The Bridegroom's Secret

Like a final premonition of disaster, the name echoed around and around in his head. “Elise?” Damn, oh, damn…

“Yes, she told me that you dated her, too, if that’s what’s making you look so worried.” Julie bit her lip. “Jemima said you dated her for almost a year. She’s really nice, Matt. Well- bred, beautiful, and she’s a fellow engineer to boot. Everyone was so shocked when you apparently ditched her for someone like me. They were waiting for the wedding date to be announced.” Her eyes darkened with an emotion he didn’t dare name. “So how long has she been working with you on the water converter?”

Matt broke out in a cold sweat. Dear God, she knew about his past with Elise, that he’d been working with her on a secret project, and he hadn’t been the one to tell her about it. “My relationship with Elise was nothing like me and you,” he said tightly. “We—damn it, it was a convenient thing. Neither of us had anyone and our parents kept throwing us together. We drifted into dating, but there was nothing there, Jules. We both agreed that if we met someone else, we’d part friends. And that’s what happened.”

“And she hasn’t met anyone since you broke up with her—a beautiful, intelligent and lovely woman like Elise?” From gentle and trusting, Julie’s voice had become brittle, and he knew he was in deep trouble.

Matt sighed. Given the way she adored him, Julie would never believe Elise didn’t love him the way she did—and worse still, given her past with cheating men, she’d have a hard time believing that he’d fallen for her while dating Elise; but he couldn’t let that affect him. It was time to tell her the truth.

“Elise is an old friend, and an excellent engineer. When I couldn’t get my head around a major part of the job, I did ask her opinion, and she came up with a way to make it work. From there, it just—well, it all fell into place, really. We work well together but that’s all.”

“I understand,” was all she said at first—but the pain in her voice gave him no relief, only a sinking feeling. “Were you really dating her when I kissed you that first day?” she asked, so softly he had to strain to hear her.

The spear of guilt hit him again. He wheeled away, trying to justify what was, to him, unjustifiable. “I went straight to her and told her I’d met you. We parted amicably, Jules. It was never serious between us.” Could he explain that he’d never even taken Elise to bed because it felt almost like she was a sister, a cousin? He’d known her since before kindergarten; their mothers were like sisters. It just hadn’t been there for him the way it was with Jules.

“Is she part of the contracts that will put McLachlan’s on a worldwide map? Has she worked with you on the motoring deal?”

Palpitations, cold sweat, clenching stomach—he hadn’t known extreme fear mimicked the symptoms of a heart attack until now. “Sweetheart…” He turned back to face her, knowing he might as well tell her the rest, and trust in her love to get them through. “She’s an old and trusted friend, and she put thousands of dollars into the prototype that I didn’t have at the time. You know how far McLachlan’s had crashed. I could barely afford to pay my workers for three months. She deserved the partnership, so I got a contract made up. She owns forty percent.”

“And your workers own how much?” she whispered. “Ms. Whittaker also told me your workers knew about your invention, and the deals, and have shares. It appears I’m the only one without any share in it at all.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and seemed to shrink inside herself.

Dear God. Matt’s stomach churned. Could this get any worse?

“Who else knows about you and Elise?” she said softly, her voice filled with a world of pain. “Who else knows about the contracts? How much time were you spending with her when you weren’t with me?”

From a faded flower, she’d become like a kicked puppy—a woman thinking she was scorned. Oh, God help him, what to say? How to make this right? “Julie, I’ve done nothing to earn this level of distrust from you. Okay, so I’ve spent some time with Elise over the past few months,” he admitted, thinking of the days and nights in Elise’s company, “but it was purely business.” His chin kicked up. “I don’t want her, Jules, and she doesn’t want me—not anymore.”

“Any more?” she pounced on his words. “I thought you said it was only ever friendship.”

He resisted the impulse to close his eyes. “Look, I don’t know why, but I couldn’t feel anything deeper for her—and if she had feelings for me for a little while, friendship is all we feel now. When I told her about you, she was happy for me, for us. We decided we would always have been better as friends. I haven’t touched her from that day—except a hug or two of jubilation when the water converter worked.”

She whitened further, and he could have shoved a gym bag full of dirty socks in his stupid mouth for saying that. Hadn’t he learned the lesson yet? Never give away too much, son. Women only want to know enough to make them happy.

He reached for her. “I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for us—for our future.”

She moved away, shaking her head. “Future?” she whispered. “A future of what, Matt? More secrets? More months and years in which you do these amazing things, and your mother, your ex and your workers share your life and I know nothing about it?”

Anger began to surge through him. “Tonight was our engagement party. I did all this for you. What else do I have to do to prove you’re the only one for me? You must know that by now.”

She moved out of his touch and spoke so softly he could barely hear her. “It seems there’s a lot I don’t know.”

Matt turned her around and looked into her eyes. “Maybe I made a mistake in waiting until tonight to tell you everything at once—but we’re getting married, Jules. You either trust me by now or you don’t.”

She just looked at him with deep, unblinking eyes, but he could see she wasn’t truly with him. She’d slipped into the past, remembering another man, an unfaithful man who’d said the same thing.

He didn’t have a chance in hell, unless he took control right now.

Taking her hands in his, he looked into her eyes and said, with what he hoped was quiet strength, “Sit down and listen to me, Jules, and I’ll tell you everything. I was going to tell you tonight, anyway. I’d planned it all.”

“You mean there’s more?” she whispered, sounding horrified. “Not…not now, Matt. No more now…”

One look at her white face and dilated eyes told him what he’d done to her. He knew there was no way he could tell her his final secret tonight, he couldn’t let her down again. It would break her.

There was only one thing he could think to say. “I love you, Jules.”

She didn’t answer in words; she even refused to look at him now. Finally, after what seemed hours, she spoke. “I don’t know you…”

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t even breathe. He was about to lose the love of his life because of a damned reporter!

When she spoke, it had nothing to do with what he’d just said. Or maybe it did. “Thank you for making me feel like a queen tonight.” She looked up then, and he saw her eyes glimmering with tears. She kissed his cheek, and it froze him through with its gentle good manners and definite farewell. “Spend time with your mother while she’s here. Tell her about your inventions, and the deals you’re making. Or you can talk to Elise. She seems a lovely person, and wouldn’t just accept ‘it’s only work, I wouldn’t want to bore you with the technical details.’”

He might have been angered further still by her mirroring of his words if he hadn’t heard the truth inside them…that he’d done more than merely hurt her by his months of silence. The slight hiccupping rasp at the end of each sentence was a sure sign Jules was close to tears, if she wasn’t crying already.

Though emotional by nature, Julie never cried for effect. She didn’t know how to manipulate him. She was crystal clear, impulsive and giving, funny and adorable—

And walking out the door.

He ran after her. “Julie, I won’t let you leave now, not like this. We have to talk.”

She kept walking. “I can’t take any more tonight.”

He grabbed her by the wrist to stop her walking out, but she pushed at him with her free hand. “I need time, Matt. You gave me the night of my life—the best and the worst. I’m feeling pretty betrayed right about now. I need to get my head around it.”

Shock held him immobile, rendered him speechless. As death knells to love went, betrayed ranked among the worst words.

And then she was gone.

He was wrenching her car door open before he knew he’d followed her. “Don’t do this to us, Julie! Damn it, Elise is only a friend—she was only ever a friend. I never loved her. She knows that. Ask her! I love you, only you!”

She stared up at him and hiccupped again. “How can you love me, if you don’t trust me with your life?”

God help me. “It wasn’t like that. Please don’t go, Jules. Stay. Talk to me,” he said, dropping his voice for the last sentence, suddenly conscious of his mother in the house behind them.

But the tears streaming down Julie’s face told him that talking was the last thing she wanted to do now. At least with him.

Gently, with finality, she closed the car door to her little compact and drove away. No wrenching gears, no racing out. She just left.

She left, and Matt stood there staring after her, reading his future in the past fifteen minutes and without a single clue what to do about it.

CHAPTER TWO

Eight Weeks Later

NEVER in his life had Matt thought he’d be reduced to fighting this dirty. But here he stood outside The Wedding Belles, Julie’s place of work, ready to—

Stop thinking about it. Just do it.

Standing next to his car, Matt tightened his jaw and flipped open his phone. “Hey, Callie, I’m outside. Is everything ready?”

“All systems up and running,” The Wedding Belles’ florist, Callie, replied, with a low laugh. Then, after a short silence, she whispered, “I’m used to doing… unusual things, and this has to be the most romantic way I’ve ever helped out a friend. But are you sure about this? This really is a federal offence.”

“Not if she’s willing, and since she’s my fiancée, I think we can assume she will be,” he replied lightly enough to reassure Callie. But inside, the gripping of his stomach, clenching over and over, signaled his desperation. Would Julie be willing once she knew what this was really about?

He’d pushed her to the edge over the past few months, been a fool to keep so many secrets from her—but he knew this one last secret could destroy them. He’d been trying to tell her for weeks, but after the night of their engagement party, even the thought of telling her made him freeze inside. His tongue glued to his mouth, he retreated behind his old friend and ally, silence.

A real man bears his burdens and mistakes alone. And he puts them right alone. His grandfather’s words.

After everything he’d put her through, to tell her now could be the end of them. But damn it, he wouldn’t let her walk out on him. Whatever it took, he’d keep her with him.

Callie’s voice started him out of his morbid thoughts. “Personally, I love what you’re doing. I wish Jared had thought about doing this to me,” she laughed, “but a couple of the girls are scared about becoming accessories to some kind of felony. And Jared’s worried, too.”

He didn’t blame Callie’s husband…in fact, he couldn’t blame any of them. “I won’t force her into anything she doesn’t want to do,” he said. But it was the biggest lie he’d ever told. He’d keep her in the car, in his house, in his life. Whatever it took to win her, he’d do it, short of a real abduction. He wasn’t that crazy.

He was just a man about to lose the woman he adored with a dozen words, and desperate enough to take the biggest risk of his life.

He’d spent a score of sleepless nights during the past eight weeks since the engagement-party disaster, trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, searching for the elusive miracle that would allow him to tell her what he should have told her at the start. But he’d been so lost in the happiness he’d never known before meeting Julie that the right time and the right words had never come.

Now it was too late.

At exactly 4:47 this morning, as the first threads of dawn had stretched their fingers across the sky, he’d squared his shoulders and faced the fact that he’d screwed up. Big-time. He should have told her about this long before he’d asked her to marry him, even before he’d found out McLachlan’s was in trouble. Now she didn’t want to know.

He’d thought giving her time would help. He’d crossed the country on a six-week nonstop selling tour after the fatal night of the engagement party, showing off the land prototype of his converter, and had sold its practical applications to two major players. Finally McLachlan’s was safe for future generations. Now his mother could have the comfortable retirement she deserved…and his workers and their families were secure.

He was finally free to tell Julie everything— to make her hear it. He’d been coming over to The Wedding Belles’, to her office apartment, and calling every day, from wherever he’d been—but she was now the one fobbing him off. She’d been avoiding him since the night of the party, and was using his own defence of “Don’t worry, it’s just work” against him.

The games would stop today. Julie would forgive him when she knew the truth. He refused to accept anything less. She was his life blood, his soul, and he’d fight for what was his. The rest of the plans he’d made with The Belles—the changes for their wedding—would prove that to Julie, when she was ready to hear them.

Hiding the grim resolution, he said to Callie, “So send her out. Let Julie’s kidnapping begin!”

Surely every bride feels this same need to bolt as the wedding gets close….

But Julie knew the stats. She’d reassured hundreds of nervous grooms, but only a few nervous brides in the three years she’d been working at The Wedding Belles.

What was wrong with her? She had everything— a dream wedding, Mr. Right…

Or so she’d thought, and that was the trouble. Since the night of their engagement party, she’d begun to wonder if he’d ever loved her, or if he was merely doing the right thing, the gentlemanly thing, rewarding her for standing by him during the dark times for McLachlan’s.

She knew it was paranoid, but whenever he was in town and came to see her, or when he called, she could hear it—he had something he needed to tell her, but it was bad. His obvious unhappiness at needing to tell her spoke for itself.

He’d been distracted for weeks before the party. She’d thought it was to do with the creation and marketing of the water converter that not only saved McLachlan’s but made him rich again.

Matt and Elise, that was.

She couldn’t face him. Couldn’t let him touch her. She’d never been able to resist him when his hands were on her, and there were too many doubts…not to mention that the wedding had become bigger than either of them. It resembled a runaway train careering downhill at a breakneck pace, and gaining speed by the second.

“Am I missing something, or has the hallway become more fascinating than it was half an hour ago?”

Julie smiled at Callie, the cheeky Belle. She used to use humour to hide her emotions from others; now, ecstatically wed to her high-school buddy turned sweetheart, Jared, whom they’d dubbed “My Favourite Geek”, Callie used humour to dig.

“Uniformity can be a good thing now and then,” she quipped back, hoping the joke didn’t fall flat. Hoping Callie didn’t keep digging. Her friends had all been trying to get her to talk to them for weeks now—since a few days after the engagement party—and it was obvious she was tense whenever she had to be with Matt for another interview or photo shoot. It was so tiring trying to act the happy bride-to-be, especially when every other Belle was a happy new bride or bride-to-be—or ecstatic new wife, in Regina’s case.

But until she’d spoken to Matt, it would be a betrayal.

The trouble was what to say. Three months ago she’d been certain Matt was the love of her life. Now she didn’t feel sure of anything.

“Change can be even better.” Callie said, braking in on Julie’s gloomy thoughts with a mysterious air…and a little wink.

Julie stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Callie shrugged just as Regina and Serena came out of their respective offices, and with conspiratorial smiles, each took one of Julie’s arms. “All work and no play has made Julie a very uptight girl lately. It’s time you had some fun.”

“And we know just the man you should be having fun with…” Regina said, with a mock- demure air.

Natalie and Audra joined the others. Since there were no arms left to take, Audra loosened Julie’s hair from its tight braid—her latest attempt to tame her wretched red curls—and Natalie put her hand firmly between Julie’s shoulder blades, pushing her toward the entryway.

“What have you done?” Julie asked, torn between laughter, dread and a sudden sense of gladness, a soaring hope.

Stupid woman. What are you expecting, hoping for?

Serena, another ecstatic newlywed, laughed. “We’re merely walking you out the door, darling. Welcome to your kidnapping. You’re off to the airport. He arranged everything, and you’d better go along with it!”

Matt had done this? What had he arranged…? Julie’s heartbeat fluttered as anticipation took wings. Was this what they needed? What had he arranged? Flowers perhaps, champagne, an island in the Caribbean? A week or two of the romance that had been stolen from them during the near collapse of McLachlan Industries, and the high- society, very public cancellation that had almost destroyed The Wedding Belles…?

Just an opportunity to talk—

What do we talk about? The secrets he’d been keeping? Elise?

Sudden panic gripped her. She didn’t know if she was ready to hear what he had to say. She tried to gather her thoughts, marshal arguments, but all she could think was time alone for the first time in a long time…with Matt. “But…my desk…”

“Is manned adequately and doin’ just fine, darlin’,” came the ladylike twang of the original Belle. “I haven’t done this in a long while. It’ll be fun. You’ve been a rock here since things started going downhill with the Vandiver cancellation. It’s our turn to give to you. You officially have two weeks off.”

“I already have next month off for the wedding and honeymoon,” she protested, feeling her throat closing up in protest and her heart, her stupid heart doing double time, whispering, Matt, Matt…

“We know,” Regina said gently, and kissed her cheek. “Consider this our prewedding present to you. You’ve covered for us during the past few months while we’ve fallen in love, beaten you to the altar or reconciled.” She smiled with quiet happiness, and Julie tried hard not to feel eaten up with envy, knowing each of the Belles deserved what they had. “And you never once complained.”

“So go.” Belle waved a hand with the Southern grace that allowed no room for dissent. “Get out that door, feel the sunshine and wind on your face and enjoy some time with that good-looking young man of yours.”

“It was your love story that helped us all find ours,” Callie said softly as they all marched her down the front passageway to the outside door. “We owe you, girl, big-time. Nobody deserves some happy time more than you and Matt. Now go.”

They pushed her gently through to the front of the building that housed The Wedding Belles. And beside the simple sedan he’d bought when he’d sold his beloved Jaguar to pay for her engagement ring, stood a tall, dark- haired man with touches of grey threaded through it, eyes like Antarctic ice, and a mouth so beautifully formed, so male, she ached to kiss him, long, slow and hot, until the fire blasted to life and she forgot the world existed.

Just as always.

The man of her daydreams, and more recently, her day-nightmares. Matt.

And, just like her daydream, he had flowers in one hand—but though he grinned and winked at the Belles, it was the expression hiding in his eyes that caught her breath in her throat. Bleak. Haunted. Resolute.

Nothing had changed.

It was time…and she definitely wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say.

After Matt handed Julie into the car with his customary courtesy, the remaining Belles sighed and looked at each other with a mixture of uneasiness and determination.

“I hope we did the right thing,” Natalie said quietly.

All of the Belles nodded. Not one of them had been truly fooled by Matt’s “kidnap” plan. Things had been strained between Julie and Matt for too long to be fixed with a quick romantic getaway, and Matt was far from stupid.

And they, too, had seen the look in his eyes.

Callie bit her lip. “I know how it feels to be with the wrong man. What if we just helped push Julie the wrong way?”

Audra sighed and looked bleak. Serena frowned, shading her eyes as she gazed after the departing car. “No. She loves Matt. I know she does…”

But her voice lacked its customary briskness and confidence.

Oddly enough, it was Regina, the least confident Belle unless she was behind her camera, who ended the indecision. “If Julie’s lost her faith, girls, we have to have it for her. No fears shown. No hesitation or uncertainty. I nearly lost Dell because of a lack of faith. I kept everything a secret, from him more so than from you, but all of you as well.”

“Me, too, with Kane,” Serena added soberly.

“Pride, fear and embarrassment can be a recipe for disaster,” Audra sighed.

“I believe we all met for a reason, and that Julie came to us for a reason. And I believe it’s partly because of Julie and Matt that we’re all so happy now. It’s our turn to give.” Regina looked around at each of her dearest friends. “I think Belle’s right. If Julie won’t share her worries with us, then we’ll keep throwing her together with Matt and see what happens. And believe the best will happen for them both, because we love them. Now, I don’t know about you girls, but I have a four-thirty about to come in and I have to turn the studio into a Carnivale in fourteen and a half minutes.”

The others smiled at Regina, still with the same uneasiness, but turned and walked into the building.

He was about to lose the entire contents of his stomach. Or maybe it was his heart that was coming up. It sure felt as if it was in his mouth about now.

Despite his plans to win her over, all the things he’d worked out to say, he barely spoke until he took the turnoff to the airport. He couldn’t make the words form. All he could think to say was, Do you still love me? But how could he, when he was almost sure he knew the answer and there was no way in hell he was prepared to hear it?