Page 3 of A Complicated Bride

Chapter 2

Brad

She was a relative. I’d place money on it. A shame. Can’t touch the relatives. Either Julie or my oldest living friend Jack—who was growing to be a pain in the arse since he married Julie—would have me . They’d become the most solid married couple I’d ever seen. Maybe the only one.

Not enough to change this old bachelor’s notions about marriage. It wasn’t for the faint of heart. And I didn’t have the heart for it. Possibly I had no heart at all. It hadn’t been stirred in too long a time to remember.

I trotted up the stairs, happy to escape the sappy reunion. Happy to escape the cloud of magic and grace surrounding that red-headed siren. Damn. It was nothing.

But I knew my women. I knew when someone had that IT factor. It was my damn business to know and I was damn good at my business. I’d photographed all the top models and now I was working my way through Hollywood shooting all the stars too. There was nothing stopping my career. It steamrolled right through everything.

About the only thing I had left of my old life, my beginnings, was Jack Lamont. I had no family left because I didn’t count Uncle Harold since he didn’t know who I was the last time I saw him. Mum was gone. Dad had never been around. My sis… no need to think about her.

And all the women. Every day was filled with young beautiful women, some available and some not. All for the taking.

But I’d over-filled my plate and needed a break from the picture-perfect life of high-fashion and Hollywood. Needed a break from my life which had become no more real than one of my photographs. Damn staged. Always on. Never real.

Since I’d arrived last night, I felt the difference. The edge had begun to seep from me and an easiness I hadn’t felt in a long while returned as I took my third bite of my second piece of strawberry rhubarb pie.

Then the doorbell had rung. I decided to answer it and in a flash, the instant I saw her, felt her stumble against me soft and vulnerable, the edge was back. Cast iron tension.

But this was tension of a different kind, even as hard as it was. It wasn’t connected to business, or impressing anyone or competing with anyone. More like pure sensual tension.

Bradley old boy, you’re a cad through and through.

I couldn’t see a woman without evaluating her professionally. Of course it was always the same. Maybe. I hoped the hell not.

I reached the landing and walked past the room where I’d decided to stay, two doors down and opposite to a lovely pink room. This was the room that used to be Julie’s before she married. I heaved the bags of Lily of the glamorous auburn hair onto the frilly four-poster bed.

It was high time I made an effort to know a girl without a thought about their professional worth. Without a thought about how they’d look on my arm, how they’d look when someone popped a photo.

I could do it.

Ah, but would Julie allow it? She knew me well and, according to her, I’d already broken the heart of her best friend, Tammy. Although if you asked me, she was doing fine as Mrs. XXX and our hearts had never been in it. Not all the way, although it was as close as I’d come since university.

Julie would never allow it. Lily would be off limits and that would work as well. I would get to know a woman as a friend. Have a platonic relationship with a single woman. It was a good place to start. It would be relaxing, easy, no pressure and real.

Gazing at the white eyelet encrusted pillows I turned and determined this would be good for me. Exactly the thing I needed. Exactly what I came here for—a break from the competition of seduction in the fast lane. A good sharp clean break.

With a smile, not an entirely easy smile I admit, but a determined one, I trotted back down stairs to finish my pie.

Niggling restlessly at the back of my mind was the question about why I had brought Miss off-Limit’s bags to a room of my choosing?

* * *

“Bradley, this is my cousin Lily.” Julie towered over her, one arm draped over a creamy shoulder. I couldn’t help noticing that she was dressed impeccably—if she were going to an English tea party. Definitely over the top for this lazy country Inn in nowhere New Hampshire.

What the hell was her story?

I nodded and smiled at her.

“Looks like we’ll be roommates.”

Her face transformed into one of those looks from a horror movie.

Julie was unaware of her friend’s dismay, but she said to him, “I thought you would stay with me and Jack?”

“Didn’t want to intrude. You have a full house with the babies—“