The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen

impatiently pushed it aside, feeling the headpiece finally let go. It fell from her hair and tumbled down the top two steps. It didn’t matter, she thought as she watched the man in the greatcoat turn back to look at her from the entrance to the alleyway. Even at this distance she could see the pain etching his features.

      There was no way he could be Malone, Ainslie thought faintly, her knuckles white against the iron railing as his eyes met and held hers for a heartbeat. No way at all. As Sully had said, Malone was dead.

      It was him.

      “Malone,” she whispered incredulously, her hand going to her mouth. She felt the hot rush of tears behind her eyes and blinked. Joy, so sweet and sharp it felt like pain, lanced through her. Unheeded, warm tears slipped down her face.

      Through her blurred vision, she caught his one last, agonized glance before he turned and pushed his cart swiftly down the alleyway, his head bowed. He disappeared around a corner and was gone.

      “No,” Ainslie breathed disbelievingly. “No—I won’t lose you again. I can’t have lost you!”

      Breaking free of Sullivan’s grasp, she whirled desperately away from him and ran down the steps into the crowd.

      Chapter Two

      “For the love of Mike, Ainslie—what were you thinking of, flying down the church steps like that?”

      The little change room at the back of the church was packed with O’Connell females. Jackie O’Connell Byrne, once a flawless beauty and still sexy at fifty, raised an incredulous eyebrow at her niece.

      “We’ve got a packed church, an organist who’s started the wedding march twice, and one extremely patient groom out there. What we don’t have is a bride walking down the aisle.”

      “Would you like me to get Father Flynn in to talk to you, dear?” Her face flooding with color, Cissie glanced meaningfully at the yards of white ruffles and lace of her niece’s wedding dress. “Is there…is there something you’d like to confess before you go through with the ceremony, Ainslie?”

      “For crying out loud, of course there’s nothing she needs to confess,” Jackie snapped. “Just because you’re still hanging on to your virginity for dear life at forty-nine doesn’t mean—”

      “Shut up, the both of you!”

      The gravelly roar that cut through the small room came from a wiry figure clad, like Jackie, in a silk suit. But instead of a skirt, the jacket was paired with trousers in the same sea-foam green that Tara, sitting wide-eyed a few feet away, had so vocally groused about earlier. Peeking out raffishly from under the cuffed silk pants was a pair of lime high-top sneakers.

      A flicker of amusement briefly overlaid the chaos of Ainslie’s thoughts as she took in the pugnacious jut of her Aunt Kate’s jaw. Even as she stood there facing down her younger sisters, she seemed to bounce a little on the balls of her feet, as if she were getting ready to take on an opponent in the ring. Her boxing days long behind her, Ainslie mused, the woman once known as Kiss of Death Katie would never be anyone’s idea of a sweet little old lady.

      The rest of the O’Connell women had fallen silent. Raking an impatient hand through her cropped steel-gray hair, Kate’s gimlet gaze fell on one of Ainslie’s cousins.

      “Bridie, go out and tell Father Flynn that Ainslie’s just feeling a little faint from all the excitement. Say she needs a few minutes to compose herself before the ceremony.”

      “Lie to a priest, Aunt Kate?” Bridie sounded shocked.

      Her aunt’s jaw jutted out even farther. “It’s not a lie. Look at the poor girl, for God’s sake. Her face is like cheese.”

      “Thanks, Aunt Kate,” Ainslie murmured dryly, then wished she’d kept quiet. As Bridie reluctantly left the room, the high-tops swivelled her way.

      “Lying to Father Flynn’s going to buy us ten minutes, no more, so let’s hear it, Lee. Are we scrubbing this event or what? And what was that performance in front of the church all about?”

      Performance was the right word, Ainslie thought, feeling the color rise in her cheeks under the scrutiny of her three aunts and Tara’s alert glance from the corner of the room.

      She’d made a complete fool of herself. She’d heard cameras clicking like crazy all around her, had seen Susan Frank, News Five’s roving reporter, elbow her way toward her like a stevedore in high heels, and had felt one of her own satin shoes catch in a billowing ruffle.

      She hadn’t fallen for the same reason that she hadn’t been able to go any farther. The crowd had just been too thick. As Susan Frank, microphone thrust out in front of her, reached her, sanity had suddenly washed over Ainslie in a cold wave.

      Of course it wasn’t Malone, she’d thought stupidly. How crazy can you get, O’Connell? Malone’s dead. You’re running after a ghost.

      “And here we were hoping to surprise you, sis.” Sullivan had given a rueful chuckle and tightened his grip on her arm. “We told Lee her favorite great-uncle, Paddy Malone, wasn’t up to making the trip over from the old country, Miss Frank. His heart’s not as strong as it used to be, so we didn’t want to disappoint her if he couldn’t make it at the last minute, but it looks like she spotted him. Come on, Lee, Paddy’s already slipped in the side entrance.”

      If anyone could whip a choice morsel away from a shark, her half brother could, Ainslie thought now. Susan Frank had looked immediately bored, Sully had hustled her into the church and Aunt Kate had taken over from there.

      But even the combined forces of the O’Connell women and Terry Sullivan couldn’t hold off the delayed wedding for much longer, Ainslie told herself. Not for the first time since she’d accepted Pearson’s proposal, she felt a pang of longing for her mother—a longing that had never really faded over the ten years since Mary O’Connell’s untimely passing.

      When Thomas Sullivan, Sully’s feckless and charming father, had walked out on his second wife and his young daughter, taking his son by a previous marriage with him, at five years old she’d felt as if her world had been torn apart, Ainslie remembered. Reverting to her maiden name, Mary O’Connell had moved in with her sister Jackie’s family and the O’Connell clan had practically smothered Ainslie with love. But the lack of a father had always hurt. Even when her beloved half brother Sully had come back into her life years later, his reappearance hadn’t been able to completely make up for Thomas’s absence.

      Her aunts and Sully would always be there for her, Ainslie thought, meeting Kate’s inquiring gaze. But her mother would have known without asking that she still intended to go through with this wedding. She wanted Tara to have the one thing she’d missed out on—the presence of a stable father figure in her life.

      “We’re not scrubbing this event, Aunt Kate.” She forced a smile and smoothed down a ruffle. “You were the one who taught me to leave the butterflies outside when I stepped into the ring. I—I guess I just forgot that for a minute.”

      “Is that all it was, butterflies?” Her aunt looked unconvinced, and Ainslie nodded decisively.

      “Plain old-fashioned bridal nerves,” she said firmly, and saw the doubt in her aunt’s eyes disappear. “Ladies, start your engines—or at least get your butts out of here so the bride and her chief bridesmaid can make an entrance in a minute or so.”

      The older woman’s craggy features broke into a rare smile. “Some of the stuffier McNeils are going to bust a gut when they realize it’s Kiss of Death Katie who’s giving the bride away, darlin’. I can hardly wait to see their faces. Ciss, Jackie—let’s get out there and raise some eyebrows.”

      With the squeak of sneakers and the tapping of heels receding down the hall, Ainslie took a deep breath and turned to face Tara with the same grin she’d given her aunts still fixed on her face. “Well, pumpkin, it’s just you and me now,” she said bracingly. “Ready?”

      “No.”