1
“Y
OU'RE GOING to fall in love with Grant Whiting!” Kay gushed from the front seat of the car on the way to the wedding rehearsal. “He's such a dreamboat!”
Mitzi Campion gritted her teeth and smiled at Kay and Marty as if she just couldn't wait to meet this remarkable love god that Kay had talked about nonstop all afternoon. “He sounds great, Kay, really, but right now Chester is my ideal male.”
“Oh, Mitzi, you don't mean that.”
She sighed, looking forward to a week of leisure and dog-sitting. “You bet. He'll keep my feet warm while I watch videos, and look soulfully into my eyes as I pig out on salty junk food. And it's a cinch that he'll be more faithful than any of my past boyfriends have been.”
That was no joke. In the past three years she'd been involved in three relationships, all of which had ended in heartache, not to mention heartburn from the Oreo binges she'd indulged in to make herself feel better. The strange thing was, in all three cases, everything had seemed greatâthe men had been good-looking, gainfully employed and seemingly well adjusted. But all three of them had run for cover when they'd discovered that Mitzi actually wanted a future that included marriage, kids and mortgage payments. In fact, just mentioning the word
baby
had sent Mike vaulting into the arms of a Sears model, showing Mitzi the softer side of being dumped. A year later, the vaguest hint of marriage had panicked her boyfriend Jeff, so he abandoned her and galloped off with a female jockey he'd met one weekend at Belmont Park.
Finally, there was Tim. Brother Tim now.
That
was just too humiliating to think about.
Kay shook her head reprovingly, like an elementary-school principal. Which she was. “You can't meet Mr. Right watching videos with Chester.”
“I'm through looking for Mr. Right. Apparently nothing makes the urban, workaholic man more jittery than the idea of a woman with marriage on her mindâhe's terrified that she's going to have a dozen babies and then abscond with his 401K. No, I'm afraid my Mr. Right is already someone else's happily married hubby.”
“You shouldn't be so negative,” said Kay.
Easy for her to say, standing with one foot down the church aisle.
“I have to face facts,” Mitzi replied. She was nothing if not a realist, except on those occasions when she was a hopeless romantic. “I'm the Typhoid Mary of romance. Three men lost in three years. That means I'm out of the game. If a racehorse had my record, he would have been put out to pasture, or shot in the leg, or whatever they do to the ones who are surefire losers.”
Kay, who was so in love she would have been disgusting if Mitzi didn't like her so much, looked over at Marty, her future husband, and winked. “Won't they be perfect?”
Marty laughed.
Mitzi's curiosity flared. “You mean Grant Whiting is among Cupid's casualties?”
Kay turned toward the back seat and put a hand on Mitzi's shoulder. “It's so sad. He's the nicest man, but a little over a year ago his wife left him.”
Warning sirens rang out in Mitzi's head. “Okay. What's wrong with him?”
“Nothing! Janice just never appreciated Grant,” Kay said with the vehemence of someone defending an old friend. “Anyway, she met this oil sheikh, and...well, you can guess the rest.”
Boy, could she. The old dumparoo. Mitzi began to feel a grudging kinship with Mr. Dreamboat.
“The guy was a Middle East oil sheikh,” Kay elaborated. “In fact, I think he was actually a prince or something.” She shrugged. “Grant's ex-wife might be living in a tent in the desert somewhere, but she could now buy and sell several small countries before lunch and think nothing of it.”
“Thrown over for a prince.” Mitzi sighed. At least she'd never had to compete with royalty. “That would be a tough thing to get over.”
Kay patted her arm. “Janice's folly is your good fortune.”
Mitzi screwed up her lips in a patient smile. “Even if I hadn't already decided that love is a delusion, I doubt I could fall head over heels in one short week, Kay.”
“Don't be so pessimistic. Just look at Marty and me.”
Mitzi stared at her best friend, uncomprehending. In fact, even Marty looked puzzled.
“You two knew each other in college,” Mitzi pointed out. “It was thirteen years before you got around to going on a date.”
Kay nodded. “That's rightâthirteen years, and then
wham!
One day it hit me that I was completely, madly and totally in love. It just goes to show.”
Mitzi sank against the velour of the back seat, taking little comfort from her friend's example. If it took thirteen years to fall madly in love at first sight, she was in deep trouble. The only man she'd known for even close to that amount of time was Stanley the doorman at her Manhattan apartment building, and he was seventy-two and had false teeth that clicked like castanets.
Marty turned a corner downtown and pulled into a parking lot next to a large old stone church.
“How pretty,” Mitzi exclaimed. With her photographer's eye, she could imagine how the scene would look the next day, with the morning sun beaming bright and shiny through the dappled shade of the sweeping live oaks, a summer breeze blowing at Kay's flowing wedding dress. And the bridesmaids....
Mitzi frowned at the one spectacular blight on the Hallmark-card scene, trying to block the memory of that afternoon's dress fitting from her mind. Tomorrow was Kay's day, she reminded herself. A bride was entitled to make her nearest and dearest friends wear whatever hideously ugly bridesmaid gowns her heart desired.
“Look!” Kay exclaimed, pointing and waving at someone in the parking lot. “There he is! Oh, good. I was worried he wouldn't get here on time.”
“Grant practically lives at that store of his,” Marty explained.
A workaholic type, Mitzi thought immediately. That didn't bode well. All the men she'd gone out with before were workaholics. She, on the other hand, worked hard at her advertising job but didn't want to make it her entire life. It wasn't as if she could be considered a shooting star of Madison Avenue anyway. So far as a junior ad exec, she'd developed one winning campaign...for canned ham. It wasn't the kind of success that made careers soar. Besides, what she really wanted to be was a professional photographer, but sometimes that seemed as much of a pipe dream as her desire to have a perfect loving husband and her American dream allotment of 2.5 kids.
Still perched forward, looking at the view, she realized her mouth was hanging open in astonishment. Her appreciation wasn't so much for the view of the church anymore as the
dreamboat
just in front of her.
Leaning against a white truck that was practically the size of a semi stood a grade-A Adonis. His casual stance emphasized his impressive height and broad shoulders, his short hair was a mass of sandy curls and his skin was tanned to an Olympian bronze. He had the kind of chiseled jaw and white even teeth that advertisers dream about, and as he saw the bride and groom, his dazzling blue eyes lit up in recognition. Mitzi felt her breath catch, and turned a reproachful glance toward Kay.
“This is a man you refer to as nice? Maybe knowing someone for a decade gives you a different perspective...”
Kay laughed. “Okay, he's gorgeous. Just rememberâhe's our best friend in the world...and he's completely available.”
Mitzi looked back at Mr. Available and actually felt her heart flutter, which hadn't happened in months. Though her heart palpitations did have a rusty creak to them.
Kay and Marty got out and shouted greetings to Grant. Through the car window, Mitzi saw Kay point toward where she was still hovering in the back seat. Grant turned, making eye contact with her. Having all that prime masculinity aimed in her direction caused her heart to do a few more unusual gyrations.
Kay and Marty trotted away in the direction of Kay's mom, leaving Grant with nothing to do but step forward to where Mitzi sat paralyzed with nerves, her hand frozen on the door handle. His walk was sheer male grace, and just the act of opening the car door for her seemed powerful when he performed it.
Maybe the next week would be as pleasurable as Kay had promised...
Suddenly, the realist in her was being badly outraced by the romantic.
Grant stood before her. There was something insouciant about the way his mouth turned up at one corner.
Hmm... Actually, now that she was trapped in its glare, that smile seemed almost a sneer.
He looked her up and down with blue eyes that were almost sharklike in their lack of expression. “Aren't you ever going to get out of the car?”
Mitzi jumped. She didn't know what she had been waiting forâmaybe for Grant to say hello, or help her out? Call her old-fashioned, but when Kay had described him as “nice,” Mitzi had expected manners to come along with the package.
Realism started creeping back up on her. Grabbing her handbag that went beyond oversizeâit usually carried her entire life, including a camera and a few rolls of filmâshe hauled herself out of the car, wishing now that she had on something simpler than her long black gauzy skirt and a white sheer shirt. The charm bracelet she always wore, which had belonged to her grandmother, clinked noisily as she unfolded her long limbs and pushed off the seat. Next to Grant, who was so self-possessed-looking in his khakis and conservative button-down shirt, she felt fluttery and fussy.
As she stepped out of the car, her new slick-bottomed sandals slipped against the hard pavement, nearly sending her flying. Before she could fall, she grabbed hold of Grant's arm. His rock-hard arm. The man obviously had a close personal relationship with a Nautilus machine.
Grant pulled her away from the car, let go of her and shut the car door firmly. Then he turned back, arms crossed, and gave her another long up-and-down stare. “So you're Mitzi.”
So you're the bubonic plague,
Mitzi interpreted. She tensed, not quite understanding why he was addressing her that way. Then suddenly it dawned on her. “Let me guess. You were expecting Mitzi Gaynor?”
He scratched his chiseled jaw. “Well...yeah.”
It never failedâthe curse her musicals-loving mother had bestowed on her! Inevitably, people expected a Mitzi to be short and blond and perky, a regular Nurse Nellie Forbush. Perhaps a tap-dancing cutie was what her mother had envisioned, but instead, Mitzi had grown, and grown, to five feet ten, and her body had nowhere near the grace of her nimble namesake.
“Okay, so I'm not a perky movie star. Should that rule me out as maid of honor?”
The gaze he leveled at her was about as mirthful as a peptic ulcer. “Let's just get this over with.” He turned and strode toward the church, leaving Mitzi to trail in his wake, astonished.
She had never seen someone react so rudely to her appearance, which, for all her defects, wasn't that terrible! She had even been called a rare willowy beauty once, although, granted, that boyfriend was now ringing prayer bells in a monastery.
Still, Grant's reaction seemed extreme. This was the dreamboat Kay couldn't stop talking about? He seemed more like a battle cruiser, with all guns aimed at her.
Kay's phrase buzzed through her mind.
“Just rememberâhe's our best friend in the world. ”
Had she missed something? Maybe there were extenuating circumstances that momentarily caused Grant Whiting to lose his devastating charm. Maybe he disliked wedding rehearsals, or parking lots. Or her.
Kay bounded out of the church and beckoned them forward, alerting Mitzi to the fact that she and Grant were the last stragglers. The bride-to-be tossed her short blond curls and grinned. “You two need to stop flirting and get with the programâremember, you're the stars of the whole production.”
Grant, with a perfectly affable smile on his face, held the church door open for Kay. “I thought that privilege belonged to you and Marty.”
He didn't correct her about the flirting business, Mitzi noticed.
Kay laughed. “That's tomorrow. Tonight, you and Mitzi have to stand in for us.”
He turned and bestowed on Mitzi a look that could only be called sour. Couldn't Kay see it? Mitzi glanced at Kay and saw that, no, the woman was still smiling up at Grant as if he were an overgrown Boy Scout.
“More superstitious wedding nonsense,” he said with a sigh.
Kay giggled and shooed him inside. “You'd be superstitious, too, if you were about to march down an aisle in front of two hundred people on heels high enough to bungee-jump off of.”
Grant turned to Mitzi, shrugging helplessly. “I guess ours is not to reason why, Mitz.”
Mitz?
Was he kidding? She watched in awe as Grant, Mr. Charming himself, tweaked Kay's bangs playfully and, handing over control of the door to the bride, ducked past her and disappeared inside.