by Lori Wilde
The Stand-In Groom
Lori Wilde &
Pam Andrews Hanson
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
Excerpt: The Royal Groom
Also by Lori Wilde & Pam Andrews Hanson
About the Authors
1
IF HE HAD TO hang around a shop like Lenora’s Bridal Salon, at least he was only waiting for his mother, Nick Franklin consoled himself.
He didn’t ever plan to get married, but he was bemused by his widowed mother’s whirlwind courtship. Who would’ve guessed she’d meet a great guy and start planning a wedding in eight months?
Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, Nick crossed his arms over the flaking sports team logo on his faded navy T-shirt.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit, sir?” asked Joyce, a middle-aged clerk dressed as though she were twenty in a miniskirt and showing plenty of cleavage.
Looking at the few scattered chairs upholstered in cream satin with fussy gold-and-white carved legs, he politely declined. He felt idiotic enough waiting here for his mother to have a wedding suit fitted without plopping down on one of the pretentious little seats.
He couldn’t be happier it was his mother, not him, getting married. Sue Bailey Franklin had been lonely since Nick’s father died a few years ago, and being CEO of Bailey Baby Products wasn’t compensation enough for putting up with her crotchety father, Marsh Bailey.
Her fiancé, David Gallagher, was a nice guy. Nick liked him, and so did his twin half-brothers, Cole and Zack Bailey. What he didn’t enjoy was being the designated flunky for his mother while she ran around putting together the wedding.
Ordinarily she didn’t need or want a chauffeur, but unfortunately, she’d taken a bad fall from a horse a month ago. She and David had met taking riding lessons, but the romance had gone a lot better than the riding. After two surgeries, her broken right ankle was still wrapped up too much for her to drive.
Nick restlessly shifted again. Considering how much he hated to stand around doing nothing, he could cross being a bodyguard off his list of potential careers. In fact, he wasn’t even close to zeroing in on what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.
His mother popped her head through a curtained doorway, cell phone propped under her ear as she leaned on her crutches.
“Sorry, Nicky.” She managed to cover the mouthpiece. “I have to talk to a sales rep. Trouble with distribution on the tub safety seats. I’ll be in Lenora’s office if you need me. Then just a few more tucks in the jacket, and we’ll go.”
He couldn’t imagine the ivory silk suit fitting any better than it did now on his slender mom, but he sighed, resigned.
A tall, willowy blonde entered the shop. Nick perked up. Waiting would go a little faster with a gorgeous woman like that in the place.
Female companionship was what he’d missed the most last year when he’d worked on a Great Lakes ore freighter.
Not that working for his brothers was an improvement over life on the boats. The men on the freighter had given Nick a hard time as the college-boy newcomer until he proved how adept he was at anything mechanical.
Unfortunately, he had a lot more to prove to his bossy brothers, who still thought he was a slacker for deciding not to finish college until he had a firm career goal. Right now, he wasn’t much more than a gofer for their construction business.
Both Cole and Zach had changed since he first went away to school. Once they’d been wild and single, definitely his role models. Now Cole was a daddy since the birth of his twin sons, and Zack, of all people, was besotted with his wife, a local TV personality. Nick still couldn’t believe they both had become so domestic.
At least their grandfather, Marsh Bailey, wasn’t pressuring him to get married the way he had the twins. It wouldn’t do any good if he did. Nick knew he wasn’t interested in marriage.
He liked variety too much. All he wanted to do was get Marsh off his back about getting a life, which to the old man meant settling on a career.
He still smarted remembering what Marsh had said about his shaky college career. To his mother’s credit, she didn’t add much to the criticism coming from the men in the family, but she had been disappointed. It made Nick doubly glad she had David to distract her.
Meanwhile, he was working on the career thing. Nick liked construction work well enough when he wasn’t being used as an errand boy.
The shop’s other customer had pulled a wedding dress from one of the racks and was holding it at arm’s length, studying it. Her hair was short, revealing the back of her neck in a way that made her look vulnerable.
“That one’s nice,” he said. He’d startled the blonde as she examined the voluminous dress under the watchful eyes of the clerk—or maybe here salespeople were called bridal consultants.
“I guess it is,” she said uncertainly, handing it over to the older woman. “I might as well try it on.”
Weren’t brides supposed to be enthralled by those big swishy tents called wedding gowns? At least his mother had too much taste to try to look like a cake ornament. He approved of her simple ivory silk suit, even though he was seething with impatience to get out of there.
All he had to do while he waited was think, so he welcomed the distraction. He had a lot on his mind, mainly what he planned to do with the rest of his life.
If he had it to do over, would he still blow off his business degree at Michigan State? Probably. He’d only been a semester or so away from graduating when he dropped out, sure he’d never make a go of it. His grandfather had gone ballistic, but he’d pulled some strings to get him into Alvirah College in Central Michigan. Nick went reluctantly and made sure he didn’t last a semester there.
He grinned. It hadn’t been hard to get expelled from the conservative liberal arts school, which had been his intention as soon as he realized how wrong the place was for him. For the sake of keeping peace in the family, he gave the place a chance.
Not that he was afraid of Zack and Cole, even when they threatened to kick his butt so hard he’d land in the next state. In his short stay at Alvirah, he felt as if he were back in high school getting in trouble for cutting classes and making out with his girlfriend in the janitor’s closet.
His education came to an abrupt end when he led a protest against a strict new curfew. Marsh hadn’t been sympathetic to his grandson’s protest for civil liberties, and Nick’s ears still burned when he thought about that lecture.
But it sure had been fun taking the college president’s Cadillac apart and reassembling it in the lounge of the girls’ dorm. Nick had had to bribe a local mechanic to help and borrow his dolly to get it done in one night since his college buddies were mechanical klutzes. To Nick’s credit, he’d taken full blame and refused to name his accomplices.
Okay, it was a dumb stunt, he thought, looking at his watch for the hundredth time. Working on a freighter with some really rough characters had convinced him he did need to get a life.
He just hadn’t figured out what he wanted to do. Cole and Zack had struck out on their own in spite of all the pressure to go into the family baby products business, but he didn’t see construction as a permanent niche for him.
The blonde came out of the dressing room trailing enough gown to hide six men under the skirt—not a
bad place to be, now that Nick thought of it.
She posed in front of a really large three-panel mirror, but he could tell by her frown she didn’t really want to walk down the aisle in a satin tent.
“It is so becoming on you, Ms. Moore,” the salesperson gushed.
“I don’t think so.”
Good for her. He hated to see a customer intimidated by a snooty clerk. Even his mother, who headed a corporation and held a couple hundred jobs in her hands, wavered a little when she came eyeball-to-eyeball with a bullying salesperson.
Ah, he saw the problem. Blondie was fiddling with the neckline. It was a little low, but he thought she filled it out just fine. She wiggled the top, obviously not satisfied with it.
“It is so lovely,” the clerk purred.
“I think I’ll try the eyelet,” she said decisively.
He liked a woman who could make her own decisions.
“I agree. I don’t think that one is you,” he said.
“Really?”
Was that a flash of anger in her bright-blue eyes? Was she annoyed by his comment or with the whole process of trying to imitate a fairy-tale princess?
“Definitely not the style for you.” He flashed her a big smile, but she didn’t seem impressed.
“I think you should reserve your comments for your own fiancée,” she said.
“I don’t have one.”
“You hang around bridal salons for kicks?”
The girl had a tongue. Even though she was an engaged woman, he was glad she wasn’t a wimp.
“I’m waiting for my mother to get fitted. She’s the bride,” he explained.
“Oh.”
Not much she could say to that, and she went off with the clerk trailing behind her carrying another dress.
Stacy let the saleswoman help her out of the voluminous skirt but getting it off didn’t make her feel less prickly.
This was the fifth shop she’d been to in three weeks, and she was still no closer to finding the right dress. In the big stack of bridal magazines cluttering her apartment, there were so many choices she mistakenly thought the job of finding the right gown was easy. Ha!
Maybe it was easy if she wanted to blow a couple thousand on an outfit to wear for one day, but her parents simply couldn’t afford a dress that expensive. They insisted on giving her a wonderful wedding, but she wasn’t going to let them go overboard.
She caught a glimpse of the discreet little price tag on the eyelet gown and winced. She loved the simple lines and delicate spaghetti straps, but even this modest dress was twelve hundred dollars. Maybe she could make a gown herself.
Yeah, and maybe she’d be the next Vera Wang, too. Her sewing skills hadn’t improved much since she’d put the zipper in backward on a dress for her middle school graduation. Aunt Lucille, her father’s aunt who lived with the family, had saved the day on that. She wanted nothing to do with a wedding dress, though.
Aunt Lu was the one person Stacy knew who really, really didn’t like Jonathan, her fiancé. She said his smile didn’t reach his eyes, whatever that meant coming from a nearsighted woman in her mid-seventies.
Dad kept assuring her price was no object. He did have a good job at the bank, but financial institutions were stingy employers, much like preschools.
Even though Stacy was assistant director of Happy Times Early Learning Center, her salary just about met expenses. And it wasn’t as if she were an only child. Her two older brothers still qualified as newlyweds, and the younger two were in middle school and high school.
“Now this is really dreamy on you,” Joyce said.
Stacy endured having the saleswoman enthuse over the dress, knowing the bridal consultant wasn’t the one really annoying her. Her whole family, except for Aunt Lucille, and most of her friends, were just so pleased she was marrying Jonathan Mercer.
Sure, he was a lawyer and his family had old money. She had been lucky to meet him when he came to pick up his niece from the learning center. And yes, a lot of women would kill to be in her shoes—never mind at the moment her feet were painfully pinched in the pumps the salon loaned for trying on gowns.
She was just tired of hearing how fortunate she was. She was marrying Jonathan because she loved him, not because he had an impressive resume.
She was fortunate to be engaged to a man like him. It was just that constantly being reminded of it was getting on her nerves.
A big believer in knights in shining armor and fairy-tale endings, Stacy had been swept off her feet by him. She loved hearts and flowers and declarations of undying love, and her fiancé seemed to delight in pleasing her that way.
Jonathan was the most romantic man she’d ever met. Before he proposed, he practically filled her little apartment with huge baskets of spring flowers, yellow roses and daisies and all kinds of delicate blooms.
Then he wined and dined her as though she were a princess, brought her home, and proposed on bended knee. Corny maybe, but it still made her smile.
Maybe he was a little old-fashioned, not wanting her to work after they were married, but there was a lot to be said for a man who respected her and wanted to take care of her. And darn it, he was cute, too.
He never made her uncomfortable like, say, the hunky guy who’d commented on the dress. She didn’t know why the stranger made her uneasy, except maybe his larger-than-life good looks.
But who knew planning the wedding could be such an ordeal? Was she ever going to find an affordable dress that was her?
The delicate cotton eyelet over a stiff lining was appealing, but she couldn’t decide without getting a better view in the huge reception-room mirror. Unfortunately, that meant parading in front of the gorgeous hunk in faded jeans, not that Mr. Muscles’ opinion made the slightest bit of difference to her.
She’d deliberately come alone so she wouldn’t be influenced by her mother or one of her friends. No way would she pay any attention to his opinion, but the close scrutiny of those dark-brown eyes did make her squirm.
She hesitated before leaving the dressing room area, angry at herself for being intimidated by that guy. Her reaction to him was probably a throwback to her high school days when she’d been so shy her older brothers had arranged her first date. She’d been seventeen and the guy had taken her to a G-rated cartoon movie.
Maybe she was a little quieter than her friends and sometimes a tad bit reserved with strangers, but at twenty-four, she’d outgrown the painful shyness of her younger days.
At least she was pretty sure she had.
She put on her Mona Lisa smile, hoping she looked mysterious, not vacuous, raised her chin a couple of notches, and pretended she didn’t care about a stranger’s reaction. He wasn’t the groom, and his opinion didn’t matter. She liked the way the bodice hugged her torso in a princess style and flared out, without making her look hippy.
That was what counted. The only person she wanted to impress was Jonathan, and it would please him if the partners in his prestigious law firm approved of her.
There was nothing wrong with Jonathan being proud of her, she told herself. She wanted to be a good helpmate and hostess to his friends and co-workers, even though she wasn’t convinced she wanted to be a stay-at-home wife, at least not until they had children.
Maybe it was so hard to pick her wedding dress because Jonathan seemed to think she was perfect. She didn’t want to disappoint him by looking anything but her best at their wedding.
The whistle was long and low-pitched as she walked out, a vote of approval if she’d ever heard one. Stacy wanted to scurry back to the dressing room, but part of her was pleased by Mr. Muscles’ reaction.
It confirmed her opinion that this was the best of the many gowns she’d tried on. Maybe she owed it to her fiancé to buy a dress this expensive. After all, he was paying for the reception. Jonathan insisted the two hundred or more guests on his list were too many to expect the bride’s parents to foot the bill.
She’d suggested a smaller wedding. Her own
list of seventy-five included all her close relatives and friends, but Jonathan wouldn’t hear of it.
Turning around in front of the mirror, she tried not to imagine the church with the guests on his side outnumbering hers by more than two to one.
“That’s a big improvement,” her self-appointed critic said.
“Thank you.”
Why was she thanking him? She didn’t design the dress, and she was still a long way from deciding on whether to buy it. There were maybe a hundred other bridal shops in the greater Detroit area. She hadn’t checked any in Grosse Pointe or in St. Clair Shores or...
“Are you having a big wedding?” he asked.
“Bigger than I’d like.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. It just slipped out.
“I thought the bride decided all the wedding stuff.”
“It can be a mutual decision,” she said stiffly. Ordinarily only Aunt Lucille made her feel this defensive.
“It’s not mutual if you think it’s too big.”
Hunk or not, this guy was too much. “Do you have a professional interest in other people’s weddings?”
“Do I look like a wedding planner?” He chuckled.
“More like the guy who carries boxes for the caterer.”
He snorted and twisted his mouth into an evil little half-grin. “An angel who plays hardball.”
She didn’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted. Either way, she wished those dreamy dark eyes would go contemplate his own navel. How could she make a sensible decision when he curled his full lower lip, making her want to nibble on it?
Good grief. An alien had burrowed into her brain. She had a fiancé and a future. She couldn’t think about Mr. Won’t-Mind-His-Own-Business that way.
Stacy glanced around for the saleswoman, but there was no help there. For a woman old enough to know better, she had her eyes riveted on the hunk with a goofy expression that said “Take me” in about twenty languages.