The Bride And The Mercenary

It was something a little more than a business agreement, something much less than a love match. And she was going through with it.

The limousine whispered to a stop in front of the red carpet. Before the driver could get out, Sully, impossibly handsome in a dove-gray morning suit with tails, was opening her door for her. He looked harassed. Behind him one of Boston’s finest was trying to keep onlookers away from the waist-high velvet ropes that created a barrier between the crowd and the carpet.

“What the hell was McNeil thinking?” he growled as he took her hand and helped her from the back seat.

“It’s like a damn circus,” she agreed, slanting her eyes sideways at the throng of bystanders just as a camera flash went off. “Let’s get into the church and get this over with.”

“My sister the romantic,” Sullivan murmured, stepping up his pace. “You should at least give them a smile, Lee. When Pearson and the rest of the McNeil clan arrived, they were glad-handing all over the place.”

“Goody for the McNeil clan,” Ainslie said tightly, almost tripping on a ruffle as she mounted the last step. Nonetheless she paused just before the open oak doors, pasting a stiff smile on her face and looking out over the milling crowd.

Sully was right—the least she could do was to be gracious. After all, these onlookers were ordinary people like herself. Most of the upturned faces were smiling at her.

But not all of them.

About to turn away to step into the church, Ainslie’s attention was caught by the incongruity of a figure at the edge of the crowd. Heavily bundled in an old army greatcoat, the derelict’s inappropriate clothing alone pegged him as odd. The knitted watch cap pulled low on his forehead only partially concealed the unkempt hair that straggled to his shoulders. His heavy beard was dark and ungroomed. He was wearing fingerless gloves, as if it was deepest winter instead of a mild autumn day. His ramshackle shopping cart was piled high with what appeared to be odds and ends of broken appliances. Riding on the top of the pile was what looked like a pair of used boots.

Although the shopping cart provided a physical barrier between him and those nearby, it was obviously unnecessary. Like so many street derelicts, there seemed to be an invisible demarcation line around him, as if drawing the attention of someone so obviously unbalanced would be dangerous.

Except there was no fear of that. His attention was fixed solely on her, Ainslie saw with a prickle of unease.

“Come on, champ,” Sully said wryly. “This is just the pre-bout warmup. The main event’s inside.”

He started to move forward, but Ainslie remained rooted to the stone steps, her grip on his arm tightening.

She could smell roses—smell them so strongly that it seemed as if she were enveloped in a perfumed fog. She knew her bouquet was inside the church; even if it hadn’t been, it was of white lilac and lilies. Yet she could smell roses—red roses—and for a moment she could almost swear she could feel cold velvet petals brush against her lips.

It wasn’t unease that was making her heart beat so madly, Ainslie thought, holding on to Sully for support. It was fear. She was going crazy, and she knew it.

The derelict’s hair was a matted tangle obscuring his eyes, but even as she watched he wiped at it with a gloved hand. Across the crowd, his gaze met hers, and she felt the blood drain from her face.

His eyes were a clear, brilliant green. She’d only seen eyes like that on one man, and that man was dead.

Abruptly the derelict turned away, wrenching his shopping cart around on two wheels so quickly that a man in a business suit had to scramble to get out of his path. Hunched over the handles, he started pushing it down the street toward a nearby alleyway.

He was trying to disguise his height, Ainslie thought faintly. He was trying to cover his features with that appalling beard, trying to become just another invisible cast-off from society with his strange assortment of clothing.

Either that, or he was exactly what he appeared to be—a lost soul, a denizen of the streets, a man who had slipped through the cracks and who had stayed there.

But she had to know.

“What the hell’s going on, sis?” Speaking out of the corner of his mouth, Sully tugged at her elbow, a faint frown creasing his brow as she turned to him. “Are you getting cold feet, or what?”

“Did you see him?” She forced the urgent question out from between lips that felt coldly numb. “Did you see him, Sully? Was it him?”

“See who?” Frowning in earnest, Sullivan looked over his shoulder from where a knot of ushers and bridesmaids waited just inside the oak doors. “What are you talking about, Lee?”

“I’m sure it’s him. See—there, with the shopping cart!” It felt like a gigantic weight was pressing down on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Ainslie heard the high quaver in her own voice, and turned to her half brother. “Don’t you see him, Sully?”

There was more than concern on his features now, there was alarm, and beyond him Ainslie caught Tara’s dubious look. The good-looking teenager she was standing with broke off whatever he’d been saying to her.

She was causing a scene. She was causing a scene at her own wedding, and she didn’t care, Ainslie thought desperately. It couldn’t be him—but she had to know for sure. She wrenched her arm from Sully’s grip and ran to the edge of the top step, leaning out over the black iron railing that framed it.

“Malone!”

Her hoarse cry was more of a scream, and with part of her mind she realized that the crowd had fallen silent and was staring up at her with avid curiosity. But she wasn’t concentrating on anything or anyone but the shuffling figure in the greatcoat, now almost at the entrance to the alleyway.

“Malone!” Her voice cracked on his name, and she felt Sullivan’s strong hand wrap around the lace on her upper arm. “Dammit, Malone—look at me! It’s you, isn’t it?”

“For God’s sake, Lee!” Sullivan’s voice was almost as shaky as hers. He thrust his mouth close to her ear. “Malone’s dead, sweetheart. You know that. Let’s get you inside—”

She shut out Sully’s words. The veil blew across her face and she impatiently pushed it aside, feeling the headpiece finally let go. It fell from her hair and tumbled down the top two steps. It didn’t matter, she thought as she watched the man in the greatcoat turn back to look at her from the entrance to the alleyway. Even at this distance she could see the pain etching his features.

There was no way he could be Malone, Ainslie thought faintly, her knuckles white against the iron railing as his eyes met and held hers for a heartbeat. No way at all. As Sully had said, Malone was dead.

It was him.

“Malone,” she whispered incredulously, her hand going to her mouth. She felt the hot rush of tears behind her eyes and blinked. Joy, so sweet and sharp it felt like pain, lanced through her. Unheeded, warm tears slipped down her face.

Through her blurred vision, she caught his one last, agonized glance before he turned and pushed his cart swiftly down the alleyway, his head bowed. He disappeared around a corner and was gone.

“No,” Ainslie breathed disbelievingly. “No—I won’t lose you again. I can’t have lost you!”

Breaking free of Sullivan’s grasp, she whirled desperately away from him and ran down the steps into the crowd.

Chapter Two

“For the love of Mike, Ainslie—what were you thinking of, flying down the church steps like that?”

The little change room at the back of the church was packed with O’Connell females. Jackie O’Connell Byrne, once a flawless beauty and still sexy at fifty, raised an incredulous eyebrow at her niece.

“We’ve got a packed church, an organist who’s started the wedding march twice, and one extremely patient groom out there. What we don’t have is a bride walking down the aisle.”

“Would you like me to get Father Flynn in to talk to you, dear?” Her face flooding with color, Cissie glanced meaningfully at the yards of white ruffles and lace of her niece’s wedding dress. “Is there…is there something you’d like to confess before you go through with the ceremony, Ainslie?”

“For crying out loud, of course there’s nothing she needs to confess,” Jackie snapped. “Just because you’re still hanging on to your virginity for dear life at forty-nine doesn’t mean—”

“Shut up, the both of you!”

The gravelly roar that cut through the small room came from a wiry figure clad, like Jackie, in a silk suit. But instead of a skirt, the jacket was paired with trousers in the same sea-foam green that Tara, sitting wide-eyed a few feet away, had so vocally groused about earlier. Peeking out raffishly from under the cuffed silk pants was a pair of lime high-top sneakers.

A flicker of amusement briefly overlaid the chaos of Ainslie’s thoughts as she took in the pugnacious jut of her Aunt Kate’s jaw. Even as she stood there facing down her younger sisters, she seemed to bounce a little on the balls of her feet, as if she were getting ready to take on an opponent in the ring. Her boxing days long behind her, Ainslie mused, the woman once known as Kiss of Death Katie would never be anyone’s idea of a sweet little old lady.

The rest of the O’Connell women had fallen silent. Raking an impatient hand through her cropped steel-gray hair, Kate’s gimlet gaze fell on one of Ainslie’s cousins.

“Bridie, go out and tell Father Flynn that Ainslie’s just feeling a little faint from all the excitement. Say she needs a few minutes to compose herself before the ceremony.”

“Lie to a priest, Aunt Kate?” Bridie sounded shocked.

Her aunt’s jaw jutted out even farther. “It’s not a lie. Look at the poor girl, for God’s sake. Her face is like cheese.”

“Thanks, Aunt Kate,” Ainslie murmured dryly, then wished she’d kept quiet. As Bridie reluctantly left the room, the high-tops swivelled her way.

“Lying to Father Flynn’s going to buy us ten minutes, no more, so let’s hear it, Lee. Are we scrubbing this event or what? And what was that performance in front of the church all about?”

Performance was the right word, Ainslie thought, feeling the color rise in her cheeks under the scrutiny of her three aunts and Tara’s alert glance from the corner of the room.

She’d made a complete fool of herself. She’d heard cameras clicking like crazy all around her, had seen Susan Frank, News Five’s roving reporter, elbow her way toward her like a stevedore in high heels, and had felt one of her own satin shoes catch in a billowing ruffle.

She hadn’t fallen for the same reason that she hadn’t been able to go any farther. The crowd had just been too thick. As Susan Frank, microphone thrust out in front of her, reached her, sanity had suddenly washed over Ainslie in a cold wave.

Of course it wasn’t Malone, she’d thought stupidly. How crazy can you get, O’Connell? Malone’s dead. You’re running after a ghost.

“And here we were hoping to surprise you, sis.” Sullivan had given a rueful chuckle and tightened his grip on her arm. “We told Lee her favorite great-uncle, Paddy Malone, wasn’t up to making the trip over from the old country, Miss Frank. His heart’s not as strong as it used to be, so we didn’t want to disappoint her if he couldn’t make it at the last minute, but it looks like she spotted him. Come on, Lee, Paddy’s already slipped in the side entrance.”

If anyone could whip a choice morsel away from a shark, her half brother could, Ainslie thought now. Susan Frank had looked immediately bored, Sully had hustled her into the church and Aunt Kate had taken over from there.

But even the combined forces of the O’Connell women and Terry Sullivan couldn’t hold off the delayed wedding for much longer, Ainslie told herself. Not for the first time since she’d accepted Pearson’s proposal, she felt a pang of longing for her mother—a longing that had never really faded over the ten years since Mary O’Connell’s untimely passing.

When Thomas Sullivan, Sully’s feckless and charming father, had walked out on his second wife and his young daughter, taking his son by a previous marriage with him, at five years old she’d felt as if her world had been torn apart, Ainslie remembered. Reverting to her maiden name, Mary O’Connell had moved in with her sister Jackie’s family and the O’Connell clan had practically smothered Ainslie with love. But the lack of a father had always hurt. Even when her beloved half brother Sully had come back into her life years later, his reappearance hadn’t been able to completely make up for Thomas’s absence.

Her aunts and Sully would always be there for her, Ainslie thought, meeting Kate’s inquiring gaze. But her mother would have known without asking that she still intended to go through with this wedding. She wanted Tara to have the one thing she’d missed out on—the presence of a stable father figure in her life.

“We’re not scrubbing this event, Aunt Kate.” She forced a smile and smoothed down a ruffle. “You were the one who taught me to leave the butterflies outside when I stepped into the ring. I—I guess I just forgot that for a minute.”

“Is that all it was, butterflies?” Her aunt looked unconvinced, and Ainslie nodded decisively.

“Plain old-fashioned bridal nerves,” she said firmly, and saw the doubt in her aunt’s eyes disappear. “Ladies, start your engines—or at least get your butts out of here so the bride and her chief bridesmaid can make an entrance in a minute or so.”

The older woman’s craggy features broke into a rare smile. “Some of the stuffier McNeils are going to bust a gut when they realize it’s Kiss of Death Katie who’s giving the bride away, darlin’. I can hardly wait to see their faces. Ciss, Jackie—let’s get out there and raise some eyebrows.”

With the squeak of sneakers and the tapping of heels receding down the hall, Ainslie took a deep breath and turned to face Tara with the same grin she’d given her aunts still fixed on her face. “Well, pumpkin, it’s just you and me now,” she said bracingly. “Ready?”

“No.” The teen’s one-word answer was flatly antagonistic.

Shocked, Ainslie stared at her. In the limo, Tara’s recalcitrance had obviously stemmed from a childlike need for reassurance, but there was nothing childlike about the white, set face turned to her now. Tara’s gaze, as it met hers, was disconcertingly adult.

“You lied to them. I was the only one close enough to see what happened, and I know it wasn’t just butterflies, Aunt Lee. You saw someone, didn’t you? You saw Seamus Malone.”

Ainslie felt her own face pale. “How do you know that name?” She realized her hands were clenched at her sides, and with an effort she relaxed them. “Don’t tell me—your uncle Sully, right?”

Tara shrugged, her shoulders tense under the sea-green chiffon.

“It couldn’t have been Malone I just saw, because he did die. I went to his funeral. I was there when they buried him. He walked out of my arms one night and he never came back. And he hasn’t now,” she whispered fiercely, her words not directed at the young girl in front of her. “It’s time to let him go.”

“At Uncle Sully’s marriage to Bailey you told me that true love was the rarest thing there was. You said that if a person ever found it, she should never, ever let it go. What if you did see Malone, Auntie Lee? Even if it’s impossible, what if you did?”

Under the lace and ruffles, Ainslie felt as if an iron band was constricting her chest. “I didn’t. And I don’t want to talk about it any more, Tara,” she said tightly. “Now, I’m walking out that door to get married to Pearson. Are you coming?”

For a long moment Tara’s gaze defiantly held hers. Then the soft young lips quivered, and with an impulsiveness that she’d begun to display less and less often since becoming a teenager, she rushed to Ainslie and wrapped her arms around her.

“Of course I’m coming, Aunt Lee. It’s not often a girl gets a chance to wear sea-foam green, for goodness’ sake.” Her laugh was uneven, but as she gave Ainslie one last crushing hug and stepped back, her smile was tender. “Besides, even with the door open, that perfume is getting to me. Aunt Cissie must have doused herself in it—she’s the only one who would wear something so romantically old-fashioned as roses.”

“Aunt Cissie doesn’t wear perfume,” Ainslie said absently. “She’s allergic to it.” Straightening her veil and turning to leave, she stopped, her heart suddenly crashing in her chest.

It was no ghost of a scent. Tara was right—it was overpowering, as overpowering as it had been half an hour ago, when Ainslie’d finally convinced herself that both the aroma and the man had been illusions. But now it seemed that the scent of roses was real. And Tara was conscious of it, too.

What if Malone hadn’t been an illusion, either?

“Red roses for true love,” she said through numb lips. “What if he’s still alive? What if he’s still alive?”

“The perfume means something to you, doesn’t it?” Tara’s gaze was fixed on her, her eyes enormous in the paleness of her face. “You think he has come back, don’t you?”

“But how could he?”

In an unconscious reversal of their roles, Ainslie turned to her adopted daughter. Tara wasn’t a child any longer, she realized with a small start. She was a young woman, and her steady gaze was filled with a wisdom beyond her years.

“One way or another, you have to be sure, Aunt Lee. If you don’t go after him you’ll never forgive yourself.” Tara gave her a little shake. “I’ll never forgive you.”

“But Pearson…Father Flynn…all those guests!” Was she actually considering this? Ainslie thought. “I can’t just walk out on my own wedding! Besides, I’ll run into the same crush outside as before. That Susan Frank will have a film crew right on my heels.”

“Go out the back.” Tara jerked her head toward the door leading to the parking lot, her voice quickening in excitement. “He went down that alley about a block away, didn’t he? This street should get you there just as well as the one in front of the church, and it’s quieter. No one will even see you.”

Even as she spoke Ainslie was shaking her head. “Someone will notice, and in this getup I can’t exactly outrun the mob. Leaving Pearson waiting at the altar is terrible enough. He doesn’t deserve his wedding to be made into a public joke in all the papers.”

“You’re right. That would destroy him,” Tara said slowly, her face clouding. Then she brightened. Darting to the small table near where she’d been sitting earlier, she bent over and grabbed something up. She whirled back to Ainslie, her palm outstretched. “Here.”

Ainslie blinked at the object Tara was handing her. It was a small plastic skull with glowing red eyes. Attached to it was a key.

“It’s Bobby’s.” Tara blushed, and all of a sudden she was a teenager again. “Cool, huh? He was showing it to me and in all the excitement I guess I forgot to give it back to him.” She saw the confusion on Ainslie’s face and elaborated impatiently. “It’s the key to his motorcycle, Aunt Lee. It’s right outside—I’m sure if Bobby knew he’d tell you to go ahead and use it. After all, this is kind of an emergency, isn’t it?”

Tara was right, it was an emergency. With any luck, this wild-goose chase could be over and done with in less than five minutes. If it wasn’t—

“Get this darn veil off me, pumpkin.” As Tara swiftly complied, Ainslie bent and lifted the masses of ruffles, revealing the two stiff crinolines that had made her walk up the red carpet resemble the stately progression of an unwieldy ocean liner being nudged along by a tugboat. Stripping them off, she turned back to Tara, feeling blessedly less encumbered.

“Go find Uncle Sully and tell him everything. If I’m not back in ten minutes, he’s to make up some kind of story that’ll save Pearson’s face, okay?”

With that she was gone, running toward the yellow Yamaha that was the only motorcycle in the lot, holding her skirt high as she flew across the gravel.

SHE LOOKED RIDICULOUS, and she knew it. She also didn’t care. Letting the motorcycle’s revs climb as her riding skills came automatically back to her, Ainslie tore down the conveniently deserted street and into the alley. It was flanked, she saw, by a small commercial hotel, boarded up and abandoned.

She cut the bike’s engine, realizing in the sudden silence that she had absolutely no idea what to do next. Aside from the usual litter of junk and garbage, only made notable by a discarded and rotting sofa bed a few feet away, the alleyway was empty.

What had she expected? Ainslie asked herself, her heart sinking. From his odd appearance, the man she’d seen obviously wasn’t completely normal, and when she’d unexpectedly focused her attention on him she’d probably frightened him. Had she really thought it possible that he would be waiting for her around some corner?

Very slowly, she reached for the key in the ignition. As she did so she caught a gleam just beyond the discarded sofa bed, as if something shiny was catching the light there.

She knew what it was even before she jumped off the motorcycle and ran over to it. Lying on its side, covered with a piece of torn plastic, was a shopping cart. Its contents had spilled out onto the ground, but right in front of her eyes was a pair of worn boots.

Looking up, recessed into the wall of the abandoned hotel, she noticed a door painted the same faded red as the brick of the building.

It was slightly ajar.

It had to be where he lived, Ainslie thought, her pulse racing. It had to be. Condemned or not, the place offered shelter and some kind of privacy; she knew instinctively that the man she’d glimpsed would find it impossible to bunk down with a roomful of strangers every night in a shelter. Like a wild animal, he would have a place where he could go to earth.

It would be impossible to find him in there. She hardly had time for a room-to-room search. There was only one way she could force him out.

“Malone! Malone!” Standing in the middle of the alleyway, she shouted the name as loudly as she could. He wasn’t Malone—he couldn’t be, there was no way he could be—but if this was his private lair, she was drawing attention to it. He would want her to go away, but she wouldn’t—not until she saw him face-to-face.

“Malone, I know you’re in there!”

For some reason she knew the stranger wouldn’t hurt her if he did appear. He’d definitely been odd, but there’d been nothing threatening in his oddness. Again she saw the flash of anguish she’d seen in those green eyes that had been too much like Malone’s. The memory was so clear that again her heart leaped crazily.

“Malone!”

“Stop shouting! Dammit, lady, you’re going to lead them right to me!”

The hoarse warning came from directly behind her. Whirling around in shock, Ainslie stared at the big man in the army greatcoat standing only inches away.

The bottom fell out of her world.

Dark hair fell to his shoulders, and most of his face was obscured by a heavy growth of beard. His skin bore the weathered tan of someone who spent most of his time in the elements, and there was a smear of black grease high on each cheekbone. But through the tangle of hair that fell over his forehead she could see those eyes.

She tried to take a step toward him, but her limbs wouldn’t work. “Malone—it really is you!”

This time when the hot tears streamed down her face she made no attempt to wipe them away.

“They told me you were dead, Malone! They told me you were dead, and I didn’t believe them, but when you didn’t come back to me I thought I’d lost you forever!”

The words tumbled out of her almost incoherently, and the ice that had surrounded her finally broke. With a little cry of incredulous happiness she rushed to him, wanting only to feel his arms around her, his heartbeat close to hers.

Swiftly he stepped back out of her reach. His eyes narrowed and his whole body seemed to suddenly tense.

In confusion, Ainslie met his gaze, and as she did, the wild joy that had been flooding through her instantly turned to sharp fear.