A Bride Until Midnight Read online

  She stopped in her tracks the moment she saw Summer and Kyle. “Oh.” Her blue eyes were round with surprise as she said, “There you are.”

  The feeling was returning to Summer’s limbs, but the roaring in her ears hadn’t lessened. “What is it, Abby?”

  Upon meeting Abby Fitzpatrick for the first time, and seeing her wispy light blond hair and petite build, her bow lips and ready smile, people often assumed she was flighty. First impressions weren’t always accurate, for she had an IQ that put most people to shame. It didn’t require great brilliance to recognize the reason for Summer’s disheveled appearance and glazed eyes, however, or the reason Kyle kept his back to the door.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Abby said apologetically. “But Jake’s here.”

  Summer’s hands went to either side of her face. Jake. Of course. That was what she’d forgotten.

  To Summer, Kyle said, “Who the hell is Jake?”

  It was Abby who answered. “He’s Summer’s date.” Her voice rose on the last word, turning the statement into a question.

  Summer and Jake Nichols had been in the middle of dinner two nights ago when he’d had to make an emergency house call to help a mother goat deliver twins. He’d promised to make it up to Summer. Tonight. Summer wasn’t sure what Abby was doing here, but it probably had to do with helping them choose the wedding cake.

  “Shall I tell him something came—er, that you stepped out?”

  “Yes,” Kyle said.

  “No,” Summer said at the same time. She pulled a face at her friend and took a deep breath. Walking to the counter on rubbery legs, she said, “I won’t lie. Tell him— What should we tell him? Tell him I’m running a little late. Can you keep him entertained for a few minutes?”

  “Are you sure?” Abby asked.

  The friends shared a look.

  Trying on a shaky smile, Summer said, “I’m sure, Abby. Just give me a few minutes, okay?”

  Abby spun on her heel and swished out the way she’d entered.

  “What are you doing, Summer?” Kyle asked.

  She went to the hook beside the refrigerator and opened her purse. After fishing out a brush and small mirror, she fixed her hair and applied lipstick and blush. Steadier now, she finally looked at Kyle again.

  He’d turned around and now faced her. His shirt was untucked—she’d untucked it. His collar was askew, again her doing. His green eyes were stormy and narrowed, but there was little she could do about that.

  She ran a hand down her dress, adjusted the waist and straightened the neckline. Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’m going to dinner.”

  “The hell you are.”

  The edge in Kyle’s voice held Summer momentarily still. He walked toward her like a stealth bomber, determination and displeasure in every step. He didn’t stop until he was close enough for her to see that he meant business.

  “I have to go, Kyle.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  She could tell he was trying to hold on to his temper—trying but not entirely succeeding. He was a force to be reckoned with, and she understood why he was upset. She was wildly attracted to him. There was no sense trying to deny it. Her heart rate still hadn’t settled back into its normal rhythm, her breathing was shallow and her legs were shaky. He’d touched her body and she’d felt his need. If Abby hadn’t interrupted, they would probably be in her bedroom right now. But Abby had interrupted, and Summer did have to go tonight.

  “Jake knows I’m here. I’m not going to stand him up.”

  He took her hand, then promptly released it. “So what we started he’ll—”

  Summer’s chin came up a notch. A few responses came to mind, none of them nice. In the end, she met his gaze and quietly said, “Nobody else could finish what you started.”

  She glanced at the table beside him, and, after another calming breath, she said, “I’ll ask Abby to tell Madeline we’re recommending the chocolate-vanilla swirl.”

  Leaving the cake to dry out, and Kyle to cool off, she lifted her chin and went to greet her date.

  Every bar Kyle had ever set foot in had basic similarities and a peculiarity or two that made each one unique in its own right. The three he visited in Orchard Hill were no exception. He’d knocked back a shot with his beer in the first, played a few games of pool in the second, and ordered a bar burger to go with a cold draft in the third. It wasn’t the way he wanted to spend his Friday night, not by a long shot.

  He’d gone up to his room after Summer left for her date. He had three voice mails from Grant Oberlin, each one more heated than the last, a text message from Riley, two missed calls from his mother and nothing from the source he needed to talk to. He’d tried to read, but Summer’s touches in the room were everywhere, and he’d wound up pacing.

  Summer insisted she wouldn’t lie. That was a good trait. But he was still mad. The answer was simple. He didn’t like the thought of Summer having dinner with Jake whoever-the-hell-he-was. He liked what that dinner might lead to even less, because no matter what she insinuated she wouldn’t do with anyone else, Jake whoever-the-hell-he-was was a man. Summer was a beautiful, vibrant woman, and this guy would have to be a fool not to try. Kyle had no claim on her. He had no right to feel like putting his fist in the middle of some stranger’s face, either, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t cracked his knuckles in anticipation.

  He’d dropped in on Riley and Madeline. Even in Kyle’s foul mood, he could see that he’d interrupted them in the middle of making up. After that he’d driven around Orchard Hill, getting a feel for the lay of the land. There were several more bars on the strip across the river near the college. Those catered to students, and the last thing Kyle wanted to deal with tonight was a college girl.

  A barroom brawl would have been a good diversion. The second bar he’d visited was a seedy dive where fights broke out with little provocation, but Kyle hadn’t stayed. Sometime before he’d turned thirty, he’d learned that the pain of a split lip, a black eye and a broken hand lasted longer than the satisfaction of feeling invincible that preceded it. Though he might make an exception if he encountered Jake Whoever-the-hell-he-was.

  Giving up his bar stool to some poor sap in a worse mood than Kyle, he dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter and left Bower’s Bar and Grill. It was only nine-thirty. It was going to be a long night.

  Since he’d parked his Jeep in a lot behind the second bar he’d visited, he started in that direction, in no particular hurry to get there. Most of the businesses on Division Street were closed, the storefronts emitting the blue haze of security system lighting. One window glowed bright yellow, and when Kyle went to investigate, he found himself peering into an antiquated newspaper office.

  Walter Ferris was leaning on one elbow at a counter that divided the front door from the rest of the office space. Glancing up from whatever he was studying, he spotted Kyle and motioned him inside.

  With nothing but time to kill, Kyle sauntered in and was given a tour of The Orchard Hill News. With steel desks and black telephones and an old printing press that had been retired and all but enshrined, Walter told him, when he took over the business after his father retired, it looked like something out of an old Clark Gable movie.

  “You didn’t tell me you were a news man,” Kyle said after Walter had bent his ear for a good hour telling him about the good old days when newspapers reported real news.

  Gesturing to the high ceilings and brick walls lining the interior of the building, Walter said, “She’s my second-best girl. You walkin’ or driving?”

  “Walking, for now.”

  The old leather desk chair creaked as Walter lowered his tall frame into it. Motioning for Kyle to have a seat in a chair across from him, he opened a low drawer and brought out two stout glasses and a brown bottle with a crown on the label.

  “Do you always work on Friday nights?” Kyle asked.

  In answer, Walter opened the bottle and poured
. “What I do doesn’t feel like work. Used to annoy the bejesus out of Harriet.” He stared into his whiskey. After swirling the amber liquid a few times, he said, “Never hurt a woman you love. Believe me, son, it isn’t worth it. It’ll change her forever. And that’s a hard thing to live with, harder than living with the original sin.”

  Kyle swirled his drink, too. “You seem like a man who knows what he’s talking about. How long have you and Harriet been divorced?”

  “Thirty-two years.” Walter picked up his glass and downed the whiskey in one gulp. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he said, “I was old enough to know better, but, hell, a man isn’t thinking with his brain at a time like that. Harriet and I were having problems, and my secretary was willing. Classic, isn’t it?”

  Kyle emptied his glass, too. “Harriet found out?”

  “She knew from the start. Maybe if I’d been a little discreet she would have gone on pretending.”

  When Walter grew pensive and lost in his reveries, Kyle leaned across the desk, snagged the bottle and poured them both another round. “She caught you with the secretary?”

  Walter brought his glass a few inches from his mouth. “In the act. In our marriage bed.” He looked at the whiskey then set the drink down as if he’d lost the taste for it. “Are you surprised?”

  Kyle sipped his whiskey, letting it burn his lips and tongue and throat on the way down before replying. “I have two younger half brothers and two stepmothers. After the third wife, my father stopped marrying his mistresses. Nothing surprises me.”

  “Where is he now, your father?”

  “Sleeping peacefully beneath a maple tree in a cemetery in St. Claire. At least I hope he’s at peace. The man never did like sleeping alone.” Kyle capped the bottle.

  “Do you hate him?” Walter asked.

  “He told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and he believed it. Every summer he took all three of us boys someplace we would never forget. Sometimes it was in the middle of the wild somewhere, other times in the middle of a city. I guess you could say he had a fatal flaw, but I loved him. Luckily I didn’t have to be married to him.”

  “And his ex-wives? Did they hate him?”

  “There were a lot of catfights when I was a kid. Now that he’s gone, they’ve formed a united front. It’s Riley and Braden and me against The Sources.”

  Walter laughed, then his gaze followed the course Kyle’s had taken.

  Summer was strolling by. Kyle stared at her as if he had a radar lock on her.

  She was walking next to but not touching a guy with a tattoo of an American Flag on his bicep and a Detroit ball cap on his head. She didn’t look in the window, and Kyle wondered if she’d had a good time. God, he hoped not. The streetlight picked up at least five shades of brown in her hair and bleached her dress to a hue barely darker than her skin.

  “It isn’t much fun to watch a woman you want out with another man,” Walter said.

  Kyle’s head turned with the speed of light. He hadn’t even realized he’d made a fist of his right hand.

  “Is that why Harriet flirts the way she does? Is she getting even?” he asked.

  Walter put the bottle away and shut the desk drawer with a loud clank. “Harriet was a flirt before I married her and she’ll likely be one until she takes her last breath. Don’t get me wrong. She might dye her hair red now, but she had a redhead’s fire from the get-go. She threw me out of the house the day she walked in on me. That little bitty gal dragged our mattress to the backyard and set it afire in the middle of a raging snowstorm. She filed for divorce a week later. I was belligerent back then. I showed her. I married somebody else. It was the second biggest mistake I’ve ever made.”

  “How did you two get from that burning bed to this arrangement?” Kyle asked, curious. “Any fool can see you’re deeply committed to each other.”

  Walter’s expression changed. His eyes softened, his mouth relaxed and his fingers eased on the grip he had on the arms of his chair. “She’s some woman, isn’t she? She forgave me.”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought what? That we keep separate houses? We do. I hurt her, son, the worst way a man can hurt a woman. Some women stick it out, but it changes them, and that’s reality. Harriet and I made a new reality, one we can both live with. If you want Summer, find a way to make it a reality.”

  Kyle stood up too fast and felt a whoosh in his head.

  With a chuckle, Walter said, “Come on. I’ll give you a ride to the inn.”

  Over the legal limit, Kyle let the old newspaperman drive. From the passenger window, he watched the inn come into view. It was a handsome stone building in a historic district where the lawns were large and the houses had once been owned by the crème de la crème of Orchard Hill society. Tall and sturdy, it had a roof that looked like a top hat from here.

  He wondered if Summer was back yet. He hoped she hadn’t brought the vet home with her.

  As Kyle opened the aging Cadillac’s big door, Walter said, “Remember, son. Never hurt a woman you love.”

  He stood on the walkway in front of the inn until Walter had backed out of the driveway. Kyle had one foot on the first step of the front portico when it occurred to him.

  Who said anything about love?

  Once again the Orchard Inn beckoned Summer home.

  She waited to go in until after Jake’s taillights had disappeared on the other side of the bridge across the river. Above the soft silver glow of the lights on the antique posts lining her driveway, the stars were faint pinholes in the midnight blue sky. With most of her guests gone for the weekend, the windows on the second and third floor of the inn were pitch black. Only the lamp in the bay window could be seen from here.

  She punched in the code on the electronic keypad, and went in through the front door. There was a knot between her shoulder blades and the start of a tension headache in her temples.

  There were no medical emergencies tonight, no mares in trouble, no dogs or cats hit by cars, no iguanas falling down stairs, no parakeets suffering from apparent amnesia, or hamsters hyperventilating. As she’d listened to his marvelous stories about all those incidents—her mind wandered. Jake had known before dinner was over that she wouldn’t be seeing him again. He was good about it, although not terribly happy. It would have been so much safer to care about Jake. Instead, she couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle.

  Abby had called Summer around eight to tell her she agreed with their choice of wedding cakes and had turned on all the usual night-lights before she’d gone home. Only one guest remained this weekend, and Abby said there had been no sign of him.

  Stifling a yawn, Summer listened at the stairs. All was quiet in the old inn. Kyle’s Jeep wasn’t parked in the lot. Obviously he was still out. If he returned he would have to use his electronic key. Installing those locks was the first change she’d made upon purchasing the inn. It had been worth the expense for the peace of mind it gave her.

  With the lamp in the window guiding her, she slowly made her way toward the back of the inn and the little apartment she kept there. The lack of sleep two nights in a row had caught up with her, and she yawned again.

  Her heels clicked over the hardwood floors in the dining room. As she swung the kitchen door open, she found the room dark. She flipped the switch. And nothing. The room remained pitch black. The light must have burned out. She was forever changing lightbulbs in this old place.

  She easily followed the countertop to the sink. Her fingertips were on another switch when a voice sounded behind her.

  “Are you going to see him again?”

  She jumped straight up as the light came on.

  Heart in her throat, she spun around. Kyle sat at the kitchen table, his feet propped on a chair, eyes squinting against the sudden bright light.

  Removing her hand from her throat, she said, “You nearly scared the life out of me, Kyle Merrick.”

  “Sorry.”

  He didn’t look sorry
. He looked lethal, like a man begging for trouble.

  “So are you?” he asked. “Going to see the vet again, I mean.”

  Lowering his feet to the floor, he stood.

  It wasn’t fear that made her heart speed up. It was the expression in Kyle’s green eyes, the slow, deliberate step he took toward her, and the way he reached his hand to her shoulder and gently drew her closer.

  She could have stopped him at any point. He gave her time to turn away, to hold up a hand, to tell him no and mean it, but she made no sound, no movement. Her gaze remained fixed on his, her heart beating a staccato rhythm in her chest. The vein at the base of her neck fluttered up before settling down to a steady thrum.

  Before either of them moved again, she knew. He was going to kiss her.

  And this time, there would be no interruptions.

  Chapter Seven

  The light over the sink cast Summer’s shadow across Kyle’s chest and left shoulder. The small wedding cakes were no longer sitting on the table, and the dishes they’d used to sample them had been stacked beneath the cabinet where they belonged. Summer noticed those things the way she noticed everything, but her attention was focused on Kyle.

  His face was lean and chiseled, his cheekbones hollowed slightly, his mouth open just enough to reveal the even edges of his front teeth. Beneath his gaze her fatigue and the knot between her shoulder blades was dissolving into thin air.

  Awareness, brought to life out of shadows and moon light as if just for the two of them, thrummed all around them. She’d thought the path to decorum might be a slippery slope. There was no slope; there was only this deep blue sea of possibility.

  She went up on tiptoe, and sound became a strum of heartbeats, his touch stirring her longing, his arms around her a haven. His lips found hers, and suddenly they were in the center of a whirlwind, grounded in a kiss while the rest of the world spun all around them.