Center Stage: A Hot Baseball Romance (Diamond Brides Book 8) (2 page)

At least Zach didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. “It’s a Monday night. Traffic is terrible. There’s a reason most people get married on weekends.”

Lindsey shook her head, biting her lip to keep from screaming. When the bride was an actor and the brother who was supposed to give her away played professional baseball, Monday night was the logical choice for a wedding. Only when she was certain her words could come out sounding remotely sane did she try to respond. “Give me some credit here, Zach. If I had to get jilted two years ago, at least I learned
something
from the experience. I can tell when it’s happening again. Will Braden Templeton isn’t coming to this church tonight.”

Zach protested automatically. “Don’t say that, honey. Jilted makes it sound like it was your fault.”

“It’s the truth!” Lindsey shouted. From the look on Zach’s face, he was every bit as surprised as she was by her volume. She hurried on, though, before he could offer her more pat words, more false comfort. “It’s the truth,” she repeated. “Two years ago, Doug jilted me. He let me stand there in my wedding dress, with two hundred of our family’s closest friends in the Claibourne ballroom, with a sit-down dinner and a band and a wedding cake waiting in the next room!” She was appalled by the words spilling out of her mouth, by the flood of ugly memories. But she couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t keep from saying, “He did all that because he was too afraid to tell me about his affairs, about three other women who I only found out about online, after the fact, after the most embarrassing night of my life.”

“Lindsey—”

“Don’t
Lindsey
me!” She felt terrible, cutting him off. She knew she was being rude, acting like a spoiled brat. But she had to finish. She had to say what she was thinking. She had to get all the words out, all the disgusting confessions, all the admissions she’d never had the guts to say out loud.

Because she’d worked hard at doing things right, every single day after Doug left her at the altar. She’d been a good girl, followed the rules, done everything she was supposed to do, whenever she was supposed to do it. She was the youngest of the Ormond girls, and she’d learned from the disaster with Doug. Just like she’d learned from watching her sisters.

Grace did everything right, and she ended up in a perfect fairy-tale marriage. Rachel used her kindness and strength and fortitude to recover from the worst thing life could throw at her, from being widowed by a drunk driver one year into her own storybook romance.

And Beth did everything wrong. Beth messed up everything she touched—school and friendships and family. Beth had dated bad boys from the first day she got a training bra. Beth got pregnant by the end of junior year in high school. She failed out senior year. And now, ten years later, she was only beginning to pull her life together.

Lindsey wasn’t going to be like Beth. She could still remember the screaming matches between Beth and their parents, the terrible night when Beth ran away and Daddy went to the emergency room with a heart attack, the constant, endless crises brought on by her sister’s bad judgment and worse behavior.

Lindsey could never do that to her family. Not to her sisters and definitely not to her brothers. Hell, Zach and Dane both, they expected her to be perfect. She was the baby. She had the benefit of watching and learning from everything her siblings did.

So she told the truth now.

“Even when I was standing there waiting for Doug, and you were making all your phone calls, and his best man was texting, and everyone was asking, and waiting, and confused…” She met Zach’s eyes. “I
knew
. I knew, in the pit of my stomach. I knew in that part of my brain, you know the one I mean. The one that tells the truth when you’re about to fall asleep, when you’re floating right on the edge of a dream. The one that wakes you up in the middle of the night, reminding you about phone calls and text messages and changes of plan that you never connected at the time, that you never realized had one thing in common. I knew the truth about Doug. I knew it even before I could say it out loud.”

Zach looked miserable. She understood how much that first disastrous wedding had cost him, and she wasn’t talking about money. The oldest of the Ormond siblings, Zach wanted to protect her. He wanted her life to be perfect, as perfect as he could make it, now that Momma and Daddy were both gone.

Zach was there for her. He might be twelve years older than she was. He might have resisted stepping into the strange role of not-quite-parent, all those years back. But for all of Lindsey’s life, she’d been certain Zach could pick up the pieces.

He was the one who’d found her hiding in the snack bar at the public pool when she was seven years old, crying because she was afraid to jump off the high board—and he’d taught her how to make the jump, and how to dive as well. He was the one who’d taught her how to drive stick when she was fifteen, letting her grate the gears on his old truck until she’d finally mastered the clutch. He was the one who’d told her she should look to her career instead of marriage when Doug proposed to her, and he was the one who’d walked into the hotel ballroom that horrible night and told all the guests that the wedding was off.

For all those reasons, and a thousand more, she turned to her oldest brother now and said, “It’s the same thing with Will.” But even as she said the words she shook her head, vehemently enough that her careful up-do started to tumble loose. “No,” she corrected herself. “It’s not the
same
. Will’s not screwing around with other women.”

“You’re not making sense, Lindsey.”

She bit her lip and forced herself to speak the truth. “Will’s not ready for this, not ready to be married. He thought he was.
I
thought he was. But he doesn’t want to be tied down. He doesn’t want to give up fishing trips with the guys and golf on Sundays. He doesn’t want to pass up the chance that there’s someone else out there, someone better. Someone who can cook,” she added ruefully.

“You can cook.”

She shook her head. “If you’re going to lie about that, then I can’t ever trust you on anything else again.” She sighed. “Macaroni and cheese out of a box isn’t cooking. Neither is raiding the salad bar at the local grocery store. Stop changing the subject. Will’s not ready. I forced him into this.”

Zach’s voice was rough. “If that’s true, then the asshole should have told you he had cold feet. He never should have let things get this far.”

Lindsey sighed. “It’s not all his fault. After last time, I wanted to do what’s right—keep the wedding small, keep it simple—but everything moved too fast. I was trying to be a good girl.”

“You
are
a good girl. You’re always a good girl.”

The vehemence in her brother’s voice sparked tears in her eyes. Before she could answer, there was a sharp buzz by her elbow. She recognized the text alert even as she reached for her phone. And there was the message—the one she’d feared to see, the one she’d known she would find. It had just been a matter of time.

I’m sorry.

The words were there in black and white, like thousands of other texts she’d gotten from Will. She could picture him typing the nine characters, lean fingers flashing over the face of his phone. She knew him well enough to imagine the other messages he’d typed, the longer ones, the explanations, and she could picture the way he’d deleted all but the basics.

The two words stole her breath, collapsing every atom of oxygen in her lungs into a solid, aching lump. For one blinding moment, she thought someone had actually, physically hit her. She couldn’t think of what to say, couldn’t remember how to speak, couldn’t put together a single coherent thought.

But then acting saved her again. She forced a deep breath into her lungs, just like she did for vocal warmups. She straightened her fisted fingers, focusing on the jagged energy that flowed out of her. She surveyed every taut muscle from head to toe, measured it, controlled it. And then she managed to pass the phone to Zach.

“There we go,” she said.

Years of acting couldn’t completely conquer her trembling vocal cords. Her voice was too high. But she was able to force another sentence past that lump in her chest. “Well, a good girl doesn’t keep her guests waiting in a sauna when there’s nothing left to see.” She started to push herself upright, even though she thought she might puke.

“I’ve got it,” Zach said. He looked like he was ready to go ten rounds with Will, then mop up the reception hall with whatever remained of her battered fiancé. No. Not fiancé. Not anymore.

Lindsey twisted the slender engagement ring on her finger, scarcely seeing the overhead fluorescents sparking off the two-carat diamond. “I’m fine,” she insisted, making a conscious effort to modulate her tone. “I’ll just go out there now and tell everyone.” She looked around the little closet of a room. “Do you think I should change first? I wore jeans. Maybe they’re more appropriate than this?” She gestured at her wedding gown.

Zach handed back her phone. “You don’t have to tell anyone anything. I’ll send people home. Go ahead and change. Or wait till Grace gets back. I can send back Rachel and Beth. Anna, too. They can help you.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t need any help. I don’t…” But she trailed off because she couldn’t figure out anything else to say. “I’m okay,” she finally finished, even though she wasn’t. Even though she never would be again. “I’ll wait for Grace.”

She sat back in her chair, because it was infinitely easier to do that than to argue. She buried her hands deep in her white satin skirt. She watched as Zach squared his shoulders, as he raised his chin, as he got ready to face the crowd.

“I’m sorry,” she said, just before he put his hand on the doorknob.

The stoic expression on his face almost made her sob. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about.” He stalked out of the room.

But she should be sorry. She’d brought all these people together, raised their hopes, heightened their expectations. She’d promised them dinner and a party, on a Monday night, for God’s sake. Monday, because that’s when the Rockets didn’t have a baseball game. Monday, because that’s when theaters were dark.

But now everyone would be sent home. All because Lindsey had screwed up. All because she hadn’t managed to talk to Will, to settle everything before it came to this.

She forced herself to her feet and strained her arm reaching over her shoulder, working the wedding dress’s long, hidden zipper. She’d better hurry, get out of the gown and back in her jeans and T-shirt. That way, maybe Grace wouldn’t worry too much when she got back. That way, maybe Lindsey could help with the caterers, or maybe with the pastor, with packaging up the food for a homeless shelter or someone else who could use it.

Maybe she could still make something good come out of this disaster. At least, she could try.

~~~

People could be real assholes.

As the wedding guests listened to Ormond’s announcement, a few gasped in surprise. One older woman exclaimed, “Not again!” Even the people who had enough sense to keep their voices down started whispering, loud enough to make the whole overheated church sound like it was stuffed with bees. When he was through talking, Ormond stalked down the aisle as if his spine had turned to oak; he didn’t look left or right as he strong-armed the door to the vestibule, obviously hurrying out to take care of his sister.

The guests could all lie and
say
they meant well. They only worried about poor Lindsey, about how she was handling being left at the altar
twice
in as many years. Of course it couldn’t be
her
fault. No girl deserved
that
.

But every goddamn whisper made it clear people thought there was a hell of a lot Lindsey had done. Or not done. It was all her fault.

Ryan took his time heading down the aisle, not wanting to fight the crowd. When he got to the vestibule, he found Ormond in the center of a tight knot of people. Anna Benson, his fiancée, was there too, and the matron of honor, in a pink dress that looked like it had seen better days as she clutched a brown paper bag with a spreading wet stain across the bottom. Another woman was calling out to a bunch of kids, telling them to hush for Aunt Lindsey’s sake, and a fourth stood on the edge of the family circle, shaking her head. A man balanced out the group, a couple of inches shorter than Zach and probably twenty pounds heavier, but with the same hard line to his jaw, the same eyes shouting that he was an Ormond brother.

“She’s
fine
,” Zach said, raising his hands to cut off protests from his siblings. “She wants to be left alone, and that’s what we’re going to do. She’s driving out to the farmhouse tonight. She’s got a couple of days off before she has to get back to work.”

“She’s still waiting to hear about auditions for
Itsy Bitsy Mouse
, isn’t she?” asked the quiet woman, the one on the edge of the group. “She’ll just die if she doesn’t get to play the mouse.”

Ormond shook his head. “She’s not going to
die
over anything. Come on, guys. This is Lindsey we’re talking about. She only wants to do what’s right. She wants some space, and we’re going to give it to her.”

Families were strange. Ryan was an only child; he’d never had a group of brothers and sisters to gather around, to talk behind his back, to do whatever they thought was right for him. It was kind of sweet.

Ormond started repeating himself, and then he began actively guiding his relatives out the door. “I’ll check on her tonight,” he said a few times. “I promise.” And then he pulled out the big guns. “Come on, guys. You know how she’d feel if she heard you worrying like this. Don’t pile on the guilt. Get out of here. We’ll talk in the morning. Anna, can you help round up the kids?”

By the time Ormond got them all outside, Ryan had changed his mind. Half a dozen siblings were half a dozen pains in the ass. He just had to remember that, the next time he called Dad and felt the old gripping fear in the pit of his stomach. The next time he thought about the promises he’d made to his mother, and all the ways he was letting her down. All the ways he was still the same screw-up he’d been in high school, in college, after.