” She clanked the champagne flute with the bottle and poured herself another glass, slugging it down. “Mmmm. That’s really good, by the way. That champagne.”
At two hundred and fifty dollars a bottle, it ought to be. The groom had put that on his tab, but now, Will decided it would just be a write-off. “Maybe go easy on it until you’ve had something to eat. Are you hungry?”
She shook her head with a humorless laugh.
“Do you have somewhere to go? A friend maybe?” he asked.
She slid a look his way and their eyes met in the mirror. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr.—”
“Will.”
“Will. I left that church with nothing. Not my cell, not my wallet, not a dime. But I’m good for the ride. I promise. I’ll pay you.”
“I’m not worried.” He wasn’t. Not really. Someone in her family would pay. He was sure of that.
“Maybe you won’t say that when I tell you where I want you to take me.”
He flicked a look at her, not liking the sound of that. “We’re not far from DFW airport. I mean, if you want to fly somewhere.”
“No ID.” She lifted her glass to him again. Or maybe just to the effed-up situation. “No ID,” she clarified, “no flight.”
“Right,” he said. “We could turn around. You could stop and pick up your things from your—”
“I don’t think you understand, Will. I’ll never go back. I won’t.” She busied herself looking at the buttons on the side of her door, testing them all. He wondered if he should lock the door for her own protection. No telling her state of mind.
She poured herself another flute of champagne and gulped it down. “I don’t even have the tickets to our honeymoon in Europe. Believe me, I’d use them if I had ’em. All by myself.” She hiccupped back a sob.
She found the sunroof button and slid it open and closed a few times.
“For the record,” he said gently, “I’m sorry about what happened. Nobody deserves that.”
“Maybe I did,” she said, slurring her words now. “For being s-such an idiot. That’s what you get when you pay zero attention to your intruish—intoritio—to your … gut.” She shook her head miserably. “Did I know something was off? Yeeessss. Yes, I did. Did I listen to myself? Noooo. Because Eliza Stanton’s daughter is not a quitter!”
“There’s some crackers and a tin of caviar back there. Maybe you should eat a little something to soak up all of that—”
“I need some air.” She opened the skylight fully and stood up, her head disappearing from sight out the rooftop. With one hand, she gripped the opening and with the other, she held her discarded veil like a weapon.
He could see what was coming. Merging to his right, he got past the thicker traffic and headed toward the nearest exit. He couldn’t hear what she was shouting into the wind above his car, but he was pretty sure it was directed at the misogynistic, two-timer she’d left behind. Or God. Or maybe both. The veil went up and out the sunroof and he caught sight of it floating behind the limo, caught in the updraft of air currents, heading toward the cars behind him. Oh, boy.
“Isabella?” he shouted. “Miss Stanton, please sit down. That’s not safe.”
A moment later, she ducked her head back into the limo and sprawled back down on the long seat at the back.
As he closed the sunroof his phone rang. It was the two-timing misogynist again. He was seriously regretting giving Theo his phone number now. Obviously, if things had gone as planned, that would be protocol. But things were very much not protocol today. So, he refused the call once again and set the phone down on the seat beside him as he took the off ramp with a bevy of fast-food places in sight.
