The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (13 page)

For a split second, Marly looked puzzled, as if she didn’t understand the question.  Then, slowly, as she began to understand, the cold disdain replaced the confusion.  “You expect me to keep it a secret?”

“What the hell else would you do with it? 
Write it
?”

“I don’t know.  Isn’t that generally what reporters do when they come across news that—”

“Bullcrap.  This wouldn’t be
news
, even if it’s true.  It’s just...what did you used to call gossip columns, back at the Growl?”  He searched his memory, and came up with it.  “Wouldn’t it just be
tittle-tattle
?”

She shifted the camera on her shoulder.  “The whole Wedding Giveaway promotion is
tittle-tattle
,” she countered.  “The Substitute Groom story, at least, would have the virtue of novelty.  Of human interest.  It would be
real
—something I actually reported, instead of copying it off a Chamber press release.”

“Oh, I see.”  His chest felt suddenly, oddly heavy, as if a stone had been dropped in.  His earlier urge to explain, to defend himself and make her understand, had disappeared.  “A
real
story.  And you need a few of those, don’t you, Marly?  How else are you going to land one of those desirable
real
jobs at a
real
newspaper?”

She flushed, an unflattering, blotchy red, clearly insulted by his implication and his tone. 
Fine
.  He was damned disappointed in her, and though he hadn’t meant to insult, exactly, he had meant to sting her.  He wanted her to wake up and hear herself.

“I need to demonstrate that I’m a
real
reporter, if that’s what you mean.”  She lifted her chin.  “Real reporters don’t sit on stories just because they might prove embarrassing to somebody.”

“They don’t?”  He made a low, scoffing sound.  “Isn’t that exactly what you did back at the Beacon?  You wanted to sit on a story because it would hurt somebody, and you weren’t sure you had all your details right.  And at least that story had a legitimate subject, because you were investigating a public employee.”

She flinched, and he realized he’d scored a point.  She knew exactly what he meant.  Plus, she obviously saw he was right.  But apparently she didn’t plan to admit it out loud.

Still angry, he pressed on, unsatisfied.

“Robin’s salary doesn’t come from city taxes.  Neither does Ibby’s, or mine, for that matter.  We don’t make laws or hold seats of public power.  How, then, do our personal lives become fair game?”

“When she entered the contest, she made herself a public figure.” Marly’s eyes weren’t as steady on his as they had been just moments before.  She wasn’t as sure of this ground.  She was grasping at anything to bolster her argument.

“Besides,” she added sharply, “you can’t tell me the city isn’t sinking a single public dollar into this Giveaway.”

“No, I can’t, because I simply don’t know,” he said.  “But I don’t have to know.  If protecting the public coffer is your justification, then it’s
your
job to know the facts. 
Is
city money financing the Giveaway, or not?”

But she wasn’t sure.  He knew her well enough, even after all these years, to read those eyes.  A tiny line appeared at the inside corner of one dark brow, and she squinted slightly, scanning her brain for any fact that would help.

“That’s what I thought,” he said.

Her cheeks still mottled with angry color, she stared at him in silence.  He stared back, and they stood like that, stalemated, for several hot seconds.

Finally, he looked away, shaking his head.  He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say.  He would have loved a promise that she wouldn’t print any of this, but he knew she wouldn’t offer one.  Her pride had always been prickly, and he’d given it quite a bashing. 

Ironic, wasn’t it?  He’d come here hoping to thaw her out, hoping they could return to their cautious, yet oddly exhilarating, rediscovery of each other.

Instead he’d probably driven her away for good.

Well, he’d have to live with that.  If she couldn’t handle the truth, she wasn’t the woman she used to be, anyhow.  She wasn’t the smart, subtle, gifted girl whose tart common sense and unflinching honesty had unwittingly been such an oasis in Drake’s chaotic young life. 

He took two steps back toward the cabin, but then he turned to her one last time. 

”At least be honest with yourself, okay?  If you do this, don’t pretend it’s about the public’s right to know, or the integrity of the contest, because it’s not.  It isn’t about Robin, or Ibby, or me.  It isn’t about anything or anyone but
you
.”

––––––––

E
ver since the Great Wedding Giveaway had launched back in February—weeks before Marly’s return to Marietta—the Courier had been running contest-related stories every Wednesday and Saturday.  At the beginning, the coverage had featured all angles—the locations involved, local vendors like Risa Grant, the florist, who were donors, even historical look-backs at the 1914 contest that inspired this one.

But now that the semi-finalists had been announced, the Courier had to step up the pace.  To profile all eight couples before the committee met again on April thirtieth to choose the four finalists, the paper would need to feature a wedding couple every single day.

Which meant that Marly was too busy interviewing and researching and taking photos and writing profiles to sit around and brood about Drake.  Over the next few days, a low-level anger simmered inside her, creating a tight sensation in her chest, but she tried not to let it bubble up into her conscious mind.

Whenever it did, her emotions ended up more tightly tangled than ever.  She wasn’t even certain what she was angry about.  It was just barely possible she wasn’t angry at Drake so much as she was angry at herself.

She couldn’t imagine why she’d let herself get drawn into that ridiculous argument.  How could she have been so contrary that she’d hinted she planned to publish an exposé about Robin Armstrong’s two grooms?  Sure, she’d initially been eyeing what a juicy story it would make, and if there’d been any overt cheating or scamming involved she might have pursued it.

But she knew as well as Drake did—
better
than Drake did, damn it—where the lines between public and private were drawn.  The mysterious romantic triangle of Robin, Ibby and Drake fell squarely on the private side.

The truth was, Marly had simply been upset.  It hurt her, more than it logically should have, that he’d been so intimate with another woman so recently—and that he’d treated that woman so badly.  She wanted him to explain himself.  She wanted him to prove he hadn’t been cruel.

Obviously, though, he didn’t feel he owed her any explanations.  And that had been the most upsetting of all.  In her waspish disappointment, she’d found herself in the middle of an argument she didn’t want to have, taking a position she didn’t support.

And then he’d dared to lecture her about journalistic ethics.  Her chest burned even now, three days later, remembering how contemptuous he’d sounded.  What kind of delusional, romantic fool was she?  Had she actually been imagining he cared for her?

“Marly, if that copy is going to make it into tomorrow’s paper, I’ll have to get it in the next ten minutes.”  Her mother didn’t let her voice get shrill, but Marly knew that tone.  Inside, Angelina was fuming.  “The printer’s waiting.”

“Sorry.  I’ll have it to you in five.”

Marly shoved Drake to the back of her mind and concentrated on Darlene Evers and Buckingham Smith, the semi-finalists from Texas
.
  Luckily, this was one of the easier profiles.  She’d conducted the interviews by phone, both bride and groom at the same time, and they’d been colorful and fun.

Best of all, their reason for wanting to marry in Marietta was almost too good to be true.  Apparently Buckingham Smith had been visited by a recurring dream all his life, in which he was standing at the top of a mountain, looking down on a town.  After much research, he’d decided the peak in his dream was Copper Mountain, and the town was Marietta.  Fate was calling him here.

Stuff like that was gold.  The profile was practically writing itself.

She threaded in a few quotes she’d gathered from people who knew them, did one last check for typos, then hit
send
.

“Incoming,” she called across the office. 

“Great.”  Her mother tapped a few keys, then leaned forward with that small line between her brows that meant she was tuning everything else out while she edited.

Marly leaned back in her chair, relieved to have met the deadline, but still emotional and on edge.  Joey, who had just refilled his coffee, stopped beside her desk and propped one hip against the old wood.

“So what’s got you down, chicklet?  I thought you were feeling better.  Haven’t heard you puking in a while, but you still have that hangdog look.”

She frowned, irritated.  She was so easily irritated these days.  “I do not have a hangdog look.”

“Whatever.”  He slurped his coffee, contorting his face when he realized how hot it was.  “You look like hell.  What is it?  Is it loverboy?”

She let her frown deepen into a grimace.  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.  There’s no loverboy.”

Joey chuckled as he drank more coffee.  “What about Drake Everett?  Word is, when you danced with him at the Emerson barn shindig the other night, things got so hot three nearby women ended up pregnant.”

Oh, what
ever
.  No one could possibly have reported that.  She’d been so stiff and unyielding during that dance she’d almost been rude.  Joey was just fishing.  She rolled her eyes and sighed. 

“Baloney,” she said, tilting her head toward her mother’s desk to remind him they weren’t alone.  “I had promised Drake one—”

“
Is that true
?”

Marly turned, surprised by the sound of her mother’s voice.  Ordinarily, once Angelina entered editing mode, a bomb could go off in the newsroom, and she wouldn’t even flinch. 

But she’d clearly heard this.  Her mother’s face was stony, and her hands on the keyboard were dangerously still. 

“Is it true?” she repeated, enunciating each word carefully.

The simmering irritation in Marly’s veins flared up.  Was her mother really still going to try to run her love life? 

“True that I danced with him? Or true that three women got pregnant because of it?”

“Don’t be flippant.”  Her mother’s mouth firmed.  “Surely you’re not getting involved with him again.  Of all the men in Marietta—”

“Angie, I was just teasing the kid.” Joey shot Marly an apologetic look.  “It’s nothing to worry about.  She didn’t do anything that—”

Marly held up her hand.  “No.  Don’t defend me.  What I did or didn’t do isn’t the point.” 

All of a sudden she was flat-out angry, and absolutely not in the mood to be treated like a child.  In about five months, she would be a mother herself. 

“The point is that I am twenty-seven years old.  I don’t have to answer to you about who I dance with, or who I date.  Or anything else, for that matter.”

The tips of her mother’s chiseled cheekbones were pink.  Not a good sign.

“You were representing the Courier that night, Marly.  If you were making a spectacle of yourself, flirting with one of the guests—”

“I wasn’t.  And I’m through discussing this with either of you.”  Marly turned to her monitor, her spine as straight as a lodge pole.  She had work to do.  She needed to double-check some facts about her next couple, Melissa Chen and Ralph Ho from Maine.

For a minute, she dared to hope she might have won this round.  No one spoke for several seconds.  Joey wandered back to his own desk, whistling under his breath, pretending to be nonchalant.

But she should have known better. 

“By the way,” her mother said calmly, as if she’d graciously decided to chalk Marly’s tantrum up to disrupted hormones,  “I’ve heard from Al Faulkner, out in Reno.  He says they’re not hiring right now, but he’s offered to ask around for us.  And Charlotte Jackson in Alabama says she may have a position early next month.  She’ll let us know.”

Us? 
Us
?  Though on some level Marly knew her mother meant well, that particular level wasn’t controlling her emotions right now.  Instead, all she could see was how incredibly patronizing the word ‘us’ sounded, as if job-seeking were a mother-daughter activity at pre-school.

Why should her mother feel the need to beat the bushes trying to flush out employment?  Did she have so little faith in Marly’s ability to handle this on her own?

“Mom, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”  Somehow, Marly kept her voice low and even.  “There’s no need.  I’m actively pursuing leads of my own.”

“I’m sure you are,” her mother agreed blandly.  “But it can never hurt to have a second oar in the water.”

“Yes, it can.” In spite of her efforts, Marly’s voice ticked up a notch.  She fisted her hands in her lap.  “If it makes me look like an incompetent fool, a child whose mommy has to go to bat for her, it most
definitely
hurts.”

Under his breath, Joey mumbled something that might have been
Hoo-boy
. Her mother‘s gracefully arched brows lifted.  She wasn’t simply surprised.  She was shocked.

“I’m not trying to undermine you,” Angelina said in a stiff voice.  “I’m only trying to make sure you don’t end up trapped in Marietta.  I’m merely trying to protect you from the consequences of—”

On a rush of frustration, Marly rose to her feet. 

“God, Mom,
stop
!  I know what you’re doing.  But you can’t protect me.  It doesn’t work that way.  My whole life, you’ve been trying to guard against the curse you think you passed on to me.  You did everything humanly possible to prevent me from ending up like you—unmarried and pregnant and living above the family business with your parents.” 

She shook her head, willing herself not to cry.  Tears would look weak and sad, and she wasn’t sad.  She was furious.

“But it didn’t work, Mom.  Can’t you see that, even now?  Here I am—pregnant and unmarried, and living over the Courier with my mother.”