Bridesmaid for Hire Read online

  “Sorry, smart guy,” Gina informed him, “but you were wrong. You didn’t know anything.” Tossing her head, her eyes narrowed as she said, “I would have loved to have been there to raise that little girl with you.”

  He didn’t believe her. “You’re only saying that.”

  She threw up her hands, uttering an unintelligible noise in her sheer frustration. “How do I get you to believe me? Should I get all three of our names tattooed somewhere on my body, linked in hearts? What?” she demanded. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”

  The corners of Shane’s mouth curved. “I admit that would be interesting,” he acknowledged.

  She stared at him, shaking her head. She didn’t know what to think.

  Was he being sweet? Did she drop her guard and believe him, or was he waiting for that so he could get back at her for what he felt she’d put him through with that rejection years ago?

  She didn’t know and she was afraid of making the wrong choice.

  “Damn you, Shane,” she cried, “you’re the only one who’s ever made me crazy like this.”

  “Oh no,” he contradicted. He was grinning at her now and the grin was working its way into her system, seducing her. “I can’t take credit for that. You were this way long before I ever came along. A ‘self-made woman’ I think was the way you once referred to yourself.”

  Exasperated, not to mention frustrated, Gina doubled up her fist and swung it back, ready to punch him in her agitation.

  Shane caught her hand, blocked the punch and pulled her to him.

  Pinning Gina’s arms against her sides, he brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her. Kissed her long and hard, until she stopped struggling and kissed him back.

  Her hands loosened, no longer fisted, she raised them up and threaded her arms around his neck as the kiss continued growing in intensity and depth.

  Gina sighed as Shane drew his lips away. “I don’t want to fight, Gina,” he told her softly.

  Her mouth slowly curved into a smile. “Oh, I don’t know,” she responded. “Wrestling’s got some things going for it.”

  But he shook his head. “Me, I always liked that old slogan from the sixties. Make love, not war.” He grew serious as he searched her face, wanting to make sure that he hadn’t misjudged the situation. “Make love with me, Gina,” he urged in a low, seductive voice. “It’s all I’ve thought about for the last ten years.”

  Gina paused and for one awful moment, he thought she was going to turn him down. That she was going to tell him that they had lost their chance and shouldn’t reopen old wounds.

  And then, her eyes locked on his, she whispered, “Prove it.”

  That was when he finally knew that it was going to be all right. That they had both paid for his rash proposal and her equally as rash refusal.

  “With pleasure,” he answered, pressing his lips against her throat. He felt the pulse there jump in response and the desire he’d felt building within him increased tenfold.

  Holding himself in check despite the fact that he ached to take her right then and there, Shane made slow, deliberate love to every inch of her body, causing Gina to yield to him as he crisscrossed her skin with a network of hot, ardent kisses, branding her body everywhere he touched.

  Making it his.

  Shane only vaguely remembered stripping Gina’s clothes from her body.

  What left a far greater imprint on his brain was feeling her fingers traveling along his chest, his shoulders, his torso. Touching him everywhere.

  Arousing him to an incredible degree.

  Every time her hand passed over another part of his body, Shane could feel himself responding to her, feel himself aching and wanting her the way he had never wanted another woman before.

  Because in his soul, he knew that he had never loved another woman, not the way he loved her. Even while he kept denying it to himself over the years, he knew he loved Gina.

  Always had.

  Always would, Shane now thought silently. Even if all he ever would have was this one night with her, he knew himself well enough to know that he would never love anyone else the soul-branding way that he loved the woman here with him now.

  A white-hot passion wrapped itself around Shane as he blanketed Gina’s body with a burning array of kisses, spreading them all up and down her heaving skin.

  He had her back pressed against the sofa cushions when Gina surprised him by suddenly pulling him to her, reversing their positions. Determined to return the favor. Pressing her mouth against his throat, his shoulders, his chest, Gina all but devoured him, startled by the amount of passion that had been unleashed within her. Every place she touched became a burning, erotic area, moist and throbbing. Desire just continued mounting and she acted on it.

  Because he could hold himself in check for only so long when she did that, Shane flipped their positions again, laying her on her back. From there he began to anoint all the regions of her body, working his way from her mouth to the hollow of her throat, down her breasts, then on to her quivering belly.

  She thought he would stop there and she tried to wrap her legs around his torso, arching against him. But he was too quick for her.

  His mouth went questing farther and farther, until, before she realized it, his tongue was mining the very core of her.

  Gina suddenly arched her back, seized by an exquisite sensation that exploded within her. It sent shockwaves to every nether region.

  Stunned, she stared at Shane, her heart pounding from the climax she’d just experienced.

  She had no time to regroup because Shane began to move up along her body again, following his journey in reverse until the face that had filled so many of her dreams was looming right over hers.

  Shane slipped his fingers through hers, joining them before he moved her legs apart with his knee.

  Breathing hard, she pressed up against him, silently inviting him in.

  “Look at me,” he whispered.

  Until that second, she hadn’t realized that her eyes were closed. She opened them and that was when he entered her, creating one unit out of two.

  Her heart was pounding wildly and she heard herself telling him, “I’ve missed this.”

  She thought she heard Shane say, “So have I,” but she wasn’t sure. Adrenaline was racing through her whole body, the rush she was experiencing blocking out everything except for the two of them and the myriad desires and passions throbbing demandingly throughout her entire being.

  Shane began to move, slowly at first despite the urgency that propelled him. Gina matched each move he made, going faster and faster the second he did until it became a race to see which of them would be gratified first.

  It was a tie.

  Shane brought her up and over the summit of sensations just as it exploded all around him.

  Euphoria showered down all around them, embracing them in its grip. Gina held on to it for as long as she could, trying to push the wave of pending sorrow as far back as she could.

  It came anyway. Sorrow because the euphoria had receded.

  But he was still there, still lying next to her, with his arm wrapped around her, holding her close. It pushed back the darkness. She listened as Shane’s heart beat against hers, slowly returning back to its normal rhythmic beat.

  She was afraid to move, afraid if she did, she would wind up chasing away all these delicious feelings, sending them back into some deep, dark cave where she couldn’t reach them, couldn’t touch them.

  Gina felt him shifting, but Shane wasn’t getting up. Instead, he just raised his head and pressed a soft kiss against her hair.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he commented. “Something wrong?”

  She laughed at his question, at first softly and then with growing gusto until the sound echoed throughout the room.

  “Wrong?” Gina repea
ted, raising her head so that she could look at his face. “For the first time in ten years, everything is absolutely right.”

  “Oh,” he said and she could have sworn she heard relief in his voice. And then he confirmed it by saying, “You had me worried there for a minute. I thought maybe you were having regrets.”

  “Regrets?” she questioned.

  “Yes, over what we just did,” Shane elaborated.

  “Regrets,” she repeated as if it was a strange, foreign word that she was trying to make sense of. And then she laughed again. “My only regret is that it took so long for this to happen again.”

  Before he had a chance to comment on her words, Gina proceeded to take the lead so she could show him how much she didn’t regret what had just happened there between them. She pushed him back against the sofa as she kissed every square inch of him, a prelude to another round of lovemaking.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gina felt gloriously exhausted. She and Shane had made love two more times that evening. That was a total of three times, and she was amazed that she could still move. The temptation to curl up in Shane’s arms and fall asleep was almost overwhelming. But Gina knew that she couldn’t in good conscience give in to that.

  That would be selfish, and she was determined not to ever put herself in the center of anything. Turning toward Shane, she murmured, “I’m going to get up and make you some fresh coffee.”

  “I’m not sure coffee will help,” he told her, pulling her back into bed as she began to get up. “You have completely exhausted me.”

  “No, not for that,” she laughed, brushing a quick kiss to his lips. “Coffee to wake you up so you don’t drive off the side of the road while you’re going home.”

  “I’m going home?” he asked.

  “Yes. You want to be there in the morning when Ellie wakes up, don’t you?”

  He was surprised that she had even thought of the little girl. “And you’re okay with that?” Shane questioned.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Gina asked. “She’s not a rival, she’s a sweet four-year-old girl—and your niece,” she underscored. Funny how everything seemed to have changed now. “I think you wanting to be there for Ellie and take care of her is one of your more attractive qualities.”

  He would have been lying if he hadn’t admitted that this was in the back of his head, wondering how all this was going to work out between them. “And you really don’t mind my leaving to be with Ellie?”

  “If you must know,” she told him, pausing to give Shane one more quick kiss before slipping on a T-shirt to cover herself before she went to the kitchen, “right now I feel so absolutely wonderful, I think I could probably walk across water if I tried. Besides, I don’t want to be the bad guy who keeps you away from Ellie.” She made her way toward the doorway. “This way, you might be more inclined to maybe come back for seconds.”

  “Seconds and thirds and fourths,” he added, calling after her as she left the room.

  Gina smiled. That sounded good, but she wasn’t about to hold him to what he had just said. Taking her opened coffee container out of the refrigerator, she measured out just enough to brew a superstrong mug of coffee the way she knew he liked it.

  Setting the measuring spoon aside she poured a mugful of water into the machine. She wasn’t going to allow herself to start dreaming about forever and risk being disappointed again. Once had been incredibly difficult for her. Twice would undoubtedly come close to killing her—or at least kill her spirit.

  “Let’s take it one day at a time and see where this goes,” she told Shane as he came into the kitchen.

  He had put his clothes on again and looked as if he was ready to leave. Well, that hadn’t taken much persuading. She reminded herself that it had been her idea, so of course he was ready to go.

  “Here’s your coffee,” she said, putting the mug on the table. “Why don’t you sit down while you’re having it,” she coaxed.

  Shane sat down and picked up the mug, looking at her thoughtfully. Gina was being cautious again, he thought. But he supposed, when he got right down to it, he couldn’t really blame her. Not after the way things had gone down between them the first time. Granted, it had initially been her fault, yes, but he was the one who had taken it upon himself to go away. Looking back, he had to admit that had to have been hard on her.

  He raised the mug, as if he was trying to toast something. “To one day at a time,” he said, his eyes on Gina’s.

  He vowed to himself that he was going to tread lightly, but in the end, he was fully committed to convincing Gina that they belonged together. Whether she knew it or not, she had already passed the first hurdle. She had put Ellie ahead of not only herself, but also ahead of their rekindling romance.

  It could only go well from here.

  When Gina smiled at him after he’d made his “toast,” he knew that he was on the right track.

  * * *

  Funny what reviving a romance could do for a person’s spirit, Gina thought several days later. In her case, it gave her the strength and fortitude to handle any crisis and bear up to it all with surprising humor and an astounding amount of energy.

  Nothing daunted her.

  Not even the fact that she had to deal with Sylvie and her current client’s never-ending cavalcade of mini-emergencies.

  This time Sylvie’s newest emergency was courtesy of the bride’s pet cat, a calico named Cinnamon. Apparently, Cinnamon had managed to pull down Sylvie’s veil from where she had it hung up in the closet and then the nimble cat proceeded to attack it in a frenzy, shredding parts of it as if it were some sort of a gauzy enemy.

  Reviewing the damage, Gina was temporarily speechless. But she was quick to rally—and in part she credited that to Shane’s influence. She managed to calm down the hysterical bride, then she told Sylvie that she knew someone who could restore the veil to practically its original state.

  “You do?” Sylvie sniffled. “That would be nothing short of a miracle. I had it handmade and flown in from Switzerland.”

  Of course you did, Gina thought. “Trust me. I know a miracle worker,” Gina had told her, gathering up the veil and depositing it into the large box it had originally come in.

  * * *

  Anna Bongino stared at the torn veil that Gina had brought to her, then raised her eyes to her daughter’s face.

  “Is this some sort of a joke, Gina?” she asked her daughter.

  “No, not a joke,” Gina assured her, trying to sound cheerful. “Think of it more as a challenge, Mom.” She smiled at her mother. “I just talked you up to my latest client. You were a seamstress at that high-end bridal shop for twenty-three years, right, Mom?” Gina reminded her mother.

  “Seamstress, yes. Miracle worker, no,” Anna replied, taking the torn veil out of the box. She shook her head, totally astonished. “Besides, I took that job so that one day I would be able to sew your wedding dress and veil, not repair a veil that some girl’s cat mistook for its dose of catnip.”

  Gina put her hand on her mother’s arm. “Please, Mom. This means a lot to me.”

  Something had changed, Anna thought. She could feel it. She secretly blessed the woman she had sought out with her problem. She knew that Maizie and her friends were behind this. There was a lightness to her daughter that had been missing for years.

  Looking at the veil again, Anna pretended to take a dim view of the veil’s chances. She frowned, shaking her head. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t make any promises.”

  Gina threw her arms around her mother, totally surprising her. After a beat, Anna allowed herself to close her arms around her daughter and return the hug.

  This was worth everything.

  “You seem rather chipper, given that you’re working with a crazy woman,” Anna said. She couldn’t resist adding, “Anything I should know about?”

 
; “Nope, not a thing. I just love life, that’s all,” Gina answered as she began to leave. She paused at the door for a moment and said, “And for the record, I don’t think of you as a crazy woman.”

  Anna drew back her shoulders. “I wasn’t talking about me,” she informed her daughter.

  “I know.” Gina laughed. “Thanks, Mom, you’re a lifesaver. And I’ll give you a call later to see how you’re doing.” She opened the front door, about to leave. “By the way, I’ll need you to finish fixing the veil by Tuesday at the latest. Earlier if possible.”

  Anna’s mouth dropped open, but she forced herself to swallow the first words that came to her. Instead, she just shook her head.

  “It’s going to take a miracle,” Gina’s mother murmured in disbelief. But she knew that she was talking to herself by now.

  * * *

  Having temporarily taken care of Sylvie’s latest emergency and then checking on all the other recently handled pseudoemergencies to make sure that everything was progressing on schedule and that no new developments had taken place, Gina decided to reward herself and swing by Shane’s house later that day.

  Gina started talking the second that Shane opened the door. “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by. But I was passing by this bookstore today and saw this big picture book in the window with that cartoon, Happy Hound Puppies, on the cover. I thought of Ellie because she said she liked watching that cartoon, so I got it for her.” She indicated the shopping bag she had in her hand. “I hope that’s okay,” she added as an afterthought.

  Shane took the bag from her. It felt heavy to him. “You did say one book, right?” he asked, looking into the shopping bag. “It looks like there are several in here.”

  Gina shrugged a little sheepishly. “Well, once I went into the store to buy that book, I saw a few others that I thought Ellie might like. I really couldn’t make up my mind, so I bought all of them,” she concluded with a smile.

  Shane laughed at her explanation, touched that she was motivated to buy gifts for his niece. “I can see that.”