How To Be A Blissful Bride - Stacy Connelly Hillcrest House

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was more than a little surprised Griffin had agreed. He had his own dreams that had nothing to do with becoming a hotel magnate. Dreams that could come true—if he found a way to prove himself responsible to his father.

      “Just so you know, I’d never think of myself as being stuck with you.” He paused with a hand on the doorknob. “Only lucky that you were by my side.”

      “Go! Before you make a ridiculously hormonal woman start to cry!”

      He left with a wink and a wave, and the reality of the past few minutes hit like a hurricane, practically knocking Alexa off her feet. She sank into the blue love seat, the strength all but sapped from her muscles, and pulled a matching pillow against her chest.

      Chance McClaren...

      Seeing him had been like—seeing a ghost.

      A living, breathing ghost.

      Because despite that initial news report, Chance McClaren had not died in the bomb attack.

      Two days later, every news channel in the country was scrambling to revise their headlines. Chance was injured but alive in a hospital in some foreign city Alexa had never heard of.

      But for those two days between, shock had left Alexa blessedly numb after the roller-coaster ride of emotions she’d experienced since the night they met.

      She’d spent her childhood waiting for her parents to call, watching out windows for them to show up out of the blue. Waiting, wondering, hoping, only to have that hope dashed time and time again when one nanny or another would tell her that her parents weren’t coming.

      Until the day when her grandmother arrived and put an end to all of it. To the waiting, to the wondering, to the hoping. Her parents weren’t coming. Not ever again.

      She’d relived every twist and turn, every jolt and jerk, every stomach-in-her-throat loop-the-loop after Chance left, and when she read that first news report, a small, desperate part of her had been—relieved.

      This child—a child she already loved, a child who would love and need her—would be all hers, and she wouldn’t have to share. She wouldn’t have to tell Chance he was going to be a father. Wouldn’t have to worry that he would wreak havoc crashing in and out of their lives. She wouldn’t have to face the pain of knowing she’d cursed her baby with a childhood destined to be so similar to her own.

      She wouldn’t.

       Because Chance was dead.

      Only then he wasn’t. But it was almost easier to pretend he was.

      Alexa barely had a chance to take a breath, forget to take the time she needed to recover from seeing him again, when a knock sounded at the door. She gave a small laugh as she pushed off the love seat cushions. Typical Griffin. “Forget your key?” she asked as she pulled open the door.

      Only it wasn’t Griffin standing on the other side. A living, breathing Chance McClaren arched a dark brow and said, “I don’t recall you giving me a key...yet.”

       Chapter Three

      Heat licked a path from her chest all the way to her cheeks, and she was tempted—seriously tempted—to slam the door in his face. But she’d been Virginia Mayhew’s granddaughter too long to react in such a way. Though, really, what etiquette book had a chapter on something like this?

      How to greet a weekend fling father of your unborn child. Or better yet, What to say to a man who figuratively, if not literally, had come back from the dead.

      “Come on, Lexi, aren’t you going to invite me in?”

      One hand gripped the edge of the doorframe in a casual pose, but she wasn’t fooled. His blue eyes were shadowed, his unshaven jaw clenched, the muscles in his arm standing out in stark relief. He looked like he’d fall over if he let go. And the heart she’d tried so hard to harden ached for him.

      “Please don’t call me that,” she murmured even as she stepped back and allowed him into the suite and, she feared, back into her life.

      She kept her back turned as she led the way toward the suite’s living area. The space had felt cozy when Griffin had been there with her. Now, with Chance, she felt the walls closing in.

      “What should I call you? After all, that is how you introduced yourself that night, isn’t it?”

      Alexa nearly groaned at the reminder. She’d been calling herself a fool ever since. What had she been thinking? One look into Chance’s startling blue eyes back in the lobby, and she’d remembered. Even now a rush of energy, awareness, attraction arced between them, and Alexa knew she hadn’t been thinking much at all.

      For one weekend, with this one man, she’d let herself feel. She’d known there would be a price to pay for abandoning the tight control that had shaped her life for the past twenty-plus years. She just hadn’t realized until she found out she was pregnant that her child would be the one to pay it. But only if she told Chance the truth...

      “What do you want, Chance?” She picked up the pillow that had fallen from the love seat and carefully tucked it back against the armrest, smoothing a ruffled corner as if nothing mattered more.

      “Oh, I don’t know.” His eyes glowed like superheated flame as she straightened to meet his gaze. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

      So she was right, Alexa thought. She had wounded some sense of macho pride when she pretended not to know him. Throw in an almost-engagement, and the man she’d last spoken to months ago was suddenly at her door.

      She took a step backward, needing some space from the heat coming off his body in waves, only to bump up against the white wicker coffee table. He countered her move, trapping her there unless she wanted to start scrambling over furniture to try to get away. “Chance—”

      “For someone who claims not to take risks, you sure move fast when you want to.”

      Alexa wasn’t sure her skin could get much hotter without setting her hair on fire. He knew just how fast she had moved, falling into bed with him the very night they met. Looking back, the entire weekend seemed like some kind of dream, a magical moment out of time. One that, even with the pregnancy, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to regret—until now. Until Chance made her feel ashamed. “I—”

      “Four months, and now you’re suddenly engaged?”

      “Engaged? You mean Griffin?”

      He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have another fiancé I don’t know about?”

      “No, of course not.” She didn’t even have the one he did know about. Not really.

      “Unless...” His gaze narrowed dangerously. “Were you engaged when we met?”

      “What? No! I certainly wouldn’t have slept with you,” she hissed beneath her breath as if the entire hotel might have been listening in, “if I’d been engaged to another man at the time.”

      He searched her expression, his stance easing ever so slightly at what he saw there. She caught a hint of the ocean mixed with his own masculine scent, and her focus drifted toward his lips even as she wondered if she would taste the salt on his skin...

       He’s here. I can’t believe he’s really here.

      Sucking in a quick breath, Alexa snapped herself out of the dangerous direction her thoughts had taken. Chance might have just come from a walk on the beach, but she was the one who needed to throw herself into the frigid waves!

      What had he been saying? Oh, right. He’d just accused her of cheating on her fiancé. “Griffin James and I have known each other since we were children, but he only recently asked me to marry him.”

      “Just like that?”

      “What?”

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