The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (12 page)

“It wasn’t like that,” she assured the old man.  “He wrote his columns strictly for giggles, sometimes dashing them off in math class, or in the dugout during practice.” 

“I see.  And that was a problem because....”  Fly let the sentence drift off and hang in the air between them.

She considered the implied criticism carefully.  And then, shaking her head, she had to admit she’d never forced herself to analyze her resentment. 

“Okay.  You’re right.  The real problem was...his dashed-off columns were twice as good as anything the rest of us could produce, for all our dreams of bylines at the New York Times.”

Surely Fly could see how that had hurt.  Drake Everett had had so many talents, where she’d had only the one.  When he’d bested her on her own turf, without even trying, he’d made her feel ridiculous.  He’d made her feel small. 

At the same time, he had also made her feel... stirred up.  Alive.  Confused.  Hungry for things she would probably never have. 

The combination had been unendurable.  She’d had to either fall in love with him, or hate him passionately.  In the end, hatred had seemed a heck of a lot safer.

“And you’re sure it’s not those old sins standing between you now?”  Fly had straightened in his chair, and his direct gaze was kind, but knowing.  “He wants to be with you.  You sure you’re not nursing a very old, very pointless grudge?”

“I’m sure,” she answered with conviction.  She should never have let that old barrier of hatred fall.  She’d been a fool to let Drake sweet-talk his way back into her life, even by a few inches. 

She shouldn’t ever have believed he was different, or that she was.  The truth was, she didn’t understand him any better today than she had nine years ago. 

“I don’t need another selfish heartbreaker in my life,” she said, deciding to be brutally honest.  Somehow this eccentric old man had wormed truths out of her that no one had ever heard, so there wasn’t much point in trying to be guarded now.

“And that’s what Drake is.  He may not mean to, but he hurts people.  For instance, I don’t know exactly what he did to Robin Armstrong, but I’m darned sure he hurt her.  She may be silly, and chirpy, and she’s obviously spoiled.  But I like her.”

“I like her, too,” Fly said equably.  “So does Drake.  But it’s Ibby who
loves
her.”

“Yes.  But does Robin love Ibby?”

Even if Marly had never seen the original contest tape, she would have known the answer was no.  Robin hadn’t been able to hide the fact that she wasn’t in love with her fiancé.  “I’d rather be married to a man who really loves me,” Robin had said with a transparent wistfulness, “than one who doesn’t, no matter how—”

How had she intended to end that sentence?  No matter how much Robin wanted that other man?  No matter how sexy, attractive, charming he was? 

No matter how much Robin had
loved
him?

Fly didn’t answer right away.  Marly let her crisp voice fill the silence.

“Anyone can see that Ibby is only Robin’s
substitute
groom.  Robin will probably climb into her wedding bed still wishing she could find Drake there.  So that means Ibby gets hurt, too.”  She shrugged.  “Like I said.  I don’t need another heartbreaker.”

Fly tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair.  Marly had a suspicion he wanted to get up and play something on the piano, something that would show her what was wrong with her logic. 

“The case as you lay it out is damning, I have to agree.”  He raised his eyebrows.  “But what if you have even one or two of the facts laid out in the wrong spots?  Have you
asked
Drake what’s going on?”

“Of course not,” she said.  Even if any doubts had remained in her mind—and none had—Drake had laid them to rest last night, when he’d turned his shocked face toward the stage and watched Robin hugging her fiancé.

He wasn’t happy to see his old girlfriend clinging to his ranch manager.  The situation was that simple, and that ugly.  He wouldn’t marry the woman, but he resented anyone else marrying her, instead.

“Why?” Fly sounded genuinely curious.  “Surely asking Drake is the simplest way to get at the truth.”

She stood, brushing her slacks to be sure they weren’t covered in powdered sugar.  She couldn’t believe how far off track she’d let this interview get.  It was time to leave. 

“Because there’s nothing to ask.  His love life is none of my business.  There’s nothing between us.  Nothing offered, nothing implied.”

Fly stood, too, but more reluctantly.  “I don’t believe that, Marly.  And I don’t think you do, either.  You’re a reporter.  Asking questions is what you do.  So do it.”

He twisted his wrist to check his watch.  “In fact, do you hear that blown baffle sputtering our way?  That’s Drake’s old rattletrap.  I’ve been warning him for weeks that his muffler was going to go, but did he listen?”

She swung her gaze to the window.  She couldn’t see the Ford, but she could definitely hear it.

“He’s coming right
now
?”

“Yep.  He said three o’clock, and he doesn’t stand people up...not these days.  Not even old codgers like me.”  He grinned.  “So go on, Lois Lane.  Tell the boy what’s bugging you, and see what he has to say for himself.”

He really should get the muffler fixed, Drake thought as he rattled and clanged his way down Fly’s mulched driveway.  He’d been warned, as his old friend would undoubtedly remind him.

But if he left the truck with Pete, his mechanic, he’d have to get the timing belt changed, too.  And new tires.  And then a paint job.  Pretty soon, he’d have spent a fortune.

Not going to happen
.  Even as a teenager, Drake hadn’t been like the other guys, babying his wheels and squandering every cent on bells and whistles.  He’d been too busy trying to keep his father from reducing Three Horses to rubble and preventing his mom from sinking into a depression so deep she’d never climb out.

And, of course, it had been damned time-consuming, maintaining his Mr. Big Shot façade with his friends. 

He wasn’t sure now why he’d thought the masquerade was worth the effort.  Somehow, back then, he hadn’t felt he had a choice.

Result?  Ninety percent of the time, he’d been one hundred percent dog-tired.  The first full night’s sleep he’d had in years was the night after his father died.  And now that he finally had peace of mind, a decent bottom line and a few hours to call his own, he darn sure wasn’t going to spend them tinkering with his truck.

Up till last night, he’d hoped he might spend some of those free hours with Marly, finding out how much remained of the sparks that had flown between them nine years ago.

But her polar freeze at the barn dance last night had put a serious kink in those plans. In fact, it might well have strangled them dead.

Good thing she hadn’t heard him blurt out that he could explain everything.  Because, on sober reflection, he’d realized the truth was quite the reverse.  He wasn’t in a position to explain
anything
.

He killed the engine and stared at Fly’s cabin, feeling sour and befuddled.  One of the most basic problems was that he wasn’t even sure exactly what had happened.  She’d been warming toward him, over the past few days.  The awkwardness of the lost nine years had begun to fade.  The connection they hadn’t been brave enough to admit, as teens—the attraction they hadn’t been mature enough to handle—had still been waiting there, like an underground reservoir of untapped oil. 

Then something happened, and she’d closed off.  Just slammed shut. 

Her antagonism was related to Robin, that much was clear.  But what exactly was it? Had she unearthed hard facts, or did she just have scary-good intuition?

And was he ready to demand an explanation?

He’d been debating that with himself all night.  Looked as if decision time had arrived.  Her rental car was parked near the front door, so she was still here, though her interview had been scheduled to end at two-thirty. 

He wasn’t terribly surprised.  Visits with Fly tended to overflow any time frame you tried to contain them in.  At some point—probably when Fly decided to release you from his spell—you simply blinked and realized you had lost track of the minutes.

But whether or not Drake was ready to see Marly, he couldn’t back out now.  They’d undoubtedly heard him coming a mile away. 

He smiled wryly as he hopped out of the cab and pocketed his keys.  Maybe he should get the muffler fixed, after all.  Stealth mode might be useful, now and then.

Before he had both feet on the front stoop, the door opened, and Marly and Fly appeared in the opening.  Drake still had a half-smile on his lips, thinking how unlikely it was that the Flatbed of Bliss would ever again achieve stealth mode.

The instant Marly saw that smile, her face hardened.

“Hello, Drake,” she said flatly.  “Sorry.  Our interview ran long, but I was just leaving.”

Behind her, Fly was making odd head movements and drawing his eyebrows together weirdly, as if he was trying to turn them into fingers that could point at what he wanted Drake to notice.

The sight was so comical Drake had to will himself not to chuckle.  “Not a problem,” he said.  “I’m glad I caught you.  I was hoping we might have a chance to talk.  About last night.”

Okay...apparently he
had
decided what he was going to do.  He was going to press her for an explanation.  It might be awkward, but no way he could let her walk away in this cold simmer, leaving him as much in the dark as ever.

She made a pretense of checking her watch.  “Sorry.  As I say, we ran late, so I’m already behind for the day.”

Come on, Marly
, he thought. 
It’s Sunday
.  How tightly packed could her schedule be? 

“I won’t keep you long,” he assured her cheerily.  He smiled at Fly.  “See you in a minute, okay?”

The old man nodded, and his eyebrows finally stopped struggling to speak.  “Sure thing, sure thing,” he said.  He leaned in to give Marly a goodbye hug, which she accepted with only a shade of stiffness.  “You drive carefully, kiddo.  And don’t forget—make me sound marvelous!”

“Marvelous?  She’s a reporter, Fly, not a magician.”  Drake winked at the old man, but he didn’t have time to say more, because Marly was already moving—and moving fast.  He took off after her, his longer legs closing the distance without much trouble.

As soon as she reached her car, she turned abruptly.  He had to stop on a dime.  He reached out and touched her shoulder to keep from skidding into her.

“I really don’t have even a spare minute,” she said, putting one hand against the hood and palming her keys in the other.  “And frankly I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”

“I think we do.”  He kept his voice tranquil, though hers had a decided edge.  He decided to go straight to the point, keenly aware that she might fling the door open and drive away any minute. 

“Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?  I mean...what the heck happened last night?  That glare you gave me when they announced Robin Armstrong as a semi-finalist....I’m lucky I didn’t turn to stone on the spot.”

She was impaling him with a fairly fierce glare right now, actually.  Her face was sweet, her features more rounded than sharp, so scary looks didn’t come naturally to her.  But she did well enough.

She opened her mouth to answer, then shut it.  She did that twice.  She untwisted a kink in her camera strap, then stared off toward the box elder trees as she drummed her fingertips on the hood in a metallic tattoo of frustration. 

Finally, she turned back to him.  “Okay.  You want me to tell you what happened?  I’ll tell you.  Robin Armstrong entered that contest twice.  Once, as Ibby Coole’s bride-to-be.  And once as yours.”

How did she know that
?  He almost said those words out loud, stopping himself just in time.  But he hadn’t controlled his face fast enough.  She began to nod grimly.

“So.  That’s one question answered.  You’re not surprised, which means you already knew.”

Drake propped his foot against her car’s bumper, partly to buy time.  This, of course, was why he’d been trying to persuade himself not to push her.  He’d understood that, if she confronted him with something like this, he wouldn’t be free to explain.

So instead he parried.  “And what do you think that means?  Do you think she cheated, somehow?  Do you think she’s trying to scam the contest?”

“Probably not,” she replied, fingering her keys thoughtfully.  “Although I suppose it’s possible.  More likely, I’d think, she’s just trying to survive having been jilted at the eleventh hour.  I suspect she’s making the best of a bad situation.” 

She lifted one side of her mouth in a joyless smile.  “I probably don’t have to spell out why I wouldn’t be a fan of the guy who jilted her.  Especially at the moment.”

Damn it
.  Drake took a deep breath, tamping down the pressure building inside him.  He wanted to explode into self-defense, detailing exactly what had happened. 

“Did Robin say that?  That I jilted her?”

Marly shook her head.  “I haven’t asked her.”

“Then why do you believe such a thing?”

“Because I’ve seen the video.”  She paused for effect.  “The
wrong
video.  The one Robin must have submitted with her original application.  The one in which she says she’s going to marry you.”

A chill went through him.  He’d seen that video, too.  But he kept his questions in the hypothetical, neither denying nor acknowledging anything.

“How could you have gotten hold of such a video?  Surely, if Robin retracted her first application, it should have been destroyed.”

“Operator error, I guess.  Unless some enemy at the Chamber is deliberately trying to sabotage Robin, it was probably an old-fashioned clerical booboo.  Someone mislabeled a file, or accidentally attached the old video to the email.  Easy enough to do, with that many candidates, that many files.” 

She took a breath.  “Still...I suspect that, when Jane Weiss discovers what happened, someone’s head will roll.”

“What?”  He narrowed his eyes.  “How would Jane hear about it?”