The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (11 page)

But tonight...

He’d misread this moment badly.  Marly’s profound chill, from the moment he walked into Emerson’s barn, hadn’t been merely annoyance with what she saw as superficial flirting.  This was real distance.  This was ice. 

This was a woman who was no longer interested

What the devil had happened? 

“Marly,” he said urgently.  The song was almost over.  “Is something wrong?  Have I done something wrong?”

She didn’t answer at first, staring over his shoulder as if she were trying to make something out in the middle distance. 

“I have no idea,” she said, finally.  She looked at him, her chocolate-brown eyes expressionless.  “The truth is, I don’t really know anything about you, do I?”

He frowned.  “That’s absurd.”

“Is it?”

The band played the final notes, then fell silent, accepting applause.  Instantly, a crackling sound sounded from the speakers, followed by a hollow thump as someone tested the microphone. 

He glanced at the stage.  Jane Weiss stood there, holding up a sheet of paper, waving it high over her head.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen...the moment we’ve all been waiting for!”

A murmur of excitement rippled through the room.  All around them, couples pulled apart and turned to face the stage.

Marly pulled away, too.  Her features were utterly impassive as she watched Jane wave the sheet, teasing the crowd into eager anticipation. 

Finally, Jane began to call out the list of semi-finalists, one lucky couple at a time.  But Drake was barely listening.  He was replaying the past forty-eight hours in his mind, hour by hour, sifting through his actions like a prospector sifting river silt for gold.  Somewhere in there, the answer lay buried.  Something he’d said, or something he’d done. 

Or...something he had
not
done, maybe.  Passive sins—little lapses and insensitivities—were often worse than active ones.

He shifted his shoulders, frustrated.  He could analyze his actions—they were finite and dissectible.  But once he opened the Pandora ’s Box of
non-actions
...that universe was limitless.  He could study it forever, and still never hit on the one thing he had forgotten to do.

Jane leaned toward the microphone and called out another pair of names.  “McKenna Douglas and Larry Joplin.”

A roar of excitement nearly lifted the crowd off its feet, finally dragging Drake’s attention back to reality.  He watched as the smiling couple climbed onto the stage and joined their co-semi-finalists. 

McKenna Douglas.  Well, the Chamber of Commerce was certainly predictable, wasn’t it?  She was already the queen of every Marietta heart.  Even Drake would like to see good luck find its way to McKenna.

He glanced at Marly, to see whether she had any reaction to the names she’d heard so far.  But her profile remained expressionless.  She didn’t clap, and she didn’t cheer, but she didn’t recoil or frown, either. 

She presented as the perfect journalist, an impartial spectator.  She was jotting notes on a small pad she must have pulled from a pocket.  The only thing she seemed to care about was spelling all the names right.

But then something strange happened.  Jane Weiss finished congratulating McKenna and Larry, and returned to the microphone, clearing her throat to make the next announcement.

Drake glanced once again at Marly.  This time, though, she’d angled her face away from the stage, and she was staring directly back at him.  Her gaze was penetrating, and it didn’t waver for a single second.  She didn’t even seem to blink.

He frowned, about to challenge her to explain that look.  But then Jane began to speak.

“Robin Armstrong and Ibby Coole!”

His gaze swiveled abruptly to the stage—and then darted back to Marly, a sequence that he realized instantly would look like exactly what it was...shock and discomfort.

Marly hadn’t taken her eyes from his face.  Now, though, he did see a flicker of something behind that implacable gaze.  Something he couldn’t quite define, though any fool could tell it wasn’t anything good.

Nothing quite as passionate as anger, nothing as strong as disgust.

If he’d been forced to name it, he might have said it looked like disappointment.  She was disappointed in him.

She knew, then.  She knew about him and Robin.  He didn’t have a clue how she knew—but she did.

“Marly,” he began.  Then he heard Robin’s joyous squeal, accidentally picked up by the microphone as she accepted Jane’s congratulatory hug. 

He turned instinctively toward the sound.  Robin was bouncing in place, grabbing Ibby’s arm.  Poor Ibby looked slack-jawed, shell-shocked.  So Robin hadn’t told him she was going to enter their names.

“Marly,” Drake said again, turning back one last time, his voice low and urgent.  “I can explain.”

But Marly was already gone.

––––––––

B
entley Larkspur, the retired fisherman known as Fly, lived in a small, rustic cabin just a few yards beyond the wooded eastern boundary of Drake Everett’s ranch. 

As Marly drove to their interview the next afternoon, she was glad she’d stayed up late after the barn dance, doing research on the old man.  Otherwise, she might have been startled to find herself passing so close to the Three Horses' gates, with its lovely art nouveau logo of a trio of horse heads, manes streaming out behind.

But luckily she was prepared.  Her digging had unearthed the fact that Fly had bought two acres from old man Everett twenty years ago.  Fly had built his cabin by hand and lived there ever since.

Several cabins like this dotted the edges of Three Horses.  Apparently Butch Everett’s primary method of balancing his checkbook had always been to carve up his ranch like a rump roast and serve it to anyone who put cash on the line. 

Funny, she thought as she drove past the elaborate iron gates that opened onto that long green drive.  She hadn’t sensed any money problems, back when she and Drake were in high school.  He’d presented himself like a cocky rich boy, and she’d accepted him at his word.  In fact, she’d thoroughly resented him for having everything so easy.

But she wasn’t going to dwell on Drake today.  Or ever.

She parked in front of the cabin.  As she got out, carefully slinging the Courier’s Nikon strap over her shoulder, the front door opened.

“Marly, come on in!”  Fly beamed, gesturing eagerly.  “I’ve got strong coffee and some sinfully good doughnuts to aid you through the ordeal of interviewing a blabbermouth like me.”

She made a sound of demurral.  She didn’t want to be rude, but she so rarely could eat anything these days...

He chuckled, then patted her shoulder, winking.  “Naw, don’t worry—I bought the kind with no calories.  I know how particular pretty young women are.”

She shook her head, deflecting the compliment, but there wasn’t really anything offensive about his manner.  His tone was too jocular, his hand on her shoulder too gentle and inoffensive.

She’d try to eat one doughnut, rather than disappoint him.  “I don’t count calories,” she said honestly.  “Life’s too short.”

“Oh, yeah.  My kind of gal.”  He laughed, then led the way into the cabin. 

The minute she stepped inside, she couldn’t help smiling.  It was perhaps the most soothing room she’d ever seen—and it wasn’t just the sugary perfume of the doughnuts.  She spotted them immediately, piled in a pyramid on a platter on the coffee table.  Chocolate, sprinkles, strawberry, powdered sugar... 
Wow
.  Somewhere in Marietta was a bakery whose shelves were empty.

“Welcome to my sanctuary,” Fly said.  “It’s small, but it works for me.”

It worked for her, too.  He didn’t own much, but his few possessions were lovely, each the best of its kind. 

And, in the corner, the masterpiece:  a baby grand piano.

Without warning, Fly plopped down on the bench and let his fingers skim lightly over the keys.  The cabin’s peaked, exposed-beam ceiling lent an echoing fullness to the trilling notes, as they might have sounded in a church.

He played only a few seconds and finished with a flourish.  Then, grinning sheepishly, he stood. 

“Sorry.  Sometimes a feeling comes over me, and I just have to play it out.  That was the sound the river makes on a July afternoon.  Do you know that sound?”

Oh...yes.  She knew it.  She had pulled out her notepad, but her pen hovered over the paper, never touching it.  The music...it had gone right into her, and she’d felt momentarily helpless, like a fish he’d caught, tangled in an iridescent scrap of memory. 

When she was six, her grandfather had taken her fishing on the Marietta.  Just the one time, because he’d died of a sudden heart attack a few weeks later.  But that day the sun had been so bright the beautiful river hadn’t even seemed to be liquid.  Instead, it had looked like a spill of silver glitter.  Like Fly’s music.

The afternoon had been so inconsequential, really.  They hadn’t caught any fish, and they hadn’t even talked much, because she had fallen asleep in the crook of her grandfather’s arm, drugged by heat and contentment.

And yet...it was one of the happiest memories of her entire childhood.

“Of course, I don’t fish anymore,” he went on.  He tapped his left temple.  “Brain tumor...I’m sure Drake told you.  I’m likely to get dizzy and fall down at any moment, which isn’t fun anywhere, but a serious problem in four feet of running water.”

“Yes.”  Drake had told her, that day at the diner.  And she’d researched Fly’s illness thoroughly.  Looking at this vibrant man with his twinkling eyes and his musical fingers, she found it difficult to believe he wasn’t expected to live much more than a year or so. 

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “That must be a great loss.”

He waved a hand.  “Not really.  If I had to live twenty years without fishing, that might be hard.  But
one
year?  I’ve got more than enough other passions to fill it.” 

He grabbed a doughnut in each hand, then settled himself in one of the armchairs.  “But no more of that.  No one wants to read about death.  I’d much rather tell you about my life.”

She asked if she could turn on her recorder, and he agreed without hesitation.  And then, for the next hour or so, they talked, and ate doughnuts, and laughed, and became friends.

Occasionally, he’d stride over to the piano and play something to illustrate a point—an idea or a feeling that words couldn’t quite capture.

Eventually, she kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her on the sofa.  He was smart, humble, witty and weird, and she was utterly enchanted.  The coffee went cold.  The pyramid of doughnuts toppled and fell into crumbs and ruins.  The tape ran out.

And then, somehow, suddenly, she realized that for the past several minutes—or longer—she’d been talking more than she’d been listening.  First, he’d wanted to know about her job at the Beacon and how she’d lost it.  Then about her cancelled wedding.  Then about her mother, the Courier...even her high school newspaper career.

Lulled by the easy camaraderie, she’d told him. 
Good grief
.  What kind of reporter lost control of her own interview? 

She straightened, wiping her hands, which had powdered sugar in every pore.  She tried to reconstruct their conversation.  How long ago, exactly, had she dropped the reins?

“So.  You and Drake.”  Fly sounded drowsy.  He still held half a Bavarian

cream doughnut, and he licked absently at the goo now and then, to keep it from dripping, but they’d both long since run out of room for actual eating. 

“You and Drake,” he repeated.  “Just for the record, I approve.”

She swung her feet back onto the floor.  “Approve of what?”

“Of you and Drake.  He’s a good kid.  You’re a good kid.” He smiled.  “As Drake’s surrogate father, I approve.”

She shook her head, perhaps more energetically than was necessary.  “We’re not...not...” 

What exactly did Fly think they were?  She didn’t want to deny something she hadn’t been accused of.  “We’re not dating, if that’s what you mean.”

He let his head fall to one side, a spark of curiosity waking up his brown eyes.  “No?”

“No.” 

“I see.”  He didn’t smile, exactly, but she had the awkward sensation he found her denial amusing.  “But you will be, soon?”

“No.”

He knit his bushy white eyebrows together.  “Why not?  You’re not still mad at him about that thing, are you?  That thing he did in high school?  Because that would be incredibly unfair.  High school sins should
always
be forgiven.  We’re not in our right minds at the time.”

She smiled dryly.  “Of course I’m not mad at him.  Not about that.  That’s ancient history.”

“And for Drake,” Fly continued, as if he hadn’t heard—or hadn’t believed—her denial, “those years were especially grim.  His father was financially reckless, and a damned dangerous man.  His mother almost died, and they nearly lost the ranch.” 

She didn’t respond immediately, and Fly sighed.  “You probably didn’t know any of that, did you?  He was very good at hiding it.”

She smiled again.  “Good?  He should have won an Oscar.  He was the god of school, the hunk, the baseball star who fended off lovesick girls the whole day long.”

Fly chuckled.  “Or
didn’t
fend them off, depending on the day.  I met a few of those girls.”  He cocked his head at her.  “Not in a long time, though.  Not in a very long time.”

She found that surprising, but she didn’t let it show.  “And he did all that without breaking a sweat.  No one could have suspected he had problems at home, least of all me.  Drake and I moved in completely different worlds.”

“Not
completely
,” Fly corrected serenely.  “He knocked on your world’s door now and then, didn’t he?  I remember when he told me he’d be writing for the Growl.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  I knew then there was a girl.  A girl who mattered.”

She frowned.  This was nonsense.  Even when Drake had invaded her uncool corner of Marietta High, he’d been infuriatingly self-possessed.  He’d projected the air of a prince who had gone slumming.