ONCE UPON A WEDDING Read online

  * * *

  ONCE UPON A WEDDING

  Paula Detmer Riggs

  * * *

  * * *

  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

  Epilogue

  * * *

  * * *

  Prologue

  ^»

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  Memorial Day

  Jess Dante figured he was a dead man. He'd hit the wall at 200 mph, and the car was a twisted, crumpled wreck. Jagged metal impaled his shoulder, gouging deeper with every breath he took.

  Flames were everywhere, searing his skin through the protective clothing that was now beginning to singe. Men wearing fire-fighting moon suits and drenched in fire-extinguishing foam struggled to tear the mangled wreckage that used to be a multimillion dollar race car away from the Speedway's west wall.

  Jess wanted to tell them not to bother. Too many years of living on the edge had finally caught up with him. If he didn't bleed to death, shock would kill him.

  He was already shuddering from the cold, and his vision was blurred. The pain in his shoulder and chest was beyond bearing, yet he struggled to remain conscious, desperate to experience the last few seconds of his life.

  From somewhere far away he heard sirens wailing and voices screaming. Hands reached into the ruined cockpit, frantic to free him before the fuel tank exploded.

  Jess screamed a warning, but it was too late. Something tore in his shoulder. Flesh ripped and bone splintered. By the time he was lifted from the car, he no longer had a right arm.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  «^»

  Fourteen years later.

  Child psychologist Hazel O'Connor was pleased. After six weeks of therapy, five-year-old Jimmy Bryan was finally making progress. Using dolls to represent the members of his family had been the key.

  "And who's this, Jimmy?" she asked, holding up a doll clearly representing an adult male.

  "Daddy."

  Hazel shifted position in the small seat. The playhouse in one corner of her office was an effective aid to play therapy, but it was murder on her back.

  "How's Daddy feeling today?" she asked.

  "Don't know."

  Hazel placed the "Daddy" doll close to Jimmy's hands and plucked another from the table. "Who's this?"

  The doll was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and was designed to represent a boy of five or six.

  Jimmy grinned. "That's me. Jimmy!"

  "How about if we do some pretending?" Hazel handed Jimmy the "Daddy" doll, then picked up "Jimmy."

  "I'll be you, and you be Daddy, okay?"

  Jimmy nodded. As he did, his small shoulders seemed to grow tense, and his expression approximated a man's stern scowl.

  A colonel in the air force, Jimmy's father demanded spit-and-polish neatness, so for years Jimmy had obediently lined up his toys in the same rigid way every night before going to bed, becoming hysterical if any of them was moved.

  His father also demanded military standards of courtesy, so, from the time he'd outgrown the babbling stage, Jimmy rarely spoke unless spoken to by an adult first.

  By the time he'd appeared in Hazel's office, referred to her by his pediatrician because of an inexplicable weight loss, the undersize boy had become more robot than child.

  After the first few sessions it seemed clear that Jimmy was reacting to his father's obsessive control by refusing to eat – a child's version of passive resistance. The goal now was to break that passive/aggressive cycle.

  "Daddy, I would like to give you a hug today," she murmured, her naturally husky voice pitched as high as a child's.

  "Hugs are for girls, not men." Jimmy always strained for a deeper voice when he spoke for "Daddy." He also barked out orders to the other dolls like Hazel's idea of a drill sergeant.

  "But I like hugs," she protested, holding up the "Jimmy" doll for the boy to see.

  "I said no!"

  Suddenly Jimmy threw "Daddy" against the wall, where the rag doll lay inert and crumpled. At the same time, Jimmy shot from his chair and stomped on the doll's head.

  Hazel spent the next ten minutes discussing Jimmy's feelings about what he'd done. When it was clear Jimmy couldn't handle any more that day, she walked him to the door.

  Before she opened it, however, she dropped to her knees, so the two of them were eye to eye.

  "How about a hug?"

  Jimmy nodded shyly, and she pulled him into her arms for her version of a bear hug. He kept his arms at his sides and his body stiff, but she counted the mere fact that he agreed to the small gesture of affection as progress.

  "See you next week," she said as she rose to her feet and opened the door.

  In the small, cheerfully appointed waiting room, Jimmy's mother was already on her feet. "Same time next week, Mrs. Bryan?" Hazel asked when their eyes met.

  Like most psychologists, she preferred working without a secretary. It seemed more personal, somehow, when she made her own appointments and returned her own calls.

  "We'll be here."

  Hazel watched mother and son walk out before she allowed her gaze to shift to the clearly adult, clearly masculine and decidedly unexpected visitor sprawling comfortably in one of her chairs reading a Junior Scholastic.

  Her heart gave an extra beat and refused to settle. She hadn't seen Jess Dante since "their" godson, Jesse McClane, had celebrated his fourth birthday six months earlier.

  Wide of shoulder and long of leg, the rangy defense attorney was dressed in a conservative gray suit instead of his usual jeans and rumpled corduroy jacket, which meant that he'd been in court earlier.

  Now, however, his neon tie hung askew, and he'd unbuttoned the collar of his white dress shirt. His rebellious black hair also showed signs of a rough day, plowed into unruly furrows by his strong, clever fingers.

  "Can I help you with something, little boy?" she asked in her best prissy therapist's voice.

  Dante finished the sentence he'd been reading before he tossed aside the magazine and looked up. It was electric, the invisible shiver that ran under her skin whenever her gaze touched his.

  "Yo, O'Connor, how's it going?" Jess had been reared on a cattle ranch near Placerville and had a lazy whiskey-and-honey drawl just right for wooing jurors to his way of thinking. Or women to his bed.

  Other women, Hazel reminded herself. She and Jess were friendly acquaintances, nothing more.

  "I heard you were in L.A. adding another chapter to your reputation as a legal maverick," she teased.

  His mouth took on a half shy, half devilish slant, Dante's version of a smile. His teeth were very white and very straight, except for one crooked eyetooth that gave his smile a certain wicked appeal.

  "Hacking off the establishment, you mean."

  "Undoubtedly, and something tells me you love it."

  He stood and came toward her in one economical movement of muscle and bone. Taller than most, with an extremely well-developed chest and shoulders and the strength to match, Jess was a natural athlete, which had helped him learn to compensate for the loss of his dominant hand.

  Emotionally, however, he still carried traces of bitterness that he worked to keep hidden from all but his closest friends.

  Hazel had seen the bitterness and flashes of a fierce frustration, as well, mostly when he was faced with the unexpected or untried.

  "I tried calling," he said as he brushed her cheek with his mouth in a greeting she'd long ago accepted as completely platonic. His olive skin was rough from a day's growth of beard, shadowing a jaw that was just shy of square. "Your service said you were in session."

  "It's been a busy day, and it's not over yet."

>   "Can you spare a few minutes for Jesse's godfather? It's important," he declared when she hesitated. "Or I wouldn't ask."

  "I can spare…" Pausing, she consulted her watch. "Seven and a half minutes, but who's counting, right?"

  She led the way into her office, conscious that Jess had never been there before. Nor had she been in his, a former brothel in a historical building in Old Sacramento.

  They'd met nearly five years ago outside a hearing room at Children's Protective Services when Jess was trying to secure temporary visitation rights for his client, Dr. Tyler McClane, a prominent pediatric surgeon falsely convicted of molesting his own daughter. Hazel had been representing the emotional interests of her then patient, Tyler's daughter, Kelsey.

  She'd noticed the confident set of Jess's big shoulders and the smoldering intelligence in his deep brown eyes before she'd noticed the empty sleeve of his suit coat and the dangerous line of his hard mouth.

  The chemistry between them had been instantaneous and volatile – a man for woman and woman for man connection that had literally taken her breath away.

  By the time she'd discovered that Jess was exactly the kind of brooding, cynical, emotionally scarred man she'd spent half a lifetime avoiding, she'd been hopelessly smitten.

  He, too, had seemed to sense the spark between them – but during the next few weeks, as they'd gotten to know each other better, the slow, mesmerizing burn in his eyes had changed to cool indifference. In fact, he'd worked hard at showing her just how uninterested he was.

  Hazel had been mystified and hurt – until her friend and his, Cait McClane, had explained that a messy divorce in his distant past had turned Jess into an avowed bachelor.

  The more he was attracted to a woman, the more he avoided her, Cait had insisted. But Hazel suspected her insistence was more to soothe her friend's badly dented ego than because it was true.

  "How'd the case go?" she asked as she seated herself behind her less-than-orderly desk.

  Tired after a long day that had started at seven with a new and difficult referral from a colleague, she slipped off her Italian flats and dug her toes into the soft nap of the carpet to work out the kinks.

  Jess sprawled comfortably in the only other adult-sized chair in the office and loosened his tie another few inches.

  "We won," he said.

  "Congratulations! What are you doing to celebrate?"

  His eyebrows rose, giving her a good look at his deep-set dark eyes and thick black eyelashes. She'd never seen eyes so compelling. Or more shadowed.

  "Mostly I've been trying to find my desk under the mess that piled up when I was in L.A."

  "Your desk sounds like mine every Saturday when I catch up on my case notes," she said with a sigh. "I'd rather clean bathrooms than do paperwork."

  "Me, I'd rather muck out stables," he drawled.

  "Hmm, sounds like work."

  "Only if you have to do it for a living."

  "Ah, so that's why you picked an easy profession like the law. I always wondered."

  His grin flashed again, a slow sensual invitation that she knew he didn't expect her to accept.

  "Hey, haven't you heard? Those of us who are 'physically challenged' are doing all kinds of politically correct things these days."

  Hazel hooted her opinion of "politically correct."

  "Bad form, O'Connor. Better not let your fellow shrinks hear about that."

  It was common knowledge in Sacramento legal circles that Jess had lost his arm during the Indy 500. According to the stories she'd heard, he'd blown a tire and hit the wall rather than take out the two cars on the other side of him.

  Hazel had always wanted to ask him if he ever regretted his generosity, especially when she caught sight of his empty sleeve. On the few occasions when she'd tried to engage him in conversation about anything more personal than the weather, sports and Jesse's latest achievements, however, he'd frozen her with an icy look she didn't care to see again.

  "So, what can I do for you today, Counselor?" she asked instead.

  "Remember when you were fourteen, O'Connor?"

  She frowned, surprised by a question that seemed casual, even trivial. She knew better. An intense man consumed by his work, Jess never wasted words on idle chitchat.

  "Not really," she said casually as she kept her hands busy and her mind distracted by tidying the files and papers on her desk.

  "Me, I had just won the junior bronc-busting championship for the first time. Had to beat my big brother Garrett to do it, and he was steamed. Had his mind set on winning three years in a row."

  Hazel tried not to imagine Jess at fourteen, sinfully handsome, physically superb and full of rampaging hormones.

  "I don't mean to rush you, Dante, but I have a patient due in, um … six minutes now."

  Jess glanced at his watch. He was used to setting limits on people, not the other way around. Which was why he had always considered Hazel O'Connor a challenge.

  Nothing seemed to rattle her. Not even a guy who'd been about as nasty as he could be so that he wouldn't be tempted to hustle her into an affair that would hurt them both when it ended.

  "Let me tell you a little story, O'Connor. Once there was a young girl named Silvia Gomez who was a migrant farm worker's daughter. When she was fourteen and a virgin, her father sold her to his boss, a valley farmer by the name of Cleve Yoder, in exchange for two thousand dollars and a used pickup."

  "Sold?" Hazel asked skeptically.

  He dismissed her doubt with a quick wave of his big hand. "Technically, he signed the papers allowing his underage daughter to marry Yoder, for which Aurelio Gomez just happened to get paid."

  "Oh." Hazel was listening intently now, her forehead creased into faint lines under the soft awning of coppery bangs.

  "Silvia didn't blame her father, she told me, because she was the oldest of eight and they were all hungry. Besides, she was tired of picking lettuce and thought it would be nice to live in a house with a bathroom for once in her life."

  Jess shifted his gaze to the make-believe family lined up on the small table in the corner. It was a nice setup, he thought. Inviting, but structured, with pictures of baby animals on the walls and pansies in an old teapot on the table. His gaze lingered for a moment on the stuffed figure of a man sprawled facedown, arms akimbo, as though in terrible pain.

  "Thing was," he continued, choosing his words carefully, "Silvia didn't know that Cleve liked his women submissive, and old Cleve didn't know that his virgin bride had a temper. The first time she stood up to him, he broke her nose. When she went crying to her father, Gomez just shrugged and told her that was the way a lot of Anglos treated their wives."

  Hazel drew a long breath. "So she stayed with this Cleve because she had no place else to go?"

  "Essentially, yes. After her third son was born, the doctor told her not to have any more children because it could kill her. When she told Cleve, he just laughed and said something about that being no big tragedy. One woman was just as good as another, and they all looked alike in the dark, anyway."

  "Men like that should be shot!" Hazel exclaimed with heated vehemence, then started at his sudden chuckle.

  "That's what Silvia thought, so she loaded his shotgun and waited for him in the barn."

  Her hand flew to her throat, drawing Jess's gaze for an instant before he shifted it upward a few inches. "Did she kill him?"

  "Damn near. If the man hadn't been strong as a bull, she would have. As it was, the bastard was in the hospital for a month."

  Although his expression was as carefully controlled as most things had to be in Jess's life, Hazel felt the waves of anger and frustration coming from him.

  Jess was one of Sacramento's busiest criminal attorneys. Not because he was chasing a buck, but because he had trouble saying no.

  "A soft touch in Big Bad Wolf's clothing" was how Ty McClane put it whenever he was set on riling his childhood buddy. Adversaries in the District Attorney's office called him a tough
, bleeding heart, son of a bitch in public, while privately respecting him for his grit and integrity.

  "And you're thinking of taking her case?" she asked.

  "I already did – over two years ago."

  "What happened?"

  Jess picked up a ceramic paperweight bearing the hand print of a child, hefted it as though it were a weapon, then put it down.

  "The jury didn't buy self-defense. Maybe if she'd grabbed the gun on impulse, but…" He shrugged. "The judge gave her four-to-eight in Santa Rita down in Pleasanton. Cleve got a divorce and sole custody of their sons."

  "Too bad her aim was so bad."

  A smile tugged his mouth briefly. "She claimed she closed her eyes right before she pulled the trigger. Didn't want to see the blood."

  Hazel thought about the scarlet stains on the carpeting of the apartment she'd once shared with her husband. The landlord had had the rugs replaced after Ron's death, but Hazel still saw the blood whenever she walked into the bedroom. She'd finally moved. It hadn't helped.

  "How long has she been in prison?" she found herself asking.

  "Nearly two years. Long enough to get pregnant. She's due in a week or so."

  Glancing up, she glimpsed a hard anger in his eyes. "Who's the father?"

  "That's a good question. My money's on one of the guards, but so far, Silvia has refused to name names."

  Frustration iced his already anger-cold eyes, but Hazel sensed both emotions were directed at himself.

  "Maybe she loves the man and doesn't want him to suffer," she suggested in a deliberately mild tone.

  His sudden cynical frown told her what he thought of love. "The message I got from the prison doctor said she's close to an emotional breakdown, which is why I'm here."

  "But, Jess, I don't treat adults. Only children."

  "Which means you know the child welfare system a lot better than I do."

  "Well, yes, but—"

  "Silvia's baby isn't even born yet, and already the by-the-book bureaucrats at Protective Services are making noises about the kid being a ward of the court. I need an expert in infant psychology to help me convince the suits to hold off, at least long enough to find out if Silvia can make parole."