The Substitute Bride (The Great Wedding Giveaway Series Book 7) (8 page)

“She’s in a mood, that one is.  What’s she ticked at you about, chicklet?”

Marly tossed him an innocent smile.  Joey had been the one who’d taught her to love newspaper work, not her mother.  The old man—she’d always thought of him that way, though he’d been only forty-three the year Marly was born— had made journalism seem exciting. 

“Ticked?  At me?”  Marly tried to sound lighthearted.  She didn’t want to lie to him, but she didn’t feel up to one of his grillings.  “How could
I
have upset her?  I’m just sitting here obediently, working on my little wedding stories.”

“Hey.”  Joey pulled a brown bag out of his drawer and began unwrapping what, judging from the smell, might have been yesterday’s sandwich.  “Don’t knock the wedding stories.  There are no boring assignments, chicklet.  There are only—”

“Boring reporters,” they finished in unison.  If Marly had heard that old saw once, she’d heard it a hundred times. 

“I know, I know,” she said now, smiling.  “I’m trying to find the nugget that will make this mud patty shine, Joey.  Maybe if I could actually focus on these videos for five whole minutes without interruption...”

His answering smile was sharply knowing, but he didn’t push.  He must have sensed she wasn’t ready to talk about it.  He turned back to his computer and started his fingers flying across the keyboard.

So now she really did have to look at the rest of these irritating videos.  Discouraged by the first two, she’d lost enthusiasm for watching eight lock-step performances, in which overly-cosmetized women waxed poetic about their Mr. Right grooms, then tacked on some token Montana cliches

Mountains always make me feel small
...breathy inhale...
but very much alive
.

Or was she just taking a bad attitude, because a week ago she’d been one of these breathy, hopeful women, and today she wasn’t?

She caught Joey staring at her, his eyebrows raised very high, and his jaw making a circular, exaggerated chewing motion that somehow managed to convey his skepticism about her desire to
focus
. 

Rolling her eyes, she pulled up the next video, put in her earbuds, and told herself to stop being such a killjoy.  Some of these couples might really, truly be in love.

“Hi,” the current bride-to-be said into a jiggling camera.  Marly searched her memory rapidly, hoping she’d started to differentiate the eight women enough to name them.  She’d need to identify them at the barn dance tomorrow night.

Yes, of course...this was red-haired Robin Armstrong, with her open, freckled face and her boundless, peppy energy.  She did fundraising for some arts group, or charity, or something.

“You might wonder why I’m so eager to be married in Marietta, since I actually live in Marietta.  Well, that’s pretty simple.  Nobody on this earth appreciates Marietta more than someone who lives here.  I think it’s just about heaven on earth, and I wouldn’t get married anywhere else in the world.”

There you go
.  Marly sat back, touching her earbuds to hear Robin’s soft contralto better.  One mystery solved, anyhow.  She wasn’t a true beauty, like the others, and she didn’t have a prominent Marietta surname, but she oozed life and charm.  The Chamber of Commerce would bite at this free PR like a fish going after a fat, juicy worm. 

Robin had chosen to be taped standing by a paddock on someone’s spacious ranch, with horses frolicking behind her, one wing of a log cabin off to the side, and the majesty of Copper Mountain framing the whole thing. 

“And my fiancé is from Marietta, too.  He loves it just as much as I do.  Drake’s family owns a ranch.  Three Horses, it’s called.  He’s worked on it all his life.”

Marly jerked up, ramrod straight in an instant.  She stared at the pretty, perky face on her small screen. 

“In fact, that’s how we met,” Robin was still babbling.  “The Everetts sold some land to my dad, and Drake came over to sign some papers.  I think maybe it was just meant to be, so—“

Marly dragged the status bar back, and listened a second time.  She must have misheard.

“Drake’s family owns a ranch.  Three Horses—”

It wasn’t possible.  This woman was calling her fiancé
Drake
. 

Marly opened the application files again, wondering if she could have read them wrong.  But no, Robin Armstrong’s application clearly stated that she was to marry I. B. Coole.

Marly’s heart raced in place.  What on earth was going on here?  Was someone playing a trick on her?  Someone who knew that Marly had once nursed a hopeless crush on Drake Everett?

But that was ridiculous.  No one knew, and, even if they did, no one cared.  Something else was happening here...

She sat there a long time, studying and re-studying the applications, the videos, the emails between Marly and the Chamber, the official contest webpage, the clips...everything she could find.

She kept at it for nearly an hour before she found even a single, trivial clue.  But there it was...the anomaly...the thing that didn’t fit. 

Robin Armstrong’s typed application was dated March thirty-first, which had been the very last day a contestant was allowed to enter.  Her video, on the other hand, was date-stamped February sixteenth, just two days after the contest had been launched at the Valentine’s Ball at the Graff.

The most logical inference was that, somewhere between February sixteenth and March thirty-first, Robin had submitted a new application, and probably a new video, as well.  She had probably asked that her old application be withdrawn, and replaced with the new set. 

The contest hadn’t closed until April first.  If Robin’s request came within the time window, why would anyone have refused?  Or...Robin might have had an ally in the Chamber who’d helped her make the substitution on the sly.  Or she might just have openly explained that her first attempt was inferior and the new version was more polished.

Marly swallowed, her heart still beating fast.  Finally, a hint that there was an interesting story lurking somewhere below all the frothy gowns, hyperbolic romances and model-perfect couples.

Finally an angle. 

So why didn’t she feel excited?  Why, instead, did she feel this odd, unformed dread?

Maybe she just disliked that the ‘angle’ involved Drake Everett.  Not because she gave a darn who he might have been dating...

No, it was just that Marly preferred not to follow a lead that led to someone she knew—however superficially.  It was messy, and the resulting story wouldn’t be as crisp or convincing.

But...what the heck had happened here?  Why did this woman have one fiancé, one touching love story in February, and a totally different man just six weeks later? 

Why did she have a substitute groom?

Marly’s head ached in hot beats at the temples.  And finally she realized why.  Her head was hurting from the effort of
not
seeing the obvious.

Robin had been engaged to Drake first—but he must have jilted her.  The redhead had found a new man, quickly.  And why so quickly?  Perhaps just to save her pride, but maybe....

Oh, God
. 

Maybe she needed a husband rather urgently.  Maybe she needed a husband every bit as much as Marly Akers did.

No, no
.  Marly rubbed her temples.  That was a stretch.  Logic alone couldn’t lead her to that conclusion, not yet, anyhow.  She was projecting her own problems onto these people. 

And Robin certainly didn’t look pregnant.  She wasn’t suffering from morning sickness, that much was certain from those rosy, freckled cheeks and that bouncy energy.

Surely not pregnant
.

Some idiotic voice inside her was protesting so vigorously, it was as if she had a stake in acquitting Drake of any wrongdoing. 

It could have happened the other way around, the voice insisted.  Maybe Robin Armstrong had dumped Drake at the last minute, preferring I.B. Coole... 

Maybe
Drake
had been the jiltee...

But she didn’t believe that.  No one would toss Drake Everett away.  No one in their right mind, anyhow—and Robin Armstrong seemed perfectly sane.

Marly sensed Joey was staring from his desk.  His keyboard had stopped clacking. He was obviously aware something wasn’t right.

But she couldn’t worry about Joey right now.  Half-sick with her circling, illogical thoughts, and confused about why the idea of Drake jilting Robin Armstrong should upset her so, Marley stared at the frozen video.  Robin just happened to have been paused in the motion of leaning forward, her rosy brow knit.  She held one hand out, as if asking Marly for something. 

But for what
? 

To recognize Drake for what he was? 

Or to look the other way?

––––––––

D
rake pulled off one work glove with his teeth, then screwed the top of his Thermos open and filled a couple of mugs with coffee, which thankfully was still steaming hot. 

He passed the larger mug to Ibby.  Ibby had been out here on top of the old barn, hammering roof planks for hours, so he must be half frozen.

After a mild day, the night had turned frosty, in that mercurial way Montana April sometimes had. Drake had been helping his ranch manager for only about forty-five minutes, but his face was already going numb.

“Let’s leave the rest for tomorrow,” Drake suggested, holding his mug in front of his lips so the steam could thaw the tip of his nose.

Ibby frowned, as Drake could have predicted he would.  Ibrahim Balthazar Coole was a slave of his overactive conscience.  If he postponed this repair just because it was dark or cold or inconvenient, he wouldn’t sleep a wink.

“You go on in, boss.”  Ibby’s smile was genuine, with no hint of the martyr.  “Get some shuteye.  I’ll finish up the rest of this in twenty minutes, tops.”

Drake chuckled.  Whatever Ibby was asked to do, the man always said he could handle it in ‘twenty minutes, tops’.  And he always urged Drake to take it easy, put his feet up, grab a little shuteye.

Drake had no idea what he’d done to deserve such loyalty and sacrifice.  Maybe merely surviving, and then replacing, his wretched father.  Though Ibby’s earnest manner sometimes made him seem older, he was only thirty-eight.  He’d joined Three Horses as ranch manager when he was twenty-five, so he’d spent a lot of years under Butch Everett’s thumb. 

At the time, Drake had just hit his teens, and his relationship with his father had hit rock bottom.  He’d understood his dad was letting the ranch fall apart, so behind the scenes he and Ibby had conspired to save the place if they could.

And now Drake was going to sell it.  Just showed what a saint Ibby was—he didn’t even blame Drake for that. 

They sat quietly for a few minutes, staring out over the horse paddock behind the barn. 

“I told Styles we want a buyer who’ll keep you on.”  Drake glanced at his manager, knowing he’d understand the abrupt change of topic.  Ibby was aware Drake had signed the papers with Rick Styles this morning.  “It’s in the contract.  If they want to bring in their own manager in the first two years, they’ve got to pay you a severance.  Two years’ wages.”

Ibby smiled again.  “Then you aren’t going to sell this place at all,” he observed flatly.  “Nobody’s going to cough up that much money.”

That’s what Styles had said, too—and he’d been selling property long enough that he probably knew his business. 

“We’ll see,” Drake said, shrugging.  “I just wanted you to know.”

Ibby nodded slowly.  “Might not be necessary, anyhow.  Robin’s been talking about maybe picking up and moving after the wedding.  I couldn’t tell if she was serious, but...”

“Moving where?”

“She didn’t say.  She was just saying what if we could save a bundle on the wedding somehow, wouldn’t that give us a nice nest egg if we wanted to make a move.”  He chuckled softly.  “But I’ve heard her wedding talk.  I’ve seen the price tag on that gown.  If she plans to save a single red cent on this thing, I don’t see how.”

Drake knew how she planned to do it.  But he’d let buzzards pluck his insides out before he told Ibby.  He took one last swig of his coffee, then dumped the last inch on the ground. 

“Women,” he said with an easy smile.  “Well, I guess we’d better get going, if we really have to finish this patch tonight.”

He stood, but then turned, surprised to see that Ibby remained seated, his elbows on his knees, his mug cradled in his palms. 

“What?” Drake knew the reluctance to move meant something.  Something Ibby wanted to say?

For a long minute, Ibby frowned down at his coffee.  Drake didn’t like the tension in the other man’s shoulders.  What was wrong?  Had something gone awry with Robin?  Not inconceivable.  She was feisty, peppery and determined to have her way.

Ibby was an impressive man, muscular and tall and, as far as Drake could see, fairly good-looking, too.  But gentle as a kitten.  And it turned out he’d been in love with Robin for years.  He hadn’t had the nerve to act on it until she’d made the first move.

“I have to ask you something, boss.”  Ibby turned his earnest face toward the moonlight, so that he could look straight into Drake’s eyes.  “It’s okay with you, isn’t it?  Me and Robin, I mean.  I wouldn’t have said a word to her, not ever, not if you were still interested.”

Drake shook his head, relieved.  “It’s more than okay.  It’s great.  Robin and I were never serious, you know that.  We dated for what...a couple of months?  It was no big deal.”  He smiled.  “Now the way
you
feel about her...
that
is a big deal.”

Ibby lifted his shoulders sheepishly, the worried grooves in his forehead smoothing out as he grinned.  “Yeah.  I’m pretty gone over that gal.  I still pinch myself sometimes, afraid it’s all a dream.  She’s so—and I’m so—” 

Finally, Ibby stood, laughing at his own inarticulate stumbling.  “Hell, I don’t know.  It’s like... like a stick of dynamite falling in love with a log.”

Which suddenly, ominously sounded to Drake like a great recipe for a bonfire—but not so healthy for a love affair.