Cathryn Parry - The Long Way Home

He crossed his arms and glanced down. He knew roughly half the people—Maureen’s half, and they were relatives. As for Jimmy’s half, he didn’t know many in that crowd. They were younger than him. Still, he couldn’t be sure they didn’t know who he was.

Damn it. He had done his job. He’d shown up, he’d greeted Moe and made her happy, now why couldn’t he quietly escape through a side door, for her sake?

And then he saw the leggy blonde. Standing alone by the windows, she was the only person besides him who seemed out of place.

Sure, she was dressed like everybody else, in a black cocktail dress, but in every other way, she stood out from the crowd. She was...self-contained, for one. A real stunner, but in a fresh-faced, natural way, with little, if any makeup or jewelry. Her thick, honey-colored hair was long, loose, undone. It made her look sexy without even trying. But most of all, he liked that she wasn’t driven to snake around the room in the communal conga line, or to belly up to the bar, joking with the families, or even to sit at the cleared dinner tables, drinking coffee and chatting with the more subdued relatives, because she was disconnected from them, too. That much was obvious.

And then she calmly pulled out her phone to check her messages.

He liked that. He liked that...a lot.

“Who are you?” he muttered aloud.

Jimmy spoke up behind him. “That’s Natalie.”

Bruce swiveled to face his new brother-in-law. “Is she a relative of yours?”

“No.”

“A friend of Maureen’s?”

“Yes.”

His heart sank. Messing with a friend of his sister’s was a terrible idea. Unless...

“Is she an old friend that Moe hasn’t seen in a while, or a work friend she sees every week around town?” Because the former wasn’t too bad, but the latter would be fatal.

Jimmy blinked and stared at him. Bruce waited.

“No,” Jimmy said.

“No?”

“No.”

Bruce waited some more, but Jimmy added nothing. Like so many of the hard-core engineers and techies Bruce knew, getting Jimmy to open up was like pulling teeth.

“How does Maureen know her?” Bruce asked patiently, figuring an open-ended question was his best bet. Enough of the yes/no conversation.

“They went to school together.” Jimmy blinked at him. “I have to take you downstairs now. Maureen wants you in the ballroom with her.”

“Right.” Bruce swept his arm forward for Jimmy to precede him. “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”

As Jimmy traipsed down the creaking stairs, Bruce hung back for a last look at pretty Natalie. With her thumb on her phone’s screen, she was scrolling through her messages, unruffled by the music and the dancers in the wedding reception swirling around her.

Like an oasis of calm.

He needed calm. He needed an oasis, too, since it was clear Moe wasn’t going to allow him to escape until the very end of her reception.

Would it cause problems for Moe if he approached Natalie? If she and Maureen had gone to school together, then that meant Natalie had attended the state university where Maureen had majored in business. She couldn’t be a high school friend because he’d known all her friends before he’d left home. Knowing Maureen, Natalie was a dorm-mate invited to the wedding as courtesy. She would be out of Maureen’s life just as quickly as she’d been invited back in.

Like he would be, too.

No. It was too risky.

He was about to leave, when Natalie glanced up at him. He froze as she studied him from head to toe. Then she calmly met his gaze.

And smiled.

He felt hot inside. Maybe he was nuts, because suddenly, the course of action he was imagining seemed like the only possible one to take.

* * *

ONE MOMENT, NATALIE was checking her messages. Her father had sent her a text—all in caps, but still, it was progress in getting him to switch from his habit of phoning her all the time. She had felt the phone vibrating in her purse, and since she was just sitting there watching everybody dance, feeling disconnected and out of place, she’d read his message.

Tenant called. Check the mousetraps at 3 South Street before you come home.

She’d groaned inwardly. He wanted her to cover for him at the rental apartments above the building that housed the law firm. She’d tried to tell her father she was a lawyer, not his building supervisor, and that furthermore she had her own maintenance-needy cottage to worry about, but he was under the impression that she was at his beck and call, part of the package deal of her insisting on coming home to Wallis Point to work in the family firm.

Just rebait the darn mousetrap for him.

She’d suppressed the shudder. She hated mice.

You have to do it. Besides, you’re at a wedding. Think romantic thoughts.

But Bruce Cole hadn’t shown, and her pie-in-the-sky fantasies had lost their wings and fallen to earth.

Sighing, she’d tossed her phone into her purse and prepared to leave to find a hardware store open at this hour, in case the mice had escaped and she needed new traps. She’d almost made her escape, too, until she’d glanced up at the old balcony where the orchestras used to play.

And saw...him.

She’d blinked and gaped. She must be hallucinating.

But no, it was Bruce Cole. And he looked even better than she’d remembered. The sight of him still made her stop in her tracks.

Her heart had seemed to grow in her chest, squeezing her tight. He seemed taller than before. He was broader in the shoulders and he stood straighter. Then again, he’d been a navy lieutenant, although now he was dressed in a black tux with his tie undone. His dark brown, almost black hair was swept off his forehead in a tousled nonstyle that made her want to run her hands through it and gave him the old, passionate air she remembered. His jaw was edged with a five-o’clock shadow that looked sexy and dangerous.

She lifted her gaze to him. Those dark, intense eyes, so alive with fire, were boring straight into hers.

Her heartbeat sped up. The pull of his eyes seemed to tug on her, an invisible line straight to her...well, to parts of her anatomy that hadn’t felt a man’s touch in quite a while.

His eyes seemed to drink her in. Raked her from top to bottom. And she was standing still, letting him study her. This was what she’d been waiting for, after all.

No man interested her the way Bruce did.

As a kid, he had always known how to connect with people. He had that magical quality, a “people” gene that Natalie had been born without. And now all of his intensity was focused on her. She felt every muscle weaken, as if she were being swept away by his gaze.

A slow smile slid up his face.

Make him feel comfortable, Maureen had said. Well, here was a start, and she would do her best to keep it going.

But then she was distracted by her phone vibrating again, and when she glanced back, Bruce was no longer on the balcony. He was coming down to see her—she knew it in her bones, and, shy-person-at-heart she would always be, she couldn’t help worrying.

What if she didn’t hear him properly? What if she said something wrong, something he misinterpreted, and she was responsible for sending him away from Wallis Point again?

Glancing around her, she looked for an out. Somebody they both knew who could rescue her if she made a misstep.

But every other wedding guest was on the dance floor, singing aloud to Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” reminding Natalie she was probably the only person present who was not family.

Okay. She would have to handle the conversation on her own. Pay close attention, focus, and in doing so, hopefully help him see that not everybody in Wallis Point thought badly of him.