Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Copyright

“So, do you love Stevenor don’t you?”

“Of course I love him!”

“Well, that’s one of the things I came back to find out. Now that I know, I guess you and I have nothing more to say to each other.” Adam rose and zipped up his jacket. “Have a happy life, Georgia.”

“That’s just what you did when we broke up. Just turned and walked away without even kissing me goodbye!”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she’d changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin’s British arm, Mills & Boon. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and now lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

Three Times A Bride
Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

IF SHE hadn’t been so preoccupied with entering the security code and locking the door to the studio before she stepped out into the quiet square, she might have realized sooner that he was waiting just for her. But she was too busy making a mental checklist of all the things she had to do before her wedding day to give much attention to the street.

He emerged from the shadow of the building, a dark and stealthy smudge superimposed on the deeper blackness of the night. Georgia felt his presence before she saw him and knew the raw November wind had nothing to do with the chill of awareness that inched past the fur collar of her coat and shimmied the length of her spine.

Belatedly, she noticed that the moon had disappeared behind rain-filled clouds, offering him anonymity. But she, halfway between the building and her car parked at the curb, was fully revealed in the light spilling from the wrought-iron street lamp. With her high heels and slender build, she was unmistakably a woman, unmistakably alone.

She was not afraid, however. Mildly curious, perhaps, but definitely not afraid. She refused to admit to such a possibility. To do so would negate everything she’d struggled to achieve in the last fifteen months. Like passion and rage and wild, obsessive love, fear shredded a person’s soul beyond redemption.

She knew. She was a survivor—but only just, and only because she had divorced herself, firmly and irrevocably, from all those raw emotions capable of inflicting pain with supreme indifference to a person’s capacity to bear it.

Refusing to acknowledge him by so much as a glance, she continued toward her car. Whoever he was, the man could not touch her. She was too well-defended, cocooned in the pleasant, fuzzy limbo she had built around herself. If he was a panhandler, he would be very disappointed to learn that she had only about ten dollars in her purse. If he was a mugger after her personal jewelry, he’d get her engagement ring, which was insured. But he could not touch her. Nothing could violate her inner self like that, not anymore.

Or so she believed. But five yards from her car, he closed in. She could hear the rustle of his clothing, see the condensed puff of his breath.

It was not his hand reaching out to touch her, or the feel of his fingers closing softly around the nape of her neck that taught her differently. It was the supernatural premonition, as his aura collided with hers, that sent the terror shooting through her veins.

Her breath stopped and so did her heart, albeit briefly. She opened her mouth, praying for the wherewithal to cry for help.

And a voice from the grave said softly, “Don’t scream, sweet pea. It’s just me.”

CHAPTER ONE

…THEY HAD MET three years before, at the Dog Days of August Dance at the Riverside Club. He’d looked up as she came in from the terrace, brought his smoky-blue gaze to bear on her, and suddenly those corny lyrics from South Pacific had made perfect sense. He was a stranger, lounging with narrow-hipped grace against the bar on the other side of the room, chatting with Steven Drake, the most eligible bachelor in town, but when he’d seen Georgia, he’d let the conversation lapse, straightened to his full height, and shrugged his black, open-necked shirt into place on his fabulous shoulders.

Just then, the band switched from a classic 1950’s foxtrot to the pulsing beat of Time of Your Life from Dirty Dancing, and she’d known with fatal certainty that he was going to saunter over, take her hand, and lead her out onto the floor. And that the way he’d dance with her would set staid old Piper Landing on its ear, and that she’d never be the same again.

“How could you?” her sister, Samantha, had squawked the next day.“Everybody’s talking about the exhibition you made of yourself with the grandson of that crazy old hippie, Bev Walsh.”

“Hardly a hippie, dear,” their mother had said with somewhat less vehemence, “But Bohemian, certainly, and eccentric, too. Definitely not someone we care to cultivate.”

It couldn’t have mattered less to Georgia if he’d been related to Lucrezia Borgia. They’d spent the rest of that first evening together, danced—disgracefully, no doubt— until dawn, barely been able to tear themselves away from each other, and continued to shock local society for the remainder of the time he was in town.

It had been instant romance, complete with every timeless cliche, the only flaw being that he belonged to the United States Air Force and was on leave in Piper Landing for only a week or two.

“You cannot possibly intend to pursue this relationship?” her mother had gasped when Georgia made it plain that her affair with the dashing Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot was no passing fancy.“Dear Heaven, Georgia, isn’t it time you settled down and remembered who you are?”

That had been yet one more round in an ongoing volley of disapproval over the fact that Georgia had turned up her nose at the chance of a university education, and opted instead to don a leather apron and learn the jewelry business from the bottom up.

“Chamberlaines do not serve apprenticeships,” her mother had decreed, upon learning that, at eighteen, her eldest daughter had signed over the next several years of her life to Giovanni Bartoli, the famous designer who worked in Vancouver.

When her father heard she was traveling to places like Colombia, Brazil, South Africa and Thailand in pursuit of her career, he’d been sure she’d end up at the mercy of rebels or bandits or worse. But Georgia had thrived on the experience. Up until the day she’d met Adam, the biggest thrill of her life had been her first solo trip to the diamond exchange in Amsterdam.

“Get married?” she’d scoffed when her parents suggested that, at the ripe old age of twenty-six and with her apprenticeship successfully concluded, she might want to give the matter some thought.“Not likely! I value my independence too much.”

“Get married?” her mother had gasped, practically falling victim to a stroke when, a mere two years later, Georgia had announced that she and Adam were engaged.“To that man? You can’t be serious, my dear!”

But Georgia had never been more serious in her life, nor had she ever been happier. Sadly, it had all been too good—too volatile—to last.

The shrill summons of the telephone brought her bolt upright from what more properly resembled exhausted collapse than sleep. Groping for the receiver, Georgia squinted blearily at it. Awash with a number of conflicting emotions, she couldn’t drum up her usual courteous greeting and managed only to croak furtively, “Yes?”

Her mother’s normally well-modulated voice cut the air with the staccato urgency of rifle fire.“Georgia? You’re not ill, are you? Ye gods, don’t tell me you’ve come down with something at this late date! Georgia, are you still there? Why don’t you say something?”

“I’m here, Mother,” Georgia managed, emotions still churning.

“You are ill,” Natalie accused with woeful certainty.“Oh, Georgia, how could you?”

Georgia would have liked to tell her mother not to get herself into a state but that would have been misleading since, when she heard the news, the mother of the bride would have every reason to be very upset indeed. So Georgia offered a half-truth in the hope that it might buy her a little time.“I’m not ill, Mother.”

“Well, you sound like the wrath of God.”

“Probably because I’m still half asleep.”

“Why? It’s almost eight and you never sleep in.”

“I did today, Mother. I had a restless night.”

“Oh, well, that explains it.” Natalie’s sigh was full of relief.“Pre-wedding nerves, dear. All brides get them.”

Not like mine, Georgia could have told her, but decided discretion was the better part of valor at this hour of the morning. She needed to fortify herself with a dose of good strong coffee before she relayed to her mother news that threatened to sabotage yet another wedding planned on her behalf.“I’ve got a client coming in at ten, Mother, and I really ought to get a move on, so unless there’s something in particular you wanted to talk about…?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until lunch, dear.”

“Lunch?” Georgia’s stomach rolled over in protest at the mere thought.

“My goodness, Georgia, you really are a nervous bride.” Her mother’s laughter trilled merrily down the line.“We made the date last week, remember? One o’clock at the Club, just you, me and Samantha, to go over a few last details. We’ll pick you up at the studio about half past twelve. Don’t keep us waiting.”

The abrupt click as the line went dead lent an immediacy to the request that propelled Georgia into action as little else could have done. In her present state, she was in no condition to see anyone, least of all her highly strung, socially correct mother and sister. She needed to pull herself together, fast.

Reeling a little, she sidled past the full-length mirror on her closet door, trying to ignore its mocking reflection of her hollow-eyed face, and headed for the bathroom. Was it possible, she wondered, that if she subjected herself to the pulsing force of the hottest water skin and bone could tolerate, what had happened last night might dissipate into steam and turn out to be nothing more than a very bad dream?

Certainly, it had all the earmarks of make-believe. After all, how many other women found themselves face to face with an ex-fiance who, believed dead for over a year, showed up very much alive two weeks before his one-time bride’s marriage to his best friend? And she had fainted dead away at the sight of the apparition, could still feel the lump on her head from when she’d keeled over, which was enough to make anyone hallucinate a little.

But could she possibly have imagined the sound of that voice with its lazy American drawl, or the feel of those arms that had scooped her up and bundled her into the passenger seat of her car? Could anyone other than the real Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot, retired-supposedly—U.S. Air Force, have driven her home with such efficient dispatch?

No. That had been no passing stranger playing Good Samaritan. That had been Adam, the man who, in choosing career over love, had driven her to cancel their wedding fifteen months ago and made her the pitied topic of conversation at every dinner party in Piper Landing for most of the time since. And when her mother found out that he was alive and about to wreak havoc in her life a second time, all hell would break loose.

Because havoc he would indeed wreak. He’d made that much plain during the time it had taken him to deposit her, weak-kneed, on her doorstep, last night.

“I realize, Georgia,” he’d murmured wryly, casting her a sideways glance as he followed her directions to the house she now lived in, “that the notion of creeping up on you unannounced tonight might have been illconceived on my part and that you’re understandably shocked, but I can’t say I’m especially flattered by your less-than-enthusiastic reaction at seeing me again.”

“I’m having trouble believing my eyes,” she’d quavered, with a feeble lack of originality.“You don’t seem real.”

“Oh, I’m real enough,” he’d assured her, a trace of his old sexy grin gleaming in the streetlights of Piper Landing’s tree-lined crescents, “and if it’s proof you’re looking for, this ought to do it.”

And he’d clamped a warm, very alive and very possessive hand on her knee. She’d shied away from the contact and almost squealed with fright.

He’d noticed. He’d withdrawn his hand and when he spoke again, that sexy drawl had taken on a distinctly caustic edge.“Sorry you’re not happier to see me,” he said.

“I don’t quite know what you expect me to say,” she’d replied defensively.

“How about, ‘Gee, honey, what took you so long to show up?’ Or, ‘What’s a nice ghost like you doing in a town like this?’"

“Are you a ghost?” she’d whispered, with a mixture of dread and hope.

“Not on your life, Georgia. I’m the real thing, and turning your lovely face away won’t make me disappear, no matter how much you might wish it would.”

Nor had it. He’d shifted in the driver’s seat, angling himself so that he could watch her and the road at the same time. Steering with casual, one-handed skill, he’d pushed back a lock of her blond hair and secured it behind her ear, leaving her profile exposed and vulnerable.“You’ve grown your hair long,” he remarked.

“Not long,” she’d muttered, swinging her head away.“Just longer than I used to wear it.”

“It changes you, makes you less…vibrant.”

She’d felt his gaze on her, sharply observant.“Turn left at the next intersection,” she said, “and keep your eyes on the road. I don’t want to end up in the ditch.”

But what she really meant was, Stop trying to look inside me. There’s nothing there anymore.

It was true. Losing him had left her heart so impoverished it could barely function. Oh, it pumped out its daily quota of blood all right, but the real heart was gone and left a space where the true love of her life had once lived.

“This is a far cry from your old place,” he’d said, slowing down for the approach to her house.“Practically country, from the looks of it. What made you decide to move out of the apartment?”

She didn’t bother explaining that she’d wanted to leave behind everything associated with him because remembering was too painful. Instead, she leapt from the car as fast as her still-trembling legs could carry her, anxious to put as much distance between him and her as possible.

He’d sensed her aversion and had dropped her car keys into her hand with curt formality.“I know we didn’t part on the most loving of terms,” he said, “but I had hoped you’d since found it in your jealous, insecure little heart to get over your pique. Apparently I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” she’d said, aware that the words were hopelessly inadequate.“I’m too dazed to know how I feel or what I should be saying.”

“So it seems.” He’d shrugged and looked around at her house and its winter-bare garden that sloped down to the river.“Do you mind phoning for a taxi? I’m not sure where we are exactly, but I’d guess it’s a bit too far for me to walk back to Bev’s place.”

“Of course. Would you…do you want to wait inside?”

His gaze had zeroed in on her again with brutal candor.“Yes. I want to see where you live, where you sleep, what you wear in bed, and if you keep my picture on your nightstand.”

“Oh…!” She’d quailed at the prospect and with the disquieting insight of an old lover, he’d detected her dismay.

In that bossy way of his that before had always invited her defiance, he’d continued, “But I’ll wait to be invited. Get inside, for Pete’s sake, and pour yourself a stiff drink. You look as if you could use one. I’ll walk back to the service station we passed a mile or so down the road, and call for a taxi from there. We can put off the glad reunion until another time.”

She’d been happy to comply.“Thank you!”

The heartfelt relief in her response had sent a grimace skittering over his features.“I said ‘put off’, sweet pea, not ‘forget’. You will be seeing me again. We have so much news to catch up on.”

Then he’d turned and marched down her driveway, the firm thud of his stride gradually diminishing into silence.

If only he’d chosen to disappear in a puff of smoke…!

Stepping out of the shower, Georgia swathed her hair in a towel and checked the clock on the wall. Eight twenty-five. Four hours, give or take a few minutes, before she met her mother and sister. Four hours in which to digest the reality of Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot’s resurrection from the dead and make her peace with it.

She had thought herself safe from such upheaval. Had spun a cocoon around herself so intricately woven that she’d been sure nothing could threaten it. Not passion, or hate; not rage, or joy. Just calm affection, subdued pleasure, serene indifference.

She had turned to Steven, her new house, her work-and yes, the thousand and one busy things associated with a wedding that, this time, her family wholeheartedly approved of—hoping these things would be enough to compensate for what she had lost.

Beverley Walsh, Adam’s grandmother, had tried to warn her, the day they’d accidentally met downtown about six months after Adam had supposedly died.“It takes two years, foolish child,” she’d said, referring to the fact that Georgia and Steven were spending a lot of time together.“After that, although you won’t have forgotten your first love, you will have accepted its loss. Then, and not before, will you be ready to start over with someone else.”

Georgia hadn’t been able to wait that long; the pain was too crushing, the guilt too severe. It wasn’t just the fact of Adam’s death, it was knowing she’d sent him to it.

She’d been with him, the day he received the call from his C.O. asking him to postpone his retirement for an extra two months, “just long enough to put this prototype fighter jet through its paces and identify the bugs bothering our other pilots. You can spare me that, can’t you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t sir. I’m getting married in six weeks,” Adam had said, but Georgia had seen the flare of excitement in his eyes, the sudden longing he’d tried to hide, and she’d known that, if it had been up to him alone, he’d have snatched at this last chance to fly the most exciting fighter aircraft yet to leave the drawing boards.

“I think you should go,” she’d said, after he’d hung up the phone.

“No. All that’s behind me.” He’d tried to sound accepting but she’d heard only the regret, the sudden resurgence of uncertainty that had dogged the months before he’d finally reconciled himself to giving up military life and settling down as a civilian.

Sensing this, and because she loved him, she had offered him an escape, manufacturing a reason that had everything to do with what she thought he needed, at the cost of what she desperately wanted: a man she adored for her husband—and a father for the child he did not know she had conceived.

“I’m not sure getting married is such a good idea,” she’d said, giving voice to the most barefaced untruth of her life.“I think a cooling-off period might be very good for us.”

“Haveyou lost your mind?” he’d said.“What about the three hundred guests your mother had to invite to the wedding? What about the dress and the veil and all that other paraphernalia?”

“What about the things that really matter to us?” she’d countered, and because they’d once been valid, she was able, with a conviction that left him stunned and angry, to rattle off all the reasons for not going ahead with their wedding.

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t love me, Georgia?” he’d asked at last.

To deny that was more lie than she could bring herself to utter.“No—just that I’m not sure either of us loves the other enough to give up our freedom. Let’s put the wedding on hold for now and see how we feel when you get back.”

It had been a not unreasonable gamble, she’d thought at the time. She’d found out only the day before that she was five weeks pregnant. Once his two month term was up, they’d still have plenty of time to get married before the baby was born.

“I thought we’d decided we couldn’t be happy away from each other, Georgia,” he’d said, but although his voice had been somber, his eyes had betrayed him. He was behaving like a gentleman when all he really wanted was to be an officer on active duty again.

She hadn’t been able to bear it.“Oh, please!” she’d cried.“Just go, and stop pretending it’s not what you want, too.”

Some of the light had gone out of his eyes at that.“Since you put it so kindly, maybe I will.”

“Terrific!” She’d wrenched his ring from her finger and flung it at him.“There, now it’s official. The engagement’s off until you finally decide you can live without the Air Force. Go and fly your damned toy. Fly it off the edge of the earth if it pleases you!”

He’d caught the ring, deftly tossed it in the air like a coin, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt.“Okay,” he’d said flatly.

Then he’d done as she’d asked. Without a touch, a kiss, or another word, he’d turned and left her.

In the dreadful days that followed, she had not known how she would endure the rest of her life without him. But now that he was alive after all, she could have outlasted eternity before having to face him again.

She was not granted more than two hours. Shortly after her ten o’clock clients left the studio, the buzzer at the front entrance sounded. When she peered through the burglar-proof glass double doors fronting onto the street, Adam stood on the other side. Clad in narrow navy jeans, a royal blue turtleneck sweater and a doeskin suede jacket, he looked so thoroughly gorgeous that, for a very little while, all the problems and complications inherent in his reappearance took second place to the sheer miracle and pleasure of being able to look at him again.

He had changed. Was thinner, cut closer to the bone, without sacrificing any of that startling male beauty that had first drawn her to him. His cheekbones carved a more austere angle beneath the smooth, slightly tanned skin, and in the revealing light of day she noticed that his curly black hair was now touched with gray at the temples. His mouth, that used to laugh so easily and often, assumed a severity that was new. But his heavily lashed eyes were exactly as she remembered them, smoky blue and direct, even though the lines fanning from the outer corners were etched more deeply.

A feeling like nothing she’d ever known rolled over Georgia, much like a door that had been firmly locked and bolted suddenly creaking ajar and threatening to release all kinds of demons. It left her panic-stricken.“What do you want?” she asked through the intercom.

“To talk to you, obviously,” Adam replied grimly, “though not with me standing out here on the street for all and sundry to hear, so you might as well let me in. You and I do, after all, have rather a lot to say to one another, don’t you think? And just because I was gentleman enough last night not to push you into a mutual expose of everything that’s befallen us since the last time we saw each other doesn’t mean I’m willing to put it off indefinitely.”

She could have made excuses; said she had a dental appointment in another country or something, but what was the point? Sooner or later, she’d have to deal with him and time wasn’t exactly on her side.

“Some fancy system you’ve got here,” he observed as the electronic device that protected her inventory admitted him through the outer door and then the inner.“When did you become so safety-conscious?”

She blushed a little at the lightly sugared scorn underlying his words.“When it was pointed out to me that my stock makes me a target for theft on a grand scale. Taking precautions seemed the safe and sensible thing to do.”

“Safe and sensible? The Georgia I used to know never concerned herself with being either safe or sensible.”

“She changed in the months after…”

“I died?” He stepped closer, his smile so reminiscent of his old sweet smile that she almost mistook it for the real thing. Almost.“It’s okay, sweet pea,” he assured her dryly.“You can say it.”

An absurd, unreasonable guilt made her hide her left hand behind her back.“It’s not okay,” she blurted out, retreating.“And you can’t call me ‘sweet pea’, not anymore.”

“Why not?” His smile didn’t slip an inch but she realized now what made it different. It did not touch those blue eyes whose gaze dissected her with such acute, unwavering interest.

“Because…” She faltered, the words damming up for all that she wished she could let them spill out and be over with.

“Because you’re wearing another man’s ring?” He nodded calmly at her startled gasp, and unzipped his suede jacket as if this were just another in a long list of social calls he had to make that day.“Yes, I know. You’re engaged to my best friend, Steven.”

“Who—how did you…?”

“Beverley told me. Who else?”

Georgia sagged against the desk at her back.“Of course. I should have known.”

Adam lifted his shoulders disbelievingly.“Did you expect her to keep quiet about it?” he asked, and she realized that, beneath his composed facade, disgust warred with cold anger.“She’s my grandmother, and very loyal to those she loves—unlike some I could name.”

“I bet she couldn’t wait to tell you.”

He continued to pin Georgia in that sharp, unforgiving gaze.“She waited over a year. Nearly fifteen months, to be exact, during which time she mourned my apparent death. How did you spend the time, Georgia, my love? Running want ads in the Lonely Hearts column of the Piper Landing Daily News? How many poor slobs did you reject before you decided to save yourself a lot of bother and settle for good old Steven, who was so conveniently handy once I’d vacated the scene?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, flushing at the brazen contempt in his tone.“I didn’t date anyone, not even Steven at first. But you and he had been friends for years, and he was the only one who really understood what I went through when you—when I thought you were…dead.”

“You’re wrong. He wasn’t the only one. Beverley would have understood, if you’d cared to give her the chance to share whatever small portion of grief you decided I deserved.”

There were many things Georgia could have said in retaliation, among them that Beverley Walsh hadn’t particularly wanted to share her grandson in life and had been damned if she’d allow anyone to intrude on her sorrow at his death; or that Georgia’s own anguish had been so keen that, for a while, it had taken all her strength to face each unrelenting day; or that many had been the time that she’d wished for nothing but an end to her own miserable, guilt-ridden existence, so empty and pointless had it seemed without Adam. But his greatest misconception—that she’d turned easily to another man—was the one she felt most compelled to address.

“Steven was never more your friend than in the days and weeks after you…disappeared. I think I would have died without him. He gave me back my sanity when I thought I’d lost it forever. He helped me to accept what I couldn’t change and would never understand. And he asked for nothing in return except the solace of sharing memories of you. It’s only over the last four or five months that we’ve…grown closer.”

“And how close is that, Georgia?” Adam leaned against a glass presentation cabinet with careless disregard for its fragility.“Close enough that he makes you forget the times you made love with me? Close enough that you cry out his name instead of mine when the passion takes hold? Close enough—”

“Stop it!” Georgia clapped her hands to her ears, her earlier flush a pale imitation of the real thing as a wave of embarrassment and indignation left her face flaming.“It’s no longer any of your business!”

“I guess not.” His deceptively lazy gaze missed nothing as it swept over the studio’s costly display of jewelry before finally coming to rest on her. He stared insolently at her full-skirted silk and cashmere suit, the cameo brooch at her throat, the baroque pearl studs in her ears. And last of all, he looked long and hard at the two carat diamond solitaire engagement ring on her finger.“I guess life goes on, no matter what. Things change, people change. For a thirty-year-old woman, you’ve achieved impressive success, Georgia. Grief has worked wonders on you.”

She rounded on him, stung.“How dare you cheapen how I felt and turn it into something contemptible and shallow?”

He shrugged, his shoulders lifting easily under the supple doeskin jacket.“Those are your words, sweet pea, not mine,” he pointed out softly.

“But you’re thinking them,” she cried, “and you have no right. You don’t know the half of what I went through after you disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“No, I don’t,” he said, “any more than you know what actually happened to me. One of the reasons I’m here now is that I think we’re both entitled to some enlightenment. But let’s strike a deal: I won’t ask your forgiveness for my sins of omission, if you won’t ask mine for yours of commission.”

“I don’t need your forgiveness because I haven’t done a damned thing wrong,” she shot back, an anger she’d almost forgotten sparking in response to his. Wasn’t this how it had always been between them? Raging passion, or raging fury? Sudden disagreements that erupted into flaming rows, followed by reconciliations whose intensity left them both drained and exhausted?

She sank into the chair behind her desk, the fight seeping out of her.“You know, we never would have made a go of marriage,” she said wearily.“We’re too much alike, both strong-willed—”

“I’m strong-willed,” Adam contradicted. “You’re just willful. Your trouble is, you were indulged as a child and grew up believing you had a right to whatever your little heart desired. It probably made perfect sense that, when you realized you’d made a mistake in dismissing one potential marriage candidate, you should simply turn around and snag the first available man to take his place.”

“Is that your explanation of why you were so quick to accept the decision to end our engagement?” she countered.“To avoid being chained to such a spoiled brat for the rest of your life?”

“Hardly!” He pushed himself away from the glass cabinet and she thought, as he crossed over to sit in a chair facing hers, that he limped a little.“If I’d wanted out of our engagement, I’d have said so up-front. Your family might have programmed you to believe it was your social duty to stop tongues wagging all over town by marrying the man you were sleeping with, but they never carried that much clout with me.”

Privately, Georgia felt her family ran a poor second to his grandmother when it came to trying to manipulate other people’s lives but she wasn’t about to get sidetracked by the issue now. She was, however, forced to accept the truth of the rest of his statement. Whatever else his faults, Adam Cabot had never been a coward.

“Why don’t you stop trying to outdo yourself in insults and tell me what happened to you?” she said.“Where did you disappear to for so long, and why have you shown up now, when it’s too late for either of us to go back and change things?”

“To answer your last question first, because—silly me!—I thought you might be pleased to discover I’m alive. And because I thought you deserved to hear the news from me before it became common knowledge all over town. As for the rest, official reports to the contrary, I didn’t go down with my aircraft. I managed to eject and bail out, got swept miles off course by a howling blizzard, and ended up breaking a number of bones and doing various other bodily damage when I landed in the frozen wastes of the sub-Arctic. That I didn’t get eaten alive by polar bears or die from exposure is entirely due to the kindly intercession of a band of nomadic Inuit hunters who, for reasons that escape me, find traipsing over the Polar Ice Cap a stimulating winter pastime.”

He made it sound so uttery reasonable and ordinary that she knew he was leaving out a good deal more than he was telling.“That might have kept you away for a few weeks, Adam, but it hardly explains your being gone fifteen months.”

He shrugged.“Some things take time,” he said ambiguously.“And considering the way we parted, you can’t blame me for not being in too much of a hurry to get back to you.”

Any sympathy she might have felt for him evaporated at that.“You’re the one who put our future together in jeopardy and allowed your ego to lure you out of retirement for one last chance at flying glory.”

“And you’re the one who threw my ring in my face and told me to take a hike. ‘Fly off the edge of the earth, for all I care,’ you said. Well, I did the next second-best thing, sweet pea.”

“You know I didn’t really mean that!” Georgia’s voice faltered for a moment as other memories of that last time together came surging back, but she’d be damned if she’d let them overwhelm her. She’d done all the crying she was going to do over this particular tragedy.“In case you’ve forgotten, Adam, we both said harsh things to each other. I called you selfish and chauvinistic and a lot of other things I’m ashamed to recall.”

“And I accused you of being cold and ambitious, which was equally unkind and untrue. It was your independence, the fact that you were as much a rebel as I was, that first attracted me to you.”

His voice was grave and sincere enough to soften granite. If she let him, he’d throw her life into turmoil a second time and hurt innocent bystanders in the process. Under cover of the desk, she dug her finger nails into the palms of her hands and plowed through the rest of what she had to say.“I’m not a rebel anymore, Adam. Ten days after you left, a uniformed stranger showed up at my door and told me that pieces of your precious fighter jet had been found scattered over miles but that there was no sign and absolutely no chance that you had survived. In the space of five minutes my world collapsed and nothing has been the same since, especially not me.”

“I agree. The Georgia I used to know would never have made such a remarkable recovery from grief that she’d be ready to marry someone else so soon.”

“Recovery?” Her voice cracked with emotion and she felt the tears pricking behind her eyes despite her most stringent effort to keep them in check.“I fell apart almost literally! I didn’t sleep for weeks, didn’t want to eat or go out of the apartment. I wished I had died with you, Adam, because I’d lost everything that truly mattered to me.”

More, in fact, than you can begin to guess!

She squeezed her eyes shut, even though doing so meant the tears escaped and drizzled down her face.“I felt guilty. And angry. And alone.”

“You don’t know the first thing about being alone. You had your family.”

“Who were no help at all. My mother could scarcely contain her relief at being spared having you for a sonin-law.” Georgia swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, angry and appalled at the ease with which the misery was finding chinks in her armor.

Adam leaned over, plucked a tissue from the box on the corner of her desk, and passed it to her.“But your father must have cared. He was never mean-spirited like that.”

“He was sympathetic but…”

“Too henpecked to dare take a stand.” Adam nodded.“Yeah, I’d forgotten how thoroughly your mother and sister keep poor old Arthur in line.”

“Precisely.” She drew in a deep breath and managed to get herself under control again.“And that’s when I found out what a real friend Steven was.”

“Well, good old Steven,” Adam jeered softly.

“He saved my life,” Georgia shot back, declining to mention that it was thanks to Steven that she hadn’t hemorrhaged to death when she’d miscarried Adam’s baby in the kitchen of her apartment.“If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t know how I would have gone on. I felt responsible for what had happened to you.”

“Rubbish!” Adam scoffed.“The prototype’s malfunction had nothing at all to do with you.”

“But I didn’t know that. I nursed the idea that you’d been too preoccupied over our disagreement to pay proper attention to what you were doing. The guilt festered, made more complicated by the reaction of everyone I met. Pity is a corrosive thing when it’s flung in your face every time you turn around. Steven saved my sanity.”

“So what are you telling me?” Adam wanted to know.“That you’re marrying him out of gratitude? That it’s no great love affair?”

They were the same questions that had kept her awake most of last night.“It’s not quite that simple,” she wailed.

“It is to me,” Adam said bluntly.“When a man finds himself staring death in the face, things become very simple. It’s a case of fight or go under. So do you love Steven, or don’t you?”

“Of course I love him!”

“Well, that’s one of the things I came back to find out. Now that I know, I guess you and I have nothing more to say to each other.” He rose and zipped up his jacket.“Have a happy life, Georgia,” he said, and turned away.

Eyes suddenly swimming again, she watched as he covered the distance to the front doors. Sometimes, it seemed that was what she remembered most vividly of all their times together: her watching as he walked away from her. And every time, it broke her heart all over again.

Let him go! the voice of sanity begged. Do it just one more time and you’ll never have to do it again.

Yes, she thought.

And promptly accused, in a woebegone little voice, “That’s what you did after we broke up, too. Just turned and walked away without even kissing me goodbye.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE STOPPED and turned back to face her. He looked at her long and thoughtfuly then, as he retraced his steps, said with ominous intent, “Did I really? Well, that’s one mistake I certainly don’t have to repeat.”

Georgia’s heart flapped around behind her ribs like a chicken trying to save its neck from the hatchet but Adam didn’t care. He just kept moving until he loomed no more than twelve inches from where she stood rooted to the plush blue carpet under her feet.

Trapped by the desk behind her and the reckless words she’d flung at him, she did the only thing she could without losing what was left of her pride. She tilted her head to one side and with regal condescension, offered him her cheek.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, capturing her face in cool fingers and turning it back toward him and bending his head to hers.“Not like that at all. Like this.”

As soon as he touched her, she fell apart. A soft roaring filled her mind, dimming her hearing and clouding her vision. Her legs buckled, sending her reeling into him for support. She grabbed at him blindly, intending only to anchor herself upright, and instead found herself smoothing her hands over his face in tactile renewal of its beauty.

His mouth lowered. She felt the warm drift of his breath against her lips. And then, in excruciating slow motion, he kissed her.

It wasn’t aggressive, as kisses between a man and a woman often were. There was no audacity, no thrusting invasion of privacy. He simply settled his lips on hers and let them rest there. Yet, for all that, it was a lover’s kiss, delicately, temptingly erotic. A hothouse flower on the brink of bursting into fragrant bloom—or more accurately, an echo so painfully sweet of a splendor she’d once known that she couldn’t bear to let it end.

She pressed herself to him, winding her arms around his neck and softening her mouth in acquiescence. A murmur escaped her—a plea for just a little more, just a little longer—soft enough that only he could hear it, yet able to deafen completely all those parts of her brain that were trying so hard to scream out a warning.

The hopeless, helpless longings she’d stored away, having found a crack through which to escape, took full advantage but she was too enthralled to notice. All she cared about was that Adam responded to her overtures by sliding his arms tightly around her and directing the seductive finesse he’d always employed so well to a different turn, one no longer defined by propriety.

His mouth grew bold, investigative, cajoling. As if she weren’t willing enough to surrender to its assault! He tested her lips, tasted them and, when they opened to him, accepted the implicit surrender they offered.

At least, she thought he did. Was so convinced, in fact, that it took a while for her to comprehend that he was declining after all. Not that he was so ungallant as to shove her away and remind her that she was supposed to be engaged to another man. He merely ended things. Slowly, regretfully even, but quite firmly, leaving her no choice but to abide by his refusal.

“Will that suffice?” he asked.

She wrapped her arms around her waist as the cool aftermath of his rejection infiltrated every pore of her skin to lay an icy wreath around her heart. Drawing in a great shuddering breath, she managed to nod.“Yes,” she said.

He prepared to leave again and had one foot out the door before he tossed a final word over his shoulder.“Liar,” he said.

Adam strode across the sidewalk and out into the rainslick road, narrowly missing being hit by a van that turned the corner too quickly. He barely noticed. It wasn’t his time to die; he’d already proved that with the business up north a year ago. And he had weightier things on his mind right now, like the lingering feel of Georgia in his arms, and the fact that some parts of him hadn’t been the least bit impaired by crash-landing in the frozen tundra of the Arctic.

“Hah,” he muttered with fake insouciance to the bronze statue of Eugene Piper that presided over the little public garden in the middle of the square, “that’ll teach her!”

But it had taught him, too—a lesson he’d briefly been disposed to forget: she was about to marry another man. While he’d been recovering from multiple fractures of the thigh, a dislocated shoulder and four broken ribs, not to mention a coma brought on by trauma to the brain and major bruising of just about every internal organ he owned, she’d been casting her net at Steven Drake.

The woman to whom he’d given his heart and his ring, and for whom he’d been willing to give up a career that he’d truly loved, had taken his apparent death in stride and gone ahead with her life without missing a beat. So what did he think he was doing, getting himself all fired up over a kiss when he ought to be congratulating himself on his lucky escape?

“Not that I expected her to spend the rest of her life alone, draped in widow’s weeds and burning a candle under my photo, you understand,” he grumbled to Eugene.“But couldn’t she have waited a decent interval? And chosen to look a bit further afield than my best friend?”

Eugene stared sightlessly ahead, rain dripping off his face mournfully. Some best friend, Adam, old buddy!

“I don’t blame him,” Adam said defensively.“He’s a nice guy who didn’t see what was headed his way until it was too late to duck. And at least he didn’t sweep me under the carpet the way she did. He showed some sort of conscience about the whole affair.”

In fact, from what Beverley had said, Steven had done a lot more than that. During the weeks immediately following the jet’s disastrous test flight, he’d been a frequent visitor at her house. He’d taken time out from consoling the bereaved fiancée to offer comfort to an opinionated, autocratic old lady who didn’t have another soul in the world who really gave a damn about her once her grandson had apparently shuffled off.

“He actually asked my permission to court that foolish child,” Beverley had told Adam, stemming her pleasure in his survival long enough to allude to Georgia with the customary disdain she reserved for all the Chamberlaines.“Under the circumstances I gave him my blessing and wished him luck. Heaven knows he’s going to need it, marrying into that straitlaced lot.”

She’d been referring, of course, to the long-standing feud between the Walshes and the Chamberlaines, two of Piper Landing’s founding families. It went back two generations, to the time when his maternal grandfather, Simon, had dumped Georgia’s paternal grandmother, Celeste, to marry Beverley. Well, the tables had been turned now, with a vengeance!

“In the long run it’s probably just as well that things fell apart between Georgia and me,” Adam confided to Eugene.“Hell, there’s enough grief in the world without a man finding himself caught in the crossfire between warring in-laws, wouldn’t you say?”

Although Eugene continued to stare commiseratingly into space, a young woman pushing a baby carriage through the little park heard Adam muttering to himself, flung him a startled glance, and gave him a wide berth.

Just then, the Courthouse clock struck the quarter hour, reminding him that he was taking Beverley to lunch at one.“Well, enough of this rubbish,” he decided, turning up the collar of his jacket and heading for his grandmother’s 1979 Rolls-Royce which he’d prudently parked on the far side of the square, just in case Georgia had spotted it and decided not to answer the door to her chichi little establishment.“All I need is to have it rumored abroad that I’ve come back from the dead with half my marbles missing and was spotted wandering around town talking to myself!”

The minute they were seated at their usual window table at the Riverside Club, Natalie Chamberlaine went into a recital of the prenuptial affairs being hosted during the coming week in Georgia’s honor. What she forgot to mention, Samantha, Georgia’s younger sister, supplied.

Georgia bent her mouth into what she hoped passed for a smile and tried to look interested. Apparently, she didn’t try hard enough.

“You know, Georgia,” her mother commented, visibly annoyed, “people are going to quite a lot of trouble for you. It seems to me that the least you could do is show a little enthusiasm and appreciation in return. It is the second time they’ve done this, after all.”

“Yes.” Samantha nodded smugly, secure in the knowledge that, unlike her older sister, she’d managed to get married on the first try without making a botch of things.“Smarten up, Georgia. It’s not as if we’re just recycling leftovers from the first time.”

Except for Adam! Georgia thought, and fought to stifle a burst of hysterical laughter.

“Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, dear?” Her mother peered at her narrowly.“You really don’t seem yourself today.”

Georgia toyed with her spinach salad. All morning long she’d debated on when and how to tell her family the news that was doing a great job of turning her nicely ordered world upside-down. But she’d held back because she knew there’d be an uproar from both her mother and sister when they heard. On the other hand, Adam wasn’t exactly sneaking around in secret, so how long could she afford to wait before letting them in on the fact that he’d turned up again?

Perhaps now was as good a time as any, after all. If nothing else, it would keep the outcry of protests down to a dull roar because nothing less than seeing her daughters held up at gunpoint would allow Natalie Chamberlaine to indulge in public hysteria. It wasn’t considered seemly behaviour for members of the upper echelon of Piper Landing society.

“Actually, there is something I need to tell you,” Georgia admitted.

“I don’t like your tone of voice,” Natalie broke in, playing nervously with the string of pearls around her throat.“I don’t like it at all, Georgia. It’s not bad news, is it?”

“That all depends on your point of view, I suppose…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Georgia!” Samantha leaned back in her chair and rolled her eyes, very much the smart young matron thoroughly in charge of her own affairs and unable to comprehend why everyone else coudn’t follow her fine example.“Are you going to spit it out, whatever it is, or would you like us to drag it out of you, one syllable at a time?”

When they had been children, Georgia had sometimes found Samantha so intolerable that she’d forgotten she was always supposed to act like a little lady and had hauled off and smacked her sister. She felt like doing the same thing now.

“I’m trying to find the words to lead up to this gently, Samantha,” she said.“It’s not something I feel I can just ‘spit out’.”

Doing her best to ignore Samantha’s heaving sigh of exasperation, she glanced around the dining room, searching for the inspiration that would enable her to detonate her little bombshell casually and discreetly, with a minimum of aftershock. However, when her gaze fastened on the sight of Adam and his grandmother entering the dining room and being shown to a table not ten feet away, all thought of nonchalance or restraint fled her mind.“Adam isn’t dead,” she blurted out.

Natalie’s head shot up, though not quite as high as her voice. “What did you say?”

“Adam isn’t dead, Mother. I saw him last night, and again this morning.”

“Georgia, if this is your idea of a joke…” Natalie groped for her wineglass.

But Samantha, too, had seen, and was staring fixedly across the room.“She isn’t joking, Mother,” she confirmed faintly.

Natalie swiveled round in her chair, her gasp of dismay attesting to what most of the other people in the room also were noticing: the not-so-late Lieutenant Colonel Adam Cabot, large as life, sitting across from his grandmother and inspecting the menu.

Gradually becoming aware that the dining room had grown unusually silent, he looked around and found himself the object of everyone’s stunned attention, not the least among them Natalie and Samantha. Excusing himself to his grandmother, he rose from the table. Georgia supposed it was too much to hope he wouldn’t come over to theirs, and she was right.

“Hello, Mrs. Chamberlaine,” he said, as easily as if he’d last seen her only the week before.“How are you?”

If there was one thing a person could depend on, Georgia thought, watching the exchange with horrified fascination, it was that Natalie Chamberlaine never forgot her manners. She rose beautifully, if shakily, to the occasion.“Very well, thank you, Adam. And you?”

“Never better,” he said, all charming smiles.

Samantha didn’t fare quite as well as her mother.“We thought you were dead,” she said.

Adam’s smile assumed an edge that would have cut glass.“Lovely to see you again, too, Sammie.”

“People don’t call me by that name now that I’m married,” she said, smoothing her impeccably cut hair.

“Married? Little Sammie?”

Only Samantha could have missed the amused irony in his tone.“Yes,” she said, and held out her hand defiantly to show off her broad platinum wedding ring.

Adam inspected it with the tolerant awe of an uncle admiring his niece’s latest toy.“Very nice, Sammie.”

Flushed with annoyance at his continued lack of proper respect, Samantha unwisely attempted to punish him.“In case you haven’t heard, Georgia will be wearing one, too, next month at this time.”

His smoky blue gaze switched then and settled gravely on Georgia. His smile faded.“Will she?” he said softly.“Are you sure?”

If his first question was directed at her sister, his second was meant exclusively for her. Georgia knew Adam too well to be mistaken about that.

She tried to look away but he held her prisoner in his gaze and refused to let go. To her horror, she felt herself being drawn into those sultry blue depths and suffused with another bout of unspeakable longing.

“Very sure,” she croaked, her mouth so dry she could scarcely get the words out. But when she tried to relieve the situation by taking a sip of wine, her hand shook so badly that she had to set the glass down again in a hurry.

No, you’re not, his eyes said. You’re remembering how it felt when I kissed you this morning and you’re no longer sure of anything.

“Why are you here?” Samantha asked belligerently.

“To have lunch with my grandmother. Does that offend you?” Adam answered, never once allowing his gaze to stray from Georgia.

“Of course not, Adam. That wasn’t what Samantha meant at all. You can understand, I’m sure, that we’re…well, ‘taken aback’ scarcely describes it.” Fully in control of herself again, Natalie flicked her serviette much as a matador might have tried to deflect the attention of a wayward bull.“I’m sure you have a quite remarkable explanation for your absence and we’d love to hear it, but this is not the time. Your grandmother is obviously anxious to have you rejoin her. Please don’t keep her waiting on our account.”

“Oh, she’s waited fifteen months for the pleasure of my company at lunch,” Adam said, ignoring the hint and keeping his gaze glued to Georgia.“I think she can wait a couple of minutes more, or as long as it takes for me to offer my congratulations to the bride and her family.”

“Listen, Adam!” Samantha, who never had learned when to leave well enough alone, wagged a finger at him.“We don’t know where you’ve been for the last year or more and we don’t particularly care, but one thing we do want to make clear: we won’t stand for your causing trouble for the Chamberlaines again and disrupting another wedding. You’re not going to make us the laughingstock of this town a second time.”

“Were people laughing the last time?” he inquired mischievously.“How very unkind, considering that everyone thought I’d died a hero’s death.”

Samantha puffed up with righteous indignation.“Stop twisting my words. No one wished you dead in the first place and no one does now—as long as you don’t try to disrupt Georgia’s plans. But she’s finally making the right marriage and we won’t put up with your trying to spoil things for her.”

Adam lifted his shoulders in a puzzled shrug.“Why are you so worried?” he said smoothly, his gaze continuing to burn into Georgia’s soul.“If, as you claim to believe, everything’s perfect, nobody can spoil things. But if there are hidden flaws…” He smiled and dropped his glance to Georgia’s mouth, then down her throat to where her heart was fluttering madly beneath her silk blouse.“…well then, I’m afraid they’ll surface sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to ignore them. Have a nice lunch, ladies.”

“I never did like him,” Samantha declared, stating the painfully obvious as he wove a path back to where Beverley Walsh waited for him. But her sister was in a minority, Georgia decided, watching as his progress was hampered by a number of other diners eager to express pleasure in his return from the dead.

Natalie, however, had other things on her mind than taking a poll of Adam’s enduring popularity.“Georgia,” she said urgently, her pretty brown eyes full of anxiety, “you’re not having second thoughts about Steven, are you?”

“No,” Georgia said, feeling as if an intolerable weight were compressing her chest.

“Are you sure, dear?”

“Yes,” she said, because she wanted it so badly to be true. But the sad fact was, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Adam Cabot flirting merrily with the waitress who’d come to take his order, and the sight sliced like a blade through Georgia’s heart. What had happened to those invisible lines of defense that had served her so well in recent months? Why had they fallen apart now, when she needed them most?

“Because you know, dear, everything’s in place for the wedding,” her mother went on.“The flowers, the caterers, the church—”

“Not to mention all the loot,” Samantha cut in.“You don’t want to go through that routine again, do you, Georgia, having to return all the gifts and write those tedious little notes of explanation and stuff. Remember how embarrassing that was?”

“Yes,” Georgia said, clenching her hands under cover of the table to prevent herself from racing over and yanking out that brassy blond waitress’s hair by the fistful. Wouldn’t that set Piper Landing on its ear!

Completely out of patience with her daughter’s inattention, Natalie gathered up her purse, gloves and daughters.“Girls, I think we should get out of here before another disaster occurs.”

“I agree,” Samantha said, her first sensible comment of the day, as far as Georgia was concerned.“For God’s sake, Georgia, stop staring at him like that. You’ll be drooling next.”

They hustled her out of the club and into the car with a speed that verged on panic.“You drive, Samantha. I want to talk to your sister,” Natalie ordered, handing over the keys to the Cadillac before climbing into the back seat with Georgia.

And talk she did, all the way back to the studio. Nonstop and frantically, pointing out all the things that Georgia already knew: that she’d got her life on track finally; that Steven was the most eligible bachelor in town and was completely devoted to her; that Adam Cabot had always been too much of a maverick to make good husband material and she was lucky—blessed, in fact-not to have ended up marrying him because it would have spelled disaster.

And somehow, Georgia wrapped herself in the remains of that fuzzy shroud of remoteness that had been her salvation in the past, and managed to nod and smile in all the right places. Did it so well, indeed, that when they dropped her off in the square outside her studio, she stood on the pavement and waved calmly until the car turned the corner.

Then she let herself into the studio, pulled the blind down over the window, turned out all but the security lights, and set the alarm system before letting herself out into the street again and locking the door. She wouldn’t be designing any more custom jewelry that day, nor the next, either.

It took very little time for her to drive home and pack a few essentials. Steven arrived just as she took the last load out to her car.

“Well,” he said, taking in the suitcase stowed neatly in the open trunk.“It seems I got here just in time.”

“I was going to stop by the bank and leave a note,” she said.

“Note, Georgia?” The gentle reproof in his tone made her feel very, very small and unworthy.“Don’t you think I deserve better than that?”

“You know what’s happened, don’t you?” she said miserably.“I wondered when you’d find out.”

“Everybody knows,” he said.“The whole town’s buzzing.”

“I imagine he’ll be in touch with you before the day’s over.”

Steven eyed the suitcase again.“I gather he’s already been in touch with you and that’s why you’re running away.”

“I’m not running away,” she insisted.“I’m in a state of shock and I just need to spend a little time alone to sort through a few things.” She made a helpless gesture with her hand.“I can’t do that here, Steven, so I thought I’d go up to your family’s chalet. Between commissions at work and a social calendar that’s fully booked from now until the wedding day, I won’t have a minute to myself and….”

He watched her, his honest gray eyes full of compassion.“Are we still going to have a wedding day, Georgia?” he asked, when at last she dribbled into silence.

He was a good man, a fine man. He was her best friend. If she married him, she would never know a moment’s insecurity or want. He would love her, cherish her, and gladly forsake all others for her. At the very least, he deserved her honesty now.“I don’t know,” she said.

He nodded sadly.“Then you must go and find out. Take your time, love. I’ll cover for you here.”

The fine thread by which she’d been hanging on to her control snapped at that. Like a child, she covered her face with her hands and burst out crying.

He reached out and held her, sheltering her in his arms, and she wished with all her heart that she could stay there and not have to face tomorrow.“I hate him,” she sobbed.“I don’t want things to be spoiled like this, and it’s all his fault.”

Steven stroked her hair.“It’s nobody’s fault, Georgia.”

“But I was so sure about us, until he showed up again.”

“I know.” He pulled away a little and just for a moment his resolution wavered enough to let his own pain show.“Georgia, marry me tonight. Let’s just go away and leave all this behind. So what if Adam has come back? You and I have been happy together, haven’t we? We can be again.”

Temptation lured, promising the easy road. But for how long? She shook her head.“I can’t,” she whispered.

He sighed heavily and slackened his hold.“No, I suppose not.”

She pulled away and accepted the handkerchief he offered.“Will your parents mind my using the chalet?”

“Of course they won’t. But will you be all right by yourself? There’s already been snow in the mountains and more is expected. The road might be bad.”

“I know. I’ll be careful.”

He held open the driver’s door of her car.“Then you’d better get going.”

She had never loved him more. Heavy with the knowledge that she was playing fast and loose with a man who was a prince by any standards, she backed down the driveway and drove to the outskirts of town, stopping only at the supermarket where she stocked up on enough groceries to get her through the next few days, and again at the service station to fill up with gas.

Daylight was just beginning to fade as she left Piper Landing and took the highway north toward the mountains.

Adam went for a long walk along the far side of the river that afternoon, partly as therapy to help restore the muscle tone in his injured leg and partly to get away from the general curiosity that his reappearance was arousing.

He supposed it was natural enough that people were interested, but what they didn’t seem able to appreciate was that he felt a bit like a goldfish in a bowl. And it was a difficult adjustment for a man who’d spent over a year in an isolated hunting camp in the Arctic.

What had really rattled him, though, had been running into the Chamberlaine women at lunch, with half Piper Landing society witness to the confrontation. He thought he’d acquitted himself well enough in the verbal exchange, but when he’d happened to glance up halfway through his meal to see Georgia being whisked away, he’d been unable to stop himself from swiveling in his chair and gazing after her with the lovelorn fascination of some twerp in an old black and white melodrama.

The plain fact was, she’d changed, and he wanted to acquaint himself with the new woman. Where before she’d been sculpted angles from her short, smart haircut to her elegant suits, now she flowed in softly feminine lines. Her hair kissed her shoulders, swirling over the ruffled nonsense of her blouse collar.

Her coat, winter-white where once she’d have chosen red or black, flared almost to her ankles. Her boots, her sole concession to the late November weather, were suede, with little dainty heels and tassels. Dancer’s footwear, delicate enough to perform a pas de deux.

But most of all, her eyes were different. Not in their color, that brilliant teal blue arresting enough to stop traffic, nor in their dramatic, heavily lashed shape borrowed from God knew which exotic ancestor, but in their intensity. The sharp, dissecting focus was gone, replaced by a muted dreaminess. Her gaze seemed to slide over the world, a hazy blue waterfall that didn’t quite notice the objects in its path.

It disturbed him. More, it annoyed him. He wanted to shake her, shock her into awareness, before it was too late.

Too late for what? For them? Hell, there was no“them” anymore; hadn’t been since she’d told him to forget marriage. And he really must be missing a few marbles to be freezing his butt in the cold, damp mist rising from the river, and rehashing something which he ought, by now, to have accepted.

His grandmother was intensely annoyed at being left to her own devices all afternoon and let him know it the minute he let himself in the house.“May one assume you intend to dine at home tonight, Adam?” she inquired frostily, appearing in the doorway to the library with her thick white hair skewered in a knot and held in place by a knitting needle on top of her head.“Or do you plan to abandon me for the evening, too?”

He grinned, his good humor restored by the roaring fire and the good, stiff Scotch she had waiting for him.“I thought I’d stick around and wipe the floor with you at cards since I don’t have a better offer,” he said, not the least bit perturbed by her sharp tongue.

She snorted and mumbled that absence hadn’t done much for his manners, but once dinner was over and she was three hundred points up on him at two-handed bridge, she mellowed a little.

“Pour me another vodka,” she ordered, and thought he didn’t notice that she leaned over to sneak a look at his cards when his back was turned.

“You’re the only eighty-one-year-old I know who downs vodka like water and who cheats at cards,” he said, refilling her glass.

“Don’t be a sore loser, boy,” she said, delving into the box of Russian Sobranis at her side and lighting up the one cigarette she allowed herself every evening.“It’s the mark of poor upbringing.”

The doorbell spared him the necessity of having to field an answer to that observation.“Expecting company, Bev?”

“No,” she said.“Get rid of them, whoever they are.”

But that was easier said than done. When Adam opened the door, the man who knew him better than almost anyone else on earth waited on the other side.“Hi,” Steven said.“I heard you were back.”

“Yeah,” Adam said, an unsettling mix of pleasure and rage taking hold of him at the sight of his one-time best friend.“I should have called you.”

“Why haven’t you?”

Adam threw him a level look.“You know why.”

“Yes. And I think it’s time we talked about it.”

His grandmother’s imperious tone floated out from the library.“Who is it, Adam?”

“Steven,” he said, then added to the man still standing on the front porch, “You’d better come in. This might take some time.”

Beverley greeted the visitor with a marked lack of conviviality.“Why aren’t you out celebrating with all your male friends and cheering raucously as some halfnaked female jumps out of a cake, Steven Drake, since I know for a fact that you’re getting married very shortly?”

“Because I don’t know that for a fact,” Steven said.“And that’s the reason I’m here now.”

“Why? It’s none of our business how you choose to ruin your life.”

Steven’s gaze swung from Bev to Adam and remained there.“I’m not sure Adam and I agree with you, Mrs. Walsh.”

They had met when they’d been assigned as roommates in their first semester of boarding school. It had been one of those tough establishments whose Latin motto loosely translated into: WE MAKE MEN OF THEM IF WE DON’T KILL THEM FIRST.

In that sort of environment, a kid of thirteen needed an ally he could trust. Adam and Steven had liked each other on sight and long ago had perfected the sort of telepathic communication that exists between true friends. There was no need for Steven to elaborate on his statement now.

That didn’t stop Beverley, however.“I hope you’re not accusing Adam of—” she began, tottering to her feet.

“Shut up, Beverley,” Adam said, and when she prepared to protest such uncavalier treatment, said again, “Sit down and shut up. This is between me and Steven.”

“Is it?” Steven asked levelly, cutting to the heart of the matter.“Or is it still between you and Georgia?”

CHAPTER THREE

FIFTEEN miles from where the private lane to the Drake chalet branched off from the main highway, it started to snow, dense fat flakes that cut visibility in half and added quickly to the foot or more that had fallen during the previous week.

Cranking up the car heater as high as it would go, Georgia huddled over the steering wheel, stepped gently on the accelerator, and prayed she wouldn’t come to grief on the last long incline that led to the cabin. If the car got stuck, she’d have no choice but to climb out into the teeth of the blizzard and try to fit her tires with the chains she kept in the trunk in case of emergency.

The problem was, she was far from certain she knew how to go about the task since such an emergency had never before arisen. And crouching on a mountainous back road, in the dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, didn’t strike her as a propitious place to find out.

As it happened, she had nothing to worry about. Someone had taken a blower and cleared a swath wide enough to enable her to drive right up to the property and park in the lee of the chalet’s wide, overhanging balcony.

The same someone had turned on the electric generator and split enough wood to heat a church. In the big main room, a pyramid of kindling lay waiting in the fireplace, with a basket of seasoned alder logs close by. A lamp burned on a side table, next to a thermos of coffee.

Although her down-filled coat shielded her from the worst of the weather, by the time Georgia had unloaded her supplies and hauled them inside, her hands and feet were numb with cold. Before stowing everything away, she set a match to the kindling and poured herself a mug of the coffee.

She was only partially thawed when footsteps clumped up the steps and a fist banged on the door. It was Arne Jensen, the Drakes’s nearest neighbor and the only year-round resident of the area. A tall, spare man in his late fifties who lived alone and socialized little, his sole concession to modern amenities was the telephone he’d had installed in his A-Frame cabin three winters before.

“Oh, ja, you got here then,” he declared, his singsong Scandinavian accent as pronounced as the day he’d first come to North America.“I wanted to make sure.”

Georgia smiled for what seemed like the first time in days.“I might have known you’re the one I have to thank for all this, Arne. How did you know to expect me?”

“Mr. Drake, he phoned late this afternoon. Wanted me to check up and see that you had everything you need.”

“That was thoughtful of him, and I do, thanks.”

“Good. Then I will go. The weather is getting worse. We’re in for a very big storm tonight.”

He was right. In the last half hour, the wind had risen to a mournful howl, a fitting accompaniment for Georgia’s mood. How could she jeopardize her future with Steven like this, she wondered, closing the door on Arne. What perverse streak of madness had brought her up here, away from a man who loved her enough to make sure she was safe and comfortable, even when she was running away from him?

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