Her Red-Carpet Romance (17 page)

“I know this isn't what you probably want to hear and I promise I won't try to hold you back when you want to go—but please don't want to go,” she pleaded quietly. “Not yet.”

He laughed then, and she didn't know if she was on solid ground or if what she'd just said had struck him as ridiculously funny.

All she could do was ask.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked when he continued chuckling to himself.

It took him a second to catch his breath. “Call your mother,” he told her.

She stared at him, certain she must have heard wrong. “What?”

“Call your mother,” Lukkas repeated, this time far more audibly.

She could see him asking her to do a great many things for him. But never once would she have thought he would tell her to call her mother, especially after what she had told him about her.

“Why?” she asked in hushed disbelief. “Why would you want me to call my mother, of all people?” That, in her book, was akin to having a death wish.

“So you can tell her she can stop trying to set you up with her friends' sons and nephews. Tell her your fiancé doesn't like it.”

Her mouth dropped open and she stared at Lukkas in total disbelief. Now she knew she
had
to be dreaming—or at least hallucinating. But she hadn't ingested anything that even remotely had those side effects.

“My what?”

“Fiancé.” And then it hit him. He'd left parts out.

“I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?” It was a rhetorical question. “I'm assuming you're going to say yes, and I didn't mean to do that. Of course, if you say no, it'll shatter me after I spent all this time looking for— Oh, damn,” he muttered as another thought hit him.

“Oh, damn what?”

Instead of answering, Lukkas sat up and looked around the room. Spotting what he was looking for, his jacket, which was on the floor right next to the bed, he leaned over to pluck it up and pull it onto the bed.

Feeling the pocket, he detected the slight bulge and smiled his relief.

“Still here.”

Before she could ask Lukkas what he was talking about, he took a small black velvet box out of the pocket, flipped it open with his thumb and held it out to her.

“Hanna, you brought the sunshine back into my life and I don't want to go back to living in the dark.”

He took a breath and said the most important words of his life—for a second time. “Will you marry me?”

For the second time, her mouth dropped open. She looked at Lukkas, then at the ring and back again.

“You're serious?”

Lukkas laughed shortly. “I'm naked, holding a ring, with my entire life riding on your answer. This is about as vulnerable as I can get. So yes, I'm serious.” He took her free hand into his as he made his case. “I didn't think I could love anyone ever again, or
risk
loving anyone again.

“But you, just by being you, showed me that I could, that my life had meaning again and that it was time to stop sleepwalking through each day. I can't take the ring back, so it's yours no matter what your answer is, but I'm hoping that you'll take me along with it, although—”

Stifling a laugh, Yohanna put her finger against his lips, momentarily silencing him.

“I never thought I would ever hear myself saying this to you, but shut up, Lukkas. You're talking too much and it's not necessary. That's a lot of wasted rhetoric. I've been yours from the very first day.”

He still wasn't going to take anything for granted. “Then it's yes? I want to be clear on this,” he specified.

“It's
always
been yes,” she said.

The phone rang just as he reached for her again. Glancing at the phone's caller ID, she groaned, then picked up the receiver. “Can't talk right now. I'm getting married, Mom. Call you back later.” With that, she hung up and looked at her husband-to-be.

“Where were we?”

“Here, I think,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

The phone rang again just as he was going to begin kissing her. He intended to create a path that ran the length and breadth of her body.

They ignored the ringing phone.

She would get back to her mother eventually, Yohanna thought. But right at this moment there was something far more important on her mind. She wanted to make love with her fiancé for the very first time.

And she did.

 

Epilogue

“Y
ou
really have outdone yourself, you know,” Maizie whispered to Theresa as wedding
guests filed into the rows of seats that had been set up in the garden behind
the hotel.

Theresa was catering yet another affair for Lukkas Spader. This
time, though, it was his wedding, and she had pulled out all the stops.

“Using the red carpet to designate the aisle that the bride
comes down was truly a stroke of genius,” Maizie told her with admiration.

“It just seemed fitting,” Theresa replied in the same hushed
tone.

Satisfied that everything was running smoothly and that her
employees had everything under control, Theresa had allowed herself a small
island of time to simply enjoy being a spectator at another one of their success
stories.

So far, she, Maizie and Cecilia, in their capacity as
Matchmaking Mamas, were batting a thousand.

“From what Cecilia told me, it seems as if Lukkas first fell in
love with Yohanna when they attended the premiere of his movie. I saw that
photograph one of those awful pushy paparazzi people had taken of the two of
them in a weekly magazine. Lukkas had a smitten face if ever I saw one.”

Standing beside the two women in the second-to-last row of
folding chairs at the outdoor wedding, Cecilia could only agree with her best
friends. But she also had a footnote to offer.

“You want to see smitten, take a look at the bride's mother.
That woman looks as if she's just died and gone to heaven.” Cecilia nodded at a
striking woman in blue standing at the rear of the gathering, just in front of
the hotel door.

Maizie glanced in Elizabeth Andrzejewski's direction. The woman
was positively beaming. “She certainly does look very proud,” she agreed.

“Of herself,” Cecilia exhorted. “She's telling anyone she can
corner that
she
was the one who was responsible for bringing all this
around.”

“You're kidding,” Theresa said, surprised.

“No, I'm not. According to her, she had kept after Yohanna,
urging her to go out with her ‘handsome boss' until the girl finally did.”
Cecilia laughed as she shook her head.

“Ladies, be kind,” Maizie told her friends, then winked to cast
a smidgeon of doubt on her sincerity in this matter. “We all remember what that
was like, desperately wanting to see each of our daughters get married to a good
man.”

“Yes, but we didn't nag them,” Cecilia pointed out.

“Actually, we did—if you ask the girls,” Theresa reminded
her.

Cecilia shrugged off Theresa's words. “Anyway, that's all in
the past,” she said with a careless wave of her hand.

Maizie looked at the groom, who was standing beside his best
man, anxiously glancing toward the rear of the hotel where the bride was getting
ready.

“Nice to see another happy couple preparing to spend the rest
of their lives together,” Maizie commented with an approving smile.

Just then, the orchestra ceased tuning up. Half a second of
silence then gave way to the beginning strains of the “Wedding March.”

All conversation ceased as the wedding guests turned almost in
unison to look to the rear, waiting for Yohanna to emerge from the hotel.

The hush intensified as the guests watched Yohanna walk down
the aisle, which was, in this case, the red carpet Theresa had pulled strings to
acquire for the occasion.

Initially, Yohanna had been going to walk to the altar alone
since her father had died a long time ago and she'd felt the position belonged
to him exclusively. But, at the last minute, she changed her mind and asked her
rather stunned mother to accompany her on the symbolic walk.

She told her mother it was only right, since the woman had so
anxiously wanted to give her away for the past ten years.

“I just wanted you to have someone to love,” Elizabeth told
her. “Like I had.”

“I know, Mom. I know,” Yohanna told her, linking her arm with
her mother's when the orchestra began to play.

Elizabeth was positively beaming as she walked beside her
daughter. She loved to focus on the fact that she was giving her daughter away
to Lukkas Spader, a man who was not only good-looking, famous and well-off, but
just possibly was the nicest son-in-law on the face of the earth. This was the
way she described Lukkas to each one of her friends, all of whom had been
invited to the wedding and reception.

Walking down the red carpet, Elizabeth was in her glory. It was
an event that she would remember for the rest of her life no matter how long she
lived. She said as much, in a hushed whisper, to her daughter. Then followed
that up with a question.

“Do you love him, baby?” Elizabeth asked when they were almost
at the flower-laden altar that had been built less than a day earlier by some of
the scenery crew who had worked on Lukkas's last movie. A fact that Elizabeth
would proudly repeat a dozen times over to her friends at the reception, as
well.

Yohanna's eyes were on Lukkas, her heart swelling with each
step she took that brought her closer to him. “Very, very much,” she
answered.

“Then, my job here is done,” her mother announced, all but
bursting with pride.

“Yes, it is, Mom,” Yohanna told her with no small relief.

They came to a stop right beside Lukkas. “You're so beautiful
it hurts,” he whispered to his wife-to-be, a deep smile curving his lips.

Yohanna blushed.

“Who gives this woman away?” the minister asked.

“I do!” Elizabeth cried loudly enough to be heard not just in
the last row but quite possibly inside the hotel lobby, as well.

Lukkas and Yohanna, who only had eyes for one another, were
quite possibly the only two people who hadn't heard Elizabeth's loud
declaration. The couple was too busy listening intently to the words the
minister was saying.

The words that would forever bind them to one another.

It couldn't happen soon enough for either of them.

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from THE INSTANT FAMILY MAN by
Shirley Jump.

Chapter One

W
hen Peyton Reynolds was a little girl, tearing through her grandmother's house on her way to whatever excitement waited outside the front door, her grandma Lucy would reach out, corral her granddaughter in a fresh-baked-bread-scented hug and say, “Goodness gracious, child, you gotta slow down. Life is just gonna pass you by if you don't learn to take a breath or two.”

Peyton never had learned to slow down. She'd taken every day of her life ten steps at a time, running from high school to college, graduating in two and a half years instead of four, and putting in more hours at Winston Interior Design than any other designer—earning her four promotions in three years. Then, a month before her twenty-third birthday, her world turned upside down when her older sister Susannah died in a car accident, suddenly leaving forty pounds of cuteness and need in Peyton's full-time care.

In that instant, Peyton had put the brakes on her rising career while she figured out how to be a surrogate mom to her niece, Madelyne, and still stay on the fast track in the design industry. She'd been so very close to a promotion to associate, just a step below her goal of partner, but in the past four weeks, everything she had worked for started to fall apart. And it wasn't just her career self-destructing that had Peyton worried...

It was the quiet. The words unspoken, the tears unshed.

Maddy hadn't grieved, hadn't asked about her mother, hadn't wanted to talk about it. She'd gone on playing with her toys and eating her meals and brushing her teeth, but her mood was more somber, her heart more distant. Her laughter dulled, almost silenced.

That sad quiet was what finally spurred Peyton to go back home from Maryland, arriving yesterday in Stone Gap, North Carolina, one of those small Southern towns where it seemed the world stopped spinning. Where the trees and green landscape seemed to offer peace, and quiet, and healing. And where the last man on earth she wanted to see lived. A man who had no idea she was about to upend his world in a very big way.

For a very good reason. Peyton could only pray that he would see it that way, too.

“Auntie P?”

The soft voice of Madelyne, four years old next week and as beautiful as a ray of sunshine, rose from the space on the carpet between the two double beds in their hotel room. Peyton's only niece, and the only real family she had left. There were times in the days since her sister had died that Peyton wondered how she could move forward, take a breath, without letting the grief drown her. Then she'd look at Maddy, at her bouncy blond curls and her lopsided, toothy smile, and a blanket of warmth would surround Peyton's heart. For Maddy, Peyton would do absolutely anything.

Peyton came around the beds, then bent down and offered her niece a warm smile. “What do you need, kiddo?”

“Can you play dolls with me? I gots a house set up and everything.” Maddy waved toward an empty suitcase tipped on its side, flanked by a quartet of blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbie dolls in various stages of mismatched glamour. The moment Maddy had arrived back in Stone Gap, she had made herself at home in the hotel room, taking over every square inch of space with toys and clothes, a bright explosion among the tired and boring cream-colored decor.

“Wish I could, but remember I told you I had a meeting this morning? My friend Cassie is coming over to watch you.”

“I like Cassie,” Maddy said. “She always likes to play dolls.”

“She sure does, buttercup!” The loud, happy voice of Cassie Bertram boomed into the room, followed immediately by the woman herself—platinum blonde, dressed in a bright pink sundress and flip-flops sporting giant plastic flowers. Cassie had always been larger than life, and that was part of what Peyton loved about her best friend.

A peacock, Grandma Lucy had dubbed Cassie, for all her sass and snap. Cassie lit up a room when she walked into it and lived her life out loud, in ways that Peyton could only envy. Cassie had traveled all the opposite roads from Peyton—married shortly after high school, settling down in Stone Gap with her husband, and then becoming a mother to five kids while working part-time in the school office. Cassie did the bake sales and cookie walks and all the craziness that came with kids, and more often than not, she sported glitter glue on her arms from the craft project du jour. She'd been Peyton's first call when Peyton had decided to come back home for a couple of weeks, and her biggest support system in the chaotic weeks since Maddy had become Peyton's charge. Cassie had visited Peyton often enough over the years that Maddy knew her well and loved her like another aunt.

“I've got a couple hours before I have to pick up the youngest rug rat at preschool,” Cassie said to Peyton. “Is that enough time?”

“More than enough. It won't take me long to tell a certain someone that he should...” She glanced down at her motherless niece, then stepped toward the window and motioned for Cassie to follow, saying “Be a grown-up. And do his part. Or walk away for good.”

Cassie grinned. “I wish I could be a fly on the wall to watch this particular conversation unfold.”

“It'll be fine. I'll make a logical, reasonable argument, and he'll see the wisdom in my plan.”

“Logical and reasonable? With that hunk of testosterone?” Cassie grinned. “Good luck, honey.”

Hunk of testosterone.
Definitely
three words that described Luke Barlow. Or had when Peyton had been a young, infatuated high school freshman, watching the much older Luke turn his charm on Susannah. Her sister's old boyfriend—and also Maddy's irresponsible, never-involved father. According to Susannah, he'd washed his hands of her from the day she told him she was pregnant. She might have let it go, but Peyton sure as hell wasn't going to let the man get away with shirking his fatherly responsibilities, not for one more second. Especially now, when Peyton was nearly at her wit's end. Every decision Peyton made right now was driven by the urgent need to make Maddy whole again.

“How's the little peanut doing?” Cassie asked softly, as if reading Peyton's mind.

“Same. Won't talk about it. She plays and eats and does what she's told, but there's a...wall there. I can't get past it.”

Cassie put a hand on Peyton's shoulder. “It'll get better.”

Peyton sighed. That was what she had been telling herself for a month now, and if anything, things were getting worse, not better. “I hope so. And I really hope I'm making the right decision today.”

“Auntie P?” Maddy rose, peered over the bed at Peyton. “Are you leavin'?”

“Just for a little bit, sweetie.”

Maddy's face flushed, and her right hand curled tight around the hem of her shirt. “Are you comin' right back?”

Peyton swung over to Maddy and lowered herself to her niece's level. “Right back, sweetie. I promise. Cassie will be here the whole time, and she's going to play dolls with you.”

Maddy's lower lip quivered. “How long's a little bit?”

Peyton glanced at Cassie. These were the days that made it hard. Explaining to Maddy that just because she walked out the door didn't mean she was going to disappear forever. “Faster than you can watch
Frozen
.”

“And we'll sing ‘Let it Go' together, munchkin.” Cassie grinned at Maddy. “I'll dub you honorary princess for the morning, too.”

“Okay,” Maddy said, though there wasn't much enthusiasm in her voice. She dropped back onto her Barbie-riddled carpet space and went back to her dolls. Every couple of seconds, her gaze flicked to Peyton, and her shoulders tensed with worry.

Cassie and Peyton crossed to the other side of the bed and lowered their voices again. “You're doing the right thing, Pey. That poor little thing needs family and you need help. And if that foolish man can't be bothered to spend time with that precious gift from heaven...” Cassie cast a smile in Maddy's direction. “I'd be glad to keep an eye on that little doll.”

“Thanks, but you have your hands full with that basketball team you gave birth to and everything else you're doing. Besides, it's his responsibility to do the right thing.” And the sooner Peyton got there to make sure Luke did that, the better. Peyton grabbed her purse, then darted over to plant a quick kiss on Maddy's cheek. “See you in a little bit, sweetie. Be good for Cassie.”

“I will.” Maddy's eyes were round and full, but she pressed her lips together and affected a brave front.

“A little bit,” Peyton said softly, ruffling Maddy's curls. “I promise.”

At the door, Cassie drew Peyton into a tight, quick hug. “Good luck. And go easy on Luke. He's a flirt, for sure, but he's always been a nice guy and maybe he had a good reason for what he did.”

“The only good reason is being stuck in a cave for the past four years. Something I can arrange, if need be.” Peyton grinned.

“I hope you're only half kidding,” Cassie called after her. Peyton just grinned again and slipped out the door.

But when she climbed into her car and started the engine, the frustration and worry she'd been feeling for weeks flared anew. Luke Barlow was the town's most eligible bachelor for as long as anyone could remember—one of those charming, handsome, could-do-no-wrong playboys—but who had never had anything to do with his daughter. A daughter who had lost her mother, and desperately needed a caring father.

Peyton remembered those tearful conversations with Susannah, who said she told Luke about the baby the minute she'd taken the home pregnancy test. When he'd told her she was on her own, nineteen-year-old Susannah had left town, leaving behind her chaotic childhood home—the Reynolds parental storm mitigated too rarely by visits to grandma's when they were little—determined to raise her baby alone. Peyton had followed soon after, switching colleges to be near her sister, and working part-time all through school, helping Susannah financially, emotionally—in all the ways Luke should have and never did.

How could anyone not want to be a part of Maddy's life? From the second she had held her niece in her arms, Peyton had fallen in love. She'd spent every spare minute with Susannah and Maddy, even moving Susannah into her condo in Baltimore so she could be sure they had a solid roof over their heads and a full refrigerator. It had been odd at first, coming home to the responsibilities of a full house when she was barely a grown-up herself, but Peyton had found she liked having a pseudo-family. And though her relationship with her sister had been rocky at best—the two of them butting heads daily on Susannah's refusal to give up her partying habits—the blooming bond with Maddy had been the highlight of Peyton's days.

How long's a little bit?

The heartbreaking words from her niece, so unsure and lost in the wake of her mother's death, told Peyton that Maddy needed a father, now more than ever, and the days of Luke Barlow running around town, as footloose as a loose kite in the wind, were over.

Peyton double-checked the address, then drove the few miles across town to Luke's house, located only a few blocks away from where the Barlow boys had grown up. She parked her car, strode up the walk, then pressed the doorbell, reminding herself to try to be calm, logical. To keep emotion out of it.

Uh, yeah, considering the riot in her gut right now, she had a better chance of being hit by a snowstorm.

The bell chimed, a dog barked, and then...nothing. Peyton waited in the hot North Carolina air, while the cicadas buzzed in the deep woods to the east side of the house.

Luke lived in a modest bungalow, which surprised her. A house smacked of dependability. A mortgage or a lease. Permanence. She would have never thought he would buy a house, much less live in one.

An old wooden swing much like the one Grandma Lucy had hung for Peyton when she was a little girl drifted in the breeze on ropes hanging from an oak tree just down the hill sloping away from the driveway. The painted white mailbox hoisted a bright red mail-to-take flag, while an audience of pansies waved in the shade underneath. The whole property seemed to beckon her back in time, to the days when life had been unfettered, uncomplicated.

She rang the bell again. Waited some more. The dog kept barking, but there was no movement from inside. A restored Mustang convertible sat in the driveway, like some throwback to the '80s. Peyton shifted her weight, then pressed the bell one more time. If there was any justice in the world, Luke would have gotten bald and fat in the years since she'd last seen him.

The dog barked again, then shushed. A clatter of footsteps, and a moment later, the door was opened.

Luke Barlow stood on the other side, looking sleep-rumpled and scruffy with a five o'clock shadow dusting his chin. Her gut tensed, her breath caught. Definitely not bald or fat. At all. If anything, he looked better than he did when he was in high school, damn him.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

There wasn't a hint of recognition in his eyes. She told herself she wasn't disappointed. After all, she'd grown up a lot in the past five years, ditched the nerdy glasses and khaki pants for contacts and skirts. She'd let her hair grow long, made workouts a daily item on her to-do list and developed more curves than she'd had at graduation. When she was younger, she'd been the annoying little sister, while outgoing, flamboyant Susannah had always taken center stage. Now, though, she was an adult. A woman.

Hopefully, a woman to be reckoned with.

“I take it you don't remember me,” she said. “I'm Peyton. Susannah Reynolds's younger sister.”

Now recognition dawned in his eyes. His gaze swept over her, lit surprise in his features as he took in her dress, low heels, long hair. “Peyton? Peyton
Reynolds
? Holy hell, I haven't seen you in years. What are you doing here?”

Luke's deep Southern voice slid through her like honey drizzled over toast. Once upon a time, she'd had a crush on him. But that was a long time in the past, and a lot had happened in the years since. Except his damned voice still made parts of her warm.