It Happened One Night (3 page)

Harley's heart dropped.

“I'm not going to—”

She found herself outside and standing in the street.

“Listen here, Sam Clay, you can't just—”

Sam cupped her face with his hands and kissed her.

Harley's arguments died along with the last of her good  sense.  There  was  nothing  in  the  world  that seemed to matter but the feel of his hands on her face, the sensual tug of his mouth against her lips and the scent of his cologne. She'd dreamed about the way he smelled.

When he lifted his head, she moaned aloud.

Sam hid a smile. He didn't have a damn thing going for him except the fact that they were good together in bed. He knew she was afraid. Dang it all, so was he. But the moment he'd walked into that hotel bar and seen her dancing on a table in the middle of a pile of poker chips, he'd been lost. She'd been holding a handful of flowers that looked suspiciously like a bridal bouquet, and had done a neat pivot on the tabletop to the beat of the music playing in the background
before giving the flowers a toss. He'd caught them in reflex and then caught her as she started to fall. She didn't look like the kind of girl a serious man took home to Mother. She didn't appear to be the homemaker, baby-loving type—and he was. But she'd gasped when he caught her and then looked up at him with those dark brown eyes and laughed. After that, he was lost. Hours later they'd gotten married and he wasn't going to give up—at least not until they'd given the marriage a serious try.

“What are you really doing here?” Harley asked. “If you've come to make trouble, I can assure you that I don't—”

Sam put his finger in the middle of her lips and then shook his head.

“Sssh, darlin'. I don't make trouble. I make love. Don't you remember?”

Harley's knees went weak. She didn't remember a lot of things, but she well remembered the feel of his weight on her body and sweat-slick hammer of his hips between her thighs.

“Have mercy,” she mumbled.

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and began leading her toward a waiting cab.

“I'll give you mercy and anything else your little heart desires,” he whispered, as he opened the door.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Well...for starters, our flight leaves day after tomorrow morning. That doesn't give us much time.”

Flight. The word made her stomach turn. Day after tomorrow. Surely she could come up with something between now and then that would get her out of this mess.

“Time for what?” she asked.

He scooted into the cab beside her.

“To meet your parents. Pack your things. You know. Stuff.”

Parents! Lord have mercy, no! Harley opened her mouth to object when Sam leaned over the seat and gave the driver the address to her parents' home.

She stared at him in disbelief, thinking that she must have married herself to a handsome but dangerous stalker. How else would he have known her parents' address? She pulled away from him, shrinking into the corner of the cab and eyed him with something close to panic.

“How do you know where they live?” she whispered.

“You told me,” he said.

“I didn't!”

Sam grinned. He was starting to enjoy her discomfiture. She'd put him through four days of hell. It was good for her to be a little bit nervous.

“Oh yes, you did. You told me lots of things,” he said, as the cab started to move. “Like...” He hesitated, then leaned over and whispered in her ear.

Harley's eyes widened. Her face flushed and her mouth went slack.

“I did no such thing,” she whispered, glancing nervously at the driver who, thankfully, was paying them no attention.

Sam grinned. “Oh, but you did.”

Harley felt the blood draining from her face. He had to be telling the truth, because she'd never told anyone that fantasy. Ever.

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” Sam said. “And we did it the night we got married. Twice.”

Harley closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat. Her life was seriously out of control.

H
arley was trapped—both by Sam's proximity and the stupidity of her actions. She wanted to be mad at him, but in all fairness, it seemed as if he had married her in good faith. If he'd had any other ulterior motive, it would have been evident the “morning after.” All he would have had to do was walk away from what they'd done just as she had. Instead, he'd come after her—like some knight in shining armor come to rescue the fair damsel in distress.

However, distress was a mild word for the trouble Harley considered herself in, and he wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor. She kept eyeing his profile as the cab sped through the streets of Savannah, and as she did, it occurred to her that she had no idea where
he lived or what he did for a living. Following that revelation came the thought of what kind of man would marry a woman he'd just met? What was wrong with him that he would settle for a drunk-out-of-her-mind female he'd only just laid eyes on a few hours before?

She shivered in spite of the warmth of the day.

“Sam?”

He turned toward her. “Yeah?”

“Do you have a job?”

He laughed. “You could say that.”

Harley frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I'm a fireman for the Oklahoma City Fire Department.”

“Oh.”

“That wasn't a very enthusiastic ‘oh,”' Sam said. “What's the matter, don't I look like the kind of man who could put out fires?”

Harley thought of the sexual chemistry between them and resisted the unladylike urge to snort beneath her breath. From the way they made love, she could have more easily believed he started fires, instead of extinguishing them. There had been a time or two back in the motel after they'd made love, if she could have moved, where she would have gotten up to see if she was smoking.

“I don't know. I was just curious, that's all.” Then she added, “Why did you marry me?”

He stared at her, letting his gaze linger longer on
the fan of eyelashes partially shading her soft brown eyes and then on the sensuous curve of her lower lip. It was a good question. One he'd asked himself a thousand times since. He sighed.

“Do you remember our first kiss?”

She flushed, looked away briefly, then made herself face him when she answered.

“I'm ashamed to say I do not.”

A wry smile turned up one corner of his mouth. “If you did, I don't think you'd be asking the question.”

Her eyes widened. She knew they were volatile together in bed, but surely it hadn't been that sudden.

“You mean—”

“I thought the top of my head was going to come off,” Sam said softly, and then threaded his fingers through her hand. “Honey, I'm thirty-seven years old and I've seen the dark side of the moon more than once and lived to tell the tale, but I have never...with any woman...felt the earth tilt beneath my feet like it did at that moment.”

“What did I do?” Harley asked and then blushed. “I mean, when we kissed.”

“You stared at me like you'd seen a ghost and, truth be told, I knew just how you felt. I'd been thinking about settling down for more than five years but had never met the right woman...until you.”

Harley pulled her hand away from Sam and curled it around her purse instead. Her voice was shaking,
her heartbeat pounding against her eardrums so loudly she could barely hear herself speak.

“But surely you can see my position. How can you say I'm the right woman? You don't know me, and God knows I'm ashamed to say I don't remember that much of what happened.”

“I know a lot about you,” Sam said.

Again the thought came to Harley that she might be the victim of a handsome stalker.

“How so?” she asked.

He smiled. “You told me. I know your great-great-Granny Devane personally slapped General Sherman's face when his men rode their horses up the steps of her plantation house. I know that when you were little you were afraid of clowns and that every time your mother fixed fried chicken livers for dinner, you fed yours to the family cat. I know you're afraid of spiders but once rescued your younger cousin from a flooded creek without any thought of your own safety. I know—”

“Stop! Stop!” Harley moaned, and then buried her face in her hands. “My God, how could I turn loose so much of myself and not remember it?”

Sam wanted to hold her, but this wasn't the time. He'd come this far to prove to her he was serious about making their sham of a marriage work. But Harley June was going to have to come the rest of the way to him on her own or it would never work.

“I don't know,” Sam said. “All I know is that I
want to give this...give us...a chance. I need it, Junie, and I think deep down you do too, or you would never have said, I do.”

“Not Junie,” she muttered.

“That's not what it says on your butt,” Sam countered.

Her eyes narrowed angrily. “A gentleman would not remind me of such an indiscretion.”

Fed up with her constant referral to Southern gentility, Sam's eyes narrowed sharply.

“Gentleman be damned, Harley June. I told you once before, I never claimed to be anything but your husband.”

The cab came to a sudden stop.

Both Sam and Harley June looked up, slightly surprised that they had reached their destination so quickly.

“Looks like we're here,” Sam said. Tossing a handful of bills across the seat to the driver, he grabbed his suitcase as he got out and pulled a reluctant Harley out of the cab.

The cab drove away from the curb, leaving them on the sidewalk with nowhere to go but up the front steps of Harley's childhood home.

“You ready?” Sam asked.

“I can't do this,” Harley said, and grabbed Sam by the arm. “Please! Isn't there anything I can say to make you stop? You don't understand what this news will do to my family!”

“Damn it, Junie, you're twenty-seven years  old. Are you trying to tell me you still let your parents tell you what to do?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Fine then,” Sam said, and took her by the hand, pulling her none too gently up the walk toward the house, his suitcase bouncing against his leg as they went.

Harley's feet were moving but her mind had gone numb. She kept thinking at any moment she would wake up only to find this was all a bad dream. But when she heard her father's voice, she knew the nightmare was only beginning.

“Why, Harley! I didn't expect to see you today! Come look at my Sister Ruth!”

Both Sam and Harley turned. Harley felt a muscle jerk in Sam's hand, but it was the only indication she had that he might be dreading this as much as she.

“Who's Sister Ruth?” Sam asked, as they started across the lawn.

“One of Daddy's rosebushes,” Harley said. “Roses are his hobby.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember you saying he won a blue ribbon at the Savannah Garden Show last year.”

Harley shook her head as they started across the lawn, wondering what else she had told this man that she didn't remember.

Dewey Beaumont was on his knees beside a massive rosebush bursting with blossoms in all stages of
bloom. The flower's apricot color was almost as stunning as the scent. Dewey pushed himself up with a grunt, brushing off the knees of his pants as he stood. He eyed the tall man beside his daughter, noted the suitcase he was carrying and the strained expression on Harley's face and wondered what was up.

“Your mother will have a fit if she sees what I've done to the knees of these pants,” he said, then smiled at Sam and extended his hand. “I don't believe I've had the pleasure.”

Harley jumped, quickly remembering her manners.

“Daddy, this is Samuel Clay. Sam, this is my father, Dewey Beaumont.”

Sam smiled. “Mr. Beaumont, it's a pleasure to finally meet you. Harley speaks highly of you, sir.”

Dewey beamed. “Harley June is my finest achievement in life.”

Harley groaned.

Sam gave her fingers a gentle squeeze.

Dewey frowned.

“Harley...is something wrong? You are pale as one of your mama's sheets.”

One glance at Harley and Sam knew if any explanations were forthcoming, they would have to come from him.

“Mr. Beaumont, Harley's a little nervous right now.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Dewey said, not for the first time eyeing the fact that Sam Clay was still holding
his only child's hand. “Might you be able to explain that for me?”

“Yes, sir. Junie and I got married while she was in Las Vegas. I've come to meet the family and then take her home.”

Dewey was lost. “Who's Junie? And what does that have to do with—”

“Your daughter, sir. It's what I call her.”

Dewey's mouth dropped. “My daughter? You married my daughter?” He stared at Harley. “Harley June Beaumont! Have you nothing to say to me?”

Harley's stomach was rolling, but she surprised herself by answering in a rather calm voice.

“It's true, Daddy. I did marry this man in Las Vegas.”

“Lord have mercy,” Dewey muttered. “What will your mother say?”

Sam already had a notion that Marcie Beaumont was a true steel magnolia, but he was willing to face anything and anyone for Harley June. He tightened his grip on Harley's hand and smiled.

“Well now, honey, let's just go find out for ourselves, what do you say?”

Without giving her a chance to answer, Sam took off for the house. Harley found herself running to keep up with his stride with Dewey not far behind. They were on the second step of the front verandah when the door opened and Marcie Beaumont came out, her round, cherub-shaped face framed in skillfully dyed,
auburn curls. Sam had a moment to notice that her pink, flowing dress was almost the shade of her cheeks and then she was coming toward them.