"Star Moment, honey, don't forget. This is a huge Star Moment for you."
"It's okay, Mom, I get that." And, thanks, I really needed you to make me more of a gibbering nervous wreck than I already was.
"Just let me smooth the back of your dress."
"My dress is fine," Melinda answered. "Go sit in the church."
"And your tiara..."
"Will you please go sit in the church!"
"Ahh, sweetie." Sunny Duncan's eyes misted. "You look just beautiful!"
"Sunny, will you darn well do what your daughter is asking you to do?" Bob Duncan growled. "She's going to pass out from pure terror any second." He grabbed Melinda's trembling arm and glared at his wife, who nodded, smiled and scuttled into the cool dimness of the church on her three-inch peacock blue heels.
Melinda took a deep breath. If this was bridal nerves, then she had a near-fatal case. She hadn't expected to. All those years when she'd dreamed of marrying Jared Starke, had planned on marrying him, down to the very last detail, bridal jitters had never figured in the picture.
Now, she was about to marry Ryan Courcy, a man she'd known for just a few short weeks, and she felt more like she was lined up on a hospital gurney waiting for major surgery. In real life, she'd never been a great success at the big occasions the Star Moments her mother loved.
"Ready?" her father asked.
"Give me another five seconds."
Her sister, Shallis, younger by five years and looking stunning this afternoon in ice blue satin instructed her, "Drop your shoulders, Linnie. Lift your chin."
As this year's reigning Miss Tennessee, Shallis was a lot more comfortable in the spotlight. Melinda had tried to be, during her own less than successful beauty pageant years, but but
"Ryan's waiting for you," Shallis added softly.
"Yes. He is. Okay. Let's do this. Dad?" She held his arm more tightly.
The aisle of the church hadn't seemed so long since Melinda had first learned to walk, twenty-five years ago. As the organ groaned into life, Ryan turned to gaze at her down the length of worn red carpet. He was miles away, and he looked so different today intimidating in his dark suit, his face set and steady. He hadn't yet smiled at her.
Melinda's heart beat faster.
Friends and relatives crammed the church. Dozens of pairs of eyes locked on her face. Sentimental females sniffed into their handkerchiefs. Fidgety males cleared their throats. A little Courcy cousin said loudly, "I wanna go home!"
Yeah, little guy, can I come with you?
How had a flat tire on a lonely, rain-sodden farm road, seven weeks ago, led to this?
Melinda had almost gotten the tire changed successfully by the time Ryan had pulled over to offer his help. She should have told him she was fine and waved him on, out of her life. Instead, one look at those piercing blue eyes, those strong shoulders, those locks of dark hair getting rapidly soaked with rain, and she'd felt as if her own personal prince had ridden up on his gallant white charger to rescue her.
She'd let him change the tire. She'd let him feed her hot coffee from a flask and sour-cream-and-onion potato chips from a packet. She'd found out that he was a professional horse breeder and trainer who hoped to have his own stud farm one day, and had told him that she was a substitute teacher, returning from a teacher's day from Hell, at a tiny country school. She'd even let him put his rain jacket around her shoulders while they'd sat together in the cozy front seat of his SUV.
"You're soaked," he'd said, "in that thin dress."
"I can't take your jacket."
"Take my phone number, too, then you can call me so I can arrange to get the jacket back."
He'd had a slow, measured and thoughtful way of speaking that she'd liked at once, but there was nothing slow or measured in the way he'd courted her. And she'd given him the right encouragement, phoning about the jacket the very next day.
"I want to marry you," he'd said, on their fourth date.
"Ryan !"
"I'm not asking you. Not yet." He'd grinned, and her stomach had dropped like an elevator filled with wild butterflies, around fifty floors. She hadn't known it was possible to fall for a man this fast and this hard, to feel this right and this confident. Almost as confident as he was. "I'm just giving you fair warning of my intentions," he'd said.
Two weeks warning, in fact. Swept off her feet by his quiet certainty, by the way he talked about their future, by his effect on her senses, by the promise of the home and family she'd always wanted, she'd said yes without hesitation....
"I said I wanna go home!" the little Courcy cousin yelled.
A woman whispered at him, pulled him up onto her hip and clattered out of the church through a side door. Rattled by the incident as if she needed another reason to get rattled! Melinda tripped on the floor-length front of her silver-white satin gown. She heard a ripping sound. Her father said, "Whoa, honey!" and the congregation gave a collective gasp.
Ryan frowned and took a step forward. Without turning around, Shallis hissed at Melinda, "It's okay. It's just the tulle. The underskirt. I can tell by the sound of it. Don't catch your toe in the tear."
"I'll try." What made me think I could do this?
Ryan kept on frowning. He didn't take his eyes from her face. Melinda tried to gain some support from the steadiness of his regard, but she couldn't. She was too busy working out how to not catch that toe on what she feared must be a gaping tear.
The church aisle stretched out a further six miles, but she reached Ryan at last. She wanted a word from him, a reassurance, but nothing came. He took her hands, but they were so shaky and damp that he let them go again almost at once, and the frown on his face etched itself deeper into his high forehead. He ran his fingers down her bare arm, but she hardly felt it.
A commotion came from the far end of the aisle at that moment. Fast, confident footsteps. Murmurs and exclamations. And then a voice. "Linnie? Linnie, am I too late?"
A minute ago, the aisle had been twelve miles long. Now it shrank to a few yards. Melinda knew that voice, and when she turned, she knew the rangy silhouette and the handsome face, lit from an angle by rays of sunshine filtering through stained glass and falling on a sleek shock of sun-blond hair.
"Thank heaven I'm not too late," Jared Starke said.
Ignoring Ryan, Shallis, the best man, the minister and the whole congregation, he pulled Melinda into his arms and held her there.
"You can't marry him, Melinda Duncan. I know this is my fault. I'm an idiot. I always thought I had plenty of time, through law school and beyond. But you know it, don't you? You've always known it. You have to marry me!"
A hot wave of confusion flooded Melinda's already overheated body as she stared at Jared, the man who'd just interrupted her wedding.
"Jared... Marry you?" She echoed his words on a husky squeak.
"That's what I said." He smiled, his lips parted slightly.
She remembered that smile. She remembered those lips on hers, searching for her innocent teenage response, seeking to inflame it to the point of no return. He'd succeeded, too.
Over Jared's shoulder, Ryan her fiancι and her groom said nothing. Why didn't he speak? If ever there was a time for one of her mom's favorite Star Moments, this should be it. Ryan should act. Decisively. The way he'd acted the first day they met.
But he didn't. He just watched her, waiting, and she couldn't read his face.
Jared Starke held the focus of the entire congregation as though a fragile flower was cupped in his hand, and he knew it.
"You know this, Melinda," he told her. With his arms still wrapped around her, lazy, loose and oh-so-confident, his golden-brown eyes were just inches from her face. "You know what we always had together. Since high school. I was crazy to take it for granted, to send back the ring you gave me five years ago."
A ring? Ryan thought. His whole body felt frozen in place by the sight of his bride's face. What was she thinking? How did she feel?
Melinda had told him about Jared Starke how they'd dated in high school and college. But she hadn't told him that she'd given Jared a ring, nor that he'd eventually sent it back. She had spoken of Jared as if five years ago was half a lifetime ago, and as if they'd drifted apart and he'd never been truly important.
But now...
"When I heard you were getting married today..." Jared's words trailed off. He swallowed, shook his head.
Melinda's eyes were as wide as a child's. She should be angry, and she shouldn't hesitate. She should sting the guy's cheek with the flat of her hand and order him out of her life.
But she didn't. Instead, she listened, and stayed in his arms. The entire congregation held its breath, waiting for the most scandalous wedding ceremony in Hyattville in a decade. Ryan knew that his cousin Lorene was here. If Melinda Duncan ran off with Jared Starke, leaving her fiancι at the altar, Lorene would turn the story into a gossip's tour de force that she'd retell for years.
It would take courage for Melinda to walk out of her wedding and step into a minefield like that. Courage, or the heart-stopping certainty that she loved Jared after all and that she didn't love Ryan.
"Jared..." Melinda sighed again.
* * *
She looked so beautiful today. Her golden brown hair was piled on her head in gleaming tendrils and coils. Her wide-set gray eyes shone. Her satin dress hid the long, tanned legs Ryan loved but shaped itself closely over her upper body, showing the tuck of her waist and the rounded swell of her breasts.
For the first time in his life, Ryan understood how his father must have felt when his mother had cheated. For the first time, he felt for himself the rip of jealousy and suspicion in his gut, like the turn of a rusty knife, and he didn't like it.
Mom was here today. He'd glimpsed her earlier, although they hadn't yet had a chance to speak. His parents hadn't been under the same roof together in more than eleven years not since Ryan's twenty-first birthday party.
Mom had taken a cab ride out of her twenty-two-year marriage that night. She'd checked into a nearby hotel and only returned to her marital home to collect her things. She lived four hundred miles from Hyattville now and, though Ryan saw her occasionally and spoke to her by phone, he couldn't claim they were close. If Melinda hadn't insisted, he would have gone with what Dad wanted and left Belle Courcy off the invitation list.
"Sorry, buddy." Jared released Melinda at last, grinned crookedly at Ryan and spread his hands.
Melinda took a shaky breath and tried to reorientate the universe, as her former sweetheart turned to the man she was about to marry.
"Ryan, isn't it?" Jared said.
"Ryan Courcy," he replied on a growl. "That's right."
"Nothing personal. No hard feelings. But this woman belongs to me."
Melinda's frozen muscles knotted into action at last. "No! No, Jared, you're wrong. I don't!"
"Linnie "
"Please " she sucked in another jerky lungful of air " leave. Now. I'm here to marry Ryan. You shouldn't have done this."
The golden gleam of light in Jared's eyes grew brighter.
"I flew in from Chicago twenty minutes ago, and had the cab driver scream around every bend to make it here in time," he said. "I would have come from the ends of the earth if I'd had to. What more do I have to do? Should I throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here?"
"N-no. You should just leave. I'm going to marry Ryan."
She reached her hand out to her groom, the way she might have gripped a fence in a hurricane. But who or what was the hurricane here? Was it Jared? Or was it her own past? Her seventeen-year-old certainty that Jared Starke was The One?
She'd been certain of Jared for four years. She'd known Ryan for just seven weeks, and she'd agreed to marry him a month ago.
Yes, but she was twenty-six now, not seventeen. She knew so much more about what she wanted and what she felt. Certainty settled over her, after the terrifying moments of doubt, like some warm, magical blanket. She loved Ryan. She wanted to marry Ryan.
Why hadn't she told Jared so right away?
No, why hadn't she ignored Jared altogether and told Ryan himself? With words in his ear and a whisper of touch against his square jaw, a press of his arm. Why had she stood here for so long?
Because she'd had doubts. No use pretending. She had.
She'd weighed up the four years against the seven weeks. She'd remembered all those months of crying into her pillow over Jared every night, hoping he'd come back to her, hoping for a dramatic Star Moment like the one he'd just delivered. For a crucial few minutes, she'd wondered if marrying Ryan was a mistake.
Jared thought he'd won. Even now, as he backed off and charmed his way into a seat in the front row, he still acted like the man who'd won. Melinda didn't like it one bit. What did he know that she didn't?
Ryan's hand rested in hers, cool and solid and dry. She pivoted the three-quarter turn to face him. Too shaken up to smile, she murmured, "Can we just say our vows? Just do it?"
He nodded slowly, and at last the ceremony began. For Melinda, it passed in a blur, and when they'd exchanged their wedding bands, she felt as if a huge gate had just clanged shut behind her a gate that didn't imprison her, but made her safe.
She was married to Ryan, and that was all she wanted.
"You may kiss the bride," said Reverend Gray.
A thrill ran through her, and as Ryan leaned forward, she smiled up at him at last. But the touch of his lips on hers was stiff and brief, not filled with its usual sweet seduction.
"Ryan?" she whispered, looking up at him. His blue eyes glittered with tangled emotions and his mouth was hard.
"We'll carry it through for today," he muttered. "But tomorrow...Monday at the latest...we should talk to a lawyer."
"A lawyer?"
"About what's required for an annulment or a divorce."
Bubbles danced through the air as Melinda and Ryan came out of the church as newlyweds, hand in hand. Shallis blew a long string of them from the wedding-cake-shaped plastic bottle she held. They gleamed with rainbow colors in the June sunshine before they burst in a spray of tiny droplets.
Shallis laughed, and several cameras clicked, capturing Hyattville's biggest celebrity enjoying her sister's wedding day.
Melinda wasn't sorry to see the focus shift away from herself and her new husband. Even Jared Starke, she saw, had his eyes trained on Shallis's honey-gold hair and huge Miss Tennessee smile. You hardly would have guessed, at this moment, that Jared had tried and failed to derail the wedding just forty minutes earlier.
"Hold her, Ryan. Heads close together," said the photographer they'd hired to capture their day on film. His heavy professional camera clicked.
Ryan did as he was told, and Melinda leaned against his strong body, knowing that she risked falling without his support. Her legs had no strength right now. She felt so much better in his arms, enveloped in his familiar warmth, his unique, musky scent, the aura of rock-solid masculinity that he gave off.
"I don't want an annulment or a divorce, Ryan," she told him. Her voice came out thin and shaky inaudible, she hoped, over the happy noise of the wedding guests.
Ryan didn't reply. He wasn't a flamboyant, emotive speaker like Jared. He used words sparingly, carefully, and she'd always had the confidence that if he said something, he meant it.
Just now, he'd talked about divorce. If he'd meant that... Her stomach lurched and she felt ill. If she lost Ryan because a figure from her past had turned up at the most dramatic possible point...
Mom was wrong about Star Moments. Life wasn't about things like that. Love wasn't. It went so much deeper.
"Hey, you two," the photographer said. "Stop looking as if someone died. You've gotten through the hard part. You can have fun now. Look down at her, Ryan. Melinda, lift your face. Better! That's nice! Can you hold that?"
"You weren't sure," Ryan muttered. "You stood there. It felt like an hour. And you weren't sure. I could see it in your face."
She could tell he was wounded, and that he was angry, and she understood both emotions. During that crucial window of time, with everybody looking on, she'd had doubts. She'd let them show to Ryan, to Jared, to the whole congregation and she somehow knew that Ryan wouldn't want a glib insistence that her doubts had disappeared. When he weighed his own words so carefully, a hasty, effusive speech from her now would only make things worse.
But what else could she do? How could she prove he was wrong?
She'd never seen him angry like this, but she couldn't blame him for it. Only the fact that she'd gone through with the ceremony in the end had saved him from complete humiliation and hurt.
Is that why he thinks I did it? Just to save us both from the scandal?
"Ryan. My wonderful son." An attractive older woman with a strong face and a husky voice like Lauren Bacall's came up to him and touched him on the arm. A cream-and-gold trouser-suit showed a figure that had filled out by just a few pounds since her youth, and her hair was its natural silver-gray.
"Mom," Ryan said. "I didn't get a chance to talk to you before."
"I planned to get in last night, but I got so tired from driving on my own, I had to check into a motel. Melinda, honey, this is such a wonderful gift for me. I wasn't sure I'd ever see Ryan marry." Belle Courcy held Melinda in a hug and kissed her cheek.
Melinda hugged her in return, wondering if the double meaning to her new mother-in-law's words was intended. Belle hadn't known if Ryan would marry? Or she hadn't known if she would be there to see it?
Ryan hadn't talked to her in any detail about his parents' split, or the reasons behind it, but she knew he sided mainly with his dad. After knowing Jack Courcy for just a few weeks, Melinda wasn't yet at ease with her new father-in-law. She sensed a restless bitterness in him, which his son's loyalty and support didn't appear to assuage.
"It's so great to meet you," she told Belle.
"We'll talk later. I know you have to focus on the photos right now."
"No, don't move away, Mrs. Courcy," the photographer said. "Let's have the wedding party all together, and the bride's and groom's parents."
Where was Mom? Oh, with Shallis, tidying her hair. Standing near them, Dad looked tetchy and impatient, the way he always did when Mom fussed over makeup and hair and clothes. Her parents had been married for nearly thirty years, but were they really happy together? Melinda didn't know.
She felt Ryan's grip on her hand tighten, and squeezed him back. For the moment, the tension between them had eased. She laid her head on his shoulder and inhaled the mingled scents of skin and cloth and soap and shaving cream from his tanned neck. Her pulses throbbed and her bones began to melt. This was their wedding day. Did she really have to prove that she'd married him for love?
"Mom," he said to Belle. "The photographer's going to want you and Dad standing together." Melinda heard a note of warning in his voice. "You didn't bring a guest, did you? A man?"
Belle's face stilled. "I came alone, Ryan," she said quietly. "I told you that. I'll have no problem standing with your father. He's the one you need to ask."
Ryan nodded. He let go of Melinda and walked away as if he'd forgotten her, heading toward the edge of the milling group of guests, where his father stood. Even from this distance, Melinda understood the outcome of the short, tense conversation. Divorced for nine years and separated for two years before that, Jack Courcy still wasn't prepared to stand beside the mother of his son at his son's wedding.
Coming back to Melinda, Ryan said low in her ear, "We're going to have to mix up the couples for this. Would Shallis stand with Dad, while Mom partners Tom?"
"Does Tom like older women?" Melinda teased, trying to squeeze some lightness back into the atmosphere, trying to put a smile on Ryan's face. When it didn't work, her heart sank.
"Tom understands the situation," Ryan told her, his jaw jutting square and hard. He'd been close friends with his best man since grade school.
"Maybe I should ask him about it then," she answered. "Because I don't."
Ryan looked at her and his face softened suddenly. "Ah, Linnie," he said, "I know you don't. I'm sorry. That's wrong, isn't it? We've had so much to plan. And we've been so happy planning it. I didn't want to cast a shadow. Their divorce was about as bad as it gets. Dad will never get over it, nor forgive my mom."
"Forgive her?"
"She cheated. Dad's not the easiest man to live with. Maybe she felt that gave her enough of a reason. But she cheated on him for years, flirted with her lovers in plain sight, and when she left, it was to follow a married man."
"At last, we get a chance to talk!" Shallis breathed out a whooshing sigh.
"We've been standing next to each other, on and off, for nearly an hour," Melinda answered, amused.
She was used to her younger sister's dramatics. They helped, while her mind still reeled with concerns she'd never expected to have on her wedding day concerns like Jared Starke showing up at the altar, demanding she run off with him instead of marrying Ryan, and Ryan's revelation, an hour ago, that his mother's infidelity had blown his parents' marriage apart. Just from the way he'd spoken, she could tell how much this event had shaped him.
"We've talked plenty," she added to Shallis.
"You know what I mean. A-l-o-n-e," she spelled out.
The afternoon shadows had begun to stretch out from the trees in Hyattville's prettiest park. The wedding guests would be enjoying cocktail hour at the nearby Grand Regency Hotel. The bridal couple, maid of honor and best man, however, had spent this time caught in the camera lens, against a backdrop of roses in bloom, vistas of trees and the splashing Memorial Fountain.
Now, Tom and Ryan helped the photographer carry his equipment to his vehicle, leaving Melinda and Shallis to trail behind in their long gowns, toward the waiting limo.
"It was so dramatic, Linnie!" Shallis said. "Jared storming in like that."
"He didn't storm. It wasn't dramatic. It was horrible."
"For a minute, I thought you were going to go with him. I could see him sweeping you up in his arms and carrying you off."
"Don't, Shallis."
"Oh my gosh!" Shallis squeaked. "Are you regretting that you didn't do it? You thought about it. I could see it in the way you hesitated and looked at Jared then looked at Ryan. And then you "
"It was the worst mistake of my life. The worst. I'm afraid I'll pay for it, at some hidden level, forever."
"Marrying Ryan? The worst mistake?"
"No! My Lord, no, Shallis! Listening to Jared. Even for a second."
"Linnie, sweet heaven, don't cry!"
"It's worth crying over, isn't it?" Frantically, she scraped at the heavy skirt of her dress, in search of the "something borrowed" lace handkerchief she'd tucked into the "something blue" garter on her thigh. Looking down, she saw the tear in the tulle underskirt from when she'd tripped in the church. Tiny. Inconsequential. "Isn't the worst mistake of my life worth crying about?"
She dabbed at her eyes.
"No, I mean because of your makeup. What mascara did you use? I sincerely hope it's waterproof!"
"Oh, Shallis!" Melinda had to laugh, and she was still laughing and crying, too when they reached the limo. Ryan and Tom were waiting for them.
"I made her cry, Ryan," Shallis announced. "Now I'm handing her back to you."
Ryan stood close and brushed a strand of hair away from Melinda's face, while Tom and Shallis climbed into the back of the limo. "You okay?" he asked softly. "Do I have to yell at your sister?"
"I'm okay."
As long as you're touching me, as long as you're looking at me like this, I'm okay. But I'm not kidding myself that we've gotten through this, yet.
As if he'd read her thoughts, Ryan told her, "This has to be about what you want, Linnie. I love you. You know that. But maybe I rushed us both into this. And I'm not going to live through a marriage where you're never sure you did the right thing. I've seen the anguish my father suffered. I'm not putting myself through that. I'm not waiting day after day for the ax to fall. If you have doubts, I need us to cut out of each other's lives now. This weekend, not later."
"It's not going to be enough, is it, for me just to say it? To say that I don't have doubts, and that I love you?"
"If it was that simple, you wouldn't have given Jared a second glance. You have things to work out, Linnie, about why you reacted the way you did."
"And don't you, too?" She was angry. "I'm here. I chose you. I married you. Shouldn't you trust what that means? Do you honestly think I would have done it if "
"A wedding is a pretty powerful engine when it gets up to full speed. Takes courage to stop it in its tracks."
"You think that's why I went through with it? Because I didn't have the courage to hurt you in front of all those people?"
"Think about it. That's all I'm asking."
"And I am thinking about it. I'm not sure who comes out worse in your scenario. Me, for lack of courage, or you, because you apparently think that I don't think you're strong enough to take public rejection. I don't doubt your strength, Ryan."
They glared at each other, and a rush of need and desire hit both of them at the same time, with the force of a loaded truck.
"Melinda..." Ryan's voice went hoarse. "Hell, when you look at me that way, I can't think straight. I can't even see straight. Who was I kidding that we should have held back on this marriage and waited longer? I want to make love to you so bad. I want to fall asleep in your arms every night and wake up beside you every morning, and I don't want to wait another hour."
"I know. I know."
She reached for him, tear-blinded, and laced her fingers against the back of his neck, pulling him down to her. If Tom and Shallis were getting impatient, it didn't matter. If they were hitting the limo's minibar and watching the satellite TV, all the better.
The first touch of Ryan's lips came with the touch of his hands at her waist. He spread his fingers across the slippery satin then brought them higher, cupping her breasts while his mouth ravished hers.
The wide-set straps of Melinda's dress slipped from her shoulders, dragging her strapless bra lower, and when Ryan opened his eyes to look at his beautiful bride and saw those tender mounds threatening to spill, he brought his mouth down and kissed the crescents of each darkened areola until she gasped and arched and moaned. Blood charged through his body, heaviness filled his groin and his hands gentled and softened, the way they gentled on a high-strung thoroughbred filly. Linnie, his wife, was the most precious being in the world.
With a big wedding to put together in a month, they hadn't had enough opportunities for this. Making love together was spectacular, explosive...and rare. Ryan ached for it as he'd been aching since the day they'd met and he'd first been captivated by the combination of strength and vulnerability that he loved in Linnie. She had looked like a half-drowned animal, but she'd almost finished changing that tire, and he'd wanted to kiss her rain-slicked lips within five minutes of pulling over to offer his help.
Raising his head from her breasts, he found her mouth again. Linnie's mouth, so perfect, so responsive, so warm. But was it fully his? How would he know? Dad had believed that Mom was his for years, and he'd been wrong.
Ah, hell, that didn't count right now. Only Linnie counted. Only the two of them. "If I could make love to you right now, sweetheart..." he whispered, branding his mouth on her lips, her closed eyes, her hair.
"Would it solve anything, Ryan?" She eased away from him, looked into his face. "Isn't that where we made our big mistake? We made love, and we planned our wedding, but there was a whole lot of other stuff we never talked about and never gave ourselves the chance to work out. How much will we have to pay for doing that?"
"I don't know, Linnie."
"How did you get this venue at such short notice?"
Melinda flinched at Jared's voice beside her. She turned and found him leaning on the bar. He must have been watching her circuit the huge, noisy ballroom, at first with Ryan and then alone, as they took care to speak to as many of the two hundred guests as possible before the appetizers arrived. She hadn't noticed him, and she'd never expected him to show his face here.
"There was a cancellation," she answered.
"Oh, so weddings do get cancelled sometimes, huh?" The innocence of the question only made her bristle more.
"Why are you still here?" she demanded.
"I talked to Luisa, at the church. Remember Luisa?"
"Since she's one of my oldest friends, yes!"
"She said her boyfriend couldn't make it, so there was a spare place setting. Seemed a pity for it to go to waste."
"What was today about for you? What was that stunt you pulled during our ceremony all about, Jared Starke?"
"It was about you, of course," Jared said. "About us."
"Give me a break!" She could see Ryan on the far side of the room. His grandmother Courcy had gotten hold of him. She was a wonderful woman, Melinda had heard, but she could talk and talk and talk.
Melinda saw Ryan's glance arrow to his left and find her in seconds. He raised his hand in a tiny wave and shot her a smile, which soon drained into a watchful expression when he saw that she was with Jared.
"It wasn't about us at all," she told her one-time sweetheart angrily. "It was about wanting to win. That's all you care about, isn't it? It took me years to see it and, heaven help me, today for a few minutes I almost forgot, but you like to win, Jared, and if you can't do it by coming out on top in an honest contest, you'll do it by crippling the rest of the field. I'm not going to let you destroy my marriage!"
He didn't get a chance to answer, or even react. An ice blue satin whirlwind descended on him at that moment, squealing and stretching out a pair of graceful arms.
"I don't believe you haven't said hi to me yet, Jared Starke!" Shallis said. "Is it possible you don't even recognize little Shallis Duncan now that she's all grown up?" She snuggled into his arms with a saucy shimmy of her shoulders.
"I'd be pretty slow on the uptake if I didn't recognize the bride's beautiful sister," Jared answered. "Especially when I've seen her in the newspapers with a sash and a crown, calling herself Miss Tennessee."
"Oh, that?" Shallis slapped him playfully on the shoulder and the slap turned into a caress on his neck. "That's not important. Tell me about what you've been doing with your life."
She gazed up into his eyes, practically batting her lashes, and neither she nor Jared seemed to notice when Melinda eased away to go meet Ryan, who was coming toward her.
"We should sit," Ryan said. "The waiters want to serve the bridal table first. Everything okay?"
"It's fine. I don't know why Jared is here."
She did know. She'd just yelled the reason at Jared himself. Telling Ryan that she didn't know wasn't exactly a lie. It was more of a rhetorical thing, like all those old lines of her mother's during Melinda's beauty pageant years:
I don't know why you can't remember to smile.... Practice your walk.... Put in the same effort as the other girls.
Rhetorical or not, it felt like a lie. She flushed, her stomach lurched, and her appetite fled.
"I'm not going to be able to eat a bite," she murmured.
Ryan stopped in his tracks and looked at her. His hand slid down her arm. "You're not okay. You yelled at him. What did he say?" He glanced back at Jared, and Melinda looked, too. Jared and Shallis were still locked in each other's arms, locked in the flirty gaze from each other's eyes.
"Forget it," Melinda said. "Let's just forget it."
Easier said than done. Shallis darted up to the table and consumed three bites of her appetizer then darted off again to Jared, who sat at Luisa's table, toward the back of the room.
Ryan and Melinda held hands and tried to pretend everything was fine, but it wasn't. They already had enough concern with the anticipated source of tension Belle and Jack Courcy's obsessive avoidance of each other.
Could Ryan and I ever get to that point?
Now they had to deal with the bride's sister and her former love flirting as if malefemale relations were going out of style.
When Shallis drifted back for her entrιe, Melinda let fly. The bridal table was empty except for her and Shallis right now, as Ryan had gone to the bar with Tom to bring back more champagne.
"You're flirting with the man who tried to break up my wedding, Shallis?"
"And doing a great job with it, right?" Shallis grinned.
"I really don't think "
Shallis gave her a pitying smile. "Don't you get it, Linnie?" she said softly. "I'm doing it for you. Taking the heat. I saw the way Jared glommed on to you, trying to make Ryan behave badly."
Melinda blinked, and her emotion-clouded vision cleared. "Oh, Shallis, and I thought "
"Hey, beauty queens do have some useful skills, you know, and one of them is being able to flirt with a man when you really wish he was a thousand miles away."
Shallis was smiling, but Melinda caught the edge of bitterness in her tone and saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
"Shallis, I'm so sorry," she whispered. "Do you think I mind about the beauty queen thing? I don't! I love that you're Miss Tennessee. I just didn't want it for myself, that was all, and it took too long for Mom to see it."
"Linnie, truly?"
"Truly, little sister."
"I always thought you considered it trivial or something."
"No! I'm proud of you, okay? Don't ever doubt that!"
They hugged and cried and laughed, then Ryan appeared, with filled champagne glasses. He looked forbidding and ready to be angry. "Making my wife cry again, Shallis?"
"In a good way," she answered. "Right, Linnie?"
"Right."
"I came to tell you, Linnie," Ryan said, "it's time for our dance. Can I tell the band that we're ready?"
"Our dance? Of course." She nodded, nervous again. Even more nervous when Ryan left her alone to go talk to the band.
She felt Shallis tugging on her dress. "Star Moment, Linnie?"
"I hate them! I always have! Mom made me feel that I should want the spotlight, but I just don't!"
"It doesn't have to be for the whole world, you know. It's not a beauty pageant. It can just be for you and Ryan. Look into his eyes and shut out the rest of the universe, because he loves you, and that's what he'll be doing."
"How do you know this stuff? I get so self-conscious in front of people, my whole brain seizes up."
"It's just my area, that's all, the way teaching is yours. Could you dream of a better sister, tonight?" Shallis grinned.
"I could dream of a more modest one!"
"Go dance with your lover."
Melinda couldn't answer; she could only nod. Ryan was already waiting for her, a tall figure in the middle of the empty dance floor.
Ryan hardly heard the swell and roll of the music, couldn't remember more than a couple of the classic love songs he and Melinda had chosen for the band to play in a medley as their bridal waltz. He had Linnie in his arms, and that was all that mattered.
"Oh, Ryan..." She sighed against him as they danced, pillowed her head on his shoulder, reached up to stroke his neck and pulled his head down to kiss his lips.
"Linnie. Sweet Linnie."
"I love you."
"I can't even say it. My heart is bursting."
The tempo of the music shifted and slowed, and he held her more tightly, feeling the press of her breasts against his body, holding her hips through the slippery fabric of her dress.
He could feel how nervous she was. She'd told him she hated moments like this. All eyes upon her, any clumsiness on public display. But they hadn't known each other long enough for him to have experienced her reaction in person, up close, before today. He had nothing to compare it with.
Was all of it nerves and her dislike of the spotlight? Or was some of it about Jared?
Ryan couldn't believe the guy was still hanging around. He'd been tempted to co-opt his best man and each of them grab one of Jared's arms to throw him bodily from the Grand Regency Hotel lobby, into the street.
Why hadn't he? Tom would have backed him up. Alternatively, the hotel had security staff. He could have called on them. Jared was an uninvited guest.
But Ryan hadn't acted, and Jared was still here.
Why?
Oh, he knew. In his heart, he did.
I want to watch Melinda and Jared when they're together.
He wanted to see how they behaved, see if they touched.
Hell, he hated seeing this motivation in himself. It reminded him too much of his dad.
He hadn't become aware of the way his father watched his mother until his late teens, and even then, he hadn't understood it. He hadn't understood until after Mom had left and Dad had told him the truth that he'd watched his wife with other men because he felt compelled to know which were her lovers.
It made sense. But Ryan had wondered, all the same. He still did. Dad had been obsessive, merciless. Ryan would wake in the night to the sound of him interrogating her, it sounded like loud and intimidating and angry.
What had a certain man said to her? Why had they been on the phone for so long? Who was the guy she'd spoken to at the grocery store?
Mom's voice had always been low and placating in reply, and Ryan could never make out the words. He wondered, though. He couldn't imagine that Mom had had an affair with the father of Tom, his own best friend. The knowledge that Mom had been unfaithful had made Dad lose perspective. Some of his accusations, at least, had to have been wrong.
Dad had never been an easy man to live with. This was why Ryan hadn't broken contact with his mother. He found it impossible to believe that the fault was all on Mom's side. Marriages didn't work like that. A couple of times he'd almost asked her about it.
Tell me why you did it.
But he'd held the question back for complicated reasons, which he was only now, at thirty-two, beginning to understand. He hadn't wanted answers from Mom that would have forced him, irrevocably, to take one or other parent's side. And if Mom had slept with the fathers of his friends, he didn't want to know.
"You're miles away, Ryan," Linnie murmured.
"Just thinking about Mom and Dad."
"I know. I was, too, before."
"I feel like I'd do anything in the world to avoid getting to that point with you. How could the two of us ever get to that point? Skirting the edge of the room to make sure we don't cross paths, not even able to look at each other..."
Ryan pressed his forehead against hers. Melinda closed her eyes, then felt his kiss on her mouth. She returned it with a depth of need that frightened her, in the context of Jack and Belle Courcy's antagonism.
"How do we stay on the right road?" Ryan muttered. "I don't think love's enough."
"With honesty?" She looked into his eyes. They seemed clouded still.
"Okay, Linnie, if honesty is all it takes, tell me honestly what was going through your mind while you listened to Jared. What pull did he have on you?"
"The pull of the past," she answered, trying to keep her words as simple and true as possible. "The pull of all the tears I cried over him. I couldn't help thinking about how quickly my tears would have dried, at twenty-one, if I'd known then that Jared would come storming into my wedding to tell me he loved me after all."
"You never told me you'd exchanged rings."
"There are a lot of things we haven't told each other yet."
The band brought its medley down to a quiet rhythm in the background, and the emcee announced the three other couples in the wedding party who would now take the floor. Again, Ryan and Melinda had had to partner the group carefully. Tom with Sunny, Belle with Bob, Shallis with Jack. After just a few minutes, the invitation to dance was extended to everyone, and Grandma Courcy cut in on Melinda quite shamelessly, to claim her turn with Ryan.
"You've done your duty," Mom told their best man at the same time. She patted Tom on the back, then came and hugged Melinda. "Happy, darling?"
Dad stepped forward and twirled Belle beneath his arm at that moment, just as Shallis steered an awkward Jack Courcy in the same direction. Belle and Jack both began to apologize, until they suddenly saw who they'd bumped into, at which point Jack turned on his heel and barged from the dance floor. His head of steel-gray hair hung low between his hunched shoulders.
"Of course I'm happy," Melinda answered Mom. They'd both seen the uncomfortable incident.
I should never have said "of course." It's like "trust me" the more strongly you say it, the less true it sounds.
"Honey, I want to talk to you," Mom said. "Can we slip away for a few minutes?"
"Not too far." Melinda didn't want Ryan unsure of where she was.
They compromised on the telephone alcove near the rest rooms, and Mom didn't waste any time. "I saw what happened at the altar today."
"Everyone did, Mom."
"I saw your face. Honey, whatever you do, don't settle. If you married Ryan for the wrong reasons, it's not too late to do something about it. Better to get a divorce now than to wait until you're meshed together by a house or, worse, kids. I'm telling you this from the heart, because I know. The worst thing you can do is settle for less than the love of your life."
"Sunny?"
"Bob? I didn't see you."
"I've been looking for you to see if " Melinda's father shook his head, as if his original reason for seeking out his wife was totally unimportant now. "What the hell are you telling our daughter?"
He strode forward, electric in his anger. Melinda had never seen him look this way before.
Her Mom turned pale. "I "
"Are you saying that you settled when you married me?" he challenged. "The hell you did!"
He pulled her into his arms and glared down at her. She seemed mute.
"Don't you remember?" he demanded. "Think back, for just a minute. Just think about the way it was for us, think about the way it could still be if you'd let it. Dance this dance with me, and then see if you can still tell me you settled, damn it!"
Mom didn't seem able to take her eyes from Dad's face as they danced together. Watching them, leaning a hand against the same pillar that had hidden Dad's approach from view a few minutes earlier, Melinda was awed.
Her parents really loved each other.
Their love was overgrown by a tangle of day-to-day distractions and petty differences of outlook, the way an old house could be overgrown by creepers and vines. Beneath the disguising growth, however, the structure of their marriage stood as solid as ever, and Dad just wasn't going to let Mom get away with an ill-thought sense of disappointment.
They loved each other. He knew it, and Mom had only temporarily forgotten.
Shallis linked an arm through Melinda's, and watched, too. "Dad can be pretty impressive sometimes," she murmured.
"He sure can."
"You're like him, Linnie. You cut to the heart of things. You don't get distracted by the surface sheen."
"I hope you're right. Mom just told me I shouldn't settle. She's afraid I've settled for Ryan. I'm not sure if she was suggesting she'd settled for Dad, but he overheard her, and he took it that way. Now he's on a mission to prove to her that it isn't true."
"And is it true for you, Linnie?"
"No!" She said the word so forcefully that it stung her throat. "Dear Lord, no, it isn't true, Shallis!" She blinked back tears.
"And does Ryan know that?"
"I've tried to tell him. I've tried to show him. But I don't think he believes it, and I'm not sure what more I can do."
They switched their focus to Ryan. Grandma Courcy had let him go after their dance, and he'd found Melinda across the now crowded dance floor, his gaze arrowing to her unerringly, as it always seemed to do. He smiled.
"He's coming this way. Go meet him," Shallis urged her, but before Melinda could move, she saw Belle claim him not to dance, but to sit at her table and talk.
The chandeliers had dimmed by this time, replaced by whirling disco lights and a mirror ball. Waiters moved unobtrusively through the room, clearing away dishes and glasses. A few of the guests looked as if they'd made too many trips to the bar. Soon it would be time to cut the four-tiered cake that sat on a special table in the corner near the band. And then it would be time for the bridal couple to leave....
"Talk to your mother-in-law," Shallis said. "You and Ryan have spent too much time apart tonight."
But Melinda shook her head. "Their conversation is private. I can see that. And it's serious. I won't interrupt."
"Jared has left. I thought you'd like to know. That'll make things easier on all of us."
"Will it? I'm not sure. Even if he'd never showed up at the reception, he did all the necessary damage at the church."
"I can see that something is wrong between you," Ryan's mother said to him. "I've been so afraid that your father and I would leave you with this kind of legacy."
"Is that what you think is going on here?" Ryan glanced toward his father, who stood with his elbow propped on the bar. Dad had done his duty as father of the groom for a while, but then he'd retreated into himself. He seemed to prefer the company of the stranger who served his beers to that of his relatives and friends.
"It's what I'm afraid of. Trust her, Ryan. Believe what she tells you about what happened today in the church. If she has to live day after day with the knowledge that you don't trust her to the very depth of your heart, it will kill her love long before it kills yours."
Ryan shifted in his seat, disturbed by the intensity of his mother's words. "Is that what happened to you and Dad? Tell me, Mom. Tell me your side of it. I've wanted to know. I've come to doubt that all his suspicions and accusations have been true."
"Why haven't you asked before this?"
"Why haven't you told me if you have a case to put? I guess I haven't asked because I've thought that if you had any defense, you'd have told me without my asking."
"I needed to wait until I thought there was a chance you'd believe me."
"And that's now?"
She gave a shrug. "Love can change things. If you love Melinda in the right way, it will make it easier for you to understand. I never cheated on your father, Ryan."
"You left your marriage, on the night of my twenty-first birthday, to follow Ruthie Miller's father to Florida."
His mother gave a tired smile. "Ruthie Miller was having a great time at your party, and she didn't want to leave, so when her dad came to pick her up, he had coffee and we chatted for a while. He told me he was moving to Florida with his work, going ahead of the family to find a house to rent. When the party was over, your father turned on me, the way he had so many times before."
"Yes, I used to hear..."
Ryan's mother gave another sad smile. "And I used to try so hard to keep your dad's voice down, so that you wouldn't."
"What did he say that night?"
"Oh, the usual, on and on. Was I sleeping with John Miller is what it added up to. And I cracked. I realize in hindsight that the night of your birthday wasn't the best night to choose, but I just couldn't take another night of your father's pathological mistrust. I went to Florida because I'd always wanted to live somewhere warm, and I went to Pensacola. I'm happy there. The Millers moved to Boca Raton."
"In the church today, I felt as if I understood Dad how he must have felt, what it must have been like. It frightened me at the time. Now it frightens me even more."
"Why, Ryan?"
"I don't want to end up like Dad. I care about him, but I can see what he does to himself. And I'm too much like him in some ways."
Ryan's mother stayed silent, watching him, her fading blue eyes deeply troubled, and he realized that she wasn't going to come out with some glib reassurance or wise advice. Solving this was up to him.
He stood, looked for Linnie but couldn't see her. A moment later, she appeared beside him and he wrapped his arms around her, aching with the force of what he felt. He brushed his cheek against her piled up hair and inhaled.
"You smell good," he said. Nothing clever, nothing persuasive, but sometimes maybe the simplest words were the best. She held on to him, nuzzled him like a cat, and they kissed, their lips clinging together in a blast of brief, sweet heat.
"We're supposed to cut the cake," Linnie murmured.
"Forget that," he answered. "We need to talk first. Alone."
"Right now?"
"Right now. I'm not going to ruin another minute of our wedding day with any uncertainty between us."
He took her hand and almost dragged her out of the crowded room, wondering just how many pairs of eyes followed their progress. So what if it was a hundred? Not for a second did he give a flying fluke about what anybody thought, except the woman beside him.
The summer darkness was mild and filled with nighttime sounds resembling soft music. Ryan held Melinda's hand as they walked across the grass to the tiny rose garden beside the hotel. She wanted to hug him closer, but didn't dare to yet. They had to talk first. Her heart beat faster, and she searched her mind for the right words to convince him that her feelings for Jared were truly in the past.
She sensed that he wanted to be convinced of it, that he would listen with the right kind of ear, but still she felt as if she was on trial. How could she plead her case? Rehearsing the words in her head felt terrible, so she began to speak them out loud, deciding to trust that the right phrases would come.
"Ryan, I want to tell you "
"Hey... No." He turned her into his arms and looked down at her, his eyes smoky and hard to read in the blue darkness. He brushed the ball of his thumb across her lower lip, and she took in a hiss of breath, aching to feel his mouth there instead. Need and desire coiled deep inside her. What he did to her was magic, so strong.
"I know what you want to say, but you can't," he told her.
"Ryan, I "
"I mean, you mustn't. I won't let you. It's my turn, now."
"Okay."
"I was so wrong to talk about divorce to threaten you with it, punish you with it, the way I did. I heard my father's voice coming out of my mouth today, and it terrified me. I was wrong about everything I said. I'm not going to ask you for proof or assurances or anything. Mom and I talked...."
"I saw you. I didn't want to interrupt. It was good to see you looking as if you were getting closer to her again."
"I'm not going to tell you what she said right now. There's time for that. Our whole lives, I hope." His arms tightened around her.
"I hope so, too, Ryan." Her voice fogged.
"I trust you, Linnie. That's the only thing I really need to say. I trust the choice you made today. I trust that you wouldn't have made it if you didn't know that the right feelings lay behind it. And I trust your courage. If you'd wanted to go with Jared, you would have had the courage to go." He shook his head. "I I want to say more, but I don't think there is anything more. There's just this. Trust. And love."
"Mm." Melinda couldn't speak.
Her eyes brimmed. She closed her lids and tears ran down her cheeks. Ryan bent and kissed them away, his lips tickling and feathering her lashes, and when his mouth closed on hers, she could taste the salt.
They needed sugar to take the taste away. "Is that cake calling to us?" she murmured.
"Not until I've kissed you for a whole lot longer."
"Yes, please..."
His mouth was so slow and lazy on hers, you'd have thought they had all the time in the world. His tongue painted her lips with flame, and his fingers braided her nerve-endings into a web of electric sensation. Her whole body was a sigh, a ripple, a song. She anchored her hands to his hips, feeling the strength in him, enveloped in its aura.
Her breasts began to tingle and swell, and heat and heaviness pooled deep inside her, making her throb. She rocked her hips against him and felt how hard he was. Soon she'd have his satin skin beneath her hands and they'd heat each other to the breaking point. She could hardly wait.
"Linnie," he said on a ragged breath. His fingers combed her hair, scooped down to her jaw, lifted her face higher so he could kiss her more deeply. "I want
"So do I. So much!"
Under the onslaught of his hands, her hair came tumbling down to her shoulders and they both laughed. "Everyone will know...." she protested.
"Good. How about you loosen my tie and unfasten a button or two on my shirt? I want people to know this about us. That we can't keep our hands away. That we melt together when we touch, and the whole universe shifts when I'm inside you. That we belong to each other."
He buried his face between her breasts, and she arched and shuddered, clung to his shoulders, closed her eyes. "Oh, Ryan..."
"What's the tradition on this cake thing?" he muttered. "Someone else can cut it, right? Your sister? The band?"
She laughed again. "No, Ryan. We have to do it ourselves. Together. With your hand over mine."
"That bit sounds good."
"And you should probably refasten your shirt."
She lifted her hands to her hair, intending to check the damage, but he took them away before they got there. "Leave it," he said. And she did, knowing he was right.
Back in the hotel ballroom, they found Sunny, Shallis and Belle locked in an agitated triangle of consultation. Empires might fall, apparently, if that cake was not cut soon.
Shallis swooped down on Melinda and whispered in her ear, "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's great."
Mom elbowed Miss Tennessee aside. "You are your father's girl. It really hit home to me tonight. And I'm so proud of you! Are you all right, honey?"
"I'm fine. I'm fabulous."
A couple of feet away, Belle hugged her son. "I knew you would get it right with your bride. Be a friend to your dad now that you know the truth. You don't take after him nearly as much as you think. Soften him a little if you can."
"I'll try, Mom."
The band had detected the return of the bridal couple to the ballroom. With all eyes riveted on them from the moment of their entrance, detection hadn't been hard. The musicians struck up some introductory bars of music, which quickly died away. Melinda barely heard the announcement about the cutting of the cake as a waiter wheeled the cake table forward. She took the knife, with its ribbon-tied pearly handle, and Ryan's warm hand curved over hers.
They made the first cut together, releasing the rich scent of chocolate into the air from below the thickly piped white frosting. Melinda scooped the first square morsel in her fingers and lifted it to Ryan's mouth. Their eyes met as he took it between his lips and licked every crumb of chocolate from her fingers.
Then it was his turn. She opened her mouth, and the flash from the photographer's camera caught her stretching forward a little to meet Ryan's symbolic offer of food. The ballroom erupted into applause, and they laughed and kissed.
"Is this what your mom means by a Star Moment?" he whispered.
"No, this is what I mean by a Star Moment," she answered. "Even though everyone's looking on, this is just for us, and we'll have moments like this to share forever."
"Forever," he echoed. "If that's how long you want."
"That's at least how long I want," Melinda answered, as the band began to play once more.
The End