Redeemed By Passion. Joss Wood

of drugs and alcohol, but earlier she’d touched his left arm and he’d cried out. Teresa rolled back his sleeveshirt to see a small but distinctive puncture mark on his forearm. In a place where it would be difficult for him to self-inject. Like so much else about this night, nothing made sense.

      But hell, why was she surprised? This was her insane life; everything and anything was possible.

      Teresa looked from Joshua to Brooks and found his eyes studying her. Teresa waited for the kick of attraction, for a spark, and sighed when nothing happened. Maybe she wasn’t responding to him because she was exhausted and overwrought because Brooks was everything she normally found attractive in a man. At six-four or so, he was tall but perfectly proportioned with wide shoulders, narrow hips and long, muscular legs. His voice, carrying the accent of an expensive British education, was deep and luscious, his face masculine and sexy, and his skin the color of old sepia photographs.

      But he wasn’t, dammit, Liam.

       Gah!

      As if she’d summoned him, Teresa heard the discreet beep of her phone and there was his name, flashing on the screen. Her heart whimpered and her stomach clenched. Nope, she couldn’t talk to him, not tonight, possibly never again. For the past few months, since she’d stumbled back into his orbit, she’d felt off-kilter and was constantly uncertain about what she’d face on any given day. She’d been a duck, serene on the outside but paddling like hell under the water. As a result, she was utterly drained on just about every level. Tonight she’d bled out every pint of energy she’d ever possessed.

      Teresa simply did not know if she’d be able to pick her head up, struggle on. Curling up in a ball and weeping sounded far more fun than fighting another day.

      She was done. Possibly for good.

      Brooks cleared his throat and Teresa lifted her head to see him holding out a tumbler of whiskey. Taking the glass, she glanced at Joshua. He’d fallen asleep, his head between the edge of the seat and the wall of the plane. Tossing back her whiskey, she lowered the glass and met Brooks’s sympathetic eyes.

      “Would you like another?” Brooks asked, his words holding the snap of Eton and Oxford.

      Teresa shook her head. “If I do, I’ll collapse in a heap and then you will have two St. Claires to deal with.”

      Teresa blew out her breath and gestured to Joshua. “I am so sorry. I know I’m repeating myself, but I don’t know how he found out where I was working or what prompted him to—” She hesitated, looking for words. Destroy my career? Embarrass the hell out of me? Bankrupt my business? “—do what he did.”

      Brooks lifted his shoulder in a quick shrug. When he didn’t respond, Teresa took a deep breath and bit the bullet. “I will absolutely understand if you want to rescind your offer to have me plan your wedding.”

      Brooks stared at her for a long time and Teresa resisted the urge to squirm. She wouldn’t blame him if he pulled his offer for her to plan his wedding; he’d floated the offer earlier that evening, back at the gala, before her carefully planned event went to hell on horseback.

      Unbidden, snapshots of the evening jumped onto the big screen of her mind. Joshua ripping the microphone from Jessie’s hand, his incoherent screaming. Liam, bigger and stronger than her lanky brother, tackling him to the ground, his fist connecting with Joshua’s face. And all of it streaming live to Jessie’s fans around the world.

      Teresa placed her hand on her heart and tried to rub the pain away. But nope, it wasn’t going anywhere.

      Brooks tapped a long finger against the Waterford tumbler and shook his head. “Up until your brother’s unfortunate interruption, the gala evening, and the weekend, was going well. I’m intelligent enough to see how much work you put into the preparations and how dedicated you are to your job. What he did wasn’t your fault.”

      At the unexpected vote of support, Teresa felt her eyes sting. “Thank you.”

      “Let’s discuss my wedding.”

      Teresa frowned. It was close to three in the morning, she was exhausted and, after a crappy evening, Brooks wanted her to talk flowers and food? Teresa slapped back her frustration. He was offering her a lifeboat as she treaded water in a stormy sea.

      Okay, then. She’d talk weddings. “Sure.”

      Then she realized that she had no idea who Brooks was marrying and, come to think of it, was still surprised to hear of his engagement. She’d pegged him as a confirmed bachelor, someone who wasn’t interested in settling down. She pulled a smile up onto her face. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

      Brooks stared at her for a moment, his eyes not leaving hers. “You will be informed in due course.”

      Okay, then. That was a super-weird response. Teresa worked hard not to show her shock, to react in any way other than polite acquiescence. Why the secrecy? Wasn’t the bride supposed to be part of these discussions? What was going on here?

      Her thoughts scrambling, Teresa linked her hands around her knees and tried to corral her thoughts. Right, moving on. “Do you have a preference on where you would like to marry? When? How many guests? What’s your budget?”

      Brooks held her eyes when he dropped what Teresa hoped would be the last bombshell of the evening. “You have an unlimited budget and I’m offering to pay double your normal fee.”

      “What’s the catch?” she asked, not sure that she wanted to know.

      Brooks smiled. “I need you to organize the wedding of the year so that it can take place on the thirtieth.”

      “Of what month?” She needed at least six months to prepare; six months was tight but doable.

      Brooks held her eye and didn’t flinch. “I’m getting married on the last Saturday of this month, Teresa.”

      Two weeks?

       Frick.

      Teresa held out her glass and nodded to the whiskey bottle. “Can I have another? And, respectfully, are you insane? There is no way I can plan a wedding in two weeks.”

      Brooks pulled out his phone and dialed. “She said she can’t do it,” he said to the person on the other line. He then handed her the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

       Two

      There was a method to his madness...and a madness to his methods. Shakespeare’s quote, Brooks Abbingdon thought, had never been more apt. His particular method of madness was to marry.

      In two weeks’ time.

      Teresa hung up the phone and looked at him with wide, defeated eyes. “I’d be...” she hesitated “...happy to do your wedding. Two weeks is no problem.”

      Another success for The Fixer and that meant that another hefty bill would be landing in his Brooks’s inbox soon. Fact: sometimes you had to pay for things to go your way.

      Seeing that Teresa was at the end of her rope—it was the early hours of the morning and she’d had a hell of a day—Brooks told her to rest and Teresa immediately dropped her head back and closed her eyes. She’d been shocked by his time frame; hearing that he had yet to choose a bride might cause her brain to explode.

      Because, really, who planned a wedding without securing a bride?

      Apparently, he did.

      Brooks stretched out his legs and jammed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, mostly to hide the small tremor in his fingers. Married? Him? He’d always believed, still did, that wedding rings were the world’s smallest, strongest pair of handcuffs. But here he was, about to get hitched because his grandfather refused to listen to reason.

      Stubborn old bastard.

      Lester Abbingdon