A Wedding At Two Love Lane

by Kieran Kramer

  He was also a snazzy dresser himself, a lover of bow ties, tasseled loafers, fine shirts, and suits. He didn’t own a single pair of jeans.

  He hated Two Love Lane, the matchmaking agency Greer had started with her two best friends, because they’d never been able to find him his soul mate, and they’d tried three times.

  But how do you find a soul mate for a pompous ass, especially one who spoke so softly you had to come close to experience his barbs and braggadocio? Charlestonians weren’t pushovers. Even so, Two Love Lane’s most spectacular failure of a client managed to have a gaggle of friends—mainly newly arrived social climbers who didn’t know any better, and a few gold diggers—but the agency’s famous soul-mate-seeking algorithms hadn’t been able to locate anyone who was truly compatible with the man.

  Oh, and Pierre also hated Two Love Lane because early on, he’d tried to pick up all three owners—at the same time—and failed.

  Why would he want the gown? It was outrageous! He didn’t sell wedding gowns at La Di Da, he wasn’t getting married, and he was too hard-hearted to be any bride’s fairy godparent.

  “Nine hundred and fifty dollars!” Greer stood and called out. She held up her index finger, which trembled ever so slightly, and remembered to sit back down. She felt a stab of guilt. She was being rash and irresponsible. It was so unlike her. She didn’t need a wedding gown.

  She didn’t need a man, either, but she wished a handsome lover would show up and sweep her off her feet anyway. Today, especially, after officially disappointing her parents, she was in the mood to be adored, although the world would never know. Her no-nonsense air made sure of that.

  A stranger next to her leaned over. The sleeve of his gray plaid blazer was slightly rumpled, and he smelled vaguely of West Indies bay rum cologne. “I always thought I preferred the auctions with little cards you hold up,” he said, “until today.” And then he chuckled.

  She suspected it was at her expense, but she was so agitated, she didn’t care. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, her stomach in knots.

  She didn’t remove her eyes from the gown, which a young man with a bored face held aloft on a hanger. Greer willed him to have a good grip on it.

  “You’re quite entertaining,” the man in the plaid blazer said.

  In an English accent. She hadn’t noticed it at first. The wedding gown had had her full attention.

  She whipped around to face him.

  Two amused dark blue eyes looked back. Something shot through her, like a light beam through water. And then it was gone. Before she could process it, she was already cataloging him, Two Love Lane–style, the way she did every new man she met: early thirties, craggy somehow, with a sharp, sunburnt nose and a jutting, square chin covered in fashionable stubble, and too-long golden brown hair.

  Professor, hipster, permanent bachelor?

  She wasn’t sure.

  “Are you getting married?” he asked her.

  “No,” she whispered, and put her finger to her lips.

  He spluttered. Or laughed. She couldn’t tell.

  “One thousand,” Pierre said.

  This time his social-climbing friend, a young brunette in a high ponytail, held up all the necessary fingers to signify the amount. Her aqua-blue nails were like tiny daggers.

  “One thousand one hundred dollars!” Greer called.

  Pierre turned and glared at her. So did L.A. Lady.

  Greer glared back.

  The man in the plaid blazer chuckled again.

  “That’s how you do it!” Fran said. “But let’s get some more bids, people. Whoever wins the gown called Royal Bliss will own a little bit of royal history. And have good luck in love besides.” She scanned the crowd expectantly.

  Royal history! Good luck in love!

  Greer uncurled her index finger, prepared to throw it in the air again and bid higher. Funny how things happened. She hadn’t even wanted to come to the auction today. It was weird that now she was being loud and crazy and was bidding on something—without thinking. She admitted it. She wasn’t thinking. She was feeling. She always got into trouble when she did too much of that. Four years ago, she’d genuinely thought she was in love with Wesley, and then suddenly, she’d felt nothing. Not a single loving feeling for him could she conjure, and he hadn’t changed. She had. And she still didn’t know why. So she’d turned down his proposal, said no to his engagement ring, and broken his heart.

  That whole thing had scared her. And it didn’t help that everyone back in Waterloo gave her a hard time about it.

  “So, one thousand one hundred dollars is our highest bid?” Fran barked, her gavel hovering over the podium. “For this incredible gown?”

  Greer held her breath. She might win Royal Bliss!

  “Two thousand dollars,” Pierre said in his soft monotone.

  L.A. Lady elbowed him in the side and looked back at Greer.

  Greer clenched her jaw. Pierre was so annoying with his fake little voice. He couldn’t even get excited enough about winning such a spectacular gown to crank up the volume? The man would probably whisper, “Help,” if his house caught on fire.

  Wait—two thousand dollars?

  “Can he do that?” she whispered to the guy in the plaid blazer. “I mean, skip straight up to the next thousand?”

  “Of course,” he said. “It’s for charity, after all.”

  Everyone shifted in their seats.

  “Two thousand dollars,” crowed Fran, her face beaming. “What a delightful bid and a shrewd investment decision, but still on the low side. No telling how much this gown will be worth someday. Do I hear more? This is a very exciting day for the shelter!”

  What was Greer to do? She didn’t have two thousand dollars to spend on a wedding gown! Not now, at any rate. She’d just bought herself a bright red Vespa, a rug and reading chair from Pottery Barn, and an elliptical machine for her apartment. She didn’t believe in using credit, either. She chalked it up to growing up on a little farm in Wisconsin, where she actually churned butter and milked cows.

  “How could he?” she whispered to the man in the plaid blazer.

  “He’s doing you a favor,” he replied, his gaze still on Fran.

  “No, he’s not.”

  “It’s just a dress,” the man murmured.

  “It’s not just a dress. It’s special.”

  “The beads?” He mulled it over. “I’ll grant you that the story makes the dress a collector’s item for some people.”

  “That’s right,” Greer said. “At the very least, it’s an investment. You heard Ms. Banks. It will only gain in value.”

  “That’s why you want it?” His eyes narrowed. “Because it’s an investment?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really sure?”

  She nodded.

  “I think you want this dress for yourself,” he said, “and you just don’t want to admit it.”

  Bingo. How did he know she was lying?

  “It’s purely for investment reasons,” she said.

  “We all have our little quirks,” he said.

  “Not me,” Greer said. “I’m predictable. And sensible. I told you I’m not even getting married, so why would I want it for myself? Huh?”

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” the Englishman said, and without removing his gaze from hers, added, “Your foot is swinging fairly hard, you know. And your pupils are really large at the moment for such a brightly lit room.”

  She stopped her foot and felt heat rise up her neck. “It’s an investment,” she said again, and straightened in her chair. She would ignore this man in the plaid blazer from here on out.

  “Whatever you say.” He held his hands loosely knitted in his lap. She saw a flat gold signet ring on one of his fingers. “I thought you might have some compelling personal reason, or even a mad, illogical yen, to bid on the gown.”

  He said yen wit
h a lot of emphasis.

  “I don’t believe in yens,” she said.

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  It was a perfectly innocent question. But somehow it knocked her off her foundations. Maybe because he asked it so clearly. So boldly. With his gaze on hers. As if her answer mattered … really mattered.

  How silly of her to think that it did, or that he honestly cared. “Hmmph,” she said. It was one of those generic answers that covered her bases fairly well when she was flummoxed yet wanted to appear self-assured. He didn’t need to know that she had both a yen and a personal reason for bidding. That was her business.

  He leaned over. “You believe in yens,” he whispered.

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Are you sure about that?” And he winked at her.

  Of all the nerve! Dear God, people didn’t even use the word yen anymore.

  “Any more bids?” Fran asked.

  Greer stood up. “Two thousand … and one dollars.” That sounded weird to her ears, but that’s how they did it on The Price Is Right, outbidding the other person by a dollar! She’d seen it happen!

  For a moment, nobody said a word.

  Then Fran smiled brightly. “Nice try, but the rules of bidding state that bids have to be at least one hundred dollars apart once the amount reaches one thousand dollars.”

  “Fine,” said Greer, remembering too late that she could bid from a seated position. “Two thousand one hundred dollars.” She was an idiot. But she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t. She sat down again and missed. She landed on the left thigh of the man in the plaid blazer.

  “Sorry,” she said, enjoying the warmth and solidness of his leg very much without wanting to.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  But surely she imagined that. No gentleman would ever say such a thing, and she didn’t have time for bad boys. She quickly slid over to her seat and kept her eyes on Fran.

  “Five thousand,” said Pierre in such a tiny voice everyone leaned toward him.

  “There’s no way he could have said five thousand,” Greer whispered to the man in plaid.

  “He said five thousand,” he murmured.

  There were audible gasps in the room. Charlestonians loved drama. They were also appalled by garish displays of wealth—unless it was at a charity auction, and then they gave themselves permission to act like everyone else.

  Greer herself was holding on by a thread to her sense of decorum.

  “Halle-frickin’-lujah!” said Fran. “This is turning out to be quite the auction item, and we haven’t even gotten to the week in Paris at a five-star hotel or the month at a Hamptons summer cottage for ten. Is there anyone who can top five thousand dollars?”

  No one spoke.

  “All right, then,” said Fran. “Going, going.…”

  “Wait!” Greer yelled from her seat, then looked at the guy in the plaid blazer.

  “I’m not going to bid on it,” he said.

  She was desperate. “I just thought if we went in together, we could outbid him eventually,” she said at warp speed.

  He lofted a brow. “We’d get joint custody of a wedding gown?”

  “Sure.” Having it half the year was better than nothing, and way better than seeing Pierre win it.

  “I don’t live here,” the Englishman said. “I’m a visitor from London.”

  “Oh. That would make sharing hard.” She barely hesitated. “How about I’ll keep it, and in exchange I’ll give you our executive VIP soul-mate search package at Two Love Lane, my matchmaking agency? We work internationally.”

  “What makes you think I need help in the romance department?” he whispered back. His eyes twinkled merrily. “I’m not James Bond, but—”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “And why do you assume I’ve got money to burn on royal relics sewn onto a wedding gown?” He held out his hands, palms up, and looked down at his plaid blazer, which was sporty and cool but, come to think of, quite worn. His shirt wasn’t anything special, just a white oxford that had probably seen better days. He had on jeans, too, and beat-up boat shoes. “I suppose I’m flattered on that account, at least.”

  Oh, God. What if he was a missionary? Or a poor scholar researching a book no one had paid him for yet? Or was he a crew member on a yacht or a container ship tied up in Charleston harbor, and this was his only day off? He might have to go back and do the captain’s bidding, for all she knew, coiling ropes on deck or making up all the bunks.

  “I-I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Gone!” crowed Fran, and pounded her gavel on the podium. “Royal Bliss goes to the fine gentleman who bid five thousand dollars!”

  There was a squeak of joy from either Pierre or L.A. Lady.

  Greer couldn’t help stomping her right foot. Just a little. And maybe she bit the inside of her cheek, too.

  “Don’t be too down,” the man in plaid said. “There will always be other investment opportunities, won’t there?”

  “Right.” She was in no mood to be cajoled.

  “Good thing you didn’t have an honest-to-goodness yen,” he said. “Or a personal reason.”

  “Whatever,” she muttered.

  “And this is for charity, remember.” He stuck his hand in his blazer and pulled out his flip phone. She was right; how rude of her to presume a total stranger would partner with her on an investment of over five thousand dollars, especially a guy who might have bought his entire wardrobe at Goodwill, a man who carried a crummy old flip phone. He started punching in a number. “They just got themselves a cool five thousand bucks, as you Americans say.”

  She was about to say he had a point, but he abruptly stood and looked down at her.

  “By the way,” he said with a lazy half smile, “there’s another reason I wouldn’t go halfsies with you on a wedding gown.”

  “What is it?”

  “Love stinks,” he said, and squeezed past all the people to the right of her in the row.

  Whoa.

  Greer watched his back as he departed. He wasn’t the first man to tell her how he felt about love. People vented with her all the time, once they found out what business she was in. But no one had ever spoken so succinctly on the topic.

  She couldn’t help following him with her eyes as he left the hotel ballroom. It was midday. Why come to an auction unless you planned to bid? Why had he left in the middle? What kind of work was he doing here, if at all? Why had she turned to him and wanted him to bid with her, and how did he know what she was thinking?

  He turned around and caught her looking at him. Her heart jerked violently when he gave her a nod but no smile. The gesture was old-fashioned, somehow. She thought of an embattled hero about to disappear forever; she was the movie starlet who would miss him. Something fluttered in her chest, near her heart. And then he was gone, through the tall double doors leading onto the Cistern.

  She sighed. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have time to get hot and bothered over a stranger in a plaid blazer, a stranger who’d obviously had his heart broken at some point. Pierre had won the gown. Her gown.

  Royal Bliss!

  And she was missing out on Miss Thing’s birthday. She should have been there at the taping of the show. After her display at the auction, she’d fit right in with those flamboyant Price Is Right contestants who had always stressed her out. She’d been too prissy saying no to the trip. Too controlling. And look where it had gotten her: alone at an auction on the day her mother found out Greer’s old boyfriend was finally getting married. She didn’t regret her decision to break up with Wesley. But her family and friends would be bringing the touchy subject back up again and again, for the rest of her life, no doubt. They’d remind her that no one understood her reasoning.

  Well, she didn’t, either! It would have been a whole lot easier for her to marry Wesley. But she couldn’t. She still didn’t know what went wrong. And today especially, she felt lonely. Stupid, somehow. Lacking in her usual confidence.


  “Excuse me,” she said to the first person to her left in her row. She pulled her briefcase out from under her chair and then scooted past a bunch of knees, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Was life passing her by? Could a wedding gown take the place of whatever was actually missing?

  Because something was definitely missing. Not Wesley … but something else. She thought again about wishing a handsome lover would show up in her life, but it was more than just sex that she longed for. More than infatuation.

  It was love. Big love. The true, everlasting kind. She was selling it every day, wasn’t she? Hadn’t Macy found true love when she never thought for a minute that she would?

  But Greer wasn’t Macy. Greer didn’t have Cupid somewhere in her ancestry, the way Macy did. Greer had dairy farmers in her family tree, very practical, plain people whose greatest indulgence was icing on a once-a-year birthday cake, white muslin curtains trimmed in scarlet or yellow rickrack, and fresh cream from their own dairy cows on top of their oatmeal.

  Greer had thought she’d been in love, and then she’d woken up one day and the feeling had disappeared. She’d hurt Wesley terribly. Not badly enough that he didn’t fall in love again—he had. But still. According to her friends and family, he’d been moping for years, thanks to her.

  Why hadn’t she fallen in love again? Was she a robot? What was her problem? Charleston had so many interesting men in it. Sure, a few were man-boys, or had awful personalities like Pierre, but they were the exceptions to the rule.

  In the back of the ballroom, she wrote a personal check with a substantial donation to the charity.

  Pierre sidled up next to her. “Hard luck,” he said in his tiny voice. “Too bad you don’t make enough money at your sham of a business to buy whatever you want. You took enough of my money. Where’d it go?”

  “Right back in your bank account, as you well know,” she told him, and handed the check over to an elderly lady. She was wearing a hearing aid, but there was no way she’d be able to hear Pierre’s hummingbird conversation. “We have a hundred-percent refund policy for dissatisfied clients. You’re the first and only one to have taken us up on it.”

  Greer walked away from the table, and Pierre followed her.