Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (39 page)

Bouquet clutched in her hand, Fayrene walked down the rose-petal-strewn garden path in the backyard of her daughter’s home on Galveston Island. Accompanied by the traditional Wagner’s wedding march and escorted by Nick’s father, Vincent, Fayrene wore a simple pale blue dress and the happiest smile on her face. When she got to the makeshift altar, she stopped and turned to wait for her husband and daughter to come down the cobblestone walkway behind her.

The backyard was packed with friends and family. Tish was recording it all on video. Jillian and Rachael were bridesmaids. Lucia and Trudie sat in the front row, beaming like the conniving matchmakers they were. Chalk up another one for the whammy.

The wedding march ended and the band struck up the Cars’ tune “Shake It Up.”

Jim Bob was dressed in a Texas tuxedo—tuxedo top, blue jeans on the bottom, and shiny new cowboy boots. Honey would have had a hissy fit over such lax wedding attire. Fayrene, however, thought he looked adorable.

Delaney wore an off-white gown and the wish-fulfilling consignment-store wedding veil that had foretold this very day. She looked to the altar where Nick stood to the right of her mother, patiently waiting for her. He looked stunningly handsome in his own Texas tuxedo. She’d never seen a more glorious sight.

Her father shifted his weight. “You sure you want to do this, princess?”

“Positive. How about you?”

Jim Bob looked to his wife. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

“Me either. Let’s go then.” She didn’t even wait for her father to take the lead. Delaney was already hurrying down the aisle, pulling him along with her. She couldn’t wait to marry Nick. Couldn’t wait to start the next chapter of their lifelong romance.

When they got to the altar, her father put her hand in Nick’s, then he stepped over to his bride and looped his arm through hers. The minister stepped forward to renew the vows between her parents.

“You look so beautiful,” Nick whispered. “I’ll never forget this day for as long as I live.”

Their eyes met and Delaney’s heart soared. She didn’t hear the minister’s words to her parents, didn’t smell the scent of the sea on the air, didn’t see the crowd surrounding them. She only had ears and nose and eyes for the man standing beside her.

He was gazing at her with eyes so bright she thought she might stop breathing. This, then, was nirvana. Happiness enveloped her so completely she lost awareness of everything but him.

In that moment, true courage was born in her. She was not afraid of anything. Not with Nick.

For most of her life, she’d lived in the illusion of the perfect world, shielding herself from pain and the uncertainty of taking risks. But through knowing Nick, she’d learned to say “yes” to what she wanted and “no” to what she didn’t.

She’d come full circle and now she was back where she’s started, but totally changed. She was a fully realized person now. She could see clearly all the ways in which she’d held herself back, let her mother run her life. And she could see it in her friends too. Tish, who was afraid to admit she loved her ex-husband. Jillian, who was terrified to love altogether. Rachael, who fell in love too easily. She wanted desperately to help them all.

Her heart swelled with the exquisiteness of everything she’d learned, with the sweetness of her journey. And as the minister joined her and Nick together, Delaney knew what she must do to help her friends.

The band played “Shake It Up” again as they went back up the aisle accompanied by applause. Tish had taken up a crouching position at the end of the back of the last row of folding chairs. She started to stand up as Delaney and Nick walked up, but ended up bumping her head on the corner of the gift table.

“Son of a . . .” Tish started to swear, realized she was recording, and clamped her lips closed.

“Wait.” Delaney placed a restraining arm on Nick’s hand. “There’s something I need to do.”

He stopped, waited patiently. He would always be there for her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. “Do what you have to do.”

Delaney reached up, took the veil from her head, walked over, and handed it to Tish.

“What’s this?” Tish asked.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Delaney said, gazing happily at her new husband. “Because you’re going to get your soul’s desire.”

“Huh?”

Delaney left her friend staring with puzzlement at the wedding veil and went back to Nick. He took her hands, kissed her tenderly, and then just before family and friends descended upon them, Delaney caught sight of someone standing at the far corner of the backyard.

Claire Kelley.

Her eyes met Delaney’s,

Claire nodded at Tish, winked, and then she was gone.

And in that whisper of a second, Delaney realized the truth of the universe. The magic of the wedding veil had been inside her all along. Faith—in herself, in love—was what had activated it.

With that, she took Nick’s hand and walked into her brand-new life.

About the Author

Lori Wilde
is the bestselling author of more than thirty books. A former RITA finalist, Lori’s books have been recognized by the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Holt Medallion, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice, and numerous other honors. She lives in Weatherford, Texas, with her husband and a wide assortment of pets. You may write to Lori at P.O. Box 31, Weatherford, TX 76086, or e-mail her via her homepage at www.loriwilde.com.

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Wedding Veil Wishes series.

Available in mass market in 2008

A
ffluence attracts affluence.

Tish Gallagher repeated her mother’s favorite mantra to herself as she wriggled into a fifteen-hundred-dollar gray tweed Chanel suit. Her potential client was a banker and quite conservative.

After a quick peek into her closet, she added a lavender silk blouse to the ensemble. The color complimented her deep auburn hair. She removed four earrings from the multiple piercings in her ears, leaving only a single pair of simple gold studs. She clipped a strand of pearls around her neck and then donned four-inch, open-toed, lavender and gray Christian Louboutin stilettos. Because, hey, an artistic girl’s just gotta wear
something
whimsical.

Although it was late September the weather in Houston was still in the low nineties and dastardly humid. But Tish knew La Maison Vert, the upscale French restaurant where she was meeting Addison James and her daughter, Felicity, kept their dining room chilled like fine champagne. Hence the long-sleeved tweed jacket. This job was very important. She couldn’t afford to shiver throughout the interview.

As she studied herself in the full-length mirror mounted on the inside door of her closet, Tish spied the price tag dangling from her sleeve. “Uh-oh, that won’t do.”

Since her divorce, she’d lived in a one-bedroom garage apartment behind a lavish manor house in the old money section of River Oaks. The apartment had once served as maid quarters and it’s 1950’s décor with black and white tiled floors and foam green appliances held a certain kind of retro charm. Not to mention the six hundred dollar a month rent was a salve to her strained budget. The elegant neighborhood was quiet. The only draw back was her bedroom had to double as her office. Consequently, everything was always in disarray. Cameras hanging from hooks on the wall, a bank of editing monitors vying for space on the bedroom furniture, papers and files stacked on the floor.

A search for the scotch tape amidst the disorganized, overflowing room finally turned up the dispenser lurking beneath a tote bag on her computer desk. After peeling off a strip, she carefully taped the price tag up inside the sleeve of her suit jacket so she could return it to Nordstrom’s for a refund on her credit card once the meeting was over.

She took another spin in front of the mirror. Yes. She exuded money, polish and sophistication. Never mind that deep inside she still felt poor, tarnished and from the wrong side of town. “Please, please, let me get this job.”

Her car payment was two months overdue and she’d been eating Ramen noodles every meal for the past two weeks. She was hoping to procure a down payment from Addison so she could zip it to the bank before the check she’d written for the stilettos ending up costing her thirty bucks in overdraft protection.

For five years now she’d been struggling to get her fledging business off the ground. She was a damned good videographer and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to catch a break. She wasn’t one to give up on her dreams, but at some point didn’t prudence step in? When did common sense shout that your dreams were going to destroy you and you better let go of them before you lost everything that was important to you?

Like Shane.

Tish winced and bit down on her bottom lip. The love of her life. The man she’d foolishly allowed to get away. But she wasn’t going to think about him. Not today, dammit.

Sometimes, in spite of her best attempts to look on the bright side of life, it felt as if everything was slipping, spreading, festooning headlong into a disaster she could neither name, nor predict. Her throat tightened and she shook her head against the dark, creeping thoughts.

No, no. She wasn’t the sort to dwell on unhappy things. Onward and upward. That was her motto. She was just about to shut her closet door when she caught sight of the wedding veil in her peripheral vision.

The three-hundred-year-old veil was carefully folded and draped over a wooden coat hanger. Her best friend in the whole world, Delaney Cartwright, gave Tish the veil for good luck after her wedding last December.

Tish remembered the day they’d found the veil in a tiny consignment shop. Delaney had immediately fallen under the spell of it, but Tish had been skeptical. Then the mysterious shopkeeper, Claire Kelley, had told them a fantastical tale about the veil that Tish did not believe. Still, it had been a compelling fable and she recalled it with clarity. For some reason, the story had stuck with her.

Once upon a time, according to the legend, in long ago Ireland, there lived a beautiful young witch named Morag who possessed a great talent for tatting lace. People came from far and wide to buy the lovely wedding veils she created, but there were other women in the community who were envious of Morag’s beauty and talent.

These women made up a lie and told the magistrate that Morag was casting spells on the men of the village. The magistrate arrested Morag, but fell madly in love with her. Convinced that she must have cast a spell upon him as well, he moved to have her tried for practicing witchcraft.

If found guilty, she would be burned at the stake.

But in the end, the magistrate could not resist the power of true love. On the eve before Morag was to stand trial, he kidnapped her from the jail in the dead of night and spirited her away to America, giving up everything for her love.

To prove that she had not cast a spell over him, Morag promised never to use magic again. As her final act of witchcraft, she made one last wedding veil, investing it with the power to grant the deepest wish of the wearer’s soul.

She wore the veil on her own wedding day, wishing for true and lasting love. Morag and the magistrate were blessed with many children and much happiness. They lived to be a ripe old age and died in each other’s arms.

Claire Kelley had gone on to claim that whoever wished upon the veil would get their heart’s deepest desire.

Delaney had believed. She’d wished on the veil to get out of her marriage to her childhood sweetheart Evan Van Zandt-and ended up finding her true love in Nick Vinetti.

Tish was truly happy for Delaney, but magical wedding veil or not, she wasn’t sinking all her hopes into happily-ever-after. She’d thought she’d found true love with Shane and look what had happened. The old familiar misery rose up in her. The misery she’d struggled for two long years to exorcise.

She fingered the veil, wrestled with the idea of making a wish. It seemed silly.
But what would it hurt? Even if you don’t believe?

Good point. Tish slipped the veil from the hanger. The lace felt strangely warm to the touch.

Tentatively, she settled it on her head and examined herself in the mirror. The design was constructed of tiny roses grouped to form a larger pattern of butterflies. The veil was so white it was almost phosphorescent. Her scalp tingled. Her pulse quickened. There was something undeniably magnetic about the veil, even to a die-hard cynic.

“I wish,” Tish said out loud. “I wish, I wish, I wish?. . . ”

Her voice tapered off. Oddly, the veil seemed to shimmer until it looked like butterfly wings were fluttering all around her. Eerie.

She swallowed hard. Goosebumps danced across her forearms. “I wish to get out of debt. I wish I didn’t have to struggle over money. Oh hell, I’m just going to come out and say it. I wish for my career to skyrocket into the stratosphere and I’ll become rich beyond my wildest dreams.”

Instant heat swamped her body. The tingling at her scalp intensified. Her lungs felt at once both breathless and overly oxygenated. She almost ripped off the veil, but something held her back. She stared into the mirror. Stared and stared and stared.