The Wedding Must Go On. Robyn Grady

woman blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘I own this salon. I’m Roxanne Trammel.’

      The woman absorbed the news and, nodding absently, introduced herself as Ava Morris before her focus swung to Nate. ‘Where’s your bride-to-be? Nothing’s wrong, I hope.’

      Nate scrubbed his jaw. He’d only meant to help—to give Roxy a hand up with a potential sale. But duplicity, well intended or not, had caught up. Nothing for it but to face the music.

      ‘Actually,’ he began, ‘my fiancée’s—’

      ‘Out back,’ Roxy said, cutting in. ‘Emma’s choosing accessories.’

      Mrs Morris held her stomach and breathed out over a relieved smile. ‘Well, that was quick!’

      ‘Happens like that sometimes,’ Roxy said, slipping Nate a ‘you owe me’ look.

      A call from the dressing room. ‘Can someone help with this?’

      Picking up her skirts, Roxy went to hurry off but Mrs Morris put up a hand.

      ‘I’ll help Violet. You see to your other matter.’

      Mrs Morris rushed away while, sheepish, Nate tugged his ear. ‘Sorry about the Emma thing.’

      ‘You shouldn’t have lied. I in no way condone it.’ Roxy’s expression lightened a smidge. ‘But I do appreciate you trying to help. I didn’t need to embarrass you.’

      As he’d embarrassed her that night?

      But she didn’t look half as ticked off as she had a moment ago. In fact, her eyes were almost smiling, somehow reaching out. And he liked the positive change. Liked it way too much.

      Nate cleared his throat and hauled himself back. ‘We’ll need to see each other again. To discuss the Marla-Greg plan,’ he clarified quickly.

      ‘I’ll give you my email address.’ She cut across the counter and slipped a business card from a holder. ‘Why don’t you send over your ideas for Greg and Marla? I’ll be with Violet for a while yet hopefully.’

      ‘I’d rather toss around ideas face to face.’

      ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be free.’

      ‘I could hang around. Help out some more. Maybe do some zip repairs.’ His weak smile faded and he tucked in his chin. ‘I really am sorry about that.’

      She tried to hold her scowl. ‘Guess you can’t help if you’re too strong for your own good.’

      ‘I should have taken more time.’ Thought ahead.

      Hell, maybe he shouldn’t have come at all. But he believed in Greg and couldn’t abandon him. He believed in their business too, and he definitely wouldn’t abandon that. There seemed no other way around this bind, and to pull this make-up plan off he needed help. He needed Roxy.

      Looking radiant beneath the lights, she offered over the card, but Nate found his attention drawn instead to the side of her throat where a tiny pulse popped. Strange, but at this moment he seemed to feel that heartbeat as well as he felt his own. Steady. Deep.

      Hot.

      When she tipped closer, still offering the card, Nate extended a hand and accepted. He hadn’t meant for his fingers to linger, to stretch that bit further and brush over hers. And in that instant he saw the pulse in her throat beat faster and her gaze grow heavy while his dropped to her glossy parted lips.

      Time and again, he’d wondered what would’ve happened if he’d stayed that night six months ago. What principle of physics decreed that he would share his father’s fate, as well as his grandfather’s, and back on down the line? But as he continued to drink in Roxy’s curious gaze the world fell away and a series of snapshots flashed through his mind…

      His parents on their wedding day, two months after they’d met. His grandfather and grandmother in tails and lacy veil six weeks on the heels of a first date. If ever he mentioned the myth, his father would simply shrug. When a Sparks man found the right woman—the one who left his senses reeling and blood crashing like giant rollers on a shore—nothing else mattered. He might as well surrender. The toll of wedding bells was imminent. Marriage and domesticity a foregone. So, it would seem, was lack of personal growth and motivation for building security for one’s future.

      After marrying, his father had given up his dream of finishing medical school and becoming a surgeon. Instead he’d taken a job as a hospital wardsman, which meant less income to support the five kids that came along but more time to spend with his beloved wife, the only thing in his life that seemed to matter. Not always as romantic as it might sound.

      Nate couldn’t forget the weeks his mother had spent convalescing after a car accident when he was twelve. The children had needed leadership, strength, hope. Instead, their father had stopped eating, stopped communicating. He’d all but pined away for love. Or the time his father had had the chance to return to his education but had decided to support his wife’s dream of becoming a renowned painter when, hell, they could barely afford to feed themselves, let alone buy art materials and exhibition space.

      Similar stories of Sparks men and their women had survived … hasty marriages followed by a lifetime of Byronic devotion. Was it genetics or a curse? Of course it could all be coincidence.

      It was only when Nate realized his other palm had curled around the satin cinching her waist—when Roxy trembled and his head dropped deliberately over hers—that he knew the truth.

      Coincidence had nothing to do with it.

      He should have run while he could.