The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (5 page)

For several minutes, there was no sound but small, satisfied murmurs, the rustle of foil being unfolded, and the fizzing pop of opened soda cans.

But by the time she’d finished three ribs and a honey roll, she felt like a new woman.  She turned slightly sideways in her seat, cocking one knee against the console so that she could face Drake. 

She could do this.

“So,” she said.  “Talking privately was actually a very good idea.  I have to tell my mother everything tonight, and I could use a dry run.” 

She folded back the cuffs of his jacket, which was so long it covered the backs of her hands, and then shoved the sleeves up toward her elbows.  It was a subconsciously resolute gesture, like someone preparing to wrestle an alligator, or split logs.  “Where do you want me to start?”

He smiled.  “At the beginning, of course.  But only you know where that is.”

The beginning...  She hesitated.  Could anyone ever pinpoint the exact moment things started to go wrong?

“I’m sure you heard I lost my job.”

He dropped a rib into the paper bag, which he’d folded over at the top to form a trashcan.  “I’ve heard a lot of things.  I suspect most of it’s fiction, though, so I’d rather hear it from you.  Start with the job.  We’ll leave the big stuff for last, after we get warmed up.”

She smiled, appreciating the light-hearted tone.  “Okay.  The job.  Well, I had a pretty good position at the San Francisco Beacon.  Not the big paper in town, obviously, but a decent-sized alternative daily.  I was covering the city council, which was fairly dry, but I loved it, anyhow.  Unfortunately, I ended up butting heads with the city editor.”

“No,” he breathed in mock astonishment.  He grinned at her around a mouthful of honey roll.  “
You
?”

She didn’t take offense.  She knew he was right.  She had always been opinionated, even in high school. 

“
Anyhow
,” she said, “I was working a tip about one of the councilmen misusing public property.  I didn’t think the story was ready.  I hadn’t nailed it down tightly enough for my standards.  But the city editor, Joe, hated this councilman.  It was a personal thing, and Joe was pushing me to run it.”

Drake frowned.  He picked up another rib and scowled at it.  “So who won?”

“Joe did, of course.  He went over my head, and the managing editor allowed him to publish.  The best I could do was force them to leave off my byline.  And then I quit.”

“Good for you.”  He was nodding vigorously, which made her feel stupidly warm inside.  She hadn’t expected him to fully understand the nuances.  He didn’t live and breathe journalism, so he might not recognize how unethical Joe had been.

But Drake was smart—he always had been.  That’s what had made her so mad about the dumb-jock act.

“And did it blow up in Joe’s face, I hope?”  Drake sounded genuinely curious.  “Was he publicly humiliated, maybe even sued for libel, when the story turned out to be inaccurate?”

She shook her head, thinking once again how nice it would be if life worked like that.  “Nope.  It was all true.  The councilman had to resign.  They’ll probably win a desk full of awards with that story.”

Drake groaned, but then he shrugged, smiling wryly.  “Yeah, well, you learned what awards are worth when
I
got one.”

She laughed.  “True.”  And how galling that moment had been!  In her senior year, she’d edited half a dozen impressive pieces from other journalists on the Grizzly Growl, but when they’d entered the high school regional competitions, only Drake had taken home a trophy.

Looking back on it later, she’d understood why.  Drake was the only one of them who possessed a natural writing style.  The only one who had a unique voice.  The rest of them had been too stilted, too self-important, too determined to be Woodward and Bernstein.

“So...”  Drake poked at the broccoli, but finally went for another honey roll instead.  “The guy you were going to marry...was he Joe?”

She pulled her head back, startled.  “
No
!  Good grief, no.  Joe is an unethical sleaze ball.  Give me a
little
credit.”

He smiled.  He’d finished his ribs now and was licking his fingers without shame.  “Okay.  So...”

This part was harder to tell, of course, as he’d predicted.  The newspaper fiasco had been painful, but she wasn’t ashamed of her role in it.  If anything, she was proud—and she was confident she’d be able to land another job soon.  Lots of news organizations still cared about integrity, even in this cutthroat era of dwindling audience and circulation.

But the mess with Evan...

That was far, far more humiliating.  And its repercussions would be permanent.

“His name was Evan Babich.  He was a psychiatrist.  He was a very nice man.  Ethical, generous, kind.”  She chose her words carefully, determined to be fair to him.  “We met about a year ago, at a city council meeting.  He was speaking on behalf of a mental health bill.”

She could tell by Drake’s expressionless face that he had his doubts about the saintly Mr. Babich. 

“
And
?”

“And...we were going to get married this Saturday.”  She made sure her tone remained even.  “In fact, I think Evan still
is
getting married this Saturday.  It’s just that he’s got a substitute bride.”

Drake looked almost comically shocked.  He froze with his index finger near his lips, where it had been heading to be licked clean.  “What the hell is a substitute bride?”

“She’s the one who will walk the aisle with Evan, instead of me.  We’d already spent a fortune on the venue, the food, the flowers...”  She shrugged.  “I didn’t see any point in refusing to let him use them, just because he wasn’t going to marry
me
.”

Drake shook his head.  “I’m feeling dense here.  If he’s not marrying you, who
is
he marrying?  Surely no man can find a substitute bride in forty-eight hours.”

“He did.”  Suddenly, the tale she had to tell didn’t seem quite as humiliating or tragic as it had yesterday.  It was actually kind of funny, and as she delayed the punch line, she was enjoying Drake’s confused disbelief. 

“
And
?  He leaned forward, clearly frustrated that she was dragging it out. “This so-called substitute bride is....”

“She’s the girl in the cake.”  She grinned at his face, as he stumbled from one bewilderment to the next.  “You know.  The one his friends hired to pop out, scantily clad, and do naughty things to him at his bachelor party.”

Drake obviously hadn’t seen that coming.  As he tried to process the information, his jaw dropped almost slack, and his eyebrows were straight lines over his narrowed eyes. 

“Get
out
.” His tone was incredulous and laced with laughter.  “No
way
.”

“Yes, way,” she said, as if they were still in high school.  She leaned back against the passenger door, barely able to prevent herself from laughing, too.  On some saner lever, she knew she shouldn’t be making light of this.  She knew that, tomorrow...or even tonight, when she had to tell her mother everything...she wouldn’t feel the slightest urge to smile.

But right here, right now, it was just too sublimely ludicrous, wasn’t it?  It seemed like something she’d read in a book, or something that had happened to a friend—certainly not to her.

She wondered whether there’d been any alcohol in that barbecue sauce.  Or was this just Drake’s special talent—helping people see the silly side of things?

“It’s not quite as tacky as it sounds, though,” she assured him with a smile.  “When I met Evan he’d just broken up with Gloria.  Apparently she was the love of his life, and I was the rebound relationship.  His friends were concerned when we set a wedding date, because they knew he still loved her.  So they engineered another meeting.”

“Oh, my God.”  Drake groaned.  “He’s going to marry the cake girl.”

“Cake girl.”  She twirled her paper napkin around one finger, musing.  “
I was jilted for cake girl
.  It sounds like the teaser on the front of a sob sister magazine, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds like a crime, if you ask me.”  Drake was still smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes.  “It sounds like you met a selfish bastard who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself.”

A selfish bastard...that is exactly what she’d called Evan, that night...the night he broke the news to her.  But had she been fair?  He’d looked shattered.  He’d cried.  He’d offered money.  He’d begged for her forgiveness. 

Poor man.

“No,” she said.  “He’s a good guy, really.  He was right not to marry me out of some grim sense of obligation.  It’s embarrassing to be jilted, but would it have been any easier to wake up five, ten years into an unhappy marriage and discover my husband had been in love with someone else the whole time?”

“Damn.”  Drake exhaled harshly, as if he were furious with that rhetorical Evan, who’d steal ten years of Marly’s life, then asked for a divorce.  “I guess not.  But still.  And then to recycle the venue and the flowers?  What a double-barreled jerk.”

Before she could disagree again, the cab of the truck filled with white light.  The sudden radiance made a swirl across the windshield and roof, then swung away, leaving them in shadow again.

It had been the headlights of another truck.  They no longer had the park to themselves.

Half a dozen laughing teenagers spilled noisily out of the new truck’s doors. They dragged out a cooler from which they began pulling cans of soda and passing them around.  Then, as if responding to some unheard signal, the kids divided into pairs, girl-boy, girl-boy, girl-boy.  They linked hands, draped possessive, muscular arms over slim shoulders, tilted heads together, and slipped off toward the river and the darkness. 

“Should we try to stop them?”  Drake’s eyes watched the last shadow disappear around the bend.  “I don’t think I saw any beer in that cooler, but...”

Marly knew what he was thinking.  Everyone who had grown up in Marietta in the past two decades knew about Neve, the beautiful girl who, almost twenty years ago, had drowned in that river on a night much like this. 

“I don’t see why we should.  They seem like good kids.  They’re happy, and clearly sober.  And, after all...we can’t stop the world from turning, can we?”

Drake smiled.  “No.”

Marly was surprised by the surge of tenderness she felt toward the anonymous young people, those confident children who took their youth and health and freedom so for granted. 

Who knew what risks might be taken out there tonight?  The river had undoubtedly seen it all.  Along its banks, hearts had been broken.  Sexual thresholds had been crossed.  Innocence had been lost...and, maybe, sometimes, happiness had been found.

But, though the path they’d travel to adulthood seemed hard, it didn’t seem wrong.  At least for tonight, Marly felt satisfied with the natural order of things. 

You were young.  You were foolish.  You made mistakes.  You learned better.  You regrouped and then you found a better way.  That’s what she would have to do, now, too. 

For some reason this lighthearted interlude with Drake Everett had helped her feel ready to do it.

She ran her palm across the armrest, feeling the subtly cracked roughness of old leather.  She glanced over at Drake, a deliciously evil thought occurring to her.

“Is this the same truck you drove in high school?”

He nodded, patting the steering wheel with ironic affection.  “Yeah.  She won’t win any beauty contests, but she’s holding up fine.  Seems dumb to spend all that money for a new one.”

Marly raised her eyebrows.  She’d always thought of him as the type who surrounded himself with boy toys.  But then, she’d always thought of him as having the perfect home and family, too. 

She craned her neck to cast a glance toward the rear.  “And is that the infamous flatbed of bliss?”

He stared at her a minute, then threw back his head and let loose a ripple of baritone laughter.  “Who told you that?”

“Nobody.  But I was a reporter, remember?  I heard things.  And let me tell you, the girls’ bathroom at a high school is quite an education.”

“
Horrors
.”  He shook his head, pretending to cringe from the image she’d conjured up.  “And the ‘flatbed of bliss’ thing...is that your nickname, or theirs?”

“Theirs, of course.  I can’t remember which girl actually started it.  No, wait!  I do!  Remember Angie Hughes?  Short, curvy, transferred from Bozeman senior year?” 

To her surprise, he looked blank.  She searched her mind, then smiled.  “Played the piccolo?”

“Ah.
Angie
. ” He exhaled in exaggerated delight, as if overcome by agreeable memories.  Then he grinned, his dimples notching his cheeks.  “No.  Sorry.  Honestly doesn’t ring a bell.  Maybe she was making the whole thing up.”

Marly rolled her eyes.  “Right.  And maybe I’m Napoleon.”

He chuckled, but he didn’t answer because suddenly the truck blazed with light again, as two more cars pulled into the parking area. 

“Interlopers.”  With an annoyed grumble, Drake shifted on the seat, and began stuffing the last napkins and debris into the paper bag. 

She bussed her side of the cab, too.  They could hear voices, this time adults, and she knew their stolen hour had come to an end.

He got out, walked over to the large iron trash bin.  As he headed back, Marly heard him call a hello to one of the newcomers, clearly someone he knew well.  She peered through the window, but only Drake stood under the light pole, so she couldn’t identify the other man.

Besides...the sight of Drake, his blond hair bathed in lamplight, his body throwing prismed shadows that intersected in long, beautifully shaped shadows...

Looking at him, it was difficult to notice anyone else existed.

He didn’t dawdle, just said a few polite words and then climbed back into the truck.  Shooting her a quick smile, he leaned over to turn the ignition key.  Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” she said. 

He cocked his head.  “For what?”

“For making me laugh.  For helping me clear my brain.  It clarified things, talking it over with you.  I think I’ll do much better with my mother, for having practiced here first.”