Biting the Bride by Clare Willis

mouth as if to prove that there was something at the restaurant he was enjoying.
    “I’m just not very hungry tonight, that’s all. It must be the jet lag.”
    He leaned toward Sunni. “But that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Isabel tells me that she’s known you since you were both girls. Fourteen, did you say, my dear?” He directed the last question to Isabel and she nodded.
    “Yup,” Sunni replied, “we met in high school.”
    “BFF’s,” Isabel said.
    “What is this term?” Richard asked.
    “Best Friends Forever. ”
    “I see. How charming.” He turned back to Sunni. “High school, you say? I thought you met in a psychiatric institute.”
    Sunni’s spoon dropped into her bowl of red pumpkin soup, scattering the fennel, bacon, and apple balanced on its creamy surface. She stared at Isabel, aghast. This was one of their most closely guarded secrets, a pact held for sixteen years. How could she have told Richard in the five minutes they’d been waiting for her? Isabel returned her inquisitive stare with a blank smile, as if she didn’t know anything was amiss.
    “I’m surprised you told him that, Isabel,” Sunni said pointedly.
    “Told him what?” Isabel sipped her wine.
    What was her game? “About us being at Ashwood together. ”
    Isabel seemed confused. “I didn’t tell him that.” She turned to Richard. “I didn’t tell you that, did I?”
    “How else would I have known?” He waved a hand in dismissal. “But please forgive me, I didn’t realize this was a tender subject. Let’s speak of other things, shall we?” Richard leaned toward Sunni. “I’ve met the estimable Dennis LaForge already. But I’m curious about your parents, Sunni. They must be most unusual people to have created such an interesting specimen as yourself.”
    For most people this was a benign, even boring, question. For Sunni it was fraught with difficulties. “The LaForges are the closest thing to parents I’ve had.”
    “You don’t know who your biological parents were?”
    Now he was getting a little pushy. “My mother died when I was eight. I never knew my father. ”
    Richard tut-tutted in sympathy. “My condolences. I am no stranger to loss myself. Death, it seems, is always waiting in the wings where I’m concerned.” His sad smile encompassed Isabel. “And you, my dear, lost your dear mother not so very long ago.” He raised his glass in the air. “I propose a toast: To all those we have loved and lost, and to those we have found again. ”
    Sunni’s glass was already clinking against the others when the strangeness of his toast impressed itself upon her. Whom had he found again?
    She was about to ask Richard what he meant when her attention was diverted by the maître d’ passing their table, leading a diner who appeared to be alone. Sunni’s spoon would have fallen into her soup again if she’d been holding it, because the person being led was Jacob Eddington.
    He, like Sunni, was dressed a trifle too casually for the restaurant, but he looked comfortable and his clothes suited him. His leather jacket was rugged and just scuffed enough to look lived-in. Underneath it he wore a black turtleneck sweater, his dark curls spilling over the collar in back.
    Sunni held her breath while her heart pounded painfully against her rib cage. She had no idea what to do. And then the most surprising thing happened.
    “Richard Lazarus, is that you?” Jacob said, stopping in front of their table. The maître d’ waited, a patient half smile on his lips, the giant menu balanced in the crook of his arm.
    Sunni’s head swiveled from Jacob to Richard and back again. Even though her mind advised against it, some more primal part of her was busy taking stock of the two men, comparing their relative attributes. They were both far more than conventionally handsome. Jacob was taller and more slender, while Richard was broader in the chest and shoulders, but both had stunning physiques. There was