Out of Town Bride

by Kara Lennox

  Usually that thought cheered him up, but today it seemed a little depressing. He knew he would worry about her. He wondered if Muffy would hire someone to replace him once she learned the wedding was off. Then he felt an immediate, irrational stab of jealousy that someone else would spend twenty-four hours a day with his Sonya.

  His Sonya. Now that was an odd way to think about it.

  The women wound up their conversation and emerged from the office. John-Michael hastily opened his book, pretending to have been absorbed in it the whole time. He looked up.

  “Done already?” he asked innocently.

  The reporter stepped in front of Sonya, all feline grace and kittenish smile. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced. Leslie Frazier.”

  “John-Michael McPhee,” he said, taking the hand she offered. She held his just a bit too long.

  “So you’re Sonya’s bodyguard?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I saw you at the hospital and I wondered. You’re even better looking in person than they said.”

  Behind her, Sonya rolled her eyes and made gagging gestures. John-Michael stifled a grin. “Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  “You take care of our little Sonya, now,” she said, exaggerating her southern drawl. “While Marvin’s away,” she added, as if she knew a secret.

  “Oh, Sonya, that reminds me,” John-Michael said. “Marvin called on my cell while you were in your meeting. He said you must have had your phone turned off.”

  “Oh,” Sonya said, looking pained, “you should have interrupted me.”

  “I was going to, but he said I shouldn’t. He just wanted to tell you that he’d found a store in Hong Kong that sold your grandmother’s silver pattern, and he wanted to know if he should buy the pieces to replace the ones that were missing.” The fabrication had just jumped into John-Michael’s mind, but he thought it sounded plausible.

  “Oh, yes, I would love to have the set finished out!” Sonya said passionately. She turned to Leslie. “The pattern is impossible to find anymore,” she explained. Then she focused again on John-Michael. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I thought you would want him to buy any he could find, and he said he thought that, too.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “And he’ll call you later. It’s very early in the morning in Hong Kong. He’d just gotten up, and he wanted to catch you before he got stalled all day in meetings.”

  Sonya’s mouth spread into a sickly sweet smile. “Oh, he’s so thoughtful.”

  She didn’t say anything else until they were sitting in her BMW, far away from prying ears. “Thank you for what you did back there. Leslie is definitely getting suspicious, but I think our little act convinced her.”

  “You’re welcome. I think.”

  “Where in the world did you come up with that story about Grandmother’s silver?”

  He tapped his mystery novel on his knee. “I got it from this book. The hero is a butler, and his employer is trying to finish out an antique silver pattern that was her grandmother’s.”

  “You lie very convincingly.”

  “So do you, I might point out. With that act you did for Leslie, you had me convinced the wedding was really going to happen. And that you were on cloud nine about it.”

  Sonya tipped her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “It was one of the most exhausting conversations I’ve ever had. I wonder how Marvin does it, maintaining a charade for day after day, week after week? I did it for an hour and I feel like I need a blood transfusion.”

  “You mean you weren’t having fun?”

  “Fun? Pretending I was happy about a wedding to a complete jerk?”

  “Don’t most little girls like to pretend?”

  “Very funny.” She still hadn’t started the car. Driving her own BMW—her fourth since the one she got for high school graduation—had been her idea. She’d decided she needed more driving experience. “Maybe I should let you drive home.”

  “Oh, no. Another six weeks and I won’t be around. You’ll have to drive to job interviews, maybe to and from work. You need the practice.”

  “Meaning, only a spoiled brat can afford to drive just when she feels like it. Okay. But it’s rush hour out there.” Houston’s rush hour was any time after three o’clock.

  AFTER THIRTY MINUTES on I-110, during which they’d gone half a mile, Sonya couldn’t take it anymore. She took the next exit.

  “Where are we going?” John-Michael asked.

  “To a bar. I need a drink.”

  “I’ll take a taxi home, thanks.”

  “A coffee bar, of course. I’m a bad enough driver sober.”

  “But what about the kids? Don’t you have to pick them up from day care? And won’t your husband want dinner on the table when he gets home?”

  Sonya groaned. “I honestly don’t know how some women do it. Are you trying to prove I’m spoiled?”

  “Just trying to prepare you for life in the real world, if that’s what you’re determined to live.”

  “Perhaps I’ll take the bus to work. I can read metallurgy reports and do stress calculations while I commute.”

  John-Michael snorted.

  “Oh, so now you’re laughing at the idea of me riding a bus?”

  “Have you ever ridden a bus?”

  “No. But how hard could it be?”

  “Ask me that again after you’ve tried it.”

  She pulled into a Starbucks. She hadn’t had a toffee nut latte in days. She got out of the car, strode inside the coffee shop and up to the counter. After she’d placed her order, she turned to John-Michael. “What do you want? My treat.”

  “Oh.” He looked startled. “Just a regular coffee.”

  She realized she probably hadn’t ever bought him coffee before. She usually sent him in to buy whatever she wanted and didn’t bother with the money, either. Muffy provided all the employees with plenty of cash for incidentals. But traveling around with Brenna and Cindy, she’d gotten used to being the one in charge, particularly when she was the only one with a means to pay.

  When they called her name, she went up to the counter and picked up both of their beverages, handing his coffee to him. “There you are, John-Michael.” It was the first time she’d called him by his given name, at least to his face, in over a decade. It felt very strange.

  Judging from the look on John-Michael’s face, it sounded strange, too.

  He nodded and hoisted his paper cup in a toast. “To…to your new future. Whatever it may hold.”

  Sonya lifted her cup, too. “And yours.” She had this sudden, silly picture in her mind of her and John-Michael entwining their arms before sipping from their coffees. Must be all the wedding talk.

  Chapter Seven

  John-Michael had been dreading this appointment with the seamstress. The Belgian lace had arrived, and Mrs. Kim wanted Sonya to try on the dress so she could experiment using the lace in different ways. John-Michael didn’t know how many ways there were to use lace, but he was guessing quite a few, which meant another tedious wait.

  He’d brought two books with him this time.

  Mrs. Kim had a tony shop in River Oaks, where she specialized in custom-tailoring wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, debutante ball gowns, and anything else Houston’s high-society females could come up with. According to Muffy, anyone who was anybody had her wedding dress nipped and tucked by Mrs. Kim.

  John-Michael sat in the shop’s main area, decorated with huge color photographs of society wedding dresses Mrs. Kim had presumably sewn or tailored. The shop was decorated in shades of pink, lavender and mauve, with tiny French-Provincial-style chairs and crystal bowls filled with potpourri littering every surface.

  John-Michael felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop as he perched uneasily on one of the delicate chairs, once again relegated to involuntary eavesdropping.

  “You been losing weight,” Mrs. Kim scolded from inside
the airplane-hangar-sized dressing room. “Every bride the same. She either stuff herself with cake for six months and swell up like the Goodyear blimp, or she stop eating altogether and turn into a skeleton.”

  “I eat plenty,” Sonya said amid the swish of silk and lace, the whisper of chiffon. “It must be my mother’s new heart-healthy menu and exercise regimen. I’ve been doing it with her.”

  John-Michael tried to banish from his mind the image of Sonya, wearing perhaps a virginal white thong and demibra, slithering into the frothy concoction she’d once planned to wear for her wedding. What would happen to this dress, so lovingly designed, meticulously constructed, using the finest textiles? After all her hard work, would Mrs. Kim be disappointed when there were no bridal pictures to put on her wall, no mention of her handiwork in the newspaper write-up?

  The wanton spending of cash for no good reason bothered John-Michael to no end. Sonya had reasoned that Muffy would never really miss the money—she had more than enough to squander some occasionally. She was contributing to the local economy, providing work to people like Mrs. Kim. As for the florist and musicians, they would pocket the hefty deposits and not mind a bit. But after a lifetime spent carefully budgeting his money and his father’s, he hated witnessing careless waste.

  “Oh, you make such a beautiful bride,” Mrs. Kim said with genuine-sounding awe in her voice.

  John-Michael wanted to see.

  “Turn around, dear, so you can see the back in the mirror.”

  “Oh, it really is lovely,” Sonya said, a catch in her voice. Maybe she was mourning the fact that absolutely no one but Mrs. Kim would ever see her wearing the lace confection. Of course, she could keep the dress until she found someone else to marry. But maybe that was considered tacky, getting married in a dress you selected for a wedding to some other groom.

  “Now, we can gather the lace full like this, or have it more relaxed, like this,” Mrs. Kim explained.

  “I like the more relaxed look,” Sonya said wistfully. “I promised my mother I would take pictures and get her opinion, though. I brought my digital camera. It’s in that bag over there.”

  “I can’t take picture and hold the lace in place at the same time,” Mrs. Kim said.

  “Oh. Well, maybe John-Michael wouldn’t mind. John-Michael?”

  “Yes? I’m sorry, did you call me?” he asked, as if he hadn’t been hanging on every word of conversation.

  “Yes. Could you come in here and take a couple of pictures for my mother?”

  “Isn’t it bad luck to be seen in your wedding dress before the ceremony?”

  “Only if you’re the groom,” she said impatiently.

  Oh. Right.

  “I know it’s beyond the scope of your duties,” she said, “but would you please? Mrs. Kim’s hands are going to cramp up.”

  He was already out of his chair. “I’m coming.” And he entered Mrs. Kim’s inner sanctum.

  The sight of Sonya all in ivory satin, standing on a pedestal like one of those spinning ballerinas in a little girl’s music box, nearly knocked John-Michael off his feet. He’d always known Sonya was uncommonly beautiful, even for a privileged woman with all the most expensive beauty treatments at her disposal. But in that wedding dress she looked truly regal, a bride fit for a prince.

  He felt this strange twinge around his heart, and for a few stupid seconds he yearned to be the prince who claimed her as his own. The sight of her actually made him light-headed.

  “John-Michael?” Sonya said, her voice coming to him out of a thick fog.

  “You look so beautiful.” The words slipped out involuntarily, causing Mrs. Kim to beam and Sonya to blush furiously.

  “She going to be my prettiest bride ever,” Mrs. Kim said proudly.

  “Th-the camera’s in my bag over there,” Sonya stammered, nodding toward her tote bag.

  John-Michael managed to tear his gaze away from Sonya long enough to find the tote bag, find the camera, remove it from its case. He’d used it before. Sonya often asked him to be her photographer, chronicling important moments in her life. He recalled, though, that he’d never taken any pictures of her and Marvin—Marvin had always weaseled out of it. That was one of the things that had alerted John-Michael to the possibility that Marvin was up to no good.

  “Here’s choice number one,” Mrs. Kim said, gathering the lace tightly and holding it against the edge of the voluminous train. John-Michael dutifully snapped a couple of pictures. “Now, here is choice number two.” He didn’t see much difference, but snapped away.

  “Take a few pictures of Sonya without me in the frame,” Mrs. Kim said. “Mrs. Patterson has not yet seen her daughter wearing the dress.”

  John-Michael snapped a few more, his heart aching. Beauty had never made him hurt before. Maybe it was the fact this particular beauty was so unattainable that caused his pain. In that moment he wanted her worse than he’d ever wanted anyone in his life.

  Timing was everything, he kept telling himself.

  Watching her prepare for this wedding had made this week one of the more uncomfortable of John-Michael’s life. No matter how many times he told himself it wasn’t real, it was never going to happen, he still knew deep down that if Marvin hadn’t turned out to be a crook, it would be happening for real. He would be losing her forever. Even Marvin’s betrayal only delayed the inevitable. Someday she would find someone else, and today’s fiction would become tomorrow’s fact. That realization only made him more determined to investigate the potential between them, before he lost her again.

  He checked his shots in the viewfinder to be sure they’d turned out all right. “That should do it, I think,” he said. “Anything else, Miss Patterson?” Sometimes, just to get her goat, he played up their mistress-servant relationship in front of other people. Or maybe as a reminder to himself that he had a long row to hoe.

  “No, thank you,” she said, not even bothering to try to covertly get back at him, the way she usually did. Now he felt guilty for needling her. She’d done nothing to deserve it except look lovely.

  He returned to his book, which had lost its appeal, and waited for Sonya to reappear in her street clothes. She’d dressed down today in a gold turtleneck, black wool blazer, slim black pants and flat-heeled boots. He could almost see her in a professional environment when she dressed like that. But her hair was done up the way she’d planned to wear it for the wedding, tortured into an elaborate maze of twists, curls and braids.

  He remembered when she used to wear it long and loose, how it used to look after she went for a swim, then combed it out and let it dry in the sun, which provided the natural blond highlights she now paid more than a hundred dollars a month to artificially reproduce.

  “Ready,” she said as she emerged. He covertly checked her over, to reassure himself that she was once again an ordinary woman, rather than a goddess. But he had to admit that some part of her goddesslike persona clung to her even dressed in black. Or maybe it had always been there.

  “Will you keep the dress?” he asked when they were once again alone in her car.

  “I was thinking I might donate it to charity. There’s a foundation that sells donated wedding dresses to fund dreams for breast-cancer patients.”

  “And when you get married again, you’ll just have another one made?”

  She gave him a look he could only describe as sober. “I’m never doing this again. I never realized how silly it all is. A big, silly party to impress our supposed friends. The important thing isn’t the wedding with all the ridiculous trimmings, it’s the vows. And the life that comes after, of course. It could be accomplished just as easily at a little chapel, with the people you care most about there as witnesses. And all the money that’s spent on flowers and lobster bisque could be used to fund scholarships or buy books for underfunded libraries—or give the couple a start on life. For what Muffy is paying for this wedding, I could make a down payment on a house.”

  “And what made you come to this noble
conclusion?”

  “After you take away the vows and the marriage—which I’ve had to do—you see what’s left. And without all the trite, romantic rationale brides use to wallow in their excesses, it’s easier to see that what’s left is essentially meaningless.”

  “It’s an important rite of passage,” John-Michael argued.

  “Yes. And I don’t mean to downplay the importance. I’m not against weddings per se. But a party and a white dress shouldn’t be the highlight of a woman’s life.”

  “So you don’t plan to get married?”

  “Oh, I imagine I’ll get married someday. But you can be damn sure it won’t be anything like this. I can’t wait until next Monday. I’ll explain the whole thing to Dr. Cason, and I’m sure he’ll give me medical clearance to tell Mother the truth.”

  When she looked again at John-Michael, she had tears in her eyes. “I really can’t keep up this pretense much longer. It’s so hard to pretend I’m happy.”

  “Pull over,” he said. And she did, finding a spot in a parking lot. She found a monogrammed handkerchief in her purse and dabbed at her eyes, trying not to smear her makeup.

  “I’m sorry. It seems all I’ve done lately is snivel.”

  “You’re allowed. It’s an emotional time.”

  “I wish now I had just told Mother the truth when Marvin first went missing. You were right. It’s just going to be worse now.”

  “I was right? Hold it, let me find my calendar and circle this day in red. Sonya said I was right.”

  She reached out and thumped him on the arm. “Cut it out, McPhee.” But she was smiling, he noticed, through the tears. “I mean, John-Michael. I don’t know if you noticed, but I have been trying not to be so horrible to you.”

  “I’ve noticed. And I’m still teasing you. I’ll try to be better.”

  “That’s okay. I like your teasing, most of the time. You know, when you’re in junior high, if a boy teases you, it’s a sure sign he has a crush on you.”

  He did have a crush on her, and he was on the verge of telling her so. But then he remembered the incredible stress she was under and decided to hold his tongue. Just a while longer.