The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (18 page)

She loved all that part of him even more now, because she understood how many demons he’d fought along the way.  The laughter wasn’t cheap, or slick, or lazy.  It was a gritty, heroic choice.  A determination to do more than merely survive.  To thrive, to hold bitterness at bay.  To keep his heart supple, green, and giving, against all odds.

But she also had registered the fact that he’d mentioned marriage again.  Just in jest this time, perhaps...

Would he keep bringing it up?  A joke here, a question there, until, by sheer repetition the plan began to seem inevitable, the question asked and answered, the issue discussed and decided. 

She had to nip that in the bud.  She had to protect herself—and him, too.  She’d stumbled into one doomed engagement because she hadn’t been aggressive enough about acknowledging her fears.  She couldn’t let it happen again.

“Drake,” she said in a sober tone.  “About the marriage thing...”

This time, he didn’t make a joke.  He just held her in the nook of his arm and waited.

“It really is way too soon to even joke about it, don’t you think?” She wished she could think of some deft, diplomatic way to explain why she couldn’t possibly marry him.  Not now, anyhow...and maybe not ever.

The baby...the baby changed everything.

“Last night—last night the sex was wonderful...beyond wonderful...but sex is only one part of a marriage.  And all the other parts—we don’t know anything about those.  In every other way, we are nearly strangers.”

“Are we?”  He let his chin rest softly on the crown of her head.  “You might be surprised how many details I remember about you, Miss Marlborough Melanie Akers.”

She jerked up straight.  “Who told you my full name?  No one at school knew that. 
No one
.”

“I knew it,” he said simply.  And then he smiled.  “Smart-asses like me got a lot of detention.  And we served detention in the room where they kept the records.  I looked you up, and it really chapped me, I can tell you, to discover you’d been on the honor roll every single term of your life.”

She rolled her eyes.  “That’s the usual consolation prize for not having a social life.”

“Maybe.”  He sighed.  “In hindsight, I have to confess I went through what might be called a kind of creepy stalker-ish phase about you.  One time, I found your term paper on Armenian independence lying on Mr. Riser’s desk, and I jacked it.  I shoved it down my pants so I could take it home and read it.” 

She laughed out loud.  “Wow.  That
is
creepy.  Even Mr. Riser couldn’t bring himself to read that snoozer!”

“Yeah.  Not your most scintillating moment.  I was off you for three whole days after I read that one.  But then I saw you at the bowling alley, and when you bent down to throw the ball...”  He wriggled his eyebrows.  “Let’s just say there are certain rear ends that more than compensate for other problems.  Even Armenia.”

“
Creeper
,” she said, laughing in spite of herself.

“Egghead,” he countered easily.  “Okay, now it’s your turn.  What do you remember about me?”

She shut her eyes, thinking of the dozens and dozens of little details...

But she could list them all, for hours on end, and what difference would that really make?  She wished it could be as easy as he was trying to make it sound.  She wished they could simply make love in every room of his house, then exchange a few silly childhood stories...and voila!  Love, and marriage, and happily ever after.

But her story would never be that simple

So instead of answering his question, she posed the one that was haunting her.

“Have you really thought about what it would mean,” she said quietly, “to have a wife who is carrying another man’s baby?”

“Of course.”  He let his hands drift down and come to rest over her belly, which was still flat enough to make the baby seem, sometimes, like a dream.  “From the first night, when you told me you were pregnant, I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

“And, the problem is, when I think about it, I don’t use those words...
another man’s baby
.  I think
Marly’s baby
.  And, starting last night, once or twice, I’ve even dared to think
our baby
.”

“But we can’t just wish Evan away,” she said. “Right now, he insists he doesn’t want to interfere, and obviously Gloria wants no part of us, but as long as Evan lives he’ll be the biological father.  He’ll have rights.  He could swoop in at any time and complicate our lives.”

“That’s true.”  Drake nodded somberly.  “And you know what else could happen?  The stock market could fall, and we could lose the ranch.  The Courier could close.  I could get arrested for stalking my own wife. My horse could sit down at the dining room table and demand beer and pot roast.”

“Drake, be serious.”

“I
am
being serious,” he said.  “The universe is filled with things that might happen.  I can’t live every day in fear of them.  If Evan came back and wanted to be a part of the baby’s life, we’d deal with it.  He’s a civilized man, right?  I mean, he eats with a fork and uses indoor plumbing, right?”

She laughed.  “Right.”

“Then we’d deal with it.  If you said you’d marry me, Marly, I think I could face anything life had in store.”

She turned her face into him, almost too moved to speak. 

“I...I just can’t,” she said, half sick from the effort it took to resist him.  “Not yet.  Maybe not ever.  I don’t know what kind of life I can piece together, now that...”  She put her hand over her stomach, as if she should shield the baby from hearing itself discussed this way.  As a problem.  As an impediment to happiness.

The one thing she had no doubts about was that none of this was the baby’s fault.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m trying to be sensible.  The truth is, it’s...it’s just all happening too fast for me.”

He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. 

“Okay,” he said evenly.  He stroked her hair, his palm gentle.  “I’m not going to pressure you.  If you don’t think we know each other well enough, I won’t mention it again, until you tell me you’re ready.  I can wait as long as you need me to wait.”

She nodded, grateful.  Of course, she wondered whether she was making a terrible mistake.  People got tired of waiting...other women would be more cooperative....

But she would not make a decision this big out of fear.  If he was going to leave her for any reason, better to lose a lover than a husband.

They sat together without speaking for several minutes.  Slowly, her doubts and fears began to spread out, grow thin, and float away, like fog under a warm sun.

His easy, even breathing felt so safe.

After a while, she lifted her head and smiled at him.  “Hey.  I just want to be sure.  You’ll ask me again, won’t you?  Later?”

“I’ll ask you again,” he said huskily.  “And again and again.  And again.”

She let her head drop back down to his shoulder.  “Good.”

His chest moved slightly.  He was silently chuckling. 

“But hey, as long as we’re on the subject, you can always ask me, you know.  Some night, when you can’t sleep, feel free to wake me up and ask me if I’d like to marry you.”  He tickled her ear.  “I promise to make it worth your while.”   “It’s a deal,” she murmured.  She could see that happening.  Maybe.  Someday.

She stared up at the hospital windows.  Behind one of them Fly was recovering.  And just down the street, in the Courier offices, her mother was probably telling Joey that Marly was going to stay.

She was going to stay.  Which meant that, someday, Mary would show her own child the historic front pages, framed and displayed on the Courier’s antique walls.

Maybe...maybe Drake would be with them.  As her husband.  As the baby’s father.

Maybe. 
S
omeday
.

She shut her eyes.  It was good, she thought, to believe in someday again.

––––––––

T
wo months later

Robin Armstrong and I. B. Coole were married on a glorious Saturday afternoon in June.  The groom wore a borrowed tuxedo and a smile of stunned bliss.  The bride wore Chantilly lace and freshwater pearls. 

The bridesmaids wore dresses of lemon-lime green.

Marly caught the bouquet, not because she had any fielding skills...though Drake had tried valiantly to teach her.  She caught it because Robin tossed it directly into her waiting hands.

“Well, the idiot missed his chance to marry me,” Robin said with her typical half-tongue-in-cheek, utterly egocentric take on the world.  “So he’s clearly going to need a substitute bride.  Why not you?”

She eyed Marly’s baby bump, which seemed to grow bigger every day.  She grinned cheerfully.  “Hey, no problem, mama.  There are some awesome maternity wedding gowns available these days.”

Drake Everett’s pregnant, substitute bride
.  The idea made Marly laugh....but it also made her think.

Marly’s gaze wandered the crowded reception hall, until she found Drake.  He was dancing with her mother.  The two of them had been arguing all afternoon about whether Cal Ripkin Everett as the baby’s name was a joke or a stroke of genius. 

Drake and Angelina argued all the time, which Angelina adored, because she said it meant he respected her.  Which he did.

In a few short weeks, Angelina would leave to start an investigative reporting job in Chicago, and Marly would take over the running of the Courier.  Marly hadn’t ever seen her mother so excited.  Angelina looked twenty years younger, and ten times happier.

That was Drake’s doing, too. 

“You’re the one who always had wanderlust, Angie,” he’d observed over dinner one night.  “I never could see why you didn’t chat up one of those impressive contacts for yourself, instead of wasting them all on Marly.”

Just like that, the seed was planted.  Suddenly, Angelina also couldn’t see why she didn’t go hunt down a really great job. 

With Marly so lovingly protected, already living at Three Horses, and growing so proficient at handling Courier business, there was nothing tying Angelina to Marietta anymore.

And so, twenty-eight years after her first dream was scrapped, Angelina Akers was finally going to embark on a new adventure.

So if Marly was ever going to be a substitute bride, wasn’t this, maybe, the time to do it? Was she brave enough yet to take that step?

Sometimes it seemed that everything she’d seen, every word she’d written, every person she’d met since she came home to Marietta had been connected to weddings. 

Ibby, Evan, Drake, Marly, Robin, Gloria...that was the main cast of characters, of course.  But think of all the semi-finalists she’d profiled, peeking into their lives and their hearts for one brief moment. 

Love was such a gamble.

But, somehow, she’d ended up in the arms of the one man in the world who made her feel safe and thrillingly alive at the same time.

That night, when they got home to Three Horses, Drake headed for his shower, eager to get out of what he called his “penguin suit.”

With a slow deliberation, Marly took her lacy maternity party dress off and hung it in the closet.  She peeled off the pretty blue bra and panties, too. 

Then she took Robin’s green, blue and yellow-flowered bouquet and pulled out a few starry blossoms.  She tucked them into her hair.

On her way to the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing room mirror.  She was utterly naked, except for her lipstick and her messy crown of flowers.  Her baby belly swelled high and round beneath her breasts, and her eyes gleamed with a mixture of excitement and fear.  She looked like a forest creature, wild, earthy, untamed.  Some pagan symbol of spring, and fertility and growing things.

She smiled at her reflection.  It pleased her to think of her mission that way.

Drake was singing as he showered.  He sang all the time these days.  As he rode the pastures, as he fixed the fence.  As he helped her with the dishes, and sometimes, even as he climbed into bed and took her into his arms.

He didn’t hear the shower door open, she knew, because the singing didn’t stop.  Sluices of sudsy water ran down his long, muscular legs, and glistened, beckoning her toward the other, even more exciting, parts of his anatomy, as well.

As she eyed her wickedly sexy lover, a familiar hunger began to build.  Her newly pagan blood began to simmer sweetly. 

And she knew that marriage was not the only adventure she would propose in here tonight.

Without announcing herself, she knelt in front of him, and the warm water pummeled her hair.  Tiny flowers were dislodged, sent spiraling toward the drain.  She put her hands on his hips, and bent her head closer, close enough for her tongue to lick him where she knew he liked it best.

At the exact same second, the singing stopped, and he hardened, thrusting out to meet her lips.

“Marly,” he said huskily.  He reached up and knuckled water from his eyes so he could see all of her.  “Marly, sweetheart...how incredibly beautiful you are.”

“I’m glad you think so,” she said, speaking the words slowly, running her lips across the tip of him as she did.  “Because I came in here to ask a favor.”

And then she took him fully into her mouth.  He groaned, letting his head fall back. 

“
Anything
,
” he repeated passionately.  He placed the heels of his hands flat onto the wall in front of him, as if he needed help staying upright, as if her mouth were making it impossible to remember how standing even worked.

He bowed his head, and let the water cascade over him.  “Anything,” he repeated mindlessly.  He obviously didn’t even now what he was saying now.

After a few minutes, she stood, though she continued to stroke him gently, keeping the fire stoked but under control. 

She knew him so well...she could bring him to climax almost at will.  So she paced herself, knowing exactly how many seconds she planned to make him wait.

“Well, you see, about this favor,” she said.  “I was just wondering,...” She moved her hands a little faster...then a little faster still.  He panted slightly, drops of water dripping from his open lips.