Two Nights with His Bride (14 page)

“Thank you,
Aaron.” For once, her old name didn’t grate on her. For once it didn’t remind her of going to bed hungry and freezing.
Stubborn…always decided your own course and used your own resources to get yourself there.

Maybe she’d been tired of doing everything for herself. Maybe she’d felt relieved at finding someone who could take care of her for once.

Maybe she was about to barter away all her independence
for the sake of some comfort.

She put her hand in Aaron’s but paused with her foot on the step. Leaning close so no one but her dad might overhear, she whispered, “Is Wyatt okay?”

He nodded. “He’s in the stables. Helped me hitch the horses.” He helped her into the carriage and stepped back when her dad pulled himself up. The carriage swayed as her dad settled next to her. Aaron closed the door
halfway but stuck his head in at the last minute. “Beautiful horses, aren’t they?”

Who cares about the horses?
But obviously he and her dad did, since the horses were their lives. She gave him a little smile and nodded.

“They don’t have much patience for being harnessed like this, though. Since you won’t be needing the carriage at the end of the ceremony, I’ll be unhitching the horses right
after I drop you off at the end of the aisle.”

Who cares about the freaking horses!
She smiled again.

Her dad squeezed her hand. “Sounds like a great idea, Aaron. Thanks.”

Aaron closed the door, and a second later the carriage swayed as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Talk to me,” she whispered.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything.”

The carriage rocked into motion, and her guests
soon came into view. They’d all twisted in their seats to watch Ruby and Polly’s carriage arrive and hadn’t noticed hers yet.

“The day I married your mother, I was so nervous.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’d gone out with my buddies the night before and had too much to drink. Back then, bachelor parties tended to be the night before the wedding, which just shows how much smarter your generation is. Anyway,
I slept through my alarm and nearly didn’t make it to the church on time. Thought I was going to be sick all over your uncle Seth’s Pinto as he tried to break the land speed record.”

The carriage in front stopped, and so did theirs.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink,” Nancy said.

“Couldn’t afford to after that. I don’t just mean because money was tight. Your mom said alcohol made me stupid,
and she’d kick me out if I touched it again.”

Nancy’s brows shot up as she stared at him. “You’ve abstained all these years because of a promise to Mom?”

“Better believe it. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, other than you, and I wouldn’t do anything to mess that up.”

Ruby, Polly and their escorts disappeared down the aisle, and Nancy’s carriage jerked into motion again. The crowd
surged to their feet, even though the wedding march hadn’t yet begun, and the butterflies in Nancy’s stomach kept time with the percussive piece from Jared’s first big blockbuster.

“I think I’m going to be sick again.”

“Now, that’s not the kind of publicity you need. Close your eyes and take deep breaths.”

She did, dragging air in through her nose and slowly exhaling until the door opened.
Her dad hopped out, and Aaron lowered the step. She put one hand in his, one in her dad’s, and placed one foot in front of the other. Then again. And again.

Jared waited for her at the end of a red carpet that felt ten miles long—even longer than the one she’d walked on to watch him win a golden statuette earlier this year. She couldn’t look directly at him but felt his presence drawing her toward
him, as if his charisma were as powerful as a river’s current. Or maybe a whirlpool, given how turned around she felt.

Her dad kept her steady as they walked slowly down the aisle, her gaze trained on Jared’s bow tie. If she raised her eyes to meet his, she would lose her courage. If she looked anywhere else, the photographer would catch it and she’d have hell to pay after the ceremony.

Hell
to pay.
Either way, he would make her go through hell. Would she rather suffer it in the lap of luxury, a member of Hollywood royalty? Or watch her family suffer it as her dad searched futilely for work as a fifty-five-year-old ranch hand?

There are worse things than being spoken down to.

Constantly having to anticipate the things he would misinterpret as being disloyal…

Watching her freedom
curtailed as he became more and more possessive…

Asking herself whether
this
time he’d crossed the line,
this
time she should leave…

Her dad’s pace slowed until he stopped, and suddenly she was in front of the groom she couldn’t bear to face. She had no veil to lift, since she’d wanted the photographs to show her happiness as she made her way toward her life with Jared. God only knew how the
charlatan pop-psychologists would interpret her facial expressions for the tabloids she’d always courted.

“Hey, Bunny.” Jared held out his hands. “No need to be nervous.”

Her dad squeezed her palms one last time before kissing her cheek. “Always my girl,” he whispered in her ear.

“I love you, Daddy.”

His eyes swam, and for the first time she could remember, he said, “Love you, too.”

Her throat
swelled as he made his way to the empty seat next to her mom. Clutching her bouquet of blush-pink Juliet roses, she finally raised her eyes to Jared’s. He brimmed with joy, his smile stretching so wide and with such pride that she was nearly taken in by it. He gave his head a little shake, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. His voice resonated with reverence as he said, with just enough volume
for it be picked up by his lapel mic, “You’re stunning.”

And you’re a frighteningly good actor.

*

Wyatt pulled his
cap low as he sneaked out of the stables. His face had already been splashed all over tabloids and trashy blogs. He knew that asshole Jared would find a way to blame Nancy if he found out Wyatt was still around.

Trying not to look like
he was in a rush, he made his way to where his dad had driven Nancy’s carriage and started unhitching the horses. His dad’s grim expression told him more than he wanted to know, but the speakers set up to help the huge audience hear the vows left him in no doubt about what was happening.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”

One by one, he led the horses back to their stalls, his chest
aching. Every bit of him wanted to believe he’d misjudged Jared.

But he knew he hadn’t.

“Marriage is a sacred bond…”

If any of the other women he knew married a man like Jared, he would’ve felt sadness at not being able to stop her. But today he felt so much more than that. Friendship didn’t account for this sickening disappointment. Friendship didn’t lead to the dark hole stretching wider
and wider inside him with every word the pastor uttered, telling him he was missing something important, something he would never get back if she pledged her life to another man.

His fists cramped. “Dad, what do I do?”

“Let her make up her own mind. She’s the one who has to live with the consequences, either way.”

But so would he.

“Do you, Nancy Parsons, take this man…”

“No.”

“Shit,” he
muttered. “Dad—”

“Got Desperado saddled.” His dad tossed him the reins. “Go.”

He swung himself onto the stallion and rode hell for leather toward the ceremony.

‡

“Hollywood brides keep the bouquets and throw away the grooms.”

—Groucho Marx

T
he pastor had
to repeat the question. “Do you, Nancy, take Jared—”

“No, I don’t.”

A shocked gasp spread through the crowd, but Nancy never wavered. She refused to take him for her lawfully wedded husband. Refused to take him for anything but
a horrible decision and a brush with emotional death.

Warning flashed in Jared’s eyes and his grip tightened painfully around her fingers, but he laughed. “I think you misspoke, Bunny.”

Nervous chuckles rippled through their guests. She dragged her fingers out of his grasp, the same way she would start to drag her life away—slowly and painfully.

“I didn’t misspeak. I know what my lines are
supposed to be. I memorized them a long time ago, and you’ve been running them with me for months. But this isn’t how I want my story to go. I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out, Jared, and I’m sorry we got this far. But I won’t make the mistake worse by marrying you. It’s over. I want to be free.”

With painstaking deliberateness, he reached up and removed the mic from his lapel. It bounced
on the ground, and all the speakers emitted an ear-piercing screech that made their guests throw their hands over their ears and scream. His voice shaking and deadly quiet, he said, “You stupid little bitch. I’ll ruin you and your white trash fam—”

The sound of clomping hooves cut him off. “Nancy!”

Nancy spun just in time to see Wyatt galloping down the aisle on a white stallion. Pulling the
horse to a stop, he reached down just as she instinctively reached for him. He swung her up behind him, and she clung to his waist as the horse reared, turned and bolted. A tug at her waist nearly yanked her off the back end of the horse, but with a loud rip she was free.

She glanced behind her to see Jared’s foot on what had been her peacock tail and his sister stumbling toward him as if she’d
just seen a kitten get trampled.

“No!” Mallory screamed. “Not my dress!”

Once the horse had run past the last row of guests, Wyatt urged it to run faster, and Nancy held on for dear life. Her butt was on the saddle, but just barely. She tried to let her body find the same rhythm as Wyatt’s. With every bounce she was in danger of flying off. Her corset made catching her breath nearly impossible,
and she tried to ignore all the ways her life had just gone from bad to shitastic.

She’d left Jared at the altar.

She’d run off with another man.

And a horse.

The tabloids would
love
this.

As if to prove her right, the
whoomp whoomp whoomp
of a helicopter’s blades beat overhead. The chopper swooped low enough to make the grass sway with the force of the wind and spook the horse. Wyatt quickly
got it back under control and veered toward a line of trees, but a voice boomed from a loudspeaker overhead. “Nancy! Do you have anything to say to the readers of—”

She pressed her forehead against Wyatt’s broad shoulder and resisted the urge to flip them the bird. Once they were in the woods on the ranch’s outskirts, Wyatt let the horse slow down. She tried to breathe in relief, but the corset’s
boning constricted her lungs. How had women ridden like this in centuries past? And
sidesaddle
? At least she’d had the wherewithal to throw her leg over when Wyatt had lifted her.

They rode for what seemed like an hour. Her head grew light, and she was barely aware of Wyatt lowering her before hopping down beside her. She clutched at the hundred pearls acting as buttons in a line down her spine
and tried to rip them apart. “Can’t…breathe.”

Wyatt yanked the dress open in the back but the corset stayed tightly bound. Black spots swam across her vision.

“What the hell is this thing?”

“Torture,” she tried to joke, but only a gasp came out.

“Nancy, stay with me.” He rustled around with something behind her and then, with an unnatural suddenness, the corset fell apart and collapsed into
the loose bodice of the wedding dress that now seemed to symbolize all the signs she’d blithely ignored or created excuses for. She couldn’t stand to have it touching her skin for a single second longer but she had nothing else. She rasped as her first lungful of air rushed down her throat. Sinking back against him, she dragged in breath after heady breath. He must’ve used a knife to slice through
the ties in the back. If her former soon-to-be mother-in-law ever found out, she’d wet her designer undies. That image was the only thing keeping her sane right now.