Two-Penny Wedding

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Heather bent to check the side seams against the width of Hillary’s midriff. “It doesn’t look too small to me. Maybe it hasn’t been altered to Gentry’s measurements.”

  In the mirror, Hillary caught a glimpse of movement and checked to see if Gen was paying attention. She wasn’t. But something was stirring the air. Hillary felt a tightness across her chest. She felt lightheaded and breathless and excited and scared. This was bad luck. She just knew it. “I don’t think—”

  “I think it will fit,” Sydney concluded, nodding her satisfaction. “Take off your clothes and let’s give it a try.”

  “This isn’t a good…” Hillary couldn’t finish the thought. She couldn’t stop staring at herself in the mirror. She was only pressing the ivory gown against her body, but in the mirror, she was in it. The cool touch of the satin was all around her, as if she actually was wearing the dress. She closed her eyes, shutting off the illusion, but when she opened them again, the reflection hadn’t changed. She was there, in the dress. Not Sydney or Heather, who were still in the room. Just her…and a shadowy image on her right. A shadow that took a shape and form she knew. As he came more clearly into focus, Hillary wanted to scream at him to get out of her fantasy. He didn’t belong here. Not with her.

  She felt the blood draining from her face when he winked at her and she let go of the dress, as if she’d burned her hands on the delicate lace. This was wrong. Something had gone wrong.

  “Hil?” Sydney’s concern reached through Hillary’s frantic thoughts and calmed her. “You look like you saw a ghost in the mirror instead of Prince Charming. Are you all right?”

  She glanced at the mirror and saw Gentry look up. Their gazes met and Hillary pulled herself together.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and gave a hollow laugh to confirm it. “I just felt dizzy for a moment. I should probably go outside and get some fresh air. Maybe go for a swim.”

  Heather put her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you going to try on the wedding gown? We have to convince Gentry it’s magic, you know. Otherwise, she’s never going to believe.”

  Hillary bent toward the mirror and smoothed her eyebrows with a fingertip. “I’m tired of pretending,” she said. “There’s no such thing as a magic wedding dress. Why would anyone believe they could see their future in a mirror, anyway? Gentry’s right. It’s all nonsense.” Then, before Sydney’s skeptical gaze could probe deeply enough to reveal her secret, she walked into the bedroom and straight to the door. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be at the pool.”

  Stepping into the hallway, Hillary closed the door behind her and leaned her forehead against it until she could get her bearings. It was nonsense, she thought. The dress was beautiful, but it wasn’t magic. It couldn’t be.

  Because under no circumstances was Sonny Harris a part of her future.

  Chapter Nine

  “What’s this about you leaving today?” Charlie pulled a chair from the table and sat down heavily. He eyed Jake with a purposeful gaze. “I invited you to stay the week.”

  Two years ago, Jake would have shifted uncomfortably under that look, but today he didn’t have the energy. “It’s time for me to go,” he said. “I don’t belong here. Not now.”

  “She tell you to go?”

  There was no need to ask which “she” he was referring to. Gentry was the link between them, their love for her the only reason they knew the other existed. Jake smiled. “No. She doesn’t know what she wants. But it isn’t me.”

  “She’s always been a stubborn little thing. I can remember when she was three, going on twenty-one. She’d put her hands on her hips and stick out her chin and there was no budging her. She might never know what she wanted or what she was going to do next, but I’ll be damned if she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of what she wasn’t going to do…and that was whatever I had my mind set on her doing.” Charlie smiled and surveyed the Stetson-shaped pool. “Frannie says she’s just like me, but I don’t see it. I always had the sense to know what I ought to do, even if I didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe she believes this is what she ought to do,” Jake offered, although he didn’t truly believe it.

  “I kinda hoped you’d be able to change her mind.”

  “Now, why would I want to do that, Charlie? She’s hell to live with. Demanding, intractable, spoiled.” Passionate, exciting, intense.

  “She’s a handful, all right. And I don’t deny she’s spoiled, but damn, son, have you ever seen anything else like her?”

  That won Jake’s reluctant smile. “No, sir. I never have.”

  “So you’ll stay the week, then.” Charlie said it as if one statement logically followed the other. “Good, Frannie will be pleased.”

  It was no wonder Gentry had turned out so stubborn, Jake thought. Charlie was like a bulldozer, and it would take a good-size rock to slow him down. “I don’t know how Frannie has lived with the two of you all these years,” Jake said. “She must have the patience of Job.”

  “Frannie?” Charlie laughed. “That woman is hell on wheels. She’s made me toe the line for thirty-some years, and this may surprise you, Jake, but that’s not an easy thing to do.” He ran his hand across the top of his head and through his silvering hair. “I’m not saying we didn’t have problems. Still do. Big ones, too. We’re both opinionated and mule-headed, but we get through them, somehow. Maybe because neither one of us has any place to run to.”

  The message wasn’t lost on Jake, and he pensively stroked a thumb along the line of his jaw. “You think I should have come after her.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I sent a fish to do a man’s job,” he said, half to himself, regretting the fear that had prompted that flippant attempt at apology. “I thought she needed some time, a little space to think. I thought she’d be back in a week.”

  “Not my daughter. She doesn’t like to admit she made a mistake, and when you didn’t come after her, Jake, she decided you had been the mistake.”

  “I was. She didn’t belong at the lodge and we both knew it.”

  “She doesn’t belong with the Can King, either. I know that and so do you.”

  “No, I don’t,” Jake denied. “They seem to be a perfect fit. I think they’ll be very happy together.”

  “Time will tell, I suppose.” Charlie stood, still a mountain of a man with a soft spot as big as the Rockies for the people he loved. “If you’re still of a mind to leave, Jake, then so be it. You’re welcome any time you want to come back, though. In case I never told you, I was mad as hell when you ruined the last wedding by skipping out with my daughter. But I got over it. Like Frannie said, it was only a wedding.”

  Jake wasn’t sure what that meant, but he nodded as if he understood. “I’ll be up to say goodbye before I leave.”

  Charlie turned toward the house, then stopped. He fished in his pocket and tossed something onto the table. It struck the glass top with a ping, and Jake cupped his hand over the object to keep it from bouncing off the table. “I found that by the pool,” Charlie said. “Thought you might know where it belongs.”

  Jake watched him walk around the hat brim and up the steps to the terrace, waiting until Charlie was out of sight before lifting his hand. He stared at the tiny button a long time before he picked it up between his thumb and forefinger. It nestled there like a perfect pearl, ivoried with age, a bubble of an opening for the thread to pass through, imperfectly shaped, but lovingly made. As he stared at it, the button caught a ray of afternoon sun and reflected it in a startling twinkle that struck him right between the eyes.

  With a blink, he closed his hand around it. Charlie was right. Jake knew exactly where this belonged.

  AS THE BEDROOM DOOR closed behind Hillary, Gentry sat up and exchanged a puzzled gaze with Sydney, who lifted her shoulder in a don’t-ask-me shrug, although it was clear she was concerned, too.

  “She must have a headache.” Heather slipped the wedding gown back on its hanger and began to refasten the back buttons. “Y
ou know how she lets little things bother her.”

  Little things, yes, Gentry thought. But trying on a dress? And she hadn’t seemed bothered before she stepped inside the dressing room.

  “Do you remember the time Hillary was so undecided about what to wear to our first official juniorhigh-school dance, and so we took every stitch of clothing you owned, Gentry?”

  “I remember that,” Heather said with a laugh. “I wore Gen’s new red-checked jumper and tore it on the bleachers. You three patched the material with about two rolls of duct tape and I spent the rest of the dance with my butt stuck to a chair. What did you wear, Syd?”

  “I don’t remember, but it was one of Gentry’s best outfits, I’m sure. Hillary wore the taffeta dress you’d intended to wear yourself, Gen.”

  Gentry nodded. “I had to wear my mother’s cocktail dress with forty dozen safety pins to make it fit. And, Syd, the first thing you said when you saw me was that I’d be a sure winner on ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’ I never intended to speak to any of you again.”

  “But you had to,” Heather said. “Because Brian Mahoney kissed you in the boys’ locker room and you couldn’t not tell your best friends about that.”

  The memory shifted focus, and Gentry shared it with Sydney in a perceptive glance. “I wish one of you had told me Hillary was hoping Brian Mahoney would notice her at that dance.”

  “She always said it served us right to be dressed to the teeth in your clothes, while you showed up in your mother’s tacky brocade and got kissed by the cutest boy in the seventh grade…and she couldn’t even get mad at you over it because it had been her idea to take all of your clothes.”

  “We used to have so much fun together.” Heather sighed, missing the undercurrent of the reminiscence in her own state of bliss. “I think I’ll change clothes and join Hillary at the pool. Anyone else want to go?”

  Gentry shook her head, not in the mood for either sun or fun.

  “I’m in,” Sydney said, absently turning to take the wedding gown from Heather so she could change.

  As Heather headed into the closet, she glanced over her shoulder. “What do you think about the teddy, Gen? Can I borrow it?”

  “Of course,” Sydney answered. “Seduction outfits don’t transition well from one marriage to the next. If she’s planning to wear that for Sonny, she might as well issue Jake an invitation to join them in bed.”

  “What a scary thought that is,” Gentry said. Just the combination of “Jake” and “bed” brought exciting, erotic images flowing through her mind with unsettling speed. Memory was such a traitor, tossing out the arguments and anger she ought to recall and filling her thoughts and senses with the passion, the laughter, the love. “Keep the teddy, Heather,” she said quickly. “I don’t want it.”

  “Thanks.” Heather vanished into the dressing room and returned a minute later. “What about these?” From her outstretched hand dangled three more teddies, one black, one white, one a lipstick print.

  Gentry caught Sydney’s raised brow and dipped her chin in chagrin. “Keep those, too.”

  “Thanks.” Heather vanished again, her pleasure in the gift drifting back in a soft, delighted giggle.

  Sydney smoothed the folds of the million-dollar dress and laid the train over a second hanger. “Being married to a man with wild and rugged sexuality must have been a real burden to you, Gentry,” she teased. “I don’t know how you managed it.”

  She didn’t know how she had managed without it. “I’ll finish buttoning that if you want to go on and keep Hillary company.”

  “I wouldn’t touch this dress if I were you,” Sydney warned. “It’s dangerous. It twinkles. It turns innocent virgins into killer vamps.”

  “Not to worry, Syd. I’m wearing my gold cross. No magic can hurt me.”

  “I hope Hil was as lucky.” Shrugging, she turned away from the dress. “Heather? I’m going to my room to change. See you downstairs in a few minutes.”

  “Okay,” Heather sang out. “Be there or be square.”

  Sydney rolled her eyes. “I think all this romantic stuff is giving me a headache.”

  “What you need, Syd, is a romance of your own.”

  “Bite your tongue, woman. If my life should suddenly become incomplete without a man in it, I’ll get a dog and name it Mr. Right.”

  “Wish I’d thought of that,” Gentry said as she took over Sydney’s place and began buttoning the back of the wedding gown.

  Her fingers paused midway to the neckline when Heather traipsed past, the teddies looped over her arm in a black, white and red-ribboned stream. “See you later,” she called. “Thanks again for the stuff.”

  Then, finally, the door closed behind her and Gentry was alone. She stopped fussing with the buttons and stepped back to stare thoughtfully at the two wedding dresses hanging side by side on the dressing-room wall.

  The skylight in the ceiling provided a steady stream of sunlight and the sequins caught every nuance of it, bouncing flashy rainbows off the ceilings, walls and mirror. Next to it, the old wedding gown hung in rich folds of ivory, absorbing the sunlight, enfolding it, guarding it, like a secret held in reverent and respectful silence.

  Gentry touched a lace sleeve to assure herself it was just a dress. There was nothing magical about it. If the truth were known, Pop had probably found this costume at the studio and decided to have a little fun with it…at her expense.

  Heather’s account of a twinkling dress was easy enough to discount. Her imagination was always full of romantic fantasy, anyway. But Gentry had watched Hillary in the mirror as the gown was draped around her. She’d seen her eyes widen and then narrow in confusion, as if she really had seen a ghost, as if something actually had startled her.

  It could be a setup, of course. Sydney and Hillary weren’t above going to extremes to carry out a prank, and Gentry admitted she was overdue for a payback, even counting last night’s escapade at the country club. She could imagine them coming up with this magic-dress scheme and carrying it out, possibly even under Pop’s direction. Except that Hillary hadn’t looked as if she were acting a part. Even if she were, why hadn’t she done the obvious and insisted she had seen a man’s reflection?

  Dropping the sleeve, Gentry fluffed the skirt and watched the light ripple through the satin like a thread of gold. There was something mesmerizing about this dress, and there was no point in denying to herself that she was as fascinated by it as everyone else.

  Lifting the hanger, she turned the dress face front and looked at it from another angle. Something about it beckoned her…probably nothing more than a normal curiosity. Pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, she decided there was only one way to satisfy that curiosity. She was alone. No one would know. And afterward, the dress would lose whatever strange attraction it held for her.

  In a matter of minutes, she’d stripped off her shorts and shirt and pulled the dress over her head. It fell around her with a sleek rustle, and the lace sleeves slipped easily over her arms, a perfect fit. The dress all but buttoned itself, her fingers barely touching each button before it was tucked in its corresponding loop. She finished the left sleeve and was working on the right when she noticed that one of the buttons was missing. The last one at the wrist.

  Gentry wished she’d checked the gown herself instead of being so careless. Either Heather had missed sewing one back on, or it hadn’t been in the jewelry pouch with the others. Odd that Heather wouldn’t have mentioned it, but then, she had Mitch on her mind, so maybe it wasn’t odd at all. Gentry wondered if the button might still be around the pool. Chances were, though, it was gone for good.

  She reached behind her for the headpiece and checked the mirror to center it on her hair. Then she waited, watching the mirror for a twinkle. But her reflection remained uncluttered and unaccompanied. Only a bride with bright red hair and bright green eyes and the bright idea that she would give this magic dress every opportunity to prove itself.

  Giving the skirt a gentle twist,
she admired herself in the mirror, feeling a little like a child playing dressup. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” she said aloud. “Stop fooling around and twinkle, would you?”

  Just as she’d expected, nothing happened.

  “Okay, magic wedding dress, you had your chance and blew it.” Playfully, she stuck out her tongue before she whipped off the headpiece and tossed it behind her. Then she crooked her arms behind her back and reached for the buttons. One sleeve caught somehow in the lace and she frowned. Tugging slightly, she tried to pull it free. When that didn’t work, she tried to reach her left wrist with her right hand. But no matter how she twisted and turned and stretched, the fingers of one hand barely touched the others.

  It was quickly apparent she wasn’t going to get out of the dress without assistance. If she didn’t know better, she’d expect Sydney to come around the corner and snap her picture. But as much as she might wish this wasn’t her own fault, Gentry knew the responsibility was her own. And she’d just have to buck up and bear the teasing….

  With a disgusted sigh, she moved close to the mirror and pressed her shoulder against it, trying to get a better look at the snag. From the corner of her eye, she caught a movement and her breath stuck in her throat as Jake’s image became clear and certain behind her. Holy cow, it was magic! was the first thought she had, followed closely by a second—Could Jake’s reflection get her unsnagged?

  His smile was the one that had stopped her heart the first minute she saw it…and every minute after that, including this one. “Hello,” she whispered, hoping the sound of her voice wouldn’t shatter the illusion.

  It didn’t. His expression clouded with a faint surprise. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk. “Is it okay to speak to you?” she asked, barely breathing the words aloud.

  The surprise changed to a question, but he nodded.

  So far, so good. She kept her eyes fixed on his in the mirror and tried to look reassuring. “Are you allowed to make contact?”