The Bride Plan

Jace took a small step closer, which definitely put him within her personal space. And her into his personal space, come to think of it, although he maybe didn’t mind so much as she minded … not that she minded. Not that she had much left of her mind at this point.

“No,” he said, tipping up her chin with his hand. “I mean this.”

Chessie’s eyelids fluttered closed as he touched his mouth to hers. Which was probably a good thing, because then she didn’t miss any of the colorful fireworks that immediately began bursting against them.

She hadn’t been kissed in a long time. And she hadn’t liked the kiss when it had happened. It had been one of those I took you to dinner and a movie and now I expect payment kind of kisses, courtesy of the last blind date Will had set her up with nearly eight months ago.

So of course this kiss was better. It didn’t have to be much of a kiss at all to be better than her last.

Except this one was not only better than her last kiss, it won hands down over any she’d had in her entire life. Maybe three lifetimes.

His mouth tasted of sugared iced tea, and his tongue had probably gotten its Ph.D. in Persuasion, with a special commendation for Artful Insinuation.

She wanted to gulp him down, tear off his clothes, lick the sweat and salt from his muscled belly, dig her fingers into his shoulders so she could use them for leverage as she half vaulted him, scissored her legs around his back, pumped her eager lower body against him until he was so rock hard that she could feel him through his jeans.

And then she’d get really serious about seducing him ….

As if he knew what she wanted, or maybe he wanted it, too, Jace cupped her backside in both of his strong hands and ground his lower body against hers. No words required. None were needed. They both knew what they wanted from each other.

This was desire. Lust. Raw need. Animal magnetism.

Good stuff. That’s what it was.

Good stuff. Heady stuff. Can’t-stop-it-now stuff. Who-cares-if-it’s-right-or-wrong stuff. I-don’t-need-to-know-your-name stuff. I don’t even have to like you. You don’t have to like me. I’m hungry; you’re hungry. Let’s eat.

Sex. It’s what’s for dinner ….

Jace pulled his mouth away from hers, pressed his lips to her ear. “You’re vibrating.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Chessie all but gasped, trying to catch her breath, as she apparently hadn’t been breathing there for a while. Was surprised she hadn’t forgotten how. He didn’t have to talk. She didn’t need him to talk, preferred he didn’t talk. She just needed. If he didn’t watch out, she might just get there on her own, just from thinking about what she wanted him to do next. She’d never felt like this before in her life. She liked it!

His low chuckle helped bring her back to earth. “No, I mean something in your pocket. I think it’s your cell phone.”

Sanity knocked on the door to Chessie’s libido, and her libido, so entirely unused to company, idiotically let it in.

“Oh. My cell phone. Right. It could be important. I should answer it, huh?”

Jace stepped away from her just as her knees threatened to buckle. “To be continued later?”

“Is … is that a question, or are you just being smug?”

“Do you care?”

Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. Sexual innuendo. Raw, primitive lust. Openly acknowledging that, yes, she wanted to have sex with somebody. There was no dance, no courtship, no promises. No flattery or flowers. No agenda or destination other than getting him inside of her as deep as he could go and then watching his face as he drove into her again and again until they both exploded in a physical release that was the entire object of the game.

A sudden visual image stole her breath. Her caller could leave her a voice mail.

“I have a date tonight,” she heard herself say. “A blind date. I can’t get out of it. It … it’s for a dinner party at my cousin’s house. If I didn’t show up, it would make the numbers uneven. And I think the only reason for the dinner party is to …”

Jace picked up the plans and his measuring tape and began backing toward the door to the hallway. Was he angry? Did he look angry? Did he have any right to be angry?

Chessie decided he wasn’t angry. And then got a little angry that he wasn’t angry.

Talk about your mixed-up heads—she ought to have hers examined the first chance she got!

“Set you up? Been there, done that.”

“Got the T-shirt?”

“Didn’t want one. I’m not into relationships.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know.”

“I’m divorced. I found my wife in bed with another man.”

“I was left at the altar. He ran off with my maid of honor, and I doubt they’d only been sharing longing glances before they hopped that plane to Mexico. Which do you think is worse?”

He stepped back another pace, his eyes still very much locked with hers. “Are we keeping score?”

“I’m just saying. I’m not into relationships, either.”

“Good. Because I don’t want one.”

“No. I know what you want. You made that pretty obvious.”

“I didn’t hear you telling me to stop.”

Chessie pressed her crossed hands against her chest. “Oh, darling, are we having our first fight?”

Jace laughed, shook his head. “You’re something else, Chessie Burton. Don’t make me like you.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. Whatever was going on here had nothing to do with liking. We know nothing about each other. We should probably keep it that way.”

“What was ‘going on here’? Say it, Chessie. We were about to have sex, and if that phone hadn’t vibrated we’d probably be done by now, because there wasn’t going to be anything slow or easy about where we were heading.”

Chessie felt another blush starting and turned her face away from his gaze. “Yes, I know. But you started it,” she said, feeling like a child in a childish argument.

“Let’s at least be honest here, Chessie. We both started it, the first time we saw each other. And it’s not going to go away unless we finish it.”

She turned to answer him, saying what, she didn’t know. But the doorway was empty.

She dropped onto the bed, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she’d just run a marathon in some alternate universe, where she was a sex-starved nymph in transparent flowing draperies and he was the flesh-and-bone mating invention of some mad scientist out to re-populate the world with six-pack abs.

A vacation. That’s what she needed. A long vacation far, far away from here. Long enough so that the addition would be done and he’d be gone by the time she got back. Because she could never face him again after this, and she was sure he wouldn’t have the same problem. No, he’d just be there every day for the next three weeks or so; no shirt, big smile, crinkly creases around his eyes, and oozing sex from every pore. Just there, waiting for her to give him the signal.

Chessie sat up all at once. Signal? What was the signal? She didn’t know any signals. She didn’t even know who she was anymore, because she certainly wasn’t the woman who had almost … almost—Good Lord!

“I’m not going to think about this anymore,” she told herself as she stood in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink, reapplying her lipstick. “Everyone is entitled to one aberration in a lifetime. He was mine, but I was saved by the bell, and now I’m over it. It’s out of my system. He’s out of my system. He was never in my system. I don’t even like him. He’s arrogant, and assuming, and clearly just out for what he can get, and I—

“Good Lord. Now I’m trying to set myself up as either a victim or a Goody Two-shoes who didn’t know what I was doing even as I was doing it. The man is sex on a stick. He can’t help it. The only question is, do I take what he’s offering, or do I do the sensible thing and walk away?”

Her reflection had no answer for her. Neither did her formerly rational brain nor her once-bruised and now wary heart.

But her body? Oh, her body had cast its vote before she’d even finished the question.

“Where’ya goin’, Jace? Is something on fire somewhere?”

Jace had already picked up his lunch bucket and was heading toward the alley and his pickup when Carl asked his question. He turned back to look at the man, his mind racing to come up with a reason he was walking off the job. Okay, running off the job.

“I need to go downtown, check on some permits. I think we’re going to enlarge Ms. Burton’s existing bathroom, make it a Jack-and-Jill open to the workroom, which is going to change the entryway from the bedroom to the workroom, and I’m going to have to amend the plumbing permit to do that.” As lies went, this was a pretty good one, and he decided he would do just that. He’d tell Marylou about it when he saw her. She’d approve it. She’d pretty much tossed the job at him and told him to do anything he wanted with it.

But she’d never told him much about Chessie Burton. Jace wished she had. Maybe then he wouldn’t act like a complete ass every time he saw her.

“Okay, sounds good. But there’s a problem. I just got a call from Bob. He says that flatbed with the siding we were expecting today broke down on the turnpike. They’re sending a new cab, but it will probably be six o’clock before it gets here. I called the wife, but she can’t pick up Aiden, so I can’t stay, and George—”

“It’s okay, Carl. I’ll be back in plenty of time, and I’ll wait for the delivery. No problem. Gotta go.”

Jace escaped the scene of the crime—okay, now that was being a little dramatic—and then drove to the nearby park and carried his lunch pail down to the stream and the waiting ducks.

A slice of bologna for him, a few hunks of bread for the ducks. A pickle for him, a slice of bologna for the ducks. His entire second sandwich, his small bag of potato chips and the container of green grapes for the ducks. The slice of bologna he had eaten, lying in his stomach like a chunk of cement.

What the hell had he done? What the hell had he been thinking?

Had he been thinking?

Hell, no. His hormones had been doing the thinking.

Never a good idea. Never.

Damn, she’d tasted good. Tasted good, felt good, looked good.

He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since that first morning. Three days. Three days he’d waited, wondering when he’d see her again. And nothing.

Then suddenly there she was, all smiles and iced tea and flushed cheeks and that way she had of sort of tipping her chin down and looking up at him through those incredible long black lashes. Those huge blue eyes. Those see-into-her-soul blue eyes. Trying not to look, unable to look away. And that was both of them. She knew he couldn’t stop looking at her, devouring her with his own eyes.

God, she was funny. Odd funny, silly funny, nervous funny.

Every moment they were in each other’s company, you could cut the tension with the proverbial knife.

He’d honestly thought the kiss would do it. Cut the growing tension. Satisfy his curiosity. And hers.

Next time he had a bright idea he should go soak his head in something wet and cold until the feeling passed.

At least she’d come to her senses, even regained her sense of humor with that darling crack. And she’d turned down his arrogant suggestion that they meet again later, finish what they’d started. Nice to know he was attracted to a woman with a brain. Not nice to know he’d already decided he hated her blind date and hoped he got food poisoning at lunch and would have to call and cancel.

He wadded up the sandwich wrappings and shoved them back in his lunchbox before heading back up the hill toward the pickup, a couple of the ducks, hoping for dessert, he guessed, following him.

Tossing the lunchbox onto the front seat, Jace turned and leaned back against the driver’s side door, trying to remember the last time he’d been so consumed by a woman, and finally decided the answer to that was never. Not even with Marci.

He wondered if Marci had known that, sensed it, acted as she had because of it. Because he hadn’t been a good husband. He’d had his job during the day, college courses at night and then his fledgling business that took all of his energy and concentration … and devotion. He’d been 110 percent devoted to building his business. His marriage had been a casualty of his ambition.

So that was it; he wasn’t marriage material. And he wasn’t in a hurry to take another swing that would probably end up as strike two. Even being around Second Chance Bridal made him sort of knot up inside. How did Chessie stand it, having been left at the altar as she’d said she’d been? You’d think she would stay as far away from anything to do with weddings as possible.

Funny girl. Odd girl.

He couldn’t get her out of his head. That, and the last thing he’d said to her. That asinine near challenge: It’s not going to go away unless we finish it.

What a stupid macho thing to say.

“Who the hell does saying something like that make me?” he muttered to the world at large.

There was a strange, fairly strangled quack coming from ground level. Jace looked down to see that one of the larger ducks—a female, naturally—had just christened his right work boot with a suggested answer.

“I was thinking of it more as a rhetorical question,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. “But thanks anyway ….”

Chapter Three

“So tell me again how this happened, Chess,” Marylou said as she dropped into a chair in the reception area of Second Chance Bridal just as Chessie entered from the hallway leading to the dressing rooms. “I thought you’d made it clear to Will that you weren’t going on any more blind dates he set up for you.”

“And hello to you, too. I didn’t hear you come in.” Chessie slipped the rhinestone tiara back into the glass case and locked it for the night. Katie Harwell had been right, the tiara had been too much, but selling her the cathedral-length train had sweetened the bottom line of the sale, so that was all right. “It wasn’t Will this time. It was Elizabeth. I felt sort of stuck, you know?” She looked across the room at her friend and business partner and frowned. “Tell me you didn’t get more collagen injected into your lips.”

“All right,” Marylou said, holding the cool aluminum of the soda can she’d just taken from the mini-fridge against her mouth. “I did not get more collagen injected into my lips.”

Chessie opened the armoire that hid the minifridge and pulled out a diet cola for herself. “Liar, liar, French-cut pants on fire.”

“Only as a matter of degree. You were being specific. You said collagen. I didn’t have collagen injected into my lips. I had some of my very own fanny fat injected into the area just around my lips. So, not a liar. And the swelling will go down in a couple of days. Ted’s in Vegas with some golfing buddies, and I’ll be all happily pouty but not too swollen by the time he gets back.”

Chessie subsided into the facing chair, sighing. “Marylou, you’re a beautiful woman—”

“I’m a passably attractive fifty-five-year-old woman married to a forty-eight-year-old man who thinks I’m fifty-two. There, how’s that for BFF-to-BFF honesty.”

“Pretty good,” Chessie said, nodding. “Except you’re fifty-six. And,” she said as Marylou tried to make a face—the fanny fat and some sort of injections to her forehead pretty much defeating that effort—”Ted loves you.”

“Yes, third time’s the charm. He knows I’m fifty-six. He still calls me his child bride. I think we’re going to renew our vows next year, in Tahiti. Or maybe Rome. We haven’t decided. I never get tired of wearing wedding gowns. I’m thinking a lace sheath. Ecru, maybe with a colored sash. Now tell me again about this date. Is he someone local?”

Chessie realized she hadn’t asked. In fact, all she knew about Toby Nieth was that he wasn’t the country singer, Toby Keith, and she’d have to remember that or else she’d probably screw up at some point and ask him how his last tour went. “Elizabeth tells me he’s a doctor.”

“Really? Doctors are good. What kind?”

“I don’t know. He’s a doctor-doctor. It doesn’t make a difference what kind of doctor he is.”

“It would if he was a witch doctor,” Marylou said quietly. “Anyway, I’m proud of you for doing this. I know how much you hate blind dates. That’s why I’ve given up. No more matchmaking for me with you, Chess, I took the pledge. You’re just not ever going to get married. It’s very possible you’re still carrying a torch for old what’s-his-name.”

“Rick?” Chessie was shocked. Nobody mentioned Rick to her. Not ever. She could joke about her aborted trip down the aisle, but that was her. For everyone else, the subject had been tacitly agreed to be out-of-bounds. “Why would you mention him? Why would you think that?”

Marylou’s expression being cosmetically rendered unreadable, darn it, Chessie could only listen to the words, not watch for telltale signs of fibbing. Or conniving. “Because he’s back in town and you haven’t said anything about that to me or to anyone, which might mean you’re afraid of old feelings rising to the top and bubbling where everyone can see them. At least that’s the general consensus.”

Was there a Chessie’s World website floating around the internet that she didn’t know about? How did everyone know so much about her private life? Not that she had a private life. One private almost-tryst—did people still say tryst?—earlier this same day, but certainly not a private life. “How do you know Rick’s back in town?”

Marylou got up and deposited the empty soda can in the recycle bin beneath the kidney-shaped registration desk. “I haf my vays,” she said, doing an impression of Mata Hari, or some other spy with a bad German accent. “Not that I know much.” She turned and sort of smiled at Chessie. “He’s living at home with his mother—pitiful—his divorce from the bimbo maid of honor was final six months ago, he drives a three-year-old Mercedes—leased, and the cheaper model—and he’s working as a junior broker at Gibbons, Fiorello and Schultz on Hamilton Boulevard. Oh, and he’s got just the teensiest little bit of a sparse spot starting right at the crown of his head, for which he uses that liquid stuff you buy at the drugstore and rub on your head twice a day.” She rolled her eyes. “Other than that, I know nothing.”

“You never cease to amaze me, Marylou,” Chessie said sincerely. “How do you know he’s rubbing hair restorer on his head? Or don’t I want to know?”

“You probably don’t, although I will say the drugstore at that new shopping center on Cedar Crest Boulevard has a very nice selection of eye shadows.”

Chessie tried not to laugh, but it was difficult. “You’ve been stalking the man? How did you do it? Did you wear a trench coat with the collar pulled up? Or just dark sunglasses and a blond wig?”

Marylou rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s just say I happened to be in the same place he was a few times in the past week or so. But I’m done with that. Just be glad he doesn’t use that spray-on hair stuff some men use and think we don’t notice. Run your hand through a guy’s hair and come out with sticky gunk all over your fingertips and, believe me, you know.”

“Well, you and the rest of the world can relax. I’m not going to be running my fingers through Rick’s hair, Marylou. He called here once, nearly two weeks ago, and I did not call him back. Clearly he took the hint. And I am not still carrying some torch for him. Rick Peters is filed away under Lucky Escape, and that’s that. I just don’t like being set up. There’s something creepy about it. So thank you for not doing it anymore, and if you could convince everyone else, I’d be eternally grateful.”

Marylou gave her a hug. “Honey, I’ve told them and told them. She doesn’t want your help, I told them. She’s happy as she is. Alone. But you know how happily marrieds can be. They want everyone else to be happily married, too.”

Chessie disengaged herself from her friend’s expensively scented embrace and held her at arm’s length. “So you really did hire Jace Edwards because he came highly recommended? And not in some typical whacked-out Marylou Smith-Bitters idea of throwing him in front of me and vice versa?”

Marylou almost succeeded in making a face this time, she seemed that appalled. “Jace? Don’t be ridiculous. He’s not at all your type. You need a doctor, a dentist—heaven forbid, a stockbroker. Someone more … refined. He’s a hunk, certainly, and seems nice enough. I’m sure I can find somebody for him if I just flashed his photo a few times, and since I’ve given up on you, he might make an interesting project. But not you, Chess, he’s not at all right for you. He’s much too male. Rough and tumble, self-made, a little too earthy around the edges.”

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