Married By Mistake!. Renee Roszel

What if he stayed longer than five minutes? What if—what if...? She couldn’t think of the other things. And even if she could have thought of any, she didn’t want to dwell on them.

      Shaking her head, Lucy slowly stood. Pack. That’s what she had to do. She could always catch a ride to Springfield in Branson on one of the big hotel shuttles. There was no way she could carry off this charade even if Jack was willing to help. She wouldn’t put him through it. It was too much to ask, even of him.

      She must leave. Now.

      

      

      Lucy checked her watch. Ten o’clock. Her cab should be arriving any minute. Snapping shut her suitcase, she headed out of her basement bedroom and hurried up the steps as quickly as her heavy bag would allow. She knew that Elissa would be in her office at this hour working on the inn’s books, and Jack... Well, hopefully he was in his room or taking a nature walk in the woods—anywhere but in her direct escape route. She didn’t want either of them to see her and try to persuade her to go through with their insane plan. At the top of the stairs, she hastened right into the little hallway that led to the staircase vestibule, then to the reception hall.

      She could hear the crunch of tires on gravel as she reached the front door. Perfect timing. Peering through the beveled glass, she recognized the vehicle as a cab.

      Taking a long, relieved breath, she knew she was about to make a clean getaway. Let Stadler think she ran away. Let him believe she was too hurt to see him. She didn’t dare look into his two-timing, plum-colored eyes, eyes that she feared could still make her melt. She didn’t dare let him see her pain.

      Besides, Elissa had too much family pride to admit Lucy had run off. She would deny the truth with all her strength and make up some plausible story. This was the best way. If she stayed, there was no way she could hide her anguish. Stadler was not a stupid man.

      Just as she turned the door handle, she heard the slam of a car door, then another. Two slams? Two car doors? For one cabdriver? Alarm constricted her stomach, and she peeked through the glass again, only to gasp out loud.

      Stadler!

      He and—and his woman were here.

      “Luce?” The query came from somewhere in the vicinity of the staircase. She spun around. “What is it?” Jack came down the remainder of the steps and made quick work of the distance between them. “What’s wrong?”

      She shook her head, pointing disjointedly over her shoulder. Words wouldn’t form.

      He leaned close, his night-woodsy scent clean and pleasantly familiar as he looked through the frosted and cut glass. “The bastard?”

      Though she was unsettled by his word choice, she knew whom he was talking about and nodded.

      When he stepped back and looked at her again, he noticed the suitcase beside her and frowned. His glance flicked back to hers as realization struck. His look of disappointment almost made her cry. “Luce, you weren’t.” The words of disbelief came out in a husky whisper.

      She swallowed hard several times. “I—I can’t go through with it, Jack.”

      The flare of his nostrils was his only comment as he grabbed her bag and sprinted with it to the staircase hall. Throwing open the storage door below the stairs, he shoved it inside.

      Lucy started to object, but jumped when she heard heavy footfalls on the front porch. As though it were a pack of rabid wolves bent on gnawing through the door, she leaped away. Even in her stumbling retreat, she couldn’t keep from staring in hypnotized fascination at the crystal knob, twinkling as it turned.

      There was a click and a low-pitched creak when the door began to open. It happened in a crazy slow motion, seeming to take forever. But after an eternity of ponderously ticking seconds, there he was.

      Stadler Tinsley—the man Lucy had thought she would spend her life with. The drama teacher at the University of Kansas, who got a lucky break, being chosen for the lead in an off-Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Naturally, for an aspiring thespian, it had been an opportunity he couldn’t resist, even though he and Lucy were to have been married in only two months.

      So he’d asked her to wait for him—a wait that had become two long years while he toured Australia—and apparently romanced and won another woman along the way.

      Lucy was unsettled to note that he was still as disarmingly attractive as she remembered. Tall, lithe, he stood there, impeccably dressed, somewhat on the dramatic side. Not a hair on his sandy blond head was out of place. His dazzling plum eyes were bright in contrast to his milky skin. And as usual, his prominent, aristocratic nose was lifted a bit high for him to claim a shred of humility.

      Lucy knew the second Stadler recognized the woman he’d so recently and heartlessly dumped. His lips lifted in a jaunty smile, and her heart twisted. How dare he smile like that, without a hint of remorse?

      He stepped inside the door and lifted his arms as though he expected her to run to him in a spasm of joy. “Lucy, my pet!” His fine bass voice echoed as though he were speaking to an enraptured audience. “What a pleasure it is to see you again!”

      He took a step into the room, then stopped, his cultivated smile faltering. Lucy was confused for a second, until an arm came around her waist, gathering her against a sturdy torso. She could detect Jack’s cologne as well as the light, underlying tang that was his alone, and she breathed deeply, hoping that filling her lungs with his essence would infuse her with at least a little courage.

      It was too late to run.

      “Our sentiments exactly, Stadler, old buddy.” Jack extended a hand toward the gaping man who had gone still. “Really—a pleasure. Isn’t that right—darling?”

      Lucy felt wretched. The fraud had begun.

      CHAPTER THREE

      A SANDY eyebrow lifted, the only indication of Stadler’s misgiving. Though his smile had wavered temporarily, it was radiant again. “Why, Lucy-pet? What does this mean?” His arms slowly began to lower to his sides, giving the impression of a deflating plastic doll.

      A rustling came from outside the door. “Staddie?” Another rustle and a thump-thump. “Staddie? Can you open up a little wider?” After one more dubious glance at the entwined couple, Stadler swung the front door wide to allow a petite woman to struggle in, a big leather suitcase in each hand. “I told the cabbie we could get the cases, Staddie. Save a penny, save a...” She looked up, smiling brightly at the room in general. “Well, whatever. I can never remember those old sayings. Hi, everybody.”

      Lucy stared at the young woman who was barely five feet tall. Her dark hair sprouted up and out, away from her head in a punk-pixie style that somehow suited her. By her beaming smile, she clearly didn’t know the minefield she was stepping into. Apparently, Stadler hadn’t thought the poor thing needed any preparation for what could very well be awkward—if not violent. He obviously didn’t make a practice of giving bad news face-to-face. Not a particularly heroic trait, Lucy mused.

      “Hi, there.” It was Jack who broke the silence. With gentle fingers at Lucy’s back, he prodded her reluctant body forward as he stretched out a welcoming hand. “I’m Jack Gallagher and this is my fiancée, Lucy Crosby. Nice to have you visit us, Miss...”

      The pixie woman with huge hazel eyes let go of one of the bags. Instead of extending her hand, she began to rub her palm on the thigh of her mutilated jeans, seemingly cleansing it before the handshake. Lucy’s glance was drawn to her red T-shirt, taut over pert, unfettered breasts that jiggled as she moved. The shirt read, “I am woman, hear me charge.”

      After a thorough polishing of her palm, which now had to be raw if not entirely germless, the pixie extended her hand. “Sareena Green. Pleased to meet you, Jack—Lucy.”

      “Fiancée?”

      Three heads turned toward Stadler, who had now lifted both eyebrows