The First Wife (2 page)

“I promise you, I’m real.” He laid her hand over his heart. “Feel it beating.”

She did and pressed closer. Thoughts of her mother swamped her. Her hopes and hurts,
dreams and disappointments. Many of them for her daughter. Bailey had told him about
her mother’s illness, her passing. How much it hurt.

Bailey lifted her eyes to his. “I took this trip as a way to celebrate my mother’s
life. To honor her by … really living. Does that make sense?”

He combed his fingers through her hair. “It does. Completely.”

A smile touched her mouth. “And here you are.”

“And so are you.”

“It’s hard losing someone you love.”

“But they’re never really gone. Not if you truly loved them. They leave a little piece
of themselves. Here.”

He laid his hand on her breast. She wondered if he felt her heart leap at his touch.

“And what of you?” she asked thickly. “Who have you loved and lost?”

“Everyone,” he said simply.

In that moment, with that one revealing word, she fell completely, irrevocably in
love with him.

Before she could respond, he kissed her. She kissed him back and there, with the sun
streaming through the blinds, they made love for the first time.

*   *   *

They sat across from each other at a small table at the thatched-roof cabana bar.
A Bob Marley tune playing. Fruity drinks with tiny, paper umbrellas. Women in bikinis
and see-through cover-ups. Exotic, beautiful women.

And every one of them had noticed him. Several had openly flirted, as if she weren’t
even there. As if recognizing, as Bailey did, that he was way out of her league.

Self-doubt swamped her and she leaned toward him. “Why are you with me?”

He looked annoyed. “Why would you ask that?”

“Why do you think? You could have any woman in this room. On this beach, for that
matter. Why me?”

“You’re the only woman I want.”

His words, the way his gaze dropped to her mouth, thrilled. Even as the chill bumps
raced up her arms, warning bells sounded in her head.

She silenced them. “You look like that character from the show
Mad Men
.”

He cocked an eyebrow, obviously amused. “Don Draper?”

“That’s the one. You’ve been told that before, haven’t you?”

He shrugged. “People see what they want to see.”

“And what do you see when you look at me?”

“Not Don Draper.”

She laughed, liking his sudden moments of humor. “God, I hope not.”

His smile faded. “I see you, Bailey.”

She pouted and he frowned. “Don’t do that. You don’t have to and it’s not you. You’re
not like these other women. Not a Barbie doll. Real, no artifice or games.”

He leaned closer. “You still believe anything is possible. You believe in true love,
in good triumphing over evil and in happily ever after.”

She did, she realized. In her heart of hearts, despite a life that had time and again
exhibited the opposite.

How had he learned so much about her in such a short time?

The same way she had learned so much about him.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you believe in happily ever after?”

Shadows came into his eyes. He gathered her hands in his, leaned toward her. “Could
you believe enough for the both of us?”

Her mouth went dry. A lump lodged in her throat. How many times had she told her world-weary,
brokenhearted mama just that?
“I’ll believe enough for us both, Mama. Everything will change for us, you just wait
and see.”

It’d come too late for her mother. But not for her. “I can,” she said softly. “I love
you already.”

He smiled, slow and satisfied. Like a cat. A big one. Sleek and dangerous.

“You’re perfect, Bailey Browne. Absolutely perfect.”

*   *   *

Bailey’s suitcase lay open on the luggage rack. Tomorrow she’d be going home. Her
heart was breaking.

Logan sat on the corner of the bed, silently watching her pack. He’d said little in
the last few hours and she filled the silence with chatter. “All good things come
to an end. That’s what Mom used to say.” Bailey took a stack of folded shorts and
shirts and laid them in the suitcase. “Bailey,” she mimicked, “if Christmas came every
day, it wouldn’t be a special day. Or if you ate chocolate ice cream for every meal,
it wouldn’t taste so good anymore. That’s the nature of—”

“Don’t go.”

She tried not to look as devastated over this moment as she was. “My flight’s tomorrow.
I have to.”

“No, you don’t. Stay. Extend your vacation.”

She met his eyes. “Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

Her heart began to rap against the wall of her chest. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Dead serious. Change your flight.”

“It’s nonrefundable.”

“I’ll pay for another.”

Her thoughts raced. What did she have to go back to? She’d quit her job to care for
her mother and the new semester at school had just begun. She had no family and few
real friends.

Bailey shook her head. “It’d cost a fortune.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can afford it.”

“But my room—”

“I’ll make arrangements with the hotel. Or you can move into my room.”

Into his room and into his life, her own disappearing forever.

“Young women go missing in places like this.” The words popped out of her mouth; she
hadn’t even realized they’d been there.

Cold crept into his expression and he stood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt that
way.”

“I don’t. I just … I’m a single woman. I have to be careful.”

“I get that.” He started for the door, then stopped and looked over his shoulder at
her. “I guess I thought this was as important to you as it is to me.”

She’d hurt him. Impossible as that seemed for her, she heard it in his voice and saw
it in his eyes.

“Wait!” She held out her hand. “It is, I just—”

“Don’t trust me.”

“No, I do. But—”

“We’ve only known each other five days? But you have to be smart or play it safe?”
His voice deepened. “You can’t have this, us, and play it safe at the same time.”

He was right. Physical time didn’t matter, her heart had known him forever. He was
the one she had always dreamed of finding. This thing exploding between them, the
love she had always longed for.

“I’ll do it.” She nodded her head for emphasis. “But I’m paying for it myself.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “I get you wanting to be self-reliant, but—”

“No. It seems right, spending Mom’s life insurance money this way. She always wanted
me to find what she never—”

Her throat closed over the last. He took her in his arms, drew her close. She curved
hers around him, nestled her head on his shoulder. They stood that way a long time,
his heart beating steady and strong against hers.

How could anything that felt so wonderful be anything but right?

Bailey leaned back, tipped her face up so she could meet his eyes. “My dad abandoned
us when I was a baby. It broke her heart and she never found love again. But she wanted
me to have what she didn’t. She wanted me to find you.”

“You have, Bailey. And I’m never letting you go.”

*   *   *

The same suitcase lay open on the same bed. The same heavy silence surrounded them.
The sense of loss, of her heart breaking.

No, Bailey thought, now the loss cut deeper. If he had meant to snare her in a seductive
web, he had succeeded. The thought of living without him was almost more than she
could bear.

“But we’ll see each other,” she said, voice artificially bright. “We’ve made a plan.
It’ll work.”

He didn’t respond and she went on. “You come to Nebraska for the sunrise, then I’ll
come to Louisiana for the seafood.” She collected a stack of shirts from the bureau
drawer. “It’s not like we live on different planets. It’s not—”

“Stop,” he said. “Please. There’s something I have to tell you.”

Bailey’s mouth went dry. “What?” she managed.

“I was married once,” he said. “She left me.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. The thought of him married to someone else stole
her breath. It shouldn’t, they were both old enough to have been married before, and
he was older than she. But still, something about it cut her to the quick.

“I came home one day and she was gone. She left with nothing but the clothes on her
back and the money she brought into the marriage.”

Bailey cleared her throat, feeling like a deer, frozen in the headlights of an oncoming
semi. “Why didn’t you … tell me this before?”

He looked down at his hands, then back up at her. “I don’t like talking about it.”

Which meant he’d been badly hurt. Because of her father, she understood betrayal by
the one you loved most. The one you trusted and depended on.

“Who have you loved and lost?”

“Everyone.”

She could hardly find her voice. “So … Why now, Logan?”

“There’s more. Ugly gossip. About me and True, my family. I’ve put up with it most
of my life, but I wanted you to know before I … Marry me, Bailey.”

She froze, certain she couldn’t have heard him right.

But she had, she realized when she looked at him.

“Marry me,” he said again. “I want to spend my life with you.”

The strangest sensation moved over her. Like the prickle of static electricity. But
from head to toe. With the sensation came elation. And complete terror.

“You’re crazy. We’ve only known each other—”

“Our whole lives.”

She laughed nervously. “And here I was going to say twelve days.”

He crossed to her, gathered her hands in his and looked deeply into her eyes. “Maybe
it is crazy, but it feels as if my heart has known you forever.”

God help her, it felt the same way to her. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”

“Dead serious. Listen, Bailey, we could say good-bye with all good intentions of seeing
each other again. But let’s be honest, we’d drift farther and farther apart. And that
would be that.”

He tightened his fingers on hers. “But that’s not how this story goes, Bailey. It’s
not how
our
story goes.”

He released her hands and got down on one knee. He took a small, white leather box
from his pocket. “I love you, Bailey Ann Browne. Will you marry me?”

He opened the box. The most beautiful diamond ring she’d ever seen winked up at her.

She moved her gaze from the ring to his face.
He loved her
. She had told him a dozen times already, but he had waited. To make this perfect.

Happily ever after, she thought. That’s how their story would go.

She believed in fairy tales. And this was hers.

“Yes, Logan,” she said softly. “I love you and I will marry you.”

CHAPTER TWO

Louisiana

They drove with the convertible top down and the heat blasting. Bailey laughed out
loud even as she huddled deeper into her coat. Crazy, driving this way, bundled up
in their winter gear. But everything about this was completely and utterly nuts.

Logan glanced at her. “What’s so funny?”

“We are!” She stretched her gloved hands to the sky, the way she did when riding a
roller coaster. And here she was, in the front car of the wildest coaster of all.

“You’re certifiable, you know that?”

“I married you, didn’t I?”

“And I’m not about to let you forget it!” he said, then motioned to the road ahead.
“We’re almost there. Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.”

Bailey straightened, excited. For many miles now, every time they’d come upon another
set of iron gates, she’d asked if this one was Abbott Farm.

And each time he had smiled and told her they had to reach Wholesome first.

Now, here it was, announced by a quaint wooden sign.

“‘Village of Wholesome,’” Bailey read aloud, “‘population seven hundred eighteen.’
It looks so cute!”

He reached across the seat and caught her hand. “I hope you like it here.”

“I’ll love it, Logan. Because you do. Tell me again who I’ll be meeting today.”

“My sister, Raine.”

His only family. “The artist.”

“Yes. Moody and brooding.”

“Obviously a strong family trait?” Bailey teased.

“Luckily, it skipped me.”

They both laughed.

“She teaches art at the university,” he continued. “Part-time.”

“The one in Hammond. With the good elementary education program.”

“Southeastern. Yes.”

They rolled past the closed-up Dairy Freeze, then Earl’s Quick Stop. Several patrons
turned their way and stared. No doubt they recognized the car. She wondered how they
would respond to the news Logan had remarried.

He didn’t seem to notice their attention. “She lives in a secondary residence on the
grounds.”

“Don’t forget, you promised she’d like me.”

“I don’t recall it actually being a promise.” He cocked an eyebrow, expression wickedly
amused. “Besides, it doesn’t matter if she likes you, baby. Because I love you.”

He stopped at a four-way and she sent him an arch glance. “So, you’re one of those
men who’ll say anything to get a woman to say yes.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Bailey refused to be drawn away from the subject of his sister. “So, she’s
not
going to like me?”

“Raine’s a little … possessive, so her first reaction might be … cool. But once she
gets to know you, and sees how happy you make me, I predict you’ll be terrific friends.”

Bailey rolled her eyes. “Great. I‘m totally screwed.”

He laughed but didn’t deny it, and eased through the intersection. “Then there’s August.
Watch out for him, he’s a womanizer and complete S.O.B.”

“But you like him anyway.”

“I respect him,” he corrected. “He’s a brilliant trainer.”

Bailey imagined him. August Perez, dressage trainer. Dark and dashing. It all sounded
so very romantic.

“Is this really happening?” she asked.