Two Nights with His Bride (12 page)

“You…you knew about that?”

“Not at the time. I saw you hiding there one day, waiting for me, so I showered inside from then on.”

She cringed. “I’m sorry. That’s really creepy of me.”

“Yeah, it was, come to think of it. But I’m over it now. What do you really need advice on?”

She stared down at her dress, despair welling
up inside her. “Nothing.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing. Talk to me.”

Faye stepped out of the room and closed the door, leaving Nancy alone with Wyatt—sort of. But asking him for advice about Jared struck an icky chord in her. He wasn’t her buddy, wasn’t one of her girlfriends. He was a man she’d once been deeply attracted to, and talking to him felt too close to rekindling something she wasn’t
in a position to rekindle. “It’s nothing. Really.”

He paused. “If it has to do with Jared, I have plenty of advice. I don’t know how to put this kindly, but Jared’s a—”

Panic hit her hard. “Sorry, Wyatt, I have to go. Thanks for checking up, but that boulder didn’t do any permanent damage. See you around.”

She hung up before he could say anything. “Faye!”

Faye poked her head into the room.
“Yeah?”

Holding the cell out to her, Nancy said, “We got cut off.”

Faye took the phone with obvious reluctance. “I don’t know what he said, but maybe you should listen to him.”

No…listening to him would take her places she didn’t want to go. Besides, he didn’t know Jared the way she did. She stared at the sparkling ocean outside and the big, masculine bedroom she would soon share with Jared.
She was wearing a designer wedding dress and could get pretty much anything she wanted except the wedding dress of her choice.

What a minor problem to have. Most nights when she was growing up, she’d gone to bed so hungry it felt like her stomach was eating itself. Complaining about wearing a designer gown as she married a billionaire?

How petty.

“I’m really lucky, you know,” she told Faye.
“So what if I have to wear this ugly dress? So what if Jared doesn’t always understand what I’m trying to tell him? I know he loves me, and that’s all that matters. We’ll get through this and finally start our lives together, and everything will be okay.”

“Nancy, you’ve
already
started your lives together. The way he treats you now is the way he’ll continue to treat you.”

It was the closest
Faye had ever come to remarking on Jared’s recent behavior. In the beginning, she’d oohed and aahed over every bouquet he’d sent Nancy, every fancy dinner and red-carpet event he’d taken her to.

She was on a bullet train barreling toward her wedding day, and a billion tasks, problems and unforeseen complications battled for control of her brain. But one question underscored them all.

What am
I doing?

The phone rang again, a Marietta phone number popping onto the screen.

“I’m busy,” Nancy said. “No matter how many times he calls, I’m busy.”

‡

“Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings…and lawyers.”

—Richard Prior

N
ancy wrapped her
bridal corset around her torso and forced herself to breathe. When she’d tried this corset on a month ago, its tightness had given her security, confidence—not in her body but in her future. This hand-sewn
corset alone cost more than three of the mortgage payments she made on her parents’ ranch, and Jared had paid the bill without a blink. No more worrying about being the only person her parents could rely on, or whether her show would be canceled or the parts stopped coming her way. After today, her future would be just as secure as her constricted ribcage.

So why did her head spin as her mom
pulled the corset’s strings?

Maybe it was all the frenetic energy in the room. With just one hour left before she pledged her future to Hollywood’s favorite leading man, the room buzzed with frenetic activity. Jared’s mother, Barbara, was talking to the wedding planner in the quick, no-nonsense tones of a woman used to leading a battalion. Except Barbara had never been in the military. She’d
been a 1970s scream queen who’d quit to manage Jared’s acting career as soon as he’d been born and then done the same for his brother and sister.

Mallory fussed with the god-awful wedding dress, shouting “No one touch it!” to anyone who made the mistake of getting too close as she hung it against the wall for the photographer. Ruby knocked back another glass of champagne—her fourth, by Nancy’s
counting—and Polly was sneaking some chocolates from a local chocolatier.

And nerves did a manic jig in Nancy’s belly, some of them sneaking their way up to her throat.

“Tighter,” she said, and her mom pulled the strings behind her until all the air wheezed from her lungs. The corset jerked, and pain traveled up her spine. Oh, God, it hurt so good.

Her mom cringed. “Isn’t that painful, Nancylynn?”

“It’s not too bad.” Her voice came out breathlessly, the kind of vulnerable rasp Jared had once said turned him on even more than the sight of her naked. She didn’t know how to feel about that. “It’s actually pretty comforting. Like a hug.”

A fifty-thousand-dollar hug. The kind of hug her mom could never relate to.

A cork popped, and her soon-to-be mother-in-law poured bubbly into several glasses
and handed one to her. “The corset’s stunning. I’m so glad I was able to put you in touch with Rosalie. She does such exquisite work, doesn’t she? Just make sure you leave room for plenty of champagne. We need to quell those pregnancy rumors.”

“Amen to that.” She clinked her glass against Barbara’s even though the thought of champagne—or babies—made her queasy.

She swallowed her misgivings.
“Okay, let’s get me into that dress.”

It took about ten minutes to get the monstrosity on and all the feathers smoothed down. It seemed to weigh even more than it had the week before, and the cloying heat of it made her want to melt into the floor.

The whoomp-whoomp-whoomp of a helicopter’s blades pumped through the room. Polly ran to the window and looked up at the sky. “The paparazzi’s arrived!”

Nancy’s heart picked up speed.
This is really it. I’m marrying Jared Lovell.

Shouldn’t she feel happier than this?

Her mom laid her hand on arm. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.” She set her glass down on an armoire and followed her mom into the adjoining bedroom.

Her mom fiddled with the little handbag she’d bought to match her dress. “Your dad and I have looked forward to this day for
so long. We’ve been saving up and wanted to give you something.”

“Oh, Mom, you don’t have to do that.”

“We know, but we wanted to anyway. We—we didn’t know what you guys might need. I mean, it seems like you have everything.”

She took her mom’s hand and squeezed it. “We do. All we need is your love and support, and I know we already have that.”

Something dark passed across her mom’s gaze.
“Yes…
you
have our love and support. Always. No matter what.”

Oh, crud. “I’m not going to like what you have to say, am I?”

Her mom’s jaw moved as she swallowed hard. “Your dad and I have been through a lot together, and one thing I never questioned was his respect for me.”

Tears pricked Nancy’s eyes. “Jared respects me. How could you think otherwise?”

“I don’t like the way he sometimes talks
to you, sweetheart.”

“He’s just…”
Stressed. Tired. Not himself today.
The usual excuses tasted like ash as they dissolved on her tongue. “He’s always had money and fame, so he’s used to things being a certain way.”

Her mom nodded as if that made perfect sense, but Nancy wasn’t even sure it made sense to her. All she knew was she was sick and tired of having to make excuses. It was exhausting.
People didn’t know Jared the way she did. They either saw the glamorous facade he and a group of highly paid publicists had cultivated over the decades, or they saw his occasional fits of temper. They didn’t see how funny he could be, or how loving. She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders. “He’s going to be my husband, Mom. And yes, maybe I’ve been having some second thoughts. But that’s normal.
This is a huge step. You must’ve been nervous when you married Dad, weren’t you?”

Please tell me yes.

“Of course. But I was nervous about whether my dad would drink all the beer or whether we’d left the potato salad out too long. I was nervous we’d have to live with my parents forever before we could afford to move out. I wasn’t nervous about spending my life with your dad. That excited me more
than anything I’d ever experienced up till then. It felt so right that it made all my fears about money and potato salad disappear.”

Queasiness settled in Nancy’s throat. “You think I’m making a mistake,” she whispered.

Her mom hesitated. “I don’t know. I mean, I can certainly understand why you’re attracted to him. Marrying Jared Lovell…well, almost any girl in the world would be desperate
to trade places with you.”

Nancy took a deep breath, but the corset stopped the oxygen from getting to where she needed it most. She felt light-headed. Nearly a million dollars—that was how much they had spent on this wedding. Not to mention all the publicity, the photo rights they’d sold, the helicopters circling overhead…

“I’m marrying him. It’ll all be okay. It will.” It had to be. Things
always worked out in the end, right?

Her mom wrapped her in a big hug. “Then we will love him like our son.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. We just want you to be happy, sweetheart. And if he makes you happy, then he makes us happy.”

Happy? Weirdly, she didn’t think of their relationship in those terms anymore. Maybe in the beginning but not for a long time. They had moments of happiness, of course,
but that wasn’t what she’d craved in a relationship. Stability. Safety. Security. Jared gave her those things.

Didn’t he?

A commotion from the other room had her mom drawing away from her, and Nancy immediately missed the warmth of her embrace. Her parents might not have ever been able to offer her stability, safety or security, but their love overwhelmed her.

“Who are you? How did you get
in here? You can’t come in here!” Jared’s mom yelled.

“Where’s Nancy?”

Her heart dropped into her stomach, and she rushed into the other room. “Wyatt?”

He spun to face her, every muscle in his face freezing as he took in the sight of her. “Jesus. What the—.”

Barbara yanked open the door and shouted down the hall. “Security! There’s a strange man in here!”

Her mom straightened her shoulders
in indignation. “He’s not a strange man. He’s Wyatt, and he’s a friend of the family.”

“I don’t care who he is. He shouldn’t see the bride before the wedding.”

“That only applies to grooms,” her mom retorted sharply. “Wyatt’s not the groom.”

Nancy might’ve imagined it, but her mom almost sounded disappointed.

“What are you doing here?” Nancy asked.

He never looked away. “I need to talk to
you.”

“No.” Barbara stepped between him and Nancy. “I recognize you now. You’re the naked man from that horrible picture.”

“What? I wasn’t naked.”

“You were topless.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Have you ever seen any of your son’s films? Maybe I looked naked because I wasn’t carrying an Uzi strapped to my greased-up chest.”

Nancy pressed her lips together hard to keep from laughing inappropriately,
but the description was a bullseye for Jared’s early films. These days he considered himself an artist and only took on roles without automatic weapons.

“Nancy, you can’t speak to this man. You know how Jared would feel about it.”

“How about considering how Nancy might feel about it for a second?” her mom shot back.

“Stop it!” Nancy threw her hands over her ears and glared at everyone, even
the ones staring silently from the edges of the room. “This is ridiculous. I’ll talk to anyone I want to.”

“I’m getting Jared. He’ll set you straight about this.” Barbara disappeared into the hall.

Pressing her hand against the stress-ache in her belly, Nancy let out a furious breath. “I really don’t need this right now.”

“You can tell me to get the hell out, if you want. I don’t want to create
problems for you. Especially not today.”

She pressed her fingertips into the corners of her throbbing eyes. “You’re not the one causing problems. Let’s go.”

She led him into the bedroom, only realizing when she shut the door how inappropriate that would look to anyone on the other side. “Well, crap.”

“Yeah, crap.” He strode across the room and took her hands in his. “Listen. I have a feeling
I’ll be tackled by a dozen security guys in a second.”

“How
did
you get in here?”

“You forget that I grew up here.”

She raised her brows, waiting.

“Long story, involving me riding in a catering trolley,” he admitted. “I’ll tell you about it another time, if your husband-to-be doesn’t whip out a gun and shoot me on sight.”

She scoffed. “He only does that in films. I think.”