Midnight Fantasy. Ann Major

her, forcing her onto the shoulder a while ago.

      The humid wind that battered her face and tangled her butter-colored hair stank with the pungent fragrance of a plankton-laced bay. When their car speeded up, attempting to pass her again, Claire shakily pushed a sticky strand of hair out of her eyes.

      Her front wheels skidded. Her heart skittered.

      “I’m not scared!”

      When the car in her rearview mirror rushed forward and she could no longer see it, she yanked her steering wheel to the left and cut them off. Honking, they eased off the accelerator and veered back into the right lane behind her. So did she. They slowed, and she relaxed enough to rehash the humiliating little scene at the country club with North and Melody, which was the reason she was in this mess.

      North never wanted to discuss wedding details, maybe because his first wedding had ended in such disaster.

      “We’ll all be happier when you grow up!” North had thundered distractedly a few minutes after Melody’s dance had ended. Claire had been trying to discuss some of the difficulties with wedding costs. “So, scale back. Compromise!”

      North could hold onto his cowboy cool a whole lot longer than most guys, so his uncustomary show of temper should have warned her.

      “But I can’t. It’s our wedding day. If your family would just—”

      “You know what your problem is?” North had waved one of Melody’s shoes at her. “You’re spoiled, Claire.”

      “Me? Spoiled? You’re the big multimillionaire rancher.”

      Men. At first she hadn’t been able to believe that North, whose wealth was legendary, had joined forces with the wedding consultant, caterers, her parents, and his family to attack her. Why couldn’t he understand how unsure she felt with Melody home and everybody else pulling her to pieces?

      “Darling, Mother keeps saying she just wants our wedding day to be fairy-tale perfect,” she’d whispered, “something special we’ll remember forever. We’re doing this for you…to make up for…” Claire stopped, staring at the sparkly shoes he still held because she couldn’t say, my sister jilting you at the altar.

      “I wish you two would worry a little more about what comes after that day—our marriage.”

      “Oh, that—That’s the happily-ever-after part.”

      “Damn it.” North had shrugged wearily. “I’m beginning to wonder about that.”

      Finally, she’d said what was really on her mind. “Is this about Melody?”

      “Hell, no.” But he’d reddened, and the sparkly shoes had glinted. “Life’s not lived like the glossy pictures of those bridal and home magazines you and your mother pore over all the time. I wish to hell we’d eloped.”

      Suddenly she’d realized everyone, especially Melody, had begun watching them when North had raised his voice in annoyance. Claire had felt frightened and guilty when North’s gaze had drifted back to her blushing sister.

      “I’m sorry,” Claire had said. “So sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” When he’d scowled at her and then at the shoes and hadn’t apologized, she hadn’t known what to do. Suddenly she’d realized she shouldn’t have upset him with wedding details right after Melody’s dance. “Dance with me, darling,” she’d pleaded, realizing he hadn’t said one word about how beautiful she was in her white sheath.

      Again his black gaze had drifted to Melody. “I’m really not in the mood to put on a show!”

      “But we’re supposed to be madly in love.”

      “Claire, your sister’s show is a hard act to follow. And now you’ve got me all worked up, too. I can’t just…You’re always pressuring me, chasing me—”

      “’Cause you never chase me.”

      His black eyes left Melody and flicked over Claire with a strange look of pity that startled them both. When he pressed his handsome lips together and continued to regard her thoughtfully, she was terrified.

      “How will it look to everybody if we just stand around, not dancing, not talking?” Claire pleaded. “And holding my sister’s shoes?”

      “Frankly, I don’t much give a damn.”

      “You’d better be careful,” Melody had quipped, gliding up to them. “That sounds a lot like Rhett Butler’s exit line.”

      A look had passed between Melody and North. Then North’s face had hardened and he slammed the shoes into her open palms. “And you’re just the girl to appreciate a good exit line.”

      Melody had gone as pale as death.

      Claire had felt a burst of sympathy for North.

      Would he ever get over her sister?

      Of course, he would. He was. She had just been immature to push him.

      Would he ever be over her sister?

      People were turning to stare. Not knowing what to do, Claire had flown out of the club and gone to her car.

      North would follow. He would leave the stuffy party where all anybody ever did was try to impress each other. He would chase her. He had to.

      Nobody had been more upset than Dee Dee when Claire’s wacky, unconventional sister had broken North’s heart. Just as nobody had been more elated when he’d found consolation first in Claire’s friendship, and then in her love.

      Claire banged her hands on her steering wheel and listened to the band. Even out here the throbbing music was loud, almost loud enough to drown out the loneliness in her young aching heart, almost.

      “Go back inside.”

      “No, any minute North will march out those polished mahogany doors with the shiny brass handles and prove his love for me—to everyone.”

      But the doors didn’t open, and the brass handles began to swim in a sea of hot tears. North stayed at the club.

      And even though Claire had known deep down that she was, at least, partly in the wrong—she hadn’t had the guts to go back inside, face Melody and meekly apologize to North.

      Her mother, Dee Dee, who’d all but engineered this marriage after Melody had jilted North, was, once again, planning the wedding of the year. Only Dee Dee was determined that Claire’s wedding would be so magnificent everybody would forget and forgive what Melody had done. But the financial burden of marrying great wealth for the second time was a strain on their upper-middle-class budget, a fact her father never let Dee Dee forget, which was why Claire had asked North to help.

      “Have a wedding your family can afford,” he’d said. “After what Melody pulled, all that matters is a sacred ceremony.”

      Mother said the wedding had to be perfect…perfect. Just the event to reestablish Dee Dee Woods as a Texas hostess to be reckoned with after having been made the laughing-stock of the town last year by Melody. The effort and pressure to impress the right people had her mother in bed with what she called “heat” headaches.

      Bridal nerves. Maybe that’s what had Claire so uptight and jittery lately…even before Melody’s return.

      The moon lit a path from the horizon to the shoreline. Not that she noticed when the jerks behind her honked loudly.

      Their bumper slammed into hers. A sickening chill of fear shivered up her spine.

      She had driven forty miles on this fool’s errand to regain her pride. Halfway to Rockport where her parents had a condo on the bay, the punks had forced her onto the shoulder.

      They honked flirtily again. Somehow she had to get back to North and apologize, really apologize. But first she had to shake these juvenile delinquents before she left Rockport.

      When the hoods