Three Times A Bride. Catherine Spencer

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