His Wedding Date (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 2) (11 page)

"Come on, Shel." He looked really worried now.

"Brian, I really just want to be back home, in my apartment. It's been a crazy weekend, and... I have some things to take care of. I'll see you back in Naples."

"Wait a minute," he said, catching her by the arm as she tried to slip past him.

Shelly looked down at the hand held on her arm by the man who was still naked except for the towel wrapped precariously around his waist.

"I have to go," she insisted.

The phone rang, but neither of them moved to answer it. He held her arm. She refused to meet his eyes. In the space of a dozen frantic beats of her heart, the phone rang again, then a third time.

Brian cursed and let go of her long enough to cross the room to the phone and lift the receiver to his ear.

She was halfway to the door by the time he turned around.

"Shelly," he said, only half listening to the voice coming through the phone. "Wait a minute. Shel?"

He would have dropped the phone and chased her down the hallway, towel and all, until he heard the man on the other end of the phone say something about the plane crash.

"What?" he said, sure that he'd heard the man wrong.

And then, for a few moments at least, he forgot all about going after Shelly.

Chapter 6

He was on the phone for barely two minutes. Inside of five, he was dressed and out the door, hoping he wasn't too late to catch her.

When he got outside, she wasn't in the lobby or just outside the main doors, although a transportation company van was pulling out of the circular driveway.

"Hey," he said, catching the bell captain. "Is that van going to the airport?"

He wasn't sure she'd have the nerve to fly again so soon after the accident, but it would be the fastest way to get out of town. And the lady seemed very interested in getting out of town.

"You just missed it," the man said. "But the next one will be here in twenty minutes or so."

"Was a woman on there? In her twenties, light brown hair, comes down to her shoulders?"

The man knew right away. "Great legs and no luggage? Just a shopping bag?"

The shopping bag clinched it. "That's her."

"She was on the van."

"She didn't happen to mention what airline she was taking, did she?"

The bellman laughed and looked Brian over a little more carefully. "Guess you're in the doghouse, man."

Brian tried to smooth down his wet hair, then decided it was time to finish buttoning his shirt, too.

Here he was, half-dressed, his hair sticking up, chasing a woman with no luggage out of a hotel on Sunday morning. He guessed that pretty much told the story, as far as the bellman was concerned.

"Yeah, I'm in trouble," he said, praying for all he was worth that things hadn't gone as far with Shelly as they had in his dream, that he'd done nothing more than kiss her and call her Rebecca.

Shelly would never forgive him if he'd gone farther. He'd never forgive himself.

"Help me out here," Brian said to the man. "I have to catch that woman."

The man sized him up again. "She didn't say what airline she was flying, but she was worried about making the flight. She said it leaves at eight-thirty."

Brian checked his watch. Less than an hour and twenty minutes. He prayed the plane would be late, that airport security would be humming along and that she'd give him a chance to explain. He prayed that nothing had really happened.

"I need a cab," Brian said, pulling out a bill and pressing it into the man's hand. "I'll be back in ten minutes, and I need to get to the airport before that plane takes off."

* * *

He ran back to the suite just long enough to get dressed, then counted himself lucky the Tallahassee airport wasn't that big, and the Naples airport was even smaller. Only a handful of airlines had connections in both cities.

On his smart phone, in the cab, he found what he was sure was the flight she'd be taking and he booked a seat on it, as well. Now, he thought, settling back into his seat, all he had to do was get there before the plane took off.

And then explain what he'd done.

Brian groaned and rubbed his aching head. He had a hangover and a half and an empty stomach, save for the champagne that still seemed to be popping and hissing in there, and he was afraid he'd just ruined a friendship that had endured for twenty years.

How the hell could he explain himself? He wasn't even sure what he'd done, although he had a pretty good idea. He'd been making love to one woman in his mind while he held another one in his arms.

It was unforgivable, especially since the other woman was such a good friend.

He kept seeing that uncharacteristically cold look in her eyes this morning, kept seeing the hurt as well. He hated the idea of hurting Shelly.

It might not have been so bad, might have even been forgivable, if not for the time when he'd seen she wanted their relationship to move in that direction. She hadn't been much more than a kid at the time, and she'd never come right out and said anything, but she'd had a big crush on him when she was fifteen or sixteen.

Brian had been in college, but he'd spent weekends and summers at home, courting Rebecca, with Shelly watching his every move. This morning, she'd glared at him with the same look she'd had in her eyes when she was fifteen or sixteen, watching him with Rebecca.

Now he'd hurt her again, worse than he ever had before, and he felt like a jerk.

An even worse thought crossed his mind then. What if it wasn't just some sixteen-year-old crush they were dealing with here? What if it was something more recent? More... adult?

That would make things even more complicated, and it would make whatever he had done last night even more unforgivable.

* * *

Shelly had bitten her nails down to the quick by the time the plane was finally getting ready to move away from the terminal.

She desperately needed to get out of this town and forget about everything that had happened. She would have left last night, except she hadn't known where to go or how to get there.

Her money, her credit cards, her phone, her driver's license and her keys were in her purse at the bottom of that river.

A purse, she thought. Why did women have to carry purses? Why couldn't they carry a billfold and keys in their pockets, like men did?

Brian had gotten out of the river with his wallet. She knew, because he'd used his debit card to get them the suite at the hotel. She'd been fished out with nothing but the clothes on her back.

Finally, early this morning, she'd been able to think clearly enough to remember she could use her PayPal account to buy almost anything online. She used a computer in the hotel's business center to buy airport shuttle tickets and a plane ticket.

She felt extremely lucky that her copy of the police report about the plane crash, explaining her lack of ID, had been enough to get her a boarding pass and satisfy airport security.

The plane's engines revved up, and she relaxed a little. They'd be away from the gate in seconds. Maybe then she could really calm down, knowing she'd escaped and that, for now, Brian didn't remember anything.

Maybe he never would.

Still, she'd have at least until Monday morning before she had to face him again, wondering what, if anything, he'd remembered. But it wouldn't get any better. Even if she made it that first day, what about the next day, the next week, the next month?

She heard a commotion in the front of the plane and turned back from the window.

Someone was boarding. She heard the flight attendant joking with the person about barely making it in time, then saying to just sit anywhere, quickly, because they were ready to back out of the gate.

Then, Brian was strolling down the aisle.

Shelly couldn't do anything for a few precious seconds. She sat there, frozen in her seat, her eyes drinking in the sight of him while, at the same time, the crack in her heart seemed to wrench open another centimeter or two.

Vaguely, she thought about trying to hide somewhere, about trying to curl herself into a little ball in the corner and press her face against the window. But he knew she was here.

He'd somehow known to follow her to the airport and onto this plane, and now she'd be stuck in the air with him until they got to Miami and boarded the short commuter flight to Naples.

Shelly cursed under her breath as he paused at the row of seats in front of her and looked at his ticket.

"Fourteen B?" he said, looking from the paper in his hand to the label on the row of seats in which Shelly sat.

"Your ticket does not say that," she said.

"No, it doesn't. But the nice flight attendant told me I could sit anywhere. Don't want to hold everybody up when there's a seat right here. Plus, I'm not exactly happy about flying today. I thought you might be uneasy about it, too, that it might be nice to sit with someone who'd understand."

Shelly turned her face to the window and let her forehead rest against the heavy plastic pane. It was cool to the touch, and her cheeks felt hot.

Her row had three seats, and no one was sitting in the other two. He could have taken the third seat and left one empty between them, but he didn't.

He sat right beside her, his shoulders a little too broad for the narrow airline seat. Instinctively she found herself drawing inward, her arms and her shoulders hunched toward the window as she tried in vain not to touch him with any part of her body.

Not that it mattered, she thought as the plane finally pulled away from the terminal and began to taxi. She didn't have to touch him to feel his presence beside her. Her skin was hot to the touch. It felt ultrasensitive in the cool silk of the pretty blouse his mother had brought her yesterday. And her cheeks still stung a little from the unaccustomed feel of a man's face, rough with nighttime stubble, pressed against hers.

She shivered at the memory.

"Cold?" he asked, his voice low and so familiar. It sent another shiver down her spine.

He moved beside her, to put his arm around her, she thought, tensing visibly. But no. He was just closing the little overhead air-conditioning nozzle for her.

For the hundredth time or more in less than twelve hours, she felt like a complete idiot. She'd given away more with that little movement than any words they'd spoken this morning.

He couldn't know anything for sure, Shelly reminded herself. And he wouldn't know anything more than she told him with her words and her body.

"Shelly, I have to talk to you."

"No, you don't," she insisted.

He swore, and she flinched at the anger that dripped from the harsh words. Then he took a deep breath and tried again.

"Come on, squirt. Let me say it."

There,
Brian thought. That got her head back up and her eyes on him. He wouldn't have pushed her like this if he hadn't needed so badly to see her face. He'd needed to know, and now he did.

She almost seemed to hate him for an instant when she heard that silly childhood nickname. The idea of Shelly hating him was just impossible to imagine.

He could still see the bruises on the side of her face, where it had banged against the side of the plane. He could still remember how it had felt to hold her on the riverbank and think about what it would have felt like to lose her. He thought of how selfish he'd been to ask her to come with him on this trip and get her involved in the whole ugly scene.

He thought of how unfair he'd been to her.

He wondered how all the feelings he'd ever had for her, the ones he'd taken for granted, that he'd never given a second thought to, could have gotten this tangled up inside him at this moment.

And God help him, he couldn't help but think of all the things he'd done to the woman in his mind, in that incredible dream.

It had all been in his mind, hadn't it?

Had he actually seen the woman's face, or had he just assumed it was Rebecca, because he hadn't been with anyone but Rebecca in so long?