Kiss the Bride (30 page)

With trembling hands, Delaney put the veil on her head.

“I wish…,” she whispered, drawing in a deep breath, inhaling courage. “I wish to get out of this marriage.”

Immediately a strange tingling spread over her scalp and her entire body grew hot.

She felt it once more, that wavery suspension of time that she’d experienced the first time she’d touched the veil and she’d had the vision.

The one where she was marrying Nick.

She saw it again. In minute detail.

Dizziness spun her head. She had to sit down hard on the edge of Trudie’s bed to keep from falling.

“I wish to get out of this marriage,” she said again, stronger, more certain this time.

“Do you really want to get out of it?” a voice asked.

Delaney’s eyes flew open and she saw Trudie standing with her back pressed against the closed door.

“Yes.”

“So why don’t you just call it off?”

“I can’t. Evan is so good. I’ve known him since we were kids, and I don’t want to lose his friendship. Plus there’s my mother. She’ll be crushed. And the money my father has spent.” Delaney shook her head.

“It’s better than spending a lifetime married to a man you don’t love.”

“I don’t know how to tell them so they’ll hear me. No one really listens to me.”
Except for Nick,
she thought. “I’ve spent most of my life letting people push me around, bending to their will, going with the flow to avoid confrontation. I can’t stand the thought of hurting someone’s feelings to their face.”

“Too bad you don’t have a Leo to come rescue you from the altar the way Lucia did.”

“Yeah,” Delaney echoed. She could wish all she wanted, but she knew Nick wouldn’t come save her. He had too much integrity to steal another man’s wife. “Too bad.”

“You could hire someone to kidnap you.”

Delaney looked up. Possibilities raced through her. If she hired someone to kidnap her from the wedding, then her family would have to listen to her. It was dramatic. It was bold. And Delaney saw it as her only way out.

“Remember my nephew Louie?” Trudie said. “You met him when you staged my house.”

Louie had been a little rough-looking, with lots of piercings and tattoos, but he’d seemed like a nice enough guy. “Yes.”

“For the right price, he’ll kidnap you.”

S
omeone was beating on his front door.

Nick pulled himself from slumber, squinted at the clock on his bedside table, and groaned. Who in the hell had the audacity to show up on his doorstep at three o’clock in the morning? One of his brothers? A cousin?

Growling his displeasure, Nick threw off the covers.

“Coming, coming,” he called out, searching in his closet for the bathrobe he hardly ever had the need to wear. Even though his knee was almost completely healed now, he didn’t want to push it and move too quickly too soon. “Hold your horses.”

He ambled to the living room, turned on the front porch light, and looked through the peephole to find Trudie Klausman, dressed like a twenty-year-old party girl in a belly-baring tank top and a short skirt that showed off her wrinkled knees and with sparkle glitter on her face, swaying in the night air. At first, he thought something must have happened to his nana.

Terrified, Nick yanked open the door. He stared Trudie in the eyes and realized she’d been drinking.

Horror squeezed his heart as another thought occurred
to him. Holy shit, what if Trudie was here for some kind of perverted, middle-of-the-night, Mrs. Robinson booty call?

Nick gulped. “Um, hello, Mrs. Klausman.”

“Nicky, we’ve got an emergency situation on our hands.” She rushed into his apartment.

Dear God in heaven, she
was
here for a booty call.

“Emergency?” The word came out high and squeaky, the way it did when he was thirteen and his voice was changing.

She wrapped her hand around his wrist and Nick stopped breathing. “I’ve got a very dire problem, and you’re the only one who can solve it for me.”

Nick had had a few booty calls in his life, but none he’d ever had to turn down before. He didn’t know how to go about deflecting his grandmother’s best friend without hurting her feelings.

“Mrs. Klausman… I…,” he stuttered. “I’m very flattered, but.. but…”

Trudie gave him an odd look and quickly let go of his hand. “Oh, my God, you thought I came here for a booty call.”

“No, no.”

“Don’t lie.” She shook her finger under his nose. “And just because you are one handsome devil doesn’t give you the right to assume that just because I’m an ex–Vegas showgirl and that I had a little too much to drink and I’m wearing something sexy, that I would want to have sex with you. You’re far too young for me, and besides, your grandmother is my best friend. What do you take me for? A complete hussy?”

Mortified, he ducked his head. “Trudie, I’m truly sorry.”

“If Delaney didn’t need your help, I’d turn around and walk right out of here.”

Nick’s head shot up. “Delaney needs help?”

“I’ve done something kinda illegal and I’m having second thoughts, but Delaney was so desperate to get out of this wedding tomorrow, she asked me to hire my nephew, Louie, to kidnap her from the chapel.”

Delaney wanted out of her marriage to Evan Van Zandt? Hope was like a gift, sprung in his chest, resurrecting the feelings he’d tried so hard to bury. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Trudie glared and sank her hands on her hips.

No, she did not.

“Delaney’s planning on standing Evan up at the altar?”

“In the most dramatic way possible. Poor girl, she’s such a people-pleaser. Can’t bear to hurt her fiancé’s feelings, can’t sum up the courage to face her overbearing mother. She feels backed into a corner with no way out. That’s why I offered to contact Louie for her. She’s such a good-hearted person, but she’s never learned to stand up for herself.”

“She’s stood up to me a few times,” Nick said, recalling the arguments they’d had. The time she flipped him the bird.

“Which is why you’re so good for her. You inspire her to be more. You let her speak her mind and don’t squelch her. You don’t put her in a box or up on a pedestal. You actually like it when she’s not perfect. You give her the freedom to be herself. You’re exactly what she needs.”

“Did you contact Louie already?”

“Yes.”

“Has money exchanged hands?” Had a crime already occurred?

“I don’t know. Delaney was on her way to meet him when I left her.”

Nick blew out a breath and shoved a hand through his hair.

If what Trudie said was true and Delaney wanted out of the marriage so badly that she’d hired Trudie’s nephew to kidnap her from the wedding, it meant she didn’t have the courage to tell Evan the truth.

It must also mean she finally recognized platonic love was not enough to sustain a marriage.

While he admired Delaney for not going through with the wedding when she knew it was wrong, he was disappointed that she was taking the easy way out. And he wasn’t going to let her get away with it. He was going to make her face up to her feelings.

“Call up your nephew,” Nick told Trudie. “Tell him his services are no longer required.”

“But if Louie doesn’t kidnap Delaney from the chapel, she’ll end up married to Evan. And you of all people should know how miserable it is to be married to the wrong one.”

“I’ll handle it. Just call off the kidnapping.”

“Oh,” Trudie exclaimed, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Are you going to do for Delaney what your grampa Leo did for Lucia? Are you going to whisk her away and save her from marrying the wrong man?”

“No,” Nick growled. “She’s spent most of her life looking for a magical solution to her problems. Rescuing is not what she needs. What I’m going to do is be there to make sure that Delaney saves herself.”

The members of the wedding party and their families gathered outside the River Oaks Methodist Church for the
wedding rehearsal. Delaney had driven over with her parents, and she regretted the decision. Her mother’s constant nit-picking of every little detail had given her a headache.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.” Evan smiled and squeezed her hand. “Your mother means well.”

“I’ve got to get something for this headache,” she said. “I think there’s some ibuprofen in the glove compartment of the Caddy. Go on in, I’ll be right behind you.”

Head throbbing, Delaney headed back out to the parking lot, angling for her mother’s Cadillac. It wasn’t just her mother’s nit-picking that had given her the headache, and she knew it. Guilt was the thing pounding through her veins. She didn’t want to go through with this wedding, but she didn’t have the courage to tell Evan to his face. She had written him a long note, explaining how she felt and begging his forgiveness. She still hadn’t figured out how to handle her mother.

Delaney thought about all the people she was going to hurt and felt physically ill.

She plunked down in the front passenger seat of the Caddy. The humidity plastered her panty hose to her legs. She wouldn’t have worn them, but her mother insisted. Apparently in Honey’s book it was gauche to go barelegged to a wedding rehearsal.

After resting a moment to let the nausea subside, she popped open the glove compartment and rummaged around until she found the ibuprofen. She pulled the bottle out, and a crumpled-up note fell out with it.

What was this?

Delaney unfolded the note, read what was written there in stark black block letters.

She let out a gasp and plastered her hand over her mouth. Her mother had been lying. At last, she knew
the reason her mother had gone to meet the patch-eyed woman at the amusement park on Galveston Island.

Honey Montgomery Cartwright was being blackmailed.

What she didn’t know was why.

“Invitation, sir.” The security guard posted outside the River Oaks Methodist Church held out his palm and waited expectantly for Nick to paper it with a wedding invitation.

But he didn’t have one.

“No invite?” The guard arched an eyebrow.

“No.”

“Sorry.” The guard moved to block the door. “Without an invitation you don’t get in.”

A few people were still trickling in from the parking lot, but they were rushing as if late, flashing their invitations to the security guard, then slipping inside through the heavy wooden door. The sun beat down hot, pooling sweat under the collar of the only suit Nick owned. The suit he’d bought for his grandfather’s funeral.

“You don’t understand,” Nick said. “It’s imperative I get in. The bride is about to make a huge mistake.”

“If you ask me, anyone who gets married is making a huge mistake.” The guard shook his head. “Can’t go in.”

The sounds of the wedding march began. He had to get in there before it was too late. Louie wouldn’t be showing up to kidnap Delaney as she expected, and if Nick wasn’t there to intervene, he feared she’d just go ahead with the ceremony.

“I have to get in there.”

“You want me to call the cops?”

“I am the cops.”

“Prove it.”

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Nick fumbled in his pocket for his badge and shoved it in the guy’s face. “Now get the hell out of my way.”

“Jeez, fella, why didn’t you just say you were a cop in the first place?” the guard grumbled and stepped aside.

Nick tore into the building.

The contrast from the bright sunlight to the darkened interior of the church had him blinking. Disoriented, he stood in the entryway while his eyes adjusted.

Flowers invaded the foyer, filling his nose with their fresh summer scent. He heard the rustling of clothes, the muted coughs of the spectators, and the wedding march. The song was already half over.

The doors leading into the chapel were thrown wide. He hurried toward them and saw Delaney on the arm of a man he presumed was her father, moving toward the altar.

Instinct had him wanting to shout her name, but he would wait for the right moment. When the minister asked if there were any objections, that’s when he would say his piece.

He looked around for a place to sit, but he was out of luck. The chapel was crammed to the rafters. This shindig was costing her father a boatload of money. Boy, was he going to be upset when everything blew up in his face.

But probably not as upset as Evan Van Zandt was going to be. Nick actually felt sorry for him. He knew what it was like, getting dumped by the woman you loved.

Heart clogging his throat, Nick went to stand against the back wall, watching the proceedings with a surreal feeling of detached anxiety. It was as if he were in a dream, knowing he was dreaming but unable to wake up. What if, when the time came, he shouted out his objection but no one heard him?

Goose bumps broke out on his arms. He was too far away. He needed to move closer. Nick started creeping around the back of the church, picking his way past the other attendees who’d been too late to find a seat, all the while craning his neck to follow what was going on up at the altar.