Wild Ride: A Bad Boy Romance (15 page)

The wedding was
all planned.

Colton had
woken up that morning at Katy’s house early. She’d helped him put on his white
suit jacket and his new cowboy hat. He still wore the same belt that he’d had
for years. And he still used the same cologne that Katy remembered the smell of
so well. And, of course, he was still wearing his somewhat worse-for-wear tight
blue jeans.

“Don’t you think
you should wear a full suit?” said Katy. “It’s for the press after all, right?
Isn’t the whole point to look good in the papers and tabloids?”

“Yeah,” said
Colton. “But Cambridge gave me the go ahead on this outfit…he’s crazy, I had to
run practically everything by him.”

“I know. Me,
too,” said Katy, sighing. It was true. After planning the wedding down to the
last detail, she and Sara had sent the plans over to Cambridge Whitehead. He’d
said everything looked good, but had been quite demanding about the small
changes that he wanted made. But Katy had to assume he knew what he was doing…
Plus, she would do almost anything for Colton at this point.

“Sorry you had
to run everything through him,” said Colton. “I know he can be a bit of a
pain…a bit detail oriented you might say. But I figure he knows what he’s
doing…. Anyway, he said the jeans and belt and hat would be good for my image
actually. It gets that bad boy cowboy look that we’re going for with my public
image.”

“That’s already
your image,” said Katy, chuckling a little to herself. “You just want to wear
the same stuff as always.”

Colton smiled.
“Maybe so,” he said. “Thanks again, Katy. I couldn’t have done this with out
you.” He continued adjusting his bolo tie as he kissed Katy on the lips.

“I love you,”
said Katy, looking him right in the eyes.

“Love you too,
baby,” said Colton, before dashing out the door.

Then he came
back. Standing in the doorway, he said, “I look OK, right?”

“You look
great, baby,” said Katy. “You’re going to be a huge star.”

Katy watched as
Colton rushed out the front door of her apartment… She didn’t know exactly how
to feel. Watching her man ‘marry’ another woman, even if it was all for show,
was going to be hard. But at least she had Sara to be by her side now…Sara
would be there with her through the whole thing. And that night, she would have
Colton back again. He would be all hers.

As Colton
walked to his car, he had a feeling of dread come over him. Was this just the
regular pre-wedding nerves? Could one get pre-wedding nerves even for a fake
wedding? Colton supposed you could, since his stomach felt like a ball of lead
that threatened to drop right into his boots.

“Colton, wait,”
said Katy, running after him. “We might as well go to the wedding together,
right? I have to be there just as early as you, right?”

“I don’t know,”
said Colton, hesitating. “We’re not supposed to see each other for like a day
before the wedding, right?”

“We’re not
getting married to each other,” said Katy, letting out a little bit of a laugh.

“Oh yeah,” said
Colton, somewhat stupidly.

“Come on,” said
Katy. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be late. We both have a lot to do once we get
there.” She opened the door to Colton’s truck and got into the passenger side.
The truck was finally back from the shop, looking as beat up as ever. In the
truck bed in the back, Colton’s Triumph motorcycle shone. He had just waxed it.

Colton got in
and held Katy’s hand as he held down the clutch and started the engine.

Sara and I
spent the entire morning at the wedding doing all the little last minute chores
that always needed to be done. As long as we had been doing weddings, we had
never managed to get the system down to where it ran perfectly: there were
always little things that cropped up at the last minute. Over the years, we had
resigned ourselves to the fact that there would always be more to do on the
morning of the wedding.

Colton was in a
back room with his groomsmen, supposedly putting the final touches on his
outfit and hairstyle. But as I knew very well, he was most likely sharing a
glass or two of fine whiskey with the groomsmen. The groomsmen were just a
couple buddies from the rodeo. His best friend, as I understood it, lived out
of state, and Colton didn’t want to bother him with a trip just for a fake
wedding. It made me feel a bit of relief, I have to say, to hear Colton’ say it
was a fake wedding…he had told me that on the drive to the wedding this morning
in his truck. Because while I knew very well the wedding was supposed to be
fake, it felt very real. The preparations that Sara and I were doing, for
instance, felt real enough.

I knew Colton
appreciated that I was preparing the wedding for him, that I had organized
everything, and completely for free. He was only paying the flat rate for
things, and I was making no profit…I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. But
what I would have liked is if Colton could have said a few more times that he
appreciated me doing this. I knew he had other things on his mind, like whether
the ruse would work with the press (Cambridge was sure it would, so I was sure
too). I could understand that he was nervous about it. It was the start of his
new career as a celebrity after all, but…

 
“Hey, Katy,” whispered Sara, nudging me.
“The ceremony’s starting.”

I don’t know
where I had been. I had been daydreaming or something…

It was true,
the ceremony was starting.

Colton had
already walked down the aisle…somehow I had missed the whole walk. He was
standing up at the front.

The wedding was
outdoors, with a canopy in case it started to rain. But the chances of that
were remote.

I instantly
shifted back into wedding planner mode. I scanned everything, the guests the
caterers, the sky (for rain)…. I saw that Sara was doing the same thing. We had
done this hundreds if not thousands of times and we knew exactly what to look
for.

But everything
was in place.

Everything
looked perfect.

Everything was
perfect, except that Colton was about to marry another woman.

Next thing I
knew, the bride was walking down the aisle.

She was young.
She was hot. Her wedding dress looked gorgeous. That was the one thing about
this wedding that I hadn’t had anything to do with. And it was fitting, since
if I had been planning an ideal wedding for Colton, the bride wouldn’t have
been some other woman in a wedding dress. It would have been me in a wedding
dress. To tell the truth, I already knew the wedding dress I would wear. I had
picked it out long ago, long before meeting Colton.

I was always a
believer that wedding dresses should somehow fit the personality of not only
the bride, but the groom as well. And somehow, probably not by chance, the
wedding dress I had picked out in my younger years fit Colton’s personality
perfectly. I would have been hard pressed to try to explain what it was about a
wedding dress that made it compatible with a certain male
personality…especially one like Colton’s. I had called Colton something of a
bad boy in my mind…a bad boy Cowboy sports star…but now his personality had seemed
to complexify for me. That was what happened, I supposed, when you met someone
and then got to know them. The subtler parts of their personality really began
to shine through, and it was hard to describe those parts to someone else…

I looked at the
bride again.

I felt a little
jealous. My stomach still felt like lead.

But I was
resolved to do this for Colton, to plan the wedding. I knew that I was Colton’s
woman…hopefully in another year we could have our own wedding.

The bride
looked familiar…vaguely familiar. I couldn’t quite place her. It was possible I
had seen her in some magazine or on TV. After all, she was supposedly quite
famous.

But then it hit
me!

I knew where I
had met her before.

She was one of
those hot girls at the western bar where Colton and I had danced. She had given
me a look that night that said, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to take your
man from you. He’s going to be mine.’

I had forgotten
all about her that night.

But now she was
here, about to marry Colton.

The bride
caught my eye, and I caught hers.

We stared at
each other for a moment.

I’m not sure
what my expression was, but it must have been something like complete shock.

The bride, on
the other hand, looked completely composed. She didn’t miss a single beat, a
single step down the aisle, when she saw me and our gazes connected.

She gave me
that look…that same look she had given me in the bar that night.

But her look had
changed just slightly…I knew no one else would notice it.

But I saw it. I
saw it as clear as the sun in the sky.

That night in
the bar there had been a bit of hurt to her arrogant look. Now, that hurt was
replaced with complete triumph. She knew she had won. She knew that Colton
would really be hers. I knew that for her this was no innocent fake wedding.
For her, this was going to be the real thing. She was going to do whatever in
her power to take Colton, to really make him hers.

The non-denominational
religious figure at the front was muttering words that I wasn’t listening to.

Colton and
Sheila were standing there up at the front. There wasn’t an alter. Instead
there was a huge bouquet of flowers that seemed to be growing as we watched…that’s
how wild it looked.

“You OK, Katy?”
whispered Sara to me.

I didn’t say
anything.

I was trying to
listen now…trying to listen to what the religious figure was saying. He might
have been a Christian or Buddhist. I had no idea. It didn’t matter to me in the
slightest. I had been to so many weddings that some of the details had started
to run together in my memory. But I knew the speech they said by heart. Sure,
they might modify it a little for their particular religion or non-religion,
but the gist of it was the same.

And no matter
what, there was always that critical part that went ‘if anyone has any objections…’

I was waiting
for that moment. I was waiting, my ears perked for the key words, like a
starving dog waits for his dinner.

He was staring.
I heard him like I had never heard anything before.

“If anyone has
any…” he started to say.

“I do,” I said,
practically screaming the words.

“What?” he
said, startled, thrown off kilter from the words he was reciting from memory.

The world
started going strange for me… Everything seemed frozen, and moving quickly at
the same time. My heart was beating as if I was running an Olympic sprint. My
blood was cold. My head was on fire. My heart was aching.

Aching for
Colton.

I caught his
gaze. He gave me a look of complete shock, confusion, and surprise, all mixed
together. His mouth was opening…it seemed like it was doing so in slow motion.

Cambridge tried
to laugh it off. I saw his big belly heaving as he laughed. “Just a little
misunderstanding,” he said, chuckling loudly so that everyone could hear them.

The ceremony
leader looked confused. “Should I continue?” he said, seeming to mouth the
words with a gurgle-like taste to them.

“Of course,”
said Cambridge.

With the slow
motion effects of my emotions, I felt like I saw Cambridge for who he really
was. I saw deep inside him, past this outer shell of gold watches and fancy
clothes, although I suppose that was all wrapped up in who he was…everything we
do is who we are, in a sense. I saw that Cambridge Whitehead didn’t give a shit
about Colton, and didn’t give a piss about me…he just wanted his money. This
was just an investment to him, and he was just doing what he could to protect
his investment.

“Keep going,”
said Cambridge, growing perhaps a little frantic, although trying to appear
calm. But his slightly rising voice gave him away a little. “Keep going,” he
said again, waving his hands, and practically shouting at the ceremony man.

“Very well.
Where was I…. Yes, you may then kiss the bride…No, sorry, that’s a bit later
on…Where was I…”

“Stop!” I
cried.

I made my move.

All the eyes
were on me.

Everyone had
turned around in their seats. Everyone was staring at me. I saw their
expressions grow to confusion in slow motion…But who cared? Half of them were
actually paid actors…out of work never-been and never-would-be actors who were
just struggling along, trying to gain a foothold in a notoriously difficult
industry. No doubt they were all hoping that one day Cambridge would represent them,
and arrange a fake ceremony for them.

My rage grew. I
hated their falsehoods, their pretensions, the absolute phoniness of the whole
thing, of everyone here.

I was even mad
at Colton. I knew I loved him. But how could he do this to me?

I saw a big
ceramic pot, in which a plant grew. I jumped up on it in a single leap. Now I
was a coupe heads above everyone else. The branches from the potted plant were
tearing at my dress, but I didn’t care.

“Katy,” said
Sara in a loud, hissing whisper. “What the hell are you doing, Katy?” I knew she
was just looking out for me, or trying to, but nevertheless I took my small
clasp purse and threw it at her.

“This is an abomination,”
I cried. The words came pouring out of me, full of fury and anger. “This is
nothing but a huge lie! The bride and groom barely know each other.”

“Ain’t nothing
wrong with that,” said Cambridge, still trying to laugh the whole thing off.
“Hell, that’s the way I got married, right? Never did me any harm.”

A couple people
laughed along with him.

“Yes,” said
another man in the audience. I wasn’t sure where Cambridge had dredged him up
from… But to me he was just pond scum, mere algae, whether he was a paid actor
or just here for the free food and drinks. “Isn’t that right honey?” He nudged
the woman next to him, who looked uncomfortable, and didn’t say anything. I
didn’t even know if they knew each other, let alone whether they were married.

But it didn’t
matter.

“This whole
thing,” my voice taking on a pedantic tone. I sounded impossibly loud to
myself, as if I was speaking into a megaphone. “This is just a sham. It was set
up by Cambridge Whitehead, the agent of my boyfriend, Colton. Colton is only
doing this for the money and the fame. These two…Colton and this cute young
country singer…they have never even been on date. This is an arranged marriage
of the worst kind. It was set up not by their parents, but their agents. It is
going to be dissolved in a month, and it serves no purpose other than to boost
both of their careers, and to gain traction in the tabloid papers.”

I held my
breath, pausing for a moment, waiting to see what the reaction would be.

I could now
tell exactly who the paid actors were and who the poor saps were who had been
dragged into this thing, thinking it was a real marriage.

Half the
audience didn’t react at all. They were just wondering whether they would still
be paid or not.

The other half
of the audience let their jaws drop. Evidently they had no inkling of what this
ceremony really was…

Colton looked
on with his mouth open. He was staring at me. I couldn’t read the expression on
his face. But I didn’t care. Whatever sympathy I had felt for him had vanished…
I felt nothing but rage for him now. How could he go through this, when he knew
I loved him so much? At that moment, I wanted nothing more to do with him… What
kind of man would do this to his woman? What kind of man would have the love of
his life plan his own marriage to another woman?

I caught the
country singer Sheila’s gaze. She wore the fury on her face clearly. Her
expression said one other thing, aside from anger and that was: vengeance. I
knew then and there she was going to try her hardest to get vengeance, through
whatever means necessary.

“I…” I started
to say… But the words didn’t come out. Tears began flooding down my face. My
anger was now mixed with sadness. A horrible sadness, a depression that seemed
to corrode my very soul.

I turned, to
make my descent from the ceramic pot. But the potted plant got caught on my dress,
and as I descended, I tripped and fell…

My dress tore.
It tore all the way up to my waist, a huge slit in the beautiful elegant dress
that I often wore to fancy weddings.