The Accidental Bridegroom Read online

  “Hey…you!”

  When she made like she was going to jump up and get it, he grabbed her slender wrist in a viselike grip.

  “Hey…you! That stuff is dangerous—in the hands of a maniac!” His hard blue eyes fastened on her startled face. “Or a nitwit! You’re supposed to spray the bad guy, not the good guy.”

  “So, which one are you?”

  “You’ve got a smart mouth. I didn’t try to jump you in the bushes.” He stood all the way up, but as he dusted himself off, she got up too and gave him the once-over again. Her sharp dark gaze got him hot as it climbed slowly up his black cowboy boots and black, denim-clad thighs to his leather jacket.

  She yanked at the zipper of his biker jacket. Then she flipped the tip of his glossy ponytail. “How am I supposed to tell you’re the good guy when you dress like a cheap biker thug?”

  He brushed at the dirt on the leather garment in question. “Hey, this jacket wasn’t cheap.”

  “Then you got ripped off, hon.”

  The way hon slid through her pretty, scarlet-tinted lips so softly turned him on even more.

  This was bad.

  “You should take a lady with you when you go shopping,” she said.

  “I haven’t got a lady.”

  Her eyes brightened with mischief.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” he growled.

  She smiled prettily. “Don’t be so conceited. I could do way better—”

  “You think so?”

  She placed her hands under her breasts and nodded.

  Damn. This was going all wrong. He had to get back on the right track. “Hey, I got hurt trying to save your—”

  “All you did was get in the way. I could’ve handled Jeff—I’ve done it before.”

  Rafe took a deep, controlled breath. The little smart aleck had insulted him again, big time. And just when he had a yen for a bit of gratitude. He studied the way her pretty, kissable mouth kept smiling at him so flirtatiously. She thought she was really something.

  She thought she was so rich and so pretty she could get away with any damn thing she wanted to. He had to keep his distance—emotionally, professionally.

  Just because she gave her old man a run for his money didn’t mean she was going to do the same to him.

  That’s when Rafe caught the skinny brat roughly by the shoulders, yanking her up on her tiptoes, stretching her so close to his body that he could feel the heat of her again, that he could catch the sweet lavender smell of her. Half carrying her, half shoving her, he marched her toward the wall, his long legs striding forward into hers, forcing her to back up fast.

  He liked the look of fright that flickered across her face when her shoulder blades touched brick and she knew she was trapped. “Not so fast, Slim.” His bronzed hand closed gently around her throat and twisted her pretty face to his. “Do you mean you’ve dated that bastard before, and you’re dumb enough to sneak out with him again?”

  “Who appointed you my guardian angel?”

  No way could he answer that one, so he stared her down, satisfied when her dark eyes widened farther.

  “What are you, crazy? Or are you just so hard up for a guy you’ll go out with anyone?”

  Something fragile and lonely came into her eyes that caught him off guard. “No…I could get anybody…”

  “Because you’re rich or because—”

  She looked away but not before her stricken eyes had gazed up and through him and had made him feel that her soul had reached out to his.

  She caught her quivering lower lip with her teeth. When she let it go, her mouth was all wet and shiny.

  For a long moment his gaze focused on her mouth.

  Then a sudden tremor shook him.

  She was so damned sexy. Which she obviously knew. But so damned stupid.

  “Didn’t your mama ever teach you not to tease guys?” he rasped, knowing he shouldn’t hold her so close, knowing he was being sucked across some dangerous line. “Don’t you know what could happen next time, if you don’t get lucky again? That guy can’t hold his liquor—it was obvious he’d lost all control. I bet he’s hurt other women. Maybe he thought you were as far gone as he was. Maybe he preys on women like that because he knows in court, juries don’t sympathize with female victims they think drink too much.”

  When Cathy tried to jerk free, Rafe’s fingers tightened. “Listen to me!”

  She glanced down at his bruising hands. “And you haven’t ever hurt a woman?”

  Rafe saw a little boy watching a man slam his mother onto the floor, screaming at her to take the cash, that she was trash and that he never wanted to see her or her son again. He saw the little boy putting his hands over his ears to shut out her sobs, dying inside when the door slammed and his father walked out forever.

  He remembered the bruises on his mother’s face. He remembered his father’s parting words: “What are you looking at, brat? You’re not mine. I despise you. And you…” He’d turned to Rafe’s mother again. “You are the last, the very last woman I would ever marry.”

  And he remembered the suitcase full of money that was lying open on the bed.

  “No, I never hurt a woman,” Rafe said aloud.

  “Well, then…you’d better let go of me,” she said quietly.

  He relaxed his grip and inhaled a deep, slow breath. “Right.” His voice came out low and muffled. “Look, I’ve spent a lot of years with a lot of rich lowlifes like your…friend, Jeff. He’s no good. Take this as a warning—you’re going to get hurt if you don’t start picking men more carefully.”

  “I’ve known Jeff a long time. He’s part of my crowd.”

  “You need a new crowd then.” Rafe eased his hands from her shoulders and backed out of her way.

  He expected her to rush past him.

  She stayed where she was.

  “Maybe I do…need a new crowd, but I don’t get many opportunities to make new friends,” she said.

  He didn’t like it at all when she began studying him with new interest. Women hadn’t chased him all his life for nothing. He knew that look. And it spelled trouble.

  “Who are you?” she asked softly, her husky voice going through him like an electric shock. “What were you doing out here, alone in the dark?”

  “It’s kind of complicated. Why were you climbing that wall?”

  “I was bored out of my mind and looking for some excitement,” she answered in that low velvet tone.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I was bored out of my mind, too.”

  “Maybe we can find some way to entertain each other,” she said, swaying closer into his space, so that this time, he was the one who began backing away.

  “Don’t chicken out on me, hon,” she whispered. “You’re supposed to be a bad-boy biker, remember?”

  “No, I’m the good guy.”

  “That so?” Her smiling lips seemed to beckon teasingly, heating Rafe’s blood.

  He had to fight to remember that he was a coolheaded professional, that he was her paid bodyguard—that he hated rich girls like her, on general principle.

  But he badly wanted a taste of that kissable mouth. Just as badly as he wanted to banish the look of loneliness in her eyes. Not that he wouldn’t have stayed cool.

  If she hadn’t licked her lips and gotten them all wet again.

  If she hadn’t reached up and crushed her mouth to his.

  Hard.

  One taste of her tart flavor and everything spun crazily out of control.

  His cool, professional brain shifted into neutral. His primitive male senses shifted into overdrive, and all he knew was a mindless, hormonal glory of the hot sweetness of her delicious mouth, tasting him, licking him. When her lips parted invitingly, he couldn’t resist pushing his tongue inside her warm silken depths.

  Clinging tighter to his wide shoulders, she moaned. At that muted, feminine sound, a wildness filled him, consumed him.

  The brat was a wanton. And she wasn’t as skinny as he’d thoug
ht. Maybe she was slim, but she was full-bosomed. And if ever a girl was asking for it… One kiss and she’d pulled him into a furnace. No way could he stop now. Not with those velvet lips sliding across his mouth, his throat, not with her tongue flicking into his ear and setting him on fire.

  He forgot who he was. Or who she was. No longer did it matter that she was rich and he was poor. Her hot mouth blurred all the bitter realities about their relationship. He was her paid bodyguard. She hated bodyguards, and he disliked spoiled rich girls.

  He was breaking the rules of his chosen profession. He was breaking all the personal codes he lived by.

  But nothing mattered. Nothing except the way her soft curves fit so perfectly into his long legs and hard-muscled thighs. His hands ruffled through the silken gold of her hair. He kissed her long and deeply until he felt her begin to tremble against him. In another minute…

  It was a good thing she pushed him away when she did.

  “You’re pretty good at that,” she said breathlessly, smiling up at him.

  “Ditto.”

  “You must’ve done that before.”

  He wasn’t ready to admit to this fast, conceited imp that kissing her had taken him a lot further than kissing any other woman ever had. Way too far.

  “Yeah,” he growled, his breath so harsh and rough he could barely speak. “A time or two. How about you, Slim? I can tell you’ve been around the block a time or two.”

  “A time…or two,” she agreed a little too offhandedly.

  Hot, jolting anger made his blue eyes blaze as he thought of the other men who had already had her.

  She flushed uneasily. “Couldn’t you tell?”

  “Look…” His voice was hard. “I don’t want to know about all the other guys—”

  “Does that mean you want to be my guy?”

  Not in a million lifetimes!

  “You move fast,” he said aloud. Too fast.

  She was going to be hell on wheels to protect if she came on to other guys the way she came on to him.

  “No, this is just happening fast. Don’t you feel it?”

  No—he had the situation under professional control. “Look, you kissed me, Slim. Maybe I got a little excited, but it was purely sexual and a mistake.”

  “So, that’s your story.”

  He smiled. “And I’m stickin’ to it.”

  Something sparkled from the ground. “Somehow I don’t think your family would approve of me.” He leaned down and carefully picked up the necklace Jeff had torn from her neck.

  “So? What do they know? They love Jeff.”

  “He’s rich,” Rafe muttered. “He can afford to give you diamonds.”

  Rich and born on the right side of the sheets.

  Rafe took her hand and dropped the sparkling necklace into it. He studied the gems glowing like white fire in her cupped hand. He knew he would never be able to afford even one piece of jewelry like that, even if he worked a lifetime. But to her, it was probably just another trinket.

  He frowned, unaware that she was studying him as he avidly studied the diamonds. She snapped her hand shut, and when he looked at her, she smiled brightly. “I’ve got it…you’re a thief!”

  “A thief?” Furious, he froze. “I’ve never stolen a damn thing in my life.”

  “You don’t have to yell. I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

  “Look, I just work in your neighborhood.”

  “I don’t care if you’re a thief,” she said, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “In fact…I like the idea.”

  It figured. She had sneaked out of her house with a drunk, and then come on to him like a house on fire. She was just the kind of nitwit who would see befriending a thief as a grand adventure.

  She’d dealt the cards. His sixth sense told him only a fool would refuse to play such a good hand.

  So she hated bodyguards, and she liked thieves. Who was he to judge?

  He was supposed to protect her, and to do that he had to stay close to her. Which was going to be difficult if they didn’t hit it off.

  If she wanted a thief, he’d be a thief.

  “I figured it out when you were looking at those diamonds, and that’s the only reason I can think of why someone like you would be lurking out here at two a.m.”

  “While you were figuring, how come you didn’t figure me for a butler?”

  She shook her head. “No way. Now, don’t lie. I—I promise… I won’t tell.”

  “If you want to think I’m some kind of Robin Hood…who takes from the rich and gives to the poor—me being the poor—you go right ahead, Slim,” he said with seeming reluctance.

  “I knew it!” she sang, bobbing up and down on her bare tiptoes.

  Then she reached up and traced her fingers along the hard chest muscles beneath his jacket. He caught her hand and held it still.

  “Slim, you’re playing with fire.”

  “I know.” Her eyes slanted up at him and grew hot and dark. “But I like it.”

  To a girl like her, he was the forbidden. He was someone to use—till she grew bored and needed some new, more exciting form of entertainment.

  Old bitterness rose in him, and without thinking he angrily grabbed her and brought his hard mouth brutally down on hers. Two could play the using game.

  Not that she minded. Her arms wrapped around his neck. Her lips were eager, hot.

  “Where’s your getaway vehicle?” she asked a long time later when his anger was gone and he was too charged up by other unwanted emotions to deny her anything.

  “You mean my motorcycle.”

  “No wonder you’re wearing that awful jacket. That’s great! I’ve never driven a motorcycle.”

  “Driven? Did you say driven?”

  After she kissed him again and recharged all the right batteries, she demanded his key. “Take me to your hideout.”

  “If you have a lick of sense, you’ll agree to meet me tomorrow, then climb back over that wall like a good girl.”

  When she shook her golden head, one of her dangling diamond clips flew out.

  If she had a lick of sense, her father wouldn’t have had to hire him.

  “If my new bodyguard turns up tomorrow, I might not be able to get away,” she said as Rafe leaned down and picked up her clip.

  “My hideout it is, then,” Rafe murmured ironically, rationalizing that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. At least maybe Mike would be home to protect him.

  Rafe led her across the street to the bike he’d hidden in the shrubs. “Climb on,” he ordered grimly when she hesitated. Then he got on behind her, and explained everything.

  “I think I’ve got it figured out,” she whispered as she buckled his helmet under her chin.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  When she pressed too hard on the gas, the big bike bucked off the curb like a bronco lunging out of a chute. She screamed with laughter when he nearly fell off and had to grab her hard by the waist.

  As they sped through the flying dark, her filmy skirts whipping his legs, he realized she was going to give him the ride of his life.

  One

  Mexico

  Six and a half years later

  “Damn it!” Cathy hissed as she studied the reflection of her pale, narrow face and huge dark eyes in the mirror. “You haven’t got the courage God gave a mouse! What kind of mother is afraid of her own darling, six-year-old daughter?”

  The humble shopkeeper selling fluorescent skulls in the market of the quaint, impoverished Mexican village—which one of the world’s wealthiest women had improbably chosen as the perfect spot to bring up the diminutive whirlwind in question—would have agreed that Cathy had no reason to be afraid. Unless, however, she intended to cross the little girl. For Sadie, who was a pixie-faced angel as long as her mother gave her her way, had become something entirely different that afternoon in the market when her mother had said that horrid, two-letter word no. Or more specifically, “No, my sweet, darling Gordita, I�
��m afraid you cannot have one of those purple fluorescent skulls. I don’t care if it glows in the dark!”

  At no, the petite angel had frowned and chewed on her lip. At the words you cannot have, her cheeks had puffed out and turned tomato red. And when her mother had held firmly to the little hand and tried to coax her away, the child couldn’t have yelled louder if a huge stake had been hammered through her heart. In the heat of this battle, a dozen fluorescent skulls had flown from the table and been smashed, and when Cathy had had to let go of Sadie’s hand to pull money from her purse to pay the damages, Sadie had seized the biggest and grandest skull and galloped away with it, as gleefully as a marauding bandit.

  But Cathy was not thinking of that latest disastrous shopping spree as she turned away from her mirror. Nor was she worrying about her own disheveled appearance—for that was her norm.

  The lopsided, butter yellow knot perched on top of her head looked as shaggy as a haystack. Her faded jeans were ragged. The rip above her right knee gaped open and showed way too much honey-toned skin and luscious thigh—especially when one considered she was supposed to at least try to look the part of the virtuous, grieving widow.

  Except for the huge diamond on her left hand, Cathy never looked and never acted like one of the world’s wealthiest heiresses. And until she had allowed Maurice Dumont the honor of placing that unwanted five-carat lump of ice on her finger, she had been the despair of her internationally famous, socialite mother and billionaire stepfather who were the brightest megastars in their jet-setting firmament. And if Cathy hadn’t borne such a striking resemblance to her glamorous mother, all three might have believed that some madcap stork had mistakenly dropped the wrong baby down the chimney.

  A little over six and a half years ago, the frustrating relationship between these fabled parents and their unsatisfactory daughter had sunk to an all-time low when Cathy had turned up pregnant—and naturally by the most unsuitable of seducers, that gorgeous brash bodyguard with a bad attitude and splendid tattooed biceps who had ordered them all about as arrogantly as if he’d been the billionaire.

  Naturally nobody had thought it necessary to inform him that he held the dubious honor of being the unwanted sire to near royalty. Naturally Cathy had insisted on keeping the baby. Naturally her mother, who worried about appearances, had thought it best to rehire their old nurse, Pita, and build this beautiful house in Pita’s remote Mexican mountain village far from the press’s prying eyes, so the child could be raised secretly in one of the only places Cathy had ever been happy. And naturally Cathy’s stepfather, who lied to everyone that he was a Mexican blueblood who could trace his ancestry back to El Cid and a Spanish king, found a way to get revenge against the treacherous seducer of his daughter.