Wedding Willies. Victoria Pade

pulled out the rubber band that held her hair in a ponytail.

      Her hair fell to three inches below her shoulders in an unruly cascade of curls and waves. It gave Kit fits. The curl was natural and untamable, and her hair was so thick that it always seemed too bushy to her. She’d always wished for sleek, smooth hair that she could wear in a chin-length bob, but as it was, if she cut the hair she had she lost the heaviness that helped weigh it down and ended up with what she considered clown hair.

      At least she didn’t mind the color, she conceded as she brushed out the dark walnut brown mass and left it to fall free around her face.

      She replaced her makeup bag in her purse and left the rest room to find that it was still only the older woman waiting for her in the station.

      “No Kira yet,” the woman informed her.

      “It’s okay. I’ll wait outside so you can get going,” Kit assured her.

      The woman led the way through the front door and Kit followed, carrying her own suitcase this time, along with the oversized shopping bag that held her pans and utensils.

      Outside Kit found herself across the street from a gas station, and she spotted a pay phone she could use if Kira didn’t show up soon.

      As the other woman locked the door from the outside, Kit set her suitcase in front of the bench that was beside it, put her bag on the seat and sat down.

      “If Kira and Cutty were still at the old house you could walk from here,” the station attendant said. “The new house is farther away, though. Not too far a walk if you didn’t have anything to carry, but with your suitcase and… Well, I’m sure Kira will be here any minute. I can’t imagine what’s keeping her.”

      “I’ll be fine,” Kit said, assuming the older woman wanted reassurance that it was okay to leave her.

      She must have been right because the woman said, “I’ll say good night then.”

      “Good night,” Kit responded as the woman headed down the street on foot herself.

      It was a beautiful mid-August night. Warm enough without being too hot, and there wasn’t so much as a breeze to disturb the air.

      But even so Kit wished that her friend would get there. It was almost eerily quiet and there wasn’t a soul anywhere to be seen after the bus station attendant turned a corner about a block down.

      Not that Northbridge didn’t look like a nice little town from Kit’s vantage point. It did. The gas station and the bus station were face-to-face at the end of Main Street, which seemed to be the gateway to the town proper.

      Kit couldn’t see all the way to the end of Main Street from where she was, but what she could see of it was lined on either side by two-and three-story, primarily brick structures. Quaint and old-fashioned, they had such a country-town feel to them that Kit wouldn’t have been surprised to see a horse-drawn streetcar coming toward her or an old Studebaker parked at the curb somewhere along the way.

      Tall, ornate wrought-iron pole lamps lit the sidewalks on both sides of the wider-than-average thoroughfare, and each light was circled with flower boxes that held the riotous yellows and oranges and burnt umbers of the marigolds planted around them.

      But as nice as it looked, Kit would have preferred taking it all in on a leisurely afternoon when she and Kira could browse through the shops. At that moment she just wanted Kira to come get her.

      Kit was beginning to consider crossing to the gas station to call her friend when movement quite a ways down Main Street caught her eye and distracted her.

      It appeared to be a man who had just left one of the buildings, but the distance was too great for her to tell what kind of establishment he’d come out of. He was headed for her end of the street though, and despite the fact that Kit expected him to get into one of several cars parked nose-first at the curb, he just kept coming in her direction.

      Maybe he would be turning off onto a side street the way the bus station woman had, Kit thought, feeling slightly edgy when that didn’t seem to be happening.

      She reminded herself that Kira had said Northbridge was a safe place. The man Kira was marrying was a Northbridge police officer, and he’d told Kira that keeping the peace involved mostly speeding tickets, a domestic violence complaint here and there, and underage drinking due to the presence of the small college.

      But Kit felt uneasy anyway.

      It was dark, after all, and she was alone without any indication that there was anyone who would hear her scream for help if she needed it. And the man not only kept coming, when he was about a block away he looked right at her, smiled and waved.

      He wasn’t Kira’s fiancé, Kit knew that. Her friend had sent her a picture of them together, along with his twin nineteen-month-old daughters. And the man who was headed in Kit’s direction was not that man.

      This man was someone else.

      He didn’t look threatening—if that meant anything. Although he was a big son of a gun, she thought. And just because a guy was really handsome didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

      But this guy was really handsome. Really, really handsome. Handsome in the extreme.

      Long, muscular legs were bringing him closer by the second. He had a narrow waist and broad, powerful shoulders, and he wore his sable-colored hair short on the sides and slightly longer and mussed on top. And what a face. He could have done shaving commercials with those sculpted features. High cheekbones; a wide, square forehead; a thin, almost sharp and very straight nose; lips that were a little thin but seemed to suit him just the same; and when he smiled at her yet again as he drew nearer, it put two matching creases down his cheeks and gave him a hunky, mischievous air….

      “Kit?” he said when he was several yards away but close enough for her to hear him.

      “Yes,” she answered tentatively, not sure whether she was unsettled by being approached by a strange man on a deserted street, or by the fact that he was so amazing looking that it had sort of stunned her.

      He pressed a big, long-fingered hand to the chest that was barely contained in a red knit polo shirt and said, “I’m Ad. Ad Walker. I’m a friend of Cutty’s.”

      He said that with a question in his deep baritone voice, clearly wondering if she’d ever heard of him before.

      She had. Not only had Kira talked about her fiancé’s best friend, but what had prompted Kira’s trip to Northbridge in search of her sister in the first place had been a newspaper article about Cutty and this man. Cutty and Addison Walker had rushed into a burning house to save the family inside. Which they’d done, only to end up injured themselves—Cutty had broken his ankle and Addison Walker had been knocked unconscious.

      Not that there seemed to be any lingering effects because he looked in robust health now.

      Belatedly, Kit said, “Kira told me about you. I’m Kit. Kit MacIntyre,” she added, feeling foolish when she recalled that he’d already known that or he wouldn’t have been able to call her by name.

      Then, to make matters worse, she held out her hand with an aggressive thrust, as if she were trying to impress a prospective employer with her enthusiasm.

      Ad Walker smiled and accepted her hand to shake, taking it into his massive mitt, enveloping it in a warm strength that sent heat up her arm and all through the rest of her body, and left her wondering how a mere handshake could be sensuous.

      “Nice to meet you,” he said.

      The handshake seemed over much too quickly for Kit and she was shocked to find herself disappointed when he let go. So disappointed she had to force herself out of her own thoughts and into paying attention to what he was saying.

      “Mel—one of the twins—fell and hit her head,” Ad Walker explained. “Cutty and Kira had to take her in for stitches, so they asked if I’d pick you up.”

      “Is the baby all