The Bridegroom's Secret. Melissa James

Ask her! I love you, only you!”

      She stared up at him and hiccupped again. “How can you love me, if you don’t trust me with your life?”

      God help me. “It wasn’t like that. Please don’t go, Jules. Stay. Talk to me,” he said, dropping his voice for the last sentence, suddenly conscious of his mother in the house behind them.

      But the tears streaming down Julie’s face told him that talking was the last thing she wanted to do now. At least with him.

      Gently, with finality, she closed the car door to her little compact and drove away. No wrenching gears, no racing out. She just left.

      She left, and Matt stood there staring after her, reading his future in the past fifteen minutes and without a single clue what to do about it.

      CHAPTER TWO

       Eight Weeks Later

      NEVER in his life had Matt thought he’d be reduced to fighting this dirty. But here he stood outside The Wedding Belles, Julie’s place of work, ready to—

      Stop thinking about it. Just do it.

      Standing next to his car, Matt tightened his jaw and flipped open his phone. “Hey, Callie, I’m outside. Is everything ready?”

      “All systems up and running,” The Wedding Belles’ florist, Callie, replied, with a low laugh. Then, after a short silence, she whispered, “I’m used to doing… unusual things, and this has to be the most romantic way I’ve ever helped out a friend. But are you sure about this? This really is a federal offence.”

      “Not if she’s willing, and since she’s my fiancée, I think we can assume she will be,” he replied lightly enough to reassure Callie. But inside, the gripping of his stomach, clenching over and over, signaled his desperation. Would Julie be willing once she knew what this was really about?

      He’d pushed her to the edge over the past few months, been a fool to keep so many secrets from her—but he knew this one last secret could destroy them. He’d been trying to tell her for weeks, but after the night of their engagement party, even the thought of telling her made him freeze inside. His tongue glued to his mouth, he retreated behind his old friend and ally, silence.

      A real man bears his burdens and mistakes alone. And he puts them right alone. His grandfather’s words.

      After everything he’d put her through, to tell her now could be the end of them. But damn it, he wouldn’t let her walk out on him. Whatever it took, he’d keep her with him.

      Callie’s voice started him out of his morbid thoughts. “Personally, I love what you’re doing. I wish Jared had thought about doing this to me,” she laughed, “but a couple of the girls are scared about becoming accessories to some kind of felony. And Jared’s worried, too.”

      He didn’t blame Callie’s husband…in fact, he couldn’t blame any of them. “I won’t force her into anything she doesn’t want to do,” he said. But it was the biggest lie he’d ever told. He’d keep her in the car, in his house, in his life. Whatever it took to win her, he’d do it, short of a real abduction. He wasn’t that crazy.

      He was just a man about to lose the woman he adored with a dozen words, and desperate enough to take the biggest risk of his life.

      He’d spent a score of sleepless nights during the past eight weeks since the engagement-party disaster, trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, searching for the elusive miracle that would allow him to tell her what he should have told her at the start. But he’d been so lost in the happiness he’d never known before meeting Julie that the right time and the right words had never come.

      Now it was too late.

      At exactly 4:47 this morning, as the first threads of dawn had stretched their fingers across the sky, he’d squared his shoulders and faced the fact that he’d screwed up. Big-time. He should have told her about this long before he’d asked her to marry him, even before he’d found out McLachlan’s was in trouble. Now she didn’t want to know.

      He’d thought giving her time would help. He’d crossed the country on a six-week nonstop selling tour after the fatal night of the engagement party, showing off the land prototype of his converter, and had sold its practical applications to two major players. Finally McLachlan’s was safe for future generations. Now his mother could have the comfortable retirement she deserved…and his workers and their families were secure.

      He was finally free to tell Julie everything— to make her hear it. He’d been coming over to The Wedding Belles’, to her office apartment, and calling every day, from wherever he’d been—but she was now the one fobbing him off. She’d been avoiding him since the night of the party, and was using his own defence of “Don’t worry, it’s just work” against him.

      The games would stop today. Julie would forgive him when she knew the truth. He refused to accept anything less. She was his life blood, his soul, and he’d fight for what was his. The rest of the plans he’d made with The Belles—the changes for their wedding—would prove that to Julie, when she was ready to hear them.

      Hiding the grim resolution, he said to Callie, “So send her out. Let Julie’s kidnapping begin!”

      Surely every bride feels this same need to bolt as the wedding gets close….

      But Julie knew the stats. She’d reassured hundreds of nervous grooms, but only a few nervous brides in the three years she’d been working at The Wedding Belles.

      What was wrong with her? She had everything— a dream wedding, Mr. Right…

      Or so she’d thought, and that was the trouble. Since the night of their engagement party, she’d begun to wonder if he’d ever loved her, or if he was merely doing the right thing, the gentlemanly thing, rewarding her for standing by him during the dark times for McLachlan’s.

      She knew it was paranoid, but whenever he was in town and came to see her, or when he called, she could hear it—he had something he needed to tell her, but it was bad. His obvious unhappiness at needing to tell her spoke for itself.

      He’d been distracted for weeks before the party. She’d thought it was to do with the creation and marketing of the water converter that not only saved McLachlan’s but made him rich again.

      Matt and Elise, that was.

      She couldn’t face him. Couldn’t let him touch her. She’d never been able to resist him when his hands were on her, and there were too many doubts…not to mention that the wedding had become bigger than either of them. It resembled a runaway train careering downhill at a breakneck pace, and gaining speed by the second.

      “Am I missing something, or has the hallway become more fascinating than it was half an hour ago?”

      Julie smiled at Callie, the cheeky Belle. She used to use humour to hide her emotions from others; now, ecstatically wed to her high-school buddy turned sweetheart, Jared, whom they’d dubbed “My Favourite Geek”, Callie used humour to dig.

      “Uniformity can be a good thing now and then,” she quipped back, hoping the joke didn’t fall flat. Hoping Callie didn’t keep digging. Her friends had all been trying to get her to talk to them for weeks now—since a few days after the engagement party—and it was obvious she was tense whenever she had to be with Matt for another interview or photo shoot. It was so tiring trying to act the happy bride-to-be, especially when every other Belle was a happy new bride or bride-to-be—or ecstatic new wife, in Regina’s case.

      But until she’d spoken to Matt, it would be a betrayal.

      The trouble was what to say. Three months ago she’d been certain Matt was the love of her life. Now