Please Say "I Do"
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Karen Toller Whittenburg
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19.0K
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14
Chapter One
Hallie Bernhardt settled her glasses on the tip of her nose and stared over the round pewter frames until the hotel clerk’s welcome-to-the-Islands smile and Hawaiian-print shirt blurred into a slightly less annoying bril-liance. “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” she said, tapping the registration form on the counter between them. “This can’t be my room.”
He glanced at the number beneath her pink-tipped fingernail, then checked the computer screen again. “Ms. Bernhardt?” he asked. “You’re with the Brewster wedding, right?”
“Yes.”
He tapped more keys, frowned, tapped a few more, then flashed that bright white smile again. “No, ma’am, no mistake. Room 1413 has been reserved for you. It’s one of our Love Nest rooms and is normally used for newlyweds, but Mrs. Brewster insisted you have an ocean view.”
Ocean View? Oh, jeez. “No, no,” she said. “You don’t understand. I’m the wedding coordinator, Hallie Bernhardt. B-e-r-n-h-a-r-d-t. I specifically requested a single room on the ground floor.”
His smile didn’t waver. “There are no guest rooms on the ground floor, Ms. Bernhardt.”
“The next floor up, then.”
He shook his head without even checking the computer first. “I’m afraid we’re overbooked this week as it is, and Mrs. Brewster did go to a great deal of trouble in trying to move everyone to the same floor.”
Hallie shuddered, imagining the entire Brewster clan surrounding her on every side. “There has to be another room,” she said a little desperately. “I cannot spend an entire week in this room on that floor with them!”
“This is peak honeymoon season. I wouldn’t know where else to put you.”
“Switch me with someone. Stephanie Brewster won’t be here until later in the week. Give me her room.”.
“I’m sorry, but that room is already occupied by Ms. Brewster’s fiance, Mr. Keaton.” He delivered that information as if he was sure she’d be pleased to hear it. “There’s a possibility a room on the twelfth floor could become available later, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be separated from the family.”
Oh, yes, she would. She really would. “I’ll take it,” she said. “The Brewsters will never miss me.”
“It’s nothing definite, Ms. Bernhardt. The room is reserved for the rest of the week. I wouldn’t want you to count on it.”
Flattening her palms on the counter, Hallie leaned forward, just managing to control the impulse to grasp his floral-print collar and yank him across the desk to face her. Tilting up her chin so she could see through the lenses of her glasses, she read the name Kimo, on his gold badge, then shoved the glasses onto the bridge of her nose so she could keep him in focus.
“Look, Kimo, I don’t mean to be difficult, but I’ve been on a plane so long I thought I was going to have to have the seat belt surgically removed from my hips. Flying makes me nervous, and when I’m nervous, I eat. So I ate everything I could beg from the flight attendants and even embarrassed myself by swiping food’ from my neighbor’s tray. Then we hit bad weather and I spent the rest of the trip holding a little paper sack over my face, in case the turmoil in my stomach stopped going around and around and headed upward.
“The woman in front of me insisted I take a couple of her motion-sickness pills, which I accepted to be polite and had no intention of taking, except I dropped them into my pocket with my vitamin C, and just before the plane landed—the most bone-jarring landing I’ve ever experienced—I swallowed all of the tablets before I remembered they weren’t all vitamins. The pills looked like Tic Tacs and I honestly believe she gave them to me hoping they’d have a placebo effect. I’m only telling you that so you’ll understand this was no ordinary trip across the Pacific and I’m still a little shaken by it.
“On top of that, I’d hardly set foot on the island before I discovered my luggage never even made it onto the plane with me and is now somewhere on its way to Argentina. As if that isn’t enough, this is—beginning to end—the worst hair day of my entire adult life. Normally, I’m a very nice person, Kimo, but I can’t promise continued civilized behavior if you keep insisting that the only room available is the thirteenth room on the thirteenth floor!”
His smile barely drooped before it made a dramatic comeback. “The hotel doesn’t have a thirteenth floor,” he said brightly. “We skip that number because some people think it’s bad luck.”
She was sorry now she hadn’t grabbed his collar and given it a good yank. “Give me a different room, Kimo. I need one very badly.”
“But this is a lovely room,” he assured her. “With a spectacular ocean view.”
She cringed at the thought, took off her glasses, folded the earpieces across each other and tucked them into the outside pocket of her small leather briefcase. Then she took a deep breath and focused on the blur that was Kimo’s face. “I’m afraid of heights, okay? And I get seasick just thinking about watching waves erode the shoreline. So I don’t need a room with a view. I need to be as close to the ground as possible, in a room with even numbers. That’s what I requested and that’s the room I expect you to give me.” Hallie pushed the card across the counter. “Consider it your random act of kindness for the decade.”
With a nod of wary confusion, Kimo took her registration and eased a step away from the desk. “I’ll do my best, Ms. Bernhardt.”
“Thank you, Kimo.”
“It’s Kee-mo,” he said. “Not Ky-mo.”
“Whatever,” she muttered under her breath, before crooking her head politely and correcting her mispronunciation. “Thank you, Kee-mo.”
He smiled broadly, apparently thrilled by this sign of cooperation. A sweet-smelling breeze zipped through the open lobby, ruffling the fronds of the plants and rudely flipping up the hem of Hallie’s gored skirt. She slapped at the fabric and wished she’d gone with her first instinct and worn a straight-skirted suit instead of this flibbertigibbet of a dress. The suit would have been hideously uncomfortable on the trip, but at least now she’d look professionally wrinkled instead of dismally rumpled, and her skirt wouldn’t be swirling around her thighs.
A second gust of wind lifted her skirt and she batted it down, but the trickster breeze flipped it up from behind. With a gasp, Hallie spun around to protect her backside from further exposure and spied a cool, dark cave of a bar. Normally, she steered clear of alcoholic beverages—no point in killing off brain cells before their time—but one of those icy drinks with the little umbrellas was suddenly very appealing. After all, she was in Hawaii, and considering the day she’d had and the week she was facing, a few brain cells seemed a small price to pay for a few minutes of relaxation. She was absolutely certain she couldn’t feel worse.
“I’ll just wait in the bar until you find a room for me.” She offered the information to Kimo with a backward glance, clamped a restrictive hold on her immodest skirt and headed for the cabanalike bar. Paradise Bay was spelled out in some sort of ropelike material over the grass-hut entrance. Inside, the decor was strictly island eclectic, and outside, the wind danced a mean hula, setting the canvas canopies of the tables sashaying like a dancer’s grass skirt.
Dropping her briefcase flat on the bar, Hallie set her hips on one of the stools with a flippant little swivel. The bar was nearly deserted—which she thought was unusual, considering Kimo’s assertion that the hotel was overbooked. On the other hand, Paradise Bay was a honeymoon hotel that catered to newlyweds, who undoubtedly preferred the privacy of their suite to all other diversions. Honeymooners, she’d heard, slept late, stayed up late and got drunk on love. On her own disastrous honeymoon—six long years ago—Brad had just gotten drunk.
Looking around for the bartender, Hallie caught the eye of the man sitting at the other end of the bar. He watched her with a benign, but purely sexual, admiration, assessing her ass-ets in that annoying way of men who had passed the impulse of youth and wanted women to believe they could afford to be ever so much more selective. Lifting her chin and clasping her hands together on the bar—just shy of a bowl of peanuts— she pretended to be unaware of his presence. Above the bar, a television screen displayed a scene of verdant grass with the kind of hushed commentary common to televised golf. At least golf was a quiet game. No crunching of bones. No blasts from the referee’s whistle. Just the nice crack of a club striking a harmless little ball. Steepling her hands, she tapped the two index fingers together and waited for the bartender to return to his post
Patience wasn’t her strong suit, though, and she swiveled the bar stool around to face the empty tables. Propping her elbows on the counter, she leaned back and tapped her foot against the rung of the stool. She tossed her head, flipping her long, honey brown hair into a cascade down her back…at least it would have been a cascade two days ago. She kept forgetting she’d had it cut in its current trendy, frivolous, barely shoulderlength and very shaggy style. How long before she stopped tossing her head like some horse shaking its mane, she wondered. She must look like an idiot
Her glance slid to the man at the bar…and recognized the curve of his lips as amused interest All right, so he probably thought she was flirting with him. Ha! Fat chance. Not that he wasn’t attractive, if one liked the rugged-individualist type. Even in the festive, Hawaiian-print shirt, he looked ready to run out and climb a mountain on the off chance someone should challenge his masculinity. His hair was black with a few strands of silver tossed in for contrast, his skin was a rich, deep tan…. Obviously an outdoorsman, although she’d have to see more than his muscular upper half to decide if he looked capable of scaling mountains.
He lifted his glass in mute acknowledgment of her appraisal and she jerked her gaze to the front. She wasn’t interested, no matter what he thought. He obviously believed he was invincible, which was the only reason she could think of to explain why some people ignored the warnings of countless dermatologists and exposed their skin to too much sun. There was no excuse for playing ultraviolet-ray roulette these days. She had been careful to pack plenty of sunscreen, longsleeved shirts and no less than three large-brimmed hats. Of course, all her foresight wasn’t going to do her much good if her luggage didn’t show up soon.
“If I get sunburned,” she said aloud, “I’m suing the airline, the hotel and the guy who gave me this haircut.”
Rugged Individualist looked up. “Bad flight?”
His voice was deep, smooth and pleasant Why didn’t handsome men ever have high-pitched, squeaky voices? She turned her head slowly with eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
He swiveled to face her, his beer clutched in his hand, his smile lazy and so inherently sexy she nearly slid off her stool. “I said,” he repeated, blatantly ignoring her discouraging tone, “did you have a bad flight?”
Ordinarily, she would have ignored him, but pent-up frustration pushed the words right out of her mouth. “The worst…and they lost my luggage. Then when I finally get here, the hotel wants to put me in the thirteenth room on the thirteenth floor!”
“I didn’t think hotels had thirteenth floors.’ “My point exactly. You’ve been lulled into that perception. But if you think about it, skipping a number doesn’t make it disappear. So no matter what they call it, the floor after twelve is still the thirteenth floor”
“Can’t say I ever thought about it that way.”
“It amazes me that more people don’t.”
He sipped his beer and his gaze slid away from her. Hallie had seen that reaction before, although usually not quite so early in a conversation. High-maintenance female, he was thinking. Trouble. Steer clear. In another couple of minutes, he’d finish his beer and leave the room. Not that she minded. She wasn’t interested in starting anything with Mr. Individualist…or anyone else. She had far too much to do, far too much riding on this one wedding, far too many other things to think about. Her brief marriage had been more than enough exposure to relationships, anyway, thank you very much.
“So, what’s wrong with the haircut?” His question startled her, and from across the distance of five bar stools, she felt a singe of heated awareness when her eyes met his. He had vivid blue eyes, expressive eyes, and she sent up a mental note of thanks that she had excellent distance vision. If he were any closer, she’d have to put her glasses back on and then he’d leave the room for sure. “I’m sorry,” she said politely.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘What’s wrong with the haircut?’”
The haircut. She’d almost forgotten. “Oh, please, don’t be patronizing,” she said on a sigh. “I’ve had a miserable day and I don’t need some stranger trying to tell me this isn’t the worst haircut he’s ever seen.”
He regarded her thoughtfully, then set his beer bottle on the bar. “I believe you could use a drink, Ms.—”
“Bernhardt,” she supplied testily. “Not that it’s any of your business. And there isn’t a bartender here to fix a drink if I wanted one, which I did when I first walked in, but now I don’t.”
He slid to his feet and strolled toward her. Okay, so he probably did scale mountains on his coffee break. But just because he was tall and good-looking and had a slow, sexy walk was no reason to let him labor under the illusion he would get anywhere near first base with her. Luckily, the closer he got, the fuzzier he looked, and by the time he stood next to her, he had acquired a nicely blurred quality.
“I’m Rik.” He extended a hand.
Hallie did her best not to squint and bring him into sharper focus. “Yes?”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Ms. Bernhardt,” he said pointedly, picking up her hand in his warm, solid clasp and giving it a shake. “And now that we’re no longer strangers, I’d like to know what’s wrong with your haircut Personally, I think it’s cute.”
Cute. Oh, great. As if she needed to hear that! She withdrew her hand from his. “You’re wasting your time, Rik. I may be alone, but I’m not available.” She swiveled to face the bar and give him the full benefit of a cold shoulder, even though her palm tingled from the heat of his touch and she couldn’t keep from rubbing it briskly up and down her leg.
“As it happens, Ms. Bernhardt, I’m also alone but unavailable. Let’s drink to that happy circumstance, shall we?” He was suddenly on the other side of the bar across from her. “What will you have?”
“Do you work here?”
“Nope. I’m merely a guest who doesn’t mind lending a hand when needed.”
“There are rules about that sort of thing, you know.”
He cocked an eyebrow in a disarmingly attractive disregard for authority. “Rules don’t scare me much, Ms. Bernhardt. Now, what can I get for you?”
“Something refreshing, maybe with one of those little parasols. Any suggestions?”
“A mai-tai, maybe. Or a tequila sunrise. That’s very popular around here. So is Sex on the Beach.”
Hallie’s gaze flew to his and her hand dived for the peanuts. She wondered if his significant other realized he was on the loose. “Sounds too gritty for me. I’ll have that middle thing,” she said, then, not wanting to appear totally unsophisticated, added, “on the rocks.”
“One tequila sunrise coming up.”
He set a slender glass on the counter and she watched with interest as he added ice and a small measure of tequila. Not much alcohol in this drink, she thought, doubly pleased with her choice…until she saw him pick up a bottle of bright red liquid. “Oh, don’t put that in.”
He looked at her, then at the bottle. “But this is grenadine. The drink won’t taste right without it.”
“I’m allergic to red dye,” she told him. “The drink will be just as good without adding that.”
“Red dye,” he repeated, and set the grenadine aside before retrieving a container of orange juice from below the counter.
“Whoops,” she said. “Better hold the juice, too.” His quick look of surprise made her uncomfortable and she scooted the bowl of peanuts closer.
“Are you allergic to oranges, too?”
He didn’t have to make her sound like a hypochondriac. “No, of course not. Citric acid upsets my stomach sometimes, that’s all.”
He stared at her for a moment, then put the juice away, picked up the slender glass and set it in front of her. “One tequila sunrise, minus red dye and citric acid.”
She regarded the innocuous appearance of the drink and wished she’d admitted her ignorance straight-out At least there wasn’t much in the glass. She could handle that piddling amount. Resolutely, she lifted the glass in a smart salute. “Down the hatch,” she said, and swallowed the tequila in a single gulp.
An unholy fire ripped down her throat and burned like an inferno in her chest Scalding tears pooled in her eyes, but she couldn’t blink for fear of singeing her eyelashes. She coughed, choked and coughed again, ending in a hacking gasp and a pathetic wheeze. “Water,” she gasped. “Water.”
The water was in her hand almost before the whisper was out and she gulped it down. The fire in her belly sizzled and she let her head drop back, hoping to God that smoke wasn’t pouring out of her nose.
“Are you all right?”
His voice floated to her through a misty heat that oddly, gently pooled into pleasure. “Fine,” she whispered raggedly. “Never better.”
He frowned and looked—it was difficult to discern his expression without her glasses, but she thought he looked concerned. “Tequila should come with a warning label,” he said. “Want some more water?”
She shook her head and picked up another handful of peanuts. “I’ve always thought it came with a worm.”
“In this case, I guess that would be me. I shouldn’t have let you drink straight tequila…on the rocks or otherwise. It’s obvious you’re a novice.”
Novice? He thought she was a novice? “Honestly, you sound like somebody’s reverend uncle. I choked, that’s all.” She pushed the glass toward him. “I’ll have another drink, Mr. Unavailable. Just like the last one.”
His eyebrows rose. “Don’t you think you ought to pace yourself?”
“I’m not running the Boston Marathon.” Hallie tossed a peanut into the air and caught it in her mouth. Amazing. She’d never done that before in her life. Catching his eye, she felt a little foolish and a whole lot daring. “You didn’t think I could do that, did you?”
“Can’t say that I did.” He recapped the tequila after pouring a little in her glass. “You’re one surprise after another.”
She nodded…although she wasn’t entirely clear on why she was agreeing with him. “You’d be amazed at the things I can do.” Hallie looked at the peanuts that kept mysteriously collecting in her palm. “Efficiency is my middle name.”
“And what comes before Efficiency?”
“Organization.”
“That’s quite a name. What do your friends call you?”
“Hallie.” She picked up the glass and turned it in her hand. “Short a, long e, silent i“ Sucking in a breath, she downed the tequila in a gulp, ready for anything except the sudden high-pitched beeping that seemed to surround her on all sides. She looked cautiously at—his name eluded her at the moment—and realized he had turned his head to see the television. Something was going on at the golf game, she decided, but even with a determined squint, she couldn’t make out the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. “What happened?” she whispered.
“It’s a weather advisory.” He tossed the information over his shoulder. “An update on the hurricane.”
“What hurricane?”
“The one that’s been building in the Pacific for the past couple of days.”
“The Pacific Ocean?”
His glance was sharp, as if he was checking to see if she expected an answer. She knew, of course, that Pacific was shorthand for the Pacific Ocean and that the expanse of deep blue water visible not a quarter mile from where she was sitting was, indeed, the Pacific Ocean. But if there was a hurricane out there, someone should have told her. “Impossible,” she said. “I checked the weather channel before I left Boston and there was not a single mention of a hurricane.”
“It must have been a really long flight”
She narrowed her eyes at the television, but the words remained fuzzy. “Tell me what it says.”
She felt his glance but was too busy searching through her briefcase to look up. “I have excellent distance vision,” she explained. “The television is just a little too close for me to get in focus. Now, what does it say about a hurricane?”
“’The National Weather Service has upgraded the tropical storm in the Pacific to a hurricane” he read for her. “’With winds approaching seventy miles an hour, Hurricane Bonnie is moving in a southeasterly direction and, on its current path, will pass to the south of the Hawaiian Islands late Thursday. Residents are advised to prepare for high winds, heavy rain and possible swells. Stay tuned to this station for further updates.’” He turned back to her. “That’s the same bulletin they’ve been giving since yesterday.”
Hallie found the glasses and put them on, no longer caring that, since the haircut, she looked like a studious Cabbage Patch Kid in them. “Well, all I can say is they’re flat-out wrong about the rain, because there is no way I’m going to let bad weather ruin Stephanie’s wedding.”
“Stephanie? You’re here for Stephanie Brewster’s wedding?”
He sounded incredulous and, with her glasses on, she got a full dose of the question in his gorgeous blue eyes. “I’m the wedding coordinator. Bernhardt Bridal of Boston. That’s me. I’ve been planning this wedding for months, which is not nearly enough time to arrange the kind of ceremony Babs Brewster expects, but I’ve managed to put together something very nice…even though it all had to be done by telephone and despite the fact that I’ve yet to speak with the bride. Do you know her?”
“We’ve met,” he said crisply. “I’m the best man.”
“You’re the best man? In Stephanie Brewster’s wedding?” Her voice bounced inside her head in a funny kind of echo. “No, you’re not I personally sent in the measurements to Mr. Aloha Formalwear and you weten’t on the list.”
“You didn’t have my name?”
“I don’t know, but I’m positive your measurements weren’t on there…” The echo was getting worse, but she hung doggedly to her train of thought. “I’m a professional and I would have remembered the size of this.” Reaching across the bar, she put her hand on his biceps and squeezed. His hand came over hers, engulfing, electrifying, and she tried to recall what the hell she’d been thinking. She brought up her chin. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what I’m doing, aren’t you?”
His smile was entirely too sexy and her glasses made focusing on him entirely too easy. “Why don’t you tell me?” he suggested in a soft, insinuating tone of voice.
“I’m measuring your arm,” she said, as if it should have been obvious and as if her fingers weren’t itching to give his arm just a brief massage. “Of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated. “And did you reach a conclusion?”
She wished she could reach the peanuts. “Just as I suspected, you weren’t on the list I mailed to Mr. Aloha.”
His fingers stroked the back of her hand. “You can tell that by copping a feel of my arm?”
“I did no such thing.” Jerking her hand from his touch, she grabbed the bottle of tequila. “I don’t ‘cop’ feels, as you so inelegantly put it. Your arm is not that extraordinary, and besides, I don’t even know your full name.” With that, she poured another drink and tossed it back as if she’d been doing it for decades.
He moved his face closer, altogether too close for comfort. “Rik Austin,” he said. “That’s Rik. Short i, no c. Austin, as in Texas.”
Austin, Texas, buzzed through her brain like a pesky mosquito, and Hallie frowned as she tried to remember the point she wanted to make. “This is Hawaii.” That wasn’t it. “You can’t be the best man because he’s from the same place as the groom is…and it isn’t Texas.”
“Jack and I worked together in South America and his arm is approximately the same size as mine.”
Hallie looked at him. “Are you trying to confuse me?”
“No, but I can’t think it would be very difficult to do at the moment.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” she told him with feeling. “Because I know exactly what I’m doing.” To prove it, she ate another handful of peanuts and washed them down with more tequila.
“You should go slow with that stuff.” He reached for the bottle, but she moved it out of the way.
“Uh-uh-uh. I’ll have you know I take my vitamins every day, rain or shine, and I feel perfectly fine, thank you, Uncle Rik.” Hallie was amazed at the purling laugh that floated past her lips and right over the lovely buzz inside her head. “I never knew a tequila sunrise would taste so good.”
“You should see what I can do with a screwdriver.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I had that once. On my honeymoon. It made me sick.”
“The drink or the honeymoon?” His smile faded as she frowned at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad joke.”
“To be honest, I can’t remember.” Her frown deepened. “It must have been the drink. Honeymoons don’t make people sick.”
“That would depend on whose honeymoon it is.”
She wanted to consider that, but the thought sort of wisped away. “You know, Rik, I don’t usually drink anything except bottled water. But I like tequila.”
“The feeling will pass, believe me.” He clasped the bottle of tequila, preparing to put it away, but divining his intention, Hallie closed her hand over his. She liked the warmth and shape of his fingers under hers, and she told him so in a smile. “You know, Rik, someone said they put worms in this stuff.” Lifting the bottle, Hallie laid her head on the bar and looked up at the concave glass bottom. “You know what I think, Rik? I think Stephanie should have planned her own wedding, instead of letting her mother do it for her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to get married.”
There was a distinct interest in his expression that Hallie didn’t miss, despite the distortion of the thick glass bottle. “Naturally she wants to get married. The money’s already spent, the arrangements are all made, the ceremony is set, Babs Brewster has rounded up the whole family and herded them over here. The wedding will be perfect. So, of course Stephanie wants to get married.”
Rik looked pointedly at the palm trees outside, which were swaying dramatically with each new breeze. Taking off her glasses, Hallie followed his gaze, then poured a bit more liquor into her glass, set the bottle on the bar and tossed back the drink. “Stephanie is getting married Saturday if I have to kayak out into the Pacific and personally tie a knot in Hurricane Bonnie’s tail.”
Rik’s eyebrows went up in that wickedly sensual arch. “You’re a braver man than I.”
“That’s because I’m a woman. It’s easy to be brave when your entire future comes down to one wedding.”
“I hope you’re exaggerating, because a future is a lot to risk on a simple ceremony.”
“Simple?” Her laughter sounded too loud in her ears and it occurred to her, with woozy clarity, that maybe those funny little white pills hadn’t been Tic Tacs after all. “Simple,” she repeated, shaking her head. “Weddings are never simple. Even simple weddings aren’t simple. Even small family weddings aren’t simple. Outof-town weddings aren’t simple. Weddings like Stephanie Brewster’s definitely aren’t simple. Just perfect. They have to be perfect, you know. All of them. And that’s my job. That’s why the Brewsters hired me. To make this wedding perfect. And I will. Or my name isn’t—” She paused and waited for the answer to click into place. “Hallie Bernhardt,” she finished, tapping the counter for emphasis. “ That’s me.”
He leaned his elbows on the counter and clasped his hands only inches away from the peanut bowl and her restless fingers. ’What difference does it make if the ceremony’s perfect? The couple’s just as married no matter what happens during the actual wedding.”
“You’re wrong,” she stated emphatically, wanting more than anything to dip into the dwindling mound of peanuts. “Dead wrong. I can tell you for a fact that what happens during the wedding can make or break the marriage.”
“I’d be more inclined to believe that Babs Brewster has threatened murder if the wedding doesn’t come off as perfectly as she’s planned.”
“The way things have gone so far, murder is a distinct possibility.” Hallie wished she could lay her head on the bar and close her eyes for just a minute. There seemed to be a Grand Canyon-size cavern inside her head, where all the words she said and all the words he said collided and split into a million echoes. “At the moment, I think it’s a toss-up whether her hit man gets to me before I get to her. On the other hand, maybe I’ll just wait here and let him come to me. Madame Sally warned me that I’d meet someone dangerous.”
“I’m not dangerous,” Rik said with showy deference. “Just a touch uncivilized.”
Hallie looked up at him and decided that if Babs Brewster knew how susceptible she was to dark-haired men with blue eyes, Rik would be the perfect choice of hired gun. “Madame Sally must have been talking about Jose Cuervo. She’s always told me I don’t have the aura to attract dangerous men.”
“I think you’re attractive.”
“But you’re not dangerous, are you? Just uncivilized. And for the record, there’s a big difference between being attractive and being attracted. Besides, you’re just being nice because you know I have really bad hair.”
“I like your hair.” He slipped the tequila bottle out of her reach and under the counter, but she didn’t try to stop him. Her skin felt strangely elastic, and she thought that if she stretched out her hand, it might snap back and hit her in the nose.
“Do I look okay to you?” she asked.
“You look fine to me…which is a lot better than okay.”
“I mean, my face isn’t sagging or anything?”
His smile was easy on her eyes. “No sags, wrinkles or makeup lines.” He stroked the furrows of her forehead, smoothing out the frown, and she wished he would keep touching her that way until she fell asleep. “There,” he said. “Perfect.”
She sighed, knowing that if she could figure out how, she’d wrap herself around him and purr. Definitely time to move on. Putting her hands on the bar, she pushed herself upright. “I think I’ll see if they’ve found another room for me yet. I’m feeling a little jet-lagged suddenly.” Slipping off the bar stool, she teetered and caught her balance with a hand on the countertop. She licked her lips, wondering why her mouth suddenly had such a dry-roasted feeling. How many drinks had she had? Two? Three at the most. And there hadn’t been more than a drop of tequila in each one. Still, she wasn’t used to drinking at all and she probably shouldn’t have combined alcohol and all those salty peanuts. Some things just weren’t meant to be together. She knew that for a fact, and now she knew she’d have been better off to wait in the restaurant with a glass of water and a bowl of papayas. But then she wouldn’t have met Rik and found out she needed to take his measurements.
Which was a good thing, because how could anyone have a perfect wedding if the best man wore khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt during the ceremony? But she’d take care of it. There was always some last-minute detail to handle at a Bernhardt Bridal wedding. Nothing big, just some little thing overlooked. And little things could ruin a wedding…and her reputation. She would write herself a reminder in her Day-Timer. Call Mr. Aloha, she mentally noted. Get him to come over and measure the best man. Walking slowly but steadily, she reached the doorway and batted what seemed like an acre of dried grass out of her face. The lobby stretched before her in a shiny expanse of sea green, like a mirage on summer pavement. With a blink, she adjusted her focus and started toward the distant front desk.
RIK WATCHED HALLIE Bernhardt walk into the arch of dried grass at the entrance of the bar. She slapped the grass away, then paused to straighten her shoulders before she took the first confident—if slightly wobbly— step across the lobby. Unless he missed his guess, she was ten minutes or less from passing out, and when she woke up, she was going to wish she’d never heard of Jose Cuervo or a tequila sunrise. She probably wasn’t going to remember him too fondly, either.
What a package of problems she was, he thought as he picked up her forgotten briefcase. It would take a man years just to figure out everything she was allergic to. And she had that clipped Boston accent. Nothing like Stephanie’s softer tones, mellowed by years away from the city of her birth but still reserved and quiet. No, Hallie Bernhardt talked like a Bostonian, and had told him more than she realized.
Until she’d sashayed in, Rik had been enjoying the quiet dusk of the open bar. He’d savored the rapid crashing and ebbing of the tide, inhaled the fragrant wind and appreciated the shelter of a real roof over his head. Hallie obviously didn’t enjoy quiet, didn’t know how to listen to the pounding surf, didn’t know how to hear the sound of the wind as it tried and failed to find her. Over the course of his years in the Amazon, he’d learned a healthy respect for nature as well as an admiration for her unpredictability. And here, in this ridiculously luxurious hotel, he met an unpredictable woman who, despite the image she tried to project, was about as sophisticated as a chimpanzee in a fashion show, a woman who prided herself on her organization and efficiency and walked off without her briefcase.
Setting the leather satchel behind the bar, Rik smiled at her threat to tie a knot in the tail of a hurricane. She was interesting. No, more than that. She was fate.
He believed in allowing the forces that be to direct his energy and to deliver whatever he needed to his doorstep. And, just as he’d been wondering if that philosophy could survive outside the jungle he had called home for thirteen years, Hallie had walked in to prove it once again. She was Bernhardt Bridal, the ringleader of the committee that had planned Stephanie’s wedding. The wedding he had been sitting here quietly plotting to sabotage. Just as he was coming up empty on ideas about how to stop the woman he loved from marrying the wrong man, the wedding coordinator walked in and started talking. If he could have chosen a better person to meet at this particular moment, he couldn’t think who it might have been. Stephanie wasn’t here yet Wouldn’t arrive until Friday, just before the Saturday ceremony. Jack, the groom, and Rik’s best friend in the world, was here but not talking. Jack thought he was committed to this marriage already, thought it would hurt Stephanie if he bowed out, gracefully or otherwise. Rik hadn’t been able to talk a grain of sense into that hard head of his.
But here, suddenly, was the answer. A woman who knew every detail of the upcoming wedding, who had access to and influence over problems Rik couldn’t possibly create. And unless his signal decoder was seriously out of whack, she wasn’t as unavailable as she wanted him to believe. He felt a momentary pang of conscience at deliberately using her for his own purpose, but it passed. Stopping this ill-conceived wedding was worth whatever deception, whatever ruse, whatever scheme it cost…up to and including his hotel room.
