Malone's Vow

Liam stood, smoothed down his shirt, took a couple of deep breaths.

“Liam?”

Bill was hurrying toward him, his face tense, and for one awful moment, Liam thought he’d found out what had happened. But Carrie was trotting alongside him, looking just as bad.

“What is it?”

“It’s Jessica,” William said. “She’s—she’s gone.”

“What?” Liam eased an arm around Bill’s shoulders, led him to a bench and sat him down. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

Carrie knelt on the grass and took Bill’s hands in hers. She spoke to Liam, but her eyes never left Bill’s pale face.

“She wrote a note,” Carrie said, “and left it on the bed with her engagement ring and watch.”

Liam shook his head. Maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe it was the rest of the world that had gone insane. “Bill?” He squatted down beside the bench. “Talk to me. How can she be gone? Gone where?”

Bill took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Liam. “You can see how upset she must have been,” he said shakily. “Just look at how she scrawled the words.”

Upset? Oh, yes, Liam thought as he took the note, yes, indeed, the lady would have been upset. Beside herself, was more like it, afraid—no, terrified—that he’d break his promise and tell Bill what had happened.

Dearest William: I’m sorry. So terribly sorry. You’re a wonderful man. A fine man. That’s why I can’t marry you. You deserve more than I can ever give you. Forgive me, please.

He read the note again and again, until anguish blurred both his anger and the words Jessie had written. He had done this. He’d given in to a moment’s desire and this was the result.

Slowly Liam rose to his feet.

“Carrie? You took Jessie back to the house. What happened after that?”

“I started to fix her hair, but she said she wanted to do it herself. She asked me to go downstairs and make sure everything was ready. When I got back, she was gone.” Carrie gave Liam a look filled with loathing and accusation. “She was fine before she went out to the garden. Just bridal jitters, that was all. She was fine!”

Liam nodded. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d come back to Seattle to join in a happy celebration. Instead, he’d kissed a woman who wasn’t his to kiss, and now his best friend was behaving as if his life had ended. Like it or not, he knew what he had to do.

“Bill?” He squatted down again, put a hand on Bill’s knee. “Bill, you have to go after her.”

“Go where?” Bill looked up, his face tearstained. “She gave up her apartment when I asked her to move into the guest suite here.”

“Well, what about family? Friends?”

“Jessica has no family. And her friends are all here, at the…in the house.”

“Call the police,” Carrie said. “Hire a private detective.”

“No. No, I can’t do that. Jess isn’t a fugitive. She’s my fiancée and if she’s run away, it has to be my fault. I must have done something to make her—”

“You didn’t,” Liam said, so sharply that Bill stared at him. “I mean, there’s no reason to think that. You’d know if you’d done something to drive her away.”

“The only thing I know is that I have to get her back.” Bill clamped his lips together, bowed his head. Seconds passed before he looked up again. “Liam? You have to find her for me.”

Liam shot to his feet. “No. Not me.”

Bill stood up slowly, looking as if he’d aged five years in the past five minutes. “She’d run if she saw me. She has no reason to run from you.”

“Bill,” Liam said, “Bill, please—”

“And you know something about running away. You used to talk about it, remember? About how you’d run away all those times when you were a kid?”

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