by Pat Ballard
Pulling the poster out of the closet made Hanna feel like a teenager again. Her heart pounded faster, just gazing at Matt’s beautiful smile. He had been her idol. Her dream man.
In the poster he had on the tight jeans and black leather jacket that was his trademark. His dark hair was slicked back off his face, but hung to his shoulders. The guitar strap was drooped loosely around his neck and the guitar hung seductively between his legs as he stood with feet apart and hands in the air, as if he had just finished a perfect performance.
And his performances had been perfect. But then he started to quietly fade from the public’s eye, and gradually disappeared as so many of the great performers do.
She had mourned his slow disappearance almost as one would mourn a lost lover. She had acquired any and all information about him that was available to the public. She knew his likes and dislikes. His favorite colors. His favorite foods. She could have answered any trivia question about him that anyone could have possibly asked.
She wondered if he’d changed much in the last 15 years. Did he still wear black jeans and a black leather jacket? Did he still have that smooth, sexy voice?
She was so lost in her memories that she didn’t hear Will calling her name until he was almost to her room. Hurriedly, she stood the poster back inside her closet and barely had the door closed when Will burst into her room.
“He’s going to do it! He’s curious as to why he can’t see you until after the wedding, but Carl and I talked to him until he agreed to go through with it!”
“Will, I’m curious about that, too,” Hanna interrupted him.
“What?” He looked puzzled.
“Why can’t my prospective husband see me? Why did you come up with that stipulation?”
“Well—uh—I just thought—”
Will’s stumbling over an excuse irritated Hanna, because she knew full well the reason he’d come up with that stipulation. He was afraid if Matt Corbett knew she was fat, he wouldn’t agree to the wedding.
“Forget it, Will. Just go. I have things to do.” She shooed him from her room.
After closing and locking the door behind Will, Hanna went back to the closet. She found her favorite Matt Corbett CD and stuck it into the CD player. Remembered schoolgirl emotions swept over her as his voice started crooning her favorite love song. It was one of his slower songs, which allowed the quality of his voice to come through.
She took the poster out and stood it against the wall. Suddenly Matt’s eyes seemed to lock with hers, and panic washed over her. She was going to marry Matt Corbett! She was going to marry the only man she had ever had a crush on! And she was scared!
She sank slowly to the floor in front of the poster and gazed up at it. Her chest felt as if her heart would tear its way through her ribcage. Her palms started to bead up with moisture.
What was she going to do? What if she went through with this wedding and he found her repulsive? In her fantasies, he had always been the one who had loved her unconditionally. He had loved her just the way she was, and had never wanted her to starve herself and lose weight. Now that fantasy was going to be blown.
She couldn’t let that happen. She would just stick with her initial plan. She would go through with the wedding, and then she would disappear until the will was settled. Then she would get a divorce. She would arrange it to where Matt Corbett would never see her, except on their wedding day. That way, she would never have to see the disappointment in his eyes when he realized what she looked like.
With that decision made, Hanna could feel herself start to calm down. She stood the poster in the closet, but left it where she could see it when the door was open. She could dream, even if nothing would ever come of those dreams.
Sunday morning when Hanna came down for breakfast, her mother already had the Sunday paper spread out on the dining room table. Good, Hanna thought. Maybe if her mother was reading, she wouldn’t start babbling about Matt Corbett like she had done continually since Will had announced that Matt had, indeed, agreed to the wedding contract.
Hanna had her usual cup of coffee and bagel, and was contentedly nibbling the raisins off the bagel when she heard her mother’s sharply in-drawn breath.
“Oh—my—word!” She screeched, half rising from her chair.
“Mother, what is it?” Hanna asked, giving her mother her complete attention for a change.
But all her mother could do was point at the paper.
In exasperation, Hanna got up and went to read what her mother was pointing at. There on the front of the “Living” section of the paper was a large picture of Hanna, with a headline reading Rockwell Heiress Finally Sets the Date.
Hanna stared open-mouthed at the photo. It was a recent picture that had been taken one day when she had gone to the park for a brief getaway from Rockwell Place. One of the local TV crews was out filming “first signs of spring,” as they called it. She had been standing beside a huge old oak tree, watching the squirrels, when a young photographer had walked up to her and asked if he could take her picture. She had agreed, but had asked him not to put it on TV.
She’d had on a cream-colored chiffon dress that reached to her ankles, and the wind had it plastered against her body. Her hair had been whipped into a mass of reddish golden curls that seemed to be everywhere at once. Hanna smiled to herself. The young photographer was really good. He’d made her look like a sex goddess from some other century.
“I’ll sue that stupid paper. Look what they’ve done to you! They’ve made you look like some wanton floozy! I’m calling them right now!”
“No, Mother. You aren’t going to call or to sue.” Determination sounded in Hanna’s every word. Seldom did she stand up to her mother, but when she did, she usually got results.
“But why? We didn’t give them permission to print this. They can’t print something like this without asking us first.” Frustration sounded in every word.
“Who have you told about the wedding?”
“Well—I—uh—well—a lot of people,” her mother stuttered.
“I know. I’ve heard you on the phone constantly talking about it,” Hanna said, accusingly.
“But I have to make plans. I can’t plan a wedding without talking about it.”
“Did you speak with Mrs. Tolbert?”
“Yes,” her mother said. “I asked her to tell the bridge club I wouldn’t be there for a few weeks. I would be busy with the wedding.”
“And did she ask about photos for the paper?” Hanna persisted.
“Yes, she asked if I had any pictures of you. I told her I didn’t have any good ones.” Her mother didn’t even consider how her statement might make Hanna feel.
“And? What did she say?”
“Hmmmmm. Oh, she asked if I did have a good picture, would I agree to let the paper run an article about the wedding. I told her I would, and she asked a few more questions, and that was all of the conversation.”
“Well, Mother, that was how the picture got into the paper. Tom, the photographer who took the picture, is Mrs. Tolbert’s son. He does freelance photography for the paper and TV stations.”
“But still, I didn’t give them permission.”
“Forget it, Mother. It’s my picture. If anyone has a right to have a problem it should be me, and I don’t have a problem with it.”
“But it makes you look so—so—”
“Fat?” Hanna filled in the word she knew her mother was trying so hard not to say.
“Well, I didn’t say that!”
“No, but you wanted to,” Hanna said, and, taking her bagel and coffee, escaped to the balcony.
Matt Corbett perched on a stool in front of the counter at the little coffee shop two blocks from the motel where Will Rockwell had paid his expenses until the wedding. He ordered coffee and a sweet roll from the waitress, who kept flirting with him every chance she got.
He wasn’t totally broke, but his assets were frozen until he could get this IRS fiasco straightened out
. So Will had also given him a food allowance until the wedding. He didn’t like Will Rockwell much. He couldn’t figure out the guy’s motives. Why was he in such a hurry to get his sister married off, and why couldn’t Matt see his future wife? He had an occasional nightmare of lifting the veil to kiss his new bride and finding a snake’s head in place of a woman’s.
He couldn’t believe what a mess his life had gotten into. How in the hell had he, Matt Corbett, come to the point in his life that he was having to depend on a rich playboy to support him until he could say “I do” to the playboy’s mysterious sister?
He probably could have gotten out of the contract he’d signed when he was dog drunk, but the next day at the lawyer’s office Will and the lawyer had been so persuasive, he’d decided to give it a shot. After all, what did he have to lose? His career was sure shot to hell. His band had long since broken up and each member had found another gig to pull. And now that the government had confiscated all his possessions, he had absolutely nothing. He should be thankful that something like this Rockwell situation had come along when it did. Where would he be without it? On the streets, probably. Of course, the IRS didn’t give a damn about that as long as they got theirs.
But the mysterious bride-to-be bothered him a lot. Would he be expected to perform sexually? Just like a real husband? There had been nothing in the contract about that.
Weary from trying to figure it all out, Matt reached for the Sunday paper someone had left lying on the counter. The “Living” section was on top. As he pulled the paper toward him he was captivated by a picture of a gorgeous woman that covered most of the page. Whoever had taken the photograph was good. They’d captured the golden highlights in her light red hair. They’d captured the creamy complexion and those big green eyes.
Matt’s eyes traveled down her body. The wind had pressed her dress against her, outlining her large breasts and full hips. It even revealed the V between her legs. Now here was a woman! She almost looked like a goddess from a long-lost island. One that he would like to be stranded on, if she was there, he mused with a lopsided grin.
At 36, Matt had reached a place in his life where he was secure enough in his manhood that he wasn’t afraid anymore to admit he liked women with a little meat on their bones. He had spent years trying to make himself feel attracted to the skinny women that were splashed everywhere he looked, but he finally realized he just wasn’t attracted to that type of woman. He knew a lot of men who were, or who said they were, and to each his own, but he had “come out.”
He was no longer a closet lover of big beautiful women. He loved them right out in the open, and it felt so good. He had been amazed when some of his friends gladly agreed with him when he stated his preference for larger women. It was almost like they had been afraid to be the first to admit they felt the same way.
But why couldn’t he have met someone like this gorgeous babe before he agreed to marry “the monster lady,” as he had taken to calling her in his mind? Did the paper give her name? Maybe he’d call her if she weren’t married. If this goddess was available, he might have to call off this farce of a marriage.
Then his eyes fell on the headline, Rockwell Heiress Finally Sets the Date. Realization didn’t sink in when he first read the words. So what’s her name, he wondered, looking for the article that went with the picture. Then it hit him.
“Rockwell?” He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud. Could this be?
Frantically, he searched for the article.
Hanna Rockwell, heiress to the Rockwell Place estate, has set her wedding date. According to sources, unless Hanna marries by her 30th birthday, she and her family lose the entire estate. The wedding will take place on June 17.
So that’s it! Suddenly, the mystery cleared up. Brother Will had to find his sister a husband or the family would lose their estate.
But why wasn’t Matt allowed to see her? That didn’t make any sense. And why couldn’t a woman who looked like that picture find a husband on her own? Why did her brother have to get a total stranger to sign a contract to marry her sight unseen? Was there something else wrong with her? Something that didn’t show up in this picture? Was she mentally unstable? Solving the mystery of finding out how she looked just seemed to add more questions for him.
But looking again at the picture in front of him, suddenly Matt didn’t care. She was beautiful! He laughed out loud as he picked up the paper, stuck it under his arm and left the coffee shop.
Life had suddenly taken on a whole new meaning.
Chapter 2
Hanna watched as the sun slowly started to stream in through the sheer curtains, causing bright highlights to dance across the room where she had spent her childhood. She had always loved waking up in this room each morning. Even on cloudy days, the room was bright and cheery.
She had spent a restless, sleepless night, just waiting, dreading for the sun to rise. It was June 17. Her 30th birthday. Her wedding day.
She faced the day with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was glad all the preparations were finally over. Her mother had driven her to distraction with the continuous search for the “perfect” wedding gown, the “perfect” decorations, and the “perfect” guest list. In actuality, this was her mother’s wedding. Only Hanna would be the bride, and not her mother.
So for that reason, Hanna had taken little interest in the preparations. And this had frustrated her mother beyond reason. But why should Hanna care? This wasn’t a real wedding. She knew she would probably never have a real wedding. So why should she worry about all the to-do over nothing?
She was just a tool in her mother’s quest to make an impression on her high-society snobbish friends. Hanna had contemplated walking down the isle nude, just to spite her mother.
Hanna dreaded the day and what it held because it would end life, as she knew it, for a while. She glanced at the closet, thinking about the packed luggage tucked in the far end, out of sight. She mentally went over each item again, just to make sure she had packed everything.
As soon as the ceremony was over and she came back to her room to change, she would call a cab and then go down the fire escape outside her window, heading for Grandfather’s hunting cabin, tucked away in the woods of East Tennessee. She had been there with him on many occasions, and knew the cabin was stocked with enough supplies to last her for a good while.
And besides that, a small town was within easy driving from the cabin. Hanna could go for supplies any time she needed something.
She would leave a note to her mother, letting her know she was going away for a while, so she wouldn’t worry. But Hanna wasn’t telling anyone where she was going. Once she got settled in, she would call the family lawyer, Houston Couch, and give him her cell phone number so he could keep her informed about the settling of the will. She knew she could persuade Houston to keep her location a secret from her mother and Will. Houston had known Grandfather well, and knew the family situation. She could count on him to hastily settle the will, then just as hastily proceed with the divorce arrangements.
Hanna’s mind drifted to the poster of Matt Corbett that still stood inside her closet. Every time she thought of him, her heart beat faster. Would he still look like he did when he’d been a rock star? She knew he was six years older than her, so he would be 36, now. Was his hair turning gray? Maybe he had changed so much he wouldn’t even look like the same person that she’d had such a crush on as a teenager.
What would he think of her? She had to admit, her mother had picked the most perfect wedding dress of all the ones Hanna had tried on. A princess-style design, it fit her body snugly and enhanced her hourglass figure. The bodice dipped just low enough to show a modest amount of cleavage. The hemline ended just above the floor, and a long flowing train trailed behind. The veil was thin and almost transparent, and gave Hanna a mysterious appeal. She never admitted it to her mother, but Hanna felt exquisite in the dress. But after all, all brides were beautiful. At least that’s what she’d always
heard.
The morning passed quickly, and much too soon Hanna stood in front of the floor length mirror in the dressing room of the church. As the bridesmaids ooh’ed and aah’ed over her, she gazed at her reflection. She did look beautiful, she admitted to herself. Her eyes sparkled with the excitement of the moment, and to anyone who didn’t know, she looked like a real bride, about to face the man she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
Suddenly, she wished Grandfather could be here to see her and give her away at her wedding, even if it wasn’t a real wedding. But, of course, if Grandfather were here, there wouldn’t be a wedding.
Grandfather had been more like a father to her than a grandfather. Hanna’s father had been killed in a one-car accident when she was two years old, and she couldn’t remember him at all. Having Grandfather around all her life had made it easier to cope with not having a father.
The nervous shuffling of the women in the room with her brought Hanna out of her reverie, and she realized the music had started. It was time.
Her mother came hurrying into the room to make a last-minute check on her project. She inspected Hanna carefully.
“Hanna,” she started hesitantly, looking deeply into Hanna’s eyes. “I realize what you’re doing is a great sacrifice, and I just want you to know that I appreciate it. You’re my daughter and I love you. You look beautiful today.”
A compliment from Mary Rockwell was a rare thing. Surprised at her mother’s unusual show of sincerity and affection, Hanna smiled at her and lightly kissed her cheek.
“Thanks for that, Mama.” She briefly wondered how much better their relationship would have been down through the years if her mother had shown this side of her nature more often.