Stop it! Ann made a valiant attempt to stem her rising sense of panic. This was not the time to begin second-guessing her painful decision. Not two thousand miles from home. No, from her former home, she grimly reminded herself. The stately old brownstone where she’d grown up was gone. Gone along with everything else. Ann swallowed against the bitter taste of defeat that had dogged her for months.
Taking a deep breath, she focused on a dark stain on the gray tile near her left foot and slowly exhaled to the count of ten. New York City and Bill are the past. Wyoming and Nick St. Hilarion are the future.
At least he would be if he ever arrived. Ann watched with a growing sense of numbness as the last passenger off her flight was met, leaving her sitting alone. So alone. She shivered as the silence reached oppressive proportions. Everyone seemed to be elsewhere.
Which was where she wished she was. Elsewhere. Anywhere else than sitting on a hard, gray plastic chair waiting to see if the man she’d flown across the country to marry had decided to reject his mail-order bride sight unseen.
Or maybe he had seen her? The appalling thought suddenly occurred to her. Maybe he’d been waiting in the crowd when she’d arrived Maybe he’d taken one look at her and decided she’d never make a good ranch wife. Ann tucked a wayward strand of her golden-brown hair behind her right ear with fingers that shook. Maybe he’d instantly realized that she was a sham as a woman. Something it had taken her exhusband over a year to figure out. An icy chill feathered over her, tightening her skin and blurring her vision.
Ann hastily swallowed the hysterical giggle that bubbled up in her throat as visions of herself growing old and decrepit as she sat waiting for a groom who never came filled her mind.
Think. Don’t react, think. She repeated the word like a mantra. She had the phone number of his ranch. She latched onto that solid fact. She would wait another fifteen minutes, then call and leave a message that she’d checked into a motel. Just fifteen minutes more. Her slight body sagged against the hard chair.
Nick St. Hilarion shot into the closest parking space to the airport terminal he could find, cut the engine of his pickup truck and jumped out. He shoved his fingers through his short blond hair in frustration as he headed toward the nearest entrance at a brisk walk. Of all the times to be held up by an accident on the interstate!
He hurriedly located a flight-arrival screen to find the gate for her flight, then headed toward Gate F, his long legs quickly covering the distance. She was probably furious at not having been met. Bitter experience had taught him that women expected to have their every whim catered to. And being left stranded in an airport in a strange city would undoubtedly infuriate her. Suppose she hadn’t waited for him? Suppose she’d caught the first flight out?
Nick felt a curious blend of fear and hope surge through him. He wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted or not. But he was positive about one thing—that his cousin Maggie was right. He definitely needed a wife to help him deal with the unexpected arrival of his thirteen-year-old daughter into his life. But was Maggie also right when she claimed that her friend, Ann Lennon, was just the wife he needed?
Nick grimaced. He didn’t know, but if he turned down Maggie’s choice of bride for him, he held very little hope of finding a substitute on his own. He didn’t even know where to start looking. The area around his ranch wasn’t exactly teeming with matrimonial prospects.
In fact, other than a few giggly teenagers who made him feel ninety years old, the only unmarried woman that he personally knew was the sixty-year-old widowed sister-in-law of Clem who ran the feed store. He either accepted Maggie’s mail-order bride or he coped with his daughter on his own.
A shudder coursed through him at the thought of all the pitfalls lying in wait for the parents of adolescents these days. According to what he’d read, he was going to have to deal with sexual promiscuity, drug experimentation, rebellion against authority and a host of other problems. And while he hoped that it wouldn’t be that bad, in the back of his mind was the corroding fear that his daughter had taken after his ex-wife. If that were true…
Unconsciously Nick squared his shoulders. It didn’t matter what Ginny’s problems were. She was his daughter, too, and now that Mona had so suddenly decided that she didn’t want a living reminder of a former marriage cluttering up her new marriage, he wasn’t about to abandon the child to a boarding school the way his own mother had done to him. He’d do whatever it took to provide a home for Ginny, and common sense told him that the first step was to acquire a wife to help him.
His pace instinctively quickened as he saw the gate he was looking for halfway down the corridor.
Ann leaned forward slightly as she caught sight of someone moving toward her. She squinted, trying to get a better look. It was a man! Could this be her intended groom at last? She frowned uncertainly. Maggie hadn’t been able to find a current picture of her cousin, but she had mentioned that his father was Greek. Which probably meant that Nick was short and dark.
Which this man most definitely wasn’t, Ann realized as he got close enough for her to get a good look at him. He was at least three inches over six feet and built to match. Her eyes measured the breadth of his shoulders encased in his brown leather flight jacket. Impressive. Very impressive. He looked like a Hollywood representation of a cowboy hero. Emphatically masculine, sexy as the devil and totally outside her league, she instinctively rejected the brief flair of interest she’d felt.
Ann froze as his gaze swept the deserted area and came to rest on her. His brilliant blue eyes narrowed as he studied her. Unconsciously, she smoothed the jacket of her impeccably tailored brown tweed suit. To her surprise, he walked over to her.
“Ann Lennon?” The sound of his deep voice rolled through her mind and landed in the pit of her churning stomach.
Doubtfully, Ann stared at him. How did this stranger know her name? He couldn’t be Maggie’s cousin. He didn’t look like any Greek she’d ever seen. Nor could she see any family resemblance to Maggie. Maybe he worked for Nick. Maybe Nick had been unable to get away and had sent someone to pick her up—like a stray package.
Ann firmly squelched her irritation and got to her feet. This wasn’t the time to be hypersensitive, she told herself. If she were going to make a success of this unconventional marriage, she would have to develop a thick skin.
“Yes. I’m Ann Lennon.” She held out her hand, using the social amenities as a shield in this unreal situation. “And you are?”
Ann watched in fascination as the corners of his firm mouth lifted in what was either a pained smile or a grimace.
“I’m your intended, Nick St. Hilarion.”
Ann’s hazel eyes widened incredulously as his unexpected words echoed through her disbelieving mind. This was Maggie’s cousin! He couldn’t be. This had to be some kind of weird joke. Men who looked like this man didn’t have to resort to having their cousins find them wives. They’d be beating prospective candidates off with a stick.
But…Maggie had gone into great detail about his disastrous first marriage. Maybe Nick didn’t trust his own judgment anymore, either. It was possible. She noticed the rigid cast of his features for the first time. Maybe he felt as embarrassed and uncertain as she did.
She glanced down at her hand, which she was still holding out. Nick followed her gaze and muttered something that she didn’t quite catch before he grabbed it.
Ann’s breath caught in her lungs as she felt his warm fingers close around hers. Heat seemed to pour off him, seeping into her chilled flesh, making it tingle. She swallowed uneasily at her reaction. It was the weirdness of the situation, she assured herself. After all, it wasn’t every day that she flew across the country to marry a stranger. She was certainly allowed a few aberrations from her normal behavior.