Kidnapping His Bride

“I’ll bet you five dollars they never make it to the altar,” Jasper said to the man next to him. Reba, his wife, walked over and shushed him.

Tessa loved the community and almost all the townspeople and, normally, would have been grinning ear to ear at the old men’s antics, but all she could think about now was that Griff was following her every movement with his eyes, and how much she needed to get out of there before she began to like it.

Tessa was almost to the door when the bells rang again, and a six-year-old boy with a Huckleberry Finn smile entered and grinned up at her. “Hey, Tessa, where’s my Dad?”

Grinning back, Tessa felt the stress of the day wane a little. Being around Jeb Ledoux, Clay’s son and the real reason she was marrying Clay, now that his wife, Lindy, her good friend, had passed on, always had that effect on her.

“Around the corner, Jeb.” She pointed. “Who brought you?”

“Grandma and Grandpa,” he said, referring to Clay and Griff’s parents. “They’re looking for a parking space.” He didn’t move. “How come you didn’t marry Dad?”

“That’s the question of the hour.” Sadie sniffed.

“Grandma,” Tessa scolded gently, then turned back to the boy she so badly wanted to be a mother to. Jeb looked confused.

“There was a temporary problem.” Well, at least part of that was very true. Griff was a problem, but Tessa could only hope he was a temporary one. “Your dad and I will be having the wedding as soon as we figure out how to fix it.”

“Okay.” Jeb darted off around the corner to where Clay was still sitting. Tessa lingered and watched as the child stopped when he saw Griff.

“Uncle Griff! You’re back! We going fishing?”

“Come along, Tessa.” Sadie nudged her arm.

She didn’t have to be asked twice. Outside, Tessa hurried to Griff’s truck and got her veil and gloves. With a wave at Griff’s parents at the other end of the parking lot, she came back to her grandmother’s car just in time to see Sadie fish her keys out of her dress purse.

Tessa reached for them, and Sadie frowned and slapped at her hand, the way only the person who raised you could get away with. Sighing, Tessa let Sadie drive, but made sure the passenger side air bag was turned on and her seat belt snug. Seconds after the elderly woman started the engine, she started in on Tessa, just as expected.

“Darling girl, how on earth could you let yourself be thrown over someone’s shoulder and carted away?”

“It wasn’t like that, Grandma,” she said, gripping the armrest as her grandmother turned onto the highway and gunned the engine. Actually, now that her irritation had worn off a bit, Tessa realized that it had been exciting—which was Griff’s way. Romantic, even…With her eyes closed, she could see Griff’s image clearly in her mind. He was smiling, and touching her shoulder, and pulling her into his arms, and then he was—

“He didn’t kiss you, did he?”

Tessa’s eyes flew open. “No, nothing like that. He wouldn’t.” And she didn’t want him to. She swore she didn’t.

But her grandmother’s astute question pulled her back to reality. She definitely shouldn’t be fantasizing about Griff Ledoux. “It’s been over between us for years.”

“Hmm. Sounds like you’re protesting too much. Why on earth did he tote you off?”

“It was a joke on his brother,” she said softly, staring straight ahead. Her grandmother seemed to accept that and fell silent, giving Tessa all too much time to think on the ride home about Griff, and what he was really doing back in Claiborne Landing for more than a day’s visit.

One thing she did know for sure. As soon as Griff figured out he wasn’t going to stop her from marrying Clay—couldn’t stop her—he would be returning to the Air Force. He’d told her while they’d dated in high school that ever since he was a small child, the only thing he’d ever wanted to do was to fly planes, and the second he’d learned he could earn a free education at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and they would train him to fly, he’d worked all during high school toward that goal. Four years in the Academy and six years mandatory commission. Ten years of his life promised away meant nothing to him.

And everything to her, since she’d had such different goals for her life.

“Don’t let his return mess up your life, honey,” Sadie said unexpectedly. Startled, Tessa gazed over at her. “Make sure you reschedule the wedding with Clay. He’s a good man, and he can give you what you want.”

A perfect family, and a home in what she thought of—after a childhood on the road with parents who made dysfunctional sound fun—as paradise. Claiborne Landing. A place she never wanted to leave again—and where Griff usually never stayed long enough to hang up his hat.

“I know he can.”

“And you’ve already got a lot between you. Don’t mess up your chances like your mother did.”

“You never talk about Mom,” Tessa said, reaching for her gloves and holding them tightly in her hands.

“You look a lot like her.” Sadie shot a smile in her direction as she turned onto the highway that would take Tessa and her to where they had split a two-story home into their own apartments. “But you’re a lot more levelheaded. You didn’t go following Griff around the world like she did your father. That’s no kind of life for a married couple. Let alone kids.”

“She did want to come back home toward the end,” Tessa admitted. “But Dad always promised her there was more fun around the corner, if she would just stay with him. That he needed her, couldn’t survive without her. So she kept staying, even though she hated the life we had. The bill collectors calling, the skipping out at night on the rent. She spent a lot of time crying.” Just like Tessa had, when Griff had left and she’d known it had to be over between them.

Sadie sniffed. “Men always think there’s something better around the next corner. What is it with them, anyway?”

It was a rhetorical question, one that both Sadie and she had asked themselves many times while she was getting over Griff.

“You never told me all that about your parents before,” Sadie added.

“I didn’t want you to feel badly, I guess.” It had been worse than she’d ever admitted to Sadie. Her father had left her with her mother, who’d had pneumonia, Tessa had been told later, not wanting the responsibility of either of them, she supposed. She’d only been eleven, but she’d nursed her mother until she’d gotten really bad, and then Tessa had called the police for help, not wanting to, knowing that when they took her mother away, she would die and Tessa would never see her again. She’d been right. Her mother’s heart had simply stopped beating. The doctor had said it was a defect in a valve, but Tessa had always figured her mother had died of a broken heart.

Afterward, she’d ended up without a real family in foster homes for almost a year, before she’d remembered where her grandmother, whom her mother had hardly ever talked about, lived. Sadie had come for her as soon as she was called, and Tessa had made every effort to put her former life out of her mind.

“I really thought I’d forgotten all of it, but the memories seem to pop up when I’m upset.”

“Or when Griff comes to town, you mean.”

“I suppose so.” Tessa willed away the sad heart she always got when she thought about the distant past. “Anyway, he knows I want to be married and have children. As soon as he figures out the e-mailer was wrong and Clay and I will be perfectly happy together, he’s going to leave.”

“You think so, huh?” Sadie pulled into their driveway.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Tessa asked.

“Maybe the boy has figured out what your father never did,” Sadie said as she proceeded slowly up the two hundred slightly rutted feet to their home. “That the grass doesn’t get any greener than right here in Claiborne Landing.”

“He can’t stay here, Grandma,” Tessa said, her stomach doing funny flip-flops at the very thought. “It would ruin everything.”

“Then you’ll do what you’ll have to to make sure he has no reason to stay, won’t you? Hard as that might be.”

And it would be. As long as Tessa could remember, she’d dreamed of having a husband who doted on her and her children. When she’d met Griff, she’d thought he would be that man—right up to the point where his dream had become more important than hers and she’d broken it off with him, because she didn’t want to ruin his life the way her father had ruined her mother’s by his extreme need.

Sadie had been wonderful, of course, but Tessa had this dream of being part of the perfect family, and once she’d realized that the dream would never come true for her as a child, she’d changed to wanting to create it as a mother. With all her heart. If she married Clay, she would have Jeb—and, after all that had happened, that would be her dream come true.

The trouble was, while Griff was in another state, she could easily tell herself she didn’t love him anymore until she was blue in the face. But now that he would be so close to her that she could reach out and touch him anytime she wanted, well, she was a little afraid that the electricity that still sparked in the air between them might become a higher voltage than she could handle.

She would just have to, that was all. Jeb needed her as his mother, and that was that. No one at all could be allowed to stop the wedding, not even Griff.

Not for any reason.

She wondered, worriedly, just how clear Clay was making all of this to his long lost brother, whom she definitely didn’t love.

Or at least that’s what she tried to tell herself.

Chapter Three

Jeb came running out of his bedroom to where Griff was sitting on Clay’s couch, with tousled hair and a grin a mile wide, fully changed from ring bearer back to normal kid.

“Dad said I could stay with you or with Grandma, since he’s going to work,” Jeb told him. The three of them had come to Clay’s house, a couple of miles from Casey’s Kitchen, in the too quiet village of Athens. Too quiet at least from Griff’s viewpoint. He never understood why Clay seemed to like it just fine—in his eyes, they’d locked up excitement a long time ago and thrown away the key.

“He did? So which one did you choose?”

“Here, with you. We can talk about going fishing tomorrow!”

“Yeah, just don’t wear him out,” Clay said, joining them after having changed into his deputy’s uniform of a tan pullover and slacks. “He’s going to be driving back to North Carolina soon.”

“That was subtle,” Griff said, with a friendly grin to keep Jeb from sensing the underlying tension that had been between them ever since Clay had entered Casey’s Kitchen, whether Tessa had noticed it or not.

Clay didn’t respond, but since Jeb was staring back and forth between them with a puzzled look on his face, Griff decided to lighten up.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” he added.

Clay shrugged. “Yeah, well, when I saw you and the folks together at Casey’s, I figured it might be easier on all concerned if you didn’t have to stay at the farm. You were kind of stiff with each other.”

“I should have come home more often.”

“Yeah, you shoulda,” Jeb broke in, gazing up at him with something close to hero worship. “I missed you.”

“I’m surprised you remember me at all.” Griff ruffled the child’s black hair and smiled back. “I brought you something.” Lifting the suitcase by his feet onto the couch cushions, he unzipped it, took out a model of a C-130 Transport he’d bought at the base, and handed it to Jeb.

“Thanks, Uncle Griff!” If Jeb had sensed the tension in the room, the plane did the trick. He started making engine noises as he “flew” it around the living room. Clay left them for the kitchen and returned in seconds holding a beer and a soda. Standing in the doorway between the rooms, he regarded them both without any expression on his face, still angry, Griff figured, at what he’d pulled earlier.

“Look, Dad! I’m a pilot!”

Griff held back a smile, but a grimace flashed across Clay’s face. “Better fly crop dusters in-state, then, son. If you travel all over the world like your uncle Griff, you’ll break Tessa’s heart. She’s still going to become your stepmama, you know.”

“I’ll bring her with me!” Jeb said, filled with enthusiasm for his new career.

Griff and Clay shared a look. “Some women aren’t movable, Jeb,” Griff said, ignoring the jab to his heart Jeb’s words had innocently caused. “Take it from me.”

Clay finally moved forward and handed Griff the beer, and opened the cola for himself. “Why don’t you go show your jet to the twins?” he suggested to Jeb.

“Okay.” Jeb hurried over to Griff. “I’m just going across the street. Will you be here when I get back?”

“I’m going to stay with you while your dad works tonight, remember? So I’ll be here at least overnight,” Griff promised. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw Clay’s face darken. Good thing Jeb’s attention was totally on him.

“Oh, yeah. When I get back, I’ll show you all my favorite trucks, and my rock collection, and—” Jeb leaned close to whisper in Griff’s ear “—the frog I have in my room that Dad doesn’t know about.”

“That’s a plan,” he said solemnly. Maybe he’d put the frog in Clay’s bed tonight, remind his brother what fun was. Watching Jeb hurrying through the front door and letting the screen door bang shut behind him, Griff finally let himself grin again. The kid was irresistible. He did regret not coming more often to visit him, but visits with Clay, his wife and Jeb had always reminded him of what he could have had with Tessa—a family of his own by now, if she’d been the movable kind.

“What’s with you, Griff?” Clay asked, a steely edge to his voice Griff hadn’t ever heard before. “First you try to steal my bride, now my kid? He’s taken to you like burrs to socks.”

“Can Tessa be stolen that easily?” Griff remembered Clay’s words in the restaurant about “stealing” Tessa away, right before he’d decided not to argue there. Looked like they were finally going to get into it. “If she can, maybe you two ought not to be getting married.”

Clay gave him a dark look, then turned away to pace to the window and back again. “She’s going to marry me as soon as you leave,” he said, his voice gruff, “so you’d probably be better off just visiting for a bit, then going, and saving her—” Abruptly he stopped himself from saying more by taking a swig from his can.

“Saving her what?” Griff asked.

“Nothing. It’s just,” Clay continued, “that Tessa is over you. She wants to get on with her life. I’d hate to see her upset because you’re back here. Any more upset than you’ve already made her, anyway.”

“But you two shouldn’t be getting married. You don’t love each other—”

“Did I say that?” Clay interrupted, his face tightening just like it used to when they were kids before he would sock Griff in the gut over something. “Did she?”

“Neither of you will say you do,” Griff pointed out, tensing up, “which makes me suspicious.”

“Neither of us has to say it, because our getting married is none of your business, Griff.”

“Someone must think it is, or they wouldn’t have sent me the e-mail.”

Clay finally sank down in the chair across from the sofa, having said a lot more than Griff remembered him ever saying at one time. He figured it must finally be his turn to talk.

“You two will make each other miserable if you aren’t in love. Hell, Janie was in love with me, and I still made her miserable because I wasn’t in love—”

“I told you,” Clay said, rising, “I’m not discussing this with you.”

“I’m only thinking of Tessa’s best interests—”

“Too damned late for that, don’t you think?”

“It won’t be too late until you have a ring on her finger.” Griff rose, too, glaring back.

“I told you, this is none of your damned—”

“You two stop that, and right now!”

Griff’s eyes flew to the screen door, through which Tessa was entering, and, not wanting to have her see how much physical energy he was putting into fighting to keep her single, he willed himself to calm down. She had changed into jeans and a delicate pink T-shirt with those thin, spaghetti straps for sleeves, and brushed her hair out so that it fell in loose, crinkly waves over her shoulders. She was a slightly older version of the teenage Tessa he’d left behind, and Griff had never wanted her more.

He quickly shoved his desire back down, knowing full well that he still couldn’t give her the happiness she wanted. But an aching emptiness remained in his chest, the same feeling he got every time he came back to Claiborne Landing and saw Tessa. Or maybe he lived with it, and kept himself so busy he never had time to think about it. He wasn’t sure anymore.

She stood there, frowning at them both. “Tell me you aren’t fighting with Jeb in the house.”

“He’s across the street with his friends,” Clay said.

“Good.” She put her hands on her hips, and Griff forced himself to pay attention to what she was saying instead of how great she looked. “I came over to tell you two your mom and dad called me. Since we’re not getting married, Clay, they’re changing the wedding celebration they were going to have for us next Saturday to a community get-together in Griff’s honor.”

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