No, they needed that distance, and the sooner the better. Ryan walked into his closet, grabbed a T-shirt and shoved his feet into a pair of battered athletic shoes. He raked his hands through his hair, walked back into his bedroom and picked up his wallet from the credenza, in front of the now-upright photo of Ben.
“Hey, Jaci?” Ryan waited for her response before speaking again in an almost jovial voice. God, the last thing in the world he felt was jovial. He felt horny, and frustrated and a little sick, but not jovial. “I’m running out for bagels and coffee. I’ll be back in ten.”
He already knew how she’d respond and she didn’t disappoint. “I won’t be here when you get back. I’ve got a...thing.”
She didn’t have a thing any more than he wanted bagels and coffee but it was an out and he’d take it. “Okay. Later.”
Later? Ryan saw that his hand was heading for the doorknob and he ruthlessly jerked it back. He was not going in there. If he saw Jaci again he’d want to take her to bed and that would lead to more confusing...well, feelings, and he didn’t need this touchy-feely crap.
Keep telling yourself that, Jackson. Maybe you’ll start to believe it sometime soon.
* * *
It was spring and the sprawling gardens at Lyon House, Shropshire, had never looked so beautiful with beds of daffodils and bluebells nodding in the temperate breeze. At the far edge of the lawn, behind the wedding tent, it looked as if a gardener had taken a sponge and dabbed the landscape with colored splotches of rhododendron and azalea bushes, a mishmash of brilliant color that hurt the eyes.
It was beautiful, it was home.
And she was miserable.
Sitting in the chapel that had stood for centuries adjacent to Lyon House, Jaci rolled her head to work out the kinks in her neck. If she looked out the tiny window to her left, she could see the copse of trees that separated the house from the chapel, and beyond that the enormous white designer fairy-tale tent—with its own dance floor—that occupied most of the back lawn. It was fairly close to what she’d planned for her own wedding, which had been scheduled for six weeks from now. Like the bride, she would’ve dressed at Lyon House, in her old room, and her mother would’ve bossed everyone about as she had been doing all day. The grounds would have been as spectacular, and she would’ve had as many guests. Like Neil, her groom would’ve been expectant, nervous, excited.
Her only thought about her canceled wedding was that she’d dodged a bullet. And then she’d run to the States, where she’d fallen into the flight path of a freakin’ bazooka. Jaci blew her frustration out and sneaked another look at Ryan. So far she’d spent a lot of the ceremony admiring his broad shoulders, tight butt and long legs, and remembering what he looked like naked. Jaci wiggled in her seat, realizing that it was very inappropriate to be thinking of a naked man in a sixteenth-century English church. Or, come to think of it, any church, for that matter...
Jaci crossed her legs and thought that she should be used to seeing him in a tuxedo, but today he looked better than he had any right to. The ice-blue tie turned his eyes the same color and she noticed that he’d recently had his hair trimmed. He’d spent the week avoiding her since their—what could she call it?—encounter in LA, and while her brain thought that some time apart was a wonderful idea, every other organ she possessed missed him. To a ridiculous degree. She sighed and sent another longing look at his profile. So sexy, and when he snapped his head around and caught her looking, she flushed.
No phone call. No email. No text. Nothing, she reminded herself. It was horrifying to realize that if he so much as crooked his baby finger she’d kick off her shoes, scramble over the seats and, bridal couple be damned, fly into his arms.
She wanted him. She didn’t want to want him.
A slim arm wrapping around her waist had her turning, and she sighed at the familiar perfume. Meredith, her big sister, with her jet-black, geometric bob, red lipstick and almost oriental eyes looked sharp and sleekly sexy in a black sheath that looked as if it had been painted on her skinny frame. Twelve-year-olds had thighs fatter than hers, Jaci thought.
Merry gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Hey, are you okay?”
Jaci lifted one shoulder. How should she answer that? No, my life is an even bigger mess now than it was when I left. I might not have a job soon and I think I might be in love with my fake boyfriend, who has the communication skills of a clam. That’s the same fake boyfriend who left New York the morning after a night of marvelous sex. The same one whom I haven’t spoken to or had an email or a text or a smoke signal from.