His Brother's Bride

SCOTT WAS STUNNED.

He’d dreamed Laurel London into Cooper’s Corner a million times, even as he’d fully accepted that he was never going to see her again. He could hardly believe it. The excruciating pleasure—and agony—that she instilled within his most private self lunged at him mercilessly.

He opened his mouth to speak—to call out to her—and had nothing to say.

How did a man calmly say hello to a woman whose heart he’d broken? Whose dreams he’d shattered with the horrible news he’d given her. How did he call out to her, remembering that she’d made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him, that seeing him was too painful to her?

Thoughts flitted so rapidly across the page of Scott’s mental notebook, he could hardly keep up with them. Standing there close to Laurel brought the pain of Paul’s passing forcefully to the surface.

After three and a half years of mourning his older brother, he’d become pretty adept at keeping that ache locked away.

Right along with the shame of having been so desperately in love with Laurel himself. This woman had been his brother’s fiancée—left at the altar when Paul’s life had been cruelly snatched away the morning of their wedding.

Images of his brother’s mangled body, thrown from the car when his seat belt ripped from its casing, flashed across the mental page. He’d known Paul was dead the moment he climbed from the wreckage and stumbled over to the grassy embankment where his brother’s body had landed. Paul’s head had been bent at such an unnatural angle. And the blood trickling out of his mouth and down his chin would have choked him had he been breathing....

Scott hadn’t even had a scratch that bled. Not one goddamned scratch. Yet he was the one who should have been lying in a heap with a broken neck.

The sedan they’d been in that morning had been Scott’s. He was supposed to have been driving his brother from Boston, where Paul had his new law practice, back home to Cooper’s Corner for Paul’s wedding. He was the one trained to deal with the icy weather conditions.

And he would have been the one in the driver’s seat, wearing the seat belt that had broken when they hit the patch of ice and flipped, but he’d been so damned hungover he’d practically seen double.

He’d put away so much eighty proof the night before at Paul’s bachelor party that they could have sterilized medical instruments with his blood. And all because of this woman.

He’d drunk himself into a stupor to forget the fact that the following day his beloved older brother was marrying the only woman Scott was ever going to love.

Laurel turned and found him staring at her.

“Scott?” The word was both a whisper and a cry.

He nodded, needing to hold out his arms to her, to crush her to him and promise her that somehow he’d make amends, make things right for her.

&nbs

p; But he couldn’t.

There were some things a man just couldn’t do, no matter how determined he was.

How in hell could he dare to offer solace when he was the reason she was suffering in the first place? When he hadn’t even been man enough to tell her that he was responsible for her fiancé’s death?

If she’d read any of the reports, she’d know Paul had been driving that morning, but she’d been in such shock, run out so immediately, chances were she’d never seen a write-up of the accident. And even if she had, the underlying facts, the heavy ones that Scott’s conscience carried around every single day, the ones that crucified him were nothing that would show up in a report.

Only Scott’s father had known those. And now he, too, was gone.

She ran over and threw her arms around his neck, embracing him completely. Silently, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him as he fought back the needy shudder that passed through him.

In the next second she was crying, sobs racking her body. Tears burned the back of his eyes as they shared a pain too deep to put into any kind of words. No matter what else had come between them, what wrongs he’d been guilty of, they’d both loved Paul fiercely.

Scott’s older brother had been the kind of man who instilled such love in those he cared about. And loyalty, too... For both of them, the loss of Paul meant that life would never be the same again.

After long moments consumed by grief, Laurel pulled back from Scott, her dove-gray eyes limpid with tears. Gently, unable to help himself, he pushed the strands of tear-dampened hair away from her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she said almost awkwardly, her arms falling to her sides as she put more distance between them. “I guess this weekend’s been harder than I thought.”

“You’ve been in town all weekend?”

He didn’t know why that thought was just striking him now. Or why the fact that she hadn’t contacted him was so painful.

She’d had no reason to contact him. And every reason not to.