Sandra Marton - The Groom Said Maybe!

The needle on the speedometer slid past seventy.

“Leaving so soon?” Bobbi Blum had asked, after he’d made a circuit of the ballroom and then paused at the table just long enough to convince the Blums and the Crowders that he really was insane. Her voice had been sweet, her smile syrupy enough to put a diabetic into a coma, but the look in her eyes said, “Please, oh, please, don’t tell us you’re just stepping outside to have a smoke.”

Maybe it had something to do with the way he’d demanded to know if any of them had seen Stephanie leave.

“I did,” Honoria had squeaked, and it was only when he’d heard that high-pitched voice that reality had finally made its way into David’s overcooked brain and he’d realized he was acting like a man one card short of a full deck.

And for what reason? David’s mouth thinned, and he stepped down harder on the gas pedal.

It wasn’t Honoria’s fault—it wasn’t anybody’s fault—that he’d let Stephanie Willingham poison his disposition before she’d vanished like a rabbit inside a magician’s hat.

“Give us a break, Chambers,” he muttered.

Who was he trying to fool? It was somebody’s fault, all right. His. He’d homed in on Stephanie like a heat-seeking missile and that wasn’t his style. He was a sophisticated man with a sophisticated approach. A smile, a phone call. Flowers, chocolates...he wasn’t in the habit of coming on to a woman with all the subtlety of a cement truck.

He could hardly blame her for leaving without so much as a goodbye.

Not that he cared. Well, yeah, he cared that he’d made a fool of himself, but aside from that, what did it matter? David’s hands relaxed on the steering wheel; his foot eased off the pedal. The widow Willingham was something to look at, and yes, she was an enigma. He’d bet anything that the colder-than-the-Antarctic exterior hid a hotter-than-the-Tropics core.

Well, let some other poor sucker find out.

He preferred his women to be soft. Feminine. Independent, yes, but not so independent you felt each encounter was only a heartbeat away from stepping into a cage with a tiger. The bottom line was that this particular babe meant nothing to him. Two, three hours from now, he’d probably have trouble remembering what she looked like. Those dark, unfathomable eyes. That lush mouth. The silken hair, and the body that just wouldn’t quit, even though she’d hidden it inside a tailored suit the color of ripe apricots.

Apricot. That was the shade, all right. Not that he’d ever consciously noticed. If somebody had said, “Okay, Chambers, what was the widow wearing?” he’d have had to shrug and admit he hadn’t any idea.

Not true. He did have an idea. His foot bore down on the accelerator. A very specific one. His brain had registered all the pertinent facts, like the shade of the fabric. And some nonpertinent ones, like the way the jacket fit, clinging to the rise of her breasts, then nipping in at her waist before flaring out gently over her hips. Or the way the skirt had just kissed her knees. He’d noticed the color of her stockings, too. They’d been pale gray. And filmy, like the sheerest silk.

Were they stockings? Or were they panty hose? Who was it who’d invented panty hose, anyway? Not a man, that was certain. A man would have understood the importance of keeping women—beautiful, cool-to-the-eye women—in thigh-length stockings and garter belts. Maybe that was what she’d been wearing beneath that chastely tailored suit. Hosiery that would feel like cobwebs to his hands as he peeled them down her legs. A white lace garter belt, and a pair of tiny white silk panties....

The shrill howl of a siren pierced the air. David shot a glance at the speedometer, muttered a quick, sharp word and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The flashing red lights of a police cruiser filled his rearview mirror as it pulled in behind him.

David shut off the engine and looked in his mirror again. The cop sauntering toward him was big. He was wearing dark glasses, even though the afternoon was clouding over, as if he’d seen one old Burt Reynolds’ movie too many. David sighed and let down his window. Then, without a word, he handed over his driver’s license.

The policeman studied the license, then David.

“Any idea how fast you were tooling along there, friend?” he asked pleasantly.

David wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and blew out a breath.

“Too fast.”

“You got that right.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s it? Just, ‘yeah’? No story? No excuse?”

“None you’d want to hear,” David said after a couple of seconds.

“Try me,” the cop said. David looked at him, and he laughed. “What can I tell you? It’s been a slow day.”

A muscle clenched in David’s jaw. “I just met a woman,” he said. “I didn’t like her. She didn’t like me, and I think—I know—I pretty much made an ass of myself. It shouldn’t matter. I mean, I know I’ll never see her again...but I can’t get her out of my head.”

There was a silence, and then the cop sighed.

“Listen,” he said, “you want some advice?” He handed David his license, took off his dark glasses and put his huge hands on the window ledge. “Forget the babe, whoever she is. Women are nothing but grief and worry.”

David looked at the cop. “That they are.”

“Damn right. Hey, I should know. I been married seven years.”

“I should, too. I’ve been divorced seven years.”

The two men looked at each other. Then the cop straightened up.

“Drive slowly, pal. The life you save, and all that...”

David smiled. “I will. And thanks.”

The cop grinned. “If guys don’t stick together, the babes will win the war.”

“They’ll probably win it anyway,” David said, and drove off.

A war.

That’s was what it was, all right.

Men against women. Hell, why limit it? It was male against female. No species was safe. One sex played games, the other sex went crazy.

David strode into the departures terminal at the airport, his garment carrier slung over his shoulder.

That was what all that nonsense had been today. A war game. The interval with the policeman had given him time to rethink things, and he’d finally figured out what had happened at that wedding.

Stephanie Willingham had been on maneuvers.

It wasn’t that he’d come on too hard. It was that she’d been setting up an ambush from the moment in church when they’d first laid eyes on each other. He’d made the mistake of letting his gonads do his thinking and, bam, he’d fallen right into the trap.

On the other hand... David frowned as he took his place on the tail end of a surprisingly long line at the ticket counter. On the other hand, the feminine stratagems she’d used were unlike any he’d ever experienced.

Some women went straight into action. They’d taken the equality thing to heart. “Hello,” they’d purr, and then they’d ask a few questions—were you married, involved, whatever—and if you gave the right answers, they made it clear they were interested.

He liked women who did that, admired them for being straightforward, though in his heart of hearts, he had to admit he still enjoyed doing things the old-fashioned way. There was a certain pleasure in doing the pursuing. If a woman played just a little hard to get, it heightened the chase and sweetened the moment of surrender.

But Stephanie Willingham had gone overboard.

She hadn’t just played hard to get. She’d played impossible.

The line shuffled forward and David shuffled along with it.

Maybe he really wasn’t her type. Maybe she hadn’t found his looks to her liking.

No. There was such a thing as modesty but there was such a thing as honesty, too, and the simple truth was that he hadn’t had trouble getting female attention since his voice had gone down and his height had gone up, way back in junior high school.