From Here to There (2 page)

 "You're going to make perfectly beautiful bride and groom. The perfect couple," Erica enthused, as though feeling she had to offer something to add Helene’s worth to the picture.

 Helene smiled, realizing that her mouth was growing stiff with the effort. It felt so dry it was as though she'd swallowed cotton. Would she be able to say the words when she was told?

 She cast her eyes down, trying to get control of her raging emotions. She had to go through with the wedding. Everyone was waiting, seated in the pews, waiting for the bride to appear. Somehow, someway she would find the strength to walk down the aisle. Maybe once she was actually married these feelings of entrapment would disappear.

 Helene's tall, distinguished looking father strode into the room. "Are you ready, love?" he asked. "Of course, you are. You look beautiful, simply lovely." His smile was broad, filled with pride. He shook his head as though to clear it. "I could be stepping back in time, that much like my sister you look today. Rochelle--well, I wish she could have lived for this moment."

 "I still miss her," Helene said, dabbing at her eyes again. Aunt Rochelle and the ranch in Montana. They were so entwined in her past that she couldn't separate one from the other. Her delicate and beautiful aunt, who'd raised two strapping sons, kept a husband madly in love with her, maintained a home filled with baked goodies and wonderful aromas, drove tractor when needed, and still found time to be a second mother to a lonely girl when her own mother was jetting off to Europe or vacationing in Mexico.

 Helene reached up to put her hand over the dainty, gold necklace she wore. It had been Aunt Rochelle's, and she'd willed it to Helene when she died. It seemed to lend a feeling of strength to Helene as she ran her fingertip over the simple locket.

 "I can't believe this moment has finally come," her father said, dabbing at his eyes. "You're going to belong to some other man now." He shook his head.

 Belong to? Helene didn't like the sound of that. It was what she feared, but she managed a smile for this man who had sired her but who'd been less than an exemplar parent or husband himself. Despite his flaws, she knew he did love her.

 She took a deep breath before she took her father's arm, waiting at the door as her attendants made their way down the aisle, waiting as she listened to the music change into the wedding march. She bit her lip, then looked up at her father. She almost opened her mouth to tell him her doubts, but she wouldn't do it. She had to walk down that aisle.

 The floor felt slick beneath her satin slippers until she stepped onto the long white runner that led down the aisle to her groom. She tried not to think, not to let herself consider what she was doing. The music from the baroque ensemble seemed to fill the cathedral, all eyes turned toward her. Their faces were smiling with pleasure, some familiar, many friends of her parents or Phillip's guests. Others faces she didn't know.

 The oohs and aahs at her beauty offered her scant comfort and neither did her father's arm. Ahead she could see Phillip as he stood tall, strong looking, smile on his suavely handsome face as she came up to him. Beyond him were her cousins, then Phillip's attendants. She'd met his best man only once and couldn't now manage to remember his name.

 The words of the minister came to her as though through a haze. First asking who gave her.
No one gives me. I am my own person,
but she heard her father's voice saying the age-old words, then she was placed into Phillip's keeping, his strong hand closed over her cold one, drawing her forward for more words, more vows, words she barely remembered repeating, but she knew she had to have said what she must because Phillip was lifting her chin, and his lips were gently descending on hers, the kiss one of formality and ritual.

 Then they were turning and walking down the aisle, his arm around her, the hard muscles evident even through the tuxedo. Who was this tall man at her side, guiding, directing her steps as they walked out the door of the church to the waiting limousine, the limousine that would carry them to the reception?

 Everyone was flowing out the doors to their own vehicles as the limousine driver shut the door, shutting out the noise and making Helene aware of the irretrievable step she had taken. She felt as though she was in a daze. The slamming of the door woke her.

 She looked up at Phillip, his own eyes straight ahead, his mind full of who knew what. She had no idea after a courtship of barely over four months. Everything had happened so quickly, half the time, they'd been seeing each other he'd been gone on business trips. She barely knew him and knew she shouldn't have said she would marry him, shouldn't have gone through with the ceremony. She didn’t love him. How could she when she had no idea who he truly was.

 She stared at his sharp profile. It was impossible to imagine being married to him, sleeping with him.  "I've made a terrible mistake."

 He smiled patiently at her. "Did you forget something, darling?" he asked, his voice a deep, pleasing masculine one, his eyes a clear blue as he looked down at her.

 "I shouldn't have married you."

 "Pardon me?" he asked, the voice still cultured and calm, but the finely shaped lips tightening a little.

 "I've made a terrible mistake. I don't love you. I can't be your wife."

 A muscle began to twitch in his jaw. "Excuse me for being dense, but I thought that was what you just did."

 "I know what I did, but I can't go through with it."

 His eyes narrowed. "You're not making sense, Helene."

 "I know. It's completely crazy. I can't believe I... I never thought I'd be the flighty type to do something like this but--" She would not allow her fate to be controlled by others. If she'd made a mistake, well, she'd just have to be the one to rectify it.

 She glanced forward and saw that the limousine driver was looking into the rear view mirror, his eyes met hers with interest. Phillip must have noted the same thing and with a curse, slammed the window shut between the front and back of the vehicle.

 "You can't be serious," he said, his voice losing its cultured polish as he glared at her, the handsome face still nearly unbelievable in its perfection, but the lips tightly drawn and jaw clenched as the words came out in an angry hiss.

 "I've been a fool, but it wouldn't be any better to admit all this a month or two down the road," she tried again to calm him. She'd never seen Phillip angry, but she was seeing it now.

 "It wouldn't?" He raised patrician brows in the air. "It wouldn't! And just exactly what do you think this is going to look like?"

 "Is what it 'looks like' all you care about?" she asked, feeling a surge of anger. Her whole life had been dominated by ignoring what she wasn't supposed to see and pretending what she was--all for what it looked like.

 He snorted at her. "At this point, am I supposed to be concerned about your feelings? You just told me marrying me is a mistake, that you don't love me, that you'd like to... What is it you'd like, Helene? Shall I ask the driver to stop let you out along the road somewhere?"

 She glared back at him. "Don't be ridiculous!"

 The curses that followed were words she'd had no idea Phillip even knew, let alone would use. "Ridiculous," he finally managed, throwing himself back against the seat, his broad shoulders, stretching the fabric of the tuxedo as he reached up one finger and loosened the collar. "Unbelievable," he repeated. "I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than this conversation," he muttered. "What's gotten into you?"

 "Truly I am sorry, but I should never have married you."

 "You could not have figured this out say a week ago, two weeks ago, maybe when I asked you?" He glared at her, his startlingly blue eyes glacial in their anger. He shook his head as though struggling to get control of his temper. "Damnation," he growled and stared out the window as the limousine wound its way down narrow streets, past tall trees and stately houses, heading for the Aquarian Club. "I can't believe this. I really can't believe this is happening."

 "But..." She realized she had no words to explain it to him, except she knew marriage and a life the way Phillip would want it lived was totally impossible for her. She couldn't accept a marriage like her parents had endured, where her mother constantly took trips to exotic locales by herself, where her father never quit working except to see his
friends
, where a husband and wife existed side by side but never together, where money was offered as a substitute for love. She'd strangle on the coldness and limitations. She had been wrong to let it all go so far, but it was better to own up to her mistake now.

 Phillip swiveled in the seat. He scowled at her. "You will go through with the reception and pretend you are madly in love with me," he ordered. "We'll talk afterward."

 "I'm not sure I can do that."

 His smile became ugly, his eyes blue glacial ice. "You can and you will. If you want me to cooperate with your desire to end this marriage, you will do what I say. I will not be made a fool of this way. You can go wherever you damned well like after this day is over, but you'll be at my side through that farcical reception, dance the first dance in my arms, and let everyone throw rice, birdseed or whatever the hell it is they throw these days as we drive away to wedded bliss."

 Helene's mouth gaped open. She shut it again as she considered his demand. He had a right to ask this much of her. No matter what, they would both look like fools anyway when she immediately filed for divorce or in this case an annulment. It would make it worse if they didn't attend their own reception, if anyone suspected there that all was not well between the newly married Drummonds, the dream couple. Finally she nodded. "All right. I've been pretending all my life. I suppose I can manage for a few more hours. I owe you that much."

 "You can say that again," he muttered as he straightened his suit. "Your mascara is running. Fix it," he said in a coldly authoritarian voice, his smile a glaring contradiction to the anger in his eyes.

 She took tissues and fixed her face as best she could, then glared back at him.

 "Loving," he reminded her through set lips. "You understand."

 "I'm not a fool, Phillip!"

 "You couldn't prove it by today," he retorted.

 The chauffeur opened the door for them, a sly smile on his face as Phillip stepped out, then reached back to offer Helene his hand. She took it and tilted up her chin. Ahead were her friends and family who had assembled on the lawn in front of the club. She had a reception line to get through. At this point it was beginning to seem like a gauntlet.

 As she heard the click of several cameras, she plastered a smile on her face and looked up into Phillip's eyes. There was a coldness and anger there which she supposed she deserved, but if that was his idea of how to deceive everyone, he was going to need a few lessons in duplicity.

 Before the thought was fully formed, Phillip had reached down, his strong arms pulled her against his hard, muscular frame, and his lips descended on hers. The kiss was unlike any he'd given her in the courtship. It was angry and hard, but there was a passion in it she'd never experienced. He slanted his mouth across hers and before she realized what he was doing, he pushed her lips apart with his tongue and invaded her mouth. She had a moment of surprise, a moment of shocked awareness at the physical reality of Phillip Drummond, then she put her own arms up, tangled them in his hair, and pressed herself against his body. It wasn't until he released her that she had time to wonder if she'd been acting.

 "Now, now, there will be plenty of time for that later," her mother as she swept Helene and Phillip away to the receiving line.

 The compliments flowed, the effusive greetings, the countless hands to be shaken and cheeks to be kissed as people passed them on their way into the great hall of the club. Flowers were everywhere, the music resumed and everyone seemed filled with joy at the wedding, everyone except Phillip and Helene. She felt the tension in his muscles as he stood at her side, pressing against her now and again, a smile on his lips that she knew was for everyone else's benefit.

 Rafe came up, grabbed her for a quick hug, then took Phillip's hand. "You better be good to my little cousin," he sternly ordered, slapping Phillip on the shoulder.