A Bride Until Midnight / Something Unexpected

Chapter Four

“You missed your bleeping flight? Are you bleep-bleep-bleeeeeeeeep?”

Kyle held the phone slightly away from his ear to prevent permanent damage to his hearing. Grant Oberlin had a corner office on the top floor of a New York City high-rise with one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country. It had been one hell of a steep climb from the streets of south Boston where he’d grown up. Pushing sixty now, he hadn’t lost his drive, the accent or the language.

“Where the bleep are you right now?”

Kyle had learned to mentally block out Grant’s profanity. It was one of a handful of useful skills he’d gleaned from his father.

“On second thought,” Grant said loudly. “I really don’t give a bleep where the bleep you are. Here’s what you’re going to do.”

People in the business called Oberlin The Cowboy. He rolled his own cigarettes—he probably had one clamped between his lips right now—wore snakeskin cowboy boots and had a chip on his shoulder the size of Wyoming.

“Do you know how many bleepity-bleep-bleep strings I had to pull, how many favors I had to call in to get you this bleeping gig?”

The tirade continued. Kyle’s mind wandered.

Harriet had opened the windows on either end of the attic before she’d gone. Kyle stood in the gentle cross breeze, his shirt unbuttoned, his feet bare.

The attic apartment was long and narrow. With its sloped ceilings and painted wood floors, it was the kind of space his interior decorator mother would have a name for. There was a bed and dresser on one end, a kitchenette and living room on the other, and a crooked chimney dividing the two halves. Harriet had said Madeline Sullivan had lived here after college. She must have taken all her personal touches with her, because the apartment was shades of gray and splashed with yellow. Like Summer.

“Get your bony bleep on the next plane, and I’ll call Anderson and tell him you’ll be in touch.”

Oh. Grant was still talking.

The cagey newspaperman had given Kyle his first break fourteen years ago. Kyle had high regard for the man. There was a part of him screaming that Grant was right, that he was making a mistake or, as Grant put it, a mother-bleeping gargantuan bleep.

Kyle was too tired to care.

He took the verbal beating—he owed Grant that much—but he felt far removed from it. How long had it been, he wondered, since he’d felt anything? How long since his experiences had found their way through the top layers of his skin and moved him, touched him or just plain fazed him?

He was thirty-four years old and had become like one of those kids born without the sensor in their nerve endings that allowed them to feel pain. Without it, they didn’t understand the concept of fire or sharp objects or broken bones. It was a dangerous way to live because, without pain, joy had a lot in common with a shot of Novocain.

“You haven’t heard a bleeping word I’ve said, have you?”

Grant Oberlin was one of the few newsmen left willing to cut Kyle any slack. Maybe the only one. Kyle was numb to that, too.

He’d felt Summer’s kiss, though. He conjured up the sensation from memory, her soft lips, her warm breath, her pliant body. He wasn’t dead to everything.

“I heard you, Grant.” His voice could have been coming from anybody, anywhere. “I’m on the scent of something here.”

“Blonde, brunette or redhead?”

A year ago Kyle might have been able to rustle up a smile. “I have a hunch.”

“Yeah, well, your bleeping hunches hold as much water these days as a leaky bucket.” How nice that Grant was moving from gutter slang to cliché.

“I’m not sure I care if I fix the bucket, Grant.”

The blasé remark sparked a long litany of bleeps. “That’s the trouble with you bleeeep kids who come into this profession already rich. You’re not hungry enough.”

Kyle had heard it before. That no longer fazed him, either. “I’ll be in touch, Grant.” He disconnected in the middle of the lecture.

Squeezing the phone in his fist, he almost hurled it against the wall. He yanked his shirt off, balled it up, and flung that instead. With that, the adrenaline leaked out of him like a stuck balloon.

Oberlin was wrong. Kyle was hungry. Hungry for something out of his reach, hungry for oblivion.

Flying day and night, night and day, living in airports and hotel rooms while hunting down people who didn’t want to be found and sniffing out stories they didn’t want to tell, sifting through lies and searching for a grain of truth, then writing an accurate account of the events only to have it slashed in half to make it fit in a column between a political cartoon and a story about a heroic cat that found its way home over the Rockies had grown wearisome.

Who wouldn’t be tired?

Other than an occasional fluke, he’d lost the ability to sleep more than a few hours at a time. A friend of his who liked to play at psychiatry claimed his internal clock needed an adjustment. She said he needed to wake up and go to bed in the same time zone.

He needed to restore his reputation, too. And Kyle didn’t see that happening.

He went to the window Harriet had opened. From here he had a bird’s-eye view of the grounds and the river. In its day, rivers like this one had been an integral part of life in the Midwest. During the timber barons’ heyday, logs were floated on the river to thriving sawmills downstream. Harriet said a riverboat used to travel from Lansing to Grand Haven and back every day, carrying commuters and travelers before the railroads were built and highways cut through the forests, around lakes, swamps and dunes.

He wondered if the river minded that it was no longer of use to anybody. Kyle knew the feeling.

Rumor was he’d sold out an informant. The proper terminology was that he was being investigated for revealing a source. He hadn’t revealed anything, and he sure as hell hadn’t taken money for it. But he couldn’t prove it, and it had broken down the line of trust he’d worked so hard to build. And an investigative reporter without leads wasn’t an investigative reporter for long.

He probably should care about that.

He had it from a good source that he was burned out. He wasn’t burned out. And he wasn’t experiencing writer’s block, whatever the hell that was. He was just tired of fighting for meaningless front-page stories while the real news was given a two-inch spot after the obituaries.

Last night he’d slept more than he’d slept in weeks. It hadn’t lasted. Already fatigue was engulfing him.

He turned his back on the view and glanced around the room. Sloping ceilings, painted wood floors, a slip-covered sofa, mismatched lamps, and a bathroom too small to turn around in. He sank to the bed, because the accommodations didn’t matter, either.

He laid back. And was asleep before he’d closed his eyes.

Summer’s footsteps were quiet as she climbed the stairs to the third floor. At the top, she adjusted the stack of linens in her arms and finger combed her hair. She didn’t really expect to see Kyle. After all, it had been three hours since Harriet had returned after showing him to his room. Although Summer hadn’t heard the purling of the front door chimes or seen him leave through the kitchen where she’d been working this afternoon, it didn’t mean he hadn’t slipped out.

Just in case he was inside, she tapped lightly on the door. Placing her ear close, she listened. She didn’t hear music, voices or the TV. There was only silence.

She hadn’t spent much time in the third-floor apartment since Madeline had moved out two weeks ago. She’d given the place a thorough cleaning, but that was all she’d done. Since Kyle would need these towels before he could shower, and she wanted to make the bed up with fresh sheets, she knocked again. Her apartment off the kitchen and this one on the third floor were the only doors that required actual keys anymore. She had a spare key with her, but first she tried the knob. Surprisingly, it turned.

She’d have thought that somebody who’d lived in L.A. and New York and half a dozen other bustling cities would have locked up behind him. Obviously not.

She would just run in, put the towels in the bathroom, freshen up the bed, then leave. She pushed the door open and instantly felt the gentle breeze.

The natural light slanting through the small windows on either end of the space left the center portion in shadow. Her hand was on the light switch when she saw Kyle lying on the bed across the room.

Shirtless and barefoot, he was clad in low-slung jeans. His face was turned toward her, his lashes casting deeper shadows on his cheeks. She saw no movement whatsoever, no fluttering of his eyes, not even a rise and fall of his chest. She thought about the pallor she’d glimpsed before he came upstairs and wondered—

She didn’t like what she was thinking.

There were times in her life when she’d felt as if she were being steered toward a blind curve by an invisible hand pressed firmly against her back. Today she was being pulled toward it as if by an invisible cord.

As she crept steadily closer, she automatically categorized the space. She didn’t see Kyle’s duffel bag anywhere. His shirt lay half on, half off the chair beside the bed, his shoes lined up neatly beneath the window. The man was a study in contrasts. Somehow she’d expected that.

She hadn’t expected him to be dead to the world. Cringing at her terminology, she saw no liquor bottles or sleeping pills on the nightstand, or anything else that might have explained his comatose appearance.

She leaned slightly over him. Now that she was only a few feet away she could see his chest rise and fall shallowly. He was breathing. Thank heavens.

Okay, he was simply sound asleep. The voice of reason told her to stop looking at him, but my oh my oh my, she wasn’t listening.

A man’s chest really was his most attractive physical attribute. No man wanted to hear that, but it was true. Kyle’s chest was muscled, the skin taut and tan and darkened with a sparse mat of fine, brown hair. His ribs showed, suggesting a lanky, wiry build. His waist was lean, his abs tidily halved by a narrow line of hair that disappeared beneath the closure of his CK’s.

She had no idea how he kept in shape, but he was every woman’s fantasy and had a broad appeal that could have been an advertisement for anything from blue jeans to sports cars to European vacations. His legs were long and lean, too. Shame on her for allowing her eyes to linger at his fly.

Summer took a step away and let her gaze glide back along a safer path—waist, abs, ribs, chest, shoulders. His jaw was darkened with whisker stubble. His mouth was closed.

And his eyes were slightly open.

She froze like a deer trapped in the glare of headlights. He was looking at her.

Or was he?

She looked closer and realized she was wrong. His eyes were open a slit but his pupils weren’t focused. He was still sound asleep.

And she was getting out of here before he woke up and caught her watching him or worse. But what could be worse? He could accuse her of liking what she saw. She couldn’t have refuted it, for she evaded the truth when necessary, but she didn’t lie.

She scurried to the door on tiptoe, leaving the towels and sheets on the table where Kyle had left his keys. She backed out the door, her gaze on his prone form, an image that was going to be nearly impossible to get out of her mind.

Kyle was aware of two things when he wandered downstairs. His brain was fuzzy despite his quick shower, and he was starving.

He wasn’t wearing a watch, and he’d left his cell phone charging next to the stack of towels he’d discovered by his door, so he couldn’t be certain of the time. He’d missed lunch. From the look of the activity of other guests at the inn, their work was over for the day.

Two men in blue jeans and work boots stood on the portico, their voices carrying through the screen door. Three others sat around what appeared to be an old game table in the front room off the foyer. A kid who didn’t look old enough to shave was eating fast food in the dining room. The aroma of greasy fries had Kyle’s stomach growling all the way to the kitchen.

He hadn’t known what he was looking for until he saw her. Summer.

She stood at the counter, her back to him. She was whipping up something with a wire whisk, her actions slowing each time she glanced at the recipe book open in front of her. Her light brown hair swished between her shoulder blades and her hips swayed to and fro with every repetition of that metal whisk.

She must have had ultra-sensitive hearing, for she glanced over her shoulder. Stilling momentarily, she said, “You’re awake.”

He sauntered the rest of the way into the room, letting the door swing closed behind him. “Jet lag’s a b—a bear.”

“I see you found the bath towels,” she said, resuming whatever it was she was doing.

So, she’d noticed his damp hair. Obviously he wasn’t the only observant type in the room. He stopped at the kitchen table and said, “Until I spotted the towels, I thought I’d imagined seeing you in my room.”

She stopped stirring. “You saw me?”

“I’ve got to tell you, it was a relief finding evidence that you’d been there. Chronic insomnia and an insatiable hunger are bad enough. Hallucinations would have been a lot tougher to ignore.”

She smiled at his dry wit. He found he liked that, too.

“I thought you were dead,” she said, as she faced him. “Seriously, I’ve never seen anybody sleep so soundly. If you saw me deliver your towels, why didn’t you say something?”

“Like I said, I thought I was dreaming. I’d be happy to tell you about the rest of the dream.”

She rested her back against the counter, folded her arms and tilted her head slightly. He half expected a mild admonishment. He felt a sexual stirring again. Oh, he definitely wasn’t numb to everything.

“Harriet is the one who enjoys dirty stories,” she said quietly.

Did she say Harriet?

There was a nagging buzzing in the back of his mind. He looked from Summer’s hazel eyes to the clock on the stove. It was after seven.

Harriet.

He’d stood her up. Muttering Grant Oberlin’s favorite word under his breath, Kyle headed for the door.

“Take these,” Summer told him. She handed him a vase filled with fragrant lilacs. “Purple is Harriet’s favorite color.”

It was dark outside when Kyle parked at the curb in front of Madeline’s house on Floral Avenue later that night. He recognized Riley’s silver car in the driveway and also Summer’s blue sedan. Two other vehicles were there, too. It might have explained why every light in the house was on.

He climbed out of his Jeep, only to hesitate. Madeline’s doctor had prescribed bed rest, so it was unlikely there was a wild party going on, and yet for a few seconds he wondered if he should go in. Riley would have called Kyle a choice brotherly name if he knew Kyle was so much as considering the possibility that he was intruding.

Riley, Braden and Kyle had been raised by three very different mothers in three separate households. The boys had all wanted the same thing from their father: his attention, some fatherly advice and a good example. Brock Merrick hadn’t had it in him. He’d shared his immense wealth, and he’d loved his sons; he’d loved their mothers, too. The problem was, he’d loved a lot of women. By the time the boys were adults, they’d learned to accept his flaw. Ultimately, since they couldn’t get what they’d needed from him, they’d gotten it from each other. They’d also gotten black eyes and bruised egos, but that was part of growing up with brothers.

They’d vowed to be there for one another no matter what, no questions asked, and while they’d all been adults for a while now and didn’t see each other as often as they wanted to, being there for one another would never change. Feeling back in his game, Kyle walked to his brother’s door.

Riley answered Kyle’s knock and threw the door wide. He motioned him in as if Kyle were a lifeboat and Riley was swimming in shark-infested water. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Is something wrong?” Kyle asked.

This morning only Riley and his dog, Gulliver, had been home. Tonight, Kyle heard voices, several of them. All female.

“No,” Riley said. “On the other hand.” He paused again. “No, come on back.”

Kyle wondered, was there something wrong or not?

Just then a chorus of laughter carried through the house. One was throaty, one breathy, one a giggle. Again, all were feminine. Maybe there was a party going on after all.

Gulliver looked expectantly at Riley then waited for his master to nod before leading the way. The brown dog and Riley took the same route through Madeline’s house they’d taken this morning. They led Kyle past a narrow staircase in the living room then through a brightly lighted dining room and into the kitchen. From there they entered an arched hallway where Kyle saw a door that had been closed earlier.

They stopped outside a small bedroom with old-fashioned floral wallpaper and period furnishings. There was a mahogany desk and dresser on the far wall. On an adjacent wall was an antique four-poster bed. And on that four-poster were four women.

Kyle recognized Summer. She sat on the side closest to the door, her back to him, her body blocking the faces of two others. Kyle assumed the slight woman lying down was Madeline. He had no idea who the other two lined up against the headboard were. One had a notebook open on her lap, the other was gesturing wildly with her hands. Whatever she said caused laughter to erupt again.

Kyle and Riley shared a look, and Kyle quietly said, “This kind of thing would never happen between men.”

Riley’s sudden chuckle drew four sets of eyes. It occurred to Kyle that laughter looked good on Summer. Her cheeks were flushed, the curve of her lips enticing a second look. Rimmed by dark lashes, her eyes crinkled slightly at the corners. She was smiling, genuinely happy.

There was an innate elegance in the way she placed her teacup on its gilded saucer and set it on the nightstand before introducing him to her friends. Chelsea Reynolds was the curvy brunette, Abby Fitzpatrick the wispy-haired blonde.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said to each in turn.

“How did it go?” Summer asked him.

“Better than I expected.”

“Did she forgive you?”

“Who?” the petite blonde asked.

The brunette shushed her with a nudge.

“She made me work for it,” he said, his gaze steady on Summer. He and Summer were the only ones who knew they were referring to Harriet Ferris, and neither of them chose to explain to the others. “But eventually she warmed up,” Kyle said. “The flowers were a big help.”

“I’m glad.” She was looking at him as if she meant it.

Kyle wondered if anybody else in the room noticed that he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. He was interested. He was intrigued. And he hadn’t been either of those things in a while.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked her.

Summer shook her head. “Chelsea is Madeline’s wedding planner. She’s been prioritizing the most pressing details for the coming week.”

The blonde, Abby, said, “Summer’s going to be filling in for Madeline.”

“Is that right?” He smiled at Abby, but his gaze ultimately went to Summer again, for this was the first he’d heard that.

The weather had been unseasonably warm and humid today. It brought out the beast in a lot of people. As far as Kyle was concerned, the conditions were perfect for peeling off layers of clothing, for gliding a zipper down a slender back, for lowering the straps of a certain someone’s bra and for taking his time removing it.

That was a good place to halt his wayward thoughts. “If you have plans to make,” he said, looking directly at Summer, “I won’t keep you from them.” Even he could hear the huskiness in his voice. “I just stopped over to talk to Riley.” Kyle nodded at all four women. He smiled last at Summer.

He’d been accused of being vain a time or two. When he happened to look over his shoulder as he was leaving and caught four women looking at him, he knew why he’d never apologized for it.

From the doorway, he directed a question to the official wedding planner of the group. “I’m curious about something. What does a fill-in bride do?”

Chelsea held up the fingers of her right hand and began listing off responsibilities. “She hosts a bridal shower, samples wedding cake, chooses the menu, wears pink, the bride’s favorite color.” That was spoken with a shudder. “She helps the bride select the music, meets with the photographer and basically does whatever needs to be done, even if it means keeping the appointment with the seamstress for the final dress fitting, since, luckily, Summer and Madeline are the same size.”

Summer was shaking her head. “Trying on someone else’s wedding gown is bad luck.”

Obviously, this was an ongoing debate.

“Now you sound like Madeline,” the petite blonde said. “Usually she’s the one with all the uncanny intuitions and crazy premonitions.”

“I’m right here,” Madeline said. “And I can hear everything you’re saying, Abs.”

Kyle couldn’t help smiling. He would have enjoyed continuing along that vein, but he said, “And what does the fill-in groom do?” He’d already spoken to Riley about this, but his brother’s answer had been sketchy at best.

He doubted there were many women who could pull off appearing businesslike while sharing a bed with three other women, but Chelsea made an admirable attempt as she held up the fingers of her right hand again and prepared to count the ways Kyle could help this week. In the end, all her fingers remained straight.

“I suppose the groom’s responsibility during the week prior to the wedding is to support the bride.”

His gaze returned to Summer’s. In this instance he would be supporting the fill-in bride. “I can do that,” he said.

Her hair had fallen across her cheek. He would have liked to brush it away. As long as he was touching her, he would glide his finger to her chin, his thumb smoothing over her lower lip. He’d let his hand trail down her neck, stopping at the little vein pulsing in the delicate hollow.

Kyle felt the way he had earlier. Alive and aware. Especially aware. If he and Summer had been alone, there was no telling what he might have done. Instead, he reined in his hormones and smiled all around.

“It was nice meeting both of you,” he said to Abby and Chelsea. “Take care of yourself, Madeline.” At last he spoke to the woman he couldn’t seem to stop looking at. “Summer. I guess I’ll see you at the inn.”

Summer swore the temperature lowered ten degrees the minute the men left the room. She heard three collective sighs from the other women on the bed. Pleased to discover that her hand was still steady, she took a sip of tea.

“Holy moly,” Madeline declared.

“What was that?” Abby whispered.

“That,” Chelsea declared, “was one amazing example of pure masculine appeal.”

“That,” Summer qualified, “was Kyle Merrick being supportive.”

Madeline was looking at Summer, one eyebrow raised. With a point of her finger, Summer said, “Don’t start.”

Madeline grinned knowingly. And Summer thought it was going to be a long week.

“He wants you,” Chelsea said matter-of-factly.

“Film at eleven,” Abby piped in.

Arguing that they were wrong would have been futile, and Summer had a feeling she needed to save her strength. For a few moments, she’d almost forgotten that Kyle was in a profession she mistrusted. For those few blessed minutes, he’d simply been someone who slept too soundly and lost track of time and made her lose track of it, too. He was someone who took a bouquet of lilacs to a kind old lady, someone who brought out yearnings Summer hadn’t expected to feel. It was too late to chide herself, for Chelsea was right.