Carole Buck - Zoe And The Best Man

Zoe’s sense of guilt intensified. While she didn’t believe her wishes about Flynn had any real force, she knew she was going to feel at least partially responsible if he failed to fulfill the pledge he’d made to Luc Devereaux. And if Peachy’s wedding day was marred because her bridegroom’s best man didn’t get himself to the church on time…

“Yes,” she affirmed.

“Mr. Smythe’s on standby.”

“Would he be…all right?” Peachy had told her that Luc, who’d lost both his parents in an automobile accident at age nineteen, held the older man in very high esteem.

“Flynn would be better,” Terry said frankly, then glanced at his watch again. He gasped in dismay. “Oh, my God. It’s three minutes before the hour. I’ve got to get inside and tell the organist to stall. Maybe he can take requests from the congregation or something.” He gave Zoe an imploring look. “Will you stay out here a teensy-weensy while longer? Please?”

“No problem, Terry,” she acquiesced, summoning up what she hoped was a tranquil smile. “Just don’t start the ceremony without me.”

“Perish the thought, sweetie,” the former gridiron champion responded feelingly, then pirouetted on one foot and reentered the church.

Squaring her slim shoulders, Zoe turned back toward the street. She was getting all worked up over nothing, she told herself. There was no rational reason for her to be afraid of seeing Flynn again. She was an intelligent, independent, thirtytwo-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake. Luc’s putative best man posed no threat to her. He’d never posed a threat to her!

Except, perhaps, psychologically. There was no disputing that Flynn had had—continued to have—a diabolically disruptive effect on her peace of mind. But that was far more her fault than his at this point. If she’d had a shred of gumption, she would have put what had happened between them behind her a long, long time ago.

Not that what had happened between them had been all that earth-shatteringly significant. Flynn’s existence had intersected with hers for a scant five days nearly sixteen years ago. And during those five days, he’d…well, uh…he’d…

Oh, all right!

During those five days he’d saved her life.

Which wasn’t to say he’d done so because he’d genuinely wanted to, Zoe felt compelled to remind herself, clenching and unclenching her fingers. Oh, indeed, not. Twenty-three-yearold Lieutenant Gabriel James McNally Flynn had made it absolutely clear that he’d been given no choice in the matter. He’d been acting on orders from start to finish. Hauling her— or, rather, what he’d crudely referred to as her “skinny adolescent butt"—out of harm’s way had been nothing more than an assignment to him. And a damned undesirable assignment, too, for a highly trained member of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces.

Zoe gritted her teeth, remembering. She could have been a crate of kitty litter for all the consideration he’d shown her during the time they’d spent together!

She hadn’t even learned Flynn’s full name or age until after he’d delivered her into the custody of U.S. diplomats and departed for some classified location without so much as a goodbye or good riddance. Not that she hadn’t tried to discover them before that. She had. Repeatedly. Unfortunately, her taciturn military escort had proven to be about as giving as a block of granite when it came to answering questions or providing explanations.

He’d known her name and vital statistics, of course, thanks to what she’d gathered had been a very thorough pre-mission briefing. But he hadn’t deigned to call her Zoe more than a couple of times as he’d bullied her through nearly eighty miles of Central American jungle. He’d chosen instead to address her by the appellation “Goldilocks,” which had obviously been intended to goad.

Zoe closed her eyes, muttering a polyglot assortment of less than ladylike expressions she’d picked up during her singularly peripatetic formative years. Flynn had made her feel like such a…such a child during that treacherous five-day trek. She’d hated him for the way he’d treated her! And out of that hatred had come a furious desire to prove that she was more than the burdensome brat he so obviously considered her to be.

“I’ll show him” had been the mantra that had kept her going when every fiber in her body had been shrieking at her to slow down or stop. I’ll show him.

And she had.

“You didn’t think I’d make it, did you, Flynn?” she’d demanded when they’d finally reached safety. Exhausted to the point of illness, she’d been shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. She’d also been scared. For the first time in nearly 150 hours, she’d been scared out of her wits.

Flynn had stared at her without speaking for what had seemed like a very long time. During the course of that silence, she’d discovered that the deep-set eyes she’d thought were stone-cold gray were actually enlivened with flecks of green and gold. She’d also detected subtle hints of the same fear she was feeling in the lean features of the sun-bronzed face she’d come to believe was incapable of registering anything but disdain for her.

“You have no idea what I thought—or think—about you, Goldilocks,” he’d responded at last, his voice edged with an emotion she couldn’t identify.

Then he’d left her.

Zoe opened her eyes. Maybe seeing Flynn again would be good for her, she thought. It would be an opportunity to achieve…what was that popular talk-show term? Oh, yes. Closure. If nothing else, seeing Flynn again would allow her to say the thank-you she’d never had a chance to say. And after she’d uttered the requisite expressions of gratitude, maybe she’d allow herself the luxury of—

Rrrmm. Rrrmm.

An ominous rumbling disrupted what might have been a very pleasant revenge fantasy. Zoe cocked her head, listening. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere down the street. But what on earth—

The arrogant, eat-my-dust noise got louder.

And louder.

Zoe lifted her right hand and shaded her eyes, uncomfortably conscious of a sudden acceleration in her pulse. A moment later a massive black motorcycle vroom-vroomed into view.

The bike was ridden by a veritable behemoth of a man. He was blue-jeaned, booted and sported a bushy beard. He was also naked from the waist up except for a thicket of coal black chest hair and a leather vest. The brightly colored insignias on the vest suggested that he maintained a closer fellowship with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang than the Boy Scouts of America.

Zoe stared, stunned.

Could it be? she wondered. Could the lean, mean military operative she’d known more than a decade and a half ago have metamorphosed into a hairy, masculine hulk whose appearance strongly suggested that he might rank high on the FBI’s Most Wanted list or low on the evolutionary chain, or both?

She’d realized that the passage of time would have altered him, of course. Flynn had only been a few years into his twenties when she’d met him. He was now pushing forty. But even so—

Zoe’s mind suddenly jumped back to a grainy black-andwhite photograph that had appeared in the Washington Post a little more than two years ago. It had accompanied an article about Gabriel Flynn’s successful transition from military man to roving troubleshooter for an ad hoc network of international aid organizations. The picture had shown him hunkered down, talking with a pair of bone-thin, big-eyed children. Both youngsters had been staring at him with something akin to awe.

He’d had a beard in the photograph, she remembered with unsettling clarity. His thick brown hair had been sun streaked, shoulder length and shaggily unkempt. His clothing—a bizarre combination of jump boots, military-style khaki pants and what appeared to be a garishly flowered Hawaiian shirthad been filthy. He’d looked as though he’d smelled, maybe even stunk, to high heaven.