Julie Miller – Task Force Bride (страница 2)

As much as every frayed nerve inside her longed to bolt to a place of silence and solitude, she’d also worked long and hard to learn how to cope with volatile emotions and uncomfortable situations like this. She was stronger than her past. She could do this. Her client needed her. And if someone needed her, she had to help. That had always been her Achilles’ heel. Hope released the door, keeping her voice calm and her smile serene.

“Of course.” She gestured to the woman wiping at the tears that dripped on her taupe lace gown. “Perhaps you could take your wife to the restroom to freshen her face,” she suggested, needing to clear some of the emotions from the room if she was to have any chance of saving the big day. Ignoring both the father’s impatient curse and the doubt in the reluctant bride’s red-rimmed eyes, Hope pulled out her phone and texted her assistant upstairs. Tell organist to play another 15 min.

Send groom down. Keep smiling. Pray.

Hope hit Send and looked up to see the fractured family all staring expectantly at her. A mixture of compassion and trepidation filled her. She’d worked miracles in the past to make a bride’s wedding dreams come true. She hoped she had another miracle up her sleeve today. “Mr. Barrister? Please.”

With a grunt and a nod, he swung open the door and pulled his wife into the hallway with him. Hope closed the door softly, studying the grain in the fine old walnut, racking her brain for the next step in this impromptu wedding rescue.

A soft sniffle from the young woman behind her provided an inspiration. Adjusting her narrow-framed glasses on the bridge of her nose, Hope spotted a box of tissues on a shelf and retrieved them before sitting in the Sunday school chair beside her client. “Here.”

Deanna pulled a handful of tissues from the box to wipe her face and blow her nose. “It’s too much. I can’t take this kind of pressure. What if I’m wrong?”

“About Jeff?”

“About getting married. I’m only twenty-two.”

A decade younger than Hope. Her client had so much life ahead of her. She had two parents who loved her, even if they were having a hard time expressing it on this particularly stressful day. She was slender, beautiful—stunning in the mermaid-style gown Hope had helped her select. Deanna had a handsome young doctor who wanted her to be his wife.

Not for the first time in her life, a pang of envy nipped at Hope’s thoughts. And not for the first time, she pushed aside that longing and focused on what needed to be done at that moment.

She found a discarded florist’s box for Deanna to toss her soiled tissues into, and offered her another handful as the tears quieted into silent sobs. “You know, Deanna,” Hope began, “today isn’t about those people upstairs. Or the gifts or the doves or the champagne we’ll serve at the reception. It isn’t about how worried your father is that this won’t turn out to be the happiest day of your life.”

“He just wants it to be over.”

“He wants it to be perfect. He’s about to lose his little girl to another man, and today is his way of showing the world how much he loves you and how much he’s going to miss you. He’s worried that you won’t be happy.”

“Dad’s angry with me, not worried. Today is a business opportunity for him, publicity for his company. He doesn’t care what I’m feeling.”

Hope’s phone vibrated with an incoming call, setting off a chain reaction of startled gasps. She apologized before reading the incoming number, and then felt the warmth drain from her blood. How? Why? She had a pretty good idea who the unknown caller harassing her today might be. The Fates must be mocking her for sitting here and defending fathers.

“Do you need to take that?”

“No.” Hope purposefully ended the call as temper brought heat back to her body. She’d have to change her cell number. Again. She buried the phone in her jacket pocket, politely masking the urge to hurl it across the room. Hope inhaled a deep breath and remained calm for the woman beside her. “Some men—some people—don’t know how to express what they’re feeling in a way we all understand. For fathers, I think the wedding day is that one last hurrah that he can do for you. He’s trying to show his love by giving you everything he thinks you want. But I’m guessing—behind the frustration and anger—that he’s afraid.”

Deanna sniffed. “Of what?”

“That he’s failed you. That if he’d done something more or less or different, then you wouldn’t be having second thoughts about getting married.”

Deanna blinked a few last tears from her dark brown eyes and looked at Hope. “Dad never failed me.” Lucky woman. “It’s just that today has gotten so out of hand. There’s so much that has to happen.”

“There’s only one thing that has to happen.” Hope reached over and patted Deanna’s hand. “Don’t think about the pressures of the day—that’s what I’m here for. Think about yourself, and the future you’ll have with your husband.”

A soft knock at the door ended the conversation. “Dee?” The groom covered his eyes as Hope let him in. “Your dad said you were freaking out. Is everything okay?” he asked, peeking between the fingers of his crisp white gloves.

Hope pointed to the woman rising to her feet. “I thought maybe you two could use a quiet minute alone.”

He dropped his hand and turned to his bride-to-be. “Wow.”

Deanna blushed at his unabashed appreciation for the image she created in the subtly blinged gown she wore. “Jeff. You shouldn’t see me before the wedding.”

“There is going to be a wedding, right?”

Hope politely faded into the woodwork when the bride’s and groom’s eyes locked onto each other’s. There was so much love, acceptance and desire in Jeff Stelling’s eyes that she didn’t see how any woman could hesitate to commit to a man who looked at her that way.

“That’s all that has to happen today.” Deanna repeated Hope’s words and met her fiancé in the middle of the room. “You and me. I want to spend my life with you.”

“I love you, Dee. Come upstairs and start that life together with me. Please?”

“I love you.” He leaned in for a kiss before Deanna shooed him out. “Okay. Go up to the church. Tell Dad I’ll meet him upstairs. Hope? Can you make me gorgeous again in five minutes?”

Crisis averted. Tally up one more happily-ever-after. For someone else. The phone was vibrating against her hip again. Her past was calling. Ignoring it, Hope smiled. “You bet.”

Chapter One

“Really?” Hope squinted and averted her eyes from the bright headlights that filled up her rearview mirror. “You’re following a little close, buddy.”

She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and pressed on the gas to put some distance between them. She wasn’t a nervous driver at all. But normally she wasn’t out this late, and she didn’t take the shortcut off the interstate through the heart of the city. But cleanup after the Barrister-Stelling wedding had run long past the end of the dinner and dancing. And though she wasn’t the one actually bussing the tables, there were family pictures and table decorations she’d promised to hold on to until after the honeymoon. Then the gifts had to be delivered to their parents’ hotel rooms. Other than the hotel staff, she’d been the last person to leave the reception.

So what if her panty hose had long since cut off the circulation to her toes? Or if she’d have to unload every last box in the trunk and backseat of her car herself because she’d sent her assistant home. Hope had earned a tidy fortune with this event. Earned every last penny playing fashion consultant, wedding planner and family counselor. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could celebrate with a glass of wine and a long, hot bubble bath. Or maybe she’d skip them both and just fall straight into bed and sleep until Monday.

“What the heck?”

The same lights rushed up behind her a second time, nearly blinding her. “Jackass.”

Hope blamed the unlady-like condemnation on the length of the day and the unwanted calls piling up on her cell phone that bothered her more than she cared to admit. She must have a stamp on her forehead that said “Pick on me” today. Just because she tended to be shy and soft-spoken didn’t mean she lacked backbone or a brain or a temper. When the driver flashed his lights through her rear window, she muttered another word in the Ozark accent that crept into her voice whenever she got a little too angry or afraid. She double-checked her speed. She wasn’t poking along, by any means. Still, if the guy was in that much of a hurry...

Pulling closer to the parking lane so he could pass, Hope adjusted her charcoal-framed glasses to try to catch a look at the driver and license plate on the beat-up white van. But it veered so close as it sped past that it nearly clipped the side mirror on her car. “Hey!”

The van shot back into the lane in front of her, forcing Hope to stomp on the brake and skid to a stop. Glass rattled and boxes shifted behind her as several brief images printed like snapshots in her brain. A shadowy figure dressed in dark clothes sat behind the steering wheel. He wore a black knit cap pulled low over his forehead and a white scarf across his nose and mouth, hiding all but his eyes. In those brief milliseconds when he’d looked down into her car, she was certain their gazes had met, although he flew on by before the details completely registered. A shiny silver bumper that seemed at odds with the rusting wheel wells and dinged-up back doors was the last image she saw before it disappeared into the night.