Cara Colter - The Heiress Takes A Husband

“The pictures will probably be in that horrible little paper,” she said swiftly. “I can’t be seen like this.”

His eyes became impatient, but his voice did not. “It doesn’t look that bad. Bubble gum is obviously not your shade, but I really don’t think it’s that noticeable. Not like, say, neon green.”

“Please stop calling it bubble gum. It’s frosted dawn,” she informed him regally.

“And how did, er, frosted dawn, end up on bleached blond?”

Bleached blond? She wasn’t even going to dignify that by responding to it. This man knew how to make an enemy.

“I happen to be painting,” she informed him in a chilled tone.

“An artist,” he said, as if that explained all kinds of eccentricities. “The last show the museum brought in was done by a dog. Seriously. He had had his tail dipped in paint, and wagged it over the canvas.”

The most handsome man she had ever, ever laid eyes on, had casually grouped her, the bleached blonde, in the same category as a dog that painted with its tail.

She sighed. She had looked forward to this day with eagerness and delight. It was the day of her sister’s wedding, a day that confirmed miracles really did happen to the most ordinary of people, a day that celebrated love. A day that filled her with this wistful, secret hope that maybe one day, in the not too distant future, she too would be a bride.

Now, she could tell things were just not going to go exactly as per her plan. Anything close to her plan. For today. And that probably included the rest of her life, too.

“I’m not an artist!” she told him coldly. “I’m painting the walls. In my business.”

He looked at the shade in her hair incredulously. “Really?”

“This shade looks much better on the walls.”

“Really?” he said again. A slow smile was spreading across those firm lips, slow and warm and sexy.

How could Abby do this to her?

“It’s not funny,” she told him desperately.

“Of course not,” he said, in a voice that could easily have tacked “Your Honor” on the end of his response. The smile disappeared. “But do you know what really wouldn’t be amusing? Being late for the wedding. That could spoil the occasion. This, on the other hand,” he gestured at her hair, “will probably be a source of great amusement every time everyone looks at the pictures for years to come.”

“A source of amusement,” she muttered unhappily. “For years to come.”

Still she looked at her watch, and with a little cry of dismay knew he was right. She had to leave.

Apparently with him.

Giving him a look of regal dislike, as if he were responsible for the fact she had paint on her head, she swept by him and down her creaky steps.

“Why do I have the awful feeling this is going to be the worst evening of my life?” she murmured as he had to reach out and grab her elbow when her ankle turned on the step.

“Ditto,” he responded dryly, letting go of her arm with extreme and unnecessary haste.

She let him open the car door for her, a jet-black Mercedes 600SL, a car she had personally always considered more conceited than sporty.

He slid into his seat, and started the powerful engine, looking straight ahead, not even attempting conversation.

A soldier carrying out orders.

“You didn’t want to do this, did you?”

He glanced at her, looked ahead again, and did not look the least uncomfortable. “I did it as a favor to my father.”

“You must care a great deal about your father since its obvious you’d rather be eating raw jalapeño peppers chased down with chili sauce.”

He smiled slightly. “I have great respect for my father, but it’s true that given an option, I wouldn’t exactly jump at an opportunity to spend an awkward evening with a total stranger.”

“It seems to me it could have been much worse,” she snapped.

“Oh?”

“I could have been old. And wrinkled. And ugly.”

He didn’t say anything, his silence far more insulting than if he had responded.

“And you did have an option. I told you I was capable of going by myself.”

“I didn’t have an option,” he said grimly. “I told my father I’d take you. And I will.”

“I suspect you have hopelessly old-fashioned notions about honor and integrity,” she said as if that were a bad thing.

When really it seemed to her she had discovered the most amazing of men.

Wasn’t it just her luck that he was a man who had no intention of being “discovered”? Or at least not on a blind date, by a woman with pink hair, who lived at the top of a flight of rickety stairs. If only she could have made that all-important first impression count.

Brittany decided life was unbearably cruel.

Despite the melodrama of that thought, she found the wedding was beautiful once she got there, even with the paint in her hair, which nobody noticed, and the unwilling escort at her side, whom everybody did. Abby and Shane looked gloriously happy as they exchanged vows.

But the rest of the evening lived up to her dismal expectations.

Throughout dinner, Mitch Hamilton was a disapproving, humorless presence who defied her every effort to ignore him. She could still feel the sting of his disapproval over the story with which she’d entertained the other guests at their table.

A really funny story, about the one hundred and thirty-two packages of red food color she had put in her parents’ pool at their home in Highwoods in California when she was a kid.

Mr. High-and-Mighty hadn’t even laughed. He’d looked bored and then looked at his watch as if counting the minutes he’d have to put up with her.

Still, he had a certain physical allure—that same almost electrical sensation she had felt when he touched her hair—exuding from him, that made it impossible to pretend he did not exist.

Not that he was ever going to know it from her.

Now, the dance had started, and Brittany focused more intently on the couple who held center stage. Brittany was not sure she had ever seen such a beautiful sight.

Her sister, Abby, the train of her long ivory wedding dress held up from sweeping the floor by a lace loop attached to her wrist, was dancing her first dance as Mrs. McCall. She and her husband, Shane, moved around the room with the grace of two people who had been born to dance together.

There was something in the way they were looking at each other that made Brit want to believe all over again in possibility. Fairy tales. Happy endings. True love.

Her sister and her new husband danced as if they were alone in the room. The light that shone from their eyes combined wonder and tenderness and passion to such a degree it made a lump rise in Brittany’s throat.

Be happy, she ordered herself sternly, taking another quick, soothing gulp of the champagne, especially when it felt like the tears pricking at the back of her eyes were going to fall. As if she’d ever cry in front of him.

“Did you want another glass of champagne?” His voice was ice and steel, tinged with an underlying disapproval, as if she were drinking too much.

Brit noticed, with some surprise, that her champagne glass was empty.

“Why not?” she said.

Her escort looked like he was debating giving her a few reasons why not, then with a shrug snagged her a drink off a passing tray. None for him, though, Mr. Control.

“Loosen up,” she told him. “Be happy. It’s a wedding.”

He studied her for a moment. “You don’t look that happy.”

“I am so,” she said, taking another swig, recognizing just a touch of defiance in the gesture. Her sincerest wish was to be happy for her sister, but the truth was she felt envious.

It just wasn’t fair. Her sister had been given a house. With a man in it. A gorgeous man, who had fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with Abby in the space of weeks.