Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (30 page)

“We know. We’re just having fun.” Trudie accepted the veil from Rachael. “I wish to find a red-hot stud in my bed,” she said, then passed it to Gina, who wished to get pregnant.

That brought an “aah” from everyone assembled.

Everyone except Lucia.

Lucia met Delaney’s eyes. She was the only one who appreciated the power of the veil. When Gina passed the veil to her, Lucia said, “I wish you would all respect Delaney’s wishes.”

She got up and said to Delaney, “I’m just going to put this in Trudie’s bedroom so no one else is tempted to monkey with fate. Don’t forget it when you leave.”

Delaney smiled gratefully at Lucia.

“Okay,” Trudie said, rubbing her palms briskly together. “Who’s up for Jell-O shooters?”

“I’m in,” Tish said.

“Me too,” Jillian chimed in.

“None for me.” Gina patted her flat belly. “Chuck and I are working on giving the twins a little sister.”

“I’m the designated driver,” Rachael explained. “I’ll have to pass as well.”

“Delaney?” Trudie coaxed. “It’s your next to last night as a free woman. Gotta shake things up and cut loose.”

“No Jell-O shooters,” Lucia said, coming back from the bedroom. “Until everyone has some food in their stomachs. There’s Stromboli in the kitchen.”

They all crammed into the kitchen, and soon they were laughing and talking and eating and drinking and doing Jell-O shooters and telling worst-date horror stories.

“I went out with a guy who, instead of going in for a good-night kiss, licked my face.” Jillian shuddered.

“Ugh!” everyone shouted in unison.

“A guy took me to the movies, and when I came back from getting popcorn, he was necking with the woman sitting across the aisle from us,” Gina said.

“What a pig.” Rachael shook her head.

“Sex addict,” Jillian diagnosed.

“Anyone wanna talk brushes with celebrities?” Trudie asked.

Lucia sighed. “Trudie had sex with Frank Sinatra when she was eighteen, and she’s just dying to tell the story to a fresh audience.”

“No kidding?” the younger women exclaimed. “Tell us, tell us. What was old Blue Eyes like in bed?”

“First let’s set the stage. Anyone for poker?”

Five minutes later they had Sinatra on the stereo. Trudie was dealing Texas Hold ’Em, and Tish was passing around a bottle of peppermint schnapps because they’d run out of Jell-O shooters. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

In Delaney’s estimation, it was a pretty cool bachelorette party and she was glad no one had hired a male stripper. That would have been so embarrassing.

But then halfway through the game, there was a knock at the door. “Get that for me, will you, Jillian?” Trudie asked.

Jillian pushed back from the kitchen table just as another knock sounded.

“Houston PD,” came a rough, masculine voice. “Open up in the name of the law.”

Delaney’s heart leaped.

And when Jillian opened the door to reveal a very buff masked man in a police uniform, for one crazy second Delaney thought it might be Nick.

The minute he walked over the threshold, her hopes were shattered. “We’ve had reports of disturbing the peace.”

“Please, Officer Goodbody,” Trudie said. “Don’t arrest us. We’re having a bachelorette party.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

In an instant someone killed Sinatra and put on stripper music and Officer Goodbody whipped off his Velcro pants. “Who’s the bride-to-be?”

Delaney good-naturedly endured the striptease and to please her friends pretended to like it. But the thing was, the fake cop made her think about the real cop in her life.

Nick’s not in your life.

Her heart hit the floor. Sadness filled her, and she had to force herself to keep smiling as Officer Goodbody waggled his groove thing. She missed Nick so much.

What would it be like?
she wondered. If it was Nick she was going to meet at River Oaks Methodist Church on Saturday afternoon instead of Evan?

Inside her head, wistful longing warred with loyal duty. Sexual chemistry duked it out with steadfast stability. Desire versus dignity.

She couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me,” Delaney said, got up from the table, and left the room, leaving Officer Goodbody looking surprised.

“Hey, what gives with her?” he asked. “Don’t she wanna see the finale?”

“You can show us,” Delaney heard Jillian say as she hurried into Trudie’s bedroom, looking for solitude so she could collect her thoughts.

The minute she walked into the room, she saw the veil stretched out on Trudie’s bed, looking more magical than ever.

Wish on me,
it whispered to her.
Make the deepest wish of your soul come true.

Delaney paced Trudie’s small bedroom, casting frequent glances at the veil.

You can’t wish on the veil. You promised Claire Kelley.

But it was a promise Delaney couldn’t keep. The veil was her only way out. The single salvation left to her. She knew no other way to get out of the marriage that should have been so perfect and yet loomed like a total disaster. She had to rely on the magic of the veil. She had to believe.

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.”

Chapter 16

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?”