The Virgin's Secret Marriage Read online

  Janey led the way back to the kitchen, where she was busy putting the finishing touches on a four-tiered wedding cake.

  “That for tomorrow?” Joe asked, swiping a bit of butter-cream frosting from the edge of the bowl.

  Janey swiped his hand away, but not before he got a taste of the delicious vanilla topping.

  “Yes. It’s for the Thermonopoulos-Thornton wedding that Mom and Emma are both working on.”

  Joe knew this was his lead-in to tell Janey all he knew about Saul Donovan’s daughter. But he wasn’t in the mood to go into his dating history.

  Undaunted, Janey kept right on icing the cake. “So have you talked to Mom yet?” she asked, as she flattened butter cream over the top and sides of the final layer of the sugary confection.

  Joe shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his dress slacks. “I thought she might be asleep.”

  Janey lifted a telltale brow and aimed it his way before picking up the pastry bag. “One can hope she hasn’t seen the news yet,” she murmured.

  Joe watched as she put piping around the edges. “But you obviously have,” he noted with a beleaguered sigh.

  “Oh, yes.” Janey’s knowing amber eyes narrowed with disapproval. “Mac called me from the sheriff’s office. He wanted to make sure that Christopher wasn’t watching the eleven o’clock W-MOL news.”

  Joe tensed. The last thing he wanted to do was set a bad example for his only nephew. “Did Chris see it?” Joe asked uncomfortably.

  Janey compressed her lips together in a way that reminded Joe his seven-years-older sister had suffered her own travails. And regrets. Mostly, Joe thought, due to the fact she had married young, and married wrong. And then been left a widow when her only child was ten.

  But she had her life back on track now. Or at least she was getting there, Joe thought.

  “No. Not yet, but it’s unlikely I’ll be able to keep it from him. And at twelve—well, he’s bound to have a lot of questions when he does see it.”

  As well as some misplaced male envy, Joe thought. Damn it all. This was not the kind of example he had wanted to make for the starry-eyed adolescent.

  Joe sighed and repeated an old family homily, “Good news travels fast.”

  “And bad news even faster.” Janey finished it for him with a roll of her eyes and wry smile.

  Joe helped himself to a beer from her refrigerator. “Does everyone else in the family know?”

  Janey shrugged as she picked up another piping bag and began carefully decorating the cake with yellow icing flowers. “Cal saw it—he was in the doctor’s lounge over at the hospital. Last I saw Fletcher, he was headed out on an emergency call—the Petersons’ mare is in breech, and they needed a vet out there for the delivery. Dylan, well, because he’s a TV sports commentator, if he hasn’t seen it yet, he will soon.”

  Joe sighed. That covered himself and all five of his siblings. He jerked loose the knot of his tie. “I was hoping it would remain a local story.”

  Janey shook her head in silent disagreement, her own naïveté long since faded by a flawed marriage to a guy much more reckless, and self-involved, than Joe. “I…don’t think so. That backside of yours, with the black bar placed strategically across it? Who could resist?”

  Feeling like a victim on a humorous-videos TV show, Joe grimaced. “Very funny.”

  “I wasn’t laughing earlier, believe me, and neither, I’m betting, will Mom. Especially if that clip hits the national news, or worse, ends up featured on the ‘Bad Boys of the Week’ portion of Tiffany Lamour’s TV show.”

  Joe tensed. He hadn’t given any thought to that, but now that Janey brought it up, he knew his big sis was right. The footage of him being caught buck naked, with a towel draped around his ankles, was exactly the kind of embarrassing clip the cable sports network commentator liked to use to end her often sensational interview show.

  “Unless you think you could sweet-talk Tiffany into not using it,” Janey asked hopefully.

  Not likely, given the air play it had already had and the laughs it had engendered, not to mention the possibility of other networks picking it up and running it again and again. “I’m not even going to try,” Joe decided, signaling the subject was closed. He took another swig of the icy-cold beer, let it cool his parched throat. “Besides, I’ll live this down.” It was just another way of being put in the penalty box. The public censure wasn’t fun while it was happening, but it always ended eventually. And then it was promptly back to business as usual.

  “Let’s certainly hope so.” Janey bit her lip.

  Joe took another sip of beer. “What?” he demanded irritably when the silence between them continued.

  Janey wrinkled her nose at him. “What do you think? I’m worried about the impact something like this is going to have on my son!”

  “In terms of example-setting,” Joe guessed.

  “It’s not as if I don’t have enough troubles with Christopher already,” Janey lamented anxiously.

  Joe studied his sister, knowing that she was now wrestling with the same demons his own mother had encountered when he was growing up, determined to nix college and even some of his high school for a career in professional sports. “Chris still wants to become a pro hockey player when he grows up, hmm?” Joe remarked.

  The corners of Janey’s lips turned down. “Worse. He wants to follow in your footsteps all the way.”

  Here they went again. “And that’s a bad thing?” Joe prodded dryly.

  Janey looked down her nose at him. “It is when you end up on the evening news, buck naked.”

  Silence.

  “Anything else you want to say?” Joe preferred to get it over with.

  Janey began piping on perfect green leaves. “If you must know, I’m concerned about Emma, too. She’s a good friend of mine.”

  That, Joe hadn’t known. He regarded his sister contentiously. “Since when?”

  “Since I moved back to Holly Springs last year. We’ve worked together on a lot of weddings.” Janey paused, before turning curious eyes his way. “She must have been very embarrassed.”

  “That’s putting it lightly.” And Joe figured he knew why. There couldn’t have been a more shocking way for them to see each other naked for the first—and only—time.

  “Have you apologized to her?”

  Joe shrugged his shoulders restlessly. “Didn’t really have a chance. We were too busy dealing with the calamity.”

  “Then I suggest you make an apology as soon as possible.”

  Maybe later, when things cooled off, he’d send her some flowers or something. “Somehow I don’t think she wants to hear from me at the moment,” Joe drawled thoughtfully after a moment.

  “Probably not, but that doesn’t mean an apology is any less called for in this situation.” Janey shook her head. “It’s not as if she can slink away and hide for a few days, either.”

  Joe looked at her.

  “It’s June, Joe,” Janey explained in exasperation. “The height of wedding season. The Thermonopoulos-Thornton wedding is going on this weekend. The ceremony and reception are tomorrow afternoon and evening, and the bridal breakfast is on Sunday morning. It’s a fairly large group—two hundred and fifty guests—and Emma has to be there to oversee all the details. Plus, it’s a local wedding, so I imagine everyone will have seen the news or heard about her humorously unfortunate run-in with you tonight.”

  Including their mother, Helen. Joe knew his mom would have a few words of her own to deliver on the subject. He wasn’t ready to hear them. “Listen, my camping gear is still in Canada, at my apartment in Montreal. The super agreed to pack up my belongings tomorrow and ship ’em to me, but I won’t get ’em until Monday or Tuesday. So you got a sleeping bag and backpack I can borrow in the meantime?”

  “Oh, Joe. You can’t just run away and leave Emma to deal with this all alone.”

  Joe knew if he was there it would just make things worse. Holly Springs was too small a community f
or him and Emma not to run into each other. And the press would be looking for him in Montreal, too. “Coach Lantz told me to lay low until the Monday morning press conference.” At which point, Joe was supposed to handle the situation with such finesse that it would fix everything. Although how in heck he was going to do that, he didn’t know.

  “So you’re going backpacking?” Janey asked.

  Joe nodded.

  “Why not use the family cabin?”

  Joe shook his head. The family’s mountain retreat just outside Blowing Rock would be ideal. Unfortunately, it was the first place any truly nosy reporter would look. “I need the exercise,” he said. And he needed time to think. Because he had no idea what he was going to say come Monday morning that would in any way, shape or form begin to get him out of this mess.

  “WE JUST CAN’T HAVE SOMEONE of your dubious…reputation…overseeing our daughter’s wedding,” Gigi Snow told Emma bright and early Monday morning, in her office at the Wedding Inn.

  As much as Emma was loathe to admit it, she had been expecting the dismissal from the image-conscious Raleigh socialite. The equivalent of the white-gloved slap across the face, however, changed nothing in a business sense. A contract was a contract. “You understand it’s too late now—with the wedding just six days away—to cancel my services and simply walk away,” Emma warned the petite, reed-thin woman.

  “Oh, we still want to have it at the Wedding Inn,” Gigi said, smoothing her short jet-black hair, then the jacket of her Donna Karan suit. “We just don’t want you anywhere on the premises.”

  “I’m sure I can find someone to step in at the last moment, but I must warn you, you’ll be liable for two planning fees,” Emma stated kindly.

  Michelle Snow, Gigi’s daughter, a pretty and sweet young woman who rarely spoke up for herself or defended herself against her mother’s overbearing nature, began to look embarrassed. As did Gigi’s generally indifferent husband, Mason Snow.

  Benjamin Posen—the thirty-year-old groom—looked mortified at the additional expense. “But that’s going to be another—” he sputtered.

  “Twenty-five-thousand dollars, minimum,” Emma said, quickly doing the math. Her standard fee was ten percent over the cost of the wedding, and the wedding now had a quarter-of-a-million-dollar price tag, and was still inching upward every single day.

  Benjamin Posen began to sweat. He tugged at the collar on his starched blue shirt as if it were choking him, along with the silk designer tie. “I really think we ought to reconsider.” The handsome groom glanced at Emma, silently pleading for help. “After all, Miss Hart has done such a superb job for us and worked so hard for months now.”

  “Are you balking at the extra expense?” Gigi Snow stared down her future son-in-law with lethal ebony eyes. “Because if you are saying what I think you are, Benjamin, that our only daughter’s happiness and reputation aren’t worth an additional $12,500 on your behalf—”

  “It’s fine, Mother Snow,” Benjamin said in a low, strangled tone. His fair skin turned beet red, below his white-blond hair. “Really, I’ll be happy to help out with this.”

  “Good, I’m glad this is settled. I’ll look forward to hearing about your replacement—” Gigi glanced at her watch “—by noon today. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a final fitting to go to at Vera Wang in New York City.”

  The Snows filed out, Benjamin taking up the rear, somewhat desultorily.

  No sooner had they left, than Helen Hart appeared in the portal. “Your father is on the phone, Emma.”

  Emma looked at the clock. Eight-forty-five. And already the day sucked rocks. “Thanks, Helen.” Emma picked up.

  Saul’s voice rumbled over the line. “There’s a press conference this morning at the arena at 10:00 a.m.”

  Emma rubbed the tight skin above her eyes. She wished she could do what Joe Hart had allegedly done this weekend—go somewhere and hide. Or what her parents had done: issue a brief, carefully worded press statement about the fiasco and then head for a golf tournament in Southern Pines.

  But she’d had to stay and face the music. “What does the press conference have to do with me?” she asked her father tensely.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Saul growled sternly, “which is why I want you to stay clear of it.”

  Staying clear of the brouhaha hadn’t done much for Emma thus far. In fact, it seemed only to have generated more interest in her side of the story. “Who’s going to be featured?” Emma asked casually. As if she even had to ask, after the weekend scandal.

  “Exactly who you’d think, Emma! Joe Hart.”

  At the mention of his name, Emma’s pulse kicked up a notch. Pushing the sexy image of Joe—naked—from her mind, she drew in a steadying breath. “How’s he doing?”

  “That is precisely the kind of question I don’t want you asking, Emma.”

  Emma knew that. It didn’t, however, deter her in the least. “Was his weekend as bad as mine?” Frankly, she didn’t see how it could have been.

  She had been dogged by the press from Saturday morning on. Local reporters from all four networks had showed up to try to get an interview from her concerning the Friday night incident at her parents’ estate. Sheriff Mac Hart’d had to set up a perimeter around the inn, which saved her from having to answer questions by curious media. And of course as her luck where Joe Hart was concerned, would have it, it was a slow news weekend. So their unexpected late-night run-in with each other had gotten a lot of air play.

  Emma knew her parents were hideously embarrassed—and so was she. It seemed whenever, wherever Joe Hart came into her life, trouble soon followed. But this time her heart went out to him, because he had been publicly embarrassed at a level only a professional-athlete-slash-celebrity could be. And was suffering the same professional ramifications she was. Like it or not, that gave them something in common. Something to try to jointly deal with.

  As if reading her mind, and the direction her emotions were headed, her father repeated firmly, “This is Joe Hart’s problem. Let him handle it.”

  Emma knew her father would be happy to see Joe hang, and part of her would like that, too—for the way Joe had unceremoniously taken her right back to her dorm when he’d found out she was not only forbidden to have anything to do with hockey players but related to his brand-new boss, to boot. But the other part of her decided she was not going to hide.

  So Emma said a cheerful goodbye to her father and told Helen where and how she could be reached. Then she grabbed her pager and her cell phone, got in her car and drove to the Professional Sports Arena in Raleigh where the hockey games were held. The guards knew her—everyone there knew her—and they let her in one of the back entrances. Emma stopped briefly in the ladies’ room, to make sure she was camera ready, and saw how pink her cheeks were. And knew, as long as the subject was Joe Hart, she would continue to be flushed.

  After applying a little lipstick, she headed for the room where press conferences were always held, slipping in through the side door. Joe was standing with his agent and one of the team’s publicists. He was wearing a pair of jeans that molded every powerful inch of his lower half, and a short-sleeved silk-jersey T-shirt in a light charcoal gray, that delineated his broad shoulders, six-pack abs and nicely shaped pecs. He looked sexy and ready for anything that came his way, and as she stood there watching him Emma was aware of two things. One, she was glad her mother was apparently not here this morning. She didn’t want to have to face her, too. Or deal with Margaret’s attempts to steer her away from “trouble.” And two, Emma realized, whenever she was near Joe, whenever she laid eyes on him, she immediately began to feel more alive. Alert. And ready for anything, too.

  Joe stopped in midsentence when he saw her. Their eyes met for a breathtakingly long moment. Held. And then he was moving through the crowd of reporters and TV and newspaper cameramen to her side, a polite smile fixed on his face.

  As he neared her, Emma could see he apparently hadn’t shaved since she had last
seen him—a quarter inch, maybe more, of golden-brown beard lined his ruggedly handsome face. She wasn’t sure what that meant. Had he decided to grow a beard? Was it a statement regarding his attitude about the circus here today? Did he just want to look tougher, more ready to rumble, when dealing with the press?

  Whatever the reason, she was sure it had nothing to do with grooming. The rest of him was impeccably put together. He smelled good, too, as if he had just gotten out of the shower. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  Emma wished there had been just a tad of warmth in his molten amber eyes. She smiled at him as if they were old friends, instead of adversaries. “I came to see the announcement,” she murmured politely, aware their conversation was beginning to generate a lot of interest among the casually chatting sports reporters in the room.

  Joe slid a hand beneath her elbow and guided her as much out of earshot of everyone else as he could. “You know they’ll pounce on you like piranhas.”

  Trying not to feel bereft when he dropped his hand, Emma tilted her head up to his and smiled even more sweetly as she murmured back, “I also know I have to answer questions, Joe, about what happened the other night, because if I don’t make myself available to reporters, they are going to keep right on dogging me, too. The way I see it—this is the safest venue in which to do it.” The fact she was Saul’s daughter, and Saul controlled his team’s access to the press, would make them wary of angering Saul. Hence, Emma figured she could expect—and answer—some softball questions, go on the record and be done with it.

  Joe frowned, clearly seeing the wisdom of what she was saying, even as he wanted to argue with her. For purely argument’s sake? “It’s a team press conference, Emma,” he reminded her.

  And her father, the team owner, had already forbidden Emma to be anywhere near here. But then, Emma thought, Joe didn’t know that. And what he didn’t know…

  Aware all eyes in the room were on them, and that many ears were straining to hear what they were whispering about, Emma continued to smile and look into his eyes. They were so close she could smell the sandalwood-and-leather fragrance of his cologne. “You want to hold two separate ones, then?”