Barbara Dunlop - The Ceo’s Accidental Bride

In the end, both Kaitlin and Lindsay slid decent-looking pies into the oven.

“You don’t want to be sharing that with Zachary,” Ginny warned Kaitlin. Then she paused, a flash of confusion crossing her face. “Oh, my. You married him, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Kaitlin admitted. And after last night, the marriage was feeling frighteningly real.

Ginny patted her on the arm. “Wish you’d come and talked with me first.”

“Is there something wrong with Zach?” Kaitlin couldn’t help but ask. Ginny had been alluding to Zach’s lack of desirability since they arrived.

“Those Harper boys are heartbreakers,” said Ginny with a disapproving click of her tongue. “Always have been, always will be.”

Kaitlin had to admit, she could easily see Zach breaking hearts. He’d been darn near perfect last night. He’d driven through the dark to rescue her from a storm, then made exquisite love to her, teased her and sympathized with her. If a woman were to let herself fall for a man like that, heartbreak might well be the inevitable outcome.

Ginny turned to Lindsay. “Now, my Dylan. That one’s a catch. He’s wealthy, you know.”

“I do have my own money,” said Lindsay.

Ginny chuckled and gave a coquettish smile. “A girl can never have too much money.”

Lindsay was obviously puzzled. “You don’t mind me marrying your great-nephew for his money?”

Ginny looked askance. “What other reason is there?”

Lindsay’s brows went up. “Love?”

“Oh, pooh, pooh.” Ginny waved a dismissive hand. “Love comes and goes. A bank balance, now there’s something a gal can count on.”

“Your lovers didn’t have money?” Kaitlin asked, fascinated by Ginny’s experiences and opinions.

A sly look entered Ginny’s eyes, and once again she glanced around the kitchen as if checking for eavesdroppers. “They had youth and enthusiasm. I think they wanted my money.”

“Do you have any pictures?” asked Lindsay, obviously as interested as Kaitlin in the older woman’s love life.

“Indeed, I do.” Ginny wiped her hands on the big apron, untying it from the back. Then she beckoned both women to follow her as she made her way toward the kitchen door.

In the stairwell, Kaitlin asked, “Did the other Harper men break women’s hearts?”

“Every single one,” Ginny confirmed with a decisive nod.

“But not their wives.” Kaitlin’s tone turned the statement into a question.

“Sometimes their wives, too.”

“What about Sadie? Wasn’t Sadie happy with Milton?”

“Milton was a fine man. He’d have made a good lover. But once they were married, Sadie, she worried all the time.”

“That he was unfaithful?” asked Kaitlin.

Ginny stopped midstair and turned on her. “Oh, no. A Harper man would never be unfaithful.” She turned and began climbing again.

“Then why did Sadie worry?”

“She was the groundskeeper’s daughter. Oh, she pretended all right. But at her heart, she was never the mistress of the castle. That’s why she wouldn’t make any changes.”

They came to the second floor, and Ginny led them down a wide hallway. Overhead skylights let in the sunshine, while art objects lined the shelves along the way.

“The castle is really beautiful,” said Kaitlin. She wasn’t sure she’d have changed anything, either.

“So was Sadie,” said Ginny in a wistful voice. “Before Milton, we swam naked in the ocean and ran across the sand under the full moon.”

“Do you really think he broke her heart?” Kaitlin persisted. Like Emma, Kaitlin really wanted to believe Sadie had been happy here.

“No. Not really. But sometimes she felt trapped, and sometimes she worried.” Ginny swept open the double doors of a closet. She moved aside a fluffy quilt and extracted a battered shoebox, opening it to reveal a stack of photographs. “Ah, here we are. Come meet my lovers.”

Zach found Kaitlin in the portrait gallery, gazing at a painting of his grandmother when she had been in her twenties.

“Hey,” he said, coming up behind her. He didn’t ask and didn’t wait for permission before wrapping his arms around her waist, nestling her into the cradle of his body.

“Do you think she was happy?” Kaitlin asked.

“Yes.”

“Did she love your grandfather?”

“As far as I could tell.” He hadn’t spent much time looking at the portraits over the past years, and his memory of his grandmother was that of an old woman. He’d forgotten how lovely she was. No wonder his grandfather had married her so young.

“Ginny says she felt trapped sometimes.”

“I love Ginny dearly,” Zach began, a warning in his tone.

There was a thread of laughter in Kaitlin’s voice when she interrupted him. “She doesn’t seem too crazy about you.”

“But you know she’s not all there, right?”

“She’s a blast,” Kaitlin responded. “And her memory seems very sharp.”

“Well, it had to be a pretty big cage. They went to Europe at least twice a year, and spent half their time in Manhattan. You should have seen the garden parties. The governor, theatre stars, foreign diplomats.”

“Okay, so it was a big cage,” Kaitlin conceded.

“Come here. Let me show you something.” Zach shifted his arm around her shoulders, guiding her down the gallery toward the staircase.

“Your room?” she asked.

“No. But I like the way you’re thinking.” He steered her down to the first floor then back through the hallways to Sadie’s parlor.

“What are we doing?”

“I want to show you that she was happy.”

He sat Kaitlin on the settee and retrieved an old photo album from Sadie’s bookcase. Sitting next to her, he flipped through the pages until he came to one of the Harpers’ famous garden parties. The pictures were black and white, slightly faded, but they showed the gardens in their glory, and the sharp-dressed upper crust of New York nibbling finger sandwiches and chatting away the afternoon.

“That’s her.” Zach pointed to his grandmother in a flowing dress and a silk flower-brimmed hat. Her smile was bright, and Zach’s grandfather Milton had a hand tucked against the small of her back.

“She does look happy,” Kaitlin was forced to admit.

“And that’s a hedge, not prison bars,” said Zach.

Kaitlin elbowed him in the ribs. “The bars are metaphorical.”

“The hedge is real. So were the trips to Europe.”

Kaitlin flipped the page, coming to more party photos, people laughing, drinking punch, playing croquet and wandering through the rose garden. There was a band in the gazebo, and a few couples were dancing on the patio. Some of the pictures showed children playing.

“That’s my father,” said Zack, smiling to himself as he pointed out the five-year-old boy in shorts, a white shirt and suspenders standing next to the duck pond. He had a rock in his hand, and one of his shoes was missing. He looked as if he was seconds away from wading after the ducks.

Kaitlin chuckled softly. “Were you anything like that as a child?”

Zach rose to retrieve another album.

“Here.” He let her open it and page her way through the pictures of him as a young child.

“You were adorable,” she cooed, moving from his toddler pictures to preschool to Zach at five years old, digging up flower bulbs, dirt smeared across his face and clothes.

“Yeah, let’s go with adorable.”

“Did you get into trouble for that?”

“I would guess I did. Probably from Grandma Sadie. Those gardens were her pride and joy.”

“I never had a garden,” said Kaitlin, and Zach immediately felt guilty for showing her the album. He’d done it again, parading out his past and his relatives without giving a thought to the contrast with her life.

“I bet you stayed cleaner than I did,” he said, making a weak attempt at a joke.

“Once I realized-” She paused, gripping the edge of the album. “Hoo. I’m not going to do that.” She turned another page.

“Do what?”

“Nothing.” Her attention was focused on a series of shots of the beach and a picnic.

“Katie?”

“Nothing.”

He gently removed the album from her hands. “I upset you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Liar.”

She straightened her shoulders. “It was hard, okay.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” He folded the book closed and set it on the table beside him. “I’m sorry I showed you the photos. It was thoughtless.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What were you going to say?”

She pasted him with a look of impatience.

“I’ve got all night to wait,” he warned her, sitting back and making a show of getting comfortable.

She clenched her jaw, looking mulish, and he prepared himself for a contest of wills.

But then her toughness disappeared, and she swallowed. Then she closed her eyes for a second. “I was going to say…”

Part of him wanted to retract the question. But another part of him wanted to know, needed to know what she’d gone through as a child.

“I was going to say,” she repeated, sounding small and fragile, “once I realized people could give me away.” Her voice cracked. “I tried to be very, very good.”

Zach honestly thought his heart was going to break.

He wrapped an arm around her and drew her close. She felt so tiny in his arms, so vulnerable. He hated that she’d been alone as a child.

“I’m sorry, Katie,” he whispered against her hair.

She shook her head back and forth. “It’s not your fault.”

He drew a deep breath. “You’ve been alone for a very long time.”

“I’m used to it.”

But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Nobody should have to get used to not having a family. Zach had lost his parents when he was twenty, and that had been devastating enough. He’d still had his grandmother, and he’d always had the Gilbys. And he’d had Aunt Ginny, who usually liked him very much.

“Look,” said Kaitlin, pulling back and wiping a single tear from her cheek. “There’s a full moon outside.”

He twisted his head to look out the window. “Yeah?”

“You want to go skinny-dipping?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.

The salt water was chilly against Kaitlin’s skin, but Zach’s body felt deliciously warm. He held her flush against himself, her feet dangling just above the sandy bottom. Over his left shoulder, she could see the distant lights of the Gilby house. And when she turned her head the other way, she could see the Harper castle in all its glory.

The gardens were smaller than they were in the pictures, but they were still lit up at night. And an illuminated path wound its way from the edge of the garden to the sandy beach, where she and Zach had stripped off their clothes before plunging into the surf.

“Lindsay is talking about staying a few more days,” Zach offered.

Kaitlin drew back to look at him. “With Dylan?” Lindsay hadn’t said anything to her. Then again, she had spent most of her time at the Gilby house.

Zach’s teeth flashed white under the moonlight. “I think they have worked out their differences.”

“You mean Lindsay won,” Kaitlin corrected. “Where’s my ten dollars, by the way?”

“Dylan thinks he’s the one who won.”

“He totally caved.”

“I don’t think he cares.”

“By the way, if Ginny asks, they’re not having sex.”

“Ohhh-kay,” Zach slowly agreed.

“She’ll probably ask,” Kaitlin warned. “She’s obsessed with Dylan’s love life.”

“I won’t answer,” Zach pledged.

“Good.”

Neither Kaitlin nor Zach spoke for a few minutes. The cool waves bobbed their bodies, while the sound of the surf rushed up on the sand, punctuating the breeze that whispered through the bushes along the shoreline.

“You want to stay, too?” Zach asked softly, rocking her back and forth in his arms.

Kaitlin stilled against him, not sure what he was asking.

“With Lindsay?” he elaborated. “For a few days? You could work right from here?”

“What about you?” she asked, still wondering what he meant by the invitation. Was he asking her to stay on the island, or to stay with him?

“If you’re staying?” A slow, sultry smiled curved his mouth, darkening his eyes to slate. “I’m sure not leaving.”

Kaitlin’s smile grew in return. “Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He spun her in a circle, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her hands gripping his shoulders for balance. His hold was tight under her bottom as she knifed through the water.

The moon glistened high in the sky, surrounded by layers of stars. They were the same stars that Lyndall had used to navigate his way to the island hundreds of years ago. The same stars that Sadie had gazed at as a girl and as a woman, a mother.

Zach slowed and stopped, the waves now the only motion around them. Kaitlin gazed at the lighted gardens that Sadie had so clearly loved. The woman had been the guardian of the castle, the keeper of the family’s heritage. And because of her decisions, Kaitlin had been trusted with the Harper office building.